radiofree.asia

Category: Discrimination

  • Cuban Days Against Homophobia And Transphobia Have Begun

    The National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) launched the 18th edition of the Cuban Days Against Homophobia and Transphobia on Monday. Under the slogan “Love is the law,” the event will run until May 18 in the largest of the Antilles.

    During the inauguration of the initiative, CENESEX director Dr. Mariela Castro Espín commented that Cuban LGBTIQ+ activism cannot be disconnected or alienated from the current circumstances of the world, which is why these conferences are dedicated to anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggles.

    She referred to the setbacks occurring in several countries with regard to the rights of women and the LGBTIQ+ community.

    The post Cuban Days Against Homophobia And Transphobia Have Begun appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The One State

    Israel and the Palestinian Authority are each convinced that the long reach of history is on their side; the Israelis believe that future generations throughout the world will be detached from the illegal and oppressive acts committed against the Palestinians and only be aware of their present situations; the Palestinians believe that a Jewish Israel has no place in an Arab world, will constantly face enemies and hostility from Arab and Muslim nations, and these nations will one day achieve sufficient power to force their dictates on the Zionist regime.

    With its historical view, Israel proceeds to ignore Palestinian and international pleas to halt its oppression and continues with plans to fulfill the mission proposed by the Zionist Organization at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference — gain control of the land, obtain the aquifers, and create a greater Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and maybe further.

    The Palestinian Authority proceeds with continuous compromises, with hope that an Israeli government will recognize the Authority’s efforts to achieve an arrangement that satisfies Israel’s wants and preserves the Palestinian community within the former British Mandate. The stoic nature of the Palestinian people, after decades of violent aggression against them, is remarkable. Observing the Palestinians enduring the daily criminal, scheming, vicious, brutal, and violent attacks and still maintaining their presence is a tribute to human resourcefulness, a remarkable achievement that deserves praise from the entire world.

    Stoicism and commendable behavior do not move oppressive regimes that have the tools and forces to control the agenda. Israel remains recalcitrant. Nothing left for the Palestinians but to prove that Israel’s recalcitrance will work against its goals; with several millions of Palestinians within its borders, Israel will be a de facto binational state. Why not make it official and in accord with an agreeable plan?

    With that in mind, Jonathan Kuttab, co-founder of Nonviolence International, offers a thoughtful, provocative, and commendable proposal, outlined in a book, Beyond The Two-State Solution. A brief summary of Jonathan Kuttab’s propositions:

    Essential Elements of the New Order

    1. Right of Return
    The availability of this right is a serious requirement for Zionists, which Palestinians must accept. On the other hand, Palestinians, who have been forcibly denied access to their homeland, also must have a recognized right of return.

    2. Equality and Non-discrimination
    Public institutions, lands, funds, and resources must be utilized in the interest of all citizens, and discrimination must not be tolerated. Arabic, which is currently formally recognized as an official language in Israel, will need to be deliberately incorporated into public life, on a par with Hebrew.

    3. Freedom of Movement
    Restrictions of travel between the West Bank, Gaza, the settlements, Jerusalem and pre ’67 Israel must be removed, as well as the Wall and the checkpoints

    4. Relations with the Arab world
    Palestinians need to reevaluate their pan-Arab identity, and adjust it to reflect the reality that their state now is both Jewish and Arab to its very core.

    5. Defense
    The new State may require that the Minister of Defense, as well as a majority of the top brass in the army be Jewish as a matter of permanent constitutional law. Palestinians, however, must be free to join the army on the basis of equality, while all citizens who wish, must be free to demand exemption from military service for reasons of conscience.

    6. Legal Protections
    In addition to a constitution that embodies strict guarantees that safeguard the interest of either group, the “Protection Clauses” must be safeguarded from alteration by requiring that they can only be altered by high majorities “Protection Clauses” will remove the ‘demographic threat’ and ensure that a group which has numerical majority will not be able to oppress a numerical minority, or that a future change in the numerical balance between the two communities will not make the minority vulnerable to oppression by the majority.

    7. Ministry of Cooperation and Coexistence.
    This ministry will promote understanding of the history, culture, and language of each community by the other. It will also promote joint activities and programs intended to heal the hurts of the past and build understanding and tolerance between the two communities.

    8. Civil Law
    New civil laws must be promulgated that will ensure the rights of secular individuals, mixed couples, and religious communities that are not currently recognized. These include Reform and Conservative Jews, as well as Evangelicals. Without derogation from the existing rights of religious courts, individuals who choose not to be so governed should be allowed to follow their conscience and not be forced to submit to religious courts of their particular religious community.

    9. Name, Character, Public Holidays, Symbols and Flags
    Careful thought and creativity with input from both sides are required to have these elements of national identity reflect the desires of both communities without exclusivity or discrimination against the others.

    Aware that the One-state is a contentious issue and no plan will satisfy a majority of contenders, Jonathan Kuttab solicited comments to his book’s proposals. Here they are:

    Only an Israel government that believes in political, economic and social equality for all persons, regardless of religion or ethnicity, that is guided by principles of peaceful coexistence, human rights, inclusion, and social awareness can implement Jonathan Kuttab’s design. That Israel does not exist, has never existed, and is unlikely to come into existence in the future.

    Jonathan Kuttab has been idealistic and careless in expecting that this Israel will give attention to his well-formulated plan. Idealism is excusable. He has been careless by agreeing with nonsensical, spurious, and ahistorical statements consistently made by Israel’s promoters as a deceptive and supportive mechanism for the Zionist incursion. Jonathan Kuttab may not believe these deceptive narratives and felt it wise to appease those who could react angrily and scuttle the entire plan if the narratives were contradicted. Big mistake. It is dangerous to agree to anything with Israel, when agreement is not warranted. Affirm a narrative and Zionist supporters cite the acceptance as a valid appraisal of their mission. It is important to highlight these disagreements in detail, and have my responses serve as thoughtful retorts to others who express similar beliefs. Jonathan Kuttab writes:

    The whole purpose of creating the Zionist movement and the state of Israel was the perceived need to create a country that can act as a safe haven where any Jew, anywhere and at any time, can feel free to go and live there, as of right in a state of his/her own.

    During Herzl’s time, Jews were being emancipated, becoming integrated citizens of western nations, acquiring educational benefits, and achieving economic success in many countries. The principal reason for Zionism was not as Jonathan Kuttab suggests – just the opposite – due to their rapid advancements, Zionists felt that Jews would lose their attachment to Judaism and the Jewish community would wither. Few Jews at that time expressed sympathy with Zionism and most viewed Zionism as convincing their native nations that Jews had divided loyalties .

    No questions asked. Israel currently has such an ironclad law (Right of Return), which it considers to be a Basic Law of constitutional stature. It also has a publicly supported network of institutions supporting this right. This seems to be one irreducible requirement for Zionists and Israeli Jews.

    Nations that have a Right of Return give that right to previous nationals and usually their children. The Israeli Right of Return permits Jews from any nation to immigrate freely to a state that has no borders and from which neither they nor ancestors had any previous citizenship. Arabs who were previous Israeli nationals in the last decades, and whose children can claim direct descendant from an Israeli, have no right of return.

    Immigration quotas that favor entry from certain nations and restrict entry from other nations are considered discriminatory. Israel goes full length, not allowing anyone from any country to immigrate, except a Jewish person. Israel’s self-absorbed and patronizing attitude of being the official protector of world Jewry imposes problems for Jews in other nations and violates the sovereignty of their home countries.

    Given the experience of the Holocaust as well as millennia of antisemitic behavior in Christian Europe, including periodic pogroms and the Inquisition, security is an overriding consideration.

    This is an exaggeration used by the Israeli government to convince the world that its oppressive attitude has a defensive reason. The inquisition, which affected other non-Catholics more grievously than it affected Jews, occurred 600 years ago in a primitive Europe. Why relate those ancient happenings to today? Anti-Semitic Christianity and pogroms were also happenings of the past. These specially originated words could apply to hundreds of other minorities, many of who have been treated magnitudes more viciously. I never met or ever knew any Jewish person who felt insecure because of the Holocaust or other occurrences. Do African-Americans fear being returned to slavery? Do British Catholics fear the United Kingdom and American South will return to persecute Catholics again? Security is Israel’s excuse for rationalizing every oppressive and offensive action.

    Even secular Jews who resent restrictions imposed by the ultra-Orthodox, nonetheless have expressed a desire to live in a country where Saturday is the official Shabbat, life comes to a standstill on Yom Kippur, and where religious holidays are recognized and respected. They want a place where their tribal identity is recognized and where they can experience and develop Jewish communal life. To them, Zionism means a Jewish state, and a Jewish state reflects in some fashion a Jewish calendar, Jewish culture and a Jewish rhythm to public life.

    Jonathan Kuttab is talking about a small segment of the Jewish community. Half of world Jewry lives in nations that do not have an official Shabbat, and more than half of Israeli Jews do not need or want to have their weekend activities restricted.

    In addition to culture, tribe, and rhythm of life, the Hebrew language is of vital importance. This has taken on much more importance than a hundred years ago when Hebrew was more of a liturgical language, and very few spoke it as a first language.

    Linguists debate if Israeli Hebrew is a continuation of an ancient language or is a new language called Modern Hebrew that contains some Hebrew syntax. Because there was not extensive literature, poetry, philosophy, and history in a Hebrew language, the necessity for mass knowledge of the Hebrew language did not exist. English, which had become the international language, sufficed and was preferable. Creating a new language, Modern Hebrew, suits nationalist, chauvinist, and propaganda mechanisms.

    Many Israelis have publicly expressed willingness, within the framework of a genuine peace along the lines of a two-state solution, to abandon some or all of the Jewish settlements in areas occupied in 1967. At the same time, the reality on the ground, with over 700,000 settlers living in those areas, as well as the historic and religious connection to such places as Hebron and Jerusalem indicate that no major displacement of settlers can take place. An unspoken requirement therefore is to permit Jews to have the same right to live in all parts of Eretz Yisrael as Palestinian Arabs.

    Although Jews lived in the Levant and controlled a portion of the area during the short reigns of the Hasmonean kings, ancient Hebrew contributions to civilization and verifiable history are sparse and biblically contrived. For contemporary Jews, a proven relation to an Eretz Israel is “zero.” Some remains of Jewish dwellings, burial grounds and ritual baths can be found, but few, if any, major Jewish monuments, buildings or institutions from the Biblical era exist within the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem. The oft-cited Western Wall is the supporting wall for Herod’s platform and is not directly related to the Second Temple. No remains of that Temple have been located. Archaeologist William G Dever, in his book, What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and when Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel, writes, “By the beginning of the 21st century, archaeologists had given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible historical figures.” Jewish connection to Hebron remains a mythical story.

    The Zionist movement and the State of Israel was formulated as a response to worldwide antisemitism. It was promoted as a refuge and potential champion and rescuer for Jews worldwide. It also fully depended on support of all forms from this diaspora. Jews insist that they are full and loyal citizens of whatever country they reside in, and correctly reject as antisemitic charges of dual loyalty.

    Despite extensive recitations , no evidence exists of world wide anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, during the era of incipient Zionism. A few isolated groups in France and Germany accused Jews of attempting to dominate the economy and culture. Some attacks, organized to halt Jewish emancipation and combat Jewish competition, occurred early in the century in Germany (Hep-Hep riots) and others, related to exaggeration of acts by Jews and the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, happened later in Russia. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, an English-language reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is an objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work, which can be found at https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pogroms, show that “anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa,” and were “linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities.” A later 1871 attack on the Jewish community was due “in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church.”

    The pogroms of 1881 and 1882, which occurred in waves throughout the southwestern provinces of the Russian Empire, were the first to assume the nature of a mass movement. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

    In all of Europe, from what I have been able to confirm, less than 100 Jews were killed and possibly a few thousand were injured in anti-Jewish riots during the 100 years of the 19th century that witnessed the establishment of political Zionism. For context, compare those figures to other atrocities during that time, all of which are rarely mentioned.

    California, United States: During 1846-1873, 9,492 – 120,000 perished or deported.
    Amerindian population in California declined by 80% during the period.

    Queensland, Australia: During 1840-1897, 10,000-65,180 perished.
    3.3% to over 50% of the aboriginal population was killed.

    Circassia, Caucasus: During 1864-1867, 400,000-1,500,000 perished or deported.
    90% to 97% of total Circassian population perished or deported by Russian forces.

    Ottoman Empire: During 1894 –1896, 100,000 killed.
    Massacre of Armenians in Ottoman Empire.

    Statistics on casualties to Israeli Jews in the Zionist/Palestinian conflict from 1920 to 2022, compared to casualties to 19th European Jews at the time of the Zionist movement, demonstrate that the gathering of the Jews has not made them more secure or safe in Israel.

    From the start of the British mandate in 1919 until the year 2022, 74 years after the founding of Israel, 24,060 Jews have been killed and 36,260 have been wounded in the Levant. Due to identification of the Jews with Israel, attacks on Jews in the western world are increasing. Sheltered by high walls and a strong military, Israeli Jews have been able to defend themselves against embittered enemies.

    Safety from persecution.
    Extensive reports demonstrate prejudices by Israeli authorities and citizens against the Middle East and North African Jews, Yemenite Jews, and Ethiopian Jews.

    In the year 2013, 60 years after the Middle East and North African Jews came to Israel, government studies conducted in conjunction with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that “a job applicant with an Ashkenazi-sounding name has a 34 percent higher chance of being hired by an employer than a person with a Sephardi-sounding name applying for the same position, [and also that] over 22% of employers openly stated that they actively discriminate against applicants with Arab-sounding names.”

    The Middle East and North African Jews who came to Israel were Arabs; the Ashkenazi were European; the Beta Israel were Ethiopians; and the Yemenites were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of these ethnicities with unique and uniform characteristics, and created a new people, the Israeli Jews. Destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. accompanied the creation of a new people. The Zionists, who complained about persecution of Jews, wiped out Jewish history, determined who was Jewish, and required all Jews to shed much of their ancestral characteristics before they could integrate into the Israel community.

    A variety of Jewish groups, considered religious terrorist organizations in Israel, have committed disturbing and violent acts against Jews, more in Israel than the rest of the world combined, including the murder of Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin,

    Brit HaKanaim was a radical religious Jewish underground organization, which operated in Israel between 1950 and 1953.The movement’s ultimate goal – establish a state run by Jewish religious law.
    The Kingdom of Israel group was active in Israel in the 1950s. Members of the group were caught trying to bomb the Israeli Ministry of Education in May 1953, because they saw the secularization of Jewish North African immigrants as a direct assault on the religious Jews way of life and a threat to the ultra-Orthodox community.
    Keshet (1981-1989), an anti-Zionist Haredi group, focused on bombing property without loss of life.
    Sicarii, an Israeli terrorist group founded in 1989, plotted arson and graffiti attacks on leftist Jewish politicians who proposed rapprochement with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
    Lehava, an extreme religious minority, used terror to implement their views of how the society should look. Former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni stated, “This organization works from hatred, racism, and nationalism, and its goal is to bring an escalation of violence within us.”
    Sikrikim, an anti-Zionist group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, committed acts of violence against Orthodox Jewish institutions and individuals who would not comply with their demands.
    The Revolt terror group claimed the secular State of Israel has no right to existence; they hope to create a Jewish Kingdom in Israel. Arabs will be killed if they refuse to leave.

    Today, Israel has its orthodox settlers daily committing crimes against the Palestinian population, continuous pogroms that the Israeli government and media treat as happenings that are part of daily life.

    Conclusion
    One-state for all is a correct concept, but not a strategy. Until there is an effective strategy, the proposition is dubious. Transferring the dubious two-states to a dubious one-state occupies time and energy in futility, of which the Israeli government heartily approves, especially because its own strategy is to have a “no-state” – an assemblage of people in a land without borders, without a constitution, without a fixed set of laws, and without a nationality that is described by the state. Easy to expand and incorporate Jews from other nations when the land of Israel is a “no-state.”

    Having one-state returns the area to the British Mandate and to what would have been the eventual outcome of the Partition Plan. To achieve that arrangement, either the Israeli legal and administrative systems will have to be changed, or the characteristics that defined the Zionist mission will have to be deposed. The one-state is a proper goal; overcoming the reality of the Zionist vision of a “no-state” is the principal priority.

    The post The One State first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • New Zealand’s humanity – does it include all of us, or only for some?

    COMMENTARY: By Katrina Mitchell-Kouttab

    “Wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.” These were the words from New Zealand’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow.

    During a meeting with Philippa Yasbek from Jewish Voices for Peace, Dr Rainbow allegedly told her that information from the NZ Security Intelligence Services (NZSIS) threat assessment asserted that Muslims were the biggest threat to the Jewish community. More so than white supremacists.

    But the NZSIS has not identified Muslims as the greatest threat to national security.

    In the 2023 threat environment report, NZSIS stated that it: “Does not single out any community as a threat to our country, and to do so would be a misinterpretation of the analysis.

    “White Identity-Motivated Violent Extremism (W-IMVE) continues to be the dominant IMVE ideology in New Zealand. Young people becoming involved in W-IMVE is a growing trend.”

    Religiously motivated violent extremism (RMVE) did not come from the Muslim community, as Dr Rainbow has also misrepresented.

    The more recent 2024 NZSIS report stated: “White identity-motivated violent extremism (W-IMVE) remains the dominant IMVE ideology in New Zealand. Terrorist attack-related material and propaganda, including the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto and livestream footage, continue to be shared among IMVE adherents in New Zealand and abroad.”

    To implicate Muslims as being the greatest threat may highlight Dr Rainbow’s own biases, racist beliefs, and political agenda. These false narratives, that have recently been strongly pushed by the US and Israel, undermine social cohesion and lead to a rise in Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism.

    It is also deeply troubling that he has framed Muslim and Arab communities as potential sources of violent extremism while failing to acknowledge the very real and documented threats they have faced in Aotearoa.

    The Christchurch Mosque attacks — the most horrific act of mass violence in New Zealand’s modern history — were perpetrated not by Muslims, but against them, by an individual radicalised by white supremacist ideology.

    Chief Human Rights Commissioner Dr Stephen Rainbow
    Chief Human Rights Commissioner Dr Stephen Rainbow . . . “It is also deeply troubling that he has framed Muslim and Arab communities as potential sources of violent extremism while failing to acknowledge the very real and documented threats they have faced in Aotearoa.” Image: HRC

    Since that tragedy, there have been multiple threats made against mosques, Arab New Zealanders, and Palestinian communities, many of which have received insufficient public attention or institutional response.

    For a Human Rights Commissioner to overlook this context and effectively invert the victim-aggressor dynamic is not only factually inaccurate, but it also risks reinforcing harmful stereotypes and undermining the safety and dignity of communities who are already vulnerable.

    Such narratives are inconsistent with the Human Rights Commission’s mandate to protect all people in New Zealand from discrimination and hate.

    The dehumanisation of Muslims and Palestinians
    As part of Israel’s propaganda, anti-Muslim and Palestinian tropes are used to justify violence against Palestinians by framing us as barbaric, aggressive, and as a threat. We are dehumanised in order to normalise the harm they inflict on our communities which includes genocide, land theft, ethnic cleansing, apartheid policies, dispossession, and occupation.

    In October 2023, Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, described Palestinians as “horrible, inhuman animals” and was perplexed with the growing global concern for us.

    That same month Yoav Gallant, then Israeli Defence Minister, referred to Palestinians as “human animals” when he announced Israel’s illegal and horrific siege on Gaza that included blocking water, food, medicine, and shelter to an entire population, the majority of which are children.

    In making his own remarks about the Muslim community being a “threat” in New Zealand as a collective group, and labelling Palestinians being “barbaric”, Dr Stephen Rainbow has shattered the credibility of the Human Rights Commission. He has made it very clear that he is not impartial nor is he representing and protecting all communities.

    Instead, Dr Rainbow is exacerbating divisions within society. This is a worrying trend that we are witnessing around the world; the de-humanising of groups to serve political agendas, retain power, or seek public support for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    Dr Rainbow’s appointment also points a spotlight onto this government’s commitment to neutrality and inclusiveness in its human rights policies. Allowing a high-ranking official to make discriminatory remarks undermines New Zealand’s commitment to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    A high-ranking official should not be allowed to engage in Islamic and Palestinian racist rhetoric without consequence. The public should be questioning the morals, principles, and inclusivity of those currently in power. Our trust is being eroded.

    Dr Stephen Rainbow’s comments can also be seen as a breach of human rights principles, as he is supposed to uphold equality and non-discrimination. Yet his beliefs seem to be peppered with racism, often falsely based on religion, ethnicity, and race.

    Foreign influence in New Zealand
    This incident also shines accountability and concerns for foreign influence and propaganda seeping into New Zealand. The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) has published articles that some perceive as dehumanising toward Palestinians.

    In one article written by Dr Rainbow titled “With every chant Israel’s case grows stronger”, he says:

    “The Left has found a new underdog to replace the Jews — the Palestinians — in spite of the fact that the treatment of gay people, women, and political opponents wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.”

    By publicising these comments, The Israel Institute of New Zealand signalled its support of these offensive and racist serotypes. Such statements risk reinforcing a narrative that portrays Palestinians as inherently violent, uncivilised, and unworthy of basic rights and dignity.

    This kind of rhetoric contributes to what many describe as anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, and it warrants public scrutiny, especially when shared by organisations involved in shaping public discourse.

    Importantly, the NZSIS 2024 threat report stated that “Inflammatory and violent language online can target anyone, although most appears directed towards those from already marginalised minority communities, or those affected by globally significant conflicts or events, such as the Israel-Gaza conflict.”

    Other statements and reposts published online by the IINZ on their X account include:

    “Muslims are getting killed, is Israel involved? No. How many casualties? Under 100,00, who cares? Why is this even on the news? Over 100,000. Oh, that’s too bad, what’s for dinner?” (12 February 2024)

    “Fact. Gaza isn’t ‘ancestral Palestinian land’. We’ve been here long before them, and we’ll still be here long after the latest propaganda campaign.” (12 February 2024)

    Palestinian society was also described as being “a violent, terror-supporting, Jew-hating society with genocidal aspirations.” (16 February 2025)

    The “estimate of Hamas casualties, the civilian-to-combat death ratio could be as low as 1:1. This could be historically low for urban warfare.” (21 February 2025)

    “There has never been a country called Palestine.” (25 February 2025)

    Even showing a picture of Gaza before Israel’s bombing campaign with a caption saying, “Open air prison”. Next to it a picture of a completely destroyed Gaza with a caption that says “Victory.” (23 February 2025)

    “Palestinian society in Gaza is in my eyes little more than a death loving cult of murderers and criminals of the lowest kind.” (28 February 2025)

    Anti-Palestinian bias and racism
    Portraying Muslims and Palestinians as a threat and extremist reflects both Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bias and potential racism. These statements risk dehumanising Palestinians and are typical of the settler colonial narrative used to erase indigenous populations by denying our history, identity and legal claim.

    The IINZ has published content that many see as mocking the deaths of Palestinian Muslims and Christians, which is not only ethically questionable but can be seen as a complete lack of empathy.

    And posting the horrific images of a completely destroyed Gaza, appears to revel in the suffering of others and contradicts basic ethical norms, such as decency and compassion.

    There also appears to be a common theme among pro-Israeli organisations, not just the IINZ, that cast negative connotations on our national symbols including our Palestinian flag and keffiyeh.

    In an article on the IINZ webpage, titled “A justified war”, they write “chorus of protesters wearing keffiyehs, waving their Palestinian and terrorist flags, and shouting about Israel’s alleged war crimes.”

    It seemingly places the Palestinian flag — an internationally recognised national symbol– alongside so-called “terrorist flags,” suggesting an equivalence between Palestinian identity and terrorism. Many view this language as dehumanising and inflammatory, erasing the legitimate national and cultural characteristics of Palestinians and feeding into harmful stereotypes.

    The Palestinian flag represents a people, their identity, and national aspirations.

    There is nothing wrong with our keffiyeh, it is part of our national dress. The negative connotations of Palestinian cultural symbols have to stop, including vilifying other MPs or supporters who wear it in solidarity.

    This is happening all too often in New Zealand and must be called out and addressed. Our keffiyeh is not just a scarf — it is a symbol of our Palestinian identity, our resistance, and our rich, historic and deeply rooted cultural heritage.

    Pro-Israeli groups attack it because they aim to delegitimise Palestinian identity and resistance by associating it with violence, terrorism, or extremism.

    In 2024, ISESCO and UNESCO both recognised the keffiyeh as an essential part of their Intangible Cultural Heritage lists as a way of safeguarding Palestinian cultural heritage and reinforcing its historical and symbolic importance.

    As a safeguarded cultural artifact, much like indigenous dress and other traditional attire, attempts to ban or demonize it are acts of cultural erasure and need to be called out as such and dealt with accordingly.

    In the same IINZ article titled “A Justified War”, the authors present arguments that appear to defend Israel’s military actions in Gaza, including the targeting of civilians.

    Many within the community (most of us have been affected), including survivors and those with direct ties to the region, have found the article deeply distressing and feel that it lacks compassion for the victims of the ongoing violence, and the framing and tone of the piece have raised serious ethical concerns, especially as some statements are factually incorrect.

    The New Zealand Palestinian communities affected by this unimaginable genocide are suffering. Our family members are being killed and are at threat daily from Israel’s aggression and illegal war.

    Unfortunately, much rhetoric from this organisation aligns with Israeli state narratives and includes statements that some view as racist or immoral, warranting further scrutiny from the government.

    There is growing public concern over the association of Human Rights Commissioner Dr Stephen Rainbow with the IINZ, which promotes itself as a research and advocacy body.

    A Human Rights Commissioner requires neutrality and a commitment to protecting all communities from discrimination; aligning with Israel and publishing harmful rhetoric may lead to bias in policy decisions and discrimination.

    It is also important to remember that we are not a monolithic group. Christian Palestinians exist (I am one) as well as Muslim and historically Jewish Palestinians. Christian communities have lived in Palestine for two thousand years.

    This is also not a religious conflict, as many pro-Israeli groups wish the world to believe, and it is not complex. It is one of colonialism, dispossession, and human rights. A history that New Zealand is all too familiar with.

    "A Human Rights Commissioner requires neutrality and a commitment to protecting all communities from discrimination"
    “A Human Rights Commissioner requires neutrality and a commitment to protecting all communities from discrimination; aligning with Israel and publishing harmful rhetoric may lead to bias in policy decisions and discrimination.” Image: HRC screenshot APR

    The need for accountability
    Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith’s inaction and disrespectful response, claiming that a staunchly pro-Israeli supporter can be impartial and will be “very careful” from now on, hints that he may also support some forms of racism, in this case against Muslims and Palestinians.

    Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith
    Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith . . . “There needs to be accountability for Goldsmith. Why has he not removed Dr Rainbow from office and acted appropriately?” Image: NZ Parliament

    You cannot address only some groups who are discriminated against but then ignore others, or accept excuses for racist, intolerable actions or statements. This is not justice.

    This is the application of selective principles, enforced and underpinned by political agendas, foreign influence, and racism. Does Goldsmith understand that justice is as much about human rights, fairness and accountability as it is about laws?

    Without accountability, there is no justice at all, or perhaps he too is confused or uncertain about his role, as much as Dr Rainbow seems oblivious to his?

    There needs to be accountability for Goldsmith. Why has he not removed Dr Rainbow from office and acted appropriately? If Dr Rainbow had said that Jews were the biggest threat to Muslims or that Israelis were the biggest threat to Palestinians, would this government and Goldsmith have sat back and said, “he didn’t mean it, it was a mistake, and he has apologised”?

    Questions New Zealanders should be asking are, what kind of Human Rights Commissioner speaks of entire peoples this way? What kind of minister, like Paul Goldsmith, looks at that and does very little?

    What kind of Government claims to champion justice, while turning a blind eye to genocide? This is betraying the very idea of human rights itself.

    Although we are a small country here in New Zealand, we have remained strong by upholding and standing by our principles. We said no to apartheid in South Africa. We said no to nuclear weapons in the Pacific. We said no to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

    And we must now say no to dehumanisation — anywhere. Are we a nation that upholds justice or do we sit on the sidelines while the darkest times in modern history envelopes us all?

    The attacks against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims must stop. We have already faced horrific acts of violence against us here in New Zealand and currently in Palestine. We need support and humanity, not dehumanisation, demonisation and cruelty. This is not what New Zealand is about, we must do better together.

    There needs to be a formal enquiry and policy review to see if structural biases exist in New Zealand’s Human Rights institutions. This should also be done across some government bodies, including the Ministry of Education and Immigration NZ, to determine if there has been discrimination or inequality in the handling of humanitarian visas and how the Education Ministry has handled the complaints of anti-Palestinian discrimination at schools.

    Communities have particular concern at how the curriculum in many schools deals with the creation of the state of Israel but is silent on Palestinian history.

    Public figures should be held to a higher standard, with consequences for spreading racially charged rhetoric.

    The Human Rights Commission needs to rebuild trust in our multicultural New Zealand society. The only way this can be done is through fair and just measures that include enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, true inclusivity and action when there is an absence of these.

    We are living in a moment where silence is complicity. Where apathy is betrayal.

    This is a test of whether New Zealand, Minister Goldsmith and this government truly uphold human rights for all, or only for some.

    Katrina Mitchell-Kouttab is a New Zealand Palestinian advocate and writer.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Response To Trump’s Order To Restore ‘Truth’ To American History

    I have now read almost a dozen of President Trump’s executive orders issued since January. It has been an experience I will remember. They all begin with the same statement, “By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered…”

    So, I feel I have a right to respond similarly: By the authority vested in me as a citizen of the United States, protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I hereby respond to the Executive Order of March 27, 2025 on Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.

    The post Response To Trump’s Order To Restore ‘Truth’ To American History appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • India’s Parliament Passes Landmark Waqf Amendment Bill After Heated Debate

    The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025 was passed after an intense debate for nearly 12 hours on April 4, at 2 a.m. This bill, which had been given the approval of the Lok Sabha, the lower house, just a day before, at 1 a.m. on April 3, brings about a sweeping change in the Waqf property laws-charitable trusts under Islamic law. Titled the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development Act or “UMEED” meaning hope in Hindi, this bill has set off fierce contentions, with its proponents calling it a great transformative reform and critics arguing that it violates the rights of people under a veil of political activism.

    The passage of this historic legislation was celebrated by Prime Minister Modi on X, stating that it would mark a significant milestone for his government together with the abrogation of Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the Ram Temple construction. Very grandly put, but the legislation is highly contentious and complicated in its purpose, consequences, and outlook on Waqf properties spread across 9.4 lakh acres across India, making them the third-largest landholder in the country after Railways and Defence Forces.

    What Is Waqf, and Why Does It Matter?

    In the Islamic system of law, a Waqf is regarded as a charitable trust whereby an individual sets aside property-whether land, buildings, or other assets-for religious or social purposes. In its designation, the property is said to have been transferred to Allah so that it may be administered by a custodian (mutawalli) in fulfilment of specific purposes like the endowment of mosques, graveyards, or welfare activities. In India, this centuries-old practice has, however, been codified and regulated through various enactments starting from the Muslim Wakf Validating Act of 1913 to the Waqf Act of 1995, as amended in 2013. Presently 32 state Waqf Boards and a Central Waqf Council are in charge of these assets.

    The scale of Waqf assets is indeed staggering: millions of properties, mosques, cemeteries, shops, and agricultural land. In theory, their income should be utilised for the education, healthcare, and welfare of the Muslim community. Mismanagement, corruption, and a poor revenue-generating capacity remained the catchwords for the schemes in practice-the last being about ₹163 crore a year as per the Sachar Committee Report in 2006. The report mentioned that if properly managed, Waqf could have made 12,000 crore ($1.4 billion) today, establishing a chasm between what could be and what is the functioning by the government, which now claims to correct.

    The Bill: Key Changes and Controversies

    The Waqf (Amendment) Bill is intended to introduce radical reforms intended to modernise and centralise Waqf administration. Among its most controversial provisions:

    1. Abolition of ‘Waqf by User’ and Section 40: It was often said that “Waqf by user” applies to properties that had been put to religious uses for very long periods, such as ancient mosques or graveyards, making them Waqf even in the absence of formal documentation. According to Section 40 of the 1995 Act, it was also possible for Waqf Boards to determine unilaterally whether a property was under their purview. The new bill does away with both provisions and makes it mandatory for district collectors to undertake surveys and verify claims, a move the government says will stem the tide of arbitrary land grabbing. Critics fear, though, that it could endanger myriad undocumented historical sites to litigation and reclamation.

    2. Centralised Registration and Transparency: The bill obliges all Waqf properties to be listed on the government portal within six months of its enactment, thereby promoting transparency. Disputes, which were previously adjudicated solely by Waqf Tribunals, can now be appealed in high courts, thus subject to the erstwhile arguments of ensuring justice, but critics say centralising control under the state.

    3. Inclusion of Non-Muslims and Women: The bill proposes that in the Central Waqf Council (22 members) and state boards, aside from two Muslim women and representatives of Muslim communities (Pasmanda1), four and three non-Muslim members, respectively, should be included. The government suggests this is a progressive step since Waqf decisions affect non-Muslims as well. On the other hand, opposition leaders, such as AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, argue that the diversity is not required for Hindu temple boards, thereby accusing the BJP of selective interference.

    4. Inheritance Rights: A prohibition against Waqf dedications that disinherit daughters contributes towards gender equity. However, critics have noted the anomaly-the Hindu law on inheritance continues to allow fathers to discriminate in favour of their sons, and no reforms have been made to address this.

    5. Limitation Law: Property disputes will be subject to a limitation period, thereby precluding claims more than “x” years after the event. While this purportedly hastens the wheels of justice, it has evoked opposition, such as by Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who warns that lingering unresolved cases might legitimise illegal encroachments under the evil doctrine of “adverse possession.”

    The Debate: Polarization and Power Plays

    Confusion and Vast Misdirection: The next step is to satisfy the Parliament’s vagaries. In the Lok Sabha, 288 MPs voted for it and 232 against. The Rajya Sabha saw 128 votes for and 95 against. TDP and JD(U) are allies, while BJP got help from the YSRCP and BJD, which allowed free votes among their MPs to ensure the simple majority was achieved.

    Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Minority Affairs, introduced the bill on April 2, citing “97 lakh petitions” from stakeholders as proof of public demand for one that would uplift poor Muslims and modernise the broken system. He charged Waqf Boards with misusing their powers to lay claims to properties such as that of Delhi’s CGO Complex or land of a 1,500-year-old Tiruchendur temple in Tamil Nadu, aided on many occasions by past Congress governments.

    The substantive opposition came from Congress, DMK, and RJD. A. Raja of DMK stated the existing process involving independent survey commissioners and civil procedure codes prevented arbitrary acquisitions and charged that the BJP was exaggerating the ills so that control could be gained via district collectors who lack the independence of earlier officials. Congress member Imran Pratapgarhi disproved all claims that Waqf Tribunals were unaccountable “religious panchayats,” emphasising judicial scrutiny of their operations since the 1995 Act. Manoj Jha from RJD posed the question of how sites centuries old could have modern documentation and predicted a “mountain of litigation.”

    Owaisi and others posed a much graver question: the stripping of “Waqf by user” status and demands for paperwork could put historic properties on shaky ground, making them susceptible to takeovers by the government or corporations. They reminded them that of the 14,500 hectares of Waqf land in Uttar Pradesh, 14,000 hectares were recently declared state land, including old mosques and graveyards, a precedent they fear would become widespread.

    A Watershed Moment—or a Polarising Ploy?

    Crossing the divide, Modi’s term resonates differently. For BJP, the bill is a stroke of genius, falling well into its agenda of uniformity and reform. His supporters contend that it follows in the lines of Waqf modernisation of Muslim countries-transferring lands for public welfare. Rijiju assured that registered Waqf properties would not be touched, letting slide much-elaborated fears of retrospective actions.

    But “Jai Shri Ram” chants resounded through parliament once the passage was done, with critics like Uddhav Thackeray branding it a conspiracy to adopt Waqf lands for crony capitalists. The opposition plans to challenge the bill in the Supreme Court, which cites the guarantee of Article 26 on religious autonomy and warns of increased communal tensions as the result of this bill.

    The best test for the bill lies ahead yet. Will it streamline Waqf management and improve income back to Muslims, as the government claims? Or will it create polarisation, case-laden challenges, and space grabs as its detractors predict? As 99% of Waqf properties have already been digitised (per an affidavit by the government in 2020), whether such upheaval needs elimination is being debated. As India watches on, this UMEED Act, born of hope, may yet find whether it delivers progress or oozes deeper divides.

    The post India’s Parliament Passes Landmark Waqf Amendment Bill After Heated Debate first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    The term Pasmanda originates from Urdu, where “Pasmanda” literally refers to “those left behind.” In the South Asian context, especially in India, it is commonly used to describe marginalised Muslim communities who live below the poverty line and face significant social and economic disadvantages.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • India’s Parliament Passes Landmark Waqf Amendment Bill After Heated Debate

    The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025 was passed after an intense debate for nearly 12 hours on April 4, at 2 a.m. This bill, which had been given the approval of the Lok Sabha, the lower house, just a day before, at 1 a.m. on April 3, brings about a sweeping change in the Waqf property laws-charitable trusts under Islamic law. Titled the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development Act or “UMEED” meaning hope in Hindi, this bill has set off fierce contentions, with its proponents calling it a great transformative reform and critics arguing that it violates the rights of people under a veil of political activism.

    The passage of this historic legislation was celebrated by Prime Minister Modi on X, stating that it would mark a significant milestone for his government together with the abrogation of Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the Ram Temple construction. Very grandly put, but the legislation is highly contentious and complicated in its purpose, consequences, and outlook on Waqf properties spread across 9.4 lakh acres across India, making them the third-largest landholder in the country after Railways and Defence Forces.

    What Is Waqf, and Why Does It Matter?

    In the Islamic system of law, a Waqf is regarded as a charitable trust whereby an individual sets aside property-whether land, buildings, or other assets-for religious or social purposes. In its designation, the property is said to have been transferred to Allah so that it may be administered by a custodian (mutawalli) in fulfilment of specific purposes like the endowment of mosques, graveyards, or welfare activities. In India, this centuries-old practice has, however, been codified and regulated through various enactments starting from the Muslim Wakf Validating Act of 1913 to the Waqf Act of 1995, as amended in 2013. Presently 32 state Waqf Boards and a Central Waqf Council are in charge of these assets.

    The scale of Waqf assets is indeed staggering: millions of properties, mosques, cemeteries, shops, and agricultural land. In theory, their income should be utilised for the education, healthcare, and welfare of the Muslim community. Mismanagement, corruption, and a poor revenue-generating capacity remained the catchwords for the schemes in practice-the last being about ₹163 crore a year as per the Sachar Committee Report in 2006. The report mentioned that if properly managed, Waqf could have made 12,000 crore ($1.4 billion) today, establishing a chasm between what could be and what is the functioning by the government, which now claims to correct.

    The Bill: Key Changes and Controversies

    The Waqf (Amendment) Bill is intended to introduce radical reforms intended to modernise and centralise Waqf administration. Among its most controversial provisions:

    1. Abolition of ‘Waqf by User’ and Section 40: It was often said that “Waqf by user” applies to properties that had been put to religious uses for very long periods, such as ancient mosques or graveyards, making them Waqf even in the absence of formal documentation. According to Section 40 of the 1995 Act, it was also possible for Waqf Boards to determine unilaterally whether a property was under their purview. The new bill does away with both provisions and makes it mandatory for district collectors to undertake surveys and verify claims, a move the government says will stem the tide of arbitrary land grabbing. Critics fear, though, that it could endanger myriad undocumented historical sites to litigation and reclamation.

    2. Centralised Registration and Transparency: The bill obliges all Waqf properties to be listed on the government portal within six months of its enactment, thereby promoting transparency. Disputes, which were previously adjudicated solely by Waqf Tribunals, can now be appealed in high courts, thus subject to the erstwhile arguments of ensuring justice, but critics say centralising control under the state.

    3. Inclusion of Non-Muslims and Women: The bill proposes that in the Central Waqf Council (22 members) and state boards, aside from two Muslim women and representatives of Muslim communities (Pasmanda1), four and three non-Muslim members, respectively, should be included. The government suggests this is a progressive step since Waqf decisions affect non-Muslims as well. On the other hand, opposition leaders, such as AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, argue that the diversity is not required for Hindu temple boards, thereby accusing the BJP of selective interference.

    4. Inheritance Rights: A prohibition against Waqf dedications that disinherit daughters contributes towards gender equity. However, critics have noted the anomaly-the Hindu law on inheritance continues to allow fathers to discriminate in favour of their sons, and no reforms have been made to address this.

    5. Limitation Law: Property disputes will be subject to a limitation period, thereby precluding claims more than “x” years after the event. While this purportedly hastens the wheels of justice, it has evoked opposition, such as by Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who warns that lingering unresolved cases might legitimise illegal encroachments under the evil doctrine of “adverse possession.”

    The Debate: Polarization and Power Plays

    Confusion and Vast Misdirection: The next step is to satisfy the Parliament’s vagaries. In the Lok Sabha, 288 MPs voted for it and 232 against. The Rajya Sabha saw 128 votes for and 95 against. TDP and JD(U) are allies, while BJP got help from the YSRCP and BJD, which allowed free votes among their MPs to ensure the simple majority was achieved.

    Kiren Rijiju, the Minister of Minority Affairs, introduced the bill on April 2, citing “97 lakh petitions” from stakeholders as proof of public demand for one that would uplift poor Muslims and modernise the broken system. He charged Waqf Boards with misusing their powers to lay claims to properties such as that of Delhi’s CGO Complex or land of a 1,500-year-old Tiruchendur temple in Tamil Nadu, aided on many occasions by past Congress governments.

    The substantive opposition came from Congress, DMK, and RJD. A. Raja of DMK stated the existing process involving independent survey commissioners and civil procedure codes prevented arbitrary acquisitions and charged that the BJP was exaggerating the ills so that control could be gained via district collectors who lack the independence of earlier officials. Congress member Imran Pratapgarhi disproved all claims that Waqf Tribunals were unaccountable “religious panchayats,” emphasising judicial scrutiny of their operations since the 1995 Act. Manoj Jha from RJD posed the question of how sites centuries old could have modern documentation and predicted a “mountain of litigation.”

    Owaisi and others posed a much graver question: the stripping of “Waqf by user” status and demands for paperwork could put historic properties on shaky ground, making them susceptible to takeovers by the government or corporations. They reminded them that of the 14,500 hectares of Waqf land in Uttar Pradesh, 14,000 hectares were recently declared state land, including old mosques and graveyards, a precedent they fear would become widespread.

    A Watershed Moment—or a Polarising Ploy?

    Crossing the divide, Modi’s term resonates differently. For BJP, the bill is a stroke of genius, falling well into its agenda of uniformity and reform. His supporters contend that it follows in the lines of Waqf modernisation of Muslim countries-transferring lands for public welfare. Rijiju assured that registered Waqf properties would not be touched, letting slide much-elaborated fears of retrospective actions.

    But “Jai Shri Ram” chants resounded through parliament once the passage was done, with critics like Uddhav Thackeray branding it a conspiracy to adopt Waqf lands for crony capitalists. The opposition plans to challenge the bill in the Supreme Court, which cites the guarantee of Article 26 on religious autonomy and warns of increased communal tensions as the result of this bill.

    The best test for the bill lies ahead yet. Will it streamline Waqf management and improve income back to Muslims, as the government claims? Or will it create polarisation, case-laden challenges, and space grabs as its detractors predict? As 99% of Waqf properties have already been digitised (per an affidavit by the government in 2020), whether such upheaval needs elimination is being debated. As India watches on, this UMEED Act, born of hope, may yet find whether it delivers progress or oozes deeper divides.

    The post India’s Parliament Passes Landmark Waqf Amendment Bill After Heated Debate first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    The term Pasmanda originates from Urdu, where “Pasmanda” literally refers to “those left behind.” In the South Asian context, especially in India, it is commonly used to describe marginalised Muslim communities who live below the poverty line and face significant social and economic disadvantages.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How Miriam Adelson Exemplifies the Supreme Court’s Rulings that Political Corruption Is Protected by the 1st Amendment

    Here is a case that so richly displays the thorough-going corruptness of the U.S. Government so that to document it in its structural details — as will be done here — is to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the U.S. is, in fact, a dictatorship (controlled by a Deep State consisting not of its bureaucracy but of its billionaires), not at all a democracy, regardless of what the U.S. Constitution says; and it also displays how flagrantly our Constitution is routinely being violated by this Government, which, consequently, now must be seriously doubted as to this Government’s very legitimacy:

    Donald Trump as President is doing the work of his third-biggest political donor the Israeli-American thirty-billionaire Miriam Adelson, who demands Governmental punishment of students who protest against — or even just privately oppose — the Israel-U.S. ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

    While Israel provides the troops, America (under both Biden and now Trump) provides the weapons, ammunition, and satellite intelligence, that together are producing the slaughter in, and ethnic cleansing of, Gaza; and Adelson wants it to continue so as to eliminate completely (via extermination and/or expulsion) the people who live there. Students in America who have joined public demonstrations against this ethnic-cleansing are called by Adelson and her hired agent, Trump, “anti-Semites” and supporters of “terrorists” for opposing it. Here’s how this is playing out today:

    On March 19, the Wall Street Journal headlined “Columbia Is Nearing Agreement to Give Trump What He Wants: The school faces a deadline to yield to administration demands in negotiations over federal funding,” and reported that, in order to get Trump “to restore $400 million in federal funding,” Columbia University will punish enough the students who opposed the ethnic-cleansing of Gaza.

    The U.S. Government’s poster-boy of this ‘anti-Semitism’ and support of ‘terrorists’ is the Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, whom Adelson-Trump and their Administration, have in detention awaiting forced expulsion from the United States. On March 11, CNN headlined “Who is Mahmoud Khalil? Palestinian activist detained by ICE over Columbia University protests” and reported that, “‘As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand and you cannot achieve one without the other,’ he told CNN last spring when he was one of the negotiators representing student demonstrators during talks with Columbia University’s administration.” Here is the 2-minute video of him being arrested while his wife cries “I don’t know what to do!” and the federal agents refuse to identify themselves, as they drive her husband away in an unmarked car. Trump wants Khalil to be flown out of the country as soon as possible.

    Also on March 19, City Journal, of the right-wing, rabidly “corporationist” (as Mussolini proudly described himself) Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which had been set up and maintained by Ronald Reagan’s CIA chief Bill Casey and some billionaires, headlined “Who Are the Shadowy Figures Defending Mahmoud Khalil? The accused Hamas sympathizer is shrouded in mystery—and so are his supporters.” In the fascist world, not merely freedom of speech and of the press cannot be tolerated, but also freedom-of-association (which the Supreme Court accepts as being protected in order for the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment to be meaningful — even billionaires need freedom-of-association) cannot be tolerated — and this is today’s U.S.A. Whereas during the long period of U.S. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and of the Senator Joseph R. McCarthy witch-hunts against communists, freedom-of-association did not exist in the United States, it started to exist in order to protect businessmen, in Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984), and then further in order to protect discrimination against homosexuals, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000). But now, freedom-of-association likewise might, yet again, no longer exist in the U.S.

    Also on March 19, Politico made public another case, which, in some ways, is even more extreme than that of Khalil, especially against freedom-of-association. It headlined “Badar Khan Suri, a fellow at Georgetown, says he is being punished because of the suspected views of his wife, a U.S. citizen with Palestinian heritage. Masked immigration agents arrested a Georgetown University fellow and told him his visa had been revoked, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.” The Departments of State and of Homeland Security were involved in this action. The article says that Dr. Suri has no criminal record, and that “Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which is part of the [Georgetown] university’s School of Foreign Service. According to his court petition and a university directory, he is teaching a class this semester on ‘Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia.’ Suri has a Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies from a university in India.” Suri has been removed from his home and his wife in Virginia, and — en-route to a detention facility in Texas — is reported to be at “an Immigration and Customs Enforcement ‘staging’ center at the Alexandria, Louisiana, airport,” ultimately to be flown back to India. This is like, if the totalitarian-minded long-time and founding chief of the ‘Justice’ Department’s FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, were now the President of the United States (which, fortunately, he never was) — he, too, routinely violated the Constitution and broke the law that he was supposedly enforcing.

    Here is how the U.S. Supreme Court itself has produced these and other such results — blatant and increasingly routine violations of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment (among others) (as a therefore treasonous — anti-U.S.-Constitution — Supreme Court):

    The Court’s 1976 Buckley v. Valeo ruling said that the existing political-campaign-expenditure ceiling imposed “direct and substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech” and so the Court invalidated three expenditure limitations as violating the First Amendment. In other words: they said that money is “speech” — the more spending of it in politics, the better (although the First Amendment says nothing about the “quantity” of “political speech” — the Supreme Court there invented that concern, though the Founders never expressed it) — and so any limitations on campaign-spending would violate the First Amendment’s free-speech clause. (The Court’s ruling even included the brazenly stupid falsehood: “The quantity of communication by the contributor does not increase perceptibly with the size of his contribution, since the expression rests solely on the undifferentiated, symbolic act of contributing.” So, a million-dollar contribution is merely “symbolic.”) The overall limitations on expenditures by federal candidates and their committees were therefore struck down by the Court, as being inconsistent with (their lie-based interpretation of) freedom-of-speech. Thus (despite their lie that all of this is merely “symbolic” — which they knew wasn’t at all true), people who donate more to politicians should have a bigger say in who wins office than people who can’t. This ruling — granting the rich person a bigger say in ‘our’ government than the poor person has — is widely considered to have opened the floodgates for corruption to control the U.S. Government.

    The Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling said that the anti-corruption interest is not sufficient to displace the speech in question from Citizens United, and that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” This ruling — based on that blatant lie by the U.S. Supreme Court — is widely considered to be the death-knell for any hope of democracy in the United States, because it opened the floodgates for corruption to rule the U.S. Government at the other end — this time, not at the candidates-end (like Buckley) but at the donors-end (the Citizens United donors-group), by the ruling’s alleging that a “corporation” is a “person,” whose free-speech right can be expressed by its political-campaign donations, without any legal limit (the more that corporations donate to political campaigns, the better, according to the U.S. Supreme Court).

    This leaves American politics in a perfectly libertarian (or “neoliberal”) condition, such that property (a person’s net worth — wealth) reigns (on a one-dollar-one-vote basis); persons (one-person-one-vote) really don’t rule in America, because the super-rich need only to donate enough to the most-corrupt candidates so as to defeat any honest political competitor (i.e., any candidate who actually intends to fulfill on his/her public campaign-promises to the voters). Only the campaign-promises (usually made in private) to the mega-donors will be actuated as governmental policies once the winner is in office. And the scientific findings unanimously CONFIRM that at least ever since 1980, this is the way it is, in the United States.

    And once this is the way it is, the public (the voters, the consumers, the workers — the public, as opposed to the OWNERS of corporations — and especially the billionaires who control the corporations) are, in any situation that involves their personal rights as against the corporate owners, actually powerless, because the super-rich now control the Government and can always far outspend (on lawyers and anything else) any one of them (any non-rich person). This is NOT “equal justice under law.” Or, as one of the mega-billionaires himself said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” (There are only around a thousand billionaires in the U.S., and they rule over the entire population of 340 million.) That statement, made in 2006, is by now, very clearly an understatement: the billionaires have already won. The U.S. Constitution already means only what America’s super-rich WANT it to mean. If you want it to mean something else than what they want it to mean, then you will need to be able to outspend them to achieve that in the actual Government. (And the billionaires control almost all of the ‘nonprofits’ that advertise they represent “the public interest”; so, if what you want is inconsistent with what the billionaires want, then you won’t get any help from them to make that case.) This is the present reality, and only a Second American Revolution might be able to restore some democracy here, because, right now, we don’t have any — none, at all, in the United States of America. This is a proven fact — proven many times over. Anyone who continues to refer to the U.S. as being a “democracy” is either a fool or a liar. And America isn’t a dictatorship by “the bureaucrats,” nor by “the Democrats,” nor by “the Republicans” — it is being done by the billionaires, ones such as Adelson on the Republican Party side, and ones such as Soros on the Democratic Party side, who are collectively puppet-masters for the entire corrupt political show, which show elicits anger from the public against the puppets, instead of against the puppeteers, who fund and run the show.

    On March 19, Dawn News in Pakistan headlined “Mahmoud Khalil Wins Legal Battle Over Deportation” and reported that a judge ruled that Khalil’s case must be heard by a court, not result in his immediate deportation, and that a court in New Jersey must consider whether his rights of free speech and due proces have been violated by Trump. No timeline was set for a ruling, and so Khalil might continue in prison in Louisiana for a long time while his appeal moves forward in the courts.

    On the night of March 20, ABC News headlined “Judge blocks deportation of Georgetown fellow detained by immigration authorities” and reported that Badar Khan Suri’s lawyers had filed suit against the U.S. by saying that “the Trump administration appeared to be targeting the Georgetown University fellow due to his wife’s identity as a Palestinian and her constitutionally protected speech.” So, now, the judge is requiring Trump’s people to justify their action.

    Therefore, even if these and other similar cases might produce ultimate wins for the victims, their cases could produce long terms in prison while the courts consider them. If, at the end of these cases, Trump loses, there is still the question of whether Trump will do what judges order him to do. Of course, if he won’t, then congressional Democrats might try to impeach and remove him. At that point, it will be again Democratic Party billionaires versus Republican Party billionaires. What could be more serious would be if the result would be a Constitutional crisis: a contest of wills between the Executive and the Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. That would be a much better, more substantive, outcome. It could produce the necessary Second American Revolution, if the American public decide to make it so. Leaving such matters only to the billionaires to settle, needs to stop at some point, because, otherwise, America will simply continue to rot. The more that the billionaires continue to succeed against the public, the more that the country itself will continue to rot.

    The post How Miriam Adelson Exemplifies the Supreme Court’s Rulings that Political Corruption Is Protected by the 1st Amendment first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Incarcerated Transgender Women Challenge Trump’s Order

    Among the most horrific executive orders signed by Donald Trump on Jan. 20, were those withdrawing protection for transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons and terminating all their necessary gender-affirming medical care. The orders, which explicitly prohibit women’s prisons and detention centers from housing transgender female inmates, placed 22 trans women in imminent risk of transfer to a men’s facility where they would be subjected to strip searches and showering in front of men, violating the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

    The post Incarcerated Transgender Women Challenge Trump’s Order appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump Denies Student Loan Relief To Nonprofit Workers

    Trump signed an executive order on Friday, March 7, which directs the Education Department to exclude student loan forgiveness for workers at certain organizations which “engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose,” appearing to target some nonprofit groups at odds with his political agenda.

    Under the new order, workers would be disqualified from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program if the Trump administration deems that their employers violated federal immigration laws, supported “terrorism”, or engaged in so-called “child abuse,” which includes “the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents” – a clear attack on organizations that may support transgender rights.

    The post Trump Denies Student Loan Relief To Nonprofit Workers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iowa Legislature Votes to Eliminate Transgender Civil Rights Protections

    Yesterday, both chambers of the Iowa Legislature passed SF 418, a bill that strips transgender people of protections under the state’s Civil Rights Act, effectively legalizing discrimination against them statewide. The legislation, which originated as HSB 242 in a subcommittee of the Iowa House Judiciary Committee, was split into two identical bills, HF 583 and SF 418. After both passed their…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Dept. of Education Halts Thousands of Civil Rights Investigations Under Trump

    In the three-and-a-half weeks since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, investigations by the agency that handles allegations of civil rights violations in the nation’s schools and colleges have ground to a halt. At the same time, there’s been a dramatic drop in the number of new cases opened by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — and the few that attorneys have…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Discrimination Against Migrant Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia: Passport Confiscation and Denial of Citizenship

    Saudi Arabia, home to millions of migrant workers, heavily relies on foreign labor for domestic work, primarily women working as housemaids, nannies, and caregivers, which are a significant part of the country’s labor force. However, despite their essential role in the country’s households, migrant domestic workers, primarily from Southeast Asia and Africa, face widespread discrimination, exploitative working conditions, and legal barriers that strip them of fundamental rights.

    The Saudi labor system, particularly the kafala system, places an extraordinary amount of power in the hands of employers, leaving domestic workers vulnerable to abuse. Many workers find themselves subjected to passport confiscation, preventing them from leaving abusive workplaces or even returning home. Furthermore, unlike other foreign residents in Saudi Arabia who may qualify for long-term residency, migrant domestic workers are completely barred from obtaining Saudi citizenship, no matter how long they have lived and worked in the country.

    Despite Saudi laws prohibiting employers from holding workers’ passports, the practice remains common. Many migrant workers arrive in Saudi Arabia under the assumption that they will be able to retain their personal identification documents, yet they have their documents seized once they arrive in the country. Without identification or travel documents, these workers are left powerless, unable to escape exploitative conditions or seek legal protection, trapping them in their employer’s household.

    The passport confiscation leads to severe consequences such as an increased vulnerability to abuse, limited access to justice, and restriction of movement. In some cases, passport confiscation leads to conditions of forced labor and modern slavery.

    For example, Kenyan single mothers in Saudi Arabia face significant challenges as their children are denied birth certificates, thus they cannot obtain medical care, education, and exit visas. Hence, The mothers, many of whom fled abusive employers, find themselves trapped, unable to secure their children’s rights or return home. This situation highlights the broader issues of migrant workers’ rights and the legal hurdles faced by children born outside of marriage in Saudi Arabia

    Saudi Arabia does not grant citizenship to migrant domestic workers, no matter how long they have lived or worked in the country. Without citizenship, migrant workers remain subject to restrictive labor laws and cannot access key rights, such as social security, health care, or legal representation. Also, workers must constantly renew their visas, leaving them at the mercy of employers or facing the threat of deportation.

    In 2021, Saudi Arabia introduced the Premium Residency Program, which allows certain skilled foreign workers to obtain long-term residency, yet this option is largely inaccessible to domestic workers due to high fees and strict eligibility requirements.

    While Saudi authorities have made efforts to abolish some elements of the kafala system, enforcement remains weak and meaningful reforms are not implemented, leaving many domestic workers without passports nor citizenship. Domestic workers who report abuse often find themselves punished or deported instead of receiving justice.

    ADHRB calls on Saudi authorities to apply strict enforcement of laws against passport confiscation and pathways to permanent residency or citizenship. Also, ADHRB urges the Kingdom to abolish discriminatory policies that deny domestic migrant workers basic human rights and take immediate action to ensure they are treated with dignity and respect.

    The post Discrimination Against Migrant Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia: Passport Confiscation and Denial of Citizenship appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • A Progressive Radio Station Purges 2 Elected Board Members

    Two elected members were suspended from the KPFA Local Station Board (LSB) in a closed door session on November 16, 2024. It was a “show trial” that was not for show, not to be seen or even whispered about — a skeleton for the board’s closet, and an insult to the “free speech radio” spirit of KPFA.

    This was a Zoom session, a meeting in cyberspace; twenty two board members attended; four Pacifica National Board directors were here as observers, and there were several technicians and some others, in all, thirty people.  The accused persons were Elizabeth Milos and Steve Zeltzer.  Both were elected to this Local Station Board (LSB) by the listener-subscribers of KPFA, and this hearing should’ve been open to the public — especially since the “Protector” group had already publicized it as a campaign issue.  This closed hearing cannot rightfully be kept secret, and as a board member present at that session, I’m writing this account.

    It wasn’t funny to us who sat through it, but who knows how others may see it. There was irony, unintended humor, and an interesting cast of characters.

    We see a defendant, the indomitable Elizabeth Milos and others in action.  The session opens with Elizabeth challenging Christina Huggins, first about the audio recording.  Christina said there wasn’t going to be any audio recording; Elizabeth told her we’d then record it ourselves, which we did, or I did anyway, and from it made a transcription.  Christina said we didn’t have her permission, and Elizabeth then challenged Christina’s eligibility to chair the session.

    “The chair of the LSB is not going to be present?” said Elizabeth Milos. “So who is acting chair?”

    “I am the chair for this meeting,” replied Christina Huggins.

    “You’re not a member of the board,” Elizabeth reminded her.  “You can not–”

    And Christina muted her.  This being a Zoom meeting, the person who runs the meeting can press a mute button and silence board members.

    Elizabeth Milos unmuted herself. “You’re not a delegate. To be able to preside over this kind of –”

    Christina Huggins muted her again and said. “The chair does not have to be a delegate, per the bylaws.”

    “The ones who don’t have to be a delegate are the treasurer and the secretary, but the chair does,” Elizabeth explained, referring to Article Seven, Local Station Boards, Section 5.

    “You will be removed from the room if you do not come to order,” Christina warned.

    Steve Zeltzer spoke up “You’re not a delegate, Christina.”

    You will be removed as well. I’m the chair.  The chair does not have to be a delegate.”

    “Show us in writing where it says the chair does not have to be a delegate,” said Cheryl Davila.

    Christina Huggins overruled them and presided as the self-appointed chair.

    Christina Huggins is a leader of the “PROTECTORS” group — the “Huggins Faction” — which, on KPFA’s Local Station Board (LSB), represents the station’s power clique and management. Although Huggins was a former board member, and was again elected for a term beginning in December 2024, she was not a delegate at the time of this session.  Her group has a 2/3rds majority which enables them to set the agenda, and this was what they set for this day in November 2024.  So we see the majority putting two members of the minority on trial, a “disciplinary hearing,” Christina Huggins called it.

    Defendant Elizabeth Milos is a Chilean-American, a Spanish/English medical interpreter in her day job.  She’s also a labor and human rights activist.  Her co-defendant Steve Zeltzer is the host of Work Week Radio.  Both are affiliated with the RESCUE PACIFICA group, which advocates keeping the Pacifica network intact and preserving its seventy-five year antiwar tradition.

    The “trial” was ostensibly about an incident on July 31, 2024, where the defendants, Elizabeth Milos and Steve Zeltzer, held a speak-out in front of the KPFA studio in Berkeley.  KPFA’s Business Manager Maria Negret came out of the building and angrily confronted them.  Steve Zeltzer inadvertently touched Maria Negret’s hand — hence a charge of “assault and battery.”

    “He’s lucky he didn’t do it to me,” growled board member Fred Dodsworth, who played the role of “Prosecutor.”  Fred describes himself as “Loud and Proud,” and he certainly is loud, egotistical, and takes himself very, very seriously. Fred Dodsworth was perfectly cast for a leading role in this sort of thing. His mission was to seek justice for the supposed “victim,” Business Manager Maria Negret — who was not present.

    Steve Zeltzer and Elizabeth Milos had requested that Maria Negret be there as a witness.  And Jim Lafferty, attorney for the defendants, asked why Maria was not present at this hearing?

    “She’s not the accuser,” said Christina Huggins, the self-appointed chair.

    “But she filed a police complaint,” the defense attorney reminded the chair. “She filed a police complaint of assault and battery, which is a charge against one of these people.  And yet, she’s not relevant for today?”

    The chair seemed unable to give a satisfactory  explanation for Maria’s absence.  It appeared that Maria Negret did not wish to accuse Steve Zeltzer in a hearing where she could be cross examined.

    There was a police report, and Dodsworth flashed it on the screen.  But only the seal of the Berkeley Police Department was seen.  The contents could not be shown, because, Dodsworth told the hearing, “The actual police report stipulates that it is not for distribution.”

    Not for distribution?  Strange.  We had obtained a copy of the police report — presumably the same one mentioned by Dodsworth.  It did not even contain the name of the suspect or a description of the “assault.”

    What Dodsworth did have was a video of the July 31st incident.  But it was actually more embarrassing to Maria Negret than to Steve and Elizabeth.  In it we see Maria with her hands on her hips, aggressively yelling and scolding.  And the assault?  The video doesn’t show it, not until you slow it down to frame by frame, and finally there is a frame where for a microsecond Steve touches Maria’s hand.  That was the evidence of the supposed “assault and battery” on which Dodsworth based his case.

    “Yeah, we’ve been told this was an assault and battery,” said board member Anthony Fest.  “If this really was an assault, why didn’t you contact the DA’s office and request that they prosecute Steve Zeltzer?  Most likely because you wouldn’t want to be laughed at — a fraction of a second of inadvertent contact when the business manager was actually the initiator of the confrontation.”

    “If this is assault and battery, then every time I’ve gotten on BART at rush hour, I’ve been assaulted and battered,” said another LSB member, James McFadden. “I was most amused by the prosecutor’s comment that if Zeltzer had done that to him, he would have –, and then didn’t finish his sentence.  He would have what?  Assaulted and battered Zeltzer?”

    Undaunted, “Prosecutor” Dodsworth bravely and resolutely launched into presenting his case.  This was Fred Dodsworth’s hour upon the stage, and all eyes were on him as he spoke:

    “The evidence against Mr. Zeltzer is undeniable.  You saw it with your own eyes. . . . This was no accidental contact. This was no inadvertent brush. This was an attempt to wrest control of her body from herself.”

    And reminding us that Maria Negret is a Latina, Dodsworth added, with righteous indignation, “There’s additional significance when this action is taken against a woman of color.”

    “Excuse me,” Elizabeth Milos interrupted him. “There’s a point of order.”

    And this is where we learned that while presenting his case against Steve Zeltzer, Prosecutor Dodsworth had kicked delegate Cheryl Davila — the only black woman in this Zoom session — out of the meeting.

    “I’m talking. Shut up!” Dodsworth barked.

    The not easily silenced Elizabeth Milos spoke again, “One of our members, Cheryl Davila is not being allowed in.”

    “You’re out of order!” the self-appointed chair upheld the prosecutor.

    Prosecutor Dodsworth continued his speech, explaining that to excuse Steve Zeltzer “would be a betrayal of the values we stand for and erode that trust KPFA has built within staff and community, particularly among women and people of color.”

    Elizabeth Milos and Steve Zeltzer continued to raise their voices. “Cheryl Davila, who is a black, the only black board member of the KPFA Local Station Board, has been excluded!” Steve said.

    “You’re out of order, Mr. Zeltzer,” said the self-appointed chair.

    Eventually Cheryl Davila was readmitted to the meeting. After returning, Cheryl said: “Dodsworth has disrespected me on numerous occasions . . ., and today I was kicked out of the meeting. Wasn’t let back in for some time. I don’t even know why I was kicked out.  . . . It is a kangaroo court.  You guys make the rules, and we have to go by them.”

    Unlike courtroom dramas and other events that take place in a physical room or hall, this was a Zoom session where everyone except the speaker is muted, and laughter, gasps, jeers, boos, and applause were not heard.  But the attending board members were allowed brief comments.

    Since Dodsworth was making such an issue of respect for KPFA employees and staff, particularly those of color, Donna Carter and I reminded him of the time he wrongfully criticized KPFA journalist Frank Sterling who was arrested by the Antioch police.  Frank Sterling is a Native American; he won his case, and a financial settlement from the police.

    Pausing in his prosecution, Fred Dodsworth took time to reiterate his attack on the KPFA journalist.  “Mr. Sterling did not behave as a reporter,” said Dodsworth.  “He behaved as an activist.”

    Frank Sterling had stepped in to prevent a woman from being beaten.  Many journalists have done that in various ways. Amy Goodman, Gary Webb, Norman Solomon, among them. Frank Sterling is a journalist and he is an activist. That is very much in the KPFA tradition.

    Defense Attorney Jim Lafferty said this earlier in this session, but it fits here: “Having been a long time admirer of this radio station, to be present at this, … and to observe it taking place is truly sad to me. It has no resemblance to due process. An Alice in Wonderland trial would be an improvement… This hearing is … a shamefully obvious political move on the part of a majority of this board, to get rid of some people whose opinions annoy them.”

    The opinions of Steve Zeltzer and Elizabeth Milos were indeed annoying to the “Protector” group.  Steve told the hearing;

    “The [July 31st event] was about the monitorship of Pacifica. And this monitorship was brought about actually because members of this KPFA Station Board went to the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] and called on the FCC to take away the license of WBAI. Now I think that’s a betrayal of the interests of Pacifica.

    “They did that. They continue to support that.  And now that monitorship means that a new FCC Chairman appointed by the President Trump could immediately shut down Pacifica because it’s already under monitorship.”

    How the Trump Administration may handle the monitorship (“Consent Decree”) remains to be seen.  But there are also other threats on the horizon. Congress is currently working on bipartisan legislation to crack down on alternative media.

    Co-defendant Elizabeth Milos, the only witness of the July 31 incident present at this hearing, was charged with two offenses.  The first was: “making inaccurate statements in a public meeting about the alleged assault and battery.”

    Elizabeth Milos had publicly refuted the accusation.  And now at this hearing Elizabeth said, “The video proves the fact that it was not [Steve Zeltzer’s] intention to grab anybody.” Thus, by disputing Fred Dodsworth’s dubious version, Elizabeth had, in Dodsworth’s view, obviously committed a truly heinous offense.

    The second charge went to the heart of the matter.  Elizabeth had criticized the station’s Business Manager Maria Negret.  That is, Elizabeth had found documents showing that during a lawsuit by former Pacifica Executive Director John Vernile against the Pacifica Foundation, Maria Negret presented a deposition on behalf of the opposing side.  And Christina Huggins had shared confidential information with the opposing counsel.  That lawsuit cost KPFA $305,000.

    “I have been involved in exposing this fraud.” Elizabeth Milos told the hearing that she’d shown Maria Negret’s publicly available deposition.  “That would most likely be part of the reason why I’m being silenced,” Elizabeth said, and added, “I again object for the record that your Christina Huggins is not [currently] a delegate and also has serious conflict of interest.”

    Prosecutor Dodsworth didn’t actually dispute Elizabeth’s allegations against Maria Negret and Christina Huggins. He and Huggins only stipulated that such matters should be discussed in only closed sessions of the LSB.  Well, they had a point there.  The board should be able to discuss and resolve personnel issues in executive sessions.  Unfortunately, it’s impossible to discuss such issues with this board dominated by the offenders — the “Protector” group.  Only one point of view is allowed.

    And that leads directly to what this “trial” was really about — the role of the Local Station Board. The Rescue Pacifica group, with which Elizabeth and Steve are affiliated, assert that there are times when board members need to ask questions.  The above mentioned issues should concern the LSB.  Another example, one from January 2020: when it was discovered that property taxes hadn’t been paid on the KPFA’s studio for six years, and the Alameda County tax office was about to seize the building and auction it off to collect the unpaid taxes, it was proper for the board to be asking the station’s general manager how that happened.  In fact, according to Pacifica Bylaws, the LSB is required to do a yearly evaluation of the station’s manager, but that hasn’t been done for over seven years now. The “Protector” group, who have a board majority, have prevented those evaluations.

    The “Protector” group sees it as its job to protect the station’s management from the embarrassing questions that the Rescue Pacifica people ask. Protector Sherry Gendelman said at this hearing: “Oversight of employees is not the role of the LSB.”

    “We should not interfere with the operation or the employees at the station at any time,” Gendelman stated specifically. Which is a an interesting comment coming from the person who petitioned the FCC to investigate WBAI, the Pacifica station in New York.  Before that “Protectors” were involved in the month-long takeover of the NY station in 2019.  There certainly are problems at WBAI, but the Protectors’ “solutions” have done more to sabotage than to help the New York station.

    The differences between the two groups do seem irreconcilable.  Rescue Pacifica struggles to preserve the network and its antiwar programming, while the Protectors group supports a management clique that gives nine hours of KPFA’s airtime each week to Ian Masters, a show host who attacked Mumia Abu Jamal, and who promotes a pro-military vision for our country.  This struggle has gone on for years, with people looking to find common ground — which is hard to find.

    In the midst of this day’s turmoil, Defense Attorney Jim Lafferty, who is a former general manager of KPFK in Los Angeles, expressed a plea for unity and warned of the danger:

    “One of the reasons why I’m so utterly appalled by having to be here today is because Pacific has enemies!”  For God’s sakes, not Steve and Elizabeth!  No, our enemies. My enemies, your enemies. . . . They are, of course, those who are about to rule this country — who in Project 2025 spell out that they want to shut down this entire network. And yet, here we sit, doing what we’re doing today,” Jim Lafferty said.  “Have we all lost our minds?”

    “Well, I simply want to then say that I plead with all of us to remember that we’re comrades,” Jim Lafferty continued.  “And that we please can get back to the business that we should be at, because otherwise the bright future of this station is going to be removed from us.  In fact, the whole damn thing is going to be removed!”

    Two of  the “Protectors” broke ranks and voted against the suspension, but we don’t know who they were, because the ballots — like everything else in the meeting — were secret.  And there were two Protectors who did not attend this session.  Nevertheless, Dodsworth, Huggins and their crew still had a simple majority which found Elizabeth Milos and Steve Zeltzer “guilty” of all charges and suspended them from the LSB for eighteen months.  (To fully remove them from the board would’ve required a 2/3rds vote.)

    What we saw that November day was a power grab, rather crude and even clumsy, but nevertheless very effective. Board members elected by the listeners were removed by the majority faction.  Who’s next?  It could be anyone who raises uncomfortable issues.  It’s sad and discouraging to see this happening at KPFA 94.1 FM, which for so many years has been a source of information, music, inspiration, encouragement and sense of community.

    But what does this mean for KPFA listeners who may not take much interest in the details of board politics?

    Just this: the ones who run the show are the ones who determine the programming.  While many excellent shows remain, in recent years we’ve seen a drift towards echoing the corporate media and security state propaganda, promoting or at least soft peddling empire’s talking points.

    While following events in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere, we need to watch and take care of what’s happening under our noses, on the air and in the cyberspace where we live, at our community radio station.

    *****
    The quotations in the above account are from a transcript of the KPFA LSB executive session of Nov 16, 2024.  It’s long, but I strongly recommend reading it.

    The post A Progressive Radio Station Purges 2 Elected Board Members first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Fiji quota proposal sparks debate on women’s representation in politics

    COMMENTARY: By Monika Singh

    The lack of women representation in parliaments across the world remains a vexed and contentious issue.

    In Fiji, this problem has again surfaced for debate in response to Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica’s call for a quota system to increase women’s representation in Parliament.

    Kamikamica was speaking at the “Capacity Building Training for Prospective Women and Youth Candidates in Local Elections” workshop in Suva in November last year.

    USP postgraduate student in sociology, Lovelyn Laurelle Giva-Tuke
    USP postgraduate student in sociology, Lovelyn Laurelle Giva-Tuke . . . she advocates a holistic approach encompassing financial assistance and specific legislation to address violence against women in politics. Image: Wansolwara

    The workshop was organised by Suva-based civil society organisation, Dialogue Fiji, in collaboration with Emily’s List Australia and funded by Misereor.

    Kamikamica noted that women’s representation in Fiji’s Parliament peaked at 20 percent in 2018, only to drop to 14 percent after the 2022 elections.

    He highlighted what he saw as an anomaly — 238,389 women voted in the 2022 election, surpassing men’s turnout.

    However, women candidates garnered only 37,252 votes, accounting for just 8 percent of the total votes cast. This saw only six out of 54 female candidates elected to Parliament.

    Reducing financial barriers
    He said implementing supportive policies and initiatives, such as reducing financial barriers to running for office and providing childcare support could address some of the structural challenges faced by aspiring female leaders.

    While agreeing with Kamikamica’s supportive remarks, Suva-based lawyer and former journalist Sainiana Radrodro called for urgent and concrete actions to empower aspiring women candidates besides just discussions.

    She identified finance, societal norms and more recently, bullying on social media, as major obstacles for women aspiring for political careers. She said measures to address these problems were either insufficient, or non-existent.

    Radrodro, who participated in the 2024 Women’s “Mock Parliament”, supports a quota system, but only as a temporary special measure (TSM). TSM is designed to advance gender equality by addressing structural, social, and cultural barriers, correcting past and present discrimination, and compensating for harm and inequalities.

    The lawyer said that TSM could be a useful tool if applied in a measured way, noting that countries that rushed into implementing it faced a backlash due to poor advocacy and public understanding.

    She recommends TSM based on prior and proper dialogue and awareness to ensure that women elected through such measures are not marginalised or stereotyped as having “ridden on the back of government policies”.

    She said with women comprising half of the national population, it was sensible to have proportional representation in Parliament.

    Social media attacks
    While she agreed with Kamikamica that finance remained a significant obstacle for Fijian women seeking public office, she stated that non-financial barriers, such as attacks on social media, should not be overlooked.

    To level the playing field, Radrodro’s suggestions include government subsidies for women candidates, similar to the support provided to farmers and small businesses.

    “This would signal a genuine commitment by the government to foster women’s participation in the legislature,” she said.

    Radrodro’s views were echoed by the University of the South Pacific postgraduate student in sociology, Lovelyn Laurelle Giva-Tuke.

    She advocates a holistic approach encompassing financial assistance, specific legislation to address violence against women in political contexts; capacity-building programs to equip women with leadership, campaigning, and public speaking skills; and measures to ensure fair and equitable media coverage, rather than stereotyped and discriminatory coverage.

    Giva-Tuke emphasised that society as a whole stand to benefit from a gender balanced political establishment. This was also highlighted by Kamikamica in his address. He cited research showing that women leaders tended to prioritise healthcare, education, and social welfare.

    While there is no disagreement about the problem, and the needs to address it, Giva-Tuke, like Radrodro, believes that discussions and ideas must translate into action.

    “As a nation, we can and must do more to create an inclusive political landscape that values women’s contributions at every level,” she said.

    Protection another hurdle
    For Radrodro, one of the most urgent and unaddressed problems is the targeting of women with harmful social media content, which is rampant and unchecked in Fiji.

    “There is a very high level of attacks against women on social media even from women against other women. These raises reservations in potential women candidates who now have another hurdle to cross.”

    Radrodro said a lot of women were simply terrified of being abused online and having their lives splashed across social media, which was also harmful for their children and families.

    She said it was disheartening to see the lack of consistent support from leaders when women politicians faced personal attacks.

    She called for stronger policies and enforcement to curb online harassment, urging national leaders to take a stand against such behavior.

    Another female rights campaigner, the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement executive director Nalini Singh, called for stronger and more effective collaboration between stakeholders — communal groups, women’s groups, local government departments, political parties and the Fijian Elections Office.

    Singh highlighted the need for a major educational campaign to change the mindsets with gender sensitisation programs targeting communities. She also recommended increased civic education and awareness of government structures and electoral systems.

    Temporary law changes
    While she supported reserved parliamentary seats for women, Singh said temporary changes in laws or regulations to eliminate systemic barriers and promote gender equality were also needed.

    Singh also highlighted the importance of bridging the generational gaps between older women who have worked in local government, and young women with an interest in joining the political space by establishment of mentoring programmes.

    She said mandating specific changes or participation levels within a defined timeframe and advocacy and awareness campaigns targeted at changing societal attitudes and promoting the inclusion of underrepresented groups were other options.

    “These are just some ways or strategies to help increase representation of women in leadership spaces, especially their participation in politics,” said Singh.

    The views of women such as Sainiana Radrodro, Lovelyn Laurelle Giva-Tuke and Nalini Singh indicate not just what needs to be done to address this problem, but also how little has actually been done.

    On his part, Kamikamica has said all the right things, demonstrating a good understanding of the weaknesses in the system. What is lacking is the application of these ideas and sentiments in a real and practical sense.

    Unless this is done, the ideas will remain just that — ideas.

    Monika Singh is a teaching assistant with The University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme and the supervising editor of the student newspaper Wansolwara. This article is first published by The Fiji Times and is republished here as part of a collaboration between USP Journalism and Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • India’s Free Library Movement Counters Caste Discrimination

    Outside the Khirki branch of Delhi’s Community Library Project, a signboard details the day’s programs, including scheduled story times and art activities. Children bounce and buzz as they wait in line to check out their books. Patrons take advantage of clean public bathrooms, drinking water (in short supply in many of Delhi’s unplanned communities) and internet-connected laptops. This library feels more like my home Windsor Terrace branch of the Brooklyn Public Library than it does the Delhi Public Library a few kilometers away. The biggest difference?

    The post India’s Free Library Movement Counters Caste Discrimination appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Over 120 House Democrats Urge Biden to Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment

    With weeks to go until President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office with a Republican trifecta in the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, more that 120 Democratic lawmakers on Sunday called on President Joe Biden to take a crucial step toward protecting millions of Americans from Trump’s far-right MAGA agenda by ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA was passed by…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • FIFA is Whitewashing and Sportswashing Israeli Genocide and Sporticide

    Israel ‘Defense’ Forces, with unconditional support of the United States, have been waging a genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, resulting in an unparalleled humanitarian catastrophe. They dropped over 85,000 tons of bombs, exceeding the amount of explosives used in World War II.

    More than 44,000 Palestinian have been killed, including over 16,000 children, 190 journalists, 1,000 health workers, 230 United Nations staff members and many others. Over 104,000 are wounded – most of them children and women – while at least 11,000 are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes.

    As part of its genocide, Israel is also committing sporticide, killing more than 500 Palestinian athletes, including over 344 footballers. Two of them were on the Palestinian National Team, including Mohamed Barakat, the first Palestinian to score over 100 goals professionally. Israel also jailed footballers, referees, and club owners.

    Israel’s air strikes in Gaza have resulted in extensive destruction of stadiums and, sports facilities in Gaza and the West Bank. They turned football stadiums into concentration camps where they detain and humiliate thousands of Palestinians who are paraded almost naked on television screens.

    Thus, the Al Yarmouk stadium was turned into a makeshift concentration camp for Palestinian detainees. Men, women and children were rounded up, stripped down to their underwear, and blindfolded, while armed soldiers and tanks encircled the field. Blindfolded men and women were forced to kneel in front of a goal with the Israeli flag attached to the net.

    Israel allows football clubs based in illegal settlements in West Bank to compete in official Israeli leagues in violation of international law. In the occupied Jerusalem they mounted a violent attack on the headquarters of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA).

    In Apartheid Israel, sports is rampant with racism and dehumanization of Palestinians. At an Israeli match, a banner is displayed saying the lives of Palestinian children are worth nothing. Israeli football fans’ favorite anthem is “Death to the Arabs!” Such practices were noticed when Israeli team was playing in Netherland

    At the same time, Palestinian football teams, including the national team, are denied freedom of movement between the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza. They are prevented from joining the national team in regional and international matches.

    Detentions and restrictions on movement force the Palestine Football Association (PFA) to suspend football leagues in Palestine, while it hinders setting up camps for the national team abroad to participate in FIFA World Cup qualifiers.

    While FIFA allows Israeli football clubs based in illegal settlements in the West Bank to compete in official Israeli leagues, the sports body has failed to take action against Israel for its inclusion of these illegal teams in its official leagues, and for its attacks on Palestinian football. It is sportswashing Israel’s decades of forced displacement of Palestinians, its apartheid regime and its genocide against Palestinians. It is thus complicit in Israel’s breach of international law, while continuing to shield Israel’s decades-old regime of apartheid, and now genocide, from accountability.

    Actually, FIFA is violating its own statute which states that discrimination of any kind against a country, a person or group on account of race, color, ethnicity, nationality, social origin, gender, disability, language, religion, political opinion, or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.

    FIFA member associations and their clubs are not allowed to play on the territory of another member association without the latter’s approval. Yet FIFA allows Israeli sports clubs based in illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land to play in its official leagues. This is despite the International Court of Justice ruling that the settlements are illegal and a war crime.

    FIFA allows outright racism and dehumanization in Israeli sports. This happened when mobs of racist, genocide-inciting Israeli football fans went on a violent rampage in Amsterdam. They stole Palestinian flags from private buildings, burned them, while chanting racist slogans, and attacked people appearing to be Arab in the streets.

    And so we see global calls on FIFA to ban Israel. Such calls came, for example, from the 47-member Asian Football Confederation, as well as a petition that gathered over one million signatures. Almost 60 rights groups accused FIFA of applying “a different yardstick to Israeli actions,” undermining its credibility and exposing it “to allegations of political bias and hypocrisy.”

    The protestors included Human Rights Watch, UN Special Adviser on Sport, 66 members of European Parliament, 38 British MPs, 41 Danish MPs, and 30 Swiss MPs. They all called upon FIFA to exclude Israeli team from illegal settlements.

    ‘The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025’ ran a petition that gathered more than 112,000 signatures, calling for an immediate suspension of Israel from all international sports “until it fully complies with international law and sports regulations.” In Palestine itself 174 sports clubs wrote a letter calling on FIFA to suspend the Israel Football Federation (IFF).

    A report presented to FIFA by FairSquare, a human rights organization, said there were numerous grounds to expel the IFA, such as “the holding of matches in occupied Palestinian territory, systematic racial discrimination, Israel’s killing of Palestinian players and the systematic destruction of PFA facilities.” Most of these have been taking place well before 7 October 2023, the report asserted.

    In March 2024, PFA submitted a draft resolution, supported by six member associations, calling for FIFA to hold Israel accountable for sports rights and human rights violations against Palestinians. The resolution was to be tabled before the FIFA Congress scheduled to take place in Thailand in May.

    At the time PFA president, Jibril Rajoub, told the Congress:

    “For 15 years we have consistently raised the same concerns with FIFA, only to see them repeatedly deferred from one Congress to another, from one committee to the next. Now, as our football faces the same existential threat as our Palestinian people, FIFA must make a choice either to passively stand by, or uphold its core values and human rights obligations, and stand firmly on the right side of history.”

    Rajoub made a passionate plea to the delegates from 211 member associations to vote for suspension of Israel from FIFA, adding: “The suffering of millions of Palestinians, including thousands of footballers, deserves as much. If not now, then when? The ball is in your court.”

    In response to Rajoub’s submission, FIFA ordered an “urgent and independent” legal assessment, promising to table it for voting at an extraordinary meeting of its council in July. It didn’t happen. Instead, FIFA said the assessment would be presented to its next council meeting in August. The vote was again rescheduled to October.

    But when FIFA met in Zurich on 3rd October it once again postponed the decision to ban Israel. This time it said its disciplinary committee will “review the allegations of discrimination” raised by the PFA. Thus FIFA has repeatedly delayed taking action, procrastinating the vote, and shielding Israel from accountability.

    One wonders what “legal assessment” FIFA is seeking. Back in 2016 Wilfried Lemke, then UN special adviser on sport for development and peace, wrote to FIFA stating that the UN regards Israeli settlements, and by extension Israeli football teams that play in them, to be “illegal under international law”. He thus urged FIFA to suspend the IFA.

    Actually, what was done clandestinely became evident when, on 5 May 2024, prior to the FIFA Congress in Bangkok, an Israeli news outlet YNet reported that, “the Israeli military is working around the clock with the aim of arriving as prepared as possible and torpedoing the initiative of the Palestinian Association, which has already succeeded twice – in 2015 and 2017 – in raising the Israeli issue for discussion.”

    The report stated that legal advisors of the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, and ministry of culture and sports plus the IFA Chairman, were among the members of a WhatsApp group formed, calling itself “remaining in FIFA”.

    Under these circumstances, In May 2024, the Israeli Foreign Minister threatened to imprison Rajoub, and revoke his travel pass. The minister published a statement in social media, saying:

    “Jibril Rajoub, a terrorist in a suit who openly supported Hamas’s crimes, is working around the clock to get Israel removed from the international soccer association. We will work to thwart his plans, and if he doesn’t stop—we will imprison him.”

    And so, in June 2024, Australian authorities denied Rajoub a visa to enter the country, when Palestine was set to play Australia in a World Cup qualifier. And while returning home from Paris 2024 Olympic Games in August, Israeli forces detained Rajoub as he was entering Palestine at the Karama crossing with Jordan. They confiscated his passport, searched him, and handed him a summons for interrogation.

    FIFA’s double standard becomes unambiguous when we consider that sanction was imposed on Russia immediately after its forces invaded Ukraine. FIFA took stern and strict measures against Russia without vacillating, suspending it from all competitions. On the other hand, FIFA turns a blind eye and refuses to hold Israel accountable for it decades long record of war crimes against Palestinians.

    Thus, FIFA invents lame excuses, allowing Israel to participate freely in international competitions. Israel is not held accountable for it decades of military occupation, illegal settlements and grave crimes against Palestinians, including genocide. FIFA refrains from applying the same sanction on Israel that it has done in the case of Russia.

    Rather than following its principles, FIFA kowtows to the West’s blatant hypocrisy and double standards.

    The post FIFA is Whitewashing and Sportswashing Israeli Genocide and Sporticide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Media Finally Reports that Many Canadians Oppose NATO


    A large raucous protest put criticism of Canada’s most damaging international accord back on the public radar.

    In response to the opening of North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 70th anniversary Parliamentary Assembly in Montreal 1,500 protested Friday to “Block NATO”. The main banner at the front of the night march stated: “Block NATO: Reject Militarism, Imperialism & Colonialism”. For weeks my neighbourhood was plastered with posters saying “Bloquons L’OTAN”. The Convergence des Luttes anti-capitaliste (CLAC) also produced a sticker with that message and a 16-page anti-NATO paper.

    The image at the centre of their material was a boot stepping on NATO. That image, CLAC’s militant history, starting the march at night and a large student strike led to a raucous march. Some protesters probably intended to break windows at the convention centre hosting the NATO meeting. The police initially blamed protesters for setting fires in two cars but it appears tear gas canisters fired by the police were responsible. They must have fired many canisters as I tasted tear gas two blocks away from where the conflict escalated. Beyond the chemical irritants ingested by protesters and passersby, the police injured a handful of protesters.

    While I’ve generally been opposed or ambivalent towards property destruction at demonstrations, Friday’s window breaking drew significant attention to a message rarely heard in recent years. A Radio Canada headline after the night march read “Une manifestation pour le retrait du Canada de l’OTAN dégénère à Montréal” (A demonstration calling for Canada’s withdrawal from NATO degenerates in Montreal) while La Presse noted, “Une manifestation contre l’OTAN dérape au centre-ville de Montréal” (Anti-NATO demonstration goes off the rails in downtown Montreal). The Associated Press, Reuters, Aljazeera and other international media reported on the protests.

    The Mouvement québécois pour la paix’s march planned for the next day received significant coverage. About 150 marched against the NATO Parliamentary Assembly on Saturday with a L’actualité headline noting “Une autre manifestation contre l’OTAN a eu lieu samedi” (Another demonstration against NATO took place on Saturday) and Global News stating, “Anti-NATO protesters in Montreal demand Canada withdraws from alliance”. The Globe and Mail, New York Post and many other outlets published stories about the NATO Assembly with photographs of banners or placards criticizing NATO.

    On Sunday multiple media showed up to the counter summit organized by the Canada Wide Peace and Justice Network. Radio Canada’s flagship Téléjournal covered it with their blurb stating, “Demonstrations in opposition to NATO were numerous this weekend on the sidelines of its annual summit in Montreal. Several groups believe the Atlantic Alliance harms global security instead of strengthening it and urge Canada to leave NATO.”

    The media attention is important. Despite the alliance being mentioned regularly, there’s almost no hint of criticism of NATO in the dominant media.

    The scale and militancy of the protests was due to the fact they coincided with a major student strike for Palestine. Over 40 associations representing 85,000 students across Quebec voted to strike on Thursday and Friday to call on their institutions to end all relations with Israel. Many condemned NATO assistance for Israel and an Israeli delegation led by genocidal Likud Knesset member Boaz Bismuth at the Parliamentary Assembly. Israel has a longstanding partnership with the alliance.

    Student strikers targeting NATO is an indication that the popular uprising against Israel’s genocide may be broadening its outlook towards challenging Canadian foreign policy and imperialism. Canada’s support for Israeli violence makes a mockery of Ottawa’s claims to advance human rights or international law. Is it believable that genocide Justin and Joe truly care about Ukrainian sovereignty or people?

    One needn’t support Russian militarism to be troubled by NATO’s escalation. Providing logistical and intelligence support for Ukraine to fire NATO missiles deep into Russia is dangerous brinkmanship.

    NATO is a belligerent alliance pushing Canada to increase its military spending. This weekend’s protests may not have “blocked NATO” but they definitely thrust opposition to the alliance into the spotlight.

    The post Media Finally Reports that Many Canadians Oppose NATO first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Maori MPs Perform War Chant in Parliament

    Maori MPs perform war chant in parliament (VIDEO)Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke performs a Haka in parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, November 14, 2024 ©  X / @StrayDogNZ

    New Zealand’s parliament was suspended on Thursday after lawmakers from the Maori Party tore up a copy of a controversial bill on tribal rights and performed a traditional war chant in the legislature.

    For nearly two centuries, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi has guided relations between New Zealand’s native Maori people and its white settlers. The treaty promised the natives that they would keep their lands and customs in exchange for accepting British rule, and has since been interpreted by parliament and courts to guarantee the Maori a broad range of rights – including hiring quotas and financial reparations.

    The libertarian ACT party, part of the country’s governing coalition, has argued that that the treaty discriminates against non-Maori people, and has put forward a bill that would dramatically narrow its interpretation.

    During a vote on the bill on Thursday, Maori Party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke tore up a copy of the legislation before breaking into a Haka, a traditional Maori war chant. Maipi-Clarke’s colleagues rose from their seats and joined in the chant, as did opposition lawmakers and spectators in the gallery.

    Unable to quiet the shouting MPs, Speaker Gerry Brownlee cut the hearing short and suspended Maipi-Clarke from parliament for a day.

    Despite the Maori Party’s opposition, the vote passed and the bill will now proceed to a public consultation process. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon opposed the bill, but his National Party voted to support it under the terms of an agreement signed with ACT last year. The National Party is the largest faction in New Zealand’s coalition government, with ACT and New Zealand First serving as junior partners.

    Thursday was not the first time that Maori Party MPs have broken into Hakas in parliament. Back in 2021, party co-leader Rawiri Waititi was ejected from the legislature for performing the ceremonial chant after a National Party MP argued that implementing a separate healthcare system for the Maori community was discriminatory.

    The post Maori MPs Perform War Chant in Parliament first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Artificial Intelligence in Denmark’s Welfare System – Mass Surveillance and Risks of Discrimination


    This content originally appeared on Amnesty International and was authored by Amnesty International.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russia threatens EU country with racism lawsuit

    Russia threatens EU country with racism lawsuit Closeup of the Latvian flag hanging above the AB dam in Riga – stock photo © Getty Images

    Russia has threatened to file a lawsuit against Latvia in the UN International Court of Justice for allegedly racially discriminating against its Russian-speaking population, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced on Wednesday. Ethnic Russians make up nearly a quarter of the country’s population.

    Speaking at a press briefing, Zakharova claimed that Russophobia had reached “a qualitatively new level, particularly in the Baltics” and that Moscow would seek to take “offensive actions to hold accountable states that violate their international obligations in the area of eliminating all forms of racial discrimination.”

    Moscow has already filed pre-trial claims against Riga for its failure to comply with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965, Zakharova noted.

    “We are talking about open discrimination against Russians, the glorification of Nazism, which are systemic in nature, and part of the targeted state policy of the Latvian authorities,” she explained.

    She specified that these Russophobic policies are expressed in the disadvantaged status of non-citizens, the ban on education in Russian and its exclusion from all spheres of public life, the persecution of those who fought against Nazism – namely veterans of World War II – Riga’s attempts to erase the historical memory of the fight against Nazism, allowing annual marches of Latvian SS veterans, and the glorification of Nazi criminals. 

    “In order to hold Latvia accountable internationally for these violations, the Russian Federation has invoked the official dispute resolution procedure under Article 22 of the Convention,” Zakharova said, adding that Latvia will have to answer to the UN-based International Court of Justice if it continues to violate provisions against racial discrimination.

    Since the escalation of the Ukraine crisis in 2022, relations between Russia and the Baltic states have significantly deteriorated. Latvia in particular has introduced a number of restrictions on Russian citizens.

    These have included amendments to the country’s migration laws that make it more difficult for Russians to obtain extended residence permits, as well as extensive bans on the use of the Russian language – the second-most spoken language in the country – in nearly all spheres of life.

    Earlier this year, one activist was even sentenced to three years in prison for displaying pro-Russian flags in her windows, while the Latvian National Theater has imposed a blanket moratorium on any performances in Russian.

    The post Russia threatens EU country with racism lawsuit first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Pope Francis visits Indonesia as religious minorities in the country face widespread discrimination


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Non-binding Democracy

    Roma fleeing the war in Ukraine on April 13, 2022 in front of the Main Railway Station in Prague (PHOTO: Richard Samko)

    Historically it has turned out that Roma occupy the position of outcast almost in all countries where they live. From 2005 to 2015 twelve countries of Central and Eastern Europe took part in the project aimed at improving the socio-economic status and social inclusion of the Romani people, but in the end the goals were not achieved. Currently, there are Roma integration strategies in many countries, but the nation continues to be persecuted in almost all spheres of life. Noteworthy is that Ukraine, which has been enjoying the status of a victim for a long time and which demands the world to provide it with all possible support, is not an exception.

    Thus, according to Equal Right Trust, the Roma are the most discriminated ethnic group living in Ukraine. Romani people are being abused not only by ordinary citizens of the country but also by law enforcement agencies. The Ukrainian police ignore any cases concerning humiliation and violence against the Roma.  Striking examples of this are the murder of the leader of one of the ethnic communities, Mykola Kaspitsky, and the numerous attacks of local radicals on Roma families, to which local authorities have repeatedly turned a blind eye. In 2019, the international human rights organization Amnesty International expressed its outrage at the actions of nationalists in Kyiv in 2018.  Then, the members of the far-right group (now it is one of the elite military units of C14) attacked a Roma camp in Lysa Hora park. Armed with knives and hammers, they burned down tents in the camp and chased out men, women, and children residents. The Ukrainian authorities didn’t react to this incident and its participants remained unpunished.

    Since that time situation hasn’t changed much. Before the Russian invasion there were about 400,000 Roma living in Ukraine, but the war, lack of access to employment, education as well as high level of poverty and persistent discrimination by the Ukrainians forced many Roma to leave the country. The attitude of the Ukrainians towards the national minority hasn’t changed even when many Romani representatives voluntarily went to the front to defend the state which they, in spite of everything, consider their homeland. Even high-ranking representatives of Ukraine don’t hide their dismissive and arrogant attitude toward the ethnic minority. Recently, the ex-adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Victor Andrusiv, called draft dodgers who fled the country “gypsies”. It seems that the name of the Romani ethnic group in Ukraine is not used in its literal meaning but as something offensive and shameful. Just like traitors and draft dodgers, the Roma are also equated by Andrusiv with “second-class” people.

    Today, Kyiv is trying to enlist the support of its Western colleagues and demonstrating them its progress on the way to democracy. However, in reality this democracy is declarative and non-binding, and the Ukrainians continue to persecute and humiliate representatives of the “non-Ukrainian nation”.

    The post Non-binding Democracy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Discrimination against Black farmers by USDA


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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  • Black Farmers Celebrate “Historic” $2 Billion Payout for USDA Discrimination, Still Seek Debt Relief


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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  • “Historic”: Black Farmers Celebrate $2 Billion Payout for USDA Discrimination, Still Seek Debt Relief

    Seg4 farmerfarm

    We look at the historic $2 billion payout by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to farmers who experienced systemic discrimination when applying to the USDA’s farm loan programs. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has documented how USDA administrators routinely denied loans to Black farmers and other farmers of color for many decades, contributing to a massive decline in the amount of Black-owned farms in the United States. “This is a very, very historic payout for Black farmers,” says John Boyd, a fourth-generation Black farmer and founder of the National Black Farmers Association, who notes the application to receive the payout was 40 pages long. He says the group is also still fighting for a related $5 billion debt relief program. “I want people to know this is a big win, and don’t never, ever give up. The arc of justice bends slow; it bends slower for Black people, but I never gave up.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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  • The Day After the Destruction of Gaza Ends: Rehabilitating Gaza

    Nobody has stopped the 75 years of massacres of Palestinians or countered the acceleration of the massacres after Israel took advantage of a temporary high ground given by the October 7 attack. With the Palestinians awaiting the future from the present massacre in a deliberately destroyed Gaza, the New York Times solicited political pundits’ opinions of the future of Gaza. The pundits offered a variety of scenarios.

    • Israel should allow Palestinians to create a legitimate political leadership — which can take charge in the West Bank and Gaza — and empower Palestinians who pursue their freedom in ethical ways.
    • Israeli forces must withdraw all the way to the border of Gaza. As that campaign now continues, Israel, the United States and other allies in parallel must agree on the deployment of an international force drawn from NATO countries, with their deployment agreed on by Israel and the United States and operating under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council.
    • The most promising course of action, and one that has not been widely discussed, is a temporary international trusteeship under a U.N. Security Council mandate.
    • We envision a political framework of two states in a confederated association. The core concepts can be outlined as follows: two sovereign states, each with its own government but with joint mechanisms and institutions for critical shared concerns.
    • The future of Gaza — like that of the West Bank — is for Palestinians to decide. That is the essence of self-determination. The international community must not continue to place Israel first, as has been done for decades. It cannot try to seek convenient leaders as partners or try to enter yet another long-term arrangement.

    All of the proposals contain wish fulfillment and thoughts that find acceptance in much of the peace-loving world. Each contains doubts of being accepted.

    (1)    There is no transition from a war in Gaza to a rehabilitation of Gaza. There never was a war in Gaza. Israel used the October 7 attack as an excuse to accelerate its ongoing destruction of the Palestinian community.

    (2)    The killing machine that destroyed housing, government, agriculture, medical facilities, educational institutions, cultural institutions, food distribution, transportation, entire families, and left trauma in a majority of the population has been rightfully termed genocide. Will those carrying out genocide for 75 years suddenly halt the aggression and wish everyone well? Won’t the genocide continue?

    (3)    The proposals are designed to separate the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not provide sufficient living space and resources for the Palestinians and do not prevent additional Israeli encroachment on Palestinian land.

    (4)    Israel has never listened to suggestions from others and always done what it wants, no matter the crime and no matter the reactions from the United Nations, United States, and any government. Why generate proposals for a “post-war” Gaza? For whom?

    (5)    The Israeli government may seem in disarray with conflicting “good guy” and “bad guy” approaches. Don’t be fooled; the Israeli government and its Jewish citizens agree on incorporating all of the West Bank and Gaza into the stolen land and cleansing the entire area of Palestinians, which includes genocide. They differ in how to accomplish their purposes and that discussion goes on behind the scenes. The contradictory public disclosures are only window dressing to give hope to the helpless.

    (6) The same type of fraudulent “made for public” disputes between Israeli and US governments appear in the media. The US pretends to be able to keep Israel in check and Israel pretends to listen. If Israel agrees with a US suggestion, it is because Israel has a plan and they want to make it seem that the US offered it; making their “ally” look good.

    An article started with, “What can we do for the Palestinians after the genocide is over?” Not wanting to embarrass a website, its name will not be disclosed. Do people expect Israel to stop its genocide of the Palestinians? This innocence recalls the innocents of those who believed in the 2-state solution and some still do. From the day a Zionist set foot on Ottoman Palestine and, as outlined in their proposal at the 1919 Paris peace conference, the Zionists claimed all of Palestine and other territory.

    The Zionists show they will never stop adding more Palestinian lands to the already conquered and stolen lands and they test the atmosphere with murmurs of the word “annexation.” All of the two-state proposals have had confusions and contradictions that make acceptance by both sides to be impossible. What was the point of suggesting the trading of stolen land in Israel for allowing settlers to remain on stolen land in the West Bank? If Israel had available land for settlers, why send them to the West Bank and then give up land in Israel so the settlers could remain in the West Bank? Why didn’t they remain in Israel and settle there?

    The principle reason the two-state solution never had legs is because no Israeli Prime Minister wanted to go down in history as being the leader who prevented the Zionists from achieving their agenda. Knowing that and realizing the two-state solution is dead, why are there proposals for federated states, one-state, and a confederation, all of which have less probability of being accepted by Israel than the separated two states, which had zero probability.

    The reality is that the genocide persists and how to stop it is the primary issue. One scenario has Israel claiming rehabilitation of their damaged lands as first priority, for which they will assert the Gazans have responsibility, and preceding with installation of additional security, so that the remains of the massive Hamas army never again enters a few kilometers into Israel. Gazans will be herded into a smaller enclave, which will be completely surrounded by Israeli troops — probably no access to sea, no access to Egypt, and completely separated from touching Israel. Israeli military and administrative families will build communities on Gazan lands.

    Israel will control all entrances and exits to and from Gaza. Agriculture and fishing will be limited, with food importation and distribution operated by Israel authorities. Rebuilding of all demolished civic, educational, religious, medical, and cultural will be delayed and slow in forming. Look for Gazans to be living in tents for a long time. Israel’s ultra-orthodox extremists are still intent on making their Israel “Arab free,” and Gaza may provide a solution for housing some of the Arab populations from Jaffa, Beersheba, Haifa, Acre, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.

    Reports indicate Israel has already started incorporation of Gaza into a greater Israel.

    Israeli troops are fortifying a strategic corridor that carves Gaza in two, building bases, taking over civilian structures and razing homes, according to satellite imagery and other visual evidence — an effort that military analysts and Israeli experts say is part of a large-scale project to reshape the Strip and entrench the Israeli military presence there.

    This exposition on the situation in Gaza reflects an interpretation of the Zionist mind. However, the facts don’t add up to accomplishing a genocide that reduces Palestinian population to nil; demographic analysis shows that type of genocide is implausible. Unless mass extermination methods are used, diminishing a population proceeds by applying simple arithmetic ─ maintain the death and departure rate about 3-4 percent higher than the birth rate. If this is done, within twenty years, Gaza’s population will be halved. In forty years, Gaza will have less than three hundred thousand Palestinian inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of Israelis, who may not be all Jews. “If this is done” does not translate into, “This can be done.”

    Statistics indicate that the Palestinians in Gaza are the most resilient, admirable, and hardy people in the world. Despite decades of oppression, induced traumas, and physical and psychological wounds, their death rate is among the lowest and their birth rate is among the highest in the universe. They know how to handle adversity and take care of themselves and one another. The statistics tell the story.

    *The World Factbook
    **World Bank
    ***The World Factbook
    ****Highest birth rate in the world
    ****Lowest mortality rate in the world

    A surprising statistic; the Palestinians may have the highest growth rate in the world. Can Israel’s oppressive tactics reduce the Palestinian birth rate and increase the mortality rate sufficiently to cause a demographic genocide? By withholding necessary medical assistance the Palestinian birth rate might be reduced to 15/1000 population and the infant mortality rate increased to 24/1000 live births.

    Lithuania, at 15.17/1000 population, has the highest mortality rate on the planet. Why does Lithuania have the highest death rate?

    Lithuania has the highest death rate in the world mainly because of the high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and cancer. These diseases are linked to high smoking rates, unhealthy diet, and lack of physical activity. Other factors that contribute to the high death rate are alcoholism, depression, and suicide, which are influenced by the climatic, economic, and social conditions in the country.

    The Palestinians don’t have the same conditions that caused an accelerated death rate in Lithuania, especially a lack of physical activity. They spend the entire day in back breaking work and moving around just to survive. Even if their birth rate is reduced to 1.5 percent and a higher infant mortality rate reduces the living births to 1.46 percent, and the mortality rate is multiplied by six, which will give them the highest death rate in the world, the Palestinian growth rate will be only a slightly negative 0.37 percent annually. At that rate, it will take 195 years to halve the present Palestinian populations in Gaza and the West Bank. They will be around for a long time.

    What are the Zionist Jews attempting to accomplish with their deadly policies, a genocide that destroys lives, institutions, housing, government, agriculture, medical facilities, educational institutions, cultural institutions, food distribution, transportation, and entire families and never breaks the will of the Palestinians and does not reduce their numbers? Either the Israeli Jews cannot live without making the Palestinians suffer, which may be a way of translating their disturbed psyche into a mission that exalts their existence, or they have a plan, a final solution. The careless world will have to be careful. Spanish have a good expression for being careful, “ojo,” or “eye,” and pointing to an eye when saying it.

    Conclusions

    The statistics and mental ramblings lead to decisive conclusions.

    (1)    The genocide of the Palestinians is not told in numbers.

    • Article II from The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide certifies the genocide.
    • This genocide does not take life; it takes lives, preventing generations of Palestinians from satisfying their lives.
    • Causing physical deprivation, suffering from constant aggression, and mental anguish in others can be more disturbing than demographic genocide.

    (2)    The world portrays events and players upside down. Defending Hamas is depicted as being attached to terrorism and anti-Semitism. The facts indicate otherwise.

    • In finally responding to several unanswered Israeli provocations, Hamas can be blamed for the few verified atrocities committed during the October 7 attack, but these were much less than the hundreds of atrocities committed against the Palestinians and Hamas’ followers in the West Bank and Gaza. The reply to atrocities committed by US troops is usually, “During battles, atrocities often happen.” Why single out Hamas for what others are also guilty and listen to the constant harping of the October 7 attack as if it was worse and more significant than Hiroshima, September 11, and Pearl Harbor?
    • Hamas is portrayed as a corrupt, violent, terrorist, and manipulative organization that cannot administer and takes advantage of an innocent Gazan population. Reality shows the opposite. Despite constant violent attacks from Israel, Hamas has been able to sustain the morale of the Gazans, motivate them, and give them hope and life. Faced with inadequate food production, no airport or seaports, a lack of natural resources, interrupted energy, a barrier to financial markets, and limited access to the outside world, Hamas has created a society with educated, cultured, healthy, energetic, and endurable people. These are people with the highest growth rate in the world ─ they have the will to live and produce. With assistance from UNRWA, Hamas has built hospitals, schools, colleges, recreational facilities, sports arenas, and culture centers. Gazans are well housed (were well housed) with entire extended families inhabiting an apartment building. The organization has been remarkable, just the opposite from what propaganda wants us to believe.
    • The Israeli Jews are portrayed as compassionate and peace loving victims of terror. Reality shows a corrupt government that incites settler violence, engages in innumerable wars, terrorizes Palestinians, and deceives the world into accepting their destruction of the Palestinian people, just the opposite from what propaganda wants us to believe.
    • The “no holds” barred use of the anti-Semitism label to divert the public from learning the truth of the Zionist criminal actions has been clearly exposed during the last months. Seeing the success of the fraudulent anti-Semitism in gathering US domestic and government support, for Israel and intimidating college officials, leads to wondering if anti-Semitism is only a construct and was always a weapon used by the Zionists to shield the truth of irresponsible actions?  Should we reevaluate the promoted anti-Semitic charges of the Zionist past?

    For 75 years, the Israeli Jews have been oppressing Palestinians as their national sport. They wanted the land and have taken the land. They want to cleanse the land of Palestinians and have not been able to achieve that objective and there is no indication of how they can achieve it. Will Israel keep the Palestinians in captivity for eternity? Looks that way, unless the Israeli Jews, who can live well anywhere, decide to leave or decide, “Maybe we can live together with the Palestinians in a single state. Regard how obedient the Israeli Palestinian population have been.” Or, will Israel remain guided by its extremists who recite,

    Are these words from human beings? They are capable of anything. “Ojo” is the word of the day.

    You may shoot me with your words,
    You may cut me with your eyes,
    You may kill me with your hatefulness,
    But still, like air, I’ll rise.

    Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”

    The post The Day After the Destruction of Gaza Ends: Rehabilitating Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Proposed HUD Rules Would Protect Convicted Tenants From Public Housing Eviction

    Each year, approximately 600,000 people are released from state and federal prisons, immigration jails and juvenile detention facilities, but their release, while joyous, can also be fraught. The challenges faced by those who are released include finding a source of income and reestablishing contact with family and friends, but the fulcrum of successful reentry typically involves finding a safe…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Says He Will Reverse Protections for LGBTQ Kids on “Day One” If Reelected

    Former President Donald Trump said on Friday that, if he were to be reelected, he would immediately reverse a recent policy from the Biden administration which aims to provide protections for LGBTQ students under the Title IX federal civil rights law. The Biden administration’s regulation codifies a directive from the Education Department in 2021, guiding schools to interpret federal law in…

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  • Conservative States Say They Won’t Comply With Rule Against Trans Discrimination

    Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Thursday that the state would not comply with a federal regulation designed to protect the rights of transgender students in the country’s schools. On Thursday, Sanders issued an executive order affirming that Arkansas schools will continue to ban transgender students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity and prohibit teachers…

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