17 April 21
Can Anyone Help With a Donation, Please?
We are way behind where we should be at this point in the month. Really because only a precious few of you are donating. The rest are not but can.
Now would be a great time.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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16 April 21
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RSN: Mort Rosenblum | On the Rez, What's in a Name?
Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
Rosenblum writes: "The 574 indigenous tribes across the United States define themselves with their own words."
INDOW ROCK, Arizona – Patty Dimitriou smiled down at 4-year-old Wynter, contented in her lap on a break from raising hell. “This,” she said, tucking strands of long black hair from behind his copper-toned ear, “is what America now looks like.”
Exactly. These days, that is easy to forget as meaningless ethnic labels distort a new reality: the American melting pot has cooked down into a savory fusion of home-grown flavors seasoned with every exotic spice a big world has to offer.
Inspiring “diversity” is unmissable up among the dramatic high red rocks of the Navajo Nation, where tribalism means unity, not division. For a sense of it, try to pigeonhole Patty and her husband, Rob Day.
Patty’s mother, Flora, grew up in a dirt-floor hogan with no electricity or plumbing. She slept in her first bed at 11 in boarding school. As a secretarial student in San Francisco, Flora bedazzled Nicholas Dimitriou, an enterprising Macedonian immigrant from Canada. He pursued her back to the reservation and married her.
With a University of Arizona degree, Patty built a thriving public relations firm in Phoenix, hobnobbing with clients in Washington and Europe. When her father became ill in 2015, she moved to Window Rock to manage her parents’ properties.
In heels and a smart dress, Patty drives a Cadillac Escalade with plates that read “RezDiva.” In hot-babe mode (she doesn’t mind the term), she puts on leathers to roam the West with Rob on her monster motorcycle. An Indian Chieftain.
Rob sums himself up with a laugh: “I’m a half-breed.” In fact, he goes back five generations to the first Sam Day, an Irishman who, bored with life in Ohio, took a job surveying the reservation. He founded a dynasty with Irish, Dutch and Navajo wives.
The Days built some of the first trading posts and discovered ancient ruins. An old family treasure is an aging photograph signed, “To my friend, Sam Day. Theodore Roosevelt.” That was Sam III, who fired up the visiting president’s fondness for Indian heritage.
Rob’s passion is creating artful big bikes, but Day Customs Mechanical can fix or build just about anything. He wakes before dawn to direct far-flung crews but makes it home for dinner with the kids.
Wynter’s face reflects dominant Indian genes. His little sister Rebel is, as her Grandma Flora jokes, “white as a sheet of paper.”
Patty just smiled when I asked my usual question in tribal territories. Is she Indian or Native American? Whatever. The 574 indigenous tribes across the United States define themselves with their own words. The Navajo are simply Diné, the people.
“Whatever” pretty much says it. We are each something specific that defies catchall labels. Yet all earthlings trace back to the same gorges in East Africa. Today, as we face looming common calamities, we had better get it together fast.
Partisan politics and polemics obsess on the present with little sense of how we got where we are. Republicans exploit Donald Trump’s racist tropes, but racism is too vague a word for societal disconnects behind so much fear and loathing.
Black Americans suffer the most. George Floyd’s murder shed glaring light on brutality and injustice that date back to slave days. It sparked a critical mass into action, which in turn triggers white supremacist backlash. And, even in Minneapolis, police keep on killing.
We need laws and norms to entrench equality, along with reforms not only in law enforcement but also in school curricula to help kids see beyond skin tones. Of course, “infrastructure” is about more than roads and bridges.
These are urgent problems for today and tomorrow. The past is past. But if indelible history can’t be rewritten or reduced to simplicities, we can learn from it.
Slavery, reprehensible by any measure, has always been with us humans, and it still is. The pyramids in Egypt were not built with union labor. Before American settlers intruded, warring indigenous tribes — the Navajo, for one — enslaved captives.
Some American whites kept slaves. Others died fighting to set them free. As with our drug habits today, there was a demand, and people of all colors responded. Today, such demands as across-the-board reparations would likely lead to acrimonious deadlock.
One black writer, in a New York Times op-ed, heaped blanket blame on “white people,” imagining himself in Ghana, during earlier days, in a princely Ashanti palace. If so, his minions would have been marching prisoners from other tribes to ships at Elmina Castle.
I went to Accra in the 1970s after Alex Haley’s Roots inspired back-to-Africa tourism. Ghanaian friends were bemused by American strangers calling them brother. Back then, authenticity seekers studied Swahili, the lingua franca of Arab slavers.
Times change. A wise old hand who edits the Associated Press Style Book ruled black should be capitalized in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense to convey “an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community … in the African diaspora and within Africa.”
He has a point, but I respectfully demur. Black, like white, is a color with too many human shades to be a community. Americans focus on Africa, but that leaves out Tamils, Pacific Islanders and all the rest.
Blacks predominate in America’s underclass because so much is stacked against them. They are a collective target of ignorant bigots, who overlook the opposite extremes, which include an ex-president I wish could return for a third term.
Isabel Wilkerson, a former Times reporter, comes closer to it in her brilliant book: Caste. Actual Indians are bound by a rigid pecking order that neither education nor hard work allows them to escape. Social justice can break down America’s informal castes.
In any case, racial, ethnic and cultural bias goes far beyond black and white.
I was lucky at the outset, a minority Jewish kid at Tucson High among Latinos, Asians and much else. Once a red-haired, freckled tough with the Mexican name of Tellez gave me shit about Hanukah. Florence Chandler, a black fullback friend, loomed up behind him, and he slithered away.
Today, even we lapsed Jews who shrug off slurs watch vicious identity politics with alarm. When some fool flaunts a “six million aren’t enough” t-shirt, I think of how many Rosen-somethings were exterminated during my life span. “Germans” aren’t to blame. Hitler was. But why did so many people blindly follow a depraved despot?
My toes curl when some hypocrite not-really Christian calls me a bad Jew for thinking others also have rights in the unholy land. In fact, condemning Palestinians to apartheid squalor is an existential threat to Israel.
In the Navajo Nation, these labels blur. I’m a native American, lower-case “n,” born in Wisconsin. But I’m a parvenu to indigenous people whose roots within America’s boundaries run 35 generations deep.
The Navajos’ disparate clans still share a common respect for the Blessing Way, elaborate rituals that honor their creator and the four sacred mountains that delineate their rugged lands. But these are divisive times.
Social media, television and a consumer mentality tug at old roots. Casinos and tourism bring in new revenue (or will, if Covid-19 finally subsides) but also destructive elements. A troubling number of Navajo Trumpers want to privatize trust lands.
But Indians finally have a voice in Washington. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland from nearby Laguna Pueblo is wresting back hallowed land that her plundering predecessor opened to miners and drillers. Young people are rediscovering their languages and lore. Congress earmarked $1.7 billion to help tribes weather the pandemic.
Patty Dimitriou is hopeful. “Between technology, a huge chunk of money and emerging leadership, it could make for some interesting times,” she said. “We’ll see.”
Little Wynter Day, beaming up from her lap, made the point. His polyglot parents teach him Navajo along with English. He’ll likely pick up Spanish. But mostly, they’re giving him solid instruction in basic humanity and love for the natural world.
However he turns out, no misconceived label will define him.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Jon Ryan Schaffer, a 53-year-old from Indiana, pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding and entering a restricted building with a deadly or dangerous weapon. (photo: DOJ)
Oath Keeper Becomes First Capitol Insurrectionist to Rat Out Fellow Rioters
Pilar Melendez, The Daily Beast
Melendez writes: "A heavy metal guitarist and self-described 'lifetime member' of the Oath Keepers has become the first Jan. 6 insurrectionist to plead guilty and cooperate with the feds, prosecutors revealed Friday."
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Senator Bernie Sanders on Capitol Hill on January 27, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (photo: Graeme Jennings/Getty)
Bernie Is Right. We Should Immediately Expand and Improve Medicare.
Michael Lighty, Jacobin
Lighty writes: "Bernie Sanders is pushing to lower the eligibility age for Medicare and boost its coverage by adding dental, hearing, and vision benefits. Bernie's plan would be a huge step toward Medicare for All."
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Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August. (photo: Reuters)
US Police and Public Officials Donated to Kyle Rittenhouse, Data Breach Reveals
Jason Wilson, Guardian UK
Wilson writes: "A data breach at a Christian crowdfunding website has revealed that serving police officers and public officials have donated money to fundraisers for accused vigilante murderers, far-right activists, and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans."
Officers and officials also donated to fundraisers for far-right activists and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans
data breach at a Christian crowdfunding website has revealed that serving police officers and public officials have donated money to fundraisers for accused vigilante murderers, far-right activists, and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans.
In many of these cases, the donations were attached to their official email addresses, raising questions about the use of public resources in supporting such campaigns.
The breach, shared with journalists by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets, revealed the details of some donors who had previously attempted to conceal their identities using GiveSendGo’s anonymity feature, but whose identifying details the website preserved.
The beneficiaries of donations from public officials include Kyle Rittenhouse, who stands accused of murdering two leftwing protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last August. Rittenhouse traveled from neighboring Illinois to, by his own account, offer armed protection to businesses during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Rittenhouse, who became a cause célèbre across conservative media throughout late 2020, and was even supported by then president Donald Trump, held a fundraiser on GiveSendGo billed as a contribution to his legal defense. According to data from the site, he raised $586,940 between 27 August last year and 7 January .
Among the donors were several associated with email addresses traceable to police and other public officials.
One donation for $25, made on 3 September last year, was made anonymously, but associated with the official email address for Sgt William Kelly, who currently serves as the executive officer of internal affairs in the Norfolk police department in Virginia.
That donation also carried a comment, reading: “God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
The comment continued: “Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.”
Another Rittenhouse donor using an official email address was Craig Shepherd, who public records show is a paramedic in Utah. This donor gave $10 to Rittenhouse on 30 August.
Donations also came to Rittenhouse associated with official email addresses for Keith Silvers, and employee of the city of Huntsville, Alabama, and another $100 was associated with the official address of Michael Crosley, an engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a body which is charged with maintaining the US’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
Meanwhile, several Wisconsin police officers donated to a fundraiser, “Support Rusten Sheskey”, held for the Kenosha police department officer whose shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake, led to the protests that drew Rittenhouse to the city.
Two $20 donations to Sheskey’s fund were associated with email addresses of a pair of lieutenants in Green Bay, Wisconsin’s police department. One, given under the name, “GBPD Officer”, was tied to an address associated with Chad Ramos, a training lieutenant in the department; another anonymous donation was associated with Keith A Gehring, who is listed as a school resources officer lieutenant.
Another donation to Sheskey was associated with the official email address of officer Pat Gainer of the Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin police department. Given under the screen name “PPPD Motor 179”, the donation also carried the comment: “Stay strong brother.”
About 32 more donations, totaling more than $5,000, came to Sheskey from private email addresses associated with Kenosha officers, but under badge numbers rather than names.
More anonymous donations on the site came from city employees of Houston, Texas, who were objecting to the actions of the then police chief, Art Acevedo, who fired four Houston police officers after they shot and killed a man, Nicolas Chavez, who was on his knees, and in an apparent mental health crisis.
One anonymous donation of $100 was associated with the official address of that city’s fire chief, Samuel Peña, who has himself faced recent employee revolts over cost-cutting, but who has been publicly supportive of Acevedo, describing him in a tweet as a “brother & partner in Public Safety” in March, when Acevedo announced that he would be taking up an appointment as Miami’s chief of police.
Another anonymous donation of $400 was attributed in site data to an email linked to Chris Andersen and carried the comment: “I think that Chief Acevedo is part of the ‘unrecognized form of police corruption’ that Chris Anderson [sic] wrote about in his book’. Hang in there guys!!!”
Andersen’s book, The Sniper: Hunting A Serial Killer – A True Story, purports to tell the story of the hunt for a serial killer by Houston police at a time when “the United States was experiencing a wave of civil discontent regarding the unwarranted shootings (either true or perceived) of black men by law enforcement (the Black Lives Matter era)”.
In his Amazon bio, Andersen describes himself as a “39-year veteran of the Houston police department”, and as having worked in roles including homicide detective, supervising a Swat team and internal affairs.
In an email, the Green Bay police chief, Andrew Smith, wrote of the donations that “we are looking into the matter”, but added on Sheskey’s actions that his department “does not take a position on other agencies use of force”.
Lynda Seaver, director of public affairs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote in an email that Michael Crosley had made “an honest mistake”, and had “never intended to use his Lab email on this matter”.
All other agencies and individuals who were included in the Guardian’s reporting did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Guardian previously reported on the use of the site for fundraising purposes for far-right groups like the Proud Boys, who have been banned from other crowdfunding platforms after violent incidents including the alleged participation of members of the group in an attack on the United States Capitol building on 6 January.
An Afghan man and children, suffering hardships from suicide bombings and war, pose for a portrait in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 19, 2021. (photo: Haroon Sabawoon/Getty)
The US Could Have Left Afghanistan Years Ago, Sparing Many Lives
Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
Hussain writes: "America will depart without having accomplished its goals and with more Afghan suffering ahead."
resident Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw most U.S. troops from Afghanistan marks a significant reduction in America’s participation in the war. But it is unlikely to mean peace for Afghans themselves, who remain caught between a weak and corrupt central government long propped up by U.S. military might and a resurgent Taliban movement that is stronger than at any time since the United States invaded.
The question of timing hung heavily over Biden’s announcement Wednesday that America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan would soon come to an end, with the remaining 2,500 American troops in the country scheduled to come home on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The violent disintegration of Afghan society began with the 1979 Soviet invasion of the country, but the decision in the early years of this century to occupy Afghanistan and try to transform it into a liberal democracy at great cost in lives and resources has made America a key force in Afghanistan’s fate.
The U.S. will leave without having accomplished its goals and with more Afghan suffering ahead. It also doesn’t seem that America’s own “forever war” is actually ending. Biden reserved the right to carry out airstrikes and raids against suspected threats in Afghanistan indefinitely — washing America’s hands of its involvement in inter-Afghan conflict, while signaling that the United States would still be killing people in the country when it deems necessary.
This “light footprint” approach could have been adopted by the U.S. government from a position of greater strength in 2002, or at many points since. Having achieved the baseline goal of responding to the 9/11 attacks and scattering Al Qaeda’s networks in the country, there was a genuine chance to declare victory in the conflict. Instead, successive administrations chose to become permanent parties to an Afghan civil war that began with the Soviet invasion and has raged ever since. The net result has been to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Biden’s somber words reflected the undeniable fact that the U.S. did not win the war in Afghanistan. While no one else really won either, the Taliban make perhaps the most compelling case for having achieved victory after successfully enduring 20 years of pressure from a coalition of the most powerful militaries on the planet.
The American public tuned out of from the war in Afghanistan years ago. But putting the entire endeavor into perspective, a damning picture of futility and waste emerges. The U.S. squandered resources and lives on an epic scale, while backing local Afghan allies looking to settle their own scores in a long-running civil war. The ultimate goal of eradicating the Taliban proved impossible years ago, as for better or worse they have proven themselves to be deeply embedded in Afghan society and to have significant political support that has been continually bolstered by the presence of U.S. forces and the failures of the Afghan government.
The costs of waging this war of choice have been high. In addition to roughly 2,400 U.S. service members who have died in Afghanistan, roughly 157,000 Afghans have lost their lives, according to the Costs of War Project run by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, including tens of thousands of civilians. The number of wounded and displaced is unknown but is believed to run into the millions. In addition to civilian casualties inflicted directly by U.S. raids and airstrikes, a network of death squads and militias built with American support seems likely to continue terrorizing Afghans for years to come.
The current talks between Afghans themselves being held in Doha, Qatar, seem unlikely to generate a sustainable peace agreement or even prevent an increase in violence once the U.S. withdraws. In recent years, even with thousands of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban has managed to increase its hold on territory and inflict staggering losses on poorly trained Afghan security forces, who may entirely collapse once foreign troops leave the country. While the U.S. is signaling that it is largely done with Afghanistan, a Fall of Saigon moment still threatens in the future, similar to the Soviet withdrawal that led a few years later to the violent collapse of its puppet government in Kabul.
In his speech announcing the U.S. withdrawal, Biden said, “We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan hoping to create the ideal conditions for our withdrawal, expecting a different result.” In many ways Biden is correct: The U.S. cannot and should not act as a permanent occupier of Afghanistan. That said, a collective decision by four successive presidents to keep the war going has prolonged Afghan suffering while wasting American lives and resources. After 20 years, the U.S. is leaving Afghanistan in favor of a minimal counterterrorism footprint. Many haunting questions remain, including why this change in America’s approach wasn’t made decades ago, what has been accomplished by the huge loss of life and resources, and who is responsible for the ultimate failure of the U.S. project in Afghanistan.
Then-Cuban president Fidel Castro, left, joins hands with brother Raúl in Havana in February 1986 after the two were reelected during the 3rd Cuban Communist Party Congress. (photo: Charles Tasnadi/AP)
Cuba's Castro Era to End as Raúl Expected to Step Down From Communist Party Post
Anthony Faiola, The Washington Post
Faiola writes: "Sixty-two years after a band of revolutionaries set Cuba down the path of confrontation with Washington - and unleashed waves of exiles that reshaped American cities - the last of the Castro brothers, towering figures of the Cold War, is poised to surrender official power."
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Amazon fulfillment facility. (photo: iStock)
Amazon Warehouses Linked to Environmental Injustice in Southern California, Report Finds
Emily Denny, EcoWatch
Denny writes: "Over the past year, Amazon has significantly expanded its warehouses in Southern California, employing residents in communities that have suffered from high unemployment rates. But a new report shows the negative environmental impacts of the boom."
ver the past year, Amazon has significantly expanded its warehouses in Southern California, employing residents in communities that have suffered from high unemployment rates, The Guardian reports. But a new report shows the negative environmental impacts of the boom, highlighting its impact on low-income communities of color across Southern California.
The report, from the People's Collective for Environmental Justice (PCEJ) and students from the University of Redlands, shared with The Guardian, is meant to serve as an "advocacy tool to help raise awareness related to the warehouse industry's impacts on Southern California's air pollution issues," Earthjustice noted.
California's Inland Empire, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, has emerged as one of the largest "warehousing hubs" in the world in just the past few decades, according to Grist. Since establishing its first warehouse in the region in 2012, Amazon has become the largest private employer in the region, where 40,000 people now work in Amazon warehouses, picking, packing, sorting and unloading, as well as driving trucks and operating aircrafts, The New York Times Magazine reported.
"The company is so enmeshed in the community that it can simultaneously be a TV channel, grocery store, home security system, boss, personal data collector, high school career track, internet cloud provider and personal assistant," The New York Times Magazine added.
In just the last year, Amazon has tripled its delivery hubs in the region due to the demand for online shopping during the COVID-19 crisis. But despite the economic boom, heavy air pollution mainly from trucks going in and out of the warehouses infects nearby communities, the new research showed, according to The Guardian.
The research found, for example, that the populations living within a half-mile of the warehouses are 85 percent people of color, while California's overall population is 64 percent people of color, The Guardian reported. The research also found that communities with the most Amazon warehouses nearby have the lowest rates of Amazon sales per household.
"Amazon has boomed in 2020 and tripled the amount of money it's making, and it is happening at a cost to the folks who live in these communities," Ivette Torres, a PCEJ environmental science researcher and analyst, who helped put the research together, told The Guardian.
The research also demonstrated that the top 10 communities with the most warehouses in the region also experience pollution from other facilities, like gas plants and oil refineries, Earthjustice wrote in a statement.
"The Inland Empire, probably more than any region in the United States, has disproportionately [borne] the brunt of the environmental and economic impact of goods movement, and Amazon is driving that now in the Inland Empire," Jake Wilson, a California State University, Long Beach, professor of sociology, told Grist.
Last year, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority ratified a decision to allow an air cargo facility development at the airport, allowing Amazon to operate more flights out of the region, Grist reported.
Among the local residents to oppose the decision was Jorge Osvaldo Heredia, a resident of San Bernadino in Southern California since 2005. "This whole region has been taken over by warehouses," Heredia told Grist, and commented on the "horrible" air quality in the city on most days. "It's really reaching that apex point where you can't avoid the warehouses, you can't avoid the trucks," he added.
Advocates who published the research are pushing on the South Coast Air Quality Management District, a local air pollution regulatory agency, to move forward with the Warehouse Indirect Source Rule, which would require new and existing warehouses to take action to reduce emissions locally each year, The Guardian reported. Some solutions include moving towards zero-emissions trucks and mitigation fees.
"Last year, we saw some of the worst air quality, with wildfires adding to it, and the trucks were still in and out of our communities. So this is a huge change that we need right now, and that we actually needed yesterday," Torres concluded, according to The Guardian.
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