colonisation on Jayeless.net

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 11:50:34 +1000

Link: At the brink of a new world system: imperialism, race and caste

I don’t agree with 100% of this (particularly not the holding up of Stalinist states as models of democracy 🤔) but the most important point I do. The “liberal” part of the ruling class is using modern, “woke” ideas to divide the working class – blaming the white working class for racism instead of themselves and their own damn institutions that keep systematic racism going. This promotes sectarianism among ordinary people that keeps us weak and divided, less able to unite together in our common cause to truly democratise our societies and improve our social structures, our living conditions, our lives. There’s also a part comparing the caste system in India to ancient European slave-owning societies like Greece or Rome.

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:34:00 +1000

Link: Laying the foundations for our Jewish liberation

As children, we were led to imagine that the primarily European Jews fighting in the 1948 war had battled faceless villains intent on barring them from settling in a rightful homeland, a justified inheritance in the wake of genocide. Like so many before them, these enemies were intent on destroying the Jews yet again. Never once did we imagine that perhaps the people they fought were our cousins and siblings from long ago, whose homes and villages were being stolen beneath their feet. Never once did we fathom that Palestinian Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived side by side for hundreds of years in peace as a community. Because Zionism centers European Jews over others, even Arab Jews were left out of the narratives taught to us.

I grieve that, as children, we didn’t have a choice. The adults we loved and trusted imbued us with a sense of Zionist pride, a commitment to the unquestioned defense of this nation-state, and an ingrained colonial entitlement that this land was, in fact, exclusively ours. But how can anybody create a home on top of others’ remains? On top of stolen lives, communities, and memories?

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 13:19:30 +1000

Link: The colonial idea that built the Palestinian Authority

Good backgrounder on the Palestinian Authority, and how it’s used as an enforcer for Israel in the West Bank.

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 17:44:41 +1000

Link: ‘Devil devil’: The sickness that changed Australia

In 1789, a disease tore through communities around Sydney Cove, leaving dead bodies scattered along the shorelines. Some think this outbreak was a fire deliberately lit.

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 13:48:00 +1100

Link: The Anti-Colonial Revolt Was Key to Lenin’s Vision of Revolution

Lenin reacted to revolution in China with a spate of articles describing ‘backward Europe and advanced Asia,’ deliberately mocking and upending the colonial binary between the civilized and the barbarous. He wanted the Russian Revolution to spread to Germany, but he wanted it to spread to India, too.

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 14:04:00 +1100

Link: ‘Destruction by a thousand cuts’: the relentless threat mining poses to the Pilbara cultural landscape

Just as the parliamentary inquiry into Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters was reconvening in Canberra, another culturally significant site was damaged at one of BHP’s iron ore mines in the Pilbara. […]

The destruction of one ancient and sacred rock shelter is, of course, devastating. But there’s a greater and as yet unrecognised loss to cultural heritage that is occurring from the “cumulative impacts” of mining activities in the Pilbara. It’s destruction by a thousand cuts.