Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
For many in North America, the notion of a community without access to clean water seems like something that would only exist in a far-off, undeveloped country. Yet impoverished indigenous communities throughout the continent don’t have clean water or, in some cases, any running water at all.
For members of the Navajo Nation, and some of Canada’s First Nations tribes, the struggle to get clean water is a part of daily life.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
Against the objections of the United Nations, this week the United States and the United Kingdom together helped arm the world’s child soldiers.
Tuesday through Friday this week, the British capital played host to the world’s largest arms fair, Defence and Security Equipment International, where global arms vendors — many from the U.S. — sell their wares to world governments seeking to upgrade their arsenals. The event was expected to draw 32,000 visitors from 60 countries, including multiple nations that make use of child soldiers in violation of international law.
According to a report from The Guardian, of the 23 nations known by the United Nations to use child soldiers, the U.K. sold arms to 19 of them during the past five years.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
With wildfires blazing throughout the parched Western United States, the state of California has found a novel, though ethically questionable, way to save money on the state’s safety budget: Send state prisoners to work on the frontlines fighting forest fires for $2 per day.
“More than 100 wildfires are burning across the West — destroying dozens of homes, forcing hundreds of people to flee and stretching firefighting budgets to the breaking point,” wrote Tim Stelloh for NBC News on Monday. For California, he reported, that means some 14,000 firefighters combating 19 forest fires, including the “Jerusalem fire,” which covered over 25,000 acres before being mostly contained as of Saturday. “[T]he blaze — along with six others — was still sending smoke south across the San Francisco Bay Area,” Stelloh wrote.
About 4,000 low-level felons from California’s state prisons are fighting the fires, operating out of so-called “conservation camps,” according to Julia Lurie, writing on Friday for Mother Jones. “Between 30 and 40 percent of California’s forest firefighters are state prison inmates,” she reported. Inmates who committed certain offenses, like sex crimes or arson, are blocked from entering the firefighting program. Prisoners work in 24-hour shifts during forest fire season, followed by 24 hours off. Prisoners earn $2 a day just by being in the program, plus an additional $2 an hour when they are actively fighting fires.
Posted in Journalism, and Truthout
Before his first phone interview, Tim Burgess, a former prisoner, sent Truthout an email describing his experience during transport from a state prison in Vermont to a private prison 1,000 miles away in Kentucky.
“Imagine being ripped from a sound sleep, told to pack your belongings,” he wrote. “Having orders shouted at you, and being shackled at 2 am, when you have not done anything wrong and were a model inmate. When you ask questions because you have a heart condition, the only answer is, ‘Quiet inmate!’ And that was the first 20 minutes…”
Prisoners are secretly moved through US cities every day by bus, van or even airplane. The longest trips can involve days in cramped seats with a limited range of motion; prisoners remain heavily shackled even on rest stops and during meals. Being transferred is already a disorienting experience for any prisoner, usually tearing them away from their families and friends. Prisoners are often forced to drop out of classes or lose some of their valued possessions like books or musical instruments.
However, an issue that is rarely touched on is the brutality of the transport itself: The journey between prisons can be a traumatic experience that lingers long after the hours spent on the road.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
One year after a 16-year-old Palestinian was kidnapped from his home in Jerusalem and burned to death by Israeli settlers, his family and neighbors haven’t found peace, and justice seems even more elusive.
In the early morning of July 2, 2014, Mohammed Abu Khdeir was waiting for friends when he was kidnapped near his home. Witnesses and surveillance video showed him being forced into a car. His scorched and beaten body was found soon after in a nearby forest; Abu Khdeir had been burned alive by Jewish extremists.
Many saw Abu Khdeir’s brutal death as retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, who were buried just the day before. But even the mother of one of the slain Israelis decried the death of the Palestinian, telling the media, “There is no difference between blood and blood. Murder is murder. There is no justification and no atonement for murder.” The killing further inflamed the already high tensions between the people of Gaza and the occupying army in the lead up to the summer’s brutal war, during which Israeli forces killed thousands of civilians.
Posted in Austin, Journalism, and MintPress News
Dressed in a real prisoner’s clothing, an activist sat in silence on a busy college campus, alone inside a simulated solitary confinement cell drawn in chalk, on Thursday. Thousands of Texas prisoners spend about 23 hours a day in tiny confines with real walls holding them inside.
“Will you sign a postcard for my friend Alvaro?” asked Azzurra Crispino, another activist standing nearby.
The “prisoner” and his friend are part of Prison Abolition and Prisoner Support (PAPS), an Austin-based group that raises awareness about prison conditions while supporting the incarcerated. They were honoring June 11, a national day of action for long-term anarchist political prisoners held in dozens of cities around the world. For the hour and a half activists and supporters gathered under a shady tree at a corner of the University of Texas at Austin campus, the “prisoner” in the cell represented Alvaro Luna Hernandez, who has spent the last 13 years in solitary confinement in Texas prisons.
