#especially if it means people are going to them for information instead of actually palestinian or arabic organizations!!!

[shorelinnes]

hi guys just a reminder to please fact check posts before reblogging them 🙏

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

jewish people online:

yeah we have to block and report people constantly because they post misinformation, harass us, send death threats, doxx us, send sexual harassment threats, go after our friends, and generally destroy our mental health. there's not really any super well known lists of people to block and report because ever jew has a different threshold of what they can handle seeing and want to see. some people do share information especially about particularly violent people to keep others safe. we'd really like it if more people spoke up about antisemitism but at the very least just leave us alone and fact check things

antizionists anti-israel (totally just the government) anti jewish people:

we've curated a huge list of celebrities and influencers for you to block because they haven't talked about our special cause (palestine) yet! we do not encourage you to make critical decisions about who you're blocking and why and instead we want you to just block every single person who doesn't talk about palestine. no we don't care that a lot of celebrities accounts aren't even controlled by them and are instead accessed mostly by members of their staff. its just common knowledge that the best form of activism is getting mad at famous people! then people look at those people and realize how bad they are -- wait what do you mean?? we're exposing these celebrities to more people and some of those people actually agree with them?? they could even gain support? or even if they lose followers they might have a smaller audience that's more interactive?? no no wait that can't be right. also when people post things without checking for misinformation because they fear losing support or even income it can actually harm palestinians?? because the aid is probably going to hamas instead? wait how is that bad hamas are our freedom fighters!! anyway ugh all this is making my head hurt those (((zionists))) are controlling the media

[edenfenixblogs]

hi, i wanted to give you an update on that post of mine you reblogged. heritageposts has informed me that they were using the red triangle in this context: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231123-one-small-red-triangle-palestine-we-are-finally-looking/

i was wrong about what they meant with the 🔻 emoji and i am officially rescinding my previous statement

I am all for fact checking and I would love to believe that Heritage Posts did not mean this particular horrible thing they did.

However, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) is not a reliable source for information in this conflict. If HP is actually using MEMO for news, they should focus on more reliable ones going forward.

There are plenty of other left-leaning sources with more reliability, credibility, sourcing, and transparency.

They have failed several fact checks for misleading and occasionally false information. The publication is explicitly and repeatedly pro-Hamas, and they often omit vital information to skew their stories.

While they are not rated as an outright propaganda publication or as a source of conspiracy theories, they do often cite sources which do and are.

Finally, they are funded by donations. Of course these donations largely come from people who support the kind of reporting that people who donate to them support. They are a nonprofit organization, which is not inherently a bad thing. But this means their interests are not based in journalistic ideals but in political ideology. This is not a reason to completely discount a source, but it is something to keep in mind.

In general, with a topic this intense and with such profound consequences for so many people, I’m only engaging with sources who receive a “reporting” rating of “high” or better and a “credibility” rating of “high credibility.”

I would POSSIBLY consider a “reporting” rating of “Mostly factual” if it had a “high credibility” rating and several extenuating circumstances and reduced media bias to compensate for its lower score in another area.

Leftist sources worth referencing instead:

Forward Progressives

Haaretz

International Policy Digest

Current Affairs

And many others

Personally, though, (for this particular conflict especially) I tend to prefer sources that fall into the central three categories: left-center biased, least biased, and right-center biased.

No news source is perfect or without bias. But this conflict is so fraught that I frankly don’t trust anyone reporting with extreme ideological intentions. And I also don’t want to only read sources that make me comfortable. I am personally very leftist in all of my personal politics and voting. However, I also know that the far left has been more hostile to me based solely on my Jewish ethnicity than anyone else in these past months. Furthermore, I think politicians should be more left, but journalism should always prioritize facts and a full scope of a situation over any one viewpoint. I am the daughter of a journalist. I am deeply in favor of journalistic freedom. And I absolutely do NOT believe in “both sidesism.” Sometimes, there really aren’t two sides to a situation that are both equally worth listening to. There is no alternative viewpoint to “Black Lives Matter” for example that is not deeply racist.

There are not “two sides worth teaching” when it comes to The Holocaust.

But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not so simple. Israel should stop its bombing of Palestine. Palestinians should have full and equal rights. Jewish people in Israel and around the world should not have to live in constant fear or attack, harassment, or murder. There are a lot of extremely valid perspectives from Palestinians, Muslims, Israelis, Arabs, and Jews. And right now, the far left and the far right are weaponizing their ideologies to reduce all of the aforementioned groups to their worst actors. That is not something that will help anyone with regard to this conflict.

Left Leaning Sources

ABC News

Associated Press

Atlantic Media

Boston Globe

The Forward (This is a Jewish source. They had one failed fact check in the last five years, but issued an official correction.)

Human Rights Watch

Institute for Middle East Understanding (This is a Palestinian source and it has a completely clean fact check record)

Least Biased Sources

Jewish Telegraphic Agency (Obviously a Jewish source)

Reuters (this has a Very High reporting rating)

American Press Institute (not only have they not failed a fact check in five years; they have never failed a fact check ever)

The Conversation

Pew Research

Foreign Policy

Foreign Affairs

Sky News UK

Right Leaning

Note: As I stated numerous times, including in this post, I am a leftist. However, something important for American readers of this post to know is that, when it comes specifically to matters involving military analysis of foreign conflicts, a slight right lean in perspective is common and sometimes preferable to leftist idealism. I say this as someone who votes and holds opinions that are about as far left as one can get. However, I also say this as someone with a background in university studies of international politics. Because analysis of military conflicts is often done by those with experience in and understanding of the military, most of the most credible and detailed analyses of foreign military affairs do tend to be more right leaning than sources of equal worth focused on domestic political matters. Furthermore, a leftist tendency toward pacifism (which I share) tends to mean less leftist involvement in military-involved political matters at all. Of course, none of this means there are no quality leftist sources on the current conflict (which I obviously demonstrated by linking to such sources above). I am simply explaining the value of such sources to those who may justifiably be skeptical of anything right-leaning after the hellish past two decades of domestic policies and US-caused violence in other countries.

Note 2: There are plenty of right-leaning sources that received “high” credibility ratings and “high” reporting ratings. I found no sources that had both “very high” credibility and “high” reporting ratings in the “right-center” category.

Boston Herald

Chicago Tribune

Counter Extremism Project

Foreign Policy Research Institute

The Jewish Press (clearly a Jewish source, this publication is geared toward the Modern Orthodox Jewish community. They have no failed fact checks)

ITV News

Jewish Unpacked (this source has no failed fact checks. this source is right-leaning by necessity because of its historical examination of antisemitism in leftist spaces making those spaces inherently unsafe for Jews—not specifically in this most recent flare up in the I/p conflict, but for years).

Right Bias

Note: I don’t personally follow or read any of these sources. But I did list leftist sources with high credibility and reporting ratings, so I will do the same here in the interest of fairness. It should be noted that all other source bias ratings had results several pages long. Right Bias sources with high credibility and reporting ratings were confined to one page only. There are no Right Bias Sources with Very High reporting ratings and high credibility.

Economic Policy Journal (no failed fact checks now or ever)

Influence Watch (tends to view liberal and progressive politics as “extremist,” but has no failed fact checks.)

I am not inclined to trust HP simply because their most recent antisemitic behavior fell short of hoping for Jewish genocide. I have a higher bar for accounts than that.

[phoenixyfriend]

A lot has been happening today that rep calls could affect. UN vetoes, KOSA, Julian Assange, UNRWA's funding crisis and Israel's demands that it be completely dismantled, the large number of bills we just learned are on the docket for the coming week, and even the good news that is recent successes by the BDS movement.

And like... I care about this stuff. I want to talk about it. But it takes an emotional and mental toll to do it, and it takes time, and... there are two reasons to write up reference, update, information posts:

Compensation. I'm not a journalist, but if I were, I would in theory be getting paid for the information I collect and share to my audience. However, I am not, and am doing this for free. I have gotten maybe $5 in donations since I started this project, and while I recognize that this is probably because people are (quite rightly) donating instead to Palestinian charities or local campaigns or something, it's a basic fact that I am not actually being compensated for this work.

Promoting change and activism. This is in fact my main goal: to have a positive impact on current events by giving people a guide on the news and politics because there's so much happening that's hard to keep track of, and if I'm already doom-listening to half a dozen political podcasts, I might as well save other people the trouble, right?

The thing is, like... most of the reblogs on my guidelines and helpful posts are from me, to me. I am the one reblogging. I am desperately trying to get these things to circulate so I can make a difference, but... no dice. Some of the posts are admittedly pretty long (my 'how to call your reps, here's some verbiage' post is 3.4k words), and I can imagine some people are saving it for later, and then maybe forget, or they don't want to share something controversial, and like... I do get that. I do.

But it does mean the posts aren't circulating, and thus they're having less of an impact, and I can't help but feel like there are other things I could be doing to help that would be more effective. More bang for my buck, except it's my time and effort instead of my money. Like, maybe it would have more an effect if I hunted down a wider variety of elected officials I could bother instead of instructing other people on how to bother theirs? Maybe going to protests (which would be a huge commitment due to distance) would be more effective than trying to help ensure that the effectiveness of "I actually have a vote and you are losing it" of calls has the weight of numbers behind it.

Especially since I did try to blaze it, and tumblr mods rejected the post. I don't know why. It's not against ToS, since none of it was disinformation or election interference, which is the only reason given on the FAQ for why things might not be approved for blazing, but who knows.

Maybe tumblr just decided the possible blowback on them for blazing a pro-ceasefire post would be too much.

I don't know. I just... it's just really disheartening to try to help and it gets stymied because, as much effort as it might be, it doesn't reach more than a (comparatively) tiny audience, especially when my relatively low-effort polls and shitposts get easily ten times as many notes with way less energy put in.

EDIT: This is not a post that I need to have reblogged. this is just me bitching. This a vent post. What I am asking people to reblog is my activism posts that I spend hours on to try and help nudge things in a better direction. Please reblog THOSE. This one doesn't need reblogging unless you have an actual comment. Reblogging this post just to reblog, with neither useful comment nor encouragement, is not helping me with my issue of 'not paid, not making an impact' or helping with any important causes.

[gentil-minou]

So, I have this one friend who's Jewish, and pro-Israel. They're not thrilled about the civilian deaths in Gaza, but not overly bothered by them either, since according to them most of them support Hamas, and to blame Hamas for all the civilian deaths in Gaza for using Palestinian civilians as human meat shields, and that almost all humanitarian aid to Gaza is just going to go to funding Hamas. That doesn't really sound right to me, and I've tried pushing back a little, especially on the "blame Hamas for anyone the Israeli government kills in Gaza while trying to destroying Hamas" front, though honestly most of it sounds pretty off, especially with how dismissive it is of Palestinians' plight and just seems to write them off as acceptable collateral damage to get at Hamas. So I'm trying to push back on those talking points without pissing them off too much, though I don't know enough about the humanitarian aid part to counter it.

It's just really weird right now, because I know several people who are Jewish and even some with Israeli relatives, and then several who are Muslim like yourself, and I'm getting VERY different narratives from both. Though uh. The pro-Israel stuff tends to be really dismissive of Gazans caught in the crossfire to the point that I'm pretty suspicious of it. I feel bad for the Israelis impacted by Hamas's initial attack last month, they didn't deserve to have their loved ones kidnapped or killed, or to have their homes and community attacked so they don't feel safe returning. But that doesn't mean doing that to Palestinians is justified either, and that's the narrative I tend to be hearing from the pro-Israel side of things.

My advice to you is do your research. Look into what's going on, and not just what's going on now but what has been happening for the last 75 years. That's your best tool right now to figure out what you believe because this is the nature of narratives, they are in essence a story and a story is told through different perspectives.

By researching yourself and gathering information by yourself, you can form your own opinion.

Israel is banking on people sticking to the narrative that "it's too complicated" and that people will fall back on that instead of researching and learning more.

And the more you research this, the less complicated it becomes and in actuality the answer becomes really really obvious. A lot of it revolves around ugly truths about humans, but we need to see the ugly to challenge ourselves to do what's right.

I made this post a while back with some of the videos I watched at first just to get an idea of what was happening.. I want to STRESS that these are not the only things you can research for more info. There are documentaries and books and all sorts of information from people who are living through this. This is just where I started a month ago when I was like "Is it actually that complicated?" I learned within half an hour that no it really isn't.

But the one fact I keep going back to through out all of this that no narrative can deny is that this has been happening since 1948, not the October 7th Israel wants you to focus on. For me, that seals it.

Re the humanitarian aid: Israel controls the borders and crossings where humanitarian aid can go through. Israel is bombing the aid that does go through (including trucks of water this very day). If Israel were really concerned about humanitarian aid, could they not follow the trucks and deliver it themselves in their big fancy tanks? Or are they only going to use those big fancy tanks to bomb civilian vehicles that are trying to retreat?

Also important: this has never been a Muslims vs. Jews issue. There are Palestinian Jews and have been for centuries living with Muslims and Christians alike in peace. Some of the biggest protests have been organized by Jewish groups. Western Media wants you to think this is about antisemitism and they want Jews vs Muslims, but that's simply not the case. This is colonizer versus indigenous people issue. This is a US-funded and approved Israel committing genocide because of vested interests in the resources that Palestine provides issue.

I will say you questioning it at all is a good thing. Because your gut is telling you something isn't right. Listen to that gut. Let it guide you in learning for yourself rather than what they want you to believe.

And keep pushing back.

[theoscout]

I've forgotten the kind of impact that abandoned by disney and its sequels and spinoffs had on me, except for FNATI because I never spent long on it.

It just seemed... realistic? It talked about how corporations are known to do seedy and awful things and cover it up, supernatural or otherwise. It doesn't so much scare me now, as make me horribly depressed.

Sometimes, the only source of news about something isn't from employed journalists, it's from random people on the internet who run blogs and might be hunted down by authorities over it. That was something I actually romanticised when I was younger- putting my life on the line and being the one and only source for information to come through, like being the hero of my own story. So many of my ARGs were written with this format in mind, and Abandoned By Disney was the one that introduced me to it in that way.

Now I think about Friendlyjordies getting his house firebombed over youtube videos and the people of Palestine letting a glimmer of their suffering be preserved through their phones. Disney funded the latter one. It also funded Uyghur concentration camps and was responsible for all kinds of horrible laws about copyright, I could go on and on about what kind of things they done but these two are the most egregious examples that come to mind. A messed up figment of imagination coming to life through collective belief isn't even this scary.

I almost, almost wish I lived in the ABD universe more than this one, because at least the horrors I'll be facing there are charismatic. The horrors here are just depressing and sad. And the disney company is arguably more respectable there- instead of just being lazy tyrants who sit on a throne of enslaved creative potential, they're at least also running some kind of scp-esque program to keeping these horrors contained, even if they need to do bad things to do that.

admittedly, I never really went too far into fnati. I felt like we had missed potential. I feel like disney secretly trying to capture and contain weird dream demons is way more interesting than what we got. You could have been an investigator who was offered a job into the role of a cast member, and told that in exchange for being let known the truth about these shady coverups, you would need to let the company silence you. You could have been sent to fight the corruptus or contain them. We could have explored the Unknown Avian Species, Friendly John, Wily Wizard, many more things.

SIGH.

Maybe certain fan works did explore it, just without my knowledge. I can see why the people initially thought that Bendy would be a better adaptation of Abandoned By Disney than the FNATI games, especially with the Corruptus entry coming out. It sure as hell went viral, due to being a mascot horror game in a time when 90% of mascot horror was FNAF fangames with no distinct style.

lowkey, I didn't want to spend this long on Disney. I don't believe they deserve the additional allure of secretly having cool horrors being kept under lock and key. I don't feel like ANYONE who does the things they do deserve a cool horror spinoff. I don't even want to write an expy of them, because it means deriving some level of joy from their existence. Somewhere, I'll also be factoring in the suffering Palestinians and Uyghurs, and that doesn't sit well with me. I don't know how or why, but it just don't. Taking out the real life horrors to write about fictional horrors feels exploitative and wrong. It does to me, even if that's not the same for other people.

[edenfenixblogs]

I feel like what is disturbing about (some) people discussing the Israel/Palestine conflict is that they insist that most major news sources actually can’t be trusted because the news sources are secretly lying all the time. And I feel like that is what conspiracy theories are, the insistence that everyone is lying to you, and that you should only trust these people. I feel like I was falling into it too, I was starting to believe it.

I’d always told myself before that I would never fail for conspiracy theories because I am a reasonable person, but clearly this isn’t true. I can fall for conspiracy theories if I am not always careful, and complacency is dangerous.

I feel like this same idea applies to antisemitism. People think, “I can’t be antisemitic because I want equality for all people”, but we can if we’re not careful. Complacency is dangerous.

Oh, @jellymarbles! This is very insightful!!!! Look, every major news source has flaws and bias. That is and will always be true. Because it is written by people. And all people have bias. And that's ok! The problems only arise if people allow their writing to consistently and only favor bias in one direction and leave no room for uncomfortable but necessary information from other viewpoints.

If anyone is telling you not to trust "the media" or "the mainstream media," then they are not only untrustworthy on any issue, but are likely especially dangerous on any issue where antisemitism is likely to occur. This is because it is usually rooted (whether the person is knowingly being antisemitic or not) in the conspiracy theory that Jewish people control "the media."

Anyone behaving responsibly would not urge you to shun mainstream sources. Rather, people behaving responsibly will urge you to develop the very necessary skill of media literacy, which will enable you to better discern which sources are trustworthy in a variety of situations. Whenever evaluating any source, but especially when dealing in issues that involve strong and volatile opinions and contested information from a variety of voices, it is vital to critically evaluate your sources using trusted media evaluation tools, like Media Bias/Fact Check. Fact check the story details too, if possible.

You are a private citizen. You are not a journalist. You are not an international diplomat. You are not a crisis negotiator. There is no reason for you to feel pressured to respond to everything quickly. Nobody will benefit from you responding to things you don't have appropriate information on. It is not your job to respond to all information as you encounter it.

There is no prize for speaking up first or most or loudest.

Rather, you will always be the most trusted human source if you take the time to know what you're speaking about fully before you speak. If you feel an urgent need to say something because you directly wish to help someone you know, sharing unverified and possibly false information is never the way to go. Rather, instead of trying to prove your commitment to a cause with self-righteous anger, reach out to the person you wish to help directly. Tell them you know that they are going through a rough time. You may not always know what to say or what you need to share, but say that you are committed to always sharing verifiable and the information, but that you also don't need the affected person to act as a news source for you. And in the meantime, you don't need news stories to be there for a friend. Lending an ear and some comfort to someone directly will mean more than shouting into the void. Personally, I'm always a little uncomfortable when I see non-Jewish and non-Muslim/Arab/Palestinian people I know screaming onto the internet about issues related to i/p when they have never actually taken the time to talk to a single Jewish person about how they actually feel about any of it (or when they only talk to Jewish people to determine whether they are Evil Zionists or Actual Humans).

Many people are willing to make sweeping statements about how all Jews feel about Israel or zionism or Netanyahu, but aren't willing to actually have a conversation about any of those things to find out if their assumptions are correct--let alone to see if the Jewish person in question has insights into issues they haven't thought of before. (Hint: as an oft-ignored micro-minority, Jews do often have insights that are not adequately understood by those who have refused to interact with us)

I can only imagine that Palestinian people as well as Muslims and Arabs in general experience similar bigotry when people make assumptions about their views of Jews, the politico-religious ideology of Islamism (which I'm acutely aware is different than the religion of Islam), the i/p conflict, Hamas, and a variety of other issues.

Because make no mistake, choosing to ignore your responsibility of media literacy during a time of stochastic terror for multiple groups is to support that terror. Choosing to ignore media you disagree with because you disagree with it and not because the source is wrong or untrustworthy is the same as making a conscious choice to be stubbornly set in your ways at the expense of people desperately trying to make themselves heard.

In other words, choosing to maintain media illiteracy is choosing bigotry.

That said, you'll make mistakes sometimes. It's inevitable, and that's ok. Just today I deleted a post I reblogged about the extremely good and worthwhile charity organizatin Anera that is providing much needed aid to Gaza at the moment. Is that because I stopped supporting the organization? Is that because I hate Palestine and its suffering citizens? OF COURSE NOT! Rather, the person I shared it from had a blog full of hateful antisemitic content and misinformation. I couldn't direct my followers to a resource like that, because I can and must share information from sources worth listening to. If a bigot is your only way of sharing information about something, then that information is useless. If the information is actually useful, you'll be able to share it from a source who isn't dangerous.

There are many trustworthy people who regularly share information about Anera as well as other organizations that are providing aid to those suffering in the region, by the way.

It i so easy to think that a post is innocuous enough to share without fact checking. But bigotry can sneak in to a lot of places. I didn't know about the person I reblogged from until a follower pointed it out to me. Someone trustworthy will act swiftly to amend the information and thank you for the information rather than acting offended that you dared to question them. And a trustworthy source certainly won't continue to behave irresponsibly or allow others to behave irresponsibly on their behalf without putting in any effort to do better in the future.

You will make mistakes. It's OK. Don't let the fear of making a mistake stop you from taking action to help. Just be sure not to let your desire to help turn into causing actual harm. As long as you try your best and keep an open heart, all reasonable people will understand if you stumble now and again.

<3

As always, feel free to explore my #Media Literacy tag for more info and discourse on the subject.

[tungledotedu]

you reblogged a post that points out the callous and racist bias behind the spread of unproven, exaggerated claims of a large-scale scam, only to make the very same accusations. this is not helping anyone, especially gazans facing genocide, who have the most to lose from being smeared as liars and bots instead of receiving life-saving aid.

do you realise how dehumanising it is to be called a bot, let alone when you're a refugee trying to flee unimaginable atrocities? elodieunderglass's addition called for us to show grace to people asking for support, yet you've failed to do that.

it's very concerning that you tried to derail by bringing up hamas twice. at this point it's a dogwhistle for 'these palestinians begging for help are actually terrorists!'. so you think hamas is diverting aid from people in need? you are doing the same thing by making people suspicious and less inclined to donate. think of it like this:

if the average user ends up being scammed, they lose $5 and someone gets $5 they probably don't need.

if a legitimate fundraiser fails to raise enough money, gazans have a very real risk of being killed with each day as they endure more bombing with next to no access to shelter, healthcare, or food.

do you know wafaa, who is in egypt right now and is trying to save her family members in gaza? she told us her niece and sister have died. this has happened and will happen again due to the slowing down of donations. a different fundraiser had a $500 donation withdrawn due to mistaken suspicions. don't play cops; there is a lot at stake and you are putting lives in danger.

and i said hussein no longer shared his explanation of the vetting process. that's different from saying he has never explained it at any point. even that has changed due to these recent ill-informed claims. people act like he's not being transparent at all and the only work he does is sharing random links, but he and other palestinians do describe how they verify gazans' identities in a few posts if you are genuinely interested.

it's not 'complete bullshit' to take precautions, even if they aren't foolproof. the fact that you jumped to accusing hussein of lying about vetting instead of reaching out for discussion betrays a lack of good faith. and it doesn't 'cost basically nothing' for actual gazans to set up gofundmes and tumblr accounts; on top of unreliable internet access, the whole evacuation process is difficult and rigorous. and yet they do this anyway out of sheer desperation to survive and escape.

ahmed saad (90-ghost), one of the people vetting gazans' ids, is not a random anonymous user. he is actually from gaza and is the brother of journalist reema saad, who was killed in a 2021 israeli airstrike. before you start typing, his name is spelled ahmad in that cnn article because there are multiple ways to render arabic names with latin letters.

They're [registered nonprofits] not hard to find, and they do get boosted on tumblr, including on jumblr—including by Zionists! But somehow those posts don't get as much attention as these asks.

'somehow'? posts about charity organisations get boosted too, like this one with 18,000 notes. here's a general masterlist with 36,000 notes. here's another one with 160,000 notes, all with links to e-sims and aid organisations. they provide critical resources and serve a different purpose. nobody is saying you shouldn't donate to them, it's not an either/or situation. it's also important to help with evacuation funds because right now it's the only way people in gaza can get to safety.

i do agree in one respect: be critical and do your research. again, nobody is forcing you to publish the asks or donate in the first place. but spreading these claims around is going to cause panic and drive people to mass report even legitimate accounts, depriving them of one of their only means to raise funds. it's already incredibly difficult for gazans to access the internet; don't make it worse for them.

it's better to be safe than sorry, and in this case this reblog does not strike me an attempt to engage in good faith, but rather to spread more misinformation. i will block you for this reason.

i'll just leave this here (emphasis mine):

This has always been a matter of personal discretion. The vetting process some users tried to implement on here is meant to help people who want to help and accept the risk of offering aid to strangers. If you don’t trust bloggers who’ve been proudly Palestinian on this site for years, that’s up to you—genuinely, it’s fair to think “I don’t know this person and I don’t know what standards they’re operating on.” In the future, anyone who has such concerns should consider asking good-faith questions to the people involved and to converse with them like adults before jumping to accusations, conspiratorial posts, etc.

uh why the fuck would you say this

this post has 3000 notes and they get worse.

el-shab-hussein has already explained why he no longer shares how he vets individual fundraisers. scammers will use the information to be less obvious, making it more difficult to spot them.

and senatortedcruz's post has no actual proof of a widespread scam. that is a serious accusation to make, yet people are reblogging it and accepting it as true with no evidence. i won't deny that there are individual grifters on tumblr, but there are accounts like @/neechees, kyra45 and anonthescambuster that will help you avoid them. hussein even has a #scam alert tag for this purpose.

it's racist to spread misinformation about a supposed large-scale deception posing as fundraisers, not to mention dangerous because this makes it less likely for gazans to get what they need to survive and escape relentless airstrikes. we've already seen the consequences of this bias. some of these people are all too happy to be cops and harass or report gazans thinking they're bots or 'spamming' inboxes.

almost nobody on that post is encouraging others to donate to organisations or other vetted lists like those by operation olive branch, which has a faq sheet that explains how they verify fundraisers. i suspect this is an attempt to discourage people from helping palestinians altogether.

gazans are making fundraisers because they have no other choice. many of them cannot work and earn money as their workplaces have been destroyed. some have been disabled by injuries thanks to the iof's targeting of civilians. the fault is on israel for besieging them and on the egyptian government for exploiting their need to evacuate.

they're doing this for the same reason they have been posting photographs and videos of genocide so that people will pay attention to their suffering, so the world will not forget. is it such a leap in logic to understand they will also use social media to start fundraisers? do you just expect them to sit there and die in silence? so you can ignore them and your countries can keep arming israel as it commits atrocities?

[thessalian]

Thess vs Conflicts

I sometimes wish I had more to say about the Israel / Palestine conflict. Thing is, it’s been going on for so fucking long now that what I mostly have is what I had when I was a kid - and I mean a really young kid.

When I was a kid, my mother would watch the news, as you do, and I’d come up and ask what she was watching, and her response was always “Come sit down and find out”. So I tried to follow it as best I could and most of what I got was “these people are killing each other because they don’t agree on God”. And I know there’s more to it than that, at least now, but at the end of the day, that’s what I’m stuck with. It started with a fight over the Holy Land, at least in part, and more or less revealed itself for the racist xenophobic shit-show that it is.

And yes, the way Israel is treating Palestine is unconscionable and it needs to fucking stop. But at the same time, having watched this for as long as I have, I have to wonder if, were the shoe on the other foot and Palestine had received the support Israel has, or at least had the numbers ... whether they wouldn’t be doing the exact same thing to the Israeli people. Because at the end of the day - especially when dealing with religion, race and territory - a lot of people are fucking jackasses.

Not that this makes it any better, looking at what the Palestinian people have done to defend themselves against the injustices of the Israeli people, or what the Palestinian people might have done in a situation where the world backed them instead of Israel. I mean, it doesn’t. Nothing justifies ethnic cleansing, at all - especially not “They’d do it to us if they could”. What’s happening in Palestine is a tragedy and it needs to stop. It’s just ... that whole situation has gone so far past what few key conflict triggers it’s had for however long that it’s a Gordian knot of epic proportions, and no one’s willing to get in there with a sword. (Although honestly, the people who would might A) rule in Israel’s favour and make things worse and B) would probably try to turn the whole situation to their economic advantage anyway so I don’t want that either.)

It’s like with people, I tend to think. If we can’t get to the root of the problem and find coping mechanisms for the conflicts that arise in so many parts of society, all we’re doing is papering over the cracks and courting whatever the sociopolitical equivalent of a nervous breakdown is. But of course, we can’t get to the root of the problem and find coping mechanisms because there are too many people (or a few people with too much power, more to the point) who rely on those conflicts for their economic and political clout. They’re the ones that live in echo chambers of information, drop any influences that might make them question their behaviour, gaslight everyone in their immediate vicinity and shunt the negative consequences of their refusal to deal with things in a healthy way onto others. Which leaves the rest of us as the gaslit and abused spouses and children of a bunch of assholes who not only profit from our pain but actually get off on it.

I’ll say Free Palestine ... but I’ll say it a little shakily. Not because I don’t believe it, but because I don’t know what happens next. The people in power are, as a group, a shower of arseholes and they don’t even support the people in their own countries, much less a little country surrounded on three sides by Israel. I don’t know how much worse it could get for Palestine, but I don’t want to find out. No, we’re not getting regularly bombed over here - we’re not getting bombed at all. Just ... the erosion of our rights and social safety nets being perpetrated by our own government when we have absolutely zero recourse is getting scarier by the day. I have zero trust in any of the political structures at this point, and I don’t want to leave a country still shaking from constant ground and aerial bombardment to the predations of countries that do what ... well, so many countries do.

I mean, how do you choose between “being choked by the jackboot on your neck” and “being ethnically cleansed out of existence”?

[theculturedmarxist]

January 16, 1986 12:00PM ET

Double agents selling secrets to foreign governments; defectors running amok in the streets of Washington; allies betraying allies — these days spies are out of the shadows and on the spot. Yet espionage isn’t what it once was, and at least one Cold War vet fondly remembers overthrowing unfriendly governments, planning assassinations and performing dirty tricks. Most of all, retired CIA officer Miles Copeland (whose brood of rock & roll overachievers includes oldest son Miles Copeland III, manager of the Police and solo Sting; Ian, founder of the music booking agency FBI; and youngest son Stewart, drummer first for Curved Air and later for the Police) yearns for the good old days when secret agents kept their secrets secret — from the government and especially from the press.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Copeland joined the U.S. Army in 1940. Assigned to the Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC), he transferred in 1942 to the new Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the first U.S. secret intelligence agency. After the war, Copeland was station chief in Damascus, “putting Syria,” as he recalls, “on the path to democracy by starting a military dictatorship.” For this achievement, he was awarded a presidential citation. Copeland became a member of the Central Intelligence Agency when it was founded in 1947; he was appointed chief of the agency’s Political Action Staff, the dirty-tricks department, in 1950. “Nobody,” he says, “knows more about changing governments, by force or otherwise, than me.”

Copeland left government service in 1957 to form his own “private CIA,” which he claims became the largest private security service operating in Africa and the Middle East. Today the seventy-two-year-old Copeland and his wife, Lorraine, a well-known British archaeologist, live in a stone cottage in the tranquil hamlet of Aston Rowant, near Oxford, in England.

The White House has given the CIA part of the Job of handling terrorism. What do you think they will do that is different from what has already been done? You know, you’re opening a real can of worms here. The difference between the CIA’s counterterrorist experts and this new kind that’s been proliferating all over the place is that the CIA has operators who know the terrorists, who’ve actually talked to a few, who’ve even lived with them, or who, like myself, have actually been terrorists. We understand the enemy, while these instant experts who’ve been advising the White House have never in their lives laid eyes on a terrorist, and they think of them as common criminals. Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t, but where these recent “experts” are wrong is that they assume they are criminals simply because they are judging them as though they are Americans, brought up on American ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong. They are making moral judgments that aren’t relevant to the situation. What may be effective in combating crime is not likely to be effective in dealing with wrong doers who in their own eyes, whether rightly or wrongly, think they are engaged in some noble cause. The Pentagon wants to kill them; the CIA wants to win them over.

Who’s winning? It’s not a matter of winning. Just different viewpoints. The president of the United States has got to say what is necessary to keep himself in office. We have a domestic foreign policy and a foreign foreign policy. The domestic foreign policy, which is the more important one, is what he has to do to make the American public think he’s doing the right thing. Whether it’s the right thing or not doesn’t matter. The American people have to think he’s doing the right thing because we have a democratic society. Now, the American people were highly indignant about what happened in Beirut [the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in June 1985]. They wanted to do something. They wanted to punish the people without regard to the consequences. The president had to say things to them, make threats, to show the American people that, by God, we were doing something. But the professionals inside the government were worried about the consequences of this. Because what it takes to please the American people is not what it takes to please a lot of people who did not grow up in the American culture but grew up in cultures quite different from our own. We’ve got most of the world against us at the moment. When we drag out our gunboats, bomb villages and kill a lot of women and children — a lot more than the terrorists kill — we turn the world against us. And the American people don’t care. They don’t give a damn. But those people whose job it is to look after the interests of the U.S. government abroad, they’ve got to care. They have to think of the consequences of everything we do. And they know the consequences of dragging out the gunboats are absolutely the wrong ones. In fact, these are the consequences the terrorists created acts of terrorism in order to provoke. That’s the purpose of terrorism, not to kill, maim or destroy, but to terrorize, to frighten, to anger, to provoke irrational responses. Terrorism gains more from the responses than it gains from the actions themselves.

So how do you deal with it? You’ve got to know who they are. You’ve got to know their reasons for doing it. And you’ve got to manipulate them in one way or another. We have to somehow come to grips with the problem. The Israelis went in to Lebanon and killed tens of thousands of people. They say, “That’s exaggerating, we didn’t kill but 5,000 people.” Okay, let’s say they killed only 2,000 people, which is a very modest estimate. But they destroyed Lebanon. They then set up groups against each other, made chaos ten times worse than it already was. Instead of helping the Shiites — the Shiites welcomed the Israelis in — we, the United States, gave a billion dollars to the Israelis. One billion we gave because it costs a lot of money to destroy someone else’s country. We gave peanuts — Red Cross supplies — to the Shiites. What we should have done is gone in there and said to the Shiites: “Look, a lot of injustice has been done. We’re going to put your orange groves back and put you back commercially. . . . “

Is that your answer for potential terrorists? Give them lots of aid to keep them sweet? No. Let’s get back to the reason these guys are terrorists. They’re terrorists because their orange groves have been destroyed and they’ve got nothing to do. They can’t even get to their farms because the Israelis have declared them out of bounds and destroyed a lot of them. Now, the CIA’s job is to explain all of this to our government. That’s the main job of the CIA — to go to the White House and explain to the president that the only reason these terrorists are terrorists is because of the way they’ve been treated, and they’ve got nothing else to do. In fact, I’ll tell you quite frankly, if people came into Alabama, my home state, and destroyed my farms and kicked me around and kicked my children around, I’m going to become a terrorist, just as the French became terrorists under the Germans in World War II. It’s understandable. The CIA understood this and understood it very well and explained it to the president. But we had pressures from Congress. The members of Congress don’t give a damn about foreign affairs. They give a damn about their next election. They have to do what makes them popular enough with their constituents to get reelected. And their constituency cares about one place in this world, and that’s the United States.

You have told me what we should have done. What should we do to combat terrorism now that the damage has been done? Well, most terrorists in the world are coming down to two categories. The first kind are people such as the Palestinians, who’ve had — listen, I’ve known this one family for the past forty years. The guy has polio, he’s crippled. He has some teenage kids who are nice kids, nice family. The Israelis showed up at six o’clock in the evening and said: “Everybody out! Everybody out!” They all got out, and the Israelis razed his house. He says: “I haven’t done a damn thing! I’m just looking after my orange groves!” They said, “You had a terrorist in your house six months ago.” First place, he said he hadn’t, and I believe he was telling the truth. But the Israelis had no good reason to believe he wasn’t — no name, no information at all. Now this is information that our embassy reported. This is official, not something I heard from the PLO information office. Now those two teenage kids stood there and watched their family being destroyed and their mother kicked downstairs when she refused to leave the house. Can you imagine their not becoming terrorists? They don’t have an air force or artillery. I had a Shiite ask me: “You say we shouldn’t use terrorism. What should we use?” Well, you shouldn’t use anything, we might say. You should make peace with Israel. Make peace with Israel? They’ve just destroyed my land! I have nothing! My house is flattened! The whole village is destroyed! This isn’t just the Shiites talking. Our own embassy says this. You know something that very few people know, and I suspect you ought to leave all this out, but the fact is, in the American foreign service, there are a lot of patriots. You’ve never seen such patriots in your life. They all fight for American policy, right or wrong. Central America, Vietnam, wherever, except in the Middle East. The whole career service in the Middle East spends all its time fighting its own government. Anyone who doubts that can use the Freedom of Information Act to get the cables, all of them pleading with our own government to stop this support of Israel to that point. I don’t mean stop supporting Israel, but stop the behavior of Israel, which is making them hated. And we are backing them against these people they’ve kicked around. And how did the Israelis get in power? Terrorism. You’d think they’d know something about terrorism since the heads of their government have been terrorists themselves. In fact, Israel wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for their effective terrorists. But they know nothing about terrorism. A friend of mine in Mossad [the Israeli intelligence agency] said: “Terrorism is not going to destroy Israel, but our counterterrorism might, because it costs us a million dollars a day. It might drive us into bankruptcy.”

So what’s the answer to terrorism? Like I was saying, we have to find the reason these people are terrorists. The job of the CIA is to report why they are terrorists. Now I said there are two categories. The first, people who have been deprived and been ruined. The second category is this: A lot of these guys have found a way of life. They’re like gunslingers in the Old West. They drive Mercedes. There are professional terrorists now. It’s a profitable business. Maybe they were criminals originally, criminally inclined, but now they have political motivations to justify themselves. You’re not going to find them. Many of them are in Paris, and the French police don’t give a damn. The fact is that we are fighting a “proxy war” right now in which Soviet proxies face our proxies. Today’s war, between us and the Soviets, is a mosaic of regional wars. The Soviet policy is one of denial, not to gain territory for themselves but to deny it to us, to deprive us of the raw materials from Africa — cobalt, magnesium, chromium — that we have to have for a highly technological society like ours.

Are you saying the Soviets are behind terrorism? No, they exploit the troubles. Most of the terrorism in the world today the Soviets do not instigate. They may train key people to go in and stir things up, but that’s as far as they go. The Soviets are delighted when we draw up a gunboat in the Beirut harbor. They love this. It makes people hate us. The thing we should have done about the TWA hijacking in Beirut was get the damn thing over with right away as the CIA advised.

And how would we have done that? Let the Shiites loose. Forget it. We’ve lost this one.

Wouldn’t giving in like that encourage more terrorism? No. What encourages them is to get all that prime time on television. They wanted the publicity they got. And they wanted us to look like jackasses, which they succeeded in doing. In a war, you lose battles now and then. The best thing to do is cut your losses and get the hell out. They were hoping we’d drag it out.

You think the media was out of control? The media is always out of control. It’s not supposed to be under control. That’s what we have to live with in a free society. You can’t prevent the media from doing what it wants to do. But you can prevent the media from getting the information in the first place, by having rules for those who have the secrets not to release them to the media.

All right, how would the rules have worked in Beirut? How could you have prevented the madness that ensued? You know, if a plane lands in Turkey right now, the minute they establish there are hijackers on it, you know what happens? Nothing. They cut off all communications. “We want you to release so-and-so.” Silence. They just sit there and rot as far as the Turks are concerned. So there’s no news whatsoever. It’s not unethical to give the press false information. We do have a kind of adversary relationship with the press. There’s nothing we should try to do to shut them up, but it is absolutely permissible to tell the press whatever is in the interests of the American people to have the press know or think. And they can use it any way they want to. They can be suspicious, as they should be. A good pressman is suspicious of what anyone tells him.

How does your vision of the CIA fit Western democracy? [Laughter.]

Come on, what are Miles Copeland’s principles of democracy? Let me tell you about democracy. First place, I remember Syria. We decided we were going to bring democracy to Syria. So we got a translator in Arabic, and we got signs. We were going to have an election. This is 1946, ’47. The signs say, Get Out And Vote For The Candidate of Your Choice. We had people coming in the embassy and saying, “Look, these signs are no good — they don’t tell us who the candidate of our choice is.” In the United States, if we had true democracy, it would be a good thing. But true democracy is impossible now because of the fact that the general population cannot possibly keep themselves well enough informed to decide on issues except on a very parochial basis. The average person, the best he can do is something he’s not allowed to do — that’s to vote for a man because he’s known to be honest and competent. But now a candidate has to tell you what his issues are and get elected on that basis. We have to sell the idea to the American public that there are many things about foreign policy the American people simply cannot understand, because foreign policy requires, above all else, judging people according to their own standards. The emphasis should be in choosing people we trust. Where the CIA can work as an institution in a democratic government is, we have to set up criteria where nobody can get into the CIA unless he’s honest and patriotic. And I think they’ve succeeded at that. The guys in the CIA are the most strait-laced people you ever saw.

Who gets your highest marks as CIA director? I’d have to name two people, and for totally different reasons. I think George Bush was the best. He came in knowing he didn’t know a damn thing about the CIA, but he did know how to judge people whose opinions he could trust, and he listened to them.

Who is second? Dick Helms. Helms lied to a congressional committee. That’s one of his fortunate traits, that he’s willing to lie to a congressional committee. William Colby didn’t have the guts to do this. Lacking patriotism, he did not lie to a committee.

Wait a minute — lacking patriotism? Absolutely. Why should he tell a group things he knew would leak to the newspapers? He should have lied to them. If he were really a patriotic American, he wouldn’t have thought of telling them the truth.

And Helms gets high marks for perjury? With me and with everyone who has ever been a career officer in the government. Absolutely. You can call it perjury if you like, and maybe it was, but he should have been willing to go to jail for it.

It’s okay to lie under oath if you’re in the CIA? I said nothing of the sort. If what you know means that telling the truth is going to damage the national interest, it is your obligation. . . .

Who decides the national interest? Do you want me to give you a hard time or do you want an answer?

Both. Okay, I’ll give you an answer: The CIA is set up so that it’s impossible for a person as an individual to arrogate to himself the right to lie to a congressional committee or to anyone else. But what he can or cannot say is clearly specified from the day he is sworn in. He can lie to people who are not his bosses, who do not have security clearances. Most congressmen do not have security clearances. When Senator Frank Church asked me something, and he said, “Will you take an oath,” I said, “Senator, I’ll take the oath, and I wouldn’t think of telling you the truth.” Personally, I like Colby very much. He’s a very fine man, but he’s just the wrong kind of guy to be head of the CIA. He’s a good guy.

You’ve got to be a bad guy to head the CIA? You have to be prepared, as a good soldier does. A good soldier could be religious and have read the Bible, but he’s got to go out and kill people. The CIA has to have a separate set of morals. In that sense, you have to be amoral.

Is it true you were once asked by your CIA bosses to kill President Nasser of Egypt? My old boss, Frank Wisner, passed on to me orders that I was to “explore the possibility” of assassinating Gamal Nasser. Poor Wiz didn’t like doing even that. But the order came straight from the White House. Anthony Eden, who was Britain’s foreign minister at the time, believed the world would be a happier place without Nasser in it, and the belief grew to enormous proportions after the Suez fiasco. The head of British intelligence, who had a somewhat wry sense of humor, used to say that if either his boys or ours didn’t assassinate Nasser “professionally,” Eden was likely to do it himself “amateurishly,” and the results would be “messy.” Eden’s attitude was “At least we should look into it.” He said as much to his opposite number in Washington, John Foster Dulles, and Dulles discussed it with President Eisenhower, who said, in effect, “Anything to keep Tony quiet.” The order was passed down, from the president to the secretary of state to the director of the CIA — Foster’s brother, Allen — to Frank Wisner to Kermit Roosevelt to me. I was to visit Nasser, have coffee with him, say, “That’s an interesting vase you have over there in the corner,” and when he turned his head to look, make the motion of slipping a cyanide pill into his cup just to see if he would catch me at it.

Did you do it? Sort of, and I didn’t have to use the “look over there” trick. Nasser kept looking the other way out of sheer boredom at what I had to say. Just sitting there with Nasser, rehearsing in my mind just how I would go about sneaking something into his lemonade or coffee, I saw how easy it would have been-theoretically, that is. When I got back from the Nasser experiment, I went into the whole question of assassination, from the philosophy behind it to all the ways of doing it.

Philosophy of assassination? Very important. All these post-Watergate liberals forget that assassination was once a healthy alternative to war. There is only one justification for assassination: to save lives, lots of lives. One life to save many. But as for a weapon of strategy, that’s a different story.

What is the justification? The rationalization by which the so-called war of dirty tricks is justified is that it takes the place of a real war in which millions may be killed. Given such a justification, anything goes. For example, you can sometimes gain points in the war of dirty tricks by killing an expendable person on your own side and blaming it on the other. But that kind of nonsense is talked about only in meetings where “contingencies” are being considered. In those meetings, it is permissible to suggest literally anything.

One CIA target was President Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, in the summer of 1960. . . . Well, now, I’ll tell you a brief story to illustrate what a great farce that was. The CIA station chief in the Congo at the time, who I knew very well, was a very sober, conservative fellow who harbored the ambition to get into the State Department. Since he was really a CIA man, his State Department job was only a cover — and at a lower grade than his CIA job called for, to the disgrace of his wife. So his main worry was his wife, who was complaining that she wasn’t invited to parties and wasn’t seated high enough above the salt at dinners. And he was wondering how he got this lousy job in the Congo. One day he was contemplating the sadness of his lot when a message arrived from Washington. It had a code word which means this is something you take seriously because this comes from the White House. Ordinarily, when you get an order from headquarters you never obey it the first time because you’re not sure they mean it. It might be some guy telling you to do something to get himself off the hook, being on record as having ordered it. So you always wait until the second time. But if there’s a White House code word, you’d better take it seriously. The message from the White House said he was to assassinate Lumumba — to explore means to terminate with extreme prejudice. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The last thing he wanted to do was assassinate anyone, except perhaps his wife! But this thing said he had to go kill Lumumba, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it. Well, then another cable came in, saying somebody was coming out from the scientific section. And up showed this weird little Dr. Strangelove type. So not only does this guy have an order from the White House, he’s also got on hand this creep who was going to show him how to do it! Well, the station chief just blew his top, said, “The hell with this,” and told Dr. Strangelove to get the hell out.

What else did you get up to in the CIA? Well, I got my foot in the door in the psychopharmacological department by virtue of my interest in assassination. There are two categories: those which are made to look like natural deaths and those which serve their purpose only if they are known to be assassinations. For the first kind, there is a variety of methods, most of them involving poison. Somehow you introduce into the body of your victim two separate substances, at different times, each of which is harmless by itself but which becomes poisonous when mixed with the other. You wouldn’t believe what those weirdos come up with! The congressional subcommittee which went into this sort of thing got only the barest glimpse.

What did they miss? You can kill a man by putting a certain substance on a letter you send to him which gets into his system simply through his holding the letter in his fingers. You can make him allergic to almost anything — alcohol, aspirin tablets, even coffee or tea — that if he takes even a small quantity of it he will drop over dead. You can program a pair of dogs — even his own dogs — to savage him to death upon a given signal. You can do any number of imaginable and unimaginable things. But you don’t have to kill him; you can just make a fool out of him.

For example? You can slip an LSD pill into his lemonade as he is about to make a speech or have an electric fan blow “distress gas” onto him, or you can doctor his notes so that simply by holding them in his hands he will absorb enough hallucinatory materials to make him think he is God. One of [Indonesian president] Sukarno’s best, most electrifying speeches, I understand, was made after one of his assistants, a CIA agent, doctored his shaving lotion. The agent simply forgot that Sukarno’s wildest ramblings were made when he was cold sober and that a hallucinogen could only make for an improvement!

What do you think of today’s CIA? The organization itself is great, and Mr. Casey is tops, but the government won’t let it move, and the press is intent on preventing any secret operations it might try to run. As you know, unlike The New York Times, Victor Marchetti and Philip Agee, my complaint has been that the CIA isn’t overthrowing enough anti-American governments or assassinating enough anti-American leaders, but I guess I’m getting old. What’s keeping the agency inactive is Congress and disinformed public opinion. With modern communications being what they are, we’re supposed to be the best informed people in history, but we’re not. We’re the most informed, which is hardly the same thing.

You seem to take an active interest in American politics. Do your sons share your interest? It’s my impression my oldest son, Miles, has actually contributed to Republican congressional campaigns, but I’m not all that sure. That’s one area of my son’s activities he doesn’t confide in other members of the family about. [Laughs] My son Miles — he wants everything everybody says about him these days to be cleared in advance.

Does Miles have anyone in mind for the presidency in 1988? I know Miles has his eye on Congressman Jack Kemp [Republican — New York]. I think that’s his candidate, but I don’t know. [Miles Copeland III denies that he supports Jack Kemp or any other Republican or Democratic candidate for Congress or for the presidency.] He’s always planning several years ahead. Miles is pretty secretive about his affairs. He should have been in the CIA instead of me. Yeah, I’m “blah blah blah,” and he’s “hush hush.” I’m not sure he’s thought through all the implications of the power he’s got.

What do you mean? The next time you go to a Police concert — say, one like that in Shea Stadium, with 70,000 young minds open to whatever the Police decide to put into them — you can answer that question for yourself.

[schraubd]

The Problem With Canaries

A group of pro-Israel, anti-BDS students at a variety of college campuses issued a statement harshly criticizing the Canary Mission for hindering their efforts on campus and unjustly maligning fellow students. They wrote:

Canary Mission is an anonymous site that blacklists individuals and professors across the country for their support of the BDS movement, presumed anti-Semitic remarks and hateful rhetoric against Israel and the United States. 

As a group of conscientious students on the front lines fighting BDS on our campuses, we are compelled to speak out against this website because it uses intimidation tactics, is antithetical to our democratic and Jewish values, is counterproductive to our efforts and is morally reprehensible. 

This blacklist aggregates public information about students across the country under the guise of combating anti-Semitism. It highlights their LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pictures, old tweets, quotes in newspapers and YouTube videos. The site chronicles each student’s involvement with pro-Palestinian causes and names other students and organizations with whom the given student may be affiliated. 

We view much of the rhetoric employed to villainize these individuals as hateful and, in some cases, Islamophobic and racist. In addition, Canary Mission’s wide scope wrongfully equates supporting a BDS resolution with some of the most virulent expressions of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel rhetoric and activity.

The ADL initially supported the students, referring to Canary as "Islamophobic & racist". Critics quickly contested what, exactly, Canary did that was "Islamophobic & racist", and a day later the ADL backed off, apologizing for "overly broad" language. I want to talk through why I think objections to Canary as Islamophobic are potentially justified. But I want to do so in what I think is a more nuanced and specified way, because there really are interesting questions here regarding the ethics of counter-antisemitism (or counter-racism, or counter-Islamophobic) discourse that I think are being elided in the usual rush to back our friends and lambaste our enemies. Let's stipulate for sake of argument that Canary doesn't use specifically Islamophobic rhetoric (in the form of racial slurs, conspiratorial claims about creeping Sharia, and the like), and that in general the factual claims they make about the targeted persons (that they did say X or join group Y) are factually accurate. I'm open to the possibility that they do use such rhetoric or that their claims aren't factual (in which case the argument that they're Islamophobic becomes trivially easy). But I make the stipulation because the case I'm going to make doesn't depend on any such behavior by Canary. Instead, let's focus on what we might think of as Canary's strongest possible foundation: factual revelations of things the profiled individual has definitely said, or groups they have definitely joined, absent any additional commentary. Again, I'm not saying that this is, in fact, all or even most of what Canary does -- I'm saying that this sort of thing would presumably represents the formulation of Canary's mission that would be most resistant to a claim of Islamophobia. So. First, I do not generally think it is a smear or otherwise wrongful to simply republish a terrible thing somebody has said (with appropriate caveats about not taking things out-of-context, omitting apologies, etc.). For example, the other day Seth Mandel accused me of a "smear" and a "lie" towards him in the context of my column on sexist responses to Natalie Portman not attending to the Genesis Prize. The irony of Mandel's complaint was that he was actually never mentioned in the column at all; he only appears in the context of two of his tweets being republished, verbatim, with no additional commentary or interpretation directed towards him whatsoever. If you can be "smeared" simply by quoting your own words back to you, then I suggest that the problem lies inward. Moreover, I'd suggest that there actually is something important about revealing the prevalence of antisemitism that exists amidst certain social movements (on campus or not) -- if only because Jews are so frequently gaslit on this subject. Just this week, the Interfaith Center at Stony Brook University had to release a statement (cosigned by a wide range of campus Jewish, Christian, and Muslim groups) in solidarity with campus Hillel after a campus SJP member demanded that Hillel be expelled from campus and replaced with "a proper Jewish organization" (proper, the student confirmed, meaning anti-Zionist). This blog had already covered the Vassar College SJP chapter distributing literal (1940s-era) Nazi propaganda about Jews. These things happen, and there's something off-putting about claiming that it's a form of cheating or a smear to document it. Too many people think that naming and shaming antisemitism is by definition a witch-hunt. That cannot be right, and we should be very suspicious of political arguments which act as if it is right, or act as if the very act of accusing someone of antisemitism (or, for that matter, racism, or sexism, or Islamophobia) is dirty pool or foul play. So what accounts for my unease? Well, for one it might be the sense that college students, in particular, often say dumb things they regret, and there shouldn't be an entire website dedicated to spotlighting them and inviting people to berate them for it. How much one sympathizes with that point would seemingly correspond to how much one dislikes "call-out culture"; if you're not a huge fan of it (especially when it comes to young people not otherwise in the public eye) then Canary would seem to be one manifestation of a generally malign social trend. Another basis for objection might be the distinctively chad gadya character of many of Canary's entries. If one reads the site, very frequently a profiled individual is listed because he joined a group which hosts a speaker who supports an organization who bit the cat that ate the goat ... and so on. There's a very distinctive "guilt-by-association" character to what Canary does that I think is obviously objectionable, regardless of how you label it. And note how it resonates with the way blacklists are being deployed against Jews and Jewish groups right now (e.g., the announcement by several NYU student groups that they were boycotting a bevy of Jewish organizations -- including the ADL). Such calls very frequently proceed by similar logic: the group supports a program which hosts a speaker who said a thing ... so on and so forth. Such logic could be used  to ensnare essentially anyone who affiliates with anything -- which means in practice it must be deployed selectively to delegitimize certain groups and causes under the guise of neutral idealism. If that stunt makes us uncomfortable when it's deployed against Jewish groups, it should make us uncomfortable when it's deployed against Muslim groups. And here is where I think the Islamophobia charge has legs. I don't want to say "imagine if this were done to Jews", because it is done to Jews (albeit perhaps not in quite as organized a form). But there absolutely are cases of blacklisting Jewish students simply because they've joined pro-Israel groups, without any claims that the student has said or done anything remotely racist or Islamophobic. And such behavior I think is rightfully thought of as deeply chilling, and striking too deep in terms of the way it polices to the letter Jewish political and communal participation. Many Canary entries seem to be based entirely on groups the individual has joined (everything from Students for Justice in Palestine to the Muslim Students Association -- the latter of which, it is worth noting, joined the letter in solidarity with Hillel at Stony Brook), rather than any specifically antisemitic things that the individual has said or done. That seems to be as dangerous as equivalent blacklist efforts targeting Jews who are part of Hillel, or Students Supporting Israel, or J Street (yes, J Street). Indeed, I could go further. Let's take the case of the students who have, themselves, said antisemitic things -- they're on the record. Surely there could be nothing Islamophobic about including them in a database? Yet even here, I'm conflicted -- and again, the mirror-case involving Jews perhaps reveals why. Imagine there was a website which cataloged people -- mostly, though not exclusively, Jews -- who were members of Zionist or Zionist-affiliated groups for the purpose of declaring to the world that they were racist and should not be worked with. Wouldn't we view that as being antisemitic in character? Suppose that it limited itself solely to those persons who had engaged in Islamophobic remarks -- with the goal of showing the degree to which Islamophobia and racism were prevalent in Zionist discourse, in a way that gave the impression that such views ran rampant amongst (Zionist) Jewish college students. Could that be viewed as antisemitic? My instinct is yes. It is an instinct that is, admittedly, at war with my above acknowledgment that documenting the real and non-negligible existence of antisemitism that exists in pro-Palestinian movements is not a form of cheating (and I'd likewise agree that documenting the real and non-negligible existence of Islamophobia that exists in Zionist movements is likewise not wrongful). But in both cases it is a delicate thing, lest the impression be given that Jews Are The Problem or Muslims Are The Problem. It isn't wrong to demand that groups be attentive to that possibility and work proactively against it, and it isn't wrong to be suspicious of them when they seem indifferent to it. What was it that Maajid Nawaz said? “Who compiles lists of individuals these days?" Of course, the answer is "many people and many groups," and maybe that's not per se wrong (or even avoidable). But certainly it is something that requires considerable care and concern, and Canary -- given its propensity for guilt-by-association, given its wide sweep, and given the range of individuals it includes under its ambit -- doesn't strike me as expressing said care and concern. Is that Islamophobic? Depends on how you define it, but I would suggest that there is a prima facie case of a sort of moral negligence directed at Muslim students. In other circumstances, that same sort of moral negligence impacts Jews. Either way, it's a wrong, and it's entirely fair to label it as such. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2r7Rd2y

[daisy-mooon]

Omg. Its the way that Palestinians have ASKED us to do this. Bisan herself has literally made a blocklist for us to use.

Like damn this thing called "time" exists and Bisan hadn't posted it when I made this post. Sorry that I didn't have the time to dig through 395939 unofficial blocklists and instead put some of the most common celebrities on here.

"Why aren't we blocking politicians?" I'm British and can safely tell you that blocking multi billionaire Rishi Sunak, the richest Prime Minister in UK history who makes all his money from his wife's companies and by evading taxes, isn't gonna do shit! And that's an Indian-British politician. American Christians are obsessed with Israel and that they have to preserve it because its "God's plan". You would not get an American politician to even think of going against Israel if you held them at gunpoint, let alone if you blocked them online. Celebrities are not like that. It's generally agreeable that Ariana Grande is not as much of a piece of shit as Donald Trump. Especially when people have been phoning, emailing, protesting their complaints outside the houses of politicians. You are more likely to get a silent celebrity to speak up for Palestine than you are a blatant zionist.

"Lizzo posting about it is useless". This is going to shock you, but a lot of people dont use social media for politics and aren't actually that aware of the Palestinian genocide. Lizzo has like 13 million followers. Is it lazy? Yes. Is she directly informing 13 million people who may not be aware of the genocide and encouraging them to donate? Yes! And that's infinitely more helpful than silence.

"Why aren't we blocking the billionaires?" I don't think you realise how big a billion dollars is! Even Taylor Swift, a billionaire herself, does not have that same security as CEO multi billionaires. If a model or influencer looses all of their followers, they might be able to make it for a few years but they're definitely not going to be anywhere near as money secure as a CEO multi billionaire.

And this might also shock you, but celebrities have every event of their life publicised. It's called "celebrity culture" and by even just speaking out, they create a celebrity culture that is pro Palestine. That is extremely important, actually!

And last but not least, it's free. I don't know how to break this to you, but some people are poor! Some people are in debt! Some people can not afford to give or don't have the means too! I, personally, can not donate anything at the moment for private reasons! Again, Lizzo may not donate, but amongst those 13 million people, someone who can donate will. And not to mention people can participate in this and still participate in other forms of activism?

I would like to say that I searched your account for "Palestine" and have only found one other post about it. You haven't engaged with shit about Rafahs invasion, only about the MET Gala. Why don't YOU put your money where your mouth is and do more?

I don't want to see you guys yapping about how we arent helping Palestinians when Palestinians have asked us to do this. Here is Bisans blocklist for BlockOut2024, you are welcome to use it:

Over on Tiktok, people are organising to mass block celebrities that haven't talked about Palestine in a campaign called "Blockout 2024". This has spread to Twitter and Instagram as well.

The idea is to mass block a list of major celebrities, including their brands and fan pages, and ignore them. Celebrities get money when we hate on them, but blocking and ignoring them makes them loose attention and therefore money.

Does it work? Well yes! Lizzo lost several million followers in a day and has suddenly spoken out in support of Palestine. You only need to block a social media account. Its very easy.

Which platforms? As many as you have or use. This includes Spotify!

Which celebs? A lot of peoples blocklists vary but the names I've seen the most are:

Taylor Swift

Rihanna

Beyoncè

Kim Kardashian

Kylie Jenner

Selena Gomez

However, the idea is to block all celebrities and influencers that don't support Palestine or haven't spoken out for Palestine. This can be ANY celebrity or influencer, and yes, this includes Kpop and MCYT. Encourage your fandoms and fan bases to block!

YOU, the consumer, provide a celebrities income. No consumer, no income. It's time to utilise that power!

[auutintiug]

“In her own words, Hoda Katebi is “a Chicago-based angry daughter of Muslim-Iranian immigrants,” author of the book Tehran Streetstyle, community organizer, and the voice behind the radical, political online fashion publication JooJoo Azad. Here, she speaks with Palestinian-American human rights attorney, artist, educator, and writer Noura Erakat, who has time and again stunned and stupefied the media in bold, brazen, sensibly unapologetic interviews. Katebi and Erakat’s conversation is akin to two streams flowing parallel to one another, embarking upon the surfaces and diving into the depths of politics, art, activism, identity, and gender norms, ultimately joining forces in the same body of water, not in competition but in support of one another—level and determined, headstrong, open to the elements.

—

Hoda Katebi: Do you think that all art is political?

Noura Erakat: I mean, I’m trained as an attorney. I’m hesitant to make such an absolute statement. Politics is basically the negotiation over scarce resources, and it’s the work that’s being done to actually negotiate that distribution. Art is expression, some sort of expression, any kind of expression, right? It’s a visionary aide. It’s a manifestation. That could be political in two ways: What is it that the artist chose to represent as opposed to anything else, and then how does creation implicate a discussion around the distribution of scarce resources?

I don’t identify as an artist because it’s political. I identify as an artist because I think that it’s a way of being. An artist is someone who can transcend an immediate material reality to be able to define yourself on your own terms, and to want to see the world on terms that may not yet exist. So those are the things that I think define an artist, which is not being bound by what is, but instead being in the constant act of creating what could be. A lot of the time it does come from people who hold privilege who say that they don’t want their art to be political or simultaneously call out Palestinians or black folks and say, “Oh, why do you always create political art?” It’s almost like my entire life. It’s triggering to you.

HK: What role does art play for you, and especially as a Palestinian, why is it important?

NE: So, I just want to be clear: I identify as an artist because I think that that’s the best way, because a lot of people see me, and they’re, “Oh, Noura’s a lawyer. Oh, Noura’s a teacher. Oh, Noura …” You know what I mean?

HK: Yeah.

NE: And I feel like rather than be defined by the actual profession, I want to be defined by the way I relate to the world in it. Me being an artist is not me defining my career or my productivity. It’s my relationship to time. I’m also identifying as queer, right? it’s not who you’re attracted to; it’s how you’re manifesting yourself in the world outside of binaries. I want to live.

I’ve written two plays, and I’ve fallen out of that—it’s a practice, like anything, and I haven’t been keeping it up. But last fall, the Kennedy Center invited the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival, which I am a co-founder of, to curate a program for the Millennium Stage. I got to direct the program, which meant musical direction, light direction, you know, all the stage work, plus it’s a play that I wrote, and I directed the professional actress who performed it. It was actually such a miracle, because we only got to do one stage rehearsal an hour before the program started.

The DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival began because in 2011, I had been co-leading something called the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and we had created a local chapter in D.C., and all of the work that we were doing as part of that network was, I thought, very reactionary. No to negotiations. No to these terms of the peace process. No to the split. I knew, I knew that that was not going to last because that’s not something that sustains. It creates a lot of toxicity.

On a trip to Toronto, I was speaking in Toronto and my good friend introduced me to her project, the Toronto Palestine Film Festival, and I thought to myself, oh my God. That’s it. We have to create something that will outlast the politics of rejection. We have to create something that lives on its own terms. So when I got back, I and two other women co-founded this project, and now we’re in our eighth year. It is not a Palestine film festival; it is a showman arts festival. Our whole purpose is to showcase the artists, whoever they are. You could be talking about your favorite color or your favorite candy or the way your mom screwed you over and still left it in your head. The whole point is to showcase the artist and all of the different media that they use, visual, performing, cross stitching, cooking, music, dance, the whole thing.

This is where we’re dreaming of the future. This is where we’re creating. Who are Palestinians? Who are young Palestinians don’t know anything about it? From what they feel, from what their family passed onto them—how are they expressing that? And that is the future of Palestine. We’re trying to cultivate the space where they can dream. What the diaspora looks like and what the community looks like beyond just, what are the political terms upon which this will be resolved? Instead it becomes a social question, more like, what do people look like? What does trauma feel like? What is joy? What is internal conflict? What languages do we speak in this space? It also becomes one of the best tools for mainstreaming the question of Palestine. We’re bringing out audiences that probably feel like the whole thing is toxic.

HK: Yeah, it’s like a language that transcends border and culture. You create really accessible work. So, how are you able to transcend that really difficult box that lawyers are taught to be sitting in?

NE: I went into law school because I wanted to fight, and I thought, if only we had these tools we could just reason through this, then we can get out of the binds that politics had created for us, and we’ll just reason through it through some arbiter. We just listen to each side, and we can figure it out, and in fact, that was a really jarring lesson, and one of naivety, and it’s become the source of inspiration for my forthcoming book, Justice for Some: Law in the Question of Palestine, which will be out in March 2019. First of all, I barely survived the damned thing, because it is the single most white, heteronormative, classist, stifling space—

HK: Say it.

NE: —you can ever imagine. It is basically where you go to protect and revere the status quo. My issue with law school is that you take that for granted. Nobody admits that that’s what it is, and you start to act like everything that you’re studying is objective when everything is so not objective.

HK: Everything that you produce, whether it’s academic in the legal industry, you’re coming from your particular perspective of the world. Oppressed or oppressor.

NE: True, but there’s a different kind. Let me give you an example. When you’re studying property law in the United States, all property law is built upon a logic of dispossessing native nations, indigenous nations in the United States. And here you are studying concepts like liens, trusts or estates, possession, but you never ever talk about, well, what is the root of this whole model? The root of it is the dispossession of indigenous nations. Or when we talk about criminal law: We want to talk about the death penalty as a jurisprudential matter, which means we’re just going to look at the case law, but we’re not going to talk about, how is it that the law itself and the way that the death penalty becomes instrumentalized is specifically to punish black people?

I had a really hard time in law school. I ended up getting a big award at the end, which was like a vindication, but I almost didn’t even go to my graduation because I was just like, this was miserable. Afterwards, I didn’t even take a traditional law job. I went to Berkeley Law, and after law school, I got a fellowship for something like 30, 35k. That’s insane for a recent law graduate, and then there was no such thing as working as a Palestinian-rights lawyer, so I had to create my own job. It was a coup to even get the fellowship.

I’m now in a place where I have some stability, but from the time I graduated until now, I came onto the tenure track in the academy basically hustling. Nobody wants to … It’s just a difficult story. I mean, you have to be crazy to be doing this work. If I wasn’t crazy, I wouldn’t have lasted this long.

HK: What has got you through?

NE: I kept pushing. I kept being a lawyer. I went back to school, and I kept writing like a lawyer. I kept appearing on television like a lawyer until more recently. I think until last December, when I started to appear on TV and in public spaces, a little less as an attorney and more like as a human being and a Palestinian, that, I think, was a major turning point for me and for people receiving me, because when I’m talking as a lawyer, you know, I’m basically trying to be removed from it, just making the argument and letting it stand, but when I step into my skin as a Palestinian, as a human being, it’s me.

I’m still going to use logic as my primary communication tool, and everybody has a different way they like to communicate in public. Some people like to tell stories. Some people like to move you, just really deeply move you and rally you to fight and believe. I think logic is really compelling. I do it in the same way when I’m in my classroom. I don’t ever tell you what exactly to believe. I want to give you enough facts and information for you to make your own decision. That’s so much more powerful when you have to engage with me and do the work with me. You have to think about it.

For me, legal practice basically means that I’m an advocate. Because what is human rights advocacy? There’s no courtroom. What does it mean, then, to be a human rights attorney? It means that I am making a case in the world of public opinion. That’s my courtroom.

HK: What got you out of bed every day during this period? Were you also doing art at the same time, or did art come later?

NE: I was producing art while I was in law school as a writer. I dabbled in poetry, but I did the theater work. My first play is based on oral histories that I collected.

I’m in the West Bank in 2000, when the second intifada begins. I’m a student at Hebrew University [of Jerusalem], which was a whole story unto itself, but I’m the only student at Hebrew U that is a Palestinian and living in what’s known as the West Bank. And so basically, school gets shut down, because the intifada has started, and I had come eager to do an oral history project. I thought it was going to be about young girls and women. I started traveling to interview families of the slain, of the killed, and to get the stories of those killed, and so I collect all of these stories and come back. I transcribe them, and then I turn that oral history project into a revolving monologue, which is like a one-act play for about an hour where you get to hear almost all of the stories being told by the characters themselves as they’re describing their loved one who’d been killed.

So, I write that while I’m in law school. I produce that. I direct that. It takes its own life, and it’s performed in different places. I then come to do another monologue, but this time it’s a one-woman show, and I perform that one everywhere. And that was it. That space just killed my creative spirit.

HK: Do you see yourself within the legacy of any artist that you look up to? Whose tradition do you feel that you belong to, if any?

NE: The first person that comes to mind is Arundhati Roy.

HK: Bae!

NE: Right? Here is this woman completely committed to revolutionary justice and transformation but who is expressing herself also as a dreamer, as a novelist, and as an essayist, and so I really like that. It’s these visionary women who are immersed and accountable to a base and to a movement. They don’t see themselves as above or as being revered. They see themselves as being a part of something bigger than them. What you’re seeing in their work is homage to it, paying respect to it, and creating space for it.

HK: Situating yourself in the West as a site of knowledge production in academia, which is heavy orientalist, perpetuates a lot of racism, the same ways that you mention about the law. What are your experiences there, and what made you become an educator?

NE: I think in everything that I’ve done, I’ve always been an educator. Even as an activist or when I’m leading workshops at different universities from before I got into law school. The difference about entering the academy is now you’re producing knowledge in a way that’s refereed and becomes subject to academic and scholarly scrutiny. A lot of circumstances pushed me into that field, and also because I’m increasingly unfulfilled by the legal practice, which I find is so hampered by the question of politics and by political issues. I’m increasingly frustrated with the limitation of the law, but also more curious about it. Why is it working in this way? What is it about the law, what is it about politics? And so these became scholarly inquiries that push me out, like make me more disenchanted with being a lawyer.

Once I’m in the academy, now it’s like a whole different set of challenges. It becomes the most stark when people of color talk about justice issues that are difficult conversations. So, if I was talking about FGM and the Muslim community, I don’t think people would receive me harshly. It might even be kind of okay, because I’m not challenging the establishment. But being of color, producing knowledge that is counter-hegemonic is when you raise a lot of flags, and immediately people begin to question whether you’re an academic or an activist. It’s one thing if somebody was studying these things. It’s another if you’re invested in them and studying them. That’s been a really difficult challenge, how to toe that line.

It’s a lot of unknowns, like you’re saying. For me, I’m leaving the choice to myself. I write about what I find the most interesting, intriguing, because that’s what’s the most authentic, and that’s the work that I do best, when I enjoy what I’m doing. But there is great risk in doing the work in that way. I feel like that’s the risk that’s worth taking. I want to know that I spent all the time I had breathing, able-bodied and able-minded, to produce the work that I thought was critical and necessary, rather than produce the work that I thought was going to help me climb some sort of career ladder.

HK: Because at the end, you always get exposed anyway.

NE: Maybe it’s about getting exposed, but I feel like it’s between you and yourself. What is it that you want at the end of the day? What is going to make you happy? So, yeah, I’m taking a risk, but everything else that I’ve done has been a risk. Right?

HK: Yeah. And with all of these risks, what are the joys of being an educator?

NE: Oh my God, the students. There’s so much tremendous joy. There’s so much tremendous joy in their capacity and their imagination and their passion, and the community that they create with one another. In finding folks who want to create an alternative world based on a place of love and a place of vision and a place of hope and a place of faith. All of that is joyful. I believe that the revolution will be full of joy. I know the revolution to be full of joy. It’s also full of tremendous heartache, but we already know that, right? But when we fight, we don’t just fight because we’re sad and because we’re angry. We fight because we believe we can. We believe we can. We believe we should.

HK: And we have no choice.

NE: We believe we are better. And that’s so joyful.

HK: And that also takes me to the very last question that I’ll ask: What is the world that you’d like to see?

NE: Well, there’s the really nerdy answer, which is to see a world where if we are to have governments, the governments are to be run by people for the sake of people, where profit is not a determinative logic, where the distribution of wealth is not concomitant with some neo-liberal equation of productivity and earnings and market formulations, but rather based on need. That’s a world that I would love to live in.

I would like to live in a world where we’re actually honoring the earth. We are depleting this earth at such a fast rate, at such a disrespectful rate, that we’re not going to have an earth to even divide by the time we figure out how to get along with one another and get over our human conflict. That’s why billionaires are trying to figure out their exit route to Mars and life elsewhere. Environmentalism isn’t this side thing. It’s central to everything that we do, and it’s entwined with indigenous justice as well, people who have already told us how to treat this earth and how to make it sustainable.

HK: That’s beautiful. Well, thank you so much. Is there anything that you wanted to say that we didn’t get to touch on?

NE: One of the things that made me most excited about the invitation by Suited, the first thing I thought of, was that I wanted Rami Kashou to dress me, because I saw him on Project Runway and he didn’t identify as a Palestinian. I knew he was Palestinian, but he was just out there being a designer, and in watching him, I found freedom. I thought, that is what freedom will mean for Palestinians, when they can just be in the world and not have to be defined by our fight. We can just be defined by whoever we want to be. “I’ve been fangirling you for 12 years. You want to dress me?” So we meet, and he dresses me, and if you notice … I don’t know if you’ve seen the photos.

HK: I haven’t.

NE: It’s like artwork. Literally the only other person who’d worn what I wore for this photo shoot was a mannequin at a museum. It is exactly what I envision the future of Palestine to be, which is taking our tradition and our history and our past, but not going back to it or being stuck in it. It’s taking it and creating something absolutely new and visionary. It’s Palestinian futurism, and it was … that is such a central piece of the photo shoot, of this story, of what art is doing, of my own vision of: What does it take for us to create these new futures? And at the heart of it, it means not being afraid to dream.

[wittypenguin]

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

I’ll unashamedly say right off the bat I love this movie. It’s a shame that there’s a whole heap of baggage around this film, because it’s an excellent Science Fiction thriller of a sort we don’t see anymore. Let’s get all the ridiculous rumour and here-say out of the way first, though.

According to urban legend, Frank Sinatra removed the film from distribution after the John F. Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. Ballocks. While it certainly seems in poor taste at that point to be screening a film dealing with the assassination of a candidate for President of the United States, John Frankenheimer, the director of the film, states in the book John Frankenheimer: A Conversation with Charles Champlin that the film was pulled because of a legal battle between the film’s producer, Mr Sinatra, and the studio over Mr Sinatra's share of the gross sales. In the end, it was re-released to great acclaim in 1988.

Michael Schlesinger — who was responsible for that 1988 reissue — also denies the rumour. According to him, the film wasn’t removed from distribution per se, there was merely a lack of public interest in it by 1963. The idea that any film a year after its release would have the same level of interest in the marketplace — even with two Academy Away nominations (one for Angela Lansbury for Best Supporting Actress, and one for Best Editing) — is not just simply ‘glass half full,’ but downright wishful thinking. The distribution rights were held by the studio for ten years, and in 1972 those rights merely reverted to the film’s production company. Mr Sinatra’s lawyers held on to those rights so that no one would profit from a revenue stream which his lawyers had badly negotiated originally, and sitting on the film prevented it film being released for VHS home rental or ownership. Thus the falsity, “it was pulled from distribution.”

Left to right: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Khigh Dhiegh, James Edwards, Richard LePore, and Tom Lowell in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

For fairly obvious reasons, this film has become a part of JFK/RFK Assassination Conspiracy lore: there’s a Presidential candidate being shot with a high-powered rifle, wielded by a former soldier located somewhere fairly high-up in what can be described as a public place. The book came out in 1958, and cannot possibly have been a blueprint for the assassination of President Kennedy, given he didn’t announce his candidacy until January 2nd of 1960. Even if one was to say ‘oh, but, see, that’s how they worked out how to do it: they read the book!’ beggars belief. First, in order for someone to use it as a template to kill President Kennedy, the entire Secret Service, the FBI, and the CIA had to collectively ignore — for four years — the possibility that someone might use the idea of the novel to kill the President, whose life is the single most important thing they are assigned to protect. Then, someone has to put everything into place in about two years, including bringing in people working with Project MKUltra (which, admittedly, had been sanctioned in 1953, so there is opportunity for that bit… kinda…) to provide a suitable subject to perform the act, re-target them from whatever they were originally programmed for to the President instead, then cover over everything involved with what is the most treasonous plot in the history of the country, keep everyone involved silent for over six decades; all while the files from the FBI Field Office in Media, Pennsylvania were leaked, exposing the COINTELPRO programme; then the publishing of ‘the Pentagon Papers,’ exposing the history of the United States’ political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967; then the ‘Watergate scandal’ and the associated charges of corruption and influence peddling by Vice President Agnew were navigated; then the revelation of…

C’mon…!

Another aspect of the film which caused the conspiracy nutcases to go insane was the fact that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the man who fired the gun at Senator Robert F. Kennedy, appears to have either unwittingly or accidentally hypnotized himself prior to the incident using a series of LPs produced by the Rosicrucians, and then became obsessed with Senator Kennedy’s “sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 [fighter jet] bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians,” as he told David Frost in 1988. The parallel with this film’s plot becomes worse, as Mr Frankenheimer had became a close friend of Senator Kennedy during the making of The Manchurian Candidate so that, in 1968, the Senator asked Mr Frankenheimer to make some commercials for his campaign for the Democratic nomination. On the night Senator Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, it was Mr Frankenheimer who drove him from the Los Angeles Airport to the Ambassador Hotel for the acceptance speech.

There are merely coincidences — profoundly unfortunate ones — and they wouldn’t be seen as anything more than that, save for the involvement of a Kennedy family member in public office. That same reason is why anyone gives a damn about the ‘Chappaquiddick incident,’ other than the fact that one of the ‘great and the good’ was kept from serving any time in jail for their involvement in a death of an innocent person.

I do think that something happened that day in Dallas in addition to what we have thus far been told, but what it was and whom it was done at the behest of, we will never know. It certainly wasn’t something involving this film.

Angela Lansbury [left] and James Gregory [centre and on TV screen] in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Okay… now let’s get to the movie.

It starts as what seems like a standard war movie, set during the Korean War, with a group of men captured, thanks to a double-crossing Korean guide and interpreter, by Russians with helicopters bearing a simple five-pointed star (which indicates China, but could also indicate the Soviet Union…? North Korea…? Texas…?). Then the same voice which at the start of Spartacus, told us that Christianity brought about the fall of Rome, informs us here that Raymond Shaw has a Medal of Honour and has come home to glory; a glory his mother (played by Angela Lansbury) and step-father wish to bask in the reflected warmth of, thus aiding the Senate career of the opportunistic, bombastic McCarthy stand-in (played by James Gregory).

Shaw has a mid-Atlantic accent which works well with Ms Lansbury’s. He’s the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being anyone’s ever known in their entire life.

Some of the side character’s’ performances are super wooden. “Zilkov” especially seems to have no experience beyond Christmas play in grade 4.

During a scene in New York City, the Manchurian scientist is doing origami, a Japanese art of paper-folding. So… Hollywood really doesn’t know the Orient at all.

Mr Frankenheimer had film and two more he directed released the same year: Birdman of Alcatraz (starring Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, and Telly Savalas) and All Fall Down (starring Eva Marie Saint and Warren Beatty). I think it’s safe to say that Mr Frankenheimer didn’t sleep for much of 1962.

Speaking of that year in film, I was surprised at the competition Ms Lansbury had for Best Supporting Actress Oscar. In this film, Ms Lansbury is fantastic: energetic, focused, she’s got great timing, and is entirely believable in every scene. Every single level of her performance is perfect, as she is laser-sharp in knowing what she needs from everyone at every moment.

Originally, I was looking to see who won instead of her, and then who her votes were split with, as typically a performance this good is split with someone equally deserving, meaning someone comes out of left field to win [cf Marisa Tomei]. So, why didn’t Ms Lansbury win?

Because 1962 was an insanely fantastic year for film, no matter the category you sample.

In a year where Marilyn Monroe was found dead (August 5th) and the ‘James Bond’ franchise starts (October 5th – Dr. No); you have dramas like Lawrence of Arabia, The Longest Day, Mutiny on the Bounty, To Kill a Mockingbird, Billy Budd, Days of Wine and Roses, How the West Was Won, The Day of the Triffids, La Jetée (which was the inspiration of 12 Monkeys), Jules and Jim, Lolita, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Miracle Worker, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Sweet Bird of Youth; the musicals Gypsy and State Fair; plus The Manchurian Candidate, Birdman of Alcatraz, and All Fall Down from Mr Frankenheimer. It very much was a transition period from one generation of film making to the next, and the best of everything was on display. I don’t think you could consider 1962 ‘another 1939’ for film, but it was pretty damned close! Needless to say the Oscar Awards the next spring were pretty full; mostly full of Lawrence of Arabia and The Miracle Worker, but many other people as well.

I’d forgotten how much violence there is in this film. Much of it is corralled in opposite ends of the film, but there really is a bunch, and it is very shocking when it arrives. It’s still effective now, too, which makes things so very exciting.

On this disc, there’s a wonderful twenty minute documentary about the sociological factors involved in the creation of the hysteria surrounding “brain washing” and mind control in general from the early-1950s onwards. It really sews together so many disparate and interconnected threads: McCarthyism, fear of both the Soviet and Chinese varieties of Communism, imminent nuclear annihilation (an all-too real threat when this film was released, literally in the middle of the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’), the phobia of ‘too controlling mothers,’ distrust of anyone from another country, the differences between psychoanalysis and actual programming of thoughts, the focus on advertising through the pop culture book The Hidden Persuaders, and the idea that TV was a new insidious way to make ‘soft’ men instead of the ‘tough’ men the USA needed in the nuclear-powered time of the 1960s!

Anyway; all in all, it’s grand, and the times when shots are a bit out of focus, you don’t care, the story is so strong and the acting is grand, and… oh, I wish more films were like this; big, messy, multi-influenced tales of humanity. Thankfully people like Terry Gilliam and Duncan Jones are doing that sort of thing.

★★★★★

[battybat-boss]

For the United Nations, Multilateralism Is the Way Forward

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, the president of the 73rd General Assembly of the United Nations. 

The United Nations is often criticized for bureaucratic inefficiency, with its more passionate critics disparaging the organization's “uselessness.” Despite this, the UN still wields a remarkable influence in its mission to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order.

María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, who brings more than 20 years of multilateral experience in such fields as international negotiations, peace, security and human rights, has pledged to maintain the UN's commitment to multilateral relations while proposing a number of crucial and pressing reforms more in tune with the “needs and quests” of an ever more connected world. Her appointment comes during a time characterized by heightened political tensions and fears of global unrest, and Espinosa Garcés advocates for a solutions-based approach designed to not just maintain, but revitalize one of the world's preeminent peacekeeping organizations during a period when the legitimacy of its mission has been repeatedly questioned.

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Espinosa Garcés about the challenges faced by the UN today, from migration and climate change, to gender inequality, racism and autonomous weapons.

Athanasios Dimadis: At a time when global politics is marked by division and rancor, many criticize the UN for its inefficiency, bureaucracy, unwieldiness and even uselessness. In your view, what are the most crucial and pressing reforms that the UN must go through in the next five to 10 years? 

María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés: Firstly, let me take this opportunity to thank you and Fair Observer for inviting me to this interview. The theme of my presidency is “Making the United Nations Relevant to all People,” and to achieve that, the role of the media is crucial to explaining our goals and priorities.

To answer your question: One of the most recurrent topics during the General Debate, which we had in September with over 130 heads of state and government, was the strengthening of multilateralism. You used the word reform, and one of our priorities is the revitalization of the organization, by supporting the UN reform, proposed by the secretary general, under three pillars: peace and security, development, and management reform. Why? Because this is a way to make the UN more relevant, leaner, to produce efficiency, to deliver value for money, to make the real difference to people out there who count on this organization.

The United Nations does tremendous good work that doesn't make the headlines, but that doesn't mean that it does not exist - the work of the UN is real, and it's out there. It promotes conflict prevention, it secures international peace and security, it assists about 80 countries with food security. The UN promotes sustainable development, tackles climate change, stands up for human rights, for gender equality. The UN and its partners vaccinate 45% of children around the world. I could go on.

The General Assembly, which I represent, is the largest democratic body of the UN. We have 193 member states, and each country - independent of size, demographics, geography - each country has one vote. I say that all countries have the same microphone to speak and the same button to vote. So, are there challenges for multilateralism? Yes, of course, and we don't deny them, but at the same time we do not fear these challenges, we believe that diversity is actually one of our sources of strength, we see dialogue as a powerful political tool, and sometimes in political processes you will have dissent before consent - this is fine, it is part of political processes and what makes us interesting and strong.

Dimadis: What are your top priorities for your presidency?

Espinosa Garcés: We have seven, one for each day of the week. My priority is gender equality. As you know, more than half of the world's population is women. The days of including women in the decision-making spaces are long overdue. We need to be part of any conversation concerning us, but we also have a contribution to make to all decision-making fora. It has been already proven that when women are involved from the start, there is more chance of success and development. You will recall that I dedicated my election to the General Assembly to women in politics, to women and girls who are victims of violence. Gender equality - for me and for this presidency - is not only a trendy concept; it must be a reality to all women out there, and I firmly believe that this is also a task which involves men as real partners.

Another priority is migration and refugees. In December, the General Assembly hosted in Marrakesh, Morocco, an international conference on migration, where member states adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. You know, the history of humanity is the history of migration, is the history of people on the move, and this Global Compact, which was agreed upon by all 193 member states of the UN, is the result of collective action, of multilateralism, of safeguarding the rights of migrants, of addressing a transboundary issue - an issue that belongs to us all. I can safely say that nowadays most countries have experienced the phenomenon of migration directly or indirectly.

My other priorities are decent work, people with disabilities, environmental action, youth, peace and security, and the revitalization of the United Nations. These are, in fact, crosscutting priorities. When we talk, for instance, about decent work, we are also touching upon gender equality, but also on people with disabilities who need to be integrated, to have access to decent work. Work opportunities are also important to young people. If they can develop their potential, get a good education and employment, they will be more likely to positively contribute to society instead of being attracted by radicalism or other damaging ideologies.

Environmental action is a crucial priority for us as member states move to implement the Paris Agreement. We need to establish low carbon economies, to finance new, clean technologies, to reduce climate change causing emissions. And this takes collective action - this takes a strong approach to multilateralism and international cooperation. And here, my office is organizing a global campaign against plastic pollution. You know that if we do not revert the levels of plastic pollution, by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish stocks? It's up to us together to act now.

Dimadis: Peace in the Middle East seems to be an ever-moving horizon line. What can finally be done to reach a solution, especially after the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem and has so clearly chosen a side in this conflict once again?

Espinosa Garcés: The United Nations is fully committed to achieving lasting and sustained peace in the Middle East. You will recall that Resolution 181 was approved by the General Assembly in 1947. Since then, there have been several resolutions by the GA. And not only that; there has been active diplomatic engagement. I have publicly declared that the UN has a debt with the Palestinian people. The goal of achieving a political solution, which will make possible the creation of two states - a Jewish one and a Palestinian one - is a common goal. We cannot forget, however, that this is a process which is assisted by third parties as requested. Several member states are engaged directly in conversations and peace negotiations, as well as regional and international organizations. You will recall that the Quartet on the Middle East, for instance, had two member states and two international organizations - the European Union and the UN itself.

And we cannot forget that the decision is made by Israelis and Palestinians, while the role of the UN is to assist as both parties require. From our past resolutions, you know that the General Assembly has positioned itself clearly in regard with recent development on the status of Jerusalem. And I would encourage you and your readers to access these resolutions on our website to see how the discussion was conducted and what the General Assembly decided.

Dimadis: In your view, what are the biggest threats to global peace and security right now, and how can they be addressed? 

Espinosa Garcés: Instead of talking about threats, I really would like to focus on solutions. There have been different readings of threats in different times. For instance, the threat to multilateralism, which can risk gains made on peace and security. We are all now very much engaged with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as one of our biggest threats, as well as nuclear, biological, chemical weapons. Specialists in cybertechnology have raised the issue of lethal autonomous weapons, or killer robots, and all their implications. But at the same time, we have opportunities that can be used for the good of humanity. We have more access to information and immediate access as never before. The same frontier technology that makes us consider potential damaging issues and implications opens new horizons from which young people, the present and future generations, can profit.

The strengthening of multilateralism as we have been seeing in the landmark peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, but also in other parts of the world. Another encouraging moment and a great step for multilateralism and disarmament happened in September, when seven countries signed and four ratified, during the high-level week here in New York, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. All these steps lead us to conclude that global challenges are to be solved by global, collective actions. Multilateralism is not one of the ways to solve our challenges; it is actually the only possible way.

Dimadis: The International Organization for Migration has called migration one of the greatest political challenges in our era. You have named finalizing the Global Compact on Migration as one of your seven key priorities. Why do you feel the urgency around this goal at this particular moment in time?

Espinosa Garcés: Because today we have a golden opportunity to show that the international community, namely the member states of the UN, is capable and willing to work together to address today's global challenges. Managing migration is one of today's global challenges. And member states have managed to agree this year on a Global Compact on Migration, and they now had a chance to be present in Marrakesh for the formal adoption and show the world that we are serious about ensuring that migration is safe, orderly and regular.

Dimadis: The global compact is not legally binding. How can we ensure that not only all UN members adopt the Global Impact but also take actions necessary to achieve the outlined objectives?

Espinosa Garcés: Implementation will be key. And the Global Compact presents a series of tools that member states can choose to implement in line with their priorities. It is also important that we are not beginning from scratch: Many of the practices described in the Global Compact are already being implemented by several member states around the world. The Global Compact allows also for exchange of best practices.

Dimadis: According to UNHCR, we are witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record: An unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are over 25 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. And yet at this time of record migration, we are also witnessing a rise of nationalism, nationalist and populist rhetoric, especially in the host countries in the West. Some experts believe it is the direct result of these unprecedented levels of human mobility and displacement. Therefore, how do we address this issue of cultural backlash against the “other”? How do we convince governments and the public at large of the benefits of migration?

Espinosa Garcés: While it is true that we are witnessing very high levels of mobility - of migrants, of refugees, but also of people who are displaced within their own countries - I believe that I see things differently; the atmosphere toward migrants and refugees is not predominately negative. I see many positive stories and actions throughout the world that illustrate the positive side, I see many communities acknowledging the positive contribution of migrants, I see many states all around the world actively working to facilitate the successful socio-economic integration of migrants.

However, I agree what we see are the loudest, most sensational stories that play to fears creating a negative global atmosphere. The xenophobia, nationalism and racism often play directly into the anti-migrant and anti-refugees sentiment. Member states - who are the United Nations - have shown their commitment to come together to address the challenges linked to migration, including xenophobia and racism. The fact that member states, in this time of heightened political tensions and debate around migration, have managed to agree on a Global Compact for Migration is a sign of hope and a sign that the ultimate multilateral institutions that are the UN are still relevant and are the best forum to address global challenges in a spirit of cooperation.

Dimadis: Since the UN's foundation, the United States took on a key role in founding and leading the world's preeminent organizations and treaties. Recently, however, President Donald Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement and said the US will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration. How detrimental is this rejection of globalism to UN's efficiency in solving the world's most intractable issues, without the full participation and commitment from the United States?

Espinosa Garcés: I am a strong believer in multilateralism, and so I believe are the member states of the UN - as was shown by the numerous heads of states and governments attending the General Debate at the UN this year (the highest-level attendance at that level at the UN headquarters since the 2005 World Summit), several of them underlining the essential role of multilateralism as the only effective way to address global challenges. This being said, as I have stated several times, the United Nations and the General Assembly are a place for dialogue, but also for dissenting dialogue. Of course I wish that all member states supported international agreements like the Paris climate accord, and that all member states supported the Global Compact for Migration. But, again, dialogue is also about disagreeing. The important thing is to have a dialogue.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer's editorial policy.

The post For the United Nations, Multilateralism Is the Way Forward appeared first on Fair Observer.

[lopezdorothy70-blog]

For the United Nations, Multilateralism Is the Way Forward

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, the president of the 73rd General Assembly of the United Nations. 

The United Nations is often criticized for bureaucratic inefficiency, with its more passionate critics disparaging the organization's “uselessness.” Despite this, the UN still wields a remarkable influence in its mission to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order.

María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, who brings more than 20 years of multilateral experience in such fields as international negotiations, peace, security and human rights, has pledged to maintain the UN's commitment to multilateral relations while proposing a number of crucial and pressing reforms more in tune with the “needs and quests” of an ever more connected world. Her appointment comes during a time characterized by heightened political tensions and fears of global unrest, and Espinosa Garcés advocates for a solutions-based approach designed to not just maintain, but revitalize one of the world's preeminent peacekeeping organizations during a period when the legitimacy of its mission has been repeatedly questioned.

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Espinosa Garcés about the challenges faced by the UN today, from migration and climate change, to gender inequality, racism and autonomous weapons.

Athanasios Dimadis: At a time when global politics is marked by division and rancor, many criticize the UN for its inefficiency, bureaucracy, unwieldiness and even uselessness. In your view, what are the most crucial and pressing reforms that the UN must go through in the next five to 10 years? 

María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés: Firstly, let me take this opportunity to thank you and Fair Observer for inviting me to this interview. The theme of my presidency is “Making the United Nations Relevant to all People,” and to achieve that, the role of the media is crucial to explaining our goals and priorities.

To answer your question: One of the most recurrent topics during the General Debate, which we had in September with over 130 heads of state and government, was the strengthening of multilateralism. You used the word reform, and one of our priorities is the revitalization of the organization, by supporting the UN reform, proposed by the secretary general, under three pillars: peace and security, development, and management reform. Why? Because this is a way to make the UN more relevant, leaner, to produce efficiency, to deliver value for money, to make the real difference to people out there who count on this organization.

The United Nations does tremendous good work that doesn't make the headlines, but that doesn't mean that it does not exist - the work of the UN is real, and it's out there. It promotes conflict prevention, it secures international peace and security, it assists about 80 countries with food security. The UN promotes sustainable development, tackles climate change, stands up for human rights, for gender equality. The UN and its partners vaccinate 45% of children around the world. I could go on.

The General Assembly, which I represent, is the largest democratic body of the UN. We have 193 member states, and each country - independent of size, demographics, geography - each country has one vote. I say that all countries have the same microphone to speak and the same button to vote. So, are there challenges for multilateralism? Yes, of course, and we don't deny them, but at the same time we do not fear these challenges, we believe that diversity is actually one of our sources of strength, we see dialogue as a powerful political tool, and sometimes in political processes you will have dissent before consent - this is fine, it is part of political processes and what makes us interesting and strong.

Dimadis: What are your top priorities for your presidency?

Espinosa Garcés: We have seven, one for each day of the week. My priority is gender equality. As you know, more than half of the world's population is women. The days of including women in the decision-making spaces are long overdue. We need to be part of any conversation concerning us, but we also have a contribution to make to all decision-making fora. It has been already proven that when women are involved from the start, there is more chance of success and development. You will recall that I dedicated my election to the General Assembly to women in politics, to women and girls who are victims of violence. Gender equality - for me and for this presidency - is not only a trendy concept; it must be a reality to all women out there, and I firmly believe that this is also a task which involves men as real partners.

Another priority is migration and refugees. In December, the General Assembly hosted in Marrakesh, Morocco, an international conference on migration, where member states adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. You know, the history of humanity is the history of migration, is the history of people on the move, and this Global Compact, which was agreed upon by all 193 member states of the UN, is the result of collective action, of multilateralism, of safeguarding the rights of migrants, of addressing a transboundary issue - an issue that belongs to us all. I can safely say that nowadays most countries have experienced the phenomenon of migration directly or indirectly.

My other priorities are decent work, people with disabilities, environmental action, youth, peace and security, and the revitalization of the United Nations. These are, in fact, crosscutting priorities. When we talk, for instance, about decent work, we are also touching upon gender equality, but also on people with disabilities who need to be integrated, to have access to decent work. Work opportunities are also important to young people. If they can develop their potential, get a good education and employment, they will be more likely to positively contribute to society instead of being attracted by radicalism or other damaging ideologies.

Environmental action is a crucial priority for us as member states move to implement the Paris Agreement. We need to establish low carbon economies, to finance new, clean technologies, to reduce climate change causing emissions. And this takes collective action - this takes a strong approach to multilateralism and international cooperation. And here, my office is organizing a global campaign against plastic pollution. You know that if we do not revert the levels of plastic pollution, by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish stocks? It's up to us together to act now.

Dimadis: Peace in the Middle East seems to be an ever-moving horizon line. What can finally be done to reach a solution, especially after the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem and has so clearly chosen a side in this conflict once again?

Espinosa Garcés: The United Nations is fully committed to achieving lasting and sustained peace in the Middle East. You will recall that Resolution 181 was approved by the General Assembly in 1947. Since then, there have been several resolutions by the GA. And not only that; there has been active diplomatic engagement. I have publicly declared that the UN has a debt with the Palestinian people. The goal of achieving a political solution, which will make possible the creation of two states - a Jewish one and a Palestinian one - is a common goal. We cannot forget, however, that this is a process which is assisted by third parties as requested. Several member states are engaged directly in conversations and peace negotiations, as well as regional and international organizations. You will recall that the Quartet on the Middle East, for instance, had two member states and two international organizations - the European Union and the UN itself.

And we cannot forget that the decision is made by Israelis and Palestinians, while the role of the UN is to assist as both parties require. From our past resolutions, you know that the General Assembly has positioned itself clearly in regard with recent development on the status of Jerusalem. And I would encourage you and your readers to access these resolutions on our website to see how the discussion was conducted and what the General Assembly decided.

Dimadis: In your view, what are the biggest threats to global peace and security right now, and how can they be addressed? 

Espinosa Garcés: Instead of talking about threats, I really would like to focus on solutions. There have been different readings of threats in different times. For instance, the threat to multilateralism, which can risk gains made on peace and security. We are all now very much engaged with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as one of our biggest threats, as well as nuclear, biological, chemical weapons. Specialists in cybertechnology have raised the issue of lethal autonomous weapons, or killer robots, and all their implications. But at the same time, we have opportunities that can be used for the good of humanity. We have more access to information and immediate access as never before. The same frontier technology that makes us consider potential damaging issues and implications opens new horizons from which young people, the present and future generations, can profit.

The strengthening of multilateralism as we have been seeing in the landmark peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, but also in other parts of the world. Another encouraging moment and a great step for multilateralism and disarmament happened in September, when seven countries signed and four ratified, during the high-level week here in New York, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. All these steps lead us to conclude that global challenges are to be solved by global, collective actions. Multilateralism is not one of the ways to solve our challenges; it is actually the only possible way.

Dimadis: The International Organization for Migration has called migration one of the greatest political challenges in our era. You have named finalizing the Global Compact on Migration as one of your seven key priorities. Why do you feel the urgency around this goal at this particular moment in time?

Espinosa Garcés: Because today we have a golden opportunity to show that the international community, namely the member states of the UN, is capable and willing to work together to address today's global challenges. Managing migration is one of today's global challenges. And member states have managed to agree this year on a Global Compact on Migration, and they now had a chance to be present in Marrakesh for the formal adoption and show the world that we are serious about ensuring that migration is safe, orderly and regular.

Dimadis: The global compact is not legally binding. How can we ensure that not only all UN members adopt the Global Impact but also take actions necessary to achieve the outlined objectives?

Espinosa Garcés: Implementation will be key. And the Global Compact presents a series of tools that member states can choose to implement in line with their priorities. It is also important that we are not beginning from scratch: Many of the practices described in the Global Compact are already being implemented by several member states around the world. The Global Compact allows also for exchange of best practices.

Dimadis: According to UNHCR, we are witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record: An unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are over 25 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. And yet at this time of record migration, we are also witnessing a rise of nationalism, nationalist and populist rhetoric, especially in the host countries in the West. Some experts believe it is the direct result of these unprecedented levels of human mobility and displacement. Therefore, how do we address this issue of cultural backlash against the “other”? How do we convince governments and the public at large of the benefits of migration?

Espinosa Garcés: While it is true that we are witnessing very high levels of mobility - of migrants, of refugees, but also of people who are displaced within their own countries - I believe that I see things differently; the atmosphere toward migrants and refugees is not predominately negative. I see many positive stories and actions throughout the world that illustrate the positive side, I see many communities acknowledging the positive contribution of migrants, I see many states all around the world actively working to facilitate the successful socio-economic integration of migrants.

However, I agree what we see are the loudest, most sensational stories that play to fears creating a negative global atmosphere. The xenophobia, nationalism and racism often play directly into the anti-migrant and anti-refugees sentiment. Member states - who are the United Nations - have shown their commitment to come together to address the challenges linked to migration, including xenophobia and racism. The fact that member states, in this time of heightened political tensions and debate around migration, have managed to agree on a Global Compact for Migration is a sign of hope and a sign that the ultimate multilateral institutions that are the UN are still relevant and are the best forum to address global challenges in a spirit of cooperation.

Dimadis: Since the UN's foundation, the United States took on a key role in founding and leading the world's preeminent organizations and treaties. Recently, however, President Donald Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement and said the US will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration. How detrimental is this rejection of globalism to UN's efficiency in solving the world's most intractable issues, without the full participation and commitment from the United States?

Espinosa Garcés: I am a strong believer in multilateralism, and so I believe are the member states of the UN - as was shown by the numerous heads of states and governments attending the General Debate at the UN this year (the highest-level attendance at that level at the UN headquarters since the 2005 World Summit), several of them underlining the essential role of multilateralism as the only effective way to address global challenges. This being said, as I have stated several times, the United Nations and the General Assembly are a place for dialogue, but also for dissenting dialogue. Of course I wish that all member states supported international agreements like the Paris climate accord, and that all member states supported the Global Compact for Migration. But, again, dialogue is also about disagreeing. The important thing is to have a dialogue.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer's editorial policy.

The post For the United Nations, Multilateralism Is the Way Forward appeared first on Fair Observer.