THE RIGHT WINGS BIGGEST NEMISIS

GOP Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Abolish the Federal Reserve

AFTER THE UN

By Aaron Pan
May 19, 2024

The exterior of the Federal Reserve Board building in Washington on March 13, 2023. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has introduced legislation to end the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank responsible for managing the country’s financial and banking system.

The bill titled the “Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act” or “End the Fed” seeks to abolish the Federal Reserve System by dismantling its board of governors and the Federal Reserve banks. The legislation also aims to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, which created the Federal Reserve System in 1913.

In introducing the bill, Mr. Massie criticized the Fed’s monetary policies for record-high inflation.

“Americans are suffering under crippling inflation, and the Federal Reserve is to blame,” Mr. Massie said in a statement on May 16. “During COVID, the Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars out of thin air and loaned it to the Treasury Department to enable unprecedented deficit spending. By monetizing the debt, the Federal Reserve devalued the dollar and enabled free money policies that caused the high inflation we see today.”


The Federal Reserve System, also known as the Fed, was initially founded in 1913 in response to banking panics at the time. Over the following century, its powers have expanded to include regulating and overseeing banks and maintaining financial system stability. The Fed’s major function is implementing U.S. monetary policy. According to the Fed, its primary objectives include maximizing employment, stabilizing prices, and moderating long-term interest rates.

Mr. Massie also blamed the Fed for colluding with the executive and legislative branches, as well as Wall Street, for the financial problems Americans are now facing.

“Monetizing debt is a closely coordinated effort between the White House, Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Congress, Big Banks, and Wall Street,” Mr. Massie said. “Through this process, retirees see their savings evaporate due to the actions of a central bank pursuing inflationary policies that benefit the wealthy and connected. If we really want to reduce inflation, the most effective policy is to end the Federal Reserve.”

If enacted, the bill will allow one year for the Fed to be shut down. In addition, the Federal Reserve Act will be repealed, and its assets and liabilities will be liquidated. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget will be responsible for the liquidation process.

The Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act was first introduced in 1999 by then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). The legislation was reintroduced every single year until his retirement in 2013.


The legislation’s cosponsors include Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-FLa.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), and 15 others.

Besides the “End the Fed” Act, Mr. Massie, a Libertarian who favors limited government and lower taxes and opposes high government spending, has also introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2023 to require a full audit of the Federal Reserve.
The Fed Under Criticism

Since its creation, the Fed has faced increasing scrutiny and criticism over its controversial role in the U.S. economy.

The most notable critic of the Fed is late Nobel laureate and economist Milton Friedman, who on multiple occasions called for abolishing the Fed for its ineffective policies, saying “It’s done more harm than good.”

In one interview, Friedman said, “There is no institution in the U.S. that has such a high public standing and such a poor record of performance.”

Last year, E.J. Antoni and Peter St Onge, research fellows at The Heritage Foundation, published an article titled “Time To End the Fed and Its Mismanagement of Our Economy,” which lays out the argument for ending the Fed. According to the authors, “Every major economic downturn of the last 110 years bears the mark of the Federal Reserve. In fact, as long as the Fed has been around, it has swung the economy between inflation and recession. Yet Americans, surprisingly, have tolerated it.”

Argentine President Javier Milei, an economist, drew headlines last year with his promise during his presidential campaign to abolish the country’s central bank, calling it “the worst garbage that exists on this Earth” and “one of the greatest thieves in the history of mankind.”

“Central banks are divided in four categories,” he said during an interview with Bloomberg last year. “The bad ones, like the Federal Reserve; the very bad ones, like the ones in Latin America; the horribly bad ones; and the Central Bank of Argentina.”

Last year, Mohamed A. El-Erian, an economist and former CEO of investment management fund PIMCO, also criticized the Fed for its failures.

“The U.S. Federal Reserve’s growing list of policymaking, supervisory, and communications failures is becoming increasingly consequential not just for Americans but also for the rest of the world,” he wrote in an article for Project Syndicate. “The global economy’s single most important institution has lost its way.”

From The Epoch Times

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for FALUN GONG 

EXCLUSIVE: Grenadians launch new Malcolm X Foundation on the Caribbean island


Grenadian relatives of the civil rights icon want to honour him in La Digue, his mother's birthplace

ASSASSINATED: Malcolm X was shot dead on 21 February 1965 in Upper Manhattan (Image: via Getty Images)

GRENADIAN RELATIVES of Malcolm X have launched a new foundation to honour the iconic civil rights activist in the Caribbean.

The Malcolm X Family Foundation (MXFF) was founded three years ago by Grenadian historian Terrance Wilson – who is also a third cousin of Malcolm X – and British Grenadian Derek Marshall.

The co-founders say the global Black nationalist leader deserves to be honoured in La Digue, Saint Andrew, Grenada, which is also where his mother, Louise Helen Norton Little, was born in the 1890s.

Speaking exclusively to The Voice, from his home in La Digue, Grenada, Wilson said: “The family tree and family foundation starts with two African people Jupiter and Mary Jane Langdon, who came to Grenada sometime in the 1860s.

“It was said the ship was intercepted by the British Navy and they came here to Grenada as free indentured servants – they were not enslaved people.

“They started to work in Grenada and in 1882 they bought a property and had six children.”

Wilson explained one of these six children was Malcolm X’s grandmother and another daughter was Wilson’s great-grandmother and that is how he is related to the former Nation of Islam minister.

He added: “I happen to be one of the many third cousins of Malcolm X in Grenada, there’s lots of third cousins and some of them don’t even know they are part of the family.”

RELATIVES: Historian Terrance Wilson (wearing a baseball cap) and his brother Todd Perotte are third generation Grenadian cousins of Malcolm X. (Picture Credit: Supplied)
Grenadian roots

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in the United States, on 19 May 1925.

But according to the historian, Grenadian family members of Malcolm X have lived in the area of La Digue for over 150 years – with many still residing there today.

He said: “The last surviving second cousin of Malcolm X, she is Ms Eva Louis, she is 87 years old. Her mother was Malcolm X’s aunt.”

Wilson has been documenting his family’s history for several decades, and told The Voice, he met Malcolm X’s brother, Wilfred X, who had travelled to Grenada in 1993 to meet other elderly Grenadian family members.

Recalling the meeting, he said “he spent five days with us, getting to know us.”

HERITAGE: The sacred family land of Malcolm X’s Grenadian relatives in La Digue, Grenada (Picture Credit: Supplied)

The family land in La Digue – which has been passed down through the generations – will be focal point of the new foundation.

Wilson wants those interested in learning more about Malcolm X’s Grenadian heritage to get “proper information” from his living Caribbean relatives.

He added: “I have established the family foundation with the aim to correct and at the same time promote this history in a positive way for the country.”

Todd Perotte is another third generational cousin of Malcolm X, and younger brother of Wilson.

Speaking exclusively to The Voice, he said: “I remember seeing my brother and my dad always working on this stuff but I was young then.

“I remember my family had this photograph of what they wanted the logo of the foundation to look like, the Grenadian map, with the X in it, with the roots of Malcolm.”

ROOTS: The Malcolm X Family Foundation logo is based on the shape of the island of Grenada and its flags colours. (Picture Credit: Supplied)

Perotte said he was around 10 years old when he first realised he was a cousin of the prominent Black Muslim hero.

He said: “I never took it serious like how my dad and my brother did, I just knew we were related to Malcolm X and that’s it.

“But later on in life, I did, and now, I am getting more interested.”

MEETING: Todd Perotte, third generation cousin of Malcolm X, meets Voice journalist Sinai Fleary

Perotte was born in England and grew up in Grenada from the age of two. He lived in the same family home as many of Malcolm X’s Grenadian ancestors in La Digue until his early 20s.

He believes in Grenada there is not enough awareness that Malcolm X’s mother was born in the Caribbean country.

“I don’t really think they take history serious,” he said.

He continued: “I don’t think there is much in place to educate the young ones of the history of Malcolm X in Grenada.”

Perotte is calling for the Black American human rights activist to be included on the national curriculum in Grenada, to ensure his story is not forgotten in the eastern Caribbean country.

“Malcolm X was on a worldly level, it is like mentioning Toussaint Louverture or Marcus Garvey, he should be celebrated,” he stated.

Currently studying architecture in London, Perotte says he plans to design a peace garden in honour of his world-famous cousin – which will be situated on the family land in Grenada.

For Marshall – whose parents were also from Grenada – he hopes the newly established MXFF will celebrate “a rich history of relationships” and provide a community hub for locals and visitors.

He said there are also plans to mark the place where the family’s house once stood “where generations of Malcolm X’s family once lived in Grenada.”

“A lot of people even with all the modern DNA tests don’t know where they come, from but Malcolm X’s family do actually know their roots right back to ancestors,” he added.
Muhammad Ali family support

The MXFF is also being backed by Muhammad Ali Jr – son of former World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali – who said it is “really an honour” to be working with the foundation.

Speaking exclusively to The Voice, from America, he said: “We have to shake up the world one more time and get people back to the way they were. We need to do this to save humanity.”

Ali Jr said his father and Malcolm X – who were both members of the Nation of Islam in the early 1960s – “were very close” friends at one point.

He said: “I know they were very close until the CIA came in and told my father ‘don’t deal with Malcolm X, he’s a dangerous man’ but he wasn’t – he was just spreading the truth and the people didn’t want people to know the truth.”LEGACY: Muhammad Ali Jr says he will be supporting the MXFF because heritage is important (Pic Credit: Supplied)

Ali Jr is very passionate about heritage and urged more people in the Black community to research their family history.

He added: “There’s a lot of things that people do to prevent us from finding out who we really are and where we really came from, so we don’t know where we are going or how we are going to get there.

“We really need to know our history, our ancestry and where you came from so you know where you are going.”

Ali Jr said he has an obligation to God and his late father to “continue his legacy” and hopes to go to Paris in the coming months to light the Olympic torch just like his father did on 19 July 1996.

The filmmaker said it is imperative to keep the memory of people like Malcolm X and his father alive.

He added: “Keep these people that did good things, for the masses to know who they are and what they have done and how we can make America better for everyone, not just America but the whole world.”
Investigation

Malcolm X was 39 years old, when he was murdered on 21 February 1965.

As he gave a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, three men shot him 16 times in front of his pregnant wife, Dr Betty Shabazz, and three of their daughters and approximately 400 people.

Last February, Malcolm X’s family announced plans to sue the FBI, CIA and New York City police for $100m (£83m) for his assassination in 1965.

Ilyasah Shabazz, one of Malcolm X’s daughters, announced she intended to take action against several government agencies for allegedly covering up their role in her father’s death.

https://www.voice-online.co.uk/

Peace activists descend on West Bank crossing to thwart extremists blocking aid trucks

Ben Gvir criticizes use of police to secure humanitarian aid trucks, says he ‘understands pain’ of extremists who stopped aid convoys in West Bank but they shouldn’t burn trucks

By JEREMY SHARON
19 May 2024


Activists from the Standing Together organization help reload cartons of humanitarian aid destined for Gaza thrown off a truck by extremists opposing the supply of aid to Gaza at the Tarqumiyah Crossing in the West Bank, May 19, 2024. (Courtesy Standing Together)

Peace activists from the Standing Together organization on Sunday helped secure humanitarian aid trucks from Jordan as they passed through the West Bank on their way to Gaza, despite efforts by extremists to stop them.

Some 50 activists from Standing Together — a left-wing coexistence, peace and social justice movement — went to the Tarqumiyah Crossing in the southwestern West Bank close to the border with Israel, through which humanitarian aid trucks from Jordan pass on their way to Gaza in order to confront the extremists attempting to block the convoys.

Far-right activists and settlers have attacked aid convoys passing through the West Bank and destined for Gaza on several occasions since the beginning of April. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has authority over the police, has faced accusations that he does not want the force to prioritize protecting the convoys and ordered them to treat those attacking the trucks with a light hand.

“Last week, settlers and far-right extremists succeeded every day in stopping humanitarian aid trucks, they did whatever they wanted and no one bothered them, they attacked people, left them bleeding on the road, and destroyed the aid,” Standing Together director said Alon-Lee Green told The Times of Israel.

“Today was the first day in a week in which all the humanitarian aid trucks to Gaza managed to pass without the settlers stopping or attacking them,” he added.

According to Green, the modus operandi of the peace activists is to simply turn up at the crossing and confront the right-wing activists, forcing the police to intervene and ensure public order by separating the two groups.

An aid convoy heading to the Gaza Strip that was attacked by protesters in the Hebron Hills region, May 13, 2023. (Video screenshot; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Green said that since the police were then at the crossing, they were forced to deal with the far-right activists trying to stop the humanitarian aid trucks at the same time.

“It’s the Israel Police’s responsibility to stop crimes, they are the ones responsible for protecting the aid trucks. Last week the extremists managed to stop the trucks every day, attacked drivers and burnt the aid.

“Our goal is to allow the aid to get to the hungry people in Gaza and prevent this country from becoming a society which sanctifies death and starving people and violently takes the law into their hands.”

Green said that the far-right activists did manage to halt one truck and throw off some of the cargo it was carrying, but that the Standing Together members helped reload the aid onto the truck and see it on its way.

During an interview with Army Radio on Sunday, Ben Gvir praised the extremists blocking the humanitarian aid, saying it was “very good that they’re protesting” but added “I don’t think they should burn trucks or beat people up.”

In several incidents, extremists have attacked trucks in the West Bank and assaulted drivers who were not actually delivering humanitarian aid.

Ben Gvir also took pride during the interview in voting in the security cabinet against Israel’s facilitation of humanitarian aid to Gaza, claiming he was the only cabinet minister to do so.

Asked about reports in the Hebrew press whether he had reprimanded senior police officers for providing protection to the aid convoys, Ben Gvir said, “It is not acceptable to me… that they’re bringing out all these forces only to help these aid trucks.”


Activists from the Standing Together organization at the Tarqumiyah Crossing in the West Bank to thwart extremists from blocking humanitarian aid trucks destined for Gaza hold signs saying “Don’t starve [others],” May 19, 2024. (Courtesy Standing Together)He was also asked repeatedly if he thought the police should stop the far-right activists from blocking the aid trucks, saying merely that “I understand their pain, I understand their frustration.”

“I am in favor of freedom of protest, I totally understand them blocking the aid, I am against violating the law and that they burn trucks. After saying that, I think that the ones who need to stop the aid is the security cabinet,” said the minister.

According to a report in Haaretz, Ben Gvir reprimanded Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai on Thursday because police allocated two special units to protect the aid trucks and was trying to instead reassign the task to a force with a smaller budget and fewer resources.

A police spokesperson did not immediately comment as to how many far-right activists were arrested last week for halting and attacking the aid trucks, or how many were arrested on Sunday.

According to Honenu, an organization that provides legal services to far-right activists, two people were detained for blocking aid trucks close to Kiryat Gat which lies just 20km west of the Tarqumiyah Crossing.

The Biden administration is looking into sanctioning the extremists involved in the recent spate of attacks targeting the humanitarian aid convoys.

One potential candidate is Ben Gvir’s chief of staff Chanamel Dorfman, who has a long history of involvement in extremist activity, including in the West Bank.

Illegal Israeli settlers block aid trucks from occupied West Bank to besieged Gaza

Illegal settlers put roadblocks to prevent aid trucks at Tarqumiya checkpoint south of Hebron, according to Israeli media

19/05/2024

 Sunday
AA


Illegal Israeli settlers blocked humanitarian aid trucks on their way to the besieged Gaza Strip from the occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to Israeli media.

Illegal settlers put roadblocks to prevent the trucks at the Tarqumiya checkpoint south of the West Bank city of Hebron, Israel Hayom newspaper reported.

Israeli police moved to the scene to reopen the road and allow the aid trucks to move, the daily said.

Last week, Israeli protesters vandalized several aid trucks near the Tarqumiya checkpoint, ripping aid off and throwing it onto the road.

Similar protests were staged in the past week with protesters demanding the release of Israelis held captive by Hamas in return for allowing aid into the Gaza Strip.


Israel has closed the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings to humanitarian aid for the past ten days, exacerbating the catastrophic humanitarian conditions in Gaza, where approximately 2.3 million Palestinians live, including 2 million displaced persons.

Israel continued its brutal offensive on Gaza despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

Over 35,400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the vast majority being women and children, and over 79,500 others injured since October following an attack by Hamas.

More than seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Settlers attack aid trucks at Tarqumia crossing,west of Hebron [19/May/2024] HEBRON May 19. 2024 (Saba) - On Sunday, group of Zionist settlers attacked two trucks loaded with food at the Tarqumia crossing, northwest of Hebron, which were heading to the Gaza Strip. According to local sources, settlers destroyed part of the cargo and threw it on the ground, in order to prevent it from reaching the relief of citizens in the Gaza Strip. It is noteworthy that this is the eighth time that aid trucks and drivers have been attacked at the Tarqumia crossing under the protection of the Zionist enemy army. Al-hamadani

George Washington U grads storm out of graduation ceremony in anti-Israel protest

Protesters heard chanting ‘there is only one solution, intifada revolution’ after leaving; students at Drexel University in Pennsylvania set up new encampment on campus

By AP and TOI STAFF

19 May 2024

George Washington University students carry a sign during an anti-Israel protest as George Washington University President Ellen Granberg speaks at a commencement ceremony in Washington, May 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Dozens of George Washington University graduates walked out of commencement ceremonies on Sunday, disrupting university President Ellen Granberg’s speech, in protest over the ongoing war in Gaza and last week’s clearing of an on-campus protest encampment that involved police use of pepper spray and dozens of arrests.

The ceremony, at the base of the Washington Monument, started peacefully with fewer than 100 protesters demonstrating across the street in front of the Museum of African American History and Culture.

But as Granberg began speaking, at least 70 students among the graduates started chanting and raising signs and Palestinian flags.

The students then noisily walked out as Granberg spoke, crossing the street to a rapturous response from the protesters.

In video shared on social media, some protesters could be heard chanting in Arabic: “From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab.” Some also chanted “there is only one solution, intifada revolution.”

The protesters could be seen holding signs reading “your tuition funds genocide,” “divest now,” and waving Palestinian flags, with many of them sporting keffiyehs. They were also joined by a small group of Neturei Karta, the fringe anti-Zionist Hassidic sect.

Meanwhile pro-Palestinian protesters set up a new encampment at Drexel University in Philadelphia over the weekend, prompting a lockdown of school buildings, a day after authorities thwarted an attempted occupation of a school building at the neighboring University of Pennsylvania campus.

After several hundred demonstrators marched from Philadelphia’s City Hall to west Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, Drexel said in a statement that about 75 protesters began to set up an encampment on the Korman Quad on the campus. About a dozen tents remained Sunday, blocked off by barricades and monitored by police officers. No arrests were reported.

Drexel President John Fry said in a message Saturday night that the encampment “raises understandable concerns about ensuring everyone’s safety,” citing what he called “many well-documented instances of hateful speech and intimidating behavior at other campus demonstrations.” University buildings were “open only to those with clearance from Drexel’s Public Safety,” he said.

Authorities at Drexel, which has about 22,000 students, were monitoring the demonstration to ensure it was peaceful and didn’t disrupt normal operations, and that “participants and passersby will behave respectfully toward one another,” Fry said.

“We will be prepared to respond quickly to any disruptive or threatening behavior by anyone,” Fry said, vowing not to tolerate property destruction, “harassment or intimidation” of students or staff or threatening behavior of any kind, including “explicitly racist, antisemitic, or Islamophobic” speech. Anyone not part of the Drexel community would not be allowed “to trespass into our buildings and student residences,” he said.

Anti-Israel protesters march from Philadelphia City Hall to University of Drexel Campus where they set up an encampment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 18, 2024. (Matthew Hatcher / AFP)

On Friday night, members of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine had announced an action at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fisher-Bennett Hall, urging supporters to bring “flags, pots, pans, noise-makers, megaphones” and other items.

The university said campus police, supported by city police, removed the demonstrators Friday night, arresting 19 people, including six University of Pennsylvania students. The university’s division of public safety said officials found “lock-picking tools and homemade metal shields,” and exit doors secured with zip ties and barbed wire, windows covered with newspaper and cardboard and entrances blocked.

Authorities said seven people arrested would face felony charges, including one accused of having assaulted an officer, while a dozen were issued citations for failing to disperse and follow police commands.

US President Joe Biden told the graduating class at Morehouse College on Sunday, which included some students wearing keffiyeh scarves around their shoulders on top of their black graduation robes, that he heard their voices of protest and that scenes from the conflict in Gaza have been heartbreaking. He said given what he called a “humanitarian crisis” there, he had called for “an immediate ceasefire” and return of hostages taken by Hamas.

On the Campuses and Around the World, a Revolution of Empathy

BY PATRICK MAZZA

MAY 17, 2024Facebook

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In a world of so much bad news, when so many trends seem to be rolling down the wrong track, it can be hard for people who care about the future to keep our heads above water. We’re drowning in it.

In the midst of all this, a light shines through, a moral awakening of the kind we are going to need to overcome all our onrushing crises. It is the revolution of empathy now taking place on college campuses, in encampments springing up across the U.S. and other countries. Students who mostly have no direct interests, no relatives in Gaza, are rising to witness the genocide in our faces, the dead, maimed, starved and brutalized people of Palestine, and to say that in any sense of human understanding, this is unacceptable and they want no part in it. They are calling on their institutions to divest from Israel and corporations that are arming Israel.

The crackdown by university administrators and police, ranging from suspensions and campus exclusions to attacks and arrests, some involving tear gas and rubber bullets, reflects how deeply the students’ actions are challenging the dominant narrative, as I wrote in my last post. For there is a war on right now. It is a war for the mind.

A couple of items to that point have been circulating on social media lately. They have drawn a lot of attention. One is comments by Palantir CEO Alex Karp, speaking recently at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security, a gathering of military officials and high-tech military-intelligence complex contractors such as himself.

“We kind of think these things that are happening across college campuses, like, are a sideshow. No, they are the show. If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.” Palantir thought it was important enough to put the video clip up on its Twitter/X account.

The TikTok threat

Another is an exchange between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a McCain Institute event.

Romney bemoans, “Why has the PR been so awful? . . . Typically the Israelis are good at PR. What’s happened here, how have they and we been so ineffective at communicating the realities and our POV?”

Blinken responds, “We’re on an intravenous feed of information, with new inputs, new impulses, every millisecond. And, of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t,  we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”

Romney comes back with “a small parenthetical point, which is why some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. You look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites. It’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”

The point doesn’t seem so “small” and “parenthetical” though, but central to the issue. Underscored by another comment by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), on a No Labels Zoom call raising the cry for further crackdowns on student protesters, reported by The Intercept. “I don’t think there’s any question that there has been a coordinated effort off these college campuses, and that you have outside paid agitators and activists. It also highlights exactly why we included the TikTok bill in the foreign supplemental aid package because you’re seeing how these kids are being manipulated by certain groups or entities or countries to foment hate on their behalf and really create a hostile environment here in the U.S.”

This worst kind of McCarthyite blather evades the reality which corporate and political leaders are frantically trying to deny, that the students are expressing a real empathy for the other, in this case the Palestinians. One wonders if the likes of Karp, Romney, Blinken and Lawler even understand the concept of empathy, having clawed their way up through business and political power structures that reward the most sociopathic of instincts. It is the narrative they seem almost incapable of comprehending.

“Yes, it is genocide.”

To understand the revolution of empathy the students are expressing, one has to look at what they are saying, and what they are suffering, as this excellent piece by Chris Hedges illustrates, aptly describing them as “The Nation’s Conscience.” (Hedges himself has suffered the cancellation of his show on The Real News Network, no doubt because of the critical stance he has been taking on the Biden Administration’s response to the Gaza genocide.)

Hedges recounts sitting on a fire escape across from Columbia University with three student organizers of the protests. One was Sara Wexler, a Jewish doctoral student of philosophy. Understanding the Jewish desire for a safe place after all the horrors Jews have suffered, she reflects the way many Jewish people are seeing beyond a narrow “Israelism” to the interests of all people.

Hedges quotes her, “I’m a German-Polish Jew. My last name is Wexler. It’s Yiddish for money-maker, money-exchanger. No matter how many times I tell people I’m Jewish, I’m still labeled antisemitic. It’s infuriating. We are told that we need a state that is based on ethnicity in the 21st century and that’s the only way Jewish people can be safe. But it is really for Britain and America and other imperialist states to have a presence in the Middle East. I’ve no idea why people still believe this narrative. It makes no sense to have a place for Jewish people that requires other people to suffer and die.”

Another powerful Jewish voice raised in protest is Amos Goldberg. As Professor of Holocaust Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the context and history to which Antony Blinken refers are not lost on him. He knows what he is seeing.

“Yes, it is genocide,” Goldberg writes. “Although it is so difficult and painful to admit this and despite all efforts to think otherwise, at the end of six months of a brutal war it is no longer possible to escape this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain of the ‘crime of crimes,’ which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, it will stand trial for generations.

“What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of the indiscriminate killing, the destruction, the mass deportations, the displacement, the starvation, the executions, the elimination of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of the elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians – create an overall picture of genocide, of intentional and conscious crushing of the Palestinian existence in Gaza.

“In many ways, Palestinian Gaza as a geographical-political-cultural-human complex no longer exists. Genocide is the deliberate destruction of a collective or part of it – not all of its individuals. And this is what is happening in Gaza. The result is undoubtedly genocidal.”

Between window dressing and winning

Will the voices raised by students and others taking to the streets around the world have an effect? Biden recently announced he is suspending shipments of the largest bombs, 2,000- and 2,500-pound monsters capable of taking out a whole city block, if Israel conducts a major attack on Rafah, to which the Gazan population has been driven. It is almost impossible to see Biden having made such an announcement if the protests had not placed him under severe pressure. But it seems to be mostly window dressing, a game of narrative management, of image control, while Israel continues its genocidal assault unabated.

The day after Biden’s announcement, Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari responded “The IDF has armaments for the missions it is planning, including missions in Rafah. We have what we need.” U.S. officials confirmed this, as does the pummeling now taking place. Reports of an intensification of bombing in Rafah are coming in. This last so-called refuge is being brutally pounded by the Israeli military.

What can people do against this beyond standing in witness to oppose what we see unfolding? There is a point to stand up for what you know is right whether or not you have a hope of victory. Abolitionists long stood up for ending slavery, and were a minority even at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War. Opponents of the Vietnam War were a minority until very late in the conflict. Neither could abide with blatant evil, so they did what was necessary to keep their own integrity as human beings. Though with people being murdered and maimed every day, it is hard to see this as anything close to enough.

But the students and other people rising against this genocide are doing the difficult and painful work that makes a way for broad social awakening. They are rebelling against the contradictions in which we live, drawing attention to the evils in which we are collectively enmeshed, engaging in a struggle both inner and outer, to say we must live in empathy and peaceful coexistence with the other. It is the task needed to grapple with the many injustices of our world. To make a revolution of empathy, the only way we will ever win the world we want, and need.

This first appeared in The Raven.

Tens of thousands join Palestine solidarity march in Pakistan's Peshawar

Participants in 'Gaza Million March' denounce 'silence' of international community on 'genocide'

 19/05/2024 Sunday
AA



Tens of thousands of Pakistani citizens, including women and children, rallied Sunday in the northwestern city of Peshawar to voice their support for the Palestinians.

Billed as "Gaza Million March," the rally was organized by the country's mainstream religiopolitical party Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).

It was one of the largest Palestinian solidarity marches since Israel launched its latest war on Gaza in October last year, according to organizers.

The protesters held Palestine's flags as well as banners carrying pro-Palestine and anti-Israel slogans. Led by JI's newly-elected chief Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman, the march gathered at Peshawar's Ring Road area.

Rehman, who was sporting a keffiyeh or a traditional Palestinian scarf, in a speech lambasted the international community, including Arab rulers for being "silent on the genocide in Gaza."

"The Zionist state, which has the support of the US and Western governments, in the form of money and weapons, has miserably failed to suppress the wind of freedom. A small resistance group like Hamas has defeated all its technology and strategy," Rehman said.

He added that the people of Pakistan will continue to back Palestinians in their "just" struggle.

Brazil's Cavalhadas festival celebrates victory of Iberian Christian knights over the Moors

People in the heartland Brazilian city of Pirenopolis are taking to the streets in a procession of the Cavalhadas festival

ByERALDO PERES 

Associated Press

May 19, 2024

PIRENOPOLIS, Brazil -- People in the heartland Brazilian city of Pirenopolis took to the streets on Sunday in a procession of the traditional Cavalhadas festival.

The tradition began in the 1800s with a Portuguese priest who wanted to celebrate the Holy Spirit — one of the entities of the Roman Catholic Church's trinity — and also commemorate the victory of Iberian Christian knights over the Moors.

The Emperor of the Divine Holy Spirit procession started in the early hours in Pirenopolis, a city of 25,000 residents 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of the Brazilian capital Brasilia. Other countryside cities across the South American nation also celebrate the Cavalhadas festival.

The festivities include an open air reenactment of a battle between Christian warriors and Muslims. At the end, the defeated Moors are converted to Catholicism.