Category Archives: Government Oppression

By Bisi Oladele, Ibadan

Apex Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has described the attack on the Ibadan residence of Yoruba Nation agitator Chief Sunday Adeyemo (aka Sunday Igboho) as an indicator of Nigerias return to the dark days of government oppression of voice of opposition.

The organisation, in a statement by its Acting Leader Chief Ayo Adebanjo and National Publicity Secretary Mr Jare Ajayi, accused government forces of being behind the attack.

This, it said, was because the attackers bore insignia of the Nigerian Army and the Department of State Security (DSS).

The statement reads in part: The news of fatal attack on the residence of Mr. Sunday Adeyemo popularly known as Sunday Igboho in the early hours of Thursday, July 1, 2021 is a sad indicator that we are fast returning to the era of late Sani Abacha when anyone who expressed opinions contrary to governments position would be fatally attacked.

Nigerians woke up this morning to the unsavoury news of an attack on the residence of the Yoruba activist, Igboho, in Soka area of Ibadan by armed men reportedly in army and DSS uniforms. DSS is the Directorate of State Security Services, one of the federal governments security agencies.

Reports have it that the invaders came in 15 vehicles with army identity while some of the men wore DSS uniforms.

It was also reported that at least seven people were killed while yet unidentified number, including the wife of Sunday Igboho, were abducted and taken away by the invaders. They also destroyed properties running into several millions.

The attack came less than 72 hours to the plan by Igboho and others to hold a rally in Lagos to further canvass for a Yoruba nation this week Saturday.

The manner of attack indicated culpability on the part of those in authority.

We are forced into this deduction for a number of reasons. Firstly, eye witness accounts indicated that vehicles and uniforms of the attackers were that of the security agencies.

Secondly, the failure of security agencies to confront the attackers further implicated the government.

It was reported that the attack lasted for more than three hours. Igbohos residence is in a highly populated area within minutes reach to surrounding police stations.

That no rescue team came from any of the police units including the DSS office in Ibadan for the several hours that the attack lasted makes it difficult not to believe that the government is complicit in the attack.

Afenifere regretted the incident was a sad reminder of what Nigerians went through under the inglorious regime of late General Sani Abacha.

The pan-Yoruba organisation said it was forced to make this deduction because Sunday Igboho is known to be in the forefront of agitations to have a Yoruba nation.

What is wrong in canvassing for self-determination so long as such agitation is devoid of violence?

The Constitution the country is running guarantees the right of every Nigerian to express opinion and even carry out rallies as long as such are done without violence.

To the best of our knowledge, none of the rallies that Sunday Igboho has led in his campaign for a Yoruba nation could be said to be violent nor was he implicated in illegal activities.

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Attack on Sunday Igbohos house sign of dark cloud Afenifere - The Nation Newspaper

FOR the last 60 years at least I have been aware of the carve-up that was and continues to be the Union, and I passionately wish to see it dissolved in my lifetime. So I support any and every agency that promotes our independence, with the SNP patently being the prime mover. However I do not agree with some things that the SNP does, and more particularly with things that the SNP government doesnt do.

One example is its seeming lack of effort or ability in securing the ferry infrastructure of this country. Scotlands island residents of some 90,000 or so depend on reliable ferries, and regrettably they havent had them for lots of years. With its geography and its history of shipbuilding, Scotland should have a modern ferry fleet, built in Scottish yards, but what it has is an ageing fleet and an apparent lack of competence to replace it, if Ferguson Marine is taken as example.

And thus viewers of the STV evening news a couple of nights back had to suffer the skin-crawling experience of slithy-tove Gove in Stornoway, offering levelling-up funds as a UK solution to an observed Scottish Government problem. We need urgently to get a grip and thus avoid setting up obvious targets for a corrupt, devious and dishonest UK (ie English) Government, one that we have had to thole for far too long. Please, for all our sanities, not much longer!Ken GowBanchory

THE new Pietistic argument against independence seems to be that because the UK departure from the EU was so chaotic, shambolic and disorganised this means independence will be as well.

What this preposterous argument implies is that the fraudulent extreme right-wing clowns in charge of that process (Boris Johnson and his Ghouls) should continue to rule Scotland.

Brexit was presided over by Boris Johnson a man so bone idle he could not be bothered to go to five Cobra meetings during the worst pandemic for 100 years.

This was the imbecile whose government wasted 150 million on unusable masks, 10 billion on a test and trace system that did neither, 16m on Covid tests that did not work, yet got his plane rebranded at a cost of 900k. And the Unionists laughably claim independence is the problem.

It was these same British nationalist wingnuts who applauded while 1.5m EU citizens were denied a vote in the 2016 EU referendum. They have done a volte-face and are now saying that Scots living outside Scotland should get to vote in any future referendum in order to rig it.

This wretched Unionist hypocrisy has the nauseating reek of a putrid corpse.

Another absurd ludicrous insulting fairytale is that in 2014 the Yes side agreed this would be a once in a generation event. There is no evidence for this as it never happened. Yet Unionists think if they lie about it long enough then it will become reality.

British Unionists are similar in outlook to followers of the fascist Trump-loving Qanon conspiracy theory. Both are ludicrous and have an aversion to reality. Yet they are both followed slavishly by mindless fanatics.Alan HinnrichsDundee

THE Spanish government has granted a pardon to the nine Catalan political prisoners and it pains me that internationally they attribute good intentions to this farce. The pardons have been given in a forced manner, because of the recent Council of Europe report, which equates Spain with Turkey, and because of the imminent, presumably condemnatory judgement of the EU Court of Human Rights. But these are Spanish-style pardons: reversible pardons.

They are not pardons but conditional release and, if at some point they consider that they are not behaving correctly, they will put them back in prison. Furthermore, in Catalonia, there are 3300 pro-independence supporters with open criminal proceedings for holding peaceful demonstrations. For them there will be no pardons, but fines and imprisonment. Like the recent five-year prison sentence for the young Marcel Vivet. Convicted without evidence, only on the accusation of a policeman (who, moreover, we have now discovered that he had blamed another demonstrator for the same action!)

And there will be no pardon for the exiles (in Belgium and Switzerland), who will still not be able to return home because the Spanish police will arrest them against the criteria of the Council of Europe and against the immunity they enjoy as members of the European Parliament. But not only that, the Court of Auditors is also involved in the operation against independence.

It is a court that audits the accounts of public administrations (although it has not prosecuted the corruption of Spanish governments). It is linked to Francos dictatorship, made up of non-judges appointed mostly by the Spanish right wing, not very transparent and outside any democratic control. The Court of Auditors accuses the Catalan government of having incurred undue expenses and holds 41 people allegedly responsible who, although not yet sentenced as guilty, will have to pay bail per person of 3.8m, 3.3m, 2.95m, 2.2m ... or have their salaries, bank accounts and family assets seized. These amounts now demanded by the Court of Auditors are in addition to the 5.2m and 4.1m previously demanded and paid.

The state is prevaricating in order to ruin them and try to scare the independence movement. Is this the forgiveness and concord offered by the Spanish State? We will not be satisfied with nine reversible pardons while the repression continues.

However, we do know that, neither this farce nor your repression you will manage to make us more Spanish. On the contrary, you have made us pro-independence: too many grievances, too much violence.

We are and will be Catalans, inhabitants of a nation with over a thousand years of history. We have survived centuries of Spanish oppression and deserve to be free.

If a region of Spain, not the richest, but the most enterprising and hard-working, is economically sustaining the state, what you should do is respect and care for this region. The will for independence is growing and will continue to grow in Catalonia, and it will not be because of the serious economic plundering it suffers, but because of mistreatment, lies and ferocious repression that never ends. Freedom for Catalonia!Montse Molas VerdaguerBarcelona, Catalonia

I WAS interested in your article (More Research Needed on Virtual Abortion Care. National, June 28). But is more research needed on the telemedical process of carrying out abortions?

The German makers of the two drugs used to effect abortions have specifically and publicly stated that they should never be administered without real-life medical supervision. Germany and France have debated the issue of telemedical abortions for ten years and have decided against them. You go on to say that a pro-life campaign may have skewed the Scottish consultation result because a Right to Life group used standardised responses, more than 3000 of them.

If all printed voting papers were labelled standardised responses, and therefore discounted, would that mean all our past elections should have been invalidated, and all our future elections too? What value can be placed on surveys on Scottish independence if printed cards are used and then dismissed?

If I tell you that a leading British Tory MP has invested an immense amount of money in the pharmaceutical company which makes these abortion-inducing drugs, which in fact he has done, does this not tell you which way the wind is blowing?

Moreover, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Marie Stopes, indeed all the abortion providers are funded and heavily subsidised by the British Government. But the British Medical Association (Scotland) must now be seeking possible ways of saving money by not having to pay doctors and nurses to care for young women seeking abortions. Are these things not likely to skew the consultation in the other direction?

I am not personally acquainted with the Right to Life group, but it seems that votes freely and rationally given, on whatever the paper, are not standardised responses and should be respected and counted.Lesley FindlayFort Augustus

IN Kirsteen Patersons article titled, OBON isnt fascist but it gives me the shivers, she explains why One Britain One Nation must not be conflated with fascism.

But consideration of verse two is blatantly false and promotes a racist ideology when it states: So many different races, standing in the same place.

Although purportedly conveying an image of unity, the sentence in fact reflects historical racism by referring to many different races. As modern science reveals based on empirical evidence there is only one human race.

This point is also encapsulated in law as in the Equality Act 2010, Section 9, race is not used to denote either a racial ground or group. Indeed, race can be viewed as an outmoded and discredited concept to distinguish biological differences.

By teaching children whose minds are malleable distorted ideological perspectives, this serves as a good example of institutionalised discrimination, in this case racism.

Further, the song does not acknowledge the reality that people from specific national or ethnic groups, including black people, are not in the same place when considering levels of economic disadvantage and social oppression that they experience.

An innocent little ditty ... methinks not!Dr Stewart MontgomeryGlasgow

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Ageing Calmac fleet is an affront to islanders - The National

The inclusion of someone called King Mswati III in the SADC troika is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the region and has made the SADC a laughing stock. Photo: Elmond Jiyane/GCIS

VOICES

The entirety of the African continent must be democratised so that all people can benefit from the economic fruits that accompany democracy. It is therefore disgraceful that we still have in our midst, the barbaric and oppressive system of Eswatinis tinkhundla (administrative area) system.

The inclusion of someone called King Mswati III in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) troika is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the region and has made the SADC a laughing stock.

Africa has suffered enough due to colonialism and its manifestations. In this century, aptly declared as the African century by leading Afro-optimists such as former presidents Thabo Mbeki, Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Abdoulaye Wade, the archaic tinkhundla system should no longer be a negotiable matter, but must be toppled through mass rebellion, general civil disobedience and revolution.

I find it hypocritical of the international community to make vociferous objections and express disgust against Robert Mugabe and the ousted Taliban rule in Afghanistan but keep mum on the barbarism of the tinkhundla system which is responsible for the plundering of Eswatinis economic resources and widespread suppression and oppression of the impoverished majority.

It is very disturbing that police and prison officials in Eswatini do not have any rights whatsoever; instead, they are being used as knobkerries and pangas to legitimise this stinking and archaic tinkhundla system. All public service workers should stand up.

READ:Amabutho ready to defend king

The controversy of King Mswati IIIs wife, Zena Mahlangu, was just the tip of the iceberg, for there are more objectionable things that happen behind the closed doors of the so-called royal family.

The tinkhundla system is self-discreditable for it enriches the few at the expense of the majority. The system is outdated in the sense that it entrenches docility, feebleness and mediocrity in women, thus perpetuating the fallacious notion that women are inferior beings not deserving of human dignity.

The 1973 decree is a despicable political tool used by the monarch to silence free political activity. Through this decree, Eswatini has become a police and military state similar to the apartheid state that maimed and murdered thousands of freedom fighters during the struggle for liberation in South Africa.

The system is outdated in the sense that it entrenches docility, feebleness and mediocrity in women

It must be argued that the monarch should no longer be engaged in political dialogue to transform the political and economic landscape in Eswatini, but the only solution is a revolution that should elect a democratic government for the people of the land.

The royal family has been abusing the absolute power afforded them by the tinkhundla system, all in the name of culture. They abuse women and oppress the entire populace in the holy name of culture. It must be mentioned that, if culture supports the barbarism that is going on in Eswatini, then war unto this culture.

The inclusion of someone called King Mswati III in the SADC troika is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the region and has made the SADC a laughing stock. Photo: Elmond Jiyane, GCIS

The so-called King Mswati should be tried for crimes against humanity for subjecting the people to a blood-dripping illegal military dictatorship. He should also account for the deaths resulting from forced hunger, malnutrition and the scourge of HIV/Aids that continues to ravage the Swazi people.

Ka-Soko is an independent political analyst

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The oppressive Eswatini regime should be toppled by revolution - News24

A couple of weeks before the Israel-Palestinian conflict in May, Human Rights Watch released a report accusing Israel of pursuing a policy of apartheid and persecution that favors Israeli Jews over Palestinians in both Israel and the occupied territories.

The report argued that Israel has created a two-tier system, with Palestinians living under military rule and Israeli settlers under a civil legal system with greater freedoms. It claims that these inequities amount to the systematic oppression required for apartheid.

I argue that this is incorrect and, in fact, contributes to the growing global disdain for the Jewish movement for self-determination: Zionism.

I often hear my peers say that they believe Jews have the right to to self-determination in Israel, but that they are not a Zionist. In fact, I recently had a conversation with a Jewish friend of mine who, despite believing in Jewish self-determination in Israel, didnt identify as a Zionist. I told her that this very belief was, in fact, a Zionist one, and I asked her why she chose not to identify as such. She told me, without hesitation and perhaps without a second thought, that she did not identify with Zionism because of how it is perceived.

Hearing this (while not surprising) made me sad, because it showed me just how much the world has dampened the spirit of people who support the existence of a Jewish homeland.

However, I cant say I blame her. I completely understand her hesitation. Its scary to feel like you have a target on your back, and its easy to avoid expressing certain parts of your identity for fear of ruining your social life.

I know this from personal experience. I lost friends in college because I chose to be open about my Zionist identity. In recent years, anti-Zionism has been in vogue on college campuses, and its because the word Zionism has become defamatory. Zionism a movement for Jewish self-determination is now likened to white supremacy, colonialism and racism in an attempt to target the worlds lone Jewish state.

Movements like boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace oppose and outright reject the movement for Jewish self-determination. They believe it is a settler-colonial movement supporting an apartheid state.

Lets take a look at the definition of colonialism. It is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin.

Many Jews fled to Israel following the decimation of European Jewry during the Holocaust, just as Iraqi Jews migrated there to escape violence and killing at the hands of an oppressive regime. Unsurprisingly, these Jewish refugees in Israel did not maintain political allegiance an integral characteristic of colonialism to these countries.

Additionally, settler-colonialism requires that the colonizer be foreign to the land. Jewish presence in Israel in antiquity is well-documented (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls). To claim that the Jewish people do not have ancestry in this land is to disregard a long-standing history and connection that the Jewish people have with Israel.

Lets be clear: To be a Zionist is to believe in the right of the Jewish people to return to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Zionism, in its purest form, has existed since Jews lived under Babylonian occupation about 2,500 years ago. The concept of returning to Eretz Yisrael is integral to Jewish practice: When we step on the glass at weddings, it is to symbolize and commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; when we sit down for our Pesach seders, we say lshana habaah bYerushalayim (next year in Jerusalem); we even face toward Jerusalem when we pray in synagogues (or even on the side of the road, as my friends family does on road trips).

For many myself included Zionism and Judaism are intertwined.

That being said, it is vital to note that being a Zionist does not mean you cannot also believe in the right to Palestinian self-determination.

Knowing, then, that to be a Zionist is simply to believe in Jewish self-determination in Israel, there is no other conclusion than that to be anti-Zionist is to deny the Jewish people that international right.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances working definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by 31 countries (and 27 student governments), clearly states that denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination is a manifestation of antisemitism. Most people who claim to be anti-Zionist dont realize this, and believe that anti-Zionism is simply a movement to support the Palestinian people.

It is easy to shy away from identifying as a Zionist when you have been trained to believe that doing so means you are anti-Palestinian, or aligned with oppressive movements like settler-colonialism and apartheid.

However, support of Jewish self-determination and Palestinian self-determination are not mutually exclusive.

It is possible, and quite common, actually, to both support the existence of a Jewish state in Israel and criticize its policies and government officials. As is the case in most governments, very few Zionists, or Jews, agree with every policy decision made by the Israeli government.

The actions and policy decisions of the Israeli government do not define Israelis or Jews or Zionists, just as the actions and policy decisions of the U.S. government do not define Americans and their beliefs.

College students must begin to think critically about the meaning of the word Zionism, and consider why it is that the Jewish people are the only group whose right to self-determination is questioned and demonized. It is entirely possible that upon doing so, many will find that they do, in fact, identify as a Zionist.

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So you think you're not a Zionist? Think again. J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

The intense violence in Israel and Palestine in May resembled similar episodes in recent decades. But it also had several distinct features, chief among them the newfound unity of Palestinians everywhere. Palestinians rose up together in the face of the divisions that Israel has imposed on them and those created by the shortsighted partisanship of their leaders. They mounted demonstrations throughout the country in response to Israels heavy-handed repression in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and its bombardments of Gaza that killed over 250 people. Israel tried to squash these protests, leading to eruptions of mob violence mainly directed against Palestinians in cities inside Israel such as Acre, Haifa, and Jaffa. Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinian protesters in the West Bank. Then on May 18, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, inside Israel, and in diaspora communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere mounted a general strike, the first to encompass all of historic Palestine since the six-month general strike of 1936.

The deck remains stacked against the Palestinians, however, and a new Israeli government seems no more likely than its predecessor to cease its abuses and the policies that have made remote any prospect of a just and acceptable political settlement. But the stirring of a new generation of Palestinians offers some grounds for hope. A revivified Palestinian national movement can dispense with the assumptions and failures of previous generations and, through its actions and messaging, make clear the untenability of the status quo.

For years, pundits and politicians have declared that the Palestinians were defeated and demoralized and that their cause had lost its salience. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump translated this view into policies even more stridently anti-Palestinian than those that preceded them. This understanding that the Palestinians could safely be forgotten was also the basis of the normalization of relations between Israel and four Arab countries in 2020. But the uprising in the West Bank, the countrywide general strike, and the solidarity of the Palestinian diaspora delivered a clear message: the Palestinians cannot be ignored.

Western media coverage of events in May also departed from the norm. For once, broadcasters and newspapers did not blindly repeat Israeli talking points about indiscriminate Palestinian terrorist rocket fire against Israeli civiliansa claim of Palestinian instigation and culpability that such outlets ritually invoke as soon as the first Hamas rocket is fired, in the process effacing 54 years of Israeli military occupation and 73 years of Palestinian dispossession. Instead, these chronic patterns of injustice and abuse appeared prominently in both mainstream and social media. For example, many reports explained that the Sheikh Jarrah families slated for eviction by Jewish settlers with the support of Israeli security forces were refugees displaced from the cities of Acre and Haifa in 1948. Media accounts also noted that although Israeli Jews are allowed to make claims to property in occupied Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians are barred from making analogous claims to any of their extensive properties confiscated by Israel all over the country in the past seven decades.

Alongside this media awakening, people in the West seemed more understanding of the real politics at work in Palestine. Israels apologists in Washington, London, and Berlin naturally trotted out the standard clichs about Israels right to self-defense, but they could not mask the changing tone both in the political arena and in the large demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. For perhaps the first time, public discourse in all four of those countries (which share legacies of dispossessing indigenous peoples) featured discussion of the settler colonialist nature of generations of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Activists reinforced parallels to the oppression highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement, and many young Americans now connect the injustice they have seen in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, to what they saw in Sheikh Jarrah and other locales where security forces use the same U.S.-manufactured tear gas and the same militarized policing tactics.

Of course, changes in media coverage and public opinion have seemed to swing in favor of the Palestinians before, and they do not necessarily presage any meaningful political change. Such shifts occurred at the time of Israels siege of Beirut in 1982, during its fierce suppression of the unarmed first intifada starting in 1987, and during its three wars on the trapped residents of the Gaza Strip from 2008 to 2014 (the latter of which killed over 2,200 people). Each time, assiduous public relations work by the Israeli government and its friends mostly repaired the tattered screen that protects Israeli practices from real scrutiny. A frantic effort to do the same thing is underway at this moment. But there are reasons to believe that things might turn out differently this time.

The recent upheaval has brought about a unique moment, with both the growing shift in international public opinion and the nascent reunification of the Palestinian people at the grassroots level. The Palestinians have an opportunity to reestablish their frayed national movement, unify their ranks, and agree on a strategic agenda that they can clearly communicate globally. To achieve this uphill task, they will have to supersede existing political structures notably the framework put in place by the Oslo accords, including the creation of the Palestinian Authoritythat have produced only a generation of failed leaders, repressive governance, patronage-based corruption, popular demobilization, and no strategy for liberation. The two political parties that have long dominated Palestinian politicsFatah and Hamasseem structurally weaker and less popular than ever before, notwithstanding the considerable external support they receive. This is true even of a currently buoyant Hamas, whose own internal polling predicted it would lose in the elections that were scheduled for May but which were postponed by the president of the Palestinian Authority, whose legal term in office ended over a decade ago.

A new generation of young Palestinian activists has no time for the slogans, politics, and leaders of the past. These activists are operating on the same wavelength throughout Palestine and in the diaspora. Young people are taking the political initiative today, sparking a new phase of the effort for Palestinian liberation, as they have done repeatedly in the pastfor example, by launching the 1936 general strike and the 1987 intifada. They will face a hard task in overthrowing the older generation of leaders and the extensive security and financial structures that protect them. But the tide is turning, as evident in the recent popular anger directed against the Palestinian leadership. Nizar Banat, a stern critic of the Palestinian Authority, died in its custody in June, sparking widespread unrest that has underlined the extreme fragility of these leaders hold on power.

The willingness of many Americans to take a deeper and more searching look at Israel and Palestine is also encouraging. Young people, including many in the Jewish community, are more critical than their elders were of the myths that have long shielded Israel from scrutinythe notions that God gave this land to Israelis; that before the creation of the Israeli state, Palestine was a land without a people; that only Israel made the desert bloom; and that Israel is the only Middle Eastern democracy. Social media are far ahead of the mainstream media in this respect, spreading indelible video images of Israeli forces firing tear gas and stun grenades into the al Aqsa mosque, the most sacred Muslim shrine in Palestine, as worshipers were at prayer during the holy month of Ramadan; the destruction of entire multistory buildings in Gaza; Jewish lynch mobs roaming Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and in cities within Israel; and Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank shot down with live ammunition. Such things cannot be unseen.

These vivid images have helped to pierce the cocoon that the medias coverage has faithfully maintained around the 54 years of temporary military occupation and the refined system of domination in place both inside Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. Terms that were never employed in the past about Israel, such as systemic racism, Jewish supremacy, settler colonialism, and apartheid, are being debated and becoming part of U.S. and left-wing Israeli public conversations. This remains the case despite the increasingly desperate attempt of Israels defenders to paint support for Palestinian rights or criticism of the policies of a foreign state as anti-Semitic. These changes in discourse in the United States and Europe could have powerful political consequences, even if no immediate change in policy seems likely. Ultimately, they could lead to a decline in the immense military, diplomatic, and financial support that Israel enjoys from its allies in the West.

If all of this seems to be new, and may constitute a turning point, much has not changed. Both in the United States and globally, there remains an almost irrational attachment to the pretense of a two-state solution, the notion that the only way to bring lasting peace to the region is through the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Proponents of the two-state solution refuse to recognize its essential prerequisite: the demolition of the formidable structural impediments, both physical and administrative, that Israeli leaders of all stripes have erected since 1967 to prevent the creation of a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state. These methodical efforts involved the effective annexation of most of the occupied territories and the illegal transfer of nearly 750,000 colonists (over ten percent of Israels Jewish population) into these territories, in the context of the massive construction of colonial settlements, exclusive roads, and water and communication systemsthe largest infrastructure project in the countrys post-1967 history.

Without the reversal of the creeping incorporation of what is left of Palestine into the greater land of Israelthe core objective of most Israeli political parties, including those that account for perhaps 100 of 120 members of the Knessetthe invocation of a two-state solution is just a fig leaf for the unending dispossession of the Palestinian people. There is currently no prospect of an international effort to undo the facts on the ground that Israel has created to make a viable Palestinian state impossible. Nevertheless, the stubborn resistance of the Palestinian people to the efforts to dispossess and efface them from history may have forced a turning point. A new paradigm is taking shape, based on equal rights for all in Palestine and Israel, both collectively and individually, whether via an increasingly improbable two-state solution, a single state or binational entity, or a federal, cantonal, or other framework. Growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis understand the high odds against the implementation of a two-state solution and are exploring some of these alternatives. Advocates of such schemes must offer a comprehensive exposition of how these options would work in practice before they can gain real traction. But Israels persistent opposition to a truly independent Palestinian state paradoxically makes the need for these alternatives all the more urgent.

This emerging new paradigm will probably not have a short-term impact on U.S. policies or those of other powerful countries. U.S. politicians and foreign policy mandarins, liberal Zionists, and most international actors are too invested in the two-state solution for that approach to be supplanted anytime soon. Meanwhile, major international actors, the United States foremost among them, have shown little interest in preventing Israel from blocking the path toward a two-state solution. This acquiescence permits Israel to continue its brutal management of its Palestinian problem while refusing any movement toward a real resolution, an approach that former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu perfected during his many years in office.

The new government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will likely follow the course set by its predecessor, as its ruling coalition is so disparate that no new consensus on the Palestinian issue is possible. There remains a solid right-wing Knesset majority on both sides of the aisle in support of the ongoing colonization of the occupied territories and the denial of national and other rights to the Palestinian people. This hard-line position is among the greatest obstacles to change. A new paradigmeven when more fully developedis unlikely to have much immediate effect in persuading Jewish Israelis to abandon a status quo so unfavorable to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians have the capability to change this situation, however. A revivified Palestinian national movement could challenge and ultimately transform the current untenable status quo. Such a movement would require extremely difficult political shifts and a cold reevaluation of Palestinian strategy and aimshopefully driven by the election of new and younger leaders who can chart a fresh approach. This would involve several major efforts. Palestinians must show forcefully, and ideally nonviolently, the unsustainability of the status quo, which they successfully did during the unarmed first intifada from 1987 to 1991. And they must either revive the moribund possibilities of Palestinian national independence alongside Israel or, more likely, chart a vision of a future course for the Palestinians in a new postcolonial political structure shared with their Israeli neighbors. External actors who cherish their influence over their favored Palestinian clients and allies may resist such changes, but the Palestinians have in the past shown the ability to transcend such external interventionas they did under Yasir Arafats leadership from the late 1960s through the 1980sand could do so again.

The positive change already witnessed in global discourse on Palestine is in large part due to the effectiveness of Palestinian civil society initiatives and on-the-ground youth activism in the occupied Palestinian territories, the United States, and elsewhere. A rejuvenated, unified, democratic Palestinian national movement led by a new generation and built around a robust set of political goals would multiply that impact on Israeli, U.S., and international public opinion. The communication of an authoritatively presented Palestinian political message rooted in the principle of equality and backed by political, diplomatic, and mass action would decisively prove the unsustainability of Israels continued oppression of the Palestinians.

These transformations in Palestinian society and politics may be slow to come, or could arrive rapidly, or may not happen at all. Without them, the frozen confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians will continue to thaw, only much more slowly. In any case, it is already manifestly clear that an outmoded colonial system such as Israels, based on the supremacy of one ethnic group and the subordination of another, is incompatible with the values of democracy and equality. Although they are fiercely contested, these remain the leading values of the twenty-first century. An evolving Palestinian national movement with these values at its heart can only have positive effects locally and globally.

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The Palestinians Will Notand CannotBe Ignored - Foreign Affairs Magazine

One of a number of statements that stood out during the recent court hearing regarding the conservatorship of pop star Britney Spears was the singers testimony that she was being forced to remain on birth control against her will.

I have (an) IUD inside of (me) right now, so I dont get pregnant. I wanted to take the IUD out, so I can start trying to have another baby, but this so-called team wont let me go to the doctor to take it out because they dont want me to have any more children, she said, according to a story from Variety, which notes that a live audio stream of the hearing was shut down by the judge, after learning that it was being broadcast online.

That revelation was surprising, if not shocking, to many because of the reproductive rights and justice issues it raises, especially for advocates and experts who work to ensure that individuals are able to choose to reproduce and obtain access to reproductive health services.

Rachel Johnson-Farias, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights & Justice (CRRJ) at Berkeley Law School; Debra Mollen, professor of counseling psychology at Texas Womans University and a licensed psychologist and certified sexuality educator with the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT); and Sonja Goetsch-Avila, the California state senior organizer at URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE), a national reproductive justice organization that centers the voices and leadership of young people, share some of the history of the reproductive justice movement and their professional perspectives on the violation of reproductive rights that Spears has testified to experiencing. (This email interview has been edited for length and clarity. )

Q: Multiple news outlets have reported that pop star Britney Spears has said that shes been forced to remain on birth control (through an intrauterine device, or IUD) against her will, as part of her testimony in court proceedings to end the conservatorship shes been under since 2008. What were some of your initial thoughts or concerns when you first learned of this detail in her testimony?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: I entered the reproductive justice movement via my work in Californias womens prisons. A common human rights and reproductive abuse that I saw in prisons is incarceration during reproductive years. Even if the state did not intervene to sterilize someone inside, earlier contact with the prison system and longer and longer sentences have normalized such that people are incarcerated at younger ages and long enough to inhibit chances of reproducing upon release. In Britney Spears case, an IUD can be removed, but the fact that she is not allowed to choose when that happens in combination with the amount of time that the IUD has already been in place (13 years) means that Spears has been stripped of making reproductive choices, and, the longer it persists, the more her case looks like forced sterilization.

Debra Mollen: My initial reaction was one of concern about the potential for harm, particularly around issues of reproductive coercion, which are common and often associated with other patterns of relationship violence, trauma and abuse.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: I was disgusted but, sadly, not shocked after reading more about the situation. Forcing anyone to remain on birth control against their will is an explicit form of reproductive coercion. Our country has a dark history of racist, sexist, classist and ableist laws and practices that have targeted people through forced sterilization and coercion of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) methods, like IUDs and implants, to prevent wanted pregnancy in certain populations. Its unfortunate that many people are only learning more about how forced birth control and sterilization are still legal and in practice today when it happens to someone as famous as Britney Spears.

Q: Can you help us understand a bit about the basics of reproductive rights and how this particular issue fits into that understanding?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: Reproductive justice maintains that all people have the right to have a family, not have a family, and the ability to raise the families we do choose in safety and with dignity and respect. Reproductive rights forms the legal-focused arm of the reproductive justice movement and focuses on challenging laws and policies that impugn someones human right to choose whether, when, and how to have a family. Because Britney Spears right to have a child is impugned by the forced use of contraceptives, the current conservatorship case calls her reproductive rights into question. Reproductive justice is intersectional by definition, such that the historic conflation of disability and reproductive oppression should be a factor if the court reviewing Spears conservatorship employs a reproductive justice lens.

Debra Mollen: Reproductive rights are grounded in ideas that undergird personal and bodily autonomy. In the same way that no one can force you to be an organ donor, reproductive rights activists are committed to allowing each person the ability to access reproductive care and make decisions about our reproductive lives. Reproductive justice, a broader idea that was coined in 1994 by a group of Black women who recognized the need for organizations that centered the rights of indigenous women, women of color and transgender people, asserts that people should have the ability to control how, when, and if they have children and be able to raise their children safely in supportive communities.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Reproductive justice is defined as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. It was first officially coined by a group of Black women in 1994 in Chicago, right before attending the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The mainstream reproductive rights movement in the U.S. was primarily focused on the needs of middle to upper-class white women and didnt address the intersecting reproductive injustices that Black women, other women of color, queer, trans, low-income, disabled and other marginalized communities had faced for generations.

The reproductive justice framework not only demands access to reproductive health care, birth control, abortion and sex education, but also freedom from abusive and coercive powers preventing ones ability to get pregnant on their own terms. Britney Spears situation directly links to one of the key tenets of reproductive justice people deserve the right to determine if, when, and how they want to have children. In her own words, Britney Spears referenced her conservatorship as abuse. Under this abuse of power and control, its clear that Spears does not currently have the freedom and autonomy to make her own reproductive decisions.

Q: Can you also talk a bit about the history of forcing birth control or sterilization on people in this country? I understand that theres a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled in favor of this practice? How does this relate to what someone like Spears has testified to experiencing?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: Buck v. Bell (1927) was a textbook case of reproductive oppression in which the Supreme Court authorized the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck after she was raped by her foster parents nephew and, subsequently, became pregnant. The foster family, eager to hide their shame, had Carrie Buck committed to a mental institution and sterilized under a state sterilization law rooted in eugenics that legalized sterilization of feebleminded people. Several states, including California, had similar laws on the books and, together, these laws reflected a broader societal normalization of eugenics: a White supremacist pseudoscience that holds that humans can be bred to privilege desirable traits. These laws were red herrings for genocidal efforts to eliminate all deviations from a White supremacist standard and would inform the Nazi Partys antisemitic efforts.

Buck v. Bell provided the legal grounds for the sterilization of thousands of people who did not conform to arbitrary racist, ableist, classist and sexist standards and were deemed mentally and/or physically unfit. This case also serves as a foundation for much of the ongoing sterilizations that happen in prisons today. Because more than half of Black people with disabilities in the United States will be arrested before their late 20s, our jail and prison system is ground zero for reproductive oppression at the intersection of race, class, gender and ability.

Like Carrie Buck, Spears was deemed unfit to make choices for her life as a result of her disability, including reproductive choices. If the court is not careful, it stands to replicate the reproductively oppressive outcomes that eugenics laws like the one that informed Buck procure.

Debra Mollen: Forced sterilization became popularized and widely practiced at the beginning of the 20th century. Its linked to ideas rooted in eugenics (which literally means to be well born) about who should be able and encouraged to reproduce, and who should be prevented from having children. Chillingly, the Nazis borrowed extensively from U.S.-based eugenicists in both their justification and practice of genocide of 6 million Jews. Though its tempting to see these ideas as antiquated, there have been documented cases of forced sterilization through 2013 in the California prison system.

By her account, Britney Spears is experiencing reproductive coercion, denied the ability to exercise her reproductive rights by being compelled to keep her IUD inserted against her will. Reproductive coercion includes pregnancy coercion, birth control sabotage and abortion coercion. Though it is more common that people are deceived or coerced into pregnancy and to have their birth control use impeded, another example of pregnancy and birth control coercion is to prevent people from getting pregnant and compel them to use contraception against their wishes. While it is most common for men to perpetrate reproductive coercion against women, people of any gender can experience reproductive coercion.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Forced sterilization has been going on in this country for centuries and has particularly harmed Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, immigrant communities, poor and disabled folks.

Yes, the Buck v. Bell case you mentioned set a precedent for the continued targeted sterilization of people in U.S. institutions, and Spears experience is certainly connected to that legacy, particularly for those with mental health conditions.

State-supported control of reproductive decisions is still widespread. Dorothy Roberts writes at length about the forced sterilization of poor and incarcerated Black women in her book, Killing the Black Body, and refers to horrific trends of requiring specific birth control to reduce sentences or even to qualify for certain benefits. And most recently, we have seen forced hysterectomies in ICE facilities in the United States.

While California is known for its progressive policies toward advancing reproductive freedom and access to healthcare, its also important to recognize Californias own egregious history with forced sterilization and reproductive coercion. California was the most aggressive state in the country throughout its 70-plus years of eugenics laws, sterilizing over 20,000 people in our state-regulated institutions.

Q: In some of the discourse around this story, there have been arguments made that the choice to have, or not have, children is a fundamental right. Why is this so? What makes this a fundamental right?

Debra Mollen: Having or not having children is a fundamental right as it allows us the ability to make our own decisions about vital aspects of our health and reproductive lives. Interfering with and violating these rights has profound implications for our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Historically and currently, White, middle and upper-class cisgender heterosexual women have been encouraged to have, and celebrated for having, children; while those from marginalized groups (women of color, poor women, people with disabilities, transgender people, incarcerated people) have been discouraged, prevented from, and shamed for exercising their reproductive decisions across the spectrum. Consider, for example, the ability to access treatment for infertility and the distinct lack of controversy or obstacles to those who most commonly pursue fertility treatments, generally class-privileged White people, that regularly result in the abandonment or destruction of hundreds of thousands of embryos. On the other hand, marginalized people, especially women of color, poor women, and trans people, have been systematically denied access to abortion, forcibly sterilized, and experienced reproductive coercion with much greater frequency.

In the case of Britney Spears, we are reminded that no amount of fame, celebrity or wealth is adequate protection against reproductive coercion.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Everyone should be able to determine if, when, and how to parent on their own terms. Over the years, the Supreme Court has recognized reproductive rights as fundamental human rights including having children, contraception, abortion, family relationships and child-rearing. Reproductive justice allows us the freedom to make decisions about our own bodies without interference from politicians and to decide what is best for ourselves and how to best build our families and communities.

Q: What is the denial of this right of allowing people to make their own choice about having children or not having children typically rooted in? What is it historically rooted in?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: As to historical roots in the United States, reproductive oppression has deep roots in slavery. As an institution, slavery was legal at the countrys founding and repeatedly codified in law. Slavery mandated the separation of African families and necessarily required the removal of any reproductive rights for an entire class of enslaved people. This disregard for human rights based on race and class provided a broad foundation for the legal denial of basic human rights based on identity. It is not a coincidence that prisons continue to be hotbeds of reproductive oppression as the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery except in cases of conviction for a crime. If slavery can persist via jails and prisons, so too do attacks on reproductive choice and freedom.

The law is nothing else if not an iterative instrument that holds legal precedent in the highest regard. The precedent established during slavery, and later during Buck v. Bell when the eugenics movement was even more mainstream, continues to inform our reproductive rights today. Buck v. Bell was never overturned and cases like Britney Spears highlight the ways that precedent rooted in human rights abuses echoes throughout our legal systems.

Debra Mollen: The denial is rooted in eugenics, Nazism, ableism, sexism, classism, antisemitism, and racism. Of course, there are powerful implications for the intersection of these systems, which lead not only to oppressive practices but, exercised to their logical, albeit terrifying conclusion, to genocide. When the government makes decisions about who is deemed worthy and fit to reproduce, the results undermine our individual rights about one of the most vital decisions we ought to be able to make freely and with informed consent.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Policies that seek to control whether and how people give birth are rooted in White supremacy and forced upon our communities to maintain power and control.

Policies requiring forced birth control and sterilization very often go hand in hand with anti-abortion legislation and attempts to restrict access to birth control, with these laws usually pushed by the same elected officials and political movements. All of these laws have racist, sexist, classist and ablest roots and are intended to strip away the dignity and autonomy of poor people, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, disabled people and young people who already face the greatest barriers to accessing care, and more stigma when they seek support as survivors of violence. Everyone should have access to reproductive healthcare in their own communities and on their own terms. This includes survivors of violence and those who have experienced domestic or family violence.

Q: What kind of mental, emotional, and physical impact do you think the denial of this right to have an IUD removed/discontinue birth control can have on a person?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: Immense. People are quick to look to the third world for the impact of human rights abuses, but what we are witnessing in the Spears case, and the many cases like hers, is nothing short of abusive and inhumane. Unfortunately, what is happening to Britney Spears is legal and it highlights a central failing in our legal system: that which is morally bankrupt, abusive and inhumane is not necessarily illegal.

Debra Mollen: There is an established relationship between reproductive coercion and intimate partner violence. Women of color, poor women, single women and women younger than 30 are at higher risk of interpersonal violence, reproductive coercion and unintended pregnancy. Interpersonal violence and reproductive coercion are associated with increased risk for adverse psychological, physical and reproductive outcomes such as depression, anxiety, inconsistent condom use, sexually transmitted infections, impaired physical health and substance use. Unplanned pregnancy is associated with a range of adverse outcomes, including increased rates of depression and anxiety, delayed prenatal care, poorer relationship quality and less social support.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: The reality is people should not have the right to decide if they want to be on birth control and the type of birth control they use taken away from them, as Spears has. Taking away someones right to discontinue birth control, or any personal decision about their own health care and body, for that matter, has serious emotional, mental and physical impacts. When bodily autonomy and reproductive control is compromised, other aspects of ones life, sense of safety, stability, freedom and self-determination are impacted.

We can never undo the harm survivors of reproductive coercion have faced, but there are a few ways we can acknowledge them. In particular, URGE is supporting state legislation that would establish a Forced Sterilization Compensation Program to provide reparations to survivors of forced sterilization under Californias eugenics law from 1909 to 1979, or who were subjected to coerced or involuntary sterilizations in womens state prisons after 1979. People can follow California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), Back to the Basics Community Empowerment (B2B) and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) for updates and advocacy opportunities.

Excerpt from:

Experts say alleged forced birth control of Britney Spears is clear reproductive justice violation - The San Diego Union-Tribune

For months, Gov. Ron DeSantis has been riding a wave of conservative moves, such as banning Critical Race Theory, supporting proposed civic standards that dont include the word slavery and requiring campus surveys to ensure conservative ideas are not suppressed.

Now, DeSantis has vetoed a civics education bill, SB 146 which got bipartisan support from lawmakers in part because of whats called action civics, which critics consider leftist.

What does action civics mean?

According to a commentary posted on the website of The Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit, conservative think tank, action civics encourages students to participate in protests and demonstrations more than study history and our founding ideals, and understand the structure of American government.

In another article, from the conservative National Review said the bill is likely to bring leftist action civics to Florida.

Action civics inappropriately politicizes schooling by authorizing student political protests and lobbying for course credit, the article reads. That is wrong in principle. Also, through a combination of teacher bias, peer pressure, and the influence of politically biased non-profits, the action-civics projects in question almost invariably support the political Left.

The bill, SB 146, would have required high school students to participate in a practicum intended to inspire meaningful civic engagement and help students learn how governmental entities at the local, state or federal level interact with the public which they represent and serve.

But in a message about the veto, DeSantis says that SB 146 seeks to further action civics but does so in a way thatrisks promoting the preferred orthodoxy of two particular institutions.

Two institutions are mentioned in the bill: The University of South Florida campus in St. Petersburg and a nonprofit YMCA.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Republican who represents part of Pinellas County. During the 2021 session, SB 146 received unanimous support from both legislative chambers before it was sent to the governors desk.

Brandes told the Phoenix that he was shocked by the veto. He said that throughout the 2021 session, he had been in contact with the governors office about the legislation.

They have never raised concerns, he said. Brandes called the veto explanation nebulous and said he would need to speak with DeSantis himself to find out what would need to change in order to potentially propose similar legislation next session.

The bill would have established the Citizen Scholar Program, intended to combine academic instruction with the implementation of concepts learned into the local community to improve civic literacy and expand educational experiences for students. High school students who completed the program could have received up to six undergraduate credit hours.

The program would have been created within the University of South Florida and headquartered at the St. Petersburg campus. That is because of the campuss commitment to enhancing civic literacy and community engagement in the next generation of leaders, the bill language states.

The bill then would have had USF St. Petersburg contract with the nonprofit YMCA to provide students participating in the YMCA Youth and Government program the opportunity to be designated Citizen Scholar and earn undergraduate credit.

Also, high school students would have been required to participate in a civics activity, such as taking up an unpaid government internship, or learning about the U.S. citizenship naturalization process and attending a naturalization oath ceremony. Then the student would have been required to write a research paper reflecting on their experience.

According to the veto message, DeSantis wrote that his administration has worked to strengthen civics instruction.

Adam Freeman, a spokesperson for USF, responded to the governors veto Wednesday, saying in part that, We recognize that the Governor has the authority to veto all bills passed through the Legislature and we understand he has done so with SB 146.

DeSantis has been targeting civics education initiatives in Florida schools, including banning Critical Race Theory, which analyzes how Americas legal systems uphold oppression of people of color. Also banned is material from New York Times The 1619 Project, which explores American History by focusing the narratives, experiences, and contributions of Black people in America.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has already approved other civic education bills, such as mandating students to compare political ideologies, like communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with principles of freedom and democracy.

The governor also approved legislation requiring high school students to take a civics literacy exam, though it appears to be a low-stakes test. At the college level, post-secondary students must demonstrate civic literacy through passing an assessment and taking a course on civic literacy in order to graduate.

DeSantis also signed legislation that requires colleges and universities to annually conduct a survey to measure intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity, based on a concern that college and university campuses suppress conservative thoughts and ideas.

Excerpt from:

DeSantis vetoes civic education bill citing 'action civics' -- programs that critics call leftist - Florida Phoenix

(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

***

Its the Fourth of July, American Independence Day. In our sacrament meeting today, we sang all of the verses of The Star Spangled Banner not merely the first verse, which is customarily followed by the words Play ball! and we sang America the Beautiful. Singing the entirety of the national anthem allows one to think about the actual story behind Francis Scott Keys lyrics, which were inspired by his seeing (from his enforced position aboard an enemy vessel) that the flag of the United States was still flying above Fort McHenry when the sun rose following a lengthy British bombardment during theWar of 1812.

But the ward that meets after us sang the great Union anthem from the American Civil War, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and I envied them:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

[Chorus]

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat.

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him; be jubilant my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.

As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free,

While God is marching on.

Here is a stirring video of the Tabernacle Choir, the Orchestra at Temple Square Strings, and the United States Military Academy Band at West Point performing The Battle Hymn of the Republic on 4 July 2015, on the bank of the Hudson River at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York:

Ive been thinking about patriotism for the last three or four days, not merely because of the holiday weekend but on account of some reading (or listening) that weve been doing. It occurs to me that mine is no longer the simple flag-waving kind of patriotism that it perhaps once was, when I was quite young. If my children or grandchildren arent around, I just dont care that much about fireworks and I would probably rather avoid huge crowds at a public holiday event. I respect the flag, of course, and I consider myself a patriot, but Ive come to concentrate with much greater focus but also rather quietly upon the ideas that make America worth defending rather than upon mere nationalism.

This has brought me to considering a quotation that is often but, it seems, quite falsely attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her fertile fields and boundless forests, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her public school system and her institutions of learning, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

I dont much care who originally said it or wrote it. I like it because what it says is true.

And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall beswept offwhen the fulness of hiswrathshall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they areripenedin iniquity.

For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall beswept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until thefulnessof iniquity among the children of the land, that they areswept off.

And this cometh unto you, O yeGentiles, that ye may know the decrees of Godthat ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness come, that ye may not bring down the fulness of thewrathof God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done.

Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall befreefrom bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will butservethe God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written. (Ether 2:9-12)

Well, what pseudo-Tocqueville says islargely true: I do happen to think that a substantial portion of the greatness and genius of America is to be found in her democratic Congress and especially in her matchless Constitution. And Im deeply concerned that many (including many in Congress) seem to have forgotten that.

In this connection, although it doesnt cover all of my reasons for treasuring the Constitution, please see this very good article in theDeseret News by Professor Justin Collings of Brigham Young Universitys J. Reuben Clark Law School:

Perspective: How the U.S. Constitution changed the world: The U.S. Constitution has been a model for a worldview thats now under threat

But the other substantial portion, and the even more important portion, ofthe greatness and genius of America is surely to be found in the nations goodness. Ive come, therefore, to dislike the famous 1816 toast offered by the daring naval hero Stephen Decatur:

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!

In 1871,the German-born Senator Carl Schurz (R-MO) was a bit closer to the right sentiment, but still not quite there:

My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

This is important to me, and no mere quibble, because it seems clearly necessary to recognize loyalties that transcend the nation if the nation is not to become an idol. If our loyalty is always to the nation or the state, there can never be valid grounds for dissent from what the nation or the state has decreed.This is the kind of thing that, at its worst, gets us into the territory of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Well but, surely, an American might respond, America is neither Hitlers Third Reich nor Mussolinis attempted restoration of the Roman Empire. True. However, America is not without blemish. Not even close. Slavery, to choose the most glaringly obvious example, was a gross wrong, a violation of our fundamental founding beliefs, and not so very much better than the racial policies of German anti-Semitism.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Thats not Karl Marx or some Antifa lunatic. Thats the Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate on this very day (however obscured it may sometimes be by fireworks and the smell of barbecue). And, to make things just a bit ambiguous, those words were largely penned by Thomas Jefferson, who, like Francis Scott Key, owned slaves.

But back to my claim that we must have a loyalty, a vantage point, higher than the nation or the state: If what is lawful is by definition right, and if what is unlawful is by definition wrong, there can be no solid basis for seeking reform. The state becomes the ultimate arbiter of wrong and right, good and evil. To resist Hitler would be clearly wrong, because it was illegal. But was it wrong to seek to end human servitude? Was it wrong for women to seek the vote? Were the Latter-day Saints of the nineteenth century wrong to try to preserve their religious freedom in the face of government oppression? Was Governor Boggs within his rights to decree their extermination? (He spoke for the state, after all. ) Is it wrong today to oppose late-term abortions or to defend the right of a cake decorator to free expression or to oppose the destruction of womens sports by government edict? Is the principle really Whatever is, is right?

I love a statement from Edmund Burke, the English parliamentarian, a sympathizer with the American colonists and yet a fierce critic of the French Revolution who is revered by many conservative intellectuals as the very founder of modern conservatism. In 1790, in his classicReflections on the Revolution in France, he said:

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

And, Im happy to say, America has mostly been lovely. (See Theresa Dears fine Deseret News column Perspective: America is not perfect, but she is certainly beautiful. Theresa Dear is certainly someone with grounds for complaint, but she doesnt.)

We were caught up for a while too long in colonialism, in places like Cuba and the Philippines and, yes, to an unfortunate and shameful degree, Hawaii. (On this, see Daniel Immerwahrs 2019 bookHow to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.) And there is always the matter of slavery and then of segregation. Moreover, our adherence to our ideals has always been imperfect, a matter of effort often falling short and of aspirations sometimes altogether forgotten. (SeeJill Lepores book, also published in 2019,

Even in celebrating our country and the glories of its landscapes and history, the famous lyrics to America the Beautiful by Katherine Lee Bates recognize that our nation can still be better and implores Gods help in becoming what we ought to be:

America! America!

God mend thine evry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law. . . .

America! America!

May God thy gold refine,

Till all success be nobleness,

And evry gain divine. . . .

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.

One of her verses, though, begins this way:

Oh, beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life!

America is at its very best when it liberates. Whether at Yorktown or at Appomattox Courthouse or at Normandy.

(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

And liberation is a common thread that America, at its best, shares with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which liberates from sin and despair, and, ultimately, from death and from confinement in spirit prison.

Read the original here:

Thoughts on the Fourth of July | Dan Peterson - Patheos

PENDULUM by Dele Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, I dont know about you, but the week started for me on a normal note. I had looked forward to my routine life of activities. Little did I envisage the big news ahead. Government backed, government style gangsterism, no less, descended on us without warning. No journalist could have anticipated such multiple events in any single week. But this is Nigeria, a country that is always action packed like a Chinese movie.

I had always told anyone who cared to listen that Nigeria parades some of the smartest security operatives in the world, and Im not making this up or being patronising to our men and women of the Armed Forces. I have had the privilege of interacting with some of them while on peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where they overpowered the rebels that threatened to collapse those West African nations. I witnessed first-hand, how our men and women were warmly received and very well respected. I was always proud to visit them, and take pictures to display to the outside world. Those countries are eternally grateful to Nigeria.

So, you can now imagine how embarrassing it became that the same security guys who got rave reviews and accolades abroad returned home to popular acclaim only to find out that their successors have acquired notoriety for their inability to take the battle to the doorsteps of bandits and over ambitious terrorists in order to overwhelm the miscreants. It ihas been a sad tale indeed. What we now see on television and social media platforms are pitiable caricatures of the good old soldiers of yesteryears. And to make matters worse, some of us started fighting the Jonathan government principally because it failed to curtail the excesses of terrorists and bandits. The end came when the Chibok girls were abducted and the whole world rose in unison to offer solidarity to the people of Chibok in particular, and Nigeria in general. As a result of this, the candidacy of Major General Muhammadu Buhari became more attractive and absolutely compelling. We were sold on the fat hope that as a former dreaded military chieftain, who had become a trifle subdued by donning the toga of a politician, Buhari would wipe out insurgency in matters of months, if not weeks. But unbeknown to us, we were being sold a dummy and the Chibok girls saga would soon become like childs play.

Lets fast forward and conclude this important preamble very quickly. Six years after Buhari attained power, not much has changed. To be candid, things have got worse and spiralled out of control. I will be charitable to say that the Boko Haram menace has definitely improved as these particular insurgents have been pegged back a bit and their activities are less worrisome. Whether that is because of the success of the Government in overpowering them or simply that there is now bigger fish, deadlier fish, in the pond to contend with, I cannot immediately say. What is crystal clear is that the Boko Haram danger has been replaced by the greater peril of savage banditry which has practically engulfed a substantial chunk of the country, from North to south and East to West. Added to that is ethnic tension largely fuelled by the widespread feeling of unprecedented marginalization and oppression of certain parts of the country by a smaller part. Those parts, especially the South East and South West are vociferously clamouring for new countries to be carved out of Nigeria or. at the very least, some form of self-determination and governance, or restructured nation of equal partners, where no part behaves like slave masters.

These agitations have obviously irritated our President and he has finally come out of his gilded cocoon to declare a blistering war on the perceived rebels, including their leaders such as Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and Chief Sunday Igboho Adeyemo. In baring his fangs, the President has sanctioned and employed extreme high-handedness, embraced illegality, and debased the Nigerian Constitution which he swore to uphold and which ironically, he claims to be defending.

It is to these two maverick gentlemen, Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho, that I wish to turn this weekend. The unpalatable events of the past week surrounding them portend even greater danger for our continued existence as a nation than the agitation for separate nationhood which it is claimed they are fomenting.Kanus case is much more complicated. He was visiting Nigeria on holiday, only to have that holiday turned into a nightmare by supervening events. He had been arrested, charged for treason, amongst other offences, by the Nigerian government, granted bail by the Court and then vamoosed into thin air following a violent, calamitous and fatal raid on his ancestral family home in his village. Since then, hes been a most wanted man by the omnipotent Nigerian administration of President Buhari. But in fairness to him, he didnt have many options. The gestapo fashion in which his premises was invaded must have been responsible for his sudden disappearance. Who wouldnt disappear in the face of such violent assault knowing that your Government did not merely want to kill you, it wanted you very dead!

After a while, when nobody new whether Kanu was dead or alive, he suddenly resurfaced in the holy city of Jerusalem. His iconic stature grew even more, and his martyrdom seemed assured even though he was still alive. His regular broadcasts became more strident and impassioned, and it was not too long before my avid followers started demanding that I interview this irrepressible irridentist. I obliged and had a powerful Instagram live interview session with him last year. However, I never bothered to ask where he was speaking from. It was sincerely speaking not my business. What was important is that he sounded brilliant and very passionate about the Biafra project. We disagreed vehemently on a few points, especially his obsession with the theory that theres a fake Buhari in the Presidential villa. On this point, I stood my ground solidly. Even if nothing was impossible in Nigeria, not this tale by the moonlight.

I had also asked him how he hoped to get a Biafra nation without another civil war. His response was brilliant. He said a referendum would settle that. On this, I appreciated the fact that he was not irredeemably pinning his hopes and strategies on fighting a war. But I made it clear to him that a referendum was dead on arrival because those who are currently profiting from the ongoing madness in Nigeria wont go away without a fight! I am not wholly convinced about the demand for Nigeria to be split into different nations because all I can see is a fragmentation and balkanisation of the country which may not augur well for any part of the country, in the long run. Besides, I reiterated that I cannot see how the various separatist Republics and independent countries being advocated can come into being without great bloodshed. Which begs the question at what cost, nationhood?

Back to Nnamdi Kanu and his recent travails. I must admit that wherever he lived in the last few years, I didnt expect him to ever venture out of his hiding place, or if he did that he would venture far afield into unknown territories, no matter the inducement. To me that is a great act of folly. A sacrilege! Others before him have tried the same antics and, much to their chagrin and dismay, have felt the full might and weight of Nigeria and its collaborators. Salacious tales of his recent travels to Kenya are flying everywhere. And the truth is, I dont even know what to believe any more. But the latest reports I read confirmed that he was first arrested in Kenya before the authorities there transferred him to the Nigerian authorities. His mission in Kenya has not been disclosed yet. The big news is that he was captured, tortured, according to a report, and repatriated to Nigeria even though he wasnt carrying a Nigerian passport at the time of his arrest. Lets also skip the issue of diplomatic row between Nigeria and the United Kingdom. Whats remarkable for me is that our security guys actually have such aptitude and efficiency and could carry out such a daring mission with the utmost secrecy that was needed.

Congratulations. Whether this kind of mission was necessary in the overall scheme of things, or whether such daredevilry, imagination and initiative cannot be better deployed to the extant threat to our unity and survival at home is a matter for another day. For todays purpose I will end by saying that all reasonable men and women who abide by our democratic mores and constitutionalism will condemn the way Kanu was surreptitiously arrested and brought back to Nigeria without following due process, the rule of law and the constitution. It smirks too much of totalitarianism and we fancifully believed that we had left that era behind. We are being forcibly reminded that this is not the case, and we must be wary and afraid. I fear there is an endgame which only the discerning are beginning to see.

Next. Predictably, everyone knew once Kanu has been captured and chained down, the next target would be Chief Sunday Igboho Adeyemo. And pronto, his house was invaded by government forces in similar fashion to the invasion of Kanus family home about four years ago, in September 2017. This time they were led by the DSS. As with the invasion of Kanus home, there was no attempt at any civility or following the law or indeed the rule of law. There was merely a crude, thuggish demonstration of force and arbitrary and naked abuse of power by the government. A government that was using forces sworn to protect the citizenry from precisely the kind of brigandage and assault that they carried out a few days ago at Igbohos home. At the end of the operation, they left plenty sorrow, tears and blood, apologies to Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Human beings died. We are yet to be told the exact number, but it seems there were more than two people killed by the ruthless, bloodthirsty government agents, contrary to what the DSS would have us believe. Even one death is too much anyway. This has obviously become the new normal here.

In similar fashion to the Nnamdi Kanu debacle, Sunday Igboho literally disappeared before the very eyes of those sent to capture him. His whereabouts now remain unknown. In true Nollywood and Professor Peller magical style, he entered one of the rooms in his house and mysteriously disappeared causing much astonishment and confusion in the ranks of those sent to abduct him and convey him back to Abuja. It seems having lost their prey, they scurried out of the Ibadan with kidnapped family members and some aides and headed in the direction of Ekiti State, where they made a stopover. To refuel, refresh or report to someone, nobody is sure.

Again, I had interviewed Igboho, via Instagram. The Igboho that I spoke to was never interested in fighting a war. He was only working at stopping the foreign invaders (as confirmed by our President) and their local collaborators who had gone on rampage in certain Yoruba townships. I did not see or hear a man who was desperately trying to bring down his nation or destroy its unity or national fabric. I consider Sunday Igboho a patriot and nationalist who out of deep frustration has rebelled and now an agitator for Yoruba nation. In his own way, and for those that he represents, he is a freedom fighter and must not be cowed or silenced. Our Constitution gives him a right to freely express himself and his views need not tally with those of the present administration. That is the beauty of democracy.

It is for this and other reasons that the dastardly, reprehensible attack on Sunday Igbohos home must be condemned by all right-thinking Nigerians. Civilised Governments do not act in this way. Democratic administrations must remain accountable to their citizens and cannot be seen to be ridiculing and flagrantly disobeying the laws that they are meant to protect and enforce.

How can any government be proud of the activities of the DSS in attacking and assaulting the Igboho home and its occupants, and even killing innocent and unsuspecting citizens? What did Igboho do to entail the government declaring this cowardly war on this peaceful individual who is merely keeping to the saying that a(n) (English)mans home is his castle? All Igboho has ever done is to come out vociferously to say and demand that those who would wish to violate and desecrate the land of his people would never succeed whilst he is around and that his people and himself would use all means at their disposal to repel any assault or attack against his people. There is absolutely nothing wrong in that, especially where the government has failed to offer necessary protection to the innocent populace and has, as it now seems apparent, taken sides with the marauders and bandits.

No government should pride itself in having to resort to or engage in criminal conduct to apprehend relatively harmless citizens. Any government that does so is itself doomed to fail spectacularly, and ought to be challenged and caged. Otherwise, it will become the greatest monster of all time. The vitriol and diatribe of the spokesperson for the DSS in seeking to justify this affront on the Nigerian people and its constitution is ample reason for us to say that this is now enough. That is what this present government is being a party to or condoning. We must not let it continue. We must speak up now or forever remain silent in the face of almighty and abysmal tyranny and oppression.

The government must purge itself of this unforgiveable sin to the Nigerian constitution and its people. Those directly responsible must be identified and brought to book.. They must be charged with murder and treasonable felony because they dared to hijack the apparatus of State to perpetrate, achieve and actualise their nefarious ends. They have defamed the Federal Government and caused it to become the object of resentment and opprobrium. The Government must come hard on them so that it is not tarnished further. Nigeria would have saved a lot on insecurity had our stormtroopers had deployed their energies and arsenal in similar fashion against the bandits and terrorists who litter our forests. Rather we have been treated to horror movies of Sheikh Gumi and some Governors begging them like penitent school kids right in front of cameras.

Just imagine two James Bond movies premiered in one week starring Kanu and Igboho. Of course, no right thinking person should tolerate criminality but no sane person should promote government rascality!!!It is really a dark period for our country if this is the narrative we want to pursue and nurture

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Nigerias Week of James Bond Movies - THISDAY Newspapers

Thomas Paine, pamphleteer supreme, printed his greatest work Common Sense, in January 1776. The American Revolution was in its birth and Paine meant to inspire the colonials not to waver but to fight for independence from King George III. As a political pamphlet it is curious that Paine turned to the Hebrew Bible to bolster his argument. But then again, the soldiers who fought the war knew the Christian scriptures well, believed the British monarch to be the Antichrist, and would be swayed by an example of opposing monarchy from what they considered the Old Testament.

The prime example of opposition to monarchy is presented by Paine from I Samuel 8. The ancient Israelites protest Samuels leadership as a prophet and demand, Appoint a king for us, to govern us like all other nations. Their request was justified; they had enemies to fight and fortified cities to build. But Samuel did not see it this way. The Israelites were rejecting Gods rule as king.

Samuel confronts God with this rejection of theocracy. As the Bible relates, God begrudgingly gives into the demand of the people. But He tells Samuel to warn the Israelites of the oppression and enslavement of the people under a human king. The prophet tells his people, This will be the practice of the king who will rule over you. He will take your sons and appoint them as charioteers and horsemen, they will serve as outrunners for his chariots. He will appoint them as his chiefs of thousands and of fifties; or they will have to plow his fields, reap his harvest, and make his weapons and equipment for the chariots. He will take your daughters as perfumers, cooks and bakers. He will seize your choice fields, vineyards and olive groves, and give them to his courtiers.... The day will come when you cry out because of the king you yourselves have chosen; and the Lord will not answer you on that day.

Although monarchy eventually became the template for redemption, Thomas Paine focused on the suffering of the people under a king. He writes, The hankering which the Jews had for idolatrous customs of the heathens is sometimes exceedingly unaccountable. Paine further condemned the ancient Israelites, writing, These portions of scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the almighty hath entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the scripture is false. Then Paine overstates the case to protest British kingship: Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them.

ALTHOUGH PAINE disdained the Bible calling the Old Testament a history of wickedness in his Age of Reason (1794, 1795) he realized that most colonists would respect an argument against monarchy that emerged from the scriptures. Looking back almost 250 years, we ignore the reality of a revolt influenced by clergy and by the Christian Scriptures. The Hebrew Bible with Moses as a warrior was the perfect portrayal of a prophet liberating his people from an oppressive king. It would inspire colonists who were unsure to go to war but would listen to their religious leaders. Whether monarchy was the epitome of evil seemed clear to Paine. Yet, in the end, God sanctified monarchy and established it as the form of leadership that will eventually lead to messianic redemption.

While pastors and ministers relied on the Gospels and the letters of Paul, they frequently relied on the Hebrew Bible for inspiration. One example is the episode of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. Another is from the Book of Judges: Deborahs defeat of the Canaanites with the help of Yael, the Kenite, in the execution of Sisera. The clergy cited the division of Davids kingdom when the northern tribes rebelled. Also, there is Davids thanksgiving for national salvation in the Psalms (124). The congregants knew the Christian scriptures well and these sermons motivated them to fight.

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Of course, the founders of America identified closely with the ancient Israelites and considered America a new promised land. The escape from religious persecution in Europe was seen as a modern-day Exodus. But it should never be forgotten that 1776 was not only the fight for political independence but a fight to face oppressive evil and defeat it. Although Christians read the Hebrew Bible differently than Jews as a harbinger of the coming of Jesus as the Messiah the Jewish scriptures would influence a generation of Christian warriors in a fight for freedom.

The writer is rabbi of Congregation Anshei Sholom in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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The Hebrew Bible and the American Revolution - The Jerusalem Post