position:political activist

  • A beginner’s guide to Philippine feminism

    Sister #Mary_John_Mananzan, the co-founder of women’s organization Gabriela, was a political activist in the Philippines before she became a feminist.

    It was only when she went to a women’s conference in Venice, Austria and heard discussions about incest and wife-beating that she felt the need to call herself a feminist. “It dawned on me, ‘My goodness these [abuses] are in the Philippines too,” she says. “[I realized] you cannot have a social transformation unless this gender question is resolved.”

    Another known feminist, #Ging_Deles, who helped develop one of the first laws protecting women in the Philippines, got into feminism in the ‘80s. She says that she was working in the social development sector, but after meetings of bigger social development conferences, women began gathering together. Through these smaller get-togethers, it became clear how the issues of women were largely different from men, urging them to further push for women’s rights.

    Mich Dulce, a designer and co-founder of the women’s community collective Grrrl Gang, shares that she got into feminism because of music. In a previous interview with CNN Philippines Life, she said: “The [feminist music movement of the ‘60s] was what led me to become a feminist. I was not born ‘woke.’ I lived in a bubble for such a long time.”

    Deles, Mananzan, and Dulce all call themselves feminists and yet they all had different access points to feminism. We all come from diverse contexts, so if you’re looking for an entry point towards understanding the women’s movement in the Philippines, here’s a list of literature, films, and video discussions that you can consume:

    “The Woman Question in the Philippines”

    According to Gantala Press’ Faye Cura, this booklet by Sr. Mary John Mananzan offers an introduction to the state of women in the Philippines. “It contextualizes the oppression of Filipinas within the country’s colonial/neocolonial history,” she says. “It [also] discusses the challenges faced by women today — inequality and discrimination, gender-based violence, trafficking, and poverty, as well as Filipina women’s constant efforts to overcome these through feminism and the women’s movement.”

    “Daloy I” and “Daloy II”

    Batis AWARE (Association of Women in Action for Rights and Empowerment) is an organization that advocates for the rights of Filipino migrant women. In 2016, together with the publishing outfit Youth and Beauty Brigade, Batis AWARE published “Daloy 1,” a zine that features writings of Filipino migrant women. In 2018, Batis AWARE and YBB published “Daloy 2,” which dives deeper into the issues of Filipino migrant women — their day-to-day struggles, the abuses they face, and the continuous fight for their rights, among others.

    “Centennial Crossings: Readings on Babaylan Feminism in the Philippines”

    While there is a scarcity of recorded historical data on pre-colonial Philippines, there have been pieces of literature that reveal the central role women play during this era. A significant icon of pre-colonial Philippines is the babaylan, a healer or shaman who is usually a woman. In the book “Centennial Crossings: Readings on Babaylan Feminism in the Philippines,” the editors Fe Mangahas and Jenny Llaguno shine a light on how babaylanism is the inherent source of a Filipina’s strength and that babaylanism may perhaps be the forebearer of the women’s movement in the country.

    “Amazons of the Huk Rebellion: Gender, Sex, and Revolution in the Philippines”

    Written by Vina Lanzona, this book details how women in the Philippines were central to the revolution against Japanese occupation. “[This] provides an in-depth narration and analysis of the life and heroism of women warriors of the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Hukbalahap),” says Faye Cura. “[It begins] at the onset of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines until after the war has ended and the ‘Amazons’ were vilified in popular imagination. A must-read for all Filipinos.”

    ... and so on...

    http://cnnphilippines.com/life/culture/2019/4/15/philippine-feminism.html
    #femmes #féminisme #Philippines #femmes_philippines #livres #livre

  • Egypt. Remembering Hani Shukrallah, the activist-journalist | MadaMasr
    https://madamasr.com/en/2019/05/12/feature/politics/remembering-hani-shukrallah-the-activist-journalist

    As Egypt’s journalist and political activist communities gathered on Thursday to mourn the loss of prominent journalist and leftist activist Hani Shukrallah, we take his remembrance to our pages.

    Although he didn’t have direct ties to the institution, Hani was a beacon for us at Mada. As a political activist who challenged the comfort of those in power and a journalist who believed in speaking truth to power, he represented a combination that inspires us and was an embodiment of the ethos that guides us.

    Hani was 69 years old when he died. His activism began to take form during the student movement of the 1970s, in which Egypt’s university campuses became a hotbed of resistance against the government’s ambiguous stance on the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

    But Hani’s pursuit of political issues was not limited to joining effervescent, preexisting movements. It also included attempts to fundamentally shape a thinking behind a type of contentious politics that was slow to form in Egypt, from the 1980s onward. In a generous effort to highlight these endeavors, Amr Abdel Rahman, a political thinker and activist in our generation — a generation one step younger than Hani’s — synthesized Hani’s writing on a possible new communism in Egypt in the early 2000s. This writing was marked by the proposition that a capitalistic oligarchy, formed in the early 1980s, with the rise of the Mubarak government, has direct control of the state and has instigated the process of privatizing it as a whole. This process did not develop into a full-fledged capitalist project — à la the Four Asian Tigers model — because of the accumulation of a massive surplus in its hands, given the direct state control it exercised and the absence of any pressure to invest this surplus into some form of economic development. This oligarchy has also defined the possible modes of opposition to it, one that must steer clear from the presidency’s power establishment and its main economic model. In this mode of opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, which would later become a subject of Hani’s vehement criticism, managed to find room to maneuver. Unless a democractic movement stands against this oligarchy — by reactivating ties with the labor movement and the middle class — the opposition would slowly be eliminated, Hani argued. Post-2011, he would write about the ominous death of politics, saying, “The defeat of the revolution was destined to expand into a ‎trouncing of politics.”

  • The 1970s Political Activist Who Invented Penis Pants
    https://www.messynessychic.com/2013/08/01/the-1970s-political-activist-who-invented-penis-pants

    Introducing Eldridge Clever, Presidential candidate, writer, political activist, a prominent early leader of the Black Panthers, oh and inventor of the penis pants.

    One of those rare internet back alley gems, I came across this innovative design from the 1970s and just had to share it with you. The penis pants you never asked for, solve all sorts of problems according to their late inventor, Eldridge Cleaver, such as ‘fig-leaf mentality’.


    “Clothing is an extension of the fig leaf — it put our sex inside our bodies,” Cleaver told Newsweek in 1975. “My pants put sex back where it should be.” The Black Panthers frontman and radical intellectual came up with the idea while living in Paris in exile after fleeing charges from a confrontation with the police in 1968.

    He took out an ad in the classifieds of the International Herald Tribune seeking investors and manufacturers for his collection that outlined the wearer’s genitals in a ‘sock-like codpiece’. ”Millions in profits envisioned,” the advertisement read¹.

    A campaign badge for Cleaver’s 1968 Presidential campaign.

    A controversial media figure and former Presidential candidate in 1968 for the Peace and Freedom Party, Eldridge took every opportunity to model the pants himself for the press, but few publications would print photographs of the provocative design.

    Despite creating quite the stir on the 1970s male fashion scene, shockingly the penis pant was never a great commercial success. Cleaver’s questionable design did little to help his reputation with the press, who were quick to paint the former revolutionary turned fashion designer as an ageing civil rights activist gone a little … well, cuckoo.

    So there you have it, penis pants.

    It should also be noted that Eldridge Cleaver later became a Mormon.

    Je suis pas d’accord avec l’article qui traite Eldridge Cleaver de zinzin, ca me semble une bonne idée pour le #disempowerment masculin.
    #virilité #pénis #mode #black_panthers

  • Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG
    http://www.transatlanticperspectives.org/entry.php?rec=133
    Des fois que vous nauriez jamais compris pourquoi l’Allemagne est le meilleur ami des USA en Europe voici le résumé de la thèse d’Anne Zetsche

    Transatlantic institutions organizing German-American elite networking since the early 1950s

    Author » Anne Zetsche, Northumbria University Published: November 28, 2012 Updated: February 28, 2013

    The Cold War era witnessed an increasing transnational interconnectedness of individuals and organizations in the cultural, economic and political sphere. In this period, two organizations, the Atlantik-Brücke and the American Council on Germany, established themselves as influential facilitators, enabling German-American elite networking throughout the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. The two organizations brought together influential politicians and businesspeople, as well as representatives of the media and the academic world.

    Efforts in this regard commenced in the early days of the Cold War, only a few years after the end of World War II. In 1949, two American citizens and two Germans began developing the plan to found the Atlantik-Brücke in West Germany and a sister organization, the American Council on Germany (ACG), in the United States. Their plan was to use these two organizations as vehicles to foster amicable relations between the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America. Only a few years prior, Americans and Germans had faced each other as enemies during World War II and many segments of German society, including West German elites, held strong, long-standing anti-American sentiments. The U.S. public in turn was skeptical as to whether Germans could indeed be denazified and convinced to develop a democratic system. Thus, in order to forge a strong Western alliance against Soviet Communism that included West Germany it was critical to overcome mutual prejudices and counter anti-Americanism in Western Europe. It was to be one of the central tasks of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG to achieve this in West Germany.

    Individuals at the Founding of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG

    One of the founders of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG was Eric M. Warburg. He was a Jewish-American banker originally from Hamburg where his ancestors had founded the family’s banking house in 1798. Due to Nazi Aryanisation and expropriation policies, the Warburg family lost the company in 1938 and immigrated to the United States, settling in New York. In spite of the terror of the Nazi regime, Eric Warburg was very attached to Hamburg. He became a vibrant transatlantic commuter after World War II, living both in Hamburg and in New York. In the intertwined histories of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG, Warburg played a special role, becoming their leading facilitator and mediator.

    Not long after his escape from the Nazis, Warburg met Christopher Emmet, a wealthy publicist and political activist who shared Warburg’s strong anti-communist stance and attachment to pre-Nazi Germany. On the German side of this transatlantic relationship, Warburg and Emmet were joined by Marion Countess Dönhoff, a journalist at the liberal West German weekly Die Zeit, and by Erik Blumenfeld, a Christian Democratic politician and businessmen. There were two main characteristics shared by the original core founders of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG: firstly, each one of the founding quartet belonged to an elite – economic, social or political – and was therefore well-connected with political, diplomatic, business and media circles in both the United States and Germany. Secondly, there was a congruence of basic dispositions among them, namely a staunch anti-communist stance, a transatlantic orientation, and an endorsement of Germany’s integration into the West.

    The Western powers sought the economic and political integration of Western Europe to overcome the devastation of Europe, to revive the world economy, and to thwart nationalism and militarism in Europe after World War II. Germany was considered Europe’s economic powerhouse and thus pivotal in the reconstruction process. West Germany also needed to be on board with security and defense policies in order to face the formidable opponent of Soviet Communism. Since the Federal Republic shared a border with the communist bloc, the young state was extremely vulnerable to potential Soviet aggression and was at the same time strategically important within the Western bloc. Elite organizations like the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG were valuable vehicles to bring West Germany on board for this ambitious Cold War project.

    Thus, in 1952 and 1954 respectively, the ACG and the Atlantik-Brücke were incorporated and granted non-profit status with the approval of John J. McCloy, U.S. High Commissioner to Germany (1949-1952). His wife Ellen McCloy was one of signatories of the ACG’s certificate of incorporation and served as its director for a number of years. The Atlantik-Brücke (originally Transatlantik-Brücke) was incorporated and registered in Hamburg.

    Transatlantic Networking

    The main purpose of both organizations was to inform Germans and Americans about the respective other country, to counter mutual prejudices, and thus contributing to the development of amicable relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States in the postwar era. This was to be achieved by all means deemed appropriate, but with a special focus on arranging personal meetings and talks between representatives of both countries’ business, political, academic, and media elites. One way was to sponsor lectures and provide speakers on issues relating to Germany and the United States. Another method was organizing visiting tours of German politicians, academics, and journalists to the United States and of American representatives to West Germany. Among the Germans who came to the U.S. under the sponsorship of the ACG were Max Brauer, a former Social Democratic mayor of Hamburg, Willy Brandt, the first Social Democratic Chancellor and former mayor of West Berlin, and Franz Josef Strauss, a member of the West German federal government in the 1950s and 1960s and later minister president of the German federal state of Bavaria. American visitors to the Federal Republic were less prominent. Annual reports of the Atlantik-Brücke explicitly mention George Nebolsine of the New York law firm Coudert Brothers and member of the International Chamber of Commerce, and the diplomats Henry J. Tasca, William C. Trimble, and Nedville E. Nordness.

    In the late 1950s the officers of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG sought ways of institutionalizing personal encounters between key Americans and Germans. Thus they established the German-American Conferences modeled on the British-German Königswinter Conferences and the Bilderberg Conferences. The former brought together English and German elites and were organized by the German-English Society (later German-British Society). The latter were organized by the Bilderberg Group, founded by Joseph Retinger, Paul van Zeeland and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Those conferences began in 1954 and were informal, off-the-record meetings of American and West European representatives of business, media, academia and politics. Each of these conference series was important for the coordination of Western elites during the Cold War era. Bilderberg was critical in paving the way for continental European integration and the German-British effort was important for reconciling the European wartime enemies.

    From 1959 onwards, the German-American Conferences took place biennially, alternating between venues in West Germany and the United States. At the first conference in Bonn, 24 Americans came together with 27 Germans, among them such prominent individuals as Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, and John J. McCloy on the American side, and Willy Brandt, Arnold Bergstraesser (considered to be one of the founding fathers of postwar political science in Germany), and Kurt Georg Kiesinger (third Christian Democratic Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and former minister president of the federal state Baden-Württemberg) on the German side. By 1974 the size of the delegations had increased continuously, reaching 73 American and 63 German participants.

    A central goal in selecting the delegations was to arrange for a balanced, bipartisan group of politicians, always including representatives of the Social and Christian Democrats (e.g. Fritz Erler, Kurt Birrenbach) on the German side and both Democratic and Republican senators and representatives (e.g. Henry S. Reuss, Jacob Javits) on the American side, along with academics, journalists, and businessmen. Prominent American academics attending several of the German-American conferences included Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Representatives of major media outlets were Marion Countess Dönhoff of Germany’s major liberal weekly Die Zeit, Kurt Becker, editor of the conservative daily newspaper Die Welt, and Hellmut Jaesrich, editor of the anticommunist cultural magazine Der Monat. The business community was prominently represented by John J. McCloy, the president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Herman Georg Kaiser, an oil producer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. From Germany, Gotthard von Falkenhausen and Eric Warburg represented the financial sector and Alexander Menne, a member of the executive board of Farbwerke Hoechst, represented German industry.

    Officers of the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG were mainly in charge of selecting the delegates for the conferences. However, Shepard Stone of the Ford Foundation also had an influential say in this process. In the late 1950s and 1960s he was director of the foundation’s international program and thus responsible for allocating funds to the ACG to facilitate the German-American conferences. Shepard Stone was deeply attached to Germany as he had pursued graduate studies in Berlin in the Weimar period, earning a doctoral degree in history. After World War II he returned to Germany as a public affairs officer of the U.S. High Commission. Stone’s continuing interest in German affairs and friendship with Eric Warburg and Marion Dönhoff regularly brought him to Germany, and he was a frequent participant in the German-American conferences.

    The German-American Conferences and Cold War Politics

    All matters discussed during the conferences stood under the headline “East-West tensions” in the earlier period and later “East-West issues” signaling the beginning of détente, but always maintaining a special focus on U.S.-German relations. The debates from the late 1950s to the early/mid-1970s can be categorized as follows: firstly, bilateral relations between the U.S. and the FRG; secondly, Germany’s relation with the Western alliance; thirdly, Europe and the United States in the Atlantic Alliance; and last but not least, relations between the West, the East, and the developing world. The conferences served three central purposes: firstly, developing a German-American network of elites; secondly, building consensus on key issues of the Cold War period; and thirdly, forming a common Western, transatlantic identity among West Germans and Americans.

    Another emphasis of both groups’ activities in the United States and Germany was the production of studies and other publications (among others, The Vanishing Swastika, the Bridge, Meet Germany, a Newsletter, Hans Wallenberg’s report Democratic Institutions, and the reports on the German-American Conferences). Studies aimed at informing Germans about developments in the United States and American international policies on the one hand, and at informing the American people about West Germany’s progress in denazification, democratization, and re-education on the other. The overall aim of these activities was first and foremost improving each country’s and people’s image in the eyes of the counterpart’s elites and wider public.

    The sources and amounts of available funds to the ACG and the Atlantik-Brücke differed considerably. Whereas the latter selected its members very carefully by way of cooptation especially among businessmen and CEOs to secure sound funding of its enterprise, the former opened membership or affiliation to basically anyone who had an interest in Germany. As a result, the ACG depended heavily, at least for its everyday business, on the fortune of the organization’s executive vice president Christopher Emmet. Emmet personally provided the salaries of ACG secretaries and set up the organization’s offices in his private apartment in New York’s upper Westside. In addition, the ACG relied on funds granted by the Ford Foundation especially for the biannual German-American conferences as well as for the publication of a number of studies. The Atlantik-Brücke in turn benefitted immensely from public funds for its publications and the realization of the German-American conferences. The Federal Press and Information Agency (Bundespresse- und Informationsamt, BPA) supported mainly publication efforts of the organization and the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) regularly granted funds for the conferences.

    Politics, Business and Membership Growth

    Membership of the Atlantik-Brücke grew from 12 in 1954 to 65 in 1974. Among them were representatives of companies like Mannesmann, Esso, Farbwerke Hoechst, Daimler Benz, Deutsche Bank, and Schering. Those members were expected to be willing and able to pay annual membership fees of 3000 to 5000 DM (approx. $750 to $1,250 in 1955, equivalent to approx. $6,475 to $10,793 today). Since the business community always accounted for the majority of Atlantik-Brücke membership compared to members from academia, media and politics, the organization operated on secure financial footing compared to its American counterpart. The ACG had not even established formal membership like its German sister organization. The people affiliated with the ACG in the 1950s up to the mid-1970s were mostly academics, intellectuals, and journalists. It posed a great difficulty for ACG officers to attract business people willing and able to contribute financially to the organization at least until the mid-1970s. When Christopher Emmet, the ACG’s “heart and soul,” passed away in 1974, the group’s affiliates and directors were mostly comprised of Emmet’s circle of friends and acquaintances who shared an interest in U.S.-German relations and Germany itself. Emmet had enlisted most of them during his frequent visits to the meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. Another group of prominent members represented the military. Several leading figures of the U.S. occupying forces and U.S. High Commission personnel joined the ACG, in addition to ranking politicians and U.S. diplomats. The ACG’s long term president, George N. Shuster had served as Land Commissioner for Bavaria during 1950-51. In 1963, Lucius D. Clay, former military governor of the U.S. zone in Germany, 1947-49, joined the ACG as honorary chairman. George McGhee, the former ambassador to Germany prominently represented U.S. diplomacy when he became director of the organization in 1969.

    Although the Atlantik-Brücke had initially ruled out board membership for active politicians, they were prominently represented. Erik Blumenfeld, for example, was an influential Christian Democratic leader in Hamburg. In 1958 he was elected CDU chairman of the federal city state of Hamburg and three years later he became a member of the Bundestag.In the course of the 1960s and 1970s more politicians joined the Atlantik-Brücke and became active members of the board: Kurt Birrenbach (CDU), Fritz Erler (SPD), W. Alexander Menne (FDP), and Helmut Schmidt (SPD). Thus, through their members and affiliates both organizations have been very well-connected with political, diplomatic, and business elites.

    Besides individual and corporate contributions, both organizations relied on funding from public and private institutions and agencies. On the German side federal agencies like the Foreign Office, the Press and Information Agency, and the Chancellery provided funding for publications and supported the German-American conferences. On the American side additional funds were provided almost exclusively by the Ford Foundation.

    Although both groups were incorporated as private associations with the objective of furthering German-American relations in the postwar era, their membership profile and sources of funding clearly illustrate that they were not operating at great distance from either public politics or official diplomacy. On the contrary, the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG represent two prominent actors in a transnational elite networking project with the aim of forging a strong anti-communist Atlantic Alliance among the Western European states and the United States of America. In this endeavor to back up public with private authority, the Atlantik-Brücke and the ACG functioned as major conduits of both transnational and transcultural exchange and transfer processes.

    #Europe #Allemagne #USA #politique #guerre #impérialisme #élites

  • The Black Mediterranean and the limits of liberal solidarity
    https://africasacountry.com/2018/08/the-black-mediterranean-and-the-limits-of-liberal-solidarity

    The Mediterranean has become a graveyard where black and brown bodies transit a hostile and deadly passage. While the rise of the far right in Europe and border externalization have resulted in a drastic drop of the number of refugees and migrants crossing the sea, more than 1,500 people have died so far in 2018 trying to reach Europe; making it one of the deadliest years. Far right policies, dead ideologies, and cultural wars also fundamentally altered Europeans’ view on issues of forced displacement, resettlement and solidarity.

    When Paul came over the Sea is a now-celebrated documentary that highlights these issues through the encounter between two men: Jakob Preuss, a German filmmaker, former reporter and political advisor to the Green Party, and Paul Nkamani a Cameroonian migrant and political activist, whose work against the autocratic government in his home country resulted in him being expelled from university and abandoning his dream of being a diplomat.

    #migrations #asile #racisme #mourir_en_mer

  • How Women’s Studies Erased Black Women
    https://daily.jstor.org/how-womens-studies-erased-black-women

    When black women spoke out against white women’s claims that they spoke for all women, they were met with hostility. Franklin tells the story of Barbara Omolade, a political activist who helped organize a groundbreaking women’s history retreat in 1979 that helped birth Women’s Studies. Within six months, she resigned due to racism she called “pervasive, subtle and devious,” turning every day into “a battleground for inclusion.”

    #racisme

  • After 20-year break, these Iranian Kurds are taking up arms again
    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/turkey-iran-kurds-resumed-clashes-against-tehran-regime.html#ixzz4DBVCzi

    What prompted the KDPI’s sudden change in course? Most people believe that regional countries or global powers are behind the resurgence of the Kurdish activity. Iranian-Kurdish political activist Hadi Azizi believes the KDPI is engaged in legitimate self-defense against Iran. He told Al-Monitor that he does not believe that external elements were instigating these attacks, saying, “No doubt Iran doesn’t have a major say in Middle East politics. They don’t always have the support of international powers. Iranian Kurds are ready to rise."

    How will this conflict affect the autonomous Kurdish Region of Iraq, which just signed new economic deals with Iran? Azizi believes the clashes will not affect the Kurdish government in the region. He said, “South Kurdistan [the Kurdistan Regional Government] is not like it was before. They have relations now with world powers. The peshmerga fought [the Islamic State] and served humanity. They have good support. They can’t forever stand idle to just preserve their interests."

    Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/turkey-iran-kurds-resumed-clashes-against-tehran-regime.html#ixzz4DWFrSo

  • Giles Ji Ungpakorn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Ji_Ungpakorn


    Des fois que vous ne le connaissiez pas encore ...

    Giles Ji Ungpakorn (Thai: ใจ อึ๊งภากรณ์; rtgs: Chai Uengphakon; IPA: [tɕāj ʔɯ́ŋ.pʰāː.kɔ̄ːn]; born 25 October 1953) is a Thai-British academic and political activist. He formerly worked as an associate professor at Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, before he fled to the United Kingdom after facing a lèse majesté charge in Thailand.
    ...
    Giles Ungpakorn was formally charged with lese majeste in Bangkok on January 20, 2009. He had 20 days to respond to the charges, after which the Thai authorities would decide whether his case would be given to the Thai courts for prosecution. Ungpakorn said he was being charged because of the contents of his book A Coup for the Rich, which points out the main reasons the coup in Thailand two years prior took place. He fled Thailand in February 2009, returning to the United Kingdom. He stated, “I did not believe I would receive a fair trial.”

    ... voici le dernier article de son site excellent.

    Thai middle classes are violently opposed to democracy | Uglytruth-Thailand
    https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/thai-middle-classes-are-violently-opposed-to-democracy


    J’y découvre sans être étonné que la base sociologique du fascisme est identique en Thailande avec celle qui a porté au pouvoir les nazis allemands en 1933 et qui continue à s’agiter sous des appellations comme #AfD, #Pegida, etc. L’article parle aussi du fascisme clérical que l’on sous-estime trop souvent. Si vous avez envie de faire connaissance avec les hommes et organisations qui font le bonheur des adeptes du sexe avec mineur(e)s et d’autres plaisirs peu humanistes voici une source de qualité.

    Lak Si is where the fascist monk Buddha Isara blocked the polling station, refusing to allow people to exercise their right to vote. Fascist Isara made a statement after the popcorn gunman was sentenced to jail, stating that he had helped pay for his defence and would always support him.

    This obnoxious monk and Sutep Teuksuban, who led the various anti-election mobs, should be put in jail on the basis of being the master-minders and funders of these violent actions. But do not hold your breath. Fascist Buddha Isara is generalissimo Prayut’s favourite monk and has been given a free hand to organise reactionary demonstrations and spread his filth. We should not forget either that the junta head and the two-faced Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva are guilty of mass murder on the streets when they organised the shooting of pro-democracy demonstrators in 2010.

    The middle classes in Thailand hate and despise the majority of ordinary working people and the poor. They hate the fact that rich tycoon Taksin won the hearts and minds of most ordinary people with his universal health care and pro-poor policies. The middle classes loathe democracy because they are out-voted by the majority. They want to turn the clock back to a time when workers and small farmers knew their place and suffered their poverty in silence. They want to hang on to their ill-gotten privileges by maintaining social and economic inequalities. They are cowardly because they fawn on the rich and powerful and grovel to the monarchy. They also hide behind the men of the military. The violent disruption of the elections was designed to cause a crisis which could be used as an excuse to stage yet another military coup.


    Giles Ji Ungpakorn’s Red Siam manifesto
    https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/16755/Giles+Ji+Ungpakorn%E2%80%99s+Red+Siam+manifesto

    But as a staring point I offer the following ideas, the ideas of one red-shirted citizen.

    We must have freedom of expression and the freedom to choose our own government without repression and fear.
    We must have equality.
    We have to abolish the mentality of ’big people\\little people’.
    We must abolish the practice of crawling to the royal family.
    Politicians must be accountable to the electorate, not to shadowy conniving figures beyond popular control.
    We need to build a culture where citizens respect each other.
    We must have freedom and equality of the sexes and among different ethnicities.
    We must respect women, gays and lesbians.
    We must respect Burmese, Laotians, Cambodians and the Muslim Malay people in the south.
    Women must have the right to chose safe abortions.
    Refugees should be treated with friendship and dignity as any civilised society would do.
    Our country must be a Welfare State. Taxes must be levied on the rich. The poor are not a burden, but are partners in developing the country. People should have dignity. The present exploitative society stifles individuals and destroys personal creativity.
    In our country the king should honour his constitutional role and stop intervening in politics. But the ruling class in Thailand gain much from using the Monarchy and they will not easily stop doing this. Therefore the best way to solve this problem is to build a republic where all public positions are elected and accountable.
    For too long Thai society has been under the iron heels of the generals. We must cut the military budget and abolish the influence of the army in society ensuring that it can no long be an obstacle to democracy.
    We must have justice. The judges should not claim power from the Crown in order to stop people criticising their decisions. We must change the way that ’Contempt of Court’ laws are used to prevent accountability. We need to reform the justice system root and branch. We need a jury system. The police must serve the population, not extract bribes from the poor.
    Citizens in towns and communities must take part in the management of all public institutions such as state enterprises, the media, schools and hospitals.
    Our country must modernise. We need to develop the education system, transport and housing. We should create energy from wind and solar power to protect the environment.
    Our country must be peace-loving, not start disputes with neighbouring countries or support wars.

    The dinosaurs of Thai society, the Yellow Shirted royalists, will froth at the mouth in anger at this manifesto, but that is merely the symptoms of people who carry superstitious beliefs from the past, seeking to cling to their privileges at all costs. Their time is finished. We, the pro-democracy Redshirts will move forward to build a new society.

    #Thailande #fascisme #lutte_des_classes #petite_bourgeoisie #putsch #bouddhisme #religion

  • Imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah speaks from Tora | Mada Masr

    http://www.madamasr.com/sections/politics/imprisoned-activist-alaa-abd-el-fattah-speaks-tora

    Alaa Abd El Fattah, outspoken software tecchie, blogger and political activist, has spoken to the media for the first time since he began serving his latest sentence at Tora Prison.

    Abd El Fattah is serving a five-year prison sentence for being at a civil gathering in front of the Shura Council in November 2013 to protest a constitutional provision allowing the military to court-martial civilians.

    The questions were sent by journalist Moataz Shams al-Din to Abd El Fattah’s mother, mathematics professor Laila Soueif, who put them to her son during a visit. On the way home she wrote down his responses and relayed them back to the journalist. No papers were exchanged between Alaa and his mother.

    Recently, the courts upheld a one-year sentence against Abd El Fattah for “burning down the headquarters of [presidential candidate] General Ahmed Shafiq.” The prosecution has also brought another case against him for “insulting the judiciary."

  • ’Nazis secretly eat falafel’: German town’s pro-refugee posters

    In response to a wave of recent anti-refugee protests across Germany, a political activist placed pro-refugee posters at bus stops in the small town of Freital, sparking a debate online.


    http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33691246
    #affiche #street_art #solidarité #asile #migration #réfugiés #refugees_welcome #Allemagne #nobody_is_illigal #Freital

  • BBC News - Ukraine far-right leader Muzychko dies ’in police raid’
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26729273

    Oleksandr Muzychko, better known as Sashko Bily, died in a shoot-out with police in a cafe in Rivne in western Ukraine, the interior ministry said.

    He was a leader of Right Sector, a far-right group which was prominent in the recent anti-government protests.


    Oleksandr Muzychko, alias Sashko Bily
    avec l’insigne de l’#UNA-UNSO sur la manche

    Oleksandr Muzychko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Muzychko

    Oleksandr Ivanovych Muzychko (Ukrainian: Олександр Іванович Музичко, 19 September 1962 – 24 March 2014), also known under the nickname Sashko Bily (Сашко Білий), was a Ukrainian political activist, a member of UNA-UNSO and coordinator of Right Sector in Western Ukraine. He fought in the First Chechen War on Chechen side.
    During the First Chechen War he led the UNA-UNSO “Viking” group. In 1995 Muzychko was convicted in causing a heavy bodily harm to an individual. In 1997 he attempted to kill one of the UNA-UNSO members in Kiev. In 2003 Muzychko was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for racketeering and kidnapping.

    #Volhynie

  • Three secular activists to stand trial in #Egypt for defying protest ban
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/three-secular-activists-stand-trial-egypt-defying-protest-ban

    A file picture taken on June 3, 2013, shows Egyptian political activist Ahmed Douma reacting as he stands behind dock bars during his trial in Cairo, on charges of insulting president Mohammed Mursi. (Photo: AFP - Khaled Desouki)

    Egypt ordered on Thursday three prominent political activists to stand trial on protest-related charges, judicial officials said, in another sign of growing intolerance of dissent. One of them, leading dissident Ahmed Maher, was charged with protesting without permission, marking the first time anyone had been ordered to stand trial under the provisions of a new law criticized for stifling the right to protest. read (...)

    #Top_News

  • #Egypt arrests popular blogger in widening #crackdown
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/egypt-arrests-popular-blogger-widening-crackdown

    A prominent Egyptian blogger said on Tuesday he had been arrested, the latest political activist to be detained in a widening crackdown on dissent by the army-backed government. “I am now present in Basateen police station. I still don’t know the accusation against me or the reason for my arrest,” Ahmed Douma said on Twitter. انا الآن موجود في قسم البساتين...لم أعرف بعد التهمة الموجهة لي ولا سبب القبض عليّ.

    read more

    #secular_activists #Top_News

  • My Childhood as an Adult Molester: A Salt River Moffie | Zackie Achmat
    http://powermoneysex.org.za/my-childhood-as-an-adult-molester-a-salt-river-moffie

    1976 changed my life forever. In the next few years, I became a political activist and was detained several times. Family-life became intolerable. I left home and lived on the streets and with friends. Later I met Daniel, who became my lover for almost ten years. In those years I discovered that sex is political and that, as moffies and letties, we had to be part of a #revolution to change everything. It was the beginning of a life of sex and #politics

    #afrique_du_sud #apartheid #gay