Weekend Edition Saturday / NPR (11/23/19) NPR’s Scott Simon talks with researcher Bahram Sintash about China’s treatment of Uighurs. A million have been imprisoned in camps, and Sintash reports that thousands of mosques have been destroyed. Link to Audio ***** Opinion: Why You Should Think About Uighurs Next Time You Put Shoes On By Scott Simon Weekend Edition Saturday / NPR (11/23/19) The forced imprisonment of more than a million Muslim Uighurs in detention camps in the Xinjiang region of western China may make Americans feel outrage and sadness. But many may just shrug and ask, “what does that have…

The Zero Hour With RK Eskow (10/4/19) Link to 31-Minute Video

  Assignment / BBC (11/14/19) Fatmata, Jamilatu and Alimamy all see themselves as failures. They’re young Sierra Leoneans who risked everything for the sake of a better life in Europe. Along the way, they were imprisoned and enslaved. They saw friends die. Eventually, they gave up. Now, they’re home again – facing the devastating consequences of what they did to their families before they left, actions that have left them ostracised by their nearest and dearest. Who will help them to survive back home? Can they rebuild their lives, and achieve any reconciliation with their parents? And if they can’t,…

By Abby Zimet Common Dreams (11/14/19) The reign of terror, which we help fund, goes on. In the last two days of airstrikes over the open-air prison that is Gaza, where two million beleaguered people, almost half of them children, are packed and trapped, Israel has killed at least 34 Palestinians and injured more than 111. Many of the victims were children. The dead included eight members of the Sawarkah family – three adults, five kids – killed around midnight as they slept in their house.  The only survivor of the slaughter of the Sawarkahs was a month-old girl named Marah; her mother, father, aunt and siblings were all buried…

By Nick Grube Honolulu Civil Beat (9/9/19) STEHEKIN, Wash. — Deep in the Washington state wilderness, a highly paid political consultant is raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s presidential campaign. It’s the kind of money usually spent on national name-brand political operatives with bustling offices and large staffs based in Washington, D.C., or New York. But few people in the business have ever heard of Kris Robinson, the owner of Northwest Digital, a web design and internet marketing firm working for Gabbard’s campaign. His company address is a P.O. box here in Stehekin, a…

  Morning Edition / NPR (11/12/19) Water and wildlife in the nation’s public forests are slowly being poisoned by insecticides and other chemicals used in illegal marijuana operations, say forest police and researchers. They warn that the potential environmental damage could last generations. Many of the grows are the work of highly organized drug cartels, who take advantage of the forests’ thick canopy to help hide their operation. Some sites can go undetected for years. “The true crime here is the fact that they’re killing off basically America’s public lands, killing off the wildlife, killing off our water,” says Kevin…

To win the votes they need in rural areas, Democrats need a platform as bold as what Warren and Sanders propose. By John Nichols Cap Times (10/8/19) Donald Trump’s secretary of agriculture came to Wisconsin last week to deliver the message that things are far worse for Wisconsin’s struggling dairy farmers than they knew. Speaking to reporters at the World Dairy Expo, Sonny Perdue expressed doubts about whether family farmers can survive in an industry where the factory farms favored by Perdue’s agribusiness associates are taking over. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out. I don’t…

At this point, the shaky Biden for President campaign appears to be the only realistic hope for those who want a defender of corporate greed at the top of the Democratic ticket next year. By Norman Solomon Reader Supported News (10/14/19) The Democratic Party’s most powerful donors are running out of options in the presidential race. Their warhorse Joe Biden is stumbling, while the other corporate-minded candidates lag far behind. For party elites, with less than four months to go before voting starts in caucuses and primaries, 2020 looks like Biden or bust. A key problem for the Democratic establishment is that…