Original Article here: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/04/18/23975195/people-are-marching-in-support-of-the-nooksack-306-in-westlake-park-today
via Popular Resistance
SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) -- “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” (Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
"Seattle: Indigenous People Protest Tribal Disenrollment"
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Above Photo: Indigenous people from throughout Washington march through Seattle streets to protest tribal disenrollment. ALEX GARLAND
Original Article here: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/04/18/23975195/people-are-marching-in-support-of-the-nooksack-306-in-westlake-park-today
via Popular Resistance
Original Article here: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/04/18/23975195/people-are-marching-in-support-of-the-nooksack-306-in-westlake-park-today
via Popular Resistance
Monday, April 25, 2016
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
Friday, April 15, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
Wednesday, April 06, 2016
Sunday, April 03, 2016
Unist'ot'en Reportback and Fundraiser -- Seattle, April 9, Hillman City Collaboratory
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INFORMATION RE UNIST'OT'EN (First Nations Clan successfully stopping oil and gas pipelines in BC by blocking w/their bodies): http://forestaction.wikidot.com/unistoten
An evening of celebratory resistance with Rising Tide Seattle and Friends.
$5-20 suggested donation at the door // Food & drinks (non-alcoholic) provided
This event is an all-ages/family-friendly reportback and fundraiser for the Unist'ot'en Camp
We will be showing recent films about Unist'ot'en and Lelu Island, followed by Q&A with RTS collective members & friends who have spent time at the camp in the past year. Later in the evening we'll have space for community time and live music (bring your dancing shoes!)
BANDS: Dozer, Earth of Foxes, and Animals of Grace, music starting around 8:30
We would like to connect folks in the Seattle area with resources and information for travelling to the camp later in the year, particularly indigenous youth who would like to participate in the upcoming Summer Art Camp (It's going to be awesome!!).
We'd also like to talk about ways we in Seattle/ the Salish Sea region can act in solidarity with land defenders up north, so bring your ideas and your questions and your wonderful, beautiful selves!
See you then!
RTS
****Accessibility for the Co-lab: building is wheelchair accessible, and the event is held on the ground floor. Bathrooms may be small for large wheelchairs (less than standard 4' clearance). Will update with more info later.
Please don't wear strong scents so that everyone is comfortable attending
An evening of celebratory resistance with Rising Tide Seattle and Friends.
$5-20 suggested donation at the door // Food & drinks (non-alcoholic) provided
This event is an all-ages/family-friendly reportback and fundraiser for the Unist'ot'en Camp
We will be showing recent films about Unist'ot'en and Lelu Island, followed by Q&A with RTS collective members & friends who have spent time at the camp in the past year. Later in the evening we'll have space for community time and live music (bring your dancing shoes!)
BANDS: Dozer, Earth of Foxes, and Animals of Grace, music starting around 8:30
We would like to connect folks in the Seattle area with resources and information for travelling to the camp later in the year, particularly indigenous youth who would like to participate in the upcoming Summer Art Camp (It's going to be awesome!!).
We'd also like to talk about ways we in Seattle/ the Salish Sea region can act in solidarity with land defenders up north, so bring your ideas and your questions and your wonderful, beautiful selves!
See you then!
RTS
****Accessibility for the Co-lab: building is wheelchair accessible, and the event is held on the ground floor. Bathrooms may be small for large wheelchairs (less than standard 4' clearance). Will update with more info later.
Please don't wear strong scents so that everyone is comfortable attending
Pepe Escobar on RT: "Brazil, Like Russia, Under Attack by Hybrid War" -- [Initiated by Guess Who? Exceptionalistan]
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https://www.rt.com/op-edge/337411-brazil-russia-hybrid-attack/
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/337411-brazil-russia-hybrid-attack/
Color revolutions would never be enough; Exceptionalistan is always on the lookout for major strategic upgrades capable of ensuring perpetual Empire of Chaos hegemony.
The ideological matrix and the modus operandi of color revolutions by now are a matter of public domain. Not so much the concept of Unconventional War (UW).
UW was spelled out by the 2010 Special Forces Unconventional Warfare manual. Here’s the money quote:
“The intent of US [Unconventional Warfare] UW efforts is to exploit a hostile power’s political, military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and sustaining resistance forces to accomplish US strategic objectives… For the foreseeable future, US forces will predominantly engage in irregular warfare (IW) operations.”
“Hostile” powers are meant not only in a military sense; any state that dares to defy any significant plank of the Washington-centric world “order” – from Sudan to Argentina – may be branded “hostile”.
The dangerous liaisons between color revolutions and UW have now fully blossomed as Hybrid War; a warped case of Flowers of Evil. A color revolution is nothing but the first stage of what will become Hybrid War. And Hybrid War can be interpreted essentially as the weaponization of chaos theory – an absolute conceptual darling of the US military (“politics is the continuation of war by linguistic means”). My 2014 book Empire of Chaos essentially tracks its myriad manifestations.
This very well-argued three-part thesis clarifies the central objective behind a major Hybrid War; “to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects through externally provoked identity conflicts (ethnic, religious, political, etc.) within a targeted transit state.”
The BRICS – an extremely dirty word/concept in the Beltway/Wall Street axis – had to be the prime targets of Hybrid War. For myriad reasons. Among them; the push for trade and commerce in their own currencies, bypassing the US dollar; the creation of the BRICS development bank; the avowed drive towards Eurasia integration, symbolized by the now converging China-led New Silk Roads - or One Belt, One Road (OBOR), in its official terminology - and Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EEU).
This implies that Hybrid War sooner rather than later will hit Central Asia; Kyrgysztan, a prime lab for Exceptionalistan experiments of the color revolution kind, is the ideal candidate.
As it stands, Hybrid War is very much active in Russia’s western borderlands (Ukraine) but still embryonic in Xinjiang, China’s Far West, which Beijing micromanages like a hawk. Hybrid War is already being applied to prevent a crucial Pipelineistan gambit; the construction of Turkish Stream. And will also be fully applied to interrupt the Balkan Silk Road – essential for China’s integrated trade/commerce with Eastern Europe.
As the BRICS are the only, real counter power to Exceptionalistan, a strategy had to be developed for each of the major players. Everything was thrown at Russia – from sanctions to full demonization, from a raid on its currency to an oil price war, even including (pathetic) attempts to start a color revolution in the streets of Moscow. For a weaker BRICS node, a more subtle strategy would have to be developed. Which brings us to the complexity of Hybrid War as applied to the current, massive political/economic destabilization of Brazil.
In the UW manual, swaying the perceptions of a vast “uncommitted middle population” is essential in the road to success, so these uncommitted eventually turn against their political leaders. The process encompasses everything from “supporting insurgency” (as in Syria) to “wider discontent through propaganda and political and psychological efforts to discredit the government” (as in Brazil). And as an insurrection escalates, so should the “intensification of propaganda; psychological preparation of the population for rebellion.” That, in a nutshell, has been the Brazilian case.
We need our own Saddam
Exceptionalistan’s utmost strategic objective is usually to have a merger of color revolution and UW. But Brazil’s civil society and vibrant democracy were too sophisticated for hardcore UW steps such as sanctions or R2P (“responsibility to protect”).
It’s no wonder that Sao Paulo was turned into the epicenter of the Hybrid War against Brazil. Sao Paulo, the wealthiest Brazilian state, also housing the economic/financial capital of Latin America, is the key node in an interlinked national/international power structure.
The Wall Street-centered global financial system – which rules over virtually the whole West – simply could not allow national sovereignty in full expression in a major regional actor such as Brazil.
The Brazilian Spring, in the beginning, was virtually invisible, an exclusive social media phenomenon – just as Syria in early 2011.
Then, in June 2013, Edward Snowden leaked those notorious NSA spying practices. In Brazil, the NSA was all over Petrobras. And suddenly, out of the blue, a regional judge, Sergio Moro, based on a single source - a currency exchange operator in the black market – had access to a major Petrobras document dump. Up to now, the two-year Car Wash corruption investigation has not revealed how they got to know so much about what they dub the “criminal cell” acting inside Petrobras.
What matters is that the color revolution modus operandi – a fight against corruption and “in defense of democracy” - was already in place. That was the first step of Hybrid War.
As Exceptionalistan coined “good” and “bad” terrorists wreaking havoc across “Syraq”, in Brazil surged the figure of the “good” and the “bad” corrupt.
Wikileaks also unveiled how Exceptionalistan doubted Brazil could design a nuclear submarine – a matter of national security. How construction company Odebrecht was going global. How Petrobras by itself developed the technology to explore the pre-salt deposits – the largest oil discovery of the young 21st century, of which Big Oil was excluded by none other than Lula.
Then, as a result of Snowden’s revelations, the Rousseff administration required all government agencies to use state-owned companies for their technology services. This would mean that US companies could lose as much as $35 billion in revenue over two years as they would be deprived of business in the 7th largest economy in the world – as research group Information Technology & Innovation Foundation discovered.
The future is happening now
The march towards Hybrid War in Brazil had little do to with the political left or right. It was basically about mobilizing a few wealthy families that actually run the country; buy large swathes of Congress; control mainstream media; behave like 19th century slave plantation owners (slavery still permeates all social relations in Brazil); and legitimize it all via a hefty, yet bogus, intellectual tradition.
They would give the signal for the mobilization of the middle class.
Sociologist Jesse de Souza identified a Freudian “substitutive gratification” phenomenon under which the Brazilian middle class – with large swathes now clamoring for regime change - imitates the wealthy few as much as it’s ruthlessly exploited by them, via mountains of taxes and sky-high interest rates.
The wealthy 0,0001% and the middle classes needed an Other to demonize – Exceptionalistan style. And what could be more perfect for the judicial-police-media-old comprador elite complex than the figure of a tropical Saddam Hussein: former President Lula.
Ultra right-wing “movements” financed by the nefarious Koch Brothers suddenly popped up on social networks and street protests. The Brazilian attorney general visited the Empire of Chaos leading a Car Wash team to hand out Petrobras information that could prop up possible Department of Justice indictments.
Car Wash and the – immensely corrupt - Brazilian Congress, which will now deliberate over the possible impeachment of President Rousseff, revealed themselves as indistinguishable.
By then, the scriptwriters were sure that a regime change social infrastructure was already built into a critical anti-government mass, thus allowing the color revolution’s full bloom. The way to a soft coup was paved – without even having to resort to lethal urban terrorism (as in Ukraine). The problem was that if the soft coup failed – as it now seems at least possible – it would be very hard to unleash a hard coup, Pinochet-style, via UW, against the beleaguered Rousseff administration; that is, finally accomplishing Full Hybrid War.
On a socioeconomic level, Car Wash would only be fully “successful” if mirrored by a softening up of Brazilian laws regulating oil exploration, opening it up for US Big Oil. And in parallel, all social spending programs would have to be smashed.
Instead, what’s happening now is the progressive mobilization of Brazilian civil society against a white coup/soft coup/regime change scenario. Crucial actors in Brazilian society are now firmly positioned against the impeachment of President Rousseff, from the Catholic church to evangelicals; first tier university professors; at least 15 state governors; masses of union workers and “informal economy” workers; artists; leading intellectuals; jurists; the overwhelming majority of lawyers; and last but not least, the “deep Brazil” that legally elected Rousseff with 54.5 million votes.
It ain’t over till some fat man in the Brazilian Supreme Court sings. What’s certain is that independent Brazilian academics are already laying down the theoretical bases to study Car Wash not as a mere, massive anti-corruption drive; but as the ultimate case study of Exceptionalistan’s geopolitical strategy applied to a sophisticated globalized environment dominated by infotech and social networks. The whole developing world should be fully alert – and learn the relevant lessons, as Brazil is bound to be analyzed as the ultimate case of Soft Hybrid War.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
National Lawyers Guild Requests Investigation into the Jewish National Fund Status
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Original at: http://english.pnn.ps/2016/03/31/american-lawyers-request-investigation-into-the-jewish-national-fund-status/
EXCERPT:
The U.S. National Lawyers Guild (NLG) on Wednesday submitted a regulatory challenge to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requesting an investigation into the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) on grounds of discrimination and contravention of U.S. policy.
According to the NLG, the JNF enjoys tax-exempt status as a charitable organization in the United States even though the reality of its work- supporting Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine – is anything but charitable.
The JNF’s mandate is to promote racist and discriminatory policies such as forcibly displacing Palestinians from their lands to make way for Jewish-only housing developments, including inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
The JNF’s support for illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem also means its activities violate longstanding official U.S. policies against settlements, as well as international law.
“The IRS has an obligation to revoke the JNF’s status because of its involvement in displacing Palestinian Bedouins from the Negev Desert and elsewhere, and because of its support for illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” said Andrew Dalack, one of the co-chairs of the NLGIC’s Palestine Subcommittee. “How can the IRS certify with a straight face that the JNF is organized for a charitable purpose when it engages in conduct that violates international law and well-established U.S. foreign policy?”
The regulatory challenge is part of a larger international Stop the JNF Campaign that seeks to end the JNF’s role in Israel’s continuing displacement of Palestinians.
Efforts targeting the JNF are part of a growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.
The campaign is calling for people to take part in Days of Action from March 30-April 18 (Tax Day) to pressure the IRS to respond to the regulatory challenge and launch an investigation into the JNF.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
#FreePalestine -- Remember #PalestineLand Was Stolen By #Israel! Refugees Must Return!
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Palestine Land Day is an annual reminder of Palestinians’ daily struggles against colonisation #PalestineDay
via @AbbsWinston on Twitter
via @AbbsWinston on Twitter
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Thursday, March 24, 2016
"Israeli Rights Group Releases Video of Soldier Executing Wounded Palestinian Suspect" -- Robert Mackey in The Intercept
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FROM THE INTERCEPT:
FROM THE INTERCEPT:
An Israeli soldier was arrested on Thursday after a rights group published clear video images of him shooting a wounded, immobilized Palestinian suspect in the head following a knife attack in the West Bank city of Hebron earlier in the day.
The graphic, distressing video was posted online by B’Tselem, an Israeli group that provides cameras to Palestinians to help them document human rights abuses in the West Bank territory that has been under military rule since Israel first occupied it in 1967.
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, the video was recorded just after another soldier was stabbed and moderately wounded at a checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron’s Old City, and two Palestinian suspects were killed, including the one who was shot in the video.
According to Ma’an News Agency in Bethlehem, the dead men were identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, 21, and Abed al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif, 21.
In a statement accompanying the video, B’Tselem explains that the video recorded by ‘Emad abu-Shamsiyah, a Hebron resident, shows al-Sharif lying on the road injured, with none of the soldiers or medics present giving him first aid or paying him any attention at all.”
About 18 seconds into the clip, al-Sharif can be seen clearly moving his head as he lies sprawled on his back. 90 seconds later, an Israeli soldier cocks his rifle, steps forward and fires a single shot at the wounded man from point-blank range. Moments later, a clear trail of blood can be seen streaming from the man’s head across the pavement.
READ WHOLE ARTICLE, PLEASE, HERE:
"Here’s 5 Things You Need To Know About Attacks In Brussels" -- Frank Barat
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https://www.popularresistance.org/heres-5-things-you-need-to-know-about-attacks-in-brussels/
https://www.popularresistance.org/heres-5-things-you-need-to-know-about-attacks-in-brussels/
Today’s terrorist attack in Brussels is an unspeakable tragedy, and the victims should never be forgotten. However, seeking vengeance through a militarized response will only create more terrorists.
As a citizen of Belgium and activist in Brussels, there are 5 things everyone should bear in mind:
1. A massive amount of soldiers on the streets does not make you safe
The response of Belgium following the Charlie Hebdo and Paris attacks in France was to put thousands of soldiers in the streets. Despite this, and massive for intelligence services, two of the most obvious targets for terrorists, an airport and the metro, were hit in Brussels. It can only be called an utter failure on their parts, both in the strategy and the response they adopted to “defeat terror.”
This military presence is to reinforce the idea that the state is here to protect you and your well-being, which in fact is wrong on many levels. The military works to protect corporate interests first. As activist Ewa Jasiewicz puts it, “increased presence of police in public places to ‘counter terrorism’ is theatre.”
2. They do not hate us for our freedoms
The racist rhetoric of “they do not like life as much as we do” is utter nonsense and needs to be carefully deconstructed. When the killers embarked on a path to death when they woke up this morning, the sun was shining and the sky was blue for them too. The terrible crimes they committed made sense, to them, to their twisted vision of the world. I struggle to believe that anyone could kill another human being for fun, for the sake of it.
Their journey from disfranchised youth to murderous terrorists is one that we need to study, seriously, step-by-step, to move forward and hope for a better future for society in its whole.
3. Prison does not cure people — quite the opposite
While we do not know yet the profile of the Brussels terrorists, we know that the Paris attackers’ path from small-time delinquents to mass killers follows the same pattern. Their extreme and fast process of radicalization came through prisons, not mosques. They entered small crooks and came out radicalized and transformed. It is time for us to address what Angela Davis calls the prison-industrial complex. The proof is very obvious — prisons definitely do not “heal” people or help them re-integrate into a society that has already failed them.
4. To stop terrorism, you have to stop participating in it
If you look at what happened in France and Belgium, if you study all the footage and read all the media reports and analyses, you will find out that most of them focus on “security,” “militarization,” “hitting back,” and “war.” Only a few are concentrating on what the terrorists said or wrote. Why did they do it? What did they say while doing it? If you read these, which you won’t find easily by doing a Google search, you will realize that all the attackers are talking the same language.
The men who carried out these attacks were politically educated out of the destruction of Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan, the drone bombings in Pakistan and Yemen, the torture of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and the colonization and occupation of Palestine. To make it shorter, they, mostly identify as Muslims, and they were horrified by the ideological war of the West against what it wrongfully calls “the Muslim world.” This is the main motivator behind the men of ISIS becoming killers. “Your wars, our deaths” became a slogan after the Paris attacks. It might not be totally accurate, and we definitely cannot simplify things, but there is a lot of truth in it.
5. Governments know how to defeat ISIS, but prefer not to do anything about it
“We are going to go after them,” Obama said a couple of hours after the terrorist attacks. Really? When?
We know, for example, that the real people fighting ISIS at the moment are the Kurds in Kobane and other cities. We know that helping and supporting them, while cutting the route of ISIS’s oil to Turkey, would deal a huge blow to the so-called Islamic State. Are we doing it? Not at all.
Supporting Turkey, a crucial actor in this whole story with Machiavellian policies on the ground, is a major factor in the ongoing violence. We also know the role that Saudi Arabia, the most repressive state in the world, plays in the region, through its funding of Wahhabism — the most radical and dangerous interpretation of Islam possible. Rather than doing something against the spread of Wahhabism, the West is enabling it. France, for example, just gave Mohammed Ben Nayef — the future king of Saudi Arabia — its highest honor, the “legion d’honneur,” a few days ago.
These constant double standards and the lies of our governments need to be challenged. They create rancour and hate
Thursday, March 17, 2016
#Along the Pipeline - Serge Simon, Mohawk Chief and #EnergyEast
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https://youtu.be/bEpuxxLXqjU
"I couldn't live with myself thinking that I had something to do with the eventual frying of this planet... This planet is a living being."
for more info:
https://youtu.be/bEpuxxLXqjU
"I couldn't live with myself thinking that I had something to do with the eventual frying of this planet... This planet is a living being."
for more info:
Survival Under Threat, Canada’s Indigenous Unite Against Tar Sands Pipelines
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
"Blacks Have Always Had to Fight to Make Their Lives Matter in America" -- Bryan Bullock @blkagendareport
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ORIGINAL AT:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/fight_to_make_black_lives_matter
EXCERPT:
Globally, white former colonial powers get to colonize non-white people, bomb non-white people, destroy entire non-white countries and then the white citizens of those countries get to complain when those non-whites seek refuge in their white countries. Black devotees of “All lives matter” along with their white allies, don’t seem to notice that there was no “Jus Si Charlie” global moment for the killings of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Tamir Rice, Rakia Boyd or for any of the countless other African Descendant people mowed down by state violence. Parisians didn’t change their Facebook pages in mass numbers to the pictures of Sandra Bland or to a picture of Flint. World leaders didn’t rush to America to stand in solidarity with the protestors in Baltimore and Ferguson or to condemn blue violence against black people. However, the Ferguson protestors and black people do have allies in places like Palestine. Leaders in the Hands Up Coalition report receiving tweets from young people in Palestine as they faced tanks on American soil. The Palestinians tweeted and texted them on how to construct makeshift face masks out of handkerchiefs to protect themselves from tear gas. No such advice came from Parisians, British or from most white Americans for that matter. The Palestinians understand what’s it like to live under oppressive conditions, but, more importantly, they understand the problems in using euphemisms and nice sounding words like “Peace Process.” “All lives matter,” like “peace process,” takes the focus away from the real problem and the responsibility away from those with the power. In Palestine, the issue is occupation, not peace. There can be no peace under occupation. In America, the issue is, as it always has been, anti-black racism and white supremacy. There has never been a time in this nation’s history where black lives were on equal par with white lives. In fact, there can be no equality of “lives”, in a racist society.
ORIGINAL AT:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/fight_to_make_black_lives_matter
EXCERPT:
Globally, white former colonial powers get to colonize non-white people, bomb non-white people, destroy entire non-white countries and then the white citizens of those countries get to complain when those non-whites seek refuge in their white countries. Black devotees of “All lives matter” along with their white allies, don’t seem to notice that there was no “Jus Si Charlie” global moment for the killings of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Tamir Rice, Rakia Boyd or for any of the countless other African Descendant people mowed down by state violence. Parisians didn’t change their Facebook pages in mass numbers to the pictures of Sandra Bland or to a picture of Flint. World leaders didn’t rush to America to stand in solidarity with the protestors in Baltimore and Ferguson or to condemn blue violence against black people. However, the Ferguson protestors and black people do have allies in places like Palestine. Leaders in the Hands Up Coalition report receiving tweets from young people in Palestine as they faced tanks on American soil. The Palestinians tweeted and texted them on how to construct makeshift face masks out of handkerchiefs to protect themselves from tear gas. No such advice came from Parisians, British or from most white Americans for that matter. The Palestinians understand what’s it like to live under oppressive conditions, but, more importantly, they understand the problems in using euphemisms and nice sounding words like “Peace Process.” “All lives matter,” like “peace process,” takes the focus away from the real problem and the responsibility away from those with the power. In Palestine, the issue is occupation, not peace. There can be no peace under occupation. In America, the issue is, as it always has been, anti-black racism and white supremacy. There has never been a time in this nation’s history where black lives were on equal par with white lives. In fact, there can be no equality of “lives”, in a racist society.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Sunday, March 13, 2016
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