The US and NATO—under the banner of women's rights, human rights, and democracy—occupied my country and pushed us from the frying pan into the fire. Eight years is enough to know better about the corrupt, mafia system of President Hamid Karzai. My people are crushed between two powerful enemies. From the sky, occupation forces bomb and kill civilians … and on the ground, the Taliban and warlords continue their crimes. It is better that they leave my country; my people are that fed up. Occupation will never bring liberation, and it is impossible to bring democracy by war.” – Malalai Joya, Afghani Parliamentarian in 2009

Afghanistan has fallen once again. Where can an already fallen state go towards? The current iteration is the Islamic Caliphate of Afghanistan as proclaimed by the Taliban, which follows two decades of failed promises of democracy and peace by the US and its NATO allies. There is disbelief in the way US forces left Afghanistan leaving its own allies in shock, the once derided enemies are back in power again bringing the net benefit of the US invasion of Afghanistan to a big fat zero.

The Afghani’s never mattered for anyone in world politics, when the US invaded Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden there was the guise of nation-building and democracy, terms which have since been forgotten. An endless war that ran for 20 years comes to an end with a whimper, with the whole world now praying and fearing for the new Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. But the same voices have forgotten the horrors of the 20 years past because Big Brother America can run its state-sanctioned goons to run amok in the country but the Taliban criminals are somehow different.

The bottom line to the hypocrisy is this: if you fight with the Americans, the world is fair and just. We, the citizens of the world have sold our souls to the dollar dreams made in America, having lost the imagination that the world can be n-iterations different from the one that is now. In our imagined realities, Afghanistan is the window in a world of nightmares but the bombs of America are packages of peace. The perpetrators of future might change but America shall always be our hero.

#America #waronterror #hegemony

From radios in mid-ocean transit to the war rooms in Yemen, the whole world awaits the New President. His voice will boom in far corners of the earth, bringing in a new term the whole world will be aspiring for. We see him in the eyes we are trained to see, the new Emir, Raja of Rajahs, the democratic dictator. But we all wish for the same – let the American Dream of wealth, fame and power be for the whole of mankind.

America is our country, we by the virtue of global capital, are all American. The President has overshadowed COVID-19 in a year of little star power. Our eyes and ears have become sore at the idea of what our America had become. Now there is hope from the doomsday news cycle but what America has inspired has spread all over the world. Brazil, India, Turkey amongst other countries grapple with populists of the Trump variety. The tamasha that the sitting American President unveiled is irreversible. The notion of reason has taken a hit, the abstraction of the Constitution

Can this new god dispel the thought crimes of the past regime? Does the new Imperial King inspire the world and help us dream about America again? America has the brand advantage over China and what America does, we can expect the whole world to imitate. Make America Great Again, Mr. Biden. You are the President of America and in extension, the President of the World itself.

#America #democracy #capitalism

Two hundred years from now the great American history rewriting machine will have erased memories of the proxy fights with Russians in the sovereign nation of Afghanistan. What will be remembered is the horror across the world after the World Trade Center was brought down in an act of sheer terror. The word terror will be emphasized and the perpetrators names will be lost in generalizations. The wars that followed which destabilized an entire region will be an after thought. America won that war at an ideological level, convincing the world of the same. America propagated Islamophobia is internalized across the globe, equating the idea of a terrorist to a Muslim.

A Muslim pogrom will happen somewhere in this century (the Rohingyas? the Uighurs? the Kashmiris?) there will be excuses that the community asked for it. In this whole scenario, America always has and will be the victim. In broad strokes of history, the 3000 people who died in the buildings will be forgotten but the savagery of the actions that brought them down will play in memory.

The perpetrators were brought to justice through military occupation and with shiny, invisible drones that breathed hellfire. The Architect-in-Chief was killed in a clandestine military operation in another sovereign nation. This is all forgiven because we are all America and what is against this Great Nation is against all of us. Hunter S. Thompson was right in saying, “It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.”

There exists a memorial for the dead at the site of the fallen towers – but who will cry and remember the 31,000 Afghan and the 650,000 Iraqi civilians? The greater instability induced in the regions and the mass migration that followed has induced a death grip on European politics as well, but as far as we are concerned, America is absolved of all guilt. America is our only savior against the twin evils of China and Russia, in this respect we are all American, overwhelmed by the country more than the places we live in.

The real memorial for the thousands of dead, the millions displaced and the future millions that will be killed and displaced is the falling of the Twin Towers itself. It showed a moment of belligerence and exposed the deep arrogance of the American state. That a crude organization could overwhelm the greatest superstate in the history of nations with a handful of planes and some symbolism is a fact that cannot be translated into history.

$ 2 trillion (and counting) of American money went into wars after this event, even as a majority of its citizens crumble without a public safety net. The true victors in this war have been the handful of people who plunged the planes into the buildings on that Tuesday morning. They exposed what we know of America's diabolical power all along, its corruption and violent hunger. They teased America off of its money in a war that will never go anywhere. But I cannot say that, as talking against the politics of this Great Nation, is talking against the interests of the world itself.

11th September 2001 is a memory of the millions that perished because of American political greed. With this being said, God bless America.

#America #politics #power

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As someone who has never been to America but having seen the country play a major role in how I think through what I watch and read, America has fallen. There was a certain zenith where the belief in the American Dream touched even the remotest corners of the planet, where almost every country wrote its national consciousness in the American model. Ruthless capitalism, selfishness and opulence were the pillars of this model, which was buttressed by the soft power of Hollywood and the internet.

Off late the fall has become even more precipitous with the twin trouble of COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests mixed to the shrill tune of Donald Trump's voice. Viewed from a distance I cannot imagine how this country has come to shape much of the post-war world of the 20th century, for now it's a joke without a punchline. Everything American seems inhuman – the notion that an individual is the center of everything is slowly eroding, we are all in this together as the COVID-19 reminds us everyday. The Neo-liberal wet dream suckers up as governments wake up to realize that people come before corporations, the virus is a wake up call for a society gently lulled into the consumerist humdrum.

Sure, the US still has the firepower to shut its critics and wrestle its way to command its superpower status. But a revered superpower is different from an ageing bully, the American Dream is no longer the incentive but the fear of the American wrath is.

#America #COVID19

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In the next years there will be a Hollywood blockbuster with sad faced, somber actors who will play doctors and kind Samaritan. The cast and crew will encompass the whole racial ensemble of Hollywood actors. Billions will be minted, award ceremonies will be awash with tearful messages of support and celebrity charities will be overflowing with money. Black lives will matter, brown lives will matter, pink lives will matter and what not. There will be catchy slogans telling that the world cares, this movement will be copied by the movie industries elsewhere — similar stories of heroism and imitation will pop in India, China and Nigeria. Real questions of inequality, political shortsightedness and sheer human stupidity will be replaced with Hollywood's Will to Live, and the beauty and brilliance of life will be exhorted.

The reminder to all this egoistic future celebration should be: the virus has made us prisoners of our own homes and selves. There are things stronger than us that are smaller than us, and we are not invincible nor are we our economies.

The sap stories peddled by America for decades have come tumbling down in the face of a crisis the country has crumbled under. There are no glamorous American heroes that save, all the flag wielding patriotism and in your face soft power posturing can now stop. Same is the case with the Chinese or Indian national heroes. The complacency of China, the governments should also be considered. The Communist Party of will be winning the first prize with commendable participation from the Republican Party in the US and whoever the fuck is ruling in Iran. They are collective evidences of the sheer ignoramity with which political systems work without considering the people. If future wars have to be waged then they have to be in the schools and then in the countries. The enemies have never been outside, they were always with us, laughing in plain sight.

There needs to be a cultural upheaval to begin with. The rise of the American superhero, globe-trotting billionaire and the influencer can finally have some checks, the fantasy is only an inadequate extension of the capitalistic muscle. This is not something that is isolated to the Americans or the Chinese but the “hero” syndrome prevails everywhere. When we look for hope we find none because the sources of this hope have been long confined to the unglamorous sidelines. This is the time to take a call and examine our heroes and how we worship them, as with the gods they have come out to be fake.

The global recession that will surely follow will be the biggest hope. The mindless consumption will fall down and so will the way we approach media and films, what would give us hope in the hopeless times sure to follow? The class hatred will only become deep-rooted and so will be the inequality. If the recession becomes something deeper and far more tumbling, the hunger will provoke deeper questions on the way the world around has been narrated to us. Structure upon structure based on the selfish greed of what it is to be a person: the collective and the community destroyed for all purposes except for the town hall meetings Mark Zuckerberg seems to prefer. Now between all the solidarity that the government seems to be demanding of us and asking us to act in the best interests of everyone else, it is important to question the model of individualism much of modern society is built on.

This individualism is also the breeding ground for the (hero)ine, dismantling the ideology behind will help us pave way for a more hopeful blueprint of who we are and where we want to go as a collective.

#Capitalism #America #COVID19 #China