The Israeli invasions across the Middle East and the Western government and media responses to it, we in the 21st century get to witness what colonialism looks in real-time and that the colonialism of the past is not some vestige to be forgotten. The lies, the deception, the alliances and exploitation are all there for everyone to see but the existing State narratives and allegiances prevent from any kind of opposition to take the central stage in public discourse. And if England and France were the colonial powers of the past century, the United States of America have taken over as their key player, being the Imperial State to giving a blank check to their vassal states to have complete dominion over a region and its resources.

If and when there's opposition, people are promptly labelled as terrorists or any other cancelling label of their choices and if the situation goes out of hand then the arms of the police states are ready to break necks if the situation demands. What we are seeing in the current conflict now are that some lives are worth more than the others and countries aligned with the imperial power of the United States have a blank cheque to act with impunity against their enemies to further local agendas in line with broader American interests.

The fight of Palestinians in turn becomes the fight of all post-colonial states, for those who didn't witness what these power structures did in our lifetimes the livestreams of atrocities are out for everyone to see. This expansionist project would not stop on the Arab borders, as time passes and newer resources become lucrative, the arbitrary fangs of the neo-colonialism will find newer people to subjugate under its chains. It is in the interest of every person from the non-hegemonic backgrounds to resist and urge their governments to resist what the U.S. imperial ambitions bring about in the world.

In Palestine's freedom we find our own.

#America #imperialism #war

started writing this on the 23.11.2023.

The October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel and the following ploughing of Gaza by Israel have been the inevitable global headlines over the months. A lot of psyops from both sides have takes the Western world by fervor and fanaticism to both be on the side of the Israeli's and to further the Islamophobic fetish in vogue for over two decades now.

While the horrors of the October 7th attacks cannot be watered down, Israel's heavy-handed reaction by killing as many as 27,000 Palestinians, a majority of them women and children will not end in the total “elimination” of the Hamas but propel into future cycles of violence that will make look the current Hamas attack look like a pre-school Christmas party. Palestine is a young territory with a majority of the inhabitants unware of the historical connotations to their problem, instead for most their lives they only know the Israeli's as the aggressors who have shackled them without rights, water or freedom of movement, a state of siege that triggers emotional violent reactions than the measure ones of diplomacy that would commit to a peaceful solution to problem that has been in a gridlock for over a century.

The Western powers who carry the ghosts of World War II with them have unilaterally sided with Israel while glossing over the human rights violations happening in Gaza. Their narrative also fits well with the post 9-11 Islamophobia, with far-right anti.Muslim rhetoric gaining mainstream momentum in most parts of the mainland Europe and Asia. Take the case of Germany, which through its past horrors of the Holocaust is bound to respect the sanctity of Israel, but they take the devotion to far off that they actually forget the application of their rememberance culture, with “Never Again” being applied to the aftermath of the Holocaust and Holocaust alone, unaware that it was also responsible for the genocide of the Herero and Nama people in Namibia in the early part of the 20th century which it acknowledged only in 2015. But it's national discourse is heavily influenced by the Holocaust and that its only responsibility is towards the Jews (as it should rightfully should) but the learning from the Holocaust is that can happen to any group – Palestinians included.

05.09.2024

More than 40,000 Palestinian people dead, the entire Gaza Strip razed to rubble, Jewish settler violence legitimized in the West Bank and a pro-Israeli bias in the Western democracies that don't seem to tone down. Israel gets more American supplies of weapons and aid as the Gazans who've been starved, left to disease and die don't have a voice or representation anywhere in the world.

Israel, locked in an never-ending conflict wants to expand the fangs of war to neighboring Lebanon and Iran but the shooting only empty bullets for now. Looking at the map of the world there it looks obvious that America's strategic interest over Israeli supremacy is tied to its geopolitical location, within the Arab world as a non-Arab state and giving America a control over the valuable oil if it ever get more hungry.

The Israeli project against the Palestinians is an age old colonialist enterprise and though one thinks colonialism was a thing of the past century, it's interested to see it play out in the TikTok age where the violence and arrogance of power play out in the full face of the world. For now, the situation is in a gridlock and as some commentators pointed out, the only solution Israel has for the Palestinian apartheid is ethnical cleansing, which it's doing in full earnestness as we speak. But this circle of violence cannot go on forever, and what it takes is leaders who can build bridges and start anew but that's not happening anytime soon.

#Israel #Gaza #war

Since the start of the Covid pandemic, the Indian government's missives contained a large number of war imagery. Doctors and other essential workers became “Covid warriors” and the Indian government embarked on a War on Covid, vaccines became “weapons to defeat the virus” and the virus itself is an “invisible enemy” which the government is fighting on a “war footing”.

The BJP government's fascination for war and war imagery is well documented, first there was the “war on black money” rhetoric used during the enfeebling demonetization, then came “the surgical strikes”, “war-like fortifications” to protect Delhi against protesting farmers. There is almost a perverse affliction with war with the current regime, as it amplifies the power they have over the people without actually having to do nothing. It also satiates its core voter base and the outliers as it shows that the country is finally doing something, war is not a state of inaction but extreme kinesis, it creates an illusion of progress where no progress exists.

Golwalkar, widely regarded as the ideological architect of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh drew inspiration for the Hindu-state from Italian fascism, specifically Mussolini’s organization of fascist paramilitary forces. In comparing the supremacy of Hindus in India to the supremacy of the Aryan race in Hitler’s Germany, Golwalkar wrote, “To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging of the country of the Semitic races— the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here .. a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

These ideological roots have permeated into the national discourse where war is used as a euphemism to quell any public backlash. Want to question the government over the vaccine policy? We are in an unofficial state of war, we shouldn't expend energy on finger-pointing right now. The state of war is an excuse to collectivize losses while any good news is because and only because of the Dear Leader, whose kindness brings glory to us Indian people. The Dear Leader is at the same time a master strategist, a shrewd politician, and a saintlike figure. Case in point is the length of his beard which seems to exude an idea of statesmanship without anything concrete to show for it.

War imagery also eliminates any nuance that is required in complex problem-solving. It replaces meticulousness with loud bangs, which becomes rhetoric in itself. By playing the “war” card, the BJP further strengthens its brute force persona popularized by the Uri and Balakot attacks in the past years. It is a reflection of the violence-obsessed society we have become, wherein the fight against real violence we infer imagined massacres. The causalities of this war imagery are however real. It is the people of India, whose orphaned bodies burned to ashes in overworked cemeteries and clogged the Ganga. The government's apathy is visible in the statistical PR exercises it does to save face, not to mention its poor war-waging ability as visible from the haircuts it took with the Chinese confrontation in Eastern Ladakh last year.

The war imagery is a distraction from the larger problem facing India, poor public infrastructure, and a middle-class governmental perspective that views and treats its large swathes of poor sections through its elitist lens and religious nationalism. War imagery is a sign of societal decay – one which relegates intellectual operations to a lower class of thought systems, where being loud is smarter than being smart itself.

#RSS #BJP #India #war #covid