OK, I owe everyone an apology. I get it now. I’ve seen the light. I finally understand the true nature of my thoughtcrimes, and I take responsibility for them, and I stand ready to pay my debt to society. I have to thank the State of Israel for bringing about this sudden epiphany. How it happened was, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, and his delegation wore yellow Stars of David — i.e., the ones the Nazis forced the Jews to wear in public — at a Security Council session to make a statement.
I love you, brother. You are an actual dissident, in the most old normal sense, :) There are few left of this rare beast, and you are one of them, and beautifully so. Thank you, CJ.
I really needed to read this today. I mean, like, really, REALLY, needed this. I feel so alone. "Am I the one that's crazy?" I ask myself on the days it gets on top of me. No, I just have to stay strong, and remember there's a CJ Hopkins in the world who is also staying strong, and even under prosecution, doing it with wit and satire. Thank you.
Last night I watched a video - of some kid in a Gaza hospital being reunited with their sister, who was previously thought of as dead. It did “get on top of me” as I watched their car drive away to what surely must be another potential bombing “target.”
We aren’t alone. We may cry alone at times, but there is solidarity in knowing sane people don’t solve heinous crimes with exponential heinous crimes. Sane people, where I live, watch a season opening hockey game that starts out with pomp and circumstance detailing how the Oilers “Stand with Israel” and think to themselves, ‘Wait a minute, what the f#%k do the owners of the Edmonton Oilers know about the history and nuance and criminal response to this heinous attack?” Obviously, the distractions our government and corporate society uses are very effective. But they don’t fool us all. I cry for every victim. I refuse to be any kind of jingoistic useful idiot buying the propaganda garbage and lies - from either of the violent sides. I just want no more children to die. Stop! Maybe it’s time to quit watching sports and start watching the war mongering government/corporate bastards. Maybe just buying the lines CK refuses to us something our schools should start teaching.
Beautifully and skillfully said CJ. As a Jewish Israeli, I know from my own personal experience with the unbelievably cruel, inhumane, violent, ruthhless & arrogant supremacists in the israeli government exactly who the actual N*zis are here..
I know intimately their insane supremacist beliefs and ideology,
I know the false nationalist mythologies and stories of morality that they tell themselves (and hammer into our head) over and over and over again from birth, inside the SRCTARIAN BUBBLE that the vast majority of supremaciat zionists (and their gullible misinformed fans across the world who blindly repeat their false slogans) are hermetically closed in,
I know the fake nationalist "god" that their fearful violent brain invented for itself to justify their brutally cruel inhumane (and anti-God) project of dispossesion against the local people,
I have seen with my own eyes and am intimately familiar with their century-long brutal ruthless cruel traumatizing project to disposses, eliminate, throw out, take over, dehumanize and ERASE the local prople in Palestine (you can see much of it in great detail in this shocking documentary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4 which I can confirm is 100% true from my own personal experience),
I know how they corrupt & twist the Holocaust to justify the UNSPEAKABLE INHUMANITY AND GENOCIDAL HORROR they are inflicting on the local people in Palestine, and to silence anyone who dares mention what they are doing (labeling as an 'antisemite' and 'Hollcaust-denier' anyone who dares point out their GENOCIDE against the local people, anyone who stands for human dignity and exposes their life-destroying dispossesion & erasure project and security-destroying nationalist sectarian ideology of "it's either us or them")
'Antisemite' is another term the cynical supremacist zionist murderers, abusers & torturers completely corrupted, twisted, turned on its head and emptied of meaning, and are cynically using it as a political weapon to attack and silence those who expose the profound unspeakable horrific inhumanity criminality and cruelty of their erasure project against the local people (cynically and manipulatively claiming that such a person supposedly hates Jews for pointing out this genocidal horror).
Pretty much anyome who isn't a right-wing Jewish supremacist or who blindly supports right-wing Jewish supremacists is today labelled an 'antisemite' by their cynical PR and censorship machine
PPS. I'd also highly recommend listening to what this wise Jewish Holocaust survivor has to say about the right-wing zionist aupremacists and their similarity to the European right-wing fascism tha persecuted Jews, about their cynical corruption and political weaponization of the Holocaust to justify a genocidal dehumanization and dispossesion project against the local people in Palestine, and about what the term "Never Again" actually means. https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1718048169781797080?t=IPJzkf9jdqFvMABvfW5ung&s=19
PPPS. I mentioned above that their actions and ideology not only do not and cannot bring about safety & security (for anyone, neither Jews nor Muslims nor anyone else) but is actually the very cause of INSECURITY. I have a lot to say in that regard, and I think that is the root issue (and the root solution) that sectarian nationalists are unable to see. A lot to say about this but space here is limited so I'll do that in the comment/reply below
God bless you for being a rare human that can cut through all the BS you were undoubtedly indoctrinated with your whole life! It must be lonely. I know it is for me, and I'm not even Jewish.
To continue from above, with regard to why the sectarian exclucivist ethnocentric nationalist approach cannot brimg security and actually must bring about INSECURITY, as we see all around us. In my perspective (which is of course only partial and limited, as all perspectives are), the path forward out of this horror is not strictly in political arrangemnts (that's also important but secondary) but rather it lies in the heart of people, in the ability/capacity to see the humanity of another before viewing them as a label (palestinian, israeli, muslim, jew), as well as in coming to terms with and acknowledging the immense and profound trauma that each "side" has caused the other And in finding ways to heal together. (and unlike most Jews, I am fully aware and acknowledge that the trauma that supremacist right-wing zionists caused palestinians is many many orders of magnitude greater than the other way around)
All of this requires having CONTACT between the "sides" so that they may hear each other, each other's stories and each other's pain, but this contact is currently prevented and denied becasue of the incredible dominance of the sectarian nationalist divisive ideology in both sides.
As someone who was given at birth the label 'Jewish' and 'Israeli', I am noticing that one of the main things that allows this ongoing horror to happen (not only today but it has been going on for more than a century) is that there is such a total SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION between the "sides" (this is one of the greatest successes of nationalism/sectarianism, to separate people) so that people from both "sides" have no full understanding of the life experience and trauma experience of those on the "other side".
From what I see and feel, this total DISCONNECTION is exactly what allows people to cheer when "our hero fighters" (whom the other side calls terrorists or invaders/occupiers) murder, torture, oppress, abuse, slaughter and bomb "them", because each side says "they are evil people who only want to harm us, take our land and kill us/kick us out", and each side has countless examples of evil actions by the other side that are supposed to "prove" the supposed rightness of their claim.
Each "side" is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and tells itself its own story, about its trauma and difficulties, and is completely unaware of the life experience and trauma of the "other side".
And so, when the other side reacts (in what it calls self-defense) then the first side interprets it as an attack (becasue of its DISCONNECTION from the stories and sense-making of the other side) and tells a story that "those people on the other side" are evil monsters who only want to harm our side..
It's quite amazing how similar the story that each side tells itself to the story that the other side tells itself , it is practically the SAME STORY - we are the victims here who are only protecting ourselves from the aggression of those evil people over there who only want to harm us and hate us for no reason. We have no one to talk to and negotiate with, they are not human beings, they are sons of Satan who hate us from birth, who only want to destroy us and take our land and kick us out - each side speaks the exact same stories!!
And I can't help but notice that all this lack of understanding happens simply because there is NO CONTACT between the "sides". This is the tremendous success of nationalism/tribalism/sectarianism, there is an almost complete disconnection, so that I don't hear the story that the other side tells itself and how they make sense of things, I don't experience their life experience, I don't know anything about their pain, I don't realize how much the story they tell themselves is the same as the story I tell myself, and therefore there is no possibility of experiencing the HUMANITY (the fear, the search for security) that motivates the other, just as it motivates me, and therefore also indifference to the trauma that the other goes through at the hands of "our heroic fighters" (who in the eyes of the "The other side" are murderous terrorists/invaders/oppresors).
It seems to me that the main engine that drives all of this is that almost all the residents of the region undergo a very deep conditioning/indoctrination from a very young age into a separative and SECTARIAN RELIGIOUS-NATIONALIST IDENTITY and learn to believe (contrary to what reality shows) that this separate and divisive identity is what will provide them with protection and security, even though it does THE EXACT OPPOSITE!! (In a moment I will say why it does the exact opposite).
This indoctrination into the separative exclucivist religious-nationalist identity is much more than just mental brainwashing, but it is mainly the conditioning the of the nervous system and emotional system into IDENTIFICATION with a nationalist-religious label (this label equals me. This is me, This label is where safety and security is to be found), which causes the emotions and the body to react very strongly to anything that might disrupt this identity/label.
Strong reaction that comes from the fact that the body/brain/nervous system has been conditioned to learn - through constant repetition in the first years of life (when the personality is formed), again and again and again, and without questioning - this is who I am, that I am this national-religious identity, therefore anything that questions or does not identify with this national-religious system of ideas is immediately perceived as a threat to my very existence, because I am this identity/the nationalist-religious label, this is me, this is where safety and secur8ty is at..
It seems to me that those who have fallen into the abyss of sectarianism/tribalism/nationalism (and especially those whose nationalism/tribalism also involves divisive and God-denying sectarian religious beliefs) have been conditioned to believe that saftey & security will be found through group separation and exclusion and a sense of uniqueness from the rest of humanity (a feeling that is so deeply imprinted in those who believe that the label of "Jewish" is who they actually are), that security will be found through an attempt to ensure the safety of ONLY one group of people, only those who were born into the "correct" religious-national label (and everyone who was not born into the correct national-religious label can go to hell. She matters a little but not nearly as much as the Chosen People, the most valuable and important people in the universe). It sounds ridiculous, but this is a VERY common worldview in the extremely nationalist, ethnocentric, fascistic and exclucivist Israeli society (which is much more fanatically tribalstic and nationalist than Jews outside israel), and I think it plays a huge huge part in what brought this conflict about in the first place, since the very early days of sectarian zionist nationalism.
To me, this is precisely the blindness of the sectarian nationalist-religious identity: trying to create security ONLY for one group, only for a part of the whole (through division, exclusion, separation from the whole and working to secure the narrow interests of only one nationalist-religious identity), such an attempt - of trying to create security ONLY for the part and ignore what this does to the whole - such an attempt not only can NEVER ever lead to real security but exactly the opposite - this is the number one factor that creates constant conflict and INSECURITY!!!
TRYING TO CREATE SECTARIAN SECURITY (SECURITY ONLY FOR THE PART AND NOT THE WHOLE, ONLY FOR ME AND MY GROUP) IS THE VERY CAUSE OF INSECURITY!!!
In my understanding, tribalism/nationalism and sectarian divisive exoteric religion (which is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God actually is) is the great disease and blindness of humanity. Is the most destructive and deadly invention that humans have ever invented (not because we are bad, but because we have not psychologically matured yet, and are still blind, and in our naiveté we believed that this is how we will find safety & security, without understanding what we are doing, without realizing that we are actually creating constant INSECURITY when we search for security through the sectarian divisive nationalist-religious identity, when we seek security only for the part and not for the whole).
To me it is absolutely clear that it is the number one cause of human division, separation, antagonism, hatred, conflict, violence, murder and war..
Great comment. I would like to maybe add that there must be some constructive way forward to deal with the trauma that is inflicted on the victims. Something other than perpetuating a cycle of fearing and dehumanizing the other side. Because there are people who live in conditions where there is (or has been) the real threat of someone wanting them dead. I think it's important to recognize that in some cases, there are people who have experienced genuine mortal fear that someone wants to kill them. Or they have come face to face with those who tried to kill them. This needs to be worked with somehow. I spoke with a vet who felt this way in Iraq. Tim O'Brien wrote about this experience in Vietnam. A person who truly is in a situation where someone wants to kill them is probably not going to think about holism. They are going to be radically separated from their enemy regardless of how they got in the conflict. (And their fear is used as a political tool to motivate people to go to war) The fear and the need to defend oneself is going to stick with them a long time, unless there is some way to work with it. There have to be some ways to facilitate moving from fear, anger and hate for the "enemy" and toward positive contact with each other.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for putting it so skillfully and clearly. That is indeed the key first step. If there is no healing for the traumatised nervous system then we can forget about people having a higher or more wholistic perspective. Fully agree with on that. Absolutely necrssary.
However, to be honest, I am not very optimistic that even if this healing happened that there would be a real change of course because besides this immediate trauma that you mentioned, the society in israel is totally and hermatically enclosed within its own sectarian bubble and hears ONLY its own story, with zero awareness of the life experience and pain of the 'other side'. ZERO!! Palestinians don't even register as having any real human existence to the vast majority of israelis. On the very rare occasions that their existence is acknowlegded it is only as an infinitely evil villain cartoon character, a monstrous terrorist who only want to destroy us. And "they are all like that'..
Not only is their existence not acknowledged, but obviously there is no knowledge whatsoever of their stories of how they make sense of reality and how they view the zionist arrogant and violent and inconsiderate and unfriendly and hostile arrival in the middle east..
In my view, things cannot not change unless there is a very deep awakening in the Israeli psyche from the separative, divisive, self-righteous and tone-deaf spirit out of which israelis operate and in which they are enclosed. This separative self-righteous tone-deaf ethnocentric supremacist arrogant and dismissive spirit will NEVER provide them with security, no matter how many times they tell themselves that they are the victims and the righteous ones, becasue this nationalist self-absorbed tone-deaf arrogant separative divisive excluding and supremacist spirit is exactly what DIVIDES them from the organic indigenous culture and land that they invaded and claim as their own, and this spirit is exactly what keeps them as a FOREIGN ELEMENT in the middle east, an unintegrated unorganic element, a seperative arrogant antagonistic invasive foreign element, that has to always live behind walls and fortifications and billion-dollar weapons and massive surveillance and oppression apparatus against the very neighbourhood that they parachuted/instilled themselves into, imposed themselves into in an UNORGANIC manner, in a hostile, insensitive, arrogant, unfriendly, supremacist invasive and aggresive manner. They will NEVER ever find security as long as they operate from this sectarian antagonistic supremacist psychology towards the very region they invaded, psychology which israelis are deeply indoctrinated into from birth.
In an ideal world I envision a healing process in which israelis awaken out of this deep hypnosis and sectarian bubble, and deeply apologize to native people (authentic and heart-felt apology) for what they have done to them at that period in the 20th and early 21st centuries when they were profoundly unconscious and under the spell of the trauma and nationalistic separative supremacist ideology. And after deeply apologizing, sincerely and from the heart, and asking for forgiveness, the israelis might then humbly and respectfully ask the local people if they'd be kind enough to allow them to stay and live together as equals on this land..
This humble and respectful question (if we are allowed to share this land with you locals, since we have come here in distress and escaping persecution, and in return for allowing us to live together with you on this land, we will work together with you to bring the gifts of both our people for the mutual benefit of all of us) this human approach should have been done from the very first moment, rather than the violent supremacist taking-away brutally invasive and hostile antagonistic approach that guided the zionists from the start) but the zionist psyche was unfortunately too immature traumatised neurotic and undeveloped to do that at the time and brought about this colossal disaster to the land.
The way out of this is obviously to mature and heal from the traumatise neurotic violent psyche that the zionists came with to this land and to atart a new chapter in our relation to the native culture and to the land, a new sane healed mature open hearted culture of respect, learning and sharing, but unfortunately it seems like iaraeli society is moving in the exact opposite direction.
It is becoming more and more rabidly fascistic, militaristic, religiously extremist and nationalistic by the day. With each passing day Israelis are becoming more and more hermatically enclosed in their own nationalist-religious bubble, more and more rabidly right-wing, the dehumanization of palestinians is becoming more extreme with each passing day (vast majority of Israelis are simply not able to comprehend palestinian suffering or have any empathy or compassion towards them, the hatred is becoming more and more extreme by the day). Israeli society is getting more and more violent, more nationalistic, more extreme, becoming more entrenched in its own historical narrative & its own self-victimization, more fascistic (people are now arrested for liking posts on social media that depict palestininas as human beings and not as enemy monsters. Wrining or liking such posts is criminalized as "terrorism" and condemned as 'leftist traitors' and can lead to 10 years in prison. This is how fascistic israeli society is becoming, nothing other than hate towards the palestininas is allowed. Humanity, empathy and compassion is criminalized).
If I am completely honest, it is very hard for me to have much hope that change and transformation can willingly happen from within Israeli society. It seems to me that the shift to the nationalistic-religious right wing fascism in Israeli society (which happened slowly over the last 30 years but greatly accelarated in the last 6-7 years) might have now gone beyond the point of no return.. the separative nationalistic-religious indoctrination is so deep and the entrenchment in its own narratives is so deep that to me it seems that the only way change and awakening might happen is NOT through sobering up and awakening to reality out of the hypnosis in the Israeli psyche (it seems we’ve gone past the point already where this is possible) but rather it seems to me that the more likely scenario and course of events to happen now is that the sobering up and reckoning might happen only AFTER the major major catastrophe that the fascist-religious maddness is leading israeli society into (catastrophe of the nature of either becoming themselves the perpetrators of a Holocaust, or bringing about a nuclear world war, or something of this sort, something akin to the catastrophe that lead to the sobering up of the German psyche after WWII. The german psyche was also on an unstoppable nationalist frenzy of being deeply entrenched in its own narratives and its own sense of righteousness, so braimwashed and hypnotised by its own narratives of ‘it’s either us or them’ that it went beyond the point of no return, and the sobering up could happen only after a major catastrophic climax (that the nationalist/tribalist frenzy must lead a society into).
When I see the level of nationalistic-religious brainwashing and dumbing-down and emotional manipulation going on in Israeli schools and media (you can see it also in many commet sections, how extremely deeply brainwshed heart-corrupted cruel and entrenched Israelis are in their own narratives of self righteousness and being the victim, their level of hypnosis and devotion to the "it's either us or them" ideology is simply beyond reach) when seeing all this then i’m afraid that israeli society is also beyond the point of no return and is on a collision course with an inevitable catastrophe.. only then might the sobering up and reckoning happen, if there’s anyone at all left by then…
I'm really NOT optimistic at all that there can be an awakening in the deeply indoctrinated self-assured arrogant, sectarian and supremacist zionist psyche.. The societal trends and cultural zeitgeist in Israel indicate to me that the likelihood of a catastrophe is much higher than a maturing and healing and awakening from the "it's either us or them" trance.
It was interesting to read your perspective from in Israel. Although, I am sorry to hear how bad it is. I had hoped some Israelis were moving away from the hardline attitude. The atmosphere is here is maybe not exactly like over there. But it is "fascistic, militaristic" and entrenched in a (destructive) narrative. We have big corporations and all kinds of smaller companies feeding off contracts and grants related to "homeland security." All of them are dependent on "enemies within" to make money. If they can't find any terrorists, these interests apparently have no problem cannibalising the lives of innocent citizens. Their careers in "domestic intelligence" or "homeland security" depend on enemies. Charges of terrorism are being used to silence constitutionally protected speech. Innocent people are having their lives destroyed. A college student was charged with terrorism related crimes for peacefully handing out animal cruelty flyers. A non-violent 11-year old was put in solitary confinement on terrorism related charges based on gossip from another elementary school kid. This was the "evidence." He did not actually do anything.
It seems that everywhere in the west there seems to be regression to infantile fascism and religious-nationalist supremacism. I won't say anything here about the spiritual and psychological aspect of this, becasue that can easily fill up a whole book, but will just say on a more superficial level that it seems to me that this supremacist religious-nationalist fascist movement (and even neo-nazi movement, in the case of israel) seems to have two components, economic (by the corporate-capitalist empire and its NeoConservative/Zionist military-industrial complex, which benefits from a constant state of hatred and war and therefore funds and arms the warmongering religious-nationalists & supremacists all over the world) and cultural (the actual religious-nationalist supremacist fascists on the street and flooding social media and in militaries and in parliaments. Supremacist NeoCon Zionists and NeoCon Christian Zionists seem to be at the heart of this movement. A small number of them stirring this ship from positions of power in the economy and govt and media, and a huge number of them enforcing the religious-fascist cultural zeitgeist in tje militaries and on the streets and on social media and zionist-christian "alternative" media.
Historian and economist Michael Hudson recently suggeated that we are back at the age of the crusades (only with much more deadly weapons this time) that were very similarly guided by economic empire's interests pushing a religious funtamentalist zeal, for their geostrategic and geopolitical aim. For example here
And the insightful, wise and heart-based Caitlin Johnstone is out in the trenches and breaking down all the cynical emotional manipulations and propaganda tricks that the supremacist religious-nationalist fascists and their warmongering empire are using to push this anti-life fascist wave everywhere. For example https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/
This video does a good job of breaking down the very powerful neo-nazi movement in Israel. He speaks mostly of the political aspect of it, but it has also very deep and widespread roots in israel society, and its talking points are indeed now the mainstream discourse in Israel. The situation is actually much worse then what he depicts in tne video since they are now actually forming the governemt (the video was from before that happened), have cancelled all judicial oversight over them (literally can do whatever they wish with complete impunity) and are openly hunting down '"eftist traitors" in the streets, stealing homes abd land openly, and slaughtering non-jews by the thousands.. this is the mainstream of israeli society and politics now. Voices like mine are a tiny tiny miniscule minority in a huge fascist religious-nationalist wave..
Personally, I think we should be able to "relativize the Holocaust". Or even minimize it. It should be legal. And we should be able to discuss it like any other historical event, like Gaza, like whatever. Posting swastikas should also be legal. It's just a symbol. Like the Israeli star. Or the Hamas flag.
As for the rest... I kind of understand both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian question, but, right now, it's time we just stop sending money to Israel to randomly bomb hospitals and schools as if it was some sort of strategic objective (?!!?), and just force everybody to work on a solution, either a one-state solution or two-state solution, whatever. It's difficult, because the original 1947 partition is not good either, I'd just divide it halfway, one gets the North, another the South. Or just make one state, Palestine, with all people with equal rights independent of religion. Although that is going to be very, VERY hard to make it work, because neither side wants it.
US isn't only sending money, US is sending massive bombs. 100+ heavy lift air cargo planes the first few days. How is tht for restraint?
Biden says he is advocating restraint. Even Alexander Mercouris on The Duran picked up on that and seemed to give it credence. Probably because it would be the sensible thing. But really? Think about it for ten seconds; does anyone really believe Biden and US is advocating restraint? Meanwhile vetoing any ceasefire resolution and going so far as to prohibit US diplomats - if such a thing exists - to even mention the word "ceasefire". Come on Charlie Brown, kick the football.
Beyond that, I don't think "when Jewish babies were burned in Auschwitz, the world was silent." The Russians, at least, were not.
Note as well the deliberate conflation of Jewish with Israeli. As far as I'm concerned, tactics like that paint all Jews as culpable in this holocaust.
they send our money and munitions to support israel, then expect us also to sned money to palestine to aid the people we are slaughtering. These people are evil reincarnate.
Of course. But it is only allowed in one direction. Trump can get referred to as “Hitler“ every single day with impunity. Yesterday on MSNBC, a prominent anti-Trumper was being interviewed, and he said the only way to stop Trump was to put, and I quote, a “bullet to his head”.
The person interviewing him was nonplussed by this remark.
Also, there are legitimate questions about whether the swastikas and other provocative symbols going up in Berlin and other major places is not being paid for by warmongers like Soros, etc.
symbols that are quite acceptable when emblazoned on Ukrainian military uniforms and equipment ( and that have the connotation w/which they were adopted, by Banderists and Third Reich propagandists )
What I meant was: I agree! There's nothing out there but what the State says is out that, and dissent isn't appropriate or civil, and maybe not even legal.
Just want to share this with you, CJ. I was showing a (left-leaning) person your book and saying what an interesting author you were. The initial reaction was visceral toward the mask art. I tried to get them to read an article of yours to better understand your style. They literally did not understand most of your literary / cultural references. They just couldn’t. And did not want to try either. I’ll give them this: they’re young and stopped school during Covid, and more of a math person than a reader. But it sure gave me an idea what we are up against. Quick judgements. Don’t read. Don’t care. Don’t want to learn. Hot tempered. Believe their sources. No interest in expanded views. Yikes.
It’s not their fault. In the mid 1980s Reagan suddenly announced US students weren’t competitive with their foreign counterparts, and there needed to be a major reform of public education. He then rolled back most of a century of progress in educational science and reinstituted the version devised at the behest of John D. Rockefeller to produce not an educated citizenry but workers with sufficient basic skills to do their jobs who were also obedient to authority.
Over the next 4+ decades, the use of standardized tests as the ONLY measure of educational progress was introduced, and federal and state funding for public schools became dependent on those results. Not coincidentally, the movement for homeschooling, school vouchers, and charter schools quickly emerged, as did a ramping up of blaming teachers when those essential test scores didn’t improve every year over the previous one.
As a result, you now have several generations of people who (a) are woefully undereducated because their curricula were narrowed to focus on what is covered in the tests, (b) who are trained to be passive ingestors of information and (c) that any solution is either true or false, or comes from a menu of preselected “answers” only one of which is correct. This has rendered them so bored with the very idea of learning, they reject it out of hand unless it’s compulsory; and readily susceptible to embracing without question whatever a sufficient number of other people accept as true.
There are outliers, but from observing the situation for the last 5-6 years after reading up on what Education Reform™ is all about, and the thousands of much-abused teaching professionals who tried to warn everyone what was happening, they seem to be few and far between. It’s a bit terrifying, really.
While standardized testing is a menace, it's right at home in a system so standardized that 8 year-olds spend all day only with other 8 year-olds. The biggest change occurred not under Reagan, but in the years after Sputnik, when panic over "falling behind" the Soviets in the space race inspired the federal government to take a much bigger role in education. The feds, along with various think tanks that knew nothing about children or how they learn, decided that a programmatic approach, such as was used by NASA, was the way to improve math and science instruction. Frank Smith details the disaster of this change of course in "Insult to Intelligence: The Bureaucratic Invasion of Our Classrooms." Previously, instruction had been relatively more holistic and natural, but now kids were obligated to do truly brain dead worksheets, which just happened to be produced by the new Educational-Industrial Complex (think large publishers and corporations like IBM). Textbooks had always been mind-numbing, but now programmatic instruction confused and confounded children, who came to be seen as morons who could required intensely dumbed-down everything. Again, standardized testing is nothing more than a brain dead cash cow, but it is the one-size-fits-all, artificial and harmful programmatic instruction and curriculum, and the forced march of all children through it on an adult-controlled timetable, that put the nail in the coffin of public education.
All true, but it was Reagan who formalized it into law—literally. Until then, it was mostly implemented at the school board level as the salespeople convinced them education wasn't about teaching people to think but preparing them for careers. They used the "businesses aren't getting capable workers" line, and since most school boards at that time comprised local business owners, it worked perfectly.
It hardly mattered to me. I was subjected to a brain-dead series of inane readings with questions put out by IBM long before Reagan came to office. I’d say the damage was done by the 1970s.
As were we all, but back then the federal and state funding for our schools weren't totally dependent not only on the results of those tests but that they improve by a designated amount every year. That's the difference that set in post-Education Reform™.
That's the intended outcome of the Rockefeller curriculum. Public education for the sole purpose of training workers with the basic skills required for the job they're hired to do who are also unquestioningly obedient to authority. Critical, strategic and long-range planning skills were eliminated as unnecessary, and also because they could lead to worker rebellion.
Good point. It seems there was an intention to remove long-range or "overarching" vision from education. Lack of vision would also prevent people from understanding the consequences of an agenda down the road. This in turn protects powerful criminals from people demanding accountability.
Hopkins has been arrested and is facing trial for showing a swastika on the cover of his book. His book compares modern German government to the Nazis of the 1930s. Near as I can tell, the comparisons hold up.
The Israeli ambassador to the UN is saying the world is silent regarding the events of October 7. That's newspeak for "We haven't heard any criticism of Israel for what we allowed to happen (or maybe even arranged)."
I'm not silent. Hamas tortured and murdered Jews who basically agreed with them, peaceniks, because they want to kill Jews. For no other reason, Their own statements bear this out. They want to kill Jews and Christians throughout the world, as well as LGBT people. (Remember this when it is your turn. Saying you don't go to Church won't work. They hate atheists too,) They brook no negotiation. There is nothing the civilized world can do except stop them with the least collateral damage possible. Hamas could follow the rules of war and there would be a lot less collateral damage - Israel is following them. (Human shields don't have to be respected.) Israel can't even afford to hold back attacks to protect the hostages. Unlike Hamas and its supporters, they take no joy in killing babies. The sooner Hamas and its allies are defeated, the less harm will come to all peoples.
Maybe. Nobody knows at this point whether or how many Israelis Hamas may have killed. The facts are that the IDF flew quite a few Apache helicopters over the Israeli homes and dropped incendiary bombs on them. That's why you see all those charred bodies. Hamas did not dump bombs on the roofs of the Israeli homes. Their bombs can't go very far and are not that powerful. And they do not have incendiary bombs that will burn a human alive in a short time. So I'd say the Israelis killed at least 700 of their own citizens on October 7. Actually, *I* would say it was more than that. Their PR machine is in overdrive at the moment. The young woman they supposedly burned and raped (say what?!) was actually hit by rubble from their Apache helicopter bombs. When the Hamas "fighters" realized she had a brain injury, they put her in the back of a truck and took her to a hospital. Now the story is she was burned by Hamas and raped by them. Damn but those Zionist propaganda nerds are good! This was obviously a false flag operation. And, cynical to the last, Netanyahu chose progressive leftists to kill. Note they did not kill orthodox right-wingers. Takes a bit of heat off of him internally. Israel is falling apart. And this is not going to save Bibi's flaccid butt. Not this time. The dumpster full of "burned babies" was actually full of burned Hamas fighters. But we'll see whatever you tell us to see. FYI, in this situation Hamas are not terrorists. Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is ILLEGAL. Therefore, Hamas are resistance fighters and it is entirely legal to resist an illegal occupation. It is not legal to carpet bomb people you are illegally occupying. Hamas wants the Palestinians in Israeli jails released. 5500 on October 7th, and 6500 now. Israel has arrested an additional 1000 Palestinians in the West Bank since all this started.
Israelis may not love killing babies, but their government sure does. (And their mothers.) That's the whole goal. To lower Palestinian population.
I think this blog is about three hours' long and is well-worth watching in full. Lots of documentation and lots of analyses. If you really want to know the truth. If you just want to cling to your pre-conceived notions, don't bother.
I call bullsh-t. A video isn't proof of anything. We see false descriptions of images all the time. There is no benefit to the Israeli government to preside over an immense failure of protecting its own people. They wouldn't exaggerate it. Hamas itself broadcasts its intention to do attacks like this and I believe them.
Honestly, I feel sorry for you. Family members of the Israeli dead witnessed the Israeli Apache helicopters dropping bombs on their own homes. This has been reported by Ha'aretz, reportedly. The Israeli government, especially Bibi who is under the gun in internal politics, have much to benefit from this. The propaganda version of Oct. 7 gives them the excuse to carpet bomb Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as they can before they are stopped by the highly ineffectual, intellectually challenged American President. The more Palestinians they kill, the more Palestinian land they can take possession of, and the more land already stolen they will not have to return when, inevitably, they will be forced to follow international law and return Palestinian land. Unfortunately for Israelis and Jews who identify with Israel, this time Israeli violence is being watched by the whole world and they are hurting themselves more than they are hurting Palestinians. This time everyone has a cell phone with video, photographing and Internet capabilities. This doesn't render Israeli propaganda ineffective but it does even the conversation a lot. And it makes the mainstream press less significant. Everyone is watching so it behooves the Israelis to behave like decent human beings. They are so used to having free rein to do whatever they want and being paid handsomely (by the American taxpayer) to do so. Those days are over. They have been given all the rope they want and they have hung themselves. The question is only how long will it take for them to realize who they are really damaging? Every bomb makes the Palestinians more sympathetic to people who don't know much about the Middle East. It's shockingly bad optics. I'm so glad the rest of the world is finally seeing what has been going on in Palestine for 103 years. About time.
Dunno. I'm not Israeli. Don't really care about their media environment. Ha'aretz is noteworthy because it's a main outlet for English-speakers. Sick and tired of the pro-Israeli lobby. Really tired of another country controlling who I get to vote for. Not playing that game anymore.
No. This is the first I've heard of it. And given all your other claims about which I do have knowledge, I don't give it any traction. Honestly, I've heard outright anti-Semitic things said about Soros and I don't pay attention to them. I don't admire him. I don't hate him. He is who he is and he is not in my class of people. I am far more concerned with right-wing billionaires. They are dangerous and they dominate the international scene. I don't think Soros, who is Jewish, wants to get rid of you. I think you need to calm down. I do not want you to die. I don't want you to be upset as you clearly are. It is not helpful to YOU. You are damaging your heart. Do some meditation. Go swimming. Do yoga. This agitation is really bad for y our health. Eat some apples to lower your BP.
Don't understand your reference to gopros. Who said anyone videotaped anything? Independent reporting? Sources, please. Not all bombs leave craters. Granted, Israeli bombs sometimes do.
The Hamas terrorists had GoPros on, videotaped their killing spree and shared it with the world.
Honest questions I ask myself:
Which government wants complete annihilation of the other’s entire population as its stated and written goal? ( the IOW, genocide.)
Which government wants to annihilate the terrorist organizations of the other government while sparing as many innocent lives as possible as its stated goal? (Not genocide.)
In which place can citizens living under government control of the other work, earn a living and dwell under the protection of that government?
When viewing videos, photos, news stories etc, how do you determine which sources to trust?
For example, if I see a photo of an dead infant which was, according to autopsy performed, left to cook in an oven, I look at the source. I evaluate the historical accuracy of the source’s reporting and determine whether or not it’s credible.
I just wonder how many of us read fall victim to our own pre-determined bias.
Most Israelis hate Netanyahu. Just 4 weeks ago they were protesting in the streets in their tens of thousands, calling for his head because he was attempting to dilute the power of Israel's Supreme Court, quite likely in advance of his own prosecution after offering Israel up as lab rats to Pfizer, and the death and carnage that ensued.
The only people that believe Netanyahu cares for Israelis are Westerners, fed a steady diet of "Love Your Israel".
The Israeli people have suffered under his Government (twice) for a very long time.
So what does an embattled, hated Prime Minister with a public crisis on his hands do? Change the story/change the lead. Wag the dog.
Start pumping out stories to redirect everyone's gaze.
Exploit the situation to achieve multiple agendas.
Start the War you've always wanted.
And lastly, always, ALWAYS paint the other side as more sadistic and barbaric than yourself to try to keep everyone on your side, no matter how horrific your own behaviour.
Granny, you are so prejudiced that I feel sorry for you. I do. You can't see what is in front of your face. So I worry about your safety. I don't think you really understand who is a danger to you. I would get Bibi behind bars ASAP. Israel has stated for a long time that it wants to annihilate all Palestinians (and Arabs, actually). They want way more than Palestine. They are sparing no one. In fact, they just rounded up all Palestinians from Gaza in Israel who WERE allowed to work in Israel (jobs Israelis don't want) and dumped them across the border in Gaza, not to be allowed back. They basically dumped them to die. I have been following various substacks for 3-4 years through the COVID business and have figured out who knows a decent amount about various issues and who is clueless. I don't trust any Israeli source. Sorry. That's the price to pay with your Israeli Lobby in my country. It'll take a lot for me to trust anything an Israeli--even a liberal, humanistic, left-wing one--has to say. Sorry. It's been more than 50 years I've been shocked by the Zionist/Israeli (and often Jewish) willingness to lie and lie and lie. I am sure you are shocked because you believed a lot of those lies. That's between you and them. If I were a Western Jew, I would be FURIOUS. But not at people who defend the humanity of Palestinians. Not them. Zionists are not your friend, Granny62. They are endangering your life. Wake up.
I have no idea what picture you're talking about. But Israel has been at the forefront of surveillance and AI and facial recognition technology and using technology to misrepresent reality. I am skeptical of all photos, videos, news stories, etc. I watch behavior. Character is consistent. Bibi is super consistent. I watch his behavior and ignore what he says. I don't believe a thing he says. No one should. He's a fucking psychopath.
Vanessa Beeley's substack today, Nov. 12, 2023, has some compelling video footage of the IDF bombing on Oct. 7 that they are blaming on Hamas. This is when participants at the rave got in their cars and tried to flee. The footage shows helicopters (presumably--definitely not Hamas fighters) dropping bombs quite intentionally on fleeing vehicles. Also a huge bomb on cars full of people before they pulled out of their parking spaces.
Oh my god! Wtf! WAR ITSELF IS THE CRIME!! Hamas enjoy killing babies and Israelis kill them and ‘’take no joy’ in it??? What the fuck are people saying in these chats, it’s bloody mental. The facts unfold via footage that may or may not be true and may or may not be being used to tell a particular narrative. Unless you are on the ground in Gaza, please stop telling us what is going on and who is ‘wrong’ and who is ‘right’. ITS ALL WRONG. Everyone who takes a side hoists the moral superiority and righteousness flag up over the increasing piles of dead children. It’s all war. Anyone who gets on side with any war anywhere just becomes part of the problem. I despair, I really do.
I just read CJ's Mindfuck piece and glad he admits to being mindfucked too. I lived in Luxor, Egypt for 3 years and stood up to a mob of men who were attacking a woman during the pandemic. My family escaped out of Egypt days before the 6 Day War (I was 11) and I will never forget Nassar's voice blasting on loud speakers in the streets of Cairo, "Death to America and its stooge Israel", while men roamed the streets with guns. When my dad told the tourist agent we wanted to go to Israel he was screamed at "Israel does not exist". I saw the hate first hand. They make no secret if it. I watch now as the mask comes off so many people around the world who can finally express what they always thought in the dark, hatred of Jews. I wrote about it but mostly it just angers people. Hard Facts: From the River to the Sea
"…the left doesn’t just have a Corbyn problem or a Tlaib problem or a Farrakhan problem. It has a big, fat Jew-hatred problem right in its ideological core.” NYU student, Tal Fortgang
I think Clay is referring to the Israeli ambassador guy, Gilad Erdan, who was yelling at the UN / world for being silent -- "I will make you remember the shame of your silence every time you look at me" etc -- while IRL the world (aka the mainstream media and cabal-puppet governments) has been screaming so full tilt about the babies that even I who 100 ignore said puppet outlets heard it. I also heard in the screaming that Palestinian babies are not to be mentioned, because I think something yellow stars. Adding note here: Leveraging human compassion for babies to further the agenda of the cabal is deplorable across the board.
not where i live mate, where i live my so called "prime minister" has offered "unequivocal support" for "israeli" genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people, by the non indigenous "israelite" "idf" and a few thousand am-eri can "special forces" lgbt inclusive of course.. so......
im wondering who actualy lives in a sensory depravation tank?
as i write however a large part of the local world of Palestine has laid down the requirement for israel to cease and desist or cease to exist, does that still constitute silence, or is merely the sounds you filter out?
at the end of the day and likely by the end of the week all voices will be irrelevant as the inside job of Oct 7th leads to its intial purpose that being the incitement of war on Iran by "israel" using "usa" (who being bereft of oil, money and honour seek the merest of excuses and having depleted finally their strategic oil reserve and global credit)
the gross mismanagement of "usa" and "eu" as so vividly shown in the former "ukraine" over the last 2 years will be shown again as they still conceive that the middle east are camel bashing savages, well done "usa", well done "israel", build that fkn 3rd temple on the site of Al Aqusa (see current military expansion into West Bank), seat your "messiah" on your toxic, radioactive "throne", let satans mans relish the depravity, For that is whom they serve, if one would merely do the required research and i so wish you all would, its kinda important right now
we are talking about the extremists in "israel" the self same extremists that created their mirror images and set them to their bidding
It is all mighty fucked up, but humanity still, just about has a choice
I'm sick and tired of Judaism being used as a shield for the national security state's fascist agenda.
Today, I almost barfed listening to "Morning Joe" as the Warmongering propagandist ghoul, Joe Scarborough, spent hours talking about how the House and Senate must send billions in "aid" to Israel to keep it safe. The word "aid" sounds humanitarian, however, don't be fooled, aid means bombs. The implication is that Israel will only be safe if it massacres every Palestinian man, woman, and child in Gaza and the West Bank.
The rationalization is that this Palestinian slaughter is justified because of the October 7, 2023 attack where Hamas a group created by the CIA and the right-wing Likud Party killed 1,400, the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
But if we look closer at that attack and the extremely delayed response by the IDF one can become very suspicious, as such a security failure of 15 terroritorial breaches seems highly impossible in a country that prides itself on its surveillance technology which it happens to sell on every continent.
In addition, isn't it odd that it took the IDF more than seven hours to respond after the attack took place. Something is rotten in Denmark, or rather in Netanyahu's government.
Did crook Netanyahu think triggering a Palestinian/Israeli bloodbath would save his chubby ass. Just something to think about.
Meanwhile, Zionist fascist monsters have hjacked Judaism along with their criminal international financalist buddies and of course the arms industry who are all licking their chops at the cash that'll be extracted from another military slaughterhouse.
The most despicable fascist trash use historically persecuted groups like Jews and Blacks as human shields to commit the worse crimes against humanity.
They sent 80 percent of the IDF to the west bank, deliberattely leaving the border unmanned
They have surveillance all over that border...this could not have happened without
the Israeli's deliberating doing this, and not responding for 7 hours.
This is a plan by the Israeli government to eradicate Gaza so they can build condos and the Hong Kong of the Middle EAst...same as they are doing in Lahaina, the Hong Kong of the mid pacific.
This is done because of the oligarchs....As weas the poisoning of the population of Israel.
Israel govt paper came out today saying we will use the US to move the Palestinians out of Gaza and to Europe and Canada and the US.
Then they can have the land.
This is a BLATANT LAND GRAB by whoever CONTROLS THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT. And it aint the Israeli people.
Not just condos, but also offshore natural gas reserves (there is apparently a Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and Egypt wherein it is stated that extraction can begin in early 2024):
Oh yes...I saw their two fields on a map of the offshore gas deposits.
Catherine Austin Fitts woke me up to land (and other resource) grabs using the color of law and disaster capitalism...they just take what they want. They took Lahaina, will take Palestine and like Charlotte says below, they are taking the best farmlands in Ukraine.
The rest of us, like it or not, will be killed or corralled into open air jails like 15 minute cities...
I have no doubt the plan is for the few to own everything ..and the rest of us will own nothing. We will work until we cannot any longer, and then we will be killed/culled.
I kinda thing they already have the means/method of doing it using our own body electric...and will be able to just "shut us off" by flicking a switch or sending a frequency, but from a far distance which will be invisible to us.
I know I sound crazy...like schizophrenia the CIA is putting things in my head crazy...
Right now I think they are using conventional methods...deadly vaccines, corrupted food, chemotherapy, etc.....but in 50 years....I really wonder.
You are seeing behind their smoke screen; I concur with what you say keep sharing your perspective and send everyone to read Sasha Latypova and Katherine Watt on sub stack two other truth telling women. Oh if we only ruled the world. Keep on keeping on.
Scott Ritter thinks the supposed greatness of the IDF is really exaggerated. He talks specifically about Hamas taking advantage of everything it knew about the militarized fence. It would seem that Hamas was very clever and patient in planning what it did.
Free Speech should be free. We should be allowed to discuss freely the horrors of the Third Reich in order to hopefully prevent the “fourth reich.” An open discussion of current events shines the light on truth, half truths and lies. Your essays are thoughtful and the comments section illustrative of the diverse readership. However, discussions of who owns any land historically in the Mideast, Americas or Europe, are tiresome because it’s irrelevant. One could make the arguments back to Pangaea days and they would be equally useless.
Much more than blatant hipocrisy, the declarations of the zionist ambassador reach the cumulus of plain lies. 1st, Hamas didn't kill any babies and didn't cut throats as the zionist stupid propaganda insists. The list of victims from the Hamas attack desn't include childen under four. 2nd, the zionists want to pretend they are the victims when they are the opressors and the assassins. 3rd, they declared that there isn't a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 4rd, they should be compelled to answer a simple question: if 7000 aren't enough, how many more would be enough?
Too funny. The hypocrisy is so thick on so many levels a lot of eyes are being opened I think. The US, captured by the neocons, is a terrorist state and their vassal European chums can’t find their voices to cry ‘Enough’. But the people are yelling and screaming and demanding, ‘free speech and cease fire’. So far we are ignored. The power-hungry narcissists are incharge.
You will find a kindred spirit in the works of Norman Finkelstein‘s Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. A truth teller whose own parents suffered in camps during WW 2. He sees the Holocaust industry and use of anti-Semitism for what it is - a cudgel to block all rational discourse about the occupied territories. He even lost tenure due to attacks by Dershowitz a Harvard lawyer who is part of the Holocaust industry in the USA which he expands on in this book. Finkelstein has written other books and one on the Gaza situation specifically. When I have trouble understanding what Israel is doing to garner world favor I turn to this author for clarity. Best to you.
Thank you Karla I listened to Dr Finkelstein for two hours today...got the situation very straight .... what a great human being ... my sentiments exactly .... Cease fire immediately and provide humanitarian relief and sit down and negotiate a peace... and Nicki Haley .... SHUT UP 🤐
Broadcast this to the world NM’s erudite passion must be heard. Genocide supported by the world especially the USA is beyond obscene. Remember folks our government is engaging. In democide by using bio-weapons, countermeasure under the guise of a vaccine on us their own population and now our government wants us to support genocide on another marginalized group.Wake up we are all being killed by immoral governments we are all Palestinians. Wake up!
I love you, brother. You are an actual dissident, in the most old normal sense, :) There are few left of this rare beast, and you are one of them, and beautifully so. Thank you, CJ.
Ditto.
Agree, thank you
I really needed to read this today. I mean, like, really, REALLY, needed this. I feel so alone. "Am I the one that's crazy?" I ask myself on the days it gets on top of me. No, I just have to stay strong, and remember there's a CJ Hopkins in the world who is also staying strong, and even under prosecution, doing it with wit and satire. Thank you.
Last night I watched a video - of some kid in a Gaza hospital being reunited with their sister, who was previously thought of as dead. It did “get on top of me” as I watched their car drive away to what surely must be another potential bombing “target.”
We aren’t alone. We may cry alone at times, but there is solidarity in knowing sane people don’t solve heinous crimes with exponential heinous crimes. Sane people, where I live, watch a season opening hockey game that starts out with pomp and circumstance detailing how the Oilers “Stand with Israel” and think to themselves, ‘Wait a minute, what the f#%k do the owners of the Edmonton Oilers know about the history and nuance and criminal response to this heinous attack?” Obviously, the distractions our government and corporate society uses are very effective. But they don’t fool us all. I cry for every victim. I refuse to be any kind of jingoistic useful idiot buying the propaganda garbage and lies - from either of the violent sides. I just want no more children to die. Stop! Maybe it’s time to quit watching sports and start watching the war mongering government/corporate bastards. Maybe just buying the lines CK refuses to us something our schools should start teaching.
Beautifully and skillfully said CJ. As a Jewish Israeli, I know from my own personal experience with the unbelievably cruel, inhumane, violent, ruthhless & arrogant supremacists in the israeli government exactly who the actual N*zis are here..
I know intimately their insane supremacist beliefs and ideology,
I know the false nationalist mythologies and stories of morality that they tell themselves (and hammer into our head) over and over and over again from birth, inside the SRCTARIAN BUBBLE that the vast majority of supremaciat zionists (and their gullible misinformed fans across the world who blindly repeat their false slogans) are hermetically closed in,
I know the fake nationalist "god" that their fearful violent brain invented for itself to justify their brutally cruel inhumane (and anti-God) project of dispossesion against the local people,
I have seen with my own eyes and am intimately familiar with their century-long brutal ruthless cruel traumatizing project to disposses, eliminate, throw out, take over, dehumanize and ERASE the local prople in Palestine (you can see much of it in great detail in this shocking documentary https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3psMGQE0iW4 which I can confirm is 100% true from my own personal experience),
I know how they corrupt & twist the Holocaust to justify the UNSPEAKABLE INHUMANITY AND GENOCIDAL HORROR they are inflicting on the local people in Palestine, and to silence anyone who dares mention what they are doing (labeling as an 'antisemite' and 'Hollcaust-denier' anyone who dares point out their GENOCIDE against the local people, anyone who stands for human dignity and exposes their life-destroying dispossesion & erasure project and security-destroying nationalist sectarian ideology of "it's either us or them")
'Antisemite' is another term the cynical supremacist zionist murderers, abusers & torturers completely corrupted, twisted, turned on its head and emptied of meaning, and are cynically using it as a political weapon to attack and silence those who expose the profound unspeakable horrific inhumanity criminality and cruelty of their erasure project against the local people (cynically and manipulatively claiming that such a person supposedly hates Jews for pointing out this genocidal horror).
Pretty much anyome who isn't a right-wing Jewish supremacist or who blindly supports right-wing Jewish supremacists is today labelled an 'antisemite' by their cynical PR and censorship machine
I know who the ACTUAL Nazis are..
PS. The wise and brilliant Chris Hedges wrote about exactly this much better than I ever could. This is a MUST-READ piece https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/exterminate-all-the-brutes
PPS. I'd also highly recommend listening to what this wise Jewish Holocaust survivor has to say about the right-wing zionist aupremacists and their similarity to the European right-wing fascism tha persecuted Jews, about their cynical corruption and political weaponization of the Holocaust to justify a genocidal dehumanization and dispossesion project against the local people in Palestine, and about what the term "Never Again" actually means. https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1718048169781797080?t=IPJzkf9jdqFvMABvfW5ung&s=19
PPPS. I mentioned above that their actions and ideology not only do not and cannot bring about safety & security (for anyone, neither Jews nor Muslims nor anyone else) but is actually the very cause of INSECURITY. I have a lot to say in that regard, and I think that is the root issue (and the root solution) that sectarian nationalists are unable to see. A lot to say about this but space here is limited so I'll do that in the comment/reply below
Chris Hedges' piece is excellent.
God bless you for being a rare human that can cut through all the BS you were undoubtedly indoctrinated with your whole life! It must be lonely. I know it is for me, and I'm not even Jewish.
To continue from above, with regard to why the sectarian exclucivist ethnocentric nationalist approach cannot brimg security and actually must bring about INSECURITY, as we see all around us. In my perspective (which is of course only partial and limited, as all perspectives are), the path forward out of this horror is not strictly in political arrangemnts (that's also important but secondary) but rather it lies in the heart of people, in the ability/capacity to see the humanity of another before viewing them as a label (palestinian, israeli, muslim, jew), as well as in coming to terms with and acknowledging the immense and profound trauma that each "side" has caused the other And in finding ways to heal together. (and unlike most Jews, I am fully aware and acknowledge that the trauma that supremacist right-wing zionists caused palestinians is many many orders of magnitude greater than the other way around)
All of this requires having CONTACT between the "sides" so that they may hear each other, each other's stories and each other's pain, but this contact is currently prevented and denied becasue of the incredible dominance of the sectarian nationalist divisive ideology in both sides.
As someone who was given at birth the label 'Jewish' and 'Israeli', I am noticing that one of the main things that allows this ongoing horror to happen (not only today but it has been going on for more than a century) is that there is such a total SEPARATION AND DISCONNECTION between the "sides" (this is one of the greatest successes of nationalism/sectarianism, to separate people) so that people from both "sides" have no full understanding of the life experience and trauma experience of those on the "other side".
From what I see and feel, this total DISCONNECTION is exactly what allows people to cheer when "our hero fighters" (whom the other side calls terrorists or invaders/occupiers) murder, torture, oppress, abuse, slaughter and bomb "them", because each side says "they are evil people who only want to harm us, take our land and kill us/kick us out", and each side has countless examples of evil actions by the other side that are supposed to "prove" the supposed rightness of their claim.
Each "side" is enclosed and contained within its own SECTARIAN BUBBLE and tells itself its own story, about its trauma and difficulties, and is completely unaware of the life experience and trauma of the "other side".
And so, when the other side reacts (in what it calls self-defense) then the first side interprets it as an attack (becasue of its DISCONNECTION from the stories and sense-making of the other side) and tells a story that "those people on the other side" are evil monsters who only want to harm our side..
It's quite amazing how similar the story that each side tells itself to the story that the other side tells itself , it is practically the SAME STORY - we are the victims here who are only protecting ourselves from the aggression of those evil people over there who only want to harm us and hate us for no reason. We have no one to talk to and negotiate with, they are not human beings, they are sons of Satan who hate us from birth, who only want to destroy us and take our land and kick us out - each side speaks the exact same stories!!
And I can't help but notice that all this lack of understanding happens simply because there is NO CONTACT between the "sides". This is the tremendous success of nationalism/tribalism/sectarianism, there is an almost complete disconnection, so that I don't hear the story that the other side tells itself and how they make sense of things, I don't experience their life experience, I don't know anything about their pain, I don't realize how much the story they tell themselves is the same as the story I tell myself, and therefore there is no possibility of experiencing the HUMANITY (the fear, the search for security) that motivates the other, just as it motivates me, and therefore also indifference to the trauma that the other goes through at the hands of "our heroic fighters" (who in the eyes of the "The other side" are murderous terrorists/invaders/oppresors).
It seems to me that the main engine that drives all of this is that almost all the residents of the region undergo a very deep conditioning/indoctrination from a very young age into a separative and SECTARIAN RELIGIOUS-NATIONALIST IDENTITY and learn to believe (contrary to what reality shows) that this separate and divisive identity is what will provide them with protection and security, even though it does THE EXACT OPPOSITE!! (In a moment I will say why it does the exact opposite).
This indoctrination into the separative exclucivist religious-nationalist identity is much more than just mental brainwashing, but it is mainly the conditioning the of the nervous system and emotional system into IDENTIFICATION with a nationalist-religious label (this label equals me. This is me, This label is where safety and security is to be found), which causes the emotions and the body to react very strongly to anything that might disrupt this identity/label.
Strong reaction that comes from the fact that the body/brain/nervous system has been conditioned to learn - through constant repetition in the first years of life (when the personality is formed), again and again and again, and without questioning - this is who I am, that I am this national-religious identity, therefore anything that questions or does not identify with this national-religious system of ideas is immediately perceived as a threat to my very existence, because I am this identity/the nationalist-religious label, this is me, this is where safety and secur8ty is at..
It seems to me that those who have fallen into the abyss of sectarianism/tribalism/nationalism (and especially those whose nationalism/tribalism also involves divisive and God-denying sectarian religious beliefs) have been conditioned to believe that saftey & security will be found through group separation and exclusion and a sense of uniqueness from the rest of humanity (a feeling that is so deeply imprinted in those who believe that the label of "Jewish" is who they actually are), that security will be found through an attempt to ensure the safety of ONLY one group of people, only those who were born into the "correct" religious-national label (and everyone who was not born into the correct national-religious label can go to hell. She matters a little but not nearly as much as the Chosen People, the most valuable and important people in the universe). It sounds ridiculous, but this is a VERY common worldview in the extremely nationalist, ethnocentric, fascistic and exclucivist Israeli society (which is much more fanatically tribalstic and nationalist than Jews outside israel), and I think it plays a huge huge part in what brought this conflict about in the first place, since the very early days of sectarian zionist nationalism.
To me, this is precisely the blindness of the sectarian nationalist-religious identity: trying to create security ONLY for one group, only for a part of the whole (through division, exclusion, separation from the whole and working to secure the narrow interests of only one nationalist-religious identity), such an attempt - of trying to create security ONLY for the part and ignore what this does to the whole - such an attempt not only can NEVER ever lead to real security but exactly the opposite - this is the number one factor that creates constant conflict and INSECURITY!!!
TRYING TO CREATE SECTARIAN SECURITY (SECURITY ONLY FOR THE PART AND NOT THE WHOLE, ONLY FOR ME AND MY GROUP) IS THE VERY CAUSE OF INSECURITY!!!
In my understanding, tribalism/nationalism and sectarian divisive exoteric religion (which is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what God actually is) is the great disease and blindness of humanity. Is the most destructive and deadly invention that humans have ever invented (not because we are bad, but because we have not psychologically matured yet, and are still blind, and in our naiveté we believed that this is how we will find safety & security, without understanding what we are doing, without realizing that we are actually creating constant INSECURITY when we search for security through the sectarian divisive nationalist-religious identity, when we seek security only for the part and not for the whole).
To me it is absolutely clear that it is the number one cause of human division, separation, antagonism, hatred, conflict, violence, murder and war..
https://oneworldrenaissance.com/2021/01/23/holism-fragmentation-and-our-endangered-future-a-new-vision-and-a-new-hope/
Great comment. I would like to maybe add that there must be some constructive way forward to deal with the trauma that is inflicted on the victims. Something other than perpetuating a cycle of fearing and dehumanizing the other side. Because there are people who live in conditions where there is (or has been) the real threat of someone wanting them dead. I think it's important to recognize that in some cases, there are people who have experienced genuine mortal fear that someone wants to kill them. Or they have come face to face with those who tried to kill them. This needs to be worked with somehow. I spoke with a vet who felt this way in Iraq. Tim O'Brien wrote about this experience in Vietnam. A person who truly is in a situation where someone wants to kill them is probably not going to think about holism. They are going to be radically separated from their enemy regardless of how they got in the conflict. (And their fear is used as a political tool to motivate people to go to war) The fear and the need to defend oneself is going to stick with them a long time, unless there is some way to work with it. There have to be some ways to facilitate moving from fear, anger and hate for the "enemy" and toward positive contact with each other.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for putting it so skillfully and clearly. That is indeed the key first step. If there is no healing for the traumatised nervous system then we can forget about people having a higher or more wholistic perspective. Fully agree with on that. Absolutely necrssary.
However, to be honest, I am not very optimistic that even if this healing happened that there would be a real change of course because besides this immediate trauma that you mentioned, the society in israel is totally and hermatically enclosed within its own sectarian bubble and hears ONLY its own story, with zero awareness of the life experience and pain of the 'other side'. ZERO!! Palestinians don't even register as having any real human existence to the vast majority of israelis. On the very rare occasions that their existence is acknowlegded it is only as an infinitely evil villain cartoon character, a monstrous terrorist who only want to destroy us. And "they are all like that'..
Not only is their existence not acknowledged, but obviously there is no knowledge whatsoever of their stories of how they make sense of reality and how they view the zionist arrogant and violent and inconsiderate and unfriendly and hostile arrival in the middle east..
In my view, things cannot not change unless there is a very deep awakening in the Israeli psyche from the separative, divisive, self-righteous and tone-deaf spirit out of which israelis operate and in which they are enclosed. This separative self-righteous tone-deaf ethnocentric supremacist arrogant and dismissive spirit will NEVER provide them with security, no matter how many times they tell themselves that they are the victims and the righteous ones, becasue this nationalist self-absorbed tone-deaf arrogant separative divisive excluding and supremacist spirit is exactly what DIVIDES them from the organic indigenous culture and land that they invaded and claim as their own, and this spirit is exactly what keeps them as a FOREIGN ELEMENT in the middle east, an unintegrated unorganic element, a seperative arrogant antagonistic invasive foreign element, that has to always live behind walls and fortifications and billion-dollar weapons and massive surveillance and oppression apparatus against the very neighbourhood that they parachuted/instilled themselves into, imposed themselves into in an UNORGANIC manner, in a hostile, insensitive, arrogant, unfriendly, supremacist invasive and aggresive manner. They will NEVER ever find security as long as they operate from this sectarian antagonistic supremacist psychology towards the very region they invaded, psychology which israelis are deeply indoctrinated into from birth.
In an ideal world I envision a healing process in which israelis awaken out of this deep hypnosis and sectarian bubble, and deeply apologize to native people (authentic and heart-felt apology) for what they have done to them at that period in the 20th and early 21st centuries when they were profoundly unconscious and under the spell of the trauma and nationalistic separative supremacist ideology. And after deeply apologizing, sincerely and from the heart, and asking for forgiveness, the israelis might then humbly and respectfully ask the local people if they'd be kind enough to allow them to stay and live together as equals on this land..
This humble and respectful question (if we are allowed to share this land with you locals, since we have come here in distress and escaping persecution, and in return for allowing us to live together with you on this land, we will work together with you to bring the gifts of both our people for the mutual benefit of all of us) this human approach should have been done from the very first moment, rather than the violent supremacist taking-away brutally invasive and hostile antagonistic approach that guided the zionists from the start) but the zionist psyche was unfortunately too immature traumatised neurotic and undeveloped to do that at the time and brought about this colossal disaster to the land.
The way out of this is obviously to mature and heal from the traumatise neurotic violent psyche that the zionists came with to this land and to atart a new chapter in our relation to the native culture and to the land, a new sane healed mature open hearted culture of respect, learning and sharing, but unfortunately it seems like iaraeli society is moving in the exact opposite direction.
It is becoming more and more rabidly fascistic, militaristic, religiously extremist and nationalistic by the day. With each passing day Israelis are becoming more and more hermatically enclosed in their own nationalist-religious bubble, more and more rabidly right-wing, the dehumanization of palestinians is becoming more extreme with each passing day (vast majority of Israelis are simply not able to comprehend palestinian suffering or have any empathy or compassion towards them, the hatred is becoming more and more extreme by the day). Israeli society is getting more and more violent, more nationalistic, more extreme, becoming more entrenched in its own historical narrative & its own self-victimization, more fascistic (people are now arrested for liking posts on social media that depict palestininas as human beings and not as enemy monsters. Wrining or liking such posts is criminalized as "terrorism" and condemned as 'leftist traitors' and can lead to 10 years in prison. This is how fascistic israeli society is becoming, nothing other than hate towards the palestininas is allowed. Humanity, empathy and compassion is criminalized).
If I am completely honest, it is very hard for me to have much hope that change and transformation can willingly happen from within Israeli society. It seems to me that the shift to the nationalistic-religious right wing fascism in Israeli society (which happened slowly over the last 30 years but greatly accelarated in the last 6-7 years) might have now gone beyond the point of no return.. the separative nationalistic-religious indoctrination is so deep and the entrenchment in its own narratives is so deep that to me it seems that the only way change and awakening might happen is NOT through sobering up and awakening to reality out of the hypnosis in the Israeli psyche (it seems we’ve gone past the point already where this is possible) but rather it seems to me that the more likely scenario and course of events to happen now is that the sobering up and reckoning might happen only AFTER the major major catastrophe that the fascist-religious maddness is leading israeli society into (catastrophe of the nature of either becoming themselves the perpetrators of a Holocaust, or bringing about a nuclear world war, or something of this sort, something akin to the catastrophe that lead to the sobering up of the German psyche after WWII. The german psyche was also on an unstoppable nationalist frenzy of being deeply entrenched in its own narratives and its own sense of righteousness, so braimwashed and hypnotised by its own narratives of ‘it’s either us or them’ that it went beyond the point of no return, and the sobering up could happen only after a major catastrophic climax (that the nationalist/tribalist frenzy must lead a society into).
When I see the level of nationalistic-religious brainwashing and dumbing-down and emotional manipulation going on in Israeli schools and media (you can see it also in many commet sections, how extremely deeply brainwshed heart-corrupted cruel and entrenched Israelis are in their own narratives of self righteousness and being the victim, their level of hypnosis and devotion to the "it's either us or them" ideology is simply beyond reach) when seeing all this then i’m afraid that israeli society is also beyond the point of no return and is on a collision course with an inevitable catastrophe.. only then might the sobering up and reckoning happen, if there’s anyone at all left by then…
I'm really NOT optimistic at all that there can be an awakening in the deeply indoctrinated self-assured arrogant, sectarian and supremacist zionist psyche.. The societal trends and cultural zeitgeist in Israel indicate to me that the likelihood of a catastrophe is much higher than a maturing and healing and awakening from the "it's either us or them" trance.
It was interesting to read your perspective from in Israel. Although, I am sorry to hear how bad it is. I had hoped some Israelis were moving away from the hardline attitude. The atmosphere is here is maybe not exactly like over there. But it is "fascistic, militaristic" and entrenched in a (destructive) narrative. We have big corporations and all kinds of smaller companies feeding off contracts and grants related to "homeland security." All of them are dependent on "enemies within" to make money. If they can't find any terrorists, these interests apparently have no problem cannibalising the lives of innocent citizens. Their careers in "domestic intelligence" or "homeland security" depend on enemies. Charges of terrorism are being used to silence constitutionally protected speech. Innocent people are having their lives destroyed. A college student was charged with terrorism related crimes for peacefully handing out animal cruelty flyers. A non-violent 11-year old was put in solitary confinement on terrorism related charges based on gossip from another elementary school kid. This was the "evidence." He did not actually do anything.
Amazing and horrifying!!
It seems that everywhere in the west there seems to be regression to infantile fascism and religious-nationalist supremacism. I won't say anything here about the spiritual and psychological aspect of this, becasue that can easily fill up a whole book, but will just say on a more superficial level that it seems to me that this supremacist religious-nationalist fascist movement (and even neo-nazi movement, in the case of israel) seems to have two components, economic (by the corporate-capitalist empire and its NeoConservative/Zionist military-industrial complex, which benefits from a constant state of hatred and war and therefore funds and arms the warmongering religious-nationalists & supremacists all over the world) and cultural (the actual religious-nationalist supremacist fascists on the street and flooding social media and in militaries and in parliaments. Supremacist NeoCon Zionists and NeoCon Christian Zionists seem to be at the heart of this movement. A small number of them stirring this ship from positions of power in the economy and govt and media, and a huge number of them enforcing the religious-fascist cultural zeitgeist in tje militaries and on the streets and on social media and zionist-christian "alternative" media.
The brilliant theologian and investigative journalist Chris Hedges wtote about this extensively, for example in this book https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/American-Fascists/Chris-Hedges/9780743284462
And I also very highly recommend his substack
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-final-solution-for-the-palestinians
And https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israel-and-the-rise-of-jewish-fascism
Historian and economist Michael Hudson recently suggeated that we are back at the age of the crusades (only with much more deadly weapons this time) that were very similarly guided by economic empire's interests pushing a religious funtamentalist zeal, for their geostrategic and geopolitical aim. For example here
https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/why-us-support-israel-geopolitics
And the insightful, wise and heart-based Caitlin Johnstone is out in the trenches and breaking down all the cynical emotional manipulations and propaganda tricks that the supremacist religious-nationalist fascists and their warmongering empire are using to push this anti-life fascist wave everywhere. For example https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/
This video does a good job of breaking down the very powerful neo-nazi movement in Israel. He speaks mostly of the political aspect of it, but it has also very deep and widespread roots in israel society, and its talking points are indeed now the mainstream discourse in Israel. The situation is actually much worse then what he depicts in tne video since they are now actually forming the governemt (the video was from before that happened), have cancelled all judicial oversight over them (literally can do whatever they wish with complete impunity) and are openly hunting down '"eftist traitors" in the streets, stealing homes abd land openly, and slaughtering non-jews by the thousands.. this is the mainstream of israeli society and politics now. Voices like mine are a tiny tiny miniscule minority in a huge fascist religious-nationalist wave..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YMlt9Si9Ti8
Plenty more to say, but I have to go now :-)
Thanks for the links.
Please write more. Your views and lived experience are vital for this moment we are in.
I feel a bit sorry for your lawyer though... ;-)
Personally, I think we should be able to "relativize the Holocaust". Or even minimize it. It should be legal. And we should be able to discuss it like any other historical event, like Gaza, like whatever. Posting swastikas should also be legal. It's just a symbol. Like the Israeli star. Or the Hamas flag.
As for the rest... I kind of understand both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian question, but, right now, it's time we just stop sending money to Israel to randomly bomb hospitals and schools as if it was some sort of strategic objective (?!!?), and just force everybody to work on a solution, either a one-state solution or two-state solution, whatever. It's difficult, because the original 1947 partition is not good either, I'd just divide it halfway, one gets the North, another the South. Or just make one state, Palestine, with all people with equal rights independent of religion. Although that is going to be very, VERY hard to make it work, because neither side wants it.
US isn't only sending money, US is sending massive bombs. 100+ heavy lift air cargo planes the first few days. How is tht for restraint?
Biden says he is advocating restraint. Even Alexander Mercouris on The Duran picked up on that and seemed to give it credence. Probably because it would be the sensible thing. But really? Think about it for ten seconds; does anyone really believe Biden and US is advocating restraint? Meanwhile vetoing any ceasefire resolution and going so far as to prohibit US diplomats - if such a thing exists - to even mention the word "ceasefire". Come on Charlie Brown, kick the football.
Beyond that, I don't think "when Jewish babies were burned in Auschwitz, the world was silent." The Russians, at least, were not.
Note as well the deliberate conflation of Jewish with Israeli. As far as I'm concerned, tactics like that paint all Jews as culpable in this holocaust.
Biden and Blinken weep crocodile tears.
they send our money and munitions to support israel, then expect us also to sned money to palestine to aid the people we are slaughtering. These people are evil reincarnate.
To achieve any of those things would require everyone to be decent and rational including politicians
Of course. But it is only allowed in one direction. Trump can get referred to as “Hitler“ every single day with impunity. Yesterday on MSNBC, a prominent anti-Trumper was being interviewed, and he said the only way to stop Trump was to put, and I quote, a “bullet to his head”.
The person interviewing him was nonplussed by this remark.
Also, there are legitimate questions about whether the swastikas and other provocative symbols going up in Berlin and other major places is not being paid for by warmongers like Soros, etc.
symbols that are quite acceptable when emblazoned on Ukrainian military uniforms and equipment ( and that have the connotation w/which they were adopted, by Banderists and Third Reich propagandists )
Tis hard to be joyfully sane in the angry asylum.
But you'll get jailed for weeping in the laughing academy.
Heartbreakingly well-written.
Will I get in trouble for liking your post?
What I meant was: I agree! There's nothing out there but what the State says is out that, and dissent isn't appropriate or civil, and maybe not even legal.
I feel better now.
Just want to share this with you, CJ. I was showing a (left-leaning) person your book and saying what an interesting author you were. The initial reaction was visceral toward the mask art. I tried to get them to read an article of yours to better understand your style. They literally did not understand most of your literary / cultural references. They just couldn’t. And did not want to try either. I’ll give them this: they’re young and stopped school during Covid, and more of a math person than a reader. But it sure gave me an idea what we are up against. Quick judgements. Don’t read. Don’t care. Don’t want to learn. Hot tempered. Believe their sources. No interest in expanded views. Yikes.
It’s not their fault. In the mid 1980s Reagan suddenly announced US students weren’t competitive with their foreign counterparts, and there needed to be a major reform of public education. He then rolled back most of a century of progress in educational science and reinstituted the version devised at the behest of John D. Rockefeller to produce not an educated citizenry but workers with sufficient basic skills to do their jobs who were also obedient to authority.
Over the next 4+ decades, the use of standardized tests as the ONLY measure of educational progress was introduced, and federal and state funding for public schools became dependent on those results. Not coincidentally, the movement for homeschooling, school vouchers, and charter schools quickly emerged, as did a ramping up of blaming teachers when those essential test scores didn’t improve every year over the previous one.
As a result, you now have several generations of people who (a) are woefully undereducated because their curricula were narrowed to focus on what is covered in the tests, (b) who are trained to be passive ingestors of information and (c) that any solution is either true or false, or comes from a menu of preselected “answers” only one of which is correct. This has rendered them so bored with the very idea of learning, they reject it out of hand unless it’s compulsory; and readily susceptible to embracing without question whatever a sufficient number of other people accept as true.
There are outliers, but from observing the situation for the last 5-6 years after reading up on what Education Reform™ is all about, and the thousands of much-abused teaching professionals who tried to warn everyone what was happening, they seem to be few and far between. It’s a bit terrifying, really.
While standardized testing is a menace, it's right at home in a system so standardized that 8 year-olds spend all day only with other 8 year-olds. The biggest change occurred not under Reagan, but in the years after Sputnik, when panic over "falling behind" the Soviets in the space race inspired the federal government to take a much bigger role in education. The feds, along with various think tanks that knew nothing about children or how they learn, decided that a programmatic approach, such as was used by NASA, was the way to improve math and science instruction. Frank Smith details the disaster of this change of course in "Insult to Intelligence: The Bureaucratic Invasion of Our Classrooms." Previously, instruction had been relatively more holistic and natural, but now kids were obligated to do truly brain dead worksheets, which just happened to be produced by the new Educational-Industrial Complex (think large publishers and corporations like IBM). Textbooks had always been mind-numbing, but now programmatic instruction confused and confounded children, who came to be seen as morons who could required intensely dumbed-down everything. Again, standardized testing is nothing more than a brain dead cash cow, but it is the one-size-fits-all, artificial and harmful programmatic instruction and curriculum, and the forced march of all children through it on an adult-controlled timetable, that put the nail in the coffin of public education.
All true, but it was Reagan who formalized it into law—literally. Until then, it was mostly implemented at the school board level as the salespeople convinced them education wasn't about teaching people to think but preparing them for careers. They used the "businesses aren't getting capable workers" line, and since most school boards at that time comprised local business owners, it worked perfectly.
It hardly mattered to me. I was subjected to a brain-dead series of inane readings with questions put out by IBM long before Reagan came to office. I’d say the damage was done by the 1970s.
As were we all, but back then the federal and state funding for our schools weren't totally dependent not only on the results of those tests but that they improve by a designated amount every year. That's the difference that set in post-Education Reform™.
True. Also the importance of the humanities and literacy was scrapped in favor of training "technicians" (to borrow from Chris Hedges).
That's the intended outcome of the Rockefeller curriculum. Public education for the sole purpose of training workers with the basic skills required for the job they're hired to do who are also unquestioningly obedient to authority. Critical, strategic and long-range planning skills were eliminated as unnecessary, and also because they could lead to worker rebellion.
Good point. It seems there was an intention to remove long-range or "overarching" vision from education. Lack of vision would also prevent people from understanding the consequences of an agenda down the road. This in turn protects powerful criminals from people demanding accountability.
The world is silent about October 7th?
Does this guy live in a sensory deprivation tank?
You've missed the irony in his statement.
Hopkins has been arrested and is facing trial for showing a swastika on the cover of his book. His book compares modern German government to the Nazis of the 1930s. Near as I can tell, the comparisons hold up.
The Israeli ambassador to the UN is saying the world is silent regarding the events of October 7. That's newspeak for "We haven't heard any criticism of Israel for what we allowed to happen (or maybe even arranged)."
You mean the modern government in Germany not the modern German government
Yes. Thanks for clarifying.
I'm not silent. Hamas tortured and murdered Jews who basically agreed with them, peaceniks, because they want to kill Jews. For no other reason, Their own statements bear this out. They want to kill Jews and Christians throughout the world, as well as LGBT people. (Remember this when it is your turn. Saying you don't go to Church won't work. They hate atheists too,) They brook no negotiation. There is nothing the civilized world can do except stop them with the least collateral damage possible. Hamas could follow the rules of war and there would be a lot less collateral damage - Israel is following them. (Human shields don't have to be respected.) Israel can't even afford to hold back attacks to protect the hostages. Unlike Hamas and its supporters, they take no joy in killing babies. The sooner Hamas and its allies are defeated, the less harm will come to all peoples.
Maybe. Nobody knows at this point whether or how many Israelis Hamas may have killed. The facts are that the IDF flew quite a few Apache helicopters over the Israeli homes and dropped incendiary bombs on them. That's why you see all those charred bodies. Hamas did not dump bombs on the roofs of the Israeli homes. Their bombs can't go very far and are not that powerful. And they do not have incendiary bombs that will burn a human alive in a short time. So I'd say the Israelis killed at least 700 of their own citizens on October 7. Actually, *I* would say it was more than that. Their PR machine is in overdrive at the moment. The young woman they supposedly burned and raped (say what?!) was actually hit by rubble from their Apache helicopter bombs. When the Hamas "fighters" realized she had a brain injury, they put her in the back of a truck and took her to a hospital. Now the story is she was burned by Hamas and raped by them. Damn but those Zionist propaganda nerds are good! This was obviously a false flag operation. And, cynical to the last, Netanyahu chose progressive leftists to kill. Note they did not kill orthodox right-wingers. Takes a bit of heat off of him internally. Israel is falling apart. And this is not going to save Bibi's flaccid butt. Not this time. The dumpster full of "burned babies" was actually full of burned Hamas fighters. But we'll see whatever you tell us to see. FYI, in this situation Hamas are not terrorists. Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is ILLEGAL. Therefore, Hamas are resistance fighters and it is entirely legal to resist an illegal occupation. It is not legal to carpet bomb people you are illegally occupying. Hamas wants the Palestinians in Israeli jails released. 5500 on October 7th, and 6500 now. Israel has arrested an additional 1000 Palestinians in the West Bank since all this started.
Israelis may not love killing babies, but their government sure does. (And their mothers.) That's the whole goal. To lower Palestinian population.
Please show any documentation or proof.
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/evidence-israel-kills-own-citizens/
I think this blog is about three hours' long and is well-worth watching in full. Lots of documentation and lots of analyses. If you really want to know the truth. If you just want to cling to your pre-conceived notions, don't bother.
Thank you for the link. I have a new post brewing in answer to this immediate thread.
Do you go by the name of "Steve" in another life?
I call bullsh-t. A video isn't proof of anything. We see false descriptions of images all the time. There is no benefit to the Israeli government to preside over an immense failure of protecting its own people. They wouldn't exaggerate it. Hamas itself broadcasts its intention to do attacks like this and I believe them.
Honestly, I feel sorry for you. Family members of the Israeli dead witnessed the Israeli Apache helicopters dropping bombs on their own homes. This has been reported by Ha'aretz, reportedly. The Israeli government, especially Bibi who is under the gun in internal politics, have much to benefit from this. The propaganda version of Oct. 7 gives them the excuse to carpet bomb Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as they can before they are stopped by the highly ineffectual, intellectually challenged American President. The more Palestinians they kill, the more Palestinian land they can take possession of, and the more land already stolen they will not have to return when, inevitably, they will be forced to follow international law and return Palestinian land. Unfortunately for Israelis and Jews who identify with Israel, this time Israeli violence is being watched by the whole world and they are hurting themselves more than they are hurting Palestinians. This time everyone has a cell phone with video, photographing and Internet capabilities. This doesn't render Israeli propaganda ineffective but it does even the conversation a lot. And it makes the mainstream press less significant. Everyone is watching so it behooves the Israelis to behave like decent human beings. They are so used to having free rein to do whatever they want and being paid handsomely (by the American taxpayer) to do so. Those days are over. They have been given all the rope they want and they have hung themselves. The question is only how long will it take for them to realize who they are really damaging? Every bomb makes the Palestinians more sympathetic to people who don't know much about the Middle East. It's shockingly bad optics. I'm so glad the rest of the world is finally seeing what has been going on in Palestine for 103 years. About time.
Haaretz is the anti-Israel Israeli newspaper. THey seem to be outdoing themselves these days.
Dunno. I'm not Israeli. Don't really care about their media environment. Ha'aretz is noteworthy because it's a main outlet for English-speakers. Sick and tired of the pro-Israeli lobby. Really tired of another country controlling who I get to vote for. Not playing that game anymore.
Wanna buy a bridge?
Do you ever wonder why George Soros, a Jewish man, would personally fund organizations whose mission is to rid the face of the earth of Jews?
No. This is the first I've heard of it. And given all your other claims about which I do have knowledge, I don't give it any traction. Honestly, I've heard outright anti-Semitic things said about Soros and I don't pay attention to them. I don't admire him. I don't hate him. He is who he is and he is not in my class of people. I am far more concerned with right-wing billionaires. They are dangerous and they dominate the international scene. I don't think Soros, who is Jewish, wants to get rid of you. I think you need to calm down. I do not want you to die. I don't want you to be upset as you clearly are. It is not helpful to YOU. You are damaging your heart. Do some meditation. Go swimming. Do yoga. This agitation is really bad for y our health. Eat some apples to lower your BP.
So the Israelis were wearing gopros, recording as their compatriots dropped bombs?
This is ludicrous. See the video from trysted independent reporting: charred houses with bodies inside. No crater. No evidence of bombs.
Don't understand your reference to gopros. Who said anyone videotaped anything? Independent reporting? Sources, please. Not all bombs leave craters. Granted, Israeli bombs sometimes do.
The Hamas terrorists had GoPros on, videotaped their killing spree and shared it with the world.
Honest questions I ask myself:
Which government wants complete annihilation of the other’s entire population as its stated and written goal? ( the IOW, genocide.)
Which government wants to annihilate the terrorist organizations of the other government while sparing as many innocent lives as possible as its stated goal? (Not genocide.)
In which place can citizens living under government control of the other work, earn a living and dwell under the protection of that government?
When viewing videos, photos, news stories etc, how do you determine which sources to trust?
For example, if I see a photo of an dead infant which was, according to autopsy performed, left to cook in an oven, I look at the source. I evaluate the historical accuracy of the source’s reporting and determine whether or not it’s credible.
I just wonder how many of us read fall victim to our own pre-determined bias.
Granny you do know that Israel created, controls and funds Hamas right?
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
Most Israelis hate Netanyahu. Just 4 weeks ago they were protesting in the streets in their tens of thousands, calling for his head because he was attempting to dilute the power of Israel's Supreme Court, quite likely in advance of his own prosecution after offering Israel up as lab rats to Pfizer, and the death and carnage that ensued.
The only people that believe Netanyahu cares for Israelis are Westerners, fed a steady diet of "Love Your Israel".
The Israeli people have suffered under his Government (twice) for a very long time.
So what does an embattled, hated Prime Minister with a public crisis on his hands do? Change the story/change the lead. Wag the dog.
Start pumping out stories to redirect everyone's gaze.
Exploit the situation to achieve multiple agendas.
Start the War you've always wanted.
And lastly, always, ALWAYS paint the other side as more sadistic and barbaric than yourself to try to keep everyone on your side, no matter how horrific your own behaviour.
Babies in ovens??! You are being played.
Granny, you are so prejudiced that I feel sorry for you. I do. You can't see what is in front of your face. So I worry about your safety. I don't think you really understand who is a danger to you. I would get Bibi behind bars ASAP. Israel has stated for a long time that it wants to annihilate all Palestinians (and Arabs, actually). They want way more than Palestine. They are sparing no one. In fact, they just rounded up all Palestinians from Gaza in Israel who WERE allowed to work in Israel (jobs Israelis don't want) and dumped them across the border in Gaza, not to be allowed back. They basically dumped them to die. I have been following various substacks for 3-4 years through the COVID business and have figured out who knows a decent amount about various issues and who is clueless. I don't trust any Israeli source. Sorry. That's the price to pay with your Israeli Lobby in my country. It'll take a lot for me to trust anything an Israeli--even a liberal, humanistic, left-wing one--has to say. Sorry. It's been more than 50 years I've been shocked by the Zionist/Israeli (and often Jewish) willingness to lie and lie and lie. I am sure you are shocked because you believed a lot of those lies. That's between you and them. If I were a Western Jew, I would be FURIOUS. But not at people who defend the humanity of Palestinians. Not them. Zionists are not your friend, Granny62. They are endangering your life. Wake up.
I have no idea what picture you're talking about. But Israel has been at the forefront of surveillance and AI and facial recognition technology and using technology to misrepresent reality. I am skeptical of all photos, videos, news stories, etc. I watch behavior. Character is consistent. Bibi is super consistent. I watch his behavior and ignore what he says. I don't believe a thing he says. No one should. He's a fucking psychopath.
Vanessa Beeley's substack today, Nov. 12, 2023, has some compelling video footage of the IDF bombing on Oct. 7 that they are blaming on Hamas. This is when participants at the rave got in their cars and tried to flee. The footage shows helicopters (presumably--definitely not Hamas fighters) dropping bombs quite intentionally on fleeing vehicles. Also a huge bomb on cars full of people before they pulled out of their parking spaces.
Oh my god! Wtf! WAR ITSELF IS THE CRIME!! Hamas enjoy killing babies and Israelis kill them and ‘’take no joy’ in it??? What the fuck are people saying in these chats, it’s bloody mental. The facts unfold via footage that may or may not be true and may or may not be being used to tell a particular narrative. Unless you are on the ground in Gaza, please stop telling us what is going on and who is ‘wrong’ and who is ‘right’. ITS ALL WRONG. Everyone who takes a side hoists the moral superiority and righteousness flag up over the increasing piles of dead children. It’s all war. Anyone who gets on side with any war anywhere just becomes part of the problem. I despair, I really do.
I just read CJ's Mindfuck piece and glad he admits to being mindfucked too. I lived in Luxor, Egypt for 3 years and stood up to a mob of men who were attacking a woman during the pandemic. My family escaped out of Egypt days before the 6 Day War (I was 11) and I will never forget Nassar's voice blasting on loud speakers in the streets of Cairo, "Death to America and its stooge Israel", while men roamed the streets with guns. When my dad told the tourist agent we wanted to go to Israel he was screamed at "Israel does not exist". I saw the hate first hand. They make no secret if it. I watch now as the mask comes off so many people around the world who can finally express what they always thought in the dark, hatred of Jews. I wrote about it but mostly it just angers people. Hard Facts: From the River to the Sea
"…the left doesn’t just have a Corbyn problem or a Tlaib problem or a Farrakhan problem. It has a big, fat Jew-hatred problem right in its ideological core.” NYU student, Tal Fortgang
https://open.substack.com/pub/khmezek/p/hard-facts-from-the-river-to-the
and Tales of Eclipse: The Lost (Foreign) Women of Luxor https://open.substack.com/pub/khmezek/p/tales-of-eclipse-the-lost-foreign
and my latest piece Captagon, the 'jihad' drug
How we got to a place where drugs manufactured to pacify unruly children are now being used to incite terrorists to violence. https://open.substack.com/pub/khmezek/p/captagon-the-jihad-drug
I think Clay is referring to the Israeli ambassador guy, Gilad Erdan, who was yelling at the UN / world for being silent -- "I will make you remember the shame of your silence every time you look at me" etc -- while IRL the world (aka the mainstream media and cabal-puppet governments) has been screaming so full tilt about the babies that even I who 100 ignore said puppet outlets heard it. I also heard in the screaming that Palestinian babies are not to be mentioned, because I think something yellow stars. Adding note here: Leveraging human compassion for babies to further the agenda of the cabal is deplorable across the board.
it's a mostly satirical post.
not where i live mate, where i live my so called "prime minister" has offered "unequivocal support" for "israeli" genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people, by the non indigenous "israelite" "idf" and a few thousand am-eri can "special forces" lgbt inclusive of course.. so......
im wondering who actualy lives in a sensory depravation tank?
as i write however a large part of the local world of Palestine has laid down the requirement for israel to cease and desist or cease to exist, does that still constitute silence, or is merely the sounds you filter out?
at the end of the day and likely by the end of the week all voices will be irrelevant as the inside job of Oct 7th leads to its intial purpose that being the incitement of war on Iran by "israel" using "usa" (who being bereft of oil, money and honour seek the merest of excuses and having depleted finally their strategic oil reserve and global credit)
the gross mismanagement of "usa" and "eu" as so vividly shown in the former "ukraine" over the last 2 years will be shown again as they still conceive that the middle east are camel bashing savages, well done "usa", well done "israel", build that fkn 3rd temple on the site of Al Aqusa (see current military expansion into West Bank), seat your "messiah" on your toxic, radioactive "throne", let satans mans relish the depravity, For that is whom they serve, if one would merely do the required research and i so wish you all would, its kinda important right now
we are talking about the extremists in "israel" the self same extremists that created their mirror images and set them to their bidding
It is all mighty fucked up, but humanity still, just about has a choice
I think you finally got it. Good on ya. Hypocritical-absurd is a hard language to pick up.
I'm sick and tired of Judaism being used as a shield for the national security state's fascist agenda.
Today, I almost barfed listening to "Morning Joe" as the Warmongering propagandist ghoul, Joe Scarborough, spent hours talking about how the House and Senate must send billions in "aid" to Israel to keep it safe. The word "aid" sounds humanitarian, however, don't be fooled, aid means bombs. The implication is that Israel will only be safe if it massacres every Palestinian man, woman, and child in Gaza and the West Bank.
The rationalization is that this Palestinian slaughter is justified because of the October 7, 2023 attack where Hamas a group created by the CIA and the right-wing Likud Party killed 1,400, the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
But if we look closer at that attack and the extremely delayed response by the IDF one can become very suspicious, as such a security failure of 15 terroritorial breaches seems highly impossible in a country that prides itself on its surveillance technology which it happens to sell on every continent.
In addition, isn't it odd that it took the IDF more than seven hours to respond after the attack took place. Something is rotten in Denmark, or rather in Netanyahu's government.
Did crook Netanyahu think triggering a Palestinian/Israeli bloodbath would save his chubby ass. Just something to think about.
Meanwhile, Zionist fascist monsters have hjacked Judaism along with their criminal international financalist buddies and of course the arms industry who are all licking their chops at the cash that'll be extracted from another military slaughterhouse.
The most despicable fascist trash use historically persecuted groups like Jews and Blacks as human shields to commit the worse crimes against humanity.
They moved the concert the day before.
They sent 80 percent of the IDF to the west bank, deliberattely leaving the border unmanned
They have surveillance all over that border...this could not have happened without
the Israeli's deliberating doing this, and not responding for 7 hours.
This is a plan by the Israeli government to eradicate Gaza so they can build condos and the Hong Kong of the Middle EAst...same as they are doing in Lahaina, the Hong Kong of the mid pacific.
This is done because of the oligarchs....As weas the poisoning of the population of Israel.
Israel govt paper came out today saying we will use the US to move the Palestinians out of Gaza and to Europe and Canada and the US.
Then they can have the land.
This is a BLATANT LAND GRAB by whoever CONTROLS THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT. And it aint the Israeli people.
The same thing is also happening in Ukraine.
Not just condos, but also offshore natural gas reserves (there is apparently a Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and Egypt wherein it is stated that extraction can begin in early 2024):
https://rumble.com/v3s1ooy-michel-chossudovsky-follow-the-money-confiscating-palestines-natural-gas-re.html
Oh yes...I saw their two fields on a map of the offshore gas deposits.
Catherine Austin Fitts woke me up to land (and other resource) grabs using the color of law and disaster capitalism...they just take what they want. They took Lahaina, will take Palestine and like Charlotte says below, they are taking the best farmlands in Ukraine.
The rest of us, like it or not, will be killed or corralled into open air jails like 15 minute cities...
I have no doubt the plan is for the few to own everything ..and the rest of us will own nothing. We will work until we cannot any longer, and then we will be killed/culled.
I kinda thing they already have the means/method of doing it using our own body electric...and will be able to just "shut us off" by flicking a switch or sending a frequency, but from a far distance which will be invisible to us.
I know I sound crazy...like schizophrenia the CIA is putting things in my head crazy...
Right now I think they are using conventional methods...deadly vaccines, corrupted food, chemotherapy, etc.....but in 50 years....I really wonder.
You are seeing behind their smoke screen; I concur with what you say keep sharing your perspective and send everyone to read Sasha Latypova and Katherine Watt on sub stack two other truth telling women. Oh if we only ruled the world. Keep on keeping on.
Scott Ritter thinks the supposed greatness of the IDF is really exaggerated. He talks specifically about Hamas taking advantage of everything it knew about the militarized fence. It would seem that Hamas was very clever and patient in planning what it did.
How do you watch that crap?
I want to hear and see how the CIA fucks with the public. It's good to know how the spooks think.
Free Speech should be free. We should be allowed to discuss freely the horrors of the Third Reich in order to hopefully prevent the “fourth reich.” An open discussion of current events shines the light on truth, half truths and lies. Your essays are thoughtful and the comments section illustrative of the diverse readership. However, discussions of who owns any land historically in the Mideast, Americas or Europe, are tiresome because it’s irrelevant. One could make the arguments back to Pangaea days and they would be equally useless.
Much more than blatant hipocrisy, the declarations of the zionist ambassador reach the cumulus of plain lies. 1st, Hamas didn't kill any babies and didn't cut throats as the zionist stupid propaganda insists. The list of victims from the Hamas attack desn't include childen under four. 2nd, the zionists want to pretend they are the victims when they are the opressors and the assassins. 3rd, they declared that there isn't a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 4rd, they should be compelled to answer a simple question: if 7000 aren't enough, how many more would be enough?
He told a lot more lies than that
Too funny. The hypocrisy is so thick on so many levels a lot of eyes are being opened I think. The US, captured by the neocons, is a terrorist state and their vassal European chums can’t find their voices to cry ‘Enough’. But the people are yelling and screaming and demanding, ‘free speech and cease fire’. So far we are ignored. The power-hungry narcissists are incharge.
You will find a kindred spirit in the works of Norman Finkelstein‘s Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. A truth teller whose own parents suffered in camps during WW 2. He sees the Holocaust industry and use of anti-Semitism for what it is - a cudgel to block all rational discourse about the occupied territories. He even lost tenure due to attacks by Dershowitz a Harvard lawyer who is part of the Holocaust industry in the USA which he expands on in this book. Finkelstein has written other books and one on the Gaza situation specifically. When I have trouble understanding what Israel is doing to garner world favor I turn to this author for clarity. Best to you.
Thank you Karla I listened to Dr Finkelstein for two hours today...got the situation very straight .... what a great human being ... my sentiments exactly .... Cease fire immediately and provide humanitarian relief and sit down and negotiate a peace... and Nicki Haley .... SHUT UP 🤐
https://rumble.com/v3s7956-gaza-israel-and-the-hamas-attacks-with-jewish-prof.-norman-finkelstein.html
Broadcast this to the world NM’s erudite passion must be heard. Genocide supported by the world especially the USA is beyond obscene. Remember folks our government is engaging. In democide by using bio-weapons, countermeasure under the guise of a vaccine on us their own population and now our government wants us to support genocide on another marginalized group.Wake up we are all being killed by immoral governments we are all Palestinians. Wake up!