Check out the latest issue of @penandmachete, titled "250 Years of Counter-Revolution." In my opening editorial essay, "The Counter-Revolution of Capital," I chart the long history of counter-revolutionary violence from 1776 onwards. www.anti-imperialists.com/magazine/the-cou...Mostrar mais

I started semi-regular reflections called: Letters from the American Empire. I hope you subscribe and share. open.substack.com/pub/nickestes/p/letters-...

My latest: Shaking Hands with Fidel Castro open.substack.com/pub/nickestes/p/shaking-...

My latest: Water Protectors Were Right: A look back 10 years after the Water Protector movement at Standing Rock open.substack.com/pub/nickestes/p/water-pr...

The Plot to Ruin America, my reflections on the most American Fourth of July weekend of fascist marches, extreme weather, and maniacal red-baiting. open.substack.com/pub/nickestes/p/the-plot...

Is there a new Red Scare? Why's the billionaire/trillionaire class freaking out? My latest. nickestes.substack.com/p/victims-of-communism

Today is Victory Day, when Lakotas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos dealt the U.S. military a devastating defeat. What does this battle teach us about today’s forever wars? My latest. open.substack.com/pub/nickestes/p/the-indi...

Dick Cheney’s last presidential endorsement was Kamala Harris. That’s less a testament to his ghoulish legacy as an architect of wars that killed hundreds of thousands and more of a testament to how Democrats were partners in those crimes.

Leonard Peltier is granted clemency! He’s out of prison and commuted to home confinement. This is a huge win for grassroots Indigenous movements who kept his campaign alive and a moral indictment on the system and people who kept him unjustly imprisoned for half a century.

These reactions say everything.

So blowing the dust off the Bush neocons didn’t have the desired effect?

If genocide is not a dealbreaker for you to part with the Democrats, then what is?

The irony that a university named in honor of the most infamous genocider of the Americas—Columbus—is also ground zero for crushing anti-genocide protests in the twenty-first century should not escape notice.

Today is the 133rd anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre. US troops opened fire killing some 300 Lakotas of Spotted Elk’s band after they had surrendered. There has been a Wounded Knee-sized massacre nearly everyday in Gaza since Israel’s genocidal bombing.

This isn't the first genocide the United States has tried to normalize. Nor will it be the first it has tried to memory hole.

“If the [apartheid] state decided to use peaceful methods, the ANC would also use peaceful methods. ‘It is up to you,’ I said, ‘not us, to renounce violence.’” — Nelson Mandela

Hypernormalization - that’s how the USA swallowed the annihilation of more than 90 percent of Indigenous peoples and centuries of stealing children from the survivors. The settler pathology normalizes the suffering of others. That’s what it’s trying with Palestine.

The formula is simple: Israel said it would wipe out Gaza. The USA provided them the bombs to commit mass slaughter and the political and moral cover to demonize any opposition to it.

A box of dates, two Qurans, a stack of CDs, a laptop, some rusted AK-47s, a pair of shoes, some vests, a couple grenades… among the “evidence” of a Hamas “operations base” in Al-Shifa hospital. Laughable if the lie wasn’t washed in the blood of thousands of Palestinians.

“He who does not reject genocides is an accomplice. Such genocide cannot be accepted in Palestine. Israel should be declared a terrorist state.” @evoespueblo Happy birthday, big man. Keep burning bright.

Watching colleagues who supposedly study, write about, research, and publish on colonialism and decolonization waffle at this moment is disappointing, to say the least. Watching young people walk out of classes, take the street, instruct, teach, and learn has my heart forever.

What is happening to Native people is the same thing happening to Palestinians. It’s called settler colonialism and the elimination of the Native — to take the land. The main difference is that Native people here are conscripted into an imperialist doctrine, which we must reject.

Liberals don’t want to stop Palestinian genocide. Look how they treat us, Native people. They prefer land acknowledgements or claiming they too have “Native ancestry.” They’ve perfected settler colonialism.

Lots of “progressives” participated in the demonization of Palestinians by calling for ritualistic denunciations of resistance and moralized about “both sides” in effect helping gin up the blood thirst. Congratulations. You carried water for the colonizer—for free.

Did you expect the oppressed would hold hands and hug the murder out of their oppressors?

Harry Belafonte was a fierce critic of US imperialism, called for nuclear disarmament, backed the Cuban and Bolivarian revolutions, and pushed for the freedom of Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Rest in power. www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/25/harr...Mostrar mais

The US House bill that passed “denouncing the horrors of socialism” cites two slave owners and proponents of Indian removal, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, as foils to the socialist ideology of “totalitarianism.”

January 1 is the anniversary of three beautiful revolutionary struggles in Abaya Yala: Haitian Revolution 1804 Cuban Revolution 1959 Zapatista Uprising 1994

Nancy Pelosi has been in congress for 35 years (for nearly my entire life) and has led the Democratic Caucus for 19 years. Where are the news stories about her lifetime “grip” on power? Or is that standard only for brown countries?

The millions affected by catastrophic climate change, and the legacy of colonialism, in Pakistan and Puerto Rico were eclipsed today by the West’s focus on a single casket of a woman whose class helped perpetuate that suffering.

Recently declassified documents show how the British government, with the CIA, targeted Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) by trying to discredit US Black Power’s connections with African movements. www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/13/reve...Mostrar mais

Nearly 250 years ago today, white slavers called the original nations of this continent “merciless Indian Savages” in their Declaration of Independence. The counter-revolution of property on our lands began while they also declared “all men are created equal.”

SCOTUS achieved today what white supremacists tried with termination: “Indian country is part of the State, not separate from the State… as a matter of state sovereignty, a State has jurisdiction over all of its territory, including Indian country.” www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-429...Mostrar mais

On June 25, 1876, Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors killed Custer and 250 men of the 7th Cavalry as they fled. A vain-glorious Custer wanted a victory for his nation’s 100-year birthday on July 4. We blew out the birthday candles. Happy victory day! Still sovereign.

This week, a report found that the United States systematically committed genocide against Native people by stealing and killing Native children for more than a century. It found the government sold Native land to raise money for this genocidal project. www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/inline...Mostrar mais

Today is National Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls Awareness Day. Let's remember the life and legacy of Northern Paiute anti-rape activist Sarah Winnemucca (1844-1891). She saw rape and violence against Native women as a tool of conquest. (Thread)

At this point, Congress is just an arms dealer. No education. No access to healthcare. No housing. No clean drinking water. But we’ll finance your war.

Canada in three signs.

“I don’t condone violence.”

The US doesn’t import that much Russian oil, and the US doesn’t set oil prices by itself. OPEC also determines prices. New US oil production will take months, if not years, to get online. Either way, this puts a giant target on the backs of Water Protectors and Land Defenders.

The US has all but declared war on Russia. It’s goal is to sever Europe from Russian energy, using Atlantic shipping lanes to feed Europe with North American fossil fuels. The US pushed oil and gas pipelines through Indigenous territories for a reason.

The US wants war with China but can’t make a cellphone or a KN95 mask. 🤔

Leonard Peltier, a 77-year-old Indigenous elder imprisoned for nearly 46 years, is spending another Christmas behind bars. December is a time of grieving. Soon riders will arrive in Mankato and at Wounded Knee, remembering our resistance and everyone taken from us. #FreePeltier

Thanksgiving epitomizes a make-believe nation’s fake history of cordial Native-colonizer relations as its founding. We are thus compelled every year to counter a Disneyland story erasing European invasion, land theft, and Indigenous genocide. #NationalDayOfMourning

The US judicial system worked today. The constitution protects the sanctity of guns and property above life itself.

$2 trillion on a two decade war but no right to housing during a pandemic.

Cuba developed five COVID vaccines. The genocidal US blockade prevented the country from accessing syringes and medical supplies for administering them. Who is the criminal?

Another discovery of a mass grave of Native children at a boarding school shows genocide is not a rhetorical accusation against Canada or the USA. We are the evidence.

Settler states aren’t democracies.

The whole damn system is guilty.