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[humansofnewyork]

"The thing we need most is security. Without security, nothing works. We are only out here playing chess because right now, in this place, we have a little bit of security. But that’s just for right now— just this moment. In this country things have never been secure for long. In America, there is always security. And that’s why America works." (Juba, South Sudan)

[likeafieldmouse-deactivated2015]

Jonathan May - Awake (2013)

[gronalund]

Tôi nhìn những khách sạn im ắng và thưa thớt bóng người, tự hỏi khi mùa đông trở lại, khi mây mù vây bủa dày đặc, nhà này không còn nhìn thấy nhà kia, thị trấn này sẽ trùm chăn nằm ngủ?

"Còn Lại Chỉ Mây Mù"/ Nguyễn Ngọc Tư

[humansofnewyork]

“Everything was fine at breakfast. We talked normally. I went to work thinking that it was just a normal day. Then when I came home, the door was locked, which was strange, but I didn’t think much of it. Everything seemed to be in place when I went inside the house. So I sat down and watched TV, expecting them to come home any minute. After awhile, I went upstairs to the bedroom. And that’s when I noticed all her clothes were missing. Then I ran to the children’s room, and all their clothes were missing too. After seventeen years, she left me without saying a word.”  (Nairobi, Kenya)

[humansofnewyork]

"I’ve had to run from war twice. Both times I left good jobs behind, and it was very painful. The second time was the worst. I thought I’d escaped a hopeless situation, and then it happened again. You can feel when war is coming to your town. Traffic picks up. People’s faces begin to look very worried. Nobody cares for each other. If someone talks to you, you can tell that they want the conversation to end as soon as possible. The second time I had to run, I thought: ‘This time I have to get as far away as possible.’ So I came all the way to Kinshasa." "Were you worried the war would reach Kinshasa?" "No. Because the wars have all been about Kinshasa. So if the war reaches Kinshasa, the war is over." (Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo)

[90shiphopraprnb]

[runthefever]

Visit Original Link

[gronalund]

A common theme in my life is having acquaintances surreptitiously watch me doing small things (combing my hair, counting my changes, fixing my clothes etc) and judge me silently before making nasty comments behind my back about how "strange", "bizarre", "weird" I am. 

[twentywhine]

State and county Police are accompanying and marching WITH protesters in Ferguson. THESE are good cops.

Source

[choco-kick-deactivated20160120]

They’re not good cops. They realized that upping the ante only worked in the protestors’ favor and led to large protests around the country. Now they’re pacifying the protestors in hopes that they’ll eventually stop protesting and go home.

It’s no different than when the army was called into Ludlow to break up the fighting between the Colorado National Guard and the coal miners during the early 20th century. The National Guard was shooting strikers, burning their children alive and all kinds of horrible things. The Governor and President let it continue until the miners armed themselves and launched a violent campaign in retaliation, which endangered big capital. At that point the President sent in the army to “bring peace” to the region. Things went back to normal, workers continued being exploited, and justice was never found for most of the human rights violations that occurred. The soldiers who ended the conflict weren’t good, they were conniving backstabbers.

This is the exact same thing, just a repeat of history. The establishment doesn’t want things to escalate in Ferguson and elsewhere, becoming a threat to its stability or existence. The establishment doesn’t care about Michael Brown or any other Black person who’s been killed without justification. They just want the dissidence to cease and Black victims of police brutality to be forgotten.

If Capt. Johnson cared about police brutality he would defect and inform the world of the corruption and abuse that goes in in the police force. Instead he panders to the system and actively works to preserve a white supremacist power structure every day of his life.

[humansofnewyork]

"One day I drove into the city to buy goods for my shop. I repaired antennas and satellite dishes, so I needed some replacement parts. But on the road there was a checkpoint for the Syrian government, and two soldiers came up to my car. They began to argue with each other. ‘Let’s take him,’ said one of them.  'Let him go,' said the other. And they went back and forth, and back and forth. But finally the first man won the argument, and they took me out of my car, put a blindfold on me, and took me to jail. When I got to the jail, they began beating me with a cord. They asked me if I supported the rebels. I kept saying 'No,' but they kept beating me. They took off all my clothes. They said: 'We are going to whip you 35 times, and if you say 'ouch,' we will start from the beginning. They whipped me and kicked me and broke 3 of my ribs.  They said: ‘Tell us how many soldiers you’ve killed.’  I said: ‘None.’ They said: ‘Tell us how many soldiers!” I said: ‘None. I haven’t killed anyone.’ But they kept beating me and they ripped off my toenails and I screamed: ‘Eleven! Eleven! I killed eleven soldiers!’ So they put me into prison. But I never killed any soldiers. I never fought anyone. I’m a good person. I have a very sweet heart. You believe me when I tell you this, don’t you?” (Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan)

[musaafer]

What is happening in Ferguson - and the solidarity people from Palestine are expressing - is exactly what Angela Davis has been talking about. The internationalization of these oppressive structures. The prison industrial complex does not exist in a vacuum. Police brutality doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Apartheid doesn’t exist in a vacuum. These oppressive structures are interconnected.

This is why whenever I’ve seen her speak on the PIC or on feminism and abolition, she’s always connected it to Palestine. Global connections. When she was imprisoned in the 70s, in solitary confinement in an American prison, a Palestinian political prisoner in an Israeli jail sent her a message of solidarity - it was smuggled out of that Israeli cell an into Davis’ cell. Do we not see parallels of that today in those tweets sharing tips on how to deal with police brutality?

The struggles are distinct. Specific to specific communities. But the structures are interconnected. What does it say for American police to be trained by and often armed by the IDF; what does it say for weapons to be tested on Palestinians and then sold to the rest of the world; what does it say for military and prisons to both be privatized to this extent; what does it say for neoliberal institutions like the IMF and the world bank to be supporting private prisons as replacements of state functions in developing countries? We have to have attention to detail and we have to also be able to look at this in a larger framework.

[gronalund]

There was a man, his name was Zayd, and he had this to say: Having been to a pro-Gaza demonstration with me, my son asked, What is the point of demonstrations, if they fail to stop evil? We protest, but evil stays. We fight, but evil repeats itself. We win by an inch, but evil comes back by a foot. So, what’s the point? This is what I told him: If we stay in our homes, if we shrug our shoulders and say “just another day, another bloodbath”, and if we play content with the accident of life that cast us where there was plenty and in poverty threw them, would evil end? Would peace arrive? And this whisper of justice in the wind, would it be voiced, would anybody hear it? My son, I don’t know if there is any point in playing a losing hand – which is what we powerless people do – but if we don’t risk a day’s honest labour at the roulette wheel, and spited by the stormy luck abandon ship, if we let the powerful few take all our savings, our dignity, and all our children sleeping in their beds, where any man you see is one of just two, tyrant and coward, then in this miserable ordeal, what is the point of humankind? When he finished, on hearing this, I said to Zayd, you asked a question, what did your son say? He said, he looked for a full minute onto a placard figuring a dead, bloodied boy his age, and said, in a world of tyrants and cowards, happy those who fled to the underworld. And then he went silent.

FROM A CORRESPONDENT: Everyman's Child on Gaza

[thishippocampus]

When Mary Mycio tells people she visited the radioactive fallout zone around Chernobyl to study the region’s animals, the questions are always the same. Do the animals have two heads? Do they glow? 

Actually, according to Mycio and photographer and field biologist Sergey Gaschak, the animals are thriving. The 1986 explosion, the worst nuclear accident in history, forced 300,000 people to abandon the highly contaminated area around the wreckage of the power plant. Communal farms turned to wetlands and forests, and the animals came back. The area is now the largest, if unintentional, wildlife sanctuary in Europe. (via)

[gronalund]

My facebook account, which I haven't updated for months, has been hacked. 

I just logged in and saw a selfie of a half-naked guy whom I've never seen posted under my name. An acquaintance already liked the picture before I could delete it. 

THIS IS A TRULY TERRIFYING MOMENT IN MY LIFE. 

[gronalund]

Friendly reminders that the US police train in Israel and apply the tactics of Israeli occupation army to their police work in America. 

[dosajam]

The rise of genocidal Buddhist racism against the Rohingya, a minority community of nearly one million people in the western Burmese province of Rakhine (also known as Arakan), is an international humanitarian crisis. The military-ruled state has been relentless in its attempts to erase Rohingya ethnic identity, which was officially recognized as a distinct ethnic group in 1954 by the democratic government of Prime Minister U Nu. Indeed, in the past months of violent conflict, beginning in June 2012, the Rohingya have suffered over 90 percent of the total death toll and property destruction, including the devastation of entire villages and city neighborhoods. Following the initial eruption of violence in western Burma, several waves of killing, arson, and rampage have been directed at the Rohingya, backed by Burma’s security forces.

[dosajam]

— Dr. Maung Zarni, Buddhist Nationalism in Burma

Photos— Jonathan Saruk: Kutupalong and Leda Refugee Camp, Bangladesh, November 14 and 19.

[humansofnewyork]

"I want to be a pilot so I can fly everywhere." (Dhana, Jordan)