Maybe Rachel Maddow thinks Trump paying a porn star hush money for sex is an important political story but it’s just salacious gossip. It’s more documentation that he’s a sleazy dirtball but the political story they haven’t followed up on is the countless women who’ve accused him of sexual assault. Don’t we all love getting the dirt on this lowlife slimeball but we need to keep our eyes on what matters.
#ThrowTheBumOut
So if African countries are shitholes, that should mean the US can close down AFRICOM & pull out the thousands of US soldiers deployed there, the IMF & World Bank can shut down their predatory projects, & the thousands of US corporations operating there can shut down their operations.
January 12th is the 8th anniversary of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. They don’t know how many people were killed but estimates are as high as 315,000. The consequences of that earthquake were a UN troop occupation which brought a cholera epidemic; the invasion of over 10,000 NGOs milking humanitarian aid to enrich themselves, including the Clinton Foundation; the creation of a sweatshop economy orchestrated by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Millions were pledged in humanitarian aid but they didn’t clear the rubble, provide port-au-potties, or build housing. The US has militarily & diplomatically intervened in Haiti, including under Obama, not because it is an unmanageable shithole but because of the history of rebellion by the Haitian people.
Haitians are forced to immigrate & until this year had special immigration status to the US which Trump just annulled. This post from last year is about immigrants/refugees from Haiti & African countries now on the US southern border unable to enter, despite the special immigration status many of them have.
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According to local news, just across the US border in Reynosa, Mexico, immigrant shelters are increasingly serving African & Asian undocumented immigrants. That is true along the entire southern US border from California to Texas & has been since 2011.
Africans from several countries & Asians (mostly Bangladeshis & Indians) have chosen to travel to Brazil because their destination is the US. They each pay thousands of dollars to an organized network of human smugglers for false papers to cross them through 10 countries on foot, boat, & bus to the border of Mexico. That involves traveling in overcrowded fishing boats, trekking through mosquito-infested jungles, dodging armed bandits & immigration authorities, temporary encampments.
Because Mexico has no deportation agreements with some of the African countries of origin, Mexican authorities will issue Africans transit permits to get to the US border. Most, probably those with false papers, do not register for permits & must navigate the treacheries of the 1,450-mile trek on their own.
Mexico is hardly a model of enlightened immigration policy. It functions as the southern flank of US immigration & in 2015 deported more than 165,000 Central Americans. It also has one of the highest immigration detention rates in the world, including of children, & in 2015, detained 190,000 from around the world.
African refugees want to get to the US border because individuals from Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan are given US Temporary Protection Status against deportation for periods from 6 to 18 months, subject to renewal. It doesn’t mean US Homeland Security always honors that amnesty because it is also supposed to be provided to refugees from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, & Yemen & as of September 2016, it began detaining & then deporting Haitians.
There are now thousands of Africans encamped along the US-Mexico border because the US grants asylum to only 50 Africans a day. That’s why the US Border Patrol reported that it apprehended 6,126 African & Asian refugees trying to cross illegally in 2015. In the first seven months of 2016, nearly 8,000 Africans & Asians had registered with Mexican immigration in Chiapas. Just to process the registered would take US officials over six months when the International Organization for Migration estimated that 20,000 more African refugees were already en route from Brazil to the US.
The US is trying to involve Latin American countries in policing & containing refugee transit to the US & has deployed immigration agents to Mexican immigration facilities on the southern border to impede the traffic from Africa, Asia, & the Middle East.
This photo is African, Asian, Haitian & refugees from other countries waiting to register with Mexican immigration in Tapachula, Chiapas on the southern Mexican border.
Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.
(Photo by Encarni Pindado for the Guardian)
Assad propagandists Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, & Tim Anderson are up in arms that the Guardian will not allow them to take over the paper to rebut the exposé of their connections to Putin & Assad titled “How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine” by Olivia Solon. Maybe they can work out a reciprocal agreement between the Guardian & RT allowing the White Helmets to take over RT & rebut all the lies told there about them & the Syrian revolution, especially the head-chopper stuff.
Beeley is in Syria right now, embedded like always up the ass of the Syrian army & trying to deny the carnage of Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians in Idlib & eastern Ghouta. How does she explain this? This is 6-year-old Oyis Al-Taki at Dar Al Shifa Hospital. The little guy suffered massive head injuries & extensive damage to both eyes from Russian bombing in Ghouta. He was likely pulled out of rubble by a White Helmet rescue worker. A White Helmet rescue worker going about the business of the CIA? Get real.
(Photo from Dar Al-Shifa Hospital SDI)
The political affinities between the Kashmiri & Palestinian struggles are very powerful & speak to the possibilities of building broad-based solidarity. This article by Shahid Lone addresses that issue. Since Indian nationalists are making an issue of Rohingya refugees in India, including in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, that solidarity can be developed further in a powerful way. It isn’t just Islam that unites but Intifada & the struggles against occupation & genocide.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180107-kashmir-and-palestine-are-punchbags-for-their-occupiers/
Because of how history is used to justify war, occupation, & genocide, it’s necessary to get a hold on the essentials. It’s almost trite to say that but lies about their history is a whopping issue for Palestinians, Kashmiris, the Rohingya, & of course for many others fighting persecution–most particularly the struggle of indigenous peoples against colonizers.
This encyclopedic initiative called “Lost Kashmiri History” is by a collective of volunteers reclaiming Kashmiri history “in the struggle of memory against forgetting.” You’ll find lots of invaluable information to help understand the history of Indian colonialism in Kashmir, the military occupation, & the struggle for self-determination.
You can access the JKCCS report “Structures of Violence” on this link along with other reports they’ve published about mass graves excavated in Kashmir & military impunity for human rights crimes. The reports are essential to understand the monstrous character of the occupation & what Kashmiris are subjected to on a daily basis.
https://jkccs.wordpress.com/2017/05/04/structures-of-violence/
This is a very useful article about torture & state violence against Kashmiris by the Indian occupying army. It’s based on the report titled “Structures of Violence” published in September 2015 by the Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS).
https://thewire.in/212100/torture-testimonies-detained-youth-kashmir/
The murder of this small girl by a pedophile in Pakistan has deeply touched & angered many around the world. Violence against children & women are not just personal crimes but are political crimes rooted in the oppression of women. Every time a child is murdered so unspeakably, the world seems to shift on its axis. May this precious child Rest In Peace. But may we be haunted by her death not just until the perpetrator is arrested & prosecuted but until we have created a world free of such barbarism against children.
#JusticeForZainab