#rachel aviv

[luxe-pauvre]

[Martha] Nussbaum is monumentally confident, intellectually and physically. She is beautiful, in a taut, flinty way, and carries herself like a queen. Her voice is high-pitched and dramatic, and she often seems delighted by the performance of being herself. Her work, which draws on her training in classics but also on anthropology, psychoanalysis, sociology, and a number of other fields, searches for the conditions for eudaimonia, a Greek word that describes a complete and flourishing life. At a time of insecurity for the humanities, Nussbaum’s work champions—and embodies—the reach of the humanistic endeavor. Nancy Sherman, a moral philosopher at Georgetown, told me, “Martha changed the face of philosophy by using literary skills to describe the very minutiae of a lived experience.” Unlike many philosophers, Nussbaum is an elegant and lyrical writer, and she movingly describes the pain of recognizing one’s vulnerability, a precondition, she believes, for an ethical life. “To be a good human being,” she has said, “is to have a kind of openness to the world, the ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control that can lead you to be shattered.” She searches for a “non-denying style of writing,” a way to describe emotional experiences without wringing the feeling from them. She disapproves of the conventional style of philosophical prose, which she describes as “scientific, abstract, hygienically pallid,” and disengaged with the problems of its time. Like Narcissus, she says, philosophy falls in love with its own image and drowns.

Rachel Aviv, The Philosopher of Feelings

[quotesfrommyreading]

In the past decade, there have been several lawsuits against Teen Challenge. One mother sued for negligence, because her son was abruptly discharged from a Teen Challenge, in Jacksonville, for breaking a rule, and died of an overdose that night. This year, a student named Amaya Rasheed filed a lawsuit against Teen Challenge of Oklahoma, alleging that she was “physically restrained against her will” until she couldn’t breathe, and was denied medical care. (The director of Rasheed’s center said, “We remain confident that our actions are consistent with our First Amendment rights to honor our Lord and our legal obligations under Oklahoma and Federal law.”) Former employees have sued, too: a staff member in Georgia alleged that he was fired after he revealed that he had been hospitalized for depression; an employee in Oregon sued because she was terminated, on the ground of “moral failure,” for getting pregnant out of wedlock.

But these lawsuits almost never go to trial, because staff and residents (or their parents) sign a contract waiving the “right to file a lawsuit in any civil court.” Instead, the contract says that their “sole remedy” for any dispute will be “Biblically based mediation” or Christian conciliation, a type of legal arbitration. A Times investigation in 2015 found that religious-arbitration clauses, like the one used at Teen Challenge, have created “an alternate system of justice” that is often “impervious to legal challenges” and obstructs families not only from suing but from gathering facts.

Teen Challenge has been in operation for more than sixty years, but there is little public record of what occurs in its facilities. A kind of collective amnesia is fostered not only by the contract but by the culture. Once students leave some programs, their friends are not allowed to refer to them by name. Jasmine Smith, who worked at the Lakeland Teen Challenge until last winter, told me, “We had to refer to people who left the program as ‘a past student’ or ‘a past staff.’ ” Fitzpatrick, the former staff member, said that she was forbidden to communicate with employees who had resigned or been fired. She had to unfriend them on Facebook. Fitzpatrick worries that Teen Challenge will prevent her from getting new jobs, and she told me, “Even doing this interview, I’m shaking—I didn’t realize the fear.”

  —  The Shadow Penal System for Struggling Kids

[rawwithlove]

Finished this today. Picked it up last second on the way out of the library and I’m so glad it caught my eye.

[readingismyhustle]

[taviamoth]

EDIT: Read the additions to this post! Turns out they made a vague commitment. I'm keeping it up but turning reblogs off.

[sayruq]

[somegrrlreads]

10 Books from my "For Later" Shelf (aka TBR)

Photo by Eugenio Mazzone – https://unsplash.com/@eugi1492 I read all my books on my Kindle – it’s easier on my eyes and I read a lot so it’s good to have more than one book at hand without having to carry around multiples. I get my books from my public library (which has a great selection of e-books). Their site has a handy “For Later” option and as I read book recommendations, I add them to my…

[annacswenson]

"I guess I just think more generally, like, we shouldn't always be avoiding those sorts of failures."

—Agnès Callard, quoted in a The New Yorker piece, "Marriage of the Minds," by Rachel Aviv

[sscarletvenus]

Rachel Corrie, February 2003. 21 years ago.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Rachel Wahba

Vice President Kamala Harris’ emphatically raised voice demanding we must “have the courage to object when they use the term ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism?’” rings in my ears.  In what world is that  “courage”? 

It was radical Islamic terrorists who blew up the Twin Towers and destroyed thousands of American lives. It was radical Islamic terrorists who crossed Gaza into Israel and broke the country’s heart and caused the most heinous of acts that they, the Islamist terrorists proudly filmed on their bodycams. 

And the terrorist adjacent chanting “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free Yitbach El Yahud” crashes into our world here on the streets of Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco. “Hamas is coming” in blood red paint on monuments in DC is not just a “protest” of a very unpopular Israeli Prime Minister.  

There is no question Jews are between a rock and a hard place. We have for the most part been proud liberals. I remain a proud liberal. But I will never vote against Israel. Never again is now. 

If this country is not one hundred percent behind Israel and resists putting the burden of Gazan suffering on Hamas and Radical Islamist Terrorists and Iranian and Qatar funded terrorism, the Democratic party we have supported is a sham.

 “Americans are naive,” Granny said when I talked with her so long ago. But I no longer think it’s naivete. Its delusional self interest and arrogance not to recognize evil. Hamas is nothing more than a monstrous murderous death cult ready to kill all its people in the service of its paymaster, Iran. It should not be that hard to understand that Iran plans much more than Bin Laden’s pilots could ever do. 

 “Anti-Zionist” chants marching down major cities in America echo Islamic threats against Jews. Terrifying protests on college campuses and cities across America  scream for Israel’s demise, raise Hamas flags and burn American flags, glorify terrorism and normalize anti-Zionism, the Jew hatred of our time.

Denial of life under Islam is astounding despite common knowledge that gay people are not allowed to be free in Islamic countries, and caught being gay means being thrown off rooftops in Tehran, raped with iron rods (if you are a man) and dragged through the streets of Gaza, and hung on telephone poles in the Palestinian Territories. There are no open gay people in Palestine. They flee for their lives to Tel Aviv.  

You have to wonder how a progressive community I briefly felt safe in once upon a time, hates Israel, the only safe space for queer men and women, and are mum on Iran, poster child of oppression of women, murder and torture of gays, literally cloaking the country in black. 

The Orwellian Progressive idealization of monsters who started a war in the most brutal of ways and continue the war by horrifically using its own in every way possible, using its own women men and children, as many of them as it takes, all of Gaza if need be, as human ammunition to get rid of Jews and Israel is mind boggling stuff.   

Granny, you were right. Bin Laden’s rag tag jihadis were here then plowing into the Twin Towers. And it isn’t just “naivete,”on the part of people who refuse to see.  It’s denial, a sick arrogance, a cynical dance by our politicians, an ease from having lived too well too easily in the best country for too long, and a very old antisemitism. 

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

[luxe-pauvre]

[Martha] Nussbaum left Harvard in 1983, after she was denied tenure, a decision she attributes, in part, to a “venomous dislike of me as a very outspoken woman” and the machinations of a colleague who could “show a good actor how the role of Iago ought to be played.” Glen Bowersock, who was the head of the classics department when Nussbaum was a student, said, “I think she scared people. They couldn’t wrap their minds around this formidably good, extraordinarily articulate woman who was very tall and attractive, openly feminine and stylish, and walked very erect and wore miniskirts—all in one package. They were just frightened.

Rachel Aviv, The Philosopher of Feelings

[quotesfrommyreading]

Each year, some fifty thousand adolescents in the U.S. are sent to a constellation of residential centers—wilderness programs, boot camps, behavior-modification facilities, and religious treatment courses—that promise to combat a broad array of unwanted behaviors. There are no federal laws or agencies regulating these centers. In 2007, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that, in the previous seventeen years, there had been thousands of allegations of abuse in the troubled-teen industry, and warned that it could not find “a single Web site, federal agency, or other entity that collects comprehensive nationwide data.” The next year, George Miller, a member of Congress from California, championed the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act, which tried to create national safety standards and a system for investigating reports of abuse and neglect at the schools. But the law never passed the Senate. “Some schools are fraudulent in the kind of data they present to state agencies that theoretically have control over them,” Miller told me, “and they are fraudulent to parents about the level of punishment they impose.” There is a dearth of long-term mental-health-care facilities for youth, and, he said, the industry “off-loads a problem that the public system can’t manage.”

Versions of Miller’s bill have been introduced in Congress eight more times, but the legislation has never passed, and the basic problems with the industry remain largely unchanged. Malcolm Harsch, an attorney who is coördinating an American Bar Association committee devoted to reforming the industry, told me, “When programs get shut down because of allegations of abuse, they tend to disappear and then pop up again with new names, as if they were new facilities.”

—   The Shadow Penal System for Struggling Kids

[tuungaq]

it’s so funny when israel is like we’re the only place in the Middle East that likes gay people and it’s like buddy you won’t even let people get gay married within Israel itself because the religious courts pander to the Haredi. Queer people have to go get married in Cyprus to have their marriages recognized bc Israel will only recognize foreign gay marriages. Also there’s the blackmailing of queer Palestinians and Arab Israeli citizens to unpack so pardon me if I’m a little skeptical

[i-am-aprl]

21 YEARS SINCE ISRAELI BULLDOZER KILLED RACHEL CORRIE

Today marks 21 years since an Israeli bulldozer crushed to death US activist Rachel Corrie as she was trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes in Rafah city in the Gaza Strip.

This clip plays the voice of her mother, Cindy, who read aloud a 2003 email Rachel had written to her parents. She had described that the Israeli military had been committing atrocities against Palestinians and surveilling them.

One of South Africa’s main points in its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice was that Tel Aviv’s atrocities did not begin on 7 October. The Palestine-Israel conflict started in 1948 after Jewish settlers displaced 750,000 Palestinians—half of the indigenous population—a day after the founding of the state of Israel.

Corrie’s parents filed a civil lawsuit against the Israeli Defence Ministry, asserting Israel’s military had intentionally killed her. In 2012, a Haifa judge rejected it because the bulldozer driver allegedly had not seen Corrie, even though she was wearing a fluorescent jacket. An internal Israeli military investigation determined the bulldozer was engaged in a ‘combat operation,’ clearing the driver of fault. In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected her parents’ appeal. They had sought just $1 in damages.

May the memory of Rachel Corrie inspire all who struggle against oppression. Rest in power, Rachel!

Should Israel be forced to pay compensation for killing Rachel Corrie?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Gabriella Swerling

Published: Mar 21, 2024

An NHS Trust is investigating accusations that pro-Palestine nurses denied a nine-year-old Jewish boy care.

Elliott Smus, who is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, wrote on LinkedIn on Wednesday about an alleged incident at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital involving his young nephew, who suffers from a rare blood disorder.

Mr Smus said that his nephew, who has suffered with his condition for most of his life, requires a blood transfusion every month or two, spending up to days in hospital for treatment.

He said that his nephew is from a religious Jewish family and wears a kippah and tzitzit, clothing typically worn by orthodox Jewish males.

But he claimed that the child was “kicked out of his bay” by nurses wearing “Free Palestine” badges and forced “to lie on the floor with a canula in”.

As a result, Mr Smus said that his nephew is now scared that if he wears clothing that identifies him as visibly Jewish, he will not receive treatment.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has launched an investigation.

Incident was ‘horrendous’

Countdown presenter Rachel Riley, who is Jewish, described the alleged incident as “horrendous” and called on Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, and the NHS to investigate “with urgency”.

Mr Smus, who has been contacted for comment, said on social media: “As a religious Jewish family, my nephew wears his black kippah (yamulka, religious hat whatever you want to call it) and his tzitzit proudly.

“Not today. Why you ask? The nurses (NHS employees) are all walking around wearing “Free Palestine” pins and he was scared.

“Beyond that, the last few times he went in he was denied correct medical care by the same couple of nurses every time.

“This culminated the last time he went in, when my visibly Jewish nine-year-old nephew, with an autoimmune blood disease was kicked out of his bay by one of the nurses who was covered in pro-Palestine badges and stickers, and had to lie on the floor with a canula in.

“Now the damage is done and my proudly Jewish nephew (and his parents) is scared to not get treatment if he wears his kippah and tzitzit.

“Coincidentally, today when not visibly Jewish, he received quick care. Also worth noting, prior to the conflict he received excellent care.

“It is terrifying to be a Jew in the world again.”

Anti-Semitism at all-time high

The Community Security Trust, which records anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, said that anti-Semitism hit an all-time high in 2023 in an “explosion of hatred” following the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

The charity said the surge in anti-Jewish attacks, threats and abuse amounted to a “celebration” of Hamas’s Oct 7 massacre by anti-Semites whose own hatred was fuelled by the brutality of the attacks.

Its annual report said that there were 4,103 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK in 2023, nearly double the previous record in 2021, covering all types of “hate” against Jewish people.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust said: “We are aware of images and very serious claims which are circulating on social media.

“We are rapidly investigating these to establish the situation and are discussing them with the family involved. Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital is committed to providing high-quality care to all patients.”

Mr Burnham said: “I have seen the troubling reports shared on social media and have asked the Royal Children’s Hospital to launch an urgent investigation. No one should feel treated differently in our hospitals because of their race or religion. I’ve asked the hospital management to provide regular updates as they gather the facts.”

==

The "be kind" "right side of history."

Let's put aside for a moment that it's unethical for medical professionals to be wearing political paraphernalia of any variety.

Whether or not the accusation is true, literally nobody doubts that people who are pro-Hamas and support Islamic terrorism are completely capable of this kind of atrocity.