Posts tagged America
مہرین کسانه
Some Al Qaeda text up there.
And in case you forgot. Reagan and Zia’s bromance was famous back then. Too bad US history doesn’t own up to it now.
Heh. Truth.
The colonized is never characterized in an individual manner [but] … entitled only to drown in an anonymous collectivity (‘They are this.’ ‘They are all the same.’). If a colonized servant does not come in one morning, the colonizer will not say that she is ill, or that she is cheating, or that she is tempted not to abide by an oppressive contract. He will say, ‘You can’t count on them.’ He refuses to consider personal, private occurrences in his maid’s life; that life in a specific sense does not interest him, and his maid does not exist as an individual.
Pakistani American scholar Asma Barlas quotes Albert Memmi in her powerful essay A Requiem for Voicelessness: Pakistanis and Muslims in the US.
She also touches upon the issue of American government(s) refusing to discern between Arab and non-Arab people while “ensuring security measures.” Many Pakistanis have been mistaken for Arabs post 9/11 which shows how Muslim communities have been collectively thrown together while being Otherized aggressively. “For instance, all men over 16 from several Muslim countries, including Pakistan, are now required to “be fingerprinted, photographed andinterviewed” by the INS. Since the start of the program, “3,000 Pakistanis have fled to Canada and 1,100 have been deported;” as many as 50,000 are expected to return to Pakistan on theirown “before it’s all over.””
Heavy read.
The Orientalist enterprise of Western writers has received a great deal of critical attention since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978. As Western academics have learned to bring more objectivity and empathy to their study of the Islamicate, a growing number of Muslim academics, novelists and journalists – in their home countries and the diaspora – have started looking at themselves through new Orientalist constructs that serve the interests of Western powers. This native Orientalism was a minor affair during the Cold War but it has grown dramatically since the launching of the West’s so-called global war against terror. This essay examines the manner in which native Orientalists in Pakistan – writing mostly in the English language – have been supporting America’s so-called global war against terror.
Abstract of Native Orientalists in Pakistan.
Currently reading this. Remember when I said Brown Uncle Toms and Sams? This is precisely about that. Excellent so far.
Folks, white births no longer a majority in the US according to Census Bureau
Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration.
Replying with appropriate gif:
U.S. soldiers don’t listen, they are too arrogant. They get upset due to their casualties, so they take it out on civilians during their searches.
Some Afghan soldiers in a survey attempting to establish the increasing rates of Afghan soldiers killing Coalition Forces.
(via cardinalblack)
Not surprised.
(Source: The New York Times, via cartographyofmylife)
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
Toni Morrison (via jumpstart-therevolution)
This is why when my ex got so pissed about “why can’t I be European American, or Irish American, why do I have to select white?” it’s because you’re seen AS THE AMERICAN whereas the rest of us will always be ‘other’.
(via siddharthasmama)
This is simply nonsense. Being an American means living in American society, pursuing happiness, and being an upstanding citizen. That has nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
(via pragmatic-realist)
The problem is that many individuals within American society don’t seem to look at individuals that come from non-white/European-American backgrounds as being on the same ‘level’ of societal integration as they do towards other white-Americans.
These problematic elements of social ‘ignorance’ (that is, turning a blind eye to these maladies) are clearly seen in the major issues that many individuals from non-European backgrounds face in education, employment, housing, poverty, and so forth across the spectrum when compared to the great majority of white-identifying Americans.
Basically, white-identifying Americans within this country seem to get major preferential treatment by ‘western’ society as a whole. See: Euro-centrism, etc.
(via doctorofnothing)
Toni Morrison knows how to make everyone uneasy with the truth. She’s right: It’s Eurocentrism at its unfairest. No pun intended, obviously. To counter those who raise objection to this valid claim, one question should settle it all: Compare the deporting of white European(s) with non-white racial entities. See an imbalance? There you go.
(via battle-studies)
Sometimes I think being American means never having to say you’re sorry. On Wednesday, May 2, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a federal appeals court in San Francisco, unanimously dismissed a lawsuit against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo by José Padilla, the US citizen picked up at O’Hare Airport and held in military custody as an “enemy combatant” for three and a half years, during which he says he was subject to physical and psychological abuse.
No Accountability for Torture - David Cole.
The truth.
(via mehreenkasana)
Reblogged because this is important. When will it stop?
Sometimes I think being American means never having to say you’re sorry. On Wednesday, May 2, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a federal appeals court in San Francisco, unanimously dismissed a lawsuit against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo by José Padilla, the US citizen picked up at O’Hare Airport and held in military custody as an “enemy combatant” for three and a half years, during which he says he was subject to physical and psychological abuse.
No Accountability for Torture - David Cole.
The truth.
![Children seen in an anti-drones protest in Pakistan.
[Via]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3g5ec1dLV1qamcl6o1_1280.jpg)
Children seen in an anti-drones protest in Pakistan.
Boom. Don’t you just love The Simpsons?
(gif goes on for about 5 seconds)
His eyes well up and a tear slides down his cheek when Feroz Abbasi, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, is asked what he would say to the other Guantanamo Bay detainees he was incarcerated with and “left behind” when he was released as a result of diplomatic arrangements between the US and the UK and after accusations that he was an “enemy combatant” could not be proven due to insufficient evidence.
“Uhibbuka fillah,” he mumbles, his voice trembling, his lip quivering as he tries to hold back tears, “means I love you for the sake of Allah. That’s when you love someone you tell them, tell them that. It’s very hard to see your friends in that situation, you know, still there after all these years, it’s not easy.”
Torture and humiliation methods used on/against the detainees by US forces include (but are not limited to) physical abuse, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, mock executions, sexual assault, forced injections, sleep deprivation, long and short shackling for hours on end, environmental manipulation, violent dogs, use of phobias as torture, extreme cold, cultural humiliation, religious humiliation, hours of interrogations, sensory bombardment, stress positions, sensory deprivation, isolation, and music torture.
(s/o to a-restless-being for linking the video on his tumblr)
And rape. We shy away from naming the sexual torture of Arabs and Muslims at Guantanamo “rape” because A) the victims are male and B) we do not want to think of the United States as a country that uses rape as a tool of war— but it is and we do.
To learn more about the horrendous torture methods used in Gitmo, check out Wikileaks’ Gitmo Files. I’ll give a warning here though: The details, footage, interviews are extremely disturbing. Other cases of innocent individuals detained in Gitmo include:
- Shaker Aamer who has been detained for more than ten years. His gradual mental, emotional and physical deterioration is ignored by the American government and majority of the public.
- “For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators,” said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani’s interrogation records and other military documents. “Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister.”
- Lakhdar Boumediene was held in Gitmo for seven years without explanation or charge. “During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as “undeliverable,” and the few that I received were so thoroughly and thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were lost.”
- 14-year-old Mohammed El-Gharani, a Chadian national. He was seized in a raid on a mosque in Pakistan.
Behavioral science teams consisting of psychologists have explained the extreme nature of interrogation at Gitmo and its effects on innocent detainees. Doctors at Gitmo hide evidence of torture on prisoners. Psychologists were employed to introduce new methods of torture in interrogation. Obama has done little, if nothing at all, to stop the atrocities occurring in Gitmo that was started by Bush in his notorious War on Terror plan.
How is he any better?
(via androphilia)
You don’t need to be a cynic of US overseas aid to know that cash is generally directed to those countries in which Washington has a clear foreign policy objective: Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan are among the top recipients. But perhaps more shocking is the increasing evidence of the way in which the US has been exploiting aid operations as cover for CIA agents and black ops.
How the CIA’s fake aid projects put real humanitarian workers at risk in Pakistan.
Rob Crilly explains:
As if aid workers in Pakistan did not already have enough to cope with. American charities in particular have long been suspected of habouring Blackwater staff or CIA agents. Local newspapers with close links to Islamabad spies have delighted in falsely revealing NGO offices as hubs of covert intelligence networks. Now they will be able to say: “We told you so.”
This happens a lot thanks to CIA’s covert plans in Pakistan. No one should blame Pakistanis in this regard because, Joshua Foust highlights the issue here, “American aid to Pakistan has been fraught with problems for many years, facing charges of politicization, corruption, and ulterior motives.”
Literature and newspaper reviews have shown that most of mainstream America knew about and encouraged the massacre of indigenous people. Editors and newspapers across California wrote of many killings of Native people and called for the extermination of Native people as a whole. In doing this, these editors and writers described Native people as “diggers,” “savages,” “devils,” and other inhumane names, helping create racist stereotypes that still exist. These writers helped create the fake “Indian War” history in California that exists in today’s literature; these “Wars” were really the indiscriminate murder of thousands of indigenous men, women and children across California by miners and the US military. The Gold Rush has long been romanticized in American history. The 49ers have been called heroes, legends, argonauts, and pioneers. Their exploits are remembered and rejoiced in parades, movies, books and school plays. The truth is, many were thieves, murderers, and slave-traders, spurred by a government bent on destroying indigenous cultures in the name of Manifest Destiny.
Chag Lowry (Yurok)
*Estimated gold dug up during the Gold Rush in California: 24.3 million ounces (1848-1857). The estimated value of this gold at 1998 gold prices: $6.9 billion (at $285 an ounce). The price paid for a Native American severed head in Shasta in 1855: $5. The price paid for a Native American scalp in Honey Lake in 1863: 25 cents.
(via emeraldtriangleprincess)
Hamid Dabashi wrote extensively about this in Brown Skin, White Masks. It’s amazing how it’s still alive in America and will continue to thrive in its people. All thanks to the homicidal American curriculum, media, and politics.
(via lettersfromtaiwan)
