The Largest Minority

January 18th, 2010 by Manila Ryce

There are many possible responses to the devastating earthquake in Haiti: shock, horror, profound sadness, empathy and the urge to help.

Tens of thousands of people are dead and much of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, its edge-city slum Carrefour, and its one relatively prosperous suburb, Pétionville, have been reduced to rubble. Those are appropriate responses, but what comes after must be a wholesale rethinking of what international aid can and should do.

Blaming the victim, as in the last paragraph of a lead New York Times article that appeared on the day after the earthquake, is patently absurd.

Simon Romero and Marc Lacey, with others contributing, wrap up their reporting on the human tragedy in Port-au-Prince with the following: “Haiti’s many man-made woes — its dire poverty, political infighting and history of insurrection — have been worsened repeatedly by natural disasters.”

It is true that Haiti has known a remarkable combination of political violence and natural disasters over the course of its history. Are we to infer, though, that Haitians would be better off today had the insurrection that began in 1791 and led to the emancipation of slaves and the creation of the first independent black republic in 1804 not occurred?

Furthermore, should we understand from the phrase “political infighting” that Haitians are their own worst enemies and that they are solely responsible for the man-made woes (and maybe even what insurers call “acts of God”) that befall them? Are we to conclude, after absorbing the lengthy descriptions of death and destruction, that they brought it on themselves?

This paragraph at the end of an article that seems to otherwise bravely and objectively report the facts is part of a long-standing and dispiriting pattern of demonizing Haitians by erasing relevant aspects of their past. (Think: Pat Robertson.) Haiti is often — all too often — referred to as a basket case, a country on the verge of social, political and ecological collapse without any mention of how it might have arrived at that state.

The fact is that many of Haiti’s problems today stem from the response of nations that saw its insurrection as a threat or a taunt. In 1825, the French engaged in a bit of gunboat diplomacy and demanded that Haiti pay compensation of some 150 million francs — a sum derived by figuring the value of the property, in the form of slaves and land, that French planters had lost — or face a total economic blockade. This amount was roughly equal to 10 years’ worth of total revenue in Haiti.

By the end of the 19th century, Haiti’s payments to France still consumed around 80 percent of the national budget. One generation of Haitians had bought its freedom with its blood, and the generations that followed had to pay cash.

In the 20th century, the United States twice occupied Haiti, once from 1915 to 1934, with soldiers bringing the attitudes of the Jim Crow South along for the trip; and again from 1994 to 2000, the second time with arguably better intentions but ambiguous objectives and, consequently, poor results.

Many have argued that the “structural adjustment” imposed on Haiti by the International Monetary Fund in the 1990s led to the liquidation of state assets but promoted little in the way of private investment and, it almost goes without saying, did nothing to benefit the average Haitian. Is it any wonder that the country is characterized by crushing poverty and political instability?

To say this is not to remove all blame from the Haitians themselves. The country’s tiny economic elite has done little other than consolidate its own power in the past 200 years. More recently, groups that opposed former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was democratically elected twice, opted out of a nascent and fragile democratic process, giving it little chance of survival.

And massive emigration has deprived Haiti of many of its most highly skilled citizens, though who could blame them for leaving? Regardless, the responsibility for Haiti’s problems in popular accounts is almost always exclusively borne by Haitians.

The question, then, is what a more nuanced knowledge of Haiti’s past can bring to an understanding of and response to the present catastrophe. People who are reduced, in the imaginations of those who might help them, to violent, irrational, incompetent people solely responsible for their fate are not likely to receive the help they need.

Having lived in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, I worry that what happened there might be repeated in Haiti; namely, the transformation of hungry, frightened and displaced people into a “security threat” first and people in need of immediate and sustained care second, if at all.

Looking further down the road, we need to find ways to help Haiti rebuild its public institutions so that it can rebuild a city and suburbs that were home to 3 million people. Aid needs to be rethought to empower Haitians, not repeatedly “save” them. Perpetuating the boom-and-bust cycle of aid and intervention of that past century is not the solution.

Right now, though, the people of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas need our help. They need clean water (difficult to find for many Haitians in the best of times), medicine, food, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities of survival.

What they clearly do not need, though, is pity mixed with scorn.

source

December 7th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

[The following speech was given on November 30, 2009 at the United Nations as part of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.]

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary-General, Mr. President, Excellencies:

Let me begin by expressing my appreciation to the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People for inviting me to participate in today’s meeting and offering a presentation in connection with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

My name is Bill Fletcher, Jr. I am the Executive Editor of the on-line magazine BlackCommentator.com and a member of the leadership committee of the coalition known as the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. I am the immediate past president of the advocacy group TransAfrica Forum which was the leading voice within the United States of America against South African apartheid and white minority rule in Africa. I am also a long-time trade union activist.

I sit before you today to discuss a contemporary apartheid: that practiced by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people.

As an African American in and from the United States, I am keenly aware of the similarities between the systems of Israeli apartheid, South African apartheid, and the home-grown apartheid in the United States of America once known as “Jim Crow segregation.” Despite every effort of the Israeli state to wrap its actions in religious garments, to claim a God-given Judaic exclusive right for its actions, the description of the racial differential or national-ethnic differential that exists between the officially sanctioned Jewish citizens of Israel and the Palestinians within Israel, those in exile and those in the Occupied Territories sounds all too familiar. It is also far from Holy. Notwithstanding the efforts of heroic individuals such as William Patterson, Paul Robeson and Malcolm X to bring the case of African Americans before the United Nations, the international ramifications of the oppression suffered here were often and conveniently ignored by the great powers of the global North. The South African apartheid system was, to a great extent, modeled on the Jim Crow system in the United States, a fact noted by many people in South Africa and in the global South. The United Nations failed to take up the challenge to racism in my own country a generation ago; it must not fail to take up the struggle against Israeli apartheid today.

The realities of the Israeli apartheid system, in contrast to South Africa, were often hidden from view, at least outside of Israel and, later, the Occupied Territories. It was, however, the close collaboration-including military and nuclear collaboration-between the Israeli regime and the South African apartheid regime at a point when the South African apartheid regime had become an international pariah state that raised more than a few eyebrows and encouraged many people to more closely examine the theory and workings of the two states.

The parallel between the Israeli apartheid system and the Jim Crow system under which African Americans suffered and died here in the United States of America also helps to explain a phenomenon that seems to puzzle many mainstream commentators. How is it that there exists such a relatively large reservoir of sympathy among African Americans in the United States of America for the cause of the Palestinians? It is a vicious slander to assert that such sympathy is based on anti-Jewish sentiment, though I would be na? to ignore that such sentiment does exist in some isolated quarters. Rather, for African Americans, we can at one and the same time stand with the Jewish victims of the Nazi’s Holocaust, while at the same time reject the Israeli apartheid system and its victimization of the Palestinian people. The horrors of the Holocaust, as the great Martiniquan writer Aime Cesaire pointed out, were not unprecedented, but found their basis in the brutal holocausts committed against the peoples of the global South by the colonial powers and the settler states. It was based on that shared history that African Americans viscerally understood and, therefore, placed ourselves in opposition to the racist motivations that lay behind the actions of the German Nazis and later the Italian Fascists in their persecution and then attempts at annihilation of the Jewish people.

Yet none of this, that is, none of the reality of the Holocaust suffered by European Jews, excuses what has happened to the Palestinian people in the period since World War II, and especially since May 1948. And it is this that many people, in what is colloquially known as “Black America,” understand so well. The Israeli apartheid system that expropriates land from the Palestinians; restricts mixed marriages; condemns Palestinians to separate AND inferior education; and repudiates their internationally recognized right to return to their land and their homes, simply carries with it the same stench of the decadent and oppressive system that we came to know here in the USA as Jim Crow segregation.

Read the rest of this entry »

December 3rd, 2009 by Guest

On November 19th, President Barack Obama wrote a stirring tribute in USA Today to the most famous draft resister in US history, Muhammad Ali. On Tuesday, Obama spoke at West Point, calling for an increase of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, with a speech that recalled the worst shadings of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”

On November 19th, Obama wrote about why Ali’s photo hangs over his desk, praising “The Greatest” for “his unique ability to summon extraordinary strength and courage in the face of adversity, to navigate the storm and never lose his way.” On Tuesday, Obama showed neither courage nor strength but the worst kind of imperial arrogance. He asserted America’s right to go into a deeply impoverished country that - from Alexander the Great to the USSR to today - has made clear to the world’s empires that it wants to be left the hell alone.

On Tuesday, Obama summoned the spectre of 9/11 and said, “It is easy to forget that when this war began, we were united–bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear.” He didn’t mention how many innocent Afghans had already died in eight years of “horrific attacks” on their homeland or how many would die in the months ahead, defending their own homeland.

On November 19th, Obama praised Ali as “a force for reconciliation and peace around the world.” On Tuesday the Nobel Peace Prize winner, reconciled himself with war.

Would that Muhammad Ali still had his voice. Would that Parkinson’s disease and dementia had not robbed us of his razor-sharp tongue.

Today, Ali has been described as “America’s only living saint.” But like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, both postage stamps before people, Ali has had his political teeth extracted.

But in a time when billions go to war and prisons while 50% of children will be on food stamps for the coming year, we can’t afford Ali, the harmless icon. Maybe Muhammad Ali has been robbed of speech, but I think we can safely guess what the Champ would say in the face of Obama’s war. We can safely guess, because he said it perfectly four decades ago:

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here….. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”

Replace Vietnam with Afghanistan and it’s a message Barack Obama and our troops need to hear. But we shouldn’t wait for some celebrity or athlete to make that statement for us. Muhammad Ali may have helped shape the 1960s, but those years of resistance also shaped him. We need to rebuild the movement against war. We need to revive the real Muhammad Ali to inspire draft resistors of the future. We need to reclaim Ali from warmongers who would use his image to sell a war that will create more orphans than peace. This is the struggle of our lives and we have the Nobel-minted President of the United States on the other side of the barricades. Barack Obama can have the fawning media, the oadring generals, the RNC, and the liberal apologists on his side.

But he can’t have the Champ. Remove that poster from your wall Mr. President. Your Ali privileges have been revoked.

source

October 24th, 2009 by Guest

Imagine, if you will, a small, predominantly white city with growing poverty and crime in a small, highly segregated black section of its South East side.

Imagine that a black university professor in the city warns the local newspaper that “a black man will be killed this summer by a local police officer, probably under unclear circumstances.” The professor also predicts that the town’s “citizens will be insufficiently enraged” by the shooting.

Later in the same year, on a warm evening near the end of July, an older white university custodian has too much to drink at a tavern near the city’s central business district. As he and his wife leave the bar, the custodian spies a drunken 26-year-old black man fumbling with some bottles in a parking lot across the street. The black man is one of the city’s many homeless people who collect cans and bottles for recycling at five cents per container.

The 63-year-old facilities worker crosses the street to verbally harass and physically assault the young black man for spilling some bottles. As a different university professor (this one white) will note later, the white janitor appears to think that he has been specially “deputized to monitor inebriated young black guys and make sure - using physical force if necessary - they clean up their littler.”

The custodian insists on forcing a confrontation with the black man despite his wife yelling at him to leave. A bloody commotion ensues. After the white man begins his attack, the black man pulls out a short pocketknife and stabs the white man in self-defense.

A deputy with the local county sheriff’s department happens upon the scene. The deputy is a white male, 45 years old. He specializes in evictions, not violent altercations. Still, he carries a deadly .40 Glock pistol as he rushes from his car.

The officer displays his badge, identifies himself as a deputy, and points his gun at the black man. He orders the two men to separate. The janitor violates the order, knocking the black man to the ground with a single shot to the head. Keeping his Glock pointed at the black man, the officer tells the white man to “run away.” The janitor screams at the officer, telling him to shoot the black man.

The officer tells the black man to stay down on the ground. When the drunken black man staggers to his feat and allegedly “lurches” toward the officer, the deputy blows him away with a single fatal shot. The black man dies in a matter of minutes.

The white janitor is taken to the hospital to be treated for his pocket- knife wound. He is never charged with assault or anything else. His blood alcohol is not tested. His role in provoking the terrible incident goes uninvestigated.

The local city police department tells the local newspaper that the shooting was justifiable. The killing resulted, the paper dutifully reports, from a terrible assault on a local “citizen” by a menacing “transient.” The official police statement, repeated by the local press, reads as follows: “The deputy confronted the knife-wielding transient. The transient ignored the deputy’s repeated commands to drop the knife… Instead, the armed transient advanced threateningly toward the already injured city resident and was shot by the deputy.” There is no mention of how the white custodian disobeyed the officer’s orders and continued to assault the black man.

But a very dissimilar take on the killing appears within days on the front page of a different newspaper, based in a larger municipality thirty miles north. Here are ten paragraphs from a story based on the testimony of two telecommunications workers (who I shall call “Telcom A” and “Telcom B”) who witnessed the shooting from inside a car parked in direct proximity to the incident:

“‘There was no knife, there was no lunging,’ Telcom A said. ‘I saw a cop shoot a guy in cold blood.’ Telcom Worker B, 22, and Telcom Worker A, 40, who both work for a [local] telecommunications company, got off work at 7 p.m. Friday and drove with another co-worker to [a local bar] to have a drink. As their vehicle was coming out of the alley next to City Electric, which was blocked by bags of cans and bottles and some broken glass, they saw the episode unfolding to their left and turned off the radio so they could hear what was going on.”

“A skinny black man was lying on the pavement with his head against the tire of a car about 40 feet away. He was missing teeth, his clothes were dirty and he had blood on his torso.”
“The deputy, wearing civilian clothes, had a gun pointed at the man, and a third man — whose side was covered in blood [that would be the custodian] — was standing next to the deputy telling him to shoot, Telcom A and B said.”

Read the rest of this entry »

September 25th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Stephen Colbert has giant brass balls. Can we all agree that by now the Right has left no doubt to anyone that they are unabashedly racist?

I sympathize with people whose legitimate criticisms of President Obama are derided as racist, just as my criticisms of Israel have been derided as anti-Semitic. Still, it is important to draw a distinction between opposition from the Left and opposition from the Right. The arguments coming from the Right are simply not legitimate. They’re more like temper tantrums from angry and irrational children.

For example, calling Obama a Socialist (as if that’s a bad thing) is more than just hilariously inaccurate. It’s seeded in the deep fear that black people steal from hard-working white Americans. The president has done nothing to indicate he’s anything more than a corporate capitalist, yet the Right immediately links a black man to Socialism because they think both are synonymous with theft. That is the base of their “criticism”, and it really ought to be called out for what it is.

h/t RaceWire

August 31st, 2009 by Guest

It’s time to get angry about the fact that an opportunity for health care reform is slipping through our grasp, writes Nancy Welch.

THE MORNING after the November election, I visited my father in a Cleveland rehab hospital. Weak from surgery to reinforce his disintegrating spine, he was nevertheless grinning as I walked in. “We’re going to get national health care,” he said.

My father was not a radical, not even a lifelong liberal. But having suffered through a layoff in the mid-1970s, he later watched with helpless frustration as his children struggled with multiple layoffs, a home foreclosure, loss of health insurance and mounting debt.

What I should say, then, is that my father was not born a radical, but if supporting a national health program is a radical position, he–like millions of others–had become one by the time he died, 101 days into Obama’s presidency.

My father didn’t live to see the resurrection of the lunatic far right, nor the sad confusion–”Keep government out of my Medicare!”–that results when we debate health care just once every 20 years, and without any mobilization to counter the misinformation that the intractable opponents of reform are bound to spread.

My father would also never learn that well before the corporate deployment of angry mobs to derail the August town hall meetings, President Obama had promised the pharmaceutical industry not to seek lower drug prices for “public option” beneficiaries nor allow the re-importation of cheaper drugs from Canada. If he had lived, my father might have concluded that Obama, like the Clintons in 1992, had been routed by an industry lobby whose power is too great, an American “your-health-your-problem” individualism too deeply entrenched.

But before any of us exchange “Yes, we can” for “No, we can’t,” consider:

– With rising unemployment swelling the ranks of the uninsured toward 50 million, with medical costs the leading cause of personal bankruptcy even for people with insurance, and with thousands lining up in a single day in one Los Angeles suburb for the free care offered at a M.A.S.H.-style clinic, the desperate need is plain.

– With all credible studies demonstrating that public insurance provides better care to more people at less cost than our government is already spending on health care, and with Medicare’s 44-year track record, an affordable–and popular–solution to this crisis is at hand.

– With clear Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a national economic meltdown that forced even Alan Greenspan to admit his free-market faith was mistaken, Obama should have been well poised to advocate not merely for limited reform of private insurance accompanied by a public option, but for a government-administered, taxpayer-funded national health insurance program–single-payer or “Medicare for All.”

– With 556 union organizations in 49 states endorsing Congress’s Medicare for All bill (introduced by John Conyers in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate), joined with the grassroots army of Obama volunteers whose aspirations for change soared beyond getting their candidate elected, the means to launch a mass popular campaign for single-payer was–and still is–at hand.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IF 2009 seems like déja vu, it’s because Obama took a page from the Clintons’ sorry playbook. Like Hillary Clinton, who in 1992 told Physicians for a National Health Program’s David Himmelstein that she had no interest in polls showing 70 percent of Americans favoring national health insurance, Obama and the congressional Democrats barred single-payer from consideration, going so far as to arrest 13 doctors and nurses in May who sought a place for single-payer at the Senate’s “public roundtables.”

Like Bill Clinton, who struck a deal with the “Jackson Hole” insurance-industry insiders not six weeks into his presidency, Obama asked corporate insurers to help Congress draft the various bills.

Yet even a bill that would expand the private insurance market by requiring people to purchase high-deductible policies and that would hand corporate insurers public dollars to peddle skimpy polices to the young and poor doesn’t satisfy industry lobbyists and the “Blue Dog” Democrats tucked in their pockets.

Meanwhile, in the vacuum created by Democratic Party leaders when they shut out single-payer advocates lest they frighten the big business “stakeholders,” the Republican far right has staged a comeback.

Where we should have seen thousands demonstrating for the services urgently needed in an economic crisis, we have hundreds holding signs that aren’t only ridiculous, but vilely racist and, especially when accompanied by firearms, frightening. My father was shaken by the rabble who turned out for Klan-like Palin rallies across Ohio last summer. He would have been stunned to witness their return from November’s defeat.

I suspect, however, that my father would also have been–like his favorite commentators–righteously angry. Consider Rachel Maddow castigating Obama for his “collapse of political ambition,” and Bill Maher calling for a progressive party to “represent the millions of Americans who aren’t being served by the Democrats.” What a welcome change from 1992 when most commentators blamed a supposedly government-phobic American public for the demise of a national health plan Clinton never sought.

Maher’s call for a party of the people is reminiscent of the mid-1930s, when burgeoning support for a labor party spurred a reluctant Roosevelt into delivering much of the New Deal. Even more welcome are signs of stirring among activists on the ground, from the boycott against Whole Foods, whose CEO opined against health care reform in the Wall Street Journal, to Vermont’s Health Care Is a Human Right campaign, whose carpools carried hundreds–many carrying “Single-Payer Now!” signs–to August’s town-hall meetings.

An Oregon group called “Mad as Hell Doctors” plans a September cross-country caravan to demand “Health Care for People–Not Profit!” Imagine them joined by “Mad as Hell Nurses,” by “Mad as Hell Patients”–and also by “Mad as Hell Women” demanding, with “Medicare for All,” the repeal of the Hyde Amendment so we finally have full reproductive health care rights.

My father may not have been a radical, but he understood radical action might be needed for winning health care, reversing the Bush tax cuts, stopping the wars. In November, he said, “See what he does. Then you can say, ‘To the barricades.’” I think he’d agree: The time is now.

h/t Socialist Worker via Vermont Woman

August 20th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country.

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis — even peaceniks — aren’t signing on. A global boycott can’t help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one’s own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews — whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel — are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.

There are only two moral ways of achieving this goal.

The first is the one-state solution: offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a bi-national democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel. Given the demographics, this would amount to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state; for most Israeli Jews, it is anathema.

The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state.

Geographically, the one-state solution appears much more feasible because Jews and Palestinians are already totally enmeshed; indeed, “on the ground,” the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality.

Ideologically, the two-state solution is more realistic because fewer than 1% of Jews and only a minority of Palestinians support binationalism.

For now, despite the concrete difficulties, it makes more sense to alter the geographic realities than the ideological ones. If at some future date the two peoples decide to share a state, they can do so, but currently this is not something they want.

So if the two-state solution is the way to stop the apartheid state, then how does one achieve this goal?

I am convinced that outside pressure is the only answer. Over the last three decades, Jewish settlers in the occupied territories have dramatically increased their numbers. The myth of the united Jerusalem has led to the creation of an apartheid city where Palestinians aren’t citizens and lack basic services. The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost nonexistent, and Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right.

It is therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure. The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories.

I consequently have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and has since garnered widespread support around the globe. The objective is to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination.

In Bilbao, Spain, in 2008, a coalition of organizations from all over the world formulated the 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign meant to pressure Israel in a “gradual, sustainable manner that is sensitive to context and capacity.” For example, the effort begins with sanctions on and divestment from Israeli firms operating in the occupied territories, followed by actions against those that help sustain and reinforce the occupation in a visible manner. Along similar lines, artists who come to Israel in order to draw attention to the occupation are welcome, while those who just want to perform are not.

Nothing else has worked. Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians — my two boys included — does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

July 29th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Whether we’re analyzing the US military or a domestic police force within our own city, dehumanization is a central part of the training process. The job of law enforcement is to routinely harass and violate the rights of their fellow citizens - to give their own mother a ticket and beat the kid down the street if he steps out of line.

If an officer does not view you as a lesser human being, they have no internal justification to do their job. The police justify their dominance with your dehumanization. Hence, bigotry is just part of the job. The racial slurs and proud tales of abuse casually tossed around any police station would make a Fox News studio look like a hippy lovefest.

The officer is 36-year-old Justin Barrett. He was stripped of his gun and badge on Tuesday afternoon when Boston Police Commissioner Edward David learned that Barrett was the author of an e-mail which included racist remarks towards Henry Gates.

“Commissioner Edward Davis has placed Officer Justin Barrett on administrative leave pending outcome of a termination hearing,” said Elaine Driscoll, who is a spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department. “Commissioner Davis was made aware that this officer admitted to being the author of correspondence which included racist remarks,” she added. Driscoll did not know how many people received the e-mail or at what date it was sent.

According to BNO News sources with direct knowledge to the contents of the e-mail, Barrett called Gates, among other racists remarks, a “jungle monkey.” The e-mail was described as a “mass e-mail.”

read more…

Giving credit where it’s due, President Obama was right on when he candidly stated that Cambridge police “acted stupidly”. There should have been no need to apologize. If anything, it was a redundant statement.

h/t The Political Carnival