On this Independence Day, I suggest we in the United States think about liberating ourselves from one of our most harmful and destructive practices:
MONEY AND WEAPONS TO ISRAEL
“Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding, receiving about $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance.” (source). Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has sent at least 14,000 of its 2,000-pound bombs to Israel for a grand total of 28 million pounds of bombs raining down on Palestinians. And that only accounts for the BIG bombs. Who knows how many more pounds of death have dropped on Gaza.
On this Independence Day, the thought utmost in my mind is declaring independence from genocide. No one is free when others are oppressed.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Tracy Abell 
Appalling and senseless.
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Yes and yes. Take good care, Cindy. 😦
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Human suffering through acts of genocide, and human suffering from the bombs contributing to climate change. When will human beings begin to care for each other.
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Human beings can actually be perceived and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external [our] concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilized nations. It’s like an immoral consideration of ‘quality of life’.
The inhuman(e) devaluation is especially observable in external attitudes, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, toward the daily civilian lives lost in prolongedly devastating war zones and famine-stricken regions.
This effect is likely exacerbated when there’s racial contrast between the news consumer and news subject. Therefore, when that life is lost, even violently, it can receive less coverage.
In other words, the worth of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the extended conditions [i.e. usually years] under which it suffers and/or perishes; and those people can then receive comparably meagre coverage in the West’s daily news.
For example, with each news report of the daily death toll from unrelenting bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with all major protracted conflicts internationally since I began regularly consuming news products in 1987. And I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this nor that it’s willfully callous.
Assuming I’m not alone in feeling this, I say we all can still resist such flawed yet normalized human nature thus behavior.
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We’re most definitely witnessing the easy disposal of human life, in Gaza and Congo and Sudan and everywhere people are needlessly dying Covid-related deaths because our governments consider us expendable. And that normalization of Covid deaths feeds right into the normalization of genocide. We’re focused on ourselves and have become callous. I understand your point about the relentless bombing and news of death and destruction, and believe that definitely leads to fatigue that can come across as callous. I’m with you in believing we must resist those feelings that lead to more normalization and callousness. Thank you for contributing those thoughts and insights to the conversation. Take care of yourself.
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Also, increasingly problematic is the very large and growing populace who are too overworked, worried and even angry about food and housing unaffordability for themselves or their family — all while on insufficient income — to criticize industries for the environmental damage their products cause/allow, particularly when not immediately observable. It does seem convenient for such very-profitable mega polluters.
Meanwhile, (neo)liberals and conservatives remain overly preoccupied with vocally criticizing one another for their relatively trivial politics and diverting attention away from some of the planet’s greatest polluters, where it should and needs to be sharply focused. Albeit, conservatives are generally more willing to pollute the planet most liberally.
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THIS: “Meanwhile, (neo)liberals and conservatives remain overly preoccupied with vocally criticizing one another for their relatively trivial politics and diverting attention away from some of the planet’s greatest polluters, where it should and needs to be sharply focused.”
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So much violence and suffering when we desperately need to care for one another, as we’re all we’ve got. Take care, Jasper.
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WITH news-stories’ human subjects’ race and culture dictating
quantity of media coverage of even the poorest of souls,
a renowned newsman formulated a startling equation
justly implicating collective humanity’s news-consuming callousness
—“A hundred Pakistanis going off a mountain in a bus
make less of a story than three Englishmen drowning in the Thames.”
.
According to this unjust news-media mentality reasonably deduced
five hundred prolongedly-war-weary Middle Eastern Arabs getting blown
to bits in the same day perhaps should take up even less space and airtime.
.
So readily learned is the tiny token short story buried in the bottom
right-hand corner of the newspaper’s last page, the so brief account
involving a long-lasting war about which there’s virtually absolutely
nothing civil; therefore caught in the warring web are civilians most
unfortunate, most weak, the very most in need of peace and civility.
.
And it’s naught but business as usual in the damned nations
where such severe suffering almost entirely dominates the
fractured structured daily routine of civilian slaughter
(plus that of the odd well-armed henchman) mostly by means
of bomb blasts from incendiary explosive devices, rock-fire fragments
and shell shock readily shared with freshly shredded shrapnel wounds
resulting from smart bombs sometimes launched for the
stupidest of reasons into crowded markets and grade schools. …
.
Hence where humane consideration and conduct were unquestionably
due post haste came only few allocated seconds of sound bite—a half minute
if news-media were with extra space or time to spare—and one or two
printed paragraphs on page twenty-three of Section C. Such news
consumed in the stable fully developed, fully ‘civilized’ Western world
by heads slowly shaking at the barbarity of ‘those people’ in that
war-torn strife which has forced tens of thousands of civilians to post-haste
gather what’s left of their shattered lives and limbs and flee. ….
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This brought to mind the nonstop coverage when a white, blonde-haired child goes missing as opposed to the lack of coverage when a Black child goes missing.
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