Category Archives: racism

Will a two-state solution be announced in November? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

In consultations ahead of the November decision, the United States is reserving a special role for Egypt. In addition to Cairo’s traditional role as conciliator/mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as of January, Egypt is a member of the UN Security Council. Its vote could tip the scales in favor of a proposed Obama resolution on resolving the conflict or a resolution that Obama will not veto.Cairo also has a symbolic value. In June 2009, five months after being sworn into office, Obama delivered a speech in Cairo in which he pledged to “personally” bring about the implementation of the two-state solution. He promised that “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.” He added, “It is time … for all of us to live up to our responsibilities.” The last chance to live up to his promise to the Israelis and the Palestinians will come on Nov. 8, 2016, the day of the US presidential elections, and expire on Jan, 20, 2017, when the newly elected president and vice president are sworn in.

Source: Will a two-state solution be announced in November? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

 just call me deportee… no longer human or humane

Legal Nihilism Whereas Berlin and the EU are approaching open conflict with the United Nations, citizens’ initiatives also in Greece are raising strong criticism. A Greek-German appeal, for example, calls for the blockade, imposed on the refugees stranded in Greece, to be lifted. They should be promptly brought to Germany with special trains.[8] The “Train of Commemoration” initiative, in turn, has issued a statement saying that by violating “international humanitarian law” the German government, along with “the principal parliamentary and non-parliamentary supporting parties and circles” are also violating “the German constitution,” “whose historical foundation was the renunciation of the legal nihilism of its predecessor German state and its anti-humanitarian crimes of persecution. Hundreds of thousands, at the time, became refugees, wandering around the continent, in search of protection from Germany.”[9] (Read the entire text here.) Sheer Desperation Over the past few days, the protests by the refugees themselves have continued to intensify. Since the beginning of last week, there have been practically daily outbursts of collective anger. Last Thursday, in Camp Moria on Lesbos, about 50 Afghans chanted “Azandi” (which means freedom in Farsi).[10] On the Greek island of Chios, hundreds of refugees tore down a razor wire fence Friday and fled their detention “hotspot,” and marched together to the harbor. Even on the Greek mainland, protests are escalating. About 1,000 people, including many migrants and refugees, marched to the EU office in Athens Thursday, to protest against Brussels’ deportation deal with Ankara. In the north of the country, roads to Macedonia were blocked. “We expect violence,” warned on the weekend, a government spokesperson in Athens regarding the growing resistance to these illegal deportation measures. The refugees had narrowly escaped the war and are adamant in light of Berlin and the EU’s denial of protection, he admitted. “Desperate people” however “tend to resort to violence.”[11] German Deportation Personnel German personnel are also participating in the mass deportation. Thirty officers of the Federal Police were expected to arrive in Lesbos on the weekend and by Monday eight employees of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). They are tasked to assist the Expeditious Asylum Procedures in the detention “hotspots,” so that Berlin and Brussels can lend a veneer of rule of law. The BAMF is planning to dispatch 100 officials to Greece to ensure the smoothest possible implementation of the deportation deal with Turkey. For the German government this deal is of strategic importance in view of permanently sealing off the EU against refugees. It is explicitly promoting this deal as a “European solution.”[12]

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com

Israelis rally around soldier filmed executing injured Palestinian | The Electronic Intifada

The new video shows the shooter “shaking hands with far-right activist Baruch Marzel” while al-Sharif’s body is removed from the scene, according to Haaretz. The US-born Marzel, a former leader of the violent group Kach, is notorious for fomenting attacks on Palestinians. Kach was outlawed by Israel after one of its members, the US-born medical doctor Baruch Goldstein, gunned down 29 Palestinians at Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in 1994. The video provides visible evidence of the close relationship between the Israeli army and the violent settlers it supports and protects.

Source: Israelis rally around soldier filmed executing injured Palestinian | The Electronic Intifada

Israeli Education Minister: Even if the soldier made a mistake of judgment, he is not a murderer – PNN

Liberman, in addition to Education Minister and Jewish Home leader, Naftali Bennett, both attack B’Tselem Human Rights group for publishing the video. Immediately following the release of th e video on Thursday, politicians rushed to “dance to B’Tselem’s fiddle,” Bennett told Israel Radio on Sunday morning, referring to the human rights group that released the video of the killing, Jpost reported. Bennett said that “even if the soldier made a mistake of judgment he was not a murderer.” He said that the possibility of the soldier being tried for murder “demonstrated the total loss of proportions in the matter and he would act to ensure that the soldier would receive a just trial.” When asked about the execution,  El-Or Azarya, the medic soldier who murdered Abdul-Fattah Al-Sharif said that he “did the right thing at the right time.”

Source: Israeli Education Minister: Even if the soldier made a mistake of judgment, he is not a murderer – PNN

Racism And The Invisibility Of White Privilege. | Rebelle Society

I thought I might share a few things as a white mama of black boys. I actually have three sons — two black and one white. My white son is 29, and my black boys are 14 and 15. Here are some of the privileges I never realized I experienced raising my white son: Not once… … did I ever have to explain to my white son that people might be mean to him, and even hurt or kill him, simply because of his skin color. … did I ever have to tell him to keep his hands out of his pockets while in a store. … did I ever have to go into a store or a school with him to assert myself as his mother so that people would treat him fairly… so they’d think, “Oh, his mom’s white, so he’s okay.” … did I ever have to tell him not to wear the hood up on his hoodie.

Source: Racism And The Invisibility Of White Privilege. | Rebelle Society

Brussels ‘a disaster city,’ Donald Trump says after attacks – Times of India – Germans who birthed him did not assimilate? Hyenas would disavow Trumpists!

Brussels is “a disaster city” where assimilation has failed, US Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Tuesday after a series of apparently coordinated explosions rocked the Belgian capital’s airport and a metro station. At least 26 people were killed in the latest attacks to target Europe, and Trump wasted little time in saying it was more evidence that governments needed to crack down on extremists with any means possible — even using waterboarding — and that immigration policies had failed. He reiterated his belief that the US should close its borders “until we figure out what’s going on.” Anyone who tries to attack the United States will “suffer greatly,” Trump said, in typically blunt tones that have shaped his populist run for the White House, propelling him from outsider to firm favorite for the Republican ticket. “Belgium is no longer Belgium. Belgium is not the Belgium you and I knew from 20 years ago, which was one of the most beautiful and safest cities in the world,” Trump told NBC. “Belgium is a horror show right now. Terrible things are happening. People are leaving. People are afraid. This all happened because, frankly, there’s no assimilation.”

Source: Brussels ‘a disaster city,’ Donald Trump says after attacks – Times of India

Disappearances in Sri Lanka & Role of Civil Society | Groundviews

I remember that on this day, exactly two years ago, I was in detention at the Terrorism Investigation Division with another friend, Fr. Praveen. The nearest trigger for our arrest appeared to have been our efforts to look into the arrest of a mother of a disappeared child, Balendran Jeyakumary (who was also a vocal campaigner seeking truth and justice for disappearances) and other Tamils in the North. More than a year after “good governance”, Jeyakumary. Fr. Praveen and me are still being investigated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Ironically, at the same time, I have been invited for various meetings of the government and to be part of an Expert Advisory Committee related to Transitional Justice (which I didn’t accept due to various other reasons), despite still being a “terrorist suspect” and having a court order restricting my freedom of expression. Although Jeyakumary was conditionally released two months after President Sirisena took office, she was re-arrested last year under “good governance”. She also faces serious social isolation due to this and struggles to find livelihood and has been compelled to keep her young daughter in a hostel. There has been no news about her disappeared son, who she claims has appeared in a photo taken at a government rehabilitation facility. We are also no closer to the truth or justice in relation to the disappearance of Lalith and Kugan, two campaigners against disappearances, who disappeared in Jaffna in December 2011. Families of disappeared and activists don’t face the kind of attacks, threats, intimidations, discrediting etc. that we experienced under the Rajapakse regime. But monitoring of families of disappeared persons and activists in the North and East continues. And there is total impunity for the reprisals we faced in the past.

Source: Disappearances in Sri Lanka & Role of Civil Society | Groundviews

Donald Trump Warns of ‘Riots’ if Party Blocks Him at Convention – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

Is he yelling “fire” in a crowded theater or just paraphrasing his heroes Stalin, Hitler and Il Duce?

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.” He added:” If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”

Source: Donald Trump Warns of ‘Riots’ if Party Blocks Him at Convention – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

AfD party compares itself to Holocaust victims – The Local German Far-Right learning from American Far Right in Accusing those who oppose them as being racists!?!

After media reported that the Worker’s Welfare Institution (AWO) said it would not hire members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) or similar groups, one branch of the hard right party took to Facebook to respond. AWO is a non-statutory welfare organization that assists, in particular, socially disadvantaged people with workers’ rights issues. AWO said that AfD’s ideas were not compatible with its own principles, according Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. According to the Rheinische Post, the Krefeld branch of the AfD in North-Rhine Westphalia wrote in a post that soon members of the party would have to wear “blue stars” – a reference to the yellow star of David that Jewish people were forced to wear to identify themselves under Nazi Germany. “And there continue to be more bans on AFD members working. Are you excited to already be wearing the blue star? We know: We will have to wear the star as a mark of honour! To the bitter end!”

Source: AfD party compares itself to Holocaust victims – The Local