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Militancy

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Urban Shield 2012 - BAY AREA UASI. The Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative is widely viewed as having an important, ground breaking regional approach to the prevention, protection, response and recovery efforts associated with terrorism and disasters both natural and man-made, that is recognized and may be replicated throughout the state and across the country.

A multi-year agreement allows the coordination of UASI funds with other federal funding sources towards all hazards preparedness, response or recovery initiatives such as Regional Catastrophic Planning, Interoperable Communications, Information Sharing, and Chemical/Biological/Radiological/Nuclear capabilities. The Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative program's footprint is comprised of three major cities (Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose) and ten counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, and Sonoma), and more than 100 incorporated cities. Learn More. What’s Wrong with Being Militant? | RADICAL FAGGOT. Militancy is a part of our past, present, and a commitment we need to maintain for our future. The African American Studies program in which I majored at my university was founded–like countless other Black, Brown and Ethnic Studies Departments–as the result of student, staff and faculty organizing.

In 1969, after four years of alienation, tokenizing, failed communication and outright racism, the first admitted class of Black students lead a serious campaign for the prioritizing and enfranchising of Black bodies and histories on the all-white campus. Aided by the guidance and direct support of specific staff and faculty, a core of Black students took over a main hall on the center of the campus, and refused to leave until a set of their agreed upon demands had been met by the university, including the founding of a Black Studies department. Militancy does not signify hatred or malice. Like this: Like Loading... Palestine: Legitimate Armed Resistance vs. Terrorism. The Israeli, and pro-Israeli, media have made a great deal of noise about the recent Palestinian operations in the occupied Gaza Strip whereby eleven Israeli soldiers were killed in two separate attacks on armored personnel carriers.

With very few exceptions in the Israeli and pro-Israeli media these operations have been deliberately misrepresented as some sort of “terrorist” attacks, a cynical propaganda ploy designed to discredit the Palestinian legal right to resist occupation. While there is no universally accepted definition of precisely what constitutes “terrorism”, there are particular factors that are generally accepted in most definitions as constituent elements of “terrorism”. These factors provide us with a simple definition of what is, and is not, “terrorism”. To quote the Council on Foreign Relations discussion of terrorism: As for being aimed at civilians, this is generally accepted though with reservations. Clearly adds to civilians other “noncombatants”: “2. 3. On violence and the Intifada. It has now become standard to say that the Palestinians will make no progress unless suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians end. Increasingly, Palestinians correctly acknowledge that attacks targeting civilians are a cruel and illegitimate reaction to Israel’s aggression.

In addition to the toll in innocent lives, there is growing recognition that suicide bombings have harmed the image of the Palestinian people and their just struggle for freedom. It has also become fashionable to say that suicide attacks have become the “weapon of choice” for the Palestinians. The fact is that Palestinians have no access to weapons that would allow them to adequately defend themselves — as is their absolute legal and moral right — against the Israeli army. From the beginning of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, through the first Intifada into the early 1990s, there were no suicide bombings. There is an alternative that Israel refuses to try. When Did Resistance Become a Dirty Word? Any Resistance There? By Ali Farzat What the Western political class and its media demand of the Arabs and Muslims is acceptance of the unacceptable status quo in Israel-Palestine.

To resist the status quo is to be troublesome, destabilising and irrationally violent. Resistance arises from the inadequacies of a culture and religion given to antisemitism and hysteria. In order to develop, these backward folk must give resistance up. For the Lebanese, this means that they must forget the brutal 22-year occupation of their country and the 1982 siege of Beirut as well as the 2006 assault on the country’s civilian infrastructure.

Syria must smile at the illegal occupation and annexation of the Golan Heights and the theft of its essential water supplies. The Palestinians must be modern and democratic. Learning Not to Resist It’s time we stopped playing this game. What are the arguments used to demonise (rather than critically engage with) Hamas? Firstly, Hamas doesn’t recognise Israel. Our western privilege is the legacy of historical violence. For the last week we’ve been running pieces responding to Matthew Taylor’s statement that the Gaza flotilla should have been committed to nonviolent resistance. We’re almost done. Max Ajl is at bat. David Bromwich has responded to my comment about non-violence and violence with a strong, textual case for non-violent mobilization. Engagement is welcome. There is space for tactical and conceptual clarification and discussion. First, though, several mistakes, misinterpretations, and mis-directions demand correction.

Bromwich insists that “For Gandhi and for King non-violence was a principle,” and proceeds to lay out their ideas, appending a post-script with extended quotations. I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence. Bromwich placed this quotation at the end of the piece in which he insists that Gandhi’s non-violence was principled. The next issue is normative. The thing is, we already live in a world soaked with violence. Gandhi who? Gandhi why? | Jewbonics. Guest post from Sayres Rudy, who has no idea why we’re talking about Gandhi and is offering a special tutorial to the Peace and Conflict Studies community entitled, How to Detect Intel­lec­tual Fraud.

Note how perverse this is. How did Gandhi get priv­i­leged? Why didn’t Gramsci, Kropotkin, or Luxemburg, or some mad militant. there is a line by charles taylor bout religion where he says, in essence, let’s suppose there is a god. then what? No matter what, we are charged with inter­pre­ta­tion of what “God” as concept and as Lawgiver actually means, says, rep­re­sents. So somehow here is our tra­jec­tory. Pales­tini­ans are dis­pos­sessed and etc. for 50 years or a century, and the Israelis have proven repeat­edly that they are max­i­mal­ists who prefer to win than com­pro­mise, where winning means having all the crucial land and water, etc. So. What specif­i­cally would it mean for someone like Taylor to rummage through history and decide on Gandhi rather than the Home Army?

Few Palestinians are listening to the western debate over non-violence. At this site and elsewhere, a discussion about “violence” versus “non-violence” has been taking place over the past month-or-so, since the massacre aboard the Mavi Marmara, revealingly joined recently by Nicholas Kristof. In the face of empirical and ethical deconstructions of the argument for “principled” non-violence for Palestinians and the total abnegation of force by solidarity activists, Matthew Taylor has offered a lengthy rejoinder re-stating his case for the moral, ethical, and pragmatic efficacy of Palestinian non-violence. Taylor begins by defining “violence,” goes on to re-assert the utility of Gandhi, accuses me of mis-understanding Gandhi, condemns Palestinian violence, and moves on to a How-To Guide for the Palestinian Resistance.

Here’s Taylor defining “non-violence”: Nonviolence is a powerful method to harmonize relationships among people (and all living things) for the establishment of justice and the ultimate well-being of all parties. That exception makes sense. The militarisation of 'war on terror' in the US. New York, NY - In an instructive coincidence, the passage of the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) by the US Congress came on December 15, 2011, the same day as the official start of US forces' pullout from Iraq. One front in the US' post-9/11 conflicts closed overseas, as another front seemingly opened at home. Now awaiting President Barack Obama's signature, which will turn it into law, the NDAA would further entrench here at home some of the defining features of the United States' extraterritorial campaign against political violence by non-state actors, continuing the onward march of the so-called "war on terror" through the American homeland.

For years, my students, my colleagues and I have been dealing with the realities of indefinite military imprisonment without trial, and of trial before untested and unfair military commissions. To be clear, the NDAA does not institute martial law for all in the US. Keeping Guantánamo open Codifying the law of Guantánamo. Defining Militancy: Protest, Strike and Insurrection in Fighting for Our Lives. Militancy for Liberation.