Many privileged by gender, ethnicity, class express high-flown contempt for “identity politics.” Their antipathies for equality are exposed if you enter one of their political discussions with a female name or without prestigious academic credentials. If identity is no matter, why are women’s comments awkwardly & constantly ignored as if they farted in public? Why are those without educational pedigrees ignored as having nothing worthwhile to say?
If there is anything in politics whose vapidity is outdone by its mean-spirited elitism, it is the relentless criticisms of identity politics as inferior politics. As long as we are persecuted for our identities, we consider fighting for the dignity of those identities as fundamental to our worldview.
There is no such thing as a human being without identity–some privileged, some not, & many violently persecuted. If you can stop the violence against those persecuted for their identities, then we can start talking harmony. It’s not our struggles that divide but the racism, misogyny, nationalism imposed on us. Try to get that straight.
A Kashmiri friend alerted me just now that India appears to have found a way to block VPNs. He has been blocked on four so far today. Apparently there are a lot of VPNs, but as he says, it won’t take long for India to block all of them.
Kashmiris may have to find other IT ways to elude that undemocratic ban. If anyone knows how to do that, please let us know asap.
Reposting this video from May 2, 2011 of millions of Yemeni protesting their US-backed dictator. These are the people US Drones were then bombing, claiming they were al-Qaeda operatives.
This vision of millions of Arabs fearlessly defying tyranny struck terror into US, European, & Middle East regimes; this is what they are trying to bomb to smithereens in Yemen & Syria, prevent in Iraq & Afghanistan, & violently repress in Bahrain, Egypt, & Palestine, & elsewhere.
Love this video about parkour, a combination of athleticism & resistance politics prominent in Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan. This video beautifully weaves that relationship together with commentary by Khurram Parvez & Zahid Shah.
Zahid, who learned parkour on YouTube, introduced it in Kashmir & trains others in this remarkable physical discipline.
My 4-year-old cell phone died so I got a new one but have no idea how to turn the damn thing on. Poking, shaking, turning it upside down don’t work.
My resident IT specialist is a 7-year-old kid I have to visit to show me how to call home. Kind of what Modi’s government should have done before that internet ban in Kashmir.
Is misanthropy a psychological trait of the barbaric phase of capitalism? Or have there always been so many haters?
To the misanthrope, nothing liberals do is ever good enough. Not even when they protest wars, climate change, mobilize for civil rights or women’s rights. Not even when they’re making revolutions like the Arab Spring & trying to make the world suitable for human beings to live & love in.
Give me a thousand righteous liberals over one do-nothing misanthrope any day.
A Kashmiri friend asked me to read his description of the brutalities & criminalities of the military occupation after the July 8, 2016 execution of the man whose name & image cannot be put on FB (without accounts being suspended or shut down permanently) but whose funeral was attended by over 600,000 mourners.
The terror he described is overwhelming. The extraordinary toughness & character of Kashmiri resistance is unforgettable. It more than explains why India wants the news blackout restored but mostly it is a call for international solidarity to mobilize.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.
CBS is airing parts of the John Dickerson interview with Trump to evoke interest for the full interview special. Have we ever sufficiently addressed the utter banality of Donald Trump? The mind-numbing vapidity?
