Category: politics

Thousands Take to Streets in More Than 70 Cities Across US to Protest Trump’s “Reckless Acts of War” Against Iran

there should have been a rally in rochester as well. a war on iran will not only decimate what’s left of the middle east, it will also escalate violence here at home. CAIR has released information that iranians and iranian-americans are already being detained at the border by US customs and border protection. war-related hate and paranoia will intensify racism, islamophobia, xenophobia and hate crimes against a widening circle of minorities and people already at risk. the state apparatus will go into overdrive with more policing, surveillance, detentions and curtailment of rights. this will affect all of us. the time to resist is now. more here.

When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History

Paola Garcia: For Massoud Hayoun, asserting his own Arabness is in itself a political act, one of solidarity and of retaliation: “In large part, I identify as Arab because reclaiming my place in a broader Arab world […] scares our foes who have, for so long, taught us to fight against ourselves,” he writes. “I am an Arab because that is the legacy I inherit […] My Arabness is cultural. It is African. My Arabness is Jewish. It is also retaliatory. I am Arab because it is what I and my parents have been told not to be, for generations, to stop us from living in portentous solidarity with other Arabs.” 

[…] Hayoun detests all forms of colonialism, including Zionism, and speaks harshly against it. He expresses a much-justified anger against Europe and the Western world for destroying and erasing a myriad of extremely rich indigenous cultures, dividing its peoples, and generally wreaking havoc all over the Middle East and North Africa.

He similarly resents and rebels against the imposition of a European version of history, the replacement of indigenous cultures by the colonizers’ values and ways of life, the devaluation of native cultures, and the mental colonization that tells the colonized that their conquerors are superior. More here.

India: The BJP, rape, and the status of women

Rebecca Solnit, whose dream candidate is Elizabeth Warren, represents a kind of tone-deaf white feminism that boggles the mind. In 2014, she wrote ‘A Watershed Year For Feminism‘ in which she extolled India’s Narendra Modi for championing women’s issues with great effect. She characterized him deftly as ‘otherwise monstrous’ and linked to the genocide committed in Gujarat under his watch and with his support, but still found it palatable to write about him as a feminist.

It’s in line with her favorite presidential candidate toeing the American imperialist, propagandist line and describing Qasem Soleimani as ‘a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans.’ Remember the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and their imminent threat to American lives (why this ridiculous prioritization over human lives)?

If you want to learn more about how Muslim women were gang-raped, mutilated and burned in Gujarat (under Modi’s stewardship), pls feel free to google it. I couldn’t post it here because it’s simply too harrowing and sadistic. But here’s an analysis of the BJP (Modi’s political party) and the status of women in general:

‘A new group of secular intellectuals in India argues that the BJP’s real attitude towards women is based on a fascist communally-based politics in which women are seen not as individuals with rights, but as bearers of their community’s honour, to be protected or raped, depending who they are.’

To Ms Solnit and Ms Warren I’d like to say that feminism is nothing if it doesn’t embrace the rights of women of color, Muslim women, Indigenous women, women from the Global South, as well as the poorest and most marginalized people all over the world. Pls venture beyond your privileged, white American exceptionalism.

A new group of secular intellectuals in India argues that the BJP’s real attitude towards women is based on a fascist communally-based politics in which women are seen not as individuals with rights, but as bearers of their community’s honour, to be protected or raped, depending who they are.

More about the BJP, rape, and the status of women here.

India: Intimations of an Ending

Arundhati Roy: None of the white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups that are on the rise in the world today can boast the infrastructure and manpower that the RSS commands. It says it has 57,000 shakhas—branches—across the country, and an armed, dedicated militia of over 600,000 “volunteers.” It runs schools in which millions of students are enrolled, and has its own medical missions, trade unions, farmers’ organizations, media outlets, and women’s groups. Recently, it announced that it was opening a training school for those who wish to join the Indian Army. Under its bhagwa dhwaj—its saffron pennant—a whole host of far-right organizations, known as the Sangh Parivar—the RSS’s “family”—have prospered and multiplied. These organizations, the political equivalents of shell companies, are responsible for shockingly violent attacks on minorities in which, over the years, uncounted thousands have been murdered.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a member of the RSS since he was 8 years old. He is a creation of the RSS. Although not Brahmin, he, more than anyone else in its history, has been responsible for turning it into the most powerful organization in India, and for writing its most glorious chapter yet. It is exasperating to have to constantly repeat the story of Modi’s ascent to power, but the officially sanctioned amnesia around it makes reiteration almost a duty.

More here.

Revitalizing the Cheyenne language

Tommy Orange: Revitalizing the Cheyenne language, having tribal and non-tribal members learn the language, become fluent, is not an obscure hobby, is not like the learning of a past-time, like something that can’t be used or will not be useful. ‘Use’ itself depends on language and context, ‘use’ according whom? To understand the Cheyenne way of life, as Cheyenne people, as anyone interested in understanding Cheyenne people, language is the most direct route. There are ideas and worldviews embedded in the language. From what little I know to be true about any language, there is much to be learned.

Native people lived on this land for thousands and thousands of years. This country, American culture—which is in and of itself made of so many other cultures—has only existed for around three hundred years at most. There are relationships to this world, to the land, to each other to be learned from Native languages. There are ways to be we might need in a world such as this, one bent on destroying itself, one out of touch with what it means to consider our environment and our relationship to it. To have and embody respect, kindness, love, generosity. My dad told me the Cheyenne language has these qualities embedded in it. He said it’s a holy language.”

We grew up hearing our dad speak Cheyenne in phrases. Words for bread, or salt, or fart. Phrases like come sit down, come sit down for dinner. We didn’t grow up thinking we should or should not be learning our language. We didn’t know then how important a language is to keep, how it holds within… More here.

India’s citizenship bill has echoes of Myanmar’s dark path

Amy Kazmin: Back in 1982, Myanmar adopted a citizenship law recognising eight ethnic groups as “national races”, whose members were entitled to citizenship. But Rohingya — a mostly-Muslim population reviled by Burmese as illegal migrants from Bangladesh — were excluded. They instead needed “conclusive evidence” that their ancestors had lived in Burma prior to its 1948 independence — impossible for most to provide.

Rohingya remained in Myanmar despite tight restrictions on their movement, education, employment and marriage. Decades of persecution culminated in the mass expulsion of 700,000 Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017.

The context for the Indian bill has also raised alarms. The government — which claims India is being swamped by illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh — is gearing up for a massive national exercise to assess which of India’s 1.3bn residents is eligible for citizenship.

Echoing demands once made on Rohingya, Indians are expected to have to prove their ancestors were resident in India in the first years after independence — or face the prospect of being declared illegal migrants, liable to detention and deportation.

Yet Hindus and other groups now deemed refugees by the new rules will be protected. The spectre of statelessness falls therefore mainly on Muslims.

Country has incorporated religious criteria into its naturalisation and refugee policies. More here.

The Citizenship Amendment Act and its implications

From Sana Din: I’ve been trying to find the emotional strength to address how devastating the Citizenship Amendment Act is for Indian Muslims and the region as a whole. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which was passed in both houses of Indian Parliament on Wednesday is the single most destructive piece of legislation since Partition, putting the onus of proving one’s citizenship explicitly on Indian Muslims.

The law allows for anyone who isn’t Muslim from neighboring countries to become an Indian citizen. CAA was designed to function as a citizenship test for India’s Muslim population of 200 million, creating the world’s largest stateless population.

About 50 percent of Indian Muslims are illiterate, many don’t know their birthdates, where they were born, or which hospital provided these documents; all of which compound the impact of this discriminatory law. 

Both CAA and the National Registration of Citizens (NRC) work to make a stateless Muslim population that can be imprisoned in detentions centers. Muslims have begun to be detained in makeshift detention centers and more are being constructed.