This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.
This list covers the week of February 5-12. It is in order of date of the article's release.
1) Colin Kaepernick is the real MVP
Josh Kolic, The Hoop and the Harm
I can’t think of a time in my life when people of colour were in more danger than they are right now.
I was born in the early 80s. At the height of the Reagan administrations efforts to turn back the clockto a pre-Civil Rights America. I vividly remember Hillary Clinton’s “super predators ” comment about young black men in 1996 to defend her husband’s crime bill which saw a good percentage of almost a generation of black men lost to mass incarceration. I was coming into my own as an activist during the George W. Bush years where Kanye West famously and quite accurately summed up how W felt about black people. Right up to the unfulfilled promise of the Obama years where talk of “hope” and “change” amounted to nothing at all.
Read the full article.
2) Canada 150: Rosemary Brown, an outspoken pioneer for women of colour
Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun
Tireless advocate for the disadvantaged — “Until all of us have made it, none of us have made it” — Rosemary Brown was a gritty, outspoken feminist and provincial legislator with a vision of equality much broader than defined by race or gender.
Read the full article.
3) Israeli Support for Trump Gives American Jews a Taste of Their Own Medicine
Chemi Shalev, Haaretz
American Jews should brace themselves. Next Wednesday is not going to be pleasant. Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to Donald Trump’s White House and in all likelihood it’s going to be a love fest. The two leaders could be all over each other with hugs and kisses and songs of praise. Many American Jews, probably most, will feel a bit queasy. They’ll do their best to avert their eyes and look the other way.
Read the full article.
4) The age of Trump spells the end of the Zionist dream
Ben Lorber, 972mag.com
When Israel backs an American regime that threatens our liberty as humans and our safety as Jews, the claim that Zionism protects Jews no longer holds.
Read the full article.
5) The Unions Betraying the Left
Erik Loomis, New Republic
Days after the inauguration, the leaders of several building trade unions met with President Donald Trump at the White House, outraging those on the left who want organized labor to lead the resistance to the president’s anti-worker policies. The building trades cited Trump’s call for infrastructure investment and their warm personal relationship with him as reasons to be optimistic about his presidency. As reported in The New York Times, Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trade Unions, stated, “We have a common bond with the president. We come from the same industry. He understands the value of driving development, moving people to the middle class.” Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) President Terry O’Sullivan talked of Trump’s “commitment to creating hundreds of thousands of working-class jobs.”
Read the full article.
6) US police have already killed more than 100 people this year
Rachael Revesz, The Independent
More than one hundred people have died in the hands of law enforcement on the same day that Sandra Bland, an African American woman who died behind bars, would have celebrated hr 30th birthday.
Read the full article.
7) In Mexico, Trump triggers a surge in patriotism, anti-American sentiment
Laura Tillman, Los Angeles Times
Recently, Alma Siller Contreras traveled to the U.S. Consulate in the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo with a mission: to hand over her tourist visa, along with a handwritten message about U.S. President Trump.
Read the full article.
8) THE ERASURE OF HISTORY: LUKÁCS FORGOTTEN
Jerome Warren, Look Left
The statue of a Jewish Marxist intellectual in Budapest is being taken down, while at the same time, the statue of an anti-Semite fascist (Bálint Hóman) is being raised up. This is a deep insult to all those who fought against fascism. A trampling of history typically accompanies any fascist regime. One need only look at Spain under Franco, Greece under the Colonels, Brazil under Vargas and so on: a recurring trend is the revision of history and the expulsion of facts that don’t gel well with the predominant narrative.
Read the full article.
9) United Nations, EU condemn Israel legalizing settlements on Palestinian land
Gabriela Baczynska, Reuters
The European Union's foreign policy chief and the United Nations secretary-general on Tuesday criticized an Israeli move to legalize thousands of settler homes on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
Read the full article.
10) Sex work or slavery?: Why human rights discourse is no longer a tool for liberation
Nandita Haksar, Scroll.in
After nearly four decades as a human rights lawyer and teacher, I have realised that the human rights discourse is no longer a tool for emancipation and liberation but an instrument of foreign policy used by the West to control and dominate the world.
Read the full article.
11) Six Patriots Players Are Refusing To Meet Trump, Raising The Pressure On Their Teammates
Jim Dalrymple II. Buzz Feed
Fresh off their win at the Super Bowl, six members of the New England Patriots have backed out of the traditional post-game meeting with President Donald Trump — a sharp new sign of deepening American divisions.
Read the full article.
12) What if every single woman went on strike for a day?
Sarah Boesveld, Chatelaine
Activists in the United States asked women to show up to defend their rights on January 21, 2017. And show up they did: The Women’s March on Washington is set to go down as one of the largest single-day protests in American history, with half a million people flooding D.C.’s streets, not to mention the hundreds of sister marches around the world, with a turnout of nearly 120,000 across Canada.
Read the full article.
13) With Executive Order on Policing, Trump Declares Racialized War on Dissent
Flint Taylor, Truthout
On the heels of the much ballyhooed meeting that an obsequious Donald Trump conducted this week with local law enforcement officials from across the country, the president titillated the gendarmes with a threat to destroy -- COINTELPRO style -- an unnamed Texas state senator rumored to be introducing legislation to prevent law enforcement from financing police operations by seizing arrestees' property before they have been found guilty in a court of law. On Thursday, Trump followed up with an executive order that gave the recently confirmed Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions a carte blanche to bring down the wrath of the federal government on anyone who is unfortunate enough to have a confrontation with a cop, a prison guard, a border patrol officer or who knows who else outfitted with a badge and carrying a gun.
Read the full article.
14) Surviving Post-Capitalism: Coping, hoping, doping & shopping
CBC Radio Ideas
The signs are troubling: the ever-widening chasm between the ultra-rich and everyone else. Mass protests. Political upheaval and social division. It looks as though the rocky marriage between capitalism and democracy is doomed, at least according to Wolfgang Streeck, who directs the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, where he is also a professor of sociology. In conversation with Paul Kennedy about his book How Will Capitalism End?, he makes the unnerving case that capitalism is now at a point where it cannot survive itself.
Read the full article.
15) Jeff Sessions wasn't just Donald Trump's doing. Blame radical Republicans, too
Douglas Williams, The Guardian
Donald Trump has often been painted as being at odds with the Republican party. Hillary Clinton once declared that Trump was “taking hate groups mainstream, and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican party”. But the Republican party has always been radical – and now we are seeing that radicalism writ large.
Read the full article.
16) Looming Climate Catastrophe: Extinction in Nine Years?
Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch
Reports from the Arctic are getting pretty grim.
The latest, from a blog called Arctic News, warns that by 2026 — that’s just nine years from now — warming above the Arctic Circle could be so extreme that a massively disrupted and weakened jet stream could lead to global temperature rises so severe that a massive extinction event, including humans, could result.
Read the full article.
17) Rio's Olympic venues, six months on – in pictures
The Guardian
Six months after hosting South America’s first-ever Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Rio de Janeiro venues – some of which have been looted – sit mainly idle and already in disrepair, raising questions about a legacy that organisers promised would benefit the Brazilian city and its residents
Read the full article.
18) Reporter Robyn Doolittle Takes Us Behind the Scenes of “Unfounded”
Ishani Nath, Flare
The term “unfounded” used to be just another adjective, but thanks to investigative reporter Robyn Doolittle, it is now a pressing issue that all of Canada is talking about.
Read the full article.
19) More Americans joining socialist groups under Trump
Patrick Strickland, Aljazeera
Socialist groups see huge spike in membership as they join protests against US President Donald Trump.
Read the full article.
20) Trudeau's 'canoes and paddles' remark called borderline racist by First Nations MP
John Paul Tasker, CBC News
A First Nations NDP MP has written a biting, satirical letter to Justin Trudeau to "thank" him for controversial remarks he made about Indigenous youth, while taking aim at the prime minister's suggestion that some chiefs are out of touch with the needs of young people living on reserve.
Read the full article.
21) Trump furious after court upholds block on travel ban
Ariane de Vogue and Laura Jarrett, CNN
President Donald Trump's travel ban will remain blocked, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel means that citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries will continue to be able to travel to the US, despite Trump's executive order last month.
Read the full article.
22) Army veterans return to Standing Rock to form a human shield against police
Sam Levin, The Guardian
US veterans are returning to Standing Rock and pledging to shield indigenous activists from attacks by a militarized police force, another sign that the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline is far from over.
Read the full article.
23) Husbands Are Deadlier Than Terrorists
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
With the President Trump Reality Show, it’s easy to be distracted by ANGRY ALL-CAPITAL TWEETS or Oval Office tantrums. But resist, and stay focused on matters of life and death.
Consider two critical issues: refugees and guns. Trump is going berserk over the former, but wants to ease rules on the latter. So let’s look at the relative risks.
Read the full article.
24) Michael Bennett explains why he refuses to go to Israel as ‘an ambassador of good will’
Alysha Tsuji, USA Today
Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett will not be going to Israel on a trip with other NFL players sponsored by the Israeli government.
Read the full article.
25) Donald Trump 'won't challenge Muslim travel ban' in Supreme Court
Andrew Buncombe and Feliks Garcia, The Independent
Campaigners opposed to Donald Trump's travel ban are celebrating after the White House said it would not challenge an appeals court ruling in the Supreme Court.
Read the full article.
26) Teachers' act of civil disobedience should inspire us all
Larry Haiven, Localxpress
In one of the boldest acts of civil disobedience in the province’s history, Nova Scotia’s teachers, a most unlikely group, voted last week for the third time to reject the government’s public sector bargaining agenda.
Read the full article.
See also: Trump, Quebec City, Fukushima & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List January 29 - February 5
See also: The Trump Administration, O'Leary, the Women's Marches & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List January 22-29
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