refugees

Peace is an interlude between wars.
— Benito Mussolini

On a recent visit to Paris almost everyone I met asked me the same question: “Are you British insane? Are you really going to vote to leave the European Union?”
Based on the most recent polls, despite the deep scepticism of those same surveys after the last General Election, I could only answer: “It looks that way.”
Cue disbelieving looks, gasps and snorts of Gallic derision, often followed by the words: “You can always come and live here.”

For two months in the spring of 2016, two stateless Palestinian women from two refugee camps in Lebanon carried their message thousands of miles to audiences throughout North America.  Mariam Fathalla, expelled from Palestine in 1948 at the age of 18 and now 86 years old, and Amena Ashkar, born 22 years ago in the Bourj el-Barajneh camp, overcame many obstacles and were unable to overcome some, but their message never waivered. Palestine runs through our veins and we intend to return and to recover every square inch of it. It is our land and no one else is entitled to it.

For how much longer do we want to witness the annual palaver of these global conferences on poverty and undernutrition, while nothing is done on an adequate scale to help these tragically neglected people? Is it not true that all the millions of dollars spent on organising such recurring high-level summits over several decades could instead have been used to save many such lives already?

Photographer Ilvy Njiokiktjien describes what it was like to capture images of refugees in a Finnish saunaThe post Through my lens: a warm Finnish welcome appeared first on Positive News.

On May 12, Reuters revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is poised to undertake a 30-day “surge” in deportations. The label for the operation suggests a military-like endeavor—the stated goal of which is to arrest and deport hundreds of single adults, mothers, and children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who arrived after January 1, 2014, have been ordered to leave the country, yet remain in the United States without authorization.

In 1948, Zionist militias attacked Palestinian cities and villages and destroyed more than 530 Palestinian villages. About 13,000 Palestinians were killed and more than 750,000 were expelled from their homes, becoming refugees.

The last fortnight has seen the gloves come off as the Bremain camp engages in increasingly desperate scaremongering. Vote Bremain headed by that doyen of anti-corruption David Cameron is frightened by the stubborn insistence of millions of British people to reject the EU on June 23.
Polls reveal how Vote Bremain and Vote Brexit are neck and neck despite the avalanche of fear warmongering propaganda directed at the British public by Prime Minster Cameron and his big business supporters.
Brexit raises chances of war in Europe

This week, we take a look at the tens of thousands of migrants tapped in limbo in Europe, facing down the prospect of being deported back to the war zones they’ve just escaped.
For the musical break, we’ve got The Haymarket Squares, with Let’s Start a Riot.
We wrap things up with a look at the highly charged level of racial tensions in the United Snakes, and an interview with Paul, an organizer with All Out Atlanta, who helped coordinate a convergence of anti-racists to shut down the Klan at the battle of Stone Mountain.

On the 1s and 2s:

I spent the rest of my life on a long, winding journey of return, a journey that has taken me to dozens of counties over decades of travel, and turned my black hair to silver. But like a boomerang, I knew the end destination, and that the only way to it was the road of return I had decided to take.
— Salman Abu Sitta