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The Sharpeville Massacre
Posted on October 26, 2012 by Akashma Online News
Martin Meredith works of South Africa Apartheid-era, as he put it in his book “In the Name of the Apartheid”, published on 1988. His bibliography is comprised of more than 250 references that he used to compiled his book. But he gives special mention in the Bibliography section to: Anglo-Boer war, Pekenham, On the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism, Adam and Giliomee, de Klehompson, van Benson, Biko, Karis and Carter, Lodge, Mandela, Walshe; on Platzky and Walker, Surplus People Project; on economic change, Lipton. A number of personal accounts also stand out. They include Bernstein, Carson, Finnegan, First, Joseph, Lelyweld, Winnie Mandela, Modisane, Mphahlele, Woords.
I mention his special list because you might want to go in a historical quest and read for yourself the works of the people that were involved in the research and compilation of events of that era outside of the Official story.
“As the tentacles of apartheid penetrated to every level of African society, African protests against the government steadily mounted. In rural areas opposition to apartheid measures like the Bantu Authorities Act flared into open revolt. There was prolonged violence in the Hurutshe Reserve in the western Transvaal, in Sekhukhuneland and in Pondoland. Chiefs and Councillors resisting government authority were deposed and deported. Armored units and aircraft had to be deployed to crush the Pondoland revolt. When the government decided to compel African women to carry reference books from 1956, there were protest marches in almost every major town.”
In 1948, Afrikaner Nationalists came to power bringing their own version of racial rule known as Apartheid and proceeded to construct the most elaborated racial edifice the world ever seen.
In the name of apartheid millions of people were uprooted from their homes; millions more were denied basic rights. In their attempts to resist apartheid, blacks tried public protests, petitions, passive resistance, boycotts, sabotage, guerrilla warfare and urban insurrection. At every event they were meet with repression, oppression, incarnation, deportation and death.
To get to the Sharpeville Massacre we need to understand what was the goal of the protests of March 21, 1960.
The pass law of South Africa was an old tactic used by black slaves owners to control the movements of their slaves.
The first time Pass documents were used to restrict the movement of non-European South Africans was in the early 1800’s. However, slaves at the Cape had been forced to carry Passes since 1709. Farmers at the Cape ran short of labor during the first British occupation of the southern tip of Africa in 1795, with its subsequent abolition of slavery in 1808. Until that time Dutch farmers employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) supplied fresh food to passing ships using slave labor to stock up the refreshment station. They could still sell slaves within the colony, but were prohibited from importing new slaves. The settlers and government turned to the indigenous Khoikhoi people to fill the labor gap. Pass Laws in South Africa.
Sharpville, was a town built as a black suburb for the steel manufacturing center of Vereenignig, fifty miles south of Johannesburg. In the times of apartheid, towns of this kind were built to house the workers of white businesses. Usually they will be only workers, no families. But eventually they outgrew the original plan and they become full towns, when getting too close to the white towns, they will be forcefully out rooted and relocated in far away lands.
My Israel Question
Posted on September 20, 2012 by Akashma Online News
Antony Loewenstein during his presentation of ‘My Israel Quesiton’
Jamie Glassman is a British Jewish writer on The Ali G show, a comedy program known for intentionally offending deserving establishment figures. Glassman recently attended the Edinburgh Arts Festival and was disturbed. He wrote in the London Times:
“There have always been anti-Semitic jokes. But you know times are changing when you go along to a stand-up show at the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe and you hear audience members shouting ‘Throw them in the oven’ when the comic suggests kids should stop playing Cowboys and Indians and replace it with Nazis and Jews.”
His conclusion was perhaps understandable but thoroughly inaccurate. There was, he noted:
“a growing trend among left-thinking people in this country and around the world to accept as dogma that those on the Left should hate Bush, Blair, American imperialism, Israel and, while we’re at it, the Jews. It is a cultural trend that I’ve found increasingly evident but never before has the Jew-hating element been so overt. This week has confirmed that my Jewish paranoia is not entirely unfounded. As the old saying goes: ‘Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.’” Counter Punch
I’m encouraged to hear Barghouti say that in the last 12-18 months, BDS is suddenly taking off across the world. He says he can’t keep up with the number of university campuses wanting to initiate programs against Israel firms and campaigns to convince Western musicians and artists not to play Israel. I’m told that Israeli music promoters are paying 2-3 times the normal rate to convince foreigners to come because the political price for doing so is growing.
Cultural isolation for Israelis is far from complete but it’s undeniably on the rise. For example, the fact that Madonna recently felt the need to try and bring peace activists from both sides during her show – Israeli liberal Zionists came while anti-occupation activists refused – shows the campaign is starting to bite. Mondoweiss August 24, 2012 Palestine Occupied Territories
I am in Israel and Palestine for an independently organised tour of my new book, After Zionism (co-edited with Ahmed Moor). It’s a collection of new essays on today’s reality and examines the ways in which a one-state solution could be implemented. It features chapters by John Mearsheimer, Sara Roy, Jeff Halper, Omar Barghouti, Diana Buttu, Joseph Dana, Jonathan Cook, Phil Weiss and many others.
I don’t have any Israeli stamp in my passport because I requested at the airport for the officials to stamp a separate piece of paper to avoid troubles when travelling around the Muslim world. A customs official took that paper as I exited and I’m told by activists that this is an increasingly utilised tactic that only affects people who want to travel back and forth between Israel and the occupied territories.
Even when I arrive at the airport I am held and questioned for more than one and a half hours and asked why I have recently visited places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan and “how many Muslims did you speak to there?”
Of course, none of this harassment comes close to what Palestinians and minorities face on a daily basis in Israel proper and Palestine.
After Zionism, published in 2012 by Saqi Books with co-editor Ahmed Moor, brings together some of the world s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution.
Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably.
This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Diana Buttu, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.
After Zoinism One State for Israel and Palestine book available in Amazon.com
The Shifting Sands of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: An Australian Perspective
Australian Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, speaking in March this year at a United Israel Appeal fund-raiser in Melbourne, said he was “a friend of Israel” and referred to its creation in 1948 as “Australian Labor government handiwork.”
In the same month, in an unprecedented move in the country’s history, Rudd praised Israel’s democratic achievements as federal parliament commemorated Israel’s 60th anniversary and highlighted the need for an independent and economically viable Palestinian state.
The majority of parliamentarians supported the motion, but one Labor backbencher dissented. Julia Irwin could not “congratulate a nation which commits human rights abuses each day and shows blatant disregard for the UN.” Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government/Centre for Middle Eastern Studies
ME Forum, 24 November 2008
Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based independent freelance journalist, author, documentarian, photographer and blogger.He was a contributor to the 2008 Verso Books release, A Time to Speak Out: On Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity.
Articles written by Antony Lowenstein
Articles
Celebrities for Palestine – Alice Walker Stands Tall Against Israel Apartheid State
Posted On June 20, 2012 on Akashma Online News
On February 9, 1944, in the small farming community of Eatonton, GA, Willie Lee and Minnie Grant gave birth to their eighth and final child, a girl, they named Alice. Little did her parents know that their youngest daughter would become one of the most prolific, controversial and respected African-American novelists of the later-half of the 20th Century. But the potential in Willie Lee and Minnie Grant’s baby may not have been recognized early on by others living in their farming community. Alice would have to overcome a number of difficulties in her lifetime that would profoundly influence the way she pictured herself and the world around her and would later help shape her views as a writer.
Poet, Writer and Activist Alice Walker makes her position clear on BDS and Cultural Boycott Against Israel Apartheid State. She does not give her permission to Israeli Publisher House to publish “The Color Purple” , even thought that it was published in Hebrew Language before , Now She adds her voice to the BDS Campaign, her Moral Standing it is stronger than her Ego as an Author
“The Color Purple,” which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was adapted into a movie in 1985 directed by the American filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
She born in the State of Georgia, one of the more racist states of the US, that fact could have contributed to her formation as a writer, “The Color Purple” Book explore the situation of the blacks in the South, the exploitation of the black woman by the black males and the white society.
Alice Walker has lived the injustice of being black in a white ruled society, she grew up with the sores of racism and even being lived the Racist American Period and survived it, she does not show any signs of hate against this White Society, on the contrary if you read her books, and you hear her experiences that she kindly shares on her interviews, you notice her beautiful soul, how she thanks God for the transformation of our society and sees some of the changes, she reveals herself as a revolutionary mind offering to us with her writing the thought process that keeps evolving, and we can say now, that some blocks of our society are civilized in their ideas and their behavior
She has visited many places that have suffered injustices like Post Apartheid South Africa and knows of the terrible life the Afrikaans had it, and because she knows thru her own experiences the real story, she adds her voice to the people of Palestine, which sufferings are very similar to the blacks of the south where she grew up, or the South Africans of the Apartheid Era.
She has the courage to stand tall against Israel Bully of the Middle East, she was part of the Gaza Flotilla last year, unfortunately Israel Political pressure made the voyage impossible to reach Palestinians Waters, but the awareness keeps sparking out, and sees Hope for a Non Violent transition to peace.
I bow to this amazing lady that puts her name to use for a good cause without minding the professional risk.
“Alice Walker! She has absolutely nothing to gain in terms of ego, popularity, power, or Money. Her stance comes from her heart, conscience, compassion, and genuine concern for justice.” Professor Gail Baker
“Walker’s use of Celie’s own voice, however underdeveloped, allows Walker to tell the history of black women in the rural South in a sympathetic and realistic way. Unlike a historian’s perspective, which can be antiseptic and overly analytical, Celie’s letters offer a powerful first-person account of the institutions of racism and sexism. Celie’s simple narrative brings us into her isolated world with language that reveals both pain and detached numbness: “My momma dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me.”
Like her voice, Celie’s faith is prominent but underdeveloped. Celie relies heavily on God as her listener and source of strength, but she sometimes blurs the distinction between God’s authority and that of Alphonso. She confesses that God, rather than Alphonso, killed her baby, and she never makes any association between the injustice she experiences in her life and the ability of God to overturn or prevent this injustice.”
The Color Purple, 1982
Letter from Alice Walker to Publishers at Yediot Books
Published Originally on PACBI
June 9, 2012
Dear Publishers at Yediot Books,
Thank you so much for wishing to publish my novel THE COLOR PURPLE. It isn’t possible for me to permit this at this time for the following reason: As you may know, last Fall in South Africa The Russell Tribunal on Palestine met and determined that Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories. The testimony we heard, both from Israelis and Palestinians (I was a jurist) was devastating. I grew up under American apartheid and this was far worse. Indeed, many South Africans who attended, including Desmond Tutu, felt the Israeli version of these crimes is worse even than what they suffered under the white supremacist regimes that dominated South Africa for so long.
It is my hope that the non-violent BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, of which I am part, will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation.
In that regard, I offer an earlier example of THE COLOR PURPLE’s engagement in the world-wide effort to rid humanity of its self-destructive habit of dehumanizing whole populations. When the film of The Color Purple was finished, and all of us who made it decided we loved it, Steven Spielberg, the director, was faced with the decision of whether it should be permitted to travel to and be offered to the South African public. I lobbied against this idea because, as with Israel today, there was a civil society movement of BDS aimed at changing South Africa’s apartheid policies and, in fact, transforming the government.
It was not a particularly difficult position to hold on my part: I believe deeply in non-violent methods of social change though they sometimes seem to take forever, but I did regret not being able to share our movie, immediately, with (for instance) Winnie and Nelson Mandela and their children, and also with the widow and children of the brutally murdered, while in police custody, Steven Biko, the visionary journalist and defender of African integrity and freedom.
We decided to wait. How happy we all were when the apartheid regime was dismantled and Nelson Mandela became the first president of color of South Africa.
Only then did we send our beautiful movie! And to this day, when I am in South Africa, I can hold my head high and nothing obstructs the love that flows between me and the people of that country.
Which is to say, I would so like knowing my books are read by the people of your country, especially by the young, and by the brave Israeli activists (Jewish and Palestinian) for justice and peace I have had the joy of working beside. I am hopeful that one day, maybe soon, this may happen. But now is not the time.
We must continue to work on the issue, and to wait.
In faith that a just future can be fashioned from small acts,
Alice Walker
“Whereas international institutions and governments fail to take action in support of justice and equality for the Palestinian people, the Russell Tribunal will raise awareness about the urgency of holding Israel accountable for its violations of international law,”
“This tribunal will serve as an effective tool with which to educate a wider public about the nature of Israel’s system of oppression of Palestinians and will help to mobilise support for popular resistance and the BDS movement,” Juma Juma – Representative of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)
Alice Walker
Alice Walker in Berkeley, California, April 1983. Walker uses a variety of narrative forms and levels of diction to create vivid, memorable, and larger-than-life characters.
Walker’s novels include :
THE THIRD LIFE OF GRANGE COPELAND (1970),
Set in Georgia between 1920 and 1960, Alice Walker‘s first novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland describes the economic oppression African-Americans suffered under the share-cropping system and its tragic effects on black families and the black community. Walker asks to what degree blacks themselves have been accomplishes in their victimization by the white power structure, which destroys their dignity and dreams. She also explores the intersection of racism and sexism in the oppression of African American families, depicting black men who vent their anger and frustration, not on the whites who exploit them, but on their wives and children. The two main male characters, Grange and Brownfield Copeland, both try to prove their manliness through methods endorsed by white patriarchy: through assertions of power over women in the form of sexual conquests and wife abuse.
MERIDIAN (1976),
The Difficulty of Idealism
Meridian is energized by a younger generation coming into its full power and raising its voice in dissent against the institutional racism that prevailed through the 1960s. Through occasionally violent protests and demonstrations, Meridian and other activists attempt to institute change and alter perceptions. Idealistic as they are, they ultimately find various degrees of satisfaction with the goals and ideals of the civil rights movement. Meridian feels that she will always stand on the fringes of the movement since she is unprepared to take her dissent to a radical, if not murderous, level. Lynne struggles with adapting and applying her own idealism to meaningful change in the lives of southern blacks. Truman eventually sours to the movement, having lost sight of its intentions in his self-absorption. In the end, Meridian realizes the fatuousness of dying or killing for the movement, concluding that the battle is won in small ways, such as getting blacks registered to vote and improving the lives of people victimized by the unchecked expression of racism.
THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR (1989),
POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY (1992),
BY THE LIGHT OF MY FATHER’S SMILE (1998),
NOW IS THE TIME TO OPEN YOUR HEART (2004),
OVERCOMING SPEECHLESSNESS (2012).
Her poetry is collected in ONCE: POEMS (1968),
REVOLUTIONARY PETUNIAS & OTHER POEMS (1973),
ABSOLUTE TRUST IN THE GOODNESS OF THE EARTH:
NEW POEMS (2003).
Some of her short fiction has been published in:
IN LOVE & TROUBLE: STORIES OF BLACK WOMEN (1973).
She became a major figure in feminism — which she called “womanism” — through such writings as IN SEARCH OF OUR MOTHERS’ GARDENS: WOMANIST PROSE (1983) and LIVING BY THE WORD (1988). These collections of essays, speeches, and letters focus on Walker’s experiences as a black woman in America, and on racial and class inequality.
How Alice Walker become Palestinian Activist: In her interview with Amy Goodman in Democracy Now she explains how the lost of her sister and the story of a woman in Palestine that lost everything and everyone in her family made her be more out spoken about the Palestinian Issue.
ALICE WALKER: Well, I was actually mourning the death of my own sister, and I thought that, oh, she was, you know, much older, and she was sick, and she died, and we’d had a horrible five or six years before she died. And so I thought, you know, when she dies, I won’t be devastated. And I was completely devastated. It was so painful.
And I was out trying to deal with my own devastation, when I learned about a woman in Palestine, during the bombing, who had been — who had lost five of her daughters, and she herself was unconscious. And it just instantly connected me to her. I felt, what will this be like? Who will tell her? Who will tell this woman when she wakes up that “your five daughters are dead”?
And so I felt that I had to go and present myself to this situation and to be attentive to it in a way that I had started being many years before, except that at the time I was married to and then related to, in many ways, to a Jewish person who always said, well, if you see the Palestinian side, almost anything, you know, positive about the Palestinian side, then it means that you are anti-Semitic. And so, this was so shocking to me that it silenced me for a while. I mean, I said a few things, I wrote a few things. But I felt that I had left something undone. And I realize at this point in my life, and years earlier, actually, that there are things in life that call to us, and they’re ours to do. And this was one of the things that was mine to finish.
And so I went to Gaza, and I met with women who had lost everything, and their children, their houses. You know, I sat on the rubble, even though there was the phosphorus powder, because it was just overwhelming to see the injury and the damage that had been done to these people by the Israeli government. And I knew that it was my responsibility as a writer and as a human being to witness this and to write about it. I mean, why else was I — why else am I a writer? You know, why else do I have a conscience? I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.
“I speak a little about this American history, but it isn’t history that these women know.” These are the women, the Palestinian women, I’m with. “They’re too young. They’ve never been taught it. It feels irrelevant. Following their example of speaking of their families, I talk about my Southern parents’ teachings during our experience of America’s apartheid years, when white people owned and controlled all the resources and the land, in addition to the political, legal, and military apparatus, and used their power to intimidate black people in the most barbaric and merciless ways. These whites who tormented us daily were like Israelis who have cut down millions of trees planted by Arab Palestinians, stolen Palestinian water, even topsoil. Forcing Palestinians to use separate roads from those they use themselves, they have bulldozed innumerable villages, houses, mosques, and in their place built settlements for strangers who have no connection whatsoever with Palestine: settlers who have been the most rabidly anti-Palestinian of all, attacking the children, the women, everyone, old and young alike, viciously.”
AMY GOODMAN: Alice, I wanted to go back to March 2009 -—
ALICE WALKER: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — when you were in Gaza, to a video of you there.
ALICE WALKER: It’s shocking beyond anything I have ever experienced. And it’s actually so horrible that it’s basically unbelievable, even though I’m standing here and I’ve been walking here and I’ve been looking at things here. It still feels like, you know, you could never convince anyone that this is actually what is happening and what has happened to these people and what the Israeli government has done. It will be a very difficult thing for anyone to actually believe in, so it’s totally important that people come to visit and to see for themselves, because the world community, that cares about peace and cares about truth and cares about justice, will have to find a way to deal with this. We cannot let this go as if it’s just OK, especially those of us in the United States who pay for this. You know, I have come here, in part, to see what I’m buying with my tax money.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Alice Walker in 2009, interviewed by my colleague here at Democracy Now!, Anjali Kamat. When you look back at you walking through the rubble of Gaza, your thoughts?
ALICE WALKER: My thought is that I am so glad I was there. I am so glad that I managed to gather myself and present myself to this situation, because it is my responsibility, you know, as a person, as an elder, as someone who cares about the planet, who really wants us all to thrive, you know, or just survive. This is a very thorny issue, and it takes all of us looking at it as carefully as we can to help solve it. It’s not that it’s impossible to solve. But what will help a lot is the insistence by all of us on fairness and on people actually understanding what they’re looking at.
AMY GOODMAN: You say that the Middle East solution is beyond the two-state solution, and you also talk about restorative justice.
ALICE WALKER: Yes, I do, because I believe in restorative justice. I think we could use that here. I mean, I don’t feel great about the past leaders here not being brought to trial, actually, you know. But if we can’t have trial, we could at least have council. I mean, but to let people, any people, just go, after they’ve murdered lots of people and destroyed a lot, is not right. It destroys trust. So — what was the rest of the question?
AMY GOODMAN: And you believe in a one-state solution.
ALICE WALKER: Oh, the one-state solution. Yes, I do. I mean, when I think about my tax money, and I think about, well, you know, given that I’ve already given, and we as a country have given over a trillion dollars to Israel in the last — since, I don’t know, ‘48 or something, but a lot of money that we could have used here, where would I be happiest to see, you know, my money spent? Well, I would be happy seeing my money spent for all the people who live in Palestine. And that means that, you know, the Palestinians who are forced out of their houses, forced off of their land, should come back and share the land, all of it, including the settlements. You know, if I am going to be asked to help pay for settlements, I would like to be, you know, permitted to say who gets to live in them. And I would like the women and children, the Palestinian women and children that I saw, I would like to say — take them by hand and say, “You know what? Look at this. We built this for you. You’re home now.”
The following link contain Alice Walker entire interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy now
http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2010/4/13/alice_walker_on_overcoming_speechlessness_a
I Love Palestine and not forget my Nakbaa 1948
Posted By :Omar Karem
Every day we mourn Nakba since 1948 ……….????????????????
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۞*•.¸.•*۞ *•.¸.•*۞ •.¸.•* ۞
۞ لا اله الا الله محمد رسول الله ۞
۞*•.¸.•*۞ *•.¸.•*۞ •.¸.•* ۞
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Dear Online Activist Friends-Share Everything
Posted by Marivel Guzman
Original post by Vahid Razavi
On October 15, 2010
Dear online activist friends,
Social and Peace Activist, author Vahid Razavi
I would like to share with you my views on privacy and activism in the age of social media. As you are well aware, information about you; such as present location, bank account, health records, credit and driving history, as well as your online habits, emails and phone calls are monitored for the sake of companies and governments.
If you have taken a stand in a protest, placed phone calls to the Middle East, have Middle Eastern name you might as well consider your privacy out the door.
The whole notion of privacy in this digital age is misguided since governments and corporations systematically track, index, log and analyze user behavior. If you are not prone to risk and want to protect your identity, use a false name and a false picture profile and information.
That is the best way to hide your online identity. Even that does not protect you. For example if you use Skype or make a transaction at online bank to check your statements from the same machine that you used to log into your fake profile. The fake profile can be now be linked to your real identity.
This article is not about privacy but to encourage you to participate not just in your own circle but in the large circle of opposing views and positions. I will give you an example. As you are aware, for over the past two years I share articles that my team and I have written about business or social issues on my Facebook’s wall. I have open friend policy because I want our message of peace, tolerance and sustainable business practices to reach a large audience. At the same time, I am part of the Republican party, the Democratic party and moveon.org etc. I make an active decision to share information and blog posts on various groups in LinkedIn, for example the chamber of Commerce, an organization that I find myself on the complete opposition to.
Guess what happens when I post an article to one of the groups that share the opposite values that I have? They get all worked up! They start posting and calling me names etc. Frankly I do not care about that. My business and money does not come from the Chamber of Commerce or the Republicans or Democrats. I am not on any ones payroll except my own but it gets under the skin of these groups. It pisses them off like no tomorrow. I am proud of that. They devote precious time posting articles and time trying to convince themselves that they are still in the right. I just wish sometimes my activist friends expand the circle of friends and work on the larger population to sell ideas to the masses.
I am not asking you sacrifice your perceived privacy. I am asking you to get involved even if it is under a different profile name and join these groups so that we can influence its members and the actions of these groups.
Additionally we can all do many things that do not cost money and yet has a big impact. Do you know that Google/Facebook/Bing all provide coupons for first time users of the advertisement networks? If you do not have an ad network account it is easy to start one. Check it out. Create an advertisement network account and use one of the first 50 dollars or first 75 dollars ads are free coupon. Find an article or an organization you want to promote. Decide on the keywords (simply pick your cause as the keyword) Place your ads for that organization. When you reach the 75 dollar mark disconnect the ads. You did not pay a dime and was able to advertise on a network for a cause you backed.
The goal is to encourage folks to reach outside of the circle of friends and leverage social media and the web as the people’s media. The point is that too many activists remain stuck within the orbit of like minded people. While having a community is important, we often neglect the middle of society. Many people work too much, if they are lucky to have a job. They are worried about their bills, their health care expenses, their mortgage and rent payments, their families. Many of them share the same concerns and have the same anxieties as we do. They don’t have the time to explore the social and political issues in depth. They turn on the local news, watch CNN or Fox for an hour or so. Many of them simply read the free morning newspapers handed out to commuters which do not provide comprehensive analysis. This is the social layer that we as activists must reach. History shows that all social and political changes have occurred only when the broad middle of society participates. Yes, the movements are often started with small groups but they have succeeded by communicating and connecting with the larger members of society. The Civil Rights movement started with a small church in Alabama and spread across the country bringing supporters from the mainstream. The same occurred with the LBGT movement. What started as a minority movement has become mainstream. Had Blacks only confined their struggle for equal rights to themselves, it’s unlikely that any advances would have been made. Had only gays and lesbians struggled alone, it’s unlikely that their legal rights would have been recognized and their struggle continues. It’s imperative that activists reach out to the mainstream. It’s the only way to effect the social and political changes we desire. Failure to do so will result in our permanent marginalization.
That’s my two cents.
Peace.
Vahid
Too Small for social change?...Not at all
Mr. Razavi Iranian-American author of The Age of Nepotism has traveled extensively to Iran and the Balkans. He is an expert in the subject of Iran and US politics. As CEO of BizCloud company, Mr. Razavi develops the organization strategy and manages the company’s sales, engineering Marketing and day to day operations.He brings to the position more than thirteen years of sales, operations and customer service experience in the software and customer service industry.
Guilt By Association: Deceiving People
Guilt By Association: Deceiving People
Editor Raja Mujtaba
Posted on August 8, 2010 by Marivel Guzman
Posted on www.Opinion-Maker.org on 17. Jun, 2010 by Jeff in Uncategorized
By Tarik Jan
Jeff Gates new book Guilt by Association belongs to the same genre of works that one may characterize as humanistic, developed by Noam Chomsky, William Blum, Kevin Philip, Peter Beinart, Edward Said, John Mearsheimer-Stephen Walt, John Perkins, and others. The latter two are the insiders previously working for the government (CIA) or the corporate sector associated with CIA.
From data collection to analyses, their approaches are different but the common thread that runs through their works is the desire to move the world from the paradigm of domination and plunder to a relatively more equitable relationship among the nations. That is why many would consider them as children of humanity.
For instance, Noam Chomsky’s Year 501 the Conquest Continues and his other works place the U.S. in the European tradition of colonial conquest and plunder, defining it as modern-day imperialism.
William Blum’s The Rogue State centers on the U.S. desire to control the planet in the name of peace and protection. His thesis is that the U.S. wants the world to buy its weapons. “[L]et our military and our corporations roam freely across your land, and give us veto power over whom your leader will be, and we will protect you.” Blum describes it as the cleverest protection racket.
Kevin Philip’s American Theocracy is also in the same line though more focused on the deadly combination of oil and religion as arbiters of U.S. policies. By all counts it is a profound work.
Peter Beinart’s The Icarus Syndrome narrows down on the fallout of the U.S. policy in remaking world after its image.
Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism is a transformative work that traces culture role as informing the political and economic effort to control and consolidate the Western domination over others.
John Mearsheimer’s The Israeli Lobby and the U.S. Foreign Policy deals with the exaggerated American tilt toward Israel and the problems it has created to the U.S. image in the community of nations.
John Perkins’ Confessions of a Hitman is a testimonial work of a corporate employee trained to destabilize other countries through ill fated economic policies. In the process it exposes the linkage between American business and CIA sponsored subversion.
Why are these brilliant minds critical of their country? No doubt, their cause is unpopular with the powerful entrenched interests who often accused them of being anti-American. But they are not. Most of these writers share Edward Said‘s feelings about himself when he said, “It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.”
Jeff Gates follows their trail but with his own lantern. The imprint he leaves behind is easily discernable owing to its individuality, a sense of being earnest, and sincerity to his craft. His leitmotif is to unravel the machination and deception of the Jewish oligarchy at the micro-level, which he does with the skill of a consummate lawyer.
With attributes like these, Guilt by Association is a masterful study of how a “land grab” named Israel operates at the American expense. It is also an exhaustive study of how a small U.S. minority can manipulate the policies of a superpower for the benefit of the so-called Jewish homeland. More than that, it is a study of the criminalization of the American politics and economy. Combine the three aspects and one finds himself reading a book that is at once scholarly and yet free from the tedium of being pedantic, dealing with people and their wiles in pursuing a ruthless Zionist ideology and its grab for other’s land. In this sense, it has more than one dimension – a manual of subversion, a mix of psychology, brain manipulation, coercion, money laundering, and worst exploitation of human emotions.
To sift the myth from reality and facts from fiction, Gates applies the “game theory,” a branch of applied mathematics, to the Zionist manipulation of the U.S. political and economic scene. The game theory is a helpful tool in his hands to explain the role of each player in his strategic posturing. Thus as he explains it, there is the “target,” who is to be enfeebled and discredited; the “manipulator,” who plans and employs human consciousness to set the dynamics into motion against the backdrop of shared beliefs of Judeo-Christianity, democracy, and war against terrorism.
In pursuing their goals, the Israelis have layers of operatives whom Gates splinters into agents, assets, and helpers. Agents of course are trained for a job; assets are those who can be baited into empathizing with an intended cause for money, influence, sex, or ideology. Even a president can be made a pliable peddler for pro-Israeli policies through such means. Helpers are a corps of workers who give helping hand to Israeli operations. They could be as many as 7000 in London alone. As they say themselves, “[t]here are a lot of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill] … who happen to be Jewish, who are willing to look … at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness. … You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.”
With all these cadres in place, the mode is sophisticated meandering through a maze of actions. To begin with, the Israelis have chalked out dossiers of psychological profiles of individuals who can be influenced owing to their inclination or vulnerability. Jeff Gates mentions two such incidents where Jewish women used their charm on at least two presidents. For laundering money to have political clout he has a long list of beneficiaries of Jewish generosity from presidents to lawmakers, including recent presidential aspirant John McCain and White House inmate Barack Obama.
Validating his game theory, Gates mention, among others, two instances. Both are relevant to our times.
In the 1980s Libya was hot in the news for its vanguard role in supporting the Palestinian cause. Israel decided to neutralize Qadhafi through a three-phase action plan, which Jeff Gates spells out as pre-staging, orchestration, and provocation.
As pre-staging, messages are transmitted from the Libyan soil to its embassies to set off a chain of terrorist acts. The intension is obvious. Such messages are prone to interception. And that brings Libya blinking as a terrorist state on the intelligence screens in Europe and elsewhere. The U.S. shows its gullibility and accepts such doctored messages as real.
The Orchestrating phase activates the Mossad operatives to terrorist acts through proxy. The Israeli target is to get some Americans killed so that the U.S. is lured into killing those whom Israelis consider as offensive to their cause.
In the provocation phase, Berlin’s La Belle Discotheque is blasted, killing an American serviceman.
Enraged, 160 American, German, and British aircrafts unload 160 tons of explosives on Libya killing 40 civilians, including 2-year old Qadhafi’s daughter.
Berlin’s selection as the site for the terrorist attack is important as the ripple effect would be felt all over Europe convincing even cynical regimes about the Israeli plight surrounded by a sea of Muslim states.
Second, it will give the West a much needed new enemy of “radical Islam” against the backdrop of a winding cold war.
Third, it will alienate the Muslim world from the United States, eventually forcing Americans to identify themselves with Israel.
Here Jeff Gates cites a senior Mossad operative saying 15 year before 9/11 that after neutralizing Qadhafi, Iraq and Saddam Hussein will be their next target, “We are starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there is no doubt that it ‘ll work.” The rest is history. Saddam was hanged, and his country was decimated.
Gates is convincing in linking Berlin’s and 9/11 incidents to Israeli plan of bringing out U.S. total support to its security concerns in the Middle East.
He finds the genesis of the Israeli plan to involve U.S. in its war against its neighbors when Ariel Sharon’s staged an armed march to Temple Mount in the year 2000. It took Palestinians a year to start a series of suicide bombing as expected by Israel. The U.S. and Europe were of course prompt in condemning suicide bombing. But Israel was looking for something more. Iraqi support to Palestinian cause was worrisome and so was its economic and military rebound after the Gulf War. Iraq had to be axed, minimizing threat to Israel.
Gates quotes Sharon and Netanyahu saying that only when Americans “feel our pain” would they understand the Israeli plight. “Both men mentioned a weighted body count of 4,500 to 5,000 American lost to terrorism – the initial estimate of those who died a year later in the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center.”
September 11, 2001 is another orchestrated event to give Israel the much desired edge over others in the region. Two preparatory steps in Jeff Gates calculus were necessary to make this tragic event happened.
One, how to create a mental environment supportive to March 2003 invasion of Iraq? This called for a massive exercise in brain washing sustained and made plausible by a believable theoretical framework provided by Samuel Huntington 1993-1996 The Clash of Civilization.
Two, how to make people believe that Iraq was behind 9/11, and that it had weapons of mass destruction? Gates characterizes this effort as “the displacement of an inconvenient truth (that Iraq had no role in 9/11) with what people could be induced to believe. The emotionally wrenching nature of that event played a key fact-displacing role.”
But mere publication of a plausible work would not have helped unless it was critically acclaimed by the media, and academia owned it. Gates says “100 academies and think tanks were prepared to promote it, pre-staging a clash consensus five years before 9/11.”
As a capper, it would need a legislative act to legitimize Iraqi invasion. The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, made possible by the cumulative efforts of pro-Zionist lawmakers like John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Jon Kyl, should be seen against this scenario. Gates could have also said that the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, when 9/11 was still three years ahead, was a prelude to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. This implies that the plan to invade Iraq was already in gestation; 9/11 was a ruse.
Gates cites an important individual named Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission. He was addressing September 10, 2002 audience of University of Virginia:
Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?
I’ll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 –
it’s the threat against Israel. And this is the real threat that dare not speak its
name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you
frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhe-
torically, , because it’s not a popular sell.
Critiquing it, Gates says, “Zelikow omitted that candor in the 9/11 Commission report.”
Such devious cover-ups are usually associated with Third-World nations who are believed to be gullible and thus can be deceived. But here we are ironically encountering a superpower said to be free, has a vigilant press and a powerful Congress and yet the administration succeeds in deceiving people – that too without a whimper causing a major calamity to a segment of humanity (Muslims in this case). Gates dares to expose this criminality.
One should not however get the impression as if this is the only deception the U.S. played on its people. Gore Vidal’s The Golden Age has the narrative of a novel but it is history he writes without being irreverent that otherwise he is known for. According to him, it was Franklin Roosevelt who provoked Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, Harry Truman scorched Hiroshima and Nagasaki to dust on pretense that a million Americans would lose their lives even when the military heads disagreed. Vidal cites three serious works like Charles A. Beard’s President Roosevelt and the Coming of War, Robert A. Stinnet’s Day of Deceit, and Gar Alperovitz’s The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth to validate his assertion.
To people who think democracy is open and that it is people’s will, which is sovereign forget that democracy is a process that calls for shrewd management. Otherwise, it can backfire, hurting people at the hands of special interest groups who may deflect the process toward the fulfillment of their own parochial agenda. In this sense, democracy is a challenge to a people’s genius asking for their ability to sift right from wrong. Media which is considered to be a watch dog can become somebody else’s dog, susceptible to influences — acting as anesthetic to the people. If this can happen in the U.S., it can happen elsewhere too. Unfortunately, there are no exceptions.
Gates touches a few other important bases like demand or purchasing-power economics as against supply-side economics, privatization, and globalization. He shows reasonably well that supply-side economics based on the Chicago model is a root cause of our problems jeopardizing the world economy and creating monopolies. He does not, however, expose the privatization issue and its ramifications for the economy in general or how public interest is hurt, especially when it goes in the hands of international controllers of businesses. Privatization experience especially in a country like Pakistan has not been of much help in increasing efficiency or cost saving, as its proponents claimed. Public accountability to which utility services were amenable has now diminished as their ownership has moved to private hands. Karachi Electric Supply Company is one such instance.
While I agree with Gates that U.S. is guilty by association in its exaggerated tilt toward Israel, I disagree with part of his thesis giving me the impression as if it is only Israel making use of the United States. Accepting it would mean as if the Americans are too simple to care for their interests. On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that it is a two-ended relationship. Maybe I discuss it later.
Tariq Jan is a research scholar working with IPS Islamabad. He is also Member Board of Advisros, Opinion Maker. He has authored several books including ‘Secular Threat To Pakistan.’
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