Toward Freedom

Toward Freedom

2 days 9 hours ago

Sharing a story from Ghana on the factors that continue to prevent mining-impacted communities from benefitting from proper revenue sharing. Originally published by The Conversation.

"Despite the establishment of the Minerals Development Fund, mining communities remained saddled with social, economic and ecological challenges. This was partly because transferred royalties were captured by local elites. And there were issues around prompt payments to the fund, its legal status and its mandate.

To address these issues, and to establish a mining community development scheme, a new law, the Minerals Development Fund Act was passed three years ago. The scheme is to receive 20 per cent of the fund’s share (which equals 4 per cent of the total royalties paid by the mining companies to the state, or 0.2 per cent of the mining companies’ total revenue). The scheme is to facilitate development in mining-affected communities. In each mining community, a local management committee is to administer the scheme.

Despite its potential, the act has not been able to address the multiple challenges of mining communities. The reasons for this are myriad. But enough time has passed for the weaknesses in the system to be identified. It’s time the government took steps to fix these once and for all."

Ghana's mining communities are still not getting their just dues - Toward Freedom

Five changes are needed to legislation designed to allow mining impacted communities in Ghana to flourish.

Toward Freedom

3 days 6 hours ago

Sharing a piece by Umar Lateef Misgar, originally posted by ROAR Magazine, on survival and resistance in Kashmir.

"Forget about leaving the house to buy groceries — even peeking through a window was considered an affront by the Indian military personnel touting machine guns, teargas canisters, pellet shotguns and, seemingly, a visceral hatred for every Kashmiri. Without network reception, phones had no other purpose than to throw them at the soldiers, we joked. Internet was suspended and we lamented how even in war zones like Syria, people had managed to get an internet connection. Rather than being advanced under the veneer of coopted democracy, the military occupation was now manifest in the region. The whole of Kashmir had been turned into a concentration camp.

How did we survive in this camp? The short answer would be by sticking to the banalities of household life. Our homes became both a refuge and a prison. We tended to our vegetable patches; cleaned our homes inside-out; dried vegetables for the upcoming winters; wondered whether our relatives were doing well or even if they were still alive; made stock of the essential medications; worried about running out of rice; and, once in a while, climbed fences to sneak into our friends’ homes for endless political discussions.

'Is the world reacting to this?' we wondered. 'Will the Indian government go so far as killing us en masse, a genocide, an ethnic cleansing?' we worried. 'Will India and Pakistan go for an all-out war?' we dreaded. 'Is this the beginning of the end of Indian occupation?' we hoped."

Survival as resistance in occupied Kashmir - Toward Freedom

A local journalist’s account of life in Kashmir, where Indian troops are overseeing a heavy-handed crackdown and committing abuses with impunity.

Toward Freedom

5 days 13 hours ago

Isaac K. Oommen on protests against xenophobia in Kerala, a communist stronghold in southwest India.

"Coupled with the Citizenship Amendment Act, India has seen a proposal by the BJP-led government to enact a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which would further target Muslims for deportation. Citizens would not just have to prove their own residency in India, but also that of their parents (unless they were naturalized under the CAA).

Kerala, a southwestern state of 35 million, has been ruled for decades by a state assembly that is largely Communist. It has taken a strongly anti-identity-politics and pro-secular stance towards the BJP’s new laws.

Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarai Vijayan announced in the state assembly on the last day of December that detention centres to jail those suspected of being undocumented would never exist in Kerala. Such prisons have been proposed throughout the country.

Vijayan’s speech was book-ended with Kerala being the first state to pass a resolution against the CAA, which was unanimous except for the lone BJP supporter in the state assembly.

This stance on not vilifying Muslims strengthens the insistence of groups like IUML that Muslims make up a crucial part of India’s national fabric.

'We want everyone together,' said IUML Secretary Gafoor MH, speaking to Toward Freedom in Malaylam. 'We want Hindus, Christians, Muslims, everyone. In Kochi, we are a city of many sects and religions. There are Jains, Jews, Anglo-Indians even.'"

How India Became Fascist, and Why Pockets of Resistance Matter - Toward Freedom

The southwestern Indian state of Kerala remains a stronghold of resistance against the xenophobic policies of the BJP.

Toward Freedom

1 week 7 hours ago

Sharing an article on the perils of genetic testing carried out as part of international research in southern Africa. Originally posted on The Conversation Africa.

"For decades, there has been a flow of data and biosamples from the African continent to the global north. This has often been in the absence of legitimate participant consent, community engagement or data or material transfer agreements.

Biopiracy –the act of directly or indirectly taking undue advantage of research participants and communities in global health research– has a long and contentious history in Africa. A recent case occurred during the West African Ebola outbreak between 2014 and 2016 when thousands of biological specimens left the continent without consent. Very often there is minimal benefit sharing.

The issue has been in the news again in South Africa. Accusations have been levelled against the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK for allegedly attempting to commercialize data obtained from various African universities. This has reignited questions around models of consent in research, donor rights, biopiracy and genomic sovereignty."

Genetic material gathered in Africa is still being misused - Toward Freedom

Biosamples from Africa have often been taken without legitimate participant consent, community engagement or data or material transfer agreements.

Toward Freedom

1 week 2 days ago

Sharing a new translation of a story that looks at historic mobilizations in Argentina against the use of cyanide in mining projects.

"This constant tension that mega-mining provokes at the international, regional, and local level helps us to better understand the present. How and why, on December 20, 2019, ten days after the new governments had taken office at the national and provincial level, in just over ten hours, did the two chambers of the Mendoza Legislature modify Law 7722 to allow the use of prohibited substances, opening the door to mega-mining exploitation?

They did so behind the backs of citizens, the organizations and assemblies that shouted with rage behind the police barricades and that now express their frustration marching along highways and streets, and filling plazas around the province. The legislature used a legal fallacy to argue that the law established greater than allowed controls over a permitted activity and that the entry of resources to the provincial and national coffers would enable public investment and infrastructure improvements which would benefit the population.

As the population traveled by caravan from all parts of the province to convene on the government building in the city of Mendoza, the provincial government published, from its official twitter account, scandalous and refutable made-up figures about the wages and incomes for thousands of millions [of dollars] that mega-mining will bring to Mendoza. These figures are ridiculous when compared to reality: barely 0.9 per cent of the income from exports goes to the state, despite the fact that the Mining Code declares that it should be three per cent (which is quite meager in respect to the environmental damage that it causes)."

Eight days of protest force reversal of cyanide law in Argentina - Toward Freedom

A showdown against mega-mining in Mendoza, Argentina, marks Alberto Fernández' first month as President.

Toward Freedom

1 week 4 days ago

Sharing a piece on protest by Feyzi Ismail, originally posted to The Conversation UK.

"As the 2020s begin, it’s clear we’re living in an unprecedented moment: a climate emergency and ecological breakdown, a brewing global financial crisis, deepening inequality, trade wars, and growing threats of more imperialist wars and militarization.

There has also been a resurgence of the far right in many countries, emboldened most visibly by parties and politicians in the US, Brazil, India and many parts of Europe. This resurgence, however, has not gone unchallenged.

The convergence of crisis on these multiple fronts will reach breaking point, creating conditions that will become intolerable for most people. This will galvanize more protest and more polarization. As governments respond with reforms, such measures on their own will be unlikely to meet the combination of political and economic demands. The question of how to create new vehicles of representation to assert popular control over the economy will keep emerging. The fortunes of popular protest may well depend on whether the collective leadership of the movements can provide answers to it."

Protest has helped define the first two decades of the 21st century – here's what's next - Toward Freedom

The question of how to create new vehicles of representation to assert popular control over the economy will keep emerging.

Toward Freedom

2 weeks 6 hours ago

Sharing a story originally published by ProPublica on the ongoing impact of oil spills and pipeline leaks caused by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

"Even small spills have impacts, said Darryl Malek-Wiley, an organizer with the environmental conservation organization Sierra Club. Oil seeps into the marsh mud and affects the worms and snails. Birds that eat those animals are affected, as are the fish and the fishermen who bring them home. Then the marsh plants start to die, and saltwater intrudes to push them over. The coastline recedes. The next storm churns closer.

'I think it’s an outrage that they haven’t made any progress,' Malek-Wiley said. 'Here we are 14 years later and they haven’t done anything. A year after Katrina, things had settled down significantly. I think the oil response team should have been moving forward with environmental damage claims.'

Over the same period, some of the very same companies responsible for spills have gotten reimbursements totaling $19 million from a federal trust fund that allows private parties to submit claims for expenses incurred cleaning up their spilled oil. In order to get their money back, companies have to file papers saying how much oil they spilled, why it spilled and what they did to capture it. They often describe the spill as the result of an 'unforeseeable act of God.'

By failing to hold anyone accountable for the spills, Louisiana is likely leaving on the table hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental remediation money. When BP spilled 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the company agreed to pay $8.8 billion to help restore the natural environment. If the companies responsible for the Katrina and Rita spills paid up at the same rate, Louisiana would add more than $700 million to its restoration budget — money that Steve Cochran, associate vice president for coastal resilience at the Environmental Defense Fund, said is desperately needed.

How Oil Companies Avoided Environmental Accountability After 10.8 Million Gallons Spilled - Toward Freedom

More than 400 pipelines and 100 drilling platforms were damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Fourteen years later, no one has been held responsible

Toward Freedom

2 weeks 2 days ago

Sharing a line-up of nine new songs from the resistance movements in Chile & Wallmapu! Enjoy.

We Love Music: Songs of Mapuche resistance & Chilean protest - Toward Freedom

In Wallmapu, Indigenous Mapuche territory, resistance and repression never stopped. More new music here.

Toward Freedom

2 weeks 3 days ago

Sharing a short post by Ramzy Baroud on the ongoing importance of the Freedom Flotillas in the international struggle for a free Palestine.

"According to the United Nations Office in Occupied Palestine, the poverty rate in Gaza seems to be increasing at an alarming speed of two per cent per year. By the end of 2017, 53 per cent of Gaza’s population lived in poverty, two-thirds of them living in 'deep poverty.' This terrible number includes over 400,000 children.

An image, a video, a chart or a social media post can never convey the pain of 400,000 children, who experience real hunger every single day of their lives so that the Israeli government may achieve its military and political designs in Gaza. Indeed, Gaza is not just an Israeli missile, a demolished home, and an injured child. It is an entire nation that is suffering and resisting, in near-complete isolation from the rest of the world.

True solidarity should aim at forcing Israel to end the protracted occupation and siege on the Palestinian people, sailing the high seas if necessary. Thankfully, the good activists of the Freedom Flotilla are doing just that."

On the Road to Gaza: The Freedom Flotilla Will Sail Again - Toward Freedom

True solidarity should aim at forcing Israel to end the protracted occupation and siege on the Palestinian people, and sailing the high seas if necessary.

Toward Freedom

2 weeks 4 days ago

Sharing a brand new translation of an extended analysis of the crisis in Bolivia during October and November of this year. It is a long read, but well worth it.

"A political cycle has closed and its requiem must be played. Political processes rarely fit into prefabricated ideological schemes and must be considered in their complexity. We cannot look to the future without facing the mistakes of the past. When the global economic crisis, which has been in fermentation during these past years and in relation to which the economic policies of the MAS government have made the country more vulnerable, finally occurs, other songs will be played. We will have to travel new paths. For now, it is time to reorganize, to clean house. For those abroad, international solidarity must be not with he who wanted to be the supreme leader, the caudillo, but with social movements during their painful process of reorganization and in defense of the social gains they’ve acquired over past years."

Requiem for the "process of change" in Bolivia - Toward Freedom

No one, not even the most recalcitrant adversaries of the MAS, could have imagined such a dramatic and rapid collapse of the party and its government.