Month: March 2021

The Republican “Crisis” on the Mexican Border Is a Crisis of Weaponized Racism

Mark Karlin March 30, 2021 Mark Karlin

Last week has seen the GOP triumph in focusing on making Black voters “ghosts” as far as voting rights and Brown migrants from south of the border as criminal marauders. Never mind that the “crisis” of massive attempted southern border crossings has existed through several Republican and Democratic administrations — with even the Obama administration having an aggressive deportation policy. Ted Cruz should be reminded that when the Civil War began, Texas joined the Confederacy as a slave state. The white settlers also extended their racism and land appropriation to Mexican and indigenous residents, some of whom owned land under charters from Spain.

Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

Lesley Becker March 23, 2021 Lesley Becker

The title of this book describes its mission, which is to move beyond surviving abuse or assault, and to organize for the purpose of addressing violence and the root causes of violence. Transformative Justice , if implemented widely and over time, will build community safety systems that can function independently of the criminal justice system. The essays in this book are first-hand accounts describing approaches for responding to and preventing violence and abuse without police and prisons.

“Is This Who We Are?”: Gitmo is America’s Enduring Shame

Ramzy Baroud March 18, 2021 Ramzy Baroud

“Is this who we are?” President Obama animatedly and passionately asked, as he made a case in favor of the closure of Guantánamo, speaking as if a human rights advocate, not a Commander-in-Chief who had direct authority to shut down the entire facility. The truth is that the Abu Ghraib tortures were not by ‘a few bad apples’ and Guantánamo is, indeed, a microcosm of exactly what the US is, or has become.

Fukushima at Ten: Aftershocks, Lies, and Failed Decontamination..

John LaForge March 18, 2021 John LaForge

It ’s now 10 years since the catastrophic triple meltdowns of reactors at Fukushima in Japan. As Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health project put it three years ago,“Enormous amounts of radioactive chemicals, including cesium, strontium, plutonium, and iodine were emitted into the air, and releases of the same toxins into the Pacific have never stopped, as workers struggle to contain over 100 cancer-causing chemicals.”

Tunisia’s Spring Has Not Delivered Real Change — Special Report

Alessandra Bajec March 15, 2021 Alessandra Bajec

Throughout the month of January, nightly demonstrations rocked underprivileged neighborhoods in the capital and many cities across the country for more than a week. Scores of youths between the ages of 15 and 30 clashed with security forces. Some incidents of looting and vandalism were reported. The military and police responded with excessive use of force and mass arrests of over 1,600 mostly- young people, one third of whom are minors.

Zimbabwe Wildlife Authority Ditches Conservation for Gold Digging

Stephen . Tsoroti March 12, 2021 Stephen . Tsoroti

The coronavirus lockdown has enabled hundreds of illegal gold diggers to swarm into the mountains of Chimanimani to tunnel their way to gold. They have vandalized traditional sites held sacred by local people, and hassled tourists who have ventured into the park, despite weapons being wantonly fired by rival digging groups. These marauders have turned the river brown with tailings from their gold digging, harming the ecosystem that sustains human life in two countries, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.