inside-an-airport @insideanairport - Tumblr Blog

Ruha Benjamin's "Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code"

❍❍❍

The book was released in 2019, and since then, so much has changed in the world, politically and technologically, that reading it now makes it seem archaic and even melancholic.

There are concepts that by now should be evident to most people. The outcome of capitalist technological progress has never been to benefit people, but to maximize profit. People who are concerned about racism, war, genocide, and kidnapping can see these concepts clearly while reading the book. Some examples of these are the color blindness of the tech industry that is hurting black people and minorities.

The book is written pre-COVID, pre-George Floyd, pre-Epstein, Pre-Palestinian genocide, pre-NATO warmongering conflicts, pre-kidnapping of Venezuelan President, and Pre-invasion of Iran and Lebanon.

The word Palestine is absent from the book.

However, she brings great examples of the US government's discrimination against its own people. Namely, system databases that can classify one-year-olds as gang members based on a combination of ZIP Codes, names, and other algorithmic indicators.

Conceptually, the book is very academic and dull. Doesn't really push any radical concepts forward, aside from demanding that tech corporations hold themselves accountable for seeing race while writing code.

I didn't see any trace of abolishing the capitalist tech giants. Or nationalizing the tech companies and giving it to the people. There was no argument against or for "the fully automated luxury communism", abolishing tech companies or boycotting them.

The book also doesn't spend any time defining the idea of technological progress or tech utopia, and what the place of BIPOC people would be in that future.

The worst part of the book is where she talks about the Facebook employees who denied the "Russian involvement in the alleged 2016 election", which by itself doesn't seem to benefit the working class. Yet she fails to mention AIPAC, which controls the entire election in our so-called democracy.

She's trying to make a case that white supremacy has swept into the tech industry and the new "Jim Code", with engineers who were working on these technologies having racial biases because it's predominantly white. There's an absence of black bodies in Silicon Valley's atmosphere! Yes, we agree, but why stop there?

If you're part of a neighborhood that is predominantly non-white anywhere in the United States, you already know how bad the situation is. For those who are maybe a bit distant from working-class areas and need to read a book to understand what's going on in the non-white neighborhoods, this is gonna be helpful.

The image that came in front of my eyes while reading this book is Obama blaming Mexican and Muslim people for Trump's landslide victory in the 2024 Election. And Biden calling Palestinians "thugs" and dropping two shipments of food in a degrading manner. The US government under Biden destroyed one of the biggest gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, causing an environmental catastrophe.

#reading #review

We refuse: a forceful history of Black resistance / by Kellie Carter Jackson

by @voyageinn

❍❍❍❍❍❍

The writer does a great job of tracing the Black struggle in North America before and after the United States independence in 1776. The book goes through the history of slavery, reconstruction, and Jim Crow segregation up until today's current resistance movements, such as BLM and abolitionist. The writer highlights the militancy of early abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown.

The book goes further and highlights people who advocated for self-defense in the face of white terror. Women who stood firm against racism and picked up guns to defend themselves. We learn about the case of 17-year old Carrie Minor Johnson, who shot and killed Detective Sergeant Harry Wilson, a white police officer who forcefully entered her house, during the Red Summer race riots in Washington, D.C.

I enjoyed the parts of the book where we learn about black freedom struggles and liberation movements in Haiti and the Caribbean and their intersection with the United States context.

We need to remember that slavery was legal at that time, and black and indigenous freedom was a crime. Liberal mainstream media present us with an image of civil rights struggles as mostly a non-violent struggle. The white conservative and evangelical image of civil war and the end of slavery is painted almost as a white project where figures like Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe are often painted as heroes, and black and indigenous peoples are faded in the background. Yet, Kellie Carter Jackson presents a different account of central figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Robert F. Williams, who had guns and were ready defend their families against white terror.

The writer uses personal stories to connect with various stories and historical moments in the United States shameful past. The other aspect of the book I enjoyed a lot was its incorporation of current events we witness daily.

It's nice that the writer ends the book with a chapter on Joy. And presents the concept of black joy, which is different than happiness.

#review #reading

Panther Vision: Essential Party Writings and Art of Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

❍❍❍

The book, as an object, is beautiful and well-made. Lately, I have been reading everything I can find about the Black Panther Party. Previously, I finished Assata Shakur and Aaron Dixon’s autobiographies. Rashid is very knowledgeable. It seems like the movement is operating in a vacuum. That might be because he is locked up in the genocidal Amerikkkan prison. I admire the depth of his knowledge giving that he is a revolutionary captive.

In speaking about COINTELPRO, he gives a great example that the US government wants Africans to be divided and hostile towards each other. The FBI and the racist police carry out this task to make sure Africans in Amerikkka cannot have an anti-imperialist leader for emancipation. He compares this situation with the use of alcohol on Native Americans and opium in China in the 1800s.

He mentions the original BPP and the split between its leaders that the FBI perpetuated, pitting reformists against Leftists. Bobby Seale’s campaign to become the mayor of Oakland was categorized as Reformist!!! (something I disagree with)

I left off the book after reading the first quarter and a few of the essays in the middle, for example, the piece on Obama’s imperialism, as well as the short piece on Amilcar Carbal.

#review #reading

"Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman" by Greg Grandin

❍❍❍

A very moderate review of one of the biggest war criminals in modern history. Kissinger is responsible for millions of people’s deaths, torture, and displacement due to bombing campaigns, coups, and militia wars that amerikkka supported during the reign of Kissinger as Secretary of State. Countries in Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, and the Middle East (essentially, the Global South), as well as Eastern Europe, were subjected to the escalation of instability in the forceful new world order. (Power for power's sake)

Nixon and Kissinger were responsible for 110 thousand tons of bombs that were dropped on Laos. The most heavily bombed country in history. Its effects are still causing death and disfigurement in that country. Currently, in Laos, there are an estimated 80 million cluster bombs that have been dropped unexploded under a thin layer of soil. Today, Farming remains dangerous for people in Laos after years of amerikkkan bombing campaign. Forty percent of the victims are children.

I am disappointed that the writer doesn’t make fun of democracy talks (empty human rights and freedom) that constantly come out of White House and the American establishment. Kissinger was just a random person in a wicked system of racism and imperialism. Currently, White House foreign policy makers are not better than Kissinger. We can identify little kissers all over the US government in both parties.

#review #reading

Vine Deloria Jr.’s “Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto”

❍❍❍

This is a classic read for anyone interested in understanding the treaty relationship between the United States/Canadian governments and indigenous peoples, along with the history of lies and false promises made by the European colonizers stealing indigenous land. The writer also goes into detail about the recent history (before the 1970s) and the political achievements of indigenous peoples in regaining and maintaining their special status and sovereignty over their land. He also dives into cultural stereotypes and the history of white/red relationships in everyday life. He makes fun of two distinct species of homo sapiens: anthropologists and Christian missionaries.

Second to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States" and George Manuel’s “The Fourth World: An Indian Reality," this was one of the most helpful books I have read on the North American indigenous context and their struggle against European invasion. One of the most potent themes he discusses in the book is the different understandings of the word "freedom" between white settlers and indigenous peoples. Indigenous people in North America, similar to colonized nations in the Global South, see "nationalism" (as well as "tribalism") as a positive aspect of resistance against settler colonialism. As comedian George Carlin later remarked: “White European slaveowners made a revolution in North America because they wanted to be FREE.” Link

#reading #nativeamericans

Susan Williams - White Malice

❍❍❍

One of the best books I have read this year. Great research on CIA interventions in Africa, especially in Congo, from the Cold War to today. Her research covers CIA money funneled through secondary organizations (cultural, economic, and so-called humanitarian) to overthrow democratic governments such as Nkrumah’s and Lumumba’s governments. It also discusses the controversial plane crash of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. She believes there is a lot of evidence that the CIA was involved in that attack.

We, the people of the Global South, know a lot of military and propaganda projects that Amerikkka directed against us. However, the most interesting parts of the book involved leftist cultural organizations and liberal institutions that the CIA funded to directly promote Western capitalist values to hasten the regime change agendas. Organizations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Other books that come to my mind while reading this are: "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters" and "Who Paid the Piper?" both by Frances Stonor Saunders, as well as "Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers" by Joel Whitney.

#review

De-WESTOXIFICATION STUDY GROUP 2022

❍❍❍

Focusing on De-Westoxification (Weststruckness/Occidentosis/Gharbzadegi غرب‌زدگی). We will read stuff from Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Fayez Sayegh’s Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. As well as, CIA intervention in Asia and Africa and its relation to the Capitalist culture (money laundry) industry. Plus some other basic anti-imperialist texts. Planning to do this study group for 3 months only. FIRST MEETING Sunday 21st at 8 am Seattle time. Some people are joining from Europe and the Middle East so that seems to be the best time for now. We can change it in the future. Here is the suggested reading list:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XTnS18BcV1-Wj3BlNX5V2vdrPFgeeMY9/view?usp=sharing

#reading

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark - The Forever Prisoner: The Full and Searing Account of the CIA’s Most Controversial Covert Program

❍❍❍

The story was told perfectly. I almost cried reading the part where Abu Zubeydah was looking at his wife while she was searching for him, but he didn’t dare getting out of his car.

Abu Zubeydah (AZ) has lost an eye during his imprisonment and tortured. And that’s probably part of the reason the US government is afraid to release him.

It’s crazy to realize that the reason some of the Guantanamo prisoners are still locked up is not because of what they have done, but it’s because of what the US government and the CIA has done to them.

(approximately 1/3 of them are totally innocent)

When they brought the prisoners to Guantanamo for the first time from the other CIA black sites in Poland and Thailand, prisoners were all almost small and underweight due to the harsh conditions. The guards could pick them up so easily.

The book does a great job of describing the torturers including Jim Mitchell who had a psychology PhD. They got green light from GW Bush and Powell to torture people using the military training mock tortures to perform actual tortures on people who haven’t even been tried at court yet. Tortures including daily waterboarding, mock burial, putting people on unusually small boxes hours and sometimes days, using loud music and sleep deprivation.

Abu Zubeydah has created a series of drawings that illustrates these tortures that he has experienced through the past 20 years in Guantanamo (including the black sites). These images also resembles the drawings I have seen from ex-Panther Rashid Johnson, a political prisoner inside the United States.

As the US government shamefully lost the war in Afghanistan and left the country to Taliban, similar torture chambers has been discovered. The book talks about a torture site in Afghanistan called the Salt Pit, where similar methods led to multiple deaths and permanent injuries.

James “Jim” Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen who developed harsh interrogation (torture) training materials that were used by the US military on detainees held at Guantánamo; Bagram, Afghanistan; and Abu Ghraib, Iraq, are still living their lives inside United States without facing any charges. This type of torture for the most part falls under the legal umbrella of the United States law. And that’s what’s comical about a nation who invades other country’s in the name of democracy and human rights. Especially after the attack on China for educational programs for Uyghurs that was dubbed “genocide” by western-backed think-tanks, these types of systematic tortures are usually concealed from the public under the slogan “counter-terrorism”.

Here are drawings by Abu Zubeydah, depicting tortures he endured.

Drawings by Rashid Johnson linking the prison industrial complex with the war on terror.

The New Huey P Newton Reader

❍❍❍

One of the best books I have read on Black Panthers. It familiarized me with philosophy, history and thinking of Huey P Newton, better than all the other books, I have read on this subject. It provides first hand account of the Black Panthers struggles throughout their activism until Huey’s death.

It also has some of the crucial articles in the Black Panther newspaper written by Huey. Articles such as: “In Defense of Self Defense”, and “On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community”.

What I like about the Panthers is that they followed Malcolm X’s footsteps and include the struggles of Third world peoples into their struggle against the Amerikkkan Hegemony. They understood the relationship between internal colonialism within the US colonial borders and the external colonialism that the United States engaged in after the WWII in global south, most notably in Korea, South America, and Vietnam.

There was a reason that at one point in the 70’s J Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, allocated seventy five percent of FBI’s efforts to combat the Panthers. After reading this book, I think,I will pick up Huey’s PHD thesis; “War Against The Panthers: A Study Of Repression In America” 1980, and Huey’s autobiography published in 1973, “Revolutionary Suicide”.

Harriet A. Washington: “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present”

❍❍❍

This book is a must-read for everyone around the world, especially people from the global south. The author's research shatters the fake Western propaganda that displays white colonizer nations (especially Amerikkka, Western European, and its colonial satellites) as defenders of human rights. These countries not only don't care about human lives, but they also actively put their own citizens under torture and abuse in the name of science and medicine. This reality continues to this day.

Washington's research brings the history of medical abuse towards black and non-wyt subjects into a new light. She takes the reader through different phases of racism in Amerikkkan medicine. She reminds us of the recurrent scientific and institutional hate crimes in different forms and events such as; body snatching, slavery and antebellum hospital experience, eugenics, and black birth-control, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Holmesburg prison dermatological experiments under doctor Kligman, Cincinnati radiation experiment, South Carolina jailing of poor black mothers who became research subjects in the 1990s, Fannie Lou Hamer removed uterus (A common practice in segregated Amerikkkan south, which was called Mississippi appendectomy, Skin research on prisoners by Johnson and Johnson, Oregon and WA state prisoners whose testicles were cut and radiated between 1963 and 1973, MK-ULTRA CIA's mind control program and its experimentation on Black subjects, MK-NAOMI CIA's experimentation on black citizens in Florida using infected mosquitoes with yellow fever, and many more.

The last chapter of the book, followed by the epilogue, is so rich and expansive that I would love to see it in a new book by itself. She successfully connects Amerikkkan anti-black racism and medical experiments to the imperialist wars on black and brown nations in Africa, Asia, and South America. The murder of Steve Biko in South Africa by poisoning (with the aid of the CIA) was one such event. Before picking up the book, I knew that Thomas Jefferson was a slave-owner, a racist piece of garbage, but I didn't know that he actually was an amateur physician who had crazy experimental ideas about Africans.

I picked up this book for two reasons. I heard about the medical experimentation on Amerikkkan prisoners, but didn't know the degree to which it was/is implemented. Secondly, I learned about Pfizer's non-consensual vaccination program on children in Nigeria (1), which resulted in the death and disability of numerous children from 3 months old to 18 years old.

BIB

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2021/12/03/what-do-pfizers-1996-drug-trials-in-nigeria-teach-us-about-vaccine-hesitancy/

#reading

Assata Shakur - an Autobiography

❍❍❍

1. She changes her name from “JoAnne Deborah Chesimard" to “Assata Shakur”

2. Starts referring to her wyt name as her "slave name".

3. Joins the BPP and BLA. Shortly after J. Edgar Hoover ordered the forty-one FBI offices to intensify their efforts “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize” Black nationalist organizations and their leaders.

4. Gets pulled over for a minor offense (defective taillight), in New Jersey Turnpike.

5. Assata was shot in the back 2 times, (once with her hands up) paralyzing her arm, making her unable to hold a gun, yet the police insisted that she shot and killed an officer.

6. By the time she was shot and captured on May 2, 1973, she was wanted for a number of manufactured serious crimes, non of which led to her conviction or sentencing by the court due to insufficient evidence.

7. After being shot by police, she was transferred to hospital where she was subjected to forced interrogation and physical and psychological torture by variety of government agencies such as police and FBI.

8. They staged fake court in the hospital while she was tied to the stretcher.

9. She recalls the 3 books that a nurse smuggled for her in the hospital: A book of Black poetry, another one "Black Woman in White America", and Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha". How she read the poetry book out loud to protest her torture and prison inside the hospital.

10. She talks about her upbringing in the racist apartheid amerikkkan South. Education was completely empty, where they only learned to read and write, but never learned about the history of black oppression.

“(When we learned history, we were never taught the real reasons for things. We were just taught useless trivia, simplistic facts, key phrases, and miscellaneous, meaningless dates.) I couldn’t understand it. What were people all the way in amerika doing in a war because some prince got killed in Austria? I could just imagine going home and telling my grandmother that i got in a fight because some dude in Europe got killed.”

She described that later she learned that 1776 amerikkkan revolution, was a revolution for the freedom of whites only. They were told that Blacks were not fighting back against slavery. They didn't learn about black revolutionaries such as Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Cinque, and Nat Turner. She was taught at school that George Washington never told a lie, yet the reality is that not only he was a big lier, but once he sold a slave for a keg of rum. Same with Lincoln. among the most common lies are that Lincoln freed the slaves, that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves:

“The day i found out about Nat Turner I was affected so strongly it was physical. I was so souped up on adrenalin i could barely contain myself. I tore through every book my mother had. Nowhere could i find the name Nat Turner” (2)

11. Finally, she gets convicted in 1977 by an all white jury of murdering a New Jersey State trooper, although no physical evidence indicated that she had been the shooter, Chesimard’s trial had been widely covered in the African American press as a symbol of police and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) efforts to suppress Black radical movements. (1)

12. In the book, Shakur mildly criticizes Huey Newton's strategy of drawing the battle line between Panthers and police at the Panther offices across the United States. Shakur seems to be puzzled on Huey's notion of guerrilla warfare.

13. In November 1979, she escapes a high security male prison with the help of BLA and seeks political asylum in Cuba until today.

14. She is the first women on FBI most wanted list, and later on the terrorist list with a renewed reward of 2 million Dollars. In 2016 New Jersey state claimed that she is a threat to US government. Former FBI director Louis Freeh reported that the FBI offered five Cuban spies that were being held in Florida in exchange for Assata Shakur and the deal was totally rejected. (3)

"In 1977 I was convicted in a trial that can only be described as a legal lynching. In 1979 I was able to escape with the aid of some of my fellow comrades. I saw this as a necessary step, not only because I was innocent of the charges against me, but because I knew that [in] the racist legal system in the United States I would receive no justice. I was also afraid that I would be murdered in prison. I later arrived in Cuba where I am currently living in exile as a political refugee. (4)

15. Newsday reporter Ron Howell published the first interview with Shakur "On the Run With Assata Shakur" after her arrival in Cuba, confirming her presence and providing the first public glimpse into her life in Cuba. She contributed to the anti-racism and cultural education within the cuban government.

Although most foreign asylees studied at the University of Havana, the article reported the unusual claim that Shakur was studying politics, sociology and philosophy at the Escuela Superior del Partido, a system of colleges run directly by the Cuban Communist Party and populated by its members, with whom she would soon collaborate with as a political advisee. “She is clearly trusted by the Cubans,” wrote Howell, an observation that would prove prescient of the coming years as Shakur worked closely with the central committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and as an intermediary between the government and visiting American delegations...By the mid-1990s, Shakur had become a regular face at cultural and political events in Havana. Now fluent in Spanish and highly respected by Cuban officials, Shakur worked closely with the Central Committee of Cuba’s communist party, (1)

16. Tupac Shakur was Assata's godson. Tupac himself was named after Tupac Amaru (the last monarch Sapa Inca of the Neo-Inca State, the remnants of the Inca Empire in Vilcabamba, Peru, who was executed by the Spanish Colonizers). I Also read the semi-fictional book "T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E." by Sanyika Shakur. Towards the end of the book when the main character's aunt (A panther) is telling him about his family tree and blood line, she briefly mentions the story of Assata.

Bibliography

1. “Assata Shakur Is Welcome Here”: Havana, Black Freedom Struggle, and U.S.–Cuba Relations . Latner, Teishan A. 4, s.l. : Souls - A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, APRIL 18TH, 2018, Vol. 19.

2. Shakur, Assata. Assata, an autobiography. s.l. : Zed Books Ltd., 1987.

3. SOURCE, THE. CUBA REFUSES U.S. TRADE NEGOTIATION FOR ASSATA SHAKUR. THE SOURCE. [Online] MARCH 6, 2015. https://thesource.com/2015/03/06/cuba-refuses-u-s-trade-negotiation-for-assata-shakur/.

4. democracynow.org. Hands Off Assata Shakur: Angela Davis Calls for Radical Activism to Protect Activist Exiled in Cuba . democracynow. [Online] MARCH 28, 2016. https://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/28/hands_off_assata_shakur_angela_davis.

#reading #assata shakur

Max Blumenthal’s “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel”

❍❍❍

A long but essential book for those who are interested in learning more about experiencing the racist violence of Zionism in Palestine. It's written with the aim of raising awareness and educating westerners on the daily effects of land grabbing, check-pointing, and pretty much everything about the ongoing occupation on the biggest open-air prison in the world Gaza and the West Bank.

Book represents a huge amount of historical research on events that has enabled the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the Zionist regime.

I listened to it on Audiobook and had a great time learning more about Palestinian struggle. I think most informed readers would be familiar with at leas half of the events cited in the book. Although, the amount of information would certainty keep you captive all the way to the end of book.

Here are some of those terms:

The "center of life” policy, +The protesters of Ni’lin, Bil’in, and Nabi Saleh

The Children's Military Court (and No Way to Treat a Child campaign)

Israel is the only country in the world that automatically prosecutes children in military courts

Saharonim facility at Ketziot

Closed accommodation center (aka Israeli Concentration Camps)

1954: the Prevention of Infiltration Act

The terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane

1984 campaign manifesto of Kahane’s Kach Party called, “The Arabs.”

Ben Gurion once demeaned Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Arab countries as “savage” and as “a primitive community” that revered pimps and thieves

#reading

Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations

❍❍❍

When you're writing a book entirety made from interviews with Mossad and IDF murderers.

The book has good information about Mossad's collaboration with international right-wing assassins such as ex-Nazi official Otto Skorzeny in exchange for money and political immunity. The book reveals the amount of external terrorism that Israel has waged [in and out of the Middle East] in order to continue its deadly occupation of Palestine.

The writer is trying to normalize colonialism as "self-preservation". This classic move was apparently meant to justify colonisation and brutality as "defence" or "existential threat". The type of justification for state-sponsored terrorism that we hear daily from corporate media. In the end, the book is a bit self-defeating because it reveals how Israel is always the one who strike/attack/bomb FIRST and somehow always manages to present itself as the victim.

#reading

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

❍❍❍

An essential book for understanding the colonial root of the United States and its Foundation. Dunbar-Ortiz makes a great juxtapose between the current United States and Mrs. Winchester's Mystery House as the living symbol of genocides that happened on this land stolen from Native Americans. The Winchester rifle was purchased by US Military mainly for killing indigenous peoples. The house resembles the ongoing fear surrounding the white folks who are constantly reminded of the past atrocities. Paul Mooney's joke about white folks and their obsession with ghosts can fit very well on this comparison.

She also juxtaposes the internal colonization of Turtle Island and the current and past Imperial wars on Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan which resulted in killing millions of people. Unlike some other centrist historians, who see these two types of war crimes as separate, and divergent from the original foundation of the United States, she sees these ongoing atrocities as inevitably interconnected to the European land theft of Turtle Island and the invention of Modern settler-colonialism.

(United States Declaration of Independence)

This is probably the most educational book I have read about the real history of the United States. From start to finish there is not a single page that seems boring or repetitive. I learned about genocidal practices of white Americans under the blanket of science (Kennewick Man for example), Micronesians genocide (which was famously quoted by Henry Kissinger: “There are only 90,000 of them out there. Who gives a damn?”) (1), Modoc Indian Prisoners, indigenous struggle to regain the sacred “He Sapa” Black Hills (2), the doctrine of discovery, the connection between American land theft and Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories, and many more.

“The two-year invasion and occupation of Mexico was a joyful experience for most US citizens, as evidenced by Walt Whitman’s populist poetry. Its popularity was possible because of buoyant nationalism, and the war itself accelerated the spirit of nationalism and confirmed the manifest destiny of the United States. Besides new weapons of war and productive capacity brought about by the emerging industrial revolution, there was also an advance in printing and publishing techniques, which increased the book publishing market from $2.5 million in 1830 to $12.5 million in 1850. Most of the books published during the five-year period leading up to, during, and after the invasion were war-mongering tracts. Euro-American settlers were nearly all literate, and this was the period of the foundational “American literature,” with writers James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville all active—each of whom remains read, revered, and studied in the twenty-first century, as national and nationalist writers, not as colonialists.” (3)

Bib:

1. GRANDINETTI, TINA. Atom Bombs and Rising Seas. fluxhawaii. [Online] https://fluxhawaii.com/atom-bombs-rising-seas/?fbclid=IwAR3GruruFEiVvm-5QNKU76snKsTliydy8-t_4JlUFYqG5ysZP5mLrR4aEqc. 2. Estes, Nick. The battle for the Black Hills. High Country News. [Online] Jan 1, 2021. https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.1/indigenous-affairs-social-justice-the-battle-for-the-black-hills. 3. Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. s.l. : Beacon Press, 2014. 080700040X.

❦❦❦ *Currently we have a media studio with a lot of expenses. We are independently critical without any state funding, and your support allows us to continue. If you like the content and want to become part of our community, please consider supporting us on Patreon or make a one-time donation through Paypal. 🙏 ❦❦❦

#reading

Art Lift Interview with Hami Bahadori

❍❍❍

1. About justice

During the epidemic, people were forced to live in quarantine. "Inside An Airport" launched the “GREATEST QUARANTINE ART EXPO”, allowing interested artists to take advantage of the opportunity to share their "quarantine creations" in the limited home space. Hami Bahadori is one of the curators of the fair. In the face of the virus that is sweeping the world, the privileged are no exception. Hami sees new hope for interracial justice. Born in Iran to a working-class family, Hami had a happy and focused childhood. His father was an amateur painter, whose dedication and passion ignited Hami's pursuit of art. This led Hami to follow the path into the supreme hall with pure passion and carry the backpack of justice and morality. Hami remembers asking his father for advice on shadows in his paintings, but he didn't hesitate to reach out to artists in the shadows years later. As a teenager, Hami migrated with his family to the West due to economic instabilities. After graduation from art school, he continued studying art in different European countries such as Italy and Finland. I have witnessed real "international citizens" and heard many stories about "forced immigration". Whether because of the unforeseen deterioration of the climate or the inevitable war, they have to leave their homes. Eurocentrism's exclusion and discrimination against ordinary immigrants have put them in an unescapable bind.

2. Night and morning at the border of the group

Hami Bahadori found his passion in photography. He studied at the University of Washington and the Helsinki University of the Arts in Finland and set up his own photography and media studio In Seattle. The theme of migration and Western colonialism is a constant source of material for Hami, whose art tells poignant stories of migration and attack the rigidity of orientalism. Photography and moving images are his artistic medium of choice where he conveys his thoughts on privilege and race. Hami Bahadori and [his partner] Jo Kjaergaard, another prominent Helsinki-based artist, collaborated on "T̶H̶I̶S̶ ̶W̶O̶R̶K̶S̶ ̶D̶I̶F̶F̶E̶R̶E̶N̶T̶L̶Y̶" a deep reflection and expression on migration, politics, and privilege. One project, “Wreck”, tells the history of maritime shipbuilding and migration; This harrowing expression of a shared history is the highest respect for the truth depicting the suffering of forced migration. Today, these vulnerable immigrant groups on the continent are still discriminated against. To this end, Hami decided to provide opportunities for fringe artists, and he is full of anticipation and vision for the future. Even the smallest voices, collected together, can also be gathered into a firm source of power. To believe that the boundaries of the community will, at last, see the light, the cold of the morning will be worth enduring.

3. “inside an airport”

Asked why it was named "Inside an airport" and why the location was fixed on the airport itself, Hami said: "Airports, for marginalized migrant communities, are a bittersweet place, a dividing line in the lives of this community. At an airport, saying goodbye to the past, with a sense of uncertainty about the future, is an unspeakable moment. What most people don't know is that immigration violence and deportations are a regular occurrence at airports.

Hami's photography studio went through a rough patch when he was pouring a lot of energy into it, but little to show for the efforts. He was frustrated. Detachment from the day-to-day, he says, brings him back to reality when his work is put on hold.

Career rest can become a major turning point in life. That year, Hami became obsessed with blogging and making book reviews on "inside an airport." He shares his own questions and reflections on immigration, centralism, race, and the politics of privilege. Later, "Inside An Airport" developed into a reading group. A group of people gathered at Helsinki Airport to explore and communicate freely, covering topics such as art, politics, social change, immigration, etc. As the organizer, he established the topic, curated the exhibition to convey the voice of the immigrant community, and provided assistance to immigrant artists. There is a long way to go against privilege, and Hami is not backing down. In the future, when centralism disintegrates, it will be the moment when immigrants get equal human rights.

https://artlift.us/blogs/story/hami-bahadori

#interview

Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains

❍❍❍

The book does a great job of describing the migration journey of the writer to his account. It has a poetic and romantic style of writing ––almost religious in some aspects. We all know how black and brown refugees have been treated on the borders of the West including the European colonial satellite countries. For decades, brown people have been turned into refugees and migrants due to the colonialism and imperialism of European powers. We also know how these migrants (especially racialized migrants) first get rejected and tossed into the waters or locked up in some remote islands, or accepted and weaponized into propaganda machines to export future wars and then tossed out into the fringes of the society as outsiders or invaders. The Western propaganda machine is quick to torture refugees and then quickly amplify their suffering for propaganda purposes. White migrants wrote the bloody history of settler-colonial genocide as Manifest destiny. And now due to their guilt complex, brown refugees become "tokenized" into messiah-like survival stories of escape from the same brown people Westerns are terrorizing.

Anyways, this story is no expectation, aside from the fact that as soon as Boochani became the image of Australian brutality on Manus Island (an indigenous land colonized by white settlers and their anthropologists) he also became the image of Western propaganda towards the Middle East. As we learned this year, Australians have been using the Afghanistan war as their training ground for killing civilians including 14-year-old children without much consequences. These war crimes would not be forgotten in history.

The story of the mountains has a metaphysical aspect that can be provoked when thinking about migration. Nietzsche's Zarathustra descended down from the mount Urmia just like Mohammad did from Jabal al-Nour, and Jesus from the Olive mount, and Moses from Mount Sinai. It's also no surprise that Boochani now is an Associate Professor of some random university in New Zealand. The colonizers are great at using their victims. They are now comparing his book to the right-wing propaganda book The Gulag Archipelago. This is not a new phenomenon. After surviving the journey, and the racism of the system that forces many to commit suicide, the migrant/refugee subject has to make a choice. They can become a "token" for colonizers, or "go against" this racist, xenophobic and colonial mentality. In Boochani's case, I believe the former happened. If you follow Boochani's Twitter these days you find articles only about human rights issues in the Middle East rather than the human rights issues in the English colony of Australia or New Zealand. They are given almost a universal platform (thanks to colonialism) to talk about everyone, everywhere. Such a pity.

#betweensheikhnrefugee

Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews

❍❍❍

The book is a 600-page collection of Paul Robeson's own writings, speeches, manifestos, and interviews. (1) I found the book very useful before reading one of Robeson’s biographies. These writings give us a glimpse into the struggles and achievements of Robeson as an artist and activist. I also recommend reading at least one of Robeson’s biographies. Among many who have written biographies, Martin Duberman, Gerald Horne, Barbara Ransby and Paul Robeson Jr. have the best books that I have come across.

Robeson started as the only black player on the Rutgers University football team. He confronted tremendous racism by the white players. In one of these instances, Robert Nash, a member of the racist varsity squad, flatly states that Robeson “took a terrific beating...We gave him a tough time during the practices; it was like initiation. He took it well, though.” (2)

After graduation from Rutgers, he prepared himself to attend the law school at Columbia, and in-between he worked at his father’s church for a short period. His father wanted Paul to become a minister just like him. During college, Paul decided that he lacked zeal for the ministry and that a career in law better suited his wish to make a name for himself and to serve his people. (2) After finishing law school in 1923, he started to practice his law career. Soon he gave up for lack of interest and the prevalent racism in the American society. He worked for a law firm and one day left the job after a secretary (in a racist slight) refused to type his letters. (3)

Then, he started his music and acting career. He started as a musical actor playing Shakespearian theatre. Simultaneously, he lived between Europe (mainly Britain) and the United States. His reputation as an artist appeared to be boundless as early as the late 1920s, as his renown in Europe served to boost further his recognition in his homeland. (3) In 1927, he and one of his best friends Lawrence Brown appeared at a now fabled benefit for the Harlem Museum of African Art. (3) He was featured in many early Hollywood films such as Body and Soul, Borderline, Emperor Jones, and Show Boat. Many of these films (if not all) are deeply racist and profane. They are showing the real barbarity of white European culture in the United States during those years.

SPEECHES

Gradually his films and records become famous all over the world, and he was able to merge his artistic career with his political activism. He started advocating for human rights causes in the Global South as well as anti-imperialist and anti-racist work within Europe and the United States. He sang and spoke at numerous workers unions and workers conventions where the audience were working class people of all races.

Recently, I have made two mix tapes on Paul Robeson (songs and speeches) for THE EAST IS A PODCAST. (4) (5) I found this book very exceptional among the other books that I used for my research. I also published part of my research as a Twitter thread on Paul Robeson’s connection with the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru who was instrumental in Robeson’s victory over his case with the United States Department of State in 1958.

Here are some examples of Paul Robeson’s famous words gathered in this collection:

The artist Must take Sides (speech)

Africa––Continent in Bondage (News Article)

Anti-imperialists Must Defend Africa (Speech)

Robeson Asks Truman Action on Lynching (News Article)

Happy Birthday New China (1952, written while in mandatory Lockdown)

Ho Chi Minh is The Toussaint Louverture of Indo-China (1955)

Greetings to Bandung (1955)

W. Alphaeus Hunton, Dorothy Hunton, Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois as Alphaeus was being released from prison. (6)

Bib

1. Philip S. Foner (Editor), Paul Robeson. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews, a Centennial Celebration. s.l. : Citadel , 2002. 2. Duberman, Martin. Paul Robeson . s.l. : The New Press , 1992. 3. Horne, Gerald. Paul Robeson The Artist as Revolutionary. London : Pluto Press, 2016. 978 1 7837 1755 2. 4. Bahadori, Hami. Paul Robeson Mixtape Vol 1. [Sound] s.l. : The East is A Podcast, 2020. 5. —. Paul Robeson Mixtape Vol2. [Sound] s.l. : The East is A Podcast, 2020. 6. Education, Claudia Jones School for Political. @ClaudiaJonesEdu . [Online] Aug 1, 2020. https://twitter.com/ClaudiaJonesEdu/status/1289680754780155904?s=20.

#reading #paulrobeson #paul robeson

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

inside-an-airport