Palestine: Turning the Jihad into a Class War

Yasser Arafat's shadow is still felt on the people of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The former leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization may have intended in creating a secular socialist republic out of the occupation of Israel, but he, along with the organizations that he led, went rotten. Graft and corruption were rampant, and while leaders of the resistance movements were gaining prominence in the third world anti-colonial stage, the people of the Palestinian territories were left in poverty and without an infrastructure that could deliver aid. Out of this rose new movements that capitalized on the discontentment with the secular movements: Hamas and the Islamic fundamentalist movements rose to prominence. Hamas actually delivered aid and some protection to Palestinians, and it helped their popularity enough to win them a majority vote in the Palestinian Authority. However, ever since 2006 it is clear that Hamas is just as ambitious and corrupt at the PLO, enacting religious laws and refusing to cooperate with Israel at all and deepening the poverty by provoking Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip. I am totally opposed to the actions that Israel took in late 2008/early 2009 in the Gaza Strip, for the military strike killed mainly innocent civilians who had nothing to do with Hamas. While Israel continues to bury its head in its paranoid neoliberal rectum, Hamas is continuing its theocratic takeover of Palestine. What needs to happen now, not only in Palestine but in all places of the Middle East where America sets its eyes upon and where Islamic fundamentalists prey on the poor peoples, is a new movement of secular Middle Easterners who wish to see new nations created not by religious authority or by nationalistic ideals, but nations that are formed with the concepts of economic equality, social justice, equal rights, and international cooperation. Too long has the Middle East been ruled by corrupt royal families (Saudis), religious demagogues (Iran), or kleptocratic dictators (Syria, Iraq, Libya). Democracy must be formed over there, but not by imported American neoliberal democracy, but radical socialist democracies where individuals and indigenous peoples retain rights while workers and farmers own their own means of production. And with leftist secularism embedded in the culture of Palestine, new movements can spring up which challenge the lies of neoliberalism and theocracy. Freedom must be won for Palestine, and the movement will be led not by despotic clerics, but by the people.

End of High School

Well it's come down to it: April of my senior year and all I have to worry about for school are the AP Tests, a few miscellaneous projects, and my senior project evaluation. Now I'm headed to the small liberal-arts college of Danville, Ky known as Centre. It's a fine institution, with only about 1,215 students or so, and it has a high reputation. Hopefully, I can engage some not-so-sure/open-minded liberal types to join with the Socialist Party, but one step at a time. My goal is to get a Kentucky chapter of the SPUSA started at some point, mainly with some people in Louisville I know who might be interested. Further, becaue Centre uses Sodexo as their food supplier, I could work with the Student/Farmworker Association during their college campus "Dine With Dignity" campaign. In short, I have a lot of options open.
Beyond the travails of political campaigns, the end of my high school career has had me thinking about my school career. I have been to three different high schools, and it has been a strange experience at times. I was a member of my Freshman high school's track team (a 2 mile distance runner, I sucked), and I was also involved in the mock-government Kentucky Youth Assembly sponsored by the KY YMCA from Freshman to Junior year and I loved it. I also wrote for my community's youth section of the newspaper some in junior year, I did the local county teen court, with other various activities here and there. Senior year has seen me do two play productions at my high school and work with a refugee family from Bhutan for my senior project.
In short, although I wasn't a huge fan of the high schools I attended freshman to junior year, my high school career has been pretty damn good overall: I made a lot of friends, I have explored from Ohio, New York, and Chicago to Rome, Florence, Cannes, and Paris, and I will miss it. But if this has been only a taste of life so far, I can't wait for the main course. I love my family and my friends, and will miss them all, but I am about to move past the threshold of youth and enter adulthood.