NM's blog

On Israel, Hamas, and the Israeli hostages John Jewell Was there any mention of releasing the “Sausage’s” but seriously did he [Starmer]? (the Hostages?) Ned Ma John JewellHave a read, think, question your belief system … – The United States has given its imprimatur to Israel’s regional hegemony. – When Trump made plain that he wanted Israel to stop bombing [Iran], Netanyahu had little choice but to acquiesce. – Israel also appears to be pursuing a long-range plan to weaken, if not to render defenceless, the other states in the region, so that none is in a position to challenge it. The instability and precariousness of such an order are evident to American and European politicians, but they prefer to remain discreet about them for fear of being accused of sympathy for Hamas or antisemitism. – Israel now has control of the airspace over Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria – almost boundless room for manoeuvre – and has always favoured unilateral military assertion over diplomacy. – Netanyahu ...

  George Young And the English people wouldn't listen to Enoch [Powell] . Ned Ma George Young “Some 74 percent of Britons in the aftermath of Powell’s rhetoric agreed with him – that black immigration was likely to cause violence on our streets in the not too distant future, or as he put it – “In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” A few days later, a group of white youths descended on the christening party of a Caribbean family, slashing the face of the baby’s grandfather. They chanted “Powell” and “Why don’t you go back to your own country! Fifty years later, the UK finds itself amid another immigration scandal in which the children of Caribbean labourers invited to help rebuild the British economy after World War II are threatened with deportation. Has Britain really changed in this half a century? MI5 later investigated a march of 500 dockers supporting Powell through London and discovered that it too had been orchestr...

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displaye...

I personally never forget that I was tortured by a police state that was supported by the major Western powers. I was threatened with inserting a baton in my rectum while I was being beaten and completely naked. I remember the names of my torturers, the police station … And it was only for expressing my ideas and being an activist. At the time, others were subjected to even much worse torture. A few were killed.  I too am ‘deeply and gravely concerned’. The Israeli military practice is just one example Related Rape suspects shouldn’t face criminal charges – poll

Dozens of Indian workers freed from 'slavery' in Italy Related “Italy’s Sikh Slaves” Italy’s Migrant Boot Camp Raped, beaten, exploited Migrant workers in Spain

The treatment of Palestinian women, in particular the rapes and sexual aggression which they have endured since the beginning of the war on Gaza.

UN experts appalled by human rights violations

Rape and sexual abuse are not just a by-product of war but are used as a deliberate military strategy, says Amnesty. “Women are seen as the reproducers and carers of the community…  Therefore if one group wants to control another they often do it by impregnating women of the other community because they see it as a way of destroying the opposing community." — Gita Sahgal, Amnesty International “Such attacks are an assault on the integrity of individual women as well as their communities. They are a form of public desecration; they are often a deliberate attempt to humiliate enemy men for failing to protect ‘their’ women.”

James Baldwin   once noted : “Whatever you see in other people is what you see in the mirror … everybody knows, or every writer knows … no matter what I may be describing, I am describing myself.” Israel’s routine depiction of Hamas as barbaric, sadistic torturers brings the searing truth of Baldwin’s words sharply into focus. “Worse than ISIS”

It is like that ‘motto’ we heard a few times after 9/11 2001: “We have to fight them there, so they don’t come here.” Paying Africa’s brutal militias to lock up migrants

Borders ensure that poor people will never have the same freedom of movement as corporate capital. Rape as weapon Related The Darién Gap

A practice that exists in ‘peripheral’ as well as in ‘advanced’ capitalist power relations. Sexual abuse on Kenyan tea farms Related Italy: raped, beaten and exploited Spain: ‘If you don’t want to work like a slave, you’re out’

“By the end of the day American forces had killed 347 to 504 unarmed Vietnamese women, children and old men, and raped 20 women and girls, some as young as 10 years old. The massacre at My Lai was not the only time American troops committed war crimes against Vietnamese civilians, but it was the single worst instance; its severity, its cover-up and the eventual trial of just a handful of the unit’s leaders became a synonym for the entire American war in Vietnam. Rape became such an endemic problem in Charlie Company that one member of its Second Platoon, Michael Bernhardt, assumed that every woman Lieutenant Calley’s platoon came across would be raped within moments. The events at My Lai became public a year later. Several officers were brought to trial in 1971, but only Lieutenant Calley was convicted. He was released from prison in 1974.” Source: The New York Times Wrath of the centurions