Global
The result of a vote, on December 14, in the US House of Representatives regarding the combating of Islamophobia, may, possibly, appear to be a positive sign of change, that Washington is finally confronting this socio-political evil. However, conclusions must not be too hasty.
Disquietingly, Congress was nearly split on the vote. While 219 voted in favor of the resolution, 212 voted against it. What is so objectionable about the resolution, which was introduced by Rep. Ilhan Omar, that prompted a ‘nay’ vote by such a large number of American representatives?
What’s your story?
We tell stories, which evolve into myths — and myths are what hold us together. They create the collective entity known as the human race.
And myths evolve.
At least, good God, I hope they do.
We’re stuck, right now, in the myth of collective suicide, more generally known as the myth of the conquest of good over evil. And since history is told by the winners of humanity’s wars, those currently in power are always — always! — the good guys.
David Suzuki puts it this way: “As dictators have shown throughout history, collective narratives are often successful when they have a bad guy, someone or something that is ‘other.’”
Haaretz’s investigative report - ‘Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in '48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew’ - is a must-read. It should be particularly read by any person who considers himself a ‘Zionist’ and also by people who, for whatever reason, support Israel, anywhere in the world.
Top U.S. officials want us to believe that the Pentagon carefully spares civilian lives while making war overseas. The notion is pleasant. And with high-tech killing far from home, the physical and psychological distances have made it even easier to believe recent claimsthat American warfare has become “humane.”
War spews hell in all directions. Just ask the guys at Talon Anvil, a secret U.S. “strike cell” recently exposed by the New York Times as a unit with a reputation for ignoring the rules of engagement and killing lots and lots of civilians with drone strikes as it plays war with ISIS.
Part of the problem, a source told the Times, is that “the daily demands of overseeing strike after strike seemed to erode operators’ perspective and fray their humanity.”
Nuclear weapons are at the pinnacle of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” If you’d rather not think about them, that’s understandable. But such a coping strategy has limited value. And those who are making vast profits from preparations for global annihilation are further empowered by our avoidance.
At the level of national policy, nuclear derangement is so normalized that few give it a second thought. Yet normal does not mean sane. As an epigraph to his brilliant book The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg provides a chillingly apt quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “Madness in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.”
Now, some policy technocrats for the USA’s nuclear arsenal and some advocates for arms control are locked in a heated dispute over the future of ICBMs: intercontinental ballistic missiles. It’s an argument between the “national security” establishment -- hell-bent on “modernizing” ICBMs -- and various nuclear-policy critics, who prefer to keep the current ICBMs in place. Both sides are refusing to acknowledge the profound need to get rid of them entirely.
The decision by several governments across the globe to institute travel bans on seven African countries, starting on November 27, due to the discovery of a new Covid-19 variant, Omicron, was perceived to be hasty in the eyes of some and fully justifiable on medical grounds, in the view of others. However, the matter is hardly that of a difference of opinion.
The swiftness of choking off some of Africa’s poorest countries, including Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe, is particularly disturbing if placed within a proper context concerning the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Global South, generally, and Africa, in particular.