The title is an essay by Ted Steinberg published on September 6, 2019 at counterpunch.  He’s kindly given me permission to reprint it all, after I'd explained that it’s not only one of the best pieces (a dual hero journey) I’ve read in a long time, but it really should be read all of a piece.   Had I needed to retell some it, surely I’d have made a hash of it.  It’s chock-full of the many epiphanies both he and Edward Said had experienced along their roads less traveled.

Mr. Steinberg uses plain-speak, non-academic language throughout, perhaps because the vignette begins with himself at age 13, and he weaves ‘the cake’ motif as a central touchstone throughout the progression, and along the way discovers that the indigenous in Israel had been airbrushed out of history in his Hebrew school.  I hope you’ll think it’s a brilliant as I do, and appreciate it even half as much.

(My guess is that Mr. Vltchek (below) hadn’t chosen the above photo, but as it was on the page, I’ll use it, although I’ve added all the other images. I wouldn’t mind having one of those rugs, smile.).

From Andre Vltchek’s ‘Why are Anti-Migrant Arguments Pure Hypocrisy?’, July 12, 2019, journal-neo.org  (Creative Commons with attribution)

“In this essay, let us be as concrete as possible. Let us be brief.

May 15, 2019 was the 71^st commemoration of Nabka (‘the Catastrophe’ as per Palestinians), when in 1948 hundreds of thousands, some say a quarter of a million,  Palestinians either fled or were forcibly removed from their traditional homelands.  Given that timing, many journalists have been covering the March of Return protests in Gaza, ‘anti-Eurovision’ events, as well as describing the ongoing horrors of life in Gaza and the West Bank.

David Walsh at wsws.org this morning brings us:

Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation:

Birthright citizenship ain’t in the Constitution!  I’m issuing an EO ending it!  Well, of course it’s in the Constitution: The 14^th Amendment Section One reads (the Wiki):

Caution, Hard Hat Area: hippie philosophizing ahead; this is probably totally half-baked, but I hadn’t had the time to bake it…fully.

The title is paraphrasing John Trudell in his scary-brilliant 1986 ‘Rich Man’s War’.  Mr. wd and I had a conversation about that phrase recently, as well as discussing my long held beliefs and writings that humanity had been on the path of a great psycho-spiritual awakening led predominantly by the Indigenous of the earth.

(Yeppers, it’s longish, but needs must, as they say.  Feel free to pick and choose titles that seem of keen interest to you.)

‘We will not wait 70 years more’: scenes from Gaza’s March of Return’, AhmadKabariti,  March 31, 2018, mondoweiss.net (with photos)

Awesome numbers have been reported from Saturday’s #March4OurLives mobilizations and demonstrations, some reporting a million globally.

As partisan politics would have it, Saturday’s #March4OurLives was strictly about gun control. But reporters from wsws.org were on the ground in several venues including NYC, Chicago, and Washington DeeCee, and interviewed some of the young ‘uns in high school, as well as few adults with stories to tell themselves. 

‘Israel Pays a Bounty of $5,000 and Arms for Each African Asylum Seeker Expelled’; Israel was the main driver behind the 1951 UN Convention on the Rights of Refugees, but after signing it, it has never respected the rights of refugees. In fact, it has created one of the biggest refugee crisis the world has seen, says Journalist and Filmmaker Lia Tarachansky.  (the transcript of the 21 minutes is here, but the visuals and voices are of prime importance, imo.)