Month: April 2018

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Fleeing Myanmar

Parsa Sanjana Sajid April 9, 2018 Parsa Sanjana Sajid

Source: New Internationalist

The treatment of Myanmar’s Rohingya people has been seen as a genocide in the making. 

On her mind that day, in September 2017, was all that was immediate. And all that was immediate – the next meal, clean water, safe shelter, sleep without terror – clamoured for her attention but were things over which she had very little control. Rashida* wanted rest.

She was at an NGO-run medical facility at Balukhali refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh, trying to get her five-year-old daughter examined for several ailments: cold, cuts to the knee, stomach pain. read more

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe (right) at the country's independence anniversary in 2016. From early 1983 to late 1987, the Zimbabwe National Army carried out a series of massacres of Ndebele civilians called the Gukurahundi, deriving from a Shona language term which loosely translates to "the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains". (Photo credit: Jekesai Njikizana/AFP/Getty)

The Dark Chapter of Zimbabwe’s History That Won’t Go Away

Ignatius Banda April 9, 2018 Ignatius Banda

With Zimbabwe’s new President Emmerson Mnangagwa just concluding a 100-day timeline to address what he considered the country’s most pressing issues, which focused on economic revival, human rights activists have their own timeline. Survivors of the 1980s Gukurahundi atrocities, where a campaign by government soldiers claimed thousands of civilian lives, are demanding that the new president address the country’s dark past.

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The Oklahoma Teachers’ Strike Is a Mutiny Against Austerity

Michelle Chen April 6, 2018 Michelle Chen

Source: In These Times

Oklahoma teachers proudly marked themselves absent from school since Monday, and they had an excellent excuse: They made themselves present in politics instead, with a historic march on the Capitol in hopes of finally capturing the legislature’s undivided attention

Lawmakers thought they could eke through another austerity budget with the last-minute addition of a $6,100 wage hike. But an estimated 30,000 educators stopped work starting Monday to force some 200 schools to shutter, in order to send the message to elected representatives that their gesture is insufficient. The planned raise paled against teachers’ demands for a fully funded school budget, as part of a $3.3 billion package to restore massive cutbacks across state agencies, as well as the basic dignity of a living wage for all state workers. read more

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Cornel West: Martin Luther King Jr was a radical. We must not sterilize his legacy

Cornel West April 6, 2018 Cornel West

Source: The Guardian

If King were alive today, his words would threaten most of those who now sing his praises

The major threat of Martin Luther King Jr to us is a spiritual and moral one. King’s courageous and compassionate example shatters the dominant neoliberal soul-craft of smartness, money and bombs. His grand fight against poverty, militarism, materialism and racism undercuts the superficial lip service and pretentious posturing of so-called progressives as well as the candid contempt and proud prejudices of genuine reactionaries. King was neither perfect nor pure in his prophetic witness – but he was the real thing in sharp contrast to the market-driven semblances and simulacra of our day. read more

Palestinian singer Rim Banna

A Voice that Penetrated the Apartheid Walls: Singer Rim Banna and Palestinian Cultural Resistance

Ramzy Baroud April 4, 2018 Ramzy Baroud

Palestinian singer Rim Banna passed away at the age of 51. Her death on March 24, after a decade-long battle with cancer, brought grief to Palestinians everywhere. Music unites Palestinians when politicians fail. In fact, while for years the collective calls for 'Palestinian unity' has gone unheeded, Palestinian music has continued to bring Palestinians closer.