For several hours on Sunday, March 30th, hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists blockaded the Lisgar GO railway, located in so-called Mississauga, Ontario. The GO train system serves millions of commuters between different hubs throughout Canada. Activists were protesting to demand that the Canadian government stop supplying arms to the State of Israel. Pro-Palestinians protesters occupied Lisgar... Read Full Article
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Monday, May 31, 2021
State Continues Attacks Against Normalista Students in Chiapas
By Scott Campbell Today, May 31, in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, students from the Mactumactzá Rural Normal School took over at least 11 commercial trucks and set up a blockade to the protest the May 18 state attack against them as they were protesting against changes to the school admissions process. During that previous attack, 95... Read Full Article
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US Troops Die For World Domination, Not Freedom
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Vice President Kamala Harris spent the weekend under fire from Republicans, which of course means that Kamala Harris spent the weekend being criticized for the most silly, vapid reason you could possibly criticize Kamala Harris for.
Apparently the likely future president tweeted “Enjoy the long weekend,” a reference to the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, instead of gushing about fallen troops and sacrifice.
That’s it, that’s the whole entire story. That silly, irrelevant offense by one of the sleaziest people in the single most corrupt and murderous government on earth is the whole entire basis for histrionic headlines from conservative media outlets like this:
'DISGUSTING' DISRESPECT: Vice President Kamala Harris ignites outrage over 'misfire' Memorial Day tweet https://t.co/J8VMtU2OCM
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 29, 2021
Harris, the born politician, was quick to course correct.
“Throughout our history our service men and women have risked everything to defend our freedoms and our country,” the veep tweeted. “As we prepare to honor them on Memorial Day, we remember their service and their sacrifice.”
Which is of course complete bullshit. It has been generations since any member of the US military could be said to have served or sacrificed defending America or its freedoms, and that has been the case throughout almost the entirety of its history. If you are reading this it is statistically unlikely that you are of an age where any US military personnel died for any other reason than corporate profit and global domination, and if you are it’s almost certain you weren’t old enough to have had mature thoughts about it at the time.
Whenever you criticize the US war machine online within earshot of anyone who’s sufficiently propagandized, you will invariably be lectured about the second World War and how we’d all be speaking German or Japanese without the brave men who died for our freedom. This makes my point for me: the fact that apologists for US imperialism always need to reach all the way back through history to the cusp of living memory to find even one single example of the American military being used for purposes that weren’t evil proves that it most certainly is evil.
But this is one of the main reasons there are so very many movies and history documentaries made about World War Two: it’s an opportunity to portray US servicemen bravely fighting and dying for a noble cause without having to bend the truth beyond recognition. The other major reason is that focusing on the second World War allows members of the US empire to escape into a time when the Big Bad Guy on the world stage was someone else.
Happy Memorial Day pic.twitter.com/khOjpLZpET
—
️ᴀɴɪꜱʜᴇᴅ
From the end of World War Two to the fall of the USSR, the US military was used to smash the spread of communism and secure geostrategic interests toward the ultimate end of engineering the collapse of the Soviet Union. After this was accomplished in 1991, US foreign policy officially shifted to preserving a unipolar world order by preventing the rise of any other superpower which could rival its might.
A 1992 article by The New York Times titled “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls For Insuring No Rivals Develop“, reporting on a leaked document which describes a policy known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine after then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, reads as follows:
In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union.
A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.
This is all US troops have been fighting and dying for since the Berlin Wall came down. Not “freedom”, not “democracy”, and certainly not the American people. Just continual uncontested domination of this planet at all cost: domination of its resources, its trade routes, its seas, its air, and its humans, no matter how many lives need to risked and snuffed out in order to achieve it. The US has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century in the reckless pursuit of that goal.
And, as Smedley Butler spelled out 86 years ago in his still-relevant book War is a Racket, US military personnel have been dying for profit. Nothing gets the gears of industry turning like war, and nothing better creates chaotic wild west environments of shock and confusion during which more wealth and power can be grabbed. War profiteers pour immense resources into lobbying, think tanks and campaign donations to manipulate and bribe policy makers into making decisions which promote war and military expansionism, with astounding success. This is all entirely legal.
It’s important to spread awareness that this is all US troops have been dying for, because the fairy tale that they fight for freedom and for their countrymen is a major propaganda narrative used in military recruitment. While poverty plays a significant role in driving up enlistments as predatory recruiters target poor and middle class youth promising them a future in the nation with the worst income inequality in the industrialized world, the fact that the aggressively propagandized glorification of military “service” makes it a more esteemed career path than working at a restaurant or a grocery store means people are more likely to enlist.
Without all that propaganda deceiving people into believing that military work is something virtuous, military service would be the most shameful job anyone could possibly have; other stigmatized jobs like sex work would be regarded as far more noble. You’d be less reluctant to tell your extended family over Christmas that you’re a janitor at a seedy massage parlor than that you’ve enlisted in the US military, because instead of congratulating and praising you, your Uncle Murray would look at you and say, “So you’re gonna be killing kids for crude oil?”
And that’s exactly how it should be. Continuing to uphold the lie that US troops fight and die for a good cause is helping to ensure a steady supply of teenagers to feed into the gears of the imperial war machine. Stop feeding into the lie that the war machine is worth killing and being killed for. Not out of disrespect for the dead, but out of reverence for the living.
____________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
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Back to Work?: An Anti-Capitalist Analysis on Why Jobs Are Going Unfilled
On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with Robert Ovetz and Gifford Hartman, two long time anti-capitalist and class struggle researchers, who discuss the pandemic and how it has fundamentally changed the lives of everyday waged workers. Specifically, we tackle the rhetoric surrounding “unfilled jobs,” largely in the service industry, where... Read Full Article
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Sunday, May 30, 2021
The Screams Of A Dying Empire: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article:
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Ana Kasparian’s infamous Young Turks tantrum about Aaron Maté was the screams of a dying empire.
In this insane and libelous clip, @cenkuygur & @AnaKasparian say that I am "paid by the Russians" (Cenk); "seem to be working for" dictators (Ana); and deny chemical attacks on Syrian children (Ana). I don't care about their disdain for me, but I do care about being smeared. pic.twitter.com/PH229NB8SY
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 27, 2021
Some want to dismantle the imperial slaughter machine and create a harmonious world; others just want the imperial slaughter machine to give them healthcare. These are two entirely different positions. It’s not strange that these factions feud—it would be strange if they didn’t.
US progressives who smear The Grayzone and other anti-imperialist media never have any other equally anti-imperialist media that they promote and uphold as good. This is because they are imperialists.
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The only way to do actual foreign policy journalism in the western world is to make a conscious decision to tell the truth without being bullied into accepting any unproven US narrative, no matter how badly they smear you and no matter how hard it is to find work and make a living.
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US liberals are orders of magnitude more outraged about a small group of wingnuts making people nervous in the Capitol building for a few hours than they are about the fact that their government is constantly murdering people around the world.
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 30, 2021
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The blame for public distrust in government and media institutions rests solely on those government and media institutions.
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Most westerners know that Bush and his allies destroyed Iraq, while hardly any westerners know Obama and his allies destroyed Syria. That right there tells you why we haven’t seen any full-scale US ground invasions lately. America’s solution to the PR crisis caused by the horrific consequences of its military interventionism has been to switch to preferencing sanctions, blockades, and proxy wars where violence is outsourced to other powers so the US doesn’t take the blame.
Syria is a perfect example of this new model of imperialist slaughter. The US power alliance absolutely demolished that country by arming jihadist proxy forces and then sanctioning the hell out of it to keep it from rebuilding, all with the goal of eventually toppling Damascus, but the general public is completely unaware of this.
And make no mistake, good PR is absolutely essential to the operation of the empire. They don’t pour that much energy into manufacturing consent because it’s fun, they do it because they have to. You can’t rule a managed democracy without good perception management.
The need to avoid bad PR fallouts is why Bush-era “Hulk smash” ground invasions are largely a thing of the past. It’s also why the US empire now has a secretary of state who vocally supports the new model of subtler imperialist butchery:
Nominee to lead State Department Tony Blinken recently explained that Biden's pledge to "end the forever wars" means the US will reduce large-scale deployments while expanding secret wars waged by special forces and proxies.
Watch the full exposé here: https://t.co/1lY62RBl9X https://t.co/QHccVwnqSl pic.twitter.com/bW8DQc4bbk
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) November 23, 2020
Trump supporters act like it’s something special that their guy “started no new wars”, but the fact that he didn’t has nothing to do with Trump himself; it’s just the new model of imperialist butchery to favor sanctions and proxy conflicts instead, which Trump absolutely did.
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Netanyahu’s right-wing thuggishness causing a PR nightmare for Israel is a good example of why the US-centralized power alliance increasingly prefers liberal manipulators to head many of its “democracies”. An Israeli Obama wouldn’t have lost control of the narrative like that.
There’s just not enough public support for wingnuts for them to operate as effective stewards of empire in the western world anymore. That’s why so many oligarchs and imperialists disliked Trump; not because they disagreed with him on any important policies (they didn’t), but because he sucked at perception management.
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This Turkish-made weapon "hunted down a human target last year” in Libya and "attacked them without being specifically ordered to". The empire collapses nations like Libya and then tests out freaky new weapons on the inhabitants in the chaotic wild west environment they created. https://t.co/cFBTUUiqQT
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 29, 2021
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The US empire only recently started ramping up aggressions against China because while China’s economy is doing well, its military nowhere near rivals the empire’s, and that’s the real currency. If your neighbor has $100 and you have $100 plus a gun, then you actually have $200.
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If you’re having trouble interpreting a particular Bible verse, it’s because the correct interpretation is “This is an ancient document authored by confused men whose words have no relevance to my own experience.”
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History is one long string of horrific atrocities with the dominant religious institutions of the time either doing nothing or actively participating.
____________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
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Israel Out of Palestine – Resist the U.S. and the Israeli Settler State
Statement from Solidarity & Defense in support of the struggle in Palestine. We are seeing a new dynamic emerge amongst the Palestinian people, both in Palestine as well as its diaspora. Youth and women once again are taking the lead and developing new forms of struggle, of organization, of solidarity and of the political-social ideas... Read Full Article
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Saturday, May 29, 2021
Indigenous Women Begin Hunger Strike Demanding Freedom for Political Prisoners in Oaxaca
The following piece by Erika Lozano, published by Desinformémonos and translated by Scott Campbell, discusses the hunger strike started by women from Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca, demanding the release of seven political prisoners from the community. Mazatec women encamped in front of the Federal Judiciary Council in Mexico City to demand the release of... Read Full Article
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Communities in Guerrero Set Up Road Blockades, Refuse to Allow Elections in their Territories
On May 28, 2021, Indigenous communities belonging to the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata, and to the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Community Police-Founding Pueblos, set up road blockades in the Montaña Baja region of Guerrero, a southern state in so-called Mexico, announcing they will prohibit the June 6 mid-term elections from taking place in... Read Full Article
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Israel Narrative Management Is Getting Incredibly Desperate And Brazen
Listen to a reading of this article:
The National Director Emeritus for the Anti-Defamation League has announced on Twitter that he is cancelling his subscription to The New York Times, claiming that a front-page story featuring the photos of children killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza this month constitutes “blood libel” against Jews.
“I am cancelling my subscription to NYTimes,” tweeted Abraham Foxman. “I grew up in America on the NYT- I delivered the NYT to my classmates- I learned civics- democracy and all the news ‘fit to print’ for 65 years but no more. Today’s blood libel of Israel and the Jewish people on the front page is enough.”
Foxman’s statement drew criticism from all corners, including from loyal establishment pundits like Jonathan Chait, for his ridiculous assertion that merely humanizing Palestinian children killed by Israel is the same as promoting the ancient antisemitic canard known as blood libel.
To be clear, what has incensed the former leader of the @ADL is that the @nytimes, after decades of trivializing Palestinian death, has humanized our children by showing their faces & printing their names. #Gaza https://t.co/TCNAj8GY1J pic.twitter.com/Vehj9wTjZL
— Huwaida Arraf (@huwaidaarraf) May 28, 2021
Supporters of Israeli apartheid and mass murder are losing control of the narrative, which has led to redoubled perception management efforts ranging from the cringey to the iron-fisted. In the former category we’re seeing them pen entire articles attacking Seth Rogen for tweeting a fart emoji at virulent Israel apologist Eve Barlow and claiming that putting “fart” in Barlow’s name is the same as a literal pogrom. In the latter category they’re blowing up entire press offices and arresting Palestinian journalists. This is narrative management at its least subtle.
From a new statement titled “Israel now holding 13 Palestinian journalists” by Reporters Without Borders:
“Two Palestinian journalists were arrested by Israeli security forces in Jerusalem yesterday and were placed in administrative detention today, bringing the total now held administratively by the Israelis to 13. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns Israel’s misuse of administrative detention to hound Palestinian reporters.”
“Administrative detention” is one of the many apartheid abuses which Israel has come under criticism for employing, as Israel-based +972 Magazine explained last year:
According to human rights group B’Tselem, as of September 2020, Israel is holding 376 Palestinians, including two minors, in administrative detention. Israel uses administrative detention to indefinitely detain Palestinians (and on extremely rare occasions Jewish extremists) without charge or trial. Administrative detention orders, handed down by the IDF commander in charge of the occupied West Bank, are reviewed every six months, but the detainees are not told what crimes they are being accused of, nor shown the evidence against them.
According to lawyers who defend Palestinian detainees, administrative detentions are almost always based on “confidential material” handed over ex parte to the courts by the Shin Bet, to which the detainees themselves and their lawyers have no access. As a result, it is virtually impossible to defend oneself against an administrative detention order.
Israeli forces just arrested two Palestinian journalists from Sheikh Jarrah:
Wahbi Makiya and Zeina Al-Halawanipic.twitter.com/j0Tkgptcaa
— لينة (@LinahAlsaafin) May 27, 2021
Before the Gaza ceasefire last week Israel managed to deliberately blow up over 20 offices for Palestinian media outlets, as well as the tower hosting the international outlets AP and Al Jazeera.
“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” AP president and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement after the building was destroyed.
Which, of course, is the whole idea: for the world to know less about what happens in Gaza. The Israeli government has a decades-long history of threatening and targeting journalists in order to exert control over the public narrative about what happens under its rule, and as that narrative slips from its grip we are seeing this pattern ramp up with greater and greater aggression.
“Rather than reduce the cruelty, the Israeli government keeps trying to reduce accurate news coverage,” author and activist Norman Solomon writes. “The approach is a mix of deception and brutality. Blow up the cameras so the world won’t see as many pictures of the atrocities.”
The Israeli authorities will keep the journalists arrested in Sheikh Jarrah last night in jail for 5 more days before trial.
This is a clear message: attempt to document & expose Israel’s colonial violence, you will be punished with incarceration & silencing. #SaveSheikhJarrah
— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) May 28, 2021
As Alan MacLeod wrote in Mintpress News, the Overton window has shifted on Palestine. During 2014’s far more deadly Israeli attack on Gaza we saw a low-level local Democratic official sparking outrage and scandal by merely posting “Palestine <3” on Facebook, now you have words like “apartheid” being routinely used by mainstream media outlets and national US political figures to describe Israeli abuses of the Palestinian people.
People are simply becoming too conscious of the Palestine issue to tolerate its existence as a taboo subject anymore, even in the most mainstream circles of discussion. The old tactics of silencing and marginalizing Palestinian rights advocates simply do not work anymore, and politicians and pundits can no longer get away with painting themselves as progressive-minded humanists without acknowledging the brutal and unjust nature of Israeli occupation.
Palestine is simply not a third rail anymore, and it’s been this way for a while now. By the time I started doing commentary in late 2016 people were still saying you’ll be smeared as an antisemite and dragged through the mud if you criticize Israel, but my experience this entire time has been that I get a lot more vitriol and attacks coming my way by criticizing US imperialist agendas toward nations like Russia, China, Syria and Venezuela than by criticizing the Israeli government. There’s pushback to be sure, but it’s not nearly as vituperative as what I’m used to.
The Israel Narrative Is Crumbling Because Of Phone Cameras And The Internet
There are only so many viral videos of unconscionable acts that can be dismissed with "Actually this is way more complicated than it looks."https://t.co/RYWZVyMdpW
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 11, 2021
This last attack on Gaza was just the ignition of a powder keg in shifting public sentiment that had been building for several years, and it hasn’t been due to any top-down effort at perception steering by the establishment narrative managers, but by ordinary people sharing ideas and information and moving the Overton window of acceptable debate through sheer force of will.
The fact that this can be done makes one wonder in what other ways we can collectively move the narrative in a way that benefits ordinary people instead of the oligarchic empire of the US and its allies. This is an exciting time to be alive.
_____________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/05/29/israel-narrative-management-is-getting-incredibly-desperate-and-brazen/
Statues and Reclaiming Space-Time: A Focus on One Aspect of the Revolt in Richmond
A look at the George Floyd rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, and how widespread attack of the vestiges of the Confederacy and white supremacy gave way to the creation of communal forms of life. Originally posted here. Do statues actually matter? This is a question that left-wing, anarchist, abolitionist, and other rebellious southerners have grappled with... Read Full Article
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Friday, May 28, 2021
Shoddy, Unaccountable, Camera-Seeking Clout Chasers Put All of Us at Risk
Report from Fredrick, MD, Washington DC and Baltimore. Illegally Occupied Piscataway Land in so-called Frederick, MD We are a local affinity group based out of Frederick, Maryland. Following a long history of reckless and unaccountable organizing from the people and groups referenced below, we are now left with little recourse other than to write this... Read Full Article
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CIPOG-EZ Denounces Another Armed Attack Against Their Communities in Guerrero
The Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata denounces yet another armed attack against their communities in Guerrero To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation To the National Indigenous Congress To the Indigenous Governing Council To the National and International Sixth To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion To the National Network Against Repression To the... Read Full Article
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Australia Is A Giant US Military Base With Kangaroos: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
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Everyone around the world should criticize the US empire constantly and without apology. Nobody anywhere ever needs to justify or defend criticizing the most powerful, destructive and influential government on earth. It’s always right to criticize America, in any way you choose.
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Consider the possibility that the most powerful government on earth got that way largely by being willing to do whatever it takes to claw its way to the top, no matter how many people it’s needed to kill and oppress to get there and remain there.
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The US empire is the single most depraved and murderous power structure on earth. The Democratic and Republican parties are two Nazis arguing over which route to take to bring their captives to the concentration camp.
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Growing up in crushing poverty is inherently traumatic. Not everyone who’s been traumatized goes on to hurt people, but everyone who hurts people has been traumatized. Supporting a status quo which includes an impoverished underclass is supporting widespread crime and violence.
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Oh my fucking god could Australia be any more of a pathetic simpering basement gimp for Washington?? Our politics, our media, everything about this fucking place is just grease for the US war machine. We're not a country, we're a giant military base with kangaroos. https://t.co/cySPxXKac2
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 26, 2021
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If you believe anti-Zionism is anti-semitism, then you’re naturally going to see an uptick in “anti-semitism” every time Zionism rips children’s bodies apart with explosives.
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What is being done to Palestinians would be horrific and inexcusable regardless of the ethnicity or religion of their persecutors. Opposing apartheid injustice and abuse has nothing to do with opposing anyone’s religion, and attempts to claim it does are made in bad faith.
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If I wanted to sabotage the pro-Palestine movement, I would make myself a part of the conversation by criticizing Israeli abuses and supporting Palestinian rights, then I’d start going “This rise in anti-semitism sure is concerning though, can we pause and focus on this please?”
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Zionists will spend 100 times more energy attacking and smearing an influential Jewish defender of Palestinian rights than opposing a brazen Jew-hating white supremacist. Supporters of Israeli apartheid don’t care about fighting anti-semitism, they care about narrative control.
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The rapist was forced to murder his rape victim because she tried to fight him off. The rapist has a right to defend himself. Rape has a right to exist. This is actually a very complex issue, too complicated for you to understand.
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Everyone knows the best way to avoid killing civilians is to fire military explosives directly at the places where you know civilians live. https://t.co/TpnPoF164a
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 27, 2021
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If Moscow hadn’t intervened in Crimea in 2014 and Syria in 2015, the US wouldn’t have begun training us all to hate Russia in 2016.
If Russia would’ve just let the US do its thing with the Ukraine coup and the proxy war to topple Damascus, there would not have been a Russia panic, because the US war machine would not have felt an argent need to manufacture one. But then Russia would’ve eventually found itself surrounded by a sea of hostile empire and forced to relinquish its sovereignty.
Same goes for China asserting its own power regionally and economically. At some point Russia and China both realized that if they don’t start taking bold action to prevent the US empire from absorbing the entire world, they’re going to slowly see their allies and trading partners disappear until they’ve got no choice but to join. That’s all we’re seeing with all this hysteria.
If you don’t interfere in the empire’s agendas of conquest and absorption, it won’t be in a hurry to get rid of you; it will just absorb you when it’s got time and nothing else to devour. Interfere with its war machine, though, and you’re in for it.
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Steal from The New York Times. It’s not legitimate for the “paper of record” whose narratives shape your world to hide its stories from you behind a paywall. Use apps, use private browsers, use archive.is; any method used to access NYT and similar outlets without paying them is perfectly legitimate. That information is your right; you shouldn’t have to pay a plutocratic propaganda institution just to find out what it’s telling people.
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One of the ugliest lasting effects of Russiagate has been the way it's now considered acceptable in mainstream circles to just randomly accuse journalists of being secret agents conducting psyops for foreign governments. The Age of Maddow melted these people's brains. https://t.co/32C4V6d8h9
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 27, 2021
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The US-centralized oligarchic empire has no ideology and no values beyond the acquisition of more power. If Islamic fundamentalism serves them in one part of the world they’ll support that there, while simultaneously backing woke progressivism overseas if that serves them in that part of the world.
Imperialists often favor corporate liberals over conservatives in the western world because they now see liberals as better custodians of the empire’s western branches. There’s dwindling support for Bible thumpers and racists in our society, so the empire seeks better drivers.
And you may be sure that the opposite would have been the case if our society hadn’t become too conscious to accommodate the right’s ugliest aspects at mass scale. If racism had retained widespread popular support, all oligarchic institutions would’ve backed Trump to the hilt. All they care about is power and continuing their reign.
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If you think it was a big red pill to realize that the media’s narratives about the world are nothing like real life, wait til you realize that the same is true of your own narratives about your own life.
_____________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/05/28/australia-is-a-giant-us-military-base-with-kangaroos-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
This Is America #140: Kentucky Mobile Home Park Resists Eviction; Looking Forward Post-Rebellion
Welcome, to This Is America, May 28th, 2021. On today’s episode, first we speak with a resident of the North Fork mobile home park in Kentucky, about how residents there have been fighting the mass eviction of a trailer park to make way for a strip mall, a move that will displace dozens of families and... Read Full Article
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Thursday, May 27, 2021
How To Sabotage The Pro-Palestine Movement
The US-centralized power alliance is losing control of the Palestine narrative as awareness continues to spread of the injustice of Israeli apartheid, and it’s one of the most interesting things happening in the narrative matrix today.
It’s very encouraging to see an entirely grassroots activist campaign get this far off the ground, where ordinary people online and in demonstrations around the world overpower an official establishment narrative by sheer numbers and force of will until the imperial media are forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of their position. Rather than waiting for the corporate media to begin covering the plight of the Palestinians in a just manner, the people simply seized control of the narrative by speaking the truth with their own voices and becoming the dominant perspective on the matter, forcing everyone else to play catch-up.
And now we see Ireland passing a parliamentary motion condemning the “de facto annexation” of Palestinian land. After the oligarchic empire expended all that effort sabotaging Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign in the UK to keep Palestinian rights from going mainstream in the western world, Israel’s own actions have sent them mainstream anyway.
This loss of narrative control is a problem for Israel, whose nature is premised upon keeping Palestinians from attaining equality which would effectively end the Jewish ethnostate. This in turn is a problem for the empire, who needs to keep the Middle East fractured, imbalanced, and as far under its control as possible so long as human civilization is dependent on fossil fuels; if it hadn’t done that the region could have seen the rise of its own global superpower decades ago, or fallen into alignment with some other power not aligned with Washington and London. The nuclear-armed military force of Israel has consistently played a key role in bashing Middle Eastern affairs into alignment with imperial interests; as Joe Biden once said, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
The empire spends so much energy manufacturing consent for its agendas because it absolutely requires that consent. If it becomes a focal point of mainstream attention that your government is doing something that is clearly evil and firmly against the will of the people, the public will rapidly begin losing its trust in the political and media institutions that are needed to manipulate them into compliance in this managed democracy model of society we live in.
Without trust in those institutions, it’s impossible to propagandize the public, and if they can’t propagandize the public, the rulers of the oligarchic empire cannot rule. As Noam Chomsky put it, “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
So the managers of empire are going to have to regain control of the narrative somehow and get the public consenting to the US-centralized empire’s arm of operation in Israel again. How are they planning on doing this? Well, I know how I would do it if I were them.
I’ll start with what I would not do. If I were an imperial narrative manager trying to regain control of the Israel narrative, I definitely would not be telling all the pro-Palestine protesters to shut up and obey and get back into line. I definitely would not want the oligarchic media churning out articles and cable news segments screaming in unison that everyone must support Israel even when it kills scores of children in Gaza. That would only make things worse.
The absolute worst thing you can do to shut down a populist protest movement is push back against it. Unless you’re willing to alienate all your allies and lose the narrative war on the world stage by mowing down protesters with machine guns and throwing online dissidents into prison, opposing them will only create more resistance from them and give the protest movements more energy.
The Lesson Of The BLM Protests
Americans shook the earth with mass protests demanding an end to the police state and the entire liberal establishment just kept saying “I hear you, I agree with you” while doing absolutely nothing to reduce police brutalityhttps://t.co/1vyhyvJb5h
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) February 3, 2021
That’s why the establishment didn’t meet the Black Lives Matter protesters with opposition, but with “We hear you, we support you.” If they’d said “Silence you filthy riff raff and obey the police!” as many of them doubtless wanted to, it would have only showed people that the system is indeed unjust and their protests must continue with greater force. Instead they kept assuring protesters that they were heard and that their country’s political, media and corporate institutions fully support them, the whole time intending to do nothing whatsoever, and the protests eventually died off with the imperial police state having been left fully intact.
This validate-and-divert tactic is what the leaders of American corporate liberalism specialize in. It’s also the tactic caregivers are taught to employ in dementia care facilities. If you’ve got an agitated resident demanding to leave such a facility, the worst thing you can do is tell them no, because it will trigger a catastrophic response. What you do instead is validate their demand, assure them you’ll help them, then distract them with conversation until they forget what they were demanding a few minutes earlier.
If I were an imperial narrative manager trying to help regain control of the Israel narrative, I would employ such validate-and-divert tactics. I would not try to dismiss people’s concerns about the oppression and murder of Palestinians, I would validate those concerns. I would get on their side. I would insert myself into the conversation by condemning Israeli apartheid abuses and calling for Palestinian freedom. And then, once I was a part of the conversation, I would begin working to make the conversation about anti-semitism instead.
It wouldn’t take much. Just a step back from my Palestine advocacy to say “Oh, hang on, this rise in anti-semitism is very concerning, can we pause and fix this please?” And just like that I’ve knocked a lot of the momentum off of the movement and taken the conversation in a very different direction that will never reach any kind of resolution.
Over 30 children killed. Mothers dead. Hundreds injured. We are on the brink of a full-scale war. Sanctions on South Africa helped free its Black people – it’s time for sanctions on Israel to free Palestinians. Join the call. #GazaUnderAttack https://t.co/N72e0xLvX5
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) May 15, 2021
I have reflected & wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing “genocide”. It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful & is being used to justify antisemitism here & abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) May 25, 2021
Actor Mark Ruffalo did a lot more to help restore the pro-Israel narrative by first opposing Israeli apartheid and then apologizing and saying his statements were being “used to justify antisemitism” than he ever could have done by just siding with Israel from the beginning. He gained a sympathetic ear from those who support Palestinian rights and then piped that drivel right into their brains, while giving virulent Zionists a narrative weapon to uphold with an “It’s good to admit when you’re wrong! I hope everyone can learn how wrong such statements are!”
I am not Jewish, so I have no perspective on the claim that Israel supporters use claims of anti-semitism in bad faith whenever there’s a need to regain control of the narrative. But there are plenty of Jewish people who do say so, including journalist Max Blumenthal who has a good article out on the way imperial spinmeisters have been falsely framing altercations at Palestinian rights demonstrations as anti-semitic hate crimes, as well as Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, American political scientist Norman Finkelstein, and the Anti-Defamation League’s own records of supposed “anti-semitic” incidents during demonstrations.
Im looking through this ADL tracker (the main source of the claim that “antisemitic incidents” have been on the rise, conveniently since Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza), and most of them are just stuff like this lol pic.twitter.com/uSKZ1DyV5k
— Radio Free Amanda 余美娜 (@catcontentonly) May 26, 2021
This is not to suggest that anti-semitism isn’t real or doesn’t occur, just that attempts to spin it as something that has suddenly become a surging epidemic which needs to be made the new area of focus are made in bad faith. This narrative is being uncritically shoved through with increasing urgency, and if you say that attempts to turn the pro-Palestinian conversation into a stop anti-semitism conversation are cynical and manipulative you can find yourself targeted by some of the most influential people in the world.
Palestinian-American comedian and activist Amer Zahr is an ordinary citizen with just 14 thousand followers on Twitter, yet when he tweeted a short video telling Palestinian rights activists to stop letting bad faith actors derail the conversation into a bottomless pit of apologies and denunciations that will never be enough, he was angrily quote-tweeted by the likes of Senator Ted Cruz and CNN’s Jake Tapper, and two Fox News smear pieces were written about him.
This was from Saturday, after numerous acts of Jews being physically assaulted in the U.S.: https://t.co/Fj8FEiZgYq
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 25, 2021
So this is a bit of a touchy area for the imperial spin machine.
You don’t kill a protest movement with force and opposition, you kill it by sapping its energy using bad faith diversions, tone policing and concern trolling while pretending to support justice. I leave it to Palestinian rights activists to discern as individuals when that is happening on a case-by-case basis, but if the energy’s going to get sucked out of the movement, that’s probably the exit it will slip out through.
______________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
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Featured image via Tony Felgueiras, Creative Commons 2.0
source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/05/27/how-to-sabotage-the-pro-palestine-movement/
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Indigenous Communities Denounce False Consultations in the Istmo de Tehuantepec, Oaxaca
Indigenous communities in the Istmo de Tehuantepec in Oaxaca denounce the false consultations being orchestrated by the three levels of government seeking to impose industrial parks in their communities as part of the Interoceanic Corridor Megaproject To the Indigenous Peoples of the Istmo de Tehuantepec, Mexico, and the World To the Official, Free, and Other... Read Full Article
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North Carolina Anti-Prison Riot Squad Sent in After Successful Hunger Strike
The following report was submitted to a statewide prison newsletter, from an organizer at Bertie CI, in eastern North Carolina. His name is kept anonymous because participants have faced continued retaliation. Peace to all the comrades out there standing against oppression. After being forced to live in unclean conditions in Bertie’s Restrictive Housing Unit, myself... Read Full Article
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Resistance to Land Dispossession and Extractivism Continues in Cuatro Venados, Oaxaca
Two years since an eviction attempt, the communities of El Rebollero, Los Arquitos, and Rio Minas, in the municipality of Cuatro Venados, Oaxaca, continue their resistance against land dispossession and extractive industries To the Indigenous Governing Council To the National Indigenous Congress To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation To the Free and Alternative Media... Read Full Article
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The US Empire Is A Self-Reinforcing Trauma Factory
American corporate media are having a field day with a rise in violent crime across the country, seizing on the opportunity to declare that it proves last year’s calls to defund police have been thoroughly invalidated. They’ve been making these claims despite the absence of any evidence that these two things are connected, and despite the fact that no actual police departments have been meaningfully defunded at all.
“Defund the police encounters resistance as violent crime spikes” blares a new headline from CNN, which then admits that “One year since a nationwide movement sparked calls for slashing police funding in favor of other nontraditional forms of public safety, it’s not clear whether any city achieved anything resembling what protesters demanded: massively defunded or abolished police departments.”
“There has not been a universal defund movement across major cities,” executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association Laura Cooper says later in the article. “I think there was a little bit of retooling of the department budgets, but I can’t say that defund has actually played out.”
The complete and total absence of any evidentiary basis for the claim that defunding police departments caused a spike in violent crime hasn’t stopped Murdoch outlets Fox News and Sky News from airing segment after segment after segment after segment advancing that exact claim, while The New York Times tells us in an article titled “A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime” that “The surge is prompting cities whose leaders embraced the values of the movement last year to reassess how far they are willing to go to reimagine public safety and divert money away from the police and toward social services.”
Right guys. Violent crime can only be the result of this imaginary alternate reality in which there are fewer worthless police officers patrolling American streets. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that this is a nation with the worst income inequality in the developed world, where people are being squeezed harder than ever in a pandemic which the government did virtually nothing to help them through financially.
Violent crime has a direct causal relationship with childhood trauma; not everyone with childhood trauma is a violent criminal, but violent criminals are overwhelmingly victims of childhood trauma. Growing up in crushing poverty is inherently traumatizing; spending your formative years saturating in an environment of lack, stress, desperation and difficulty coping causes deep psychological scarring that takes a lot of inner work to heal, inner work that most people in poverty simply don’t have the luxury of time and energy for.
The US status quo is inherently traumatizing, because a status quo which maintains a permanent underclass working for slave wages 100 percent guarantees generation after generation of highly traumatized people. This in turn guarantees more violent crime, which in turn has led to the largest prison population on the planet. Prison is itself an inherently traumatizing place to be. They traumatize each new generation, guaranteeing more and more cops and more and more prisons year after year.
Hurt people hurt people, and the US status quo is like a factory conveyor belt churning out generation after generation of hurt people. Those who support the status quo politics of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party are choosing to support this abusive dynamic.
Many stanning for billionaires on here seem unaware that labor—the only commodity they possess—is being continuously devalued. "Just buy stocks!" they cry.
With what, bro? Your wages are vanishing. In real terms, the value of your hour is
while the prices you pay are
. https://t.co/lbFalwgLeh pic.twitter.com/GpYZ4McKyI
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 19, 2021
And that’s just domestic policy. Every aspect of the US-centralized empire is inherently traumatizing, and it gets a lot worse outside US borders. If growing up poor in America is traumatizing, think how it must be for children who are deliberately starved by US sanctions in Venezuela or US-backed blockades in Yemen. Think how it must be for the children in Gaza as US-sponsored explosives kill their family members. Think how it must be for survivors of America’s “war on terror” in the Middle East and Africa.
The trauma inflicted by the “war on terror” is a self-reinforcing feedback loop which creates more extremism which in turn is used to justify more bombings and more military expansionism in those regions. Suicide bombings have been unequivocally shown to be almost entirely the result of western interventionism; they were simply a non-issue in Iraq and Afghanistan prior to US invasions there for example. The “war on terror” is not only terrorism itself, it is an established fact that it actually creates more of the type of terrorism it purports to eliminate.
And why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t destroying and destabilizing entire nations cause people to want to fight back against you? It is self-evident that it would, just using your own empathy and understanding of human nature. As Jonathan Marshall wrote for Consortium News in 2017:
The most authoritative new study of the sources of terrorism and insurgency on the continent, Journey to Extremism in Africa (September 2017), finds that what triggers many individuals to join violent groups are incidents of government-sponsored violence, such as “killing of a family member or friend” or “arrest of a family member or friend.”
“These findings throw into stark relief the question of how counter-terrorism and wider security functions of governments in at-risk environments conduct themselves with regard to human rights and due process,” concludes the report, based on interviews with more than 500 former members of militant organizations.
“State security-actor conduct is revealed as a prominent accelerator of recruitment, rather than the reverse. . . These findings suggest that a dramatic reappraisal of state security-focused interventions is urgently required.”
Numerous other experts have drawn similar conclusions from conflict zones in the Middle East and Asia. In 2008, a RAND Corporation report on Lessons for Countering al-Qa’ida warned the U.S. military to “resist being drawn into combat operations in Muslim societies, since its presence is likely to increase terrorist recruitment. . . . Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended: It is often overused, alienates the local population by its heavy-handed nature, and provides a window of opportunity for terrorist-group recruitment.”
Similarly, the Stimson Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy, composed of former senior officials of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department, warned in 2014 that U.S. strikes had strengthened radical Islamic groups in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
Tens Of Millions Of People Displaced By The ‘War On Terror’, The Greatest Scam Ever Invented
A new report has found that at least 37 million people (a conservative estimate) have been displaced as a result of America's so-called “war on terror” since 9/11https://t.co/MsFul5zf7L
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) September 9, 2020
The status quo of the US empire guarantees that there will always be new offenders to imprison, new extremists to bomb, new justifications for blockades, sanctions and apartheid oppression. Every aspect of it creates traumatized people, whose resultant behavior is then cited to justify the existence of the power structure which caused their trauma in the first place.
And then Hollywood goes and makes movies about the heroic cops arresting the violent criminals, about the brave soldiers killing the evil terrorists, while in real life the criminals and terrorists only exist because of the trauma inflicted upon them by the same force that pays the cops and soldiers, and Hollywood is a US propaganda operation.
And those who support all this, those who support Democrats and Republicans and believe what the mainstream news media tell them, are called “moderates”. Supporters of a self-reinforcing trauma generation machine, with all its wars, starvation sanctions, nuclear brinkmanship, economic oppression, corporate exploitation, and ecocide for profit, are “moderates”, looking down their noses at traumatized populations and hoping the armed goon squads arrive in time to put them away or put them down.
The US empire is evil. The status quo is evil. We must end these evil things before they end us.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/05/26/the-us-empire-is-a-self-reinforcing-trauma-factory/
This Week in Fascism #110: From Fascist Creep to Run
Welcome fellow antifascists! We have an action packed column for you this week! From analysis and reports on violent threats from the far-Right, information on continued collusion between fascist forces and the GOP, an antifascist action roundup, updates on antifascist prisoners, brand spanking new doxxes, and so much more! There’s a lot to cover, so... Read Full Article
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Brutal State Violence Against Students in Chiapas Inspires Widespread Protests
by Scott Campbell On Tuesday, May 18th, around 120 students from the Mactumactzá Rural Normal School blockaded the Chiapa de Corzo-San Cristóbal highway in Chiapas, Mexico. The students were protesting changes to the admissions process to the school that would disadvantage working class, rural and Indigenous students. Seen as an attempt to change the makeup... Read Full Article
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Tuesday, May 25, 2021
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