tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-360099582024-03-08T01:44:25.523+02:00Fatima and Ahmed's SonI know a little more now but it is proving not to be enough!Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.comBlogger2015125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-15653881705612968682014-07-06T10:33:00.000+02:002014-07-06T10:33:05.976+02:00We have some unfortunate news for all the readers and friends of the blog<br />
<br />
Ridwan passed away on Wednesday 2 July 2014. He succumbed to a heart attack.<br />
<br />
The blog had become an important part of his life over the last few years, and we want to thank the readers and friends for their contributions and support over the years.<br />
<br />
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-34053431199628124852014-06-27T11:44:00.001+02:002014-06-27T11:52:46.244+02:00Seeking Justice—Or at Least the Truth—for “Comfort Women”<div class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://fpif.org/seeking-justice-least-truth-comfort-women/" target="_blank">Foreign Policy in Focus</a></div>
Christine Ahn<br />
June 24, 2014.<br />
<br />
<b>A growing global movement is ensuring that if the Japanese government
won't hold itself to account for its crimes against women, then history
will.</b><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbuF-SmhzacP8xzt748oEf_AqONu-vPv6ljUiGtpYqgEbvIrhytkLr-TPtB_0KvR1j5sKvxPAPyU5Ltk9BQlF8ar61z132jUHc3VlEsUXUSu4-_7pWy3HG_rRSlxv73R-_aN1F/s1600/comfort-women-japan-world-war-ii-reparations-apology-memorial-glendale-fairfax-722x562.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbuF-SmhzacP8xzt748oEf_AqONu-vPv6ljUiGtpYqgEbvIrhytkLr-TPtB_0KvR1j5sKvxPAPyU5Ltk9BQlF8ar61z132jUHc3VlEsUXUSu4-_7pWy3HG_rRSlxv73R-_aN1F/s1600/comfort-women-japan-world-war-ii-reparations-apology-memorial-glendale-fairfax-722x562.jpg" height="310" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Former comfort women and their supporters dedicate a memorial to </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
victims
of the Japanese military’s sex trafficking of women </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and girls during
the Second World War. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(Photo: Melissa Wall / Flickr) </div>
<blockquote>
On June 9, outside of Seoul, 91-year old Bae Chun-hui took her last gasp of air at the <a href="http://www.nanum.org/eng/">House of Sharing</a>, a communal home established for former “comfort women” in South Korea to live out their remaining years in peace. <br />
<br />
Bae was kidnapped at the age of 19 and taken to Manchuria, where she was forced into sexual slavery until the end of the Second World War. <br />
<br />
Not only did Bae die without achieving justice. In her final days, she also witnessed Japan’s shameful efforts to wring its hands of war crimes its military committed against an estimated 200,000 women and girls from throughout Asia during the Pacific wars of the 1930s and ’40s. <br />
<br />
Bae was among the Korean women who spoke out after the former comfort woman Kim Hak-sun <a href="https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/24570305/who-are-the-ianfu-comfort-women-new-voices">broke her silence</a> in 1991 and publicly recounted her abduction and sexual torture by Japanese soldiers. In her testimony, Kim painfully recalled: “A commissioned officer took me to the next room which was partitioned off by a cloth. Even though I did not want to go he dragged me into the room. I resisted but he tore off all of my clothes and in the end he took my virginity. That night, the officer raped me twice.” <br />
<br />
Kim lifted the floodgates for other Korean women to come forward. Burmese, Chinese, , Japanese, Filipina, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and Pacific Islander women also verified that their experiences were not isolated, but were the outcome of a systematic, well-organized government program to establish “comfort stations” for Japanese soldiers throughout Asia and the Pacific. <br />
<br />
The Japanese government has vigorously resisted calls to repent for its actions. But a growing global movement is ensuring that if Japan won’t hold itself to account for its grievous crimes against these women, then history will.</blockquote>
Read the rest <a href="http://fpif.org/seeking-justice-least-truth-comfort-women/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<b>Comment: </b>Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is key among those who would rather round-up a revisionist history than confront what Japan did to the so-called "comfort women".<br />
<br />
It is shameful nationalist politics and it won't make the past disappear.<br />
<br />
I have followed this story for many years here on the blog and elsewhere in my academic work. And for this reason I look forward to the forthcoming film "Within Every Women: Secrets, Shame and Strength. A story of three grandmothers enduring and unending war". See a sample reel <a href="http://wewomanfilm.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
I also find the struggle story of the golden bronze statue - the <i>Pyeonghwa-bi</i> (the Peace Monument) - absolutely remarkable in the manner that it presses political consciousness. The <a href="http://fpif.org/seeking-justice-least-truth-comfort-women/" target="_blank">article above</a> describes it so:<br />
<blockquote>
Since 1992, at noon on every Wednesday, irrespective of rain or snow, Korean comfort women and their supporters have stood across the street from the Japanese embassy in Seoul, calling upon the Japanese government for justice and reparations. <br />
<br />
On December 14, 2011, to commemorate the 1,000th protest, they installed Pyeonghwa-bi, or the Peace Monument—a golden bronze statue of a barefoot teenaged girl sitting in a chair with her hands gently resting on her lap. On her left shoulder rests a small bird symbolizing the innocence of the young girls and women forced into sexual slavery.</blockquote>
In the coming year or so I would like to travel to Seoul and watch this struggle at noon on a Wednesday.<br />
<br />
Onward! <br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-48905958179953311432014-06-25T14:34:00.002+02:002014-06-25T14:34:18.192+02:00When Islam came to Australia<div class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27260027" target="_blank">BBC Magazine</a></div>
Janak Rogers<br />
June 24, 2014.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha8wHXZYvetwcqAPE7O55hPIny7qZQPKerwlLcLQXD2MGT23mYmwzymyjkeMtuhRFvk8Uki3xOSoWsmGMlfZsqo2bSuRGpagMHev_Xmg-o7guS-RQfyefShAOjaTZI1R0SnPXv/s1600/_75635512_galiwinku624_alamy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha8wHXZYvetwcqAPE7O55hPIny7qZQPKerwlLcLQXD2MGT23mYmwzymyjkeMtuhRFvk8Uki3xOSoWsmGMlfZsqo2bSuRGpagMHev_Xmg-o7guS-RQfyefShAOjaTZI1R0SnPXv/s1600/_75635512_galiwinku624_alamy.jpg" height="256" width="400" /></a></div>
<blockquote>
<b>Few Australians are aware that the country's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had regular contact with foreign Muslims long before the arrival of Christian colonisers. And Islam continues to exercise an appeal for some Aboriginal peoples today, writes Janak Rogers. </b><br /><br />The white lines are faint but unmistakable. Small sailing boats, picked out in white and yellow pigment on the red rocks of the Wellington Range in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, tell a different story from the one most Australians accept as the history of their nation. <br /><br />They are traditional Indonesian boats known as praus and they brought Muslim fishermen from the flourishing trading city of Makassar in search of trepang, or sea cucumbers. <br /><br />Exactly when the Makassans first arrived is uncertain. <br /><br />Some historians say it was in the 1750s, but radiocarbon dating of beeswax figures superimposed on the cave paintings suggests that it was much earlier - one of the figures appears to have been made before 1664, perhaps as early as the 1500s. </blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZduhyphenhyphenbEJxO3-A4Lkk1CmrP1_5CxxtniK3NSjy5QrvZHbP4Kj1Y44oTHUFxBhrJ3HfyKVFz_cuOrK45hToQGwh89e6q7GhOeAoNa5mxHtdatJNNxCUXOejPLG-TL3GAVbdsf5u/s1600/_74610729_taconetalpraufigure5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZduhyphenhyphenbEJxO3-A4Lkk1CmrP1_5CxxtniK3NSjy5QrvZHbP4Kj1Y44oTHUFxBhrJ3HfyKVFz_cuOrK45hToQGwh89e6q7GhOeAoNa5mxHtdatJNNxCUXOejPLG-TL3GAVbdsf5u/s1600/_74610729_taconetalpraufigure5.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="width: 464px;">A cave painting of an Indonesian prau, found in Arnhem Land</span></div>
<blockquote>
They apparently made annual trips to gather the sea cucumbers, which fetched a high price because of their important role in Chinese medicine and cuisine. <br /><br />The Makasssans represent Australia's first attempt at international relations, according to anthropologist John Bradley from Melbourne's Monash University - and it was a success. "They traded together. It was fair - there was no racial judgement, no race policy," he says. <br /><br />Quite a contrast to the British. Britain designated the country terra nullius - land belonging to no-one - and therefore colonised the country without a treaty or any recognition of the rights of indigenous people to their land. <br /><br />Some Makassan cucumber traders stayed, married Aboriginal women and left a lasting religious and cultural legacy in Australia. Alongside the cave paintings and other Aboriginal art, Islamic beliefs influenced Aboriginal mythology. <br /><br />"If you go to north-east Arnhem Land there is [a trace of Islam] in song, it is there in painting, it is there in dance, it is there in funeral rituals," says Bradley. "It is patently obvious that there are borrowed items. With linguistic analysis as well, you're hearing hymns to Allah, or at least certain prayers to Allah."</blockquote>
Read the rest <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27260027" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<b>Comment</b>: "You live and learn" like my landlady Nancy in Baltimore used to tell me in the late 90s. I did not know anything about Muslims in what is now Australia before white colonization.<br />
<br />
I am not surprised though. <br />
<br />
About 15 years ago I met a Native Indian brother in the US who told me about Muslims who travelled to what is the US now before white colonization - or, before Columbus 'discovered' the Americas.<br />
<br />
He spoke about the influence of Islam on Indians somewhere - and about intermarriage - but I never followed up. Well once I looked for literature on what he told me but I did not find any online.<br />
<br />
If you know more please do tell.<br />
<br />
Onward!Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-73271203666610651312014-06-23T12:58:00.002+02:002014-06-23T13:00:52.213+02:00Student Gets Trapped In Giant Stone Vagina <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/22/student-trapped-stone-vagina_n_5519718.html" target="_blank">The Huffington Post (UK)</a><br />
June 22, 2014.<br />
<br />
An American exchange student had to be rescued after getting <a href="http://rt.com/news/167684-stone-vagina-germany-rescue/">trapped in giant stone vagina. </a> <br />
<br />
Five emergency service vehicles and 22 fireman had to help the unfortunate lad after he got stuck in the marble carving in Tübingen, Germany on Friday afternoon. <br />
<br />
The student is reported to have climbed in after a dare.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1e46QhrX3OLDDrcZ-if7YRVf4y9szgorOIPtY95xQa3GGUOY1D6H7XBRyhrhL1ukNDzZqr3y4PHsX5691zIWqt5KT55eWRAXTN9ohmso1x1IT8Dbj6U-JRL1hm1Ugcv1_A_iz/s1600/o-STONE-VAGINA-570.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1e46QhrX3OLDDrcZ-if7YRVf4y9szgorOIPtY95xQa3GGUOY1D6H7XBRyhrhL1ukNDzZqr3y4PHsX5691zIWqt5KT55eWRAXTN9ohmso1x1IT8Dbj6U-JRL1hm1Ugcv1_A_iz/s1600/o-STONE-VAGINA-570.jpg" height="258" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
Erick Guzman who witnessed the incident posted on Imgur: "I was there!!! He just wanted to take a funny picture. <br />
<br />
"The fire department was not really amused, and he was really embarrassed." <br />
<br />
The sculpture Pi-Chacán, by Peruvian artist <a href="http://www.delajara.com/">Fernando de la Jara,</a> has been in its current location at the town's university for around 13 years.<br />
<br />
Read the original article <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/22/student-trapped-stone-vagina_n_5519718.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<b>Comment</b>: See also more coverage in today's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-student-rescued-giant-vagina-sculpture-germany" target="_blank">Guardian</a> (UK) - particularly the comments section.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/6/23/1403513127464/The-student-waits-to-be-r-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The student waits to be rescued from the giant vagina sculpture" border="0" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/6/23/1403513127464/The-student-waits-to-be-r-001.jpg" data-pin-description="The student waits to be rescued. Photograph: Erick Guzman/Imgur" height="310" width="220" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="inline"><span class="caption" style="width: 220px;">The student waits to be rescued. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="inline"><span class="caption" style="width: 220px;">(Photograph: Erick Guzman/Imgur)
</span></span></div>
<br />
There are so many descriptors to throw at this student; it's not like he was born yesterday ;0)<br />
<br />
Onward!Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-36670555981566812912014-06-22T15:34:00.003+02:002014-06-22T15:34:35.676+02:00Carlos Latuff on Saudi-funded ISIL terrorism in Iraq and Syria<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp0vMDC1O_fZi1sbYe2wiUYKuWCYjggBFMKQWJz9g1bPz4pHg5D3n1_OoIGLPbJtYbBvGT5eBNIf8JC9hp8ZXYregWfxpU9AC3McoGLlO620efbs7HInKeA8uA8cXRVJXqKMtp/s1600/islamic-state-in-iraq-and-the-levant.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp0vMDC1O_fZi1sbYe2wiUYKuWCYjggBFMKQWJz9g1bPz4pHg5D3n1_OoIGLPbJtYbBvGT5eBNIf8JC9hp8ZXYregWfxpU9AC3McoGLlO620efbs7HInKeA8uA8cXRVJXqKMtp/s1600/islamic-state-in-iraq-and-the-levant.gif" height="217" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://latuffcartoons.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/saudi-funded-isil-terrorism-in-iraq-and-syria-cartoon-operamundi/" target="_blank">Credit</a></div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-18915497192739374672014-06-22T01:58:00.002+02:002014-06-22T02:08:59.316+02:00"Look at us baby, up all night"<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="215" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GmcLVI2JKqc" width="460"></iframe></div>
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"Aren't we the same two people who lived <br />
through years in the dark?" (Eagles) </div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-33267312453522954022014-06-21T12:03:00.000+02:002014-06-21T14:11:43.359+02:00Major US church votes to sanction Israel <div class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/06/major-us-church-votes-sanction-israel-201462151024115633.html" target="_blank">Al Jazeera</a></div>
June 21, 2014.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Presbyterians say move to pull investments modelled on campaign against apartheid in South Africa.</b></blockquote>
<blockquote>
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</blockquote>
<blockquote>
A leading Christian church in the United States has endorsed a policy of divestment to protest Israel's policies towards Palestinians, deciding to sell church stock in three companies whose products Israel uses in the occupied territories. <br />
<br />
The Presbyterian Church (USA) general assembly voted on Friday by a razor-thin margin, 310-303, to sell stocks in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. <br />
<br />
Carol Hylkema of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, a Presbyterian group that advocates for Palestinians and spearheaded the drive for divestment, said their action was modelled on the divestment movement to end apartheid in South Africa. <br />
<br />
"It was because of divestment that we were able to break the apartheid in South Africa," Johnnie Monroe, a pro-divestment Presbyterian, told Al Jazeera. "The church has to make a moral stance for moral justice." <br />
<br />
A church spokeswoman estimated the value of the Presbyterian holdings in the three companies at US$21m. <br />
<br />
Two years ago, the general assembly rejected a similar divestment proposal by two votes. <br />
<br />
Heath Rada, moderator for the church meeting held in the US city of Detroit, said immediately after the vote that "in no way is this a reflection of our lack of love for our Jewish brothers and sisters." <br />
<br />
The decision is expected to reverberate well beyond the church. <br />
<br />
"It was a vote heard halfway around the world in Israel," Al Jazeera's John Hendren, reporting from Detroit, said. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In a separate vote, the assembly also voted to re-examine its historic support for a two-state solution.</blockquote>
Read the rest <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/06/major-us-church-votes-sanction-israel-201462151024115633.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<b>Comment</b>: Excellent decision despite the thin margin.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: lime;"><span style="font-size: large;">BOYCOTT ISRAEL !!! </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Onward!</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-32569653021647186272014-06-21T04:39:00.001+02:002014-06-21T14:18:15.331+02:00King Floyd<div style="text-align: center;">
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"Ah sookie sookie now ..."</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-90478060145365534102014-06-19T17:16:00.002+02:002014-06-19T17:16:57.416+02:00Julius Malema on White Friends<div style="text-align: center;">
"If you have a white friend as a black person and he or she </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
doesn't know your language or is not taking the initiative to </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
learn your language that person is no friend at all." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWemxQY3EbQnXaRHGQT3FSOxP9ew7gpXPaJ71Vr7p45TFe0Z3QLixQ2tsmOMLOfxadIG_HpGU-Zmo9tCsEqEI0J6oJ43Iv7JaC0Zozh2fyF4Sg6TYWqJCSpXCEQqwHmq8d_NgT/s1600/8c78753ae7e14598a8983fe5d92e1595.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWemxQY3EbQnXaRHGQT3FSOxP9ew7gpXPaJ71Vr7p45TFe0Z3QLixQ2tsmOMLOfxadIG_HpGU-Zmo9tCsEqEI0J6oJ43Iv7JaC0Zozh2fyF4Sg6TYWqJCSpXCEQqwHmq8d_NgT/s1600/8c78753ae7e14598a8983fe5d92e1595.jpg" height="320" width="259" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Julius Malema at the State of the
Nation Address in Cape Town. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(Nardus Engelbrecht, Sapa)<br />
<br />
***** </div>
<b>Comment</b>: More <i>dumbassedness</i> from the clown prince of post-apartheid politics.<br />
<br />
Onward!<br />
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<a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Malema-turned-Parliament-into-a-circus-20140619" target="_blank">Credit</a></div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-13829513816695345882014-06-19T15:46:00.001+02:002014-06-19T17:26:21.562+02:00How Black Panthers turned to North Korea in fight against US imperialism<div class="separator tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/north-korea-network" target="_blank">The Guardian</a><span class="trackable-component component-wrapper eight-col" data-component="Series Index:feature-special main-2 Editable trailblock - two big pictures + four small ones:Editable trailblock - feature"> (UK) </span></div>
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<span class="trackable-component component-wrapper eight-col" data-component="Series Index:feature-special main-2 Editable trailblock - two big pictures + four small ones:Editable trailblock - feature">Tania Branigan</span></div>
June 19, 2014.<br />
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<b>Unpublished memoir reveals how a couple at heart of black freedom movement visited Pyongyang on ideological pilgrimage </b><br />
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Black Panther Party members outside the New York City courthouse in April 1969. </div>
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(Photograph: David Fenton/Getty Images) </div>
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<blockquote>
“Broken wine bottles and hypodermic needles are very effective. Pork chop and chicken bones can even be utilised as weapons,” the Black Panther newspaper instructed its readers in 1970. If the tone was familiar to them, the source of inspiration might have seemed less so: “This is ‘Juche’, relying on what you have, to sustain your resistance,” it explained.<br />
<br />
The article was testament to an unexpected alliance. On one side was the California-based revolutionary socialist movement, declared by FBI director J Edgar Hoover “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”.<br />
<br />
On the other was “hermit kingdom” North Korea, with its ideological tenet of ‘juche’ or self-reliance; a country which then seemed something of a “Stalinist Switzerland”, recalls former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver, now a law professor at Yale.<br />
<br />
The ties between the two are more than a historical curiosity, says Benjamin Young, a contributor to <a href="http://www.nknews.org/">NK News</a> whose Masters research at the State University of New York: the college at Brockport, uncovered surprising details of the relationship.<br />
<br />
It is a reminder that North Korea was not always “an economic basket case”, as declared by the Obama administration. At the time it appeared to be an east Asian success story, outperforming the South. The alliance also demonstrates the North’s long term interest in cultivating high profile international visitors and the Panthers’ search for support around the world.<br />
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“North Korea at this point was really on a global publicity campaign, even putting adverts in the New York Times and Washington Post promoting juche and peaceful reunification,” says Young.</blockquote>
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<a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/6/18/1403103993296/04886ee3-b892-4449-af2c-0a68f8048dbd-460x276.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver." border="0" class="gu-image" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/6/18/1403103993296/04886ee3-b892-4449-af2c-0a68f8048dbd-460x276.jpeg" height="276" width="460" /></a></div>
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Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver, in exile. </div>
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(Photograph: Lee Lockwood/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image)</div>
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In Eldridge Cleaver, then a leading figure in the party and married to Kathleen Cleaver, they found an eager ally.</div>
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Read the rest <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/black-panthers-north-korea-us-imperialism" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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***** </div>
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<b>Comment</b>: I remember meeting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldridge_Cleaver" target="_blank">Eldridge Cleaver</a> just two weeks before he died in 1998.</div>
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The meeting took place at a university in Portland, Oregon, where I was a professor of Black Studies and faculty adviser to the student group who brought Cleaver to campus.</div>
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Cleaver did not spend too much time talking to me and I was less interested in talking to him. At that point the man had traversed the political spectrum from a being radical black Marxist to an ultra conservative Republican who believed that the US would be saved by a lesbian Jewish president.</div>
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While he was on campus he gave a lengthy talk on the relationship between ecology and the coming presidential savior. </div>
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When we heard about <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9805/01/cleaver.late.obit/" target="_blank">his death</a> it was said that he died somewhere in California.</div>
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Politics not only makes for strange bedfellows it also makes for <a href="http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20081725,00.html" target="_blank">strange political journeys</a>.</div>
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Onward!<br />
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<b>Ps</b>: See also <a href="http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/north-korea-and-the-american-radical-left" target="_blank">"North Korea and the American Left"</a> by Benjamin Young (Wilson Center) for links to the documents uncovering Eldridge Cleaver's relationship with North Korea.</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-10067913928742492102014-06-14T04:32:00.000+02:002014-06-14T04:54:34.544+02:00Happy Yemen<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1ISArE-H0cY" width="460"></iframe></div>
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*****</div>
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<b>Comment</b>: By now you know that Pharrel Williams' Happy anthem is making its rounds across the globe. </div>
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My favorite is the version from Yemen but hey even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ck2PXLuTy8" target="_blank">South Africa</a> is Happy, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0-ROs5jRI0" target="_blank">Palestine</a> too, oh and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioNvF04Pe9E" target="_blank">Columbia.</a></div>
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Oh what the hell check out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU6u_cbnWn0" target="_blank">Tunisia</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAWnzrFfJyQ" target="_blank">Italy</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audy0aHjdyg" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=froqLDTX-F0" target="_blank">Ethiopia</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fNFZgEBNek" target="_blank">India</a> ... </div>
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And if you been paying attention these Happy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg5qdIxVcz8" target="_blank">Iranians</a> pissed off the zealots. <br />
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Happy Muslims in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVDIXqILqSM" target="_blank">Britain</a> ... and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQIcqv2XKw" target="_blank">US</a>. More <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anLPzwc-aNc" target="_blank">American Muslims get Happy</a>.<br />
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Huh?<br />
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What will the Imam say. ;0)</div>
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Here's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM" target="_blank">the original Happy</a>.</div>
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I'm not Happy just in case you wondering ... well cause I can't sleep dammit (Saturday 4:29am).</div>
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Onward!</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-54726626111993115382014-06-14T03:00:00.001+02:002014-06-14T03:41:28.232+02:00Saturday 2:56 AM<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="215" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ttbsYCM3lgU" width="320"></iframe></div>
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"And I refuse to leave</div>
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'Till I see the morning sun </div>
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Creep through your window pane ..."<br />
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*****<br />
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<b>Comment</b>: It's so cold here in South Africa we need an old skool <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiI42aZ5F40" target="_blank">Heatwave</a> or at least some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdIqbv7SPo" target="_blank">Sunshine</a>.<br />
<br /></div>
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Onward</div>
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Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-8319387041809892932014-06-12T16:36:00.004+02:002014-06-12T16:39:54.001+02:00Fast Car<div style="text-align: center;">
"You got a fast car<br />
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?<br />
You gotta make a decision<br />
Leave tonight or live and die this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO9Qa7MpAvw" target="_blank">way</a>" </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjusVLQroIcZ0m4E07ClMQfUiKAvtKU5C2_pbgvpZeuJvLNB06WfPf5xwfeQOYLwa6RbiapAe8BK6Wdv3CXXZQGeVMYHcecn51A8vP2j1iIRcjPF1lIn-ybErE2lgMH8R0DyT7A/s1600/bmw-bringing-m235i-to-the-us-in-2014-47059-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjusVLQroIcZ0m4E07ClMQfUiKAvtKU5C2_pbgvpZeuJvLNB06WfPf5xwfeQOYLwa6RbiapAe8BK6Wdv3CXXZQGeVMYHcecn51A8vP2j1iIRcjPF1lIn-ybErE2lgMH8R0DyT7A/s1600/bmw-bringing-m235i-to-the-us-in-2014-47059-7.jpg" height="216" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.google.co.za/search?q=bmw+2+series+235&client=firefox-a&hs=TTS&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=JLqZU4iZDIeO7Qah_oDgBg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1252&bih=602#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=tSbl63HFgq-ipM%253A%3BzqKi-yZByYGCmM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fs1.cdn.autoevolution.com%252Fimages%252Fnews%252Fbmw-bringing-m235i-to-the-us-in-2014-47059-7.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.autoevolution.com%252Fnews%252Fbmw-bringing-m235i-to-the-us-in-2014-47059.html%3B728%3B394" target="_blank">Credit </a></div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-7032762572386781702014-06-10T12:08:00.001+02:002014-06-10T12:10:28.570+02:00The Korean grandmothers who sell sex<div class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27189951" target="_blank">BBC</a></div>
Lucy Williamson<br />
June 9, 2014.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbH75_pQfen8mz7_nvW0-ZZsKeTBClBTgtc3MJ7i43rTDBpQXMpFtp9pXtDa2jvrZW2w160i7QvcQ6ohn-AFgHUOc_3uTgZC-a3srMl1DFO04toAc44sq4F0PfDphXjJ1cfU05/s1600/_74495048_board_corbis624.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbH75_pQfen8mz7_nvW0-ZZsKeTBClBTgtc3MJ7i43rTDBpQXMpFtp9pXtDa2jvrZW2w160i7QvcQ6ohn-AFgHUOc_3uTgZC-a3srMl1DFO04toAc44sq4F0PfDphXjJ1cfU05/s1600/_74495048_board_corbis624.jpg" height="205" width="320" /></a></div>
<blockquote>
<b>Koreans could once be sure that their children would look after them in their old age, but no longer - many of those who worked hard to transform the country's economy find the next generation has other spending priorities. As a result, some elderly women are turning to prostitution. </b><br />
<br />
Kim Eun-ja sits on the steps at Seoul's Jongno-3 subway station, scanning the scene in front of her. The 71-year-old's bright lipstick and shiny red coat stand out against her papery skin. <br />
<br />
Beside her is a large bag, from which comes the clink of glass bottles as she shifts on the cold concrete. <br />
<br />
Mrs Kim is one of South Korea's "Bacchus Ladies" - older women who make a living by selling tiny bottles of the popular Bacchus energy drink to male customers. <br />
<br />
But often that's not all they're selling. At an age when Korean grandmothers are supposed to be venerated as matriarchs, some are selling sex. <br />
<br />
"You see those Bacchus Ladies standing over there?" she asks me. "Those ladies sell more than Bacchus. They sometimes go out with the grandpas and earn money from them. But I don't make a living like that. <br />
<br />
"Men do proposition me when I'm standing in the alleyway," she adds. "But I always say, 'No.'" <br />
<br />
Mrs Kim says she makes about 5,000 Won ($5, or £3) a day selling the drinks. "Drink up fast," she says. "The police are always watching me. They don't differentiate." <br />
<br />
The centre of this underground sex trade is a nearby park in the heart of Seoul. Jongmyo Park is a place where elderly men come to while away their sunset years with a little chess and some local gossip.</blockquote>
Read the rest <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27189951" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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***** </div>
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<b>Comment</b>: Very sad story told against the backdrop of destructive capitalism.</div>
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I was thinking as I read this article that the opulence of South Korea extends everywhere. Not a day goes by in motor journalism without mention of the rise of Korean manufacturers Hyundai and Kia.</div>
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And what about Samsung phones and televisions?</div>
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We are inundated by the progress of capitalism South Korean style.</div>
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Yet here is an isolated article that tells of the weight of capitalist collapse. A weight once drawn by the very elderly women who must now endure its "success".</div>
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Very sad indeed and a tremendous indictment of materialist culture.</div>
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I can't think that there is anything Confucian about having old women sell their bodies for food.</div>
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That said it is also true that this sad state of affairs is not unique to South Korea or to old people in that country.</div>
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Onward!</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-52915954140256634692014-06-08T20:58:00.001+02:002014-06-08T21:00:19.495+02:00Nadal Wins 9 French Opens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRv4GtWoK35evqFYsvKPQ5xQ-ktMKbAFxMoHCOkl_l6Zek2_sVjp2xI2F-wHzCWj8uZEmTGz8z9-6BNgEUrp3v3lij0TMijK167g1_hN1EyN9gdXWPwqTReATdZhUIwYHdKzVj/s1600/Nadal-Djokovic-011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRv4GtWoK35evqFYsvKPQ5xQ-ktMKbAFxMoHCOkl_l6Zek2_sVjp2xI2F-wHzCWj8uZEmTGz8z9-6BNgEUrp3v3lij0TMijK167g1_hN1EyN9gdXWPwqTReATdZhUIwYHdKzVj/s1600/Nadal-Djokovic-011.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></div>
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*****</div>
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Comment: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/jun/08/imperious-nadal-overcomes-djokovic-to-win-his-ninth-french-open-title" target="_blank">Nadal has now eclipsed Borg's record</a> of four straight wins at Roland Garros. He has won nine French Opens and with today's win five in a row. </div>
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His grand slam total stands at 14 right alongside Sampras and just three off from Federer's. And he is just 28 years old and it is very likely that is form will continue to eclipse Federer.</div>
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This is the grand age of men's tennis no doubt and in no small measure because of the likes of Nadal, Federer and Djokovic.</div>
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When it comes to who is the greatest of all time (goat) in the men's game I agree with Agassi who recently said that it is Nadal.</div>
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What makes him the greatest is that he has played in this time of greats and he has consistently beaten Federer and Djokovic alongside other very talented players and he has done so across surfaces.</div>
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An amazing athlete no doubt and he ain't done yet. And hey he is a Gemini too ;-)</div>
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Onward </div>
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Picture <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2014/jun/08/rafael-nadal-novak-djokovic-french-open-final-in-pictures#/?picture=438866909&index=15" target="_blank">Credit</a></div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-58909092121274357982014-06-08T12:23:00.000+02:002014-06-08T12:26:58.479+02:00Nazila Ghanea: For the Bahá'ís imprisoned in Iran, freedom and human rights seem remote <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2014/06/bah-s-imprisoned-iran-freedom-and-human-rights-seem-remote" target="_blank">New Statesman</a><br />
June 6, 2014.<br />
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<b>Seven Bahá'ís – members of Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious
minority, persecuted by the government for decades – have now spent six
years in prison for practising their religion.</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiddOAj8fP_jxdWy2bk0rX7_P2joD9zDJGUgJhICFjKJtWK1xNF7xatDyFIE98L5w-Byd6Xv2XpJg6eND1ZfxLWt9O7mjYoEuP6Xslm5D-YG7ve1F4tITG8FM_gHF76GeOS2Mqs/s1600/76708410.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiddOAj8fP_jxdWy2bk0rX7_P2joD9zDJGUgJhICFjKJtWK1xNF7xatDyFIE98L5w-Byd6Xv2XpJg6eND1ZfxLWt9O7mjYoEuP6Xslm5D-YG7ve1F4tITG8FM_gHF76GeOS2Mqs/s1600/76708410.jpg" height="218" width="320" /></a></div>
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An inmate peers from behind a wall as a guard walks </div>
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by in the infamous Evin jail. (Photo: Getty)</div>
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It has been a month of contrasts, frankly of extremes. <br />
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May 2014 marked six years since seven adults were taken from their homes and thrown into the notorious Evin prison in Iran. One is the mother of a dear friend whose gifts are treasured in my home. <br />
<br />
Who are these prisoners? The charges against the seven included espionage and propaganda against the Islamic order. They are mothers and fathers, one is a school principal, another an agricultural engineer, a businessman, a psychologist. What matters though is that they are Bahá'ís, members of the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority and persecuted by the government for decades. The fabricated charges against them, the illegal closed trial that led to a twenty-year jail sentence – the longest given to any prisoners of conscience in the country – were all set up to punish them for their role in coordinating the affairs of the Bahá'ís in Iran, affairs which are numerous in a religious community that operates through such networks of elected and appointed lay people. <br />
<br />
The most moving protest on this anniversary was the large group of prominent Iranians within Iran that risked life and limb to stand up against the unjust imprisonment of the seven by visiting their family members. This group included human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh – joint winner of the 2012 Sakharov Prize honoring those who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought – and Ayatollah Masumi Tehrani, a senior Muslim cleric who recently gifted a piece of art to the Bahá'ís as an expression of hope for a future Iran committed to respect for the human rights of all. <br />
<br />
There remains, however, a very sharp contrast between this cohesion amongst Iranian defenders of human rights and the actions of the Iranian authorities. When a European Parliament delegation visited Tehran last December for the first time in six years, Iran angrily criticised them for “secretly” meeting with so-called seditionists including Sotoudeh. When the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton visited Iran in March, she too was harshly criticised for meeting with a group of leading Iranian women activists, including Sotoudeh. A European Parliament resolution on 3 April 2014 condemning Iran’s “continued, systematic violation of fundamental rights” led to Iran’s Parliament cancelling a planned visit with EU parliamentarians. <br />
<br />
As calls for respect of human rights were being heard from Iran, Iran’s revolutionary guards proceeded with their latest attempt at oppression by excavating a historically important Bahá'í cemetery in Shiraz, the southern Iranian city of my birth. Some 950 graves of Bahá'ís that include those of 10 women – the youngest just 17 – executed for refusing to forcibly deny their religious belief, now risk being destroyed forever. Many thousands from around the world will forever be denied the possibility of remembering the 10 Bahá'í women at their resting place. Thousands of family members will be denied the basic dignity of saying prayers for their dead and my daughters will never be able to see the graves of their great-grandparents. <br />
<br />
Which of these shall I share with my 8 and 11 year old? The profound joy of principled camaraderie amongst Iranian upholders of justice, or the attack on their dead ancestors? I’ve shared both, trusting that they will gain an insight into the choice we all ultimately face of sacrificing for the greater good or sinking to the depths of hatred. All this, with patient optimism that the former is conquering the latter and the future of Iran is bright. </div>
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Read the original article <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2014/06/bah-s-imprisoned-iran-freedom-and-human-rights-seem-remote" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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____________________</div>
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<br />
Dr Nazila Ghanea is Assistant Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford and serves as a member of the OSCE advisory panel on freedom of religion or belief. She writes this piece in her personal capacity</div>
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___________________ </div>
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*****</div>
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<b>Comment</b>: There is no compulsion in religion or belief inside of Islam.<br />
<br />
Iran is wrong in persecuting Bahá'ís.<br />
<br />
The argument that there are seditious forces among the Bahá'ís is not convincing and smacks of authoritarian religious control.<br />
<br />
Iran would do well to free these Bahá'í prisoners and to uphold the dictates of the Qur'an which is very clear on religious tolerance.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This is a case of inhumane oppression and it should be condemned openly and particularly by Muslims everywhere.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Onward!</div>
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</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-32976828169528066972014-06-06T09:18:00.001+02:002014-06-06T09:18:38.138+02:00Let It Bleed: The Stones In Israel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/further/2014/06/04-0" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a><br />
Abby Zimet<br />
June 4, 2014.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJFpDpeVMNPlbKE-G67BYLUbCzWY1J0z60stfWfVgBOsPXJk4iFwIAyUqzNOnpI_JmJp2bwnvz0bLctQBN_Wfh8at2XatUYw53q77LwpIKS-enGvj_USGfMV1KYtBnt9u-kem/s1600/stones_bpon7aicyaeocic-580x580.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJFpDpeVMNPlbKE-G67BYLUbCzWY1J0z60stfWfVgBOsPXJk4iFwIAyUqzNOnpI_JmJp2bwnvz0bLctQBN_Wfh8at2XatUYw53q77LwpIKS-enGvj_USGfMV1KYtBnt9u-kem/s1600/stones_bpon7aicyaeocic-580x580.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
A brilliant new <a href="https://twitter.com/stephinrome/status/473907019389620224"><strong>logo</strong></a> in honor of the Rolling Stones "historic" first <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/rolling-stones-kick-off-tel-aviv-concert/"><strong>performance </strong></a>in Israel tonight (June 4), despite <a href="http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2014/05/pink-floyd-rolling-stones-israel-bds.html"><strong>pleas</strong></a>
from BDS activists who called it "the moral equivalent of playing Sun
City at the height of South African apartheid." They were reportedly
paid $6.7 million. First <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/life/music-theater/.premium-1.597065"><strong>reviews </strong></a>were mediocre. We never liked them anyway.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtfr5KQdgmt6XGjnw6AvJeO8YoJtNyPuZgYlUFR77PxGPLnmg01GSJGlEXK6XNNf9MOi3HCj8d0CkrBZHd7HUzqW8UDYDFskcW96-kQPb6ugsb9ecu8whAn1yI0z0lDFKPVRnE/s1600/stones_3_bpomzj0cuae-q5q-580x542.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtfr5KQdgmt6XGjnw6AvJeO8YoJtNyPuZgYlUFR77PxGPLnmg01GSJGlEXK6XNNf9MOi3HCj8d0CkrBZHd7HUzqW8UDYDFskcW96-kQPb6ugsb9ecu8whAn1yI0z0lDFKPVRnE/s1600/stones_3_bpomzj0cuae-q5q-580x542.jpg" height="299" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilE94HJ4XwxsgxqCMiVU9hFiUIp5vAyTCPFRKV7lnZUnknQZ1z0zMB7X-6jckm8029rewr_KEHWulvcoh2lDx_N4YQdeTceV7OK4W5Yp8JE1t-AoGler1gcIp6691M7xaJuUP8/s1600/stones_arrive_1401910702064.jpg-620x349.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilE94HJ4XwxsgxqCMiVU9hFiUIp5vAyTCPFRKV7lnZUnknQZ1z0zMB7X-6jckm8029rewr_KEHWulvcoh2lDx_N4YQdeTceV7OK4W5Yp8JE1t-AoGler1gcIp6691M7xaJuUP8/s1600/stones_arrive_1401910702064.jpg-620x349.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></div>
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Read the original post <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/further/2014/06/04-0" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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*****</div>
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<b>Comment</b>: Proof that age does not necessarily make you wiser or more humane.</div>
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<span style="color: lime;"><span style="font-size: large;">BOYCOTT ISRAEL !!!</span></span></div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-58568708399422401382014-06-06T08:41:00.001+02:002014-06-06T08:44:54.564+02:00India's Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur on Rape<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_rkKDf679CNqzW4d3EASusPE8fJ68021pMdt2hXN7m2A-SheJ2NslUlV4rnDYPRY7CPW0Q9-yI7M78LDf1b0QOs_iG8gqKTdCV78VCb9Jq3XQDN3bDO0nP_yqHa5o1CrTSHGP/s1600/Babulal+Gaur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_rkKDf679CNqzW4d3EASusPE8fJ68021pMdt2hXN7m2A-SheJ2NslUlV4rnDYPRY7CPW0Q9-yI7M78LDf1b0QOs_iG8gqKTdCV78VCb9Jq3XQDN3bDO0nP_yqHa5o1CrTSHGP/s1600/Babulal+Gaur.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The ruling BJP's <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/uk-india-rape-idINKBN0EG1EX20140605" target="_blank">Babulal Gaur</a> is also </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a lawyer (Picture <a href="http://bhopale.blogspot.com/2009/12/krishna-gaur-bhopal-timeline.html" target="_blank">Credit</a>)</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span id="articleText">"This (rape) is a social crime which depends on men and women. </span></div>
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<span id="articleText">Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong."</span></div>
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<span id="articleText">*****</span></div>
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<span id="articleText"><b>Comment</b>: Dumbass man ... </span><br />
<br />
<span id="articleText">Onward! </span></div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-82587590779734473312014-06-05T09:57:00.000+02:002014-06-05T09:57:03.995+02:0050 Bones<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFpdN1ZAVjfFHnvZUNN4iSm4TBS8c4wXs2O-5DnFp3N8IV7c0xTL6Kuin2M1oBUTZ_Zn7zAjz8RsS0LYt05FKoSo1wDkdDDv4G1FI2YshfY8tYyUt0h_-zM8D8fcxNynCuusP/s1600/oldcouplesexsleep350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFpdN1ZAVjfFHnvZUNN4iSm4TBS8c4wXs2O-5DnFp3N8IV7c0xTL6Kuin2M1oBUTZ_Zn7zAjz8RsS0LYt05FKoSo1wDkdDDv4G1FI2YshfY8tYyUt0h_-zM8D8fcxNynCuusP/s1600/oldcouplesexsleep350.jpg" height="258" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.verses4cards.co.uk/wrinkinsults.html" target="_blank">Credit</a></div>
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<b>Comment</b>: Here's to at least 50 more boners .... </div>
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Onward!</div>
Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-69421664155849282852014-06-02T10:33:00.000+02:002014-06-02T10:45:18.217+02:00Gary Younge: Who's in control – nation states or global corporations?<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/02/control-nation-states-corporations-autonomy-neoliberalism" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> (UK)<br />
June 2, 2014.<br />
<br />
<b>Around the world, calls for national autonomy have grown. Minorities are blamed but the real culprit is neoliberalism</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The night in 2002 when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won his landslide victory in Brazil's presidential elections, he warned supporters: "So far, it has been easy. The hard part begins now." He wasn't wrong. As head of the leftwing Workers' party he was elected on a platform of fighting poverty and redistributing wealth. A year earlier, the <a href="http:///">party had produced a document, Another Brazil is Possible</a>, laying out its electoral programme. In a section entitled "The Necessary Rupture", it argued: "Regarding the foreign debt, now predominantly private, it will be necessary to denounce the agreement with the IMF, in order to free the economic policy from the restrictions imposed on growth and on the defence of Brazilian commercial interests."<br />
<br />
But on the way to Lula's inauguration the invisible hand of the market tore up his electoral promises and boxed the country around the ears for its reckless democratic choice. In the three months between his winning and being sworn in, the currency plummeted by 30%, $6bn in hot money left the country, and some agencies gave Brazil the highest debt-risk ratings in the world. "We are in government but not in power," said Lula's close aide, Dominican friar Frei Betto. "Power today is global power, the power of the big companies, the power of financial capital."<br />
<br />
The limited <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/03/haitians-singing-president-democratic-legitimacy">ability of national governments to pursue any agenda</a> that has not first been endorsed by international capital and its proxies is no longer simply the cross they have to bear; it is the cross to which we have all been nailed. The nation state is the primary democratic entity that remains. But given the scale of neoliberal globalisation it is clearly no longer up to that task.<br />
<br />
"By many measures, corporations are more central players in global affairs than nations," writes Benjamin Barber in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/17/politics">Jihad vs McWorld</a>. "We call them multinational but they are more accurately understood as postnational, transnational or even anti-national. For they abjure the very idea of nations or any other parochialism that limits them in time or space."<br />
<br />
This contradiction is not new. Indeed, it is precisely because it has continued, challenged but virtually unchecked, for more than a generation, that political cynicism has intensified.<br />
<br />
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born," argued the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. "In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."</blockquote>
Read the rest <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/02/control-nation-states-corporations-autonomy-neoliberalism" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<b>Comment</b>: One of the "morbid symptoms" is the growing anti-immigrant sentiments in the West which essentially is a function of a long-standing system of race, class and gender privilege(s).<br />
<br />
The loss of jobs and the crumbling economies in many of these countries are often seen as an encroachment of privileges instead of an exacting neo-liberal global marketplace where jobs and capital flow in the direction of profitability.<br />
<br />
And so as Younge points out there is the accompanying nationalist anxiety to retrieve and protect the heritage of days past - read this as nationalist action towards kicking out undesirables and tightening border influx controls.<br />
<br />
But like Younge says all of this is not new. And, to take the argument further we should not expect that what is happening is because the system of nation-states and the concept of sovereignty has deteriorated unexpectedly.<br />
<br />
Rather, what is happening now is a logical contraction. The same was true when the West 'explored' the world and used slavery and genocide toward capitalization.<br />
<br />
Now the need is to move money where it can be safe and to do so while placing production in locales where people work on the edge of starvation.<br />
<br />
And so middle life in the old colonies will need to contract - even disappear where needed.<br />
<br />
For these reasons it seems as if the concept of the nation-state is under attack.<br />
<br />
The truth is closer to the reality that as a container the nation-state is an artificial construction. There is no such organic thing as a nation and therefore its contents is a matter of speculation and manipulation.<br />
<br />
The state on the other hand is nothing more than the culmination and ordering of elite interests. These interests are fixed on profit, taxation, regulation, cycles, etc.<br />
<br />
In these terms the nation-state can me made to be nothing more than the interests of capital and the form of capital may be corporations or even state entities.<br />
<br />
The emphasis is on elite control and expansion ... and where necessary contraction.<br />
<br />
It is all about domination.<br />
<br />
The matters of justice and democracy are negotiated in the interests of elite control and played out for comparative advantage through constructed crises as Marx argued.<br />
<br />
Onward! Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-52787680657301377442014-05-28T17:09:00.002+02:002014-05-30T12:16:52.427+02:00Maya Angelou 1928 - 2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2Gu3LsTPaebc50VfEZhqmIegwk0ujHt6d8vTBQWW25ldCvZQDqB9Oc5feklqCZuRFSBY8u0dPqH_RVlW-5P4SHQu0XzUQtgzC_KE0OspfJe6IG_cGv0d3USxlaFfrJJvKwCS/s1600/Maya-Angelou-Quotes-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2Gu3LsTPaebc50VfEZhqmIegwk0ujHt6d8vTBQWW25ldCvZQDqB9Oc5feklqCZuRFSBY8u0dPqH_RVlW-5P4SHQu0XzUQtgzC_KE0OspfJe6IG_cGv0d3USxlaFfrJJvKwCS/s1600/Maya-Angelou-Quotes-2.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I have always admired the intellectual integrity and emotional depth of Maya Angelou even though I think she had political blind spots when it came to Bill Clinton and especially <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/15/maya-angelou-barack-obama-remarkable-job" target="_blank">Barack Obama</a>.<br />
<br />
Still, it saddens me to read about her passing today. But this is the course of life and she will live on in word and deed for longer than most of us. <br />
<br />
About a decade ago I bought three of her seven autobiographies in Portland and read in "The Heart of a Woman" (1981) that she was once married to Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) stalwart <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vusumzi_Make" target="_blank">Vusumzi Make</a>.<br />
<br />
I asked my late dad if Robert Sobukwe ever mentioned the marriage between Vusumzi Make and Maya Angelou but he did not know.<br />
<br />
That aside, reading Maya Angelou is always a journey into a quest for a greater human spirit. Just recently I was passing time in a tea shop in Delhi and reading a recent article she wrote on her mother, Vivian Baxter, entitled: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/30/maya-angelou-terrible-wonderful-mother" target="_blank">"My terrible, wonderful mother"</a> (The Guardian: March 30, 2014).<br />
<br />
The article is an extract from her 2014 book entitled <a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781844089147&guni=Article:in%20body%20link" target="_blank">"Mom and Me and Mom</a>".<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPMoAvz27fxB8bgZ4nb-HHP6clwnO5CocNPuJPgIPGF7xC0nO6MaD0RjEg5CyYP3Ms7-Fu0D5yTRddpEiTWrzzuGZBspXxFVlSWvbcjYilis2BAX468gtYPRRVGLhItqbHLfur/s1600/Maya-Angelou-with-her-mot-006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPMoAvz27fxB8bgZ4nb-HHP6clwnO5CocNPuJPgIPGF7xC0nO6MaD0RjEg5CyYP3Ms7-Fu0D5yTRddpEiTWrzzuGZBspXxFVlSWvbcjYilis2BAX468gtYPRRVGLhItqbHLfur/s1600/Maya-Angelou-with-her-mot-006.jpg" height="240" width="400" /></a></div>
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Maya Angelou and her mother, Vivian Baxter (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/28/maya-angelou-poet-author-dies-86" target="_blank">Credit</a>)</div>
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Her relationship with her mother was intense and often marked by disagreement and distance. Over time she made peace with the "elegant" Vivian Baxter. It is a remarkable story of resilience and forgiveness.<br />
<br />
Forgiveness is a recurring theme in her writing. Perhaps she has a liberating lesson for all of us with this quote: "It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody."</div>
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<br />
If you have not read her, start now. If you have, read her again. </div>
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May her passing prompt many more young folks - especially girls and women - to pick up her books and read about a woman who dared to define her character and worth in a world too trapped in ugliness and despair.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Perhaps it is best to remember her life as she wanted:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“What I would really like said about me is that I dared to love. By love I mean that condition in
the human spirit so profound it encourages us to develop courage and
build bridges, and then to trust those bridges and cross the bridges in
attempts to reach other human beings.”</blockquote>
May she rest in peace.<br />
<br />
Onward!<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***** </div>
<b>Update</b> (May 30): <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phillip-martin/reconciling-maya-angelous_b_5412462.html" target="_blank">See</a> "Reconciling Maya Angelou's Legacy With Her Support of Clarence Thomas" by Philip Martin (Huffington Post Politics: May 29).Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-91329528643497317632014-05-27T21:00:00.000+02:002014-05-27T21:44:05.008+02:00Subcomandante Marcos Is No More<a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4867-subcomandante-marcos-is-no-more">Upside Down World</a><br />
Written by Desinformemonos<br />
May 26, 2014.<br />
<br />
Translated by Danica Jorden<br />
Source: <a href="http://desinformemonos.org/2014/05/adios-al-subcomandante-marcos-nace-galeano/">Desinformemonos.org</a><br />
For audio recording of Marcos' goodbye <a href="http://komanilel.org/AUDIO/EZLN/entreLaLuzyLaSombra.mp3">click here.</a><br />
<br />
<i>“We believe that it is necessary for one of us to die so that Galeano may live on. So we have decided that Marcos must die today,” announced the Zapatista military head and spokesperson."</i><br />
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At 2:08 am this morning, Subcomandante Marcos announced that as of that moment, he had ceased to exist. In a statement made before those attending a tribute to Galeano, the Zapatista assassinated in the Zapatista community of La Realidad, the military head of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) noted: “If I were to define Marcos, the character, then I would say without hesitation that he was a mask.” <br />
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After more than 20 years at the helm of the political-military organization that first took up arms on the 1st of January 1994, Marcos announced that he has given up the command. He noted that after last year and the beginning of this year’s Zapatista Little School classes, “we realised that there was already a generation that could look us in the face, listen to us and speak to us without guidance or leadership, neither deferring to us nor requiring monitoring.” And so, he said, “Marcos, the personality, was no longer necessary. The next phase of the Zapatista struggle was ready.” <br />
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In the emblematic community of La Realidad, the same one where on May 2nd, a group of paramilitaries from the Independent Central of Agricultural Workers and Historic Campesinos (CIOAC-H) assassinated Zapatista Base Support Galeano, Subcomandante Marcos appeared at dawn, accompanied by six comandantes of the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee and Insurgency Subcomandante Moisés, whom he named his successor in command last December. <br />
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“It is our conviction and our practice that we don’t need leaders or chieftains, messiahs or saviours, in order to develop and fight, only a little humility, a lot of dignity and a great deal of organisation; the rest either serves the collective or serves no purpose,” Marcos said. <br />
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A black patch with the design of a pirate skull covering his right eye, the erstwhile Zapatista spokesman recalled the dawn of the 1st of January 1994, when “an army of giants, or indigenous rebels, descended into the cities, and with their steps shook the world. Just a few days later, with the blood of our fallen ones still fresh in the streets, we realised that we weren’t being seen by those outside. Accustomed to looking past indigenous peoples, they didn’t raise their glance to look at us; accustomed to seeing us humiliated, they could not understand in their hearts the dignity of our rebellion. They fixated upon the only mestizo wearing a balaclava; in other words, they weren’t watching. So the men and women who lead us said: ‘They only see the smallest thing; let’s make someone as small as they are, so that when they see him, through him they will see us.’” <br />
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That was how Marcos was born, out of “a complex deceptive manoeuvre, a terrible and at the same time marvellous magic trick, a malicious move played by our indigenous heart; indigenous wisdom defying modernity through one of its bastions: the media.” <br />
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The press release, signed by “the free, alternative, autonomous or otherwise known media,” known in various alternative communication outlets as Radio Pozol, Promedia and Resistance Report, produced an atmosphere of applause and hurrahs at the EZLN after the Comandante’s announcement. <br />
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The image of Subcomandante Marcos travelled around the world in the early hours of the 1st of January 1994. The sight of a man armed with red bandoliers and an R-15, clad in a black and tan uniform covered with a woolen Chiapas Highlands chuj, his face covered by a balaclava and smoking a pipe, appeared on the front page of the most influential newspapers on the planet. Over the following days and weeks, his ironic and humourously charged communiqués were released, defiant and irreverent. The few hand-typed white pages were literally snapped up by the Mexican and international press. Twenty years and over four months later, Marcos has announced the end of this phase. <br />
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“It is hard to believe that twenty years later, ´nothing for us´ became more than a slogan, a good phrase for signs and songs, but a reality, La Realidad”, said Marcos. He added, “If being consistent is a failure, then incongruence is the path to success, and the way to power. But we don’t want to go that way, we’re not interested in that. Under those circumstances, we’d rather fail than triumph.” <br />
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“We believe,” he said, “that one of us must die so that Galeano may live on. So we have decided that Marcos must die today.” <br />
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“At 2:10 am, Insurgency Subcomandante Marcos forever descended from the stage, the lights were extinguished, followed by applause from members of the Sixth, and in turn a greater round of applause from Zapatista supporters, militants and insurgents,” was the report from La Realidad. <br />
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In keeping with his ironic style and traditional postscripts, the character of Marcos signed off with: P.S. 1 Game Over. 2.- Check Mate. 3.- Touché. 4.- Mmm, is this what hell is like? 5.- So now that I’ve dropped the mask, can I walk naked? 6.- It’s really dark in here, I need some light…”<br />
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Read the original post <a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4867-subcomandante-marcos-is-no-more">here</a>.<br />
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*****</div>
<b>Comment</b>: I am a great admirer of the cause of the Zapatistas. And I am sure many reading the post above here and elsewhere are admirers of one kind or another.<br />
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But excuse me for a minute if I say the statement above is overly dramatic and romanticized bullsh*t that is just downright tiresome.<br />
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The hero who is known but unknown to just about the whole world has ridden off into the revolutionary sunset 'cause they have schools now and kids with new faces and expectations.<br />
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Please.<br />
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Save us the materialist next phase of the struggle spiel. And spare us the equally pretentious drivel about dying so Galeano may live on.<br />
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What is the value of this kind of prank politics with its unavoidable undercurrents of hero worship and cult of personality nonsense?<br />
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Revolutions are about ideas and principles and not individuals, movements, or moments in history.<br />
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In this scheme it matters little that Marcos or Geleano lives or lived. <br />
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Onward!Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-33713513949797365422014-05-27T16:21:00.000+02:002014-05-27T16:26:18.515+02:00Best Damn Kim/Kanye Comment on Gawker this Week<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"This picture has to win some kind of award for depicting the biggest, </div>
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deepest, most dense collection of douchebaggery </div>
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that humanity has ever
witnessed."</div>
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<span class="display-name author vcard"><a class="fn url" data-dropdownhover-anchor="1581798579-hovercard" href="http://johnnywasaschoolboy.kinja.com/" target="_self">JohnnyWasASchoolBoy</a></span></div>
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Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-67283982335243945832014-05-27T13:02:00.000+02:002014-05-27T16:57:49.140+02:00Caribbean Reparations Initiative Inspires a Revitalization of US Movement <div class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23881-caribbean-reparations-initiative-inspires-a-revitalization-of-us-movement" target="_blank">Truthout</a></div>
Don Rojas<br />
May 26, 2014.<br />
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The headquarters of CARICOM, the Secretariat of the Caribbean </div>
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Community, is just outside Georgetown, Guyana. </div>
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(Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidstanleytravel/13958170063">David Stanley / Flickr</a>)</div>
<blockquote>
Picture this scene. It was almost surreal, improbable just a few years ago: a room filled with presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers from the 15-nation Caribbean Community (CARICOM), all listening with rapt attention, several nodding in agreement, as one of the region's most distinguished academics, and perhaps the Caribbean's most prominent public intellectual, gave a riveting report on the recent work of CARICOM's Reparations Commission. <br />
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Yes, "reparations," as in compensation for the crimes of slavery and indigenous genocide at the hands of former European colonizers - reparations, as in reparatory justice for the horrific consequences of two of the greatest crimes against humanity in the history of this planet - the 400 years of the African Slave Trade and the systematic and calculated extermination of the indigenous peoples of the Americas - reparations, as in fundamental and comprehensive social, economic and political justice, indeed, historical justice for the descendants of African slaves and native American peoples. <br />
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This scene played out in the conference room of the beautiful Buccament Resort on the Eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent on March 10, 2014; the occasion - the 25th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community. <br />
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There was applause at the end of the professor's report. Not a single dissenting voice was heard from a group of leaders whose politics ranged from conservative through liberal to progressive. The CARICOM heads of government then proceeded to unanimously adopt a 10-point program for reparatory justice for the region. <br />
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This breakthrough plan calls for a formal apology for slavery, debt cancellation from former colonizers and reparation payments to address the persisting "psychological trauma" from the days of plantation slavery. <br />
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"For over 400 years Africans and their descendants were classified in law as nonhuman, chattel, property and real estate. They were denied recognition as members of the human family by laws derived from the parliaments and palaces of Europe. "This history has inflicted massive psychological trauma upon African descendant populations. This much is evident daily in the Caribbean. Only a reparatory justice approach to truth and educational exposure can begin the process of healing. Such an engagement will call into being, for example, the need for greater Caribbean integration designed to enable the coming together of the fragmented community," stated the CARICOM Reparations Commission.</blockquote>
Read the rest <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23881-caribbean-reparations-initiative-inspires-a-revitalization-of-us-movement" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<b>Comment</b>: I have always been fascinated by arguments for reparations. In large part the emphasis is based on the recognition that structural damage persists.<br />
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Detractors often express the knee-jerk reaction that reparations punish those who were not connected to the atrocities of the past. This is a thin reading and understanding of how inequality is structured and how it persists.<br />
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That said though there is nothing really radical about a call for reparations. In fact, reparations represent a more conservative argument for redress - where conservative is a reading bent on change within a system.<br />
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A revolution on the other hand would be the alternative in that its emphasis would be on complete systemic change or rupture.<br />
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What reparations movements often overlook is the subservience of asking beneficiaries of atrocities to fix the past and its persistent inequities. And, when there is a measure of success the changes or fixes are almost always never enough - or even go far enough in spirit.<br />
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What we often have is a tense negotiation between political and economic interests at the very least.<br />
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The TRC in South Africa and Affirmative Action represent forms of reparations. Most folks would be surprised by this because the colloquial understanding is of paying an agreed amount for injustices - like reparations after a war, for example.<br />
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But at its center, the reparations argument is about seeking redress. The problems though remains the context within which the redress or remedy is to be decided.<br />
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For this reason, reparations is really not aimed at taking back the past and seizing what was lost or stolen. More likely, reparations is dependent on keeping the system within which is agitates very much intact and drawing an approximation of benefits in the current epoch.<br />
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And, this approximation cannot be real in that it cannot exactly or even closely decide on what was lost or damaged.<br />
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How does one decide on a dollar amount for the losses and atrocities suffered as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, for example? <br />
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Still, elites fighting over power in any one system will use the reparation argument to project what was lost and what is needed to remake or remedy the past.<br />
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Sadly, these same elites often miss the metaphorical boat and get lost inside the very system they are critiquing.<br />
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The outcome is that reparations is a seasonal - if you will - grab at attention that almost never goes very far from the platitudinous call for change.<br />
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Disaffected people don't need negotiated handouts is my thinking. As Frederick Douglas once said: "power concedes nothing without a demand"<br />
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The point of argument here is not about the substance of repair that is needed but rather the systemic formula of reparations that does not nearly go far enough.<br />
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Onward!<br />
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Ps. See <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/" target="_blank">"The Case for Reparations"</a> by Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic: May 21, 2014). Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36009958.post-47916627035150449412014-05-26T20:30:00.002+02:002014-05-26T20:31:32.500+02:00Mr Fish: Happy Memorial Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ridwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16758153484699728802noreply@blogger.com0