If Trump can be connected to all of these incidents it should be with the knowledge that the entire country is suffering from a terrible sickness that few want to confront. Americans prefer to think well of themselves and their nation and treat any information contradicting that belief as an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs. There were hate crimes before Donald Trump ran for president and most of them weren’t carried out by individuals. Most of them are still sanctioned by the state.
The crazed Trump lover may have tried to send bombs to Obama and Clinton but they sent bombs to Libya and destroyed a nation that still suffers from their terrorist acts. They are quite literally guilty of committing hate crimes, along with other NATO leaders and their predecessors in high places. The fact that they know how to express diplomatic niceties is no reason to see them as being on our side as we fight to defeat fascism at home and around the world.
Their enablers cannot be given a pass either. When we fight to make war and peace a political issue we are derided as purists and spoilers who ought to be quiet and allow imperialism to take place without hindrance. The people who join in the chorus of denunciation should not be allowed to wring their hands when dead bodies appear within our borders too.
It is a really strong column. I am getting so tired of people who try to divorce reality from response. I'm sick of those who offer a critique where they express shock at violence within the US with their pose that ignores the violence that our government okays, endorses and, yes, carries out on a daily basis.This is not unique or novel. This present moment is reflective of earlier ignorance. But can we not learn? Or maybe we just don't want to?
Libyans? They have the same blood in their veins that we have. They have the same hopes and dreams. The same is true of Iraqis, of people everywhere. To ignore that reality and to ignore the violence our country inflicts on others is to choose to live in ignorance.
Our government daily teaches that (a) violence is an answer and that (b) if an American is killed in the US government's violence some lip service may be given to regret (or not). The message is sent daily that the lives of people in other countries do not matter and that it is okay that our government kills them.
If you are appalled by the use of violence within the US, grasp that violence is used daily by our government and that we are taught this is normal. Do not be surprised when that lesson results in more and move violence within the US.
Ruth's "What about hate actions, Mr. Tapper?" explores this topic as well.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
- TOMORROW: Come out for our #AntiwarAutumn event at 7 p.m. in NYC! Details
blackallianceforpeace.com/events/endallw…
The upcoming actions follow the Women's March on the Pentagon from two weekends ago. Last night, Elaine noted YOUTUBE video coverage in "Women's March on the Pentagon (videos)." Coverage matters now as much as it did in real time. The following Tweets from this morning note Nick Brana's speech at the Women's March on the Pentagon.
1/11 So I wanna thank Emma, Cindy, Bonnie and the whole Women's March on the Pentagon team for putting on this fabulous event. And I wanna say that I'm here because 6 yrs ago I stood on the other side of those walls, and what I saw haunts me to this day.
2/11 I was working for John Kerry in the Senate and the Pentagon put on what it called a "Wounded Warrior Welcome." I attended with my colleagues and we lined the walls of a long corridor as the Iraq war Vets began to go by. Some were limping. Many were in wheelchairs, row after
3/11row of them. Missing arms, missing legs, sometimes missing both. They tried to hide their pain. But it was often betrayed by a grimace. Watching these poor young men struggling down this hallway condemned to a life of disability I was struck with a sorrow so consuming that...
4/11..it was difficult to stay there. As person after person passed me by my mind turned to one question - FOR WHAT!? For what were those men maimed? For what did Casey Sheehan die? For what were 100s of 1000s in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen killed? Since the 2nd...
5/11..World War American politics has been marked by a familiar pattern. Both major parties moving further to the right in unison. This shift accelerated dramatically in the 1970s when wages broke from productivity, and profits began accumulating at the top. Over the past 40 yrs
6/11..an immense transfer of wealth has created a 2nd Guilded Age of political corruption trusts & a new economic royalty. Struggling with tightening budgets an exasperated working class has turned to the #Democrats for decades to level the playing field. Each time the party has
7/11..reversed its mandate and carried the nation further into the pockets of Wall St & the military industrial complex. The #DemocraticParty has long since traded its New Deal alliance w/labor for a partnership with big business. After reaching for change within the party....
8/11 throughout so many elections & receiving nothing but broken promises a desperate electorate cast itself into the arms of a racist & sexist Authoritarian! The resounding rejection of a political establishment in 2016 proved that an establishment party CANNOT LEAD A POLITICAL
9/11 REVOLUTION! We cannot defeat Authoritarian Populism from the platform that gave rise to it! America is a 1 party state with 2 right wings! They only give them different names to create the illusion of choice. Working people need a party that will end the wars, slash the...
10/11 defense budget, and re-deploy our resources to defend Americans against the most lethal enemies to ever invade our shores - poverty, hunger, and ill-health! The only thing that is going to stop our nation's march to #Fascism is the creation of a genuinely Populist anti-
11/11 ...establishment Progressive alternative. A major new Progressive party. A large majority & record number of Americans are now calling for it and WE MUST ANSWER THAT CALL! Thank you. 
ForAPeoplesParty.org
sign up to help. #LaborPartyRising #PeoplesParty
ForAPeoplesParty.org sign up to help. #LaborPartyRising #PeoplesPartyAt ANTIWAR.COM, Danny Sjursen observes:
We aren’t miracle workers. We’re just soldiers after all – kids barely out of their teens and officers in their mid-20s do most of the fighting. Still, policymakers in Washington, and citizens on Main Street both seem convinced that the mere presence of a few hundred or thousand American troops can alter societies, vanquish the wicked, and remake the world.
A colleague of mine refers to this as the myth of the magic soldier: sprinkle US troops in some horrific mess of a country and voilà – problem solved!
It sounds great, but this sort of delusional thinking has led the United States into one failed quagmire after another, killing some 7,000 US troops and close to one million locals. After 17 years of fruitless, indecisive war, its quite incredible that a bipartisan coalition of mainstream Republicans (neocons, mostly) and Democrats (neo-liberal relics) still cling to the idea that American soldiers wield magic powers. It’s long past time to review the record of our over-adulated troopers and reframe the actual – limited – capabilities of military force.
The standard Washington-media-military narrative goes something like this: take any unstable Muslim country that has any presence of Islamists at all; drop in a few thousand US Army advisors, trainers, or combat troops; stay indefinitely – and loudly proclaim that if ever those soldiers should leave said Muslim country it will undoubtedly collapse and the US of A will be directly threatened.
Some version of that exact formula has been tried in, sequentially, Afghanistan (2001-present), Iraq (2003-present), and Syria (2011-present), along with numerous smaller regional locales: Libya, Niger, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Sometimes the troop levels topped out at nearly 150,000 (Iraq), other times the ground forces and special operator teams are smaller (Yemen, Somalia), but the basic blueprint is the same – US airpower, plus commando raids, plus trainers and advisers can somehow stabilize the unstable, secure the insecure, and – ultimately – we hope, craft a "Little America" in the Muslim world. There’re just a couple problems with this veritable religion of US militarism: 1) we rarely consult with the locals before beginning each "crusade"; and 2) It. Has. Yet. To. Work.
Yet still the wars drag on.
Here's Mosul, Iraq, in 2018
Progress? Is that what the above is supposed to demonstrate? Because it doesn't. And the violence never ends, not even during the observance of Arbaeen.
Never ending war has not liberated Iraq. It has turned it into a land of orphans and widows. IRIN notes Nadia Murad (who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year):
Murad was abducted from the Yazidi’s historic homeland in Sinjar, northeast Iraq, in 2014. After escaping IS and Iraq in 2015, she began to tell her story and became an advocate for Yazidis and other Iraqi minorities: we highlighted her advocacy in this 2016 piece on what, if anything, humanitarians can do to stop human trafficking and sex slavery.
Those Yazidis who managed to
survive the 2014 massacre and mass enslavement fled, first to the top of
Sinjar mountain, then later to camps elsewhere in Iraq or to Europe.
But around 10,000 people never left the safety of the heights, and in
April of this year IRIN found them barely eking out an existence with little outside help.
This photo essay took
readers inside the Sinjar hospital that caters to some 25,000 Yazidis
who have returned home with no X-ray machine, no ventilation equipment,
no lab, and only six beds.
On the topic of Iraqi women, we'll note this essay by Tana Gilly Khailany published by UN Women:
Tanya
Gilly Khailany, from Iraqi-Kurdistan, is a former member of the Iraqi
Parliament (2006 – 2010) and a co-founder of the SEED Foundation, an
organization that works with survivors of violence and trafficking in
Iraq. An outspoken women’s rights activist, Ms. Gilly Khailany was one
of the key parliamentarians who legislated the 25 per cent quota for
women in Iraqi provincial councils. As an expert on political
participation and peacebuilding, she recently spoke at a side event on the margins of the 73rd session
of the UN General Assembly on 26 September in New York. In this
interview, Ms. Gilly-Khailany talks about what motivates her, and what
women’s meaningful participation in peace processes means in practical
terms.
I am an activist; I came from
activism and became a legislator. There were several incidents and
moments that led me to this path.
I remember one with my son when
he was in the fifth grade and had to write a paper on a topic of his
choice. I was helping him. He said to me, ‘I could have written my paper
on women’s rights, but I didn’t want my friends to make fun of me.’
I was a parliamentarian at the
time. I thought, all the work I had done… and here was my son, not
feeling comfortable to talk about women’s rights. That incident stayed
with me and motivated me to push forward.
It took my son years to openly
talk about women’s issues. Today he’s doing his senior paper on
gender-based violence in the tech industry. That’s just one person; we
have to make sure thousands and millions of boys feel comfortable
talking about women’s rights.
My fight is for the chance of
equal opportunity. A woman should not be held back from pursuing her
dreams and aspirations because she is a woman. One of the measures that I
worked on as a parliamentarian that I am most proud of, is the quota
system for women in the Iraqi Constitution. We asked for 40 per cent but
got 25 per cent quota for women in the Iraqi Parliament. I worked with
women activists to establish the same quota for women in provincial
councils. Having the quota at the provincial level was really important
because women could use the provincial councils as a stepping stone to
get back into politics, to learn and to grow. Now in the Iraqi
Parliament, there are many women who came from the Provincial councils.
My fight is also about peace.
Peace is not just about security. It’s about equality and social
justice. No one is above the law, and no one should be discriminated by
the law.
Peace needs women’s meaningful
participation. For that to happen, first, women must get a seat at the
table. In my country, there have been many women in political parties,
they’ve headed women’s caucuses in the parliament, but when it comes to
core issues, women are still not at the table. It’s also about bringing
issues that matter to women to the table.
When we talk about sustainable
peace, reconciliation is part of that. But people talk about political
reconciliations between political parties. There are women who have been
impacted deeply by the conflict; how can we not talk about their
reconciliation? Simply put, women’s voices must be heard, when it comes
to running the country.
Sustaining peace is not only
about protecting women during times of war, but also protecting women in
times of peace. The UN has the tools for holding countries accountable
to resolutions and treaties. Any country not in compliance, should be
called on it.
When it comes to women’s rights, there’s no room for diplomacy.”
Here is the newly formed cabinet of Iraq. Whatever happened to women? (The gender ratio in Iraq is almost 50:50)!
Iraq Has New Cabinet But Without Women
It is amazing how many reports have been done by so-called news operations about the new Cabinet and not one of the US outlets have led with the lack of women. When it is noted, it's included as an aside, a single sentence, maybe two.
Priorities send messages and an Iraq for all is not a priority for the new prime minister. 14 people confirmed and all were men. More to the point, this isn't new. Nor is Abid Adel al-Mahdi. He's seen Nouri al-Maliki criticized for the lack of women in his Cabinet in his second term as prime minister.
He saw the same criticism for Hayder al-Abadi after al-Abadi took over a month to find a woman to nominate . . . to head the Ministry of Women.
So al-Mahdi knew this problem going in and could have made a real effort to differentiate himself from those who came before. Instead, he appears to be bound and determined to fumble and stumble like all that came before, never learning a lesson, never avoiding a pitfall.
Iraq is inviting a return to war. 500 or more foreign women await speedy trials (aka collective punishment) in Baghdad on grounds of joining the #IslamicState. #Iraq #HumanRights #InternationalLaw By @ChristinaAsquit and @sophia_mjones
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What about hate actions, Mr. Tapper?
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