#it would not surprise me to find out israel has long been doing similar still

[a-typical]

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappé (2006)

[ameliarating]

I read through @pumpkinpaix‘s deeply thoughtful post about cultural appropriation and dismissal of Chinese cultural concerns (two related but distinct phenomena) in non-Chinese MDZS/CQL fan-spaces and should-be-obvious-but-painfully-is-not disclaimer: 

When it comes to these things, the voices that should be rising above the rest are the Chinese fans speaking out about what they’ve seen.

I’m only here because I feel I have what to say on this bit here: 

For context, we are referencing two connected instances: the conflict described in these two threads (here and here), and when @/jelenedra tweeted about giving Jewish practices to the Lans. Regarding the latter, we felt that it tread into the territory of cultural erasure, and that it came from a person who had already disrespected diaspora’s work and input.

Context

The Lans have their own religious and cultural practices, rooted both in the cultural history of China and the genre of xianxia. Superimposing a different religious practice onto the Lans amidst other researched, canonical or culturally accurate details felt as if something important of ours was being overwritten for another’s personal satisfaction. Because canon is so intrinsically tied to real cultural, historical, and religious practices, replacing those practices in a canon setting fic feels like erasure. While MDZS is a fantasy novel, the religious practices contained therein are not. This was uncomfortable for many of us, and we wanted to point it out and have it resolved amicably. We were hoping for a discussion or exchange as there are many parallels and points of relation between Chinese and Jewish cultures, but that did not turn out quite as expected.

What happened next felt like a long game of outrage telephone that resulted in a confusion of issues that deflected responsibility, distracted from the origin of the conflict, and swept our concern under the rug.

Specifically, we are concerned about how these two incidents are part of what we feel is a repeated, widespread pattern of the devaluing of Chinese fans’ work and concerns within this fandom. This recent round of discourse is just one of many instances where we have found ourselves in a position of feeling spoken over within a space that is nominally ours. Regardless of what the telephone game was actually about, the way it played out revealed something about how issues are prioritized.

(Big surprise, I’m going to talk about Jewish things and MDZS)

I haven’t read the fic in question, but I have certainly made many posts about Jewishness and the Lans, imagining certain traditional Jewish educational settings and modes of learning and argumentation as superimposed onto the Cloud Recesses. I’ve also written other posts, mostly for me and the three other people out there who would find it funny, imagining different sects as different Jewish sects - or at least, who they have most in common with.

Never was I imagining these characters or worlds to be actually Jewish, but, as people often do in fandom, I was playing around in the spaces, delighting in overlaps I found, out of a deep-seated wish that I could have anything like MDZS or so many of the other fantasy I loved with Jews.

I’m jealous. I’m so jealous. 

Here’s how I was relating to it: 

China is a country of billions with an immense media audience of its own, its own television, movies, books, comics, etc. The only Jewish equivalent could ever be Israel, very tiny, and while there is a lot of good Israeli television, books, etc out there, it doesn’t approach what’s available from China, and certainly none of it has broken through to be a fandom presence of its own, not even in Jewish only or Hebrew speaking spaces. And even when that happens, the creators don’t often draw on Jewish history and myth. (One example I can think of a show that does is Juda, a Jewish vampire show from Israel, but I know exactly one (1) person on tumblr who’s seen it.)

So I was treating MDZS the way I treat American media - as a playground. Since I can’t find Jewish stories, especially in fantasy, I’m going to play around with it in non-Jewish stories.

Here’s how I should have been relating to it:

There are so many people who, like me, have been hungry to find themselves and their stories and their magic in fandom spaces. They have a show that’s made it big. Is it fair to, even playing around in tumblr posts, set so much of that rich cultural context aside in order for me to find room for my own? 

In the U.S., at least, where I am, it’s not the same as doing the same thing with, say, The Lord of the Rings (where I wrote a fic making use of Jewish mourning practices and assigned them to the Beorians) or Harry Potter, because that’s taking a dominant culture which is all I usually ever see and make room for myself. 

In MDZS, especially in the English language fandom where the Chinese cultural context is never dominant and is often shouted over and overlooked, and where there just aren’t many other examples of media that made it big in the fandom, I am only making room for myself by shoving aside something else that barely has any room at all.

In many ways, I became the fan that frustrates me, that writes about Jewish characters celebrating Christmas, rather than the fan that I wanted to be, which gets excited about cultural overlap and similarities. I’m sorry and I apologize.

My first reaction was not to. My first reaction was to say it’s not the same. Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other. But even if that’s less destructive, in some ways it’s more painful, because that’s where we should be able to look to each other for solidarity. (Obviously this is in English language fandom - Chinese fans are not a minority in Chinese language fandoms!)

I do believe that there should be room to make silly posts about the Lans doing things that Jews do, because the Lans do do things that Jews do. When I made an edit where Lan Wangji was responding to Lan Qiren quoting in Hebrew from the Jewish prayerbook rather than the sect rule to distance from evil, I did that because he was saying the exact same thing. It was wonderful to me, that a Lan sect rule could be exactly the same as something I pray every morning.

That’s very different from when I wrote imagining the Lans as Jews which left no more room for the Lans as Chinese Buddhists. It’s those later things I apologize for and what I’ll be careful about in the future.

I do still want to return to something I said just above, however: “Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other.”

I worry, as I wrote in a separate post, about the tendency I see in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist spaces to look at Jewish practices and laws and culture and see it as an example of Western hegemony rather than as a survivor of it. Especially in a post that talks about the Chinese diaspora experience, where the very word diaspora was coined to describe the Jewish scattering across the globe and only much later was used for other cultures and peoples.

I don’t object to its now much more universal use as a word. It’s useful and it’s powerful and I believe it can be used to build solidarity. I do ask for, however, recognition that while Jews, especially in the West, might reproduce Western hegemony and use it against others, our own ethno-religious experiences bubbling up is not one of those reproductions.

In other words, when we erase, accidentally or purposefully, the Chinese cultural and religious contexts of characters in MDZS/CQL in our rush to write in Jewish cultural and religious contexts, we are doing harm as ourselves, not as representatives of Western/European/Christian hegemony. And in fact, what inspired us to write in our own contexts is that there are certain things (deference to elders, life carefully regulated by a series of laws about everything from interpersonal-ethical behavior to food habits to modes of speech, cultural horror regarding desecration of the dead, etc) we find in these stories that we don’t find in many Western stories that resonate with our own cultural background.

Which is not to erase the harm itself. I am sorry for it and I will do my best going forward to write about overlaps without erasing or replacing what is already there from the beginning and should remain so.

[eurosong]

Undo my ESC 2020 (SF1)

Good evening, folks! “Undo my ESC”, my look at how I would have changed this year’s contest, is back! Even though the EBU, well, indeed sadly and very literally did undo the ESC this year, there is still room for changing about my personal ideal Eurovision 2020. Let’s have a look at the first semi-final! 🇦🇺 Australia: I continue to be mightily impressed with the quality of Australia Decides, an NF putting forward a number of credible options to represent Oz. I felt the juries helped dodge a bullet this year, because the televote winning song was a rather cliché and dated choice, out of step with the relatively vibrant and contemporary feel of the field. The actual winner was pretty decent albeit with dubious live vocals and an even odder stage concept. It could be improved by working on those two factors, though even better would be to send instead the dramatic Rabbit Hole, truly a title for our season, or even better, the searingly emotional Raw stuff which knocked me off my feet upon first listen and still packs that punch 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan: Once again, Azerbaijan went down the “buy in a song from elsewhere and attempt to put on a thin gloss of local instrumentation onto a generic pop song in lieu of some actual authenticity. I can’t say I even hate the song this time, though I do dislike how they reportedly nabbed it off non-oil-rich San Marino in a bidding war. I would have brought back Dihaj or... anyone who could produce something halfway Azeri? Also, something that doesn’t make me do a full-body cringe as much as the country ranked the worst in the ESC-sphere for LGBT rights sending a song about “gay or straight or in between.”

🇧🇾 Belarus: Belarus made the right choice - I can really rarely say those words. For only the second time ever, we got a song in Belarusian, and whilst it isn’t up there with the gorgeous Historyja majho žyccia for me, Da widna is still a pleasant listen that soars above many of the hyped pre-contest fan favourites and was a nice surprise from a bad NF. The only thing that I would change? That the unhinged comic brilliance of Pavloni be in the final. Watch from about halfway through to the end for an absolute mood whiplash odyssey. 

🇧🇪 Belgium: A lot of people had plenty of hope when they heard that the veteran Hooverphonic were set to represent Belgium in 2020, and I was amongst them. My reäction to what they ended up bringing though was tepid. It’s got the quality rich instrumentation that I expected from this band, pleasant vox, but as a song, it goes nowhere for me, in part because of how repetitive it is and lacking in a hook I find it. I would have picked a more immediate song for Eurovision, because this felt like another DNQ for Belgium, following the same mistakes as 2018 and 2019. They will be back in 2021, and I will be interested to see if they take a slightly different tack. 

🇭🇷 Croatia: Following up on Belarus, Croatia was another example of a selection in which I had no hope providing something excellent to recompense for usually reliable countries going off the rails. I finally have from Croatia something to fit in with the likes of Adio from Montenegro and Nije ljubav stvar from Serbia as an epic Balkan ballad. Few people were expecting Divlji vjetre would win; I was over the moon that it did and would change nothing. I hope Croatia re-send the gentleman Damir next year with an equally strong song. 

🇨🇾 Cyprus: After giving us a literal replay of Fuego last year, this year they’ve gone a slightly different route, but no less generic (even coming with one of the several duplicately named titles of this year), no less uninspiring, no less completely detached from Cypriot music. I’m longing for Cyprus to send something like Eimai anthropos kai ego again.

🇮🇪 Ireland: So RTÉ came into Eurovision all guns blazing this year, promising “an almighty bop” that will be “remembered in 10 years’ time like Euphoria.” I had feared that their frame of reference for their song would be 10 years’ stale, but instead they cast their net even further back to the mid-2000s. It properly sent me into hysterics when I heard this being compared to EVERY major female singer of that period, depending on whom you asked, before this came into general release. You know what, though? I hold my hands up and admit that I adore the anthemic Story of my life. It’s just so drenched in colour that I feel uplifted every time I listen to it, which is often! Lesley has such a likeable, authentic charisma that adds to the song too. I am so gutted we’ll never see the staging because I feel this would have been a memorable party moment. This is just 3 minutes of happy nostalgia and I live for it.

🇮🇱 Israel: You know, usually, I am not a fan of single-artist national finals, because if you are not a fan of the artist, your choice is very limited indeed. However - I don’t know how one can nót be a fan of Eden to some degree. Her music is not up my street, but she sells it to me through sheer force of personality, positivity and presence. She had four songs and she put her heart and soul into them all. The winner was the vibrant Feker libi, which I would only change by altering the chorus a bit, as its odd 90s dance vibe doesn’t sit so well with the rest of the song. As for Eden, she cried when she reälised she couldn’t go to ESC 2020 and again when she found out she’d been picked for 2021. I wish all artists had this amount of passion. 

🇱🇹 Lithuania: There was a sea change in Lithuania this year. I don’t know what happened, but they went from punchline to packing a punch. Their national final had been one that pretty much no one watched, dragging on for several weeks and almost always to choose a mediocre, anticlimactic choice after all that effort. This year, it was one of the most entertaining and diverse NFs of the bunch. My early favourite to win was the powerhouse Monika Marija’s return with If I leave, very much up my street with its country stylings. However, by the time the final came, I had been won over also by the eventual winner, the offbeat and infectious On fire, whose victory I would not alter because it serves as a more dramatic turn of the page for Lithuania’s Eurovision presence. It was such a relief to see this prevailing, with a huge lead in the televote, over the awful, imported Unbreakable or the respectable but pedestrian Make me human. I hope the broadcasters will respect the support this has in Lithuania and allow the Roop to come back in 2021. 🇲🇰 Macedonia: Just no. No. No. Scrap everything about this, bring back Kaliopi and let her get her revenge for the juries screwing her out of qualification with the beautiful “Dona.” 🇲🇹 Malta: Malta have done the unthinkable and sent two songs in a row that I really like for the first time since 1997-8. As Ian would have put it, I was expecting a mere “vocal exercise” from Malta to show off the impressive range of Destiny. Instead, they came out with something so soulful that I have no choice but to enjoy. I hope they go a similar route in 21.

🇳🇴 Norway: So, finally Norway saw some sense and reverted to making the most of having a talented composer, Kjetil Mørland, who is so enthusiastic about Eurovision that he has come back since his success with A monster like me a few times. He should have won with En livredd mann; I wouldn’t have been unhappy at all had he won with Who we are, and indeed, Attention was another song that I had to consider as being amongst the best of its (bizarrely organised) selection. The one thing I’d change? The lyrics. It sounds like an infatuated 12 year old with low self-esteem singing, not a grown woman.

🇷🇴 Romania: It’s not up there with Goodbye or On a Sunday, but Romania have returned with a third song I really enjoy. Alcohol you was head and shoulders above the others in the single-artist selection, and I am still sent by the way she sabotaged the bop that was predicted to win the final so that she could send this more meditative, confessional effort. What would I change? The unnecessary revamp that abruptly shifts the direction of the song in the last third.🇷🇺 Russia: When this first came out, I thought “well done, Russia. Kept us waiting on you until way past the deadline, and all for this bizarre Aquaësque troll entry.” Despite myself, “Uno” has grown on me to some degree. Maybe it’s because of the death stare of the female backing singer who’s giving me some strong Rosa from Brooklyn 99 vibes, and I live for that. Maybe it’s because it’s serving a flourescent lime green in a year when there is so much beige that even an ugly odd colour seems pleasing. I wouldn’t change this, and I hope they get sent again next year because it’s delightful seeing Russia unpaired from Kirkorov. 

🇸🇮 Slovenia: Again, I am going to find myself in a small minority, but Slovenia was, like Belarus and Croatia, an unappetising selection that nonetheless yielded a gem for me. They really said screw you to underlying trends and went for a song that moves at a glacial pace fitting of the title, Voda. This was constantly in last place on the Eurovision scoreboard app, which just speaks to the limited taste tolerance of many of its users. There is so much here to enjoy: Slovenia sticking with its language yet again; the ethereal vibes; the deep, rich voice of the singer; the melancholic and poëtic lyrics; and the fact that it was perhaps the only good “revamp” of the season, going in the opposite direction of Albania and inserting an orchestra to make it that much richer in sound. Wonderful stuff and hope she returns in 2021.

🇸🇪 Sweden: So, for the first time since 2014, Sweden has sent a female artist - 3 in fact - and with them, left the cookie cutter niche they’d occupied since then behind. They sent my favourite of their songs since 2013, Move, a joyous gospel-infused effort where the love and positivity of the Mamas gave me tingles to watch. And yet, it wasn’t my ideal choice. My personal winner would have been my favourite entry from Sweden since... possibly as far back as I morgon är en annan dag in 1992. I’m talking ‘bout Dotter of course. The artist whose beautiful Melodifestivalen début with Cry got bizarrely ignored had a superb redemptive arc this year, becoming the huge favourite with Bulletproof. I watched her performance of this over 200 times so far and still watch often. I find the song so poignant, the performance and her presence so bewitching. It’s a rarity for songwriters who also perform their songs to get this far in MF these days, and Dotter lost out by the narrowest of margins, but would have been a great encouragement to others like her had she won. It was widely said that Sweden had the potential for a record-equalling seventh win if they had sent Bulletproof. As much as I cherish Ireland’s record, had it been Dotter to equal it, I wouldn’t have been mad at all. 🇺🇦 Ukraine: Widbir got over their Maruw drama in great style, once again being one of the coolest and most alternative national finals out there. Well done, Ukraine! There were a number of propositions that I would have been happy to see represent the country. My initial favourite was Vegan, one of my most streamed songs of the season and one which always puts a smile on my face with Jerry’s facial expressions and puns like “‘cause I’m vegan, I can’t even call you honey.” And honestly, I would have loved to have seen it in Rotterdam. I also loved, amongst others, Tam kudy ja jdu and Picz, which were both the victims of being in a semi-final with all the good songs whilst the second semi-final was nowhere near as competitive. Having said all that, I am not sure that I would change the eventual winner, Solowej, because it’s its own brand of delightfully authentic. I would undo their unnecessary revamp and keep it as the live version linked to above, though. And the automatic qualifiers: 🇩🇪 Germany: As you would expect from one of the musical monoliths of Europe, Germany once had some of the best and most diverse national finals of the continent, but something went wrong - they kept inviting wild cards, whose scrappiness endeared them to the public even when their songs were mediocre, and so we saw complete no-marks getting the Teutonic nod despite star-studded competition. Nonetheless, “Unser Lied für” was always worth tuning in for, an annual dose of getting mesmer-eyes’d by Barbara Schöneberger too. This year, they threw it all away for one of the most repetitive songs of the year, with a young, confused looking Slovenian being the god knows how many’th contestant to channel his inner Justin Timberlake with another knockoff that sounds as German as fajitas. I would have kept the national final - or, if they’re really going to start doing internal selections, go daring with Lily among clouds, whose Surprise was one of the crown jewels of the previous NF season. 🇮🇹 Italy: Sanremo, which actually predates Eurovision, is so much more than an NF, but its own cultural institution, and the quality is such that a song can be your fifth or sixth in Sanremo but still rank really highly in your ESC rankings. Performing with, and composing for, the orchestra, seems to give its entries a timeless quality that few others compare with. My initial favourites were Tosca’s Ho amato tutto, which from its first strains to the final, saudadic “eh” that serves as an unofficial coda, breaks my heart still sublimely; Viceversa, a heartwarming effort by the unbelievably charming Gabbani and Tikibombom, a slice of Sicilian excellence with trenchant lyrics. My most streamed has been Sincero, remembered more for the hugely memetic moment of one of its representatives changing the lyrics and the other walking out disgusted, but which I adore for its synthy vibes and its brilliant lyrics. The eventual winner was Fai rumore, which I also love too much to propose that it be changed. The lines about “an unnatural silence between us” are all the more poignant now. Lowkey think this could have won Italy its long-awaited third victory. 🇳🇱 Netherlands: Now, this is what I call a host nation song. The way I see it, if you’re hosting, you have a direct ticket to the final that you may not enjoy again for a long time, so why not go for a risk? And a risk NL indeed took. Grow is a very atypical song. It builds in a way we do not expect it to. It is mostly minimalist, focusing most of our attention to Jeangu’s voice, making this an intimate, almost confessional track. The crescendo is cathartic. After Albania destroyed itself with an unnecessary revamp, this became my #1 and I would change nothing about it. It really sucks that a song so personal to its writer and performer won’t be allowed on the stage in 2021 - that’s what I would change. A ridiculous decision on the EBU’s part.

[mama-germany]

Submission: {IIRC, submission format is bad. This is feminists-against-feminism, hopefully unedited by Mama Germany :^), and ill end my submission with “/submission”, and the rest, if anything, is mama-germany. Also, hopefully the paragraph breaks take, and if they dont…. welp…}

Imma be real with u chief, I dunno what you want me to do with this.  I’m a Jew.  I don’t like communism.  I don’t actually live in Germany.  And I’m not reading all this.  Idk.

Karl Marx’s “On: The Jewish Question” seems a prototype for conflict theory, but has ‘the real jew’ as the 'Haves’ the in place of the 'bourgeois/rich/capitalist’ 'oppressor class’. Conflict theory, icydk, is the collectivist egalitarian pseudoscientific theoretical paradigm taught in sociology, underpinning essentially the whole social justice perspective, and directly encompassing marxist theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, critical theory, gender schema theory (and likely influenced John Money’s gender theory, and builds on gender theory), queer theory, gender critical theory, postmodern theory, lysenkoism (mostly abandoned), standpoint theory,  post colonial theory, animal liberationism, and of course, intersedtional theory which synthesizes them all together wherever they can be synthesized. Marx said the nature of jews is huckstery, he said the real lofe manifestationnof the god of israel is money itself, he said eliminating money would render the jew an equal and normal person. His whole theory, and every conflict theory since, relies on the presupposition the indovodual is irrelevant and what matters is only the aggregate disparities between groups. This turns his theoey ultimately against all boundaries of the individual, their private property and necessarily their innate natural self ownership, their right to self ddetermination. Marx viewed liberalism/individualism as egoism. His whole family was actually jewish, IIRC, he just didnt succeed like they did, he was jealous and a mooch, kind of a beta, likely an aspie if i am to go off the symptomology. He hated them, he was jealous, he wanted success and they had it and he didnt, and so he was basically spot-on like the character Cain from hebrew legend.

Martin Luther. He wrote “On The Jews and Their Lies”. He described jews as piglets suckling from their mother pig, israel, and blamed jews for pretty much everything he viewed as wrong in society. He was basically the predocessor to Hitler and Marx. And one might actually say Marx was an additional predocessor to Hitler. I sure would posot that as likely, even if by proxy of Hitler being influenced by left socialists. I mean, he literally modified the marxist “'class struggle” into his own version of “the struggle”, “MY Struggle/Mein Kampf”. Which brings us to out next german collectivist philosopher. If youre picking up the theme im putting down.

Third subject, Hitler. Self explanatory. Jew-hating anti-egalitarian ethno socialist. Obviously fits in with the last two subject entries. BTW,I have a larger point to all this random pattern listing. One more.

Slightly diverging from hatred of jews, and more toward the begining of postmodernist thought, Max Horkheimer who said freedom and justice are incompatible opposites, and argued everything are oppressive social constructs, every letter and word and phrase and interaction. He said there is no way to know what a just society is, but that we can complain and struggle against the things we dont like and dont find just. And so if you also consider he in the same sitting said freedom and justice are opposites, and this was while summarizing his academic ideas to an interviewer, we can deduce he was directly opposed to freedom, despite considering himself anti-authoritarian…. Anyways, he was bonkers, hope you dont live near Frankfurt, theyre bonkers around them parts, and i know someone who has told me firsthand just how horkheimer style bonkers that town is.

{Honorary mentions. The Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert. Although there was clearly nuance here, Prussia WAS part of the German Empire, but the german youth injunction/sinker was still set in him, to which collectivism was his driver/floatation. He was a nationalist and refused advisors compelling him into an anti-left policy. Honorary mention 2. Antifasciste Aktion, the communist vanguard formed by the german communist party, the KPD, formed to forght fire with fire, using brownshirt tactics against the brownshirts (to whom they lost).}

All four, all German. All of them. 5 if we include the Kaiser. The father of protestantism, the father of communism, the left reformer whos students sparked the “New Left” movement, and Hitler, HITLER. ALL GERMAN. Which is not an implicit racial claim im implying, but one about a sour philosophy. I refer to this as German Collectivism. It is the archetype if collectivism which germany seems particularly possessed by. These have ravaged the whole world, toppled entire nations and enslaved likely over two billion people considering just the PRC, USSR, and Nazi Germany esp with its labir camps. Luther could be viewed as the origin, certainly the origin of modern german collectivism (protestantism & lutherean conspiracy theory, left socialism, and nazism), but the purpose of germany has not changed through any of its past or present phases. It’s purpose seems to be unintentionally destroying itself in the process of intentionally trying to destroy the rest of Europe in attempt to conquer Europe and/or the world. Maybe it came from its clash with Rome, and it never left that modality of picking away at its neighbors. Perhaps its influence from the abrahamic faiths it long traded with, maybe that caused the sort of over-populate-and-make-conquest-youth-army kind of societal reproductive modality, by influence of the abrahamic faiths that did that in the middle east for millennia (with obvious great success, whereas Germany fails at the same niche). Maybe it’s because of their empire-orientation, their pre-lutherean state where they were catholic, and so the culture, thinkers and leaders became oriented toward empire. I dont know. But i do know Hitler, the Kaiser, and Marx were all three alienated children who were very disturbed, and assume Horkheimer and Martin Luther were of similar origins, it seems the common theme among these german influences. Disturbed children make for great communists, and germany has long been riddled with communists. Communists & new left communists like intersectionalists have been frequently compared to a religion, and germany was previously, according to Neitzsche who overtly shared my distain for German philosophy (to my surprise, i love him even more now), he said it seemed to him 4/5 people in germany  were part of protestant clergy. The whole state seems in an unending modality if one total hegemonic culthood after another.

The purpose for german collectivism being so consistently against jews, i assume. It is that jews are very successful on average by comparison to every other category in the west. So theyre integral to the structure of society, particularly around power. So to do the sort of semetic strategy, the strategy of Mohammad and Moses, the strategy of just toppling societies and inheriting the remains, in the west, one must (perhaps in a sidenote of historical irony) go through the jews. If they want to make their collectivist totalitarian ideology dominate, they have to go full cain, and stab their brothers - the jews. And just as stabbing Abel didnt wirk well for Cain, obviously taking out the most success oriented demographic (OF WHICH THERE ARE TWO) in your country is not going to work well for Germany. The other the German Collectivist opposes is the individualist - the English liberal, the stoic, the empiricist, the existentialist, the naturalist, the skeptic, these sorts. These sorts of ideas bring success, and so the authoritarian german collectivist requires their demise as well. The Kaiser hated types like us, the Fuhror hated types like us, marx hated types like us, Horkheimer, and Luther to a clear extent.

i should mention, im not a supernaturalist, the supernatural is all metaphor taken as superstition, im woth Neitszche. Theres certainly no supernatural, and race is a politically meaningless concept to me. But what is contained within the borders of germany…. There seems to be an eccentric kook persona, as a sort of cultural clone prevalent in germany, parallel to the American redneck or hillbilly. Theyre not all terrible people, but theyre often super fucked up like longislanders are in NY, or hillbillies from appalachia, or rednecks from alabama. Or just extremely eccentric like a german lady i knew IRL or Joerge Sprave, or oh my god, Max Horkheimer the kook. And it doesnt miss the city, theyre like that, but converted to progressive ideology. Crazy brutes from yesteryear, mostly tamed, or stubby and eccentric out the wazoo, or tall frail and vegan and metro af. And it’s not limited to the old german. Einstein, (not shitting in einstein, not calling him collectivist, but) absolute weirdo jewish german, Horkheimer, absolute nut job, jewish german, Marx, jewish family, the only correlation is they lived in Germany, like Hitler, the SS, and the kaiser. Even the nations east of them who share similar culture, look at Freud, absolutely a german collectivist type, but from Austria, which today is apparently an ethno national socialist state in all but admission. Prussia influenced the Kaiser’s collectivism. Even people i know from america who have all german ancestry and only third gen american, theyre bonkers, like ICP & Twisted clown-rap omega bonkers, and believe in shit like vampires and wicca and werewolf “lychen”. Oh, and i forgot to mention in summarizing Hitler, his wackjob supernaturalist beliefs. What is that? Why is this so normal there for so long and nowhere else for so long? It seems to spread from there more than anywhere else.

It has to be cultural, and deep seeded. It can be changed, and it needs to be. A german lady mutual of mine sees it and is clearly very weighted by it; i was hindered by it drastically, and i live in America. The nihilism, the self hatred, the narcissism, the psychopathy, the selective empathy (ie, selective psychopathy), the tribalism, the scapegoating. You live in germany, you must see it. You dont seem to like sj or right socialism. You seem closer to an individualist. A westerner despite Germany.

Would you consider it a real phenomenon? 'German Collectivism’? A label for describing the seeming german modality of collectivist government and the german philosophical origin of the majority of world’s largest, most wide spread, and deadly collectivist movements? Particularly today regarding the medium of marxian/intersectional conflict theory ideology? I can easily empirically trace intersectionalism and the french fake-gobbldigook-espousing 'intellectuals’ Peterson points at, back to the ideas of Marx (a german). What are your thoughts on it? What caused it? Why is it so historically persistent to this day? It’s still trying to domineer and control Europe via the proxy of the EU. And what the hell is wrong with so many (#notall) German children?! Or, likely, should i moreso be asking about ***the (#notall) parents***? But today, those parents were raised by nazis, or people raised by nazis. (#notall) but those nazis were raised by communists and imperialists, and those imperialists and communists were raised by communists and lutherean protestants, and those communists and lutherean protestants were raised by more protestants, and then catholics before them, and tribalist pagans before them. The hegemony is just unending waves of wacky who begat waves of wacky. Id like to see the origin of this crap fixed, see germany liberalized, just to show german collectivism undone SOMEWHERE it has been established for once, and in Germany itself no less. My first thought is just end the EU.

Is it real? What’s the cause? How do we undo it? 

[ruminativerabbi]

Awakenings

For some reason, I’ve always been drawn to Rip Van Winkle-style stories about people who fall asleep for one or many years and then wake up to find themselves in whole new worlds. First of all, there’s Rip himself—a fictional character who first made his appearance in Washington Irving’s collection of stories and essays, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which came out exactly 200 years ago in 1819. The book has long since been forgotten by most, as unfortunately also has been its author: one of the true giants of American literature in his day, Irving has for some reason not joined the authors he himself encouraged in their careers—writers like Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—in the pantheon of American authors still read other than by people to whom their books have been assigned in American Literature classes. And he really was one of the greats! I believe that I’ve read all his stories, certainly most of them, and “Rip Van Winkle” is one of my favorites. His other still-famous story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” turned into a whole series of Hollywood movies—most memorably Tim Burton’s 1999 film, Sleepy Hollow—and television shows, is also a terrific piece of writing that deserves to be more widely read in its original format. But I digress: I wanted to write here about Rip van Winkle himself and not the author who dreamed him up.

The story is well known and easily retold. One day while wandering deep in the woods near Sleepy Hollow to escape his wife’s endless nagging, Rip runs into the ghosts of the sailors who in their day manned Henry Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, and promptly joins them in a game of nine pins and in drinking a lot of liquor, whereupon he falls into a deep sleep. Then, when he awakens twenty years later, he discovers that his son is now a grown man, his wife has died, and that he missed the entire American Revolution while he slumbered away. He makes his peace with being a widower easily enough (the Van Winkles don’t seem to have had too happy a marriage), finds it more challenging to abandon his native allegiance to King George, and finally ends up settling in with his grown daughter as he tries to figure out the new world and his place in it.

There are lots of parallel stories to Irving’s tale. Third-century (C.E.) Greek philosopher Diogenes Laëterius, for example, wrote about a man named Epimenides who fell asleep for fifty-seven years and then had to negotiate an entirely new world when he awakened.  Jewish literature has its own version of both Rip van Winkle and Epimenides in Honi the Circle-Drawer, a wonder-working rabbi of the first century (or thereabouts) who fell asleep for seventy years and awakened to find a man tending to carob trees that Honi himself had witnessed the man’s grandfather planting just (it must have felt like) a day earlier. Other cultures have their own versions, but what makes them appealing—and also slightly terrifying— is the fantasy that this could possibly happen to us readers, that we too could possibly get into bed tonight, turn off the light, drift off into sleep…and then awaken not tomorrow morning but a century from now. Nor is it hard to explain why this is such an arresting theme to so many. We all like to think that the world is so sturdy, so substantial, so there, after all…and then an idea like this takes root and suggests that it’s all a chimera, all a fantasy, all an elaborate illusion played out against an equally illusory dreamscape, that what feels so real is only an elaborate set that the stage crew will take down the moment we breathe our last. And why shouldn’t the theater of life mimic the way things work in real theaters? The show closes, the crew strikes the set, the actors return their costumes, and everybody goes home. And, on Broadway, that is that!  

And now it turns out that it really is so that people fall asleep and awaken decades later. Some readers may have noticed a story in the paper a while back about one Munira Abdulla, a woman from a small town in the United Arab Emirates, who was in a terrible automobile accident in 1991 when she was only thirty-two years old. She fell into a coma, but was kept alive by her family in the hope that she might one day awaken. And she did just that, awakening, apparently on her own, after twenty-seven years. Technically speaking, Ms. Abdulla was in the state technically called “minimal consciousness,” which is less bad than being in a full coma (i.e., in which the patient shows no sign of being awake) or in what’s called a persistent vegetative state (in which the patient appears to be awake but shows no signs of awareness). It is, however, still extraordinarily rare for patients possessed of minimal consciousness simply to awaken.

It’s happened closer to home as well. Terry Wallis, for example, was nineteen when his pickup skidded off a bridge near his hometown in Arkansas, which accident left him in a persistent vegetative state. Doctors told his family that he had no chance of recovery. But then he somehow managed to move up a notch into the same state of minimal consciousness that Munira Abdulla was in. And there he remained for nineteen years, domiciled at a nursing home near his parents’ home. And then one day in 2006 his mother walked into his room, whereupon he looked up and said “Mom” out loud, the first word he had uttered in almost two decades.

Donald Herbert’s is a similar story. A Buffalo fire-fighter, Herbert was injured on the job in 1995 when debris in a burning building fell on him and left him in what doctors called a state of “faint consciousness” for a full decade. And then, in 2005, after a full decade of silence, he opened his eyes one day and asked for his wife.  

These are rare stories, obviously. Most comatose people—including people possessed of faint or minimal consciousness—do not suddenly wake up and start talking. Indeed, in every real sense, these people I’ve been writing about are the rare exceptions to an otherwise sad rule. But the fact that such people exist at all is very meaningful: even if the overwhelming majority of comatose patients do not spontaneously wake up, some apparently do. And in that thought inheres the huge problem for society of how to relate to the somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans who exist in states of partial, faint, or minimal consciousness. Most will never recover. But some few may.

Many readers will remember Penny Marshall’s terrific 1990 movie, Awakenings, starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, and based on Oliver Sacks’ 1973 book of the same title. (Less well known is that Harold Pinter wrote a short play, A Kind of Alaska, based on Sacks’ book as well, which is often performed as part of a trilogy of the playwright’s one-act plays.) The story of the book and the movie (and presumably the play as well, which I’d like to see one day) is simple enough: a doctor working in 1969 at a public hospital in the Bronx is charged with caring for a ward of catatonic patients who survived the world-wide epidemic of encephalitis (specifically the version called encephalitis lethargica) in the 1920’s. The doctor, very movingly and effectively portrayed by the late Robin Williams, somehow has the idea to try using L-Dopa, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s Disease, on these patients and gets astounding results; the movie is basically about one of those patients, portrayed by Robert De Niro, whose “awakening” is depicted in detail. It doesn’t work in the long run, though; each “awakened” patient, including the one played by De Niro, eventually returns to catatonia no matter how high a dose of L-Dopa any is given. The movie thus ends both hopefully and tragically: the former because these people on whom the world had long-since given up were given a final act in the course of which they sampled, Rip Van Winkle-style, the world a half-century after they fell asleep; and the latter because, in the end, the experiment failed and no one was cured in anything like a long-term or fully meaningful way.

Why do these stories exert such a strong effect on me? It’s not that easy for me to say, but if I had to hazard a guess, I think I’d say that the concept of dying to the world briefly and then coming back to life to see what happened while you were gone is what draws me in. (Fans of Mark Twain will recall Tom Sawyer’s wish to be “dead temporarily.” But even Tom and Huck only manage to be gone from the world long enough to attend their own funeral and enjoy the eulogies they hear praising them, not to vanish for decades and then come back to life.) I’m sure there would be surprises if I were to go to bed tonight and wake up in 2089. Some would be amusing—seeing what model iPhone they’ve gotten up to or what version of Windows, or if anyone even remembers either—and some would be amazing: if the President of the United States in 2089 is sixty years old, then he or she won’t have been born yet.  But mostly it would be chastening, and in the extreme, to see how all the various things that seem so immutable, so permanent, so rooted in reality in our world, have all vanished from the world, as will probably also have all of the houses in which we live today, the banks in which we store our cash, and even the shore lines that mark the boundary between the wine-dark sea and the dry land upon which we live in safety or think we do. Depending on a wide variety of factors, that thought is either depressing or exhilarating. But in either event, it makes it easier not to sweat the small stuff or allow our own anxieties to impact negatively on the pleasures life can offer to the living.

I will bring all these thoughts with me as I prepare for Israel in a few weeks’ time because the Rip Van Winkle and Terry Wallis stories are Jerusalem’s own as well. The vibrant center of Jewish life for more than a millennium when the Temple was destroyed in the first century, the city was suddenly emptied of its Jews by its Roman overlords who renamed it and forbade Jews from living there. And yet…some small remnant always remained in place while the city slept. And then, just when the Jewish Jerusalem’s faint consciousness seemed poised to flicker and die out entirely…just the opposite happened as Jews from all over the world built a new city on the outskirts of the old one and breathed consciousness and life itself into its ancient alleys and byways. As the patient came back to life, she didn’t only re-enter history either—she began to be a player in her own story, stepping off the stage to become her own play’s playwright and director. It felt like a miracle then and it feels like one to me today too.

When I’m in Jerusalem, I myself feel my consciousness expanding and becoming in equal parts rejuvenated, reconstituted, and revivified. I never run out of things to do, to write, to read, to experience. I can’t imagine being bored in Jerusalem, even on a hot day in mid-summer when I could just as easily be on the beach in Tel Aviv. I love the beach! But there is something about the air in Jerusalem, and the light, that is the spiritual version of L-Dopa that Robin Williams gives his patients in Penny Marshall’s movie. Except that it doesn’t wear off with time and, if anything, only gets stronger and more powerful as the weeks I spend in Jerusalem pass one by one until the time comes to come home and begin a new year in this place we have all settled.

[patriotsnet]

What Does The Bible Say About Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-does-the-bible-say-about-republicans/

What Does The Bible Say About Republicans

What Does God Say About Democrats

What Does the Bible Say About 2016 Election – Hidden Secrets Revealed – Republican vs Democrat

Sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Saving America

Steven Andrew is leading the nation to reaffirm covenant that the USA follows Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches covenant is the most important action to save lives, restore safety, strengthen the church, and raise godly generations.

testimonials

Michael

I know of no one doing everything they can to help our nation to turn away from wickedness and sin, and turn back to God, like Steven Andrew.;

Craig

Giving to USA Christian Church is the most powerful way to support God’s will for the nation and defend Christianity.

The USA is in a national emergency. Our only hope is to surrender our lives and the nation to God and agree to obey the Lord. We have hope. It is not too late to find Gods mercy. Steven Andrew

People are very concerned. The news shows the USA is in a freedon verses tyranny national emergency. It could even be a life verses death crisis if the nation goes into captivity as happened to Israel and Judhae for their sins. If we want to honor God and have God bless our lives and nation, it is important we know: What does the Bible teach about Democrats?

I am Steven Andrew, the pastor who believes like the founding fathers. I am on a mission from God

Pray

Is the Bible your final authority or do you go by your feelings and own ways?This is Gods opinion, not mine.

For protection and national security, the nation needs to see Democrats hearts the way God does.my This is Gods opinion not my opinion.

Grist Is The Only Nonprofit Newsroom Focused On Exploring Solutions At The Intersection Of Climate And Justice

Our team of journalists remains dedicated to telling stories of climate, justice, and solutions. We aim to inspire more people to talk about climate change and to believe that meaningful change is not only possible but happening right now.;Our in-depth approach to solutions-based journalism takes time and proactive planning, which is why Grist depends on reader support.

This September, become a monthly donor, and your entire yearly amount will be matched. Grist hopes to welcome 200 new monthly members by September 30, and were closing in on our goal! Help us further advance our reporting by giving us the stable, reliable funding we need. Consider becoming a Grist member today to ensure this important work continues and thrives.

Bible Verses Violated By The Republican Party

Please note this article is not another case of a Democrat insulting the Republican party and their religious members.; I dont like either political party and Ive lost hope in the current political system until major changes are made.

While Ive lost most; interest in national politics,; some things still catch my eye. But what bothers me the most, and always gets my attention, is when a politician campaigns on a the premise that their allegiance to their God makes them a better person than the other candidate. Fast forward a few months after their election and there they are obstructing ethical legislation; for their constituents only to make their donors happy.

If a politicians; adherence to the Bible is what makes them a good person and good elected official, what do they become when they no longer adhere to the Bible?

You can understand why I feel my arguments made here are sound: The voting and campaign records of Congress are widely-available public records, and since 7 out of the 10 Bible verses I used are from either Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, meaning that 70% of this is literally the Gospel truth

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James : 19 Niv: Everyone Should Be Quick To Listen Slow To Speak And Slow To Become Angry

Well THAT’S a big red flag if I ever saw one. Any of the above points show that Donald Trump does not have a reasonable filter. Whatever comes to mind comes straight out of his mouth, especially when he gets angry. If our president acts out in anger, we are going to have a lot of issues on our hands. Can you imagine how he would converse with other world leaders? What would he do if they insulted our government, or heaven forbid, Trump’s hand size? How would he react to negative criticism from countries we very much need to remain on good terms with? Not only is this dangerous, it also gives more reason for people not to respect America. It would say a lot about us if our leader had the same temperament as a two-year old in a time out. A true God following leader would participate in rational discussion, in which all sides are heard and acknowledged.

I’m not trying to tell anybody that Hilary is the Christian candidate we’re looking for. In fact, I don’t even believe we need a Christian candidate at all. This is America, where anybody of any race or religion can do the job. What I am trying to say, is that if you think Donald Trump is your closest bet to having a Christian in office, you’re making the wrong choice.

Your choice matters. Choose wisely.

Abortion Is An Integral Part Of The Vaccine Industry

For you created my inmost being;;you knit me together;in my mothers womb.;Psalm 139:13

The Bible makes clear that life begins at conception. It says that every child is a gift from God . If Jesus were here today, I am not sure if He would be carrying a sign, but we can agree He would be pro-life.

Many are surprised to find that in fact, vaccines do contain;aborted fetal tissue,;including lung and kidney tissue.

This is because scientists grow live vaccines in living tissue. You can find aborted fetal tissue in 23 total vaccines, including:

MMR

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Gop Lawmaker: The Bible Says If A Man Will Not Work He Shall Not Eat

This storys headline;has been corrected. A quote from Rep. Jodey Arringtons remarks at a congressional hearing has also been added.

One lawmaker is citing a godly reference to; justify changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Rep. Jodey Arrington recently quoted the New Testament to question the strength of current work requirements.

The biblical passage, 2 Thessalonians 3-10, was a rebuttal to one of the hearings expert witnesses, a representative of the Jewish anti-hunger group MAZON. It is also a familiar refrain to anyone who has watched past debates about SNAP.

House Republicans have historically cited the verse if a man will not work, he shall not eat as justification for cutting some adults SNAP benefits. Arrington referenced the verse in a discussion;about increasing the work requirements for unemployed adults on the food stamp program. But critics say that;advances;a pernicious myth about the unemployed who receive SNAP.

The verse in question applies specifically to people who can work or otherwise contribute to society but choose not to, said theologians from several denominations who spoke to The Post. There is a perception, among some voters and lawmakers, that many adult SNAP recipients are exactly this sort of freeloader.

More from Wonkblog:

James : 26 Esv: If Anyone Thinks He Is Religious And Does Not Bridle His Tongue But Deceives His Heart This Person’s Religion Is Worthless

Wow. That was blunt. I commonly hear people say that they like Donald Trump because, “He speaks his mind.” There is a monumental difference between speaking your mind, and throwing words about without caution. The things that Donald Trump has used his platform to say should not only shock you; they should offend you. His words are rash, prejudiced, and hurtful. You don’t believe me? Here are some examples:

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of a**.”

“My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has well been documented, are various other parts of my body.”

Now I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound like the kind of man who has proper control over his tongue to me. Words are some of the greatest indicators of who we are. The president of our country should be able to possess certain qualities, such as engaging in foreign affairs without flying off the handle. Not only is this concerning to our national security, it is also a warning sign of poor character.

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Looking For Some More Related Articles

Take a look at these other similar type articles:

Robert

Great article Jack,Sure a lot of good points you brought up. A lot to ponder as an election grows near.

It seems like the people who get elected reflect the sentiment of the nation. If we are concerned with the economy, we vote for the people we think will fix it. If we are concerned with moral issues, we vote for those we think care about what we care about.

This may also be a way in which God judges, or blesses, a nation. As the individuals of a nation move further from God, they elect representatives that are also further from God. These representatives are then naturally going to be motivated by something other than God and His love. Therefore, the nation suffers.

On the other hand, as the individuals of a nation move closer to God and elect godly representatives, these representatives seek Gods will for themselves and the country. The nation is blessed.

Thanks again for a wonderful, thought-provoking article.

Yours in Christ,

Friendship Is The Goal Of The Gospel

What does the Bible say about voting in 2020?

Christians rightly think about salvation as forgiveness of sins and eternal life. But it is more than this. Jesus gives all who trust him the privilege of being his friends . And what is eternal life, after all? According to Jesus, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent . He rescued us to forge an intimate relationship with the triune God . God forgives us that we might share in his triune fellowship of love forever.;

In the new creation we will enjoy true friendship with all other believers. Our future is a world of friendship.

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Matthew : 28 Esv: But I Say To You That Everyone Who Looks At A Woman With Lustful Intent Has Already Committed Adultery With Her In His Heart

Now, I’m not trying to single out Donald Trump for having completely natural biological urges. All of humankind has fallen prey to the allure of lust. However, to battle with that in one’s heart and to voice it out loud to others are two completely different things.

The LORD calls men to honor and protect women. Women are handcrafted by God, and they are to be respected. Donald Trump has been quoted saying things that go directly against this God-given duty:

“Grab them by the the p*ssy.”

If that wasn’t vulgar enough for you, here’s a list of adjectives he has publicly used to describe women: Fat. Dog. Pig. Slob. Disgusting animal.

I don’t know what it’s going to take for this country to start valuing women properly, but having this guy in charge isn’t going to do it. As a woman, you should be concerned that a candidate for president is getting away with talking about your demographic like that. As a man, you should be standing up for the women in your life by saying that this is NOT okay! Young girls in this world should not grow up thinking that those words are okay because the President of the United States says them. If we elect this man, that will be the standard our girls will have for the men in their lives.

Exercising Our Civic Responsibility: What The Bible Says About Voting

Before we look at what the Bible says about voting, let us look at how our individual votes count.

Song of Solomon 2:15 says, Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. Foxes sometimes, in search of food, would enter into the grape orchards and devour the grapes and spoil the crop. However, the little foxes were too small to reach the grape bunches so they would chew on the vines and it would kill the whole vine. Instead of the farmer just losing his crop, he would lose his vine which was more disastrous. Spiritually some things we do or allow that we might think are little or insignificant can also be disastrous for us.

Listed below are some of the little foxes that generally keep us from our civic responsibilities, in the area of voting. The devil uses these lies and others so that he can keep godly men and women away from the polls and get the candidates of his choice elected. If we do nothing, it makes it easy for the enemy to help those who could become the wrong leadership for our nation.

My one vote doesnt count anyway.

Im disillusioned by the whole political process.

Im already too busy to take the time to cast an informed vote, so I just dont vote at all.

Politics are corrupt anyway and as a Christian I dont want to be involved.

What the Bible Says About Voting

_______________________________________________________________

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Achieving Racial Justice And Equity

The Bible is very clear that God does not show favoritism, and neither should his followers. So, there is no place for racism in the church or in America. The Democratic Party is absolutely just in standing strong against racism in America.;

Now, personally I think that some of the Democrats policies for eliminating racism are not biblical at all. But the fact still remains: The basic policy position is biblically just.

As the election approaches, remember: As Christians we are called to lead people to Christ, not to an elephant or a donkey. Dont allow your politics to sabotage your witness to unbelievers or your fellowship with believers.;

Our loyalty must be to Christ. So, do some research, and vote in line with the heart of Christ. Lets do our best to vote for right and just leaders, and to pray for righteousness and justice in the hearts of those who are elected.

Dane Davis is the pastor of Impact Christian Church. Join Impacts live outdoor worship service at 9 a.m. Sunday at 17746 George Boulevard in Victorville, or tune in online at 10 a.m. on the Impact Christian Church YouTube channel or Facebook page.

Christianity For Votes: How Republicans Are Using A Religious Facade To Gain Political Power

On full display: Rep. Ted Yoho, in his non-apology to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, remarkably argued, I cannot apologize for my passion or for loving my God, my family, and my country.

Talk of God has been brought into and out of national politics throughout American history, with various partisan and non-partisan causes, but rarely in our history has any political group weaponized faith for political goals as comprehensively as todays Republican Party. Although the name of God has been used as a rallying cry for Republicans for decades, the party that claims to support Christian values has developed a twisted ideology where the mere mention of God has become a license for injustice. Consequently, his name is being thrown out in vain by Republicans who seek to avoid being held responsible for their actions, even when those actions go directly against the Scripture.

The contradictory nature of devotional statements made by GOP;members;was put on full display in a recent scandal in Congress,;when Rep.;Ted;Yoho, R-Florida,;was forced to resign from a Christian organizations;board after publicly exhibiting a behavior profoundly opposite to the values he claimed to stand for.

Yohos non-apology

A powerful political tool

If we want to resemble a hope for uniting and healing;within our;nation, we must rebuke lies, hate and division. We must rejoice in the truth.

WANT TO ADD YOUR VOICE?

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Christians Cannot Serve Both God And The Gop

The Christian right is the backbone of the Republican Party. Christians of all stripes from Catholics to Protestants and evangelicals consistently vote Republican. The core tenets of the modern Republican Party, however, are at stark odds with biblical scripture.

Over the last four decades, few priorities have consumed the Republican Party more than economic policies that benefit the ultra-wealthy. The Ronald Reagan presidency, in particular, ushered in an era where corporate bottom lines took precedence over fair wages for American workers. The rise of the Reagan-Republican ethos, which preaches the elevation of over virtually all other considerations, directly influenced of American jobs to countries with vast pools of cheap labor. Ditto for union-busting and the adoption of job-killing automation in pursuit of maximum profit.

These factors, unsurprisingly, the American middle class. Moreover, Presidents Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump all pursued radical tax policies that overwhelmingly; if not solely; benefitted a small group of exceptionally wealthy Americans at the expense of the working and middle classes.

Republican policies favoring the ultra-affluent, however, stand in stark contrast with biblical scripture. The Bibles condemnations of the wealthy and the accumulation of riches leave zero room for ambiguity.

In short, followers of Christ must choose between God and money.

Property was sold and the proceeds distributed to anyone who had need.

[hudsonespie]

Part II: Fish Farming is Feeding the World, But at What Cost?

[Part I of this article may be found here. This piece appeared first in The New Yorker and is reproduced here courtesy of The Outlaw Ocean Project.]

In September 2019, Gambian lawmakers gathered in the stately but neglected hall of the National Assembly for an annual meeting, where James Gomez, minister of the country’s fisheries and water resources, insisted that “Gambian fisheries are thriving. ” Industrial fishing boats and plants represent the largest employer of Gambians in the country, including hundreds of deckhands, factory workers, truck drivers, and industry regulators. When a lawmaker asked him about the criticisms of the three fish-meal plants, including their voracious consumption of bonga, Gomez refused to engage. “Boats are not taking more than a sustainable amount,” he said, adding that Gambian waters even have enough fish to sustain two more plants.

Under the best circumstances, estimating the health of a nation’s fish stock is a murky science. Marine researchers like to say that counting fish is like counting trees, except they’re mostly invisible—below the surface—and constantly moving. Ad Corten, a Dutch fishing biologist, told me that the task is even tougher in a place like West Africa, where countries lack the funding to properly analyze their stocks. The only reliable assessments of fish stocks in the area have focussed on Mauritania, Corten said, and they show a sharp decline driven by the fish-meal industry. “Gambia is the worst of them all,” he said, noting that the fisheries ministry barely tracks how many fish are caught by licensed ships, much less the unlicensed ones. As fish stocks have been depleted, many wealthier nations have increased their marine policing, often by stepping up port inspections, imposing steep fines for violations, and using satellites to spot illicit activity at sea. They also have required industrial boats to carry mandatory observers and to install monitoring devices onboard. But Gambia, like many poorer countries, has historically lacked the political will, technical skill, and financial capacity to exert its authority offshore.

Still, though it has no police boats of its own, Gambia is trying to better protect its waters. In August 2019, I joined a secret patrol that the fisheries agency was conducting with the help of an international ocean conservation group called Sea Shepherd, which had brought—as surreptitiously as it could—a one-hundred-and-eighty-four-foot ship called the Sam Simon into the area. It’s equipped with extra fuel capacity, to allow for long patrols, and a doubly reinforced steel hull for ramming into other boats.  

In Gambia, the nine miles of water closest to the shore have been reserved for local fishermen, but on any given day dozens of foreign trawlers are visible from the beach. Sea Shepherd’s mission was to find and board trespassers, or other vessels engaged in prohibited behaviors, such as shark finning or netting juvenile fish. In the past few years, the group has worked with African governments in Gabon, Liberia, Tanzania, Benin, and Namibia to conduct similar patrols. Some fisheries experts have criticized these collaborations as publicity stunts, but they have led to the arrest of more than fifty illegal fishing ships.

Barely a dozen local government officials had been informed about the Sea Shepherd mission. To avoid being spotted by fishermen, the group brought in several small speed boats at night and used them to spirit a dozen heavily armed Gambian Navy and fisheries officers out to the Sam Simon. We were joined on the patrol by two gruff private-security contractors from Israel, who were training the Gambian officers in military procedures for boarding ships. While we waited on the moonlit deck, one of the Gambian guards, dressed in a crisp blue-and-white camouflage uniform, showed me a music video on his phone by one of Gambia’s best-known rappers, ST Brikama Boyo. He translated the lyrics of a song, called “Fuwareyaa,” which means “poverty”: “People like us don’t have meat and the Chinese have taken our sea from us in Gunjur and now we don’t have fish.”

Three hours after we embarked, the foreign ships had all but vanished, in what appeared to be a coördinated flight from the forbidden waters. Sensing that word about the operation had gotten out, the Sam Simon’s captain changed plans. Instead of focussing on the smaller unlicensed ships close to land that were mostly from neighboring African countries, he would conduct surprise at-sea inspections of the fifty-five industrial ships that were licensed to be in Gambian waters. It was a bold move: marine officers would be boarding larger, well-financed ships, many of them with political connections in China and Gambia.

Less than an hour later, we pulled alongside the Lu Lao Yuan Yu 010, a hundred-and-thirty-four-foot electric-blue trawler streaked with rust, operated by a Chinese company called Qingdao Tangfeng Ocean Fishery, a company that supplies all three of Gambia’s fish-meal plants. A team of eight Gambian officers from the Sam Simon boarded the ship, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. One officer was so nervous that he forgot the bullhorn he was assigned to carry. Another officer’s sunglasses fell into the sea as he leaped onto the deck.

Copyright Fabio Nascimento / The Outlaw Ocean Project

Onboard the Lu Lao Yuan Yu 010 were seven Chinese officers and a crew of four Gambians and thirty-five Senegalese. The Gambian marine officers soon began grilling the ship’s captain, a short man named Shenzhong Qui who wore a shirt smeared with fish guts. Below deck, ten African crew members in yellow gloves and stained smocks stood shoulder to shoulder on either side of a conveyor belt, sorting bonga, mackerel, and whitefish into pans. Nearby, the floor-to-ceiling rows of freezers were barely cold. Roaches scurried up the walls and across the floor, where some fish had been stepped on and squashed.

I spoke to one of the workers who told me his name was Lamin Jarju and agreed to step away from the line to talk. Though no one could hear us above the deafening ca-thunk, ca-thunk of the conveyor, he lowered his voice before explaining that the ship had been fishing within the nine-mile zone until the captain received a radioed warning from nearby ships that a policing effort was under way.

When I asked Jarju why he was willing to reveal the ship’s violation, he said, “Follow me.” He led me up two levels to the roof of the wheel room, where the captain works. He showed me a large nest of crumpled newspapers, clothing, and blankets, where, he said, several crew members had been sleeping for the past several weeks, ever since the captain hired more workers than the ship could accommodate. “They treat us like dogs,” Jarju said.

When I returned to the deck, an argument was escalating. A Gambian Navy lieutenant named Modou Jallow had discovered that the ship’s fishing log book was blank. All captains are required to maintain log books and keep detailed diaries that document where they go, how long they work, what gear they use, and what they catch. The lieutenant had issued an arrest order for the infraction and was yelling in Chinese at Captain Qui, who was incandescent with rage. “No one keeps that!” he shouted.

He was not wrong. Paperwork violations are common, especially on fishing boats working along the coast of West Africa, where countries don’t always provide clear guidance about their rules. Fishing-boat captains tend to view log books as tools of bribe-seeking bureaucrats or as statistical cudgels of conservationists bent on closing fishing grounds.

But the lack of proper logs makes it almost impossible to determine how quickly Gambia’s waters are being depleted. Scientists rely on biological surveys, scientific modelling and mandatory reports from fish dealers on shore to assess fish stocks. And they use log books to determine fishing locations, depths, dates, gear descriptions, and “fishing effort”—how long nets or lines are in the water relative to the quantity of fish caught. 

Jallow ordered the fishing Captain to steer his ship back to port, and the argument moved from the upper deck down to the engine room, where the Captain claimed he needed a few hours to fix a pipe—enough time, the Sam Simon crew suspected, for the Captain to contact his bosses in China and ask them to call in a favor with high-level Gambian officials. Jallow, sensing a stalling tactic, smacked the Captain in the face. “You will make the fix in an hour!” Jallow shouted, grabbing the Captain by the throat. “And I will watch you do it.” Twenty minutes later, the Lu Lao Yuan Yu 010 was en route to shore.

Over the next several weeks, the Sam Simon inspected fourteen foreign ships, most of them Chinese and licensed to fish in Gambian waters, and arrested thirteen of them. Under arrest, ships are typically detained in port for several weeks and fined anywhere from five thousand to fifty thousand dollars. All but one vessel was charged with lacking a proper fishing-log book, and many were also fined for improper living conditions and for violating a law that stipulates Gambians must comprise twenty per cent of shipping crews on industrial vessels in national waters. On one Chinese-owned vessel, there weren’t enough boots for the deckhands, and one Senegalese worker was pricked by a catfish whisker while wearing flip flops. His swollen foot, oozing from the puncture wound, looked like a rotting eggplant. On another ship, eight workers slept in a space meant for two, a four-foot-tall steel-sided compartment directly above the engine room and dangerously hot. When high waves crashed onboard, the water flooded the makeshift cabin, where, the workers said, an electrical power strip had twice almost electrocuted them.

Back in Banjul, one rainy afternoon I sought out Manneh, the local Gambian journalist and environmental advocate. We met in the white-tiled lobby of the Laico Atlantic hotel, decorated with fake potted plants and thick yellow drapes. Pachelbel’s Canon played in an endless loop in the background, accompanied by the plinking of water dripping from the ceiling into half a dozen buckets. Manneh had recently returned to Gambia after a year in Cyprus, where he had fled after his father and brother had been arrested for political activism against Yahya Jammeh, a brutal autocrat who was eventually forced from power in 2017. Manneh, who told me that he hoped to become President one day, offered to take me to the Golden Lead factory.

Copyright Fabio Nascimento / The Outlaw Ocean Project

The next day, Manneh returned in a Toyota Corolla he had hired for the difficult drive. Most of the road from the hotel to Golden Lead was dirt, which recent rains had turned into a treacherous slalom course of deep and almost impassable craters. The trip was about thirty miles, and took nearly two hours. Over the din of a missing muffler, he prepared me for the visit. “Cameras away,” he cautioned. “No saying anything critical about fish meal.” Just a week before my arrival that some of the same fishermen who had pulled up the plant’s wastewater pipe had apparently switched sides, attacking a team of European researchers who had come to photograph the facility, pelting them with rocks and rotten fish. Though they opposed the dumping and resented the export of their fish, some locals did not want foreign media publicizing Gambia’s problems.

We finally pulled up at the entrance of the plant, five hundred yards from the beach, behind a ten-foot wall of white corrugated metal. An acrid stench, like burning orange peels and rotting meat, assaulted us as soon as we got out of the car. Between the factory and the beach was a muddy patch of land, studded with palm trees and strewn with litter, where fishermen were repairing their boats in thatched-roof huts. The day’s catch lay on a set of folding tables, where women were cleaning, smoking, and drying it for sale. One of the women wore a hijab dripping wet from the surf. When I asked her about the catch, she shot me a dour look and tipped her basket toward me. It was barely half-full. “We can’t compete,” she said. Pointing at the factory, she added, “It all goes there.”

The Golden Lead plant consists of several football-field-size concrete buildings, and sixteen silos, where dried fish meal and chemicals were stored. Fish meal is relatively simple to make, and the process is highly mechanized, which means that plants the size of Golden Lead need only about a dozen men on the floor at any given time. Video footage clandestinely taken by a fishmeal worker inside Golden Lead reveals the plant is cavernous, dusty, hot, and dark. Sweating profusely, several men shovel shiny heaps of bonga into a steel funnel. A conveyor belt carries the fish into a vat, where a giant churning screw grinds it into a gooey paste, and then into a long cylindrical oven, where oil is extracted from the goo. The remaining substance is pulverized into a fine powder and dumped onto the floor in the middle of the warehouse, where it accumulates into a ten-foot-tall golden mound. After the powder cools, workers shovel it into fifty-kilogram plastic sacks stacked floor to ceiling. A shipping container holds four hundred bags, and the men fill roughly twenty to forty containers a day.

Near the entrance of Golden Lead, a dozen or so young men hustled from shore to plant with baskets on their heads, brimming with bonga. Nearby, standing under several gangly palm trees, a forty-two-year-old fisherman named Ebrima Jallow explained that the women pay more for a single basket, but Golden Lead buys in bulk and often pays for twenty baskets in advance—in cash. “The women can’t do that,” he said.

A few hundred yards away, Dawda Jack Jabang, the fifty-seven-year-old owner of the Treehouse Lodge, a deserted beachfront hotel and restaurant, stood in a side courtyard staring at the breaking waves. “I spent two good years working on this place,” he told me. “And overnight Golden Lead destroyed my life.” Hotel bookings have plummeted, and the plant’s odor at times is so noxious that patrons leave his restaurant before finishing their meal.

Golden Lead has hurt more than helped the local economy, Jabang said. But what about all of those young men hauling their baskets of fish to the factory? Jabang waved the question away dismissively: “This is not the employment we want. They’re turning us into donkeys and monkeys.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the tenuousness of this employment landscape, as well as its corruption. In May, many of the migrant workers on fishing crews returned home to celebrate Eid just as borders were closing down. With workers unable to return to Gambia and new lockdown measures in place, Golden Lead and other plants suspended operation.

Or they were supposed to. Manneh obtained secret recordings in which Bamba Banja, of the Ministry of Fisheries, discussed bribes in exchange for allowing factories to operate during the lockdown. In October, Banja took a leave of absence after a police investigation found that, between 2018 and 2020, he had accepted ten thousand dollars in bribes from Chinese fisherman and companies, including Golden Lead. 

On the day that I visited Golden Lead, I made my way down to the sprawling beach. I found Golden Lead’s new wastewater pipe, which was about 12 inches in diameter, already rusted, corroded and only slightly visible above the mounds of sand. The Chinese flag was gone. Kneeling down, I felt liquid flowing through it. Within minutes, a Gambian guard appeared and ordered me to leave the area.

The next day I headed to the country’s only international airport, located an hour away from the capital, Banjul, to catch my flight home. My luggage was light now that I’d thrown away the putrid-smelling clothes from my trip to the fish-meal plant. At one point during the drive, as we negotiated pothole after pothole, my taxi driver vented his frustration. “This,” he said, gesturing ahead of us, “is the road the fishmeal plant promised to pave.” 

At the airport, I discovered my flight had been delayed by a flock of buzzards and gulls blocking the only runway. Several years earlier, the Gambian government had built a landfill close by, and scavenger birds descended in droves. While I waited among a dozen German and Australian tourists, I called Mustapha Manneh. I reached him at home, in the town of Kartong, seven miles from Gunjur.

Manneh told me he was standing in his front yard, looking out on a litter-strewn highway that connects the JXYG factory, a Chinese fish-meal plant, to Gambia’s largest port, in Banjul. In the few minutes we had been talking, he said, he had watched ten tractor-trailer trucks rattle by, kicking up thick clouds of dust as they went, each hauling a forty-foot-long shipping container full of fish meal. From Banjul, those containers would depart for Asia, Europe, and the United States.

“Every day,” Manneh said, “it’s more.”

Ian Urbina is the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington DC that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.

This article appears here courtesy of The Outlaw Ocean Project. Part I of this story may be found here.

from Storage Containers https://maritime-executive.com/article/part-ii-fish-farming-is-feeding-the-world-but-at-what-cost via http://www.rssmix.com/

[the-christian-walk]

HISTORY LESSON (PART 1)

Can I pray for you in any way?

Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true?”

To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’”

“So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship Me in this place.’

Then He gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.

Acts 7:1-8

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

“This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.” Acts 6:13-14

These were the words of the false witnesses used to accuse Stephen as he was hauled in front of the Sanhedrin following a running dispute with the members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen.

Of course, Stephen had said no such thing, no more than Jesus Himself had said things He was accused of while brought before the council. We spent the past four messages looking at this similarity and others before the life of the Savior of the world and His devoted servant.

As the accusations were raised in court, we read where the high priest looked at Stephen and asked a direct question:

“Are these charges true?”

It was a simple yes or no inquiry but as we see, Stephen didn’t give a simple answer. Instead, he launched into a lengthy history lesson which encompasses nearly the entire length of Acts 7. His point was that it was the Jewish religious leaders, not him, who were blaspheming against Moses and God. In fact, it was the Jewish religious authorities who had not only willingly murdered an innocent man in Jesus but they did so without an ounce of consideration that He was who He said He was, the one and only Son of the God Most High, the very God who had granted the order not to murder. The Jews believed that God resided in their temple as if God could be contained within a human structure. At the pinnacle of his long historical message, we will find Stephen proclaim the truth that God doesn’t simply reside in any houses constructed by human hands. Rather, He abides with His people wherever they are.

To start highlighting this truth, we see Stephen begin in a place where his audience would find familiarity, with their beloved Abraham. After he commands all present to listen, he says these words:

“The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’”

“So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship Me in this place.’

Then He gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.

The Jewish religious leaders worshiped and adored Abraham who was viewed as the father of the Jewish nation. In fact, we read where he gave birth to a son named Isaac who would then give birth to a son named Jacob who would go onto have twelve sons who became leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel (the patriarchs). Yes, Abraham was a father but it was with a lower case “f”.

You see, Stephen makes sure the Jewish religious leaders get focused on the main Father, their God who was willing to help them see the wrongs of their ways, if they would just allow Him to do so. In regard to Abraham, nothing would have happened from a historical perspective with the man seen as the progenitor of the Jewish nation had God not ordained it first. The Bible starts with these words, “In the beginning, God”, for a reason. He was present before anything was created and He is the holy Author and Orchestrator of everything.

And so, it’s of no surprise when we see God taking center stage in the first part of Stephen’s history lesson. It was God who appeared to Abraham, not the other way around. It was God who commanded Abraham to leave his country and people to journey to an unidentified destination. All Abraham was told by God was that He would show him the way and that’s all that matters. If God calls us to go somewhere, we don’t need all the details. We just need to trust in Him and His purposes, knowing that He always leads us to where He wants us to be and does so without fail.

Stephen reminds his listeners that this is exactly what Abraham did. He responded to God’s call with obedience, leaving the “land of the Chaldeans” and ending up in Canaan, the land God had sent him to, the very land the Jews inhabited as Stephen spoke. At this time, Abraham was childless at the time but God made this promise to His faithful servant:

“For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship Me in this place.”

It was a glimpse into the future, one that provided amazing future implications, not just for Abraham but for his family. Yes, family. For although Abraham and his wife Sarah had no children, this was obviously going to change because God said it would. Abraham would have descendants, a lot of them, and eventually they would find their way to what would be called “The Promised Land” but not before a lengthy period of hardship marked by enslavement and mistreatment in a country that wasn’t their own, a country we now know was Egypt. It would be a long time spent in oppression and suffering but it wouldn’t last forever because God would deliver them from their captors, punish the nation that enslaved His people, and then bring them to the land He set apart for them, the land He brought Abraham to more than four centuries earlier.

In the beginning of creation, it was all about God.

As the Jewish nation was conceived and then birthed, it was all about God.

And as we’ll see in the second message of this series and those after, God takes center stage because that’s where He has always been.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at Joseph.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com

[bibleteachingbyolga]

Set aside, for a moment, the day’s pressing tasks. Hush, if you can, the hopes and desires that rushed upon you the moment you awoke. Step away from the morning’s burdens. Forget what the hours ahead may hold.

Now, Christian, remember: You are going to heaven. Very soon, even any moment, you will be hastened away from all you’ve known here to take an eternal holiday. You will wake up to find your lungs filled with the air of “a better country” (Hebrews 11:16). Your sorrows and sighs will be out of sight (Isaiah 51:11). You will see Jesus face-to-face (Philippians 1:23). And with him you will be home (2 Corinthians 5:8).

And now imagine what life might be like if, as we step back into the day’s tasks, desires, and burdens, we kept one eye upward. How might today be different if we brought the hope of heaven into the stuff of earth — if thoughts of things above adorned our waking hours?

We might then discover how much of our happiness rests on heavenly mindedness. And we might strive to have it said of us, as it was said of a saint of old,

Of that good man let this high praise be given, Heaven was in him before he was in heaven.

Set Your Mind on Things Above

The pursuit of heavenly mindedness can go wrong, of course. The popular criticism “Don’t be so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good” has teeth because some have, indeed, used heavenly mindedness as an excuse for earthly aloofness. They have hummed “I’ll Fly Away” while floating comfortably through this world, not remembering that the most heavenly minded man of all labored, sweated, healed, touched, and bled for this world of need.

We would do well, then, to listen again to the clearest charter of heavenly mindedness in Scripture:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4)

What does it mean to be heavenly minded? Not merely to live then and there, but to live now in light of then, here in light of there.

Roots in Heavenly Soil

If you belong to Christ, then in the truest sense, you do not live here on earth, but there in heaven: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Nor is your life in Christ on full display now, but only then: “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).

Your life is wonderfully, inextricably, eternally bound up with Jesus himself, who reigns there and will appear then. And heavenly mindedness aligns us with that fact, teaching us to define our identity not by the person we see in the mirror but by the Savior we see in Scripture.

Yet such a mindset does not nullify the life we have on earth, but rather transforms it according to the culture and norms of heaven. If we are hidden with Christ there and will be revealed then, we cannot help but look more like Christ here and now. Paul develops this point through the rest of the chapter, where he pens a portrait of the heavenly minded:

They put to death all that dishonors God and demeans others (Colossians 3:5–9).

They dress themselves in the heavenly clothing of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience (Colossians 3:12).

In a society of accusations and recriminations, they speak the otherworldly language of forgiveness (Colossians 3:13).

They walk under the reign of divine peace, which has established its throne on their hearts (Colossians 3:15).

They speak and sing with the harmony of gratitude and grace (Colossians 3:15–17; 4:6).

In every relationship, in every word, in every deed, they seek to show the glory of Jesus Christ (Colossians 3:17–4:1).

They are like oaks whose roots sink deep into heavenly soil. Though they grow up in the same field as the rest of the world, and though the same winds and storms beat against their trunks, they daily draw nourishment from another world, and so bear the fruit of that better country.

Heavenly Habits

How then can we grow in heavenly mindedness? How can people like us — everyday saints with jobs and families and friends and neighbors and a host of earthly responsibilities — come to have it said of us, “Heaven was in him before he was in heaven”?

The first answer is familiar: give ourselves to Bible reading and prayer, to corporate worship and fellowship, each of which is a means of heavenly mindedness as much as it is a means of grace. But alongside the daily habits of Scripture and prayer, and the weekly habits of corporate worship and fellowship, we can also position ourselves more intentionally to set our minds on things that are above.

Begin your day in heaven.

Robert Murray McCheyne, a heavenly minded man if there ever were one, once described his morning devotions as a means of “giving the eye the habit of looking upward all the day” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray McCheyne, 64). Knowing his thoughts would not drift toward heaven in the afternoon or evening unless he fixed his mind there first thing, he began his day in heaven.

We might learn the same lesson from the Lord’s Prayer. In teaching us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), did not Jesus assume we would normally begin the day on our knees? And significantly, before that prayer leads us to ask for daily bread, it sets our minds on things above:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done,      on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9–10)

If we take the Lord’s Prayer as our model, then heaven will fill some of our first thoughts every morning. Here and now will fade, at least for a few moments, before the brilliance of there and then. And when we walk into our day, we may take something of heaven with us.

Set your mind through meditation.

The command to “set your minds on things that are above” means more than “read about things that are above.” Something beyond mere reading is needed — a practice the biblical writers call meditation (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:1–2; 119:97).

If typical Bible reading focuses on paragraphs and chapters, meditation focuses on sentences and words; if in Bible reading we walk down the hallway of a passage, in meditation we open doors and explore rooms. The meditative Bible reader may, for example, read all of Colossians 3 in four or five minutes, but then come back to spend as much time (or more) pondering the wonder of what it means to be “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Meditation takes us above the foothills and puts us on the peaks of God’s revelation. And like Moses, we may come down still shining with the glory we’ve seen.

Maybe serious meditation feels like moving mountains to you. If so, start small, and don’t lose heart. Our minds, like a muscle, grow stronger through exercise. And by God’s grace, what feels impossible now may feel almost natural six months from now.

Retreat to things above throughout the day.

We saw above that Robert Murray McCheyne aimed to cultivate “the habit of looking upward all the day.” Many of us share a similar ambition — at least in theory. Reality might tell a different story.

If you’re at all like me, you leave your morning devotions with a sincere desire to go on thinking of things above in the spare moments of your day. But then you regularly fill every spare moment with something else. In the car, you turn on the news. In line at the store, you check your email. Waiting for a friend, you play a game on your phone. Lying in bed, you scroll through social media. None of these activities is necessarily bad. But how often are they the reflex of a mind addicted to distraction? And what if we resolved to spend at least some of the day’s silences recalling what we read that morning, rehearsing a memorized passage, or praying to our Father in heaven?

Moses told Israel to turn to God’s word “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7). If we too claimed more spare moments for the things that are above, we might be surprised at the unusual strength, peace, and joy that would be ours.

Treasure the heart of heaven.

Heaven is and always will be a world of glory (Colossians 3:4). When God makes all things new, the canyons and mountains, the galaxies and grasslands of this fallen world will groan no more (Romans 8:21). These broken bodies will be clothed with immortality (1 Corinthians 15:54). Human society will share in the very harmony of the Trinity (John 17:22–24).

Nevertheless, the hub of all that glory, whose name will rest upon our foreheads, and whose brightness will light up the world, will be God himself in Christ. “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). Heaven without Christ is like the ocean without water, the sky without air, fire without flame. He is heaven’s beating heart.

What does this mean for our heavenly mindedness? It means that our minds are most full of heaven when they are most full of Christ. As John Owen writes, “The whole glory of the state above is expressed by being ‘ever with the Lord, where he is, to behold his glory.’ . . . Our hope is that ere long we shall be ever with him; and if so, it is certainly our wisdom and duty to be here with him as much as we can” (Works of John Owen, 7:344).

Heavenly mindedness is an invitation to be with Jesus as much as we can, in preparation for the day when we will be with him always. So begin your day with Jesus, fix your meditations upon Jesus, and retreat throughout the day to Jesus. Because “set your minds on things that are above” means, at its core, “set your minds on him.”

[xtruss]

9/11 & Mumbai Attacks Were Inside Jobs: A Detailed Analysis By Elias Davidson

Elias Davidson is an author of several books, including the ‘Betrayal of India.’ GVS team sat down with him in Islamabad and tried understanding his perspective on history since 9/11.

— Magazine Desk | June 8, 2019 | Global Village Space

Most in the west may see German author Elias Davidson as he describes in his own words: “an idiot conspiracy theorist”, but he defines himself as a researcher who works like a historian. Unlike a journalist who travels from place to place, he collects and analyses all the published material, all data in public domain, and the claims made by the government agencies and then attempts to discover the truth hidden behind the trove of lies. GVS team sat down with him in Islamabad, during his recent visit, and tried understanding his perspective on history since 9/11. We offer excerpts from a detailed interview. His claims and judgments are provocative. Readers are the best judge.

GVS: What made you take interest in Mumbai terrorism?

Elias Davidson: Let us begin from 2001, that is, 9/11. I believed, like many others, that it was an operation carried out by Osama Bin Laden, a war backed by Muslim fanatics who professed that they are going to punch the noses of Americans because of what they were doing in Israel and the Muslim world. To be honest, many people in the left felt a little bit happy about it that finally, someone is banging on the head of Americans – and I believed it too. I didn’t really care about 9/11; I thought it just happened.

Until a year later, a friend of mine lent me a book by Thierry Meyssan, who was a French journalist and wrote the first critical book, “The Horrifying Fraud,” on the event. The book explained that it was not possible for a plane to enter the Pentagon and there were contradictions in the official story. So, I read it thoroughly. I checked all the sources, that is, Washington Post, New York Times, to see if he was making something up. However, I realized that he had thoroughly researched and produced the book.

I was astonished that I did not know about these things. It peeked, my curiosity, therefore I went on to investigate 9/11 and I did so for ten years. Rather early in my research, I began to pose the question, ‘who were the perpetrators and what evidence was there from the American government to say that they were Islamic terrorists?’ I searched and tried my best to find evidence, but I found none. There were four categories of evidence in my research. Firstly, the names of passengers; secondly, security videos from the airports; thirdly, witnesses who saw these people at the airport or the boarding phase; fourthly, identification of their bodily remains from the crash sites.

I looked for all this information on the FBI’s website, FBI’s documentation, which was sent to the 9/11 commission, on newspapers, and in books. I combed everything I could and found not a shred of evidence. To sum it up, I documented everything in my first book published in 2013, ‘Hijacking America’s mind on 9/11’. There is a full chapter devoted just to the absence of evidence.

In the last few years, I sue everyone who dares to mention Muhammed Atta, the alleged pilot, as a terrorist or mass murderer. They have to deal with me; I will take him to court and accuse him of defamation – I am a defender of Muhammad Atta in the world. This is a strong statement, and I stand by it because I know it is the truth. I have accused 130 German journalists about it, in another book I published in Germany. I sent the journalists a letter where I stated that I would give them a possibility to retract those accusations on Muhammad Atta and apologize or provide some evidence of their assertions.

GVS: Questioning 9/11 makes people question your credibility, how did you come around to not believing in the American statements on 9/11 in the first place?

Elias Davidson: Let me say one thing; my book was published in the United States in 2013. I commented in black and white with all the sources mentioned. The entire story of 9/11 was a lie; especially about what happened on the day, no Muslim hijackers, the two planes which had crashed were still in the air after the alleged crash time. There is documented evidence from American sources that two of the four planes were still in the air at the time of the alleged crash.

Nobody until today has challenged a single fact in the book. Why? Because there is nothing to question. This is thoroughly documented. Many people in America endorse this book. There are 14 positive reviews of this book on Amazon and zero bad ones. Anybody who is trying to challenge me, please do so. I would be satisfied because I get bored of always getting commended. Please call it wrong. I have sent letters to American professors rebut the book, but nobody takes up the challenge.

GVS: The Mumbai attack, which happened on 26 November 2008, when did you get interested in that?

Elias Davidson: After I finished this work, I began to look at other terrorist attacks, which were attributed to Al-Qaida or Muslims. I thought I’d like to see if they had the same features as 9/11, state operations and so on. I began with the London attacks in 2005. I did in-depth research on that – around 70 pages – which I published as an ebook and came to the same conclusion that it was a state operation.

There were four people, three of them were British Pakistanis, but they were not involved, and they were not the perpetrators. If they were at all involved, then they were patsies and sent with ruck sacks without knowledge of what they were doing; it was just conjecture. What is clear is that the entire official London story is a lie, so I documented it as well.

GVS: We wonder why you don’t find the official explanations convincing? Two of us were in London on the eve of 7/7, in 2005 and we saw it developing the media reports as they poured in?

Elias Davidson: It is not a question of convincing, and you could have been in London, but that doesn’t give you an advantage over me when it comes to details. You did not go through the inquests for four years; I went through all the documents of the investigation that are available publicly. It is thousands of pages long, and I went through every sentence.

I researched in-depth like I usually do and concluded that the story was a fabrication. I don’t know which agency in the UK did it. It is possible that the New York Police department was also involved as they showed an extraordinary interest in the London affairs. They even constructed the so-called bomb factory in New York – a copy of the bomb factory from Leeds – which was allegedly where the bomb was produced.

GVS: What is so surprising about that? If an attack has happened in the UK, it would worry them that a similar attack might occur in the US, so they would simulate similar exercises to know how to deal with it.

Elias Davidson: I understand, but basically, we have the same case with Mumbai, and the New York Police Department was particularly interested in the Mumbai Attacks. They sent a delegation directly, held a conference a couple of weeks later in New York, and made simulations as if they knew everything.

GVS: What do you think is the real reason for their interest?

Elias Davidson: Okay, we will come to it after we discuss London. Everybody interested in my research on 9/11 has to read my books to have an opinion about it. To say that I have any conspiracy theories is not a rational way of addressing anything of that kind. I am a scholar; I have published articles on International Law in the United States, UK, Netherlands, Iran, etc. So, I am not a ‘nobody,’ I am an expert in international law and human rights who has written comprehensive books about these things.

So, anybody who is to deal with these things will first of all have to read them and then can say that they do not agree. However, to call me a conspiracy theorist is like calling me a nut. It has to have a meaning; it should hurt me, but it is so stupid that it doesn’t deserve a response. Anyhow, conspiracies exist everywhere. Even a police investigator is a conspiracy theorist because every crime committed by people is a conspiracy. The term has no meaning basically and is ridiculous – it just a term to demean people.

GVS: Did you visit India for your research on the book?

Elias Davidson: No. Do you think it is not possible to study and come to an understanding unless you physically see the place? How do historians do it? If you want to write about something that happened a hundred years ago, what do you do? You go to manuscripts and documents. Nobody can charge you for not living there; otherwise, there will be no history.

A journalist, typically, is usually not at the scene of the crime. Sometimes he doesn’t even have access to witnesses. So, if you are working as a scholar and you know how to work with evidence, you don’t have to go and speak to a person. I don’t think that I will get more by speaking to somebody who already spoke extensively to the newspapers in India, ten years ago; he will now tell me another story or repeat it. I don’t know but it will not add very much to the investigation and what is already available is so much information and so helpful that I didn’t see a need and I knew that it would not add any value.

I knew that I would get closed doors with the police, even Vinita Kamte, the widow of the slain officer. She came to closed doors with the Mumbai police – people with whom her husband worked. Do you think me coming from Germany would find opened doors? Not. So, there was no point in going there. Moreover, I think anybody using that argument should, first of all, go on the merit of what I wrote. Is there something wrong in the book? Tell me because I am open to that. However, don’t judge me because I am in Germany. I can be in Germany and do better work than someone in India.

GVS: Has the Indian government reacted to your book on Mumbai terrorism?

Elias Davidson: They have reacted like everybody else – they have hidden under the tables – no reaction. Nobody in the official governments in India or anywhere else, no media or journalist reacts to my writings. How can they do it? They can only call me an idiot conspiracy theorist. They cannot deal with the facts which are there with all the sources.

GVS: What were the key facts that attracted you to study the Mumbai attack?

Elias Davidson: I began with London and then I went to attacks in Djerba, Istanbul, etc. These were different terrorist attacks that I studied. I wanted to write an anthology on terror attacks with different chapters, including Mumbai and Bali. So, I came to the issue of Mumbai and began to work on it, just like the others. I never went to these places because I work like a historian; taking information and studying it. So, I deliberated on all of these and tried to find a common thread to compare them.

I thought the study on Mumbai would be only 50-60 pages of research, but it grew and grew to become an entire book because the information available on the issue was huge. Also, the judgment of Ajmal Kasab had a lot of media coverage, and it was a very complex operation – comprised of 8 locations. It required much effort to study the issue and became a book of 900 pages.

It took me two years of work to write it, and I did not write it for any publisher. I just went on researching and had contacts with people in India. I am very thankful to Inspector S. M. Mushrif, who wrote the first critical book on Mumbai attacks called, ‘Who killed Karkare?’ So, I got in touch with him, told him what I was doing, and he encouraged me.

My discoveries on the Mumbai operation grew and grew, and I used only publicly sourced documents. All of these documents are cited in my book, and I have cached all of them on my website in case an article in the Indian newspapers is made to disappear later on. So, in the book, I give a number to Google, which will lead directly to my website and the original document. I don’t know of any author who goes as far as that to help the reader to check his sources. I give all of the sourced documents to the reader.

GVS: What is the significance of the assassination of Karkare?

Elias Davidson: That is very simple – nationalist Hindus threatened him because he was exposing Hindu terrorism and he was shot. He confided to different people, who confirmed that he was afraid for his life, even on the day of his murder. The current Prime Minister of India, Modi, had publicly threatened him and called him a traitor, which under Indian law is passable of a death sentence. So, he was threatened and murdered with 26/11.

GVS: What is your understanding of Ajmal Kasab, who was in Indian custody and whose confessional statement was on television?

Elias Davidson: First of all, I don’t know if his name was Ajmal Kasab because the first information we got through the Indian media was a different name, which gradually changed to Ajmal Kasab. I don’t know if it was his real name and I also don’t know who he was. He told in his stories that he was already arrested in Mumbai two weeks before, etc. Secondly, nobody from Pakistan, neither family nor officials, came to identify him personally. So, we don’t know who he was, or even the photos we have are of this guy or someone else.

GVS: There were rumors in Islamabad that Ajmal Kasab could have been a small-time spy or an infiltrator that entered India from Nepal and was there for quite some time. In his confessional statement, he spoke local Marathi; he was very fluent in the local language and hence, could not have just landed in India through the boat.

Elias Davidson: I did not look at that. Looking into that presupposes that Ajmal Kasab was legitimate and involved in the attacks. However, I don’t have any evidence for that. So, whatever he told in his confessions, which he retracted in his statements, was for me like hot air – I don’t know if he was coached. You see, someone who is held by the police has hardly any access to his lawyers and he was not interviewed by any Pakistani; how can you comment on what he said or what the police said he said. So, for me, it was all hot air.

GVS: Why do you think the Indian state was so quick to execute him?

Elias Davidson: Why should they keep him in alive? This guy was hired to play some role in these attacks by those who organized it. Maybe he was asked to be at CST, to be photographed, if he had admitted in front of people that he was asked to stand with a Kalashnikov at CST, he would have revealed the entire story. So, the best thing is to eliminate this guy.

This is what usually happens with all the so-called Islamic terrorist attacks in the west – the alleged perpetrators are typically eliminated because they do not want these people to come to court. Also, this was maybe a mistake or not, in Mumbai, but here was one case in the Boston marathon. They didn’t kill one guy, and then he was sentenced to death in America, but this usually doesn’t happen. Look at the attack in Berlin, in the Christmas market in 2016.

I wrote the first book on this attack in Germany, it sells very well and is already in the fifth edition. I showed that there was no attack at all, and it was a staged theatre. The German government accuses Anis Amri, an Indonesian guy, who rode a truck and killed twelve people. That was all bullshit. And he was murdered in Milano. The police shot him because he tried to kill the policeman. You see, all these people are eliminated before they can talk, so there is no trial. And so, the government does not have to prove the case.

GVS: In the book, you mentioned that there was no public trial, but there was a trial, and he had lawyers.

Elias Davidson: Let us put it this way – it was a sham trial. It was a judicial farce and was not open or fair. It violated all the basic rules of a fair trial. If you look at the qualifications of a fair trial according to the international human rights law, you will see that this trial violated all the necessary provisions of a fair case and in fact, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations protested against this unfair inquiry.

So, this is not only my conclusion, but many others also considered the trial unfair, which is honestly an understatement. This judge, M L Tahilyani, should be imprisoned, in my opinion, because of how he undermined justice in India and the trust of the public. A person like this deserves to be punished. There was an appeal process, but I am sorry to say that the next levels, the Bombay Court and the Supreme Court of India, abdicated their obligation to seek the truth and justice.

The Supreme Court heaped admiration for this judge. Many years ago, I met a lawyer who was entitled to represent people in the Supreme Court of India, and he told me how the institution is fantastic. His judgments impressed me a lot, so I had a positive opinion of the Supreme Court of India, but I lost all of it after reading what they wrote about the lawsuit.

GVS: Indian position is that the trial was difficult because Pakistani government was not cooperative.

Elias Davidson: There was nothing like that. This is an argument of little standing. I will give you an example; the court could have interviewed the many people who saw all kind of things around these attacks, which contradicted the official account. However, they were not invited to testify. I have named in my book, around 40-50 witnesses who saw things which completely contradict the official statement.

GVS: We had read somewhere that while official account mentioned the use of Kalashnikov AK 47 assault rifles by the attackers, the subsequent autopsy reports at the hospital do not indicate the use of automatic rifles. What do the autopsy reports show, how these people died?

Elias Davidson: There were no autopsies; I am not aware of any autopsy reports. An important point I think I should mention is that there were two parallel series of attacks in Mumbai. I call them domestic attacks and international attacks. The internal attacks began in the CST terminals, railway stations; they then proceeded to Cama hospital, which led to the assassinations of three officers and their assistants and continued to the synagogue on the way to Girgaon.

So, there were four attacks which we will call the domestic operation, which was concentrated and designed to get rid of Karkare. The international operations begun in the Leopold hotel touched the Taj Mahal hotel, Oberoi Trident, and the Nariman House Jewish center – four locations which were mostly frequented by foreigners. The other one was primarily visited by locals and poor Indians. So, there were two operations which had to be coordinated.

There was probably overall coordination of both operations, but most likely two command centers – one for the local and one for the international operation. The Mumbai police commanded the local operation led by Rakesh Maria. He was the key person in the local operation. I don’t know who ran the international operation, but I suspect that there were Americans involved. Now, if we go by that description, we have two operations which are coordinated by one body or one mind.

This mind must have been automatically connected to those who wanted to kill Karkare – the policeman investigating Hindu terrorism. It cannot be, that some people in Pakistan were doing their own thing, and others joined in precisely at the same time.

GVS: Could Karkare not have been an accidental victim of the whole episode?

Elias Davidson: Exactly, this is what the official account says. However, if you look at all the details around the assassination, you will find nothing accidental. For example, police officers who were around the place at the time of the assassination got an order to stand down and not impede. They said it publicly that they were not supposed to go to that place. So, this operation was organized so Mumbai Police would not interfere with the assassination.

Another thing is that in this domestic operation, we were told that there were two people – Ajmal Kasab and Ismail – who went from one place to another and did this killing. However, this is impossible. Why? Because the shootings in the CST continued even after the Cama hospital operation began. The Cama operation started before the end of the shootings at CST and finished by the middle of the night – far longer than the assassination. So, we had at least two to three teams; one team at CST, one at Cama hospital going on until the middle of the night, another team to assassinate Karkare and a fourth team to shoot people near the cinema. So, we had at least four teams in the domestic operation, not just a few people.

GVS: So, none of the attackers, apart from Ajmal Kasab, were identified? How many attackers were there in total?

Elias Davidson: No, not at all. I have no clue. The official story says ten, but there could have been way more. You see because witnesses reported that in each location there were more attackers. In CST, people said there were three or four attackers outside the station. In Leopold, one witness said that three people were coming on a motorbike, and one of them looked European. Moreover, all of these witnesses were never identified.

I don’t know, some of them might be mistaken, but as long as you don’t go into the details and interrogate you will never find out. One attacker, Ajmal Kasab, was captured alive on the cameras with a gun and then made a confessional statement. It was said that he was captured alive, but this was not the first news. The first news was that two people were killed at Girgaon Chowpatty, through the night the story slowly changed that he was not killed but was shot; then a doctor came and said that he was never shot. So, we have these three versions about the capture of Ajmal Kasab.

GVS: What does your research show about the rest of the nine attackers? What happened to them, their dental records, skull records, bodies, identification, etc.?

Elias Davidson: We have nothing, nothing concrete about these nine people. We don’t know where they came from; we don’t know to whom these bodies belong – we only have first names of some of them. I cannot find it because there is no information about them.

GVS: Indian authorities identified a motorboat that sunk, and they had communication intercepts between Mumbai and Karachi, the FBI had a witness, Dawood Gilani, who was American of Pakistani origin. What does your research show about all that?

Elias Davidson: About the boat, in my book, I present four witnesses who said something about it. One witness, as it was reported in the news, spoke to the police, that he saw people coming out of the boat; one person said six and another said there were eight people. However, the one who said that he saw people coming out of the boat stated something else in court; he said that he went fishing and found an empty boat.

So, there was a contradiction between what was said in court and what was said to the newspaper, so we don’t know whom he was lying to. However, in any case, his testimony got dismissed because it was unreliable. In another case, a lady said that she was taken to America, from a fishing village, to testify secretly in January. Her name was Anita, and her story is entirely surreal. She revealed that she saw six people coming out of the boat. I have an entire section on her, as it was reported in the media, both in India and abroad.

GVS: What about the satellite communication intercepts between India and the FBI?

Elias Davidson: Do you mean the telephone calls? It’s nice that you brought that up. It is the biggest blunder of the organizers. They should have been smarter about them. First of all, the phone calls were organized by the FBI in such a way that you cannot see who called. It said that the call was made from Pakistan, but the calls were transmitted from a company based in New Jersey. A company in Delaware owns the VOIP Company in New Jersey.

The FBI intercepted all the calls and later when the investigation was to be conducted, organized an interview from the court, with the owner of the company on video. The FBI connected the court to this man in Canada, through an agent in California. So, the FBI was a central agent around the calls. They intercepted all the calls. Basically, the FBI was organizing all these things.

GVS: How can you say that the FBI was organizing this? We can argue that the FBI claims to have intercepted all the calls which were made via the internet, and telephone, and the FBI got to see all that.

Elias Davidson: Well, this is one part of it. If you focus logically, the FBI has many things to worry about. How could the FBI come to the idea of intercepting calls, in the spur of the moment, between somebody in India and somewhere else? You cannot do it unless you know. Indian witnesses said that they knew telephone numbers of the attackers before the attacks.

There was foreknowledge of the telephone numbers used by the attackers. So, the foreknowledge existed already in India, and I suppose with the FBI; otherwise, they could not intercept the calls. It is not logical. You cannot intercept the call unless you know something is going on and you are alert. All that I am saying is well-documented.

GVS: Have you not talked to the Indian authorities after 900 pages of research?

Elias Davidson: Let me give you an example, if you have a criminal unless you have the power of an Attorney and unless you have the ability to subpoena people and to force them to come and interview, you cannot interview a criminal or a suspect.

GVS: However, the critical questions regarding the evidence, the nine attackers that were never identified, you could have raised questions to the Indian officials about the inconsistencies in the case.

Elias Davidson: Do you think, realistically, that a guy sitting in Germany will get answers from Indian authorities who are implicated in that? This is not realistic. I am writing letters every day to officials in India, to ask questions, and I never get any response. They don’t want to implicate themselves. I would have liked to talk to witnesses, but you can never reach the witnesses. I was talking to a victim (I will not disclose where she is), and she said that she went to Mumbai later and everyone was afraid to speak to foreigners. They are fearful for their lives.

GVS: Why do you think India organized this? What was the motivation or the goal?

Elias Davidson: It is clear that this was a massive and complex operation. My approach was, first of all, forensic. I did not think about motives in the beginning. I began to look for motives after finalizing the forensic part. I started with India, but also what could motivate Pakistan, United States, Russia, etc. As per my research I see several motives for India. One was to provide adjustment for increases in the budget for the military and the police; they pushed for that.

Secondly, and an essential thing, was to accelerate the buildup of a national security state or a domestic surveillance state or the big brother state in India; this was a program that had started earlier but accelerated automatically after Mumbai. As I discovered later, India may be a test laboratory for the United States, on how to create a big brother society in such a big country. So, it might have even been supported by Obama and the administration at the time, to use India as a laboratory for such an enormous national security state.

However, this is conjecture; what is not conjecture is that India is building a national security state. Third, politically, it helped to unite the Indian public around the threat from Pakistan and shift to the right for the BJP. Fourthly, this event galvanized the middle class in India, who were previously very complacent about national security; all at once they were on the streets to demonstrate for more security in Mumbai. After that, the security industry boomed.

Fifth, certain elite segments of the Indian society who had wanted to increase cooperation with Israel and the United States; benefited directly. After the Mumbai attacks, the interim minister resigned, and Chidambaram took over, and he was the key opener for the FBI to give them direct access to Ajmal Kasab, and all the information on Mumbai attacks. He opened the gates of India for American Intelligence, American law enforcement, etc. This was auto commanded, he said it himself, and the Americans confirmed it.

GVS: Did the FBI ever make definitive judgments about the Mumbai issue? Have you ever seen anything in which they concluded black and white? Like the Dawood Gilani case.

Elias Davidson: No, Gilani or Headley is a Red Herring. It is utterly irrelevant to Mumbai. To my knowledge, the FBI did not issue a paper to cite anything directly. What the FBI did was first, they sent a team straight to Mumbai during the attacks. Second, they got direct access to Ajmal Kasab even before he got a lawyer; they interviewed him for nine hours. Thirdly, they were participants of the phone calls.

Fourthly, they organized with the New York police department, if I remember correctly, about one to two weeks after the attack, a seminar on how to cope with such an attack. Now, at that time no investigation had been released, but the FBI and the NYPD were ready with a blueprint of how it was done. And this is documented. They had a conference with people from all over the United States, to discuss the modus operandi of Mumbai. At this time, as I said, they could not have had such information because it requires much more time to investigate such an operation.

GVS: You must have heard the Indian argument that the Mumbai attacks were orchestrated by elements in Pakistan so that there is continued hostility between India and Pakistan; otherwise, India and Pakistan could have come close to each other. What is your perspective on that?

Elias Davidson: Well, this might have been one of the reasons. I don’t think that it was the primary reason. I mentioned already the motives of India; this could have been one of the reasons. However, I stand with my investigation to think that it was not the main reasons. Pakistan was only the by-product. It is handy politically, but the main thing was the domestic and economic reasons with the United States.

GVS: However, Mumbai terrorism provided the pretext for the United States and, mostly, India to declare Pakistan as a terror-sponsoring and terrorist state. And the Pakistanis have often thought that the Mumbai attacks were arranged to get Pakistan by the neck and to take it to the Security Council as a terrorist state.

Elias Davidson: Yes, this is true and absolutely correct.

[anonymoustalks]

We thought we were defeating political islam, but after 10 years of the current regime, it's now clear that Islamist have won the social engineering game

(6-18-20) You both like history.

Stranger: Hi

You: hi

You: I should really remove this tag

Stranger: ha ha

Stranger: why

You: idk I'm not very knowledgeable about history

You: what do you like about history?

Stranger: well, we have internet for it

Stranger: war and it's impact on building new civilization

You: I feel like many people on this tag are fond of military history

Stranger: Military history can be boring

You: I'm not very interested in military history

Stranger: me neither, but middle edge politics are good to start with

You: middle age?

Stranger: Religion and politics especially

Stranger: yap

You: mhm

You: I like thinking about what life was like

You: idk what it was like to be a peasant

Stranger: or middle eastern librarian or greek philosopher's assistant

You: mhm right

Stranger: looks like I had longest chat for today

You: I feel like we don't learn enough about the middle east in school

Stranger: school curriculum is biased these days

You: mhm biased towards?

You: like in our school we learned all about the greeks and romans and stuff

You: athens democracy

Stranger: biased towards the dominant followers of religion in that that country

You: mhm

You: I think it's important to study the history of people you're very different from

Stranger: Athens democracy is a safe topic, that's why it is so popular in curriculum.

You: yup

Stranger: Agreed

Stranger: I am not sure where you are from, but I am from a muslim majority country.

You: ohh I'm from the US

You: which country?

Stranger: Muslims are almost sidelined by the Islamists

Stranger: tragedy

You: can you explain the difference for me?

Stranger: give 30 sec

You: this is a really pleasant surprise because I'm used to lots of people from north america at this time on omegle ^^

Stranger: I am from Bangladesh

You: cool

Stranger: Capital Dhaka

You: that's cool

Stranger: was studying the influence of Political Islam in different centuries

Stranger: controversial subject for westerners

Stranger: but not for me

Stranger: it's more of a risky one

You: mhm I think it's important to study

Stranger: being a Muslim in a growing sentimental Islamist dominant society is no longer easy

Stranger: world has changed :(

You: I'm not sure if I"m understanding why it's hard to be muslim in an islamist society?

Stranger: Open discussion about religion, god, science, philosophy was quite prevalent in middle age middle east

You: right

You: golden age

Stranger: but now it's safe to avoid it

Stranger: even within your friend circle

Stranger: looks like I am typing most of the time

You: hm?

You: I'm really interested in hearing what you have to say

You: in your country, is there only one branch of islam that is in power?

You: or are there multiple branches that are tolerated?

You: like in the US, we have catholics, protestants, methodists... a lot of branches of christianity

Stranger: We are democratic country of around 180 million population, led by a female Muslim Prime Minister

Stranger: But after her death, Islamist will reign. Mostly .... :(

You: ohh I see

Stranger: Sunnis are majority here

Stranger: which state are you from?

You: one of the New England ones ^^

You: so right now Bangladesh doesn't have political islam?

You: but you think it it will once the next party takes power?

Stranger: BD has political islam, it just subsided for a while

You: I see

You: what do you think of political islam?

You: like why is it good or bad?

Stranger: but they are active in social engineering

You: mhm

Stranger: Any religion practiced for sake of political dominance, it evil

Stranger: period

Stranger: *is evil

You: oh wow that's a strong opinion ^^

Stranger: We thought we were defeating political islam, but after 10 years of the current regime, it's now clear that Islamist have won the social engineering game

You: mhm what kind of social engineering did they do?

Stranger: just google Turkey before/after Erdogan

Stranger: same thing happened here

You: ah okay

Stranger: So, I believe you would find my stance a bit aggressive, being from one of those New England states

You: hm?

Stranger: I probably branded Islamophobe, if I were in one of those states.

You: ahh

You: I don't think you are an islamophobe

Stranger: definitely I am not, as you already know that I am a Muslim myself

You: I think most americans are broadly supportive of secularism

You: right it's hard for me to imagine any american calling you an islamophobe haha

You: since you are muslim

You: I was just surprised that you called it "evil" since the language sounds very strong

Stranger: you should call it what it is

Stranger: no sugarcoating, when comes to the practice of religious supremacy

You: mhm is that what happens in a religious state?

You: I'm just curious because israel is kind of a religious state? (are they?)

Stranger: it's happening

You: ^^ I'm just trying to understand

Stranger: Israel is progressive, but they are also hurting themselves a bit since the rise of Likud

Stranger: their religious schools and leaders are not dominant.

You: ahh okay

You: thanks for explaining

You: are religious schools bad?

Stranger: not always

Stranger: but in current world, it's definitely not contributing towards peace and progress

Stranger: at least Islamic schools

You: mhm and you are progressive, it sounds like

Stranger: I am disappointed, that people in my country have learned nothing from what happened in Afghanistan, or what's happening in Pakistan everyday.

You: mhm

You: (what happened in Afghanistan?)

Stranger: we all know

You: taliban?

Stranger: Hmm . . .

Stranger: your election is near

You: mh eventually

Stranger: how much influence does religion have in 2020

Stranger: ?

You: (sorry, many of us americans are fairly ignorant about international politics)

You: mhm, maybe a little less than 2016 I think

You: 2016 was a big year because there were many vacant supreme court seats

You: and religious conservatives wanted to appointed justices who were sympathetic to religious values

You: I think trump is more closely aligned with nationalism than religion

You: although the republican party has always been the side for religious conservatives

Stranger: Yes, Trump is definitely not into religion, but need to acknowledge for sake his supporters in Midwest and other red states

You: yup

You: I think economy, coronavirus, and race will play the biggest role n 2020

Stranger: political move, same things happen

Stranger: Bangladesh is in a very interesting position the geopolitical situation in southeast asia

You: because?

Stranger: bordered by India (2nd biggest economy by 2050), nearby China (biggest economy), and US interest to establish military base at Bay of Bengal (since 90s)

You: oh I didn't know the US wanted to establish a military base

Stranger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia

Stranger: lots of Southeast Asian leaders were eliminated to establish one here

Stranger: *alleged

You: oh interesting

Stranger: 20th Century history can be harmful for your sould

Stranger: *soul

You: aww :c

Stranger: International politics is not a gentleman's game anymore

Stranger: before 20th century few good instances were there

You: mhm

Stranger: are you still student?

You: yup!

You: you?

Stranger: I am back in academia again

Stranger: after a while

Stranger: are you in School or University?

You: university

You: "again"?

Stranger: Yes had Engineering, then job then again doing my MSc. Probably higher degrees abroad in next, hopefully

You: oh wow that's a lot of degrees

You: what is it like living in a muslim majority country?

Stranger: in our country, we can't even speak arabic, let alone understand it

Stranger: but political islam and intolerance is growing

You: um... are they adding arabic to your school curriculum?

Stranger: We had one arabic in our school

Stranger: but if you want learn it well, then you need to go to madrasa

Stranger: it's a religious school

You: right

Stranger: not so many tolerant/rationale people come out of this system

You: yeah...

Stranger: we are not the traditional muslim majority country even though it's almost 90% muslim (150 million)

Stranger: you need to go to middle east to experience it

You: mhm are you similar to indonesia?

Stranger: Islamization has taken over traditional culture

Stranger: but it's still quite cosmopolitan in big cities

You: mhm, so islamization is more in rural areas?

Stranger: mostly

Stranger: just study about the Saudi software and it's influence in Indonesia in recent years

Stranger: you will understand how it works

You: ah I don't know anything about it

You: saudi software or anything

Stranger: Saudi software has great influence in Muslim countries. Local culture cannot compete with their budget.

You: oh I didn't know

Stranger: with few billions they can transform society thousand miles away

Stranger: and if US want for their own political gain, then the process become much faster

You: mhm...

Stranger: are you science or humanities?

You: science

You: biology

You: although I also like the humanities

Stranger: but not good for career

Stranger: :(

You: haha ^^ did you want to do humanities?

Stranger: I was good at painting/drawing, but never went to fine arts; you know why.

You: mhm right

Stranger: Wish we could discuss much about the the middle age history

Stranger: but chat is not good for long discussion

You: mhm fair enough

Stranger: just trying the omegle for the first time, didn't expect to get such long conversation.

You: oh really?

You: um, yeah I think this is unusual

You: there are also many mean people here

You: and horny people

Stranger: it has always been like this

Stranger: I was feeling nostalgic about the good old yahoo chatroom

Stranger: so a friend told me to try Omegle

You: oh wow, I never used that

Stranger: they were great when I started using internet on slow broadband

Stranger: mean people were there too

You: mhm

Stranger: but some focused chatroom was also created

You: which chatrooms did you like?

Stranger: movies, football, book discussion

Stranger: it was back in 2004-2008

You: mhm a while ago

Stranger: I think you were much younger back then

Stranger: ha ha

You: how are you?

You: *how old

Stranger: I am in my early 30s

You: ahh cool

You: I'm 26

Stranger: so do you like sports?

You: mhm, not very much

You: I'm a little boring haha

Stranger: it's okay

Stranger: have you ever been to Asia?

You: yup, I have!

You: I'm Chinese American actually

Stranger: are you born in China then moved to USA?

You: nope, born in the US

You: my parents immigrated here for graduate school

Stranger: I see

Stranger: It's 9:45AM here

You: mhm I guess you have to go?

Stranger: what time at your place?

You: nearly midnight

Stranger: I think it's about time to sleep. I haven't slept last night. was doing some work.

You: ohhh

You: go to bed!

You: that's so late!

You: it was nice talking to you

Stranger: Yeah . . . .

Stranger: Yes it was good

You: I thought you just woke up

Stranger: we all in lockdown and it's weekend here

Stranger: Friday, Saturday our weekend

You: ahh

You: I didn't even know that

Stranger: So watched Netflix all night

You: haha

Stranger: It's good to chat with you

Stranger: well the best with your studies

You: yup, you too

You: good luck!

Stranger: you too . . . . :)

You have disconnected.

[waqasblog2]

Content Marketing for SEO: 25 Proven Angles That Still Attract Links | Detailed.com

In October of 2017 I set out to start building my own private backlink database.

It was always intended to stay private – I don’t have the budget or desire to compete with what’s already out there – and created with my own research purposes in mind.

For instance, I wanted to know what the top sites in specific niches were linking to this year, month, or even week. Not only would this help with client work, but give me inspiration for content that works well in one niche that might work well in others.

To get this data with current platforms you have to find all the top sites in an industry, crawl through their recent outgoing links – site by site – and then see if you can spot any trends.

It’s a ton of work, and certainly not something I want to do on a regular basis.

If this isn’t your first visit to Detailed then you’ll know that a few weeks ago I shared a large part of my link index in public on our homepage.

Our unique “selling point” (the data will always be free) is that you can easily see popular sites in specific industries and then find the people linking to (and tweeting about) them.

I didn’t want to just show any link or tweet, but mentions from sites that aren’t PBN’s or automated blogs, and tweets from people thought to be ‘influencers’ in their field.

In other words, you can easily find the links that real people are giving out to content they enjoy, rather than scrolling through a ton of spammy mentions.

Now that we’re processing around 100,000 genuine, in-content links per day, I can start pulling out some interesting insights from that data.

I can now see exactly what sites in specific niches (or from the web as a whole) are linking to in certain timeframes.

I’m going to be open up as much of this data as I can in the near future, but for now I thought I would share some of the more interesting content angles that get people talking.

Every single example below has picked up in-content links, in the first three months of this year, from some of the biggest sites in their niche.

If you’re using content marketing as part of an SEO strategy to pick up more links, hopefully this gives you the insights and inspiration you’ve been looking for.

Map Out Your Audiences’ Biggest Goal: A Six-Year-Old Finance Article That Picks Up Links Every Week

Published: Jan 13th, 2012 | Notable link: GetRichSlowly.org (March 15th, 2018)

This example is quite special because it was written over six years ago, yet still has people talking about it like it was just published.

Mr. Money Mustache is one of the biggest names in personal finance, ranking 8th in the world by our count. I’m not surprised to see him picking up links, but I am surprised how well this article is performing compared to his more recent updates.

The piece isn’t particularly long, coming in at “just” 1,100 words, but it is instantly practical and useful for readers of the site.

If you spend a second in the personal finance blogging world, you’ll know a common goal for many in the space is early retirement.

Their focus seems to be less on building businesses like I find in the marketing world, but more on saving what they currently make.

Mr. Money’s article was directly focused on how you can achieve early retirement (his readers’ ultimate goal), with a few graphs from his own experience of doing the same.

Looking into the links it picked up and the anchor text used, it’s clear this is a bit of timeless advice that has cemented itself in the personal finance blogosphere.

It seems like people found so much use in the article for their own personal journey that they have no problems making sure their readers get to learn from it as well.

Be clear about a significant goal most of your audience have, and either map out a way to get there from your own experience, or share insights you’re picking up along your own journey.

Rank Your Niche: It’s Not Just the Sites Included Who Will Link Back

Published: January 27th, 2014 | Notable link: Blogdash.com (February 26th, 2018)

It pains me to link to this because we’re trying to rank our own list of the top finance blogs but maybe the link karma gods will look down on Detailed kindly.

Modest Money’s own list of the top blogs in the finance niche has picked up, by far, more links than anything else in the finance world so far in 2018.

I think this is clear example of “snowball link building”, where you continue to pick up links because you already rank for something.

People aren’t linking to this because of any kind of special relationship they have with the site (at least not recently), but because it’s an easy way to say ‘here are some top personal finance blogs’.

For instance, just last week it was linked to by the Wall Street Survivor blog with the anchor text, “Digest as much information as you can from the top financial blogs on personal finance and ensure”.

The text in italic made up the clickable link.

BlogDash linked with similar anchor text, “the best financial blogs and money saving tips”.

They’re not saying it was great to be included (as neither of them are). They’re just sharing a valuable resource so they can get on with the rest of their article.

If there isn’t yet someone who has ranked your niche, here’s your motivation.

Influencers Will Link to Events They’re Involved In

Published: February 12th, 2018 | Notable link: AngelinaTravels.BoardingArea.com (February 12th, 2018)

I can’t think of a better way to entice people to link to something than when they’re personally involved in it.

Okay, maybe I can: Use someone’s product or service and have massive success with it and they will link to your story a million times over (but let’s leave that for another blog post).

Speakers for an upcoming travel conference, Frequent Traveler University (or FTU), were more than happy to announce that tickets were now on sale and you would be able to personally meet them at the event.

Here’s popular blogger Angelina Travels doing just that.

Lots of blog posts were written solely about the conference, with headlines including:

I shortened the headlines to make them easier to read (changing Frequent Traveler University to FTU), but didn’t add any words.

Speaking at an event helps raise someone’s profile – you get to take pictures of yourself holding a microphone on stage, after all – so if you your industry needs one more conference, consider being the one to host it.

If you’re not interested in offline marketing, I have seen people have success running virtual summits as well, but their speakers don’t tend to write entire blog posts about them.

The Free Email Course That the Personal Finance World Sunk Their Links Into

Published: February 21st, 2018 | Notable link: 1500Days.com (March 13th, 2018)

It’s nice to see that early staples of content marketing can still get people talking.

Birds of a Fire set the finance world alight (I had to say it) when they released their free 18-day financial independence email course.

FIRE, a popular acronym in the finance blogging world, stands for Financial Independence Retire Early.

Finance bloggers are a close-knit community who cheer on each other’s progress so I’m not surprised to see this do well.

I would say the links it picked up were almost as much about who shared the email course than what they had created (people linking to it can’t have gone through it) but the concept itself has always done well online.

If nothing else, creating an email course is a great way to get people on your email list who may not have been enticed to join it before.

Share Industry Numbers That People Can Build Off and Quote

Published: January 22nd, 2018 | Notable link: Usabilia.com (January 24th, 2018)

Towards the end of January, email automation platform Mailchimp released their annual stats on how many emails were being sent out using their service.

This particular update was focused on the shopping holiday Black Friday, with their customers sending over 1.9 billion emails.

As some MailChimp users integrate the service directly with their online stores, they were able to attribute those emails to over $6bn in sales, compared to $3.5bn in 2016.

So who’s linking to this kind of content?

Medium publication UX Collective used the stats to help justify an article on why every startup needs a blog. They specifically focused on how beautiful the article was that shared all of the data.

Usabilia used the data when opening up a public discussion on how other people’s holiday results shaped up, as you can see in the screenshot below.

Other’s simply included it in roundups of ‘cool stuff to click on.’

If you have any kind of unique data you can give out to share the progression of something in your space (more emails, more sales, more [something]), then you may find people latch on to that and cover it in their own way.

A Scoop is a Scoop, Even When Nobody Reads Your Site for That Particular Topic

Published: February 22nd, 2018 | Notable link: Coindesk.com (February 22nd, 2018)

Al-Monitor, which describes itself as “the pulse of the middle east”, is known for their reporting on places like Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Israel.

When they published the scoop that one of the countries they frequently cover (Turkey) is considering their own ‘national’ bitcoin, cryptocurrency blogs covered it in droves.

There isn’t much I need to say about this angle: If you can report a story first, people will link to you.

News sites publish so much content that as a by-product of their reporting, someone with a blog will find something they write interesting.

This stood out to me though because it provided the ‘meat’ for others to write entire article around, like Coindesk shown below.

Coindesk consistently rank in the top three cryptocurrency blogs online, reaching tens of millions of monthly visitors.

Getting mentioned by a big site like this can (and did) encourage a few smaller sites to report the news as well.

I have never had a scoop in my life so I’m not going to advise you on how to get them, but if you ever have the (ethical) opportunity to write about something first, take it.

Share Your Knowledge, Especially If It Deviates From the Norm

Published: March 7th, 2018 | Notable link: NovelInvestor.com (March 9th, 2018)

The Collaborative fund, which manages over $150m, is an alliance of nine individual investors.

One of those investors, Morgan Housel, published an insights-packed article on the ideas he believes changed his life.

I think the article was so popular because he makes some points you may not immediately agree with or have thought about.

The first section is based around the idea that “Everyone belongs to a tribe and underestimates how influential that tribe is on their thinking.”

Maybe you’ve never thought of this concept and it makes sense to you. Either way, it grabs your attention because it’s not the kind of thing you hear every day.

Here’s just a snapshot of the links it picked up (our private link index is not as pretty as the public one).

Four of the many links the article picked up in March were from link roundups, meaning the piece didn’t necessarily fit into articles that people were writing, but when they were in the mood to link out, they kept this one in mind.

Can you take a stand? Make a point? Share your personal experiences?

If they’re uncommon, they might just get people talking.

A Picture Contest Is Worth 1,000 Links

Published: February 14th, 2018 | Notable link: TheAtlantic.com (February 15th, 2018)

World Press Photo, a non-profit organisation, recently unveiled the nominations for the world press photo of the year.

As the name suggests, the best pictures by photo journalists are shared on the site before the winners are announced at an in-person event.

Unsurprisingly, because of the calibre of the work involved, photography blogs were quick to pick up the story.

While you may not be in the photography niche, you can certainly highlight the best work that others in your industry have created.

I actually think this is one of the best opportunities in this entire article because while contests are common, they tend to be about winning something rather than showcasing the best of an industry in one place.

I love the idea of building a minisite just to celebrate those who are doing the greatest things in your field.

Industry Stats Created Another Six-Year-Old Article That Top Blogs Can’t Stop Quoting

Published: May 28th, 2012 | Notable link: SEMRush.com (January 12th, 2018)

If you’re active in the marketing world, you may already be familiar with the blog of Jeff Bullas.

What you might not know is that Jeff published a piece of research six years ago (!) that still picks up links from some of the most popular marketing blogs.

What’s even more interesting to me is that the anchor text people use to link to his article is almost entirely the same.

Here’s the anchor text of five links the article picked up in March of this year:

It’s funny to see that two separate sites (SEMRush and Customer Think) both wanted to highlight the same stat about the importance of using images in your articles.

Interestingly, the stats people are linking to were created by an entirely different company and Jeff’s article is only 655 words with their infographic in the middle.

People link to this because they want to make a point in their article without having to cover it in too much depth.

It’s much easier to simply link to someone else’s research and insights on the topic, and I’m sure Jeff isn’t complaining.

How do they find it to link to? I would put that once again down to snowball link building — picking up links because you already rank.

It’s second in Google for ‘importance of images’ along with 2,000 other related keyphrases.

Curating the Research of Others Works Surprisingly Well

Published: April 4th, 2011 | Notable link: Stripe.com (March 23rd, 2018)

When our link index outputted the URL for this page my first thought was “Makes sense they’re getting links. They put together some stats.”

Look at the URL to see what I mean: https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

You just assume from the text in the link that they’ve done their own research on cart abandonment rate, but that wouldn’t be entirely correct.

The lists part of the URL is a bit more of a giveaway: Baymard Institute have put together a resource of the best cart abandonment research by other people.

They do include some comments of their own, but they only make up 300 words.

CrazyEgg, BPlans, Foundr and Campaign Monitor are among dozens of sites who have linked back to the curated resource in 2018.

Why?

My theory is once again because it ranks so well in Google. They’re literally #1 for ‘cart abandonment statistics’ and ‘cart abandonment rate’.

If you just want to throw a quick link in an article, take the first result and call it a day.

Of course, they had to create something valuable to get those links in the first place, and as a curated list of the research of others, it’s nice to think everyone is enjoying some traffic.

Stories Are Incredibly Powerful (Even When They’re Not True)

Published: May 14th, 2015 | Notable link: StartupBeat.com (March 22nd, 2018)

It makes for a great headline: Goldfish have a longer attention span than humans.

If I hadn’t clicked on a random YouTube video a few weeks ago I would have followed the rest of the internet in finding the stats sad but totally believable.

That random video was from LinkedIn’s head of marketing who went down the rabbit hole trying to find the true source for this data, but it doesn’t appear to exist.

The BBC corroborated his findings with their own research.

As the saying goes, a lie can travel half way around the world before the truth gets a chance to put its shoes on.

This isn’t a lie per say, but shows that facts can get in the way of a good story.

Just look at how many links it is still picking up, three years after it was first published.

With the anchor text people are using, it’s clear they just want to make a point – “You / your readers have a short attention span.” – without really having to explain why they’re saying it.

PDF Research Reports (Even Old Ones) Appeal to the Linkerati

Published: September, 2015 | Notable link: QuickSprout.com (February 19th, 2018)

If you’ve been involved in content marketing for any length of time then you have likely heard of Joe Pulizzi’s Content Marketing Institute.

Joe sold the company a few years ago for $17m so it’s fair to say he knows how to use content to promote his work.

In recent years Content Marketing Institute put out reports sharing survey results on the topic of B2B Content Marketing.

What’s surprising is that in 2018, the 2016 version of the report has picked up more links than the 2017 version.

Let me say that again so it’s less confusing. This year, more people are linking to the 2016 report that Joe put together on this subject than the most recent version (the 2017 edition).

Atomic Reach wrote about ‘Content Marketing Trends for 2018’ yet still linked to data from a few years ago.

It could be that few people know the 2017 version exists, but it’s interesting they’re still happy to link to what might appear as more ‘dated’ stats.

It’s also interesting that people have no problems linking directly to PDF reports (which both versions are). I think Joe is missing a trick when it comes to not having the data accessible on a blog post, but I’ve never sold a company for $17m, so what do I know.

Nostalgia is a Powerful Emotion If You’re Looking for Reactions

Published: January 31st, 2018 | Notable link: Eatfeastly.com (February 16th, 2018)

Until I put this article together, I had never heard of Carob.

I had to read this piece by the New Yorker to have any idea that it was actually supposed to be some kind of chocolate substitute ‘back in the day’.

A number of food bloggers were happy to share the trip down memory lane with their readers.

Eat Feastly talked about the story in their “What we’re reading this week” while Joy the Baker included it in her link round ups which happen every Sunday.

We often see nostalgia work well in places like Reddit or image sharing communities like 9Gag, but I haven’t seen it used too often in written content.

Maybe it’s time to change that.

Revisting History Works For Those Incredibly Passionate About Their Niche

Published: February 13th, 2018 | Notable link: LongReads.com (February 16th, 2018)

Another article that got food bloggers talking this year was The New York Times’ history lesson on the discovery of hill rice.

Like Carob, it’s not something I’ve ever heard of.

This too picked up links from roundups by Eat Feastly and Joy the Baker (though not in the same week).

Longreads, which reaches an estimated one million visitors per month, dedicated an entire article to the piece.

They used the headline “The Unexpected Reemergence of an Elusive Strain of Rice” to add their commentary.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the New Yorker or The New York Times pick up links – so much so that I was tempted not to include them in this article.

That said, as they both had unique angles with their content, I thought I would make an exception and include them.

I’ve seen articles on history work particularly well in the fitness niche (talking about the old greats) and in the programming world (how things got started) so I’ll make sure I dedicate an entire article to this ‘tactic’ in the near future.

10X Content: A Real-World Example of Taking a Concept to the Next Level

Published: November 27th, 2013 | Notable link: Stripe.com (March 23rd, 2018)

Joint first on our list with the most links from various sites, Hubspot’s incredible marketing statistics page will not leave you wondering why people talk about it.

The page is practically a goldmine for picking up links as people get to use it to back up points they make in their articles about a variety of topics.

In February & March alone (not including January as the list will get too long) it picked up links from sites like:

Now we can add Detailed to that list as well.

Of course, we could say that HubSpot are a huge brand so that helps them pick up these types of links, but I say it’s this type of content that helped them become a huge brand.

You likely know how well having unique stats can work when it comes to people using your data to make a point, but Hubspot really went above and beyond with this article.

It’s a great example of taking a proven angle and then just taking it to the next level.

Create a Free Tool, Because Every Blog Has a ‘Best Tools for X’ Roundup Post

Published: April 2nd, 2013 | Notable link: CoSchedule.com (March 12th, 2018)

We love free things.

We especially like people sharing useful free things with us that we didn’t previously know about.

That could be why people are more than happy to continually recommend Hemingway Editor, five years after it launched.

The software works in a web browser (and on desktop if you so choose) and highlights sections of your writing where your wording can be improved.

While it picked up links for a variety of reasons, some of the most common headlines are around tool roundups, such as:

I’ve already found that with the relaunch of Detailed, people are starting to include the site in roundups of tools where you can check backlinks, which I think is really cool.

If you have some programming skills, or a budget of a few hundred bucks for something simple, then don’t under estimate how valuable free software can be when it comes to people sharing things.

In the Right Niche, Rumors Are As Linkworthy as Facts

Published: January 11th, 2018 | Notable link: Petapixel.com (January 16th, 2018)

I have an upcoming post planned to talk about how powerful scoops can be, but I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that if you’re the first to report a story, you can get a lot of attention.

What you might not know is that the scoop doesn’t have to be factual.

Take Nikon Rumors’ recent post in the photography niche (scoops are kind of their thing) when they talked about Nikon’s rumoured upcoming mirrorless camera.

The story quickly picked up links from Petapixel (the number one site in the photography niche), Phoblographer, DPReview and Fstoppers, among others.

Every single one of these sites wrote an entire story about the original Nikon Rumors scoop.

Though scoops aren’t easy to get, I do want to show you what works, and they’re possibly the best way to pick up links if you can land them.

In-depth Comparisons: For When Opinion is More Important Than Data

Published: January 6th, 2018 | Notable link: SLRLounge.com (February 21st, 2018)

William Edwards Deming made two frequently quoted remarks about data.

In God we trust; all others must bring data.

And,

Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.

With everything we’ve ever done here at Detailed being data-focused, you could say I’m a fan of his message.

That said, there are times when feelings and opinions need to take precedent.

When you’re going to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a piece of technology, you really want to see how well it fares against the competition, rather than just relying on what the manufacturer tells you.

What better idea to test expensive hardware in an environment that might render it useless: Bad weather.

Imaging Resource published an in-depth weather test where they compared top-of-the-line Nikon, Canon, Olympus and Sony cameras in unfavorable conditions.

The post, which went live on the 6th of January this year, comprised of images, videos and thousands of words of text.

It clearly hit a mark with their audience, receiving over 200 comments – a rarity in the age of feedback via social media.

As you can imagine from the tone of this post, they picked up a number of links from other big sites in the photography space, showing the power of this kind of comparison.

Side Projects That Solve a Real Problem. Meet Colloq

Published: June 3rd, 2017 | Notable link: SmashingMagazine.com (March 16th, 2018)

I’m not sure if it’s entirely accurate to call Colloq a side project, but it was started recently and isn’t the main focus of its founders, so I think that’s at least a fair way to define it.

This simple project that helps you find conferences in different topics and in different events, primarily targeted towards designers and developers.

I don’t attend any conferences so Colloq certainly isn’t aimed at me, but with how many conferences there are in the digital marketing world alone, I can see how valuable their offering will be.

With the number of sites starting to talk about them, I’m certainly not the only one who sees merit in the idea.

As you would expect, design & development sites are the ones talking about it the most (below), but they’re not the only ones.

Though many of their links have been picked up through guest posts, they are earning natural mentions around the web, which I’m sure will continue as the service becomes more popular.

The truth is that I could have written about 100+ side projects that are still picking up links in 2018, but I wanted to highlight something fairly new (less than a year old) with an interesting angle.

Websites that solve a need and are both stylish and functional will always attract backlinks.

Create a Framework That Others Can Follow

Published: June 10th, 2013 | Notable link: SmashingMagazine.com (March 15th, 2018)

Five years ago, developer Brad Frost introduced a concept called ‘atomic design’ to the world via this blog post.

I consider myself to be a very slightly above average web designer but I still don’t really get why the article is so popular.

I get the concept, but it has been five years since it was published and it’s still picking up links from Smashing Magazine, Drupal, Invision App and others.

These are among the biggest sites in the design and development world (Smashing Magazine is literally number #1 in our blog rankings).

It could be because of the tool the post links to – which helps you build websites using the framework – but I can’t quite figure it out.

Still, it is one of many pieces of content like this that I’ve seen do well.

Give people an overarching view of a subject and then break it down, point by point, so that they can see how each part fits together.

When people are writing about your topic and don’t want to go into detail on the “basics”, there’s a chance they’ll send people your way.

Put Out Data That Let’s Other People Look Smart

Published: March 8th, 2018 | Notable link: ConvinceandConvert.com (March 10th, 2018)

When a New York Times best-selling author writes an entire article about a small part of your data you probably have a good thing on your hands.

Each year, Edison Research puts out what they call the ‘Infinite Dial Report’, which asks people various questions about the modern technology they use in their lives.

As they stick to the same questions every year, it makes each update even more valuable because you can compare changing usage over time.

For instance, they were able to report that in 2017, podcast listening among American women jumped 14%.

Jay Baer, the bestselling author I mentioned, put this data into an article on ‘The 13 Podcast Critical Statistics of 2018’.

The Edison Research is interesting, but their design leaves a lot to be desired.

I actually wonder if the data being formatted in the way it is could be their benefit: People repurpose and pick apart the data in an easier to digest manner, but link back to the original source out of courtesy and respect.

Survey Your Niche And Share the Results: Lessons from StackOverflow

Published: March 13th, 2018 / Notable link: Entire article on WPTavern.com

This next example shouldn’t be too surprising to any developer who saw this go viral on Twitter in the past fortnight, but it’s a great example of the power of questioning your audience.

Stack Overflow recently put out their 2018 developer survey results which delve into things like the professional developers’ preferred coding language, salaries around the world and the number of dev’s employed in-house versus those working remotely.

Entire articles from other sites were written about the survey, with WPTavern, a WordPress focused blog, originally headlining theirs as “Stack Overflow Survey Respondents Still Rank WordPress Among the Most Dreadful Platforms.”

Interestingly they changed the title before I managed to take this screenshot.

What we’re seeing here is that survey results aren’t just interesting to the people directly involved in them (developers), but people can (and will) take that data and see how the results can be of interest to their own audience.

Of course, it helps that Stack Overflow is a big brand in the design & development world, there far from being the only ones with a big enough reach to put something like this together.

I’ve recently been heavily involved in creating surveys for clients and while it can take work to get people to respond to them, having original data to share is priceless.

“Cool” Stuff Still Works; Just Don’t Turn into Bored Panda

Published: February 24th, 2018 | Notable link: UltraRunnerPodcast.com (February 26th, 2018)

I wouldn’t expect trying to become the next Viral Nova or Bored Panda will pick up many links, but I couldn’t not include an example that is a little out of the norm.

When a news website featured a new hotels’ unique selling point, people loved the idea.

You certainly can’t predict how well “cool” news will be received (not every Bored Panda article is a hit) but there is a chance people will take the information and share it in their own unique way.

For instance, the Ultra Runner podcast linked to this article with the anchor text,

“It looks like they’ve found a venue for the inaugural ultra trail Scotland.”

I’m not sure about you but I thought that was pretty funny.

I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds or thousands of people have read the article, sent it to their friends and said “We need to go here.”

The Ultra Runner Podcast are sharing that same message in blogging form.

I would use this sparingly, and keep in mind you have to reach a lot of people to pick up links, but there might just be the perfect story to share you can see your audience enjoying.

Take Complex Research And Explain the Results in Laymans Terms

Published: February 20th, 2018 | Notable link: FoodPolitics.com (February 28th, 2018)

As I was getting ready to publish this article, I realised I had picked 24 examples to discuss.

To cure my headline OCD I knew I had to find one more angle to cover.

Fortunately, the team at Examine.com recently put together a great article on whether you should eat low fat or low carbs to lose weight.

Their article discussed a recent scientific study from Dr. Christopher Gardner of Stanford University.

If you aren’t subscribed to email lists or websites which share diet studies however, there’s a good chance that you a) would have missed the information in the first place or b) not had the interest to go looking for the nuggets of knowledge in all of the research.

That’s where Examine came in, with an article that breaks down what the research shows, and what it does not, in ways that anyone can understand.

This resulted in a lot of sites in the fitness and health space linking to them.

Guess what?

Out of the six links in the screenshot above, only three linked back to the original source. The other three only linked to the commentary on Examine.

I understand you may not be in the health space where opportunities like this will crop up more often, but they do exist.

The Infinite Dial example above certainly isn’t optimised for people to talk about.

Is there research in your niche that you could breakdown and dissect for others? If so, you might just get more attention than the original, or uncover some valuable insights people didn’t even know existed.

Create an In-Depth Review of the Most Anticipated Product in Your Space

Published: February 6th, 2018 | Notable link: TheWireCutter.com (February 14th, 2018)

I’ve put this last on our list because quite honestly, it might be the least valuable.

Out of the 25 angles shared here today, I think this is the most difficult to implement because you have to get your hands on a physical product that is either really interesting (that other people haven’t covered) or really anticipated (that other people haven’t covered).

That said, being the first to physical product reviews has made some business owners multi-millionaires (e.g. iFixIt with their Apple teardowns) so there is a huge market for reviews.

On the 6th of February, tech blog The Verge went live with their review of Apple’s latest device, the Homepod.

As you can imagine this picked up links from other sites in the tech sphere, but that wasn’t all.

Certainly helped by the huge reach The Verge has and their reputation for in-depth journalism, sites like Abnormal Returns (an investment blog) and Hubspot (a marketing software provider) both included the review in their weekly link roundups.

I’m not too surprised – anything Apple related tends to get the world’s interest – but it’s another example of being the first to cover something, or at least the first to certain people.

The other thing that makes this angle particularly difficult is that The Verge went to a ton of effort in this review. Their video at the top of the article is so polished that it looks like Apple themselves put it together.

A Simple Tip to Know If What You’re Creating Will Hit the Mark

There are certainly more angles than the 25 I’ve shared here, but I hope you found some inspiration in this article.

A good thing to keep in mind when you’re creating content that will hopefully attract links is to ask yourself, “If somebody else shared this, would people thank them for it?“.

Would their audience be grateful to read my product review? My industry stats? My trip down nostalgia lane?

If what you create is so good that the person sharing it looks better for doing so, then you’re probably on to a winner.

This content was originally published here.

[nothingman]

There’s been lots of attention-grabbing opposition to Trump’s “Muslim ban” executive order, from demonstrations to court orders. But polls make it clear public opinion is much more mixed. Standard phone polls show small majorities opposed, while web and automated polls find small majorities continue to support it.

What surprises me about the poll results isn’t that lots of Americans like the ban — but that so many Americans don’t. Regular people have lives to lead and can’t investigate complicated issues in detail. Instead they usually take their cues from leaders they trust. And given what politicians across the U.S. political spectrum say about terrorism, Trump’s executive order makes perfect sense. There are literally no national-level American politicians telling a story that would help ordinary people understand why Trump’s goals are both horrendously counterproductive and morally vile.

Think of it this way:

On February 13, 1991 during the first Gulf War, the U.S. dropped two laser-guided bombs on the Amiriyah public air raid shelter in Baghdad. More than 400 Iraqi civilians were incinerated or boiled alive. For years afterward visitors to a memorial there would meet a woman with eight children who had died during the bombing; she was living in the ruined shelter because she could not bear to be anywhere else.

Now, imagine that immediately after the bombing Saddam Hussein had delivered a speech on Iraqi TV in which he plaintively asked “Why do they hate us?” — without ever mentioning the fact that Iraq was occupying Kuwait. And even Saddam’s political opponents would only mumble that “this is a complicated issue.” And most Iraqis had no idea that their country had invaded Kuwait, and that there were extensive United Nation resolutions and speeches by George H.W. Bush explaining the U.S.-led coalition’s rationale for attacking Iraq in response. And that the few Iraqis who suggested there might be some kind of relationship between Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the Amiriyah bombing were shouted down by politicians saying these Iraq-hating radicals obviously believed that America’s slaughter of 400 people was justified.

If that had happened, we’d immediately recognize that Iraqi political culture was completely insane, and that it would cause them to behave in dangerously nutty ways. But that’s exactly what U.S. political culture is like.

Interiors from a building in Amiriya district, a residential area on Baghdad’s western outskirts, after an Allied bombing on an air raid shelter by US bombers, Gulf War, Feb. 14 1991.

Photo: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images

In an interview last March with Anderson Cooper, Donald Trump tried to puzzle out what’s behind the terrorism directed at the U.S. “I think Islam hates us,” Trump learnedly opined. “There’s a tremendous hatred there, we’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”

“In Islam itself?” asked Cooper. Trump responded, “You’re going to have to figure that out. You’ll get another Pulitzer.”

During Trump’s speech at the CIA right after his inauguration, he expressed the same bewilderment. “Radical Islamic terrorism,” pondered Trump. “This is something nobody can even understand.”

John F. Kelly, now Trump’s head of the Department of Homeland Security, is similarly perplexed, saying in a 2013 speech that “I don’t know why they hate us, and I frankly don’t care, but they do hate us and are driven irrationally to our destruction.”

Say what you want about the tenets of this worldview, but at least it’s an internally consistent ethos: We’re surrounded by lunatics who want to murder us for reasons that are totally inscrutable to rational people like us but … obviously have something to do with them being Muslims.

Meanwhile, in private, the non-crazy members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment aren’t confused at all. They understand quite well that Islamist terrorism is almost wholly blowback from the foreign policy they’ve designed.

Meanwhile, in private, the non-crazy members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment aren’t confused at all.

Richard Shultz, a professor at Tufts whose career has long been intertwined with the national security state, has written that “A very senior [Special Operations Forces] officer who had served on the Joint Staff in the 1990s told me that more than once he heard terrorist strikes characterized as ‘a small price to pay for being a superpower.’” That small price, of course, is the deaths of regular Americans, and is apparently well worth it.

The 9/11 Commission report quietly acknowledged, hundreds of pages in, that “America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.” A senior official in the George W. Bush administration later put it more bluntly to Esquire: That without the post-Gulf War sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, “bin Laden might still be redecorating mosques and boring friends with stories of his mujahideen days in the Khyber Pass.”

Intelligence professionals were quite aware that an invasion of Iraq would take the conditions that led to 9/11 and make them far worse. The British Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war published a February, 2003 assessment by British intelligence of the consequences of an invasion of Iraq, which would occur one month later. “The threat from Al Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq,” the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee told Tony Blair, and “the worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly.”

The CIA had the same perspective. Michael Scheuer, who for several years ran the section of the Agency that tracked bin Laden, wrote in 2004 that “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.”

For its part, the Defense Department’s Science Board concluded in a 2004 report that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.”

A Palestinian woman reacts amid destroyed buildings in the northern district of Beit Hanun in the Gaza Strip during a humanitarian truce on July 26, 2014.

Photo: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

When Barack Obama took office, he had two choices.

First, he could tell the truth: That the U.S. has acted with extraordinary brutality in the Middle East, that this had been the main motivation for most Islamist terrorism against us, and if we continued the same foreign policy Americans would be killed indefinitely in intermittent attacks. Then we could have had an open, informed debate about whether we like our foreign policy enough to die for it.

Second, Obama could continue trying to run the Middle East without public input, but in a more rational way than the Bush administration.

Obviously he went with the second choice, which demanded several different forms of political correctness.

Most importantly, Obama pretended that the U.S. has never done anything truly wrong to others, and can enjoy the benefits of power without any costs. This is the most pernicious and common form of political correctness, but is never called that because the most powerful people in America love it.

But Obama also engaged in something more akin to what’s generally called political correctness, by contending that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. But it does — just not in the way that Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller would tell you.

Religion and nationalism have always been similar phenomena, and Islam sometimes functions as a form of nationalism. And like all nationalisms, it has a crazy, vicious right wing that’s empowered by outside attacks on members of the nation. The right loves to jeer at Obama for calling Islam “a religion of peace,” and they should — not because Islam specifically isn’t a religion of peace but because there is really no such thing, just as there is no “nationalism of peace.” It’s true religions and nationalism can bring out the best in people, but they also bring out the worst (sometimes in the same person for the same reasons).

But Obama could never say anything like that, because he knew the U.S. needs the governments of Muslim-majority countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to keep the rest of the Middle East in line.

This amalgam of political correctness made it impossible for the Obama administration ever to tell a story about terrorism that made any sense. For instance, in his 2009 speech in Cairo, he declared, “It is easier to blame others than to look inward” — and then went on to demonstrate that truism.

His description of wrongs done by the U.S. was vague to the point of meaninglessness: “tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.” Also, “Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world.”

Obama then explained that “Violent extremists have exploited these tensions.” So … 19 people were motivated to fly jetliners into buildings by “tensions”? If that’s the only story that non-Muslim Americans hear, they’ll rationally be terrified of Islam.

In 2010, Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, emitted a similar bland puree of words at a press conference when questioned by Helen Thomas about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed underwear bomber. Their exchange went like this:

THOMAS: And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.

BRENNAN: Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents… [They] attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that [they’re] able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.

THOMAS: And you’re saying it’s because of religion?

BRENNAN: I’m saying it’s because of an al Qaeda organization that uses the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.

THOMAS: Why?

BRENNAN: I think this is a, uh, long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.

At his sentencing, Abdulmutallab explained his motivation in less time than it took Brennan to say there wasn’t enough time to explain:

[I pledged] to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.

To be fair, there is one situation in which American officials have lost the mushmouth and drawn a direct connection between a country killing Mideastern civilians and terrorist retaliation: when that country is Russia. William Burns, formerly Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State, recently and accurately proclaimed that “Russia’s bloody role in Syria makes the terrorist threat far worse.” John Kirby, an Obama State Department spokesman, warned that Russia’s brutalization of Syria would lead to  “attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities.”

Russia’s response to our friendly observation was about the same as ours when Russia told us before the invasion of Iraq that it would cause a “wave of terror.”

Trump supporters demonstrate against a ruling by a federal judge in Seattle that grants a nationwide temporary restraining order against the presidential order to ban travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries, at Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on February 4, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

That brings us back to President Trump and his executive order on immigration.

Trump’s story about why it’s necessary is, factually speaking, garbage. But a normal human being can at least understand it and its moral: These incomprehensible foreigners are all potential psychotics, we’ve got to keep them out. Under these circumstances, who cares that no one from any of these seven countries has killed any Americans yet? They’re all part of a huge morass of ticking time bombs.

By contrast, the Democratic, liberal perspective laid out by Obama makes no sense at all. We’ve never done anything particularly bad in the Middle East, yet … some people over there want to come here and kill us because … they’ve been exploited by violent extremists who’ve perverted Islam and … gotta run, there’s no time to explain.

Regular people could sense that anyone mouthing this kind of gibberish was hiding something, even if they didn’t realize that Obama was trying to keep the U.S. empire running rather than concealing his secret faith in Islam.

And because a coherent narrative always beats the complete absence of a story, no one should be surprised that many Americans find Trump’s fantasy of inexplicable Muslim hatred persuasive. The only way to conclusively beat it will be with a coherent, complicated, true story like this:

America has done hideous things to countries across the Middle East for decades, such as bomb a civilian air raid shelter, burning the silhouette of a mother trying to protect her baby onto its walls. It was inevitable that some people would seek revenge. This doesn’t mean that their brutality is justified, any more than the slaughter at Amiriyah was justified by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. It just means that humans are humans, violence begets violence, and Americans will always be in danger unless we change our foreign policy.

We must welcome immigrants from the Middle East both for moral and pragmatic reasons. Morally, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is what sent the region spiraling into catastrophe; only psychopaths set someone’s home on fire and then lock them inside. There are already three million Muslim American citizens. If the government keeps bombing the Middle East while making it clear that it genuinely hates Muslims, that will only spur to action more troubled weirdos like Omar Mateen — who was born in Queens, a few miles away from Donald Trump’s childhood home.

And we’d better get started with this story soon, because it may not be true forever. Israel has done an exemplary job turning a solvable, straightforward fight over land into a religious war that may no longer have any solution. We’re making similar strides in transforming a conflict that was 90 percent political, where there can be compromise, into a religious conflict where there can’t.

This can be seen, on the one hand, in ISIS propaganda. Bin Laden generally just talked about kicking the U.S. out of the Middle East and said things like, “Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe.” The ISIS magazine Dabiq cheerfully tells us that “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah … even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.”

On the other hand, Donald Trump is president of the United States and Steve Bannon is his chief strategist. Bannon straightforwardly believes, as he told a conference at the Vatican in 2014, that “we’re in a war of immense proportions” that’s part of the “long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam.” To win, Bannon says, we must form the “church militant” – an archaic term for the “Christian church on earth regarded as engaged in a constant warfare against its enemies, the powers of evil.”

So it’s quite possible ISIS and the Trump administration can successfully collaborate on getting what they both want: a totally unnecessary, civilizational war. To stop them we have to end our truckling equivocation about terrorism, and start telling the truth while there’s still time.

Top Photo: During a memorial service in Baghdad, Iraqis gather around a bomb hole in the ceiling of the Al-Amariya shelter in 2003, where more than 400 people were killed in a U.S.-led missile attack during the Gulf War. Iraqis opened a new memorial center outside the Al-Amariya shelter to mark the 12 year anniversary of the attack.

The post Why Do So Many Americans Fear Muslims? Decades of Denial About America’s Role in the World. appeared first on The Intercept.

via The Intercept

[irenenorth]

New Post has been published on Irene North

New Post has been published on http://www.irenenorth.com/writings/2017/09/there-are-no-signs-of-the-times-and-the-world-is-not-ending/

There are no "signs of the times" and the world is not ending

Far too many people are caught up in speculation about the end of the world. While we are doing a good job at ignoring actual climate change, the hurricanes currently ravaging parts of Earth are not the end of the world, nor do they have anything to do with Jesus Christ, the book of Revelation, or any other such nonsense. Yet, in a letter to the editor to the Star-Herald, a reader thinks that is exactly what is happening.

We have heard the term, “Sign of the Times are everywhere.” We also know that Jesus said we cannot know the day of his return.

Well, right there you should stop writing, because you’re also going to start telling us what those signs were. You don’t even see that the bible says there are going to be signs everywhere, but you won’t know when he’s returning. Why does that statement not make your head hurt?

He also said in Matthew 16:3: “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky. But you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” Matthew 25 encourages us to be ready, not like the unwise five virgins who had no oil in their lamp when the bridegroom arrives. God has always warned His people of judgment to come.

Did you also know Matthew 16: 2b-3 does not appear in many early manuscripts? When you look at contextual and grammatical similarities and differences between the passage and Luke 12:54-56, they seem similar in English. But we all know the bible wasn’t written in English. Some scholars, such as Bernard Weiss, professor emeritus of languages and literature at the University of Utah, argue the Matthew passage is older than the Luke passage and came from an earlier source.

In “Q: A Reconstruction And Commentary,” Harry Fleddermann argued, “In addition the form πυρραζει appears only in Byzantine writers, a further sign that the passage is a late interpolation into Matthew’s text.” (Pg. 652)

You can’t quote from something that shouldn’t be in your holy book. However, both this passage and the quote from Matthew 25 are dealing with the end of the world. Matthew 25 is telling you to be prepared for the day of judgment, which you don’t know when it will occur.

It’s supposed to be a lesson about being good every day. By not knowing when this judgment is coming, you’ll be good all the time.

Are you aware that some Jewish Rabbis and others who have spent their lives studying the Word of God, believe that a total eclipse is a sign, a warning of judgment to a nation?

It’s not just Jewish Rabbis who spend their lives studying. Many ultra orthodox Jewish men do this while their wives do all the work, in and outside the home. It’s a bit controversial. Also, they are studying the Torah, not the Christian bible, so Old Testament only.

Is it supposed to make a difference that two religions misinterpret the same information? Have you researched every single eclipse in history and what happened after to a nation which had experienced such a scientific phenomenon? If you have, you wouldn’t says it’s a, “sign, a warning of judgment to a nation” because you would know that’s wrong.

His protection may no longer be present for a nation who chooses to take him out of their schools, kill unborn babies, disobey his law regarding marriage, live lives of immoral behavior and lawlessness. We reap what we sow.

Here we go with this bullshit again. God was not taken out of schools. Anyone in a school is allowed to pray to their god. What is not allowed is for faculty or staff to preach to children in the school. It’s a form of proselytizing and is illegal. As long as my tax dollars are going toward public schools – about 70 percent in Scotts Bluff County – you’re not preaching any religion within a public school.

We shouldn’t kill unborn babies? Tell that to your god. There are many examples of the bible being pro-abortion. And don’t give me that bullshit excuse “it’s in the Old Testament” because you follow the entire bible. You don’t get to pick the nice bits out or the bits that adhere to your personal beliefs. You take the whole thing.

Hosea 13:16: The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.

II Kings 15: 16: At that time Menahem, starting out from Tirzah, attacked Tiphsah and everyone in the city and its vicinity, because they refused to open their gates. He sacked Tiphsah and ripped open all the pregnant women.

Numbers 5:11-21 describes how to induce an abortion. In Numbers 31:17, Moses is commanded by God to kill women that might be pregnant. Hosea prays for God’s intervention in Hosea 9:11-16. God responds by making all the women who are pregnant miscarry.

God has also clearly laid out what biblical marriage is, yet Christians get upset at same-sex marriage. I’m more horrified by biblical marriage. If we are bad people because we “disobey his law regarding marriage” then I’m a terrible person because I don’t want any part of it.

Within a few days after the eclipse, I was not surprised to hear words like “unprecedented,” in describing the flooding.

Yeah, people always say this when catastrophic things happen. Also, please go read some books about climate change. This has nothing to do with total solar eclipses or a god, or anything else “end timers” people want to grasp onto.

Are you aware that after the last total eclipse in 1918 approximately 670,000 people lost their lives from a pandemic flu?

There are total solar eclipses every few years. You don’t see most of them because they occur over the ocean and/or are difficult to get to. The last total solar eclipse in the United States was February 26, 1979.

“After the last total solar eclipse in 1918” is an inaccurate statement. Here’s a list of other total solar eclipses that touched some part of the United States:

June 24, 1778 October 27, 1780 July 18, 1860 August 7, 1869 July 29, 1878 Jan 24, 1925 Aug 31, 1932 July 20, 1963 March 7, 1970 February 26, 1979 July 11, 1991 August 21, 2017

Do you notice something missing there? Oh yeah, there’s nothing around the time of the Spanish Flu in the United States. So let’s look at the entire world. Looking at NASA’s website on May 29, 1919, we have a total solar eclipse passing through South America and Africa. It also touched a teeny bit into Central America. It was during this eclipse that Einstein tested his theory of relativity.

Okay, we have a date, but the author of the letter to the editor is claiming “670,000 people lost their lives from a pandemic flu” after a total solar eclipse in 1918. I’ve already shown there was no total solar eclipse in 1918. It was in 1919. So let’s look at the claim.

The Spanish Flu pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920. It infected 500 million people worldwide and killed 50-100 million people, or 3-5 percent of the world’s population at that time. The letter’s claim of 670,000 is not accurate. According to a page that no longer exists for the U.S. Government, “An estimated 675,000 Americans were among the dead.” Stanford University concurs with this number.

This claim still isn’t completely accurate, because the letter to the editor claims these deaths happened after the eclipse, which I, scientists, and people who were there, established as happening in 1919. Researching before writing the letter to the editor would have helped clear up this erroneous information.

There never has been any correlation between a solar eclipse and deaths of any kind, flu or otherwise. It’s delusional to think this is true.

The only place you’re going to find any connection between the 1919 total solar eclipse and the Spanish Flu is on websites filled with fear about “the end times.” You won’t find it anywhere logical, thinking human beings go.

How I feel right now. (Photo: http://cdn.iwastesomuchtime.com/October-18-2011-20-12-49-DoubleFacePalm.jpg)

I read an article recently by Anne Graham Lot. I quote in part: “A few years ago I was teaching through the book of Joel when the ancient words of his prophesy came up off the page. Joel 2: 31: ‘The sun will be turned to darkness … before the coming of the great dreadful day of the Lord.’”

So what? Do you realize how many eclipses – lunar, solar, and hybrid – have occurred over the centuries? Which one was supposed to be this dreadful day? Are we supposed to cower in fear each time an eclipse happens?

Most of us are not knowledgeable of the relevance of the Jewish feasts and God’s appointed times.

Then why bring it up? Are you just taking someone’s word for it instead of doing your own research? I’m sorry you like to be ignorant of these things.

We are not aware of the signs in the heavens that speak of his program. (Not the astrology that is commonplace.) The wise men of the Christmas story used their knowledge of the star that led them to the Christ child.

What the hell do these two sentences have to do with each other or the overall point? Seriously. You’re just writing word salad at this point.

The year 2017 is the year of Jubilee of Israel’s being back in their homeland as a nation. (1967)

No. This is not happening. You’re misinterpreting the 49th and 50th year listed in the bible and assuming it’s going to happen. According to biblical law, the year of Jubilee cannot happen because the 12 tribes of Israel are not united. It doesn’t matter that some people think it can happen when some of the tribes are united.

The Revelation 12 woman is seen in the constellation for the first time since the approximate time of Adam and Eve.

Again, this is more “end times” bullshit. The book of Revelation doesn’t have anything to do with the end times.

If you want to get a grasp on the book of Revelation, you should read “Revelations” by Elaine Pagels. This partial review in Salon will give you an idea of what Pagel’s book is about.

The Revelation of John of Patmos, however, did make it into the official Bible, and in “Revelations” Pagels explains why. It qualified not because it was written by John of Zebedee, one of Jesus’ apostles, as the text’s great champion, Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, claimed. It wasn’t. In fact, the author of the Book of Revelation “belonged to the second generation of Jesus’ followers,” part of a cohort struggling to come to terms with the fact that Jesus’ promise — that Judgment Day and the Kingdom of God would arrive within the lifetimes of some of his disciples — had not come to pass.

He was also not a Christian as we currently understand the term. Pagels makes a persuasive case, using what should be obvious to any careful reader of Revelation, that John regards himself as a Jew who has recognized Jesus as the messiah. That’s why he’s so exercised about “them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.” Pagels believes that these “false” Jews were, like John, members of the radical sect founded by Jesus. John regarded them as dangerously corrupt and idolatrous because they did not observe traditional Jewish strictures surrounding food and sex. Many of them, she suspects, were Gentiles converted by the faction of Jesus’ followers led by Paul, the religion’s first great evangelist.

The Book of Revelation was written at a time when the significance of Jesus’ legacy was furiously contested, and that’s one reason why it gets hauled out so readily at times of similar discord. Presented as a divinely bestowed vision, filled with rains of fire, burning mountains, seas turned to blood and angels with swords flying from their mouths, as well as costarring the ever-popular Four Horsemen, the Whore of Babylon and, of course, the Beast, the text is essentially an over-the-top cry of “You’re doing it wrong.” John of Patmos felt that his religion was being threatened by purported faithful who had assimilated into the dominant culture of the Roman Empire (eating meat from pagan temple sacrifices was a big issue for him), and he wanted to remind them of the hideous fate awaiting that evil empire and anyone who had gotten too cozy with it.

Because the prophetic imagery of the Book of Revelation — much of it derived from the Hebrew Bible and legends — is so figurative and surreal, it has proven remarkably adaptive. John had to cloak his meaning in bizarre symbols because his text was, as Pagels puts it, “anti-Roman propaganda,” of the sort that had probably gotten him exiled to begin with. In the following 400 years or so, John’s Revelation continued to be interpreted in this way, as Roman authorities smashed Jewish rebellions and persecuted Christians who refused to participate in the obligatory civic tributes to Rome’s gods.

Then Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 and gave the religion a favored place in his empire. The Book of Revelation was refitted by leaders like Athanasius for use as a hammer against Christians who did not bow to Church hierarchy. Ironically, a prophecy intended to demonize Rome (in the figure of the Whore of Babylon, that ancient oppressor of the Israelites) was used by those who, with Constantine’s approval, “adopted the Roman army’s system of rank, command and promotion to create effective control over a wide network of congregations,” a network that become the Catholic (“universal”) Church. Then, in a doubled irony, the same old Whore was, centuries later, said to symbolize the Catholic Church by Protestants who viewed Roman Catholicism as depraved and despotic.

Pagels’ sympathies clearly lie with the small religious communities that had sprung up throughout the region (though particularly in Egypt) in Athanasius’ time. These are the inward-looking, simple-living mystics who incorporated into their Christian worship spiritual ideas and practices from all over the ancient world and who preserved the gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi. Some of those texts are as weird and visionary as the Book of Revelation, and some are far more beautiful, egalitarian and inspiring to many modern eyes. But they were not politically useful, and the Book of Revelation was. So it ended up in the New Testament and they did not.

The book of Revelation is merely a political tool to keep you in line. It has nothing to do with an eclipse or any “end times” garbage.

I’m watching with interest the Jubilee Feast of Trumpets this September.

Your “Feast of the Trumpets” is more commonly known as Rosh Hashanah (רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה), is the Jewish New Year. Its biblical name is Yom Teruah (יוֹם תְּרוּעָה‎), literally, a day of shouting. It is the first of the Jewish high holy days, described in Leviticus 23:23-32. It is a celebration which takes place over two days and marks the traditional anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve.

The celebrations include a ram’s horn, or shofar, festive meals, symbolic food and lots of noise. The Mishnah, the first major written redaction of Jewish oral tradition and first major work of Rabbinic literature has the second known reference to Rosh Hashanah. In the Mishnah, it is known as the “day of judgement.”

So, Rosh Hashanah is the new year, but it is also Yom Hadim (sometimes seen as Yom HaDin), judgment day. On Yom Hadim, three books are opened – the book of life, the book of death, and a book for those living in doubt with non-evil sins.

During this time, God balances a person’s good deeds against their wrongdoings for the past year. Rosh Hashanah is a time of reflection, penance, and to ask God for forgiveness. (As a side note, I miss this time of year in New York. There is fresh Challah bread everywhere.)

Rosh Hashanah gets even more complicated when you learn about Yom Kippur and Sukkot and how they all relate to one another. I don’t know why the author of this letter to the editor is “watching with interest.” If they think it’s a day of judgment like in Revelation or the “end times,” that is wrong. Rosh Hashanah happens every year.

God is in control and He is faithful. I’m listening, watching and want oil in my lamp.

Then go fill your lamp. Did you not read the passage? You’re supposed to be prepared with your own oil, not waiting on other people to fill it for you.

“Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

He’s not coming. He doesn’t exist. Stop wishing on a fantasy and live in the here and now and make a difference in the world today.

This nearly 3,000 word refutation is far longer than I intended it to be. When I read this letter to the editor, I knew instantly all the inaccurate claims. I couldn’t let it pass without refuting it.

I’m just going to say, don’t believe what you are told. Take the time to find the truth. Then, you won’t share lies and misinformation and I won’t have to spend five hours refuting you.

[rickjsposts]

Political odds updated, Netanyahu wagers, Trump impeachment odds, Trump removal by end of term odds and discussion

New Post has been published on https://www.rickjshandicappingpicks.com/30388-2/

Political odds updated, Netanyahu wagers, Trump impeachment odds, Trump removal by end of term odds and discussion

I have always enjoyed figuring out odds on events that are not easily quantifiable. When I played poker full time I had an opportunity to make various off the wall wagers with other players and had a knack for getting substantial overlays:)

That is what betting is all about. Rarely do you get a 100% wager:) Its all about getting a positive expected value. If you wager for a while with a negative EV it is going to cost you. If your wagers are mostly positive EV then, in the long run, you will make money. It’s that simple, except it is not. There is what is call variance. In simple terms, it’s the probability curve. The more wagers you make the more your outcome is going to reflect your EV. But in the short run, you could have a positive EV and have some pretty painful negative runs.

This is where most bettors go astray. They do not consider Variance. Poker players are the same way. I have seen the best players in the world go broke and remain broke. Variance in common sense everyday terms means you wager an amount that you can afford. There are many tools you can use, once you decide on your bet size and bankroll, and edge. But, in simpler terms, a rule of thumb is to not wager more than 2% of your bankroll on any one wager. And your bankroll should be a size that if you were to lose it all, you could laugh it off.

In all of wagering the above paragraph is the most important. As even if you have an edge, if you do not respect variance you are going to run into trouble. That is a RickJ given:)

So with that in mind lets look at some new political odds:

I finally opened up an account on http://Predictit.org. Even if you do not wager it a good site to stay abreast of the issues and odds. There is active discussion under each wager and the site has come a long way since it first started. The volume on many wagers is significant enough where the spreads are reasonable.

The reason I opened the account was I saw several wagers that I thought had substantial value. Not just 2 to 5 % like you get in sports betting but upwards to 30 to 40%:)  Netanyahu was getting something like 3 to 1 that he would not be Prime Minister on 11/30.  My estimation was it was 3 to 1 in the other direction, at least. Israeli elections are a bit different than in the US. The sides have to be able to form a coalition. Until they do the existing PM stays in office.

Now, essentially my wager is that a coalition is not going to be formed by 11/30.

I also made essentially the same wager ending 12/31. The further out you go the dicier it gets. But knowing how Israel politics works it would not surprise me to see the 3rd election. Netanyahu has not been PM because he is a novice at politics. The left is closing in on him with the help of Obama’s team. But unlike in the US, most Israelis do not welcome outside help. So I expect at the very least another drawn-out process.

Is it a cinch?  Remember, nothing is 100%. If my thinking is off then I might lose the wager. And if my thinking is correct, I could still lose. But, it’s a nice positive EV value.

What is interesting about predict it is you get a nice cross-section of bettors. There are some pretty sharp political bettors there, but for the most part, you get what you see at the poker tables. People that bet their hearts rather than their minds. They look at the media, form an opinion and wager. Now, I would be remiss if I did not take advantage of this opportunity:)

I am going to start posting more often here as we approach 2020. I want to make this a regular post, similar to what I had done for 15 years in sports betting. So, expect daily or semi-daily discussions on new odds that come up.

Let’s take a look at two more that are of interest to many.

The odds right now that Trump will be impeached his first term are roughly 6 to 4 in favor of impeachment. Not conviction but impeachment.

I had said long ago in a previous post I thought it was likely the House would impeach. The drumbeat gets louder and louder now and the momentum is toward impeachment. The Democrats have boxed themselves into this as the public is against it and it will most likely cause them problems keeping the House in 2020 if they go down that road.

So the question is, is there value on either side of the 60/40? Remember the question is not what you feel or what you would like to see. It is simply an objective determination if there is value on either side of the wager. I think they have it priced correctly. At least close enough where I would not take either side of the wager. They already have voted, and they do not have the votes. Do not believe what you read in the media. They do not have the votes yet. There are enough moderate Democrats in states that Trump carried that know they are history if they go down that road.

Of course, self-destruction has always been a popular human characteristic, so you have to factor in they will bend to the mob and give up their careers:) But again considering everything 60/40 seems about right.

Now the next is more interesting.

The odds right now of Trump completing his first term is just under 3 to 1 in favor. Remember they have to get a 2/3 vote in the Senate for conviction and that the Senate is held by a Republican Majority. Another important variable is the Republican base is an astonishing 94% in support of Trump.

There is no question the Republican establishment would love to see Trump gone.  He has made governing difficult for them. He has exposed the corruption in DC. And many are getting nervous, make no mistake corruption is not dependent on what political party you are in. But, the overriding consideration for politicians is survival. The best example is Graham. He has transformed into virtually a never Trumper, to Trump’s best friend:) And guess what, 2020 is approaching. Funny how that goes. But, Graham is a good bellwether of how things are going for Trump. I assure you if Trump falters Graham will turn on him in a heartbeat.

He is already wavering just a little bit over this Ukraine hoax.

But let’s get back to the 3 to 1. The Mueller report, irrespective of how the media spin it, take Russia and Obstruction off the table. The Ukraine issue is a setup. The MO is very similar to the Russia hoax, and the Kavanaugh hoax. The game plan is almost identical. Already holes are being made into the Ukraine setup.

Without getting into the details, as there are many, I put the odds of Trump being removed from office by the end of his term by impeachment and then conviction in the Senate at 10 to 1 or higher.

That is a significant overlay in my judgment worth wagering on. The problem is you post the money and it stays posted until after the elections in 2020, over a year away. If I were to make a wager like that it would be with another poker player where we just pay up after the wager is completed. That is my preference. But 3 to1? I look at that and wish I could find a poker player or gambler I knew was good for the money to wager a substantial amount with.  The last wager I saw this good was when I gave 10 to 1 that Jerry Brown would be elected Governor of Ca. I had that handicapped at about as close to 100% as you could get. And I only had to lay 10 to 1:)

So, you get the idea of how I analyze these. And I am wrong from time to time:)  I always say I do not need the best of it to wager, I just need to think I have the best of it.

Hope you enjoyed this, as there will be more posts coming now that we are into the political season.

RickJ

RickJ’s Handicapping Picks

Rickjshandicappingpicks.com/political-odds

Skype: riccja

[ceciliatan]

G. Willow Wilson guest of honor remarks at #ICFA40

I’m in Orlando for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA, pronounced “ick-fah”) where today the guest of honor, G. Willow Wilson, gave a terrific keynote speech at the luncheon in which she talked about how it is that some writers (particularly marginalized writers) get labeled “political” while others (of the most privileged groups) do not.

Some of you who read my blog might remember me getting into a Twitter storm in 2016 at a romance convention when I tweeted that a white, heterosexual, married writer had advised new writers “don’t be political on social media. Be Switzerland. Be neutral and don’t take sides.” My comment to that (on social media) was that only someone who is a member of the privileged class has the privilege to “decide” whether to be political. The rest of us don’t get to “choose” whether to be political or not because merely by existing we are perceived to be making a political statement.

G. Willow Wilson’s speech went right to the heart of that issue. What follows is a pseudo-transcript of about 60% of her remarks. I have recreated this from my notes, so please do not ascribe any direct quotations to her without checking with her first. Any errors are my own and I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t make a few while transcribing. (One little typo can change a “now” to a “not” and reverse the meaning of a sentence, entirely!)

I do these transcript-type blogs for my own record of things I find really noteworthy to talk about and to give folks who couldn’t attend the conference a taste of what was said. I stress again it’s only a fraction of what was actually said.

It begins with an introduction of the speaker by David Higgins, the vice president of the IAFA (hosts of ICFA) and then G. Willow Wilson’s remarks.

G. Willow Wilson GoH Speech March 14 2019 ICFA 40

Introduction by IAFA vice president David Higgins: You may have heard the Captain Marvel film just had a spectacular opening weekend, as the first female solo superhero film in the Marvel franchises, which has put to shame the [former Marvel CEO] Isaac Perlmutter’s wikileaked memos delineating his/the company’s anti-woman bias. I like to think that no one would be more excited by the success of Captain Marvel than Kamala Khan, the creation of our of our guest of honor, G. Willow Wilson.

Kamala is such a Captain Marvel fan, she writes fanfic about it, and [when she is imbued with superpowers] takes on the mantle of Ms Marvel. Although I myself have not written G Willow Wilson fanfic (audience laughter), I did help create the cover of this ICFA program. [Which depicts G. Willow Wilson and Mark Bould in comic book fashion fighting against unseen enemies.] Please let me let out my inner fangirl and gush about how much I love Ms. Marvel.

Let me also talk about the post-911 diversity efforts by DC to internationalize the Green Lantern corps. In the creation of Simon Baz there are elements combatting some problematic stereotypes while doubling down on others. Ms. Marvel, by contrast, is a great pleasure, and I teach Ms. Marvel in my class. Kamala doesn’t fit any of the easy labels that my students have been taught previously. Although they want to refer to her as Arab American but that’s not exactly true, she’s a second generation Pakistani American. My students arrive at [a really long string of words: second-generation Pakistani American millennial from Jersey City].

Part of the brilliance of Wilson’s writing is that Kamala’s identity isn’t oversubscribed to any one of those adjectives that describe her. Kamala comes to life and isn’t just a representative of a social category. Like her, Islam isn’t just one easy-to-understand thing. The fact that Kamala is a millennial is also important. Furthermore Kamala is loving, quirky, and inspiring. Wilson exhibits the same humor and sophistication in her other work. Cairo was recognized as a top pick by Library Journal, etc. [Long list of G. Willow Wilson’s accolades, and a detailed description of the novel Alef the Unseen.] Having finished a five-year run on Ms. Marvel, she has now started writing Wonder Woman for DC. And just days ago, The Bird King was released, a novel that tells the story of the last Emirate of Muslim Spain.

G. Willow Wilson: Wow, I’m apparently very busy! (Laughter) In my job, since I’m on these very specific comic book deadlines, you have to hit them month after month, but it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. I have to move on to the next and the next. You don’t get to sit back and think, wow, I did such a lot of stuff. But hearing that list makes me think, wow, no wonder I’m so tired! (laughter)

Thank you for having me here. I can already see why so many of you love this convention so much. It combines the best of fan run cons like Westercon and an academically rigorous exchange of ideas. This has already begun to seed ideas into my brain. I wanted to talk a little bit about the theme of the conference this year: Politics and Conflict. I wanted to say something about the trends I see as a writer today in both books without pictures as well as comics.

When I saw the theme, I thought it could not be more timely than to talk about politics and conflict in genre. The roles that politics play in the genres we typically consider escapism, these are at the forefront of what we struggle with at the far end of the political spectrum. Not everybody who writes about politics is considered a “political” voice, while others are automatically considered political. It’s played out in interesting ways in my own career and life. Who is labeled “political?” To talk a bit more about that I’m going to tell you an origin story.

Once upon a time in 2009, I got the most extraordinary piece of hate mail. Every line was a different color. One was red, one was blue, the next one orange… Someone put a lot of work into this it, like a work of art! It was the old Internet so someone put a lot of work into a lot of highlighting to make it like that. This anti-fan or non-fan accused me of being part of the, now let’s see if I can remember all the parts: “socialist Islamist homosexual attack on America.” And as I read it back in 2009, I thought to myself wow, that is not a real thing. (laughter) But it sounds fabulous! (cheers)

This was before I took my email private so I used to get this kind of thing, but never one with such a load of hyperbole and such a work of art! But what was interesting to me was that I got this letter because I was doing a guest writer stint for J. Michael Straczynski on Superman. He was having some health problems and had to take a couple of months off, and I was going to tread water for three issues until he got back. Anyone knows that when there’s a big-name writer on the book who takes a break, the idea is you don’t change anything. You put everything back where it was when you started, and wait for the big-name writer to come back. I was told to “use Superman as little as possible.” I was happy to just have my name on the book and these filler issues were about Lois Lane reconsidering her life and going to her old stomping grounds. The artist they gave me came over from erotica and only knew how to draw women in 3/4 profile with this [stunned] expression her face. So maybe it’s not a surprise they weren’t very well received. But by writing these very mild, banal, filler issues of Superman I was labeled political. This occurred to me was something that was going to follow me. No matter how ridiculous and banal what I wrote was, I would be labeled political.

It was interesting to me to note that some people who wrote political stuff, on the other hand, were NOT labeled political. Some of you may know Fables by Bill Willingham, which is a large ongoing poignant exploration of fairy tales and fairy tale tropes. He was really the first to do that, widely imitated later; he created a genre-defining work. But he wore his Republican credentials on his sleeve. He is a friend and mentor. He was very generous with his time and insight, and when he was the toast of the comic book industry he would throw these infamous parties at Comcion. But he really wore his conservative politics on his sleeve. His beliefs come up not infrequently in Fables. I’ll read you this little bit:

The main character is talking to Gepetto, and there’s big conflict coming between fairy tale creatures. The main character says to Gepetto have you ever heard of Israel? Gepetto [asks him about it]. The character answers: Israel is a small country that is surrounded by countries who want to destroy them. They have a lot of grit and iron and I admire them. [Description goes on for a while.]

It really struck me that if I had said anything similar in my own work, praising real world events or countries, and putting them into the mouths of characters who were owned by a giant media corporation, I would have lost my job. But when I just tread water and write banal Lois Lane stories, here I get these hate letters. Bill Willingham could do this and face no reprisals. And all I had to do was exist and still face reprisals.

Why does that difference exist? When we’re talking about comics and graphic novels, these are a unique medium because they are visual. Those of use who are born with sight, we learn to interpret images automatically. But writing and drawing comics we learn to interpret things in a special way. You learn things as a comic book writer like if you want a cliffhanger it has to go on an odd numbered page, so it was be on a page turn rather than a spread which would be a spoiler. How do different readers interpret different gestures? It becomes political in a way other media do not because it goes straight into our brain that doesn’t differentiate truth from fiction. We believe what we see. And we begin interpreting what we see from the moment we see it whether we realize it or not.

And then when you are writing superheroes in particular you are using characters people grew up with. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the great irony is that superheroes are meant to reflect the zeitgeist, what’s going on right now. But people get very attached to the version of the character they grew up with. So when you reboot Spiderman and make him a black kid from New York or Batwoman a lesbian, and you do it just so you can tell a new story, something fresh and current, you get labeled political. That gets labeled a political and not artistic choice. Who owns those images? Corporations or writers or the fans? Who owns the characters, who owns the discourses around them? What do we do when there’s disagreement?

SF/F welcomes the reader to interpret the work because it is so symbolic. It invites us to put ourselves in the work and imagine things wildly beyond the bounds of our daily lives. There is conflict built into these genres that invite interpretation; interpretation invites dispute and discussion. It’s not always easy to know why we label certain things certain ways and not others. It’s been interesting to see this play out as I write Kamala Khan. My run on Ms. Marvel is done and I am now handing it off to Saladin Ahmed. The label of innate politicalness–here I am inventing words–is something that is kind of a spectre that has been hanging over this since the beginning.

I was talking with a mentor of mine and the editor on Ms. Marvel [Sana Amant] about how to navigate that political descriptor. I knew we were going to carry certain labels. A lapsed Catholic from Milwaukee with a typical American backstory wouldn’t get the same labeling. [Making Kamala Khan who she was] shaped the series by forcing us to put care and attention into every aspect of the series that we wouldn’t have examined otherwise.

We set our expectations quite low. We said let’s shoot for 10 issues and it will be really cool, and then we’ll probably go right back to what we were doing before. We didn’t know she’d have a shelf life. Kamala had the “trifecta of death”: new characters don’t sell, female characters don’t sell, minority characters don’t sell. The retrospective is that of course these various other projects failed for various reasons. But we had to create something that had joy and beauty in it and didn’t reflect the terror we were going through in the production of the series. Our editor Steven Wacker who championed us, our colorist, etc. the whole team. We worked more closely with the artistic team than any before or since because we knew there was zero room for error. When you have a character who doesn’t fit in a box, there is a burden of representation that unfairly falls under scrutiny. So everyone has to bring their A game at all times. Then we got to 10 issues, and then to 20, and then 30 and then 50, and then the trade paperback hit the New York Times bestseller list, and then the second one did. And we realized that we had pulled together a team that overcame the low expectations. Kamala survived and will outlive all of us.

[This success] can open the door for more. We have been living in a bottleneck for talent. When we didn’t consider representation [and only wrote/published for the dominant group/dominant paradigm] several generations of talent built up behind that bottleneck. That talent might have been lost if it weren’t opened at this extraordinary moment in history.

I’d like to close by saying nothing is impossible. If there is anyone who knows that for sure, it’s the people in this room. Thank you.

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