#we refuse to be complicit

[creekfiend]

whoever is elected president of the United States will immediately become a war criminal upon being sworn in if they are not one already and captain america was already about nationalism and if you didn't notice the MCU being racist about arabs in the very first fucking iron man film WHICH WAS SPONSORED BY THE US MILITARY I simply do not know what to tell you and I'm going to dunk all of you into a big old bucket of ice until you are damp and chilly

[gentil-minou]

[luxlightly]

There's a question at the heart of philosophical debate for centuries which is "is it more important that people do not die, or that I do not feel I have a hand in killing them?"

It's the basis of the trolley problem. Do I choose to let 4 people die just so that I could say I didn't personally kill one person? Which is more important? Their lives or my conscience?

From an outside perspective, we feel the answer should be obvious: that in choosing not to act, we are still acting. We are still choosing to allow 4 people to die. But, in the moment itself, it's hard to see, and we recognize that. The idea of being in any way supporting a single death is more than most people's conscience will allow. It's easier to let go of the switch and distance ourselves from the responsibility of the result.

But when the price of inaction becomes hundreds of thousands of lives, the gap of morality grows. When you have seen hundreds of thousands die already and you know hundreds of thousands more will, the idea of putting one's own personal sense of moral purity above those lives becomes harder for me to understand or defend. Especially in a case where, if one doesn't act, everyone on both sets of tracks dies.

Conceptually I do, of course. It's not like morality is a simple issue, especially in the face of mass atrocities. There's a reason the tolley problem exists, after all. But in practically, I will always have a fundamental difference in morality as people who think like that, when it reaches the scale it has.

It's still my choice, regardless if I choose not to act and I won't ever allow more blood to be spilled just to say my own hands are clean of it. To me, nothing seems more performative than that.

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

I don’t know why I’m shocked with the United States’ support for genocide given their track record with it. I don’t know, I just hoped that maybe for once they would actually make an effort to prevent one and speak out against it but it looks like we’re going down the same path we always do which is: make it worse, assist in the deaths of innocent civilians and then when the dust settles claim that another genocide can never happen again and next time we won’t be silent and we will do something about it.

[bijoumikhawal]

Oh 100 percent! But they seem to lean into his Europeanness rather then his POCness that I wonder was a conscious choice since Sisko's blackness is a wonderful part of his story, or more of a gloss over since they made him augmented But his beginning "doc on the frontier" reeks of colonialism. Do you have any posts on Bashir and his "otherness"

I don't think I've made many because frankly, the fandom leans heavily into him as British and I've seen at least one fairly popular fan imply it was racist to emphasize his brownness too much in a way I found offputting (we now have each other mutually blocked) and said out of pocket weird shit about Julian simply knowing Arabic.

I do think it was intentional but not necessarily the way I think you mean- for one, Siddig has gone on record as not thinking of himself as especially Arab pre-9/11, which is interesting considering his first two film/TV roles as a Palestinian man on Hajj and as Prince Faisal. For another, Julian's character concept seems like it mightve been "vaguely exotic fuckboy" but specifically the "Mediterranean" variety. And lastly it wouldn't suprise me if this was a writer blindspot or they felt comfortable making Bajorans partially vaguely Kurdish and Cardassians partially vaguely Turkish (something I also haven't talked about much bc I both don't people to pretend me saying that is apologia and because my thoughts involve the ways in which that was kind of bigoted), but didn't feel comfortable writing an actual Arab character that interacts with Arab culture.

However I will say if you want to understand Anglo-Egyptian relations in a way I think sheds light on Julian as a character to read "Beer in the Snooker Club"- it's a semi autobiographical novel by a Coptic man from around the time we got independence. Siddig isn't Egyptian and the Sudanese relationship to Egypt and England is distinct, but they did cast an Egyptian for Amsha and I usually write her side of the family as mixed Egyptian-Sudanese and Richard's as Indian-Jewish-British. Because it's from a Coptic perspective it also has some differences to Arab or broadly Egyptian experiences, but it's still very well regarded as something of a cultural exemplar.

[nothazellevesque]

a man self immolated in front of the israeli embassy in washington dc yesterday. not just any man. an active member of the us air force. he live streamed his death, and said that he refused to be complicit in a genocide any longer. he said that compared to what palestinians were facing every day, setting himself alight was nothing.

let me reiterate. an active duty air force member burned himself alive because he was so disgusted by what the us government was openly supporting. he live-streamed his own suicide, so the whole world could bear witness as a man in his military uniform set himself on fire to protest his government’s complicity in the horrors that we have all been forced to watch happen in real time. he became a new horror. footage of the immolation blurs him out the moment the fire catches, but you can hear him. it is over in seconds, really, but you can hear him screaming. he shouts “free palestine” until his body physically cannot make any sounds other than guttural screams of agony. and then he falls silent. a police officer arrives and points a gun at his still burning body, shouting at him to get down on the ground. and it is over.

his name was Aaron Bushnell. he was twenty five years old. and he isn’t here anymore because the political ruling class has decided that genocide is perfectly fine as long as it preserves imperialism. in the coming days, people will try to discredit him. to say that he was mentally unstable. they will try to bury his actions to save face and defend israel’s propaganda. do not let them. aaron knew what he was doing. he knew what he was doing when he put on his military uniform, set up his twitch stream, and made his final walk up to the embassy. he knew what would happen to him when he flicked that lighter. do not let them forget. aaron’s blood is on the hands of the political ruling class.

[heritageposts]

🇵🇸 From BDS:

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the BDS movement, calls for the boycott of Eurovision 2024. We urge all participating broadcasters, national competitors, finalists, production crews, and viewers to boycott the contest following the refusal of the organisers, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), to ban genocidal Israel. Palestinians call on supporters to launch creative, strategic initiatives that can pressure broadcasters to withdraw, and appeal to all participants to refuse to be complicit in the EBU’s whitewash of apartheid Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Venues and events organisers planning Eurovision screening parties should refuse to do so, and instead hold Apartheid-Free or Genocide-Free alternative Eurovision events, including teach-ins/workshops/panels about Israel’s cynical pinkwashing and artwashing.

BDS has now, as of today (2 Mar), officially called for a boycott of Eurovision 2024, and for organizers to launch initiatives to pressure broadcasters and participating artists to withdraw from the competition.

For more info, see the BDS alert.

[eowyntheavenger]

Americans, these are things we are NOT saying in 2024:

"Voting blue won't solve anything." Yes it will: if enough of us do it, it will solve a problem called Trump's second term in the White House. We unfortunately live in a two-party system. If you refuse to vote, you're effectively voting for Trump. I shouldn't need to explain this to people, yet here we are.

"It doesn't matter who's president. Both candidates are the same anyway." No, they are REALLY not. Biden was never my first choice, and his shipments of arms to Israel are despicable, but don't try to tell me even for a second that a second Trump term would be the same for the world as a second Biden term.

"But voting blue won't fix [fundamental underlying problem in America]." Voting for Democrats cannot fix every issue, this is true. But by saying this and ONLY this you are discouraging people from voting by making them feel hopeless. Voting is one of many tools in our arsenal, not the only tool, but an important one, and it does matter.

"You shouldn't vote blue, you should do [other thing] instead." See above: you can vote and protest and organize at the same time. It's not either/or. You can do it all. Stop discouraging voters from exercising their rights under the guise of leftism.

"Voting is just legitimizing government power. It makes you part of the system." Literally just shut up. Women and people of color didn't fight for their voting rights to have you say things like this. If you live in America and you can legally vote, then you should fucking vote, and vote blue. There is no neutral option.

"Voting blue just makes you complicit in [this bad policy]." Inaction, and allowing Trump to have a second term, is worse for the entire world than any Democrat policy. Yes, even that one. Voting is not about finding a perfect unproblematic candidate. It is about choosing the lesser of two evils.

"Voting doesn't work because—" STOP IT. STOP DISCOURAGING PEOPLE FROM VOTING.

You know who wants you NOT to vote? Trump supporters, that's who. You should be suspicious of ANYONE who is suggesting that your vote doesn't matter, or that both candidates are the same, or that Biden's policy on XYZ means you shouldn't vote for him. Trump supporters aren't trying to get your vote by saying, "Vote for Trump!" They're trying to get your vote by DISCOURAGING YOU FROM VOTING AT ALL.

I don't like Biden either, but Trump is unequivocally worse. Voting doesn't fix everything, but it is the minimum fucking requirement of living in a democracy. Voting for president has real, tangible, immediate impacts on people's lives, and choosing not to vote is not the rebellion you think it is, it is just relinquishing your voice. So fucking vote. THIS IS A GROUP PROJECT AND DAMN IT WE ARE NOT FAILING BECAUSE OF YOU.

[scottishcommune]

Below the cut is a template email to send to Edinburgh Pride regarding sponsorship from Aegon, who have investments linked to the genocide in Palestine. Please feel free to use this text or edit it and make it your own and send it to contact@prideedinburgh.co.uk

Dear Edinburgh Pride,

As a queer person living in Edinburgh, I was deeply saddened to learn that the march partner for Edinburgh Pride 2024 is Aegon.

In December 2023 the ‘Don’t Buy Into Occupation Coalition’ published a report that showed Aegon have US$564million invested via shares and bonds in companies operating in illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories. Source: https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf

We are watching a live-streamed genocide every day - over 36,000 people in Palestine have been murdered by Israeli forces, including at least 15,000 children. The brutality of these atrocities are unthinkable, with evidence of torture and targeting of hospitals, ambulances and refugee camps.

We all have a responsibility to do what we can to end this genocide. As queer people, we are part of a rich history of resisting oppression and dehumanisation - of both ourselves and those we stand in solidarity with. Pride started as a protest against homophobia, transphobia and police violence. It is an important moment to come together as a community to celebrate queer joy and resilience.

But how can we celebrate using profits stained with the blood of our siblings in Palestine?

Aegon has $564million invested in companies that have been listed by the UN as “raising human rights concerns” for their operations in illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories, In 1948, 750,000 Palestinian people were displaced from their homes and lands and since then, Israeli settlements have been used to spread this process of colonisation.

In addition to this figure, Aegon also has major investments in Eaton Corp Plc., who supply parts for helicopters and fighter jets to the Israeli military and have recently been the target of major protests at their factory in Dorset. They also invest in Amazon, who support the Israeli military with surveillance technology used against Palestians.

Israel has long used ‘pinkwashing’ as a tactic to justify the brutal repression of Palestinians, using queer people to legitimise this horrific violence. We refuse to allow this to be done in our name.

The tide is turning on companies like Aegon that profit from investments in the companies complicit in genocide. Recently, both Hay and Edinburgh Book Festival have dropped Baillie Gifford as a sponsor after over 800 authors called on them to divest from companies involved in Israel and the fossil fuel industry.

I ask that Edinburgh Pride:

Calls on Aegon to commit to divest from companies involved in supplying technology to Israel and operating in illegal settlements.

Drop Aegon as a sponsor until they are able to show evidence of divestment.

Publicly call for a ceasefire and a free Palestine.

There is no pride in genocide.

I look forward to hearing your response.

XX

Sources:

Investments in companies operating in illegal settlements https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf

Investments in Eaton https://extranet.secure.aegon.co.uk/static/sxhub/pdf/client-pen-distribution.pdf

Investments in Amazon https://www.aegon.co.uk/content/dam/auk/assets/publication/fund-factsheet/standard_bkj9zs0.pdf

Israel’s pinkwashing: https://bdsmovement.net/pinkwashing

War on Gaza statistics: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker

Edinburgh book festival ends Baillie Gifford sponsorship: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm553zrr3e4o

[fairuzfan]

Banks in the US are actively complicit in the forced starvation of Palestinians. Palestinians have known since the Holy Land 5 that anything we do for Palestine can get us sent to jail and it's a risk we have been willing to take. But now banks even refuse to allow us to send aid to a population that has nothing. Almost every public and private sector powerhouse in the world intends to wipe out the Palestinian people and Palestine and they're more than content in lending a hand in it.

[withbriefthanksgiving]

The director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN (UN OHCHR), Craig Mokhiber, has resigned in a letter dated 28 October 2023

the resignation letter can be found embedded in this tweet by Rami Atari (@.Raminho) dated 31 October 2023.

The letters are here:

Transcription:

United Nations | Nations Unies

HEADQUARTERS I SIEGE I NEW YORK, NY 10017

28 October 2023

Dear High Commissioner,

This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.

I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.

This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What's more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations "to ensure respect" for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel's atrocities.

Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson, Geneva

In concert with this, western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence. US-based social media companies are suppressing the voices of human rights defenders while amplifying pro-Israel propaganda. Israel lobby online-trolls and GONGOS are harassing and smearing human rights defenders, and western universities and employers are collaborating with them to punish those who dare to speak out against the atrocities. In the wake of this genocide, there must be an accounting for these actors as well, just as there was for radio Mules Collins in Rwanda.

In such circumstances, the demands on our organization for principled and effective action are greater than ever. But we phave not met the challenge. The protective enforcement power Security Council has again been blocked by US intransigence, the SG [UN Secretary General] is under assault for the mildest of protestations, and our human rights mechanisms are under sustained slanderous attack by an organized, online impunity network.

Decades of distraction by the illusory and largely disingenuous promises of Oslo have diverted the Organization from its core duty to defend international law, international human rights, and the Charter itself. The mantra of the "two-state solution" has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people. The so-called "Quartet" has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo. The (US-scripted) deference to "agreements between the parties themselves" (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.

High Commissioner, I came to this Organization first in the 1980s, because I found in it a principled, norm-based institution that was squarely on the side of human rights, including in cases where the powerful US, UK, and Europe were not on our side. While my own government, its subsidiarity institutions, and much of the US media were still supporting or justifying South African apartheid, Israeli oppression, and Central American death squads, the UN was standing up for the oppressed peoples of those lands. We had international law on our side. We had human rights on our side. We had principle on our side. Our authority was rooted in our integrity. But no more.

In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US, and to fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself. We have lost a lot in this abandonment, not least our own global credibility. But the Palestinian people have sustained the biggest losses as a result of our failures. It is a stunning historic irony that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in the same year that the Nakba was perpetrated against the Palestinian people. As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the UDHR, we would do well to abandon the old cliché that the UDHR was born out of the atrocities that proceeded it, and to admit that it was born alongside one of the most atrocious genocides of the 20th Century, that of the destruction of Palestine. In some sense, the framers were promising human rights to everyone, except the Palestinian people. And let us remember as well, that the UN itself carries the original sin of helping to facilitate the dispossession of the Palestinian people by ratifying the European settler colonial project that seized Palestinian land and turned it over to the colonists. We have much for which to atone.

But the path to atonement is clear. We have much to learn from the principled stance taken in cities around the world in recent days, as masses of people stand up against the genocide, even at risk of beatings and arrest. Palestinians and their allies, human rights defenders of every stripe, Christian and Muslim organizations, and progressive Jewish voices saying "not in our name", are all leading the way. All we have to do is to follow them.

Yesterday, just a few blocks from here, New York's Grand Central Station was completely taken over by thousands of Jewish human rights defenders standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an end to Israeli tyranny (many risking arrest, in the process). In doing so, they stripped away in an instant the Israeli hasbara propaganda point (and old antisemitic trope) that Israel somehow represents the Jewish people. It does not. And, as such, Israel is solely responsible for its crimes. On this point, it bears repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of Israel's human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu. When they seek to silence us with smears, we must raise our voice, not lower it. I trust you will agree, High Commissioner, that this is what speaking truth to power is all about.

But I also find hope in those parts of the UN that have refused to compromise the Organization's human rights principles in spite of enormous pressures to do so. Our independent special rapporteurs, commissions of enquiry, and treaty body experts, alongside most of our staff, have continued to stand up for the human rights of the Palestinian people, even as other parts of the UN (even at the highest levels) have shamefully bowed their heads to power. As the custodians of the human rights norms and standards, OHCHR. has a particular duty to defend those standards. Our job, I believe, is to make our voice heard, from the Secretary-General to the newest UN recruit, and horizontally across the wider UN system, incisting that the human rights of the Palestinian people are not up for debate, negotiation, or compromise anywhere under the blue flag.

What, then, would a UN-norm-based position look like? For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable, and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law? The answer, I believe, is simple—if we have the clarity to see beyond the propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice to which we are sworn, the courage to abandon fear and deference to powerful states, and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace. To be sure, this is a long-term project and a steep climb. But we must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points:

Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law.

Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity.

One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dicmantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.

Fighting Apartheid: We must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid, just as we did for South Africa in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.

Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.

Truth and Justice: We must call for a transitional justice process, making full use of decades of accumulated UN investigations, enquiries, and reports, to document the truth, and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators, redress for all victims, and remedies for documented injustices.

Protection: We must press for the deployment of a well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with a sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.

Disarmament: We must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel's massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.

Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.

Solidarity: We must open our doors (and the doors of the SG) wide to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian human rights defenders who are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their human rights and stop the unconstrained flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders, where they advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid, and impunity, and smear our human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.

This will take years to achieve, and western powers will fight us every step of the way, so we must be steadfast. In the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the longstanding siege on Gaza, stand up against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank (and elsewhere), document the genocidal assault in Gaza, help to bring massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction to the Palestinians, take care of our traumatized colleagues and their families, and fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN's political offices.

The UN's failure in Palestine thus far is not a reason for us to withdraw. Rather it should give us the courage to abandon the failed paradigm of the past, and fully embrace a more principled course. Let us, as OHCHR, boldly and proudly join the anti-apartheid movement that is growing all around the world, adding our logo to the banner of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people. The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.

I thank you, High Commissioner, Volker, for hearing this final appeal from my desk. I will leave the Office in a few days for the last time, after more than three decades of service. But please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance in the future.

Sincerely,

Craig Mokhiber

End of transcription.

Emphasis (bolding) is my own. I have added links, where relevant, to explanations of concepts the former Director refers to.

[just-about-nothing]

like jesus okay i’m basically anti war & certainly anti iraq & afghanistan and so i’m like 100% biased but this sort of television just. doesn’t make the military come off in any sort of good light. when television can’t come up with halfway decent justification for this shit that even me, as someone’s whose just studied law at the undergraduate level, can pick apart, it’s pretty pathetic. there are not justifications for war crimes & given both invasions were big fat war crimes, any sort of justification on television comes across as weak willed & pathetic.

[nbadenverweeders]

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Of the Americans who fought in Korea or Vietnam, none were "innocent" by virtue of having been drafted. The moral choice there was to either dodge the draft, defect to the other side, or frag the guy giving orders. Anyone who chose otherwise was a criminal and a murderer. And once the draft was over and the army became volunteer-only, all the excuses vanished. Yes, there are people who were in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria who regretted it, but regretting your crime doesn't undo it. That's just the minimum requirement for being a decent human being in the aftermath.

To everyone who says "you leftists can't go around hating on the troops, don't you want them to join the revolution?" I say "why would they join us if they couldn't handle being told the truth about the genocidal terrorist organization they volunteered for?" If their reaction upon hearing people call the US military murderers and terrorists is to deny or equivocate or rationalize their participation, then they're not yet fit to be a revolutionary. If we're trying to dismantle the imperialist warmongering empire that continues to use its might and influence to murder millions around the world that is the United States, what good is a person who balks at the notion that the troops who volunteer to pledge their lives and their loyalty in service of this empire might be complicit in its crimes?

An American soldier or veteran who is not ready to admit they were wrong will not be any more ready to join us if we lie to them and say they made no mistake in joining the US military. We only weaken our own messaging and our own position if we refuse to condemn not just the US military as an organization but all those who continue to participate in and defend its actions. The troops are not innocent.

[creature-wizard]

Addressing some anti-voter reasoning (and explaining why it's bad)

The reasoning most anti-voters are using is bad, and here's why.

"I plan to vote third party."

When it comes to presidential elections, third-party voting is dead in the water without massive election reforms, which Republicans will never allow if they have their way. By voting third party, you're effectively voting for Trump and Project 2025/Agenda 47. This might sound harsh, but it's just the truth right now.

"I would be complicit in genocide."

If genocide is what you're worried about, how would letting Donald J. "Finish The Problem" Trump become president help? Do you really think Donald J. Muslim Ban Trump isn't going to go after Palestinians already in the US? And what exactly do you plan to do for Palestinians in a Trump dictatorship when you've been imprisoned for "pornography" because you were trans in public, posted pictures of trans people or characters, or posted support for trans people? (Yeah, Trump and his buddies want to legislate so-called "trans ideology" as "pornography" and make it illegal.)

"It would be no worse than what POC are going through already."

However bad things are for POC in America right now, a Trump presidency would make them even worse. Using their suffering to justify letting Trump into the White House again is really, really messed up.

"White people have it coming."

White people won't be the ones who suffer the most. Again, POC will be disproportionately affected by Trump's policies. If you actually care about POC, why would you want to subject them to that? How does making things worse for them help anything?

"Bad things happened under Biden."

And a number of them happened because of Supreme Court members whom Donald Trump appointed, and because Republicans blocked his efforts to fix things. Furthermore, many good things happened under the Biden/Harris administration. Here's one post with examples. Here's another post. And here's another post. And here are some good things Kamala Harris has done.

One reason to vote for Harris is to balance the Supreme Court. If elected, she'll be able to appoint judges who aren't turbo-conservatives, which would help us immensely going forward. (It was a liberal Supreme Court that got us gay marriage, remember?) Meanwhile, if Trump is elected, he will appoint more turbo-conservative judges. We gotta think about the long game here.

"The Revolution would solve everything."

Leftists right now would never have tactical parity with, much less superiority over the US military, which Donald Trump would happily sic on all of you. At best, your "revolution" would actually be decades of insurgency. The genocide in Palestine would still happen, and the most vulnerable people in the US would suffer even more.

So basically, there's just no good reason not to vote at this point. Refusing to vote (or voting third party) is counterproductive to literally anything you want to accomplish, unless what you want to accomplish is "make things infinitely worse for everyone."

[androgynealienfemme]

"We go from store to store, trying to things on and inspecting them. I give my opinions on dresses and shoes, blouses and lipstick colors. Sometimes I say things that make the other women look at me, agape, as though my mouth has been possessed by that flighty queen from Queer Eye even while the rest of my body still looks like any other big dumb boy's. I say that I like a skirt but I wish it were bias-cut instead of A-line, or that I am not fond of the fashion for surplice tops, or that the post-WWII idiom in shoes this season is amusing but rarely looks good on actual feet, or that I like the look of a bolero jacket. I know the names of colors, heliotrope and coral and Nile blue, and I can say without hesitation whether a lipstick might look better matte with a bit of powder.

These other women look at me with wonder, their boyfriends and husbands having made a fetish out of refusing to learn such words under any circumstances, as though merely pronouncing the word "periwinkle" or "princess seam" could easily turn a strong man gay as a box of birds. They say to her, "That's your husband?" in voices that loiter between admiring and disgusted, as though they know that there's no force on earth that could make their men or boys take such interest in their clothing and they think they might really prefer that to the spectacle of me, filling an armchair, legs crossed ankle over knee, looking just right until I say "tea length."

The point is that she wants other girls to see what it looks like to have a boy so cracy in love with you, as I am, that he will spend an afternoon talking about capri pants to have a boy so delighted by you that he never calls you by your name, but addresses you always as "beautiful girl," or "my love" or occasionally and with great fondness, "boss." To have a boy who will happily fetch your next-size-down and carry your bags and charm the salesclerks at the register without flirting overmuch and just generally try to make himself as useful as possible, all for the dizzy and undying pleasure of making you happy. And even though I am not a boy, I look like one, and so I can be complicit with her in this kind of wonderful afternoon, part indulgence of her great beauty and style, part guerilla feminist activism.

Later, when we walk through the mall or down the sidewalk, me laden with packages that are clearly hers, I watch the eyes of the people we pass: the women who look at me with a certain longing, wishing they had their own boys to carry the bags. The men who look at her with an unmistakable hunger, wishing that they had the honor of schlepping for a girl like her, and then look at me with a certain edge of disbelief, not quite clear about why I get to squire this marvelous example of femininity around when they are clearly wealthier, more handsome, better hung. I have learned to meet all of these gazes with a calm kind of sweetness. There's no point in defensiveness or sheepishness or challenge. I'm the one holding her bags."

"Being a Shopping Switch” Butch is a Noun essays by S. Bear Bergman (2006)