#i don’t view israel and palestine through which government i want to back. why the fuck would i do that

[girlgerard]

mommm white people on tumblr are misconstruing my posts again despite the post being entirely about how important wording is + how i don’t feel comfortable posting large statements when i haven’t fully processed them yet.

[palestinianliberator]

To be Palestinian is exhausting

You will not find a single Palestinian who hasn’t had to endure all of the following and more:

Constantly having to prove our existence

[This is going to be a tremendously long post, but I implore you to read through what you can]

Constantly having to educate everyone around us on our history and people while we continue to be slaughtered

Constantly having to combat Israeli propaganda and dehumanization campaigns against us

Constantly having to combat liberal propaganda from those who simply cannot understand the pain and damage they are doing

Constantly having to defend ourselves from the overwhelming forces that stand in our way, from the Israeli forces to the global institutions that help support it to the structures in the US that mean that any Palestinian who dares speak out risk both their lives and livelihood

Constantly in fear of whether or not you’ll end up on another “list” as a result of daring to speak out

Constantly having to do it all again as soon as we’re back on the news

Constantly having to answer for all other Palestinians in a way that nobody else is expected to

Constantly being seen as the “crazy one” when trying to share your narrative, having to defend against an endless barrage of accusations of antisemitism

Constantly being put into situations by bad-faith actors who attempt to engage in “debate” or “discussion” or “dialogue” with talking points that demean and duhamanize you, all while being expected to maintain a smile and cool composure while someone literally debates to your face your own existence or how “actually it’s YOUR people’s fault you’re being slaughtered! Israel isn’t the bad guy here!”

Constantly being forced to choose between engaging in bad-faith debates framed in a way to make you look like the unreasonable bad guy while the person implicitly defending your ethnic cleansing is made to look like the “rational good guy” or looking after your own mental health, knowing that even refusing these “invitations” is itself a mark against you and your people

Constantly being told that you’re too “biased”, too “close”, too “emotional” about the literal slaughter of your people to be seen as a valid source, while Israelis and complete outsiders are given all the space they want to speak for us endlessly

Constantly seeing people being actively mislead and wondering if you have the capacity to reach out to them and attempt to share your narrative with them, knowing that if you don’t, they’re going to go on to propagate the same lies justifying your ethnic cleansing

Constantly having to combat GENUINE censorship throughout the media, social media, and society itself. It’s a fact proven by former Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube employees that Palestinian voices have their reach censored in a way no one else does, which is why it’s so important to amplify and actively share Palestinian voices rather than just liking or indicating support

Constantly being told you don’t know your own history by people who’ve educated themselves on Youtube and Wikipedia despite having lived the reality yourself and dedicating your entire life to studying every single aspect of it

Constantly seeing those who have the courage to stand alongside you being shut down with accusations of antisemitism and seeing them lose their courage to stand by you out of fear of their own image and livelihood and having to rush to their defense as well

Constantly having to see photos of your people, sometimes even people you know, maimed, injured, murdered, or burned to ash by Israeli aggression but knowing you have a duty to share what’s happening and must stomach the images to show the world the true extent of the suffering we endure

Constantly having to worry not just for your own safety, but the safety of your family and loved ones who can be punished or targeted because of things you yourself say

Constantly wondering who you can actually trust, from new friends and acquaintances to professors to even other Palestinians because we’ve been so heavily infiltrated by Israeli intelligence looking to blackmail Palestinians using anything from their sexual orientation or even made up “evidence” meant to ruin their lives

Constantly having your heart sink every notification you get wondering if it’s news that a loved one has been killed

Constantly seeing the corpses of loved ones shared on social media and reliving the trauma all over again, yet again knowing that you WANT the world to see what’s happening

Constantly seeing the effects this has on your own family and feeling helpless to do anything

Constantly on alert for the FBI at your door as they often “visit” Palestinians who dare speak out, myself included on numerous occasions 

Constantly wondering if your advocacy for your people is going to result in the loss of your job, scholarship, license

Constantly being asked to “humanize” and “feel for” those who live their lives day in day out completely unfazed by your suffering despite living in a society that couldn’t even FUNCTION without our subjugation

Constantly being told “don’t blame regular Israelis, blame the government!!” as if the state itself wasn’t founded on our ethnic cleansing, as if it isn’t “normal Israelis” who make up the entirety of the Israeli Military and have actively brutalized you and your people

Seeing allies you fought for suddenly SILENT when it’s their time to speak up

Studying on a US campus where those SAME SOLDIERS WHO ENGAGED IN YOUR PERSECUTION AND ACTIVELY SERVED AS THE ENFORCERS OF YOUR OCCUPATION then re-enact the trauma against you and you’re meant to simply ignore the fact that THEY ARE THE SAME PEOPLE WHO MURDERED YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY, and not being allowed to even be ANGRY at that

Trying to navigate this half-life in the diaspora where it’s a struggle to connect with other Palestinians given the distance between us and yet not being able to connect with anyone around because, again, they simply can’t understand

Constantly being expected to simply give up your time to those who demand you answer them and debate your existence and narrative with them, who them take you blocking them for your own mental health as a “victory” to be lorded over you when you simply can’t take it anymore

Constantly having to EXPLAIN all of this because nobody but other Palestinians can truly understand just how pervasive, overwhelming, and incapacitating this unique form of exhaustion is

Constantly seeing your erasure and ethnic cleansing defended all over the media, all over social media, throughout your academic career, while those ENGAGED in your ethnic cleansing have the audacity to claim that the media is biased against THEM

Constantly on guard with everything you say and write, knowing that unlike those promoting our ethnic cleansing, we don’t have the luxury of making mistakes or getting lazy in our writing and advocacy. One mistaken source, mistaken information, being imperfect is enough to discredit your voice entirely

The crippling obligation you have to share the narrative of your people, knowing that so many people will view you as the spokesperson of your entire people, knowing how unfair it is, but also knowing that if you DON’T speak out, nobody will on your behalf, and even the most well-intentioned, involved allies can simply never understand how it all truly feels

Seeing the entire world stand by and do absolutely nothing while your people are slaughtered time and time again

Seeing your history misconstrued by people implicitly defending your ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism

Knowing that our parents have been through this and more, seeing them have to go through this yet again while still being forced to go about their daily lives and given no time to mourn or recover

Not being able to even share our culture without being attacked for it

Knowing that so many of your friends and family won’t ever be able to return to their homeland while foreigners from around the globe are flown into Israel free because it’s their “birthright”

A “birthright” denied to even my own parents, born in Jerusalem yet unable to enter it

Having even self-proclaimed “allies” question Palestinian resistance, policing our tone, never /really/ understanding our pain and anger and how they themselves contribute to it

Screaming from the moment you can about what’s happening to us, desperately trying to get people to CARE, and having it often fall on deaf ears

Knowing that if you’re not the source of information for those genuinely seeking to learn, they may find themselves mislead by sources that claim to be fair and balanced while imprinting subtle lies about Palestine and Palestinians on those they engage with

Not even being able to find the energy and ability to respond to genuine messages of love and support, which are greatly appreciated, and feeling bad about it because you don’t want to seem like you’re not genuinely happy to hear it

Feeling a sense of overwhelming exhaustion in times like this while at the same time being unable to sleep

Seeing the effect all of this has had on your people, knowing your people have among the highest rates of depression on the planet and yet we’re all suffering together with no way to ease the pain

Being constantly exposed to the ways in which your people are erased and questioning if you have the energy or sanity left to deconstruct such aggression to help outsiders understand the severity of it all

Seeing allies suddenly call for “peace” when Palestinians are finally fed up enough to rise up and fight back against an overwhelming military force

I could go on, but in case you it’s not already clear, I’m tired and exhausted

Always wondering if any of this is even worth it when the world has ignored your slaughter and ethnic cleansing for nearly 8 decades, knowing that nobody is about to step in to help now.

Constantly wondering if any of this is even worth it, and then feeling inspired by fellow Palestinians, our resilience, the fact that despite ALL of this and more, we continue to fight.

Despite all of this, I would never even consider or entertain the thought of being born as anything other than Palestinian

[weyassinebentalb]

Gaza Conflict Stokes 'Identity Crisis' for Young American Jews

Dan Kleinman does not know quite how to feel.

As a child in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, he was taught to revere Israel as the protector of Jews everywhere, the “Jewish superman who would come out of the sky to save us” when things got bad, he said.

It was a refuge in his mind when white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted “Jews will not replace us,” or kids in college grabbed his shirt, mimicking a “South Park” episode to steal his “Jew gold.”

But his feelings have grown muddier as he has gotten older, especially now as he watches violence unfold in Israel and Gaza. His moral compass tells him to help the Palestinians, but he cannot shake an ingrained paranoia every time he hears someone make anti-Israel statements.

“It is an identity crisis,” Kleinman, 33, said. “Very small in comparison to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, but it is still something very strange and weird.”

As the violence escalates in the Middle East, turmoil of a different kind is growing across the Atlantic. Many young American Jews are confronting the region’s long-standing strife in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

The Israel of their lifetime has been powerful, no longer appearing to some to be under constant existential threat. The violence comes after a year when mass protests across the United States have changed how many Americans see issues of racial and social justice. The pro-Palestinian position has become more common, with prominent progressive members of Congress offering impassioned speeches in defense of the Palestinians on the House floor. At the same time, reports of anti-Semitism are rising across the country.

Divides between some American Jews and Israel’s right-wing government have been growing for more than a decade, but under the Trump administration those fractures that many hoped would heal became a crevasse. Politics in Israel have also remained fraught, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-tenured government forged allegiances with Washington. For young people who came of age during the Trump years, political polarization over the issue only deepened.

Many Jews in America remain unreservedly supportive of Israel and its government. Still, the events of recent weeks have left some families struggling to navigate both the crisis abroad and the wide-ranging response from American Jews at home. What is at stake is not just geopolitical, but deeply personal. Fractures are intensifying along lines of age, observance and partisan affiliation.

In suburban Livingston, New Jersey, Meara Ashtivker, 38, has been afraid for her father-in-law in Israel, who has a disability and is not able to rush to the stairwell to shelter when he hears the air-raid sirens. She is also scared as she sees people in her progressive circles suddenly seem anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, she said.

Ashtivker, whose husband is Israeli, said she loved and supported Israel, even when she did not always agree with the government and its actions.

“It’s really hard being an American Jew right now,” she said. “It is exhausting and scary.”

Some young, liberal Jewish activists have found common cause with Black Lives Matter, which explicitly advocates for Palestinian liberation, concerning others who see that allegiance as anti-Semitic.

The recent turmoil is the first major outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza for which Aviva Davis, who graduated this spring from Brandeis University, has been “socially conscious.”

“I’m on a search for the truth, but what’s the truth when everyone has a different way of looking at things?” Davis said.

Alyssa Rubin, 26, who volunteers in Boston with IfNotNow, a network of Jewish activists who want to end Jewish American support for Israeli occupation, has found protesting for the Palestinian cause to be its own form of religious observance.

She said she and her 89-year-old grandfather ultimately both want the same thing, Jewish safety. But “he is really entrenched in this narrative that the only way we can be safe is by having a country,” she said, while her generation has seen that “the inequality has become more exacerbated.”

In the protest movements last summer, “a whole new wave of people were really primed to see the connection and understand racism more explicitly,” she said, “understanding the ways racism plays out here, and then looking at Israel/Palestine and realizing it is the exact same system.”

But that comparison is exactly what worries many other American Jews, who say the history of white American slaveholders is not the correct frame for viewing the Israeli government or the global Jewish experience of oppression.

At Temple Concord, a Reform synagogue in Syracuse, New York, teenager after teenager started calling Rabbi Daniel Fellman last week, wondering how to process seeing Black Lives Matter activists they marched with last summer attack Israel as “an apartheid state.”

“The reaction today is different because of what has occurred with the past year, year and a half, here,” Fellman said. “As a Jewish community, we are looking at it through slightly different eyes.”

Nearby at Sha’arei Torah Orthodox Congregation of Syracuse, teenagers were reflecting on their visits to Israel and on their family in the region.

“They see it as Hamas being a terrorist organization that is shooting missiles onto civilian areas,” Rabbi Evan Shore said. “They can’t understand why the world seems to be supporting terrorism over Israel.”

In Colorado, a high school senior at Denver Jewish Day School said he was frustrated at the lack of nuance in the public conversation. When his social media apps filled with pro-Palestinian memes last week, slogans like “From the river to the sea” and “Zionism is a call for an apartheid state,” he deactivated his accounts.

“The conversation is so unproductive, and so aggressive, that it really stresses you out,” Jonas Rosenthal, 18, said. “I don’t think that using that message is helpful for convincing the Israelis to stop bombing Gaza.”

Compared with their elders, younger American Jews are overrepresented on the ends of the religious affiliation spectrum: a higher share are secular, and a higher share are Orthodox.

Ari Hart, 39, an Orthodox rabbi in Skokie, Illinois, has accepted the fact that his Zionism makes him unwelcome in some activist spaces where he would otherwise be comfortable. College students in his congregation are awakening to that same tension, he said. “You go to a college campus and want to get involved in anti-racism or social justice work, but if you support the state of Israel, you’re the problem,” he said.

Hart sees increasing skepticism in liberal Jewish circles over Israel’s right to exist. “This is a generation who are very moved and inspired by social justice causes and want to be on the right side of justice,” Hart said. “But they’re falling into overly simplistic narratives, and narratives driven by true enemies of the Jewish people.”

Overall, younger American Jews are less attached to Israel than older generations: About half of Jewish adults under 30 describe themselves as emotionally connected to Israel, compared with about two-thirds of Jews over age 64, according to a major survey published last week by the Pew Research Center.

And though the U.S. Jewish population is 92% white, with all other races combined accounting for 8%, among Jews ages 18 to 29 that rises to 15%.

In Los Angeles, Rachel Sumekh, 29, a first-generation Iranian American Jew, sees complicated layers in the story of her own Persian family. Her mother escaped Iran on the back of a camel, traveling by night until she got to Pakistan, where she was taken in as a refugee. She then found asylum in Israel. She believes Israel has a right to self-determination, but she also found it “horrifying” to hear an Israeli ambassador suggest other Arab countries should take in Palestinians.

“That is what happened to my people and created this intergenerational trauma of losing our homeland because of hatred,” she said.

The entire situation feels too volatile and dangerous for many people to even want to discuss, especially publicly.

Violence against Jews is increasingly close to home. Last year the third-highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States were recorded since the Anti-Defamation League began cataloging them in 1979, according to a report released by the civil rights group last month. The ADL recorded more than 1,200 incidents of anti-Semitic harassment in 2020, a 10% increase from the previous year. In Los Angeles, the police are investigating a sprawling attack on sidewalk diners at a sushi restaurant Tuesday as an anti-Semitic hate crime.

Outside Cleveland, Jennifer Kaplan, 39, who grew up in a modern Orthodox family and who considers herself a centrist Democrat and a Zionist, remembered studying abroad at Hebrew University in 2002, and being in the cafeteria minutes before it was bombed. Now she wondered how the Trump era had affected her inclination to see the humanity in others, and she wished her young children were a bit older so she could talk with them about what is happening.

“I want them to understand that this is a really complicated situation, and they should question things,” she said. “I want them to understand that this isn’t just a, I don’t know, I guess, utopia of Jewish religion.”

Esther Katz, the performing arts director at the Jewish Community Center in Omaha, Nebraska, has spent significant time in Israel. She also attended Black Lives Matter protests in Omaha last summer and has signs supporting the movement in the windows of her home.

She has watched with a sense of betrayal as some of her allies in that movement have posted online about their apparently unequivocal support for the Palestinians, and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. “I’ve had some really tough conversations,” said Katz, a Conservative Jew. “They’re not seeing the facts, they’re just reading the propaganda.”

Her three children, who range in age from 7 to 13, are now wary of a country that is for Katz one of the most important places in the world. “They’re like, ‘I don’t understand why anyone would want to live in Israel, or even visit,’” she said. “That breaks my heart.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company 

source https://www.techno-90.com/2021/05/gaza-conflict-stokes-identity-crisis.html

[hg47]

47 Reasons Why I Fear Islam - (Reason 35)

-35-Earthly Islamic success seems more about loot, taking possessions from Infidels rather than self-actualization. ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-Islam-Crusades/dp/0895260131/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380255775&sr=1-1&keywords=POLITICALLY+INCORRECT+GUIDE%E2%84%A2+TO+ISLAM In POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE™ TO ISLAM (THE) Robert Spencer shows through historical research that the temporary growth of culture and science in the Middle Ages under Islamic rule had nothing to do with Islam, but came instead from Infidels who served Muslim masters.  Even the architectural design for mosques is unoriginal; the foundational structure and shape for mosques was stolen from Byzantine churches, and only slightly modified to eliminate references to Christianity.  So when Muslims show pride in their fine mosques, they are being arrogant about a design they ripped-off from a culture they smashed: “We steal from the best!  It’s ours now!  Soon everything you have will be ours!” ++++------- tweet ~ Koran TweetNotes: Muslims are forbidden to become friends with Non-Muslims. (It’s OK to *pretend* to be a friend.) ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380310980&sr=1-1&keywords=CRUEL+AND+USUAL+PUNISHMENT+by+Nonie+Darwish In CRUEL AND USUAL PUNISHMENT Nonie Darwish gets into the blind greed of Muslims.  Muslims dare not blame Islam for the economic failure of their countries of origin, because Islam is perfect; it must be the evil Jews who wrecked the Arab lands, or the Great Satan America.  Muslims look at the economic success of Britain or France or the United States, and think they must impose an ideal Islamic Government on these prosperous nations!  They will do Islam right on these countries.  In Nonie’s words: “They want to take over a ready-made civilization and claim it for themselves and Islam.” ++++------- A quote from Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi (the entire Islamic world considers him a leader who will be remembered throughout history): “Islam is not a normal religion like the other religions in the world, and Muslim nations are not like normal nations.  Muslim nations are very special because they have a command from Allah to rule the entire world and to be over every nation in the world.” @hg47 says – I agree with Mawdudi when he says that Islam is not a normal religion like other religions.  For that reason, Islam is more to be feared.  Other religions are after the soul of the woman or the man in disagreement with the particular religion.  (This is a slight over-simplification; doing “good deeds” and achieving “peace of mind” also factor into other religions.)  Islam is after the property and the lives of any man who refuses to bow down before the Islamic God.  (This is a slight over-simplification; women are also useful as property, things which must be owned by a male Muslim; things to be enjoyed sexually, things to produce future Muslim warriors.) I agree with Mawdudi when he says that Muslim nations are not like normal nations.  Muslim nations are abnormal.  Muslim nations protect rapists from prosecution.  Muslim nations are ruled by Islam, a set of obsolete laws fixed unchangeably 1,100 years ago, which Muslims insist must rule all men everywhere, which call for the elimination of the Jewish people from the earth.  Wait, didn’t we just go through that mess with Adolph Hitler half a century ago? Mawdudi didn’t quite say it, but I will.  Muslims are not like normal people.  Muslims insist that the holocaust never happened.  If Muslims lose that argument they say that the Jews got exactly what they deserved: death.  This is what Muslims teach their children.  Muslims, all Muslims, believe that the perfect written down laws of their God must rule all men everywhere, everywhen.  Muslims, all Muslims, take as their standard of reference for the Perfect Man someone who married a girl when she was six years old and had sex with her when she was nine years old, setting the ideal sexual standards for all men for all time. ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380310980&sr=1-1&keywords=CRUEL+AND+USUAL+PUNISHMENT+by+Nonie+Darwish In CRUEL AND USUAL PUNISHMENT Nonie Darwish gets into how whatever wealth and power of Muslim states acquired were the result of jihad battles with Infidels. In the words of the Islamic Prophet: “I have been awarded victory by terror, so the treasures of the earth are mine.” ++++------- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/opinion/12brooks.html A captivating article by DAVID BROOKS about the accomplishments of the Jewish people, especially the tech boom within Israel, compared to the Muslim people and their pathetic nations.  One conclusion was quite scary.  The Muslims may win not by nuking Israel, but by fomenting sufficient instability so the key Jewish leaders of the technological boom relocate to California. ++++------- tweet ~ Koran TweetNotes: The Koran counsels deceit in dealing with Non-Muslims. ++++------- http://www2.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=b73e7965-830c-4c76-9601-f071e8fa3a55 Perceptive article by Robert Fulford on the emir-like behavior of powerful Muslims, where personal status is everything, but actually accomplishing something is a petty trifle.  This article also illustrates why Western notions of representative democracy will never work in Islamic lands, by describing a meeting of social scientists in the Middle East who accomplished nothing through their association but each member got a chance to make a fine speech. Lebanese proverb: “Plenty of ejaculations but no pregnancies.” ++++------- http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/03/egypt-ethiopia-water-war.html Egypt versus Ethiopia: the first of many Water Wars?  Muslims in Egypt are so busy praying in military formation, bitching about the government leaders, burning the occasional Christian church, and blaming Infidels and Jews for all their problems that they may soon have no drinking water. ++++------- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/opinion/friedman-backlash-to-the-backlash.html?ref=thomaslfriedman Thomas L. Friedman’s fascinating Op-Ed piece on occasional slight stirrings of moderation within the Muslim world.  Friedman is a great thinker with his head screwed on straight.  When he writes, I read. ++++------- tweet ~ Koran TweetNotes: 61% of the Koran is about Non-Muslims, the worst of creation. Allah hates Non-Muslims and plots against them. ++++------- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443866404577566770697427382.html?mod=googlenews_wsj RICHARD LANDES on Mitt Romney’s comments comparing Israel with Palestine. Some points Richard Landes brings up: 1) The Muslim leaders are contemptuous of hard work. 2) Muslim economic life and Muslim political life is governed by the Islamic principle of RULE OR BE RULED.  Cooperation?  Nope.  Compromise?  Nope.  “I win!  You lose!  Why?  My AK-47 is pointed at your head!  And now that it is pointed at your head, give me your wallet!” 3) Intellectual openness is un-Islamic!  We can’t have that! 4) Innovation is sinful and against perfect unchangeable Islam!  “Now memorize that Koran.  No, you missed a word, recite from the beginning, and shout with joy the part about killing Jews.” 5) Law & Order?  Nope.  Protection rackets! ++++------- Quote from Richard Butrick: We should never forget that “Islam” means submission -- the opposite of self-determination and Enlightenment values. ++++------- A quote from Amil Imani: Islam is a charter of submission. It is a sworn enemy of freedom and views the Cyrus Charter as heresy. ++++------- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-cables-saudi-princes-parties Heather Brooke on the astounding underground party night life within Saudi Arabia hosted in the private homes of wealthy royalty, revealed by Wikileaks. Some Muslims really know how to party like it’s 2014-jihad! ++++------- A quote from Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi (the entire Islamic world considers him a leader who will be remembered throughout history): “Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man.  Islam doesn’t look for a nation to be in better condition than another nation.  Islam doesn’t care about the land or who owns the land.  The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam.  Any nation or power in this world that tries to get in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy.” @hg47 says – Please note that Islam is here to destroy the American way.  Please note that there is no compromise with these people drunk on their savage religious laws from the Seventh Century; they don’t care about you or me or which of us owns what, because they are out to acquire all of it for themselves.  Muslims will fight and destroy you and me if we resist them in their quest to die fighting Infidels for the glory of Islam. ++++------- http://www.hudson-ny.org/1610/sharia-advancing-in-west Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury on how the wild growth of Sharia banking helps Sharia law to gain traction within Western nations. @hg47 says – Confess that “Sharia Banking” may be a soft-target for “Infidels Irritated by Islam” to attack.  As I understand it, the whole notion of “Sharia Banking” is a BIG LIE, pretending to be one thing, All Islam All The Time, while actually just covering up the exterior with Islamic trinkets and describing the transactions in obscure Arabic that hides the essential function of the “supposed” Sharia Bank.  In other words, ALL the evil and forbidden Western financial transactions proceed as normal, absolutely nothing is changed, except the obfuscation for the Mullahs and the Ayatollahs back home in Muslim lands.  Charging interest?  Check!  We’ll just call it: “Boo-boo-de-goo-go!”  Derivatives?  No prob!  That’s when the foot washes the hand while the toes hold the money! The only real difference between Sharia compliant banks and Western banks is the tellers with scarfs in the lobby and the money laundering for Muslim terrorist organizations. I know that Islam is never concerned with the spirit of the law, only the letter of the law.  But I’m wondering if the Mullahs back home “get” that by describing the Western financial transactions differently, that they are re-writing the letter of Islamic law.  This is a precedent. My question is this: how many other forbidden behaviors in violation of obsolete laws from the Seventh Century may now be described differently to obey the letter-of-Islamic-law? ++++------- http://www.meforum.org/ - awesome info on current Middle East events and Islam +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +Go-To-36+ +Go-To-Beginning-Of-47-REASONS-WHY-I-FEAR-ISLAM+

[apexart-journal]

Elizabeth Velazquez in Jerusalem Day 22 (7.24.19)

How do I say what I need to say?

Wow. 

I had an argument with my father. I called him to see how he’s doing, share my experiences, listen to the current news of corruption of the Puerto Rican government and ask about the protests and tear gas used. We couldn’t have more opposing realities, views, beliefs and opinions. We fight. I got so pissed off. He told me I should read more and to read the bible beginning to end. He asked, “How many gods are there?” I said, “many.” He told me that I don’t believe in god. He said, “The bible is the rule of law,” and that there’s only one holy book and one god, “The god of Israel- the chosen people.” I spewed pieces that were on my mind as I desired so greatly to hang up the phone! At one point, I responded fervently, “Soy artista! Soy artista!” It was my way of saying “I will not be obedient. I don’t want to be obedient.” He said that I should not say the things I say and that I was sent there just to look and appreciate. He’s right about one thing- I definitely do need to read more- although, not the bible.

I’ve been a little bit in the middle of contrasting and conflicting realities, views, beliefs and opinions lately. It’s really overwhelming. Reflecting on myself, I know that I’m able to constantly preoccupy my thoughts with other people being insular, but I can be that same thing. And I do also know, and not looking forward to, going back to a different complicated dilemma that is America. 

It’s so difficult to be with and work with people I don’t agree with, especially when they cause psychological and emotional harm. It is necessary to remove myself at times. But family? I know people sometimes feel the need to and even have to cut family members out of their lives completely. But damn. I forgot what it’s called, but when a Jewish person leaves Judaisim their family holds a kind of funeral for them and they become dead. 

This song comes to mind:

Lauryn Hill- 

“I find it hard to say, that everything is alright

Don't look at me that way, like everything is alright

'Cause my own eyes can see, through all your false pretenses

But what you fail to see, is all the consequences

You think our lives are cheap, and easy to be wasted

As history repeats, so foul you can taste it

…

We must destroy in order to rebuild Wake up, you might as well

Oh are you oh are you satisfied

Oh are you satisfied?

Rebel oh rebel

Why don't you rebel, why don't you rebel?

Why don't you rebel?”

I met with an advocate for worker’s rights in East Jerusalem. It was an important conversation we went into while I learned about the work they do. They focus on unionizing Palestinian workers and fighting for their rights using Israeli Law and also focus on getting Palestinian women jobs, among many other things. I believe that they’re doing important work, although I have different opinions about things that were said. 

East Jerusalem was a cultural and economic center of Palestine before 1967. The wall cut it off from Palestinians living on the other side in the West Bank, and so it has become overpopulated and economically depressed leading to 80% of Palestinians in E. Jerusalem living below the poverty line, plus they don’t have citizenship, which means they can’t receive services from the Israeli government. The person I spoke with is up on politics and very passionate about goals that will bring change. Although, it was mentioned that at a protest held by Israelis- no Palestinians joined. At that point, I couldn’t bring myself to attempt to adequately unpack that. I did say that one reason may be the fear of retaliation. That was the point where I felt a blind spot and like nothing I would’ve said would’ve made a difference, so I continued listening.

We even talked about A.O.C.- Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Green Technology as the future and the One State/Green Party. I agreed with some things stated and felt there was a strong desire to make change, but I also felt that it was void of something. It’s the kind of void that would be like saying, “I don’t see color. We are all one race. We are all equal. etc.” If racism is not allowed, as per the One State/Green Party, then there will have to be laws in place, but that change will be met by violence from the dominant class of people. I could only think about it from an American perspective, being of Puerto Rican/Peruvian descent. Israel-Palestine is a different place, with different histories between people, although there are similarities. I thought about Reparations- to which it was stated that it would not be of help in the case of Israel-Palestine (What? Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. “Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”- Malcolm X (thank you Soul Fire Farm)). I thought about what happened after Emancipation. I thought about what happened after segregation was outlawed. What happened during the Civil Rights Movement through today. The murders of young black men and women. I felt disheartened. 

Although, it sounded ALMOST convincing- the belief that if we can leave identity behind (Question: Who would need to leave identity behind? And who actually would do this? Made me think of Nam June Paik and 3 other Korean artists I know that say they left their culture behind. One of them was also obsessed with Cartier watches. These are my observations and not criticisms.). Rather than identity, it was stated, that the end goal would have to focus on a 4th Industrial Revolution- Green Technology. The improvement of the economic status of people would solve all problems. But there’s one thing- humanity is far beyond economical problems. We’re facing a serious condition of lacking humanity- a deep rooted psychological, mental and emotional problem that no economic system will solve on its own. Green Technology will have to come with goals for how we can make humanity care and feel again. Racist capitalism is a major hindrance to this. 

[evilelitest2]

Debunking Stupid Christopher Hitchen’s Quote

     I don’t think this is going to be like a reoccuring thing, but may be every so often I should take a statement made by somebody and just delve into how wrong it is.  Today’s offering comes from @datablossom in defense of Christopher Hitchens.  Only context you need, I was saying that reductionist views towards your opposition leads to extremely stupid decision making, like Christoper self describing himself as a single issue voter in regards to the War on Terror and how dumb it is, and this quote is suppose to debunk my claim.  Now for a bit of context. Christopher Hitchens was an atheist Philosphy of the “New Atheist” movement, one of the supposed Four Horsemen, and cards on the table I just can’t stand the New Atheist philosophy at all, I find it trite, smug, and extremely intellectually vapid, its Voltaire without the humor. But beyond that, I find it very much like the Free Speech Warriors, where they start out as a group using questionable methods to oppose an actual right wing evil force (The Religious Right and the Fox News culture Warriors) only to immediately ally with those exact same people and support their world view in a moment’s notices.  Its like a LOTRS thing, they use the methods of the Enemy and almost instantly become the enemy.  Cause remember, Christophen Hitchen started out as an opponent to Fundamentalist Christianity, and then once you introduce Islam into the mix, he quickly winds up supporting those same people 

So here is the quote, as well as the commentary of @datablossom which will be marked in Italics 

Here’s Hitchens’ actual words, not some truncated quote that explains nothing, it’ll just boil my guts if I don’t bring them to the forefront:

“There is a widespread view that the war against jihadism and totalitarianism involves only differences of emphasis. In other words, one might object to the intervention in Iraq on the grounds that it drew resources away from Afghanistan - you know the argument. It’s important to understand that this apparent agreement does not cover or include everybody. A very large element of the Left and of the isolationist Right is openly sympathetic to the other side in this war, and wants it to win. This was made very plain by the leadership of the “anti-war” movement, and also by Michael Moore when he shamefully compared the Iraqi fascist “insurgency” to the American Founding Fathers.”

Ok right off the back, we have Hitchens utterly failing at his supposed goal to be rational and engaging in the type of hyperbole simplistic thinking that he himself smugly mocks in his other books (I had the misfortune of raeding Hitch 22.  Lets break this down 

1) Ok so firstly, Hitchen is doing a really classically stupid thing of buying into simplistic black and white paradigm created by the duplicity  and believed by their ignorant, because in case you haven't noticed, the War on Terror isn’t a war with a single force.  Jihadists and Totalitarianism aren’t like...singular things.  Hell they are actually two very different entities and it is really evident that Hitchens hasn’t read Arendt.  The War on Terror isn’t with a singular opponent, that is why it is such a clusterfuck.  Here let me use an example of a normal war as a contrast.      WWII was a battle against the Axis powers, who were three countries and their associated Vassal States.  They had capital cities, heads of states, armies, forms of goverment and a physical location that they occupied.  Nazi German controlled this land mass 

So if you send an army in and take over the territory in red, guess what, you’ve won, you have eliminated Nazism.  Which we you know...did.  There is a clear war end with a clear victory condition.      But Terror isn’t like...a nation.  There is no Terrorstan with its capital city of terovania ruled by the King of Terrorism who we can go in and kill, because this isn’t a conventional war.  Like what is the end goal of the War on Teror, how do we win?  Are we fighting to eliminate Bin Laden and Al-Quedi?  Well in that case, then why invade Iraq, because if anybody actually understood anything about the period they would know the two men detested each other and opposed each other politically.  Is the goal to wipe out islam?  Well that means that you are talking about the largest genocide in all of human history.  Is it to try to eliminate Fundamentalist militant Islam? Well then the best way to do that historically has never been through war which only strengthens Islamic extremism (you know how since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq we have seen Islamic fundamentalist get only more powerful?)  The thing about the War on Terror and the War on Drugs is that they are these huge international utterly mismanaged fuck ups which not only cost an inordinate amount of blood and treasure, but also can’t really be won because they are by their nature unwinnable, how do you fight a fucking concept? And Hitchens is just sort of accepting this premise that the War on Terror is like a thing, he is just kinda unquestioningly going ‘Well this paradigm totally exists and lets run with it”  Terms like “The Enemy” or “The other side”.  What is the Other Side Exxactly?   2) I mean going off the mindless Assumptions that HItchens is making, who are we fighting exactly?  LIke ok, if you aren’t 4 years old, you should know that the Middle East isn’t a singular faction of unified peoples who all agree on stuff.  I mean lets do a quick list of factions in the middle east The Saudi Royal Family The Saudi Wahhabist Clerics The Pakistani Goverment The Pakistani Military Saadamn Hussein’s Iraq (at the time of this writing) Al-Queda Hamas Hezbollah The Theocracy of Iran The Goverment of Turkey The Kudishistan Fighters The Government in Egypt The Muslim Brotherhood The Dictatorship of Syria The Goverment of Lebenon The Monarchy of Jordon The Palestinian Leadership The nation of Israel (with all of the factions contained there in) The various sub states that make up the UAE The goverment of Qutar The Dictatorship of Kuwait The Dictatorship of Libya The Dictatorship of Tunisia The Dictatorship of Yemen The Dictatorship of Oman The Governments of the US, France, Britain, Russia, India, and their Allies The various exiles and rebels from all of those countries And that is just a short list.  None of those groups are unified with the others, they might be allies or share common interest, but they aren’t the same thing, I mean the Sunni Shia division is just one big part of this.   Again its one of those things that if you are you know....stupid it seems simple but the moment you try to understand the details, the whole thing falls apart, and as evident from this and other writings by him, Chris really doesn’t actually know anything about middle eastern politics like...at all.   3)  Speaking of unquestioning assumptions HItchens is oh so fond off, even if we are going to fight against radical Islam, he just kinda accepts that direct military intervention is going to work, because...look its gonna work ok, it just is.  And this is one of those things that if you actually you know...studied the history of the region and the politics or just occupation in general, you’d immediately know how stupid that is, but again, Hitchens is basically going with military approach because it feels emotionally correct, but because it feels emotionally correct and seems simple.  ‘argg, goes guys are bad, lets send troops in and stop them’ which of course...no, that doesn’t work.  Because when you bomb somebody’s house, they aren’t inclined to listen to you, and imposing democracy at Gun point doesn’t have a history of working.  LIke if he knew anything about the history of the region he could have studied the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan or the fall of the Ottoman Empire and maybe conclude ‘oh wait, just going in their guns blazing just doesn’t work”   4) Now mr. Rational here supported the Iraq War, and thought that was a capital idea, only for it to fail disastrously.  And his argument was “Well its a Muslim dictatorship, lets get ride of it”  And no where in his article does he go “Oh lets also invade Saudi Arabia, you know, the Muslim Theocracy which provides most of the funding for Islamic fundamentalism?”  But again, that just goes unquestioned cause you know...he doesn’t actually know anything about the region beyond some vague stereotypes 5) Also Jihadism and Totalitarianism are different concepts, Christopher you fucking idiot.  If we are fighting against Totalitarianism, then we should be invading China, Russia, North Korea, Totalitarianism is a sytem of goverment, Jihaadism is a militant practice, they are sometimes linked but they aren’t always the same thing.   6) So when Hitchen says “Oh the Left wants the Other Side” to win, what does he even mean? Again, this isn’t a two sided conflict, is like...39 sided conflict and some of them keep switching sides.  So which “other side” does the left want to win?  Do his think that Moore wants Bin Laden to create a new caliphate because you know...that never happened.  or does he mean like leftists wanting Palestine to get its own state, because yeah, a lot of leftists do want that. but he doesn’t really argue how that helps “The Enemy” or how the one state situation helps weaken Islamic fundamentalism.  But no, this is just the same Red Scare bullshit of “Oh if we don’t even try to understand why people are trying to kill us, that means we win the war right?” bullshit that didn’t work then, and isn’t working now.  For example, if Hitchen understood like...anything about the region he’d know about the 1953 Iranian Coup and how that didn’t weaken Muslim extremism but only made it worse.   7) Also, I hate defending Michael Moore of all people, but no, he didn’t say he wants Muslim extremism to win, he said that the war is immoral, unjust and doesn’t work, creating more problems than it solved.  The point of the founding father’s comparison is that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and to the Iraqis the insurgents, they are trying to get foreign invaders out of their country.

Ok next quote 

“To many of these people, any “anti-globalization” movement is better than none. With the Right-wingers it’s easier to diagnose: they are still Lindberghians in essence and they think war is a Jewish-sponsored racket. With the Left, which is supposed to care about secularism and humanism, it’s a bit harder to explain an alliance with woman-stoning, gay-burning, Jew-hating medieval theocrats. However, it can be done, once you assume that American imperialism is the main enemy. Even for those who won’t go quite that far, the admission that the US Marine Corps might be doing the right thing is a little further than they are prepared to go - because what would then be left of their opposition credentials, which are so dear to them?…….” 

Lets switch to letters for this one 

A) Yes it is true there is a racist America First anti War Right wing element, but...the left never really embraced them.  In contrast, it was the right who really came to love them and then elected one of these Lindberghians president, good job 

B) Evidently it is really rational to assume that there are only a few sides in very argument, it doesn’t seem to occur to Hitchens that you might oppose Islamic fundamentalism and also not think that invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 are both wrong because nuanced thinking is rejected by the new atheists evidently.  You see why I am never impressed  by the so called New Atheist Rationalists, because they are really shitty about being rational, they take the rhetoric and shallow trappings of rationalism and use it to cover opinions that are coming from anti intellectual reductionist bigoted places and say “look its rational”...actually very similar to how muslim fundamentalists acts towards Islam.    

Reading Hitch 22 for me was a lot like watching Citizens Kane but without awareness, because every single thing he condemned he inevitably wound up doing himself.  

C) Also if you are talking about getting into bed with people they should oppose, lets talk about the fact that Hitch here became a surrogate for a Right Wing movement led by a Fundamentalist Christian who opposed Stem Cell Research, denied Global Warming and has a mixed record on evolution...and Hitch gets into bed with them.  And for all of his talk of Human rights, democracy, and feminism, he winds up working with people who hate feminism, who violate human rights regularly (you know...torture), and who support dictatorships abroad.  Again, the only way the rationality of Hitchens seems remotely consistent is if you are...stupid and don’t know any of the details.

This is why the New Atheist almost always wind up working with the religious Right, and why the people who opposed Republican attempts to demonize video games winded up part of the Right Wing machine, because if your core intellectual methodology is simplistic, then you are going to always be attracted to simplistic people.  

“………And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam. Globally it’s a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states, with an enormous fortune it’s pumping the ideologies of wahhabism and salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrassas, training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That’s what it does globally, it’s quite strong. In our societies it poses as a cringing minority, whose faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need. Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn’t it? It says it’s the Final Revelation.”

Lets go Roman Nummerials this time 

I) Globally its a giantaic power, I love this bit, because Hitch just spilled his hand and revealed to the world that he honestly thinks the Muslim powers are all one thing.  Cause....no....no they aren’t.  Three of the largest oil producing countries are Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and guess what, they all hate each other.  Iran is Shia, Iraq was secular, and Saudi Arabia was a Sunni Fundamentalist State.  

II) OK he is talking about the mass funding of madrassases with Whahabism and yeah, thats a problem...How is invading Iraq solving that problem Hitch? Cause while Saadam Hussein was an evil terrible person, he wasn’t really big with Muslim fundamentalism, he was more secular, and into nation building.  Wouldn’t Hitch want to like, invade Saudi Arabia instead?  It honestly feels like he doesn’t know the difference between Iraq and Saudi Arabia 

III) Which makes his alliance with the Bush administration all the more ironic because you know who has massive ties to Saudi Arabia?  Oh right, the oil industry which is in bed with the Bushes and the Republicans party

IV) So you are just kinda left with a man who will abandon all of his principles (again he voted for Bush) if they appeal to his single issue

“I'm a single-issue voter, to get straight to the point. I'm really only interested in the candidate who's toughest and least apologetic when it comes to the confrontation with Islamic Jihadism.”

So you know...a moron 

Hitchens’ single issue was the fight against totality. Whether it comes from the madmen of jihad, the brutal fascist conservative windbags of the world, or the stilted leftist wignuts that pretend video games turn normal boys and girls into women hating sociopaths.

It seems like Hitchen’s point is “I don’t actually understand these issues, but I am going to rely upon broad generalizations to make it seem like my opinion on the matter actually is important.”  And that is generally what you get from Hitchen’s work, self important preening and fertilization of intellectual standards that he will never hold and will abandon in an instant if something appeals to his bigotry or xenophobia.  But I see why he is so popular with teenage boys, because the childish inflated sense of self worth is very telling, and I still think he hasn’t actually read Orwell.

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

Good Advice, would be nice if the man actually followed it for once.  

[greenandhazy]

YO! I’m back! and I came back to a Hanukkah card, thanks @canadiansuperhero <3

I’m going to post a bunch of pictures tomorrow probably, but some thoughts and memories beneath the cut

(fair warning, this is fcking long)

I LOVED our tour guide. his name was Boaz and he was chill, funny, and super informative. he addressed us collectively as “beautiful people” or “bubbelech” and presented info in a very nuanced way

like he addressed the whole glorification of the suicide at Masada and how that’s a little bit Problematic, and before we talked about Mt. Herzel he led a conversation about narratives--why they’re constructed, how, how they might be biased or helpful--and he was very frank when asked about various Israeli conflicts (Palestine, Arab-Israelis, Orthodox vs non-Orthodox, etc).

he also took us on an optional museum trip on Shabbat just because he loves museums. man after my own heart. (the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is AWESOME, by the way. perhaps a little traditional, but still very well done.)

holy shit the Negev desert. took my breath away. driving through the mountains was incredible, and I’m sad that I really don’t have very many good pictures of it because it was through the bus window, but damn was it something

on a related note, we spent that night in a Bedouin camp and even though it was totally designed for tourists, the head dudes really did treat us like guests and we learned some really cool stuff and ate a lot of delicious food with our hands, so overall a win.

I hate that I’m going to That Person who’s always like “yeah well to get REALLY good hummus and falafel you have to actually go to the Middle East, you just can’t get it in America.” but like. it’s the truth. Hummus Abu-Hassan in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. for reals.

also, I was planning on buying zaatar anyway because it’s mentioned in the Jerusalem cookbook, but then I tried it on a bagel and also in this Yemenite flatbread and it’s SO GOOD, I got a huge bottle of it.

on our first Shabbat we visited Ramat HaNadiv, which is a garden complex in Zikhron Ya’akov, and it was a really beautiful way to spend the day. there was also a garden section specifically designed for blind people that had only plants that had strong fragrances or interesting textures, that was cool.

we had eight Israelis traveling with us for half the time and I made two friends:

Ayelet, who almost immediately taught me a Hebrew pun. “koreha” means “hilarious,” but she insisted that we always pronounce it as “koreHAAAA.”

and Alon, who was quieter but we visited his family’s home as part of the trip, and he played Hallelujah on the piano while his sister sang, so later on we talked about music and swapped recommendations. he was super into the Tracy Chapman I played him

I also made friends with some people I don’t think I ordinarily wouldn’t have talked to, including an 18-year-old guy from NYC who thinks I’m very mature and wise (which was SUPER gratifying bc this was otherwise a mansplaining-heavy trip) and two brothers who taught me a very fun, very evil card game called King Mao.

there was a geopolitical talk session, which overall I think was quite good--the speaker gave a nuanced talk, and my only critique was that it was a little too nuanced for some of the people who came in with very strong pro-Israel (pro-IDF? pro-Bibi? not sure which term is most accurate) views. like, I think those of us who were moderate or left-leaning understood the sympathy for Palestinian civilians in his portrayal, but it went over some people’s heads, which was unfortunate

I did find it hilarious when he played this Hamas song, and four of the Israelis, including our tour guide, started singing along because it’s so catchy that people used to play it in clubs all the time.

Hannah Senezc’s grave is on Mt Herzl--I realized that it would be about five minutes before we came upon it, and that was very meaningful for me. Hannah isn’t my Hebrew name anymore, but she was a not-insignificant part of the reason I chose it in the first place, so I left a stone.

I  had a lot of thoughts at the Western Wall--I might make a whole separate post about that. it moved me, but not in the way I expected.

we visited the Mehane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem on Friday afternoon. it wasn’t my favorite place to shop, but it was a great place to people-watch as people prepared for their Shabbat. I liked that a lot.

the Holocaust History Museum was very moving--I appreciated it as both a visitor and as a public history student. two things I think stuck out for me. the first was Yad VaShem. I was prepared for the wall of names, which I had seen photos of, but I was caught off guard by the huge gaping hole in the mountain below it--“the gap that six million people have left in our community and our history” was how the tour guide put it. and the second was the tour guide, who connected the Holocaust to the violence in Syria (and other modern human rights abuses) several times. she started the tour with the book burnings, and--I remember very clearly--said to us “in 1933, no one could see Auschwitz.” then, as she took us through Hitler’s rise and the development of the reich, she kept asking “do you see Auschwitz yet? do you see us getting closer?” it was incredibly powerful

a couple negatives:

like I said, I don’t think people talked enough about the oppression of Palestinian civilians specifically. the geopolitical talk covered discussions about Gaza, Syria, and Jordan, and it tended to focus on governments; I think the tour guide gave a great discussion about the spectrum of Israeli politics, but the geopolitical speaker discussed Palestinian civilians in relation to Hamas, not in relation to Israel, which was quite a gap.

there were ~28 guys and ~12 women and holy shit men can be the worst. so much casual mansplaining, and I didn’t even REALIZE how much until I found myself being told that ancient Germans and ancient Romans actually spoke different languages, which explains the difference between French and German. then I frigging snapped, and realized how much it had been happening throughout the trip.

(aside from sexism, 18-22 y.o. boys can just be super disrespectful, fyi. it sucks. some of them were late a lot of the time and they drank way too much, even on the nights when we were explicitly told we should not be drinking. it was v uncool.)

twice we had rabbis speak to us, and both times they were Haredi rabbis who... were just slightly too black and white for my tastes. like, I was probably the only religious person in the group, and among the most educated about Judaism, so I understood a lot of their points, but they were often phrased in a way that was very off-putting to the secular Jews in the group (exacerbated by communication issues with one of the rabbis whose English was not quite as strong), which put me in a weird position of wanting to defend Judaism as a whole even while I disagreed with the specificity of the position under discussion.

related: I have developed a specific frustration with secular Jewish men who criticize the separation of men and women in Orthodox Judaism (and pre-denomination Judaism) as sexist without a) recognizing their own sexism and b) acknowledging that, in some cases, women actually derive personal satisfaction from elements of that separation, and that women can have their own distinct spirituality that does not depend on men. (I feel like my status as a traditionally-women’s-college alumna is showing here.)

overall, I’m glad I went. I had hoped to have had more spiritual conversations with my peers, which didn’t really happen, but other than that I think it fulfilled my expectations. I’m more confident explaining where I stand with regards to Israel; I’m more familiar with its flaws as well as its strengths, and in the future I think I will be able to engage in politics surrounding it with more confidence. (That doesn’t mean I’m going to want to discuss it all the time, but I don’t think I will cringe whenever the topic comes up.)

on a religious level, I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad I visited the wall. seeing so many Jews being unapologetic about it has given me more confidence in how I want to express myself, and I am confident in my choice of name: Yocheved. It felt right when I was holding the Torah, it felt right at the Kotel, and it feels right now.

so yeah. good trip.

[coin-river-blog]

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, possibly the most overrated politician in U.S. history, is nothing new to politics and she’s no reformer either.

She is supposed to represent hope and reform and millennials bringing some of their warmth and earnestness to politics, but she is actually politics as usual.

inb4: “what does this has to do with cryptocurrency”

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I don’t know about you, but when I see Washington politicians like AOC and like Donald Trump saying they want the Fed to keep “printing” even more money, and then go and call themselves the servants of the people or whatever — it just reminds me I need to make some more cash fast to buy crypto quick before these pols loosen the Fed’s sphincter so wide the entire monetary regime slips through their fingers.

Sorry for the visual.

I’d like to have both feet in the rocket ship before it starts flying to the Moon. That’s not to be read as advice. I’m just telling you how I connect the dots since many of you have asked.

“This is just blatant character assassination.”

No it’s not. Below is a list of facts about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Mostly it’s AOC in her own words, her own tweets, her own interview answers. How can sharing someone’s own words be character assassination?

Or assuming it can be, those most be some pretty damaging things the politician said!

And people have a right to talk about it. Especially since AOC has been delegated the power to vote over people’s finances and how markets are governed.

Something many of us are watching very closely.

Thanks for all the great comments on my articles everybody.

Here are 10 Ways Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is Bad to the Bone:

1. Shady

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is doing what Washington’s been doing for decades. | Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP

The shady or crooked politician is one of the oldest tropes in politics.

Think of Hillary Clinton who cheated at the DNC primary contest and in the general election, or Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz whose close friend and staffer stole from Congress. Think of crooked Richard Nixon, and Alexander Hamilton with his shady financial schemes.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fits into this mold, just another shady, crooked politician.

Her henchman is about to get away with a $1 million finance scandal.

Experts are saying it wasn’t illegal, but it was shady.

2. Clueless

Politicians are often clueless about the real world.

The way they view the world every problem needs a legislative solution.

They think they can centrally plan the world. But they often know every little about what they think they can design better by force of law.

Vacuous, ill-informed statements Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made on a number of subjects ranging from Israel and Palestine, to proposals in her Green New Deal show how little Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really knows about what she imagines she can design.

3. Elitist

One of the things people like least about powerful federal politicians like President Barack Obama, State Secretary Hillary Clinton, and President George H. W. Bush is their elitism.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s elitism and privilege has been conspicuously on display since her shock win of the Democratic primary against Rep. Joe Crowley. It’s tweets like this:

Yup. If you don’t like the #GreenNewDeal, then come up with your own ambitious, on-scale proposal to address the global climate crisis.

Until then, we’re in charge – and you’re just shouting from the cheap seats. https://t.co/h3KSJhHqDN

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 23, 2019

4. Alarmist

Still from V for Vendetta / Warner Bros.

Politicians are inveterate alarmists, always with their hands full of costly, radical legislative solutions in search of problems. They tell us the big lie to get us to give up our freedoms.

The big lie is the super exaggerated threat that people are too embarrassed to believe anyone would lie about, but it’s pretty worn out in 2019.

That hasn’t stopped AOC from making dire global warming predictions.

She says, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

5. Dishonest

“I always thought that if more good people had concealed carry permits,then we could end these Muslims before they [unintelligible].”

This was just this weekend at CPAC, the conference attended by the President and members, to 1000s.

Where’s the resolution against Islamophobia? https://t.co/eXA9F1fezI

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 5, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a sitting U.S. congresswoman who recently got into a public spat with a private citizen, Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. on Twitter, something Democrats considered unseemly of Donald Trump after becoming president.

Amid her skirmish with the pastor and private university owner, the congresswoman tweeted a link to a video of Falwell speaking at a conference with the year wrong which completely changes the context for what his remarks were referencing, a dishonest tweet.

I thought @AOC was just dumb but she is a liar too. She claims this was @CPAC last week when it was actually in 2015 the day after the deadly CA attacks by radical Muslims (“those” Muslims I referenced) She also deleted the last part of my quote “before they walk in and kill us”. https://t.co/lIw4V4BaVj

— Jerry Falwell (@JerryFalwellJr) March 5, 2019

6. Ridiculous

Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions.

And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one. pic.twitter.com/rsD17Oq9qe

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 10, 2018

One of the things that never ceases to amaze news junkies is how ridiculous politicians can be. Things like Nancy Pelosi saying they would have to pass the bill so we could find out what is in it. Or Elizabeth Warren triumphantly releasing that DNA test.

When Ben Shapiro challenged Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a debate, she ridiculously compared it to cat calling a woman on the street. Hilarity ensued:

"Hey, girl — want to have a public one-hour discussion on the intricacies of trade policy, deficit spending, and the value of the profit motive? I'll even donate a bunch of money to charity or your campaign to make it happen." — Construction worker in Queens, apparently

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 10, 2018

7. Unscrupulous

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to run up the planet’s credit cards to pay for her plans. | Photo: REUTERS / Joshua Roberts

One of the worst things about politicians is how unscrupulous they are. They are so ambitious, so power hungry and glory seeking.

They’ll run over anyone to accomplish their ambitions.

They seem to have very little regard for the seriousness of the measures they take and the often devastating unintended consequences of their half-baked interventions.

It’s ironic because they’re always saying to think of the children, but that’s exactly who they kick the can down the road to, the children who grow up in greater debt each year. That’s why politicians kiss babies. They know that’s who’s paying for all their bright ideas.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no different than these unscrupulous politicians, only she’s worse. She wants the government to print even more money to saddle the children with even more debt to pay for her pet programs.

8. Menacing

I have noticed that Junior here has a habit of posting nonsense about me whenever the Mueller investigation heats up.

Please, keep it coming Jr – it’s definitely a “very, very large brain” idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.

Have fun! https://t.co/oQ6MsdJYCk

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 7, 2018

Politics is a very dirty, very predatory business full of threats and warfare.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wasted no time showing her threatening side to Donald Trump Jr.

It reminds me of when President Obama menacingly told Rep. Peter DeFazio, “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” after DeFazio voted against Obama’s spending bill.

9. Arrogant

There’s something about politics that attracts extremely arrogant people.

I can see why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be arrogant, beating a senior U.S. congressman for his seat in his own primary before the age of 30, but boy she sure is.

10. Meddling

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders’ telegenic protégé, has won near Trumpian levels of attention | Source: Win McNamee / Getty Images / AFP

Meddling politician is a redundancy.

It’s what politicians in a democratic society exist to do. They meddle in other people’s business. They take up other people’s time and money. They fix things that aren’t broken until they’re very badly broken. That’s pretty much what socialism is.

The saga of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez epic meddling in Amazon’s HQ2 resulted in billions of dollars to her community lost and now she’s hard back pedaling from the meddling.

[melbynews-blog]

The 'Jewish nation' is the central myth of Zionism. It needs to be dismantled.

Neuer Beitrag veröffentlicht bei https://melby.de/the-jewish-nation-is-the-central-myth-of-zionism-it-needs-to-be-dismantled/

The 'Jewish nation' is the central myth of Zionism. It needs to be dismantled.

Today, April 18th, is the eve of Israel’s 70th Independence Day. Some are probably wondering how that may be possible, if Israel declared its independence on the evening of May the 14th. The answer is, that Israel celebrates the event as if it was a Jewish holiday, according to the moon calendar, which most often does not coincide with the Latin, sun-based calendar.

This is only one aspect in how Israel seeks to apply itself as a “Jewish State”. But I am going to speak about an even more essential ideological aspect that sits at the heart of Zionism. It is not the notion of the Jewish state as such, but the notion of the Jewish nation.

First, let’s jump back 100 years and look once again at the words of the British (and notably Jewish) Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, in his critique of His Majesty’s Government’s intentions to endorse a ‘Jewish national home” in Palestine in 1917:

“I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion. It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation: of the same race, perhaps, traced back through the centuries – through centuries of the history of a peculiarly adaptable race”.

But Montagu’s logic did not win the day. Zionism did. And nowadays, many Jews around the world are relating to Israel’s Independence Day as if it was a religious holiday. Last Friday I had a conversation in Copenhagen with a man I hardly knew, we both merely knew we were Jewish:

“Will you be celebrating Yom Haatzmaut [Israeli Independence Day]?”, he asked.

“You betcha I won’t!” I answered.

The man responded with a predictable expression of bewilderment.

“I’d rather be commemorating the Nakba”, I said.

“Nakba? What’s that?” He wondered.

“It’s Arabic for ‘catastrophe’”, I explained, “when the vast majority of Palestinians was expelled”.

“Oh”, he said.

After a short pause, he went:

“But I love holidays like for example Pesach [Passover]”, he said.

“Alright, but that’s a religious holiday. Independence Day is not a religious holiday, unless you consider nationalism to be religious”, I said.

That was that conversation. Yesterday I was invited by another Jew to celebrate Israeli Independence Day – at the Copenhagen synagogue (as the very issue of Independence Day as a Jewish holiday was discussed):

“If you really are in any doubt about it being a Jewish holiday you can go to the Synagogue in Copenhagen tomorrow night as well as most other synagogues where there are special services and there are prayers on Thursday that you only say on Holidays (Hallel) and of course it is a day off and therefore a holiday in the Jewish state”, he wrote.

So you see, this notion of an extra-territorial, Jewish ‘nation’ has been subscribed to by very many Jews around the world – and makes the Israel case a mixture of religion and nationalism – but not nationalism in the sense that we normally attribute to the term.

The Jewish ‘nationalism’, as embodied by the State of Israel, literally means that there are no Israeli nationals, and that there cannot be. It may sound surreal (and should) to those who are not yet familiar with this bizarre concept – but even more bluntly put, Israelis don’t exist in the national sense – only as citizens. “Jewish” is defined as a “nationality” (alongside some 130 other recognized ‘nationalities’), and the purpose of this construct is simple: Since Israel defines itself as The Jewish State, and wishes to cement that concept fully as the Nation State of the Jewish People, the only ones who actually enjoy national rights, as opposed to merely citizenship rights, are the Jews. And yes when I say ‘the Jews’, I’m not accidentally generalizing – this is a generalization that Israel itself makes, an extra-territorial generalization, which entails that any Jew from anywhere can ‘return’, ‘ascend’ and receive automatic citizenship and a subsidy welcome package from the Jewish State. This even includes people who are not Jewish by Israeli orthodox law, merely by third generation paternal affiliation.

These are fantastic terms for Jews all over the world – I mean, why wouldn’t you want such an ‘insurance policy’?

It is this ‘insurance policy’ that makes it possible for Prime Minister Netanyahu to call on Jews to immigrate to Israel in the wake of terror, like he did in the wake of the Paris 2015 attacks:

“To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home”, he tweeted.

Some Jews were concerned about what such proclamations and ‘insurance policies’ can mean. The Director of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, said at the time:

“Israel must cease this Pavlovian reaction every time Jews in Europe are attacked. Every such Israeli campaign severely weakens and damages the Jewish communities that have the right to live securely wherever they are.”

This is essentially the point that the mentioned Edwin Montagu was also making, back in 1917:

“When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants”.

How insightful. Montagu elucidates not only the Judeo-centric concern – but the Palestinian one. And with all the Jewish concerns, it is the Palestinians who have had to pay most dearly for this Jewish ‘insurance policy’. The “Jewish nation” has for them meant dispossession, and it is a continuing matter. Jews around the world insist on their “birthright” to Israel, while those who were actually born there and have ancestry from time immemorial, are dispossessed. And when some Jews protest this, they even get the finger (see above how ‘Birthright’ founder Michael Steinhart reacted to Jewish protesters calling for boycott of the free trip to Israel for young Jews). But giving the finger to Jews is the least of it. That finger has been given to Palestinians all the way through, that’s what it’s all about. The Jewish ‘nation’ idea is about them being dispossessed and stripped of any national affiliation with their homeland, for Jews to ‘return’.

That’s what Israel’s ‘independence’ is about. It means ‘we don’t need Palestinians’. Because we already have a ‘nation’ – the Jewish one.

This is the central myth that needs to be dismantled – that of the ‘Jewish nation’. It is the absolute core of Zionism. Everything that Israel does stems from this notion, of the “Jewish nation”.

For Judaism to actually survive this horror and become a mere religion or societal tradition within modern constructs of ‘nations’, the myth of the ‘Jewish nation’ must be deconstructed. The archaic concept of a religious-conditioned ‘nation’ must give way to the modern, enlightened version, wherein the term basically defines those who happen live in a given territory in a given time, providing them with justice, freedom and equality. Dispossessing the vast majority of those under the pretext that there’s a ‘nation’ waiting to take their place cannot be the solution.

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[newstfionline]

The Jobless Youth Of Gaza Have Lost Faith In Everyone

Cyrille Louis, Le Figaro, Oct. 19, 2017

GAZA CITY--Their world doesn’t extend much beyond this piece of sidewalk that never seems to change. Glued to their white plastic chairs, Khaled, Mohammed and Abdel Rahman spend their time talking about everything and nothing while fiddling with their smartphones. There’s no 3G coverage, so their only connection to the rest of the world depends on a router powered by a portable battery. The hairdresser’s salon down the street, which is forced to turn on its generator whenever a client comes, lets them charge up during power shortages, which is most of the time. This is daily life for these three young men in the poor neighborhood of Shuja’iyya, on the east side of Gaza City: closed and dull.

“The world out there is like the future: I don’t think about it,” jokes the 20-year-old Khaled Sukkar, who gets by selling second-hand clothes.

Abdel Rahman says he and his friends are part of a “lost generation,” and looks back on the past as if talking about a golden age. “When they were our age, our fathers and grandfathers would earn 10 times more by working for the Israelis,” he says.

The same complaint echoes all along the narrow strip of land. More than half of the 2 million people crammed in Gaza are under 25, and most of them have never set foot outside the territory. They have been isolated by the Israeli blockade since the Islamist group Hamas prevailed in its military conflict against Fatah, in June 2007, as well as by the almost permanent closing by the Egyptian authorities of the Rafah Border Crossing, after the summer of 2013. The young here know little more than the repetition of wars, the restriction of freedoms and a shrinking economy.

Despite a remarkably high level of education, unemployment among that age group reaches a record high of 60%, with a peak of 73% for recent graduates. “With such a pool of skilled labor and a slowing birth rate, all the ingredients are there for strong economic growth in the Gaza Strip,” says Anders Thomsen, the United Nations Population Fund’s representative to Palestine. “But the many constraints hindering its development threaten to turn these assets into a burden.”

Shayma al-Naji, 24, has her own perspective. Unlike Khaled and his friends, the young woman looked as if she was holding all the keys to a successful career. The daughter of a former high-ranking police officer, she obtained her architecture certificate from the Islamic University of Gaza in the spring of 2015, and immediately started looking for a job.

“That’s when things got complicated,” she says. “In Gaza, too many people have been raised with the strong belief that a woman shouldn’t work--or in a low-ranking job. So the few internships I was offered all led nowhere.”

Her classmates haven’t been much luckier. Shayma says that most of them are unemployed, and many have resorted to work as taxi drivers so as not to be a financial burden on their families. “Being young in Gaza means first and foremost feeling useless,” she says. “I wake up every morning asking myself what I could do with my day. We clean the house. We spend hours on Facebook. Then I go out with my friends and we dwell on our depression together ...”

Unlike some of her friends, who she says are hoping to bring meaning to their lives by getting married, Shayma dreams only of leaving Gaza. Coming from a rather open-minded family, it was easy for her to convince her parents to let her--successfully--apply for a grant to go and study in Hungary. “They can see that there’s no future here for me,” she says.

Two of her older sisters already moved to Britain. For Shayma, however, the battle isn’t over yet. The Hungarian embassy in Tel Aviv recently approved her visa application, but the Israeli authorities are slow in granting her the required paperwork to leave the territory. “Unfortunately, I don’t have good connections, and without that, things are very complicated here,” Shamya explains.

Many young people share this urge to flee Gaza, but for the vast majority it’s far out of reach. After the summer 2014 war, dozens of them risked their lives by climbing the fence that separates them from Israel, or spent all their savings to sneak into Egypt through the few smuggling tunnels still in use, in the hope of being then able to go to Europe.

“People from my generation, unlike our parents, don’t think the situation is going to improve for Palestinians,” says Ahmed Kraia, 22. He is freshly graduated from the Al-Azhar University but hasn’t found a job yet. He hopes to obtain a grant to be able to continue his studies in France. In the meantime, he spends hours on Facebook, chatting with people he vaguely knows who took the plunge and moved to Europe.

“They’re traveling from city to city, going to the cinema or to concerts and nothing seems to stand in their way,” the young man says with a sigh. In Gaza, the last cinema closed down in 1998 and the Hamas takes a dim view of the rare concerts organized by local rap bands.

Anywhere else, such malaise might have led to a youth rebellion. Will that happen here in Gaza? Jouman Abou Jazar, 28, gives a faint, wry smile. In January, he took part in a rare demonstration to protest against power shortages. “There were more than 3,000 of us, but Hamas quickly dispersed us with their truncheons.”

The violence of that reaction was enough to quiet the rebellious instincts, at least momentarily. But the despair is now expressed out loud in the streets of Gaza. “We are already dead, so to speak. What have we got to lose?” Jouman asks. “Everybody would accept to go and work in Israel without hesitation, including some members of Hamas who can’t make ends meet,” he adds.

Like so many other people here, Jouman started to work when he was 12 and until just a few years ago, he would earn a very decent living working in the smuggling tunnels to Egypt built by Hamas. He would dig, bring out the sand, transport flour or cigarettes ... until their sudden destruction in 2013 by the Egyptian army ruined this business. The city at the Egyptian border, Rafah is “a dead city now,” he adds.

Hamza Redouan, a 24-year-old journalist who works for a radio station affiliated with Hamas, says he dreams of studying in France, but only for a while. Afterwards he’d want to come back home. “The situation is undoubtedly more difficult now than it was 10 years ago,” he says. “I remember the spirit of hope after the Israelis left. The only thing people we were thinking about then was to build a free and prosperous Palestine, liberated from the corruption of the Palestinian National Authority. But in hindsight, I wonder whether Hamas hasn’t made a mistake in taking control of the government and locking itself into a fruitless power struggle with the Palestinian National Authority, rather than focusing on resisting occupation.”

Negotiations in recent weeks between Hamas and the Fatah leaders of the Palestinian Authority offer signs of reconciliation on a political level, but long-term questions about the society and the economy will not go away. “According to our forecasts, a million working-age youths will enter the Palestinian job market by 2030,” says Thomsen of the United Nations Population Fund. He warns that the situation could turn into a “humanitarian catastrophe” if the constraints hindering the economy in Gaza aren’t removed until then.

On the sidewalk in Shuja’iyya, Khaled, Mohammed and Adel Rahman shrug. “We’re sinking so quickly,” one of them states matter of factly. “Why would we even look toward the future?”

[sagealex]

On the U.S. Withdrawing from UNESCO

So, the other day, I came across a few reports that Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing from UNESCO. It seemed like a big deal, but it is hard to understand on the surface what this means, and why it’s important.

So, from the UNESCO site itself, UNESCO is an agency of the UN which aims to ensure that each citizen of participating countries:

has access to quality education

may live in a culturally diverse environment

can fully benefit from scientific advances

and can enjoy freedom of expression

This sounds like a pretty cool organization right? Why would the United States want to leave the governing body that wants to ensure that every citizen of each country involved has all of the benefits that allow for basic democracy?

Luckily, there are a few detailed statements from all sides of the situation that can shed some insight on everyone’s motivations.

First, let’s look at The State Department’s press statement: “The United States Withdraws From UNESCO”

This statement is pretty short and sweet. It states that the U.S. will withdraw from UNESCO on the basis of:

the U.S.’s concern over UNESCO’s mounting debt

the “need for fundamental reform in the organization”

and continuing anti-Israel bias

First of all, it’s interesting that the U.S. is concerned about UNESCO’s debt, considering the U.S. is apparently $500 million in debt to the organization from unpaid dues since the Obama administration, as a protest of the organization’s recognition of Palestine.

Second, it’s incredibly vague to call for “fundamental reform” in any organization. This point suggests that there’s some form of corruption in UNESCO, from the State Department’s point of view, but there is no discussion of this possibility, so it’s impossible to tell whether this assertion could be backed up.

Third, anti-Israel bias seems to be the main point of the withdrawal, considering the fact that Nikki Haley (the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) has talked about the existence of “anti-Israel bias” in the organization before. Additionally, the P.M. of Israel said in his own statement that he:

...welcomes the decision by President [Donald] Trump to withdraw from UNESCO. This is a courageous and moral decision because UNESCO has become the theater of the absurd and because, instead of preserving history, it distorts it.

Israel has also announced that they will be withdrawing from UNESCO soon.

The statement from the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova is a lot longer,

but pretty much serves to defend both UNESCO, and its position that its views are in line with those of America.

Despite the overt message of peace in the statement, a lot of it seems either to be fighting words meant to fire back at the Trump administration, or priorities that completely miss the point of what the administration and its supporters truly prioritize.

For instance:

In 2011, when payment of membership contributions was suspended at the 36th session of the UNESCO General Conference, I said I was convinced UNESCO had never mattered as much for the United States, or the United States for UNESCO. [...]

Despite the withholding of funding, since 2011, we have deepened the partnership between the United States and UNESCO, which has never been so meaningful.

Even though the surface statement is that UNESCO wants the U.S. to be a part of the group whether or not they pay, as a response to the State Department’s statement that UNESCO is in a concerning amount of debt, it seems to say “well you certainly haven’t done anything to change that as a member of the organization, have you?”

Even so, at least this point sort of addresses a concern cited in the State Department’s statement.

Similarly, the UNESCO statement addresses support of Jewish people through discussion of how UNESCO has fought against and continues to fight against antisemitism. This doesn’t constitute support of Israel as a state, but it flies against assertions by various people aligned against UNESCO that the organization has no respect for Jewish heritage.

Despite both of these points, it seems clear that the statement isn’t intended to draw the U.S. and the Trump administration back in, it seems to be talking to someone else. Namely, the people who will align with UNESCO against the Trump administration. This is because the majority of the “common values” discussed are values not mentioned in the State Department’s statement, and that most people are aware are counter to the priorities of America’s current base of supporters for the Trump administration. These include:

advancement of quality education

scientific cooperation for sustainability

freedom of expression, “to defend the safety of journalists”

the empowerment of women as “change-makers”

and so on. UNESCO says that these are the priorities of the American people, and for some American people, they’re not wrong, but to suggest that these are the priorities of the Trump administration and its supporters would be laughable. These are clearly digs at the actions that Trump, his campaign, his supporters, and now his administration have taken.

Additionally, the services that UNESCO claims to have worked with America to provide include:

preservation of natural biospheres

events that celebrate human rights and cultural diversity

efforts toward holocaust remembrance

cooperation with USGS and the Army Corps of Engineers for efforts towards sustainability

cooperation with American corporations to support girls’ education in tech

and, again, so on. Each of these points can be isolated as stances against the alt-right and the Trump administration, just by comparing these actions to well-known events that have occurred under Trump and during his campaign. I won’t go point-by-point on these, because a reader who aligns with the alt-right will likely know why these points rub them the wrong way, and a reader who vehemently opposed the alt-right will know the instances I’m speaking of. If you’re in neither category, I have an ask box.

Finally, the statement emphasizes how World Heritage sites in the U.S. are marvels to the rest of the world as well, and how it would be a shame to lose them, and how UNESCO will continue striving for the universality of the organization.

If you’ve ever talked to a conservative you’ve probably heard them mention “globalism” with great disdain, so I don’t think explanation of why this misses Trump & Co. in terms of gaining favor.

Based on the UNESCO statement, it seems like UNESCO considers this a shame, but is making no effort to endear themselves to the Trump administration and regain U.S. membership in its duration.

Even so, the permanence of this action is not certain. This is not the first time the U.S. has pulled out of UNESCO, 

as Ronald Reagan pulled out in 1984 on the basis of similar claims: corruption and an ideological bias against the West. It is entirely possible that someday down the line, the U.S. will rejoin UNESCO, but, as long as the political atmosphere in the U.S. continues to function how it currently does, that day may not be anytime soon.

[oldguardaudio]

PowerLine -> President Trump’s First Re-Election Ad – Updated: CNN Refuses to Run It

CNN FAKE NEWS RUSSIA Trump at HoaxAndChange.com

CNN Fake News at HoaxAndChange.com

Powerline image at HoaxAndChange

Daily Digest

President Trump’s First Re-Election Ad [Updated: CNN Refuses to Run It]

McMaster’s Obama (don’t call them) holdovers

Was it a hack or a leak? (3) [with comment by Paul]

DACA at the five-year mark

Collusion gone missing

President Trump’s First Re-Election Ad [Updated: CNN Refuses to Run It]

Posted: 15 Aug 2017 11:43 AM PDT

(John Hinderaker)

We truly have entered the era of the permanent campaign. The 2020 election is more than three years away, and President Trump has already released his first ad. I suppose the ad has in view not only Trump’s re-election but also the fact that the Democratic Party press doesn’t want to cover the administration’s accomplishments, preferring to obsess over Trump’s foibles and non-existent scandals. The ad seeks to remind voters of Trump’s record so far, which is, in fact, impressive:

As usual, the Trump administration has to rely on its own devices to get its message out, the press being occupied elsewhere.

UPDATE: CNN refused to run the ad on the ground that it is inaccurate. The ad features several CNN personalities among the media people who are pictured while the voiceover says, “The president’s enemies don’t want him to succeed.” CNN said:

“CNN would accept the ad if the images of reporters and anchors were removed,” a network spokeswoman told DailyMail.com.

“Anchors and reporters don’t have ‘enemies,’ as the ad states, but they do hold those in power accountable across the political spectrum and aggressively challenge false and misleading statements and investigate wrong-doing,” the spokeswoman added.

No word on whether she was able to say it with a straight face.

   McMaster’s Obama (don’t call them) holdovers

Posted: 15 Aug 2017 10:48 AM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

According to the Daily Caller, about 40 of the 250 officials on the National Security Council (NSC) are Obama administration holdovers. Their boss, H.R. McMaster, has instructed that these folks not be called “holdovers.” This might make sense from a team-building perspective. But since I’m not part of the team, they will be referred to as holdovers in this post.

The Daily Caller’s Richard Pollock and Ethan Barton profile some of them. They report that Allison Hooker remains NSC director for Korea, no backwater job given current circumstances. According to Pollock and Barton, Hooker is “an architect of former President Barack Obama’s Korean policy.” This may be a reach because they also say she joined the NSC in 2014, by which time Obama administration Korea policy was in place.

Nonetheless, President Trump has denounced Obama’s Korea policy — “strategic patience” — in harsh terms. Thus it’s surprising to find his administration’s NSC adviser on Korea still in place more than half a year into the Trump administration.

Pollock and Barton report that McMaster’s director for South America is Fernando Cutz. He received his master’s degree in international relations from the Clinton School of Public Service in or around 2010. The Clinton School operates on the grounds of the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.

According to Pollock and Barton, Cutz, who previously reported to former deputy NSC advisor Ben Rhodes, enthusiastically endorsed Obama’s Cuba policy throughout his tenure as an NSC staffer. He helped plan and organize Obama’s trip to Cuba.

Andrea Hall is another holdover who reported to Ben Rhodes. She serves as NSC’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and threat reduction.

Pollock and Barton cite a paper she published in December 2002, while earning her doctorate, in which she criticized the West for not doing enough for Vladimir Putin. She wrote that “Russia has received few tangible benefits from its cooperation with the United States,” and claimed that Washington was “ignoring Russian concerns.” She added:

Given that Putin has received significant criticism for his foreign policy concessions and that he has valid concerns about the Russian economy, Washington would be wise to help Russia achieve some of its goals as well in order to cement this partnership.

In fairness to Hall, this thinking does not seem inconsistent with Trump’s. Coincidentally (or maybe not), it mirrors the “blame America first” attitude of McMaster’s Israel-Palestine guy, Kris Bauman. He blamed Israel and the Bush administration for undermining the peace process by failing to recognize Hamas’ moderation.

Rear Adm. David Kriete, another Obama holdover, is NSC’s director for strategic capabilities policy and responsible for policy on nuclear weapons-related issues. According to Pollock and Barton, he was a representative to the interagency panel that wrote Obama’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which reflected the former chief executive’s vision of a “nuclear-free world.”

That document received considerable criticism from conservatives. According to Pollock and Barton, “National Review” found that it “undermines the basis of the deterrent policy that has helped maintain the peace for more than 60 years.”

Pollock and Barton discuss several other holdovers. However, the four discussed above strike me as the most problematic.

Michael Anton, an NSC spokesman and author of the famous “Flight 93 Election” article, told the Daily Caller that all of the holdovers (I assume he didn’t use that word) are “stalwarts” who faithfully follow the president’s foreign and military policies. I have no reason to believe that any holdover is insubordinate.

However, the NSC can help shape a president’s foreign and military policies. That’s particularly true where, as here, (1) the president lacks experience with, or apparent in-depth knowledge of, foreign policy issues and (2) the national security adviser is extremely aggressive.

Thus, the cliche “personnel is policy” seems particularly apt in the context of this NSC staff. That’s why it’s reasonable to be concerned about some of the Obama holdovers and about McMaster’s purge of some pro-Trump staffers.

   Was it a hack or a leak? (3) [with comment by Paul]

Posted: 15 Aug 2017 10:43 AM PDT

(Scott Johnson)

Salon has a good column summarizing the argument presented by Patrick Lawrence in the Nation asserting that the alleged Russian hack of the DNC email was rather an inside job. It nicely complements our previous installments in this series. Author Danielle Ryan quotes the official DNC response to Lawrence’s Nation article provided to the Nation after publication and now appended to the article:

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Russian government hacked the DNC in an attempt to interfere in the election. Any suggestion otherwise is false and is just another conspiracy theory like those pushed by Trump and his administration. It’s unfortunate that The Nation has decided to join the conspiracy theorists to push this narrative.

Ryan rightly comments that the statement “is so lackluster it is almost laughable[.]” Students of logical fallacy may recognize both the argument from authority and the ad hominem in the three-sentence DNC statement. That is pathetic.

Via Glenn Reynolds/InstaPundit.

PAUL ADDS – The case that the Russians hacked the DNC emails has always been based on the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies. To my knowledge, these agencies have not provided the information that forms the basis for their conclusion. Thus, the public has never been in a position to assess the conclusion’s validity.

As long as there was no credible person or organization building a case to the contrary, I was willing to believe — naively perhaps — that the conclusion of the intelligence agencies was very likely correct. Now, it seems that a credible case to the contrary is emerging.

I think it is time for the intelligence agencies to back up their conclusion if they can so that those who defend it don’t have to rely on argument from authority.

   DACA at the five-year mark

Posted: 15 Aug 2017 08:47 AM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

Mark Krikorian points out that today is the fifth anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA is President Obama’s lawless amnesty diktat. It enables adult illegal aliens who claim to have come to the U.S. before age 16 to get work permits, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, etc. Nearly 800,000 people have done so.

Candidate Donald Trump promised to end DACA on “day one.” Like much of his campaign rhetoric, the promise was empty. DACA remains in place. “Day one” — like “right now,” and “very soon” — turned out to mean “later, if at all.”

Krikorian argues that it’s time to end DACA. He explains:

Adults who were brought here illegally by their parents at very young ages (toddlers, not teenagers) are indeed good candidates for amnesty – they’ve grown up here and formed their identities as Americans. But it’s Congress that makes laws, not the president, as President Obama himself pointed out a year before the DACA decree: “for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.”

DACA may be on its way out without the active involvement of the Trump administration:

The anti-borders crowd’s real fear is that DACA will be added to the multi-state lawsuit, led by Texas, against DAPA – Obama’s even larger lawless amnesty for illegals with U.S.-born children, that never went into effect because it was stopped in the courts.

Since the legal pretext used by the Obama administration to justify DACA is identical to DAPA, it could well be that at the next hearing on the lawsuit, coming up in a few weeks, the judge will allow DACA to be swapped in for DAPA (which DHS has rescinded). If that were to happen, DHS Secretary Kelly, now White House Chief of Staff, has said the administration might not be able to defend it in court. (I don’t think there’s any “might” about it.)

Krikorian sees a way to put DACA-style amnesty on a solid legal footing as part of a big fix of our immigration system:

The president has expressed sympathy for the DACAs, a sentiment probably shared by most Americans. But rather than reacting to events, the way to proceed would be to phase out DACA and at the same time propose a legislative compromise.

Announce that DACA renewals will only be processed until December 31, after which they will start expiring. (It would take two years for all of them to lapse.) That would light a fire under Congress to pass a package upgrading the DACAs from their lawless Obama amnesty to a genuine lawful one, in exchange for the RAISE Act, the Davis-Oliver Act, and mandatory E-Verify.

The Democrats will balk at first, but the clock will be ticking.

I’m less confident than Krikorian that Democrats will ever go along with such a compromise. Considering the alternatives, however, I think it’s worth a try.

   Collusion gone missing

Posted: 15 Aug 2017 06:04 AM PDT

(Scott Johnson)

The latest Washington Post collusion story is different from the others. The story is “Trump campaign emails show aide’s repeated efforts to set up Russia meetings.” Last night Paul Mirengoff summarized and deconstructed the story here.

If you’ve been following the collusion hysteria, you won’t want to miss this story. The story comes in the accustomed form — under the byline of numerous Post heavy hitters (Tom Hamburger, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman with the assistance of Adam Entous, Alice Crites, Devlin Barrett, David Filipov, Philip Rucker and Ellen Nakashima), features the usual anonymous sources, and stands at one remove from the original documents — but this is a collusion story with a difference. The collusion has gone missing.

The story is based on “20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees this month after a review by White House and defense lawyers.” The Post reporters haven’t seen the documents themselves, but relevant parts have been read to them “by a person with access to them.” And that’s not all: “Two other people with access to the emails confirmed the general tone of the exchanges and some specific passages within them.” I guess that’s the way the Post heavy hitters were taught to do it in journalism school.

The Post heavy hitters won’t come right out and say it, but those parts of the 20,000 pages that were read to them lack the whiff of collusion. The emails involving a volunteer campaign policy adviser demonstrate that proposed meetings with the Russians “generated more concern than excitement within the campaign[,]” which of course does not slow down the heavy hitters one bit.

Again, that’s not all. Proposals sent to then, campaign manager Paul Manafort, were expressly rejected. “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips [to Russia],” Manafort wrote.

The Post solicited a comment from an unnamed spokesman for Manafort. The unnamed spokesman commented that the email chain provides “concrete evidence that the Russia collusion narrative is fake news.” That seems an entirely reasonable interpretation of the evidence presented in the story.

Wary of readers who may need to brush up on ancient history, the Post heavy hitters add that Manafort’s “Virginia home was raided by FBI agents three weeks ago as part of an investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III[.]” It’s amazing what you can do with nine reporters on a story like this.

   PowerLine -> President Trump’s First Re-Election Ad – Updated: CNN Refuses to Run It PowerLine -> President Trump’s First Re-Election Ad - Updated: CNN Refuses to Run It Daily Digest…

[politicalfilth-blog]

Video: Trump and Putin Meet, What Does The Future Hold?

We Are Change

This is Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange.org. I have a very special guest on today. We have Angelo John Gage, and we’re going to be talking about a slurry of important issues dealing with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. With all the latest developments that happened after the G20 summit, and the potential ramifications for American foreign policy and with what’s taking place inside of Syria.

I wanted to talk to Angelo mainly because he doesn’t tell you things that you want to hear. Angelo has pissed-off people in the white nationalist community, as well as both pro and anti-Trump, he is also a US Marine Corps War vet. He’s been there, he’s seen it on the ground, and he’s been making important videos telling people exactly what’s happening. Angelo doesn’t go soft; he tells you exactly how he sees it.

Angelo, I wanted to talk to you about all these things that are happening, unlike a lot of the other popular social media figures who are pro-Trump you held Trump’s feet to the fire. You were one of the few people who didn’t placate for views and fame. You told people the hard truth whether they wanted to hear it or not. People were angry with you, just like people are angry at me for calling out Donald Trump when he bombed the Syrian air base. When he took down that Syrian airplane when he was doing things that were incredibly horrible towards world peace and the future of Syria. Now with the latest developments that just happened between Trump and Putin what do you take from these latest meetings?

Angelo John Gage:

Well, I like Putin, starting with back in 2013 when ‘apparently’ Assad gassed his own people. Putin was like wait, let’s just hold on for a second. While John Kerry was pushing for war, Putin said let’s send people in there, let’s see what is going on, let’s take away those weapons. So I liked Putin for that, he’s not the kind of person that just goes in, and begins to bomb everybody to show off the strength of a country.

Trump Supporters often claim that Trump is playing 4D chess, which is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I like Putin; he is a chess player. I like that we can work with Russia, why are crazy liberals or leftists against world peace. We’re not at war with Russia yet, that’s great, I don’t want World War Three with any country. I’ve been to war twice, so to all of these people who are playing Call of Duty, who want to go to war should know. Nobody wins in a war, the politicians might, the special interest groups do, the globalists and the bankers will, but the soldiers, the children and the families who are obliterated don’t. I got PTSD, a lot of my friends came back messed up, some of them never came home. War is not something that’s good, we should always avoid it, but the special interests they want war and are glad to see it. I’m hopeful to see two world powers, get together and hopefully do something good, get rid of ISIS.

Luke Rudkowski:

It does seem like there was a shift at that G20 meeting but it is difficult to determine what is going on. If you look at US defense spending, they spend almost as much as the other ten highest countries in this world. More than China, more than Russia, more than the UK, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy, and Brazil combined.

If you look at the United States as a country we’ve been at war, for almost 220 years, the country is only 241 years old. One interesting factor thing in this whole game with ISIS is that there is so much information missing from the mainstream dialogue.

I have one chart up here showing you all the countries that ISIS operates in, all the countries that are against U.S. foreign policy objectives. Look at what happened in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Kurdistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, all of them have been targets of ISIS. While other countries like Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, and Kuwait who have co-operated with the United States, those countries don’t have ISIS destroying their nation.

There’s a bigger scheme here, with the policies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now with Donald Trump. Trump has continued some of those failed, horrible policies. What are some of the bigger truths for you, when it comes to the bigger geopolitical picture that we’re all dealing with? What do you think people need to know more about?

Angelo:

You know Israel is very powerful, it’s a very small country, if you criticize the government of Israel or some other country you are called an anti-Semitic or an Islamophobe. That would be like criticizing Nigeria and being told you’re racist. It’s not the case, and we all know it. If you listen to the UN reports Israel, Qatar, all of our allies are funding these different rebels, including the United States. Yes, rebel groups and AIPAC is a powerful lobby with the US Government, and there are other lobbies from other countries. Look at the Saudis they’re very powerful. Trump’s giving them four hundred billion dollars in weapons, what do you think they’re doing with those.

It’s interesting, WikiLeaks posted that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are clandestinely funding ISIS. Trump gives them four hundred billion in arms, where are those arms going? It’s important to see that our allies are involved, there’s interest in the Middle East with many different alliances. We’re spending our tax dollars supporting their air forces, which are shooting down planes that are taking on ISIS.

Hillary Clinton email reveals she knew of Saudi & Qatar government funding for ISIL (ISIS) by August 2014 https://t.co/tlWxkEZ8FN pic.twitter.com/RmaFi9lQQP

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 5, 2017

Israeli government officials have come out and admitted that they’d committed war crimes, in Palestine. The U.S. has also committed war crimes, which is one of the reasons why I woke up. When I got back from the second tour in Iraq, I was just googling things when I learned that we were dropping white phosphorus in Fallujah. They say we are looking for chemical weapons, but when you see the pictures of corpses that are completely toasted black skeletons, you change your perspective. The Israelis do that in Palestine, and Saudi Arabia is doing it right now in Yemen.

So we’re using this nonchemical weapon that burns you to a crisp when it touches your skin. I’m thinking ‘wait I thought we were the good guys,’ so I started questioning Iraq and then 9/11, that’s where I started. I started going through everything, asking about everything and watching all the videos. I started researching all of this, and I got into different types of politics.

I pissed off every group the SPLC, white nationalist, leftist Trump supporters, and one of the reasons why I pissed off Trump supporters Luke is because everyone voted for Trump. Now when I saw him and what he was saying during the campaign that we’re going to bomb the hell out of ISIS. I thought awesome; we’re going to make America great and rebuild the wall, all these wonderful things. No more globalism, that’s what I wanted to hear and what did he do. He launched Tomahawk missiles into Syria without investigation, a sovereign country who’s fighting ISIS.

That was it for me; he just killed people. This man killed people just to show strength. We’re the only country on planet earth that has ever nuked civilian targets. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians heart we nuked them. I mean everyone knows we’re crazy, even Obama was droning people the whole time. It’s not defense spending, I say it’s offense, it’s offensive, we’re spreading our bases all over the world. We keep creeping in, killing Qaddafi, killing Saddam, were they great people, I don’t know. Apparently, Libya was amazing under Qaddafi. Saddam maybe he was a little mean, I don’t know, but all we do is a regime change. We do it for special interests, for our allies, while you and I pay for it all, it’s terrible.

Luke:

There are the drone strikes that Barack Obama conducted, including the one that killed a 16-year-old American citizen. Donald Trump carried out an attack recently that was planned by Obama and it killed an eight-year-old American girl. You see Trump colluding with Henry Kissinger, and continue the same policies of Barack Obama. I have sounded the alarm for some time, and people hate me for it as you know if you’ve been watching my YouTube channel.

I don’t hate any group of people; I am not racist, I am not anti-Semitic. However, I do not like governments who abuse their authority. Like when Israel decides to bomb Syrian government forces that are fighting radical Islamic terrorists. These same rebel groups that Israel provides support to, that they take care of in the Golan Heights region. I’m reporting this news, but other press is afraid to go that far because they’re concerned about being labeled. It’s common sense, we speak the truth, not to placate an audience, not for fame, not for money because you deserve it. We don’t care about this outside society, and that’s why I wanted to have you on Angelo. Your one of the people who has been holding their feet to the fire, one of the people who are not afraid to be critical of them. In this media game, if you want to be successful, you pick a side, a gang, an affiliation. If you stick to that side, the other will hate you, but supporters will follow you and defend you. You will get the greatest number of followers but guess what, that dichotomy I believe is breaking down, the truth is somewhere in the middle. It is gray, it is not just black and white, there are bigger ramifications, there are bigger things that we all need to understand.

The way you came about this was from a very personal experience; you went through it, you saw it. Is there anything else you want to share, about the journey that you have been on whether it’s waking up or speaking the truth and having people being mad at you. What sticks out to you the most from this journey that you have been on?

Angelo:

I started with Fallujah then I learned about World War Two and the banking system. I ended up watching David Icke; he’s got a very spiritual approach to things. I got into everything; I read all these different books and groups then I realized that everything was about picking sides. It’s all left or right no matter what, race, religion, and politics. Meanwhile these globalists, they’re all over the place, they’re all one big agenda, they’re all different people working together to control everyone. They want us in these boxes, these categories, where we fight over all of these petty problems, and they manipulate us. I realized it’s all just good versus evil.

If you are a good person, I don’t care what color you are, or where you are from. We have to work together to stop evil people. The evil people are a minority on the planet; we have the power to do it. My journey was going through all these different realities and different truths. There are a lot of them, they are very deep, but it’s ultimately irrelevant to the bigger picture.

We have to take action because you could sit there and read a thousand books. It’s like if you were a surgeon, you go to medical school, but you never performed a single surgery. What if you never take action in the real world, then you’re not a surgeon, your just one on paper. I got addicted to reading conspiracy theories and information, and I didn’t do anything with it other than to make some videos, I had to start taking political action.

When Trump bombed Syria, my heart broke. Imagine going to war twice, thinking your there to save these people. There are children; I would throw them water, they were thirsty and starving, we weren’t supposed to do it. Then coming back home, being thanked for your service, then learning that it was all nonsense, it was all a lie.

Then I busted my ass to get Trump elected. I was in all the chat rooms; we were destroying the narratives. I’m in there with people who are making up new hashtags; that trend like crazy. I am busting my rump getting people to vote for Trump, including my family, everyone I know. Then he ordered the Syrian Tomahawk attack, and my heart just snapped it, just broke.

So now I am trying to hold Trump accountable, for what he’s done. So either Trump’s in on it or he’s just too naive, or he’s playing 4D chess.

Luke:

We’re on the brink of World War 3, it’s ridiculous, it makes no sense at all.

Angelo:

A lot of people have become famous because of Trump, many pundits, that have all these followers, they don’t want to go against him. It’s not about Trump; we could make America great again with or without him, there’s almost a cult of personality with him.

Here comes Trump from out of nowhere, he’s not part of the establishment, he kicked everybody’s ass in his first try, becomes president, it was the greatest victory. I remember watching the election waiting for him to win, we got our country back.

A lot of people have this faith in things; they don’t even care if the person comes through or not, they just live in a fantasy world. While we are here in the real world. That’s why when people say let’s just turn the Middle East into a sheet of glass, which pisses me off. There are people there and children. The people that are saying these things, they haven’t been to war. I’ve been there it’s horrendous, it changes your life, it will mess you up.

I’m susceptible to it; I won’t even watch a war movie. I can’t watch “Saving Private Ryan,” I will be crying. I’ll tell you straight up; it’s because they make it very real looking, you know you lose people, one second you’re talking to a guy, the next second his head’s gone. There are people that want us to go to war, war hawks like, Madeline Albright former Secretary of State who said that Iraq was worth the 500,000 dead children. Think how many stadiums you could fill with their dead bodies. These people are cold-blooded, psychopaths, they are mentally insane.

They are a minority, so we are the majority, but they have a great way of playing on our tribalistic ways. You can be part of a particular race and be proud and happy and your parentage. I’m all for identity, I’m all for protecting yourself, and your people and culture and everything. You can’t allow yourself to be manipulated over pride; it’s okay to be happy. You have to work together with people, who are on the same side as you, even though they might not look like you, they might not quite think like you, but they’re under attack as well.

The globalists are doing this whole thing of picking us off one by one, you know let’s pit this group against that one, it’s all divide and conquer. Eventually, they will try to destroy us all. We need to convince other groups, that while we may have different views on things, we’re all under attack and we need to help each other out.

Even the Republicans and Democrats they’re all pretty much on the same team, we pick a side, we vote for who we want, we argue about the small things that don’t matter.

What about the Federal Reserve, what about the income tax of 30%, every four years you work for a year for free. Our forefathers had a revolution over 3% tea tax. Meanwhile, we’re getting taxed to death, and they are making up theories about global warming, that it’s our fault, it’s not the sun.

Nobody cares because it’s all a big dog and pony show, it’s all bread and circus’s, we got our gadgets our Netflix, our cars that talk to us, our phones are smarter than us. It’s like what Alex Jones says, that it’s a technocracy.

Luke

There’s a lot of attention towards drama, should this civil disobedience be done this way or that way. Hang on, wait a minute; there are people dying in Yemen and Syria because of horrible foreign policy decisions. People don’t want to see that; there is a lot of money to me made, there’s a lot of clicks, there’s fame, ego, and pride. Instead of caring about everyone in this world, they care more about themselves or their group or their gang or their affiliation and the material things they are tied to. These people just get me mad. That’s why I’m so happy, that there are people like yourself.

I just wanted to leave you with the last question, we know it’s down to just love and fear, that’s the two basic dichotomies, how do you see things going in the future especially with Donald Trump as our president and with the situation in Syria?

Angelo

I hope that have some agreement where they stop mingling in Syria. I hope that Trump keeps his word and bombs the hell out of ISIS. I hope he is really playing 4D chess and just playing everyone. I think Putin knows what he’s doing, so I have more hope for Putin. I hope Trump delivers; I’m not going to worship him if he says he is going to do something than I am holding him accountable.

If Trump is naive or being deceived maybe he will stop doing it. It’s up to us to be vigilant and keep the pressure on the people that work for us. We like the guy; he is really funny, he makes funny jokes. However, that’s how you get seduced, and it becomes a cult of personality. Then you let him slide for killing people. There has to be justice in this world, without it, we are just animals.

We have to be more than that, so my message Luke is that, yes it’s fear and love. We’ve got to start loving ourselves enough and respect each other, so we don’t have this new world order elitism trample us.

We don’t have any self-respect because we’re sellouts. We don’t hold our leaders to their promises because were too comfortable. I would rather fight to the death than be enslaved, that’s just me.

Luke

Angelo thank you for all your incredible work. I want to thank all you beautiful, amazing human beings for your support; please subscribe to stay in touch with real independent media. Love you guys, stay tuned.

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The post Video: Trump and Putin Meet, What Does The Future Hold? appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/this-is-luke-rudkowski-of-wearechange-org-i-have-a-special-guest-angelo-john-gage-and-were-going-to-be-discussing-donald-trump-and-vladimir-putin-with-all-the-latest-developments-that-happened-af/

[eichy815]

Amber Waves of Pain

This is an open letter to the rest of the world.  These are the musings of one lone American boy who hopes that members of the international community might end up reading this and understand the complex political struggle that is going on within America’s borders.

When people ask me if I’m “proud to be an American,” my answer is:  sometimes.  I loathe so many of the things my government does without the public’s consent or through manipulation (i.e. “patriotic” rhetoric).  On the other hand, I adore many of the public figures who speak out (and back up their speech with actions) on behalf of a better vision for the United States as a whole.

I don’t believe in blind nationalism or loyalty tests.  I’ve always lived my life judging everyone and everything on their/its own merits.

I’ve never viewed America – or any other nation, for that matter – to be culpable, as some monolithic entity, for human atrocities or rampant corruption.  Every country has dissenters, powerless citizens, and vocal visionaries who, in practical terms, have little-to-zero control over the institutional status quo of their homeland.  In my editorial from last week entitled “Despicable You,” I outlined how the decision-makers and power-hoarders who are truly responsible for greed and deception are the ones who need to be held accountable for it.

So, for those of you outside of the United States who harbor animosity toward “Americans as a whole,” listen up, please...

First, let’s make the distinction between the American government and the American people themselves.  If you think “Americans as a whole” just blindly support the U.S. government and its policies, then you haven’t been paying attention.  Yes, I’ve talked with members of the international community who honestly believe that “most Americans” are in favor of whatever rules and regulations those braintrusts in Washington D.C. pull out of their asses.

But, if that was true, we wouldn’t have Tea Party conservatives rising up to challenge the Republican establishment’s fairweather adherence to limited government.  We wouldn’t have the Justice Democrats and “Berniecrats” rising up to challenge the Democratic establishment’s defense of corruption and milquetoast policy.  And we wouldn’t see a lot of Americans so frustrated and disheartened that they choose to “check out” of having political awareness altogether.

I don’t necessarily adhere strictly to any of these factions.  My desire for my country is to dislodge those establishment politicians who have been enabling disharmony and chaos, while boosting politicians (both incumbents and insurgents) who exhibit a desire for real positive change.  Once elected, it’s up to each individual politician to advocate for how they believe we should collectively achieve that.

This is what democracy is all about.  It’s not necessarily “better” or “worse” than any other form of government...but it’s the form of government we have.  So those of us within America who want to transform it aren’t going to back down (and, no, “term limits” aren’t a magical solution to solve the problems of corruption and cronyism).

Yet, you still have members of the world community looking down on America just because it’s easy to believe that “Americans as a whole” are supposedly facsimiles of Donald Trump or James Carville or Bill O’Reilly or Chuck Schumer. 

On top of that, many jaded, cynical, usually-left-leaning Americans themselves also internalize these same toxic sentiments toward their fellow countrymen/countrywomen.  These archetypes of the American populace are missing the boat:  self-flagellation via some trendy doctrine of “anti-Americanism” inherently fails to separate our government from its people.  Without that distinction, we’re just going to keep going around in circles, ad infinitum.

America still grapples with institutional racism and ethnic tensions.  South Africa obviously struggled with this throughout the last century, as well.  We have seen it rage throughout many different parts of the world:  Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of the Sudan, the Ottoman Empire, Rwanda, Bangladesh, East Timor, and various Slavic nations, if we're citing historical examples.

That doesn’t make it right.  It means that America isn’t the only perpetrator.  It’s wrong no matter who does it.

America struggles with economic inequality.  Many American activists from all across the political spectrum are trying to impel solutions that will reduce this burden.  But, in the meantime, *Rest_Of_The_World*, maybe some of your own governments should stop allowing American corporations or multinational businesses to set up (and maintain) tax shelters that skirt around the ideals of economic justice!

The United States hasn’t moved as fast on LGBT equality compared to other industrialized countries.  But we’re getting there.  All nations that are moving toward becoming more gender-inclusive have a moral responsibility to collaborate and lead the way for the nations that are still regressive in this area:  Russia, Cameroon, Jamaica, Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Uganda, to name a handful.

Undoubtedly, the U.S. is a major contributor to environmental neglect and global pollution.  But so are China, India, Russia, Germany, South Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.  I disagree with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement; yet, even the major players who have vowed to remain a part of the Paris Agreement have a long way to go, themselves.  Those of us who care about the planet’s future will do everything we can to circumvent Donald Trump and find ways around his atrocious (lack of) environmental policy.  But, in the long term, it still has to be an international coalition.

I also concur with many of you who feel my country’s military should be less interventionist.  That doesn’t mean leaping to some diametrically-opposed isolationist extreme.  It means I would like to see our military become more collaborative (i.e. U.N. Peacekeeping Missions) to reduce our own – and everyone else’s – levels of nuclear proliferation, border invasion, and trade coercion.  I would support some moderate cuts to my nation’s defense budget...but that also means the U.S. defense budget itself needs to be more prudently dispersed.  That’s something I will push for on the domestic front, for my part.

Clearly, the United States isn’t the only offender, here, when it comes to creating cross-border strife.  Off the top of my head...

Israel and Palestine

Pakistan and India

North Korea and South Korea

Russia and the Ukraine

Saudi Arabia and Yemen

Mexico and El Salvador

Syria and Iraq

China and Japan

Egypt and Darfur/Sudan

The United  States may not be an angel...but neither are these players.

Now the burning question that so many of you are still probably trying to figure out:  how in the hell did Donald Trump get elected, in the first place?

Well, the more educated members of the world community are obviously aware that the United States still uses an antiquated Electoral College model:  Hillary Clinton actually netted almost three-million more popular votes than Donald Trump did in 2016.  So, ultimately, Trump won due to a glorified technicality.  A much better Democratic presidential nominee probably would have trounced Trump by an even greater margin (i.e. Barack Obama in 2008).

But why did America allow it to become as close as it was between Trump and Clinton?  Well, Americans didn’t exactly “allow it” to happen.  The pro-Trump voters are similar, conceptually, to the Canadian pro-Harper voters in 2006...to the Filipino pro-Duterte voters in 2016... to the French pro-LePen voters this past April...and even to the British pro-Corbyn voters this past May (although Corbyn would be a “leftist” version of Trump, personality-wise).

This vocal pro-Trump delegation was able to achieve an unexpected and unlikely victory through a ridiculous combination of voter suppression, corporate monopolization, sectarian privilege, institutional corruption, an out-of-control and overly-sensationalistic “mainstream media,” and an economically-beaten-down general public.  A “perfect storm,” as we say in America.

There are those of us here in the U.S. who are determined to prevent this from happening all over again.

But don’t pretend as though you feel Trump is some spontaneous aberration.  Let’s say Trump had never risen to power as head-of-state – but either/both of Marine LePen and Jeremy Corbyn had.  Would you be just as hostile or pejorative toward the French people or the British people as you are toward the American people?    

Arrogance and entitlement isn’t unique to the United States.  I see it exhibited by people all over the world, regardless of education level, regime style, or ideological manipulation.

So let’s get specific.  Let’s tailor our solutions to people’s needs.  Every country should be doing this.  But, as an American, I’m going to start by directing my efforts accordingly here at home.

If you want more details as to what I would do if I was President of the United States – please refer to my op-ed entitled “If Eichy Ruled The World...”

Again, we need to get specific and tailor new solutions to America’s needs.  It’s easy to say that America should alter its health care model in order to “do what Europe does.”  But that involves actually studying and analyzing the multiple, individual health care models enjoyed by individual countries across different continents...and then determine which model is going to work best within the realities of the United States and its economy.  Not all European health care programs are monolithic, you know.

I believe in some increased, reasonable levels of gun control for my country.  But drop the whole “Suck it up and hand over your guns, America!” narrative that assholes/bigots such as Jim Jefferies endlessly peddle – without any regard to cultural/institutional differences among different countries.

Stop acting as though all Americans are a bunch of prototypes of Ryan Lochte (insofar as how Brazilians most likely viewed him, during the 2016 Summer Olympics).  And quit gloating about how Otto Wambier “got what he deserved” for being a “privileged white male.”

It’s unrealistic to expect America to be some moral paragon while failing to stipulate that everyone else has to be willing to play fair, as well.  

So let’s make a deal, Planet Earth.  We’ll work on getting Donald Trump ejected from the Oval Office as soon as possible.  Meanwhile, let’s see the rest of you focus your own efforts on minimizing the evil and greed of...

Bashar al-Assad

Omar al-Bashir

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Muammar Al-Gaddafi

Kim Jong-un

Islam Karimov

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

Robert Mugabe

Yoweri Museveni

Vladimir Putin

and

José Eduardo dos Santos

Then, maybe all 300+ nations of the world can have a shot at actually achieving the era of “unprecedented peace and prosperity” that the world has actually never experienced (despite what veterans from the Clinton/Gore Administration would have us believe).

Tall order, huh?

best wishes,

– Eichy