Old City of ISIS capital Raqqa has Fallen to the Revolutionary SDF

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) female fighters enter the battle against ISIS in Raqqa


    

The spokeswoman for the campaign “Euphrates Anger” (Xezeba Firatê), Jihan Sheikh Ahmad, from the Yekîneyên Parastinê Yên Jinê (Women Defense Units, YPJ) campaign confirmed today the conquest of the old quarter of the Raqqa and the Darayeh district, to the West.

The control of the Old Quarter is a very remarkable advance as it was fortified by a historic wall and its narrow streets, complicated offensive operations.

Darayeh was closed at the beginning of the week and has progressed with street to street fighting.

1st Sept 2017. map of Raqqa. yellow is SDF contolled. A Civilian/Military Council of all ethnic and religious groups and women has been set up to administer the city, its reconstruction, relief and refugee organisation, etc, The new administration uses the model of the Manbij Civilian Council, adopting many principles of the Rojava revolution of Democratic Confederalism, but without direct Kurdish control.


The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have discovered networks of tunnels that were used by members of the Islamic State (IS). Continue reading “Old City of ISIS capital Raqqa has Fallen to the Revolutionary SDF”

American Ecocide: Dicamba mega toxic Herbicide escapes Control

This miracle weed killer was supposed to save farms. Instead, it’s devastating them.

   

Clay Mayes slams on the brakes of his Chevy Silverado and jumps out with the engine running, yelling at a dogwood by the side of the dirt road as if it had said something insulting.

Its leaves curl downward and in on themselves like tiny, broken umbrellas. It’s the telltale mark of inadvertent exposure to a controversial herbicide called dicamba.

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“This is crazy. Crazy!” shouts Mayes, a farm manager, gesticulating toward the shriveled canopy off Highway 61. “I just think if this keeps going on . . .”

“Everything’ll be dead,” says Brian Smith, his passenger.

The damage here in northeast Arkansas and across the Midwest — sickly soybeans, trees and other crops — has become emblematic of a deepening crisis in American agriculture.

Farmers are locked in an arms race between ever-stronger weeds and ever-stronger weed killers.Image result for Dicamba nightmare kills everything

The dicamba system, approved for use for the first time this spring, was supposed to break the cycle and guarantee weed control in soybeans and cotton. The herbicide — used in combination with a genetically modified dicamba-resistant soybean — promises better control of unwanted plants such as pigweed, which has become resistant to common weed killers.Image result for Dicamba nightmare kills everything

The problem, farmers and weed scientists say, is that dicamba has drifted from the fields where it was sprayed, damaging millions of acres of unprotected soybeans and other crops in what some are calling a man-made disaster. Critics say that the herbicide was approved by federal officials without enough data, particularly on the critical question of whether it could drift off target.

Government officials and manufacturers Monsanto and BASF deny the charge, saying the system worked as Congress designed it. Continue reading “American Ecocide: Dicamba mega toxic Herbicide escapes Control”

54 Saharawis on hunger strike at Madrid airport after Asylum denial

 54 Saharawis are hunger strike at Barajas airport for not receiving asylum. Sahara was the Spanish colony of Western Sahara which they abandoned in 1975. It was illegally taken over by Morocco and has been in dispute ever sinceRelated image

 54 Saharawis started a hunger strike after their asylum applications were rejected by the Spanish authorities./Ph. Eldiario

They had  applied for asylum in Spain ten days ago,  and the hunger strike is inside  Madrid-Barajas airport detention room, a spokesman of those affected told Eldiario Spanish online newspaper.

By Insurgente     The group started the hunger strike following the denial of the asylum request of 41 of the applicants and the return of one of them “by obligation,” the spokesman said.

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“Many of them are students who prefer to be on hunger strike, even if they have a bad time and are arrested in Spain, rather than risking their lives and being returned to Algeria, where most are threatened,” Asman said.

They have been assigned a lawyer, without giving them the option of choosing counsel, and have been a translator of Moroccan origin, who did not specify the individual situations of the majority of asylum seekers.

Upon arrival in Barajas, foreigners not admitted as well as the asylum seekers are transferred to rooms authorized for this purpose that are located at terminals 1 and 4 of the facilities. They are owned by AENA, the airport authority,  and are guarded by the National Police and private security guards.

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«We are 54 Saharawis who have been on hunger strike without food and without water», stated Saad Asman, one of the asylum seekers who raised worries regarding the health of some of people who started feeling dizzy as they suffer from diabetes. Continue reading “54 Saharawis on hunger strike at Madrid airport after Asylum denial”

Harvey Partly Due To Climate Change.. Partly caused by Texas Capitalists

warming

For every extra degree Celsius in warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water. This tends to make rainfall events even more extreme when they occur. Another element that we can mention with some confidence is the temperature of the seas. “The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are about 1.5 degrees warmer above what they were from 1980-2010,” Sir Brian Hoskins from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Climate change fueling extreme weather

It’s a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly | Michael E Mann

“That is very significant because it means the potential for a stronger storm is there, and the contribution of global warming to the warmer waters in the Gulf, it’s almost inevitable that there was a contribution to that.” Researchers are also quite confident in linking the intensity of the rainfall that is still falling in the Houston area to climate change. “This is the type of event, in terms of the extreme rainfall, that we would expect to see more of in a warming climate,” Dr Friederike Otto from the University of Oxford told BBC News.

Nature’s ironic ‘revenge’: Harvey hits the heart of the Fossil Fuel empire.. but also strikes the Poor and uninsured…

Ecocidal Houston Oil Mafia Reap Whirlwind of  Climate Change’s Hurricane Harvey…..   Exxon Knew for decades and Profited while paying none of the costs
Exxon may lose billions.. Serves Them Right!.. you say. Only that the criminal billionaires scooping the loot from the great fossil fools nightmare will still have their mansions, private islands, yachts and offshore fortunes safely  stashed away.

Image result for PHOTOS Hurricane HARVEY floods

It’s the ordinary six and a half million of us in Houston, only one on six of whom have flood insurance, who will have their lives ruined.

The great irony is that fracking for gas and tight oil is both the greatest promotion of EXXON TEXAS and probably the greatest new addition to runaway climate chaos, though that can’t be proved since Trump abolished methane measurement.

But does the Texas fossil fuel industry cause Climate Chaos? Of course it does, though you can’t prove a specific case  ”Harvey benefited from unusually toasty waters in the Gulf of Mexico. As the storm roared toward Houston last week, sea-surface waters near Texas rose to between 2.7 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit above average. These waters were some of the hottest spots of ocean surface in the world. The tropical storm, feeding off this unusual warmth, was able to progress from a tropical depression to a category-four hurricane in roughly 48 hours”.  see footnote 1

Climate change made every stage of Hurricane Harvey more horrific .

Okay so the sea is much too hot, but there’s evidence Harvey’s weird stalling out on the coast may also be connected to climate change.  Because of man made devastation and galloping desertification inland south Texas produces a semi permanent anticyclone which blocks entering storms. see footnote 2 Continue reading “Harvey Partly Due To Climate Change.. Partly caused by Texas Capitalists”

Anarchists Fight For a Collective, Sustainable Society Not a Power Vacuum

extraneousthinker           Perhaps clearing up misconceptions is due to the G20 disruptions a la Black Bloc in Hamburg. Regardless, this misunderstanding is largely propagated from the flimsy coverage in the mainstream media.

Mr Robot, for example, showcase a collective of leftist hackers who erased the debt and crippled the financial system in their universe. Fight Club similarly, bombed the capitalist financial centers by infiltrating the security of buildings. V for Vendetta also bombed Great Britain’s political centers in a symbolic meaning of a new society. Even a kid’s show of Nickelodeon in Legend of Korra featured an evil airbender, Zaheer, who believed that the natural order is “disorder.” He eventually killed a queen and ensued a period of chaos and banditry.Resultado de imagen de positive anarchism

It’s no accident then that when anarchists show up on the news or elsewhere, the first thing people believe that anarchists fight for is a power vacuum – no power, no structure, nothing in it’s place.

The proof is in the pudding. Even with it’s problematic inception as an ideology in Europe, anarchism never was for vacuum. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wanted to replace the system of private property with collective ones.Resultado de imagen de positive anarchism

He attempted this by encouraging a semi-reformist mutualist institutions. Yet others, like Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta, believed that an organized society would have to fight in revolution to achieve anarchist aims. This tendency won out. Continue reading “Anarchists Fight For a Collective, Sustainable Society Not a Power Vacuum”

Cato Manor Resistance : A Repeat of mass Evictions under SA Apartheid

Durban: 67 years after Apartheid evictions, ANC violently attacks Cato Manor occupation

Two people have been blinded this week in violent reprisals from State and local ANC-linked thugs as they try to push land occupiers out of Cato Manor in Durban, South Africa. Pic: AbM

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The relatively new occupation, organised with shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), has been shaken by the extreme violence, which saw Smiso Maphumulo shot in the eye on Tuesday and Noluthando Masikiza blinded on Thursday. In a statement, AbM said:

Their ‘crime’ is that they have been impoverished by a system of oppression and have occupied land in order to have a place to live. The government of this country has no regard for the poor. It treats our legitimate and urgent aspirations for justice as criminal and rules us with violence.

The municipality has been interdicted by the High Court in Durban to refrain from demolishing, destroying and burning people’s property in seven land occupations, including the new land occupation in Cato Manor. Resultado de imagen de Cato Manor Evictions

The court interdict further states that people whose homes were demolished are allowed to reconstruct. But because the ANC in the Province considers itself as law unto themselves they have continued with the evictions in violation of the court interdict.

Yesterday the Anti-Land Invasion Unit continued to demolish people’s homes. When the shacks were destroyed the materials were burnt. This was an unlawful and violent attack undertaken by a criminal state.Imagen relacionada

In Women’s Month the government of the ANC keeps emphasising their role in the fight for the rights of women. We ask which women are these when armed agents of the state can shoot at women who are poor and living under shameful conditions?

The situation in Cato Manor is getting out of hand because the ANC does not want to respect the processes of the law and because it holds impoverished black people in such contempt that it does not recognise our humanity. Continue reading “Cato Manor Resistance : A Repeat of mass Evictions under SA Apartheid”

Harvey’s Climate Chaos Revenge also strikes the Poor… Exxon Knew and Profited

Ecocidal Houston Oil Mafia Reap Whirlwind of  Climate Change’s Hurricane Harvey.Exxon may lose billions.. Serves Them Right!.. you say. Only that the criminal billionaires scooping the loot from the great fossil fools nightmare will still have their mansions, private islands, yachts and offshore fortunes stashed away.

Image result for PHOTOS Hurricane HARVEY floods

It’s the ordinary six and a half million of us in Houston, only one on six of whom have flood insurance, who will have their lives ruined.

The great irony is that fracking for gas and tight oil is both the greatest promotion of EXXON TEXAS and probably the greatest new addition to runaway climate chaos, though that can’t be proved since Trump abolished methane measurement.

But does the Texas fossil fuel industry cause Climate Chaos? Of course it does, though you can’t prove a specific case  ”Harvey benefited from unusually toasty waters in the Gulf of Mexico. As the storm roared toward Houston last week, sea-surface waters near Texas rose to between 2.7 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit above average. These waters were some of the hottest spots of ocean surface in the world. The tropical storm, feeding off this unusual warmth, was able to progress from a tropical depression to a category-four hurricane in roughly 48 hours”.  see footnote 1

Okay so the sea is much too hot, but there’s evidence Harvey’s weird stalling out on the coast may also be connected to climate change.  Because of man made devastation and galloping desertification inland south Texas produces a semi permanent anticyclone which blocks entering storms. see footnote 2Worse hurricanes The warm wet Continue reading “Harvey’s Climate Chaos Revenge also strikes the Poor… Exxon Knew and Profited”