Covid

MASKING SAVES LIVES

Friday, February 27, 2015

"In Photos: Israel Destroys Protest Camp, Palestinians Vow to Rebuild" bySilvia Boarini on Electronic Intifada



Activists erect more wooden structures as Israeli Border Police prepare to dismantle the camp for the SIXTH time.

Nabeel Abdullah, 67, is from Abu Dis. “I came [to the protest camp] because Israel is taking our land. We all need to come down here and stand together to defend it.”



Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Murder of Malcolm X Was An Incalculable Loss to Us All -- February 21, 1965


"It is not a case of our people...wanting either separation or integration. The use of these words actually clouds the real picture. The 22 million Afro-Americans don't seek either separation or integration. They seek recognition and respect as human beings."

"I think that an objective analysis of events that are taking place on this earth today points towards some type of ultimate showdown. You can call it political showdown, or even a showdown between the economic systems that exist on this earth which almost boil down along racial lines. I do believe that there will be a clash between East and West. I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation."

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."

Voices for Palestine Crew at Westlake Park, Downtown Seattle. Join Us on the 1st & Third Saturdays!

Blazing Seattle Sun Dazzles Sign Saying Stop US Aid to Israeli Occupation!

Voices for Palestine (Seattle) Educating Crowds near Westlake Park.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Innocent Man Spends Half His Life in Jail -- Because of Cop Who Ended Up Torturing in Guantanamo

Sunday, February 08, 2015

Spirit Horses by Annie Humphrey with John Trudell



http://youtu.be/gd6wsVgWoUI

HAUNTING & BEAUTIFUL SONG.

AND THE OUTRAGEOUS STORY IT WAS EMBEDDED IN:

Native-American Kids Doused With Beer at SD Hockey Game

http://www.laprogressive.com/native-american-kids-doused-with-beer/

Monday, February 02, 2015

Feb. 9 Seattle Vigil to Defend Rasmea Odeh, Palestinian/American Community Organizer. Thank you, @stopfbi

When:  Monday, February 9, 4:30-5:30

When:  Federal Court House, 7th & Stewart



National Week of Action to defend Rasmea, February 9-15

Published on Sat, 2015-01-24 13:56 
The campaign to defend long-time Palestinian American leader Rasmea Odeh has reached a critical stage. We urge everyone to join us in organizing an event or protest on your campus or in the community during the week of Feb. 9 – 15.
All of us need to shine a light on the real injustice that is taking place in Detroit. Rasmea, a Palestinian American woman who has done so much for so many, is facing deportation and up to ten years in jail on a trumped-up immigration charge.
We need to go all out in focusing attention on her case before her March 12 sentencing. After the sentencing, it is anticipated that the appeals process will start. This fight will not be over until we have justice.
Rasmea has made great contributions to the community and the cause of Palestinian freedom. We need to stand with her.
*This event is being called ad hoc in response to the above call.  Please distribute widely to your lists.  Respond to this email with any questions. Thanks.  Linda Jansen, Member Voices for Palestine

Sunday, February 01, 2015

"Syriza Victory Reveals Media's One-Dimensional Backwardness" -- By Chris Spannos @teleSURtv

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Syriza-Victory-Reveals-Medias-One-Dimensional-Backwardness--20150130-0012.html

The recent coverage of Syriza’s political rise reveals several ways in which the journalistic profession has lost its meaning.
Syriza's sensational triumph in the recent Greek elections sent shock waves around the world and has whipped some international media into a frenzy.
Hours after being sworn in, the new Syriza government froze privatizations, re-instituted a monthly 751 euro minimum wage, promised immigrant children citizenship, canceled public sector layoffs, and more.
The New York Times questioned the ability of the Syriza government to succeed. The Independent asserted that Greece is doomed to failure. And the BBC and Reuters worried about market rumblings.
To these powerful media outlets Syriza's actions — aimed at ensuring basic human well-being so that people have a decent income to guarantee access to shelter and food, for example — are backward. For them, the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank imposed economic austerity — which has caused 3 million Greeks to go without health insurance, soaring infant mortality, and an increase in suicides — is necessary to make the country competitive in the global market.
It is difficult to see how this view could be more irrational.
The Economist magazine proposes that the reforms of Greece’s new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who, according to them, “probably is a crazy leftwinger,” would lead to more loss of worker income and boost unemployment rates even higher than the current 25 percent.
But by September 2011, in the very early stages of the imposition of economic austerity, more than 68,000 small businesses had closed. By the following September, one-third of the shops in Athens’ city center had been shut down. The National Confederation of Greek Commerce reported in April 2013 that an “unprecedented” 150,000 small and medium-sized businesses had closed.
Could Syriza's social democratic reforms do more damage to the welfare of the population, as compared to the ways in which neoliberal capitalism's sweeping privatization — including 14 airports, major radio frequencies, islands, beaches, historic buildings, gas, water, ports, and railway systems — and austerity has savaged the country?
In his seminal text from 1960, “Modern Capitalism and Revolution,” the Greek/French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis wrote that privatization is one of the most striking features of modern capitalism because it destroys the collective social relations that are the basis for people coming together to solve the important problems of the day. It depoliticizes. It drives society to provide private, rather than public solutions, and pressures people to act alone in a spiral away from others.
No wonder one of the first acts of the Syriza government was to freeze the privatizations. Dominant international media has predictably reacted hysterically.
When the Greek economy hit an iceberg nearly six years ago, the EU and IMF speedily began pushing through a far-reaching free market agenda resulting in millions of people becoming destitute. In resistance, Greeks took to the streets in colorful protests and debilitating strikes.
The hand held lasers that Greeks shone into the lenses of cameras and faces of police in the many street manifestations against austerity and repression sought to blind media's one-dimensional view of their plight. In shining the lasers, they hoped to interrupt the pro-austerity paparazzi occupying Athens Plaza Hotel balconies safely above the tear gas and batons descending in Syntagma Square below.
The pro-austerity paparazzi portrayed the Greek crisis in terms of corruption, responsibility, and debt, sanitizing the human costs and consequences of austerity that Greeks were rebelling against. The austerity that operates as a form of social control, distancing individuals from each other, causing what Castoriadis described as a lonely spiral away from one another.
This helps explain why some Greeks have attacked, or at least physically confronted journalists warning them to stop filming or risk having their camera smashed. I personally have been confronted in this way, by protesters. When your story is not being told, but the images of your resistance are being used to sell a story of irresponsibility against completely “sane” and necessary economic measures — you do not want the images to be made at all.
The institutions of dominant media have been corrupted to their core so that the entire modern enterprise of journalism has lost its meaning.
The word for “journalist” in Greek is dimosiográfos — pronounced dee-mos-eeo-gra-fos — and in Greek looks like this: δημοσιογράφος. In etymological terms, the root “dimos” (δημοσ) means “the people” while “gráfos” (γράφος) means “writer.”
There are different interpretations of what these words signify when put together. My preference is that when combined these words define a journalist as a “writer for the people.” If the Greek word for journalism can be said to have this connotation, the recent historical coverage of crises and Syriza’s victory reveal the number of ways in which the profession has lost its original meaning. Journalists in dominant media do not write in service to the people. They write in service to power.
Ever since Syriza stepped into the ring as a serious electoral contender, European and Greek elites have heightened fears about panicky investors and a Greek expulsion from the eurozone in order to ring fear in the hearts of the population so that they would not vote for Syriza. And now that a Syriza victory has challenged austerity's boundaries of acceptable thought, the chorus peddling fear has intensified.
So while you read nauseating and patronizing headlines suggesting “Why the Eurozone May Need to Sacrifice Greece to Save Spain” (Wall Street Journal), or vague and factually erroneous media reports that “Greece was the laggard of Europe, sometimes hardly bothering to aspire to the standards of other EU nations” (BBC), remember that these and other dominant media institutions are attempting to enforce an irrational world view upon populations that elevate an unjust social order which keeps the powerful secure over the human well-being and free development of all.