The Martin Luther King Center in Cuba: Immersed in the World and the Revolution

Chris Gilbert

 December 25, 2025

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Network of Popular Educators in Alamar, La Habana del Este, Cuba, November 2025.

Now I know that there are many more things in heaven and earth than I’ve dreamt of. I never expected to find a Baptist-inspired project that enthusiastically defends gender and sexual diversity, socialism, and the Cuban Revolution. Yet that was precisely what I found at the Martin Luther King Center in Cuba when I visited in late November 2025 and was received in its offices by key members of its team, including Marilín Peña, Joel Suárez—son of the Center’s founder—and Sayonara Tamayo.

In fact, the MLK Center is full of paradoxes. First, it is a Christian-inspired initiative committed both to socialism and to the Cuban Revolution. Second, it has its roots in revolutionary Protestantism, on a continent where the liberatory current has been mostly Catholic. Third, it maintains links with progressive church groups in the United States—the very country that has tried to bring down Cuba’s government and has placed the island under a genocidal blockade for more than half a century. Yet revolutions are always made of paradoxes, as Lenin’s wartime train ride through Germany and Hugo Chávez’s military background both demonstrate.

Joel tells me how the MLK Center was born. His father belonged to a “terribly conservative” Baptist tendency (I later found out that the Ebenezer Church next to the Center is the very one that dictator Fulgencio Batista attended). So when the Revolution triumphed in 1959 many of its parishioners simply left, since they thought “God himself had gone to Miami.” However, there were others, including Joel’s father, the Reverend Raúl Suárez, who stayed. They were inspired by the Revolution’s project of social justice and wanted to move forward as part of it. As a result, they developed a progressive—even revolutionary—Christianity, somewhat in isolation from the powerful Catholic liberation theology that was emerging at the time.

Their initial work of distancing themselves from the conservative ideology of U.S. missionaries and walking the new path with the Revolution went on for several decades. The Center itself was formed in the late 1980s and named in honor of the great civil rights leader, because they wanted to take up work outside the remit of a church. Its two pillars were, on the one hand, “macro-ecumenical work” with a wide range of Cuban religious groups from the perspective of liberatory theology and, on the other hand, popular education in the communities. The latter was conceived in keeping with the original project of Paulo Freire, which involves raising political awareness while fostering popular protagonism and revolutionary transformation.

Over the years, the Center has trained thousands of popular educators. Marilín explains how the educators often find themselves in complex situations. “The Christians see us as communists, and the communists see us as Christians—though some of the latter recognize we are more communist than they are.” At one point, these educators felt themselves to be too spread out and isolated, each in their respective communities. They needed a support structure. That is why in 2007 the Center decided to create its networks of popular educators. There are now thirty-seven such networks established across the Cuban territory. The Center also works with popular movements across the continent, in the spirit of Cuba’s longstanding revolutionary internationalism.

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I am visiting Cuba with an interest in the question of how popular power combines with the revolutionary leadership exercised by the state and the Party. This combination seems to me to be an extremely important but underrecognized feature of every successful and sustainable anti-imperialist revolution. There can be no doubt that the principal contradiction in the world today is between imperialism and oppressed nations. However, one should not forget that carrying out the struggle against the main enemy—the U.S.-led imperialist system—requires addressing other, subordinate contradictions at the same time. That is how popular power is built and maintained in a mutually reinforcing relationship with revolutionary state power.

The subordinate contradictions that need to be addressed include those that are directly generated by capitalist exploitation and also by gender and racial oppression. Confronting these issues is important not only because it is right in itself, but also because doing so is necessary if the primary struggle against imperialism is to be viable and sustainable. In a general sense, it is only by addressing issues of social emancipation that one can guarantee the incorporation of the bases in what is necessarily a long-term anti-imperialist project.

Cuba has a long history of mobilizing people and building popular power as part of social emancipation. The history of its mass organizations that express popular power, such as the Committees in Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), the Federation of University Students (FEU), and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), is a glorious one. On an ideological level, the fusion of revolutionary leadership with popular power is reflected in how the Cuban Revolution adopted Marxism—Leninism as its guiding ideology and socialism as its goal, but grafted this project onto a deeply developed tradition of patriotic, democratic, and anticolonial thought that is an important part of Cuban national culture.

The central figure in that endogenous tradition is José Martí, a revolutionary leader, writer, and patriot of the 19th century who organized the struggle for Cuba’s independence. The fusion of popular and national components with the aspiration to achieve socialism through scientific means (i.e., the Party and Marxist theory) is one of the great achievements of the Cuban Revolution. Symbolically, one could represent it with a triangle at the base of which are Martí and Marx, both feeding into the revolutionary thought and action of Fidel Castro.

Beyond ideology and symbolism, however, the organizational expression of this fusion consists in how the state and party relate to the multiple expressions and institutions of popular power—the power of the base. In recent times, these grassroots-level institutions have suffered. The longstanding effects of the cruel U.S. blockade, along with the simple loss of momentum following the heroic “peak” first decades of the Revolution, have made them less dynamic. Sometimes the formal organizational component dominates over content and substance.

That is why the work of the MLK Center is so important at present. The people it brings together are revolutionaries and communists (many are Party members) who also connect with broad social bases—through their Christian-inspired work and through their efforts as popular educators, whose central mission is strengthening communities and activating popular participation.

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The day after my meeting with the MLK Center’s coordination, I was able to accompany Center team member Suray Cabrera in a visit to one of the networks of popular education in situ. The locale we visited is in a residential area of East Havana called Alamar, in the Micro X neighborhood, where the Center’s Network of Educators works jointly with one of the Neighborhood Integral Transformation Workshops created by the municipal government.

Seated before us in a circle are twenty people of different age groups who have come together in a space decorated with posters of Fidel, Chávez, and Che and banners of the 26th of July Movement. Their skills and backgrounds are very diverse. Some are teachers, some are retired professionals, others are social or natural scientists. All are involved in grassroots organizing or educational work. Their projects in the community include an extracurricular program with secondary schools, adult education, craft workshops, sports and tai chi sessions, and raising awareness about environmental issues in this coastal region.

Once a year, each network drafts a plan for its activities, objectives, and intentions with the Center, and in turn receives a budget. There is two-way coordination, guided by the idea of building the social fabric, strengthening participation, and expanding popular control in the territory. As we go around the circle of those assembled, they explain what their work is. An older man takes a different tack and refers to the importance of Fidel’s legacy in these times for both Venezuela and Cuba, highlighting his connections with ordinary people. A woman to my right recounts the success of their children’s baseball team, which they call the “peloteritos.”

When I ask what impact the network makes in this area, they respond that there is more participation here, better conflict mediation, better organized community activities, and better interaction with the delegates of popular power. They close the meeting referring to a strikingly appropriate quote by José Martí that they have taken as a motto: “One must teach through conversation, as Socrates did—from village to village, from house to house.”

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These projects in the communities are humble ones, but only in appearance. In that sense they resemble Raúl Suárez, the MLK Center’s soft-spoken founder, who turned 90 this year. Raúl was a Baptist pastor who remained loyal to the Revolution from the beginning, despite being treated with some suspicion at first for his beliefs, and was even wounded in its defense at Playa Girón. In 1993, he did a successful hunger strike in opposition to the U.S. blockade, specifically to force president Bill Clinton to allow a school bus and medical supplies to get through. Because he had the confidence of the people in his district, he became a deputy to the National Assembly of Popular Power.

Raúl’s son Joel, who is an electrical engineer by training, is also very much a man of the people. At the same time, he is a wide-ranging reader and deeply thoughtful intellectual. With a permanent cigarette in hand and wild mane of curly hair, Joel talks affectionately about his good friends from the ranks of revolutions around the continent and beyond—their sacrifices and their hopes. However, he constantly weaves these stories into larger reflections drawn from his reading.

What Joel most wishes to impress on me is that revolutionary transformation cannot do without revolutionary subjectivity and therefore cannot leave aside the question of religion. For many people around the world, especially in Latin America, religion orients their lives; it is central to their lived experience. Hence, it would be an error for revolutionary leadership and governments—potentially a grave one in certain contexts—to set aside religion and other spiritual impulses as merely private matters.

In fact, as Joel points out, there are basic features of even ostensibly secular revolutionary subjectivity—such as the idealistic fervor that motivated people to cut sugarcane for the Revolution in the 1960s—that operate on a terrain that is crisscrossed by both religion and revolution. He also notes that the Cuban Revolution inspired almost religious sacrifices in its internationalist endeavors, even as it invoked concepts of the promised land, transcendental hope, and expectations of a better future that are typical of religious subjectivity.

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Recent developments in Latin America, especially the rise of Christian fundamentalism, seem to offer vivid proof of Joel’s thesis about the need to attend to subjective consciousness as it develops in the religious sphere. The fundamentalist evangelical churches, which are spreading like wildfire across the continent, offer escape, ecstasy, and the promise of community. But along with these often-illusory promises usually come the hardened figures of patriarchy, submission, conformity, and conservative politicization.

The fundamentalist evangelical sector reared its head as a political force in Cuba when, in the wake of the 2019 constitution, a new Family Code came up for debate, prior to a plebiscite. The evangelical churches took to promoting the “original family”—mom, dad, and kids—by holding meetings on street corners and distributing posters that depicted their ideal household. Only the hard work of the Center, with its popular education practices, made it possible for the progressive rights promoted by Cuba’s LGBTQ+ and feminist groups to be understood by the masses as those that best served their own interests. This work contributed to the approval of a 2022 Family Code that defends those rights, which include same-sex marriage.

This was one battle that was won, and it served as a testing ground for the Center’s combination of spiritual and moral energy and community-oriented praxis. Now there are more battles to come. In the cultural struggle for the future of Cuba that is taking place in the present, one can see both light and shadows. The most troubling development is that a capitalist-inspired culture of radical individualism and success is entering the social base with force. These attitudes could undermine the revolutionary subjectivity of the masses, thereby eroding the popular power that is a key pillar of the Revolution’s anti-imperialism and socialism.

On the other hand, sixty-six years of revolutionary experience have left Cuba with huge reserves of social solidarity and anti-imperialist commitment in the bases. The work of the MLK Center in popular education and community organizing shows that this legacy of revolutionary subjectivity can still be tapped and also rekindled. The struggle is ultimately for people’s hearts and minds, and for the Revolution itself. As Fidel said, a revolution is the child of culture and ideas—and so is its continuity.

This article originally appeared in Monthly Review Online.

Chris Gilbert is professor of political science in the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela.

AI resurrections of dead celebrities amuse and rankle

By AFP
December 21, 2025


AI creations have triggered a debate about who controls a person's identity and legacy after death - Copyright AFP Chris DELMAS

Anuj Chopra in Washington, with Anna Malpas and Rachel Blundy in London

In a parallel reality, Queen Elizabeth II gushes over cheese puffs, a gun-toting Saddam Hussein struts into a wrestling ring, and Pope John Paul II attempts skateboarding.

Hyper-realistic AI videos of dead celebrities — created with apps such as OpenAI’s easy-to-use Sora — have rapidly spread online, prompting debate over the control of deceased people’s likenesses.

OpenAI’s app, launched in September and widely dubbed as a deepfake machine, has unleashed a flood of videos of historical figures including Winston Churchill as well as celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.

In one TikTok clip reviewed by AFP, Queen Elizabeth II, clad in pearls and a crown, arrives at a wrestling match on a scooter, climbs a fence, and leaps onto a male wrestler.

In a separate Facebook clip, the late queen is shown praising “delightfully orange” cheese puffs in a supermarket aisle, while another depicts her playing football.

But not all videos — powered by OpenAI’s Sora 2 model — have prompted laughs.

In October, OpenAI blocked users from creating videos of Martin Luther King Jr. after the estate of the civil rights icon complained about disrespectful depictions.

Some users created videos depicting King making monkey noises during his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech, illustrating how users can portray public figures at will, making them say or do things they never did.

– ‘Maddening’ –

“We’re getting into the ‘uncanny valley,'” said Constance de Saint Laurent, a professor at Ireland’s Maynooth University, referring to the phenomenon in which interactions with artificial objects are so human-like it triggers unease.

“If suddenly you started receiving videos of a deceased family member, this is traumatizing,” she told AFP. “These (videos) have real consequences.”

In recent weeks, the children of late actor Robin Williams, comedian George Carlin, and activist Malcolm X have condemned the use of Sora to create synthetic videos of their fathers.

Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, recently pleaded on Instagram to “stop sending me AI videos of dad,” calling the content “maddening.”

An OpenAI spokesman told AFP that while there were “strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures,” public figures and their families should have ultimate control over their likeness.

For “recently deceased” figures, he added, authorized representatives or estate owners can now request that their likeness not be used in Sora.

– ‘Control likeness’ –

“Despite what OpenAI says about wanting people to control their likeness, they have released a tool that decidedly does the opposite,” Hany Farid, co-founder of GetReal Security and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told AFP.

“While they (mostly) stopped the creation of MLK Jr. videos, they are not stopping users from co-opting the identity of many other celebrities.”

“Even with OpenAI putting some safeguards to protect MLK Jr. there will be another AI model that does not, and so this problem will surely only get worse,” said Farid.

That reality was underscored in the aftermath of Hollywood director Rob Reiner’s alleged murder this month, as AFP fact-checkers uncovered AI-generated clips using his likeness spreading online.

As advanced AI tools proliferate, the vulnerability is no longer confined to public figures: deceased non-celebrities may also have their names, likenesses, and words repurposed for synthetic manipulation.

Researchers warn that the unchecked spread of synthetic content — widely called AI slop — could ultimately drive users away from social media.

“The issue with misinformation in general is not so much that people believe it. A lot of people don’t,” said Saint Laurent.

“The issue is that they see real news and they don’t trust it anymore. And this (Sora) is going to massively increase that.”

burs-ac/des

As US battles China on AI, some companies choose Chinese


By AFP
December 21, 2025


The January launch of Chinese company DeepSeek's high-performance, low-cost and open source 'R1' large language model (LLM) defied the perception that the best AI tech had to be from US juggernauts like OpenAI, Anthropic or Google - Copyright AFP Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV

Thomas Urbain with Luna Lin in Beijing

Even as the United States is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence, Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market.

Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the United States.

These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini – whose inner workings are fiercely protected.

In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba to DeepSeek, allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their needs.

Globally, use of Chinese-developed open models has surged from just 1.2 percent in late 2024 to nearly 30 percent in August, according to a report published this month by the developers’ platform OpenRouter and US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

China’s open-source models “are cheap — in some cases free — and they work well,” Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China told AFP.

One American entrepreneur, speaking on condition of anonymity, said their business saves $400,000 annually by using Alibaba’s Qwen AI models instead of the proprietary models.

“If you need cutting-edge capabilities, you go back to OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, but most applications don’t need that,” said the entrepreneur.

US chip titan Nvidia, AI firm Perplexity and California’s Stanford University are also using Qwen models in some of their work.

– DeepSeek shock –

The January launch of DeepSeek’s high-performance, low-cost and open source “R1” large language model (LLM) defied the perception that the best AI tech had to be from US juggernauts like OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.

It was also a reckoning for the United States — locked in a battle for dominance in AI tech with China — on how far its archrival had come.

AI models from China’s MiniMax and Z.ai are also popular overseas, and the country has entered the race to build AI agents — programs that use chatbots to complete online tasks like buying tickets or adding events to a calendar.

Agent friendly — and open-source — models, like the latest version of the Kimi K2 model from the startup Moonshot AI, released in November, are widely considered the next frontier in the generative AI revolution.

The US government is aware of open-source’s potential.

In July, the Trump administration released an “AI Action Plan” that said America needed “leading open models founded on American values”.

These could become global standards, it said.

But so far US companies are taking the opposite track.

Meta, which had led the country’s open-source efforts with its Llama models, is now concentrating on closed-source AI instead.

However, this summer, OpenAI — under pressure to revive the spirit of its origin as a nonprofit — released two “open-weight” models (slightly less malleable than “open-source”).

– ‘Build trust’ –

Among major Western companies, only France’s Mistral is sticking with open-source, but it ranks far behind DeepSeek and Qwen in usage rankings.

Western open-source offerings are “just not as interesting,” said the US entrepreneur who uses Alibaba’s Qwen.

The Chinese government has encouraged open-source AI technology, despite questions over its profitability.

Mark Barton, chief technology officer at OMNIUX, said he was considering using Qwen but some of his clients could be uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with Chinese-made AI, even for specific tasks.

Given the current US administration’s stance on Chinese tech companies, risks remain, he told AFP.

“We wouldn’t want to go all-in with one specific model provider, especially one that’s maybe not aligned with Western ideas,” said Barton.

“If Alibaba were to get sanctioned or usage was effectively blacklisted, we don’t want to get caught in that trap.”

But Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, said there were no “salient issues” surrounding data security.

“Companies can choose to use the models and build on them…without any connection to China,” he explained.

A recent Stanford study published posited that “the very nature of open-model releases enables better scrutiny” of the tech.

Gao Fei, chief technology officer at Chinese AI wellness platform BOK Health, agrees.

“The transparency and sharing nature of open source are themselves the best ways to build trust,” he said.

Agentic AI set to become big in 2026


ByDr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL
December 21, 2025


City of London at night. — Image by © Tim Sandle

As leadership teams wrap up annual planning and look ahead to 2026, this provides a rare moment in the corporate calendar for those occupying the heady heights of the C-Suite to step back and reassess which trends will actually matter as the next year unfolds.

Dimitri Masin, Co-Founder and CEO of Gradient Labs — an AI-native fintech working with leading financial institutions across Europe and recently launched in the U.S. — believes the next phase of customer experience will look fundamentally different. Based on what his team is seeing in live, regulated deployments, Masin has told Digital Journal about three customer experience shifts that will define CX in 2026.

Dmitri Masin previously served as Sales Finance Analyst at Google and VP Data Science, Financial Crime and Fraud at Monzo (UK’s Venmo Bank), joining as one of the early employees and scaling a 120+ person team. With a background in financial engineering and AI, he specialises in risk-compliant automation for regulated industries. With two partners, he established Gradient Labs, the conversational AI platform purpose-built for financial services.

This year, the startup secured a $13 million investment in just one week, and the platform can now reach over 32 million end-users.

1. Voice AI becomes trusted and safe

According to Masin: “Voice will shift from being the most unpredictable customer-support channel to the most trusted one. Financial institutions will begin adopting voice AI that can reason through complex procedures, follow multi-step compliance workflows, and guarantee audit-ready accuracy in real time.”

This means, as AI transitions: “Voice is becoming a core part of the AI-powered operating system for financial firms – resolving issues end-to-end, not just answering calls. The global voice banking market is projected to grow to nearly $18 billion by 2032, so this is the future the industry is heading.”

2. Outbound predictive communication

Masin also sees predictive analytics increasing in scope: “The next evolution of customer service is outbound predictive communication – moving from reactive responses to proactive engagement. AI agents will anticipate customer needs before they surface, reaching out with solutions, not apologies. Imagine a system that alerts a customer before a payment fails, or offers guidance before a compliance issue even occurs.”

As to the significance? “This shift from reactive to predictive service will redefine what trust and satisfaction mean in financial experiences.”

3. The shift to 360° autonomous customer experience

Attracting and keeping customers remains essential to any business seeking to grow, and here autonomous AI becomes a necessary tool: “We’re moving beyond hyper-personalisation toward truly agentic AI – systems that don’t just tailor experiences, but act on behalf of customers to resolve their needs autonomously. Gartner predicts that by 2029, agentic AI will autonomously resolve 80% of common customer service issues without human intervention, leading to a 30% reduction in operational costs, but the market demonstrates it can happen sooner.”

As to what this means in practice, Masin explains: “AI systems will not just personalise customer experiences but autonomously act on behalf of users across inbound requests, proactive outreach, and back office operations – everything executing payments, resolving disputes, and managing compliance checks in real time. Intelligent agents manage entire customer journeys and compliance workflows end-to-end. The shift from “hyper-personalised” to “hands-on, proactive AI” will redefine what trust and efficiency mean in customer operations.”

‘What is the Christian word in the face of genocide?’: new Kairos Palestine document calls for repudiation of Zionism

“What is happening [in Palestine] today is the true face of Zionist ideology . . . turning Palestinian existence into an unbearable hell,” declares the recently released Kairos Palestine document, "A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide."

By Jeff Wright 

 December 20, 2025 

MONDOWEISS

Displaced Palestinians continue their daily lives under difficult conditions inside displacement tents scattered amidst the destruction in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, on December 9, 2025. 

(Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)


Last month, 300 people—led by the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Palestine— gathered in Bethlehem to launch the second Kairos Palestine document: A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide. 140 Palestinians and 160 internationals spent the day unpacking the theological and political descriptions of the conditions that Palestinians face and attending to the indigenous church’s call for Palestinian resistance and Christian solidarity. The conference was hosted by Kairos Palestine, the largest Palestinian Christian ecumenical nonviolent movement for freedom and justice.

Mays Nassar, Kairos Palestine staff, introduced the 14-page document, saying, “With the beginning of the genocidal war on Gaza and the worsening reality of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, we reached a decisive moral and theological turning point. Our hearts were compelled to reflect on the meaning of faith in such a time of horror. We asked ourselves what must we say to our people now? What is the Christian word in the face of genocide?”

In the first part of the document, “The Reality: Genocide, Colonization and Ethnic Cleansing”, the authors lament, “We raise this cry from the heart of the assault on Gaza — a war that has left behind hundreds of thousands of martyrs and wounded, and nearly two million displaced people. Many were buried beneath the rubble, burned alive, tortured to death in prisons or forcibly displaced more than once. Others endured starvation, targeted even as they ran in search of food. Tens of thousands of children were killed in the most horrific ways. Gaza’s health, education, economic, and environmental sectors—indeed, every component of life—have been destroyed.”

“Exposed today,” the document states, “is the true face of Zionist ideology: a system that over decades has entrenched an organized and sophisticated regime of apartheid supported by advanced technologies that exercise total control over every aspect of Palestinian life—fragmenting the land, dividing its people, and turning Palestinian existence into an unbearable hell.”

Genocide is both a cumulative process, according to the document, “one that began in the minds of the settler-colonial powers of Europe when they denied the image of God in others and legitimized death, domination and slavery,” and a “structural sin against God, against humanity, and against creation.”

“We consider the State of Israel, established in 1948,” Kairos II maintains, “to be a continuation of that same colonial enterprise built on racism and the ideology of ethnic or religious superiority.”

Authors of the document charge that “the genocidal war has laid bare the hypocrisy of the Western world, its hollow values and its empty boasts of commitment to human rights and international law. In truth, the Western world has sacrificed us, revealing racism and double standards toward our people.”

Palestinian Christians decorate the Latin Monastery Church in hardships Gaza City ahead of New Year celebrations, continuing their preparations despite the hardships facing the besieged enclave, on December 9, 2025.

(Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)

Turning to the global reality of Christian Zionism, the document describes the ideology as a “theology of racism, colonialism and ethnic supremacy… a theology that has produced apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide of indigenous people.”

“Christian Zionism calls on a tribal, racist god of war and ethnic cleansing, teachings utterly alien to the core of Christian faith and ethics,” Kairos II continues. “Christian Zionism must therefore be named for what it is: a theological distortion and a moral corruption.”

In what some may consider the document’s most controversial call, Kairos II insists that religious conversations and interfaith dialogue with Christian Zionists must be ended.

“After all efforts to invite Christian Zionists to genuine repentance have been exhausted,” Kairos II reads, “moral, ecclesial and theological responsibility requires that they be held accountable and that their ideology be rejected and boycotted. The time has come for the churches of the world to repudiate Zionist theology and to state clearly their position on Palestine: this is a case of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people.”

The document goes on to describe the increasingly violent actions of settlers: “Across the occupied West Bank… [t]hey wreak havoc upon the land, destroy crops, poison or seize water resources and attack residents—all under the protection, support and even participation of the Israeli army in acts of violence, killing, home demolitions and forced displacement.”

Regarding the Palestinians living within the state of Israel, the document states, “blatant racism and discrimination persist. Palestinian communities face intimidation, criminalization of free expression, and persecution of any effort to defend Palestinian rights, along with [Israel’s] deliberate neglect of rampant organized crime in Palestinian towns. Those displaced within Israel in 1948, whose lands were confiscated, are still denied the right to return to their villages and rebuild their homes. Bedouin communities remain victims of systematic displacement and ethnic cleansing….”

The document doesn’t hesitate to name challenging internal conditions that have been increasingly exacerbated over Israel’s 77-year-long dispossession and occupation:


Political division, rivalry and exclusion have deepened. The majority of Palestinians have lost confidence in their political leadership. As a result of the Oslo Accords and their aftermath, the Palestinian Authority has been trapped in serving the interests of the occupier….

Signs of disorder have… become part of our reality, largely due to the absence or weak enforcement of the rule of law. This has led to a rise in intimidation, land encroachment, tribalism, favoritism and corruption in its various forms at the expense of the common good, deepening people’s frustration and despair. Amid the vast destruction and genocide in Gaza, acts of violence, revenge, chaos and theft have only added to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

The document also describes a worrying external reality.


In recent years, our region—the Middle East—has undergone major political and regional transformations shaped by a deliberate plan to impose Israeli military dominance over the entire area with the support of Western powers, drawing a new political and demographic map. Backed systematically by its allies, Israel has attacked many countries of the region, violating their sovereignty and that of their peoples, flouting international law and entrenching itself as an aggressive, bullying state as if it stands above all laws and conventions—pushing the region and indeed the world to the brink of catastrophe.

The second part of Kairos II, “A Moment of Truth for Us”, is focused inwardly on Palestinian society. “In the face of this harsh reality and at this decisive moment we raise this cry—first to ourselves, to the sons and daughters of our churches and congregations, and to our entire people in the homeland and the diaspora.”

The document calls “for a comprehensive national reevaluation of our reality to draw lessons and insights leading to a unified, collective vision and a clear strategy for future action… within a legitimate representative framework” and warns “against giving our national struggle a religious character or turning it into a religious issue that pits religions against one another.”

In almost lyrical prose, Kairos II addresses:the Palestinian woman, “the unbending backbone, partner in the struggle, holding together home, land, memory and future all at once… There can be no true liberation without her full participation at every level of decision-making and nation-building.”
the Palestinian Church: “We are the sons and daughters of the first Church… those who cultivated this land, built its cities and villages and drank from its waters. We do not live on the margins of this land. We are woven into its fabric. We carry its history and heritage. Its very soil knows us as its own. Many empires have passed over this land and disappeared, buried in the dust of history, yet the bells of our churches continue to ring—bearing witness to the truth and proclaiming resurrection every day.”“our youth”: “You are the living Church…. We see your anger, your sorrow, your fear. We also see your strength…. We do not call you to naïve optimism, but to hope that is rooted in action…. Express yourselves. Write. Sing. Create. Organize. Resist through your humanity in a world that seeks to strip it from you.
“our people in the diaspora”: “You may be geographically far from Palestine, but Palestine lives within you…. Your voice has the power to shift realities. Share our suffering and our stories of steadfastness and success…. We will not lose our dream of reunification, nor will we abandon our right of return.

In the third part of the document, “A Call to Repentance and Action”, the authors make their appeal to persons around the world.

To Christians: “working together with both religious and secular coalitions… pressure [your] governments to isolate Israel, hold it accountable… press for the prosecution of war criminals whoever they may be… ensure reparations for the Palestinian people… work for the immediate return of the displaced through the reconstruction of Gaza and the strengthening of its people’s steadfastness.

To people of conscience: “believers in God from every faith and persons of conviction… join together in coalitions that safeguard humanity from further descent into the reality of injustice, tyranny and domination.”

“We call for a global theological movement built on the pillars of God’s Kingdom — a movement that arises from the contexts and struggles of peoples suffering from colonialism, racism, apartheid and the structural poverty produced by corrupt economic and political systems that serve the interests of the world’s empires.”

To the Jewish voices that oppose the war and confront Zionism from moral, faith-based and human conviction: “[W]e find [in you] partners in our shared humanity and in the struggle for freedom and human dignity—partners also in religious and political dialogue.

Rejecting the conflation of Jew and Zionist, the document draws a clear distinction. It declares, “Not every Jew is a Zionist and not every Zionist is a Jew.”

At the heart of the document’s plea to all is a clarion call to costly solidarity, the risking of one’s self for the sake of the other. “By its very nature,” the document insists, “true solidarity is costly. It has a price. It is a faith-based stance, a human commitment and a moral responsibility. True solidarity is also the embodiment of our shared humanity and fraternity. Either we live together—or we perish together. Today it is Palestine. Tomorrow it will be other marginalized and oppressed peoples.”

The final section, “Faith in a Time of Genocide”, is the briefest, and offers a reaffirmation of the Palestinian Christians’ steadfast faith and this honest assessment of the possibilities for peace:


To speak of a political solution today is futile unless we first undertake the serious work of acknowledging and rectifying past wrongs—beginning with recognition of the historic injustice done to Palestinians since the rise of the Zionist movement and the Balfour Declaration. Any genuine beginning must involve dismantling settler colonialism and the apartheid system built on Jewish supremacy…. What is required is international action and protection…. Enduring solutions will not rest on the logic of force, but on the foundations of justice, equality and the right to self-determination.

In her address at the conference, Dr. Muna Mushahwer, an ophthalmologist and member of the board of Kairos Palestine, acknowledged, “Yes, we are angry, furious even. Jesus himself got angry at the Temple as we read in Matthew 21:12-13. He got angry because the house of the LORD was to be a house of prayer, but it was turned into a den of thieves. How angry do you think he is now that the land of the LORD has been turned into a place of death and desolation? But from this anguish and pain comes this moment of truth for us. As we write in Kairos II, we raise this cry… a cry of steadfastness.”

“Faith in a Time of Genocide” will stand alongside Chrisian confessions written in other times of crisis, such as the Barmen Declaration during the rise of Nazism (1934), MLK, Jr’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement (1963), and The South Africa Kairos Document during the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa (1985).

Jeff Wright
Jeff Wright is an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

 

Ragebait Governance

How the State Became the Arbiter of Truth

by Nolan Higdon / December 10th, 2025

Image information: “Trollface” by Me in ME is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Oxford University Press’ 2025 Word of the Year is “ragebait.” The term captures a defining feature of today’s information ecosystem: content engineered to provoke anger, boost engagement, and overwhelm our ability to think clearly. Fake news is a potent form of ragebait, and in this week’s Gaslight Gazette, the most troubling examples come not from fringe corners of the internet but from the people who now claim to be combating disinformation. This essay examines how the federal government under President Donald Trump has adopted, and expanded, the very practices it once criticized, turning itself into the nation’s most powerful arbiter of truth while sidelining the press, rewriting narratives, and generating its own brand of institutional ragebait.

The announcement of an arrest in the D.C. pipe-bomb investigation, tied to the events surrounding January 6, saw a proliferation of ragebait. The suspect, Brian Cole, reportedly believed the 2020 election was stolen, a belief shared by many who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Yet even the straightforward update about his arrest generated its own bout of rage and fake news. While discussing the case, CNN’s Jake Tapper described the suspect as “white” even though the images on screen clearly showed Cole was Black. No correction was issued in the segment. Conservatives had recently spread their own fake news about the case. The conservative outlet The Blaze, in a spectacular act of defamation, incorrectly named an unrelated woman as the suspect. If Cole is indeed guilty, The Blaze should prepare its legal team for a defamation case.

In another example of the intersection of rage and fake news, there was the chaos at the CDC last week. The conflict emerged over CDC guidelines, when established scientists clashed with activists and appointees installed by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. After sidelining career experts, the agency reversed long-standing guidance and declined to recommend the Hepatitis B vaccine for young people. Multiple experts say the decision was driven by misinformation rather than evidence. Once again, public institutions tasked with promoting truth are becoming factories of confusion. Ragebait has always been a problem, but the real crisis emerges when the government itself becomes the most prolific producer of ragebait.

Fake News About Fake News: The White House’s Disinformation Spiral

“Misleading. Biased. Exposed. Media Offender of the Week.” This sounds like a tagline from a scrappy media-watchdog newsletter. In fact, it’s an official designation from The White House. The Trump administration has replicated the tactics it once condemned in the Biden era, launching a government-run website that identifies alleged fake news, names specific journalists and outlets, describes their supposed “offense,” and then offers “the truth.”

The problem? Their standards for truth are as arbitrary as they are political. One recent example: Fox News was labeled too “woke,” after the White House misidentified the reporter they were criticizing for “bias.” The administration’s supposedly authoritative sources for debunking stories are equally suspect, relying almost entirely on government accounts, including posts from “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth” and a New York Times article that merely reported what unnamed officials said. In other words, the government cites itself as the final word on reality.

This trend is spreading. Agencies including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are now publishing their own “debunkings” of media stories. Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking not only to dismiss views opposing the Trump administration as baseless, but also to criminalize them. According to a memo obtained by Ken Klippenstein, the targets include those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme support for mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity.”

These actions are especially ironic because conservatives erupted in outrage when President Joe Biden attempted something similar with his short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, which was run by Nina Jankowicz, known for her cringe-worthy TikTok videos. The First Amendment exists precisely to prevent governments from monopolizing truth and delegitimizing the press. Yet that’s exactly what is happening under Trump’s administration.

Pledging Silence: The Death of Accountability at the Pentagon

Image Information: (Top)“Pete Hegseth” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0; (Left) “Laura Loomer by Gage Skidmore (cropped)” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. (Right) “Matt Gaetz” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

In October 2025, we witnessed a dangerous escalation in government censorship of the press. That month, the Pentagon announced it was barring legacy journalists from its briefings after they refused to sign a pledge to report only information pre-approved by Pentagon leadership. The New York Times refused to sign the pledge and is now suing the Pentagon on the grounds that the pledge violates the Constitution’s free press protections.

Those who signed, known as pledgers, can no longer credibly call themselves journalists; by agreeing in writing, they have committed to acting as stenographers for the Pentagon. The pledgers now populate the briefing room. They include Laura Loomer, who has a long record of spreading debunked claims, and Matt Gaetz, who left federal office under allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use, and bribery. The pledgers faced online backlash this week after three different pledgers reported that their outlets were occupying the desk formerly held by the Washington Post, whose journalists evacuated the Pentagon after refusing to sign the pledge.

Meanwhile, one of the pledgers revealed they had interviewed Pete Hegseth, the head of the Pentagon and U.S. Secretary of War, describing it as a good interview but stressing that it was off the record, preventing them from sharing any details. Essentially, this means the pledgers mingle with Pentagon leadership yet offer nothing substantive to the public in terms of objective journalism. They act as mere props to give the illusion of a free press while failing to fulfill the true role of journalists.

At the same time, the pledgers sided with the press secretary’s claim that, before the pledge, the press had been acting unethically by persistently knocking on the press secretary’s door. Apparently, reporting objective facts, getting figures like Hegseth on the record, and the press secretary engaging with the media are no longer considered part of journalism, at least according to those who signed the pledge.

The entire situation feels profoundly Orwellian and dangerous. Hegseth is embroiled in a scandal, repeatedly changing his story amid accusations of overseeing war crimes in an unofficial conflict and leaking sensitive information that endangers U.S. military personnel. The stakes are real. This week, a damning government report on “Signalgate” revealed that Hegseth shared information that could have put service members’ lives at risk. He also faces allegations of overseeing war crimes connected to a double-tap strike on Venezuelan drug boats in an unofficial conflict. Recent reports claim the second strike occurred 45 minutes after the initial attack, long after survivors had shown they were no longer a threat, raising serious questions about the operation’s intent and legality.

With the video documenting the alleged war crimes concealed from public view and genuine journalists supplanted by propagandists, both Republicans and Democrats have retreated into entrenched partisan positions, interpreting the unseen footage to advance their own narratives. Despite repeated promises of transparency, the video remains withheld. In the absence of a free and independent press, truth devolves into partisan property, and accountability effectively vanishes.

Censorship

This section chronicles some of the most pressing examples of censorship from the previous two weeks. Project Censored defines censorship as “the suppression of information, whether purposeful or not, by any method—including bias, omission, underreporting, or self-censorship—that prevents the public from fully knowing what is happening in society.”

Image information: (Left) “Public Domain: JFK with RFK Outside Oval Office by Robert Knudsen, March 1963 (NARA)“ by pingnews.com is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.(Right) “MLK Photo and Quote“ by mattlemmon is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Long Shadow of Impunity: The Real Scandal Isn’t Trump, It’s Decades of Looking the Other Way

“Did the Trump administration commit a war crime in its attack on a Venezuelan boat?” read a December 2025 headline from National Public Radio. The headline was one of many in which journalists asked, and pundits debated, whether President Donald Trump’s Department of War had crossed a legal line by bombing Venezuelan boats. Yet what is missing from most of these accounts is the historical context that gives such claims meaning. Trump’s actions, like those of any president, do not exist in isolation. They sit atop decades of presidential abuses that were ignored, minimized, or sanitized by the press and the public. As the anti-censorship organization Project Censored notes, censorship can be either intentional or accidental. Regardless of the cause, it seems that historical context has been erased from our press discourse on contemporary events, including the alleged war crimes committed by the U.S.

The erasure of historical context deprives citizens of the framework needed to understand that many of the actions they oppose are not the result of a single administration or individual, but rather decades of the public failing to hold the powerful accountable. Instead, people divide into partisan camps, only concerned when “the other side does it,” which effectively means that neither side is held accountable. This allows those in power to continually expand their authority, even at the expense of constitutional guardrails.

From Iran-Contra to Gaza: A History of Presidential Lawbreaking Without Consequences

The historically astute surely noticed the connection between the discussion of the Trump administration’s alleged war crimes, and the death of Eugene Haines Hasenfus on December 2, 2025. Hasenfus, a former United States Marine, helped ferry weapons to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua on behalf of the U.S. government in the 1980s. On one of these missions, his plane crashed, and in the process revealed a secret and illegal operation by the Ronald Reagan Administration known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

The scandal revealed how Reagan violated the separation of powers, supported terrorism, enabled drug trafficking, and armed Iran while it was at war with Iraq—which America was also arming. Before the story broke publicly, Reagan warned his cabinet, “If such a story gets out, we’ll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House.” Despite the gravity of these crimes, consequences were negligible. George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president and a knowing participant, succeeded him as president without ever facing accountability.

This troubling pattern of impunity has persisted across administrations: Bill Clinton ordered a controversial strike that destroyed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory under questionable justification; George W. Bush oversaw drone strikes and torture programs; Barack Obama expanded the drone campaign, which killed civilians including U.S. citizens; Donald Trump, in his first term, ordered the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in violation of international law; and Joe Biden faces global condemnation for aiding Israel’s assault on Gaza, which the United Nations has declared a genocide.

It is against a long history of presidential misconduct without consequence that accusations of war crimes against the Trump administration must be understood. This pattern of impunity has been allowed to persist by the American public. For decades, presidential wrongdoing has rarely been punished. Had earlier leaders been held accountable, their successors might have hesitated before violating national and international law. Instead, the public’s default response remains partisan outrage—a reflex that will undoubtedly surface in the comments on this article—ultimately letting all perpetrators off the hook and normalizing abuses of power up to the present day.

War Abroad, Violence at Home: Tracing the Fallout of U.S. Foreign Policy on American Soil

The importance of historical context extends beyond war crimes to include domestic events as well. On November 26, 2025, Afghanistan refugee Rahmanullah Lakanwal reportedly shot and killed two National Guardsmen. Trump claimed that Biden was at fault because he ended the war in Afghanistan and allowed refugees, including Lakanwal into the country. However, this overlooks important historical context. First, before Biden suggested removing troops from Afghanistan, it was Trump who, during his first term, sought to withdraw U.S. forces after he left office in January 2021. Second, while Biden did oversee the troop withdrawal and allowed Lakanwal to enter the United States, it was the Trump administration that granted him asylum back in April.

Furthermore, Lakanwal’s crimes should be understood within the broader context of the long history of U.S. involvement in weaponizing, collaborating with, and training individuals abroad, actions that have often led to those individuals committing violence on domestic soil. A similar tragedy unfolded in April 2025, when Jamal Wali, a former translator for U.S. forces while they fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, shot police officers in Fairfax, Virginia, before being killed by law enforcement. Moments before opening fire, he was stopped by police and was recorded bemoaning his experience in the U.S. noting “I should have served with f–king Taliban.” This suggests a broader pattern, as Lakanwal’s story is similar but even darker: he served in a CIA-backed Afghan ‘Zero Unit,’ an elite paramilitary force accused of human-rights abuses, including killing civilians and torturing detainees during the war. These histories complicate simple partisan narratives, especially about war, yet they are routinely excluded from mainstream coverage.

When History is Forgotten: How Media Complicity Enables Power to Evade Accountability

New revelations about past censorship reveal how historical erasure distorts the press’s ability to accurately inform the public’s understanding of power today. In November 2025, a whistleblower disclosed that the CIA had once celebrated misleading Congress during the post-1963 investigation into President Kennedy’s (JFK) assassination. Relatedly, that same month it was also revealed that during the 1960s the NYPD conducted far more extensive surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) than previously known. As with the JFK case, those who questioned the government’s version of King’s assassination were often dismissed as baseless conspiracy theorists. While not every counter-claim can be, or ever will be, proven, what is demonstrably true is that the government withheld information from the public in both cases.

That fact alone should prompt greater skepticism from the press regarding government claims about contemporary events. This means abandoning the practice of routinely lumping together two very different groups: those raising informed, evidence-based questions and those drawing unfounded conclusions. For example, while there are many baseless, Alex Jones–style narratives, such as claims that the government is turning frogs gay or that school shootings involve crisis actors, there are also legitimate conspiracies supported by evidence, like Watergate or Iran-Contra. Dismissing all alternative narratives as lunacy only serves the interests of those in power. Reduced skepticism among journalists enables the government to conceal evidence with minimal pushback, while the fear of being labeled a “conspiracy theorist” discourages legitimate inquiry and has contributed to decades of misunderstanding.

This revelation should force journalists to rethink their role, not just getting the story right, but getting it right when it matters. The truth means little to those whose lives were shattered by lies that changed the nation’s course. Worse yet, modern journalism’s economic incentives often reward holding back information until it can be monetized. For example, reporters concealed President Biden’s cognitive decline until it could be released in book form, after the election, and after the period in which the public could have used that information to determine whether a primary challenge was necessary. Repeatedly, the recent scandal involving Journalists Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) makes this structural failure unmistakable. Both journalists reported knowing that Kennedy, who reports to be a recovered heroin addict, allegedly used DMT in 2024 but waited nearly a year to disclose it. In fact, they only released this information when Nuzzi could include it in a book and Lizza on his Substack. By the time the reporting surfaced, RFK Jr. had already undergone his confirmation hearing for Secretary of HHS. Surely the public would have wanted to know that beforehand.

Perhaps the starkest illustration of the costs of historical secrecy is the long-delayed release of the Epstein files. I have compiled a continuously updated guide for readers who want documented facts rather than speculation about the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Although some files from the Epstein estate and select government records have been released, more are expected on December 19, 2025. Additionally, last week a Florida judge approved a motion to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the Department of Justice’s Epstein investigation. Meanwhile, key materials, including documents held by Epstein’s lawyer and by figures like Michael Wolff and Steve Bannon, as well as unreleased government and banking records, remain hidden. After years of the news media dismissing those who questioned Epstein’s connections to power as conspiracy theorists, the release of emails has brought prominent and powerful individuals under scrutiny including the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew and Larry Summers to Noam Chomsky, Sarah Ferguson, Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, and Andrew Farkas.

The revelations expand our understanding of Epstein’s function as a power broker connecting governments, corporations, intelligence agencies, and political operatives. He played a role in facilitating communication between India’s Modi government and Steve Bannon, pursued financing for Israeli cyberweapons, hosted Israeli operatives, promoted the export of Israeli surveillance technology to Côte d’Ivoire, and helped build diplomatic backchannels between Israel and Russia. He even collaborated with Dershowitz in 2006 to undermine early scholarship on the political influence of the Israel lobby. The recently released images and videos of Epstein’s Virgin Islands estate, including a medical-style chair surrounded by masks, a blackboard covered with redacted names, and records of his contacts, suggest how much more remains concealed. Given the historical record, journalists would be wise to avoid dismissing researchers’ claims as baseless conspiracies and instead follow the evidence.

From Revolution to Repression: The Complicated History of Free Speech and Protest at UC Berkeley

History is not only a catalog of abuses of power, but it is also a source of inspiration. The University of California, Berkeley is often remembered as a bastion of protest that ignited the Free Speech Movement and helped catalyze the social movements of the 1960s. But that history is more complicated than the popular myth suggests, and its omissions are worth recalling when considering the university’s current suppression of speech.

Recently, UC Berkeley administrators threatened disciplinary action against student protesters advocating for Palestinian rights, a chilling echo of the very restrictions students once fought to dismantle. Some interpret this as evidence that Berkeley has lost its commitment to free speech, but history tells a different story. The university has long been resistant to student protests, even in the 1960s. It was students, drawing inspiration from movements like the Civil Rights Movement, not university officials who ignited the Free Speech Movement and expanded civil liberties on campus. Those gains were won through confrontation and collective courage, not institutional benevolence. We would all do well to remember that lasting change has never come from waiting for permission; it has always come from insisting on the society we hope to create.

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Nolan Higdon is a Project Censored national judge, an author, and university lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Read other articles by Nolan, or visit Nolan's website.