Author: mara.ahmed

it’s hard to be a person of color, someone whose identity’s foundational stone was set in the non-western world and engage with media, history, or culture produced by the west. one is constantly negotiating a minefield. with all its politico-historical analysis and feeling, the russian invasion of ukraine is not a global south problem. it does not, for the most part, involve people of color. yet western commentators, media and politicians found ways of dragging in the other and raising their glass to racism.

first the bulgarian PM said something like: ‘these are not the refugees we are used to. they are european, intelligent, educated people, some are IT programmers…this is not the usual refugee wave of people with an unknown past. no european country is afraid of them.’

in the british telegraph, daniel hannan wrote emotionally: ‘they seem so like us. that is what makes it so shocking. war is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. it can happen to anyone.’

on france’s BFM TV, a commentator pontificated: ‘we’re not talking here about syrians fleeing the bombing of the syrian regime backed by putin, we’re talking about europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.’

and on america’s CBS news a world-weary guy declared: ‘this is not a place like iraq or afghanistan…’ he was generous enough to call ukrainian cities ‘relatively civilized’ and ‘relatively european,’ confessing how he had to choose those words carefully.

to hell with these people and their parochial, racist worldview. posting this graphic to remind everyone that folx are the same everywhere, war is always repugnant, and some of the most grotesque violence in the world is funded and wielded by the ‘civilized’ west.

stop wars everywhere. and let people move freely and safely.

#waronukraine #russianwar #ukraine #russia #warsucks #stopwars #syria #iraq #afghanistan #refugeesarehumanbeings #europeanracism #europeanexceptionalism #westernmedia #europeanpolitics #racistinfrastructure #racisthistory

so relieved that the hostage situation at the colleyville synagogue ended without any hostages being hurt. the captor was killed, not sure how, but the hostages escaped or were let go and are safe. thank god.

bringing violence and terror into a house of worship is a special kind of horror, whether in texas, pittsburgh, christchurch, quebec city, charleston or birmingham, whether within the purview of what we mourn and condemn officially or further away in the darkest recesses of empire and settler colonialism (remember the house to house killings in fallujah including shootings inside a mosque during the US siege, or more recently, the brutal raid on al-aqsa mosque).

a special kind of horror.

don’t know if we will ever learn the truth about the texas hostage-taker (msm will agitate, jumble together and churn out its own political fantasies), but i wish he hadn’t dragged aafia siddiqui into his delusions.

aafia siddiqui is living her own horror, the kind where one is reduced to sub-human chaff, a by-product of the war on terror’s systems of annihilation – bleeding, screaming, squashed waste stowed away in guantanamo or miscellaneous black sites and prisons. she was disappeared in 2003, near islamabad, along with her 3 children (the youngest was 6 months old at the time and is still missing, presumed dead). she has been detained, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for almost 20 years. it’s beyond comprehension, perhaps beyond human empathy or compassion. a lot of what was ‘churned out’ to justify her destruction, reads like lurid accusations of witchcraft back in the 1600s. her family has nothing to do with what happened. her brutalization started a long time ago. her nightmare needs to end.