Trump’s ‘black hole’
“A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it.” — Wikipedia
An elderly Palestinian woman tries in vain to protect her olive trees as Israeli settlers, protected by the Israeli army, cut down 800 Palestinian-owned olive trees near the town of Shuyukh, east of Hebron.
The general who tried to preempt & outsmart the Sudanese Arab Spring by assuming power, as the generals did in Egypt against the Egyptian Arab Spring in 2011 & 2013, is out within 24-hours as a result of mass protests in the streets. The military has not been defeated but is temporizing & is almost certainly rethinking its strategy so it can eventually crush the popular movement for democracy.
Two young men were traveling in a car today near Rafiabad in the Baramulla district of north Kashmir when Indian paramilitary soldiers stopped their vehicle & checked their fingers for the stamp proving they had voted. When they didn’t find it, they interrogated the men about why they didn’t vote in the Indian elections & then beat the living daylights out of them for not voting. Adil Ahmad Rather & Tariq Ahmad Rather both ended up in a hospital for their injuries.
Soon after residents of the area heard of the assault, they took to the streets in protest, blocking the Handwara-Baramulla National Highway which is the highway closed down to Kashmiris on Sunday & Wednesday so Indian military convoys can travel through. The protesters demanded harsh action against the occupying soldiers, saying “we are not even safe in our own localities.” Who knew that in Kashmir one could be beaten to a pulp for not voting in an election rigged top to bottom against them?
One news agency reported that a FIR (a formal accusation of a criminal offense) has been registered against the soldiers & that a criminal investigation will be pursued. That would be at odds with the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) which gives the Indian occupying army complete impunity for human rights & war crimes committed in Kashmir. The odds that these young men will get justice for being beaten up are in the realm of fat chance.
End the occupation of Kashmir. Self-Determination for Kashmir.
(Video is one of the young men after the assault.)
(Graphic created by Kashmiri Rizwan Raheem)
The presentation of Black culture in American movies is absolutely deplorable & of Black women doubly deplorable: fools, hyper-sexual, vulgar, jiving. It must be humiliating for Black actors to participate in these travesties.
Since George Clooney has so often publicly war mongered against Sudan, it would be good to know if he stands with the Sudanese Arab Spring. Or is popular resistance to dictatorship not what he meant? Did he have US military intervention more in mind?
Even the littlest Sudanese wants democracy. Since children are the most frequent victims of war, occupation, & genocide & often the primary targets, it is fitting that they learn early to stand against tyranny.
Sudanese protesters outside army headquarters chanting “The people want to bring down the regime.” This is the kind of ‘regime change operation’ that fascists, Assadists, & Stalinists most deplore.
I am aware that many of my friends & most of my family have religious objections to abortion. Coming from the Catholic tradition where even birth control is considered evil, I am not insensitive to those scruples though I do not share them. I am committed to the right of women to control our reproductive lives as fundamental to our freedom.
My mother had 22 pregnancies. It cannot be said she enjoyed most of them. She would be depressed & flat on her back for most of the nine months & once described her years of constant pregnancy as feeling “blanked out.” Her last pregnancy, when I was in high school, was a miscarriage. I was home alone with her at the time & she called me in to baptize the fetus & share the moment with her. It was a very powerful moment for me while we both marveled at the mystery of life. But my mother was jubilant that she had miscarried since she already had 19 kids. That is how woman feel when faced with an unwanted pregnancy & have the option of abortion. When they do not have the option of a safe, legal abortion, millions of women around the world take matters into their own hands & many young mothers die.
The early women’s movement was concerned about how abortion & forced sterilization were/are used against Black, Latina, Native American women & women in other countries of black & brown women. To distinguish abortion as a woman’s right from racist eugenics programs, we formulated the demand “abortion on demand; no forced sterilization” & we fought for that demand. It is not that we don’t have respect for human life but that we do. We trust that women will make the best choice about their ability to give a child love & nurturance or terminate a pregnancy if they can’t. Women’s bodies; women’s right to decide.