May 13
2021: a century of Ireland divided
Jim and I worked together on a Zoom program entitled "Equal Rights for All: Resisting Settler Colonialism and White Nationalism in the United States, Northern Ireland, and Palestine.”
Joining Jim on the panel was a local Black Lives Matter organizer, and a Palestinian professor, Mazin Qumsiyeh. So our conversation moved easily into colonialism and how intricately linked it is to racism. Very few US media outlets put such concepts together for listeners or readers. To have colonies, a country has to be militarily aggressive. A nation can't colonize a country before it is conquered, at least a country that is already inhabited. Not even our country's genocide of its indigenous peoples is explained in terms of ethnic cleansing and colonial racism. Americans have never even read about their empire, or about how aggressive its military has been over the last 70 years.
Aggression, in international politics, is commonly defined as the use of armed force against another sovereign state, not justified by self-defense or international authority. Any state being described as aggressive in foreign or international reporting, therefore, is almost by definition in the wrong.It’s a word that seems easy to apply to the United States, which launched 81 foreign interventions between 1946 and 2000 alone. In the 21st century, the United States has attacked, invaded or occupied the sovereign states of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. FAIR, April 30, 2021
Oppressed peoples like African Americans, Palestinians, and Catholics of Northern Ireland know what empire and occupation means. Would the empire implode if the people of our country suddenly realized the reality of their "sweet land of liberty"? It took a war to awaken the German people. But empires eventually create the catastrophes that destroy them. Whether it is climate collapse or nuclear way, the US empire will be at the bottom of it. We are all in the belly of the beast.
