I support banning Zionism. I support Palestine Action. I support Palestine being Palestine again. I support Canceling U.N. Resolution 181. I support Gaza, Hamas, the Houthi's. I support Iran defending itself against Zionist Terrorists. I support Caity & Tim. HELP WANTED
I don't support banning Zionism. Everyone should have the right to express whatever opinion they want. But without the active, aggressive support of the state, including its media wing, this would be a minority opinion.
I think Mary is speaking about free speech in General? I do agree with her, I do not want our speech denied so...... When I was very young the KKK came to Evanston IL. to march in a high percentage Jewish population city with a very large temple. The ACLU went to court to return their right of speech. I assume Mary is suggesting this? Interesting though, fire in the theater. We are certainly on fire : (
Exactly zionism is not an "opinion" but a proven murderous genocidal anti-human cult. A cancer of humanity is israel, zionism, and its supporters (paid useful idiots who will be also eliminated later by zionists when no longer needed).
I remember that. At the time I thought, good for ACLU--defending free speech in an unpopular context. Then I found out that the town the Nazis wanted to march in (not Evanston I think) was known for having a high number of Holocaust survivors in it. And I said Wait a minute. This isn't about free speech. This is about cruelly harassing victims, traumatized people. Like some aggressive males wanting to run around in a rape survivors conference. Hell no.
As for whatever you might mean by practicing Zionism, here's how the Israel Palestine situation ought to be resolved according to me: those Israelis capable of living peaceably with their Palestinian neighbors should be welcome to remain in Palestine. Those who can't--90+%--should be deported, to move to wherever they're welcomed, mostly wherever each has kin.
Western freedom of speech and Democracy have been sacrificed to protect Israel our world as we knew it is being taken over only good thing to come out of it is that we can see it clearly !!!
It's just another zionist lie and some fools fell for it. We now have the job of reeducating them, so repeat it often "Europeans cannot be semites, nor can their detractors be be labelled anti-semites, or what they say be anti-semitism.
Yes. We're at the point of any/all governments on one side, and flesh and blood people on the other. Maybe I'll start capitalizing 'people', as a slight attempt at a wake-up call.
The 2020s have shown us what Collapse is, full on. Capital 'C'...
The Australian political-media class has exposed itself as a craven, racist, genocidal cohort of sycophants of Israel and the United States of America. Future generations of Australians will be sickened by this shameful phase in your country’s history. The genocide of First Peoples in Australia has never ended, and has now been extended to Palestine.
All these settler-colonial English speaking entities are historically genocidal corrupt entities like israel. That is why they support israel so much. They sold their souls for money and power. Look at the origin and history of USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Some have been liberated from UK genociders like India, Pakistan, South Africa, etc.
Well said Mr. Walker, and totally agreed. The hope is that future generations can learn from this and not repeat the same mistakes that lead to this point
Unreal the amount of power and political influence these racist fascist thugs have on western gov'ts. Especially in the orange freak's usa. Revolting. May the brave surviving Palestinians find peace and freedom one day free from the loathsome occupiers and oppressors. Long live freedom of speech, free from fascist corrupt amoral sycophants
As Mr Robot realizes halfway through the fight "you can't beat them. But that doesn't mean you have to let them beat you."
The reality is the wealthy and powerful own everyone and everything: media, science, medicine, academia, literature, entertainment, government, courts, economies, judges, markets...the fix is so deep and the mess so intertwined that to untangle and stop it would be like trying to separate the eggs, flours and sugar after you baked the cake. America needs Israel, it is a lifeline for the empire, a literal strategic arm and there is NO WAY to get it to cut off its arm. The US will sooner set itself on fire than say no to Israel and when it does that it will take the rest of the world with them.
So you can't beat them. But you dont have to let them beat you. You can still try to find a corner for yourself to be happy and thrive and make a difference in the world and lives of those around you without becoming collateral damage like Renee Good or Shireen Abu Akleh. There is no shame in wanting to live and there is nothing wrong with refusing to die for lost causes. Just sayin'
Sorry, I don't think this is the time to be worrying about our own comfort - and I don't see opposing genocide and my government's complicity as a lost cause.
Is it an uphill battle? Sure. Important freedoms and concepts like justice are always worth fighting for. I'll bet those Germans and French members of the Resistance recognised that they were facing an uphill battle when they fought the Nazis. But to sit back and wave the flag of surrender before the battle is actually fought is just weak, frankly, unprincipled.
I always liked the formulation: "We don't fight Nazis because we will win, we fight Nazis because they are Nazis." (from Chris Hedges) Feel free to substitute other genocidal, fascist, apartheid regimes for "Nazis".
it is not about comfort but about how you want to spend whatever little time you have left on this Earth. You have been opposing genocide since day one, and yet nothing has changed in Palestine, has there? They are still starving and shooting them under the cover of a ceasefire. What exactly has the Left accomplished in terms of working class victories and powerover the past 30-40 years? Nothing. Zilch.
The world has become less worker friendly, a handful of men own more than the bottom half, more wars and misery spread across the globe, inequality has risen to astonishing levels, Wall Street won and got bailed out and bonuses while Main Street had their homes foreclosed...the minimum wage is still 7.50 an hour, the poor still thrown in jail for petty crimes while the real criminals are running the country. You are more likely to get into Harvard than to find a job and more likely to be hit by a meteor than to get free healthcare at this point in this country. And that golden age is about to end for Europeans too after Biden bombed the Nordstream pipeline at the rate Trump is going.
And now we have been witness to a live streamed genocide with no end in sight. America is setting its constitution on fire to protect a foreign nation.
The Left accomplished NOTHING. The last candidate they had who ran on some modest left policies, like Bernie, was sabotaged and defrauded out of the nomination openly by the Dems who are about useful to the Left as the Vichy government was for the Resistance.
Here's the thing: fight all you want, but understand that if you manage to mount any sort of meaningful, effective resistance against them, they will come for you!!
First they will try and co-opt you (AOC, Mamdani...). If you dont play along, they will start threatening your reputation (Assange, MLK, Sanders...). If that doesnt work, then they will start the lawfare against you - debanking, throwing the might of the law, whose mechanisms they own, after you - charging you with espionage, terrorism...see Snowden, see Assange. Forcing you into exile. Or spend the rest of your life running.
Because they own the system and every mechanism and levers in it, they can just change the goalpost and laws to say whatever you do is terrorism and illegal and whatever they do is legal. We see it right now. They called Good a terrorist and a bitch before emptying 3 rounds in her face on camera and she wasn't even part of any resistance. She was just in their way....
And if that doesnt work, they will just kill you. Remember, these people had no problem emptying a bullet in JFK's head with his brains splattered all over his wife's Chanel when it looked like he no longer wanted to feed the military industrial complex. And he was the president and popular and beloved!!
See MLK: the moment he started talking about anything but white lunch counters, he got the same treatment. See Black Panthers who are designated a terrorist group and have been eliminated while the KKK is still around and active. Why do you think that is?
See Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and any kind of black resistance leaders. All dead. Or in in exile, or died in exile (Assata Shakur) or in prison for the last 50 years (Leonard Peltier).
And the population is buying it. See Russiagate and the revival of the red threat etc. As we speak people are cheering regime change in Iran to "liberate them". It is Iraq 2.0 now. No lessons learned.
So yeah resist, by all means, but recognize you cannot really beat them. And there will be a huge prize to pay if you try. And btw the Nazi regime was not ended via a grassroots movement. Or via the French resistance or any of that stuff.
And now they also have AI and tech and surveillance - none of which they had before. So good luck with that Revolution.
“it is not about comfort but about how you want to spend whatever little time you have left on this Earth” don’t kid yourself, you’re talking about comfort.
Is it your suggestion that the US civil rights movement achieved nothing and shouldn’t have bothered? Do you think many current black Americans agree with you? Out of the nearly 1.5billion Indians, are you aware of a single one who thinks they shouldn’t have opposed the British?
The left has accomplished nothing over the last fifty years because people like you bought the centrist arguments that resistance is pointless. And since the left had been winning most of it for the preceding century, things were quite good by the beginning of the 70s, so selfish and lazy cowards like you were able to say “well I’m fine, fuck the Palestinians and native Americans.” You are the problem Ginnie, people like you undermining everyone else’s efforts. If you haven’t the courage, decency and integrity to play your part in the struggle we are all depending on, at the very least stop trying to undercut those who do want things to improve.
Everything you say is totally true. But those in power want us to give up and be docile and submissive. Should we give them what they want? When black people in the Deep South got together and protested peacefully (and relentlessly), they DID change circumstances for their children and grandchildren. I think it is wise to warn people to stay within the letter of the law, but to still speak out while we can and still peacefully protest. The truth is the US isn't the powerhouse it used to be militarily and economically. It can't afford its aging mistress in the Middle East. Young Jews living in Collective West are alienated and reject Zionism - and hate the genocide being done in their name. We are not alone in this battle. This is not the time to give up.
You keep misunderstanding: I am not saying to give up, I am saying that the chances of beating them are very unlikely and that any fight you put up, will be met with utmost brutality and you risk losing your life. And peaceful protests will DEFINITELY not work. That is just ahistorical. You can't petition and beg and vote your way out of large scale oppression and this level of deep seated inequality and corruption.
I am exhausted from seeing so much injustice in the world and those who commit them get away with and the needle not moving a tiny bit in the right direction. I am tired of seeing what they do to people who manage to bring a modicum of justice to others, like Donzinger who got a judgment against Chevron and they sued him out of a license and his very life that he spent for years under house arrest under the orders of a private court no less, for nothing other than preventing the poisoning of indigenous people.
I dont see a way out via any of the methods employed these past 40 years. Again, I ask you, what has changed for the better for the Left in the last four to 5 decades? You bring up the Deep south and civil rights, but those didnt go down peacefully. The labor movement that gave rise to the New Deal was militant, not milquetoast as we see now with union leaders endorsing the two duopoly candidates and helping management break a strike.
You have to be realistic with what is happening and the path forward, the cost and clearly whatever has been done these past 50 years is not working.
Gullible (and stupid, and mean-spirited and racist) voters were easily persuaded to vote against their own interests just as long as someone else would be getting hurt. Apparently, there are more of them than there are of us. I'd still rather not be a CU next Tuesday.
I think it's much more nuanced than that. While the battle against fascism may be reminiscent of the one in the 1930's and 1040's, the world has changed enormously since then. Then there were about 2 billion people in the world and the precipitating issue was the Great Depression. We very likely face a great depression now but it's a minor issue compared to: there are 8 billion humans, most of them demanding several times the resources of each person then, and we're beginning to run out of resources, while capitalism depends on constant economic growth; climate change is bearing down on us, along with plastic and PFAS contamination; sperm counts and insect populations are falling by 1 to 2% per year; the mass of land mammals is approximately one third human, two thirds our livestock, and just 4% for all wild species put together. The response of governments to this crisis (sum it up as overshoot) range from Republicans and their like, just denying it and doubling down, to Democrats and their equivalents relying on greenwashing. Which means existential trajectories continue to ramp up unimpeded. Extrapolate a couple of decades and the question is whether a massive collapse of our economies will mercifully come before the collapse of ecosystems that renders us extinct along with much of the glorious fruit of evolution on this planet.
In the face of this predicament, the battle against fascism in relatively minor and short-lived. And, at least in the US, the fascists have spent 40 years figuring out how to clamp their hands to the reins of power. We can't win with some kind of old-fashioned battle. What we can do is withdraw our support from the Machine, by not working for a corporation and not buying from them. To prepare for a collapse, we need to do essentially the same thing: set ourselves up with livelihoods that involve self-sufficiency (ideally owning your own energy-efficient home, controlling your own water supply, growing some of your own food, ideally you have at least some energy source like solar panels); engaging in local trades that don't necessarily involve money but build community; instead of one well-paid job in your household you have multiple self-controlled income streams. Example: when you need to fix your roof or your car, instead of paying someone else to do it because you're too busy working a job you hate, you learn how to repair your roof and do it yourself, thus saving quite a bit of money, and now you have a new skill you can trade for something else you need that you can't provide yourself. When you do have to buy things, choose a farmers market or local one-off mom-and-pop over some international behemoth.
Here I note that many of these things are legally problematic if you live in a city--maybe you need a license to fix a roof, and a permit. But as collapse advances, such rules will be increasingly ignored.
What I recommend here is not a transition you can make overnight or in one year but it simultaneously gives you security and peace, and allows you to engage in a boycott or general strike in the most effective fashion--where you NEVER BUY FROM THAT CORPORATION AGAIN). And it helps recreate the kind of community that can weather whatever is coming.
So, this looks a lot like Ginnie's suggestion of retreat. Except--we also need to each do what we can to oppose whatever stupid destructive fossil fuel or data center or other project is proposed for our area, that would add to the crisis. And, we need to impede the fascist juggernaut, whether it's Palestine or ICE rounding people up--at least speaking out about it.
Mary, your post is so full of holes I hardly know where to start addressing them.
“Fix your own roof instead of working a job you hate”. My husband is capable of building an entire home, which he did for us with the assistance of his family. But we didn’t get the means to do it by growing a money tree. And yeah, he worked for a corporation—General Motors—- for 35 years in order to have the income, a pension, and our healthcare.
He’s also built several outbuildings on his own, including beautiful digs for my horse.
Roofing materials ain’t free!
You clearly know NOTHING about automobiles. Even an experienced mechanic like my husband does not have the equipment to work on a modern vehicle. He’s restoring our ‘68 Camaro, which is a whole ‘nother animal and has been working on cars since he was a teenager. But newer vehicles are all but impossible even for the accomplished home mechanic.
We have a farm and grow the majority of our own fruits and vegetables but tell that to some poor slob in some shithole like NYC.
Getcher uninformed and totally unrealistic head outta the clouds!
I’m from a generation in which boys learned the skills to become men. And thanks to my father’s foresight, I learned a few myself as a young girl.
Try to get a 30-year-old off their phone long enough to construct a home or even till a garden!
I am an expert finisher/refinisher of wood; can finish drywall; perfectly paint both interiors/exteriors.
I also wield a mean chainsaw and big ol’ Ford tractor outdoors 😉 and am a retired landscaper. That 30-year-old couldn’t keep up with me in a million years.
Yeah, French Revolution is a cracking example. She didn’t buy my examples of “countries that have liberated themselves from colonialism;” still poorer than their former colonisers so their independence doesn’t count, apparently.
Because they are not truly free. Formal independence means nothing when imperial domination continues by via means. Europe has long exploited these nations - and still does- through unequal trade, and institutions like the IMF and World Bank that trap them in structural adjustment programs giving out loans that force countries to reshape their economies to serve Western interests in exchange for “aid,” all at the expense of their own people. Look at how those people actually live. That is not freedom.
The French Revolution confronted entrenched power with methods that are almost unthinkable today - and widely condemned now - but they reflected a recognition that entrenched elites rarely relinquish power voluntarily.
And how did we come here. It did not happen over night. It was obvious 50 years ago and more. But humans are lazy conformists who will not stand for right and justice until it becomes almost too late. A well known human curse. zionists may have won few battles (against unarmed civilians) but those coward ghouls I am convinced have lost the war. It is just a matter of time.
So you mean like, keep your head down, and as long as you’re personally safe, don’t stick your neck out for anyone else? And then complain in astonishment when nobody comes to stick up for you?
We said that months ago here. We are all Palestinians now. Whether you like it or not zionists will come after each of us humans using other humans as useful idiots. Few humans will be left alive to serve satanic radical zionist jewish cult.
yeah...and they are all dead!! That the establishment will give you....they are more than happy to accommodate.
Again, fight, but remember it comes at a steep cost with a very slight chance of any meaningful return. If that is your thing, I am not saying dont do it.
On a factual level, they aren’t all dead yet. If you hadn’t noticed the conflict in Palestine is still happening. And Native Americans, while they now have a load of white people living on their land, are still alive and their cultures are preserved. And these are two of the only territories still governed by their colonial invaders.
Throughout Africa, Asia and South America the indigenous people ultimately beat off their oppressors. Yeah, the countries are still at a global level managed and owned by empires, but this is no different to Britain and Australia. Go ask the people of Nigeria, South Africa, India whether they want their European overlords back, or whether maybe they ought to have placidly surrendered and accepted their extinction as you seem to be suggesting.
Yeah these definitely sound like success stories. We can see how free the peoples of Africa and South America are. How liberated and not at all just either immiserated or being exploited and starved to prop up Western corporations. I bet those kids working Diamond and rare earth mineral mines for Musk would disagree with you about how great their livers are going now that they are no longer officially slaves and colonies of European empires.
And let's talk about US natives: confined to reservations that look like third world slums with highest disease and mortality rates and lacking infrastructure. They definitely made it. I guess if barely holding on is a measure of success I can see why you would think they are doing well. But the reality is, they are still building pipelines through their lands. Remember all the people protesting cop city? Charged with terrorism for handing out flyers. And let's not forget Tortuguita, who was shot 57 times with military-grade assault rifles while sitting cross legged, hands raised protesting the Copy City forest encampment in Atlanta. Cop city is destroying the Weelaunee Forest and building a deadly police militarization center.
This is what they do with the resistance.
I am not saying not to fight, I am saying it will come at a huge prize and that ultimately you wont be able to beat them like that.
No I am saying it wont make a difference. And that whatever meager change comes at a huge price. I wont tell you to not pay that price. By all means...
Give in, surrender, capitulate, resistance is futile, you cannot resist the power of the dark side Luke, that kind of vibe? Just stand there quietly while I execute you?
Actually to be fair your point is more “just stand there quietly while I execute them, I definitely promise you’re not next.”
I keep saying “who do you think is going to stand up for you if you won’t stand up for them?” Seriously what is your response? Are you surrendering, or do you think if you betray everyone else some miracle will save you?
Bravo Amos. That is how real self-respecting human should be. What do we live our lives for? To make it better and more just for our children. Fuck israel and all its supporters and ghouls. May those murderous cowardly a$$holes also burn in hell for eternity.
but you cant beat them. Stop quoting fantasy black and white/good and evil movies for children dude. It's not as simple as who will save you. Again, do fight but recognize it will come at a cost and any meaningful resistance will be met with an equally meaningful harsh response. You have to be very clear on that before you put on your superhero cape! (and please do feel free to point to any meaningful successes and push back against the oligarchs for the last 40 years). What has all the activism achieved for working people? Less wars? More wealth for workers? Like...what? That's a lifetime to be engaged in activism and not be able to show anything for it.
I am not saying to not fight for what you want, I am saying be prepared to lose. Also, I dont think dying for lost causes is courageous. And refusing to die for them cowardly...
ya because most people dont wanna die and be ruined! Look what they did to Assange. Not wanting to die and suffering endlessly these 5 minutes you got on Earth are not cowardly. That's the propaganda they sell you in movies. That said, if that is the path you choose to take, I am certainly not stopping you. But let's be clear it will come at a massive prize and extremely low return.
That is the difference between people like you and people like the rest of us commenting on this thread. We don't see that fighting for the injustice being done to the Palestinians is a "lost cause." Why do you think the Zionist Israelis are coming out from behind their curtain? Why did they draft the Legislation saying speaking against Zionism was "hate speech?" They are running scared. They know that young people have turned against them. They know that lots of justice and peace loving Jews have turned against them. They know that their strategy to conflact Zionism with Judiasim isn't working - That people know the difference between genocidal sociopaths and decent, moral, anti-genocidal Jews. They are losing, and you are saying give up? Your persistence is starting to make you sound like a troll. Is that what you are doing? Initially, I didn't think that. But now, I have my doubts.
This is very true - we only have to remember votes for women, the civil rights movement and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. And of coiurse reactionary forces are always waiting to claw any gains back.
Great narrative. You nailed it in all the right places. New ideas however, can come along and dig up old soils.
Remember that Darwin, only a few centuries ago, was faced with the almost impossible task of convincing humanity that Homo Sapiens were more ape-like than God-like.
The opposition he
Must have faced must have been like climbing Mount Everest, yet, as half the population of humans now believe, his theories were adopted and have become quite normal.
We can change, and we must change. Otherwise, there may soon be no one left to change anything. Extinction is on our menu, and we need to remove it, or it will remove us.
I dont know. it's probably good for the planet and all life on it if humans werent around to keep burning it down. And you know they wont stop - they wont stop until they set the whole thing on fire.
No. This is not true. It's true of the sociopaths who run the whole world now--it's true of the sociopathic CULTURE that has taken over nearly the whole world--but it's not human nature. Or rather our nature is plastic, we have both aggressive and competitive impulses and cooperative empathetic ones. Which predominates depends on CULTURE, and when this increasingly mad, toxic one collapse--soon--we all need to work to see our local cultures develop along healthier lines. There is work to do. It isn't easy. Don't give up.
not human nature? Have you not studied history? When has human nature ever created an equitable peaceful world? The current period is the most peaceful and equitable we have ever been in. The norm is oppression, royalty, feudalism. Are you kidding? May I acquaint you with the torture methods of Medieval Europe? This is so naive that it is almost quaint. Human nature has never been peaceful and cooperative.
This is incorrect. Check into what anthropologists say based on the most recent research. Yup, if you study human HISTORY, the last few thousand years in which the culture based on domination has held sway, as told by the victors who were the ones with pens in their hands, it's been one long tale of violence and domination. But the evidence from the hundred thousand years before that is that the forager bands had little warfare and were egalitarian and in tune with the rest of the web of life. Evidence of relative health based on skeletons shows that the advent of agriculture, which enabled but did not cause stratification, led to a decline in health. Dark ages are also depicted as horrible--by the people with pens in their hands, and for them it was a horrific loss of privilege--they had to scrabble in the dirt for their bread like everyone else. But ordinary people thrived--now they didn't have to pay tribute to the Lords.
most people are not political or well versed in history and politics and generally many people are just fundamentally ignorant, gullible and conformists. It's like the Matrix where everyone is so plugged into the system and the integration is so manifold and fundamental that unplugging is hard, if not impossible and existential. Most people are blue pilled and ok with that. It is hard to yank them out of the system they are so integrated in and see things for what they are. Ever seen They Live? it's like that.
Palestine is the tip of the spear for humanity's liberation and we have to make the best use of it that we can. The alternative is powerful and unthinkable.
Hopefully you Aussie's are louder and more willfully defiant than those of us on the other side of the ocean who have an orange headed fool ruling us and criminalizing anyone who has brown or black skin, and destroying as much of the rest of the planet he can get away with. Free Palestine! Free Free Free Free Palestine!
We should use the laws to also target hate groups like Chabad. These groups that espouse anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred and fund Israeli genocide and illegal settlements
I support banning Zionism. I support Palestine Action. I support Palestine being Palestine again. I support Canceling U.N. Resolution 181. I support Gaza, Hamas, the Houthi's. I support Iran defending itself against Zionist Terrorists. I support Caity & Tim. HELP WANTED
I support the world turning against zionist violence against unarmed people. I support world leaders turning against zionist domination.
I don't support banning Zionism. Everyone should have the right to express whatever opinion they want. But without the active, aggressive support of the state, including its media wing, this would be a minority opinion.
Mary:
Expressing an opinion on Zionazi-ism is one thing.
Putting it in practice is quite another.
AND ZIONAZI-ISM MUST BE BANNED.
Period.
I think Mary is speaking about free speech in General? I do agree with her, I do not want our speech denied so...... When I was very young the KKK came to Evanston IL. to march in a high percentage Jewish population city with a very large temple. The ACLU went to court to return their right of speech. I assume Mary is suggesting this? Interesting though, fire in the theater. We are certainly on fire : (
Hi Landru
Free speech is one thing.
Putting something in practice is quite another, as I said.
Zionism is a murderous ideology that must be wiped off the face of the earth!!!
Exactly zionism is not an "opinion" but a proven murderous genocidal anti-human cult. A cancer of humanity is israel, zionism, and its supporters (paid useful idiots who will be also eliminated later by zionists when no longer needed).
Straight up Nick!👍
I say, WE eliminate them!
I remember that. At the time I thought, good for ACLU--defending free speech in an unpopular context. Then I found out that the town the Nazis wanted to march in (not Evanston I think) was known for having a high number of Holocaust survivors in it. And I said Wait a minute. This isn't about free speech. This is about cruelly harassing victims, traumatized people. Like some aggressive males wanting to run around in a rape survivors conference. Hell no.
As for whatever you might mean by practicing Zionism, here's how the Israel Palestine situation ought to be resolved according to me: those Israelis capable of living peaceably with their Palestinian neighbors should be welcome to remain in Palestine. Those who can't--90+%--should be deported, to move to wherever they're welcomed, mostly wherever each has kin.
I am interested if I have your take on the argument correct. See my reply to our friend Gypsy33.
see abo ve
reinstate un resolution 3379.
UN is useless. One needs free world (non-west) to unite. Only brute force will stop zionists.
I volunteer Chuck,
And being Murkin, I’ll defend my right to free speech with the business end of a thirty-ought-six.
You said it, Caitlin -> Fuck Israel (and Zionists and Zionist suppporters), Free Palestine!
F F The IOF, F F the IDF
Chang my friend, are you blocking me? It seems I can not like your comment however, I am replying with a LIKE : )
Western freedom of speech and Democracy have been sacrificed to protect Israel our world as we knew it is being taken over only good thing to come out of it is that we can see it clearly !!!
How is it possible for Semites to be antisemites?
How is it possible for Europeans to be Semites even though their DNA contains no Semitic DNA??
It doesn't get any more anti-Semitic than Zionism!!!
It's just another zionist lie and some fools fell for it. We now have the job of reeducating them, so repeat it often "Europeans cannot be semites, nor can their detractors be be labelled anti-semites, or what they say be anti-semitism.
It makes no sense
It does if you're a lying zionist out to rule the world.
Thanks for not capitalizing the z-word.
Every little gesture helps.
: ) I include the u.s. , israel, uk, eu etc. : )
Yes. We're at the point of any/all governments on one side, and flesh and blood people on the other. Maybe I'll start capitalizing 'people', as a slight attempt at a wake-up call.
The 2020s have shown us what Collapse is, full on. Capital 'C'...
It's a good question.
The Australian political-media class has exposed itself as a craven, racist, genocidal cohort of sycophants of Israel and the United States of America. Future generations of Australians will be sickened by this shameful phase in your country’s history. The genocide of First Peoples in Australia has never ended, and has now been extended to Palestine.
Could not agree more, Stephen. The utterly gutless duopoly government and mainstream media prostrate themselves before the 'threatened'
delicate little zionazis, caving in on every issue. On this 'day of mourning', I'd like to light a candle for each of the 71,000+ victims in Gaza.
All these settler-colonial English speaking entities are historically genocidal corrupt entities like israel. That is why they support israel so much. They sold their souls for money and power. Look at the origin and history of USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Some have been liberated from UK genociders like India, Pakistan, South Africa, etc.
Well said Mr. Walker, and totally agreed. The hope is that future generations can learn from this and not repeat the same mistakes that lead to this point
Unreal the amount of power and political influence these racist fascist thugs have on western gov'ts. Especially in the orange freak's usa. Revolting. May the brave surviving Palestinians find peace and freedom one day free from the loathsome occupiers and oppressors. Long live freedom of speech, free from fascist corrupt amoral sycophants
Well said and agreed!
Israel abuses the world.
“Israel abuses the world” , to put it as mildly as can be. Terrorizing might be a more appropriate word.
Thank you Caitlin. This is so true.🇵🇸☮️🙏
As Mr Robot realizes halfway through the fight "you can't beat them. But that doesn't mean you have to let them beat you."
The reality is the wealthy and powerful own everyone and everything: media, science, medicine, academia, literature, entertainment, government, courts, economies, judges, markets...the fix is so deep and the mess so intertwined that to untangle and stop it would be like trying to separate the eggs, flours and sugar after you baked the cake. America needs Israel, it is a lifeline for the empire, a literal strategic arm and there is NO WAY to get it to cut off its arm. The US will sooner set itself on fire than say no to Israel and when it does that it will take the rest of the world with them.
So you can't beat them. But you dont have to let them beat you. You can still try to find a corner for yourself to be happy and thrive and make a difference in the world and lives of those around you without becoming collateral damage like Renee Good or Shireen Abu Akleh. There is no shame in wanting to live and there is nothing wrong with refusing to die for lost causes. Just sayin'
Sorry, I don't think this is the time to be worrying about our own comfort - and I don't see opposing genocide and my government's complicity as a lost cause.
Is it an uphill battle? Sure. Important freedoms and concepts like justice are always worth fighting for. I'll bet those Germans and French members of the Resistance recognised that they were facing an uphill battle when they fought the Nazis. But to sit back and wave the flag of surrender before the battle is actually fought is just weak, frankly, unprincipled.
Yes indeed. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said of Hitler: "we must go on with our work and opose him whether we are successful or not".
I always liked the formulation: "We don't fight Nazis because we will win, we fight Nazis because they are Nazis." (from Chris Hedges) Feel free to substitute other genocidal, fascist, apartheid regimes for "Nazis".
Jennifer, as he said before his execution…
Yes indeed. No one said opposing Nazis is easy.....
Of course not Jennifer.
Neither is opposing Zionazi-ism which nonetheless must be done.
And I would die to defend my right to do so (unlike Ginnie).
That’s called PATRIOTISM!
That should be two "p"s in oppose!
it is not about comfort but about how you want to spend whatever little time you have left on this Earth. You have been opposing genocide since day one, and yet nothing has changed in Palestine, has there? They are still starving and shooting them under the cover of a ceasefire. What exactly has the Left accomplished in terms of working class victories and powerover the past 30-40 years? Nothing. Zilch.
The world has become less worker friendly, a handful of men own more than the bottom half, more wars and misery spread across the globe, inequality has risen to astonishing levels, Wall Street won and got bailed out and bonuses while Main Street had their homes foreclosed...the minimum wage is still 7.50 an hour, the poor still thrown in jail for petty crimes while the real criminals are running the country. You are more likely to get into Harvard than to find a job and more likely to be hit by a meteor than to get free healthcare at this point in this country. And that golden age is about to end for Europeans too after Biden bombed the Nordstream pipeline at the rate Trump is going.
And now we have been witness to a live streamed genocide with no end in sight. America is setting its constitution on fire to protect a foreign nation.
The Left accomplished NOTHING. The last candidate they had who ran on some modest left policies, like Bernie, was sabotaged and defrauded out of the nomination openly by the Dems who are about useful to the Left as the Vichy government was for the Resistance.
Here's the thing: fight all you want, but understand that if you manage to mount any sort of meaningful, effective resistance against them, they will come for you!!
First they will try and co-opt you (AOC, Mamdani...). If you dont play along, they will start threatening your reputation (Assange, MLK, Sanders...). If that doesnt work, then they will start the lawfare against you - debanking, throwing the might of the law, whose mechanisms they own, after you - charging you with espionage, terrorism...see Snowden, see Assange. Forcing you into exile. Or spend the rest of your life running.
Because they own the system and every mechanism and levers in it, they can just change the goalpost and laws to say whatever you do is terrorism and illegal and whatever they do is legal. We see it right now. They called Good a terrorist and a bitch before emptying 3 rounds in her face on camera and she wasn't even part of any resistance. She was just in their way....
And if that doesnt work, they will just kill you. Remember, these people had no problem emptying a bullet in JFK's head with his brains splattered all over his wife's Chanel when it looked like he no longer wanted to feed the military industrial complex. And he was the president and popular and beloved!!
See MLK: the moment he started talking about anything but white lunch counters, he got the same treatment. See Black Panthers who are designated a terrorist group and have been eliminated while the KKK is still around and active. Why do you think that is?
See Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and any kind of black resistance leaders. All dead. Or in in exile, or died in exile (Assata Shakur) or in prison for the last 50 years (Leonard Peltier).
And the population is buying it. See Russiagate and the revival of the red threat etc. As we speak people are cheering regime change in Iran to "liberate them". It is Iraq 2.0 now. No lessons learned.
So yeah resist, by all means, but recognize you cannot really beat them. And there will be a huge prize to pay if you try. And btw the Nazi regime was not ended via a grassroots movement. Or via the French resistance or any of that stuff.
And now they also have AI and tech and surveillance - none of which they had before. So good luck with that Revolution.
Do you know any Irish people who think Ireland should have accepted British rule?
“it is not about comfort but about how you want to spend whatever little time you have left on this Earth” don’t kid yourself, you’re talking about comfort.
Is it your suggestion that the US civil rights movement achieved nothing and shouldn’t have bothered? Do you think many current black Americans agree with you? Out of the nearly 1.5billion Indians, are you aware of a single one who thinks they shouldn’t have opposed the British?
The left has accomplished nothing over the last fifty years because people like you bought the centrist arguments that resistance is pointless. And since the left had been winning most of it for the preceding century, things were quite good by the beginning of the 70s, so selfish and lazy cowards like you were able to say “well I’m fine, fuck the Palestinians and native Americans.” You are the problem Ginnie, people like you undermining everyone else’s efforts. If you haven’t the courage, decency and integrity to play your part in the struggle we are all depending on, at the very least stop trying to undercut those who do want things to improve.
Ginnie:
The Black Panthers are alive and well and “better armed this time around”.
Protecting AmeriKKKans from ICE.
Good!!
Ginnie,
Everything you say is totally true. But those in power want us to give up and be docile and submissive. Should we give them what they want? When black people in the Deep South got together and protested peacefully (and relentlessly), they DID change circumstances for their children and grandchildren. I think it is wise to warn people to stay within the letter of the law, but to still speak out while we can and still peacefully protest. The truth is the US isn't the powerhouse it used to be militarily and economically. It can't afford its aging mistress in the Middle East. Young Jews living in Collective West are alienated and reject Zionism - and hate the genocide being done in their name. We are not alone in this battle. This is not the time to give up.
You keep misunderstanding: I am not saying to give up, I am saying that the chances of beating them are very unlikely and that any fight you put up, will be met with utmost brutality and you risk losing your life. And peaceful protests will DEFINITELY not work. That is just ahistorical. You can't petition and beg and vote your way out of large scale oppression and this level of deep seated inequality and corruption.
I am exhausted from seeing so much injustice in the world and those who commit them get away with and the needle not moving a tiny bit in the right direction. I am tired of seeing what they do to people who manage to bring a modicum of justice to others, like Donzinger who got a judgment against Chevron and they sued him out of a license and his very life that he spent for years under house arrest under the orders of a private court no less, for nothing other than preventing the poisoning of indigenous people.
I dont see a way out via any of the methods employed these past 40 years. Again, I ask you, what has changed for the better for the Left in the last four to 5 decades? You bring up the Deep south and civil rights, but those didnt go down peacefully. The labor movement that gave rise to the New Deal was militant, not milquetoast as we see now with union leaders endorsing the two duopoly candidates and helping management break a strike.
You have to be realistic with what is happening and the path forward, the cost and clearly whatever has been done these past 50 years is not working.
Do I need to send you a link to the footage of Emily wilding Davison literally dying for you? Do you know who she was?
Nailed it.
Gullible (and stupid, and mean-spirited and racist) voters were easily persuaded to vote against their own interests just as long as someone else would be getting hurt. Apparently, there are more of them than there are of us. I'd still rather not be a CU next Tuesday.
I think it's much more nuanced than that. While the battle against fascism may be reminiscent of the one in the 1930's and 1040's, the world has changed enormously since then. Then there were about 2 billion people in the world and the precipitating issue was the Great Depression. We very likely face a great depression now but it's a minor issue compared to: there are 8 billion humans, most of them demanding several times the resources of each person then, and we're beginning to run out of resources, while capitalism depends on constant economic growth; climate change is bearing down on us, along with plastic and PFAS contamination; sperm counts and insect populations are falling by 1 to 2% per year; the mass of land mammals is approximately one third human, two thirds our livestock, and just 4% for all wild species put together. The response of governments to this crisis (sum it up as overshoot) range from Republicans and their like, just denying it and doubling down, to Democrats and their equivalents relying on greenwashing. Which means existential trajectories continue to ramp up unimpeded. Extrapolate a couple of decades and the question is whether a massive collapse of our economies will mercifully come before the collapse of ecosystems that renders us extinct along with much of the glorious fruit of evolution on this planet.
In the face of this predicament, the battle against fascism in relatively minor and short-lived. And, at least in the US, the fascists have spent 40 years figuring out how to clamp their hands to the reins of power. We can't win with some kind of old-fashioned battle. What we can do is withdraw our support from the Machine, by not working for a corporation and not buying from them. To prepare for a collapse, we need to do essentially the same thing: set ourselves up with livelihoods that involve self-sufficiency (ideally owning your own energy-efficient home, controlling your own water supply, growing some of your own food, ideally you have at least some energy source like solar panels); engaging in local trades that don't necessarily involve money but build community; instead of one well-paid job in your household you have multiple self-controlled income streams. Example: when you need to fix your roof or your car, instead of paying someone else to do it because you're too busy working a job you hate, you learn how to repair your roof and do it yourself, thus saving quite a bit of money, and now you have a new skill you can trade for something else you need that you can't provide yourself. When you do have to buy things, choose a farmers market or local one-off mom-and-pop over some international behemoth.
Here I note that many of these things are legally problematic if you live in a city--maybe you need a license to fix a roof, and a permit. But as collapse advances, such rules will be increasingly ignored.
What I recommend here is not a transition you can make overnight or in one year but it simultaneously gives you security and peace, and allows you to engage in a boycott or general strike in the most effective fashion--where you NEVER BUY FROM THAT CORPORATION AGAIN). And it helps recreate the kind of community that can weather whatever is coming.
So, this looks a lot like Ginnie's suggestion of retreat. Except--we also need to each do what we can to oppose whatever stupid destructive fossil fuel or data center or other project is proposed for our area, that would add to the crisis. And, we need to impede the fascist juggernaut, whether it's Palestine or ICE rounding people up--at least speaking out about it.
Mary, your post is so full of holes I hardly know where to start addressing them.
“Fix your own roof instead of working a job you hate”. My husband is capable of building an entire home, which he did for us with the assistance of his family. But we didn’t get the means to do it by growing a money tree. And yeah, he worked for a corporation—General Motors—- for 35 years in order to have the income, a pension, and our healthcare.
He’s also built several outbuildings on his own, including beautiful digs for my horse.
Roofing materials ain’t free!
You clearly know NOTHING about automobiles. Even an experienced mechanic like my husband does not have the equipment to work on a modern vehicle. He’s restoring our ‘68 Camaro, which is a whole ‘nother animal and has been working on cars since he was a teenager. But newer vehicles are all but impossible even for the accomplished home mechanic.
We have a farm and grow the majority of our own fruits and vegetables but tell that to some poor slob in some shithole like NYC.
Getcher uninformed and totally unrealistic head outta the clouds!
🙄🙄🙄
Everyone has to start somewhere, Gypsy!
Jennifer
I’m from a generation in which boys learned the skills to become men. And thanks to my father’s foresight, I learned a few myself as a young girl.
Try to get a 30-year-old off their phone long enough to construct a home or even till a garden!
I am an expert finisher/refinisher of wood; can finish drywall; perfectly paint both interiors/exteriors.
I also wield a mean chainsaw and big ol’ Ford tractor outdoors 😉 and am a retired landscaper. That 30-year-old couldn’t keep up with me in a million years.
Yeah, French Revolution is a cracking example. She didn’t buy my examples of “countries that have liberated themselves from colonialism;” still poorer than their former colonisers so their independence doesn’t count, apparently.
Because they are not truly free. Formal independence means nothing when imperial domination continues by via means. Europe has long exploited these nations - and still does- through unequal trade, and institutions like the IMF and World Bank that trap them in structural adjustment programs giving out loans that force countries to reshape their economies to serve Western interests in exchange for “aid,” all at the expense of their own people. Look at how those people actually live. That is not freedom.
The French Revolution confronted entrenched power with methods that are almost unthinkable today - and widely condemned now - but they reflected a recognition that entrenched elites rarely relinquish power voluntarily.
And how did we come here. It did not happen over night. It was obvious 50 years ago and more. But humans are lazy conformists who will not stand for right and justice until it becomes almost too late. A well known human curse. zionists may have won few battles (against unarmed civilians) but those coward ghouls I am convinced have lost the war. It is just a matter of time.
So you mean like, keep your head down, and as long as you’re personally safe, don’t stick your neck out for anyone else? And then complain in astonishment when nobody comes to stick up for you?
"First they came for the Communists......."
We said that months ago here. We are all Palestinians now. Whether you like it or not zionists will come after each of us humans using other humans as useful idiots. Few humans will be left alive to serve satanic radical zionist jewish cult.
no one is gonna stick their neck out for you anyway and if they do, they die. See Palestinians and their supporters. See indigenous people.
And yet people have made the ultimate sacrifice, all down through history. Indigenous Americans and Palestinians are examples of that.
yeah...and they are all dead!! That the establishment will give you....they are more than happy to accommodate.
Again, fight, but remember it comes at a steep cost with a very slight chance of any meaningful return. If that is your thing, I am not saying dont do it.
On a factual level, they aren’t all dead yet. If you hadn’t noticed the conflict in Palestine is still happening. And Native Americans, while they now have a load of white people living on their land, are still alive and their cultures are preserved. And these are two of the only territories still governed by their colonial invaders.
Throughout Africa, Asia and South America the indigenous people ultimately beat off their oppressors. Yeah, the countries are still at a global level managed and owned by empires, but this is no different to Britain and Australia. Go ask the people of Nigeria, South Africa, India whether they want their European overlords back, or whether maybe they ought to have placidly surrendered and accepted their extinction as you seem to be suggesting.
Yeah these definitely sound like success stories. We can see how free the peoples of Africa and South America are. How liberated and not at all just either immiserated or being exploited and starved to prop up Western corporations. I bet those kids working Diamond and rare earth mineral mines for Musk would disagree with you about how great their livers are going now that they are no longer officially slaves and colonies of European empires.
And let's talk about US natives: confined to reservations that look like third world slums with highest disease and mortality rates and lacking infrastructure. They definitely made it. I guess if barely holding on is a measure of success I can see why you would think they are doing well. But the reality is, they are still building pipelines through their lands. Remember all the people protesting cop city? Charged with terrorism for handing out flyers. And let's not forget Tortuguita, who was shot 57 times with military-grade assault rifles while sitting cross legged, hands raised protesting the Copy City forest encampment in Atlanta. Cop city is destroying the Weelaunee Forest and building a deadly police militarization center.
This is what they do with the resistance.
I am not saying not to fight, I am saying it will come at a huge prize and that ultimately you wont be able to beat them like that.
It is how one lives life. If you want to be slave serving your master do it. No one lives forever anyway.
Lots have people have stuck their necks out for you and I, to allow us to have the lives we have.
(And if your suggestion is, fuck the Palestinians and the indigenous peoples, then I don’t agree.)
Amos:
You ROCK!
👍👍👍
No I am saying it wont make a difference. And that whatever meager change comes at a huge price. I wont tell you to not pay that price. By all means...
Give in, surrender, capitulate, resistance is futile, you cannot resist the power of the dark side Luke, that kind of vibe? Just stand there quietly while I execute you?
Actually to be fair your point is more “just stand there quietly while I execute them, I definitely promise you’re not next.”
I keep saying “who do you think is going to stand up for you if you won’t stand up for them?” Seriously what is your response? Are you surrendering, or do you think if you betray everyone else some miracle will save you?
Bravo Amos. That is how real self-respecting human should be. What do we live our lives for? To make it better and more just for our children. Fuck israel and all its supporters and ghouls. May those murderous cowardly a$$holes also burn in hell for eternity.
but you cant beat them. Stop quoting fantasy black and white/good and evil movies for children dude. It's not as simple as who will save you. Again, do fight but recognize it will come at a cost and any meaningful resistance will be met with an equally meaningful harsh response. You have to be very clear on that before you put on your superhero cape! (and please do feel free to point to any meaningful successes and push back against the oligarchs for the last 40 years). What has all the activism achieved for working people? Less wars? More wealth for workers? Like...what? That's a lifetime to be engaged in activism and not be able to show anything for it.
Ginnie, I find your attitude cowardly.
Nothing changes without sacrifice.
I am not saying to not fight for what you want, I am saying be prepared to lose. Also, I dont think dying for lost causes is courageous. And refusing to die for them cowardly...
It's a not a lost cause, but it requires the kind of crazy courage most of us do not possess.
ya because most people dont wanna die and be ruined! Look what they did to Assange. Not wanting to die and suffering endlessly these 5 minutes you got on Earth are not cowardly. That's the propaganda they sell you in movies. That said, if that is the path you choose to take, I am certainly not stopping you. But let's be clear it will come at a massive prize and extremely low return.
That is the difference between people like you and people like the rest of us commenting on this thread. We don't see that fighting for the injustice being done to the Palestinians is a "lost cause." Why do you think the Zionist Israelis are coming out from behind their curtain? Why did they draft the Legislation saying speaking against Zionism was "hate speech?" They are running scared. They know that young people have turned against them. They know that lots of justice and peace loving Jews have turned against them. They know that their strategy to conflact Zionism with Judiasim isn't working - That people know the difference between genocidal sociopaths and decent, moral, anti-genocidal Jews. They are losing, and you are saying give up? Your persistence is starting to make you sound like a troll. Is that what you are doing? Initially, I didn't think that. But now, I have my doubts.
He or she is fatalist and coward.
This is very true - we only have to remember votes for women, the civil rights movement and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. And of coiurse reactionary forces are always waiting to claw any gains back.
Great narrative. You nailed it in all the right places. New ideas however, can come along and dig up old soils.
Remember that Darwin, only a few centuries ago, was faced with the almost impossible task of convincing humanity that Homo Sapiens were more ape-like than God-like.
The opposition he
Must have faced must have been like climbing Mount Everest, yet, as half the population of humans now believe, his theories were adopted and have become quite normal.
We can change, and we must change. Otherwise, there may soon be no one left to change anything. Extinction is on our menu, and we need to remove it, or it will remove us.
I dont know. it's probably good for the planet and all life on it if humans werent around to keep burning it down. And you know they wont stop - they wont stop until they set the whole thing on fire.
No. This is not true. It's true of the sociopaths who run the whole world now--it's true of the sociopathic CULTURE that has taken over nearly the whole world--but it's not human nature. Or rather our nature is plastic, we have both aggressive and competitive impulses and cooperative empathetic ones. Which predominates depends on CULTURE, and when this increasingly mad, toxic one collapse--soon--we all need to work to see our local cultures develop along healthier lines. There is work to do. It isn't easy. Don't give up.
not human nature? Have you not studied history? When has human nature ever created an equitable peaceful world? The current period is the most peaceful and equitable we have ever been in. The norm is oppression, royalty, feudalism. Are you kidding? May I acquaint you with the torture methods of Medieval Europe? This is so naive that it is almost quaint. Human nature has never been peaceful and cooperative.
It's true. We are barbarians restrained by a thin veneer of civilisation. Exactly HOW thin that veneer is depends on a whole load of factors, I think.
This is incorrect. Check into what anthropologists say based on the most recent research. Yup, if you study human HISTORY, the last few thousand years in which the culture based on domination has held sway, as told by the victors who were the ones with pens in their hands, it's been one long tale of violence and domination. But the evidence from the hundred thousand years before that is that the forager bands had little warfare and were egalitarian and in tune with the rest of the web of life. Evidence of relative health based on skeletons shows that the advent of agriculture, which enabled but did not cause stratification, led to a decline in health. Dark ages are also depicted as horrible--by the people with pens in their hands, and for them it was a horrific loss of privilege--they had to scrabble in the dirt for their bread like everyone else. But ordinary people thrived--now they didn't have to pay tribute to the Lords.
So how come all of us on here can see it, and Trump voters, Reform voters etc etc, can't?
Humans are herd animals to rival any sheep or dog.
Poor them, Feral. 😼
most people are not political or well versed in history and politics and generally many people are just fundamentally ignorant, gullible and conformists. It's like the Matrix where everyone is so plugged into the system and the integration is so manifold and fundamental that unplugging is hard, if not impossible and existential. Most people are blue pilled and ok with that. It is hard to yank them out of the system they are so integrated in and see things for what they are. Ever seen They Live? it's like that.
More ape-like than God-like we certainly are.
Don't insult apes or other animals. Even insects are more intelligent than self-destructive humans.
Palestine is the tip of the spear for humanity's liberation and we have to make the best use of it that we can. The alternative is powerful and unthinkable.
True. If we can't oppose something as obviously evil as Zionism, then the rest of our issues stand even less of a chance. Israel is the red line.
Thank you, Caitlin, stand strong! Solidarity! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Palestinians are not the only people who are enslaved.. I think the condition might be endemic to the species.
In short, let the struggle to preserve and expand the rights of peoples not cease.
Free Palestine
“Free Palestine” , as well as the collectivity of the human way of thinking.
Thank you
Hopefully you Aussie's are louder and more willfully defiant than those of us on the other side of the ocean who have an orange headed fool ruling us and criminalizing anyone who has brown or black skin, and destroying as much of the rest of the planet he can get away with. Free Palestine! Free Free Free Free Palestine!
We should use the laws to also target hate groups like Chabad. These groups that espouse anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred and fund Israeli genocide and illegal settlements
Love you Caitlin. I was getting confused about what you will be able to write, and how far we could go to comment.
Fuck ( the very first time I used the word! ) Israel, Free Palestine!
Indu, good job!
Sometimes (often) no other word’ll do it!