(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — Anti-apartheid activist and Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, has nominated imprisoned Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouthi, for a Nobel Peace Prize. The first black Archbishop of Cape Town, himself a living symbol of a liberation struggle, was also awarded the prestigious prize in 1984 for his opposition to South Africa’s brutal racist regime.
Football bombs, record wars and threat levels + this day in history w/the Sedition Act and our song of the day by Cate Le Bon on your Morning Monarchy for May 16, 2016.
I had mixed feelings when I learned that Palestine has erected a statue of Nelson Mandela, the iconic South African anti-Apartheid leader. On the one hand, I was quite pleased that the unmistakable connection between the struggles of Palestinians and South Africans is cemented more than ever before. On the other hand, I dreaded that rich, corrupt Palestinians in Ramallah are utilizing the image of Mandela to acquire badly-needed political capital.
A foray of condemnations of the boycott of Israel seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Calls from Western governments, originating from the UK, the US, Canada and others, to criminalize the boycott of Israel have hardly slowed down the momentum of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). On the contrary, it has accelerated.
The year 2015, the tenth year of the existence of our movement, has almost come and gone. On the 3rd of October we gathered at the Curries Fountain Stadium to celebrate ten years of struggle. More than four thousand comrades participated in the celebration. We have survived years of serious repression – including arrests, assaults, torture, imprisonment, the destruction of our homes, slander and assassination. In these ten years we have won many victories in the struggle for land and dignity.
At this site I have already reviewed scholarship and recent history with which I would otherwise seek to illustrate my position. For the sake of brevity I will refrain here from submitting the entire indictment again.
However, the “Greatest Show on Earth” is starting to roll into a town near you — thankfully not one near me — and with it the usual battalions of charlatans and hypocrites will also come, those waving what George Carlin so poignantly called “America’s greatest theatrical prop” (aka as Bible, Holy Scripture etc.)
Until the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974, apartheid in South Africa was secure. There was no substantial resistance anywhere in southern Africa. Pretoria’s neighbors comprised a buffer zone that protected the racist regime: Namibia, their immediate neighbor which they had occupied for 60 years; white-ruled Rhodesia; and the Portuguese-ruled colonies of Angola and Mozambique. The rebels who fought against minority rule in each of these countries, operating without any safe haven to organize and train, were powerless to challenge the status quo.
ALGIERS — The Western Sahara is not just a section of the famous desert that dominates North Africa.
Shenid Bhayroo was one of the thousand-plus journalists that traveled to South Africa in December 2013 to cover the death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela, the former political prisoner and first black president of the southern-most nation on the African continent.
Most of those journalists representing nations worldwide covering the memorial activities for Mandela, reporting on the ‘mood’ in that country, missed the mood Bhayroo saw among many South Africans.
