Saturday, 9 March 2024

FROM this week’s news ON: the war in West Asia [Content Warning - links to reports on oppression/bigotry/hate, violence including SA & CSA/abuse/war, genocide, language. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green. I have loosely grouped the posts where such seemed reasonable, but that is subjective (i.e., my opinion - others are free to disagree), and challenging, as some posts belong in multiple “groups”.

Reporting on recent and currrently ongoing war in West Asia (I object to the colonial term “Middle East”), in imperialistic Israel, Gaza, and adjoining nations, includes the following: 

Note: as with other mass murderers/serial killers/and the like, violent extremists crave publicity, so I refuse to give that to them - I will avoid using their names (which is a policy adopted by good law enforcement and media for other mass murderers), and I will not give them the satisfaction of being described with the T word. 

This is explained further in my post at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2023/10/from-news-on-war-in-west-asia-content_25.html. 

Note also that the genocidal intent of the VE group I refuse to name is, and has been for some time, clear, according to this from experts in that topic. Information suggests that several thousand of the Palestinian deaths to date are likely to be from that group - maybe up to 20% (as a maximum) of the total: the rest - more than 80% - are innocent civilians, including babies, toddlers, and children. 

 In my opinion, a safe place for Jewish people has to exist because of the world’s collective failures in the 1930s and 40s (the problem was not only Germany, but every nation that rejected Jewish asylum seekers/refugees [including my nation - although Yorta Yorta man William Cooper was a notable “upstander”] or allowed antisemitism - and that continues now) ... but the Arab nations’ proposal for a single nation with Arab and Jewish provinces should have been given more consideration, IMO, and now that MUST be as part of a two state solution, lest Israel’s foundation and existence be inherently based on an injustice - which, as part of correcting an injustice, intrinsically morally weakens that foundation and existence.  

Note also:   mainstream media continues to fail to report on the sexual assaults by _____ (which may partly be a bias resulting from having a majority cismale editors);   media bias towards Israel has been reported, but I have not seen that in the media I read;   this, on when criticism of Israel becomes antisemitism;   and   Israel’s conduct since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the collapse of the Oslo Accords has - in addition to devastating and often displacing and killing its victims - been damaging of its standing (and devastating to those people on the receiving end), and its conduct now risks an even more self-damaging Pyrrhic “victory”. 


  • “Aaron Bushnell Sacrificed himself to Stop Gaza Genocide: “I won’t be Complicit””   https://www.juancole.com/2024/03/bushnell-sacrificed-complicit.html   “Aaron Bushnell set himself afire on Sunday, a telling decision by a serving USAF airman, saying that he refused to be complicit in the Gaza genocide. His martyrdom could well make such a contribution as developments evolve in the geopolitical realm.   Headlines by most mainstream media outlets were close to identical. They skipped words such as “Gaza,” “Palestine,” or “genocide” — even though Bushnell used precisely such words in his final statement.   ...   But, unlike the media treatment of a similar self-immolation in Atlanta some three months ago, this incident was so well-spread on social media that the mainstream was forced to provide coverage.”   


on peace/ceasefires:   


on human rights and human suffering (on both sides) aspects:   


regionally:    

 

internationally:

  • “Triumphant Down Under: Elbit Systems and the Australian Military”   https://theaimn.com/triumphant-down-under-elbit-systems-and-the-australian-military/   “This approach of nodding in one direction while waving a hand in the other has come to typify the slim, unimaginative armoury of Australian diplomacy. When it comes to the substance of policy towards Israel, the military industrial complex, not dead Palestinians, tends to have the final say.   ...   Forget Wong’s wobbliness, the persuasive pull of the Genocide Convention, and Canberra’s concerns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Cash, contracts and jobs drawn from the military industrial complex continue to sneak through the guards.”   This is not the only area of concern regarding military connections: Burma/Myanmar remains of concern over military ties as well - especially as the junta is intertwined in so many business ventures   
  • “Writers puzzled after State Library Victoria cancels workshops for teens citing ‘child and cultural safety’”   https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/mar/06/state-library-victoria-cancels-workshops-omar-sakr-jinghua-qian-alison-evans-pro-palestine-stance   “Sakr, who posts pro-Palestinian messages on social media regularly [said]   “I’m not comfortable with the seriousness and the vagueness of their ‘child and cultural safety’ phrase. Invoking the safety of the student participants in the program implies that at least one of us is dangerous.   I’ve never seen a program cut without explanation, and then been flat-out ignored like this.”   ...   Despite Guardian Australia informing the library that it had a copy of Sakr’s termination contract, a spokesperson said the young writer’s bootcamp had been deferred, not cancelled, saying it was “due to changes in the external environment” and the need to ensure “the highest levels of child and cultural safety are in place”.”   The Library’s conduct is concerning: they need to answer the questions that have been posed  



My links for activism post may aid any activism you may decide to do on any/all of these. If you do, don’t get too fixated on specific instances of problems - important though they may well be: take a moment to also consider the broader issues these incidents and groups of incidents may suggest/reveal.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

  • this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

  • there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  • I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/  

 

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