An excerpt frpm Tabish Khair's novel JUST ANOTHER JIHADI JANE was published as an MR Working Title and can be purchased on Amazon, Kobo and Weightless Books.
The reaction of the global left to Don Trump’s victory in USA has been predictably predictable, as can be seen from a series of articles in...
If I had to be as simple as possible, I would say these two things:
1. The simplest reason to support the Lakȟóta People, the Sioux, in their struggle at Standing Rock was, is, because they asked for support. It’s the reason to keep actively supporting them now, even after Sunday’s decision by the army to not grant Energy Transfer Partners an easement to run the Dakota Access pipeline beneath the Missouri River at Lake Oahe. The Sioux are a sovereign people, a people who’ve suffered hundreds of years of injustice, genocide, and oppression by Americans. That oppression has always been carried out by the army, by businesses and their interests, by ordinary citizens homesteading, and by local law enforcement. The army and the police and business interests are...
Direct Action
Oceti Sakowin is also a training camp. We attended a several hours long direct action training our first day in camp, mandatory for anyone who wishes to participate in direct action. One of its clear goals is to train others in effective nonviolent direct action, in its principles of unity and non-isms, and in learning how to take space and how to relinquish space. The direct action trainers told attendees to return home to their own Standing Rocks and train others. As such, I see Oceti Sakowin as a site in a much larger movement. I think that’s particularly threatening to the army: that indigenous people and their allies, that marginalized and oppressed people and their allies, from all over the country, come to Oceti Sakowin and learn how to take...
New York, Chinatown, early 1900s. (Photo: Byron Company, Library of Congress)
AFTER THE US ELECTIONS and the resounding victory of Donald Trump, the word “fascism” has been trotted out widely in public discussions. Even during his campaign the new President-elect was associated from time to time with the figures of both Benito Mussolini and Adoph Hitler. Some writers, especially in Italy, also compared him to ex-Prime Minister (also billionaire) Silvio Berlusconi (even though, we should recall, the Italian leader did distance himself from the American). Some analysts labored further, defining Trump as a right-wing Hugo Chávez, a KKK caudillo. Each of these pairings have something in common: they all explain the Trump phenomenon...
The exercise of power and the capacity for its abuse takes many forms. It is not confined to Donald Trump.
In the current moment, it is frighteningly evident that individuals poised to hold positions of power within our government will likely exercise that power abusively. But, in our grief over the election and its aftermath, we should also maintain a constant watchfulness for abuses of power on the part of those holding any and all positions of institutional authority, whether within a corporation, a university, or a department.
Rather than positioning ourselves as victims – and turning to someone else in a position of institutional authority to “rescue” us...
