mouthporn.net #empire – @protoslacker on Tumblr

Three Good Links

@protoslacker / protoslacker.tumblr.com

I read posts online that interest, infuriate, stimulate, inspire, or otherwise move me. I'll share short snippets. Mastodon Shuffle

This attack was undertaken at the direction of Bill Flanagan, President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Alberta. Thus it is imperative that President Flanagan, the University of Alberta Board of Directors, and the campus community be reminded of the kihci-asotamâtowina, the sacred promises which bind all who live upon these lands to live according to the principles of miyo-wîcêhtowin (good relations), wîtaskêwin (peaceful living together on the land), and tâpwêwin (speaking with truth). This treaty relationship is the only moral or legal claim the university has to the lands it occupies, to the research it conducts, and to the access it has to Indigenous lands and resources. This university, its president Bill Flanagan, and other members of administration, violated all of these principles, and failed to uphold their Treaty obligations when they unleashed state violence upon students, staff, and community members on May 11th.

âpihtawikosisân posted on May 14,2024. Statement of Treaty Principles: University of Alberta’s May 11th attack on students, staff, and community

To access the signable Google form please click here.

#empire #law #relations #morality #honor #indigenous wisdom #palestine

Mitt Romney Through a Counterinsurgency Lens

Last week I read a piece by Julia Conley in Common Dreams, Romney Admits Push to Ban TikTok Is Aimed at Censoring News Out of Gaza.

The article is about Mitt Romney and Antony Blinken in conversation as the keynote address at The Sedona Forum. The version of the article I first saw had the full address embedded. The page today has a 2-minute snippet posted by Arnaud Betrand at Twitter.com that really fits with the article. But I clicked to watch the full video and from the very start felt so much disdain for Mitt Romney, a gut-level disgust I hadn't felt about him before.

I know the feeling and also know that it often gets in my way about understanding. The solution isn't to ignore the feeling, which I probably can't do anyhow, but rather to take some time to attempt to better understand.

Later in the week I caught a live episode of Millennial's Are Killing Capitalism with Dylan Rodrigues at about the 50 minute mark. Rodrigues and MAKC host Jared Ware are discussan article by Rodrigues, How the Stop Asian Hate Movement Became Entwined with Zionism, Policing, and Counterinsurgency.

The lens which Rodrigues provided of counterinsurgency as a political logic was very useful to me for begining to unravel the sticky ball of disdain for Mitt Romney. I've paid too little attention to what. counterinsurgency is. here The conversation gave me plenty of pointers to learn more.

Dylan Rodrigues also peeled down another layer to the ways in which we can imagine the state. And he mentioned that he'd been studying the question with William Anderson and Dean Spade among others. I found a conversation with Harsha Walia, William Anderson, and Dean Spade at Barnard in 2022, No borders! No prisons! No cops! No war! No state?. The discussion opened up a view to imaging states and no-states.

A political logic which makes turning a blind eye towards genocide is appalling to me, but perhaps even mores shocking is the many ways I find myself entwined in that logic. Thinking about counter insurgency and the state more critically is necessary for imagining and doing something other which more consistent with what I value.

#gaza #genocide #empire #american foregn policy #counterinsurgency

For all of France’s proclamations of liberté, égalité, and fraternité, slavery was essential to both the moral and material architecture of French imperialism in Africa. But legitimizing moral hypocrisy has always been essential to making capitalism work.

Alex Park in Africa Is a Country. A crop that changed the world

Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History by Jori Lewis

#racial capitalis #africa #empire #peanuts #book #soap #slavery

That is the most recent legacy of Bernard Lewis. The invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq. But Lewis’ affiliation with powers of death and destruction went much deeper than that. Afghanistan and Iraq are in ruins today, millions of Arabs and Muslims have been murdered, scarred for life, subjected to the indignity of military occupation and refugee camps, in no small measure because of the systemic maligning of Muslims Lewis advanced in his books and articles, and with them informed generations of imperial officers.

Hamid Dabashi in Aljazeera. Alas, poor Bernard Lewis, a fellow of infinite jest

On Bernard Lewis and ‘his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong

#bernard lewis #empire #war on the greatere middle east

This may not translate into immediate support for Palestinian freedom, but Palestinian liberation is being seen in the new light of day. This is the challenge for the left now, the one we are all focused on and the one we must think most sharply about. We are living through a revival of internationalism and another extended moment of mass protest. Even as we tire in the face of exhausting odds, a hulking imperial ship that refuses to acknowledge our power as it trembles, we must persist. A victory against the systems that oppress Palestinians is a victory against the systems that oppress us all.

Hammer and Hope, No. 3 Spring 2024. ANTI-ARAB RACISM AND THE U.S. AND ISRAELI WAR MACHINES

The West’s dehumanization of Arabs has helped to normalize war crimes.

#americn foreign policy #war on greater middle east #racism #opression #empire

As an unprecedented act of resource sovereignty, OPEC’s intervention represented the high tide of anticolonial internationalism. But the economic crisis, which the price hikes created blew the same front apart.

George Roberts in African Arguments. The First Oil Shock: February 1974 and the making of our times

1974 saw an unprecedented surge in global oil prices. Workers, students and soldiers took to the street, toppling governments from Addis to Niamey. With the end of cheap oil, Africa’s liberatory march entered an era of prolonged crisis – not unlike today.

#oil #empire #money #africa

Why did these attempts to preserve empire fail? Europeans could not understand how it was that, having subjugated 90 percent of the Earth, they were now on such a losing streak. Well, over a period of 450 years, by criminalizing birth control, they had obliged their women to produce six to eight children each, and thus to provide their respective empires with more personnel than was lost in the process of conquest and colonization. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the birth rate for women in the various Western empires fell to just two per capita, while at the same time each of their female colonial subjects was bearing an average of six to eight children. And, as of 1970—starting in Germany—Europe had fallen to fewer than two children per woman.

Gunnar Heinsohn (translated by Rafaël Newman) in 3Quarks Daily. Putin’s Second Genocide

#genocide #empire #demographics #russia #ukraine

upload.wikimedia.org

Patrice Lumumba, during the round table conference in Brussels in January 1960

Photo: Harry Pot , CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, via Wikimedia Commons

Patrice Lumumba was assasinated on January 17, 1961.

I noted the anniversery of Patrice Lumumba's death and was keen to read more about him today, party goaded on by my abrasive reaction to Senator Fetterman saying that it is 'appalling' that South Africa brought the genocide case given its history. What is the history the senator is referring?

I can't claim vast knowledge of history on the African continent. But I am old and follow the news a bit. For what it's worth sometimes the news cuts deeply and and is painful to me. In my lifetime, news of American foreign policy has hurt a lot of people. Certainly that's the case in many situations across Africa. The assassinationof Lumumba provides a window into the reasoning behind the policies. of Lumumba provides a widow into the reasoning behind the policies.

I listened to an excellet podcast interview with Leo Zeilig at Youtube Patrice Lumumba, Africa's Lost Leader With Leo Zeilig. And read a interview with Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja at Jacobin Why They Killed Patrice Lumumba.

Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja remarks in the interview that Dag Hammarskjöld shared the same worldview as major Western powers. A character sketch of Patrice Lumumba by Brian Urquhart at the UN provides insight about that worldview.

There has been renewed attention to the plane crash that killed Hammarskjöld. Susan Williams's piece at The Yale Review provides a glimpse into that topic.

It is worth noting that Israel's founding occurs at the same time of the "decolonization" of African countries. I am perpelxed by the strident media campaigns denying that the modern state of Israel is a colonial project. This page at The American Jewish Committee is one example.

Western powers, especially the USA has folowed a neo-coloinial agenda in Africa. The US special relationship with Israel seems a part of this wider neo-colonial agenda.

#patrice lumumba #africa #empire #democracy #american foreign policy

The Palestinians are engaged in an anti-colonial struggle, possibly the last anti-colonial struggle in today’s world. But their struggle is widely attributed to religious fanaticism and irrational hatred of Jews rather than to the normal, universal desire of all people to live in freedom and dignity on their land. The western stand with Israel carries an echo of the habitual colonial tendency to treat struggles for national liberation as proof of the savagery, barbarism and terrorism of the indigenous population. This is how the “civilised world” responded to the liberation struggles of South Africans, Algerians, Kenyans and Vietnamese. And this is how some western leaders look upon Palestinian resistance today.

Avi Shlaim in Middle East Eye. War on Gaza: Netanyahu, Hamas and the origins of the 2023 Nakba war

In this extract from a new book, Avi Shlaim says that all the signs are there that the Netanyahu government is actively planning a second, and decisive, Nakba

Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm

#israel #palestine #americn foreign policy #empire #ethnic cleansing

protoslacker reblogged

“We are not any smarter, kinder, wiser, or more moral than people who lived ninety years ago. We are just as likely to needlessly give up our political power and to remain willfully ignorant of darkness as it’s dawning. But we know something they didn’t know: we know that the Holocaust is possible.”

— Masha Gessen Being Awesome

Zeit: Read the talk that Masha Gessen gave at the ceremony of the Hannah Arendt Prize in Bremen. "Comparison is the way we know the world"

Source: daviddark.substack.com

#genocide #Israel #american foreign policy #empire

Even if you fully believed all the nonsense about nonbinding ethics codes that are enforced by mindpower, Cool Whip, and promises of good faith, it just isn’t possible to read the stories about 20 years of partisanship, pay-to-play, and the erosion of norms of judicial humility and restraint on the part of the MAGA wing of the court and still feel confident that this is the body to which one wants to entrust the major electoral outcomes of the coming year.

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate. The Supreme Court Did This to Itself

#john robert's court #law #politics #empire #dishonor #craven and corrupt

The entire 2.3 million population of the Gaza Strip is facing crisis levels of hunger and the risk of famine is increasing each day as the Israel-Hamas war grinds on, a U.N.-backed body said in a report published on Thursday. That makes the proportion of households in the Palestinian enclave that are in hunger crisis, or suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, the largest ever recorded globally, the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said.

Aidan Lewis at Reuters. Entire Gaza population facing hunger crisis, famine risk - U.N.-backed report

#american foreign policy #president biden #ethnic cleansing #empire

I am a part of this depravity, and that's hard to fathom.

#palestine #gaza #ethnic cleansing #horor #american foreign policy #empire

The implications of destroying Oak Flat cannot be genuinely understood without looking at the context, history, and relationships of Indigenous people to the land. Similarly, collaborating with a company like Rio Tinto cannot be understood without recognizing their very destructive history and relationship with Native peoples.

Zinaida Carroll in Restoration Magazine at NIWRC (June, 2021). Oak Flat | Chi'chil Bildagoteel.

The Spiritual Connecton of Idigenous Women to the Land and Its Crucial Role in the Apache's Battle for Sovereignty

#oak flat #law #indigenous law #politics #empire

Palestine w/ Mohammed el-Kurd

Featuring Mohammed el-Kurd on Palestine. A short but expansive interview.

In the interview Mohammed el-Kurd ways that Gaza is an international struggle. One of the reasons he cites is that Gaza is, "a concentrated illustration of the ways western superpowers come together to exert violence against indigenous and brown people.." then adds how widspread the tactics used in Gaza are, against climate activism and policing across the USA.

Avi Shlalm wrote an important article in Prospect Magazine, All that remains. The great stregnth of the article is a short and accurate history that shines light on the western superpowers complicity. Shalalm makes the case that the only way out of this morass is a negotiated settlement. And that the USA cannot serve "as the sole broker because its pronounced bias in favour of Israel."

Both the interview and the Prospect piece are subtantial and nuanced. I'm putting the two together because it was the conjunction of the two that helped me to see how important an internatioalist's perspective on Gaza is. The attention and voices of people around the globe.are a source of hope in the midst of this horror.

#power #violence #empire #Israel #Palestine

A commemorative quarter honoring the late Edith Kanakaʻole, venerated Hawaiian cultural icon, kumu hula, composer, chanter, and a key influence in the Hawaiian renaissance of the 1970s has been released into circulation by the U.S. Mint. Her designation as an honoree is an unbelievable honor for her family, foundation, and people. Featured on the quarter depicting Edith Kanakaʻole is the inscription “E hō mai ka ʻike,” which refers to the intertwined role hula and chants play in this perpetuation of Hawaiian knowledge systems.

Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation. US Mint Quarter Release Celebrations By Edith Kanaka 'ole Foundation

#knowledge systems #hula #empire

Kloppenberg is especially concerned about the global south. “With the saturation of most commercial seed markets in the USA, Canada, the European Union and Australia, the big players are looking to the global south for new customers. Their target is the tens of millions of peasants and small farmers who still save, replant, share, exchange and even sell seed.” Kloppenburg is currently working with farmers in Kenya to help empower them by registering their seeds under OSSI principles.

Jack Kloppenburg quoted in an article by Michaela Hass in Plantings at the World Sensorium. “Open Source” Seeds Loosen Big Ag’s Grip on Farmers

A handful of companies own the patents on virtually every seed planted in the US. Now, a new crop of unowned seeds is bringing biodiversity back to farming.

#food #seeds #open source #rules #law #empire

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.

mouthporn.net