I'm looking forward to a second Christmas season without a word from the pulpit by any of our Christian "leaders" about the genocide in the holy land. These gutless wonders can't get up enough nerve to call out the Zionists for their slaughter of Palestinians, including the Christian ones. Talk about motes and planks... What is wrong with them?? Whatever they thought they were teaching me in Sunday school and in the pews has amounted to nothing. Fuck the whole lot of them.
What can you expect from, for example, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, a bunch of atherosclerotic codgers with the humanistic perspective of burrowing beetles, who've exemplified their muteness on humanitarian issue for decades by remaining largely silent on the US embargo of Cuba, a largely Catholic country. Complete waste of protoplasm.
Yes, so many religious leaders are hypocrites. My wife left her church last year because the pastor refused to speak out against the genocide. Turns out she's in thick with the local Jewish group.
And those of us who aren't like that are powerless. We go to demonstrations, we speak out, we write, we boycott, we plead...what do we have to do to stop this insanity?
I, for one, refuse to vote for any candidate that supports this stinking genocide.
I have been a supporter of the "Right to Choose", and non-governmental interference with a woman's body all my life. However, I also believe the woman's choice should not be one taken lightly and there should be a reasonable window of time for the decision to be made.
Yet, here we are now: told to normalize a genocide because its more important to vote for a candidate who supports the "Right to Choose" - even though her party has done really jack shit to really fight for this important issue in the last few decades, but instead, has used it as a political football to garner votes while at the same time moving to the Right as fast as the party can when it comes to War, Corporate deregulations, Censorship, Torture, Environmental Exploitation, and further Exploitation of the working classes.
It's unacceptable. I too will not support any candidate who supports a genocide. If a genocide is not your moral redline, what is?
I think their goals is to let us get use to it which in my view, is wicked and inconceivable how can normal human beings get use to such atrocities? We shouldn’t give up on the Palestinians while they are still resisting the oppressive regime. The more we keep on talking about it, our "leaders " will eventually cave in. Those who are staying silent forget that one day table can turn…
Three deadliest words: “I’m a moderate”. Featured on front page of the Times online, a NC woman explaining why she, a moderate Republican, is voting for Kamala. It tells us what the Times thinks is important — the status quo, obviously, that America remain the nightmare to itself and the rest of the planet. And it tells us that the mentality of the Democrats and Kamala is stuck idling in neutral, somewhere in the 1970s, when there actually were moderate Republicans like John Lindsay. Most of all, it tells us few awake Americans to get off our asses and recognize that moderates and the Times are incompatible with real revolutionary change, that flapping jaws about choosing red or blue is just a profoundly deep pile of happy horseshit to slip on and fall into on the way to the empire’s demise.
Coming from a minority’s perspective I believe the majority is now realizing what America has always been which was known to most minorities. They and I have known the evil and the greed that America was built on and continues to forge with. This is a perspective you can find in the Global South. It is known to us as common knowledge. I would consider this time period as the Awakening of Americans. Americans have had such a privileged life compared to other countries that were forcefully subjugated by the U.S. for the U.S in the name of “democracy”. Falsely presenting to the American public for most of its history if not all of its history, that the U.S. are the “good guys” while every other country that doesn’t concede to American ideology are “evil”, barbaric, terrorists.
Right, Ari. And we, here in Australia, are constantly reminded that we are 'joined at the hip' with Uncle Sam and such being the case, must recognise that we are equally guilty. It's only a matter of scale; the crime of supporting and supplying the Israeli rogue state with its tools of death makes us just as reprehensible in our 'moderation' and with our mealy-mouthed 'voice of reason'.
As an American as a Veteran, I have so much guilt for being indoctrinated by the western propaganda even when I knew all of this information prior. I still wished and wanted to be proven wrong. Time and time again I was proven right. In my opinion now it is our time to hold the torch of truth and educate others, help people understand through the lies.
"How did that one incident, just by itself, not stop the world?"
Where were the pro life people when 4 babies were left to die during Israel’s genocide? I find most pro lifers hypocrites because they can’t let women decide what they need, but then they turn around and bitch about women who need financial help to bring those babies to life. Same with every hypothetical congress member who doesn’t want to give poor people aid, but has no problem with corporate welfare that costs billions more than any aid to the poor. I just hope that karma really does exist…
I always like to think that, when the rest of us are dead and gone in some thermo-nuclear holocaust started over profit margins, these c***s will be left to fight to the death over the last radioactive hamburger. I won't be there to see it, but the thought will comfort me in my last hours/moments.
True but notice how the category 'white' has expanded and now includes eg Israeli lives (if Jewish) , many citizens of poor countries if ruled by appropriate US backed dictators , some Europeans etc. Non-white lives are beginning to include almost everyone else and certainly has very little if any relation to skin hue .
Oh, I have. Whiteness was expanded to include the middle and even lower classes (whose skin would unavoidably be exposed to the sun), then -shock, horror - to peoples like the Irish... basically, expanding as it needed footsoldiers and supporters.
You've got to admit though, those Isrealis don't particularly look like the Semites at the pointy end of White Phosphorous Bombs.
Human life's worth isn't decided by woman's choosing whether it's convenient for them or not. It's the height of ethical irrationality to claim that non-viable infants being killed is fine so long as a woman decides it is but an atrocity if she doesn't. Human life is Human life. Taking it is unethical.
I think that you misunderstand something there, allowing this stupid phrase in as part of a defence of your position on a deeply complex issue. Perhaps it's because you moralise from afar... far away being a place where people like you don't have wombs.
Thankfully, outside of Dumbfuckistan, we've stopped squabbling about this.
Agreed. The desecration of Gaza is the cherry on the rotting cake of marauding western capitalist racism and we have been complicit beneficiaries. Israel is an American aircraft carrier masquerading as a country placed there right when it was conveniently noted that the Middle East was full of petroleum (sadly for them, not Israel, but the seas outside Gaza and Syria are full of the stuff) - a bona fide golem made of black sludgy mud of imperialism, the demonic resuscitated corpse of bygone eons of rotting carbon-based lifeforms.
It’s not who I am. I have protested strongly to powers that be and I voted accordingly, encouraging others to do likewise! I’m totally ashamed of America!
Yes - good for you. I am not American - and it is only the American people who can stop this horrid ethnocide which is achieving an ethnic cleansing. However - only the great orange wonder quips that he could have a seaside resort on the Gazan Mediterranean.
I, like Patricia, want to say it's NOT who I am. And I will keep protesting, no matter who wins the US election. I invite anyone to email me if you'd like me to supply you with little "Peace Bit" scripts each day which you can use to contact your legislators in the cause of peace. They're short. And they apply to legislators in various countries, not only the US. Email KathleenTempleTailor [at] gmail.com. Or subscribe to the archive of Peace Bits... There are hundreds of them in the archive, no two alike. To go to the Peace Bit archive, put in my name (Kathleen Temple) [dot] wordpress.com. --Does it do any good to contact our legislators? It helps to embolden their staffers, if nothing else. Also, do we want the war lobbyists to be the ONLY people our legislators ever hear from??
I've been getting direct messages on Instagram from multiple Gazans begging for help. How awful to have to resort to begging from random strangers on the internet. Every little aspect of life is practically impossible for them. Shaima told me she has to pay for access to a solar charger to charge her phone. I gave her the rest of what I earned from my last job. https://www.gofundme.com/f/qgdb2b-support-shaimas-family-in-gaza
Be careful of scams and frauds. There are morally reprehensible people out there that would exploit ANY situation for money. At this point, it's challenging to decide which are scams and which are not.
Yeah, I worry about that. I asked questions and looked carefully at her previous posts. And her account is followed by two other Palestinians that I follow. So seems legit. But everyone should do their due diligence.
Genocide decided my vote. Interestingly, even shockingly - no one writes about the achievements and absence thereof and platforms of any of the candidates. I wonder if a woman from Mars descended to earth in the midst of the political horse races - would she have any idea (besides genocide and climate catastrophe) what the platforms the candidates stand for? Would she ever know anything about capitalism? about the drift of wealth from the poor/middle class into the hands of the wealthy? about private equity buying up large tracts of residential real estate? about the destructiveness of organs like AIPAC have for our democracy? about what the people need and want? about the unipolar world? about the eternal wars and the ever fattening killing tools industry?....about DeJoy's dismantling of Ben Franklin's USPost Office?.....to learn about what a serious substantive political discussion sounds like check out Chris Hedges interview of Kshama Sawant....she's brings a clear conceptual framework to analyze what is - from a Marxist point of view and was absolutely fierce leading the battle for a $15 minimum wage, taxing fat tech companies, etc in Seattle, WA. Educational.
It is important to note here that, despite relentless propaganda from their corporate media and political leaders from both major political parties, a strong majority of Americans disapprove of Israel's war on Gaza and want the U.S. to stop supplying arms and military aid to Israel. See: https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx ) It remains to be seen how this majority disapproval affects the presidential elections tomorrow. If the results are less than clear, remember that both Trump and Harris have been disagreeing only about who backs Israel most strongly. This makes it impossible for voters to express their disapproval of the genocide without abandoning their concerns about the many other issues facing their nation in this election. (Not just grocery prices.) I personally voted for Jill Stein, primarily based on my government's immoral support for Israel's continuing atrocious treatment of the Palestinian people, but am not ready to condemn all of my fellow citizens and voters as heedless genocide supporters because they find it necessary to vote for one of the two genocide supporters likely to be elected to run their country. Such condemnation is better reserved for the criminally cynical elites running the nation's major political parties, its mainstream media, its universities, its Congress, its intelligence agencies, its arms manufacturers and all the other parts of the American establishment, who don't and won't listen to the majority American people and who have constructed a system in which they have no need to do so. You know all this, of course. But sometimes forget that moral condemnation lose can force when the brush is too broad and the available choices involved are oversimplified.
The people who are in charge in DC could care less if 99% of the American public wants to stop the genocide. I remember Cheney being asked directly if it bothered him that the majority of Americans were against the Iraq war and his answer was “so what?”. This election extravaganza is strictly a distraction to maintain the illusion we have a say in our government. Not one interviewer held Trump or Kamala’s feet to the fire to acknowledge they support Israel no matter what.
Unfortunately I remember clearly a British journalist spending a whole 50min explaining that the Vietnam war was lengthened & not shortened by the huge worldwide campaign against it . If true it is a perfect argument against any expression of opinion by eg any population . (It reminds me of when I was told that I should not attend certain political meetings because I talked too much/was too articulate/ had read too many books). So sorry for posting !
What would be the logic in "lengthening" the Vietnam war "because" of "huge worldwide campaign against it"? Why would that be a factor? There are multiple factors/reasons for why the US might have wanted to prolong the war, but I don't see the logic in how "protesting against a war" lengthens it.
Also, I wouldn't take ANY journalist at their word. I would need to do due diligence and critical thinking (based on my capabilities at the time...)
I think what was meant was that opposition strengthened the "we shall not be moved" attitude of the President . It doesn't have to be logical - it might just be childish/bloody minded !
Anyone that believes that "The truth shall set you free" has been gaslighted. The "truth" often traps you, makes you a pariah, excludes you from peer groups and society, and so many other things. I would love for someone to explain exactly HOW "the truth shall set you FREE" in the general context.
For 40 years I have spoken out against ITs treatment of the Palestinians. I continue to speak out and pray every day that justice will fall on the evil that has now become fully transparent. I have resisted and continue to resist what more can I do? I have contemplated taking my anger to another level and another outlet and will not get into details. The reader will have to use their imagination. But i must say it gives me some relief in spite of knowing anything I would do will not stop the evil train barreling down the tracks. I can only continue as I have been and hope and pray that this train and its passengers endup a smoldering wreck like Gaza.
I ask myself this question every day. How is it possible to regress to such a low point. The lies, the hypocrisy, obfuscation perpetrated not just by the ruling classes but the plebs in general. Our world needs a complete reset.
"How is it possible to regress to such a low point." - you will stop asking such questions once you realize that there's been no regression. It's always been that way.
I agree our dominant society needs a reset - for so many reasons. I respectfully disagree it has always been this way - or all societies carry out or tacitly tolerate such unconscionable actions by their rulers.
Wherever you are - when push comes to shove you won't recognize your family, your neighbors, etc. What's happening right now doesn't mean something happened to people. People have always been that way. The crisis just exposed it. Same as always.
People, by which you mean all, can be naturally evil, selfish, murderous etc but that requires the necessary environment and circumstances. Equally the moral opposite is true. What has changed are tipping points in disenpowerment, enpowerment and manipulation. Humans are a crude lot but not naturally and essentially as you describe. That view is a goal of systems like capitalism. Do resist it, good bot!
You describe a very simplistic and idealistic dichotomy. Without going into details I'll just say that proper religions figured it out long ago. If only militant atheists had less hubris and paid more attention.
I don't think that I have, actually; quite the opposite of a dichotomy. I say that people contain multitudes and are responsive to conditions. If anything, you descrive a simplistic monotomy: people are and have always been bad. I don't buy it
But militant athiests... agreed... they are too wrapped up in their unprovable beliefs. Ironic, huh?
Regress? Americans genocided 56 million people through our settler colonialism and stole 270 million acres of land through the homestead act alone. It is a continuation, not a regression. We must fit that piece into our puzzle of understanding because the puzzle isn't finished without it.
It is not true that everyone is just sitting and watching this happen. It does stop many of us in our tracks. Many of us write emails, participate in phone ins, go to demos. We do this because we see what is happening. The problem is the people we are writing to don't care about what we think. Our politicians are afraid of blowback from the Empire. And they are very interested in making money and helping their rich friends become richer. For sure there are people walking around in a daze, some even supportive of Israel's "right to self defense". But dwelling on those people and not looking at how we can resist is never going to solve anything. We need to resist in any way we are able to do so. Talk. write. Some people even put themselves in positions to be arrested to bring attention to the issue.
Yes! Thank you, Susan. "Resist in any way we are able." That's what I'm trying to do too. One thing I do is to supply my friends and family with daily suggested wording they can use on their legislators. Anyone can email me if they'd like to receive my daily "Peace Bits": KathleenTempleTailor [at] gmail.com. Or subscribe to the archive. Search KathleenTemple in the wordpress site. In that archive, no two Peace Bits are the same. (many ask, "does it do any good?" - well, does anything do any good? I don't know. But that's why I like what you wrote here, Susan T.)
I'm looking forward to a second Christmas season without a word from the pulpit by any of our Christian "leaders" about the genocide in the holy land. These gutless wonders can't get up enough nerve to call out the Zionists for their slaughter of Palestinians, including the Christian ones. Talk about motes and planks... What is wrong with them?? Whatever they thought they were teaching me in Sunday school and in the pews has amounted to nothing. Fuck the whole lot of them.
Didn’t Israel target the holy land last Xmas? And Christians sat on their asses and stayed silent!
Yes they attacked Bethlehem on Christmas 2023
They're afraid of losing their jobs. Just like everyone else. All enslaved by money.
Ideally, more people would wake up to these religious hypocrisies and question their leaders who portray themselves to be very religious.
Oh but they'll be sure to quote from the Torah at least once in every sermon they lay down in the year ahead.
What can you expect from, for example, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, a bunch of atherosclerotic codgers with the humanistic perspective of burrowing beetles, who've exemplified their muteness on humanitarian issue for decades by remaining largely silent on the US embargo of Cuba, a largely Catholic country. Complete waste of protoplasm.
Yes, so many religious leaders are hypocrites. My wife left her church last year because the pastor refused to speak out against the genocide. Turns out she's in thick with the local Jewish group.
Absolutely! Their hypocrisy is breathtaking. It always has been.
lol
The State and Religion have both shared in their authoritarianism
Both require you to accpe tand follow that authority without question
One reason there were religious wars
And those of us who aren't like that are powerless. We go to demonstrations, we speak out, we write, we boycott, we plead...what do we have to do to stop this insanity?
I, for one, refuse to vote for any candidate that supports this stinking genocide.
I have been a supporter of the "Right to Choose", and non-governmental interference with a woman's body all my life. However, I also believe the woman's choice should not be one taken lightly and there should be a reasonable window of time for the decision to be made.
Yet, here we are now: told to normalize a genocide because its more important to vote for a candidate who supports the "Right to Choose" - even though her party has done really jack shit to really fight for this important issue in the last few decades, but instead, has used it as a political football to garner votes while at the same time moving to the Right as fast as the party can when it comes to War, Corporate deregulations, Censorship, Torture, Environmental Exploitation, and further Exploitation of the working classes.
It's unacceptable. I too will not support any candidate who supports a genocide. If a genocide is not your moral redline, what is?
I think their goals is to let us get use to it which in my view, is wicked and inconceivable how can normal human beings get use to such atrocities? We shouldn’t give up on the Palestinians while they are still resisting the oppressive regime. The more we keep on talking about it, our "leaders " will eventually cave in. Those who are staying silent forget that one day table can turn…
We should never forget the mass murder of innocents. Never.
The best we can do is to continue to speak out, raise awareness, and boycott however we can. The number of people who're resisting needs to increase.
Understand why people are who they are and inspire them to be different. There’s no other way.
I don't understand it.
Have you tried to understand it, either by yourself or by consulting those working on exploring this?
Three deadliest words: “I’m a moderate”. Featured on front page of the Times online, a NC woman explaining why she, a moderate Republican, is voting for Kamala. It tells us what the Times thinks is important — the status quo, obviously, that America remain the nightmare to itself and the rest of the planet. And it tells us that the mentality of the Democrats and Kamala is stuck idling in neutral, somewhere in the 1970s, when there actually were moderate Republicans like John Lindsay. Most of all, it tells us few awake Americans to get off our asses and recognize that moderates and the Times are incompatible with real revolutionary change, that flapping jaws about choosing red or blue is just a profoundly deep pile of happy horseshit to slip on and fall into on the way to the empire’s demise.
Coming from a minority’s perspective I believe the majority is now realizing what America has always been which was known to most minorities. They and I have known the evil and the greed that America was built on and continues to forge with. This is a perspective you can find in the Global South. It is known to us as common knowledge. I would consider this time period as the Awakening of Americans. Americans have had such a privileged life compared to other countries that were forcefully subjugated by the U.S. for the U.S in the name of “democracy”. Falsely presenting to the American public for most of its history if not all of its history, that the U.S. are the “good guys” while every other country that doesn’t concede to American ideology are “evil”, barbaric, terrorists.
Right, Ari. And we, here in Australia, are constantly reminded that we are 'joined at the hip' with Uncle Sam and such being the case, must recognise that we are equally guilty. It's only a matter of scale; the crime of supporting and supplying the Israeli rogue state with its tools of death makes us just as reprehensible in our 'moderation' and with our mealy-mouthed 'voice of reason'.
As an American as a Veteran, I have so much guilt for being indoctrinated by the western propaganda even when I knew all of this information prior. I still wished and wanted to be proven wrong. Time and time again I was proven right. In my opinion now it is our time to hold the torch of truth and educate others, help people understand through the lies.
I see continuing zombiehood. It's quite disturbing in people you felt certain would never succumb. I just stay away from them
The babies. Exactly. What more is there to say?
World, November 5, 2024.
Current world population 8,186,360,868.
Desertification this year (hectares) 10,164,346.
Erosion of arable land this year (hectares) 5,930,315.
Forest destroyed this year (hectares) 4,404,995.
People without access to safe drinking water 759,512,491.
Deaths due to water-related diseases this year 713,241.
Toxics released into the environment this year (tons) 8,294,427.
Overweight people in the world 1,769,301,781.
Obese people in the world 873,832,295.
Undernourished people in the world 883,135,235.
People who died of hunger this year 9,472,476.
Children under 5 died this year 6,437,864 (21,107 per day).
Military Defense Spending This Year $1,476,121,090,663S.
Money Spent on Obesity Programs in the United States This Year $58,555,178,985.
Money Spent on Video Games This Year $102,559,881,901.
Public Spending on Health This Year $5,353,131,168,848.
Public Spending on Education This Year $3,546,977,947,740.
Internet Users in the World 6,396,425,094.
About fifty conflicts.
1% of the population owns over 50% of the world's wealth.
The poorest 50% of the population owns 1% of the world's wealth.
(www.marusi.org/pen.htm)
Take a bow, "free" market capitalism!!
Tragically not as it should and needs to be. Thanks for the numbers.
"How did that one incident, just by itself, not stop the world?"
Where were the pro life people when 4 babies were left to die during Israel’s genocide? I find most pro lifers hypocrites because they can’t let women decide what they need, but then they turn around and bitch about women who need financial help to bring those babies to life. Same with every hypothetical congress member who doesn’t want to give poor people aid, but has no problem with corporate welfare that costs billions more than any aid to the poor. I just hope that karma really does exist…
I always like to think that, when the rest of us are dead and gone in some thermo-nuclear holocaust started over profit margins, these c***s will be left to fight to the death over the last radioactive hamburger. I won't be there to see it, but the thought will comfort me in my last hours/moments.
Every white life matters...
True but notice how the category 'white' has expanded and now includes eg Israeli lives (if Jewish) , many citizens of poor countries if ruled by appropriate US backed dictators , some Europeans etc. Non-white lives are beginning to include almost everyone else and certainly has very little if any relation to skin hue .
Oh, I have. Whiteness was expanded to include the middle and even lower classes (whose skin would unavoidably be exposed to the sun), then -shock, horror - to peoples like the Irish... basically, expanding as it needed footsoldiers and supporters.
You've got to admit though, those Isrealis don't particularly look like the Semites at the pointy end of White Phosphorous Bombs.
Human life's worth isn't decided by woman's choosing whether it's convenient for them or not. It's the height of ethical irrationality to claim that non-viable infants being killed is fine so long as a woman decides it is but an atrocity if she doesn't. Human life is Human life. Taking it is unethical.
"...whether it's convenient..."
I think that you misunderstand something there, allowing this stupid phrase in as part of a defence of your position on a deeply complex issue. Perhaps it's because you moralise from afar... far away being a place where people like you don't have wombs.
Thankfully, outside of Dumbfuckistan, we've stopped squabbling about this.
Agreed. The desecration of Gaza is the cherry on the rotting cake of marauding western capitalist racism and we have been complicit beneficiaries. Israel is an American aircraft carrier masquerading as a country placed there right when it was conveniently noted that the Middle East was full of petroleum (sadly for them, not Israel, but the seas outside Gaza and Syria are full of the stuff) - a bona fide golem made of black sludgy mud of imperialism, the demonic resuscitated corpse of bygone eons of rotting carbon-based lifeforms.
Well said!
It’s not who I am. I have protested strongly to powers that be and I voted accordingly, encouraging others to do likewise! I’m totally ashamed of America!
Yes - good for you. I am not American - and it is only the American people who can stop this horrid ethnocide which is achieving an ethnic cleansing. However - only the great orange wonder quips that he could have a seaside resort on the Gazan Mediterranean.
I, like Patricia, want to say it's NOT who I am. And I will keep protesting, no matter who wins the US election. I invite anyone to email me if you'd like me to supply you with little "Peace Bit" scripts each day which you can use to contact your legislators in the cause of peace. They're short. And they apply to legislators in various countries, not only the US. Email KathleenTempleTailor [at] gmail.com. Or subscribe to the archive of Peace Bits... There are hundreds of them in the archive, no two alike. To go to the Peace Bit archive, put in my name (Kathleen Temple) [dot] wordpress.com. --Does it do any good to contact our legislators? It helps to embolden their staffers, if nothing else. Also, do we want the war lobbyists to be the ONLY people our legislators ever hear from??
If genocide is not a red line, you don’t have a red line.
As good a message, Caitlin, as you have ever written. Mind challenging
Well written.
I've been getting direct messages on Instagram from multiple Gazans begging for help. How awful to have to resort to begging from random strangers on the internet. Every little aspect of life is practically impossible for them. Shaima told me she has to pay for access to a solar charger to charge her phone. I gave her the rest of what I earned from my last job. https://www.gofundme.com/f/qgdb2b-support-shaimas-family-in-gaza
Be careful of scams and frauds. There are morally reprehensible people out there that would exploit ANY situation for money. At this point, it's challenging to decide which are scams and which are not.
Yeah, I worry about that. I asked questions and looked carefully at her previous posts. And her account is followed by two other Palestinians that I follow. So seems legit. But everyone should do their due diligence.
With her permission, I published our conversations:
https://open.substack.com/pub/zoemagnes/p/if-my-family-and-i-do-not-die-from
Genocide decided my vote. Interestingly, even shockingly - no one writes about the achievements and absence thereof and platforms of any of the candidates. I wonder if a woman from Mars descended to earth in the midst of the political horse races - would she have any idea (besides genocide and climate catastrophe) what the platforms the candidates stand for? Would she ever know anything about capitalism? about the drift of wealth from the poor/middle class into the hands of the wealthy? about private equity buying up large tracts of residential real estate? about the destructiveness of organs like AIPAC have for our democracy? about what the people need and want? about the unipolar world? about the eternal wars and the ever fattening killing tools industry?....about DeJoy's dismantling of Ben Franklin's USPost Office?.....to learn about what a serious substantive political discussion sounds like check out Chris Hedges interview of Kshama Sawant....she's brings a clear conceptual framework to analyze what is - from a Marxist point of view and was absolutely fierce leading the battle for a $15 minimum wage, taxing fat tech companies, etc in Seattle, WA. Educational.
It is important to note here that, despite relentless propaganda from their corporate media and political leaders from both major political parties, a strong majority of Americans disapprove of Israel's war on Gaza and want the U.S. to stop supplying arms and military aid to Israel. See: https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx ) It remains to be seen how this majority disapproval affects the presidential elections tomorrow. If the results are less than clear, remember that both Trump and Harris have been disagreeing only about who backs Israel most strongly. This makes it impossible for voters to express their disapproval of the genocide without abandoning their concerns about the many other issues facing their nation in this election. (Not just grocery prices.) I personally voted for Jill Stein, primarily based on my government's immoral support for Israel's continuing atrocious treatment of the Palestinian people, but am not ready to condemn all of my fellow citizens and voters as heedless genocide supporters because they find it necessary to vote for one of the two genocide supporters likely to be elected to run their country. Such condemnation is better reserved for the criminally cynical elites running the nation's major political parties, its mainstream media, its universities, its Congress, its intelligence agencies, its arms manufacturers and all the other parts of the American establishment, who don't and won't listen to the majority American people and who have constructed a system in which they have no need to do so. You know all this, of course. But sometimes forget that moral condemnation lose can force when the brush is too broad and the available choices involved are oversimplified.
The people who are in charge in DC could care less if 99% of the American public wants to stop the genocide. I remember Cheney being asked directly if it bothered him that the majority of Americans were against the Iraq war and his answer was “so what?”. This election extravaganza is strictly a distraction to maintain the illusion we have a say in our government. Not one interviewer held Trump or Kamala’s feet to the fire to acknowledge they support Israel no matter what.
Unfortunately I remember clearly a British journalist spending a whole 50min explaining that the Vietnam war was lengthened & not shortened by the huge worldwide campaign against it . If true it is a perfect argument against any expression of opinion by eg any population . (It reminds me of when I was told that I should not attend certain political meetings because I talked too much/was too articulate/ had read too many books). So sorry for posting !
What would be the logic in "lengthening" the Vietnam war "because" of "huge worldwide campaign against it"? Why would that be a factor? There are multiple factors/reasons for why the US might have wanted to prolong the war, but I don't see the logic in how "protesting against a war" lengthens it.
Also, I wouldn't take ANY journalist at their word. I would need to do due diligence and critical thinking (based on my capabilities at the time...)
I think what was meant was that opposition strengthened the "we shall not be moved" attitude of the President . It doesn't have to be logical - it might just be childish/bloody minded !
"British" is the key word there.
OK but in which direction ? I mean was he wrong because British or right because British ?
Since when did the people have any say in how things are run?
But if they did, would things really be that much better?
That is a different question. "The truth shall set you free, but first, it will piss you off."
Anyone that believes that "The truth shall set you free" has been gaslighted. The "truth" often traps you, makes you a pariah, excludes you from peer groups and society, and so many other things. I would love for someone to explain exactly HOW "the truth shall set you FREE" in the general context.
I'll give it a go, chokaski. Are you familiar with "if you don't lie then you don't have to have a good memory"?
yes, if informed and eyes opened.
That is a big "if".
i think it has been done and could be again.
For 40 years I have spoken out against ITs treatment of the Palestinians. I continue to speak out and pray every day that justice will fall on the evil that has now become fully transparent. I have resisted and continue to resist what more can I do? I have contemplated taking my anger to another level and another outlet and will not get into details. The reader will have to use their imagination. But i must say it gives me some relief in spite of knowing anything I would do will not stop the evil train barreling down the tracks. I can only continue as I have been and hope and pray that this train and its passengers endup a smoldering wreck like Gaza.
Me too ! Only a bit longer I think ? Since before the 6-day War anyway .
I don't see Israels neighbors doing anything about the genocide.
Well if they tried they would be facing the power and confidence of the US , would they not ?
Exactly. The question should be what can they do.
The question of how they got themselves into such an impotent position is another matter.
Divided and conquered. Same old playbook
I ask myself this question every day. How is it possible to regress to such a low point. The lies, the hypocrisy, obfuscation perpetrated not just by the ruling classes but the plebs in general. Our world needs a complete reset.
"How is it possible to regress to such a low point." - you will stop asking such questions once you realize that there's been no regression. It's always been that way.
I agree our dominant society needs a reset - for so many reasons. I respectfully disagree it has always been this way - or all societies carry out or tacitly tolerate such unconscionable actions by their rulers.
Wherever you are - when push comes to shove you won't recognize your family, your neighbors, etc. What's happening right now doesn't mean something happened to people. People have always been that way. The crisis just exposed it. Same as always.
Disagree that your generalisation holds.
People, by which you mean all, can be naturally evil, selfish, murderous etc but that requires the necessary environment and circumstances. Equally the moral opposite is true. What has changed are tipping points in disenpowerment, enpowerment and manipulation. Humans are a crude lot but not naturally and essentially as you describe. That view is a goal of systems like capitalism. Do resist it, good bot!
You describe a very simplistic and idealistic dichotomy. Without going into details I'll just say that proper religions figured it out long ago. If only militant atheists had less hubris and paid more attention.
I don't think that I have, actually; quite the opposite of a dichotomy. I say that people contain multitudes and are responsive to conditions. If anything, you descrive a simplistic monotomy: people are and have always been bad. I don't buy it
But militant athiests... agreed... they are too wrapped up in their unprovable beliefs. Ironic, huh?
maybe one can understand the pushing and shoving mechanisms and explain.
Regress? Americans genocided 56 million people through our settler colonialism and stole 270 million acres of land through the homestead act alone. It is a continuation, not a regression. We must fit that piece into our puzzle of understanding because the puzzle isn't finished without it.
"If the rule that you followed led you to this, of what use was the rule?"
It is not true that everyone is just sitting and watching this happen. It does stop many of us in our tracks. Many of us write emails, participate in phone ins, go to demos. We do this because we see what is happening. The problem is the people we are writing to don't care about what we think. Our politicians are afraid of blowback from the Empire. And they are very interested in making money and helping their rich friends become richer. For sure there are people walking around in a daze, some even supportive of Israel's "right to self defense". But dwelling on those people and not looking at how we can resist is never going to solve anything. We need to resist in any way we are able to do so. Talk. write. Some people even put themselves in positions to be arrested to bring attention to the issue.
Yes! Thank you, Susan. "Resist in any way we are able." That's what I'm trying to do too. One thing I do is to supply my friends and family with daily suggested wording they can use on their legislators. Anyone can email me if they'd like to receive my daily "Peace Bits": KathleenTempleTailor [at] gmail.com. Or subscribe to the archive. Search KathleenTemple in the wordpress site. In that archive, no two Peace Bits are the same. (many ask, "does it do any good?" - well, does anything do any good? I don't know. But that's why I like what you wrote here, Susan T.)