Mexico Reaffirms Anti-Drug Cooperation with U.S., Asserting Sovereignty


By RT Staff Reporters
January 3, 2025
THE RIO TIMES

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico restated her commitment to work with the United States in combating drug trafficking. She spoke at her first press conference of 2025, addressing recent statements by US President-elect Donald Trump.

Sheinbaum emphasized Mexico’s willingness to collaborate while maintaining its independence. She declared that Mexico would not accept any interference or subordination from the US. The president stressed that Mexicans would handle their own affairs.

The Mexican leader clarified that cooperation with the US stems from humanitarian concerns. She expressed readiness to assist in addressing the health crisis caused by drug-related deaths. However, Sheinbaum drew a clear line between cooperation and submission

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Mexico Reaffirms Anti-Drug Cooperation with U.S., Asserting Sovereignty. (Photo Internet reproduction)

Sheinbaum challenged a recent New York Times article about fentanyl production in Sinaloa, Mexico. She questioned the scientific credibility of the report’s claims. The president pointed out inconsistencies in the portrayed manufacturing process.

The Mexican leader raised doubts about the lack of focus on fentanyl production within the US. She questioned the whereabouts of US drug cartels distributing fentanyl in American cities. Sheinbaum also wondered about the destination of profits from fentanyl sales in the US.

Sheinbaum’s statements reflect a balanced approach to US-Mexico relations on drug trafficking. She aims to maintain cooperation while asserting Mexico’s sovereignty. This stance aligns with her government’s commitment to addressing the drug issue independently.

Economist says mass deportations will cost Mexico tens of billions of dollars, a blow to its economy


by: Salvador Rivera
Posted: Jan 2, 2025 
BorderReport.com 

SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Mass deportations proposed by President-elect Donald Trump will be a huge blow to Mexico’s economy, according to Ismael Plascencia López, specialist with the Northwest Mexico Federation of Economists.

“They’re talking about deporting 11 to 13 million undocumented migrants now in the United States, it seems like an impossible task,” said Plascencia López. “But, if only one to two million people get deported, it would still be a huge strike on the Mexican economy.”

He predicts Mexico will have to invest millions of dollars to care, feed, house and transport deported migrants, not to mention those from other nations.

“It’s going to be a blow just in terms of the number of people sent here, but what about all those countries that refuse to take in their own people, they will likely end up in Mexico, you have to care for them as well,” he said.

Plascencia López predicts the biggest loses will be due to the lack of money being sent home by migrants working north of the border, something Mexico’s economy is heavily dependent upon.

According to Banxico, Mexico’s National Bank, $63.3 billion dollars were sent to Mexico in 2023 by migrants in the U.S., and from January through October of this year, the figure was almost $55 billion.

“This is the result of a worldwide campaign to oust migrants from many countries, something promoted by President-Elect Donald Trump.”

“There are always extremes, some say it’s good Donald Trump won, there were some who opposed his initiatives before, but now with him having control of Congress and the Senate, there won’t be anyone to stop him, this will hurt Mexico.”

India’s Free Library Movement Counters Caste Discrimination and Authoritarianism

Organizers are leaning into the library as a crucial institution in broader movements for social and political change.

By Emily Drabinski

January 3, 2025

Source: Truthout

LGBTQ+ community members are welcome at the The Community Library Project in Delhi. Image by Emily Drabinski



Outside the Khirki branch of Delhi’s Community Library Project, a signboard details the day’s programs, including scheduled story times and art activities. Children bounce and buzz as they wait in line to check out their books. Patrons take advantage of clean public bathrooms, drinking water (in short supply in many of Delhi’s unplanned communities) and internet-connected laptops. This library feels more like my home Windsor Terrace branch of the Brooklyn Public Library than it does the Delhi Public Library a few kilometers away. The biggest difference? Anyone can join the Khirki library for free, while the Delhi Public Library charges 100 rupees a year. It’s a number too small to make a meaningful difference to the library budget, and too large for the poor and working class who make up much of the city — a nominal figure that serves only to exclude.

Changing this system is the singular priority of India’s Free Libraries Network (FLN). “The mandate to be free is one of the most important demands we are making,” Prachi Grover told Truthout. Grover is part of a network of grassroots activists and practitioners pushing for changes to the country’s public library system under the banner of the FLN, a consortium of more than 100 community libraries and individuals founded in 2019. Group members are committed to the development of free public libraries open to all Indians, regardless of gender, class or caste. In December, the group launched its People’s National Library Policy at an event held at Delhi’s India International Centre. Community organizers, legislators, librarians, booksellers, authors and the interested public gathered to learn more about the network and its legislative priorities. Speakers included Grace Banu, director of the country’s Trans Rights Now Collective; V. Sivadasan, a Marxist member of parliament from Kerala; and a panel of speakers from community libraries across the country. (This author also spoke at the event.) The gathering marked a turn toward organizing for government support for libraries, a recognition that the kind and scale of transformation FLN members seek requires action from the state.

The demand for a free public library goes well beyond the rupee. “Free for us is also the freedom to be in that space, to use it without fear, to have the support to learn how to use the space or read the books, to be a space where everyone moves with respect and dignity,” said Grover.

This means the library must be explicitly anti-caste and feminist, says Purnima Rao, a member of FLN’s board. “We must release the Indian public library from the chokehold of patriarchal and Brahminical systems, which have long gone unchallenged,” she told Truthout. In Khirki, those commitments are listed clearly in colorful signage that reminds members that all are welcome in the space, including women and those whose caste position has long excluded them from these institutions.

Such restrictions are rarely listed in the rules. For example, the Delhi Public Library states that it provides service “irrespective of any distinction of sex, caste, creed, and religion.” For FLN activists, such statements are insufficient, given deepening inequality in Indian society more broadly. To join, charging fees effectively exclude the poor from libraries, embedding a class-based hierarchy into an ostensibly public institution. By contrast, FLN libraries must be explicitly anti-caste and gender-inclusive, and programs must reflect this priority. “One of my first jobs at the Community Library Project was managing the line at circulation,” Rao told Truthout. “I was told not to allow anyone to cut the line, no adult could skip ahead of any child.” For Rao, it was among the first times she had experienced a line that nobody could cut, regardless of class or caste status. The community library is a space where everyone is equal.

As they advocate for a free public library system with politicians and policy makers, FLN organizers continue to build community libraries on the ground as examples of the world they want. In Dibrugarh, a city of just over 150,000 in the northeast corner of Assam, trans rights activist and storyteller Rituparna Neog established the Chandraprabha Saikiani Feminist Library & Resource Centre as a library and community space. The brightly lit space features walls festooned with rainbow flags and shelves of books for patrons of all ages in a mix of languages including Hindi, English and Assamese. Library leaders also support Project Kitape Katha Koi, a community library that serves children in nearby Chenijan, Jorhat, among the region’s industrial tea plantations. “Within a free community library, we can sit together, we can exercise democratic values, have discussion and conversation, sharing of information, knowledge,” Rituparna told Truthout. “The free community library is a site of resistance.”

Grover sees free libraries in Assam and across India as part of a history of public library organizing in the country. “For the longest time, we have seen waves of library movements and individual and collective efforts to build a public library system in India,” says Grover. “Each time it gains momentum the ideas are filtered down, diluted and eventually buried, perhaps barring in Kerala, till they are unearthed again with a fresh set of demands for public libraries for the people. No matter the number of blows to the movements, the demand keeps resurfacing.”

For now, FLN activists and organizers are leaning into the library as a crucial institution in broader movements for social and political change, especially urgent as the extreme right continues to consolidate state power in the country. “Libraries are the people’s tools to educate, organize and agitate,” says Rao. “FLN recognizes the critical role of the library in listening and responding to the people’s struggles. The library must employ its resources, infrastructure and services to empower all.”

The Term ‘Antisemitism’ is Being Weaponised and Stripped of Meaning – and That’s Incredibly Dangerous

Israel uses it to silence critics of its Gaza war while the right uses it to attack opponents. Meanwhile, the issue itself goes unaddressed

By Rachel Shabi

January 3, 2025

Source: The Guardian


Fascist rally. Image by DT Rocks, Creative Commons 4.0



When the international criminal court issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials in November, the response from the country’s government was all too familiar. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected outright the warrants for alleged war crimes in Gaza against him and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, calling them “an antisemitic decision”. The ultranationalist national security adviser, Itamar Ben-Gvir, declared that the court had shown “once again that it is antisemitic through and through”. And the transport minister, Miri Regev, chimed in, claiming: “This is modern antisemitism in the guise of justice.”

Bleakly, none of this was a surprise. Over a year into Israel’s assault on Gaza, which some experts have described as a genocide, accusations of antisemitism raised to counter criticism of Israel have gone into overdrive. Such claims have been made against protesters crying out for an end to the bloodshed in Gaza and against the UN and aid agencies warning of a humanitarian catastrophe. They have been levelled at global news channels and the international court of justice; against actors, artists, pop stars and even British-Jewish film-makers. So sweepingly and speech-chillingly are such claims made by Israel’s diehard defenders that the very term “antisemitism” is losing its meaning. It is exactly as the British-Jewish philosopher Brian Klug warned 20 years ago: “When antisemitism is everywhere, it is nowhere.” Blanket misuse has, troublingly, turned the term into a feature on an Israeli politician’s lingo-bingo scorecard.

And all this is happening precisely at a time when antisemitism is increasing globally. When Britain’s Jewish community has experienced verbal and physical attacks. When Jewish schools and synagogues have been dealing with death threats and desecrations. In the past 18 months, a Jewish woman was stabbed in her home in France, there have been shootings at schools in Canada and we saw a full-blown antisemitic riot in Dagestan in Russia.

Meanwhile, the far right is taking advantage of the political crisis brought about by Israel’s world-changing war, alternately using actual antisemitism and a pretence of caring about antisemitism to advance its bigoted ideology. For some sections of the far right, antisemitism is the active ingredient powering a racist, migrant- and Muslim-bashing agenda. It echoes the antisemitism that has always been at the core of white supremacism and has made a comeback with the “great replacement” theory: the conspiracy that Jewish people are secretly plotting to flood western countries with people of colour. On the other hand, for resurgent far-right parties across Europe, a performative fight against antisemitism has provided a path to political rehabilitation. Extremist leaders from Hungary’s Victor Orbán to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands present as self-declared champions of Jewish minorities in a supposed clash of civilisations against Islam.

All of these factors – and a few more besides, just to add to the confusion – have collided to turn our conversation on antisemitism into one characterised by accusations and rebuttals, contortions and misunderstandings, bad faith interpretations and endless blind spots. It’s the sort of dissonant mess from which any reasonable person might decide to quietly step away. Because what is the uninvolved onlooker supposed to make of it all? While researching my new book on the subject, several people I spoke to told me they were afraid to even ask about antisemitism, for fear that this might itself be construed as antisemitism. This is another clear sign, if any other were needed, that something has gone badly wrong in the way we talk about the issue.

Untangling these confusions, I found it was possible to identify distinct themes so that the moving parts of this chaos came into focus. For starters, there is the way that racism is commonly understood as a colour line. While the invention of “black” and “white” is key to understanding the racism that enabled slavery and colonialism and that still inflicts daily harms today, this doesn’t help us to fully comprehend the roots of antisemitism. Studying the histories of racism and antisemitism shows us that one has always influenced the other. The persecution of Jews in the middle ages helped create the architecture of racism that underpinned colonisation and enslavement in the Americas, and reveals how the category of “whiteness” is a fundamentally unstable invention – which is why Jewish people have in the past fallen in and out of it, confusing and intensely irritating racists through the ages.

Then there is the grim hypocrisy of our political conversation on antisemitism, which remains hyperfocused on the left. While media cycles spin out over whether the chanting of long-used Palestinian slogans constitutes antisemitism, examples of anti-Palestinian hatred from supporters of Israel get waved along. This is not just about the silencing of voices protesting against Israel’s carnage in Gaza – although that is bad enough. If antisemitism is so blatantly wielded as a political weapon, it creates the impression of a fundamental unseriousness about the subject. Dedicating endless column inches to campus protests over Gaza is shifting the spotlight, not just away from the devastation in the Palestinian strip, but away from the dangerous antisemitism coming from the far right.

In her latest book, Doppelganger, Naomi Klein writes about the important political issues that have been discarded by the left, only to be opportunistically seized and twisted by the right. So during the pandemic, for instance, people’s reasonable fears about pharma monopolies were commandeered to spew out vaccine conspiracies. The same dynamic now applies to the fight against antisemitism, where the right has strategically filled a space vacated over decades by the left. But far from raising awareness of this ancient prejudice, the right has instead turned the issue into a wedge with which to clobber political opponents: those protesting against Israel’s multiple aggressions and violations of international law, the Black Lives Matter movement, diversity and equity programmes or those grouped together under that catch-all irritant “wokeism”. The effect has been to sow division, derailing progressive movements, thwarting efforts at social, economic and climate justice and helping an increasingly extreme right wing win elections around the world.

A true understanding of what has gone so wrong with our discussion of antisemitism – and how to put it right – will not just fortify the left in this urgent political moment. It will also consolidate our antiracist endeavours. It will yield inclusiveness, moral clarity and cohesion. And most of all, it will help us to make sense of the alarming, divisive and destructive rightwards shift of the world – because only then do we stand a chance of changing it.

 

Pakistani police claim 35 percent of militants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are Afghan nationals

• by Setara Qudosi
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Akhtar Hayat Khan, the police chief of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, has alleged that 35 percent of the approximately 4,000 militants active in the region are Afghan nationals.

Speaking at a meeting with provincial lawmakers, Mr. Khan also revealed the existence of 188 militant groups operating in the province. He emphasized that these groups benefit from “uninterrupted logistical lines” extending across the border into Afghanistan.

Senior police officials at the meeting highlighted the militants’ strongholds in southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu, and Lakki Marwat. The proximity of these areas to the Afghan border, combined with active terror networks, has made the region a hub of insurgent activity, they said.

The officials acknowledged the limitations faced by the police force in countering the insurgency. They admitted that the current security infrastructure is insufficient to withstand large-scale attacks on checkpoints and noted that police are unable to conduct patrols in many areas, leaving militants free to operate, especially at night.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani daily newspaper Dawn reported that the Inspector General of the Frontier Corps and the commander of Peshawar’s military corps are scheduled to brief lawmakers behind closed doors next week on the security situation in the region.

The escalating violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has underscored the challenges facing Pakistan as it grapples with a resurgence of militancy, particularly in areas bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s return to power has added to security concerns.

MAGA vs. foreign workers, part 2


-Chinese visitors talk with education consultants at the booth of the United States during an expo in Beijing, China

Riley Callanan
Jan 03, 2025

GZERO

First, they came for the H-1B visa. Now, MAGA activists are pushing to end the US’ Optional Practical Training, or OPT, program, calling it a“guest worker program” that acts as a backdoor to the H-1B and threatens American jobs.

What is OPT? The program was introduced in 1947 to allow foreign students to work in the US if their employment was required or recommended by their school. Initially, the program was designed for short-term, practical training, but itwas extended for STEM grads in 2008 from 12 to 29 months and again in 2018 for up to 36 months. It is widely used bystudents from India: In 2023-24, 42.9% of Indian students in the US were pursuing mathematics or computer science, while 24.5% were enrolled in engineering programs.

What would happen if the US OPT-ed out? Ending OPT would impact the nearly 350,000 students who qualify for the program every year, particularly in STEM fields, and cause a cash crunch for universities reliant on high international tuition fees. It would affect businesses in tech, health care, and engineering, industries that attract the most OPT candidates. Opponents claim, however, that the US has no STEM worker shortage and that ending the program would provide more work for homegrown grads. So far, Elon Musk has not waded into the OPT fray, but we’re waiting.

Trump's New Orleans terror attack comments foretell foreboding future: analyst

Sarah K. Burris
January 3, 2025 
RAW STORY


Anthony Crider

The way that President-elect Donald Trump responded to the terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day says a lot about how he is likely to behave when it comes to terrorism in his second term.

Writing for The Guardian, Robert Tait said that Trump's reaction "especially when combined with his false accompanying message that the episodes confirmed his frequent warnings against open borders and illegal immigrants."

Trump's post on Truth Social claimed "the USA is breaking down" and claimed only "strength and powerful leadership" will stop it.

Tait recalled the 20% increase in anti-Muslim hate that erupted after a radicalized Islamist husband-and-wife team killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California in 2015 after Trump took to social media and ranted about it.

Professor Brian Levin of the California State University and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism recalled that after Trump lashed out at the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-Black crime surged.

“It’s about the most extreme language you can get when it comes to anti-immigrant comments,” Heidi Beirich told The Guardian. She co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracks far-right movements.

“The attacks on immigrants, coming from Trump for a long time now, and inflamed by the situation where the person who did the [New Orleans] attack is not even an immigrant, are certainly going to raise the level of violence and attacks on immigrants in the country," Beirich added.

“Statements by presidents and other political leaders have a violent impact downstream,” Levin said. “Those toxins surface elsewhere."

The former New York City police officer said that a president's use of stereotypes and conspiracies reverberates into aggression.

The danger, he warned, is that Trump's comments will inspire vigilante attacks from his supporters.

“We’re concerned that this will in some way be taken as a message to folks who think they’ve been deputized to go after people who they think are undocumented,” Levin said.

He claims that there will still be far-right terrorism but that there's a rising threat "likely to emerge from the hard left." He used the U.S. response to President Richard Nixon from defunct groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather Underground as examples.

“Couple that with what we have going on internationally, where we have the highest frequency of conflicts we’ve seen in some time; add in idiosyncratic extremists, either their single-issue or idiosyncratic prejudices and hatreds, then you see there really is a perfect storm. The key words going forward are everything, everywhere, all at once. We’re diversifying and evolving with regard to extremism," he predicted.

Read the full report here.

Trump will impose sanctions on ICC, report says


January 3, 2025 

MEMO

US president-elect Donald Trump at The Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, France on December 7, 2024 [Mustafa Yalçın/Anadolu Agency]

US President-elect Donald Trump plans to impose devastating sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague immediately after taking office, Israel Hayom newspaper reported citing informed sources.

The sources claimed the “executive orders could be unveiled as soon as January 21”, just one day after Trump’s inauguration and “will target both individual ICC personnel, including judges and prosecutors, and the institution as a whole.”

“The administration intends to classify the ICC as an organisation threatening US interests, employing designation procedures similar to those used by the State Department for terrorist organisations globally. This designation will trigger severe restrictions on anyone involved with the court’s operations,” it added.

According to the paper, the restrictions aim to force the court to withdraw the arrest warrants issued against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant.

The incoming administration considers the ICC’s arrest warrants a direct threat to US national security and fear these actions ultimately seek “to strip the US and its allies of their ability to mount military defences against global threats.”

Officials also fear the US could face similar warrants.

ECOCIDE

Oil slick from Russian tanker spill reaches Crimea

Oil from two Russian tankers, which sank and ran aground in the Kerch Strait after a storm in December, has spread 250 kilometres to reach the coast of Sevastopol in Crimea, Moscow-installed officials said on Friday.


 03/01/2025
FRANCE24
By: NEWS WIRES
A photo released on December 17, 2024 showing rescuers responding to an oil spill along the coastline of the Black Sea, caused by the wreck of two oil tankers. © Russian Emergencies Ministry via AFP


Oil from two ageing and damaged Russian tankers -- one of which sank -- was detected on Friday off the coast of Sevastopol, the largest city in Moscow-annexed Crimea.

The Volgoneft-212 and the Volgoneft-239 were hit last month by a storm in the Kerch Strait, which links Crimea to the southern Russian Krasnodar region and is about 250 kilometres (155 miles) from Sevastopol.

One sank and the other ran aground, pouring around 2,400 tonnes of mazut, or heavy fuel oil, into the surrounding waters, according to Russia's transport ministry.

"A small oil slick reached Sevastopol today," the Moscow-installed head of the city, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram, publishing a video of the oil, a thick substance known as mazut.

He said it was around 1.5 metres in width and length.

Sevastopol, with a population of over half a million, is the historic home of the Russian navy's Black Sea fleet, heavily targeted by Ukraine throughout the nearly three-year conflict.

President Vladimir Putin has called it an "ecological disaster" and hundreds of volunteers have been deployed to scoop up contaminated soil from beaches in Crimea and along Russia's southern coast.

The transport ministry said the type of oil is particularly hard to clean as it is dense and heavy and does not float on the surface.

It is the first incident of its kind ever involving M-100 grade mazut, Russia's transport ministry said.

"There is no proven technology anywhere in the world to remove it from the water column," it said on social media.

"Therefore the main method is collection from the shoreline, when the mazut has been dumped on the coastal zone," the ministry said.

Some 78,000 tonnes of contaminated soil and sand has been removed from beaches so far, Russia's emergency situations ministry said Friday. Up to 200,000 tonnes may need to be removed.

Ukraine has slammed Russia over the spill, accusing it of trying to ship oil products in vessels unfit for harsh winter sea conditions.

Under Western sanctions, Russia has resorted to using a so-called "shadow fleet" of mostly old tankers to export its fuels around the world.

Russia seized the Crimean peninsula in 2014 following a pro-EU revolution in Kyiv.

(AFP)

Ethiopia villagers flee volcanic activity 'in panic'

Sultan Kemil

BBC


Hundreds of people in a rural part of Ethiopia, 165km (100 miles) north-east of the capital, Addis Ababa, have been leaving their homes in panic as a nearby volcano has been showing signs of a possible eruption, a local chief told the BBC's Afaan Oromoo service.

The smoke coming from Mount Dofan that began around 17:00 local time (14:00 GMT) on Thursday "has a fiery plume and it's very high," Sultan Kemil said.

In a video posted by the Ethiopian Geological Institute on its Facebook page steam and debris can be seen shooting out from the mountain.

In recent weeks, there have been more than a dozen seismic events around Awash Fentale - an earthquake-prone area of Ethiopia's Afar region.

Abdu Ali, the chief administrator of the local area in Afar told Ethiopia's FBC news site that an evacuation process is under way to prevent harm to residents.

He is quoted as saying that there have been earthquakes that are getting "higher and stronger".

Tremors have also been felt away in Addis Ababa.

Shiferaw Teklemariam, from the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission, told the Reuters news agency that while it was too early to classify the activity as an eruption, authorities were taking precautions.

Risk of Ethiopian volcanic eruption prompts evacuation of residents


03 January 2025 - By Reuters

The Ethiopian Geological Institute posted a video showing what appeared to be dust and smoke emerging from a volcano in Awash Fentale in Afar region. File image.
Image: 123rf/Jerry Rainey

A volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was showing signs of starting to erupt on Friday, prompting authorities to move residents to temporary shelters, a state-affiliated broadcaster and a government geological office said.

The Ethiopian Geological Institute posted a video on its Facebook page showing what appeared to be dust and smoke emerging from a volcano in Awash Fentale in Afar region.

Fana Broadcasting, citing a regional administrator in Afar, reported that authorities had evacuated residents out of the affected area, which is roughly 165km from the capital Addis Ababa.

Shiferaw Teklemariam, commissioner of the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission, said it was too early to label the activity an eruption but authorities were not taking chances.

"The community; some are already leaving those areas. We are also preparing to do it in a well organised manner. It [moving the community] will be done based on predictions," he told Reuters.

The area experiencing volcanic activity has also been prone to earthquakes and tremors in recent months.