Can you really cry for the victim while you are simultaneously arming the aggressor ? Apparently you can, especially if you are the kkkanadian government.....
Too often international “aid” seems to be like the rich and powerful buying “indulgences” to atone for their sins in medieval times. Certainly it is commonly doled out to gloss over global inequities. It’s definitely a tool Ottawa employs to present itself as generous while sustaining unequal corporate and imperial power structures that benefit Canada.
At a recent donor meeting the Canadian government pledged $70 million for Yemen. To explain the donation Minister of International Development Karina Gould declared, “Yemen is undergoing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and its people deserve decisive action. Their suffering must end, and their rights and dignity must be protected. We must do everything possible to make this happen.”
But Gould’s “everything possible” doesn’t include stopping Canada from fueling a six-year-old Saudi-led war that has left over 100,000 Yemenis dead. In response to the international development minister’s announcement World Beyond War Canada’s Rachel Small tweeted, “genuinely floored by the hypocrisy. $295 million in aid to Yemen since 2015 is a drop in the bucket compared to $6 billion in weapons Canada exported to Saudi Arabia in the same period. As Karina Gould knows the most important action needed for Yemen is for Canada to stop arming Saudi Arabia.”
According to Statistics Canada data for January, Canadian armoured vehicle sales reached a whopping $487 million, the largest ever monthly total. Canada also exported $4.8 million worth of “arms and ammunition” to the Saudis in January. Additionally, Montreal-based flight simulator company CAE has trained Saudi pilots in numerous locales. “Under Trudeau, Canada Is Saudi Arabia’s Most Dedicated Gunrunner”, explains a recent article by Kelsey Gallagher of Project Ploughshares.
In a sign of the depraved state of Liberal discourse, Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae, simply denies it all. He recently claimed, “we don’t sell arms to any of the parties to the conflict” in Yemen while six months ago Rae responded to a UN report that documented Canada’s role in fueling the conflict by labeling Canadian exported armoured vehicles “jeeps”. “It’s not what you’d call a weapon,” he said.
Alongside the weapon deliveries, the Liberals have mostly ignored Saudi violence in Yemen. They have rarely criticized Saudi bombing and when they have it has been in polite terms.
At best Canada’s aid to Yemen is a bandage on a humanitarian catastrophe spurred by a war Ottawa fuels.
A similar dynamic is at play with Canadian aid for international COVID-19 support. In December Canada put up $485 million to help impoverished nations access vaccines. But Ottawa has hoarded vaccines, having amassed enough to inoculate the entire Canadian population five times over. More troublingly, the government has refused to support a World Trade Organization (WTO) proposal calling for a temporary waiver of certain rules on intellectual property rights to allow poor countries to produce COVID-19 vaccines. The World Health Organization and over 100 countries back the “Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the Prevention, Containment and Treatment of COVID-19”. Canada and a number of other rich countries are refusing to support an initiative opposed by Big Pharma. Under mounting pressure over the five-month-old proposal, the Trudeau government now denies it opposes the patent waiver, claiming it simply wants more information about the effectiveness of the proposal. In the meantime, the initiative has been repeatedly put off and much of the Global South has little access to COVID vaccines.
Canada’s COVID donation masks Ottawa’s unwillingness to challenge Big Pharma and the broader intellectual property rights lobby.
Individual aid projects are often helpful (though many are not). Still, progressives shouldn’t spend time calling for more aid. In a just world, transfer payments from wealthier regions to poorer ones would smooth out inequities. But, in the here and now it’s important to be cautious about feeding ‘more Canada’ ideology that enables destructive, interventionist, policies.
Rather than pushing for more aid, progressives should challenge corporate and imperial power structures. In this vein, activists recently delivered a letter to the PMO signed by 68 groups, representing one million Canadians, demanding an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Similarly, dozens of groups sent a letter to Trudeau last week calling on Canada to support a WTO waiver for COVID vaccines.
Beyond specific campaigns, we need social movements and political parties to challenge the arms economy and upward flow of wealth spurred by intellectual property rights accords and other forms of exploitation. In brief we need masses of Canadians questioning an unjust status quo.
We need to build a peaceful, fair world where aid is given because we are all our sisters’ keepers
Here's yet another person who veered from the accepted narrative, and was thus vilified by mainstream media for "endangering his people" and for "being reckless". President John Mugufuli (RIP) of Tanzania showed the world how foolish and unreliable the covid tests are, and was then attacked for it.
Whatever your thoughts on this are, it's important to at least try to hear another viewpoint and not just dismiss it due to fear and uncritical acceptance of everything the various imperialist governments say about this .
John Magufuli: Death of an African Freedom Fighter, Confronted Big Pharma and the Corrupt Covid Cabal
All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
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In the Western world, African leaders are invisible, until that is, they draw the ire of the Globalati, the Pandemic Curia, the WHO, and its Virus-obsessed Media.
On Wednesday March 17, the queasy, seemingly unreal news broke out of Tanzania: “We have lost our courageous leader, President John Magufuli, who has died from a heart illness,” said Tanzanian Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan, in a television broadcast that shocked the world and revealed the new Covid-Colonial order in no uncertain terms: No matter what Magufuli may have achieved for Tanzania, trying, for example, to protect her from Covid’s economic ravages, his “denialism” meant that the world, including Tanzania, was better off without him. So much for Black Lives Matter—none of its pieties would apply to Africa’s economic liberators.
Everybody in the Covid trenches felt the shock death to be connected to Magufuli’s provocation to the global Covid industrial complex last May, when he covertly had non-human samples—from fruits, goats, sheep, and car oil—tested for Covid on the PCR test, returning positive results from a paw-paw, a quail, and a goat.
With humor, cheek, and audacity, Magufuli had crossed a line—exposing the fraud and illegitimacy of the PCR testing apparatus that the WHO relied on to justify the global lockdown, the terror, and the vaccine rollouts. After the disturbing results came in, Magufuli suspended the head of Tanzania’s National Health Laboratory, Nyambura Moremi, and formed a 10-person investigative committee. The EU had given Tanzania 27 million Euros to impose strict Covid lockdown measures, but along with the Presidents of Belarus and Burundi, Magufuli kicked the WHO out of his country.
It is no mystery why Dr. Magufuli took on the absurdity of using PCR as a frightening tool for a (putative) Corona virus.
Magufuli earned his bachelor of science in education degree, majoring in chemistry and mathematics as teaching subjects from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1988 and subsequently earned masters and doctoral degrees in chemistry, again from the University of Dar es Salaam, in 1994 and 2009, respectively. In late 2019, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Dodoma for improving the economy of the country.
In addition, he’d declared that vaccines didn’t work and were dangerous, while keeping Tanzania open for business and refusing to adhere to either social distancing or masks. Meanwhile, as though bearing out the notion that Covid only becomes a problem when a country bows to its dictates, Tanzania turned up next to no “cases” or deaths from Covid. As of March 18, the official numbers, according to Our World In Statistics were: 509 cases, 183 recovered, and 21 deaths, since Jan. 22, 2020.
On Twitter, some of his extraordinary achievements, totally absent from media reports, began to emerge:
“Magufuli will be remembered for these top 4 things:
Moved Tanzania to a middle income country in a single term.
Built Africa’s best electric railway, which is still a dream in the USA.
Slaughtered corruption and plundering of TZ resources.
Downplayed Covid-19
— Serial Tweeper
“His death is a win for imperialists who will stop at nothing until they control Africa. He was a true leader who had the interests of his people at heart.” — Generational Youth Talks
“You have to be Tanzanian to understand how great Magufuli was.” — Protas Manunited
“He was very unique in decision making. Now we go back to stealing minerals.” — Mwesiga Credius
Magufuli—who fought corruption and foreign bribes—rejected a $10 billion loan from China, banned Government officials from foreign trips, and radically cut back both the size of his cabinet, their salaries, and his own salary. It was reported that in 2019, according to Tweeter “Blacks Region,” China offered to give Tanzania a loan to expand Dar es Salaam’s port if they agreed to have no construction of a new port, have the Chinese run the port for 30 years, and provide the Chinese a 99-year lease. “President Magufuli refused, saying only a madman would sign that.”
He also fought foreign gold mines and accused them of extensive criminal corruption. Reuters reported in 2017:
“Tanzanian President John Magufuli has said he will close all the mines if mining companies delay negotiations to resolve a dispute over billions of dollars in back taxes which the government say they owe.” Magufuli himself tweeted on July 1, 2020, that the World Bank had declared Tanzania a “middle income country,” a full five years ahead of the projected schedule. “GOD BLESS TANZANIA,” he wrote.
None of this warmed him to the United States, which issued a condescending statement, reasserting that we are now the United States of Covid and Political Correctness: We offered our condolences to Tanzanians, “…as they advocate for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and work to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. We hope that Tanzania can move forward on a democratic and prosperous path.” The frosty statement seemed to suggest that Magufuli had done none of the above, but that it would all be achieved now that he was out of the way.
What right do we have to condemn the late Magufuli’s Covid “denialism” when they show 21 deaths and we report over 500,000? (A false number through and through.) Maybe “Covid denialism” is the best policy ever? Maybe, like Goethe’s Forest King, it only kills if you’re afraid of it and believe in it.
Certainly, Magufuli’s death was unexpected. The Tanzanian anti-corruption populist, nicknamed “the bulldozer,” seemed the very picture of health. Yet he’d not been seen since Feb. 27, creating a lot of innuendo and predictive programming from his foes that he was hidden away somewhere, dying of Covid. The idea that he’d died of a heart condition, while being treated in a hospital for it, also seemed far-fetched, for such a relatively young and energetic leader.
If this was true, that Magufuli’s heart had given out, it’s impossible to underestimate how many sworn enemies of his radical, unapologetic, anti-globalist economic policies were thanking their lucky stars, some of them openly.
Tanzanians, meanwhile, wailed, cried, and screamed as the body of their beloved leader was driven through Dar es Salaam to lay in state:
You’d never have a clue Magufuli was loved in his country at all if you only looked at Western media headlines, consistent in their icy Covid-Imperial tone—projecting that Magufuli was rightfully swept away by the very “virus” he “denied” while alive.
None of the corporate media outlets—not one—quoted Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s statement that President Magufuli had died of a heart condition. It was as if that particular international event did not occur—as if the story’s spin was coordinated and pre-written, which should surprise none of us. Instead, the world’s press (outside of Africa) ran almost identical headlines, reducing Magufuli’s 6-year transformative reign to a spitting contest over his “Covid denialism,” while pushing an unsourced “rumor” he’d died of Covid.
Some typical headlines:
“John Magufuli: Tanzania’s President dies aged 61 after Covid rumours” —BBC News
“John Magufuli, Tanzania leader who played down Covid, dies at 61″ —The New York Times
“Tanzania’s Covid-19 denying president, John Magufuli, dead at 61” —New York Post
“Tanzania’s President John Magufuli who urged citizens ‘to pray coronavirus away’ has died” —CNN
“Tanzania’s Covid-skeptic leader Magufuli dies after weeks of rumors about his health” —NBC News
“Tanzania’s Covid-Denying President, John Magufuli, dies aged 61” —The Guardian
They all drew their disapproving angle, curiously, not from the Tanzanian government’s official statement, but from Kenyan TV (KTV), which bore him political hostility.
The rumor (which displaced the Tanzanian Vice President’s statement) was never even attributed to a named source, but also included the secondary rumor that Magufuli had had to be flown to Kenya—or possibly India—to be treated for his top-secret “Covid” (the new AIDS—multi-faceted weapon that can be used against political enemies for virtually any desired outcome).
Some cited an “opposition leader.” Beyond the borders of Western media, the source of the internationally quoted rumor came clear: The man Magufuli defeated in the last election: Tundu Lissu, who, from exile in Europe, became the oracle on what had killed Magufuli. “Covid took him down,” Lissu was quoted by several newspapers as saying, even adding, cruelly: “It’s poetic justice,” and of course, the banal and ubiquitous accusation, designed to attract reward biscuits from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
“He denied science.”
In this tweet, Lissu draws the post-Colonial/Virus-Colonial line in the sand, making clear how he sees Tanzania’s future, as one of “science” and “international cooperation.”
The Deccan Herald openly ran headlines quoting Lissu as an authority on Magufuli’s death:
Is this language not flatly racist? Or is Pharma-Colonialism a blank check for the racism that is prohibited in other contexts?
Author, broadcaster, and nutritionist Keidi Obi Awabu commented in his broadcast devoted to Magufuli’s death:
“Opposition politicians seem to be the darlings of the Western Press.”
The Independent ran with a similar headline that didn’t clarify at all that it had no actual sources for its assertion that Magufuli was sick with “Covid.”
The hammering of the international media against Magufuli was a traumatic reenactment of how they maligned and attacked former South African President Thabo Mbeki 20 years ago, for stepping off the beaten pharmaceutical NGO path on HIV/AIDS.
Colonialism in Africa has been replaced by what I call “Virus Colonialism,” which demands that every nation fall in line with the WHO’s declared pandemics, from HIV to Covid. They must not question any facet of the so-called “science,” which occludes a vast array of incalculable injuries inflicted on Africa in the name of these putative viral emergencies. God forbid they themselves decide what their government health policies and priorities should be. Colonialism never dies; it just takes on new forms.
The Paw-Paw Incident
While Mbeki invited 33 HIV experts to Pretoria in 2000, from both sides of the HIV causation and medication debate (and was forced to resign over it), Magufuli did something much simpler, but possibly even more provocative to the Globalist Colonial Powers. In early May, he stood before cameras and narrated the results of a Tanzanian government experiment that quite literally blew a hole in the hull of the entire Covid Propaganda Ship. He had understood that the PCR Covid “test” was creating the mass illusion of sickness and death to come, by counting “cases,” and decided to see just how reliable the test was. The results were as shocking as they were comical.
Speaking slowly and deliberately, Magufuli said: “We took samples from goats. We took samples from sheep. We took samples from a paw-paw. We even took samples from car oil.” He went on to say they had taken samples also from “other things” which included: jackfruit, a kware bird, and a rabbit. They gave all the non-human samples human names and ages, and this was the result he announced:
The car oil (named Jabil Hamza, male, 30) came back negative on the PCR test. The jackfruit (named Sara Samuel, 45,) was inconclusive. The paw-paw fruit, “We named it Elizabeth Ane,” he said. “The results of the paw-paw came back positive—that it has Corona. That means the liquid from the paw-paw is positive.” The bird sample was also positive, as was the goat sample.
Smiling in the sun, Magufuli said, displaying his subtle sense of humor: “That means all the paw-paws should be in isolation also.” He then wondered whether “…all the goats that we have here,” or at least the one which tested positive, “…should also be in isolation.”
He’d made his point, but he was also serious: He instructed the Tanzanian security forces to investigate what he saw as clear corruption with these so-called test kits. He understood that the test was the gateway for the overtaking, by WHO and its satellite forces, of Tanzania’s population, economy, civil liberties, and resources.
Population Control Disguised as Charity
“There is something happening,” he said. “I said before we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation.” In another talk he said: “Vaccines are dangerous,” and also stressed the common-sense observation: “We have lived for over a year without the virus and the good evidence is most of you don’t wear masks.”
As a PhD chemist, Magufuli held a post as an industrial chemist in Tanzania for many years, and even blew the whistle on the sterilizing effects of the Gardasil vaccine:
“In a certain country, its girl children – aged below 14 years – were vaccinated against what was said to be cervical cancer, but it later emerged that the vaccination was meant to make them infertile,” he said.
Beneath the Covid war lies a spiritual battle which many Christians see as nothing less than a Satanic attack. This is another front that the secular international media, accusing Magufuli of “denying science,” attacked and mocked him on.
He called Covid “the devil” (shatani) and said that it “cannot live in the body of Christ.” Dr. Stella Immanuel, from America’s Frontline Doctors, made similar points in her speeches, stressing that the fear itself was diabolical and was killing people.
Magufuli’s “paw-paw” video went viral on social media, among the ever-growing ranks of Covid “skeptics,” who’d understood that the PCR test, which its inventor Kary Mullis always stressed was not designed to identify “infection” with a virus, but could take any single molecule, and mass-amplify it, as one can cast shadows on a wall and make them appear fearsome.
A bio-tech illusion, used to collapse the economy and freedom of the entire world.
One of many examples of Magufuli’s successes, here is a photo of the airport in Dar es Salaam, rebuilt on his watch:
On Feb. 24, days before the last time he was seen, Magufuli was in rare form, unveiling a massive road project in Dar es Salaam, and stressing that only the ruling CCM party could have achieved this. His mantra was “Hapa Kazi Tu” (Work Is My Only Focus). “Tanzania is a rich country,” he said. “We have to use our wealth in order to develop.”
Most ironically, one of the last things his people ever heard him say was in answer to the question of how the project was finished on time. “It was completed on time because no-one used Corona as an excuse to delay it,” he said, applauding the contractors and instructing government officials not to even think of using Covid as an excuse to delay the development of Tanzania’s critical infrastructure projects. His last public appearance ended with a choir serenading him.
Kenyan attorney, scholar, and former Director of Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission Patrick Lumumba is a great admirer of Magufuli. After a sit-down meeting with Magufuli, he coined a new verb: “To magulify.”
He explained:
“What is ‘to magulify’? To magulify, which we will not find in the English dictionary but I hope it will find a place in the next issue of the dictionary…is to create an environment where resources are used efficiently, to create an environment where leadership is disciplined, and to serve one’s country with dedication and in the spirit of patriotism. When you say and do that, then, you have been magulified.”
May his eternal spirit protect Tanzania from the worthless PCR test, from Covid terror, lockdown, and all the internationally sanctioned plunders Magufuli gave his life to keep at bay.
That paw-paw, “Elizabeth Ane,” that goat, and that quail, with their positive Covid tests, will forever be a thorn in the side of the Covid industrial complex, thanks to the ingenuity and courage of John Pombe Magufuli.
I'm sure most people are aware by now of the recent attacks on people of Asian descent within the borders of the united states . As usual, this didn't fall out of the sky, but there is a whole ugly history behind it. It has nothing to do with fuckface trump , it has to do with the country and it's founding, and also it's exploitative imperialist system.
Today’s Horrific Outrageous Rise in Attacks on Asians Within the US—and the History Behind This
| revcom.us
A Chinese kid comes home crying after a classmate pushes her to the ground and yells, “Go back to China, you kung flu virus.” Her mom dries her tears and says, “Remember, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.”
But this is AmeriKKKa, where racism is deeply woven into everything—and where words do in fact not only hurt, but kill.
An 84-year-old Thai immigrant in San Francisco died after being violently shoved to the ground. An 89-year-old Chinese woman was slapped and set on fire in Brooklyn. A 75-year-old Asian man died after being violently shoved to the ground during a robbery in Oakland. In Georgia a man confronted an Asian woman outside a store saying, ‘F**king lying b*tch Who the f**k are you... You’re spreading this shit. F**king nasty dirty conspiracy Chinese! You’re why we gotta wear masks, you disease-spreading, b!tch. F**k your people!”1
Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, there’s been a dramatic rise in anti-Asian attacks. There have been at least 3,800 reported incidents—a 150 percent increase from the year before, with 40 percent of the victims Chinese and 60 percent women.2 And since the start of the pandemic anti-Asian attacks have really been on the rise in many other countries around the world.3
On March 16, Robert Long, a 21-year-old white guy in Atlanta, drove to three different Asian-owned spas and killed eight people—six of them Asian women.
And there are thousands more incidents of anti-Asian verbal abuse, shunning, discrimination, physical attacks and vandalism.
There’s a Whole History Here...
White supremacy and racism is built into the bloodstream of this country and as part of this, there’s a whole history of anti-Chinese, anti-Asian xenophobic thinking, and racist attacks.4
In the 1860s American companies went to China and recruited Chinese men who were then brought to the U.S. and brutally exploited building the transcontinental railroad. Tens of thousands were packed like cattle into squalid hulls of ships, many dying on the voyage across the Pacific Ocean. They came to the “Gold Mountain” with dreams of making money and returning to their villages. Instead, they were labeled “the yellow peril” and faced savage discrimination, repression, and racist pogroms. In 1871, a white mob of 500 tortured and murdered 17-20 Chinese in downtown Los Angeles. In 1885, white vigilantes massacred 28 Chinese miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented Chinese from immigrating and remained in effect until 1943. Many laws specifically discriminated against Chinese in schools, housing, and jobs.
During World War 2, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and put in concentration camps—by the “enlightened liberal” president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And over the decades there have been many instances of anti-Asian crimes.
Historically the U.S. has fanned racism and xenophobia (hatred of foreigners), spreading American chauvinism and divisions among the people. The U.S. has waged many unjust wars against Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. And each time, these wars have been accompanied by the most obscene racist dehumanization of the peoples of those countries. The Vietnamese were called “gooks.” Efforts to prevent Chinese immigration and the fight against Japan in World War 2 came with cartoons of slanty-eyed, buck-toothed, yellow people. And this in turn, fanned racism against Asian people living the United States. And there was the literal “rape and plunder” of these countries. Brothels went up around U.S. Army bases and women were raped by U.S. soldiers. Asian women were debased and depicted as “exotic” sexual toys.
In recent years, there has also been the targeting of people from the Middle East and South Asia as possible “terrorists,” leading to roundups in these communities, imprisonment without trial, deportations, pervasive government surveillance, use of informers and provocateurs, and more. And another part of this whole picture is the way various ruling class political forces have promoted ant-Asian racism among industrial workers—telling them that their jobs have been “stolen” by Asian workers who are being super-exploited abroad in assembly line sweatshops. And this too reverberates, resulting in anti-Asian attacks in the United States.
In 1982, two days before his wedding, Chinese-American Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two white men who held Chin responsible for auto workers losing their jobs because of the Japanese auto industry. In 1987, police in Sonoma County, California, fatally shot Kwan Chung Kao. The cops claim Kao, who was drunk and waving a broomstick, was shot because they “thought he was a martial arts expert.” No charges were brought against the pigs. In 1996, 24-year-old Vietnamese-American Thien Minh Ly was stabbed to death by what police described as two “white supremacist types.” Investigators say one suspect bragged to a friend, “Oh, I killed a Jap a while ago.”5
Now with the COVID-19 crisis, anti-Asian sentiment has taken on a whole new life—fanned by the same white supremacists that consider Confederate flag wavers “very fine people.” Trump’s rants about the “Chinese Virus,” the “Kung Flu,” and the “China Plague” have been echoed by his supporters, including in the government, and by right-wing media like Fox News. Who can doubt the link between the racist shit spewing from Trump’s lips and the anti-Asian attackers who shout, “go back to China,” and “dirty Chinese”? One Asian woman was sprayed with Lysol by someone who yelled, “You’re the infection. Go Home!”
The ugly, racist thinking that’s led to the brutal treatment of Asian people, as well as Black people and other people of color, is certainly alive and well—among the rulers of this country and throughout society.
At a March 18 House of Representatives hearing on anti-Asian discrimination, Republican Chip Roy from Texas decried the hearing as “policing free speech,” and then claimed he was “in favor of justice” by outright referring to lynching—saying, “We believe in justice. There’s old sayings in Texas about find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree.”
Incredibly ugly, profoundly disgusting, and outrageously racist, yes. And American as apple pie!
2. Statistics from Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition of community organizers and academics formed in March 2020 which reports on instances of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans. This number only represents reported incidents and there are undoubtedly many more. [back]
Corpses of victims of the largest mass lynching in U.S. history, when a white mob of 500 tortured and murdered 17-20 Chinese in downtown Los Angeles, 1871.
Work on the last mile of the Pacific Railroad. Photo: Library of Congress.
Japanese internment, Byron, California: Farm families of Japanese ancestry board buses for Turlock Assembly Center, 1942. Photo: Dorothea Lange
Of course the assholes in charge in any government position don't care about migrant children, alone or otherwise. This story will surprise some people, but it shouldn't. Idiot biden is running the same oppressive system as fuckface trump was. It's all got to go.
Outrage over child detention center reopened over toxic dump
Plans to reopen a migrant detention facility on top of toxic military waste in Homestead, Fla., have sparked anger. Located just south of Miami, the closed facility was the largest center for unaccompanied migrant children — with 3,200 beds — before it was shut down in 2019 due to national outrage and community organizing against it.
Im/migrants in detention are often given aluminum blankets, like the repurposed one in this graphic. WW Photo: Mirinda Crissman
As of Feb. 22, the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden Administration plan to reopen the temporary “shelter” built to detain migrant children, this time under the name “Biscayne Influx Care Facility.”
The facility sits near Homestead Air Reserve Base. According to a report by Earthjustice and the American Friends Service Committee, its location poses serious health and safety threats to children, including exposure to toxic chemicals. The site is less than a mile from eight hot spots with 16 different sources of contamination. Lead, mercury, arsenic, pesticides and volatile compounds — many of which are carcinogenic and can cause chronic health issues — have been found in the soil and groundwater. (tinyurl.com/5vcd3h8k)
Not only is it near the site of toxic military waste, but Earthjustice and AFSC found that its proximity to the military base “violates federal and county noise restrictions. Detained kids are exposed to noise from F-16 jets at levels that can cause memory loss and cognitive stunting.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tried to spin the deliberate decision to open these “overflow care facilities” as a response to coronavirus. HHS has 13,200 beds for children, having added over 80 facilities in the last four years for a total of 200. Because of cramped, unsanitary conditions, with little ability to social distance during a pandemic, only half of these beds are usable. Influx centers like the one in Homestead or one that was recently reopened in Carrizo Springs, Texas, cost $775 a day per child. (Washington Post, Feb. 22)
Detention for profit
These overflow facilities for migrants have very little to do with caring for children and everything to do with profits. Until late 2019, the Homestead detention center was run by Comprehensive Health Services, Inc., a subsidiary of HHS operator Caliburn International Corp.
Under their ownership, children were packed like sardines into cold rooms that hold 70 to 250 kids. Many were detained for more than six months, according to interviews done by five legal and child psychology experts in February 2019. There were multiple cases of sexual abuse by staff.
“These children are in perhaps the most restrictive and least family-like setting possible,” said Neha Desai, director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law. “I spoke with youth that slept in rooms with 100 other kids at night. Some of them have been there for months on end, with no freedom of movement, no privacy, no human contact.” (Huffington Post, Feb. 12, 2019)
New contractors looking to profit are already circling the proposed reopening of the Homestead facility. Serco, Inc. — a British contractor that has faced allegations of abuse and sexual assault in Britain and Australia — advertised “an exciting new career opportunity supporting direct care services and supervision of Biscayne Influx Facility.” Serco’s job posting has a disclaimer: “pending contract award.” (Miami Herald, March 7)
Because we have been forced to organize our societies around profit for a few, we see the U.S. capitalist government torturing children in toxic conditions and calling it “care.” These kids were forced into these cages because U.S. imperialism has made conditions in the countries they came from so unstable.
Whether it’s migrant children in what the powers that be call “influx” or ”overflow” facilities, or the 48,000 children held everyday in juvenile jails (Prison Policy Initiative, Dec. 19, 2019) — placing human children in cages is an everyday fact of U.S. empire. A government that is willing to do this to children is not the friend of the people and never has been. The facility in Homestead needs to be shut down again, and for good.
Abolish all forms of human caging! Tear down the walls!
