Malm noted: “1840 was a pivotal year in history, for both the Middle East and the climate system. It marked the first time the British Empire deployed steamboats in a major war. Steam power was the technology through which dependence on fossil fuels came into being: Steam engines ran on coal, and it was their diffusion through the industries of Britain that turned this into the first fossil economy.

“Only by exporting it to the rest of the world and drawing humanity into the spiral of large-scale fossil fuel combustion,” Malm writes, “did Britain change the fate of this planet: The globalization of steam was a necessary ignition. The key to this ignition, in turn, was the deployment of steamboats in war. It was through the projection of violence that Britain integrated other countries into the strange kind of economy it had created — by turning fossil capital, we might say, into fossil empire.”

https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/massive-scale-genocide-and-ecocide-are-close-relations/

The monotheistic religions made it normal to squash people: "I think there is something really special about the Bible [...] which is precisely this idea that the revelation of truth comes through the suffering of the weak." (Matthieu Poupart)

Then the Renaissance made it easier to blame the victim: With modernity, "it is the person who takes no initiative who is seen as responsible for the emergence of sexual promiscuity." (Matthieu Poupart)

#EstelleSays #longThread

“In her magisterial book The Great Partition, Yasmin Khan offers a sobering conclusion: The Partition of 1947 is also a loud reminder, should we care to listen, of the dangers of colonial interventions and the profound difficulties that dog regime change. It stands testament to the follies of empire, which ruptures community evolution, distorts historical trajectories and forces violent state formation from societies that would otherwise have taken different—and unknowable—paths. Partition is a lasting lesson of both the dangers of imperial hubris and the reactions of extreme nationalism. For better or worse, two nations continue to live alongside each other in South Asia and continue to live with these legacies.”
―Caroline Elkins, "Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire"

“For nearly a thousand years, communities on the Indian subcontinent had coexisted in a cultural melting where religious identity was less salient than ethnic or linguistic identity. “A hybrid Indo-Islamic civilization emerged,” according to the historian of India William Dalrymple. “In the nineteenth century, India was still a place where traditions, languages, and cultures cut across religious groupings, and where people did not define themselves primarily through their religious faith.” Much as communities had negotiated means of coexistence in pre-Mandate Palestine only to see them unravel during British rule, the subcontinent’s communal arrangements corroded when the full weight of Britain’s colonial state bore down on them. The Raj’s divide and rule policies produced a chemical-like reaction, shattering long-standing traditions of coexistence and interacting with local personalities who had their own ambitions, passions, and allegiances. It was another liberal experiment in empire gone horribly wrong, and on a scale so epic that once history’s chain of contingent events combusted, no one could contain it.”

Excerpt from Caroline Elkins' #book, "Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire"

@bookstodon hat-tip @markvonwahlde

"Labour has gone to great lengths to make clear that nothing substantial will change."

"Centrist rule, typified by the incapability or unwillingness to take seriously the manifold crises humanity now faces, only increases the political dissatisfaction on which the far-right feeds. The […] Tories – or Reform itself – may well return renewed and worsened in 2029 when public frustration sees Labour’s exercise in political nothingness collapse."

Francesca Newton writes: https://vashtimedia.com/election-labour-victory-keir-starmer-shehecheyanu/

"At a talk in Brooklyn [in 1985, Primo] Levi, asked for his opinion on Middle East politics, started to say that ‘Israel was a mistake in historical terms.’ An uproar ensued, and the moderator had to halt the meeting."

Pankaj Mishra in #LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n06/pankaj-mishra/the-shoah-after-gaza

"Palestine, as George Orwell pointed out in 1945, is a ‘colour issue’, and this is the way it was inevitably seen by Gandhi, who pleaded with Zionist leaders not to resort to terrorism against Arabs using Western arms".

Pankaj Mishra in #LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n06/pankaj-mishra/the-shoah-after-gaza

"Armed Israeli settlers raided more than a dozen Palestinian communities under the army’s guard, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake"

Oren Ziv: https://www.972mag.com/pogroms-west-bank-soldiers-settlers/ @palestine

#AI performs

By design #generativeAI is extremely hungry in resources: https://mas.to/@maugendre/111841507744115766

#AI already serves to transform ways of working. You can even industrialize killing: https://techhub.social/@estelle/111505251994013079

Margot Déage: "A girl who does not belong to a boy or a man can fall into the category of whore at any time, whatever her clothes or sexual practices."

Margot Déage: "Being in a position to say who’s a whore and who’s a good girl is a power in itself within the girls’ group, a power that is strongly mobilised by certain girls. The ones who can fall, in general, are the hardest on the matter."

(fr) https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/france-culture-va-plus-loin-l-invite-e-des-matins/violences-au-college-e-reputation-et-mauvais-genre-5265267

#AI performs

By design #generativeAI is extremely hungry in resources: https://mas.to/@maugendre/111841507744115766

#AI already serves to transform ways of working. You can even industrialize killing: https://techhub.social/@estelle/111505251994013079

"As state violence rages, Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills remain steadfast"

Aman Abhishek: https://vashtimedia.com/2024/03/21/formats/report/state-violence-sumud-south-hebron-hills-palestinians/ @palestine

"Palestinians across the West Bank describe how Israeli settlers, with military backing, are intensifying their takeover of land for illegal construction."

https://www.972mag.com/settler-outposts-west-bank-palestinian-land/ @israel

"In Jenin, brazen Israeli raids fuel fiercer Palestinian resistance"
by Mariam Barghouti (2024, February 27) for #972Mag: https://www.972mag.com/jenin-refugee-camp-israeli-raids-palestinian-resistance/ @palestine

Here is a feminist opinion about #safety, #security, #masculinity, #whiteness, #liberals and #progressists.
It notably stated the need for a discourse incorporating sorrow and hope, on 9 November 2023:
(he) https://politicallycorret.co.il/morroco-smol-3/
(en) https://politicallycorret.co.il/morroccan-left-3-en/

His family is originally from Massachusetts:
“Here, the geographical division is ethnic-based: we’ve had ghetto communities since the founding of the country. We are the only country in the world where a town can decide who to admit and who not to. They exclude not only Palestinians, but also the poor, or single mothers.”
https://global.ilmanifesto.it/israel-is-a-fragmented-society-that-no-longer-knows-itself/ @israel