#Leaders Conference 2017

[gootarts]

as of 8/3, the most recently updated version of this post is here (it's a reblog of this exact post with more info added)

as a lot of you know, limbus company recently fired its CG illustrator for being a feminist, at 11 pm, via phone call, after a bunch of misogynists walked into the office earlier that day and demanded she be fired. on top of this, as per korean fans, her firing went against labor laws---in korea, you must have your dismissal in writing.

the korean fandom on twitter is, understandably, going scorched earth on project moon due to this. there's a lot currently going on to protest the decision, so i'm posting a list here of what's going on for those who want to limit their time on elon musk's $44 billion midlife crisis impulse purchase website (if you are on twitter, domuk is a good person to follow, as they translate important updates to english). a lot of the links are in korean, but generally they play nicely with machine translators. this should be current as of 8/2.

Statements condemning the decision have been issued by The Gyeonggi Youth Union and IT Union.

A press conference at the Gyeonggido Assembly will occur on 8/3, with lawmakers of the Gyeonggi province (where Project Moon is based) in attendance. This appears driven by the leader of the Gyeonggi Youth Union.

The vice chairman of the IT union--who has a good amount of experience with labor negotiations like these--has expressed strong support for the artist and is working to get media coverage due to the ongoing feminist witch hunts in the gaming industry. Project Moon isn't union to my knowledge, but he's noted that he's taken on nonunion companies such as Netmarble (largest mobile game dev in South Korea) by getting the issue in front of the National Assembly (Korea's congress).

Articles on the incident published in The Daily Labor News, Korean Daily, multiple articles on Hankyoreh (one of which made it to the print edition), and other news outlets.

Segments about the termination on the MBN 7 o' clock news and MBC's morning news

Comments by Youth Union leaders about looking into a loan made to Project Moon via Devsisters Ventures, a venture capital firm. Tax money from Gyeonggi province was invested in Devsisters in 2017, and in 2021, Devsisters gave money to Project Moon. The Gyeonggi Youth Union is asking why hard-earned tax money was indirectly given to a company who violates ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles.

Almost nonstop signage truck protests outside Project Moon's physical office during business hours until 8/22 or the company makes a statement. This occurs alongside a coordinated hashtag campaign to get the issue trending on Twitter in Korea. The signage campaign was crowd-funded in about 3 hours.

A full boycott of the Limbus Company app, on both mobile and PC (steam) platforms. Overseas fans are highly encouraged to participate, regardless if whether they're F2P or not. Not opening the app at all is arguably the biggest thing any one person can do to protest the decision, as the app logs the number of accounts that log on daily. For a new gacha such as Limbus, a high number of F2P daily active users, but a small number of paying users is often preferable to having a smaller userbase but more paying users. If the company sees the number of daily users remain stable, they will likely decide to wait out any backlash rather than apologize.

Digging up verified reviews from previous employees regarding the company's poor management practices

Due to the firing, the Leviathan artist has posted about poor working conditions when making the story. As per a bilingual speaker, they were working on a storyboard revision, and thought 'if I ran into the street right now and got hit by a car and died, I wouldn't have to keep working.' They contacted Project Moon because they didn't want their work to be like that, and proposed changes to serialization/reduction in amount of work per picture/to build up a buffer of finished images (they did not have any buffer while working on Leviathan to my knowledge). They were shut out, and had to suck it up and accept the situation.

Hamhampangpang has a 'shrine' section of the restaurant for fans to leave fan-created merch and other items. They also allow the fans to take this merch back if they can prove it's theirs. Fans are now doing just that.

To boost all of the above, a large number of Korean fanartists with thousands of followers have deleted their works and/or converted their accounts from fanart accounts to accounts supporting the protests. Many of them are bilingual, and they're where I got the majority of this information.

[note 1: there's a targeted english-language disinformation campaign by the website that started the hate mob. i have read the artist's tweets with machine translation, and they're talked about in the second hankyoreh article linked above: nowhere does she express any transphobic or similarly awful beliefs. likewise, be wary of any claims that she supported anything whose description makes you raise eyebrows--those claims are likely in reference to megalia, a korean feminist movement. for information on that, i'd recommend the NPR/BBC articles below and this google drive link of english-language scholarly papers on them. for the love of god don't get your information about a feminist movement from guys going on witch hunts for feminists.]

[note 2: i've seen a couple people argue that the firing was for the physical safety of the employees, citing the kyoani incident in japan. as per this korean fan, most fans there strongly do not believe this was the case. we have english-translated transcripts of the meeting between the mob and project moon; the threats the mob was making were to......brand project moon as a feminist company online. yes, really. male korean gamers aren't normal about feminism, and there's been an ongoing witch hunt for feminists in the industry since about 2016, something you see noted in both the labor union statements. both NPR and the BBC this phenomenon to gamergate, and i'd say it's a pretty apt comparison.]

let me know if anything needs correction or if anything should be added.

[tamamita]

why do zionists always assume its antisemitic to think that zionism a settler colonial idea

Modern Zionists aren't actually well-read into their own history. I could invoke the likes of Theodore Herlz, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, David Ben Gurion, and many other political Zionists and how they were ardent supporters of settler colonialism, yet it wouldn't get through their head, because they genuinely believe the land of Palestine is their right to claim, despite the people inhabitating the area. But to claim that the establishment of the Settler state was necessary due to antisemitism is not correct.

The pogrom of the Jewish people in the Pale of Settlement in Imperial Russia resulted in the mass displacement of Jews. But most Jews did not flee to Palestine, but to the US and Western Europe to live relatively better lives, due to the French revolution and so on. They had no desire whatsoever to move to Palestine due to its harsh climate and environment. Although the repression of Jews in the 19th century added to Zionism's appeal, Zionism did not emerge because of it as is often portrayed.

Jewish historian Michael Stanislawiski explains:

The first expression of this new ideology were published well before the spread of the new anti-semitic ideology and before the pogroms of the ealy 1880s. The fundamental cause of the emergence of modern Jewish nationalism was the rise, on the part of Jews themselves, of new ideologies that applied the basic tenets of modern nationalism to the Jews, and not a response to persecution.

-- Zionism, a short introduction (Stanislawski, 2017)

As was the case for that time, the doctrine of nationalism became prevalent across Europe. Many versions of it gained hold of European intellectuals and the upper-classes. One of these were ethnonationalism, which emphasised common ancestry. Such a view was popular among Germans, Hungarians, Russians, Poles and etc, who saw their "tribes" as being distinct, and therefore needed to be preserved from foreign threats. Zionism would mirror some of these aspects, which was prevalent in Eastern Europe. The founding father of Revisionist Zionism (and the precursor to the Likud party), Ze'ev Jabotinsky stated:

"The creation of a Jewish majority, was the fundamental aim of Zionism, the term "Jewish State", means a Jewish majority and Palestine will become a Jewish country at the moment when it has a Jewish majority".

-- Zionism, and the Arabs, 1882-1948 A study of ideology (Yosef Gorny, 1987)

However, there was another ideology emerging which was far more popular among the oppressed Jewish people, which would propell them to emancipate themselves where they lived. Revolutionary Socialism.

According Ilan Pappe, the doctrine of Zionism was vehemently opposed by Jewish leaders all around Europe on the basis of Talmudic violations, the rise of revolutionary socialism and the rise of Jewish assimilationism. Additionally, in a conference in Frankfurt, rabbis decided to omit the mentioning of "the return" from Jewish prayers as a reaction to Zionism. However, Zionism would face intense opposition from Socialist Jews, especially the Bundists, who openly declared Zionism to be anti-Socialist, opportunistic and reactionary. Zionism was an alien idea, and revolutionary socialism emphasised the importance of the liberation of Jews where they lived, resulting in an ideological feud between the Bundists and Political Zionists. Even the likes of the Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the Settler state, and David Ben Gurion, the first PM of the settler state, would condemn the Bundists for their opposition to Political Zionism.

[centrally-unplanned]

This article about Hamas's strategic planning in the lead up to the October assault was at least a partial mind-changer for me. So far I had been viewing Hamas as executing a "bait" attack on Israel for international & domestic political reasons. Kill enough Israelis, and in particular take some hostages, to force Israel to invade Gaza; which you want because that will re-inflame radicalism, tank Israel's growing coziness with Arab states like the Gulf Monarchies, and keep the Palestine Question front-and-center on people's agendas.

What it was not about was achieving any sense of a military victory; Hamas did not think they would be able to defeat the IDF on the field, or even truly hold them back. They thought they would do better than they have in defending Gaza, to be honest, but the goal wasn't to "win" in that way or anything. The actions of Israel, in their inflamed bloodlust, would be the fulcrum of progress for Hamas. It was the most logical interpretation of their strategy, because tbh its working, Israel's strategy void has bungled this war at every level. Of course if it is "worth it" is a completely separate question - Hamas is playing a game from deep, deep in the red, if you aren't going to fold and pack it up from that position these are the hail mary plays you make.

This article, a long (and sometimes overly windy) interview with two career members of the Palestinian governing orgs (primarily Fatah), shines a very different light on that. They outline that over the past ~decade, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar coalesced power around his own faction of highly fundamentalist adherents that convinced itself that divine favor was shining on them and they would be able to actually defeat Israel in the field. The most compelling evidence for this is a conference they held planning the post-conquest occupation of Israel:

So detailed were the plans that participants in the conference began to draw up list of all the properties in Israel and appointed representatives to deal with the assets that would be seized by Hamas. "We have a registry of the numbers of Israeli apartments and institutions, educational institutions and schools, gas stations, power stations and sewage systems, and we have no choice but to get ready to manage them," Obeid told the conference.

They even called people up to ask if they would take the job of governor of this-of-that province! This was not a bored-Friday white paper by any means. They discussed defensive plans and counter-offensives like that was on the table. Sinwar outlined conquest as the goal.

If we accept this premise, it naturally lends itself to the question "okay how did they get the rest of Hamas to go along with this?" Because Hamas is not all These Kinds of People, its a governing state that does politics on the international stage after all. One of the reasons I leaned towards my interpretation was that, for the past ~decade, Hamas has actually been doing a glam-up rebranding of the org to make it more moderate & respectable in international eyes. The 2017 Charter Revision is the biggest example, which included say disavowing the idea that this was a religious war (distinguishing between zionism & judaism), and loosely admitting to the idea that they could recognize Israel as a country if terms were met. Actions like these show actors who are pretty level-headed. Were they inauthentic? Did they change their mind?

Maybe a bit, but its more than they aren't the same people. Right alongside the build-up to the October attack was a purging & sidelining of whole swaths of Hamas leadership. Many were not even informed of the attack - though they knew something was coming. Apparently it leaked on October 2nd, and a bunch of leaders just immediately fled the Strip for safety. This one is the most amusing:

Haniyeh's eldest son took a similar course of action. Around midday on October 2, Abed Haniyeh chaired a meeting of the Palestinian sports committee, which is headed by the minister of sports, Jibril Rajoub. Suddenly he received a phone call, left the room for a few minutes and then returned, pale and confused. He immediately informed the committee – whose members were in a Zoom conference with counterparts in the West Bank – that he had to leave for the Rafah crossing straightaway, as he had just learned that his wife had to undergo fertility treatment in the United Arab Emirates. (He was lying.) He granted full power of attorney to his deputy and left the Gaza Strip hurriedly.

That is one way to duck out of a pointless meeting, take notes people!

So instead of my hail mary politics play, what you have is a story of an institutional coup by a radical faction - which for extremist resistance groups is an ever-present threat. None of this means the "bait" strategy part is wrong of course, that was definitely still the point - but this argument here claims that goal of the bait was to bring the IDF into Gaza where it could be defeated in the field with their extensive fortifications, and then presumably inspire others like Hezbollah to jump on the moment of weakness and besiege Israel proper.

So....is this true? There are two gigantic caveats on this article: the first is that the people being interviewed do not primarily work for Hamas - they are members of Fatah, the leading faction of the PLO. They hate Hamas, they are not Hamas leaders themselves, they have every incentive to paint Hamas as irredeemable. You really can't take this story simply at their word. But they aren't outsiders - they hate Hamas but they work with them constantly, that is how it works, people rotate around in the Palestine orgs. They have met personally and worked with dozens of Hamas leaders; one of them was even called to be offered one of those post-war occupation governorships! (He said no lol) So its a big red flag but not a damning one. And things like the fleeing leaders, the conference on the occupation, those all 100% happened. They released press on it, they weren't hiding it.

The second caveat is that its just really not uncommon for large organizations, particularly extremist ones, to engage in mainly performative actions at scale. The South Korean government still maintains a department that plans for the administration of North Korea for example! Not totally useless ofc, but it writes exactly the reports you think it does that get put in a bin and never touched. Sometimes its appeasing internal factions, sometimes its PR, sometimes its just institutional inertia. Its absolutely believable that Hamas would make a big plan for how they would conquer Israel because otherwise...what do you tell the commanders, exactly? Why are they fighting again? A significant percentage of the lower-level fighters need that belief, so you give it to them. While certainly there is a fundamentalist faction in Hamas, are they ones winning? Or are they just another faction being played against?

I don't see enough evidence to say, but there is enough to make me pause. I'm not sold on it in the end, that is my final conclusion. I think more brains than Sinwar were involved in this and they had more realistic aspirations. And yet the level of commitment and disorganization does suggest that at least some of what was pushing events forward was a group immune to doubts being at the wheel. Certainly interested in researching more.

[nerdygaymormon]

My 10 year Tumblr anniversary

June 2024 marks 10 years since I started this blog!

I originally began this blog as a way for me to follow discussions taking place on Tumblr about important topics in the LDS community, like racism or Ordain Women, which couldn't be discussed in mainstream LDS spaces. 

I soon found the LGBTQ+ LDS community which called themselves queerstake. I would message them and make comments on their posts, and they gently encouraged me to write my own blog posts to share my thoughts with others. I resisted, thinking I had nothing of value to add to the conversation and no one would be interested in what I had to say. I finally wrote my first blog post in June 2016 and it was about meeting the Sistas in Zion and sharing that I'm gay and the kindness of their reaction. That post got exactly zero likes or comments, reaffirming my belief that I didn't have anything of interest to share. I didn't write another post until August and it got a few likes and that was enough, I wrote several more posts that month and haven't stopped.

I used to go to blogging sites to find blogs by queer Latter-day Saints. Their stories resonated with me and felt important. Usually they began with someone coming home from their mission, which they hoped would be rewarded by God removing their gayness, and being disappointed or surprised this didn't happen. They expressed a commitment to staying in the church, but as the months went by they more and more wrote about the hurt they experienced, the pain of church policies aimed at them, insensitive encounters with church members and leaders, and anger at things said in General Conference. Typically there would be entries for a few months and then the blog goes silent, no more entries. 

I would think of not just how important these blogs were to me, but in some distant future they would be of interest to historians wanting to better understand what it was like to be a queer Mormon at a time of big changes in society and the LDS Church. 

Most of those blogs were written by folks in their 20's and lasted just a few months to maybe up to 2 years. I thought perhaps writing as someone in their 40's would add to these voices, and for it to matter I needed to be authentic in sharing my thoughts, feelings and experiences, showing the good, bad, and ugly. I honestly was surprised and thrilled if I had a post reach 40 or 50 likes, and was unprepared for having a post in 2017 get clicked on more than a half-million times.

Since my viral post a lot of younger queer people started following me. I still wanted to be honest and authentic and vulnerable, but I also wanted my blog to be a queer-positive space, which is why is have many posts with rainbows so visually it's clear this is a blog of a queer person. 

I started getting many messages with questions, often anonymously which meant the only way I could respond was by posting my answer to my blog. I soon felt like I was the Dear Ann Landers of Queerstake and have posted about 2000 responses since 2017, which averages to about 150 such responses per year. 

Because queer people usually don't grow up being taught about queer history and culture, I will occasionally make posts about such things, including about LDS queer history because as a queer Mormon, I can be proud of the LDS pioneer and pioqueer legacies. 

The person who started this blog 10 years ago could never have imagined I would be out to everyone in my life, and once I was out that I would still be a member of the LDS Church and get to meet General Authorities, that I would have my words published in books, be a guest on podcasts, or serve in the leadership of an organization (Affirmation) for queer people. It's been a wild ride.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Timeline: Part 4 -July 2017

Previously:

2015 - April 2017 | An Update

May 2017 - June 2017

This piece features events, press, and PR from the summer of 2017. You will see competing narratives - the Daily Mail leaking Meghan's dossier drip by drip by drip and Meghan's team counterattacking with engagement rumors.

There are two main stories in the royal sphere during this time that we know Meghan is paying attention to, as these most definitely shape her understanding of what it means to be royal: royals taking glamorous summer vacations and daily coverage of Diana's life, the impact of her death, and her lasting legacy to the world.

Fasten your seatbelts!

(Note - this was initially meant to also include the August 2017 events but Tumblr was having problems saving the post.)

July 1, 2017: The Cambridges, Harry, and the Spencers attend a private memorial service at the Spencers' Althorp estate for Diana. Meghan's relationship history is published and it's revealed she left Cory for Harry.

July 2, 2017: Charles plans to host a 70th birthday party for Camilla and the Express speculates whether Harry will bring Meghan with him. Additionally, the broadcast network that airs Suits in Britain drops the series from its slate and won't show its upcoming seventh season.

July 3, 2017: Kensington Palace announces that the Cambridges will visit Poland and Germany.

July 4, 2017: Kensington Palace confirms that Harry will have a role in the upcoming state visit by King Felipe and Queen Letizia. Meghan teases whether she will attend Wimbledon 2017. Harry's scandals are revisited.

July 5, 2017: Meghan's appearance at the 2016 Create & Cultivate conference resurfaces, as do her comments from The Tig about being biracial.

July 6, 2017: Meghan does another airport pap walk as returns to Toronto after spending 10 days in London with Harry.

July 8, 2017: Meghan leaks that she has tried on wedding dresses with friends and is beginning to think about a wedding at Westminster Abbey. The Daily Mail publishes all about Meghan's first marriage and the divorce. Katie Nicholl publishes several scoops: 1) Meghan keeps clothes at Nottingham Cottage, 2) Meghan is so familiar to KP security and the RPOs that she doesn't need a security pass to enter, 3) Harry wants to be engaged by his birthday, and 4) they want to debut Meghan as his fiancee at Toronto Invictus Games.

July 9, 2017: Harry attends a music festival and is photographed getting close to a blonde woman. At the same time, there is fast-spreading gossip that Camilla disapproves of the relationship. Meghan gets worried: she hints about the engagement to get Harry back in line and tries to assuage concerns about her marital history by explaining that being married to Harry will be different than when she was married to Trevor. Meghan merches a baseball cap.

July 10, 2017: Meghan doesn't like the comparisons to Pippa Middleton anymore (which she began, mind you) and says they look nothing alike. It's announced that Trevor is thinking about writing a book about his relationship with Meghan, sparking another round of rumors that the marriage broke down when Meghan cheated on Trevor with a Suits castmate.

July 11, 2017: It's revealed that Meghan was still dating Cory when she began dating Harry.

July 12, 2017: Meghan attends the Suits party to celebrate taping their 100th episode. Meghan's team puts out a story that she and Harry are so alike because Meghan's uncle is the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church, just like Harry's grandmother is the leader of the Church of England. Rita Ora flirts with Harry and Meghan gets mad, saying she doesn't want to marry Harry.

July 13, 2017: The Spanish State Visit begins, with Harry accompanying King Felipe and Queen Letizia to Westminster Abbey and attending the state banquet (where he sits next to Rose Cholmondeley...iykyk). Meghan's "one tear, left eye, go" interview resurfaces and she tries to be a beauty guru again. Suits Season 7 premieres in the U.S.. Meghan practically calls Kate a Stepford Wife.

July 14, 2017: Meghan gets more private protection and increases her security team.

July 16, 2017: A friend of Harry says they're engaged and everyone is looking forward to the after-party more than the wedding. Meghan leaks that Harry will quit the royal family for her and her "don't give it five minutes if you're not going to give it five years" interview resurfaces. Harry wins his IPSO privacy case against The Mail for publishing paparazzi photographs taken in Jamaica.

July 17, 2017: Meghan sets up Chelsy to be Harry's Camilla in their marriage.

July 18, 2017: Meghan tries to be a yoga influencer again. Meghan also brings back her gender equality platform and reminds us about her soap commercial.

July 19, 2017:

Pictures from Meghan's childhood are published, including a photograph saying/showing she won Homecoming Queen in high school (US high school is ages 14 - 18). Speculation begins immediately that Meghan has had cosmetic surgery to minimize her black traits and Markle feeatures, including chemical treatments for her hair.

Meghan hints that Harry will propose on her birthday and that they will elope to marry.

Meghan leaks that she's worth $5 million.

July 20, 2017: Meghan says Harry will propose soon and they have no intentions of eloping.

July 22, 2017: Meghan's ice bucket challenge video resurfaces, causing speculation over how she knows Rory McIlroy and what the nature of their relationship is.

July 24, 2017: Meghan promotes Suits and hints that she wants IVF twins as soon as possible after the wedding. (The IVF twins story is important for two reasons. One, because in the first picture taken of Meghan after the pregnancy is announced, she is carrying two purple binders. We know she likes to virtue signal, so many people believe this is her hinting that they are expecting boy-girl twins. Second, because while she ended up having a boy, the decor and theme for her February baby shower indicated she was expecting a girl.)

July 25, 2017: Prince Albert of Monaco (son of Grace Kelly) gives advice to Meghan and Harry and British Vogue writes about Meghan and her fashion.

July 26, 2017: Meghan claps back against the rumors of plastic surgery by getting medical experts to say she hasn't had any work done.

July 27, 2017: Meghan teases an engagement in the Express, who recaps the relationship to date.

July 28, 2017: Meghan merches Rachel Zane's wardrobe. She's spotted in London, supposedly with Doria (though Doria is never seen). Meghan's insecurity over Harry's past causes problems for him.

July 29, 2017: An open letter is published to William and Kate, urging them not to have a third child. This comes after playful comments by the pair while on tour in Poland and Germany earlier in the month when they were gifted baby items by fans on walkabout.

July 31, 2017:

Christopher Geidt is forced out retires and is replaced by Charles's favorite, Edward Young.

Kate hires Catherine Quinn as her new private secretary.

Meghan is worried a Cambridge baby is going to steal her thunder and leaks that the Cambridges won't have any more children. After Kate's third pregnancy is announced and this article resurfaces, speculation begins over what Meghan knew (because Harry leaked like a sieve to her).

William and Catherine are in Belgium for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele.

Lainey gossips that the recent shakeups in palace household staff has to do with Charles's discomfort with William and Harry operating independently of him. She also confirms for the first time that Charles was angry with the KP love shield because it overshadowed his work in the Middle East.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

From Michigan

* * * *

Another good day!

August 8, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

The effort of Democrats to use Project 2025 as a millstone to sink Trump's presidential ambitions has Republicans running for the hills. On Wednesday, Trump's longtime evil minion Stephen Miller appeared on Ari Melber’s show on MSNBC to unequivocally deny any connection between Trump and Project 2025. (Miller was Trump's speechwriter who drafted Trump's “American Carnage” inaugural address in 2017.)

Miller claimed that Trump “is his own man” and “he alone decides what policies he will follow.” Miller explained that the near-perfect overlap between Project 2025’s policy goals and Trump's campaign promises is pure coincidence.

Ha! Good one! Who says MAGA extremists don’t have a sense of humor? For Trump to “set his own policies,” the following improbable conditions would need to exist simultaneously: (a) Trump would have to understand the differences in competing policies; (b) he would have to care about policies that did not affect his personal power and wealth; and (c) he would have to do the work of promoting and implementing those policies. Yeah, right! That didn’t happen in Trump's first term, and he has told us that the only policies of his hoped-for second term will be vengeance and retribution.

Ari Melber was having none of Stephen Miller’s disinformation. But Miller was running from Project 2025 as fast as he could. For good reason. Focus group testing has shown that when Republican and Independent voters hear about the substance of Project 2025, they oppose it overwhelmingly.

Republicans know this and are trying to repair the damage of having published their plot to end democracy. See Navigator Research, Focus Group Report: Project 2025. (“After participants viewed clips of the Wall Street Journal video detailing Project 2025, disdain for the plan grew.”)

The problem (for Republicans) is that Democrats have done a great job of identifying Trump as the prime beneficiary of Project 2025. Indeed, on its website, Project 2025 is described as a “Presidential Transition Project.” Since the project was drafted by Trump administration alumni, the “presidential transition” was for Trump, not Biden (now Harris).

Republicans are in full panic mode. JD Vance wrote the forward to a book by Project 2025’s author Eric Roberts, “Dawn’s Early Light,” which summarizes Project 2025. The book was scheduled to be published this month (August 2024) but has now been mysteriously delayed until after the election. See Media Matters for America, Delayed publication of Heritage president's book reflects Project 2025 shell game. Unfortunately for JD Vance and Trump, Media Matters has obtained a galley copy of Eric Roberts’ book and is willing to share!

But it gets worse (for Trump). In 2022, Trump shared a private jet ride with Kevin Roberts on the way to a Heritage Foundation conference. (Heritage Foundation is the sponsor and funder of Project 2025). At the Heritage Foundation conference,

Trump delivered a keynote address that gestured to Heritage’s forthcoming policy proposals. “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” Separately, Roberts told The Washington Post in an interview in April of this year that he had previously discussed Project 2025 with Trump as part of offering briefings to all presidential candidates. “I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025,”

See Washington Post, Trump took a private flight with Project 2025 leader in 2022. (This article is accessible to all.)

Given that Kevin Roberts said he briefed Trump on Project 2025 and Trump told Heritage that the project “lay[s] the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” Trump's claim last month that “Have no idea who is in charge of it” is a blatant lie. Although Trump claims that he and Kevin Roberts did not discuss the project on the flight, Trump's comments at the Heritage Foundation conference make clear that Trump knows exactly what Project 2025 is.

The Trump campaign’s release of Project 2025 was an act of hubris and overconfidence it now regrets, just like its effort to drive Joe Biden out of the race.

Here's the point: Trump has been caught with his hand in Project 2025 cookie jar and we must continue to tie Trump and Vance to the project and make clear that they are lying about their lack of involvement in the project.

On the campaign trail with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have managed to continue the momentum and enthusiasm of the Harris campaign. Trump was missing in action from the campaign trail, while JD Vance stalked Harris and Walz, drawing paltry crowds while showing flashes of anger and arrogance. JD Vance is turning out the be an “anti-candidate” who is a drag on the ticket.

At a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Harris and Walz drew a crowd of 10,000, while a rally in Detroit drew 15,000. Per reports, the interest in the rallies far exceeded the capacity of the venues. See The Guardian, ‘We’re not going back’: thousands rally for Harris and Walz in Wisconsin and Michigan.

A simultaneous appearance by JD Vance in Michigan (Shelby Township) drew a crowd so small it was outnumbered by the press contingent covering the event. See video embedded here. See Newsweek, Liz Cheney Takes New Dig at JD Vance's Rally Sizes. Per Newsweek,

A video of the event shared to X by Michigan political reporter Maggie George suggests that the small number of people attending the Vance speech in support of the candidate was rivaled by the press covering the event.

The small crowd is an indication of the lack of coordination and ground game by the Trump campaign—a lack of focus that starts at the top with Trump. Per reports, Trump is spending more time blaming advisers and complaining about his campaign’s problems than campaigning. See WaPo, Trump complains about campaign as advisers try to focus on attacking Harris. (This article is behind a paywall.)

JD Vance did Trump no favors on Wednesday when he gave a sour response to a reporter’s question about Vance being “joyless” and angry:

Reporter: You have been criticized as being a little too serious, a little angry sometimes. What makes you smile? What makes you happy? JD Vance: Well, I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, Dan. A-HAHA-Heh-heh. .  . .But, look, sometimes you got to take the good with the bad. And right now, I am angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country and done to the American southern border.

After insulting the reporter and describing himself as “angry,” Vance then acknowledged that Trump “loves to . . . make fun of everybody that’s out there.” See Trump VP Pick Laughs as Reporter Asks 'What Makes You SMILE?

The stark contrast between the well-executed, enthusiastic, joyful campaign of Harris and Walz is dramatic. And it is encouraging. See Salon, "Bringing back the joy": Kamala Harris' rally blows away JD Vance's weird appearance across town | Salon.com

But the race remains tight (tied?) despite positive signs in almost every new poll that suggest a strong trend in favor of Harris and Walz. 

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[dailyanarchistposts]

It Sure Won’t Be Televised

A lack of affinity with long-standing cultures of resistance and even knowledge of other struggles enforces an alienation and helplessness taught to people throughout their entire lives, especially in areas where colonization is entrenched and consolidated, such as Northern Europe [R.F. – see Return Fire vol.3 pg87]. The marketing and cultural promotion of institutionalization, and disbelief in self-organization, leads people to political submission, accomplishing the work of state powers: political order and pacification of the population.

We should value climate science, but we must look at the origin, history and reality of this accounting – or the lack thereof – as record heat and marine die-offs in the Western Americas and flooding in Germany, Belgium and France have recently demonstrated. Only after such record-breaking natural disasters hitting home have newspapers started to call into question climate sciences projections as underestimated.[33]

While Greta [R.F. – highly mediatic Swedish youth climate activist] is invited to elite conferences, the cases of two women (Jessica Rae Reznicek and Ruby Katherine Montoya), sabotaging the Dakota Access Pipeline [R.F. – see Return Fire vol.4 pg16] around 2016/2017[34] on multiple occasions, however, went unmentioned by most news outlets, along with countless other actions (see warriorup.noblogs.org). The networks of autonomous ZADs, ‘Zones to Defend’ in Western Europe opposing new large and useless development projects [R.F. – see Return Fire vol.1 pg81] also goes largely unnoticed in international media. With the Zapatistas [R.F. – see “It Was Wartime”] as an exception, there are hundreds of struggles for Indigenous autonomy against infrastructure and mining projects across the world that go unnoticed by the what the media calls climate ‘youth’ and ‘justice’ activists [R.F. – see Rebellion Extinction].

When high expectations are met with incomplete storytelling by news outlets and academics, desperation takes hold. Lack of information regarding resistance and alternatives to corporate and state obedience is no coincidence. Desperation, fear and lack of self-confidence creates an opening for authoritarian ideologues to take hold within decentralized movements, selling false hopes and answers through their utopian techno-fixes and megalomania, big and small.

If this desperation remains unchecked, people will submit to the existing as well as their institutional conditioning and look to authorities or leaders. It seems, at times, people just want some authority to tell them “everything will be okay” so they do not have change their habits, let alone take direct action.

[madamlaydebug]

On this day in 2021...

R.I.P.

Go well … you have fulfilled your purpose 💕https://www.patreon.com/RunokoRashidi

RUNOKO RASHIDI

Runoko Rashidi is an anthropologist and historian with a major focus on what he calls the Global African Presence--that is, Africans outside of Africa before and after enslavement. He is the author or editor of twenty-two books, the most recent of which are My Global Journeys in Search of the African Presence, Assata-Garvey and Me: A Global African Journey for Children in 2017 and The Black Image in Antiquityin 2019. His other works include Black Star: The African Presence in Early Europe, published by Books of Africa in London in November 2011 and African Star over Asia: The Black Presence in the East, published by Books of Africa in London in November 2012 and revised and reprinted in April 2013, Uncovering the African Past: The Ivan Van Sertima Papers, published by Books of Africa in 2015. His other works include the African Presence in Early Asia, co-edited by Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. Four of Runoko's works have been published in French.

As a traveler and researcher Dr. Rashidi has visited 124countries. As a lecturer and presenter, he has spoken insixty-sevencountries.

Runoko has worked with and under some of the most distinguished scholars of the past half-century, including Ivan Van Sertima, John Henrik Clarke, Asa G. Hilliard, Edward Scobie, John G. Jackson, Jan Carew and Yosef ben-Jochannan.

In October 1987 Rashidi inaugurated the First All-India Dalit Writer's Conference in Hyderabad, India.

In 1999 he was the major keynote speaker at the International Reunion of the African Family in Latin America in Barlovento, Venezuela.

In 2005 Rashidi was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree, his first, by the Amen-Ra Theological Seminary in Los Angeles.

In August 2010 he was first keynote speaker at the First Global Black Nationalities Conference in Osogbo, Nigeria.

In December 2010 he was President and first speaker at the Diaspora Forum at the FESMAN Conference in Dakar, Senegal.

In 2018 he was named Traveling Ambassador to the Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities League RC 2020.

In 2020 he was named to the Curatorial and Academic boards of the Pan-African Heritage Museum.

He is currently doing major research on the African presence in the museums of the world.

As a tour leader he has taken groups to India, Australia, Fiji, Turkey, Jordan, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, Togo, Benin, France, Belgium, England, Cote d'Ivoire, Namibia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Peru, Cuba, Luxembourg, Germany, Cameroon, the Netherlands, Spain, Morocco, Senegal, the Gambia,Guinea-Bissau,Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar.

Runoko Rashidi's major mission in life is the uplift of African people, those at home and those abroad.

For more information write to Runoko@hotmail.com or call (323) 803-8663.

His website is www.drrunoko.com

[mariacallous]

In 2017, around the time U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, more than 400 U.S. cities and counties stepped into the leadership void and adopted ambitious climate action goals. And this September, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the United States for the United Nations General Assembly meetings, he sat down with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro before meeting with presidents and presidential aspirants.

Zelensky and Shapiro’s visit to a factory in Scranton that makes munitions for Ukraine is an example of subnational diplomacy, a fast-growing field in the United States in which governors, mayors, and other local officials take a direct role in world affairs. The uptick comes just in time. With a monumental election just days away, the United States might swerve from global engagement to retrenchment once again. Foreign partners have always had to deal with changing administrations in Washington, but rarely have they had to deal with the ever-present risk of such volatility. Subnational diplomacy builds more layers and durability into the fabric of the United States’ international partnerships. It thickens the country’s global diplomacy when Washington leans into alliances, and—by building lasting relationships among leaders at many levels—keeps it in vital conversations and forums on transnational issues when the federal government retreats.

Powers like China and France have long understood the strategic value of building relationships at the local level. Additional investments and actions are now needed from the federal government, local governments, and the private sector to accelerate U.S. subnational diplomacy and position governors and mayors to be a source of ballast and stability on the global stage.

Foreign policy, and the way the United States connects with the world, has never been solely about Washington. The Biden administration recognized this with its early focus on a “foreign policy for the middle class.” Because foreign policy has deep implications for local communities, U.S. cities and states are increasingly connecting with partners abroad to advance their interests, in turn influencing how the world perceives and interacts with the United States. In our work at the Truman Center, we’ve mapped more than 3,000 data points on individual relationships between U.S. cities, states, and foreign counterparts.

Subnational diplomacy has moved past the framework of sister cities and city-to-city relations focused on soft academic or cultural exchanges. Local leaders confront global challenges at their doorstep: from water scarcity in Phoenix, to Chinese interference in New York, to defending democracy against authoritarian impulses in many locales. Mayors and governors have no choice but to think globally, taking on the role of ambassador for their community, and cultivating ties with partners around the world to accelerate trade, innovation, and investment. It is now common to see U.S. mayors networking with their peers abroad to influence global agendas, with large local delegations at every United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) climate meeting and cities like Houston becoming global champions for energy transition. Some encounters are making waves: California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s trip to China in 2023, for instance, was a major development in both areas. Foreign countries are frequently reaching out to local U.S. governments to advance their interests; in the majority of cases this is well-intentioned, but recent headlines highlight the national security risks involved.

To be clear, subnational diplomacy is not a substitute for strong leadership from Washington. Given the necessarily centralized nature of the federal government’s official relations, governors and mayors can’t sign treaties or deploy the United States’ military might. But what they can do is maintain some of the country’s global engagement across political cycles, and they can do so across the political spectrum.

While Washington remains polarized, local leaders from both parties are engaging in global affairs, often independent from the national political climate. The participation of 14 major U.S. cities in C40 Cities, a network of mayors focused on combating the climate crisis, demonstrates to the world that a significant portion of the United States remains committed to combating the crisis, even when Washington chooses a different course. Similarly, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s visit to Ukraine in September was an opportunity to express full support for Ukrainian sovereignty. Holcomb, a Republican, was the first U.S. governor to visit Ukraine since the war began, and the trip culminated with the signing of a bilateral agreement between Indiana and Ukraine on technological, agricultural, and cultural collaboration. The ability of local leaders to transcend national politics makes them essential to maintaining the United States’ global presence, no matter who controls the White House.

Despite the momentum, the United States still lags behind its partners and competitors in how it resources and supports subnational diplomacy. Countries like Japan, South Korea, and France have a long history of employing subnational diplomacy as a complement to centralized foreign policy and supporting it with funding and expertise. China has also leveraged the subnational space to advance its interests, and the U.S. intelligence community recently signaled the risks related to the cooptation of subnational diplomacy by China to advance malign goals, including illicit influence on political campaigns and dissuading engagements with Taiwan.

To its credit, the Biden administration has responded to falling behind in subnational diplomacy by creating a new Subnational Diplomacy Unit (SDU) at the State Department, which serves as the department’s front door for U.S. mayors and governors and is headed by a former ambassador and Los Angeles senior official. Among its achievements are bringing hundreds of leaders from the Western Hemisphere together for a historic summit and initiating a program to place State Department foreign and civil servants in the offices of U.S. mayors and governors. Changes to the State Department’s organizational chart rarely attract much attention, but the creation and growth of the SDU is an unheralded success. Further steps are required, though, to strengthen U.S. subnational diplomacy.

First, the progress made at the State Department with the SDU must be institutionalized. Draft legislation to mandate this function at the department has languished, meaning the SDU has limited capacity to meet the demand for its assistance and future administrations can easily do away with it. Passing that legislation should be a priority, including during the coming lame-duck session, so that regardless of the upcoming election’s result, more robust support for subnational engagement becomes a mandated State Department function, matching the level of support provided by foreign countries to their own subnational diplomacy strategies.

Second, while subnational leaders are accelerating their bilateral engagement abroad, they should be more engaged in multilateral spaces. U.S. cities are notably absent from the United Cities and Local Governments organization, one of the most prominent global networks that allows cities to set the agenda. Leaders of major U.S. cities and states should also consider creating new global subnational coalitions on urgent transnational issues where they don’t already exist, such as rising authoritarianism, mirroring effective domestic subnational coalitions that have recently formed on issues such as reproductive rights. They should do this regardless of the election’s outcome, but the networks will be especially relevant if former President Trump wins.

Finally, a combination of public and private sector interests should create an innovation fund for subnational diplomacy to support primarily small- and medium-sized U.S. cities to elevate their global engagement. There are significant disparities between the ability of these cities and their larger counterparts to conduct diplomacy, which quickly becomes a geographic equity issue. The fund could help cities and states hire an international affairs lead on the mayor or governor’s team to build expertise and diplomatic muscle, or support related capacity-building. It could be a public-private partnership or be primarily private (led by a combination of philanthropic foundations and private companies) in the event of an uncooperative federal government.

The United States’ federal structure is one of its greatest strengths, because it nurtures skilled leaders in cities and states who wield real influence. But when it comes to diplomacy, those leaders are too often overlooked. When Washington is globally engaged, it leaves influence on the table when it doesn’t mobilize talented subnational leaders to amplify and buttress its diplomacy. When Washington retreats, those same leaders can maintain vital relationships and keep the United States in key conversations. In either scenario, investing in subnational diplomacy isn’t a luxury: It’s imperative for national security.

[honesty-my-policy]

“if someone came into my country without warning and slaughtered innocent people, took some hostage and left, would you expect me and my people to not retaliate? I damn well would retaliate.” you just described what Hamas is doing. Israel is an OCCUPATIONAL FORCE. You described the Nakba

Israel is OLDER than Palestine. You can't displace people who weren't there ORIGINALLY. The only reason it was PARTITIONED was because of the BRITISH/UN. In the late 19th century there was a rise of Zionism, a movement advocating for the establishment of the Jewish homeland, where Jewish people began purchasing (legally) land in Palestine.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

After WWI, under British Mandate by the League of Nations, Jewish immigration to the region increased considerably, causing tensions between Jews and the Arab majority population.

The UN approved 1947 partition plan is what triggered a civil war between Israel and Palestine. However! The Jewish Agency for Palestine RELUCTANTLY accepted the partition plan. It was the ARAB higher committee, the ARAB League and other ARAB leaders and governments who REJECTED it.

Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, first secretary-general of the Arab League from the 22nd of March 1945 to September of 1952 said - "Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades."

Sources: 1

"We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea." Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli told his people: "We shall eradicate Zionism."

Source: 1

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini a Palestinian Arab and Muslim leader said that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but "would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated."

Sources: 1, 2

The civil war was ONCE AGAIN STARTED by ARABS, on November 30th, 1947. When a bus on it's way to Jerusalem from Netanya was attacked by Arab militants, followed by another attack on a different bus. Killing 7 Jews.

Sources: 1, 2

Again, all of you have somehow forgotten that Israel was there FIRST. You've also forgotten how many expulsions and exoduses of Jews there've been. In fact in human history there are been over 1000.

Sources: 1, 2, 3 (from 2013 so dated)

Islam has always been anti-Semitic, you just refuse to acknowledge it. I'm not claiming every Muslim is anti-Semitic but those who haven't experienced a culture outside of their own? There is a HIGH chance that yes. They are. The ORIGINAL HAMAS charter from 1988 was very clear on their intentions. They may have watered it down in 2017 but that was just to save face and get people like you to be on their side. Sadly, it's working!

'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.'

'[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.' (Article 13)

Sources: 1, 2

Lastly, if HAMAS cared at all about their people and what they are claiming is a 'genocide' in Gaza. Why haven't they been vocal about the other Muslims being massacred around the world? Haven't heard of them? Yeah, cause it's not been mainstream media.

Sources: 1, 2,

HAMAS wants the public hearts to bleed for them, while using their own people as human shields. They don't care about evacuating their own people for safety. They glorify dying as human shields as a righteous death so that they'll stay. It's good publicity. It makes others turn against Israel.

It's called a RED HERRING or an APPEAL TO YOUR EMOTION. Yes, we should feel emotions and that's okay. Do I think it's okay for civilians to die in the middle of war? No. I wish there wasn't a war happening at all. Personally? I think both sides not just TALKING ABOUT SHIT is STUPID. But for some reason PEOPLE STARTED KILLING EACH OTHER.

People get emotional about shit. They start fighting. They don't TALK. They can't be REASONABLE. WAR HAPPENS. Then again, I think HAMAS wants to kill Jews.

So yeah. The entire situation is absolute dog shit. But HAMAS fucked around and found out. It's sad to me that y'all are so easily turned against Israel and the Jews by social media and a distortion of history.

Do more research.

[reasoningdaily]

After Black Lives Matter - CEDRIC G.JOHNSON

THIS BOOK IS A FREE DOWNLOAD FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY CLICK THE TITLE TO DOWNLOAD

Contemporary policing reflects the turn from welfare to domestic warfare as the chief means of regulating the excluded and oppressed The historic uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd transformed the way we think about race and policing. Why did it achieve so little in the way of substantive reforms? After Black Lives Matter argues that the failure to leave an institutional residue was not simply due to the mercurial and reactive character of the protests. Rather, the core of the movement itself failed to locate the central racial injustice that underpins the crisis of policing: socio-economic inequality. For Johnson, the anti-capitalist and downwardly redistributive politics expressed by different Black Lives Matter elements has too often been drowned out in the flood of black wealth creation, fetishism of Jim Crow black entrepreneurship, corporate diversity initiatives, and a quixotic reparations demand. None of these political tendencies addresses the fundamental problem underlying mass incarceration. That is the turn from welfare to domestic warfare as the chief means of regulating the excluded and oppressed. Johnson sees the way forward in building popular democratic power to advance public works and public goods.  Rather than abolishing police, After Black Lives Matter argues for abolishing the conditions of alienation and exploitation contemporary policing exists to manage.

Review

"A virtuoso performance! Weighing the successes and limitations of Black Lives Matter, Johnson concludes that identity-based mobilization—confusing what people look like with what they need—cannot substitute for majoritarian political coalition-building." —Barbara J. Fields, Columbia University "A brilliant scholar who is first and foremost concerned with equality and justice. It’s those very commitments that lead him, in After Black Lives Matter, to question today’s antiracism and its nostrums." —Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto "Essential reading for those weary of platitude-driven texts on race and criminal justice and in the market for an empirically grounded political analysis that points to practicable solutions to one of the biggest problems of our day." —Touré F. Reed, author of Toward Freedom "A provocative and expansive critique from the left of the loose collection of protest actions, organizations, and ideological movements-whether prison abolition or calls to defund the police-that make up what we now call Black Lives Matter...After Black Lives Matter should be commended both for the clarity of its message and the bravery of its convictions." —Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker

About the Author

Cedric Johnson is professor of African American Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His book, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics was named the 2008 W.E.B. DuBois Outstanding Book of the Year by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.  Johnson is the editor of The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. His 2017 Catalyst essay, “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Anti-policing Struggles and the Limits of Black Power,” was awarded the 2018 Daniel Singer Millenium Prize. Johnson’s writings have appeared in Nonsite, Jacobin, New Political Science, New Labor Forum, Perspectives on Politics, Historical Materialism, and Journal of Developing Societies. In 2008, Johnson was named the Jon Garlock Labor Educator of the Year by the Rochester Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He previously served on the representative assembly for UIC United Faculty Local 6456.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Given the sheer scale, magnitude and diversity of 2020’s resurgent Black Lives Matter protests, many pundits, scholars and activists celebrated the George Floyd rebellion as an historic watershed, one where the possibility of real reform came into view. For too  many, however, the euphoria of the moment suspended any criti- cal analysis of what it all meant. This is a deeper problem on the  US left—the tendency to read protests as always prefigurative rather than contingent, and as a manifestation of real power rather than a reflection of potential. Such wish-fulfillment think- ing, however, forgets that mass mobilization is not the same as  organized power, and that mass mobilization is much easier now with the endless opportunities for expressing discontent provided by social media, online petitions, memes and vlogging.

The scale of protests can be misleading, and their actual effectiveness, regardless of their size, is dependent on historical conjunctures, such as the balance of political forces, the organized power and  capacity of opposition and the clarity of objectives among activists. Throughout the opening decades of this century, ever larger  protests have proved incapable of consolidating in a manner that might effectively oppose ruling-class prerogatives. In recent memory, we have witnessed successive mass protests—turn-of the-century demonstrations against global capitalism, protests against the Bush administration’s so-called War on Terror, Occupy Wall Street encampments, anti-eviction campaigns, the March for Our Lives following the Parkland High School mass shooting, protests against police violence and ICE deportations, among others—but these have done little to depose capitalist class power and the advancing neoliberal project.

If anything, the hegemony of finance capital, the war-making powers of the national security state, the criminalization of immigration, the power of the gun lobby and the unaccountability of police are as entrenched as ever. THIS BOOK IS A FREE DOWNLOAD FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Hamas is not the Palestinian people. Hamas is a terrorist organization that came to power in Gaza in 2006.

For the Christian

Johnnie Moore's International religious liberty bio from Wikipedia:

China:

Moore condemned China’s treatment of Muslims in 2017 and wrote an open letter to the Chinese premier alongside of Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.[8] In May 2021, the People's Republic of China issued retaliatory sanctions against Moore that banned him from entering the territory that it controls the United States issued sanctions against a Chinese official for the official's involvement in the detention of Falun Gong pratcitioners.[9][10][11]

Middle East:

In 2017 Moore joined the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance Press Conference calling for tolerance and the end of bigotry.[12][13] Moore played a key role in the release of the historic Bahrain Declaration calling for rights for religious minorities in the Middle East. Days after the move of the Jerusalem embassy more led a multi-faith peace delegation from the Kingdom of Bahrain on a pilgrimage in Jerusalem.[13] Moore’s Bahraini trip to Jerusalem prompted his being listed on the electronic intifada for allegedly forging and alliance between Bahrain and Israel in defiance of the Arab boycotts of Israel.[14][15]

Moore met and raised awareness of human rights issues with the Saudi CP within weeks of the death of Khashoggi.[16] He also visited the country on 9/11 and is an advocate of the Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 reform agenda.[17] Moore participated in the announcement of the first ever Chief Rabbi for the United Arab Emirates[18] and held meetings with heads of state throughout the Islamic world with the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates in 2018[19] as well as advocating for persecuted Hindus in India.[20] He now serves on the ADL Task Force for Protecting Minority Groups in the Middle East.[21]

Moore praised the Kingdom of Jordan for its interfaith efforts[22] as well as praising the President of Azerbijain as a model of peaceful coexistence.[23] He has also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and various Palestinian leaders,[24] the President of Azerbaijan,[25][26] and twice with the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2019 and 2018[27][28] and he has met with the World Council of Churches.[29]

Moore referred to the ISIS threat against Christians in Iraq and Syria as a “once in a 1000 year threat to Christianity.”[30] He chartered a private jet and organized the evacuation and resettlement of ISIS victims from Northern Iraq to Slovakia over Christmas in 2015, a first in a series of efforts that eventually resettled over 10,000 Christian and Yazidi refugees displaced by ISIS.[31][32] On September 11, 2019 he joined forces with Muhammad Alissa of the Muslim World League to issue a joint statement calling for cooperation between evangelicals like Moore and Muslims with a focus on protecting Christian holy sites.[33] Moore is a critic of Iran and has called for the Iranian people to take back their religion from their supreme leader.[34][35] He praised Pakistan’s prime minister for the arrest of a leading terrorist[20] and in 2019 his advocacy was credited for the release of an 82-year-old Muslim prisoner of conscience in Pakistan, Abdul Shakoor.[36][37]

Moore was among an evangelical delegation who met with Egyptian government officials[38][39] and was the guest of Egypt’s president for the grand opening of the Middle East’s largest cathedral.[40]

North Korea:

Moore was involved in bringing together liberal, moderate and conservative evangelicals in a joint call for prayer for peace in North Korea.

Terrorism Primer

Peace Process Primer

[libertariantaoist]

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news-roundup/news-roundup-9-27-2023/

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 9/27/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

Senator Robert Menendez denied the allegations levied against him by the Department of Justice. Last week, a grand jury indicted the powerful Senator on bribery charges. Investigators found hundreds of thousands of dollars said to be payments to access the Senator’s influence. The Institute 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the US would increase its military ties with Kenya. Washington agreed to provide additional security assistance to Kenya after Nairobi agreed to lead a UN mission to Haiti. The Institute

Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that the first batch of US-made Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine, which are armed with toxic depleted uranium (DU) ammunition. AWC

The Biden administration on Monday announced a $2 billion loan for Poland that will go toward modernizing Warsaw’s military. AWC

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Budapest was ending support for Kiev on international issues due to a 2017 Ukrainian law that limits the rights of Hungarians. The announcement comes as Ukraine’s support in Eastern Europe wanes, with Poland halting all weapons transfers to Kiev after President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Warsaw. The Institute

Four American advanced fighter jets arrived in Romania and will begin conducting patrols over the Black Sea region, according to NATO. The deployment comes as Washington wages a proxy war against Moscow in Ukraine that has stretched into the Black Sea. The Institute

The commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet attended a Russian Defense Ministry video conference on Tuesday, a day after Ukraine claimed he was killed in a September 22 missile strike on the fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol, Crimea. AWC

A senior US official told The Washington Post that the Biden administration is not pressuring Ukraine to hold elections, while some Western officials do want to see a wartime vote. AWC

A report from 60 Minutes that aired Sunday detailed how US taxpayer dollars are not only funding weapons in Ukraine but are also subsidizing small businesses and paying first responders salaries, among other things. AWC

Senate leaders on Tuesday announced they reached a deal on a stopgap funding bill that needs to be passed by September 30 to avert a partial government shutdown. The bill includes $6.2 billion for Ukraine and $6 billion for natural disasters. AWC

On Tuesday, the Kremlin said US-provided Abrams tanks in Ukraine will not impact Russia’s operations and will “burn” like other Western armored vehicles. AWC

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that the Turkish parliament will ratify Sweden’s NATO membership as long as the US follows through on its plans to sell Turkey F-16 fighter jets. AWC

China

President Biden is hosting Pacific Island leaders for a second annual summit in Washington that’s part of his administration’s strategy to counter China in the Asia Pacific. AWC

The Philippines is taking steps to retake Scarborough Shoal, a disputed chain of rocks and reefs in the South China Sea that has been effectively controlled by China since 2012. AWC

Middle East

Israeli Tourism Minister Haim Katz arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a UN conference, making him the first senior Israeli official to publicly visit the Kingdom, which comes as the US is pushing for a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal. AWC

After weeks of clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Arab tribesman aligned with Deir Ezzor Military Council (DEMC), the SDF has imposed a curfew following a resumption of fighting on Monday. These ethnic tensions are boiling over in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, illegally occupied by the US and its SDF partners, as the Arab majority resists Kurdish rule. The Institute

Read More

[usafphantom2]

China would be working on updates for its best poaching and manned/unmanned teams

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 10/25/2023 - 08:59am Military

The China People's Liberation Army (PLAAF) Air Force is updating the Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon fighter, China's response to the Lockheed Martin F-22, and is experimenting with concepts of manned and unmanned team-building, in the same way that the U.S. Air Force is doing, according to the Pentagon's latest assessment of Chinese military power.

In the Annual Report of China's Military Power, released in mid-October, the Pentagon reports that the PLAAF "is preparing updates for the J-20, which may include an increase in the number of air-to-air (AAM) missiles that the fighter can carry" in its low observation configuration, installing engine nozzles with thrust vectoring and adding super cruising capacity by installing national WS-15 engines with higher thrust."

The two-seat J-20S was also presented, and experts speculate that this version is being evaluated for possible control of autonomous escort aircraft.

As the J-20 already has the capacity to launch a series of missiles equivalent to the F-22, upgrading the aircraft in stealth mode would give the J-20 a distinct advantage over the F-22; particularly because the J-20 can carry the PL-15, which is the Chinese equivalent of the U.S. medium-range advanced air-to-air missile AIM-120. Although the range of the PL-15 is speculative and the range of the latest version of AMRAAM is rated, senior USAF officials said that the range of the PL-15 exceeds that of AMRAAM, giving the Chinese stealth fighter a potential first vision/first shooting ability against the American fighter.

The U.S. Air Force has been developing the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM), built by Lockheed Martin, since mid-2017, but the program is highly confidential. When it was first revealed at an industry conference in 2019, USAF ammunition leaders said the weapon would be operational in 2022, but no announcement has been made indicating that this has happened, and the USAF has refused to answer any questions about the missile since then.

Although the report does not indicate how many J-20 China built, industry experts said that, in early 2023, Chengdu had manufactured between 180-220 J-20, eclipsing the 187 F-22 built by the US. China is building J-20 at a rate of 40-50 per year. However, these analyses are based on serial markings seen on aircraft at air and trade fairs, and China may have painted misleading serial markings on its aircraft to suggest a larger inventory than it actually has at hand.

Most J-20s are deployed in the interior of China or near the Indian border, making it difficult for Western analysts, without access to national satellite images, to make a reliable count.

China's report remained largely silent about PLAAF and the F-35 People's Liberation Army (PLAN) Navy counterpart, known in China as FC-31/J-31.

"The development continues in the smallest FC-31/J-31 for export or as a future naval fighter for the next class of PLANE aircraft carrier," the report said, without commenting on the progress of the jet.

The first versions of the J-31 appeared to be almost clones of the F-35, but more recent images show a more elongated overall shape, with larger tail surfaces, perhaps more suggestive of the F-22. Unlike the F-35, the J-31 has two engines.

The report indicated that about 1,300 of China's 1,900 fighters are fourth generation or higher. The J-20 and FC-31/J-31 are considered fifth generation types.

The Pentagon's assessment offered little new information about China's H-20 stealth bomber program, supposedly a near-twin of the U.S. Air Force B-2 bomber, except to say that the Chinese state media reported “that this new stealth bomber will have a nuclear mission capability,” in addition to fulfilling conventional functions.

China is upgrading its existing H-6 Badgers, based on the Tu-16 bombers of the 1950s, built under license from Russia. The H-6 serves both PLAAF and PLAN, and these aircraft have been equipped in recent years with long-range ground attack missiles, “t giving the PLA a long-range precision attack capability that can hit targets in the Second Chain of Islands from airfields in mainland China,” the Pentagon said.

The navalized H-6N can carry "a ballistic missile launched from the air," the report noted, which "may have nuclear capability".

In addition to having more mature air combat capabilities, China is developing a series of unmanned aerial vehicles, ranging from portable units to large aircraft of the US RQ-4 Global Hawk class.

“Air and commercial fairs are exhibiting a growing number of autonomous and team systems, including for combat applications,” the report said. "In these concepts, Chinese developers are showing interest in further growth beyond [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and EW (electronic warfare) in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, with a substantial amount of development exhibiting efforts to produce drone swarm capacity for operational applications."

China has exhibited large stealth-looking jet drones in military parades and has several drones in the U.S. MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper class, which is also making available for export, the report noted.

Source: Air Force & Space Magazine

Tags: Military AviationChengdu J-20 'Mighty Dragon'PLAAF - China Air Force

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has work published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[watchmenanon]

OCTOBER 31, 2019

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinian Christians that Nobody is Talking About BY RAMZY BAROUD

Palestine’s Christian population is dwindling at an alarming rate. The world’s most ancient Christian community is moving elsewhere. And the reason for this is Israel.

Christian leaders from Palestine and South Africa sounded the alarm at a conference in Johannesburg on October 15. Their gathering was titled: “The Holy Land: A Palestinian Christian Perspective”.

One major issue that highlighted itself at the meetings is the rapidly declining number of Palestinian Christians in Palestine.

There are varied estimates on how many Palestinian Christians are still living in Palestine today, compared with the period before 1948 when the state of Israel was established atop Palestinian towns and villages. Regardless of the source of the various studies, there is near consensus that the number of Christian inhabitants of Palestine has dropped by nearly ten-fold in the last 70 years.

A population census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2017 concluded that there are 47,000 Palestinian Christians living in Palestine – with reference to the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. 98 percent of Palestine’s Christians live in the West Bank – concentrated mostly in the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem – while the remainder, a tiny Christian community of merely 1,100 people, lives in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The demographic crisis that had afflicted the Christian community decades ago is now brewing.

For example, 70 years ago, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, was 86 percent Christian. The demographics of the city, however, have fundamentally shifted, especially after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in June 1967, and the construction of the illegal Israeli apartheid wall, starting in 2002. Parts of the wall were meant to cut off Bethlehem from Jerusalem and to isolate the former from the rest of the West Bank.

“The Wall encircles Bethlehem by continuing south of East Jerusalem in both the east and west,” the ‘Open Bethlehem’ organization said, describing the devastating impact of the wall on the Palestinian city. “With the land isolated by the Wall, annexed for settlements, and closed under various pretexts, only 13% of the Bethlehem district is available for Palestinian use.”

Increasingly beleaguered, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem have been driven out from their historic city in large numbers. According to the city’s mayor, Vera Baboun, as of 2016, the Christian population of Bethlehem has dropped to 12 percent, merely 11,000 people.

The most optimistic estimates place the overall number of Palestinian Christians in the whole of Occupied Palestine at less than two percent.

The correlation between the shrinking Christian population in Palestine, and the Israeli occupation and apartheid should be unmistakable, as it is obvious to Palestine’s Christian and Muslim population alike.

A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December 2017, interviewed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian population in Palestine.

The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing situation where they can no longer perceive a future for their offspring or for themselves”.

Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.

Gaza is another case in point. Only 2 percent of Palestine’s Christians live in the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip. When Israel occupied Gaza along with the rest of historic Palestine in 1967, an estimated 2,300 Christians lived in the Strip. However, merely 1,100 Christians still live in Gaza today. Years of occupation, horrific wars and an unforgiving siege can do that to a community, whose historic roots date back to two millennia.

Like Gaza’s Muslims, these Christians are cut off from the rest of the world, including the holy sites in the West Bank. Every year, Gaza’s Christians apply for permits from the Israeli military to join Easter services in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Last April, only 200 Christians were granted permits, but on the condition that they must be 55 years of age or older and that they are not allowed to visit Jerusalem.

The Israeli rights group, Gisha, described the Israeli army decision as “a further violation of Palestinians’ fundamental rights to freedom of movement, religious freedom and family life”, and, rightly, accused Israel of attempting to “deepen the separation” between Gaza and the West Bank.

In fact, Israel aims at doing more than that. Separating Palestinian Christians from one another, and from their holy sites (as is the case for Muslims, as well), the Israeli government hopes to weaken the socio-cultural and spiritual connections that give Palestinians their collective identity.

Israel’s strategy is predicated on the idea that a combination of factors – immense economic hardships, permanent siege and apartheid, the severing of communal and spiritual bonds – will eventually drive all Christians out of their Palestinian homeland.

Israel is keen to present the ‘conflict’ in Palestine as a religious one so that it could, in turn, brand itself as a beleaguered Jewish state in the midst of a massive Muslim population in the Middle East. The continued existence of Palestinian Christians does not factor nicely into this Israeli agenda.

Sadly, however, Israel has succeeded in misrepresenting the struggle in Palestine – from that of political and human rights struggle against settler colonialism – into a religious one. Equally disturbing, Israel’s most ardent supporters in the United States and elsewhere are religious Christians.

It must be understood that Palestinian Christians are neither aliens nor bystanders in Palestine. They have been victimized equally as their Muslim brethren, and have also played a major role in defining the modern Palestinian identity, through their resistance, spirituality, deep connection to the land, artistic contributions and burgeoning scholarship.

Israel must not be allowed to ostracize the world’s most ancient Christian community from their ancestral land so that it may score a few points in its deeply disturbing drive for racial supremacy.

Equally important, our understanding of the legendary Palestinian ‘soumoud’ – steadfastness – and of solidarity cannot be complete without fully appreciating the centrality of Palestinian Christians to the modern Palestinian narrative and identity.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/10/31/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestinian-christians-that-nobody-is-talking-about/

[beardedmrbean]

Looks like they got el chopos kid at Sinaloa airport, that and Mexico city is under lockdown cause the cartels are out on force. Anyupdats so far?

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Nineteen suspected gang members and 10 military personnel were killed in a wave of violence surrounding the arrest of Mexican drug cartel boss Ovidio Guzman in the northern state of Sinaloa, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said on Friday.

Mexican security forces captured Guzman, the 32-year-old son of jailed kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, in the early hours of Thursday morning, prompting hours of unrest and shootouts with gang members, the minister said.

Guzman was extracted by helicopter from the house where he was caught and flown to Mexico City, before being taken to a maximum security federal prison, Sandoval added.

The arrest spurred the powerful Sinaloa Cartel - once headed by El Chapo himself - to go on a rampage, setting vehicles on fire, blocking roads, and fighting security forces in and around Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa.

Twenty-one other people were arrested during Thursday’s operations, Sandoval told a news conference, adding there were no reports of any civilian deaths.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said there were no immediate plans to extradite Ovidio to the United States, where his father is in a maximum security prison after being extradited in 2017 and found guilty in a New York court.

“The elements (of the case) have to be presented and the judges in Mexico decide,” the president said. “It is a process...It is not just the request.” No U.S forces had assisted in Ovidio’s capture, Lopez Obrador said.

An enhanced security presence will now remain in place in Sinaloa, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, to protect the public, with an additional 1,000 military personnel traveling to the region today, Sandoval said.

Passengers on an Aeromexico passenger flight at Culiacan airport crouched low below their seats as shots rung out around the runway on Thursday.

“As we were accelerating for take-off, we heard gunshots very close to the plane, and that’s when we all threw ourselves to the floor,” passenger David Tellez said. Aeromexico said one of its plane was hit by gunfire at Culiacan but that no-one was hurt.

The airport was due to reopen later on Friday after being closed due to the violence.

In 2019, a failed operation to arrest Ovidio ended in humiliation for Lopez Obrador’s government. At the time, security forces briefly detained Ovidio, triggering a violent backlash from cartel loyalists and leading authorities to quickly release him to stave off the threat of further retribution from his henchmen.

His latest capture comes before a North American leaders’ summit in Mexico City next week, which U.S. President Joe Biden will attend. Cooperation over security is due to be on the agenda.

THE EXTRADITION QUESTION

The United States has sought Guzman’s extradition for years.

In 2021, the State Department announced a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

Guzman, known by the nickname “The Mouse,” has been charged in the United States with conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. The State Department said he oversaw methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa responsible for producing “3,000 to 5,000 pounds” of the drug per month.

The State Department also said information indicated he had ordered multiple murders, including that of a popular Mexican singer who had refused to perform at his wedding.

Surging flows of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the United States, where it has fueled record overdose deaths, have heightened pressure to capture Guzman.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers the Sinaloa Cartel, along with one other gang, to be responsible for most of the fentanyl inside the United Sates. ______________________

Well then, that's a thing there isn't it.

50/50 on this thing kicking off a civil war in the cartel being a good or bad thing.