polly7
polly7's JournalResisting Evictions Spanish Style
By Melissa García Lamarca
Source: New Internationalist
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Most Spaniards purchased property because they were heavily encouraged by the state to do so. The institutional drive to increase home ownership dates back to the first Minister of Housing under the Franco dictatorship, José Luis Arrese, who stated in 1957: ‘We want a country of homeowners, not of proletarians.’ Promoting homeownership was a way for the state to abdicate responsibility for providing social housing, turning insubordinate spirits prone to protest about their living conditions into orderly, moral and disciplined citizens.
On top of stopping evictions under way, PAH and indignado groups have also been occupying foreclosed buildings to provide shelter for evicted families with nowhere to go. A wave of occupations is occurring across the country. ‘We don’t want to steal anyone’s house, but we have nowhere to go and these chalets are empty. It’s crazy,’ stated a woman living in one of 70 occupied properties on the outskirts of Madrid. Until two years ago, she was an administrative assistant and her husband was a plumber. ‘We want people to understand that we are not despicable or lazy. We used to be the middle class.’
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/resisting-evictions-spanish-style-by-melissa-garc-a-lamarca
Julian Assange on George Bush’s Library and Bradley Manning’s Trial
By Medea Benjamin and Julian Assange
Friday, April 26, 2013
George W. Bush’s new presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Texas has opened with great fanfare, including the attendance of Presidents Obama and former Presidents Carter, Bush Sr. and Clinton. George Bush has said that the library is “a place to lay out facts.” What facts would you like to see displayed at his library?
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/julian-assange-on-george-bush-s-library-and-bradley-manning-s-trial-by-medea-benjamin
Drone Wars: How White Privilege Obscures Real Dialogue
By Noor Mir and Rooj Alwazir
Saturday, April 27, 2013
“I have been to Yemen,” Lindsey Graham said to Farea al-Muslimi. Our blood pressures rose. “Isn’t your country in turmoil?” Graham continued. “We have some problems.” replied Al-Muslimi. Graham ended his questioning, self-indulgent smirk on his face, as if to say, “I rest my case.” Although we doubt he is even aware of the terminology, Graham’s neo-colonial presumptions about Farea’s understanding of his own country were disgusting.
No, Senator, you do not rest your case. We, as citizens of the United States and witnesses to the turmoil in this nation, do not accept your reasoning. Schools are shutting down across the country and students are staging walkouts on this very day to protest this blow to their rights to a fair and equal education. Affirmative action is still a subject of debate, as though structural inequalities are a myth. We are still waging an endless, futile and racist war on drugs and extending a school to prison pipeline that is tearing apart families and disenfranchising youth. Racial profiling is rife, with a Palestinian woman in a hijab being assaulted in a Boston suburb last week following the bombings and a Bangladeshi man being savagely beaten in the Bronx on account of the color of his skin. This country is ripped down the middle when it comes to gun control despite the serious shootings that have devastated Aurora (and remember Columbine?). Monsanto damages our food diversity and destroys our health but props up our elected officials with one hand and stifles small farms with the other. There are uprisings, there is dissent, there is police brutality. This country is in no lesser turmoil than Yemen, or Pakistan, just because the standards to which you hold our homelands in comparison to yours is whitewashed by your condescension and insensitivity to difference. Your bigotry precedes you, Senators -- your causation is fundamentally flawed.
Lindsey Graham was not the only one whose self-righteous “understanding” of the political and cultural landscapes of places like Pakistan and Yemen barred him from actually exploring the human cost of war. The majority of the hearing focused on analyzing the flaws of the current administration’s reliance on an overbearing executive authority and reforming the AUMF. We waited with bated breath for it to go beyond what we had hoped was only a self-obsessed, stagnant battle of the egos, but it did not. Questions prized legal, constitutional and operational aspects over ones actually pertaining to stories that Farea could have told, their commentaries punctuated with “We thank you for coming such a long way,” or “We thank you for that chilling perspective.” Nobody apologized for bombing his village, Wessab. They ascribed so profoundly and unwaveringly to forceful measures of “counterterrorism” as a given strategy with no room for questioning that they, in turn, tried to reject the validity of his personal experiences.
http://www.zcommunications.org/drone-wars-how-white-privilege-obscures-real-dialogue-by-noor-mir
Vandana Shiva - We Don’t Need Genetically Engineered Bananas For Iron Deficiency
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Nature has given us a cornucopia of biodiversity, rich in nutrients. Malnutrition and nutrient deficiency results from destroying biodiversity, and with it rich sources of nutrition.
The Green Revolution has spread monocultures of chemical rice and wheat, driving out biodiversity from our farms and diets.
And what survived as spontaneous crops like the amaranth greens and chenopodium (bathua) which are rich in iron were sprayed with poisons and herbicides. Instead of being seen as iron rich and vitamin rich gifts, they were treated as “weeds”. A Monsanto representative once said that Genetically Engineered crops resistant to their propriety herbicide Roundup killed the weeds that “steal the Sunshine”. And their RoundUp Ads in India tell women “Liberate yourself, use Roundup”. This is not a recipe for liberation, but being trapped in malnutrition.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/we-don-t-need-genetically-engineered-bananas-for-iron-deficiency-by-vandana-shiva
'Big Men' Explores Greed in West African Oil Exploration
By Katie Van Syckle and Rachel Boynton
Source: Rolling Stone
Friday, April 26, 2013
The film explores the connections between the Ghanaian company who finds the oil field, the small Texas oil company who drills, the Wall Street private equity partners who invest, and the Ghanaian government officials who manage the contracts. The glitch, depending on your seat, comes when Ghanaian leadership changes, the justice department is called in to investigate allegations of corruption on the part of the U.S. firm and credit contracts due to the financial crisis.
The film’s backdrop is the increasing violence in Nigeria, where militants are stealing from and blowing up foreign gas pipelines in an effort to siphon off profits from the corrupt Nigerian government who isn’t sharing the riches. The doc simultaneously looks at the process and implications of western companies investing in foreign oil ventures, profiles an African country trying to profit after centuries of exploitation and watches as everyone navigates how to slice the billion-dollar pie.
Boynton also looks at the psychological motivations for the individual players, all striving to be masters of the universe, or in West African parlance, "big men." Rolling Stone spoke with Boynton about her cautious optimism for Ghana, the legacy of Milton Friedman and working with Brad Pitt and Sebastian Junger.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/big-men-explores-greed-in-west-african-oil-exploration-by-katie-van-syckle
Pilger - Dance On Thatcher's Grave, But Remember There Has Been A Coup In Britain
By John Pilger
Source: Johnpilger.com
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The corruption and inhumanity under Thatcher knew no borders. When she came to power in 1979, Thatcher demanded a total ban on exports of milk to Vietnam. The American invasion had left a third of Vietnamese children malnourished.
I witnessed many distressing sights, including infants going blind from a lack of vitamins. “I cannot tolerate this,” said an anguished doctor in a Saigon paediatric hospital, as we looked at a dying boy. Oxfam and Save the Children had made clear to the British government the gravity of the emergency. An embargo led by the US had forced up the local price of a kilo of milk up to ten times that of a kilo of meat. Many children could have been restored with milk. Thatcher’s ban held.
In neighbouring Cambodia, Thatcher left a trail of blood, secretly. In 1980, she demanded that the defunct Pol Pot regime – the killers of 1.7 million people – retain its “right” to represent their victims at the UN. Her policy was vengeance on Cambodia’s liberator, Vietnam. The British representative was instructed to vote with Pol Pot at the World Health Organisation, thereby preventing it from providing help to where it was needed more than anywhere on earth.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/dance-on-thatchers-grave-but-remember-there-has-been-a-coup-in-britain-by-john-pilger
First Bush Library Quietly Celebrates Eleventh Anniversary
APRIL 25, 2013
POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ
And for Harland Dorrinson, who curates Mr. Bush’s other library, the lack of attention stings.
“We’re actually the first George W. Bush library, if anybody cares to know,” Mr. Dorrinson said, adding that “no media whatsoever” covered the Guantánamo library’s eleventh anniversary.
“They say that millions of people are going to visit the George W. Bush Library in Dallas every year,” he said. “On a good day, we’re lucky if we see one or two C.I.A. guys in between interrogations, looking for a Tom Clancy novel.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/04/first-bush-library-quietly-celebrates-eleventh-anniversary.html?mbid=nl_Borowitz%20(112)
After the sad, gory images, here is something really great:
http://globalgrind.com/entertainment/bradley-cooper-julian-edelman-new-england-patriots-visits-boston-marathon-bomb-victims-hospital-photos
NHL Takes 'Historic Step' for LGBT Equality
By Dave Zirin
Source: Edge of Sports
Monday, April 15, 2013
“Welcoming—not begrudging, not tolerant—welcoming.”
—Patrick Burke
There is an old expression in social movements that sometimes it takes years to make days worth of progress but sometimes it takes only days to leap ahead years. In the fight for full citizenship for our LGBT friends and family, it certainly seems like every day another year mercifully moves forward.
As for the sports world, that longtime bulwark of homophobia, heteronormative socialization, and “no homo” jokes, we seem to be making decades of progress by the hour. We’ve seen NFL players stand up and organize for marriage equality. We’ve seen other players criticized by the league and media for what used to be accepted homophobic slurs. We’ve seen legitimate efforts to try and lay the groundwork for an out-and-proud active gay male athlete. We’ve seen new organizations and voices rise to the occasion to try and actually remake jock culture so it’s a force for LGBT inclusion instead of its historic opposite. And today, in a first for a major sports organization, we have the National Hockey League taking a stand against anti-LGBT bigotry in their sport.
The NHL and the NHLPA announced that they would be joining in a formal partnership with the You Can Play Project, whose mission is ending homophobia in the locker room and on the playing field. The league will adopt tough non-discriminatory language, have educational seminars for rookies, and confidential outreach support for closeted players. In the words of You Can Play founder Patrick Burke, “Today marks a historic step for LGBT equality in sports. The NHL and the NHLPA [NHL Players' Association] are stepping up to ensure that the hockey community is welcoming -- not begrudging, not tolerant -- welcoming to LGBT players, coaches, management or fans. Now with the culture of the hockey community behind us, we can do the important educational outreach to help everyone know how to be accepting. The NHL has long had a slogan – ‘Hockey Is For Everyone.’ We will work alongside our partners in the NHL and the NHLPA to continue to make that true.”
For those unfamiliar with the story of the origin of You Can Play, the Burke family is hockey royalty. Patrick’s father Brian Burke is a longtime, greatly respected hockey executive who became an impassioned advocate against homophobia when his son Brendan told his family he was gay. The following year, Brendan died in a car accident at the age of 21. After Brendan’s death, Patrick started You Can Play, in honor of his brother’s memory. They have been doing individual public service announcements and educational events with athletes for several years. Their work is also timely as rumors persist that an NHL player will come out in the months ahead. It makes sense that even Gary Bettman, perhaps the worst commissioner in the history of sports, would see the writing on the wall and understand that partnering with You Can Play makes sense for the league.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/nhl-takes-historic-step-for-lgbt-equality-by-dave-zirin
The Fifth Estate did a great interview with Patrick Burke on his brother, Brendan. http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/thelegacyofbrendanburke/patrickburke.html On edit, I just rewatched this and it's part (the most important part, imo) of the full interview I'd seen a while ago. For anyone interested, the full documentary is here: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/thelegacyofbrendanburke/
WikiLeaks and the 2007 Iran NIE – Part 1
By Linda Pearson
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Former US National Intelligence Council chairperson Thomas Fingar received the 2013 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence on January 23 for his role overseeing the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran.
The NIE finding’s that all 16 US intelligence agencies judged “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” removed the immediate threat of a US-Israeli military attack on Iran.
It contradicted the previous NIE report from 2005, which had judged with “high confidence” that “Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure”.
In his memoirs, then-US president George W Bush complained that the NIE “tied my hands on the military side … how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/wikileaks-and-the-2007-iran-nie-part-1-by-linda-pearson
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