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 June 17 - 24. It is generally in order of the date of the article's release.
There are two articles from prior to the period that have been included. They have been integrated into the post.
1) Human rights groups condemn Ukraine over its funding of nazi militias
The Morning Star
HUMAN rights groups in Ukraine hit out today after it was revealed that nazi militias involved in brutal and violent attacks against minorities have received cash from the government.
Read the full article.
2) Et Tu, Bernie?
Chris Hedges, TruthDig
There are two versions of Bernie Sanders. There is the old Bernie Sanders, who mounted a quixotic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination as a democratic socialist who refused corporate cash and excoriated corporate Democrats. And there is the new Bernie Sanders, who dutifully plays by the party’s rules, courts billionaires, refused to speak out in support of the lawsuit brought against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for rigging the primaries against him and endorses Democratic candidates who espouse the economic and political positions he once denounced.
Read the full article.
3) Report looks at child poverty across Canada
Jordan Press, The Canadian Press
Anti-poverty groups are raising the stakes on the Liberal government's promise to reduce the prevalence of low-income families by detailing child poverty rates in all 338 federal ridings -- including the above-average rates facing constituents of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau.
Read the full article.
4) Colombian Far-Right Candidate Duque Wins Presidential Elections
Telesur
One hour after the polls closed on Sunday for the second round of Colombian presidential elections, electoral authorities announced that far-right candidate Ivan Duque won over the leftist alternative Gustavo Petro with 53,98 percent versus 41,81 percent as 100 percent of the vote was counted.
Read the full article.
5) Colombia: FARC Willing to Meet With Duque to Maintain Peace
Telesur
The Common Alternative Revolutionary Force, the FARC, is worried that Duque's victory could hurt the historic peace process.
Read the full article.
6) Colombia: Duque Torpedoes Peace Before Taking Office
Telesur
Colombia’s Senate has heeded a call from Ivan Duque to indefinitely postpone a bill on the procedures to apply the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.
Read the full article.
7) The Democrats’ Myopic Reaction to the Trump–Kim Summit
James Careden, The Nation
In his recent Nation report from the Singapore summit, the redoubtable Tim Shorrock observed, “Even as the first images flashed across the world of Trump and Kim shaking hands against the unusual background of US and DPRK flags flapping together, social media and op-ed sections of media sites were filled with denunciations of Trump. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate led the attack.”
Read the full article.
8) Ontario Looks Right
Herman Rosenfeld, Jacobin
Canada is not immune to the rise of right-wing populism. Case in point: the recent election of Doug Ford as Premier of Ontario after years of Liberal rule.
Read the full article.
9) Chimps and orangutans among species in danger of being wiped out in imminent mass extinction of primates, scientists warn
Josh Gabbatiss, The Independent
Primate species including chimpanzees and orangutans are on the brink of extinction, and scientists fear that without a concerted global effort they will soon be gone for good.
Read the full article.
10) The unspeakable cruelty of Trump’s child-migrant camps
Sarah Kendzior, The Globe and Mail
Under the direction of Donald Trump and Attorney-General Jeff Sessions, the U.S. government has snatched roughly 2,000 children of asylum seekers from their parents – including an infant girl who was taken from her wailing mother while breastfeeding – and put them in detention camps. They are there for the crime of existing, as migrant children fleeing foreign violence and oppression, in Mr. Trump’s United States.
Read the full article.
11) Canada detains migrant kids, too, and it needs to stop, experts say
David P. Ball, The Toronto Star
Immigration experts and government critics say Canada Border Services Agency’s ongoing detention of minors — generally with their families — is deeply damaging to child welfare and mental health.
Read the full article.
12) THE U.S. HAS TAKEN MORE THAN 3,700 CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS — AND HAS NO PLAN FOR RETURNING THEM
Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S program of systematically separating migrant children from their parents is steadily expanding, government officials confirmed Tuesday. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s “zero tolerance” doctrine, U.S. authorities have been ordered to criminally prosecute all individuals arrested for illegally crossing the border without exception, including asylum-seekers and parents arriving with small children.
Read the full article.
13) Trump’s new immigration cruelty
Barry Sheppard, Red Flag
Washington has a long history of using deportations to strike fear among undocumented workers. In recent years deportations have increased – former president Barack Obama became known as “deporter in chief”.
Read the full article.
14) Canada aims to avoid detaining migrant children, but it happens
Benjamin Shingler · CBC News
McGill study on Canadian practice finds 'psychiatric and academic difficulties long after detention'
Read the full article.
15) If Justin Trudeau really cares about keeping refugee women and girls alive, his government needs to rescind the Safe Third Country Agreement
Jaymie Heilman and Maria Walker, Feminist Current
Many Canadians are rightly horrified by the Trump administration’s recent move to begin separating children from their asylum-seeking parents when they cross the US-Mexico border. A related — and perhaps equally devastating — change to American policy has received far less attention: domestic violence and gang violence no longer qualify as grounds for asylum in the US. Because the Canadian government still adheres to the Safe Third Country Agreement with the US, Canada is complicit with a policy that could sentence tens of thousands of Central American refugee women to extreme physical abuse, sexual enslavement, and death.
Read the full article.
16) The Trump administration is keeping preschool children in “tender age” detention centers
David Gilbert, Vice News
The Trump administration is forcibly separating babies and toddlers from their parents on the border with Mexico and sending them to what they call “tender age shelters” in South Texas, according to a report from the Associated Press.
Read the full article.
17) Trump Signs Executive Order To Stop Family Separation At Border
Roberta Rampton, Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump backed down on Wednesday on an immigration policy that sparked outrage at home and abroad, signing an executive order to end the separation of children from their parents when immigrant families are caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
Read the full article.
18) Migrant Children Drugged Without Consent At Government Centers, Court Documents Show
Roque Planas, HuffPost USStaff working on the behalf of the Office of Refugee Resettlement are routinely drugging detained child migrants with psychotropics without their parents’ consent, according to legal filings.
Read the full article.
19) Ripping Children Away From Families Is As American As Apple Pie
Ricky Riley, Blavity
America has a long history of separating children from their families.
Read the full article.
20) Immigrant children beaten, stripped, placed in solitary confinement at U.S. detention centre: Court documents
Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson and Garance Burke, The Associated Press
Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention centre in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.
Read the full article.
21) Dear America, we can teach you about cruelty to refugees. Love, Australia
Brigid Delaney, The GuardianYes, America, we have so much to teach you about cruelty and brutality and violence to some of the most vulnerable people on earth. We are a small nation, but on this issue we really punch above our weight!
Read the full article.
22) Think your ancestors came here legally and 'waited their turn'? Think again
Sheila Langan, Irish Central
As happens every time policies and practices against undocumented immigrants dominate the news, this week a vast array of memes and messages have been circulating from Americans who believe that their immigrant ancestors have nothing in common with today's undocumented immigrants.
Read the full article.
23) AN ABUSED WOMAN CAME TO THE U.S. SEEKING ASYLUM. THE GOVERNMENT TOOK HER 5-YEAR-OLD SON. THIS IS HOW SHE GOT HIM BACK.
Debbie Nathan, The Intercept
A GUATEMALAN WOMAN whose child was taken from her last month by immigration authorities in Texas after coming to the U.S. seeking asylum was released after 38 days in detention last week. Immediately after being freed, she went to the federally funded facility that was managing her 5-year-old son’s care and recovered him.
Read the full article.
24) Brazil's Lula da Silva: 'This is Political Imprisonment'
Telesur
In an exclusive interview, Brazil's favorite presidential candidate, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, says he'd never betray the trust of his supporters.
Read the full article.
25) Should Canada give up on NAFTA? Yes.
Gordon Laxer, The Toronto Star
NAFTA is a corporate rights agreement, not a free-trade agreement in the original sense.
Read the full article.
26) Australian war crimes
Ben Hillier, Red Flag
How many civilians have Australian special forces killed in Afghanistan? We don’t know and may never know. But it is becoming clearer that war crimes of a scale not previously reported or acknowledged have been carried out by some in Australia’s most venerated military units.
Read the full article.
27) Italy's far-right government announces 'census' and deportations of Roma traveller population
Jon Stone, The Independent
Italy’s new far-right interior minister has announced a “census” of the country’s Roma community and set the stage for deportations of the ethnic group.
Read the full article.
28) Italy's deputy PM Salvini called for 'mass cleansing, street by street, quarter by quarter', newly resurfaced footage reveals
Tom Embury-Dennis, The Guardian
Footage has re-emerged of Italy’s new interior minister calling for a “mass cleansing” of migrants from “entire parts” of the country.
Read the full article.
29) Salvini’s ‘Roma register’ marks a dangerous step towards fascism
The Morning Star
ITALIAN Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s order that all Roma people in the country be registered so that “non-Italians” among them can be expelled looks like fascism.
Read the full article.
30) 'Commie cadet' who wore Che Guevara T-shirt kicked out of US army
The Associated Press
A West Point cadet who wore a Che Guevara T-shirt to his graduation and posted a message online saying “communism will win” has been discharged from the US army.
Read the full article.
31) Canada's Chrystia Freeland 'Blind To Emerging Multipolar World'
Nino Pagliccia, Telesur
In a strange case of reversed roles, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland tried to convince U.S. President Donald Trump to return to his lost path of globalization and international trade agreements in an impassioned speech she gave at the Foreign Policy Forum on June 13 in Washington, D.C.
Read the full article.
32) Jewish extremists taunt ‘Ali’s on the grill’ at slain toddler’s relatives
Jacob Magid, The Times of Israel
Two dozen far-right protesters shout outside courtroom in support of Duma terror attack perpetrators; relatives slam police for letting abusive chorus continue unabated.
Read the full article.
33) A Brief History of U.S. Intervention in the Countries of Origin of Central American Asylum Seekers
Mark Tseng-Putterman, Medium
At the margins of the mainstream discursive stalemate over immigration lies over a century of historical U.S. intervention that politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle seem determined to silence. Since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 declared the U.S.’s right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America, the U.S. has cut deep wounds and left deeper scars throughout the region. These wounds are inextricable from the contemporary crisis of internal and international displacement and migration in the region.
Read the full article.
34) Hungary law bans helping migrants
BBC News
The Hungarian parliament has passed new legislation that criminalises lawyers and activists who help asylum seekers.
Read the full article.
35) 'Disgusting': 72% of Alberta inmates haven't been convicted of crimes — the highest proportion in Canada
Jonny Wakefield, The Edmonton Journal
Seven out of every 10 people behind bars in Alberta haven’t been convicted of their alleged crime, a statistic the head of a local prisoner advocacy group called “disgusting.”
Read the full article.
36) Three Tulsa schools don’t want to commemorate America’s racist past anymore
Christianna Silva, Vice News
Three schools in Tulsa decided to change their names from honoring a slave owner, a Confederate general, and Christopher Columbus to instead highlight positive reflections of America’s past.
Read the full article.
37) Anti-fascist lessons from Republican Spain
Jim Jump, The Morning Star
As the 80th anniversary of the decisive Spanish civil war battle of Ebro approaches, JIM JUMP recalls the heroism of the International Brigade and how European governments aided and abetted the victory of fascism.
Read the full article.
38) Jagmeet Singh Says NDP Won’t Bail On Canada-Israel Group, Despite Pressure
Althia Raj, The Huffington Post
The federal NDP says it has no plans to withdraw from the Canada-Israel interparliamentary group despite vocal concerns from some of its party members.
Read the full article.
Please note that this was in response to the Open Letter: A call for the NDP to withdraw from the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group that was published on The Left Chapter among other forums.
39) Overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canada’s prisons persists amid drop in overall incarceration
Emma McIntosh and Alex McKeen, The Toronto Star
The population of people behind bars in Canada, overall on the decline, continues to include a massive overrepresentation of Indigenous inmates, according to newly released government data.
Read the full article.
40) As 'Wealthiest and Freest Country in the World,' Nikki Haley Tells Bernie Sanders It's 'Ridiculous' to Examine US Poverty
Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
"As it happens, I personally believe that it is totally appropriate for the U.N. Special Rapporteur to focus on poverty in the United States," Sanders responded.
Read the full article.
41) Children's teeth are paying the price for the cancellation of fluoridation in Calgary
June Dabbagh, Leagh Harfield, Wendy Street-Wadey and Juliet Guichon, The Calgary Herald
As the school year draws to an end, it is time to consider how Calgary has been treating its children lately. In one respect, the answer is not well at all.
Read the full article.
42) CANADIAN DELEGATES ATTEND MARX CONFERENCE IN CHINA
Elizabeth Rowley, People's Voice
In late May, the Communist Party of China invited other Communist, workers’ and left parties from around the world to an important event marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. About 70 delegates from 50 parties attended a theoretical conference held on May 29 in the southern city of Shenzhen, on “The Historical Contribution of Karl Marx and the Contemporary Significance of Marxism.”
Read the full article.
43) Fraser Institute Bombards Ontario With Ads Falsely Portraying Minimum Wage Workers as Teenagers
Press Progress
As Premier-designate Doug Ford prepares to roll back Ontario’s minimum wage, the Fraser Institute is blanketing social media with misleading ads that falsely portray minimum wage workers as teenagers.
Read the full article.
44) Extreme Inequality Creates Global Disorder
James K. Galbraith, The Nation
The principal driver of global inequality—both within and between countries—is the global financial regime. This has been a feature since the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, with recurrent catastrophic effects following the onset of the 1980s debt crisis, including the collapse of the socialist nations and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Back then, it was a conservative stroke of genius to institutionalize “market exchange rates” on a global scale. Those markets work well enough for rich nations, but they guarantee problems for everyone else. Each exchange crisis has wiped out a decade or more of progress against inequality, as anyone in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, or much of Africa will tell you. The rise of China, on the other hand, has everything to do with its refusal to play the game of open capital markets. And while inequality in China rose rapidly for internal reasons beginning in the 1990s, it stabilized more than a decade ago.
Read the full article.
45) Trump flips on North Korea, declaring country still an 'extraordinary threat'
The Guardian
Donald Trump has declared that North Korea still poses an “extraordinary threat” to the United States, just days after saying that the country’s nuclear program no longer constituted a danger.
Read the full article.
46) Why Canadians Don’t Care About the Air India Bombing
Chandrima Chakraborty, The Tyee
I have no personal connection to the tragedy, but our country’s broad indifference to it came to me as a surprise. A course I was teaching at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., 25 years or more after the bombing, called for a section on Air India Flight 182, but when I went to look up the scholarly research, I was astonished by how little there was.
Read the full article.
47) The age of patriarchy: how an unfashionable idea became a rallying cry for feminism today
Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
On 7 January this year, the alt-right insurgent Steve Bannon turned on his TV in Washington DC to watch the Golden Globes. The mood of the event was sombre. It was the immediate aftermath of multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault against film producer Harvey Weinstein, which he has denied. The women, whose outfits would normally have been elaborate and the subject of frantic scrutiny, wore plain and sober black. In the course of a passionate speech, Oprah Winfrey told the audience that “brutally powerful men” had “broken” something in the culture. These men had caused women to suffer: not only actors, but domestic workers, factory workers, agricultural workers, athletes, soldiers and academics. The fight against this broken culture, she said, transcended “geography, race, religion, politics and workplace”.
Read the full article.
48) Canadian winemaker Norman Hardie accused of sexual misconduct
Ann Hui and Ivy Knight, The Globe and Mail
A Globe and Mail investigation reveals a wide-ranging pattern of alleged sexual advances and sexual harassment by Hardie, a major player in Canada’s food and wine industry.
Read the full article.
49) Eurydice Dixon: how one woman’s death put focus on ‘male rage’ in Australia
Gay Alcorn, The Guardian
The alleged rape and murder of a comedian has sparked anger about attitudes to women.
Read the full article.
50) 'Not as ironic as I imagined': the incels spokesman on why he is renouncing them
Justin Ling, The Guardian
In the wake of the Toronto van murders, Jack Peterson was the most prominent defender of the anti-feminist ‘incels’ – until the community turned on him.
Read the full article.
51) Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It
Lee Camp, TruthDig
We live in a state of perpetual war, and we never feel it. While you get your gelato at the hip place where they put those cute little mint leaves on the side, someone is being bombed in your name. While you argue with the 17-year-old at the movie theater who gave you a small popcorn when you paid for a large, someone is being obliterated in your name. While we sleep and eat and make love and shield our eyes on a sunny day, someone’s home, family, life and body are being blown into a thousand pieces in our names.
Read the full article.
52) 'We Don't Know... How Bad It Is': 31-Car Oil Train Derails Into Iowa Floodwaters
Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
Adding to the mountain of evidence that "oil trains are a disaster for our health, our safety, and our climate"—an argument environmentalists have been making for years—a 31-car freight train derailed in Iowa and started leaking crude oil into floodwaters on Friday morning, forcing evacuations of nearby homes and raising concerns about drinking water contamination.
Read the full article.
See also: Border Separations, North Korea Summit, NAFTA & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List June 10 - 17
2018 is halfway done...and the time is at hand for a roundup of the best songs of the year...so far!
