Two days after the announcement of her hiring, the Sanders presidential campaign suspended its national Jewish outreach coordinator, Simone Zimmerman, on Thursday after revelations that she had posted vulgarities about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Facebook. “She has been suspended while we investigate the matter,” Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Senator Bernie Sanders, wrote in an email. Ms. Zimmerman’s suspension comes after a report on Wednesday in The Washington Free Beacon, which found a Facebook post in which she used a vulgarity and described Mr. Netanyahu as “arrogant, deceptive, cynical” and “manipulative.” She then used more aggressive language and continued that he had “sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer.” But members of the American Jewish establishment had been attacking her and the Sanders campaign since her appointment for her record of criticizing Israeli settlements and its policies in the West Bank and Gaza. Abe Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, also called for her firing.
Category Archives: Feminism
Dilma Rousseff Targeted in Brazil by Lawmakers Facing Graft Cases of Their Own – The New York Times
In the impeachment case, she is not facing charges of graft. Instead, she is accused of using money from giant public banks to cover budget gaps, damaging Brazil’s economic credibility. Ms. Rousseff, then, is something of a rarity among Brazil’s major political figures: She has not been accused of stealing for herself. Eduardo Cunha, the powerful speaker of the lower house who is leading the impeachment effort, is going on trial at the country’s highest court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, on charges that he pocketed as much as $40 million in bribes. Mr. Cunha, an evangelical Christian radio commentator and economist who regularly issues Twitter messages quoting from the Bible, is accused of laundering the gains through an evangelical megachurch. Vice President Michel Temer, who is expected to take over if Ms. Rousseff is forced to step aside, has been accused of involvement in an illegal ethanol-purchasing scheme. Renan Calheiros, the Senate leader, who is also on the presidential succession chain, is under investigation over claims that he received bribes in the giant scandal surrounding the national oil company, Petrobras. He has also been accused of tax evasion and of allowing a lobbyist to pay child support for a daughter from an extramarital affair. Altogether, 60 percent of the 594 members of Brazil’s Congress face serious charges like bribery, electoral fraud, illegal deforestation, kidnapping and homicide, according to Transparency Brazil, a corruption-monitoring group.
Source: Dilma Rousseff Targeted in Brazil by Lawmakers Facing Graft Cases of Their Own – The New York Times
Humans of New York
Source: Humans of New York
“I’m graduating from Columbia with a Masters’ in Public Health. I want to stay in New York for another few years, but then I want to go back to Texas. My family is from a ‘drive-through’ town off Route 66. It’s tempting to stay here in New York because there are better opportunities. The Department of Health is very developed, and there’s so much funding from the government, and the services are so extensive. I feel like there’s so much I can learn here. But then I feel like I need to bring it back home. Texas is a big ole place. People are spread out. And so many of them don’t have access to the services they need.”
Meet the outspoken critic of Israel who is Bernie Sanders’ new Jewish outreach director – US Elections – Jerusalem Post
Zimmerman is hardly an anti-Semite. A native of Los Angeles born in 1990 and the great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Zimmerman grew up in a Conservative Jewish household, went to Jewish day school and Jewish camp and was active in United Synagogue Youth, the Conservative movement’s youth organization, according to a biography of Zimmerman on the website of the American Jewish Peace Archive. The bio is based on an interview with Zimmerman last May. Zimmerman said she visited Israel a number of times during her childhood.When she started college at the University of California, Berkeley, Zimmerman initially gravitated toward the traditional pro-Israel camp. She joined Berkeley’s Israel Action Committee, protested a divestment bill in the student senate and went to Washington in the spring to attend AIPAC’s annual policy conference.But Zimmerman’s political views changed as she learned more from advocates of divestment and witnessed Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians during a visit to Israel, she said. She soon joined her campus chapter of J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group that supports US pressure on Israel to support a two-state solution. She spent the summer after her sophomore year studying colloquial Arabic at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2012, Zimmerman was elected president of the national student board of J Street U, the group’s campus arm.
Rousseff decries ′conspiracy′ to replace her | News | DW.COM | 12.04.2016
“The mask of the conspirators has fallen,” Rousseff said. “One of them is the not-so invisible hand that’s leading this impeachment process, through perversion of power and unimaginable abuses,” she added. “The other is rubbing his hands together and is rehearsing the farce of a would-be inauguration speech.” Brazil is facing a deep political crisis, with opposition parties accusing Rousseff of illegally manipulating government accounts. In addition, many allies of the embattled president are suspected of links with the massive Petrobras corruption scandal. Rousseff and her supporters insist that the accusations are bogus.
Source: Rousseff decries ′conspiracy′ to replace her | News | DW.COM | 12.04.2016
Kurdish commander: European jihadists plan new attacks – Radio Sweden | Sveriges Radio
European jihadists are the most ruthless fighters within the terrorist group the Islamic State and they have formed special units that focus on carrying out terrorist attacks in Europe, says the commander-in-chief of the female Kurdish forces in northern Syria. “European jihadist who join IS become key figures in the organisation. They become professional terrorists,” says Nasrin Abdullah, who is visiting Sweden this week. “A majority of the suicide bombers and decapitators that we see have been selected from the European recruits.” Abdullah heads the YPJ, the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units in northern Syria. Recently, the Kurds have made significant advances in the region, and have managed to reclaim large areas of land from the Islamic State, also known as IS. But they have paid a high price. Abdullah has lost more than 500 soldiers in the fight against IS over the past two years, and she says IS has far-reaching plans to carry out further attacks in Europe. “IS has formed special units to attack Europe. To a large degree those units are made up of jihadist who have joined from Europe,” Abdullah tells Radio Sweden.
Source: Kurdish commander: European jihadists plan new attacks – Radio Sweden | Sveriges Radio
حالة التوحد العربي وايمان بلا نظافة – وكالة وطن للأنباء
حالة التوحد العربي وايمان بلا نظافة 61 0 Google +0 0 الثلاثاء | 12-04-2016 – 07:45 صباحاً كتبت نادية حرحش وصلنا اليوم بشعوبنا العربية الى حالة التوحد . وكأن اصل الكلمات تكشف لنا تماما أن ما يجمعنا لم يكن أبدا “وحدة” ,بل حالة توحد تنكرنا لها حتى استفحل المرض بنا وتعدينا حالات الانفصام التي لا تفارقنا . فننظر الى انفسنا ونرى كائنات متوحدة التكوين تنكر لها أهلها فتنكرت لأنفسها . وأصبح التوحد هو وحدة مفهوم الواقع المعاش.
Source: حالة التوحد العربي وايمان بلا نظافة – وكالة وطن للأنباء
A state of Monologue: Terror or Resistance in Palestine
I can assure that every single Palestinian has lost his faith in any possible hope from the Palestinian authority, either by believing that they are helpless, and thus they cannot do anything, or because they believe that thye are in full collaboration with Israel, and their role is nothing but to give a hand to Israeli power.
On the Israeli level of the Palestinian life, when for the whole last year, and as a consequence of the brutal burning and killing of abu Khdeir, more coercion was authorized against Palestinians? Shooting, lynching and imprisoning remarkably targeted children. When restriction increased. Violations expanded. And on top of all, if I was a young Palestinian who wants to be part of a demonstration and I know that throwing a stone will send me to a life imprisonment, I may as well try to stab. The result is always one, either death or prison.
Palestinians reach to a level where full despair made them enter a closed tunnel where they know that the end is a crash that is fatal. With full realization. It could be revenge to the weak disappointing Palestinian authority that failed to meet the minimum of peoples demands, especially in such times when the people are directly targeted and not a single statement is made properly in levels with the situation.
When the Palestinian sees his friend, his neighbor, or the scenes of lynching the bleeding bodies of youngsters with no remorse and absolute inhumanity and fascist behaviors. What does the Israel expect?
My Israeli friend was telling me yesterday: “ do you think it is fair that I will be walking with my infant in the old city and get stabbed?” suddenly for her everything Arab became a red zone and dangerous, even though she lives in abu gosh an Arab town, that she insists they are an exception. They are what stand for the good Arabs in Hillel Cohen’s book “the Good Arabs”. For her the fear of every Arab became the norm. At that instant I could but see the norm of my very own life. She wouldn’t even understand what it means to be a mother in my situation, like all those mothers who have just lost their children thinking that they went to school or colleges, living with an eternal mourning on a child who was just names a martyr for an act that no one really knows if it happened or not, and in any norm, should it have cost him his life? She doesn’t realize that the moment my daughters leave the door of my home, I leave them with a chance of the absolute hideous fate of a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation. She doesn’t understand that if my daughter for any reason made a wrong move and stopped by an Israeli could be the next Palestinian “terrorist” in her eyes.
Reblogged on WordPress.com
The hopes and fears of Syrians in Germany
What do Syrians that already live in Germany think about the many new refugees arriving here? A recent study tells us, and also contains a surprise: their opinion about an upper limit for refugees
Five years into ban, burqa divide widens in France | Europe | DW.COM | 10.04.2016
Roy says burqas were never popular in France. “The bulk of the Muslim population didn’t oppose the ban openly because they don’t ask for the freedom of the burqa,” Roy says. “There has been a feeling among people of Muslim origin, believers and nonbelievers, that the ban of the burqa is in fact part of pressure and attack against Islam as a religion.” France is home to the largest number of Muslims in Western Europe, with about 5 million. When the law went into effect, it was estimated that fewer than 2,000 women wore the full veil.
Source: Five years into ban, burqa divide widens in France | Europe | DW.COM | 10.04.2016










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