Category: politics

the long goodbye

‘the long goodbye’ with riz ahmed is a short film but so incredibly hard to watch. as he says: “it feels clear to me that this does very much feel grounded in reality, the reality of people’s fears, the reality of where we’re at…” the sequence of events shown in the film is already a reality in palestine, kashmir, india, china, burma and many other parts of the world. this is where we’re at.

google the long goodbye short film riz ahmed. it’s free to watch online including on youtube and vimeo.

To be in a time of war

“The US military is never anywhere to protect human life, it is there to protect its interests. It couches its militarism in the language of the protection of human life while worsening/creating conditions that destroy human life. That’s the history of American interventionism.” (Sana Saeed)

i didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to say this on veterans day, while being bombarded with patriotism and pictures of people in military fatigues, but there’s nothing noble about war (especially its present incarnation). the power differentials between people and countries are so obscene that war is nothing more than theft, slaughter and genocide. we talk about white privilege and structural hierarchies within american society, but seem not to recognize those same inequalities when they apply to people outside the US. being american is also a kind of supremacy, a violent imperial blindness to the pain and suffering of others. i saw a disturbing discussion on fb where activists were trying to distance the police from the military, saying it’s ok to defund the police but without the military the US would be a sitting target. wow. don’t they realize white people feel the same way about the need for policing? that without it they would be open to the violence and criminality of people of color? they believe that white safety can only be guaranteed thru the oppression and harsh control of black and brown people. we can’t fight for our own liberation while justifying the killing and exploitation of other human beings. it doesn’t work that way.

here is a tribute to the great lebanese american poet, essayist, and visual artist etel adnan, who just passed away: “To Be in a Time of War”: An Homage to Etel Adnan (1925-2021)

from “to be in a time of war” by fady joudah:

To bomb, eliminate
a country, blow up a civilization, destroy the living.
To exit from one idea to enter another.
To admire the light,
bless the spring.
To consider the present time as sheer lead.
To create terror, that’s war.
To wallow in cruelty, conquest. To burn. To kill. To torture.
To humiliate: that’s war…

malala’s marriage

so i believe in marriage. when it works, it can be a beautiful thing. i wish malala all the best on her nikah. may she and asser malik truly form a vibrant and powerful partnership. the reason i’m posting this is because of the mean comments i’ve seen on twitter. people keep posting a snippet from an interview in which she questioned the necessity for marriage (when at university) and then went on to say how people grow and change all the time. so, yeah, exactly. also, she’s not too young. 24 is an ok age to make such a decision. finally, all the talk about an unwanted arranged marriage is preposterous. this is the girl who went to school even when some armed men decreed otherwise and got shot in the head for being too independent. u really think she can be railroaded into a marriage she doesn’t want? seriously? makes me think how at the end of the day, in spite of her fame and personal history, in spite of the relationship she has with her parents which is well documented, in spite of her obvious intelligence and education, when it comes down to it, she’s just a muslim girl. so the same old, tired, islamophobic tropes must be applied to her reflexively. marriage is always a gamble, whether u marry someone at 24 or 30 or live with them for years before tying the knot. we all do our best and i wish malala success and happiness in the decision she’s taken.

#malalayousafzai #malala #marriage #marriagecanbebeautiful #muslimwomenarepowerful #fuckislamophobia

rifqa by muhammed el kurd

cannot wait to read ‘rifqa,’ muhammed el kurd’s book of poetry, named after his grandmother rifqa. this is how susan abulhawa reviewed it:

“The words that Mohammed assembles in his poems aren’t pulled from books or dictionaries. They are snatched from clouds, excised from his bones, excavated from Jerusalem’s fabled tales and the inscriptions on her storied stones, plucked from the creases in tank treads and history’s smoke. There is rage in this book—piercing, defiant, inspiring rage that ebbs and returns, and settles in blank spaces that push words far apart on the page.

Unlike the lightness of the word rifqa, this book is heavy, weighed with 103 years of Rifqa’s life as a refugee warrior, a woman of infinite final words—which Mohammed calls punchlines—of a matriarch’s expansive love, a colonized indigenous people’s anguished longing to breathe, and a globalizing irreverence rising from what is muted, buried, razed, and painted over.”

You can watch my films online

Friends, I am delighted to share that in addition to ‘The Muslims I Know’ and ‘Pakistan One on One,’ you can also watch my third film online.

‘A Thin Wall’ (2015) is shot on both sides of the border, in India and Pakistan. Produced by myself and my friend, filmmaker Surbhi Dewan, it tells personal stories of the 1947 Partition. Surbhi and I interviewed our families and friends in order to capture their stories of loss and rupture, and their longing for home in what became another country.

Writer Namrata Joshi says about A Thin Wall: ‘Without intending to do so, the film makes one go beyond ruminating on the “us” and “them” narrative of 1947, when one country was torn apart to create two independent nations, forcing us to look at the fissures that continue to form and deepen more than 70 years later. The talk of “organised violence” and “systematic ethnic cleansing” back then reverberates in the present. It makes you wonder about the ghosts of the past mutating into newer entities of hatred, still using people as pawns. The film may not be about it, yet it makes the viewer confront this pervasive reality indirectly.’

The film is a collage of poetry, prose and images about the Partition by artists and writers such as John Siddique, Uzma Aslam Khan, Ajay Bhardwaj, and Asim Rafiqui.

With gorgeous animation by Gayane Bagdasarian and music by acclaimed singer songwriters Zeshan Bagewadi, Hassan Zaman and Nivedhan Singh.

Pls watch and support activist filmmaking! If you live in the US, Canada or UK, watch A Thin Wall on Amazon. Everywhere else, watch on Vimeo.

Robin Wilt wins

congrats Robin Reynolds Wilt! ur well-deserved victory gives me hope. thank u for standing up for ALL oppressed people, ALL over the world, and for addressing racism not just here at home (in brighton or the US more broadly) but also in other settler colonies such as israel (it’s important to be precise even if vague, feel-good statements about justice and solidarity get more likes).

the prolonged, relentless, and well-organized backlash robin received for saying “free palestine” only goes to show how deeply our struggles are intertwined. MLK’s famous words that “no one is free until we are all free” are not just a handy aphorism, they contain a practical guide for how to think and fight.

that a woman of color had the audacity and fortitude to live by those words, and face the overwhelming backlash that was bound to come, does not surprise me — that’s how history has always been made.

#blackwomenrock #freepalestine #endtheoccupation #endsettlercolonialism #zionismisracism #notoracism #blacklivesmatter #endamericanimperialism #endwhitesupremacy

book launch: documentary cinema in israel-palestine by shirly bahar

an unforgettable evening in brooklyn last night, celebrating the launch of “documentary cinema in israel-palestine – performance, the body, the home” by my brilliant friend shirly bahar. delicious palestinian food by ayat, music by laura elkeslassy, ira khonen temple, zafer tawil and dan kurfist, poetry by mariam bazeed, qais kamran, and halah abdelhadi, and a wonderful reading from the book by shirly.

“bahar offers a nuanced reading of the cinematic documentary corpus emerging from israel-palestine, as well palestinians’ and mizrahim’s different and unequal yet interrelated forms of oppression and racialization under israeli rule. while pain sets them apart, the documentary representations of pain of palestinians and mizrahim invite us to consider reconnection by focusing on the very relational nature of pain.”
outdoors, in a cozy backyard in williamsburg, filled with friends and powerful energy – one day soon palestine will be free.

#booklaunch #brooklyn #williamsburgbrooklyn #shirlybahar #palestine #palestineisrael #cinema #mizrahim #palestinecinema #mizrahifilm #solidarity #longingforhome #lossandpain #zionismisracism #palestinewillbefree


Colin Powell and the lubrication of imperial warfare

Laleh Khalili: “Colin Powell’s justification of the Iraq war in 2002/2003 was only one of the more recent times he lubricated the machinery of imperial warfare. In 1968, he covered up the My Lai massacre when he was assigned to investigate a whistleblower report on the massacre.

He was a national security advisor during Reagan’s Dirty Wars in Latin America, oversaw the Panamanian invasion, and whose Powell doctrine about the maximum use of force left smouldering remains of incinerated soldiers in its wake in the 1991 US invasion of Iraq.“

Steven Donziger sentenced to prison

Steven Donziger, an American environmental attorney, went after Chevron. His focus was the Lago Agrio oil field case or the “Amazon Chernobyl.”

‘He represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous Ecuadorians in a case against Chevron related to environmental damage and health effects caused by oil drilling. The Ecuadorian courts awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 billion in damages, which led Chevron to withdraw its assets from Ecuador and launch legal action against Donziger in the US.

In 2011, Chevron filed a RICO suit against Donziger in New York City. The case was heard by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who determined that the ruling of the Ecuadorian courts could not be enforced in the US because it was procured by fraud, bribery, and racketeering activities. As a result of this case, Donziger was disbarred from practicing law in New York in 2018.

After having been under house arrest since August 2019 awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan’s RICO decision, in July 2021 US district judge Loretta Preska found him guilty; he is now facing the possibility of a 6-month jail sentence. While under house arrest, in 2020 twenty-nine Nobel laureates described the actions taken by Chevron against Donziger as “judicial harassment” and human rights campaigners have described Chevron’s actions as an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation. In April 2021, six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus demanded that the Department of Justice review Donziger’s case. In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights ruled that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release.’

Steven was sentenced to prison today on contempt charges. It is unprecedented.

Oil companies own us. The level of corruption in our judicial and political systems is deeply depressing. We will drive our gas guzzling American trucks and Humvees into extinction, and take the rest of the world with us.

Women are not an excuse for colonial intervention

In the wake of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, U.S. politicians and media pundits alike have argued that Afghan women’s rights are now in peril as they weather life under the repressive and cruel Taliban. Many have gone on to make the case that the United States’ presence as a force for securing women’s rights was in fact a necessary one, further reinforcing the idea that in the end, the United States was a benevolent force in the country.

While Afghan women activists and leaders have fervently resisted the Taliban’s resuscitation — as demonstrated by the many protests that have taken place in cities like Herat, Kabul, and Ghazni over the past few weeks — this hardly signals the view that the 20-year U.S. occupation was liberatory. In fact, as many activists have been clamoring for years, the United States played a significant role in exacerbating existing structures of corruption, warlordism, and bribery that allowed the Taliban to return as a major political player, two decades after they were ostensibly ousted from power.

Despite the wanton violence the United States and its allies wreaked on Afghanistan through their military intervention, bookended by one of the most chaotic military withdrawals in contemporary history that has left hundreds of thousands of people stranded under a regime they had no part in bringing to power, it remains difficult for the American public to frame the U.S. mission in Afghanistan as anything but a gift to the Afghan people. Though the invasion and occupation were done without the meaningful consent of Afghan civilians, self-determination and sovereignty are now being depicted as opportunities that the United States has afforded Afghanistan in the wake of its irresponsible exit.

The notion of “benevolent governance” as a system of power relations refers to the idea that certain forms of authoritative rule are an expression of generosity on the part of those who rule, usually under the pretext that a given population lacks the infrastructure, reasoning, and public will to rule themselves. It is a discourse through which imperial projects justify themselves as anchored in an ethics of care as opposed to what they really are: a politics of exploitation, extraction, and geopolitical grandstanding. As Women’s Studies scholar Carole Stabile and Media Studies scholar Deepa Kumar have noted, “suffering women are subjects for political and public concern only insofar as their suffering can be used to advance the interests of US elites.” In 972 Mag.

In Modi’s India, the Echoes of 1930s Germany Are Growing Louder

While Modi is gallivanting in the US, with Kamala Harris talking about the ‘Indian people’s commitment to democracy and freedom’ (such empty words), this is what is happening in Modi’s India:

“Hindu Mobs, anti-Muslim Boycotts: In Modi’s India, the Echoes of 1930s Germany Are Growing Louder

Modi is talking to world leaders about the threat of Islamist radicalization. But the real threat to India comes from a radicalizing Hindu majority fueled by the increasingly brazen, violent anti-Muslim bigotry of Modi’s own party.”

american priorities

for a poor country that can’t afford universal healthcare for its people, the US found 1 billion dollars for israel’s effing iron dome (meant to protect an illegal genocidal occupation). this is on top of the 500 million dollars we give them annually already. if this doesn’t get ur goat, nothing will. 420 members of congress voted yes, only 9 voted no. remember their names: cori bush, andré carson, chuy garcía, raúl grijalva, marie newman, ilhan omar, ayanna pressley, and rashida tlaib. just goes to show how this system is beyond repair, beyond electoral politics, beyond common sense. its corruption is absolute, its racism and colonial aggression foundational. it needs to go.

It is time to abort Texas’s abortion law – and much more

An excellent (and unsettling) piece about the abortion law in Texas by the great Belen Fernandez, in which she quoted one of my Facebook posts. Pls read.

‘In addition to being criminally invasive, the Texas law is totally unhinged. For starters, its enforcement is delegated not to agents of the state but rather to individual citizens who stand to win $10,000 or more by bringing lawsuits against doctors, abortion clinic staff, Uber drivers, and any other witting or unwitting accomplices to abortions performed after the six-week cutoff.

Plaintiffs need not be from Texas nor have any relation to the defendants. Presumably, SB8 will not only encourage run-of-the-mill American religious zealots to further unleash their inner policemen but also incentivise assorted other demographics to capitalise on efforts to dismantle the semblance of women’s rights that has been attained under patriarchal capitalism.

As NPR notes, the Texas Right to Life organisation has already “set up what it calls a ‘whistleblower’ website where people can submit anonymous tips about anyone they believe to be violating the law”.’ In Al Jazeera.

the met gala

i don’t have an opinion on AOC’s appearance at the met gala, but hey, do i have an opinion on the met gala itself. it is obscene. i just met a brilliant young woman the other day. she has three jobs (three!). one of them is teaching as an adjunct at columbia university. she’s in her early forties. she makes enough to just barely live in brooklyn and she’s constantly under stress because she has no health insurance. it’s criminal. and this isn’t even the worst of what this country offers. the rich are not rich because they work harder or are smarter, they’re rich because they know how to use/scam/milk a system that’s inherently unjust and meant to perpetually exacerbate inequities. i couldn’t care less for their antics or charity. they shouldn’t have that kind of money in the first place. eat the rich.