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JOIN ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK - SUPPORT BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS MOVEMENT - AUSTRALIA NOTABLE FOR ITS ABSENCE!

Want to support Palestinian freedom, justice and equality?
Join #IsraeliApartheidWeek 2016

Each year, Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) takes place in more than 150 universities and cities across the world. With creative education and action, IAW aims to raise awareness about Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people and build support for the nonviolent Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In response to the impressive growth of BDS in the last few years, Israel and its right-wing allies in the west have launched repressive, anti-democratic attacks on the movement and the right to boycott, instead of fulfilling their obligations to end Israel's violations of international law. This makes this year's #IsraeliApartheidWeek more crucial than ever.

Support Palestinian popular resistance to oppression--join IAW 2016.

Check out apartheidweek.org and #IsraeliApartheidWeek to find out what's happening in your area. More events in different cities are being added all the time, so do check back if there's nothing in your city listed yet.

Want to organise #IsraeliApartheidWeek events on your campus or in your city? Register your organisation here and you'll receive an info pack full of ideas about how to organise #IsraeliApartheidWeek.

Dates:
UK: February 22-28
Europe: February 29-March 7
Palestine: March 1-10
South Africa: March 7-13
Arab World: March 20-26
US: various, including March 27-April 3
Latin America: April 10-24
Canada: various throughout March, check with local organisers

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MELBOURNE - THE MOST LIVEABLE CITY - UNLESS YOU ARE A GERIATRIC!

When one reaches the venerable ages of 93 and 89 as we are, one hopes, here and there, that there will be "things" that make getting around the city and suburbs just that little bit easier and more comfortable.

Well, don't try catching public transport in certain parts of Melbourne because, apart from the disaster which is the "universal" transport card called Myki, you won't find shelters for when the weather is inclement, you won't find benches or seats to rest your weary - and ageing- bones, and many of the public transport vehicles are not designed for comfortable seating - assuming you are able to obtain a seat, although I must say these days some young people are very helpful and give up their seats for people like ourselves.

We try not to travel during peak periods, but very often it is unavoidable if there have been doctors' appointments or hospital visits scheduled for the wrong times for the elderly.

Certain parts of Melbourne's suburbs are more responsive to the needs of geriatrics than others, but they are the exception rather than the rule, and with council rates ever on the increase, we elderly are the mote in councils' eyes.

They hope we are "here today and gone tomorrow".

AFL KNOWS ABOUT BOYS, NOW LEARNING ABOUT GIRLS, NEVER HEARD ABOUT HOMOSEXUALS!

The AFL seems to have discovered that half - that is about 50% - of the population, consists of girls, and the other half - or about 50% consists of boys.

What the AFL is unable to discover is that people in both these groups happen to be gay, lesbian, transgender and all other variations in between.

What the AFL is incapable of discovering is that they are also known as human beings and what the AFL is showing is human rights abuses in an ongoing process.

What it has not yet been able to show is that its homophobia shows no signs of abating and it seems it has no will to open its doors to "the other".

We are now living - and loving - in the 21st century where some of the world has become fairly civilised - and I use the word fairly advisedly, because even amongst these communities pockets of hate continue to plague us endlessly.

It is ridiculous that the AFL - and all other sporting codes in Australia - are still riddled with homophobia.

Do they think that homosexuals are going to attack their playmates in the middle of matches in order to have sex with them?

What are their problems and when are they going to wake up?

Why Cameron won’t stop boycott of Israel

Michael Deas Activism and BDS Beat 29 January 2016 from electronic intifada

David Cameron and his colleagues have defended war crimes ordered by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Number 10/Flickr)

Palestine solidarity activists are mobilizing against the UK government’s efforts to stop local councils divesting from weapons producers and firms that assist Israel’s crimes.

A “public consultation exercise” has been called to solicit views on efforts by the ruling Conservatives to override decisions by city and regional authorities if they clash with British foreign or security policies.

Activists who regard the efforts as an attack on local democracy have set up an online forum, through which UK residents, can take part in the consultation exercise. The consultation — called by the central government — will close on 19 February.

The Conservatives have made it clear that the proposals are in response to measures introduced by various councils against firms doing business with Israel.

When announcing them in October, the Conservative government issued a statement complaining that “hard-left foreign and defense policies” were “on the rise.” Among the examples it cited was a 2014 decision by Leicester City Council to boycott goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The proposals indicate that Israel’s supporters are perturbed about the growth of the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. They follow a successful mobilization targeting Veolia, a major corporation that has been involved in building a light rail network for Israel’s settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. Veolia has been excluded from municipal contracts collectively worth billions of dollars because of decisions taken by councils in the UK and further afield. Because of that pressure, Veolia was forced to sell its investments in Israel.

Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, has said he wants to stop authorities where the rival Labour Party has a majority from influencing the UK’s international relations. At an event held last year by Conservative Friends of Israel, a lobby group within his party, Hammond said: “Under a Conservative government, our foreign policy will be made in the Foreign Office and not in hundreds of Labour-controlled town halls.”

War on Want, part of the BDS movement, has formed an alliance of organizations that oppose the Conservative’s plans. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is part of that alliance, too.

Shielding arms dealers

The ad hoc alliance also includes activists on climate change, who are concerned about the initiative’s potential implications. Environmentalists across the world have been calling on public authorities to divest from the oil industry and other major polluters.

The Conservatives have stated, too, that they wish to halt measures against weapons-producers. The Conservatives have specifically referred to a campaign aimed at ensuring that local authority pension schemes divest from BAE Systems.

As well as selling to and investing in Israel, BAE has provided many of the weapons that Saudi Arabia has used in recent attacks on Yemen.

Many local authorities in the UK have voted to divest from fossil fuel companies or to exclude the arms industry from their pension schemes.

This is not the first time that Prime Minister David Cameron and his colleagues have tried to denigrate the Palestine solidarity movement.

Free expression

Prevent, the government’s flagship “anti-terror” policy, has previously been used in such a way. It obliges teachers to report children who they regard as susceptible to radicalization.

Under Prevent, a 15-year-old boy was reportedly accused by the police of holding “terrorist-like” beliefs after he had worn a “Free Palestine” badge.

The Conservatives’ efforts are part of a bigger international push to counter the BDS movement. France has effectively criminalized protest actions that urge a boycott of Israel. And the US is seeking to have provisions that would outlaw a boycott of Israel inserted in a planned trade agreement with the European Union.

Cameron and Hammond have been staunch defenders of Israeli aggression, particularly its 2014 attack on Gaza. Privately, Foreign Office staff have said that maintaining strong ties with Israel is now a key priority for the UK.

More than likely, the Conservatives’ efforts will backfire on them. By trying to ban the boycott of Israel, they are turning the surrounding issue into one about freedom of expression. And by assaulting local democracy, they have angered elected representatives across the country.

The Conservatives will not succeed in weakening the BDS movement. If anything, they will make it stronger.

• Michael Deas's blog

THE CLINTONS EARNED OVER US$3.5 MILLION IN PAID ADDRESSES TO PRO-ISRAEL ORGANISATIONS

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Grayzone Project

The Clintons Earned Over $3.5 Million in Paid Addresses to Pro-Israel Organizations

Bill Clinton said he “would grab a rifle” and fight for Israel during paid speech.

By Sarah Lazare, Max Blumenthal / AlterNet

February 11, 2016

Bill and Hillary Clinton are under increasing scrutiny from the mainstream press over paid speeches they have given to big banks in exchange for millions of dollars. According to CNN, the couple has earned a total of $153 million in lecture fees from companies and organizations affiliated with the financial industry.

But the media has been conspicuously silent about the large sums the Clintons have raked in from paid addresses to pro-Israel organizations, including the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which directly participates in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouin citizens of Israel. An evaluation of Hillary Clinton’s public disclosures from 2001 to 2015 shows that she and Bill, and their daughter, Chelsea, have earned roughly $4 million in speaking fees from pro-Israel organizations, including JNF and organizations allied with the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The vast majority of these documented payments—$3,599,999—have gone toward the Clintons’ personal income, and up to $450,000 has been funneled into the Clinton Foundation.

Ramah Kudaimi, membership outreach coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, told AlterNet, "It is the right of voters to know what every single candidate earns in speaking fees, whether from banks or pro-Israel groups that engage in oppressive policies against Palestinians. It is the voters’ right to know if we have candidates running to be president who plan to continue horrific U.S. policies that make us all complicit in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights.”

The Wages of Blaming Palestinians

Bill Clinton’s presidency ended with the collapse of the U.S.-led peace process at Camp David in 2000. After leaving office, Clinton publicly blamed Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat for the failure of negotiations, explicitly violating a promise he made to Arafat at the start of the Camp David process. The former president thus reinforced then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s infamous talking point that there was “no Palestinian partner” for peace.

Bill Clinton declared in the summer of 2002, at the Toronto chapter of the pro-Israel group Hadassah-WIZO, “If Iraq came across the Jordan River, I would grab a rifle and get in the trench and fight and die,” reportedly earning wild applause from attendees of the $1000-a-plate dinner. According to a New York Post reporter in attendance, Clinton again blamed Palestinians for his failure at Camp David, “accusing Arafat of making a ‘disastrous mistake’ by turning down past peace proposals that would have given the Palestinian leader control of 97 percent of the West Bank.” Clinton earned $125,000 for the speech.

Payments From Obama’s Opponents

Bill Clinton received $425,000 for two speeches to Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a right-wing group that generally supports the Likud-run government of Benjamin Netanyahu and is hostile to Democrats. Simon Wiesenthal Center president Marvin Hier, who addressed the 2000 Republican National Convention, has compared President Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain and described the Iran nuclear deal as “another Munich.” In 2011, three years before Bill Clinton’s second paid speech before the organization, Hier accused then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of “a sell out” to anti-Semitism for opening diplomatic discussions with Egypt’s democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood.

While unmentioned in public disclosures, the Clinton Foundation website notes that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main arm of America’s pro-Israel lobby, contributed between $10,001 and $25,000 to the organization for at least one speech delivered by Bill Clinton, with the exact date or amount paid unspecified. S. Daniel Abraham, the Slim Fast diet mogul who serves on the board of AIPAC, has given as much as $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. Through a series of front groups, ad campaigns and Israel propaganda tours for freshman members of Congress, AIPAC spent upward of $40 million last year in a failed attempt to derail the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal.

Among the Clintons’ pro-Israel speaking fees, only one was received from an organization that could be classified as part of Israel’s peace camp. The Abraham Fund, which says its aim is to “promote coexistence and equality among Israel’s Jewish and Arab-Palestinian citizens,” paid Bill Clinton $125,000 for a single speech in 2002.

Chelsea Clinton raked in as much as $325,000 in speaking fees from the United Jewish Appeal and its affiliate, the Jewish Federations, a pro-Israel umbrella group of Jewish American establishment organizations that actively combats the Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, bivestment and sanctions) movement. She remits 100 percent of her speaking fees to the Clinton Foundation, where she is a board member and helps decide how the foundation spends its $180 million annual budget.

Bill Clinton took in six-figure lecture fees from pro-Israel synagogues around the country. Our calculations include only Jewish instutions whose pro-Israel programming could be identified; we excluded hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees paid to the Clintons by Jewish instutions whose online materials do not explicitly promote Israel.

In addition, Bill Clinton received $250,000 for a speech to Univision Management Company, the media corporation co-owned by pro-Israel billionaire Haim Saban. As AlterNet’s Grayzone Project recently reported, Saban and his wife Cheryl contributed $5 million to the pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC, Priorities USA Action, this February. Saban has also contributed between $5 and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,” Saban said in 2004.

Whopping Fees From Ethnic Cleansers

Public records show that Bill Clinton earned a total of $549,999 in four speeches to the JNF. The disclosures do not mention the JNF’s most generous fee. JNF provoked an outcry within pro-Israel circles when it transferred half a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation through the Peres Academic Center to pay for a single speech by Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton later said he donated his large fee back to the Peres Academic Center, but there are lingering questions about where all the money went, including funds from the JNF.

Formed in 1901, JNF has spent over a century driving Palestinians off their land, including through the creation of the paramilitary force euphemistically named the Green Patrol. Former JNF director Yosef Weitz outlined detailed plans for the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, demanding that their villages be destroyed and they “be harassed continually” to prevent them from returning.

In recent years, JNF has teamed up with the Israeli military, police and Christian Zionist donors to violently expel the residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel’s Negev Desert. Among them is Al Arakib, which as of October 2015, has been razed to the ground a staggering 90 times.

Video below by Max Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, shows the destruction of Al Arakib by Israeli bulldozers in 2010 — the third time it was demolished — in order to make way for a JNF-funded “forest” and Jews-only town. The JNF is widely opposed in Palestinian civil society and controversial even within Israel, where it owns roughly 13 percent of state land and vows to lease it to exclusively Jewish tenants.

Israel's Destruction of the Bedouin Village Al-Arakib

Will Hillary Honor Her Commitments?

Hillary Clinton has made her unflinching support for Israel a centerpiece of her foreign policy agenda. In November 2015, she promised to “reaffirm” the “unbreakable bond with Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu,” suggesting she would adopt a friendlier posture to Israel’s right-wing leader than Obama had.

In a July 2015 letter to mega-donor Haim Saban, which her campaign distributed to the press, Clinton declared “we need to make countering BDS a priority.” It was the first time in American history that a presidential candidate mentioned by name the grassroots movement to boycott Israel.

As the challenge to her primary candidacy from Senator Bernie Sanders grows, Hillary Clinton is tacking left. During her concession speech in New Hampshire, Clinton insisted to local supporters, “I believe so strongly that we have to keep up with every fiber of our being the argument for, the campaign for human rights.”

Whether a Clinton presidency would alter the U.S.-Israeli special relationship remains to be seen. But as long as she honors the wishes of her family’s top contributors, as she has pledged to do, her argument for human rights must exclude Palestinians.

The following list shows Bill and Hillary Clinton's personal income from speaking fees to pro-Israel groups between 2001 and 2015, based on public disclosures.

Click to enlarge.

The following list shows the Clintons' speaking events to pro-Israel groups, which were compensated by payments to the Clinton Foundation. The Foundation's website does not provide information about the exact date of the engagements or the amount given.

Click to enlarge.

Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, Sarah co-edited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

CLOSE CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Over the last few years I have started petitions concerned with closing the concentration camps and freeing asylum seekers into the community.

The petitions were met with a stony silence generally, the first one obtaining less than 90 signatures. The second one reached about 40.

All of a sudden, because there has been talk of the numbers of children in the camps, their treatment in the camps and torture and disease growing alarmingly, the population is gradually stirring and more people are becoming concerned about the situation.

I don't know what would happen if one tried to start another petition but I am not game to try, being too worn out by the disgusting politics of the whole situation.

Who caused the situation in so many countries around the world that as of today, there are millions all over who are trying to escape the disasters unfolding in their countries of origin?

Why, none other than the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and other countries too numerous to list ---------- and as they say, ......."and the band played on".

THE NUMBER PLATE SAYS "VICTORIA THE EDUCATION STATE"

Various people have been blamed for the parlous state of education in the state of Victoria.

Who are actually to blame are a few generations of politicians.

Education in Australia has generally been somewhat on the slides for many years, so what is going on?

Part of the blame lies with the system of government and control - an uneducated population don't know enough to challenge the system, so by keeping state schools underfunded and keeping private schools overfunded, we breed those with a belief that they are born to rule. They themselves are taught to believe that they know best, not just in education, but in everything else.

The outcome of course is teams of politicians who are 'born to rule".

What happens then is that those education institutions which are deemed unnecessary such as TAFE colleges and schools which cater for those who do not want to be professional people like doctors or lawyers or architects or dentists - or even teachers - are underfunded and forced to close, leaving hundreds if not thousands of those who want different types of education with no available institutions and unemployed or underemployed teachers.

Then these same governments want to make more money out of property and other money-raising ventures and decide to ensure that more of the population are able to live closer to the cities by subdividing properties and making greater demand of schools which have been closed and the properties they were on very often sold - to further developers.

In the Melbourne suburb of Preston a primary school was closed about 8 years ago and now with development of medium density housing all over the suburb with attendant huge population increases, a girls high school was closed a few years ago and stands empty at the moment, with population increases all the time with all the new developments.

One doesn't have to be a genius to see that this is an exercise in futility and all governments are to blame for creating this situation.

VICTORIA THE EDUCATION STATE it is not and never will be!

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CONCENTRATION CAMP AND A DEATH CAMP?

Basically one could start with the premise that a death camp is designed to lock people up and systematically kill them, as the Nazis did in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other places. A concentration camp is where you lock people up indefinitely. They will either be let out one day or they won't.

Take Gaza and the West Bank as modern (?) examples. In order to get rid of the Palestinians - not by sending them to gas chambers but by keeping them in prison conditions and killing them off by provocation in small numbers at a time with the aim of total demoralisation so that they beg to leave of their own accord - presumably the theory is that eventually there will be less and less Palestinians and the Israelis can occupy Gaza and the West Bank totally and incorporate them in Israel and Palestine will be history.

Unfortunately for the Israelis the Palestinian population is increasing more rapidly than the killings so plan A is not working very well.

Also bit by bit the outside world is starting to wake up to the criminalities of the state of Israel, and at last there are more and more protests around the world.

Take Manus and Nauru. Lock up asylum seekers and throw away the keys and leave people with no hope whatever of any future. This will deter asylum seekers, people smugglers and human rights defenders who see these concentration camps for what they are - hell holes.

Concentration camps were an invention of the British in South Africa during the South African War of 1899-1902. The British made themselves hated by the Afrikaners who were incarcerated and who died of ghastly diseases and other issues of helpless incarceration.

Think of other parts of Africa and Middle East areas around the world and consider how you feel about concentration/death camps.

The pinkwashing of Melbourne ‘Pride’

By: Bobuck Sayed

Feb 5, 2016

archermagazine.com.au

The protest at this year’s annual ‘Pride’ march in Melbourne, and the violent reaction it subsequently received, draws critical attention to the ethical compromises the queer community has made to gain the power, funding and visibility we now have.

A group of queer and transgender activists disrupted the march in front of the NAB faction with a peaceful sit-in to demonstrate that ‘Pride’ is not simply a celebration, a statement from the group outlines, but a protest fighting for liberation for everyone harmed by heteronormativity, cisnormativity, misogyny, ableism, racism and other forms of oppression.

Video footage shows people from the crowd verbally vilifying the protestors for disrupting the parade and then assaulting them with fists, shoves and discoloured water from hoses and buckets. Each succeeding attack on the masked protestors, who were both able-bodied and disabled, is followed by roaring affirmation from the mob. It is horrifying to watch members of the march aggressively confront the protestors, attempt to steal their flags, litter them with insults, and then have the audacity to demand them to “show your fucking face, you cowards!”

Our queer forbearers fought for our freedom to be out and proud. But what is the Pride movement costing us if the voices and actions of those demonstrating among us are violently silenced and policed?

The protestors’ concerns were with Midsumma Festival’s continued affiliation with ethically compromised corporations who co-opt LGBT causes to valorise their own public image. This phenomenon is called pinkwashing, and there is growing backlash around the world against organisations and governments who intentionally associate themselves with queerness as a marketing campaign, without rectifying the damage they cause to other marginalised communities.

NAB is a major partner of Midsumma Festival, and AGL is a gold-supporting partner, whatever that means. These companies are notorious for investing in fossil fuels and, as such, the socio-environmental devastation that climate change is responsible for. Furthermore, NAB invests in Transfield, which manages the ‘security services’ at offshore refugee processing centres in Nauru and PNG. As the statement from the protesters describes, some of those processed offshore by Transfield are queer and gender diverse. Another sponsor of the festival, Jetstar, is similarly complicit in the forceful deportation of asylum seekers.

The value of a protest against the contentious affiliations of Midsumma, one of the largest queer festivals in Australia, and its ties to fossil fuels and offshore detention centres cannot be ignored. Especially because many of the participants at ‘Pride’ had little knowledge of these affiliations before the protest.

The fact that this political gesture had to be staged in the middle of the march, and received such ardent antagonism from onlookers, testifies to how few opportunities there are for criticism of the queer community to be voiced from within the queer community. Ignoring these examples of our diversity renders us vulnerable to the same dogmatic homogeneity that has historically erased our own histories and visibility.

Many of the onlookers allegedly interpreted the peaceful sit-in as a homophobic gesture, despite the protestors holding a trans flag and proclaiming a banner that read: “Queers Revolt!” If these markers of queerness, alongside the protestors’ chants of ‘no pride in pinkwashing’ and ‘no pride in deportation’, fell on deaf ears, then we need to seriously consider why. The violence they endured must only have exacerbated the existing alienation many trans and queer people feel from a gay culture that has effectively been commodified and deradicalised. There is no humour in police having to defend queer protesters from the trigger happy, violently defensive onlookers at a ‘Pride’ march.

The queer and trans protestors managed to disrupt the march for approximately 17 minutes.

While the concept of pinkwashing may remain largely reserved to academic branches of the queer community, it is our collective responsibility to spread awareness of our own ethically fraught links to corporate funding and the vocabulary used to describe it. Would anyone bat an eyelid if your drag queens this evening were brought to you by Adani Mining?

It’s not about boycotting Midsumma. The festival itself does good work. It’s about listening to those from within our community when they are brave enough to stop us in our tracks and tell us something’s wrong. These protesters are not homophobic and they did not miss the deadline for joining the day’s events – they abstained from the march due to its contentious funding and sponsorship links. Herein lies the irony in Midsumma’s chairperson John Caldwell innocently saying, after the march, that the protestors would have been welcome to join in.

In Sydney, campaigns to rebrand Telstra’s public phone booths and ANZ’s ATMs, nicknamed GAYTMS, with rainbows during Mardi Gras are further examples of Australian pinkwashing. These companies make a public spectacle of supporting the queer community, but the logic behind these efforts is simple. In fact, in a quote cited in the SMH, Melissa Tandy, chair of ANZ’s global Pride network, explicitly acknowledges that corporate support for queerness is tied into increasing productivity by freeing the time and energy that workers might otherwise be using to hide their identities in the workplace. Queer activist Nic Holas rightly challenges the authenticity of this corporate sentiment in the same article, asking, “What are the corporate policies on transgender bathroom access, for example?”

Be not fooled: these rainbow campaigns are not an altruistic and ethical investment into our struggle. Co-opting the symbols and histories of queer people, loaded as they will forever be with the blood of queer martyrs, is deeply disrespectful and exploitative no matter the ethical orientation of whoever appropriates them. But pinkwashing by corporate giants, responsible as they have historically been for the erasure of queer visibility, rubs salt into the wound. Lest we forget that none of these companies support the marginalised unless they come with a profit margin.

With the eve of marriage equality in Australia nigh upon us, liberation in one form beckons. All the same, it is vital that we encourage the diversity of queer struggles and the value of criticism from within our community, in order to continue our liberation from the multi-layered and often obliviously intra-LGBT oppression that many of us receive.

When I attend queer events, I want to believe that, somewhere in the twinky mass, there is awareness of the struggles for liberation beyond the governmental and religious institution of marriage. I want to believe that the dearth of ethnic diversity is acknowledged and questioned by others besides me. I want to believe that cis-gender white gay men are also fighting against the disproportionate cultural representation they receive from queer media. But when I see efforts to demonstrate the diversity of the queer community in all its radical beauty squashed by other queers, I’m inclined to believe that none of us can stare into the mirror and see beyond ourselves.

Bobuck Sayed is a queer Afghan-Australian writer, editor and performer currently knee-deep in the murky waters of a literature thesis on ecocritical postcolonialism. 

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THE AGE JOINS THE LOCAL ANTI-SEMITES - CARTOONISTS OF THE WORLD REJOICE!

I know anti-semitism when I see it.

I am 89 years old and Jewish, have lived and worked in South Africa, the UK and Australia, and been confronted by anti-semitism in all 3 countries.

I do not know about the background story of the cartoon in The Age newspaper on Wednesday 3 February 2016, copy at end of this paragraph, but it smacks of the sort of stereotype of Jews from the 19th and 20th century and on into the 21st century.

This should have been edited out by the newspaper editor.

Anti-semitism is alive and well and living in a city near you.

MBEKI'S REPUTATION IS NOT IN TATTERS BECAUSE HE WAS ALOOF

Op-Ed: Mbeki's reputation is not in tatters because he was aloof

• Nathan Geffen
• from Daily Maverick
• South Africa
• 01 Feb 2016 10:59 (South Africa)

It is because his policies caused hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths. By Nathan Geffen for GROUNDUP.

First published by GroundUp.

Four articles so far. More than 7,000 words. Yet in Thabo Mbeki's attempt to salvage his legacy, not once has our former president mentioned HIV. (Read articles one, two, three and four.)

In Monday's missive, which is even less penetrable than usual, Mbeki appears to defend himself from the charge of being aloof. He is upset that this accusation contributed to his defeat by Jacob Zuma at Polokowane in 2007.

But leaders are not looked upon unkindly by history solely for a subjective personality trait such as aloofness. Mbeki's reputation doesn't rise or fall on whether he was aloof, too intellectual or even authoritarian in his personal relationships. It is deservedly and unalterably shattered for a much clearer reason: he pursued policies that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people dying, most of whom might otherwise have still been alive today.

On 10 December 1998, a handful of people held a protest on the steps of St George's Cathedral. They had two main demands for government: (1) Make a plan to introduce an antiretroviral called AZT for pregnant women with HIV. (2) Develop “a comprehensive and affordable treatment plan for all people living with HIV/AIDS.”

That was the modest launch of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). It took nearly four more years, two court orders and many large demonstrations before the state began reluctantly rolling out a countrywide mother-to-child transmission programme in 2002. It would take until March 2004 before antiretroviral treatment became available as a matter of policy in the public health system. And then only after more protests, the intervention of Nelson Mandela, a civil disobedience campaign and legal threats. By contrast, Botswana began its treatment programme in January 2002.

Even after the antiretroviral treatment rollout began, Mbeki's Minister of Health undermined it. She and the Medical Research Council under Anthony Mbewu gave and received support, both material and moral, to and from the charlatan Matthias Rath.
Rath ran double page newspaper advertisements across the country dissuading people from taking antiretrovirals. Instead, he encouraged them to take his vitamin products. He ran an unauthorised clinical trial, an extremely serious crime for which he can be tried if he ever returns to South Africa, under the nose of the Minister. His colleagues presented “results” of this trial at a meeting with the minister and the provincial MECs for Health (p. 56). She defended him publicly.

Meanwhile people died on Rath's clinical trial. They too might be alive today had they sought treatment in the public health system. It took two court cases by the TAC to run this murderous quack out of the country.

There was much else: co-option by the Department of Health of The National Association of People Living with HIV and AIDS (NAPWA), a major organisation representing people with HIV, support of several other charlatans – at least one of whom was even given an opportunity to present to a parliamentary committee (p. 87) to the applauds of the ANC members present. And let's not forget Virodene and Mbeki's purge of the Medicines Control Council because its chair dared to call him out (ch. 8).

Nearly two decades later that once internationally renowned institution has still not recovered.

Mbeki disputed there were many AIDS deaths. He was supported by Rian Malan. This likely earned Malan a favourable mention in Mbeki's 2004 State of the Nation Address.
Two studies, conducted independently of each other, have estimated that the delayed treatment rollout caused well over 300,000 avoidable deaths. These estimates are conservative. Without the robust response by civil society to Mbeki that ultimately resulted in the change in government policy, many more would have died.

You could argue that Mbeki made a mistake, that he got it unintentionally wrong, that there was no malice in his AIDS denialism. But Mbeki chose to ignore the country's scientists and doctors. These included Malegapuru Makgoba, who headed the Medical Research Council (before being replaced by Mbewu), Kgosi Letlape who headed the South African Medical Association, respected researchers Quarraisha and Salim Abdool Karim and many others.

Mbeki also ignored ordinary people with HIV like Christopher Moraka. In 2000 Moraka, dying of AIDS-related illnesses, appeared before Parliament and pleaded for pharmaceutical companies to drop the prices of AIDS medicines. He died long before the companies or anyone in cabinet listened. Mbeki, his Miniser of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and his Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, barely lifted a finger to help bring down drug prices. That was left to TAC and other civil society organisations.

Instead Mbeki hosted his absurd AIDS advisory panel, half of whose members were AIDS denialists. He was photographed – smiling, not aloof – with an outspoken, now dead of AIDS, denialist. He questioned whether a virus can cause a syndrome, and continuously cast aspersions on proven antiretroviral treatments.

Whether or not Mbeki was aloof is irrelevant. What matters is that he caused enormous suffering and death. He should consider himself fortunate to have escaped prosecution. Instead of indulging in impenetrable revisionism, he should maybe consider penance by living the rest of his life quietly, pursuing good deeds. Perhaps he, as well as his chief apologist Frank Chikane, could start by washing the feet of the surviving members of Christopher Moraka's family. DM

Geffen is GroundUp's editor. Views expressed are not necessarily shared by GroundUp's staff.
Photo: Funeral of AIDS treatment activist Christopher Moraka on 8 May 2000. Source: Treatment Action Campaign.

• Nathan Geffen
• South Africa