Links – Feb. 18, 2019

February 18, 2019 Struggle for socialism

I refuse to honor George Washington, and other ‘founders’ who enslaved and sold human beings Denise Oliver Velez

Thousands Strike At Mexican Factories, ‘It’s Become a Social Movement’ teleSUR

The Whitest News You Know. The false promise of a press for everybody The Baffler

Labor

Adam Wainwright: MLB Players Will ‘100 Percent’ Go on Strike, Barring Change Bleacher Report

Top Federal Labor Agency Fires Its Union TPM

The first of several US military transport planes arrived in Cucuta on the Colombian border with Venezuela. Photo: BBC

Venezuela and Haiti

U.S. Masses Aid Along Venezuelan Border As Some Humanitarian Groups Warn Of Risks NPR

Red Cross, UN Slam ‘Politicised’ USAID Humanitarian Assistance to Venezuela

WikiLeaks Haiti: The PetroCaribe Files from 2011

How the US tried—and failed—to scuttle a Venezuelan oil deal even though it would bring huge benefits to Haiti’s impoverished people.

How Washington and Big Oil Fought PetroCaribe in Haiti Haiti Liberte

How capitalism reduced diversity to a brand Vox

On Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” NewPolitics

But Roma has been praised loudly and loftily across the board. The most charitable explanation for this, of course, is that indigenous people have such a slight presence in Hollywood, their stories are so seldom ‘told’, and so when a big director/writer comes along to ‘tell’ one of those stories– and in a supposedly ‘truthful’ light by referencing the genuine exploitation many indigenous are subject to as domestics – then we are possibly that much more inclined to believe we are seeing something gritty, real and profound. That’s the more charitable explanation. The less charitable explanation is that perhaps we don’t expect the same depth of characterization in the depiction of an indigenous character compared with their white counterpart, because we instinctively or unconsciously feel that indigenous lives don’t contain such depths in the first place.

Keystone XL suffers another setback as judge blocks most work on the oil pipeline CNBC

Bill Officially Recognizes Japan’s Ainu As Indigenous People teleSUR