#Anti-state movements National

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Two years after Malcolm X successfully petitioned to be transferred from the Concord Reformatory in Massachusetts to Norfolk to take advantage of its educational opportunities, he and three other Muslims there captured public attention and were transferred back to Charleston for refusing typhoid inoculations. They grew out their beards, refused to eat pork, and demanded cells facing east toward Mecca, threatening to contact the Egyptian consul if that right were denied. They even secured transfer from the foundry after complaining that it was too loud for meditation. The warden at Charlestown "had absolutely no idea who or what converted the quartet but pooh-poohed" reports that they were being granted extra religious privileges, noting that the cells facing east were "just regular cells." As one newspaper article concluded, "The four new Moslems enjoyed complete religious freedom-and constant surveillance."

This contradiction of freedom and surveillance came to define the relationship between incarcerated Muslims and prison officials over the next several decades. As Malcolm remarked just days after leaving Norfolk, "All of the opposition was, after all, helpful toward the spread of Islam there, because the opposition made Islam heard of by many who otherwise wouldn't have paid it the second thought." The dialectical relationship between prison repression and prisoner resistance grew from the demands of the four men at Norfolk into the vanguard of the prisoners' rights movement a decade later. As Malcolm wrote to his brother, "The more the devil openly opposed it, the more it spread.""

- Garrett Felber, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. p. 30.

[nappingpaperclip]

Modern Zionism is an Israeli Nationalist movement. The arguments & defenses that Zionists use to justify the horrific actions taken by the state of Israel become much more clear when you start understanding it this way.

[heritageposts]

Harris has been a staunch supporter of Israel for years. In 2017 she addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference and reminded attendees that the first resolution she co-sponsored as a senator was aimed at combating “anti-Israel bias” at the United Nations. “Let me be clear about what I believe. I stand with Israel because of our shared values, which are so fundamental to the founding of both our nations,” she told the crowd. In 2018 she gave an off-the-record speech to the organization, but eventually released her comments. In that speech she claimed that she raised money for the Jewish National Fund as a Girl Scout. “Having grown up in the Bay area, I fondly remember those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” she told the audience. “Years later, when I visited Israel for the first time, I saw the fruits of that effort and the Israeli ingenuity that has truly made a desert bloom.”

For those unfamiliar with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), they're a Zionist organization that has been instrumental in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

See Stop the JNF for more information on their history, the way they operate, and their decades-long campaign of greenwashing (i.e. destroying native plants, crops, and agriculture under the banner of 'making the desert bloom').

Continuing, the Mondoweiss article goes:

“The vast majority of people understand the importance of the State of Israel,” she added later. “Both in terms of its history and its present in terms of being a source of inspiration on so many issues, which I hope we will talk about, and also what it means in terms of the values of the United States and those values that are shared values with Israel, and the importance of fighting to make sure that we protect and respect a friend, one of the best friends we could possibly have.” While running for President in 2019, Harris was praised by the lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) for running to the right of Obama on the Iran deal. On the campaign trail Harris told Kat Wellman, a voter affiliated with DMFI, that she would reenter the agreement but “strengthen it” by “extending the sunset provisions, including ballistic missile testing, and also increasing oversight.” “I was very impressed with her. I thought she gave an excellent speech, she gave a very detailed, responsive answer to my question,” Wellman told a local paper after the exchange. “I’m pro-Israel, so I was I was very concerned and all about making sure we limit nuclear missiles in any country that could possibly destroy us all. I thought her answer was very good.” Harris has condemned the BDS movement and claimed that is “based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” However, she voted against an anti-BDS bill in 2019 citing First Amendment concerns.

For the full article, which includes Kamala's response to Israel post Al-Aqsa Flood, see Mondoweiss (July 22, 2024)

[opencommunion]

recommended resources on Lebanese resistance and its context

this has been in my drafts for a long time bc I wanted to find more audio resources but in light of recent events I'm posting as is, and will add more later. pdfs for texts without links can be found on libgen ⭐ = start with these 📺 = video resource 🎧 = audio resource Hizballah ⭐ Lara Deeb, "Hizballah and Its Civilian Constituencies," in The War on Lebanon: A Reader, eds. Nubar Hovsepian and Rashid Khalidi (2007)

⭐🎧 Electronic Intifada Podcast with Rania Khalek, "Why Hizballah would deal Israel a deadly blow" (2024)

⭐🎧 Electronic Intifada Podcast with Amal Saad, "How Hizballah Aims to Deter Israel" (2024)

📺 Rania Khalek, Interview with Hezbollah's Second-in-Command Sheikh Naim Qassem (2023)

🎧 Rania Khalek and Julia Kassem, "The Hybrid War on Lebanon is All About Weakening Hezbollah" (2022)

Hassan Nasrallah, "Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah," ed. Nicholas Noe (2007)

Judith Harik, "Hizballah's Public and Social Services and Iran," in Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the last 500 years (2006) Sarah Marusek, Faith and Resistance: The Politics of Love and War in Lebanon (2018)

Abed T. Kanaaneh, Understanding Hezbollah: The Hegemony of Resistance (2021)

Karim Makdisi, "The Oct. 8 War: Lebanon's Southern Front" (2024) Political theory ⭐ Ussama Makdisi, "Understanding Sectarianism," in The War on Lebanon: A Reader, eds. Nubar Hovsepian and Rashid Khalidi (2007)

⭐ Rula Juri Abisaab and Malek Abisaab, The Shi'ites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah's Islamists (2014)

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 (2010) Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon (1998) 2006 war ⭐ Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski, The 33-Day War: Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Consequences (2007)

The Electronic Intifada with Dahr Jamail, "The world just sat by" (2006)

The Electronic Intifada with Bilal El-Amine, "Lebanon in Context" (2006) The War on Lebanon: A Reader, eds. Nubar Hovsepian and Rashid Khalidi (2007)

Civil war and 1982 invasion ⭐📺 Up to the South, dir. Jayce Salloum and Walid Ra'ad (1993)

⭐📺 Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon, dir. Mai Masri and Jean Khalil Chamoun (1987)

⭐ Souha Bechara, Resistance: My Life for Lebanon (2003)

Jean Said Makdisi, Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir (1990)

Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout, Sabra and Shatila, September 1982 (2004) Ottoman era Charles Al-Hayek, "How, then, did you try to rebel?"

Lebanon Unsettled, "Lebanon's Popular Uprisings"

Axel Havemann, "The Impact of Peasant Resistance on Nineteenth Century Mount Lebanon," in Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (1991) Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (2000)

Peter Hill, "How Global was the Age of Revolutions? The Case of Mount Lebanon, 1821" (2020) Mark Farha, "From Anti-imperial Dissent to National Consent: the First World War and the Formation of a Trans-sectarian National Consciousness in Lebanon" (2015) French mandate era ⭐ Kais Firro, Inventing Lebanon: Nationalism and the State Under the Mandate (2002) Sana Tannoury-Karam, "Founding the Lebanese Left: From Colonial Rule to Independence" (2021) Idir Ouahes, Syria and Lebanon Under the French Mandate: Cultural Imperialism and the Workings of Empire (2018)

Malek Abisaab, Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (2009) Misc ⭐📺 Leila and the Wolves, dir. Heiny Srour and Sabah Jabbour (1984)

⭐ Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (2007)

Karim Makdisi, "Lebanon's October 2019 Uprising" (2021)

[mashpotatoe]

im a white jew, i was born in israel,

ive lived there all my life and was brought up in an environment that fosters racism driven by nationalism, nationalism driven by racism.

in israel, they teach you jews and muslims (though usually, they just say arabs) have always been enemies, the same way the US deems the entire middle east as a inherent war zone, ridding them of the responsibility for perpetuating war in thst region.

they tell you "were the fair and humane side who strives for peace! its the arabs who never accept the offer!"

i remember the first time i began doubting that sentiment was in fourth grade, when we were having a discussion in class about the character of Saul from the Torah. the teacher was talking about how Saul, the first monarch of the Kingdom of Israel, used to fight the Philistines, and when she added that the Philistines were the natural enemy of the Israelites, she asked the class what group of people is their modern equivalent to which everyone very eagerly replied "Arabs!" and nevermind that there in that same class sat two arab boys, one of whom sat next to me, who i looked at and thought "but he isnt my enemy? hes just a boy in my class."

they teach you to hate arabs. sometimes they say it outright. sometimes they say it more carefully, or make a distinction between good and bad arabs, those who are with us and those who are against us.

in a state based on the idea of (white) jewish supremacy, they teach you jews are naturally superior. they use the conspiratorial narrative of "jews controlling the world" to their favor, giving their own watered down explanation for why antisemitism exists, saying that it must be driven by jealousy.

the zionist movement always used antisemitism to its advantage, either for reinforcing the notion of jewish supremacy or appealing to the real pain and trauma of generations, people who survived the holocaust, connecting them to stolen land where they are "guaranteed" safety ergo granting "justification" for the suffering of others.

its using peoples real pain that makes fear mongering so effective, and when the israeli population grows up being told all of their neighboring countries want to kill them, they quickly get defensive of the "only land where they can feel safe", but the only explanation ever provided for Why these neighboring countries are considered enemies is because theyre arabs.

and when it comes to palestine, it isnt even recognized as a country, nor identity. just a threat. ive talked to many people who are genuinely unaware of the occupation, and they arent willing to believe it either, because the media narrative has successfully shifted the blame on hamas. because "how could it be us? we want peace! its the terrorists who make us look bad! and their children, they grow up to be antisemites*, might as well get rid of them too!" they never stop to think what environment these children must grow up in to develop these "radical" ideas.

* what they mean by antisemite is really just antizionist, but the term anti/zionist isnt practiced in local dialect, being a zionist is treated as a given

any jew who stands against israels oppression is dubbed a self hating jew, but the biggest contributors to antisemitism is the people in charge of an ethnostate, because at any moment they could decide who is not white enough to be jewish, who is too jewish to be white, who stood against the current coalition government and who is an obedient dog.

israelis arent a monolith, but many of them have been won over, convinced its an "us v them" situation, when in reality it could never be the "us" that "loses"

the israeli government was waiting for an event like the massacre on the seventh of october to declare war, to have the so called "right to defend itself", so they could initiate the final steps of an ethnic genocide and displace, if not kill, all remaining palestinians. under the guise of bringing peace.

it isnt too late to call for a permanent ceasefire, to end the occupation.

please contact your representatives, attend protests and rallies if you are able. palestine will be free, and the flowers will rise again.

[fatehbaz]

was thinking about this

To be in "public", you must be a consumer or a laborer.

About control of peoples' movement in space/place. Since the beginning.

"Vagrancy" of 1830s-onward Britain, people criminalized for being outside without being a laborer.

Breaking laws resulted in being sentenced to coerced debtor/convict labor. Coinciding with the 1830-ish climax of the Industrial Revolution and the land enclosure acts (factory labor, poverty, etc., increase), the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 establishes full-time police institution(s) in London. The "Workhouse Act" aka "Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834" forced poor people to work for a minimum number of hours every day. The Irish Constabulary of 1837 sets up a national policing force and the County Police Act of 1839 allows justices of the peace across England to establish policing institutions in their counties (New York City gets a police department in 1844). The major expansion of the "Vagrancy Act" of 1838 made "joblessness" a crime and enhanced its punishment. (Coincidentally, the law's date of royal assent was 27 July 1838, just 5 days before the British government was scheduled to allow fuller emancipation of its technical legal abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean on 1 August 1838.)

---

"Vagrancy" of 1860s-onward United States, people criminalized for being outside while Black.

Widespread emancipation after slavery abolition in 1865 rapidly followed by the outlawing of loitering which de facto outlawed existing as Black in public. Inability to afford fines results in being sentenced to forced labor by working on chain gangs or prisons farms, some built atop plantations.

---

"Vagrancy" of 1870s-onward across empires, people criminalized for being outside while being "foreign" and also being poor generally.

Especially from 1880-ish to 1918-ish, this was an age of widespread mass movement of peoples due to the land dispossession, poverty, and famine induced by global colonial extraction and "market expansion" (Scramble for Africa, US "American West", nation-building, conquering "frontiers"), as agricultural "revolutions" of imperial monoculture cash crop extraction resulted in ecological degradation, and as major imperial infrastructure building projects required a lot of vulnerable "mobile" labor. This coincides with and is facilitated by new railroad networks and telegraphs, leading to imperial implementation or expansion of identity documents, strict work contracts, passports, immigration surveillance, and border checkpoints.

All of this in just a few short years: In 1877, British administrators in India develop what would become the Henry Classification System of taking and keeping fingerprints for use in binding colonial Indians to legal contracts. That same year during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, and in response to white anxiety about Black residents coming to the city during Great Migration, Chicago's policing institutions exponentially expand surveillance and pioneer "intelligence card" registers for tracking labor union organizing and Black movement, as Chicago's experiments become adopted by US military and expanded nationwide, later used by US forces monitoring dissent in colonial Philippines and Cuba. Japan based its 1880 Penal Code anti-vagrancy statutes on French models, and introduced "koseki" register to track poor/vagrant domestic citizens as Tokyo's Governor Matsuda segregates classes, and the nation introduces "modern police forces". In 1882, the United States passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1884, the Ottoman government enacts major "Passport Nizamnamesi" legislation requiring passports. In 1885, the racist expulsion of the "Tacoma riot".

Punished for being Algerian in France. Punished for being Chinese in San Francisco. Punished for being Korean in Japan. Punished for crossing Ottoman borders without correct paperwork. Arrested for whatever, then sent to do convict labor. A poor person in the Punjab, starving during a catastrophic famine, might be coerced into a work contract by British authorities. They will have to travel, shipped off to build a railroad. But now they have to work. Now they are bound. They will be punished for being Punjabi and trying to walk away from Britain's tea plantations in Assam or Britain's rubber plantations in Malaya.

Mobility and confinement, the empire manipulates each.

---

"Vagrancy" amidst all of this, people also criminalized for being outside while "unsightly" and merely even superficially appearing to be poor. San Francisco introduced the notorious "ugly law" in 1867, making it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view". Today, if you walk into a building looking a little "weird" (poor, Black, ill, disabled, etc.), you are given seething spiteful glares and asked to leave. De facto criminalized for simply going for a stroll without downloading the coffee shop's exclusive menu app.

Too ill, too poor, too exhausted, too indebted to move, you are trapped. Physical barriers (borders), legal barriers (identity documents), financial barriers (debt). "Vagrancy" everywhere in the United States, a combination of all of the above. "Vagrancy" since at least early nineteenth century Europe. About the control of movement through and access to space/place. Concretizing and weaponizing caste, corralling people, anchoring them in place, extracting their wealth and labor.

You are permitted to exist only as a paying customer or an employee.

[determinate-negation]

the misinformation about hamas is unreal even on the pro-palestine side. their current charter even lays out terms for a possible two-state solution (which the israeli government dismissed before it was even finished being written) and in three separate paragraphs they outline that they will not persecute anyone on the basis of religion, race or gender and do not have a quarrel with the jewish people, only the zionist entity of israel. but everyone keeps saying READ THEIR CHARTER! THEY WANT TO GENOCIDE JEWS! i read the whole thing? the only thing they said about jews was that they don't have a problem with jews and they even acknowledge the european antisemitism that lead to the zionist entity...

yeah. i recommend anyone to check out this article and read their charter themselves

The Zionist project does not target the Palestinian people alone; it is the enemy of the Arab and Islamic Ummah posing a grave threat to its security and interests. It is also hostile to the Ummah’s aspirations for unity, renaissance and liberation and has been the major source of its troubles. The Zionist project also poses a danger to international security and peace and to mankind and its interests and stability. 16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity. 17. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.

Most vital, and despite maintaining the right of Palestinians to strive for and achieve their liberation, Article 20 then asserts:

Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

Hamas thus consents to recognize an Israel along its 1967 lines, before Israel annexed territory in two successive wars and pursued further violent land grabs in Syria’s Golan. Ironically, this leaves Hamas policy closer to international law than the relentless Israeli projects of border and settlement expansion.

[whatisonthemoon]

Stop US and Chinese aggression in the Philippines! Turn imperialist wars into wars against imperialism!

From Bayan Laguna https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd9L7gGQClkWkuEsM2sp2Zt3znNer3fS6IpLQK0fv-tCNEb-w/viewform

We, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN, New Patriotic Alliance) Laguna, are calling on all progressive and anti-imperialist forces in the world to support the cause of the Filipino people and the proletariat of the world in our just struggle against imperialism.

The contradictions of the world are plunging its imperialist powers into further conflict. The worsening crisis of capitalism is concentrating larger amounts of capital to a smaller group of monopoly capitalists. Inter-imperialist competition is driving state monopoly capitalists to exert greater influence over its colonies and semi-colonies, through economic and political means.

In the Philippines, the United States of America is exerting its massive influence in its hunger to wage a war of aggression against its chief rival, the People’s Republic of China. It is using every instrument it has in its arsenal to turn the Philippines into a military station, and the Philippine government into a loyal lapdog.

Under the unconstitutional Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, the US will use at least 9 military bases in the Philippines to station US forces and arms, including nuclear weapons. Currently, there are at least 12,200 US troops stationed in the Philippines under the guise of the US-RP Balikatan joint military exercises.

This is in line with the US’ overall strategy of “encircling and containing” China. Under the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, it has also established military bases in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Singapore. The US is also actively provoking China with its saber-rattling over Taiwan and military exercises in the Philippines.

China, meanwhile, is also keen on waging war to assert itself as an imperialist power. For years, China has intensified the export of capital to semi-colonies like the Philippines through loans and the Belt-and-Road initiative. It has continually challenged US dominance in the region, by leading the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and by militarizing the South China Sea with artificial bases and increased naval presence.

It was Vladimir Lenin who said that “imperialism means war.” The divisions between imperialist powers are causing further inter-imperialist rivalries all over the world. Imperialist powers are funding reactionary regimes and puppets in its semi-colonies in order to protect imperialist interests, expand imperialist plunder and further extract cheap labor and natural resources from the oppressed peoples of the world.

It was also Lenin who said that imperialist wars must be turned into wars against imperialism. All over the world, the oppressed classes are waging anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggles for their national and democratic rights. The Filipino people, from the time Spanish colonizers first set foot in the archipelago up to the present, have continually asserted our right to national sovereignty and enriched our militant and anti-imperialist tradition, especially in the face of reaction and overwhelmingly oppressive imperialist aggression.

We stand with the peoples of the world against imperialist aggression. The primary contradiction faced by the Filipino people continues to be the contradiction between the Filipino struggle for national democracy and imperialism. We continue to stand against foreign aggression and for national sovereignty. We do not accept both US and Chinese attempts to drag us into war and are standing for just and lasting peace.

Let us reaffirm the struggle against imperialism and fight for a democratic future! Imperyalismo, ibagsak!

[thatweirdtranny]

you know? it’s really fucking wild that my actual opinions about israel/palestine — not the opinions people assume i have based off bad faith interpretations of my posts or what others have said my opinions are — are so fucking controversial???

my opinions:

a permanent ceasefire that everyone involved will adhere to needs to happen, and this ceasefire needs to at the very least include bringing the hostages home and allowing distribution of aid to palestinians

on that note, aid needs to be given to palestinian civilians in a manner that ensures they will actually receive it

netanyahu needs to go (not controversial but it needs to be said)

hamas needs to go (somehow this is a controversial statement?????)

tokenizing jews who agree with you while demonizing the other 80+ percent of jews is bad

palestinians and israelis are both entitled to this region of land and ideally a 2-state solution should be the goal, but any solution that a) respects the humanity and safety of both jews and palestinians, and b) is based in reality, is acceptable

the land of israel is the homeland of both jews and palestinians and both deserve to live there in peace

jews and palestinians deserve to safely visit their holiest places

people in general deserve not to suffer through wars, and i’d personally love if the next ceasefire doesn’t get broken and if this cycle of violence could be broken

the antizionist movement has a problem with antisemitism

there is an extreme amount of misinformation surrounding this conflict that gets spread widely without any consideration or scrutiny

oct 7 was a heinous and disgusting act of evil, and anyone justifying it as an act of resistance needs to understand that most jews are terrified of you and rightly so

NOT my opinions:

palestinian children deserve to die

palestinians don’t deserve a state

islamophobia is okay

anti-arab sentiment is okay

anything that could be described as kahanism

antizionist jews deserve to be targets of antisemitism

anyways!! i am once again begging people to support solidarity organizations that promote peace between israelis and palestinians like: standing together, allmep, eco peace, etc

[zvaigzdelasas]

South Africa’s genocide case has put the spotlight on a deeper fault line in global geopolitics. Beyond the courtroom drama, experts say divisions over the war in Gaza symbolize a widening gap between Israel and its traditional Western allies, notably the United States and Europe, and a group of nations known as the Global South — countries located primarily in the southern hemisphere, often characterized by lower income levels and developing economies.

Reactions from the Global North to the ICJ case have been mixed. While some nations have maintained a cautious diplomatic stance, others, particularly Israel’s staunchest allies in the West, have criticized South Africa’s move.

The US has stood by Israel through the war by continuing to ship arms to it, opposing a ceasefire, and vetoing many UN Security Council resolutions that aimed to bring a halt to the fighting. The Biden administration has rubbished the claim that Israel is committing genocide as “meritless,” while the UK has refused to back South Africa.[...]

As a nation whose history is rooted in overcoming apartheid, South Africa’s move carries symbolic weight that has resonated with other nations in the developing world, many of whom have faced the burden of oppression and colonialism from Western powers.

Nelson Mandela, the face of the anti-apartheid movement, was a staunch supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat, saying in 1990: “We align ourselves with the PLO because, akin to our struggle, they advocate for the right of self-determination.”

Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that while South Africa’s case is a continuation of its long-standing pro-Palestinian sympathies, the countries that have rallied behind it show deeper frustrations by the Global South.

There is “a clear geopolitical context in which many countries from the Global South have been increasingly critical over what they see as a lack of Western pressure on Israel to prevent such a large-scale loss of life in Gaza and its double standards when it comes to international law,” Lovatt told CNN.

Much of the non-Western world opposes the war in Gaza; China has joined the 22-member Arab League in calling for a ceasefire, while several Latin American nations have expelled Israeli diplomats in protest, and several Asian and African countries have joined Muslim and Arab nations in backing South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ.

For many in the developing world, the ICJ case has become a focal point for questioning the moral authority of the West and what is seen as the hypocrisy of the world’s most powerful nations and their unwillingness to hold Israel to account. [...]

Israel sided with the West against Soviet-backed Arab regimes during the Cold War, and Western countries largely view it “as a fellow member of the liberal democratic club,” he added.[...]

“But the strong support of Western governments is increasingly at odds with the attitudes of Western publics which continue to shift away from Israel,” Lovatt said.

Israel has framed the war in Gaza as a clash of civilizations where it is acting as the guardian of Western values that it says are facing an existential threat.

“This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told MSNBC in December. “It’s a war that is intended – really, truly – to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization.”

So far, no Western countries have supported South Africa’s case against Israel.

Among Western states, Germany has been one of the most vocal supporters of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. The German government has said it “expressly rejects” allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that it plans to intervene as a third party on its behalf at the ICJ.

An opinion poll by German broadcaster ZDF this week however found that 61% of Germans do not consider Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip as justified in light of the civilian casualties. Only 25% voiced support for Israel’s offensive.

But it is in Germany’s former colonial territory, Namibia, that it has attracted the fiercest criticism.

The Namibian President Hage Geingob in a statement on Saturday chided Berlin’s decision to reject the ICJ case, accusing it of committing ��the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions.” The statement added that the German government had not yet fully atoned for the killings.

Bangladesh, where up to three million people were killed during the country’s war of independence from Pakistan in the 1970s, has gone a step further to file a declaration of intervention in the ICJ case to back South Africa’s claims, according to the Dhaka Tribune.

A declaration of intervention allows a state that is not party to the proceedings to present its observations to the court.

“With Germany siding with Israel, and Bangladesh and Namibia backing South Africa at the ICJ, the geopolitical divide between the Global South and the West appears to be deepening,” Lovatt said.

Traditionally, the West has wielded significant influence in international affairs, but South Africa’s move signals a growing assertiveness among Global South nations that threatens the status quo, says Adekoya.

“One clear pattern emerging is that the old Western-dominated order is increasingly being challenged, a situation likely to only further intensify as the West loses its once unassailably dominant economic position,” Adekoya said.

19 Jan 24

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Clinton Prison

"On December 25, 1959, a small group of Muslims gathered in the Clinton Prison recreation yard for Jumu'ah. As one of the prisoners remembered, it "was snowing and it was very cold, but as usual, on Friday we would meet to [do] a short prayer regardless of inclement weather or anything else." Fewer than ten feet from the men was prison guard John Emery Duquette, who was assigned to monitor the congregation that day. It was common for a guard to stand nearby and observe, and the group had routinely met in this designated area for almost a year, drawing anywhere from ten to seventy men. As James X Walker recalled, as "the Muslims grew we began to receive more area." By late 1959, the physical space had grown to fifteen yards long and seventy yards wide and was paved using stones the men had collected from the yard. It featured a stove for cooking and an oven for baking, since the mess halls did not offer halal cooking:

We would all more or less join together to purchase food and things of that nature so that we could cook it ourselves.

It also offered a vibrant intellectual life, with a blackboard for illustrations and classes on current events, Black history, Arabic, and readings from the Qur'an on Fridays such as this." As Joseph X Magette later testified, we "were tolerated. I wouldn't say we were admitted, but we weren't denied the right to meet."

Then, Magette recounted, "all of the sudden the situation changed completely. Thereafter we were in complete segregation" (solitary confinement). Duquette claimed that he heard one of the prisoners say that they were going to take over solitary confinement and filed a disciplinary reporting the familiar argument that the group's religious intentions were disingenuous. The men were charged with hosting an "unauthorized meeting under the guise of an assembly for religious purposes." Sammy X Williams, who allegedly made the remark, was locked up immediately, and the other men were soon taken to disciplinary court and moved to a minimum privilege area, which was accompanied by a loss of 360 days of good time. Some of the men remained in solitary confinement until June of the following year.

Clinton, like other prisons across New York, California, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., had become a central battleground for the Nation of Islam by the late 1950s. In 1957, Attica's warden, Walter Martin, wrote to prison commissioner Paul McGinnis that four prisoners at Attica had been identified as Muslim. This

fad for Qur'an... has been developing over recent months. I have been trying to puzzle out what the 'gimmick' is in this matter but haven't solved it yet.

Muslim prisoners requested access to the Qur'an in Arabic, religious literature published in Black newspapers, and correspondence with ministers such as Malcolm X in Harlem and Robert X Williams in Buffalo. They challenged the lawfulness of punishing them for their religious beliefs with such measures as solitary confinement and loss of good time. In many of these cases, the state used the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam (AMI) to undermine these claims, offering prisoners only English translations of the Qur'an and correspondence with Ahmadi religious leaders. An early precursor to the contemporary "good Muslim/bad Muslim dichotomy in the United States, which as Mahmood Mamdani points out, put "good" secular westernized Islam against "bad" pre-modern, radical Islam, was the state's privileging of the AMI over the NOI. The racial particularity of the Nation of Islam's Black Nationalism provided the foundation for the state's argument that the group was insincere in its religious convictions and was merely using Islam as a front for its political agenda. 

Muslim prison organizing and litigation in New York joined the first wave of cases that prompted the attention of the courts. No figure was more important in this movement than Martin X Sostre. His parents, Saturnino, a Communist merchant seaman, and Crescencia, a cap maker, migrated from Puerto Rico and settled in New York in 1925, two years after he was born. Sostre was influenced by Lewis Michaux's African National Memorial Bookstore and the stepladder orators on 125th Street in Harlem. He left school in the tenth grade to help his family earn money during the Great Depression and was drafted in 1942. After being dishonorably discharged in 1946, he was arrested in 1952 for heroin possession. Sostre arrived at Clinton Prison in 1953 and, like many eventual converts, listed his religion as that of his childhood: Catholicism. He later recalled that there were thirty Muslims belonging to "at least four different sects of Islam": AMI, MST, NOI, and Sunni, Like many before him, Sostre was introduced to Islam through the AMI.

He first wrote to the movement in 1958 in an attempt to get a copy of the Qur'an and credited his conversion to another Ahmadi prisoner named Teddy Anderson, who brought his Qur'an from Green Haven Prison. It was the only copy at Clinton. Sostre remembered:

We would have to consult with him and borrow it from him. He was reluctant to lend it out, naturally, but usually he would loan it out to ones that wanted to peruse it.

In this sense, Sostre's conversion was typical of prisoners during the 1950s. Another key organizer, Thomas X Bratcher, later testified that he was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Islam at Auburn Prison in 1959 after receiving teachings on the Ahmadiyya faith. He also described a robust Muslim community at Auburn:

Some were Ahmadiyya, some were Moorish Science Islams, some were Sunni Muslims, some were Wahapi [Wahhabi].... We had a non-sectarian class. That means that we did not lean to the teachings of any so-called sect in Islam.

Although the men were introduced to Islam through the AMI, a small but growing community was drawn to the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood. Citing the state's sanctioning of the AMI, Bratcher asked to write to Elijah Muhammad. "Since permission is granted to the Ahmadiyya Muslims to correspond with religious advisors," he wrote to prison commissioner Paul McGinnis, "I assume similar permission shall be granted to me."

Despite the efforts of prison officials to divert Muslim converts toward the AMI, the Muslim Brotherhood continued to thrive in New York prisons throughout the 1950s. Because they were not given a formal space to hold services within the prison, informal prayers such as those described at Clinton often took place in the prison yard.  Men relied on an oral tradition of memorized prayer, and surahs were passed from prisoner to prisoner. As Willam X SaMarion remarked, these prayers were "learned by heart, to be able to speak about." Many of these lessons were based on editorials by Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X published in Black newspapers in the late 1950s. "Most of us have never seen the inside of a Temple," Thomas Bratcher wrote Malcolm X. "We have had to make up our own lesson from articles appearing in the Los Angeles Herald Dispatch."" Newspapers that reproduced these editorials were forbidden at some prisons and monitored at others. In 1958, for example, the California director of corrections notified all wardens and staff that

requests to subscribe to the Pittsburgh Courier or the Amsterdam News should be screened as possible indications of interest in Muslemism.

The stark contrast between the "tolerance" described by Magette prior to December 1959 and the various punishments levied against Muslim prisoners thereafter points to the state's strategizing to suppress political activities and the spread of Islam in New York prisons. The timing of the response by prison officials was certainly not merely coincidental. Shortly after the airing of The Hate That Hate Produced, an entire apparatus of state control, which included local surveillance and a national network of shared information about the Nation of Islam, was erected. Just as the sensationalist miniseries had prompted fear among its largely white viewership and denunciation from moderate civil rights leadership, prison officials who had been puzzling over the growth of the NOI in prisons now took decisive action.

Just two weeks after the Jumu'ah raid, "all pens, pencils, paper--anything that could be used to write a writ, was confiscated." "I was told that I could not purchase any more legal paper nor could I have a pen in my possession, Joseph Magette recalled. Walker and Magette were handcuffed together and taken to meet with prison administrators, where Magette claimed he was struck across the face by a prison lieutenant and Walker was told that he must "withdraw this petition and give up this... ridiculous idea of a so-called religion." At the time of the Clinton reprisals, Muslim prison litigation was just beginning to be developed as a coherent strategy. Martin Sostre. William SaMarion, James Pierce, and Edward Robert Griffin (who had been paroled by the time of the trial) had submitted what was believed to be the first writ by Muslim prisoners." As the judge later noted at trial: "These complaints were drawn the same day, same thing. Apparently even the wording is practically identical."

The writs from Clinton Prison became the basis for the Pierce v. Lavallee case, which was argued by Jawn A. Sandifer and Edward Jacko. Both attorneys were graduates of Howard Law School and protégées of Charles Hamilton Houston. Having won the largest lawsuit against the City of New York on behalf of the Nation of Islam in the Johnson X Hinton police brutality case of 1957, the attorneys were again employed by Elijah Muhammad on behalf of Muslim prisoners at Clinton. Commissioner McGinnis responded to the threat of judicial oversight by extending state surveillance into the daily activities of Muslim prisoners. That summer, he asked wardens to submit monthly reports on all Muslim activities in New York prisons, which the senior prison inspector, Richard Woodward, eventually used to compile a summary that was distributed to each prison administration. As a final measure meant to quell the activities of Muslim prisoners, SaMarion, Sostre, Magette, and Walker (but not Pierce) were all transferred to Attica Prison on June 28, 1960. There they joined an active Muslim community that continued to grow through religious conversions and prison transfers until it included almost sixty members and became one of the most active political communities in the U.S. prison system.

- Garrett Felber, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. p. 55-59

[jewish-sideblog]

Clearly, y'all don't care about Jews, and the fact that Hamas is violently antisemitic doesn't seem matter to any of you. So let me go with a new approach, of equal truth and value. Hamas is violently anti-Palestinian.

This past week, Hamas attacked evacuation routes and prevented Gazan citizens from fleeing an active warzone. [1]

They did that because they routinely use Gazan civilians as human shields. Hamas intentionally builds military targets close to schools, hospitals, and mosques, putting soft targets in the way of both incoming and outgoing fire. Hamas encourages Gazan civilians and children to stand on the roofs of buildings they know the IDF is targeting. [2]

Hamas has refused to allow elections in Gaza since 2006. Not just Palestinian National Authority elections, mind you. No open elections for any office have been held in seventeen years. Palestinian rights to free elections and self-determination have been denied by Hamas. [3] (And good luck to anyone who tries to blame that on Israel, because elections were held by the PNA in the West Bank in 2012, 2017, 2021 and 2022. It's Hamas's intention alone to purge democracy.)

Hamas's track record on human rights is appalling. Palestinian prisoners in Gaza face unfair trials and death sentences after being tortured by police. Palestinian women are prevented from accessing the legal systems to escape domestic abuse situations. Political dissidents in Hamas, even ones who merely support the other half of the Palestinian government, have been summarily executed. [4] [5]

Peaceful organizers in Palestine protested Hamas's massive tax hikes in 2019. Hamas security forces responded by assaulting demonstrators, tracking them down, raiding their homes, and detaining them. And, as previously mentioned, prisoners in Gaza are not treated well by Hamas. [6]

Edit Nov.5, 10:30 PM: I forgot to add arguably the most important thing-- Hamas manipulates the humanitarian aid they receive away from helping Gazans and toward killing Jews. 5% of Hamas's budget actually gets used for humanitarian aid, while 55% goes to military use. Construction equipment intended to rebuild Gaza's crumbling infrastructure is used to build a complex series of underground tunnels. Those tunnels in turn are used to smuggle Iranian military equipment into the country. They were also used for human trafficking in the October 7th attacks. [7]

If you actually want Palestinians to be free, you can't just replace Israel with Hamas. But it's not like they're the only option for supporting Palestinian liberation. While Fatah doesn't have an immaculate historical track record, it now operates as a leftist, democratic socialist, secular Palestinian government that fights for a two-state solution. Similarly, Arab-Israeli political parties like the Hadash-Ta'al coalition support leftist, anti-Zionist, and two-state solutions from within the Israeli parliament.

You can and should support Palestinian liberation movements that abuse neither Jewish nor Arab human rights and dignities. Plenty of them exist out there. But if y'all continue to throw your weight behind an antisemitic and anti-democratic terrorist regime, Palestinians and Jews will both take note of exactly where you stand.

[ghelgheli]

I don't think now, at the time Iran is viciously defending against US imperialism, is the time to be making left-communist critiques of them.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not some unimpeachable bastion of anti-imperialism in western asia and it is dangerous to withhold critique just because it is opposed to US hegemony. The IRI is a theocratic ethnostate pushing back against euro-american imperialism while enacting its own centuries-long imperialism on the ethnic and religious minorities that fall within and around its borders. On a weekly if not daily basis, the IRGC, the paramilitary basijis, as well as the regular police harass, arrest, and kill not only such minorities as Kurds, Balochs, and Ahwazi Arabs (don't have to look far for this), but also ethnic Persian political dissidents and gender and sexual minorities.

The history of the 1979 revolution speaks to the development and rise of Khomeinism in the 1970s as a bourgeoisie opportunism that claimed the martyrs of Iranian communists while at every turn promising the disenfranchised baazaaris the protection of their private property. The purge of the Mojahedin in the months after the revolution, the associated purge of all deemed communist, and the immediate suppression of Kurdish autonomy movements in the northwest, all form the legacy of Khomeinism. It is important to be honest about this, to be honest about the reformulation of institutional misogyny and the other ills of Pahlavi Iran under the IRI, while simultaneously recognizing that the revolution was successful in one thing: exorcising the puppeteering hands of the united states from the country. It is important not to fall into the trap of valorizing an imperial power, while understanding that the only liberatory future for the people on the plateau and surrounding regions is revolution from within and below, not external intervention. These are compatible and, indeed, complementary halves of a whole politic!

As a Tehrani, and particularly as an ethnic Persian/Iranian Azerbaijani (Iranian Azerbaijanis being subject to linguistic and cultural suppression, but nonetheless perhaps the most integrated minority), it strikes me as my responsibility to talk about this. And it is something I talk about regardless of what is going on. As an esoteric Shi'a, it especially seems like my responsibility to talk about what Khomeinism has wrought.

And all of that is to say nothing of the fact that in my post I was just critiquing left-Shi'a infatuation with Khomeinism qua ideology, with no mention of the IRI—whose relationship with Khomeinism is varied, nebulous, and I would say secondary to the three decades of theocratic nationalism that has developed since Khomeini's death.

[maxknightley]

Which Dungeon Meshi characters would vote for Biden?

laios is a single-issue voter, and that issue is "more funding for biology research." since both biden and trump handled the novel SARS coronavirus poorly, he would not trust either candidate to do what he wants. therefore he would write in the name of a prominent dragon expert. (if dragons don't exist in this hypothetical, substitute some real-world megafauna, like elephants or moose.)

falin can't vote until she sorts out the fact that she's legally dead.

marcille is definitely the "really into ruth bader ginsburg" brand of turbolib. that being said, at fifty years of age, she's just old enough to remember her parents complaining about his anti-busing efforts, and more than old enough to remember the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. even more importantly, however: she would be really put off by his tendency to make gaffes and ramble about weird shit. she thinks Optics and Being Presidential are very important. she would therefore start a short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful movement to try and get Harris nominated instead.

chilchuck is a union man at heart, so he would call a vote to determine whether the union as a whole endorses biden or condemns both candidates. if they vote to condemn, he just stays home and gets day-drunk instead

senshi doesn't vote.

izutsumi isn't 18 yet.

kabru phone-banks for biden as part of an elaborate plan to run for state senator, then votes third party and lies about it.

toshiro is a foreign national. also, he doesn't watch the news. for all he knows or cares, obama is still president

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - November 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. Agrivoltaics for sustainable food, energy and water management in East Africa

“[… C]ertain crops […] thrived under the partial shade provided by solar panels. The shade also helped to reduce water loss through evaporation, leading to more efficient water usage. Additionally, rainwater harvested from the panels could be used to supplement irrigation needs.”

2. The world’s largest wildlife crossing is now standing in California

“The structure crosses a 10-lane freeway and has been built to help protect all sorts of wildlife[….] And it’s not just for fauna: some 5,000 plants grown from seed collected within a five-mile radius have been nurtured in two specially created nurseries. The bridge will be topped with wildflowers, shrubs and native grasses that will also benefit insect populations.”

3. Judge rules the military must cover gender-affirming surgery for members' dependents

“[Judge] Torresen found that [gender-affirming] surgery is indeed medically necessary and that the Defense Department had not shown that any important governmental interest was advanced by denying the coverage.”

4. Social Media Can Boost Caracal Conservation

“The team found that searches on the species doubled after the project [using “social media to educate about the caracal”] launched. […] ”The research demonstrates how a public interest in urban ecology and the global phenomenon of ‘cats on the internet’… can be harnessed to leverage conservation action.””

5. US Labor Board Bans Captive Audience Meetings to Ensure 'Truly Free' Worker Choice

“[T]he National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday ruled that employers cannot force workers to attend anti-union speeches. [… W]orkers will no longer have to take part in so-called "captive audience meetings," which employers often use as a union-busting tool and a form of coercion.”

6. Study links grazing with plant phenology and abundance

“In general, plants where caribou or muskoxen were present experienced earlier green-up and greater abundance later in the growing season. “We're used to thinking of the timing of plant availability as impacting the productivity of grazing animals, but not the reverse," Post said.”

7. Frog populations once decimated by disease mount a major comeback

“"These results provide a rare example of how reintroduction of resistant individuals can allow the landscape-scale recovery of disease-impacted species, and have broad implications for amphibians and many other taxa that are threatened with extinction by novel pathogens."”

8. California Announces Special Session To Protect Trans People

“Newsom’s directive is clear: safeguard reproductive healthcare, support immigrants, and shield LGBTQ+ people from what is viewed as existential threats to civil rights and democratic norms. […] California has a unique opportunity to set the blueprint for other states in resisting a Trump administration[….]”

9. When ‘OK, Boomer’ Means ‘Let’s Go Protest’

“Youth activists across the country recognize the efforts of their eco-minded predecessors and welcome them as mentors, role models, and collaborators in their battle against the climate crisis. […] “The idea that Boomers don’t care, he said, is “just misinformation.””

10. How Aussie Waste Warriors are Redirecting Excess Food to Those in Need

“A growing movement is working to reduce perfectly good food going to waste by redirecting it to homes and charities. [… C]haritable organisations [… are] transforming fresh produce that would otherwise have gone to waste into millions of cooked, nutritious meals for people in need each year.”

November 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)