SOWETO DAY 16 JUNE 1976 - 40 YEARS AGO AND THE WORLD HAS FORGOTTEN!

SOWETO UPRISING 16 JUNE 1976 - 40 YEARS AGO

On 16 June 1976 the South African apartheid government, which had been trying to force Afrikaans on the schools in Soweto, saw the results of their destruction of the education system instituted for the Blacks in South Africa break down when the young people of Soweto went on a strike from their school system and rioted in the townships.

Shootings by the police on that day and subsequently saw South Africa erupt with riots, assassinations, police state actions and worse leading to suppression equal to the worst apartheid control ongoing for the next 18 years.

Then the unthinkable occurred - boycott, divestment and sanctions helped bring the apartheid regime to its knees and the apartheid government released Nelson Mandela and others, negotiated with them and in April 1994 the first democratic election occurred in South Africa.

End of apartheid and a "new world order" for all South Africans - or so we all believed until August 2012 when 34miners were killed by police - mostly blacks killing blacks - at Marikana - the largest massacre of civilians in South Africa since Sharpeville in 1960.

So deep an impression on the world in 1994, so forgotten completely 40 years later so that no main stream media seem to have remembered this historic event which changed the world's perception of the original apartheid state to the extent that the world now shuts the other apartheid state out of sight, out of mind - Israel maintaining the largest concentration camps in Palestine the world has ever known and practising apartheid with a concentration that shows how much further the South African apartheid regime could have gone.

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From  southafrica.info

June 16 1976: The day youth changed South Africa's history

A placard from the student protest. The events of 16 June 1976 were sparked by the apartheid government imposing Afrikaans as the language of teaching in black schools.

15 June 2016

Compiled by Mary Alexander

It took a single day for young South Africans to change the course of South Africa's history, setting us on the path to democracy.

That day was 16 June 1976.

Here is an hour-by-hour account of events as they unfolded, 40 years ago.

• This Youth Day, follow real-time tweets of the events of 16 June 1976 on @SA_info via the #SowetoUprising hashtag.

Protesting Soweto students in 1976. (Image: Doing Violence to Memory)

Background: An education denied

By 1976, the frustration had been building for a generation. Young black South Africans knew their schooling was the worst in South Africa.

In 1953, the new National Party government had passed the Bantu Education Act, which made sure black youth were educated only to the point that they could be servants to white people's prosperity.

Before then, South Africa had a rich tradition of mission schools. Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, and many others had been given the opportunity to become some of the best minds in South Africa as a result of their quality schooling.

But the apartheid government wanted the threat of bright African minds to stop. Many mission schools were closed.

By 1976, students' frustration reached boiling point when the government began to introduce Afrikaans as the language of teaching.

Black students, particularly in the cities, were fluent only in African languages and in English. Few knew Afrikaans well enough to be taught in it, let alone write exams in the language.

The mood at the start of the march - before the police opened fire - was hopeful and excited. (Image: South African History Online)

07:00

It is a Wednesday morning, 16 June 1976. Today, the Soweto Students Action Committee have organised the township's high school pupils to march to Orlando Stadium, as a protest against the government's new language policy.

The student leaders come mainly from three Soweto schools: Naledi High in Naledi, Morris Isaacson High in Mofolo, and Phefeni Junior Secondary, close to Vilakazi Street in Orlando.

The protest is well organised. It is to be conducted peacefully. The plan is for students to march from their schools, picking up others along the way, until they meet at Uncle Tom's Municipal Hall. From there they are to continue to Orlando Stadium.

The children of Soweto were in high spirits at the promise of the protest. (Image: Doing Violence to Memory)

07:30

Students gather at Naledi High. The mood is high-spirited and cheerful. At assembly the principal gives the students his support and wishes them good luck.

Before they start the march, Action Committee chairperson Tepello Motopanyane addresses the students, emphasising that the march must be disciplined and peaceful.

At the same time, students gather at Morris Isaacson High. Action Committee member Tsietsi Mashinini speaks, also emphasising peace and order. The students set out.

On the way they pass other schools and numbers swell as more students join the march. Some Soweto students are not even aware that the march is happening.

"The first time we heard of it was during our short break," said Sam Khosa of Ibhongo Secondary School. "Our leaders informed the principal that students from Morris Isaacson were marching. We then joined one of the groups and marched."

There are eventually 11 columns of students marching to Orlando Stadium - up to 10 000 of them, according to some estimates.

09:00

There have been a few minor skirmishes with police along the way. But now the police barricade the students' path, stopping the march.

Tietsi Mashinini climbs on a tractor so everyone can see him, and addresses the crowd.

"Brothers and sisters, I appeal to you - keep calm and cool. We have just received a report that the police are coming. Don't taunt them, don't do anything to them. Be cool and calm. We are not fighting."

It is a tense moment for police and students. Police retreat to wait for reinforcements. The students continue their march.

By Thursday 17 June 1976 the student uprising had spread to Alexandra township in the far north of Johannesburg.
The placard in the centre reads: "Vorster and Kruger shall not go to heaven."
In 1976, JB Vorster was prime minister of the apartheid government, and Jimmy Kruger his minister of police.
The placard on the right - partly cut off - reads simply: "Don't shoot. We are not fighting."
(Image: Doing Violence to Memory)

09:30

The marchers arrive at today's Hector Pieterson Square. Police again stop them.

It was here that everything changed. There have been different accounts of what actually started the shooting.

The atmosphere is tense. But the students remain calm and well-ordered.

Suddenly a white policeman lobs a teargas canister into the front of the crowd. People run out of the smoke dazed and coughing. The crowd retreats slightly, but remain facing the police, waving placards and singing.

Police have now surrounded the column of students, blocking the march at the front and behind. At the back of the crowd a policeman sets his dog on the students. The students retaliate, throwing stones at the dog.

A policeman at the back of the crowd draws his revolver. Black journalists hear someone shout, "Look at him. He's going to shoot at the kids."

A single shot rings out. Hastings Ndlovu, 14 years old, is the first to be shot. He dies later in hospital.

After the first shot, police at the front of the crowd panic and open fire.

The Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto. (Image: Brand South Africa)

Twelve-year-old Hector Pieterson collapses, fatally injured. He is picked up and carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo, a fellow student, who runs towards Phefeni Clinic. Pieterson's crying sister Antoinette runs alongside. The moment is immortalised by photographer Sam Nzima, and the image becomes an emblem of the uprising.

There is pandemonium in the crowd. Children scream. More shots are fired. At least four students have fallen to the ground. The rest run screaming in all directions.

10:00

Dr Malcolm Klein, a coloured doctor in the trauma unit at Baragwanath Hospital, is on his break when a nurse summons him with a look of utter distress on her face.

Bloodied, injured and dying students were ferried to Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. (Image: Doing Violence to Memory)

"I followed her and was met by a grisly scene: a rush of orderlies wheeling stretchers bearing the bodies of bloodied children into the resuscitation room," he recalled later. "All had the red 'Urgent Direct' stickers stuck to their foreheads ...

"I stared in horror at the stretcher bearing the body of a young boy in a neat school uniform, a bullet wound to one side of his head, blood spilling out of a large exit wound on the other side, the gurgle of death in his throat. Only later would I learn his name: Hastings Ndlovu."

12:00

After the first massacre, the students flee in different directions. Anger at the senseless killings inspires retaliation.

Buildings and vehicles belonging to the government's West Rand Administrative Buildings are set alight and burned to the ground. Bottlestores are burned and looted.

More students are killed by police, particularly in encounters near Regina Mundi Church in Orlando and the Esso garage in Chiawelo. As students are stopped by the police in one area, they move their protest action elsewhere.

By the end of the day most of Soweto has felt the impact of the protest.

Schools close early, at about noon. Many students, so far unaware of the day's events, walk out of school to a township on fire. Many join the protests. The uprising gains intensity.

21:00

Fires continue blazing into the night. Armoured police cars later known as "hippos" start moving into Soweto.

Official figures put the death toll for that single day at 23 people killed. Other reports say it was at least 200.

Most of the victims are under 23, and shot in the back. Many others are maimed and disabled.

Aftermath

The uprising spreads across South Africa. By the end of the year about 575 people had died across the country, 451 at the hands of police.

The injured number 3 907, with the police responsible for
2 389 of them. During the course of 1976, about 5 980 people are arrested in the townships.

International solidarity movements are roused as an immediate consequence of the revolt. They soon give their support to the pupils, putting pressure on the apartheid government to temper its repressive rule. Many schoolchildren leave South Africa, to join the exiled liberation movements.

This pressure is maintained throughout the 1980s, until resistance movements are finally unbanned in 1990.

Sources and additional information

This is largely an edited and condensed version of the timeline published by South African History Online in the feature The June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising.

Journalist Lucille Davie has written many excellent accounts of the events of June 16 1976. These include:

• 16 June 1976: 'This is our day'
• The day Hector Pieterson died
• Hastings Ndlovu: Forgotten hero of 1976

Additional information - particularly the memories of Baragwanath Hospital trauma doctor Malcolm Klein - sourced from "The Soweto Uprising - Part 1" by Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, in chapter 7 of The Road to Democracy in South Africa Volume 2, published by the South African Democracy Education Trust.

Many events omitted from this timeline, such as the killing of Dr Melville Edelstein, are to be found in this comprehensive and moving account. The chapter can be downloaded in PDF.

Researcher Helena Pohlandt-McCormick has made a wealth of testimony, photos and documents about the 1976 student uprising available online. Browse her Doing Violence to Memory: The Soweto Uprising.

Clarification of the sequence of events in the initial police shooting, and the deaths of Hastings Ndlovu and Hector Pieterson, was provided by Sulaiman Philip from interviews conducted, during the course of June 2016, with veterans of June 16 1976.

Read more: http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/soweto_1976_timeline.htm#.V2dY7KJ5qct#ixzz4C5GprPHg

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16 June ’76 – Remember Dr Melville Edelstein – the life & death of a good man

Kevin Harris productions

[Broadcast on SABC 2 “Issues of Faith” on 16th June 2013 @ 09h00]
Click here to view the video
PREMISE

Dr Melville Edelstein’s tragic slaying in Soweto on 16th June 1976 by a mob of enraged township youth, is the direct consequence of a racist system that socialized its citizens to judge & respond to one another impulsively on the basis of skin colour stereotypes – rather than evaluating people as individuals with their own particular differentiating personal qualities.

CENTRAL CHARACTER 

The central character is philanthropist, Dr Melville Edelstein.

Dr Edelstein’s goal was to serve humanity.

By all accounts he was a good man who cared about people as individuals.

This caring attitude towards every individual brought about his demise on the 16th June 1976.

Knowing that the situation was volatile – after ensuring that others had moved out of Soweto to safety – Dr Edelstein made the fatal decision to drive back into the township to check on the safety of a colleague.
His colleague had long moved out of the township to safety and Dr Edelstein – caught up in a mob of enraged students – was dragged out of his colleague’s office and brutally slain.

Under the circumstances, Dr Edelstein was slain because he was white.

His death was the direct consequence of the racist system of apartheid which socialized South Africans to impulsively judge and respond to one another not as individuals with individual qualities, but according to a stereotypical image based solely on skin colour.

In this context, as a white man – following shortly after the shock brutal police-shootings, in the volatile heat of that moment – Dr Edelstein represented the oppressor and in that “mob situation” the crowd of black students instinctively avenged the killing and wounding of fellow students by police earlier that day by taking the life of Dr Edelstein.

In his private life, Dr Edelstein carried the pain of rejection by his eldest child and only son Michael from his first marriage.

Despite repeated ongoing attempts to reconcile, to his dying day, Dr Edelstein was rejected by Michael who – in a final act of rejection – legally changed his surname from Edelstein to Lyall.

SYNOPSIS

“16 June ’76 – Remember Dr Melville Edelstein”, is the life-story of Dr Melville Edelstein – brutally slain by a crowd of enraged students in Soweto on June 16th, 1976.

Deputy Chief Welfare Officer of the West Rand Administration Board [WRAB], Dr Edelstein was a philanthropist who over the years instituted many community projects for the Youth & the Disabled in Soweto.

A practicing orthodox Jew, Melville Edelstein was apolitical & dedicated to serving the good of mankind. He was also a pacifist who refused to enlist for World War II.

Before his death, he worked closely with the youth of Soweto & produced a prophetic Masters thesis intended to warn the Nationalist Party Govt of their looming collision-course with Black youth, titled, “What do young Africans Think”.

Highly respected as an academic, Melville Edelstein had the ear of Prime Minister of the day, John Vorster – as well as influential ministers in his Cabinet.

Despite this, his warnings went unheeded.

On June 16th 1976, the youth of Soweto took to the streets to register their rejection of the institution of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in “Bantu Education” schools.

That morning, Dr Edelstein was hosting the official opening for a branch of his Sheltered Workshop Program designed to provide employment for the disabled in Orlando East, Soweto.

When news of the student uprising reached the project, the ceremony was brought to a hurried end as dignitaries and workers were ferried out of the township.

Concerned about the safety of a colleague – Pierette Jacques, back at the Youth Centre in Jabavu – Melville Edelstein drove from Orlando East through crowds of gathering students to get to her office.

“I told them it was going to happen”, Samuel Thlotleng, a social worker at the Central Western Jabavu office heard Dr Edelstein cry as he rushed into the office instructing his staff to leave immediately.

When Melville Edelstein finally emerged from his office later that morning, the political temperature had long been raised by police shootings in the township & he walked straight into the wrath of a seething crowd of enraged students.

Shortly there-after, news photographer Peter Magubane came across the disfigured remains of Dr Edelstein’s body – a crude sign hung around his neck with the words,
“Beware, Afrikaans is the most dangerous drug for our future”.

“If they’d known who he was, this would never have happened”, Magubane was quoted as saying.

“16 June ’76 – Remember Dr Melville Edelstein” is the little-known story of Dr Melville Edelstein – a philanthropist who chose to work within the confines of the Apartheid system to serve the poor & oppressed. In so doing he brought hope & light into the lives of many of Soweto’s destitute & marginalized community.

Caught in the back-lash to the most oppressive phase of the Apartheid era – Melville Edelstein was the victim of the consequences of the apartheid system – a racist system which socialized South Africans to impulsively judge and respond to one another not as individuals with individual qualities, but according to a stereotypical image based solely on skin colour.

The Scream - Edvard Munch

Contact Kevin Harris

Kevin Harris
Email: khprod@global.co.za
Tel: +27-11-726 4809

UNITED STATES GREEN PARTY FOREIGN POLICY ON PALESTINE-ISRAEL AND BDS

Our Australian Greens should take a leaf out of the United States' Green Party's book. Here is the latter's statement on US foreign policy, Palestine-Israel & BDS. (Their leader and presidential candidate is Dr Jill Stein):

"The Jill Stein campaign calls for ending support for governments committing war crimes and massive human rights violations, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. It supports the BDS movement as a peaceful, nonviolent set of actions organized by civil society across the world aimed to end Israel apartheid, occupation, war crimes, and systematic human rights abuses.

"US foreign policy requires an emergency overhaul, from a program of total global military and economic domination, to a policy of promoting international law, human rights and diplomacy. We must cease and desist from being, in the words of Martin Luther King, the greatest purveyor of violence the world over. Our foreign policy currently serves war profiteers and fossil fuel companies, but not the American people or the cause of global justice, peace and security. Our failed wars of the past 14 years have cost us 5 trillion dollars, left over a million people dead in Iraq alone, and killed or maimed tens of thousands of US service men and women. Yet we - and the Middle East - are far less secure, not more secure.

"In addition to ending our catastrophic and immoral wars for oil and markets, we must stop aiding and abetting the human rights violations and war crimes of our allies who are massively defying international law. This includes the Israeli government and the rulers of Saudi Arabia. With regard to Israel, the United States has encouraged the worst tendencies of the Israeli government as it pursues policies of occupation, apartheid, assassination, illegal settlements, demolitions, blockades, building of nuclear bombs, indefinite detention, collective punishment, and defiance of international law. Instead of allying with the courageous proponents of peace and human rights within Palestine and Israel, our government has rewarded consistent abusers of human rights.

"Therefore, the Stein campaign calls for ending military and economic support for the Israeli government while it is committing war crimes and defying international law. In addition, the Stein campaign supports actions of nonviolent resistance to the policies of the occupation and of the Israeli apartheid regime, including those of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, which was endorsed by the Green Party of the United States in 2005 and is supported by thousands of civil society peace activists and organizations.

"Consistency in US policy regarding human rights and international law will begin, but not end, with Palestine and Israel. I will apply this same approach to other nations such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, among others.

"Finally, we call for the establishment of a Palestine and Israel Truth & Reconciliation Commission as the vehicle for shifting from an era of US support of human rights and international law violations to one based on justice and truth bringing all parties together as equals to seek workable solutions. A dedicated commitment to justice will further the security of all parties, Palestinians, Israelis, and all people in the region, much better than the current policies of politically, economically and militarily supporting the systemic and institutionalized abuse of one side against the other."

Posted by MERC at 7:57 AM 5 comments:

Labels: BDS, The Greens

ORLANDO MASS MURDERER OMAR MATEEN WORKED FOR G4S, ONE OF THE LARGEST PRIVATE SECURITY EMPLOYERS IN THE WORLD

From Project Censored - by email 0n 14 June 2016

By Peter Phillips

The Orlando mass murderer, Omar Mateen, worked for G4S, one of the largest private security employers in the world. G4S has some 625,000 employees spanning five continents in more than 120 countries. As a private security company it provides services for both governments as well as corporations. Some of its well-known contractors are with the British Government, the United States, Israel, Australia and many more. G4S providers a range of services in the areas of corrections, policing, and security of important facilities. In the corporate sector it has worked with such well-known companies such as Chrysler, Amtrak, Apple, and the Bank of America.

A statement from G4S, published by The Independent June 12 says that: “We are shocked and saddened by the tragic even that occurred at the Orlando nightclub. We can confirm that Omar Mateen had been employed with G4S since Sept 10 2007. We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends, families, and people affected by this unspeakable tragedy.”

Mateen worked with the company since 2007. G4S provides security personnel for the Department of Homeland Security, US Customs and Border Protection at the US-Mexico border, and helps transport undocumented immigrants from urban areas.

Mass killings like the one in Orlando directly benefit private security firms like G4S by increasing fears and demands for higher security services. Estimates are that over $200 billion is spent on private security globally with higher amounts expected yearly. The industry currently employs some 15 million people worldwide.

G4S offers security guards, alarms, management and transportation of cash and valuables, prison management, and electronic monitoring of offenders in 120 countries worldwide. They are the second largest private employer in the world. Their annual revenue in 2014 was $10.5 billion. Increasingly G4S operates in “complex environments” and accepts jobs national armies are not trained to do like land mine clearance, and military security in active war zones.

Chevron Oil in Nigeria contracts with G4S for counter insurgency operations that deploy armed groups of fast-response mercenaries both on land and on delta water patrol boats mounted with machine guns. G4S maintains a similar operation in South Sudan. G4S also provides surveillance equipment to checkpoints and prisons in Israel.

G4S has been plagued with problems in the last decade, most noticeably with the botched contract at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. They failed to provide the 10,000 plus trained employees they had promised under contract. Instead G4S had roughly 2,000 people properly trained, with many more getting only a few weeks’ worth of preparation. The result led to the British Military being called in to provide security with some 13,000 troops alongside G4S.

In June of 2014, G4S was accused of violently removing protesters from outside its own offices in London, a claim the company denies, and a few months after that G4S had to pay $100,000 for unlawfully restraining youths in a secure training facility. In 2011, a double amputee was improperly secured in one of G4S’s ambulance services and died when the unsecured wheelchair tipped over backwards as he was being transported to the hospital.  It was found that the G4S staff was not sufficiently trained to move patients safely from their homes to hospitals. And as far back as 2004, a 15-year-old died when three G4S employees at Rainsbrook Secure Training Center restrained him. None of the officers were charged in that incident.

G4S is a transnational security company in direct service to the global corporations and the transnational capitalist class. G4S protects capital and assets around the world and is increasingly taking a private military style approach as needed. As a multi-billion-dollar public company major investors come from the financial core of the transnational capitalist class including; Blackrock, UBS, Vanguard, Barclays, State Street, Allianz, J.P. Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse, and FMR. Even the State of California and New York have holdings in G4S. Nine of the thirteen largest most connected money management firms and banks in the world have direct investments holdings in G4S.

Omnicom, the largest public relations and propaganda firm in the world, handles media for G4S and undoubtedly is currently in full crisis management mode to protect the company and minimalize links to Omar Mateen.

G4S is a part of neoliberal imperialism that is leading to the substitution of and privatization of state police. Inside G4S’s 625,000 employees are undoubtedly a number of reactionary individuals with extreme racist, homophobic, and xenophobic feelings similar to Omar Mateen. These folks are armed walking time bombs that can individually or collectively unleash disruption and chaos on humans anywhere in the world. The resulting chaos and fear will be used to justify even more demands for private security, including even martial law, all resulting in improved profits for G4S.

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Peter Phillips is a Professor of Political Sociology as Sonoma State University and president of Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored. Fully footnoted research on G4S is available on line at: http://projectcensored.org/private-military-companies-in-service-to-the-transnational-capitalist-class/

June 10, 2016 in CounterPunch

Apartheid, Human Rights and BDS

by Robert Fantina

Ryan Rodrick Beiler | Shutterstock.com

Now that Israel has declared the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement an existential threat, along with all the countless other things that supposedly represent such a threat to that apartheid nation, United States government officials, who are second to none in their obeisance to Israel, have begun to act. Some states have actually passed laws banning BDS. Since New York was not one of them, its Zionist governor, Andrew Cuomo, issued an executive order, preventing the state from doing any business with businesses that support the movement.

Now, one is not to be blamed if this brings to mind the McCarthy era, in which people from all walks of life were accused of being Communist infiltrators, bent on nothing less than the destruction of the United States of America. Lists were compiled, people were blackballed, careers and lives were ruined by a scurrilous U.S. senator who saw the Communist ‘threat’ under every bed. Mr. Cuomo assures us that lists will be compiled of business that are thought to support BDS; those lists will be made public, and the accused will have ninety-days in which to convince the governor that they don’t oppose apartheid. They are assumed guilty of the crime of supporting human rights, and must somehow demonstrate that they do not.

One can imagine government employees reviewing news archives, seeking information about unions, businesses or churches that have voted to divest from Israeli-owned companies. Names of company executives will be gathered from company websites, and then Facebook will be searched, to see if these executives have ever supported BDS. If so, a pox on them! Constitutional protections of freedom of speech do not apply to those who support Palestinian human rights. The governor of New York has just said so.

With the reactionary right ready to nominate Donald Trump, of all people, the old axiom that politics makes strange bedfellows is once again proven true. Mr. Trump did what he does best at the Apartheid Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention in Washington, D.C. in March of this year, when he made a spectacle of himself in front of that unholy group. He bowed and scraped with the best of them, but since he is, after all, The Donald, he somehow did it better than the rest.

But there he is now, in the Israeli bed with Hillary Clinton, Mr. Cuomo, and most other U.S. representatives, most of whom are bought and paid for by AIPAC.

Now, these august worthies will proclaim that the BDS movement is anti-Semitic. After all, they say, hands wringing in anguish, why do the BDS people say nothing about human rights abuses in other nations? Why do they only single out poor little Israel?

Let us look at an analogy, that may, perhaps, help clarify things for these confused souls. This writer donates money to the Heart Association. He does not donate to the American Cancer Society, Patients with Alzheimer’s, Victims of Landmines, etc. It is not because he does not consider these to be worthy causes; he certainly praises the valuable, life-saving work they do. However, his means are limited, and he cannot donate to every worthy charity on the planet. Therefore, he has selected one of two out of all the rest, and rather than making a very small donation to fifty charities, makes a more substantial one to those.

Perhaps Mr. Cuomo believes that this writer (if the good governor were aware of this writer’s existence), cares nothing about cancer patients. He may think this writer is unmoved by the difficulties people suffer when they or a loved one has Alzheimer’s. He may think this writer can look casually and uncaringly at those who have lost limbs due to land mines.

Similarly, he may think this writer is anti-Semitic, due to his dedicated support of all things Palestinian, including the BDS movement.

In all cases, the governor would be wrong in those beliefs.

Yet would this writer be wrong in thinking that the governor,with his eye on the White House, cares nothing for the suffering of Palestinians, looking instead at the deep pockets of the Israeli lobby? He thinks not; any reasonable person, looking honestly at the brutal oppression of the Palestinians, would not so quickly attempt to thwart every effort to assist them.

The media and those highly-regarded (for reasons that completely escape this writer) government officials, are quick to condemn any violent resistance on the part of the Palestinians, but overlook the extreme, constant violence to which they are subjected by the Israelis. And now, when a peaceful means of opposing the illegal and immoral occupation is growing, they seek to outlaw it. One wonders why they don’t simply say, as Texas Senator and one-time Republican presidential candidate wannabe Ted Cruz did, that Palestine simply doesn’t exist? Proclamations such as that issued by the New York governor are just as stupid, and will not hold up in any court of law, but wouldn’t their Israeli masters be more pleased with additional fantasies? They already talk about Israel’s brutal, murderous army as the most moral in the world; they proclaim with a straight face that a country with separate laws for Jewish Israelis and non-Jewish Israelis is the only democracy in the Middle East. Add to that the fantasy that any criticism of Israel is an existential threat to that country, and the only thing lacking is the belief that Israel will, as in all good fairy tales, live happily ever after.

The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa began in 1959 and lasted for thirty-five years. South Africa had separate laws for the minority white population, with everyone else a second class citizen. Even the Jewish publication Haaretz proclaimed in 2009 that Israel apartheid is worse than South African apartheid. But never mind any of that: the U.S. is attempting to outlaw BDS by passing legislation written by Israel.

Will this be successful? Does this reaction against BDS spell its doom? Let us not be too hasty here. First, it is highly unlikely that any of these Draconian, McCarthyesque laws will stand up in court. Secondly, BDS is an international movement, and the U.S. remains one of the very few nations that still stands completely with Israel against Palestine. The U.S. will only further isolate both itself and Israel in the international community by its go-it-alone support for apartheid. And lastly, this isn’t 1959, a year that began an eventually-successful boycott without the aid of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email, text, and all the marvels that the Internet has introduced.

The tide of justice has long since turned in Palestine’s direction. The U.S., which supported the apartheid government of South Africa right up to the bitter end, will once again be standing alone when Palestine rids itself of the shackles of Israeli oppression. That day is coming, and the pompous pronouncements of U.S. politicians, and even their executive orders, will not prevent it.

Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Pill Press).

ZIONISTS CENSOR AUSTRALIAN SCHOOL CURRICULA?

New test for VCE literature sparks censorship concerns

Date

May 26, 2016 The Age

Timna Jacks

Education Reporter 

 

Cast of the play, Tales of A City by the Sea, when it premiered in 2014. Photo: The Age

• VCE play accused of being 'anti-Israel propaganda'

Books, plays and films studied for VCE will soon be screened to ensure they don't offend religious and cultural groups.

Education Minister James Merlino has ordered the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority (VCAA) to review its text selection process for VCE English, literature, drama and theatre studies.

A spokesman for Mr Merlino said the Minister requested to "extend" the guidelines to "ensure that the views and sensitivities of cultural and religious groups are considered".

This comes after two Jewish groups slammed the inclusion of a play on the VCE drama list, Tales of a City by the Sea, which depicted life during war in Gaza, and was written by Palestinian playwright Samah Sabawi.

Mr Merlino demanded the review after the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria complained that the play promoted an anti-Israel agenda and could isolate Jewish students.

Some of Australia's most well-known authors, including some who have books on the list, have slammed the minister's intervention.

Christos Tsiolkas has criticised the review. Photo: Simon Schluter 

Author Christos Tsiolkas said excluding texts that would offend certain groups put "most literature out of bounds".

He said his teachers showed him provocative literature, including works by Henry Miller, Philip Roth, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Tennessee Williams. These inspired him to become a writer and feel more comfortable as a gay male.

"What scares me about the current age is that teachers may not take these kinds of risks with their students anymore because of this general fear that you can't be seen to treat young people as curious or intellectually able," he said.

"The last thing you'd want is a curriculum that will bore students."

Anna Funder's former publisher was sued by a group of ex-Stasi, who found her book Stasiland offensive. Photo: Trevor Collens

Writer Anna Funder, whose non-fiction book Stasiland is on the VCE English booklist, said while she was not across the details of the review, testing literature to ensure it was not offensive was ludicrous.

"A lot of Shakespeare is offensive, Shylock is offensive, The Taming of the Shrew is offensive … life is offensive and literature represents life.

"Any government that tries to make a piece of literature palatable to everyone kills the thing."
However, a spokesman for the Ethnic Community Council of Victoria welcomed the review.

"We welcome any government initiatives that look at embracing the cultural sensitivities of the many ethnic groups that are represented in Victoria."

Dr Dvir Abramovich, who is the chair of B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, said students should not be exposed to "pedagogical materials" that could "create tension and disharmony between their friends at school".

"The VCAA selection process must reflect community standards by ensuring that students are provided with plays that promote understanding of complex issues and which furnish its learners with appropriate context and balance."

But president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Bishop George Browning, said he was concerned that the minister was "bowing to vexatious complaints".

"It is vital that the review does not lead to censorship of Palestinian voices within arts and education, even if this is difficult for some people to hear."

President of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English Monika Wagner said challenging texts encouraged students to think critically.

"It [the review] does tend to suggest that there would be a single homogenised heteronormative, culturally normative type of text that is considered acceptable. I don't know what that text would be but that's what I would be afraid of."

This is not the first time the VCE authority has been asked to reconsider texts perceived to be controversial.
In 2012, Nobel-prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera was reviewed by the VCAA after an Age columnist complained it was offensive because it "says repeatedly that screwing a child for art's sake is excusable".

 

May 27, 2016 article in CounterPunch

Silencing America as It Prepares for War

by John Pilger

Orlok | Shutterstock.com

Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party’s rigged convention.  The great counter revolution had begun.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America’s victims in faraway places.

“We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don’t you forget it.”  So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, “Which side did you fight on?”

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called “The Price of Freedom” at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa’s grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved “a million lives”; Iraq was “liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision”. The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington’s boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it “never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. It didn’t matter … “. Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called “a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is “cool”. One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.

In 2009, Obama promised to help “rid the world of nuclear weapons” and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is “modernising” America’s doomsday arsenal, including a new “mini” nuclear weapon, whose size and “smart” technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is “no longer unthinkable”.

James Bradley, the best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, “[One] great myth we’re seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who’s trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He’s the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He’s committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that’s attached to actual policy. It isn’t.”

On Obama’s watch, a second cold war is under way. The Russian president is a pantomime villain; the Chinese are not yet back to their sinister pig-tailed caricature – when all Chinese were banned from the United States – but the media warriors are working on it.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has mentioned any of this. There is no risk and no danger for the United States and all of us. For them, the greatest military build-up on the borders of Russia since World War Two has not happened. On May 11, Romania went “live” with a Nato “missile defence” base that aims its first-strike American missiles at the heart of Russia, the world’s second nuclear power.
 
In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a “pivot”.

As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.

It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue; CNN and BBC hysteria followed; China was building airstrips on the disputed islands. In its mammoth war game in 2015, Operation Talisman Sabre, the US practiced “choking” the Straits of Malacca through which pass most of China’s oil and trade. This was not news.

Clinton declared that America had a “national interest” in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia.

Clinton, the “women’s candidate”, leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine – literally, borderland — that Hitler’s Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton’s presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world’s ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close.

Sanders, the hope of many young Americans, is not very different from Clinton in his proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He backed Bill Clinton’s illegal bombing of Serbia. He supports Obama’s terrorism by drone, the provocation of Russia and the return of special forces (death squads) to Iraq. He has nothing to say on the drumbeat of threats to China and the accelerating risk of nuclear war. He agrees that Edward Snowden should stand trial and he calls Hugo Chavez – like him, a social democrat – “a dead communist dictator”. He promises to support Clinton if she is nominated.

The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to “make America great again”, Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.

“Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy,” wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.

In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States “everywhere on the globe”? What is NATO’s true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?

The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of “free and open debate” and “democracy at work”. His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief  of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin’s gulag.

This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19^th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.

In Britain, this is Blairism. The Christian war criminal Tony Blair got away with his secret preparation for the invasion of Iraq largely because the liberal political class and media fell for his “cool Britannia”. In the Guardian, the applause was deafening; he was called “mystical”. A distraction known as identity politics, imported from the United States, rested easily in his care.

History was declared over, class was abolished and gender promoted as feminism; lots of women became New Labour MPs. They voted on the first day of Parliament to cut the benefits of single parents, mostly women, as instructed. A majority voted for an invasion that produced 700,000 Iraqi widows.

The equivalent in the US are the politically correct warmongers on the New York Times, the Washington Post and network TV who dominate political debate. I watched a furious debate on CNN about Trump’s infidelities. It was clear, they said, a man like that could not be trusted in the White House. No issues were raised. Nothing on the 80 per cent of Americans whose income has collapsed to 1970s levels.  Nothing on the drift to war. The received wisdom seems to be “hold your nose” and vote for Clinton: anyone but Trump. That way, you stop the monster and preserve a system gagging for another war.

 

John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com

May 13, 2016 from CounterPunch

Zionist Israel Hides Its Crimes Behind Its Smears of Truth-Tellers

by Paul Craig Roberts

badahos | Shutterstock.com

Several years ago two very distinguished American scholars wrote a book, The Israel Lobby.
The book made a very understated case that the Israel Lobby has far more power over the US government and media than is good for America or Israel, as it silences constructive critics who are Israel’s friends. The two scholars were demonized by the Israel Lobby as advocating the return of the Holocaust.

The Israel Lobby presented itself as just a poor little weak thing unable to stand up to all the Nazis assailing Israel. Meanwhile the US Congress was unanimously passing outrageous resolutions handed to it by the Israel Lobby.

A number of former US Senators and Representatives, including Cynthia McKinney, have publicly stated that they were removed from office by the Israel Lobby for criticizing actions of the Israeli government, such as the Israeli government’s attempt to sink the USS Liberty, in which a majority of the American crew were killed or injured.

Instead of defending the US Navy, the cowardly US government was so scared of Israel that the President of the United States and the Admiral conducting the inquiry, Senator John McCain’s father, rushed to the defense of Israel and covered up the incident.

The coverup has been so successful that few Americans today know that a vessel of the US Navy was decimated by an Israeli air and torpedo boat attack, and Washington did not even file a protest. Really! The US is a “superpower,” and the cowardly government cannot even stand up to Israel?

What do you think will happen to these pussies in Washington when they confront by their carelessness and unjustified arrogance the power of Russia and China?

Little wonder that after 15 years of pointless conflict the US has been defeated by a few thousand lightly armed warriors in Afghanistan, and the “Mission Accomplished” pronouncement of the moron George W. Bush now requires intervention by the Russian Superpower to be accomplished.

Only Russia can bring the terrorism in the Middle East that the dolts in Washington created to an end. The low grade morons in Washington sponsor the terrorism in order to bleed the American taxpayer of money to pay the profits of the Military-Security Complex that President Eisenhower, a Five Starr General warned us about going on 7 decades ago.

The Americans are so incompetent that they should just depart the scene and go home and hide under their beds so scared they are of “terrorists,” largely an invention of neoconservative propaganda.

But it only takes a propaganda invention, a false flag event, to scare “powerful America” out of its wits.
I became an “anti-semite” when I observed that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians resembled the Union Army’s treatment, under Sherman and Sheridan, of the American Plains Indians. Wholesale genocide.

An Israeli official wrote to me asking me why I criticized Israel for doing to the Palestinians what the United States government did to the native Americans. In other words, the Western World, and Israel that allegedly suffered the Holocaust, were not required to make any moral progress in one or two centuries. Whatever the Union war criminals did to the American Plains Indians in the 19th century is perfectly OK for Israel to to to Palestinians in the 21st century.

So much for those who believe in moral progress.

“Anti-semite” has lost its sting, because every justified criticism of the Zionist Israeli government is declared to be anti-semitism. The word is so overused and misapplied as to be useless. Indeed, to be declared “anti-semite” by the Israel Lobby is to be declared a person of high moral conscience.

Currently the Israel Lobby is at work destroying anyone associated with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which is an effort to sanction Israel for its genocide against Palestine. The popular musician, Roger Waters, is one of the few brave enough to support this movement.

Waters says that many of his colleagues, who protested the Viet Nam War and South Africa Apartheid are too “scared shitless of Israel” to protest what former US President Jimmy Carter called Israeli Apartheid.
Republicans, conservatives, and the Israel Lobby do not like Jimmy Carter because he speaks honestly, but that is why I respect him.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the Palestinians have had their country stolen. Now they, like native Indians in the US in the 19th century, have been confined to ghetto reservations. This is a simple fact. But anyone who states the fact is declared by the Israel Lobby to be an anti-semite who wants to kill all the Jews.

In other words, it is Zionist Israel that is committing genocide, but if a person mentions that fact that person is accused of wanting to do to the Jews what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

Israel, thanks to the complete cowardice of the government of “the world’s only superpower” and the largely Israeli controlled US media and entertainment industry, has got away with this raw exercise of the power of propaganda and intimidation.

But not with Roger Waters.

Support Roger Waters, one of the acknowledged greatest rock musicians of this era, when he stands up for the Palestinians and opposes the monstrous crimes of Zionist Israel.

It is amazing to me how courage has disappeared from the entire Western world. Insouciant Americans have lost their liberty to disinformation and fear. Such a fearful and afraid people have no prospect of standing up to the Russian and Chinese people.

The Western World buried in propaganda and lies is now in the trash bin of history. It is no more.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.