Category: politics

russiagate was always sketchy and a huge distraction from trump’s horrific policies and the concerted resistance they should have encountered at every juncture. i’ve never posted anything on russiagate. hope this is the last we hear of it.

Ben White: Russiagate has imploded after Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. In this video, Aaron Maté explains why the conspiracy theory was bogus from the beginning, and how corporate media outlets spent the past 2 years lying.

i remember those who cheered the liberation of libya 8 years ago and pooh-poohed anti-war voices like mine. western intervention is not always damaging they said. i knew time would tell – how this would destroy libya and lead to immense human suffering. sadly, here we are today.

“Post-9/11 there is a more concerted effort to demonize Muslims, to make us the other, sort of the foreign threat and the enemy,” said Kameelah Mu’Min Rashad. She’s the founder of the Muslim Wellness Foundation, which promotes healing and emotional health in American Muslim communities.
That message is what the 15- to 20-year-olds she counsels have heard their whole lives.

“Unfortunately for them it feels commonplace,” she said. “From extremely horrific events like what we saw happened in New Zealand in Christchurch to daily microaggressions and invalidations of their identity. And so I am very proud of how resilient American Muslim youth are. And I’m also very concerned about the onslaught and sort of daily erosion of their humanity.” More here.

Nesrine Malik: There was something distinctly different about the response to this [massacre], in terms of the mainstream press and commentary. And the main distinction was that people immediately began, not everyone of course, but those that usually are not, sort of, the “thoughts and prayers” type contingent immediately tried to come out with tempering language and saying this is a terrible thing, but we must not allow this to chill us from criticizing Islam or Muslims. And I thought that was really unusual. I hadn’t really seen that before. It was a response that was usually restricted to the right-wing press in the U.K. in particular, but it had become a mainstream position along with the sympathy and the kind of condolences. There was an immediate chaser to that which is “but let’s not let this get in the way of legitimate concerns and criticism of Islam.” More here.

abdul aziz. incredible hero. didn’t let the white supremacist terrorist enter his mosque. ran outside screaming, threw a credit card machine at him, picked up his gun, and smashed his car window. the coward bolted. abdul aziz is from afghanistan, a country occupied by white supremacists in military fatigues. he settled in australia first but had to leave on account of racism. white supremacy – it’s never-ending.

Randa Abdel-Fattah: The planes crashed into the twin towers. The bombs hit Iraq and Afghanistan. We were divided into moderates and extremists.
We were socially engineered to play the part of the integrated, always-ready to-condemn, apolitical, safe Muslim.

We were told that the price for conditional belonging was the sacrifice of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and every other broken, exploited third-world body and soul that paid the price for the West’s wealth and ‘freedom’.

We were expected to forgive Abu Ghraib, forget Guantanamo Bay, be silent about Gaza.

We were told the borders would be patrolled by whiteness, not the indigenous owners of this land. Our mosques were vandalised, our hijabs ripped off our heads, our leaders seduced into accepting we needed to be spied on, racialised and marked as a suspect community at-risk of ‘radicalisation’ via countering violent extremism programmes.

We told you the threat is still white supremacy. You ignored us and said: ‘Accept Australian values or go back to where you came from.’

The Arab revolutions in your colonial playground were crushed by dictators cashed up and supported by you.

The divided and conquered morphed into the grotesque. Local communities were seduced again into denying race, denying history, forgetting our troubles were playing out on stolen land.

We took responsibility for terrorism and condemned, over and over again. We disciplined and tamed the beards, the hijabs, the niqabs, the Friday prayers in schools, the sermons.

We let academics research our children to find the genetic code for ‘becoming terrorist’. We focused on ‘social cohesion’, ‘community resilience’, ‘Australian values’. We produced public speakers, athletes and diversity liaison officers. We complained about the incendiary media headlines, fascist rallies, race-baiting politicians and commentators. We cleaned up the bacon, always with the bacon.

We told you the threat is still white supremacy. You ignored us…
More here.