Category Archives: Global Politics

When We Protested and The Lebanese Government Tried To Kill Us

The day after, I’m the most proud I’ve been in years. I’m proud of every single man, woman and child that went down yesterday to protest. I genuinely love every single one of those 10,000 people that gathered around in Beirut yesterday, even the smokers.I’m proud of the people of Tripoli who went down to Beirut late at night to protest even when no one protested for them when their city was being burned again and again. I’m proud they were not deterred at the Madfoun checkpoint which was blocked by the army at 1:40AM to stop them.You people turned Beirut into a city that’s worth being plastered across the world yesterday because you were amazing, courageous and wonderful. You got people all across the country to see the government for what it truly was: a rotten establishment that reeks of decay.The day after, you are all heroes, with your cuts and scars and bruises and teary eyes. The government fears you. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have reacted this way. In a few years, when you have children in a country that’s hopefully become civilized enough for us to bring children into, you will sit down and tell them how you changed things. It’s a beautiful story to tell, believe me.

via When We Protested and The Lebanese Government Tried To Kill Us.

Slovakia ′will only accept Christian refugees′ | News | DW.COM | 20.08.2015

“Score another point for fundamentalist idiots who claim to be Christian and Muslim!” The Slovakian government, which will accept 200 people from camps in Turkey, Italy and Greece under the EU plan, denied that its decision to exclusively accept Christian refugees was discriminatory as it was intended to ensure community cohesion.

Slovakia’s Interior Ministry spokesman Ivan Metik told the BBC: “We could take 800 Muslims but we don’t have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?

“We want to really help Europe with this migration wave but…we are only a transit country and the people don’t want to stay in Slovakia.”

Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the German Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, sharply criticized Slovakia for rejecting Muslim refugees.

He told radio station Deutschlandfunk that Slovakia’s behavior is contributing to the failure of Europe, and that the country’s egotism would torpedo the EU’s ability to act.

via Slovakia ′will only accept Christian refugees′ | News | DW.COM | 20.08.2015.

A Beating in Boston, Said to Be Inspired by Donald Trump’s Immigrant Comments – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

After a Hispanic man was beaten Wednesday by two Boston men, one of whom told the police that he was inspired by Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant message, Mr. Trump told reporters that his supporters were “passionate.”

Two brothers from South Boston were arrested and charged with beating the 58-year-old man, who is homeless, with a metal pole, breaking his nose and battering his chest and arms, The Boston Globe reported.

“Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” the police said one of the brothers, Scott Leader, 38, told them. His brother, Steve Leader, 30, was also charged in the beating, the police said. The Globe reported that the brothers have extensive criminal records.

Told of the attack, which also left the man soaked in urine, Mr. Trump said at a news conference late Wednesday that it was the first he had heard of it.

“It would be a shame,” Mr. Trump said, before adding: “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”

The episode is not the first time that Mr. Trump’s inflammatory comments have been cited in connection with violence.

via A Beating in Boston, Said to Be Inspired by Donald Trump’s Immigrant Comments – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times.

Arizona school district adds abstinence-only, anti-choice sticker to science textbook

Last year, the conservative Gilbert School District decided that to fully compile with the law they should probably censor the parts of the high school honors biology textbook that mention contraception and abortion. Because we all know that mentioning the fact of the existence of something amounts to promoting it. They seem to have dropped their original plan to literally just rip out those pages, and instead are handing out these stickers and requiring students to put them on the inside cover of their book as a little reminder of the state’s values.

via Arizona school district adds abstinence-only, anti-choice sticker to science textbook.

Why Are White Liberals Getting So “Berned Up” By Black Women Activists? | Dame Magazine

Garza and the other Black women activists are unbossed and unbought, following in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm, Ella Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer. They have made it clear that there can be no business as usual while Black people are dying in the streets.

BLM is also working in the tradition of ACT-UP and Code Pink, both mostly White organizations that have embraced the tactics of disrupting public gatherings and officials. The hostility directed at BLM, given the celebration of these White-led movements by White progressives, begs the question: Is it the tactics that people are uncomfortable with, or the sex and skin color of the people putting their bodies on the line?

“When these groups disrupted, they were heroes and courageous. Now we have a group of Black women who are disrupting forums on behalf of Black life and we’re seen as people who don’t have a strategy,” said Los Angeles–based BLM co-founder Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac. “That has everything to do with stereotypes of being Black and female in this country.”

“White supremacy is very real. If two Black women can go up there and hold space and get that kind of response from those folks in Seattle who claim to be so progressive then we have a problem. The vitriol from the left is a litmus test for what we imagine what would happened if we did this in a Republican setting,” said Moore.

The optics of two Black women publicly confronting powerful White men is certainly unprecedented. Willaford and Johnson pushed aside a history where Black women have been denied access to the political stage, a place where White male politicians routinely demonized and chastise them as bad mothers and welfare queens driving up the national debt, who regularly denounce their cultural influence as disputable and immoral. Willaford and Johnson snatched the mic, owned the stage, and made clear who was in charge, followed up with a hashtag: #BowDownBernie.

While eschewing White fragility in favor of Black survival, BLM activists are also challenging Black people’s hang-ups around queer leadership, women’s roles, and respectability politics.

“There’s a lot to be learned from Black women’s resistance,” said Garza. “Black women participate consistently in elections and toward the side of justice. Black women are consistently carrying the crisis of democracy and of the country’s economy on our backs. They have consistently taken risks that have opened up opportunities for everyone in the workplace, home, and in social justice.”

“From what I can see, it is a wholly new paradigm of Black women’s leadership,” said Daryl Scott, a history professor at Howard University. “Historically Black women have been expected to do be the support for the leadership of Black men, doing everything from serving food to carrying out the details of organization. BLM, however, places women in leadership roles and tosses aside gendered expectations of how roles are supposed to be fulfilled.”

Scott said he is not certain if we are witnessing a new brand of womanist politics or a new brand of Black feminist politics, but we are definitely witnessing a new paradigm. Historically, Black women were organizing, and working at a grassroots level, often behind the higher-profile Black male leaders. Now, they doing the work and are the face, and voice, of the movement.

The politics of respectability, which required male clergy leaders, have been pushed aside; the walls of a media that sought after those leaders and credentials have been kicked over by this group of Black women who aren’t calling press conferences or asking for a microphone, but snatching it without care or concern of the optics. For this generation, there are no worries about “airing dirty laundry” or reinforcing stereotypes. These women are literally fighting for their lives and they could care less if that makes White people uncomfortable.

via Why Are White Liberals Getting So “Berned Up” By Black Women Activists? | Dame Magazine.

Japan marks 70 years since its surrender ended World War II Some Still Support Japan’s War – fail

Hiromichi Moteki, secretary-general of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, said he was “disappointed” by the tone of the statement by the prime minister on the eve of the anniversary, in which Abe apologized for the “immeasurable damage and suffering” the nation’s military caused before and during the war.

“We have no reason to apologize to other nations in Asia that became independent because the Japanese military took on the European colonial powers,” Moteki told DW. “We helped them achieve freedom and they should be thanking us.”

 

Nationalist Moteki claims Japan’s aim was to “liberate” Asia from colonialism

Liberating Asia?

Like many nationalists, Moteki believes that Japan invaded and occupied parts of the Pacific and mainland Asia to create a “co-prosperity sphere” and that it was liberating its neighbors from colonialism.

Equally, Moteki and many on the right in Japan are convinced that China triggered the Sino-Japanese war in August 1937, there was no massacre of civilians in Nanking four months later, the United States provoked Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and “comfort women” were not coerced across Asia and the Pacific to serve as prostitutes for Japan’s soldiers.

via Japan marks 70 years since its surrender ended World War II | News | DW.COM | 15.08.2015.

Angry White Man | The New Republic Ron Paul analysis from 2008

To understand Paul’s philosophy, the best place to start is probably the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Auburn, Alabama. The institute is named for a libertarian Austrian economist, but it was founded by a man named Lew Rockwell, who also served as Paul’s congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982. Paul has had a long and prominent association with the institute, teaching at its seminars and serving as a “distinguished counselor.” The institute has also published his books.

The politics of the organization are complicated–its philosophy derives largely from the work of the late Murray Rothbard, a Bronx-born son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who viewed the state as nothing more than “a criminal gang”–but one aspect of the institute’s worldview stands out as particularly disturbing: its attachment to the Confederacy. Thomas E. Woods Jr., a member of the institute’s senior faculty, is a founder of the League of the South, a secessionist group, and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, a pro-Confederate, revisionist tract published in 2004. Paul enthusiastically blurbed Woods’s book, saying that it “heroically rescues real history from the politically correct memory hole.” Thomas DiLorenzo, another senior faculty member and author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, refers to the Civil War as the “War for Southern Independence” and attacks “Lincoln cultists”; Paul endorsed the book on MSNBC last month in a debate over whether the Civil War was necessary (Paul thinks it was not).

via Angry White Man | The New Republic.

Settlers torch Bedouin’s tent, spray slogans calling on “Burning of All Arabs”

PNN/ Ramallah/

Israeli settlers from the “Pay The Price” extremist groups on Thursday morning have torched a tent in which lives a whole Bedouin family from Arab A-Kaabneh tribe, in Samia village West of Ramallah.

Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) field worker, Zakaria Sadah told the Official Agency that settlers have burned down the

via Settlers torch Bedouin’s tent, spray slogans calling on “Burning of All Arabs”.