Showing posts with label KPFA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KPFA. Show all posts

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

Israel's atrocities continue and worsen (video)

Eds., Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Mohammed Omer (live from Gaza), Aaron Mate, Nermeen Shaikh (DemocracyNow.org, 7-29-14), KPFA
The "State of Israel" has two goals, exterminate Palestinians and win PR war in the U.S.
 
Overcoming the media blockade in Gaza
Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan 
Amys_column_default
Host Amy Goodman
One of the greatest challenges in understanding the real situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is getting reliable information. This latest assault on Gaza reaffirms the key role played by the U.S. media in maintaining the information blockade. [Our U.S. F-14 fighter planes are used by Israel in its/our bombing of Palestinian civilians manned by Israeli pilots trained by the U.S. military-industrial complex]. It also highlights the increasing importance of pressure applied by social networks.



25 x 6 mile prison, 1.8 million prisoners
With a reporter in Gaza right now (Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who took this picture of a Palestinian baby harmed by Israel now in the hospital)... Despite [another phony] U.N. Security Council call for a ceasefire, Israel has intensified its attack on Gaza and warned the world of a "protracted campaign," more war crimes against civilians justified by saying it is only trying to kill Hamas members.

Palestinian officials say they have killed more than 110 people in the past 24 hours, with some saying Monday was the most intensive night of bombing the civilian city of Gaza so far. During this time, Israel attacked more than 150 sites including Gaza’s only power station and a media center that houses the broadcasting headquarters of Hamas and a number of other Arab satellite news channels. News of what is really going on under Israeli military oppression will not be allowed to get out unless Israel controls the broadcast, the access, the PR, the message, and the spin.
farms
Gaza A-J America (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)


Earlier on Monday, ten people were killed, eight of which were children, and 40 others wounded by a bomb in a park near the beach in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. The child victims were said to be playing on a playground swing when they were hit by Israel.

Israel, to add confusion to the chaos, denies carrying out the attack -- even though eyewitnesses said the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike.

Another Israeli bombing reportedly hit an outpatient building of Gaza’s main hospital, al-Shifa. Meanwhile, ten Israeli soldiers were said to have been killed on Monday. Fifty-three Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians, and a Thai Buddhist migrant farmworker have died since Israel's assault began.

Democracy Now! goes to Gaza City to speak with correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. "[Israel has] shelled hospitals, U.N. schools; they’ve bombed people in their homes," Kouddous reports. "There’s literally nowhere for these people to run to." [All borders are blocked to Palestinians by Israel, who wants 1.8 million civilians hemmed in and killed by airstrikes, gunboats, ground invaders, and spies.] "Nowhere to Go": Gaza suffers one of deadliest...
 
We (U.S.) support war crimes. Israeli media control makes sure of it. See A-J U.S.

Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer: Lifting Israel's blockade isn’t a Hamas demand — it’s a human right:

Today is Eid, the feast and culmination of Ramadan, the holiest month on the Islamic calendar. But there is no opportunity to observe or celebrate it. The number of Palestinians murdered by Israel has topped 1,100 after one of the deadliest 24-hour periods since Israel began an assault on a section of Palestine/Israel called "Gaza" 22 days ago.

Most of the murdered have been civilians. More than 1 out of 10 (180,000) Palestinians have been displaced over the past three weeks. This is roughly 10 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip, an open air prison that is one of the most crowded, densely populated pieces of land in the world.

Democracy Now! is joined from Gaza City by award-winning Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer. "I believe Israel wants to make people turn against the resistance," Omer reports. "There is no way for people to turn against the resistance -- in fact it is the other way around. People in the street say we do support resistance because that is the only way to end the occupation. 

"...I’m afraid we are going to have more radical generations in the Gaza Strip, and I fear for the future of Gaza and the future of the West Bank [the two remaining parts of Israel where all indigenous Palestinians have been corralled into areas like concentration camps, refugee camps, and metropolitan prisons where Israel controls everything that goes in and comes out in addition to raining down death on civilians any time it wishes] -- and I fear the future of the region if the international community is not acting now to end the blockade and the operation in Gaza." Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer: lifting Israel's blockade...
Full "Democracy Now!" show for July 29, 2014 (democracynow.org)

Decrying "brutal operation taking place in our name," Israeli military reservists refuse to serve As Israel pledges to continue the assault on Gaza for "as long as is required," we are joined by two Israelis who have refused to serve in their country’s military reserves. On Tuesday... (July 24, 2014) 

Pressuring Israel, Presbyterian Church divests from firms tied to Israel's occupation of Palestinian land In what is being hailed as a major milestone for the global campaign to boycott and divest from Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to divest from three... (June 23, 2014) 

A war on campus? Northeastern University suspends Students for Justice in Palestine chapter The Northeastern University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has become the latest student group to face reprimand for organizing around the Palestinian cause. Northeastern has suspended... (March 13, 2014) 

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald: Edward Snowden "satisfied" by worldwide outrage over secret U.S. spying operations In this Web-only interview, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald reveals that he talked to NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Saturday. "He is doing very well in terms of his mindset, his demeanor," Greenwald... (July 08, 2013 blog post) 

Lawmakers threaten funding of Brooklyn College for hosting event on BDS campaign against Israel New York politicians are threatening to cut funding to Brooklyn College if the school hosts a forum Thursday night about the Palestinian-led BDS campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. (February 06, 2013)
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Sunday, 22 June 2014

ZEN: "The Void," "Sex in the Church" (video)


Brad Warner (Hardcore Zen)
British Zen Buddhist, Taoist, Episcopalian teacher Alan Watts is an inspiration to Californians, where his show continues to air on Los Angeles' Pacifica Radio (KPFA.org) thanks to Roy of Hollywood Tuckman (8:00 am Sundays, midnight Thursdays).

This video is the fourth episode of Alan Watts' 1959 KQED TV series "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life." (DVDs available at alanwatts.com/collections).

Alan Watts was an unabashed lover
A native of England, Watts attended the King's School near Canterbury Cathedral. At 14 he became fascinated with the philosophies of the Far East. By 16 he regularly attended the Buddhist Lodge in London, where he met Zen scholars Christmas Humphries and D.T. Suzuki. As a speaker and contributor to the Lodge's journal, The Middle Way, he wrote a series of philosophical commentaries and published his first book on Eastern thought, The Spirit of Zen, at age 21. In the late thirties he moved to New York, and a few years later he became an Episcopalian priest. In 1942 he moved to Illinois and spent the wartime years as chaplain of Northwestern University.
Square to hippie (ianmack.com)
In 1950 he left the church, and his life took a turn away from organized religion back toward Eastern ways and expanding horizons. After meeting author and mythologist Joseph Campbell and composer John Cage in New York he headed to California and began teaching at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco.

There his popular lectures spilled over into coffehouse talks and appearances with the well-known beat writers Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. In late 1953 he began what would become the longest-running series of Sunday morning public radio talks, which continue to this day with programs from the Alan Watts Tape Archives.
In 1957 he published the bestselling The Way of Zen, beginning a prolific ten-year period during which he wrote Nature, Man and Woman; Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen; This Is It; Psychotherapy East and West; The Two Hands of God; The Joyous Cosmology; and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.

By 1960 Watts' radio series "Way Beyond the West" on Berkeley's KPFA.org had an avid following on the West Coast, and NET TV began national broadcasts of the series "Eastern Wisdom in Modern Life." The first season, recorded in the studios of KQED, a San Francisco TV station, focused on the relevance of Buddhism, and the second on Zen and the arts.
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Friday, 6 June 2014

Actress Charlize Theron gang-RAPED (video)

Was the gang-rape victim "asking for it"? Or has an intrusive press violated actor Charlize Theron in the worst way as she tries to live a quiet life of obscurity? (hdwallpapers.in)

 
Charlize Theron (celebs101.com)
You know how they say Gwyneth Paltrow is a real jerk? She's a self-absorbed elitist parent trying to outdo all of us, and a wife who never has to face divorce like the rest of us because she "consciously uncouples" instead? (lol) Well, we like her, Goop and all. She got in trouble recently for a bit of hyperbole comparing her life with Internet trolls to "war." Mrs. John McCain got bent out of shape. Anything to hate on a skinny, holier-than-thou Hollywood starlet. 

Oh, Gwyn, you know who's a real gem? Charlize Theron. If Paltrow has gone off the deep end of insensitivity by comparing her life to combat, Theron takes the cake by claiming she is being "raped." By high-caste Indian men with police help? No, it's that intrusive "gotcha" press bumbling Sarah Palin warned us about. Theron compares pushy reporters to rapists. Paltrow is relieved the attention has turned to Madonna's ex (Sean Penn)'s newest girlfriend.

Dalit victims Murti and Pushpa (news.com.au)
This is much more important an issue than which celebrity said what. It's their job to distract us by calling attention to themselves. What's Justin Bieber up to? He's on tape saying the N word. WTR? Have his ratings gone up? It's all about the ratings in showbiz. It's important because the horror that is the gang rape and murder of two Shakya/Dalit caste girls in India isn't getting the traction and outrage the rape of a young, middle class woman on a New Delhi bus did in 2012. Why? 
 
That was a middle class, high woman, so the rapists went too far. If they want to rape low caste girls and kill them, well, that's apparently more understandable. And middle class Indian women living in the city aren't going to get too bent out of shape and get out in the streets to protest. But eave tease (sexually harass) another worker with Internet access and a toilet, and that they will picket about.
 
Where is our outrage when things happen to our social-inferiors? Because when it's our perceived social-superiors, it's game on! We must have justice! Policeman beats and kills someone, who cares. Someone beats and kills a policeman, stop the city, declare martial law, institute a curfew for everyone, that "savage" must be corralled, captured, and decapitated like an animal. The policeman we can acquit for doing the best he could in a tough job we don't want to do. What a society, what a world to live in.
Charlize Theron says she was [gang] raped
They started to make me feel raped
South African-born ["all-American," Hollywood] actress Charlize Theron has waded into controversy for a recent interview in which she compared intrusive press coverage to rape.
 
Theron told the U.K.’s Sky News that “every aspect” of her life has become fodder for the tabloids:
 
“I don’t (Google myself) -- that’s my saving grace,” she said. “When you start living in that world, and doing that, you start feeling raped.”
  • The perpetrator was not one medium but the media, which is plural. It constitutes a "gang"; if she feels raped, it was by a group of celebrity-crazed individuals.
Asked if she meant to use such strong language, the actress said: “Well, when it comes to your son and your private life -- maybe it’s just me.
 
“Some people might relish in all that stuff, but there are certain things in my life that I think of as very sacred and I am very protective over them,” she told Sky News.
 
“I don’t always win that war, but as long as I don’t have to see that stuff or read that stuff or hear that stuff then I can live with my head in a clear space, which is probably a lot healthier than living in that dark room.”
 
“I can’t be concerned about what some idiot is going to write online about my short skirt; I can only take responsibility for myself,” she added.

Rape jokes on Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy": Did you hear the one about Peter Griffin?
 
Miss Theron was in London to promote her new film, “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” starring “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane [famous for rape and other risque humor that shows us ourselves as Americans], which opened on Friday.
 
Her comments come after actress Gwyneth Paltrow made headlines last week for comparing negative online attacks to fighting a war. More
Rape of the Shakya caste, India (audio)
Indian police use water cannons against anti-rape protesters: Civilian officers push and shove demonstrators before using water cannons to disperse them.
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FEMEN activists against patriarchy
The Buddha was from the Shakya -- which means "grey earth" and also came to be a goldsmith caste -- clan, from which the caste may claim descent, as it does in Nepal and as it may survive dispersed in Central Asia: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kalmykia (Europe), and Indo-Pakistan (formerly part of Gandhara, India).
Women of India in US (india-west.com)
Recently in UP, India two girls were gang raped, murdered, and lynched with their own scarves. Why? They were the wrong caste, making it tacitly permissible to mistreat, abuse, and "punish" them as if they were low socioeconomic-status individuals in America. The New Delhi and Mumbai gang rapes caused much more media attention and public outrage. Reaction to this double murder and flagrant sexual assault -- which a police officer participated in -- is dying down. The Dalit caste have no functional rights, even if they have nominal ones. To get rights many Dalits are converting to Buddhism, which does not please the nationalist Hindu majority.

Indian monks on PlayStation (Geolis06/flickr)
But this is a global problem beyond India. The problem is patriarchy, endemic sexism, poverty, and capitalism, and our colonized minds. Santa Barbara murder spree, rampant child sexual trafficking in the U.S., Boko Haram kidnappings, the "honor killing"/public bludgeoning in front of police of a young woman outside the Lahore high court in Pakistan for disobeying her parents and marrying the man she wanted to, U.S. college campus assaults and cover ups... all tie in. Pacifica Radio Berkeley takes a GLOBAL perspective on violence against females by talking to Rafia Zakaria, Dawn newspaper and Al Jazeera-English columnist, and Preeti Shekar, UC Berkeley women rights activist, South Asia specialist, and journalist. What do we do now?

Rape in India?
Candlelight vigil (independent.co.uk)
(W) In 2011 number of brutal assaults on women were reported in Uttar Pradesh state in India. And according to the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the majority of those assaulted were poor women from remote areas and Dalits ["untouchable caste"]. PUCL Vice President S.R. Darapuri says, "I analysed the rape figures for 2007, and I found that 90% of victims were Dalits, and 85% of Dalit rape victims were underage girls" (BBC, "Rape and murder in Uttar Pradesh," July 18, 2011). More

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Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Women, gun laws intersect in Santa Barbara

Sonali Kolhatkar (uprisingradio); Crystal Quintero, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly
University students gather near Royce Hall at UCLA to pay tribute to the Isla Vista victims during a candlelight vigil Monday made front page of LA Times (Wally Skalij/latimes.com).
  
Misogyny and Gun Laws, Isla Vista
A mass killing in the Santa Barbara County town of Isla Vista on Friday resulted in seven people dead, including the suspected perpetrator, and 13 injured.

Twenty-two year old Elliot Rodger, a privileged young man of half-Anglo, half-Chinese descent, is alleged to have stabbed his three male roommates and then turned to a sorority on the UC Santa Barbara campus.
  • For a "misogynist gun spree" there sure were a lot of male victims, stabbing deaths, and car injuries. But never mind that! We must focus on guns. Guns are the problem. This doesn't happen in China. In China mass murderers use knives. Is Rodger a new Candy Jones, another Monarch Butterfly?
Guns don't kill people. It's mostly the bullets.
There he killed another young man and two women. Rodger also struck several people with his car as he drove around Isla Vista shooting at people before ending his own life [the planned containment of all programmed shooters]. Shortly before his killing spree, Rodger posted a 137-page document detailing his life story and his motivation for the killings, as well a seven-minute YouTube video.
Rodger’s mother warned authorities about him after he began posting disturbing video earlier this year. But the young man managed to convince police that there was no reason to detain him.

Elliot Rodger has been linked with the so-called “Men’s Rights” movement. In his video and written “manifesto” he lamented being constantly sexually rejected by the white blonde women he was attracted to, and he resented men who enjoyed popularity with women. 
 
The killings have also prompted New York’s [opportunistic] Republican Congressman Peter King to call for enhanced background checks for gun sales. Richard Martinez, the grieving father of Christopher Michael-Martinez, who was among those murdered, made an impassioned plea at a press conference. More

GUESTS: Robyn Thomas, Executive Director of Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, based in San Francisco, Katie McDonough, assistant editor for Salon, focusing on politics, culture, and feminism. She wrote the commentary, “Elliot Rodger’s fatal menace: How toxic male entitlement devalues women’s and men’s lives.”

Commentary
General editorial consensus, Wisdom Quarterly
You a woman? (damnhangover.com)
Wait. Is Wisdom Quarterly opposed to guns or not? Opposed. We are opposed to ALL guns. But we are NOT anti-gun advocates.

Why, if you oppose all guns, are you not anti-gun?

When we as Americans finally advocate that guns be taken out of the hands of militant killers (police) and government agents (soldiers), we will say "no more guns." The anti-gun lobby, however, is part of the police state -- unwittingly so -- because all it asks for or demands in the wake of these very predictable incidents is that they be mandated out of the hands of citizens. What should be put in their place? "Give them more psych meds" seems to be the implicit answer. Dr. Drew (LovelineShow.com, May 27, 2014) was advocating forced institutionalization and forced drugging of anyone a psychiatrist says needs it. Is that the world we want? Should we bring back personality-numbing electroshock-therapy now in the nicer chemical guise?

College students return to class after UC Santa Barbara rampage (David McNew/SCPR.org)
 
"I do not perform for gender" (TOI)
Citizens are not the main problem. Authorized-criminals in uniforms and undercover are the main problem. Let's do something about that instead of using every sensationalized and possibly set up situation as the pretext to launch social media campaigns ("I'm a radical, I'm on Facebook!"), "hashtag activism," and Democratic gun-control drives. Look at Canada: full of guns and no where near the problem of anyone getting shot. Why? It's not the guns.

Misogyny (hating women) is a problem. Let's address that, not as the violent aberration of a young mental health patient but as the everyday garden variety violence of mostly "well adjusted" men and lots of women. When someone says or does something as outrageous as Rodger, it is said people rush to say, "Not all men." And that's true. But you know what? Yes all women. The oppression that is part and parcel of our society affects ALL females all day long, even jerks gems like Sarah "Caribou Barbie" Palin and FOX News' Ann Coulter, who contribute to the problem and oppression rather than advocating any viable solution.
 
SlutWalks across the USA and world
What are we doing in our daily lives? You don't have to be a Ukrainian FEMEN sextremist or Russian Pussy Rioter or Indian anti-rape bus striker (do you want a death penalty for rape out of revenge that replaces actually addressing the systemic problem?) or topped/topless American "SlutWalk" ("We know you aren't him") participant to do something. Male ally Hugo Schwyzer was no ally. There is a lot we can do, all women and all male allies. 

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