#Stateless Children

[kazifatagar]

Marina Mahathir on some of the amendments to the citizenship law

Marina Mahathir criticizes the recent amendment to Malaysia’s citizenship law, arguing it marginalizes Malaysian women and worsens statelessness. While the amendment allows Malaysian women to pass citizenship to future foreign-born children, it excludes those born before the amendment. Many mothers still face the struggle of securing visas and citizenship for their existing children. The new law…

[coochiequeens]

“The motives of the two applicants in wanting to become parents of babies in their late sixties would seem to have been entirely self-centred, with no thought as to the long-term welfare of the resulting children,” - Mr Justice McFarlane

By Angus Thompson Thursday 20 February 2025

Would-be parents seeking out commercial foreign surrogacies are being warned the government may fight their bids for adoption, rendering the infants both permanently stateless and legally parentless.

A High Court case revealed a “self-centred” older UK couple - their identities concealed by the court - whose unlawful arrangement with a clinic in Cyprus saw two siblings born to Ukrainian women. The children were then left in limbo for four years before the judge granted adoption as their only option.

An application for a parental order following a conventional surrogacy may only be made if the gametes of the applicant were used to bring about the creation of the embryo. But in this case, the women in their sixties had used donors for the eggs and sperm.

Furthermore, the order can’t be made if the surrogate has been paid, other than for expenses “reasonably incurred”, but the fee paid for the arrangement was around £120,000.

Lawyers acting for the Home Office warned the government may oppose on “policy grounds” future attempts to adopt children born through overseas, commercial surrogacy arrangements before being brought to the UK.

Andrew McFarlane, president of the court’s family division, said the decision should put would-be parents “on notice that the courts in England and Wales may refuse to grant an adoption order ... with the result that the child that they have caused to be born may be permanently stateless and legally parent-less”.

“Put bluntly, anyone seeking to achieve the introduction of a child into their family by following in the footsteps of these applicants should think again,” Mr Justice McFarlane said.

It is the latest case of a judge criticising aspiring parents who have become embroiled in clandestine and costly ordeals, particularly involving countries that ban arrangements with same-sex couples.

In the most recent case, the court heard the women, who were beyond child-bearing years, had connected with a foreign surrogacy clinic which they had understood was based in southern Cyprus.

It was only after the arrangements had been significantly advanced they came to realise the clinic was in fact operating in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, where surrogacy is unlawful and where the placement of children with same-sex couples is also not permitted.

Mr Justice McFarlane also made reference to the age of the two women, who will be in their seventies and eighties when the children are in their teens.

“The motives of the two applicants in wanting to become parents of babies in their late sixties would seem to have been entirely self-centred, with no thought as to the long-term welfare of the resulting children,” he said.

“It was astonishing to learn, and have confirmed by their solicitor, that the applicants had not given any consideration to the impact on the children of having parents who are well over 60 years older than they are.”

In summarising the submission of lawyers for the Home Office, the judge said the government will consider in future cases whether to oppose an adoption order on policy grounds.

Here's another story that gives more details

President of the England and Wales Family Division Sir Andrew McFarlane has commented on the case of a couple, one in her late 60s and one over 70, who commissioned the birth of two babies abroad through surrogacy. 

Ruling in Re Z (Unlawful Foreign Surrogacy: Adoption), he said that the applicants, Ms W and Ms X, had commissioned the babies for £120,000 in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. 

The unlawful clinic used women from Ukraine as surrogate mothers. The two individuals who donated gametes to create the embryos had been chosen by Ms W and Ms X to replicate their own racial characteristics.   

Both surrogacy, and the placement of children with same-sex couples, are unlawful in that jurisdiction. 

The two children were born on the same day to two different surrogate mothers and through donated eggs. 

Though the children were born in Northern Cyprus, they did not have any rights there, or in Ukraine through their birth mothers. 

Refused leave to enter 

The commissioning parents were refused leave for four years to enter Britain with the babies. 

In Britain, the only route to lawful parentage of the children was through adoption, since the surrogate mothers were legally their parents.

The women who gave birth to the children had since returned to Ukraine and could not be found. 

The judge agreed to make an adoption order but warned that the decision should not be taken as a precedent. 

A court declining to make an adoption order would result in children that were “permanently stateless and legally parentless”, he said. 

The unlawful operation was exploitative and purely for commercial gain, he commented. 

The judge criticised the commissioning parents as “entirely self-centred”, with no thought as to the long-term welfare of the children. 

'No thought'

The judge said it was astonishing that the applicants had given no thought to the impact of having parents over 60 years older than them, and said that the children would likely become carers in their teens. 

Anyone considering following the pair’s footsteps to introduce a child into their family “should think again”, he said. 

“If the court had been asked before these applicants set off for Cyprus whether this was a good idea, let alone one that was legally compatible with domestic policy in these matters, the court’s view would undoubtedly have been a negative one,” the judgment states. 

It concludes that the authorities in Britain may in future oppose the making of adoption orders in such cases. 

[zingay]

To provide an explanation for people who don't understand the living situation in Gaza:

Gaza is under siege, there are no open exits, the only passages are Israeli checkpoints and the Rafah Crossing at the border of Egypt. The border is completely closed due to Egyptian relations with Israel and the West. Israel does not allow Palestinians to pass through checkpoints.

The other border is the sea, which is not a passage they are able to take as they have no transportation as well as the fact that Israel has an active navy

All of their necessities (food, clean water, medical supplies, electricity) are controlled by Israel, they cannot recieve humanitarian aid as all attempts are met with threats. They are given less than the necessary amounts of resources to sustain themselves. Israel has now cut that off completely. Hospitals are running on generators

They do not have the materials, permits or machinery required to make water purifiers, produce medical equipment, ensure food safety or to even rebuild demolished housing.

This also means they don't have the means to build bomb shelters, something I've noticed many Westerners expect them to have. Gaza has no shelters and nobody is able to build them

This means every time Israel has sent a bombardment, Gazzans have been out in the open or hiding in corners of their hopes hoping not to get killed.

Human rights are non-existent for Gaza. Protest is met with snipers. Children are met with violence. Any non-white, non-jewish people who pass through a checkpoint are forced to strip in order to be searched. Palestinians are treated as subhuman

Palestinian people, including children, have been arrested without provocation and are held prisoner without trial for years on end. Many who were arrested as young teenagers are now adults and still imprisoned, with some in solitary confinement for years

Rape is extremely prevalent among IOF soldiers. Both men and women have bragged about sexually assaulting Palestinian men, women, and children. This includes prison guards, who sexually abuse prisoners. Sexual abuse is also prevalent at checkpoints and during interrogations

Anyone who manages to leave can never come back, as Palestinians are not given a state or government, and are forced into remaining stateless and a refugee in most countries

If I see you people still supporting Israel after seeing this, then I have to believe you're heartless

[reasonsforhope]

"In a landmark move towards ending statelessness, Thailand’s cabinet has approved an accelerated pathway to permanent residency and nationality for nearly half a million stateless people, marking one of the region’s most significant citizenship initiatives. 

The decision announced on Friday [November 1, 2024] will benefit 335,000 longtime residents and members of officially recognized minority ethnic groups, along with approximately 142,000 of their children born in Thailand.

“This is a historic development,” said Ms. Hai Kyung Jun, UN refugee agency (UNHCR) Bureau Director for Asia and the Pacific. The measure is expected to dramatically reduce statelessness, addressing the situation of the majority of nearly 600,000 people currently registered as stateless in the country.

Thailand’s commitment to eradicating statelessness has positioned the Government as a leader in addressing this humanitarian challenge, the agency said.

The country recently pledged at the Global Refugee Forum 2023 to resolve statelessness and was among the founding members of the Global Alliance to End Stateless, an initiative launched by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, in Geneva last month...

UNHCR has expressed its commitment to continue working closely with the Royal Thai Government on the implementation of this groundbreaking decision and to ending statelessness overall."

-via United Nations News, November 1, 2024

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

Trump is trying to remove birthright citizenship

My issue with it, is actually the war on Palestine

(I'm trying my best to explain the issue but it's not gonna be perfect, so please please please read the links below)

Some countries already do not have birthright citizenship, the citizenship of babies born in that country depends on the citizenship of their parents.

The problem is Palestine isn't considered a full legal country by all countries.

So if Palestinians flee the war as refugees, they may end up in a country that doesn't have birthright citizenship. Because it's really really really hard (impossible) to enact Palestinian nationality laws. Because much of Palestine is under occupation of Israel.

Which makes the baby (and sometimes the parents) stateless.

Statelessness is a HUGE ISSUE for discrimination. Because they don't have any valid documents proving their origin. They have no nationality. They have no country to protect them. They have no country to be deported to (or they risk being deported to a country that's actively hostile against them).

If an American travels and gets captured by a terrorist organization, their government will protect their citizen. Stateless people have no such protection. Moreover, trying to get jobs, visas, travel documents with no nationality is a shitload of red tape.

So, yeah. Birthright citizenship isn't just about protecting people from being deported to a country they don't know. It's about protecting people from being stateless.

Because if refugees flee to the United States and they're here for.. 10 years? 15? They're probably gonna have children. And those children will be full legal citizens of the United States, and not have to deal with the hurdles of atatelessness that their parents have to fight just to go to school or get a job.

-fae

[useless-catalanfacts]

I remember exactly what my thoughts were when I first learned what had happened to my great-grandfathers. I used to talk to one of them —the survivor, who lived in Venezuela— on the phone when I was a kid, so I had always known he had had to "leave after the war" (Spanish Civil War), in a very vague sense. When I was in primary school, another class of the last year was studying the Second World War and my mother volunteered to share the letters we still keep that my (other) great-grandfather had sent from the refugee camp and from the front. So I guess it's just normal that at that point they also shared the "secret" with me. Like hundreds of thousands more, and like at least one person in most families in Catalonia, they fought during the war but feared what came after even more than the suffering of war itself. When the fascists won the war in 1939, they crossed the Pyrenee mountains by foot to cross the border with France (they cross into Northern Catalonia, the little bit of Catalonia that was annexed by France centuries ago) and escape the persecution that was mass-murdering antifascists. But when they crossed the border with France, the French authorities locked them in the refugee camps on the beach (my great-grandfathers were in Argelers beach camp), where they had barely any food or drink, no houses besides little tents they made themselves out of reels they could find on the beach, and very little clothes for the winter. Many people died of cold and hunger, particularly the children. When children were born, the mothers buried them under the sand because it was the only way they could think to keep them a bit warm. The humid sand of the beach.

And as I was hearing all of this, my only thought was: how did people let this happen? Why did the French government lock them to make them suffer like this? Why did the guards steal from them and mistreat them the way they did? Why did the people who lived near not give them food or jackets?

And to be fair, many people helped in some way. That's why the Swiss nurse Elizabeth Eidenbenz is a national hero for us Catalans. One of my great-grandfathers managed to escape the camp by being given work by a local man. However, a new war started in Europe (WW2) and the Nazis seemed to be coming near, and Franco (the fascist dictator of Spain) had given orders to the Nazis that any person who had gone on exile from Spain was stateless and could be killed (stateless: the blue triangle in concentration camp prisoners' clothes). My great-grandfather found a way to get to a ship to Venezuela and Mexico —thanks to the open borders of these two countries, thousands of people were saved and started a new life in safety. My other great-grandfather, however, used the only other way to escape the camps: when WW2 came, he enlisted in the foreign legion of the French army to continue the work of fighting fascism. His legion was eventually captured, his friend he had enlisted with was taken to a castle where the Nazis used him for experimenting, and my great-grandfather was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp and later killed in a gas chamber in Gusen camp at the very end of the war. And still, growing up I always heard that we are a lucky family, because at least we know what happened to him. Hundreds of thousands of people are still missing, buried in mass graves. The state of Spain (including Catalonia) is the 2nd country in the world with the highest amount of unfound people, after Cambodia, because of all the massacres of the fascists and the bodies under roadside ditches.

And for all these years I have always had in my mind: how could people do that? And how could people see it and allow it?

Now, we are all like the people of France with a choice of helping or letting it happen. The internet connects the world and we are all witnessing how Israel is committing genocide on the Palestinian people. After having turned Gaza in an open-air concentration camp for decades, now they have decided to completely wipe out its people, homes, cultural heritage, schools, hospitals, universities, shops, streets, sewage system— everything. And just like the people back then, we have the opportunity to help Palestinian people survive.

We cannot save our relatives, but we can do what we wished someone had done for them. If you would have wanted help for your family, if you would have helped mine, please if you can make a donation for Palestinian people.

Here's a list of Palestinian people who are raising funds to escape. Israel has made it impossible for Palestinians to leave the heavily-bombed Gaza strip except for the Rafah crossing (to Egypt); and then Israel went and destroyed the Rafah crossing, too. But the Rafah crossing opens every so often and the people with an Egyptian travel agency permission can cross. To get the permission, they must pay 5000$ each person over 16 years old and 2500$ each child under 16, and this doesn't cover transport nor living expenses. You can collaborate to saving a family by donating to their GoFundMe campaigns. Every donation can make a difference. Click each person's name to go to their GFM page, where you'll find more details of their story.

Yahya Ahmad: 20-year-old Pharmacy student from Gaza wants to evacuate his family including his sick father and young brother, after their house was destroyed and they lost everything. (Verification link) @yahyaahmed5

Mahmoud Khalaf: a PhD student from Gaza in Ireland asks our help to raise funds to get his family out of Gaza. (Verification link: number 151) @mahmoudkhalafff

Muhammad Shehab: Israeli bombs destroyed their home and killed relatives and friends, his family has already been displaced 9 times. They want to escape Gaza and apply to become asylum seekers anywhere possible. (Verification link) @mohammedshehab2

Mahmoud AlBalawi: this family needs help to evacuate for the safety of all and particularly the children who suffer of malnutrition. (Verification link) @elbalawi

Palestine Jad Al-Haq: Palestine gave birth during the war but there aren't medicines nor needed materials to raise a healthy child, her mother is also ill and everyone risks illness as a result of the situation created by Israel (destroying the sewage system, not allowing food and medicine, bombing the hospitals, etc). The whole family wants to escape. (Verification link) @falestine-yousef

Fadi Ayyad: 18-year-old whose family's home has been destroyed, he's taking care of his family including younger relatives. They are very close to reaching their goal!! (Verification link) @aymanayyad82

Abdelrahman: 22-year-old Abdelrahman and his mother. They lost their home and Abdelrahman lost his school where he was studying. They are also quite close to reaching their goal. (Verification link) @anqar

Aziz Zaqout: Heba is a pregnant mother of five, faced a health crisis that took her to seek treatment outside Gaza right before the war started. She was separated from her 1-year-old baby and the rest of her children, leaving them in the care of their father, your donation can help them reunite and save the children and father. (Verification link) @azizzaqout

Abd Alhadi Aburass: the war destroyed his home and advocacy bureau, needs money to save his family and provide healthcare for his children. (Verification link) @abdalhadiaburas

Aya Alanqar: for Aya, her husband and their three children (2, 5 and 7 years old), displaced 13 times after their home was destroyed. (Verification link) @ayaanqarsblog

The children Kareem and Carmen: Yousef Hussein is raising money for his nephews Kareem and Carmen after their family of 8, including their mother, were killed when their house was bombed. They are displaced in a refugee camp with other relatives, they want to evacuate and join their uncle Yousef in the USA. (Verification link) @adham-89

Samer Aburass: Samer, his wife and their 3 children lost their home and businesses, and their children (particularly the youngest one, 1 and a half year old) suffer malnutrition. They want to evacuate for a safe future. (Verification link: number 196) @samerpal

Also consider donating to the Municipality of Gaza's fundraiser to fix the water and sewage system: Gaza Water Project.

These are only a few people, who had contacted me on this blog or on my main blog (with less followers, so it's better to post here), but there are many more. You can also check this spreadsheet of verified fundraisers like this one, follow the Palestinian blogger @90-ghost who verifies fundraisers, or use the site gazafunds.com (every visit shows a different verified fundraiser).

Visca els pobles i visca Palestina lliure 🇵🇸🕊️

[mariacallous]

Yesterday the president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man who was mistakenly sent to a gulag in another country, celebrated the suffering of this innocent person, and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps.

This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped.

So let’s begin with language, because language is very important. When the state carries out criminal terror against its own people, it calls them the “criminals” or the the “terrorists.” During the 1930s, this was the normal practice. Looking back, we refer to Stalin’s “Great Terror,” but at the time it was the Stalinists who controlled the language. Today in Berlin stands an important museum called "Topography of Terror"; during the era it documents, it was the Jews and the chosen enemies of the regime who were called "terrorists." Yesterday in the White House, the Salvadoran president showed the way, referring to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a "terrorist" without any basis whatsoever. The Americans treated him as a criminal, even though he was charged with no crime.

The first part of controlling the language is inverting the meaning: whatever the government does is good, because by definition the its victims are the "criminals" and the "terrorists." The second part is deterring the press, or anyone else, from challenging the perversion by associating anyone who objects with crime and terror. This was the role Stephen Miller played when he said yesterday in the White House that reporters "want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children."

The control of language is necessary to undermine a legal or constitutional order. Our rule of law begins with notions such as the people and their rights. If politicians shift the framework to "criminals" and "terrorism," then they are shifting the purpose of the state.

In the United States, we are governed by a Constitution. Basic to the Constitution is habeas corpus, the notion that the government cannot seize your body without a legal justification for doing so. If that does not hold, then nothing else does. If we have the law, then violence may not be committed by one person against another on the basis of namecalling or strong feelings. This applies to everyone, above all to the president, whose constitutional function is to enforce the laws.

Trump spoke of asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to find legal ways to abduct Americans and leave them in foreign concentration camps. But by "legal" what is meant are ways of escaping law, not applying it.

It is that anti-constitutional escapism that enables abuse. State terror involves not just the malignant development of state organs of oppression, such as masked men in black vans, but also the withdrawal of the state from its role as a guardian of law. What aspiring tyrants present as "strength," the ability to terrorize innocent people, rests on what might be seen as a more fundamental weakness, which is the withdrawal of the state from the principle of the rule of law. When we have law, we are all stronger; when we lack law, everyone is weaker except for the very few who can direct the coercive power of the state against the rest of us.

In the history of state terror, the escape from law into coercion takes three forms, all of which were on display, incipiently, in the White House yesterday: the leader principle; the state of exception; and the zone of statelessness.

The leader principle, or in German Führerprinzip, is the idea that a single individual directly represents the people, and that therefore all of his actions are by definition legal and proper. In discussions in the White House and thereafter, we see this notion being advanced. Trump's advisors claim that what he is doing is popular. The claim (as in legal filings) that the president is acting from a personal "mandate" from the people has the same problem. Asked on Fox News about the abduction of Americans and their transfer to foreign gulags, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “these are Americans he is saying who have committed the most heinous crimes in our country.” If it comes down to what “he is saying,” then he is a dictator and the U.S. is a dictatorship. Trump spoke of the need to deport people who "hate our country" or who are "stupid."

The second escape from law is the state of exception. In principle, the Soviet Union was governed by law. Before its greatest exercises of terror, however, the Soviet authorities declared for themselves states of exception. This meant that, on the territory of the Soviet Union itself, it was "legal" (in Bondi's and in Trump's sense) to abduct people and send them to concentration camps: authorities claimed that there was some sort of threat, and so protections could be withdrawn and procedures set aside. People could be abducted in black vans and executed or sent to a camp, "legally," in the sense that the law had been set aside. The notion of the state of exception, important to Soviet practice, was at the center of Nazi theory. As the leading Nazi thinker Carl Schmitt argued, the sovereign is the person who can make an exception. If we are living in normal times, then we think we should be governed by law. But if politicians can use words to make us think that these are exceptional times, then we might accept their lawlessness.

A simple way to escape from law is to move people bodily into a physical zone of exception in which the law (it is claimed) does not apply. Other methods take more time. It is possible to pass laws that deprive people of their rights in their own country. It is possible to carve out spaces on one's own territory where the law does not function. These spaces are concentration camps. In the end, authorities can choose, as in Nazi Germany, to physically remove their citizens into zones beyond their own countries in which they can simply declare that the law does not matter.

This exploitation of purported stateless zones was the main line of the history of the Holocaust. Under Hitler, the Germans did have concentration camps on their own territory, and they did reduce Jews to second-class citizenship, and they did live under a permanent state of exception. But, in the main, the mass murder of German Jews was achieved by their abduction and forced rendition to sites beyond prewar German territory where, German authorities claimed, there was no law.

A probing of this statelessness approach was on display yesterday, as Trump and his advisors claimed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of the United States whom US authorities abducted by mistake and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador, was now beyond the reach of American law. This is state terror: the state is presented as "strong" in its oppression of a person, but as weak in its ability to respect or enforce law. The idea that the United States can send you to places from which it cannot bring you back is the theoretical basis for a doctrine of statelessness. Call it the Rubio Doctrine: in the words of the secretary of state, "the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the President of the United States, not by a court." But what that implies is that people forcibly transported beyond the boundaries of the United States can be incarcerated or killed for no reason. That would be "foreign policy."

Will citizenship save people? Obviously it is better to be a citizen than not. Citizenship provides some protection, at least by comparison with its absence, or with statelessness. The problem, though, is that citizens can find themselves borne along with the rationales applied to non-citizens. If we accept that Trump exercises power because of the Führerprinzip, then what is to stop him from saying that the people want to see the forcible rendition of “homegrowns,” of "really bad people, every bit as bad as the ones coming in." If citizens accept that we are living in a state of exception, then they are also accepting that they too can be treated exceptionally. Perhaps worst of all, if citizens accept the notion of stateless zones, of law that only functions as the servant of power, they are inviting their own deportation to places from which we will never return.

If citizens endorse the idea that people named by authorities as "criminals" or "terrorists" have no right to due process, then they are accepting that they themselves have no right to due process. It is due process, and due process alone, that allows you to demonstrate that you are a citizen. Without it, the masked men in the black vans can simply claim that you are a foreign terrorist and disappear you.

Horrible though all of this is, it is still state terror in outline, a test of how Americans will react. We can react by seeing all of this for what it is, and naming it by name: incipient state terror. We can react by associating ourselves with others are repressed before we are. Only in solidarity do we affirm law. We can remind the other branches of government that their functions are being taken over by the executive. Citizens cannot do this alone; they have to remind the rest of the government of its constitutional functions.

The president is claiming core congressional responsibilities when he asserts personal control of immigration policy, criminal law, and the funding of forcible renditions. Congress could very easily pass laws, if a few Republicans found the courage. The president is claiming core judicial functions when he defines himself as judge, jury, and, in the case for forcible renditions to El Salvador, de facto executioner. The phrase "contempt of court" took on vivid life in the White House yesterday.

Even these most basic institutions, the ones defined by our Constitution, do not act on their own. To a very sad degree, Supreme Court justices and members of Congress are already complicit in this experiment in state terror. They might find their way back to an America in which their offices have meaning, but only with the help of we the people.

[misfitwashere]

State Terror

A brief guide for Americans

TIMOTHY SNYDER

APR 15

READ IN APP

Yesterday the president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man who was mistakenly sent to a gulag in another country, celebrated the suffering of this innocent person, and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps.

This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped.

So let’s begin with language, because language is very important. When the state carries out criminal terror against its own people, it calls them the “criminals” or the the “terrorists.” During the 1930s, this was the normal practice. Looking back, we refer to Stalin’s “Great Terror,” but at the time it was the Stalinists who controlled the language. Today in Berlin stands an important museum called "Topography of Terror"; during the era it documents, it was the Jews and the chosen enemies of the regime who were called "terrorists." Yesterday in the White House, the Salvadoran president showed the way, referring to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a "terrorist" without any basis whatsoever. The Americans treated him as a criminal, even though he was charged with no crime.

The first part of controlling the language is inverting the meaning: whatever the government does is good, because by definition the its victims are the "criminals" and the "terrorists." The second part is deterring the press, or anyone else, from challenging the perversion by associating anyone who objects with crime and terror. This was the role Stephen Miller played when he said yesterday in the White House that reporters "want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children." 

The control of language is necessary to undermine a legal or constitutional order. Our rule of law begins with notions such as the people and their rights. If politicians shift the framework to "criminals" and "terrorism," then they are shifting the purpose of the state.

In the United States, we are governed by a Constitution. Basic to the Constitution is habeas corpus, the notion that the government cannot seize your body without a legal justification for doing so. If that does not hold, then nothing else does. If we have the law, then violence may not be committed by one person against another on the basis of namecalling or strong feelings. This applies to everyone, above all to the president, whose constitutional function is to enforce the laws.

Trump spoke of asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to find legal ways to abduct Americans and leave them in foreign concentration camps. But by "legal" what is meant are ways of escaping law, not applying it.

It is that anti-constitutional escapism that enables abuse. State terror involves not just the malignant development of state organs of oppression, such as masked men in black vans, but also the withdrawal of the state from its role as a guardian of law. What aspiring tyrants present as "strength," the ability to terrorize innocent people, rests on what might be seen as a more fundamental weakness, which is the withdrawal of the state from the principle of the rule of law. When we have law, we are all stronger; when we lack law, everyone is weaker except for the very few who can direct the coercive power of the state against the rest of us.

In the history of state terror, the escape from law into coercion takes three forms, all of which were on display, incipiently, in the White House yesterday: the leader principle; the state of exception; and the zone of statelessness.

The leader principle, or in German Führerprinzip, is the idea that a single individual directly represents the people, and that therefore all of his actions are by definition legal and proper. In discussions in the White House and thereafter, we see this notion being advanced. Trump's advisors claim that what he is doing is popular. The claim (as in legal filings) that the president is acting from a personal "mandate" from the people has the same problem. Asked on Fox News about the abduction of Americans and their transfer to foreign gulags, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “these are Americans he is saying who have committed the most heinous crimes in our country.” If it comes down to what “he is saying,” then he is a dictator and the U.S. is a dictatorship. Trump spoke of the need to deport people who "hate our country" or who are "stupid."

The second escape from law is the state of exception. In principle, the Soviet Union was governed by law. Before its greatest exercises of terror, however, the Soviet authorities declared for themselves states of exception. This meant that, on the territory of the Soviet Union itself, it was "legal" (in Bondi's and in Trump's sense) to abduct people and send them to concentration camps: authorities claimed that there was some sort of threat, and so protections could be withdrawn and procedures set aside. People could be abducted in black vans and executed or sent to a camp, "legally," in the sense that the law had been set aside. The notion of the state of exception, important to Soviet practice, was at the center of Nazi theory. As the leading Nazi thinker Carl Schmitt argued, the sovereign is the person who can make an exception. If we are living in normal times, then we think we should be governed by law. But if politicians can use words to make us think that these are exceptional times, then we might accept their lawlessness.

A simple way to escape from law is to move people bodily into a physical zone of exception in which the law (it is claimed) does not apply. Other methods take more time. It is possible to pass laws that deprive people of their rights in their own country. It is possible to carve out spaces on one's own territory where the law does not function. These spaces are concentration camps. In the end, authorities can choose, as in Nazi Germany, to physically remove their citizens into zones beyond their own countries in which they can simply declare that the law does not matter. 

This exploitation of purported stateless zones was the main line of the history of the Holocaust. Under Hitler, the Germans did have concentration camps on their own territory, and they did reduce Jews to second-class citizenship, and they did live under a permanent state of exception. But, in the main, the mass murder of German Jews was achieved by their abduction and forced rendition to sites beyond prewar German territory where, German authorities claimed, there was no law.

A probing of this statelessness approach was on display yesterday, as Trump and his advisors claimed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of the United States whom US authorities abducted by mistake and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador, was now beyond the reach of American law. This is state terror: the state is presented as "strong" in its oppression of a person, but as weak in its ability to respect or enforce law. The idea that the United States can send you to places from which it cannot bring you back is the theoretical basis for a doctrine of statelessness. Call it the Rubio Doctrine: in the words of the secretary of state, "the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the President of the United States, not by a court." But what that implies is that people forcibly transported beyond the boundaries of the United States can be incarcerated or killed for no reason. That would be "foreign policy."

Will citizenship save people? Obviously it is better to be a citizen than not. Citizenship provides some protection, at least by comparison with its absence, or with statelessness. The problem, though, is that citizens can find themselves borne along with the rationales applied to non-citizens. If we accept that Trump exercises power because of the Führerprinzip, then what is to stop him from saying that the people want to see the forcible rendition of “homegrowns,” of "really bad people, every bit as bad as the ones coming in." If citizens accept that we are living in a state of exception, then they are also accepting that they too can be treated exceptionally. Perhaps worst of all, if citizens accept the notion of stateless zones, of law that only functions as the servant of power, they are inviting their own deportation to places from which we will never return.

If citizens endorse the idea that people named by authorities as "criminals" or "terrorists" have no right to due process, then they are accepting that they themselves have no right to due process. It is due process, and due process alone, that allows you to demonstrate that you are a citizen. Without it, the masked men in the black vans can simply claim that you are a foreign terrorist and disappear you.

Horrible though all of this is, it is still state terror in outline, a test of how Americans will react. We can react by seeing all of this for what it is, and naming it by name: incipient state terror. We can react by associating ourselves with others are repressed before we are. Only in solidarity do we affirm law. We can remind the other branches of government that their functions are being taken over by the executive. Citizens cannot do this alone; they have to remind the rest of the government of its constitutional functions.

The president is claiming core congressional responsibilities when he asserts personal control of immigration policy, criminal law, and the funding of forcible renditions. Congress could very easily pass laws, if a few Republicans found the courage. The president is claiming core judicial functions when he defines himself as judge, jury, and, in the case for forcible renditions to El Salvador, de facto executioner. The phrase "contempt of court" took on vivid life in the White House yesterday.

Even these most basic institutions, the ones defined by our Constitution, do not act on their own. To a very sad degree, Supreme Court justices and members of Congress are already complicit in this experiment in state terror. They might find their way back to an America in which their offices have meaning, but only with the help of we the people.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

"THERE'S NO MENTAL HEALTH UNDER BOMBING AND COLONIAL OCCUPATION": Open letter from Brazilian psychology associations calling for an end to the violence against the Palestinian people

We call on all people, the international community, especially mental health professionals, to work towards a non-violent and definitive solution to the ongoing conflict, to take concrete actions for an immediate ceasefire in the area, and for the ending of the brutal colonialism in place. We also emphasize the importance of opening the borders to humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people.

In these last days, Israel’s brutal and cruel bombing in the Gaza Strip – a territory that has been besieged by Israel for the last 17 years – has resulted in  the deaths of more than 8,000 Palestinian (including more than 3,400 children), and more than 20,000 injured people. Alongside, millions of people have been forcibly displaced and deprived of basic needs (PRCS, 2023)[1].

However, the figures fail to represent the current reality, as the death toll and injuries rise second by second.Israeli air strikes destroyed more than half of Palestinian residences, besides deliberate attacks on hospitals, schools and universities, erupting a massive humanitarian crisis.

We also condemn and deplore the violence against Israeli civilians, victims of Hamas’ violent retaliation, especially because it has affected innocent people, many of whom are still kidnapped.

Recent statements released by an official representative of the Israeli governmentrefered to Palestinian people as “human animals”[2]. Accordingly, the entire Gaza population  be held like hostages, through a complete blockade of food, water, electricity, fuel and medicines. Israel very recently blocked access to internet signals, isolating Gaza from the rest of world. (MSF, 2023)[3]

The collective punishing of innocent people constitutes a war crime and, hence, must be strongly condemned. (ICRC, 2022).[4] We consider that Israeli government pronouncements have amplified the racist ideology, relying on international impunity and compliance. Xenophobia reinforcement turns migrants, refugees and stateless people – not just Palestinians – the main victims of the dehumanising discourse.

It’s crucial to keep an eye on what’s going on in Gaza: 2.2 million people – most of whom were already displaced migrants from historic Palestinian territories irregularly occupied by Israel – have been living in an open-air prison for 17 years[5]. Israel determines what comes in and out of Gaza: people, energy, food, medicine, fuel and humanitarian aid. Whole families have their homes destroyed by bombings, children are born and die surrounded by walls, and their national identity and existence as a people have been denied for decades.

The systematic ethnic cleansing of a walls-confined population living under a military siege by air, land and sea is undoubtedly a horrendous crime.. The colonial measure imposed on this population, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank and other parts of historic Palestine, has already produced 6.1 million Palestinian refugees (UNRWA, 2023)[6].

While witnessing the unacceptable thousands of deaths, we note with concern the harassment and attempt to silence supports of Palestinian rights. Under any circumstance, it should be acceptable to persecute those who denounce the existence of stateless people living in apartheid conditions.

These claims are incontestable. The UN Human Rights Council 2022[7] presented a report pointing out 3 essential elements: Palestine is strictly an open-air prison, the largest prison in the world; there is an apartheid regime throughout Palestine; and some aspects of everyday life in Gaza share similarities to a concentration camp. None of this began on the 7th of October 2023. There is nothing new except for the intensification of war propaganda against the Palestinian people. That can be named as Media Genocide, which is the intentional elimination of a people through war propaganda and, the circulation of false news and narratives.

The Palestinian struggle is also a struggle to be waged in Brazil.. We perceive the Palestinian tragedy as deeply connected to the war against the poor, Black people and traditional communities in our country. The same logic of racial and ethnic supremacy relies on Brazilian whiteness, which justifies police incursions into favelas systematically murdering Black people including children, teenagers and young people. It is important to emphasise that there are numerous agreements between the Brazilian security forces and the Israeli armed forces, with Brazil being one of the biggest markets of Israel’s arms industry[8]. Israeli ammunition finds Black and peripheral Brazilian bodies.

The supremacist rhetoric of brutalisation and dehumanisation has historically been denounced by the Black movement in Brazil, for example in the context of the former South African apartheid regime and also in international solidarity actions for the Palestinian people. Black liberation movements have also experienced the ideological condemnation of their freedom efforts, which were labelled under the rubric of “terrorists”. The dehumanisation of Black people is also the dehumanisation of the Arab people, a violence consolidated by the whiteness global alliance and its genocide and ethnocide practice.

THE SOCIAL COMMITMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY IN DEFENSE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

We, as psychologists committed to every human life’s dignity, guided by the Fundamental Principles of our Ethic Code, urge for a radical commitment to the anti-racist and anti-genocide struggle, which is connected to the ethical and political duty of psychology.

We call on our professional category and psychology students to bravely tackle this issue affecting the whole world. A call to fulfill  our ethical duty to uphold human dignity, by keeping a critical distance from war propaganda and demanding humane and dignified relations throughout all the ongoing situations.

Almost every child or teenager in Gaza has been born in a state of segregation, a situation that combined with constant attacks, and the side effects of the siege and occupation has been triggering severe psychological distress and psychiatric disorders[9]. The colonial and apartheid regime imposed on Palestinians, described in six reports released by United Nations and recognised by several humanitarian organizations, including Amnesty International,  are social determinants of mental health deterioration.[10].

Therefore, a historical analysis of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, the Nakba effects and the 1948 catastrophe is essential. Psychology, as a science and a profession, must reject superficial or improper analyses in this sense. We criticize institutions and associations in the mental health field whose statements endorse the dehumanising rhetoric worldwide spread. For instance, the APA declaration[11] neglected the Palestinian historical context, disregardingthe violence imposed on the besieged Gaza population. There is no mention of the terrible bombing of the small enclave [a territory or part of a territory surrounded by another state] affecting Palestinians in an incomparable way to Israelis. We consider that these statements[12] ignore contingencies such as precarious mental health, besides amplifying the collective trauma resulting from decades of oppression, continuous violence, humiliation and injustice inflicted by Israel’s occupation.

Politics and mental health cannot be dichotomised. One cannot analyse the occupation of Palestine without examining the strategies of dehumanisation, and the stripping of dignity and life of the Palestinian people.

The dehumanisation of Palestinian lives – whether in deeds or speeches – normalises Palestinian suffering, as if it was natural, obvious and impossible to stop. Palestinians have been vocalising their suffering for decades and pleading for visibility to the international community. They do so in countless non-violent ways: resisting every minute, every second, to avoid disappearing. They produce art, music, and poetry. They cultivate and care for their original land and territory.

Until we see a Palestine free of Israeli colonial domination, no number of bombs will extinguish the innate desire to live with dignity. In this way, the Palestinian resistance is incurable, quoting Mahmoud Darwish.

As psychologists, we understand and accept the historic call to stand alongside the Palestinian people. The complicity with mass genocide, ethnic cleansing and the murder of children in particular, shall not be in our name.

We condemn the system of segregation, discrimination and collective punishment imposed on Palestine. There is an urgent need to build peace, which only comes through the consolidation of the Palestinian State and establishing a regime that respects the universal rights of all those who live in the region.

The Palestinian people – like all people in their self-determination – need to be able to exist beyond the imposed walls, the barbed wires, the refugee camps and all the dehumanisation: they need to be able to make their contribution to the beautiful story, yet to be built, of collective emancipation and the development of the humankind.

Link to the letter.

Link if you wish to sign it.

[horizon-verizon]

Calling Daenerys a “colonizer” or an “imperialist” is actually genuinely insane because both her ancestors and her personally are culturally Essosi, and Valyria was itself a big factor in why slavery exists in Essos at the scale it does at all. While Slavers Bay was part of Old Ghis thousands of years ago, it spent an equally sizable and influencial part of its history being part of Valyria, to the point where several of the masters we encountered spoke Valyrian as their first language. She’s not an outsider, and there is no cultural misunderstanding. Outside of the abhorrent practice of slavery, she is attempting to fit in culturally, right down to wearing a tokar.

Some people already explained how it’s not allegorically operation Iraqi freedom from an authorial standpoint, but also, just from a purely political standpoint, Slaver’s Bay is a massive imperialist force itself. It’s not an unstable developing region, and Daenerys is not an agent of a powerful foreign empire attempting to destabilize it for the enrichment and strengthening of that empire. She is a singular individual and former bridal slave being followed by a truly stateless group of former enslaved people from hundreds of different places who herself has literally nothing to gain by staying there. Any allegory to US intervention in the Global South fundamentally falls apart when you think about it for three seconds, because the Slaver’s Bay itself is more akin to the US than it is to any nation in the Global South. (Which is also why it has so many powerful allies in other slavery-practicing parts of Essos trying to get her gone.) It’s a powerful imperialist machine. It also falls apart because it requires to deliberately misunderstand why the US has the intervention policies it does (hint, it’s not actually to spread freedom and democracy. It’s to steal resources.) There are no resources Daenerys needs in Meereen, and she actually is interested in and working towards the longterm stability and improvement of the lives of the people there, which is why she didn’t just fuck off to Westeros (or at least Pentos until her dragons grew) after Astapor.

And her haters keep regurgitating the “she just killed 163 random slavers and didn’t find out who ackshulllyyyy was responsible” talking point, but contrary to the show, there was no poor sad little Hizdar’s daddy who was really really so sad about the 163 murdered enslaved children. Because that’s not how anything works. Killing 163 children to intimidate Daenerys was not something that a few bad eggs got together and did by themselves, it was an official act of the state. The state in Meereen is collectively run by the masters, and organizing that kind of deliberate, calculated horrific action, from planning to execution, is the collective responsibility of all of the officials in the state. Every single one of them was as guilty as the next and the only problem there was symbolically only killing 163 of them instead of the all of them.

just from a purely political standpoint, Slaver’s Bay is a massive imperialist force itself. It’s not an unstable developing region, and Daenerys is not an agent of a powerful foreign empire attempting to destabilize it for the enrichment and strengthening of that empire...Any allegory to US intervention in the Global South fundamentally falls apart when you think about it for three seconds, because the Slaver’s Bay itself is more akin to the US than it is to any nation in the Global South. (Which is also why it has so many powerful allies in other slavery-practicing parts of Essos trying to get her gone.) It’s a powerful imperialist machine. It also falls apart because it requires to deliberately misunderstand why the US has the intervention policies it does (hint, it’s not actually to spread freedom and democracy. It’s to steal resources.)

Absolutely, but they'll almost never admit to that (unless it's like that blonde whitey on TikTok who blase said she'd be fine with Southern states integrating slavery) part of U.S. liberalism is disguised conservatism bc white supremacy.

[eretzyisrael]

Remembering the Moroccan Jews who were murdered at Auschwitz

As we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, let us remember the Moroccan Jews who were living in France and were sent to their deaths. La Voix Sepharade (Mai/juin 1986) has a full list (with thanks Ariel):

In France the Vichy regime was in place after June 1940. It zealously gathered the stateless Jews and sent them to the camp at Drancy, a way station to the Polish death camps where they were gassed on arrival. ten percent were selected for forced labour.

The Germans left behind meticulously detailed lists. Some 157 Jews of Moroccan origin were murdered at Auschwitz; 13 survived. The eldest Messaoud Aknine of Tangier  was 73. The youngest, Michel Dray was one year old.

They came from all over Morocco – Ouezzane, Rabat, Mellila, Mogador, Tiaret.

The Moroccan families lived in isolation; at least one of their members was born in France or elsewhere in Europe. They received no aid or assistance. Take the Dray family from Casablanca. The parents were on Convoy 57 of 18 July 1943. Their children  were on convoy 66 of 20 January 1944.

The Nazis were waging a ruthless war against all Jews – regardless of where they came from.

[hasufin]

Radical Reinterpretation

In the novel 1984, they had Newspeak. It was like English, but not English. It was a language which allowed the Party to define what things meant.

While people talk about things like “Doubleplusungood”, the real power is in redefining existing words. If you can change what a word means, not only do you control what you say you also control what everyone else says and has said in the past.

The USA has jus soli “right of soil” citizenship, meaning that anyone born on US soil is a US citizen. This is a powerful thing for America. Historically, it was used to assure that black slaves were legally full US citizens, a right which had been denied to them prior to the American Civil War. It has another important benefit: the USA does not, and cannot, have generations of stateless residents. Although some may find that objectionable, it has been beneficial to the country.

This right is found in the 14th amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside

Now a reasonable interpretation to this would hold that anyone born in the USA save for the children of foreign diplomats (who have Diplomatic Immunity) are automatically US citizens.

In recent years, opponents of this right have advanced the claim that persons who are not here legally are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and therefore their children should not be allowed US citizenship. Of course, illegal immigrants who are held in US prisons are somehow not afforded diplomatic privileges.

One would say that in order to end jus soli citizenship, the 14th amendment would have to be repealed. This is not the case. If the current Chief Executive decides on a reinterpretation of the words ”subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and the courts allow it, then effectively the Executive and Judiciary branches will have changed the Constitution without involving the Legislative branch.

It is worth noting that the current SCOTUS has not shrunk from overturning precedent and radically reinterpreting words when it suits their goals.

Such a rewrite of a crucial right in the Constitution would have dire effects on the country.

Realistically, the current administration has no more ability to reduce illegal immigration than prior administrations; it is engaging in showy and brutal measures, but is not targeting the root causes. So there will still be a substantial population of undocumented people in America - but such a policy will create a further population of stateless individuals, assuring legal problems and severe unrest in future generations. This has not worked out well for any other country, and will not work out well for the USA.

It will deter legal immigration: this places the children of H-1b visaholders in limbo, and even if the current laws do not directly affect them, a sensible person will realize that US law is becoming increasingly xenophobic and the country is not safe for anyone presenting as foreign regardless of their legal status.

It could be used to disenfranchise large numbers of American citizens: a citizen could be challenged to not only prove their own US citizenship but also that of their parents. While likely not resulting in deportation or putting people in concentration camps, it could be used as an excuse to deny voting registration. Notably, this would particularly affect college-educated liberals who often move away from their families after graduation, and would find it onerous to prove the citizenship of family members who live many states away. (It might hurt some conservatives too, but if it disproportionately hurts liberals, republicans are okay with it).

In a larger issue, this sets precedent to essentially suspend entire rights by radical reinterpretation. For example, Article VI of the US Constitution states “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Current interpretation being that you cannot bar someone from public office based on their religion, or lack thereof. However, the Constitution does not explain what constitutes a religious test. A new interpretation would hold that this simply means you cannot require a person to perform a particular religious act or answer any questions about religion as a condition of public office; but requiring someone to be a member of a church (likely under the guise of “demonstrating membership in good standing within the community”) does not constitute a religious test, as it does not specify a particular church nor any particular religious practice. And, of course, local authorities would be allowed to determine which churches are actually members of the community. Such a reinterpretation could be used to deny public service to anyone who is not a member of an organized religion, and even to specify which organized religions can participate in government, while maintaining the façade of religious freedom.

Rewriting laws by redefining words is a powerful tool in the authoritarian playbook, and makes a mockery of the entire concept of the rule of law.

[dyinginfandom]

Been trying to put my frustration with what Israel is doing in Gaza into words for months. But I’m done with the bullshit from Zionists and their supporters

My grandfather was Hungarian and as part of a non political paramilitary youth organisation likely had to have a hand in the war I know this from his POW papers from 1945 in an American pow camp in Germany . He would later flee the soviets in Hungary after taking part in their attempted revolution. He abandoned his family; a wife and son and we don’t know what their fates were. He first went to Austria then to Turkey then the uk where he met my gran and they married in 1963 and moved away from her entire support system to a city with many Hungarian refugees like him working in cutlery works and steel factories. He’d never talk of the war or of his first family past them existing, his siblings families don’t know their fates other and with no one from his generation left we can only guess. He was an awful man who died an awful death alone because of his own actions.

I use this to preface what I’m about to say

He was forced to take part in a genocide and support it, I’m watching my government do that now, watching as universities label anti Zionism as antisemitism while my uni hosts one of the Brits who went over and fought for the IDF and was allowed to return while a girl who joined isis almost a decade ago just lost her appeal for her citizenship back. Both went over to partake in a foreign war and commit acts of terror, one is stateless and the other is allowed to walk around with no consequences. We aren’t allowed to protest on campus so the Palestine society held one off campus to try and stop him from visiting.

The university of east anglia has labelled these two quotes graffitied on campus as antisemitic and the BBC is reporting on this as such, antisemitism. They are anti Zionist. ‘Judaism opposes Zionism’ and ‘Zionism = colonialism’.

Aaron Bushnell an active duty US service man set himself on fire in protest of the war on Gaza.

Brazil’s president spoke out against the Zionism and Israel decided to have a word with the Brazilian ambassador but knowing what was coming Brazil recalled him

China has called out that Hamas should not be labelled as terrorist under international law as it is armed resistance.

Countries have cut funding to the UNRWA a relief group that exists because Israel refuses to call the Palestinians refugees or allow their return to their ancestral homes once it has stolen it

Israel is knowingly committing a genocide and has said it won’t listen to the ICJ

They are killing their own hostages that are being held by Palestine then cheering when 2 are saved while others lay dead murdered by their own hands.

They are executing young children in front of their parents who are then carrying them to hospital to hope for salvation.

They’re stealing belongings from walking canes to underwear from those they’ve killed or displaced to humiliate them for owning normal things.

They killed the Family of a six year old girl, Hind, while she was in the car with them then when the Red Crescent ambulance arrived which they allowed in they bombed it and killed her and the two paramedics, Ahmed and Yousef, who were there to save her.

During the Super Bowl they displayed propaganda while they bombed Rafah, the safe Zone they had told people to go to. There was a little girl, Sidra, hanging from a window!

They are targeting journalists and their families. Wael’s family was killed while he worked and he was reported, he was attacked with his camera man who was killed and he reported on it. Over 25 journalists killed

They have attacked every place where documents can be found to destroy them, mosques, churches, government buildings, universities, everything gone.

Egypt is building a buffer zone in the desert, Bissan a brave young journalist has talked of her fear of this desert buffer zone killing them

Canada has removed Palestine as a country of birth on passports

ITV filmed as a man with a white flag they had just interviewed and was walking way as he was murdered by a sniper

In the West Bank IDF shot a teenager at a family bbq then prevented his family getting him to an ambulance

Also in West Bank IDF dressed up as civilians walked into a hospital and assassinated a man incapacitated in a hospital bed and those at his bedside

THEY HAVE LABELLED ALL PALESTINIANS AS TERRORISTS!

Heck they’re allowed to stay in Eurovision, ‘October rain’ in name alone has political connotations meanwhile Russia and Belarus are banned and the Palestine flag has been banned - Iceland was fined the other year for a free Palestine banner.

This occupation, this genocide has been happening for over 75 years since the creation of Israel in the aftermath of ww2 but their want for this land goes back further. When Zionism was founded in the late 1800s they chose Palestine, a peaceful place where the abrahamic religions lived in peace, to be their land and no one else’s (did we not learn from the crusades?) in 1903 they got the support of the British govement then ww2 and the Holocaust happened and Britain ‘owning’ Palestine gave them what they wanted, Palestinians who had not been consulted or considered in this who’s homes were stolen fought against it and you get the war of 1948 where this kicks off.

When you look at their defenses for this we have ‘self defence for October 7th’ that isn’t an excuse for genocide and reminds me of Germany faking a polish invasion to invade them and kick off ww2. ‘They have hostages’ so do you and you’ve refused to exchange hostages for a ceasefire heck you’ve killed your own hostages in Gaza. ‘Palestine started it’ see my very very cut down explanation of the history.

Then there’s the classic ‘we can’t be committing a holocaust cos that happened to us’ see the cycle of abuse, the number of Holocaust survivors in poverty in Israel, and the other victims of the Holocaust cos everyone focuses just on the Jewish casualties of the Holocaust that 6 million number cos they’re the biggest proportion but there were 5 million other victims, political enemies of the reich, disabled people, lgbt, poc, Romani, Soviet pows, by making the Holocaust just a Jewish genocide in discussion you erase the rest of that genocide.

I put on les mis for a fanfic I’m writing and all I can think about instead of what I’m writing is what Palestine was and how we treat Palestine today.

I was labelled a nazi for my heritage growing up, just like Israel is calling Palestinian children Hamas. Only difference is that Hamas is closer to those of the Warsaw Getto or the French resistance than the Nazis. Because Israel’s laws against Palestine are extremely close to the Nazi laws against the Jews.

End Zionism on Israel and return Palestine to the Palestinians

FREE PALESTINE

[god-i-love-deserts]

Lower half-hidden for mentions of human trafficking:

Ok, headcanon from discord I'm posting here: Talon has no official nationality and is stateless. His heritage is wildly scattered around West and Central Asia making it next to impossible to track down any biological family whom he likely inherited his statelessness from. As a result of not having any legal status, he’s not given many good options outside of his living with his uncle.Since statelessness means not having access to social services, healthcare, a formal education, or several basic human rights, he's always had a knack for finding ways around the system, albeit through illegal means (ie. Identity fraud).The lack of formal education can also explain away how he didn't know what photosynthesis was. Why would he bother with primary school stuff he doesn't need to know when all the useful information is taught in colleges with gullible students who don't properly dispose of bank statements, uses IPNs while on public wifi, post personal information, and drunkenly leave important stuffs (wallets, credit cards, IDs) lying around at parties. Kids don't usually carry IDs, but I don't think he’d take those from kids if they did. Maybe cash if they're a little fiend.I also believe that he wouldn't have had a chance at a formal education in the first place.

How does a kid from maybe Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, or wherever, end up with Claw? Given that stateless individuals, particularly women and children are more at risk of falling victim to human trafficking, I submit this headcanon: Claw meets ‘Talon’ somewhere in central Asia while supplying weapons to an extremist faction, being ‘forcefully adopted’ himself and needing a successor, he continues the cycle and takes the newly dubbed ‘Talon’ under his care. In doing so, Claw hammers the final nail in his proverbial coffin, mirroring his ‘Mother’s’ actions when taking in her successors, ‘Claw’ and ‘Thaw’. The cycle of abuse will repeat for another generation, but Talon escapes what could have been a worse fate. Then again, fated to be a villain isn't much better. Luckily the titular character, Inspector Gadget, defied fate by not dying to a poorly disposed banana peel, so there may be a little hope for Talon.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

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 CalMatters

WhatMatters

Your guide to California policy and politics

By Lynn La

January 22, 2025

Presented by Uber, Alibaba and Californians for Energy Independence

Good morning, California.

CA sues Trump administration over ‘birthright’ order

Attorney General Rob Bonta discusses the state’s efforts to protect the rights of immigrants at the San Francisco Public Library’s Bernal Heights branch in San Francisco on Dec. 4, 2024. Photo by Jeff Chiu, AP Photo

From CalMatters criminal justice reporter Nigel Duara:

Resistance state Round 2 officially began Tuesday when California filed its first lawsuit against the new Donald Trump administration.

Eighteen states, including California, filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging an executive order by Trump that would revoke the right of guaranteed citizenship to anyone born in the country. 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, at a Tuesday press conference: “I am deeply disappointed that we’re here, and also not at all surprised. This isn’t some theoretical legal disagreement. It would strip Americans of their most basic rights.” 

Bonta and the other attorneys general are asking the court for an immediate injunction to stop the order from taking effect on Feb. 19 while they litigate the case in United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 

The attorneys general sued on grounds that the order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Immigration and Nationality Act by denying birthright citizenship to children born in the U.S.

“Under the order, such children born after February 19, 2025 — who would have been unquestionably deemed citizens had they been born two days ago — will lack any legal status in the eyes of the federal government,” the lawsuit asserts. “They will all be deportable, and many will be stateless. They will lose the ability to access myriad federal services that are available to their fellow Americans.”

The order would also affect how, and whether, states can provide health care to low-income children who would be denied citizenship, the lawsuit alleges. In California, that’s Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program and the federal Children's Health Insurance Program.

The executive order asserts that undocumented people are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., and therefore not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Daniel Farber, faculty director of UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment, said the Trump administration’s argument likely faces long odds in court. 

Farber: “I think there's virtually no support among experts for the view that people who are born in the U.S. and whose parents aren't lawfully in the country are somehow not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Lawsuit tracker: With Trump’s term underway, CalMatters is tracking the lawsuits California is filing against the administration. Check it out here.

 How will Trump’s second presidency affect your corner of California? CalMatters is working with public radio partners to gather perspectives across the state. Share your thoughts here.Focus on Inland Empire: Each Wednesday, CalMatters Inland Empire reporter Deborah Brennan surveys the big stories from that part of California. Read her newsletter and sign up here to receive it.

 Other Stories You Should Know

 Trump seeks to overhaul CA water deliveries

An aerial view of the California Aqueduct on Dec. 15, 2021. Photo by Aude Guerrucci, Reuters

Besides the litany of executive orders, Trump also directed his administration Monday to route more water sourced from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to people in “other parts of the state … who desperately need a reliable water supply.” 

But his memo is causing confusion among some environmental experts, writes CalMatters’ Alastair Bland.

The memo calls for reinstating rules drafted during Trump’s first term in 2019, which would override an alternate proposal — unveiled in December but years in the making — developed by the Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom administrations. 

In comparison to this plan, Trump wrote his rules “would have allowed enormous amounts of water to flow” to the Central Valley and Southern California, and that currently, “enormous water supply flows wastefully into the Pacific Ocean.”

But there’s one hitch: The Biden and Newsom plan would actually send more water to Southern California than Trump’s, according to an environmental analysis of the plan.

Jon Rosenfield, science director with the environmental watchdog group San Francisco Baykeeper: “It’s not worded with any precision and it embeds a lot of false premises. It shows an incredible lack of understanding of how California water works.”

Read more here.

 

Budgeting for CA wildfire aid

A play area smolders at the Palisades Elementary Charter School in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 8, 2025. Photo by Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Lawmakers serving on the budget committees for the ongoing special session plan to consider today two bills that, together, would set aside as much as $2.5 billion in state funding for wildfire response and preparedness.

The proposals, which the Legislature could pass as early as Thursday, would provide $1 billion for cleanup and recovery for communities affected by the wildfires currently burning in Los Angeles County. The other $1.5 billion would come from the climate bond voters approved in November to prepare California for other natural disasters.

Of the $1 billion in recovery money, $1 million would specifically go towards rebuilding affected schools. As CalMatters’ Carolyn Jones explains, at least a dozen schools have been damaged, including at least five that were completely ruined.

Money from a recently-passed bond measure for repairing school facilities is also expected to help. The state is likely to prioritize schools devastated by the fires — meaning some schools still in dire need of critical repairs could miss out.

Read more here.

Wildfire newsletter: CalMatters is teaming up with PBS SoCal, LAist and KCRW to offer a free newsletter that delivers new and accurate information about the Southern California fires. Read an edition and subscribe.

 California Voices

CalMatters columnist Dan Walters: The L.A.-area fires add another layer to an already fraught relationship between the two egocentric political figures of Trump and Newsom.

California Voices Deputy Editor Denise Amos: As an intern working for the public transportation agency that employs her father, one L.A. college student aspires to lead the agency altogether.

 

 

Other things worth your time:

 

Some stories may require a subscription to read.

 Southern CA is about to get its first rain in months. Here’s what it means for the fires // Los Angeles Times 

With fires coming under control, LA preps for mudslides // LAist

Western Altadena got evacuation order many hours after deadly Eaton Fire exploded // Los Angeles Times

Trump’s choice for No. 2 education job has Sacramento ties // EdSource

Migrants waiting in Tijuana feel immediate sting of Trump’s border crackdown // The San Diego Union-Tribune

Mexican consulate ‘working tirelessly’ to protect immigrants’ rights in Central CA // The Fresno Bee

Two Americans freed in prisoner swap for Taliban figure held in CA // The Guardian

Huntington Beach is tackling libraries — again // LAist

Former San José police union director will serve no jail time for smuggling opioids // KQED

 

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[mariacallous]

The path to Palestinian statehood has been crushed beneath an avalanche of bombs, bullets, smoke, and fire. “After Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a prepared statement in January.

What little hard-earned trust there was between Israelis and Palestinians has been shattered both by the slaughter of civilians by Hamas in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7, 2023—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust—and the subsequent war between Hamas and Israel. More than 30,000 Palestinians have now died, the majority of whom were civilians. Violent resistance has failed Palestinians—and empowered extremists in Israel.

In the Israeli collective psyche, Oct. 7 was a tremendous violation because of the sneak nature of the attack, the dismembering and burning of corpses, the use of systemic rape as a weapon of war, and the targeting of civilians including children in kibbutzim and attendees at a music festival. There is little appetite for peace with the perpetuators.

In Gaza, meanwhile, Israel is carrying out a brutal and unremitting war that has buried countless children under rubble and seen the destruction of more than half of all houses as well as libraries, court houses, hospitals, and all of the territory’s universities. Many Palestinians view the Israeli military offensive as an attempted genocide. The greater part of the Palestinian political spectrum, including both Fatah and Hamas, broadly support the South African case in the International Court of Justice.

Yet there is little hope of real victory for either side. Even today, parts of Gaza remain under Hamas control, and the top figurehead commanders inside Gaza who oversaw the planning and execution of the Al-Aqsa Flood—Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif—have not been captured or killed. The Hamas political leadership outside Palestine is, for the most part, also still at large—top Hamas political bureau members Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Meshal, and Mousa Abu Marzook are still alive, while Saleh Al-Arouri was assassinated by Israel in Beirut on Jan. 2.

Both sides have hardened against a two-state solution. In a Jan. 16 interview, Meshal dismissed the possibility of a two-state solution and said the Oct. 7 assault on Israel proved that liberating Palestine “from the river to the sea” is a realistic idea. In November, another Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hammad pledged that Hamas would “repeat October 7 again and again” until they achieved their goals—the total destruction of Israel and a Palestinian state throughout the entirety of the land.

Strategically, this makes no sense. While occupied people have a right to violently resist military occupation, for relatively disempowered people, trying to assert their cause through advocacy and negotiation is a much more fruitful domain than violence because it relies on force of argument rather than military might.

The Palestinian case for self-determination—like any stateless people—is bulletproof, even if Palestinians themselves are not. The principle of self-determination is enshrined in the U.N. Charter, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Palestinians have an inalienable right to rule themselves in the land on which they live.

The trouble is that Hamas’ demands go far beyond demanding self-governance. What they and Palestinian anti-Zionists demand is the right to extinguish their neighbor’s self-governance, and conquer their neighbor’s territory. It’s the same right that Israeli extremists claim as they prepare new settlements on the West Bank—and even dream of seizing land in Gaza.

This overarching narrative of Palestinian resistance against the existence of any kind of Israel or Zionism has been deeply embedded into the cause since the start of the conflict—and has produced little but tragedy for Palestinians. Since before 1948, the use of force to resist Zionist presence in the land was normalized and glorified. Muslim leaders such as the Grand Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini refused to permit the establishment of any kind of Jewish state at the heart of the Arab world on what they held to be Islamic land. This absolute rejectionism fueled the anti-Zionist pogroms of the 1920s and 1930s, and spurred the Arab Palestinian factions to try to extinguish the newly created state of Israel in 1947 to 1948.

It was only in the 1990s that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) renounced the strategy of violence, recognized Israel, and switched toward a strategy of diplomacy and negotiation. But this did not last very long. After the failure to agree upon a negotiated two-state solution at Camp David, Yasser Arafat gave his blessing to armed groups including Hamas to initiate a Second Intifada, perhaps as an attempt to achieve greater negotiating leverage and further Israeli concessions. Hamas’ takeover of Gaza and their war against Israel is simply a continuation of this long history of anti-Zionism.

Of course, this approach has failed to achieve both Hamas’ objective of eradicating Israel, and also failed to grant Palestinians any kind of state. So why is this?

Reliance on violence fuels a cycle of violence. This cycle of violence has led to severe Israeli retaliation, exacerbating the suffering of civilians and leading to deep humanitarian crises, cruelly visible in Gaza today. The use of violence has sabotaged the Palestinian cause on the international stage. Violent tactics have frequently been used to justify the delegitimization of Palestinians, and serve as an excuse to prolong the occupation of the Palestinian Territories by Israel. Horrific acts such as those of Oct. 7 alienate potential allies and supporters, particularly in the Western world.

This is not to mention the internal Palestinian political landscape. The split between Hamas and the PLO over tactics, strategy, and goals has fragmented Palestinians. This has made it more challenging—if not nigh on impossible—to present any kind of united front in negotiations with Israel and the international community.

The Israeli right has used Palestinian fragmentation as a way to prevent the development of a two-state solution. According to the Jerusalem Post, in 2019 Netanyahu admitted as much when he told a private meeting of his Likud party that bolstering Hamas was part of his strategy to help maintain a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Yet the use of peaceful protests and strategies has also faced significant challenges. Despite the moral and ethical superiority of nonviolent resistance, its effectiveness in the Palestinian context has been limited due to several factors. Peaceful protests often receive less media attention compared to violent conflicts simply because they are of lower impact and lack the visceral shock of terrorism.

This lack of visibility can limit the impact on the global stage, making it harder to garner any kind of recognition or negotiation leverage. While violence might isolate Palestinians on the world stage, the dramatic and attention-grabbing nature of violent attacks helps to bolster Hamas’ standing on the Palestinian street, where they are seen to be the ones doing something—anything—to fight for the Palestinian cause.

Beyond this, peaceful protests have often been met with heavy-handed responses from Israeli security forces—such as with the Great March of Return in 2018. This suppression not only risks the lives and well-being of protestors and also discourages participation from the broader population. Violent elements including Hamas have also infiltrated these movements, and turned efforts at peaceful protest into acts of aggression.

The ongoing occupation, the blockade of Gaza, and settlement expansions in the West Bank underpin a sense of desperation and frustration among Palestinians. As Frantz Fanon suggested in his anti-colonialist opus The Wretched of the Earth, violence sometimes can be viewed as a cathartic force and as a response to the systemic violence inflicted upon an occupied people by a process of colonization or military occupation, and thus as a means for an occupied or colonized people to reclaim their humanity and agency.

Additionally, Palestinian nonviolent campaigns have been blighted by the same tendency for maximalist demands as Hamas’ violent campaigns. The Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for example opposes Palestinians having dialogue with Israelis, in what they call “anti-normalization,” and makes maximalist demands about the right of return for all Palestinian refugees to Israel. By making maximalist demands that are never going to be met in a negotiation, nonviolent campaigns can doom themselves to failure through the perception that these demands are not serious or in good faith.

After this war, we must call for a new approach rooted in realism, a renewed commitment to coexistence, and the willingness for both sides to compromise. Both Israelis and Palestinians need to abandon maximalist demands and delegitimization to focus on pragmatic solutions, accepting the fact that neither side is going to disappear, or push one or the other into the sea.

Israelis and Palestinians must both accept that maximalist positions—whether it’s the complete destruction of Israel as a state or the denial of Palestinian statehood —are unattainable, implausible, and only perpetuate the cycle of violence, hatred, and trauma. Moving beyond this demands a culture of coexistence, where both Israelis and Palestinians acknowledge each other’s right to live in peace and security. Education and public discourse—on both sides—must emphasize mutual respect, understanding, and the historical and emotional ties that both groups have to the land.

The focus must shift back to negotiating a pragmatic compromise that can satisfy the core needs of both sides. Palestinians and Israelis need to prepare to head back to the negotiating table and work out our differences. This involves working towards establishing a Palestinian state with agreed borders, preventing the takeover of this state by terrorist groups like Hamas. We need to establish a consensus on Jerusalem’s status, refugee rights, and an end to settlement expansion. On the Palestinian side, trust was lost in previous peace efforts due to settlement expansion. On the Israeli side, trust was lost due to continued violence, leading to a lack of faith in Palestinian leadership’s ability to control extremism and provide security.

The international community, including regional powers and global organizations, must play a constructive role in mediating and supporting this process. This includes ensuring that any agreements reached are respected and providing economic and political support for peace initiatives. This pathway to peace is undoubtedly challenging and requires courage, vision, and perseverance. But it’s the only way toward a future in which two peoples can live side by side in peace, dignity, and safety.