Category Archives: Global Politics

Israel punishes hunger strikers for demanding their rights | The Electronic Intifada

“When it comes to the hunger strike by terrorists in Israeli jails, I take the approach of Margaret Thatcher,” Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote on Facebook, in reference to the former British prime minister who notoriously allowed Irish hunger strikers to die in prison in 1981.

Source: Israel punishes hunger strikers for demanding their rights | The Electronic Intifada

Fairfield mother of four deported back to Mexico – Trump is so proud to have sent this 15 year resident packing to where she cannot see her children! #loserTrump, #TraitorTrump

Maribel Trujillo Diaz has been placed on a plane bound for Mexico, lawyers for the Fairfield mother of four, who has lived illegally in the U.S. since 2002,

Source: Fairfield mother of four deported back to Mexico

Save

Woman Punched By White Supremacist In Berkeley Speaks Out: SFist

Fairly soon, the 5-foot, 1-inch Rosealma, who weighs 95 pounds, says she found herself cornered near a wall, and she says “I was just trying to block myself away from different people who were just pushing me and attacking other people.”Then, she says, “From the corner of my eye I saw this fist coming at me,” and she says “[Damigo] punched me on the bridge of my nose. It cut it a little bit. I got thrown down and I’m pretty sure he just ran [away]. I got right back up. I was punched twice more by two other people. People kept trying to throw me down to hit my head on the rocks that were in the planter. I was just trying to not get my skull cracked open.” She soon found her boyfriend nearby covered in blood.Rosealma was likely targeted because she was wearing all black and sported dreadlocks, trademarks of the “antifa” as the alt-right calls them, though it’s unclear if anything occurred prior to the moment caught on video to provoke the attack.And she wants to set the record straight about a Facebook post she wrote that the alt-right has taken out of context to prove that she was there to do harm. She wrote, “Heading to Berkeley to disrupt the neo-Nazi / white supremacist jerk circle today. Nervous af but determined to bring back 100 nazi scalps.” This was a reference to a line from Inglorious Basterds, she explains. “I guess no has seen Quentin Tarantino movies. I thought that was going to be obvious, but I guess not.” (The line, delivered by Brad Pitt’s character, is “Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps!”)

Source: Woman Punched By White Supremacist In Berkeley Speaks Out: SFist

Satirical news show censored by Apple in Hong Kong and Taiwan – IFEX – Nothing personal, just profits before freedom of speech and thought

Since 2013, Apple has started taking down apps – including banned books and circumvention tools – from its China iTunes store in order to comply with local laws. In June 2016, China tightened its control over mobile applications with the introduction of Provisions on the Administration of Mobile Internet Application Information Service. These regulations outlaw applications that spread rumors and information deemed harmful to national security. In January 2017, The New York Times was taken down from the Apple iTunes Store because of such provisions. However, the newspaper’s app remains available in the Hong Kong and Taiwan versions of the store. In the letter to Cook, Chappell stressed that while he is aware of the restrictions in China, the management of Apple’s Hong Kong and Taiwan app stores should be different: No doubt, China Uncensored likely falls under some of mainland China’s dubious legal categories such as: Undermining national unity Spreading rumors Disrupting social order There is no point in disputing your app store decision with respect to mainland China… but Hong Kong and Taiwan are not ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. They are regions that operate under independent legal systems. China Uncensored launched a petition on April 4, urging its viewers and supporters to tell Apple to “uncensor” the China Uncensored app from its Hong Kong and Taiwan app stores. As at the time of this story’s publication, more than 5,800 people had signed.

Source: Satirical news show censored by Apple in Hong Kong and Taiwan – IFEX

Assad’s departure still non-starter for Putin

Maxim Suchkov writes that following the visit of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow this week, “the departure of President Bashar al-Assad was and remains a non-starter for Russia. What neither Lavrov nor Putin would probably say to Tillerson, but do expect him to understand, is that Russia has invested so much into Syria now, politically and militarily, that Moscow’s primary concern is less about Assad than about the principle, power and prestige of maintaining its position. Hence, any plan that might move Moscow from this standing would have to involve some face-saving mechanism that the Kremlin could package as a win-win internationally, and as a ‘decision made in Russia’s best interest’ domestically.”

Source: Assad’s departure still non-starter for Putin

Viral Video Allegedly Shows Known White Supremacist Punching Woman During Berkeley Protest: SFist Aiming at Seattle and Boston next?

As Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino told the LA Times, “These guys are like vape shops — they’re starting to spring up everywhere, and there’s nothing particularly new or creative about it.” The text on the Identity Evropa site, he says, reads like “a template that exists within the alt-right.”And, Levin says, “A lot of these young guys dig these Western civilization ramblings and attempt to intellectualize bigotry. It tries to put a pseudo-intellectual veneer that revolves around identity and history and the notion that the accomplishments of Western civilization are under attack by our increasingly diverse and multicultural society.”As CBS 5 reports, the Proud Boys, the alt-right faction who took responsibility for organizing Saturday’s rally as well as the March 4 rally in Berkeley, declared victory after yesterday’s melee on social media, with one person saying “Boston, Seattle, we’re coming for you.”

Source: Viral Video Allegedly Shows Known White Supremacist Punching Woman During Berkeley Protest: SFist

When shooting a teen in the back is a ‘professional error’ | +972 Magazine

An IDF brigade commander shot a Palestinian teen who threw a rock at his jeep, while the boy was running away, and then left him bleeding on the road. Initially, the colonel claimed his life was in danger. With each subsequent interrogation, the story changed. The military police determined the incident was a ‘professional error’ –  bad aim – and closed the case despite evidence that tells a very different story.

Source: When shooting a teen in the back is a ‘professional error’ | +972 Magazine

The Most Pernicious Form of Terrorism Threatening the U.S. Is the GOP | Dame Magazine

Women die. The GOP is not content to kill only women on American soil. By reinstating the global gag rule, pulling funds for UNFPA, and choking off funding to fight HIV/AIDS around the world (women make up over half of HIV/AIDS cases globally) will punish women everywhere. The god of the GOP doesn’t like women who have sex.The singular focus on abortion (a symbol of women in control of their sex lives and bodies) as anathema to the god of the GOP allows “pro-lifers” to sleep at night. Targeting “baby-killers” takes the thinking out of it. The truth is more difficult; analysis and empathy are required. Many women’s only contact with a doctor or medical professional is through Planned Parenthood and well-women clinics. Abortion, even when outlawed, does not and will not stop abortion. Women will die without access to safe legal abortion, Planned Parenthood, and other women’s clinics. You may ask, why don’t those women just go to another doctor? Who can afford to have the choice? The GOP hates Medicaid. Though they haven’t explicitly invoked their racist, sexist, classist Welfare Queen-esque statement, the policies are unmistakable, from the drug-testing requirements in the offing to states refusing to expand Medicaid coverage through the ACA. There is a swath of states in the Deep South that didn’t expand Medicaid, which meant women, mostly women of color and women in more rural areas, fell into the Obamacare doughnut hole. Which is to say, these women make “too much” money for Medicaid but not enough to afford health care through the exchange. Of course, fixing this part of the ACA isn’t on the GOP agenda—quite the opposite. Jesus, to their minds, is all about small government. Today’s GOP, the one born from the Moral Majority, embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of the right-wing Christian god they purport to serve. They are carrying out god’s will, very much like the Taliban. If shutting down women’s health clinics and blocking access to abortion doesn’t kill women, especially women of color, guns in the hands of domestic abusers just might. Stand your ground laws across the country will result in brown people dying; these laws are a license to kill. People of color will be swept up in the new war on drugs— the last war on drugs’ only accomplishment was incarcerating young Black and brown men, not only breaking up families, but forever taking away these men’s rights to vote. Voter ID laws targeting people of color along with gerrymandering will ensure reelection of god’s chosen legislators.And if all else fails they have this: You as a woman in this country have a right to speak. The subtext: Only if we dress a certain way, wear our hair just so, don’t cover our heads with scary fabrics, and balance an aspirin between our knees. Otherwise we are asking for it: rape, assault, hate crimes, incarceration, forced birth. The Taliban will blow our heads off. The GOP prefers death by a thousand cuts.

Source: The Most Pernicious Form of Terrorism Threatening the U.S. Is the GOP | Dame Magazine

Le Pen: France ‘not responsible’ for WWII roundup of Paris Jews – Europe – Haaretz.com

Some 13,000 Jews, including 4,000 children, were arrested in 1942 by French authorities, with some accounts showing they were coordinated with the SS; they were all eventually deported to Auschwitz

Source: Le Pen: France ‘not responsible’ for WWII roundup of Paris Jews – Europe – Haaretz.com

7 Arrested During NYC Protest Against Syrian Airstrikes: Gothamist

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), said, “While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked.”The protesters were intent on bringing a message of peace. From WABC 7:”All of these humanitarian wars that it has waged for hundreds of years have never brought about peace and democracy,” said Nina Macapimlac, a protester. “So bombing other countries to bring peace is a contradiction.””While Assad is a murderer and doesn’t represent the will of the Syrian people, the United States definitely does not represent the will of the Syrian people,” said Dan, a protester. “And Syria is a question to be answered by the Syrians, not by American imperialists who have devastated the region for decades.”

Source: 7 Arrested During NYC Protest Against Syrian Airstrikes: Gothamist