Thought for the Day

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Originally Posted by 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.

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There are ways to show support for a Palestinian state. Vandalizing a place of worship (for any reason) is not one of them.

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Originally Posted by 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?

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(Broncofan, I have only edited your post to create space).

Impotent rage often performs these ugly acts, as if seekiing compensation for the real power that it lacks, as if such gestures were anything but. Google 'Free Palestine' and you will find numerous examples from around the world targeting Synagogues and other Jewish institutions and buildings, but no sense that these are, in the international sense, co-ordinated. I am not sure when and where it originated, but Israel's re-building of the Berlin Wall on Palestinian land (they have yet to finish this illegal 700+km project) has provided, on one side, a space for spectacular graffiti, a lot of it daubed by non-Palestinians, and I wonder if this sub-culture has gone global, with 'Free Palestine' the most common logo.

There are some Palestinians groups outside Israel that do and support this, and obviously other groups like BLM who claim to support the Palestinian cause, in their own way, and with some support from within the Palestinian community under occupation, because there have always been militant anti-Jewish elements there, but not in the majority (just as there are vicious anti-Arab factions in Israel).

Thus, the trigger for the graffiti in Minneapolis and other places most recently has been linked to the claims that Israel has been training US law enforcement, even to the extent that putting a knee on the neck as a restraint is an Israeli tactic (it is not, see the first link below) From these misleading claims, one can see the left making the link, serving their purpose of demonizing Israel without engaging in a proper debate about what is actually happening on the ground in the Occupied Territories. Israel, or rather 'the Jews' become a stick with which to beat the Cops, a marriage of wickedness. As the links show, Israel has provided courses to US law enforcement, and many others, mostly in an anti-terrorist scenario, including surveillance techniques, crowd control and so on (see the second link), most of which are a waste of money as Israel has only used intelligence and counter-terrorism techniques to one purpose: to murder Palestinians (cheaper than mounting a trial and no need for documentary evidence presented to a court of law), failing completely to crush the Palestinian movement under Occupation.

So for me, it is horribe, it is pathetic, it is ineffective, it hurts people, it costs money and ultimately, achieves nothing positive. I am aso inclined to the view that protest politics in the US is more violent and destructive than it is here in the UK. In France it tends to means smashing shop windows -the left did it in the 1960s and 1970s, the 'Yellow Vests' last year. What is gained from all this? Nothing, unless you think the left in the US is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians under occupation, who have enough to worry about without being dragged into a protest movement in the US (see the third link). It has been one of the most glaring contradictions in the 'revolutionary' movement since the 1960s, that under the all-embracing term of 'national liberation' they are an Internationalist movement supporting Nationalist objectives, be it in Vietnam, Ireland, Angola or Palestine. That it means they now share the same space as anti-Semitic far right groups ought to be a wake-up call, but they ain't listening.

We have to live with it, just as the President's unofficial Republican Guard is on the front line in Portland and other cities, provoking more violence than is necessary, perhaps a prelude to the fighting to come at the end of the year.

We can still try to counter it, by the tedious method of argument and debate, but I am not sure who is listening, and unless and until major states and blocs such as the USA, the UK, the EU and Russia promote the Palestinian cause with a view to finding a just and lasting settlement, Israel will continue to shape the debate and frustate the process, creating the polarising politics we suffer from today.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factch...-kneel-on-neck

https://jinsa.org/i-am-the-architect...ieve-the-lies/

https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/06/...target-israel/

Even though they wound up arresting the guy, the fact people chose to record an attempted rape on their phones instead of physically stopping it, is not a good look for the both the citizens of NYC and the city as a whole.

If there is one statement that justifies the concept 'Black Lives Matter' maybe this is it (and where's he from? Kenosha):

"Following the arrest of five people for shoplifting close to $5,000 of merchandise from Prime Outlets in Pleasant Prairie and a subsequent high-speed chase that ended in a collision with another vehicle, Beth delivered a strong message about the perpetrators, three Black men and two Black women from Milwaukee.

"I'm to the point where I think society has to come to a threshold where there are some people that aren't worth saving," Beth said. "We need to build warehouses to put these people into it and lock them away for the rest of their lives. These five people could care less about that 16-year-old who just got his driver's license yesterday. They drove through a red light, they stole thousands of dollars worth of clothing, and they don't care.

"Let's put them in jail. Let's stop them from, truly, at least some of these males, going out and getting 10 other women pregnant and having small children. Let's put them away. At some point, we have to stop being politically correct. I don't care what race, I don't care how old they are. If there's a threshold that they cross. These people have to be warehoused, no recreational time in jails. We put them away for the rest of their lives so the rest of us can be better." (my emphasis in bold)
https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/2...ny/5645279002/

Much of Beth's statement calls on the language of early 1900s race pseudoscience. Even when eugenicists weren't speaking entirely along racial lines they were proponents of the idea that certain people were beyond redemption and intrinsically criminal. When such people have children those children are in some way predisposed to crime simply by being their offspring.

It is popular in right-wing circles to look at someone's record and find 10 or so convictions and dismiss that person as a "career criminal." And while I admit that someone who has a lot of convictions is much less likely to get it together and straighten out their life, it's likely an indictment of our inability to rehabilitate people. That life is easy to fall back into if every other road is blocked off because someone has a record.

The problem with our law enforcement and criminal justice system is that those who are not in policymaking positions have a very narrow mandate and are not encouraged to question whether their methods are equitable. If a police officer arrests a black man for a minor drug offense and that man is then prosecuted and put in jail for a crime that a white person would get community service for, somewhere along the line there has been a breakdown. Perhaps a lot of that inequity takes place in District Attorney's offices where they adas make deals with attorneys representing affluent white clients but are encouraged to punish Black people who aren't excused as "good kids who made a mistake."

Black Lives Matter focuses on the use of force and violence against Black people at the hands of law enforcement. The excuses we hear people make after Black men are shot and killed reveal all of the other biases that run through our system and need to be reformed.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Much of Beth's statement calls on the language of early 1900s race pseudoscience. Even when eugenicists weren't speaking entirely along racial lines they were proponents of the idea that certain people were beyond redemption and intrinsically criminal. When such people have children those children are in some way predisposed to crime simply by being their offspring.

It is popular in right-wing circles to look at someone's record and find 10 or so convictions and dismiss that person as a "career criminal." And while I admit that someone who has a lot of convictions is much less likely to get it together and straighten out their life, it's likely an indictment of our inability to rehabilitate people. That life is easy to fall back into if every other road is blocked off because someone has a record.

The problem with our law enforcement and criminal justice system is that those who are not in policymaking positions have a very narrow mandate and are not encouraged to question whether their methods are equitable. If a police officer arrests a black man for a minor drug offense and that man is then prosecuted and put in jail for a crime that a white person would get community service for, somewhere along the line there has been a breakdown. Perhaps a lot of that inequity takes place in District Attorney's offices where they adas make deals with attorneys representing affluent white clients but are encouraged to punish Black people who aren't excused as "good kids who made a mistake."

Black Lives Matter focuses on the use of force and violence against Black people at the hands of law enforcement. The excuses we hear people make after Black men are shot and killed reveal all of the other biases that run through our system and need to be reformed.

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I think this is how you should judge whether or not a person is a career criminal and whether or not there is chance for rehabilitation:

If their 10 convictions are for violent crimes and/or felonies that resulted in violence, then they're a career criminal and there was a good chance they are never going to be rehabilitated.

If their convictions were for dealing drugs, I more than willing to give them a pass under the right circumstances given the fact that I believe drugs should be legalized. But that all changes if they're committing violent crimes along with possession with intent to sell.

If a person has 10 convictions of non violent offenses, I think there is a chance for rehabilitation. A lot of it depends on the crimes they committed and how frequent they were committed.

Finally, if you start seeing someone progressing towards violent offenses, I think that's where you have to start sending a message with them when it comes to sentencing.

I generally agree with you. I think someone who has a history of violence and sexual assault is much less likely to ever be rehabilitated.

My own preference is somewhere in between what I see in some Northern European countries and what we have here. In Norway, they have mass murderer Anders Breivik in a cell that looks like a small office. I think it might even be decorated. I'm not sure what purpose it would serve but that guy's head should be in a toilet first thing every morning for the rest of his life. There are some crimes where people really cannot redeem themselves or ever be rehabilitated.

On the other hand, people born into a life of poverty who find themselves on the street can commit dozens of crimes and not be vicious or mean at all. They may simply not know any other way out of that life and our system of incarceration keeps putting them back there instead of helping to elevate them out of it. And no I'm not saying that poverty makes someone a criminal, but often times people on the right who talk about their tough upbringing grew up in families that were working class. This is qualitatively different from really extreme forms of poverty.

Two thoughts today-

1) I don't want to sound mean spirited, but is there something a bit over-the-top in the way RBG is being elevated from her status as Supreme Court Justice, to 'icon' of American Democacy?

2) Has there ever been in recent times a more precise example of what the Greeks callled Sophistry, in the justifications made by Senators MCConnell, Graham and Romney with regard to the process of selecting a new Supreme Court Justice?

Standard definition of Sophistry
"the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving."...

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Two thoughts today-

1) I don't want to sound mean spirited, but is there something a bit over-the-top in the way RBG is being elevated from her status as Supreme Court Justice, to 'icon' of American Democacy?.

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If you look at her personal history, she is not perfect but has been an extremely impressive in the fight for women's rights. She graduated first in her class at Columbia Law and couldn't find a single job in New York City. This would be like an Olympian not getting hired as a high school track and field coach. For Law students, the grading process is done blindly because grades are considered such an important factor in obtaining employment. It may sound like I'm overemphasizing the importance of grades and pedigree but only to the extent those things have always been given that exact emphasis by law firms and law schools who designed a grading system they believed could be administered without favoritism (even if admission sometimes doesn't operate that way; the admissions process for graduate schools is slightly less corrupt than undergraduate admission but there are usually a handful of students who do not merit admission at every top law program).

She authored the first casebook on sex discrimination, she was co-founder of the Women's Rights project at the ACLU, personally argued 6 sex discrimination cases before the supreme court, wrote the brief for Reed v Reed in which the Supreme Court extended the equal protection clause to women. Even if she had never served on the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, her work at the ACLU would make her an extremely notable feminist figure. The cases she argued extended constitutional equal rights to women and also blocked paternalistic laws that were intended to "protect" women by keeping them out of certain types of employment and mandating their role as caretakers.

I agree that her status as an "icon" is a bit unusual and sudden. But if you look at what she personally did in terms of women's protections under the law, it's hard to think of how one person can have more of an impact at this point in time legally. To frame her previous accomplishments differently, she wrote the brief for the department she helped found at a civil rights organization she worked for in a case that ended up extending equal protection under the law for women. She wrote the first legal casebook ever for the subject of sex discrimination. And won 5 landmark cases before the Supreme Court on sex discrimination. She also authored memorable opinions, including her dissent in Lily Ledbetter which resulted in the passage of the Lily Ledbetter fair pay act.

I think for some she represents defiance in the face of male legislators who want to turn back advances in women's rights. She did not retire when a liberal justice could have been appointed which was a mistake. I would say I give you a qualified I agree and disagree. It's actually her work before she became a Supreme Court Justice that was most pathbreaking I think.

Thanks, Broncofan, for that eloquent and informative post. I now appreciate the sense of loss, and achievement associated with RBG, and after all, we have also spent lives listening to opera.