Tag Archives: WorldNews

Italy jails 24 South Americans over Condor-era killings

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An Italian court has handed life sentences to 24 ex-officials from South America over their role in Operation Condor. It’s estimated that thousands of people were murdered under the secret US-backed campaign.

Trump touts environmental record despite slashing climate regulations

Tell your lies big and often!

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In a White House speech, the president claimed clean air and water has been a priority but voters disapprove of his climate crisis handling

Donald Trump is arguing he has made America an environmental leader, despite moving to gut dozens of rules meant to safeguard clean air and water and rescinding every major US effort to stem the climate crisis.

Related: Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez move to declare climate crisis official emergency

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Immigration agency secretly searches millions of Americans’ ID photos

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The news has raised alarm in states that allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses: Utah, Vermont and Washington

US immigration authorities have accessed driver’s licenses databases across the country, searching millions of people’s photos without their knowledge, privacy researchers reported Monday.

The revelations have raised significant alarms in Utah, Vermont and Washington, in particular. Those three states have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s IDs and permits, but also have appeared at times to work with Ice agents seeking access to those databases, according to Georgetown Law experts who obtained the government files through records requests.

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Billy Bragg claims it is ‘beyond doubt’ that Morrissey is spreading far-right ideas

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Bragg also calls out the Killers’ Brandon Flowers for describing the former Smiths frontman as ‘a king’ despite controversies

Billy Bragg has condemned Morrissey for sharing a video from a YouTube channel that argued that the British establishment is using Stormzy to promote multiculturalism at the expense of white culture. The video, which has since been removed, contrasted the positive critical response to Stormzy’s headline set at Glastonbury with headlines detailing Morrissey’s support for far-right groups. Morrissey posted it on his de facto website, Morrissey Central, under the title: “Nothing But Blue Skies For Stormzy … the gallows for Morrissey”.

Related: Bigmouth strikes again and again: why Morrissey fans feel so betrayed

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Russia’s RT and Sputnik barred from UK conference on media freedom

just fruits

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Foreign Office says news organisations refused entry to London event over their ‘active role in spreading disinformation’

Russia’s RT and Sputnik news organisations have been banned by the Foreign Office from attending a global conference on media freedom in London because of their “active role in spreading disinformation”.

Some 60 ministers and 1,000 journalists and members of civil society are expected to attend the meeting, co-hosted with Canada, on Wednesday and Thursday.

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Putting Oscar and Valeria’s deaths in context

The deaths of Oscar and Valeria Martinez continue to echo in El Salvador.   Their attempt to cross the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande was forced by exclusionary policies of the US government which drastically limit the number of asylum seekers who can cross a bridge at an official port of entry each day. Those policies instead push desperate migrants into the water or into the dessert away from walls and border patrols in their attempt to enter the US, often with fatal results.

We know Oscar and Valeria’s story because of one emotionally dramatic photograph.   Yet they are just two of the scores of migrants who have continued to die making attempts to cross the US border.  Data from the Missing Migrants Project, which tracks migrant disappearances and deaths worldwide, documents at least 181 deaths along the US-Mexico border so far this year, or almost exactly one per day.  This compares to 212 deaths in all of 2018.  The number of deaths has increased every year since 2014:

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Source: Missing Migrants Project

Yet instead of steps to reduce migrant deaths, this week brought the news that the US government will retry its case against Scott Warren of No More Deaths, the humanitarian activist charged with aiding migrants in the Arizona desert.  In June, a jury could not reach a verdict when the government prosecuted Warren for providing humanitarian assistance to two migrants he encountered in need of water and medical attention in the border area.  The government will try again to prove its case in a prosecution which critics see as harassment and intimidation of those who would provide humanitarian aid.

This makes it an appropriate time to view the documentary Lamento con Alas (“Lament with Wings”) a short documentary about good Samaritans Lavoyger Durham and Lori Baker who attempt to make a difference during the immigration surge in the summer of 2014.  In parallels to the Scott Warren case, Durham breaks stereotypes as a Texan rancher who sets up water stations that keep immigrants alive even as they illegally cross his land. And Baker, an associate professor of anthropology at Baylor University, exhumes deceased immigrants from unmarked graves and works to return the dead to their families in Latin America. She founded the Reuniting Families Project to establish a system for DNA analysis and identification of these deceased migrants. Durham and Baker both work to bring dignity to migrants who cross the US border in dangerous conditions…. The original score for the documentary was crafted by Carlos Colón, a Salvadoran composer who fled to Guatemala and then the United States as a refugee from El Salvador’s civil war.