“Victor Ahansu was barely awake with his wife and baby twins before the grinding sound of bulldozers woke them. It was all the warning the family had, he said, before fleeing mass evictions in their historic community of Makoko in Lagos. Their house was demolished on Jan. 11, one of thousands taken down by the ongoing operation. Now the 5-month-old twins and their parents live in a wooden canoe, with a woven plastic sack for shelter from the rain. The thump of hammers fills the air as other residents of Nigeria ’s largest city break down homes and salvage what they can. … For decades, tens of thousands of people have lived in homes on stilts above the lagoon in Makoko, one of Africa’s oldest and largest waterfront communities.” (02/01/25)
“This weekend, what began as a protest in Los Angeles turned into violence. Not debate. Not a peaceful assembly. Violence. As you watch the scenes unfold on television, it feels like something that should be happening in Iran or Afghanistan — not in Los Angeles. Downtown mobs clashed with federal officers outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. Protesters were seen throwing water bottles, bottles, rocks, debris and other objects at federal and assisting law enforcement officers. A dumpster was moved into the street and set on fire outside the federal facility. The image was unmistakable: street chaos aimed directly at the seat of federal authority in the center of America’s second-largest city. This is happening yesterday and today — not in some unstable foreign capital. It is happening in Los Angeles, on streets where families work, live and commute.” (01/31/25)
“The national security adviser to Slovakia’s prime minister has resigned after documents released by the US showed he exchanged messages about girls and diplomacy with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Robert Fico announced he had accepted Miroslav Lajčák’s departure in a video message on Saturday, describing the adviser as ‘an incredible source of experience in diplomacy and foreign policy’. The resignation comes a day after three million files relating to the influential financier were released by the US Department of Justice. While the files do not show any wrongdoing on the part of those featured, including Lajčák, they have raised renewed questions for those who associated with Epstein.” (01/31/25)
“NASA began a two-day practice countdown Saturday leading up to the fueling of its new moon rocket, a crucial test that will determine when four astronauts blast off on a lunar flyby. Already in quarantine to avoid germs, Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew will be the first people to launch to the moon since 1972. They will monitor the dress rehearsal from their Houston base before flying to Kennedy Space Center once the rocket is cleared for flight. The 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket moved out to the pad two weeks ago. If Monday’s fueling test goes well, NASA could try to launch within a week. Teams will fill the rocket’s tank with more than 700,000 gallons of super-cold fuel, stopping a half-minute short of when the engines would light. A bitter cold spell delayed the fueling demo, and the launch, by two days. Feb. 8 is now the earliest the rocket could blast off.” (02/01/25)
“Stephen Miller’s ascent to the shadow presidency began like so much other poison in the very immediate aftermath of 10/7, with a post nine days after the terror attacks from the official X account of the Trump campaign introducing a long list of bullet points under the title ‘Trump Plan to Keep Jihadists and Their Sympathizers Out of America.’ The campaign promised it would immediately revoke student visas from campus protesters born outside the country, ‘proactively send ICE to pro-jihadist demonstrations’ to arrest them, ‘aggressively deport resident aliens with jihadist sympathies,’ use a then-obscure law called the Alien Enemies Act to jump-start said deportations, and ‘implement strong ideological screening for all immigrants to the United States’ that would automatically disqualify anyone suspected of harboring ‘sympathy for jihadists, Hamas or Hamas ideology.'” (01/31/25)
“A new poll finds 45% of American voters identify as independents, not aligned with either party that dominates politics. That is the highest rate on record for the United States. Voters in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe display a similar neutrality or disinterest. Political polarization, it appears, is contributing to citizens’ party disaffection and thus, potentially, to civic disengagement. The danger of a public that has ‘checked out’ of political interchange, observed American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Samuel Abrams, is that ‘citizens gradually learn the wrong lesson: that withdrawal is safer than participation.’ At the same time, cities around the world (from Mexico City to Montreal, from Boston to Bengaluru, India) are managing to cultivate a feeling of local belonging that fosters civic involvement and trust.” (01/23/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“If I spoke critically of something abusive that India was doing in Kashmir, would you expect me to be accused of an anti-Hindu hate crime? If you criticized an Indian military operation, would you have to preface it with ‘I don’t hate Hindus or their religion and am not the slightest bit Hinduphobic?’ If there was worldwide opposition to something that Indian military forces were doing, would you expect western governments to start frantically churning out laws to ban that opposition because it was making members of the Hindu community feel unsafe? Would it ever in your wildest imaginings occur to you that a criticism of the violent actions of the government of India could in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Hindu faith and the membership of that religion? You can probably see where I’m going with this.” (01/24/25)
“The forecast is grim for New York City school kids. On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that, no matter how many inches of the white stuff drop during Sunday’s looming storm, there will be no snow day to start the week. ‘I know to the disappointment of any student that’s watching this right now, Monday is either going to be a remote learning day or it’s going to be an in-person school day,’ Mamdani said on NY1. ‘It’s not going to be a traditional snow day. That is a determination we’ve made.’ Give these kids a damn break. Remote learning — a horrifically ineffective holdover from the Covid lockdown era — has essentially wiped out the glorious snow day, a rite of passage for so many American kids, including right here in the Northeast.” (01/23/25)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“At the opening ceremony for Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled glossy images of his vision for a ‘new Gaza’: shining apartment towers, luxury developments, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. There were no Palestinians at the ceremony — and none on the Board of Peace itself. In Kushner’s fantasy, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza. But how, exactly, are Palestinians to be ‘demilitarized’ and pacified to make way for this Riviera of the Middle East? The assassination of Gaza’s Khan Younis police chief in a drive-by shooting this January offers a chilling clue. It was not an isolated act of lawlessness, but an ominous signal of what lies ahead.” (01/23/25)
“Last year, a controversial pest control bill started making its way through the General Assembly. The legislation, which passed through the senate, would prevent civil ‘failure to warn’ liability lawsuits from being filed against pesticide manufacturers and sellers in Tennessee as long as they have an EPA-approved label. Toward the end of last session, the House Judiciary Committee voted to place the bill on 2026’s calendar. The legislation was on the committee’s agenda for this Wednesday, with rumors that a new amendment rewriting the bill would be introduced by Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville). But when Wednesday rolled around, the bill was taken off notice, pausing its progress once again. The Lead Up Groups in favor of the GOP-sponsored legislation include the Tennessee Farm Bureau and the Modern Ag Alliance, which Bayer founded to protect, defend, and ensure continued farmer access to crop protection tools (specifically glyphosate) amidst mounting legal challenges.” (01/23/25)
