Pomona City Council Chooses Trash Over Residents (tags)
Monday, July 16, 2012
POMONA, California - A city council meeting to decide the fate of a proposed waste transfer station in the city's impoverished east end became contentious as various factions interacted at a pre-meeting rally. After a long corporate presentation and an even longer public comment period, the council voted against the vast majority of the community to approve the project. Protest, including some shoving involving police, ensued.
The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti (tags)
"A US military occupation of Haiti under the guise of earthquake disaster ‘relief’ would give Washington and private business interests tied to it a geopolitical prize of the first order. Prior to the January 12 quake, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince was the fifth largest US embassy in the world, comparable to its embassies in such geopolitically strategic places as Berlin and Beijing.[17] With huge new oil finds off Cuba being exploited by Russian companies, with clear indications that Haiti contains similar vast untapped oil as well as gold, copper, uranium and iridium, with Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela as a neighbor to the south of Haiti, a return of Aristide or any popular leader committed to developing the resources for the people of Haiti, -- the poorest nation in the Americas -- would constitute a devastating blow to the world’s sole Superpower. The fact that in the aftermath of the earthquake, UN Haiti Special Envoy Bill Clinton joined forces with Aristide foe George W. Bush to create something called the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund ought to give everyone pause. According to Marguerite Laurent ('Ezili Dantò') of the Haitian Lawyers’ Leadership Network, under the guise of emergency relief work, the US, France and Canada are engaged in a balkanization of the island for future mineral control. She reports rumors that Canada wants the North of Haiti where Canadian mining interests are already present. The US wants Port-au-Prince and the island of La Gonaive just offshore – an area identified in Aristide’s development book as having vast oil resources, and which is bitterly contested by France. She further states that China, with UN veto power over the de facto UN-occupied country, may have something to say against such a US-France-Canada carve up of the vast wealth of the nation."
Immigrants Are Welcome Here. Nazis Are Not. (tags)
October 24, 2009
RIVERSIDE, California - In Southern California's largest antifascist action in recent memory, a diverse group of between 400 and 500 protesters held a demonstration against a group of 16 neo-Nazis from the National Socialist Movement in the Casa Blanca barrio of Riverside. The NSM sought to target the day laborers who congregate outside the Home Depot at the corner of Indiana and Madison to exercise their right to free speech and look for work, but the community denied them any opportunity to put their genocidal ideology into practice. Despite efforts to contain the throng to sidewalks behind metal barriers, thrice the activists pushed forth their demands by taking over the street--in outright defiance not only of the police, who numbered well over 50, but also of protest organizers' pre-established rules of conduct. The day saw two arrests of anti-Nazi demonstrators criminalized for defending their community, and several activists reported being pushed and struck by police batons.
The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It (tags)
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee blasted insurance giant CIGNA for failing to approve a liver transplant one week earlier for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who tragically died just hours after CIGNA relented and agreed to the procedure following a massive national outcry. “CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro called the final outcome ‘a horrific tragedy that demonstrates what is so fundamentally wrong with our health care system today. Insurance companies have a stranglehold on our health. Their first priority is to make profits for their shareholders – and the way they do that is by denying care." "It is simply not possible to organize major protests every time a multi-billion corporation like CIGNA denies care that has been recommended by a physician," DeMoro said. “Having insurance is not the same as receiving needed care. We need a fundamental change in our healthcare system that takes control away from the insurance giants and places it where it belongs – in the hands of the medical professionals, the patients, and their families."