“Prediction: Long after I’m gone, there will be two revelations:
1) That epidemic Alzheimer’s and autism will be found to be caused or contributed to by substances released into the environment by big business.
2) That as with asbestosis, lung cancer etc they already know about it.”
–John Scott
The flight of 150,000 Syrian civilians from Syrian & Russian carpet bombing in Idlib: what Treasa Ní Cheannabháin calls “Syria’s Naqba” but what Assad propagandists Bartlett & Beeley call ‘cleansing Idlib & Hama of international terrorists.”
Historians estimate that up to 2,000,000 Africans kidnapped in the Atlantic slave trade died en route to the Americas & were just thrown overboard. Because they were not seen as human beings, they were treated like cargo, chained & packed together like sardines, fed little, often beaten. They died from starvation, dehydration, diseases like scurvy, smallpox, measles, dysentery, & murder. Women & children were often raped & sexually assaulted by the sailors.
By the last 18th century, a male slave could be sold for between $600 & $1,500 (about $9,000 to $15,000 in US dollars today).
Showing that white supremacy still prevails in all its stench, it’s estimated that over 34,000 African refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. But that figure is unreliable & certainly an underestimate since there is no monitoring agency that values African lives enough to count the number of refugees who board rickety ships in North Africa & compare that to the number who make safe passage.
The anthem of Palestinian resistance to colonialism, apartheid, genocide:
Ramadan in the rubble of Israeli bombing in Gaza: a Palestinian family at the Iftar meal breaking the fast.
If you want to get insight into the savagery of US colonization of Hawaii, there is a Netflix movie titled “The Island Murder” about a 1931 case in Honolulu where a disturbed socialite married to a naval officer made a false accusation of rape against five Native Hawaiian men. Their trial was declared a mistrial but her socialite mother, with connections to the most influential figures in the US, kidnapped one of the falsely accused men & murdered him for refusing to save his own neck by bearing witness against the others.
The psychopathic socialite, her equally psychopathic mother, & navy officer husband were put on trial with Clarence Darrow (of Scopes trial fame) as their lawyer. (He was known as a progressive lawyer but took the case because he lost his savings in the stock market crash & needed the dough for retirement.) They were found guilty & sentenced to ten years but the white governor of Hawaii commuted their sentence to one hour spent sipping tea & champagne in his office. Then they were forced to leave Hawaii & were welcomed in the US as celebrities.
It’s just a horrifying story & this documentary really captures the racist hatred & white supremacy that prevailed in the US up until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The reclaiming of Hawaii by its indigenous peoples from affluent white invaders remains one of the great unfinished struggles in US politics. In so many ways it resonates with the struggle of Palestinians because Hawaii is also a colonial-settler state like Israel.