Black Lives Matter Declares War On Israel
According to Alan Dershowitz anyhow:
It is a real tragedy that Black Lives Matter — which has done so much good in raising awareness of police abuses — has now moved away from its central mission and has declared war against the nation state of the Jewish people.
Not exactly a declaration of war Alan:
The platform accuses the US of being “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people” by providing aid to “an apartheid state.”
In addition to a declaration of war, Dershowitz labels the accusation of Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people is a " blood libel":
Until and unless Black Lives Matter removes this blood libel from its platform and renounces it, no decent person — black, white, or of any other racial or ethnic background — should have anything to do with it.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2016/08/12/black-lives-matte...
Here's the full statement from a BLM "affiliated group":
The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US-made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Everyday, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US-funded apartheid wall.
(To locate the offensive word "genocide" scroll way to the very end of this extensive and lengthy section that actually focuses more on domestic issues and contains a lengthy critiques of many global imperial wars of aggression)
https://policy.m4bl.org/invest-divest/
I found some rightful pushback at Counterpunch:
The days of profligately abusing loaded terms like “anti-semitism” and “blood libel” to try and control the parameters of thinkable thought on Israel are, thankfully, coming to a close. Unlike previous generations, younger people fully understand the mechanics of this long-running and all-too-successful thought control gambit and will not put up with it any more.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/16/alan-dershowitzs-advice-to-black-...
And a more lengthy pushback at The Tablet in an excellent article that provides historical context for Jewish/Black American relations, criticizes the use of the word "genocide" and concludes:
But American Jewish institutions cannot expect to maintain moral credibility on issues of racial justice in this country, no matter the specifics on policy, when they are silent when a Knesset member declares that his wife would not be willing to give birth in the same maternity ward as an Arab; when a book is banned in Israeli high schools for depicting a love affair between a Jew and a Muslim; when nearly half of all Israeli high school students declare their support for denying the vote to non-Jews; when Palestinian homes built without permits are demolished and Jewish homes built without permits only a hundred yards away are quickly connected to water lines and electricity. For a community that has reared its young to see their Judaism and their commitment to justice as inseparable, claiming that such realities must be understood in “context,” as “complicated,” or a tragic consequence of “ha’matzav” (“the situation,” as Israelis call it) reeks of moral hypocrisy.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/210838/the-problem-is-...
Well I hope that clarifies things. BLM accused the U.S. of being complicit in "genocide" instead of limiting their criticism to "Israeli war crimes" against the Palestinian people.
My take is that Alan Dershowitz and all of the other usual racist suspects are legitimizing Netenyahu's war crimes against the Palestinian people as well as America's immensely evil GWOT.
In my opinion the use of that horrible word "genocide" pales in comparison to both the treatment of Palestinians by the state of Israel as well as the way American cops are gunning down Black, Brown and Native American's for no reason.
Comments
There is no justifying the unjust
Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is unjustifiable. Recently, I learned of something that probably many of you already knew: that Israel was using cluster bombs in Gaza, a most indiscriminate way to kill lots of people. Cluster bombs were designed to kill large enemy formations in the field, not civilians in urban areas. Don't know if that allegation is true, but wouldn't doubt it. Of course we in the US have nothing to admire in the Bush-Obama unending war against Muslims, either. And we sure have ruined or ended the lives of hundreds of thousands--or even millions. And tell me where BLM is wrong with their assertion. I cannot then see, why, in this case we should hesitate to say "All Lives Matter" because in condemning the application of ALM, then people are implicitly justifying the continued killings of Muslims by the U.S. and its allies.
Note to poster: I hate acronyms. I would have stopped reading this essay if GWOT were used earlier in this. What the fuck does GWOT mean? There are other readers on this site who do not appreciate acronyms--especially one as unfamiliar as GWOT.
Wikipedia has redirected “GWOT” to “War on Terror” since 2006
For a long time, the abbreviation was fairly standard in informal writing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWOT
I have to confess my ignorance also. Acronyms are often
not useful in trying to communicate.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Nothing wrong with *not* knowing such, off the top of one’s head
Probably a sign that most of one’s attention is flowing towards real life, rather than the will-o’-the-wisps of language use in pop culture.
Thanks. One example, as one who lived for many years in the
rural west, is BLM which always meant to me the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees millions of acres of federal land and also means Black Lives Matter.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
I think that often, too, duckpin.
Though I use it in my siggy, TMI is is forever etched into my brain as Three Mile Island. Our daily crossword puzzle comes from NEA. Being curious I looked itup and still wasn't sure if it was editors, education, or arts.
However, being a kindle user and lacking a keyboard, I can see the value of acronyms. I have nearly five minutes into this post already. I sympathise with phone users. I can NOT text on a phone. One finger covers half the keypad.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
BLM = Bureau of Land Management
BLM-GLO = Bureau of Land Management-General Land Office Records web site where genealogists look up Land Grants issued in the names of ancestors. One can get a copy of the deed on the site for free, but if one wants all the paperwork associated with "improving the land" (building a house/structure, clearing the land), then there's a fee.
Yes, I'm very familiar with that portion of the BLM web site.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute ..., where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. — President John F. Kennedy, Houston, TX, 12 September 1960
They keep changing the name
To protect the guilty.
DoD changed from GWOT to OCO - ongoing contingency operations - several years ago.
We still use OCO. Of course, we've added ISIS/ISIL (Islamic states and levant - good British term from their post WWI meddling in the Middle East) and have renamed OEF/OIF (operation enduring freedom/operation Iraqi freedom) with new acronyms (which I forget), all of which get added to the alphabet soup.
One of these days,
somebody is gonna write a sentence in which all the nouns are replaced by acronyms.
native
Try reading Pentagon situation reports
GWOT = Global War On Terror...
I don't mind anacronyms for long sentences that can be replaced with 4 letters.
I also don't mind asking in a thread/comments section what it means, since we always have so many helpful people willing to fill in the gap in knowledge and it doesn't really divert the thread by having someone ask.
Personally, I think such things can actually be beneficial in a sense as building a shared lexicon can indeed unite people into feeling more like a cohesive group or club, which is good from a movement building perspective as well as for retention as people that feel a sense of "Community" are more likely to stick around and engage with others.
I know that there has been a bit of discussion about this lately and after giving it some thought that was my conclusion, but I could be wrong.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
GWOT?
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Global War On Terror?
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Yes.
Thank you. Acronyms are becoming the bane
of communication. I am easily distracted and if I go look something up, I will spend hours getting side-tracked, so now I will either just ask or just move on and forget the essay that did not choose to clearly communicate with this reader.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
You gotta admit
GWOT wasn't too hard to figure out in context of the story.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
No, I don't.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Okay, you don't have to,
but you would if you were honest. You can't tell me you haven't heard "War On Terror" complete with the scare quotes and implication of dun-dun-dun-daaaahh sound track several thousand times in the last fifteen years.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
So now you are questioning my honesty as well
as my intelligence? Yes, I have heard of the global war on terrorism, but I consider the term to be false, so why should I automatically in the course of reading an article about genocide, BLM and Israel make that connection?
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Well, I didn't figure it out either.
I, too, hate acronyms. Why do I need to take the time to try and figure them out when the writer can just type out the actual words? HTFAATS? Let me know if you figure that one out.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
HTFAATS
how the fuck are activists to survive
bygorry
TANSTAAFL
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
TANSTAAFL = Their ain't no such thing as a free lunch...
That's right, I read my Heinlein...
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
I knew it was used in the 50's
Was introduced to me by Niven, though. I don't know how old it really is.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
Created by Heinlein, as far as I know...
First heard it in the the story "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress"
which was about a Libertarian revolution on the mood.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Was it Heinlein who said...
"You never truly own anything that you can't carry with both arms on a dead run."?
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
Quite possibly.
Course I have a love/hate relationship with Heinlein.
I am more of the "If you can't fix or build it, you don't own it" school of thought, because I consider the best possessions to be knowledge. But then of course, I've had to abandon so many of my "Things" over the course of my life, that I place very little value on material possessions.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
TANJ!
There ain't no justice!
Also from Heinlein if memory serves me right.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
LOL! But not it!
HTFAATS = how's this for an acronym that sucks?
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Duh!
Or, the Global war OF terror,
as Big Al would have it. A far more accurate description IMO.
native
Far far far more accurate. To the rest of the world we are the
ones to be feared.
***
With all the recent acts of terror carried out by ISIS, world peace rests squarely on most of our minds.
However, when people around the world were asked which country they see as the greatest threat to world peace, guess what they said?
They said it was America:
http://ijr.com/2015/03/279944-country-named-biggest-threat-world-peace/
***
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Bobby Burns had it right.
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
native
Took a while to read it, but it proves that the more things
'change' the more they 'remain the same' (if you'll excuse that tired old saw).
I'm more a Thomas Moore kinda gal...
***
“Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out;”
― Thomas More, Utopia
***
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Heh. It's not hard to imagine More
and Burns sharing a bottle in some mythical Scottish tavern, beyond the reaches of chronological time. I'd cast Bob Dylan as the barkeep from our own era, adding his two-cents worth of versified wisdom:
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge
to which a scoundrel clings...
Steal a little and they throw you in jail,
steal a lot, and they make you a king."
native
That would be a conversation to eavesdrop upon, wouldn't it?
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Ah, "To a Louse"
One summer on Long Island, we had a terrible infestation of fleas, the dog especially, but all of us. My Mom noticed a flea on herself during Mass at church. To appease her demoralization, as soon as we got home she pulled out Bobbie Burns and read that poem to us. What fun we had talking about it. http://www.robertburns.org/works/97.shtml
Soon my Mom found a very odd summer Catholic Mass on Sundays: at a drive-in theatre in Brentwood. It was wonderful. No worries about dressy clothes or even shoes. One time we even forgot to leave the dog at home.
We actually lived in Queens, but she was a teacher so we spent the whole summer in a shack in Islip without running water or electricity. Heaven for us kids, but a little rough on our appearances on Sundays. We stopped spending summers there when Suffolk Co outlawed outhouses, or anyway once we learned of the law. I think we did enjoy an extra few years illegally.
So many quick to slander sites or writers they dislike as racist
and beyond the pale, and who don’t observe any niceties in proclaiming their moral superiority to their conversation partners, are conspicuously silent on anything involving Israel.
I think a lot of those that cry racists at home but are quite
about it overseas are not really so much concerned about ending racism as they are about virtue signaling.
Helps them feel morally superior without having to actually push for any change that might adversely affect them personally.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
Silent only in self-defense on that topic
If one condemns the latest murder of people on one side or the other, one is accused of taking the side of one side or the other. There is no winning against that kind of accusation when one has never taken sides in the first damned place. I just roll my eyes and STFU about the topic entirely.
The only thing I care about is that the killing stop and "leaders" on both sides grow the fuck up and sit down at a table like sensible adults and forge a peace. Nothing is solved by killing each other. IF/When killing each other stops entirely, progress toward peace can be made.
I am not, however, making the connection between Black Lives Matter and the IP conflict. That is extending Black Lives Matter into realms that should not be connected to the IP conflict if they want anything to be done about Black Lives Matter here in the US. The logic escapes me.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute ..., where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. — President John F. Kennedy, Houston, TX, 12 September 1960
Sickening Wave of Racism
Years of reading and writing to an empty audience has left me with a writer's block. Lost in detail and citations, a result of western academic training.
Its all connected: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the so-called War on Terror, the quest for Full Spectrum Dominance, the ideology of the New American Century, the subversion of governments through "Color Revolutions", the corporate big money co-opting "democracy", the rigging of the USA primary elections, the mass media converted into a froth of untruth (солгать), the hundreds of years of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, social and economic injustice of the racist society/government are all the same twisted mass of poisonous social order created by madmen.
Even the Internet has been partially taken over by troll farms (Hasbara, Clinton Ops etc. ad nauseum). Any support of what is BEING CAlled Black Lives Matter, or any attempt to support justice for Palestenians is met by a wave of hate and lies. This on top of, Facebook and other social media making sure that only the official story gets into mass consciousness. Add social media censorship, which often is semi-invisible.
I take it is the platform that is being cited. I posted it earlier in a comment, and on Facebook where I got a total of one like (from my niece in Bolivia). Black Is Back Platform/ To my way of thinking this is the clearest platform produced this election cycle. But, the empire has decided that "Black Lives Matter" is a clear and present danger and the marionettes and mouthpieces and troll farms of empire are flooding both the main stream media and social platforms with hate and falsehoods disguised as truth.
Black Lives Matter is now being broad-brush painted as a Black Racist Terror organization... when its not an organization per se at all. If you want to see the racial hate and misinformation in a tidal wave of verbose diarrhea just check twitter #BlackLivesMatter.
Even check the hijacking of my most recent essay.
Ithas all made me sick at heart. Although, I will tell you that the people of Dominica understand it, even the details from far away Ukraine, Palestine and the South China Sea are easily understood. Dominicans understand colonialism and domination by power hungry plantation overseers (the hoard of employees of the corporations) grouped into militarized empires.
From the Light House.
Black Lives Matter L.A. Video - Day 35
Still standing after 35 days. This is an 18 second video of a Victory Ritual following LAPD harassment of posting "No Trespassing" signs in the small area across from City Hall they have been occupying.
They immediately complied by moving their entire set up 50 feet. I was recording a couple of small groups caucusing about the next step when I accidently taped a leadership discussion.
The short woman waving me off is a leader/decision maker for BLM L.A. and the rest are my friends from LACAN. They just didn't want any statements recorded that might be used against them as proof of their terrorist conspiracy to stop the LAPD from shooting people for no reason.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Better Videos On Facebook at Black Lives Matter L.A.
I deleted the facebook app because it bogged down my half smart $50 boost phone. And I refuse to download "Messenger" just because dipshit Zuckerberg wants more money and more market domination.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
It's not about BLM or Israel....
It's about questioning or calling out the DNC and the "Big Capital" that owns it.
Any criticism of the DNC will be met with an attack on the critics character or intelligence using whatever slime they think will stick, even if they have to invent it out of whole cloth...
The Democrats have gotten worse than the republicans lately with their attacks against anything other than the sanctioned group think.
As bat shit crazy as the Republicans were, they never went to such efforts to silence their own membership as the Democrats have done, particularly this cycle?
Why not? Because in this one response they are smarter than the Democrats, they realized they can't shit on a sizable minority of their base without it costing the party dearly.
A lesson the Dems will probably learn from (or not, they seem pretty obtuse at learning anything that requires self critical thoughts) the 2016 election results, particularly on the Down Ballot.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
Hidden Colors 3 - The Rules of Racism
One way or another this is a film everyone needs to watch. Rated 8.1 at imdb. The filmmaker, Tariq Nasheed, needs all the support he can get. So try demanding your local library get a copy... Interlibrary Loan should be able to find it...
Reviews: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3528092/reviews?ref_=tt_urv
Title Page: Hidden Colors 3: The Rules of Racism (2014)
I am looking forward to seeing the recently released Hidden Colors 4.
From the Light House.
Racist has lost meaning
Everyone's a racist now. Support BLM? Racist. Don't support BLM? Also racist. Don't care either way? Biggest racist ever. Everyone in the world is now a racist.
I find your comment to be incredibly Racist!!!
(I am just trying it on for size since it seems to be the current fashion. So far, I don't like the way it feels.)
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
I no longer take the racist accusation seriously.
Which apparently Makes me racist.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Agreed, they "Cried Wolf" with that one too much...
It used to be when I heard that, I would immediately try to verify it, see if it was racist and to what extent.
Now? I don't even waste my time as now racist has come to mean, "You disagree with me but I cannot refute your argument so I am gonna derail it by putting you on the defensive to change the argument from its current focus to you and your failings."
Fuck that lazy ass, immature, debate ending nonsense.
What is equally bad is that it automatically provides some shade to the real racists, who could legitimately say, "Oh come on, EVERYONE is a racist according to those people." and actually have some weight to their defense.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
Well, the word "racist"
no longer has a clearly and commonly understood meaning. If it ever had one. Its various connotations and shadings have been so extensively and extravagantly used for political ends, that its utility as a conveyor of meaning has been badly compromised. "Anti-Semetism" has suffered a similar fate. Nowadays, anybody who's not an ardent Zionist can be labelled an anti-Semite.
In general, any word that has the suffix "ist" tacked on the end of it, is highly suspect. Language can be a strange beast - it can be used to obfuscate and confuse thinking, as easily as to elucidate and refine it.
native
Been seeing that too
Sexist, racist, anti-semite, bigot, all over used and losing meaning.
Wish the same would happen to a few other words. It kinda happened with "faggot," or "fag." Used to be way more derogatory towards gay people, but now it's pretty much the same as calling someone a "douche-bag," or "asshole."
Wasn't the objective
for society to no longer care about race and treat everyone as individuals?
It seems that liberals want everyone to be more and more concerned about race, with no final objective.
Pretty much what "PC Culture" means
Be concerned about every little thing you say and its ability to be turned into an anti-(insert group here) comment, without any reasoning as to how being as inoffensive as possible will make society a better place.
Personally, I'd rather we all be offensive to a degree and develop the ability to laugh it off, than everyone be an inoffensive drone with growing frustrations at the inability to express oneself.
dershowitz
went over to the dark side a long time ago. I think only the wingers pay attention to him now, especially when he's screeching about anything touching Palestine. And he should know that by so freely swinging around "blood libel," he just serves to trivialize it. But I guess he doesn't care.
Ever since Dershowitz came out as a torture enthusiast
Ever since Dershowitz came out as a torture enthusiast in 2003, I have tried to ignore him.
"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."
Me too - another overpaid academic apologist for the
entrenched power structure.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Dershowitz, like many another US
Israel- booster, is an ardent neoconservative. He's an ambitious war-monger, to be perfectly frank. For these folks, the hegemonic PNAC agenda aligns perfectly with the interests of Israel's current right wing agenda. In fact, the two are inseparable.
They claim, insistently, to speak for all Jewish people world wide, but I do not believe they actually do. They certainly do not speak for any of my Jewish friends.
native
Well, fork Israel
these bastards can kiss my ass. The IDF is seen in this video tossing a hand grenade into a group of Palestinians that were not doing anything but sitting and talking. SCREW ISRAEL!
[video:https://youtu.be/728pj6TcFiw]
The fact that these sorry excuses for human beings bring out their lawn chairs to watch the Palestinians get bombarded by Israeli war planes should be all the proof one needs to see the sickness that permeates their entire society.
And the fact that Mrs. Clinton is so far up Bibbi's butt should concern us all, we will be in a war with Iran within the 1st 100 days of her administration, if not sooner.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
Damn, that was disgusting and disturbing.
It's readily apparent that those seated there were not up to anything, they didn't react like those that were engaged in criminal behavior, no panic, no effort to flee despite the ominous vehicle stopping, they just seemed curious, right up until the grenade.
I really hope that was a flash bang and that nobody was injured or killed.
They seem to be using the same unity building tactics as the DNC, and with likely the same results...
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
Our Green leadership supports Israel, is against BDS
Elizabeth May, Federal Member of Parliament threatened to quit. Andrew Weaver, BC Provincial leader has issued a statement against BDS of Israel.
Of all foreign policy why that one? China building military installations on coral reefs, that would be a good issue to discuss.
Images:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/sep/17/south-china-...
To thine own self be true.
Need a few dots connected
How did BLM get from righteous indignation regarding race issues and police in the US to condemning Israel?
You might like it but I don't see the purpose unless BLM is trying to round up everyone with an issue. For what purpose?
Advise BLM to just state their intent and see what happens.
Oh, who(m) speaks for BLM? See Occupy...
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Isreal has been training our US Police for a number of years.
I don't speak for BLM. These links may explain some of their reasoning.
Joint training might as one of the influences of the increased militarized force for crowd control.
Chicago has implemented many techniques used by Israeli forces to manage/occupy Palestinians over the years.
.
Requests for police to stop training in Israel have been denied.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Good question.
Whatever BLM may be trying to do, tying it to the predicament of Palestinians seems rather far-fetched.
native
Whatever BLM may be trying to
OK, please try and read the "What We Believe" statement from the Black Lives Matter web site.
http://blacklivesmatter.com/guiding-principles/
And the 19 point agenda from the National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination:
http://www.blackisbackcoalition.org/national-black-political-agenda-for-...
And then see if you can sincerely continue to call it far-fetched.
From the Light House.
What Is The Problem?
Scroll way down to the heading above. This is the concern of BLM:
https://policy.m4bl.org/invest-divest/
An in depth discussion follows with many examples of oppressed groups being decimated by unjust wars including:
And
The use of the word "genocide" was such a trivial comment in an extensive and informed critique of global war racketeering that the Dershowitz criticism is ludicrous.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Here are the dots.
Palestine became an important issue after social justice advocates in the black movement started making connections to their own histories of experiencing racism or colonialism in the Caribbean or Latin America or Africa. The Palestinian experience parallels the Black and Latino experience in the U.S. Its also an issue of global power, an issue of decolonization which directly relates to the struggle of Black and Brown peoples around the world.
The documentry "When I see them, I see us." Features Cornel West, Angela Davis, Danny Glover to name a few. Oppressed people around the world must stand in solidarity with one another. Remember the last Gaza massacre? It was at the same time as Ferguson. From Palestine tweets like:
And from protesters in Missouri:
The Black and Brown Movement, the Palestinian Justice Movement, the Climate Justice Movement, the Anti-War Movement are all intimately interconnected, and pretty much what the Sanders campaign was all about on an electoral plane. BDS against the Israeli apartheid state is a direct evolution from the boycott of the South Africa apartheid state.
The problem I am seeing on what used to be a "progressive" forum is that a goodly portion don't have a clue that racism is not some personal feeling we or they may have, or that it has solved by electing a Coon AKA "Plantation Overseer" like Obama.
It is a problem of long standing power structures.
From the Light House.
This conceptual division
of the world into "black and brown" people vs "white" people is neither helpful nor accurate. It is simplistic in trying to shoehorn complex cultural and political conflicts into the single mold of racial discrimination. It is theory devoid of context.
In many places throughout Africa and across the world, religious and cultural conflicts play an equal or greater role in social discord than racial conflicts do. If you happen to be Sunni in today's Bahgdad for example, it doesn't matter whether you are black, white or brown, you will be oppressed. In Japan, half the population could be considered "racist" but the discrimination there has little to do with skin color. Baltimore and Ferguson ain't the world as a whole.
Granted, in many places, people of African descent are considered to be second-class citizens, including here in the USA. But the reasons for this are as much cultural and political and economic as they are racial. Emphasizing the racial aspect of our discord as you seem to do, and then trying to extend it worldwide, seems very unhelpful to me.
native
Tomorrow....
Too late to continue the discussion so I will try and continue with a Pt. 2 tomorrow. Just this one thing because it annoys me:
Doesn't have anything to do with what I have said. You are either making it up out of whole cloth, or responding to someone or something else. I have been consistently speaking about power structure and oppressed peoples. And this from the point of view of African-Americans, Afro-Caribbean people, Latin Americans and Palestinians.
From the Light House.
The two situations
(US blacks vs US cops, and Palestinians vs Israel State) are analogous but not identical. In many important ways, they're not even similar. Seems risky to me, trying to unite them in a common cause, which is more ideational than actual.
native
I think supporting victims of oppression everywhere is a plus.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
US blacks vs US cops...
First, such a blanket statement needs some sort of backup, citations, quotes from people we respect. Its not a rebuttal, its a tweet or an unsubstantiated opinion. This unsubstantiated opinion tries to negate the very real daily and collective experience of generations of Black, Brown and Palestinian people who have lived generations under oppression, looting resources, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.
Except for twins (theoretically), no two individuals of a species are identical. Nevertheless, the family, genus, species are in the same box taxonomically. Many American white people seem to think that "racist" refers to "prejudice" or to an individual's feelings. It completely misses the point of liberation struggles around the world. That is the genus and family of oppression and injustice.
Racism is a structure, a power relationship. It is institutional and the ones who institutionalized it were/are white people and white power from George Washington to Hillary Clinton. WTF do you all think Bernie was talking about speech after speech, "And we understand our LGTBQ brothers and sisters... and we understand our African-American brothers and sisters...." He had a rudimentary grasp that all oppression is related (Killer Mike, Danny Glover, Nina Turner and Harry Belafonte were more sophisticated because they have first hand generational experience).
Personally I could care less what the hell you or anyone else think of Latino or Black people or Palestinians. What I care about is destroying the structures of oppression. That means all oppressed peoples all over the world join together, put their fists up and fight back.
From the Light House.
I do not entirely disagree with you.
But a diatribe isn't a dialogue. IMO there are too many of the former, and there is not enough of the latter.
native
Function of Diatribe
-- http://literarydevices.net/diatribe/
From the Light House.
Quite so. Maybe I have heard
and read too many diatribes to be much impressed by any of them. I find a respectful dialogue to be a more interesting thing to attend to.
native
...
You have not answered to any of the issues I am discussing, instead have gone for the literary-style (similar to the grammar) police gambit of misdirection.
From the Light House.