#and i think some stays were calling them out for being zionists and

[bandzboy]

idk if this is what youre implying or not but i do feel like it is entirely possible that theyre going to the met gala to distract from all the zionist stuff with jype...like skz fans will absolutely be excited seeing them there and unfortunately that could overshadow everything shitty at that company...at least for a short period of time. and idk which brand theyre partnering with ( i havent been keeping up with kpop stuff) but they could also be going there to network and talk about it with other celebrities maybe??? so that also helps them gain support

i mean it can also be possible atp i am not excluding any possibility and i mean that stupid song with charlie puth is coming out this week too and it's kinda a good distraction so nobody talks about how there's this collab with a zionists singer and a zionist israhelli producer and just yeah mess mess MESS

[nimrochan]

I don’t think that my few handfuls of followers on various social media accounts realize that I’m an American-Israeli. I’ve been watching things unfold and staying silent for the most part. I know it’s very easy to have an opinion from the comfort and safety of my home, but too many people are also echoing online opinions without enough information or thought behind them. Although it’s fair to say that I’m biased, I think it’s important to view conflicts from multiple perspectives. Including and especially from someone from the actual region/culture that everyone outside of it suddenly has an opinion on. And I think I’m ready to say what I wanted to say:

Why aren’t people more angry with Hamas?

I’ve spent some childhood years in Israel. Every week on the news was another incident - a bus b*mbing, a car b*mbing, a s*icide b*mber… I remember being terrified of getting on buses, or going to public places. I remember soldiers standing at the entrance of every mall, and I remember hearing how one soldier died while stopping a s*icide b*mber at a mall entrance - both were women in their early 20’s. Until today my father tells me to avoid crowded places, and to always stand in a corner with my back on the wall to observe my surroundings.

When I moved to America I had moved on from these memories and didn’t really think about them. But the attacks never stopped. For DECADES. And over the last few years I did notice that very few non-Jewish Americans were aware of what life is like in Israel - having a barrage of rockets rain on you every once in a while. Having alerts to warn you to head to the nearest shelter. Israel has the protection of the Iron Dome. But it’s not perfect, and some rockets do hit their targets. Also, you know, maybe people shouldn’t be firing rockets unprovoked into another country?? (Don’t even get me started on Hezbollah, too.) No one bats an eye if other countries randomly shoot rockets into Israel, but as soon as Israel retaliates to try destroying the area where rockets come from, everyone comes out of the woodwork to condemn them.

Some of my American family members have an app that dings every time rockets are fired into Israel. I could never bring myself to download it. The number of dings drives me crazy.

In fact, if you ever wanted to buy a piece of jewelry or sculpture made of Hamas rockets, there are businesses upcycling them.

If you’re not from Israel, I just want you to imagine the number of rockets that regularly have to come into your country for any rockets-to-products businesses to even exist. For reasons beyond my comprehension, a lot of political parties in America want to defund the Iron Dome, a system designed solely for defense. But I digress.

Gazans never had an Iron Dome and yet Hamas gives no regard to the lives of their own people when they fire openly from homes, schools, hospitals. When they hide hostages and weapons in heavily populated areas.

I remember frantically texting and calling people on 10/07 to see if any of my family members were harmed or killed in the attack. All while anti-Zionists already rallied on social media to offer no sympathy and blame the attack on the Jews on, the Jews. Right. Luckily, whatever close family I had in the area was far away enough from the attack that they were spared, and they soon evacuated. My second cousin and her kids were only spared because they happened to be away, but their home was in ashes and their friends and neighbors were dead.

Israel is a small and close-knit country. I don't have words to describe how we grieved. 1200 innocent civilians sl*ughtered for no reason. That number is just a little under half of the number of deaths on 9/11, and it was done without the help of airplanes, just men running around killing people. The youngest one was 14 hours old. This is the largest m*rder of Jews since the Holocaust. I won’t even go into detail about how some of their bodies were mutilated because it’s too horrific for me to want to type it out. In fact I left the most disturbing footage out of this post. I had been avoiding seeing the footage of Shani Louk, but it was shown at the exhibit too and I’ll never be able to forget it for as long as I live. It made me sick to my stomach.

Look at the pictures. Look at all those shoes. The last time I felt such powerful emotion staring at shoes was at a Holocaust museum. A lot of item displays included their owners’ smart phones showing their final videos on a loop. The people who attend the Nova festival tend to be laid-back, free spirits. They show up covered in glitter and wearing fairy-wings, waving rainbow flags. They lived next to Gaza because they felt safe there, and they often supported Palestinians. Listen to the unhindered joy in the voice of the man calling his father to tell him he had m*rdered ten Jews. One of the most disgusting parts of this is the fact that people protested outside this exhibit as well.

When I brought myself to browse social media again, over and over I saw posts about how “they deserved it” and “they had it coming.” The same people, the same self-proclaimed “feminists” who would shared the #MeToo and #YesAllWomen hashtags, people with immensely large followings, were now having no sympathy for the Israeli women who were r*ped, basically saying “she asked for it.” People defending and excusing Hamas because they “weren’t created in a vacuum.” When did we start excusing r*pe and t*rrorism for ANY reason? On that note, don’t you think Israel’s aggressive defense of itself also stems from a historical reason, shaped by outside forces?

And then there are many voices still expressing plain denial! This was the most well-documented t*rrorist attack in history, because the attackers filmed it with pride, and yet over and over I also saw people posting about how “it never happened,” “they would never do that,” and how these t*rrorists were just “resistance fighters” with propaganda crafted to “make them look bad.”

In my home state of New York, I saw people marching wearing same types of scarves that these “resistance fighters” wore to commit crimes against humanity so recently, tearing down posters of Israeli hostages instead of hanging their own posters on innocent killed Gazans and sharing in the grief.

I see people over and over calling Israelis “white colonists,” when in fact MOST OF THEM ARE BROWN, dark-skinned just like their neighbors (if I showed you photos of my family in Israel, you'd be surprised to learn they aren't Arabic). We are an ethnic minority on this planet and in every country except Israel, but antisemites love to flip the script and paint us as majority white colonizer oppressors. When the majority of Americans calling for the abolishment of Israel are themselves actually living on colonized land (I mean, really?) When most of North Africa has been colonized by Arab populations, yet everyone seems to conveniently forget that. Most alarmingly, I see people marching the streets and praising Hamas and the actual 10/07 attacks.

These same people probably could never spot Gaza on a map before 10/07. Where were they for the Chinese Uyghurs? Where were they for the mass murdered Syrians? For Afghans left at the mercy of the Taliban? For Iraqis killed after 9/11? For Darfur? Because no news unless Jews, right? How can you say you care about Muslims and then praise Hamas? How can you be Pro-Palestine and Pro-Hamas at the same time?! There is a huge, sick problem in America when college students here are applauded by overseas t*rrorist leaders on goddamn Twitter.

And these “Queers for Palestine”- where is the support for the gayest, most feminist, and most liberal country in the Middle East? (Go ahead and look up which country in the Middle East holds annual Pride Parades.) Where is the support for the millions of Arab-Israelis and other non-Jews who call Israel their home? Where is the support for the Arabs and non-Jews also killed on 10/07? Where are the feminists using their voices to demand Hamas return the hostages that are very likely being r*ped as I type this?

I feel like I’m going crazy telling people that there is a lot of fake news and propaganda being spread by Hamas and eaten up by the West. I am not the kind of person to use the phrase “fake news.” But when I see some extreme footage allegedly showing the IDF doing something especially horrible, I count the hours or days before the news is silently retracted because it turned out to be incorrect. Propaganda against Jews has seeped so far into gentile culture over the decades that people don't even realize it. It’s become sickeningly casual and normalized in all kinds of circles. Hell, I don’t even know who to vote for or who secretly wants me dead - the left side with the pro-Hamas crowd or the right side with their white supermacists .

No, I am not denying that a lot of innocent Gazans are dying horrific deaths. When I see footage of injured Palestinian children, I don’t look away and pretend it doesn’t happen, because it does. But what about Hamas dressing up as civilians, firing weapons among civilians, and continuing to hide the hostages??? What about the 15-17 year old brainwashed children marching with guns? When is enough enough? You know which army doesn’t hide in civilian clothing, or recruit children, or parade naked dead women around after they’ve killed them?? Take a guess.

War is fucking awful. And I'm not trying to justify it, just trying to articulate why this is such a clusterfuck of a situation. Someone please name any other country that wouldn’t retaliate and demand their hostages back after such an ugly, unprovoked attack. Someone please explain to me why the hatred is so intense and out of proportion. Again, DECADES of attacks. Someone please tell me what should be done - because if you do nothing, then 10/07 happens over and over and over again. Israelis are all living, breathing people with families just like Gazan civilians are. Stop dehumanizing us.

Why is it that after the Ukraine-Russia war started, when most westerners were on Ukraine’s side (including myself so don’t jump down my throat), that individual Russians living in western countries did not feel threatened the way individual Jews are being threatened? That war actually seems a way more black-and-white situation to me. Why did the Israeli singer for Eurovision need presidential-level protection from the mob gathered outside her hotel? Why did the other contestants continually insult her? You think every single Jew on the planet has a say in what happens in Israel?

Why am I going on social media to dumb down, only to see posts like “Reblog to increase IDF soldier s*icides” and “Like to # CeaseFire” and “From the river to the sea” (that expression basically means to promote the killing of all Israelis, I don’t care how you look at it). Why are you trying to call a cease fire with t*rrorists who are known to constantly break ceasefire, then make a surprised Pikachu face when they do it again?

Anti-Zionism is a clever cover for anti-semitism. The very definition of Zionism is the pursuit of an independent Jewish state (of which there is currently only ONE - for comparison, there are 57 Muslim countries). A lot of people don’t even know what Zionism is when they call themselves Anti-Zionist. And if you do? Most Jews are Zionist. You can’t separate semitism from Zionism to make yourself feel better. Israel is such a tiny country, it takes 6 hours to drive end-to-end across the longest part. While all over the world, synagogues are being threatened, Jewish graveyards are being vandalized, and Jews are being attacked, you are absolutely telling me and my people that we don’t deserve a safe space. And yes, Jews are indigenous to the Middle East just like Arabs are.

How do people rally against discrimination, but in the same breath act like discrimination towards Jews doesn’t count? You can’t reason your way out of it. You do not get to tell me what is and isn’t antisemitic.

Hamas does NOT give a damn about the actual land that Jews are living on. Hamas’s ultimate goal is to kill all Jews (it's LITERALLY spelled out in their government charter), is that what people want?? And even if you deny it, you think you could theoretically move all 8 million Jews out of Israel to where exactly?

You think other countries want to welcome a mass migration of 8 million Jews? (Remember why Jews left in the first place?) You want literal t*rrorists to have a stronger foothold in the Middle East?

Why do the surrounding countries condemn Israel, yet not step up to help Gazans either? Why won’t they open up their borders?

I’m sick and tired of people who have zero stake in the Middle East and very little knowledge just jumping on the bandwagon and virtue-signaling like it’s some clear black-and-white situation when it’s not. And then having the nerve to lecture ME. I’m angry and I’m frustrated.

Bring them the fuck home.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

since zionists are coming to whine in my dms that I’m so mean for supporting Palestinians who “had it coming for being terrorists” (yeah, zionists are definitely not racist, huh?), let me make this very simple.

Let’s say your great-great grandparents built a home on some land. They built it by hand, and your family has lived there for generations, fixing it up as old things needed renovations or just stopped working or they just wanted to make it compatible with new things like electricity when that came out. You grew up there, your parents grew up there, and your grandparents grew up there, and now you have children of your own starting to grow up there too.

You loved that house, it’s the only home you’ve ever known and years of loving care had made it beautiful, it even has a garden that your great grandparents planted olive trees in, and of course by now it’s a flourishing orchard. Your family are the only ones who had ever lived in that house, but your family had become quite diverse throughout the decades as children grew up and married, some new family members looked and lived quite like you, and some looked and lived differently, and you thought little of it because, why would you?

Then one day a stranger comes by with a feed to your family’s home, claiming the government had settled a deal that since this stranger’s great-great-great-great grandparents first owned that land and were forced off of it by people who looked a bit like you. The stranger gives you an ultimatum to leave the land immediately because they consider it to rightfully belong to them, or die. Some of your family flees, you don’t blame them, but you stand your ground as best as you can, but the stranger has guns, and strong friends to supply them. They kill your mother, blind your father, kidnap many of your siblings and cousins and so you take your children and anyone who’s left and flee to the far side of the property, on the half still allowed to them by the government’s ruling. For a time it’s fine, but the stranger wasn’t satisfied, and finds you again in the new home you were building. See, the way the stranger sees it, their ancestors had originally owned ALL of that property, so they figured that was what they were owed. You plead with them to let you stay, or even just to not hurt your family. Your pleas are denied.

This time they killed your children. They killed your cousins. They killed most of your siblings. Your family and your home, all gone in front of your eyes.

Do you think you would still care whether or not the stranger was right about who owned that plot of land first, or would you perhaps care more about what they just did to everything you held dear?

Zionists like to say “well hamas should have never ever taken hostages” and feign ignorance as to why hamas is gaining support at an exponential rate.

It’s not that complicated. If your options are stand there and get shot or get a gun and shoot back, are you really going to pretend to be confused by most people going with the second option?

No. You aren’t. You want to spin the narrative that people calling for a free Palestine are terrorists who want to see the death of all jews and some nebulous “scary muslim takeover”, but I know you’re not that dumb. I know you've seen videos posted by the IDF’s own beating, kidnapping, and killing civilians. I know you’re not stupid enough to honestly believe those are all terrorists, even the children. I know most of you aren’t even under the delusion hamas is just like ISIS.

This is deliberate. Genocide is easiest when the aggressor plays victim to try to say it’s self defense, but here’s the thing—

It doesn’t matter how many times you claim otherwise, hind did not deserve to die. If she was the ONLY child the IDF killed intentionally, that would be unforgivable, but given there are tens of thousands of children that have lost life or limb at the hands of the IDF, it’s indefensible. It’s murder. A child trapped in a car with her family’s bodies after the IDF attacked being used to lure out aid workers and kill them all at once is just evidence you have lost your humanity. I hate that I even have to only talk about the children because you think every adult in Palestine is secretly an evil terrorist, it’s a lot harder to say that about a child with an age in the single digits, but many of you still try to anyway.

Racism is a hell of a thing, and some of you are a little too drawn in by the idea of killing all the brown people in a region so you can build beach resorts and theme parks.

If Palestinian land is so sacred and divinely promised to the Israelis to the point the Israeli government considers all rain fall to be explicitly property of israel, why are you taunting it with the blood of the innocent and desperate?

I don’t know, I think if anyone but a Zionist tried to justify bombing hospitals and dressing as aid workers to kill as many of an ethnic group as possible, people may be a bit reasonably against that, but for some reason it’s fine as long as the group committing the genocide has enough oppression points stocked up from previous incidents.

[totally-california]

The World’s Issues (and What Californians can Do)

For once this isn’t satire, so please actually pay attention. This is about the situation with Israel and Palestine.

ISRAEL AND PALESTINE SITUATION: This is a big one. It’s a huge issue that needs to be addressed; almost everyone knows that it’s happening. For those that don’t know, Hamas, a terrorist organization, took Israeli hostages into the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s response was initially viewed as acceptable before immediately doing a 180 into violence. They began to bomb the Gaza Strip, displacing millions of innocent Palestinians from their homes. This already happened prior when Israel took over Palestine in 1948, but now the bombing has led to the people that remain are close to dying, potentially starving, or have been killed. Many people need donations and funding to stay on their feet to pay for things like medical aid, and one of the only ways to get out had been Egypt, until Hamas made the border into Egypt to dangerous to cross.

THE US’S CONNECTIONS: The truth of the matter is it’s actually very hard for the US to immediately cut ties with Israel. While it may seem like a good idea, and in many ways it is, it’s actually a bit more difficult than just placing an economic sanction. This is mostly because so many people in the government were pro-Israel in the past, and it’s hard to instantly break off when something bad happens. However, this issue has been happening for months, surely they’d have changed, right? This is because something so totally ingrained into people takes a long time to change (such as being raised to be racist or homophobic), and let’s be honest, most of America’s politicians are old. While that doesn’t justify their behavior, the fact that many politicians are politically calling for a ceasefire is a step in the right directions. We need to make sure they keep going in that right direction, however. All they need is a little push. Which brings us to…

WHAT CALIFORNIANS (AND OTHERS) CAN DO: What can you do to help these people? For starters, vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Donald Trump has repeatedly stated he would help Israel “finish them off”. You can read this in his Agenda 47 or just watch one of his interviews. And if you’re thinking of voting third party… um… the third party candidate is a little out of it as well. Like, actually kind of insane. (Look up the dead bear/roadkill situation for more information) Kamala, meanwhile, has vocally stated she wants a ceasefire twice (so has Tim Walz). While this isn’t directly cutting ties with Israel, it’s better than what the other candidates are doing. Push her. When you vote, say you’re on the fence about what candidate to pick but that helping Palestine would definitely help persuade you. The next thing you can do is donate to help them. Many of the donations I DO know about are from the UK, so you may have to look up an exchange rate, but I’ll search for some more. Here are some that I’ve found:

One warning I have for you: if you do decide to actively protest, DON’T protest and interrupt someone for 40 minutes in a rally. You’re just going to worsen the situation for ALL parties involved. The whole thing where the protests interrupted an already established rally is NOT a protest- it’s public interference. I know it may be tempting to interrupt a rally for protesting, but DON’T DO IT. Michigan is a great example of what NOT to do. (Kamala’s reaction wasn’t the best either, but for a spur of the moment response, most people probably couldn’t have done much better). And don’t automatically assume someone is a Zionist just because they don’t have ‘save Palestine’ written all over their blog. Edit: Something else that does not help is immediately considering anyone who is Jewish pro-Israel. That’s not how it works, and it’s not true.

Now, Gaza and Israel, unfortunately, isn’t the only conflict going on around the word. (Especially with North Korea, and the war between Russia and Ukraine) It’s just one of the only ones being talked about, sadly. Now there’s also protesting in Bangladesh, due to its corrupt government, and several hundreds of other human rights violations around the world (price of Healthcare in Pakistan is one that comes to mind, as I recently did a school report on it) I can’t even list them all. (I’ll be back with more, I hope. School is starting soon and I might not have time). For now, we need to help who we can- but we also need to fix our economy. That means we can’t always be Team America World Police. We can’t let people get hurt. But we can’t ignore ourselves either.

Help Palestine. To truly make America great again, we need to help those that need it. It even brings up the question of if America was ever great in the first place. But right now? Everyone needs help. So we need to make sure we are capable of helping others, as well as ourselves. Stay safe, vote, and spread the message.

[papirouge]

I already talked several times abt the "anti Zionism is the left equivalent of woke" stupid takes but I'd like to once again to point out here is that "woke" and "Zionism " are NOT equivalent bc one got to be shoved its definition by the very people who HATE "woke". TBH "woke" has yet to get a definition so much idiots have been using this word left and right.

You hardly see people brag about being "woke" these days. The people who incepted this lingo were smart enough to distance themselves from that word as soon as things started to go sour, and hardly any liberal who's being accused of being woke explicitly labeled themselves as such. That's not the case of Zionists.

It's not rare to see Israelis call themselves Zionist. Unlike woke, Zionism has actually a VERY CLEAR definition (despite what some desperate gaslighter will tell you), helped by the literature/political essays aiming to propell this political and religious project into reality. Again : the only people I've seen making book about "woke" were people AGAINST the "woke" movement.

IDK why OP insinuates that "Zionist" is a bad word ("nastiest word"). Zionist isn't derogatory in and of itself. It's extremely dishonest of them to act like it was equivalent to the "pedophile" slur. If "Zionist" was that derogatory, Zionists THEMSELVES wouldn't wear that word as badge of honor, in their social media handle, twitter bio, etc...

Oh and I already said that every person trying to paint the critic of Zionism as a "leftist" thing was an idiot : Muslim countries have been explicitly against what they call the "colonial Zionist entity named as Israel" for DECADES. And they weren't leftits. Western leftists just jumped on the bandwagon. And let's not talk about the growing anti Zionist (edging on antisemitism) sentiment within the western right. So no, unlike the woke (left) vs anti woke (right) thing, the division between Zionist and anti zionism isn't that much cookie cutter between left and right.

People like OP create this artificial delineation only for the sake of their narrative ("Anti Zionism is just like woke but for the left aKtcHualLy uwu")

The only reason (pro Israel) people are seething at anti Zionism is simply bc they oppose zionism, not because they acknowledge Zionism as a political project. And I hate seeing posts like OP thinking they're really doing something comparing apple and oranges (although their post was well intended)

I already told you that since Zionist were losing the sympathy battle, they were now resorting to nitpick about semantics. "Is that really genocide?" "Anti Zionism is antisemitism actually uwu" "from the river to the sea is a pro genocide/islamist dog whistle uwu" etc. Don't let yourself be distracted : while those people are making articles and lengthy posts about choice of words or the history of Israel....babies are being removed from collapsed buildings at the hand of Israel. Never forget that. Stay focus.

[andrrrgynous]

hey what was the controversy involving amyl and the sniffers? i like to think that i have a half-decent knowledge of what's happening sometimes in the australian music scene but i hadn't heard of it lmao

ok so i'll link a few articles that explain it a bit more thoroughly but basically they were on the lineup for a festival sponsored by the israeli ambassy and once some artists discovered this they called for a boycott bc obviously a lot of bands don't wanna play a festival sponsored by a colonizer government with a lot of blood on their hands. all these bands pulled out... except the headliner amyl and it didn't take long for people to accuse them of being zionists and to this day ppl still aren't sure if the band ''really didn't know'' like they said or don't care and are posers... but heres some links with more details

https://aijac.org.au/australia-israel-review/noted-and-quoted-january-2023/

and tbh i didn't forgive them until not that long ago bc i rlly thought they should've known better but forgiving is not forgetting for now it is strike 1 for me, if they pull something ignorant again they're over for me, but with situations like this i think people should stay critical and not just form an opinion without a discussion

[kkelenca]

This is very much an anti-"Vote blue no matter who!" moment. Call your representatives. Tell them you will *not* be voting for them if they don't vote on this bill. Say you won't vote for Biden. NOT VOTING is also a tool in the box of electoralism - if the democrats face no pressure from the left to not do evil genocide then, then they will keep doing evil genocide shit.

Call and absolutely say all of that, and make clear demands for what they should be doing. I’ve been calling almost every single evening.

Recognize there ARE people like Tlaib, Omar, Ocasiao-Cortez, Bush, Bowman, Ramirez, Lee, Green, Carson, Jayapal, etc. running for these offices, House and Senate alike. Find the ones near you and support them if you’re dead set against voting for these current faces. Fight like hell to have them win.

Campaign for Dean Phillips if you’re dead set against Biden—I fully plan to vote for him in the primary myself if the field stays as-is. He’s currently saying he supports Israel’s right to self defense, but also saying he believes Palestinians should have self-determination and specifically wanting to help create a Palestinian state is a hell of a lot easier to push toward their desired unified, single, apartheid-free state than whatever secretive, genocide-abetting garbage we’re dealing with right now.

Put your time and money where your mouth is. I’m still recovering from my third spinal surgery and have physical therapy looming again once I’m no longer on narcotics and able to drive myself to bi-weekly appointments, but I already make donations to my candidate of choice for my representative on top of my 2 state-level people, and I actually reached out and we’ve spoken directly before.

I will personally always vote against the hungriest fascist I’m faced with. That’s the whole point of “lesser of two evils” in the first place. Yeah, sometimes they both suck ass, but there are still levels of awful.

You think a Republican would have any qualms about aiding Israel? We’d already be actively attacking the Palestinian people—sorry, would have “declared war on Hamas”—and would have sent way more supplies and soldiers than we already have on top of whipping the Evangelical christofascist base into a frenzy the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Republicans took the chance to do exactly that with impunity in 2001. But this time we’d be faced with someone ready and willing to engage in a violent coup here pulling those strings.

Only 4 Republicans were willing to not censure Tlaib just for being honest—the measure ostensibly citing antisemitism over use of “from the river to the sea” because some of the most powerful major Jewish organizations in the US are Zionist and have had the public and government’s ear on the situation for decades. Meanwhile, 191 Democrats voted against the measure. There’s an awfully big chasm between those two numbers. And it’s happened repeatedly, without widespread pushback, anytime criticism of Israel has come from a (progressive, Democrat) member of the house.

The vote for cutting IRS funding to give to Israel? 12 Democrats voted for it. 2 Republicans against it.

11 Republican members sponsored a bill to expel all Palestinians in the US. Landsman (OH) is a pro-Israel Democrat, was even one of the 22 who voted to censure Tlaib, yet he’s drafting his own bill against Zinke, the leader on the expulsion bill.

Breaking tonight, the Republicans have now proposed a bill to revoke scholarship money from college students speaking in defense or favor for Palestine.

That pressure from the left? That pressure is voting for progressive voices, donating and campaigning for them. That pressure is voicing your own opinions to those representing you, regularly.

Not voting at all? Considering that your way to send a message? All you’ve done is take your hand off the wheel and let all the pressure from the right take over the whole car.

[taylor-on-your-dash]

I guess you're a good person to ask because I am so lost and have been from the beginning. I consider myself an average American that's too busy trying to earn a living and keep all of the balls of my life up in the air at the same time. So naturally, I'm not keeping a close eye on the news beyond headlines. I don't understand this Israel/Palestine thing at all. What's going on? I have consumed some news on this but I still can't make sense of it. Why do Jewish people stand up for Israel even though they're doing terrible things? Isn't Palestine also doing terrible things? Why is this such a divisive issue? Shouldn't everyone know who the good/bad guys are? What is a Zionist? Why do Jewish people get so much hate (Charlottesville)? Like, why does anyone care what someone believes? Why are the republicans pro Israel? Why do liberal Jews feel conflicted? Why or why isn't all of this considered anti-Jewish?

I don't know what's going on. I hope no part of this ask is in someway out of line.

If you could answer me directly that would be great, as I'm afraid I won't see your response otherwise.

thank you for trusting me enough to ask me this question! I don't blame you if you're confused, it's a long war and an emotionally charged topic. I will try my best to explain what's happening, considering that this is an ask on Tumblr. however I'm a person with my own opinions, therefore I still encourage you to try to read about it on your own, even just the standard Wikipedia page, to form your own opinion.

HISTORY: it all started in 1946, right after WWII, when the Holocaust survivors started leaving Europe to return to what they called the Holy Land, with help of a Zionist organisation. This is what Zionism is: a nationalist movement that advocated for the creation of the state of Israel. At the time, Palestine was under the control of the UK. the UK didn't like the arrival of Jewish people and tried to stop it, but it became increasingly difficult, especially when the Jews armed themselves and started bombing the English embassy. the United nations intervened and they proposed a separation of Palestine, partly Muslim and partly Jewish. I guess they were trying to replicate what happened to India and Pakistan? in 1948 the UK handed over Palestine to the newly born state of Israel. this caused the withdrawal of many Muslim Arabs to the Gaza strip, a small territory on the border with Egypt, and the start of the war. in 2007 Hamas took control of Gaza and Israel reacted by imposing a blockade: the only way to enter or leave Gaza is through two streets, one controlled by Israel and one controlled by Egypt.

WHO IS HAMAS? Hamas is the main political party of Palestine. they obviously advocate for a free Palestine, which is literally the only reason why Palestinians vote for them. they are also an islamic party. they are the ones who attacked Israel during the music festival on October 7th and took the hostages to Gaza. after this the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, justified the current attack on Gaza.

I think that it's such a divisive topic because people kinda understand both sides. it's useless to negate it, the Jewish people originally come from Palestine as well, and they would've stayed there if it wasn't for the Romans who chased them away. the Holocaust is still fresh in everyone's mind and there's some sort of closure into thinking that the Jews got "home", i guess? on the other hand, Palestinians didn't do anything wrong, that was their land and their homes and their lives and they didn't deserve to be treated like they were.

this war started 80 years ago. both of them have done terrible things. there isn't a good side or a bad side anymore, that's how horrible the war is. no matter how it's gonna end, nobody will be fully satisfied. racism, whether it's islamophobia or antisemitism, also plays a part. media are muddling the water by purposefully condensing anti-zionism to antisemitism. being against Israel is not antisemitic. the first is being against Israel's politics, the other is being against the existence of the Jewish people. also people realize that Israel is a fully formed and recognized country with international power and infrastructures, while Palestine doesn't have any of that.

I'm not gonna lie to you, I have no idea of what happened in Charlottesville, I don't think it made the Italian news. I also don't know what a liberal is exactly. I don't know what the republicans are saying exactly, but they're notoriously islamophobic so that doesn't surprise me. I don't know much about American politics though.

I think that covered it all, but if you have any more questions, you're welcome to ask them.

[wesokkasimp]

general zuko relationship headcanons

-hmm

-so i’m writing these for a post-war relationship

-don’t mind me projecting my crush on firelord!zuko

-this boy def doesn’t ask you out right away

-too nervous for that

-i know i said in my long distance h/c that he would propose right away, but that was for an established relationship

-if y’all aren’t already dating expect to be waiting a lil while

-once things have kinda… settled in the world? like it’s still rather unstable, but at this point most passive aggressiveness between nations is gone

-that’s when zuko would finally take some time for himself and his personal relationships

-if you had left the Fire Nation after the war to do other things, he may have realized he missed you more than the others

-and he missed you in a different way

-with the others he just missed interactions and the good times they had as team avatar

-and he missed that with you too

-but he also just kind of craves your presence

-your scent, your warmth, your touch, your voice

-he could probably sit in a room with you silently all day

-taking in the very essence of you

-because there’s just so much to take in

-when he realizes this, he doesn’t peg it as a crush at first

-zuko’s the guy that can read his friends and loved ones like a book but cannot decode his own feelings for the life of him

-poor kid :(

-he probably just pegs it as knowing you better than the others

-especially if you grew up in the Fire Nation

-ESPECIALLY especially if y’all grew up around each other

-but he starts to question his line of reasoning when you come to visit

-he hasn’t seen you since the southern water tribe drama

-and it’s been two or three years since then

-so you get off… the boat? idk wtf they use for transportation

-he’s waiting at the bottom of the harbor

-he knew when you stepped off the landing and he saw you for the first time in years

-he knew when all it took for him, a very focused person, to become distracted was you paging through a file of things for your work, a furrow in your brow

-when he can normally work through various natural disasters (the Fire Nation is an kind of an archipelago so i assume they get lots of hurricanes/tsunamis and stuff like that)

-THAT was when this boy finally came to his senses and realized he had a thing for you

-but him acting on it? that’s a whooooole different story

-HE’S SO SHY AND NERVOUS OMFG IT’S CUTE

-but it’s also a little annoying at times

-because for years he’s been loud and boisterous with you

-and now that he knows he has a thing for you he doesn’t know how to act

-you don’t catch on tho (thank god for him)

-like you know he’s acting different, but you don’t know why

-he knows you’re gonna figure out what’s going on if he doesn’t fix his behaviour soon

-so he keeps an air of normality around you

-but on the inside he’s still super shy and nervous

-zuko doesn’t have a ton of experience with relationships in general but especially romantic ones

-i don’t think he would’ve gotten with someone after mai broke up with him

-it took him a little bit to get over her, as seen in smoke and shadow

-he’s also a busy guy in general; not tons of time for dates

-iroh may have set up a few dinner dates but nothing substantial has grown from those

-so… in conclusion… king has no idea what the fuck he’s doing

-mai was a pretty special case as she was ridiculously low maintenance and showed zero emotion

-aka exactly like zuko

-i feel like them being so alike was probably one of the reasons their relationship didn’t work out

-like… i’m showing no emotion, you’re showing no emotion, i’m not gonna coax emotions out of you, you’re not gonna coax emotions out of me, we both bottle up anger at each other, ourselves, the world, etc, aaaand cue huge screaming match

-getting off topic whoopz

-since mai was so much like zuko, he had an idea of how to court her

-if he thought something sounded stupid, mai would probably think that too

-but it’s a different story with you

-you might have similarities to zuko but you’re not EXACTLY like him (if you are sorry but i had to make y/ns persona less generic)

-so… romantically? has no clue what the fuck you’re looking for in a relationship

-even if he knows you really well platonically, he thinks that doesn’t translate into romantic relations because he’s clueless ok

-so zuko decides on the subtle approach

-would he confess? no! of course not !!

-but do his touches tend to linger?

-does he let you catch him staring at you?

-is he suddenly very invested in the dating scene wherever you’re living?

-...yes

-and you’re not stupid, you catch on

-and… honestly, there’s no big confession from either of you

-things just sort of evolve on their own

-you end up staying in the Fire Nation a lot longer than you originally planned

-fun excursions that were once platonic turn more and more sensual and flirty

-pats on the back and high fives slowly become back rubs and hand holding

-but... HE STILL HASN’T ASKED YOU OUT

-at this point no one know what the fuck your relationship is

-friends? lovers? fwb? 

-no one can figure it out

-least of all you

-i wish i could make zuko super smooth and have this super romantic confession but that would be so ooc for him

-HE TRIES HIS BEST BUT ROMANCE IS HARD FOR HIM OK >:(

-what probably happened was he took you out to dinner

-and you’re tired of not knowing what you are to him

-so you’re like zuko? what are we to each other?

-and he has been DREADING this question

-he knew it was coming eventually

-and to be honest he’s not quite sure either

-he knows he likes you as more than a friend

-and he’s pretty sure you feel the same way

-so he decides to go out on a limb and speak his mind (finally omfg)

- “More than friends, I think. I mean, I think of you as more than a friend… I think you feel the same way? Or-”

-“Zuko, it’s fine. I like you as more than a friend too, but we don’t have to label ourselves right away.”

-the boy is RELIEVED

-it’s like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders

-he’s not the kind of guy that says “i don’t like labels” as an excuse to fool around

-even though you never really talked about it, it’s a silent agreement that you’re both exclusive

-so… i mean that’s basically dating 

-our boy just has commitment issues ok 😔

-eventually you start kissing him in the cheek

-when i tell you he was FLUSTERED when you did that the first time

-i honestly can’t decide if zuko hates pda or loves it 

-he’s touch starved, so idk if he really craves or is really hesitant to physical contact

-if it’s the former, expect hand holding, cheek/forehead kisses, him wrapping his arm around your waist, etc 

-even if he likes pda he keeps it professional

-if it’s the latter…

-the only consistent pda you’re gonna get is hand holding

-if ANYONE gives you shit for something like your socioeconomic status before you started dating zuko or if you came from somewhere outside the Fire Nation

-he will get annoyed and tell them off as politely as possible 🥰

-as for marriage…

-he wouldn’t really think it out that much if he was trying to decide if he wanted to marry you

-by the time he would be considering marriage, he knows right away that he does in fact want to marry you

-his PROPOSAL, however

-he definitely plans this big thing and then somehow messes it up after practicing it a bunch of times

-you still say yes ofc

-zuko is pretty dedicated to the Fire Nation, so he will most likely follow most traditional aspects of the Fire Lord and Lady’s wedding

-he’d integrate important wedding traditions if your culture if you’re from another nation

-married life would be pretty similar to pre married life

-he just gets to call you his wife now :)))

-so it’s canonical that people try to assassinate zuks

-like ALL the time

-he felt like he could handle it but once you moved in with him he started to become very worried :(

-so he beefed up the security around his quarters. even if you also have training in combat he just wants to sleep a little sounder

-hngh if y’all want kids that can be another post this is already kinda long

-that all folks :)

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AHHHHH HI THESE ARE VERY LATE BUT THEY ARE HERE,,,,, anyways might have to turn off my inbox because,,, uh,,, very angry anti semites and zionists in there rn don’t really feel like getting death threats today

[bandzboy]

Different anon, but. Look, I was already boycotting the song itself and everything from the day it was announced. But at this point, I feel this really weird uneasy feeling that I can only describe as: I'm not sure if I want to be a STAY anymore.

With things going the BTS Americanization Route (with extra Zionism), it just feels so starkly different from the SKZ and 3Racha that I admired originally. Not that changing music style is bad itself (they changed quite a bit from the start of 2020 to 2023). But it feels less like a change made from growth, and more like getting stripped of what made their whole thing appealing originally.

And I see it with parts of the fandom too. Yes, there's still some nice fans. But now we have a bunch that are so focused on streamings and chart ratings and big numbers, rather than if they actually like the music.

I miss when most Stays would joke about how their view counts were all ''organic''. Now they're raising money to get collab songs on the charts. I miss when most Stays were proud multistans, and their v-live fan forum would regularly be sprinkled with posts about Ateez or TXT or Day6, or even Limesoda.

And the weird thing is: I told myself back in the late 2010s that I wouldn't get caught up too much in the celebrity fandom thing. That I wouldn't put SKZ on a pedestal, so that I wouldn't get disappointed if things went south somehow. But now, I subconsciously hesitate to listen to even their other songs, even if it's through unofficial or pirating means. And I feel like I'm over-reacting, and it's frustrating.

Sorry for the rant. I just feel like I need a second opinion on this.

i think this is honestly a valid reaction and feeling this way is valid too because even i feel this way about kpop in general and kpop groups like even before all of these boycotts started to unfold i was just SO jaded with this "community" if we can even call it that. the way some people are behaving lately towards this boycott is unveiling the fact that some people just care about streaming and buying and that's it! that's their whole purpose as a fan and then also shun people that don't wanna do it and for what reason? also, the fact that i've seen so much racism come to light with this! people getting harassed for wanting to stand for something and being pro palestinian, palestinian fans getting harassed for calling shit out because yes their feelings are super valid and especially when the group they stan is saying nothing and the company they are under is employing zionists, they can feel betrayed like idgaf about what people say! even before this when fans would call out idols for being ignorant these fans would be racist to these fans for being hurt like?? what is this culture we are creating in these spaces is what i am asking?? i knew it was like that even before all of this but lately it's like i am getting hit with realizations left and right it's so insane how some people are acting. whether some people like it or not, we are allowed to feel disappointed and criticize them. even i feel stupid for these types of things bc it's like you mentioned we should know better and yet we put these people on pedestals and for what? it's all very valid concerns to have especially this time around! so many companies want groups to be international but then dgaf about international fans' opinion and they never did to begin with how do expect people to want to stan these groups when they do disrespectful shit and you pretend we don't exist unless we give you money

[chicago-geniza]

well i intended to go for a nice evening walk, ended up having a panic attack, ordering a couple of cocktails at the bougie bar, joining a jam session with a bunch of old hippies on the logan green (one of them gave me a handpainted wooden medallion which seems to be carved out of tree bark, strung on a length of yarn???), met a crustpunk train-hopping dude in town for the month (& his dog, in a leather-studded harness) who's lived in 45/50 states & a 44 yr old guy everyone called "the wizard" wearing a tattered, patch-covered robe who shares most of my parents' conspiracy theories & considers himself a latter-day prophet, he bought us sorbet & ice cream, wound up hanging out with them & staying up all night at their indescribably eclectic, cluttered, blood-spattered (!!!) apartment, belonging to 44 yr old guy's art curator father & decorated accordingly, smoking m*th & listening to music & talking (or rather listening to them rant/rave/recount stories from their incredibly wild lives), i gave them advice on applying for unemployment & medicaid & how to appear compliant enough w/ carceral psychiatric intervention so they won't section you without actually submitting to forced medication or institutionalization, especially if they assign you a case worker & do regular "wellness checks." also how to pass off certain aspects of behavioral dysregulation as executive dysfunction, get them to pay for an adhd evaluation, get an adderall IR scrip, sell the 30 mg pills (cite body weight, high doses of other psych meds as reason for higher dose; look sincere; play to systemic biases toward cis white men, unfortunately), & use the cash to buy m*th, if they'd prefer to keep doing that. you can also pass positive psychotic symptoms--agitation etc.--off as severe anxiety, especially if you have a history of trauma, & they will give you benzodiazepines. it is in their best interest to keep you docile, i.e. tranquilized, particularly if your past convictions & involuntary institutionalizations revolve around a pattern of aggressive behavior, & that's On The Record/there's a paper trail. (e.g. one dude got arrested trying to keep cars away from an injured bird on the road, some genre of raptor i think (???) by threatening them with a shopping cart, not hitting them, but like, running at them as if to collide then feinting at the last minute so they'd swerve out of the way. not the safest or most effective maneuver, lotta reckless endangerment, but the motivation was admirable. probably put the fear of god into some drivers, though. he doesn't seem to have, like, impulse control.) it's a lot easier & you have fewer run-ins with the cops if you game the system & appear cooperative. they gave me this coat, which "just showed up in their apartment one day," like i did. 44 yr old guy walked me back to apartment, stole a street sign & tore down a real estate sign en route, lori lightfoot did indeed take down the pride flag in front of her house on july 1st & replace it with an appropriately patriotic american flag, i walked past the idling plainclothes cop car & another marked police vehicle with their Mayoral Guarding Detail inside at like 4.30 am smoking a menthol cigarette (not inhaling), high on m*th, draped in a neon anime jacket, in the company of a visibly insane, unshaven & unshorn middle-aged man in a technicolor patchwork trenchcoat, holding a lit cigarette in one hand & an upside-down traffic cone in the other, which he was using as an ad hoc amplifier for a noise track playing on my phone. he was also carrying the stolen real estate banner &, inexplicably, a stack of mail. i gave him my old backup phone (no SIM card & doesn't hold a charge long, ancient, but still works), since neither he nor the other dude have phones (cops took them), also one hybrid edible for each of them, as a thanks for the m*th & the kindness. their hearts are in the right place but they have some fucked-up beliefs about "reverse racism" being real, while also saying in the same breath that you can tell our country is irredeemable by the way it continues to

treat black people. we were discussing medical weed for seizures on medicaid & 44 yr old guy mentioned one of his close friends, a black epileptic woman, whose seizures were frequent & severe enough they prevented her from working. then he added, in apparent bemusement, they she hadn't spoken to him in some time, & he wondered why. a little while later he relayed their last conversation & i was like "my dude, i can say with 100% certainty she is not talking to you because you said some *appallingly*, jaw-droppingly racist shit & did not even realize it was racist." then i, comma, a white person, explained to this man that he literally thought of their exchange as, like, an abstract argument over insignificant ideas, a theoretical exercise, & therefore considered it simply a smug gotcha to "counter" hotep theories about egyptian origin by claiming that "if that's true, american slavery & the oppression of black people in america are divine retribution for the enslavement of the jews in ancient egypt, an eye for an eye & a deserved punishment." like, first of all, what the actual fuck, if i were that woman i would also never speak to you again, second of all there's the collapse of historical time & mythical time, history & exegesis, an assumption that rests on spurious claims of biblical literalism (zionist colonization logic, btw! him: what's exegesis? what's zionism? me: never mind, not the point. exegesis is the interpretation of religious texts in a religious CONtext, in this case what you would likely call the hebrew bible.)--but most importantly it is 100% irrelevant to this discussion whether or not black americans are Actually Factually descendended from ancient egypt! you just told this woman to her face that the ancestry she claims, of which she's proud, is the reason & justification for SLAVERY & BLACK SUFFERING--not only that, but that if it WERE true, than black people would DESRVE to suffer, by DIVINE DECREE. you are trying to force her to abdicate her claim on this heritage by putting her in a position where she'd be forced to concede complicity in her people's historical & present-day persecution, oppression, & essentially the existence of structural racism. & using The Figural Jew as a rhetorical cudgel to bludgeon her into this corner. what a despicable thing to say. like, he hadn't considered it from her perspective at all, & once he groked why the comment itself was, like, unforgivable (idk, maybe she's more forgiving; she has a virtue-name), i started socratic-method-ing him through why it was particularly unforgivable for *him* to say to *her*--the individual is not responsible for the systems from they benefit, but they are imbricated in them, they are implicated when they actively perpetuate & uphold them, even with speech acts. & finally gave the same "there is no such thing as reverse racism because racism is not an individual act, it is an institutional, systemic phenomenon, & it is an ideology, one which individual acts can bear out or be in accordance with, & to which individuals can subscribe (this bearing it out in their behavior, in their institutional roles, in their interpersonal interactions--here i gave & solicited examples of each) or be subject (also gave & solicited examples). m*th makes me very good at Explaining clearly & he was surprisingly receptive--like, it was astonishing that it had not occurred to him??? but it hadn't, the same way it hadn't occurred to my mother, & she interpreted it as "reverse racist" when their next-door neighbor called her the "white devil" for disputing their property line, & i had to be like "ok but if you called in a random third party to mediate in lily-white [city], oregon, where white supremacists openly drive down the street in pickup trucks with swastika armbands, whose side do you think they would take, statistically speaking, in your property dispute. that's why racism is systemic & institutional, & your rude neighbor calling you a name over a disagreement does not constitute 'reverse racism,' because 'reverse racism' by definition cannot

exist." now this dude wants to like, read books, so i gotta get him some entry-level Intro To Racism primers??? how did i end up here, but better me than his black epileptic (ex-)friend, i guess??? jesus christ. both of these guys have the most chaotic, reactionary politics in a potpourri with these deep commitments to abolition & mutual aid & a kind of proto-anarchist consciousness, none of which would be called by those names, but all of which is borne out in practice & in the politics of everyday life. they remind me a LOT of my parents. i'm loath to imagine how they'd internalize my stepdad's rambling, street-preacher-style libertarian lectures. probably go out & buy guns & invest in gold on the stock market & double down on the conviction that free speech is being curtailed & individual rights are in jeopardy because you can no longer unleash a barrage of harassment against some guy on the street because you think he looked at you funny. these claustrophobic convictions, like the space to express oneself is getting smaller & smaller every day, *other people* are taking it away from you, suffocating you on all sides with their offense demanding your silence, they are *making* the walls close in--when in fact it's more like a holodeck. you're a member of the Hegemonic Group, afforded the privilege of the default, so you don't question the vast verdant expanse that is your domain--ah, Free Speech, the sun never sets on the empire of ~uncensored expression, you can say whatever you want whenever you want without facing consequences because you control all the organs that mete out consequences & you have also determined that those groups who might be adversely affected by your words--emotionally OR materially--are not, well...of consequence. but of course the vast verdant domain is an illusion, photons & forcefields, held together by the all-encompassing TOTALITY of the dominant group's hegemony, power, etc. once that power begins to redistribute throughout the system--however unevenly, however incrementally, however slowly--as even the smallest pieces are appropriated by those deemed inconsequential, who have endured years of systemic, material, institutional violence that allowed the dominant group to become dominant & retain its dominant position--once those 'inconsequential' groups speak up & say "actually, these words bear an indelible imprint of the violence enacted upon us, these words are the legacy of that violence, these words are a tacit endorsement of the ideology behind that violence, which classifies us as subhuman, & even if *you* can't hear those echoes, the words broadcast on two historical frequencies, so now that we're able to broadcast on a frequency *you* can hear, we request you find other language, & consider the implications of the words you've been using for years." well--once The Subaltern Speaks, the dominant group loses its 'innocence,' & becomes aware the vast verdant expanse of language is an illusion of infinite space, aware of the four holodeck walls pressing in behind the simulacrum of the horizon, & suddenly "what one can say without negative consequences"--largely social, sometimes, rarely, if social media goes viral, professional--feels much more claustrophobic. so they get angry. & some of them are just bigots, obviously, but some of them--like my parents, &, even, this weirdly well-intentioned m*thhead who said one of the most shockingly racist things i've heard in my life & *honestly didn't understand why it was racist*, is really riled up about free speech & individual rights, hates the government, hates "FANG" (facebook amazon netflix google) & has a bunch of dystopian conspiracy theories about data harvesting & personal information that only miss the mark in that they get too nefariously biopolitical (billionaires want to put microchips in everybody for surveillance to monitor our movements & sell us more stuff; they don't need to, they already use our phone location & browsing habits to generate the algorithm & sell the information to ad companies lol, it's digital& cast a

single illuminati figure in the role of comic book villain, controlling the operation behind the scenes like an evil puppetmaster (classic conspiracy fare; again, we gotta take that energy, that suspicion, the understanding that they are being taken advantage of & tricked, the idea that power & capital & resources are concentrated among a very small number of people, however it's not an individual wealthy villain with a desire for world domination who wants to turn Free Americans into microchipped drones, it's a *class* of people--or rather several classes, but *who those people are as individuals does not matter*. if you guillotined bill gates, another billionaire would take his place. bill gates qua bill gates is not the problem. it is classes of people who control the means of production & own property & profit enormously from exploiting the labor of a desperate, rapidly increasing underclass, i.e. from the system as it is. therefore it is in their interest to maintain the status quo, because it serves them. 'the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.' the middle class gradually ceases to exist. if you want to compound it by race, consider the GI bill as an example - you learn about it as the leg up that enabled thousands of WWII vets to buy houses, enabling them to enter the middle class. hundreds of thousands of third-gen middle class white americans still reap the structural, socioeconomic benefits of their grandparents' initial upward mobility, including,, very tangibly, those selfsame houses, which can be inherited & then rented out as a second property if the children or grandchildren accrue enough money to buy their own properties. but only about 100 black vets got approved for homeownership loans, despite the staggering numbers of black soldiers who enlisted & applied through the GI bill. anyway! the impulses are there, & they're only being funneled into conspiracy thinking because that makes intuitive sense on a narrative level. these guys have a high school education; so does my stepdad. their reading habits are...eclectic, sporadic, pretty much dictated by occasional recommendations & like, little free libraries around the neighborhood. it's both interesting & frustrating to see like - hey, here are these people, we agree on a lot of things, they're earnest & open & want to learn & would give their neighbor the shirt off their backs as a matter of principle. they'd give a *stranger* the shirt off their backs; they'd share whatever they had. even what chores there are in their collective--they live with two other guys--(dumpster diving, walking the dog, tidying up the apartment) are allocated by ability & inclination. they made advance plans to look after the dog & their roommate with War PTSD on the 4th of july if the fireworks upset them, jokingly called the dog an emotional support animal. you give them the tools, the reading, talk to them like normal people with a stake in society--like, imagine a society that would have a stake in people like you instead of criminalizing you & consigning you to the margins! that's already *political imagination* because anyone who occupies a marginalized position will have their existence politicized, whether they want this or not, so better to become a self-aware, self-reflexive political subject, no?--talk *with* them because tbh i am them, i'm just better at situational masking & also i am very very afraid of cops so i only damage property in groups during planned political actions (not spontaneously, because i feel a flash of rage at my neighborhood gentrifying, & simply do not have a superego, so i tear down the real estate sign for the fancy new apartment complex in a fit of pique, because in this house we believe that spontaneity can & should be developed into class consciousness, again, the seeds of which are there in the initial trigger for the spontaneous reaction, i.e. anger at gentrification. not opposed to a little direct action, but they're just gonna put up a new sign tomorrow, it doesn't advance your agenda or hinder the gentrifiers' progress. now, if

you sabotaged the construction site for the new apartment buildings & painted a few potent symbols + graffiti'd a pithy, written statement expressing your opposition to gentrification generally & these apartments specifically? in a prominent place, large font, eye level, visible & legible from oh, a block away? maybe as a member of a collective, your neighbors, perhaps? & you could sign it "[neighborhood] or [block] residents" to pack more of a punch, the power of a crowd speaking in unison to say "not OUR home, you predatory developers"? that's no longer spontaneous, impulsive, affective violence, & it's also no longer an individual--acting alone leaves you vulnerable. again--i didn't just *intuit* that he tore the sign down because he was mad about gentrification, i asked, in a genuinely curious tone, not at all accusatory, no hint of reprimand or censure, just...interested, "why did you do that?" & he was like "it made me fucking mad." & i was like "what about it made you mad? the apartments? how come?" & he thought about it for a minute & explained. i'm not sure *he* necessarily made the conscious connection until prompted. idk, i know people talk a lot about the fact that breitbart & drudge report are free while NYT & "all the news fit to print" is paywalled, & q-pilled covid hoax sites are free while "reputable" pandemic coverage & public health guidelines & explanations of mRNA vaccines for a lay audience are paywalled & that's true but also We Live In A Society & if you talk to the wingnuts who AREN'T that way because of any far-right ideology, a lot of them are just...autodidacts without much formal education but a lot of raw intelligence that leads to analyzing The Big Picture & trying to deduce a pattern, find a framework that explains why the world is the way it is, profoundly frustrated, deeply aware of American society's, universalized & figured as the world's, exceptional unfairness & cruelty, & *that can be redirected* with reading, discussion, prompting critical thought, introducing community connections, & perhaps most importantly for this genre of person, getting them to see patterns at work in terms of systems & structures rather than individuals, letting go of American individualism's explanatory power & belief in its liberatory potential (see: the sort of ad hoc libertarianism that goes hand-in-glove with much conspiracy thinking, both stemming from 1) mistrusting the government, & 2) ultimate freedom of the individual as the most sacred value, therefore it is what all enemies want to take away), outlining positive, actionable goals rather than just ambient suspicion & anger at authority, & figuring out how those goals can be accomplished more effectively by an organized collective (but this will ultimately benefit the individual). If the world isn't run by a shadowy cabal, if you begin to understand the structures responsible & how they manifest even on the scale of your block (e.g.!!! predatory developers buying up properties during a pandemic, tearing down affordable housing to build expensive condos on the lot, or giving old buildings a "spit and polish" so they can double the rent, pricing all the current residents out, not to mention all the little local businesses, almost all mexican & run by the mexican families who live here, that give our block its culture & will get pushed out by boutique coffee shops & the like, catering to a more affluent & almost certainly whiter clientele)--you can, in fact, change the world, something both of them repeatedly referred to as their purpose on earth. it may not be as a maverick figure, one against an army, but strength in numbers is an aphorism for a reason.

anyway! thse guys were also really weird about jews, in the philosemitic way conspiracy theorists of a certain stripe often are. the itinerant vagabond guy gave me one of his drawings; it's really lovely. i'm going to give them "are prisons obsolete?" & "the wretched of the earth" & some david graeber. 44 yr old guy has this idea that society is atomized & people aren't connected to each other & have lost the willingness or the ability to communicate with each other, also that the overreach of authority has driven some people to violence, & that makes the world feel unsafe to everyone else. he feels guilty because he is acutely aware that language, when wielded adroitly & intentionally, always has the capacity to manipulate; he is afraid of succumbing to the temptation, because he senses the coercive power of language within himself. the other guy was mostly quiet but said 44 yr old guy is one of the best friends he's ever had. he thinks animals are able to sense emotions and to heal, & he thinks they can mediate between people who have become too isolated, who have forgotten humans' innate ability to forge connections, approach others as social creatures seeking to bond instead of mistrustful, apprehensive, rejecting overtures of friendship because they expect subterfuge, or propriety has evolved to deem such overtures inappropriate outside of strictly delineated, artificially orchestrated contexts. deviation from the norm is not permitted. & back again to policing. they have an idea called "the omega family," omega for the end, a group of like-minded people who come together, who encounter each other serendipitously (predicted through auspicious auguries & recognized on sight through a constellation of signs & wonders, because of course we are all psychotic here, it was nice to just be psychotic & discuss these things like they were normal lol), & serve as catalysts to each other's "personal truth." anyway this is why i don't go out when i'm crazy, i always end up in situations like this, see also: the last time i did m*th, in a pizza hut bathroom in tallinn with an art student from glascow named muhammad ali (he went by ali), the son of white muslim converts--we thought it was c*ke but it got lost in translation & that's how i figured out i had adhd. later i got [redacted] by a filmmaker from kazan & he gave me his business card afterward for some reason, which was extremely funny. thankfully these dudes were better behaved. one of them even gave a speech about how men shouldn't rape people??? & also how our society shouldn't construct women as universal victims because in doing so it makes victimhood almost compulsory & shoehorns women into a victim role as part & parcel of womanhood? i was like yes my dude you are almost there, read the essay "abject feminism." (i did not tell them i was trans bc i wasn't sure how that would shake down, to be honest; couldn't get a read on it. did tell them i was gay & they respected it, though one did say he dated a lesbian once, & i explained that many men feel compelled to interject with an anecdote relating an exception to the rule or insist that they will he the exception to the rule, & it's really just bad manners, not even getting into the bad politics. he took it on the chin & talked about how the girl in question came home to find her partner dead of an overdose & his wife had just died of MS, so their relationship was more about grief & comfort than sexual attraction. i was like that's really, really sad, & it's wonderful that you were able to be there for each other at a time of such staggering loss, & i am a person who totally understands what you mean to communicate, but if a lesbian tells you they're a lesbian & you reply that you once dated a lesbian & they get offended & instead of responding with contrition or correction you elaborate on the tragic backstory of the relationship as though that explains the circumstances in which a self-proclaimed lesbian would date a cis man, other lesbians *will* deck you, or at the very least not take you, an unwashed white guy in

his 40s who isn't neurotypical & sits way too close for social convention in a way that could easily be construed as a come-on, in good faith.) tl;dr made some new friends, did some good drügs (i much prefer smoking m*th to snorting it, basically like purer, more potent adderall, & as such will not be doing it again for a LONG time, because i enjoy it FAR too much; slices through the brain fog & the chronic fatigue & the joint/bone pain, makes me able to pay attention, follow the thread of a conversation, actually be *interested* & want to ask *questions* & expand, build, encourage my interlocutor to elaborate, place more kal-toh pieces until the conversation shimmers into a three-dimensional shape, instead of being listless & exhausted & disengaged & *bored* all the time, so obviously i would get addicted immediately if given the opportunity, & i've known this forever lol)--now going to hydrate, refill pill case, write some emails, & meet C at the beach! not how i expected to reboot my brain, but it works! also putting them on limited facebook view because i try to keep some groups of people in my life quarantined from each other & that includes 1) my relatives & my academic ~colleagues (ne'er the twain shall meet), 2) my exes & my family, 3) my relatives, colleagues, & uh. a couple of lovely, but extremely psychotic dudes with very long criminal records i met while doing hard drugs

[skinfeeler]

you may notice so-called progressive members of religions (including those which are minority religions in ‘the west’) spend much more time on critics of religion than conservatives in their own circles. sentiments such as “X discussion belongs within the community” might clue us in as on why, but allow me to proffer a red thread that i believe i have identified throughout all of this.

it is, obviously, true that critique of religion often constitutes or is a vehicle for assorted bigotries. a certain vigilance can be understandable and i advocate among my peers to not let us become callous of the very real dangers that members of certain ethnic and cultural groups (however one might understand these) face, even people marginalised in and by such religious communities. this is then, in fact, the crux of my project: the acknowledgment that say, ex-muslims aren’t really helped by islamophobia given the fact that it’s not like they’re going to get support from those people peddling it, which is exactly why it’s so tragic that many of them feel there’s no place for them on the left, because so many people on the left refuse to acknowledge that even though islamophobia is well, extant, it’s not like people stuck in certain spheres (among which gay and trans people, women, and all children) are impervious from being harmed just because larger society might not be accepting of those who level that harm unto them. this much then is important: to do right by everyone who must be done right by in whatever way and to leave people’s dignity intact, and to do so in such a way that cannot be co-opted by white supremacists and the like— the most important way to do this is to attack the concept of parental authority, which (culturally) christian conservatives will never accept but will resolve basically all problems that result from the shape of religion as a non-elective membership propagated through the family (as structured by clergy etc etc, whatever).

inoffensive as this clause should be to anyone who claims to be part of the left — which must fundamentally oppose the family for either marxist reasons per engels or for other reasons — even anti-theism which very clearly takes this form is mistaken, usually on purpose, by many religious apologists, to be something it’s not. one of those things that get invoked is the very real white supremacism and imperialist thought that is too endemic in our circles. i’ll admit to tendencies herein appearing from time to time — including in myself, at times, regrettably — but i also insist that a large part of this is simply the fact that while religious people enjoy the benefits of community and avenues for discussion and review, many of us do not: all we have at this stage, sadly, is the diatribes of new atheists who consider christendom an important ‘bulwark’ to protect the ‘occident’ who are useless to anything but an insipid culture war. mistakes are going to be made, and i think some small leeway should be allowed those most ambitious of us who still have a clear and provable dedication to justice and equity (and this is in fact the point of any useful notion of freedom of speech), especially since what we currently have works for nobody except those who want first and foremost to remain comfortable— which is exactly what i believe describes so many anti-anti-theists, but we do in fact need an alternative.

it’s not easy to be leftist and religious and my heart goes out to those who try, even if i don’t ultimately think that where they are heading will allow them to keep their principles coherent and intact: members of one’s congregation and one’s spiritual leaders may tacitly condone or endorse ethnic cleansing in the levant, assorted infant genital maiming rituals, reifications of gender that only those least abject to it can find peace with (consider the humble theyfab), the imperative and exaltation of procreation, to name a few possibilities, which one then is implicitly required to respect in order to remain part of such communities, and i understand the struggle of wanting to be or remain part of those and to have to tangle with that. what i don’t understand then, though, is the abhorrence of people outside such circles who perform critique of the like: i simply do not agree with the fact that certain discussions should stay within the community and they should be well left alone in literally every way with no demands made given the fact that certain members in those communities who this harm is visited upon and whose membership isn’t elective (including all children) do not have voice or agency in those discussions — they deserve support and solidarity across cultural lines, especially as it’s apostates from so many religions who helped me survive and i will owe this to them forever — let alone those in the outgroup who fall victim to the real geopolitical consequences of the substance of certain positions that proliferate in some of these communities, as is now more relevant than ever. this latter aspect is obvious to even the progressive religious apologist, however… at least those conservatives, both inside the congregation and in much more conservative movements don’t threaten what they perceive to be the faith.

an instantiation of this which i will see even most progressive religious people abhor is the notion that any religion is tied, inherently, to not just a nation, but a state. and so they can quibble with their zionist peers and spiritual leaders on this, because both of them have one thing in common: the idea that even if one’s religion/culture is not most meaningfully embodied through state, it is through family, and the criticism of the conservative that the progressive has is not that they are wrong, but merely inauthentic and clinging to something unnecessary, but they are not. i vehemently disagree: the nature of most organised religions has changed through both necessity and acknowledged moral imperative. why can a religion which doesn’t transmit through the family (one of only adult converts perhaps) be envisioned— which in turn wouldn’t depend so heavily on the reification of bodies and family immanent in the aforementioned (a conclusion worth stressing on its own)? if you ask me, it’s a matter of a lack of courage borne from a lack of understanding of history— one may want to read doubt: a history by jennifer michael hecht who is considered jewish according to halakha (for however much that fucking means) who speaks on what the german jews in the 19th century, understanding that they could either stay stuck in the present (and thus have their worldview eventually become as farcical as those who believed that recreating the temple era of judaism was either viable or desirable in any histiographical or theological sense as a result of you know, history historying) or establish those principles which they believed were actually important that could be passed on regardless of how judaism was envisioned before. their work, however hegelian in nature, produced some of the greatest minds even among their apostates, including theodor adorno. turns out that even when people become philosophers rather than rabbis (or ministers, or imams, or gurus), they have plenty to offer, there is wisdom and value in exalting sagehood above the pulpit and how the pulpit must always lay down the law for the mechanisms of familial transmission.

consider second, the ancient greeks: the ancient greeks no longer possess the structures required to exercise their worldviews and theodicies as a bloc (in diaspora or otherwise). regardless, many of their concepts and wisdoms persist in various cultures literally all across the worlds, including mine: their strands of cultural dna have germinated in a larger cosmopolitan phenotype, and i believe this is beautiful and worthwhile in its own right, and in no way whatsoever a loss. sure, their influence might not be recognisable as an enduring culture, but does that make it any less valuable? no, not in the slightest. the fact is, once you are on the other side this is the most normal thing in the world, nobody will mourn it, and everyone who wishes to return will be easily dismissed as entertaining a fantasy. the only way to forestall this is in fact a tautological clinging to the present which will necessarily through the course of history become an immanence of reaction, after all, the prime fallacy of reactionary thought is that it is in fact possible to recreate the past, which is plainly not true except perhaps for aesthetic but which will regardless necessarily be rooted in the current conditions of the world. all that forestalling this progression constitutes is the insistence on the completely artificial. much like the workings of the state are one that imposes a false reality, a phantasm, a reification onto the world, so with family, and literally the moment you stop propping it up it will be superceded. let me repeat that: supercession is inevitable, and the most sophisticated elements of any culture acknowledge this and have for literal centuries (although some cultures are ahead of others in this regard by-and-large). for every generation of a culture persisting as itself, apostates and deviants emerge and at this rate they have done more for the progress within any cultural body than will ever happen within such cultural bodies, which must begrudgingly acknowledge that they are dependent on modernity in order to make any progress at all (and as such, will wither away together with modernity), although of course they will deny this at any front— the adaptation of any covenant is desperately contingent on integration and naturalisation of the apostate and the ‘modern’, or at least her wisdom , which the embodied religious individual will then, of course, pretend to practisee more ‘maturely’ than the apostate because they insist on integrating it in a neutered fashion where it is stripped of future potential of development until the next steal comes along, which is better than fully embodied anti-atheism as the ever-sublating struggle against entropy, for some fucking reason.

this is the promise of ‘externality’ that foucault dreamt of: that there is a way of thinking ‘outside the box’ that allows us to once and for all dispel and move on from the ways of thinking that we cannot think outside of. derrida then disputed him by arguing that there is no outside context. derrida is right— regardless, i remain optimistic: perhaps this cosmopolitan neotenous emergence is a culture in itself, but it is as divergent from what came before as christianity is to judaism, and islam to both christianity and judaism. all it takes is courage, and once the leap of faith has been made, this state of affairs will be the most normal thing in the world. in light of this, the claim that anticlericalism is simply an outwash of christendom becomes obviously farcical and a clear double standard when one considers in juxtaposition their insistence that christianity is divergent from what came before, even though in both cases (christendom versus judaism, anticlericalism versus christendom) perhaps some commonality in language exists and perhaps some people exist who have not managed to estrange themselves from the trappings of christian thought— not to mention the worldwide history of anticlericalism that is yet to be integrated which exists exactly because clericalism necessarily has the same structure and function across all religions. join me in this supercessionist bliss, reject the idea that chronology of thought implies that successors are one and the same as what they draw upon or co-opt, and help usher in the only future world worth conceiving of, resting easy and comfortable in the truthful rejection of the notion that any culture needs to cling to the notion of familial transmission to have any worth at all or that its existence as such is inevitable. the complete and utter nullification of familial logic will happen regardless of whether you want it or not anyway, because it is as artificial as the logic of nation and state and likewise unsustainable and on its death march— this is the one and final eschatology of this world which is not a threat, but a promise, since it will (and can) not be the result so much of repression but of religion collapsing under its own weight, and this much is only uncomfortable to those who are disciples to the family regardless of whether they admit it to themselves or not.

[viki-field]

Forgive us for our savagery

(a letter to the peace-loving world community)

Dear world community, that is currently wagging its finger at Israel and is suggesting the most extraordinary and at the same time genius solution for the current situation: “Stop shooting”! Looking at the history of Israel, I am impressed at your consistency in defending this principle.

In 1948, you drew a pretty line on a map that was supposed to separate Israel that belonged to the Jews and Palestine that belonged to the Arabs. You also drew the borders of Jerusalem that had a special international status. It was all so beautiful! You decided not to pay attention to the fact that Arab countries all around straight away said that they won’t tolerate a Jewish Israel. You continued to implement your peace-loving principles and withdrew your army.

You didn’t shoot when the armies of 5 different Arab countries first took over the land that was intended for the Arabs and then tried to destroy the Jews. Forgive us for the fact that the unreasonable and unwise Jews didn’t follow your recommendations and took weapons in their hands and defended every meter of land in order to build there their own country. If we would have just followed your example, then we wouldn’t have had Israel today and all the problems related to it. Forgive us.

Then there were years of long guerrilla warfare from Egypt and Transjordan on Israel territory. But TikTok and YouTube didn’t exist then and the information took a while to arrive in Europe. Probably when the information did arrive you oohed and shook your finger at someone. We just couldn’t see from here. Sorry for not noticing and fighting on our own.

Then there was the Suez crisis where Israel helped Britain and France not to get their own hands dirty and provided more of its own military than both of these countries combined. You shook your finger and threatened us with sanctions, and after that peacefully, how you like it, you brought your troops into Egypt to quiet down the situation there, but more importantly so that your tankers could safely pass through the canal.

In 1967 Egypt decided to get its army ready and attack Israel. They demanded that you got out. But you’re against violence! So you left. Because the most imperative thing is not to shoot! You showed us an example of how to avoid a conflict. Excuse that the unreasonable and slow Israel didn’t flee to another land, the same year Israel had to fight with Egypt, Iraq and Syria.

During that war, Israel acquired the Sinai Peninsula, Judea and Samaria, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Though it didn’t need that much territory. It just wanted not to have hostile armies gather around its cities.

Furthermore, the borders that you drew on the map in 1948, were erased long ago, and every year 10 to 15 thousand Arab “travelers” just randomly appeared here. Some of them brought explosives with them, but who knows maybe they wanted to stun fish. So essentially, we took a green marker and drew new borders and life got easier. However, you got heartbroken over the fact that we messed up your artwork. Sorry, we can buy you a new map.

Then there was the “War of Attrition”, ongoing terrorist attacks, the “Yom Kippur War”, you showed an example of peace and sat in Europe. You demanded of Israel to stop and not win that much. The only thing is when OPEC got mad at Israel and reduced its oil deliveries it brought a jump in prices all over the world. This, of course, was very bad, so you decided to show a special example of peacefulness. For the sake of peace during a UN meeting, you identified “Zionism as a form of racial discrimination.” Forgive us. Our Zionist Founding Fathers (whom you supported at the time) didn’t know about that.

As well, we had two wars with Lebanon. To start with, on the southern border with Lebanon, Syria established a whole mini-state (Fatahland). Israel arrived there and moved the Syrian army. Though as soon as Israel stopped its military actions you helped 10 thousand militants safely get back to their countries.

The only thing is, Israel stayed in control of the so-called “buffer” zone. This kind of Jewish impudence was outrageous, so in 2000 you forced us to leave. And then instead of the Syrian army, the border filled up with the Iranian Hezbollah. New fortifications and new weapon factories. No, you didn’t stay silent. You looked at Iran strictly and made them withdraw all of their foreign troops from their territory. “Ok!” they said and left Hezbollah on the border. And what can you possibly accuse Lebanon of?— they’re weak, they can’t control Hezbollah, therefore you decided not to pay attention to it.

Then, there was a new war, disarmament of the buffer zone. Then there was your cease-fire resolution! Thank you! You demanded to remove Hezbollah from that zone and reminded everyone that “This can’t happen again!” Moreover, at Israel’s request, you brought your troops and special people to, “observe the situation.” And they observed. They observed how Hezbollah resumed its activities there as well as new rockets flew towards us.

Oh yes, you constantly show us your peaceful and creative ideas. What wonderful conferences you have held, we even got to travel the world! The Camp David Accords, the Madrid Conference, negotiations in Washington, the Oslo Accords. And each one of them was a “breakthrough”, “step forward”, “unprecedented breakthrough.”... The only thing is in Gasa they considered the unprecedented breakthrough as a victory over Israel, and while riding this wave Hamas came to power (which you also recognized as a terrorist organization). But you are peace-loving, so you continued sending them help and finances. You saw how they made rockets and dug tunnels but taught Israel to stick with peace. Forgive us for restraining this activity even though you were mad.

I’m sure that now you also have a bunch of creative ideas on how to achieve peace. Thank you! Your example of peace-making on our land is outstanding! Your advice and examples — invaluable. Your resolutions are just the pinnacle of an imaginative style and meticulous phrasings.

Sorry that we’re so far behind you. Apologies for taking weapons into our own hands and trying to disarm Hamas that is bombing our cities. Perhaps it would have been easier for us to follow your example of peace if, for example, European cities were being bombed. Although, I think no, I think we are still barbarian people, and we will support an anti-terror group regardless of where it is located. As was the case when Israel assassinated al-Masri, al-Qaeda No.2. So forgive us for our barbaric ways. We will fight terror as we can.

[nightcoremoon]

weird opinion but christians aren't religious.

ok so like, jews generally follow god's rules, muslims follow allah's rules, hindus probably follow their gods rules, so on and so forth. and overall they do it out of faith; they do it because they want to honor the deity who loves them rather than because society forces them to.

granted the zionists and the radical extremists and the zealots do exist but as loud minorities and thus are statistical outliers & don't matter.

christians are... a different breed.

"if you aren't x branch and dont obey y rules you'll go to hell so we'll fucking murder you" is pretty much the main driving force behind a significant portion of christianity in history. the catholics, the protestants, the orthodoxy, all are built on a foundation of fear, anger, and hatred. it's shaped the way society developed; in the 4 nations that did the most genocidal imperialist colonialism- England, France, Spain, and Italy- a combination of convenient coastal locations, naval prowess, military tendency, christianity, and ultranationalism lead them down a path of missionaries, holding bibles in one hand and bloodstained knives in the other. the religion is inseparable from the culture and inseparable from the horrible things done in the name of their god, and the resulting cancers of society we feel today from the campaigns of slaughter. xenophobia. capitalism. savage barbarism via sensationalized capitol punishment. misogyny. queerphobia. gender fascism. classism. racism. all of these issues in the "civilized world" stem predominantly from those four nations and the disease ridden pestilent filth some call pilgrims.

here's something interesting:

there are less than 1 million rastafari in the world.

there are less than 5 million shinto in the world.

there are less than 25 million jews in the world.

there are less than 30 million sikhs in the world.

there are roughly 100 million african cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are less than 400 million chinese cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are about 500 million buddhists in the world.

there are about 1.1 billion hindus in the world.

there are about 1.2 billion nonreligious people in the world.

there are 1.6 billion muslims in the world.

and one final statistic

there are over 2.1 billion christians in the world.

the jewish count is a highball, rounded up, and includes several different definitions of jewish including people who are only one quarter. so for every single person who is even remotely jewish, there are more than 8 christians. for every hindu, there are 4 christians. for every atheist, agnostic, or "other", 2 christians. this frightening statistic should set off warning bells for everyone who is involved in a discussion about religion. and anyone who knows BASIC world history and can correlate data at all can probably piece together what I'm putting down.

now, I may be slightly biased here considering my eclectic religious beliefs. now, I personally believe that there is some primary force of energy that may or may not manifest itself as a humanoid being, that engineered the most basic laws of physics in the universe: atomic magnetism. as can be inferred by planck's constant and its implications, our universe is digital, written in binary. an electron either moves or doesn't move. there are no other options. so I genuinely believe in some form of intelligent design; whether it's a bearded guy on a cloud, some dude with six arms and an elephant for a face, just a big swirling pool of ectoplasm, or a big ol' plate of spaghetti and meatballs, something is out there that we are physically incapable of contacting from our plane of existence, just as a drawing on a piece of paper cannot reach out to interact with the world: a gif will move on its own but it will never acknowledge our existence, even if it could think by itself. and all the different mythologies of the world- egyptian, greek, norse, shinto, whatever- very well could be the agents of that unknown "god". perhaps anubis, ra, and bastet are just angels with animal heads that all of the peoples of ancient egypt saw and were like oh I guess this must be a god. maybe zeus and loki were the same person with a magic dick who fucked a bunch of animals in both greece and the scandinavian countries and spawned all of the horrible half-animal monstrosities that, idk, made vishnu think "well I have to kill that" and caused the biblical flood or something. maybe the jewish god gifted wisdom to siddhartha for sitting under a fig tree for 6 years through the angel pomona [roman goddess of fruit, had to google that one], so buddha gets his wisdom from demeter and is in nirvana right now right a step up from hades on yggdrasil the world tree keeping an eye on his charge persephone. any theory could theoretically be true but we ants of humans will never fucking know because we can't just point a telescope at the magellanic clouds and say "look, there's amaterasu with russell's teapot, and she's having tea with... *rubs eyes* lemmy kilmister??? wow I guess gods are real after all!" it's impossible to know the secrets of our universe because of the very restrictive nature of the universe itself. is it a circle? is it a donut? WE DONT FUCKIN KNOW.

we cannot know what religion is truthful.

""anyone who says that any one religion is more or less true than any other is a fucking moron, and if they're suggesting that White Western European Colonial Imperialist Protestantism is the one true faith, they're probably a fucking racist colonizer who beats his wife/sister and burns gays at the stake. and considering how that exact demographic is typically the one that murdered people for not converting to their religion, I don't think they have the intellectual non-deranged ability to make those logical connections.

again, I'm not saying that there AREN'T a lot of people of every religion who are evil assholes who contributed to mass genocide. israelites killed palestinians. shiites killed sunnis. hutus killed tutsis. danes killed geats. turks killed armenians. the ottoman empire has as much blood on its hands as the holy roman empire. germans who called themselves aryans but weren't actually aryan killed jews. but all of these tragedies were isolated incidents rather than repeated patterns over the course of two thousand years. not like christianity was and is.

just look at the United States, Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, & India's British Raj. Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, by extension Protestantism and Catholicism, are the shared factor between the long and bloody history fraught with massacring indigenous populations who wouldn't convert religions. native americans, indigenous canadians, latin americans but predominantly mexicans, the eastern chinese, coastal africans, aborigine aussies, indians- coastal coastal coastal. true the western chinese and the mongols/hunnu and xinjiang muslims haven't exactly been on civil terms and the silk road has always been a battleground and the middle east was already tenuous before murrica bombed them for oil but those happened in such a spread out area among asia which is FUCKING HUGE, MIND YOU! but also that's three high traffic places with massive diversity, it's human nature to have conflict, but not nearly to the same level as all of the shit christianity has done to the world. it's impossible to separate the religion from the cultures; victorian england without protestantism is just dirty people who die at 15 from having their 3rd child. italy without the catholicism is just grass and cheese. france and spain without religion are just kingdoms that fought wars with england for forever and now just make food that's one part delicious and three parts horrifying. religion is directly responsible for a significant portion of the evils those countries committed. one religion in particular.

they don't practice religion the same way as the rest do. they aren't faithful to their god. they don't follow his rules out of love but out of fear. they execute dissenters without a second thought, heresy they cry. they execute women and little girls for being free thinking or having sickness associated with mercury poisoning in the water, witch they cry. they slaughter men women and kids alike in the name of cramming their beliefs down the natives throats, we're chasing out the snakes they cry, we're bringing god to your godless people they cry, we're just civilizing you they cry. they shit in the streets and proudly display rotting corpses and leave the impoverished disabled and starving to die alone and whip their slaves and rape teenage girls and scrap in the streets while sopping wet with spilled ale over insignificant insults and stab people to death in the night and never even fucking BATHE, and they have the nerve to say the natives were uncivilized. the nerve. because hey. they read a magic book they stole from a culture who stole from another culture who stole from another culture, mistranslating each time from hebrew to greek to italian to english, and they think they're better because their skin is white.

christians never evolved. their mentalities have stayed the same. all thatms advanced has been technology. that's it. they're still the same evil disgusting degenerate bastards they always were. they just have the money they stole to buy stained glass windows, rosary beads, giant tacky metal statues, bigass robes, leather, and printing presses. and as time passed they used the money they continued to steal to buy cars and websites and radio stations and commit felony tax evasion and secretly molest children and line the pockets of the politicians.

all of their holidays are stolen from pagans anyway.

so fuck christmas. fuck easter. fuck lent. fuck the golden calf christian holidays that the tiny minded fragile snowflake conservatives lose their collective shit over because the pandemic response common sense stipulations won't let them buy the shit they can't afford with money they shouldn't have for people they don't even LIKE, all in the name of tradition, tradition! the rituals that worship something so much worse than satan or baphomet or pan or whatever: the dollar. they buy all the new shiny shit they can, at the expense of the chinese kids that the corporate pigs outsource to, buy the pine trees and the coca cola vunderbar and the fake mint corn syrup Js and watch the same shitty cookie cutter white supremacist hallmark fash movies and stuff their kids full of enough sugar to go into a goddamn coma when the african slaves who pick the cocoa beans will never get to know what actually being a kid will ever feel like because they're gonna die from falling into a combine harvester and be eternally forgotten to history and no christian will ever give a shit because they don't fucking care about what they don't see on their safe space news or hear on their safe space radio or read on their safe space social media. they think their worst sin is eating cheeseburgers so instead they'll go eat a mcchicken or chick fil a or an arby's chicken sandwich instead but not at popeyes because "that place is sketchy" and by that they mean they don't wanna eat where black people eat, that's why cracker barrel was so popular for so many white christians for so long because it had racially segregated seating until barely 20 years ago.

they don't love jesus. they love a paper doll they shove into their back pockets until every other sunday where they go to a fucking mall with a baptism waterslide and raise their hands like a bunch of dumbass weirdos and away to adult contemporary indie schlock with the word jesus pasted into a boring-ass hetero romance song, pat themselves on the back, then go to starbucks to scream slurs and misgenderings at 14 year old starbucks baristas who give them a cappamochalattechino instead of a fucking carmamochalattechino because you mumbled under the mask you didn't even fucking cover your nose with because you don't give a shit about the virus beyond how it inconveniences you.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. until you suggest the slightest infinitely small inconvenience to them that would alter their holiday plans even the littlest smidge. then they would kill you if not for the police. don't get me started on them because you know by now what I'd say about those fuckers. but they'll gladly wear shirts about how they'll kill you. how they'll go back 200 years. how they'll murder you and watch you slowly suffer because their primate brains shoot a million endorphins when they watch things die by their hands because they never evolved a sense of empathy, compassion, or morality beyond how wearing a cross necklace will remove any of the consequences they will face in their afterlife.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. unless you're gay or black or trans or Not Christian™ or mexican or disagree with them about politics economics sociology science technology music or movies. assimilate or die. assimilate or die. assimilate or die.

they don't deserve special treatment for their false idols.

they aren't better than jews or muslims.

they're worse.

so much worse.

and they should be stopped.""

-Nightingale Quietioca

save as draft arch draft bookmark draft where did I put my keys contra code kontra kode I need to remember this and copy it buzzwords keywords find it later please god tumblr don't bork on me this is good stream of consciousness repackage repackage change the words this is a great character study if I do say so myself thanks 3am me you're welcome 3am me

[jewish-privilege]

...When the conference began Thursday morning, I was warned that protesters from the Bard chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine planned to interrupt my panel with [Ruth Wisse, a Harvard professor of Yiddish literature and scholar of Jewish history and culture, and Shany Mor, an Israeli thinker who is affiliated with the Hannah Arendt Center]. I was surprised they were not targeting the one on Zionism, but the one on anti-Semitism, the only panel of about 20 over the course of the two-day program where three Jews would be discussing the topic.

“But we’re not even talking about Israel,” I said to the conference organizers. “How does that make sense?”

My concern was met with an explanation of the College’s policy towards protesters. The center’s leadership, and the two Bard College deans attending the conference, seemed to have no particular plan to handle what was fixing to become an ugly disruption of Jews trying to discuss anti-Semitism. [Roger Berkowitz, the founder and director of Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center] told us that there would be added security, but the security officers were not allowed to remove the students.

As the protesters started to gather in the lobby, I approached them. I told them that I respected their passion and commitment to what they thought was right, but asked why they had picked this panel.

“Come to my panel tomorrow,” I said. “Come protest my comments on Zionism. I’ll be talking about the occupation. Bring your signs.”

I told them I’d reserve the first and second audience-questions for members of their group, but that protesting the all-Jewish anti-Semitism panel was undercutting their work.

“Don’t you see that?” I asked. Didn’t they see that protesting Jews over Israel when they are not even talking about Israel is racist? Didn’t they understand that saying we were responsible for the behavior of the Israeli Jews just because we shared their ethnicity was racist? That making every conversation with Jews about Israel is racist?”

“The conversation about anti-Semitism is already inherently about Israel,” one of the students archly explained, repeating a deeply anti-Semitic trope that has been voiced across the spectrum from David Duke to Louis Farrakhan to Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters. Right-wing anti-Semites see any accusation of anti-Semitism as a Jewish conspiracy to take away the rights of whites, while left-wing anti-Semites sees the same accusation as an attempt to silence Palestinians.

Apparently, so do some Bard students.

...When the protesters proceeded to interrupt Wisse, they were applauded by several of our fellow conference speakers in the audience. These vaunted intellectuals, flown in from across the country to discuss racism, were commending a display of racism against Jews.

This was much more horrifying than the students’ chanting and leafletting, which failed to stop the indomitable Wisse from having her say, defining anti-Semitism as any political organizing against Jews (I have been told since that two students were removed, something I didn’t see from the stage, but the rest stayed). Not one of our fellow conference speakers got up and exercised their free speech rights to call the protest what it was. Not one came over to us after to express shock and horror that three Jews would be denounced for Israel’s actions while attempting to discuss anti-Semitism in America.

...But not one of my fellow speakers said a word. Two days later, I have not received a single note acknowledging what happened, which leaves me thinking they condone it.

And some were explicit about it. At a party for conference speakers at Berkowitz’s house right after the panel, Etienne Balibar, a French philosopher currently teaching at Columbia University, told me he thought the protest was wonderful.

“Why are you silencing Palestinians?” he demanded. “There should have been a Palestinian discussing anti-Semitism. They have many thoughts about it!”

I left the party. How could I drink with people like that? And back at my hotel, I realized that it would be pointless to participate in Friday’s program. There is no debate possible when people think anti-Semitism is not only acceptable, but commendable.

So when I was introduced the next morning, I pulled out a new set of remarks. I directly addressed these academics and writers and intellectuals who were brought to Bard to speak about how to fight racism and anti-Semitism. I told them I was appalled that not one of them had called out this blatantly racist act, the way they surely would have if it had been three Muslims on the dais, or three black speakers — or at least, the way I would have in that scenario.

“I’m horrified by your cowardice. By your self-justifications,” I read from the new set of remarks I had written the night before. “You, who I called luminaries! Whose books I’ve read! There’s nothing more I want to say to you or hear from you.

“The next time someone says, ‘What have you done to help Jews as anti-Semitism has spiked across the nation, as Jews have been murdered at their place of worship and Orthodox Jews get beaten to a pulp day after day in Brooklyn,’ you can say, ‘I sat idly by as Jews were protested for trying to talk about anti-Semitism. I allowed a Jewish woman to be held accountable — because of her ethnicity — for the actions of a country halfway around the world where she can’t even vote. I egged the protest on, in fact. And then I went to a party.’”

There is no debate possible when people think that your very humanity is up for debate, something my fellow conference goers no doubt accept as obviously true when it comes to anti-Black racism or anti-Muslim racism. And yet somehow, when it comes to anti-Jewish racism — holding one Jew accountable for the actions of another simply because they are Jewish — no one bats an eye.

No doubt the intelligentsia at the conference proceeded to debate whether Jews are a valid target of protest in my absence (Berkowitz did ask me to stay, as did a few members of the audience when I walked off the stage). No doubt others will continue to debate the question, too; perhaps they will argue that Zionists are a valid target, even when they are discussing issues that aren’t related to Israel.

Yet polls show that more than 95% of Jews in America have a favorable view of Israel. The debate over whether Zionists are human and deserving of human treatment will have to be held in the absence of Jews of conscience. In 2019, no Jew should be forced to debate their humanity, their right to exist independent of anti-Semitism.

...But as I know all too well, the most important factor in hosting the full gamut of legitimate opinion is knowing where the red lines are. And if you think allowing Jews to be protested for being Jews does not represent a red line, I have nothing more to say to you, and nothing I want to hear.

As I was getting my suitcase to leave the Bard campus on Friday morning, a student approached me. He had followed me out of the auditorium after I made my speech and left the stage. He had a big smile on his face.

“That was great,” he said. “I was at the panel last night and I didn’t really understand what was happening. I’ve never really understood what anti-Semitism is. But your remarks just now — they made it so clear.

“I get it now!” he said, his young face awash in the jubilance that intellectually curious people feel when a puzzle is solved.

I was filled with surprise and gratitude. I had convinced one person.

[Read Batya Ungar-Sargon’s full post at The Forward]

[chiseler]

A Palestinian Guide to Surviving a Quarantine: On Faith, Humor and ‘Dutch Candy’

Call it a ‘quarantine’, a ‘shelter-in-place’, a ‘lockdown’ or a ‘curfew’, we Palestinians have experienced them all, though not at all voluntarily.

Personally, the first 23 years of my life were lived in virtual ‘lockdown’. My father’s ‘quarantine’ was experienced much earlier, as did his father’s ‘shelter-in-place’ before him. They both died and were buried in Gaza’s cemeteries without ever experiencing true freedom outside of their refugee camp in Gaza.

Currently in Gaza, the quarantine has a different name. We call it ‘siege’, also known as ‘blockade’.

In fact, all of Palestine has been in a state of ‘lockdown’ since the late 1940s when Israel became a state and the Palestinian homeland was erased by Zionist colonialists with the support of their Western benefactors.

That lockdown intensified in 1967 when Israel, now a powerful state with a large army and strong allies, occupied the remaining parts of Palestine - East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Under this lockdown, the Palestinian freedom of movement was curtailed

to the extent that Palestinians required permits from the Israeli military to leave the Occupied Territories or to return home, to move about from one town to the other, and, at times, to cross a single Israeli military checkpoint or a fortified wall.

In Palestine, we don’t call our imprisonment a lockdown, but a ‘military occupation’ and ‘apartheid’.

As for ‘shelter-in-place’, in Palestine, we have a different name for it. We call it a ‘military curfew’.

Since I was a child, I learned to listen intently to orders barked out by Israeli military officers as they swept through our refugee camp in Gaza declaring or easing military curfews. This ritual often happened late at night.

“People of Nuseirat, per orders of the Israeli military you are now under curfew. Anyone who violates orders will be shot immediately,” the terrifying words, always communicated through a loudspeaker in broken Arabic, were a staple during the First Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) of 1987.

The period between 1987 to 1993 was a virtual ‘lockdown’. Thousands of people, mostly children, were killed for failing to respect the rules of their collective imprisonment.

In Gaza, even when a full military curfew was not in place, we rarely left our small and crowded neighborhoods, let alone our refugee camps. We were all haunted by the fear that we may not be able to make it home by 8p.m., the time designated by the Israeli military for all of us to return home.

Every day, ten or fifteen minutes after the nightly curfew set in, we would hear the crackling and hissing of bullets as they whistled through the air from various distances. Automatically, we would conclude that some poor soul - a worker, a teacher, or a rowdy teenager - missed his chance by a few minutes, and paid a price for it.

Now that nearly half of the population of planet Earth are experiencing some form of ‘curfew’ or another, I would like to share a few suggestions on how to survive the prolonged confinement, the Palestinian way.

Think Ahead

Since we knew that a complete lockdown, or a military curfew, was always pending, we tried to anticipate the intensity and duration of it and prepare accordingly.

For example, when the Israeli army killed one or more refugees, we knew in advance that mass protests would follow, thus more killings. In these situations, a curfew was imminent.

Number one priority was to ensure that all family members congregated at home or stayed within close proximity so that they could rush in as fast as possible when the caravan of Israeli military jeeps and tanks came thundering, opening fire at anyone or anything within sight.

Lesson number one: Always think ahead and prepare for a longer lockdown than the initial one declared by your city or state.

Stay Calm

My father had a bad temper, although a very kind heart. When curfews were about to start, he would enter into a near-panic state. A chain smoker with obsessive, although rational fear that one of his five boys would eventually be killed, he would walk around the house in a useless rush, not knowing what to do next.

Typically, my mother would come in, rational and calculating. She would storm the kitchen to assess what basic supplies were missing, starting with the flour, sugar and olive oil.

Knowing that the first crackdown by the Israelis would be on water supplies and electricity, she would fill several plastic containers of water, designating some for tea, coffee and cooking, and others for dishes and washing clothes.

Per her orders, we would rush to the nearby stores to make small but necessary purchases - batteries for the flashlight and the transistor radio, cigarettes for my dad, and a few VHS videotapes which we would watch over and again, whether the curfew lasted for a few days or a few weeks.

Lesson number two: Take control of the situation - do not panic - and assign specific responsibilities to every family member. This strengthens the family unit and sets the stage for collective solidarity desperately required under these circumstances.

Preserve Your Water

I cannot emphasize this enough. Even if you think that a water crisis is not impending, do not take chances.

It is easy to feel invincible and fully prepared on the first day of quarantine - or military curfew. Many times, we lived to regret that false sense of readiness, as we drank too much tea or squandered our dishwashing water supplies too quickly.

In this case, you have a serious problem, especially during the summer months when you cannot count on rainwater to make up for the deficit.

Years after the end of the Intifada, my father revealed to us that many a time, him and mom used the rainwater they collected in buckets throughout the house, including the leaked roofs for our drinking supplies, even when there was no electricity or gas to boil the water beforehand.

In retrospect, this explains the many bouts of diarrhea we experienced, despite his assurances that they had painstakingly removed all bird droppings from the salvaged water.

Lesson number three: Cautiously use your water supplies during a quarantine, and never, under any circumstance, drink rainwater or, at least, keep diarrhea pills handy.

Ration Your Food

The same logic that applies to water applies to food. It goes without saying that any acquired food would have to cover the basics first. For example, flour, which we used to make bread, comes before bananas, and sugar, which we consumed abundantly with tea, comes before Dutch candy.

I made that mistake more than once, not because of my love for the imported Dutch candy which we purchased from Abu Sa’dad’s store, located in the center of the camp. The truth is, my brothers and I played a strange form of candy poker which kept us entertained for many hours. I dreaded running out of my precious supplies before the curfew was over, thus subjugating myself to potential humiliation of having to auction everything else I owned - including my small radio - to stay in the game.

My poor mother was devastated numerous times by the horrible choices we made when we rushed to buy ‘essentials’.

Lesson number four: Agree in advance on what classifies as ‘essential food’, and consume your food in a rational way. Also, if you are lucky enough to locate Dutch candy in whatever version of the Abu Sa’dad’s store, in your town, do not gamble it all in one day.

Find Sources of Entertainment

If electricity is still available, then you still have the option of watching television. For us, Indian movies, especially those starring Amitabh Bachchan, were the number one option. Imagine my disappointment when our beloved movie star, who helped us through numerous military curfews in Gaza, was photographed grinning with right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s visit to India in 2018.

If electricity is cut off, be ready with alternative options: books, free wrestling, living-room soccer (with the ball preferably made from stuffed-up socks contributed by all family members), and, of course, candy poker.

Lesson number five: The key is to have more than one form of entertainment and to be prepared for every eventuality, including power outages as a form of collective punishment.  

Find the Humor in Grim Situations

Don’t focus on the negatives; there is no point or wisdom in that. Emphasizing the grimness of a situation can only contribute to the feeling of defeat and powerlessness that are already generated by the lockdown. There will be plenty of time in which you can look back, reflect, and even bemoan your unfortunate circumstance.

But, during the curfew itself is when you actually need your sense of humor most. Take things lightly - laugh at your miserable situation, if you must. Forgive yourself for not being perfect, for panicking when you should have been composed, or for forcing your younger brother to gamble his underwear when he runs out of Dutch candy.

Difficult situations can offer the kind of scenarios that can be interpreted in two extreme ways: either extremely tragic or extremely funny; opt for the latter whenever you can, because as long as you laugh, as long as your spirit remains unbroken, your humanity remains intact.

Lesson number six: Be funny, don’t take life too seriously, share a laugh with others, and let humor inject hope in every hour and every day of your quarantine.

Hold Tighter to Your Faith

Whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or any other faith; whether you are an atheist, agnostic, or practice any form of spirituality, philosophy or belief system, find comfort in your faith and beliefs.

Since all mosques in our refugee camp were shut down, if not raided during a military curfew, the call for prayer, which we heard five times during each day, was permanently silenced.

To keep the call for prayer going, we would sneak to the roof of our houses, carefully scan the area for any Israeli soldiers, and collectively make the call for prayer whenever it was required. Volunteers included my English teacher, who was communist and claimed that he did not believe in God, myself, and Nabil, the neighbor boy with the massive head and the most unpleasant voice.

In curfews, we developed a different relationship with God: He became a personal and more intimate companion, as we often prayed in total darkness, whispered our verses so very cautiously as not to be heard by pesky soldiers. And, even those who hardly prayed before the curfew kept up with all five prayers during the lockdown.

Lesson number seven: Let your values guide you during your hours of loneliness. And if you volunteer to make a call for prayer (or recite your religious hymns) please be honest with yourself: if you have no sense of rhythm or if your voice has the pitch of an angry alley cat, for God’s sake, leave the job to someone else.

In Conclusion ..

I hope that under no circumstances you will ever hear these ominous words: “You are now under curfew. Anyone who violates orders will be shot immediately.” I also hope that this COVID-19 quarantine will make us kinder to each other and will make us emerge from our homes better people, ready to take on global challenges while united in our common faith, collective pain and a renewed sense of love for our environment.

And when it’s all over, think of Palestine, for her people have been ‘quarantined’ for 71 years and counting.

by Ramzy Baroud