Month: Jul 2022

by It’s Going Down Jul 21, 22 Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS via thefreeonline.. shared with thanks

Welcome, to This Is America, July 21st, 2022.

On today’s episode, we speak with Minerva, a full-spectrum mid-wife, herbalist, and abolitionist, about the struggles ahead now that Roe v Wade has been overturned and how we should be thinking about organizing our communities to meet our needs directly.

We then switch to our discussion, where we touch on the mass police repression in Akron, Ohio in the wake of the police murder of Jayland Walker, the growing housing crisis, and much more.

All this and more, but first let’s get to the news!

Living and Fighting

Class War

Hundreds of independent truckers are holding pickets and disrupting commodity flows at the Port of Oakland in protest of a new law that threatens a large section of the workforce from being able to pick up jobs from shipping companies. Meanwhile in cities like Seattle, Detroit, and Boston, Starbucks workers have gone on strike in the face of ongoing attacks by management against newly unionized stores.

In Minneapolis, camp defenders mobilized to push back against yet another tent city eviction. According to Unicorn Riot:

On July 8th, dozens of community members rallied at the encampment in the early morning hours and staved off what many thought was an eviction attempt by the city. [One resident] told Unicorn Riot that she’d heard the police will stay away “as long as there’s defenders present.”

In Lockport, New York, mobile home owner’s rent strike has now entered its third month. Tenants in Laurel, Maryland launched a rent strike recently over housing conditions and have forced landlords to the table as tenants in Louisville, Kentucky have also launched a rent strike to demand repairs.

Continue reading “This Is America #170: Building Revolutionary Care for Post-Roe Times”

from thefreeonline 21st July 2022

Under the new constitution approved in 1999 when the Chavez led Revolution came to power in Venezuela the hundreds of small surviving indigenous groups and their Commune culture were granted a special place and dignity.

However the landowning oligarchy, in power since the Spanish conquest disagreed and many wished they had completely exterminated the indigenous peoples.

So either support or opposition to indigenous rights and culture became one theme in the media, street and military battle between the mass popular revolution and the ex rulers and upper middle class.

The opposition, backed as always by the USA, CIA and military, corporations, some ONG’s and the western mass media, succeeded in closing down the key oil industry, blockading trade and branding Chavez and the revolution as execrable totalitarians.

Despite various military coup attempts from the USA the state run revolution survived, due to key army support, strong social programs, and mass popular and nationalist approval, including from the Communes Movement, which dated back to Indigenous times.

With the blockage of the National Parliament, hunger, bankruptcy and intense sanctions and international pressure the State became more repressive, jailing opponents and protestors.

The popular Constituent Assembly was also organised, in parallel to the bourgeois parliament. It works with quotas of seats for various social and ethnic groups, like indigenous, women, the communes, unions, etc.

Special elections were also recently organised in Indigenous areas, in the spirit of reparations, with guaranteed number of seats…

All in all both the Venezuelan state and hundreds of civil society and indigenous groups are making an effort to repair centuries of terror and extermination.

However hatred, racism and killings continue, often by far right mercenaries linked to the much greater state and US sponsored killings across the border in Colombia, where thousands of indigenous, community and ex FARC members have been murdered with impunity.

(Although we now at last have a progressive President in Colombia, Petro still only has minority power against the entrenched oligarchy).

The killings, devastation and severe repression of Indigenous folks in the southern Amazonas State stems mainly from a plague of artesanal gold miners organised in militarised mafias , and extending their operations from Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, etc.

Continue reading “Gold Mining Mafias murder Indigenous Resistance leader Virgilio Trujillo as Amazonia, Venezuela province trashed”

Before the Russian invasion, CIA reports linked him to an oligarch so dirty and so mired in “significant corruption” that the State Department banned him from entering the U.S.

How Corrupt is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky? — The New Dark Age

Climate crisis leaves serious consequences in Spain

Posted on July 19, 2022 by ELCOMUNISTA.NET in ECOLOGÍA, MEDIO AMBIENTE, ESPAÑA / translation thefreeonline

Although the heat wave decreased slightly in Spain yesterday, it was only in the West and temporary as forest fires and record high temperatures continue with no end in sight. Climate studies show Spain sliding into the ‘Saharan Hell’.

#IFPontdeVilomara July 13 2022 A firefighter barely escaped, his clothing in flames

The heatwave split in two, with half of it racing north over France, briefly the UK,Netherlands Germany and Scandinavia, leaving a trail of new record highs and devastating fires behind it.

In Spain, 360 people have already died due to high temperatures since July 10. A figure that rises to 659 in Portugal. In these two countries, temperatures reached 46 degrees.

Air is still drifting northward from the ‘Saharan Hell’, with temperatures in Cordoba, Anadalucia, forecast over 40C max, every day for the next 14 days at least.

The possible impact on non-forest assets and smoke on the population are the most noticeable consequences of the incident, which are added to thirty scattered in different regions of the Iberian nation.

Continue reading “Heat Kills over 1,000 in Portugal and Spain in last 10 days , as Wave sweeps North – English /Spanish”

Resembling a Monty Python sketch, Berlin officials still insist new Nord Stream 2 pipeline is ‘not certified’, refusing to back down and switch on the 55bcm of Gas while going bankrupt for lack of gas.

some info from A Western Banned News Agency via thefreeonline

Germany will not use the new alternative pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia, Nord Stream 2, even though its usual route, Nord Stream 1, is shut down for maintenance, the country’s government reiterated on Monday.

“Nord Stream 2 is not certified, it does not have a legal permit for operation. This issue is not relevant,” Beate Baron, the representative of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, declared.

Of course the government could just write a certificate today.

The announcement comes as Gazprom ‘upped the ante’ in the gas dispute by declaring force majeure on EU gas flow via Nord Stream 1, citing “extraordinary” circumstances outside its control.

That pipeline is currently closed for maintenance until Thursday. There is rising concern in Germany, however, that Gazprom will not resume supply when the works are complete.

German politicians have united in raging economic war hysteria against Russia, leading no less than 7 rounds of deep and unprecedented illegal punitive sanctions, for its intervention war to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

In addition politicians have gifted billions of euros worth of often advanced weaponry to Ukraine, ensuring a long and bloody war. Until now Russia had committed about 20% of its armed forces, and excluding conscripts and reservists.

German led economic war against Russian oil and gas has ignored their own dependence on these commodities and could spell economic suicide.

READ MORE: Gazprom declares ‘force majeure’ on EU gas flow – media

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, has the capacity to transport 55 billion cubic meters of gas annually and its construction was completed last September.

However, the certification process was repeatedly delayed due to opposition from the US and a Russophobic campaign in Europe over energy dependence on Russia.

In February, prior to the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, German authorities finally denied the pipeline’s certification and the project was halted indefinitely.

Berlin is now reportedly considering repurposing parts of the unused pipeline for an LNG terminal to import expensive and highly methane leaking frack-gas from the USA.

Gazprom’s CEO Alexey Miller said last month that the pipeline is ready to be switched on and could start pumping gas to Germany any time.

Russian tennis star shares photo with partner after ‘coming out’

Pathetic Politicos: You can’t easily read these Russia Today reports in The West due to stupid racist sanctions. Nor can you watch Daria’s viral YouTube interview (added here by thefreeonline) in Russia, where it’s blacked out by the US ban. Anti LGBT attitudes in Russia and elsewhere are slowly changing..

The news regarding her personal life has made headlines in Russia and beyond. It follows a similar declaration by Russian women’s football star Nadya Karpova in a BBC interview last month.

Daria Kasatkina posted a picture with Natalia Zabiiako after a revealing YouTube interview was released on Monday

Kasatkina made headlines after her interview. © Mike Kireev / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Russian women’s tennis number one Daria Kasatkina has revealed she is in a relationship with former figure skating star Natalia Zabiiako, shortly after Kasatkina discussed her sexuality in a YouTube interview.

video added by the freeonline> YouTube and this video are largely blocked in Russia due to racist anti Russian hysteria

Kasatkina, 25, made the revelations about her private life in a wide-ranging discussion in Spain with blogger Vitya Kravchenko which was published on Monday. 

The tennis star said that the topic might be a “taboo” in her homeland but added that “living in the closet for a long time is difficult and doesn’t make sense.”

READ MORE: Russian tennis star opens up about her sexuality Kasatkina confirmed her relationship with Zabiiako. © Instagram

“There’s this phrase, ‘if you want to be gay’. If you want to or not, if you become it or not. What kind of nonsense is this?” asked Kasatkina.  

“Really, it seems to me there’s nothing easier in the world than to be straight. Given a choice, who would choose to be gay and make life difficult for yourself? Seriously. Especially in Russia.”

Continue reading “Russian tennis star Daria Kasatkina comes out as gay and speaks out against Russian attitudes”