by Kristy Siegfried, IRIN

Note: This story ran on the eve of Election Day, on IRIN news service. —CounterVortex

Immigration has dominated the US presidential campaign like never before. Donald Trump’s oft-repeated promise that, if elected, he will build a “big, beautiful” wall at the US-Mexico border helped secure him the Republican nomination, and his rhetoric about illegal immigration appears to have struck a chord with many working-class Americans.

But how many of his election promises on immigration are implementable? And what threat does a Trump presidency pose to migrant and refugee rights in the US and beyond?

by Bill Weinberg, The Villager

What really fills me with despair is that amid it all—the rise of an open fascist at the forefront of the Republican party, the relentless reign of deadly police terror, the impending collapse of the global biosphere—even the most quotidian aspects of our lives are being colonized by sinister corporate bureaucracies that eat up our time and energy… making it impossible for us to fight back against all that other stuff.

As heretical as it is, I have to confess that I am nostalgic not only for the pre-digital world, but also for the world before the Ma Bell break-up. I know this was supposedly a blow to the corporate leviathan, but service interruptions in the monopolistic era were virtually unheard-of. Today they are more or less constant.

Is this due the chaos of competing companies and technologies, as opposed to the efficiency of a centralized monolith? Or is it merely a function of digitization, and the decision to let the old copper wires deteriorate—those wires on which (as we shall see) I unwillingly depend?

In any event, Verizon (like its competitors) has perfect impunity to make my life hell—and demand that I pay them to do so.

Activists Revive Heroic WWII-era Practice of Smuggling to Safety

by Phil Wilomt, Waging Nonviolence

About 100 Danes, young and old, stood outside Copenhagen City Court in the chilly seaside winds last week to show their solidarity with four activists alleged to have illegally assisted refugees in their trek across the waters from Denmark to Sweden.

While only two of the accused are Danish citizens, all are members of MedMenneskeSmuglerne, or “Those who smuggle thy neighbor”—an outgrowth of the more broad-based initiative Welcome to Denmark, which welcomes migrants and refugees into the country.

Last year, over one million migrants and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and other unstable nations endured the risks of exodus to Denmark and other parts of Europe. Many died during the journey or ended up in refugee camps for prolonged periods. This migration wave correlates directly to the growing xenophobia and shift to the right in many European countries, including Denmark.

“Pretty much all leftist organizations in Europe neglected to consider the refugee influx on their agendas,” said Mimoza Murati, one of the non-Danish activists facing criminal charges that day. “We should have been prepared because we know the political landscape.”

A Legal Environmental Justice Perspective

by Dayna Jones, Jurist

The largest multi-tribal gathering of indigenous peoples in North America in over a century is happening now at the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota. Leading the cause is the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. The Standing Rock Sioux and their allies are standing against construction of the “black snake” Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), slated to run under the Missouri River and through their historically sacred tribal sites. The tribe states it had not been properly consulted prior to construction of the DAPL, a requirement legally mandated by Executive Order 13175 (PDF). The order stipulates that: “[e]ach agency shall have an accountable process to ensure meaningful and timely input by tribal officials in the development of regulatory policies that have tribal implications.”

The Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s assertion that the Army Corps of Engineers, an executive agency charged with overseeing and granting pipeline permits, has failed to meet the clearly-enunciated requirement of meaningful consultation, makes this case one of the strongest Native American environmental justice legal claims in history. Environmental justice, a paradigm born of a merger between the civil rights and environmental movements, is unique in Native American communities. This unique status stems from the legal classification of tribes as domestic dependent nations, sovereign as political entities, yet still under the plenary authority of Congress, as per Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The plenary authority of Congress over the tribes is a stretch at best, as Native Americans predate the Constitution. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has established a solid judicial body of law giving Congress, and only Congress, the ability to act in good faith as wards over the affairs of Indian Country, such as the 1886 case of US v. Kagama.

Demand End to Guardianship System

by Sarah Aziza, Waging Nonviolence

The View from the East Village

by Bill Weinberg, The Villager

As I write, Russian tanks are amassing on the line that separates those areas of Ukraine controlled by the Kiev government from the Crimean Peninsula, now unilaterally annexed by Moscow. Kiev has placed its armed forces on high alert, and there are fears of full-scale war.

In addition to the Crimea stand-off, for two years Ukraine has faced a Russian-backed separatist revolt in the eastern enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk. Despite official denials, Russia is widely thought to have troops there, backing the separatists.

All this was set off by the 2014 Maidan revolution—named after Kiev’s central square, which was occupied by protesters over the bitter winter of 2013-4, to demand the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovich. Just as Britain recently voted to flee the European Union, Ukrainians were seeking closer ties to it. For the Maidan protesters, the EU represented guarantees for human rights and transparency in a country dominated by corrupt oligarchs.

Yanukovich represented the epitome of this kind of political animal, and set off the Maidan movement by rejecting a treaty for preliminary ties with the EU in favor of one for closer integration with Russia. He was finally removed by a vote of parliament in February 2014. By then, some 200 had been killed in repression, and some on the side of the protesters had started to arm. New elections were held in May, bringing the more Euro-friendly Petro Poroshenko to power. But separatists seized the east, and Russia annexed Crimea.

Even if you don’t follow international news, it was hard to be unaware of all this if you live in the East Village. From the early days of the Maidan movement, a wall on the east side of Second Ave. between St. Marks Place and 9th Street displayed news clips from Kiev and messages of support for the protesters—adorned with the blue-and-gold colors of Ukraine and the trident that is the symbol of the nation.

?Putin Shows What Trump Has in Store for America

by Michael I. Niman, The Public

It might seem like I’m writing a lot about fascism lately. It’s just the drought of journalists using the F-word that makes any use of the word stand out—this as a bona fide fascist is within striking distance of the White House.

In case you were on the fence and reluctant to believe that the Republican candidate for president—the one who claimed he could shoot a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing steam among his supporters—is a fascist, this week’s pronouncements by him and his allegedly more palatable running mate reiterate the point.

As he climbs back up to a statistical dead heat in the polls, Trump complimented Vladimir Putin for his leadership style. Media criticism focused on the fact that Putin ordered the invasion and occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Others dusted off Cold War tropes to remind us that we hate the Russians. All of this misses the point that Trump zeroed in on Putin’s leadership style. This demands that we look at how he treats his own people—how he leads his own nation.

From Roses to Evacuation

by Leila Al Shami

Four years following its liberation, the predominantly agricultural town of Daraya, strategically located near Syria’s capital, has fallen to the regime. A deal was reached to evacuate the 4,000-8,000 civilians remaining from a pre-uprising population of 300,000. The local fighters who defended their town so courageously will go to Idlib and join the resistance there.

Daraya’s residents know that they may never return to their homes. Photos circulated on social media showed residents gathered at the graves of loved ones to say goodbye. Fears abound of a plan to cleanse opposition strongholds permanently; and in previous evacuation deals, even those carried out under UN auspices, many were detained by the regime, never to be seen again.

Bernie is OK — but not ‘or Bust’

by Bill Weinberg, The Villager

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a protest by members of New York’s Peruvian immigrant community in Union Square, to oppose the candidacy of Keiko Fujimori in the South American country’s presidential race—the daughter of imprisoned ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori, who intransigently defends her father’s blood-drenched legacy. Peru’s left mobilized for her defeat.

Keiko was opposed by a merely odious center-right technocrat and former cabinet minister, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, or “PPK.” Verónika Mendoza, the left-wing candidate who was bumped out of the race in the first round in April, urged her supporters to vote for pro-corporate conservative PPK, so as to keep openly fascistic Keiko out of office—and to be prepared to build a vigorous opposition from his first day on the job.

It was a very close vote, but it worked—PPK won by the proverbial hair in the June 5 run-off.

As if to drive home the point that PPK is merely a lesser enemy (but still very much an enemy), soon after his election he unveiled an economic program that calls for privatization of Peru’s communal indigenous and peasant lands—and their sale to mining, oil and agribusiness interests. Land-grabs by corporate interests have already been a source of much rural unrest in Peru in recent years.

I hope the analogy is clear.

Not Thwarted by State Terror

by Shirin Hess, Waging Nonviolence

On June 19, the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca was the scene of a senseless massacre. The bloody battle took place in the rural town of Nochixtlan and resulted in the death of at least nine civilians. “Right now, the federal police are withdrawing, going back to their vehicles,” said a witness of the attack as he filmed the horrific scene. Bullets are heard smashing against metal traffic barriers on the roadside as the camera image shakes. Taking heavy breaths he calmly continued, “And as they retreat, they are shooting at us with firearms.”

A week earlier, police crackdowns had begun in various regions of Oaxaca state. These acts of violence are occurring in light of current protests in Oaxaca, where—since May 15—the teachers’ movement has set up a peaceful plantón, or encampment, in the city center, and dozens of roadblocks across the state, including Nochixtlan. The teachers demanded a dialogue with the local and federal government about a recently approved education overhaul and the implementation of its neoliberal policies in Oaxaca.