“Who Assadists are going to mock now? The Sudanese Arab Spring. Who Assadists are going to vilify as terrorists & Islamists now? The Sudanese Arab Spring. Who Assadists are going to call paid actors now? Oh Sudanese White Helmets. Who is going to write the next War on Terror” chapter book? Oh Assad propagandists.”
—Tango Graffiti
Ohio just made abortion a crime after one & a half months of pregnancy; Alabama lawmakers are considering 99 years of prison for a woman who gets an abortion & Texas is considering the death penalty. And there you have it. Misogyny laid out in spades. A one-month fetus has more rights than an adult woman.
Alaa Salah, named the Nubian Queen for her iconic role in leading Sudanese protesters, opened a Twitter page & soon reported she was receiving death threats but that they would not deter her from standing against al-Bashir. The Twitter page is now closed down, most likely so she can protect herself. This is among the issues faced by women activists & revolutionists. Our fullest respect & solidarity with her & all women of the Sudanese Arab Spring.
Palestinian Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement, has been denied entry into the US. He attended college & lived here for ten years. He was coming for speaking engagements at Harvard & NYU & to attend the wedding of his daughter who lives here. He was only refused entry because the US government is attempting to outlaw BDS & force us to pledge allegiance to Israel. More evidence that the Palestinian struggle against colonialism, apartheid, & genocide is directly linked to the US Bill of Rights.
Contrary to some posts, the arrest of Assange is not the end of civilization as we know it. He’s nobody’s idea of a hero & has pretty rotten politics. Our defense of him is based on principles of freedom of the press & his exposure of US war crimes in Iraq. There’s no value in going over the top about what his arrest means. Because of his high profile, he’ll get a trial in a kangaroo court & be sentenced to a long stretch in jail. He will also have a defense campaign. Compare that to the disappearance, torture, & murder of hundreds of journalists all over the world who have almost no active, ongoing defense. Compare it to what Palestinians, Kashmiris, Rohingya, Uyghur, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Somalis, Libyans, & so many others endure. Assange is in a hell of a spot. But it’s not the same as being tortured to death in a gulag. We should not lose perspective on that.
So sorry about posting so much but there is a lot of really important stuff going on. It seems as though the planet is spinning out of control. Or does it just seem like that when you’re a senior & you’re seeing “two, three, many Vietnams” when what you long to see is “two, three, many Arab Springs”?
The Sudanese Arab Spring has barely just begun & already the “regime change operation” crowd is out in force blaming Israel & the US for the popular uprising against a dictator of 30 years. In fact, Israel & the US have been covertly involved in the region for several years which led to the secession of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011, consequent mass starvation & civil war in South Sudan, & a massive refugee crisis. When the ‘regime change operation’ crowd talks about Israel, it is from a dark place of anti-Semitism which obfuscates Israel’s very real role in international counterrevolution.
This is a post I wrote in December 2012 about Israel’s role in South Sudan. It plays an extensive role there & has for several years & it’s important to understand how they are involved. But what’s developing in Sudan now is a popular uprising against a deeply entrenched dictatorship that is not manipulated by Mossad or CIA agents trying to pull off a regime change. If they wanted a regime change, they could do what they’ll done in so many other countries & simply assassinate al-Bashir.
Over the years, I’ve written other posts about Sudan & South Sudan, most of them revolving around the role of CIA operative John Prendergast & his celebrity sidekick George Clooney.
Here handcuffed African immigrants wait in a bus after their arrest by immigration agents in Tel Aviv (Dec. 22nd). Israel is deporting thousands of Africans & preparing tent cities to detain them until deportation. The crackdown is on 50,000 undocumented African immigrants, who they call “infiltrators,” primarily from Eritrea & Sudan, with lesser numbers from other Sub Saharan countries. In 2011, under the Zionist Law of Return, Israel admitted nearly 17,000 new immigrants as citizens from Russia, Ukraine, US, France, & Ethiopia. Many Ethiopians, called Beta Israel, can gain Israeli citizenship because they are lost tribe claimants from the tribe of Dan–even though they were unable to pass repeated DNA tests looking for the distinctive Jewish Y-chromosome. These are the sarcasms that make up Zionist immigration policy.
One of the more repugnant features of Israel’s crackdown on the 7,000 Sudanese immigrants is that Israeli machinations & meddling in Sudan since 1950 were part of David Ben-Gurion’s “periphery strategy,” which involved supporting non-Arab regimes in Sub Saharan Africa as a security fence. Israeli policy incited conflicts between north & south Sudan & made them more acute by selling armaments to separatists in the south. This led to intermittent civil war going back to 1955 & despite a peace agreement in 2005 continues to today. Well over 3 million people have been killed & 5 million displaced & forced to migrate.
When South Sudan became independent from Sudan on July 9, 2011, Israel was Johnny-on-the-spot, recognizing South Sudan not even 24-hours later. By July 28th, Israel announced it had established full diplomatic ties & signed the first commercial agreement regarding desalination, irrigation, water transport & purification. Curiously, the agreement was not signed by officials in Israel’s Energy & Water Ministry but by Israel Military Industries Ltd, a weapon manufacturer specializing in producing land, air, & naval combat systems.
Israeli companies descended on South Sudan like vultures, promising to develop its nonexistent infrastructure, including roads, airports, power plants, agriculture, etc. The US, European countries, & the World Bank promised big bucks to the corrupt regime–but of course it is to develop the neoliberal agribusiness model, exploit the immense oil & mineral reserves of the country, & build sweatshops. As Meir Greiver, an Israeli business tycoon said, “Because the salaries are so very low, I think that many Israeli businessmen who send their manufacturing & textile work to China could do it there instead.” That’s what Israel & the new South Sudanese regime call economic cooperation–deals worth billions of dollars to Israel & foreign investors–but squat to the people of South Sudan!
Due the protracted civil war in Sudan, there has long been famine in South Sudan but all these predatory nation builders can provide is armaments & promises. They can move their heavy artillery about the country but when it comes to delivering food, they claim impassable roads make it impossible. That’s what Israel is shipping thousands of immigrants back to! Or do they just need sweatshop labor!?
After Israeli recognition of South Sudan, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who has said African asylum seekers “threaten the Zionist dream,” called for immediate negotiations with South Sudan to return undocumented Sudanese refugees & migrant workers, arguing they no longer needed protection since South Sudan had gained independence. They would be given US$1,300 & a plane ticket home or be forcibly deported. That included 18 South Sudanese students matriculated in Israeli colleges who were not allowed to complete their studies. Some of the very Israeli politicians (like Danny Danon from Likud) who promoted Israeli business ventures in South Sudan are now flapping their gums at racist rallies & inciting Israelis to violence against African immigrants.
(Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
The Nubian Queen: the crowd is chanting ‘thawra’ (which means revolution in Arabic) to her prompts.
Long live the Sudanese Arab Spring.
On Monday, the IMF approved a $4.2 billion loan for Ecuador. On Thursday, the Ecuadorian Embassy handed Assange over to British authorities at the request of the US State Department. Coincidence? Or is all about the Benjamins?
A report titled “No One Hears Us” detailing torture of women in Assad’s gulag:
https://researchcentre.trtworld.com/images/files/reports/no-one-hears-us.pdf?