Articles
Articles
Failure of Umpires: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Anthony Cherry : One of the worst racial pogroms in U.S. history might have been prevented if city and state leaders had done their jobs responsibly ... Instead of trying to protect the Black community, Tulsa law enforcement and city officials, along with state authorities and the U.S. Army, gave carte blanche to, and even assisted, white vigilantes as they attacked and destroyed Black Tulsa. ... The perpetrators of the mob violence were subsequently granted impunity: not one white person was ever prosecuted for murder, torture, looting or arson, even though those crimes were amply documented. ... The implications of the failure of government officials—whether liberal or conservative—to serve as arbiters of justice is ultimately as significant today as it was in 1921...
[ Visit Website ]
Jul 17, 2021, 2:24pm
Articles
Black Women and American Freedom in Revolutionary America
Karen Cook Bell: What is the price of freedom? Is it worth the cost if failure means a return to slavery or death? This was a question many enslaved women asked themselves as they struggled with leaving behind family and friends to gain freedom. During the American Revolution, one-third of fugitives were enslaved women. ... Women ran away more frequently during the Revolutionary Era than at any time before or after the war due to the breakdown of oversight and state authority. ... Dunmore’s Proclamation ... offered freedom to slaves who would aid the Loyalist cause ... Black women, in fact, played an integral role in the expansion of abolitionism during the American Revolution...
[ Visit Website ]
Jul 13, 2021, 2:46pm
Articles
100 years since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party
Peter Symonds: The revolutionary conceptions that guided the founding of the CCP 100 years ago stand in stark contradiction to the hypocrisy and falsifications that characterise the official centenary celebrations ... The whole official celebration is built on the transparent lie that the party has remained true to its founding principles. In reality, the CCP long ago renounced the program of socialist internationalism on which it was established. ... The CCP is not a party of the proletariat but of the bureaucratic apparatus that rules China. ... The aim of the CCP today is not the overthrow of imperialism but for a prominent place in the world capitalist order...
[ Visit Website ]
Jul 1, 2021, 2:04pm
Articles
Distraction from Climate Action: Article 6 False Solutions (VIDEO)
Indigenous Environmental Network: When Indigenous Peoples and organizers are kicked out of the UNFCCC COP 25, the people rise up and find a vehicle for expression shown in this 15-minute documentary. The UNFCCC COP 25 in Madrid aimed to finalize the rules for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, a set of guidelines under which global carbon pricing systems will operate. ... The film demonstrates the stark contrast between the privileged corporate and government elites and those of Indigenous Peoples and organizers resisting Article 6 and other false solutions. ... the film warns us of the rebranding tactics used by corporations to commodify life and proliferate carbon pricing systems for the purpose of continuing business as usual...
[ Visit Website ]
Jun 30, 2021, 3:17pm
Articles
How The CIA Turned Afghanistan Into A Failed Narco-State
Alan Macleod: The war in Afghanistan has looked a lot like the war on drugs in Latin America ... Last year saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over a third while counter-narcotics operations dropped off a cliff. The country is said to be the source of over 90% of all the world’s illicit opium from which heroin and other opioids are made ... The U.S. government has a long history of directly involving itself with the worldwide narcotics trade ... In Colombia, it worked with President Alvaro Uribe ... one of the nation’s most important drug traffickers ... investigative journalist Gary Webb exposed how the CIA helped fund its dirty war against Nicaragua’s leftist government through sales of crack cocaine to black neighborhoods across the United States...
[ Visit Website ]
Jun 27, 2021, 3:01pm
Articles
On Nasser’s Fight for Arabic Independence and a Free Palestine
Cynthia Chung: Nasser became the catalyst for an Arab Revolution for independence, a revolution that remains yet to be finished ... In the 1950s the so-called enemy of the West was not only Moscow but the Third World’s emerging nationalists, from Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt to Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. ... In the 1960s, left wing nationalism and Arab socialism spread from Egypt to Algeria to Syria, Iraq and Palestine. This emergence presented a threat to the old imperialist game of Great Britain, to which the United States was a recent recruit...
[ Visit Website ]
Jun 15, 2021, 2:36pm
Articles
The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel: ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing. ... Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. ... America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. ... billionaires have a palette of tax-avoidance options to offset their gains using credits, deductions (which can include charitable donations) or losses to lower or even zero out their tax bills...
[ Visit Website ]
Jun 8, 2021, 3:44pm
Articles
How to Be More Than a Bystander
Sarah Belle Lin: 5 Ds of Bystander Intervention - distract, delegate, document, delay, and direct. ... it’s vital to show people how not to be passive bystanders as attacks on Asians multiply around the US. ... Distract is what they describe as creating a distraction that could bring an end to the harassment without addressing it directly ... Delegate is asking for help from others nearby ... as a general rule in nonviolent situations, we would encourage people, not for their automatic first step to be, to call the police ... check in with the person that’s facing the harassment or conflict and ask what they want to do ... Document is capturing visual evidence of the harassment taking place...
[ Visit Website ]
Jun 3, 2021, 12:41pm
Articles
Land Governance: Past
David Suzuki: The first video (12 min.) in the “Land Governance” series examines the historical context of Indigenous Peoples’ dispossession from the lands that sustain them within Canada, and identifies the legal and policy landscape that created the conditions for today’s environmental and social crises. ... It explores the need to build on the rights and responsibilities of Indigenous Peoples, which are rooted in inherent governance of their territories.
[ Visit Website ]
May 24, 2021, 3:11pm
Articles
Philadelphia’s DA Election Is a Test for Progressives
Lexi McMenamin: The results of the city’s district attorney election will highlight the left’s growing influence—or how far they still have to go. ... This election has far-reaching implications beyond Philly’s borders. Krasner’s election in 2017 kicked off the spate of “progressive prosecutors,” so-called due to their willingness to overhaul the traditional role of a prosecutor in support of criminal justice reform. ... In the years since winning the 2017 primary, Philly’s jail population has dropped by almost 30 percent, cash bail and overall prosecutions have been reduced, and he’s refused to pursue the death penalty...
[ Visit Website ]
May 18, 2021, 2:42pm
Articles
Why Does the United States Support Israel?
Jason Farbman: US and Israeli interests have converged in important ways. The United States has served as a critical sponsor for Israel financially and politically. And Israel has played an invaluable role in helping the United States dominate the Middle East. ... Washington got what was effectively a US military outpost in what American military strategists determined was the most important region in the world. ... The United States is able to exert its influence without direct involvement. And Israel continues on its course: settlements, military bombardments, displacement, and murder of Palestinians...
[ Visit Website ]
May 17, 2021, 2:40pm
Articles
Homeless Oaklanders were tired of the housing crisis. So they built a ‘miracle’ village
Gabrielle Canon: Under a highway, beautiful structures offer food, healthcare, showers and a free ‘store’ – as well as a strong sense of community ... The so-called “Cob on Wood” center has arisen in recent months to provide amenities for those living in a nearby homeless encampment, one of the largest in the city. ... But most importantly, it’s fostering a sense of community and dignity, according to the unhoused and housed residents who came together to build it. ... Cob on Wood was brought to life with help from local advocacy arts and food groups who teamed up with Miguel “Migz” Elliott, an expert in the ancient technique of making cob structures...
[ Visit Website ]
May 11, 2021, 10:56am
Articles
The Drone Revolution Comes to England
Maya Evans: As cities and towns are faced with rising poverty, homelessness and drug addiction, the authorities respond with more social control, using a technology that makes George Orwell’s 1984 seem tame ... I'm seated in the police Zoom briefing with other council members representing Hastings, my small English seaside town in East Sussex. ... Our Chief Inspector is telling us about the crisis we have with soaring heroin addiction in the town. ... The next section of the briefing is about the future use of police surveillance drones, and how they could become useful in combating crime...
[ Visit Website ]
May 4, 2021, 2:35pm
Articles
The Radioactive Underbelly of the Oilfield
Justin Nobel: The oil and gas industry has been promising great jobs for years but oilfield workers are risking their health for those paychecks. ... workers don’t always end up drilling for oil and pulling pipe, wellhead jobs stamped with a certain gritty glamour upon the American imagination. They often end up at a far seedier and even less regulated end of the oilfield, working in the largely unknown underworld of radioactive oilfield waste. Scooping it up and hauling it hither and thither in trucks. ... Waste spewed up by fracked wells in the first weeks of production is filled with toxic chemicals from the fracturing, as well as heavy metals, used fracking sand, and naturally occurring radioactivity from the formation...
[ Visit Website ]
May 1, 2021, 2:26pm
Articles
The Yurok Tribe Is Using California’s Carbon Offset Program to Buy Back Its Land
Abaki Beck: In January, the Yurok Tribe in California bought a 40-acre farm. Located next to an elementary school and the tribe’s Head Start program, the farm will serve as an outdoor classroom for children as well as a source of organic produce for the tribe. ... (Cap-and-trade programs allow industries that cannot otherwise reach their emission compliance requirements to purchase credits, called offsets, from sellers that sequester greenhouse gases.) ... In 2013, when the cap-and-trade program formally launched, the Yurok became the first entity in the state to register a forest offset project...
[ Visit Website ]
Apr 19, 2021, 3:00pm
|
FountainofLight.net