Local
Hundreds of people answered the call from Palestine Solidarity Group - Central Ohio and and took to the streets in Columbus in three rallies to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for human rights during the 11 days conflict. The gathering on May 21st at Goodale Park was grateful for the ceasefire, but all fully realize that the struggle to end the illegal occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza and the unrelenting daily abuses of Palestinian human rights that provoked hostilities can and must continue.
Hostilities were inflamed by Israel’s plans to evict Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, the closure of the area around the Damascus gate where Muslims gather during Ramadan, and a brutal attack on Muslims praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan. From eyewitness reports, when the Israeli police forces entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they shut down the emergency medical clinic in the mosque compound and welded the door shut.
Hundreds of people answered the call from Palestine Solidarity Group - Central Ohio and and took to the streets in Columbus in three rallies to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for human rights during the 11 days conflict. The gathering on May 21st at Goodale Park was grateful for the ceasefire, but all fully realize that the struggle to end the illegal occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza and the unrelenting daily abuses of Palestinian human rights that provoked hostilities can and must continue.
Hostilities were inflamed by Israel’s plans to evict Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, the closure of the area around the Damascus gate where Muslims gather during Ramadan, and a brutal attack on Muslims praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan. From eyewitness reports, when the Israeli police forces entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they shut down the emergency medical clinic in the mosque compound and welded the door shut.
There’s nothing new about this, which is why I know it’s there before having seen the new budget proposal. The United States funds most of the world’s most oppressive militaries, sells them weapons, and trains them. It has done so for many years. But if you’re going to propose an enourmous budget that relies on deficit spending, and you’re going to claim that a gargantuan military budget (bigger than the Vietnam War budget that derailed LBJ’s domestic priorities) is somehow justified, then I think you ought to have to stand and justify every bit of it, including the 40% or so of U.S. foreign “aid” that’s actually money for weapons and militaries — first and foremost for Israel.
A U.S.-government-funded source for a list of the oppressive governments of the world is Freedom House, which ranks nations as “free,” “partly free,” and “not free.” These rankings are supposedly based on civil liberties and political rights within a country, with apparently no consideration of a country’s impact on the rest of the world.
Here’s a video from one of the facilitators lined up for World BEYOND War’s online course on War and the Environment which begins on June 7th, 2021:
This course could not be more important. A culture of extraction and destruction is closely tied to a culture of war. Questioning that ethos of destruction and consumption is challenging, but it has belatedly begun. Challenging a culture of militarism is even harder.
Thursday, May 27, 10-11:30 am ET
Virtual Forum
The Martin Luther King Center in Cuba, along with the Cuban Association of the United Nations (ACNU) and the Oxfam Program in Cuba, invites you to join next Thursday, May 27th, at 10 a.m. for the Virtual Forum: Right to Live Without a Blockade. The forum is part of the launch of a new Oxfam report on the impacts of U.S. sanctions on the Cuban people and on the life of women.
The report details how the U.S. Blockade against Cuba hinders development and Cuba's ability to carry out projects, it limits the development of capacities, the people's leadership, and the full exercise of their rights - particularly those groups that are most vulnerable. The report emphasizes the experience of women, illustrating the impacts of the Blockade on the Cuban population over these last six decades, and even more intensely, in this current moment of the global pandemic.
Suddenly a shard of history comes flying at me from the ebbing days of World War II, hitting me in the heart. You mean world leaders (not to mention all the rest of us) were serious about transcending — for good — the hell the world had just been through and . . . ending war?
In February 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt, on his return from the Yalta Conference with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, and two months before he died, gave an address to Congress, as quoted recently by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies:
When I began writing this piece about fifteen months ago, think back yourself, I wanted to write a snarky piece but that time has passed. Reality plays hard!
Today, 365 days have passed since Geoge Floyd’s murder was videotaped; therefore, the people are here, physically and culturally.
Let me walk us through a social contract: The Great Society, several peoples’ revolutionary movements, and now, what does it take to be anti-colonialist/anti-racist?
Many authors express their perspectives, my thoughts follow, I caution all who follow to be careful there has been a pandemic and economic collapse.
I started writing the article two days after my father, Reverend Doctor Leslie E. Stansbery, passed on February 29, 2020, and nearly two years after my mother, Margaret Dorothy Stansbery (Van der Zee) passed on January 17, 2018. The Trump presidency killed my parents, but more importantly the Great Society is passing as we breathe.