Thursday, January 25, 2024

Hooray for South Africa!

 

                                                          Hooray for South Africa!

                                                             Junious Ricardo Stanton


       



On December 29, 2023 the government of South Africa went before the International Court of Justice in The Hague to officially file charges against Israel accusing that nation of the crime of genocide against the people of Gaza. This was an historic initiative on several levels; first because Israel has been aggressively conducting illegal territorial expropriation and land grabs and has illegally usurped, stolen, occupied and displaced hundreds of thousand of Palestinians since 1967. Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war Israel has subjected the residents of Palestine to brutal, ruthless military occupation on their own land, constant assaults on their dignity and person and knowingly and deliberately deprived Palestinians of natural resources such as water, destroyed and expropriated their farm lands displacing them off of their land and illegally detaining them without just cause. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/

Israeli settlers have an extremely hostile attitude towards the Palestinians and have worked incessantly to undermine their efforts at indigenous internal organization and self-determination. Israel colluded with it prime enablers the US and UK to create a counterweight to the Palestinian Liberation Organization which vehemently opposed the ongoing settler expansion. Together the US, UK and Israel played a pivotal role in the creation and promotion of Hamas. https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/ https://tribune.com.pk/story/2302309/how-and-why-israel-helped-create-hamas

Hamas started out as a charity organization far less political and militant than the PLO; but once it gained Israeli support it overshadowed the PLO (a classic divide and rule tactic by the Israelis) because many rank and file Palestinians felt the PLO sold them out by negotiating a ”peace” deal with Israel.

Hypocritically, the United States of America, the greatest purveyor of violence and conflict on this planet today in its role as a global arms seller and instigator labeled both the PLO and Hamas terrorist organizations. This act of psychological projection (ascribing to others what you yourself are guilty of) allows the US to support the crimes against humanity being conducted by it allies and proxies or in the case of Israel its master!

The details and narratives of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack which ironically is being called Israel’s 9-11 are highly suspicious. Gaza is one of the most thoroughly policed, spied upon and monitored spaces on this planet; even the Israelis say a mouse can’t move anywhere in Gaza without them detecting it! Similar to the US 9-11, astute people should be asking: how did such a highly sophisticated, costly occupation, intelligence/monitoring system get caught flat footed, how did well armed entities with advanced detection/defense systems like the kind the US and Israel deploy, have such feeble initial responses to these two attacks?!

The theory both the US and Israel allowed their attacks to occur makes the most sense to me. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html Allowing it to happen provided Israel with the rational to rapidly do what it has been gradually doing for fifty years: ethnically cleanse Gaza, displace the people either via death or massive destruction and disruption. The attack provided an excuse for Israel to go full speed ahead with their plans for a Greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Tigris Euphrates Rivers. https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/what-is-greater-israel-why-is-the-idea-not-acceptable-to-the-muslim-community-1621507466-1

The South African government had a Popeye moment “That’s alls I can stands and I can’t stand no more.” witnessing the impact of Israel’s deadly overhanded response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. After watching drones, missiles and artillery murder innocent civilians and decimate large swaths of Gaza territory, South Africa said enough. South Africa filed charges against Israel in the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide! Their presentation laid out the facts of collective punishment and indiscriminate violence against civilians. “In an 84-page filing to the ICJ, South Africa argued that Israel is committing genocide by killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing serious mental and bodily harm, forced evacuation, widespread hunger, and by creating conditions “calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” It also accused Israel of failing to stem incitement to genocide in the public pronouncements of its officials. During three hours of oral argument, lawyers representing South Africa asked the ICJ to order a suspension of Israel’s campaign in Gaza to protect the rights of Palestinians in Gaza ‘from imminent and irreparable loss.’

Such ‘provisional measures,’ as they are known, function as a kind of restraining order to stop a dispute from escalating while the court considers the full merits of the case, which could take years. For provisional measures the court need only decide if prima facie, or ‘at first glance,’ the acts complained of could fall foul of the genocide convention… South Africa presented widely reported evidence that it said showed a “systematic pattern of conduct” by Israel ‘from which genocide can be inferred.’ The UN defines genocide as an act ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.’” South Africa accuses Israel of genocide and urges top UN court to halt Gaza war by Christian Edwards https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/middleeast/south-africa-israel-genocide-icj-hague-day-one-intl/index.html

While the ICJ has no power whatsoever to enforce any ruling it may make, we can applaud at least one nation, an African nation that knows first hand the horrors of settler/invader racial oppression that had the courage to do the right thing! Meanwhile Israel and its lapdogs attempt to justify the unjustifiable, defend the indefensible and promote the slaughter of innocents.

                                                                       -30-


Thursday, January 18, 2024

Movies to See

 

                                                                       Movies To See

                                                                Junious Ricardo Stanton




Today’s motion picture environment is much different than it was just a few years ago. Even if the theater management pulls a movie from the venue due to lack of attendance, now you can still see the films via, streaming, cable or direct purchase without waiting months or years. You can see them without going to a store to buy the DVD or ordering them from Netflix which no longer does mailings. So you have no excuse not to see a particular film even if it is not in theaters.

Recently my wife and I went to see The Color Purple and The Book of Clarence. I urge you to see both of these films while you can in theaters or when they become available via streaming services or direct purchase.

The Color Purple is a reimagining of the book, the 1985 original film of the same name and the award winning 2005 Broadway musical production also called The Color Purple. While the 2023 film version encompasses aspects of all of them, the book, the original film and Broadway adaptations, it is not a remake or reboot of any of them. It is a unique project all its own.

The new film is different in that the scenery and setting are not the same even though the action still takes place in the South during the 1920’s. This time the action is near the ocean and we get to see more of Shug Avery’s lavish lifestyle in Memphis Tennessee as she helps Celie find and reinvent herself. More importantly, in my opinion, the story line arc of the characters is more developed and the criticisms of the book and movie about the depiction of the men offer a resolution without altering the trauma of the backstory. The backstory remains the same, there is brutality and abuse by Celie’s step-father but the character of Mister shows gradual transformation and eventual redemption in this version.

The scenery, the costumes and interplay among the characters is powerfully well done, the songs have positive messages and the choreography reflect the Black experience and culture. The direction and actors are very very good and their performances help differentiate this film from the original and the stage versions allowing it to stand on its own merit.

I recommend seeing the film because at its core it is extremely entertaining and it has a powerful message of resilience, forgiveness, redemption and empowerment.


* * *


I also highly recommend The Book of Clarence. It is a unique and groundbreaking film that is the first depiction of people of color in a Biblical era film in the history of American cinema and this film stands in stark contrast to the historically inaccurate Hollywood portrayals of the people of that region as white skinned Europeans! The film shows what the people probably looked like two thousand years ago all of whom except for the Romans are black and brown people! The film is satirical but it addresses modern human conditions and psychological states and finds resolution amid deep personal ambiguity uncertainty and crisis.

The film is based in Biblical subject matter yet it is satire but with a powerfully poignant modern message. The notion of a Black man living two thousand years ago in Palestine named Clarence is in itself funny. To top that, Clarence has an estranged twin brother named Thomas who is the famous doubting Thomas disciple of Yeshua Bar Joseph (Jesus of Nazareth). The cinematic magic and interplay between the two of them played by Lakeith Stanfield which reveals their contentious history, their divergent lifestyle choices and worldview differences is genuinely ingenious. The film also uses iconic themes from older movies like the Ben Hur chariot race but in an irreverent and humorous fashion that reveal how Clarence’s choices as he tries to hustle to make it big blow up in his face.

The character Clarence is a man determined to prove he is somebody. He is a small time hustler, con artist and schemer who wants to make a better life for himself and his mother amid the brutal Roman occupation and oppression in Jerusalem. Seeing Jerusalem as ancient an all Black city with the exception of the Roman occupiers is masterful. There are modern elements woven into the story like their slang, Clarence selling and smoking weed, homelessness, poverty and the tensions between the residents of Jerusalem and the Roman occupiers.

Clarence finds himself at odds with and owing money to a Jerusalem gansta who just happens to be the brother of the girl he is infatuated with. Clarence must find a way to square his debt with her brother to save his life. The film chronicles his desperate attempts to find a way to raise money to repay him in a short period of time.

I will not give any more of the plot away other than to say Clarence witnesses Jesus performing miracles and he notices the way the people flock to Jesus and adore him. Clarence is an atheist but decides he wants to be like them to get money. He tries to join them as a disciple but is rebuffed. He subsequently connives, schemes and scams with his two compatriots to perform fake miracles so he can get money and fame, However his conversations with Mary, John the Baptizer, his twin brother Thomas and other true believers stirs something deep within him.

I will leave it at that but I urge you to see this film. It is thought provoking in its content and it provides extremely deep imagery and messages throughout the whole film. I know many Christians will have problems with this movie because it goes against the deeply entrenched orthodoxy of a lily White Jesus. Many will categorically reject the film without even seeing it. To do this is to do yourself a disservice and deny yourself a thought provoking cinematic experience.


-30-

Thursday, January 11, 2024

 

                              What Happened to the Real Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr?

                                                              Junious Ricardo Stanton

                                                                        




If students analyze King’s speeches and life’s work more carefully, they’ll see that he promoted a more radical approach to justice—not one that asks citizens to be neutral on racism or one that merely offers comfort.” Teaching About King’s Radical Approach To Social Justice - Choshandra Dillard https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/teaching-about-kings-radical-approach-to-social-justice


The powers that be are attempting to whitewash the true legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Shortly after they had him cut down on a balcony in Memphis Tennessee in April of 1968, the plutocrats and oligarchs who own and run this country determined to destroy the movement he was building; a movement for social justice, equity, peace and prosperity for all Americans. The psychopaths who own and run this country decided to redefine King’s impact, redirect his righteous fervor for social justice and neuter his push for structural change and replace it with a one day of service thus nullifying persistent activism for a systemic metamorphosis of American society. Thus far it is working, our government is spending trillions for overseas wars while homelessness and despair escalate in this country yet not a peep of protest out of the masses!

The ruling elites weren’t able to dissuade or stop the campaign to make King’s natal day a national holiday so they cunningly recast his image into one of a “dreamer” rather than an ardent activist and champion for peace and social transformation. They always promote the “I have a dream” refrain from his August 28, 1963 March on Washington D.C. speech. They never mention the stirring words that preceded his famous refrain; “… It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

The campaign to tear down legal apartheid and racial cast in America was winning meanwhile the US ruling elites escalated their imperialist campaign to replace French Neo-Colonialism in Indochina with an American brand determined to snuff out the liberation movement in Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson put the pedal to the metal and intensified the war effort exponentially.

Martin Luther King Jr was one of the few nationally prominent US clergy who stood up against the Military Industrial Complex and courageously denounced the war in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand). King disparaged the carnage and war profiteering at the expense of justice, morality and obliterating the grinding poverty experienced by Blacks, whites, indigenous peoples and people of color in this country. His efforts earned him the hatred and hostility of the power elites.

King’s national Poor People’s Campaign was an embarrassment to the US government because it exposed the lies and disingenuous propaganda that portrayed America as the land of the free, home of the brave and a place of unlimited opportunity for all of its citizens. His efforts to mobilize a diverse cross section of Americans to come to Washington and plead their case for social justice and systemic transformation including ending the war marked King as a man to be, to use a CIA term “neutralized”, meaning killed.

The FBI tried all kinds of tricks to make King give up even pushing him to commit suicide, https://allthatsinteresting.com/fbi-martin-luther-king-tapes to no avail. So on April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while assisting Memphis Tennessee sanitation works in their struggle for recognition, decent wages and benefits.

The ruling class then had to decide how to deal with his legacy. Today little or no mention is made of King’s stance against the war nor his push for radical societal transformation. We never hear his speeches about the ravages of war both at home and far away places like Indochina. We are not exposed to King’s words at Riverside Church in New York one year to the day before his brutal murder in Memphis Tennessee where he said, “… Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor…” Beyond Vietnam – A Time To Break Silence.

The billionaires and warmongers who own the media are depriving us of King’s conviction, courage and vision. They deliberately suppress words like this, “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Ironically, King warned against superficial acts of kindness versus real change. “One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

In 2024 as we celebrate Martin Luther King’s natal day and his life mission, do not allow the warmongers, the corporations and soulless billionaires belittle King’s true legacy, misdirect and rechannel our energies and actions in ways that pose no threat to their power and maintain the status quo! As wars increasingly ravage our planet, do not allow the warmongers, war profiteers, their bought and paid politicians and controlled media trick us into being silent, passive and acquiescing to their evil! Be like Martin Luther King Jr., speak out, act out and live in ways that promote and spread peace.

                                                                       -30-

Friday, January 05, 2024

2024 Predictions

 

                                                                  2024 Predictions

                                                               Junious Ricardo Stanton

                                                                          



“Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to relive them”. George Santayana, American Philosopher

Most of us are oblivious to the fact our present is built/based upon our past and likewise the future is built upon the present. Human behavior is a series of patterns and proclivities we call habits, customs, traits, norms and physiological conditioning. Over time we can discern a continuity or consistency in people’s patterns so much so we can accurately predict their future patterns over time. Much of our behavior is conformity to social pressures from family, peers, indoctrination and the government So when I offer my predictions for 2024 I am not star gazing, casting bones or reading a crystal ball, not at all; I am merely engaging in pattern recognition, trend analysis and extrapolating observable patterns onto the coming days of 2024.

Based in this past year and previous years, I can confidently predict: the United States will continue to be the greatest threat to world peace on the planet in its role as the greatest purveyor of weapons and violence on earth. Likewise Israel will continue its ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine and the US will provide unapologetic support for that country’s crimes against the people of that region.

The United States and its’ allies will continue their proxy war in Ukraine pumping billions of our tax dollars into a futile, unwinnable effort to bring Putin and Russia to heel. This U.S. mischief has been going on long before Putin launched his nation’s Special Military Operation in 2022. The US instigated and fomented the mayhem in Ukraine when it spent five billion dollars to overthrow and supplant the duly elected president with their hand picked puppet. Things have gone downhill for that woebegone nation ever since. Ukraine cannot win this conflict but the crazies in Washington, London, and Brussels think they can force a military victory/solution there.

In 2024 flash additional points for global conflict and war will be: Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, the Red Sea area, the South China Sea and throughout the African continent. In Africa, the effects of 2023 coups will result in additional tensions on the continent as the governments in Niger and Gabon attempt to stabilize and restore confidence within their countries as will: Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad and Sudan who experienced coups in 2021 and Mali who experienced a coup in 2020. On an up trend, many African governments are attempting to forge regional alliances with their neighboring countries to strengthen their positions militarily and commercially and leverage their proximity and natural resources for their betterment.

The world will witness more nations choosing sides, many in the Southern Hemisphere, Latin America and Asia will distance themselves from the US/NATO/Five Eyes Axis and link up with the expanding BRICS alliance that just took in Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates on January 1, 2024. We will see additional nations seek membership in the BRICS alliance. The tide is rapidly turning and the US/NATO/Five Eye/Israeli axis is not the team most nations want to play for or with. This quantum shift will have an extremely deleterious impact on the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the US global empire and its standing in the world!

In 2024 the fear-mongers in the media/government/Big Pharma cabal will continue to hype and exaggerate viruses during the flu season, pushing mRNA injections while ignoring natural immunity altogether and downplaying our bodies’ ability to defend and heal itself from illness. In 2024 the increasing alarm from insurance companies and their actuarial experts regarding excess mortality, their mounting payout “losses” due to the increase of sudden deaths as more and more younger people drop like flies, will continue being suppressed by the corporate media; which just coincidentally gets most of is advertising funding from Big Pharma! Everything but the mRNA shots will be blamed for the excess mortality in 2024.

Look for an accelerated push in the “anthropogenic climate change” scam as billionaire plutocrats/oligarchs push their “Green Agenda” on the world. Yes pollution exists, much of it is due to modern capitalism. If the greedy corporations stopped cutting down whole forests and stopped despoiling the plants that use photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, we would not face a “climate crisis”! It is these very same extremely rich folks and their corporations who are causing most of the environmental harm and disruption not ordinary folks like you and me. We need to realize this, call them out and hold them accountable!

The mind control apparatus suppresses the fact our planet is a living entity; if it were not, no life would exist here. All living things go through changes! The earth has gone through countless changes: ice ages, land shifts and continental divides, sea level rising and lowering, extreme weather, desertification and more before humans emerged on the scene. We are in a living dynamic, vibrant physical environment and we will see changes in the planet just as we see changes in ourselves. In 2024 people will still fall for the climate crisis okey-doke.

2024 will produce a highly contentious presidential election as the US becomes more polarized, fractured, uncivil and continues to disintegrate along gender, ethnic, economic and ideological fault lines. There will be little civil debate as the politicians and media talking heads further polarize and weaponize the political process.

In 2024 inflation will continue to rise despite what the politicians say. The US dollar is being debased daily as more and more money is put into circulation and the Federal Reserve Banking cartel manipulates interest rates ostensibly to stabilize the economy; but 2024 will see even more sticker sock and a further decline in our standards of living.

In 2024 the stresses of the so called COVID “New Normal” will result in the current trends of maladaptive behaviors, rising suicides, declining life expectancy, addiction and depression. The goodnews is all is not lost, we do have the power and agency to uplift and transform the quality of our lives even in the midst of so much turmoil. In 2024 many people will turn to nondenominational spirituality, meditation, and introspection and not be so outer directed thus gaining personal stability in the midst of accelerating change.

My intent is not to be a prognosticator of bad news; I’m merely to pointing out trends I think will continue into 2024. Stay well and think for yourself!

                                                                              -30-