Reader Comments: Texas Gov. OKs White Supremacist Terror; How Extremists Took Over Israel; Arrest Warrants for Israeli & Hamas Leaders; Calif Academic Workers Strike for Pro-Palestinian Protesters; Intl Recognition of State of Palestine; more....
Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements, Shorts, AND cartoons - May 23, 2024, xxxxxx
This is appalling! White supremacists like Daniel Perry walk free while racial justice activists linger in prison for decades; face nearly insurmountable barriers to parole, let alone pardon, after 30, 40 or even 50 years of incarceration; often after being convicted on suspicious/unjust convictions.
"Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivered a ringing endorsement of racist, right-wing vigilante violence last Thursday, when he extended a rare state pardon to a bigoted killer who was duly convicted for the murder of Garrett Foster, a protester at a 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration ... Abbott pardoned Perry on May 16 immediately after receiving a recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is under near-complete control of the governor himself ... 'I look forward to approving the Board’s pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk,' Abbott said in April last year—less than 24 hours after the jury decided Perry was guilty."
"In Part I, we describe the origins of a religious movement that established Jewish settlements in the newly won territories of Gaza and the West Bank during the 1970s. In Part II, we recount how the most extreme elements of the settler movement began targeting not only Palestinians but also Israeli leaders who tried to make peace with them. And in Part III, we show how the most established members of Israel’s ultraright, unpunished for their crimes, gained political power in Israel, even as a more radical generation of settlers vowed to eliminate the Israeli state altogether."
I agree with Biden: There is no equality between the Israeli actions and that of HAMAS. However, I do agree that individuals on both sides should be prosecuted in order to set a precedent.
Even if you're the victim, and a long time victim at that, you should not be persecuting people who are not responsible for the problem. If that was common thinking, the actions of all wars, everywhere, every time would not take place.
Think of Nat Turner, American anti-slavery fighter, who during a rebellion killed White Southerners who never owned slaves and even may have opposed slavery. Or think of the people living in the Village of Auschwitz, who may have opposed the Nazi genocide of Jews, who were killed by the Auschwitz prisoners when they were finally released. Or the residents of Warsaw Ghetto who killed ordinary residents of the Ghetto. Today, we honor them despite their unjust violence against innocent people.
Similarly, think of the innocent people killed and hurt by HAMAS; despite 75 years of oppression of Palestinians by Israel. Maybe if the justifiably furious long-time victims of the past had been prosecuted along with their own victims, victims today might not be so willing to persecute others because of where they happen to be at a specific time or some demographic group to which they belong. Prosecution of these long-term victims who become the abusers are rare; maybe it's time for this kind of prosecution to begin.
Yes, the HAMAS leaders who inappropriately took their revenge against innocent people for what had been happening to Palestinians for 75 years should be prosecuted along with the totally non-equivalent terrorists of the Israeli Government. If these prosecutions had taken place, these horrors of today would be less likely to take place.
Poverty is exacerbated in situations involving mental illness.
Citizens with mental illness constitute a significant percentage of people with mental illnesses who live on the street with no hope of mental health care nor housing. America must be judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable people.
The punishment of the poor has its roots in the English Poor Laws of centuries past.
Trump and his allies are planning to “deconstruct” the administrative state by stripping its power and forcing out tens of thousands of workers. That will put all of our lives at risk.
Since when is jose ovejero a Marxist intellectual. His alteration of the communist manifesto is appalling. What has he achieved in Spain as a Marxist or for feminists? Has he watched how the self defined "feminists" in mexico cover their faces and yield weapons to hit innocent bystanders, deface public buildings and destroy public and private property with absurd demands and slogans which have resulted in critics by the majority of the Mexican women who see a major improvement in their economic and social condition under Obrador? Or Morena, the best and more powerful party that has emerged in the last 80 years of struggle against neoliberalism which is what retrograde Ovejero represents? Please xxxxxx read what you endorse before you lose your leftist reputation. Otherwise you are merely going to look like a puppet of the imperialist, neoliberal and religious forces working against Morena, AMLO and Sheinbaum for the last 6 yrs.
Jose Vera
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Global Left Midweek replies:
We appreciate your feedback. We aren't familiar with Jose Ovejero, so we did not choose to post his piece assuming he is a Marxist, but because of the issues it raises about Claudia Sheinbaum's candidacy. We are open to criticism of Ovejero and Mexican feminists, just as we are to criticism of AMLO and Morena. Do you know of any critical writings on the current feminist movement in Mexico?
The LA Times has been so terrible on this, running articles that are basically helping Wonderful campaign against the law. This one below was sort of a pathetic attempt to make up for that in the face of the criticism they've received, and even then it got most things wrong and softpedaled the unionbusting.
University of California, Santa Cruz graduate students and other academic workers, members of UAW Local 4811, begin a strike and are joined by UCSC Students for Justice in Palestine as they picket the main entrance to campus on Monday, May 20, 2024 (AP photo).
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz walked off their jobs and went on strike Monday, the first campus to do so as part of a systemwide protest against a public university they say has violated the speech rights of pro-Palestinian advocates.
United Auto Workers Local 4811 represents 48,000 graduate students who work as teaching assistants, tutors, researchers and other academic employees on the 10-campus UC system. Organizers said the campuses will not strike all at once, opting instead for rolling strikes, to protest the arrests and forcible ejection by police of union members who participated in demonstrations calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
Rebecca Gross, a UC Santa Cruz graduate student in literature and union leader, said at least 1,500 people were on strike Monday and had no plans to return to work until the union reaches a deal with the university. Students and researchers are not teaching, grading or working in their labs, and they are withholding data, she said.
In 2011, the State of Palestine was admitted into UNESCO; in 2012, after it was accepted as an observer state of the United Nations General Assembly with the votes of 138 member states of the United Nations, the PA began to officially use the name "State of Palestine" for all purposes.
Join us for a comics reading and performance by cartoonists writing about Palestine, including contributors to the collection Cartoonists for Palestine, hosted by Jewish Currents director of community engagement Solomon Brager and Cartoonists for Palestine editor Shay Mirk. We will have readings from Jennifer Camper, Marguerite Dabaie, Eli Valley, Kazimir Lee, and Ben Passmore, and a live drawing to musical performance by Tracy Chahwan accompanied by Nebila Oguz and Omar Dewachi. This event will be held in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in New York City, as well as live streamed online.
