Articles
Articles
The Underground Migrant Support Network
Eleanor Colbert : One early morning this September, organizer Sendy Soto, 38, asked Manuel (a pseudonym), in line at the busy Chicago Greyhound bus station, if he wanted a cup of tea. ... Manuel, 26, was wearing a thin white shirt and holding a plastic bag with all his belongings. ... Soto is the founder of Chicago Immigrant Transit Assistance (CITA), an organization that serves people seeking asylum in the midst of legal processing as they pass through the Chicago Greyhound station. ... Thousands of families and individuals released from ICE detention centers are sent on Greyhound buses across the United States each year, forced to navigate the arduous transit system without assistance on their way to reach their sponsors and await their hearings....
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Oct 30, 2019, 3:17pm
Articles
China’s Long March to Total Food Security
Jim Dean: Earlier this year, China announced adding 5 million more hectares to its 42 million already connected farmland and shooting for 60 million hectares by 2022. This is part of China expanding, modernizing and restructuring its agriculture industry from top to bottom for maximum production and efficiency. ... China has always had limited arable land, much of which I suspected had been over-farmed. It consisted of only 10% of the total land area, as compared to 20% in the continental United States ... You cannot move land to water, so you have to move water to land, and China chose weather modification ... Tens of thousands of fuel-burning chambers were set up in the Tibetan mountains, and that boosted rainfall by roughly 10-billion cubic meters annually. ... The chambers burn solid fuel to produce silver iodide, a cloud-seeding agent ...
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Oct 26, 2019, 2:58pm
Articles
A 'Red Deal': Why Indigenous Communities Belong at the Center of Climate Action
Josue De Luna Navarro: "We are all related; us, plants, animals, water, air, and soil. We are all related."... Earlier last month, The Red Nation published "The Red Deal"—a political framework developed by young Indigenous activists, which pushes the Green New Deal to go further. ... "The Red Deal is not a counter program of the GND," they write. "It's a call for action beyond the scope of the U.S. colonial state. It's a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land." It pushes current climate policy work to expand, to include the demilitarization of the U.S. border, the abolishment of ICE, and decolonization of stolen land...
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Oct 14, 2019, 2:52pm
Articles
Mining the Future - Climate Change, Migration, and Militarization in Arizona’s Borderlands
Ryan Devereaux: Right now there are construction crews at work on Organ Pipe, pumping water from a rare desert aquifer to mix concrete for Donald Trump’s long-promised border wall. The survival of a fragile and unique desert ecosystem hangs in the balance. ... In Arizona, the federal government has long weaponized the desert as a tool to stop migration, one used in concert with an army of federal agents, the best technology money can buy, and network of immigrant detention centers. ... Just last month, a report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre found that climate disasters forced a record-setting seven million people from their homes in the first six months of 2019...
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Oct 3, 2019, 3:25pm
Articles
Native American 2020 candidate aims to raise awareness of indigenous peoples
Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, UK: Mark Charles knows his bid is a long shot but hopes to shed light on the historic abuse of Native Americans and other ethnicities ... “Do we want to be a nation where we the people actually means all the people?” Charles says. ... “Because if we do, then we have some foundational level work to do.” ... Native American people living on reservations, Charles says, have always been overlooked by politicians. The territory of the Navajo Nation covers 27,000 square miles alone ... is rarely visited by politicians running for president...
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Oct 2, 2019, 3:57pm
Articles
Private Prisons Are a Dead-End Economic Recovery Model. Just Ask This California Town.
Conner Martinez: Driving into the rural community of Adelanto, Calif., you are greeted by a large sign that reads “Adelanto, The City With Unlimited Possibilities.” Unfortunately, the sign’s statement is incompatible with the environment surrounding it ... Adelanto’s reality may finally change, however, with a new bill (AB 32)(California) banning private prisons, including immigrant detention centers ... That would not only put an end to the consistent human rights violations committed inside the facility, but it would also end the city’s long, failed attempt at using detention as a development strategy, providing an example for other rural communities across America who have gone down the same disastrous path...
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Sep 30, 2019, 4:59pm
Articles
Why We Should Fight for the Veterans Health Administration
Suzanne Gordon/Steve Early: Republicans and centrist Democrats love to pour money into more and more wars. But when it comes to providing public health care for the soldiers they put in harm’s way, they try to privatize and starve vets’ programs. ... In 2018, Democrats on the Hill helped conservative Republicans and the Trump administration pass the VA MISSION Act. As currently being implemented, this legislation will siphon billions of dollars away from the VHA’s budget and direct that money toward private doctors and for-profit hospitals often ill-prepared to treat veterans. ... As the VHA is starved of needed funding, its staffing levels will further decline and then its nationwide network of public hospitals and clinics will be dismantled. ... veterans who qualify for VHA medical benefits, due to their low income or service-related condition, land on an island of socialized medicine within our larger system of private insurance and for-profit health care providers...
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Sep 1, 2019, 11:22am
Articles
The Social Movement Photography of David Bacon: Part Six, Homeless & Hungry in People’s Park
David Bacon: For residents of Berkeley, the park represented a transformative moment. In 1969 they transformed it in just a few days from a vacant lot to a green expanse of trees, grass, a performance stage, and more. ... The area sat vacant for two years, until April 1969, when it was taken over by the surrounding community ... On May 15, after the university’s chancellor ordered the property cleared, Berkeley police, backed by the California Highway Patrol, deployed guns and teargas against demonstrators up and down Telegraph Avenue. In the escalating conflict, cops shot and killed James Rector as he stood on the roof of a building watching it all unfold below. ... On May 30, 35,000 people marched from the campus to the park to protest, but a fence remained around People’s Park until May 1972, when protesters took it down for good...
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Jul 31, 2019, 2:46pm
Articles
In Venezuela, the Right to Housing is Made Possible by the Revolution
Alex Anfruns: In the Antímano neighbourhood of the capital district of Caracas, a very special block of flats has been built. Its inhabitants built it with their own hands. ... The idea was to rescue abandoned urban land that did not fulfill any social function to benefit families in a situation of “social risk, without their own housing and young couples who are founding families”. ... Many people among these families had no idea how to hit a brick. There were certainly others who were bricklayers, but most of us were women. The first challenge was to assume that a five- or six-story building had to be built; it was difficult, we couldn’t even conceive of it. ... here there is a prototype of a different family. Our goal was to build a community ... There are no elevators in the building, so elderly and disabled people live on the ground floor. ... Once the housing was raised as a right, returning the use to an abandoned land, the tool for the community to consolidate its objective was to assume self-government...
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Jul 30, 2019, 11:58am
Articles
On July 26, Cuba Has a Lot to Be Proud of
Bill Hackwell: Today marks the 66th anniversary of the simultaneous assaults on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and the military garrison in Bayamo led by Fidel Castro and less than 200 combatants in what is known as the impossible storming of the heavens against the brutal U.S. puppet dictator Fulgencio Bautista ... For the Cuban people July 26 is a day of great pride for all the gains they have made through determination and sacrifice ... Just this past week Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) graduated another 500 doctors from 84 countries most of whom received full scholarships. ... The World Health Organization has reported that Cuba has 9 doctors per thousand inhabitants where the United States has 2.3 doctors per thousand. ... A Save Our Children report has ranked Cuba as the safest country in Latin America to be a child or adolescent (not to mention visit). And UNICEF has declared that Cuba, despite the blockade, has no malnutrition...
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Jul 26, 2019, 2:06pm
Articles
The Sun Dance
Mark Kodama: It was the summer of 1876. The great white father was demanding that we sell our land to them – land that was not ours to sell – and then move to the reservation – where only hardships and starvation awaited us. The buffalo was dying fast as white hunters shot them on the plain, taking only their skins and leaving their carcasses to rot on the plains. ... The prophet Sitting Bull called for us to resist. He called for us to meet in council. He called for a sun dance. There they would offer themselves to the creator. There the creator through the buffalo would provide answers to them. ... Plains Indians – the Sioux, the Cheyenne and the Arapaho — answered Sitting Bull’s call in great number joining his Hunkpapa Lakota at his camp near the Wolf Mountains...
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May 21, 2019, 11:08am
Articles
A Route 66 Road Trip Through Indigenous Homelands
Shoshi Parks: I’m seeking out the histories and communities that existed before Route 66 and that survive still today. ... The wind is so powerful on top of the mesa that even hours after I’ve returned to the valley below, I’ll be wiping its ancient sand from the cracks and crevices of my skin. In the Keres language, this is Haak’u, New Mexico’s Pueblo of Acoma, a sky city perched on a 300-foot bluff, some 7,000 feet above sea level—the oldest community in the United States. ... Although there is no running water or electricity, around 50 people live on the mesa year-round in brick homes—some covered in wattle and daub, others in adobe—just as their ancestors have since at least the 12th century. ... Beyond the pueblo is a 156-square-mile territory of mammoth stone formations and cottonwood trees that road trippers traveling Route 66 have been visiting since the 1950s...
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May 14, 2019, 3:04pm
Articles
BRI Forum Points to Tectonic Shift in Geopolitical Power
James ONeill: The second BRI Forum was held in Beijing from 21st to 27th of April 2019. It was intended by 5000 delegates from 150 countries, including 40 heads of government and representatives of 90 international organisations. ... the scheme has captured the attention, imagination and support of more than 150 countries. There are two major elements: a land-based road, rail and optic fibre network throughout Asia and extending to Europe, and a maritime series of routes linking China to Europe, Africa, and Latin America ... As Andre Vltchek says, “nothing outrages the West more than the prospect of losing absolute control of the world.” ... The United States has for decades sought to prevent a political, strategic and military partnership developing between Russia and China. They fail to see that it is their policies and actions that provide a major impetus for Sino-Russian cooperation. .... The fact that 152 nations have joined the BRI from every region of the world is evidence that the majority of the world’s nations see the BRI as a better alternative then the bullying, financial destruction, invasions and occupations employed by the United States to maintain their hegemonic view of the world...
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May 7, 2019, 3:47pm
Articles
A hundred years ago, May Day was a very big deal
Lloyd Alter: May Day used to be a happy celebration of spring and fertility. Now it is almost completely ignored. What happened? ... Everywhere people "went a-Maying" by going into the woods and bringing back leaf, bough, and blossom to decorate their persons, homes, and loved ones with green garlands. Outside theater was performed with characters like "Jack-in-the-Green" and the "Queen of the May." Trees were planted. Maypoles were erected. Dances were danced. Music was played. Drinks were drunk, and love was made. Winter was over, spring had sprung. ... Really, everyone was having such a good time, but once the industrial revolution took hold, it got harder for people to take the day off work, and the long hours made a thing such as May Day impossible for most workers. ... But the day was still important for workers, and labor unions were pushing the Eight Hour Movement...
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May 1, 2019, 2:50pm
Articles
Ignorance and Russophobia
Gordon Duff: The roots of Russophobia run deep in the US. They go much further than censored or slanted media or political gameplaying in Washington. What has to, or at least should be accepted is that Russophobia is a belief system, just like a religion, but with no spiritual nature, no holy prophets but resembling the worst of religion. Russophobia is a religion of hate that no one understand or will acknowledge the root cause of. ... We’re going to show how a powerful group, called the China Lobby, financed by massive American military aid, intended to fund Chaing Kai Shek’s fake war against Japan, bought Washington, “lock stock and barrel,” and began blaming Russia for the world’s ills. ... A similar “blame Russia” effort went on when the US “lost Vietnam” to Ho Chi Minh. ... This cabal, now certainly a Deep State organization, were unleashed on Democratic President Harry Truman, they brought Eisenhower into the presidency, quite possibly eliminated the Kennedy brothers, rigged two Nixon elections, and have dominated American politics, with some exceptions, since their inception....
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Apr 28, 2019, 3:19pm
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