We use our advanced military power to
enforce our conditions and demands on other countries. We either threaten them
with our military might, or install a puppet government (again by using our
arm power) to deplete natural resources of the land. After their economic base is
destroyed, they rush to safety and migrate to richer lands; to ours. We treat
them as second hand citizens and make them clean our refuse and eat our
leftovers. But it can go on for so long before it bites us back, as in the case
of Ferguson. The war between the prosperous minority, backed by the government, and the underprivileged
majority will reach its boiling point during the next two years when the Right
has the full control of the government. The following four articles from today’s
news reflect this analysis. Passages are excerpts from the full article, links
of which can be checked by clicking on the title of each article.
Well, you know, this
week the media is absorbed with a foreign policy crisis in the Middle East. But
there's a crisis occurring on our own border, in our own neighborhood, so to
speak, that's probably more important to the average American than the question
of whether militant Sunnis or corrupt Shiites run Iraq.
For the last few
months, the last six, eight months, thousands, tens of thousands of children
have been pushing across the U.S. border between Mexico and Texas in a
desperate effort to flee poverty and violence and hopelessness in their
countries. They're overwhelming facilities down there. The detention centers
are overcrowded. The immigration service doesn't know what to do with these
kids. Some of them get put on buses to be sent to families someplace. It's a
mess.
And it's quickly
deteriorated into politics, of course. The Democrats and Republicans blame the
president. The president says it's a humanitarian crisis, so we have to act,
and so we do. But lost in this debate is the question of U.S. responsibility
for the basic causes of this tragic immigration to the United States.
Immigration politics in the U.S. focuses on the U.S. But, you know, the
question of what to do with people who are arriving here misses the point of
how they arrived and why they arrived.
People come from somewhere, and in this case 95 percent of these
children are coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Now, this just
happens to be three countries, along with much of the rest of Central America,
that the U.S. has dominated and controlled for the last hundred years.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appears set to anger women and
rights groups in Turkey once again after voicing his strong objection to the
equality of women and men, instead recommending what he called “equivalency.”
“When we are able to look at human beings from the point of view of justice, then the elimination of discrimination between women and men would be possible in a much more fair, humane and conscientious way. What do women need?” Erdoğan said Nov. 24, delivering a speech at an international gathering in Istanbul aimed at discussing women’s rights and freedoms.
He also reiterated an argument he voiced in the past, announcing: “You cannot bring women and men into equal positions; that is against nature because their nature is different.”
The Turkish president has consistently exhorted women to have at least three children, while also terming abortion “murder” and railing against Caesarian sections.
He also used the occasion to stage a strongly-worded attack on “feminism and feminists,” claiming that they “reject the concept of motherhood.”
“Our religion [Islam] has defined a position for women [in society]: Motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood,” he said.
His speech at the Women and Justice Summit did not mark the first time he publicly praised motherhood. Back in 2008, he declared that designating just one day as Mothers’ Day was an “insult to mothers.” “In our beliefs, one kisses the feet of mothers. Paradise is next to the mother’s feet. That’s how we approach them,” he said at the time
“When we are able to look at human beings from the point of view of justice, then the elimination of discrimination between women and men would be possible in a much more fair, humane and conscientious way. What do women need?” Erdoğan said Nov. 24, delivering a speech at an international gathering in Istanbul aimed at discussing women’s rights and freedoms.
He also reiterated an argument he voiced in the past, announcing: “You cannot bring women and men into equal positions; that is against nature because their nature is different.”
The Turkish president has consistently exhorted women to have at least three children, while also terming abortion “murder” and railing against Caesarian sections.
He also used the occasion to stage a strongly-worded attack on “feminism and feminists,” claiming that they “reject the concept of motherhood.”
“Our religion [Islam] has defined a position for women [in society]: Motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood,” he said.
His speech at the Women and Justice Summit did not mark the first time he publicly praised motherhood. Back in 2008, he declared that designating just one day as Mothers’ Day was an “insult to mothers.” “In our beliefs, one kisses the feet of mothers. Paradise is next to the mother’s feet. That’s how we approach them,” he said at the time
At least 31 people have been killed
and 360 others injured in a four day "spiral of violence" in Turkey led by
pro-Kurdish protesters demonstrating against the government's policy on Syria,
the interior minister said Friday.
Ala said that clashes broke out in
35 cities, and 221 civilians and 139 security officials including police were
wounded.
Over 1,000 people were detained and
58 people have formally been arrested for their involvement in the protests
which caused damage to 212 schools, he said.
The violence, which has been
concentrated in south-eastern Turkey but also flared in Istanbul and Ankara, has been among the worst
rioting seen in the country in years.
The official toll has already well
exceeded the number of eight people confirmed to have been killed in the May-June
2103 nationwide protests against the ruling party.
The demonstrators responded to a
call late Monday by Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party for protests against the
government's lack of action to stop the Syrian border town of Kobane falling to
jihadists.
But some of the deadly violence has
been blamed on clashes between PKK supporters and backers of the Kurdish Sunni fundamentalist
group Huda-Par which is sympathetic to ISIS.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has declared a state
of emergency in advance of the grand jury’s pending decision in the Michael
Brown shooting case. On Monday, Nixon issued an executive order to activate the
state’s National Guard in response to what he called "the possibility of
expanded unrest." Nixon cited the protests in Ferguson and the St. Louis
area since Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by police officer
Darren Wilson on August 9. The grand jury has been meeting for nearly three
months, and protests are expected to escalate if they choose not to indict. But
while state officials say they fear violence, protesters say they fear a return
to the militarized crackdown that turned their community into a war zone. As
the grand jury nears a decision and all sides prepare for the unknown under a
state of emergency, we are joined by two guests: Jeff Smith, a New School
professor and former Missouri state senator whose new book is "Ferguson:
In Black and White," and Montague Simmons, chair of the St. Louis-based
Organization for Black Struggle and a key organizer in the movement that has
emerged since Brown’s killing.
