"NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Amalia Dache of the University of Pennsylvania about race in Cuban society, and why Afro-Cubans have been at the forefront of recent protests."
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/25/1020342843/afro-cubans-come-out-in-droves-to-protest-government
-->Dr. Dache didn't have a good word to say about Cuba, but perhaps that might be expected since her family "escaped" from the island and her father had been a supposed "political prisoner." Dr. Dache makes some interesting points not often heard in our mainstream media: that Blacks in Cuba get universal healthcare and complete access to education, something not afforded people of color in the US. But the professor does not dwell on these positives about Cuba. She is clearly there to find fault with what she calls the "revolutionary dictatorship" leading the country. The government doesn't provide enough food for Black students to go to college. No mention, of course, of the intensely damaging US embargo in her discussion of this food scarcity.
Dr. Dache goes on to point out political repression of Blacks, skipping over the fact that the US has a much higher incarceration rate for African Americans at 38%. She might have also mentioned that the peak of race based discrimination in Cuban history occurred from 1898 - 1902, the period that the US invaded and occupied the island.
Dr. Dache takes Black Lives Matter to task for supporting calls to end the blockade of Cuba, a Black Lives stance that is rarely mentioned in our mainstream media. The embargo has, in fact, disproportionally hurt people of color in Cuba, another aspect that gets omitted in this little propaganda piece. NPR simply gives us more of the same when it comes to covering up US imperialism. Don't expect anything better when NPR reports on other targets of our military empire, be they Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Cuba.
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Common Dreams:
"Several of the same corporations and law firms that publicly condemned the passage of Georgia's voter suppression law in March also contributed thousands of dollars this year to state lawmakers and officials who supported the legislation, according to a new analysis of campaign finance disclosures, first reported on Thursday by the Washington Post.
'Many of the most powerful institutions in our society—global corporations and elite law firms—have made vague statements about supporting voting rights, but these statements are meaningless if these entities continue to fund the politicians behind restrictive voter legislation,' said Daniel Jones, president of Advance Democracy, the nonprofit research group behind the analysis.
Georgia's sweeping attack on voting rights, signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on March 25, restricts access to the ballot in numerous ways, including by limiting early and absentee voting, reducing the number of ballot drop boxes, and criminalizing those who attempt to provide food and water to voters who are often forced to wait in line for hours on end."
-->The NYT had a long article about the ins and outs of passing a voting rights act. Strangely the large corporate donations to Republicans opposing voting reform was left out.
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The Guardian UK:
"The latest flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip has been accompanied by a 'catalogue of violations' committed by Israeli police against Palestinians in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, according to research from Amnesty International.
Arab citizens of Israel have been subjected to unlawful force from officers during peaceful demonstrations, sweeping mass arrests, torture and other ill-treatment in detention, and police have failed to protect Palestinians from premeditated attacks by rightwing Jewish extremists, the human rights watchdog said on Thursday. ...
Palestinians face a culture of increasing repression and violence from the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, said Saleh Hijazi, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and north Africa. On Thursday protesters took to the streets of Ramallah over the death in custody of an outspoken political figure arrested by Palestinian security forces."
-->This is a simple story of human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. What isn't so simple is why readers have to find out about this in the English publication, "The Guardian," rather than in the NYT.
