Game on: boycott Starbucks as part of economic boycott of Israel (BDS)

https://www.facebook.com/JewishVoiceforPeace/videos/10157315979909992/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTM5MjQ0OTM0OTk1MzU/

In the ongoing confusions about whether or not Starbucks is included among companies to boycott as part of BDS, they have hired the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to do their anti-racist training after the scandals about racism against Black patrons. This video from Jewish Voice for Peace about the racism of ADL should clear up all the confusions once & for all. Game on. Boycott Starbucks. And let them know why.

When Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan was asked his views on rape, he responded: “Even discussing this issue feels disgusting, don’t bring up this issue. It is terrible to even talk about it.” Such refined sensibilities, so cultivated, so urbane. But we don’t buy it. Squeamishness covers a multitude of evasions. Women & children have been silenced for generations out of shame, as if something they did brought on sexual assaults. One of the most important, if still incomplete, accomplishments of the feminist movement has been to drag sexual assault, particularly against children, out of the darkness into the full light of day so that the shame of this crime adheres entirely to the perpetrators & not to the victims. Squeamishness will no longer be used to silence & shame.

The white supremacy, Islamophobia, & anti-Semitism of Assadists

Douma Apr 7 (White Helmets) Apr 19 2018
You shake your head in disbelief that white people who’ve only been to Syria a matter of days or weeks embedded up the ass of the regime are given any hearing at all over the voices of 5.5 million Syrian refugees or activists like Yassin Al Haj Saleh, a former Assad political prisoner, & the White Helmets. Eva Bartlett once admitted she didn’t know anything about Syrian history or politics before 2013 when she got hired on as a propagandist. She admitted her entire education came from Global Research, the libertarian, anti-Semitic, & Islamophobic cesspool–& probably from David Icke who thinks reptilian Jewish bankers rule the world & for whom she worked–though you don’t need an education if you function as a ventriloquist dummy. Vanessa Beeley was riding horses & doing sales before she got hired on in 2014. So what gives them credibility to say the videos of bombing victims are all staged with kidnapped child actors? Are they video forensics experts too?

What gives Robert Fisk, who looks down on Arabs & doesn’t understand one damn thing about the Arab Spring uprisings, more authority than the White Helmets, Syrian citizen journalists, or the several doctors who say they were coerced into denying the chlorine attack on Douma? What gives Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Rania Khalek, Vijay Prashad, Craig Murray, Jonathan Cook, or all the others any credibility? These are social climbers & children of privilege with an instinctual abhorrence to working class rebellion against injustice & inequality. They have no commitments except to their careers. They’ll say anything that gets them honoraria & TV slots.

The answer to this enigma is written all over the script: white supremacy, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism. The fact that Black writers like Margaret Kimberley, Glen Ford, & Ajamu Baraka are among the most ardent & paranoidal fellow travelers of the white propagandists doesn’t alter that reality an iota but only testifies to the crisis of Black political leadership that libertarianism has made such inroads into their thinking. The only reason these propagandists carry such weight–other than idiocy, racism, & credulity–is that Russian media, especially RT, back these propagandists to the hilt & give them income & a platform & that the Assad regime & Russia know how to manipulate & play social media.

There will come a time of accounting. Those Syrians now shouted down will set the historic record straight. It will be too late to salvage the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. But not too late to rebuild the historic movements of the Arab peoples to build new societies based on equality, democracy, & justice.

Photo is White Helmet rescue worker with child suffering the chlorine attack on April 7th in Douma.

(Photo from White Helmets)

Muhammad Mouria updated us about Palestinian Abdul Rahman Nofal, an unarmed 12-year-old protester at the Great Return March who was shot in the leg by Israeli snipers & was prevented by Israeli authorities from leaving Gaza for medical treatment. Abdul’s father announced that an urgent amputation took place this morning at the Ramallah Hospital in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Israeli propagandists claim that those shot at the Great Return March were terrorists.

A vignette of disability from Gaza

Gaza man watering plant (Muhammad Smiry) Apr 19 2018
A remarkable vignette from Gaza: a young man, one of many who have lost limbs in Israeli bombing, watering a flower planted in what is likely the boot from his amputated leg.

Stand with Palestinians in demanding the end of occupation, self-determination, & a democratic, secular state where Jews & Palestinians live as brothers & sisters.

(Photo tweeted by Gazan Muhammad Smiry)

Women propagandists come into their own in service to Assad dictatorship

Beeley on Ron Paul April 2018
Women propagandists have come into their own in service to the Assad dictatorship. It’s a necessary role if one is to sell Islamophobia & the need to save Muslim women by bombing their children, spouses, mosques, schools, fields, cities, hospitals to smithereens. Who better to claim the suffering of children is staged by kidnapped children forced to foam at the mouth on cue, as Vanessa Beeley did in this interview with rightwing libertarian Ron Paul? It’s just a wonder that so many who call themselves progressive never noticed the rightwing politics of all these women or their associations with organized fascism. It’s just a shame so many cannot tell real suffering from false or real revolutions from street theater. But that’s nihilism for you. It’s just a pity that so many women who once played positive antiwar roles are now marching like lemmings behind propagandists. We once thought better of them.

(Photo is screenshot of Beeley on Ron Paul interview show)

Woman lawyer for Asifa’s family threatened & in fear for her life

https://www.facebook.com/brutindia/videos/386235148524297/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTM5MjI0MzY0MDgxMDk/

From the demeaning response so many commentators gave the #MeToo movement, it’s clear that too many do not understand or they support the role that rape & violence, including murder, play in subordinating women. Violence is ubiquitous in every woman’s life. This young woman is the lawyer for Asifa’s family, She not only has to probe the savage violence of this crime but she talks here about being threatened herself by high caste lawyers in Jammu. She is afraid of being brutalized or murdered. Part of the international campaign to demand justice for Asifa is demanding protection for this young woman in fear for her life for standing against the rape & murder of a child.

Indian occupying forces attack justice for Asifa protesters in Kashmir

Asifa protest in Kashmir (Kulgam News Agency) Apr 19 2018
These two young Kashmiri women are being arrested for protesting to demand justice for Asifa. Hundreds of students protesting for Asifa across Kashmir have faced tear gas & pellet gun attacks. Three were admitted to hospital with pellet injuries to their eyes. What Indian authorities have every reason to worry about is that the political campaign in defense of Asifa will broaden to international campaigns against sexual violence under occupation, like the mass rape & torture at Kunan Poshpora in 1991, & an exposure of sexual violence as part of caste oppression. This is #MeToo writ large.

(Photo from Kulgam News Agency)