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Kit O'Connell: Approximately 8,000 Words Posts

Islamophobia Industry Spent $206M Building Hatred In US, But Here’s How To Create Love Instead

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Islamophobia is more profitable than ever in America, but a new report from a leading Muslim civil rights organization offers a new strategy to take the national conversation back from the proprietors of hate.

Thirty-three key organizations promoting anti-Muslim sentiment had access to a combined budget of $205,838,077 between 2008 and 2013, according to “Confronting Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the U.S. 2013-2015,” a report published on Monday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in collaboration with the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to these core organizations promoting hatred, the report identified 74 groups involved in the larger “U.S. Islamophobia network.” That’s an increase from the 69 groups identified in the previous report, “Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States,” published in 2013.

WikiLeaks’ Assange Enters Year 5 Of Confinement, War On Whistleblowers To Continue Indefinitely

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

On Sunday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marked the fourth anniversary of the day he entered the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on asylum.

Many, including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and philosopher and political analyst Noam Chomsky, voiced their support for Assange and their hopes for his eventual freedom. But Assange is just one of many victims of the U.S. war on whistleblowers, an unprecedented crackdown on government transparency that’s unlikely to end any time soon.

Assange entered the embassy on June 19, 2012 under threat of extradition to Sweden for questioning over allegations of improper sexual behavior toward two women. Swedish officials have refused to guarantee that Assange will not be extradited to a third country, and until recently, they’ve also refused invitations to question him at the embassy. Though the case against him has weakened over time, Assange still fears he could face decades in prison, or even the death penalty, if he were extradited from Sweden to the U.S., where a secretive, federal grand jury could indict him for hosting classified, leaked information on WikiLeaks.

Amid Anti-BDS Pressure, Facebook Israel Appoints Long-Time Netanyahu Advisor To Policy Post

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

An advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking a top post at Facebook amid calls for increased censorship on the social network.

Facebook recently announced that Jordana Cutler would head policy and communications at the social media giant’s Israel office. Cutler currently works as the chief of staff for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and is a long-time advisor to the prime minister.

“The appointment comes amidst growing Israeli government frenzy concerning incitement allegations and BDS, the global non-violent movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, whose often viral presence online exposes Israeli human rights violations,” wrote Dorgham Abusalim, a foreign policy analyst at Mondoweiss, on Monday.

PCBs Poison America’s Teachers & Students, But EPA & Monsanto Won’t Take Responsibility

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

A toxic chemical that used to be prevalent in construction materials may still be hiding in the walls of thousands of American schools, and experts believe the EPA is doing too little to prevent it from poisoning a new generation of children.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, a family of chemicals better known as PCBs, were commonly used in building materials until 1979, when they were finally banned due to the threat they pose to human health.

But the damage had already been done, according to Al Letson, the host of the Reveal podcast.

Beyond ISIS: Orlando Mass Killing Is About Much, Much More Than ‘Radical Islam’

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

In the wake of the worst mass killing on U.S. soil since 9/11, politicians and the media seized on the killer’s purported declaration of allegiance to Middle Eastern terrorist groups as an excuse to demand more military intervention overseas and an increasingly militarized homeland.

Omar Mateen, the 29-year-old shooter who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando on Sunday, reportedly declared allegiance to Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the the terrorist group known in the West as ISIS or ISIL) during a 911 call placed just before he began his attack.

As journalists and investigators piece together the evidence, a complex picture is emerging of a conflicted man whose hate and violence were decidedly homegrown.

But this hasn’t stopped the presumptive presidential nominees from both major political parties from using Mateen’s actions as an excuse to call for waging more war and expanding the power of domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Corruption At The UN: Whistleblower Investigated, Child Sexual Abuse Ignored

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

A whistleblower who alerted authorities to the alleged rape of children by U.N. peacekeepers resigned after top U.N. officials investigated him instead of investigating the accusations he called attention to.

When U.N. officials failed to act on a confidential report which accuses French troops of sexually abusing refugee children in the Central African Republic, Anders Kompass, field operations director at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, leaked the report to the French government in 2014.
According to a June 7 report from IRIN, a news site focused on global humanitarian emergencies, “The alleged abuse involved hungry children – as young as eight – in the M’Poko camp for displaced people, coerced into sex in return for food or a little money.”

Now Kompass is calling it quits. He told Obi Anyadike, IRIN’s editor-at-large, that the situation has made it “impossible for me to continue working there.”