Category Archives: Apartheid

Pro-Israel group NGO Monitor teams up with Europe’s far-right | The Electronic Intifada

Displaying enormous hypocrisy, NGO Monitor appears happy to ally itself with actual peddlers of bigotry. Next week, it will jointly host an event in the European Parliament chaired by a representative of the far-right Danish People’s Party.Anders Vistisen, the politician in question, would be a suitable candidate to run Donald Trump’s Nordic fan club – if such a thing exists. In some respects, Vistisen has acted as a vanguard for the politics of division that the US president espouses.Trump made his infamous call for a Muslim entry ban in December 2015. Vistisen urged similar measures in Denmark almost two years before then.More recently, Vistisen has advocated that a barbed-wire fence should be erected on Denmark’s border with Germany in order to keep refugees out. He also favors the Australian model of detaining refugees in large camps.

Source: Pro-Israel group NGO Monitor teams up with Europe’s far-right | The Electronic Intifada

White House Official Violated Law Banning Political Activity, Agency Says – The New York Times

 

Dan Scavino Jr., the White House director of social media, violated a federal law that prohibits political activity by government employees, the federal agency empowered to enforce the law has concluded, citing the tweet Mr. Scavino sent in April calling for the defeat of a Republican member of Congress who has been critical of President Trump.The United States Office of Special Counsel took no official action to punish Mr. Scavino, but it issued a warning that became public on Friday that “if in the future he engages in prohibited political activity while employed in a position covered by the Hatch Act,” the office could move to enforce the 78-year-old law.

Britain’s concentration camp in Palestine | The Electronic Intifada

During 1936, a major revolt against Britain and its support for Zionism erupted in Palestine. The authorities responded with a policy of mass incarceration.In June of that year, Arthur Wauchope, the British high commissioner in Palestine, received a telegram from London officials. The officials informed him about a parliamentary query on “what steps are to be taken” to provide “reasonable conditions at Sarafand concentration camp.”A British military base had been installed next to the village of Sarafand al-Amar on Palestine’s coastal plain and was, in Wauchope’s view, a “healthy locality.”Wauchope tried to depict the camp positively by noting that it had been approved by an unnamed director of medical services and that access to tobacco was “unrestricted” and “facilities are given for daily exercise.”Wauchope was less rosy in a letter he sent to the Colonial Office in London the next month. He acknowledged that one of the two sections in the camp had “no water closets and bathrooms.”

Source: Britain’s concentration camp in Palestine | The Electronic Intifada

Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub

The man in the white house sits, naked and obscene, a pustule of ego, in the harsh light, a man whose grasp exceeded his understanding, because his understanding was dulled by indulgence. He must know somewhere below the surface he skates on that he has destroyed his image, and like Dorian Gray before him, will be devoured by his own corrosion in due time too. One way or another this will kill him, though he may drag down millions with him. One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall. Another dungheap awaits his landing; the dung is all his; when he plunges into it he will be, at last, a self-made man.

Source: Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub

Noose found at African American history museum in D.C. | Reuters

“The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity — a symbol of extreme violence for African Americans,” Director Lonnie Bunch said in an email to museum staff sent to Reuters by a museum spokeswoman.Bunch said museum officials do not know who was responsible and told staff the incident “is a stark reminder why the work you do is so important.”A U.S. Park Police spokeswoman confirmed the agency was investigating but declined to provide any further details.The incident comes less than a week after a noose was found hanging from a tree outside the nearby Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian.com, an affiliated news organization, said.

Source: Noose found at African American history museum in D.C. | Reuters

LeBron James Responds to Racial Vandalism: ‘Being Black in America is Tough’ – The New York Times

 

“Hate in America, especially for African-Americans, is living every day,” he said. James said that when he was first notified of the incident, he was reminded of the mother of Emmett Till, who insisted that her son, who was lynched in 1955, have an open coffin at his funeral, so people could not ignore the brutality of the killing.“No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough,” James said. “And we’ve got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African-Americans until we feel equal.”

Isabel Allende and Margaret Atwood are Just Some of the Writers Supporting a New Movement to Tackle Exile and Racism – The Ladies Finger

Our world is in crisis. People have always been forced to move against their will: they’ve fled wars and natural disasters, persecution and violence. But never before has the forced movement of people occurred at such a rate. 1 in 113 people in the world today have been driven from their homes. Simultaneously, a rising climate of nationalistic xenophobia among host nations has made resettlement for those who’ve experienced forced displacement increasingly dangerous and uncertain.

Source: Isabel Allende and Margaret Atwood are Just Some of the Writers Supporting a New Movement to Tackle Exile and Racism – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Congressman Al Green Threatened With LYNCHING After Calling For Trump’s Impeachment | 3CHICSPOLITICO

U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) received voicemails threatening to lynch him and calling him racial slurs after he called for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, he said Saturday.Green, who is black, played the recordings for about 100 attendees at a town hall in Houston, according to the Houston Chronicle. They include death threats, racial epithets and graphic language.“Hey Al Green, we’ve got an impeachment for you. It’s going to be yours,” one caller said. “It’s actually going to give you a short trial before we hang your nigger ass.”“We’ll lynch all you fuckin’ niggers,” another caller said. “You’ll be hanging from a tree.”

Source: Congressman Al Green Threatened With LYNCHING After Calling For Trump’s Impeachment | 3CHICSPOLITICO

The GOP Doesn’t Think My Son’s Life Is Worth Living | Dame Magazine

We don’t say this in polite society, but our society isn’t polite anymore, so I will spell it out: Our culture has long been riven with the idea that people with disabilities lead such miserable lives that their lives aren’t worth living. You hear this when people say, “If that happened to me, I’d kill myself.” The notion springs from being afraid of what you don’t know. If you happen to be young and able-bodied, for instance, the idea of being old and crippled frightens you and you can’t imagine that you could possibly be happy in that state. Conversely, if you happen to be able-bodied and healthy now, but are not particularly enjoying the experience, you may comfort yourself by thinking that at least you’re better off than the disabled.But perhaps you aren’t. Perhaps you and the disabled have more in common than you think. I cannot speak for everyone officially classified as disabled, for they constitute 20 percent of the population, and are as heterogeneous and complicated a group as you could wish for. But I can speak for my son: There are times when his misery is agonizing and explosive, and there are times when his joy lights up the whole neighborhood. The power of his emotions is such that he seems to be both happier and more miserable than most people I know. Surely, he is as complex and vast.This fear we have, of losing what we have now—our memory, our ease of movement, our health—can make us push the inevitable away to such an extent that we start believing that misfortune or simple decay only happens to other people, people who have not said their prayers, or exercised daily, or popped the right multivitamin. We “other” the sick, the disabled, the old. In so doing, we divide ourselves into us and them, “us” being the somewhat fit, “them” being all of those people with oppressive medical bills and annoying demands.The most recent example of this sort of thinking pops up in Alabama Representative Mo Brooks’s defense of the AHCA. In a comment to CNN, the Congressman commends Trump’s proposed bill for allowing “insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people who have done things the right way that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”In other words: “We,” the virtuous diet-abiders and Fitbitters, are unfairly saddled with the costs of “them”—those slobs who didn’t take care of their health. I’d love to see our nation’s fast-food chains go up in a purple cloud of smoke and for fresh nutritious lunches to be given out freely at schools, to every child, including those whose parents do not have decent jobs and cannot pay. I’d love to see more jogging and jump-roping and dancing in the streets. I believe that movement is good for the body and soul, as is stillness. But to imagine that we wield ultimate control over our health is a form of modern madness.

Source: The GOP Doesn’t Think My Son’s Life Is Worth Living | Dame Magazine