Day: October 28, 2013

Africa
Sudan

Sudan: massacres, ‘execution spree’ as El Fasher falls to RSF

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have fired on fleeing civilians, plundered hospitals, and carried out over a dozen “field executions” in El Fasher in the days since the paramilitary army took the city, local observers report. The Sudan Doctors Network issued a statement saying the RSF had carried out a “heinous massacre [of] unarmed civilians on ethnic grounds in what amounts to an act of ethnic cleansing.” Among those slain in targeted summary executions was reportedly Siham Hassan, a longtime activist and former member of parliament. She was known for running a community kitchen to feed the hungry in El Fasher, and as an outspoken advocate for women’s rights. (Map: PCL)

Palestine
Gaza

UN human rights chief: Gaza faces ‘darkest moment’

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that “the darkest moment of the Gaza conflict is unfolding in the north of the Strip.” Calling for urgent action by the international community, Türk stated: “Unimaginably, the situation is getting worse by the day. The Israeli Government’s…practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians. We are facing what could amount to…crimes against humanity.” Türk asserted that under the Geneva Convention, member states have “an obligation to act when a serious violation of international humanitarian law has been committed.” (Photo: badwanart0/Pixabay via Jurist)

Europe
Putin

Russia conducts simulated nuclear strike

Russia’s military conducted exercises with nuclear-capable missiles, shortly after the State Duma unanimously voted to revoke ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Russian Strategic Missile Forces command claimed the exercises were part of a regularly scheduled annual training drill held every October. But Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the exercises were to simulate a retaliatory nuclear strike to be carried out if Russia were attacked with nuclear firepower first. The Russian military widely publicized videos of the exercises across state media. According to the Kremlin, the exercises were overseen by President Vladimir Putin from a Moscow command center. (Photo: Kremlin)

Europe
Warsaw

Poland: mass uprising for reproductive rights

Warsaw and other Polish cities have seen mass protests since the country’s Constitutional Tribunal issued a ruling that will virtually end legal abortion. Tens of thousands of protesters—the majority of them women—have taken to the streets of cities and towns across the country, in defiance of pandemic restrictions harshly limiting the size of gatherings. Their anger has been directed against the ruling conservative Law & Justice Party (PiS) and the Catholic church, which are seen as being behind the decision. Protesters have disrupted services and sprayed graffiti on the walls of Warsaw churches. Clashes broke out in a number of cities between the demonstrators and far-right groups ostensibly organized to defend churches. Two women were also injured when a car drove through a group of protesters who were blocking a road in Warsaw.  (Photo: Notes from Poland)

North America
neo-Nazis

Podcast: looming fascism and the digital dystopia

In Episode 21 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants in anguish about how he has been forced by market and technological forces beyond his control into the same matrix of digital media that is fast eroding the very concept of truth and lubricating the consolidation of a fascist order in the United States and the world. In the aftermath of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, Weinberg documents Trump's complicity and virtual green-lighting of the attack, and calls out his rote condemnation as rank hypocrisy. From the wave of hate unleashed immediately upon his inauguration through the "false flag" theory he floated about the MAGA-bomber, Trump has played to anti-Semitism in barely veiled terms. The doublethink that now lets him get away with his blatantly disingenuous disavowal of the massacre is related to the post-truth environment fundamentally inherent to digital media. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo via Germ)

North America

Native Americans unite against ‘termination’ threat

At its annual convention in Denver, the National Congress of American Indians spoke strongly against the Trump administration’s decision to halt the restoration of ancestral lands to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts, invoking a return to the disastrous policies of the “termination era.” At issue are 321 acres where the Wampanoag sought to build a casino. The US Interior Department issued a decision in 2015 to take the lands into trust for the trib, and ground was broken on the casino the following year. But opponents challenged the land transfer in the courts. In April 2016, a federal judge found the Interior decision had bypassed the Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling in Carcieri v Salazar, concerning a land recovery effort by the Narragansett Indian Nation of Rhode Island. In the Carcieri case, the high court ruled that the federal government had no power to grant land in trust for tribes recognized after passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. In September of this year, the Interior decision was reversed by Tara Sweeney, the new assistant secretary for Indian Affairs. Sweeney determined that the Mashpee Wampanoag-—whose ancestors welcomed some of the first settlers to the Americas more than 300 years ago—could not have their homelands restored because they were only federally recognized in 2007. (Photo: Indianz.com)

The Andes

Colombia: mass graves exhumed in Cauca

At least 18 bodies found in three mass graves near the pueblo of Tacueyó in Colombia’s Cauca department are believed to be victims of a guerilla massacre.

GLOBAL WARMING AND THE END OF GROWTH

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, World War 4 Report

Two landmark scientific reports on climate change have just been published. File them under “H” for “horror.”

The first one is a digest of the most recent findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was formed in 1988 to advise the United Nations on all scientific information relevant to the implementation of the UN Climate Change Convention. The Panel periodically publishes a summary of the latest climate science for policymakers, which is subject to line-by-line approval by the 195 participating governments.

Continue ReadingGLOBAL WARMING AND THE END OF GROWTH