denial

State parole officials had not yet publicly announced that Erik Menendez would remain behind bars, but word of the outcome was already spreading among his family members early Thursday evening.

Stunned and angry at the decision, some relatives took to social media just as news broke that Menendez, 54, had been denied parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of his parents, a grisly crime committed with his older brother, Lyle.

“How is my dad a threat to society,” Talia Menendez, his stepdaughter, wrote on Instagram. “This has been torture to our family. How much longer???”

In the all-caps post, Menendez’s daughter castigated the parole board, calling them “money hungry media feeding pieces of trash” after the decision.

“You will not have peace until my dad is free!!!!” she wrote in a following post.

A hearing for Lyle, 57, began Friday morning, leaving family members who support his case clinging to hope his ruling will be different.

Originally sentenced to life without parole, the brothers eventually qualified for resentencing because they were under 26 years old at the time of the killings.

Several petitions and legal filings went nowhere for decades, but their case received renewed attention after the popular Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” sparked a social media interest in their case, and the sexual abuse the two siblings alleged was perpetuated by their father, Jose Menendez.

A superior court granted their resentencing petition in May, paving the way for the parole hearings this week.

More than a dozen relatives of the two brothers testified in favor of parole during the Thursday hearing for Erik Menendez, and were also expected to speak for Lyle as well.

After a nearly 10-hour hearing Thursday, Parole Commissioner Robert Barton commended the support Menendez received from his family.

“You’ve got a great support network,” he said Thursday before pointing to Erik Menendez’s repeated violation of prison rules by using a contraband cellphone. “But you didn’t go to them before you committed these murders. And you didn’t go to them before you used the cellphone.”

Erik’s wife, Tammi Menendez, blasted the decision.

“Parole Commissioner Robert Barton had his mind made up to deny Erik parole from the start!” she wrote on X. “This was a complete setup, and Erik never stood a chance!”

Anamaria Baralt, a Menendez cousin and the family spokesperson, tried to remain positive in a video posted on Instagram, noting he could re-apply for parole in three years.

“Erik was given the lowest possible denial time,” she said. “It’s disappointing. we are certainly disappointed as a family.”

However, she said she was proud of Menendez as he addressed the parole board for the first time, something the family did not view as a possibility a few years ago.

“We knew this was a steep climb,” she said in the video. “California is very rigorous in its standards. Not many people get out on parole on their first try. So it wasn’t entirely a surprise. But it is nonetheless very disappointing.”

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy group that pushes for criminal justice reform, the vast majority of inmates who go before the board are denied parole.

A recent study of parole rates across the states by the Prison Policy Initiative found that 14% of parole hearings in 2022 resulted in approval.

“While we respect the decision, [Thursday’s] outcome was of course disappointing and not what we hoped for,” the Menendez family said in a statement. “But our belief in Erik remains unwavering and we know he will take the Board’s recommendation in stride. His remorse, growth, and the positive impact he’s had on others speak for themselves.”

Family, friends and cellmates have commended the two brothers for their work inside prison in the past few years, referring to them as “mentors” for other prisoners and spearheading programs inside prison walls.

Lyle Menendez spearheaded a beatification project at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, and his brother has organized artwork for the project.

The two have started programs dealing with anger management, meditation, and assisting inmates in hospice care.

But Thursday‘s hearing also aired struggles and issues the younger sibling has faced during more than three decades in prison, including drug and alcohol use, fights with other inmates, instances of being found with contraband, and allegations he helped a prison gang in a tax fraud scheme in 2013.

Members of the parole board spent several minutes in particular asking about being caught multiple times with a cellphone, which he said he used to speak with his wife, watch YouTube videos, pornography, and look for updates on his case in the media.

Menendez said he paid about $1,000 for the phones, and said he did not consider the impacts the devices could have in the prison system.

“I knew 50, 60 people that had phones,” he said Thursday. “I just justified it by saying if I don’t buy it someone else is going to buy it. The phones were going to be sold.”

It was in January that he said a lieutenant had an extended talk with him about the impacts, including how someone must smuggle the phone, how it must be paid for, how it corrupts staff, and how they can be used for more criminal activity.

Despite the connection phones provided to the outside, Menendez said, it was later that he realized the effect that using one was having on his life, now that the prospect of freedom was possible.

“In November of 2024, now the consequences mattered,” he told the board. “Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life.”

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who has opposed parole and resentencing for the two brothers, applauded the decision by the board.

“The California Board of Parole has rightly decided against granting parole to Erik Menendez,” he said in a statement. “This ruling does justice for Jose and Kitty Menendez, the victims of the brutal murders carried out by their sons on Aug. 20, 1989.”

Hochman said that, during their time in prison, the brothers have continued to claim they killed their parents in self-defense, but pointed out that their parents suffered shotgun blasts to the back and at point-blank range during the killings.

“The Board correctly determined that Erik Menendez’s actions speak louder than words, and that his conduct in prison and current mentality demonstrates that he still poses an unreasonable risk of danger to the community.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reveals details of phone conversation with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is “in denial” about the suffering inflicted on Gaza, and the international community is now saying, “Enough is enough”.

A day after announcing that Australia will recognise Palestinian statehood at the United Nations next month, Albanese said that frustration with the Israeli government amid the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza had contributed to Australia’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

“[Netanyahu] again reiterated to me what he has said publicly as well, which is to be in denial about the consequences that are occurring for innocent people,” Albanese said in an interview with state broadcaster ABC on Tuesday.

Albanese said he spoke with Netanyahu last week to inform him of Australia’s decision to join France, Canada and the United Kingdom in recognising a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September.

Netanyahu, he said, continued to make the same arguments he made last year regarding the conduct of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has now killed more than 61,500 Palestinians since October 2023.

“That if we just have more military action in Gaza, somehow that will produce a different outcome,” Albanese said, recounting his call with the Israeli leader, according to ABC News.

Announcing Australia’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood on Monday, Albanese said that “the risk of trying is nothing compared to the danger of letting this moment pass us by”.

“The toll of the status quo is growing by the day, and it could be measured in innocent lives,” Albanese said, adding the decision was made as part of a “coordinated global effort” on the two-state solution, which he had discussed with the leaders of the UK, France, New Zealand and Japan.

pic.twitter.com/9VkQU0LcwV

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) August 11, 2025

“A two-state solution is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and to bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza,” he said.

“It seems to me very clearly… we need a political solution, not a military one,” he said.

Albanese had said just last month that he would not be drawn on a timeline for recognition of a Palestinian state, and has previously been wary of a public opinion backlash in Australia, which has significant Jewish and Muslim minorities.

But the public mood has shifted sharply in Australia against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge this month, calling for aid deliveries to be allowed to enter Gaza as the humanitarian crisis worsens and Israel’s military continues to block relief efforts.

Israel also plans to take military control of Gaza City, risking the lives of more than a million Palestinians and instigating what a senior UN official said would be “another calamity”, as deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to grow across the enclave.

“This decision is driven by popular sentiment in Australia, which has shifted in recent months, with a majority of Australians wanting to see an imminent end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Jessica Genauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University, told the Reuters news agency.

For more than 21 months, much of the international media danced around the truth about Israel’s war on Gaza. The old newsroom cliche – “if it bleeds, it leads” – seemed to apply, for Western media newsrooms, more to Ukraine than Gaza. When Palestinian civilians were bombed in their homes, when entire families were buried under rubble, coverage came slowly, cautiously and often buried in “both sides” framing.

But when the images of starving Palestinian children began to emerge – haunting faces, skeletal limbs, vacant stares – something shifted. The photographs were too visceral, too undeniable. Western audiences were confronted with what the siege of Gaza truly means. And for once, the media’s gatekeepers could not entirely look away.

The world’s attention, however, alerted Israel, and a new “hasbara” operation was deployed. Hasbara means “explaining”, but in practice, it’s about erasing. With Tel Aviv’s guidance, pro-Israel media operatives set out to “debunk” the evidence of famine. The method was fully Orwellian: Don’t just contest the facts. Contest the eyes that see them.

We were told there is no starvation in Gaza. Never mind that Israeli ministers had publicly vowed to block food, fuel and medicine. Never mind that trucks were stopped for months, sometimes vandalised by Israeli settlers in broad daylight.

Israeli officials, speaking in polished English to Western media, assured the public this was all a Hamas fabrication, as though Hamas had somehow managed to trick aid agencies, foreign doctors and every journalist in Gaza into staging hunger.

The propaganda machine thought it had struck gold with one photograph. A New York Times image showed a skeletal boy, Mohammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq. Israeli intelligence sources whispered to friendly outlets: He’s not starving. He has a medical condition. As if that somehow makes his horrific condition acceptable.

The Times went ahead and added an editor’s note to “correct” the record.

That’s how hasbara works – not by persuading people but by exhausting them. By turning every fact into a dispute, every image into a row. By pushing editors to “balance” a photograph of an emaciated child with a government news release denying he is hungry.

Imagine a weather report where one source says, “It’s raining,” and another insists, “No, it’s sunny,” while everyone stands outside, soaked from the downpour. Gaza is that drenched truth, and yet much of the Western news media still feels obliged to quote the weatherman in Tel Aviv.

Every honest report is met with a barrage of emails, phone calls and social media smears, all designed to create just enough doubt to make editors pull back.

But the claim “He’s not starving. He’s just sick” is not an exoneration. It’s an admission.

A child with a pre-existing medical condition who is brought to the point of looking like a skeleton means he has been deprived not only of the nutrition he needs, but of the medical care. This is forced starvation and medicide side by side.

Palestinian journalists inside Gaza, the only ones reporting since Israel banned all foreign media and killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists, are starving alongside the people they report on. In a rare joint statement, the BBC, AFP and Associated Press warned that their own staff members face “the same dire circumstances as those they are covering”.

At the height of the outrage over these photos last week, Israel allowed in a trickle of aid – some airdrops and 30 to 50 trucks a day when the United Nations says 500 to 600 are needed. Some trucks never arrived, blocked by Jewish extremists.

Meanwhile, a parallel mechanism for aid distribution has been funnelled through Israeli-approved American contractors, which purposefully create dangerous and chaotic conditions that lead to daily killings of aid seekers. Crowds of starving Palestinians gather, only to be shot at by Israeli soldiers.

And still, the denials persist. The official line is that this is not starvation. It’s something else – undefined but definitely not a war crime.

The world has seen famine before – in Ethiopia, in Somalia, in Yemen, in South Sudan. The photographs from Gaza belong in the same category. The difference is that here, a powerful state causing the starvation is actively trying to convince us that our own eyes are lying to us.

The goal is not to convince the public that there is no hunger but to plant enough doubt to paralyse outrage. If the facts can be made murky, the pressure on Israel diminishes. This is why every newsroom that avoids the word “starvation” becomes an unwitting accomplice.

Starvation in Gaza is not collateral damage. It is an instrument of war, measurable in calories denied, trucks blocked and fields destroyed.

Israel’s strategy depends on controlling the lens as well as the border. It goes as far as prohibiting journalists allowed on airplanes airdropping food from filming the devastation below.

For a brief moment, the publication of those photos of starving Palestinians broke through the wall of propaganda, prompting minimal concessions. But the siege continues, the hunger deepens and the mass killing expands. Now the Israeli government has decided to launch another ground offensive to occupy Gaza City, and with it, the genocide will only get worse.

History will record the famine in Gaza. It will remember the prices of flour and sugar, the names of children and the aid trucks turned back. And it will remember how the world allowed itself to be told, in the middle of a downpour, that the sky was clear.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Starvation in Gaza. An entire population deprived of food after months of Israel blocking vital supplies and waging relentless attacks.

Experts say the strategy means long-term damage for the health of Gaza’s people.

So what are the consequences of Israel’s actions?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Dr Nick Maynard – Volunteer surgeon who worked in Gaza with Medical Aid for Palestinians

Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan – Paediatric intensive care doctor treating acute malnutrition in Gaza

Alex de Waal – Executive director at World Peace Foundation; author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine

‘Numbers don’t lie,’ but certainly deceive in India. Behind every celebration of prosperity is a harsher reality of exclusion, injustice, and hunger. This isn’t simply economic inequality; it’s a catastrophe masquerading as progress. India’s economic narrative, which is frequently portrayed as one of “unstoppable growth” and technological dominance, begins to crack under scrutiny. Official numbers put India’s per capita income at roughly $2,800. But this figure, like the country’s projected image of a growing power, is misleading. When billionaires like Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani are excluded from the equation, the income level scarcely changes. However, excluding the top 1% and top 5% from the formula reduces the value to $1,730 and $1,130, respectively, which is lower than in some sub-Saharan African nations. What seems to be a statistical recalibration uncovers a more terrible truth: India’s progress is not merely unequal but fundamentally discriminatory.

This distortion is not an accounting oddity. It is an outcome of an economic approach that prioritizes accumulation over distribution. The sparkling pictures of India’s space missions, unicorn business enterprises, and diplomatic gatherings mask a harsher ground reality in which over 800 million Indians rely on free food rations for their survival. This is not a minor statistic; it is the distinguishing characteristic of India’s development trajectory.

The Illusion of Aggregate Growth

The illusion of aggregate growth has persisted in part because it serves a political function. Modern economic theory cautions against using averages in isolation. As Amartya Sen, a notable Indian economist, correctly cautioned, “Averages are often misleading when inequality is rampant.” This warning has been ignored in India’s policy settings, where GDP development has been used as a symbol of national pride, covering the erosion of basic human rights. This conflict between growing GDP and rising hunger demonstrates the decoupling of national wealth from human well-being, which John Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness would characterize as a failure of social institutions. Growth cannot be considered just if it fails to improve the lives of the poor citizens. In India, the increase is clearly benefiting the elites; the top 1% currently owns more than 40% of the country’s wealth. In any just society, such a concentration of resources would raise alarms. In India, it is hailed as a symbol of national achievement.

India’s K-Shaped Recovery and the “Trickle-Down” Myth

The COVID-19 epidemic indicated this structural disparity further, resulting in what economists refer to as a “K-shaped recovery.” The rich elite saw their fortunes increase dramatically, while low-income workers, daily wage laborers, and rural people saw widespread unemployment and pay collapse. With over 90% of India’s workers laboring in the informal sector, this was far from a small crisis; it was economic collapse camouflaged as resilience. Nonetheless, officials adhered to the flawed concept of trickle-down economics, providing corporate bailouts and tax breaks while ignoring health, education, and rural livelihoods. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has frequently warned that “trickle-down economics is a myth.” Inequality does not accelerate growth; rather, it slows it down. However, India continues to promote the wealthy through tax breaks, corporate bailouts, and lax laws, while insufficiently funding public health and education.

The Global Image vs. Domestic Realities

This internal difference is in sharp contrast to India’s self-proclaimed global reputation. In diplomatic circles, India is portrayed as a counterbalance to China, a technology powerhouse, and a rising climate leader. However, this is only a façade. Behind the glamour of moon landings and semiconductor ambitions is a country that houses about 33% of the world’s hungry children, according to UNICEF. These are not the features of a rising power. They are signs of a troubled society, not because of its objectives, but because of how it pursues them.

The gap between perception and reality is not novel. Partha Chatterjee, a political theorist, notably articulated the “politics of the governed,” in which the impoverished are regulated by governmental paternalism rather than empowered through structural transformation. The Indian state continues to create a narrative of modernity and strength for external consumption while depending on ration cards and token welfare measures to keep the populace calm. The elite are exalted, while the others are just administered.

A Colonial Continuity of Economic Extraction

India’s wealth inequality at present follows colonial extractive patterns. Dadabhai Naoroji’s “Drain Theory,” which stated that British colonization took India’s wealth without proper reinvestment, has eerie parallels in the present. Now, the corporate-financial elite, centered in metropolitan hubs such as Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi, act as internal colonists, enriching themselves while abusing workers and ignoring fundamental public services. India’s federal economic model exacerbates this split, as income remains concentrated in a few affluent states while significant portions of the country — from Bihar to Jharkhand — suffer from poverty, resulting in widespread internal migration and deepening social fragmentation.

Food Insecurity as a Political Choice

Food insecurity is at the root of this catastrophe, caused by policy failure rather than scarcity. India is a major producer of rice, wheat, and pulses internationally. Nonetheless, hunger endures on a massive scale. The Public Distribution System (PDS), while seemingly extensive on paper, is rife with corruption, exclusion mistakes, and inefficiencies. Access to food is still determined by social class, gender, and land ownership. In this perspective, hunger is not a natural calamity but a political decision. It is the unavoidable result of a system that refuses to transfer resources, defend the disadvantaged, or abolish entrenched privilege.

India’s fixation with GDP growth has evolved into an instrument of denial, a statistical mask worn by an elite class unable to confront the hardship that most Indians face on a daily basis. The World Bank may record billions of dollars in economic activity, but it does not include the girl child in rural Rajasthan who drops out of school owing to starvation or the farmer in Vidarbha who is driven to suicide by debt. India’s economic miracle, as frequently represented in Western media and diplomatic circles, is based on the purposeful marginalization of these people. Instead of correcting the failing paradigm, the Indian state has militarized it. Growth numbers are displayed at global conferences, while dissident voices—academics, journalists, and civil society—are repressed or labeled as “anti-national.” Instead of fixing the system, the state is cleaning up the truth. This is not development. This is deceit.

Conclusion

India’s economic model, lauded by its political elites and promoted to the world as the triumphant tale of the Global South, is in desperate need of scrutiny. India’s global image as a growing power is based on ethically and economically unsound assumptions. The sparkle of global conferences and billionaire meetings obscures a sobering reality: a country where the prosperity of a few masks the suffering of many. Real power comes from justice, equality, and dignity, not GDP stats or orbiting satellites. And unless India decides to raise its poor rather than just projecting its affluent, the mirage of prosperity will remain just that: a delusion.