The Largest Minority

June 9th, 2009 by Guest

A CNN headline, reporting Obama’s plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads “Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.” Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.

Keeping just to Israel-Palestine — there was nothing substantive about anything else — Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to ‘point fingers’ at each other or to “see this conflict only from one side or the other.” There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.

Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.

Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as “an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.” How should the Obama administration see it? Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June ‘67) border, perhaps with “minor and mutual modifications,” to borrow U.S. government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab “confrontation states” (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement. Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a “beginning” if the U.S. continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.

In the background is the Obama administration’s goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the “moderate” Arab states against Iran. The term “moderate” has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to U.S. demands.

What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: “Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).” All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.

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June 4th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Perhaps it’s time to cut funding to Israel.

Obama is undeniably pro-Israeli, so you may be asking, “What more do the Jews in this video want?” Nothing short of complete eradication of all Muslims. Ironic isn’t it? Despite the overuse of Goldwin’s Law these days, comparisons between Zionists and Nazis are frighteningly valid.

Zionists frankly don’t want peace. They want all the land they think they’re entitled to (which extends far beyond Israel) and think any negotiation is unacceptable. Putting Libertarian conspiracy theories about 9/11 aside, Zionists actually do pose a huge threat to the President’s life and US security. If I were Obama I’d be keeping a close eye on Rahm Emanuel’s father, a former Irgun terrorist, and I’m only half-joking when I say that.

A militant Israeli state served our imperial interests for decades, but now that we can no longer sustain our empire we face perhaps the largest example of “blowback” we have ever seen. So how do we quell a Zionist monster we’ve been feeding for decades? Backing international law regarding Israel would be a good start. Supporting the Palestinian Right of Return would turn Israel from a right-wing “Jewish State” which breeds extremism into a democratic one which respects human rights.

h/t Allison Kilkenny who also has a great piece on why Obama’s Cairo speech was a failure.

May 19th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

“Back during slavery, when Black people like me talked to the slaves, they didn’t kill him, they sent some old House Negro along behind him to undo what he said.”

Malcolm was a prophet whose words are more relevant today than ever before. Seems to me that we should retain a healthy suspicion of any black figure that throngs of white people adore. Be they entertainer or president, the “House Negro” is a puppet to the interests of his master. Granted, today this analogy is applicable across all races to a varying extent.

April 12th, 2009 by Guest

by David Gespass

For those of us who were in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 for the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, the decision of the United States to leave before the conclusion was disheartening, but not surprising. The Clinton administration had given little support to the conference and the Bush administration appeared downright hostile to its goals. There were two issues in particular the US did not want on the agenda. One was that of reparations for the slave trade and the other was the plight of the Palestinian people. While the US withdrawal was predicated on the latter, it remains an open question how much of a role each played in its decision.

Nearly eight years have gone by, a new US administration has promised change and greater engagement with the international community. One would think, therefore, that administration would seize the opportunity to participate in the Durban Review Conference next month in Geneva as the perfect opportunity to distinguish itself from the past. Sad to say, that is not the case. This time, the US is not going to leave in the middle of the conference. It will be absent from the start, having decided that “current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable.” The administration criticizes the original Durban Declaration and Program of Action and claims that the draft for the upcoming conference compounds its flaws. It specifically expresses concern that no one country (meaning Israel) should be singled out for criticism and that the document should go no further on reparations than did the Durban declaration. The Durban declaration called for Palestinian self-determination, for a lasting and just peace in the region and recognized the slave trade as criminal, calling for appropriate measures to reverse its consequences.

Since the US has done little to address the issues of concern on either front since Durban, one would expect the Bush administration to oppose any document calling for more. But this is a new administration that has promised change and more internationalism. In the wake of the world’s excitement over the first African-American president in our history, it had an opportunity to truly distinguish itself from the past. It chose, instead, to embrace it.

Most recently, the things the US criticized were deleted from the draft document. Incredibly, the US is still refusing to participate in the review, though it now has no justification at all for its stance. And it has never addressed the fact that both the original Durban Declaration and the document being negotiated for the Review Conference require consensus for adoption. That is, unless every participating country agrees, not just to every word but to every punctuation mark, the document cannot be adopted. Therefore, the best way to ensure a document acceptable to the US is for it to participate in the review process. Indeed, its failure to do so guarantees it will find the resulting document unacceptable.

The US began its announcement that it would not participate in the Durban Review Conference by saying: “This Administration is committed to diplomacy and to active and effective engagement with international institutions, which can play a vital role in addressing the challenges we face. The United States looks forward to engaging with our partners around the world to build a more peaceful and secure world.” Apparently, the administration really intends to engage only its “partners” and those with whom it disagrees are not part of the equation, a position that insures the world will not become more peaceful and secure, but more divided and contentious.

The rich kid on the block used to take his ball and go home if he didn’t get picked to play, but the US goes further than that. Since everyone not only plays, but has veto power in the UN, the US is staying home because it is not being allowed to dictate the final score before the game is played. The promise of change and the promise to engage rings hollow when the condition to engage is for the world to accede to your demands before the conference even begins. It rings hollower still when you decide that acceding to your demands is not enough.

source

March 31st, 2009 by Guest

This Cesar Chavez Day (March 31) reminds us how forgotten stories can perpetuate stereotypes.

Charlotte, an Asian American student leader at Pomona College, asked me how do we ignite people into political action and sweep away the tired public perception of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) as passive and docile. I asked her if she knew the story of Pilipino or Japanese American farm workers in the fields and she admitted she knew very little. Considering the last of the Pilipino farm workers from an earlier period died in 1997 and very little has been written in any depth, most of the students across all races I met that day shared this common amnesia.

The story of Latino labor leader Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) has been widely circulated to the point of Cesar’s birthday being designated as a California state holiday and President Obama declaring public support of it becoming a national one. It is a story that has both inspired and been used to awaken the sleeping giant of Latina/o political activism. The UFW battle cry of “Si Se Puede” has been adopted by the current burgeoning immigrant rights movement and its English translation, “Yes We Can,” by Obama in his recent successful presidential run.

However, the story of AAPI farm workers has been lost as well as the true face of AAPIs.

Many do not know that the 1965 Delano Strike, which gave birth to the UFW, was started by Pilipinos, not Cesar Chavez and the Mexican farm workers.

As the summer heat of 1965 ripened the grapes of the Delano fields, Pilipino farm workers walked off the job and struck for dignity and better working conditions. Earlier, Cesar Chavez of the mostly Mexican National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) had refused the request of Larry Itliong of the predominantly Pilipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to join the strike. A week after the strike began, Larry approached Cesar again and this time Cesar relented, with pushing from Dolores Huerta and his wife Helen Chavez, and the Mexican workers overwhelmingly voted to join the Pilipino farm workers. Both unions merged to form the UFW. Cesar became the head of the union with Larry as second in command. Dolores Huerta became First Vice President and the Pilipino farm worker leaders filled the rest of the top six leadership positions with Philip Vera Cruz as Second Vice President, Andy Imutan as Third Vice President, and Pete Velasco as Secretary Treasurer.

Additionally, the strike led to large support from the Pilipino American community with an alliance forming between Pilipino farm workers and Pilipino professionals as the Filipino American Political Alliance (FAPA), the first national political Pilipino organization with Larry Itliong eventually becoming its president. By 1970, over 30 cities had active chapters.

By the time of this strike, many of these Pilipino farm workers had over thirty years experience fighting and striking in the field since they arrived in the late 1920s and 1930s. Most struck within the first year on the job in the US . Even earlier, Japanese American workers actively battled in the fields. Growers thought AAPI workers were too militant and confrontational and began vigorously seeking out Mexican workers, who they saw as passive, subservient and docile.

Over 40 years later, the narrative has flipped. Many perceive Latino/as as central to the revival of the US labor movement and swinging many important political elections in different places like California . Whereas, a number of people label AAPIs as culturally obsequious and compliant.

Like the growers in the past who saw Mexican farm workers as submissive, many people today assume AAPIs come from a place which emphasizes obedience and passivity more than other cultures (Passivity is present in all communities). Community leader Myung Soo Seok once told me that defining Asian values as “not making waves” is an inaccurate “American” interpretation.

This Cesar Chavez Day, we must restore the forgotten heritage of all people forged through struggle and remember the stories of AAPIs as a vibrant political force again.

source

February 10th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Former Oakland pig, Johannes Mehserle, has been freed on bail after being caught on video shooting 22-year-old Oscar Grant in the back. Mehserle’s $3 million bail was posted by unknown sources after BART Police Chief Gary Gee told fellow officers to support his bail. The pig was released just as protesters who took part in a demonstration against the murder were arraigned.

Incidents like this clearly show that the police are an illegitimate authority in neighborhoods of color throughout the US. The system is made to protect itself, so eventually we are going to need to exercise our own human right to overthrow these tyrannical gangs we live in constant fear of.

January 21st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Gotta love the irony in that title. This article is long but, like everything from Noam, it’s definitely worth your time. If you’re at work and your boss gets angry at you for reading this blog instead of filling out those TPS reports just yell, “Bitch, there’s a black man in the White House!” and throw up a peace sign with the obligatory “yes we can” as you recline to put your feet on the desk. I did that once at my old job and I imagine it would’ve worked if, at the time, there had been an actual black man in the White House. I was ahead of my time. Let me know how it goes now that change is in the air (sans US policy in the Middle East).

On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.

That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee.

In his retrospective “Parsing Gains of Gaza War,” New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner cited this achievement as one of the most significant of the gains. Israel calculated that it would be advantageous to appear to “go crazy,” causing vastly disproportionate terror, a doctrine that traces back to the 1950s. “The Palestinians in Gaza got the message on the first day,” Bronner wrote, “when Israeli warplanes struck numerous targets simultaneously in the middle of a Saturday morning. Some 200 were killed instantly, shocking Hamas and indeed all of Gaza.” The tactic of “going crazy” appears to have been successful, Bronner concluded: there are “limited indications that the people of Gaza felt such pain from this war that they will seek to rein in Hamas,” the elected government. That is another long-standing doctrine of state terror. I don’t, incidentally, recall the Times retrospective “Parsing Gains of Chechnya War,” though the gains were great.

The meticulous planning also presumably included the termination of the assault, carefully timed to be just before the inauguration, so as to minimize the (remote) threat that Obama might have to say some words critical of these vicious US-supported crimes.

Two weeks after the Sabbath opening of the assault, with much of Gaza already pounded to rubble and the death toll approaching 1000, the UN Agency UNRWA, on which most Gazans depend for survival, announced that the Israeli military refused to allow aid shipments to Gaza, saying that the crossings were closed for the Sabbath. To honor the holy day, Palestinians at the edge of survival must be denied food and medicine, while hundreds can be slaughtered by US jet bombers and helicopters.

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December 26th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

There is a certain sense in the minds of millions in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, that we have reached the promised land.

The imagery and oratory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is invoked, to suggest that his Dream, as articulated in his epic “I Have a Dream” speech, has been realized.

There is a deep sense that freedom is here, as we all live in a “post-racial America.”

Or do we?

To be sure, we are all on the brink of history, for this has never happened before.

But there was a time, quite a while ago, when similar feelings swept the nation, and especially Black hearts, that a new day was breaking, and the old ways had fallen away, when freedom was as real as rain.

I speak of the Reconstruction era, when the nation formally extended civil rights to millions of Black men (not to women, notably) and scores of Black people took office in state and federal legislatures, beginning a wave of progressive legislation to better the abominable living conditions of millions, Black and white alike.

But Reconstruction was short-lived, due to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the betrayal of Black freedmen by the federal government, and the campaign of white terrorists against Black people and Republicans, which converged to reassert white supremacy.

The Supreme Court also played a pivotal role in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), which, despite the clear language of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, supported states rights over federal constitutional rights, and thus signaled to the South that its denial of rights and segregation of Blacks wouldn’t offend their reading of the Constitution.

The hopes, dreams and freedoms of millions were dashed for more than a century, so that the lie of white supremacy could prevail.

At the end of the Civil War, when slavery was formally abolished, Black people were so joyous that many changed their names to reflect this new-found freedom to define themselves. They organized their own churches. They opened schools and businesses. They ran for and won local and national offices. They sat on juries. And they married in droves.

Within a generation, all of these freedoms were washed away, by law, custom and a vicious reign of racist terrorism.

What this history revealed is freedom can be ephemeral.

It matters not what is written in constitutions, nor the rhetoric or promises of politicians. It matters what people fight for.

If history teaches us anything, it is that it matters what social movements struggle for.