Joseph Essertier

「ペンライトは剣より強し」

bbc.com/news/world-eur… bbc.com/news/world-eur… infiniteunknown.net/2014/03/08/bbc…

A totally different interpretation of the events of May 2nd, 2014 from what we find *today* in Western media. The BBC had earlier been warning about the resurgence of Nazism in Ukraine, e.g., youtu.be/5SBo0akeDMY?si…

Antikriegsaktivisten in London gedachten des Jahrestags des Massakers von Odessa im Mai 2014, bei dem Dutzende Gewerkschafter von rechtsextremen Milizen getötet wurden, weil sie sich gegen den Putsch von Euromaidan stellten.

NOW: May Day protester climbs to top of Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge arch in Washington DC and unfurls a black banner as police and firefighters respond in what I’m told is a one-man demonstration against the Iran War.

Parenti talks about this in his famous “yellow” lecture. Denial of education and literacy is denial of a full existence, of dignity and opportunity, of one’s very humanity. The less you know about the world, and the less you can learn on your own, the easier you are to control.

Yes, there used to be a national push in the U.S. But now intellectuals don’t seem to care about it, or even about democracy in general, especially industrial democracy. I have written about movements in Japan to improve literacy by adopting the Roman alphabet and colloquial writing, e.g., researchmap.jp/read0153721/pu… My book on the class and gender aspects of the struggle for greater literacy in Japan was published a few months ago: kinsei-do.co.jp/books/1246/ The situation in Japan is not so different from the U.S. The Oakland, CA city council proposal in the 1990s to treat Ebonics as a language and teach children there to understand and appreciate the differences between Ebonics and standard American English caused many people to freak out. Even Jesse Jackson was alarmed at first, until he realized that the aim of the Oakland city council was full literacy and true bilingualism for African-American children. Appreciating the value of one’s native language and how its grammar differs from the language of the hegemonic, dominant group (white, middle class people in the U.S.) The Oakland city council were ahead of their time. They knew that study of Ebonics, just like study of Spanish by Latino children in CA, would enrich the lives of African-American children, as they learned about the beauty and richness of the culture and community that they grew up in. The main opponents of the spread of literacy in Japan and China have been intellectuals, especially powerful intellectuals with strong ties to the state or who benefit from state power. John DeFrancis did much research on the situation in China: pinyin.info/readings/defra… Lu Xun, the great writer of China, remembered as a modernizer of literature there, was a huge pioneer and advocate of literacy in China through script and style reform, but the history of the reform movement that he was a part of has been actively suppressed by conservative intellectuals and by governments in Japan and even China. (Even the USSR eventually opposed Esperanto, the international language for the working class). But the USSR originally paid for the development of Latinhua, which became Pinyin. (The basic facts are on Wikipedia). Qu Qiubai, the de facto head of the Chinese Communist Party at one time, himself was one of the pioneering researchers who developed this Roman alphabet script for Chinese. His reward for that work was being executed by the Nationalists (Chiang Kaishek’s KMT). Another key pioneer was a Russian researcher, mostly forgotten today. Mao Zedong advocated the use of the Roman alphabet for Chinese for many years, but he changed his position and government policy as soon as his party took power in 1949. Communist advocates of “Latinization” or “Romanization” were shocked. Improving literacy through script reform had been a major aim of social reform for them. But elite, liberal and left-leaning intellectuals have generally sided with the traditional hegemonic culture and the dominant class, and have opposed revolutionary language reform. Look at what happened in Korea when an easy-to-learn script (Hangul) was adopted. Both South and North Korea enjoy high literacy rates. South Korea, not constantly threatened by other nation-states and by the most powerful military in the world, became a thriving democracy. Preventing the spread of literacy is part of holding down the “riff raff.”

Beyond the arguments, it’s just really sad that most people in this country, from kids to adults, can’t and don’t read. Literacy is so essential to a dignified and intelligent life, and there used to be a national push for it not too long ago. And now it’s damn near gone.

A court in Israel says the two volunteers abducted in international waters from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla will not be released. The lawyer for Brazilian national Thiago Avila and Spanish Saif Abu Keshek says they have been abused in custody. Brazil and Spain say their abduction and detention are illegal.

A citizen’s group in Japan takes out a full page ad in the Asahi newspaper saying, “No war! Protect the Constitution!” The Asahi has a huge circulation, over 3 million for its morning edition, which is larger than the Washington Post circulation.

Some 50,000 people joined a peace march in Tokyo, chanting “No to war!”, “No to constitutional revision!”, “No to militarization!” Follow: T.me/presstv

ぜひ５万人のエネルギーをご堪能ください。 平和のうちに生存する権利 憲法変えさせない 不断の努力 戦争止める 憲法記念日 #2026憲法大集会 ＃憲法集会2026

@berlinSTOPwar That is KAWAGUCHI Mayumi, who has been tenaciously singing throughout Luchu (the Ryūkyū Islands) and Japan for peace, inspiring advocates of peace for at least a decade. You can find lots of her music at YouTube and other Internet sites, e.g., youtu.be/YYyLQgA8dWI?si…

Japanischer Musiker singt Die Internationale bei der Maikundgebung in Osaka

🇪🇸 Spanish PM Sanchez says he delivered three messages to Israel’s Netanyahu: 📌 Spain will always protect its citizens 📌 Will always defend international law 📌 Demands release of Spanish citizen detained on Sumud flotilla

🚨 URGENT: GSF PARTICIPANTS BRUTALIZED BY IOF AFTER 40 HOURS AT SEA 🚨 Global Sumud Flotilla participants have just survived 40 hours of calculated cruelty aboard an iOF navy vessel in Greek waters. They were denied adequate food and water. They were forced to sleep on floors that were deliberately and repeatedly flooded. When the military moved to abduct two participants, Saif Abukeshek (Spain / Palestinian origins) and Thiago Ávila (Brazil), our crew peacefully resisted and the response was sheer violence. Participants were punched, kicked, and dragged across the deck with their hands bound behind their backs. They suffered broken noses, cracked ribs and bloody beatings. Shots were even fired at them in the chaos. The nightmare isn't over. Greek police are now trapping our battered crew on buses, denying them the freedom to leave while Saif and Thiago have been abducted and taken back to Occupied Palestine. Our participants remain unbroken: 60 participants have immediately launched a hunger strike. This is a vicious attack on peaceful civilians. We will not look away. We demand their freedom and international accountability NOW.

This looks interesting: *Chūkyō: The urban branding of Nagoya, Japan’s “middle capital”* by Mitchell Clark. etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd…

At the Southeast Exit of Shinjuku Station in Tokyo there was a lively protest against the militarism of the Takaichi administration and their attempt to remilitarize Japan by rewriting the Peace Constitution. This is the exit for beautiful Shinjuku Gyoen Park, where many tourists go.

@AntiatomOrg made an appeal to people in the U.S. to take concrete steps to prevent nuclear war.

非武装市民（unarmed civilian）という形でガザの人々を助けようとしている、WBWのジョン・フランシス・ルア（John Francis Reuwer）さんはイスラエルのならず者たちに誘拐されました。誘拐された方々は暴行を受け、食事や水を与えられず、苦痛を伴う姿勢で拘束されたと主張しているそうです。 turkiyetoday.com/world/flotilla…

「マイダン革命」（虐殺）を研究して本を書いた、イヴァン・カチャノフスキー氏によると、ベルギーや英国、ドイツ、ウクライナ、米国のテレビ番組の映像には、ホテル・ウクライナやマイダン勢力が支配するその他の建物から、狙撃兵によってマイダンの活動家やBBCのジャーナリストが誘き出され、射殺される様子が映っていると言ってます。以下Substackの記事は分かりやすい証拠です。 substack.com/home/post/p-18…

On 2 May 2014, western-backed neo-Nazis in Ukraine forced protesters into the House of Trade Unions in Odessa and set it on fire. 48 people burned to death, and 200 were injured. Those who tried to escape were violently assaulted. This was among the opening salvos of the NATO proxy war that is now tearing the country apart.

SUCCESS! Animal activists who tirelessly work to stop industrialized torture of dogs and other animals are some of the bravest, most noble and most self-sacrificing people I've known, and they just had a rare but very important and well-deserved victory. They've been working for a decade, often in obscurity, to shut Ridglan farms in Wisconsin due to the sadistic conditions in which beagles are bred and kept before being sold for hideous experiments, then killed. (When I first began reporting on the abuses at Ridglan and similar industrial horrors, it was thanks to these activists who kept haranguing me and many in media to pay attention.) Some of the worst corporations systemically abusing dogs and other animals are protected in the US by political officials even though they're violating animal abuse laws on a massive scale: because these corporations buy up federal and state legislators. For the same reason: it's the activists trying to expose and stop this dog and animal torture who are the ones persecuted for peaceful protests: charged with felonies, sometimes even investigated by the FBI under "terrorism" laws. After all these years, @DxEverywhere, @WhiteCoatWaste, @waynehhsiung and others finally got some key federal and state politicians in Wisconsin and DC and national media -- both left and right -- to focus on the atrocities at Ridglan. That led Wisconsin officials to force the closure of Ridglan. All this became a big national media story a couple of weeks ago when the activists protested, trying to rescue the beagles (whom Ridglan planned to sell or kill before closure), and were beaten, tear-gassed and prosecuted by local police and private security. But now Ridglan, due to all this national attention, was forced to liberate the beagles. Look at these majestic dogs -- a breed chosen for experimentation due to their loving docility and trust, and who were bred into the world solely for experimentation, suffering and death -- finally being freed yesterday as a result of these activists' years of unpaid, sometimes dangerous, but always admirable work: