Global
When are American soldiers not really engaged in combat?
Generations of political leaders have eroded America’s prosperity. They've exported jobs, supported casino capitalism, funded wars. Now it's not just our tax dollars they’re after. It’s our children.
The coming wars are not patriotic. They are the result of the abject failure of political leadership and a long trail of lies stretching back decades.
Those who control the narrative and push for ever-increasing war as a solution to all ills are leading America, and America’s future generations, into an abyss from which we may never be able to recover.
Generations of political leaders have destroyed America’s economic largess through the signing of trade agreements which exported jobs and industry abroad. They have removed consumer protections and supported massive bailouts of casino capitalism, and now - again - predators are circling to extract every cent possible from the public purse through the forever war machine.
This time, however, it’s not just our tax dollars they’re after. It’s our children.
The word Muqawama in Palestinian lexicon does not need elaboration beyond the immediate meaning it generates among ordinary Palestinians. Only recently, and specifically after the Oslo peace accords and the sudden infusion of western-funded NGOs, did such terms as ‘peaceful resistance’ and ‘non-violent resistance’ begin to emerge within some circles of Palestinian intellectuals. These phrases, however, never truly registered as central to the collective discourse of Palestinians. For them, Muqawama remained: one - indivisible, all encompassing.
I clearly remember my first day at an UNRWA school in a refugee camp in Gaza. I was five years of age. It felt like my life was over.
The distance from Block 5 of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp to the New Camp – located within the municipal boundaries of Nuseirat - was long, exhausting and terrifying.
I had to walk for several miles, on a very dusty journey that compromised my new, specially tailored red suit and orange sandals.
On the arduous journey, passing through citrus orchards and heaps of sand, I was accompanied by hundreds of children, some more experienced and confident, and others, like me, crying all the way to the UNRWA Elementary School for Boys.
On the way, I learned about the 'crazy man of the orchard', the disheveled guard who chases after unruly children whenever they try to pluck orange fruits from the Hirthani trees. I also learned about the unleashed dogs that belonged to some Bedouin tribe, whose bites may result in many rabies injections and terrible pain.
"When someone shows you who they are,” Maya Angelou said, “believe them the first time."
That should apply to foreign-policy elites who show you who they are, time after time.
Officials running the Pentagon and State Department have been in overdrive for more than 250 days in support of Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Supposedly dedicated to defense and diplomacy, those officials have worked to implement and disguise Washington’s war policies, which have taken more lives than any other government in this century.
