World War Round-Up Vol. 2 - YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN (Plus some big NVRMR news!)
World War Round-Up Vol. 2 - YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN (Plus some big NVRMR news!)
Rozali Telbis on Naomi Klein, baby beheadings, Chris Hedges, Howard Zinn, and her allegiance to the truth.
BIG NEWS EVERYONE…
WE JUST HIT 1000 SUBSCRIBERS!
That’s right - We just hit a big milestone - 1000 subscribers! And we’re about to hit the 10 thousand views a month mark!
That’s right - we fucking did it.
I’d like to thank Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka, my family, Don Friesen and the Ottawa Mennonite Church, Kurt Cobain, the Evasion kid, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Grandfather William Commanda, Roger Noganosh, my spiritual family, Albert Hoffman, Terence McKenna, the grassroots Wet’suwet’en, and everyone who ever picked me up hitchhiking.
I’d also like to give a big shout out to Matthew Ehret, Cynthia Chung, Rob Brown, the CBC, Robert F. Kennedy, Montreal Counter-Info, North Shore Counter-Info, It’s Going Down, Anarchist News, and everyone else who helped Nevermore reach a larger audience.
Thank you for helping us achieve our goal of keeping the anarchist fire burning through the long, hard winter.
We could probably have done it without you, but it would have taken longer.
Thanks for everyone that has ever doubted me, - you inspire me to prove you wrong.
The biggest shout out goes out to the members of the Nevermore team - Paul Cudenec, Dave Amis, Margaret Anna Alice, Rozali Telbis, John Duffy, Tom Keefer, Jordan Henderson, and all of our readers, especially our paid subscribers.
And my biggest shout-out of all goes to my co-pilot Rozali Telbis, who basically came to Nevermore’s rescue at a crucial moment.
Sometimes all someone needs is for someone to believe in them to help them pull through, and Rozali was that person for me.
Thank you, Rozali - I couldn’t have done it without you.
If you have yet to check out Rozali’s work, what are you waiting for? You can start here:
Anyway, hope that wasn’t too much for the new subs, but those of you who have been with us for awhile know it hasn’t been easy to get to this point.
I personally feel strongly that it’s important to celebrate your successes. Anyone that thinks that getting a project like Nevermore off the ground is easy should give it a shot.
The truth is that Nevermore was always a means to an end - the essential truth at the heart of the anarchist movement had been reduced to embers. Now it burns again.
Now we can get back to the business of becoming ungovernable.
Now we can get back to the business of smashing the state.
Now we can get back to the business of getting free.
- Crow Qu’appelle
WORLD WAR ROUND-UP VOLUME 2:
YOU CAN’T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN!
Hi all — Rozali here.
Here are some of the stories that have been on my radar. It’s impossible to prioritize what is most important, as that is entirely subjective, but I have a particular interest in the news stories that give us a glimpse as to what we can expect from the impending fallout between the Israel/Palestine conflict around the world. I also included commentary from some notable voices, and news developments.
Some additional notes:
My allegiance is to the truth. I don’t like playing propaganda telephone. I don’t like to spread viral news stories that have not been verified (including but not limited to the mass rape allegations, baby beheadings, and that one story about how Hamas gutted a pregnant woman and let her unborn child die slowly out of its mother’s womb ).
The aforementioned stories have not been verified, and I have linked below to an example of some outlets attempting to find out more information about such stories, like the horrible baby beheading one, for example.
I will revise my statement if any of these end up being verified.
It’s really important for me to make sure we do our due diligence so we can limit our complicity in spreading mis/disinformation.
In terms of the question of ‘taking sides’ I actually think it is more harmful to claim to be ‘moderate’ or a ‘centrist.’
I think of Howard Zinn’s infamous quote ‘You can’t be neutral on a moving train,’ which boils down to the fact that by refusing to ‘pick a side’ or choosing to be a ‘centrist,’ you have already chosen a side and that is the side of complicity.
For those who don’t know, Howard Zinn was a man of true conviction, and while conviction can be a tool for evil, I think it’s more vital to have conviction than it is to be complacent.
I have my own biases — and the stories I selected below obviously reveal my biases. But I’m also anti-war. Governments lie. Mainstream media lies. Independent media lies. And everyone has an agenda.
It feels impossible to get down to the truth, but the least we can do is try to piece together as much as we can from as many sources as we can. From there, we can see what is omitted, how the story is framed, what is being included, and who is benefitting from the way the story is told.
I also try to remind myself of something Crow recently emphasized: This isn’t about Israel vs. Palestine, it’s about the People vs. the State .
It’s important that we remind ourselves of this, especially as we find ourselves seemingly more divided than ever — even amongst the pro-freedom groups.
What I’ve read today:
UK Looks to Ban Palestinian Flags, Chants, Symbols
UK Secretary of State Suella Braverman is looking into criminalizing chants, flags, and other ‘racially aggravated’ Palestinian symbols.
Link to The Guardian news story.
In a letter Braverman writes,
“It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.
It appears that politicians are already getting trigger happy, eager to criminalize any speech under the guise of ‘security.’ This is all very reminiscent of the post-9/11 world.
Reading this story also brought me back to Canada’s freedom convoy and how so many people called Canadians ‘terrorists’ or ‘far right extremists’ for proudly displaying the Canadian flag.
There’s already a dangerous precedent being set here, and it will only foment more hostility, resentment, and impede civil liberties — and the free flow of information is more important than ever.
Note: Many countries already ban Hamas-related symbols. Germany, for example, banned the Hamas flag in 2021 under its new terror law.
Hamas Calls for Worldwide Mobilization on October 13
According to Reuters, former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal is calling for protests across the Muslim world in support of Palestinians to join the fight against Israel.
"[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday," Meshaal, who currently heads Hamas's diaspora office, said in a recorded statement sent to Reuters. . .
"To all scholars who teach jihad... to all who teach and learn, this is a moment for the application (of theories)," Meshaal said.
The Twittersphere is abound with claims that mass terrorist attacks will take place globally on Friday, October 13. I’m not so sure, but I thought it important to note.
The Grayzone investigates source of the ‘beheaded babies’ claims
Multiple mainstream outlets — including U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman — parroted the claim that Hamas beheaded 40+ Israeli babies, and The Grayzone did some digging into the veracity of these claims, and they identified David Ben Zion at the center of the story.
Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army, told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies.” The Grayzone found that Ben Zion allegedly incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank just earlier this year.
Other outlets are also questioning the ‘baby beheading’ story including The Intercept who reported that the Israel military could not confirm the claims that Hamas beheaded babies during a weekend assault.
This claim continues to go viral, and yet still no one seems to know the truth.
Naomi Klein claims to support ‘unity’ while condemning one side
Naomi Klein, one of the greatest modern sellouts of the left, had this to say about the conflict in an op-ed in the Guardian:
Harder for us adults is the fact that, in their desire to celebrate the powerful symbolism of Palestinians escaping the open air prison that is Gaza — which occupied people have every right to do — some of our supposed comrades on the left continue to minimize massacres of Israeli civilians, and in some extreme cases, even seem to celebrate them. . .
In fact these callous displays are a gift to militant Zionism, since they neatly shore up and reconfirm its core and governing belief: that the non-Jewish world hates Jews and always will – look, even the bleeding-heart left is making excuses for our killers and thinks that Jewish kids and old ladies deserved death merely by living in Israel.
Naomi Klein simultaneously asks for ‘solidarity’ while claiming that leftists are celebrating the massacre of Israeli civilians.
Note she doesn’t actually name any names; she simply lays the blame on the ‘bleeding-heart left’ for thinking that “Jewish kids and old ladies” deserve to die.
Klein really outdid herself on this one. At this point you have to wonder if anyone takes her scholarship seriously anymore.
Chris Hedges: Palestinians Speak the Language of Violence Israel Taught Them
As always, Chris Hedges hits it out of the park.
The collective retribution against innocents is a familiar tactic employed by colonial rulers. We used it against Native Americans and later in the Philippines and Vietnam. The Germans used it against the Herero and Namaqua in Namibia. The British in Kenya and Malaya. The Nazis used it in the areas they occupied in the Soviet Union, Eastern and Central Europe. Israel follows the same playbook. Death for death. Atrocity for atrocity. But it is always the occupier who initiates this macabre dance and trades piles of corpses for higher piles of corpses.
I recommend reading the entire article in full. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning seasoned foreign correspondent and journalist who has worked overseas and extensively covered the Middle East.
He knows what he’s talking about, and he’s been on a tear lately. If you want to see his journalistic prowess in its fully glory, the following piece is not to be missed:
Alan Macleod writes about the disparity of media coverage
This is an older article, but it’s especially relevant right now.
In MintPress News, Alan Macleod writes about the disparity of media coverage when it comes to white vs. marginalized people.
We can see it play out in real time all over again. Certain hand-picked Israelis are selected to be the face of the conflict, while the suffering and bombing of Palestinians is largely ignored.
People can of course disagree with this, but there is no denying that there has always been disproportionate coverage between how the media covers certain groups of people.
Some highlights from the article:
For many, this disparity is simply about racism. “Ukraine is not the worst act of war since World War II. It’s not even the worst war going on right now,” wrote Sri Lanka-based journalist Indi Samarajiva, referring to Syria and Yemen; “It’s just the worst to happen to white people.”
“This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected,” wrote The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association.
“The idea that war is a thing that happens in lands outside of the West is beyond myopic. It is a gross misrepresentation of the entirety of human history. People who are not white are not more innately prone and habituated to violence and suffering,” added the Foreign Press Association, Africa.
Okay! That does it for this edition of WORLD WAR ROUND-UP.
If you happen to be attending any anti-war protests in the near future, we’ve included a bunch of song thats that would sound great being blasted by a loudspeaker at a rally or march. We hope you like them!
If you feel like it, please share links to songs that would be appropriate for this purpose and we may include them in a future post.
WE WANT YOUR FEEDBACK!
How is everyone else feeling? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you know something we should do? Have we been sleeping on the briliant work of a lesser-known journalist? If so, please share your tips with us in the comments!
Also, if you like what we do and you want us to keep doing it, we wouldn’t hate it if you chose to support us by becoming a paid subscriber.
We would be ever so grateful!
Andddd… Did you know that Nevermore welcomes unsolicited submissions of original journalism?
If you happen to be a Substacker who’s following the War in the Holy Land, please consider contributing by writing your own edition of World War Round-Up!
Details here:
I didn't know Chris Hedges he seems impressive thank you for these interesting readings