August, 2014
Protesters say Ferguson feels like Gaza, Palestinians tweet back advice
A dialogue is taking place on social media between angry American protestors demanding justice in the killing of an unarmed black teenager by police and Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip who have been hit hard by deadly Israeli attacks for weeks.
As streets of Ferguson in the US state of Missouri have recently been witnessing tear gas and heavily-armed SWAT teams, some protestors compared the city to war-stricken Gaza Strip.
Some protestors chanted "Gaza Strip" as they confronted lines of police, Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce wrote on Twitter. "We are being occupied," one commented to the Daily Beast. "Will we as a people rise up like the people of Gaza?"
Scenes of police crushing protestors in Ferguson, where African-American Michael Brown was shot to death on Saturday, have prompted outrage in more than 100 cities across the US.
Israel launched the latest war against the blockaded Gaza Strip on July 8. Nearly 1,962 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have so far lost their lives and at least 10,100 have been injured in the Israeli war.
On Wednesday, Israel and Hamas agreed to extend a temporary truce in Gaza for five more days as they continued their indirect talks in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
"Much support to #Ferguson #Gaza," tweeted Inas Safadi, a Palestinian from Gaza. "Revolution of Ferguson, can't be prouder of these people who won't let their son's blood goes for nothing."
Gazawia, another Tweeter user wrote "Where I come from, what some call "rioting" we call an uprising. #Ferguson #Gaza #Palestine #intifada."
Rana Nazzal tweeted a picture of Hamde Abu holding a sign that read "The Palestinian people know what mean to be shot while unarmed because of your ethnicity."
Some Palestinians even offered advice to the Ferguson protesters on how to deal with tear gas inhalation, and other riot control methods.
"Don't Keep much distance from the Police, if you're close to them they can't tear Gas. To Ferguson from Palestine," wrote Rajai AbuKhalil. Mariam Barghouti said, "Always make sure to run against the wind /to keep calm when you're teargassed, the pain will pass, don't rub your eyes! #Ferguson Solidarity."
AbuKhalil replied to Miriam "And of course DON'T wash your eyes with water."
A user took the tweets as a sign that the news for the Ferguson protests has been spread throughout social media and people across the globe now know about the demonstrations.
"You know things are out of control in Ferguson, MO, when people in Gaza are tweeting advice on how to cope," Damian Foley wrote. "I don't think anyone is trying to compare Ferguson to Gaza. The point is solidarity and justice." AN/ISH
Gazans advise US protesters on Twitter
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/08/15/375381/gaza-people-twitter-advise-us-protestors/
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August, 2014
Comment on PressTV Debate by Lil Joe
Frederick Peterson presents himself as the official or spokesperson for Congressional Defense Fellow (whoever or whatever that's supposed to be), inadvertently proving African American working class and poor have more in common with the working class and poor of Palestine than they do with U.S. imperialism and Zionism. The same ideological language he uses to endorse Zionist slaughter of the innocent in Palestine is used to endorse vicious repression of working class and inner city poor African Americans -- in this country's ghetto slums.
Working class and poor African Americans languishing in inner-cities in America's slum ghettoes are of an economic category of surplus population. Capitalist commodity production exploits its workers by compelling workers to sell their labour power as commodities. These labour commodities are put to work in valorising labour processes. This is the process of exploitation in that the values paid out in wages are contracted at a rate in which by this valorising labour process there are more value bearing commodities above what is paid out in wages. But, as capitalist commodity production by wage labour labour efficiency is increased by speed-ups and progressively displacing workers by newer, more efficient technology to increase the amount of commodity output per worker constantly tossing more and more unemployed workers into the streets of poverty -- an increasing surplus population.
Thrown from the active work force, these structural unemployed workers constitute what's called a surplus population. This is because these workers can no longer participate in production. In Gaza joblessness jumped to 38.5 percent at the end of last year from 32 percent in the third quarter of 2013, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In the United States over seven million Americans who want a job are not counted as part of the labor force. The unemployment rate has remained steady at 6.3% , but the unemployment rate for African Americans, coming in at 11.5%, is currently more than twice as high as that for white Americans. This explains why, as there is a higher percentage of Black and brown in the surplus population. Thus, the 'disporportunate' percentage of black and brown workers tossed into the surplus population become a disporportionate percentage of so-called criminals filling prisons or soldiers in the nations armed forces -- hired guns to participate in mass murder campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Somalia ...
The United States has from its origin been a capitalist republic. It has never been a democracy of working people, by working people or for the people. It has always been an armed republic of the economic ruling classes, capitalist classes. America's bureaucratic-military State has always been and yet is dominated by the ruling classes. Political representatives of the ruling class have at their disposal special bodies of armed men and women, with courts and prisons to legislate and enforce laws.
When economic and social conditions engender working class and minority rebellions, state and federal troops are brought in to suppress those rebellions: e.g. suppression of the 'Shays Rebellion' in 1786-87. The vicious suppression of workers Great Railroad strike of 1877 in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Missouri. The suppression of union led workers general strike in Seattle, 1919. The suppression of the union led 1934 general strike in San Francisco. The suppression of miners union organising campaign of 1921 in Matewan. The suppression of working class poor Black rebellion in the so-called 'Watts Riot' in Los Angeles 1965 and the inner city rebellions across the nation in in 1967- 68.
Historical data reveal the fact that in the final analysis what appear to be racial struggle is in actuality class struggle. This is true for Black workers in the U.S. It is also true of the Palestinian native of Palestine as well. Racialism and nationalism, and for that matter religious sectarianism are forms of false consciousness and are products of class culture. The unessential ideological consciousness masqueraded as essential. The problem for the working class is that the ruling classes ideological and political representatives play racial, national, and religious cards in such a manner as workers of the 'race', or religion of the ruling class are socially privileged while racial, religious, and ethnic minorities are beat into either submission or driven to rebellion and revolution.
State power is the instrument of class politics. The class content of State power, whatever the political form, is repressive. Institutional racism in the United States was/is a part of a social system of economic domination of capitalists enforced by social operant and classical conditionings by ostensible racial rewards and punishments. The system rewarded privileges to 'white' workers who went along with it, and punishment of native Americans, African slaves and then share-croppers, and Mexican-Americans in the expropriated South West. Contemporary immigrants from Latin America to the United States come from one surplus population to another surplus population. Denied citizenship in the U.S., these immigrant families have no rights American capitalists are bound to respect. Undocumented workers have no rights.
In the United States an upper stratum of 'white' workers were rewarded by 'good' jobs. Similarly the Apartheid economy of South Africa. In Palestine it is immigrant "Jews" who are rewarded with privilege and Palestinians punished by repression to continue Apartheid Zionism in "Israel". Yet it is evident by repressive behavior of the ANC government in South Africa and Obama as America's President that the capitalist character of the State continues just the same. Similarly the Palestinian Authority in West Bank. It is now evident that the change in colour of skin of those comprising political government doesn't change the repressive essence of the State.
Peterson is a regular on PressTV Debate. In all Debates he appeals to false consciousness, racial colouring of social consciousness to justify State violence by denouncing rebellious oppressed people as violence engendering violence. Violence by the State is said to be a 'response' to racial or sectarian violence on the part of oppressed people in rebellion. This is the demagogic rhetoric used by Peterson and his kind to justify violent repression: it is a matter of self-defense that armed forces main, murder or incarcerate those who resist social oppression.
Mercenary intellectuals such as Peterson are paid apologists of imperialism and Zionism. This includes military forces massacring native peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Somalia and for it's providing financing, weapons and training of its fascist Lackeys in Syria and Ukraine; as well as providing financing, weapons and political support to its Quisling -- the Zionist garrison regime's violence in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon.
Thus, Peterson's ideological tactic is to blame the victims of State repression as the cause of State violence used against them. Blame the victim. There are no such things as justice and fairness. Peterson pretends to represent 'moderation' and 'fairness'. Political power is based on the material interests of those constituting classes in possession of the means of production and distribution.
In the posted Debate, as in the previous ones on PressTV, Peterson attacks the victims as the cause of their victimization. Its called blaming the victim. It is perhaps inadvertent on his part, but in this video by using the same language and social category placing African-Americans in the same frame as he places the Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan and Ukraine Resistences, what he's doing is openly admitting that he regards African Americans as an oppressed people in the United States.
The perception of working class and poor Black people in the cities of America are situated as an 'internal colony', as we said of it in the 1960s-70s Black Liberation Moments. Working class and poor inner city Blacks in rebellion in the U.S. naturally come to recognise natural solidarity with the Palestinians in rebellion in Gaza. All workers have a common enemy. This is true in Palestine/ "Israel" for Palestinian and Jewish workers in Palestine/Israel as for working class descendants of immigrants to the United States originating from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Not only rebellious African American workers in the U.S., but all workers in the U.S., and workers the world over, must recognise and identify themselves with Palestinian workers' rebellion as comrades and support those comrades.
Related videos and a commentary:
'Israeli Carnage In Gaza Strip Goes On' [Ken O'Keefe & Frederick Peterson @ Presstv] [Video]
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/180929/Israeli_carnage_in_Gaza_Strip_goes_on_Ken_OKeefe__Frederick_Peterson__Presstv/
Rampant racial discrimination in US
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/08/15/375391/rampant-racial-discrimination-in-us/
Palestinians teach Ferguson protesters how to deal with tear gas
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/ferguson-protest-palestinians-gaza-tear-gas/
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