Bolivia is dealing with the contentious results of a recent election and, as The Nation reports, “Even if this fraud thing falls apart, I don’t know if people who are protesting against the results will accept the results, because there’s so much mistrust in…the whole electoral process.”
Many Western countries are taking time to address the consequences of climate change, but for poorer countries like Guatemala, as The Intercept reports, that is not a luxury they can afford. “Just beyond, Guatemala’s Motagua River pours into the Caribbean, carrying with it a daily freight of trash washed out of overcrowded city dumps and unofficial landfills hundreds of miles upstream.”
Protests in Hong Kong have been widely covered by mainstream media that continues to dissect why so many protesters have taken to the streets. On the contrary, as FAIR reports, far less attention is being paid to the public protests in Haiti, Ecuador and Chile.
When people think of drug trafficking, they usually don’t consider what kind of environmental impact that might have, as the human component tends to take precedent. However, as Truthdig reports, some traffickers deal in the sale of rare fish and in the process “The earth’s most endangered whale has become a victim not only of the usual environmental suspects, but, due to the fact that its habitat in the Sea of Cortez is also home to the totoaba, a valuable fish, it has been caught up in none other than the drug trade.”
Nearly half of homeless people in America live in the state of California. And the the state authorities continue to break up encampments. As Democracy Now! reports, “The city of Oakland has vowed to permanently close the encampment by the new year, but the people living there say the city has not offered them viable housing alternatives. Homelessness in Oakland has grown by nearly 50% in the past two years.”
Counterpunch says that “Bernie Sanders is the people’s choice for president for a reason. The neoliberal revolution that began in the 1970s not only hasn’t benefited most people economically, it has led to falling life expectancies …The political establishment’s failure to respond, or even acknowledge that there is a problem, is reflected in the class divide between business and oligarch campaign contributions to the 2020 establishment candidates and small donor support for Mr. Sanders.”
The recent testimony by Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s role in political advertising has prompted many to reassess how much freedom the company should be given when it comes to political campaigns. The Real News Network approaches this issue by speaking with Timothy Carr of the Free Press who said “In this case, politicians are given free rein to lie, to say things that are dangerous, in some cases, and dishonest, while Facebook’s own community standards disallow its regular users to make the same lies.”
Despite a decrease of news coverage in the U.S., Venezuela is still dealing with the U.S. backed un-elected leader, Juan Guaidó. Increased ‘assistance’ has been diverted to Venezuela by the U.S. to support, as The Grayzone calls it, a “shadow government”. A memo obtained by the L.A. Times reveals that USAID is diverting $41.9 million from aid for Central America and instead sending it “to Guaidó and his faction,”
Peter Souza with this week’s tweet of the week:
In spite of Hillary Clinton being absent from the current Democratic primary, that has not stopped her from providing her input, specifically when it comes to Tulsi Gabbard. According to The Ghion Journal, this animosity may be pushing the DNC to help out Gabbard’s opponent in the primary in order to get back at her for daring to criticize Clinton.
The HEADLINES:
1. ‘He died whimpering and crying’: Trump announces Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid in Syria (The Independent)2. The American System of Tipping Makes No Sense (The Atlantic)
3. Sondland Testified Trump Pressure On Ukraine Was Quid Pro Quo, His Lawyer Tells WSJ (HuffPost)
4. California orders new evacuations as blackout begins (BBC)
5. No 10 to explore other routes towards election after Lib Dem proposal (The Guardian)
