Human Rights

I recently read an article by investigative historian Eric Zuesse, author of America’s Empire of Evil, that began “One of the core features of nazism (not the German political Party but its core ideology) is racism, which allows some ethnicities (or “races”) to be advantaged by law, and other ethnicities to be discriminated against by the law — it is, at its very core, AGAINST equal rights under law.” Well, I was intrigued by what was packed into one long sentence due to recent developments in the United States and I am sure that none of my regular readers will be surprised by my view that a lot of what has gone wrong in the United States and elsewhere has been due to a racist Israel and its powerful lobbies.

On February 22, 2024, China's Ambassador to The Hague, Zhang Jun, uttered the unexpected.

His testimony, like that of a number of others, was meant to help the International Court of Justice (ICJ) formulate a critical and long-overdue legal opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. 

Zhang articulated the Chinese position, which, unlike the American envoy's testimony, was entirely aligned with international and humanitarian laws.

But he delved into a tabooed subject—one that even Palestine's closest allies in the Middle East and Global South dared not touch: the right to use armed struggle.

The global trade war was launched yesterday officially by the Trump regime.
It is one of the last gasps and "lashing out" of a dying US empire. A
global recession will follow but the biggest losers will be the western
world (primarily US and EU) and its lackeys (those who tied their future
with it like the Palestinian and other Arab "leaders"). My advice to them
and others: end the genocide now and get rid of your US $ and any
investments you have in multinational corporations tied to
imperialism/Zionism (and thus to genocide) and focus on how to feed people
in an era of climate change and job elimination (due to AI etc). Boycotts,
divestment, sanctions will make the period of pain shorter as a new world
order is being born (see bdsmovement.net). Dare we hope for a new era of
peace, equality, free trade, and sustainability?

Yunseo Chung is a 21-year-old South Korean student who has been living in the US since she was 7 years old. Chung is an academically gifted student and was the valedictorian at her high school. Suddenly Chung has gone into hiding from the government Gestapo-style ICE agents who are hunting her down in an unmarked van for exercising her right to free speech by taking part in the campus demonstrations calling for ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

My journey into the realm of people’s history began during my teenage years when I first read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. This initial exposure sparked my curiosity about how history is constructed, and it led me to delve deeper into historiography—particularly the evolution of people’s history as an intellectual movement. Over the years, I encountered a wide range of historians, from Michel Foucault and Marc Bloch to Lucien Febvre and Chris Harman, each offering unique perspectives on the study of ordinary people in history.