Dark Times and Some Inspiration
Image by Leonardo Yip.
I put N“P”R on while I made coffee three mornings ago and learned three things:
+1. The US imperialist client and occupation and apartheid state of Israel launched a surprise bombardment that slaughtered 400 Palestinian human beings (including many children) in Gaza even as Israel-Hamas peace talks were ongoing last weekend because (a) the Donald Trump regime did nothing to advance serious peace efforts there and (b) Trump’s fellow fascist Bibi Netanyahu wants a resumption of war to satisfy his far-right base and keep his domestic political enemies at bay.
+2. Medical scientists have determined that the extreme heat regularly endured by a rising percentage of people thanks to the ongoing fossil capitalist program to turn the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas chamber is altering human DNA in such a way as to accelerate the aging process. The capitalogenic climate catastrophe is shortening human lives and undermining human well-being in ways that are comparable to smoking or prolonged exposure to toxic chemicals.
+3. The female-enslaving state of Louisiana, run by Christian fascists, is trying to extradite a New York doctor to prosecute her for the Louisiana state crime of sending abortion medication pills to a Louisiana woman. The physician faces five years in a Louisiana prison. She is shielded from extradition by a recent New York state law but N“P”R reported that the misogynist state of Louisiana may try to circumvent this protection by turning to the federal government. I was reminded of the 1850 Fugitive Slaw Law, which required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state and made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves.
In reporting these three stories, N“P”R did not exactly use my language here, of course, but this is the essence of what I heard.
Meanwhile in other news, the poster boy of fascism-appeasing inauthentic opposition Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer ($D-NY) went on liberal cable last Tuesday night to sell his new book and deny that we are currently in a constitutional crisis. Schumer voiced his head-in-the-sand view as the Trump administration has brazenly defied the federal judiciary by going ahead with mass and individual deportations despite clear and explicit orders not to do so by two federal judges.
The fascist leader Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump has called for the impeachment of at least one of these jurists. He sent out a TruthSocial post insanely calling one of those judges — get this — “a Radical Left Lunatic” and a “troublemaker and agitator sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.” Mein Trumpf went on to claim that the judge has no legitimate authority to rule against Trump because Trump won the 2024 election “by a lot” and the judge is un-elected.
Trump’s robotic Christian fascist press secretary denied that a mere federal judge has any legitimate authority over the executive branch.
Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan — an openly thuggish authoritarian who threatens to jail mayors whose’ cities shield immigrants from ICE gendarmes — said this about the criminal deportations: “We are going to make this country safe again … We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.”
So much for the long-term constitutional principle of judicial review, Article 3 of the US Constitution, and Marbury vs Madison. So much for the “rule of law.”
Calling moderate bourgeois judges “Radical” and part of “the Left” is classic fascist deception and propaganda.
The Columbia University graduate student, anti-genocide activist, and permanent legal resident Mahmoud Khalil remains behind bars in an “immigrant detention facility” far from his eight months pregnant wife. He was extra-judicially kidnapped by the Trump fascist regime eleven days ago because he helped lead protests against the just re-escalated genocide in Gaza — a brazen violation of his democratic rights under the first, fourth, and fifth amendments to the US Constitution.
Credible rumors from within the US government have been sent my way that “by April 20 Trump has asked secretaries of homeland security and defense to determine if he should invoke the Insurrectionist Act and deploy US military to surprise civil disorder.”
This and so much more of the darkness that is falling across the land right now is hard to process. It is my view the outcome of not having already risen up in the many millions to fight for an emancipated world beyond the oppressive rule capitalists, imperialists, racists, sexists, and fascists – something we can and must still do.
On a positive note, the Weimar leader Schumer has been forced to cancel his recent attempted book tour thanks to popular outrage over his decision not to block the formerly republican Republican Party’s arch-reactionary budget “reconciliation” bill.
Also good to hear, the New York doctor threatened by Louisiana says she will keep sending abortion pills into Louisiana and other Trump Confederacy states because “it’s the right thing to do.”
And if you are looking for some really deep inspiration, here is Mahmoud Kahlil’s recent letter from a concentration camp in Louisiana, which was also published on CounterPunch earlier this week:
“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing. Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing — based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.“
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