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The Voice of Berta Cáceres Has Become the Voice of Millions

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

I spoke to Berta Cáceres the day she was murdered. I never imagined that later this year I would be in a demonstration along with almost a thousand women in Honduras asking for justice for her murder.

That day we had been talking about a workshop we were doing together on collective healing and power. The last thing she said to me was, “Take care, compita.” She called some of us compita or compa, short for compañera, a political term we use for a friend in the struggle. She didn’t care who you worked for or where you came from. When she said, “This is a compa, compa,” it meant, “This person is one of us, an ally.”

Sometimes, I still can hear her voice and this reality of having her gone forever feels like a dream.

Nine months have passed already since she was murdered, and by now the world knows all about Berta Cáceres. Just as we know how The Mirabal sisters fought against the regime controlled by a cruel dictator, Rafael Trujillo, in the Dominican Republic and were killed on government orders on on November 25th 1960 – and this is the reason why we commemorate that date every year around the world as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Berta was an extraordinary feminist environmental activist and indigenous leader among the Lenca people in Honduras. She was a brilliant organizer and strategist, a firm and inspiring teacher, and a true internacionalista.

Berta recognized how the Lenca communities’ struggle to protect their land and rivers was a global struggle, and at the same time she knew how to sow the love in her struggle in the heart of each person that she was involved with.

For more than a decade, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) – the community-based movement she co-led, organized one community after another, building a network among 200 Lenca communities with allies across Honduras and in every part of the world. It is this movement that is giving us the hope that our future can be different. One of these communities fought for years against the construction of the Agua Zarca Dam, a hydroelectric project that would have destroyed water resources, livelihoods and displaced the community. Berta always knew they would win their fight to save the river, the river itself told her so. That was how COPINH, along with Rio Blanco people, managed to throw out a huge Chiñese company.

After the 2009 coup in Honduras, Berta received dozens of threats for her activism, particularly in defense of the land and natural resources in Lenca territory when it seemed that every inch would be auctioned off (there are 49 concessions on their land today).

On March 2, she was killed for her defense of the river Gualcarque. And she’s not the only one. Honduras is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists, according to Global Witness. Between 2010 and 2015, 109 people were killed there for taking a stand against destructive dams, mining, logging, or agricultural projects. Of the eight people whose deaths were reported in 2015, six were indigenous leaders.

I met Berta and COPINH when I was a teenager, but from 2011 onwards I worked closely with her and other compitas to support their struggles and also to create and activate her security and protection plan, while JASS and many other allies together built the National Women Human Rights Defenders Network in Honduras and the Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders Initiative (known for its Spanish acronym, IMD). The IMD is a collaborative effort of six organizations that develops feminist movement-building strategies to address the specific forms of violence, stigma and sexism that women human rights defenders face. Berta survived every imaginable threat and harassment – that she would be raped and killed, that her children would be raped and killed.

In 2012, while organizing protests against the proposed dam on the Rio Gualcarque in the Lenca community of Rio Blanco, Berta was picked up by a police truck, framed and taken into custody, and charged with illegal possession of weapons. Aware that she was in danger of being killed or “disappeared,” she called us, activating the network. Within hours, all of Honduras and more than 150 international and Latin American organizations began calling the Chief of Police demanding her release. After just two days, she was allowed to go home although the charges remained.

We fought the legal battle but she was never really safe. New accusations, charges of criminal behavior, and slander about her personal relationships and her role as a mother became public. It was difficult for her, but her commitment to life and to saving the river and to human rights activism never wavered. Nor did the attacks against her, right up until the time of her murder.

When I first heard that this leader: my friend, my teacher, one of my political guides was assassinated, I didn’t believe it. In fact, I was not able to cry until I was coming home from the second demonstration mobilized to denounce her murder. I saw graffiti—Berta Vive—on a wall with her face, right there in front of me, and I burst into tears. I used to wonder, if they can kill a high-profile activist like her, what does that mean for the rest of us, for the thousands of other activists in Honduras who put their lives on the line every day to demand justice and respect for people’s rights and to protect the planet?

Today, in this demonstration, nine months later, I understand… her voice has become millions! Her assassination will never be forgotten, just like the Mirabal sisters who opposed the dictatorship they were living under and were assassinated for their activism and became symbols of of both popular and feminist resistance. In this century when we are facing a global dictatorship performed by different actors, Berta embodies three different resistances: anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and anti-capitalist.

Because Berta was one of Honduras’ most recognized human rights defenders, her murder captured worldwide attention, even in a country as violent as ours. In 2015, she received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize which honors grassroots activists. She and COPINH have many allies around the world because of their active involvement on so many issues that are important to indigenous peoples and to Honduras. The power of her story, and the vast networks tied to her and COPINH unleashed an explosion of activism after her murder, mobilizing environmentalists, feminists, indigenous rights leaders, and human rights advocates around the world, who are still calling—in a loud, collective voice today —for those responsible to be held accountable and for an end to construction of dams and other projects that threaten people’s lives.

FMO, the Dutch investors in the Agua Zarca dam Project, earlier this year announced the suspension of all activities, and after a Fact Finding mission they decided to seek what they call “a responsible exit from the Project”. However this million-dollar commission delivered a report on the Agua Zarca project in September that omitted evidence, and did not adequately address the key issue of prior, informed consent

Two weeks after her murder, JASS worked with many international groups and donors to pull together a delegation of Honduran women defenders to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. The delegation, which included the co-coordinator of COPINH, was led by Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, Berta’s daughter, who testified before the plenary on March 18.

In her testimony, Bertha Cáceres called for the creation of an independent expert group supported by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate her mother’s murder,and for the Honduran government to take steps to end a culture of impunity. She received a standing ovation. The trip to New York was the first international visit led by Bertha Cáceres, COPINH, and other Honduran justice leaders. Since then, there have been two other delegations to the US and a full tour of Europe.

Five men have been charged with Cáceres’ murder, including a mid-level employee of Desarollos Energéticos (DESA), the Honduran company leading the dam project. Despite our best efforts, Cáceres couldn’t be protected at all times. But people who work to protect the environment and their communities shouldn’t need protection. The Honduran government must come clean about its role in the systematic persecution of indigenous and environmental leaders under its watch.

It must end the careless destruction of land belonging to indigenous peoples and the persecution and criminalization of activists demanding justice and democracy, and start listening to local communities who have their own proposals for how to improve their own lives and simultaneously protect the planet. Cáceres called this idea “People’s power.”

The murder of Berta Cáceres, and other members of COPINH, has provoked an enormous international solidarity response and a push for justice around the world, while also bringing to the forefront the responsibility of governments, banks, and corporations in human rights violations against communities that defend territories and natural resources. Based on JASS’s experience accompanying COPINH and Berta’s family, we experience the continuous violations against the Lenca community and women human rights defenders in Honduras, and the power of international solidarity.

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Nine months later the search for justice has not gone cold despite of the robbery of the case file on Berta Cáceres’ assassination, and the poor results on her case. Numerous human rights groups, both in Honduras and internationally, have called for an independent investigation. Berta´s daughters, friends, and organization have been tireless demanding justice for her and all Human Rights Defenders who face different kind of threats -including death just for doing what they have the right to do. That is why we have all welcomed the creation of an International Experts Advisory Group (GAIPE) created to support and pursue the investigation of the murder of Berta Cáceres Flores and the attempted murder of human rights defender, Gustavo Castro Soto.

On the 25th November this year, in the streets of this dangerous city (Tegucigalpa) a thousand women were demanding justice for Berta, not just because COPINH has been increasingly targeted but because the demand for justice for Berta´s case is the demand for all of us. We know that any of us can be the next one. But inspite of the fear the we face every day the chant of the voices of a bunch of teenagers: Berta Caceres Flores, sown in the heart of all rebellions ” flowing right there on those roads, held our hearts together and gives us the courage to shout the slogan that has been echoed around the world: “Berta didn’t die; she multiplied.”

Daysi Flores is the Honduras Country Coordinator for JASS (Just Associates), a global women human rights network dedicated to strengthening grassroots women activists, community organizing and movement-building for greater impact and for protection.

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Kaia Gerber Looks Just Like Mom Cindy Crawford in New Hudson Jeans Campaign

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

Kaia Gerber may only be 15 years old, but the teenage daughter of Cindy Crawford has already accomplished more than we have this week.

On Monday, Hudson Jeans introduced the burgeoning star as the new face of its Fall 2017 campaign. In the lead shot photographed by Patrick Demarchelier, of course Gerber looks like a pro. After all, she’s already posed for brands as major as Marc Jacobs, so this was likely another walk in the park. She’s wearing a denim shirt with a matching set of all-American jeans.

Courtesy

And though the shot is worth a million words, we couldn’t help but notice how much she looks like supermodel mom Cindy Crawford in the image. Need convincing? Here’s a reminder of their similarities:

In addition to Gerber, the campaign also stars Gabriel Day-Lewis, the son of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Courtesy

RELATED: Kaia and Presley Gerber are the Spitting Image of Their Parents

According to WWD, Hudson Jeans will also unveil its first collaboration, Hudson x Baja East, on Sept. 12 at Baja East’s NYFW show. The capsule is set to include tropical prints and streetwear mixed in with Hudson’s denim pieces.

Scroll down to see more of Gerber in the campaign.

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Capitalism Is Doomed — Without Alternatives, So Are We

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

In 1946, George Orwell pondered the fragility of the capitalist order.

Reviewing the work of the influential theorist James Burnham, Orwell presaged several concepts that would later form the groundwork for his best-known novel, 1984.

“Not only is the best of capitalism behind us, but the worst of it may lie just ahead.”

In his book The Managerial Revolution, Burnham envisioned, as Orwell put it, “a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production.”

“The real question,” Orwell adds, “is not whether the people who wipe their boots on us during the next fifty years are to be called managers, bureaucrats, or politicians: the question is whether capitalism, now obviously doomed, is to give way to oligarchy or to true democracy.”

While Orwell was wary of Burnham’s worldview and of his more specific predictions, he agreed that the relationship between capitalism and democracy has always been, and always will be, a precarious one.

“For quite fifty years past,” Orwell noted, “the general drift has almost certainly been towards oligarchy.”

Pointing to the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the few and acknowledging “the weakness of the proletariat against the centralised state,” Orwell was far from optimistic about the future — but he was quite certain that the economic status quo would eventually give way.

Recent events, and the material circumstances of much of the world’s population, have prompted serious examinations of the same questions Orwell was considering seven decades ago. And though it appears as if rumors of capitalism’s imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated, there is good reason to believe that its remarkable ability to adapt and evolve in the face of frequent (self-induced) shocks has reached a breaking point.

Widespread discontent over stagnant incomes and the uneven prosperity brought about by neoliberal globalization has, in 2016, come to a head in striking fashion; Donald Trump, Brexit, and the rise of far-right parties in Europe have many questioning previously sacred assumptions.

“Is the marriage between liberal democracy and global capitalism an enduring one?” asked Martin Wolf, a formidable commentator in one of the world’s leading business papers, the Financial Times.

This was no rhetorical softball; Wolf is genuinely concerned that the winners of globalization have grown complacent, that they have “taken for granted” a couple that was only tenuously compatible to begin with. He also worries, rightly, that they have downplayed the concerns of the “losers.”

Wolf concludes that “if the legitimacy of our democratic political systems is to be maintained, economic policy must be orientated towards promoting the interests of the many not the few; in the first place would be the citizenry, to whom the politicians are accountable.”

Not all members of the commentariat share Wolf’s willingness to engage with these cherished assumptions, however. Indeed, many analysts have reserved their ire not for failing institutions or policies but for the public, reviving Walter Lippmann’s characterization of the masses as a “bewildered herd” that, if left to its own devices, is sure to usher in a regime of chaos.

“It’s time,” declared Foreign Policy‘s James Traub, channeling the sentiments of Josh Barro, “for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses.”

Apologists like Traub and Barro — just two among many — speak and write as if the leash previously restraining the “herd” has been loosened, and that the resulting freedom has laid bare what elitists have long believed to be the case: To use Barro’s infamous words, “Elites are usually elite for good reason, and tend to have better judgment than the average person.” They point to the rise of Donald Trump as evidence of an intolerable democratic surplus — evidence, in short, of what the masses will do if granted a loud enough voice.

Aside from being conveniently self-serving, this narrative is also false.

Far from loosening the leash, elites have consolidated power to an unprecedented extent, and they have used their influence to undercut democratic movements and hijack public institutions. The resulting concentration of wealth and political power is jarring, and it puts the lie to the farcical notion that elites are a persecuted minority.

But, in the midst of these anti-democratic diatribes, fascinating and important critiques of a rather different nature have emerged.

“Far from loosening the leash, elites have consolidated power to an unprecedented extent, and they have used their influence to undercut democratic movements and hijack public institutions.”

Instead of urging us to align Against Democracy, to use the name of a recent book by the libertarian political philosopher Jason Brennan, many are arguing that it is capitalism, and not the excesses of the democratic process, that has provided figures like Trump a launching pad.

In his book Postcapitalism, Paul Mason argues that the rapid emergence of information technology has corroded the boundaries of the market; “capitalism,” he insists, “has reached the limits of its capacity to adapt.” And its attempts to reach beyond these limits have fostered an economic environment defined by instability, crippling austerity for the many, and rapid accumulation of wealth for the few.

According to Oxfam, the global 1 percent now owns as much wealth as the bottom 99 percent. CEO pay has continued to soar. And though post-crisis reforms have carried soaring promises of stability, the financial sector is still far too large, and many of the banks harmed by the crash they created are back and nearly as powerful as ever.

Mason summarizes: “According to the OECD, growth in the developed world will be ‘weak’ for the next fifty years. Inequality will rise by 40 per cent. Even in the developing countries, the current dynamism will be exhausted by 2060.”

“The OECD’s economists were too polite to say it,” he adds, “so let’s spell it out: for the developed world the best of capitalism is behind us, and for the rest it will be over in our lifetime.”

Sociologist Peter Frase, in his new book Four Futures, implicitly agrees with many of Mason’s key points, but he then takes up the task of looking further ahead, of contemplating possible futures that hinge largely upon how we respond to the crises we are likely to face in the coming years.

For Frase, not only is the best of capitalism behind us, but the worst of it may lie just ahead.

Central to Four Futures are what Frase calls the “[t]wo specters…haunting Earth in the twenty-first century” — “the specters of environmental catastrophe and automation.”

Rather than attempting to predict the future, Frase — guided by Rosa Luxemburg’s famous words, “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism” — lays out potential, contingent scenarios. And while Mason’s book exudes optimism about the advancement of information technology and automation, Frase is more cautious.

“To the extent that the rich are able to maintain their power,” Frase writes, “we will live in a world where they enjoy the benefits of automated production, while the rest of us pay the costs of ecological destruction—if we can survive at all.” And, “To the extent that we can move toward a world of greater equality, then the future will be characterized by some combination of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity, depending on where we are on the other, ecological dimension.”

It comes down, in short, to who wins the class struggle. “I am a very old-fashioned Marxist in that way,” Frase remarked in a recent interview.

None of the futures Frase maps out are inevitable, the result of historical forces that are beyond our control. He is contemptuous of those who cling to “secular eschatology”; capitalism’s collapse, he notes, will not likely be the result of a single, revolutionary moment.

In expressing this view he aligns with Wolfgang Streeck, who has argued that capitalism is “a social system in chronic disrepair,” and that while “we cannot know when and how exactly capitalism will disappear and what will succeed it,” we can know that a system that depends on endless growth and the elimination of all restraints will eventually self-destruct.

The disappearance of capitalism, though, as Orwell understood, does not necessarily imply the emergence of an egalitarian society, one in which resources are shared for the benefit of the many. But while few agree on precisely how to establish the framework for such a society, there are, Mason and Frase argue, policies that can move us in the right direction.

Both, for instance, support the idea of a universal basic income, which, in Frase’s words, would “create a situation in which it possible to survive without depending on selling your labor to anyone who will pay for it,” making automation a path to liberation, not destitution. And Mason rightly argues that, in order to avert catastrophic warming, we must radically reduce carbon emissions.

But the usual political obstacles remain, as does the fact that the “winners” are not likely to hand over their gains, or their positions of power and influence, without a fight. We cannot, then, passively rely on amoral forces like technology to bring about the necessary change.

“Technological developments give a context for social transformations,” Frase writes, “but they never determine them directly; change is always mediated by the power struggles between organized masses of people.”

_____

The future is necessarily disobedient; it rarely conforms to even the most meticulous theoretical anticipations, to say nothing of our deepest desires or fears.

But one thing is clear: The future of capitalism and the future of the planet are intertwined. The health of the latter depends on our ability to dismantle the former, and on our ability to construct an alternative that radically alters our course, which is at present leading us toward catastrophe.

“One thing is clear: The future of capitalism and the future of the planet are intertwined.”

Whether the path to which we are ultimately confined is one that leads to a utopian dream or a dystopian nightmare is contingent upon our ability to connect the struggles that currently occupy the left — those fighting for the right to organize are confronting, at bottom, the same forces as those working to prevent the plunder of sacred land.

There are reasons to be both hopeful and pessimistic about the prospects of these struggles.

The campaign of Bernie Sanders, and the movements that emerged before it and alongside it, revealed that there is a large base of support for social democratic changes that, if enacted, would move us in the right direction.

The obstacles, however, are immense, as is the arithmetic: As Bill McKibben has noted, “The future of humanity depends on math,” and the climate math we face is “ominous.”

But, as Noam Chomsky has argued, the debate over the choice between pessimism and optimism is really no debate at all.

“We have two choices,” he concludes. “We can be pessimistic, give up and help ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can be optimistic, grasp the opportunities that surely exist and maybe help make the world a better place. Not much of a choice.”

Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep

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Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer Have a New Famous BFF

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer’s friendship is the stuff of Hollywood dreams, obvs. Groundbreaking comedian meets quirky A-lister with a need to speak her mind; they quickly form an indomitable bond, go jet skiing together, and exchange tons of inside jokes about Bradley Cooper (probably). Who wouldn’t watch that movie?

Anyway, it seems that J.Law and Amy’s tight-knit crew just expanded.

On Sunday, Amy Schumer posted a photo on Instagram with the caption “Sisters.”

Since the Inside Amy Schumer star posts photos of her actual sister, Kim Caramele, quite often, the caption didn’t seem out of place, but then we took a closer look, and—no siblings in sight!

Instead, Schumer is caught in an embrace with Lawrence and fellow actor Woody Harrelson.

We knew Lawrence and Harrelson were close (The Hunger Games!), but we had no clue Schumer was part of the fun.

RELATED: Amy Schumer’s National Bikini Day ‘Gram Is Everything

Does this meeting have anything to do with the “passion-y project” that Lawrence and Schumer are working on together? After all, the stars are playing sisters in the film. Could this mean Woody Harrelson is set to take on the role of oddball dad? We’re ready to line up for tickets now.

By Tncse

Mariah Carey’s Swim Accessories Are Just as Extra as You’d Expect

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

Mariah Carey, the *most* extra human on this planet, went for a dip in Israel’s Dead Sea recently. Note: The Dead Sea is a salt lake, in fact, it’s one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water—almost as salty as Mariah when you ask her about J.Lo (jk, not that salty).

Not only did Carey wade out in a cheetah-print bustier-style one-piece (and what appears to be a sheer sarong), but she did so in FULL BLING.

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Yep, Queen Mariah glittered at sea in a chain-link gold choker, gold hoop earrings, and bracelets galore. She also rocked a pair of high-shine aviator shades, natch.

Considering the singer’s notoriously expensive taste, we’re fairly confident in assuming her barrage of accessories is authentic.

Mariah is the OG diva, so we honestly can’t imagine her posing for a photo-opp in anything less—but we must say, we’re a tad worried about her jewelry! Is “encrusted in salt” a new trend amongst celebrity collectors?

RELATED: Mariah Carey, Queen of Shade, Still Has No Idea Who J. Lo Is

Stay perfect, Mimi.

By Tncse

What Does War Generate?

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

At an April, 2017 Symposium on Peace in Nashville, TN, Martha Hennessy spoke about central tenets of Maryhouse, a home of hospitality in New York City, where Martha often lives and works. Every day, the community there tries to abide by the counsels of Dorothy Day, Martha’s grandmother, who co-founded houses of hospitality and a vibrant movement in the 1930s. During her talk, she held up a postcard-sized copy of one of the movement’s defining images, Rita Corbin’s celebrated woodcut listing “The Works of Mercy” and “The Works of War.”

She read to us. “The Works of Mercy: Feed the hungry; Give drink to the thirsty; Clothe the naked; Visit the imprisoned; Care for the sick; Bury the dead.” And then she read: “The Works of War: Destroy crops and land; Seize food supplies; Destroy homes; Scatter families; Contaminate water; Imprison dissenters; Inflict wounds, burns; Kill the living.”

The following week, General James Mattis was asked to estimate the death toll from the U.S. first use in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, of the MOAB, or Massive Ordinance Air Burst bomb, the largest non-nuclear weapon in U.S. arsenals.

“We stay away from BDA, (bomb damage assessment), in terms of the number of enemy killed,” he told reporters traveling with him in Israel. “It is continuing our same philosophy that we don’t get into that, plus, frankly, digging into tunnels to count dead bodies is probably not a good use of our troops’ time.”

His comment seemed to echo another General, Colin Powell, who, when asked how many Iraqi soldiers might have been killed by U.S. troops invading Iraq in 1991, commented, “That’s not really a number I’m terribly interested in.” Other generals noted that some of those Iraqi troops, conscripts trying to surrender, were literally buried alive in their trenches by plow attachments affixed to U.S. tanks. More recently, Lieutenant General Aundre F. Piggee acknowledged that during the 2007 U.S. military surge in Iraq, when civilian casualties rose by 70%, the U.S. military wasn’t “necessarily concerned” about limiting civilian deaths.

What are the generals’ concerns and interests in Iraq and Afghanistan? How strong is their concern even for the well-being of their own troops? Several veterans of U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have written persuasive memoirs about the wastefulness of their deployments, accusing commanders of sending them on futile missions. Major Daniel Sjursen, writing for Tom Dispatch, describes the ostensible reasons for the entire U.S. war in Afghanistan as fantasies. He argues that U.S. generals gained promotions and notoriety for strategic proposals designed to win what they knew was an unwinnable war. He describes the squandering of soldiers’ lives to secure villages which had been largely abandoned, and the pointlessness of paying high-tech military contractors billions for weapons useless against homemade enemy bombs:

That’s right, the local “Taliban” — a term so nebulous it’s basically lost all meaning — had managed to drastically alter U.S. Army tactics with crude, homemade explosives stored in plastic jugs. And believe me, this was a huge problem. Cheap, ubiquitous, and easy to bury, those anti-personnel Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, soon littered the “roads,” footpaths, and farmland surrounding our isolated outpost. To a greater extent than a number of commanders willingly admitted, the enemy had managed to nullify our many technological advantages for a few pennies on the dollar (or maybe, since we’re talking about the Pentagon, it was pennies on the millions of dollars).

In a spate of recent articles, Sjursen and other veterans of U.S. war in Afghanistan have shredded each of the various rationales U.S. generals and pro-war think tanks have given to defend the wreckage and ruin the U.S. has caused during sixteen years of “generational war” in Afghanistan, throughout which U.S. people have been told that the war protects Afghans from the Taliban.

War profiteers and self-marketing politicians have no interest in helping U.S. people understand that war itself is a tyrant, that the sound of nearby gunfire or a drone attack is as much of an order to flee one’s home as any command from a Taliban warlord. Children displaced by war, living in the relative safety of Kabul’s refugee camps find scant protection from hunger, disease, and the harshest winters, while mothers repeatedly tell us that if it weren’t for the children bringing scraps of food scavenged at the market place and working as child laborers in the streets, the families would starve. When will the U.S. end, when will it depose, this war that it has made into a ruler of Afghanistan?

Mubasir, age ten, lives in Kabul. He helps his family by polishing boots every day from 7:00 a.m. to 12 p.m. Then, as part of the APV “Street Kids School” program, he goes to school during the second part of the day, assured that the APV will compensate his mother for the income he otherwise might have earned. The APV give her a monthly donation of rice, cooking oil and a small amount of beans.

In a recent videotaped conversation with Mubasir, Hakim, who mentors the APV, asks if he has any special problems at home. Mubasir responds: “We have many problems. My father is in prison. I cannot manage on my own. There’s not much at home.” Mubasir earns an average of 75 cents to $1.50 per day.

Do you sometimes have fruit at home?” Hakim asks. “No,” says Mubasir. “And meat?” “Never, we’re definitely not able to have meat.” Asked if he feels tired at the end of the day, after working in the mornings and schooling in the afternoons, Mubasir notes that he does his homework from “Then I say my prayers and go to sleep.”

Mubasir has never been helped by the U.S. or the Afghan government. But Afghans have learned to help each other. I’ve watched the APV community care, profoundly and practically, about feeding the hungry, bringing drink to the thirsty, and visiting people nearly imprisoned in refugee camps. Every year, they provide warmth for families at risk of freezing to death during harsh Afghan winters.

It seems simplistic, at first, to contrast the works of peace and the works of war. U.S. politicians endlessly promise us humanitarian wars meant to create stable, democratic regimes wherever our bombs level buildings, reservoirs and electricity plants, dismembering whole economies and countless civilian bodies, creating endless reservoirs of panic and rage and grief from which democracy might grow. Perhaps we forget people like Mubasir because after having heard these implausible platitudes, we forget our humane pretensions and settle down to rooting for our side against faceless enemies of the wrong race and religion.

Humane aid is desperately needed in Afghanistan, but it can only evaporate in corruption if people bearing weapons control it. Resources meant for impoverished people are predictably diverted toward the benefit of various factions fighting a war. Warring factions within Afghanistan, including the U.S. army, cannot do the works of mercy as they pursue the works of war. War has its own agenda and remains the worst of many dark outcomes for Afghanistan until the U.S. resolves to contribute nothing more to the region but the plentiful reparations it will owe once its pointless war is surrendered, and its troops have gone home.

My young Afghan friends live in a country which is maddened, bloodied, and broken. They know what war generates. Yet they still believe it’s in the interest of U.S. people, including the generals, to abolish war and live together without killing one another.

Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

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Kylie Jenner’s Secret Fear Is Something Most People Love

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

When you imagine the daily life of Kylie Jenner—something the social media star has dedicated a reality series to unveiling—what do you see? A string of lingerie-clad Instagram photo shoots, perhaps? Hours of hair and makeup? Lunch with momager Kris? That’s to be expected, but when it comes to the real Kylie, the woman behind the the brand is far less predictable.

What does the 20-year-old beauty boss fear, for example? Mean comments? A low Instagram “heart” count? Nah, Jenner’s fear is much more elemental, and also super bizarre: She’s afraid of butterflies. You read that correctly, Kylie Jenner is “terrified, terrified” of butterflies.

In a promo for an upcoming episode of Life of Kylie set in a butterfly sanctuary in London, the E! star revealed that she’s super scared of the beloved insect.

“This is how I think of them,” Kylie shared, “Cut their wings off, and if you just look at their bodies … they’re not that pretty. It’s literally a bug.”

RELATED: Kylie Jenner Frees the Nipple for Her First-Ever “Super Nude” Shoot

Although we don’t find butterflies particularly frightening, we must say, Jenner’s rationale does make sense.

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By Tncse

Leonardo DiCaprio Auditioned for a Role in Hocus Pocus

November 14, 2019 | News | No Comments

Can you imagine Leonardo DiCaprio in Hocus Pocus? Well, it might have been. The actor auditioned for the beloved 1993 movie, and the film’s director, Kenny Ortega, absolutely loved him. Too bad he was also up for two career-making movies, including What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which earned him an Oscar nomination.

The casting directors warned Ortega that DiCaprio would probably have to turn down the movie, but apparently his audition was a must-see regardless of whether or not he could accept the role. “The [casting] ladies called me up and they said, ‘We’re sending you an actor today but he’s not available but you’re going to fall in love with him but you can’t have him.’ I’m like, ‘Why are you teasing me?’ They were like, ‘You need to see this guy because he’ll inspire you and if nothing else, he’ll help you find the right guy to play Max,'” Orega recalls to Entertainment Weekly.

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Buena Vista/courtesy Everett Collection

“And they send me in a young Leonardo DiCaprio, who I completely and absolutely fall in love with,” he continued. “He’s just the most sincere and most centered and a wild child at the same time. He was feeling awkward. He was like, ‘I just feel really bad being here because I’m up for two other movies and I really want them both and I don’t want to lead you on.’ I was like, ‘That’s okay, I was already warned.'”

Oretga asked him what movies he was hoping to book. “One of them was This Boy’s Life and the other one was What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” DiCaprio revealed to Ortega. “Obviously, he left and incredible things happened for that young man and to this day, but meeting him awakened me to the kind of spirit and fun and sincerity that I was looking for in an actor and when Omri Katz came around, I fell in love again and he was our Max.”

Well, if we couldn’t have DiCaprio, Katz is definitely an awesome pick.

By Tncse

To Fight Global Threat of Antibiotic Resistance, WHO Issues First-Ever Guidelines to Curb Use

November 13, 2019 | News | No Comments

To address the major and growing global threat that stems from rampant overuse and misuse of antibiotics in agriculture, the World Health Organization (WHO) this week issued its first-ever formal guidelines instructing farmers to stop using so many antimicrobials in healthy livestock.

“As important as these guidelines are, they are just that—guidelines. To help curb resistance, individual companies and/or countries actually have to take action on them.”
—David Wallinga, NRDC

“If no action is taken today, by 2050, almost all current antibiotics will be ineffective in preventing and treating human disease, and the costs of losing these drugs will exceed U.S. $100 trillion in terms of national productivity,” the U.N. agency predicts in a related policy brief (pdf).

David Wallinga, a senior health officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said the guidelines “may be a game-changer in this fight,” because they call for “fairly significant changes to how many of the world’s biggest food-animal producers now operate, including the U.S.”—but “as important as these guidelines are, they are just that—guidelines. To help curb resistance, individual companies and/or countries actually have to take action on them.”

The U.S.-based advocacy group Center for Food Safety (CFS) welcomed the guidelines, while also noting how they “illustrate the degree to which our regulators and large food animal producers are falling short.”

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Cameron Harsh, CFS’s senior manager for organic and animal policy, called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reconsider its support for using antibiotics on livestock for disease prevention, urging the FDA to “better align domestic policies with the WHO and to take stronger measures to restrict and reduce use of antibiotics in food animals raised in the U.S.”

The WHO guidelines reflect growing concerns about the amount of antibiotics used in agriculture, and what that means for both humans and animals in the long term.

As Kazuaki Miyagishima, director of the WHO’s Department of Food Safety and Zoonosesn, explains: “the volume of antibiotics used in animals is continuing to increase worldwide, driven by a growing demand for foods of animal origin,” and “scientific evidence demonstrates that overuse of antibiotics in animals can contribute to the emergence of antibiotic resistance.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns that “a lack of effective antibiotics is as serious a security threat as a sudden and deadly disease outbreak.”

“Driven by the need to mitigate the adverse human health consequences of use of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals,” the guidelines (pdf) include four recommendations:

An overall reduction in use of all classes of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals;
Complete restriction of use of these antimicrobials in food-producing animals for growth promotions;
Complete restriction of use for prevention of infectious diseases that have not yet been clinically diagnosed; and
Antimicrobials classified by the WHO as “highest priority critically important” for human medicine should not ever be used to treat food-producing animals, while antimicrobials classified as “critically important” should not be used to control the dissemination of an infection within a group of food-producing animals.

Since 2005, WHO has published a list of antimicrobials categorized as “important,” “highly important,” or “critically important” to human medicine, with the goal of preserving the effectiveness of available antibiotics. The latest revision (pdf) was published in April 2017.

The guidelines also feature two best practice statements. In the first, the WHO declares that “any new class of antimicrobials or new antimicrobial combination developed for use in humans will be considered critically important for human medicine unless otherwise categorized by WHO.”

The second statement advises that “medically important antimicrobials that are not currently used in food production should not be used in future production including food-producing animals or plants,” acknowledging that although the guidelines focus on livestock rather than plants, using antibiotics on plants also contributes to antimicrobial resistance that can be transferred to humans.

The guidelines were released just ahead of U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week—an annual effort by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to raise awareness about antibiotic resistance—which begins November 13. The CDC found that as of 2013, more than 2 million Americans are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, and about 23,000 of those people die because of the infection.

By Tncse

Nature Offers Solutions to Water Woes and Flood Risks

November 13, 2019 | News | No Comments

When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defense, transportation, flood control, drinking water and food. After the Spaniards conquered the city in 1521, they drained the lake and built Mexico City over it.

The now-sprawling metropolis, with 100 times the number of inhabitants as Tenochtitlán at its peak, is fascinating, with lively culture, complex history and diverse architecture. It’s also a mess. Water shortages, water contamination and wastewater issues add to the complications of crime, poverty and pollution. Drained and drying aquifers are causing the city to sink—almost 10 meters over the past century!

“Conquering” nature has long been the western way. Our hubris, and often our religious ideologies, have led us to believe we are above nature and have a right to subdue and control it. We let our technical abilities get ahead of our wisdom. We’re learning now that working with nature—understanding that we are part of it—is more cost-effective and efficient in the long run.

Had we designed cities with nature in mind, we’d see fewer issues around flooding, pollution and excessive heat, and we wouldn’t have to resort to expensive fixes. Flooding, especially, can hit people hard in urban areas. According to the Global Resilience Partnership, “Floods cause more damage worldwide than any other type of natural disaster and cause some of the largest economic, social and humanitarian losses”—accounting for 47 percent of weather-related disasters and affecting 2.3 billion people over the past 20 years, 95 percent of them in Asia.

As the world warms, it’s getting worse. Recent floods in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal have affected more than 40 million people, killing more than 1,000. One-third of Bangladesh is under water. In Houston, Texas, Hurricane Harvey has killed dozens and displaced thousands, shut down oil refineries and caused explosions at chemical plants. Some say it’s one of the costliest “natural” disasters in U.S. history.

Although hurricanes and rain are natural, there’s little doubt that human-caused climate change has made matters worse. More water evaporates from warming oceans and warmer air holds more water. Climate change is also believed to have held the Houston storm in place for longer than normal, and rising sea levels contributed to greater storm surges.

A lax regulatory regime that allows developers to drain wetlands and build on flood plains has compounded Houston’s problems. The city has no zoning laws, and many wetlands and prairies—which normally absorb large amounts of water and prevent or lessen flood damage—have been drained, developed or paved over. President Donald Trump also rescinded federal flood protection standards put in place by the Obama administration and plans to repeal a law that protects wetlands. Compare Houston to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, which sit below sea level. Regulation and planning have helped the Dutch cities lower flood risk and save money.

As climate disruption accelerates in concert with still-increasing greenhouse gas emissions, people are looking for ways to protect cities from events like flooding. In China, authorities are aiming to make them more sponge-like. A Guardian article explained: “Designers will concede to the wisdom of nature to ensure water is absorbed when there’s an excess: instead of water-resistant concrete, permeable materials and green spaces will be used to soak up rainfall, and rivers and streams will be interconnected so that water can flow away from flooded areas.” As well as offering flood protection, the measures will also help prevent water shortages.

Cities worldwide have employed many of these flood-protection measures, including in the U.S. If China goes beyond its 16-city pilot project, it will be the largest-scale deployment of such combined measures ever.

Restoring natural areas costs much more than protecting them in the first place, more intense and frequent storms and floods can still overwhelm natural defenses, and growing human populations will further stress resources, but restoring natural assets is a start.

Ultimately, we must work with nature to prevent and adapt to problems such as flooding, water scarcity, wildfires and climate disruption. When we work against nature, we work against ourselves.

David Suzuki is a well-known Canadian scientist, broadcaster and environmental activist.

By Tncse

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