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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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