Monthly Archives: June 2021

Dr. George Robinson| Special to The Times

Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the people. Revolutionaries used this phrase to condemn churches for making people tolerate oppression while hoping for a better life after death. Revolutionaries offered utopia, but they built nations with oppression, imprisonment and slaughter.

The United States of Americawas founded on freedom. This freedom is built on the ideas that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Government secures these rights and governs by consent of the governed. Pursuit of happiness is acting on personal conviction while respecting it in others, which guarantees it for all.

Our fledgling nation revolted against the most powerful nation on earth without destroying it. Our American experiment proves our founding ideals work.

Religion is the revelation of a power higher than humanity and validates these rights. It empowers, soothes and is the source of gratitude. We appeal to this higher power at birth, death, morning, evening, fasting, feasting, holidays, tragedies, starting sessions in Congress and on our money. Religion is part of American lifeof human life.

Is America perfect? No human endeavor is perfect, and the sins of the fathers influence the third and fourth generations. America is making progress living up to its ideals. The same goes for organized religion.

Slavery and racism are atrocities against the innocent and riddle human history. War, persecution, famine, poverty, economic failure and pandemics consume the innocent. Freedom of speech reveals humanitys mistakes. American ideals do not cause these problems. They are the best tools and guides to solve them. Benevolence and forgiveness are essential.

Does religion neglect lifes problems? The organized religions I know help us in life as much as hereafter because the two are connected. Churches give charity on a personal level while teaching self-reliance. They network to provide humanitarian aid globally.

Charity provides essential food, clothing and shelter,making education possible. Education begins in the family.(Proverbs 22:6) Vocational training or higher education deliver a good life. Religion promotes learning and wisdom(Proverbs 9:9-10), while it cautions against being too smart in your own conceits.(Romans 12:16)

It is no accident that our nation isNo. 1the world for charity per capita. Americans gave $450 billion in 2019;70% came from individuals.(Barrons) The South gave the highest percentage.(Philanthropy Roundtable)

The economics of religion teach that we must work to eat (by the sweat of your brow), for the sake of dignity. We reap what we sow. While it isOKto have a barn filled with the fruits of Gods earth, God is offended when we tear down the barn to build bigger ones instead of aiding those lacking the essentials of life.(Luke 12:16-21)

Religion ministers to the soul,which science and government cannot heal. Religion offers certain truths which we recognizeand the truth makes us free.

George Terry Robinson, MD, serves in the Gadsden Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Read the rest here:

PAPER PULPIT: Organized religion makes progress living up to ideals - Gadsden Times

Dear Reader (Including members of the Bailey Beach Club Diversity Committee who may suddenly be too busy to read this newsletter),

I want to talk to you about everything going on right now.

Unfortunately, according to Brandeis Universitys Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Centers Oppressive Language List, I just oppressed you.

See if you can figure out why. Ill wait. Give up?

Ill forgive you for not knowing this, but apparently the phrase everything going on right nowdamn, I did it to you againis oppressive. Why? Because, I defecate you negatory, Being vague about important issues risks miscommunication and can also avoid accountability. So, if I say, everything going on right now in reference to police brutality, or the pandemic, I might be letting our oppressors off the hook.

So let me be more specific. When I say everything going on right now, Im referring to garbage like this. And the last thing I want to do is let the people responsible for this linguistic oppression off the hook.

Some more examples:

Brandeis also wants you to stop using the term trigger warning because the word 'trigger' has connections to guns for many people; We can give the same heads-up using language less connected to violence.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a report on how to deal with drones. Thats a legitimately important subject. Fortunately, they did such a bang up job solving all that, they had time left over to fix the oppressive language of aviation. The FAA Gender-Free Style Guide Recommendations appended to the report call for replacing he and she with they and them, airmen with air crew etc. They also want to do away with cockpit because on occasion masculine crew members have wielded the term cockpit to exclude or undermine femme coworkers.

The Biden White Houses budget proposal refersin one section at leastto people who have babies as birthing persons.

In a similar vein, in an essaynone dare call them op-eds anymorein todays New York Times, a transgender man writes:

We are, all of us, in a constant stage of negotiation with the political and cultural forces attempting to shape us into simple, translatable packages. Trans people, by necessity, are more aware of these forces; that fluency is a strength, and it has afforded us an opportunity to question the stories about the biology of gender that are so foundational to American culture: Do we all really want to co-sign the notion that a uterus, and thus reproductive potential, is how we define womanhood? When a nonbinary person births a child, why must the birth certificate dictate that the person who gave birth is a mother, and what does being a mother even mean, exactly? What might it mean for all parents if mother and father were not such distinct categories in child-rearing? Who benefits from their continuing separation?

Now, I just ranted about the above essay on TheRemnant (out tomorrow), so I dont want to recycle all that here. So let me start with this trigger warning thing to get me to my point.

I have no problem doing away with the phrase trigger warning. Im not a fan of the term or the idea behind it. But let me concede in the spirit of generosity and humility that one doesnt have to be categorical about this. Advising people in advance about disturbing content is perfectly fine with me. Movies have ratings and TV shows have parental advisories, and I find that not just defensible but helpful. Lots of shows depicting suicide these days come with a warning and help-line for those feeling suicidal. That seems like a better social compromise than banning depictions of suicide.

No, my main problem with the way trigger warnings have been deployed is the broadness and nature of what theyre warning about. My second biggest problem is that the science behind trigger warnings is garbage.

The systematic violence of the English language.

But thats not why Brandeis wants to get rid of the term. It thinks trigger is associated with violence. Okay, if were going to take that seriously, lets note that the word trigger derives from the Dutch word trekker, from which we get trek. Today, trek means a journey, but it originally meant to pull, like a wagon pulled by oxen (hence the evolution of the word). Trigger means something you pull; it may indeed be associated with violence, but only in the minds of people who make that association.

But if words associated with violence have to goMuadDib!there are far deadlier killing words out there. For instance, our political discourse is drenched in military language: battleground states, ad blitzes, taking flak, over the target, scorched earth, political crusade, pyrrhic victories, skirmish, belligerents, political ambushes, nuclear options, war on poverty, etc.

In fact, our entire language is littered with the corpses of dead metaphorswords and phrases that no longer mean what they once did because we forgot where they came from.

Hotshot is derived from heated ordnance used to set fire to enemy ships. When football players go over the top, its an homage to trench warfare from World War I. So are phrases like in the trenches and no mans land. If I tell my daughter to get moving on the double, Im using the language of war preparation.

Now, because Im a logophile, I dig this stuff.

But in this context, Im perfectly willing to ask, So frickn what? If youre working freelance you dont mean youre a medieval mercenary willing to fight for whichever side pays you enough. Im writing this on deadline, which means I have to deliver it by a specific time. But deadline was born as a Civil War term for the border around a military prison that you could be shot without warning if you crossed. Nobody tell the folks at MSNBC that their show Deadline: White House is steeped in the language of incarceration and total war.

Words change versus changing words.

Now, if youre a clever sort, you might argue that Im making the same point as the folks playing word games. After all, you could say, Sure, trigger used to mean X, but now some people think it means Y, and the new meaning is trigger I mean, disturbing.

But is it? Ive never met anyone who felt aggressed against when I said something like, Lets pull the trigger on this. Are we going out for Mexican or Chinese?

Ill happily concede that such people must exist, but who died and made them the bosses of everybody? Moreover, assuming these people exist, how many of them are looking to find a reason to be offended? If there are 10,000 people in America who feel oppressed by the term trigger, Id guess 9,950 of them are the kind of people who walk the earth looking for reasons to be a pain in the ass. Indeed, thats one of the problems with trigger warning culture: It trains people to be pains in the ass because it incentivizes the practice of taking offense by rewarding people with power and attention. Victimhood is powerful these days.

This is why newsrooms and universities are infestedsorry if that word offends youwith little linguistic Maoists searching out reasons to take offense. And its why every day we get manufactured outrages. The Pharisees at the Brandeis Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center have a business model designed around the idea of constantly scouring the language for reasons to take offense. And that Orwellian model requires constantly changing acceptable language to catch people for being offensive.

The Mother of All Asininities

And thats the real problem: This war on oppressive language is itself oppressive. The organic evolution of language from below is inherently small-d democratic. Its undirected, emergent, and unavoidable.

Using the commanding heights of the culture, never mind the power of the federal government, to bully and shame people out of using the term mother is oppressive. Its an imposition from above. Its also staggeringly, awe-inspiringly stupid.

Lets start with oppression. Cultural erasure is a hot topic these days. And you know whats a deeply embedded concept in many culturesincluding our own? Mothers. (Its also a pretty deeply embedded concept in medicine, biology, and science generally, which is something to keep in mind when you hear these people say, I believe in science.)

Im honestly offended that I have to explain this. Ask any black, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, Catholic, Muslim, Jew, or literally any other normal person, and theyll tell you what mother means to them, both personally and as a concept. Even for people who hate their mothers, motherhood is a powerful thing (if it werent, they probably wouldnt hate their mothers). In my experience, the people who invest the most meaning in motherhood are colloquially known as mothers. But its really not limited to them.

The phrase, as American as apple pie allegedly gained widespread popularity as as American as motherhood and apple pie during World War II. Reporters would ask American soldiers what they were fighting for, and a common response was, For mom and apple pie.

Then theres Mother Nature, and oh, forget it. I refuse to keep going. Putting me in the position of having to explain that motherhood is central to vast oceans of culture, faith, literature, language, norms, laws, and other concepts in which virtually all human civilizations are rooted is infuriating.

We didnt get rid of the term mother to spare the feelings of orphans or homosexual couples. Why invest in transgender people and their sense of grievance and discomfortas sincere and real as it may bethe moral authority to erase all of that?

Im not advocating cruelty toward transgender people asking to get rid of the word mother. But I am saying that the answer should be an emphatic, albeit polite, No. Thats not going to happen.

The answer should be No on the merits: 99 percent of society should not be held hostage to the feelings of 1 percent (a generous enumeration of their representation in the population, by the way). Motherhood is too important, too entrenched, and too meaningful to get rid of. Especially when you consider that the word and concept was here first and was never intended to give offense. If I move to a country that drives on the left side of the road, I dont get to scream that Im being oppressed by having to adjust accordingly. Admittedly, trans people arent literal immigrants. But they are essentially new arrivals culturally. Showing a little deference to the supermajority culture isnt too much to ask.

And, as I noted on TheRemnant, if youve spent the last 30 years hearing feminists and Handmaids Tale fans denounce conservatives for reducing women to mere breeders, Id like to know why calling them birthing persons is some great victory.

Again, you dont have to be opposed to everything the language police are doing. I for one think removing the term niggardly from everyday parlance is no great loss, even if the word has nothing to do with the homonymic racial epithet. But intent does matter. The FAAs linguistic commissars want to get rid of cockpit because on occasion masculine crew members have wielded the term cockpit to exclude or undermine femme coworkers. Maybe they should just put more energy into disciplining people who use cockpit in an offensive way? I mean, the kind of person determined to harass women with the word cockpit will not be left powerless to continue doing so if you mandate the use of flight deck instead. If anything, taking away the word creates opportunities for fresh cockpit jokesLets call it the gelded pit! Also, that way, you wont have to use idiotic adjectives like masculine and femme to describe crew members. I mean, who knew Luca Brasi was so far ahead of his time?

Turning mother into an offensive or even simply antiquated term is unfair and unjustified cultural oppression, exploiting the admirable American desire to treat people decently. Simply put: Its asking too much.

Which brings us to the stupidity of all this. The answer should be No for another reason: Its never going to happen. People arent going to stop using the term. And because its never going to happen, good and decent progressives, sympathetic to the struggles of trans people, should pull them aside and tell them, Look, that dog wont hunt. Pick your battles.

And they should say this to trans allies for their own sake. Nobody is going to go nuts if individual trans people refer to their own utero-American spawning vessels as birthing persons. But if you want to invite a backlash against trans people, start hectoring and bullying people to refer to their own mothers as birthing people. Start correcting old ladies who gush about how much they love being a grandmother, Excuse me, thats offensive! You are a grandbirthingperson!

See how that goes for your cause.

Lets concede the whole of the argument: Enlightened people should abandon the word mother entirely. Well, if Joe Biden and the Democrats energetically campaigned on eliminating the concept of motherhood in 2020, Donald Trump would be president today and Republicans would have comfortable majorities in Congress. What Im saying here isnt merely criticism, its constructive criticism.

By all means, youre free to fall back on the time-honored progressive practice of rolling your eyes at conservatives making too big a deal out of some PC tempest in a teapot. But this smug, hand-waving response misses how politics works. These stories arent isolated, theyre cumulative. The backlash against critical race theory may seem sudden, but it built up over decades. Standing against political correctness has gotten many a Republican elected because all of these dots in the cultural landscape form a picture a lot of people dont likeand for good reason.

Youre free to describe yourself however you like. Thats freedom. But relentless language policing is culturally oppressive, and its no less so even if, in an unwitting homage to Herbert Marcuse, you claim youre doing it to fight oppression.

Various & Sundry

Canine update: All is well with the beasties. But I dont have too much to report because I was gone for most of the week. I even had to post reruns on my Twitter account. I did get to chase the Dingo on Monday, which is always fun. The only big news development this weekand its big according to canine journalistic standardsis that the Fair Jessica has issued a fatwa that the girls dinner be boring for a while. Normally, we chop up some protein, leftover chicken or steak and put it on top of the kibble. The girls were getting blas about it, so Jess has put them on a straight kibble dinner regimen until their sense of entitlement abates. Theyre not happy about it. Theyve talked to their union rep, theyve filed formal grievances etc. The only glimmer of hope is that TFJ leaves for a drive to Utah tomorrow, leaving me in charge of their menu. No word on how I will deal with this issue.

ICYMI

Last Fridays G-File

Last weekends drive-time Ruminant, featuring a farewell to Mr. Nick Pompella

The weeks first Remnant, with poverty expert (and Brookings sympathizer) Scott Winship

The war over CRT continues to irritate

The members-only midweek G-File on progressive kookery surrounding In the Heights, written from the Oklahoma wilds

The weeks second Remnant, a supplemental episode on separation of church and state

The case for humility in politics

And now, the weird stuff

How deep is your love?

Fishy dealings at Subway

Relationship goals

Not quite what William Peter Blatty had in mind, but

The Midwestern sensibility

California, rest in peace

Love, Ukranian style

Correction, June 26: Yes, we know the headline should have asked, Whos Oppressing Whom,? not Whos Oppressing Who? Wed like to say it was a tribute to Aretha Franklin, but it had more to do with Friday rush hour. Thank you to our Twitter copy editors.

Original post:

Who's Oppressing Whom? - The Dispatch

Text Size:A- A+

New Delhi: PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said on Sunday the dialogue process initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Jammu and Kashmirs mainstream leadership can gain credibility by ending what she called an era of oppression and suppression in the union territory and understanding that a dissenting voice is not a criminal act.

Give the people right to breathe and rest will follow later, the former chief minister said, as she termed the prime ministers meeting with a 14-member delegation from J and K here on Thursday as a way forward to end the sufferings of people in the erstwhile state now under central rule.

Mehbooba, who was part of the delegation, made it clear that the onus was on the Centre to make the dialogue process credible, and said it should initiate confidence building measures and allow people to breathe and also ensure protection of jobs and land for the people.

When I say allow people to breathe, I mean that today any dissenting note from any side has to cool his or her heels in the prison. Recently, a man was jailed for expressing his sentiments that he had lots of hope from a Kashmiri advisor. The concerned Deputy Commissioner ensured that he was in jail for a few days despite being granted bail by the court, Mehbooba told PTI in an interview here.

So, when the prime minister says that he wants to eradicate Dil ki doori, such kind of suppression has to come to an end immediately, she added. At the landmark meeting, Prime Minister Modi had said he wants to remove Dilli ki doori (distance from Delhi) as well as Dil ki doori (distance between hearts) in an effort to bring Delhi closer to the people of J and K.

Dil ki doori has to be decreased with the people of Jammu and Kashmir and for that all the draconian orders passed have to stop. The jobs and land rights have to be protected, the PDP president said.

First and foremost, the era of suppression and oppression has to come to an end and the government has to understand that a dissenting voice is not a criminal act. The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, and I will refer to it only as a state, has become a jail, she said.

The 62-year-old Mehbooba, who was the last chief minister of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir before abrogation of its special status on August 5, 2019, emphasised that among other measures required as confidence building measures were providing relief to the tourism and trading community of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh regions.

On August 5, 2019, mainstream politicians including Mehbooba, Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar and others were taken under preventive detention. The senior Abdullah was the first to be slapped with the controversial Public Safety Act(PSA), followed by Omar and Mehbooba. The PSA against Abdullah senior was revoked in March last year and in the same month Omar was also set free. However, Mehbooba was released only in October last year.

Maintaining that she took part in the Delhi talks only to apprise the central leadership of problems faced by the people, Mehbooba said, I have not come for any power politics as my stand is clear that I will not contest any elections until the special status of Jammu and Kashmir is restored.

Since the invite was from the prime minister, I took it as an opportunity to highlight the suffering of people post August 5, 2019 when Article 370 was scrapped and bifurcation of state was done unconstitutionally. Article 370 of the Constitution gave special status to J and K. On August 5, 2019, the border state was bifurcated into union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

Mehbooba also reiterated that she would not contest elections if J and K remained a union territory.

I have made it clear many times that I would not contest any elections under the Union Territory, but at the same time my party is also aware of the fact that we will not yield political space to anyone. We contested the District Development Council elections held last year, she said.

Similarly, if elections are announced for the assembly, the party would sit and discuss.

The 14-member delegation not only met the prime minister, but also Union Home Minister Amit Shah and senior bureaucrats. Besides Mehbooba, the other former chief ministers who were part of the delegation were Farooq Abdullah, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Omar Abdullah.

Also read: Dont make Kashmir guinea pig for experiments, says Ghulam Nabi Azad in Rajya Sabha

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad expressed optimism that the Centre would not reject the demand of the mainstream political parties in Jammu and Kashmir for restoration of statehood before the polls, adding the union territory status of the erstwhile state was not acceptable to anyone.

One thing was there that everybody was asked to speak frankly. I think all the leaders spoke very frankly and the important thing is there was no ill will towards anyone, Azad, a former chief minister, told PTI in an interview.

Azad, 72, said he had made it clear at the meeting that the union territory status of Jammu and Kashmir is not acceptable for which every political leader extended support. Besides Azad, three other former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti were also part of the multi-party delegation.

So, we have made our point clear. The only thing that we wanted was that first statehood should be restored and then elections should be held. Of course, they (Centre) have not responded but a joint stand of all the political parties was that first statehood should be granted, full-fledged statehood, and then it should be followed by elections, Azad said.

Asked what are the chances that the Centre would agree to the statehood first demand, Azad, who was leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, said he was optimistic, asserting at least they have not said no.

And I think things have changed now. The amount of time the prime minister gave, the words he used that forget the past now. And the meeting gave a great opportunity to understand concerns and issues, he added. The meeting had lasted for nearly three-and-a-half hours.

I think the way the prime minister spoke saying that forget the past and we have to bring peace and build new bridges of confidence between Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir is important.

Azad said the prime minister made it clear that he would like the politics to be run by all those political parties who were present and that he would extend cooperation.

I dont think that the prime minister will do or the home minister will do anything contrary to that which is not acceptable to them (politicians from J-K).

Former deputy chief ministers Tara Chand, Nirmal Singh, Kavinder Gupta and Muzaffar Baigh were also present at the Thursday meeting along with veteran CPM leader Mohammed Yusuf Tarigami, Congress chief of JK G A Mir, Peoples Conference chief Sajad Lone, Panthers party chief Bhim Singh and BJP leaders Ravinder Raina and Jammu and Kashmir Apni party chief Altaf Bukhari. PTI

Also read:PM Modi assures early election & statehood to J&K in first attempt to break ice in 22 months

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Read more from the original source:

Dialogue with PM Modi will gain credibility after era of oppression ends in J&K, Mehbooba Mufti says - ThePrint

The UK has sold arms and military equipment to two-thirds of countries slammed for their dire record on human rights and civil liberties, according to a new report.

Between 2011 and 2020, the UK licensed 16.8 billion of arms to 39 countries castigated by Freedom House, a US government-funded human rights group, for theirpoor record on political and human rights, British daily newspaperThe Guardianreportedon Sunday.

The London-based Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) also found that during the same period, 11.8 billion of arms had been authorized by the British government to countries on the Foreign Offices own list of repressive regimes.

The British Department for International Trade has also identified nine countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, as core markets for arms exports. The countries have been widely criticized for human rights abuses.

Right now, UK-made weapons are playing a devastating role in Yemen and around the world. The arms sales that are being pushed today could be used in atrocities and abuses for years to come, said Andrew Smith of the CAAT.

Wherever there is oppression and conflict there will always be arms companies trying to profit from it, and complicit governments helping them to do so, Smith said.

Saudi Arabia and its regional allies, emboldened by Western powers weapons and support, launched a deadly military campaign against Yemen in March 2015 to reinstall the former Riyadh-friendly Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The war which they claimed would last only a few weeks but is still ongoing has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including women and children, and destroyed much of Yemens infrastructure.

Throughout the campaign, the British government kept up arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite widespread reports that the weapons are being used against civilians.

The UK has sold combat aircraft, helicopters, drones, grenades, bombs and missiles to Riyadh, with most weapons licensed via the opaque and secretive Open License system.

According to Sarah Waldron of the CAAT, UK-made weapons have been central to a bombardment that has destroyed schools, hospitals and homes and created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

Many of these sales are going to despots, dictatorships and human rights abusing regimes. They havent happened by accident. None of these arms sales would have been possible without the direct support of Boris Johnson and his colleagues, Smith added.

Back in February, Oxfam, an international charity organization,warnedthat British arms sales to Saudi Arabia could prolong the war in Yemen.

The UK is ramping up its support for the brutal Saudi-led war by increasing arms sales and refueling equipment that facilitate airstrikes, said Sam Nadel, head of policy and advocacy at Oxfam.

Read this article:

UK sold about 17bn of weapons to two-thirds of 'rights abusers' - Tehran Times

Two-thirds of countries classified as not free because of their dire record on human rights and civil liberties have received weapons licensed by the UK government over the past decade, new analysis reveals.

Between 2011-2020, the UK licensed 16.8bn of arms to countries criticised by Freedom House, a US government-funded human rights group.

Of the 53 countries castigated for a poor record on political and human rights on the groups list, the UK sold arms and military equipment to 39.

Noteworthy recipients include Libya, which received 9.3m of assault rifles, military vehicle components and ammunition. Last week it was the focus of international peace talks to stabilise a country where armed groups and foreign powers compete for influence.

Further analysis by the London-based Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) found that 11.8bn of arms had been authorised by the UK government during the same period to the Foreign Offices own list of human rights priority countries. Two-thirds of the countries 21 out of 30 on the UK government list of repressive regimes had received UK military equipment.

The Department for International Trade has also identified nine nations as core markets for arms exports that groups say are guilty of many human rights abuses, including Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey.

The UK government has already admitted that a Saudi-led coalition has attacked Yemen using weapons made by British companies with the UK supplying more than half of combat aircraft used by the Middle East kingdom for its bombing raids.

Right now, UK-made weapons are playing a devastating role in Yemen and around the world. The arms sales that are being pushed today could be used in atrocities and abuses for years to come, said Andrew Smith of the CAAT.

Further arms deals are expected in the near future with many of the countries on the Freedom House list expected to send representatives to Septembers international arms fair in east London.

Wherever there is oppression and conflict there will always be arms companies trying to profit from it, and complicit governments helping them to do so, said Smith.

Many of these sales are going to despots, dictatorships and human rights abusing regimes. They havent happened by accident. None of these arms sales would have been possible without the direct support of Boris Johnson and his colleagues, added Smith.

Russia was also among the beneficiaries of UK arms sales in the last decade, it received 44m of UK arms including ammunition, sniper rifle components and gun silencers, analysis shows. Moscow last week claimed it had chased a British destroyer out of Crimean waters with warning shots and bombs.

The sales to Russia and Libya were, however, made before ongoing arms embargoes to both countries were introduced, a situation that critics say highlights the short-term thinking behind most arms sales.

The Department for International Trade has been contacted for comment.

See the original post here:

17bn of UK arms sold to rights abusers - The Guardian

Criticizing a nationality for their governments actions only leads to oppression and bias. Lets be clear in our discussions of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Editors note: This piece discusses antisemitic and anti-Arab comments posted online that may be offensive to some readers.

In recent weeks, the global community has grappled with spikes in both anti-Israeli/anti-Palestinian sentiment following an uphill trend in violence between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. In the midst of the deaths and injuries that resulted, a flurry of political discussions took social media by storm, revving internet users from all corners of the world to take sidesas if one side is completely in the right or wrong.

As an individual with no Israeli-Palestinian ties and a rudimentary understanding of the decades-long conflict, I sit on the sidelines eager to learn and absorb all that I can. However, I am filled with disgust at the sheer amount of ignorance and delusion. By using nationality in the critique of a governments actions, we are participating in the undergirding of biases and false equivalences that create perpetual cycles of hostilities and oppression. To best demonstrate the argument that I pose, lets take a look at this tweet written on June 25, 2021:

48 hours left before the Israelis besiege Silwan & ethnically-cleanse al-Bustan before moving onto the next. We must stop this #SaveSilwan.

This Tweet is among the masses in the ceaseless Twitter vacuum that propel such dangerous rhetoricmore so than others, since its author has a large following. Irrespective of the validity and accuracy of the tweet, the inherent issue with this assertion lies in the word Israelis. To neglect the usage of a more specific term like Israeli forces bolsters an inherent bias that all Israelis support ethnic cleansings. The tweet extrapolates the actions of a small sect of Israelis and applies them to an entire population of people. Dangerous rhetoric retains strength in numbers.

Given the speed and rate at which information spreads on social media, public opinion can quickly generate hatred and resentment. Take a look at these examples from Twitter:

The settlers are attacking Palestinians, the Israelis are shooting rubber bullets inside the Palestinian hopes right now in #SheikhJarrah. LOOK AT THEIR BRUTALITY!

Israelis chant for our death, while we chant for our freedom, So (sic) who of us is the terrorist or extremist? This is Zionism! #IsraelApartheidstate.

Palestinians are so serious about peace that theyre willing to murder as many Jews as possible in order to achieve it.

Israelis literally respond to rocks by shooting children.

Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue. #settlementsrock

In these examples, self-proclaimed Middle East experts outrageously use out-of-context video clips or news sources to support an overly simplistic outlook on an entire nation of people. Moreover, these Twitter users fail to provide more in-depth context for the egregious claims they perpetuate. This is especially true for the last tweet written by Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative political commentator. Rather than saving his criticism for the perpetrators of the violence erupting in the Middle East, Shapiro thoughtlessly dispenses his criticism towards all Arabs.

We can see that decrying a collective group of people perpetuates a gross oversimplification of the actualities. Social media platforms like Twitter cater to the simplification of complex topics by condensing them into up to 280 measly characters. Both conservative commentators, liberal pundits, influencers, and celebrities attempt to vaguely weigh in on nuanced issues which only continues to stoke the flames.

As a proud Asian-American with Chinese heritage, I recognize just how xenophobic and despicable poor language can be. Similarly, to declare that the Israelis did this or the Palestinians did that runs the same inherent risk of misrepresenting a group of people for arbitrary falsehoods.

We all find ourselves falling into the habit of using national origin in lieu of the government in everyday conversations on politics. We as Americans have subscribed to these tendencies from day one. From sentences like the Japs bombed the Americans during WWII to the Americans constantly steal oil from the Middle East, our habit of directly correlating nation to nationality is a perilous habit to maintain since it only pits people against people. Perhaps the most foot-in-mouth politician weve all come to learn and love would be former president Donald Trump, who propelled divisive phrases like kung flu or the Chinese virus at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How can we engage in mature conversations that do not consign a group of people on faulty notions? When immersed in political discourse, I implore you to be cognizant whenever attributing specific actions or traits to a collective. Specify that they are Israeli forces, the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority, or Palestinian insurgents. Never attribute them to the millions of Palestinians or Israelis who are compassionate, understanding, empathetic, and considerate.

An age-old saying declares that sticks and stones may break bones, but words can never hurt. I beg to differ.

As students, scholars, and leaders, I encourage the Vanderbilt community to discuss tough topics with respect, curiosity, and open-mindedness. To avoid overgeneralization and simplification, do your due diligence with your research. Always choose your words carefully when sharing your opinion with others. After all, knowledgeability triumphs all the black squares people post for #BLM. Only through using respectful, courteous, and civilized language can we break the mold ingrained into us that divides and vanquishes our community.

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ZHAO: When words hurt more than fists The Vanderbilt Hustler - The Vanderbilt Hustler