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Life’s all about the revolution, isn’t it? The one inside, I mean. You can’t change history. You can’t change the world. All you can ever change is yourself.
— Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
Hosni Mubarak was found guilty of allowing the deaths of at least 800 protesters in the 18-day uprising that toppled his presidency in 2011. Given a life sentence alongside him was his former interior minister Habib el-Adly.
The picture above was taken and tweeted by Al Jazeera’s @glcarlstrom, and is of parents outside the courthouse who have dropped to their knees crying over the portrait of their martyred son after hearing the news of the verdict.
Boy, did I need to see this today. Manatees, or sea cows as they’re sometimes called, are aquatic, herbivorous mammals. They are also big and ooogly wooglily adorable. I like them better than their above-water dwelling counterparts. For any other tumblrbots out there who’re stressed, overworked, sleep deprived, or in need of some love (if, from nowhere else, the internet), I give you the picture below. Enabler of smiles and warm feelings.
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Sometimes when things get hard, we tend to set our sights on what’s hard, that difficult thing that keeps us upset, and we turn our back on our strengths.
It’s days like these where I feel the weight of the world.
The US continues its drone attacks throughout the Middle East. An airstrike on the Kanur province of Afghanistan’s resulted in the death of Sakhr al-Taifi, al-Qaeda leader at large. This crosses off one of the many on the U.S’s secret kill list, but at what cost? Similar drone attacks have also caused the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Pakistan alone.
Ignoring, for a moment, other issues- such as the implications for international law, the lack of government consent, and that war has not, in fact, been declared against many of these countries- it’s a shame how cyclical these policies seem, following and continuing a familiar pattern, with a few superficial variations. A warning nations should heed and take note of, but seldom do.
The except below, from a colorful, passionate, but nonetheless admonitory article by Seumas Milne, could have been published a decade earlier. Warning against the risks, of pouring fuel on the fire then, as it does now.
Of course, drone attacks are only one method by which the US and its allies deliver death and destruction in Afghanistan and the wider Middle East, from night raids and air attacks to killing sprees on the ground. The day after last Friday’s Houla massacre in Syria, eight members of one family were killed at home by a Nato air attack in eastern Afghanistan – one of many such atrocities barely registered in the western media.
But while support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low in all Nato states, the drone war is popular in the US. That’s hardly surprising, as it offers no danger to American forces – the ultimate asymmetric warfare – while supposedly “taking out” terrorists. But these hi-tech death squads are creating a dangerous global precedent, which will do nothing for US security.
A decade ago, critics warned that the ”war on terror” would spread terrorism rather than stamp it out. That is exactly what happened. Obama has now renamed the campaign “overseas contingency operations” and is switching the emphasis from boots on the ground to robots.
But, as the destabilisation of Pakistan and growth of al-Qaida in Yemen shows, the impact remains the same. The drone war is a predatory war on the Muslim world, which is feeding hatred of the US – and fuelling terror, not fighting it.
