Links - 18th October 2024 (1 - Covid-19)

Meme - Supervaccinated person and normal person both thinking: "Why aren't they dead yet?"

Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics? - "The present coronavirus crisis caused a major worldwide disruption which has not been experienced for decades. The lockdown-based crisis management was implemented by nearly all the countries, and studies confirming lockdown effectiveness can be found alongside the studies questioning it. In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth. Our aim was to learn lessons and analyze ways to improve the management of similar events in the future. The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past. The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic."
In July 2024, a covid hystericist still claimed that the IFR for covid was 4% and that "A totally dispassionate, objective and scientific response to a respiratory pandemic would involve essentially the same measures". Covid hystericists don't learn.

Did the Covid inquiry just admit lockdown was a mistake? - "The Covid inquiry has this afternoon published a full report on its first module, assessing the resilience and preparedness of the UK’s pandemic response. It has so far been met with apparently predetermined headlines of how the UK Government failed its citizens by “preparing for the wrong pandemic”, and that the country was “ill-prepared”. The impact of austerity meant that this was certainly true — but the currently unreported and biggest story in the report is its wholesale attack on the lockdown approach itself.  Baroness Hallett’s full report contains remarkable criticisms of the Government’s preferred lockdown policy, which was also adopted across the world. Far from stating that the UK should have locked down sooner and harder, as many predicted, Hallett’s team has concluded that “the imposition of a lockdown should be a measure of last resort […] indeed, there are those who would argue that a lockdown should never be imposed.” Strikingly, the initial media reactions have barely anything to say about the report’s conclusions on lockdowns, just as the word “lockdown” was not mentioned once in the WHO’s September 2019 report on non-pharmaceutical interventions in pandemics. This is because, though it’s long been an article of faith in these circles that earlier and harder lockdowns were the solution, this is not the conclusion that the report comes to. Instead, Baroness Hallett has concluded that there were devastating failings in imposing lockdown in the first place. First, the report highlights the fact that lockdowns were untested as a means for responding to a pandemic. One section notes that former chancellor George Osborne “said that no one had thought that a policy response up to and including lockdowns was possible until China had commenced one in 2020, and so there was no reason for the Treasury to plan for it”. This confirms the initial reports in outlets such as the Washington Post that China’s response was “unprecedented”. There is also extensive weight given to the evidence of epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University, who is quoted as telling the inquiry that lockdown “was an ad hoc public health intervention contrived in real time in the face of a fast-moving public health emergency. We had not planned to introduce lockdown […] there were no guidelines for when a lockdown should be implemented and no clear expectations as to what it would achieve.”  Even more importantly, the report for the first module emphasises that one of the failures of the “ad hoc” lockdown approach was that its novelty meant there was no time to interrogate its consequences. The inquiry notes that “if countermeasures in the form of non-pharmaceutical interventions are not considered in advance […] their potential side effects will not be subject, in advance, to rigorous scrutiny.” In other words, the imposition of ill-prepared policies meant that there was no chance for politicians and the public to interrogate what the consequences would be, a weakness the UK Government has only acknowledged since the end of the pandemic.   The report goes on to refer to the work of the new UK-wide Pandemic Diseases Capabilities Board (PDCB), which noted the upshot of this failure of a cost-benefit analysis. Hallett’s team quotes the PDCB’s summary that the current assessments “do not include a full risk assessment for the use of [non-pharmaceutical interventions]. Given that the imposition of lockdown in part accounted for a 25% drop in GDP between February and April 2020, the largest drop on record, and numerous secondary and tertiary impacts on all sectors, this represents a significant gap in the UK’s assessment of pandemic risk.”  And so the real story of Hallett’s report is not that the UK was prepared for the “wrong pandemic”, but that it resorted to a hitherto-unimaginable policy, on no evidence-base, where the risks were not fully assessed. The real story is the report’s analysis that lockdowns should only be resorted to in future as “a last resort”, and quite possibly should never be resorted to at all. While there are gaps — the UK government’s own evidence that its Test and Trace system reduced Covid infections by at most 5% at a cost of UK£29.3 billion isn’t discussed — today’s report of Module 1 delivers a devastating blow to the lockdown consensus. It offers an admirable discussion of the many factors to be balanced in a health emergency, citing former chief medical officer Sally Davies and her advocacy of a need to “balance the biomedical model”, so that Government decision-makers receive advice from a wider range of perspectives. This would include economic impact, social wellbeing, and the effect on children and young people in education.  The report pulls the rug from under those whose declamations were taken as quasi-religious pronouncements throughout the terrible years of the pandemic. The real question to emerge is whether the media will honestly report what Hallett’s team has actually said — and what the consequences of this should be."

Jay Bhattacharya on X - "In Fall 2020, German ethics professor @chluetge  pointed out the obvious immorality of lockdown for the lives of children and the poor. German state authorities, in the grip of a zero-covid delusion, fired the ethics professor from its ethics board.  Sweden protected human life better than Germany without locked and with less collateral damage. The German authorities should have listened to the ethics professor rather than narrow minded virologists like @c_drosten  who lacked expertise and judgement."

High rates of COVID are causing outbreaks, rising hospitalizations and deaths heading into the school year : r/ottawa - "Honestly, wouldn't mind covid lockdowns again. Empty roads, wfh, chill environment.  Any based redditors feel the same?"
Clearly, inflation is the result of corporate greed

High rates of COVID are causing outbreaks, rising hospitalizations and deaths heading into the school year : r/ottawa - "Swiss cheese theory! Add in masking, sanitization, social distancing, capacity limits during peak COVID months, changing work and social culture to be more inclusive instead of isolationist and all of these things would greatly increase our health and help minimize COVID. Every room should have a screen indicating its CO2 levels to help you make informed decisions, and companies should be held to high standards to keep the cleanest air possible.  This wouldn't just help with COVID but many airborne illnesses like the flu and cold."
The covid hystericists are still at it

Autopsy findings in cases of fatal COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis - "COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to myocarditis, which, in some circumstances, can be fatal. This systematic review aims to investigate potential causal links between COVID-19 vaccines and death from myocarditis using post-mortem analysis. We performed a systematic review of all published autopsy reports involving COVID-19 vaccination-induced myocarditis through 3 July 2023. All autopsy studies that include COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis as a possible cause of death were included. Causality in each case was assessed by three independent physicians with cardiac pathology experience and expertise. We initially identified 1691 studies and, after screening for our inclusion criteria, included 14 papers that contained 28 autopsy cases. The cardiovascular system was the only organ system affected in 26 cases. In two cases, myocarditis was characterized as a consequence from multisystem inflammatory syndrome. The mean age of death was 44.4 years old. The mean and median number of days from last COVID-19 vaccination until death were 6.2 and 3 days, respectively. We established that all 28 deaths were most likely causally linked to COVID-19 vaccination by independent review of the clinical information presented in each paper. The temporal relationship, internal and external consistency seen among cases in this review with known COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis, its pathobiological mechanisms, and related excess death, complemented with autopsy confirmation, independent adjudication, and application of the Bradford Hill criteria to the overall epidemiology of vaccine myocarditis, suggests that there is a high likelihood of a causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and death from myocarditis."

Meme - "REMEMBER WHEN THEY OUTLAWED FRESH AIR & SUNSHINE BECAUSE THEY CARED ABOUT YOUR HEALTH? *Park bench with tape on it*"
One cope is that it was a pandemic. Clearly during a pandemic, any measure supposedly taken in the name of public health - even one contradicted by the science - is justified
Other copes include mocking people who criticise this as covidiots or selfish

Chinese lab linked to Covid leak may have also released ANOTHER deadly virus, new research claims - "A bombshell new study suggests that this polio strain, which infected a four-year-old boy amid a wider viral outbreak in China's Anhui province, is '99 percent' identical to a polio variant that was stored 200 miles away, during that same time period, at the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology. Researchers at France's Pasteur Institute cannot say with certainty where this strain, dubbed 'WIV14,' originated. But they insisted two possibilities 'must be explored' — including the chance that WIV14 polio originated within the Wuhan institute itself."

China 'carried out disinformation campaign to force world economy into lockdown', says US lawyer in extraordinary theory - "Michael Senger suggested the Communist Party promoted nationwide shutdowns in a bid to "cripple rival economies" amid the coronavirus pandemic... Senger however claims the Communist Party may have weaponised social media in an aggressive psy-op to spread hysteria to push for the lockdowns. The campaign may have pushed nations into committing economic suicide. He points to thousands of tweets which were encouraging world governments to try out the draconian rules first adopted by China. Senger even alleges Prime Minister Boris Johnson was targeted by Chinese disinformation after he first suggested herd immunity rather than a lockdown. The lawyer, from Atlanta, Georgia, laid out his theory in an article for Tablet Magazine titled "China's Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign". Writing on Twitter, he said: "By promoting fraudulent data, aggressively deploying disinformation, and flexing its institutional clout, Beijing transformed the snake oil of lockdowns into ‘science’, crippling rival economies, expanding its influence and sowing authoritarian values." He argued lockdowns "might not even be science it all" and claimed they are based on brutal policies used by Chinese leader Xi Jinping... Senger claimed it was a "domino effect" of country's following China's policy after Italy became the first nation to lockdown. Senger said: "Is there something more sinister behind this? Was this actually planned so it would crash rival economies and spread authoritarian values?" WHO described the lockdown of Wuhan as "unprecedented" in January, before actively encouraging other nations to follow China's lead just one month later. Senger claims the "smoking gun on the genesis of the coronavirus lockdown" is the fact Twitter removed tens of thousands of fake accounts promoting China's message. Twitter confirmed in June it had took down 23,750 accounts which were "highly engaged" in disinformation - and 150,000 which were engaged in amplification. The social media giant confirmed the accounts were deleted as they were promoting China's response to the coronavirus outbreak. Tweets included videos of Chinese workers disinfecting streets - each of which were accompanied by suspiciously similar messages praising in China. Senger writes much of this campaign was focused on bombarding Italy as it went into lockdown - sparking much of the rest of the world to follow. He also brands videos began emerging from China earlier in the pandemic, including people collapsing in the street with scenes reminiscent of apocalypse movies as "fake". Speaking of Sky News Australia, Senger said: "The only purpose behind these is to spread fear. To show this virus is really, really scary." And the lawyer accuses China of having "fake numbers" over the virus, with its figures "manifestly forged"... Senger claims the Britain's Prime Minister may have been targeted by misinformation when he suggested using herd immunity to beat the virus. He wrote: "On March 13, suspicious accounts began storming his Twitter feed and likening his plan to genocide. "This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were hardly active before then." FBI officials also revealed in July that US politicians had been approached by the Communist Party to endorse China's strategy on coronavirus. Chris Wray, FBI director, said: "We have heard from federal, state and even local officials that Chinese diplomats are aggressively urging support for China’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis. "Yes, this is happening at both the federal and state levels. Not that long ago, we had a state senator who was recently even asked to introduce a resolution supporting China’s response to the pandemic."... "The most benign possible explanation for the CCP’s campaign for global lockdowns is that the party aggressively promoted the same lie internationally as domestically – that lockdowns worked. "And then there’s the possibility that by shutting down the world, Xi Jinping, who … envisions a socialist future with China at its centre, knew exactly what he was doing.""

Richard Hanania on X - "People who took Wegovy were 33% less likely to die from Covid, and the effect kicked in before they even lost weight. They were 19% less likely to die of all causes. Incredible. The evidence is accumulating that it might be a good idea for everyone to be on this."
Obesity Drug Wegovy Prevents Covid Deaths, Study Suggests - The New York Times

Man, 34, died of cancer after GPs dismissed concerns, inquest hears - "Oliver Philpott, 34, called his GP practice at least six times during the Covid 19 lockdown complaining of severe pain in his back and long-term fatigue. Instead of being seen by a doctor in a face-to-face appointment, he was repeatedly assessed over the phone. He finally saw his GP at the medical centre four months after he first reported symptoms, but tragically died three days later. A post mortem later found the 34-year-old had a large 20cm tumour wrapped around his heart and lungs. The aggressive sarcoma had infiltrated his right lung and had eventually caused pulmonary emboli which caused a heart attack that killed him. In a double family tragedy, his father, Anthony - wracked by guilt and grief over the death of his son - took his own life. Today at an inquest into Oliver's death in Hastings, his doctor, Fiona Warner, said Covid 19 had restricted the number of patients doctors could see face-to-face."
Monsters! Why do they want grandma to have died?!

Meme - "While he locked you down, this communist czar was spreading aids"
"WATCH: NYC'S FORMER CORONAVIRUS ADVISER SAYS HE ATTENDED SEX PARTIES DURING PANDEMIC TO 'BLOW OFF STEAM'"
WATCH: NYC's Former Coronavirus Adviser Had Sex Parties During Pandemic - "New York City’s former coronavirus adviser, Dr. Jay Varma, apparently had parties involving sex and drugs during the pandemic, according to secretly recorded footage of him speaking about the instances...   Varma said he was the one who convinced de Blasio to issue the vaccine mandate... It is important to note that a New York State judge ruled in October 2022 the city employees fired for not taking the coronavirus vaccine must be reinstated and given backpay because the vaccine mandate was unconstitutional, according to Breitbart News.  Per the recent Post article, Varma has said he takes responsibility for not using the “best judgment” while also saying the private conversations were taken out of context."

The Real Lesson of Jay Varma's COVID Sex-Party Scandal - The Atlantic (aka "Public-Health Officials Should Have Been Talking About Their Sex Parties the Whole Time")
Right on cue...

The Surgisphere Scandal: What Went Wrong? - "It sounds absurd that an obscure US company with a hastily constructed website could have driven international health policy and brought major clinical trials to a halt within the span of a few weeks. Yet that’s what happened earlier this year, when Illinois-based Surgisphere Corporation began a publishing spree that would trigger one of the largest scientific scandals of the COVID-19 pandemic to date. At the heart of the deception was a paper published in The Lancet on May 22 that suggested hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug promoted by US President Donald Trump and others as a therapy for COVID-19, was associated with an increased risk of death in patients hospitalized with the disease. The study wasn’t a randomized controlled trial—the gold standard for determining a drug’s safety and efficacy—but it did purportedly draw from an enormous registry of observational data that Surgisphere claimed to have collected from the electronic medical records of nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients across 671 hospitals on six continents.  The study was a medical and political bombshell. News outlets analyzed the implications for what they referred to as the “drug touted by Trump.” Within days, public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) instructed organizers of clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment or prophylaxis to suspend recruitment, while the French government reversed an earlier decree allowing the drug to be prescribed to patients hospitalized with the virus.  Before long, however, cracks started appearing in the study—and in Surgisphere itself. Scientists and journalists noted that the Lancet paper’s data included impossibly high numbers of cases—exceeding official case or death counts for some continents and coming implausibly close for others. Similar data discrepancies were also identified in two previous studies that had relied on the company’s database. Inquiries by The Scientist and The Guardian, meanwhile, failed to identify any hospital that had contributed to the registry. It also emerged that, for a company claiming to have created one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated patient databases, Surgisphere had little in the way of medical research to show for it. Founded by vascular surgeon Sapan Desai in 2008 and employing only a handful of people at a time, the company initially produced textbooks aimed at medical students. It later dabbled in various projects, including a short-lived medical journal, before shooting to fame this year with its high-profile publications on health outcomes in COVID-19 patients.   The provenance of Surgisphere’s database—if it even exists, which many clinicians, journal editors, and researchers have questioned—has yet to become clear. Most of Desai’s coauthors admitted to having only seen summary data, and independent auditors tasked with verifying the database’s validity were never granted access, leading to the June 4 retractions of the Lancet study and a previous paper based on the database in The New England Journal of Medicine. Over the following days, The Scientist and other media outlets pointed out inaccurate claims made on Surgisphere’s website, which it had launched in February and gradually erased as accusations of fraud mounted. Desai, who spoke to The Scientist at the end of May, is no longer responding to requests for comment... While a heightened sense of urgency during the pandemic undoubtedly contributed to the problem, there were many people and institutions that theoretically could have prevented Surgisphere’s effects on science and public health, notes Rachel Cooper, the director of the Health Initiative at the nonprofit organization Transparency International.  Desai’s astonishing influence on COVID-19 policy was dependent on multiple parties, Cooper notes, from the institutions that employed him to the coauthors on his research studies, the journals that published the work, and the organizations that issued public health decisions based on his research. Seen that way, the scandal represents “a perfect storm of issues that have always been there”"
From 2020. If you don't Trust the Science (and we all know that the Science is Settled), you are a conspiracy theorist, science denier and spreading misinformation

Trump Promoted Hydroxychloroquine, A Drug Now Linked To 17,000 Deaths
Those Published “17,000 Hydroxychloroquine Deaths” Never Happened - "The CDC describes HCQ as “a relatively well tolerated medicine” and that “HCQ can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers” referring to its long-term use in chronic diseases.   Basic logic dictates that, if a drug is safe for long-term use, it would also be safe for short-term use, including (and especially) in Covid-19 early treatment/pre-exposure prophylaxis type indications.   These are pharmacology fundamentals that ought to be known by any pharmacist or physician – let alone to a professor serving as a Journal Editor-in-Chief at a taxpayer-funded state College of Pharmacy.   Did not even one person on her editorial board of over 50 “peer-reviewers” and staff ponder the celebrated and storied history of HCQ (and its predecessors) and how incongruent this study’s findings were before choosing to publish data denigrating HCQ safety?   The correct answer to that might actually be: “no”…  The publishing editorial board all seem to be laboratory bench (non-clinical) research scientists, per their biographies. Although the board does promote itself as meeting DEI requirements of being “gender diverse,” a more important question might be is if they have the appropriate credentials and experience to review and opine on clinically complex drug safety/epidemiology subject matters in the first place... there were never “17,000 deaths;” it was always a hypothetical extrapolation of people that could have died, based on “unreliable” (eg, actually, fraudulent) databases on top of the previously mentioned, problematic late-stage RECOVERY-trial-type dosing and timing.   Still, Josh Cohen, a Forbes.com PhD senior healthcare columnist, used this publication to headline an absurdly biased op-ed against HCQ, stating that Trump’s HCQ proposal was “Linked To 17,000 Deaths.” Forbes’ Tufts, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania- trained “healthcare analyst” misrepresented or appeared to not understand the now-retracted study methodology or projections.   It went downhill from there. Mere hours following the publication, very similar, now objectively inaccurate, highly politicized, and seemingly coordinated attacks on HCQ and Trump were published by: The Hill, Politico, Frontline News, Scripps News, the Guardian, KFF Health News, News Nation, Newsweek, AOL.com, Yahoo News, and Daily Kos, in addition to a multitude of prominent regional, international, and US federal news outlets, many falsely estimating that 17,000 deaths had already taken place and that the (imaginary) victims’ blood was already on Donald Trump’s hands... Here are some screenshots of headlines referencing non-existent deaths based on a now-retracted study... Almost immediately following the January 2, 2024 publication, its critical flaws including basic miscalculations among many other deficiencies were brought to the attention of Dr. Townsend by Xavier Azalbert and non-profit BonSens.org attorneys starting on Jan 7, 2024. In fact, a total of 9 communications were sent by the above individuals, but none of them were ever shared as “Letters to The Editor” by Dr. Townsend in good faith to inform readers of specific potential shortcomings, as is otherwise commonly done.   Dr. Townsend seemed to forget that bad medical data and publications can do actual patient harm, and kept legitimate and important study criticisms to herself. Instead of taking responsibility and making a leadership decision, she passed the buck to a Committee on Publication Ethics, delaying the needed retraction. It appallingly took 234 days (~7 months, from the January 2nd publication to August 26th) for Dr. Townsend’s Journal of Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy to finally retract the “unreliable” article. But at that point, untold millions around the world had already been (and continue to be) polluted with outrageously incorrect information about non-existent HCQ deaths. This raises some questions about Dr. Townsend’s duties and responsibilities as the Editor in Chief"

Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "Deborah Birx from her memoir, explaining how "two weeks to flatten the curve" was just marketing for harsh, months-long lockdowns that she was really planning:  "On Monday and Tuesday [March 9th and 10th, 2020]…we worked simultaneously to develop the flatten-the-curve guidance I hoped to present to the vice president at week’s end. Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions. We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown. …  No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.""
The "myth" of the slippery slope strikes again

Thread by @GeauxGabrielle on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " The revisionist history of COVID is crazy but I was there. I journaled through it. I screenshot through it. We were (and still are) living through history. And as an epidemiologist I want future generations to know how fucking stupid and selfish you dumb sons of bitches were Don’t talk to me about a goddamn fucking thing I’m doing. Y’all do not know me. People who DO know I be COVID conscious down."
From 2024. Covid hysteria is still raging

Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "2023 meta-analysis of 40 high-quality studies:  COVID death rate in 2020 for people younger than 70 was 0.07%.  1-in-1500.  We locked down for that?  We created massive learning loss in children for that?  We forced everyone to take a novel mRNA vaccine, that didn't stop transmission, for that?  We destabilized our society and economy and created runaway inflation for that?  We destroyed countless small businesses and participated in the largest wealth transfer to elites in history for that?  We implemented mass censorship for that?  We fired and canceled hundreds of thousands of people for that?  We decimated trust in medicine and public health for that?"
Mankosmash on X - "At the time, I was getting banned on Reddit for pointing to evidence that the case fatality rate was about 0.2%. The media was saying the CFR was over 2% to scare people. Supposedly credible "experts" were "conceding" that it was over 0.5%. We knew this all AT THE TIME."
As usual, the covid hystericists got very upset by peer reviewed research exposing their delusions
Ironic. Even Fauci knew this in 2020, that "the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively"

Meme - Puritans burning witches at the stake: "Oops, turns out the masks and vaxes were pointless"
Puritans to fire (the witches are dead): "Mistakes were made on both sides"

Links - 17th October 2024 (2)

FCC approves controversial radio station deal involving Soros-backed group - "The Federal Communications Commission has approved a controversial deal: it gives control of more than 200 radio stations to a group funded by Democratic mega-donor George Soros.  Some of those stations are in Texas...  Carr says whenever foreign ownership is involved the process takes months so that national security agencies can do a review.  “It's very much out of the ordinary, we'll be creating a special shortcut just for this one entity that is backed ultimately by this George Soros group," Carr said. In a letter Friday, the House Oversight Committee accused FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and other commissioners of "bypassing an established process to do a favor for George Soros and facilitate his influence over hundreds of radio stations before the November election.""
Billionaires controlling the media are only bad when they don't push the left wing agenda

Archaeologists Discover World's Oldest Break-Up Letter at Neo-Babylonian Site - "King Nabonidus wasn’t a fan of being stood up, says a new finding by archeologists at Liberty University. Researchers have unveiled that the 6th-century BCE Neo-Babylonian king sent what is thought to be the first break-up letter ever discovered... “News has reached me via the Upper Euphrates that you were visiting with my childhood friend Nisaba. I am devastated by this betrayal, as you are one of my favorite concubines. You have until the end of the month to pick up your flax shawls and sandals or else I will donate them to the temple of the moon god.”"

Meme - *Nursing Director, Chief Medical Officer, Hospital Administrator, Healthcare IT Specialist. Pharmacy Manager. Health Policy Analyst, Health and Safety Officer, Medical Records Supervisor, Clinical Research Manager, Patient Care Coordinator sitting around looking at frontline staff dig hole*
Frontline staff: *digging hole alone*
"Due to budget constraints, we're going to have to let our frontline staff go."

How Where You’re Born Influences the Person You Become
This makes no attempt to correct for genetics, despite giving it a passing mention

In the 2024 Democratic Party Platform, the word Women appears 82 times, the word Men, 4 times. Why don't the Democrats pay more attention to male voters since they trail among them in the vote? : r/MensRights - "They don't care about our vote."
"They don't care about our issues or concerns. They do want our votes and expect to get them by guilting."
"This. I was pretty enthusiastic about Harris until I started trying to talk about improving the quality of life for men and they acted like I was crazy. I'm convinced their version of feminism means women get everything, not equality."
"They want our votes for now, but hope either way for them to become unnecessary; women make a slim majority at present and are more easily swayed by their rhetoric than men when removed from social support structures like family and religion. Their work for some time now has been tearing down every conceivable social support and replacing it with their politics."
"More bluntly, they don't care about men. If they have any feeling towards men and boys, its toleration at best, outright hate and resentment more frequently."

Meme - "MEN LOOK AT BOOBS FOR THE SAME REASON A LITTLE KID LOOKS AT PUPPIES IN A CAGE. WE JUST WANT TO SET THEM FREE AND PLAY WITH THEM."

Meme - "YOU'LL BE A BIG MOVIE STAR, BABY! I SEE OSCARS AND TONYS IN YOUR FUTURE!"
"WHERE DO I SIGN!?"
"OKAY OSCAR AND TONY, YOU'RE UP"
"SUPER BUM LOVE 7" *worried man on bed exposing ass*

Meme - "When you're at an airport security check and they pull out an Uno reverse card *Muslim woman in hijab screening white lady*"

Meme - "The fact Bill Clinton may have bombed a country so Hillary Clinton would resume missionary sex with the lights off has ruined my entire week."
"A biography of Hillary Clinton, written by Gail Sheehy and published in late 1999, stated that Mrs. Clinton had refused to talk to the president for eight months after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. She resumed talking to her husband only when she phoned him and urged him in the strongest terms to begin bombing Serbia; the president began bombing within 24 hours. Alexander Cockburn observed in the Los Angeles Times,"

In the 18th Century, Pineapples Were a Symbol of Wealth and Power - "Originally from South America, pineapples were discovered by Christopher Columbus on one of his voyages to the New World. When he brought them back to Spain, many Europeans — royalty in particular — were completely taken by the delicacy. It was a rare, beautiful fruit most people had never encountered before and artists began incorporating pineapples in their work — whether lavishly depicted in  a painting or elegantly carved into wooden furniture.  The pineapple made its way to England in the 17th century and by the 18th century, being seen with one was an instant indicator of wealth — a single pineapple could cost the equivalent of $8,000 today. In fact, the fruit was so desirable and rare that consumers often rented a pineapple for the night to show off to fellow party-goers."

Montreal bylaws: Man fined for tying dog to parking meter - "A Montreal man who tied his dog to a parking meter while he entered a bakery is now facing a hefty fine for breaking a law he had no idea existed.  He's warning other pet owners who may face similar fines.  "It's something that I've seen other people do, myself included," said Dimitar Beshkov, with his four-year-old mutt Indy.  On Thursday, Beshkov popped in for a croissant on Rachel Street and tied Indy to a meter outside.  When he came out, less than five minutes later, a Montreal police (SPVM) officer was waiting to give him a ticket for $664...  According to the City of Montreal's website, tying a dog to a tree or street furniture is prohibited under provincial law.  At all times, a dog must be under the control of a person capable of controlling it.  It is a law the SPCA supports.  "Though it may seem ridiculous, in these particular circumstances, very strictly regulating when dogs can be tied outside is actually sound policy in terms of animal welfare and public safety," said SPCA lawyer Sophie Gaillard."

I found the stupidest way to find a job and it’s given me more results than 300 online applications. : r/GenZ - "It’s so fricken simple, but it’s worked 3 times last month. If you work at a retail store or some job where you meet customers/clients on a regular basis. All you have to do is get everyone talking about the economy then wiggle into the conversation about “how no one wants to work”. Really get them talking and eventually you’ll run into someone complaining about how one of their employees or coworkers quit or doesn’t want to work. Just agree with their circumstances. Then let them know how you’re looking for a job.  I did this to everyone for a month and so far I got 3 job offers as an insurance sales associate, HR recruiter, and a factory worker all paying 25 dollars or more."

That Time William McKinley Gave Away His Lucky Flower—And Then Died - "Early in his political career, an opponent of William McKinley’s gave him a red carnation boutonniere to wear during a debate. McKinley went on to win that debate and then the congressional election in 1887 (he served in the Ohio House of Representatives for 14 years), and he saw this red carnation as his good luck charm. He began wearing one during all election cycles, including his two gubernatorial wins and his 1896 presidential campaign. After his first presidential win, McKinley started wearing a single carnation in his lapel at all times. He even kept a bouquet of them on his desk in the Oval Office and would gift them to visitors.  McKinley—who was born on January 29, 1843—was also known to give people the flower from his lapel, though he would replace it as quickly as possible. In 1901, months after his second term in office began, he was in Buffalo, New York for the Pan-American Exposition. While greeting the public, he met a 12-year-old girl named Myrtle Ledger who was there with her mother. Years later, Myrtle recalled that President McKinley said, “I must give this flower to another little flower,” and then he gave her his lucky carnation.  Minutes later, McKinley greeted another person in line—his assassin, Leon Czolgosz. The president was shot twice and died the following week from gangrene. Three years later, the Ohio General Assembly named the scarlet carnation the official state flower in his honor."

Meme - Benny Feldman @Feldfrog: "You know how people who used to torture animals as a kid are way more likely to be psycopaths as adults? I'm sort of the opposite, I actually used to catch girl rabbits and pleasure them effortlessly with my fingers until they came"

Family that walk on all fours have 'undone the last three million years of evolution' - "The Ulas family has been the subject of evolutionary fascination for years after they were discovered in a remote village in Turkey walking on all fours. Back in the early 2000s, a scientific paper was published on five of the Ulas siblings and their strange bear crawl-style of movement, with experts divided over the cause of the abnormality... The Ulas mother and father had a staggering 18 children, however, of these, only six were born with quadrupedalism (walking on all fours), which has never been seen before in modern adult humans... Humphrey pointed out that the affected siblings – five of whom are still alive and aged between 22 and 38 – all suffer from a particular form of brain damage. In the 60 Minutes documentary, he showed MRI scans which revealed that they each had a shrunken section of the brain called the cerebellar vermis. However, the professor also noted that this in itself “[doesn’t] account for their walking on four legs”. He explained: “Other children who have damaged cerebellum, even children who have no cerebellum, can still walk upright.” He also stressed that the Ulas’ form of quadrupedalism differs from that seen in our closest animal relatives – chimpanzees and gorillas – in one key way. Whilst these primates walk on their knuckles, the Turkish children’s use the palms of their hands – putting their weight on their wrists while lifting their fingers off the ground. "What's significant about that is that chimpanzees ruin their fingers walking like that"... "These kids have kept their fingers very agile, for example, the girls in the family can do crochet and embroidery," he added. Humphrey has hypothesised that this could indeed be the way our direct ancestors walked... The LSE researcher also suggested that there are more basic explanations for the Ulas children’s quadrupedalism: they were simply not encouraged to walk on two feet. In the Turkish village where they grew up, there was no local health service to help the disabled kids make the transition from crawling as babies (on hands and knees) to walking fully upright. Humphrey told 60 Minutes that he provided the Ulases with a walking frame and within a few hours “there was an astonishing transformation”. “The children who had never taken a step upright on two legs [used] this frame to walk across the room with such delight in their faces and a sense of achievement,” he recalled, adding that it was as if they had “suddenly made a breakthrough into the world they never imagined they could ever enter.”"

Labour’s authoritarian urges are worryingly obvious... and not just in outdoor smoking ban it intends to impose - "They’re there too in the Home Secretary’s extraordinary plan to embroil our police once again in recording “non-crime hate incidents”. Yvette Cooper seems to believe this will show zero tolerance for anti- Semitism and Islamophobia. Experience proves it will be a mandate for cops to probe anyone who simply hurts another’s feelings via even the most anodyne remark in person or online. That’s not police business. Besides, they’ll be busy enough chasing illegal smokers down the street on behalf of the Government’s public health fanatics. Or should we say “irregular” smokers, since “irregular” is how Labour intends now to rebrand the illegal migrants landing on our beaches in small boats? Meanwhile, in our universities, Tory measures painstakingly negotiated to preserve free speech are set to be axed. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson risibly claims they were a charter for “hate speech” against minorities. In fact they were merely a safeguard against aggressive left-wing radicals shutting down speakers voicing even mildly conservative views on campus. Some political balance is vital. Our students and lecturers are already overwhelmingly left-wing and our universities the wokest places in the land. At University College London a new edict says vulnerable people must not be called “vulnerable”. Even if your sole motive is their protection and needs, such supposedly unthinking and blunt language could “disempower them”. Will Labour ever rein in this insanity? As we say, the omens are not good."

Estonia offers to hold UK prisoners as our jails are full with record number of lags - "Estonia’s minister of justice Liisa Pakosta said the Baltic nation had cells it could rent out to Nato allies. She said the scheme could be worth £25million to Estonia and hinted the UK and Sweden are already in talks over sending prisoners there."

‘A whole economy issue’: Labour productivity declines for second straight quarter - "“This is not a problem confined to one region or sector — say manufacturing. It is a whole economy issue,” said Douglas Porter , chief economist at Bank of Montreal, in a note to clients. “And while it may seem like an esoteric topic for many, the reality is that unless it is properly addressed, Canada’s relative standard of living will continue to weaken.”... Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada, said it’s important to look at productivity before the pandemic, prior to disruptions that skew the data. Antunes says Canada’s productivity overall has declined 0.5 per cent compared to the average in 2019 and Canada has been a laggard for decades... This low productivity trend has also grabbed the attention of the Bank of Canada this past spring, when Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers delivered a speech in Halifax, highlighting Canada’s productivity problem has reached an emergency level... GDP per-capita, another important measure to look at when discussing the standard of living of Canadians, posted its fifth consecutive quarterly decline during the second quarter of this year. Porter notes Canada continues to be outpaced by our American counterparts when it comes to productivity and our position among the OECD continues to decline. “U.S. productivity has thus outpaced Canada by 10 per cent in the past five years alone,” said Porter. “Looking at GDP per hours worked in U.S. dollar terms, the OECD finds that Canada has now slipped even below Italy and Spain and is losing sight of the U.S. and most Northern European economies.”"

Michael Higgins: Jagmeet Singh can still yank Liberals even further to the left - "To be fair to Jagmeet Singh he has parlayed two dozen NDP seats into a political wedge that has forced the Liberals to turn sharp left. That he gets no credit for it, even from NDP supporters, is probably because he is a tiresome, whining, sanctimonious hypocrite. Singh’s hypocrisy during his political marriage with the Liberals has been a defining feature of the last two years — attack Justin Trudeau on every occasion, but back him in the House of Commons to ensure the government doesn’t fall... Singh never seems to waste an opportunity to turn the political marital bed into a verbal pillow fight. Singh told delegates attending the British Columbia NDP convention last November, “I have seen Trudeau’s government up close. I shouldn’t be mean, but one of our MPs has described working with the Liberals like wrestling eels that are soaked in oil.” But he also noted, Trudeau “only acts when he is forced to, or when his political future is on the line.” It is this that Singh is gambling on. Certainly, Singh blindsided the Liberals on Wednesday with his announcement that he was dissolving their partnership — the one that in 2022 called for “no surprises” between the two parties. Just over a week ago, Government House Leader Karina Gould said she was “fairly confident” that the agreement would hold through to June 2025... Of course, Singh must also have his eye on the declining polling numbers for the NDP. According to an aggregate of polls for 338Canada , if an election were held now the NDP would see their number decline by a third — down to 16 seats from 24."

Is this Jagmeet Singh's swan song? - "The party’s gambit was simple: by working alongside the Liberals, the New Democrats could claim credit for such popular policies as national dental care and pharmacare. The idea was that once these programs started rolling out, Canadians would recognize the NDP’s hand in these initiatives and reward it with strong polling numbers. But, to the surprise of Singh and his team, the anticipated poll bounce never came. What was worse — the struggling Liberal government became more of an anchor than a lifeline to NDP fortunes. Rather than boosting support, Singh’s deal with the Liberals dragged both parties down. The Liberals tacked further left than expected and have seen public trust erode. Meanwhile, the NDP found itself on the wrong side of issues that alienated voters it desperately needs. Take, for instance, the NDP-backed motion on the Israel-Hamas war. Watered down from its original form, which sought recognition of a Palestinian state, it still signalled an uncomfortable departure from Canada’s long-standing foreign policy. This misstep may cost the Liberals key seats, such as the Toronto–St. Paul’s stronghold they lost in a June byelection. It’s a perfect storm of mistakes that make Singh’s latest declaration of independence seem less like a power move and more like a last-ditch effort to save face ahead of must-win byelections in Winnipeg and Montreal. Is this Singh’s swan song? It certainly feels like the beginning of the end for his leadership. Some within the NDP have already started asking tough questions. Singh has failed to consistently raise the party’s polling numbers above 20 per cent — a threshold the NDP hasn’t regularly crossed since he took the helm. Compared with the heights reached under Jack Layton or even Tom Mulcair when the NDP was a genuine contender for power, the party’s performance under Singh’s leadership has been underwhelming. It’s time to face the facts — today’s NDP has morphed from a vehicle for political and social change into a platform for Jagmeet Singh’s vanity. Yet his social media persona, though appealing to younger voters, hasn’t translated into the kind of widespread support the party needs... The NDP leadership review last October, while not damning enough to force Singh out, showed cracks in the foundation. It represented one of the worst reviews of any NDP leader since the 1970s."

Singh targets carbon tax in a flaccid attempt to imitate Poilievre - "In August 2021, pre-coalition deal, EKOS had the Conservatives polling 52 per cent higher than the NDP among working-class voters; by August 2024, that lead grew to 119 per cent... Singh, it seems, had to learn the hard way that punitively taxing people for existing in a modern (but cold) economy isn’t exactly the way into a working voter’s heart. The Liberals and NDP have forked on how to manage this mess: the NDP are denouncing the present iteration of carbon pricing (sort of), invoking the disproportionate suffering workers are supposed to experience in a changed climate without openly opposing it. The Liberals, meanwhile, are trying out another hopeless rebrand while giving carve-outs to strategic provinces (Atlantic Canada). Layered with other flaccid working-class pitches, it’s not hard to see why the Conservatives are in the lead. The NDP has largely veered from labour politics toward campus-style identity concerns, even supporting the Liberal government as it caved to the rail duopoly in its dispute with train engineers. The Liberals have performed miserably worse on worker appeal, touting rebates and welfare programs nobody wants to have to rely on. Sure, there’s a carbon tax rebate, but the scheme is still a net negative for all but the bottom quintile — most people know that money is best left in their pockets anyway. The free amenities don’t resonate all that much better. Liberal free school lunches, Liberal free birth control — all while Canada is getting collectively poorer respective to peer countries. Trudeau, confronted by a dissatisfied steelworker two weeks ago, even tried to play the free dental-care card. Didn’t this tradesman appreciate the latest expansion of the welfare state? No, of course not. “I pay for it myself…. Why? I have a good job,” responded the worker. The Liberals, and to a lesser degree, the NDP, struggle to understand the great insult of having welfare jigged in front of one’s face like a lure. No, a few hundred-dollar “Climate Action Incentive Payment” isn’t enough to buy someone’s vote, and it’s offensive to even suggest that it might be. No, another free service that everyone could afford in 2005 isn’t going to cut it, especially when many of us can’t reliably find a doctor. Climate justice was only fun when the rich were the ones paying, and handouts only felt great when most workers didn’t need them."
The working class is too stupid and ignorant to realise that the NDP is the party that really represents their interests. But they're too bigoted to swallow identity politics after all

Jack Karlson, who shot to fame after ‘succulent Chinese meal’ arrest, dies aged 82 - "The man who immortalised the phrase “this is democracy manifest” while starring in what has been described as the pre-eminent Australian meme, Jack Karlson, has died aged 82. Karlson – although there are debates as to whether this was his real name or one of many aliases – was a serial prison escaper and small-time crook who shot to fame in 2009 after a news clip of his arrest at a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in 1991 was uploaded on to the internet. “What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?” Karlson theatrically boomed as his bear-like frame resisted a string of police officers."

Angry netizens call out Wells Fargo for not noticing a dead employee for 4 days - "Denise Prudhomme, a sixty-year-old, worked at the American financial services's corporate office in Tempe, Arizona. She clocked in at 7 am on August 16, Friday. On Tuesday, August 20, she was found in her cubicle at 4:55 pm by the police and was pronounced dead. The preliminary investigation did not indicate any foul play. According to a USA Today report, the company stated that since the employee’s desk was located in a very “underpopulated area,” she went unnoticed during the weekend... most of the people are the company work remotely"
It's a good bet that most bashing the company also demand remote work

Schools are competing with cellphones. Here's how they think they could win - "At Nguyen’s school, students lock their phones in neoprene pouches during classes or even all day. A teacher or principal’s magnetic key unlocks the pouches. It doesn’t matter how dynamic the lesson, said Nguyen, who teaches at Marina Valley High School and now markets the pouches to other schools. “There’s nothing that can compete with the cell phone.”... Some say other forces behind teen disengagement are only amplified by the cellphone. The divisive political climate often makes students unwilling to participate in class, when anything they say can rocket around the school in a messaging app. Taylor’s high school English students tell him they don’t talk in class because they don’t want to be “ canceled ” — a term applied to public figures who are silenced or boycotted after offensive opinions or speech. “I’m like, ‘Well, who’s canceling you? And why would you be canceled? We’re talking about `The Great Gatsby,’” not some controversial political topic, he said. Students “get very, very quiet” when topics such as sexuality, gender or politics come up in novels, said Higgins, the Massachusetts English teacher. “Eight years ago, you had hands shooting up all over the place. Nobody wants to be labeled a certain way anymore or to be ridiculed or to be called out for politics.” So Higgins uses websites such as Parlay that allow students to have online discussions anonymously. The services are expensive, but Higgins believes the class engagement is worth it. “I can see who they are when they’re responding to questions and things, but other students can’t see,” Higgins said. “That can be very, very powerful.”"

Meme - Japanese sign: "Please do not finger the peaches. As this fruit is easily damaged, would you mind not touching it by hand."

Weird Florida throwback: Psychedelic mushrooms and alligators don't mix - "Amid the recent news of a face-biting slaying and an accused Chipotle-eating baby neglecter, it's easy to forget that Florida has always been a land of weird behavior. Here's an example from 2013, when five Florida men learned a valuable lesson: psychedelic mushrooms plus marijuana plus alligators does not equal a good time... a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer found four men and a teenager in Little Big Econ State Forest near Oviedo with a bag full of narcotics. Those arrested included Rick Myers, 30; Tyler Salzman, 20; Gregory Sansota, 22; and Jacob Russell, 20. The juvenile’s name was not released, and a woman with the group was not booked.  According to the wildlife commission, the group had psilocybin mushrooms in the bag while one of the men was holding a 2-foot alligator that was “tucked into a bandana.”... The incident inspired the viral photo that read: “Do Not Feed Hallucinogens To The Alligators”"

Mike Benz on X - "The US State Dept called in massive favors & leveraged personal connections to build voting machines for Lula-aligned Brazil officials and then the CIA warned Bolsonaro not to mess with or cast doubt on all the new US State Dept-secured voting machines determining his election"
Mike Benz on X - "What’s funny is both the 1964 military junta in Brazil and the 2022 judicial junta in Brazil received direct help from the CIA to rise to power."

Crémieux on X - "Have you seen these charts on parental time use from Our World in Data, Financial Times, and The Economist? These graphs are not good... In some cases, they fit an exponential increase to data with limited differences between just two timepoints!"

Meme - ">Playing DnD
>Wizard gets into a fight with an important NPC
>When the wizard realizes who the NPC is, he apologizes and asks "As a token of my goodwill, would you like me to make you a magical sword?"
>NPC agrees
>Wizard casts polymorph and turns them into a sword.
>Argues that the NPC shouldn't have a will save because they agreed to it."

“Genocide”? Canada’s Government Wanted to Close Every Indian Residential School in the 1940s

Ironically, left wingers are usually for compulsory schooling.

Canada’s Government Wanted to Close Every Indian Residential School

"In what might be considered an act of heroic optimism, in March 1942 Canada’s House of Commons convened a special committee to “study and report upon the general problems of reconstruction and re-establishment which may arise at the termination of the present war.” This was a particularly grim time for the Allies in the Second World War. Most of Europe was under Axis control, German general Erwin Rommel was rampaging across North Africa and the German army was near the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow. In the Pacific theatre, Japan had recently captured Singapore and Burma, and the crucial Battle of Midway was still three months away. Nevertheless, a committee of Canadian politicians was tasked with imagining what the country would look like after the war.

By February 1944, the Reconstruction and Re-Establishment Committee turned its attention to Canada’s Indian Residential School system which, for the most part, educated native students from remote reserves in dormitory-style schools...

Appearing before the committee to discuss Canada’s now-demonized residential schools was Robert Hoey, superintendent of Welfare and Training at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Summarizing the attitude in Ottawa, Hoey said most of his fellow bureaucrats “can dismiss the matter just in a sentence – that the residential schools are no good. But,” he added, “they use language considerably more forceful than that.”

Hoey explained that his own opinion was not quite so pointed; he was in favour of offering an education to as many “Indians” as possible, regardless of the venue. He did admit, however, that his department was closing residential schools at the rate of about one per year. “I think we are outgrowing our Indian residential schools,” Hoey noted. Asked how he would direct future budgets, he replied, “Establish day schools.”

Committee member and Saskatchewan MP Dorise Nielsen strongly agreed with this sentiment...

Such rubbishing of residential schools was neither new nor novel. In 1942, deputy superintendent-general of Indian Affairs Harold McGill wrote to his deputy minister explaining that, “I hold, and have long held the opinion that the educational requirements of the great majority of Indians could be met by day schools to the decided benefit of the Indians and the financial benefit of the taxpayer.” The deputy minister replied in the margins of McGill’s memo, “As soon as war regulations regarding building materials permit, the building of day schools and the closing of residential schools should be proceeded with.”

An official dislike for segregating native students in remote residential schools was again evident in the 1948 report of a joint House of Commons and Senate committee reviewing the Indian Act. The report’s central recommendation was that “wherever and whenever possible Indian children should be educated in association with other children.” (See page 188 of document.) Some committee member expressed interest in “having Indian children sent to municipal or provincial day schools” rather than continuing with the existing federal system at all. (See page 47.) Following these recommendations, Ottawa essentially froze enrolment in residential schools in anticipation of eventually shutting them down.

It was thus the express desire of Canada’s federal government to rid itself of residential schools as early as the 1940s – five decades before the last school finally closed its doors in 1996. So why didn’t the federal government close them all in 1948? Not only would such a move have saved Ottawa considerable money and effort, it would also have avoided later accusations that the operation of these schools constituted a “genocide”, as a unanimous House of Commons motion claimed in 2022. The answer: because the government was not prepared to abandon vulnerable Indigenous children.

As painful as it may be to admit today, the vast majority of native children attending residential schools during the post-war period suffered from social ills, family hardships and health concerns that were far more serious than those faced by most other children in Canada. In particular, the devastating inter-generational effects of alcoholism and parental dysfunction on reserves had turned residential schools into a de facto native child welfare system. Had the government shut these schools down in the 1940s, as it very much wanted to, those children would have been left at grave risk of injury or death. There was, quite simply, no other place for them to go.

And so, regardless of the well-documented problems of ill-health and abuse at some residential schools, keeping them open long past their due date was a decision made with the best interests of Indigenous children at heart. Considering this, claims of genocide are not just wrong, but outrageously wrong.

In the late 1800s the new country of Canada was faced with the perplexing problem of how to help an estimated 120,000 Indigenous people habituated to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle cope with the sudden demands of a modern society based on agriculture, resource extraction, permanent towns and expanding industries. The populist reform movement sweeping across North America seemed to offer a ready answer: public education. Publicly-provided, compulsory schooling was widely hailed as the solution to poverty and social disharmony throughout Canada...

Indigenous leaders were well aware of the over-arching importance of education; church-run residential schools had been operating in Canada as charitable missionary endeavours as early as the 1600s. When Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minster, began signing treaties with the inhabitants of what had been Rupert’s Land (now most of western Canada) in the 1870s, the issue of education was a key area of negotiation. All of the “numbered” treaties signed between the federal government and the various tribes required Ottawa to build and run schools “whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it,” as Treaty 6 states. Schools were thus a contractual obligation for the Government of Canada. For native parents, the schools were to be the means by which their children could enter a world they were struggling to comprehend...

In line with its treaty promises, the federal government began funding a church-run Indian Residential School system (as well as a day school system) shortly after Confederation so as to provide native children with basic language and other skills required to function in Canadian society. This was to be a voluntary acculturation process, at least during Macdonald’s time. As Indian Affairs’ annual report for 1898 stated, “The Department’s policy is as long as possible to refrain from compulsory measures and try the effect of moral suasion and an appeal to self-interest.”

Not until the 1920s did federal legislation extend compulsory education to native children, although this policy was rarely enforced. Most Indigenous children attended school for only a few years, with more than half of the attendees of both day and residential schools dropping out after Grade 1. Such schools were clearly not prison camps, as is often alleged...

The disastrous effects of alcohol on native communities shows itself very early in Canadian history...

Protecting native communities from alcoholism’s debilitating effects was also one of the driving forces behind creation of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1873. The Mounties were tasked with stemming the illicit trade in whiskey flowing across the border from the United States. Their efforts were gratefully recognized by Chief Isapo-Muxika at the signing of Treaty 7 in 1877. “If the [NWMP] police had not come to this country, where would we all be now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so fast that few of us would have been alive today. The Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter.”...

The modern impact of alcohol on native Canadians has been dealt with by several noted Indigenous writers, including Calvin Helin and Harold Johnson. In his powerful 2016 book Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing my People (and Yours), Johnson, a former Saskatchewan Crown prosecutor who died in 2022, makes the provocative claim that half the Indigenous people known to him locally died, either directly or indirectly, from alcohol abuse.

“I can’t stay silent any longer. I cannot with good conscience bury another relative,” Johnson writes in Firewater. “I cannot watch any longer as a constant stream of our relatives come into the justice system because of the horrible things they have done to each other while they were drunk. The suffering caused by alcohol, the kids with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), the violence, the poverty, the abandoned children, the mental wards and the emergency rooms, the injuries and the illnesses and the loss of hope and the suicides have all piled up within me to the point that I must speak.”

FASD deserves special attention in any discussion of residential schools. It was only formally identified as a medical condition in the 1970s, but its impact likely goes back centuries. It is caused when a woman consumes alcohol while pregnant, damaging the developing fetus within her. FASD can impair the victim’s health in numerous ways including physical abnormalities as well as problems with memory, cognition, communication and abstract reasoning. Children with FASD typically have serious difficulties in school, both academically and in interacting with others. Tragically, these problems inevitably follow them into adult life, revealed by high rates of violence (including spousal and sexual abuse), suicide and addiction.

FASD can repeat in an endless cycle as women with FASD are prone to drinking during pregnancy, resulting in another generation of FASD children. And while this pathology can occur within any race or culture, it is particularly virulent on Canadian reserves. Scientific studies suggest FASD occurs among Indigenous children on and off reserves at rates between 10 and 100 times greater than in the rest of Canada. Nearly two-thirds of Inuit women in Arctic Quebec, for example, drink during pregnancy, putting their children at great risk of FASD. A recent academic study identified five key demographics in which FASD is most prevalent worldwide; Canadian Indigenous children under the care of welfare agencies lie at the intersection of several of these categories.

Despite the enormous shadow cast by FASD and alcoholism in native communities, the issue is rarely discussed in official circles. The 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), for example, barely mentions the topic. And just two of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action (#33 and #34) make any reference to FASD – one of which demands the court system treat those with FASD in a more lenient fashion, a proposal that can lead to further trauma on reserves. FASD is the unmentioned demon that haunts the native experience throughout Canada.

As Ottawa sought to extricate itself from the residential school system in the post-war period, it was confronted by a great surge in the number of Indigenous schoolkids, fuelled by a native baby boom every bit as profound as the post-war baby boom in the rest of Canada. Between 1943 and 1954, the number of Indigenous students doubled from 16,000 to 32,500. And within this boom was a rapidly growing share of students described as “neglected children”, “orphans and part-orphans” or children from “broken and problem homes”. This was almost certainly the result of alcoholism and undiagnosed FASD on reserves. Whatever the terminology, government officials felt they couldn’t just leave these children at home with their parents. And the only place they could send them was residential schools.

In 1996 Trent University historian John S. Milloy produced a lengthy report on the history of Canada’s residential schools for the RCAP entitled Suffer the Little Children: The Aboriginal Residential School System 1830-1992 (later revised and republished as A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System 1879-1986). In his earlier RCAP report, Milloy examined why Ottawa failed to carry through with its stated intention to shut down the residential school system in the 1940s and concluded it was due to “the emergence of a new role for the schools, that of social welfare institutions.”...

During the aforementioned Reconstruction and Re-Establishment Committee hearings in 1944, superintendent Hoey candidly admitted that while his department was shutting down residential schools, they remained necessary for the care of “orphans and children from disrupted homes.” The same message can be found in the 1948 Indian Act joint committee recommendations, which said residential schools were required for children “who come from homes in which competent welfare workers decide that institutional care is needed.” What to do with child welfare cases on reserves was always a dilemma for federal officials, but in the post-war era it was growing much worse. And this created a major impediment to Ottawa’s planned exit from native education...

Typically, a child required an application form to attend a residential school. Where a child could otherwise reasonably attend a day school, the application had to be supported by an additional explanation for why residential school was necessary, chosen from one of six categories. Category 3 covered cases of “serious neglect.” By 1954, Milloy reported, Category 3 welfare cases were given “first priority in admission.” Milloy says he found “many thousands” of such applications...

In all cases, a residential school placement appeared to be the only recourse available to protect or help the child in question.

A federal census taken in 1953 found that 43 percent of the 10,112 Indigenous children in residential schools nationwide were listed as neglected or living in homes that were unfit because of parental indifference or over-crowding...

As the supply of such cases increased, Canada’s Indian Residential Schools were forced to transform themselves from mainly educational institutions to “a sort of foster home which endeavour[s] to cater to the social and emotional needs of the child,” as a 1966 departmental report cited by Milloy puts it. In that year, an astounding 75 percent of 9,778 residential students were welfare cases. At Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Residential School, federal regional director Francis B. McKinnon noted in 1967 that, “Practically all the children now in residence have been placed there mainly for reasons other than to facilitate school attendance.” A church official replied that his school had essentially become “a welfare institution.”

As time went on and Ottawa pushed its policy of opening day schools and closing residential schools, the share of difficult cases in the remaining residential schools went up even further. By 1975, children from “broken or immoral homes” constituted nearly the entire student population at three Saskatchewan residential schools: Gordon’s Residential School (83 percent), Muscowequan Residential School (64 percent) and Cowessess Residential School (80 percent)...

The near-complete takeover of these schools by high-needs children, many of them likely suffering from undiagnosed FASD or other health problems, would have made the experience for all students extremely difficult, especially the minority who were attending only because there was no day school near their home reserve. This may help explain why so many witnesses to the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission expressed such negative memories of their time at residential school which, in turn, led to accusations of genocide.

As the problems of forcing church-run residential schools to become child welfare institutions multiplied, Ottawa finally found a way out of its conundrum. In 1964 the Federal-Provincial Conference on Indian Affairs came to an agreement on “the terms under which Indian children may be accepted in provincial schools.” A separate series of federal-provincial agreements around the same time also transferred the care of native children in need to provincial child welfare agencies. But even with these agreements, the shutdown of residential schools still took decades. By the mid-1980s the transfer was largely complete, even if the last school – Gordon’s Indian Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan – remained open until 1996...

Given the circumstances on reserves, having white families foster vulnerable native children was considered by many child welfare experts to be the best available option. The Sixties Scoop was driven by the same intractable conditions that turned residential schools into welfare institutions several decades earlier: in the absence of any other viable alternatives, it was considered the only way to help desperate children in need. Today, this policy is widely referred to as an “abduction of First Nations children” and yet another stain on Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people. It has also been duly apologized for and generous compensation has been paid. Amid all this breast-beating, however, one might also spare a sympathetic thought for the thousands of loving parents whose act of compassion in adopting impoverished and distressed native children is now regarded as yet another form of genocide.

Following the transfer of native child welfare to the provinces in the 1960s, responsibility was further devolved to Indigenous agencies. This process culminated in 2019 with federal legislation intended to completely “Indigenize” native child welfare by allowing every First Nation in the country to create and deliver its own care standards. The new law also makes it nearly impossible to apprehend native children from dysfunctional homes, as such cases will now be subject to a “cultural continuity” test.

This law was challenged and judged partially unconstitutional by Quebec courts in 2022 as an overstep into provincial jurisdiction. Earlier this month, however, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled it to be wholly constitutional, with Indigenous leaders hailing the decision as an “historic moment” in “advancing reconciliation”. Can this latest change in jurisdiction really make a difference in improving the lives of vulnerable Indigenous children? It seems unlikely.

Despite the closure of the entire residential school system, several decades of devolution and the rapidly ascendant role of Indigenous-controlled child welfare agencies, the foundational problems have never gone away. In Manitoba, 91 percent of children under the care of a family services agency are Indigenous. Nationwide, according to the 2021 Census, native children under 14 account for 53.8 percent of children in care, despite representing less than 8 percent of children that age in Canada. Meanwhile, Indigenous youth continue to struggle with alcohol and drug use, unemployment, low educational attainment and mental health problems at rates substantially above the rest of the country. The most obvious conclusion regarding the intractable persistence of these social issues is that jurisdiction is irrelevant. The residential school system was never the cause, but one of many attempted solutions.

Should Canada’s residential school system be characterized as a genocide? It has lately become impossible to discuss the history of residential schools without confronting this damning allegation. The 2022 House of Commons motion claims the answer is self-evident. So too the 2019 report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (Although the latter came with a “cultural genocide” qualifier.) More recently, some proponents have even demanded any opinions to the contrary be criminalized.

A careful review of the facts belies these hysterical allegations. While conditions in some schools were less than ideal – perhaps even abusive – due to budget shortfalls and poor staffing, the schools existed to fill a necessary and irreplaceable role. In the beginning, this role was to provide Indigenous children with the language skills and other Western knowledge essential for their successful participation in Canadian society. As time went on, however, the schools transformed to fill an even more vital role. They became a de facto child welfare system for vulnerable children from dysfunctional homes brought on by centuries of alcohol abuse within Indigenous communities.

By the 1940s, federal bureaucrats knew there were better options for educating native students, but as much as they would have preferred to shut down residential schools, they couldn’t. Doing so would have abandoned the many individual welfare cases these schools protected. Without acknowledging this difficult truth, it is impossible to comprehend the full story of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.

To conclusively answer the question of whether the residential school system was a genocide, consider again the final Category 3 application form from the Mohawk Institute residential school listed above. “Since her father has remarried, the girl has been boarded out among relatives. The child is of a nervous disposition and has developed and (sic) impediment in her speech. It is considered the child will receive proper care and attention to overcome this condition at the School.”

What sort of genocide frets about a young girl’s speech impediment?"

 

Links - 17th October 2024 (1 - Palestine/Middle East Peace)

Ta-Nehisi Coates' vision of an Israel without Jews - "One sentence is all it takes to understand writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ views on Israel. “On the last day of my trip to Palestine, I visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center,” Coates writes as the lead to the final section of his new book, “The Message.” Israel, Coates apparently believes, does not exist — and probably has no right to exist. How else to explain his situating a memorial to the destruction of European Jewry in some mythical place called “Palestine” — a country that has never existed, rather than in the very real state of Israel and its equally real capital, Jerusalem... In one notorious passage, heavy with manipulative guilt-making, Coates speaks of a visit to Paris’s Luxembourg Gardens — which he brands a “public garden.” Marveling in their splendor, Coates laments that he — supposedly victimized by American disenfranchisement — had “never sat in a public garden before, had not even known it to be something that I’d want to do. And all around me there were people who did this regularly.” Huh? We have “public gardens” in every city in America, brother Coates — have you never been to Central Park? With his new book, Coates has found limitless source material in the doom that has become the Palestinians. By his own admission, Coates had never been to Israel or Palestine before his 10-day journey last year that undergirds “The Message.” (Imagine a white writer parachuting into some African conflict to report on its past and present in the same manner; you can’t — because it would never happen). His unfamiliarity with the region would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous — both to the Israelis imperiled by Hamas and Hezbollah along with the Gazans and Lebanese held hostage by their Islamist overlords. And yet, like so many today and before him, Coates blames the Jews... Juiced up on arrogance and entitlement, Coates sets up a place, Palestine, and a people — the Palestinians — of whom he claims admiration, commonality and license to give voice solely because he’s black. Because they are both “conquered people.”... Backed by his trauma-tourism jaunt through the Holy Land, Coates is suddenly equipped to deliver the final word on a century of Zionist egregiousness. Amateurish and self-indulgent, “The Message” is the ultimate exercise in intersectional chutzpah coming from the wrong writer on the wrong topic at very much the wrong time... There are no winners in “The Message” beyond Coates’ own ego. Jews, for instance, are essentially erased, save for the Zionist pioneers he reduces to white supremacists — along with the wincey Kapos who accompany Coates through Jerusalem as they echo-chamber his foundational anti-Zionism. Despite his imprimatur of moral purity, Palestinians hardly fare better. Coates may believe his prose speaks for a people “erased from the argument and purged from the narrative,” but his fetishistic reverence for Palestine and Palestinians lacks any of the necessary nuance upon which nations (such as Israel) are actually founded. In Coates’ hands, everything Palestine-related — their food, their architecture, their stories of exile and rebirth – is worthy simply because it’s Palestinian, even though the exact same parallels can be found among Israeli Jews. “The group spoke about politics in a manner of communal intimacy — the way my people speak when no white people are around,” writes Coates of a Palestinian-American community he visits near Chicago upon his return from the Middle East. Take it from me, Ta-Nehisi — someone who’s both black and Jewish — we Jews speak exactly the same way when we’re among our own. Such silly setups — Coates’ cringy Pale-fabulism — confirm the hollowness of the DEI culture that gave voice to folks like Coates in the first place. Whether in Palestine or Philly, Coates’ veracity — like those of the Palestinians he obsesses over — rests in his color and identity, not in truth or facts. How else could a book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict come to market with no serious consideration of Hamas or intifada or the Oslo Accords — only “ethnic cleansing” and Gaza “reservations” and lots and lots of “whiteness.” Coates’ reliance upon the “Jews are White” trope is perhaps the most damning confirmation of his disdain for Jews and Judaism. As my own blackness attests, Jews — including a plurality of Israelis — aren’t exactly “white.” Indeed, the only motivation behind Coates’ “Jews are white” charade is to edify the claims of “genocide” and “zionist-colonialism” now parading through city squares and college campuses intended to legitimize Hamas barbarism and justify Jewish death. And this, ultimately, is the real message of “The Message.”... Horrified by the hotel guard who’d dared ask if he was a hotel guest, Coates declares, “I could only ask myself, what the f–k am I doing here” in Israel? A better question would have been, “What the f–k is Ta-Nehisi Coates doing writing a book like ‘The Message’?” "
Coates needs some education from French anti-racists about how terrible France is

Exclusive | CBS Interview on Israel Triggers Fight at Network; Shari Redstone Weighs In - WSJ - "A CBS morning-show interview about Israel with author Ta-Nehisi Coates has triggered turmoil inside the network, with executives saying it failed to meet their standards and some staffers saying management came down hard on an anchor who was doing his job.  In the interview, which aired on Sept. 30, anchor Tony Dokoupil opened by stating that the content in Coates’s new book “The Message,” which is critical of Israel, “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”"
You're not allowed to challenge left wing anti-Semitism. You're only allowed to ask difficult questions of Trump, Vance etc

Thread by @OrenKessler on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Just a book on a display table at Barnes & Noble, published by Stanford, with this on the back cover:  “Neither a democratic political party nor a terrorist group, Hamas is a multifaceted liberation organization, one rooted in the nationalist claims of the Palestinian people.” Just a book on a display table at Barnes & Noble, published by Stanford, with this on the back cover:  “Neither a democratic political party nor a terrorist group, Hamas is a multifaceted liberation organization, one rooted in the nationalist claims of the Palestinian people.”"

Thread by @OrenKessler on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I’ve read the NY Review of Books for many years, but this is journalistic malpractice:  “Seventy-six years ago, Zionist militias drove more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.”  1948 was vastly more complex than this nonsense sentence.
The word “tendentious” doesn’t quite cut it:  “Between 1947 and 1949 armed Zionist militias roamed through Palestine, ethnically cleansing the inhabitants of more than five hundred villages, massacring many, and forcing out an estimated 750,000”
From this week’s issue:  “In 1948 Aziz became one of over 750,000 Palestinians expelled from their homeland by Zionist militias”
Naturally, this propaganda is published in the October 4, 2024 issue in order to coincide perfectly with the year anniversary of the October 7th attacks. All of these come from Tareq Baconi, author of “Hamas Contained”
There are many things in history that I wish were true, but just because something feels satisfying to write doesn’t make it so. Twitter isn’t really the place to relitigate 1948, but there are many, many good books on it (“libraries worth of books,” as I wrote in “Palestine 1936”). Morris’s seminal Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Revisited) is a good place to start. Were there expulsions during the war? Few serious historians deny that. It depended mostly on when and where, and the military situation in a given time and place. But despite Baqoni’s fantasies of Einsatzgruppen with Star of David armbands, it’s well-documented that Palestinians fled many, many villages, towns and cities without seeing a single member of “Zionist militias,” as he puts it. That tends to happen in wars. Civilians flee. Again, Twitter isn’t the place to relitigate this. There are these things called books. I wrote one, and it also covers 1948.  But this – this isn’t history. It’s an elite American publication publishing a deliberately timed defense of the indefensible...
For those actually interested in 1948, see eg the list in Morris ,2004:  A: Abandonment on Arab orders C: Influence of nearby town ‘s fall E: Expulsion by Jewish forces F: Fear of being caught in fighting M: Military assault W: Whispering campaign amazon.com/Palestinian-Re…
A quick glance at the list will show you that this history, like much history, is (brace yourselves) complex.  What you don’t see is the letter “E” for Expulsion all down the line, as Baconi tries to dupe readers into believing, with the avid encouragement of the NYRB."

Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: "This was, depending on your definitions, either the 6th or the 9th rejection of a fairly good peace deal by the Arab side.  Why do they keep doing this? Because they want a ONE state solution - the Palestinians in the state of Israel, and the Jews in the State of Grace."
Uri Kurlianchik @VerminusM: "In 2008, Israel offered the PA 100% of Gaza, 94% of the West Bank + compensation, half of Jerusalem, and a right of return for 1000 Arabs per year. The Americans called it amazing. The Palestinians rejected it "out of hand." After such an offer is rejected, what else is left?"
"PROJECTION OF ISRAELI PROPOSAL FOR TERRITORY"

The Curious Rise of 'Settler Colonialism' and 'Turtle Island' - The Atlantic - "Settler colonialism—academic jargon for the violent process by which colonial empires empower settlers to push out and oppress Indigenous inhabitants and form a dominant new society—is a term much in vogue among activists and academics on the left. To talk of settler states and oppressed Indigenous people, and claim an umbilical connection between Palestinian struggles and those of Native Americans, is to construct a morality tale stripped of subtleties—a matter not of politics, but of sin. Israel, in this view, is not a flawed and contentious democracy engaged in a war with an enemy that vows to destroy it. It is a settler-colonialist state built upon the oppression and exploitation of Indigenous Palestinians. A left-wing kibbutznik who lives a few miles from Gaza and drives sick Palestinians to Israeli hospitals is no less a colonialist than a right-wing theocratic settler who brandishes an automatic rifle and insists on the annexation of stolen lands on the West Bank... Settlers, the theory goes, are mere pawns of imperial patrons, and impermanence is implied. Settlers can be uprooted, sojourns violently terminated. What matters is that Indigenous people reclaim their rightful inheritance.  The Australian historian and anthropologist Patrick Wolfe, who died in 2016, is widely seen as one of the intellectual founders of settler-colonialism theory. This form of colonialism, he wrote, is premised on “the elimination of the native” through genocide and coercive policies that turn survivors into “white people.” This process, Wolfe explained in a 2012 interview at Stanford University, is a “‘winner take all,’ zero-sum game whereby outsiders come to a country and seek to take it away from the people who already live there, remove them, replace them.” Any reasonable measure of European colonial empires and the westward trail of American settlers can locate exploitation, racism, and bloody conquest. Wolfe’s theories resonate deeply in left-wing corners of academia. Prominent American universities from UCLA to Yale offer courses in settler colonialism; British universities have research centers devoted to it; papers in journals debate its finer points and expand the discussion to include the subjugation of native people as a laboring class. Many divine in settler-colonialism theory a global explanatory power, applying it not only to the U.S. and Wolfe’s native Australia—where Europeans dominated and marginalized the Aboriginal population—but to Indonesians in West Papua, Indians in Kashmir, and Moroccans in Western Sahara... The notion that Indigenous violence is inevitable, even liberatory, has gained chilling traction on the American left. “One could (and should) very well argue that in a settler colonial context, there are not such things as civilians,” the Palestine-issues committee of the Democratic Socialists of America wrote in June on X (formerly Twitter). “It’s total folly to compare settlers perpetrating pogroms to resistance groups deploying violence to liberate themselves.”  More assumptions flow from this conceptual fountainhead... Just by way of concentrating the mind, let’s remember the specific nature of the violent resistance practiced by Hamas, whose fighters began the morning of October 7 by breaking a cease-fire with Israel and ended by killing children, raping women, and slaughtering parents in front of their children. Decolonization turns out not to be metaphorical. I put the question of settler colonialism to Roger Berkowitz, the academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. He said he is taken aback both by the speed with which the ideological construct of settler colonialism has entered the global discourse and by how intently people who espouse the theory focus on Israel... In invocations of settler colonialism, Berkowitz hears progressives giving up on effecting change through political means. “The left has replaced its faith in proletarian subjects and utopian solutions with a view of the Indigenous as innocent and oppressed. It’s an ethics rather than a politics.” In the late 1960s and early ’70s, prominent radical American Indian activists saw in Israel a symbol of an Indigenous people regaining their land and reviving their language. Since then, however, many Native American activists came to strongly embrace the Palestinian cause alongside anticolonial struggles in Algeria, Ireland, and South Africa. If their “Indigenous cousins” can liberate Palestine, the underlying logic suggests, so Indigenous Americans might set free Turtle Island tomorrow.  “We want U.S. out of everywhere. We want U.S. out of Palestine. We want U.S. out of Turtle Island,” the University of Minnesota professor Melanie Yazzie, who is Navajo, said at “From Minnesota to Palestine,” a panel in December sponsored by Red Nation, whose politics run sharply left. “The goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States.” To talk of dismantling an American settler state of 330 million people is to take a rhetorical flight of fancy. It is less a program than a millenarian dream––a “prophecy,” as Nick Estes, a University of Minnesota historian who is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and a co-founder of Red Nation, has written. Unlike Hamas leaders who explicitly and repeatedly call for Israel’s violent elimination, Native activists and academics say they have in mind not a bloody Indigenous uprising but a socialist revolution against liberalism and capitalism, to demolish national borders and police forces, and upend a racist system that, in Estes’s words, seeks “to kill us off, confine us to sub-marginal plots of land, breed us white.” This might occur in concert with sympathetic descendants of settlers... Morality tales offer poor stand-ins for politics, and discourage an honest engagement with history, which is often messy and fractured. The question of who is Indigenous in Israel and Palestine involves layers of complication. One of the holiest sites in Islam, the venerable al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, was built in the seventh and eighth century and sits atop the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. The first temple was completed there in the 10th century B.C.E. and predates the foundation of Islam by 1,500 years... Today the Mizrahi Jews, as the Indigenous Jewish residents of the Middle East are known, comprise slightly more than half of Israel’s population."

Thread by @JewishSpaceLazr on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "9/11 was my 2nd week as exec dir of @RutgersHillel, at @RutgersU, the State U of NJ. The next day flyers went up all over campus inviting people to a special meeting of the Muslim Students Assoc on 9/13. Of course I went. Here is what I saw and heard. It haunts me to this day. 🧵 I thought half the campus would be there. Who wouldn't want to hear what the MSA had to say 2 days after Al-Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans? We could smell the smoke from Ground Zero on campus. But I was the only visibly non-Muslim person in a crowd of 200+. Wearing my kipah. ✡️ The first 45 minutes a prof spoke on the atrocities of the recent Algerian civil war. At first I didn't understand why. But he was making a point to the doubting Muslim students. SEE? It is possible for Muslims to do violent terrible things. It's possible Muslims had done this. The fact that he had to drive that point home over and over was a wake up call for me that his audience had a very different understanding of themselves and the world than I did. To say the least. The next speaker was the imam from a nearby mosque. He spoke ad nauseum, quoting the Quran in Arabic, citing Hadiths, employing the kind of excessively poetic language that is foreign to the Western ear. Between all that and his accent, I confess I couldn't understand a thing. Then came Q&A, where the rubber hit the road. The very first question was from a foreign student who said simply "How do we explain to people that the Israelis did this?"  It felt like all eyes turned to me, standing in the middle of the crowd with my Jewishness on my head. I just stared straight ahead at the imam, waiting for his answer. How would he respond? Would he explain, as the prof did, that yes, Muslims could have done this? Would he condemn or support Al-Qaeda? His answer shocked me then, but in retrospect explains the next 2 decades. After a very long, thoughtful pause he replied "It is too soon to explain the political dimension." And with that, 200+ heads nodded up and down in approval and understanding. Yes, Israel had done this! This had nothing to do with Muslims. It was the Jews!! My head was spinning. I stayed until the end, listened to other questions, but tbh I heard none of them, remember nothing else. I am now used to the world's infinite capacity to deny reality by blaming Israel, but it was new then. For the next 20+ years on campus anti-Israel antisemitism was the #1 issue I dealt with on campus, as Palestinian Solidarity and then SJP rose to prominence, while faculty and administrators denied Jewish concerns and the world became...what it is today. But NONE of this is new. All of it was present in that one meeting after 9/11."

Matthew Nouriel on X - ""Zionism has created a reality in which Jews have forgotten they are dhimmis." - Mufti of Gaza, Haj Muhammad Said al-Husseini, 1948 It was never about land."

Meme - Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby: "Breaking: The University of Pennsylvania has changed its bookstore’s “history” section to exclusively propaganda books demonizing Israel.  It is no wonder the university breeds a student body that is radicalized, considering these are the books they push on them."

Conner Habib on X - "Susan Sontag, a few days after 9/11/01. She didn’t flinch. She was widely reviled for this and stood, resilient, anyway."
wanye on X - "This is yet another demonstration of the truism that all debates about tactics are really a debate about something else. Progressives are of course fine with civilian casualties. In fact they’re fine with the deliberate targeting of civilians as a primary objective. In fact, they think that Americans civilians actually *have it coming* and *deserve what they get*. Whenever you hear these people complaining about collateral damage in Palestine, in other words, you should understand that they are perfectly comfortable with the direct targeting of civilians, given that they support the cause in question.  So just understand that the debate is about which side you’re on, not ever about civilian casualties.  Debates about tactics are always a debate about something else."
Another example of "this is actually a perfect distillation of how lefties argue:
1. find two things that are different in nearly every possible way
2. find one superficial similarity between them (this proves they are actually identical)
3. "why are you against one but not the other 😏"

David Collier on X - "Remind me again why the Arabs did not declare a Palestinian state between 1949-1967? After all there was no 'occupation'. The Arabs held Gaza, Judea/Samaria + the holy places in Jerusalem. Yet no Palestinian state! Why? Because their real goal is all about destroying Israel!"

Thread by @ShaiDavidai on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The Infiltration of Terror Supporting and anti-American Ideology into North American Universities: A case study...
On September 26, 2001, (just fifteen days after 9/11), @SamiAlArian (a professor at @USouthFlorida) was a guest on the @BillOReilly show.  Prof. Al-Arian was asked about a statements he had made, saying that "Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem."  He could have taken his statement back. He could have denied having made it. Instead, he doubled down.  When asked about his call for the annihilation of Israel, Prof. Al-Arian's answer was, and I quote, "let me just put it into context." It doesn't end there.  Five years later, Prof. Sami Al-Arian pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to contribute services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Stop scrolling and think about that for a second:  A Professor at a major American University was arrested, pleaded guilty, and was deported for raising funds for the Islamic Jihad. In prison, Prof. Sami Al-Arian used the same tactic that the imprisoned terrorists use in Israel.  He went on a hunger strike.  Guess who came to the defense of the person who just pleaded guilty to a terrorist conspiracy?  @amnesty International.
As part of his plea deal, Prof. Sami-Al Arian was deported to Turkey, where he could presumably be more effective working with the Islamic Jihad. In Turkey, Sami Al-Arian founded The Center for Islam and Global Affairs (@cigaistanbul).  Here's an event in which they hosted Professor @JonathanACBrown from @Georgetown to talk about his book about Islam and Blackness.  (Remember this guy. He comes back later in the story)
Being a true gentleman, @SamiAlArian left his wife Nahla behind, so she could keep up the spirit of supporting terrorism in the U.S.  Here she is, last spring, in the illegal encampment at @Columbia University.  Columbia did not even issue a condemnation of her visit.   (as a side - Here's how @AP reported on her visit: They described Nahla as a "retired school teacher" and @SamiAlArian as someone "who had been prosecuted [...] on charges that he had given banned support [...] to a sanctioned Palestinian group",  They just omitted the fact that he had pleaded guilty and that the "sanctioned group" was a designated terrorist organization. ) Of course, @SamiAlArian also left his daughter @LailaAlarian behind.  Guess what she does for a living?  You guessed it: She's a journalist at no other than Qatari-funded @AlJazeera.  Guess where @LailaAlarian went to school?  You guessed it again: @Columbia School of Journalism (@columbiajourn). But here's the really crazy part:  @LailaAlarian is married to @JonathanACBrown, a Professor of Islamic Civilization at @Georgetown School of Foreign Service (@georgetownsfs)  Remember him? That's the guy giving talks for the center run by a convicted supporter of terrorism.
So what does the son-in-law of a convicted supporter or terrorism teach and research at @GeorgetownSFS, a school that trains the future leaders of American and international politics? In 2017, @JonathanACBrown gave a lecture at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (@IIITfriends) about Islam and slavery in which he stated that he doesn't think that “ it’s morally evil to own somebody".  He also justified rape as something that has been historically acceptable.  His response was, just like his terrorist supporting father-in-law's response, you need to look at the context. The obedient son-in-law that he is, @JonathanACBrown routinely shows his support for Hamas, the PFLP, and the Palestinian Islamic on his social media.  Here he is, denying the massacre of October 7 *while it was ongoing*. Again, stop scrolling and let that sink in for a moment:  The son-in-law of a convicted supporter of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad teaches at @Georgetown and openly supports the same terrorist organization.  In what world is that a morally acceptable thing?
So, what did we have here?
- A professor at @USouthFlorida who called for the annihaliation of Israel and who pleaded guilty to charges of terrorist conspiracy.
- A wife who openly supports @Columbia students who protest in favor of her husband's favorite terrorist organization.
- A @Columbia trained daughter who writes for the Qatari-funded @AlJazeera
- A @Georgetown professor son-in-law who openly supports terrorism, derides its victims, and finds ways to justify slavery and rape.  
This is just a case study.  There are hundreds of other professors like these all across the U.S.  Professors like Rashid Khalidi at @Columbia who is still battling accusations of being a spokesperson for the PLO, a Palestinian terrorist organizations from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Something needs to be done.
(side note: please share this with Jewish students and alumni of @Georgetown. They might want to know who their tuition and donation money is currently funding)"

Meme - Visegrad 24 @visegrad24: "This is what "globalise the intifada" looks like. *911 Twin Towers on fire*"

Dr. Eli David on X - "“We must declare that Palestine is an Islamic land, and that Spain 🇪🇸 – Andalusia – is also the land of islam. Islamic armies must also conquer Rome 🇮🇹. The decline of the West will give rise to islam from its ashes.” Their intentions cannot be clearer."

Meme - Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇨🇾🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou: "The “1,455,590” death toll figure comes from a Brown University study which counts every single conflict related death in the Middle East since 2001 as a death caused by America. ISIS carrying out genocide against Yazidis? America. Assad gassing neighbourhoods? America"
Jezebel Peliqueen.bsky.social @linbregar: "R.I.P. to the 2,996 Americans who died on 9/11. And R.I.P. to the 1,455,590 Innocent Muslims who died during the US invasion for something they didn't do."

Queers for Palestine? Group offers $1 million for LGBTQ advocacy org to hosts Pride parade in Gaza, West Bank - "A watchdog group that aims to expose hypocrisy announced Monday that it would donate $1 million to "Queers for Palestine" or any U.S. LGBTQ advocacy organization to host a gay pride parade in Gaza or the West Bank. Anti-Israel groups such as "Queers for Palestine" have surfaced across America since the Hamas terror group attacked Israel on October 7, but homosexuality remains deeply taboo in the Palestinian territories. Gay and transgender people in Gaza and the West Bank face a significant level of persecution and are often subjected to horrific acts. New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) President Gregory T. Angelo, who is gay and the former president of Log Cabin Republicans, said the campaign is a "wake-up call" to anyone who identifies as part of the "Queers for Palestine" or "Gays for Gaza" movements... "On the left in the United States, all oppression is the same oppression. And I think the left, quite to their disservice, lumps everything from racial discrimination to sexual orientation discrimination to gender discrimination to Islamophobia, all under the same umbrella. That’s certainly not the case," Angelo said. Angelo said that many anti-Israel protesters across the United States insist LGBTQ people aren’t treated particularly well in the United States when confronted with facts about how they would be treated in Gaza or the West Bank. "Well, that could not be further from the truth. Here in the United States, we have protection from job discrimination for gay and trans individuals that came through a Supreme Court ruling. We have same-sex marriage is the law of the land in all 50 states, and just more generally, aside from legislation, we have a country that welcomes people of all faiths and family types," Angelo said. "Contrast that with what you see over in the Palestinian territories where same-sex marriage isn't something that's even a possibility or discussed," he said. "There are no protections in terms of employment for sexual orientation or gender." Palestinian Authority police in 2019 barred gay and transgender rights group from holding events in the West Bank and threatened to arrest participants. Meanwhile, Israel frequently promotes its tolerance on issues of sexual orientation and Tel Aviv is proud of its reputation as a top destination for gay and lesbian travelers. Angelo said he was stunned in 2013 when he visited the West Bank during an immersion trip to Israel. "I got to see with my own eyes the disparity in, not just gay rights, but really human rights that are evident when you cross over between Israel and into the Palestinian territories," Angelo said. New Tolerance Campaign bills itself as a "watchdog organization mobilizing Americans to confront intolerance double-standards by establishment institutions, civil rights groups, universities, and socially-conscious brands," according to its website. "NTC action campaigns empower ordinary Americans to hold accountable self-proclaimed arbiters of tolerance when they betray their own stated values," the site says."

Uri Kurlianchik on X - ""Jews have no business living in the Middle East!" cries the Pakistani living in London."
Am HaNetzach on X - "Arabs in New York love screaming at us to go back to Poland."

Meme - Kid to mother in devastated landscape: "But mom you were so happy when we attacked Israel"

Richard Goldberg on X - "Qatar becomes second Muslim nation whose citizens can travel to the US without a visa Are you kidding me? You can host Hamas and the Taliban and come to the US without a visa???"