Ever since Nestle applied for the permit to increase pumping at the White Pine Springs well (PW 101)in Evart for its bottling operation in Stanwood in 2016, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation has been contesting this outrageous water grab. We have argued in public forums, educated across the state about the injustices this grab represents to the people and ecosystems of Michigan, and worked with organizations and citizens who submitted thousands of comments opposing the more than 200,000 gallons a day increase. Failure of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) to deny this increase has left two […]
Terrace
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Above photo: National Geographic/cc. And How One Man Did. These are dark days for both our nation and the world. Climate change is wreaking havoc everywhere, a global pandemic continues its onslaught, our nation’s experiment in democracy is threatened by a slow-motion insurrection and, to top it all off, our nation has taken the lead in pushing Russia toward a war over Ukraine that is capable of going off the rails into a full-scale nuclear war (and that is not hyperbole!). At least four or five U.S. OHIO Class “Trident” ballistic missile submarines are currently at sea on “hard alert” in […]
Above photo: Oahu Water Protectors and supporters demonstrate in opposition to the Red Hill fuel tanks. Civil Beat. Hawaii’s Governor Gets Wishy-Washy about Permanent Shut Down of Jet Fuel Tanks. August 1 is the earliest De-Fuel Tanks Could Begin, a Wait of 8 months; Teachers Speak of Trauma of Children from Military Families. We knew the U.S. Navy would slow roll the process of complying with the State of Hawaii to defuel the leaking 80-year-old jet fuel tanks that contaminated the drinking water of over 93,000 residents of O’ahu. The majority of the 93,000 were the military’s own families. No Transparency […]
Above photo: Anti-war protesters gather in front of the White House on Jan. 27 to demonstrate against escalating tensions with Russia. Win McNamee/Getty Images. TAKE ACTION: Endorse the Call to Action by submitting the name of your organization. Click here to endorse. Hold a visibility action. Send photos of your action to info@popularresistance.org so they can be shared at the online rally. Register for the National Rally to be held on Saturday, Feb. 5 at 12:00 noon Eastern time. Click here to register. You can find and share the registration using bit.ly/StopWarWithRussia. Sign and share this petition to President Biden and […]
Above photo: YouTube. As the COVID-19 mainstream media narrative steadily disappears from news headlines around the world, following the highly coincidental timing of last week’s Davos Agenda virtual event held by the World Economic Forum, the corporate media has now, in lockstep, moved onto what many commentators predicted they would – an escalation in the current Ukraine crisis, in which Russia has been accused of planning an ‘imminent’ invasion of its smaller Western neighbour, with Kiev having come under the control the US-EU aligned governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since the 2014 CIA and MI6-orchestrated Euromaidan colour revolution was […]
Above photo: Steven Donziger attends his pre-sentencing rally. From Law and Crime. BREAKING: In a stunning 57-page report, a panel of prominent lawyers concluded that Judges Kaplan and Preska denied me a fair trial and illegally detained me. They demand the US government free me immediately and investigate the judges. Vindicated, but still need justice. pic.twitter.com/G26hg9smQd — Steven Donziger (@SDonziger) January 25, 2022 CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT. Report of monitors: United States v. Steven Donziger, No. 19-CR-561 (LAP); 11-CIV-691 (LAK) United States Federal Court, South New York Trial Division. Pilot project to establish International Monitoring Panels to Evaluate […]
Above photo: From Spring Magazine. NOTE: This weekend, January 28 to 30, there will be international solidarity actions with Palestine. See Global Days of Action for Palestinian Rights. The JNF (Jewish National Fund) once again is in the news, this time for collaborating with the State of Israel in dispossessing Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. According to a 2010 UN report, this is not the first time Sheikh Jarrah’s residents have been dispossessed and, while illegal under international law, it is not illegal according to Israeli law. It is one more act of brutality, brought to […]
Above photo: U.S. soldiers leave a plane as they arrive from Afghanistan at the Manas air base. AFP. We’ve seen this before. The U.S. creates a situation, digs in its heels and makes ultimatums—and tens of thousands die. I resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 in opposition to another war-President Bush’s war on Iraq in which followed that war playbook. We’ve seen it in Afghanistan and Iraq and now it may be over Ukraine or Taiwan, and oh yes, let’s not forget multiple missile tests from North Korea, ISIS fighters rioting and escaping from prisons in Syria, the millions in […]
Last week, one of the most important digital rights cases took place in Quito, Ecuador. Ola Bini, a software designer who makes tools for activists to protect their privacy, was arrested at the Quito airport in April, 2019 just hours after Julian Assange was taken from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Bini has been detained in Quito for almost three years. His prosecution has been fraught with irregularities. Clearing the FOG speaks with Veridiana Alimonti, a human rights lawyer and the Associate Director for Latin American Policy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, about the case, its connections to the Julian Assange […]
Above photo: Leonard Peltier, the Native American rights activist who shouldn’t even be in prison, says the “fear and stress” tied to constant COVID-19 lockdowns in his prison is breaking him and others. Via Associated Press. The Native American rights activist, now 77 and ailing, says “fear and stress” from unbearable periods of isolation is breaking him and others. Never mind that he shouldn’t be in a federal prison at all. Leonard Peltier, the Native American rights activist whom the FBI put behind bars decades ago without any evidence that he committed a crime, tells HuffPost that his facility’s prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns and failure […]
Above photo: Guy Smallman. Palestine Action Strikes Again. Activists take aim at Elbit Systems once more, raiding and occupying their weapons factory in Shenstone. Palestine Action have raided Elbit System’s subsidiary, UAV Engines Ltd, in Shenstone, Staffordshire at 7.15 this morning. The activists have sprayed blood-red paint and begun dismantling the weapons factory, whilst occupying the roof to prevent site operations. With windows smashed and equipment dismantled, the action draws parallels with Israel’s forced demolitions of Palestinian homes, sounding the alarm on the ethnic cleansing Israel is currently enacting in Sheikh Jarrah, Palestine. Elbit Systems are Israel’s largest arms manufacturer and hold a significant […]
Above photo: Yemenis inspect the wreckage of buildings after they were hit by Saudi-UAE-led airstrikes at a neighborhood in Sana’a, Yemen, 18 January 2022. The Saudi-UAE-led coalition’s airstrikes targeted a neighborhood in Sana’a, killing at least 12 Yemenis, injuring 11 others and destroying five buildings. The coalition intensified airstrikes on the Houthis-held provinces of Yemen, including the capital Sana’a, after the Houthis claimed responsibility for drone attacks that targeted the UAE capital Abu Dhabi. EPA-EFE/Yahya Arhab. After Arab Spring protests erupted in the Middle East in 2011, toppling longtime dictators of the Arab World, including Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni […]
We must fix our broken system of labor law. One of the most important things that could be done to generate a more equitable economy is to dismantle the barriers to union organizing and collective bargaining (McNicholas et al. 2019; Oliver 2021). New data on unionization from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS 2022), coupled with evidence on the value of unions and on workers’ desire to be unionized, reinforce the importance of this goal and the urgent need for policy reforms: In 2021, 15.8 million workers in the United States were represented by a union—a decline of 581,000 from 2019 […]
Above photo: Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press. Rally at the British Embassy in Washington, DC in 2020. Washington, DC – Led by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), more than 26 antiwar groups and 2,500 individual peace and justice advocates have cosponsored a statement calling for the immediate release of publisher Julian Assange and commending him for his contributions toward global peace. Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States after the Trump administration indicted him on unprecedented Espionage Act charges. His indictment marked the first time in U.S. history that a journalist has been charged for publishing truthful information. […]
Above photo: Pro-Trump protesters on the steps of the US Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images. After over a year of incessant publicity, the Capitol building incident of January 6, 2021, has taken on mythic proportions. While all myths are prone to hyperbole, not all are entirely false as the following accounting relates. 1. January 6 was an attempted coup According to Noam Chomsky: “That it was an attempted coup is not in question,” likening the incident to Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. However, after storming the Capitol building and taking selfies, the demonstrators simply […]
Above photo: Cherokee Nation hosted the kickoff event for the United Nations’ International Decade of Indigenous Languages on January 5-7, 2022 at the Chota Conference Center in Tahlequah. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. opened the first day of the event with a welcome. The Cherokee Nation hosted the launch of the United Nations’ International Decade of Indigenous Languages in Tahlequah last week. The three-day event featured language leaders from around the world, both in person and virtually, to share information and best practices on language preservation efforts. The 10-year initiative continues the work of the United Nations General Assembly’s […]
Above photo: C-SPAN.org. Put aside Democrat versus Republican. Let’s just look at corporations versus people. Elizabeth (Liz) Fowler has a stellar corporate resume. For seven years, she worked at Johnson & Johnson, as vice president for global health policy. Before joining Johnson & Johnson, she was chief health counsel to Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, who banned single payer advocates from the deliberations that led to the insurance company dominated Affordable Care Act. In her off time, Fowler is a runner. She runs marathons and triathlons around the world. During work hours, she carries the torch for the health insurance industry […]
Above photo: King speaks in Eutaw, Alabama in June 1965. AP. And Re-entombment of Black Liberation Movement. It is January, and in the U.S. this means it is time for the annual ritual of revisiting the white-washed, de-radicalized, pro- “American” M.L. King fairytale as part of the official celebration of King’s birthday. In the official story, Dr. King was not the creation of the movement that was fighting for the democratic and human rights of Black people. No, it was Dr. King who created the movement, according to the colonial white elite and the neocolonial Black misleadership. In this story, the […]
A World War II Era underground storage tank containing over 100 million gallons of jet fuel at the Red Hill Fuel Facility has been leaking into the aquifer that provides water to the people of Oahu. Until recently, the Navy denied there were leaks or that the water was unsafe despite multiple complaints of health problems and an oil sheen found in the tap water. Now, the Oahu Water Protectors have gained the Navy’s attention and that of local and state elected officials. Wayne Tanaka of the Sierra Club of Hawaii speaks with Clearing the FOG about the fuel facility, what […]
Above photo: Protesters make their feelings known about Boris Johnson and the Tories in Parliament Square on Wednesday. Paul Childs/Reuters. Over the past several days, the news story that has dominated British news headlines, and consequently, the news headlines of the rest of the Western world, is controversy over a leaked email confirming Boris Johnson’s attendance at a Downing Street garden party in May 2020 – a time when the Summer weather is usually at its peak in Britain, and incidentally, the same time when the entire country was under stringent lockdown measures. In spite of offering an almost immediate apology in […]
Above photo: The U.S. Supreme Court is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, July 10, 2021. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana. The Supreme Court, in a predictable 6-3 decision, blocked OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) that required employees in businesses with 100 or more employees to either be vaccinated or regularly tested and masked. Dissenting were the three Justices appointed by Democratic Presidents: Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. The majority stated that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHAct) “plainly” does not authorize the vaccine or masking requirements. Calling the OSHA standard no “everyday exercise of federal power” they labeled it “instead a significant […]
Above photo: CIAT – CC BY-SA 2.0. And The Shame Of Shrinks. Roland Chrisjohn, lead author of Dying to Please You: Indigenous Suicide in Contemporary Canada, more effectively than anyone I know, confronts this tragic denial by mental health professionals: through their medicalizing and diseasing of sociopolitically-fueled suicidality, they are enabling suffering and increasing suicide. Chrisjohn is Onyota’a:ka of the Haudenausaunee, has a doctorate in psychology, and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Canada (Dying to Please You coauthors are Shaunessy M. McKay and Andrea Odessa Smith). Chrisjohn—to make it as easy as possible […]
Above photo: Shells of land snails from Rurutu (Austral Islands, French Polynesia) — recently extinct before they were collected and described scientifically. O. Gargominy, A. Sartori. The history of life on Earth has been marked five times by events of mass biodiversity extinction caused by extreme natural phenomena. Today, many experts warn that a Sixth Mass Extinction crisis is underway, this time entirely caused by human activities. A comprehensive assessment of evidence of this ongoing extinction event was published recently in the journal Biological Reviews by biologists from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France. “Drastically increased […]
Above photo: King Soopers employee Susan Hester, who has worked for the grocery chain for 18 years, walks the picket line during a strike on January 12, 2022 in Glendale, Colorado. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images. The strike began a day after a report showed 14% of Kroger workers have experienced homelessness in the past year. On the heels of a new report showing significant financial insecurity, including homelessness, among workers at Kroger grocery stores, more than 8,000 of the chain’s employees in Colorado went on strike Wednesday to demand fair wages and better healthcare benefits. Amid a recent wave of successful strikes at […]
Above photo: The World Bank building in Washington, April 5, 2021. Andrew Harnik/AP. As the Omicron variant of COVID-19 rips through the world’s population, the World Bank has forecast slowing global growth for 2022 as well as the following year in its Global Economics Prospects report issued on Tuesday. While it was certainly not its intention, the report is an exposure of the claims by capitalist governments that no serious public health measures can be undertaken to eliminate the pandemic because they would be detrimental to the “economy.” In fact, as the figures in the report make clear, the policy of “let it […]
Above photo: Protestors wear orange detainee jumpsuits and black hoods as they hold a banner calling for the closing of the US detention center at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba in front of the White House in Washington on January 11, 2014.Nicholas Kahm / AFP/Getty Images. Washington, DC – On Tuesday, Jan. 11, twenty-nine national faith groups sent a letter to President Biden and all Members of Congress calling on them “to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and to ensure that all of the people held there are either released, agree to a plea deal, or receive a fair trial in […]
Above photo: Alicia Jrapko. With deep sorrow and on behalf of her family, we announce that our dear colleague, sister and friend Alicia Jrapko passed away last evening after fighting a cruel illness for more than two years. In spite of the hard treatment, she never stopped working as much as she could. Alicia regretted not being able to continue contributing, loving and living with the energy that always characterized her. Alicia was a great Argentine revolutionary, the daughter of workers who at a very young age took up the struggles of a generation that dreamed of building an Argentina with […]
Above photo: People hold up a banner while listening to a news conference outside San Quentin State Prison in California in July 2020 to discuss a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility that sickened more than 1,400 inmates and caused six deaths. Eric Risberg/AP. Newly released data from 2020 show the impact of early-pandemic correctional policy choices and what kind of change is possible under pressure. But the data also show how inadequate, uneven, and unsustained policy changes have been: most have already been reversed. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a lot of new data over the past few […]
Two Hawaiian Activists Discuss the Latest Episode in Two Centuries of Colonialism. “It’s not a government; it’s not a democracy; it’s essentially a mafia state run by terrorists who don’t hurt just Hawaii but indigenous peoples across the world.” – Ihilani Lasconia In November, a huge underground naval fuel storage facility at Red Hill near Honolulu burst, leaking 14,000 gallons of jet fuel, contaminating the water supply, poisoning scores of people and driving thousands of Hawaiian families from their homes. The state’s attorney general, David Day, has alleged that the military has essentially no control over the safety of the […]
Above image: With ConocoPhillips eyeing Venezuelan assets, Guaidó’s actions suggest more collusion than incompetence. Daniel Duque / Venezuelanalysis. With the US-backed “interim presidency” not going away, VA’s Ricardo Vaz looks at the implications for Venezuela’s foreign assets. On January 3, close to midnight, the expired, opposition-controlled National Assembly (AN) voted to extend its own term and the Juan Guaidó “interim presidency” for yet another year. While there may be doubts about continuing with an experiment that has no prospects of suceeding, there are in fact several billion reasons for these US surrogates to remain in place. The eternal “interim” government This […]
Above photo: The leaders of the Troika of Resistance – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel – alongside China’s representative at Ortega’s inauguration in Managua. It’s the US and EU. Western corporate media claims Nicaragua’s Sandinista government is “isolated,” but it has support from countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America representing billions, while US fights with EU. This January 10 was the inauguration of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, the leader of the socialist Sandinista Front. Western corporate media outlets are pushing a ridiculous narrative that Nicaragua is “isolated” from the so-called “international community” […]
At dawn today, January 12, 2022, Israeli bulldozers and combat-ready soldiers raided the Palestinian village of Al-Atrash in the Naqab desert in southern 1948 Palestine [present-day Israel]. For the third day in a row, Israeli bulldozers have been bulldozing large swathes of land belonging to Palestinians from the village. The escalated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Al-Atrash is part of a scheme that is being implemented jointly by both the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and Israel’s Land Authority. As a response to this, Palestinians from Al-Atrash and the surrounding areas have been protesting for three days now in an attempt to stop the […]
Above photo: Neighbors watch the inauguration of President Daniel Ortega, on a giant screen at a park in the Julio Buitrago neighborhood of Managua, Nicaragua, Monday, January 10, 2022. Imposed hours before Ortega presidential inauguration. Nicaragua has hit out at a new raft of sanctions imposed on the country just hours before President Daniel Ortega’s inauguration on Monday. The measures targeting a number of Nicaraguan officials were announced as Mr Ortega was sworn in for a fourth consecutive term of office in a ceremony in the capital Managua attended by dignitaries and guests from across the world. Sanctions were imposed by […]
Above photo: Protesters demand the closure of Guantanamo Bay in Washington in 2019. MEE/Ali Harb. Geneva – On the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, UN experts* condemned the facility as a site of “unparalleled notoriety” and said its continued operation was a stain on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law. “Twenty years of practising arbitrary detention without trial accompanied by torture or ill treatment is simply unacceptable for any government, particularly a government which has a stated claim to protecting human rights,” said the independent experts, appointed […]
Above photo: Advocates for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, including Roger Waters, call on President Biden to close it on the 20th anniversary of its opening, Jan. 11, 2022. Check out all the photos here. It is, to be blunt, beyond dispiriting to have to be calling for the closure of the tired and discredited “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay 20 years — 7,306 days — since it first opened. The prison, as I have long explained, is a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and every day that it remains open ought to be a source of shame to […]
Above photo: Activists in New York City show their support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which took effect on Friday. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images, Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of the official representatives of the […]
Above photo: Students leave Brooklyn Tech High School mid-day, to protest school safety during the pandemic, on January 11, 2022. Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock. Students at several high schools in New York City coordinated a walkout from classes on Tuesday to call for remote learning as they protest what they say are unsafe learning conditions inside school buildings as COVID cases surged just as the spring semester began last week. A campaign mounted by students and activists across some of New York’s best-known high schools – including Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant – led to a walkout shortly before noon on Tuesday. While precise […]
Above photo: Protesters from Occupy Biden hold a protest near the president’s residence in Delaware. Echo Alford. Reject Campaign Funds from Fossil Fuel Interests A Green Constitutional Amendment. Dover, DE – A coalition of progressives and environmental groups are challenging lawmakers to sign on to a set of green New Year’s resolutions to kick off the 2022 session. Says participant Phillip Bannowsky, “this is a way to separate the committed from the compromised.” The activists claim in their text that confronting the climate crisis “has been impeded by the short-sighted interests of powerful economic players.” Specifically, they call for a Green […]
Above photo: August 2020 U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed 10 Afghan civilians. Getty Images. The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2004. But President Trump stopped publishing them after February 2020, shrouding continued U.S. bombing in secrecy. Over the past 20 years, as documented in the table below, U.S. and allied air forces have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles on other […]
Food Not Bombs was founded in 1980 to provide direct aid to people while educating about the perversion of spending so much on the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) while tens of millions of people do not have the basic necessities. It has turned into a global movement to build food sovereignty and organize systems outside the establishment. Clearing the FOG speaks with Keith McHenry, the co-founder of Food Not Bombs, about the criminalization of homelessness, their recent legal victory in Florida and why we must be concerned about increasing homelessness in the United States and the overall direction the country is going. […]
Above photo: Zachariah Ben walks through the corn fields of his family’s Ben Farms on Dec. 23, 2021. Ben worries about how the ongoing drought fueled by climate change will affect local farmers and ranchers. Pauly Denetclaw for Indian Country Today. Dry conditions pose problems for crops, livestock and water supplies. Gallup, New Mexico — It’s an overcast, windy November day as Zachariah Ben stands tall over the small, folding table at a local flea market. His tsiiyééł sits low on his neck and it’s clear that his dark brown hair is very long. Before him, on a black-and-white Pendleton blanket, sit two products — Bidii Baby […]
Working-class families are faced with an extra burden as the new year begins – the expiration of the expanded child tax credit. The expansion provided support for families struggling during the pandemic by changing some key factors of the already existing credit. Namely, the expansion increased the annual amount per child from $2,000 to between $3,000 and $3,600, it paid the credit in monthly installments rather than in one lump sum, and it expanded the full benefits of the credit to families who previously had been ruled ineligible due to their income being too low. On the same day that the […]
Above photo: runvrparavur – CC BY-SA 3.0. During the month of December 2021 two warnings of impending sea level rise were issued by highly respected groups of climate scientists. These are professional scientists who do not deal in hyperbole. Rather, they are archetypical conservative serious-minded scientists who follow the facts. The most recent warning on December 30th is of deteriorating conditions at the Arctic and Greenland. The second warning is the threatening collapse in Antarctica of one of the largest glaciers in the world. As these events unfortunately coincide so close together, one at the top of the world, the other at […]
Chris Hedges discusses the nature of Islamophobia with the author and professor, Nazia Kazi. Islamophobia is not defined solely as anti-Muslim sentiment. It is not limited to hate speech and hate crimes, racial stereotypes, or discrimination against Muslim men and women. Islamophobia, in its most pernicious and deadly form, is embodied in the wars waged by the United States in the Muslim world, as well as the laws and internal security structures that turn Muslims in the United States into “the other.” These laws include the criminalization of migrants, allowing Americans to justify the violent and illegal treatment of the undocumented, and […]
Above photo: U.S. Northern Command, Canada Command establish new bilateral Civil Assistance Plan. Canadian admirals and generals often act as if this country’s armed forces are an appendage of the US military, but it’s a mistake to simply label them US lackeys. As I detailed recently, the Canadian Forces (CF) have assisted their US counterparts through naval missions, special forces deployments, peacekeeping missions, chemical weapons testing, wars and much more. Canadian military leaders are constantly seeking to strengthen their ties with the US military. In 2013 secret discussions were held to “fully integrate” the US and Canadian militaries, according to the CBC. […]
Imprisoned Wikileaks founder, journalist and free speech champion Julian Assange today faces life imprisonment for telling the truth about U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the U.S. torture base in Guantanamo Bay. Assange faces charges under the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act. Prosecution under that WWI anti-democratic law placed thousands of antiwar activists in prison for exercising their free speech right to protest WWI. Ironically, the Dec 19, 2021 New York Times front-page two-part series entitled, Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes, follows in Assange’s footsteps in reporting U.S. war crimes, yet The Times staff writers […]
Above photo: American troops marching in Vladivostok during Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, August 1918. Public Domain/Wikipedia. Americans have become increasingly skeptical of the use of military force for matters beyond defending the American homeland. One year into the Joe Biden administration and most of the world has accepted two realities. First, America is not back, and Biden’s slogans notwithstanding, there simply is no going back to the pre-Trump era. Secondly, whether America keeps troops in various parts of the world or brings them home, America’s will to fight is by and large no longer there. Its implications for […]
Above photo: Shutterstock. While states and localities still have a long way to go toward getting everyone access to high-speed Internet, efforts at all levels of government, and especially federal funding, promise positive progress. If 2020 convinced the country that broadband for all Americans is essential, then 2021 underscored a reality of life: Goals often require longer timelines than we’d prefer. To put it another way, a worldwide emergency helped the U.S. recognize the importance of having ubiquitous high-speed Internet, and now we’re playing catch-up. There’s no quick and clean fix, which is a clunky pill to swallow for millions of people who […]
Above photo: Anti-imperialist graffiti in Caracas. Reuters. During the 21st century, the US, working with corporate elites, traditional oligarchies, military, and corporate media, has continually attempted coups against Latin American governments which place the needs of their people over US corporate interests. US organized coups in Latin American countries is hardly a 20th century phenomenon. However, this century the US rulers have turned to a new coup strategy, relying on soft coups, a significant change from the notoriously brutal military hard coups in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries in the 1970s. One central US concern in these new coups has […]
During the 2020 presidential campaigns, it was common for people who planned to vote for Joe Biden to say that they recognized he was a corporate-friendly candidate but that we just needed to elect him and then he could be pressured to act in the interests of the people. Well, unlike the marches after President Trump was elected, that mass pressure on Biden has not materialized. Now, a coalition of smaller climate justice groups (not the Big Greens) has just completed a weeklong occupation of land close to the President’s home with two demands: that he declare a climate emergency and […]
Evolve Education Center. Indianapolis, IN – A pastor is leading the charge of reclaiming an abandoned school and creating a community-and-trades center on the east side of Indianapolis. Pastor Denell Howard’s vision of The Evolve Education Center is slowly coming to fruition after years of planning, praying and a community effort to fix the building up. Requiring about a half million dollars to get the lights turned on, the center needs the help of the broader community to generate enough resources together. A volunteer named Stan, who spent months cleaning up the building, gave Unicorn Riot a tour of the reclaimed school […]
Above photo: Publicity image from The Battle at Lake Changjin. To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party, the powerful Chinese Central Propaganda Department commissioned a blockbuster film that depicts a US defeat in the Korean War. Under fire from US bombs, the heroic People’s Army fights a brutal ground battle and emerges victorious. Brave Chinese soldiers are caught in a hellish landscape as air attacks riddle the earth all around them. A villainous US Gen. Douglas MacArthur, shot Nazi-style from a low camera, shakes his fist and shouts into a microphone, “I believe we will […]
Above photo: Protestors in Midtown Manhattan call for an end to police brutality after Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict. Vincent Tsai. In the year 2021, it was the turn of the US government, particularly its judicial system, to respond to the protests of 2020. In the summer of 2020, the people of the United States witnessed the largest anti-racist struggle in the country’s history after a video of the brutal murder of George Floyd by officer Derek Chauvin went viral. While Floyd’s murder was the catalyst, the first year of the pandemic was marked by increased police and vigilante violence. Ahmaud Arbery, […]
Occupy Biden activists to hold rally demanding that Joe Biden take bold action to combat Climate Change. Saturday January 1, 2022 at 1 p.m. at 909 Centre road Wilmington, DE. This week, environmental advocates addressed intensifying fossil fuel pollution, climate injustices, and the Biden administration’s failure to take the lead on climate crisis solutions during the Occupy Biden protests near Joe Biden’s Wilmington, DE home. Their goal remains to increase the pressure on the President to declare a climate emergency and end new fossil fuel projects. The actions are being led by local community leaders and supported by dozens of environmental […]
Above photo: Chuck Kaufman in Honduras outside of the U.S. Palmerola Air Base, 2011. NOTE: This is the information about Chuck’s death from the Alliance for Global Justice: It is with great sadness that the Alliance for Global Justice announces that Chuck Kaufman, our National Co-Coordinator and one of the founders of AfGJ, has died. He passed peacefully of natural causes on Tuesday, December 28, 2021 in his Tucson, Arizona home after a brief illness. Chuck was a true leader, a visionary, a master strategist and above all, a loving and kind comrade and friend. Through his wise stewardship Alliance for Global Justice grew […]
Above photo: Military Spouse who reported fuel poisoning symptoms. Ann Wright. Risk Outweighs Military Claims of National Security. Red Hill is a Ticking Time Bomb. In a strongly worded proposed decision and order, on December 27, 2021, David Day, the Hawai’i State Department of Health Red Hill case Hearing Officer and Deputy Attorney General announced in a 33-page proposed decision and order that the “imminent peril” caused to the drinking water by the U.S. Navy’s leaking jet fuel tanks in the island of O’ahu outweighs the military’s claims that the tanks are key to “national security.” On November 28, approximately 19,000 gallons of […]
Above photo: Climate activists. Ray Bailey. Since Saturday, climate activists have been protesting outside President Biden’s neighborhood in Wilmington, DE, while pushing the President to declare a climate emergency. Delaware – This week, environmental advocates addressed intensifying fossil fuel pollution, climate injustices, and the Biden administration’s failure to take the lead on climate crisis solutions during the Occupy Biden protests in Wilmington, DE. Their goal remains to increase the pressure on the President to declare a climate emergency. The Delawarean led actions are supported by dozens of environmental and social justice groups from around the country and have resulted in hundreds […]
Above photo: Photo by Sierra Club. Sierra Club Executive Director Wayne Tanaka and Honolulu citizens call for the Red Hill fuel tanks to be shut down. Leaves Many Unanswered Questions For Residents of Honolulu. Out of 20 jet fuel tanks, eight tanks have NOT been inspected in 20 years and three tanks have NOT been inspected in 40 years! Hawai’i – On Friday, December 24, I went to Aliamanu Military Reservation at Red Hill housing area which is located above the entryway into the main tunnel that leads into the U.S. Navy’s deep, massive, leaking 80-year-old Red Hill underground jet fuel […]
For the end of the year, Clearing the FOG speaks with economist Richard Wolff about the current state of United States capitalism. Wolff explains that the United States is experiencing the greatest crisis in its history – a severe economic crisis at the same time as a pandemic, as well as the climate crisis. This is unprecedented. Unlike the great depression in the last century, when the wealth divide shrank, inequality is worsening. On top of that, US empire is in decline. Wolff discusses the current state of inflation and supply chain disruption and the forces behind them. Instead of facing […]
What lies ahead? Elias Amare, editor of Horn of Africa TV, explains the situation in Ethiopia in light of the declaration by the TPLF that they are withdrawing to Tigray. He analyzes the situation over the past few months that led to this moment. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has announced that it will withdraw its forces to “give peace a chance.” This marks a key milestone in the civil war it started in November 2020. Why was the TPLF forced to retreat? What prospects lie ahead for the country? Elias Amare, editor of Horn of Africa TV, explains. Source […]
Above photo: Patrick Pleul/Picture Alliance via Getty Images. Capping Off a Year of Labor Action at Amazon. For the first time, Amazon is experiencing a multi-site U.S. work stoppage. It comes at the end of a year marked by union organizing and labor militancy at the retail giant. On Wednesday morning, several dozen Amazon workers at two separate Chicago-area delivery stations staged a walkout to demand raises and safer working conditions, making it the first time the tech giant has seen a multi-site work stoppage in the United States. Coming just three days before Christmas to ensure maximum impact, the action caps a year of intense organizing […]
Above photo: New York City taxi drivers celebrate their successful hunger strike outside City Hall. Amba Guerguerian. ‘We Are Made of Hope.’ Grinding hunger, spiritual epiphanies and, often, victory. The huelga de hambre has been used for thousands of years. It has won many struggles,” said Ana Ramirez, 42, who fasted for 24 days this spring to demand that undocumented people and other excluded workers in New York receive stimulus and unemployment money. “Esther the reina won a battle with the hunger strike.” Ramirez is referring to Queen Esther of the Old Testament’s Book of Esther. The queen and her supporters fasted for three days […]
Above photo: Images Money / CC BY 2.0. The Fed has options for countering the record inflation the U.S. is facing that are far more productive and less risky than raising interest rates. The Federal Reserve is caught between a rock and a hard place. Inflation grew by 6.8% in November, the fastest in 40 years, a trend the Fed has now acknowledged is not “transitory.” The conventional theory is that inflation is due to too much money chasing too few goods, so the Fed is under heavy pressure to “tighten” or shrink the money supply. Its conventional tools for this purpose are to […]
On 12 July 2007, two US AH-64 Apache helicopters fired 30-millimetre cannon rounds at a group of Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad. These US Army gunners murdered at least a dozen people, including Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. Reuters immediately asked for the US to conduct a probe into the killing. Instead, they were fed the official story by the US government that soldiers of Bravo Company, 2-16 infantry had been attacked by small arms fire as part of their Operation Ilaaj in the al-Amin al-Thaniyah neighbourhood. The soldiers called in air strikes, which came in and […]
Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos is a Cuban truck driver who was sentenced for 110 years in prison because of a vehicle accident on the I-70 in Denver in 2019. The brakes of the semi-truck failed and he crashed into traffic, causing a 28-car pile up, killing four people, and injuring several others. The accident occurred because the company Aguilar-Mederos worked for at the time did not properly maintain their equipment and permitted a driver to use a truck with faulty brakes. “I ask God too many times why them and not me? Why did I survive that accident?” Aguilera-Mederos said to the […]
Above photo: weather.com. The weekend of December 10-11, 2021, saw a reported 30 tornadoes hitting several states from Arkansas to Illinois; as of this writing, 74 people are confirmed dead and several buildings severely damaged or totally demolished. All the cases of death and destruction are devastating; however, the most telling and unconscionable are the deaths of eight people at a candle-making factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, and six in an Amazon facility in Edwardsville, Illinois. What makes these two cases significant is that they most likely could have been avoided, but once again capitalism’s insatiable greed is significantly responsible for these […]
Above photo: Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash. Peru ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on 23 December 2021, becoming the 59th state party. The ministry of foreign affairs said that the move highlights Peru’s “high commitment to its obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law”, as well as its “commitment to promoting international peace and security”. Addressing the UN General Assembly this September, the minister of foreign affairs of Peru, Óscar Maúrtua, hailed the TPNW’s entry into force as a “great achievement” and “a legal and moral starting point on a long road to achieve nuclear disarmament”. […]
Above photo: StandWithChesa.com. California – Chesa Boudin has been serving San Franciscans as their district attorney for nearly two years. He is a leading progressive in what has been called the progressive prosecutors’ movement. Other progressive district attorneys in that small cohort are George Gascon in Los Angeles and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia. In Berger v. United States https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/295/78/, the Supreme Court said that the duty of a prosecutor “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” Yet all too many prosecutors are more concerned with winning cases than with doing […]
Above photo: President Joe Biden speaks in Wilmington, Del., on March 12, 2020, left, and former President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington on April 5, 2020. AP Photo, File. What is the evidence nearly a year into the alleged Biden presidency that there has been a change of guard in Washington? Donald Trump thinks he’s still president according to no more reliable a source than Rachel Maddow on her February 5th show. This was confirmed in May by Vanity Fair. Right-wing conspiracy theorists echo this analysis as recently as this month. Left-liberals are smugly confident that Kamala Harris’s running mate is in the White House, snoozing […]
Our economic and racial divides grew even wider in 2021. But there are signs of hope for a more equitable future. A year ago we had such high hopes. We expected the Covid vaccine rollout to bring a swift end to the pandemic, opening a window for pushing bold solutions to the long-standing economic, racial, and gender divides that had grown even wider under Covid. Where are we as 2021 comes to a close? These 10 charts highlight major inequality developments of the year, covering some steps back and some important steps forward. The rich have gotten richer by squeezing workers […]
A new program is placing Medicare recipients into private health insurance plans without their knowledge or consent in a final effort to fully privatize our national Medicare system. Known as “Direct Contract Entities (DCEs),” this program is putting more of our healthcare system into the hands of private equity to generate enormous profits at the expense of our health. Clearing the FOG speaks about this with Kay Tillow, a long time health care, civil rights and union activist. Tillow explains what these entities are, why they threaten the future of our entire healthcare system and how they block our ability to […]
Above photo: Janvieve Williams Comrie | Buenaventura, Colombia. Gender, Climate Change and Migration. The Black Experience in the Americas has always been, by circumstance, design and by purpose, inextricably tied to the land and to forms of Resistance expressed through different peoples in different territories throughout the Americas. Climate change affects communities and regions differently, even within the same country, depending on their cultural, economic, environmental, political and social context. But climate change also affects people differently within these same communities and regions depending on their race and genders, both at an individual and collective level. For Black communities, an underspoken […]
Above photo: Federico Parra/AFP. Venezuela Analysis columnist Jessica Dos Santos takes aim at self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó’s antics and how his “circus” goes on. A few days ago I was out grocery shopping when I heard a man tell his friend that Venezuela was the only country in the world with two presidents but where everything was still screwed up. This has become a running joke among Venezuelans. However, some three years ago, when Juan Guaidó proclaimed himself “interim president” and was instantly backed by the United States and the European Union, things didn’t seem so funny. The government and its support […]
One particularly pernicious myth going around in the US is the notion that “natural immunity,” gained from contracting Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, is preferable to getting vaccinated. One prominent politician, Sen. Rand Paul (R.–Ky.), has declared that he refuses to get vaccinated, because of his belief that he has “natural immunity” since he’s “already had the disease” (Slate, 5/23/21). Now, the Republican Party is officially embracing its position as the anti-vaccine political party, advocating what they call “natural immunity” as an alternative or substitute to getting vaccinated, as the Associated Press (11/21/21) reported: Republicans fighting President Joe Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandates […]
The negligence of our nation’s history has allowed for the continued racist representation of Native Americans, specifically when discussing their representation as mascots in amateur and professional sports. Several scholars have chosen to raise awareness to the ongoing misrepresentation and racist imagery that is present in amateur and professional sports by arguing against the allowance of such images, claiming such representation to be a by-product of a postcolonial society that allows for cultural imperialism, where the idea of Native American lives and presence are simply a thing of the past and not of the present day. The continued misrepresentation and racist […]
Above photo: Nathaniel St. Clair. Wherever and whenever obscenely rich people existed, they always protected their wealth and the privileges that come with it from the majority of non-wealthy people working for them and around them. Emperors, kings, czars as well as masters of huge slave plantations, lords of big feudal manors, and major shareholders and top executives of capitalist megacorporations did so partly by the use of brute force, or through the exercise of power, and bribery. All of them also used ideological persuasion, but none more so than capitalists today. And while “the weapon of criticism can never replace […]
Above photo: For the third time in three years, the Wet’suwet’en have faced militarized raids on our ancestral territory. One month ago today, the RCMP violently raided unceded Gidimt’en territory (November 18-19, 2021), removing Indigenous people from their land at gunpoint on behalf of TC Energy’s proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline. The Wet’suwet’en enforced our standing eviction of CGL by closing roads into the territory November 14-17. Following the raids, arrestees received cruel and violent treatment in prison. The conditions set forth by the court are human rights violations to Indigenous peoples. We’re still here. We’re still throwing down. We are more […]
Notwithstanding that China is a relatively “shy participant” in Middle Eastern policy, the US hegemony, which claims exclusivity among the most “obedient” Arab countries (those which fall into its strategic sphere of influence), is threatened by it. The worrying aspect for the US is that Beijing seeks to present a different model that integrates and takes advantage of the US’s failed military experiences in many wars and direct political interference attempts over the past decades. China hopes for a non-aggressive economic-political breakthrough in the Middle East through a less ferocious and less explicit model than the American one. China has robust […]
Above photo: Nicole Rushing, center, gives a thumbs up as cars honk in support of protesters outside the Hawthorne Fred Meyer in Southeast Portland. Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB. A weeklong strike is underway affecting a number of Oregon grocery stores, barely a week before Christmas Day. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, representing many employees at Fred Meyer and QFC stores, confirmed early Friday morning that it is moving ahead with a walkout at stores in Portland, Bend, Newberg and Klamath Falls. The details and specifics of a walkout are complicated. While the UFCW represents roughly 10,000 Fred Meyer […]
NOTE: Listen to this Clearing the FOG interview with Bruce Gagnon about the US’ support for Nazis in Ukraine and provocation of Russia. – Margaret Flowers With a bold and completely self-sabotaging diplomatic blunder, one which fails on every level including the least rigorous sanity test, this past Wednesday the U.S. was one of two nations to vote against a UN resolution designed to discourage the glorification and promotion of Nazi ideology. The other nation was Ukraine, which currently is overrun and effectively ruled by Jew-hating, Russia-hating, LGBT-hating neo-Nazis, who openly flaunt their allegiance to Stepan Bandera, a collaborator with the Third Reich during WWII. The reason the […]
Above photo: Reuters. On November 7, Nicaragua held elections in which current president Daniel Ortega received 75% support and, as a result, begins a new term of office in January. Not surprisingly, the US government described the election as a “sham.” Of more concern is that many on the left seem to agree. William Robinson’s NACLA article, Nicaragua: Chronicle of an Election Foretold, is a scathing critique, repeated in an interview with The Real News. In this article, we will show that Robinson’s claims are based on falsehoods and elite bias. He appears to be out of touch with the reality […]
Above photo: U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin laughs with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley during a break in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the defense department’s budget on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 17, 2021. Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool. The bill will now be signed by President Biden to become law. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the massive $778 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in a vote of 89 to 10. The legislation is a compromise version of the NDAA that was already passed by the House and now just needs President Biden’s signature to become law. Congress added $25 billion more to […]
Above photo: Sergei Malgavko/TASS. Over the past month, in a break from its usual focus on COVID-19, the Western mainstream media has dedicated a sizeable amount of coverage to unverified claims by unnamed US intelligence officials that the Russian Federation is planning an imminent military invasion of its western neighbour Ukraine – under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since 2014, when the CIA-orchestrated Euromaidan colour revolution toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych, following his November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with Moscow. […]
If you listen to the corporate media in the United States, you may believe the lies that say Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. In reality, it is the United States, led by then vice president Joe Biden, that conducted a coup to replace the elected president of Ukraine in 2014 and has been training and arming Nazis to attack the ethnically Russian Donbass Region in eastern Ukraine ever since. There is daily violence against civilians and basic infrastructure. The Biden administration is escalating this aggression and trying to blame Russia with the support of the same corporate media that defended […]
Above photo: Auto worker activists for direct democracy leafleted at plants across the country to promote a yes vote on the referendum. UAWD. This article was originally published on December 1, but is being updated as results come in. The members of the United Auto Workers have voted overwhelmingly to move to a direct voting system for choosing their union leadership—“one member, one vote.” With all votes counted as of December 2, direct elections had the support of 63.6 percent of voters. It’s a historic win for reformers in one of the nation’s most important unions, where members have pushed for […]
Above photo: Screenshare. Wall St. and Insurance Companies are stealing Medicare–End Direct Contracting. Louisville, KY – On Saturday, December 11 at 11:00 a.m. EST, Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care and others will gather outside the headquarters of Humana, 500 W. Main St., Louisville, KY 40202 where they will demand an end to Medicare Direct Contracting, a program that could fully privatize Traditional fee-for-service Medicare without a vote by Congress. The protest with feature Steven Katz in full costume as the Grinch with the reading and performance of “How the Grinch Stole Medicare,” an original poem from National Single Payer. Jill Harmer and […]
The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed–or even infuriated. There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires. By and large though, Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the […]
Massachusetts – Smith College students marched through the streets of downtown Northampton backed by a chorus of honking cars as they chanted, “We don’t want a prison nation, stop mass incarceration!” on Saturday, Dec. 4. This march was in support of a moratorium on prison and jail construction within Massachusetts that was introduced in the Massachusetts state legislature. The bill was written by Families for Justice and Healing and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, who, along with Massachusetts Peace Action, sponsored the walk. Smith students and volunteers from other prison abolition organizations in the area […]
Above photo: Erie Strayer strikers. Ironworkers Local 851. Overshadowed by larger strikes, the Ironworkers picket line stretches into its third month. Many people who work hard in full time jobs take a dental plan for granted. Many people who work hard in full-time jobs assume they will get more than a 25-cent-per-hour raise each year. But a group of workers at a cement plant in Erie, Pennsylvania have spent two months on strike trying to win those basic things — and their fight is far from over. About 40 workers at the Erie Strayer cement factory are members of Ironworkers Local 851. The company is family-owned, and has been unionized […]
Above photo: Palestine Action’s first trial has ended in acquittal. Palestine Action. United Kingdom – Three activists who defaced an Israeli drone engines factory in the UK were found not guilty of criminal damage on Monday. The two-day trial took place at Newcastle-under-Lyme Magistrates Court, near Stoke-on-Trent in central England. Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori told The Electronic Intifada that the victory showed they were on the right track. “We’re going to continue to take direct action in order to shut down and undermine Israel’s arms trade,” she said. It was reassuring to have court backing for taking action against Israeli […]
Above photo: Mourners bury the bodies of Houthi fighters killed fighting Saudi forces during their funeral in Sanaa, Yemen, Nov. 24, 2021. Hani Mohammed | AP. Amid a flurry of diplomatic gestures of peace from the United States, US bombs are devastating parts of Yemen in Saudi Arabia’s Operation Golden Bow. Hodeidah, Yemen – Inside the ruins of a modest Yemeni home where human and animal remains were strewn together, local rescuers struggled to evacuate a pregnant mother and other potential survivors from the rubble as warplanes circled above. There, they found the body of a toddler covered in ashes beside the […]
Above photo: A poster with a Nazi swastika printed on a Russian flag and reading “The colours of the occupiers” has been glued on Independence Square in Kiev on March 12. Yury Kirnichny/AFP – Getty Images. Only the United States and Ukraine voted against a UN Resolution denouncing the “glorification of Nazism.” History proves that racism in all its forms is foundational to this country and continues to be affirmed. Writing these words during the Thanksgiving “celebration” is sadly ironic as it illustrates the contradictions of a culture that has yet to reconcile itself with its colonial and white supremacist ideologies, […]
Following Xiomara Castro’s victory in the Honduran elections, Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, Coordinator, COPINH, spoke to Peoples Dispatch about what this means for people’s movements in the country. She talks about the government’s plans in its first 100 days, what movements like COPINH think are the next steps for rebuilding democracy, and more. Source link
Strike enters third month. Striking workers to be replaced with ‘permanent replacement employees’, company says. Hundreds of striking union workers at four Kellogg’s cereal plants in the US have overwhelmingly voted to reject a tentative agreement on a five-year contract negotiated between the union and the company, extending a strike that started in early October. Roughly 1,400 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union “have spoken”, union president Anthony Shelton said in a statement on 7 December. “The strike continues.” The union is “grateful for the outpouring of fraternal support we received from across the labor […]
Despite a disagreement over some amendments in the Senate, the United States Congress is poised to pass a $778 billion military budget bill for 2022. As they have been doing year after year, our elected officials are preparing to hand the lion’s share – over 65% – of federal discretionary spending to the U.S. war machine, even as they wring their hands over spending a mere quarter of that amount on the Build Back Better Act. The U.S. military’s incredible record of systematic failure—most recently its final trouncing by the Taliban after twenty years of death, destruction and lies in Afghanistan—cries […]
Above photo: U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meet on June 16, 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland. | Denis Balibouse – Pool/Keystone via Getty Images. On May 25, 2021, when the date of June 16 was announced for the summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, it seemed a good idea to waste no time in warning Biden and his neophyte advisers that a major shift in the “world correlation of forces” (to borrow an old Soviet term) was bound to heavily influence the June talks. China, of course, would not be taking part in the bilateral talks, but it would […]
Above photo: Military Spouse Lauren Bauer questioned Navy brass at Houlani Community Center. Civil Beat. Fuel Must Be Removed from Tanks within 30 Days. On December 6, after all hell broke loose at each of the five town hall meetings held over several days by the U.S. Navy to try to calm military families who have been drinking and bathing in fuel contaminated water, the Governor of the State of Hawai’i issued an order to the Navy to suspend the operation of the massive jet fuel tanks and within 30 days “defuel” or remove the fuel out of the tanks! Governor Ige said […]
Above photo: Screenshot of a map of Enbridge’s pipeline system, Enbridge’s website, 12-3-21. On November 5, the Canadian oil company Enbridge announced that it plans to increase capacity on its pipeline system that connects a crude-oil storage hub in Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf Coast, now that the Line 3 pipeline linking Alberta and Wisconsin is complete. The Carrizo Comecrudo and other Indigenous groups in the area, along with the Indigenous Environmental Network, have pledged to protect Indigenous sacred sites and oppose future pipeline developments. Increasing capacity may include building a new pipeline linking the Houston area to the Port of […]
Above photo: People wade through high water to evacuate a flooded home in LaPlace, La., after Hurricane Ida struck. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images. Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2021, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. This time the levees held. Billions of dollars invested in reinforcing them had paid off – at least for part of the population. A strong similarity between Ida and Katrina still emerged: Low-income communities and communities of color remain at high risk from hurricanes. As scholars who study refugees and migration worldwide, we are finding that the communities most at risk are […]
But We Can End It. Capitalist accumulation has always depended on cheap labor and resources extracted from the Global South. To end this violence we need a post-capitalist transition—otherwise, as climate breakdown accelerates, the ceaseless search for profit will drive us further into barbarism. As the failure of COP26 sinks in, it is increasingly clear that our leaders have neither the courage nor the will to respond effectively to ecological breakdown. This is not surprising. The ecological crisis is being driven by capitalist growth, which is tearing through the living world at a staggering pace, with the rich states and corporations of the […]