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Reality and Dreams

Fidel Castro Ruz GRANMA
The leader of the Cuban Revolution insists that Cuba will never stop struggling for peace and the well-being of all human beings, for every inhabitant on the planet regardless of skin color or national origin.

Samsung: Accept Recommendations of Mediation Committee

International Campaign for Responsible Technology
July 23, 2015, a formal Mediation Committee established by Samsung and civil society groups issued ground breaking recommendations to compensate hundreds of workers who became ill while working at Samsung and to implement innovative prevention policies to protect their workers in the future. Samsung has agreed to the Committee’s recommendation to provide 100 billion won ($85.8 million), but rejected the core recommendation — funding an independent non-profit foundation.

Black Labor Organizers Urge AFL-CIO to Reexamine Its Ties to the Police

Sarah Jaffe Truthout
Police ... sometimes are workers who make very little money, oftentimes receive very little benefits in terms of the capitalist system that we live in and we want to recognize that . . . If police were to excise police brutality and anti-Blackness from their institution, I think we'd be having a very different conversation. And that's also a conversation that I would be happy to have.

Honduras’ Garifuna Communities Resist Eviction and Land Theft

Jeff Abbott Waging Nonviolence
Along the Atlantic coast of Honduras, Afro-Caribbean Garifuna communities are being forced from their land, as proposals for the creation of mega-tourism projects and corporate-run “model cities,” gain momentum. Mega-projects are just one of the problems Honduran Garifuna communities have had to face in the six years since a U.S-supported coup d’etat removed then-President Manuel Zelaya from power. But the Garifuna are organizing to defend their land and culture.

The Humanitarian Crisis Deepens in War-Torn Yemen

Kitty Stapp Inter Press Service
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is warning of a major humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where violence “has radically increased” since March, when the U.S.-backed Saudi aerial offensive began. According to Teresa Sancristóval, the head of MSF’s emergency unit, “The impact of this conflict is much wider than only the bombing or the shooting. Yemen is predicted to be the first country in the world to have a capital without water, and water scarcity has an enormous impact.”

Cheap Prison Labor Critical to Fighting California’s Wildfires

Natasha Geiling ThinkProgress
Fires are proliferating throughout California where an unprecedented drought has turned the California countryside into a tinder box of dry and dying vegetation. But the fires are also emblematic of the state’s dependence on inmates to help battle the wildfires. California’s firefighting program (Cal Fire) boasts the country’s largest inmate firefighting program. Close to half of Cal Fire’s firefighters, approximately 4,000 prisoners, are inmate firefighters.

Israeli Doctors Resist Force-Feeding Palestinian Prisoners

Ehab Zahriyeh Al Jazeera
The rapidly deteriorating health of Mohammed Allaan, a Palestinian political prisoner on hunger strike has pit Israeli legislators, who recently enacted a law mandating that he be force-fed, against physicians, who refuse to comply on grounds that doing so would be tantamount to "torture," and violate their Hippocratic Oath. Hunger strikes have become a common form of protest by Palestinians held indefinitely without charge in Israeli administrative detention.

80 Years Later, Republicans Are Still Fighting Social Security

Richard Eskow Campaign for America's Future
Social Security, which continues to provide benefits at costs far below those in the private sector, celebrated its 80th birthday Friday. And polls show Americans are extremely pleased with it. But, while Democrats finally seem to have abandoned their flirtation with benefit cutting, Republicans remain committed to its privatization. Yet campaigning against Social Security is political suicide, so the Republican strategy is to convince voters the program is unreliable.