This blog is dedicated to the struggles of people everywhere to advance human progress and save this planet from the decline of capitalism. Its focus, since 2011 has been supporting the emerging revolutions everywhere.
By now it should be clear to all that when Donald Trump talks about when America was "great" before, he is talking about a time when white men of wealth could rule without the challenges they face today, i. e. the good ole days of the 1950's or maybe even the 1850's. Ever since he came down a Trump Tower escalator to complain about so-called Mexican rapists and announce his candidacy, he has stood at the center of a last-ditch attempt by a segment of the US capitalist class to re-establish white supremacist rule in a radical new way that is likely to lead to fascist government in a few years if not stopped.
Jill not Hill equaled Trump
This successful attempt by a white supremacist cabal to seize executive power in the US government was aided in no small part by a white Left that rallied around the Green Party candidacy of Jill Stein. This group refused to acknowledge the extreme white nationalism and racism that distinguished the Trump candidacy. They declared that there were no significant differences between the two contenders, or even claimed that Donald Trump was the lesser of two evils. They campaigned for progressives to either cast a symbolic vote for Jill Stein, or just stay home. They never seriously tried to win over Trump voters. Their focus was on diverting Clinton voters to the Jill St. off-ramp This was, in effect, a voter suppression campaign every bit as effective as any run by the Russians or the Republicans, and without it Trump would have lost. Had the Jill Stein voters in just three states voted for Hillary Clinton instead, she would be president now.
Last Monday, Amy Goodman had Ralph Nader on Democracy Now to get his appraisal of the current situation. In spite of the Trump cabal's continuing fear-mongering about immigrants from the South, and the cruelty they are training Americans to accept in the government's treatment of people of color. In spite of the fact that the architects of this immigration madness see it as but a stepping stone to racist policies they hope to implement against all people of color, regardless of citizenship, Amy and her guest continue to remain mute on the racism driving Trump's policies and programs.
Note the cruelty he highlights in his wall.
Where does Nader address this?
Curiously, they also made no mention of either the Green Party or Jill Stein. What made this noteworthy was the fact that Ralph Nader ran as a Green Party presidential candidate, and appeared on DN in 2016 to promote Jill Stein's bid. Now he gets billing only as "former presidential candidate Ralph Nader," and the Green Party is nowhere to be seen.
What makes this particularly tragic is that during the 2016 presidential campaign, the line from Greens was even if they had no chance of winning, and might even throw the election to Trump, they were doing the really important work of building the political party that could lead the mass struggle in the future. Now the future has come, and not only is the Green Party no more effective than it ever was, many activists formerly known as Greens are striving to distance themselves from that history.
Ralph Nader pitching his new book on Democracy Now on Monday
To talk about all of this and much more, we’re joined by longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate [ of what party, Amy? ] Ralph Nader. He is author of the new book To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course.
Ralph Nader, welcome back to Democracy Now! Let’s start where we ended, with that long list of just what’s happened this week,
We'll get to Nader's list in a moment. First, let's start with when he was on DN just before the election, because I think it can be fairly argued that Ralph Nader also paved the way for the Trump presidency, and I suspect that isn't covered in his new book.
Ralph Nader didn't notice the racism of the Trump campaign when he was on DN before the election, 19 September 2016, but he did rage against what he called "bigotry" in the 2016 presidential campaign:
[T]he idea of calling a third party “spoiler,” using the First Amendment right to run for office, is a politically bigoted word and should never be tolerated by the American people, because everyone has an equal right to run for office.
Just because you can run for office, it doesn't follow that you should run for office. If most progressive think like Ralph Nader, and write their own name in, while the reactionaries rally around a single candidate, a bad outcome will be assured, and banning the word spoiler won't change that arithmetic. Jill Stein was so taken by the fact that she could run for office, that she never considered whether she should run for office. Many warned Donald Trump can only win if Jill Stein stays in. She did stayed in, and on DN until election night, and he won.
Anyway, back to the present. Ralph Nader gives Amy Goodman a list of current political priorities as he sees them:
RALPH NADER: And we’re going to present to the progressive chairs of the House of Representatives a whole list of hearings that have to be held in order to put these in play, electorally, in terms of public opinion and in terms of civic action. I can give you a quick list if you’d like.
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.
RALPH NADER: OK. First, obviously, is one on single payer. Full Medicare for all...
There needs to be hearings on corporate crime by the Judiciary Committee...
5,000 people die every week in this country in hospitals due to preventable problems. We know what they are. There are no congressional hearings here.
There’s got to be congressional hearings on foreign policy...
Criminal justice reform, that one is long overdue...
How about climate devastation? I think we shouldn’t use the words “climate change.” It’s too benign...
So, you could just go list after list. Minimum wage, that should be up right away...
Good list. Except it fails to fight or even address the extreme white nationalism, both in rhetoric and program, that the Trump cabal uses to "rally its base." This is the terrain of the most important political struggle facing the country. This obviously includes all the fear mongering against brown immigrants that has been skillfully used to normalize a level of official cruelty to people of color that would have been intolerable only a few years ago. Shouldn't a progressive congress also challenge Trump on his border wall and Muslim ban, Nader?
Trump has also lead a very vocal attack against African American football players for protesting the racist killings of people of color at a time when those killing go unabated, and hate crimes by white supremacists, including racist murders, are on the rise. Where are these questions on Nader's list?
Maybe the new congress should exercise some oversight into the FBI's responds to the rising tide of white nationalist violence, and question why the new category of "Black Identity Extremist" was created by the Trump administration.
Much of Trump's support for white nationalists international, whether in Britain, Europe or South African has been done in concert with Vladimir Putin, and Russian ultra nationalists. Shouldn't the new congress also look into this?
Ralph Nader didn't exactly lead the fight against Trump before the election. Now he tries to see a silver lining where he can. For example, he thinks that "if they overturn judicially" ObamaCare "that opens the door" to single payer health care. Nevermind it will close the hospital door to thousands that need life-saving treatment right now.
He tells us that the gathering of synophants around Trump means he won't be around long:
The combination of Mulvaney, John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a lethal one even for Trump’s political survival. He’s trying to get sycophants around him, which is usually a late stage in the collapse of a regime.
His reading of history is meant to comfort and disarm us, when we should be most alarmed because that is not the lesson of history. Adolf Hitler had gathered his most important sycophants, including Joseph Goebbels, Rudolph Hess, Hermann Göring, and Heinrich Himmler as early as 1925, hardly the late stage in the collapse of his regime.
This Monday, the US government is going into a second day in a huge fight over what Nader called "a porous wall that is eroding farmer property values and ranchers on the Mexican border." The campaign to build the southern border wall is about distracting people from the real problems we face with fear of brown people. All the rhetoric ostensibly about border, is really about building a fear of the brown caravans. It certainly isn't about stopping drugs and terrorists. Unlike refugees, they are very mobile. They can and do cross the unguarded Canadian border with little trouble or controversy. Nader doesn't address the real purpose of Trump's border wall. He just thinks it won't work ["porous" - but that's not its purpose, Ralph.] And the worst thing - it will erode property values.
When Amy Goodman asked him for his thoughts on impeachment, Nader said "We shouldn’t make a big deal out of it." Since impeaching a president is a big deal any way you slice it, it sounds like Ralph Nader opposes impeaching Donald Trump. No doubt, this position was welcomed when he appeared on Fox News the day after his DN appearance to pitch his new book on Tucker Carlson.
Ralph Nader pitching his new book on Fox News Tucker Carlson on Tuesday
I registered my first Internet domain name, CosmosEng.com, in 1996, and over the years I have registered or bought many Internet domain names, sometimes on speculation. This morning I got the idea that it would be fun to own TrumpTowerMoscow.com. Since this wasn't an original idea, I wasn't surprised to find that someone else had beat me to the punch. TrumpTowerMoscow.com had already been claimed, although no corresponding website for it exists.
Instead it was parked on Godaddy, where they are offering to negotiate its sale:
It turns out that the domain name TrumpTowerMoscow.com is owned by the Trump Organization. The WHOIS database shows they first register it on 17 July 2008, which means Trump's interest in a Moscow Tower goes back over a decade. Five years later, he still kept hope alive, although there still was no website!
@AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!
Apparently, Trump's dream of a Moscow tower didn't die even after he became president, contrary to all his denials. The domain registration was last updated less than six months ago on 28 June 2018, the same day Trump sent out this tweet:
Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election! Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!
It doesn't expire until 1 July 2019, assuming it isn't renewed:
I'm seriously thinking of ponying up the seven buck, or better yet, contacting the Trump Organization directly, and making a bid. After all, it isn't being used, and Trump swears he's not interested in a Trump Tower Moscow anymore. If that is the case, might he be willing to part with it?
According to Democracy Now's own search facility, today's Death Notice was the first mention ofRaed Fares on Democracy Now. Google's much more thorough search engine also finds nothing before today's Headlines on Democracy Now.
For those familiar with the work of this Syrian revolutionary and the civilian society protest organization he lead, Kafranbel, this will sound extraordinary, but it is a true fact, and a damning commentary on the biased way Amy Goodman and Democracy Now have represent Syrian developments since the beginning of 2011.
Banner like these made Kafranbel famous worldwide, just not on DN
He came to Los Angeles, and I had an opportunity to hear him speak. The event was even announced on KPFK, but I guess Amy missed it. That was five years ago. We have cover Fares and Kafranbel manytimessincethen, as has just about anyone interested in honestly informing people about what the struggle in Syria, that has taken as many as a million lives, is all about. Clearly, that hasn't been Democracy Now. Raed Fares and Kafranbel should have had a dozen show segments by now, if DN really was an unbiased progressive outlet. Now that he is dead, its safe to talk about him, so today he finally got a HEADLINE:
Syrian Journalist Raed Fares, Who Faced Threats by Government and Rebels, Killed in Idlib
Syrian radio host and activist Raed Fares was shot dead in Idlib Friday, along with activist Hamoud Jneed. Fares founded Radio Fresh, an independent radio station broadcasting from inside opposition-held Syria. Fares joined the popular protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in 2011. In the following years, he documented the human cost of the war in Syria, exposing rights violations and the devastation of air strikes on civilians. Fares was targeted by both the government and opposition militants. He survived previous assassination attempts, a kidnapping and torture.
So the first ever Linux Beach CYA Awards goes to Democracy Now for Wednesday's first ever mention of Raed Fares. Now we can't say Amy never mentioned him, and now that he's dead, its safe to say a few words. Democracy Now knew that if their audience saw the Syrian Revolution through Raed's eyes, they would support it, and that's the last thing Amy wants. Way to go, Democracy Now! Don't ever change. We won't be able to use this logo.
In 1978, I led a group of American educators on a tour of China. It was an exciting time to visit. President Nixon had ended 25 years of US attempts to isolate the People's Republic of China just six years earlier, and we were among the first western tourists to visit since the revolution in 1949.
While in Beijing, we were given a tour of the National Minority Institute, where we were told of the more than fifty national and ethnic minorities that live in China, the ongoing struggle against discrimination and great Han chauvinism. As we were leaving the institute, I overheard a white member of our overwhelmingly white tour group say:
I don't believe they have any minorities in China. They all look Chinese to me.
I was reminded to that comment Monday evening by Tucker Carlson. He was focused on one of his usual subjects - the Honduran migrant caravan making its way through Mexico to the US border. Under the leadership of Donald Trump, he and the rest of the Fox News crowd have been crying wolf about what they call an "invasion" of poor refugee families. US white supremacists, led by Donald Trump, have effectively taken over the Republican Party, and have been using anti-immigrant agitation as a gateway to their more extreme goal of creating a white ethnostate.
In Tijuana, on Sunday, there was a small anti-immigrant protest by Mexican citizens who support Trump's position on the Honduran caravan. While most Mexicans have been very accepting and supportive of these Central American refugees, Tijuana has become the center of anti-immigrant activities in Mexico. There Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum, who has been called "The Trump of Tijuana" and "Donald Trump Jr.," because of his hateful rhetoric directed at the caravan, has created a favorable climate for that opposition.
It might be said that Donald Trump has adopted him with this tweet:
The Mayor of Tijuana, Mexico, just stated that “the City is ill-prepared to handle this many migrants, the backlog could last 6 months.” Likewise, the U.S. is ill-prepared for this invasion, and will not stand for it. They are causing crime and big problems in Mexico. Go home!
The neo-Nazi Daily Stormer also supports him. They quote extensively from the Mayor's "choice words for this group of brown movers," saying "those certainly sound like statements that someone from ICE or the KKK would make," before complaining that "Simply saying that a group of brown people are committing crimes is an act of racial hatred."
Of course, one reason Tijuana has such a massive problem is although thousands of refugees are trying to seek asylum, the US is playing a game of asylum suppression, not unlike the Trump campaign policy of voter suppression, by accepting claims at a handful of legal ports of entry like San Diego, where they are processing only 100 claims a day.
Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum in a Trump styled "Make Tijuana Great Again" hat. Does he realize how ironic it is that he says this in ENGLISH, or did he just want to make sure it could be read by his target audience? Does he also agreed with the way Trump talks about Mexicans? Trump talked about the Mayor again in his Thanksgiving call to the troops in which he said he also authorized the US army to use "lethal force" at the border "if they have to." Does this "Mexican patriot" also support Trump on that?
Tijuana has already had its own challenges in recent years, like more than 2000 homicides in 2018, before 3000 refugees started camping out near the border crossing. Given encouragement from the mayor, the anti-immigrant propaganda coming from north of the border, and who knows what other incentives, it's surprising that they could only muster about 300 "Mexico First" protesters willing to say things like:
"Trump was right! This is an invasion!"
However, those 300 where enough for Tucker Carlson to build a show segment around because he thought he could use this protest to demonstrate that the dislike of immigrants he promotes nightly was universal [xenophobic], and not racist. Tucker thought that since they were Mexicans protesting immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, he could use them to argue that white supremacy was not behind the anti-immigrant campaign in the US either. The Daily Stormer thought they could use the story the same way:
It looks as if the Jew-run media is mostly trying to ignore what’s happening in Tijuana. That’s because there’s no way they can really spin a narrative in their favor. For weeks they were claiming that the bad orange man in the White House was lying about the caravan. But what’s happening in Tijuana proves that he was right. The mere fact that the Mexicans want these invaders to go back to where they came from is proof of this.
...
They do however have multiple videos about Jim Acosta’s press pass and a video about Apple’s CEO Tim Cook talking about how he wants to brainwash children into becoming faggots.
...
Their narrative about the caravan was wrong and they can’t start calling Mexicans racist for being angry at the situation. And they definitely want to ignore the fact that Tijuana’s mayor is basically agreeing with Trump in saying that these invaders need to go back to their shitholes.
Since Tucker pretends to be "Fair & Balanced," he can't be that direct, so he invited on Enrique Acevedo, an anchor at Univision, to be his guest for this segment on the Tijuana protest.
Tucker played Fox News interviews with four protesters. The show used subtitles even though all the Mexican protesters they interviewed were speaking very intelligible English. They said things like "these are bad people", "they don't belong here", "this is not about racism," and "these caravans are committing crimes." Tucker then proceeded as though those were majority opinions in Mexico, and put his main premise to his guest:
Tucker: I'm confused. We just saw a group of Mexican citizens in Tijuana saying basically the same things that President Trump says, almost to the word endorsing Trump. Are they white supremacists?
Enrique: Well, you have to understand that unlike human beings, intolerance, hate, and even racism flow freely across borders, and that's what you saw in those interviews. They're not running for president. They're not running for president in the United States either. They are part of a group of around 300 protesters in a city of 1.3 million who, like many others along the way of this Caravan, are opposed to their presence in Tijuana, and you know, the overwhelming majority of people in Tijuana welcome immigrants. It's a city of immigrants.
Tucker: Wait but, wait but, I'm sorry, can I just backup a little bit? Its a big city for sure. Hold on. Woe, I think you just said that they're racist but they're Latino, Spanish-speaking Latinos attacking other Spanish-speaking Latinos. So where's the racism?
Enrique: Well, we're not a monolithic community Tucker. We have people from Central America, from Venezuela, from Colombia. Different backgrounds, different ethnicities, and yes, racism exists in Mexico toward Central Americans. It's not new. It's happened through...
Tucker: Okay, but I'm not quite sure how it's racism if they appear to be of the same race?
Anti immigrant protest in Tijuana getting violent. They start attacking woman defending Honduran migrants in caravan. Yelling perra (bitch) pic.twitter.com/aeauXYoASt
Like that educator on my tour that could see only Chinese in China, Tucker Carlson puts everybody south of the US southern border into the same race of brown people. That's how he thinks about race. He is white and all of them are brown, including, no doubt, the Mayor of Tijuana, and those are objective, immutable racial categories, and not his subjective and culturally derived opinion.
He is delusional.
He should start with the objective reality that while humans of all races and nationalities have eyeballs and teeth that are white (more or less), nobody has skin that is objectively the color white. The main determinate of human skin color is its density of melanin. As the English rulers of colonial America begin to create a system of African slavery as a solution to their labor problems, they sought to built a pro-slavery unity among all those exempt from slavery based on their lighter skin color, and for this new synthetic "race" they appropriated the label "white" because it carried with it many positive attributes. Soon after that, they began to label the Africans they were enslaving "black," although their skin color was not black like their hair color. They labeled them "black" because that color already had many negative connotations. These labels were chosen to support slavery and white supremacy. This happened in the 17th century in what would become the United States.
It was a marketing and branding coup d'état, and the inauguration of white supremacy. People like Tucker, who don't understand the fraudulent nature of the title "white," and think of themselves as white, also assume that racism or white supremacy is limited to the sphere of conflict or interaction between "white people" and "people of color," indeed they strive to limit it to that, as though the racial categories he has in his head have some objective, persistent reality to them. This makes it hard for him to understand that their was a time when people he may now welcomes into the white race, such as the Irish, Jews, and less than a hundred years ago, as I reported in The Rise of Xenophobia, the Poles, where not considered white and were subjected to racism, or white supremacy, by those that did consider themselves white. I wonder in Tucker considers Jews white, even today. I know his Daily Stormer buddies don't. I'll bet Gastélum thinks he is white, although Tucker thinks he is the same race as every other Latino.
It is also problematic for racists like Tucker to conceive of a white supremacist hierarchy existing among people he considers all to be in another race. This is a simpleminded view of the world.
Anyone familiar with African American culture and history knows very well that there is a racist hierarchy of discrimination based on skin color, with lighter skin being favored. This discrimination is supported by the white power structure, but it also is a reflection of white supremacy within the oppressed race. In other places, I have report on how even in Sudan, Africa, among the brown and black skin population, where exists a white supremacist hierarchy enforced by those who think themselves "white" no matter how brown they may look to European eyes.
The Guardian also reported on this protest. Sarah Kinosianwrote:
On Sunday, anti-caravan protesters chanted: “Out Hondurans, we don’t want you here”, “Tijuana first” and “Long live Mexico”, and waved Mexican flags and signs reading “no to the invasion” and “no more migrants”.
The group, which at its height numbered about 300, gathered in front of a statue of the Aztec warrior Cuauhtémoc before making their way to a sports complex serving as a temporary shelter to about 2,500 migrants from the caravan.
She also wrote about how this Mexican anti-immigrant movement had been influenced by the US:
While many have welcomed the migrants – as they have the thousands of others who have come to the city over recent years – some Tijuana residents have expressed hostility to the caravan, amid intense media coverage and aggressive rhetoric from the US president, Donald Trump.
The Associated Press echoed this sentiment, saying that while some blamed the backlash on the sudden arrival of the caravan:
Others point to social media and the hostile rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said it harbored criminals and gang members and was planning an "invasion."
There has been a well developed social media campaign at work building this anti-immigrant movement in Mexico. Karla Zabludovsky on Buzzfeedwrote about this 15 November 2018 in The Racist Backlash To The Migrant Caravan Is Building In WhatsApp Groups In Mexico:
Several Facebook and WhatsApp groups advocating for the caravan's deportation have sprung up in the month since the migrants set out from Honduras, underscoring escalating anti-immigrant sentiment in northern Mexico. The violent language used against Central Americans in these groups echoes that used by Trump supporters in the US, referring to the caravan as an "invasion" and issuing a call to arms in defense of borders.
Inside the WhatsApp chat, people have felt free to share their unfiltered views:
"These people are a Cancer that signals the end of Mexico."
"I'm asking the men here to defend their women and children... Since the majority of Central Americans who've arrived are men, violent thefts will start any moment now."
"Plagues are confronted with venom. And [bullets] are the venom here. Hondurans are equal to gonorrhea."
Other messages in a WhatsApp group called "Citizen’s Blockade" — which BuzzFeed News had access to after joining a related, closed Facebook page — included suggestions to deliver pizza and hamburgers filled with pesticide to migrants, and a call to burn down one of the biggest shelters in the city. The group has more than 250 participants.
Considering that all that they still had only 200-300 protesters at their rally. These are the people Tucker supports-a minority of haters who advocate violence. James Fredrick, writing for NPRdescribed them as a "few hundred Tijuanenses gathered in the city's high-end Rio area." While some of the marchers headed for Mayor Gastélum's office, other headed off towards a shelter where more than 2,500 immigrants are staying. Alonzo Castillo, 37, a construction worker from Honduras was not intimidated by their tactics, and had no trouble putting a name to what they are facing:
“I’m not afraid of them, this is just racism.”
Tucker Carlson may think that opposition to Central American immigrants in Mexico can't be based on racism because they all "appear to be of the same [brown] race," but as CNN Contributor Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote in 2012 In Mexico, racism hides in plain view:
The enduring taboo subject is skin color, whether an individual's complexion betrays an allegiance to the Spanish who conquered the Aztec empire in 1521 or the Aztecs who were conquered. It's no exaggeration to say that, in this country and especially in this city, the best, highest-paying, most important jobs often seem to go to those who, in addition to having the best education and the strongest connections, have the lightest skin.
On television, in politics and in academia, you see light-skinned people. On construction sites, in police forces and in restaurant kitchens, you're more likely to find those who are dark-skinned. In the priciest neighborhoods, the homeowners have light skin, and the housekeepers are dark. Everyone knows this, and yet no one talks about it, at least not in elite circles.
He also talked about the role this racism has played in holding Mexico back:
Nor do Mexicans seem all that eager to discuss the larger dynamic that race feeds into: the fact that this is, and has always been, a country of deep divisions. In the 100 years since the Mexican Revolution, one part of Mexico has often been at war with another: urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor and, yes, dark-skinned vs. light-skinned.
It's one reason that institutions such as the economy, the political system and the social structure haven't matured as quickly as they should have, given Mexico's advantages.
This country of 120 million people has ports, highways, airports and skyscrapers. It takes in billions of dollars every year in revenues from oil and natural gas, and billions more from tourism and remittances from Mexican migrants living abroad. Mexico's economy is growing faster than the U.S. economy, and investments are flowing in from Asia and Europe. It's consistently within the top three of trading partners for the United States. But what good is all that when only a small number of the population can live up to their full potential? Prejudice kills progress.
Those like Tucker Carlson who promote the narrowest possible view of the problems caused by racism are just wrong. It was a core feature in the development of early capitalism because white supremacy was developed as a ideological tool that could be used to justify domination not only of the newly created "non-white" people of the Earth, but the very Earth itself. Just as it has held back Mexico's develop, so has it held back revolutionary development worldwide. Capitalism can never be transcended so long as white supremacy has so many under its spell.
UPDATE 29 Nov 2018: First reports blamed HTS for his murder, and now that evidence of HTS support for Fares has been found, it would seem that conclusion is, at best, premature, and may be wrong.
Raed Fares
The Syrian revolutionary Raed Fares was murdered today, along with fellow activist Hamoud Juneid in the town of Kafranbel, Fares' own Radio Fresh is reporting. They are reporting Fares and Juneid were "shot dead by unknown assailants riding a van in Kafranbel." It is widely believed the dominate jihadist group in Idlib, HTS [Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham], was behind the assassination.
Raed Fares became one of the few Syrian activists I had the opportunity to meet in the flesh. I meant him almost five years ago when he came to Los Angeles in December 2013
'Immense loss for Syria': Gunmen kill Idlib activist Raed Fares
Raed Fares, who heads Kafranbel-based Radio Fresh and survived a 2014 ISIL shooting, dies in gun attack, reports say.
Raed Fares gained prominence with protest banners that drew international attention on social media [File: Raed Fares via Reuters]
Gunmen in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province have killed Raed Fares, a prominent activist who ran an independent radio station in the country's last opposition stronghold.
Fares was shot on Friday along with his colleague Hamoud Juneid in the town of Kafranbel, according to their Radio Fresh station.
Fares and Juneid were "shot dead by unknown assailants riding a van in Kafranbel", Fresh FM, which provides independent news and satirises both President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups, said in a post on Facebook.
Salman, a 33-year-old mathematics teacher, who witnessed the attack, told the Middle East Eye website that attackers in a van driving "at high speed ... fired shots from a machine gun, before speeding away".
Juneid died during the attack while Fares died of his wounds at the Orient Hospital, Middle East Eye reported. More...
This section is reprinted from our 15 December 2013 post on Raed Fares and Kafranbel
Protest March in Kafranbel, Idlib Province | 6 Dec 2013
The fortitude & courage of revolutionaries .. From Kafranbel
A town in northwestern Syria has become the creative center of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. Since the beginning of the uprising, the residents of Kafr Anbel have drawn signs that skewer the Assad regime and express outrage that the world has not done more to stop the killing in Syria.
This type of defiance and courage is what will ultimately destroy Assad and his tyrannical regime. Heroes are people that are pushed to the point that they have nothing to live for in their current situation and decide that to die trying, is far more superior than to live "dead".
Raed Fares, an activist in Kafranbel, explained that the town's residents chose to draw in English, rather than Arabic, explicitly to reach an international audience. "It's very important to send our message to all the world," he said. "And English is the public language."
And here's to hoping that this little website will help you guys reach your messages to that greater audience. Keep it up!
Thanksgiving message from people in Syria to people in the US
Kafranbel: the Syrian revolution in 3 minutes | 17 Sept 2013
This is how the international community reacted to the genocide commited by Assad against the Syrian people
Yesterday we posted reports that Kafranbel, a town in Idlib made famous for its witty protest signs made in English, was under heavy attack by regime forces (map). At the end of the day, there was little news beyond the report that many shells had fallen and many civilians were injured.
In Kafranbel, in rebel-held Idlib province, I met Abu Yusuf, who had been a policeman for 26 years. His words voice a sentiment shared by the Syrian mainstream: "I don't fast in Ramadan. I pray when my mind isn't busy. I'm a Muslim, but my first religion is humanity. I don't care about the religion of the president. But I'll fight to the death to not be ruled by a murderer."
