#at some point i want to write about one state solutions with reference to jewish currents' dispatches from gaza

[karinyosa]

one action that i haven't seen a ton of people discuss online is writing a letter to the editor (not one specific editor, that's just what they're called). i'm thinking of palestine, but a lot of this can apply to other things. jvp has a letter to the editor guide here if u think you'd find that helpful. it's specific to jvp members from what i remember, so take what applies. individual papers will sometimes have their own sets of guidelines as well so be mindful of those. letters are generally more likely to make it to print when it comes to local papers, but you can also write letters to like. the nyt or wapo. you're just more likely to not get a response. as tools for social change, letters' purpose is to sway public opinion and pressure via institutions of media. i focus on local papers because, like with bds campaigns targeting college campuses, this stuff is going to start on a smaller scale first, but can and does build over time. think of one berkeley branch voting to divest very soon after another did first. this is like that to me.

i recommend seeing what other articles individual papers have about palestine just to get a feel for what might be most impactful for you to write about, or what still needs to be said. for local papers, you might want to tie it to your community in some way (and that might even be a requirement to get in the paper), so you can talk about, for example, how much money comes out of your specific area for israel, using uscpr's funding map. you can talk about protests in your area. if there are arab, palestinian, and/or muslim communities in your area, you talk about them. if there are medical facilities or lots of families in your area, you can talk about them. if there's a big tech presence in your area, you can relate it to that. education, youth, food, policing, etc. there's something. there are probably multiple lines of connection between your local community and palestine. you can also just respond to a published article or lte.

if you are writing a letter to the editor, it will be considered an opinion piece, so you can include opinions or things that may be seen as more subjective. check out other letters to the editor to get a sense for the type of tone/content/etc they are looking for. don't be afraid to break or bend those rules, but it's helpful to be aware of the general vibe of the paper, what's likely to get published, and what needs to be said.

what do you want your community to be talking about? what needs to be brought to their attention? what misconceptions need to be corrected? what issues do you want to put on the table? what do you want to add to the conversation? what's missing? what should be done about it?

if you can't make it to in-person actions, this can all be done online. and if you consider yourself good with words, this may be an area in which you're uniquely effective.

ps: citing other articles or sources is always helpful and is a way to platform other articles/books/texts that u think should be shared, although i don't think that's usually a requirement for ltes. if u can't think of one, ask around.

#palestine #sudan #drc #actions #haiti #writing #letter to the editor #at some point i want to write about one state solutions with reference to jewish currents' dispatches from gaza #and like. help lay the groundwork for that to be something that's at least considered a possibility by the general public #but there are also papers where it's like. i think i need to write about like this language of self defense and who is presumed to be #violent and argue that it is a genocide and things like that #so you know. gauge where you need to push etc. not that you necessarily need to respond to what's there #also there are more than likely multiple local papers in your area. you can write to more than one #personal stories also work for this #if you've written or made artwork idk if every paper is going to pick that up but consider submitting to a local litmag #congo #free palestine #also i'm not an organizer or a professional. these are just some things i've been thinking about

[mr-president]

I have a question (To be perfectly clear this is not an ask trying to strum up controversy, but just my own curiosity of your views, and I love your analysis and how you say things. But if you have nothing to say on this matter feel free to delete this ask)

There’s some controversy in the funger fandom about the writing of the Bremen army, also in Pav. Some people think it’s too sympathetic or the choices that Miro made are in poor taste. Do you have any opinions on this?

CW: fascism, Nazism, antisemitism, and what have you. also, sorry if i get things wrong, again, it’s been a while.

Yes, I do think that portraying a historical, fascist, genocidal regime in Nazi Germany as the Bremen army was in poor taste. It’s one thing to just have a fantastical, fictional totalitarian government and another to use an actual historical allegory as stand in for history. The Bremen army is an allegory for Nazi Germany, there is absolutely no denying that, and Mr. Haverinen made that conscious, authorial choice to make that connection.

However, and this is my personal opinion, I don’t think he properly understood, articulated, or represented the impact that Nazi Germany had on Europe, the world, and especially for Jewish people. And this is a problem, because Nazi Germany still has lingering influences on society and culture today, and Mr. Haverinen’s choice to not only write Nazi Germany in the story but portray it in such a way is…in poor taste.

I understand why Mr. Haverinen likely used Nazi Germany as an allegorical tool—the same reason why he uses religious allegory throughout the story. Because we are all familiar with WW2 and Nazism, we have a general idea and basic understanding of this fictional totalitarian, colonialist regime. And that is perfectly fine and is a valid shorthand storytelling device.

Additionally, the Bremen Empire is still depicted as Not A Good Thing. Like, that’s very clear within the narrative—Mr. Haverinen is not a Nazi and clearly does not support that ideology. However, I do believe that he could have done better in understanding/depicting a sensitive historical subject beyond showing how they are bad. If that makes sense.

My problems with the Bremen Empire are that it:

fails to articulate a coherent ideology as to why their influence is so vast,

gives them a somewhat “good” motive that kind of validates their existence

does not empathize with or represent the minority group (Jewish people) who were most affected by this historical tragedy.

For 1), though there are references to the Bremen army’s horrific atrocities, it’s kind of hand-wavey as to why they’re really doing it, seemingly only because Le’garde’s general bloodlust and assholeness. I’ll discuss that more in the second point, but I just want to state that Nazi Germany had a legitimate, compelling, and actual ideology behind it that perpetuated the attitude of nonchalance and “justice” that came with the atrocities they committed.

It is not merely power, it was fascism. Fascism cleans up your neighborhood, gives you jobs and school and work, gives you what made you great, and gets rid of what put you down. Fascism creates a problem and posits that the solution is to exclude the…undesirables and raise yourself up to your truest potential.

And here, Bremen fails. Somewhat.

Point 2). Their motive. The ultimate goal of Le’garde’s bullshit is for him to usher in new era of humanity, where he becomes Logic, ascends to new-Old Godhood, and helps humanity overcome the rule of the Old Gods and truly live for themselves rather than their whims.

Ultimately, it’s uncertain if this will be a positive thing, but in Ending A it’s kind of a good thing, especially with Reina becoming Logic instead of Le’garde. Of course, much like Funger 1, it begs the question of “was this suffering all worth it,” but like many people have criticized with Reina’s usage at all, that question doesn’t hit as hard as Funger 1.

And Funger 1 didn’t even need a wholeass Nazi allegory to ask that question. Was the suffering of every innocent civilian worth it to get Logic? To usher in this new era of humanity?

The question seems more on the side of “Yeah” because unlike Funger 1, Logic’s existence is depicted as a good thing for humanity. Thus, Bremen is sort of a “good thing,” that at least it was towards something positive and for the betterment of people everywhere.

Which is…a really awful thing to say when, again, this was an actual fascist regime who discriminated against, subjugated, and had a system that enforced the oppression of numerous minority groups.

Point 3). Not really interacting with the minority groups subjugated. Termina’s cast is pretty much entirely made up of minorities, and many of them do have or would have tangible interactions that conflict with the Bremen army.

Levi and Pav are perhaps the best examples of characters who were genuinely traumatized by the Bremen army, and their actions and characterization are substantial for recognizing the psychological impact colonization has on people.

However…no character or even allegorical minority group is a stand in for Jewish people, who are one of the most affected groups of Nazism.

Ok, there didn’t need to be a Jewish character who actually went through the atrocities of Nazism in graphic, Funger-grade detail. That could be very triggering, and it could also spell problems of getting the story censored. And also, misrepresentation is a genuine thing to fear when depicting something like that.

But to scrub most if not all references of Antisemitism? Isn’t that kinda fucked? I think it’s fucked. Let me know if I’m wrong.

Anyways, I need you (audience) to understand something.

It is imperative to understand that this is Fear & Hunger. These are games which depict suffering, mass, unavoidable, tragic, yet wholly unnecessary suffering. You the player suffer and understand suffering. And then Mr. Haverinen has an allegory for a fascist regime which caused so much mass, tragic, colonialist, yet entirely unnecessary suffering and chose not to depict who were those sufferers.

It’s my own opinion, but if you make Nazi germany you can empathize with the people who suffered from it if your central theses revolve around suffering.

Additionally, I understand that this story is supposed to be a fantastical retelling of history, but girl, like. You could keep the historical allegory and the historical context and just have it be vaguely referenced. But you interact with the Bremen army in the game. Le’garde acts as a stand in for fucking Adolf Hitler.

Like, you could keep the historical allegory and the historical context and just have it be vaguely referenced. But to interact with that history in such a direct manner, on the side of the oppressor? Without much depiction of the oppressed?

In my opinion, Mr. Haverinen doesn’t really have an excuse for depicting what is essentially Nazi Germany in such a strange way. He didn’t need to make an allegory to Nazi Germany. He didn’t need the game to interact directly with Nazis and their leader. He didn’t need to even depict Nazism to begin with, or have it be such a dominant force in the narrative.

For that reason, it is fucking worthy to critique his authorial choices about a major historical tragedy in a game about tragedy.

Of course, you can say “it’s fictional, people shouldn’t be stupid and believe Nazi Germany was actually like this; there are penis gods, don’t be stupid,” but guess what?? People will be stupid. Fiction doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and though I doubt actual Nazis will come about from Funger, I think Mr. Haverinen isn’t absolved of criticism for portraying Nazi Germany in such a way. It still perpetuates harmful narratives about authoritarianism, minimizes the impact of fascism, and what have you.

We unfortunately exist in a society where people could take away that authoritarianism is maybe cool because you get the internet out of it and maybe sovereigns are trying to help society.

We exist in a society where the portrayal of suffering as perhaps a necessary evil for societal gain is the standard. And for a series that seems to want to say something meaningful in portraying suffering, shouldn’t it aim to critique oppression by sympathizing with the oppressed?

Plus, fuck you if you just tell people not to be stupid and to shut up. That has always been a tactic used by privileged individuals to…talk around the issue. But I’m getting off topic—a rant about alt-right or moralist tactics to end or control a conversation is for another day.

Basically, hey. I care enough about this series to write this critique. I care enough about it that I drew it every day in June, and here I am still thinking about it.

Your art can and will be criticized. This is the right of your audience, and you should listen to their critiques. You should be afraid of potential backlash but people will love your work still despite its grievances. And you should try and do better.

And you should talk about problems in representation. That’s like, how things get better. Be a bitch. Don’t let those with the privilege to ignore continued systemic oppression control the narrative and silence you.

On the subject of Pav, I think he’s…fine? He’s basically Russian, and I think the problems with his characters have more to do with the Bremen Empire being poorly written than his character conceptually. Because I think conceptually, he’s fine—illustrates the cycle of abuse, the trauma of war, whatever, whatever.

tldr; oh yeah, it was not a good representation and we should criticize it.

#please let me know if there are any inaccuracies or if i fucked up #this was very rambley and i did not read through it #mr president interviews #fear and hunger #fear and hunger termina

[ianworthy]

Israel vs Palestine

What is really happening? And the bloody solution…

First off, I'm from a small town on the other side of the planet so I don't have any kind of agenda.  If you want that B.S. there's lots of options.  I realized more than ever over the last year that we are being lied to and manipulated on the daily, which led me down many rabbit holes. I've been "re-educating" myself and started writing in an effort to make some sense of the craziness.

History made shorter…

We should start around when the Ottoman Empire ended for some context, which was in the early 1920s in case you slept through History.  If you rely on the ‘news’ you'd think this started a couple of weeks ago.  Reality, if you go back far enough no one "owned" anyone, nor the land they occupied or any of the land you’re on right now. Humanity and its entire existence has involved one tribe/country trying to annihilate the other.   It never works out, but here we are 200000 years later, give or take 194000 years, depending on whether your belief in Science transcends beyond vaccines and masks.  In case you didn't catch that I’m referring to the 6000 year timeline outlined in the Bible.  Breaking this down to the core revolves around religion used to create unnecessary animosity, so a relatively small proportion of a population can benefit.  Isn't that every war ever?

After the Ottoman collapse, the land that's in dispute aka Israel and Palestine was given to the British.  Interesting fact, if you look at all the atrocities and wars currently going on in the world, they are all countries that were "occupied" some way or another by the British or to a lesser extent, the French.  Aren't we all curious for Harry's hot take on how he's the product of ruthless colonization of his great grandparents that its impact on global society is ever present? These former colonies are humanitarian disasters enslaved by whichever military coup at the time provides corporations with the most resources.  But hey, as long as the Old B of England got the right biscuits to accompany her afternoon Tea that's all that matters, right?        

When the British, or most powerful Army at the time called the shots, there was a movement referred to as Zionism that began to gain support from the Jewish people throughout Europe.  Zionism basically means the nationalist movement to create a state for the Jews, not the jam by Damien Marley, which is my first exposure to the word Zion.  I'm sure this rise was foreshadowing of what was to come.  Not to get all conspiracy theory on you but none other than the Rothschilds (wealthiest family in history that created the global money supply that are apparently no longer wealthy) created a proposal that involved divvying up the land for a state in the future, which was after the war.  Google the ‘Balfour Declaration’ if you don't believe me.  From that point the amount of land occupied by the Palestinians has steadily decreased, according to the last map I checked it was looking pretty bleak.  The land was divided not because they are physiologically different but because one group of parents parents parents were raised to believe in Abraham and the other a linkage to Abraham.

Up to the current point… 

I'm sure that Jared Kusher's involvement in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the Trump peace plan of supplying the middle east with more missiles played a supporting role, but more current, Ramadan.  The Israelis like all of the World Leaders during the last year have been flexing too much during the lockdowns of COVID, which carried over to yet another Ramadan and evicted some families for further settlements.  In addition to the evictions the Israelis broke up a Mosque gathering on Eid, Antifa style.  Eid for Muslims is like Christmas for Christians, but instead of getting toys and gifts from Jesus swap, Santa Claus, you get to eat during daylight after a month of starving yourself.  This Mosque is Islam's third holiest site, conveniently Jerusalem is Judaism and Christianity holiest site as well, coincidence?  To relate, for Christians, if Jerusalem is the holiest, and the Vatican is the Second then probably a Church like Notre Dame would be third, or up there at least.  I feel that the MSM coverage of the Notre Dame burning was little different than the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 

In retaliation to the Israeli raids, Hamas, the awful military leadership of Palestine launched missiles that had no real threat of reaching their target, being shot down half way by the Rafael Advanced Defense System (Iron Dome) that the US taxpayer supplied batteries for under Obama.  In response to a “potential” desert storm attack from Palestine a bunch of USA made Lockheed Martin F-16s equipped with M61 Vulcans and Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles launched an Airstrike killing a bunch of innocent civilians, including kids.  According to the death toll I just looked at, it was 241 dead Palestinians, including 5 top Hamas commanders, the media and a bunch of kids to 12 Israelis, no executives, consultants, shareholders or politicians were killed.               

The Solution Is…

Two solid states, and no longer decreasing the amount of land occupied by the Palestinians and increasing of Jewish settlements.  Palestinians and Jews both have the right to a home.  With the help of the greedy boomers (worst leadership class in history) and the media making the next couple of generations hate each other, the rift is super deep.  Every war is sustained by the industrial military complex.  Lockheed Martin Raptors or Raytheon Heat Seeking Missiles do not magically appear in the Israeli Air Force.  The corporations that run the United States are in the business of making money at all costs, in this case innocent lives mostly Palestinians.  Humans need to stop providing the means to commit such acts of horror.     

It also seems pretty convenient that Benjamin Netanyahu was recently unable to form a new government and is facing criminal corruption charges.  Party leaders are always guilty of something, it’s just a matter of if they follow the most profitable line or not.  He's obviously not the right person to run Israel, taking it in the extreme right position that’s trendy right now in politics.  Extreme either way is no solution to anything, and the sooner Netanyahu goes the better.  His father was an Ivy League Professor active in the Zionist movement, who's father was also a Zionists.  Point here is people that grow up entitled with an unwavering ideology and no life experience make for horrible leaders.  That applies to a lot of world "leaders", even the countries that don't have nonsensical inbred Royals in charge.  Any peaceful long-term resolution involves leadership that recognizes that Jews and Palestinians have a right to a home.  There also needs to be more fair coverage.  I guess it doesn't help that the people running Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Lionsgate, Universal, NBC, The New York Times, The Tribune, Discovery, CNN, Google and Facebook are all Jewish.  In Palestine, the Israeli Air Force blew up one of the main media buildings that housed Al Jazeera News and the Associated Press.  No press or opinion vs all the colluding press and opinions. 

As for Hamas, or any of these military coups that emerge are the result of instability and no leadership for its people, present more of a challenge.  Israel can and hopefully soon, will function just fine with new leadership.  My entire adult life, the Industrial Military Complex has been at war with the Middle East.  The defense contractors that have been defending America from an “evasion” always seem to find some action. It's purely about Oil(Money) and strategic power, but we can leave that for another time. From the West perspective Hamas is a terrorist organization, which they are, but if you're living in Palestine having dinner with your family and a Raytheon heat seeker comes through the window and blows up your family into pieces. Wouldn’t that be a terrorist act? In order to have any kind of sustainable solutions the counties and corporations that pillage these places killing innocent people need to find a way to structure these de facto coups into a legit military that can serve as a National Army. At the end of the day these kids are just fighting for what they think or are forced to think is right. Given the option, and right identity, kids can redirect their frustration and hatred towards a national unity that respects and values its citizens. Not that I have much faith in non-secular rule, but I think as a starting point a country that can be run more or less by its people is better than this apartheid situation that’s going on now.

The ceasefire has been called, which is the necessary short-term solution, however not going to change much going forward.  This game is being played with a zero-sum, and I think that they were premeditated targets that were going to be fired at some point in the future regardless of what the spark was. My position at the end of the day is that a handful of countries produce all the weapons used to blow everyone up, so it should start at the source and those who benefit the most.  Which obviously isn't the everyday people of Palestine or Israel. The upside, with the media fighting for relevance the corporate narrative is being challenged.  We just haven't figured out the right way. I have some thoughts, subscribe or follow please.

#israel vs palestine #news #tumblr #israel #palestine #war #peace #ramadan #mosque #zion

[morlock-holmes]

This anonymous article from the Washingtonian, (Which is apparently... a magazine? Of some sort?) “What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right “ was being reblogged on my dash a few times and looking at some of the notes a lot of people were calling it propaganda without saying which side they thought it was propaganda for.

I think a LOT of people were so swayed by the “One Concerned Mom Speaks Out!” tone of the thing that they kind of missed the actual narrative.

I mean... If anything it’s kind of propaganda in favor of the alt-right, isn’t it?

Here’s how the author of the piece sums up the inciting incident in the story:

One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s [The author’s son] mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”

No one called me as this unfolded, even though Sam cried for about six hours straight as staff members parked him in vacant offices to keep him away from other students. When he stepped off the bus that afternoon and I asked why his eyes were so swollen, he informed me that he would probably be suspended, but possibly also expelled and arrested.

Later there’s more, but basically the school authorities double down, Sam’s parents decided that if the authorities were that cruel and insane Sam needed to be in another school, and so they transferred him. Sam then starts getting into 4chan and reddit alt-right communities, who explain that what happened to him happened because of feminism gone crazy.

So, as a slight aside I have always thought since I was in high school myself that this kind of zero-tolerance, authoritarian crap is particularly cruel to inflict on growing children. A boy Sam’s age is trying to differentiate himself, see himself as an individual, and the authorities come in and go, “It doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t matter why you did what you did, we will never care about that, we see you as a type and there is nothing you can do to convince us otherwise.”

This message would be incredibly dispiriting to anybody, but particularly to children.

Contrast, meanwhile, his experience on Reddit:

Soon Sam stopped trying to convince me to join his brave new world. He was so active on his favorite subreddit that the other group leaders, unaware that he was 13, appointed him a moderator. Among his new online besties, this was a huge honor and a boost to his cratered self-esteem. He loved Reddit and its unceasing conversations about the nuances of memes—he seemed in love with the whole enterprise, as if it were an adolescent crush. 

...

Eventually, Sam had to give up moderating for the most practical of reasons: Eighth grade ended and he was packing for sleep-away camp. He would be offline for a month and would need other mods to cover for him. To ask for help, he had to out himself as a kid.

Sam and I both laughed about the absurdity of the situation, though he admitted he was nervous he’d be exiled from moderating. I asked him to read me the responses to his message. They were all of the “Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me” variety—one of their most sophisticated and reliable colleagues was a middle-schooler heading off to Jewish summer camp!

Later, it was my turn to be surprised: They all contributed to a going-away gift for Sam and mailed an emoji-themed fidget-spinner to his bunk address.

Faced with new information that Sam has broken the rules, his school imediately brands him a predator, threatens to arrest and expel him, and responds with undisguised hate.

Faced with new information about who Sam is, his alt-right buddies are shocked, but then reiterate that they still care about him and value the contributions he has made to their community, and get together to express that to Sam.

I’d like to make a little list of what Sam gets from the alt-right in the narrative:

A group of people who have shown that they will support and value him, even if they find out new things about him.

People who listen and care about what he has to say

An explanation of what, exactly, happened to him and why.

Ideas about how he can protect himself and others from having that happen again in the future.

Allies and support for enacting those ideas.

His parents, by his Mother’s own admission in the article, were only able to provide fumbling efforts to provide protection from that particular school’s administration. His parents and their politics were totally ready to say that taking all that stuff about cucks seriously was pretty weird and dumb, his mother is totally ready to counter any statistics his alt-right buddies might have, but is completely and utterly unequipped to provide any of the other stuff I listed up there. There’s a moment where Sam explains to her what he and his friends think happened:

Sam pledged fealty to the idea of men’s rights because, as he said, his former administrator had privileged girls’ words and experiences over boys’, and that’s how all of his troubles had started in the first place. I’d never in my life backed the “masculinist” cause or imagined that men needed protecting—yet I couldn’t help but agree with Sam’s analysis.

The mother’s politics didn’t actually equip her with an alternate explanation of what happened; rather, she has to concede that his explanation makes sense, and having conceded that has no idea what to do with herself.

In fact, as the article ends she is only vaguely starting to come to grips with the fact that Sam needed the kinds of support I listed above:

“All I wanted was for people to take me seriously,” [Sam] repeated matter-of-factly. “They treated me like a rational human being, and they never laughed at me. I saw the way you and Dad looked at each other and tried not to smile when I said something. I could hear you both in your room at night, laughing at me.”

I struggled for a moment because I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true. But I couldn’t deny his accusation. Behind closed doors, when my husband and I thought our children were asleep, we had often vented to each other about Sam’s off-the-wall proclamations and the bizarre situation we found ourselves in.

So I told Sam simply that I was sorry for making him feel bad.

I still think about his words a lot, especially when alt-right figures headline the news. But mostly, I wonder how I could have tried so hard to parent Sam through this crisis and yet tripped up on something as basic as not making my own kid feel small.

By the end of the article Sam is disenchanted with the Alt-right through, well, it’s not totally clear. The author of the article, by the end, seems to understand that Sam needed at least some of the things I outlined up there, but it’s not clear to me if she views the fact that her own politics were completely unable to provide them as an actual problem.

In fact, it’s not clear to me what she believes her politics are actually for. I know, I know, it’s not a philosophical article, but the question of “How much power do public school administrators have over their charges and what can parents do to counter them” is a nakedly, inarguably political question; after all, it’s about how a state-run institution should be run. And rather then turning to her own left-wing beliefs to contextualize and fight this decision, her solution is that her family has enough money to put Sam in another school.

Now, I’m not criticizing this decision, I think it was probably difficult, even brave. But it’s noticeable that her left-wing, non-culty politics don’t seem to have much to offer the next Sam, a Sam whose parents might not have private school tuition sitting around in their bank accounts. 

In fact, she seems to regard the fact that Sam’s alt-right buddies were able to offer up compelling narratives and give him hope of implementing a solution and reasserting his self-worth as, well, cheating. Isn’t that cult-like behavior? Politics aren’t actually supposed to help the Sams of the world contextualize the things that happen in their lives, and when they do, it’s awfully sinister.

This seems to be part of something that has heavily infected the American left. It’s a kind of unspoken philosophy that says, “Politics is for solving major problems, the rest should be handled elsewhere.”

Even when a question overtly connected to Mom’s politics crops up in their life, her politics have literally nothing practical to offer any of them. Her left-wing politics are correct it doesn’t matter if they’re helpful.

This is what I keep trying to get at when I say people are missing the point with Jordan Peterson. Yeah, a lot of what he says sounds factually rickety to me as well, but, well, when I spend every day wondering why I can’t seem to get my life together, simultaneously dreading it AND feeling like there’s no point in trying to change, how does having a more correct view of lobster biology help me out with that?

I mean, I’m not saying it can’t, I’m saying people won’t even connect the two. Look at the reviews of 12 rules and people will usually grudgingly admit that his self-help advice might be useful, but really, it will tend to rile up exactly the wrong kind of person, and anyway, what does any of this have to do with politics?

This is what I keep trying to get at about effective altruism, as well. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s that by its very nature it will never be about providing me, personally, with any help, because it’s focused on stopping rogue AIs and mailing out malaria nets, fine causes but notice that, while Rationalists see “How can I stop a super-intelligent AI from destroying us” as a solvable problem “How do I make the kind of friends who will spontaneously check on me if I sound like I’m sick?” is completely insolvable.

To the extent that my existing faculties haven’t already made it happen, unfortunately there are no clarifying frameworks or advice better than, “Well, it’s hard.”

Rationalists are better about this than generic leftists but I also feel like that’s a low bar. Answers to the question “What can I do to concretely improve my life, and, for that matter, why should I even bother, what’s the point?” are becoming ever more disconnected from left-wing thought, and most of the concrete attempts to answer these questions are coming from the right.

I actually don’t think this is good, incidentally.

#politics #rationalism

[lady-bluebird-luv]

Figuring out how to handle SNK

The last few chapters of AoT have set off a lot of alarm bells, and I’m not really sure how to feel. There have been a lot of weird, uncomfortable revelations for a while now: Erwin has connections to Erwin Rommel, who is sometimes considered almost heroic for his involvement in Operation Valkyrie, and whose contributions to the Holocaust are sometimes debated, but who was nevertheless a major component to the Nazi war machine and not nearly as innocent as he’s sometimes made out to be (often by Nazi sympathizers and apologists). Isayama has also defended Japanese war crimes in Korea and glorified a sanitized Yoshifuru Akiyama with his portrayal of Pixis. I’ve stuck by the series for a long time - I wasn’t actually aware of the Akiyama/Pixis stuff and the Korea comments until recently, embarrassingly, and because I love the story and its characters, I was willing to give Isayama the benefit of the doubt. It’s pretty common to see a love of German language, culture, history, etc. in anime and manga (as weird and uncomfortable as I think that is), so the Rommel stuff seemed, several years ago, like a really misguided character design that was potentially a result of insensitive and uneducated, but not necessarily fascistic or antisemitic, fascination with the man. 

(Spoilers for recent chapters below)

In light of recent chapters, I’m a lot less willing to give Isayama the benefit of the doubt. Zeke’s comments about his and Eren’s goals set off all the alarm bells. Previously, we’ve seen Holocaust parallels in the treatment of Eldians in Marley, and the narrative that they are essentially the cause of the world’s suffering. My first thoughts reading Zeke revealing his ultimate goal was that he was essentially suggesting the final solution. 

Given that Isayama has courted fascism, and war crimes in the past, I think it’s pretty clear at this point that those sentiments have bled into his work. It’s incredibly alarming, makes me very uncomfortable, and brings up the question of whether SNK is a love letter to the Nazis - Which lots of people can and have argued, but which I’m not entirely convinced of. Isayama’s views have obviously influenced the series, and we see references to the Nazis and their allies frequently. Some of these references (again, Pixis) are glorifications that don’t reflect the very real, horrific things these figures did, and that’s unacceptable. But I’m not entirely convinced that the story is a validation of the Holocaust. 

Yes, there are pretty clear parallels between the Eldians and the Jewish people, as well as increasingly clear Holocaust parallels. Militarism, Oppression of people based on their ethnic group, war, and fascism feature heavily in AoT, especially in depictions of Marley and Marleyian characters. But a distinction that I think is important to make is that these themes are not glorified. Dominating rulers of the world’s various factions are corrupt, or liars, or ineffective, or some combination of the three. Time and time again, war and imperialism are shown to not be glorious and exciting, but rather a pointless, brutal exercise that leads to nothing but loss and enduring societal scars. Those who condemn Eldians, calling them devils and working towards the destruction of the Eldian people, are not heroes. Saying that Eren’s goals, or that Eren himself at this point, is “good” is a massive stretch - maybe because of the morals of readers, but also because I really don’t see his goals portrayed in a positive light. The Eldian people he wants to end are victims, and I don’t think the fiery narratives they’re bombarded with negate the fact that they are not, in actuality, demons - they live in a brainwashed society that hates them for crimes that aren’t their fault, forced to respond to people who want to destroy them. People have pointed to the designs of the titans as mimicking anti-semitic caricatures:

And yes, in this case the comparison is there, but this is the only titan that really supports this particular criticism of Isayama’s work. From what I saw when I googled “Attack on Titan titans”, the others don’t have similar features. Titans are also meant to look grotesque, often with features in strange proportions, so the features of this titan that people have zeroed in on doesn’t necessarily scream anti-semitism to me, even in the context of the series. It’s also important to note that, while the unsavory comments like the ones Isayama has made are often made in conjunction with those that are anti-semitic, he hasn’t (as far as I know) made openly anti-semitic remarks, and hasn’t responded to the recent concern over his series. 

I’m also very skeptical of the origin story of the titans that’s been used to point to Isayama’s anti-semitism. Time and time again, the history given to the characters has been falsified (e.g all the history fed to the islanders by the royal family), so I’m not inclined to believe an origin story that’s been used by the Marleyians to their political advantage, especially given the story’s almost mythic depiction. In SNK’s Holocaust parallels, if the Eldians are Jewish, then Marley is Nazi Germany, and it’s pretty clear to me that Marley, a fascistic state, is not and has never been the good guy. 

Maybe Isayama is writing an ode to the Axis powers and never meant for my takeaway from his work to be, “War is awful, and if you teach children to hate each other, you perpetuate a cycle of death, despair, and prejudice.” But that’s the takeaway I have. Considering the comments he’s made, those sentiments may have led to a deeply anti-semitic work, and it’s true that just because something isn’t blatantly anti-semitic doesn’t mean it isn’t supporting Nazis at all. Given my uncertainty, I don’t really know what to decide as to how (or if) I continue to support the series, but I just don’t see AoT as pro-Nazi. I also don’t see a lot of evidence for AoT being a reversal in which the people inside the walls are the “Aryans” and forces like Marley are the Jewish people/Africans oppressing them, which I known is a theory some people have proposed. 

I don’t deny the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, and I’m not defending Isayama’s comments, as much as some people reading this may decide otherwise. As much as I’m not entirely convinced AoT is meant to be Nazi propaganda, I don’t deny that Isayama has made some pretty fucked up decisions while writing his manga. It brings up the debate of whether or not people should support work they enjoy when the author has been established as an unpleasant person (i.e. Ender’s Game and Orson Scott Card), and whether art can be separated from the person that makes it. I don’t think Attack on Titan can be separated from influences on the author that clearly shine through, but I’m also not convinced that the manga is one big jerk-off session to fascist, anti-semitic regimes. I’m very hesitant to condemn it, especially considering that SNK isn’t over. Maybe, based on the way the story ends or developments in future updates, I’ll change my opinion. For now, I see the alarming elements there are in AoT as more of a jumble of Isayama’s beliefs than evidence of a concrete pro-Nazi narrative, as dangerous and vile as they are. 

Granted, I’m biased. I love AoT’s characters, and I have a lot of good memories of the story. It’s been a big part of my life for a long time, and I want to preserve it if I can do so with my conscience intact - I like to think that my love of fictional people doesn’t undermine my hatred of violent bigots. I don’t want to annihilate something that I see a good message in because of vile things the author says when it’s not entirely clear to what extend those sentiments shine through and what conclusion the story will ultimately make. If, as the story continues, something happens that makes its anti-semitism undeniable, I’ll condemn it in a heartbeat. But I’m not wholly convinced at this time, and I haven’t reached that breaking point. 

#attack on titan #antisemitism #nazis #snk spoilers #snk 114 #snk 116 #snk analysis #bluebird's snk meta

[occidentaltourist]

“Secular Christian ideas/imagery,” probably wasn’t the right phrasing (my brain was a bit on autopilot last night lol). Think along the lines of how Christmas has become very secular. Yes, it’s still very much a christian holiday, but you don’t necessarily have to be christian to celebrate it. It’s become so ingrained in western (US) culture that it’s normal to take part in the tradition (trees, lights, decorations, presents, parties, even Santa Clause) with none of the religion. (1/14)

My dear anon, thank you so much for your analysis; this was a very interesting read and your thesis certainly provided a lot of food for thought! I’m putting the rest of your analysis under the cut (which I encourage those reading this blog to read in its entirety, and I hope you eventually post sometime as well).

With the caveat that unlike films, which are also of course collaborative but almost always directed by one person and typically have one cinematographer - television has even more ‘cooks in the kitchen’ and variability in creative visions/directorial choices from episode to episode … I would agree that religious imagery or symbolism appears in the show. Maybe this seems intuitive, given that Supergirl is a being imbued with godlike powers on this earth.

Some thoughts:

Worldkillers and the concept of possession and exorcism

I’ve read some posts about the WKs that use terms and concepts from clinical psychology, but I agree that the possession/exorcism is probably a more applicable concept (given that this is a show that’s, by definition, not rooted in the ‘real world’ as we know it).

I’m not familiar with the different kinds of kryptonite - all I know is the regular green and the infamous red from S1 -,but I understand kryptonite has other colors too. Maybe the eventual solution also involves the use of some kind of ‘magic rock’ that exorcises the ‘worldkiller’ from the ‘human’ - if indeed the WKs can be saved?

Corville and his role

I’m on the fence about the choice the writers made to bring him back and have him be the one delivering the doomsday ‘prophecy’ about the rise of Reign and Kara being a savior. It  weakens the point I thought they were trying to make in ‘The Faithful,’ about charlatans and cults vs. religion and spirituality. 

Why not have Alura’s hologram be less cryptic, and serve this role instead? Maybe that’s coming, and the link of the Worldkillers to Zor-El/the House of El is something they’re saving for 3b. 

(Just my opinion about where the story is going. I do think that, like the Medusa virus, the link to Kara’s own family will eventually be revealed. Which aligns with what you say below the cut about good and evil essentially springing from the same source.)

Again, THANK YOU for this thoughtful and thought-provoking ask! Please come back soon with your excellent insights. :)

They use christian images and ideas in a secular way, in the same way Christmas can be celebrated without the religion. It’s not like veggie tales or purposely trying to tell a christian story. They pull some concepts, images, and/or ideas to build their own story that has nothing to do with religion or god. Christian concepts constantly show up in comics, especially Superman and by extension Supergirl

 (Which is somewhat odd, because Superman was created by two Jewish teenagers in response to rising anti-Semitic feelings in the United States due to the influx of Jewish refugees because of the Nazis rise to power in Germany and said refugees then being forced to assimilate.) That being said, Supergirl doesn’t see as much of it, both in the comics and the show, because they’re always trying to depict the refugee side of the story. 

She’s old enough to remember Krypton and morns it’s loss while having to learn to assimilate on Earth. But these concepts and images still pop up, especially on the show that passes through many creative hands per episode. Using ‘The Faithful’ as an example- They borrowed from a recognizable religious (christian) image (the stigmata) that would emphasis the importance of the scene while fitting with the overall theme of the episode, which was about belief and religion. She’s old enough to remember

Krypton and morns it’s loss while having to learn to assimilate on Earth. But these concepts and images still pop up, especially on the show that passes through many creative hands per episode. Using ‘The Faithful’ as an example- They borrowed from a recognizable religious (christian) image (the stigmata) that would emphasis the importance of the scene while fitting with the overall theme of the episode, which was about belief and religion. 

The show also borrows ideas from christianity again when setting up the cult. They’re depicted worshipping and praying to Rao while also seeing Supergirl as a god and praying to her, but they believe she was sent by Rao to save them (that point is driven home when Kara goes to visit Corville in jail to find answers about Reign).

It’s very reminiscent of the holy trinity, a christian doctrine which states that god is one essence that has three distinct external persons (God the father-God the son-God the holy spirit). Christians believe that Jesus was god’s only son sent by god as a savior but Jesus is also god, which is why Jesus is worshipped with as much fervor and reverence as god.

Similarly the cult believes Supergirl, the last (only) daughter of Krypton “Rao’s external persons,” was sent by Rao as a savior, but Supergirl is worshipped with the same reverence as if she were also an extension of Rao. Jesus son of god, Kara Zor-el daughter of Rao. This makes that “stigmata scene” all the more fitting and relevant, but it can also go one step further. As you know, the stigmata are marks or wounds that correspond to those left on Jesus’ body during the crucifixion.

It was at his crucifixion and death that most (if not all) of his disciples and apostles lost their faith and ran away into hiding. In that scene when Kara cuts her palm all of the followers, even Corville himself momentarily, lose their faith and run away.

Then, fast forward to the prison scene in 3x09, they had Corville make direct references to christianity: the end of days, “a Lilith,” sign/mark of the beast, the devil, prophesied events that single the coming of the end of days, describing the worldkiller as one would the antichrist, once again propping Kara up as the savior sent here to defeat the beast/devil. The writers definitely made this cult have a christian… flavor to it, and then built other scenes and images up around that.

Now keeping with the theme, Corville keeps saying that she was sent here as a savior. If it does come to pass that Kara and Kal-el were sent, “specifically to protect [Earth] from another Kryptonian-created menace,” it would create another christian parallel that’s a bit more subconscious in its creation. (This is what my last sentence was referring to.) The whole premise of christianity is god sending his(her/their/its) son to save humanity (salvation) from evil (i.e. the devil).

Everything is based around that point. Kara and Kal-el being sent here by their parents to save humanity from an evil Kryptonian creation, would parallel that. The parallel would deepen with the Kryptonians creating the worldkiller and god creating Lucifer (According to christianity, god created the angels and Lucifer was an angel before his fall). There are also other images they’ve used throughout the show.

Notice how when Kara is defeated in battle, and they really want to make a show of it, her body will be straight (except for perhaps a bent knee or something) with her arms outstretched. The last time we saw this was in 3x09 after Reign dropped her from a skyscraper (which would tie in with all the other parallels they’ve made this season). It’s also seen in 2x18 when the nano swarm pins Supergirl (upright with arms outstretched) and Lena had to sacrifice Jack to save her.

The worldkillers are also somewhat interesting with how they’re writing the human vs worldkiller in each of them, because it’s eerily similar to possession. You can look up cases of supposed possessions and exorcisms that have been documented by the Catholic Church, or you can just watch movies that are based off of them to get the general idea (I mean we’ve all at least heard of The Exorcist).

The worldkillers are also somewhat interesting with how they’re writing the human vs worldkiller in each of them, because it’s eerily similar to possession. You can look up cases of supposed possessions and exorcisms that have been documented by the Catholic Church, or you can just watch movies that are based off of them to get the general idea (I mean we’ve all at least heard of The Exorcist).

It happens against the will of the person, they can suddenly become ridiculously strong and/or fast, do things that they normally couldn’t do or shouldn’t be possible, they become completely different when whatever is doing the possessing takes over, the only way to “win” is to attempt to save the person and calling on that person to fight and reject it. (Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this dissertation that went waaayyyyy longer than I originally intended.) 

#supergirl #religious symbolism #dctv #krypton #anonymous

[aymanofhisword]

Why the Jerusalem declaration is Trump’s cruelest move yet

medium.com - Ben Wolford

A father and mother are in the middle of a difficult discussion over the custody of their child. They’ve both been crying. It’s the most critical moment of their lives. Suddenly, a preposterous man sits down at the dining room table, issues a legally binding order in favor of the father and then abruptly changes the subject: “Big crowd expected today in Pensacola, Florida, for a Make America Great Again speech!”

If you can imagine the way the mother feels, you can begin to imagine how Palestinians feel today.

The U.S. conversation has moved away from Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The story was way down on the home pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I couldn’t even find stories about it on the leftist front pages of Mother Jones and Jacobin. A Latterly contributing editor in Washington just told me that “it’s barely being discussed.”

The arrogant nonchalance is part of what’s so infuriating to Palestinians. Trump’s declaration was a gut punch to 12 million people that left them feeling sick, morose and angry in a way that’s difficult for non-Palestinians to understand. And we don’t even bother trying. Indifference is America’s ultimate act of cruelty.

But in fact, this is the worst thing the Trump administration has done. Worse than the Muslim ban, worse than repealing DACA and worse than walking away from the Paris Agreement.

Twenty thousand people assembled in downtown Amman today—and thousands more protested around the world—because one more piece of land has just been taken away from them. They did not elect the person who took it from them. The Israelis did not elect that person. And not even a majority of American voters elected that person. Fewer still among those who voted for Donald Trump know anything about the Israel-Palestine dispute or care.

Yet the images streaming out of today’s protests can give you an idea how much Trump’s 12-minute speech on Jerusalem matters.

If you think this demonstration has the look and feel of the protests that led to the Arab Spring, you’re not wrong. There’s a direct link between the way these protesters feel now and the way the protesters felt in 2011.

I’ll explain that, but first the requisite background. Jerusalem is a divided city. Both Israel and Palestine claim the whole municipality, but for now, after decades of gridlock, each side is mostly content to grasp a portion: the Israelis in West Jerusalem and the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Palestinians wanted East Jerusalem to be part of Palestine in any two-state agreement.

Trump, by himself, for no apparent reason, has imperiled that arrangement by declaring (or rather, slurring) “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.” He didn’t say West Jerusalem. He said Jerusalem.

Journalists yesterday tried to make David M. Satterfield, the acting assistant U.S. secretary of state for the Middle East, clarify the president’s statement. It ended with Satterfield attempting to say grammatically acceptable sentences while at the same time saying nothing at all:

QUESTION: Could you explain the distinction between recognizing the capital and not deciding anything on borders as it refers to a deal? Because if you’re saying that this is a final status issue to be negotiated at the table, how does either (a), this not prejudice a deal when Jerusalem is a final status issue, or (b), how is it not a meaningless declaration that could be negotiated at the table? It has to be one or the other.

AMBASSADOR SATTERFIELD: Elise, final status negotiations are going to deal with those boundaries of sovereignty, border questions that the president spoke to as not addressed by his recognition. The president thought it was the right thing to do for the United States, after all these years, to acknowledge the fact, the reality, that Jerusalem is the seat of government of the state of Israel, the capital of the state of Israel. That’s it.

QUESTION: But it’s — respectfully, it’s inconsistent with the idea that you would also be negotiating at the table unless you can acknowledge what we’re all trying to get you to say, which you artfully are not —

AMBASSADOR SATTERFIELD: Thank you, Elise. You may well think that. Thank you.

QUESTION: Well — but the idea that it may — that is — that Jerusalem is the capital, but perhaps in final status negotiations that it might be not the united capital.

AMBASSADOR SATTERFIELD: Elise, I will only address one more point on this. What were the words the President used? It was a very simple statement: recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. There are words you might want to put in there; he didn’t. There are words you might want to take out; he didn’t. That statement was very carefully made, as was the comment we are not prejudicing addressing by this decision final status issue.

When asked in what way the statement was carefully made, he said “I’m not going to get into a tick-tock on this.” Asked if he personally agreed with the decision, Satterfield gritted his teeth: “Oh, now. I am an employee of the U.S. government. … This is a decision which we will work our best to execute and advance.”

In the absence of any clarification from the Trump administration, Palestinians have intuited what’s going on here: The United States, which was supposed to be mediating a deal, has suddenly awarded a city it doesn’t own to a people that doesn’t deserve it, as one Amman protester put it.

The chief Palestinian negotiator told The New York Times he’d given up on hope for a two-state solution and was shifting strategy toward simply making life better for Arabs stuck under Israeli occupation. “This is the reality,” he said. “We live here. Our struggle should focus on one thing: equal rights.”

The people he represents—those thousands marching in Palestine, Jordan and elsewhere today—aren’t ready to give up. But they, too, have undergone a shift. To speak with them, it feels like more than a mere shift in strategy, though that’s part of it: They’ve steeled their hearts and clenched their fists to a new reality in which no one—not the U.S., not Israel and not the Arab leaders who govern the Palestinian diaspora—is dealing with them honestly.

Remember, this is a people that understands all of Palestine to be its territory, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea. They understand Zionists and the West to have stolen this place where Jews, Muslims, Christians and others once lived together; imposed a religious state; and subjected the local inhabitants to second-class status or worse. They understand that they will one day reclaim this land, no matter how long it takes. The dream is to establish a democracy where Jews, Muslims, Christians and others can again live peacefully—a state where they can pay taxes and elect officials that work for everyone.

Today that dream seems further away. The Palestinian Authority, a governing body set up in 1994 to manage the transition to a Palestinian state, and its Fatah party leadership are seen as failing. The alternative, a Hamas-led vision of armed struggle, begins to appear as though it were necessary all along.

“They … have been told that their only hope is to create such pain for Israelis and unrest throughout the region that their needs will have to be addressed,” writes Mitchell Plitnick, former vice president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

This isn’t to say that Palestinians are the violent, extremist hotheads that Israeli and American propaganda would have you believe. (For instance, the U.S. embassy here in Amman ordered the children of government employees to stay home from school on Thursday. As far as I know, this wasn’t based on any intelligence that kids were in danger. Rather, it smells more like racist fear-mongering: “Those reactionary Arabs will kill your children.”)

On the contrary, Palestinians who aspire to nationhood view—with good reason—the Israeli occupation of Palestine as a violent, military project. Therefore, right or wrong, arguments for a violent, military response are at least understandable and should not be conflated with terrorism, as the editor of The Jerusalem Post does.

Such a conflict would be devastating. More than 1,500 civilians died in the 2014 Gaza War, almost all of them Palestinian, including some 500 children. But Palestinians are willing to die for statehood. Already, I’ve just seen a report of two killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during protests.

Such demonstrations could keep growing, especially as they relate to U.S.-allied Arab dictators in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are not only repressive (in a variety of ways) but are seen as increasingly cozy with Israel as a counterweight to Iran and Islamic extremist groups. It’s in this sense that many Palestinians are calling for a second Arab Spring, in the hopes that such an uprising would spawn a dozen Tunisias. But it could also spawn a dozen Syrias.

That predictions falls at the cataclysmic end of the spectrum of possibilities. So far, the “three days of rage” Palestinian leaders called for have been mostly peaceful. There’s still plenty of room for the parties to salvage the nonviolent resolution that Trump’s action threatens to destroy. But it would be a mistake to discount Palestinians’ feelings of powerlessness—and the power such a feeling creates.

Why would Trump even want to mess with that? “It is almost impossible to see the logic,” wrote Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution. Sixty-three percent of Americans opposed the move, according to a University of Maryland poll.

Trump’s motives for anything are a mystery, and he likes to keep it that way. He prefers chaos to continuity, and he likes to do things that make him the center of attention. He’s also been the target of an intense pressure campaign by right-wing American Jewish organizations, Evangelical Christians and wealthy donors like casino owner Sheldon Adelson, who made the Jerusalem embassy relocation a focus of their lobbying efforts. It worked.

The biggest reason this was such an irresponsible decision is simple: It didn’t have to be made.

It was a cruel decision because the majority of Americans aren’t effected and don’t care, while for so many people in the street today it felt like everything.

#jerusalem #peace #politics #america #middleeast #palestine #israel #trump #opinion

[writingwithcolor]

Research:Large to Small Scale, Avoiding Homogenizing East Asian Cultures, & Paralleling Regions Appropriately

I’m currently working on a project set in a secondary world, but with nations that roughly correspond to major cultures in our world. 

By that I mean I’m trying to create amalgamations of cultural groups. For example, one country corresponds to Germanic cultures, one to Celtic, one to Mediterranean. There are, so far, also countries that correspond to Eastern Asia - a mixture of Japanese, Chinese and Korean, mainly - South America, “Arab countries” and so on. My first question, in that regard, would be whether or not this concept - creating a “vibe” that reads Eastern Asian, for example, but is not one specific culture - is offensive and if it is, what I can do to solve it. 

The project I’m working on makes use of so called FaceClaims, which means that, for example, actors are used to represent fictional characters. If I based the country on China alone, then I could only use Chinese FCs and would thus greatly limit the representation. A solution I thought of was to have each country be inofficially split up in itself, so the “East Asian” country would have a “Chinese” region, a “Korean” region and so on. Secondly, I have a desert region that I thought would be nice for an “African” (I am very much aware that there is no such thing as an “African culture”, so bear with me) cultural group. For this “country”, I thought of a loose union between different nations of people. There, I’m stuck - should I choose one region in Africa, let’s say West Africa, and base each nation on one specific peoples there? Or should I create my own “African-inspired” cultures? Or should I choose cultures from all around Africa and base a nation on each?

My third question goes along a similar line: The “cultures” I have chosen for the countries are by far not all there are in the world. There is no country for Native Americans, for example, none for South-Eastern Asians (unless I integrate them with my “India”), no Central Asian, etc. I know it is impossible to include all cultures there are in the world, but how do I choose which ones to represent in a concept like mine? I don’t want to exclude them, but I simply cannot create as many countries as there are cultural groups.

One possible solution I thought of specifically refers to Jewish people, since I feel it is important to represent them more in fantasy writing. My current idea was to have their story go similar to that of our world: Exile, long travels, and a split into groups, one of which would be the Ashkenazim, living somewhere near the Germanic country, and the other would be the Sephardim, which I imagined to live in between the “Arab” and “African” country, in a semi-autonomous city-state. But is it offensive to adapt what happened to the Jewish people in a secondary world or should I make it so that they have a more positive past and life, no exile like there was in our world? As far as I know, the exile is an important part of Jewish identity and cultural understanding, but I thought I’d ask anyway.

I’m going to preface this that some of this wording might sound very harsh, but I recognize you are genuinely asking out of a place of respect but you just aren’t sure what the best way to respect the world’s diversity is. The problem is it’s still not quite respectful enough, and shows sometimes glaring ignorance of nuances in the region.

I would also like to remind people that just because your exact question hasn’t been answered to the full scope you’re looking at, doesn’t mean you can’t get an answer as a whole. For example, we’ve discussed the concept of how and when to mix different cultures in the East Asian tag. Shira will cover your questions regarding Jewish representation below. 

However, I’m going to specifically tackle this from a research and worldbuilding perspective, primarily talking about a history of forced homogenization and how to avoid recreating colonialism/imperialism.

Notes on Language and False Equivalences

For starters, basically all of these groups are too broad. By a long shot. Either they flatten sometimes dozens to thousands of cultures (“Native American country” is in the thousands, “West Africa” is in the hundreds, “China, Japan, Korea” is in the dozens, if not hundreds, same deal with India). This language use makes people pretty uncomfortable, because it implies that the basis is stereotypes. It implies you haven’t done research, or, at least, haven’t done enough. When discussing nuance, it’s best to imply you understand there is nuance— like you did with Africa and Jewish culture, but neglected to do everywhere else.

You also go very broad with all non-European cultures, but narrow down a general homogeneous part for your European analogues, by picking Germanic and Celtic.

This double standard is something that is exactly what we try to draw attention to at WWC: to our ears, it sounds like “I’m taking Germanic peoples for Europe, but I’m going to mix three East Asian countries because those two regions have the equivalent amount of sameness that I can pass it off.”

While that sounds specific to just you, it’s not. We’ve received this type of question dozens of times in the past and it’s a general cultural attitude we’ve faced lots and lots and lots of times. Western society makes you think the equivalence is equal, because they’ve flattened all non-European countries with the single broadest brush, but it’s not.

I would also caution you on relying on media images for face claims, because media images only represent the idealized version of beauty. We’ve written multiple description guides that point out how much variety exists within all ethnic groups and how people seeing us as all the same is a microaggression.

You are right that you can’t tackle all of the world’s diversity into your worldbuilding, because, well, there is so much. The core of your question is basically how to narrow it down, which is what I’m going to tackle.

My suggestion is twofold: 

Research big, top level things, over a few centuries— namely, keep track of empires that have tried to take over places and look at what groups Western society lumps together when it spreads multiple regions.

Build small with a focus on a very specific place and group— namely, pick the smallest possible region you can and see what you have to build from there.

Researching Big

Researching big helps you catch what not to flatten, or at least, where flattening might be reinforcing situations that a government perpetuated. I’m going to focus on East Asia since that’s the bulk of your question, and it’s also where I’ve spent some time worldbuilding. The principles apply to all groups you’re trying to research.

East Asia— namely Japan, Korea, and China, although that is an oversimplification itself— is composed of two empires: China and Japan. This makes homogenization extremely risky because you’re touching two nerves of countries trying to take over in very recent history.

China has taken over a very large swath of land over centuries, and still has independence fights to this day from their recent history. As a result, they have both a roughly overreaching culture because the empire is so old, and a very fractured culture with over 50 recognized ethnic groups. When you think of “Chinese” you usually think of the dominant Han Chinese, but because of its old empire roots you can get a giant variety. In modern day, some provinces have kept their individual culture, while others have been part of China for so long there is a general “sameness” to them that can capture the flare you want.

Japan’s imperialism is similarly recent, only ending in 1947, and it left wounds across the Pacific (including Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Malaysia). Many of their actions are classified as war crimes. They’ve also erased their own Indigenous population by insisting only one ethnicity lived in the country. Both of these factors make mixing Japan into an “East Asian” mix tricky. Japan’s culture, while heavily impacted by China and Korea, is pretty distinct because of its island status.

Big research also lets you see the neighbouring areas at a time borders might not have been the same. For example, in the 1600s, China was much smaller because the Manchu External Expansion hadn’t happened yet. As a result, places we now think of as “Chinese” actually weren’t, and you’ll have to account for these differences in your worldbuilding. You can determine this by looking up historical maps/empires, which might require book research (libraries are wonderful).

This does not mean you can ignore recent history, however. Because the story is set in modern day, people will be viewing it through a modern lens. You need to research both the modern and the historical context in order to understand how to go about crafting a respectful world.

So that’s stuff you would’ve discovered by big research. By tracking empire movements, you can see where old wounds are and what historical contexts exist within whatever region you’re pulling from. If you take North America, you can see how each individual tribe is cast aside in favour of settler stories; in Africa, you can see how multiple empires wanted to plunder the land and didn’t care who it was; in the Middle East, you can see both the recent military involvement, the historical Ottomans, and the historical Persians.

Build Small

You can also see what empires influenced their regions for long enough to create a similar-ish culture throughout multiple regions, which can help you extract the essence you’re looking for. I would add a very large caution to only do this for historical empires where those who suffered under the regime are not fighting in present day/ have living memory of it (such as incorporating too much of England, France, or Spain in the Americas, along with the two examples above).

Now you can build small. If you wanted to give a sense of, say, coastal China with a heavy amount of trade, you can pick a major port city in China and figure out the pluralism in relation to that city. What parts identify it as Chinese (architecture, governance, food, general religious practices— folklore changes by region, but the general gist of practices can remain similar enough to get a vibe), and what parts are borrowed from a distinct enough culture they’re noticeably different?

By going from a city level, you can imply pluralism by throwing in asides of differences “out there” that shows you’ve thought about it, without cramming your world full of cultures you can’t fit in the plot. You can then also narrow down what to include based on map proximity: if there’s an easy sea or land path to an Egyptian analogue, you’re probably going to at least hint at it. This is a known historical trade, btw. Egyptian blue and Han purple are made of similar substances, pointing to an ancient cultural link.

You can research this by simply googling the country and looking under its history in Wikipedia. If you look up “China”, you can see “Imperial Unification” as one of its history points. “Japan” similarly gets you the Meiji period. Turkey shows the Ottoman empire. You can also look up “empires in [region]” that will give you a similar overview. This even works for places you don’t think have historical empires, such as North America (the pre-colonization section notes several).

This also is a starting place for what the borders would’ve been during any given time period, and gives you places to potentially factor in military involvement and recent strife. This is where modern research comes in handy, because you can get an idea of what that strife looked like.

Hope this gives you an idea how to go about worldbuilding a diverse population, and how to avoid paralleling recent wounds. 

~ Mod Lesya

Regarding Your Jewish Characters

I think it’s valid to reflect our real history in fantasy although if you dwell too much on the suffering aspects and not the “richly varied cultural traditions” aspects you’ll probably lose some of us because suffering-porn written from the outside gets old fast (if you’re Jewish yourself you 200% have the right to write this, of course.) Human Jewish characters living in pockets in fake-northern-Europe and fake-Mediterranea and fake-North-Africa (or even Fake China and Fake India; we’re there, too) is actually injecting some well-needed historical accuracy back into a genre that’s been badly whitewashed, gentilewashed, etc by imagining a Europe where nobody but white gentiles existed until they conveniently popped into existence during whatever era the writer thinks is appropriate.

In other words, if your fake Germany has a Jewish neighborhood in its largest city, that’s a way of making pseudo-European fantasy more realistic and less -washy, and is overall a good move, despite the fact that the destruction of the temple is the reason we were in Germany in the first place. (I mean… it’s not like you’re planning on sitting there writing about Tisha b'Av itself, right? You don’t have to say “And the reason there are Jews here is because a bazillion years ago, we wound up getting scattered” just to have Jews.)

By the way, having myself written secondary-world fantasy where entire countries, plural, get to be majority-Jewish, and 100% free of on-screen antisemitism, I think both ways are valid.

–Shira

#homogenization #guides #fantasy #history #Chinese history #Japanese history #Korean history #East Asian History #research #world building #colonialism #imperialism #racism #languages #East Asia #East Asian #China #Japan #Korea #Africa #West Africa #Middle East #Jewish #Judaism #coding #regions #settings #long answer #writer reference #writer research

[christianworldf]

New Post has been published on Nehemiah Reset

New Post has been published on https://nehemiahreset.org/news/minnesota-news/government-news-mn/trump-calls-on-minority-congresswomen-to-apologize-after-he-said-they-should-go-back-to-their-countries/

Trump calls on minority congresswomen to apologize after he said they should ‘go back’ to their countries

John Wagner

National reporter leading The Post’s breaking political news team

July 15 at 12:08 PM

President Trump on Monday called on a group of minority, liberal congresswomen to “apologize” to the United States, Israel and him and accused them of “racist hatred” a day after he said in inflammatory tweets that they should “go back” to their countries.

“When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said,” Trump said in new tweets Monday. “So many people are angry at them & their horrible & disgusting actions!”

He later criticized Democrats for coming to the defense of the congresswomen, who he claimed had shown “racist hatred” in their speech and are “very unpopular & unrepresentative.”

With his latest tweets, Trump dug in further on a line of attack that was widely condemned by Democrats as racist and employed a tactic he has used before: accusing his opponents of the same transgressions for which they have criticized him.

Trump’s tweets appeared to target four outspoken freshmen lawmakers who have been feuding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.).

Only one of them — Omar — was born outside the United States.

[Trump tells four liberal congresswomen to ‘go back’ to their countries, prompting Pelosi to defend them]

All four have called for Trump’s impeachment — Tlaib has done so using profane language — and have been highly critical of his administration, notably denouncing conditions at federal detention facilities near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump’s comments regarding Israel appeared to target Omar and Tlaib.

Earlier this year, Omar apologized after she was widely accused of anti-Semitic speech for suggesting that supporters of Israel’s government have an “allegiance to a foreign country.”

Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, has advocated what has been dubbed a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arguing that the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively opposes a two-state solution of neighboring Israeli and Palestinian states, she has supported the transformation of Israel into a single, jointly governed Arab-Jewish nation. But the idea has little support among either Israelis or Palestinians.

When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said. So many people are angry at them & their horrible & disgusting actions!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2019

If Democrats want to unite around the foul language & racist hatred spewed from the mouths and actions of these very unpopular & unrepresentative Congresswomen, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I can tell you that they have made Israel feel abandoned by the U.S.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2019

Republicans remained largely silent Monday morning about Trump’s tweets targeting the minority lawmakers.

Ocasio-Cortez went on Twitter to denounce Trump shortly after his latest posts.

“It’s important to note that the President’s words yday, telling four American Congresswomen of color ‘go back to your own country,’ is hallmark language of white supremacists,” she wrote. “Trump feels comfortable leading the GOP into outright racism, and that should concern all Americans.”

Trump’s tweets on Sunday morning were sent before he headed to his golf club in Sterling, Va.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump tweeted.

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” Trump added. “Then come back and show us how it is done.”

[Republicans are quiet as Trump urges minority congresswomen to leave the country]

Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Tlaib was born in Detroit, and Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York. Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia; her family fled the country amid civil war when she was a child, and she became a U.S. citizen as a teenager.

Pelosi subsequently described Trump’s tweets as racist and divisive.

“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” she said in a tweet. “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power.”

By Sunday evening, at least 90 House Democrats, plus Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), had denounced Trump’s remarks, with more than half of them using the words “racist” or “racism” to describe his tweets.

The only Republican member of Congress to speak out against Trump on Sunday was Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), who wrote on Twitter that “POTUS was wrong to say any American citizen, whether in Congress or not, has any ‘home’ besides the U.S.”

“But I just as strongly believe noncitizens who abuse our immigration laws should be sent home immediately, & Reps who refuse to defend America should be sent home” in the next election, he added.

A few other Republicans were critical of Trump’s tweets when asked about them on Monday.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), speaking on the syndicated radio program “Michigan’s Big Show,” called Trump’s tweets “really uncalled for” and “very disappointing.”

“We don’t respond to everything that’s out there,” he said when asked about the relative silence from GOP lawmakers. “But I would imagine, I would know, that a good number of my Republican colleagues don’t appreciate the comments as well. And actually if you look at the facts . . . three of the four were born in this country, so it makes no sense.”

During a television appearance Monday morning, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) counseled Trump to focus on policy differences with the congresswomen rather than on them personally.

“Aim higher. They are American citizens. They won an election. Take on their policies,” Graham said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

During the interview, Graham called the congresswomen’s ideas “anti-Semitic” and “socialist” and said their agenda is “disgusting.”

“We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists,” Graham said, referring to Ocasio-Cortez. “They hate Israel. They hate our own country.”

Trump later tweeted selective quotes from Graham’s interview that did not include his advice to “aim higher.”

[‘1950s racism straight from the White House’: Trump’s tweets revolt politicians around the world]

Trump also faced some criticism from Republicans beyond Capitol Hill.

In a statement, former Ohio governor John Kasich, a frequent Trump critic, called the president’s comments “deplorable and beneath the dignity of the office.”

“We all, including Republicans, need to speak out against these kinds of comments that do nothing more than divide us and create deep animosity — maybe even hatred,” he said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) sought to highlight the silence of most Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“Is the Republican silence over President @realDonaldTrump’s racism agreement or embarrassment?” he said in a tweet late Monday morning.

On Sunday night, Trump tweeted that it was “sad” to see Democrats “sticking up for people who speak so badly of our Country and who, in addition, hate Israel with a true and unbridled passion.”

He returned to that argument Monday morning.

“If Democrats want to unite around the foul language & racist hatred spewed from the mouths and actions of these very unpopular & unrepresentative Congresswomen, it will be interesting to see how it plays out,” Trump wrote. “I can tell you that they have made Israel feel abandoned by the U.S.”

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday morning, Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Pence, said: “I don’t think the president’s intent in any way is racist. . . . This is not a universal statement that he is making.”

Asked about the controversy during an earlier appearance on the Fox Business Channel, Short mentioned a recent naturalization ceremony at which Pence presided and that was attended by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is Asian American.

“So when people write the president has racist motives here, look at the reality of who is actually serving in Donald Trump’s Cabinet,” Short said. “He is making a point about a great frustration a lot of people feel that, I think it’s hard to find anything Ilhan Omar has actually said since elected to Congress that has been positive about the United States of America.”

Felicia Sonmez, Mike DeBonis and Ashley Parker contributed to this report.

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[rabbiandrewrosenblatt]

From Debate to Dialogue

In 1992 I took Modern British Literature 3269 at Columbia University, taught by the celebrated professor, Palestinian nationalist, and author Edward Said. He used literary theory and criticism to argue that European colonialism was a system in which the indigenous people in colonized lands were portrayed in art, politics, and everyday discourse as racially inferior to the white Europeans who colonized them. A central thesis of this intellectual project was Orientalism (also the title of his book that popularized the notion) – which is the point that language has the power to normalize the racial distinctions and hierarchies that enabled European empires to colonize, oppress, and enslave the non-white inhabitants of the so-called Orient. A corollary to this was the claim that Zionism was an extension of European colonialism. He argued that the founders of the Zionist movement were white Europeans who followed the same strategy to displace Arabs that European colonizers had used to conquer and enslave non-white Indians, Asians, and Africans. 

By the time I was in Prof. Said’s class, his reputation was well established. He had become an influential person in politics, advocating for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He had been an independent member of the Palestinian National Council. He had once acted on behalf of the US government to convey a peace plan to Yasir Arafat. Many of the Jewish students in my class naturally anticipated that there would be some discussion of politics. There was none. 

However, according to my fellow students there was one episode of politics. It happened in a lecture that coincided with Yom Kippur, when none of the Jewish students were in attendance. The novel covered in that session was Youth by Joseph Conrad. Conrad’s work had been a central case study of Said’s doctoral thesis. Many of Conrad's works feature ships. In Youth, the ship is the Judea. However, in that particular class, Said referred to the ship as the Palestine. My classmates were confused; they would have had less context to question the nuance of this substitution than the Jewish students who observed Yom Kippur. The next class, we all anticipated further discussion about the novel, and his changing the name of the ship. 

There was none. 

If we apply Said’s method of critical analysis to the ‘text’ of his lecturing, then he was taking advantage of an opportunity to frame or re-frame the narrative of the defining conflict of his life – i.e., the birth of Israel at the expense of the birth of a Palestinian state. The classroom is often seen as a place where knowledge, truth, and history are defined for tomorrow’s leaders. If Said saw the birth of Israel as a racist, colonialist displacement of Arab Palestine, then re-naming Judea – the ancient designation for the Jewish state – would be a step toward reversing Orientalism. 

Three weeks ago, I wrote a Friday message that commented on a podcast featuring Seth Rogen. That week’s writing got more responses than any other Friday message. Some were supportive and some critical. Last week my letter included an apology to Mr. Rogen and his family for the personal tone of my criticism of the podcast. I said the following:

In a message two weeks ago, I aggressively argued against Seth Rogen’s remarks regarding the founding of the State of Israel. The wording of the message implied a judgment of how our community and his family educated him. That was wrong, and my words should never have even suggested that. I apologize for expressing my arguments in terms that impugned the Rogen family. I, too, have to learn from my mistakes and errors 

This week, I got a phone call from Mr. Rogen. I want to share what I learned from him and what I believe we agreed we learned from the reactions to the podcast.  

The first and most important lesson is that we can all be guilty of oversimplifying each other’s positions or oversimplifying the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Rogen told me that he felt that his comments had been taken out of context. I had focused on a sound bite that was intended for a podcast on comedy. To clarify his position on Israel he linked me to a long-format podcast with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. In this interview he said he realized, on reflection with his wife, “when having a conversation about something so sensitive...it is what we said and it is also what we did not say. When you're having even a humorous conversation about something so nuanced, leaving things out or omitting things can become just as bad as the things you do say.”  

I now see that I had responded to an oversimplification at the same level, with platitudes. After speaking with Mr. Rogen and learning more about his personal values, I think that his position on Israel reflects a certain ideal, not entirely different from the philosophy of the Kibbutz movement – in which his parents met – that sought to bring a strong sense of justice and equality to the world. The humanitarian ethos of Zionism is very different from Prof. Said’s view of Zionism as an inherently racist enterprise. 

From the Kibbutz movement’s perspective, the values of liberal democracy and fairness should be applied to the present situation. Israel’s treatment of Palestine and of Palestinians should reflect the humanitarian ideals that were at the core of the humanist labour movement. The argument Mr. Rogen advances sees the current policies and negotiation strategies as a betrayal of the founding principles of Israel. Many Israelis agree. I think there is much to value in such a perspective; dismissing the merits and values of such a perspective is not true to my own thinking, nor is it an effective way to get others to understand my opinion. 

There is irony in the fact that this all began with a comedy podcast and a simple line about how Mr. Rogen’s Israel education was too narrow, and then was carried on by responses, including my own, that were similarly narrow. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that organized Jewish communities present a curriculum designed exclusively to build Jewish identity and love of Israel. It speaks to the nervousness of the diaspora about the disaffection and disappearance of Jews. It speaks to the reality that there are so many narrowly-defined anti-Israel counter-narratives out there – like Prof. Said’s linguistic turn on Youth – that it is only natural to advance a counter-counter-narrative. It speaks to the very real security concerns that Jews have had in Israel from 1920 to the present. However, narrowly focusing on any single factor leaves little room, if any, for a more fulsome presentation of the Palestinian condition portrayed in the media, in the arts, and in the classroom. Too often, it leaves out a balanced view of how dehumanizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be to ordinary people on both sides – especially to Palestinians. 

Mr. Rogen and I are probably more in agreement than he might think. In the weekly letter of 8 December 2017, I applied this principle [with Terry Neiman] to the Israel-Palestine situation as follows.

It is hard to imagine listening to a narrative from enemies who lie and mislabel us as an occupier, a Nazi, and a war criminal. It is hard to listen to people who cannot utter the word Israel without the modifier of Apartheid… However, in our experience, problems do not get solved without genuine appreciation of the story of the other side. Those who choose to remain callous to the opposite story in a conflict are doomed to a status quo of conflict. 

Palestinians call their story the Nakba - the Catastrophe. 

The Torah, at its core, values investigation that is broadly fact gathering to present the whole picture of any situation. The laws that emerge from this week’s Torah reading [Parshat Shoftim] concerning the procedures of the court reflect the need for both fact-finding and empathy. A panel of judges must include experts in the fields of practical knowledge. The law cannot exist outside of the factual knowledge of a conflict. Interestingly, the members of the court cannot be “exceedingly old.” Rashi understands this to mean that they must not be so detached from having raised their own children that they have ceased to have the patience and mercy that it takes to tolerate the indiscretions of youth. 

There is a law in the Code of Torah Courts that if a court gives a unanimous verdict of guilty, then they must declare the accused exempt from punishment. One interpretation, a close reading of Maimonides in Sanhedrin 9:1, is that if everyone is of one mind to convict, then it may be that the court was biased or predisposed to find guilt and therefore was guilty of either prejudice, group-think, or both. As such, even those who are the most loyal defenders of Israel should be open to widening their lens. 

I am ever mindful that my readers – many of whom I know personally – have a range of views and political leanings. My pulpit gives me the privilege to share my narrative with many, and affords me the advantage of controlling my email distribution list. In contrast to this, Edward Said had a captive, non-Jewish audience that lacked context for his interpretations, and lacked the power to challenge his academic pulpit. He was using his privilege to re-write someone else's narrative. Mr. Rogen and I, with very different audiences, share the quality of getting more diverse, unfiltered feedback than Said got in the classroom. This experience taught me that my words carried beyond my intended readership, and that those readers were sent emotionally and intellectually in a direction opposite to what I intended.

I believe that one’s ability to engage in meaningful reflections on Israel and its policy decisions and its treatment of the Palestinians suffers from being far from the realities on both sides of the conflict. We speak about Israel from the comfort and shelter of being an ocean and a continent away, and fail to appreciate what a luxury it is to opine on Israeli and Palestinian actions when we are not part of the facts on the ground.

On reflection, I see more clearly now how my conversations with political or intellectual critics and adversaries is different from my discussions with my co-author and contributing editor Terry Neiman. Over the years, Dr. Neiman and I have developed a process of  dialogue. We agree, disagree, re-construct, re-approach, and incorporate each other’s perspectives. In contrast to that, the adversarial debates I have with others are more like competitive wrestling matches in which one person will be pinned or submit. To the extent that all our debates seek to open the perspectives of all, it is a good thing. To the extent that they intend to suppress voices and perspectives, it is a very bad thing.   

I appreciate that Seth Rogen took the time to call me to sort this out. I don’t know if his conversations with me or with Haaretz changed his opinion or gave him opportunity to see things differently. I can say for myself it was an inspiration to read further, explore more, and to be disciplined enough not to fall further into the trap of electronically-mediated debate – the so-called echo chamber effect. The chiddush – the novel approach – here is that we stopped lobbing shots at each other in the media and started a dialogue. I look forward to less oversimplification, less winner-take-all debate, less competition for control of the narratives, and more dialogue. 

[democratsunited-blog]

No, the Nazi platform did not echo the Democratic platform, as Donald Trump Jr. said

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=7282

No, the Nazi platform did not echo the Democratic platform, as Donald Trump Jr. said

At the Washington, D.C., premiere of a new movie by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, Donald Trump Jr. gave an on-camera interview to One America News Network, a conservative outlet.

In it, the younger Trump echoed one of D’Souza’s themes that Democrats are a crypto-Nazi party.

“You see the Nazi platform from the early 1930s … look at it compared to the DNC (Democratic Party) platform of today, you’re saying, ‘Man, those things are awfully similar’ to a point where it’s actually scary. It’s the exact opposite of what you’ve been told.” (The Aug. 1 interview can be seen on video here, around the 3:20 mark.)

Really?

The assertion appears to originate with D’Souza’s 2017 book, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left. In one passage, he cites a 25-point program that included nationalization of large corporations, government control of banking, the expropriation of land, a broader pension system, and universal free health care and education.

If you read the Nazi platform without knowing its source, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were reading the 2016 platform of the Democratic Party. Or a least a Democratic platform drafted jointly by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sure, some of the language is out of date. The Democrats don’t talk about “usury” these days; they’d have to substitute “Wall Street Greed.” But otherwise, it’s all there. All you have to do is cross out the word “Nazi” and write in the word “Democrat.”

D’Souza did not respond to an inquiry for this article, but Trump Jr. sent a tweet on Aug. 2 that said, “So the left spends the last 3 years falsely calling my entire family NAZI’s, but the second I point out the similarities between the economic platform of the National Socialists and the Democrat Party, they scream bloody murder. Here’s what I was referring to. #facts.” The tweet linked to a teaser clip from D’Souza’s film that covers much the same ground as the excerpt above.

We dug out the original Nazi platform from 1920 and consulted with historians of the period. There was wide agreement that D’Souza has made a dubious and overly simplified comparison of the Nazis and the Democrats while also overlooking large portions of the platform that couldn’t be further from present-day Democratic orthodoxy.

“There is not the slightest, tiny sliver in which this could be even somewhat accurate,” said Jeffrey Herf, a University of Maryland historian and author of The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Herf is a self-described critic of President Barack Obama, yet he said he can say confidently “that the Democrats have nothing in common with the Nazi Party.”

What did the Nazis run on?

In 1919, Adolf Hitler joined what was then the tiny German Workers’ Party and began to convert it to his renamed National Socialist German Workers’ Party, said Richard Breitman, an American University historian and author of The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. Hitler became a co-author of the party’s program of 1920. (At that point, Germany had Democratic elections.)

The document is important, historians said, but it also requires a caveat.

“It did not reflect all of Hitler’s views — it was a compromise,” Breitman said. Some items — indeed, many of those that D’Souza says echo contemporary Democratic Party planks — are socialist. But even some of these are overlain with nationalist ideas more in tune with Hitler’s thinking, and overall, a majority of the planks articulate an extreme form of racial nationalism that is absent from modern-day Democratic platforms.

The economic elements D’Souza emphasized need important context, said Laurie Marhoefer, a historian at the University of Washington who has studied the period.

“The socialist elements in national socialism are in service to the racism,” she said. “That’s very different from socialism itself, from social democracy, and from the Democrats in the United States, who aren’t even social democrats.”

Some points that may sound similar

We found only three points in the 1920 Nazi platform that could be described as clearly similar to points made in the 2016 Democratic Party platform.

• “We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age.”

• Support for “the aim of opening up to every able and hard-working German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement. … We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the state.”

• “The state must ensure that the nation’s health standards are raised.”

However, these goals are so anodyne that not only the Democratic platform but also the Republican platform in 2016 mentioned them.

In three other cases, it’s possible to cherry-pick language from the Nazi platform that echoes Democratic Party principles of equality, prosperity and freedom, but a closer look reveals important differences.

• “All citizens shall have equal rights and duties.” This sounds inoffensive, but elsewhere in the Nazi document, it offers an exclusionary definition of “citizens” — specifically, that “only those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.”

• “We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class.” This may sound like American political boilerplate, but the next clause defines the pathway to this goal as “the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders.” There’s nothing in the Democratic platform about expropriating department stores for the benefit of small-business owners.

• “We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the state.” This sounds fine, but the sentence goes on to clarify, “provided they do not threaten its existence nor offend the moral feelings of the German race.”

D’Souza ignores many Nazi planks that are antithetical to Democratic Party policies

The majority of points in the platform address issues that cannot be found in the Democratic Party platform.

• Colonization. “We demand land and territory (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our surplus population,” the Nazi platform said.

• Immigration restrictions and deportations. The document says, “If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich.” In addition, “all non-German immigration must be prevented.” The 2016 Democratic platform, by contrast, says the party “supports legal immigration” and would maintain ‘the United States’ role as a beacon of hope for people seeking safety, freedom, and security.”

• The death penalty. The Nazi platform said that “common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race.” But the Democratic platform calls for abolishing the death penalty.

• Nationalization of the economy and expropriation of assets. While some may suggest that Democrats’ preference for progressive taxation and regulation of the free market are tantamount to socialism, the elements of the Nazi platform derived from the socialist side of its roots are more far-reaching than elements of the Democratic platform. For instance, the Nazi document advocates “the abolition of incomes unearned by work,” “the ruthless confiscation of all war profits,” “the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations,” and “expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation, the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.”

• Restrictions on the press. The Nazi document said that ‘the publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare must be forbidden” and added that “non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers,” punishable by “immediate deportation.” Nothing like this appears in the Democratic platform.

• Racial purity. The roots of the Holocaust can be detected in the 1920 Nazi platform. “Only members of the nation may be citizens of the state. Only those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.” It goes on to say that the party “combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us.”

This element offers the starkest difference, experts said.

“There is nothing in the Democratic Platform that resembles the central point of the Nazi movement — that ‘no Jew may be a member of the nation,’” said Peter Hayes, a Northwestern University professor of history and German and author of Why?: Explaining the Holocaust.

And as harsh as some of its rhetoric is, the 1920 document actually underplays what Nazism eventually became.

“Because Hitler wanted to create the image of consistency and infallibility, he never changed the program after he became Fuehrer of the party,” Breitman said. “He just continued to radicalize his views. When he gained power in 1933, he exploited opportunities to seize dictatorial control and then worked to expand party-state control of all aspects of life.”

Our ruling

Trump Jr. said, “You see the Nazi platform from the early 1930s … look at it compared to the (Democratic Party) platform of today, you’re saying, ‘Man, those things are awfully similar,’ to a point where it’s actually scary.”

Only a small number of elements of the two platforms are clearly similar, and those are so uncontroversial that they appear in the Republican platform as well. The vast majority of planks in the Nazi platform not only don’t appear in the Democratic platform, but are wholly antithetical to it. We rate this Pants on Fire.

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#Democrats

[feedbaylenny]

This is my 90th blog post and like most journalists, I identify mistakes all over and somehow — often through publicity — try to get them fixed. But not on this milestone. There’s too much good to write about.

I also want to point out the page CohenConnect Headlines Sitemap has a list of all the blog posts I’ve written and published over the past 3+ years, in chronological order. Nobody — early readers nor myself — can remember everything I’ve done and there hadn’t been a place to look. The right side of what you’re reading (or bottom on mobile) just show the past 10 and the most popular. A regular “sitemap” of category words is well below, on the bottom of the right side (or the bottom on mobile). But the “search” box also works very well, contains both categories and tags, and maybe more.

So staying positive, let’s honor some heroes with this post. These days, there are too few and far between. I remember years ago, while working at WCAU in Philadelphia, Larry Mendte saying on the air with such certainty, “Heroes never admit they are,” or something to that effect.

I’ll start by setting something straight. Two survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Florida posed for a picture with the caption Prom 2018, but they won’t be going together.

https://twitter.com/cameron_kasky/status/988454056615202817

That’s despite what Pink News in the UK reported Tuesday, to the disappointment of Cameron Kasky and David Hogg’s many fans.

The publication describes Kasky “lovingly hugging Hogg, who contrasts Kasky’s sloppy smile with a stair which pierces your soul.”

Monday, Kasky posted the picture on Twitter. Click here for that original article, which may not be true, but contained a lot of positive reaction from hopeful supporters.

Yesterday, the Miami Herald wrote,

“Rebecca Boldrick, Hogg’s mother, told TMZ.com that Hogg has another date for the prom. “Jeff Kasky, Cameron’s dad, told TMZ, ‘Cameron and David love each other very much, as do the 20 or so other kids that are part of their group, but not in a romantic type of way.’”

Then, Cameron’s mother, who has been a friend for about 40 years, posted a picture of the two of them titled “My date” Tuesday night. I’m not naming her because she has not put her name out in the public.

You watched Kasky dress down Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in a CNN town hall for refusing to refuse contributions from the National Rifle Association. In fact, what it took for Cameron to try to get a simple “yes” or “no” answer to his question from a sitting U.S. senator and former presidential candidate from his own state was amazing!

Fellow survivor Hogg also became a gun control advocate and activist against gun violence, but he has been more controversial. New to Florida — his family moved from L.A. at the start of high school — he chose to attend Stoneman Douglas because of its TV production classes.

Hogg may be most famous for what The Washington Post called his “dust-up with Fox News host Laura Ingraham,” who used this tweet to “make fun of the teen’s public lament about being rejected by colleges to which he had applied.”

https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/979021639458459648

(It really won’t matter because he plans to take next year off after high school to campaign in the midterm elections.)

The next day, Ingraham apologized to Hogg but not anybody else she’d put down over the years, including LeBron James, and by then it was too late.

https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/979404377730486272

https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/979404540754657280

So, knowing how TV and news are businesses that revolve around money (Where have you heard that multiple times before?), he urged his 700,000+ Twitter followers to boycott Ingraham’s advertisers.

https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/979168957180579840

The Washington Post noted, Hogg called the apology an insincere “effort just to save your advertisers.”

Then, “In a matter of days, Ingraham lost more than a dozen advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hulu, Jenny Craig, Ruby Tuesday and Miracle-Ear.”

https://twitter.com/LibertyMutual/status/979811276003205121

That weekend, Hogg told CNN,

“It’s disturbing to know that somebody can bully so many people and just get away with it, especially to the level that she did. … No matter who somebody is, no matter how big or powerful they may seem, a bully is a bully, and it’s important that you stand up to them.”

He even went as far as to compare the tweet and Ingraham’s criticism of him, saying they “were in line with bullying statements she had made about others: a conflict with gays while she was at Dartmouth in 1984 and, recently, responding to LeBron James’s political statements by saying that the NBA star should ‘shut up and dribble.’”

“I’m glad to see corporate America standing with me and the other students of Parkland and everybody else. Because when we work together, we can accomplish anything.”

Then Ingraham took a week off. Fox claimed the vacation had been planned.

Hogg, now 18, has already made political change.

When Leslie Gibson, who was running unopposed for the Maine House of Representatives, described fellow Parkland student Emma González as a “skinhead lesbian,” Hogg called for somebody to challenge the Republican. He got not one but two other candidates, and Gibson dropped out of the race in response to public reaction critical of his comments.

Today, a little more controversy. The conservative network The Blaze is reporting,

“The Zionist Organization of America is calling on Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg to change the name of his forthcoming book, as it believes that the title shows ‘shocking insensitivity to Holocaust survivors.’ “Random House publishers announced Thursday that David and his sister Lauren had penned a deal with the publishing house to release a book, #NEVERAGAIN: A New Generation Draws the Line, June 5.”

Lauren is a freshman survivor.

https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/986682645814956032

According to The Blaze, Random House said it plans to make a donation to Everytown for Gun Safety.

The Blaze also reports the book is being described as

“a statement of generational purpose, and a moving portrait of the birth of a new movement.” “In times of struggle and tragedy, we can come together in love and compassion for each other,” David told Entertainment Weekly. “We can see each other not as political symbols, but as human beings. And then, of course, there will be times when we simply must fight for what is right.” Sister Lauren added, “It’s amazing to see that so much love can come from so much loss. But from our loss, our generation will create positive change.”

But I’ve had an issue with using the phrase “never again” since it has always referred to one event: the murders of 6 million Jews and millions of others in the Nazis’ organized extermination campaign during World War II. Personally, I think the book title should be changed, and don’t think the phrase should be used in any other matter, but don’t doubt Hogg’s sincerity about the gun issue.

The ZOA said in part,

“By co-opting ‘Never Again’ title for his book opposing guns, David Hogg trivializes the holocaust” and the Hoggs’ book title “offends Holocaust survivors, Jews, and all human rights-loving people.”

Those are sections the Glenn Beck-founded network chose to highlight, due to its own agenda.

Click here for the complete press release issued yesterday, which also said,

“This statement should not be construed as in any way lessening our shock, outrage and pain regarding the Parkland school shooting. ZOA completely sympathizes with the loving, bereft families and all the infinitely precious victims of the Parkland shooting, all other school shootings, and all other shootings. All affected by these tragedies are in our hearts and prayers. … “It is an expression that should never be politicized or co-opted by anyone, regardless of political affiliation. … “The Holocaust was unique and unprecedented, in that: it involved a ‘final solution’ designed to murder every single Jewish man, woman and child; Jews were the only people killed for the ‘crime’ of existing; the murder of Jews was an ‘end in itself’ rather than a means to some other goal; and the people who carried out the ‘Final Solution’ were primarily average citizens ‘just doing a job.’ None of the other terrible slaughters and genocides this world has witnessed share all these characteristics.”

We’ll see what happens.

A third of the 20 founding members of the group Never Again MSD is activist Emma González, who has also had to deal with criticism of her bisexual orientation, hairstyle and more, including this.

The Washington Post reported,

“A doctored animation of González tearing the U.S. Constitution in half circulated on social media during the rally, after it was lifted from a Teen Vogue story about teenage activists. In the real image, González is ripping apart a gun-range target.”

I guess you could say desperate liars were targeting her because they had nothing better.

The group was promoting the March 24 “March for Our Lives” rallies in which even the president’s daughter, Tiffany Trump, supported. I traced how this posting came to be.

https://twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/977696844187885569

  Kasky, Hogg and González — along with fellow students Jacqueline Cohen and Alex Wind — even made Time magazine‘s list of the 100 most influential people in the world for becoming prominent activists, organizing protests, and speaking out publicly to demand stricter laws on gun control.

Time wrote in an article, How we chose the 2018 TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people: “Barack Obama, who has said that his greatest frustration as President was the failure of commonsense gun-safety laws, draws inspiration from the Parkland, Fla., teenagers who organized the March for Our Lives: ‘They have the power … to reject the old constraints, outdated conventions and cowardice too often dressed up as wisdom.’” Click here for the Time article about the Parkland 5.

Mashable went back further, writing the former president…

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/966704319658647553

and first lady…

https://twitter.com/MichelleObama/status/966483852834287621

“both tweeted support for the Parkland teens following the deadly shooting, and wrote them a handwritten letter in praise of their ‘resilience, resolve and solidarity.’”

Notice the dates on everything. The attack took place on Feb. 14.

Mashable included a typed version of the letter, for those of you having trouble with Mr. Obama’s handwriting, and also a look at celebrities joining in at the March for Our Lives.

https://twitter.com/mic/status/976502415376703488

Even former NFL placekicker Jay Feely needs a lesson on seriousness, after The Sporting News showed a tweet he posted. It showed a “photo of him holding a gun while standing between his daughter and her prom date” that was intended to be a joke.

https://twitter.com/jayfeely/status/987853794221350912

Feely should know better. He’s from Florida, grew up there and spent a year with the Miami Dolphins. The next day, he clarified what had happened.

https://twitter.com/jayfeely/status/988067986115149824

On a more positive note, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports the prom will be an “over-the-top” party with a touching tribute, and students promising the best prom ever, after 17 people were shot to death at their school on Valentine’s Day. Four seniors were killed. So were seven freshman (that will be some prom in three years), plus three other students and two adults.

Eventually, the prom committee wanted to recognize the tragedy that’ll mark their high school memories. There will be a memorial near the entrance to the ballroom. It’ll also include two members of their class who died in 2016 of cystic fibrosis and suicide. The memorial will be surrounded by couches and designated as a quiet place to sit and think.

Inside, the prom will be stopped by 17 seconds of silence.

It also won’t be expensive. The cost: Just $30 per ticket, and $50 for non-seniors. The hotel, DJ, florist, decorator, and other vendors are donating their services for free or at cost, and the hotel is giving families of the senior victims a free weekend of their choice.

Good for all of them!

Marjory Stoneman Douglas survivors, along with high school students from around the country, were not even born 19 years ago during the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo.

(I remember it like yesterday. I had returned from vacation, was working at WCAU, and our news anchor Renee Chenault happened to be from Littleton. She ended up going there to report from her hometown, but being local news, did not get the publicity of Katie Couric for touching the hand of a victim’s father on the Today show.)

There were an estimated 150,000 students protesting on Friday’s anniversary at more than 2,700 walkouts, according to organizers.

The Chicago Tribune, in an Associated Press article published Friday afternoon, said,

“In a new wave of school walkouts, they raised their voices against gun violence. But this time, they were looking to turn outrage into action.” The students, “turned their attention to upcoming elections as they pressed for tougher gun laws and politicians who will enact them. Scores of rallies turned into voter registration drives. Students took the stage to issue an ultimatum to their lawmakers.”

Activists behind a March 14 protest, a month after Stoneman Douglas, estimated it drew nearly 1 million students.

(I find it interesting The Chicago Tribune used an Associated Press article, while I learned Chicago’s Fox TV station asked the other Fox stations for a story they could post on their website, because they were apparently unable to write one of their own. Were there no rallies anywhere near Chicago? Probably plenty, considering the numbers above! At minimum, I would’ve shown the big one around town and then another in a zip code they wanted to target for ratings. Even chopper video would’ve done the job except for hearing the students tell their reasons for walking out, firsthand. But we know how Fox stations operate with sharing web articles. It seems at this point, they’ve become dependent on their sister-stations rather than even try to do the work. I love how so many of today’s young people are the opposite of this kind of corporate laziness!)

The Washington Post noted, “Critics have questioned whether … the high school students demanding that the nation’s gun laws be strengthened are mature enough to understand the complex policy positions they have staked out.”

Isn’t this exactly what we want from our young people? To think, investigate and reconsider if necessary? And don’t these particular students who experienced what they did have unique insight on the issue? Yet some people feel the need to criticize them. Maybe it’s because they need to be heard. Maybe because these grown-ups really have not grown up and are jealous. Or maybe because “the kids are alright” and and it simply bothers them because they have issues of their own.

How much are they bothered?

Click here for “Ted Nugent says Parkland students ‘have no soul,’ calls them ‘mushy-brained children’” (The Washington Post, March 31, 2018).

Nugent, perhaps the NRA’s most outspoken board member, told a San Antonio radio station, “These poor children, I’m afraid to say, but the evidence is irrefutable. They have no soul,” after discussing with the host their belief the teenagers have been manipulated by left-wing ideologues.

“The lies from these poor, mushy-brained children who have been fed lies and parrot lies,” Nugent said. “I really feel sorry for them. It’s not only ignorant, dangerous and stupid — it’s soulless. To attack the good, law-abiding families of America when well-known, predictable murderers commit these horrors is deep in the category of soulless.”

Click here for “How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet” (The Washington Post, March 26, 2018).

If ardent NRA supporters don’t lose now, or in this year’s midterms, or even the 2020 presidential election, they should absolutely know the demographics of this country are changing. Eventually, they will lose to people who have felt real pain and others of that generation. It’s going to happen, whether they’ll consider themselves martyrs, or if they’re even alive to feel any suffering from their defeat.

Wikipedia

Also a hero: Last week, the pilot of Southwest Airlines flight 1380, Captain Tammie Jo Shults, landed her plane calmly and successfully, on just one engine, here in Philadelphia. She saved 148 lives.

The trouble on the flight from New York to Dallas started when one of its engines appeared to explode in midair. The only person killed was passenger Jennifer Riordan who was partially sucked out of a broken window. That was extraordinary despite the tragedy.

https://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/986788359350751232

  https://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/987487170947637248

YouTube

According to The Guardian, “Those present recalled that after the plane had landed, Shults walked through the aisle to talk to them, to see how they were doing.”

  Talk about responsibility AND customer service!

Turns out, The Guardian continued,

“Shults was one of the first female fighter pilots in the US Navy and was elite enough to fly an F/A-18 Hornet. She flew training missions as an ‘enemy pilot’ during Operation Desert Storm, as women were then still excluded from combat missions.”

Also not to be forgotten is the heroism of Waffle House diner James Shaw Jr. Early Sunday morning, outside Nashville, he was sitting with a friend at the restaurant counter when police said a gunman wearing nothing but a green jacket opened fire outside.

As CNN reported, “Glass shattered, dust swirled and Shaw said he saw a man lying on the ground.”

Four people were killed.

https://twitter.com/MNPDNashville/status/988000352741003264

CNN continued, Shaw

“bolted from his seat and slid along the ground to the restroom, he said. But he kept an eye and an ear out for the gunman. And the moment the shooter paused, Shaw decided to ambush him … before more lives were lost.”

He charged at the man with the rifle. They fought. Finally, Shaw said he managed to wrestle the barrel of the rifle from the gunman, tossed it behind the counter and the shooter escaped.

https://twitter.com/MNPDNashville/status/988055742363193344

“The gun was hot and he was naked but none of that mattered,” Shaw said, with a burn on his hand a wound on his elbow where a bullet grazed it.

He told reporters,

“I figured if I was going to die, he was going to have to work for it. … I was just trying to live.”

https://twitter.com/MNPDNashville/status/988476776316841984

Travis Jeffrey Reinking, 29, was arrested Monday, after a 34-hour manhunt.

https://twitter.com/MNPDNashville/status/988916197411508224

NBC News pointed out he went from wearing only a green jacket to a green “suicide smock — a padded gown made from heavy-duty polyester that is held together with Velcro strips.”

If you are of a certain age, you remember Schoolhouse Rock! from ABC on Saturday mornings. The jazz musician who was instrumental in that cartoon series died Monday in Mount Bethel, Pa., 92 miles and an hour-and-a-half drive from Philadelphia.

Bob Dorough was 94.

Wikipedia

Simple Wikipedia

Schoolhouse Rock! ran from 1973 to 1985. The cartoons, including “My Hero, Zero” and “Three is a Magic Number,” (the first in the series) were written and performed by Dorough.

His biography says he “entertained and instructed unsuspecting children.”

Schoolhouse Rock! came back for another five years in the 1990s and its 40th anniversary was marked with a DVD edition of the entire five subject series.

Has a Schoolhouse Rock! tune ever helped you on a test? Do you have a favorite? I especially liked how a bill became a law (“I’m Just a Bill”) and “Conjunction Junction.”

Wikipedia

Finally, there’s the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, site of last night’s Sixers playoff game where they eliminated the Miami Heat. Actually, the topic is replacement names, and Wells Fargo is not a very good corporate citizen.

I have always been against companies buying names for stadiums and liked it when NBC Sports, before losing the NFL in 1998, made it a point of not referring to the names of stadiums but just the city, unless there was confusion between different stadiums.

  Philly.com says its readers suggest either Wilt Chamberlain, Sam Hinkie or Ed Snider.

Wikimedia Commons

The stadium, where the Flyers played hockey until their season ended earlier this week, is named for Wells Fargo which is a big bank in Philadelphia and many other cities. Before that, it was named Wachovia. Before that, First Union. FU Center had something special to it. And before that, CoreStates. Just shows you how banks take each other over and waste money having to change the names on every branch and piece of real estate, including the ones they sponsor or use to advertise.

Speaking of money, Wells Fargo was in trouble yet again for what the website called “scams that targeted its own customers,” specifically its mortgage and auto insurance practices. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency made the accusations and ordered the bank to make restitution, plus pay the regulators $1 billion in fines. Wells Fargo did not admit or deny any allegations.

Just two years ago, Wells Fargo’s employees recused of secretly opening more than 2 million deposit and credit card accounts to meet their sales targets and receive bonuses. The bank had to pay $185 million to settle those allegations. It also fired about 5,300 employees for doing what may have been their jobs. In that case as well, Wells Fargo did not admit or deny allegations.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo has been the nation’s third largest bank by assets.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

FYI, the late Wilt Chamberlain played for the San Francisco/Philadelphia Warriors and the Philadelphia 76ers, and is widely considered one of the greatest and most dominant players in NBA history. He still holds the single-game scoring record, having scored 100 in one game. It happened March 2, 1962, in Hershey, Pa. against the New York Knicks. The Philadelphia Warriers moved west to San Francisco after that season.

Twitter

  Sam Hinkie was General Manager and President of Basketball Operations of the Philadelphia 76ers. He graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and led the Sixers to some lousy seasons, but the team rebounded from what he left behind. In 2015, ESPN named Hinkie’s Sixers as the major professional sports franchise that had most embraced analytics.

  Wikipedia

  And the late Ed Snider helped build the Spectrum and owned the Flyers, the Wells Fargo Center and a lot more. Wikipedia noted, “In a 1999 Philadelphia Daily News poll, Snider was selected as the city’s greatest sports mover and shaker, beating out legends such as Connie Mack, Sonny Hill, Bert Bell, and Roger Penske.”

Click here for several other readers’ thoughts on new names, some more serious than others!

Please, if you like what you read here, subscribe to CohenConnect.com with either your email address or WordPress account, and get a notice whenever I publish.

Who says everything I write is negative, but correct? This is my 90th blog post and like most journalists, I identify mistakes all over and somehow -- often through publicity -- try to get them fixed.

#"never again" #Bert Bell #Bob Dorough #Cameron Kasky #Connie Mack (Philadelphia) #corporations #David Hogg #Ed Snider #Emma Gonzalez #Everytown for Gun Safety #Glenn Beck #James Shaw Jr. #Jay Feely #Jeff Kasky #Laura Ingraham #Lauren Hogg #Liberty Mutual #Mashable #Michelle Obama #Nazis #Never Again MSD #Operation Desert Storm #Philadelphia Warriors #Pink News #Rebecca Boldrick #Roger Penske #Sam Hinkie #San Francisco Warriors #Schoolhouse Rock! #Sonny Hill

[roguenewsdao]

Was Billy Graham Praying for Armageddon?

"On Saturday, February 1, 2003, I lifted my hands to begin praying and the Lord spoke to me ... I wanted to know whether the God the Father's direction was to go to war or not go to war.... The Lord said, ‘I am saying to go to war with Iraq’." -  Roy A. Reinhold as quoted by F. William Engdahl

"They feel that everything from the Nile to Euphrates belongs to Greater Israel." - RM interview with Mimi al-Laham aka Syrian Girl, October 15, 2017

This past month the world mourned the death of arguably one of the most famous Evangelical preachers of the 20th century. I certainly remember him as a fixture and "spiritual advisor" to kings and presidents during my childhood. I am speaking, of course, of William Franklin Graham, Jr. He is better known as Billy Graham.

F. William Engdahl certainly remembers him too. The title of today's blog is taken from a subheading that appears in Chapter 10 of Engdahl's book "Full Spectrum Dominance - Totalitarian Democracy In The New World Order." Mr. Engdahl was good enough to share the entire chapter with his fan club. I have been wanting to talk about Christian Zionism and the "Greater Israel" agenda ever since I read Mr. Engdahl's kind gift last November [feel free to grab the PDF file here of Chapter 10].

What escapes millions of people today is the underlying belief that the British monarchy fosters about their special bloodline. Someday perhaps we'll speak about this at length, but the short story here is that the British monarchy - who, by the way, is just about the only bloodline to have survived all the other royal bloodlines of Europe - believe that they are the natural heirs and legal claimants to throne of King David and Jerusalem. Even the word "Saxon" is thought to derive from the land of Scythia which could well be where many thousands of Israelites eventually were dispersed following both the Assyrian takeover of the northern kingdom of Israel and the later Babylonian takeover of the houses of Judah and Benjamin 800 years before Christ. [See David Livingstone's research linked here.]

In season one of the Netflix series "The Crown," I hooted and hollered when the show depicted the full, ancient Jewish rituals that are associated with the coronation of the British monarch. This is well depicted in Season One, Episode Five's "Smoke And Mirrors" title. I highly recommend that you watch and pay close attention to the words uttered by the Archbishop as he alchemically "transforms" the woman Elizabeth into a deity. Yes, that is what they believe and the script of the episode makes this abundantly clear.

In season two of the series, the entirety of episode six revolved around the Queen's fascination with the Billy Graham crusade and his visit to London. She requests a private audience with the holy man because she is wrestling with what to do with her favorite but disgraced uncle, the abdicated and former King Edward VIII, a notorious Nazi sympathizer.

Now, what the entire series "The Crown" as well as every other pro-British-monarchy drama will never, ever reveal to you is that the heart and soul of pretty much all Illuminati Secret Societies in Europe is this agenda they have to thwart God's choice for ruler of the throne of David and, instead, seat their own choice. Their choice for Messiah and King has been engineered to bleed some very - uhh - shall we say, "interesting" DNA through his veins. This belief that they hold dear is the cause of every war that has been fought since the fall of Rome and is even running as a prime motivating force behind the "Singularity" human-hybrid civilization that is currently being imposed on you.

So I just had to roll my eyes when I saw the true-life encounter of Billy Graham with the current holy grail of the bloodline, Queen Elizabeth II, back in 1955 depicted in the popular Netflix series. Then came along Rogue Money friend and highly respected researcher, F. William Engdahl. What Mr. Engdahl has to say about Billy Graham and other men of his ilk, religious leaders like Jerry Falwell, needs to be broadcast far and wide. You will never understand the motivation behind the coming battle in the Middle East until you understand how mainstream organized religion in America has been used as a staunch and loyal tool to bring it about.

Rapture Theology and the 'Greater Israel'

In Chapter 10 of his book cited above, Engdahl reminds us that the popular Evangelical concept of a coming Rapture is a relatively recent teaching dating back only as far as the 1850's. Oh, yes, they did find a single passage in the Bible on which to build the idea. How better to secure a popular base for your warmongering agenda than to take advantage of the public's devotion to sacred scripture? It's the ol' Problem-->Reaction-->Solution formula, in play, again.

In the mid-19th century, John Nelson Darby, a renegade Irish priest of the Church of Ireland, created the idea of "the Rapture" as he founded a new brand of Christian Zionism. His invented doctrine promoted the idea that "Born-Again Christians" would be taken up to Heaven before the second coming of Christ—their "rapture." Darby also put Israel at the heart of his strange new theology, claiming that an actual Jewish state of Israel would become the "central instrument for God to fulfill his plans for a final Battle of Armageddon."

Keep in mind the political and financial history of that time period. The West has just come through a period of anti-monarchist revolution. City of London and Amsterdam banksters are firmly in control of a vast planet-wide economy. Half the authority over armies and treasuries now sits in the hands of elected Parliamentarians, not Kings. The other half, whether that be pertinent to the ruling body of the UK or that of the USA, sits in the hands of Lords or Senators whose loyalty is given to the Banksters. Therefore, to control those armies and treasuries, you simply need to control the thinking and the voice of the proletariat.

In a world where The People still generally regard the Bible as authoritative, nobody directs their thinking better than the voice of the Clergy. Engdahl goes on to write:

Christian Zionists like Reverend Jerry Falwell and Rev. Pat Robertson could be traced back to a project of British Secret Intelligence services and the British establishment to use the Zion ideology to advance Empire and power in North America. American Christian Zionists in the period of American Empire in the 1950’s and later, merely adopted this ideology and gave it an American name. 

These American Christian Zionists, just below the surface, preached a religion quite opposite to the message of love and charity of the Jesus of the New Testament. In fact, it was a religion of hate, intolerance and fanaticism. The soil it bred in was the bitter race hatreds of the post-Civil War US South held by generations of whites against blacks and, ironically, against Catholics and Jews as ‘inferior’ races. Their religion was the religion of a coming Final Battle of Armageddon, of a Rapture in which the elect would be swept up to Heaven while the ‘infidels’ would die in mutual slaughter.

Do you see the Hegelian Dialectic in play? "The soil it bred in was the bitter race hatreds of the post-Civil War" South. That's how this works. You keep two polar opposites grinding at each other. Out of their conflict, a new path arises. Then you wash-rinse-repeat the cycle again.

Therefore, out of this period arose charismatic preachers like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others. Either wittingly or unwittingly, these leaders served the needs of that Babylonian Priesthood who is steadily moving an ancient football down the field toward a goal of ultimate one world government. The Priesthood has no qualms about hijacking sacred scripture and twisting their own blueprint of power out of it.

Regarding Billy Graham's son, Franklin, who also became a preacher in his own right, Engdahl goes on to say:

Echoing the anti-Islam fervor of Falwell and Robertson, Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the famous Christian evangelist and Bush family friend, Reverend Billy Graham, declared after September 11 that Islam was “a very evil and wicked religion.” The large US Southern Baptist Convention’s former President, Jerry Vines, called the Prophet Mohammed the most vile names imaginable. It was all about stirring Americans in a time of fear into hate against the Islamic world, in order to rev up Bush’s War on Terror.

Graham, who controlled an organization known as the Samaritan Purse, was a close religious adviser to George W. Bush. In 2003 Graham got permission from the US occupation authorities to bring his Evangelical anti-Islam form of Christianity into Iraq to win “converts” to his fanatical brand of Christianity. 

According to author Grace Halsell, Christian Zionists believed that “every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us.” It was all beginning to sound far too much like a new Holy Crusade against more than one billion followers of the Islamic faith.

I would add to Engdahl's last comment there about a "Holy Crusade against more than one billion followers of the Islamic faith" to include also the adherents of Jewish faith. In fact, during the 1970's, Billy Graham got caught in the revelations of the infamous "Nixon Tapes" and was even accused of being anti-Semitic [linked here]. I know that this is a point that many people struggle to come to terms with: how can an a person be pro-Zionist and yet anti-Semitic at the same time? 

The answer leads you to the very heart of the global network of secret societies. The key to reconciling such an apparent oxymoron is to realize that this entity that I refer to so often, this Babylonian Priesthood, sees itself as supra-human and actively in communion with supernatural beings or their human-hybrid avatars. When you look at the western history of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is easy to see how the Zionist agenda of British leaders like Lord Palmerston and documents like the Balfour Declaration were all stepping stones whose path has been carefully directed down to our day, a Sabbatean path whose cause has been somewhat gullibly supported by the powerful American "Bible Belt" puppets to wipe out anybody in the Middle East, Jews and Muslims alike, who gets in the way of the Priesthood.

To bring our discussion full circle and firmly cement it in the roots of that Babylonian Priesthood network, I'll present below another section from Engdahl's Chapter 10 to summarize the role that Freemasonry and Christian Zionism have played in moving that Priesthood's bloodthirsty anti-human manifesto forward.

Mr. Engdahl included a section in Chapter 10 entitled "Bush, Christian Zion and Freemasonry." Here are a few of his points:

A most difficult area to illuminate regarding American relations to right-wing Israeli Zionists and the ties between Israel and Christian Zionists such as Jerry Falwell, Rev. Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Gary Bauer and other US backers of the Right-wing Israeli Likud policies, was the role of international esoteric freemasonry.

Freemasonry has been defined as a secret or occult society which conceals its goals even from most of its own members, members who often are recruited naively as lower level members, unaware they are being steered from behind the curtains. The most powerful Freemasonic Order in the United States is believed to be the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, or the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, with its world headquarters now in Washington, DC....

There was a special role played by one of the two major branches of Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry....The Scottish Rite enjoyed an active branch in Israel, even though it was nominally a Christian society. It spoke of its tradition going back to ‘the early masons who built King Salomon’s [sic] Temple.’ The fact that American Christian Zionists typically were concentrated in the South and came from the similar white racist strata as the Scottish Rite, and that they actively backed the Israeli fanatics who seek to rebuild the Third Temple of Salomon at the site of the sacred Al Aqsa Mosque and thereby ignite the Final Battle of Armageddon cannot be coincidence. All evidence suggested that the Jewish advocates of destroying Al Aqsa and rebuilding the Temple of Salomon there were being supported by the Scottish Rite masons in the United States and Britain.

Indeed, there was circumstantial evidence that much of the organized American Christian Right that backs Israeli right-wing policies was secretly backed by Scottish Rite masonry. The Southern Baptist Convention recently had a heated debate over allegations that some 500,000 of their members were also masons, reportedly most Scottish Rite. The Southern Baptist organization is well-known for its racial hatred of blacks. Cecil Rhodes, the man who was backed by Rothschild to create the mining empire of South Africa was a Scottish Rite member as was Lord Palmerston, also himself a British Israelite.

That, in a nutshell, is how you connect the dots between the the 17th century rise of the Rothschilds at the same time that the Illuminati, Rosicrucians, Jesuits, Sabbateans, and Freemasons were growing in power, and the modern-day Hegelian Dialectic opposition of Liberal Leftists and Conservative Rightists.

Satanism Boils Down to Lying

The takeaway of this blog is to show that there are hundreds of people who, either knowingly or unknowingly, have allowed themselves to be used as pawns by that Babylonian Priesthood. The Priesthood is actively promoting a vast deception. Millions of people have fallen under the spell of belief that they are the "chosen" who will be commuting to heaven. The cruel joke is that the Priesthood sees itself as the "chosen" who alone have the right to affix themselves to the heavenly realms of supernatural beings. By directing these charismatic leaders and their flocks to publicly "evangelize" that belief, the Priesthood has now verbalized the spell in order to effect its realization, a very Kabbalistic notion.

What the flock doesn't see is that the perpetuation of this spell is designed to lead themselves to a slaughter that likely will emanate from the territory of the 'Greater Israel' that Syrian Girl referenced in the opening quotation of this blog. When Jesus Christ walked the earth, he openly faced the agents of that Priesthood who even at that time exercised great influence over that same territory. Christ clearly exposed the root of their agenda. "You are from your father the Devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a murderer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him," was the clear declaration that Christ broadcast in public. (John 8:44).

(Bill Graham, a long time spiritual advisor to President Nixon, delivered the eulogy at Nixon's funeral on April 27, 1994. And yet, according to the recent @DarkJournalist interview with Bob Merritt, the only men that Nixon trusted were Merritt and Kissinger - not Graham?)

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if an institution is actively perpetuating a lie that will leads millions of people into a bloody war, then that institution is not aligned with the principles of Christianity. People often think of "Satanism" as referencing those dark ugly rituals of sex orgies and child sacrifices. To be sure, factions within those secret societies mentioned above are indeed participating in those acts. But Christ's definition of "Satanism" was much more broad: any ideology that promotes a deception and the murder of humankind is just as much a component of "Satanism" as the more obvious abhorrent practices.

In the next blog this week, I will include comments by W. The Intelligence Insider that speak to his opinion that the New World Order thugs are very much on track for launching that slaughter. #NoMoreSecretSocieties !

My Twitter contact information is found at my billboard page of SlayTheBankster.com. Listen to my radio show, Bee In Eden, on Youtube via my show blog at SedonaDeb.wordpress.com.

#BILLY GRAHAM #CRUSADE #JERRY FALWELL #MORAL MAJORITY #ENGDAHL #FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE #CHRISTIAN ZIONISM #GREATER ISRAEL #NEOCON #SAMARITAN PURSE #9/11 #ISLAM #ARMAGEDDON #WW4 #FREEMASONRY #ESOTERIC #SCOTTISH RITE #CECIL RHODES #DARBY #RAPTURE #EVANGELISM #EVANGELICAL #HEAVEN #NIXON #LIAR #FATHER OF THE LIE #WARMONGERING

[indeigenousperson-blog]

Greetings brothers and sisters from around the world. I am your host, the vessel through which these symbols of meaning are channeled, for now, you can call me Nate. I started this blog for the purpose of tackling tough, hard-to-speak on topics and issues concerning us so called 'black' people. A more appropriate label would simply be "human," or "hueman," but we will approach that further in the piece.

At this time I would like to introduce myself, as mentioned above, you may call me Nate. I am a 25, soon to be 26 year old 'black' man living somewhere in London. I currently do freelance work while focusing the other portion of my attention on creative endeavors such as writing fiction and poetry.

If you are wondering why the word black, when referring to the people, is stratified with quotation marks throughout the piece, it is because we are no more crayon colours than we are wildebeest at a tea party. Dispelling socio-normative, linguistic mythologies is a hobby of mine. I hope you will indulge me.

Before you get excited, no, I possess no pieces of paper, lamenated or otherwise, that state I was effectively able to comprehend, regurgitate and revise someone elses' work for three to however many years it takes one to achieve an undergraduate degree. So no, this is not some scholarly intellectual masturbation at play.

If you eat prejudice for breakfast I suggest closing the tab, shutting down your device, whatever you need to do. The things I will speak on are not for the fainthearted. If you think it's impressive to be so well spoken at my age, in lieu of those pieces of paper, you will be in for a shock further along the road should you choose to remain a reader. In the age where words hold the power of destructive magic and can inflict grievous harm to ones mental and physical state, understand this is my safe space, and the things I speak on will be uncompromising, unrelenting, uncouth (to the naysayers), unapologetic and just about every "un" pejoration you can think of.

I will be damned in 19th century hell-fire before I censure myself.

With introductions out of the way, let us begin.

I have been reading a fascinating book. Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People. Fascinating material. As I am early days, mostly flicking through it during my work commutes, so far the author, an Israeli Historian, has discussed the notion of "a people" providing historiographic analysis and discourse with it. The conversation within has sparked such action potentials in my brain to make me wonder the age old question, "Who am I?"

Now, being a 'black' man from London, we all know slavery happened. We all know the bodies of fellow 'black' people rot beneath Chambers Street. Is that the whole story? No, of course not. There are those among us who accept 'black' people as the first people, that through migration and nature some, over time, became 'white', that is to say their, 'blackness' still in tact, bodies underwent specific phenotypical changes in response to climatic stimuli.

In other words: 'white' people are 'black' people with less access to melanin.

With mankind soon to enter the twenties of the 21st century, I imagine most people know of melanin. For those who don't or opened a new tab to look it up you probably found this:

"A dark brown to black pigment occurring in the hair, skin, and iris of the eye in people and animals. It is responsible for tanning of skin exposed to sunlight." The laymen nod their heads in totalitarian understanding. I look closely at the second sentence.

"It is responsible for the tanning of skin exposed to sunlight." Because this piece is devoted to the colour black, not melanin, I won't break down Google's doors for its piss poor definition. Instead I will offer another, in the words of Llaila Afrika, "Melanin is inside and outside the body.  Melanin is the vital chemical that makes life itself. Melanin is found in the environment."

That's right. The soil on which you stand has melanin. The stars that produced the carbon in your mother's ovaries have melanin. The very universe you inhabit was created by the biochemical known as melanin. In future segments I will absolutely revisit this topic with some entertaining, anecdotal commentary about the time I attended a biochemistry seminar.

In the mean time we will get back to this issue of colour. Earlier I made a lexical distinction between human and hueman. As words are the tools that blind us to the truth, more often than not, I feel it important to draw this correlation and highlight its irony.

When 'blacks' were widespread referred to as 'coloured' it was seen, by the dominant society, as a step up from nigga/nigger, less harmful, more accepting. In today's multi cultural society that 'black' people have been roped into believing is to their benefit, the term "people of colour" has seen a shocking resurgence. I find the term clumsy as it simply refers to anyone who is not 'white,' as though to say white is not a colour. Clumsy as it may be, it serves its purpose for the sake of conversation.

The word "hue" means coloured. Remove 'e' from hue and you have a new onset "hu" (which incidentally is another word for "sun")  and when you add "man," gives you "human," in other words, "coloured man," in other words, "black man," the first man.

There is a societal trope that dictates 'black' boys dislike reading. The above is one of many examples I will highlight in this blog that show you why having, at the very least, a basic interest in words and language is important. They are the tools through which you are deceived on paper and verbally. Understanding them gives you power.

This is more a stream of thought than a traditional blog. No fancy doodahs, no freakish, new speaker millennial lingo, no definitive lengths, no 'dumbing down' of ideas and sentences to meet the indulgent societies whims.  No compromise.

What you will receive from the this stream of thought will be an inciteful new take on 'black' consciousness, the challenges facing the 'black' community, and solutions for combating those challenges.

There may be some entertainment, should I feel it necessary to get my point across. However, I have to warn you, I feel the strongest indictment of 'black' people's continued abject outlook to intellectual pursuits is a result of us wanting things to be fun to get them done. One doesn't learn how to count because it's exciting. They do so because it's a necessary life skill. That isn't to say that everything you learn is a necessary life skill, but when it comes to attaining knowledge of self, being disciplined, committing to fundamental principles of your betterment, surely that doesn't have to be fun?

I started this piece with the intention of tackling how we classify ourselves. Is black the appropriate word when we are all technically black? Probably not. Will it be easier, in the name of better communication, to continue to classify ourselves as 'black'? Perhaps. What alternatives are there? Moor? What if my people weren't Moors? I can't go around saying I'm something I know nothing about.

Therefore the title of this blog: The Indigenous People, henceforth shall we be known, so say we all.

#black #white #melanin #biology #chemistry #biochemistry #people #race #moor #colour

[jdketchwrites]

Coming Out of the Broom Closet

With all of the turmoil and division in our country lately. Between the election, the violence in Charleston, and now the tragedy in Houston. I’ve noticed an increased amount of discussion surrounding religion. This has traditionally been a sensitive subject for me as I've only just recently been able to be open and honest about my beliefs within the past 10 years or so. 

Surprisingly, I've found that by being open and honest about my own beliefs, I’ve seen them begin to change in a very organic way to a place where I am the most comfortable with my practice and faith than I ever have in the past. I am, however, concerned by own continued temptation to explain or justify said practices to anyone who feels differently or is on a similar but different path. For anyone reading, I apologize, as I'm being intentionally obtuse here, I will get to some specifics in a moment. One of my core beliefs when it comes to religion is that there is no 'one size fits all' solution. Everyone finds their own way to peace and enlightenment. Be it through the bible and Jesus, the Torah and Yahweh, or a Book of Shadows and Gaia.

For years I bristled against Christians of all stripes. Primarily because of my resistance to rules and dogma, but also because of a significant amount of negative experiences with various churches in my youth. It would take me another decade and a half before I would meet anyone of the Christian persuasion that I didn't feel like they wanted to crucify me or burn me at the stake for daring to not adhere to their beliefs. That was when I went to a Jesuit university to finish my bachelors in English and was required to take a theology course taught by the wonderful Jean Weber. She was a Sister of Ignatius and one of the top Bible scholars in the world. When we were asked to go around the room and discuss some of our feelings on faith, I took a chance and came out of the broom closet, so to speak. At that time, I was still identifying as Wiccan. Dr. Weber's response to my honesty was so remarkable that It stuck with me forever. Here's this dyed in the wool member of the Catholic church, and here's this thirty something non-traditional student in a night course declaring that he's a witch in front of a class of theology students and her response is,"That's fantastic, I don't have a lot of experience there but I'd love to learn more from you." This has been my own go to response to anyone of a faith I'm not familiar with ever since. I've responded this way to everyone from Mormons to LaVeyan Satanists, and have found that this response garners me more respect than scorn.

But as I've stated in the beginning, my openness to talk about my particular belief and religious leanings have allowed me to examine it and allow it to evolve. When I was asked in that class almost 10 years ago, I was still identifying as Wiccan. I had been identifying as Wiccan since college as at a time when I needed spiritual help the most in my life, I was met with not Christians offering to help, but a group of novice Witches, who embraced me with no judgement, and were willing to answer any questions I had, yet did not seem adamant on recruiting me. It would be several years later that I would self-identify as a witch myself. In my time since meeting that group of Wiccans in college, and adopting the practice myself, to coming out openly as a Witch in my 30's on a Jesuit campus, I've picked up a significant amount of study in the area and have adopted an eclectic and singular practice and ideas on faith and belief. I no longer call myself Wiccan. I know many Wiccans and I respect their practices and their structures. However, those practices and structures do not work for me spiritually any longer. If I'm being honest, I don't think they ever did. However, at the time that I was finding myself magickly and spiritually, I lacked the confidence, and the vocabulary to identify as anything else. The way in which I identify currently is simply Pagan. Being neither Christian nor Jewish belief and adhering to a pre-Christian polytheistic mindset. Even that is an incomplete description of my beliefs. Though Pagan is the easiest way I have to answer the question, "What is your Religion?" If I were to be more specific I would state that I am a Fictionalist Chaote Weirdsmith. If some of those words sound made-up to you, you're correct. At a certain point, my spiritual ideas and identity reached a point in which I had to find new ways to identify it. I'll break it down one by one.

Fictionalist: This one, above the other two, is probably the core of my beliefs. So much so, that much of what informs my belief in this instance supercedes and even contradicts the other parts of my own spiritual identity. I refer to myself as a fictionalist because, I feel all fiction, that being the classification for any story or setting that is derived from imagination, to be sacred. To better illustrate my feelings here, let me use a quote from Neil Gaiman in his book American Gods.

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.

In my own words: 

Fiction is the story of how we see ourselves, told without the constraints of empeirical evidence or plausibility. Our turest selves, without the burdens or banality of experience. Fiction is the experience of life with the boring bits edited out. Fiction demands empathy as you expeirence life though another's eyes. Just because something is fictional, doesn't mean it isn't true. Just because it never happened, doesn't mean it's not real.

Often, Christians will bristle when I state that I believe the Bible to be a work of fiction. What they don't understand is that, for me, that is stating it is sacred. Whether or not the people and places depicted in the book really existed as living breathing people is not as important as the story they tell or the lessons they teach. I also believe that one can learn as much from Tolkien, Jane Eyre, Douglas Adams, Jane Austen, and any other work of literature as you can from the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah. To me, all fiction is Sacred. When I describe myself to others as Pagan, they will sometimes ask if I believe in other gods. I will say I do, I believe in all gods. Does that mean that I believe God or gods exist? No, not empirically, I believe that a deity is a fictional construct that we humans create in order to interact with the world beyond comprehension. That leads me to the second part of my spiritual designation.

Chaote: an easy definition of Chaote is one who practices Chaos Magick. The Wikipedia description of Chaos Magick is

A contemporary magical practice which emphasizes the pragmatic use of belief systems and the creation of new and unorthodox methods.

Which I find fairly accurate. I ran across the concept of Chaos Magick when I was first learning my way around Pagan beliefs. I had a few friends who had dabbled in Discordianism for a time. Finding that to be insufferable, I slowly discovered that my own magickal practice veered away from much of the ritual and methods of traditional witchcraft and Wicca. Still adhering to the basic tenant of Do No Harm, I began experimenting with my own instinctual methods and settled in on a practice that is singular to me, simple, and unorthodox. In my research of Chaos Magick, I learned Sigil Magick from the magician and author Grant Morrison. I came across cartomancy on my own, through exploring my own fascination with playing cards and stage magic. I combined the two and began recording my findings in my own book of Shadows. I understand that there may be a lot of jargon there and what I've just typed may not be exactly informative. Though I hope the bit about fictionalism is at least straightforward enough to be intriguing. The Chaote bit is a bit messy by design. It is chaos after all. Finally, Weirdsmith: This is a term I made up for myself as an identifier that sums up the other two combined. It is also a reminder to myself that whether I regularly practice anything else, be it magick or prayer or anything. I could give all of that up, and as long as I continue to contribute to the general weirdness of the world, I'm still being true to myself. The purpose of this little missive isn't to sway anyone to my side of the fence or anything. I have had a number of inquiries into my particular belief structure, and I also feel that describing something in writing is a good way to explore and study it. And in my experience, beliefs need to be studied and explored, and ultimately questioned on a regular basis, if they are to be trusted at all. So, whatever your belief, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, or something else entirely, I find it fascinating and hope to learn more from you.  

#religion #magick #chaote #fictionalism #weirdsmith

[opedguy]

Trump Sends Envoy to Tel Aviv and Ramallah

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), March 14, 2017.--Testing the water for an eventual Mideast peace, President Donald Trump sent his peace envoy Jason Greenblatt to meet with 67-year-old Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 81-year-old PLO Leader Mahmoud Abbas.  Meeting with Netanyahu at the White House Feb. 15, Trump’s remarks were grossly distorted in the mainstream press, suggesting he was abandoning the so-called two-state solution.  All Trump said was that it was up to Israel and Palestinians to decide what they wanted, either a two-state or one-state solution.  Trump never said he favored one versus the other, only that it was up to Israel and Palestinians to decide.  “President Abbas and I discussed how to make progress toward peace, building capacity of Palestinian security forces and stopping incitement,” wrote Greenblatt. Greenblatt’s mission was “fact-finding,” trying to figure out a way forward.

            Approaching the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, the international community doesn’t recognize Israeli spoils, including Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, Jordan’s East Jerusalem and West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.  Palestinians collectively refer to Israeli spoils of the Six Day War as “occupied territories.” Before the Six Day War, Palestinians held not one square inch of sovereign land, all territory seized by Israel from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Palestinians complain about Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as the biggest obstacle to peace.  But the real obstacle involves the June 7, 2007 split between the PLO and Hamas, when Hamas seized the Gaza Strip by force.  Controlling Gaza, Hamas doesn’t accept any PLO overtures toward peace. Since Hamas seized Gaza, the U.S.—and European Union—hasn’t accepted this reality.

            With PLO’s Abbas no longer able to negotiate for peace without Hamas approval, Israel has no viable peace partner with whom to negotiate a two-state solution.  Gaza’s current ruler Yahya Sinwar, a former Israeli prisoner, has no intent of making peace with Israel.  Greenblatt knows that Abbas can’t speak for Siwar, who’s made it clear he seeks to destroy Israel, nothing less.  Trump invited Abbas to come to the White House to show balance with Netanyahu’s Feb. 15 visit.  Greenblatt “continued discussions relating to settlement construction in the hope of working out an approach that is consistent with advancing peace and security,” knows that all bets are off if Sinwar’s Hamas and PLO’s Abbas can’t reconcile differences. Trump would like nothing more to silence his critics—including Obama—to be the first U.S. president to negotiate peace between Israel and Palestinians.

            Former President Barack Obama and his peace envoy Secretary of State John Kerry spent nearly two years banging their heads against a wall making peace.  Whatever went wrong with Obama’s peace talks, he blamed Netanyahu, driving U.S.-Israeli relations to the lowest point in recent memory.  Obama and Kerry couldn’t get over the fact that Hamas called the shots, knowing they had no peace partner to negotiate a two-state solution.  With the media fixated on Trump’s collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, the president would like nothing more than to change the narrative.  Greenblatt “reaffirmed  President Trump’s commitment to Israel’s security and to the effort to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve a lasting peace through direct negotiation.” Obama abstained from vetoing Dec. 23, 2016 a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel settlement-building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

            Obama’s decision to go along with the Security Council condemnation of Israel marked a new low in U.S.-Israeli relations. Backing the Security Council resolution did nothing to advance the peace process.  Obama revealed why he was no friend of Israel, showing ineptness in U.S. foreign policy.  Recent polling in Gaza showed that most residents not only don’t want peace with Israel, they believe Hamas will eventually conquer the Jewish State. When you consider Hamas’s ongoing state of war with Israel, Obama plowed ahead blindly seeking a peace when none was possible.  Sending Greenblatt to size up things was a good thing for Trump before leaping, like Obama and Kerry, into a quagmire.  Only nine percent of West Bank residents believe President Trump will continue Mideast peacemaking.  That same poll indicated that 60% of Palestinians no longer believe in a two-state solution.

            When you consider that half the Palestinian people actively seek war with Israel, it’s no wonder that peace negotiations aren’t possible.  Telling Netanyahu to “go easy” on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Trump hopes to show some kind of gesture to Palestinians. Netanyahu knows that the biggest obstacle to peace talks is not settlement construction but Hamas’s ongoing war with Israel.  As long as Hamas continues to build tunnels and stockpile more rockets, there’s little Abbas can do in the West Bank to change things. Greenblatt spoke to Abbas about reducing incitement, or the recent spate of Palestinian car-ramming and knife attacks, but Abbas considers it his right of resistance to Israeli occupation. Former President George W. Bush decided after Sept. 11 the U.S. could no longer accept Palestinian terrorism for whatever reason.  Trump looks like he’s heading in that direction.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.