#and about how even her own university does business with israel

[scorpion-flower]

Hey, wanna see something really disgusting?

Go to Nerdeen Kiswani's stories on IG (@nerdeenk) to watch multiple videos of Israeli zionists openly celebrating the death of Palestinian civilians (especially childrens') openly admitting in interviews that they want to see Arabs die and photos from her DMS where people taunt her and tell her "Hey, remember that 18 month old baby we burned?" as well as "Go back to where you came from you dirty pig".

But remember, media wants you to believe that Palestinians (and all Arabs tbh) are uncivilized and that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East *clown noices*

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

Jewish students at Concordia University in Montreal must fend for themselves when their anti-Zionist classmates resort to assault and harassment on campus, according to students who spoke with The Algemeiner.

No single incident, they said, evinced their alleged abandonment by school officials more than one on March 12 in which Jewish students were trapped in the school’s Hillel office while members of the anti-Zionist club Supporting Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), concealing their faces with keffiyehs and surgical masks, banged on its windows and doors and stomped on the floor of the room above it.

“It’s usually just a safe place for Jewish people to come and hang out,” Chana Leah Natanblut, president of Chabad Concordia, said of the Hillel office. “We were all doing our work and chilling, and all of a sudden we started hearing chanting, like screaming and stuff. We thought maybe it had something with the student strike going on, but then we started hearing people scream terrorists and banging on the ceiling. The Supporting Palestinian Human Rights club is directly above us.”

Seeking the source of the din exploding around them, Natanblut and her friends walked to the window, where they saw a crush of SPHR activists, some standing on the fire escape outside of it, others standing in the parking lot below.

“B—ch!” “Dog!” “Zionism is terrorism!” they screamed, while the person on the fire escape whacked away at the window. The rioters came from “all sides,” Natanblut explained, sprinting through the hallways to hammer the walls outside the club and setting off what felt like seismic shocks that shook the room. Amid the clatter, Natanblut noticed that a shopping bag hooked on a wall mount behind the door was swinging like a pendulum, as if to count down the time they had left before the worst occurred.

“We immediately locked the window and made sure that the door to the room was locked,” Natanblut continued. “We really felt trapped, and I couldn’t even leave to use the bathroom. I was wondering how would I get out and if I would be attacked if I did. So, I started to videotape what was going on, and I called my friend, the person in charged of advocacy for Hillel, telling him to come right away. Then I called security.”

Security arrived promptly, Natanblut said, and reprimanded the SPHR rioters. However, to Natanblut’s astonishment, they refused to discipline those involved in the disturbance on the grounds that Jewish students had contributed to instigating the incident.

According to Natanblut, the SPHR students told the officers that they behaved as they did because the Jewish students had filmed them. To no avail, Natanblut and her friends explained that they only began recording after the banging and screaming started and that they had all been minding their own business. Declining to privilege one account of what happened over the other, security took their statements and left, refusing to answer questions about next steps, including whether the rioters would be allowed back in the building.

“We only filmed because they were harassing us, for evidence, and we didn’t feel safe,” Natanblut said. “Security obviously told them to disperse and that they couldn’t act that way, but they didn’t say what would happen and it felt almost as if they had taken their side. Who’s to say they won’t do it again? What kind of message does it send to do nothing about it?”

Similar occurrences are the new normal for Jewish students attending Concordia University, Anastasia Zorchinsky, founder and president of The StartUp Nation, a pro-Israel club, told The Algemeiner. On Nov. 8, for example, just over a month after Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel, anti-Zionist protesters approached Jewish students and punched several in the face. No one was punished for these offenses, she explained, and the university has had the habit of refusing to denounce antisemitism as a stand-alone problem, always being sure to mention Islamophobia as well to insinuate that Jewish students are engaging in hateful behavior themselves. With several large anti-Zionist events coming up later this month and in April, she fears Jewish students will be targeted again and denied justice.

“The university must enforce its policies, which it’s not doing,” Zorchinsky said. “There’s a clear double standard when it comes to violence against Jewish students, and there must be investigations of these students and expulsions of any found to have committed antisemitic violence. We don’t need pro-Hamas students on our campus behaving this way. We don’t need students who support terrorism on campus. They’re a danger to everyone. Not just us.”

Concordia University did not respond to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.

[tienramadan]

Mayor Eric Adams says "outside agitators" influenced Columbia University protests. What does he mean?

NEW YORK -- Mayor Eric Adams and other New York City officials have blamed "outside agitators" for escalating pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University and influencing students. CBS New York investigative reporter Tim McNicholas has been asking the city for specifics on what that means.

NYPD arrests over 100 protesters at Columbia University

Tuesday night, Columbia University asked the NYPD to clear protesters who had locked themselves inside Hamilton Hall on the school's Morningside campus, as well as those who had been staying in an unsanctioned tent city for over a week.

According to the NYPD, 109 people were arrested at Columbia.

CBS New York has asked the NYPD how many of the people arrested at the protest were students, but they have not yet provided an answer. However, senior police sources say of the 282 people arrested at both Columbia and City College of New York, 27% were over 30 years old and just over 10% have been arrested several times, mostly protest-related.

Wednesday morning, the NYPD showed reporters a lock they say protesters put on Hamilton Hall. The Deputy Commissioner of Public Information said, "This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities."

In 2020, however, Columbia's Public Safety Department offered what appears to be the same lock to students at a discount. CBS New York is still working to confirm who brought that lock to Hamilton Hall.

Also on Wednesday, another NYPD deputy commissioner said the wife of a man convicted of terrorism was on the Columbia campus last week, but police have no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing on her part.

Lisa Fithian seen at Columbia University protests

The NYPD has pointed out at least one person involved in this week's protests who they describe as a "professional agitator."

Police released a video from earlier this week of Lisa Fithian, who has helped organize protests for a long list of causes across the country for decades. She was on campus Monday night into Tuesday morning.

In another video from Monday night, she is seen directing protestors as they tie a table to a door. Tuesday, Fithian told CNN that was done as a safety measure because tables have been used to shove people.

Fithian said she didn't train anyone to take over any buildings, and she said she's not affiliated with any group and came to Columbia on her own accord.

CBS New York tried to reach her Wednesday but hasn't heard back.

Mark Naison, a protest historian and professor at Fordham University, told CBS New York he doesn't believe outsiders are the main organizers of pro-Palestinian campus protests.

"There are a lot of Palestinian students at almost every major university, and some of them have lost 10 or 20 relatives in Gaza," he said. "And this is very personal and they talk about this to their fellow students."

"Historically, communities have always leaned internally to answer the moral question, 'What side are you on?' And have always organized themselves internally to fight for the rights of other folks," said Celeste Faison, an executive director of Movement for Black Lives and a demonstration strategist in Harlem.

What happened at Columbia University?

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment on Columbia University's main lawn in early April, demanding the school divest from companies that do business with Israel. On April 18, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik asked the NYPD to clear the protesters, saying the encampment posed a danger. Over 100 people were arrested.

Protesters quickly returned to the main lawn, setting up an even larger tent city and camping out for over a week. During that time, student protest organizers and school officials had discussions to try to find a resolution, but officials said Monday they had reached an impasse and a deadline was issued for students to clear the encampment.

The protesters refused to leave the tent city, and overnight Monday into Tuesday, a group forced their way into Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside.

Shafik then again called on the NYPD for help clearing Hamilton Hall and the encampments. She also requested the NYPD maintain a presence on campus until after the university's commencement ceremony.

Tuesday night, hundreds of NYPD officers entered the campus, took dozens of protesters into custody and dismantled the encampments.

Shafik released a statement Wednesday morning, saying in part, "I am sorry we reached this point."

[ragingbookdragon]

The Best Of Us

Batfamily x M!Reader

Word Count: 3,035 Warnings: Angst

Author's Note: And here we are with a Batbrother fic! Enjoy! -Thorne

It wasn’t an inferiority complex. Not really. He wasn’t prone to anger or any of the other symptoms listed under it—and he checked. Multiple times. But there was something about being the only non-vigilante in his family of vigilantes that made him feel inadequate compared to the rest. Bruce had the Justice League, Dick and Jason had their own fantastic groups that saved the day, and Tim and Damian were still in school, but even they had their groups too. Hell, even Alfred still had contacts from his days in MI-5. And yet, he had none of the skills his brothers or father had, no extensive martial arts training, master detective skills, or weapon mastery. He was completely normal—or maybe abnormal in this case. And on some level, he resented that he couldn’t be like his family—maybe he did have an inferiority complex.

***

The greatest thing in (Y/N)’s mind about still being allowed to live at home was that no matter what, there was always food around to eat—Alfred saw to it that every growing man in the house had enough to eat—that being said, their grocery bills were outrageouslyexpensive.

He balanced his tablet in one hand, the other hand adjusting the tie around his neck as he stepped into the kitchen, quick to raise the tablet in time to avoid whacking his youngest brother in the head.

“Morning,” he greeted, taking his seat at the table, just after Jason’s. A chorus of tired, ‘mornings’ came back at him and he quirked an eyebrow. “Wow, loving the enthusiasm this morning, guys.”

Jason snorted and propped his chin on his palm, watching (Y/N) for a moment. “I seriously don’t understand how you’re always so chipper in the morning.”

He huffed a laugh and took a sip of the coffee that Alfred set down. “Someone has to be the ray of sunshine in this group of gray clouds.” (Y/N) cast a glance at Dick who was shoveling eggs into his mouth. “And it seems like our eldest is busy feeding his bottomless pit.” Dick was fast to shoot him a glare, that he returned with a smile.

Just then, Tim trudged into the kitchen in an oversized hoodie and plopped down in his seat, immediately shoving the plate in front of him to drop his head onto the table.

“Jesus Christ, you guys,” (Y/N) sighed, flicking at his tablet for a moment. “You’ve seriously gotta take a day off to recuperate.”

“What do you think we do during the day?” Dick retorted, taking a swig of milk.

“Okay I think you’re confusing the entire day with the first half,” he reasoned. “When I say take a day off, I mean the whole twenty-four hours.” He glanced at everyone, and the only person who seemed to not be tired was Alfred, and that’s partly because (Y/N) believed he was immortal. “You guys are gonna run yourselves into the ground,” he said. “I just don’t think—”

“We know what we are doing, (Y/N),” Damian interrupted with a glare. “We know our limits better than you do.”

He let out a sigh and shook his head. This conversation had happened many times before and it wasn’t anything new.

“I’m not saying I know them better than you Damian, I’m simply saying that you guys should take a day to relax so that something doesn’t happen on the job that you can’t control.”

(Y/N) glanced at his father. “Dad, c’mon, you know I’ve got a point.”

Bruce hummed and flipped the page of the newspaper. “So does Damian.” He met (Y/N)’s eyes and nodded. “You don’t have to worry so much, (Y/N). We know what we can handle.”

He stared at Bruce for a moment then scowled. “I don’t even know why I bother,” he muttered, and Damian was fast to chase his comment.

“I don’t know why you bother either. You’ve never once experienced what we do every night.”

(Y/N) met his youngest sibling’s glare. “Just because I don’t stick my neck out for each person in this city night after night doesn’t mean that I don’t know what it’s like to be exhausted.”

Damian crossed his arms over his chest. “So, you know what it’s like to be exhausted from blood loss because you’ve been stabbed or shot? Or to be exhausted from saving the lives of innocent people? You do?”

“I—” (Y/N)’s mouth opened, then he snapped it shut and looked away with a darkened expression, tasting something sour in his mouth. “No, I don’t.”

“That’s what I thought,” Damian finalized, and in the wake of the uncomfortable tension, a cellphone went off.

Everyone started looking for theirs, but (Y/N) muttered, “It’s mine.”

He picked it up and put on a cheerful voice. “Good morning Angela…yes, I just got the floor plan…” he tapped at the screen on his tablet. “Do me a favor and move the people from table eight to table three. Mr. Robinson is better friends with Mrs. Grace and will certainly give us a warmer atmosphere in that area.”

(Y/N) paused and listened, then he stood from the table and pushed his chair in. “Let me get to the office and we can situate the rest of the guests for tonight…alright, see you soon. Bye.”

He pulled the phone from his ear and ended the call, then took the black backpack that Alfred was holding to him. “Thanks Alfred.”

“Of course, Master (Y/N). Have a pleasant day at work.”

He huffed a laugh, but it was anything but amused. “I have to give a speech tonight in front of the entire company and three different magazines.” He glanced at Bruce. “Think you’ll be able to attend tonight? It’d mean a lot to me.” Bruce grunted, his way of telling (Y/N) that he’d try, but to not hope for a miracle.

It was fine, he was used to parentless ceremonies and events. He cleared his throat and shrugged on the backpack, making his way to the garage door.

“See you guys later.”

***

He’d given a few speeches in his short twenty-four years, and while he’d never say he was an expert on public speaking, he did know his way around a podium. That being said, every time he had to do a speech, he felt like vomiting—nerves he chocked it up to.

(Y/N) cast a glance around the packed ballroom, quietly groaning at the massive amount of people. His own table was empty, save for Angela and thank god for him, Lucius. He couldn’t help but frown at the name tags sitting in front of the empty seats.

“Wondering where the rest of the gang is?”

He met Lucius’ eyes and gave a halfhearted smile. “I’d like to think they took my advice and took the night off but…something tells me that the night called to them.” His lips pulled downwards. “I’m not going to act like this is a surprise, Lucius. I couldn’t even get them to show up for my university graduation.”

(Y/N) smiled and stood up, grabbing the notecards beside him. “What makes you think I could get them to show up to this?” He left the table and moved to the side of the stage, waiting for his name to be called. His fingers briefly shifted to his chest, feeling his heart fluttering beneath chest, nerves causing his breathing to come in short bursts. (Y/N) shut his eyes and took a deep breath, letting a pleasant smile cross his face as the presenter called his name, and walked up the steps.

The bright flash of photography momentarily blinded him, but he smiled through it. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us tonight at the Centennial Inside Alliance Award Ceremony.” He flashed everyone a million-watt smile. “My name is (Y/N) Wayne, and as many of you know, I am a senior editor for Inside Alliance. It is my pleasure tonight to recognize Inside Alliance’s top writer for the year.”

(Y/N) glanced around the room, making sure to catch the eyes of the hundreds of guests.

“Inside Alliance was created on August fourteenth, nineteen-twenty by a group of immigrant mothers and fathers who wanted to bring knowledge of their homes and cultures to the rest of world. Some of those countries being Germany, Romania, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Israel, and many, many others.”

“The production of their valuable time and extensive care created one of the greatest magazines that is still in business today, that brings attention to the worldwide issues that many groups face, while still connecting to their roots of educating the public on cultures and groups.”

He smiled. “It is with my upmost honor that I congratulate and introduce Miss Flora Janaliyeva, one of our newest and greatest writers that has joined Inside Alliance, and the winner of tonight’s Inside Alliance Award.”

(Y/N) turned to the side and grinned at Flora as she ascended the stairs. Her long black hair was braided down the length of her back and she wore a bright and floral-patterned gown. She reached (Y/N) and he reached with his right, shaking her hand, and handed her the glass award with the other.

“Miss Janaliyeva, it is with honor and congratulations that I give you this award for your excellent talent and recognition of ability from Inside Alliance.”

She smiled brightly and accepted the award. “Thank you, Mister Wayne, the honor is mine.” He nodded politely once more and descended the stairs as she began her speech, quietly taking his place back at the table.

“Well done, Mister Wayne,” Lucius smiled and (Y/N) let out a deep breath.

“I’m just surprised I was able to do that without stuttering or panicking.” He glanced over, smile lowering slightly. “Lucius, are you alright?”

The older man dabbed at his forehead and nodded, though when he breathed, it sounded labored. “I’m fine,” he assured, then reached up to rub at his chest.

(Y/N) shifted. “I don’t think you’re alright Lucius.” He leaned over. “Are you having chest pain?”

“I—yes,” he grit out then met (Y/N)’s gaze. “My chest is getting—tight and I…and I—”

He started to slump over and (Y/N) shot to his feet, eyes widening with fear. “Lucius!” The yell startled the crowd and Flora, who all looked over at the two.

(Y/N) pulled the older man back and pressed his ear to his chest, listening. He pulled away and yelled, “Someone call an ambulance! I think he’s having a heart attack!”

He helped Lucius to the floor and immediately pressed his palms to the man’s chest, starting compressions. His breath came in panicked spurts and he kept looking at Lucius’ face.

“Just hand on Lucius. You’re going to be okay.” (Y/N) kept at it until the EMT’s arrived and they knelt beside them.

“Let us take over.”

For a moment, he didn’t move, too afraid that if he did, Lucius would die, but one of the EMT’s placed a hand on his shoulder while the other slide their hands underneath (Y/N)’s.

“Son, we’ll take it from here.”

(Y/N)’s arms went slack, and he let the medic pull him away, watching as they took over and started moving him onto the stretcher.

“Please, save him. He’s—he’s friends with my family I—”

The medic nodded firmly. “We’ll do all we can.”

And all (Y/N) remembered was someone ushering him into a taxi heading for the hospital.

***

The first people that arrived were Lucius’ family who were grateful for (Y/N)’s actions, but the young man could barely grimace as they disappeared into the hospital room, leaving him sitting outside, his head in his hands. Tears gathered in his eyes as he thought back to what the ER doctor told him.

***

“Mister Fox is in a stable condition, but you have to understand, Mister Wayne, his heart is very weak.”

“But—but he’ll be okay right?”

“Based on Mister Fox’s past conditions, he’s verging into heart failure. His heart is too weak to keep up with what the body needs.”

“And…and what does his body need at this point?”

“At this point? A new heart.”

***

He sucked in a breath and fought to keep the sob from escaping his throat, just as heard, “(Y/N)!”

His head shot up and he saw his father and older brothers coming down the hallway. (Y/N) clambered to his feet.

“Dad I—” he started, but cut off as he choked on a sob, and Bruce pulled him into a hug, holding (Y/N) as he sobbed. “I’m sorry,” he cried. “I tried my best but—”

“Shh,” Bruce hushed, a firm, but gentle hand coming to rest at the back of his son’s neck. “You did all that you could.”

He pulled back and wiped his face. “But Lucius needs a new heart, and I don’t know what to do. I should’ve seen this coming. He hasn’t been feeling well the past few weeks and I—”

“(Y/N),” his father said firmly, hands coming to rest on his shoulders. He met Bruce’s eyes. “This wasn’t your fault.”

His libs wobbled and he whispered, “But if I were like you guys, I would’ve seen something earlier. I didn’t and now…” sighing, he added, “and now Lucius needs a new heart, or he’ll die.”

Bruce’s sigh was heavier than (Y/N)’s and it made his chest heavy. “We’ll get Lucius a new heart, (Y/N).”

He lowered his head and lamented, “I’m sorry, dad.”

His father squeezed his shoulder then lead him towards Dick and Jason. “Take (Y/N) back home for the night. I’ll stay here with Lucius’ family.”

They nodded and led their brother down the hall, arms firm across his shoulders in a comforting way. They didn’t say anything, knowing that there wasn’t much to offer, but their support was enough for (Y/N), even if he felt horrible.

***

For being the World’s Greatest Detective, his son was evidently the World Best Hider, because it took Bruce a long time to finally find (Y/N). He stepped quietly over to the form sitting on the ledge and took a seat beside him, silently gazing out at the backyard. A bottle appeared in his vision and he focused on it as the smell of whiskey reached his nose.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked but took the bottle anyway.

“Jason gave it to me earlier.” He watched Bruce take a sip. “Figured it fit the occasion.”

Bruce chuckled. “That sounds like Jason’s way of dealing with a problem.”

They sat in a comfortable silence for a while, passing the bottle back and forth, simply enjoying the calm around the manor and night.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” Bruce suddenly said.

(Y/N) sighed and set the bottle down, kicking his legs out off the roof. “Lucius said he hadn’t been feeling well recently. And I just passed it up to getting older.” He looked at his father. “If I’d actually paid attention, then I would’ve seen the symptoms.”

“Do you actually know what the symptoms of heart failure and heart attack are?”

“I…no, not really.”

“Then you couldn’t’ve known.” He looked at (Y/N). “Lucius works in my office every day. If anyone should’ve known and seen it, it should’ve been me.” Bruce shook his head. “But you did everything you could at the awards ceremony, and that saved Lucius’ life tonight. You did good.”

“I could’ve done better.” (Y/N) muttered. “I should’ve. I’m your son and I’m practically useless to the family but—”

“Woah, woah,” Bruce interrupted, brows furrowing as he asked, “What are you talking about?”

(Y/N) turned to him. “I am the least useful person in this family. I mean you and the guys are these crazy intelligent, vigilante master detectives and I’m just me.” He wiped away a tear that fell from his eye. “I can’t speak seven different languages or solve murder cases with a single strand of DNA left at the scene of a crime. Hell, I can’t even throw a punch.” He sighed heavily. “The last time I tried, I broke my hand.”

Meeting his father’s gaze, he said, “I just want to be like you guys.” He lowered his head. “I just want to be normal and not an outlier in the family.”

Bruce simply stared at him for a long moment, and while he’d never been privy to let his emotions show on his face, he let them this time—shock and shame. Shame that he didn’t see his greatest achievement suffering.

“(Y/N).”

He didn’t look up at first, but then he did. “Yes sir?”

“How long have you felt like this?”

(Y/N) shrugged. “Forever?”

His father sighed. “Son, I…I never wanted you to be like us.”

He gaped at Bruce. “What?”

“(Y/N), every person in this family is driven to do what we do because of our childhoods. You’re the only one who doesn’thave any skeletons in his closet.” He stared at him. “We wish every day that we could be like you and not a day goes by that we don’t think that.”

“I…what?” he floundered, absolutely bewildered at the idea that his father and brothers wanted to be the most boring person ever. “There’s no way that’s true.”

“It is.”

“No.” (Y/N) huffed. “I’m me. I’m plain and boring, work a nine to five job me. I mean I write for a magazine for god sakes! And you guys save the world!”

Bruce chuckled. “And what we wouldn’t give to be just a bit more normal like you, son.” He shrugged. “You think you’re inferior because you’re not a vigilante, but you’re the one thing that keeps us all sane. You give us the perspective of someone who isn’t what we are. Of someone who’s completely normal.”

He reached over and placed a hand on (Y/N)’s shoulder. “And being normal? Being you?” Bruce squeezed firmly. “I don’t want you to be anyone else.”

(Y/N) gazed at him, and though he felt tears in his eyes, he didn’t blink, didn’t let them fall. “I’ve only ever wanted to make you proud.”

Bruce smiled heartfully. “You do, (Y/N). Everyday. Because you’ve always been the best of us.”

[exxar1]

Interlude 1: Lessons From The Old Testament

3/27/2021

             It is a lovely Saturday afternoon in Las Vegas. And I mean genuinely beautiful spring weather! It’s 73 degrees outside with a perfectly pleasant breeze that would be great accompaniment for a hike in Red Rock canyon. Alas, I must report for work in an hour.

           In following my plan to read the whole Bible in a year, I’ve been working through the books of Samuel and Kings for the last 2 weeks. This morning I wrote down some of the lessons I’ve gleaned from the Old Testament in general, but these 4 books in particular.

1.     Am I listening for God’s voice? 1 Samuel 3:10: “…Speak; for thy servant heareth.” No, God doesn’t use an audible voice today as He did with Samuel, but that’s because we now have his Holy Word in the form the Bible. We also have the Holy Spirit if we are truly born again. I need to make sure that I’m always listening for the Spirit and seeking God’s wisdom in all things. I should never be so busy with daily life, nor should the noise of the world be so loud, that I don’t hear God when He speaks to me.

2.    God does not tolerate sin. Eli was a servant of the Lord, but he failed to rear his sons to also fear and obey God. Because of this, God took the lives of all three and gave the priesthood to Samuel. Same for the nations of Israel and Judah. Throughout the books of Samuel and Kings, God punished his chosen people over and over as they continually disobeyed his commandments and turned to idol worship. There were occasional respites, short periods where certain kings would obey and fear God; David and his son Solomon, for example. Unfortunately, those two – and two or three others in the succeeding generations – were the exception, not the rule.

Am I always obeying the Lord’s commandments? Am I living my life in complete service to Him? When I do sin, am I genuinely repentant? God will forgive me, His love and mercy are as vast as the universe He created. But He is also a jealous God, and He will punish me when I turn from Him, as a loving father will discipline his child when he strays. I should always be striving to please God and obey Him always in all things.

3.    There are consequences for sin. God’s divine patience with Israel and Judah finally reached an end in the latter half of the book of 2nd Kings. He delivered His people into the hands of their enemies, and both nations were exiled into Babylon. Chapter 17: 7-23 summarizes the sins of Israel and Judah and God’s punishment for their continual sin.

Even though God will always forgive me when I sin, He will not spare me the consequences of my sin. Therefore, I need to always be seeking Him first and be making good choices.

4.    God will reward obedience and faithfulness to Him. David was chosen as King of Israel because he had a heart that was always seeking God. Even in the worst times of his life, when he was on the run and hiding from Saul, David never lost his faith that God was always with him, and that He would take care of him. (Psalms 23 & 46.) God rewarded this faithfulness time and again throughout David’s life.

Same goes for Solomon. When God spoke to Solomon early in his life, Solomon requested not riches or long life but, instead, the wisdom to lead the nation of Israel. God rewarded Solomon’s request with not only wisdom but riches as well.

Now, it should also be noted that, even though David and Solomon always sought to please and obey God, they also sinned. Both men were polygamists, and David even committed murder to try to cover his sin of covetousness and adultery. But God used them anyway, and each still suffered the consequences of their sin. Which brings us to the final point:

5.    God always keeps his promises. The Israelites were never completely wiped from the face of the Earth. God had made a covenant with Abraham, and He had also promised His people salvation through the lineage of David. Therefore, while He allowed His people to suffer the consequences of their disobedience, He still protected them and kept His word to them.

God will do the same for me. No matter how many times I stray, I will never lose my salvation. God has promised me that He is preparing a place for me in Heaven, and He will keep that promise. But neither is that a license to go do whatever the hell I want. Refer back to lesson #3.

           What I also found most striking about these four books was the clear parallel of the nation of Israel/Judah at this time and the United States today. Over the past year, I have argued with strangers on Facebook who try to convince me that America is not now and never was a Christian nation. That belief utterly baffles me. The phrase “In God We Trust” is still stamped on all our coins. The Declaration of Independence uses the phrase “divine Creator”. Despite all the scrubbing and washing by today’s social justice warriors, it’s still a known fact that all our founding fathers believed in the basic religious principles taught in the scriptures. Those principles are scattered throughout the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other documents such as the Federalist Papers. George Washington and his compatriots might not all have been born again Christians, and they were most certainly as flawed, failing and sinful as you and me. But they regarded the Bible as an essential guide to the basic facts of our flawed, failing, sinful human nature, and they crafted a carefully constructed form of government that was designed to enhance the best in all of us and, by the same effect, discourage the worst.

           Today, that government is in serious threat of being dismantled from the inside out. The founding fathers had not anticipated what Paul wrote to Timothy: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

           Today’s generation is all about the self. Just as Israel and Judah in the Old Testament continually turned away from God to worship false gods and idols, so we today have turned away from God to worship the idol of ‘self’. There is not a single news headline lately that doesn’t bear some form of the phrase “personal rights”, or “individual truth”, or “living as him/her/itself”. Everyone screams about their own “truth” and that their “rights and freedom of expression” are all that matters, especially when it comes to the homosexual and transgender movements. Everyone’s rights are more important than everyone else’s, and our nation has become a people who are “…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” (And no, before you even say it, I am not referring to the COVID/mask/pandemic government mandates. That specific case is a whole ‘nother argument where, yes, personal rights and freedoms most definitely matter.)

           And, just as He did to Israel and Judah at the end of 2nd Kings, God’s divine patience is rapidly running out for America. God delivered Israel and Judah into the hands of their enemies, the Babylonians. His chosen people spent seventy years in exile as punishment for their wickedness and their disobedience. Something I didn’t know before reading the commentary in my MacArthur study Bible is that Israel never returned from that captivity. Several thousand Israelites had migrated to the kingdom of Judah prior to the Babylonian captivity, so that all twelve tribes were still intact seventy years later, but it was only the former kingdom of Judah that actually returned, whole and united as the ‘new’ nation of Israel, seventy years later.

           Think about that. God kept his promise to Abraham. The whole of His chosen people were not utterly wiped from the face of the earth, but the meager, reunited nation that returned from Babylonian captivity was nowhere near the size or power that it once was. God’s wrath was justified and vast.

           If you study world history, you will find that ANY nation that has ever put God first has ALWAYS prospered. Think of the Victorian era of 19th century Great Britain. Queen Victoria was – and still is – revered as one of England’s greatest monarchs, and it’s because she believed that her empire was blessed by God. The evidence is self-explanatory. At that time, England – and the United States – were considered by all the world as the greatest powers, and the best lands of equal opportunity by all those seeking a better life. Our founding fathers built this nation on the premise that God had created every man and woman – no matter his/her race or station in life – equal. That ALL of us were endowed by our Divine Creator with certain, inalienable rights. And that, as long as we continued to recognize the source of our blessing and our greatness as a nation, we would prosper.

           Sadly, that cannot be said of us today. We, as a nation, have fallen so far from God’s grace that I wonder what our exile will look like. Though I have not yet done a close reading and study of the book of Revelation, I am fairly certain that nowhere in that book is there a mention of any western nation such as ours. We are rapidly losing our reputation as a world super power, and I believe that America as we know it today will not exist by the time chapter one of Revelation begins. And, right now, it’s not hard to see why.

           John 1:4-5 says, “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (Emphasis mine.) America has become filled with great darkness. For me, personally, that is my only mission for the rest of my life. I will do what I can to be a light for Christ and the gospel as we get closer and closer to that first chapter of Revelation. God’s wrath is coming, and only those who have believed on His name and accepted Him as their Lord and savior will be spared His judgment.

           The only answer for today’s corrupt generation is the command from God found in Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” For those who are still ignoring that command, Isaiah warns, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

           Amen.

[expatimes]

What is Israel's secret weapon against Iran?

There is much reason to believe, but obviously no hard evidence to prove, that Israel is behind the most recent assassination of yet another high-ranking Iranian scientist.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was seen by United States and Israeli intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons capability, was evidently killed on November 27 in an ambush on a highway near Tehran “with remotely controlled smart devices”.

It is, of course, impossible to know what exactly happened on that highway. The Israelis have reasons to exaggerate their capabilities in conducting deadly covert operations in Iranian territory. Iranians, meanwhile, have reasons to conceal the manner in which their prominent official was killed, and engage in their own reciprocal disinformation campaign.

What we are left with is the evident fact that Israelis, perhaps in cahoots with the Americans, the Saudis or even the Emiratis, were behind yet another targeted assassination of a prominent Iranian official.

But how does Israel do it? How does this puny little settler colony get away with murder, repeatedly?

Projecting more power than they actually possess

Although Israel wants to project an image of an omnipotent and omniscient force that can kill and destroy with the flick of a finger, the fact is that it is all a bogus, cliché, and gaudy posture. There is not much mystery surrounding this cowardly operation: we have the Israeli-US intelligence, Saudi-Emirati finances, and the sleeper cells of the treacherous Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) - the ex-Iranian terrorist outfit - operatives inside Iran as the most likely combination of factors that allowed Israel to commit this murder.

Targeted assassination is a common feature of Israeli behavior. The murder of prominent Palestinian revolutionary writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut on July 8, 1972, together with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees Najim, is perhaps the most infamous and iconic of such assassinations.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was not the first and likely will not be the last Iranian scientist presumed murdered by the Israelis. At least half a dozen Iranian scientists have been murdered over the last decade, and Israel is to have been chiefly responsible for half of these murders.

To be sure, Israel is neither the first nor the only state that has eliminated its perceived enemies with assassinations outside its borders. Earlier this year, Donald Trump ordered the US military to murder Qassem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian military official, in Iraq. Just two years ago, Saudi Arabia chopped to pieces Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist, in Turkey.

The Iranians themselves have a long history of brutally murdering their perceived enemies around the world. They, for example, stabbed prominent opposition figure Shapour Bakhtiar to death in France in 1991. They do not hesitate to murder dissidents inside Iran either, as in the notorious case of the so-called “chain murders” of the 1980s and 1990s.

So no state can assume a holier than thou posture here. They are all guilty as sin. It is a dog eat dog world out there among these ruling regimes of terror and murder, each one worse than the other.

But still, the bald-faced incursion of a colonial settlement into a sovereign nation to murder one of their high-ranking scientists requires some examination.

What is Israel's secret weapon?

The specific question I wish to raise here is how could Israel murder Fakhrizadeh, then cowardly assume a stance of “neither denying nor confirming”, and get away with it?

The issue at hand here is not the Israeli behavior, which is systematically criminal. All you have to do is read Ronen Bergman's Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations (2018) to learn chapter and verse the sustained and systematic history of the settler colony being founded and kept in place with such targeted assassinations.

There is a link, I wish to propose, between the fact that Israelis can just move into Iran and murder anyone they want and the cowardly sellouts like the rulers of the UAE, Bahrain or Sudan “normalising” the historic theft of Palestine and entering into diplomatic relations with the settler colony.

That link spells out the scandalous incompetence of ruling states on all sides of the Gulf and beyond having no trust in their own people and degenerating the state apparatus into the instrument of tyranny against their own populations instead of learning how to protect their national sovereignty. On this score, there is no difference between the rulers of the UAE and Iran: they are both pathetically weak towards American-Israeli militarism because they are pathetically tyrannical towards their own citizens.

Let us talk specifically about Iran. The ruling state dedicates an overwhelming segment of its security and military apparatus to keeping Iranians themselves in line. It is so conscious of its own illegitimacy that its single most important function is to grab power, control the economy, and systemically subjugate Iranians to oppressive surveillance.

The ruling military, intelligence and security apparatus of the Islamic republic does not want to accept how utterly ridiculous it looks that Israel can infiltrate their country and point-blank murder one top scientist after another, while they are busy brutalising a teenage child into wearing her scarf one way and not the other. The sheer stupidity of this state just boggles the mind.

Stateless nations, illegitimate states

Israel is a garrison state - a state without a nation ruling over the Palestinians, a nation without a state. And so is precisely every single other state around it, chief among them Iran that has long since lost the trust and support of the nation over which it rules with wanton cruelty.

Imagine for a minute if people in Iran or anywhere else in the Muslim world were the masters of their own destiny. Imagine if the dungeons of the Islamic republic were not filled with political prisoners and human rights activists. Imagine if the ruling state did not waste much of its resources and abilities to surveil the Iranians and punish them for the slightest sign of life and liberty.

That is the secret weapon Israel has against Iran and all the other corrupt regimes in the region. That these illegitimate rulers do not see the strength of their countries is in their own population; that freedom, liberty, the ability to stand up proudly and claim national sovereignty is the true source of power for any country. Instead these pathetic incompetent fools who cannot even protect their most precious assets are trying in vain to keep an entire nation prisoner of their outdated, corrupt and moronic politics.

Israel is a military base created by a gang of European adventurists. They would not even dare to imagine infiltrating Iran, or Turkey, or Egypt, or any other real country, and murdering one of their citizens if they realized they had the will of an entire nation confronting them. They know the entire apparatus of the Islamic republic from top to bottom is irredeemably foreign to the defiant will of the Iranian people, that after 40 years they have miserably failed to become integral to the will of their nation, that they and their entire propaganda machinery has become parasitic to the organic integrity of an ancient but young, proud and competent nation, over which the ruling clergy has much power but little authority.

Nations against states

What can Iran do in retaliation for their top scientists being murdered by Israel? Nothing. Can they reciprocate and go and kill an Israeli nuclear scientist? Of course not, they do not have the wherewithal to do anything remotely similar to that. So they huff and they puff and ultimately shoot a few useless missiles in one direction or another and continue abusing their own population and supporting Hamas, Hezbollah or the murderous al-Assad regime for one useless act of “resistance” or another.

But at the same time, the habitual chicaneries of Israel will ultimately have to face not these feeble and pathetic states but the root of the power of resistance to its murderous deeds which is the will of the Palestinians and the Iranians alike.

What is lost to Israel and its sustained course of criminal activities is how utterly futile they are. They mobilize all their evil means and assassinate a few Iranian nuclear scientists - so what? Iran has literally thousands upon thousands of such unclear scientists, more than half of them women physicists from top Iranian universities. What is Israel going to do? Kill them all? Drop a couple of their pathetic and useless atom bombs on Iran as its American godfather Sheldon Adelson wants to do?

Is it possible to prevent Iranians from achieving nuclear knowledge or technology for peaceful or even non-peaceful purposes if that is what Iranians decide to do? Do they think a puny little settler colony can stop an entire nation that has given Maryam Mirzakhani to the world? Where do they think the late genius mathematician came from? Tel Aviv University? Israelis will fail miserably in this as they fail in everything else they touch - from stealing Palestine, to convincing anyone with an iota of decency and empathy to accept this blatant theft.

Both the ruling Islamic republic and the settler colony of Israel will ultimately fail to silencing the will of Palestinian and Iranian peoples. The repressed but defiant will of nations, Palestinians under the boots of Israeli soldiers and Iranians under the cruelties of their ruling regimes, will prevail.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=15357&feed_id=22325

[jewish-privilege]

...This fall, [my children] both signed up for Tuesday wheel-throwing, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Last week, when that fell at the end of the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I emailed the museum school to double-check that class was still on (yes), and then realized the next one would clash with Kol Nidre.

“Presume next week is off because of Yom Kippur?” I wrote back.

“The museum does not cancel classes because of any religious holidays,” came the reply.

This may be technically true: Classes are not cancelled because of Christmas or Easter; they’re never scheduled on those days. The whole museum is closed on both Christmas and Christmas Eve.

I was annoyed, yet not sure whether I was justified.

It’s not like Yom Kippur is some minor holiday, and Kol Nidre, the evening service that opens the 25-hour fast, a critical part of observing it. My synagogue’s Kol Nidre was scheduled to start at 7 p.m., and the four of us would need to be showered, dressed, fed and watered well before; obviously, pottery would not be possible.

Which is fine. I grew up in a family that attended an Orthodox shul and public schools, which meant we were constantly missing something. I considered it character-building to be virtually the only student missing two days for Shavuot, a holiday most of my Jewish classmates had never heard of; four for Sukkot, Shemini Atzereth and Simchat Torah; and four more over Passover — unless Passover happened to coincide with Easter break, which of course we called “spring break” in a nod to the supposed separation of church and state, but did you ever notice spring break always includes not just Easter Sunday but usually Good Friday, too?

I recall taking a somewhat absurd pride in excelling despite missing all these days, especially in the first weeks of school. I also remember being called out, not by Christian classmates or teachers, but by the secular Jews, who did not see why I needed to skip soccer practice for Shemini Atzeret, a holiday they could hardly pronounce never mind observe.

...I decided to gut-check my pottery outrage with — who else? — my Facebook friends, an admittedly unscientific (and heavily Jewish) universe. The response was fast and fascinating.

One of the first came from a neighbor who is Bosnian, and Muslim. “Imagine being part of a religious minority, and having your holidays ignored,” she wrote, not only by the museum “but, you know, schools and government.” Later, a professor who is from Birmingham, Alabama, and now lives in Beirut, noted: “They’re not closed for Diwali or Mawlid al-Nabi either, much less the nights before.”

Point taken. Seriously.

And then there were fellow Jews, including two friends from childhood, who thought outrage was definitely not appropriate. “I expect that everything is going to go on business as usual and would be surprised if a class were cancelled,” wrote one. Another, who now lives in Israel, noted: “The USA claims separation of church and state, but it’s a Christian country no matter how you look at it. Otherwise, why would Xmas be a federal holiday?”

Indeed, the museum’s explanation was that it “follows the federal-holiday schedule.” For the record, Christmas is the only religious holiday included among the 10 federal holidays in 2019; Christmas Eve is not a federal holiday, and is the only other day besides the 10 our little museum is closed.

...My Facebook friends shared a litany of complaints: soccer games on the first day of Rosh Hashanah despite school having been closed, chess tournaments on Passover, few non-Christmas patterns in the wrapping-paper sale fundraiser. They also had some constructive ideas: one from New York City noted that her kids’ pottery and photography classes were not canceled, but that she’d been offered a makeup session or a pro-rated refund.

That struck me as fair, smart and sensitive, and so I wrote to the head of our museum’s education program, Leah Fox, suggesting such. They could be ecumenical about it: anyone who missed class for any holiday — or any other conflict — could go to one make-up session.

She referred me to the museum school’s Policies and Procedures on Make Up Classes, which, no, I had not read before shelling out the $343 per kid for 10 weeks. “Students missing class by their own choice will not receive a make-up class, refund or credit.”

This did not help the outrage factor. I wrote back saying I found her explanation “disappointing and discriminatory.”

“I think students missing class for religious reasons should be in a different category than ‘by their own choice,’” I pointed out. “I guess it is technically our choice to live in a country that is de facto Christian, but it’s also one that has freedom of religion as a foundational principle.”

As this was unfolding, my husband reminded me that we had had a similar situation with the very same museum barely six months ago, over our then-Friday afternoon pottery class that was on the night of the first Passover Seder — and Good Friday, the start of our school “spring break.” He had done the emailing that time, and first got the same “federal holiday” answer, but after bumping up to Ms. Fox, the education director, won the day — sort of.

Class that Friday was “cancelled due to construction in the Ceramic Studio as well as the holiday and vacation weekend,” Ms. Fox wrote back in April.

So I guess we’re 1 for 2 on the pottery-holiday scoreboard. Or maybe 1.5.

In her last email to me, Ms. Fox noted that accommodating all the Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and “other religious observances” would overwhelm the calendar, and that “in following the federal calendar, we remain open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.” She also said she’d talk to the museum leadership about “how we may accommodate more observances in the future.”

“In the meantime,” Ms. Fox added, “we will change the policy language related to personal choice.”

That felt like a tiny victory I could take with me — and my kids — to Kol Nidre.

[Read Jodi Rudoren’s full piece at Forward]

[arcticdementor]

Can you believe ...?

Perhaps no question has been repeated more times in reaction to more events this year than that one.

The most recent major outrage in the Jewish community, now several news cycles behind us, came on the Shabbat before Yom Kippur—the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—when many American Jews seemed dumbfounded by what was to me predictable news: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, progressive superstar, had pulled out of an event honoring Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated because of his efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. Rabin was, as Bill Clinton said at his funeral, “a martyr for his nation’s peace.”

…

But it wasn’t AOC who was mixed up. The savvy politician had read the room and was sending a clear signal about who belongs in the new progressive coalition and who does not. The confusion—and there seems to be a good deal of it these days—is among American Jews who think that by submitting to ever-changing loyalty tests they can somehow maintain the old status quo and their place inside of it.

Did you see that the Ethical Culture Fieldston School hosted a speaker that equated Israelis with Nazis? Did you know that Brearley is now asking families to write a statement demonstrating their commitment to “anti-racism”? Did you see that Chelsea Handler tweeted a clip of Louis Farrakhan? Did you see that protesters tagged a synagogue in Kenosha with “Free Palestine” graffiti? Did you hear about the march in D.C. where they chanted “Israel, we know you, you murder children too”? Did you hear that the Biden campaign apologized to Linda Sarsour after initially disavowing her? Did you see that Twitter suspended Bret Weinstein’s civic organization but still allows the Iranian ayatollah to openly promote genocide of the Jewish people? Did you see that Mayor Bill de Blasio scapegoated “the Jewish community” for the spread of COVID in New York, while defending mass protests on the grounds that this is a “historic moment of change”?

Listen, it’s been a hell of a year. We all have a lot going on, much of it unnerving and some of it dire. Moreover, many of these stories only surface on places like Twitter; they don’t make it into the pages of The New York Times or your friends’ Facebook feeds, which is where most Americans get their news these days. Reporters don’t cover these stories adequately, contextualizing them, telling readers which ones are true and which ones aren’t, which ones matter and which ones don't.

So it makes sense that many smart, well-intentioned people are confused. Or rather: Looking for someone to explain why an emerging movement that purports to advance the ideals they have always supported—fairness, justice, righting historical wrongs—feels like it is doing the opposite.

…

To understand the enormity of the change we are now living through, take a moment to understand America as the overwhelming majority of its Jews believed it was—and perhaps as we always assumed it would be.

It was liberal.

Not liberal in the narrow, partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law—and equality under that law—is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy.

The liberal worldview was one that recognized that there were things—indeed, the most important things—in life that were located outside of the realm of politics: friendships, art, music, family, love. This was a world in which Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be close friends. Because, as Scalia once said, some things are more important than votes.

Crucially, this liberalism relied on the view that the Enlightenment tools of reason and the scientific method might have been designed by dead white guys, but they belonged to everyone, and they were the best tools for human progress that have ever been devised.

Racism was evil because it contradicted the foundations of this worldview, since it judged people not based on the content of their character, but on the color of their skin. And while America’s founders were guilty of undeniable hypocrisy, their own moral failings did not invalidate their transformational project. The founding documents were not evil to the core but “magnificent,” as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, because they were “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” In other words: The founders themselves planted the seeds of slavery’s destruction. And our second founding fathers—abolitionists like Frederick Douglass—made it so. America would never be perfect, but we could always strive toward building a more perfect union.

I didn’t even know that this worldview had a name because it was baked into everything I came into contact with—my parents’ worldviews, the schools they sent me to, the synagogues we attended, the magazines and newspapers we read, and so on.

…

No longer. American liberalism is under siege. There is a new ideology vying to replace it.

No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology”—as in, the successor to liberalism.

…

The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game—due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself—must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with—designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power.

…

Critical race theory says there is no such thing as neutrality, not even in the law, which is why the very notion of colorblindness—the Kingian dream of judging people not based on the color of their skin but by the content of their character—must itself be deemed racist. Racism is no longer about individual discrimination. It is about systems that allow for disparate outcomes among racial groups. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, then the course must have been flawed and should be dismantled.

…

In fact, any feature of human existence that creates disparity of outcomes must be eradicated: The nuclear family, politeness, even rationality itself can be defined as inherently racist or evidence of white supremacy, as a Smithsonian institution suggested this summer. The KIPP charter schools recently eliminated the phrase “work hard” from its famous motto “Work Hard. Be Nice.” because the idea of working hard “supports the illusion of meritocracy.” Denise Young Smith, one of the first Black people to reach Apple’s executive team, left her job in the wake of asserting that skin color wasn’t the only legitimate marker of diversity—the victim of a “diversity culture” that, as the writer Zaid Jilani has noted, is spreading “across the entire corporate world and is enforced by a highly educated activist class.”

The most powerful exponent of this worldview is Ibram X. Kendi. His book “How to Be an Antiracist” is on the top of every bestseller list; his photograph graces GQ; he is on Time’s most influential people of the year; and his outfit at Boston University was recently awarded $10 million from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

…

And just in case moral suasion is ineffective, Kendi has backup: Use the power of the federal government to make it so. “To fix the original sin of racism,” he wrote in Politico, “Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals [sic]: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.” To back up the amendment, he proposes a Department of Anti-Racism. This department would have the power to investigate not just local governments but private businesses and would punish those “who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” Imagine how such a department would view a Jewish day school, which suggests that the Jews are God’s chosen people, let alone one that teaches Zionism.

Kendi—who, it should be noted, now holds Elie Wiesel’s old chair at Boston University—believes that “to be antiracist is to see all cultures in their differences as on the same level, as equals.” He writes: “When we see cultural difference we are seeing cultural difference—nothing more, nothing less.” It’s hard to imagine that anyone could believe that cultures that condone honor killings of unchaste young women are “nothing more, nothing less” than culturally different from our own. But whether he believes it or not, it’s obvious that embracing such relativism is a highly effective tool for ascension and seizing power.

It should go without saying that, for Jews, an ideology that contends that there are no meaningful differences between cultures is not simply ridiculous—we have an obviously distinct history, tradition and religion that has been the source of both enormous tragedy as well as boundless gifts—but is also, as history has shown, lethal.

By simply existing as ourselves, Jews undermine the vision of a world without difference. And so the things about us that make us different must be demonized, so that they can be erased or destroyed: Zionism is refashioned as colonialism; government officials justify the murder of innocent Jews in Jersey City; Jewish businesses can be looted because Jews “are the face of capital.” Jews are flattened into “white people,” our living history obliterated, so that someone with a straight face can suggest that the Holocaust was merely “white on white crime.”

This is no longer a fringe view. As the philosopher Peter Boghossian has noted: “This ideology is the dominant moral orthodoxy in our universities, and has seeped out and spread to every facet of American life— publishing houses, tech, arts, theater, newspapers, media,” and, increasingly, corporations. It has not grabbed power by dictates from above, but by seizing the means of sense-making from below.

Over the past few decades and with increasing velocity over the last several years, a determined young cohort has captured nearly all of the institutions that produce American cultural and intellectual life. Rather than the institutions shaping them, they have reshaped the institutions. You don’t need the majority inside an institution to espouse these views. You only need them to remain silent, cowed by a fearless and zealous minority who can smear them as racists if they dare disagree.

It is why California attempted to pass an ethnic studies curriculum whose only mention of Jews was to explain how they, along with Irish immigrants, were invited into whiteness.

It is why those who claim to care about diversity and inclusion don’t seem to care about the deep-seated racism against Asian Americans at schools like Harvard.

It is why a young Jewish woman named Rose Ritch was recently run out of the USC student government. Ms. Ritch stood accused of complicity in racism because, following the Soviet lie, to be a Zionist is to be nothing less than a racist. Her fellow students waged a campaign to hound her out of her position: “Impeach her Zionist ass,” they insisted.

It is why the Democratic Socialists of America, the emerging power center of the Democratic Party in New York, sent a questionnaire to New York City Council candidates that included a pledge not to travel to Israel.

It is why Tamika Mallory, an outspoken fan of Louis Farrakhan, gets the glamour treatment in a photoshoot for Vogue.

And this is why AOC, the standard bearer of America’s new left, didn’t think Yitzhak Rabin was worth the political capital, but goes out of her way, a few days later, to praise the Black Panthers. She is the harbinger of a political reality in which Jews will have little power.

It does not matter how progressive you are, how vegan or how gay, how much you want universal health care and pre-K and to end the drug war. To believe in the justness of the existence of the Jewish state—to believe in Jewish particularism at all—is to make yourself an enemy of this movement.

…

If you’re nearing the end of the essay wondering why this hasn’t been explained to you before, the answer is because, yet again, we find ourselves in another moment in Jewish history at a time of great need and urgency with communal leadership who, with rare exception, will not address the danger.

I understand why people have been blind to this. Life has been good—exceedingly good—for American Jews for half a century. Many older communal leaders seem to lack the moral imagination to see this threat. It’s also hard for anyone to hear the words: They’re just not that into you.

So when I try to discuss this with many Jews in leadership positions, what I face is either boomer-esque entitlement—a sense that the way the world worked for them must be the way it will always work—or outright resistance. Oh please, wokeness isn’t important anywhere but in silly Twitter microclimates. When you explain that no, in fact, this ideology has taken over universities, publishing houses, the media, museums and is now making quick work of corporate America, you hit another roadblock: Isn’t this just righting some historical injustices? What could go wrong? You then have to explain what could go wrong—what is already going wrong—is that it is ruining the lives of regular, good people, and the more institutions and companies fall prey to it, the more lives it will ruin.

…

Last month, I participated in a Zoom event attended by several major Jewish philanthropists. After briefly talking about my experience at The New York Times, I noted that if they wanted to understand what happened to me, they needed to appreciate the power of that new, still-nameless creed that has hijacked the paper and so many other institutions essential to American life. I’ve been thinking about what happened next ever since.

One of the funders on the call launched into me, explaining that Ibram X. Kendi’s work was vital, and portrayed me as retrograde and uncool for opposing the ideology du jour. Because this person is prominent and powerful enough to send signals that others in the Jewish world follow, the comments managed to both sideline me and stun almost everyone else into silence.

These people may be the most enraging: those with the financial security to oppose this ideology and demur, so desperate to be seen as hip; for their children to keep their spots at the right prep schools; so that they can be seated at the right tables at the right benefits; so that they are honored at Brown or Harvard; so that business does well enough that they can renovate their house in Aspen or East Hampton. Desperate to remain in good odor with the right people, they are willing to close their eyes to what is coming for the rest of us.

Young Jews who grasp the scope of this problem and want to fight it thus find themselves up against two fronts: their ideological enemies and their own communal leadership. But it is among this group—people with no social or political capital to hoard, some of them not even out of college—that I find our community’s seers. The dynamic reminds me of the one Theodor Herzl faced: The communal establishment of his time was deeply opposed to his Zionist project. It was the poorer, younger Jews—especially those from Russia—who first saw the necessity of Zionism’s lifesaving vision.

Funders and communal leaders who are falling over themselves to make alliances with fashionable activists and ideas enjoy a decadent indulgence that these young proud Jews cannot afford. They live far from the violence that affects Jews in places like Crown Heights and Borough Park. If things go south in one city, they can take refuge in a second home. It may be cost-free for the wealthy to flirt with an ideology that suggests abolishing the police or the nuclear family or capitalism. But for most Jews and most Americans, losing those ideas comes with a heavy price.

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on Powers of X #2

We’re working on a deadline here, so let’s get to it!

Once Again, We Return...to Octopusheim (X^0):

In this section, Charles and Moira go to Octopusheim to share what they’ve learned with Magneto in order to gain his support for their whole mutant unity masterplan. 

Thanks to the timeline infographic from last issue, we know exactly when this particular meeting at Octopusheim is happening - it’s Year 43, four years before the “Moira/Xavier/Magneto schism,” six years before the Genoshan genocide, and nine years before the present day. This timing is quite interesting, because it suggests a high degree of patience on their part. After all, it’s been twenty six years since Moira first introduced herself(herselves?) to Charles, which is a lot of time to not make moves. On the other hand, having a head start didn’t help in earlier lives, so there may be some other rationale. 

There’s a really interesting echoing of Giant-Sized X-Men #1, with Xavier explicitly in the role of recruiter once again (we’ll see other pitches of his throughout the rest of HoX/PoX). The difference is that rather than relying on his normal posture of benevolent, almost wizardly, superior knowledge, Charles is using an admission of mutual fault to put them on an even level, which is necessary to gain Magneto’s trust for the psychic link to Moira. 

Incidentally, when it comes to character voice, Hickman does an impressive job of nailing not just Magneto but the specific era of Magneto when Chris Claremont re-invented him as the Miltonian anti-villain holding the world to ransom in the name of enlightened despotism and mutant self-protection. “Who determines waht is truly good and truly evil?...I do. I decide.” is particularly well-observed, right down to his ironically Nietzschean self-conception. 

At the same time, Moira’s query is clearly meant to shift the terms of discussion from the scientific (”you’re a specialist, specializing in the behavior of mutants”) to the religious. As her warning that “my truth is profound and life changing. It’s primal...” suggests, Moira is testifying in the Protestant sense of the word. 

What follows is a series of psychic images of failure that bring the Satanically-proud Magneto to his knees, but remain really ambiguous: his death by Sentinel could be from pretty much any life other than 9, although 4 or 5 seem most likely;  given his costume, the image of him in chains seems to be from the Trial of Magneto, which could be in Life 4 or 10; the central image of him with furious glowing eyes could be generic or perhaps a reference to the couple times he’s used artifical power-boosters; the image of him in a SHIELD tank being observed by Nick Fury is unclear; and him fighting the Shadow King is particularly singular, since the Shadow King has yet to show up in the narrative. Interestingly, we don’t see Moira showing him his death at Apocalypse’s hands in Life 9. 

For his own part, Xavier is preaching a much more secular argument: mutant unity in order to not merely survive but thrive, which is very Adam Smithian. I’m not the expert that Nir Revel is when it comes to drawing parallels between Israeli history and HoX/PoX, but even with the one course I’ve taken in Israeli history, I could see the parallel between the bargain that Magneto strikes with Xavier (”I won’t acquiesce to sympathy or doubt...I won’t give an inch, I will check you at every moment of weakness”) reads a lot like the compromises made at the founding of the State of Israel between the leaders of the various political parties.

Then again, I think the allegory works for political leaders at the time of the founding of any number of nation-states, which is one of the things that makes the business of nation-building so very difficult. At every step, there are innumerable obstacles of the moment, yet the decisions made on how to overcome them will always have unforeseeable long-term consequences. Something to keep one’s eye on for the future.

Does It Need Doing? (X^1):

In a direct follow-up from Powers of X #1 and House of X #1, Cyclops gets briefed on the Mother Mold/Nimrod mission. Incidentally, I think this segment is a great counter-example to the somewhat overblown statements from some in the fandom that all of these characters are mindless pod-people who are acting out of character; throughout this briefing, Scott is consistently snarky in a very dry way that feels very in character to me.

Magneto’s pointed reference to Operation Paperclip with regards to Orchis I think further emphasizes an ongoing theme that Hickman’s working on with regards to nation-states, nation-building, and nationalism: no nation is free from sin. Even after fighting “the good war” against fascism, the U.S recruited Nazi scientists to give it a technological edge in the Cold War for the same stated reasons of necessity that drive both Krakoan and Orchis policy.

Following on from House of X #2, not only are humans a mere road-bump compared to Sentinels, but even Mother Mold itself is viewed as a secondary problem compared to the hostile AI singularity that is Nimrod. 

And further showing how everything links to everything, this mission happens because of the information that Moira brought back from Life 9/X^2. More on this in a bit.

Machines Are Pure Information (X^2):

Speaking of which, we shift to another briefing on Krakoa, one life and a hundred years distant, in which Rasputin and Cardinal brief Apocalypse about the fruits of their own partially-successful clandestine mission.

While Apocalypse is very Apocalypsy in this segment, what with the idea that civilization is the fruit of war and that he’d happily sacrifice Rasputin and Cardinal both for the information he’s received, it is really interesting to see him talk about the powers and perils of information and the dangers of analysis paralysis; this last topic is particularly important as the series continues to explore the nature of these vast, universe-spanning consciousnesses. More on this in a bit.

Speaking of which, we see Nimrod the Lesser getting really distracted by trying to figure out what the mutants were up to, something that will arguably be his downfall. Incidentally, Nimrod’s casual execution of two humans for mouthing off to him not only suggests the lie at the heart of the Man-Machine Supremacy, but also that whatever kind of A.I he might be, he absolutely did not pass the “Heller-Faust line,” because he’s clearly a sociopath who lashes out violently due to emotional impulse. 

 Going back to Asteroid K, we go back to a discussion of how the machines’ problem is that they “archive every moment of everything,” which makes it impossible for them or anyone else to actually make use of the data. If we apply the same problem to the Phalanx and the other universe-spanning consciousnesses, which for all their vaunted intelligences seem to restrict themselves to consumption of resources and calculation of data without any higher purpose, I’m left wondering whether these singularities are actually idiot gods capering at the heart of the universe.

By contrast, the mutant resistance find their purpose in transcending the bare necessities of survival in the name of transcendant meaning. 

Nimbus Infographic:

This infographic, read together with the one that ends the issue, is where we really start to see what X^3 is about, namely Hickman’s thinking on technological/mechanical transhumanism.

To begin with, we learn that the people I’ve been referring to as blutants describe themselves as “post-human,” which suggests that the “human-machine-mutant war” ultimately ended in some sort of synthesis between mutant and machine. Not only do the post-humans have “seer-selves,” but we see that Nimbus started as the “copying - and integration - of their minds into a single thinking machine.”

Moving on, it’s interesting to note that the language of X^3 is entirely focused on terms of assimilation between cultures - will it take place as a consensual “suitor-alliance” or forceful consumption of the lesser by the greater? Is there a difference, when we’re talking about the “ascension” of copied minds?

It’s not a good sign that Nimbus’ interaction with Niburu is all about using “force...to inject” a planet with consciousness, or that the Worldmind decides to take a detour to “consume multiple Saturinian and Jovian moons ino order to increase its...intellect.” Over and over again, intellect and consumption go hand in hand, but we never see intellect actually getting used for anything meaningful (transcendant or otherwise).

Universal Predators (X^3):

Speaking of which, we see in the next section that the whole project of the post-human Outreach project is to negotiate the terms of ascension so that their culture is “preserved” rather than “mined,” in a context in which civilizations interact seemingly only in terms of predator and prey.

It’s particularly ominous that the Phalanx’s opening words are that they “ate your worldmind,” in a process that involves a lost struggle for “sovereignty” - a term that should ring particularly ominously given Krakoa’s struggle to be recognized as a sovereign nation-state.

That the post-humans’ goal is ascension is likewise troubling, because of how closely it tracks the self-abnegating human religion of X^2 (which we’ll see in the next issue) and suggests that the post-humans have abandoned the biological transhumanism of the X^2 mutant resistance.

Types of Societies Infographic:

This infographic reads very differently in the wake of Powers of X #5, suggesting a trans-universe taxonomy of intelligences, with each rung on the ladder thinking it’s the biggest and baddest out there, only to become fodder for the next higher up.

As people have noted, Xavier’s backup of mutant minds through Cerebro potentially puts Krakoa on the ladder, since they’re potentially far above the SI:1 (Machine) level if they ever combine the backups.

At the same time, we’ll see in future issues a number of biomachines - the eight-person long-distance communications system we see in Powers of X , the Five-person (or six-person, given the integral role that Xavier/Cerebro plays) resurrection system, the six-person Krakoan systems (Interface, Transit/Monitoring, Defense/Observation, Secondary/External, Overwatch/Data Analysis), and possibly the five-part Cerebro system - that would seem to be a parallel to the SI:10 (HIve) level of machine consciousness.

Similarly, Cerebro’s database of mutant minds (or the population of Krakoa) could potentially go straight up the chain from Intelligence (SI:100-10,000) to Phalanx (SI:1,000,000)...if the database was turned into a consciousness of its own following the uncommon Kree model, although that would seem to run counter to Krakoan taboos.

Speaking of my skepticism about the intellect of these machine consciousnesses, the deception at the heart of the Technarch (SI:10,000) and Phalanx relationship suggests that, on a universe-wide scale, the Technarchs seem to be rather mindless drones whose only purpose is providing resources to their masters.

One thing that’s slightly odd about Hickman’s description of the Worldmind (SI:100,000) is that, based on its descriptions here, it really should be a Type I Kardashev civilization rather than a Type II, since the line between I and II is planetary vs. solar system-wide energy usage/control.

A final note on the ambiguity of the suitor-alliance vs. consumption relationship - while the post-humans view Ascension as an alternative, this infographic describes Ascension as “consuming” for the purpose of “adding to its intelligence needs.” Either way, you’re just food for thought.

[schraubd]

I'm Very Tired and Cranky: S.1/BDS Edition

I didn't want to write this. I really really didn't. I've been swamped the past few days dealing with Rep. Rashida Tlaib telling people who backed an anti-BDS law that "they forgot which country they represent", then explaining why that's an antisemitic dual loyalty trope even when applied to non-Jews like Marco Rubio, then excoriating the AJC for literally making its own dual loyalty accusation against Tlaib as some sort of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I racist retort to Tlaib's tweet, and finally just throwing up my hands and saying we should probably just avoid tropes of "loyalty" and whatnot in this entire discourse, because none of y'all can be trusted. And because this is the internet and this involves Jews and antisemitism and Israel and Palestine, I was doing all this while dodging a surrounding milieu of commentary that was as dumb as you could possibly imagine. In particular: Nobody involved in this controversy seems to have the foggiest understanding of what Senator Rubio's bill (designated "S.1") is even doing. When they're not engaged in outlandish hyperbole about it "banning criticism of Israel", they're outright mistaking it for completely different bills about BDS. And to the extent their arguments do touch on something that is within striking distance of an actual public controversy, they're almost universally awful. That's right: this is a rant post. Feel free to skip it. I'm venting. Longtime observers of "anti-BDS" laws may recognize that there are two very different "versions" of these laws which have been the subject of legal controversy recently. One is the federal "Israel Anti-Boycott Act", or IABA. This would (for the most part) update the Export Administration Act's preexisting ban on boycotting Israel as part of an effort to comply with a boycott demand by a foreign country to also include international governmental organizations (i.e., the EU and UN). I wrote critically about that proposed law here. Notably, neither the current law nor the IABA would prohibit, penalize, or restrict individuals or companies from boycotting Israel based on their own conscientious ideological choice -- it only covers boycotts which are done at the behest of a foreign power. The second are state-level laws which generally prohibit the state from investing in or contracting with entities which, themselves, boycott Israel. Such laws include the recently struck down Kansas and Arizona laws, as well as the Texas law that was recently challenged by a speech pathologist who could not (she maintains) renew her contract with a local school district because she boycotts Israel. These laws do target "conscientious" boycott decisions -- not by prohibiting the choice, but by declaring that the government won't contract with bodies that make that choice. I've written critically about these laws here and here. So which of these categories does Senator Rubio's S.1 fall into? Neither. His bill -- or rather, Title IV of his bill (the other three titles are defense authorizations for Israel and Jordan, and tightened sanctions on Syria) -- does one thin: it states that state anti-BDS laws (of the second-type, above) are not preempted by federal law. If that sounds technical, it is. Rubio's law doesn't itself impose any penalty or restriction on persons engaging in BDS. All it says is that if a state passes a law limiting its own investment or contracting to entities which disavow BDS, such a law wouldn't be deemed to conflict with any federal statute (preemption hasn't been a major feature of debates over BDS bills, but presumably Rubio is worried about Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council). If no states pass these laws, then Rubio's bill does nothing. If a state does pass a law, Rubio's bill still doesn't shield the state from having to defend its enactment against a First Amendment challenge. The state laws which Rubio's bill would declare non-preempted either are constitutional or they're not, but that question is utterly non-germane to Rubio's bill. And likewise, the validity of these state laws is entirely separate from the IABA and whether it is a wise or permissible alteration to the existing anti-boycott framework of the Export Administration Act -- Rubio's bill doesn't even touch on that subject. And even if we move to the subject of the state laws and their constitutionality -- boy, are we ever getting a blast of Twitter School of Law. On the anti-side: There's the basic version that says these laws "allow punishment for Americans who protest Israel", which, no they don't -- they just hold that the state won't invest or contract with you if you boycott Israel. Why is it the case that every single intervention in these debates that at all requires any adjustment in how one registers one's objections to Israeli policy is perceived as tantamount to banning discussion outright? Don't answer that -- I know exactly why. Then you get the more advanced play that the state can't claim its own ideological right to "boycott the boycotters" because "the Constitution is designed to protect American citizens from the government, and not the other way around", which sounds great until you think about it for a quarter-second and realize how strange it would be to apply to the government in its capacity as an employer and contractor, where it repeatedly and necessarily will be making non-viewpoint neutral choices on a daily basis. First Amendment law has recognized this since at least Pickering v. Board of Education:

[I]t cannot be gainsaid that the State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.

This doesn't mean that the state can impose any condition it wants on the speech of its employees -- if the phrase "arrive a balance" wasn't a dead giveaway, the sentence immediately prior to that passage in Pickering--"[T]he theory that public employment which may be denied altogether may be subjected to any conditions, regardless of how unreasonable, has been uniformly rejected"--is clear enough. But there is a balancing test, and it should be obvious that there are absolutely scenarios where the government can and should limit its contracting decisions (ex: the state can't ban racist speech, but it absolutely can fire a police officer who engages in racist speech, because the state has a strong interest as an employer to not let its employees talk that way). Moving to the "pro" side, first you have to hack through article after article talking about the IABA and how it is only a minor update to the EAA and har-de-har don't Sanders and Tlaib realize we've had a law like this for years -- you're talking about a different bill! Then you get the folks who say "well, these are just anti-discrimination laws" and ask what your position was on Masterpiece Cakeshop. The problem with that argument (other than the obvious "wait -- what was Rubio's position on Masterpiece Cakeshop?") is that these laws -- despite my advice -- are not being written as anti-discrimination laws. Indeed, Rubio's bill -- which only applies to boycotts which are taken "for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the Government of Israel" -- wouldn't even apply to a straightforward discrimination case where someone who refused to transact with an Israeli national simply because "I hate Israelis." If these are anti-discrimination provisions, then just write them that way: "we won't contract with any party which refuses to stipulate that they don't discriminate on basis of [inter alia] national origin." They're not written that way in part because these laws are, by design, meant to encompass activity that is not in of itself discriminatory (ex: the genuinely "nonpartisan" boycotter who refuses to do business with any party that she deems violates human rights -- Israel included as one of many). Those who cite Rumsfeld v. FAIR (upholding a federal law requiring universities which accept federal money to allow military recruiters equal access to campus facilities) are at least in the right ballpark -- it is an "unconstitutional conditions" case -- but it hardly disposes of the controversy here. FAIR relied heavily on the notion that the decision to exclude recruiters from campus is not itself inherently "expressive" (I'd also note that the government's interest in insuring its own agents have access to a facility they are, in part, funding seems especially strong and isn't present in the anti-BDS law cases). But a boycott is much more inherently expressive, and since -- unlike the law in FAIR (and again, against my recommendations) -- the state laws are explicit that they are quite purposefully targeting the expressive aspects of the boycott, not the conduct per se (again: Rubio's bill doesn't even cover a generic refusal to do business with Israelis) -- it sits on far less stable footing. All of which is to say: the law here is not fully settled and is complex, and we could stand for a much more careful conversation about how government speech versus individual liberty versus non-discrimination intersect in cases like these. But we're not having it, and nobody wants to have it. And I'm just really tired, all of the sudden. via The Debate Link http://bit.ly/2FnyoRA

[massielandnetwork]

Important Economic Trends During Anarchy

2021 – Let the Games Begin

15. A Christian Secession – Distortions are Bubbling

Did you enjoy “Happy Birthing Person Day”? I gave the Love of My Life a bouquet of her favorite flowers. It would have been interesting to visit a card shop and see how many Birthing Person Day versus Mother’s Day cards were on the racks. “Birthing Person” is probably only useful as a tool to identify idiots like the Demented Marxists (DMs) in control of our Congress.

Perhaps Melinda Gates should be the U. S. Attorney General. She is the only person that has displayed any moral backbone of those connected with Jeffrey Epstein and his pedophilia gang. Epstein constantly bubbles to the surface like methane gas from a land fill and yet no one has been prosecuted for the crimes committed. At least Melinda is publicly cleaning Billy’s plow. I wonder what she would do with Hunter’s laptop?

Meanwhile the Keystone Kops (aka FBI and Department of Justice) are fully committed to prosecuting Americans that were upset about election fraud in DC on January 6 while giving free rides to Antifa that destroyed Billions of Dollars of property in numerous USA cities. They have Hunter Biden’s laptop and all of Epstein’s video/data along with his female accomplice but are unable identify any laws broken? Do the DOJ/FBI/DM’s get together for MOVIE NIGHT with Biden’s and Epstein’s libraries? Who do you think is now collecting the blackmail payments?

Gas lines, a middle east war (did you see the videos of Israel’s Iron Dome defending against 130 rockets form Hama?), rising inflation– this does feel familiar. The price of corn is up 120%, soybeans are up 60% and wheat is up 40% over last year so food prices are going to soar. The “D Team” is in charge (Democrats, aka Demented Marxists). I have yet to identify a D Team member that has accomplished anything in real life. Build Back Better must mean Trash First.

In a bright spot, Martha’s Vineyard has voted in favor of a huge windmill farm thus marking the first time The Elites have abused themselves. Those Chinese made windmills are 900 feet tall (the equivalent of a 90-story building), noisy, plus there are reports of serious vibrations. Not to mention ugly like a solar farm. This should be fun to watch. If you own property there, sell.

Pre-Wuhan Virus, the American economy was humming. Economic growth was the strongest in decades, unemployment was the lowest in decades, and businesses were growing but running with lean inventories practicing “Just in Time” supply pipeline management. With the abrupt shutdown, toilet paper became scarce because folks overreacted buying multiple years’ worth of toilet paper. The toilet paper manufacturers went into overtime producing the maximum supply trying to catch up with demand. Today, toilet paper is in such surplus that “Free Toilet Paper” is a giveaway inducement for other goods. That was an artificial distortion of the market where the short-term demand for toilet paper exceeded supply.

The same dynamic is in play in steel, OSB board, drywall, computer chips, even labor, in fact almost everywhere. Our economy is experiencing distortions so prices are rising to balance supply with demand. Many of the shortages are artificially created by our DM government paying folks NOT to work thus depriving business of the labor they need to expand their production. The DMs in control of Congress, the White House, and the various government agencies seem amazed that if you pay people not to work, they do not work. Incompetence.

Signs advertising for workers are everywhere yet unemployment is increasing. Actually, the number of folks on the government dole is increasing. Government is not the answer to the problem, IT IS THE PROBLEM. The only solution is less government.

Meanwhile, everything costs significantly more than one year ago. The Fed says it is temporary because as workers return to their jobs, more productivity will come online and prices will decline. Theoretically, that is correct but prices tend to be “Sticky” going down. Furthermore, that analysis does not take into account the increased cost of energy, materials, etc.

The fact … this is the front edge of serious inflation. We have discussed for some time that the alternatives were rapid economic growth (Trump’s agenda) or devaluation/inflation (Biden and his fellow DM’s agenda). Trump’s agenda would have created wealth, the DM’s agenda brings only pain. Those of us that lived through the Stagflation of the late 1970’s have seen this nasty combination before when Jimmy Carter was President. Cinch up your saddle, this will be ugly.

Here are some critical economic events.

1. U. S. Steel canceled their planned $1.5 Billion investment in a new manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania. They join Ford in canceling Billion Dollar investments in manufacturing here in the US. Biden’s investment partner, China, wins again. Are you tired of losing yet?

2. Ransomware attacks are up because the wealth of the USA makes us particularly great target. But Biden and his fellow DMs have the answer just like about the crisis at our southern border? “Crisis? I do not see a crisis.” Dementia has a benefit.

3. Green energy is not economically viable without enormous government (taxpayer) support which is a red flag to any thinking person. The current gas shortages are caused by ransomware but is a foretaste of government by Green Energy illusionists/ DMs.

Keep watching the activity about the fraudulent election last November.

1. Michigan – The Antrim County investigation results are in and they prove massive fraud. The bulldog attorney that is pursuing that investigation despite DM threats has filed with a court seeing to EXPAND the audit. Previously the Michigan Supreme Court previously ruled that the Michigan Secretary of State exceeded her authority when she approved a variety of changes to the state’s election laws. Was the “certified” election in Michigan a fraud? YES.

2. The Arizona legislature authorized recount of 2.1 Million votes in Maricopa County, Arizona is rolling despite the DMs attempt to prevent it. I have read that the Department of Justice has 100 attorneys assigned to shut down the audit. Do you find it interesting that the DM’s do not want the election audited?

3. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg gave $400 Million to localities for the election so long as his group could run those elections. Facebook needs regulation.

4. Lawsuits have been filed and counter filed by Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell, and Dominion (the voting machine company). Stay tuned, much more to come.

121 days into the DMs’ coup (the longest four months EVER), I am already tired of losing and exhausted with self-important politicians and bureaucrats who in the real world would be recognized as idiots. Here are some recent events that will impact our economic future:

1. The Fed says they are going to continue their Quantitative Easing (QE) or another 2+ years. The stock market has realized that inflation is here. The Fed knows any reduction in QE will mean higher interest rates. Higher interest rates mean a slower real estate market and ultimately lower prices for real estate and financial assets.

2. It was reported on Wednesday that the annual inflation rate for April was 4.2%. As the rate of inflation continues to increase, the financial markets will raise interest rates faster than The Fed anticipates or force The Fed to greatly expand their QE. Watch the 10-year Treasury. Without QE, interest rates would be higher today. Various sources estimate that by the end of 2021 the 10-year Treasury will be 2.5% to 3.0% and mortgage rates will increase to 4.0% to 4.5%. Those may be low.

3. When Bubbles burst, shortage becomes surplus overnight. Unsustainable things continue until that unpredictable moment when they stop. In a financial crisis “Cash is King”. Get prepared.

A great piece of land remains The Best investment long term unless the DMs get us to full-fledged Marxism. Capitalism builds wealth, Marxism/Socialism consumes it in self destruction. Pray for a return to honest elections in the USA. God is in control. Men make plans, but God ALWAYS wins.

“Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.”

(1 Peter 2:12) New Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press)

Stay healthy,

Ned

May 12, 2021

Copyright Massie Land Network. All rights Reserved.

[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCILLE BALL IS ON THE WARPATH

January 15, 1973

By ELAINE SHEPARD, HOLLYWOOD (WNS) 

Faint-hearted TV and film executives had better start circling the wagons. Lucille Ball is on the warpath. 

Lucy never does anything by halves, and is feisty enough to take on the whole show business establishment. She has become one of the television industry's richest, most influential leaders, and she has a very personal set of moral weights and measures. 

"A lot of dirty old men have been on a ragged, jagged toot of making money and pandering to an audience's basest instincts. As soon as they are not making money which is happening already those pictures will sit in the vault.” 

"I know my audience is still out there so I'm not worried. But it's a terrible thing as a mother or father to try to shape your children morally and in every other way and have it torn down in one short season of movie-going. Because once they are 15 and a certain height they are allowed in to the theatres and everything they were taught to believe in is ripped apart. All this permissiveness has put tremendous responsibility on young people's shoulders. At least you and I had guidelines. Now they are not even allowed a conscience that tells them right from wrong." 

Tacky pictures are something to be avoided like drafts and bad cooking, says Lucy. "At home, I've stopped many movies in the middle and sent guests and projectionists home.” 

"Violence has gone beyond the bounds of tolerance. Today's films leave the young people in a spiritual wasteland. No direction. Everything is dirty, smelly, icky, lousy. They should have something to hope for, to dream about. We need a little fantasy. Not just sexual fantasies. We give them no hope any place." 

Lucy was one of the first to demolish forever the cliché that beauty and brains are incompatible. Her energy is atomic. Smoking cigarettes at a cancerous rate, she was on the phone arranging last-minute details for her 80-year-old carrot - topped mother, Dede, to go fishing in Colorado. "My condominium is at 9,800 feet. You should see Dede going down the mountain with the kids on a belly-whacker at 40 miles an hour." 

Tall and handsome Gary Morton says his 11-year alliance with Lucille is "the most wonderful thing that ever happened to him." It is a marriage that hums. You can sense the little waves of approval and the love arrows going back and forth. He gave Lucy a white juiced-up golf cart with her name on the door to carry her around the Universal Studios lot. Gary is executive producer of "Here's Lucy." This season represents his wife's 22nd year as a major CBS Television Network star. 

With every rung of the theatrical ladder greased and the most slippery one at the top, Lucille keeps her watchful big blue eyes on 21-year-old daughter Lucie, a costar on the program. "She is quite serious about her career." 

Lucie and her brother Desi IV (20 this month) have been raised with every advantage that wealth and love could provide. "Their father (Desi Arnaz III) is proud of them. He has a Moroccan palace in Baja. The kids, including Liza Minelli, visit them there. My son loves Liza very much and so do we. I knew her before I knew my own children. Our family is so close now it hurts. Very close. So close that the telephone bills from Desi's movie locations in Japan and Israel are astronomical." 

She has no plans to retire. "I don't know what I'm going to do from one minute to the next. When it's time to make a decision I make it. I don't feel any need to change the comedy format. Response from the fans indicates it works." 

How did movie standards get twisted? "Some producers have been given so much rope they are hanging themselves. A lot of pornographic stuff is going begging. We have good directors but no big studios with jobs for them. No 'papas' around anymore; nobody to set standards and give direction. Among the exceptions in this town are Disney and Ross Hunter. I say 'thank God' for them."

Former waitress, soda jerk, wholesale garment model and chorus girl, Lucy became the first woman president of a major Hollywood film producing company (Desilu Productions) with an estimated annual gross of $25,000,000. In 1967 she sold her interest in Desilu to Golf & Western Industries and is a substantial shareholder in that financial empire. 

In 1968 she formed Lucille Ball Productions. Headquarters is rented from Universal Studios. "I am happy to be a tenant and not interested in being a big tycoon anymore. We will create new TV programs, specials and movies." 

We didn't discuss Women's Lib. For Lucy is Women's Lib personified. 

She also is Auntie Mame. The movie starts this month, will make a fortune for Warner Bros., and be a coronation for the queen of comedy. 

Monday, January 15, 1973, also saw the premiere of “Lucy and Her Genuine Twimby” (HL S5;E17) guest-starring Robert Cummings. 

On the same date, UPI reported that “Here’s Lucy” would return for a sixth season, marking Ball’s 23rd year on TV. Coincidentally, the following item reports that Lucy’s friend and frequent co-star Mary Wickes would recreated her Broadway and film role in a television version of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” for Hallmark Hall of Fame. 

[January 15, 1973, was also just before production began on the film musical Mame. Joan Crosby reported on the press event.]

It was like the old days of Hollywood. The red carpet was laid at Studio One at The Burbank Studios (nee Warner Brothers) and 200 people showed up for lunch with Lucille Ball and the cast of "Mame," the day before production. 

Lucy made a great entrance in her silver-and-black outfit, with long earrings, cigarette holder to match, close cropped black hair and tightly wound silver turban. If you wonder why Mame couldn't be, like Lucy, a redhead. Lucy says a lot of thought went into the color, which will be used in the early scenes. Before the 20 years of Maine's life are finished she will also be seen as a blonde, redhead and finally, blue-tinted, silver-haired lady. Told that it's hard to get used to her with dark hair, Lucy smiled and said, "I can't get used to me, either." 

Lucy will have about 45 costume changes in the musical, which delights her and should please the ladies. 

Robert Fryer, who is co-producer of "Mame," said they needed an actress for the role who was "chic, humorous, warm and loving," and Lucy mugged her way through that. 

Lucy said she was delighted to do "Mame" because it is "a four-letter word and so is love, so is care and so is hope." She added that so many films today lack these qualities. "Also, they don't give us anything to hum unless you want to come out of the theater humming a manure pile."

Lucy introduced costars Robert Preston, Bea Arthur (who played Vera on Broadway and will recreate it here), Jane Connell, the original Agnes Gooch, and darling Kirby Furlong; who will turn 10 during production. 

Kirby, who is very small for his age, was wearing a tuxedo and director Gene Saks said, "Kirby always dresses that way. He gets up in the morning and jumps into his tux." Kirby laughed. 

Meanwhile, in other papers, Mame’s casting was reported, concentrating on adult Patrick, played by Bruce Davison. The release incorrectly lists Madeline Kahn, who was initially cast as Gooch, but left the production, reportedly due to a conflict with Lucille Ball.