The Largest Minority

September 25th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

SPREAD THIS VIDEO! This is what happens to dissenters in the USA.

Didn’t President Obama denounce the same types of kidnappings and general repression when they were taking place in Iran? It’s interesting to note that the unauthorized street protests which he defended in Tehran are actually considered illegal in the “Home of the Free”. And thank God for that. Cracking Commie skulls is an American tradition!

If the men kidnapping the youth are indeed military, as their uniforms suggest, they’re clearly violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which states that the federal government can not use the military for law enforcement (except in Iraq and Afghanistan of course).

Not to worry though, Obama is different. I have faith that the kid in this video won’t be getting roughed up and held on trumped-up political charges. Most likely he’s just been selected to attend a Beer Summit with the G-20 leaders to work out their differences.

video description below the fold

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September 23rd, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Sometimes I think Greenpeace just isn’t radical enough, but every so often they do some cool shit like this to remind me why I’m a member.

Greenpeace activists are hanging off a Pittsburgh bridge with a massive banner displaying our message to G20 leaders gathering for tomorrow’s summit. The banner takes the form of stylized “road sign” that warns of the political maneuvering and delay that have put a international climate treaty in jeopardy as the world enters the final stretch on the road to Copenhagen.

We’re hanging banners off of bridges surrounding the area where these leaders will be meeting tomorrow.

The messages we’re sending are:

* “Warning: G20 Climate Talks Ahead. Danger of Falling Expectations”
* “Caution: Climate Disaster Zone. G20 in Session. Expect Delays.”
* “Danger: Climate Destruction Ahead. Reduce CO2 Emissions Now.”

We’re sending these messages to world leaders, because instead of rolling up their sleeves and working on a constructive solution to global warming, they’re heading down a dangerous road of destruction. All signs ahead point to a lack of leadership.

September 11th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Remember when Obama denounced Iran’s suppression of free speech? We’re doing the same for the G20.

Attorneys Call Denial of Permits to Activist Groups Bogus

PITTSBURGH, PA - September 11 - Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA) filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on behalf of groups seeking to hold peaceful demonstrations in downtown Pittsburgh where the Group of 20 summit (G-20) will take place later this month. The complaint charges the U.S. Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, the City of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources with violating the groups’ constitutional rights to free speech.

The plaintiffs include: CODEPINK; Pittsburgh Women For Peace; 3 Rivers Climate Convergence; Thomas Merton Center; Pittsburgh Outdoor Artists; Bail Out The People and G-6 Billion. The complaint was filed after repeated efforts to negotiate with the city regarding the permits.

“The City is unjustified in denying permits to these peaceful protestors,” said CCR Vice President Jules Lobel. “We hope the court will uphold and protect the core American values of free speech and the right to dissent.”

“Despite working in good faith for weeks to resolve G-20 demonstration permits with the City of Pittsburgh and federal officials, demonstration organizers can wait no longer and will now pursue permit remedies in Federal Court,” said ACLU-PA Legal Director Witold “Vic” Walczak.

“This is a struggle for our First Amendment rights,” said Francine Porter, CODEPINK Pittsburgh Coordinator. “Refusing these permits takes away our right to educate the public about the G-20 agenda and how it relates to war, war funding and war’s impact across the globe on mostly women and children.”

“The G-20 is gathering in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis,” said Molly Rush, co-founder of the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. “Unrestrained profit-making by financial institutions and the deregulation and privatization of public resources have led to disaster for the vast majority of the world’s people. Yet the people lack a voice in the proceedings.”

The complaint alleges violations of the Constitution based on the following actions by the defendants: 1) refusal to issue permits to demonstrators for the use of Point State Park during the week of the G-20; 2) failure to issue permits for First-Amendment-protected activities in Pittsburgh’s downtown; 3) refusal to issue a permit for a march by the Thomas Merton Center within a reasonable distance from the Convention Center on one day during the summit; and 4) refusal to allow demonstrators permission to stay overnight in several Pittsburgh parks.

To read the full complaint, click here.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization dedicated to defending and expanding individual rights and personal freedoms throughout the entire state of Pennsylvania. Visit www.aclupa.org.

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The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

source

August 28th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Jimmy Carter said that he had received a call from Khahamat religious Jews in the United States who told him that they had already begun fasting once a week in solidarity with Gaza and its people, and asked him to join them. But he and his wife had decided that they would do so alone and had already started fasting.

Carter’s speech came during iftar, the evening breakfast, held at the Grand Park Hotel in Ramallah. It included members of the Elders organization, a group of world leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, and a number of Palestinian intellectuals, businessmen and representatives of civil society institutions.

During the meal to break the day’s Ramadan fast, the group exchanged views. Desmond Tutu said, “I’ve heard many Palestinian and Israeli youth. I have heard things that are very impressive, but I felt the presence of hope in spite of the occupation and the suffering of the Palestinians that it causes, which is very important.”

Speaking of politics, Carter said, “We must not forget that all the Israeli settlements to the east of the Green Line are illegal, how can you talk about a settlement freeze” in a clear reference to what is being talked about these days by the current US administration led by Obama.

h/t IMEMC

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.

August 10th, 2009 by Guest

You’ve gotta respect Chris Hedges. He doesn’t dilute his message by adding sugar to the bitter truth. Originally posted on Truthdig. h/t Dandelion Salad

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this, we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.

We owe Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party an apology. They were right. If a few million of us had had the temerity to stand behind our ideals rather than our illusions and the empty slogans peddled by the Obama campaign, we would have a platform. We forgot that social reform never comes from accommodating the power structure but from frightening it. The Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists who battled for women’s rights, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement knew that the question was not how do we get good people to rule—those attracted to power tend to be venal mediocrities—but how do we limit the damage the powerful do to us. These mass movements were the engines for social reform, the correctives to our democracy and the true protectors of the rights of citizens. We have surrendered this power. It is vital to reclaim it. Where is the foreclosure movement? Where is the robust universal health care or anti-war movement? Where is the militant movement for sustainable energy?

“Something is broken,” Nader said when I reached him at his family home in Connecticut. “We are not at the Bangladesh level in terms of passivity, but we are getting there. No one sees anything changing. There is no new political party to give people a choice. The progressive forces have no hammer. When they abandoned our campaign, they told the Democrats we have nowhere to go and will take whatever you give us. The Democrats are under no heat in the electoral arena from the left.

“There comes a point when the public imbibes the ultimatum of the plutocracy,” Nader said when asked about public apathy. “They have bought into the belief that if it protests, it will be brutalized by the police. If they have Muslim names, they will be subjected to Patriot Act treatment. This has scared the hell out of the underclass. They will be called terrorists.

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July 21st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Got international solidarity? Capitalists are vampires - parasites who view us as nothing more than livestock to feed off of and have dominion over.

Corporations have used the government and media as instruments to destroy the US labor movement. We must rebuild it. Organizing is not easy in a capitalist society. Since a capitalist system pits workers against each other, we’ll need to learn how to cooperate rather than compete. Forming an organization, union, or cooperative is a first step.

During the height of our concern over the Iranian elections, Peruvians were being massacred in the name of US free trade interests. In what’s been called “The Amazon’s Tiananmen,” Hundreds of indigenous people blocking Shell Oil from raping the Amazon were murdered by police. However, we were instead focused on Iran because they’re the declared enemy of our capitalist overlords.

Still, I will give credit where it’s due. If the traditional media was correct about one thing during their frenzy over “Iran’s Twitter Revolution”, it was their own insufficience. Unlike the dying corporate media, twitter and the internet in general have proved to be useful, democratizing tools. Never in the history of the world have the proletariat been so connected to each other, AND YET we still lack a strong global movement. The internet can either help us escape reality or transform it.

We must recognize our unique role as individuals within the international movement. As Marx said, “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” When individual workers thrive in the belly of the beast, they can enable that prosperity to translate to the entire global collective. As Americans, we hold a higher level of responsibility since our actions have the potential to dramatically transform the rest of the world.

We live in the Americas where the greatest disparity between rich and the poor exists, yet we are not class conscious. Americans feel more solidarity with Obama than with a so-called insurgent in Iraq.

However, when people push reform to the limit and government won’t concede any further, they realize revolution is needed to dismantle that roadblock. Workers in America must come to that realization soon if international movements of the Left are to succeed. The head vampire must be killed once and FOR ALL.

July 13th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Max Blumenthal and Jesse Rosenfeld interview young Tel Aviv residents about Iran, Obama and right-wing laws limiting the speech rights of their Palestinian-Israeli neighbors. The shocking responses reflect the deepening of racist and authoritarian trends in Israeli society. This is the sequel to “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem,” the video banned by YouTube, Vimeo and the Huffington Post after topping 400,000 hits.

Max Blumenthal’s video “Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama’s Cairo Address” was deleted by YouTube after topping 400,000 views. Apparently, documenting the frightening Nazi-esque racism of entitled Zionists is a terms of use violation. Yes, these people currently have nuclear warheads pointed at Iran.

As you might expect, Blumenthal was berated by your typical Israeli apologists for being a “self-hating Jew” who was spreading Antisemitism with the most horrid of left-wing tools - journalism. So as a response to his reality-denying detractors, Blumenthal interviewed Israelis during the day in a more “metropolitan” part of the country your tax dollars built. Enjoy it while you can.