they sell pens.
we buy with blood.
many of them, from their mythical land come to us, with clean hands, softened in the Ganges. they meet our eyes. that gaze, which through you goes elsewhere. behind their orange irises you see wheels turning. like the innards of a Swiss-watch. precise. surgical.

they sell paper.
so much paper. we buy with blood.
they put the kettle on boil. it whistles. the seduction of tea.
there is no better heaven. our pens poised. the next word will liberate.
an orgasmic lull prevails.
that next sentence. always in arrival. like that justice thing.
meanwhile Ashfaq is no more. Maqbool has gone. Asiya and Neelofar, raped then killed. Afzal hanged. Tufail, buried in two graves. the Ittar seller in Lal chowk disappeared. they found his bones with empty bottles; the kettle whistles.
the tea never comes.
our bones are made tired. waiting.
before the door of law from that over-used Kafka tale. the only thing that grows after this wait, are their swords. looming mightier. and this too, we write.

they exhort us to write. and write. in blood.
of peace. of tulip gardens they grew on soils made fertile with our flesh, and bones.
and write. when they, are at war with us.
*********

Ather Zia is a political anthropologist, poet & short fiction writer. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit.

(Photo is protest in Srinagar in solidarity with minor girl of Handwara who is still in police custody against her will)

There have been repeated methane fires at the site that burn for days but there are also continuous fires deep within the trash mountain. There are also frequent collapses, especially after rain storms. This is not just true at the Guatemala City dump site but in sites around the world.

On Wednesday, there was another massive collapse at the dump & guajeros working the dump were caught unawares. Four people were killed, there were many injured, & at least 24 people are still missing.

For no apparent reason, media is reporting the deaths & missing not as guajeros but as “garbage collectors.” That’s what they call the people lined up here on the crest of the dumpsite when they are almost certainly guajeros. It’s likely the fatalities are far greater than is being reported since there is little control over who & how many are scavenging at any given time.

This is neoliberal waste management in the era which Obama calls
the “most prosperous, most progressive era in human history.”

(Photo by Josue Decavele/Reuters)

Finkelstein calls himself a communist whilst he gallops at top speed to the right. He places his hopes in official institutions of capitalist rule like the UN; disdains Palestinian Intifada & the proposal for a democratic, secular state; & denounces BDS as an Israeli gimmick.

Read his interview at your peril but be prepared for a bad case of political dyspepsia.

http://mondoweiss.net/2016/04/norman-finkelstein-on-sanders-the-first-intifada-bds-and-ten-years-of-unemployment/?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_co

During one of her missions, her team came across a yellow, cool liquid covering the jungle. To refresh themselves, the team picked the leaves & rubbed the substance on their skin. It was of course Agent Orange. The skin on her body is now covered in scars which she has had several operations to repair. Agent Orange has 24 different symptoms, including cancer & birth disabilities in ones offspring. Her son died of cancer at the age of 35 & her daughter is physically & mentally disabled.

Vietnam is still suffering from the war; many hundreds of children (as in Iraq) are born with catastrophic disabilities & only families to care for them. There are still thousands of land mines & soil contaminated by Agent Orange & Napalm.

Many people are disappointed the Vietnamese regime is going the neoliberal route. But nothing can take away the contribution of the Vietnamese people to humanity when they routed the mightiest military machine in the world & when their struggle showed humanity the power of resistance & international solidarity.

Many people today fighting the yoke of neoliberal colonialism do not have the military advantages of the Vietnamese. Building international solidarity, the second phalanx of opposition to tyranny, is essential to compensate for the lack of military force.

Our fullest respect to the Vietnamese resistance as we rebuild the international antiwar movement to render the same solidarity to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine, & elsewhere.

(Photo by Lonnie Schlein)

Supporting Assad & Putin in bombing entire cities just because the US claims to oppose Assad is the dominant view on the left–making it hard these days to tell the libertarian left from the right.

This is a woman injured by Syrian or Russian airstrikes in Old Aleppo, Syria. Explain to her how it’s for the greater good.

(Photo by Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters)

People learn by reading as much as they can using their critical faculties. That’s why critical faculties were invented. If one wants to understand what is going on, you can’t just read the usual media sources for liberals & leftists because the left has as many points of view as protestantism & some of them are dead wrong or outright tendentious.

You have to learn intellectual discernment, what’s important, what’s speculation, what’s verifiable. You have to understand the official narrative in order to challenge it. You have to compare as many sources as you can & when you read them, you have to figure out what their point of view is. Sometimes sources aren’t only media but also the reports of human rights groups & activists. Reality is complex & you can’t impose a template upon it, a political agenda that suits your biases.

Those who eschew mainstream media express an anti-intellectual tendency & a distrust of their abilities to learn how to understand what is going on. Thus their reliance on others to tell them. One can read mainstream media without being corrupted–& must read it to develop critical analysis skills. It’s not a badge of honor to ignore it but a symptom of distrust gone wild.