Global

Since January, 48 states have introduced at least 389 bills that amount to shameful, outright voter suppression -- and many have already become law.

These racist anti-voter bills limit ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting, reduce early voting days and hours, criminalize the distribution of water to voters waiting in long lines, and more.

The killing of four young Palestinians by Israeli occupation soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, on August 16, is a consequential event, the repercussions of which are sure to be felt in the coming weeks and months. 

 The four Palestinians - Saleh Mohammed Ammar, 19, Raed Ziad Abu Seif, 21, Nour Jarrar, 19, and Amjad Hussainiya, 20  - were either newly born or mere toddlers when the Israeli army invaded Jenin in April 2002. The objective, then, based on statements by Israeli officials and army generals, was to teach Jenin a lesson, one they hoped would be understood by other resisting Palestinian areas throughout the occupied West Bank. 

That link between age and wisdom — is it just a joke?

Suddenly I’m curious in a real way. I just turned . . . 75. There’s a significance to that number that isn’t abstract, and I’m having a hard time ignoring it. Perhaps it has more to do with cataracts and hearing aids, not to mention wobbly knees, lost thoughts and techno-cluelessness, than it does with diamonds. But I find myself wondering, more than ever, what I have learned over the past three quarters of a century — and what, if anything, I understand.

I think about the chaos in Afghanistan, the insane war on terror, refugees massed and caged at the southern border, a child murdered on the streets of Chicago. When I was in my 20s, I felt certain the world from which such cruelty and stupidity emerged was being transformed. Our generation was changing it. Now, as I limp to the bathroom, I feel the throb of an aching heart. Things have changed in some ways, both for better and for worse, but mostly they have stayed the same. What I have come to understand is how little I know.

On this day – August 25, 1984 – Truman Capote died and a new documentary sheds light on his life and writing.

In Cold Blood author Truman Capote is one of the most storied American writers of the second half of the 20th century. Capote’s greatest talent may have been off-page, when he was onstage and center stage, promoting his image, endlessly appearing on TV talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett, David Frost, Johnny Carson, etc., cleverly, calculatingly cultivating what his contemporary, Norman Mailer, called “advertisements for myself.”

As he well knew, Truman’s unusual appearance made him instantly stand out in a crowd: This fish out of water was more or less openly gay when it was strictly taboo; diminutive if dapper; a Southerner amidst Manhattanites; possessor of a unique speaking voice; and wielder of a wry wicked wit. Later in life substance abuse, alas, made the author even more of a spectacle.

If you want to know how the United States wound up with “government by stupid” one need only look no farther than some of the recent propaganda put out by members of Congress, senior military officers and a certain former president. President George W. Bush, who started the whole sequence of events that have culminated in the disaster that is Afghanistan, is not yet in prison, but one can always hope.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- During the first days of America's bombardment
and invasion of Afghanistan 20 years ago, the Taliban government
collapsed in panic, abandoning Kabul in November 2001.

Simultaneously, their Arab allies including Osama bin Laden and other
al Qaeda fighters fled their expensive homes and weapons-stocked
training camps in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and elsewhere.

In Jalalabad, 88 miles east of Kabul, bin Laden and al Qaeda abandoned
all sorts of things during their rushed escape.

In their former homes and schools, I found bullet-punctured targets of
silhouetted heads, foreign passports, forged visas, hand-drawn
bomb-making instructions, and freshly printed news clippings
downloaded from the Internet reporting about the hijackers who crashed
planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Today, the US and other countries fear a possible return of al Qaeda
Islamists -- perhaps renamed and much more secretive -- and a
continuation of their previous deadly behavior which went far beyond
the 9/11 attack.

In the 1980s, the animal rights movement was a sorry sight. In Chicago, it consisted of three to five activists handing out soggy leaflets in the rain outside a fur store on a Saturday, one also holding his skateboard. No one remembered to bring the signs and no one could agree whether to protest carriage horses or captive whales at the Shedd Aquarium on the next Saturday.

Passersby were abusive. “Your shoes are leather,” they would yell, a simplistic syllogism that both meant human use of animals was inextricable and that we were hypocrites. Our shoes were not leather.

“Get a job,” they would yell, an absurd allegation since demonstrating on Saturday did not mean we did not have a jobs –– we did.

“Why aren’t you helping people?” they would accuse, listing crack babies, AIDS patients and the homeless. Some of our more interactive activists would fire back, “what are YOU doing for people,” which produced a mute silence. Who were the hypocrites?

“You people are clowns,” we also heard a lot –– and worse.

The U.S. and other governments are not making the priority of rescuing endangered people from Afghanistan that a consumer of Hollywood movies might imagine being made were the endangered people Jews in Nazi Germany.

Sadly, the reality in the 1940s was no different from today. Major investments went into wars, and Western officials wanted no large numbers of refugees. They opposed them for openly racist reasons, exactly as if they worked for Fox News in 2021 only worse.

If only Afghans today were Jews back then, . . . it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Saving human lives just does not rank up there with eliminating human lives as a national priority — not that anybody has to be reminded of that during the COVID pandemic.

If you were to listen to people justifying WWII today, and using WWII to justify the subsequent 75 years of wars and war preparations, the first thing you would expect to find in reading about what WWII actually was would be a war motivated by the need to save Jews from mass murder. There would be old photographs of posters with Uncle Sam pointing his finger, saying “I want you to save the Jews!”

Wakeup Calls

As the Afghanistan Armageddon unravels, this humiliating, devastating defeat for the US and its allies and the 20th anniversary of 9/11 (and who knows what may take place to mark that day?), plus the June 29 death of war monger extraordinaire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are wakeup calls. They offer Americans the chance to reflect upon, reconsider and rethink Washington’s disastrous, interventionist foreign policy. After 20 years of war, the retreat of US forces from the Afghan Theater – an ass-kicking of Biblical proportions – is a reminder of the limits of American power and overreach.

The US foreign policy establishment has again been exposed for its extraordinary imbecility, incompetence and an arrogance of Greek tragedy dimensions. As Kabul goes the way of Saigon 1975 and the September 11th sneak attack is commemorated, along with our ongoing racial reckoning, the USA also has a rare golden opportunity for an Imperial Reckoning, a Perestroika in how America – the global busybody – interacts with the rest of the world.

Morgan Harper, a consumer protection attorney and community organizer, is a 2022 Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate for Ohio. 

Born to a teenager, Morgan lived in a foster home for nine months before being adopted and raised in Columbus by a public school teacher. She received scholarships to attend Tufts (BA), Princeton (MA) and Stanford (JD). During the Obama administration, she served as a Senior Advisor at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) responsible for protecting consumers against predatory lenders.