Month: October 2015

Source: The Nation

Poet, rapper, and filmmaker Boots Riley has just published Tell Homeland Security—­We Are the Bomb, a collection of songs, commentaries, and stories 
from his work with the Oakland hip-hop group the Coup and the band Street Sweeper Social Club. Riley has been involved in political activism for decades, from police-brutality protests to supporting Occupy Oakland. This interview has been adapted from The Laura Flanders Show.

LF: How would you describe what you do?


BR: I try to find creative ways to put ideas out to make the ground fertile for organizers. read more

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

Only a revolution in thinking can stop the media, politicians and firearms lobby from having to trot out their well-rehearsed lines after every mass shooting

Within the American polity there is a cyclical requiem in the wake of each mass shooting – a predictable collective lament for a calamity that ostensibly everyone regrets and nobody can resolve. Profiles of the victims emerge as reporters opine in front of police tape, wringing every last detail from tear-stained survivors. Gradually facts about the shooter emerge, followed by endless speculation about his (they are almost always men) motives before the president calls for prayer and healing.
read more

Source: The New Internationalist

This is Part 3 of Hussam’s story. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Rescues from the mass crossing of the Mediterranean went largely unnoticed in the wider world until 19 April, when more than 800 migrants drowned off the coast of Libya when their boat capsized.

More than 200,000 refugees and migrants travelled to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea in 2014, more than triple the number in 2013; 30% of those were Syrian. Italy alone received 160,000 of those 200,000 refugees and migrants, at the rate of 480 each day. The Italian-operated Mare Nostrum maritime search and rescue programme, with a price tag of $10.5 million a month, was cut for budgetary reasons in October 2014. read more