Truthout:
"Community organizers and their supporters are celebrating that after years of local resistance, South Louisiana Methanol won’t complete a stalled $2.2 billion petrochemical complex in a region known as 'Cancer Alley.' In a statement Friday, the environmental law organization Earthjustice and groups it has represented in challenges to the project — RISE St. James, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, and the Sierra Club — highlighted a letter to the company from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ).
As the letter details, the LDEQ in July notified South Louisiana Methanol (SLM) that its application to modify permits for the complex in St. James Parish would be withdrawn from review unless the company provided the department with necessary information by August 19.
'No response from SLM was received. Accordingly, LDEQ hereby withdraws the aforementioned application from review,' the letter states, adding that new authorization would be required to start or resume construction."
-->This is a real victory against corporate polluters that have targeted Black communities. Cancer Alley is a relic of Jim Crow. Too bad the NYT didn't cover this important story.
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Stanford Internet Observatory:
"Stanford Internet Observatory collaborated with Graphika to analyze a large network of accounts removed from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in our latest report. This information operation likely originated in the United States and targeted a range of countries in the Middle East and Central Asia. ...
Our joint investigation found an interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia. The platforms’ datasets appear to cover a series of covert campaigns over a period of almost five years rather than one homogeneous operation.
These campaigns consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran. The accounts heavily criticized Russia in particular for the deaths of innocent civilians and other atrocities its soldiers committed in pursuit of the Kremlin’s 'imperial ambitions' following its invasion of Ukraine in February this year."
https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/sio-aug-22-takedowns
-->Congratulations to the NYT and Washington Post for covering this story. At least the empire's "fake news" gets exposed in some US media. What about NPR, that bastion of anti-Russian propaganda? No mention of this story on Public Radio.
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Democracy Now:
"Leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party say the FBI carried out a violent raid on its properties with flash grenades and drones early Friday morning in Missouri and Florida. The pan-Africanist group has been a longtime advocate for reparations for slavery and a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy. ...
'And then we heard this loud racket outside, this noise from loudspeakers demanding that the residents of this property should come out with our hands up and nothing in our hands. And as this was being said, loud flashbang grenades were exploding all around the house and, I was later to learn, in the back stairwell of the house. So, I asked her [his wife] to allow me to leave first, and to get on the phone to call people to let them know that we were being raided. And she tried but was unable to do it because they had jammed our phones. ...'
They had already knocked out the windows in the house, in my house. They had knocked some doors loose from the hinges. They had come to the back stairwell, as I mentioned. They used flashbang grenades in the rear of my house, plaster all over everything. ... So, clearly, you know, we’ve been targeted. They stole cellphones. They stole laptops. They stole iPads. They stole something like 40 years of archives that we have in that building in St. Petersburg, Florida, of the history of our movement, of our party and the struggle there in St. Petersburg. And they also detained — they went to the residence of Akilé Anai, who is a young woman who oversees most of our communications work. And they told her a lie that someone was breaking into her car, to draw her outside of the house.' -Omali Yeshitela
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/8/10/black_socialist_chairman_fbi_raid_response
-->Omali Yeshitela has been on Activist Radio twice in the last couple of years. But why wasn't this political raid covered in the NYT? This stuff is right out of the Jim Crow days of COINTLPRO. Shame on the NYT for keeping this political raid on a Black activist community secret.
