Right-wing politics
fromTruthout
3 days agoNo Kings Must Mean No War: Foreign Policy Is Least Democratic Space in Politics
The majority of Iranian Americans oppose the war on Iran, despite media portrayal of pro-monarchy sentiments.
Once upon a time, adding official to an announcement served a purpose. It distinguished fact from rumour, press release from pub chat. Sensible. Helpful. Civilised. But in recent years, the word has gone rogue. Nothing can simply happen anymore. It must be officially announced.
I'm concerned that all of the advances that we made for the last 61 years are going to be eradicated. Charles Mauldin, 78, one of the marchers who was beaten that day, expressed this concern about potential Supreme Court limitations on the Voting Rights Act.
If you know anything about the basic origins of Black History Month then you know that we weren't given' anything. The question of who owns and authorizes Black History Month holds particular relevance now, in its centennial year, and at a time when efforts to celebrate, preserve, and acknowledge Black people's past in this country are under attack.
In the 1980s he was known for his defense of apartheid and his criticism of the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in Pretoria, which he accused of terrorism. In 2013, five days after the death of Nelson Mandela, the great South African anti-apartheid leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he said that the media idealized his figure.
She remembers walking with her big brothers down a sidewalk fractured by the roots of old oak trees while children played hopscotch on the playground. She remembers going outside and clapping erasers together so that plumes of chalk dust rose above her head. And she remembers being told that she was attending a school that many white parents had taken their children out of just a few years earlier because they didn't want them sitting in class with Negroes.
Twelve activists linked to the Palestine Action group who were charged with breaking into the British site of an Israel-linked defence firm have been released on bail. There were tears of joy at London's Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, as the 12 prisoners, including hunger strikers Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Qesser Zuhrah and Heba Muraisi, were released on Friday.
They offered a rare window into the lives, struggles and aspirations of African Americans, and a way for me to feel connected to a community far beyond my immediate environment. Through Ebony, I was introduced to towering figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Their courage, moral clarity and commitment to justice shaped how I thought leadership and service.
In any liberal morality play, Democrats always get to be the shivering, oppressed black people, while Republicans have to play the part of Bull Connor, Birmingham, AL's racist commissioner of public safety. Except the facts are exactly the opposite. I'm sure you're bored of hearing this, but Connor was a Democrat, as were all the politicians promising "massive resistance" to racial integration. Republicans were the ones forcing Democrats to abide by federal law, along with a few John Fetterman- style Democrats.
Both Human Rights Watch and the cross-party law reform organisation Justice say recent legislative changes have created a chilling effect on lawful protest and should be repealed. Their reports, simultaneously published on Thursday, also say that proposals for more curbs should be halted. They highlight the arrest of Republic anti-monarchy protesters during King Charles's coronation, charges and arrests of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and long sentences for climate protesters as examples of the crackdown on the right to peaceful dissent.
Fifteen years ago, Egyptians from all walks of life took to the street to demand "bread, freedom, social justice." They were protesting the oppressive 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak. Egypt had been under martial law for 31 years. This meant that political opposition was silenced, and opponents were often imprisoned and tortured. Police brutality was the norm. Egypt's economy was also weak and relied heavily on foreign aid and loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Among the rebels who, on December 8, entered Damascus and put an end to almost 14 years of conflict and the Assad family regime one of the cruellest and longest-lasting in the Middle East was one who spoke Spanish with a slight Caribbean accent. Dr. Bachar Alkaderi, a graduate of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana, specializing in general and thoracic surgery, became, through the twists of fate and history, a revolutionary commander.
The word that comes to my mind is dissidence. If we want to understand why the whistleblowing, camera-wielding people of Minneapolis have caused the Trump administration-and Donald Trump himself-to flinch, I believe we need some added history, and a bigger map. What we've been watching is part of a long, established tradition-one that might help Americans unlock a different kind of future.
My new book, " On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World," is inspired by King and Hanh's friendship. These two men bonded over the shared insight that how we show up for each other matters, as does how we advocate for social change. In his sermon " Loving Your Enemies" King announced, "Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." Hanh taught: There is no way to peace, peace is the way.
King's intuition was that white people with lower incomes would support this type of policy because they could also benefit from it. In 1967, King argued, "It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income . . . which I believe will go a long, long way toward dealing with the Negro's economic problem and the economic problem with many other poor people confronting our nation."