That “we’re the bad guys” mentality is exactly what let’s any enemy simply trample.over not only our rights but our homes and eventually are countries. You think ISIS are the good guys for “defending their religion” or something? Volunteer for a m u s l i m centre? Yeah, totally, let’s empower the very people that took my best buddy’s legs. Cheers to that, dude.

quasi-normalcy:

lady-feral:

Shut up.

We directly created the conditions that gave rise to ISIS. We created the Taliban and Al Quaeda before that. Our war profiteering and imperialism has done nothing but hurt civilians.

Yeah, ISIS is bad. Yeah, the others are too. But when we kill more civilians than insurgents WE ARE THE PROBLEM. There are no acceptable levels of civilian casualties.

THERE ARE NO ACCEPTABLE LEVELS OF CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.

And if you want to talk weakness and terrorism, let’s discuss the literal fucking Nazi that was protected by police weeks ago that just murdered two Americans in an act of terrorism targeting Muslim women. If you want to talk about heroism let’s discuss the young man I’m watching over in the hospital tonight–a scholar and a poet who nearly lost his life with the other two for daring to stand up against hate. A boy barely old enough to drink put his unarmed body in harms way to protect the innocent while cowards in armor invade foreign lands crying “freedom” and allowing “acceptable levels of civilian casualties” so our corporate overseers can make more money.

Shut the fuck up.

The War on Terrorism has now lasted more than fifteen years. How many people have been killed or maimed or dispossessed, how much money has been spent, and what exactly do we have to show for it? Is the Middle East more peaceful or stable now? No. Are there fewer terrorists? No. Are you any safer now than you were in 2001? No. All that it’s done is ruin millions of people’s lives, militarise our societies, and create a power vacuum to be filled by an organization so bloodthirsty that even al-qaeda seems disgusted by them. And we’re just supposed to continue this until trumpets sound on doomsday? Fuck off.

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black-to-the-bones:

Dropping knowledge.

More history that our schools fail to teach

The truth of imperialism, colonialism.

open-plan-infinity:

putting-it-in-putin:

onyourtongue:

1500 cases from 1990-2016 (that we know of). And to clarify, this lists comprises of brown and black lives.. there’s so many names I could add to this, we are far from this post-racial utopian society people try to paint us as. In some areas in the UK, black people are 17x more likely to be stopped and searched. Black bodies mysteriously die in cells while the IPCC torments the families with biased investigations that they were never here to seek justice for them. Just this February Sarah Reed a black British woman died under mysterious circumstances in her cell. Tell me how a black woman who was sexually assaulted in the psychiatric hospital she was put in ended up in prison? She was also a victim of police brutality a couple of years ago. In 2012, police broke the neck of science student Julian Cole leaving him brain dead while the family still awaits his justice in 2016!

We need to know why our lives are seen as so disposable. We need to know why black people are over represented in the custodial system and why such racial prejudices exist in the criminal system in the first place. They purposely hide the history and achievements of black people in the UK so we remain ignorant and forget about our own movements in the 60s – our fights to bring in “no discrimination” laws. Our fights to be treated as equal. Many Brits don’t even know the origin of the biggest festival in Europe – Notting Hill carnival, which was political, created as a means to celebrate our heritage and culture in the face of adversity. Gangs of police have been terrorising us since the majority of our grand parents came during the windrush era in the 40s. Police brutality is nothing new. Ask your grand parents how they used to try to intimidate black folks minding their business, kidnap and beat them up only to drop them off somewhere far from home. How they’d ignore evidence pointing to members of white hate groups who would murder us, harass us and vandalise our property/businesses. This isn’t anything new. And history continues to repeat itself as the list of brown and black lives continue to be taken away/brutalised. The media may try to hide it but it’s happening.

Let’s not pretend that the UK hasn’t played a huge role in propagating the false belief that whiteness is superior. Let’s not pretend that they have not spread this through violence, pillaging countries, colonisation and slavery. Do not wipe away the history of this country and what they continue to do, to paint some utopic fantasy which you can use to compare to America. What can Britain teach America about valuing black lives? We aren’t above them at all.

The UK has a higher incarceration rate of blacks than America does

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/oct/11/black-prison-population-increase-england

^ This is true.

“

Black people are more disproportionately represented in U.K. prisons than in the U.S. The proportion of black people in jail in the U.K. is almost seven times their share of the population, whereas in the U.S. the proportion of black prisoners is four times greater than their population share” (x)

Tumblr is pretty US-centric, so boosting this as FYI.

Other countries chime in?