Those who decide for us

Who you see in the video is Antony John Blinken‎, United States’ secretary of state, who apparently doesn’t know who is the former president of Afghanistan.

In the video, he says he’s been talking to President Karzai, instead of Ghani. Hamed Karzai was one of the former presidents of Afghanistan, long ago.

These are the people who are deciding for us. Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. are all highly influential of USA’s politics and these people. These are the people sitting in front of negotiation boards, war councils, so-called democracy committees, human rights watches, and everything else.

They have no clue of what is happening to people, they don’t feel the pain, they don’t face any consequences, and they have no understanding of the destruction they cause, yet they are deciding for us.

Check this video:

This is an Afghan/Australian citizen, captured and beaten by Taliban in Kabul airport, recorded this video few moments before his death. He talks to the Talibs saying “if I was fully Australian, you would’ve respected me but now, because I talk Persian, you beat me…”

In his last sentences, he says he’s Australian and then… death.

These were only two of the thousands of videos of crimes against humanity, happening daily in our region here. Just two videos, less than 1 minute.

Priorities

There’s news that the Germans in Afghanistan evacuated beer cans but failed to bring Afghan people and employees. When you check the priorities of governments and those in power, you understand more about how the world is being controlled and how those in power feel about people.

There are pictures of a C-17 airplane full of people running for their lives. Many got into the plane and many were left behind but the more saddening part is that there were seats for dogs but no place for more people who were in danger of death.

Taliban finally occupied the whole Afghanistan, well except for Panjshir where Ahmad Masoud, son of Ahmad Shah Masoud the popular guerilla, is holding resistance. Taliban is promising a different picture but we all know that’s a lie. They keep killing everybody, discriminating against women, enslaving children, and forcing their ideologies on people.

Taliban is no different than any other terrorist group. They are currently seeking for global acceptance, so they lie about their goals and behavior. They use newly available resources to them, such as country-wide television, for propaganda and facade.

Now, in this situation, other countries are listing their priorities and in those priorities there seems to be no place for people. They are thinking about natural resources in Afghanistan, drugs, guns, businesses, military industry, etc. The question is, where is the people in those lists?

Whenever we hear politicians talking about the situation in the region, we hear them talking about the good for people and how they’re fighting for human rights, but when we check their actions, there’s only good for themselves and their businesses. Why is that?

We people get manipulated a lot, and maybe we do something about it. The result of us being manipulated sometimes is to pay more taxes or be restricted in some ways, but the result of Afghan people being manipulated is them being killed.

Priorities. We need to check and sort our priorities RIGHT.

Continue the action

I’ve seen the above photo (post ) and wondered is that really justice? I’ve posted a similar post before but in that post, the situation imposed on people was natural, not human-made. I understand the good intention creator of the photo has but it occurred to me that this is enough for many people.

Just like how most slavery abolitionists stopped after the slavery became illegal, many stop their action when some part of injustice is addressed. In the above photo, the situation is not natural, it’s human-made. The fence is built by humans and it is probably not only for animals, it’s also too keep some people out.

I believe the true justice (in the situation described in the photo) is that they get equal chance, equal opportunity, and equal respect to watch the game from stand among others and get enough/equal chance to contribute to the society they’re in, not to be kept out among animals.

Israeli apartheid

Many people think of Israel and Palestine as two countries at war; with Israel, a state for Jewish people, occupying Palestine, where Palestinians live.

The truth is both Israeli Jews and Palestinians live all over the territory, ruled by one government and one army based on the idea of advancing the supremacy and domination of one group of people of Jews and that is what guides its policies and its practices towards Palestinians. In other words: Apartheid.

Read more… “Israeli apartheid”

The modern slavery between monkeys!

There were a group of scientists who were doing some experiments on some monkeys. The put five monkeys in a cage and made them live there. In the cage, they put a ladder and above the ladder, they put some bananas.

Every time a monkey tried to climb the ladder and get some bananas, the scientists poured very cold water on other monkeys that were under the ladder, they shocked those who were under the ladder.

After a while, whenever a monkey tried to climb the ladder to get some bananas, other monkeys would pull the climbing monkey down and beat that poor one. A while passed and none of the monkeys, despite the inherent desire to the bananas, would climb the ladder because they were afraid of getting beaten by others.

The scientists decide to replace one of the monkeys, monkey number one, with another monkey that has no idea about the situation in the cage. When they replace monkey number one, the new monkey tries to climb the ladder and others pulled it down and beat it.

After a few times of getting beaten, the new monkey also decided to not climb the ladder for bananas, even though it has no idea why climbing the ladder is forbidden. When this happened, scientists replaced monkey number two with a new monkey.

Monkey number two was replaced and the same situation went on. New monkey tried to climb the ladder and got beaten and after a few times it decided to not climb the ladder even though it didn’t know why it is forbidden to climb the ladder or eat the bananas on top.

This went on until all the monkeys were replaced by new ones. Now none of the first monkeys are in the cage and all are replaced by new ones, and none of the new ones ever experienced the cold water but every time a monkey wants to climb the ladder, it gets beaten.

If we could continue the experiment and ask the monkeys why they beat the climbing monkey, their possible answers would be 1: I don’t know, it’s tradition, everybody does it; and 2: I don’t know, this is what is popular among other monkeys, you should obey the public.

Traditions and belief in the societies may have a very interesting or convincing root but they may be obsolete nowadays. I’m not trying to argue about the root of the problems, but how or whether they are affecting us today.

What I wrote was simply imposing a modern slavery of thought on monkeys. A similar story happened to humans, I believe. I truly believe we humans are experiencing a form of slavery, a modern new slavery, in which we have no idea why we do certain things or obey certain systems, but we’re too afraid of getting hurt to disobey it or act against the mainstream.

We are too afraid of swimming against the river, and even if we try to do, other fishes will stop us, and if you ask why they do it, they have no answer, they simply believe our actions are not right.

I try to change this, and I hope you join me.

Boxer syndrome

Do you know what is the Boxer syndrome? In the book Animal Farm, Animals helped each other to kick out the master and his family and take control over the farm. The first thing they do after is to set Seven Commandments that said all animals are equal and nobody should claim itself master of others.

But it won’t take long that a pig who became the dictatorial president changes the commandments slowly to put advantages and privileges for itself and those around it.

Ultimately, Napoleon, the president pig, becomes an oppressive dictator and begins to adopt many aspects of human behavior. The pigs start walking on their hind legs, drinking alcohol, wearing clothes, and carrying whips near the end of the book. The commandments are changed to say, famously, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Meanwhile, there’s a working horse named Boxer which is very kind and is morally and behaviorally approved by all farm animals. The animals ask Boxer to help them change the situation (or decide what to do) but Boxer doesn’t pay any attention to its surroundings and is only busy with its hard work.

Boxer’s slogans are “Comrade Napoleon is always right” and “I will work harder!” Boxer feels it should work very hard and should not have anything to do with others.

Although Boxer could prevent the terrible events that fall on the animal farm, he worked hard and had nothing to do with others. He was busy with its own work and only found out about the incidents around itself when Napoleon, the dictator pig, sold it to a butcher.

In our lives, we meet so many people who are busy with their honest hard work and have no idea how the system, state, country, or people are moving or where we’re heading.

In a scene in the Titanic movie, while the ship hit the iceberg and was sinking, while people where screaming and running for their lives, while everybody were trying to be saved, there were a group of musicians/players who were performing classic music masterpieces.

They were doing their best, they were true hard-working people who tried to avoid their work be influenced by the environment/situation they were in. But in a sinking ship, while everybody is busy saving themselves or other people, when nobody is even paying attention or cares about your work, when your work has no good effect on the situation, why and how does it matter?

Many people we know are effected with the Boxer syndrome and forget when is the correct time to take a position or change the situation, or even do anything that matters, sadly.

You can’t be neutral

Often when I talk about politics, specially sensitive stuff, some people claim they are neutral. I tell them you can’t be neutral, you’re either on the good side, or the bad side. I’ve written a post about this before, but I felt I should mention this again.

Being neutral is impossible because by being neutral you’re basically helping the bad side to win. Imagine you’re in situation where fire is burning wood, how can you be neutral in that situation? Arguing that you’re not fueling the fire nor turn it off doesn’t make you neutral. By doing nothing, you’re just helping fire to burn the wood without any disturbance.

Doing nothing in politics is meaningless. You’re either siding with one side or their opposer. Often when I talk with people about politics, some claim they’re neutral and I tell them it’s impossible. You’re not neutral in politics, you’re in denial. It’s very simple to me. I can’t believe someone is neutral when one side is a fascist and the other side is fighting for democracy.

Quote

A cop is a cop. And you know, he may be a very nice man but I haven’t got time to figure that out. All I know is that he got a uniform and a gun, I have to relate to him that way. That’s the only way for me to relate to him, at all, because one of us may have to die.

You know in New York there’s a big campaign going on to humanize the policemen and they have billboards upstate and they a picture of a big cop bending over this little blonde girl and the sign said “some people call him pig”. I wanted to buy a billboard, I told a friend of mine, I wanted to buy a billboard and show this big cop and this fourteen-year-old kid with thirty bullets in him and say “some people call him peacemaker”.

James Baldwin & Nikki Giovanni

Stop accusing people of what they didn’t do

I sent this post as an email message to libreplanet-discuss mailing list.

Do you guys follow football? I mean the real football, not Amerikkkan one. There’s a club in Spain named Barcelona. They have a player in their team named Leo Messi. I think many of you know him.

Messi is believed to be one of the best football players in the history. During time, some people accused Messi of sexual assault and harassment. They even went to court for it and sued Messi. It turned out that all of them were only doing this for money, hoping that Leo Messi gives them some ransom.

There’s another player named Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is almost as same as Messi. He is again believed to be one of the bests in the history. He also was accused of sexual harassment and assault. Again, some people went to court and sued him, etc.

Some of the accusers never went to court but they tell very interesting stories on how they were assaulted. There were no proof and the teams (Barcelona and Real Madrid) never responded.

I can’t tell if those players who have a reputation of good behavior and charity and social work were really offenders or not, but I can tell one thing. Barca and Madrid didn’t let go of their best players because of some unproven accusations.

I remember Leo Messi once attacked a journalist physically because he was very angry but again, he made up to that, apologized, and never repeated such behavior because he was aware of how it can affect people. Again, we didn’t see any effort to ban Messi from playing football completely because that mistake.

I’m a football fan. I’m a fan of Manchester United, neither of those teams I mentioned but I never ever campaigned to throw out Messi and Ronaldo for unproven accusations.

I did not expect those teams to simply fire probably the best player of their history because some people said so.

Do you get my analogy here? I hear stories about an autistic person named RMS that he has assaulted women, harassed them, or sexually abused them. When I go and read the stories, I see what Stallman did was to “upset” some people. Not harassment, not assault, but upset.

Stallman shouted at some people or interrupted them while speaking. He hit on women or asked them out and insisted on that, which made them uncomfortable. If he was doing to me, I would be upset too, but I wouldn’t ever accuse him of assault or harassment. I wouldn’t expect FSF to fire its probably most valuable player that is known for his charity, effort for equality, justice, women’s rights, etc.

Why people expect FSF to fire its probably best player in history? I don’t understand that.

What people explain is not sexual harassment. He was an unpleasant person, maybe, to some people but he didn’t do anything to harass them.

Let me give you another example. There’s a different between patting some child on the butt and pedophilia. Now a pedophile most-probably does pat children on the butt but are all people who do that pedophiles? Hell no.

Please don’t accuse people of what they didn’t do because they made you uncomfortable or were unpleasant. If someone shouts at you, defend yourself or if the act of shouting makes you psychologically hurt, please be very very careful when you come out of your home because you may experience it almost every time.

If someone hitting on you makes you uncomfortable, ask them not to do that or ask security to help you but don’t accuse that person of harassment because looking at someone or being weird is not harassment. And again, please be careful when you come out of your house because you may experience it every day.

If someone interrupts you, ask them not to do that or argue back but don’t accuse that person of harassment because they didn’t harass you with that. Harassment is different. And please be careful when you come out of your house because people may interrupt you every day.

Stop with accusing people of things when they didn’t do that.

Also, please don’t accuse me of sexual harassment because I wrote this note. I don’t even know any of you and I did not harass you. Disagreeing with you is not harassment. Sending email messages is not assault.

I had to clarify that because as far as I’ve seen you people, the next open letter would’ve been for me. Don’t start arh-open-letter please. And yes, I’m mocking some people.