#Pentagon Police Department

[zahri-melitor]

Someone needs to study DC’s habit of randomly making the nearest woman character the GCPD Commissioner, particularly in other timelines, without stopping to consider whether this makes any narrative sense for the character in question.

Barbara suffers this the worst of course, but also Renée Montoya and Catherine Kane suffer it (Catherine Hamilton fucking Kane. Tell me you haven’t read Batwoman without saying you haven’t read Batwoman).

The only positive example I can think of is that hot minute Sarah Essen was Commissioner when the mayor demoted Jim in the mid 90s. And even then it was ‘Sarah’s just a stand in while we have narrative tension with Jim’.

[icubuzz]

This is the I beam that was found in the debris on its side by fireman and rescue workers. It was as shown in the shape of a cross. The first responders and firefighters took it as a sign from the Lord. Only the Lord could make order out of chaos and art from a disaster. A hurricane does not leave sculptures in its wake. Remember the people and the stories from 9/11/2001. Tell your children. Refuse to forget.

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

is Jewish Voice for Peace actually Jewish? I've heard a couple different things about that but no sources

@gryphistheantlerqueen also asked:

Whooo boy. So this has been sitting in the inbox for a few months, I wrote up a draft, and then it just sat... until this past week, when some new JVP BS hit the fan and gave me the kick to finish it.

Sooooo...

Verdict: Not Actually Jewish

(updated verdict after finding out about the “self-managed conversion” and “teacup mikvah”) Jewish, technically, and that "technically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and is actively debatable without access to a detailed breakdown of JVP’s actual membership rolls. 

In general summation, JVP is a far-left radical antizionist group that is headed by a few visibly antizionist Jews and whose membership rolls are either a strong minority or outright majority of non-Jews, based on variable statistics that they've released. Although they claim that the “majority of their members and staff are Jewish”, this seems to be both statistically unlikely and actively suspicious due to their noted tendency to instruct even non-Jewish members to speak #AsAJew on social media, and their instructions to do “self-managed conversions”.  However, due to their title, they are very popular with people who want a Jewish Stamp Of Approval for demonizing Israelis and Zionist Jews as a result. In effect, they are Jewish in the same way that people like Candace Owens and Hershel Walker are Black—as self-tokenizing minorities who throw the rest of their ethnic group under the bus in exchange for power and political access.

And despite the claims that they are “inspired by Jewish values and traditions” (as put on their website) and “oppose anti-Jewish hatred,” JVP routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric, up to and including blood libel and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and acts as a shield against non-Jews who also engage in antisemitic rhetoric so long as the non-Jews in question remember to shout "For Palestine!" first. This is not an exaggeration. 

The primary example of their in-house antisemitic rhetoric is their "Deadly Exchange" program, where they explicitly and conspiratorially blame Israel as being responsible for American police brutality and militarization. However, for all of their fearmongering and blame-casting on the subject—as if American cops needed outside help in brutalizing minorities or gaining military-grade handmedowns from the Pentagon, both of which are explicit claims of the "Deadly Exchange" program—they have a hard time actually identifying specific deaths associated with the international training seminars they're holding up as responsible.

One of the the closest they've come to a specific allegation is claiming that "former St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch trained with the Israeli military three years before Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising." (Note: this was in a video that appears to have since been made private.) But Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson PD, not the St. Louis PD, and Fitch retired months before the killing. So he was in a completely different police department, and this is the closest JVP comes to pointing to specific deaths or acts of brutality that they blame on Israel. Everything else is literal fearmongering--up to and including the classic conspiratorial tropes of "secretive Jewish governmental influence".

JVP has also happily supported the words of white supremacists like Richard Spencer, taking his “You could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people," statement at face value, using it as the basis for entire articles where they compared Zionism to White Supremacy as a deliberate misrepresentation of the ideology that is common on the extreme political Left (you can compare that treatment again with how Candace Owens treats the word "Woke" on the Right). Even when the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march happened, JVP wasted no time in comparing Zionism with the very ideology fueling the people chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us," saying that Zionism is "Jewish racial supremacy" and calling for a universal condemnation of the ideology as a form of White Supremacy... which was the exact sort of message that many of those same White Supremacists would have happily agreed with.  So JVP is essentially siding with literal White Supremacists,  even as they claim that "Jews are not the primary victims of White Supremacy."

JVP also engages in Holocaust revisionism, such as with this lovely quote from Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of JVP, “I believe it is critical to situate the genocide of Jews in a broader context, and not as an exceptional, metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also targeted for annihilation.”

(another quote, from an article by Surasky, which compares Netanyahu to Hitler.)

This is just straight revisionism of the entire Holocaust and the unique fixation the Nazis had on the Jews. Literally, even when they were losing, they were diverting resources from the war just to kill more Jews. Quote Hitler himself, "Jews must be prevented from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations." The very basis of the Nazi ideology paints Jews as an existential threat to the human race's peace and security—a far cry from JVP's claim that the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust wasn't unique or exceptional.

Additionally, JVP ignores or re-envisions Mizrachi Jewish history. They call the very term Mizrachi “Zionist rhetoric,” and refer to Mizrachi “immigrants,” (“Deadly Exchange,” pg. 16-17), and claim “the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim” (“Our Approach to Zionism”) as though those weren’t the direct result of the mass expulsion of and violence against Jews in MENA countries. These weren’t immigrants, these were refugees. 

And as for the question of “Are they Jewish?”, well...

Statistically, they are not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, 90% of whom identify as some degree of Zionist in the sense of “Supporting Jewish self-determination.”  One does not need to be Jewish to join JVP, as they proudly state on their website. Their membership rolls are also extremely obfuscated, and the fact that they encourage their followers, whether Jewish or not, to post and speak “as Jews” on social media makes it even more difficult to figure out what percentage of their membership is actually Jewish.  Furthermore, they have instructions for their members to engage in “self-conversions” that are not acceptable to Jewish law or tradition, and misuse/appropriate other sacred Jewish traditions to the point that “blasphemy” is an accurate description, with their instructions on the mikvah (a sacred bath) being outright offensive.  

(note that one has to be completely nude and bare of any adornment or makeup to use the mikvah, which is a pure pool of collected rainwater to be immersed in, for context on the above... misuse.  Trying to claim this as being “in line with sacred Jewish tradition” is like trying to claim to be Catholic while also saying that the Pope is the Antichrist and that using beer and a doughnut for the Eucharist is acceptable. For more information on mikveh, see: The Jewish Virtual Library, Aish, myjewishlearning, or Chabad.

There's also no altar.

The irony of asking people not to appropriate while doing this is astonishing.)

It’s also telling that they straight up say they are “claiming” the practice as their own.

Furthermore, JVP has hosted panels on “antisemitism” in the past... headed by people who are not only not Jewish, but who have been credibly accused of antisemitism in the past.  

JVP has also endorsed The Mapping Project Boston, which was a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) subsidiary, listing every “Zionist” organization in Boston, Mass. This included Jewish schools, elder homes, community centers, disability centers, and more; all of them painted with scary and misleading “links” to non-Jewish organizations to insinuate Jewish control of the state and city governments, invoking age-old antisemitic tropes of a conspiracy of Jews as they did so:

(first image is the Mapping Project, the second is a 1938 Nazi political cartoon)

The Mapping Project also, and this is my personal favorite, accused Harvard University of doing “racist science” for engaging in archeological and genetic studies of Jews and Jewish history.  Tellingly, BDS actually disavowed The Mapping Project (albeit for bad optics, not for the rank antisemitism they were promoting)... but JVP has not, even though the Mapping Project’s entry for the ADL reads as follows:

Masquerading as a “civil rights” group, the ADL is a counterinsurgency and espionage organization whose mission is to protect the mutual interests of the US and Israeli governments, and to eliminate solidarity among oppressed peoples, especially concerning Palestine. The ADL spies on and criminalizes activists (using its connections to governments, police, schools, and corporations) while undermining their work by pushing its own state-sanctioned, pro-“Israel” agenda. And while the ADL claims to represent Jews and to fight “antisemitism” on their behalf, the organization has supported anti-Jewish state violence and sanitized Nazis. The ADL cannot be reformed: it must be dismantled and whatever resources it has should go towards repairing the many harms it has done. (Emphasis added.)

Of course, JVP has also engaged in similar conspiracy-toned antisemitic dogwhistles, such as this fun bit from their first Deadly Exchange video:

So clearly (to me at least), they have no problems with The Mapping Project’s tone and presentation.  

And this isn’t even going into JVP’s routine promotion of blood libel, their egregious double standards, their approving of pogroms, their active support for Hamas terrorists and demonization of Hamas’ victims, their attempted revisionism of Jewish history, their abject rejection of Jewish culture, and their other actions that show not just bias, but outright hatred for 90% of the world’s Jews.  

As one commentator put it, JVP as an organization is very much like Autism Speaks is to Autistic people--a thinly disguised hate group that views the people they’re supposedly speaking for as the problem, and themselves as promoting the Solution.  To this moderator, they’re the equivalent of the Association of German National Jews, who were also known as the Jews for Hitler; they wanted to abandon Judaism and embrace Naziism... and they got sent to the gas chambers anyway.  

Mod Joseph

Sources:

www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peace

www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mikveh-Guide-for-Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Outlined.pdf

(and also just... a general experience/exposure to them on social media, where even the most progressive actions taken by Israel, such as the recent ruling regarding queer Palestinians being able to claim sanctuary in Israel, being labeled as “pinkwashing”)

[tomorrowusa]

In the US military, you swear an oath to the Constitution – not to the President. If Trump issues an illegal order then officers may wish to punt by taking the matter to court rather than defying Trump or breaking an oath they could face a court-martial for.

Pentagon officials are holding informal discussions about how the Department of Defense would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, defense officials told CNN. Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment. Trump in his last term had a fraught relationship with much of his senior military leadership, including now-retired Gen. Mark Milley who took steps to limit Trump’s ability to use nuclear weapons while he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president-elect, meanwhile, has repeatedly called US military generals “woke,” “weak” and “ineffective leaders.”

As if we don't have enough to worry about, the military must deal with a demented president with his finger on the nuclear button.

In general, the options are limited to keep Trump from doing crazy things ahead of time.

There is not much the Pentagon can do to pre-emptively shield the force from a potential abuse of power by a commander in chief. Defense Department lawyers can and do make recommendations to military leaders on the legality of orders, but there is no real legal safeguard that would prevent Trump from deploying American soldiers to police US streets.

Beware of misuse of the Insurrection Act.

The president’s powers are especially broad if he chooses to invoke the Insurrection Act, which states that under certain limited circumstances involved in the defense of constitutional rights, a president can deploy troops domestically unilaterally.

There's certainly potential for a constitutional crisis if Trump provokes tension with the military.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kristen Welker and Alexandra Marquez at NBC News:

President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News on Thursday that one of his first priorities upon taking office in January would be to make the border “strong and powerful.” When questioned about his campaign promise of mass deportations, Trump said his administration would have “no choice” but to carry them out. Trump said he considers his sweeping victory over Vice President Kamala Harris a mandate "to bring common sense" to the country. "We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to — at the same time, we want people to come into our country," he said. "And you know, I’m not somebody that says, 'No, you can’t come in.' We want people to come in." As a candidate, Trump had repeatedly vowed to carry out the "largest deportation effort in American history." Asked about the cost of his plan, he said, "It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag."

It's unclear how many undocumented immigrants there are in the U.S., but acting ICE Director Patrick J. Lechleitner told NBC News in July that a mass deportation effort would be a huge logistical and financial challenge. Two former Trump administration officials involved in immigration during his first term told NBC News that the effort would require cooperation among a number of federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the Pentagon. Trump's win included record gains among Latino voters, who Democrats had tried to capture by pointing to Trump's rhetoric on immigrants and a pro-Trump comedian's racist joke about Puerto Rico.

In Thursday’s phone interview, he partially credited his message on immigration as a reason he won the race, saying, "They want to have borders, and they like people coming in, but they have to come in with love for the country. They have to come in legally." Trump also noted the diverse coalition of voters he attracted, pointing to gains he made among Latino voters, young voters, women and Asian American voters from 2020.  "I started to see realignment could happen because the Democrats are not in line with the thinking of the country," the president-elect said. "You can’t have defund the police, these kind of things. They don’t want to give up and they don’t work, and the people understand that." Trump also spoke about his phone calls with Harris and President Joe Biden since the election.

Donald Trump gave an interview to NBC News, in which he pledged that there will be “no price tag” for his mass deportation plan.

[ursula-legun]

always strongly recommending that people read Rise Of The Warrior Cop but i think it's especially relevant in an era of discussing. biden.

dude has such a major hand in the current positioning of US police departments. 1994 "community oriented policing services" bill was specifically aimed at massively boosting the number of cops "on the streets" (you can imagine which streets.) fucking mind-boggling amounts of federal funding went towards this end, and it did increase the relative quantity of new hires + shift the style of proactive policing in the US - but also a shitton of that money went to funding better equipment for police departments, helping to reinforce the police-military-industrial complex. (IIRC the bill included provisions subsidizing domestic police purchases of military gear from the pentagon, but that may have been another bill, so grain of salt there.)

obviously it was 30 years ago, people change, any given person has limited power, kind of the whole point of this election being moot is that there's not actually much difference in structural effect bearing from who the current figurehead is, etc etc. add your own caveats.

but it does bear relevance that one of the largest police militarization bills in the last 50 years was marketed, in no small part by biden himeslf, as being "community oriented." which i think is just an interesting little example of, idk, why one might be entirely inclined to disregard whatever the fuck kind of promises a political party is making, especially if analysis of those promises is taken entirely at face value.

also - again, the particular people involved in these processes are often fairly arbitrary, etc., but it is kind of fucked to be viewing this guy in any kind of favorable light given the last ~decade of discussion on US police brutality, and his specific history of responsibility for that present state. etc.

[drsonnet]

(2024)

APRIL 1968..#ColumbiaUniversity In 1968, students occupied buildings and hundreds were arrested. Credit...Larry C. Morris/ TheNewYorkTimes

A protest 56 years ago became an important part of Columbia’s culture.

During the Vietnam War, students seized campus buildings for a week until university officials and the police cracked down.

By Vimal Patel April 18, 2024

Columbia University is no stranger to major student protests, and the uproar that unfolded at the institution on Thursday had echoes of a much bigger revolt in 1968 — another time of upheaval over a war many students deeply believed was immoral.

That year, in April, in the throes of the Vietnam War, Columbia and Barnard students seized five campus buildings, took a dean hostage and shut down the university.

By April 30, a week after the protest started, university officials cracked down.

At about 2 a.m., police began clearing students from Hamilton Hall “after entering the building through underground tunnels,” according to the student newspaper, The Columbia Daily Spectator. Minutes later, police entered Low Library, again through tunnels, removing occupying students by force.

By 4 a.m., they had cleared all buildings, resulting in more than 700 arrests — one of the largest mass detentions in New York City history — and 148 reports of injuries, the student newspaper reported. Officers trampled protesters, hit them with nightsticks, punched and kicked them and dragged them down stairs, according to a New York Times report.

Most of the injuries were cuts and bruises, relatively minor as compared to some of the brutal arrests of protesters at the height of antiwar and civil rights demonstrations at the time. The university also sustained some property damage, including smashed furniture, toppled shelves and broken windows.

In the end, the protesters won their goals of stopping the construction of a gym on public land in Morningside Park, cutting ties with a Pentagon institute doing research for the Vietnam War and gaining amnesty for demonstrators.

The protests would also lead to the early resignations of Columbia’s president, Grayson L. Kirk, and its provost, David B. Truman.

The fallout from the violence hurt the university’s reputation and led to reforms favoring student activism. Today the university touts its tradition of protest as part of its brand.

On Thursday, another Columbia president, Nemat Shafik, took what she called an “extraordinary step” and authorized the New York Police Department to clear out a student encampment on campus.

[darkmaga-returns]

Trump has a strong chance of winning the 2024 presidential election, believes US economist and former Reagan administration official Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.

"It appears that Americans have cast off their insouciance and are going to take back their country from the two corrupt political parties, both of which have unleashed evil on America and the world,"��writes US economist and former Reagan administration official Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, referring to Trump supporters enthusiasm.

The veteran economist believes that Trump has a strong chance of winning the 2024 presidential election. However, he suggests that Democrats may attempt to undermine the voting process and steal the election. If their scheme fails and Trump secures victory, he assumes they may still try to obstruct his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

Dr. Roberts specifically highlights Department of Defense Directive 5240.01, issued on September 27, 2024. This directive seemingly permits the use of lethal military force against American citizens in support of police authorities during domestic disturbances, contingent upon the approval of the Secretary of Defense.

"The Democrats might try to… orchestrate an 'insurrection,' invoke Pentagon Directive 5240.01, and prevent Trump from being inaugurated," the economist suggests. "We must keep in mind that the inauguration of a president comes two and one-half months after his election. There is plenty of time for Democrat and ruling elite mischief."

Trump assuming office won't automatically mean the US is out of woods, Dr. Roberts continues.

"There is one threat in making American great again, and that threat is restoring American militarily dominance," writes the former Reagan official. "The neoconservatives will use this American desire not only to foment wars but also in the name of national security to restore the spying, the restraints on free expression, and the name-calling that have eroded our civil liberties."

There is a serious political battle ahead since "in many ways, for the ruling elite this election is an existential matter," Dr. Roberts warns.

[beardedmrbean]

Haiti is fast descending into anarchy.

Over the weekend, the violence in the capital Port-au-Prince ramped up once again. Heavily armed gangs attacked the National Palace and set part of the Interior Ministry on fire with petrol bombs.

It comes after a sustained attack on the international airport, which remains closed to all flights - including one carrying Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

He tried to fly back to Haiti from the United States last week, but his plane was refused permission to land. He was then turned away from the neighbouring Dominican Republic too.

Mr Henry is now stuck in Puerto Rico, unable to set foot in the nation he ostensibly leads.

Among those who did manage to get into the stricken Caribbean nation, though, was a group of US military personnel.

Following a request from the US State Department, the Pentagon confirmed it had carried out an operation to, as it put it, "augment the security" of the US embassy in Port-au-Prince and airlift all non-essential staff to safety.

Soon after, the EU said it had evacuated all of its diplomats, fleeing a nation mired in violence and facing its biggest humanitarian crisis since the 2010 earthquake.

Millions of Haitians, however, simply don't have that luxury. They're trapped, no matter how bad things get.

The situation is dire at the State University of Haiti Hospital, known as the general hospital, in downtown Port-au-Prince. There is no sign of any medical staff at all.

A dead body, covered by a sheet and swarming with flies, lies in a bed next to patients waiting in vain for treatment.

Despite the overpowering stench, no-one has come to remove the body. It is rapidly decomposing in the Caribbean heat.

"There are no doctors, they all fled last week," said Philippe a patient who didn't want to give his real name.

"We can't go outside. We hear the explosions and gunfire. So, we must have courage and stay here, we can't go anywhere."

With no prime minister and a government in disarray, the gangs' power over the capital is near absolute.

They control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince and the country's most notorious gang leader, Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier has again told the prime minister to resign.

"If Ariel Henry doesn't step down and the international community continues to support him," he said last week, "they will lead us directly to a civil war which will end in genocide."

Meanwhile, the police, outnumbered and demoralised, are struggling to keep looters at bay. The Salomon police station in Port-au-Prince was attacked and burnt out, and charred police vehicles lie outside the still-smouldering building.

US evacuates Haiti embassy staff amid gang violence

Haiti's main port closes as gang violence spirals

Haiti gangs demand PM resign after mass jailbreak

Nevertheless, even in the face of the total collapse of law and order, people must still venture out to make a living.

At a nearby market, several street hawkers told the BBC they had no other option but to leave their homes, even with gunmen roaming the streets.

"I have three kids, and I'm all they have - I'm their mother and their father," said Jocelyn, a market trader who also didn't want to give her real name.

"So, I'm obliged to take to the streets. Yesterday gunmen came here and stole all our money. A lot of vendors lost all their money. But there's no way to stay at home when you have three mouths to feed."

"The anxiety is killing me when I'm in the street," echoed an older woman selling fruit. "I keep thinking what if I get shot dead? Who will take care of my children then? I have no family to support me."

To the west, in one of Haiti's nearest neighbours, Jamaica, the dignitaries, diplomats and heads of state of the Caricom regional group are gathering for an emergency summit.

The instability in Haiti is a problem for the entire Caribbean community, and for Washington too. The idea of a nation of some 11 million people being run by gangs is of huge concern, particularly the potential impact on outward migration during an election year in the US.

It's clear Caricom favours seeing Mr Henry resign as soon as possible, from outside of the country if necessary.

The Biden administration in the US has publicly said the unelected prime minister - who had promised to hold an election in February - should return to Haiti, but only in order to stand down and begin a transition to a new government.

Privately, though, US diplomats are increasingly aware that it might now be impossible for him to return, and that even attempting to do so could further destabilise Haiti.

A UN-backed plan for a Kenyan-led rapid reaction force to tackle the gangs is still far from becoming a reality.

To add to the lawlessness, a week ago, around 4,000 inmates escaped after the gangs attacked the main prison in Port-au-Prince.

Those prisoners are now back on the streets and bolstering the ranks of their gangs.

In the aftermath, the cell doors are now wide open, the facility is virtually abandoned and there are blood stains on the ground after gunmen overpowered the guards.

A prime minister unable to return, violent gangs in control of the capital and dead bodies piling up on the streets: Haiti is currently a nation about as close to a failed state as it's possible to be.

[otamu-times]

I honestly hate memes about September 11th. I think they are tasteless and I think they are missing all context about the fear and confusion that happened that day. I think it demeans the people who lost their lives tragically and it demeans the first responders and people who lost their lives later from the dust of the towers.

If you want to understand the confusion of that day you should watch this broadcast. I remember watching this same broadcast before heading to school. At first people thought it was an accident and then the second tower was hit, then the pentagon was hit. Later the third plane hijacked crashed in a field. There was so much fear that day…what would be hit next? The towers collapsed, phones were down. There was so much fear. Just watch the entire broadcast to understand the confusion.

I remember doing nothing that day in class. Some kids were crying over missing relatives. Thankfully being in the Midwest only one kid lost their uncle who worked in the towers.

The patriotism was a response to rally after the tragedy because unfortunately there weren’t many answers and unfortunately the response from the US government was disproportionate. This event was so pivotal in how the US operates. It buckled down on security theater at airports and militarization of the police force. The Department of Homeland Security was created.

This does not negate this from being a tragedy. I think younger people don’t know the grief and pain that came from this and that is why it is memeable. The patriotism, the security theater, the other political blunders can be memeable, but the jokes about the towers, the lives lost, the confusion are just tasteless.

[mynnthia]

i watched the battle of algiers (1966) with a friend the other day. really powerful movie

ID: screenshots from the movie "The Battle of Algiers". the scene is an interview between a french reporter, and Ben M'hidi (Algerian revolutionary leader) Reporter: isn't it cowardly to use your women's baskets to carry bombs, which have taken so many innocent lives? Ben M'hidi: Isn't it even more cowardly to attack defenceless villages with napalm bombs that kill many thousands of times more? Obviously, planes would make things easier for us. Give us your bombers, sir, and you can have our baskets.

its also really something how the rhetoric used by the french colonizers is near-identical to modern ziоnist talking points (including how even many western "leftists" supported ziоnist ideals)

ID: screenshots depicting a french colonel answering an interview question Colonel Mathieu: Is it legal to set off bombs in public places? Remember Ben M'Hidi's answer when you asked him the question. The F.L.N. wants to throw us out of Algeria, and we want to stay. Even with slight shades of opinion, you all agree that we must stay. When the F.L.N. rebellion began, there were no shades at all. Every paper, the communist press included, wanted it crushed.

down to the "we cant be nazis, we were killed by nazis during ww2" excuse

ID: continued screenshots from the same scene as above Colonel Mathieu: We're neither madmen nor sadists. Those who call us fascists forget the role many of us played in the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis don't know that some of us survived Dachau and Buchenwald.

we also read the wikipedia page together after the movie to clarify some details, and found out apparently the battle of algiers has also been used for "counter-insurgency classes", including by the us military. which is rather abhorent to the movie's legacy and history

ID: screenshot from "The Battle of Algiers" wikipedia page, in the section under "Screenings for counterinsurgency agencies". the contents of note are: 1) 1960s screenings in Argentina: By 1963, cadets at the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) started receiving counter-insurgency classes. In one of their courses, they were shown the movie The Battle of Algiers [...] ESMA was later known as a center for the Argentine Dirty War and torture and abuse of insurgents and innocent civilians. Anibal Acosta, one of the ESMA cadets interviewed 35 years later [...], described the session: "They showed us that film to prepare us for a kind of war very different from the regular war we had entered the Navy School for. They were preparing us for police missions against the civilian population, who became our new enemy."

2) 2003 Pentagon screening: During 2003, the press reported that United States Department of Defense (the Pentagon) offered a screening of the movie on August 27. The Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict regarded it as useful for commanders and troops facing similar issues in occupied Iraq. A flyer for the screening said: "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film"

[mightyflamethrower]

Since the 1960s, universities have always been hotbeds of left-wing protests, sometimes violently so.

But the post-October 7 campus eruptions marked a watershed difference.

Masked left-wing protestors were unashamedly and virulently anti-Semitic. Students on elite campuses especially showed contempt for both middle-class police officers tasked with preventing their violence and vandalism and the maintenance workers who had to clean up their garbage.

Mobs took over buildings, assaulted Jewish students, called for the destruction of Israel, and defaced American monuments and commentaries.

When pressed by journalists to explain their protests, most students knew nothing of the politics or geography of Palestine, for which they were protesting.

The public concluded that the more elite the campus, the more ignorant, arrogant, and hateful the students seemed.

The Biden administration destroyed the southern border. Ten million illegal aliens swarmed into the U.S. without audit. Almost daily, news accounts detail violent acts committed by illegal aliens or their surreal demands for more free lodging and support.

Simultaneously, thousands of Middle Eastern students, invited by universities on student visas, block traffic, occupy bridges, disrupt graduations, and generally show contempt for the laws of their American hosts.

The net result is that Americans are reappraising their entire attitude toward immigration. Expect the border to be closed soon and immigration to become mostly meritocratic, smaller, and legal, with zero tolerance for immigrants and resident visitors who break the laws of their hosts.

Americans are also reappraising their attitudes toward time-honored bureaucracies, the courts, and government agencies.

The public still cannot digest the truth that the once respected FBI partnered with social media to suppress news stories, to surveil parents at school board meetings, and to conduct performance art swat raids on the homes of supposed political opponents.

After the attempts of the Department of Justice to go easy on the miscreant Hunter Biden but to hound ex-president Donald Trump for supposedly removing files illegally in the same fashion as current President Biden, the public lost confidence not just in Attorney General Merrick Garland but in American jurisprudence itself.

The shenanigans of prosecutors like Fani Willis, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg, along with overtly biased judges like Juan Merchant and Arthur Engoron, only reinforced the reality that the American legal system has descended into third-world-like tit-for-tat vendettas.

The same politicization has nearly discredited the Pentagon. Its investigations of “white” rage and white supremacy found no such organized cabals in the ranks. But these unicorn hunts likely helped cause a 45,000-recruitment shortfall among precisely the demographic that died at twice their numbers in the general population in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Add in the humiliating flight from Kabul, the abandonment of $50 billion in weapons to the Taliban terrorists, the recent embarrassment of the failed Gaza pier, and the litany of political invective from retired generals and admirals. The result is that the armed forces have an enormous task to restore public faith. They will have to return to meritocracy and emphasize battle efficacy, enforce the uniform code of military justice, and start either winning wars or avoiding those that cannot be won.

Finally, we are witnessing a radical inversion in our two political parties. The old populist Democratic Party that championed lunch-bucket workers has turned into a shrill union of the very rich and subsidized poor. Its support of open borders, illegal immigration, the war on fossil fuels, transgenderism, critical legal and race theories, and the woke agenda are causing the party to lose support.

The Republican Party is likewise rebranding itself from a once-stereotyped brand of aristocratic and corporate grandees to one anchored in the middle class.

Even more radically, the new populist Republicans are beginning to appeal to voters on shared class and cultural concerns rather than on racial and tribal interests.

The results of all these revolutions will shake up the U.S. for decades to come.

Soon we may see a Georgia Tech or Purdue degree as far better proof of an educated and civic-minded citizen than a Harvard or Stanford brand.

We will likely jettison the failed salad bowl approach to immigration and return to the melting pot as immigration becomes exclusively legal, meritocratic, and manageable.

To avoid further loss of public confidence, institutions like the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the DOJ will have to re-earn rather than just assume the public’s confidence.

And we may soon accept the reality that Democrats reflect the values of Silicon Valley plutocrats, university presidents, and blue-city mayors, while Republicans become the home of an ecumenical black, Hispanic, Asian, and white middle class.

[ancientcosmicsecrets]

A True Story Of An Alien Contact

The Venusian Visitor

Imagine this: You are the President of a mighty nation, and one day, you receive a visitor from another planet. He claims he comes in peace and has a message for you and the world. He says he can help you solve your problems and join a galactic community of other civilizations. He also mentions that he has only three years to complete his mission. If you were in this situation, what would you do? This is not a science fiction scenario. It is reportedly what happened in the 1950s when a friendly alien named Valiant Thor visited Earth from Venus. His story is considered one of the most fascinating and controversial cases of alien contact ever recorded. It is also one of the most inspiring and challenging stories ever told.

Who was Valiant Thor?

Valiant Thor (or Val for short) was an extraterrestrial being who claimed to be from Venus, the second planet from the Sun. He looked human, except for having six fingers on each hand and other anatomical differences. He had an IQ of 1200, spoke 100 languages, and had a vast knowledge of science, history, and religion. He came to Earth on March 16, 1957, with a mission: to invite humanity to join the interstellar community and to warn us about the dangers of nuclear weapons. He said he had a message from the High Council, a group of benevolent aliens who watched over our planet and wanted us to evolve and prosper. He also said he had access to advanced technologies that could solve many of our problems, such as disease, poverty, and pollution.

He did not come alone. He had two companions, Jill and Donn, who stayed in his spaceship while he went to meet the authorities. He landed in Alexandria, Virginia, where he was greeted by two police officers who escorted him to the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense.

How did he meet the President?

Valiant Thor met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon at the Pentagon. He presented his credentials and proposal, called "The Victor One." It was a document that outlined how Earth could benefit from joining the interstellar community and how we could avoid self-destruction by abandoning nuclear weapons. He also offered to share his knowledge and technology with us, but only if we agreed to use them for peaceful purposes. He gave the President three days to consider his offer and to consult with his advisors. He said he would wait for his answer at the Pentagon, where he was given an apartment as a guest. He also said he would not reveal his presence to the public as he did not want to cause panic or confusion.

What did he do at the Pentagon?

Valiant Thor stayed at the Pentagon for three years, from 1957 to 1960. He met with many government officials, military leaders, scientists, and religious figures during that time. He also traveled around the country and visited various places of interest. He was friendly, charming, and respectful to everyone he met. He also demonstrated some of his abilities, such as telepathy, levitation, and healing.

He tried to persuade the people in power to accept his offer and to change their ways. He warned them that if they continued to pursue nuclear weapons, they would face dire consequences. He also told them that other alien races were not as friendly as him and might pose a threat to Earth. He said he was here to help us, not harm us. He also made friends among the humans who believed in and supported him. One of them was Frank E. Stranges, a Christian evangelist who wrote a book about him called "Stranger at the Pentagon." Stranges claimed to have met Val personally and written his book based on his conversations.

Why did he leave?

Unfortunately, the President and his advisors rejected Valiant Thor's offer. They feared that accepting his help would undermine their authority and their economy. They also doubted his motives and his credibility. They thought he might be a spy or a trickster. They decided to keep him at the Pentagon as a guest but not a partner.

Valiant Thor was disappointed but not surprised by their decision. He knew that humans were not ready for his message and his gifts. He respected their free will and did not force them to change their minds. He completed his mission on March 16, 1960, exactly three years after he arrived. He said goodbye to his friends and left the Pentagon. He rejoined his companions in his spaceship and departed from Earth. He said he would return someday when we became more mature and open-minded.

The story of Valiant Thor is fascinating and inspiring, but is it true? There is no conclusive evidence that proves or disproves his existence. The only source of information is Frank E. Stranges, who claimed to have met him personally and written his book based on his conversations with him.

Whether you believe in Valiant Thor or not, you can still learn something from his story. He represents a peaceful, harmonious world where humans and aliens can coexist. He also represents a challenge to our beliefs and values, where we must question our assumptions and actions. He also represents hope for a better future, where we can overcome our fears and conflicts and join the interstellar community.

[mariacallous]

On Dec. 9, China Coast Guard vessels fired water cannons at Philippine supply ships in the Scarborough Shoal, where the Philippine ships had arrived to resupply fishermen. That’s just the latest skirmish in the disputed atoll, which is located near the Philippines but was seized by China in 2012. In fact, in recent months, China has markedly increased its maritime bullying in the waters off the Philippines. That trend is already beginning to spread nervousness among Western businesses interested in friendshoring some of their operations to the Philippines—which may be precisely what China is after.

The water-cannon attack on the Philippine supply ships, which resulted in one of the vessels suffering engine damage and having to be towed back to port, came only a few weeks after two other heavy-handed actions by Chinese vessels near the Philippine coast.

In late October, a Philippine supply vessel and a vessel from the Philippine Coast Guard were bumped, respectively, by a China Coast Guard vessel and a vessel belonging to China’s maritime militia. The incidents took place near the Second Thomas Shoal, in waters that both the Philippines and China consider their own. In 2016, the tribunal in charge of enforcing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) sided with Manila over the Second Thomas Shoal, but that hasn’t stopped Beijing from claiming it is the rightful owner and underlining this point through various maritime provocations.

Indeed, for the past decade, there have been regular encounters between China and the Philippines in the desolate waters.

In recent months, China has been particularly keen to demonstrate its presence around the Scarborough and Second Thomas shoals. It has rammed Philippine Coast Guard vessels and boats resupplying fishermen. It has used water cannons against Philippine vessels and tried to chase them away. On just one day in November, 38 Chinese vessels were circling the Second Thomas Shoal’s waters, according to The Associated Press.

“There has been a gradual escalation this year, which you can trace back to February, when a Chinese vessel directed [a military-grade] laser against a Philippine vessel and the Philippines made the footage public,” said Ray Powell, the director of Stanford University’s SeaLight group, which tracks maritime gray-zone aggression. “The footage got a lot of attention, which encouraged the Philippines to take pictures of other incidents that were already happening,” Powell added. “That has continued throughout the year, and now the situation has become escalatory.”

Beijing’s objective, Powell said, is to discourage any attempts by nearby countries to follow the Philippines’ example in asserting their rights to waters that China has unilaterally declared to belong to Beijing. “China wants to communicate that it has jurisdiction in the South China Sea and gets to decide over activities there,” he explained.

The aggression may be of the gray-zone kind—that is, not involving military violence—but it’s decidedly harmful, and not just to the Philippine and other vessels being targeted. “China’s harassment of civilian Philippine vessels carrying out humanitarian missions has a negative impact on shipping in the surrounding waters,” Amparo Pamela Fabe, a professor at the Philippines’ National Police College and a fellow of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Brute Krulak Center, told me. “It also heightens the geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea.”

Indeed, the harassment has so alarmed the U.S. Defense Department that the U.S. military is now making a point of showing its presence off the Philippine coast, including by sending aircraft to circle above altercations between Chinese and Philippine vessels. But in reality, there isn’t much the Pentagon can do to deter the vessels from the China Coast Guard or the maritime militia off the coast of the Philippines: The United States wouldn’t risk an armed conflict with China over the harassment of Philippine vessels.

So the harassment will continue and even expand—and simply being a nuisance in the waters may be China’s whole point, because the altercations are causing considerable anxiety. “Philippine vessels cannot freely enter the area within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, and Philippine fisherfolk cannot go fishing in the area,” Fabe noted.

And the anxiety doesn’t end there. That’s because the Philippines is one of the countries to which manufacturers keen to reduce their operations in China have turned their attention.

Global manufacturers assessing potential new locations for some of their manufacturing see lots of benefits to setting up shop there. The country has a comparatively well-educated labor force that includes many English-speaking workers. It’s mostly friendly with the West. It’s geographically close to China, which would mean comparatively moderate disruption as entire supply chains are shifted. It even has workable relations with its other regional neighbors, which is indispensable to friendshoring efforts, as no single country can replicate China’s extraordinary all-in-one manufacturing solution.

But getting friendshoring business is by no means something to be taken for granted; competition is fierce among the prospective beneficiaries of this sudden and rapidly accelerating shift. In a July ranking of friendshoring destinations published by the consultancy Kearney, the Philippines had dropped three places since the company’s 2021 ranking, falling to 12th place, primarily as a result by significant efforts by Mexico and Colombia to attract U.S. manufacturers.

And easy access to ports in prospective new locations is crucial as manufacturers decide where to set up shop or expand operations. Without a guarantee that the transportation of components can take place without disruption, manufacturers will be wary of setting up factories in the Philippines or anywhere else in the region.

That’s why China’s maritime harassment is so effective: It not only immediately affects Philippine fisherfolk, shipping companies, and manufacturers, but also makes global manufacturers nervous about friendshoring in the Philippines. And the manufacturers don’t need to be reminded that China can choose to engage in the same bullying of Vietnam and other nations in the South China Sea to whose waters China also lays partial claim and which also stand to become friendshoring destinations. Indeed, China Coast Guard, civilian, and “research” ships have already taken to harassing Vietnamese oil and gas operations in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone.

China didn’t launch its maritime harassment with friendshoring in mind. But being able to delay or even thwart friendshoring has turned out to be one of the benefits of the harassment. And because it’s not military aggression, it’s unclear what the response should be.

One thing is clear, though: If the world wants friendshoring to succeed, China’s maritime harassment will need to be stopped. The question is by whom.

[ausetkmt]

Get Ready for Fort Liberty: The Pentagon Begins Changing Confederate Base Names | Military.com

The Pentagon has started the process of renaming Fort Bragg and other bases, as well as ships and hundreds of signs and roads, as it plans to scrub ties to the Confederacy from all installations by the start of 2024.

William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, directed all Department of Defense organizations to implement this week the recommendations handed down by the Naming Commission, an independent panel created by Congress and charged with reviewing and replacing the names, according to a press release.

It's a heavy undertaking that includes new names for nine Army bases -- Bragg will become Fort Liberty -- two Navy ships and upward of 1,000 other items located on America's military installations. But Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon's press secretary, told reporters Wednesday he was optimistic it could all be done within the year.

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"I think we are confident, you know, each of the services has clear instructions in terms of what it is that they need to focus on, and where the secretary is confident that the services are and will continue to take that seriously," he said.

Ryder did not have an updated figure on what it would cost to take on all of the recommendations from the Naming Commission. The latest estimate from the group, released this past September, was a total of $62.5 million.

Katherine Kuzminski, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank who researches military culture, told Military.com on Friday that the DoD has dealt with renaming operations in the past.

In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced that the U.S. Pacific Command would become the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, a shift that required changes ranging from signs to stationery.

Kuzminski said that was accomplished in a relatively short period of time. She added that senior leaders in the military can also start referring to those Army bases by their new names right now to help make them commonplace.

"You do have to think about all of the details such as who owns what signage or when exits on interstates will be changed," Kuzminski said. "But we can start referring to these installations like Fort Liberty by these new names and it can get at what the Naming Commission was doing, which was changing the culture."

Kuzminski said it's possible cost estimates could go up as the Pentagon starts to unravel how involved the renaming and replacing process is.

Department of Defense officials began to reckon with the military's long history of honoring namesakes tied to the rebel army that fought in the Civil War following George Floyd's murder at the hands of police, which subsequently sparked nationwide anti-racism protests.

The Naming Commission was established in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act and began submitting its first report cataloging those Confederate-linked names on military bases in May 2022. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin accepted the commission's recommendations this last September.

The group identified nine Army bases, including Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Fort Benning, Georgia, which are both named for Confederate officers.

They recommended Benning be renamed Fort Moore, after Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, who led men during the Vietnam War, and his wife Julia. The cost of renaming all of those bases will come to around $21 million, by the Naming Commission's estimates.

Additionally, the Navy identified the USS Chancellorsville, named after a Civil War battle with a Confederate victory, and the USNS Maury, named after Matthew Fontaine Maury, who left the Navy to sail for the Confederacy, according to the Pentagon. The commission did not provide new name recommendations for those vessels.

The commission also identified Confederate officers recognized on campus at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy, which will cost an estimated $450,000 to replace.

The largest amount of assets would be various roads, signs, buildings and street names throughout the Pentagon's portfolio, which would account for nearly $41 million of the cost.

Editor’s note: The Pentagon said in a Jan. 5 press release that The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery was being disassembled. A spokesman for Arlington National Cemetery contacted Military.com after publication to say that the information provided by the Department of Defense was incorrect. A paragraph reporting that detail has been removed from the story. A plan for the removal of the monument is still being developed, the spokesman said.