Category Archives: racism

Just because they can… Israeli forces deny Nablus farmers access to fields to harvest wheat | Maan News Agency

Israeli forces on Saturday morning prevented Palestinian farmers from accessing their fields to harvest wheat south of Nablus in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian official said.

Ghasan Daghlas, who monitors settlement-related activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that dozens of Palestinian farmers were on their way to harvest wheat in the area of Lafjan near the village of Aqraba when they were stopped.

Daghlas said that Israeli troops blocked the farmers and told them that they could not access their fields because the area had been declared a closed military zone, with no further explanation.

via Israeli forces deny Nablus farmers access to fields to harvest wheat | Maan News Agency.

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Left Out of Chilean Boom – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service

Tens of thousands of women employed as seasonal workers in rural areas of Chile suffer high levels of poverty and poor working conditions, even though their labour generates huge profits for agricultural exporters.

In 2013, Chile’s agro-exports amounted to nearly 11.6 billion dollars. But most seasonal workers earned less than the minimum monthly wage of 380 dollars a month.

Chile is ranked by international consultants as one of the world’s 25 fastest-growing countries and the second-fastest in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which it joined in 2010 to become the only Latin American member along with Mexico.

And according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), it is the country with the lowest proportion of informal labour in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Nevertheless, there are still casual and seasonal workers employed in precarious conditions, without basic labour rights.

“In Chile there is a large number of workers, and women in particular, suffering precarious working conditions characterised by low wages, a lack of job stability and a lack of legal protections because they are subcontracted or outsourced, etc,” the minister of the National Women’s Service (SERNAM) Claudia Pascual acknowledged.

And the situation is especially bad for women from poor urban neighbourhoods or rural areas, the minister told IPS.

“It’s not the same thing to be a poor woman, a Mapuche, Aymara or Quechua [indigenous] woman, a rural woman, as it is to be a professional,” Pascual added.

The amount of work done by seasonal workers skyrocketed in the 1980s when fruit plantations and exports grew exponentially in Chile.

via Seasonal Agricultural Workers Left Out of Chilean Boom – Inter Press Service | Inter Press Service.

Beersheba church defaced in new anti-Christian ‘price-tag’ attack | Maan News Agency

A church in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba was defaced with anti-Christian graffiti attacking Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary on Friday in the latest in a string of attacks by suspected Jewish extremists targeting Palestinian Christian sites.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the graffiti on the church in the old city of Beersheba read: “Jesus = Son of a whore.”

Spokesman for the Israeli police Luba Samari confirmed the incident, and said police have opened an investigation into it.

The attack comes only two days before the Pope is due to visit Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, amid a wave of attacks against Christian holy sites and property that have occurred inside Israel in the last few months.

via Beersheba church defaced in new anti-Christian ‘price-tag’ attack | Maan News Agency.

‘WTF’? Republicans and Summer Lunch Programs for kids – City vs Rural | The Last Of The Millenniums

Wait a second.

Wasn’t it just a month ago that the Republican Wonk Wizard Paul Ryan was complaining about the lack of work ethic in urban inner cities?

So now the House Republicans want to cut ALL of the money for summer lunch programs in the cities and instead spend it ONLY in rural areas.

So yeah.

WTF?

What this amounts to is rewarding Republicans who are the majority in rural America while punishing urban voters who are a Democrat majority.

via ‘WTF’? Republicans and Summer Lunch Programs for kids – City vs Rural | The Last Of The Millenniums.

Footage of Palestinian boys being shot is genuine, says Israeli rights group | World news | theguardian.com

Michaeli said: “The footage is continuous, as you can see from the time stamps.

“It starts just before midday and finishes around three. Taken together it shows that there is a light demonstration with some stoning. Soldiers fire rubber bullets and teargas until the fatal shootings. Then you see the youths get shot and fall.”

Footage shot by CNN of the killings appears to confirm this picture, showing Nadim Nawara throwing stones at one stage close to the building where he was shot and killed, but still at some distance from where witnesses have placed the closest Israeli soldiers.

Whether violence took place earlier or not, Israeli open fire regulations are unequivocal in stating that it is only permissible to use live rounds – or lethal force – against stone-throwers when there is an immediate risk to life.

Neither of the youths was throwing stones when they were killed, and one was walking away from the Israeli position, with his back to soldiers, when he was shot.

The wounds to the two boys and the other who survived appear consistent with small-calibre, high-velocity live rounds, including the described entry and exit wounds and the way the bullets travelled in the body.

Commenting on efforts to cast doubt on accounts of the affair in +972 online magazine, Dahlia Scheindlin, a public opinion analyst in Tel Aviv, attempted to explain recent comments: “Public figures are well aware that the postmodern mindset makes it hard to pin down facts. Throwing out theories, no matter how wild, raises doubts even if far-fetched. Using words inaccurately, or not admitting to one’s actions is another form. Accusing the other side of full-out conspiracy and elaborate fabrications is another.”

via Footage of Palestinian boys being shot is genuine, says Israeli rights group | World news | theguardian.com.

A Republican World – ‘Waiting lists at the Veteran’s Administration is a moral outrage; which is why Republicans are willing to block the opening of 27 new clinics until they get new sanctions against Iran’* | The Last Of The Millenniums

A Republican World – ‘Waiting lists at the Veteran’s Administration is a moral outrage; which is why Republicans are willing to block the opening of 27 new clinics until they get new sanctions against Iran’*

via A Republican World – ‘Waiting lists at the Veteran’s Administration is a moral outrage; which is why Republicans are willing to block the opening of 27 new clinics until they get new sanctions against Iran’* | The Last Of The Millenniums.

Settlers use bulldozers to level Palestinian land near Salfit | Maan News Agency

Occupiers creating “facts” on the ground with IDF assistance – Israeli settlers on Thursday leveled Palestinian land in the village of Kafr ad-Dik west of Salfit, local Palestinian officials said.

Settlers from Alei Zahav and the Bruchin outpost used

bulldozers to level land in an area known locally as Thair Subih.

Witnesses say the settlers were escorted by Israeli military forces.

A day earlier, settlers from Ariel used bulldozers to raze agricultural lands belonging to Palestinian farmers from the Salfit town of Kifl Haris.

A local activist who monitors settlement activities told Ma’an that Ariel settlement is expanding to the West and South and construction work has increased dramatically during the 9-month period of peace negotiations.

Ariel settlement is located 16.5 kilometers east of the green line in the center of the Salfit district, blocking Palestinian development in the area.

via Settlers use bulldozers to level Palestinian land near Salfit | Maan News Agency.

Nigel Farage and Ukip’s bigoted populism | @guardianletters | Politics | The Guardian

Nigel Farage continues to insist that we should be worried if Romanians move in next door (Farage remarks branded racist by three senior Labour figures, 20 May), while YouGov finds that 51% of Ukip voters think immigrants and their families (including those born here) should be encouraged to leave Britain. This merely confirms what was already obvious, yet apparently needs to be spelled out: Ukip is a party that spreads and feeds off racism and xenophobia.

For many years the rightwing tabloids have waged a campaign of hysteria about asylum and immigration, while both main political parties have either contributed or pandered to an increasingly fact-free discourse based on the prejudiced assumption that foreigners are a burden on society. The emboldening of Ukip’s bigoted populism is just one of the entirely predictable consequences of this trend.

The class represented by Ukip’s millionaire backers and personified by its leader – a public-school-educated former City trader and professional politician – has a vested interest in diverting social and economic anxieties away from the rich and powerful and towards our friends and neighbours.

via Nigel Farage and Ukip’s bigoted populism | @guardianletters | Politics | The Guardian.

Jean-Marie Le Pen suggests Ebola as solution to global population explosion | World news | theguardian.com

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right Front National, has suggested the deadly virus Ebola could solve the global “population explosion” and by extension Europe’s “immigration problem”.

At a cocktail party before an election rally in Marseille on Tuesday evening, days before the European elections in which the FN is leading the polls in France, Le Pen spoke of the “demographic explosion” in the world.

“Monseigneur Ebola could sort that out in three months,” he said in front of journalists.

Later, addressing supporters, Le Pen, 85, said he feared the French population risked being “replaced … by immigrants”.

“In our country and in all Europe, we have known a cataclysmic phenomenon – a migratory invasion that, my friends, we are seeing only the beginning of today.”

Le Pen, who is standing as MEP for the south-east seat, added: “This massive immigration risks producing a real replacement of populations if we don’t arrive in power soon enough to put an end to the politics of decadence that has been followed for decades.”

He said that religion added an “aggravating factor” to this problem because many immigrants were Muslim and Islam had a “conquering vocation … and even more conquering when it feels strong and they feel numerous”

S.peaking in Marseille, which elected an FN mayor in one of its districts in recent elections, Le Pen was followed on stage by his daughter, party president Marine.

Once again, her father undermined her campaign to convince voters the FN has evolved from its days as a vehicle for the extreme right and Nazi apologists.

via Jean-Marie Le Pen suggests Ebola as solution to global population explosion | World news | theguardian.com.

German reporter leaves Turkey after death threats over mine story | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

A correspondent for Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine has been forced to temporarily leave Turkey after he received thousands of death threats over his article on the country’s worst mining disaster.

“I was not withdrawn” by the magazine, Hasnain Kazim, the Istanbul-based correspondent, told AFP in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

“I am just spending a few days somewhere else to be on the safe side. In a few days I will be back in Istanbul and continue to do my work,” he said.

In his article, Kazim quoted a miner from the western town of Soma saying, “Go to hell, Erdogan,” in a show of anger at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s response to the mining disaster that claimed 301 lives.

Kazim said he has received over 10,000 threats via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, adding that a few hundreds of them were death threats.

“Get out of my country you filthy pig,” one Twitter user wrote.

Kazim said he did not express his or Der Spiegel’s views in the article but just quoted a miner.

“I reported from Soma and quoted one surviving worker with the words: ‘I would not have said this earlier, but now I want to tell Erdogan: Go to hell!'”, he said.

“AKP trolls did not see or did not want to see that this was a quote but considered me and Der Spiegel to have said that,” he added, referring to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“Unfortunately, several papers and TV channels spread that, too – some close to the government to show Germany’s ‘evil’ character, some critical of the government to misuse me as their spokesperson.”

via German reporter leaves Turkey after death threats over mine story | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.