Black athletes dominate U.S. gymnastics

Gymnastics in the US used to be a lily-white sport. Now it’s dominated by Black athletes–both female & male. There still isn’t a level playing field since most Black families can’t afford the years of training required. And just like Serena & Venus Williams in tennis, the athletes sustain a lot of racism from competitors being left in the dust. But it’s like gymnastics has come into the real world.

General Sisi’s persecution of Muslim Brotherhood

MB massacre

FB prompted me to re-share this post from two years ago. It was written just over a month after Sisi & the military bounced president Morsi & openly took over Egypt. I would write it quite differently today but still stand by my assertion that defending the Muslim Brotherhood against massacres by the Sisi regime was not just the humane & democratic thing to do (regardless of the politics of the MB) but was a defense of the Egyptian revolution.

The military junta had worked with & manipulated the MB leadership under Morsi but turned on the MB to behead the revolution & protect military rule. Bloodbaths are not the method of social transformation but of tyranny. That distinction is never going to change.

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A propaganda war is on to justify the massacres & brutal military siege against the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt. How anyone who claims to stand for democracy & social transformation can defend these barbarities is one of the unfathomable enigmas of politics. (And that would be giving defense of barbarism its most charitable twist.) What is happening is a political process separating the wheat from the chaff in revolution & the revolutionist from the Islamophobe.

It is one thing to denounce the torching of Christian churches. One can even allege with some certainty that the MB was involved–although given the military siege & the use of divide & conquer by the regime, it is likely agents provocateurs from SCAF, the US Pentagon, CIA, & Mossad are also implicated. All that would have been sorted out in a court of law if the military regime allowed the rule of law.

It is another thing entirely to ignore the massacre of hundreds of unarmed MB civilians & focus reporting on denouncing the torching of police stations & writing sentimental obituaries for the riot cops & soldiers getting caught in the crossfires of the carnage they are creating. That kind of reporting is a dead giveaway to whose side you are on & it typifies the coverage on the Facebook wall of Egyptian Streets.

Media are already using the massacres to beat the drums of Islamophobia. Cynics will use the carnage to document their conviction social transformation is impossible against the mighty fortress of US & Egyptian militarism. Revolutionists will not wait for the tear gas & the horror to dissipate before examining with the most careful attention & closest approximations how the counterrevolution gained the upper hand in Egypt.

One thing is already certain: regime change is an insufficient program for social transformation; the military runs the show in Egypt & they must eventually be forcibly challenged & dismantled down to the last bullet & tear gas canister. A full program that incorporates that monumental task & addresses the political, social, & economic problems of Egyptian working people must be developed.

Egyptian working people have been a beacon of revolution over the past few years; activists around the world have learned much from observing their struggles & their stand against what seemed insurmountable odds. Their leadership was forged in the cauldron of revolution & did not have sufficient time & resources to develop an action program to successfully challenge the military junta—which was armed to the teeth by the US Pentagon.

Supporters of the Egyptian military siege use guilt-baiting & call those outside Egypt know-it-alls for taking a stand against the massacres of MB civilians. They suggest only an Orientalist would take a stand against bloodbaths. It’s takes a whole lot more than name-calling & guilt-baiting to silence the international voices of outrage at the crimes of the Egyptian military regime & their Pentagon & Zionist allies.

(Photo of family & friends grieving as they come to mosque to identify their loved ones by AP)

“No to the detention of Mohammed Allan!” No to administrative detention in Israel

Mohammed Allan protest ((REUTERS:Ammar Awad)  August 16 2015

Palestinian protesters near the Al-Aqsa mosque last Friday hold up a placard of political prisoner Mohammed Allan who went into a coma after nine weeks of a hunger strike to protest his illegal incarceration. The Arabic on the placard reads, “No to the detention of Mohammed Allan”.

Allan was arrested last November in the West Bank as an alleged Islamic Jihad activist & placed in administrative detention, which means indefinitely without charges. It’s one of the many barbarisms of the Israeli occupation. His father, Naser Allan, said his son was expecting to be released June 6 & was “crushed” when Israel extended his detention for another six months. Under administrative detention, Israel can go on extending till the cows come home without formal charges. Palestinians have no rights in Israeli prisons. In protest, Allan went on a hunger strike as other Palestinian prisoners have.

When his condition worsened last month, Allan was admitted to Soroka Medical Center in the Israeli city of Beersheba but was recently transferred to the intensive care unit at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. Under another Israeli barbarism approved July 30th by the Israeli parliament, the prison service can get permission from a judge to force-feed prisoners. This contradicts the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), the UN Human Rights Commission, & the World Medical Association which all consider force-feeding to be torture specifically prohibited under international law.

Lawyers & family members believe Allan was transferred from Soroka to Barzilai because Soroka medical personnel refused to comply with the new law & with a recommendation from Soroka’s ethics committee to treat Allan against his will, including performing blood tests or force-feeding. Two days after the Knesset passed the force-feeding law, Dr. Tamar Karni, head of the IMA’s ethics committee, showed up at Soroka to support the physicians defying the order. Karni later told Israel Radio that “Forcefully feeding him at this stage can kill him. We will not treat our patients forcefully. We are not jailers, we are not torturers.” Of course, the Israel Knesset is following the well-trodden path of the US & Obama regime at Guantanamo by flouting international law opposing force-feeding prisoners.

According to his father, Allan went on the hunger strike because he thought it was “the only way he can win his freedom.” He added that “Force-feeding means premeditated execution of the prisoner. This is a crime, & no doctor will be willing to be involved in that.” Not unless like US doctors involved in Guantanamo, they have political & psychotic affinities with Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengele.

Like the hunger strikers of Northern Ireland under the Thatcher regime, Allan & other hunger strikers are posing a public relations problem for Israel & exposing the barbarism of Israeli apartheid & occupation. If Allan dies in their custody, Israel worries about an international backlash–& should be. His life is clearly of no consequence to them. But it is to us.

Our political response must be to demand the end of arbitrary arrests, the end of the occupation, the end of military aid to Israel. Building the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel is the most powerful solidarity we can express.

(Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters)

The children of Umoja, Kenya

Umoja, Kenya children (Georgina Goodwin for the Observer) August 15 2015

Children are the only males allowed to live in Umoja, Kenya, the women-only sanctuary for victims of sexual & domestic violence. The village runs a school for the kids & it’s apparent from this delightful photo they are thriving in an environment free of violence–at least in the confines of the village.

(Photo by Georgina Goodwin for the Observer)

Umoja, Kenya: a women-only sanctuary from violence against women

Umoja, Kenya (Georgina Goodwin for the Observer) August 15 2015

Umoja (“unity in Swahili) is a women-only village of 48 women & their children in Samburu Country, Kenya. It was founded as a sanctuary for women in 1990 by Rebecca Lolosoli, a feminist, & 14 other women she advocated for when they were raped by British soldiers garrisoned in the district. When she spoke up for the rape victims (who were stigmatized, some beaten & others accused of prostituting by their husbands & family) she was beaten by men in her village. When her husband did not protest the assault, she left him & founded Umoja with the other women.

The Guardian-UK is not the first to write on Umoja. More importantly, it’s not the first to completely misrepresent the story & turn it into a feel-good morality tale in the genre of white supremacy. As endless accounts going back years portray it, the rapes which set off the chain of events are an incidental part of the story. Some accounts don’t even mention them. What’s highlighted is the rebellion against the “traditional subordinate position of women” in Kenya, including forced & child marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, rape–“all of which are cultural norms among the Samburu” people. It’s true most of the founding women of Umoja were socially ostracized & shunned by their husbands when they reported the rapes & the village now accepts women fleeing sexual & domestic violence of every kind. There’s no denying Kenya has widespread violence against women. It’s hard to find a corner of the planet that doesn’t.

Umoja is a marvelous countercultural initiative providing sanctuary to women but it is hardly a feel-good project. It relies for survival on charitable contributions & still only accommodates a small number of women–nothing compared to the actual number of women & children raped by British soldiers or sustaining violence. It is also surrounded by continuing violence under a repressive regime. Media reports that spiteful Kenyan men set up a village nearby by to harass & keep surveillance on the women. They don’t mention that England still maintains five military training facilities for over 3,000 soldiers in the region–which it has for 50 years. During that time, there have been hundreds of documented rapes by British soldiers. There are undoubtedly hundreds more unreported because the women are afraid of the social consequences. There is no current information on rape statistics by British soldiers in the region.

Communities in the region are pastoral & isolated victims would be attacked by soldiers in broad daylight while grazing animals, doing errands, walking; others were attacked in their homes. The rapes, including of children, were brutal–involving torture, beating, injuries; women say they were hunted down in packs & often gang raped. Many women had children born as a result of these rapes who also suffer humiliation & stigmatizing.

As early as 1972, village elders & district officers began reporting the rapes to senior Kenyan officials & to the British Army. The Kenyan government refused to intervene & the British government looked the other way, allowing widespread rape to continue with complete impunity. That situation prevails to this day. In 2003, 650 Masai & Samburu women rape victims took legal action against the British government. The British government accused the hundreds of litigants of forging hospital & police reports. Nothing has come of that suit to date.

In June of this year, Kenya & the UK negotiated a new military cooperation deal currently valued at about £58 million (Sh7.9 billion or US $91 million) a year. The pact allows up to 10,000 British troops a year to train in Kenya before they’re deployed to Afghanistan & Iraq. Britain wants a deal like the US has with Afghanistan & Iraq where English soldiers who commit crimes in Kenya fall under the jurisdiction of UK military law. Kenya wants them tried in local courts so the deal was only renewed until October. The rapes apparently were not mentioned in negotiations–only the murder of a herdsman by a British soldier.

The photo is the women of Umoja. Nineteen-year-old Judia (in the center) came six years ago to avoid being sold into marriage.

(Photo by Georgina Goodwin for the Observer)

Humanizing war criminals

CBS news reported on Obama’s summer playlist on Spotify. Our man is just so cool–a real Motown guy. BDS supporters always appeal to performers to honor the cultural boycott of Israel so as not to provide the soundtrack to the bombing of Gaza. So does the US bombing of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, & Pakistan become cool if Obama is tapping his toes to Motown? Are we now going to hear Netanyahu’s playlist?

Armed vigilantes patrol Black community while police pay no heed

Ferguson Oathkeepers (Scott Olson:Getty Images) August 15 2015

Officials in Ferguson made quite a flap about 18-year-old Tyrone Harris Jr. having a hand gun before they shot him several times. He’s in the hospital now in critical condition. So those same authorities have some explaining to do about why they allow the Oath Keepers, a heavily armed civilian paramilitary goon squad, to openly patrol protesters in Ferguson to prevent looting. They have not been deputized & have no right to be there standing on rooftops & patrolling protesters–armed with assault weapons.

According to reports, the Oath Keepers chatted amiably with police & strolled around with their AK-47s without any action taken by law enforcement. Why is that? Because they’re white guys with guns? Because the cops knew a lot of them from the police department?

The Oath Keepers are a right-wing vigilante group founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate, former army paratrooper, & former aide to Ron Paul. To be a member you have to be current or veteran military, police, or first responder. They claim their purpose is to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign & domestic” & their stated purpose in Ferguson is to protect businesses against the threat of looting. That means they intend to shoot down those in the Black community who might lob a brick at a pharmacy or walk off with some toilet paper from a store.

The heavily-armed goon squads are a clear & present danger to the Black community but the authorities accept them amicably as an auxiliary force. Now doesn’t that tell you something about martial law against the Black community!? The Oath Keepers should be asked to stand down & if they refuse they should be forcibly removed from Ferguson under threat of incarceration.

The photo is an Oath Keeper vigilante patrolling the Black community which was under martial law.

Our fullest solidarity with the Black community in Ferguson.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)