Thought for the Day

[fred41]

To add to what I said though. Aside from insidious Anti-semitism present in today’s politics...the most brutal types - as shown by the examples of mass murder given by Bronco, are (at least here in the States) committed by white supremacists and Nazis. There’s always just so much anger and ignorant narcissism. Plus out and out crazy. Aside from the encouragement they receive when the President says his usual BS, I think they’ve also grown (like many other hate groups) with Twitter and other social media. I remember reading somewhere that they have started really growing around 2012.

I guess the one good thing is - true angry haters just have a really hard time hiding it.

[broncofan]

Yeah, unless you live here, you probably wouldn’t know it, but the majority of anti Semitic assaults in NYC the last couple of years were disproportionately by black people...I don’t even know what category you put that in politically. I doubt the majority of the aggressors really identify with a party, probably just thugs...but I will say this - members of the far left always love to flirt with anti-semtism, often saying it’s just politics against Israeli aggression, but then quite a few of them always seem to have something good to say about Louis Farrakhan too.

I wouldn't put a party to it but the reason the BHI movement and NOI often get attributed to the left is because some of their members are involved in social justice movements. The Nation of Islam is extremely homophobic and transphobic and so aren't in any true sense committed to social justice but then people who use their rhetoric will be involved in protests against bigotry. The Black Hebrew Israelites do not practice Judaism, are not Jewish or descended from practicing Jews, but are conspiracy theorists who think anyone who calls himself a Jew today is a fake Jew or an imposter who is stealing his/her cultural birthright.

They believe they are justified in hating us because we're not really Jews according to them. They also adopt some language of anti-colonialism. I'm getting stuff on my twitter timeline about Anne Frank being a "white Becky" and stuff like that.

I'm certainly not blaming an entire ethnic group as there have been plenty of Jewish Americans who have made anti-Black statements. I'm merely saying the BHI conspiracy theories are real crackpot stuff and people who believe them have no clue how batshit it is.

As for the Israel stuff, it's very true that there is a lot to criticize about Israel and there's nothing antisemitic about it if done in remotely good faith. If I actually showed you the Corbyn supporting twitter accounts I've been talking about you'd see there's nothing fair or normal about the commentary. They post memes that originate on neo-nazi forums about antisemites really being people THE JEWS hate and some quote falsely attributed to Voltaire saying "learn who you can't criticize" cause they rule over you. Like jackals you find them commenting after hate crimes committed against Jews trying to shift the conversation to Israel.

If I had to impersonate them it would be like this:

Person A: Jews are scum and I hate them
Jewish person: That's antisemitic.
Corbynite: It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel
Jewish person: But that had nothing to do with Israel
British Press: Jewish community in furor claiming "antisemitism" over Israel comments.

So all I'm saying is we're seeing a lot of bullshit. I'm by no means saying there's any more antisemitism in the Black community than there is anti-Black racism in the Jewish community. I'm just saying there's been a big uptick everywhere recently.

[blackchubby38]

I wouldn't put a party to it but the reason the BHI movement and NOI often get attributed to the left is because some of their members are involved in social justice movements. The Nation of Islam is extremely homophobic and transphobic and so aren't in any true sense committed to social justice but then people who use their rhetoric will be involved in protests against bigotry. The Black Hebrew Israelites do not practice Judaism, are not Jewish or descended from practicing Jews, but are conspiracy theorists who think anyone who calls himself a Jew today is a fake Jew or an imposter who is stealing his/her cultural birthright.

They believe they are justified in hating us because we're not really Jews according to them. They also adopt some language of anti-colonialism. I'm getting stuff on my twitter timeline about Anne Frank being a "white Becky" and stuff like that.

I'm certainly not blaming an entire ethnic group as there have been plenty of Jewish Americans who have made anti-Black statements. I'm merely saying the BHI conspiracy theories are real crackpot stuff and people who believe them have no clue how batshit it is.

As for the Israel stuff, it's very true that there is a lot to criticize about Israel and there's nothing antisemitic about it if done in remotely good faith. If I actually showed you the Corbyn supporting twitter accounts I've been talking about you'd see there's nothing fair or normal about the commentary. They post memes that originate on neo-nazi forums about antisemites really being people THE JEWS hate and some quote falsely attributed to Voltaire saying "learn who you can't criticize" cause they rule over you. Like jackals you find them commenting after hate crimes committed against Jews trying to shift the conversation to Israel.

If I had to impersonate them it would be like this:

Person A: Jews are scum and I hate them
Jewish person: That's antisemitic.
Corbynite: It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel
Jewish person: But that had nothing to do with Israel
British Press: Jewish community in furor claiming "antisemitism" over Israel comments.

So all I'm saying is we're seeing a lot of bullshit. I'm by no means saying there's any more antisemitism in the Black community than there is anti-Black racism in the Jewish community. I'm just saying there's been a big uptick everywhere recently.

Don't worry, nobody was insinuating that you were saying there was more antisemitism in the black community.

[Stavros]

- members of the far left always love to flirt with anti-semtism, often saying it’s just politics against Israeli aggression, but then quite a few of them always seem to have something good to say about Louis Farrakhan too.

It is a Trotskyist tactic, to identify a grievance or a 'persecuted' or ostacised or minority community, and offer them support so that when the Revolution comes (and it is imminent -ask any Trotskyist!) -these relatively small groups can be recruited as allies in the revolutionary struggle. Once in power, I don't see any future for them as there is nothing a Trotskyist has in common with Farrakhan, and on the basis of how the Bolsheviks in Russia systematically recruited and then disposed of their allies when they needed bodies on the streets (the Social Democrats and the Kadets for example; and one could also point to the fate of the left in Iran who supported the Ayatollahs in February 1979 and were dead by December) I would not expect Louis to waste his time on godless heathens.

One irritating example of how lazy people on the left can be, though it is not exclusively a left-wing problem, is the way in which Israel is being accused of creating an Apartheid state in regard to Israel and the Occupied Territories. I take the view that the Likud and more extreme parties in Israel have in effect, created for themselves a political dead-end by opposing the 1993 Treaty between Israel and the PLO, rejecting any land for peace negotiations, with the proposed annexation of the Occupied Territories without offering any guarantee of citizenship.

Here is the point: part of the plan that Grand Apartheid that was implemented in the 1970s, required Black people to leave 'White areas' -for example, in the Transvaal and the Cape- and 'return' to their 'Homelands' or Bantustans, on the basis that they were their 'natural' homelands, where they would be given the right to be independent of South Africa. In this sense Apartheid intended to take away South African Citizenship and Nationality and grant to the Black population their identity defined by their Homeland -KwaZulu, Venda, Bophuthatswana, Transkei, Ciskei etc. Instantly, it can be seen that the one thing Israel has no intention of creating is a Palestinian Bantustan in which Palestinians would have the right to be politically independent, as this would in effect be the creation of a separate Palestinian state -so the use of the concept of Apartheid is to my mind nonsense.

Segregation, however, is rooted in the Zionist experience, and indeed was cultivated, first, as an idea proposed by Theodor Herzl (who only once visited the Ottoman provinces we now regard as either Israel or Palestine) and was put into practical reality during the first, second and third Aliyah.

[Stavros]

John Hume has died at the age of 83. He was a key player in Northern Ireland's fractious politics from the 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and one of the finest politicians the UK -and Ireland- has ever produced. It is hard to understimate the importance of his tireless work for peace, a genuine peace, in Northern Ireland, his dedication to resolving some of the most bitter sectarian bigotry found in any part of the world, and his plea, which he made again, again and again, for dialogue. Dialogue within the North across divided communities; dialogue between the North and South of Ireland; dialogue between all and the UK.

Never moving away from his belief that peace is better than war, talking better than fighting, in the end, when the Provisional IRA and the British had fought themselves into a sticky bog with no hope of advance, it was Hume's politics that unlocked the true value that lay in Northern Ireland, in Ireland and in the UK -the value of hope and honest dialogue, based on the view that we are united by more than what divides us.

Look at the currrent generation of policy makers in Government, and compare Hume's passion for justice, his commitment to peace, his transparent language, above all his decency. You find, in the UK and the USA, two men whose only commitment is to themselves, to the inflated legacy they claim for themselves, a fake greatness bereft of palpable achievement. John Hume entered politics in the 1960s and never wavered for three decades -I can't imagine the Prime Minister or the President lasting three weeks in that Northern Ireland.

Ireland North and South, is in a better place today than it was in 1968, and Hume played his part in that transformation.

When Yeats was tangled up in the tumult of Ireland's Nationalist revolution, a revolution that consumed as much as it produced, he penned one of Ireland's most famous laments:

“Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.”



Hume offered a way out of this gloom with his own fanatic heart, a heart imbued with the deeply Christian view that we are all capable of doing good things when we want to, and that we should do so more than cause harm or pain. One is left with some other quote:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth.

[Stavros]

The 45th President thinks he deserves a Nobel Prize for something he didn't do. That the UAE has decided to recognize Israel as a sovereign state and open diplomatic relations with it, is the formalization of a prevously informal relationship built on the personal relations between Under-President Kushner, the UAE's Ambassador to the USA,Yousef al-Otaiba, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

It is hard to find two more corrupt billionaires in the Middle East than these two Arabs, and the only thing separating them from Benjamin Netanyahu is the fact that the Israeli Prime Miinister has not been able to embezzle from Israel's treasury the kind of money that Otaiba and MbS earn from rent -for neither man has any idea what it means to work for a living. Even if neither Otaiba or MbS passed substantial sums to Kushner in return for 'services rendered', the pressure they put on Qatar must surely have been part of that statelet's decision to settle the colossal debt Kushner had with them, a debt which if called in would have destroyed the family. It is, after all, the Middle East, where nothing happens without the green stuff (it used to be gold) moving from one pocket to another, just ask the average Beiruti why toxic, explosive chemicals were stored for years in a warehouse by the sea.

You can't award a peace prize to someone who did nothing to enable diplomatic relations to open between two states that were not at war, though the point of criticism must surely be the ease with which the Americans have warmed to unelected dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. If the President wants the Prize, where is the end of the war in Yemen where the UAE, Saudi Arabia and US (and UK-) manufactured weapons have destroyed homes, businesses, schools and hospitals? And let us not forget the people who were inside them, over a million of whom are now refugees in their own country-well, maybe yes forget about them.
Yes, give him a prize- for hypocrisy.

The Press will tell you the UAE action is matched by the 1979 Treaty between Egypt and Israel, and Jordan's with Israel in 1993. So ignore, as if it never happened, the PLO treaty with Israel, also 1993, the one that was supposed to be followed by a trade in land for peace. You don't hear about it, because Israel and the UAE have decided the Palestinians are an irrelevance to their own relations, and in any case, the architects of that so-called peace are dead: Rabin slaughtered by a fanatical Zionist, Arafat imploding in a cesspool of lies and incompetence. Best not mention too that Netanyahu was opposed to Peace with the Palestinians even before the Treaty was signed, and that not a single remark from the worthless hypocrites on display in the last 24 hours will promise the Palestinians anything except yet more misery and murder.

The illegal occupation of Palestinian territory will continue; the illegal siege of the Gaza Distict will continue, illegal settlement expansion will continue, and the daily harassment of Christians in Jerusalem and Bethlehem will continue, all approved by the USA, acting in concert with the violent autocracies that it has endorsed, even as it stands by while the UAE foments more war and disarray in Libya. The days when Human Rights, Freedom, even democracy were the base on which the USA argued its moral case in Europe and the world, are over. Two words- Human Rights- have been cut out of every official US statement on foreign affairs; the mere idea that the Republican Party regards Palestinians as people with rights of any kind is just laughable, as the country embraces autocrats and criminals, and rewards the violation of the law, having zero respect for international law, and not much more for its own.

It looks like a primary aim of Israel, to reject regional solutions to the Arab-Israeli confict, to a sequence of bi-lateral treaties is working, yet at every stage the elephant in the room remains fixed to the floor: what about the Palestinians? Weak, divided, without friends across the reigion, it is true this chronic condition has weakened Palestinian politics. But it does not detract from the moral case, made with such chilling, biting reason by Rashid Khalidi in The One Hundred Year's War Against Palestine (2020), or in a more plaintive lament in the writings of Raja Shehadeh.

Peace for whom? The war continues, its victims ignored for now. No triumph to see here, no advance. Just some corrupt, odious billionaires and a crooked politician slapping each other on the back, as they worship what they have in the bank.

[Stavros]

An unarmed black man has seven bullets pumped into his back because five police officers were incapable of arresting him.

An armed white terrorist shoots three, kills two, and is protected by the police, and praised by Tucker Carlson.

Nikki Haley: "America is not a racist country".

What will the President say tonight, if he says anything at all? Not, as Othello did -'It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul' -just before he murders Desdemona, as one expects the President to murder the truth.

Get a grip, America, and get rid of the guns.

[KnightHawk 2.0]

An unarmed black man has seven bullets pumped into his back because five police officers were incapable of arresting him.

An armed white terrorist shoots three, kills two, and is protected by the police, and praised by Tucker Carlson.

Nikki Haley: "America is not a racist country".

What will the President say tonight, if he says anything at all? Not, as Othello did -'It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul' -just before he murders Desdemona, as one expects the President to murder the truth.

Get a grip, America, and get rid of the guns.

Nikki Haley is delusional and toned deaf,just like the other members of the Trump Party and is unwilling to acknowledge that is systemic racism is a major problem in the US,and has been for over 400 years and needs to be addressed. The Demagouge And Malignant Narcissistic will be making false claims that him and his corrupt administration has been doing a great job, and the virus is under control and will be going away,when evidence and facts says the opposite, and spreading propaganda and misinformation about his political rival and the democrats,portraying them as the radical left who is going to destroy the country if they get elected,even though the D.A.M.N has been the same thing for over 3 1/2 years.

[broncofan]

I doubt anyone wants to hear it but I anticipate in the next 15 years this will become a bigger issue. In the last year, many Jewish organizations have been vandalized by people claiming support for the Palestinian movement. This includes Hillel organizations, Chabad organizations, and synagogues. In Los Angeles a while back a synagogue had Free Palestine graffitied on it and a bunch of social media users wanted to argue that somehow because Free Palestine is not an antisemitic message that daubing it on an American synagogue is also not antisemitic. But then how do they get to the position that the synagogue in some way is thwarting Palestinian statehood?

I knew eventually Free Palestine would be daubed on a synagogue that either flew an Israeli flag or had in some way mentioned Israel at some point. The connection could be as tangential as a trip for congregants to Israel or support for the continued existence of the state. Flash forward to 2020 and recently a synagogue that flew an Israeli flag was vandalized with Free Palestine. One could say their support of Israel was more explicit than mere implication but what does it actually mean to display a country's flag? If an Iranian-American organization had the Iranian flag, would it be support for murdering protesters or hanging gay men from cranes? Would a Chinese flag outside of an organization for Chinese-Americans be considered support for the current atrocities being committed by the Chinese government against Uighurs? Of course not. People try the analogy with extinct movements like the Nazis or the Confederates where the message is clearly intended to intimidate or support racist ideology and it fails. One of those entities was a secessionist movement that wanted to institute chattel slavery and the other a single regime that sought the death of every non-Aryan on the planet. Israel is a state that exists and the only one in the last 2000 years that has had a Jewish majority. Its statehood is also recognized by the United Nations.

Vandalizing a place of worship is bad even if you disagree with the views of the congregants or congregation. Vandalizing and burning Jewish organizations and then trying to find any connection to the idea of Jewish nationalism after the fact is profoundly sinister.

Somehow though, the proposition that synagogues should not be murals for Pro-Palestinian slogans will be interpreted as opposition to pro-Palestinian messages. I am merely saying that if this is ever the direction a left-wing movement wants to go in, they will end up with about 3% of the Jewish vote and an enormous distraction, for no benefit whatsoever. They will also compromise themselves morally.

[broncofan]

I am having trouble finding facts about the moments that led up to Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and killing two people. Whatever we find out, it is beyond insane that a 17 year old is traveling from one state to an adjacent one with a weapon of war so that he can rove the streets during protests against police brutality. It is beyond insane that he would not be arrested for openly carrying this weapon (he is a minor, forget that this weapon in particular probably shouldn't be owned by civilians), that he would not be arrested on the evening he shot two people, and that police officers would be shown thanking him.

Police officers that want to demonstrate they are being unfairly tarnished shouldn't be supportive of that kind of armed threat by a child against protesters and should perform their duties in a way that doesn't clearly indicate racial bias. Black men are shot by police and after the fact we hear the most strained justifications. Pot use, holding toy guns, resisting while unarmed. Here, a 17 year old was carrying something pretty close to a machine gun in a town he traveled to, shot two people, and was able to leave on his own power. What kind of insanity is that?