#it was a post about what canada is doing to palestinians for anyone curious

[the-stars-forsaken]

whoops accidentally reblogged smthn on this acc that was meant for my main!

my main is already tagged in my about as @kogasaur in case anybody wants any of that, but I do want to try and keep this blog strictly clangen things so I'm not getting lost storyline wise and so people have an easier time reading

just wanted to address tht rq so people weren't confused on why it isn't on this blog anymore since ik a handful of people saw!

[swamp-world]

In saying this, I don't mean to detract from the situation in occupied Palestine right now. One issue that people have brought up many times so far is that Israel is a settler-colonial nation, and that if Israel has no right to exist, neither does Canada, Australia, America, New Zealand, and so so so many other similar nations.

Just saw tags on a post saying "you don't get to dissolve an existing country because it's behaving badly"

And, first of all, killing 75 children feels a bit more severe than "behaving badly" but that might just be a me thing, yknow?

Second, that's not why people want to dissolve it. It's unjust in its premise of occupying land, removing the existing populations, and the likes.

It has borders encouraged by external nations, without the permission of the people whose territory it was occupying. Realistically though, there was already limited Palestinian self-determination due to prior colonial ownership by the British and earlier the Ottomans.

This, to clarify, isn't really meant to be a factual post. I'm doing my best to remain factual but don't treat this as history or law. I'm using my Tumblr page as a sort of journal to mark down questions and resources and track my understanding of the situation. There's a lot that I don't know. This is the start of me looking into things. This is mostly a post for me.

So let's talk about Nigeria. In 1967, a secessionist Igbo group formed the Republic of Biafra. This was all of 7 years after Nigeria gained independence from the British in 1960. This attempt at secession didn't go well: a newly formed nation already splintering along ethnic lines didn't bode well for Nigeria. Nor did a fracturing Republic signal good things for the waning colonial influence. After all, if Biafra gained independence successfully, what was to signal to other groups that they couldn't do the same thing, effectively rendering colonial influence powerless? The British saw independent Biafra as a threat to their oil imports, despite Shell-BP being more than willing to continue trading and operating there, until the British issued sanctions on them. France, though not officially recognizing Biafra, armed them clandestinely, because they saw this as a way to destabilize British influence in the region and get their own foot in the door.

Biafra was defeated, and reintegrated into Nigeria in 1970, after blockades caused millions to starve to death.

The only nations that provided formal recognition to Biafra were independent from colonial rule themselves.

I'm not suggesting that the situations in Biafra and Palestine are the same. This isn't about the specifics occurring in Palestine, not yet at least.

What I'm curious about is the legitimacy of a nation, the dissolution of a "legitimate" nation, the creation of new states, the justification for a state, and whether the state as we recognize it is legitimate itself, or whether the concept ought to be dissolved. This is absolutely a question way too big for myself yet, but I'm nothing if not egotistical enough to look into it. Better minds than me will have done so already, and I'm an idiot who hasn't taken the time to read existing theories and literature before making my own way. This discussion is going to be a very big mess, involving present settler-colonial states (America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), former colonial and neocolonial states (a lot of African republics), SWANA if I can, and post-Soviet states as well. I should also take the opportunity to learn more about central and east Asian politics and history, since i don't know a lot.

This is going to be much more an anarchistic mastubratory fantasy than anything else.

Evidently I'm new to this discussion. I'll hopefully have a lot more time to spend reading books in the coming weeks, audiobooks if nothing else, and if not that, then a lot of time to think. So, all in all, we will see.

This is also definitely an open invitation to anyone who has thoughts, input, curiosities, or knowledge on the matter to join and contribute. I don't want this to be egotistical self-congratualting theory alone. This is about real-world politics and people. If this can be a collective thing, I think that's excellent and important and I would much rather do this while working with and learning from others, than being a self-sounding board.