The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'american flag on a bomb.'
Students and some of their teachers have been demonstrating on college campuses across the country. At Columbia University in New York, they're demanding that the school administration divest from every company that does business with Israel, and they're camping out in tents until their demands are met. Here in Minneapolis, campus protests included a surprisingly large percentage of protesters in masks. Are they still worried about COVID or are have the masks become some kind of activist fashion statement?
Student protests are in general unsurprising. Given how screwed up our society is, they should be happening constantly. But I don't recall seeing any major protests since 2020. And now suddenly pro-Palestinian protests have erupted at campuses nationwide. Of all the causes these students could be championing, why this one? And why now?
The dire plight of the Palestinian people is obviously concerning. Israel's decision to raze Gaza in response to the October 7 Hamas attack maximized civilian deaths. Some say this placed Israel in violation of international law. According to Amnesty International, Israel is using American munitions to perpetrate war crimes in Gaza. Of course, Hamas has also been seen with American weapons.
The situation in Ukraine is no better. According to former CIA officer John Kiriakou, "the CIA and the State Department ... were responsible for the 2014 overthrow of the Ukrainian government." US and UK officials have been actively collaborating with Nazis there ever since. Western powers have sabotaged peace negotiations while sending enormous quantities of military aid to Ukraine. At this point, over 10k civilians have been killed and 14 million people have fled their homes.
Terrible things are happening in other parts of the world too. The war in Yemen killed hundreds of thousands of people. Here's a quote from a recent article about that:
The aerial bombardment of Yemen has caused a level of devastation reminiscent of Israel's current campaign in the Gaza Strip. ... Like Israel, the Gulf coalition has justified its bombings by claiming that seemingly civilian sites were being used for military purposes — claims that are very difficult to evaluate independently. ... The majority of weapons used by the Saudi coalition originate from the United States, the UK, and EU countries. The UK has deployed its own troops, who were embedded with Saudi forces accused of torture.
The nature of US involvement in each of these countries is deeply suspect. Financially, American interests profit from all three conflicts, with defense contractors and financiers leading the way. It's socially acceptable to support these atrocity profiteers by investing in their enterprises. From my perspective, the recent campus protests are attempting to assert that it's no longer acceptable to support atrocity profiteers that do business with Israel.
That assertion seems reasonable enough. But I wonder where all the protesters were for Yemen's war. Working in news media, I can't help but notice that the news barely covered Yemen whereas Gaza got nonstop coverage, especially across independent media outlets.
When AdBusters magazine published a photo of a ballerina on the iconic Wall Street bull, its call to action ignited Occupy Wall Street. This call to action was only effective because enough people were so fed up with the status quo that they were willing to take to the streets. What we're seeing now are students so fed up with the status quo that they're willing to risk academic standing to make their support for the Palestinian people heard.
These students are strangely not protesting the war machine in general. And I have uncomfortable suspicions about their politics. But if their main demand is for their schools to pull investments from atrocity profiteers, I hope they succeed.
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See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
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- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.
As always, I appreciate your reflection! And I didn’t know about the AdBusters magazine, and how it helped spark the Occupy movement.
And let’s not forget Haiti and all over Africa too, when it comes to the US war machine! I’m curious where all of this will go. Police responses are getting more intense. Yet it seems that people would rather choose a side than advocate for everyone, which means us vs. them tribalism is alive and well unfortunately. Somehow it seems that real wisdom is about recognizing the intersectionality of all of these issues, and the deeper machine that drives all wars and unaccountable military spending.
The war machine is indeed global. It both fuels tribalism and exploits it. On a cultural level, reality is often structured as a choice between a limited number of bad options. We could choose differently but in practice we rarely do. The only way out that I see is developing the kinds of stories that get people thinking more constructively.
I'm not even sure it's really students instigating the protests. Out of 282 people arrested recently at Columbia University, 134 had no association with the university. Free speech is one thing, property destruction, preventing students from attending class and otherwise intimidating other students is another.
I don't at all support the U.S. giving arms away to countries in the manner that they do. Having said that, it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, not the other way around. 99% (at least) of what is going on there is their fault. If they want peace, they can leave at any time. i don't buy into Western powers "sabotaging" anything. From a Ukrainian perspective, what peace is reasonable other than for Russia to get the fuck out? I suppose some sort of peace would exist if Ukraine just surrendered.
As far as "collaborating with Nazis", Eastern and Western powers have a long history of collaborating with questionable groups against what is deemed the bigger enemy. I don't doubt there are Nazis in Ukraine though I do question their influence. Articles like the one you linked always seem vague on details even reaching back to cold war era spy stories for support.
And yeah, I get that Russia doesn't like Western powers dabbling in Ukrainian politics. But either Ukraine is an independent country that can associate with whom they chose or they are not. It doesn't justify invasion.
Interesting arrest stats from Columbia. I wonder who is giving these students their marching orders.
You are totally right that Russia is at fault for invading. But the West's installation of a far right government in Ukraine combined with the brutal repression of Russian speakers in Donbas, carried out in part by Azov, makes it hard for me to see the invasion as unprovoked. And I doubt the invasion and subsequent war would've even happened if not for American/European sabotage of diplomatic efforts.
But why the deployment of troops all the time?
Are these countries preparing for war? Even creating weapons annoys me all the time
Yes war and weapons of war are very annoying.
#hive #posh