#uncultivated nation

[jhara-ivez]

3 days with my german family and I already realize that I hate all the german food.

So boring.

[tamamita]

hey sal feel free to ignore this but i got into an argument with a zionist who claimed that arabs sold their lands to them, is this true

This is interesting, because it ignores a lot of context. Keywords to remember is the Ottoman capitulation, the Felaheen, the Sursock purchase and the eviction of Palestinians that inhabited the area at that time.

The Sursock family was a family of Aristocratic landlords with strong ties to the Turkish and European nobility dating back to the 19th century. The Sursocks were known to have mass purchased land in Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. While they were absentee landlords, they hired Arab labours who inhabited the purchased land at that time. When the Turks capitulated following WW1, the Turks were pressured into allowing the land to be sold to the PLDC, the Palestinan (later Israeli) Land Development Company. The PLDC sought to purchase the Jezreel valley, which consisted of 20-25 Arab villages, from the Sursock. . Keep in mind that the Jezreel valley was the most fertile land of Palestine and close to the economic city of Haifa. Following the mass purchase of land by the PLDC, the Jewish landbuyers expelled Arab tenants and depopulated the Arab villages despite their usufruct, and right to toll on the land. This all came as a surprise to the Arab inhabitants. This was all part of the idea that cheap Arab labour should be replaced with Jewish labour, this despite the fact that Arab labourers had greater expertise on the agricultural field; the settlers were unfamiliar with the land. Keep in mind that according to JNF, the Jewish national fund, only 3% of the Palestinian land were uncultivated, destroying the myth that the land bloomed as a result of its settler colonizers. The Hashomer Hatzaeer would come to be the center of these kibbutzim and would establish over 30 kibbutzim built ontop of the Arab villages before 1948. As a result, the Arabs, or Felaheen (The Arab peasant class) put up a resistance against the JNF out of concrete material reasons and attempted to fight back against the expansion of these kibbutzim. This was the first instance of Arab resistance against Zionism.

All of these lands were purchased before 1948 and the Arabs were expelled and depopulated only for the kibbutzim to be established with the help of the money provided by the Jewish Colonization association and its organs. However, the British mandate did not require the landowners to compensate for the expelled Arab tenants. The Arabs were forced to migrate to slums and towns. In one of these towns, a notable Syrian resistance fighter would rise up, namely, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, and declare jihad on the British. When the Arabs resisted their dispossession by every means necessary, even violence, the Zionists used this as an excuse to fortify their colonizers and expand them due to "escalating security needs". Since the colonizers were too weak to face the resistance, they turned themselves to the British to gain their support in an attempt to expand their lands as means of security for the Kibbutzim. In a memondarium written by the Kibbutz Hazora (a settlement in Jezreel) to the Jewish Agency in 1936: "Our basic demand is for our own instutions to help us ugently in getting the British authorities to expand our territory--this is a vital issue for us.". A similar pretext is used whenever the colonized put up resistance against their colonizers, in which the same excuse is used to further expand and colonize the lands. This is the logic of the oppressor in any context, whether it is colonial or in the class struggle.

[ghelgheli]

Recognizing this central ambivalence in regard to so-called Western values—whereby they are cast out as “postmodern authoritarianism” only to be embraced as the “true spirit” of societies to come—is essential to understanding the strategic significance of the anti-gender misappropriation of postcolonial language. This ambivalence sheds light on the fact that the superficial takeover frames the “gender ideology” colonizer not simply as the “West as such but [rather as] the West whose healthy (Christian) core had already been destroyed by neo-Marxism and feminism in the 1960s” (Korolczuk and Graff 2018: 812). Very often, the anti-gender misappropriation takes on a decidedly Islamophobic hue; for all their catering to anticolonial sentiments, anti-gender thinkers often claim that “gender ideology,” with its historical roots in anti-European “neo-Marxism and feminism,” goes hand in hand with the threat of (Muslim) immigration. A blatant example of this can be found in former Cardinal Sarah’s proclamation against the two unexpected threats of our times:

On the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS.” . . . From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West [and] the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy [and] female subservience. (Sarah 2015)

Sarah aggressively draws up a dual picture of the true enemy—the biopolitical survival of the family is threatened on the one hand by excessive secularization and sexual freedom, and on the other by “ideologized Islam’s pseudo-family,” which marks the degraded and uncivilized counterpart to Christianity’s proper tradition. This discursive construction of “terrorist look-alikes” as possessing an excessive, uncultivated, and dangerous sexuality yet again plays into the same fundamental racialized mapping of progress that colonial gender undergirded (Puar 2007). This rhetoric is mirrored by Norwegian right-wing politician Per-Willy Amundsen (2021) when he writes that:

I will never celebrate pride. First of all, there are only two sexes: man and woman, not three—that is in contradiction with all biological science. Even worse, they are allowed access to our kids to influence them with their radical ideology. This has to be stopped. If FRI [the national LGBT organization] really cared about gay rights, they would get involved in what is happening in Muslim countries, rather than construct fake problems here in Norway. But it is probably easier to speak about “diversity” as long as it doesn’t cost anything. (Amundsen 2021; translation by author) Here Amundsen draws on the well-known trope of trans* and queer people “preying on our kids” while at the same time reinforcing the homonationalist notion that Europe, and in particular Norway, is a safe h(e)aven for queer people—perhaps a bit too much so. In his response to Amundsen, Thee-Yezen Al-Obaide, the leader of SALAM, the organization for queer Muslims in Norway, aptly diagnoses Amundsen’s rhetoric as “transphobia wrapped in Islamophobia” (as quoted in Berg 2021). Amundsen mirrors a central tenet of TERF rhetoric by claiming to be the voice of science, biology, and reason in order to distinguish his own resistance to “gender ideology” from the repressive, regressive one of Muslims. In this way, his argumentation, which basically claims that trans* people don’t exist and certainly shouldn’t be recognized legally, attempts to come off as benign, while Muslim opposition to “gender ideology” is painted as destructive and anti-modern. This double gesture, which allows Amundsen to have his cake and eat it too, is a central trope in different European iterations of anti-gender rhetoric. In France, for example, such discourse claims that, “while ‘gender ideology’ goes too far on the one hand, the patriarchal control of Islam threatens to pull us back into an excessive past. Here of course, ‘Frenchness’ is always already neither Muslim, nor queer (and certainly not both)” (Hemmings 2020: 30). Therefore the French anti-gender movement sees itself as the defender of true Western civilization, both from Western “gender ideology” and from uncivilized “primitives” who are nevertheless themselves victims of “gender ideology.” A similar dynamic plays out in Britain: “Reading Muslims as dangerous heteroactivists and Christians as benign points to how racialization and religion create specific forms of heteroactivism. . . . Even where ‘Muslim parents’ are supported by Christian heteroactivists, they remain other to the nation, and not central to its defence” (Nash and Browne 2020: 145). In the British example, it is clear that white anti-gender actors represent themselves as moderate, reasonable, and caring—often claiming that their resistance to the “politicization�� of the classroom has nothing to do with transphobia and homophobia.

Is “Gender Ideology” Western Colonialism? Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang

[scotianostra]

On 15th September 1773 the emigrant ship “Hector” arrives in Pictou Harbour on Nova Scotia carrying 189 Highlanders, most loaded two months earlier in Ullapool.

Although they were not the first Scots to arrive in North America they were the vanguard of a massive wave of Scottish immigrants to arrive in what is now Canada. In the century following the landing of the Hector more than 120 ships brought nearly 20 000 people from Scotland to the port of Pictou. By 1879 more than ninety-three percent of the region’s rural property owners had Scottish names.

Ironically, very few of the Hector people stayed on the Pictou Plantation. They had been cruelly deceived by the shipping company that brought them out to Nova Scotia. The land was not ready for settlement as promised and supplies for the coming winter were meagre. Most of them moved on to settled parts of the province leaving an intrepid handful of their countrymen to fend for themselves in an uncultivated wilderness.

The Hector was owned by two men, Pagan and Witherspoon, who bought three shares of land in Pictou, and they engaged a Mr John Ross as their agent, to accompany the vessel to Scotland, to bring out as many colonists as they could induce, by misrepresentation and falsehoods, to leave their homes.

As they were leaving, a piper came on board who had not paid his passage; the captain ordered him ashore, but the strains of the national instrument affected those on board so much that they pleaded to have him allowed to accompany them, and offered to share their own rations with him in exchange for his music during the passage. Their request was granted, scrolling through various passenger lists I have found out the Piper was more than likely a man called William McKay.

All those travelling that were aged over 8 were required to pay full fare for the passage, those between 2 and 8 were charged half fare under 2’s were free. It was bad enough that they were conned with the promise of land in Canada but conditions on board the Hector were said to be horrendous, the ship was barely sea worthy and has been described as a crumbling wreck. I can’t find any mention of how may survived the 11 week journey or how the passengers were related to one another it was a nine week journey over the Atlantic, Smallpox and dysentery took their toll on the infants and children on board. In all, eighteen died at sea, I think by that they mean 18 children, poor things. By the time the rotting hulk landed, people were picking at the planks to find worms to eat.

On arrival about all that they seen was the dense forest grew down to the water’s edge as far as the eye could see.

The unfamiliar customs and appearance of the natives inhabiting the area so terrified the settlers that they remained on board for two days despite their desire to walk again on dry land. Finally, on September 17, 1773, dressed in full Scottish regalia, with all pageantry of their kilts and the pipes, they went ashore

The “Hector” pioneers faced extreme difficulties during their first year in the New World, but with the development of a lively timber trade with Scotland and the finalising of land grants, conditions improved and the development of what is now Pictou County was under way. The land was rich, the rivers and oceans plentifully stocked with fish, and the timber of high quality.

Pics are of a stamp issued in 1973 to mark 200 years since the crossing and the Hector replica at Pictou. The Hector Heritage Quay is one of Nova Scotia's major cultural tourist attractions. The Hector is a full-sized replica of the original ship. A Highland Homecoming, a celebration of the strong Scottish spirit, takes place on-site every September. and kicking off today.

You can find all the details on their FB page here https://www.facebook.com/shiphector/

[dailyanarchistposts]

Section I: Preface to this Chapter

In a Capitalist system, there is — in fact — a constant and perpetual economic depression. In every period of history of the Capitalist nations of the world, there has always been the omnipresence of the ghetto, the masses on the fringes of starvation, the widespread effects of poverty, misery, want, and criminality. Unemployment of the millions is a marked trait of any stage of economic development in the Capitalist nations. A year never passes in these nations that thousands do not die from hunger, millions are pushed on to the streets as paupers and beggars, and hundreds of thousands of children become homeless. Economists may assert, one way or another, that the nation is going through a recession or a depression or a boom or a bust, whatever terminology that they can supply to others to get them to invest or sell out. But the boom and the busts are only relative. In one case, only forty million are unemployed, in the other, only thirty five million. The evidence again and again confirms one recurring fact when examining the an economy: the Capitalist system is in a constant and perpetual depression. Poverty is an intrinsic element of the “free” economy.

Why, one may inquire, is it that the system of Capitalism, and not the present situation, is blamed for the poverty and want of a nation? I can only answer in strict confidence that Capitalism may be blamed because it is an economical system, and in this respect, it is the method by which wealth is distributed throughout a society. There are and always have been vast, countless tracts of land, uncultivated and unused, while there are thousands and millions starving on the streets, without a home to live, without food to eat. But to a Capitalist, who serves only his desire of self-interest, these individuals — whom have no money or anything of value to offer — do not concern him. To argue that Capitalism is a system inherently stuck in a depression, one must not even bring up the uncultivated lands. There is enough food in this world presently to feed all that are starving, there is enough land to house all the homeless, there is enough wealth existing to give everyone luxury. There is enough work to be done, that if it were done productively, for the good of the whole instead of the good of a single individual, everyone would have a decent, respectable job, considerably shorter than our current eight hour day. It is the system of Capitalism, that funnels wealth to the rich and brings poverty to the masses; in its boom one out of ten million stops starving and its bust an additional ten million are brought to the fringes of misery and want.

Waste, too, is an inherent component of the Capitalist system. Under the desire to profit, those who own the means of production will do what they must in order to gain a revenue; it is in their own self interest. So long as there are empty mouths on the brink of starvation, there will be a Capitalist willing to poison enough of his food so that all cannot be fed — so long as there are people without homes and subject to the wretched abuse of nature, there will be a Capitalist willing to burn buildings so that all cannot be housed — and so long as there are people suffering from the pain of cold, there will be a Capitalist willing to destroy clothing so that all cannot be comforted. A decrease in supply will mean that demand will rise. While a Capitalist could sell 1,000 loaves of bread for $1 per loaf, making a total of $1,000 revenue and feeding everyone, he could sell 500 loaves of bread for $5 per loaf, making a total of $2,500 — but leaving half the population to die. All this will be done under the guise of “free trade” of “free enterprise,” and our economists have failed miserably to do anything worthwhile by blatantly using the word “free,” as it has not helped the majority of people escape from oppression.

[cliozaur]

- “Cosette had been taught housekeeping in the convent, and she regulated their expenditure, which was very modest.” That’s cool thing to be able to do when you are not even sixteen! (And that’s the skill that Thénardier obviously lacks, for he consistently squanders family’s fortune whenever he comes into his a substantial sum of money.) But on the other hand, Valjean’s reluctance to take charge as the “master of the house” and have a say in housekeeping matters is somewhat disturbing. He considers himself unworthy and shifts the responsibility onto Cosette. Which is a bit too much. While she is the mistress of the house, he is, well… the father—whatever it means. Valjean is aware that Cosette was raised and educated as a bourgeois girl in the convent, and now he’s creating an environment for her to continue feeling like one. It is so amusing to imagine him engaged in interior design of her rooms! How he was searching for and bringing into the house all those Persian rugs, canopied beds, silver-gilt dressing-case etc. While reading the description of Cosette’s rooms, I had a feeling that we have returned to the old Gillenormand’s house!

- Jean Valjean himself assumes the façade of a respectful bourgeois: he pays taxes and is even a member of the national guard (that’s how he obtains a national guard uniform to infiltrate the barricade and then to pass it along)! However, he conceals his true identity and date of birth from authorities. This dual life—appearing as a bourgeois during the day and as a working-class man at night (as Marius accurately guessed when he saw him disguised as a labourer)—shows the complexity of his existence.

- “Jean Valjean had left the garden uncultivated, in order not to attract attention.” It’s so bizarre that a man who had been tending gardens for many years, had to refrain from taking care of his own garden once he finally had one. Although, he hardly regards it as “his own” garden.

[mariacallous]

This investigation contains graphic images and footage as well as references to killing and mutilation that some readers might find distressing.

An image analysis by Bellingcat shows an infamous Russian neo-Nazi with ties to the controversial paramilitary Wagner Group may be involved in the staging of a photograph showing a man holding a severed head in Syria.

Alexey Milchakov oversaw the far-right Rusich Group, described by experts as a ‘contingent‘ of Wagner, the armed group that staged a rebellion against Russian authorities last year. Rusich has previously been implicated in war crimes in Syria and Ukraine, including torture and mutilation. According to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Milchakov has at various times shared command of Rusich with Yan Petrovsky. Both men are subject to sanctions by the US, EU and other governments.

On February 10, 2020, the Telegram channel of a prominent Russian military blogger posted an image of a man in uniform holding a severed head. Behind him was another severed head and a backdrop of hilly, uncultivated terrain as far as the eye could see, smoke rising from the horizon. Then, on January 18, nearly four years after the original post, Rusich’s official Telegram channel posted the same image before deleting it shortly thereafter. The face of the man holding the head had been censored in the image, which may have been taken in 2017. Although references to an unobscured image exist on social media, Bellingcat has yet to discover it. But by using open source research methods, even the obscured version of the image can shed some light on the identity of this uniformed man in the hills outside Palmyra. 

Since the photo was initially uploaded, further imagery of Rusich fighters in Syria has surfaced, providing further reference material against which to compare the image. We used the arrangement of camouflage patterns on the man’s uniform to conclude that his uniform is the same as that worn by Milchakov in multiple photographs seen on his social media accounts. It is, therefore, possible that the man holding the severed head is Milchakov himself, who is also known as ‘Fritz’ and ‘Serb’. 

This would not be the first time that Wagner or Wagner-affiliated soldiers have committed such acts in Syria.

In a statement posted to their Telegram channel after Bellingcat reached out for comment, Rusich wrote, “the acts depicted do not constitute a war crime because a) we’re not military and b) we were happy to do it.” Rusich did not directly address whether Milchakov was the man in the image or involved in the incident, though without any evidence or explanation suggested it could be a far right Belarusian national who fought alongside Ukrainian militants in the Donbas war. Bellingcat attempted to contact Milchakov via his VK account but received no response.

This image was published after a November 2019 article by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta identified a former Russian police officer as one of a group of Wagner mercenaries who recorded themselves torturing and mutilating a Syrian man in June 2017. The article and a follow-up from April 2020 are crucial pieces of evidence of atrocities by Wagner mercenaries in the country, though no charges have ever been filed. (Caution: these links contain graphic images of torture and mutilation.) Meanwhile, Rusich and Wagner Telegram channels have on several occasions posted other redacted images showing armed men wearing the same uniform as that worn by the man who held up the severed head. These were taken in the same area of Syria as the aforementioned beheading image. Severed heads and other images of extreme violence feature heavily in internal and external propaganda in Wagner’s online culture. In Syria, photos of heads on stakes and skulls were widely shared and, in some cases, turned into alternate logos for Reverse Side of the Medal (RSOTM), a mercenary culture brand. In Russia’s current war against Ukraine, Wagner fighters and their supporters have distributed similar imagery.

[newsandletterscommittee]

Just as the process of organizing the proletariat as a class is not, on the other hand, a gradual evolutionary fact, a slow and progressive maturing; it’s a tumultuous succession of qualitative leaps corresponding to violent and often bloody clashes between classes, through which the proletariat of the destitute overcomes in a single stroke the more coarse and immediate forms of organization, divided by locality and sector, discontinuous in time and space, breaks through the narrow limits of the parochial and company, subordinates the personal, local and corporate interests of individuals and groups to ever broader interests and aims, until in the political party every boundary of group, category, nation is obliterated and every act obeys the imperatives of the ultimate and general aims of the class.

A dialectical process that has nothing to do with the idealistic interpretation of history, whereby each stage is annulled by the next and, having reached the summit of “consciousness”, humanity enters once and for all the “reign of reason”.

The party, itself a product of material determinations, is a battle order, which, possessing superior theoretical and organizational weapons, is called upon not only to defend them against the converging attacks of capitalist society and even against the nagging of those material determinations to which it owes its life, but to carry them as instruments of decisive action within the immediate organizations into which they continually flow, driven by the pressure of the facts of capitalist society and the motion of incessant proletarianization of the middle classes, new levers of wage‑ earners; the party is therefore called to radiate therein what, in periods of reflux of class struggle, may be only the “light” of the historic revolutionary program but which is destined to become, in fiery periods of social conflict, the great “magnetic field” of polarization of all the subversive forces unleashed from the underground of the bourgeois social and political order.

The party is neither the Spirit hovering above the waters of biblical mythology, watching from on high the confused moving and stirring of a humanity imprisoned in the fetters of the flesh, nor the Demiurge who, at the X hour, descends into the arena and single-handedly changes the face of the world: it’s a material force whose decisive action in the great unfoldings of history is possible on the sole condition of meeting with the gigantic thrust that comes “from below”, raw and “uncultivated” as a natural and physical phenomenon, not directed and not determined by conscious ideologies or distinct concepts (Engels 1890: “it will be the non‑ socialists who will make the socialist revolution”), but led irresistibly to move on the terrain of the program which, even in its darkest hours, the party will have been able to proclaim and defend against all and in spite of all, in the ranks and organizations of the wage‑ earners struggling against capital.

Firm Points of Trade Union Action, Il Programma Comunista, no 19 (1962)

[paleodictyoptera]

I'm curious if this a uniquely north american problem, or if this conversation is just unaware of other continents-

And I just remembered how thorough the use of fire by Aboriginal peoples was in the process of completely reshaping Australia's landscape. The rainforest flora was pushed to the absolute wettest parts of the coast where fires don't really take hold anymore, resulting in like 90% of the continent being fire-dominated due to human influence. And they've had much longer to experiment with shaping the community if western archaeology is to be trusted (50-60k years for Australia vs. 12-25k years for North America), so it's likely even more adapted to human influence.

This has to be a global issue, wilderness is defined largely in the context of white people history; in many cultures there's no equivalent concept. I heard about conflict over rewilding in Wales, one part of which being the initial translation of rewilding from English to Welsh was more like "making a wasteland" than any form of restoration. People have been shaping the land they live in since there've been peoples and lands; 'wilderness' in western cultural carries all the political baggage of colonialism and seeing other cultures and nations as savage and the land they gain sustenance from as uncultivated.

And it needs to be smashed.

If you can recognize how much of North America was cultivated over thousands of years by indigenous people, then you also need to recognize that a significant chunk of "wilderness" here is dependent on human intervention to thrive.

There are countless plants and fungi, from mushrooms to grasses to trees, that have been proven to do best when regularly harvested, whether it's because harvest makes them release seeds or clears away dead growth or provides more light to younger plants, cultivation means that harvesting is often to the benefit of the plant.

Which means that you also have to recognize that locking those plants away from people, even with the best intentions, can actually do horrible damage to their populations and to existing ecosystems.

There isn't an easy solution to this problem. Proper foraging isn't something that most people are taught anymore and many of these plants do not have significant enough populations right now to survive excessive harvest.

But going forward, as we work on restoring ecosystems and helping our planet (and our relationships to the land) heal, then we need to acknowledge that humans and nature are not separate entities and that we've always been dependent on each other.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.17 (after 1930)

1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law. 1932 – Bonus Army: Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits. 1933 – Union Station massacre: In Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash. 1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is executed in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison. 1940 – World War II: RMS Lancastria is attacked and sunk by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France. At least 3,000 are killed in Britain's worst maritime disaster. 1940 – World War II: The British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces. 1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union. 1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic. 1948 – United Airlines Flight 624, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board. 1952 – Guatemala passes Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land. 1953 – Cold War: East Germany Workers Uprising: In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion. 1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing 18 ironworkers and injuring others. 1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/acre in the 1863 treaty. 1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8–1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools. 1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm announced the Joint Communiqué to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed. 1967 – Nuclear weapons testing: China announces a successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon. 1971 – U.S. President Richard Nixon in a televised press conference called drug abuse "America's public enemy number one", starting the War on drugs. 1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee during an attempt by members of the administration of President Richard M. Nixon to illegally wiretap the political opposition as part of a broader campaign to subvert the democratic process. 1985 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-G mission: Space Shuttle Discovery launches carrying Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a payload specialist. 1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct. 1989 – Interflug Flight 102 crashes during a rejected takeoff from Berlin Schönefeld Airport, killing 21 people. 1991 – Apartheid: The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth. 1992 – A "joint understanding" agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II). 1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. 2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. 2017 – A series of wildfires in central Portugal kill at least 64 people and injure 204 others. 2021 – Juneteenth National Independence Day, was signed into law by President Joe Biden, to become the first federal holiday established since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

[whileiamdying]

How a Dream Came True: Young Jane Goodall’s Exuberant Letters and Diary Entries from Africa

BY MARIA POPOVA

When Jane Goodall (b. April 3, 1934) was a little girl, she was given a stuffed toy chimpanzee, whom she named Jubilee. From that moment on, little Jane and Jubilee became inseparable, but she especially enjoyed sitting with him on a tree branch in her family’s backyard, where she would read the Tarzan novels for hours on end. Like most children, Jane transformed the toy and the books into raw material for dreams — in her case, the dream of going to Africa to study the curious lives of monkeys. Unlike most children, she spent the next two decades turning that childhood dream into a reality by becoming the world’s most influential primatologist and the most celebrated woman in science since Marie Curie.

When she boarded the S.S. Kenya Castle one chilly spring day, 22-year-old Goodall was burning with exuberant enthusiasm for the work she was heading to Kenya to do. But she had no idea that this work, at first met with enormous resistance, would revolutionize not only our understanding of chimpanzees — her lifelong locus of curiosity and expertise — but our understanding of the complexities of all animal consciousness.

Jane Goodall with the young chimp Flint at Gombe (Photograph: Hugo van Lawick, Goodall’s first husband, courtesy of Jane Goodall Institute)

In a letter to her family penned aboard the Kenya Castle in March of 1957, found in the altogether magnificent Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters (public library), Goodall writes:

Darling Family, It is now 4 p.m. on Thursday and I still find it difficult to believe that I am on my way to Africa. That is the thing — AFRICA. It is easy to imagine I am going for a long sea voyage, but not that names like Mombasa, Nairobi, South Kinangop, Nakuru, etc., are going to become reality.

The first page of Goodall’s letter to her family from aboard the Kenya Castle

On April 3 — her twenty-third birthday — Goodall finally arrived in the dreamsome reality of Nairobi. Her first letter home brims with uncontainable gusto for the life she was about to begin — a life she had purposefully pursued since childhood:

I really do simply adore Kenya. It’s so wild, uncultivated, primitive, mad, exciting, unpredictable. It is also slightly degrading in its effect on some rather weak characters, but on the whole I am living in the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood.

Illustration by from ‘Me … Jane,’ a picture-book about Goodall’s childhood. Click image for more.

But the most fateful date in Goodall’s journey came more than three years later: On July 14, 1960, she arrived in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, where she would spend many years conducting the groundbreaking research for which she is celebrated today, and to which she still returns frequently in the course of her tireless environmental conservation work.

It was there that she met, named, and befriended the now-famous David Greybeard — the first chimp to overcome the fear of human contact and the generous gatekeeper who made possible Goodall’s research amid the chimpanzee community.

Jane Goodall with David Greybeard at Gombe

On her very first day at Gombe, Goodall saw her first chimp. It was a highly unlikely occurrence — at that point, scientists considered chimpanzees mysterious creatures at once wild and timid, nearly impossible to sight, let alone approach. In a diary entry from that first day, preserved by The Jane Goodall Institute, the young scientist captures the tremendous thrill of that miraculous event — a visceral affirmation that she was indeed living her childhood dream:

We woke at dawn … Left about 9 and arrived about 11. The fisherman were all along the beaches frying their dagga fish. It looked as though patches of sand had been whitewashed. Above, the mountains rose up steeply behind the beaches. The slopes were thickly covered with accacia and other trees… Every so often a stream cascaded down the vallys between the ridges, with its thick fringe of forest — the home of the chimps. The lake water was so clear I could scarcely believe it. Our tent was up in no time, in a clearing up from the fisherman’s huts on the stony beach. We had some lunch together, and then Ma and I spent an exhausting and hot afternoon setting things in order. I say exhausting because I had a foul sore throat, turning into a cold. Then, about 5 o’clock, someone came along to say some people had seen a chimp. So off we went and there was the chimp. It was quite a long way -too far to tell its sex or even see properly what it looked like — but it was a chimp. It moved away as we drew level with the crowd of fishermen gazing at it, and, though we climbed the neighboring slope, we didn’t see it again. However, we went over to the trees & found a fresh nest there. — Whether that day’s of the day before I couldn’t tell. We returned to the beach and walked back. We all had dinner together, and after long chats, & helplessly endeavoring to hear the news, Ma and I thankfully retired to bed.

Although 26-year-old Goodall was accompanied by her mother at Gombe — a requirement by the park’s chief warden, who was concerned about the young primatologist’s safety, and a reflection of what women scientists had to grapple with in that era — she continued corresponding with her relatives at home. On day three at Gombe, she writes in a picturesque letter to her grandmother Danny and the rest of the family:

We got here, Danny, on your birthday & mentally had tea with you — just after I had seen my first chimpanzee! I could hardly believe I could be lucky enough to see one on my very first day. We were quite far away, but at least close enough to know it was a chimp & not a baboon. There are lots of Baboon here — one Troop comes very close to the tent each morning to watch us. I went out yesterday afternoon to do a little exploring on my own and saw a beautiful bushbuck — a smallish animal, lovely reddish gold colour. He flew away almost from under my feet, barking like a dog.  The country here is quite beautiful, but very rugged. The little stream behind the tent rushes down the steep rock valley, gurgling and splashing down steppes of waterfalls. The water is pure and sweet — doesn’t even have to be boiled. 16 such streams flow down the valleys between the mountain ridges, & along their banks are the forest galleries, the home of the chimps. In between the mountain slopes are fairly bare — really it is ideal country for my job, though at the moment the task seems of a huge magnitude. We got here, Danny, on your birthday & mentally had tea with you — just after I had seen my first chimpanzee! I could hardly believe I could be lucky enough to see one on my very first day. We were quite far away, but at least close enough to know it was a chimp & not a baboon. There are lots of Baboon here — one Troop comes very close to the tent each morning to watch us. I went out yesterday afternoon to do a little exploring on my own and saw a beautiful bushbuck — a smallish animal, lovely reddish gold colour. He flew away almost from under my feet, barking like a dog.  The country here is quite beautiful, but very rugged. The little stream behind the tent rushes down the steep rock valley, gurgling and splashing down steppes of waterfalls. The water is pure and sweet — doesn’t even have to be boiled. 16 such streams flow down the valleys between the mountain ridges, & along their banks are the forest galleries, the home of the chimps. In between the mountain slopes are fairly bare — really it is ideal country for my job, though at the moment the task seems of a huge magnitude.

To see the passion and perseverance with which Goodall has dedicated her life to the accomplishment of that monumental task is nothing short of breathtaking.

Jane Goodall with David Greybeard at Gombe

Complement the altogether exhilarating Africa in My Blood, a trove of Goodall’s contagious enthusiasm and goodness, with the beloved scientist on empathy and our highest human potential, her answers to the Proust Questionnaire, and a lovely children’s book about her childhood.

[saintlydior]

all about reinvention

i pray that this will never be

my last bloom

i waited for this growth

yet

i still want to grow more

tall like a balete tree in national highway

as durable as acacia

and rare like lapnisan in the deepest jungles of southeast asia

i do not fear reinventions

but

i fear that i won't be able to keep

the people i have right now

in the process

of morphing myself into

something that'll benefit me

and my peace

at some point

i do not want to reinvent

myself constantly

perhaps i want to be better

scattering my roots freely

and bloom

& bloom

&& bloom

like a wildflower uncultivated

by the world's incongruities

[big-cat-safari]

Unveiling the wonder of Dhikala Canter Safari: A Wildlife journey Like No additional

Explore the uncultivated wonder of Jim Corbett National Park with the Dhikala Canter Safari. Bystander stately Bengal tigers and other varied wildlife in their natural surroundings. Pass through lush forest and scenic grasslands on the ship open-roof canter vehicle, creating etched in your mind moments in the heart of this iconic Indian animal’s refuge.

[thxnews]

Africa's Food Future: Transforming Agriculture Together

  "Harnessing Change" at the Borlaug Dialogue

Africa's food and agribusiness sector is poised to become a powerhouse, with a projected value of $1 trillion by 2030, according to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank. This exciting revelation took center stage at the Norman E. Borlaug Dialogue, an annual event held in America's agricultural heartland. This year's gathering focused on the theme "Harnessing Change," where delegates and panelists explored innovative strategies to bolster innovation, adaptation, and diversification, all while fortifying resilience and sustainability in global food systems.   African Leaders Rally for Food Security In a world where food security is a pressing concern, several world leaders are actively working to strengthen food production and food security across Africa. In a significant show of unity, they convened at the landmark global Feed Africa summit in Dakar, also known as the Dakar 2 Summit, last January.   Unlocking Africa's Agricultural Potential Africa, home to 65% of the world's uncultivated arable land, is paradoxically a net food importer. African leaders are determined to make their countries self-sufficient and even food exporters. With the global population projected to reach nine billion by 2050, the imperative to boost agricultural productivity in Africa has never been more critical.  

From Dakar 2 to Des Moines: African Development Bank's Vision

At the Borlaug Dialogue, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina took the stage to emphasize the achievements of the Dakar 2 Summit, an event organized by the African Development Bank in collaboration with the Senegalese government and the African Union. During this session titled "From Dakar 2 to Des Moines," Adesina highlighted that 34 African leaders had endorsed country-specific food and agriculture delivery compacts. These compacts outline action-driven plans aimed at ensuring food security and unlocking Africa's vast agricultural potential within five years.   Empowering Millions Through the Feed Africa Strategy These compacts align closely with the core objectives of the African Development Bank's Feed Africa strategy, which was launched in 2016. Since its inception, this strategy has already positively impacted more than 250 million people by providing access to improved agricultural technologies.   Investment Commitment for Food Security Adesina further disclosed that partners had committed over $70 billion to support these food compacts, with the African Development Bank pledging $10 billion over the next five years. The collective determination of African leaders at the Dakar 2 Summit underscores their commitment to ensuring the continent achieves food self-sufficiency.   Ethiopia's Wheat Success President Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia, who also attended the Borlaug Dialogue, celebrated Ethiopia's newfound self-sufficiency in wheat production and its ability to export wheat to neighboring countries. President Zewde pointed out that the African Development Bank's Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) initiative significantly contributed to this accomplishment. TAAT facilitated the distribution of over 100,000 tons of heat-tolerant wheat seeds, resulting in a remarkable 1.6 million metric ton increase in Ethiopia's wheat production in 2023.   The Role of Leadership Vice President Kashim Shettima of Nigeria underscored the importance of leadership in Africa's quest to achieve food security and sustainable development. Shettima emphasized that a nation's fate hinges on the quality of its leadership.   Combating Corruption and Fostering Investment Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Nigeria's Plateau State spoke about the necessity of addressing corruption and reducing administrative bottlenecks to attract investors. Mutfwang emphasized the importance of making investments in Plateau State a win-win proposition and called for streamlining the process for investors.  

The African Development Bank's Commitment

The African Development Bank has already dedicated $853 million to public-sector-initiated Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZs) and successfully mobilized $661 million in financing alongside co-financing partners. Together, these partners are investing over $1.5 billion to establish 25 agro-industrial zones and supporting ecosystems in 13 countries.   Inviting Investment in Africa's Agribusiness Sector Adesina extended an invitation to investors and stakeholders to confidently invest in Africa's food and agribusiness sector. He highlighted the strong political will and promising results on the ground, encouraging investment in the continent's food future.  

Champions of Change and Growth

The African Development Bank has been a stalwart contributor to the Borlaug Dialogue, with Dr. Akinwumi Adesina receiving the World Food Prize laureate in 2017 for his transformative work in the African food system. His achievements include combating corruption in Nigeria's fertilizer industry, securing resources for smallholder farmers, and enhancing crop and production efficiency.   A New Borlaug Laureate This year's Borlaug laureate, Heidi Kuhn, receives recognition for her farmer-focused development model and her remarkable efforts to revitalize farmlands, ensure food security, sustain livelihoods, and enhance resilience in conflict-affected regions worldwide.   Commendation for the African Development Bank's Initiatives Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn, President Emeritus of the World Food Prize Foundation, and Ambassador Terry Branstad, the Foundation's current President, lauded the African Development Bank's initiatives to feed Africa, acknowledging their significant contribution to the continent's food and agricultural future.   Sources: THX News & African Development Bank Group. Read the full article

[kumarshivam]

Embarking on an Unforgettable Wildlife Safari in India

When it comes to encountering the raw magnificence of essence and encountering magnificent animals in their biological habitats, periodic experiences compare to a wildlife safari. India, a ground of diverse terrains and prosperous biodiversity, offers some of the most captivating wildlife safaris in India. From dense woodlands to arid deserts, India's different topography is home to a superabundance of unfamiliar animals and birds that await finding on your subsequent wildlife excursion.

Exploring the Untamed Wilderness:

Wildlife safaris in India convey you to a planet where uncultivated jungle supremacies are supreme. One of the most iconic termini for such a background is the Ranthambore National Park, snuggled in the soul of Rajasthan. Here, the untouchable Bengal tigers roam voluntarily, their magnificent existence a scenery to behold. As you experience the park's deep forests, the buzzes of birds and rustling of leaves create a symphony of nature's hymns, making every juncture a sensory pleasure.

A Glimpse of Royal Splendor:

Further south lies the Bandipur National Park, part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, which proposes a various yet equally mesmerising safari understanding. The park's lush landscapes are home to flocks of elephants, graceful deer, and even the inaccessible Indian leopard. The lush greenery nourishes the excellent setting for these critters, as they proceed roughly their everyday habits, unaware to the watchful eyes of safari-goers.

Birdwatcher's Paradise:

For avid bird lovers, the Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur is a fantasy come true. This UNESCO World Heritage Site transforms into a vibrant utopia during the migratory season, as herds of colourful birds from foreign intersections of the orb converge here. With your binoculars in hand, you'll give birth to the prospect of smudging periodic species such as the Siberian crane, as they grace the swampland with their presence.

Roaming the Desert Wonders:

Embarking into the spirit of the desert, the Rann of Kutch offers a surreal adventure of wildlife safari in India. The extensive salt lodging arrives busy during the Rann Utsav, an artistic celebration that occurs simultaneously with the entire moon. Amidst the cultural carnivals, you can undertake a safari through the stark geography, catching peeks of the endangered Asiatic wild mule and witnessing the raw magnificence of a land shaped by the aspects.

Conclusion:

In a world where concrete wildernesses monopolise the horizon, a wildlife safari in India permits you to reconnect with nature's curiosities in its purest structure. From the regal tigers of Ranthambore to the vibrant avian inhabitants of Bharatpur, each safari proposes an unusual window into the realm of the wild. As you inundate yourself in these breathtaking terrains and meet the tremendous beings that shout them home, you'll be reminded of the delicate equilibrium that maintains vitality in our world.

So, whether you're a seasoned wildlife lover or somebody striving for a truly transformative journey experience, contemplate undertaking a wildlife safari with La Safaris India. As the sun sets on each day of investigation, you'll discover yourself inscribing extraordinary recollections into the material of your voyage, all-time donating to the preservation actions that protect these special habitats for ages to come. Welcome the buzz of the wild and let La Safari India unlock the entrance to a planet of biological wonders you'll cherish forever.

[infiniteglitterfall]

I mean, sure, if you get fed that level of disinformation, you're GOING to hate Israel.

Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid exposed Hamas as the ones killing civilians while looting yet another humanitarian aid truck. 70 of the 100 or so (not 150, thankfully) were crushed in the stampede or run over by panicking truck drivers trying to leave.

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Israel can't be a white colonialist ethnostate, because it's not white.

21% of Israel is Arab Muslims. Of the Jewish majority, more than half emigrated from MENA countries, or had already been there before any immigration started.

If you can claim that people who originally fled from the Middle East to Europe to escape waves of colonization and invasions (from the Roman Empire, the Islamic Empire, the Crusades, etc), and fled BACK because they continue to be a target of white supremacy, are white... then sure: About a third of Israel is white.

The statement that there were plenty of Jews in Palestine before Europeans invaded and kicked them out of their homes and lands and businesses for being brown is... a new one on me, I'll give you that.

There were 20,000-25,000 "Brown" Jews there in 1880; 35,000 "white" Jews immigrated from Romania and the Russian Empire in 1882.

The fact that they were largely fleeing incredible violence based on their ethnicity suggests that they were not considered white. So does the fact that white supremacy continues to target Jews based on both physical appearance and antisemitic tropes.

Either way, there's no record of the newcomers either invading, or kicking locals out of their homes. Not the local Jews, nor any other local populations.

Most of the [Jewish] land purchases involved large tracts belonging to absentee owners. (Virtually all of the Jezreel Valley, for example, belonged in 1897 to only two persons: the eastern portion to the Turkish Sultan, and the western part to the richest banker in Syria, Sursuk “the Greek.”)

Most of the land purchased had not been cultivated previously because it was swampy, rocky, sandy or, for some other reason, regarded as uncultivable.

This is supported by the findings of the Peel Commission Report (p. 242): “The Arab charge that the Jews have obtained too large a proportion of good land cannot be maintained. Much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased . . . there was at the time at least of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.” (1937)

Israel also isn't based in ethnic cleansing.

The U.N. voted in 1947 to partition this former Ottoman Empire land into Israel and Palestine.

The League of Nations voted to set the whole thing aside for Israel thirty years before that.

That's not ethnic cleansing.

The elitist, fascist, rich leadership that Britain appointed for the Palestinians did work toward ethnic cleansing.

But of the Jews. Not the other way around. And they failed to accomplish it.

Palestinians were deeply screwed over by their leadership. The most prominent one, Amin al-Husseini, became a Nazi war criminal.

He refused to prepare for Palestinian independence. He utterly rejected the entire idea of a two-state solution. The only acceptable solution, to him, was for the region to be wholly Arab.

So he persuaded the Arab League countries to first, organize armed militias to attack Jewish and mixed neighborhoods for months, and second, if that did not work: to invade and destroy Israel.

Those two actions were the cause of the Nakba.

For instance, there's an enormous amount of historical detail showing that the second-largest Arab community left before the war even started -- partly due to the violence from Arab militias, partly because al-Husseini's Arab Higher Committee told them to.

There's a massive amount of historical data about all of the cities and towns that Arabs left. But the vast majority of them simply left because they feared the war was coming closer to their homes. As anyone would if they were being invaded.

The only reason this isn't obvious is that only Arab Muslims and Christians, not Jews, fled.

But that's because Jews had nowhere to flee to. All the other countries in the MENA region were busy invading them, exiling them, or both.

And lastly, but most lengthily:

Palestinians haven't been undergoing genocide for 8 decades.

In 1947, when the U.N. voted to create Israel and Palestine, Palestinian leaders organized armed militias to attack Jewish and mixed neighborhoods, and organized Arab League countries to invade and destroy Israel the moment Britain pulled out.

The militias drove at least 100,000 Palestinians out before the war even started. Hundreds of thousands more fled during the war.

When the smoke cleared and the peace treaty was signed, those in what was now Israel became Israeli citizens. They have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen: Jewish, Druze, Circassian, Bedouin, etc.

About 66,000 had stayed in the Gaza Strip, and another 132,000 had moved there to avoid the war.

Egypt had taken Gaza in the war, and proceeded to largely ignore them and deny them either citizenship or voting rights.

(There were already no Jews in the Gaza Strip; iirc, they'd been forcibly removed by the Ottoman Empire during WWI and hadn't returned.)

Jordan took the West Bank, making sure to kill or kick out all the Jews there first. Everyone else who lived there or had fled there became semi-Jordanian. Jordan gave them citizenship, treated them decently, and, as a country, is still half-Palestinian today.

Egypt's treatment of Gaza sucked.

But it wasn't genocide.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel annexed the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, Gaza, and the West Bank. Gaza and the West Bank became occupied territories, governed by the Israeli Military Governate.

Palestinian workers took jobs in the agriculture, construction and services industries inside Israel, to which they had easy access. But they were under military occupation; and Israel built 20 settlements in Gaza over the next 14 years.

Even under occupation, the West Bank kept the mayoral system that it had gotten from Jordan, which gave it some independence and a way to develop its own infrastructure.

The occupation sucked.

But it wasn't genocide.

In 1988, Palestine declared independence.

At the same time, militant antisemitic extremists founded Hamas, with the mission of violently destroying Israel because Jews control the media, the world government, the drug trade, corrupt all societies, and want to use Israel to take over the world.

The First Intifada began with women organizing to create infrastructure and collective resources that would allow Palestinians to boycott Israeli goods and services, and strike from jobs in Israel, putting direct economic pressure upon Israel to negotiate with them.

Groups like Hamas added violence to the uprising: throwing massive rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israelis, and shooting them. Israel responded with violence: using brutal force to shut down protests, even breaking people's hands or shooting them.

But just like Gaza under Egypt, it did not become a genocide.

Within three years, Israel and Palestine were in negotiations that resulted in the Oslo Accords.

The Second Intifada, from 2000-2005, was much more violent. Palestinians felt that both their own government, and Israel's, had failed them. Hamas had spent the intervening time learning and growing.

In the First Intifada, Palestinians "still had a political project; the second manifested a pure despair that now distrusted politics. Hence, the second Intifada provided a context for a blood feast of suicide terrorism that sometimes seemed to seek death for death’s sake."

1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians died as a result.

2001 marked the largest number of Palestinian deaths at Israeli hands in any one year -- until 2023.

But that was not a genocide.

The massive number of suicide bombings during the Second Intifada is also why Israel began to build border walls.

In 2005, Israel unilaterally decided to dismantle all its settlements in Gaza and withdraw all its troops.

In 2007, Hamas staged a violent coup, kicking the Palestinian government out of Gaza and running it as a far-right fundamentalist dictatorship. This prompted both Egypt and Israel to close their borders with Gaza.

Hamas has started every single war Israel has been in since then, and broken every ceasefire they've had.

In fact, Israel has never been at war with Palestine.

Only with Hamas, in Gaza.

Hamas has been claiming ongoing genocide since 1988, with no examples or arguments for that.

Meanwhile, the population of Palestine has only grown, and its life expectancy is now equal to that of the U.S.

That's where the claim now, of almost 80 years of genocide, comes from: Groundless Hamas propaganda.

The Israeli Genocide Force has got to be the most pathetic "fighting force" in history. "Hungry people showed up to get an announced flour distribution, and we were so SCARED we had to kill 150 of them (many of them children) and wound a bunch of others while they were running away!"

If you're still pro-Israel, fuck you. Zionism as practiced by Israel is basically just Naziism directed at a different target. If that objectively accurate statement offends you, go fuck yourself; you're a shitty person.

And if you think it's antisemitic to oppose Israel and its nearly 8 decades of genocide against Palestinians, you're not worth even attempting a conversation with. Netanyahitler is not some kind of "Jewish pope," dumbass, and Zionist does not equal Jew.

Israel is a white colonialist ethnostate based on genocide and ethnic cleansing, and should not exist. Period. "But where would Jews go if not for Israel?" There were plenty of Jews in Palestine before Europeans invaded and kicked them out of their homes and businesses and land for being brown. If the white invaders have a problem with giving back what they stole, that's a them problem.

Israeli bootlickers and genocide enthusiasts try to frame Palestinians striking back after nearly 80 years of oppression as "violence against Jews," when it's no more "Jew-targeted violence" than Native Americans opposing the European invaders was "Christian-targeted violence."

Oh, and if you believe ANY Israeli propaganda after all the lies they've been forced to admit to, you don't have the critical thinking skills of a rock.

TL;DR: Love Jews, love Palestinians, hate Israel and the IGF with the passion of a million burning suns.