[-empyre-] under the gun

Mon Nov 14 15:25:05 AEDT 2016

Friends as a one -empyre old timer and an old time activist, jailed for
several years, waterboarded and a lot of etc, exiled in Sweden for more
than 30 years now back in South America I dare to add my voice to this
collective lamentation.
The election in the US was an election between Schila and Caribdis. Hillary
Clinton played for many years in the powers inner territorium and she
became flawed or tainted.  Her support to the war in Irak and her support
to Israel hawks made her a very impopular candidate among leftist or
radical thinkers.
Women didn't vote for her "per se", Susan Sarandon who voted for Jill
Stein, told a reporter "I don't vote with my vagina". Many saw not in
Clinton a champion of radical feminism.
But in comparison with Trump ' blatant antisemitism bigotteri and lies she
become mother Teresa.
Now we, the world, must cope with four years of backlash and xenophobic
rethoric.
We got six former Guantanamo prisoners to Uruguay they spent 13 years in
jail without trial. They were vaguely accused of belonging to al Qaeda or
to be Osama bin Laden drivers or other more or less ungrounded accusations.
One of them, Ahmed, is now a friend to me. He was at my home today and
tried unsuccessfully to reach his family living in the living hell of
Aleppo.
Trump has said he and Putin are going to go together against Isis and it
means supporting and keeping Assad in power.
It means all those millions killed and displaced in Siria sacrificed
themselves for nothing, Assads goes out from this war stronger than ever.
And in Europe it's a lot worse my Swedish friends are in dismay.  Trump
promised Putin to accept officially Russians annexation of Crimea and Trump
answered to the question of a journalist "I am not ready to take the US to
a war for some suburbs to St Petersburg".
(He was speaking about Ucrania Letland Estonia and Lithuania of course).
If we are not able to make a world coalition against Trump and Putin we are
going to see a new world order scarier than that we had before.
Sorry for my long rant!
Ana

Den 14 nov 2016 00:33 skrev "AAR" <ghostnets at ghostnets.com>:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
I’ve dipped in & out of this thread. Yes, there’s a lot of hysteria going
around for very good reasons. A video by Van Jones has been circulating in
which he basically advises people to step back and reinforce our personal
base- with love, happy routines, etc, even as we search for the ways
forward. He thinks there are some opportunities. I don’t know. T. is moving
swiftly to install people and initiatives that could rapidly lead to
planetary ruin for most of us. It’s hard to stay focused. Personally, I
find that besides my rage, owning my grief helps a lot. i stay on FB
threads with smart people I admire. I keep working. As a Jewish person, I
am weighed down by millenia of PTSD. I am trying to see past my own horror
and terror to everyone else’s. I have my walls up against white Christian
male complacency and misogyny. But hey, there are tons of female
male-identified misogynists out there as well. The news screams about happy
white supremacists spawning a whole new generation of Nazis, and every hour
it seems I hear about another hate crime. Artists and intellectuals did not
do well in the Third Reich. I think we will all be walking targets for the
disaffected, but more to be revealed. The RNC of the USA pulled a fast one
in slow motion in this country, with voter suppression and gerrymandering,
whipping up false fears, controlling the media, making unholy coalitions
with hypocritical evangelicals, Putin and our very own FBI so fossil fuels
can destroy the earth asap. So many will be collateral damage. So many
already have been. Some are talking about common cause with other poor
people who happen to be white supremacists. I doubt it. So the answer? At
least keep talking, writing. At the very least, let us not harm each other.
Let us clearly identify the real enemies.

“What the world needs is a good housekeeper.”
Aviva Rahmani, PhD
Affiliate INSTAAR, University of CO. at Boulder
https://www.nyfa.org/ArtistDirectory/ShowProject/1446ef3a-0a9d-4449-96be-
74023eb9c376
Watch “Blued Trees”:  https://vimeo.com/135290635
www.ghostnets.com
www.gulftogulf.org

On Nov 13, 2016, at 8:32 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

I'm hoping this goes to the list, since I believe I received it from the
list, not from the cc?

I find " We don't want to discuss some very hard realities that exist on
the ground. By "we" I mean specifically the kinds of liberal intellectuals
and artists who inhabit this list." - because you assume that we don't
understand those "hard realities" - whereas you really don't know what any
of us, non-white or white, even Trump supporters, are going through, and
that's part of the problem. The post is divisive, even though I agree with
it. So I can say on another list I co-moderate, there is considerable
hysteria, on Fb there is the same, and there are hard realities for many
many of us - ranging from issues of Obamacare to sensing an approaching
armageddon of forced exile. And many of us are protesting, are out there,
are organizing, as much as anyone else.

_No one_ has been ready for this, and one of the heartening things at the
demonstration yesterday was the call for unity, from people ranging from
Muslims to Jews, Blacks to whites, all sorts of sexual orientations etc.

I will absolutely not apologize or accept the category of "liberal
intellectuals who inhabit this list" - we're subscribers, and we subscribe
to many many other lists and real-life organizations and practices; in
other words, I don't see this as a totality - any nore than I see Trump
supports as all poor uneducated whites. I'm not trying to sound
antagonistic - I don't feel that way honestly, I'm just trying to get rid
of labels and hopefully increase the understanding that many many many of
us are under the gun, even whites - I'm thinking of some people I know who
are worried about dying when the medications run out... I should also note
being Jewish, I've been subject to hate crimes myself, etc. It's all
shameful.

Please, if you do have any suggestions, offer them. And hopefully we won't
have censorship on this list. We do have to realize everyone's feelings are
on edge, in every part of the country, and we have to learn to listen. At
the same time we have to learn how to concretely oppose the bullying and
hate crimes have have increased at least 300% in the past few weeks.

Alan

On Sun, 13 Nov 2016, empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

==
email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt
==
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20161114/725a7653/attachment.html>