I never thought my antipathy to organized religion could actually increase, but in this era of right wing religious extremism, it seems like the only option for those of us with a humanist soul.
Atheism is too soft. Anti-theism is where it’s at for me now.
If you are a follower of any of these misogynistic death cults – no matter which sky father you claim is the rightful one – you have a serious problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re one of the “moderates” – you are part of the problem if you ascribe to, and worse justify, such organized mass insanity.
Religious nationalism regularly showcases itself as one of the major sources, if not the major source, of bloodletting the world over.
Take your religion and shove it up your ass, you miserable fucking losers knuckle-dragging around the wrong side of history. You’re bringing the rest of us down with you, and we’re sick of it.
It’s impossible to be sympathetic with any of you people when this what it leads to.
A fascinating development was reported recently by Al Jazeera about the ongoing civil war in Myanmar:
A coalition known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance officially joined the coalition of regional ethnic paramilitaries and the people’s defense forces against the junta, by capturing Chin Shwe Haw, a key military town in the northern Shan state, bordering China.
The plan, according to an official statement from the alliance, was to “assert and defend territory against Myanmar military incursions, eradicate ‘oppressive military dictatorship’, and combat online fraud along the border”
Yup, you heard that last part right “combat online fraud along the border” – and this is where China comes in, helping an alliance of paramilitaries fight a junta that is essentially a Chinese vassal state.
According to the report:
“Made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta’Ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA), the alliance is part of a coalition of seven ethnic armed organisations which maintain close ties with China and have bases or territories near the country’s border.
A particular target of the operation is the cyber-scamming industry that has boomed in autonomous militarised zones on Myanmar’s eastern border since the February 2021 military coup, generating billions of dollars for Chinese gangs working in collaboration with the Myanmar military, its proxies and other armed groups.
A United Nations report published in August found that an estimated 120,000 people had been trafficked into the industry in Myanmar, where they are forced to scam people around the world and are subject to abuses including torture, sexual violence and other forms of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.
The industry has ensnared Chinese nationals as victims of both trafficking and scamming, and over the past year, the Chinese government has exerted increasing pressure on the Myanmar military to crack down. In recent months, China also launched a series of cross-border operations resulting in the arrest and repatriation of more than 4,500 people, according to a report published last month by the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar, an independent think tank.
While Operation 1027 offers the potential to help advance China’s objectives in relation to the cyber-scamming industry, analysts say it could also give new energy to Myanmar’s anti-coup movement, also known as the Spring Revolution, which aims to remove the military regime and establish a federal democratic union.”
One wonders if China is, both, flexing and hedging at the same time.
Does China see the tide shifting in favor of the resistance and against the junta?
It’s possible, because this is not really a proxy war between a Chinese-supported junta and Western-backed paramilitaries. The resistance is pretty much on it’s own, barring backdoor support from marginal Western policy and military actors. Myanmar doesn’t matter as much to Western state powers as Ukraine or Israel-Palestine do.
China can exert its sphere of influence very easily towards the resistance and it’s exiled National Unity Government, i.e. essentially playing both sides and hedging their bets. The NUG and the various paramilitaries will gladly take Chinese support if it means getting rid of the junta. They just have to convince China that they will indeed remain a very junior partner of China’s following the establishment of a new government.
***
Broken Shackles Media | Citizen Journalism | Nov 8 2023
If you liked this post please consider sharing it:
As the war enters its winter torpor, the gains for Ukraine are so small (in blue) that one needs to zoom in to see it on the interactive map updated by the Institute of War Study .
Below is a map of what it looked like in the summer of this year, a few months back. Scant changes, as one can see.
Proving, yet again, that defending territory is much easier than retaking territory through counter-offensive measures.
Call me crazy, but I think Putin’s strategy looks to be holding onto the erstwhile Ukrainian territories that have a majority or plurality of Russian speakers, maybe holding out long enough to take Odessa, then calling it mission accomplished.
Zelensky is fast running out of support for his counter-offensive, especially given the scant territorial gains. The hubris of Western media pundits and policy makers was showcased here, deeply underestimating the ability of Russia to defend it’s gains, and overestimating Ukraine’s ability to to regain its lost territory.
Ukraine and Russia are not as unequal as Hamas and Israel, but Ukraine is not a near peer adversary of Russia like it was made out to be, and most definitely not without US support.
With a rabid, revenge-driven Israel now competing with Ukraine for American military aid, things aren’t looking good for Ukraine’s prospects of gaining a whole lot more territory.
People in the West, and certainly in Ukraine, might not like to hear this – but it might be wise to call it a valiant stalemate, and start media spins respectively to save face.
Unless they – Putin, Zelensky, his Western backers – are all cool with more bloodshed. Which they well might be.
One can only hope saner heads will prevail.
***
Broken Shackles Media | Citizen Journalism | Nov 6 2023
If you liked this post please consider sharing it:
People unfamiliar with the Islamic world might not understand what a bloody chasm exists between Sunni and Shia power players in the region. A brutal and ghastly history of warring ethno-fascist states.
Israel has done more to bridge the Sunni-Shia divide than probably even the Christian crusaders of millennia past. (That might have been hyperbolic, but you get the idea.)
A brief examination of the just concluded speech by the leader of Hezbollah confirms this. Hassan Nasrallah speaks directly to Palestinian hearts and minds. No doubt, he does this with his own utilitarian interests in mind. (Who doesn’t?)
But when the rest of the world has abandoned the Palestinians, those fighting against their oppressive conditions will go to the Nasrallahs and Khameinis for support. So they’ve been doing just that. For years, maybe decades now.
Any one of us would, if placed in the same situation. The enemy of my enemy and so on…
Palestinian militants are not fools to think that Iran, and their proxy Hezbollah, or even other Arab and Muslim players like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey have the cause of Palestinian liberation purely at heart. All of us inherently understand rationale theory at a pragmatic level. The only life condition that weakens that understanding is privilege.
Without fail, I have found that the wealthier someone is the stupider they tend to be with regards to understanding other people’s rationales. This is simply because they can afford to be that dumb for a temporary period of time. This is very true for powerful Western states as well.
We in the wealthy, privileged West need to come to terms with the fact that this brief era of Western dominance is rapidly coming to an end. Our egos need to come down from the grandiosity we have been accustomed to. For our own sake.
Let us pay heed to what James Baldwin said, when he asked us to understand that “if I’m starving, you are in danger.”
Israel is living this right now. The entire Western world is going to follow suite.
As the last Western settler-colonial outpost it represents in state-form what Baldwin speaks of. Instead of sharing, Israel is arming itself to the teeth with weaponry and psychopathy to defend a gilded cage of its own making, with American and European patronage.
But the oil is going to run out sooner or later. And with it, the patronage, at a time when the divide between the military haves and the military have-nots is rapidly decreasing. Sharing is not so much haughty charity as much as it is a necessity for survival.
That’s a lesson we can all afford to learn.
***
Broken Shackles Media | Citizen Journalism | Nov 3 2023
If you liked this post please consider sharing it:
love liberation struggle 