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Revolutionary Women Today – The Wind Beneath My Wings by June Terpstra, PhD 3/8/2020

On International Women’s Day, 2020 this article is updated and dedicated to women who are fighting imperialism. This is an homage to the brave women who stand with men to resist and defend the people of the world against tyrannical capitalist and imperialist governments posing as democracies. There are courageous women around the world that are educating, inspiring, agitating and organizing against greed, wars, invasions, occupations, environmental devastation, supremacy and patriarchy in the New World Unipolar Order. If you do not know these women I am honored to introduce them to you.

 The women I write about today represent the revolutionary women’s demand for a radical reordering of society towards real liberation and self-determination for all people. They have been on the front lines to save the people and the planet whether focused on reform, resistance or revolution. They are brilliant and brave women from around the world, young and old fighting against oppression. Research their names and you will see, hear and feel their passion: Sal Auger, Marwa Osman, Amal Saad, Zaynab Haboon Mahamud, Diana Berek, Christine Geovanis, Heather Cottin, Suz Rox Palmer, Felicity Arbuthnot, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Lizzie Phelan, Yasmin Nair, Rania Masri, and Sarah Abdallah. These women manifest revolution and resistance in journalism, protest, art, writing, teaching, brigades, seminars, video, rescue, radio, music, politics, community, and care daily. Some you will find immediately and others you must search for but all are making a difference by the way they live. They represent the push for dramatic historic shifts against capitalism and imperialism, colonialism and globalism.
 
 Brilliant Amal Saad:
 As an Arab woman and a Marxist “Critical Feminist”, I have to ask bourgeois liberal feminists the following: Who says this is YOUR debate in the first place? And by you, I mean you American and European “experts”. Women asides, what gives your universities, think tanks and media the right to be debating and determining the destiny of our region? Why do we never question the colonial mentality that underlies your Middle East departments and bureaus, your “centers for democracy” and “peace” for the Middle East initiatives? Who the hell are you to be studying us and issuing us Euro-American directives on “good governance” and “conflict resolution”? …What gives privileged white women the right to be pursuing their supposed “emancipation” on the backs of our oppressed people? And why are the needs of this “debate” greater than the need of Syria and its people? http://resistance-episteme.tumblr.com/
 
 Courageous Chris Geovanis:
 The state’s scheme to effectively ban the public from the public — and publicly funded — the trial is part of a long-standing official pattern to harass, arrest and undermine those who dissent in Chicago. For years, activists in Chicago had to fight in court for permission to rally and march against the Iraq war, and protesters have routinely been subject to arrest simply for attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights. More broadly, the restrictions that local government overlords have imposed on public access and public oversight in the NATO trial are part of a national effort to rebrand dissent as inherently dangerous.
 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/21/your-rights-arent-worth-crap/
 
 Compassionate Suzella Palmer:
 Therefore when trying to understand what gangs are, why they exist, why young people get involved in gangs, and just as importantly, how to prevent and respond to (victims and perpetrators of) gang crime and violence, we should not forget to factor in the: ‘the inherent dissonance between capitalism’s heady and seductive cultural aspirations and its structured socio-economic reality of unequal opportunities, which engendered an anomic and therefore criminogenic cultural climate.’ (Hall and Mclean, 2009) http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Palmer%20Suzella.pdf
 
 Fearless Felicity Arbuthnot:
 …the US and UK are seemingly remarkably selective when it comes to tyrants who “kill their own people”, and not only have failed to censure their tyrannical Iraqi puppet, Nuri al-Maliki, but are arming him to the teeth with the same weapons which are linked to the horrific birth defects, and cancers throughout Iraq, which he is now using on “his own people.” Moreover, if allegations from very well informed sources that he holds an Iranian passport are correct, to say that US-UK’s despot of choice appears in a whole new political light would be to massively understate. https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/us-and-uk-continues-arming-a-tyrant-in-iraq/
 
 Powerhouse Esther Stanford-Xosei:
 Reparations mean to repair the harm, restore, transform a people or a group who have been disposed and lost status and standing in the world community as a result of historical and contemporary injustice. To put a figure on it is banal. Some have put the cost at trillions but we are still accounting for the damage done and losses suffered but how do you account for the loss of land, destruction of our environment loss of citizenship, heritage, wealth and self-worth? http://www.thebritishblacklist.com/kunga-dred-talks-esther-stanford-xosei-founder-member-parcoe-pan-african-reparation-coalition-europe/
 
 Daring Yasmin Nair
 I came out as queer among gays and lesbians who made it clear that sluts like me were to shut up so that the straight world might believe that we deserved our “rights.” Gays and lesbians, who surely had the most reasons to be suspicious of the prison industrial complex, were now clamouring for hate crimes laws that would increase penalties and put more people in jail. It may seem like a huge burden to place on the black and white inked shoulders of a woman who only existed on paper, but at that moment it seemed like I had recovered my balance in the world. http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/my-modesty/
 
 Heroic Brooke Heagerty:
 It is clear that before “capitalism” enslavement could be the fate of any person, no matter his or her color. Whites enslaved whites by the millions. Divisions in society were not related to color. Who ruled society and who was considered a part of society had nothing to do with race. Such status was instead defined by wealth or by force. With Nelson Peery in “Moving Onward: From Racial Division to Class Division.”
 
 Always Eloquent, Marwa Osman:
 This is what happens to someone who has been struck by deterrence. To be deterred means to be afraid of everything around you. Not to trust yourself or those who are close to you or anyone who is supposed to protect you. To be deterred means to be aware that your margin of error is narrowing day by day. To be deterred means that you are fixated in front of your TV, waiting for an official statement from your enemy, to tell you when it is time to get out into the sun. https://www.opednews.com/articles/Israel-Whimpers-at-the-Fir-by-MARWA-OSMAN-Hezbollah_Israel_Israel-And-Palestine-190907-334.html
 
 Last but not at all least, I name artists, activists, organizers, editors, teachers, musicians, engaging the world daily whose work inspires me:
 Sally Auger of the Indigenous Dream a Wild Seed project, teacher and Somali women’s rights activist Zaynab Mahamud, artist-activist Diana Berek, activist educator historian Heather Cottin, animal rights activist Hannah Arbizanni, organizer and activist for Arab human rights Rania Masri, Musician Lah Tere, social media activists Tracy Marshall, and Sarah Abdallah. These are some of the women around the world whom I know are standing with the oppressed creating strategies and tactics to deal with the dangerous realities of imperialism. They are dedicated to ending the terrorism of US/UK/Israeli military aggression as it manifests across the globe. I am honored to know these women and celebrate their lives today.
 
 
 

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Artwork Jenny Starr

 

Hollow Women of the Hegemon Part II
by Dr. June Terpstra

“Those who have crossed
with direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
remember us—if at all—not as lost
violent souls, but only
as the hollow men
The stuffed men.

… This is the way the world ends” ~“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot

 

HOLLOW WOMEN OF THE HEGEMON PART II: ATROCITY ENABLING HARPIES

Dr. June Terpstra: “This article is an update of the article I wrote in 2008 titled “Hollow Women of the Hegemon”.  It is about the hollow women, the stuffed women, who help the hollow men who are devoted to profit, power, plunder, and pollution.  The word, hegemon, is used to identify the class, state or group with the most power that is responsible for the dissemination of dominant power group’s ideas, systems, and practices that most benefit those in power and those who rule for them.

Since WWII the US government and it’s corporate elites reached the top position in the world.  Their ascendency was the result of being the most violent and aggressive military with the most weapons of mass destruction and hence The Hegemonic force in the world.  The most fundamental mission that the US Hegemon faces is how to maintain power.

Hegemonic power distribution across the globe historically and presently faces counter-hegemonic forces wanting sovereignty, redistributive and transformative social and economic change. For over 500 years this power base has been held by Euro-American white patriarchal capitalist men of a global ruling class that only allowed more men into the Hegemon.  The men of the Hegemon must constantly calculate and recalculate the power ratios and make projections of who to allow at their table, with the ultimate concern being how to preserve its dominant position at the least cost.

In this process, they made deals with Saudi, African, Latin American and Asian men.  Men in power during the past century faced consistent pressure to include women to the Hegemon.  Once these men were convinced that there were economic and social gains to allowing women to the Hegemonic table they began the process by inviting their mothers, wives, daughters, mistresses, and friends to seats at the decision-making table.

Next, in a deliberate conscious manner, they allowed women into the secret services, militaries, academies, and cultural centers to be groomed for power positions that would benefit existing power holders.  The Hegemon relies on submission to its rules by the other main actors to sustain its role of domination so who better than “Daddy’s Girls” to do some of the dirty work of maintaining the Hegemon.

Historically using coercion and deceptions to uphold the rules can alienate as well as intimidate so by putting a womanly face of oppression, they employed a cunning positive incentive toward those that are willing to behave in accordance with their rules for a piece of the swag.

These “First wave” women of the modern-day Hegemon even adjusted the rules to include torture, rape, and assassination of sovereign state leaders, the establishment of more prisons, rendition, illegal invasions and occupations, and sponsorship of new terrorist groups to deflect potential challenges.  These women did not flinch at using brutal force against those states and groups who were clearly unwilling to abide by hegemonic rules.

This article is still a call warning the people not to follow the women leaders who stand by their HegeMan. This is a call for women not to vote with their vaginas and believe the myth that women have essential characteristics that make them more nurturing, empathic, and non-violent.

This is a call for women and men who will stand to resist and defend the people against the tyrannical US, UK, EU, and Israeli governments posing as democracies. This is a call to us all to end the oppression of globalized militarized debt-based economics that funds all wars, profiting from state terror while fomenting all states of terror.”

HIS-STORY IS HER-STORY

The interlocking directorate of male rulers who employed the modern “First Wave” women leaders, chose Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Corazon Aquino, Benazir Bhutto, Madeline Albright, Janet Reno, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton because they were loyal daughters, wives, and sisters of the men of the Hegemon.

These early “mothers” reveled in their power fomenting economic terrorism against the poor, wars, invasions, and occupations for the Oligarchs. These early women in power were focused on power for themselves “in solidarity” with their men.

Thatcher Reagan
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan: A Special Relationship

They neither represented the liberal feminists “ethic of care” or the revolutionary women’s demand for a radical reordering of society. Instead, they joined the front lines in the agenda too, as Kissinger stated, “depopulate” the women, men, and children of the planet, through their endless wars.

The war crimes of all these women are many but the highlights include Thatcher in the Falklands, Gandhi against the Muslims, Meir against the Palestinians, Aquino against Muslims and communists, Bhutto for Britain over the Pakistani people, Albright against Yugoslavia and Iraq, Janet Reno at Waco, Condoleezza Rice all over the globe, and Hilary Clinton in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Haiti, Bolivia, and Honduras.

HARPIES OF WAR

collage harpies

Described by political analyst Pepe Escobar, as the Three Harpies of the war on Libya, Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice have made their bones and proven their loyalty to the Hegemon.  Media and educational systems include these and other women experts and representatives of legal and human rights organizations to appear publicly to criticize women’s oppression in Middle Eastern countries.

While ignoring the statistical realities of the obscene numbers of women raped, beaten and killed by men in the USA these “experts” are used to gain women’s support for the wars. As women in the USA support war under the guise of democracy and liberation, a divisive diversion is wedged between women and men who are resisting hegemonic invasion and occupation.

Visible token women leaders clucking sanctimoniously over “women’s rights” as bombs are being dropped on their “sisters” are examples of Western feminist “success” stories within the hegemon; women such as Hillary Clinton, Samantha Powers, Susan Rice, and Victoria Nuland.  A dishonorable mention goes to Michelle Obama who stands by her Hegeman as he drone bombs, assassinates and acts as Destroyer of Worlds for his masters.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Amnesty International Campaign for “Womens Rights” in Afghanistan

THE HARPIE ROLL CALL

We begin with Hilary Clinton, Lady MacDeath, the recent star in the US theatre of macabre and absurd defamations of democracy in her bid for the presidency.  It’s important to note that the US Hegemon took a long time to allow a woman candidate for president while they did place some women in power in other nation-states.  However, in the first bout to run a woman candidate they chose a male for the current US president, a man of African and European-American ancestry, over their girl, Hillary.

Obama did well for the Hegemon for the past few years which accomplished what they intended, further divisions in an already divided and well-conquered populace, economic policies favoring the rich, while they kept the neo-con war going under the tenure of neo-liberal Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State from 2009-2013.

Hillary did well as a former Secretary of State for the Hegemon by destroying Libya, and overseeing the murder and rape of Gaddafi while stealing Libya’s gold.  She is alleged to have lied about Benghazi.  She is presiding over massive voter fraud including the military not getting their votes counted in this election.  She is accused of using a secret private server with classified material for her activities.  She oversees the drones being operated in the US and in other countries.  She gave 123 Technologies $300 Million and right afterward let it declare bankruptcy so it could be sold to the Chinese.  This is the woman for whom many will vote.  I guess if you don’t mind millions of dead children, women and men to keep your “lib” on you will vote for her.

Her many scandals including covert ops in Honduras, ripping off Haiti in the recent crisis, Whitewater real-estate deal and her futures trading that brought her a quick $100,000, the Watergate committee, Vince Foster, commodity deals, the joke Iran Nuke deal, DOJ spying on the press, stealing White House furniture, using the State Department to interfere with an Inspector General Investigation on departmental sexual misconduct, and supporting her man when he lied about a blow-job and cheated on her, to name just a few.

Note that the Bilderberg group, the historical decision making a place for the Hegemon has included Hillary Clinton is to the list of invitees. This news indicates that the powers that be have most likely decided to back Clinton for President.

Clinton Bilderberg
Hillary Clinton attends Bilderberg 2016

Hillary is the woman that the war criminal and overseer for starving the children of Iraq, Madeline Albright, says that all US women must support or else lose their feminist credentials.  The women liberals who believe she will protect their economic and reproductive rights will vote for her “with their vaginas” as commanded.  Many will also vote for her to maintain the Democratic Party, the neoliberal wing of the Hegemon.

This will only perpetuate the problems we face and the only change it will bring is more war, more torture, more rape, more divisions, more state terrorism, and more economic decline for everyone not in power in the Hegemon.  My grand-daughters will be drafted because of her. #Never Hilary

Samantha Powers, a problem from hell for the 7-year-old African boy who was recently hit by her motorcade, was Obama’s pick for UN Ambassador and has been an efficient atrocity enabler by spinning human rights and women rights into mechanisms justifying narratives for hegemonic terrorism, invasions, and occupations.

Described by journalist Tara McKelvey as the “femme fatale of the humanitarian-assistance world,” with the emphasis on fatal, her most notable accomplishment is her enabling of the Hegemon’s most ruthless perpetrators, primarily through her protection of Israel, the perpetrator of the Palestinian Holocaust. Described by White House foreign policy speechwriter Ben Rhodes as “the point person at the White House on all issues related to Israel at the UN,” Power routinely coordinated with the Israeli government to help protect its occupation of Palestinian territory.

It was a decidedly conventional task that began with her leading of the efforts to weaken the impact of the Goldstone Report that found Israel guilty of crimes against humanity during its assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09. She then helped shield Israel from legal scrutiny after its commandos massacred 8 Turkish activists and one US citizen in international waters on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010. Next, Power spearheaded the US strategy to undermine the Palestinian Authority’s bid for statehood at the United Nations. Power has yet to admit to the consequences of her role in enabling some of the worst atrocities ever committed against one of the world’s longest-suffering populations.

In Libya, where Power’s demand for military intervention influenced President Barack Obama’s decision to authorize force, the US flung open the floodgates of chaos, transforming a sovereign state into a destabilized battleground for local warlords and jihadists while the Hegemon grabbed the gold.

In Syria, meanwhile, where one of the greatest hegemonic manufactured atrocities of modern times continues to devour civilian lives, Power’s high-profile initiatives have done little more than generate publicity for herself and support the Hegemon’s profits and plunder whilst her motorcade speeds through African villages hitting children and running off to spin her cover story.

Samantha Power recently received the 2016 Kissinger Prize in Berlin. Power, who is lauded as some great human rights advocate, probably does more than any other public figure to harm the cause of global human rights.

samantha power hand

Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor, responsible for mass murders in Africa, by supporting policies that have led to the deaths of millions and the weakening of those nations’ sovereignty include: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C.), and Sudan, the two largest nations on the continent, before the break-up of Sudan in 2011. This has resulted in a permanent destabilization of the countries of the Great Lakes region and parts of the Horn of Africa.

In 1996 Rice, as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of African Affairs, supported the armies of Rwanda and Uganda to invade D.R.C. (then Zaire), and to install Laurent Kabila as its new President.  From 1997-1998 Rice returned from her first trip to the Great Lakes region as the newly installed Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.  In her role, she agreed to have over 1 million Hutu refugees in UN camps inside the D.R.C. removed by the armies D.R.C. neighbors Uganda and Rwanda. Rice is quoted as saying that:

“Museveni [of Uganda] and Kagame [of Rwanda] agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes is the danger of a resurgence of genocide [referring to the Rwandan Hutus who fled to the D.R.C. after Kagame took over Rwanda—LKF], and they know how to deal with that. The only thing we have to do is look the other way.

Rice’s “looking the other way” was followed by a decade of killing and the looting in the D.R.C. by armed groups supported by Rice’s chosen “leaders” in the region, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagama.

In 1998 Rice was instrumental in orchestrating the bombing of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Omdurman, Sudan, just outside of Khartoum, allegedly for producing chemical weapons that could be used in terrorist attacks on the United States. Not a shred of evidence was ever found to justify the al-Shifa attack.  Despite Rice’s repeating the lie that Sudan is the only state in Sub-Saharan Africa that posed a direct threat to U.S. national security interests, no evidence was ever been made public to corroborate that allegation.

In fact, the U.S. intelligence community has admitted that it has no such evidence, and has collaborated with its counterparts in Sudan in fighting terrorism.

Rice and power

Susan Rice is a good daughter of the Hegemon; her record of killing Africans is her badge of brutality, giving her a seat at the table of the Hegemon.

An up and coming Harpy, Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, is in competition with Angela Merkel and Hilary Clinton for biggest liars award.  Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs “Toria” Nuland was purportedly the “mastermind” behind the Feb. 22, 2014 “regime change” in Ukraine, plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych while spinning the narrative for U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for “democracy.”

Victoria-Nuland
Victoria Nuland

Like her husband arch-neocon, Robert Kagan who co-founded the Project for the New American Century in 1998 around a demand for “regime change” in Iraq, a project that was accomplished in 2003 with President George W. Bush’s invasion for the Hegemon, she was overseer for a neo-Nazi coup in the Ukraine that has been devastating for the people.  Nuland recited a litany of Big Lies about the “new Ukraine,” –Claiming it’s “building a peaceful, democratic, independent” nation is polar opposite truth.

She lied about Crimea “under illegal occupation” – ignoring near Crimean unanimity to reverse a historic mistake and rejoin Russia.  She turned truth on its head claiming that in eastern Ukraine, Russia and its separatist puppets unleashed unspeakable violence and pillage.  She has helped with ushering a new cold war with Russia saying, “This is a manufactured conflict controlled by the Kremlin, fueled by Russian tanks and heavy weapons; financed at Russian taxpayers’ expense and costing the lives of young Russians…” No evidence whatever shows Russian involvement. None exists except photos exposed as fakes but it is interesting to note that her statement fits the US perfectly!

Moving to the global stage a hegemonic homage must be made to the world’s most powerful woman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who replaced Condoleezza Rice.  She reigns over a Germany who is once again a force to be reckoned with economically and militarily.  In fact, Germany just put troops on the ground in Syria with no concern for the sovereign Syrian government who do not want them there.

She was one of the staunchest supporters of the US war for Iraqi oil and spoils. Her unilateral decision to allow Israel to obtain a fleet of Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft-built, Dolphin-class submarines costing $2 billion each, subsidized by the current German Government, gives the Israeli state a ‘second strike’ nuclear capability far in advance of that of either Britain, Germany or France and posing a potential threat to all European states.

Merkel face
Angela Merkel on the refugee crisis.

True to the Big Daddy USA Angela Merkel’s cabinet approved a measure to bring fracking, the patents for which are owned mainly by American companies such as Dick Chaney’s Halliburton, into Germany. This is a prelude toward removing Europe from Russia’s energy-market and bringing the U.S. and European oil companies to dominate there instead.

A recent poll conducted by German web platform, Alles Schall und Rauch, asked more than 3,000 of its readers from Germany and 40 other countries to determine the world’s “liar of the year.”  More than 39 percent of those surveyed crowned the German chancellor with the “liar of the year” title.

park guen hye

Park Geun-hye, is literally South Korea’s daddy’s girl, daughter of Park Chung-hee who ruled the country with a repressive iron fist from 1961 to 1979. Her father came to power through a CIA sponsored military coup d état and his rule ended when his own Korean CIA director assassinated him.   President of South Korea since 2013 Korean President Park Geun-hye is the first female leader of her country with the full support of the conservative party— an especially impressive accomplishment considering South Korea has the highest level of gender inequality in the developed world.

She is known for her inability to communicate with people spontaneously and her lack of empathy for difficult lives of the grassroots populace because of her privileged position throughout her life.  As a good asset for CIA she tried to get North Korea to abandon their nuclear-weapons program by promising humanitarian aid and an investment in its industries, but to no avail. Park has flexed her muscles by testing missiles that can reach all of North Korea, but Kim Jong-un hasn’t blinked and hasn’t quashed any nuclear ambitions. Park conforms, as the Hegemon instructs, to the recurring model of a female political leader who is a daughter, a wife, or a sister of a powerful male leader.

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Clinton’s trip to Myanmar 2011

Aung San Suu Ky, Myanmar, Islamaphobe and media darling, an alleged asset of MI-6 and CIA recently was named State Counselor of Myanmar.  As the Constitution is designed to prevent her from becoming President, the Parliament created the new powerful position of State Councillor; a role similar to that of Prime Minister. She is also conveniently Minister of the President’s Office and Foreign Minister.

Her position as leader of the “Saffron Revolution” was sold as an ultra-liberal pro-democracy, progressive movement and was one of the West’s most successful neo-colonial creations to date, Aung San Suu Kyi, portrayed and revered as a modern day, secular “saint” of neo-liberalism and Western democratic values works hard to keep the Muslims in Myanmar down.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) and her “Saffron” mobs, are fully funded, backed, protected by, and in absolute servile obedience to both US and British special interests.  A 2006 36-page document out of the “Burma Campaign UK” explicitly details the enormous amount of money and resources both the US government and its corporate-funded foundations have poured into her image and her “movement.”

The most telling information begins on page 14 of 36 of the report’s PDF file. Titled, “Failing the People of Burma?” the report enumerates the vast resources the West has invested in building a “pro-democracy” movement and argues that even more support be given to initiate a “transition” in the oil and mineral rich Myanmar.

As is evidenced today, women’s participation in the military-industrial complex is embedded in every way. Legislation for the draft submitted after 2001 and now again in 2016 with Hilary Clinton’s full support explicitly defines both men and women of the ages between 18 and 26 as “conscripted” for military service where they get to learn how to oversee and conduct torture in prisons like Abu-Ghraib in Iraq.

ECONOMIC TERRORISM

Big Daddy Hegemon’s national and global bean counters are also important powerful women of which to take note, Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve, and Christine Legarde, head of the IMF— both the first women to hold these jobs.  They have been obedient daughters of the Hegemon bringing down those who dare to threaten the debt-based usury rich capitalist economic system.

Janet Yellen is the guardian of the US capitalist economy heading up the Fed, a private central bank historically noted for running a scam operation designed to financially enslave the American people since 1913. She has done a “good” job for the bottom lines of wealth and power. In 2015, Yellen upheld the tradition of little to no oversight or auditing for the Fed. Yellen holds a position of immense power, and her decisions affect the entire country.

Christine Legarde, appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund in 2011, is the first woman to head the organization, which serves as the economic adviser and backstop for capitalist greed in 188 countries. Charged in 2008 with “negligence” by a French court over her role in a €403m sum handed over to a French businessman, LeGarde, is one of the Hegemon’s cleverest girls.

Along with the European Central Bank and the European Commission, the IMF under Lagarde has been preoccupied with complete economic slavery for Greece’s failing economy, which has generated $95 billion of debt that will specifically benefit Germany. Relations between the IMF and Athens, already strained after last year’s brinkmanship, have reached a new low.

Whether in media, education, government, or corporations, women play critical roles as leaders, managers and foot soldiers paving the way as role models for future obedient leaders and workers for the hegemon. As the hegemon minimally provides for the needs of its poorest women the illusion of equal opportunity and equity is fostered when a Hilary and an Angela take the stage together.

In the same pattern in which Fanon described the desire of the “native” for the white man’s power so do these women politicians desire the power of their masters that is the opposite of desiring liberty. Liberation and resistance mean desiring freedom, it is struggling, and the struggle requires we build ties by nurturing the desire for liberty in each specific situation. The historical tragedies of torture and genocide now are commandeered by the “powerful” women allowed to act as overseers for the global masters.

Our failure to hesitate to stop these leaders has a price here and now. As more women and children are recruited by these women leaders more defenseless women and children will be tortured, shot and killed by our own daughters for the Hegemon. It is all part of the grand depopulation plan of the lords of war. All the hegemon’s boys and girls are to follow the “harsh arithmetic of pain,” whereby civilian casualties on both sides “play in their favour,” the favor of the ruling class that is.

Historically there have always been some women doing undercover dirty work but since WWII women in power have been paid agents and assets for the state and the corporations behind the state. With a clear political agenda, they are caught up in the profits of imperialism. So total is the saturation of the hegemonic narrative in the minds of American and European women they almost never perceive it as problematic.  The neo-liberal woman wearing their $1200 Armani suits preach that it is only ‘normal” to want to “uncover” the women of the Muslim world and make them “free to be” to have “sex in the city”.

bbc take off hijab
BBC “Take off your Hijab” My Stealthy Freedom Campaign. Targeting Iran

People who are standing with the oppressed and for liberation need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous realities of the new gender blind and colorblind imperialism. We cannot simply wait until the next generation of sons and daughters decide to follow Hillary or Angela’s demands for more cannon fodder. We must stop these leaders before they export their perverted propaganda, their sick, and dangerous militaristic terrorism, their culture of death to children and grandchildren here so they do not spread it to the children and grandchildren over there.

We cannot simply wait until another son or daughter of people decides to follow the leader’s con jobs and deceptions. We must stop this madness of pre-emptive war games that the Judeo-Christian culture of death, male, female, GLBTQ, left, right, red or yellow, black or white, is spreading from sea to poisoned sea.

We must stop working to reform the Hegemon. The actual history of over 200 years of people in the US fighting for the rights of natives, slaves, immigrants, GLBTQ, the poor and women across race and class “from within” has produced 31 Flavors of overseers now called managers, supervisors, CEOs, and politicians who support capitalist’s greed and cruelty. Those who are chosen to represent hegemony are chosen to maintain the wealth and power of those who already have it and if they do shake things up they will be removed.

So yes, one can get have the job of president and that president will be surrounded by a global cabal of warmongering supremacist oligarchs in a capitalist system who will insist on a great number of wars in countries that have oil, gold, water, minerals, gems, or are next door to China and Russia.

This same system will insist that women presidents legitimize the rape and assassination of leaders of sovereign states, invade and occupy sovereign nations, drone bomb potential innocents, spy on everyone, mass incarcerate its own people while poisoning the food and the planet.

Every day that same President will hear repeatedly how great the threat is of Africans, Muslims, and of course, communists.   She will be told that migrants are scum, how the disobedient need to be smacked down and how dissenters need to be shot and most importantly that terrorists must be killed where ever they are with no regard for national sovereignty or rules of war.  There is no escaping the corrupt and cruel system that thrives on social and economic inequality and hegemonic brutality with the hollow women at the helm.

CONCLUSION

There are courageous women around the world that are educating, inspiring, agitating and organizing against greed, wars, invasions, occupations, environmental devastation, supremacy and patriarchy in the New World Order. You’ve probably never heard of them so I am honored to introduce a few of them to you.

These women represent the revolutionary women’s demand for a radical reordering of society towards real liberation and self-determination for all people.  They have been on the front lines in the agenda to save the people and the planet. They are brilliant and brave women from around the world, young and old fighting against oppression.  You have probably not heard of them because they do not work for the Hegemon.

Research their names and you will read, hear and feel their passion:  Leila Khalid, Assata Shakur, Harsha Walia, Amal Saad, Cynthia McKinney, Marwa Osman, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Chris Geovanis, Suzella Palmer, Felicity Arbuthnot, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Ajanta Sinha Ghosh, Lah Tere, Mariela Castro, Alieda Guevarra, Rosa Clemente, Diana Berek, Heather Cottin, Lizzie Phelan, Cyrstal Vance Guerra, Rania Masri, Sarah Abdallah, Cheri Honkala, Kathleen Clever, Brooke Heagerty, Cindy Sheehan and many others around the world.

These women manifest revolution in protest, art, writing, teaching, brigades, seminars, video, radio, music, politics, community and care for others daily.  Be like these woman, demand a radical reordering of society towards real liberation and self-determination for all people.

Create the front lines to save the people and the planet. Be brilliant and brave in the fight against oppression and resist being conned by whatever flavor they offer to appease you. 

***

June Scorza Terpstra, Ph.D. is an activist educator and university lecturer in Justice Studies, Criminal Justice and Sociology. She has founded numerous programs for homeless, abused, youth and oppressed people in the USA. She is presently teaching courses on Law and Terrorism, Social Justice, Resistance, Criminology, and Juvenile Justice. She is a former Community Research Fellow and doctoral graduate of Loyola University Chicago.

 

 

June Terpstra: Revolutionary Women Today – The Wind Beneath My Wings

Posted by: June Terpstra

On International Women’s Day, 2020 this article is updated and dedicated to women who are fighting imperialism. This is an homage to the brave women who stand with men to resist and defend the people of the world against tyrannical capitalist and imperialist governments posing as democracies. There are courageous women around the world that are educating, inspiring, agitating and organizing against greed, wars, invasions, occupations, environmental devastation, supremacy and patriarchy in the New World unipolar Order. If you do not know these women I am honored to introduce them to you.    

The women I write about today represent the revolutionary women’s demand for a radical reordering of society towards real liberation and self-determination for all people.  They have been on the front lines to save the people and the planet whether focused on reform, resistance or revolution. They are brilliant and brave women from around the world, young and old fighting against oppression.  Research their names and you will see, hear and feel their passion:  Sally Auger, Marwa Osman, Amal Saad, Zaynab Mahamud, Diana Berek, Chris Geovanis, Heather Cottin, Suzella Palmer, Felicity Arbuthnot, Tracy Marshall, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Mairi Ann Lowry, Lizzie Phelan, Yasmin Nair, Hannah Arbizanni, Rania Masri, Sarah Gillespie, Sarah Abdallah, BK Kumbi, Brooke Heagerty, Lah Tere, Rosemary Lee, and Sandra Reid.   These women manifest revolution in protest, art, writing, teaching, brigades, seminars, birthing, video, rescue, radio, music, politics, community, and care daily.  Some you will find immediately and others you must search for but all are making a difference by the way they live.  They represent the push for dramatic historic shifts against capitalism and imperialism, colonialism and globalism.

Next, there are women in media and cultural works not featured in corporate media.  These are the revolutionary experts to call. They refuse to be used as assets on the subject of women’s oppression to stir up consent for war against the people.  Amal Saad, Chris Geovanis, Suzella Rox Palmer, Felicity Arbuthnot, Esther Stanford-Xosei, Lizzie Phelan, Yasmin Nair, and Brooke Heagerty are women’s whose writing educates and produces knowledge. Read what they say as these are women to whom we must listen. 

Brilliant Amal Saad:

 As an Arab woman and a Marxist “Critical Feminist”, I have to ask bourgeois liberal feminists the following:  Who says this is YOUR debate in the first place? And by you, I mean you American and European “experts”. Women asides, what gives your universities, think tanks and media the right to be debating and determining the destiny of our region? Why do we never question the colonial mentality that underlies your Middle East departments and bureaus, your “centers for democracy” and “peace” for the Middle East initiatives? Who the hell are you to be studying us and issuing us Euro-American directives on “good governance” and “conflict resolution”? …What gives privileged white women the right to be pursuing their supposed “emancipation” on the backs of our oppressed people? And why are the needs of this “debate” greater than the need of Syria and its people?  http://resistance-episteme.tumblr.com/

Courageous Chris Geovanis: 

The state’s scheme to effectively ban the public from the public — and publicly funded — the trial is part of a long-standing official pattern to harass, arrest and undermine those who dissent in Chicago. For years, activists in Chicago had to fight in court for permission to rally and march against the Iraq war, and protesters have routinely been subject to arrest simply for attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights. More broadly, the restrictions that local government overlords have imposed on public access and public oversight in the NATO trial are part of a national effort to rebrand dissent as inherently dangerous.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/21/your-rights-arent-worth-crap/ 

Compassionate Suzella Palmer: 

Therefore when trying to understand what gangs are, why they exist, why young people get involved in gangs, and just as importantly, how to prevent and respond to (victims and perpetrators of) gang crime and violence, we should not forget to factor in the: ‘the inherent dissonance between capitalism’s heady and seductive cultural aspirations and its structured socio-economic reality of unequal opportunities, which engendered an anomic and therefore criminogenic cultural climate.’ (Hall and Mclean, 2009) http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Palmer%20Suzella.pdf

Fearless Felicity Arbuthnot:

…the US and UK are seemingly remarkably selective when it comes to tyrants who “kill their own people”, and not only have failed to censure their tyrannical Iraqi puppet, Nuri al-Maliki, but are arming him to the teeth with the same weapons which are linked to the horrific birth defects, and cancers throughout Iraq, which he is now using on “his own people.” Moreover, if allegations from very well informed sources that he holds an Iranian passport are correct, to say that US-UK’s despot of choice appears in a whole new political light would be to massively understate. https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/us-and-uk-continues-arming-a-tyrant-in-iraq/

Powerhouse Esther Stanford-Xosei:

Reparations mean to repair the harm, restore, transform a people or a group who have been disposed and lost status and standing in the world community as a result of historical and contemporary injustice. To put a figure on it is banal. Some have put the cost at trillions but we are still accounting for the damage done and losses suffered but how do you account for the loss of land, destruction of our environment loss of citizenship, heritage, wealth and self-worth?  http://www.thebritishblacklist.com/kunga-dred-talks-esther-stanford-xosei-founder-member-parcoe-pan-african-reparation-coalition-europe/

Front-line Lizzie Phalen:

And in the months after I said goodbye to Mohammad just before I went through immigration in Damascus airport, for what I never expected to be the last time I would see him, the threat of Mohamad's and potentially the world's worst nightmare has only become graver. While he continued to hold on to his conviction that Syria would defeat imperialism’s conspiracy to destroy it, every time we spoke, up until our last conversation about a week ago, the ever-increasing horrors wreaked by that conspiracy haunted him.  His living torment is now over, but his conviction lives on through the friendships and love he nurtured in so many people. And as my headache that started on Saturday morning morphs into the agonizing acceptance that he is gone, I am deeply thankful to Mohamad that through our short friendship I have learned and will continue to learn life long lessons from his limitless capacity to not just value love for humanity above all else, but to practice that love.  http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.com/

Daring Yasmin Nair

I came out as queer among gays and lesbians who made it clear that sluts like me were to shut up so that the straight world might believe that we deserved our “rights.” Gays and lesbians, who surely had the most reasons to be suspicious of the prison industrial complex, were now clamouring for hate crimes laws that would increase penalties and put more people in jail. It may seem like a huge burden to place on the black and white inked shoulders of a woman who only existed on paper, but at that moment it seemed like I had recovered my balance in the worldhttp://nomorepotlucks.org/site/my-modesty/

Heroic Brooke Heagerty:

It is clear that before “capitalism” enslavement could be the fate of any person, no matter his or her color. Whites enslaved whites by the millions. Divisions in society were not related to color. Who ruled society and who was considered a part of society had nothing to do with race. Such status was instead defined by wealth or by force. With Nelson Peery in “Moving Onward: From Racial Division to Class Division.”

Always Eloquent, Marwa Osman:

This is what happens to someone who has been struck by deterrence. To be deterred means to be afraid of everything around you. Not to trust yourself or those who are close to you or anyone who is supposed to protect you. To be deterred means to be aware that your margin of error is narrowing day by day. To be deterred means that you are fixated in front of your TV, waiting for an official statement from your enemy, to tell you when it is time to get out into the sun.  https://www.opednews.com/articles/Israel-Whimpers-at-the-Fir-by-MARWA-OSMAN-Hezbollah_Israel_Israel-And-Palestine-190907-334.html

Last but not at all least, I name artists, activists, organizers, editors, teachers, musicians, engaging the world daily whose work inspires me:

Sally Auger of the Indigenous Dream a Wild Seed project, Journalist and professor Marwa Osman, teacher and Somali women’s rights activist Zaynab Mahamud, artist-activist Diana Berek, activist educator historian Heather Cottin, organizer for the League of Revolutionaries for a New America Sandra Reid,  Irish activist Mairi Ann Lowry, animal rights activist Hannah Arbizanni, organizer and activist for Arab human rights Rania Masri, Musician Lah Tere, social media activists Tracy Marshall, and Sarah Abdallah.  These are some of the women around the world whom I know are standing with the oppressed creating strategies and tactics to deal with the dangerous realities of imperialism. They are dedicated to ending the terrorism of US/UK/Israeli military aggression as it manifests across the globe. I am honored to know these women and celebrate their lives today. 

http://othersite.org/june-terpstra-revolutionary-women-today-the-wind-beneath-my-wings/

______

Emancipatory Research in Domestic and Foreign Affairs
June Terpstra

07/19/16

A recent debate about my hypothesis that the photographer Spencer Tunick, and another of his nude photoshoots/protests, this time at the RNC, was a psyop Soros/CIA type sponsored event caused me to once again recognize that those of us studying manufactured uprisings cannot take short cuts when publicly discussing these events if we are sincere about educating others about our hypotheses and theories. A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for something that can actually be tested. Here is my circle of friends (many who are journalists, academics, activists, writers, artists, and students) we have explanations for world events that we identify as manufactured revolutions, hegemonic sponsored uprisings, and foundation supported activism that benefits the hegemon because they fit pattern and narratives of the Hegemon with which we are familiar. 

The word, hegemon, is used to identify the class, state or group with the most power that is responsible for the dissemination of dominant power group’s ideas, systems and practices that most benefit those in power and those who rule for them. The documented history and patterns of the Hegemon's secret services covert and overt operations around the world are well known in this circle but to those who are new to this information and have not studied these manipulations and machinations of what some call the "deep state" the narratives fall into the category of "conspiracy theory", a term purposely introduced to trivialize and discount those who study these operations. 

A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing. Certainly, a review of CIA history and US foreign and domestic affairs demonstrates the repeated and successful experiments manipulating the public away from fundamental economic and social change while manufacturing public consent for the security state, war, and plunder. Simply denying the history of how hegemony is maintained through covert and overt operations based on reactionary liberal or conservative agenda-driven critiques is not skepticism--it is a denial of the manner in which ruling classes have maintained wealth and power throughout history. True skeptics are open to scientific and historical evidence and are willing to evenly assess it.

There are times when the tendency to make a binary distinction between something that is true, as in the case of documented CIA and US-sponsored interventions around the globe in an absolute sense and something that's false or a lie, as in the case of the "official story" of the 9/11 attacks. There is a tendency by some of us to easily make claims without the evidence to back the claims because we have seen the pattern and know the scripts used repeatedly throughout history. The pattern of these narratives and events demonstrates to us the continuum of evidence on which we build our understanding of the planned events being staged to maintain power in the hands of those who already have it and want more. However, we still must do our work in every case to substantiate our hypotheses with evidence. I see this happening currently regarding the recent coup in Turkey, the war against Syria, and the search to verify who is sponsoring groups such as the White Helmets and ISIS. Beginning with the question of "who benefits" from these groups and their actions and following the money is always the starting place but the first source documentation is still needed once we verify the connections. The mental shortcuts to make sense of the cacophony of information we are presented with every day should not allow us to get sloppy. Conversely, we must acknowledge the historical patterns, narratives, psychological operations and scripts used to manipulate and coerce the public past and present as valid supports in the process of gathering evidence against the Hegemon. 

The struggle does continue.

 

SHIFTING PARADIGMS

June Terpstra

5/4/16

Concepts of ethical duty are based on the ethical paradigms in which they reside. This means that "good" or "bad" consequences are defined according to the constructs of the belief system(s) that laid the foundation for the existing social structures/institutions. For example, the belief system/paradigm from which present day retributive models emerge in Western criminal justice systems are those that pose that the "greater good" is to punish the criminal towards goals of:

1. social control which conserves the power of those who already possess it in the most cost-effective manner possible and profit from it when possible;

2. to protect those in power by preventing harm against individuals, with a special emphasis on protecting those individuals with the power and authority who provide a barrier between the powerful and the powerless;

3. to exact revenge on those who violate and threaten the balance of power in the society; and

4. to maintain the appearance of adhering to an ethic of human rights and a duty of care for a public who have been taught to believe in the importance of a democratic republic.

If you shift the paradigm to one of social/redistributive justice or Indigenous justice, or transformative justice there are completely different conceptions of "the greater good." Within these systems, the greater good means society's response must be immersed in the struggle for transforming society through action on behalf of the poor and oppressed, the colonized, the wounded and those suffering. Using the aforementioned paradigms, crime and harm are interpreted not primarily from an individual, private perspective, but from a social and economic perspective. Crime is not considered an individual, private, or merely personal reality. Crime is regarded as a social, historical fact, crime is the absence of social stewardship for people and planet, crime is the absence of compassion and love in relationships among human beings. These paradigms view present-day economic and social constructs as criminal specifically because they are embedded systems of oppression and exploitation encompassing the majority of the world’s people. Within these paradigms, the greater good is to resist and transform the crimes of oppression and exploitation to repair the imbalances of existing mechanisms of power and transform them to foster individuals who are members of a human community in charge of their history and who consistently shape history by questioning the consequences of their actions and activities they are producing as a society. 

The damages done by experiencing, seeing and knowing the cruelty perpetrated by human beings to one another creates gaping wounds and aching scars. Without society and a way of living that promotes humane, restorative and transformative responses systemically, people do not heal. Justice as healing will never happen if we continue to attempt to survive in societies that have been constructed through cultures embracing wars that brutally promote imperialism, colonialism, fascism, neo-conservativism or neo-liberalism. We have ethical, social and cultural models for other ways of living and organizing ourselves as humans from the past and from people's visions articulated in theory for the future. Only by living out these visions in our daily relationships in communities with vastly different structures from the ones in which we exist now can we heal and grow. Until then, we are all dead men walking.

 

 STOP TRYING TO REFORM IT

Stop trying to reform it. Based on my research as a sociologist and over 40 years of my work experience creating a shelter for battered women and children, sexual abuse hot-lines, a university women's center, a child sexual abuse prevention program, a university anti-discrimination program, and an "at-risk" youth center, I see little to no evidence that working within the system produces fundamental social or economic justice. The actual history of over 200 years of people in the US fighting for the rights of natives, slaves, immigrants, GLBT, the poor and women across race and class "from within" has produced 31 Flavors of overseers called managers, supervisors, CEOs, and politicians who support capitalist's greed and cruelty. The ruling class or 1% or oligarchy or Deep State, whatever you want to call it, now uses 31 flavors of people to do their bidding be it a Black President or a white woman Secretary of State or a native Judge. Those who are chosen to represent hegemony are chosen to maintain the wealth and power of those who already have it and if they do shake things up they will be removed. So yes, one can get a job as a police officer and that officer will be surrounded by a whole white supremacist system and its representatives that will insist on a great number of arrests in poverty neighborhoods populated by people of color to feed the prison industrial complex and keep the poor under control. This same system will insist that that same officer arrests people with excessive force for drugs, debts, traffic violations, hanging around on streets corners with friends, not being obedient in school, and countless other non-violent offenses. Every day that same officer will hear repeatedly how savage African Americans are, how women deserve to be raped, how migrants are scum, how the disobedient need to be smacked down and how dissenters need to be shot until he or she comes to join in the fascist fight for uncontested power and control over the people. This same scenario plays itself out in every facet of the system. It really is not about well-intended individuals, it's about a corrupt and cruel system that thrives on social and economic inequality.  


June Terpstra, 2016

 

 

 


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Holocaust Holidays In The USA






 

Identity without Supremacy

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/dr-june-c-terpstra-identity-without-supremacy.html

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/08/1-dr-june-c-terpstra-identity-without-supremacy/

 

Borders and Walls:  Follow the Money
 
Reflections on International Women's Day, 2011
 

12/17/2010
Rebooting Resistance
June C. Terpstra
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rebooting-Resistance-by-June-Terpstra-101216-346.html


 

The Inescapable Human Bond — by June Terpstra

January 15, 2010
 
3/19/10
A Moral Vest
June Terpstra, Ph. D.

http://chilaborarts.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/reporting-from-cuba-june-terpstra-phd/

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/03/22/cubans-wear-a-moral-vest

 

 Sunday, September 19, 2010
Laudable Features of the Cuban Revolution

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Laudable-Features-of-the-C-by-June-Terpstra-100918-805.html

 

 

Untitled from juliet bond on Vimeo.

 

The Death of A True Brother: In Memory of Simon Pietro Marchese

http://www.oocities.org/unclrb/FamChron1.html 

6-14-64 to 5-6-04

For Violetta Scorza

By June Terpstra

 

 

 The apostle SimonPeter was known to have healed a man over 40 years of age who had been crippled from birth with but the words, "Silver and Gold I do not have, but what I have I give to you."

As I write this article the funeral of my dear cousin, SimonPietro Marchese, son of Violetta Scorza Marchese is occurring in Milano, Italy, where he served as pastor for Waldensian churches.  I first met SimonPietro in the summer of 2001 on a research journey I took to Italy.  I was seeking my Italian roots in as many ways possible: by visiting the land where my mother was born, by participating in a research project in Rome about so-called Italian school "reform" efforts, by participating in the counter-summit and protests in Genoa with over 200,000 people who were taking a stand against the policies of injustice and greed of the G-8, and most important of all, by meeting my family in Italy (the descendants of Dominico and Josephina Scorza).

It was through Dario Scorza that I learned that I had family in Rome.  A Waldensian seminary student from the same seminary my grandfather had attended, named Christina, phoned me in my first week in Rome and invited me to dinner at SimonPietro Marchese's pastoral home with his mother, Violetta Scorza Marchese, and partner Miriam Englese.  Christine, a dear friend was agreeing to accompany us throughout the evening as an interpreter because my Italian was elementary and the family in Rome does not speak English. I was very excited to be in Rome meeting family.  It was a dream come true.

SimonPietro, Miriam and Christina picked me up outside of the University where I was housed for the Rome research project.  We were all in a pitched state of energy and enthusiasm to meet each other.  Immediately, SimonPietro asked me what I was doing in Rome and I explained my quests for family history and social justice.  Everyone in the car got very excited when we realized we all attending the protests the following week in Genoa because it meant we had some strongly shared values about oppression and exploitation of the world's people and the planet.  From that point on we discussed family and politics throughout the evening. 

I fell in love with my family that first night in Rome.  I was provided the first of many Scorza gourmet home-cooked meals.  This one was a four-course meal cooked by Violetta.  That night we shared family photos and stories, took a trip to a debate between Waldentians and academics in the Castle D'angelo park, and of course, engaged in our own vibrant theological and political discussions that are so passionately required in Italy in the same way they are dispassionately disavowed in the USA. I noticed immediately that SimonPietro, as busy pastor to 2 churches in Rome, was on his cellular phone a lot during the course of the evening with calls from parishioners in need. My first impressions of him were that he was a thoughtful, well educated, life-loving man who was much respected and needed in his Christian based community.  After that evening, SimonPietro and Miriam and I agreed to meet up at the protests in Genoa the following week.

During that evening with family in Rome I had laid out my itinerary for my summer in Italy.  Unbeknownst to me, SimonPietro joined Dario and Dominico and  began working behind the scenes to ensure that I would meet with and stay with family everywhere I went throughout Italy.  He became my true, loving and protective brother. 

Dominico Scorza met me at the train station in Genoa.  Later in the day he showed me the bus system and walked me to the organizational and media headquarters for the Anti-G-8 summit. I was welcomed lovingly during my week in Genoa by cousins Dominico and Margie Scorza who housed, fed me wonderful meals cooked by chef Dominico, and discussed family, politics, and religion with me while I attended the organizational meetings, protests and worked with the Italian Independent Media in Genoa.  I believe this was also the last time Dominico, Margie, and Waldo saw SimonPietro when he came to visit them at their home during the protests. 

SimonPietro and Miriam and I met up for a meal before the Friday night protests which were for increased justice and human rights for migrants across the world. Slowly, my knowledge of Italian was increasing enough that we could debate the issues of pacifism and direct action as methods for social justice and social change.  We were on the same side of the battles for justice, only we disagreed on tactics.  But arguing with SimonPietro was all good as they say in the USA or Va bene in Italian!

As most Italians know and most Americans do not know because the corporate news in the USA censors news about world protests both here and abroad, the protests in Genoa was very violent for many reasons which I will not review here.  It was a war zone and for a time, I was stuck in the Diaz School with other journalists and had no information about SimonPietro and Miriam's safety until later when I was able to reach Dominico and Margie for news.  However, by the time I took the train out of Genoa, there was SimonPietro, waiting to escort me back for a stay at his house.  The next day he accompanied me to pick up my rental car to make sure I did not get overcharged or lost. On the train ride to pick up the rental car, he informed me that he just happened to have business to attend to in San Pietro, Calabria and would like to drive me there in my rental car and then take the train back to Rome. 

Please understand that this very busy pastor of two churches dropped everything for several days to accompany me from Rome to Calabria and show me the country of my great grandparents and cousins.  I was so overwhelmed with love for his generosity, not to mention that we were kindred spirits with a love for politics, the oppressed peoples of the world, good food and fun which would mean a very wonderful trip indeed!  We took 2 dictionaries and favorite music tapes on that trip and sang, talked and laughed all the way from Rome to Calabria.  Sharing music in the car, I came to love the Italian folk singer, Fabrizio D’Andre and I was able to give a gift of music to SimonPietro of the musical group from Naples, Spaconapoli.  We both knew the words to Va Pensiero and sang that together! 

While in San Pietro, SimonPietro drove me up and down the mountain so that I would know how to get around and how to get to the train station later in the week when I would meet Dario Scorza and follow him to their summer home for a visit.  SimonPietro thought of everything and so did his mother, Violetta.  In a matter of 2 hours, she made me a summer dress and him a pair of pants to wear for visiting family in San Pietro!  Brava!  He took me to relative’s homes to visit with many but one great matriarch whom I came to love immediately I was able to visit two times in my stay there.  He showed me the family cemetery and gave me more of my ancestral history for which I am eternally grateful.  He was the embodiment of good sharing, walking, talking, driving, singing, eating, love for life and I am a better person to have known him.

Later, I returned to Rome (this time driving alone) from a blessed stay with Violetta in San Pietro, and Dario and family on the Sea in Calabria, where I was scheduled to stay with SimonPietro and Miriam for the end of my journey that summer in Italy.  Needless to say, I got lost trying to find the apartment house where they live with other Waldentians. Never the less, when I called SimonPietro, told him where I was (near the Coliseum), he met me and led me back to his house.  It was during this part of my stay in Rome that I got to see SimonPietro in action as a pastor.  By this time my Italian had improved quite a bit so I could actually understand most of his Sunday sermon which was one of love and liberation.  What a gift to sit in that church and sing hymns in Italian with Miriam and see SimonPietro in his own unique version of the pastoring role that he inherited from so many Scorza ancestors.  He reminded me of my grandpa Joseph Scorza.  The epitome of goodness and mercy, love and service on his own terms. 

That August Sunday in Rome was a very hot day and like so many Italians, SimonPietro and Miriam had no fans or air conditioners, so I talked SimonPietro into commandeering a fan from the church.  He did this with hesitation, maybe he thought I was being a baby about the heat, but later that day with that big fan blowing over the kitchen, he remarked laughingly, that borrowing the fan had been a great idea!  For the rest of that hot week, SimonPietro and Miriam and I began to talk on another more personal and in-depth level about our lives.  I came to know and love them both even more.  I adored SimonPietro and called him brother, fratello. They also showed me more of Rome and we had such fun sightseeing together.  It was not until our last night together that SimonPietro finally, after much protest, allowed me to pay for a meal.  Throughout my whole trip the generosity of the Scorza relatives was overwhelmingly gracious and a great gift to me, as someone on a very strict budget at the time.  Any Italian Scorza wishing to visit the USA while I live here is welcome in my home and to my soild Italo-Americano cooking.

My last morning in Rome I sat at SimonPietro's kitchen table and wept to be leaving Italy and him, with whom I felt so deeply connected.  At the time, we made plans for my return the next summer to complete the writing of my dissertation in Italy.  I never for a moment believed that I would never see him again.  For many good reasons, I have been unable to return to Italy as expected.  I deeply regret that I was not able to return the summer of 2002 to spend more time with my brother's cousin, SimonPietro Marchese.  We had many talks about liberation theology which we both hold dear and to which he attributed as the main foundational base for which he could be a Christian and a pastor. 

My own faith has deepened knowing him and with our talks over the past two years both in person and on the internet.  His example of goodness and his fight for justice will always be a light to guide me in my life.  The world was a better place for me knowing that SimonPietro was in it. He will always be loved.

___________________________________

 

A restatement on my assessment of direct action and black bloc tactics and strategies at protests. 

2001

Whether situationist or pre-theoretical shit-kicking authentic activists, (as opposed to police/CIA/MI-6 assets and provocateurs) using direct action and black block tactics are fomenting a rebellion against that which capitalists hold sacred, that is, property and products which the police attempt to protect at protests and manifestations. Direct actions against the "Stuff" of capitalism can be argued as either a tactic or strategy but it's still real human beings rising up in ways to de-construct and destroy the capitalist attachment to their cultural products. From my experience in Genoa in 2001 these rebellions represent a blow to the fascists of any stripe, left or right.

Manifestations and protests today, while sometimes representing groups of diverse peoples for a complex range of issues does not represent "a movement or The Movement" in any country.  In fact, protests are ultimately only one facet for the revolutionary struggle against the oppressors who control through violence and force. The learning curve of the oppressor is very high when it comes to violence and counter-intelligence games. Sadly, often higher than those of us working for anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist change. The activists using Black Bloc tactics or masking are no more infiltrated than any other group. Agents and under-cover mother fuckers historically have created terrorist groups, false greenie groups, sponsored and trained so called feminist groups like pussy riot, run peacenik training programs, played key roles on social forum organizing committees, created "leaders" for protests, and dress up like black bloc or Guy Fawkes and smash up shit in order to criminalize more of the people and lock all resistance down with incarceration and more repressive legislation to stop revolution, resistance or even reform. 

Some say that protests are no longer effective, and that is a valid concern, especially given how many protests are now sponsored by Koch brothers, CIA and Soros, the T-baggers and Gusanos. I understand this and yet what we do know from experiences around the world is that small groups and affinity groups inter-connected in multiple ways for common goals against oppression have more elements of egalitarianism and social justice energy to make dissent visible.   In other words, if actions, policies, procedures, struggles, even war benefits the destruction of empire and capitalism, if it benefits the poor and the people---we need to support it mindfully, without cultural imperialism clouding cognitive functions.  This support which includes critique can be provided in countless ways with continued support for honoring multiplicity in nations, movements and groups for real revolutionary love, in solidarity against oppression, and for self-determination and liberation.   June Terpstra,

 

 http://chicago.indymedia.org/print.php3?article_id=3563 
Independent Media Center 
 http://chicago.indymedia.org:8080 

Update Genoa: Days End for an Activist in Genova Friday 20 Jul 2001 
author: June Terpstra 

summary 
Friday, July 20: Chicago IMC Global Desk: 4th in a series of eyewitness reports from the streets of Genoa by Chicago activist June Terpstra. Days End for an Activist in Genova 


For some here in Genova tonight means an encampment in a stadium surrounded 
by the armed fascists. For others, it means sleeping in tear-gassed 
clothing and tents. Others are meeting together to plan tomorrow's 
strategies. There are some of us in hospitals tonight and some of us in jail. 

After making my way around the battle in the streets here in Genova to the 
School where we are encamped, I have been contacting family and allies in 
America so they know what I have seen and what others here are fighting against. It's been a long hard day of courage against the realities of the Genova war zone. We have stayed in touch all day in the IMC headquarters to keep watch for all those in the streets. 

There are those here who are working around the clock to get the news out 
to all of you in the rest of the world about this critical fight against 
the imperialist scum and their armies while also working to get help, 
legal, medical and food and water to our brave comrades in the streets. 

It did not take long for the pigs to move in and attack people. Many here believe that the black block, who are primarily blamed for the "anti-imperialist" violence are infiltrators. What I saw was that the Black bloc were incredibly well organized and seemed not to get attacked by the heat 
in the manner in which the fascists went after the Tutte Bianche and the civil disobedience groups. 

I honestly do not know if the Black Block is Secret service infiltrators, 
but the ones I saw, and I followed about 200 hundred of them, sure did have a lot of cell phones and were very organized. Is it difficult for the movement as a whole to acknowledge an organized revolutionary group of well-trained young people? Or, do they get their training from the same evil ones as the young men in armored vans and who camped here by the thousands to repress those who demand freedom from oppression from the transnational elite? 

These are just a few of the questions I ask myself tonight here in this 
school space that houses those of us, media, medical and organizers, who 
made it to "safety" (perhaps the safety of being sitting ducks) in Genova 
today. 

You will see the horrors faced today, beatings, at least one confirmed killing and many many arrested. As I write this report there are helicopters flying over us and I am reticent to go to sleep on the bed I 
have made for myself on the floor. 

I will dream tonight of the ancestors who will fuel us with the strength, 
skill and courage that all of us who are together now tonight in Genova 
need and of the path that in the not too distant future will hold millions 
of us as we walk together for freedom from this military fascism for 
capitalism has its hold over the world today. 

In Solidarity and for the liberation of the Oppressed, 
June 
Liberation Central 
juneemoon.8m.net 

June Scorza Terpstra 

 

Christmas as Cultural Genocide

By Dr. June Terpstra 

12/25/08

The Baghdad Christmas celebration includes a large poster of Jesus.

This morning's headlines in the U.S.A. are touting the official public celebration (meaning paid for by the USA/CIA) of Christmas in Baghdad. This marks yet another nail in the coffin of Iraqi culture and this is exactly how cultural genocide works.  Flying a garish hot air balloon in
the Baghdad sky with a picture of the white man's Jesus on his bogus birthday; manufacturing the depression and suicide that comes with the unnecessary consumption of crap which families cannot afford; and paying Santas to prance in the streets of Baghdad tempting children with desires which only benefit the invader is not merely offensive to Iraqis and
Muslims everywhere but part of the ongoing cultural genocide campaign that comes with imperialism and colonialism.  

The proof, as American and African histories demonstrate, is in the proverbial Christmas pudding.  With every crusade come the priest, preacher, and missionary whose church pimps
him and her out with bibles paid for by the corporation for which it stands. With an assumption of racial, ethnic, religious and intellectual superiority and entitlement comes the imperialist assets-- the preacher, teacher, social worker, and culture manager.   They insist everyone speaks English; they change the children’s names from Mohammed to Joe and Fatima to Mary; they sneer at and disrespect all aspects of ancient and sacred traditions; they spit on the Quran while giving you their Bible.

Today's imperialist scribes are already revising the Iraqi history books with lies about the superiority of the occupier and the inferiority of the occupied.  The children are taught to be humiliated and debilitated with hate for themselves and their people.  They are programmed to turn against each other in the "divide and conquer' strategy that works time and again for the invader. Nothing is easier to control than a group of sheep convinced that they are each and every one of them, a wolf for the other. In other words, Sunnis fearing Shiites, Muslims fearing Christians, women fearing men, the poor fearing the rich, the “legal” fearing the “illegal” and on and on it goes. The triumphs of cultural genocide will be evident when the people exist obsessed with individualism, property, and consumption as the way to respond to their grief, despair and fear. 

 American Christian and Zionist expansionism solidify the global social reality of the critical conceptual division being between "Judeo-Christian Euro-American" and "Muslim Arab".  Those now termed “Americans” have a civil, moral juridical standing that lifts them above the Arab.  The American of any race, sex, or age is the expropriator; the Arab/Muslims are expropriated.  The American is the colonizer; the Arab and the Muslim are the colonized.  The Judeo-Christian and the Jew from anywhere are now the settlers; the Arab/Muslims are the displaced.  Hence, the construction of formal ontological patterning in the population of the globe, signified by ethnicity and creed.

Begun by the European imperialist and perfected by the American imperialist lurks a pervasive social construction, a set of positions in the global structure being put in place. This cultural imperialism is so structured as to have negative ramifications for every sphere of Arab Muslim life---juridical standing, moral status, personal racial and ethnic identity, epistemic reliability, existential plight, political inclusion, social metaphysics, sexual relations, and aesthetic worth.  For those assigned the category of Arab and Muslim the socialization one receives, the lifeworld in which one moves, the experiences one has, and the view one develops is based on an anthropology and an ethic of the master “race” which is Judeo-Christian.  Imperialist racist supremacy, even with the accession of a biracial president, is still an integral aspect of U.S. culture. 

This is evidenced in the blatantly racist acts and political policies of the U.S. domestically and internationally. While so-called democratic ideas about the “equality of man” are officially proclaimed, the mechanisms of privilege based on ethnicity, race and creed become more complex and more firmly entrenched. U.S. occupiers, be they soldier, contractor, preacher or teacher travel to Iraq and all over the world to perpetuate this system simply through their desire for privilege, their desire for what they feel is their “due.”  This imperialist structured social advantage fosters a cognitive disability in the occupier so that he ignores his acts of brutality, torture and abusiveness to the occupied.  

The rules of the imperialist game of cultural genocide are foundational to occupation and are designed primarily to transmit advantage and disadvantage across generations of the occupiers over the occupied.  Social control is maintained by the invader through domination in the economic, political and cultural arenas.  These men and their few select women will be chosen from groups that promote the illusion that positions of power come through merit and everyone will have a chance at becoming rich and powerful, like Obama!

The dehumanization that is promoted by the Judeo-Christian invasion of Muslim countries fosters a response in the invader and invaded that destroys that which is human, goo and kind within each actor.  In other words, all are taught to think that certain people, such as Arabs and Muslims, are less than human, so it’s necessary to kill the “hajjis” and steal their lands and oil and obliterate their culture.  

The sin of the Christian and Jew is their greed which causes invasion, occupation, state terrorism and cultural genocide.   If there is any true meaning of goodness and
love left in any Judeo-Christian tradition it must mean that those who are descendents and members of invader countries, creeds and cultures refuse to exist in relations of domination, not as dominated nor as dominator and not as oppressed or oppressor.  Redemption and atonement for Christian and Jewish invaders and occupiers will only come in standing for and with the oppressed Arabs and Muslims through the end of war and occupation. The creation of ties to Arab and Muslim people, through a love of life for all the people, their culture and their land, involves not hot-air Jesus balloons and Santas in the streets.  Salvation lies in solidarity with all Arabs, Muslims, and people throughout the world without homes, without work, without papers and without their land who have little or nothing on which to survive. By standing with the oppressed to build a better world where the invader and invaded, occupier and occupied, master and slave no longer exist fosters the possibility to bring peace on earth and good will to all.

 http://www.al-moharer.net/moh275/trepstra275.htm

 Dr. June Terpstra is a graduate and former research fellow of Loyola University Chicago.

 

Reform, resistance and revolution

Dr. June Scorza Terpstra, Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 30, 2007, 00:18

When the second invasion of Iraq began I held educational meetings at my home and the homes of friends just to get the word out about the lies that are now exposed. Have any of these education efforts helped? Some have helped. The support for the war in this country is at an all-time low.

However, this makes no difference to the real power behind the governmental thrones -- the bankers, the oil mongers, and the bomb makers and their media outlets. These guys and their subsidiary armies are making trillions in profits from their terror wars. Their subsidiaries include the prison and police industries here in the USA -- one of the biggest and few growth industries left in the country.

We must stop collaborating with the invader occupiers by denying the depth of the deceptions simultaneously sown by the government, media, and academics. If we, the people kick the oppressor out over here the people of the Middle East could would kick the invader and collaborators out over there!

The educational site of struggle is primary. Some of us who have been studying may be wearying of the information about what is happening but repetition and mirroring are critical to the educational process. By telling the truths of the people’s oppression there and connecting these truths to the people’s oppression here, we become people who resist the lies.

Many accuse me of preaching to the choir, yet the programming here in the USA is so intense that without hearing and being inspired and confirmed by realities of the war and against the lies is a daily site of struggle. We need the choir to inspire and remind us over and again that we are not insane and alone in our understanding of the world. In fact, where are those new resistance songs, arts and letters we need?

Liberals, in general, have recommended a polite or inviting education about the truth of imperialism to convince the American public that they should not support the war machine. They urge a more inviting educational style than my usual one. Yet, I would defend all educational styles including the "hit em over the head with the truth" style. I know the power of the "frontal attack" educational model and the impact it had on my own thinking and understanding of imperialism and oppression. What I’m saying here is that which offends and is viewed as so "extreme" may be just the thing that moves people. Of course, what people in the USA think is extreme may be that which the rest of the world already knows because they have been invaded and occupied by the imperialists for centuries. They know that the "lifestyle" of the USA and Europe is off the backs and lands of the people. At times the informative voice in the USA may sound extreme because the programming is so dense with lies.

This brings me to my topic of reform, resistance and revolution. Many people in the USA are involved in reform efforts and still believe the system can be fixed. Those who know me know I no longer believe in reform. I will support any and all efforts towards fundamental change as long as those efforts are not sponsored by the CIA complex. A third political party that unites liberals and moderates on the issues would be the most practical solution now for reform efforts. The Democrats and Republicans are bought and paid for. A third party in the USA could emerge by using local organizing and the Internet to push a campaign forward. However, it will take more than tired ass old Ralph Nadar to be the frontman. The Green Party is probably most viable in this regard. Yet, they too are walking the sell outline for power in Europe and the USA.

A resistance movement (both above and underground) in the USA is being built from the ground up as we have seen the recent groundswell of immigrants rising up in this country. Resistance is fertile and can happen in a heartbeat. Resistance can also fall apart in a heartbeat. The organization must come from below at the local levels which are networked nationally to existing groups. There are organizations in the USA that are anti-imperialist and anti-fascist working to stop the war and end imperialism above ground in this country. Those interested in building a resistance underground must do that offline all the time. The Che and Chavez approach could work here with the people so as to claim this land is your land for the first time in solidarity across race with an emphasis on the poor, the working class and the declining middle class. Resistance will be effective when we are clear about our common goals, organization, and action plans as opposed to dictating ideology. By respecting each other’s ideologies and religions while agreeing on common goals and taking action, instead of holding endless meetings, the resistance could be fertile and grow! The time has definitely come today.

Presently, both in Iraq and in the USA revolutionary movements and revolutionaries must employ all means necessary as the evil greedy elite and their governments and media will not stop their killing, torture and plunder as history shows. Although revolutionaries in the USA must support anti-imperialist resistance movements in Iraq and around the world, the emphasis must be here in the USA. If we can stop the war machine and imperialism here that will give folks around the world a stronger force of resistance there. But be advised, the people of the world will do it with or without the support of anti-imperialists in the USA. The people of those countries know better than anyone in the USA what they must do to kick out the invader-occupier and his collaborators. Revolutionary work is also above ground and underground, it is overt and covert, subversive and willing to work outside the box, including this Internet box. Clearly networked solidarity on these efforts must be forth coming on all fronts.

The actual steps to organizing can be found in many places, from theoretical texts, manuals on guerilla and urban warfare to activist organizing models and anarchist action strategies. Start by organizing a small group in any of the above categories. Be clear in the aims and goals and with other groups with which to hook up for actions sponsored locally and nationally. Practice what you preach every day. Be smart, treat each other with dignity and respect but know that with all success comes infiltration so be mindful and watchful. Know and understand the risks so the consequences come as no surprise.

The major sites for reform, revolution and resistance are these: economic systems and institutions, the military and police techno-complex, the government, the media and arts, educational institutions, agribusinesses and food production sites, religious institutions and educational institutions. Many of us work in these systems, change takes action.

All of us can take more risks to speak out and educate ourselves and each other more rigorously. Many of us have people right in our families and workplaces who are ignorant. Give them the information in as many ways possible. The repetition and mirroring of conformity has worked us over to make us as stupid as we have been in the USA. We must employ real education to deprogram ourselves, our families and friends while simultaneously inspiring our communities and ending our isolation. Ending the war and ending imperialism is possible, the question is what will we actually do to make it happen?

Dr. June Scorza Terpstra is on the faculty of Northeastern Illinois University.  http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m33272&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

 

http://gradworks.umi.com/31/65/3165933.html