Danny Glover: Race and the Obama Administration

12 April, 2009 — peoplesgeography

Actor-activist Danny Glover takes a principled stand on calling for the Obama administration to display genuine leadership on the second Durban racism conference.

In 2001 I traveled to Durban, South Africa, to join the tens of thousands of people who came to participate in the United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. More than 2,000 came from the United States, a rainbow of people crossing all lines–racial, ethnic, national, language, immigration status, religious and much more–joining an equally diverse crowd from across the globe. It was an extraordinary opportunity to meet, discuss, argue and strategize over how to rid the world of these longstanding evils.

Our participation paralleled that of the official US delegation. And that’s where we faced a huge challenge. The Bush administration team, having only grudgingly agreed to participate at all, made clear they had no real commitment to fighting racism or offering leadership on other challenging issues of discrimination. When they didn’t like a few small parts of the sixty-one-page text, they packed up and walked out of the conference. It was a sad but hardly surprising moment, exposing once again the history of US failures to take seriously the consequences of its own legacy of racism, a point most recently made by Attorney General Eric Holder. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Race, Racism, USA. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

Ashkenazim's Pawning of Mizrahim, Sacrificing Gaza

20 January, 2009 — peoplesgeography

An immensely interesting and revealing piece that discusses the too-rarely broached internal racism of Israeli society by Smadar Lavie (’Sacrificing Gaza to revive Israel’s Labor party‘). Israel’s racism against its own second class citizens (the Eastern Jews or Mizrahim, the Palestinian Israeli Arabs are third class citizens) is demonstrated in Ashkenazi Jews treatment. The Ashkenazi Jews who constituted the political elite settled the Eastern-origin, darker-skinned Mizrahi Jews — whom they call “monkeys” and “indians” — in ethnically cleansed Palestinian towns as a demographic shield and buffer. “While the regime had endowed Ashkenazi left-wing kibbutzniks living in northern Israel with well-equipped air-conditioned underground shelters,” Lavie notes, “it had failed to make corresponding provision for the neighboring Mizrahi agricultural cooperatives and development towns. After the war, the Mizrahim in the north publicly acknowledged, and with great bitterness, that they had been sacrificed for Israel’s military adventure.”

Not only is zionism racism, its own internal racism is plain to see. How long can Israel survive with these mounting internal contradictions? Full article over the jump; bold emphasis is editorial. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Racism. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Ashkenazim’s Pawning of Mizrahim, Sacrificing Gaza

20 January, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

An immensely interesting and revealing piece that discusses the too-rarely broached internal racism of Israeli society by Smadar Lavie (’Sacrificing Gaza to revive Israel’s Labor party‘). Israel’s racism against its own second class citizens (the Eastern Jews or Mizrahim, the Palestinian Israeli Arabs are third class citizens) is demonstrated in Ashkenazi Jews treatment. The Ashkenazi Jews who constituted the political elite settled the Eastern-origin, darker-skinned Mizrahi Jews — whom they call “monkeys” and “indians” — in ethnically cleansed Palestinian towns as a demographic shield and buffer. “While the regime had endowed Ashkenazi left-wing kibbutzniks living in northern Israel with well-equipped air-conditioned underground shelters,” Lavie notes, “it had failed to make corresponding provision for the neighboring Mizrahi agricultural cooperatives and development towns. After the war, the Mizrahim in the north publicly acknowledged, and with great bitterness, that they had been sacrificed for Israel’s military adventure.”

Not only is zionism racism, its own internal racism is plain to see. How long can Israel survive with these mounting internal contradictions? Full article over the jump; bold emphasis is editorial. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Gaza, Israel, Racism. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

To the Americans Who Defend Liberty, Thank You

30 March, 2008 — peoplesgeography

Thanks to Dave and Haitham, this deserves wide circulation so I am adding it here as well.

You’ll be moved and encouraged, as I am, by the ordinary Americans who speak up for a stranger.

Yes, there were some that were silent — there invariably is — and this is a lesson about silence as acquiescence and passive complicity in discrimination.

John Quinones of ABC serves as a model for his mainstream media colleagues in this particular story. R/T: 7 minutes

Posted in Discrimination, Islam, Peace education, People, People power, Racism, US Foreign Policy, USA, Video. Tags: . 1 Comment »

Geoffrey Robertson on Why Britain Should Say Sorry To Australia’s Aborigines

18 February, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com

What really leapt out in this Guardian piece from Geoffrey Robertson is that the English Fabian Socialists, almost always looked up to by many of us in the labour movement and culturally lionised, were eugenicists who advocated the assimilation or “humane eradication” of what they saw as “lesser races”. It is surprising that George Bernard Shaw, who I otherwise quite like as a playwright and political commentator from that era, is among this group that includes Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Virginia Woolf, DH Lawrence and others. Even making allowances for the prevalent modes of thought of the time in which they lived, this is a revelation. As late as 1934, a British Department of Health report recommended compulsory sterilisation of the “feeble-minded’, as Robertson points out. Ironically, he adds that it was opposition from Labour MPs that quashed the recommendation, “who feared that working-class people would be the real victims of the Fabian intelligentsia.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Australia, Genocide, Hegemon-watch, History, Human Rights, Indigenous peoples, Race, Racism, UK. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Tandberg on the heart of Australian politics

24 September, 2007 — peoplesgeography

Background: There has been some brouhaha over the past week in Australian politics over the fact that Labor and Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd had a minor heart operation 17 years ago.

Here is cartoonist Tandberg in The Age:

Key events in John Howard’s heartless politics: Tampa and the “children overboard” deception; the placement of asylum-seekers and children in detention; the Siev X disaster in which 353 asylum-seekers perished; participation in the illegal and immoral 2003 Invasion of Iraq; the Redfern Riots, Macquarie Fields Riots and Cronulla Riots; and the military intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.

Posted in Australia, Cartoonists, Indigenous peoples, Politics, Racism, Refugees. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

No room at the school unless you’re racially pure

4 September, 2007 — peoplesgeography

Internal blatant discrimination against Israeli Arabs who make up a fifth of the population is well known and documented, as is the brutal and longest running occupation in modern times of Palestinian territories by Israel.

Racism against its “own” — olive-skinned Jews indigenous to the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and not the politically dominant Ashkenazi Jews who originated from Europe, is less documented but endemic to Israeli society. Note that while the term Sephardi Jew originally described Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, in common usage it now denotes all non-Ashkenazi Jews.

Y-Net (2 Sept) reports that a Haredi (orthodox Jewish) Talmud Torah school has recently rejected a ‘Sephardi’ child on racial/ ethnic grounds, with the school principal branding the child’s part Sephardi heritage a ’stain’ in his genealogy.

I am posting this in part because it is under-reported in the mainstream press, and also because it so well illustrates Hannah Arendt’s observation (The Origins of Totalitaranism) that “… though tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.”

Zvi Alush writes:

Anyone who thinks that racist rules are a thing of the past is wrong, according to the mother of a four-and-a-half year old child who was rejected from a Talmud Torah school because of his grandfather’s ethnicity.

“They are alive and kicking in all their ugliness in Ashkenazi haredi educational institutions,” the mother said.

The child was denied admission to a Talmud Torah school in Beit Shemesh because of what its principal called a “stain” in his genealogy.

“Tell the child’s dear father that although he himself is completely Ashkenazi, his wife’s father is Sephardic, and we therefore cannot accept his son into our institution. We have to maintain a certain standard,” the principal said.

The child’s mother made several attempts to change the principal’s mind, to no avail.

“I begged the principal. I explained that my child is truly Ashkenazi and looks exactly like his father. Our son also speaks Yiddish, but nothing helped,” the mother said. “They explained to a friend of ours that they didn’t want to ruin their Talmud Torah with ‘damaged goods’.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Diplomacy, Education, Israel, Israel Watch, Japan, Judaism, Justice, Political Economy, Race, Racism. 2 Comments »

The New (York City) Anti-Semitism: Reinstate Debbie Almontaser to the Kahlil Gibran International Academy

1 September, 2007 — peoplesgeography

Any intelligent observer can easily discern that the “new” anti-semitism today has little connection with discrimination against Jews. Anti-semitism nowadays is mostly about deplorable discrimination and racist attacks against Arabs. Right now in New York, the Likudnik thought police are trying their darndest to designate Arabic words like intifada and madrassa (which simply means ’school’ in Arabic, regardless of religious affiliation), treasonous. Madrassa does not mean religious school.

We see this playing out in the trumped-up brouhaha about the Kahlil Gibran International Academy, wherein Debbie Almontaser, the head, was branded a terrorist for not apologising enough (for the hardline-Zionists liking) about the word ‘intifada’ (which simply means ’shaking off’) on a T-Shirt–worn by someone else! The racist bullying and defamation resulted in Almontaser resigning.

This reflects poorly on NYC, which has a rich history of cosmopolitanism, the same American tradition that brought Kahlil Gibran, the timeless Lebanese-born poet and philosopher, to the shores of the US where he made such a lasting impact upon the world of literature.

As Anthony DiMaggio notes, Daniel Pipes is one of the reactionaries spouting utter rubbish about Arabic, such as: “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage” and “Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam…”

Islamophobe Pipes fails to mention that the most populous Muslim country is Indonesia (pop: 242 million), whose national language is Bahasa Indonesian. He neglects to mention that there are a great many Christian Arabic speakers too, such as myself. Yes, Arab culture is attached to Islam—since when then is that a crime?–but also to Christianity and Judaism, too. The demonisation of Islam and of Arabic as a language by ignoramuses and ideologues such as Pipes and Bella Rabinowitz is all in service of the terror-blather that has hijacked public discourse in the United States.

Samuel Freedman is one of the very few voices in the MSM to more accurately document the affair, as Richard Silverstein observes.

Press Picks:

Al Jazeera news clip (Thanks Ressentiment)

Posted in Activism, Arab, Arabic, Diplomacy, Education, Hegemon-watch, Iraq, Justice, Language, Lobby watch, Military-Industrial Complex, Neocons, Peace and Justice, Peace education, Politics, Propaganda and psy-ops, Race, Racism, US Foreign Policy, USA, Video. 8 Comments »

Humanising the Hemisphere: John Pilger’s The War on Democracy

24 August, 2007 — peoplesgeography

John Pilger’s latest film, The War on Democracy (R/T 93 minutes) is an interesting and important excursion into the Latin American hemisphere and US foreign policy towards its southern neighbours. It starts with Venezuela and includes a look at Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador and more, and addresses the politics at the human level, never shirking the grim details about torture, the US School of the Americas, and mass suffering inflicted as a result of US government policy.

One of many highlights is in the opening section that focuses on Venezuela is the interview with Chavez that begins at the 5 minute mark. We also discover that people’s constitutional rights are remarkably printed on supermarket packets to raise awareness, and that there is free health care — three vignettes just within the first 15 minutes.

Also check out Pilger’s latest article Israel: an important marker has been passed (New Statesman, 23 Aug).

Posted in Activism, Chile, Empire, War and Terror, Hegemon-watch, History, International Relations, Iraq, Neocons, Neoliberalism, Political Economy, Politics, Poverty, Race, Racism, Religion, US Foreign Policy, USA, Venezuela, Video, War. 4 Comments »

UK Peer Jenny Tonge speaks out for justice in Palestine

19 August, 2007 — peoplesgeography

UPDATED: many thanks to Jenny Tonge for kindly responding to a query about full Hansard transcript availability which has allowed me to feature more of her address. Parliamentary debate transcripts at both the House of Commons and House of Lords can be found on the Hansard link here by date and member name.

Liberal-Democrat peer Jenny Tonge spoke out for justice in Palestine in a House of Lords speech last month, predictably earning the ire of Israel-apologists (see J-Post)

Here’s an excerpt of her speech:

The Palestinians have been brought to their knees. A cultured and well educated society with high skill levels has been reduced to a third-world country. The statistics are there for all to see. If noble Lords do not believe me or any of the other speakers, the Select Committee for International Development in the other place produced a good report this year. I hope that noble Lords will read it. It tells of injustice—injustice to Palestinians.

The new Government talks of rebuilding the economy in Palestine and of getting the Palestinians back to work, which is very welcome. But how will they do that with road blocks, checkpoints and Bantustans divided by settler-only roads? How can an economy work in this situation?

Even education is being destroyed as children are terrorised by raids on their schools. Exams in Nablus, for example, were disrupted only last week by the IDF. An unskilled and illiterate generation will emerge, capable of very little except low-wage labour. The economy cannot be rebuilt unless Israel changes its policies.

Therefore, the problem remains—how do we persuade Israel to change? We want Israel to be a secure and prosperous state—and I say that sincerely. How can anyone in Israel believe that the present situation will give them what they want, long-term security. I am not anti-Semitic, but I am appalled by the racist, apartheid state of Israel. I use the word “apartheid” in its literal sense—it means separation—because that is what is going on.

Policies of the western countries towards Israel must change. Israel must be made to understand. We must consider trade sanctions and boycotts, if necessary, to make that country obey international law. The present situation is a disaster for Palestinians. It is a disaster for Israel. It is a disaster for the whole world. It has to change.

Thank you, Jenny Tonge. Hope you are holding up well with the usual character smears and pathetic denigration this kind of speaking truth to power elicits from the Likudnik ideologues. Of course, unlike them, Dr Tonge has actually been to Gaza and seen conditions for herself. Dr Tonge, who cites her proudest achievement in parliament since 2001 as “highlighting the plight of the Palestinians under occupation by Israel”, is a treasure.

German peace movement spurns settlement products

In other positive developments, Ha’aretz reports that Germans have protested the sale of food from West Bank settlements. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Activism, Apartheid, Boycotts, Diplomacy, Human Rights, Illegal settlements, Israel, Israel Watch, Lebanon, Militarism general, Palestine, Palestine Peace, Peace and Justice, Peace education, People, Political Economy, Propaganda and psy-ops, Racism, Speeches, UK. 3 Comments »
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