by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox Are you worried about the rising political power of violent white nationalists in America? Well, you’ve got plenty of company, including U.S. national security and counterterrorism officials. And we’re worried, too — worried enough, in fact, to feel that it’s time to take a look at the experience of India, where Hindu supremacist dogma has[Read More…]
by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox So many crises — from war to mass species die-offs to climate meltdown — afflict our world that we often don’t take time to draw insights from what generally passes for the small stuff, the things that happen all too close to home, including aging. Most of us don’t relish the prospect of[Read More…]
by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox The Burden of Massive EV Batteries Will Be Borne by People and Ecosystems Much of the excitement over the Inflation Reduction Act, which became law this summer, focused on the boost it should give to the sales of electric vehicles. Sadly, though, manufacturing and driving tens of millions of individual electric passenger cars[Read More…]
One thing is constant in India: violence. The perpetrators are the same; only the faces of those who encounter and resist the violence change. In India, or JatiIndia — my name for this nation of jatis/castes — the social hierarchical structure of jatiism/casteism and the inherent violence that goes with it stems from the country’s tree of systemic upper-caste supremacy[Read More…]
No, because the face of a little girl in Bangladesh, or a little boy in Cambodia, and the thought of a nuclear blast going off close enough to them for them to lose their life, is enough. Again, this is a love letter. This is a love letter to all the civilians of the planet. — Philipos Melaku-Bello, in response[Read More…]
The “Vote Yes” side screamed at us that we wanted to kill babies. Their skillfully branded mother-and-child logo and cynical three-word slogan “Value Them Both” were everywhere here in Salina, Kansas. Always the same cozy white-on-purple image and soothing words on yard signs and banners, as if they were My Pillow or Hobby Lobby. On weekends, they would occupy street[Read More…]
by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox Time is fast running out. The world’s affluent nations, with their abundant greenhouse emissions, have to finally drag themselves across the starting line and begin phasing out fossil fuels at the accelerated pace that the climate emergency demands. And if they can manage to do that, they clearly will need to quickly build[Read More…]
Losses on both sides were profound — U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken, May 25 press conference with Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu in Israel, AlJazeera. (All of the following li(n)es were uttered during the same press conference.) Yes. Losses were profound. But not on both sides. On one side, among Palestinians, of whom 253 were killed, including 66 children, and[Read More…]
The ‘New Deal’ part of the Green New Deal is mostly good and necessary. But the ‘Green’ part has a big hole at its center: the lack of a direct mechanism to rapidly reduce the use of fossil fuels in the economy; therefore, it cannot guarantee their elimination on a crash deadline. It relies instead on an erroneous assumption that[Read More…]
As his 67th birthday nears, and Pennsylvania political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal faces challenging and potentially fatal health crises, his legal case is still slowly winding its way through the arduous appellate court system. — New court filings for Abu-Jamal’s appeal, Workers World, March 22. Injustice is an industry in the United States of America, just like militarism and prisons. An[Read More…]
It is outrageous from the beginning that she was arrested and prosecuted instead of investigating the physical assault against her… The sentence shows the status of the Egyptian judiciary today, which is largely in the service of the political interests of the government, rather than assisting in delivering justice.” — Amr Magdi, Egypt researcher at Human Rights Watch, Middle East Eye,[Read More…]
On this International Women’s Day let’s take a moment to remember one of JatiIndia’s victims, 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama from Manipur, India who was hauled out of her home at night, brutally tortured, raped and then shot dead by Indian paramilitary forces — the 17th Assam Rifles — on July 11, 2004. There were bullet wounds found in her vagina and[Read More…]
The new farm laws will make it more difficult for farmers to earn an income, said R.S. Amaresh, a 65-year-old farmer from Renukapura village in Challakere taluk of Chitradurga district. ‘It is very difficult to survive as a farmer. There is no value for our crop. We have given up hope on agriculture. If it continues like this, a day[Read More…]
The intruder [Gaur] was referring not to a joke Faruqui had just made, but one that he’d uploaded on YouTube in April 2020. It referenced Rama, a widely worshipped Hindu deity, and his wife Sita. “O Lord, my beloved, has come home,” Faruqui starts, dropping lyrics from an enormously popular Bollywood song in which a woman celebrates the return of[Read More…]
We make equipment, we give it to our so-called allies[in the Middle East], who we don’t even know who the hell they are… 2,300 Humvees sent over. A couple of shots are fired and these guys run like a bunch of thieves, which they are. Our allies. Our allies. And ISIS picks up the weapons, the Humvees, the this. It’s[Read More…]
“Rescue us from the sub-jail – what you call the media ‘facilitation’ centre,” reads a sign held up by a pair of, what you, JatiIndia — my name for this country of jatis/castes — call “anti-national” hands. Who qualifies as a so-called anti-national? Anyone who resists and exposes JatiIndian supremacy within the boundaries of the country, and in occupied Kashmir.[Read More…]
Politically, there is a clear difference between Biden and Trump, but for the Palestinians, they both favor Israel over us — Palestinian taxi driver Ahmed Zayed, former member of Fatah, The Christian Science Monitor, December 2 Two days after that article was published in the Christian Science Monitor, Israeli Occupation Forces killed a teenage Palestinian boy named Ali Ayman Saleh[Read More…]
Atrocities Caste, Present and Future Sandip, Ramu, Lavkush and Ravi. Those are the names of the upper-caste Thakurs who tortured and gang-raped a 19-year-old girl in Hathras, Utter Pradesh, JatiIndia, on September 14. Folding his palms, [Manisha’s father] pleaded, ‘Our daughters are no longer safe. We are helpless, I request the nation to stand with us, help us get justice[Read More…]
The jingoist nation and nationalism have got weaponized by the political class to destroy dissent and polarize people. The mass frenzy has accomplished complete derationalization and inversion of meanings where destroyers of the nation become deshbhakts (patriots) and selfless servers of people become deshdrohis (traitors). As I see my India being ruined, it is with a feeble hope that I[Read More…]
I am one of those who did not obtain help to fix the house. I am living in it because I am not the owner of the house I’ve been living in for six years, and without documents I could not obtain help to repair it. Staying here in these conditions is not easy. But since I have my daughter[Read More…]
Why impose punishment before the facts have been fully assembled? Why have the chief and the mayor created a termination document amped up with hyperbole? Unfortunately, the answer is that this termination is a cowardly political act. — Attorney of former Louisville Metro Police Detective Brett Hankison, WDRB, June 25. A cowardly political act has been done indeed. Not toward[Read More…]
What I can’t do is change my skin color for y’all… Just like when I go to work everyday, it’s a choice… no matter what happens in that day, good or bad, I chose it. When I was born I didn’t choose that. I didn’t choose to be the color I am, but I’m proud of who I am and[Read More…]
The State’s knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on a Black man’s neck. That’s what it took BLACK LIVES MATTER America to take to the young but deadly pandemic streets like there was no tomorrow. And it’s been the same since. Michael Cruse… killed a man before for running a stop sign… He was fired from the police department…[Read More…]
Photo by John Epic taken outside Kansas’ 1st District Congress member @RogerMarshallMD’s office in Salina, Kansas, May 4 Yesterday, May 4, marked the 50th Anniversary of the Kent State University Massacre in Ohio, when the U.S. National Guard showered bullets into young anti-Vietnam war protestors killing four and wounding nine. According to David Paul Kuhn, author of The Hardhat Riot:[Read More…]
Aaj Woh Kashmir Hai Mehkoom-O-Faqeer Kal Jise Ahl-E-Nazar Kehte Thay Iran-E-Sagheer (Today that land of Kashmir, under the heels of the enemy, has become weak, helpless and poor Once known among the wise as Little Iran) — Allama Muhammad Iqbal, poet and philosopher of Kashmiri origin, “The Poet who Introduced Language of Resistance in Kashmir,” New Frame, July 11, 2019[Read More…]
(Includes a meal brought to you by Discomfort Foods) I’ve been living on Custer Street in Salina, Kansas since the day I moved to the United States from India in 2000. At that time I had no idea who General George Armstrong Custer was and what he had stood for. Now I do. On Thanksgiving Day I was in my[Read More…]
(Includes a recipe brought to you by Discomfort Foods) In February 2018 on Fox News, Laura Ingraham ended her interview with former CIA director James Woolsey by asking him if the United States continues to “mess around in other people’s elections.” To which Woolsey, as though tasting the tasty lie in his mouth, replied: “Welllllllll aummmm yum yum yum yum[Read More…]
Two things in America create “bipartisanship”: support for Israel’s apartheid regime and support for endless US war and intervention around the world. — Ali Abunimah, October 16. It’s September-October and I’m sitting at my Sidewalk Museum of Congress (SMoC) studio outside Kansas’ 1st District Rep. Roger Marshall’s office embroidering portraits of the Palestinian al-Farra family, most of whom were killed[Read More…]
I have to say it doesn’t take very long for Kansas’ 1st district Rep. Roger Marshall and his staff to feel like as though they are the victims of their constituents’ concerns and not the other way around. This time it started on Sunday, August 4 with some singing and chalking on Rep. Marshall’s sidewalk. The chalking included images as[Read More…]
What do Shahed Amer al-Bayoumi, Abdel-Raouf Salha, Arafat Jaradat, Ayoub Asaleya, Mohammed Suleiman, Sawsan Ali Dawud Mansour, Mohammad H., Isma’il Muslem Hamad Abu Bteihan, Ala Ziad Abu ‘Aasi, Fadi al-Darbi, Atef al-Maqousi, Jaber Ibrahim Abu Hweige, Fadiyah Jaber Abu Hweige and Muhammad Jaber Abu Hweige have in common? They are Palestinians between the ages of 9 and 69 who have[Read More…]
There is no one poster child who embodies the struggle of the Palestinian people living in the shadow of Israeli settlers and military occupation. Every Palestinian child, woman, and man will tell you intricate stories of what life and death is like under the perennial burden of occupation, and what that means for the land beneath their feet, their usurped[Read More…]
This is an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water — Donald Trump, INDEPENDENT, September 29, 2017 Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017. One and a half years later, many of the island’s more than 3 million U.S. citizens continue to be forgotten and ignored by the federal government. Earlier this year, Stan Cox and I stayed[Read More…]
Co-Written by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox From the early days of the Trump administration, the White House and Justice Department have obsessively sought to separate asylum-seeking parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border. The American people and the courts have mounted fierce resistance to this sadistic practice, but Trump’s men will not be deterred. Separation continues despite[Read More…]
As I write this, Kris Kobach, the ‘He Was Trump Before Trump’ Republican nominee for Governor of Kansas, along with Donald himself, are getting ready for a rally in Topeka at the Kansas Expocenter. Kobach’s campaign manager and chamcha @jrclaeys tweeted recently in regard to the rally, “It’s gonna be YUGE! #ksleg #RemainRed #MAGA.” As you can see Claeys’ chamchagiri[Read More…]
Our “liberal” media push back when riled up MAGA heads spit venom laced with ignorance and stupidity. But the same media turn a deaf ear to the many articulate voices for justice and accountability that have been rising from all across this fracked nation, in their respective communities. And while the media spends its umpteenth week covering, non-stop, what the[Read More…]
Co-Written by Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox The United States government views human rights not as the foundation of human dignity but as an impediment to corporate profits. — Haley Pedersen & Jodie Evans, AlterNet, January 11, 2018. In the United States of America it’s all about the quantity, not the quality, of so-called freedom. That may be because[Read More…]
The Palestinian cause is not just for Palestinians, not even just for Arabs. The Palestinian cause is a humanitarian cause. What makes me happy is to see the humanitarians of the world stand with us in solidarity to free our land. — Ahed Tamimi, Empire Files: Abby Martin Meets Ahed Tamimi—Message From A Freedom Fighter. In 1976, the Palestinian villages[Read More…]
If I were to describe Islam in three words, there is nothing there besides sex, crime and murder. So the question for you is not whether Rohingya will stay here or the Musulman will leave here…. Now, what’s the question is that everyone is being brought here (The banner in the back reads: Drive Out Rohingya Save India Protest.… Thank[Read More…]
India wants to reap the benefits of Islamophobia from which the world is suffering…. the Indian government has to reconcile its own people to body bags coming from Kashmir…. If the Indian people were told the truth that Kashmiris don’t want to be with India, and the struggle here is sustained by them primarily…. the public opinion in India too[Read More…]
Sandwiched between the months of June — which saw the 50th anniversary of Israel’s Palestine occupation — and August — the 71st anniversary of India’s Independence from British rule and India’s subsequent occupation of Kashmir — this July can perhaps be remembered as a month when two nationalist ideologies — Zionism and Hindutva — that have thrived on these two[Read More…]
We must create a society in which women – including Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women,[Dalit and Adivasi women], disabled women, Muslim women, lesbian queer and trans women – are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments. –Statement from Women’s March’s Unity Principles, with[Read More…]
Salim Khan, a Muslim driver was burnt alive after a message was passed on the police wireless that a Muslim driver was coming that way. On the night of February 28, when people were attacked in Vatwa, all they could see was heads and more heads. Swords were being waved in the air, shots were fired by privately owned guns.[Read More…]
7 in the series JatiIndia: A Flag of Atrocities Caste, Present and Future For more than a quarter century, journalist/activist Teesta Setalvad has worked tirelessly to ensure that India’s Constitution serves the people. Her most well-known work involved exposing, through her group Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), the atrocities committed by Hindutva extremists in Gujarat in 2002. As part[Read More…]
It was about 8:00 on the morning of November 9 in Mumbai, India. I sat down with the internet to talk with my husband Stan in Kansas, where it was 7:30 pm November 8. Like many other now-shell-shocked Americans, he was watching what we thought would be the finally-final episode of America’s Got President. The look on his face said[Read More…]
An interview with MuslimPress Why did you choose the name “Jatiindia” for your work? What’s the significance of this name? Inequality exists in societies all across the globe. Designed by Brahmanism (which came before Hinduism), the caste system is a uniquely cruel and immutable version of this phenomenon because it has been conveniently sanctioned by the Hindu religion. The Indian[Read More…]
Man, I dream of just being able to paint. Go to sleep when I want, get up when I want, eat when I want. Try to enjoy what’s left for me. Talk to the little children—be an elder for my people.—Leonard Peltier, United States Penitentiary, Coleman I in Florida, July 4, 2016. This is not a good time to be[Read More…]
Unfinished Portrait is a project in perpetuity, tracking the footsteps of our post- 9/11, post-Iraq War world.I began work on the project in 2005. And, today, eleven years later, the content and execution of this work has evolved, much like the illegal wars of Iraq and Afghanistan have themselves evolved, you might say.
I got involved in the whole drones process because I was representing people in Guantanamo Bay. And when President Obama came into office he says we’re going to close Guantanamo Bay and fairly quickly it dawned on me that yeah he didn’t like Guantanamo, so they were just going out and killing the people instead of locking them up. And[Read More…]
Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein visited Topeka, Kansas on July 2, and I was there. Listening to her make her case that afternoon was like a breath of fresh air this election season. Dr. Stein touched on almost all of the policy issues, both domestic and foreign, that all of us 20-odd people present in that Ramada Inn room cared[Read More…]
If Salvador Dali were around today he might have captured the mood of the nation best in a painting. But, you could simulate one for yourself by piecing together these wildly varying, discordant sentiments in your head: “Sheis an extremely ambitious liberal interventionist hawk….[and] was the leading figure behind the destruction of Libya…If Hillary Clinton gets into office, it means[Read More…]
Modi Regime should be Called to Account for the Deadliest Triple Train Collision at Balasore 
Thoughts on World Environment Day 
Nuclear Fusion: Eternal Energy = Eternal Damnation 
Why There Should Be A Treaty Against the Use of Weaponized Drones 
Protests in Germany after Anti-fascists sent to five years in prison 
Women Wrestler’s Protests: Exposing Beti Bachao Slogan 
Inauguration of Parliament Building: Coronation Ceremony? 
FBI appears to be continuing investigation of Julian Assange 
And We Are Much More Than Our Uterus. (In Solidarity With the protesting wrestlers) 
Strike ends in Belsonika with reinstatement of 10 suspended workers 
A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu Is Provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank 
The Ancient Patterns of Migration 
Seven Reasons Why the Present Phase of Imperialism is the Most Dangerous Ever 
Unmasking Tourism’s Roadblocks 
Metro authorities humiliating ordinary commuters 
PLI Scheme- Do subsidies to profit-earning private manufacturers yield commensurate societal benefits? World Environment Day in India: Doing Justice with the Day 
Ben Roberts-Smith: The Breaking of a Plaster Saint 
Do we All need Religion? An Introspection 
Obama, Kissinger and the Nobel Peace Prize 
The Politics of Erdogan and Western Anxieties 
The Compulsion to Intervene – Why Washington Underwrites Violence in Ukraine 
Just War and Just War Theory 
Stolen Heirloom or poppycock 
‘Simply Inconceivable’ to Dump Fukushima Water in Pacific, Critics Say After Latest IAEA Report 
Eradicate Dowry, Eliminate Dowry Violence 
Growing number of elderly homeless in the US 
Rise Up in Solidarity with Protesting Wrestlers 
Plastic Pollution in Destinations: A Growing Threat to Environmental Sustainability 
The US Censors Dissenting Voices: On the Attacks Against the Midwestern Marx Institute 
The US Government Should At Least Listen to this Wisdom of its Top Experts on the Ukraine Crisis 
Indigenous Australians & Palestinians: Treaty, Truth, Voice, Referendum & Senator Lidia Thorpe 
Kya Sharmsaar hai hindustan……are wrestling champions of India going the Mohammed Ali way? 
Legislative Gaps Helping Overseas Shell Companies? 
Book Review: Marginalised but not Defeated 
When Will US Join Global Call to End Ukraine War? 
AUKUS, Congress and Cold Feet 
The Wars We Don’t (Care to) See – Aggression Made Easy 
Raising the Palestinian flag in Daley Plaza Center, Chicago: A powerful symbolic gesture 
Shocking Lack of Concern for World’s Safety by War Mongering Elite 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
