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For Immediate Release
June, 29 2011, 04:45pm EDT
Contact:
Athens: Donna Nevel, +30-694-266-3852;
New York: Leslie Cagan, 347-581-1782
Twitter @USBoatToGaza
'US Boat to Gaza' Invites Media to Inspect Boat and Passengers
"We're Sulfur-Free and Ready to Sail"
WASHINGTON
Passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, invite Greek and international media to inspect The Audacity of Hope at 3 pm Athens time on Thursday, June 30, in the town of Perama (next to Piraeus), 42 Democratis.
The entire boat will be open for view, photography, and video. The captain, crew, and passengers on the boat will be available for interviews and inspection. The cargo of the ship - 3,000 letters from Americans to the people of Gaza - will also be available for view, photographs, and video. Everything that will be on the boat when it sets sail, including food and passengers' personal medications for use during their voyage, will be available for inspection.
The Audacity of Hope was inspected by Greek officials on Monday, June 27 after a complaint was lodged by an Israeli group that the vessel was not seaworthy. We have not yet received notification of their findings nor a copy of their report, but we are certain that our boat is up to code. Meanwhile, Israeli officials have made outrageous allegations that passengers on the flotilla will be bringing "sacks of sulfur" to pour on Israeli soldiers. Even Members of Israel's own security cabinet have dismissed these charges as "media spin" and "public relations hysteria."* We invite the media onto our boat to conduct a thorough inspection. We are confident that such an inspection will show that our boat is "sulfur-free" and ready to sail.
Free Gaza is a human rights group founded in 2006. Our mission is to break the Israel's illegal siege on Gaza's 1.8 million civilians, since it inflicts collective punishment on the Palestinians who live there and has destroyed its economy. Free Gaza believes in direct action in confronting Israel's abuse of Palestinians using non-violent means and has found these voyages to be one of the most effective ways to alert the world to the prison-like conditions of Gaza. Ultimately, there is no better example of direct action than Free Gaza's sustained attempts to break the siege on Gaza which Israel claims it no longer occupies
LATEST NEWS
‘Collective Failure of Humanity’: Nearly 118 Million Refugees Violently Displaced Worldwide
The number of people who were forcibly displaced at the end of last year dropped from 2024 levels, but that change was largely driven by people who were forced to return home, sometimes to precarious conditions.
Jun 11, 2026
The number of people forcibly displaced around the world fell last year for the first time in years, dropping by more than 5 million—but with that trend driven in part by countries that have forced refugees to return home, often to precarious or dangerous conditions, advocacy groups warned that the world's refugee and displacement crises are far from being solved.
At the end of last year, 117.8 million people were forcibly displaced around the world, according to data released Thursday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). That number includes 41.6 million refugees, 9 million asylum-seekers, and 68.7 million internally displaced people.
While the number of displaced people fell from 123.2 million in 2024, the UNHCR emphasized that the change reflected "a sharp increase in the returns of refugees, mostly to Afghanistan, Syria, and Sudan."
"Many of the returns occurred under adverse circumstances and the reintegration conditions remain extremely challenging," said the agency.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said that "in Afghanistan, millions were forcibly returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, and in [the Democratic Republic of] Congo some displacement camps were evacuated at gunpoint, sending thousands of families back to homes that no longer exist."
Of 2.9 million Afghans who were no longer considered forcibly displaced last year, most of their returns to their home country were "involuntary in nature due to changes in the policies of host countries."
In the US, the Trump administration last year terminated Temporary Protected Status for Afghan nationals, between 9,500 and 11,700 of whom were legally residing in the US. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans were deported from Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan last year.
"The first fall in global displacement in over a decade should be good news. Instead, it reflects misery on a historic scale," said David Milliband, president of the International Rescue Committee. "These numbers tell a story of both forced returns and forced displacement. People are returning to countries mired in crisis, most with no choice, with every route to safety collapsed around them."
The number of refugees who were successfully resettled dropped precipitously last year along with the number of people who were classified as displaced. Just 81,800 people found new homes through resettlement programs or sponsorship pathways, representing a year-on-year drop of more than half.
The top countries that continued to host refugees last year were Colombia, Turkey, and Germany, and more than 70% of refugees came from just six countries: Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
Egeland emphasized that while the number of forcibly displaced people fell last year, "the number of people who have fled their home because of violence and conflict has nearly tripled over the last 15 years."
"The 117.8 million people now violently displaced around the globe would constitute the world’s 13th-largest country by population. Larger than Egypt, Germany, or the UK. A human toll of vast proportions, and a collective failure of humanity," said Egeland.
The numbers released by UNHCR indicated that while millions "continued to be uprooted" last year, "many more endured protracted crises with no solution in sight. The world continues to fail civilians caught by conflict and violence."
UNHCR warned that among those who remain forcibly displaced, 7 in 10 refugees have been exiled from their homes for at least five years with little prospect of ever leaving refugee camps with precarious living conditions.
“For too many refugees, displacement starts as a lifeline but lasts a lifetime," said Barham Salih, the UN high commissioner for refugees. "Humanitarian aid saves lives, but it is not the end point and does not enable refugees to become active agents in control of their futures. We need a paradigm shift that creates a new sense of hope and opportunity for people fleeing war and persecution."
Salih called for a reduction by more than half, over the next decade, in the number of refugees who are reliant on humanitarian assistance and are living in temporary shelters.
"The initiative would expand opportunities for voluntary returns, humanitarian visas, and relocation, while transitioning refugees from aid dependency to self-reliance through access to education, healthcare, financial services, and labor markets," said the UNHCR.
The large numbers of people who have been forced from their homes—and in a rising number of cases, forced to return home under duress—"are almost impossible to comprehend," said Egeland. "And as an increasingly nationalistic world becomes increasingly desensitized to what it truly means to be forced to flee home, the gap between decision makers and donors and displaced people continues to widen. This cannot be accepted as the new normal."
“As humanitarians our work is to support displaced people in their hour of greatest need," he added. “But we cannot do this without a world that is willing to stand up for humanity... We must support diplomatic solutions to end crisis, and fund aid to relieve suffering. We must protect civilians and stand up for international humanitarian law. We must all remember our humanity.”
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A group of Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation to hike taxes on US corporations that buy back their own stock as a new analysis estimated that major companies have spent nearly $5 trillion on share repurchases since President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts took effect.
The Democratic legislation, titled the Stock Buyback Accountability Act of 2026, would increase the current stock buyback excise tax from 1% to 4%, a change that experts say would raise around $240 billion in revenue over a 10-year period and likely dissuade some companies from engaging in buybacks, which artificially inflate share prices and further enrich shareholders and executives.
“After getting massive tax breaks from Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, giant corporations are turning around and delivering stock buybacks at record highs,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in introducing the new bill to rein in what they called corporate America's "stock buyback bonanza."
“It’s shameful that wealthy shareholders and executives are profiting while American families pay through the roof for groceries, gas, and rent," said Warren. "This bill is an important step forward in making corporations pay their fair share."
The legislation's release coincided with an analysis conducted by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), which found that 100 of the largest corporations in the US have spent a combined $4.8 trillion on stock buybacks in the eight years since enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law.
"Every time Republicans sweep an election they shower corporations with new tax breaks, and then corporations shower their wealthy shareholders and executives with new stock buybacks."
Just 10 companies—Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Oracle, Nvidia, and Visa—were responsible for more than $2 trillion of the $4.8 trillion in total buybacks since 2017, ATF noted. The group estimated that, had the Stock Buyback Accountability Act been in place over the past eight years, the federal government could have raised around $200 billion in revenue from the 100 big corporations examined in the new analysis.
“The huge tax cuts corporations received from the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—which were supposed to be used to increase employee pay and business investment—have instead been wasted on trillions of dollars of stock buybacks,” said ATF executive director David Kass. “Stock buybacks widen economic inequality by making already wealthy shareholders even richer. We need the Stock Buyback Accountability Act now more than ever.”
Stock buybacks were effectively prohibited in the US until 1982, as they were considered a form of market manipulation. Over four decades later, in 2025, stock buybacks by American companies surpassed $1 trillion—a record high.
"Every time Republicans sweep an election they shower corporations with new tax breaks, and then corporations shower their wealthy shareholders and executives with new stock buybacks," Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday. "We need to dial up the tax on these buybacks, and if corporations decide they’re better off investing in workers and long-term growth, that’s a great outcome.”
ATF noted in its analysis that "the resulting rise in stock price created by a buyback is not taxed unless the stock is sold."
"With the top 5% of households owning 70% of all stocks, that is a big benefit for wealthy investors, who prefer the unrealized income which comes from buybacks to the traditional corporate dividends that are paid out and taxed on an annual basis," the group observed.
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Money Flows Reveal 'Trumpified' 250th Celebration Rife With 'Grift, Self-Dealing, and Enriching Friends'
"The Trump administration has once again found an avenue to tilt the scales in favor of corporate interests even as millions struggle to believe in the dream of America."
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A report released Thursday reveals that the Trump administration has been using the United States' 250th birthday as an opportunity to shovel more than $100 million in federal contracts and grants to "a network of politicized entities under the control of Trump administration officials and political allies."
The report, produced jointly by researchers at Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project, reveals how Freedom 250, an organization created by Trump loyalists last year after a failed effort to take over the congressionally-authorized America 250, has been raising money to create a "Trumpified" semiquincentennial celebration.
Since October, the administration has handed out contracts and grants worth nearly $103 million to entities that are either controlled or influenced by Trump insiders including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 2024 campaign manager Chris LaCivita, and former campaign finance director Meredith O’Rourke.
In addition to receiving taxpayer cash, Freedom 250 is getting undisclosed amounts in private funding from corporations including ExxonMobil, Oracle, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, and United Airlines, all of which have major regulatory issues before the federal government.
"Freedom 250’s ongoing efforts to raise private money raise a slate of ethics and transparency concerns about whether Trump and his allies are soliciting donations in exchange for access to the administration, including the president," the report notes, "especially since many of the corporations that have joined have major business dealings currently before the administration."
Alan Zibel, research director with Public Citizen and co-author of the report, said that Freedom 250's entire operation revolved around creating a "Trumpified version of the 250th anniversary" that is "mostly about lionizing Trump and catering to his political base."
"The 250th anniversary of the country should be a moment to reflect on the values of the nation," added Zibel. "Apparently, the Trump administration is replacing those values with grift, self-dealing, and enriching friends with taxpayer dollars."
Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, program director with the Revolving Door Project and report co-author, remarked that the Freedom 250 celebrations fit a lifelong Trump pattern of "obsessively scarring everything in his path with his likeness, his name, and his gaudy, dictatorial taste in faux gilding."
"The Trump administration has once again found an avenue to tilt the scales in favor of corporate interests," Rosenthal added, "even as millions struggle to believe in the dream of America 250 years after the signing of the [Declaration of Independence]."
A Thursday report in The Atlantic detailed the tensions between Freedom 250 and America 250, which is still planning to put on its own events in a spirit of nonpartisan celebration of the United States.
While some Republican members of America 250, including former Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, have been trying to make peace with the more MAGA-centric Freedom 250 operation, that hasn't stopped Trump loyalists from taking shots at the group.
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