1 September 2014. A World to Win News Service. Mustapha Meziani, a 31
year old Moroccan university student, died on 13 August after a 72-day
hunger strike. He was arrested after a 24 April altercation between
Islamist and secular students at the Dhar El-Mehraz campus in Fez, an
important concentration point in the struggle against the Moroccan
monarchy. An Islamist youth reportedly died of a bullet wound. The prime
minister and other top authorities attended his funeral.
The authorities demanded "firmness" against the organization Democratic
Way (Base). Meziani and three others were charged with premeditated
murder. People associated with the organization say that neither side
had used firearms, so the Islamist's death was suspicious.
Meziani and two others were placed in preventative detention pending
trial. Subsequently he and other students were not allowed to sit for
university exams, and he went on hunger strike to demand reinstatement,
saying that he was innocent of the charges and being illegally punished
for his political activism. His father and a friend started a hunger
strike themselves outside the hospital where he was being held, but they
were soon arrested.
Meziani's hunger strike drew national support as an example of official
indifference to the lives of the country's youth. The Moroccan Human
Rights Association issued a statement blaming the government overall and
specifically the ministers of justice and the prison administration for
the young man's death, since he was willing to give up his fast if what
the MHRA called his "legitimate right" to attend university were
recognized. He was not given medical attention until he slipped into a
coma.
The April demonstrations that led to Meziani's arrest were seen as a
continuation, to some degree, of the Moroccan youth upsurge that began
on 20 February 2011, in the wake of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Massive demonstrations took place across the country, including an
attack on a police station in Marrakesh. The monarchy was able to calm
the situation by allowing elections to the lower house of parliament and
the formation of an Islamist government.
Nevertheless, King Mohammed VI continues to hold the final authority.
Most human rights and other groups have accepted the strictures that
frame political life in Morocco, where it is illegal to challenge the
institution of the monarchy, the "integrity" of the country (this means
questioning Morocco's illegal annexation of the former Spanish colony of
Western Sahara), and the religion of Islam, but some organizations with
ties among university students have refused to accept these boundaries.
On 1 July, Mouad Belghouti, who raps under the name "Al-Haqed", was
sentenced to four months in prison in Casablanca for a video on Youtube
called "Dogs of the State," about the Moroccan police.
In Egypt, Alaa Abd El-Fattah has also gone on hunger strike. The
33-year-old blogger, Arabic language software developer and political
activist is known for his early public opposition to Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak. For many people his name is closely associated with the
youth movement currents in the January 25, 2011 uprising that led to
Mubarak's ouster. On 18 April El-Fattah announced, "At 4 pm today, I
celebrated together with my colleagues my last meal in prison," vowing
not to eat again until he is released. He is one of 25 people sentenced
to 15 years in prison for holding a demonstration in front of the
Egyptian parliament last November in defiance of a law banning protests.
Let out of jail on bail last March, these youth activists were
physically barred from entering the courtroom for their trial in June,
and then sentenced in absentia without a trial on the basis of their
absence.
Alaa's younger sister Sanaa, 20, is also in prison for demonstrating and has joined him in the hunger strike.
Other jailed activists have also joined him, including leaders of the 6
April Youth Movement. That organization is now banned, and its Facebook
page reports that about 30 members were arrested on 1 September when
they set up a funeral stand in front on the family residence of a
recently deceased member in Bulaq El Dakrour, a Cairo slum district.
Imprisoned supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood are also reportedly on hunger strike.
Alaa's hunger strike, he explained (madamasr.com), was precipitated by
his desire to be with his dying father, a lawyer well-known for battling
the Mubarak regime and the military in court and the sphere of public
opinion. The father, Ahmed Seif al-Islam, died 27 August. He was famous
for a message to his imprisoned son, saying that he had hoped to leave
him a democratic country but could only leave him the prison cell where
he himself had been held.
Also well-known for their opposition to the military regime that took
the reins after Mubarak fell in February 2011 are Alaa's wife Manal, his
sister Mona, his mother Leila Souief and his aunt, the UK-based
novelist Ahdaf Soeuif. This is his third detention since then.
In announcing his hunger strike, he said, his family is "part of the
struggle of thousands who never give up and millions who sometimes rise
up."
Like many other people associated with the Egyptian youth movements,
Alaa initially supported the military in the July 2013 ousting of the
elected Muslim Brotherhood government, but since then has tried to
dissociate himself from both sides. "We have to remove ourselves
completely from the conflict by not raising demands except within the
limits of the right to life and the dignity of the body and the freedom
of the individual," he said.
Those taking such a stand have been relatively marginalized from current
Egyptian political life, since most people cannot imagine not having to
choose between the military junta and Islamist rule and this stand does
not put forward a viable alternative. It can't address the demands for
"Dignity" and "Bread, freedom and social justice" that moved millions of
Egypt's impoverished masses as well as middle classes in 2011.
Yet the U.S.-backed military government, like the U.S. and French-backed
Moroccan monarchy, despite their electoral spectacles, are trying to
crush any opposition that brings their legitimacy into question.
- end item-
Thursday, September 04, 2014
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Not One More Black Life! Stop U.S. Wars of Occupation and Police Terror!
Reparations Now! A Call for Days in Solidarity with African People, 2014
Everywhere you look around the world, war and crisis rage with intensity. Bombs labeled “made in the USA” rain down upon the suffering peoples of the world on nearly every continent.
In the wake of the brutal police murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sustained righteous and militant African rebellions, marches and resistance have broken out in the face of intense military-style repression.
The government issued a “no-fly zone” over the town of Ferguson and declared a state of emergency, inflicting tear gas, rubber bullets and other means of coercion against the African community.
Inside the U.S., this government’s war against the African community is escalating. The rebellions in Ferguson have pushed the case of Michael Brown to the surface, but the reality is that another African is murdered by police or white vigilantes every 26 hours in this country.
Another Michael Brown is likely being gunned down in cold blood by police right now as you read these words. As white people, we never see this happening in our communities.
Everyday there is police murder, brutality, harassment or degradation directed at black people even as Africans, especially African youth, are rounded up and herded into the lucrative U.S. prison gulag—the largest prison population on earth.
The world watches in horror as the U.S.-backed settler state of Israel murders and terrorizes Palestinian children, women and men while the U.S. intensifies its resource wars on ever expanding fronts.
Africa, with the greatest concentration of natural resources on earth, is being plundered by U.S and foreign corporations everyday while Africans live in poverty without electricity, clean water and health care.
The media gives a great deal of attention to the current Ebola virus crisis, but there is no mention that there are million of deaths from malaria annually, 90 percent of which are in West Africa. (http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats)
We see the volatile U.S. economy failing to “recover” as skyrocketing numbers of unemployed college graduates are forced to live with their parents and a record 50 percent of the American population can now subsist only with some form of government assistance.
What is the future for us, for all of humanity and for the planet itself today?
What are the solutions?
U.S. imperialism is a hungry parasite looking for its next victim
All over the planet—and inside the U.S.—African, Mexican and oppressed peoples are resisting U.S. war, terror and theft of their resources and land.
Black and brown peoples are fighting back against this brutal and profit-driven capitalist system built not on ideals of equality and democracy, but on hideous crimes such as the massive enslavement and commodification of African people, unimaginable genocide of the Indigenous people and colonial violence of massive proportions.
This system and country rest on a pedestal of torture, terror and humiliation for the benefit of a minority of the human race at the expense of millions and millions of people and their cultures and social systems.
This is how capitalism was born and this is the only way it can continue to function today.
The Uhuru Solidarity Movement offers a solution to the crisis of today’s world.
There is a future for humankind being forged in the ghettos and barrios and oppressed and impoverished communities every place where people are fighting for self-determination, the freedom to live and not just grovel to survive on a dollar a day in a repressive system while others enjoy the benefits of their stolen labor and resources.
People everywhere want the right to build their own economies with their own resources that benefit their children and their people.
They want to freely associate both economically and culturally with whomever they wish.
They want a dynamic, equitable world built on true justice, peace and mutually-respected independence.
We can and must be part of that future.
As white people organized under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, working for the liberation of Africans everywhere and in solidarity with oppressed and struggling peoples across the globe, we know there will never be peace without this vision.
That’s why we say “Reparations—there can be no justice without it.”
We must separate ourselves from identifying with the U.S. government and its expectations of unity, a white nationalist unity, and mindless apathy that has us fighting for our own interests at the expense of the rest of the world.
As Harvard Professor Walter Johnson stated in his article “King Cotton’s Long Shadow,” published in The New York Times:
“It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism. Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined. Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness.”
The legacy of slavery and colonialism is alive in Africa today, where the majority of Africans are profoundly impoverished as the U.S., Europe, China and others carry out a feeding frenzy of the theft of African resources.
The legacy of slavery and colonialism is alive in the fact that white people, even in this economic downturn, have 22 times the wealth of African families who live in desperate poverty. (http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/21/news/economy/wealth-gap-race/)
The legacy of slavery and colonialism is alive in the fact that the Indigenous people live in concentration camps called reservations with a life expectancy of 47 years in the U.S. or are forced out of desperation to send their children across the border.
The legacy of slavery and colonialism is alive in the fact that we the Euro-Americans can always aspire to send our children to college and move up the ladder of success.
But a life lived on the backs of Africans and oppressed peoples is neither politically sustainable nor personally tolerable.
Capitalism has been built on a simple equation for the past 500 years: the price paid for the white world to have so much prosperity and opportunity is that everyone else must suffer and die as mere objects of a cruel and brutal system.
As organizers of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement inside the belly of the capitalist beast, we see reparations as the genuine method of reversing the flow of resources seized by the blood-sucking parasite.
This is one, small, very sick planet. Whether we like it or not, the future of white people is inextricably intertwined with everyone else’s.
Peace is built on a premise of the equitable sharing of the world’s resources and respect for all nations and their cultures. The U.S. and Europe make up 17 percent of the world’s population but consume 80 percent of the world’s resources (http://worldcentric.org/conscious-living/social-and-economic-injustices).
It’s time that we, white people, abandon our self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world, a damaging isolation that has enabled us to live a lifestyle that oppresses others and destroys the planet.
For there to be peace we must pay our dues and restitution. Reparations are owed to those from whom life, livelihood and happiness have been stolen for hundreds of years, and for our part in complacency in keeping a blind eye to this deadly status quo.
Imperialism, capitalism and white power must go!
Join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement in building the Days in Solidarity with African People, a campaign which is raising reparations for the work of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, building concrete programs of African economic self-determination and power in the U.S., Africa and Europe.
The Uhuru Movement is organizing worldwide to create the basis for an independent and liberated African economy, planting the seeds of a just and socialist future with institutions like Black Star Industries and the All African People’s Development Empowerment Project.
Spanning continents, the Uhuru Movement is uniting African people as one people fighting to reclaim control of their resources and destinies.
Their struggle for self-determination represents the possibility for a future without oppression, colonialism and slavery.
White people: join the peoples of the planet in creating a healthy world of peace and equity. Build the Days in Solidarity with African People in your area.
Join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement by going to uhurusolidarity.org.
Contact us! Email info@uhurusolidarity.org or call 727-888-3797.
Reparations Now!
Thursday, August 14, 2014
What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson: Net Neutrality, Algorithmic Filtering and Ferguson
Article by
Ferguson is about many things, starting first with race and policing in America.
Ferguson is about many things, starting first with race and policing in America.
It’s a clear example of why “saving the Internet”, as it often phrased, is not an abstract issue of concern only to nerds, Silicon Valley bosses, and few NGOs. It’s why “algorithmic filtering” is not a vague concern.
It’s a clear example why net neutrality is a human rights issue; a free speech issue; and an issue of the voiceless being heard, on their own terms.
I saw this play out in multiple countries — my home country of Turkey included — but last night, it became even more heartbreakingly apparent in the United States as well.
For me, last night’s Ferguson “coverage” began when people started retweeting pictures of armored vehicles with heavily armored “robocops” on top of them, aiming their muzzle at the protesters, who seemed to number a few hundred. It was the fourth night after an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was shot by a — still unnamed — police officer after a “jaywalking” incident. Witnesses say he died hands in the air, saying “don’t shoot”.
The first night Mike Brown was shot, a friend asked on Twitter whether this would ever make the national news. It deserved to be national news as multiple significant, ongoing crises intersect at Ferguson: the loss of jobs which hit these communities worst; the militarization of US police departments; race; chronic multi-generational poverty.
But those very factors often make it less likely such places make the news, except as trouble spots. Places to be ignored. Avoided. “We” hear it only through official statements, often dismissing local concerns, painting them as looters, thugs, troublemakers.
It seems like a world ago in which such places, and such incidents, would be buried in silence, though, of course, residents knew of their own ignored plight. Now, we expect documentation, live-feeds, streaming video, real time Tweets.
I watched this interaction online. When local the police department in Ferguson showed up at the first vigils for this young man with dogs, the outrage spilled over to people who may not have been following it the first day. When night after night, reports of tear gas came in, more national journalists went to the area, as well as more residents turning on their cameras, deliberately. More and more people started talking about this.
Yesterday, national journalists were harassed, assaulted, arrested — without paperwork — while sitting quietly, recharging their phones at McDonald's — captured on video. Police positioned like snipers on top of armored, anti-mine vehicles kept their rifles — I have no idea what kind — aimed at protester within full view of national media, in broad daylight — pictured from multiple angles.
This unfolded in real time on my social media feed which was pretty soon taken over by the topic — and yes, it’s a function of who I follow but I follow across the political spectrum, on purpose, and also globally. Egyptians and Turks were tweeting tear gas advice. Journalists with national profiles started going live on TV. And yes, there were people from the left and the right who expressed outrage.
I write and talk often about protest over-policing in multiple countries, so the topic was not a new one to me but I saw many people who I know don’t necessarily follow this day-to-day (and don’t condemn — not everyone can, or should, follow every worthy issue) start talking about it.
And then I switched to non net-neutral Internet to see what was up. I mostly have a similar a composition of friends on Facebook as I do on Twitter.
This morning, though, my Facebook feed is also very heavily dominated by discussion of Ferguson. Many of those posts seem to have been written last night, but I didn’t see them then. Overnight, “edgerank” –or whatever Facebook’s filtering algorithm is called now — seems to have bubbled them up, probably as people engaged them more.
But I wonder: what if Ferguson had started to bubble, but there was no Twitter to catch on nationally? Would it ever make it through the algorithmic filtering on Facebook? Maybe, but with no transparency to the decisions, I cannot be sure.
This isn’t about Facebook per se—maybe it will do a good job, maybe not—but the fact that algorithmic filtering, as a layer, controls what you see on the Internet. Net neutrality (or lack thereof) will be yet another layer determining this. This will come on top of existing inequalities in attention, coverage and control.
Twitter was also affected by algorithmic filtering. “Ferguson” did not trend in the US on Twitter but it did trend locally. [I’ve since learned from @gilgul that that it *briefly* trended but mostly trended at localities.] So, there were fewer chances for people not already following the news to see it on their “trending” bar. Why? Almost certainly because there was already national, simmering discussion for many days and Twitter’s trending algorithm (said to be based on a method called “term frequency inverse document frequency”) rewards spikes… So, as people in localities who had not been talking a lot about Ferguson started to mention it, it trended there though the national build-up in the last five days penalized Ferguson.
Mass media, typically, does not do very well covering chronic problems of unprivileged populations, poor urban blacks bear the brunt of this, but they are not alone. Rural mostly white America, too, is almost always ignored except for the occasional “meth labs everywhere” story. But yesterday, many outlets were trying, except police didn’t let them. Chris Hayes says that police ordered satellite trucks off the area so that they could not go live from the area. Washington Post was only one outlet whose journalists were arrested — citizen journalists were targeted as well.
On the scrappy live feed kept up by frequently tear-gassed, coughing citizen journalists, I heard the announcements calling on them to “turn off their cameras.”
But maybe in the future, they don’t have to bother to arrest journalists and force cameras off. In California, legislation is being considered for “kill switches” in phones — a feature I honestly cannot imagine a good use for this in the United States.
The citizen journalists held on, even as choked from the gas, some traditional media started going live from the region, and today, it’s on the front page of many newspapers.
Maybe, just maybe, there can be a national conversation on these topics long-ignored outside these communities. That’s not everything: it may be a first step, or it may get drowned out.
But I’m not quite sure that without the neutral side of the Internet—the livestreams whose “packets” were fast as commercial, corporate and moneyed speech that travels on our networks, Twitter feeds which are not determined by an opaque corporate algorithms but my own choices,—we’d be having this conversation.
But keep in mind, Ferguson is also a net neutrality issue. It’s also an algorithmic filtering issue. How the internet is run, governed and filtered is a human rights issue.
Ferguson: Justified Resistance to a Racist System
via @syndicalisms
@reuters
People resist and fight the police who fired tear gas and rubber bullets, witnesses say they even saw snipers aiming at protestors. Cops also used LRAD on people.
People covering up their ears from LARD, while others hold their hands in the air, right before police unleashing another attack on them.
@rebeccawatson –The #Ferguson cops are just dressing for the job they want: dystopian totalitarian murder thugs.
Gas cans and crackers being lobbed into people’s front gardens, via @jonswaine
risinggalaxy @risinggalaxy The militarization of the police has a reason: The bosses see us as the internal enemy. Not in US only. Everywhere. #ferguson@TefPoe – Antonio French has been arrested and we are currently at the Ferguson jail demanding his release
#OpFerguson #HandsUp, Solidarity Protests Sunday 3 PM at Your Local #Police Station. Wherever you are, solidarity has no boundaries:
@theblogpirate: “Imagine what this little girl from #Ferguson learned about her country and its police today.”
Ferguson police chief, Tim Fitch, seems to have been trained in “counter-terrorism” in Israel by the IDF.
KKK have started to raise money for the police officer who executed Michael Brown.
The night before, around 1 a.m., local police shot another man claiming “he pointed a gun at them”, he’s in critical condition. A woman was also injured by a bullet and taken to the hospital, following a drive-by shooting in Ferguson.
It’s not clear what caused this. Earlier, the standoff between residents and police resulted in police pulling back and protestors retreating. Soon after that, police started to hunt down residents. See timeline of events as reported by witnesses below.
Residents attacked with tear gas by militarized police.
@prisonculture – I’ll just say this. Adding a few more black cops to the #Ferguson police department WILL NOT solve this problem. It won’t.
Police have arrested two journalists, Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan J. Reilly of the Huffington Post, because they were posting messages on twitter about the police repression, happening nearby:
“Lowery and Reilly tweeted that they were in a McDonald’s near a demonstration when police came inside and asked patrons to leave. “Officers slammed me into a fountain soda machine because I was confused about which door they were asking me to walk out of,” Lowery tweeted after his release. “Was waiting to be taken away, large black man SCREAMING for help in back of police truck. They refused his calls for paramedics. ‘I’m dying. I’m dying. Please call help’ he screamed. They mocked him.” Lowery said he was released without paperwork or explanation.”
pic @WSJ
Al Jazeera crew were also attacked with tear gas by police, see video here. These attacks on journalists are relevant when put in the context: for hours, a right wing outlet was the only one allowed to live stream from Ferguson.
“Almost all of his propaganda plays into the hands of the extreme right wing in the United States. He dismisses feminism and gay rights as part of a New Word Order plot to reduce the population. He dismisses climate change as a hoax, and backs it up by giving weather reports on Mars. He attacks non-existent, nameless, faceless organizations like the Illuminati but ignores the evils being done by right-wing billionaires like the Koch Brothers.” Why the Alex Jones industrial complex must be dismantled
Local media in Ferguson ignore police violence and brutality and project it on the protestors, inciting more racist propaganda and racist violence against the black community. While not explaining that the police are the ones armed, doing the shooting and inflicting violence on legitimate protestors, local journalists are actually covering up and justifying police violence against a legitimately enraged black community.
photo AP
50 years ago and today.
Prosecutors refuse to release information about the police officer who gunned down Mike Brown on August 9, invoking “witnesses’ credibility”. St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch claims they are still gathering data about the killing of Mike Brown and that it will be weeks before they release their information about what happened on August 9 in Ferguson. This contrasts the lack of restrain from the police to release all sorts of data about people protesting.
Trayvon Martin & The Fight Against The New Jim Crow, watch it all here.
Howard University, the historically black college in Washington, D.C. Twitter user @The_Blackness48 posted it, explainingthat it wasn’t so much a planned rally as a bunch of students already gathered for a meeting on freshman move-in “and we also felt we needed to respond to the Mike Brown issue.” via MotherJones
St.Louis police aiming at protestor holding his hands up in the air, Ferguson, August 13. Photo: AP
Kids sending a message, #Ferguson @AnonAustria
Huffington Post reporter Ryan J. Reilly being arrested when police officers suddenly closed a Ferguson McDonald’s restaurant on West Florissant Avenue on Wednesday. (Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
UPDATES August 12: Protestors in Ferguson resisted and managed to push the army of cops, armed to their teeth, away, after they inflicted more terror on the community. Some 250 residents refused to obey police orders to disperse, and instead kept protesting and yelling at cops to go home, calling them invaders and an occupying force. Armed cops shot gas canisters at people’s heads, tear-gassing them in their own backyards while they stood there with their hands in the air. Earlier today, a no-fly zone was instituted over Ferguson. Protests and clashes are ongoing with police, see below for updates from tonight, livestreams, and other information.
http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/11732/web
North St. Louis County Fire and EMS Live scanner feed.
http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/4176/web
St. Louis County Police Dispatch – 1st Precedent scanner feed:
http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/17648/web
North St. Louis County Fire and EMS Live scanner feed.
http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/4176/web
St. Louis County Police Dispatch – 1st Precedent scanner feed:
http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/17648/web
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