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Susan T's avatar

I heard Macklemore's song a couple of days ago and was happy to hear it. Watching it is painful, but it is so good that it is being put out there. I was walking my teensy dog down the street today and a woman was coming the other way with a huge dog. He looked nice but big. I started talking to the woman and she was talking about somebody who was acting like an idiot and I just blurted out "like all that stuff that is happening in Gaza and nobody is stopping them". I couldn't believe myself. I had no idea who that woman was. But she looked a little surprised for a second and then she started talking about the horrible, sick, insane, nazi like stuff that is happening in Gaza. We ranted for about 15 minutes. It was good to meet a random person who actually saw what is happening.

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gypsy33's avatar

Hi Susan

The Vietnam war protesters were wrong…until they were right.

The Iraq war protesters were wrong…until they were right.

The Gaza genocide protesters are “wrong” and they will be proven right. Of course, that’s a fact that we here already know.

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Shaista Ali's avatar

I love that you blurted it out, it allows others the opportunity to admit their humanity too that is stuffed down because nobody wants to be called a terrorist supporter according to lying narratives (or if they are closed off, maybe a realization of how many random dog walking strangers care and think on this topic - opening a crack toward introspection).

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narjis of many camels's avatar

The hubby and I own a bakery and started displaying Palestinian flags and keffiyeh in November. At first I was anxious and we did have some people ask awkwardly about them, ask if "anyone was offended" by them, or get uncomfortable when they saw our walls with Arabic writing. I even saw some people walk out without speaking to us and I suspect that they saw the flags. The other reaction we've gotten was whispered "we support Palestine too!" Or a hushed "thank you for displaying the flag" or "I'm Jewish but I think what's happening over there is wrong". The only time I know I can comfortably mention the genocide and know I'm not alone is when the customers are visibly Muslim, and then we share an unspoken solidarity that I treasure.

This genocide has completely upended my life, and the lives of so many of us, not anywhere near the horrible reality that Palestinian people are enduring, but a damaged life nonetheless. It may close my business and send my family and I to another country before all this is over. I am certainly not the same as I was a year ago. Now that genocide is ok, I guess nothing matters anymore.

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Susan T's avatar

this is incredible, powerful, amazing....no wonder the controllers want to ban tik tok.

https://www.tiktok.com/@andre17118/video/7366330939011583265?_r=1&_t=8mA6k2KBrXa

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Levi Tate's avatar

Biden links October 7th with Holocaust,

links Genocide protests with antisemitism.

The US has mandated eight days for Holocaust Remembrance each year.

And each President bows to The Lobby and must give a speech.

As this is a useful tool to support the Genocide of Palestinians

Biden didn't disappoint The Lobby.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/07/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-u-s-holocaust-memorial-museums-annual-days-of-remembrance-ceremony/

Remarks by President Biden at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony

excerpts:

-----------------------

But there is no place on any campus in America — any place in America — for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind — (applause) — whether against Jews or anyone else.

Violent attacks, destroying property is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. And we are not a lawless country. We’re a civil society. We uphold the rule of law.

And no one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves. (Applause.)

To the Jewish community, I want you to know I see your fear, your hurt, and your pain.

Let me reassure you, as your President, you are not alone. You belong. You always have, and you always will.

And my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad, even when we disagree. (Applause.)

Now, here we are, not 75 years later but just seven and a half months later, and people are already forgetting. They’re already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror, that it was Hamas that brutalized Israelis, that it was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget. (Applause.)

And as Jews around the world still cope with the atrocities and trauma of that day and its aftermath, we’ve seen a ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world: vicious propaganda on social media, Jews forced to keep their — hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts.

On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class.

Antisemitism — antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish State.

Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th, including Hamas’s appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews.

It’s absolutely despicable, and it must stop.

Silence — (applause) — silence and denial can hide much, but it can erase nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they cannot be muri- — buried, no matter how hard people try.

In my view, a major lesson of the Holocaust is, as mentioned earlier, it’s not — was not inevitable. We know hate never goes away; it only hides. And given a little oxygen, it comes out from under the rocks.

But we also know what stops hate. One thing: all of us.

------------------------- end of Biden quote

Some have learned the lessons of the Holocaust and pour into the streets to protest Genocide.

Others have learned to manipulate the slur of antisemitism to intimidate and silence those that protest against Genocide.

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Susan T's avatar

He (Biden) links the Holocaust and October 7th: an insult to holocaust survivors. He talks about the exaggerated reports of sexual violence from Hamas. An insult to women who were actually violated on October 7th or in any other war. By Hamas or by Israeli soldiers. Any of us who have read about wars and the aftermath know that all soldiers on all sides everywhere have been known to rape women as symbolism of their takeover of their enemy's "property"

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Eric Rubin's avatar

Occupy Wall Street was full of energy at first. Until it was infiltrated by agitators and dispersed by Bloomberg. That was a local movement against bankers and the fed. This time it’s the whole empire at stake and it’s a national movement against them. It will be a little harder to sweep this under the rug. Not to mention these are the kids who potentially will be holding the levers of power in 20 yrs. We are in for a bumpy landing as pan Arabism resurges and threatens everything AIPAC holds dear.

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Feral Finster's avatar

As long as the police and army will shoot when ordered, the rulers sleep soundly in their beds.

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David Avenell's avatar

Being of the Vietnam era myself and joining protests then, seeing the moral strength and courage of these students has brought me a glimmer of hope, albeit still a little faint.

I would add: Noticed how mostly only young, educated people oppose genocide and mass murder? Coincidence or what?....but that'd be heading towards tin foil hat territory.

Of course it's not only young people, Double Down News just posted this short video from a Jewish Holocaust survivor:

https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2024/may/7/holocaust-survivor-absolutely-demolishes-israel

Well worth watching.

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Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

I think younger people, I not being one of them, have the great organizing advantage of being in groups where they can meet with like minded people. They can talk with one another and learn from each other. I was in college during the Vietnam era, and could easily find people to protest with.

Now, many of us older people are retired and fairly isolated. Certainly there is no large group of peers with which I am associated with on a daily basis. I think that this may be a significant barrier to more older people getting back out in the streets. That and hip replacements.

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Anne-Marie thompson's avatar

Hey Joy, some of us oldies are out there on a Sunday, marching in Melbourne. Come join us if you can.

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Carolyn's avatar

Hmm, definitely the young have more energy but I am seeing with the old that it is the uneducated who are more aware. Strange

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David Avenell's avatar

Yeah Carolyn, but the mature and experienced ( I try to avoid the O word) learned from 'Life' .

Unfortunately, not all learned the same lessons.

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novapsyche's avatar

I would say it has less to do with smarts and more to do with status. Those who have elite degrees and have worked a lifetime networking and building up a reputation have far more to lose by speaking up than most. It's a form of cowardice, don't get me wrong. But it helps explain the connection between nosebleed levels of education and the lack of outspokenness on this issue.

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Carolyn's avatar

You could have "hit the nail on the head". Talking with extended family I found being brought up in pretty much the same environment and coming to opposite conclusions was puzzling. Now there is not a mention of anything but agreement on concern for grandkids in the future etc. I think experiences causing caution and a "lack of trust" is in the equation too.

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Indu Abeysekara's avatar

Thank you dave.jumanji for the link - it is very inspiring. Great generosity on the part of a really good person.

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gypsy33's avatar

Dave …sigh.

Educated, educated, educated. All it takes is good common horse sense to realize when atrocities are committed.

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JennyStokes's avatar

100% true. Maybe if we had more people with 'horse sense' in our Govts. Something good might happen.

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David Avenell's avatar

In that case there's apparently not much horse sense in the world and even less courage to act or even care.

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Robert H Stiver's avatar

Very affective video...thanks.

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May 8, 2024
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David Avenell's avatar

It's fair to say to sat for both and for the rest of the world. If Amerika can be reformed, the threat of global war - probably nuclear - goes away.

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May 8, 2024
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David Avenell's avatar

You got it Botty, nail, hammer, head. They know but don't give a fuck. I like to remind people of the famous line from 'Casablanca' - "It doesn't take much to realise that the problems of two little people don't matter a hill o' beans in this crazy world".

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Klonda56's avatar

The overlords have decided that this younger generation will own nothing and rent everything from them.

So no home loans or car loans then.

Perhaps the overlords don’t realise they are sowing the seeds of their own demise through boundless greed.

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May 8, 2024
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Feral Finster's avatar

The irony is that many Wall Street institutions were founded because the white shoe institutions of the day either de facto banned Jews from employment, or didn't allow them to become partners, deal with clients, etc..

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Myriad Mike's avatar

The problem is that the “governments” don’t care, one wit, what their citizens think!

That’s a pretty big hurdle.

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May 8, 2024
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Summer Koester's avatar

Persecuted people understand what it’s like to be persecuted. That’s why historically marginalized groups (lgbtq, bipoc, neurodivergents etc) support Gaza. Your argument is irrelevant. Retire that lazy argument already its boring & outdated. Innocent ppl did not create this war.

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Megan Baker's avatar

It’s extraordinary that when lefties list marginalized groups they literally never mention children. Tells you all you need to know about the left’s failure where everyone under age 18 is concerned.

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Summer Koester's avatar

How can you mention children when the very people being persecuted in Gaza are mostly children

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Megan Baker's avatar

Umm, huh? I’m not the one who leaves children off the list of oppressed groups.

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Summer Koester's avatar

Im a 20 year teacher & have. 2 kids. U dont need to tell me about children 🙄

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May 8, 2024
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Megan Baker's avatar

To be sure, the rightwing is emphatically cruel and hypocritical in this regard, but then I don't expect anything but cruelty and hypocrisy from them. I SHOULD be able to expect more from the camp that harps endlessly on "privilege," oppression, and marginalization. In this regard, the American left is largely a failure where children are concerned, heartily supporting industrial schooling as it does and generally dividing and conquering that demographic along class lines, to the exclusion of any discussion of child abuse. It's appalling, and the reason I stepped away from leftist activism several decades ago, until October 7th. If it's child advocacy you want in the United States (which would make you a rare bird indeed), then don't look left or right, look to the alternative education and attachment parenting communities. Even there you'll be hard-pressed to find acknowledgement of middle or upper-class child abuse (and the racism that lets their parents off the hook), but they're the only groups in the U.S. who see children as human beings worthy of respect and universally deserving of advocacy. The left is on the correct side of history on many or most issues, but it's little to no better than the rightwing when it comes to education or the reality of childhood in this godforsaken country.

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May 8, 2024
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Summer Koester's avatar

Who cares

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Sam's avatar

That’s what you took from the song and this article? I love it when people like you expose yourselves and go off on tangents instead of addressing the topic because you can’t.

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Whatistobedone's avatar

Why are.you reading this writer? Why don't you go elsewhere? Best to ignore you me thinks...toot-a-loo....that's a good boy...ta ta...

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May 8, 2024
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Rula Abboud's avatar

Why is it that somebody is standing up for freedom for all so hypocritical? Do you know how many decades the Palestinians have been oppressed and no one seems to care in the past?

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Sam's avatar

Triggered? When you have to resort to lying….

Explain how he’s a hypocrite. What else you got? More lies I expect.

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May 8, 2024
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gypsy33's avatar

With age comes this thing called “LIFE EXPERIENCE “.

And wisdom, though I don’t claim this for all my fellow boomers.

BTW, if I weren’t 70 years old, I wouldn’t have had the privilege of living through the 1960’s. YOUR generation will never experience anything like it!

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Benj's avatar

You are here to be an asshole. You should be escorted out and banned.

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May 8, 2024
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May 8, 2024
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Susan T's avatar

why do you care?

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May 8, 2024
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Susan T's avatar

I don't.

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Leon Brown, Jr.'s avatar

Hind’s Hall is not only righteous, politically speaking, but it’s Great Music! Oh, how I hope and pray that this will inspire many others with major platforms to speak up and speak out with courage and conviction to condemn the atrocities of the American and Israeli states and lobby for justice in this world!

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Contrarian 33's avatar

From Australia, a fully paid up and totally subservient member of the American (little Israel) empire.

Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held a much-publicised meeting with rabbis and Zionist leaders last Friday at which he met their demands for his government to do everything it can to create the political conditions to shut down protests on Australian university campuses and more broadly against the genocidal Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Albanese met with members of Rabbinical Council of Australasia on May 3, 2024.He used the 90-minute meeting at Sydney’s Central Synagogue to vow to do more to fight alleged “antisemitism.” He thus aligned himself with a vitriolic campaign by Zionist organisations and the right-wing corporate media to slander the campus protests and the widespread public opposition to the genocide as anti-Jewish, even though many Jewish people are actively involved.

Murdoch media outlets and the Liberal-National Coalition (partners in crime) are openly demanding a police crackdown similar to the violent attacks on campus protests across the United States. They have voiced fury that a national council meeting of university chancellors last Thursday did not call for such police operations. An editorial in the Murdoch media’s Australian last Friday accused the chancellors and vice chancellors of giving “free passes for anti-Semitic enemies of Israel at universities.” On the same day, a Murdoch tabloid, posted a venomous editorial comment claiming that anti-genocide protests in Australia and internationally amounted to “undisguised Jew hatred” and equating them to the Nazi holocaust. Good old holocaust again. Thought that one has passed on into history. But what a lot of tripe.

Hey, people out there. I think that Netanyahu and his Zionist brigades are being anti-Christian and anti-Muslim. That surely equals the well promoted fantasy of anti-Semtiism.

Murdoch’s mob, off again……….

"Yet anti-Jewish and pro-Palestinian protests and camps at our universities are being tolerated, even supported, despite their hateful message,” it further declared. “Why haven’t the universities, particularly Melbourne and Sydney, called in the police?”

Well, that was from Murdoch, something like the USA's CNN. That’s for starters.

Why haven't they, Murdoch??????? Because it is called 'Freedom of Speech'. How's that? Not something you support so it seems.

Probably doesn’t even remember what ‘freedom of speech’ means at his age. Off again getting married again, probably.

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Leon Brown, Jr.'s avatar

Excellent update from down under! Genocidal collaboration is global (especially in the west)…

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Shawn Ehm's avatar

Brilliant piece. Thanks for sharing. I really hope there is more like this to come. 🙏❤️

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Megan Baker's avatar

Also, we may be at the mercy of our Congressional reptiles, but we should be brutally mocking and ridiculing them. Who the fuck are they to pontificate on any damn thing; they’re the most reviled people in the country! Not one of them should be able to turn around without being reminded of the utter contempt with which the country regards them. They shouldn’t be able to get through an airport or eat out without being spat on, literally. Let’s give them the treatment they so richly deserve, whaddya say?

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Andy Vantino's avatar

"Macklemore attacks Biden, the brutal police crackdowns on protesters... with lines ...like “The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied.”" 📢

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Kevin Hammond CMT's avatar

When we rid the world of war profiteers we are much more apt to rid the world of war.

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

"Netanyahu rap about how Zionism is rad while Tony Blinken plays guitar?"

Good heavens, NO! Now, that sort of video should be aged restricted to be seen by only those who are over age 140. Not Macklemore's rap. His song is the song of the 21st century, the song that the kids (and us oldsters, too) will be rapping, singing and humming and quoting from for the next decade if not longer. This is the protest piece the pro-Palestine peace movement has been needing to capture the imagination of the mainstream public and bring down the evil empire of Western imperialism once and for all. THANK YOU!

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Mark Taylor's avatar

Wow, what a great song!!! That YouTube age restriction is total BS. It's just another way of tracking and surveilling people and getting them to help the government do it. You can see it on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v4tnhff-macklemore-hinds-hall.html

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Susan Harley's avatar

Thanks Caitlin, that is encouraging ❤️‍🩹 my heart and prays are with the people of Gaza.

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Jack Mackeddie's avatar

Very well put, just like the war the empire started in Vietnam and realised that they can’t fool all of the people all of the time. But the empire managers and hegemony financiers still made huge profits.

“Democracy” is manipulated so much these days, but still the masses don’t realise they’re being taken for a ride.

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PFC Billy's avatar

There were large protests against several of our wars of choice since Vietnam. They were dealt with QUITE effectively, Google "free speech zone".

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Feral Finster's avatar

The YouTube algo also made the Macklemore video hard to find, at least for me. You had to specifically search for it, and the algo buried the results under a pile of other stuff.

Basically, if you weren't specifically looking for it and determined not to get sidetracked, you wouldn't find it.

This was, without a doubt, entirely intentional.

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