Four Ways to Look at Standing Rock: An Indigenous Perspective
In the shadow of the Trump election, I found myself explaining to world climate leaders how to see Standing Rock through an indigenous lens.
Month: November 2016
Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerillas’ Victory – Book Review
Here is a volume offering great surprise, at least to this presumably well-educated reader, deeply sympathetic to the Cuban Revolution since its inception. Perhaps the cult of the personality around Che and Fidel is the reason for an absence of real social history on this vital subject?
Central African Republic: Another “Mission Accomplished” for UN While Real Problems Persist
On October 30, 2016, the French Minister of Defense, Jean-Yves Le Drian was in Bangui, Central African Republic to end the French military help to the UN peacekeeping troops. He claimed that the French mission had been “a success.”
Medics Describe How Police Sprayed Standing Rock Demonstrators With Tear Gas and Water Cannons
Source: The Intercept
As police unleashed streams of icy water Sunday night against Dakota Access pipeline demonstrators, Linda Black Elk, a member of the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council, was helping care for injured demonstrators. The council estimated that 300 people were treated for injuries, including 26 who were taken to area hospitals.
“What it was like was people walking through the dark of a winter North Dakota night, some of them so cold, and sprayed with water for so long, that their clothes were frozen to their body and crunching as they walked. So you could hear this crunching sound and this pop-pop-pop, and people yelling [to the police], ‘We’ll pray for you! We love you!” Black Elk said, describing the scene as police sprayed protesters with water and fired tear gas and rubber bullets during the more than six-hour standoff.
The Koch Brothers’ Favorite Congressman Will Be in Charge of the CIA
Source: The Nation
Mike Pompeo is an extremist who stokes fears of Muslims and talks of executing Edward Snowden.
In the “Republican Wave” election of 2010, when brothers Charles and David Koch emerged as defining figures in American politics, the greatest beneficiary of Koch Industries largess was the newly elected Congressman Mike Pompeo. Since his election, Pompeo has been referred to as the “Koch Brothers’ Congressman” and “the congressman from Koch.”
Pompeo, who on Friday accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s invitation to take over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a foreign-policy hawk who has fiercely opposed the Iran nuclear deal, stoked fears of Muslims in the United States and abroad, opposed closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, and defended the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional surveillance programs as “good and important work.” He has even gone so far as to say that NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden “should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.”
Obama created a deportation machine. Soon it will be Trump’s
Source: The Guardian Unlimited
While he is still in office, the president should urgently take action to limit the damage that Trump can do once it’s in his hands
Among the many asphyxiating gut punches delivered by Donald Trump’s election, his denigration of immigrants and pledge to deport them en masse stand out. Trump has now signaled that he will move to deport as many as three million immigrants after he takes office, and roll back Barack Obama’s executive action protecting more than 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.