10 June 2018. Brother Ajamu Speaks

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We must bring in the UN to play a role in a sustainable peace process in Syria since it’s clear that the USA, Russia, and Israel are playing a cynical game in Syria that won’t result in peace and national reconciliation.

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The Tamimi family continues to suffer from Israeli brutality. This is why the focus has to be on US imperialism because this criminality couldn’t occur without US support for the Zionist apartheid project. https://goo.gl/ZZHYiK

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Did people read the incredible comments from Obama about being too early because the dumb masses just weren’t ready for his version of enlightened politics? The only difference between Trumps’ megalomania and Obama’s is that Obama is supposed to be the nice one.

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The USA brings a threat of war, suffering, and insecurity to every region of the world, yet activists in the USA continue to give political cover for US aggression. Opposing war and militarism isn’t an add-on… it’s a position fundamental to being a human being.

Ajamu Baraka

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Brother Ajamu On Phony-Baloney “Leftists”

I happen to be a religious believer, many left people are. This isn’t proselytism… it’s simply how I’d express this issue. If we disagree, let’s do so in a spirit of kamaradschaft and solidarity. I do daresay that we agree on opposing the Empire’s aggression wherever it occurs.

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I got to the Left Forum 2018 only to run into some silly so-called leftists passing out flyers denouncing me as a supporter of Assad. Look imperial left, anti-US imperialism isn’t supposed to be selective based on whether or not you like the nation that’s in the crosshairs of empire. Moreover, some black revolutionaries reserve the right to see and relate to the world based on our own interests and experiences; we see US imperialism as the number one global contradiction. Now, you might have a different agenda and might even believe that the USA can be on the right side of history and a force for good… that isn’t our experience and the experience of millions globally.

2 June 2018

Ajamu Baraka

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Editor:

You run into them all the time… armchair leftists proclaiming that we shouldn’t aid the victims of the Empire because they’re not “pure” enough. The task imperative for our time is opposition to the Empire. Therefore, we should aid all those standing against it, even if they’re not “left”. The pressing objective is opposition to the Empire and the defeat of its neoliberal crapitalist agenda; all else is nought compared to that. If you bleat about how imperfect this or that Imperial victim is, you’re on the Empire’s side, and I, for one, won’t be silent. I confide that I’m not alone in thinking that way.

BMD

Archbishop Oscar Romero, Martyr, to Become Saint at Vatican Ceremony on 14 October

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After a 38-year-wait, it’s now official. Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered in 1980 for speaking out against military oppression, will become a saint of the Roman Catholic Church at a Vatican ceremony on 14 October. On 19 May, Pope Francisco, the first pontiff from the Americas, announced the decision during a meeting with cardinals based in Rome. Romero, long considered a saint by Catholics across the Americas, will be elevated to universal veneration at the Vatican ceremony alongside Pope Paul VI, the pontiff who first appointed him a bishop and made the fateful decision in 1977 to make him archbishop of San Salvador. Four others… two Italian priests and German and Spanish founders of separate women’s religious orders… will also become saints at the ceremony.

The Salvadoran’s canonisation, while expected in recent months, nonetheless represents the culmination of one of the clearest turnabouts of Francisco’s nearly five-year papacy. The cause for Romero languished for decades under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who expressed unease with his connection to liberation theology and his vocal denunciations of government killings and kidnappings. Less than two years after his election as pontiff, Francisco placed Romero firmly on the sainthood track, formally decreeing in February 2015 that the archbishop was assassinated as a martyr for the Catholic faith. He then authorised his beatification, the last step before sainthood, in May of that year. El Salvador’s ambassador to the UK, Elisabeth Hayek-Weinmann, told us:

Romero’s coming sainthood represents a unique opportunity for us to heal our historical wounds, restore our social fabric, and build a new sense of national identity based on common values, with social justice and respect for human dignity at its core. His teachings and legacy provide us, as a nation, a strong moral compass.

During the 19 May meeting with cardinals, known as a consistory, Francisco formally received the request to authorise the canonization of the six persons by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes. Amato gave Francisco a brief biographical sketch of each of the sainthood candidates. He said:

Romero was archbishop during a time of great political crisis in El Salvador and was outraged at seeing the violence against the weak and the killing of priests and catechists, he felt the need to assume an attitude of fortitude. On 24 March 1980, he was killed while celebrating Mass.

After hearing each candidate’s history, Francisco announced their canonisations as a group and set the date and place of the ceremony. As it became clear in recent weeks that Francis would announce Romero’s canonisation, discussions in Rome focused on whether the pontiff would decide to hold the ceremony at the Vatican or in El Salvador. Considerations included trying to make the event accessible to Salvadorans wishing to attend but wanting also to emphasise that, as a saint, Romero will be an example of Christian witness not just for El Salvador but the entire world. Carlos Colorado, a Salvadoran who runs the popular Super Martyrio blog that closely followed the process of Romero’s canonisation, said in an interview:

A ceremony in San Salvador would’ve been a blowout with people attending numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

In a recent blog, Colorado hypothesised that Francisco may still go to El Salvador soon in order to venerate the new saint’s tomb and bring a sense of celebration to the country. One opportunity would be for the pontiff to make a stopover there during his expected January 2019 visit to Panama for World Youth Day. Paulita Pike, an American who lived in El Salvador off-and-on since the early 1970s, knew Romero and now helps coordinate the popular Amigos de Romero/Cultura Romeriana Facebook page, said:

By canonising Romero in Rome, Francisco is holding him up as the model pastor, the model bishop, for the bishops gathered there. Wherever he’s canonised, he’s going to be our saint.

Pike kept vigil at Romero’s tomb in San Salvador’s cathedral overnight on 18 May with members of her group, awaiting news of the canonisation. She said:

He isn’t ours but he’s St Romero of the Americas. Now, he’s going to be St Romero of the world.

19 May 2018

Joshua McElwee

National Catholic Reporter

https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/archbishop-romero-martyr-be-made-saint-vatican-ceremony-oct-14

Trump’s Iran Policy Might Be Linked to “Big Setback in Syria”

Most of the Syrian people, of all confessions and all nationalities, support the government, not the American-backed Islamist terrorists… that’s why the American attempt to topple Assad failed… along with help from Russia, Iran, and Hizbullah (probably, also with covert Chinese aid, too).

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Last week, US President Donald Trump withdrew the USA from the JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal. Sputnik discussed the implications and the consequences for global companies and especially the ramifications of an already strained relationship between the USA and the EU with Salil Sarkar, journalist and writer based in Paris.

Sputnik

Give us a quick insight into how things are progressing in terms of President Trump and his policy on isolation; there’s never a quiet day when it comes to Trump; what’s your take on President Trump and this constant barrage of news every day?

Salil Sarkar

Sure, but that was planned, it was probably planned like that, I’d say it was certainly planned like that. President Trump seems to be on a sort of isolationist line; he and his allies, and that brings him into a conflict with other parts of the American, the US deep state. So, it keeps on appearing either in sleazy stories or more developed political stories, so that’s what’s going on, there’s this tussle inside the USA as to whether they’d get more isolation as they withdraw from other parts of the world while clenching their teeth and grunting like in the case of the DPRK, supporting Israel, or even in the case of Iran, for example, this jettisoning of the nuclear agreement signed in 2015.

Sputnik

President Trump threatened to withdraw from this JCPOA agreement for many months now; in fact, it was his policy strategy for the presidency, but why has he chosen this move now when previously he bolted on it, what’s your take on it?

Salil Sarkar

It’s tough to say. Why now? Probably, it was in the aftermath of their big setback in Syria, where the USA, its Western allies, and the Gulf countries tried to replace the Assad government in Syria by supporting Islamists, which they have done before in other countries, but in this case, it was a big setback. Most Syrian people supported the government, so they tried to keep the war going somehow using other forces, but hitting out at Iran was one of the things to do, they already had sanctions against Russia, for example, Iran was slipping by after this agreement in 2015, the nuclear pact. So, it’s a way of starting things all over again, and I don’t know which section of the US deep state is pushing it, Trump, of course, is the President, he has to balance everything, but that’s the way it is and it’s happening now, but I can’t give you any guarantees, I’m not in the minds of some of those people there in Washington.

21 May 2018

Sputnik International

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201805211064634506-trump-iran-policy-linked-syria/