26 February 2018

HOMOPHOBIA WRIT LARGE!


NEVER DROP YOUR ACTIVISM OR YOUR VIGILANCE OR WE WILL BE LOST FOREVER.



This item comes from Chris Graham in New Matilda on 25 FEBRUARY 2018, and shows that despite the marriage equality vote last year, homophobia is alive and well and living in all parts of Australia near you.


Here's the full text of a column McCormack wrote in 1993, for a local newspaper. This guy is about to be the second most powerful leader in the country.

Dear readers,

A week never goes by anymore that homosexuals and their sordid behaviour don’t become further entrenched in society.

Unfortunately gays are here and, if the disease their unnatural acts helped spread doesn’t wipe out humanity, they’re here to stay.

On Monday hundreds of thousands of homosexuals marched through Washington in a demonstration intended to show their demands for equal rights and an end to discrimination should no longer be ignored or denied.

How can these people call for rights when they’re responsible for the greatest medical dilemma known to man — Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome?

AIDS shows no discrimination.

It claims thousands upon thousands of innocent people’s lives every year.

On the very night of the homosexuals’ march that pompous critic Stuart Littlemore on Media Watch on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had the gall to criticise various newspaper editors across Australia for “gay bashing”.

He ridiculed them for showing some moral backbone and condemning homosexuality.

It’s just as well some newspapers are speaking up and acting as watchdogs on moral issues. If it was left up to the likes of Littlemore, heaven knows some of the all-embracing attitudes society would be told it was OK to accept.

24 February 2018

MORE THAN A FIGHT OVER COUSCOUS: WHY THE PALESTINIAN NARRATIVE MUST BE EMBRACED


More Than a Fight over Couscous: Why the Palestinian Narrative Must Be Embraced


As soon as Virgin Atlantic Airlines introduced a couscous-style salad “inspired by the flavours of Palestine”, a controversy ensued. Israel’s supporters ignited a social media storm and sent many complaints to the company, obliging the airline to remove the reference to Palestine.

In the Zionist narrative, Palestine does not exist – nor is it allowed to exist – even if merely as a cultural conception.

The sad irony is that, while Israel appropriated Palestinian-Arabic couscous (the Palestinian dish, in particular, is known as ‘maftoul’), branding and marketing it in western countries as ‘Israeli couscous’, its supporters go to every extent possible to erase any reference that may validate Palestinian Arab culture, whether Muslim or Christian.

This is an old habit, an endemic practice that dates back to the destruction of nearly 600 Palestinian villages and localities in 1947-48. Palestinians refer to these earth-shattering events as the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe. Tellingly, Israel outlaws the use of the term or the commemoration of the tragic event in any way.

From claiming Palestinian Arab culinary culture as their own, to ‘Judaized’ Arabic street names to rewriting history, Israel and its supporters are relentless.

Israel fears a Palestinian narrative because the Israeli government understands, and rightly so, that it is the collective Palestinian narrative that has compelled resistance, in all of its forms for over 70 years.

All attempts have failed, until recently.

The 1993 Oslo Accord is a critical juncture that shattered the cohesiveness of Palestinian discourse and weakened and divided the Palestinian people. However, it is not too late to remedy this through decisive and concentrated efforts that overcome the challenge of a Palestinian political viewpoint beholden to self-seeking political aspirations and competing factions.

In the absence of a Palestinian leadership populated by the Palestinian people themselves, intellectuals must safeguard and present the Palestinian story to the world with authenticity and balance. The clarity and integrity of the Palestinian story has been damaged and divided by Palestinian Authority (PA) tactics which remove Palestinian refugees’ right of return from their political platform.

Essentially, the story of Palestine is the story of the Palestinian people, for they are the victims of oppression and the main channel of Resistance, starting with the creation of Israel on the ruins of Palestinian villages. If Palestinians had not resisted, their story would have concluded right there and then and they, too, would have disappeared.

Those who admonish Palestinian Resistance, armed or otherwise, have little understanding of the psychological ramifications of resistance, such as a sense of collective empowerment and hope amongst the people. In his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”, Jean-Paul Sartre describes violent resistance as a process through which “a man is re-creating himself”.

And for seven decades, Palestinians have embarked on this journey of the recreation of the “self”. They have resisted, and their resistance in all forms has moulded a sense of collective unity, despite the numerous divisions that have been erected amongst them.

Relentless resistance, a notion now embodied in the very fabric of Palestinian society, denied the oppressor the opportunity to emasculate Palestinians, or to reduce them to helpless victims and hapless refugees. The collective memory of the Palestinian people must focus on what it means to be Palestinian, defining the Palestinian people, what they stand for as a nation, and why they have resisted for years.

A new articulation of the Palestinian narrative is necessary, now more than ever before. The elitist interpretation of Palestine has failed, and is as worthless as the Oslo Accords. It is no more than a tired exercise in empty clichés, aimed at sustaining American political dominance in Palestine as well as in the rest of the Middle East.

The peace process is dead, but the Palestinian people are still resisting; unsurprisingly, the people are mightier than a group of self-centred individuals. Grassroots resistance is not constrained by the frivolous politicking of PA leader, Mahmoud Abbas, or any other actors.

Abbas and his men have not only muzzled the political will of the Palestinian people and falsely claimed to represent all Palestinians, they have also robbed Palestinians of their narrative, one that actually unites the ‘fellahin’ (peasants) and the refugees, the occupied and the ‘shattat’ (diaspora), into one distinct nation.

It is only when the Palestinian intellectual is able to repossess that collective narrative that the confines placed on the Palestinian voice can be finally broken. Only then can Palestinians truly confront the Israeli Hasbara and US-Western corporate media propaganda and, at long last, speak unhindered.

But there are obstacles, leading amongst them is the ruthless attempt by Zionist historians and institutions to replace the Palestinian historical narrative with their own. The story of the Palestinian cuisine on an airline menu may appear trivial in the greater scheme of things but it is significant, nonetheless.

In the Zionist Israeli narrative, Palestinians, if relevant at all, are depicted as drifting nomads, without a culture or tradition of their own, an inconvenience that hinders the path of progress – a duplicate narrative to the one that defined the relationship between every western colonial power and the resisting natives, always.

From the Zionist point of view, Palestinian existence is an inconvenience that was meant to be only temporary. “We must expel Arabs and take their places,” wrote Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion.

Assigning the Palestinian people the role of dislocated, disinherited and nomadic people without caring about the ethical and political implications of such false representations has erroneously presented Palestinians as a docile and submissive collective, to be wiped out by those more powerful.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and Palestinian resistance is the unremitting example of the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people. Palestinian culture is rooted, like the olive trees and mountains of Galilee.

Yes, the fight has been an arduous one. Between the rock of Israeli occupation and Hasbara and the hard place of Palestinian leadership acquiescence and failure, Palestine, Palestinians and their story have been trapped and misconstrued.

It is time for us to step up. We, as Palestinian writers, historians and journalists, assume the responsibility of reinterpreting Palestinian history and internalizing and communicating Palestinian voices, so that the rest of the world can, for once, appreciate the story as told by wounded, but tenacious, victors.

More articles by:
Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: ramzybaroud.net

18 February 2018

THE MARIKANA WOMEN'S FIGHT FOR JUSTICE, FIVE YEARS ON



The Marikana women’s fight for justice, five years on

Marienna Pope-Weidemann meets Sikhala Sonke, a grassroots social justice group led by the women of Marikana

October 13, 2017


 Marienna Pope-Weidemann is War on Want's press officer. @MariennaPW






The women of Sikhala Sonke. Photo: Sikhala Sonke
The fatal police shooting of 37 striking workers at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine in August 2012 was the worst recorded instance of police violence in post-apartheid South Africa. Five years on, there have been no prosecutions and no real improvements – no compensation for the families living in grief and dire poverty.

There has also been no apology, although staggeringly Lonmin has created a commercial out of the incident. But as always with the Marikana story, the most important characters were left out.

A few weeks after the massacre there was another death in the community. Amidst a brutal crackdown Paulina Masuhlo, a powerful community leader, died after being shot by police. Paulina’s death helped galvanise the birth of Sikhala Sonke, a grassroots social justice group led by the women of Marikana.

As well as demanding criminal prosecution for the killings and compensation for the families, Sikhala Sonke also carries forward the demands those workers died for: a living wage and dignified conditions.

We cry together

It’s anyone’s guess how Lonmin accumulated its impressive collection of corporate social responsibility awards. More than ten years after signing a legal obligation to build 5,500 homes in exchange for mining rights, the world’s third-largest platinum producer has erected just three show homes, while the families of its workers live in shacks without electricity or running water. This despite a staggering $15million loan from the International Finance Corporation solely for the social development of Marikana.

Like many killings in black communities, wherever they occur, the horror is not easily absorbed by white society. It will be a stretch for many in the UK to imagine that a British mining company would rather let employees be shot and killed than pay a fair wage. But is it any more unimaginable than cutting corners to cut costs on the Grenfell tower blocks? Or fighting wars for oil even as our dependence on them threatens millions of lives with climate chaos? It becomes clearer every day that we live in a system fuelled by the unimaginable.

Marikana might be far away, in a country very different from our own, but the struggle at the heart of Sikhala Sonke is one we should be able to identify with: the struggle of those hurt most by a powerful corporation to hold it accountable for its crimes. In Britain too, we are searching for ways to take back control of our lives and country from elite interests that see us as expendable.

The documentary Strike A Rock tells the Marikana women’s story

In August I met and talked with two of Sikhala Sonke’s leading figures, Primrose Sonti and Thumeka Magwangqana. They explained that for five years, the women of Sikhala Sonke have had to ‘fight with two hands’. With one, they fight Lonmin on behalf of their community. With the other, they have had to fight for their place within that community, to be recognised as social justice leaders by a male-dominated union movement.

Sikhala Sonke means ‘we cry together’ and the name speaks to a pain older and deeper than the massacre itself. Far from transcending the yawning inequalities of the apartheid era, South Africa has now become the most unequal country in the world. Though less than 10 percent of the population, white South Africans still control the vast majority of the nation’s wealth.

As well as being highly racialised, this inequality is also highly gendered. A third of women in poor households are survivors of gendered violence and young women are eight times more likely to be affected by HIV/AIDS. They are far more likely to be in low-paid and unpaid work, while in Marikana, the only compensation offered to grieving women is to take up the jobs of their dead in the dark labyrinth of mines, where they live under the constant threat of rape and assault. Look deeper, to where racism and patriarchy intersect, and it is black women who bear the brunt of oppression in modern South Africa and around the world.

The erasure of black women from political struggle began long before Marikana. While much is said of men who had to leave their families to work in mines and cities or resist apartheid, what is less visible is the contribution of women, both to the family and to the cause. Every dead or absent father leaves a mother to carry the family alone: a lifetime of unpaid labour alongside paid work to make ends meet. And while media coverage of the commission into the massacre cast the women of Marikana as grieving widows, that is only where their story began.

Keeping hope alive

In an economic system that sees value only in a wage, this inequality is embedded in the logic of the system. The profoundly political nature of unpaid family and movement support, without which no anti-apartheid movement in South Africa or strike in Marikana would be possible, fades into the background – along with the indispensable role played by women of colour in the movement for global justice.

Black women live each day on the intersection of racial, patriarchal and class oppression. In this much complained about ‘age of identity politics’, which is more broadly recognised amongst progressive circles in the global north, it has become ‘polite’ to concede that women of colour have a powerful role to play in movements for social change – but all too often this is mere lip service, paid in the interests of meeting diversity quotas or meant as ‘compensation’ for their experience, as though a slot on a speaking panel could redress generations of oppression.

But beneath all that is a simple truth: that like all the most painful experiences in life, oppression can be a great teacher. Being born on the intersection is not an enviable position. However, as those of us lucky enough to have learned from brave and brilliant women of colour in social justice work will know, that pain can develop into a profound sensitivity towards unjust applications of power; the sort that sneak up on those without the eyes to see them and collapse our efforts towards equality from the inside. This kind of leadership, too concerned with power over others, stifles the oxygen needed to spark real change from below.

It is from intersections like this that our most powerful stories, inspiring ideas and promising leaders emerge. Recognising that means stepping back to seed spaces for that leadership but it does not mean stepping out. Allies too have a vital role to play and the difference between recognising leadership from those most oppressed and reinforcing oppressive hierarchies by leaving them to all that labour alone, is about whether we are prepared to stay connected and above all, to listen.

Sikhala Sonke describe Lonmin and the ANC government as ‘twins’, both responsible for the situation in Marikana. And now is a vital moment because both are on thinning ice. Lonmin’s share price is at an all-time low and last year, a five-month miners’ strike forced a basic pay rise of 20 percent. Meanwhile the ANC, which has ruled South Africa since apartheid, is losing its majority as the next generation of South Africans feel they have sold out to white economic interests. It is hard to think of a place where this is clearer than Marikana.

Exploited by Lonmin and abandoned by their government, the women of Sikhala Sonke have kept the faith by refusing to abandon each other. It is that solidarity, they say, that keeps hope alive.

War on Want has partnered with Sikhala Sonke to support their work. Click here to find out more and help get the word out by joining our Thunderclap. This marks the start of a renewed campaign supporting Sikhala Sonke here in the UK. The campaign is in memory of Marikana woman Paulinah Masuhlo, who died in September 2012 after being shot by South African police.

07 February 2018

PUBLIC TRANSPORT VICTORIA TEACHES US HOW TO CATCH TRAMS

These two posters at our tram stop shelter are most revealing - not on how to be in your 90s and safely catch one of the new trams and get a seat, and hang on to the straps, and stand firmly.



This is what the TRAM COACH tells us inside the shelter:

TRAM SAFETY: LET'S ALL GET ON BOARD

Next to TRAM COACH are three items in circles and they read, from left to right:

sit tight; grip right; stand strong.

Now let's take them in sequence, based on the fact that you are 95 years of age: sit tight assumes you have a seat to sit on - doesn't always happen on a full tram, and the picture is very unclear; then grip right assumes there are enough straps to hold on to - which there aren't on the new trams shown in the picture - and if you do manage to get a strap to grip onto - and it is too high anyway, and the tram jerks - which happens more often than not, so you can't grip right, what do you do when you fall?; then stand strong assumes you have somewhere level enough on these new trams to stand firmly, but again a jerk and you are flat on your face.

This really presents a major problem, and then try to get on and off these new trams and the platform is higher off the ground than the old trams, and you are old and arthritic and have all sorts of other age-related problems, and no car, and your main means of transport  - to your doctor and other people who help you one way and another is the tram, and taxis are expensive and you are a pensioner - and you have several problems!

And let's not forget how many tram stops - and we are only talking about tram stops at the moment - don't have seating while you wait for your tram, and you have several more problems.


This is what the TRAM COACH tells us outside the shelter:

TOUCHING ON: HAVE YOUR MYKI READY AND HOLD STEADY

Try and hold steady while you try and touch on and the tram jerks off  and your hold position is fairly tenuous at best!

What out coach does NOT tell us is that when you get off the tram, apart from falling off because there is such a huge gap between the inside platform and the ground outside,  you must look out very carefully because cars keep roaring through, even though legally they have to stop when the tram stops.

There is absolutely no reason why the government can't fit cameras or cctv to each tram to capture the motorists who are attempting to kill the alighting passengers, and fine them so heavily that they will not make these attempts in the future. They could be allocated demerit points as well so that their licences could be revoked if they exceeded a certain limit.

MICHAEL KROGER - ANOTHER ZIONIST WHO LIVES IN AUSTRALIA

Michael Kroger, the latest zionist to come out of the closet, is now taking the Greens candidate for the Batman by-election to task because of her support for BDS.

The candidate, Alex Bhathal, has now stated that she doesn't support all of the BDS items, particularly two of them.

There are probably more zionists in 2018 in Australia than there are in Israel, but unlike those in Israel where most are probably Jewish, the vast majority of those in Australia are Christian.

The question is, why??

The answer must assuredly be that they are trying to get the Jewish zionists to move to Israel, thus saving them the problem of their ongoing anti-semitism.

After all, there are only somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 Jews in Australia, and once Isael has kicked out most of the African refugees there and also the Palestinian Israeli citizens who still live in the so-called officially recognised  "borders" of Israel, there will be more than enough extra places for Australian Jewish zionists.

After all, apart from the Christian zionists like Michael Kroger, there are the fanatical Jewish zionists like the federal member for Israel Michael Danby - who still calls Australia home.

Does Michael Kroger know that there are many Jews in Australia who do not toe the zionist/Israel line and who support BDS?

Many of them also don't fear the political consequences of complete boycotts of Israel as some of the Greens seem to do. The Greens still have a great deal of growing up to do, and they should have trips to South Africa and learn what BDS achieved there in the apartheid years.

Of course Israel apartheid is easier to enforce because of the numbers involved, but with the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians, the Israelis hope to one day have the numbers.

RED JOS - ACTIVIST KICKS BACKS



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90 years old, political gay activist, hosting two web sites, one personal: http://www.red-jos.net one shared with my partner, 94-year-old Ken Lovett: http://www.josken.net and also this blog. The blog now has an alphabetical index: http://www.red-jos.net/alpha3.htm

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