Sunday, July 7, 2019

Freeland 'America First', Israeli Apartheid, Climate Emergency & more -- The Week in News, Opinion and Videos June 30 - July 7


This week's list of articles, news items, opinion pieces and videos that I see as a must if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.



This list covers the week of June 30 - July 7.

1) SAN FRANCISCO IS PAYING FOR JAMAL TRULOVE’S WRONGFUL CONVICTION. WILL KAMALA HARRIS?

Kyle C. Barry, The Appeal 

Police and prosecutors framed a father of four in a 2007 murder case with local and national political implications.

2) Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages

Sam Levin, The Guardian 

Two massive luxury real estate deals in Los Angeles have shone a harsh light on the wealth gap in a region where tens of thousands of people live on the streets while mansions the size of football fields sell for more than $100m.

3) US Activist Scott Warren To Be Retried in Helping Migrants Case

Telesur

United States (U.S.) activist and member of the humanitarian group "No More Deaths", Scott Warren will be retried after a jury was unable to agree on a verdict for charges for helping migrants at the border with Mexico, U.S. prosecutors said Tuesday.

4) MEDIA FRAME: A ‘WAR ON COPS’ NARRATIVE WITHOUT EVIDENCE

Adam H. Johnson, The Appeal

An ABC News report last week on a “multi-year” trend of violence targeting the police highlights how easily the “war on cops” narrative sneaks into mainstream media with thin sourcing and little fact-checking.



5) Frustration and confusion mark Parkdale-High Park NDP nomination

Matt Fodor, Now Magazine

It was a stressful, painful and humiliating experience for the mostly African immigrants who came to support Saron Gebresellassi and participate in the Canadian political process for the first time.



6) The NDP should allow Rana Zaman to run

Judy Haiven, The Nova Scotia Advocate 

Just 4 months before the 2019 federal election, the NDP is has effectively blocked two women of colour from running under its banner.

7) Honduran Police Repress Protesting Teachers with Teargas

Telesur

Teachers and students are renewing round of protests across the country in favor of public healthcare and education services on Thursday and Friday amid police violence and repression, reported local media.

8) Outcry after reports Brazil plans to investigate Glenn Greenwald

Dom Phillips, The Guardian

Brazil’s Bar Association, journalists and opposition lawmakers have reacted with outrage to reports that the country’s federal police plan to investigate the bank accounts of an American journalist who published leaked conversations between prosecutors and the graft-busting judge who is now Jair Bolsonaro’s justice minister.

9) Enforcer of Philippines War on Drugs Defends Killing a Toddler: “Shit Happens”

David Gilbert, Vice News

The man responsible for conducting Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs has defended the killing of a three-year-old girl during a drugs raid by saying “shit happens.”

10) In Rural Areas, Homeless People Are Harder To Find — And To Help

Mary Meehan, NPR

"A lot of people in the world don't realize it, but they are one paycheck away from being out here with us"



11) China Condemns Western ‘Hypocrisy’ on Hong Kong

Telesur

China has labeled western criticisms over Hong Kong protests as ‘hypocritical’, whilst the city’s leader Carrie Lam condemned the 'extremely violent' protests that saw demonstrators break into the Legislative Council and raise the former British colonial flag.

12) DSA/Jacobin/Haymarket-sponsored ‘Socialism’ conference features US gov-funded regime-change activists

Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone

The 2019 Socialism Conference, sponsored by American leftist juggernauts the DSA, Jacobin magazine, and ISO’s Haymarket Books, features regime-change activists from multiple US government-funded NGOs.

13) UK Acting With 'Typical Imperialist Arrogance' On Iran's Tanker Seizure - Communist Party

Umer Jamshaid, Urdu Point

Thursday's interception and seizure of the Iranian oil tanker, Grace 1, by the UK Royal Marines constitutes a "reckless" provocation at a time of escalating tensions in the middle East and looks like an act of "typical UK imperialist arrogance," Robert Griffiths, the general-secretary of the UK Communist Party, told Sputnik on Friday.

14) Madrid threatens migrant rescue ship with massive fines

Alejandro López, WSWS

The acting Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is threatening the migrant rescue charity boat Proactiva Open Arms with huge fines if it continues rescuing migrants. It is part of the mounting assault on migrants throughout the world by capitalist governments, which, facing mounting domestic political opposition, are promoting nationalism and xenophobia.

15) Syriza betrayed its principles – and the Greek people. Its days are numbered

Alexander Kazamias, The Guardian

Alexis Tsipras’s party promised to fight EU-imposed austerity, but instead embraced it. Sunday’s polls will punish them.

16) Corbyn wishes Amazon 'many happy tax returns' on its 25th anniversary

Mark Sweney, The Guardian 

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has sent a barbed birthday card to Jeff Bezos to mark Amazon’s 25th anniversary, wishing the company “many happy tax returns” and demanding it pays more UK tax, pays its staff better and improves working conditions.

17) Alberta to spend $2.5M on public inquiry into 'foreign-funded special interests'

Drew Anderson · CBC News

"It's basically kind of a show trial to try and intimidate critics and people concerned about climate change into silence."

18) The living hell of young girls enslaved in Bangladesh's brothels

Corinne Redfern, The Guardian

Sold by traffickers, trapped for years and raped many times a day … this is the life of tens of thousands of underage girls in Bangladesh. We hear their stories.

19) FBI’S LENIENCY TOWARD BORDER VIGILANTE CONTRASTS WITH HARSH TREATMENT OF “BLACK IDENTITY EXTREMIST”

Trevor Aaronson, The Intercept

While militia leader Larry Hopkins remained free to terrorize immigrants, Christopher Daniels was jailed for months, losing his home and his job.

20) Israeli government minister takes credit for 27 U.S. states passing anti-BDS laws

 Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss

A leading Israeli government minister takes credit for 27 U.S. states passing laws aimed at curbing citizens’ advocacy for BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign targeting Israel.

21) Palestinian Authority thought compliance would lead to independence, but it only strengthened Israel’s domination

Noura Erakat, Mondoweiss

The following is an excerpt from Noura Erakat’s new book Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. In in Erakat outlines how the Palestinian Authority’s “illusory quest” for statehood “has shaped the Palestinian leadership’s commitment to U.S. tutelage and its reticence to embark on a bolder course based on a politics of resistance.”

22) Talib Kweli’s removal from festival lineup is part of anti-Palestinian censorship trend

Open Letter, The Guardian

103 signatories including Peter Gabriel, Naomi Klein and Boots Riley condemn attempts in Germany to impose political conditions on artists who support Palestinian rights.

23) Israel Might Apologize to Ethiopians but Will Keep Shooting at Unarmed Gazans

Gideon Levy, Haaretz

Israel’s ludicrous attempt to create islands of morality and equality in a sea of racism and violence has once again blown up in its face.

24) Sports-washing and the Toronto Raptors

Marion Kawas, Mondoweiss

If you’re a basketball fan, and also a supporter of justice for Palestine, then you have probably heard about the controversy surrounding the offer of a proposed trip to Israel for the new NBA champs the Toronto Raptors, from one of their co-owners Larry Tanenbaum.

25) Canada adopts Israel lobby’s contested definition of anti-Semitism

Nora Barrows-Friedman, Canadian Dimension

Canada has announced that it will formally adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that could characterize Palestinian rights campaigning as anti-Jewish bigotry.

26) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Other Democrats Reject “Staged” Tour of Migrant Detention Facilities

Robert Mackey, The Intercept

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ resisted the efforts of Customs and Border Protection officials to prevent her from speaking directly to migrants detained in El Paso, Texas, on Monday, forcing her way into a cell filled with women during a congressional delegation visit.

27) Border Patrol Agents Have a Secret Facebook Group, Where Racism and Sexism Prevail

Abigail Weinberg, Mother Jones

Current and former Border Patrol agents, who are responsible in part for detaining people who enter the US illegally, have displayed shocking callousness toward immigrants and women in a secret Facebook page with roughly 9,500 members.

28) 'Help': Photos show hundreds of migrants squashed into cells, appealing for assistance

Julia Ainsley and Annie Rose Ramos, NBC News

Government investigators have identified poor conditions in another sector of the southern border, publishing graphic photos showing extreme overcrowding in Rio Grande Valley migrant facilities and finding that children there did not have access to showers and had to sleep on concrete floors.



29) ‘Canada Adopts America First Foreign Policy,’ US State Dept boasted in 2017, with appointment of FM Chrystia Freeland

Ben Norton, The Grayzone

The US embassy in Ottawa boasted in a March 2017 memo, “Canada Adopts ‘America First’ Foreign Policy,” just after PM Trudeau appointed hard-line hawk Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister.

Venezuelans tell Canada to lift the economic blockade.



30) President Maduro Ratifies Commitment to Dialogue in Norway

Telesur 

The Venezuelan president said that his government is keeping open all doors for political dialogue with the opposition and said that next week there will be good news.

31) Why the US Puppet President of Venezuela is Toast

Roger Harris, Counter Punch

Even the corporate media are losing enthusiasm for the US government’s ploy to replace the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela with the US-anointed security asset Juan Guaidó. Reuters reports in a July 1 article, “Disappointed Venezuelans lose patience with Guaidó as Maduro hangs on,” that the US-backed “military uprising” has “unraveled.” A critical reading of the article explains why.

32) 'Fundamentally Flawed': UN Expert on Bachelet Venezuela Report

Telesur

Former consultant for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the one Bachelet now leads, says her report is 'unfortunately unbalanced', calls for lifting sanctions.

33) Eternal gratitude for Cuban blood shed to win Angola’s independence

Granma

As part of his official visit to the island, Angolan President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço met with Cuban combatants who fought in his country’s independence struggle, recalling those times.

34) Alaska: temperatures rival Miami amid 'unprecedented' heatwave

Edward Helmore, The Guardian 

Alaska’s temperatures soared to new highs on the Fourth of July as the state bisected by the Arctic Circle endures a heatwave that has shattered records in some cities.

35) India staring at a water apocalypse

Saikat Datta, Asia Times

A combination of climate change, bad policies and political apathy is steadily pushing India into a catastrophic water crisis that threatens stability in South Asia.

36) Amazon destruction accelerates 60% to one and a half soccer fields every minute

Vasco Cotovio, CNN

Amazon deforestation accelerated more than 60% in June over the same period last year, in what environmentalists say is a sign that the policies of President Jair Bolsonaro are starting to take effect.

37) Welcome to the fastest-heating place on Earth

Jonathan Watts, The Guardian 

In the world’s northernmost town, temperatures have risen by 4C, devastating homes, wildlife and even the cemetery. Will the rest of the planet heed its warning?

38) June was hottest ever recorded on Earth, European satellite agency announces

Conrad Duncan, The Independent 

Last month was the hottest June ever recorded, the EU‘s satellite agency has announced.

See also: Europe Burns, MMIWG, Bill 21 & more -- The Week in News, Opinion and Videos June 23 - 30

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