AlJazeera: Bringing Awareness to the Armenian Genocide

Al Jazeera, March 10, 2015

Ronald Grigor Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, discusses the 1.5 million people killed from 1915-1922

October 12: Indigenous Peoples Day

[Throughout the country, cities and schools are replacing the “traditional” celebration of victorious settler colonialism — “Columbus Day” — with a day of remembrance, respect, and resurgence of native peoples, “Indigenous People’s Day”.  All who wish the unity of oppressed and exploited people, and the struggle for decolonization, for an end to colonialism, settler-colonialism, and imperialism, have an interest in joining this movement to end the celebration of genocide. — Frontlines ed.]

Cowardly, Hypocritical, Subservient Congressional Black Caucus Endorses Israeli Apartheid and Current War Crimes in Gaza

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cowardly-hypocritical-subservient-congressional-black-caucus-endorses-israeli-apartheid-and–

                                         Israeli President Shimon Peres hosts Marcia Fudge, chair of the US Congressional Black Caucus, and a delegation of the caucus at the president’s residence in Jerusalem.  (February, 2014)

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon, July 30, 2014

Back in the 1970s, when the Congressional Black Caucus began calling itself “the conscience of the Congress,” that was almost literally true. CBC members could be relied upon not just to reliably vote for raising wages and expenditures on housing, health care and education, but to keep the issues of full employment and opposition to unjust war near thefront of their public agendas.

By the late 1980s, a gaggle of former CBC staffers had moved through the revolving doors of elite affirmative action to become corporate lobbyists, with the same ethics and table manners as their white colleagues, but with black faces. Thanks in large part to their efforts, by 2000 a tsunami of corporate cash began filling up the coffers of incumbent CBC members, their black replacements, or in the cases of Alabama’s Earl Hilliard and Georgia’s Cynthia McKinney, their black opponents.

Only a single member of the CBC, Rep. Barabra Lee opposed President Bush’s blank check for invading anywhere he pleased in Septermber of 2001, and by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, four CBC members, some of them swimming in donations from military contractors, raced down to the White House to have their pictures taken with Bush as the bombs were about to explode over Baghdad.

Israel: Dissent Among the Enforcers of Ethnic Genocide, but Not Enough

	We Are Israeli Reservists. We Refuse to Serve — A Petition.  By Yael Even Or July 23, 2014 Washington Post To us, the current military operation and the way militarization affects Israeli society are inseparable. In Israel, war is not merely politics by other means — it replaces politics. Israel is no longer able to think about a solution to a political conflict except in terms of physical might; no wonder it is prone to never-ending cycles of mortal violence. And when the cannons fire, no criticism may be heard.
	Israeli cannons fire toward Gaza this week., (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images),
	Whenever the Israeli army drafts the reserves — which are made up of ex-soldiers — there are dissenters, resisters, and AWOLers among the troops called to war. Now that Israel has sent troops to Gaza again and reserves are being summoned to service, dozens are refusing to take part.

Incremental Genocide: An Interview with Israeli historian Ilan Pappe

[Khan Yunis Refugee Camp in Gaza, March 2006. Photo by zoriah via Flickr]

In a recent Opinion piece published on Electronic Intifada, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe defines the Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as an “incremental genocide.” He writes “Israel’s present assault on Gaza, alas, indicates that this policy continues unabated. The term is important since it appropriately locates Israel’s barbaric action—then and now—within a wider historical context.” Malihe Razazan spoke with Professor Ilan Pappe about ways in which we need to examine the ongoing Israeli military aggression on Gaza within a wider historical background. The interview was conducted on 15 July, prior to the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza.

Israel Claims It Killed 1500+ Palestinian Civilians “in Self Defense” — but Their Intent is Clear:

Israeli Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

JULY 25, 2014

by BRETT WILKINS

While the world recoils in horror at the sight of Israeli troops slaughtering Palestinians by the hundreds, one high-ranking Israeli parliamentarian says his country should go further and implement its own final solution in Gaza.

In an Arutz Sheva op-ed, Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset (parliament) and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, outlines his horrifying “solution in Gaza.”

Feiglin, who is banned from entering Britain for “seeking to provoke terrorist acts,” calls for an all-out attack on Gaza with “no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage.’” He also advocates a “total siege” on Gaza, as if the current siege isn’t total nor devastating enough in its impact on the 1.8 million residents of the world’s largest open-air prison.

After the ‘ultimatum,’ ‘attack,’ ‘siege’ and ‘defense’ phases of Feiglin’s “solution,” we move to what he calls the “conquer” phase.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.”

That means we’d surely be witnessing more slaughter of innocent men, women, children, infants, the elderly, the ill and the disabled, as if there’s not already enough of that going on in Gaza.

And for what? For Zionist lebensraum and cheaper rent in Tel Aviv:

The US/China/France/UK/Israel “Scramble for Africa” vie for “Humanitarian” Honors in Nigeria

[IRecent years have seen the insertion of imperialist forces and inter-imperialist hegemonic claims into every corner of the world, under the guise of “humanitarianism” or “disaster capitalism.”  The US has been most prominently displayed in this practice, having honed the method as a public doctrine after failing the “winning hearts and minds” test in the Vietnam war, and then doing medical rescues in the period of recovering from the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” (ie, reversing the functional anger and opposition to imperialist wars).  In recent years, as the world imperialist system has become more crisis-ridden and internally contentious, other imperial powers have entered the “humanitarian imperialist” contest as well.  Today, the new “scramble for Africa” is focused on the struggle to rescue the Nigerian girls abducted by the diabolical and malevolent “Boko Haram” gang which grew in the vacuum of elite corruption and sectarian power, and mass poverty in Nigeria, which are the fruits of colonialism and neo-colonialism, and of a regime that cannot or will not keep Nigerian people out of harms way.  The US has drones from its nearby drone base in Niger, and some troops and “advisors” from AFRICOM; France has some forces on the ground, a legacy from the French colonial (and more recent neo-colonial) wars in neighboring countries; Britain has some surveillance planes; Israel has sent Special Forces commandos/shock troops, at Goodluck Jonathon’s invitation; and China, not one to be left out or to forget their massive recent Nigerian investments, has sent a PLA frigate, and given a new satellite to Nigeria to run their media and tele-communications and surveillance ops.  See the 4 articles below for more self-determination-breaking-news on these opportunist/imperialist relief efforts from the US, China, Israel.  —  Frontlines ed.]

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Kidnapped Girls Become Tools of U.S. Imperial Policy in Africa

Wed, 05/14/2014

by Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford

Kidnapped Girls

 

The “humanitarian” U.S. military occupation of Africa has been very successful, thus far. “The Chibok abductions have served the same U.S. foreign policy purposes as Joseph Kony sightings in central Africa.” Imagine: the superpower that financed the genocide of six million in Congo, claims to be a defender of teenage girls and human rights on the continent. If you believe that, then you are probably a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“The Boko Haram, like other jihadists, had become more dangerous in a post-Gaddafi Africa – thus justifying a larger military presence for the Americans.”A chorus of outraged public opinion demands that the “international community” and the Nigerian military “Do something!” about the abduction by Boko Haram of 280 teenage girls. It is difficult to fault the average U.S. consumer of packaged “news” products for knowing next to nothing about what the Nigerian army has actually been “doing” to suppress the Muslim fundamentalist rebels since, as senior columnist Margaret Kimberley [14] pointed out in these pages, last week, the three U.S. broadcast networks carried “not a single television news story about Boko Haram” in all of 2013. (Nor did the misinformation corporations provide a nanosecond of coverage of the bloodshed in the Central African Republic, where thousands died and a million were made homeless by communal fighting over the past year.) But, that doesn’t mean the Nigerian army hasn’t been bombing, strafing, and indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of, mainly, young men in the country’s mostly Muslim north.

Jose Campos Torres, and Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, and countless more of us

Gil Scott-Heron — Jose Campos Torres, and a Visual Poem for Oscar Grant

Gil Scott Heron’s “Jose Campos Torres” (1978) and video by TripleTruth

Trayvon Martin (no justice, just us)

Inspired by Gil Scott Heron’s “Jose Campos Torres” Brooklyn born lyricist/poet/singer Glennjamin Bishop digs deep and touches real-life issues and emotions in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin tragedy.
Published on Apr 4, 2012

Memorial Day: While the system glorifies imperialist war, the people remember the victims of their war crimes — Hiroshima/Nagasaki

USA Terrorism: HIROSHIMA / NAGASAKI Atomic Bomb

This video is a clip from a BBC Documentary called “BBC History of World War II: Hiroshima (2005)”. It is available on DVD
The US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the largest international terrorist attack in history.  This attack was the only time that atomic or nuclear weapons have been used.

“Terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation against civilians in the pursuit of political aims.
In the Geneva and Hague Conventions, which in turn are based upon the basic principle that the deliberate harming of
soldiers during wartime is a necessary evil, and thus permissible, whereas the deliberate targeting of civilians is absolutely forbidden.

These Conventions thus differentiate between soldiers who attack a military adversary, and war criminals who deliberately
attack civilians.”

No Thanks on Thanksgiving: A Native American view