Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): There’s an infuriatingly common type of liberal who purports to oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza while also saying they support “Israel’s right to exist”, as though Israel’s existence is somehow separable from its genocidal murderousness. This is a state that literally cannot exist without nonstop violence and tyranny, as demonstrated by its entire unbroken history since its inception. It was set up as a
One of the most powerful critiques came from Dr. King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" (1963, before Ochs):
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
In fact liberalism has been dead for the last twenty years. There can be no liberalism where there is no thrust of intention to actually pursue liberal values. It has been replaced by neoliberalism which is the total collapse of liberalism. Nobody especially the media wants to about neoliberalism because it is the stealth ideology ruining western cultures. It is a form of economic fascism where wealth and power go straight to the 1%. It is no coincidence we are about to have our first trillionaire as neoliberalism makes it very easy to become wealthy and endlessly wealthier.
Canada's liberal government is in fact neoliberal as are all our other parties as neoliberalism erases party identities.
A stated goal of neoliberalism is to denigrate and marginalize the role of governments which they have achieved very effectively as they are no more than toadies to the vested interests that control them.
It is very well entrenched in our societies going back to the time of Reagan and Thatcher who were god parents to the ideology.
Until we face the destructive realities of what neoliberalism does to our societies progressive change is frozen and war and despotism will continue to prevail.
It is only one of several ruinous ideologies operating in the background that eviscerate our liberal and democratic values. The west has been hijacked by war mongers and greedy ideologues and politicians are their "useful idiots".
This is not surprising. The fake liberals have been doing this domestically forever.
If you spend time in the US you will find all these fake liberals that have been central to the creative of a country that persecutes its poor for being poor, exploits them, refuse them basic social infrastucture, has the worlds biggest police force chasing them on the streets, and a mass incarceration state that imprisons them at higher rates than any country they call a dictatorship. All of these things that add up to massive structural inequality - the fake liberals DEMAND them.
But everyone continues to let them call themselves liberal because they support abortion rights and they wave rainbow flags.
The so-called west is a mentally empty space. And the rest of the world cannot continue to afford this level of vapidity.
Even after his successive cave ins to Clinton and Biden(well, Obama), I still did not realize how craven Sanders was until I saw his reactions to Oct 7.
highly recommend you read "The General's Son" by Miko Peled. 2nd edition with a forward by Alice Walker, Just World Press, 2016. or watch Chris Hedges interview with him:
Spot on Caitlin, thank you!! Bernie needs to be reminded that he is not nor was he ever the human we all thought or hoped he'd be, perfect article, shame on him, again!
The U.S. might have had a legitimate (though immoral) strategic interest in Israel as an unsinkable aircraft carrier amidst oil-producing countries. However, vastly improved offensive and defensive rocketry since 1948 has made even that unsinkable aircraft carrier obsolete. The U.S. is now risking a regional war for no strategic purpose. Zionism jumped the shark with its rejection of a Palestinian state, encroachment in the West Bank, and now genocide in Gaza. Zionism is no longer useful to the U.S. Empire, although it continues to be for fund-raising politicians.
The upshot of the content: "israel" has NO right to exist. It predecessor role model that it has surpassed, 1933-45 Nazi Germany, was basically wiped off the map because the international community had decided it had no right to exist — leaving aside who started WW2 and what really happened.
Yet, that same international community is fine with Nazi Germany's successor state for the sole and only reason that is a Jews-only "state" because what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust - leaving aside the numbers and the facts — gives the so-called Jewish homeland the right to do what it wants. This defies all logic.
And, as Caitlin points out, the Jews around the world already have homelands. In other words, a separate, Jews-only homeland is not needed and is a crime against humanity.
Certain kinds of western liberals -- and there are many -- drive me nuts! Great examples are Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau who is one of the most lying, virtue signalling jerks you can imagine. Right in there with Hillary Clinton.
So disappointed in Sanders. My wife and I supported him in '16, but that was it. I wasn't surprised that he caved in during the '20 election; I was only surprised at the speed with which he did so.
I have heard many versions of Phil Ochs’ “Love Me, I'm a Liberal” over the years and it has been very adaptable to any decade; the covers invariably keep the last verse.
"where Jews are welcomed and kept safe." Well, how about where poor people are welcomed and kept safe? Because from where I sit there are a hell of a lot of homeless people who deserve housing and help and do not get it, and they run the gamut in terms of ethnicity. So one religion has to be kept safe above all others? Liberals are racist and classist and hide that truth from themselves.
You nailed it, Ms Johnstone. I closed my most recent post with the slogan "make 'israel' Palestine again", which may sound glib or reactionary to some, but it's actually a call for a 'one state's solution, with equal dignity and rights for all of it's people. If certain supremacist Jews don't like it, let them 'return' to America or Europe or wherever they sprang from.
One of the most powerful critiques came from Dr. King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" (1963, before Ochs):
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
In fact liberalism has been dead for the last twenty years. There can be no liberalism where there is no thrust of intention to actually pursue liberal values. It has been replaced by neoliberalism which is the total collapse of liberalism. Nobody especially the media wants to about neoliberalism because it is the stealth ideology ruining western cultures. It is a form of economic fascism where wealth and power go straight to the 1%. It is no coincidence we are about to have our first trillionaire as neoliberalism makes it very easy to become wealthy and endlessly wealthier.
Canada's liberal government is in fact neoliberal as are all our other parties as neoliberalism erases party identities.
A stated goal of neoliberalism is to denigrate and marginalize the role of governments which they have achieved very effectively as they are no more than toadies to the vested interests that control them.
It is very well entrenched in our societies going back to the time of Reagan and Thatcher who were god parents to the ideology.
Until we face the destructive realities of what neoliberalism does to our societies progressive change is frozen and war and despotism will continue to prevail.
It is only one of several ruinous ideologies operating in the background that eviscerate our liberal and democratic values. The west has been hijacked by war mongers and greedy ideologues and politicians are their "useful idiots".
This is not surprising. The fake liberals have been doing this domestically forever.
If you spend time in the US you will find all these fake liberals that have been central to the creative of a country that persecutes its poor for being poor, exploits them, refuse them basic social infrastucture, has the worlds biggest police force chasing them on the streets, and a mass incarceration state that imprisons them at higher rates than any country they call a dictatorship. All of these things that add up to massive structural inequality - the fake liberals DEMAND them.
But everyone continues to let them call themselves liberal because they support abortion rights and they wave rainbow flags.
The so-called west is a mentally empty space. And the rest of the world cannot continue to afford this level of vapidity.
The convenience of perpetual victimhood exploited by the convenience of spineless liberalism.
Even after his successive cave ins to Clinton and Biden(well, Obama), I still did not realize how craven Sanders was until I saw his reactions to Oct 7.
Oh, if Team R in general or Trump in particular were presiding over the genocide, liberals would suddenly find their consciences. Like magic!
Witness how bravely they condemned Trump’s sponsorship of Saudi genocide in Yemen, only to do a 180, once Biden was in charge.
highly recommend you read "The General's Son" by Miko Peled. 2nd edition with a forward by Alice Walker, Just World Press, 2016. or watch Chris Hedges interview with him:
https://youtu.be/CU0UcPKe9Ysi=9beGqPrmp42HB2Zv
Spot on Caitlin, thank you!! Bernie needs to be reminded that he is not nor was he ever the human we all thought or hoped he'd be, perfect article, shame on him, again!
The U.S. might have had a legitimate (though immoral) strategic interest in Israel as an unsinkable aircraft carrier amidst oil-producing countries. However, vastly improved offensive and defensive rocketry since 1948 has made even that unsinkable aircraft carrier obsolete. The U.S. is now risking a regional war for no strategic purpose. Zionism jumped the shark with its rejection of a Palestinian state, encroachment in the West Bank, and now genocide in Gaza. Zionism is no longer useful to the U.S. Empire, although it continues to be for fund-raising politicians.
I don't understand what anyone expects from liberals.........they are the milksops/knee jerk/thoroughly propagandized individuals.
At least we know the GOP is BRUTAL.
Another article that is spot on.
The upshot of the content: "israel" has NO right to exist. It predecessor role model that it has surpassed, 1933-45 Nazi Germany, was basically wiped off the map because the international community had decided it had no right to exist — leaving aside who started WW2 and what really happened.
Yet, that same international community is fine with Nazi Germany's successor state for the sole and only reason that is a Jews-only "state" because what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust - leaving aside the numbers and the facts — gives the so-called Jewish homeland the right to do what it wants. This defies all logic.
And, as Caitlin points out, the Jews around the world already have homelands. In other words, a separate, Jews-only homeland is not needed and is a crime against humanity.
Certain kinds of western liberals -- and there are many -- drive me nuts! Great examples are Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau who is one of the most lying, virtue signalling jerks you can imagine. Right in there with Hillary Clinton.
So disappointed in Sanders. My wife and I supported him in '16, but that was it. I wasn't surprised that he caved in during the '20 election; I was only surprised at the speed with which he did so.
I have heard many versions of Phil Ochs’ “Love Me, I'm a Liberal” over the years and it has been very adaptable to any decade; the covers invariably keep the last verse.
"where Jews are welcomed and kept safe." Well, how about where poor people are welcomed and kept safe? Because from where I sit there are a hell of a lot of homeless people who deserve housing and help and do not get it, and they run the gamut in terms of ethnicity. So one religion has to be kept safe above all others? Liberals are racist and classist and hide that truth from themselves.
You nailed it, Ms Johnstone. I closed my most recent post with the slogan "make 'israel' Palestine again", which may sound glib or reactionary to some, but it's actually a call for a 'one state's solution, with equal dignity and rights for all of it's people. If certain supremacist Jews don't like it, let them 'return' to America or Europe or wherever they sprang from.