Quote of the day – Right, Right

“As long as I am president, Honduras will stand behind Israel.”

- Juan Orlando Hernández

Word of the day

Buckraking.

Quote of the day – UNC children’s clinic

“[F]or the rest of us Krispy Kreme represents the siren call of diabetes, obesity, clogged hearts, and death - we can only hope a death that takes place in the Krispy Kreme Challenge Children’s Specialty Clinic, which I’m sure is a very good hospital with some now very terrible branding.”

- Sam Biddle

Quote of the day – democracy and the TTIP

“I do not take my mandate from the European people.”

- EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in reply to questions about her continuing promotion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership despite strong opposition in Europe

(I first read the quote in this article about the Israeli government’s efforts to use the secretive trade pact – among other means - to suppress BDS and other transnational solidarity and human rights actions.)

Quote of the day – the joint struggle

“We offer this statement first and foremost to Palestinians, whose suffering does not go unnoticed and whose resistance and resilience under racism and colonialism inspires us. It is to Palestinians, as well as the Israeli and US governments, that we declare our commitment to working through cultural, economic, and political means to ensure Palestinian liberation at the same time as we work towards our own. We encourage activists to use this statement to advance solidarity with Palestine and we also pressure our own Black political figures to finally take action on this issue. As we continue these transnational conversations and interactions, we aim to sharpen our practice of joint struggle against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the various racisms embedded in and around our societies.”

- 2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine (read the whole thing here)

Historical quote of the day - the drive for life and the drive for destruction

“It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting of the whole of life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and expression of man’s [sic] sensuous, emotional, and intellectual capacities…. In other words: the drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually independent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Those individual and social conditions which make for suppression of life produce the passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which the particular hostile tendencies – either against others or against oneself – are nourished.”

- Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, pp. 181-182

Quotes of the day

From the MSNBC news “ticker” during Rachel Maddow tonight:

“Three people killed and more than 20 injured in stabbing and shooting attacks in Israel.”

“Secretary of State Kerry condemns attacks on Israeli civilians, says violence ‘has got to stop’.”

“Israeli PM Netanyahu vows ‘aggressive’ response to recent spate of violence.”

Another perspective.

Does the Israeli government think this can go on forever? It can’t, and it won’t.

Rahaf and Nour Rasmi Hassan

“Israel kills toddler and pregnant mother in Gaza”

Many killed and wounded in bombings of peace march in Ankara

A deadly attack on a leftwing, Kurdish rally for peace and justice.

Terrifying rightwing mobs rampage in Israel

US media remain silent. State officials continue to encourage racist rioting. As Rania Khalek argues, “As Israel’s culture of hatred spirals out of control, the media outlets concealing the incitement from top Israeli leaders and the ‘death to Arabs’ riots they help spawn are complicit, again.”

Meanwhile, this is the march the vegwashers want some activists to see.

Report: The Palestine Exception to Free Speech

Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights have produced a new report documenting efforts to censor and silence Palestinian rights activists on US college and university campuses:

“The tactics used to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights frequently follow recognizable patterns. Activists and their protected speech are routinely maligned as uncivil, divisive, antisemitic, or supportive of terrorism. Institutional actors—primarily in response to pressure from Israel advocacy groups—erect bureaucratic barriers that thwart efforts to discuss abuses of Palestinian rights and occasionally even cancel events or programs altogether. Sometimes the consequences are more severe: universities suspend student groups, deny tenure to faculty, or fire them outright in response to their criticism of Israel. Meritless lawsuits and legal threats, which come from a variety of Israel advocacy groups identified in this Report, burden Palestinian rights advocacy and chill speech even when dismissed by the courts. Campaigns by such groups have even resulted in legislation to curtail Palestine advocacy, criminal investigations, and filing of charges against activists.”

Quote of the day – no paradox, no irony

Carne Ross:

“The Kurds are alive to the paradox that this experiment in “government by the people” has become possible only amid the violent rupture of war. But there is a darker irony, too.

Democracy was supposed to be the point of Western intervention in the Middle East. But in Rojava, where it is cherished and has prospered despite the most vicious of opponents, this brave experiment is being quietly starved while the supposed champions of democracy stand by.”

There’s no paradox, no irony. Understanding the cultural, religious, and geopolitical reality of “Western intervention” allows us to dispense with these obfuscating terms.

Fadi Alloun

As the video above begins, voices can be heard in Hebrew shouting – apparently at police – “Shoot him! He’s a terrorist! Shoot him!” and “Don’t wait! Shoot him!”

Alloun can be seen backing away from the mob, along the tracks of the Jerusalem Light Rail.

The lights of a police car can then be seen and the sound of seven gunshots heard. Alloun falls to the ground. At no time in the video was he any threat to anyone.

COWSPIRACY

Now on Netflix:

Coca-Cola and the American Academy of Pediatrics

Via PBS NewsHour:

Comical glare of the day

Quote of the day – Oh, FFS

“‘Kissinger’s official biographer’, writes the man Kissinger first asked to be his official biographer, ‘certainly gives the reader enough evidence to conclude that Henry Kissinger is one of the greatest Americans in the history of the republic,…’”

[Source]

From an unofficial biography.

(They’re all men, by the way: neoliberal men, neoconservative men, imperialist men, biographical men, Islamist men, secular-nationalist men, ambitious men, historiographical men, critical men, theoretical men, anti-imperialist men,... It’s a regular club.)