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Violence

Netanyahu Won. Now What?

So he won and I have to say I am relieved. There wll be no more endless cycles of pointless ‘negotiations’ with Israel pretending that some day it will agree to a two-state solution while continually escalating both settlement (colony) building and the maltreament of the Palestinians. Now everyone will see that the Palestinians were right all along and that Israel has never been a partner for negotiations. There is no real political Left in Israel and if the other side got to form a government, all we would have seen is more of the same. Now we’ll see if the EU has the decency and conviction to enact proper sanctions. Then of course there is the US.

Right Wing Activist Fires Staffer Who Refused To Incite Violence @BlackLivesMatter

James O’Keefe, the right-wing’s garbage answer to both Michael Moore and Punk’d, is drawing attention again, this time for allegedly firing an employee who refused to strong-arm an operative into following a hidden-camera video script that would bait anti-police brutality protestors into making violent statements against police. His “investigative reporting”/propaganda organization Project Veritas recently used the same manipulative tactics against Eric Garner’s daughter. Rich Valdes, former Director of Operations for Project Veritas, is threatening to sue O’Keefe for wrongful termination “because [O'Keefe] was unhappy with me for being unwilling to strong-arm the guy to do his dirty work,” he told the Post.

Zimbabwe Activist Missing After Abduction In Unmarked Truck

Fears are growing for the safety of a political activist in Zimbabwe reported to have been abducted by five unidentified men almost a week ago and bundled into an unmarked truck near his home. The country’s high court on Friday ordered police and the state intelligence agency to search for Itai Dzamara, a former journalist who last year staged sit-in protests demanding the resignation of President Robert Mugabe. Dzamara’s disappearance echoes the darkest days of Zimbabwe’s political instability and has raised concerns of a fresh crackdown on political opponents, civil society activists and journalists. After his abduction on Monday, his wife approached the high court in Harare to force the police and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to search for her husband.

Organizing Against Feminicide In Mexico

As the demand for justice for the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students continues in streets worldwide, the epidemic of violence against women grows and justice for its victims remains relegated to a labyrinth of impunity, inefficiency and government indifference. Yet the demand for justice and against feminicide has not only endured over three decades of violence, but continues to mobilize people across borders. At the end of the International Women’s Day March in Los Angeles on March 8, Carla Castañeda began a 72-hour hunger strike to demand justice for her missing daughter Cynthia Jocabeth Castañeda and all the daughters of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Carla, along with the mothers of the Ayotzinapa students and the thousands of other relatives of disappeared people, is seeking information on the whereabouts of her daughter kidnapped six years ago.

Mothers For Justice Outreach Letter: Victims Of Police Violence

In the wake of the recent unjust murders of Dontre Hamilton, Corey Stingley, Derek Williams, Brandon Johnson, Larry Jenkins, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and so many more at the hands of police officers and racist vigilantes, people in cities across the nation have risen up to demand Justice in their communities. For every individual killed, there is a mother who has suffered a loss greater than any one person should have to bear. We, the mothers of this movement, are calling on all concerned community members to join us in our fight. Together we unite to stand against police brutality and racial injustice and to demonstrate our love and determination to protect our children and our country. On May 9th, 2015, Mother’s Day Weekend, The Mothers for Justice United will march on the US Department of Justice in our nation’s capital, Washington DC. Will you stand with us? "

Five Months After Ayotzinapa, Resistance Remains Strong

It is clear that the massacre of these students was politically motivated, and involved both the state and federal governments. As is so often the case, the United States lurks behind the curtain of violence, having trained and equipped police in the region for decades. Since Mexico’s war on drugs began in 2006 there have been at least 40,000 people killed in the country. Many of these deaths are, contrary to police reports, unrelated to drug trafficking. Often, they are attacks on civilian protesters and indigenous peoples. Unlike other disappearances and massacres, Ayotzinapa has gained national and international attention because of the popular uprising in response, largely led by family of the dead and disappeared.

We Kill Our Revolutionaries

He hopes prisoners will organize to mount a coordinated nationwide work stoppage and hunger strike to improve conditions behind bars, including raising pay from the roughly $1 a day that prisoners now receive for eight hours of labor to the legal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. He would like to see coordinated boycotts of the overpriced commissaries. He said prisoners should purchase only the bare necessities, such as soap and toothpaste, and forego the “zoozoos and wamwams,” prison slang for junk food. He places no hope in the courts and the legislatures. Prisoners will have to start to carry out acts of mass civil disobedience for any justice, he said—that is the only mechanism left to them. “Prison authorities never give you anything without a fight,” he said, clutching white prayer beads.

U.S. Army Claims To Be Full of Liars

“Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession” is the title of a new paper by Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras of the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. Its thesis: the U.S. Army is full of liars who habitually lie as part of a lying culture that has internalized and normalized lying to the point of unrecognizability. Finally a claim from the Army I’m prepared to take seriously! But the authors aren’t interested in the Army’s lying press releases or lying Congressional testimony or lying sound bytes promoting each new war, predicting imminent success, and identifying each dead adult or child as an evildoer. In fact, it seems pretty clear that the authors are in fact lying to themselves about the nature of the Army’s lying.

Canadian Police Documents: Carbon-Free Movement A Security Threat

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence. “There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels,” concludes the report which is stamped “protected/Canadian eyes only” and is dated Jan. 24, 2014. The report was obtained by Greenpeace.

The Terror We Give Is The Terror We Get

We fire missiles from the sky that incinerate families huddled in their houses. They incinerate a pilot cowering in a cage. We torture hostages in our black sites and choke them to death by stuffing rags down their throats. They torture hostages in squalid hovels and behead them. We organize Shiite death squads to kill Sunnis. They organize Sunni death squads to kill Shiites. We produce high-budget films such as “American Sniper” to glorify our war crimes. They produce inspirational videos to glorify their twisted version of jihad. The barbarism we condemn is the barbarism we commit. The line that separates us from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is technological, not moral. We are those we fight.

NJ: Protest Saturday For Unarmed Man Killed By Police

The People's Organization For Progress (POP) will have a march and rally to demand justice for Abdul Kamal. It will take place Saturday, January 10th, 12 noon, beginning at Irvington Town Hall, 1 Civic Square, in Irvington, New Jersey. Abdul Kamal, a 30 year-old Black man was unarmed when he was shot 10 times and killed by Irvington, New Jersey police more than a year ago. His family and friends and many in the community, including the People's Organization For Progress, believe his death was unwarranted and unjustified. His case will go before an Essex County grand jury sometime this month. "We are having this demonstration to send a clear message to the Essex County Prosecutor that we want the officers who killed him to be held accountable for his death," stated Lawrence Hamm, Chairman, People's Organization For Progress.

US Cities Organize To End Plan Mexico

For over three months, Mexicans have organized demonstrations in the country’s cities and towns, demanding justice for the disappeared college students from Iguala, Guerrero. Yet since October, protestors have not only called for the appearance of the 43 disappeared students (now presumably 42 since the remains of one student were identified among ashes found near the scene of the crime), but also the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto and justice for the tens of thousands of disappeared and hundreds of femicides nationwide that have occurred, especially since the war on drugs was launched in December 2006. At the core of their criticisms is the impunity and corruption at local, state and federal levels. While protestors in Mexico have amplified their demands, multiple protests have been organized abroad in more than fifty countries. One of the largest and most notable is in United States, known by the hashtag #USTired2.

We Are Tired Of Supporting Militarized Police At Home & Abroad

The #USTired2 Campaign Demonstrates How The Us Is Not Only Supporting Militarized Police In Ferguson and Across the United States, but Around The World As Well. This December 7th Join In Protested the Killing of 43 Students In Mexico, a Crime in Which the US is Complicit For many in these United States, images of mass graves in Mexico or stories like that of the 43 missing Normalista students of Ayotzinapa are disturbing, but far away. For others of us, Mexico is not just a “foreign policy issue.” Mexico es familia. Inspired by our friends, family and loved ones in Mexico, #UStired2 is a nationwide effort involving students, local Mexican and Latino and other communities, immigrant rights activists, religious organizations, concerned scholars and many others from across the entire United States. Our effort has one goal: working in the United States to promote peace as an alternative to the catastrophically failed drug war that has left more than 100,000 dead and 25,000 people disappeared in Mexico. More than 43 cities in the United States—one for each student disappeared in Ayotzinapa—have joined our effort—all in less than a week after the call to action was made.

Occupy Kenya: Protesters March For End To Violence

Apathy and thuggery greeted an attempt to kickstart an Occupy movement in Kenya to protest against government inaction in the face of rising insecurity and terrorism. The march and sit-in dubbed #Tumechoka, meaning “We are tired” in Swahili, was called on Tuesday after the execution of 28 people on a bus in Mandera in the far northeast of the country over the weekend. That attack, claimed by Somalia’s Al Shabaab militants, left some Kenyans questioning their government’s capacity and willingness to prevent terrorism. “The government does not recognize that this is a religious battle,” said Stephen Omodia, a 39-year-old businessman, who clutched a red-painted wooden cross in his hands to symbolize the lives lost in terrorist attacks in recent years.

Fear And Justice In The Battle For Mexico’s Future

I woke up in fear, and for the rest of the day it controlled my life the way fear tends to control people’s lives. It dominated my thoughts the way it dominates people’s thoughts and actions, paralyzes them until they are deprived from all hope and the very basic human capacity to change the world around them. My fear was provoked by a nightmare, not one I saw in my dreams, but rather a nightmare I have been unfortunate enough to observe with my own eyes and come to know intimately. It was the fear of waking up and realizing my friends have disappeared at night; lifted from their beds by men in uniforms, leaving friends and family behind who from that day on can only guess after the fate of their loved ones. This fear is not imaginary. This is the fear I struggled to understand when talking to my friends and fellow students when I lived and studied in Mexico. It is a fear that is incomprehensible for someone who has not lived in a country where more than 100.000 have been killed and disappeared in less than ten years.