Human Rights
Tempting as it is to isolate Donald Trump as the worst president in history (and “worst” is putting it mildly . . . more like the most narcissistically infantile, the most Nazi-friendly), doing so achieves nothing beyond a fleeting sense of satisfaction.
Yeah, he’s scary. His supporters are scary. But he comes in a context.
Whether or not he’s impeached, or removed from office via the 25th Amendment, his effect on the country won’t go away. Trump can’t be undone, any more than an act of terror — or war — can be undone.
But maybe Trump can be addressed beyond a sense of outrage. Maybe he can foment, in spite of himself, not simply change, but national transformation. Realizing this, and seizing hold of the moment he has created, may be a far more effective way of dealing with his unhinged presidency than merely exuding endless shock.
This, of course, is how the mainstream media is dealing with the situation. Journalism has never been so yellow. Extra! Extra! Trump tweets a whopper! Read all about it!
Racism is not a new phenomenon and while it is an ongoing daily reality for vast numbers of people, it also often bursts from the shadows to remind us that just because we can keep ignoring the endless sequence of ‘minor’ racist incidents, racism has not gone away despite supposedly significant efforts to eliminate it. I say ‘supposedly’ because these past efforts, whatever personnel, resources and strategies have been devoted to them, have done nothing to address the underlying cause of racism and so their impact must be superficial and temporary. As the record demonstrates.
I say this not to denounce the effort made and, in limited contexts, the progress achieved, but if we want to eliminate racism, rather than confine it to the shadows for it to burst out periodically, then we must have the courage to understand what drives racism and design responses that address this cause.
Given the intense media coverage over Charlottesville, a recent small headline largely escaped notice, but it could have a major impact on how Americans come to terms with the excesses that developed from the “global war on terror.” For the first time, several individuals closely associated with the CIA torture program were about to become answerable in a court of law for “legally aiding and abetting and/or factually aiding and abetting torture,” forcing the government to intervene and come to a settlement of the case.
Human history is peppered with dreadful accounts of minority communities who were deliberately demonized before atrocities were committed against them. Though the global Muslim community is not under a clear and present danger, dark clouds are indeed gathering. The upsurge of belligerent Islamophobia and violent ethnic nationalism in the West, the mass deportation of refugees in US and other Western countries, and the institutional ethnic-cleansing of the Rohingya—a Muslim minority community in Myanmar—should raise red flags.
Yes, there are some Muslims out there who wreak havoc; who cause destruction of lives and properties only to get themselves, their people, and nations destroyed. Whether they are ISIS, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram or any other, they have been the fatal curse that destroyed or gave the pretext for mightier nations to invade and destroy many Muslim nations.
Donald Trump stands cluelessly at the edge of history, exemplifying everything wrong with the past, oh, 10,000 years or so.
The necessity for fundamental change in humanity’s global organization is not only profound, but urgent.
Trump’s latest outburst about North Korea’s nukes — threatening that country “with fire, fury, and frankly power the likes of which the world has never seen before” — creates a comic book Armageddon scenario in the media, except, of course, his power to launch a nuclear war on impulse is real.
I was asked to speak about prosecuting weapons dealers and war makers with a focus on Saudi Arabia. There are, I think, many ways that one could go about that. I say this as a non-lawyer, with certain perverse preferences that lawyers generally don’t share.
Existence is Resistance: The Palestine Museum of Natural History with Dr.
Mazin Qumsiyeh https://youtu.be/IZFSTAZ4_jw
Palestinian Ecoactivism with Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh https://youtu.be/PHRFPbyiioE
THREE ACTIONS
Jewish voice for peace ACTION: Five nonviolent activists were forbidden
from boarding a plane from Washington to Israel - and neither the airline
(Lufthansa) or the Israeli government will explain why or show us
documentation. We are activists for equality, justice, and dignity for all
people of Israel/Palestine. Join us in asking Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer
to explain why we can’t go there.
To read Witnesses of the Unseen: Seven Years in Guantanamo is to run your mind along the contours of hell.
The next step, if you’re an American, is to embrace it. Claim it. This is who we are: We are the proprietors of a cluster of human cages and a Kafkaesque maze of legal insanity. This torture center is still open. Men (“forever prisoners”) are still being held there, their imprisonment purporting to keep us safe.
The book, by Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir — two Algerian men arrested in Bosnia in 2001 and wrongly accused of being terrorists — allows us to imagine ourselves at Guantanamo, this outpost of the Endless War.
It is all about the oil. Whatever else one hears about Venezuela, it is all about the oil. That is what one needs to know first about why the U.S. Empire has Venezuela under siege. It is about the oil.
When President Trump says, "Venezuela is a mess; Venezuela is a mess, we will see what happens”, it is all about the oil. When the U.S. Empire imposes sanctions on Venezuela, it is all about the oil. When the mainstream corporate media (i.e. Fake News) cries crocodile tears about democracy, human rights and political prisoners in Venezuela, it is about the oil. When the U.S. calls into session emergency meeting of the United Nations and the Organization of American States, it is about oil.
Venezuela has the largest known reserve of oil in the world, and Venezuela controls its own oil, not international corporations; and it uses its oil for the benefit of its people. The U.S. Empire instead wants to control that oil and it wants the profits from the oil to go to U.S. oil corporations, especially ExxonMobil. Everything else one hears now about Venezuela is prologue or epilogue. The main plot is about the oil.