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"Like anyone who has lived through war, I dream that future generations will one day be at peace, will abandon the weapons of war. But I know my dream is impossible. As a writer and especially as a veteran, I know that underneath the beautiful green meadows of peace are mountains of bones and ashes from previous wars and, most awful to contemplate, the seeds of future wars." The First Time I met Americans
"Baraka wasn’t concerned with whether white musicians imitate black musicians. His quarrel was with a society that allows some to rake in profits at the expense of others, a process that has consistently and aggressive." Why Culture Matters
Capital expansion has no religion "The treatment of the Rohingya is sometimes described as a crime against humanity. But we need to interrogate its sources. If we bring in some of the larger trends affecting modest rural communities, two major facts stand out. One is the far larger numbers of Buddhist smallholders who have also been expelled from their land in the last few years. And the other is the fact that large-scale timber extraction, mining, and water projects are replacing the expelled." Is Rohingya persecution caused by business interests rather than religion?
Yes. An Egyptian filmmaker is planning a rejoinder to the Hollywood blockbuster  American Sniper , with a film focusing on the "other side of the story" - the Iraqi fighter said to have killed dozens of American soldiers during the occupation. ' Iraqi Sniper': An Egyptian film-maker plans a response to American Sniper
الكتابة كفعل تحرري عند غسان كنفاني وإميل سيزار (Writing as a liberating act in the writings of Ghassan Kanafani and Aimé Césaire)
If the "civilised" treat their own people in this way , then one should understand the indifference to the 400,000 Iraqi children or the similar number killed by a Syrian regime they did not want to remove. Or, the 500,000 to a million killed in a genocide in Rwanda. Mechanisms have included sanctions, aid, debt, celebrities "saving Africa and defending human rights" ... There are exceptions though when  there is a profit to make out of some people or a demographic need combined with hostorical guilt (Germany). In the mid-19th century British capitalism deliberately legalised opium trading in China that turned millions of Chinese into addicts and made British commerce huge profits. The Chinese fought an unsuccessful war against the British to stop the trade. Well, in the 21st century there is another legal opium trade operating in the heart of America. It has produced an opioid epidemic across working-class middle America. And it has been created by big pharm...