Latest news with #NickUt
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
The time for Australia to recognise the state of Palestine is right now
No one should underestimate the power of one image to move the minds of nations. Just like the image of nine-year-old South Vietnamese girl Pham Thi Kim Phúc, running naked on a road, screaming as her back burned from napalm dropped during an attack by the South Vietnamese air force. That moment was captured by photographer Nick Ut. The New York Times debated running the photo due to its nudity. They ran it on their front page the next day in edited form. It became powerfully attached to the Vietnam war and rippled through global opinion. The memory of this image bolted to my mind's forefront when I saw last week the images of children starving in Gaza plastered across almost every media outlet in the world, including conservative UK outlet the Daily Express, which featured a staggering front page with a gaunt Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq – a one-year-old so starved, he now weighs the same as a three-month-old baby. His spine sticks out like a knotted thread – an image that whipped a headline out of the Daily Express: 'For pity's sake, stop this', declaring that the suffering 'shames us all'. Muhammad is not the victim of a drought, or an event beyond the control of people and governments. It's no accident, this boy – like so many children in Gaza – has barely any energy to lift eyelids. This is a result of deliberate decisions by the Netanyahu government to restrict humanitarian aid into Gaza. The significance of the Daily Express featuring this image should not be overlooked. A publication with a conservative bent has taken a strong stand because the humanitarian cause should not be political. These images have torn through social media. The same week, one of the biggest western nations – and the first member of the G7 – France, announced it would officially recognise the state of Palestine at September's UN general assembly. About 147 nations already recognise the state of Palestine – but none as large as France. That's significant. So many nations have lost patience and are unable to stay silent or inert, as the Netanyahu government continually demonstrates its refusal to conduct its pursuit of Hamas in a way that respects the life of innocent civilians, something demanded by international humanitarian law. Our prime minister's strong statement this week and his recognition over the weekend that 'Quite clearly it is a breach of international law to stop food being delivered, which was a decision that Israel made in March', paves the way for further action. This is the moment for our nation to take a similar stand. I'm proud that our party has twice agreed at its highest decision-making forum – the National Conference of the Australian Labor party – to recognise the state of Palestine. The time to do so is absolutely right now. It would be so close to the declaration of the French, sending a powerful signal, build momentum and likely influence other nations, even though at this moment the UK and German governments appear unmoved. It's not that the move of its own will point-blank end the suffering experienced by Palestinians in Gaza. There is so much crucial work to be done. But it will cement and back in the stand taken by 28 nations last week – rightly including Australia – to object to any re-partitioning of Gaza into concentration zones, tantamount to ethnic cleaning. While our party position has been straightforward, our government has understandably believed recognition should be part of a peace process. That has been a clear-cut, logical stand for the times. But times change. Just when we think we can't be shocked further, every month of this 20-month campaign has seemingly proved us wrong and this demands a rethink in our response. It's also blazingly clear that the Netanyahu government has absolutely no intention of recognising a Palestinian state. Not now, not ever. That's clearly not a party you can negotiate a peace process with, especially if they're not even prepared to warm a seat at the negotiating table (frankly that seat will have to be dragged into the room collectively by the actions of the international community). French president Emmanuel Macron felt no need to observe conditionality prior to making his announcement. He did set out nearly half a dozen important markers as part of the recognition process, which Australia would not conceivably object to. These included: an immediate ceasefire, the immediate release of all Israeli hostages, a massive surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the demilitarisation of Hamas. The fact that only over the weekend the Netanyahu government is allowing 'minimal' aid into the territory demonstrates that the actions of the French government mattered, they made a difference. The time is right for Australia to recognise Palestine. Last week, I took part in a vigil outside Parliament House. Parliamentarians of different stripes took shifts in reading out the names of the 17,000 teenagers and children killed in Gaza since 7 October. 17,000 names listed in a book whose weight dragged on the heart. The pages formatted into a grid: name, age, gender. I can't describe to you how confronting it was, as the eye moved left to right, reading a name where the age 0 was listed beside it. I kept thinking to myself: that baby deserved to be raised and nurtured within the love of a family, to laugh and play with other kids, to grow to fulfil their own ambitions, write their own history. Yet their history is starkly recorded as a name subsumed within a thicket of lines and pages captured in a book of casualties. If a conservative outlet such as the Daily Express can summon heart to demand better for children like Muhammad, why can't Australian conservatives do the same, the ones who champion pro-family values but are silent in the face of families being wiped out. We can and should feel for both Israeli and Palestinian families. We're all human after all, right? Ed Husic is the federal Labor MP for Chifley in western Sydney
![Dear Black Folks: The Protests Against ICE Are Absolutely Our Fight Too [Op-Ed]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsone.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F22%2F2025%2F06%2F17495049643842.jpg%3Fquality%3D80%26strip%3Dall&w=3840&q=100)
![Dear Black Folks: The Protests Against ICE Are Absolutely Our Fight Too [Op-Ed]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fall-logos-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fblackamericaweb.com.png&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
Black America Web
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Dear Black Folks: The Protests Against ICE Are Absolutely Our Fight Too [Op-Ed]
Source: Nick Ut / Getty As Donald Trump sparks chaos by illegally deploying troops to Los Angeles, as immigration raids intensify, and as protesters are flooding the streets to demand dignity for migrants, far too many Black folks are sitting back on social media platforms singing a tired, familiar song. It's being sung off-key with a false sense of safety and a dangerous misunderstanding of how white supremacist violence works. The chorus of retreat sounds something like this: 'Black folks need to stay home.' 'Let them handle it. This is their fight.' 'Most Latinos voted for this mess.' 'ICE don't target us. We've got citizenship.' 'I ain't marching for nobody who won't march for me .' 'Latinos don't like us anyway.' But what's really being said underneath all that deflection is this: 'If they come for Latinos, I'll be quiet, as long as they leave me and mine alone.' But if you study history, I mean really study history, then you should already know that they never leave us alone. Not for long. I get it. Black folks are tired. We've carried the weight of every major freedom movement in this country. We've bled. We've died. And we've been betrayed. We've shown up, over and over, only to be met with anti-blackness in return. But this ain't about who likes us. It's about who's next! What ICE is doing to migrants isn't just an immigration issue. It's white supremacist violence at its core. It's separating families. It's state violence. It's stalking and snatching people from homes and workplaces and making them disappear. It's caging children. And for Black folks in America, this should all feel deeply familiar. The white supremacist machine of state violence doesn't make distinctions based on citizenship status. What ICE is doing to Latinx, West Indian, and African migrants is part of the same machinery that has policed and abused Black American bodies for centuries. We know what it means to have our families torn about by the state. We know what it means to be told that we don't belong in the land we built. We know exactly what it's like to be criminalized simply for existing, to be dehumanized by everyday language, media propaganda, policies, and bureaucrats in uniform. Black folks know what it means to live under surveillance, to be chased, cuffed, caged, and disappeared. We are the descendants of people who had to run. From plantations. From the Fugitive Slave Act and slave catchers. From the KKK and lynch mobs. Even if you were born right here in America, with ancestors going all the way back to slave ships, that border violence still echoes through Black lives. The ol' 'I got my papers, I'm safe' is a delusion. That little blue passport won't stop you from getting profiled, harassed, arrested, or shot by a cop who sees your Black skin before your citizenship status or hears your command of English. Just ask the countless Black immigrants already deported, or the U.S.-born Black folks ICE illegally detained anyway. Do you think that racist ICE agents caught up in immigration hysteria and round-up quotas will stop to check birth certificates? Just ask Peter Sean Brown, who was detained in the Florida Keys when an ICE agent mistakenly detained him as an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica. He spent weeks in custody and eventually sued. Or, ask Davino Watson, a native New Yorker who was imprisoned as a 'deportable alien' for more than three years despite claiming citizenship and then denied compensation by the court system. Source: Nick Ut / Getty ICE detentions are triggered by racial profiling, flawed algorithms, and sloppy data. Skin complexion, language, and citizenship won't shield us. Think about all the Black folks walking around without real IDs to prove they're citizens. Over a quarter of Black adult citizens do not have a driver's license with their current name and/or address and 18% don't have a license at all, according to the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. If ICE can mistakenly detain Black and Brown Americans born in the U.S., even if they have documentation, then no one is immune. Some Black folks are also citing the 2024 election exit polls to justify staying home and staying silent, like the ICE protests don't concern us. 'Latinos voted for Trump.' But exit polls don't tell the whole story. They only sample registered voters who actually voted, and they never account for the millions of undocumented immigrants who can't vote. They also oversample precincts that don't match the demographic reality, skewing results toward the dominant group in those districts. Most Latinos, like Black Americans, did not vote for Trump. According to national polls, 56% of Latinos who voted cast their ballot for Kamala Harris, while 42% went for Trump. Yes, Trump made gains among Latino men, but gains don't equate to dominance. The Latino vote split along familiar gender and generational lines, just like our communities. We can't turn a sampling of voter turnout into 'most Latinos voted for Trump,' and we can't let bad math be an excuse to justify apathy. And there's this one: 'I ain't marching for nobody that won't march for me.' Or its equally tired fraternal twin: 'Latinos don't like us anyway.' This is scarcity-minded, historically illiterate nonsense that treats solidarity as some sort of tit-for-tat transaction. If that's how our ancestors thought, then there wouldn't have been an Underground Railroad, no Civil Rights Act, A Voting Rights Act, or a Montgomery Bus Boycott. Solidarity is a strategy, not some popularity contest. If you're out here claiming Latinos don't march for us, then clearly you haven't picked up a history book. Y'all must not know about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta who led the United Farm Workers who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. Y'all must not know about the Puerto Rican Young Lords working hand-in-hand with the Black Panther Party to run free clinics, breakfast programs, and tenant organizing drives in Chicago and New York City. Or, about the Mexican students who took their cue from SNCC and Malcolm X during the 1968 East LA walkouts and launched the Chicano civil rights crusade. In recent years, Afro-Latinos have been at the forefront of Black Lives Matter chapters, organizing vigils, raising bail funding, and pushing for police accountability across the country. In Chicago's Little Village, Latino organizers launched the 'Brown Squad for Black Lives' and established a Black and Brown Unity food pantry. Martin Luther King III has been working alongside Mi Familia Vota , a national Black-Brown coalition whose mission is to combat hate crimes, anti-immigrant policies, and attacks on voting rights— together —not as separate communities. Just because these sustained interracial commitments and coalitions aren't trendy headlines or going viral on social media doesn't mean solidarity isn't unfolding in schools, community centers, neighborhoods, and politics. It's one thing to let white folks battle each other, whether it's MAGA vs. neoliberal, liberals vs. conservatives, or Karens vs. Capitol Hill. White folks battling each other is the empire fighting over who gets to steer the ship while it is already sinking. You want to sit back and watch that unfold while sipping tea or eating popcorn? Fine. Letting white folks eat each other doesn't carry the same moral weight as turning your back on another marginalized community facing the same white supremacist violence as us. Let's also remember that anti-Blackness is global. It lives in every community, including our own. Black Americans can be just as anti-immigrant, just as colorist, just as xenophobic, just as colonized in our thinking. So, if you're sitting out because of what some Latinos, West Indians, or Africans said about us, then you're not protecting yourself. You're just waiting for your turn. So, what do we do? Source: Jason Armond / Getty We organize. We show up at ICE protests so the system doesn't get to isolate people in silence. We donate to immigrant bail funds and deportation defense teams like the Haitian Bridge Alliance, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and UndocuBlack. Use your platforms to amplify the stories, organizing, resistance, and victories of undocumented folks. Build local coalitions to organize teach-ins, mutual aid drives and community safety networks that bridge Black and Brown neighborhoods. We also need to unlearn the anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous narratives this country feeds us because solidarity starts in the mind. Black folks cannot afford to pretend that citizenship or birthright assures our protection. A system built on racial profiling, quotas, and militarized tactics never stops at 'not us.' It doesn't send ICE to the border and leave us in peace. These immigration raids strengthen a culture of normalized, dehumanizing state violence against anyone who looks 'other.' Immigration will become the excuse to expand the surveillance state and militarized policing in Black communities. This is absolutely our fight! Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of 'Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America' and the forthcoming 'Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.' Read her Substack here . SEE ALSO: Trump's Job Corps 'Pause' Is MAGA's Plan To Eliminate Poor Youth Harvard And White America's Creepy Obsession With Hoarding Black Remains SEE ALSO Dear Black Folks: The Protests Against ICE Are Absolutely Our Fight Too [Op-Ed] was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
LeMonde
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
World Press Photo Executive Director Joumana El Zein Khoury: 'The legend surrounding the Napalm Girl photo is being challenged'
In January, the film The Stringer, shown at the Sundance Festival in the United States, sparked controversy by claiming that one of the world's most famous photographs, The Terror of War – better known as Napalm Girl – had been wrongly credited to Nick Ut of the Associated Press (AP) when it was actually taken by another Vietnamese photographer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe. Since then, AP has published its own investigation and decided to maintain credit to Ut. However, World Press Photo, which runs a prestigious annual photojournalism competition and awarded the image in 1973, took a different path: It no longer attributes the image to Ut, though it has not reassigned credit to another photographer. The organization's executive director, Joumana El Zein Khoury, explained the reasoning behind the decision. Why did World Press Photo feel the need to take a position on the 'Napalm Girl' photograph? Our organization has existed for 70 years, and we take questions of transparency and accuracy very seriously. When doubts arise about a prize-winning photo, we have a process in place. So, when the documentary The Stringer was shown in January at the Sundance Festival, we conducted our own investigation. We waited for the AP to release its own findings before going public. And we found that there were valid questions surrounding this photo. We decided to keep the 1973 prize for the photograph, but have suspended the attribution until further evidence emerges.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
World Press Photo suspends Nick Ut's credit for iconic 'Napalm Girl' Vietnam War image
More than 50 years after Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize-winning image of a nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack in the South Vietnamese village of Trảng Bàng, a prestigious photography organisation has cast fresh doubt over who actually took it. World Press Photo, which awarded the image its 1973 Photo of the Year, recently announced that it has suspended its attribution to Ut, following the release of a new documentary, The Stringer, that challenges the long-accepted account of the photo's origins. The organisation said its independent investigation raised questions regarding Ut's role and suggested that two Vietnamese photographers, Nguyen Thanh Nghe - highlighted in The Stringer - and Huynh Cong Phuc, may have been better positioned to take the image. Related Culture Re-View: A photograph changes the course of the Vietnam War From skater girls to climate illusions: Meet the winners of the 2025 Sony World Photography Awards The Stringer, which premiered at Sundance in January earlier this year, claims Nghe sold the photo to AP's Saigon bureau chief for $20 and a print, and forensic experts from the French NGO Index also weighed in, concluding it's 'highly unlikely' that Nick Ut took the photo based on comparisons with other images credited to him that day. 'We conclude that the level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution,' said Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo. 'At the same time, lacking conclusive evidence pointing definitively to another photographer, we cannot reassign authorship, either.' Ut will not be asked to return his cash prize from the World Press Photo 1973 Photo of the Year. The Associated Press, where Ut worked at the time, have said that after conducting two internal investigations it couldn't find any definitive proof to strip Ut's credit and no compelling evidence anyone else took the photo. 'We understand World Press Photo has taken different action based on the same available information, and that is their prerogative,' the statement said. 'There is no question over AP's ownership of the photo.'
Euronews
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Who really took the Napalm Girl photo? Iconic image credit 'suspended'
More than 50 years after Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize-winning image of a nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack in the South Vietnamese village of Trảng Bàng, a prestigious photography organisation has cast fresh doubt over who actually took it. World Press Photo, which awarded the image its 1973 Photo of the Year, recently announced that it has suspended its attribution to Ut, following the release of a new documentary, The Stringer, that challenges the long-accepted account of the photo's origins. The organisation said its independent investigation raised questions regarding Ut's role and suggested that two Vietnamese photographers, Nguyen Thanh Nghe - highlighted in The Stringer - and Huynh Cong Phuc, may have been better positioned to take the image. The Stringer, which premiered at Sundance in January earlier this year, claims Nghe sold the photo to AP's Saigon bureau chief for $20 and a print, and forensic experts from the French NGO Index also weighed in, concluding it's 'highly unlikely' that Nick Ut took the photo based on comparisons with other images credited to him that day. 'We conclude that the level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution,' said Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo. 'At the same time, lacking conclusive evidence pointing definitively to another photographer, we cannot reassign authorship, either.' Ut will not be asked to return his cash prize from the World Press Photo 1973 Photo of the Year. The Associated Press, where Ut worked at the time, have said that after conducting two internal investigations it couldn't find any definitive proof to strip Ut's credit and no compelling evidence anyone else took the photo. 'We understand World Press Photo has taken different action based on the same available information, and that is their prerogative,' the statement said. 'There is no question over AP's ownership of the photo.'
