“[Indian] Government should spread Corona in Kashmir. The traitors will be taught a lesson, just like China did in Wuhan. One has to be evil to save this country. π‘π” @HinduRastra14 in response to Indian PM Narendra Modi, @narendramodi. April 27, 2021.
Official figures rank India as second only to the United States at 30.50 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 401,050 deaths,with a mere 3.9% rate of full vaccination as of July 3, 2021.The New York Times reports a much graver situation, including an intensive study of three different antibody tests, called serosurveys, which convincingly demonstrate the utter gravity of Covid-19 pandemic in India. The in-depth scientific analysis of the serosurveys by NYT indicates that at the most conservative the estimated number of deaths in India is at least 600,000, with a more likely estimate of 1.6 million deaths, and a worst case scenario of 4.2 million deaths. Post-August 5, 2019, when India unilaterally derogated Articles 370 and 35A, after dismissing even the faΓ§ade of the elected assembly in 2018, the Indian State has even more vigorously discriminated against the people of Jammu & Kashmir, particularly its Muslim population, especially in the form of explicitly prejudicial new land laws aimed at full-blown settler-colonialism. In a frightening feedback loop, the Indian state violence draws upon and abets Islamophobic violence against Muslims of Jammu & Kashmir at large, and includes a rising number of lynchings, the latest on June 21, 2021. The pandemic situation in Kashmir is thus exacerbated by a settler-colonialism aimed at βdrowning Kashmiris once and for all.β
Soviet propaganda: “Money, Nuclear Weapons and the KKK” (source: capl@washjeff.edu)
It is U.S. election season, 2016, and the extremely dumb baseline for presidential-year rhetoric has already been exceeded with gusto thanks to a fake-tanned reality TV blowhard now leading a white nationalist movement as the Republican Partyβs nominee. βCould it get even more dangerously silly, though β the discourse?β asks a visitor from a planet yet to be discovered by terrestrial science. Well, this is America, my little green partner: youβre damned right it will.
The how, however, in βhow this election will increase the urgency of our desire for an early demiseβ has come out of far left field. The banal idiocy of the liberal, centrist, and now alt-right debate has been answered by contrarian-left columnists and their invocation of the Cold War witch hunt against allegedly-traitorous alleged communists, except this time it is not right-wing anti-communists being called out for baiting anyone to the left of Joe McCarthy as a red. No, the Soviet Union having collapsed 25 years ago, the roles of left and right have been inverted, and so it is the left-of-center critics of a proto-fascist who risk being outed as rank McCarthyites for criticizing a billionaireβs ties to and fondness for a right-wing authoritarian (one on the verge of a formal partnership with the U.S. war machine).
And with that, the alien craft exits the solar system.
Donald J. Trump, the candidate citing the Cold War as the basis for a new, βideological screening testβ to be imposed on immigrants: a victim of anti-communism? The mere thought of the argument may dull the senses, but itβs an argument that, unlike the USSR, just will not die in the alt-reality of punditry. That matters, not just because bad arguments are bad (certainly they are, but not all are worth rebutting), but because world peace literally depends on it. If the leftβs so singularly focused on the worst claim a liberal personality has to offer that it spends more time rebutting thanΒ proposingβexplaining that Vladimir Putin is not the head of the Illuminatiβweβll never get around to building a genuinely internationalist movement that rejects conspiracy for a consistent opposition to greedy capitalists and vicious imperialists wherever they may be.
In the meantime; instead: βDemocrats Are Redbaiting Like Itβs 1956,β informs the online magazine Current Affairs, for example, the article to which the headline is attached arguing that 2016 Democrats βhave revived a long-dormant practice: accusing those to their left of being Kremlin operatives, and discrediting their political opponents with allegations of grand KGB conspiracies.β
But Russia isnβt red and neither is the Republican nominee for president. Still, though, we persist as if the KGB still exists, not because those engaging in the discourse are dumb, necessarily, but rather: weβre distracted by the dumbest arguments of the moment, and opposing them, to the point that weβre not making better arguments of our own. To wit: By suggesting, for instance, that Russian hackers infiltrated the Democratic National Committee and leaked unflattering emails to harm a candidate the Russian government has reason to hate β conflated, for purposes of knocking a straw-argument out the park, with the decidedly less common belief that Trump is literally a Russian secret agent β liberal Democrats are βconspiratorially positing that those who disagree with them are either intentionally or unintentionally serving the interests of the Kremlin.β
That argument requires no conspiracy, though: Trump has proposed policies that would serve the interests of the Kremlin β which, like the United States, seeks to promote its interests abroad β just as he and others, like Hillary Clinton, have proposed policies that would serve the interests of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Bahrain and other repressive governments. And, just as the U.S. notices when certain factions abroad are perceived as more amenable to its interests, Russia does as well. This isnβt chemtrails.
stargazing on the backs of our children
what kind of heaven lies under our feet, yet
starry, starry nights on the backs of our beloveds: “Andromeda, you see, sweeps from right to left. Ursa Major just above it, Cassiopeia is the loose bunch near the shoulder, within, there are all the signs.”
stars, also, on the pitch-black eyes of our daughters, our sons
dying stars, supernovae of frightful beauty
freedom’s terrible thirst clotting into black holes
amidst galaxies of desire
desire of freedom, both deadly and rejuvenating
the dead(ly) gaze of our youth
still threatens to annihilate the brutal
despite their guns
turn the enemy into stone, my dear child!
look him in the eye.
βMake this your star gazing, your horoscope for the week, for all of tomorrow. A starry eyed tomorrow⦔
they shoot our young on their backs, on their eyes,
our eyes will petrify them still
the battle will be won
Medusa, the freedom fighter, will have her day
P.S: This poem was originally written as a Facebook post on Aug 27 or 28, 2015, inspired by Najeeb Mubarkiβs caption, within quotation marks above, of a photograph of a Kashmiri youthβs back, shimmering with scores of pellet injuriesβ¦ Pellet injuries that are touted to be βnon-lethal,β but are anything but.
It happens to be one of the few things coincidentally saved from my now-disabled account β please sign here to demand that Facebook reinstate it.
Michael J. Sandel is an American political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for the Harvard course “Justice”, which is available to view online, and for his critique of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in his first book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. His bookΒ Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy appears in the list muse top 100 political science books list.
Professor Quentin Skinner delivered a public lecture,Β How Machiavellian was Machiavelli?, at the University of York, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the composition of NiccolΓ² Machiavelli’s The Prince, in 2013.
For other articles in this seriesΒ 1,Β 2,Β 3,Β 4,Β 5,Β 6,Β 7,Β 8, 9, 10, 11
William A. Schabas
Since Israelβs latest attack on the besieged Gaza Strip, last summer, Iβve been researching the issue of Israelβs genocide. I quickly found out that Iβm not the only one, and although the subject has been addressed by scholars, politicians, UN bodies, and Palestinian civil society since 1982, this attack has prompted an unprecedented amount of criticism and study.
Last summer, a New York city police officer choked a black grandfather named Eric Garner to death. Garner was suspected of selling loose cigarettes. The arrests of people like Garner are part of a controversial policing tactic called Broken Windows. Broken Windows claims to prevent large crimes by cracking down on small ones. But itβs really about controlling and punishing communities of color, through police encounters that can sometimes be deadly.
For other articles in this seriesΒ 1,Β 2,Β 3,Β 4,Β 5,Β 6,Β 7,Β 8, 9, 10, 11
On the 7th of April 2004, then United Nations Secretary General to the Commission on Human Rights, Kofi Annan, launched his Action Plan to Prevent Genocide:
We must never forget our collective failure to protect at least 800,000 defenceless men, women and children who perished in Rwanda 10 years ago. Such crimes cannot be reversed. Such failures cannot be repaired. The dead cannot be brought back to life. So what can we do?
In my series of articles about Israelβs ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, I tackle this assertion through different aspects of prevention mechanisms that have been put forth by the United Nations, such as The Convention of Prevention of Genocide, the UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide statements, and other reports and documents.Β In this article, Iβd like to discuss Annanβs plan, which is an overarching document and a promise of the UN to endangered communities that asses the dangers as they happen, and to bring it to task about its inaction to prevent Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian People.
Hedges & Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?Β
Journalist Chris Hedges interviews political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, who says democracy requires continuous opposition and vigilance by the citizenry.
On the 7th of April 2004, then United Nations Secretary General to the Commission on Human Rights, Kofi Annan, launched his 
P U L S E 