Self Defense Should Not Be So Offensive

When I firebomb your house, killing you, your spouse, your three children and 7 grandchildren, is it possible the court would find me not guilty based upon a self defense argument because you killed my child a month ago? Very likely not.

What exactly is self defense? And what isn’t?

It would surely be my right to defend myself and my child during the period of time that you were actively attacking them, or even when the attack was imminent. But, after the attack was over and you no longer posed an imminent or active threat, my legal right to harm you would not exist.

“The mainstream view in international law is that the only legitimate aim of self-defense is halting and repelling an ongoing armed attack, or perhaps preventing an imminent armed attack. Typically, the total destruction of the enemy would not be necessary to achieve that goal,” Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University in the United States, told CNN, according to Egypt Independent.

Despite the repeated narrative, driven by the President and VP of the US, other US government officials from the State Department and Department of Defense, and the western media, among others, that Israel has the right to self defense and the “duty” to defend the people of Israel in relation to the Hamas attack on October 7, that right, if it indeed existed at all, ended a long time ago.

Based upon a reasonable understanding of the right to self defense, Israel’s “right to defend itself” ended when the Hamas attack ended.

Israel already defended itself, during the attack that began on October 7. And did so quite poorly. Catastrophically poorly, in fact.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) failed to protect the people of Israel. And not only did it fail in its mission to “defend” Israeli citizens, but it actively attacked them as it attacked perceived Hamas gunmen. Israel killed an unknown number of kibbutz members, festival goers, Israeli residents, hostages, and potential hostages, all counted among the 695 Israeli citizens killed on October 7.

Almost nothing the IDF has done since 10/7 has been defensive, and all of it has been offensive. In every sense of that word.

Bombing and destroying buildings and killing their occupants when there is no attack being launched from said buildings, depriving hundreds of thousands of safe shelter, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Creating the conditions of starvation by blockading a nation, stopping sufficient food from entering, bombing bakeries, denying power and fuel for cooking, destroying agricultural land, preventing farmers from harvesting their crops, disrupting the work of aid groups and killing relief agency workers is not self defense. It is offensive.

Attacking medical systems and hospitals, killing doctors and hospital staff, sniping nurses and patients, bombing ambulances, killing and burying people sheltering on hospital property, denying power and fuel for hospital operation, blockading medical supplies, rounding up and interrogating hospital staff is not self defense. It is offensive.

Denying an entire population clean water by cutting off water supplies that you control, cutting off electricity and fuel to prevent water pumps from working, bombing desalinization plants, destroying water and sewage treatment facilities and water distribution and sewage systems is not self defense. It is offensive.

Parading stripped men and boys through the streets, blindfolding them, binding them, interrogating them, torturing them, forcing them to act out false surrender scenarios for the camera, and in some reported cases, summary execution of individuals, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Firing over 100,000 tank shells, in addition to tens of thousands of tons of bombs and missiles, into an area the size of Philadelphia, bombing and explosive demolition of historic sites, of mosques, of universities, bulldozing of monuments, and destruction of cemeteries is not self defense. It is offensive.

Displacing 1.9 million people, many of them multiple times, telling them to move to safe places, then bombing those safe places, then telling them to move to other safe places and bombing those safe places, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Killing 8000 children and counting, including premature babies in incubators, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Bombing schools that have turned in to refuges for the displaced, killing teachers and UN employees, assassinating professors and other academics, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Cutting off the electricity for an entire population, preventing fuel for power plants, bombing power infrastructure, destroying internet and cellular infrastructure, is not self defense. It is offensive.

Targeting reporters with bombs, missiles and gunfire, bombing their homes and killing them and their families, and destroying dozens of media offices, no matter how many times the western media calls it “self defense,” is not self defense. It is offensive.

Even “destroying Hamas” cannot be considered self defense. You can’t defend yourself against a possible, or even likely future threat. You can only defend yourself against an active or an imminent attack.

In addition to all of this there is the issue of Israel being the occupying force that controls Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Under international law, an occupying power has the responsibility to provide for the safety and protection of the people under occupation. When the occupying force is also the aggressor in a genocidal campaign against the occupied, it is the world’s responsibility and legal duty to step in. The US is actively preventing this as it fully backs the genocide taking place.

Genocide is not self defense. Bombing people not actively engaged in an attack against you is not self defense. Starving a population is not self defense. Murdering children is not self defense.

It is offensive.

How to Commit Genocide (2023)

An important part of carrying out genocide is quieting the voices of those opposing the genocide.

This is done by the social and cultural institutions of the nation in addition to its government. The media, education system, legal system, and economic system all play a role.

And it starts before the genocide begins. Humans are not naturally prone to genocide, it takes a little conniving and convincing (too often, too little) before we become passive bystanders or active supporters in genocide. The conditions are set in place well before the genocide begins, and othering and dehumanization are the key. It is what Utah Phillips calls controlling the blame pattern, “the public schools build in automatic responses. Levers and Buttons. …Then the government reaches out through its media, in every home, and pushes those buttons and pulls those levers and elicits massive response for or against anything it chooses.” Once those mechanisms are in place, the power of the government to commit genocide or other egregious acts is greatly enhanced.

Active genocide often begins with an event in which one group is actually or theoretically harmed by the actions of another group. At that point the harmed group may have reached a breaking point, or may find it a crisis of convenience to move forward with plans that it has been developing for decades. Settler colonial genocides typically are aligned with the second path. Oppressed people will rebel, which is their right and settler colonial projects will use these rebellions in every manner possible to further dispossess and to commit genocide.

Before the genocide, or before the latest round of ongoing genocide, the nation or group enacting the genocide will dehumanize the victim. An event of rebellion is invariably an opportunity to increase the dehumanization. The event will be exaggerated to the point that it will become unacceptable to believe that the rebelling people have any humanity. This will be claimed directly by the government with the willing alignment of corporate media (they have never aligned otherwise).

Media will feature government spokespersons pushing forward the government stories and lies, and some “ordinary people” that agree with them. Anyone simply trying to put the acts of rebellion in context will be slammed by the government and the media as repugnant and disgraceful. Anyone with any power that opposes the genocide will be maligned and discredited.

If anyone opposing the government version of the truth is heard from in the commercial media at all they will be forced to agree with the primary narrative or will be publicly ridiculed and dismissed. The price of entry into media spaces that will primarily oppose your perspective in relation to the genocide in Gaza is the condemnation of Hamas. Often you will not be allowed to share any other point of view until you have convincingly agreed that Hamas is evil and unredeemable.

College students will be reprimanded, expelled, and recognized student groups disbanded for opposing the genocide as we have already seen at Columbia, Brandeis, Harvard, and in Florida. Media will denounce campus activism against genocide and support the punishment of activists. People will be fired from their jobs for supporting Palestine or opposing genocide, and offers of jobs will be revoked. New laws against freedom will be enacted and individuals will be arrested for reading and sharing information. Private organizations, and Lobbies that exist to support the settler colonialists will focus significant attention on the oppression of the denunciation of genocide.

Many of the actions taken to oppose the genocide will be demonized. Rallies will be called “hate marches” and participants “pro-Palestinian mobs” by pundits and government officials. The very language used to support freedom for Palestinian Arabs will be condemned as a call for genocide of the Jewish people. All as part of the ultimate goal to paint the opposition as hateful and aligned with the rebels that you have painted as savages.

Another intertwined element of committing genocide is incessantly repeating certain beliefs to attempt to make them undeniable.

Promoting falsehoods and biased perspectives reinforces the atmosphere that promotes genocide and denigrates the opposition to genocide. Details related to the Hamas attack of October 7 are still coming to light and the initial disinformation is slowly becoming unsustainable. Those original stories of atrocities have already done their job. They have already whipped up the hatred of all Gazans and of Palestinian Arabs to extreme levels within Israel and have promoted Islamophobia in the US and other nations.

No matter that it is now becoming clear that not only were there no mass beheadings of babies but no babies were beheaded, and only 1 baby has been identified as being killed during the Oct 7 attack according to data published by Haaretz. That baby was named Mila Cohen. According to reporting by Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), Mila was killed when Hamas gunmen fired through the door of the family’s safe room while the family was hiding inside. Despite this the baby murder myth persists. The data published by Haaretz lists 29 children between age 4 and 17 killed on Oct 7 out of 1152 identified individuals.

After claiming the death toll of Israelis on October 7 to be 1405 for some time (a figure many news outlets erroneously labeled 1400 civilians despite the clear evidence of there being hundreds of military and police casualties in that number), Israel has lowered the number of killed to “roughly 1200 people,” according to Haaretz. There is evidence that reveals that some of the civilian deaths that occurred on October 7, and possibly some of the military deaths, were at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces as they tried to defeat the Hamas gunmen. Members of the IDF admitted to media that both from the air and the ground, buildings, vehicles and individuals were targeted without knowing clearly who they were. A helicopter pilot was quoted by Mako (translated from Hebrew), “And I choose such targets that I tell myself that the chances of me shooting at abductees here are low." But it's not one hundred percent. "To tell you one hundred percent, it's not.“ The report by JNS that describes the killing of Mila Cohen also describes her mother Sandra’s death, “In the ensuing shootout (between IDF and Hamas gunmen) Sandra Cohen was hit four times in the lung and once each in the arm and leg, but called on her two kids to escape together to a neighboring house.”

In addition to inflating the crimes of Hamas in order to increase support for the Israeli assault on Gaza, additional falsehoods must be spread through rabid repetition. One of these is that Israel has a right, and a duty, to self defense. When a spokesperson for the US state department was asked if the US recognized that the Geneva Conventions apply to the Palestinian Territories, his only response was “we believe wholeheartedly that Israel has every right to defend itself…”

The reality is, that due to Israel’s crime of occupying the Palestinian Territories, it does not have the legal right to self defense related to this attack, and even if it did retain that right under these circumstances, very little of what it is currently doing in Gaza can be described as self defense. This is similar to arguing that the US had a right to invade Afghanistan after 9/11 in self defense. Both Israel and the US commonly refer to attacks on other nations and targets as “self defense,” when no reasonable rules of self defense apply.

Another of these incessantly repeated stories is that Hamas protects itself by using civilians as human shields. This serves the twofold purpose of dehumanizing Hamas and absolving Israel of its blame when civilians are killed. This story allows Israel to kill more civilians. It allows Israel to bomb schools and hospitals and mosques and claim “human shields’ are the reason that non-combatants are dying in such huge numbers.

In investigating the deaths of 11 civilians in 7 incidents in 2009, Human Rights Watch found, “no evidence that the civilian victims were used by Palestinian fighters as human shields or were shot in the crossfire between opposing forces.” In these cases the investigation found that the civilians were directly attacked by the IDF while waving white flags. The HRW investigation did document cases in which, “Israeli soldiers stood behind a Palestinian man who was forced to search a home.  Deliberately using civilians to deter attacks on a military target is considered “human shielding.”  The use of civilians as human shields or to engage in work for military purposes violates international humanitarian law.”

In 2010, an Israeli military court found two IDF soldiers guilty of using a 9 year old boy as a human shield during the 2008-9 ‘Operation Cast Lead in Gaza’ after forcing the boy to open bags suspected to be booby trapped.

If you want to slow down the independent reporting of your genocide, it is a useful tactic to prevent international media from entering the war zone unless embedded with your troops and under your supervision of their reporting. Where it is impractical to exert full control over certain stories or news outlets then your tactic can shift to murdering the media.

As it has done in previous military operations such as during the Great March of Return, and in the well publicized assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, Israel is deliberately targeting reporters and photographers in Gaza. At least 36 journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli attacks, as have many family members of journalists. Several more journalists have been injured and several have been detained or are missing.

If you want reporting on the death toll to stop and accurate death toll numbers are reported by hospitals to the ministry of health, you incapacitate the hospitals. Deny them power, water, supplies. Bomb them. This is a war crime, but with your savvy public relations expertise you can just blame Hamas for operating from within or under the hospitals. No mater that there is little evidence that it is true.

To convince people that extensive tunnels underly the hospitals, create a computer simulation of what these tunnels might look like and distribute to friendly media. Show aerial footage of a concrete bordered opening in the ground outside the hospital as proof of the tunnels, jut be careful it can’t be easily debunked by a moderate level of investigation. Claim that a video proves Hamas is working in the hospitals by showing a crowds of people inside with one person holding up what might be a rifle (but make sure there are’s any clear images of the scene proving that it is a police style baton). So far, the Hamas headquarters in hospitals story has less evidence than the Iraqi WMDs.

If there is an agency that has been providing life saving aid to your genocide victims for decades and has produced reams of reports on your previous human rights violations, be sure to claim they are allied with your opponents and just kill them.

How do we battle the genocide deniers tactics? Recognize them, debunk them, expose them, ridicule them. Stop letting them have any power to diminish the efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine.

Hellfire and Ginsu

(content warning: description of bombing scene/victim)

Hellfire is the name of an American missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrup Grumman. In its initial design it was created to deliver an explosive charge from the air to an armored vehicle or tank by honing in on a reflected laser pointing at the target. It has been in use since 1984 and several variations of the original design have been developed over the years.

The missile is over 5 feet long and weighs about 100 pounds. It can travel at a top speed just under 1000 miles per hour and can strike from up to 11km away. It is primarily deployed via attack helicopters and drones.

Sales of Hellfire missiles have been approved to at least 30 countries, many of which are in the Middle East, including Israel. The British Ministry of Defense confirmed using Hellfire missile in Afghanistan.

While traditionally designed as an air to ground missile, Israel has used Hellfire missiles to destroy a civilian plane that entered its airspace from Lebanon in 2001 and an Iranian drone that entered from Syria in 2018.

In addition to its initial use against armored vehicles, the missile and its variants have been popular for use in assassinating “high value targets.” Wikipedia has a list of several of these individuals assassinated will hellfire missiles (which appear to all be muslims), including American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who was assassinated in Yemen by the US.

There is a special variant of the Hellfire missile with no explosive warhead nicknamed the Ninja Missile or Flying Ginsu. This variant, called the R9X, has one meter long concealed blades that are deployed just before impact to shred its victims.

In a gruesome video posted online on November 9, at least one individual outside of Al-Shifa hospital is sliced apart by what is speculated to be an R9X missile. The projectile, which reportedly targeted a car, bounces around a courtyard area where many people are moving about or in large tents. There is no explosion. A camera moves around the scene in response to the impact and eventually settles on the victim, screaming for help, surrounded by blood and body parts.

It is probably the most gruesome video I have seen of the genocide in Gaza. I have tried to be very careful in what I am viewing to not traumatize myself. A privilege that I know Gazans do not have.

As gruesome as this one scene is, most of the other bombs are worse. This bomb kills only if it strikes you directly, or on ricochet. Explosive bombs will kill you in a direct strike or from a distance, will blow you apart, will incinerate you, can kill you with bomb shrapnel or shrapnel from exploding objects. Explosive bombs can collapse buildings down upon you. Israel has also used white phosphorous bombs in Gaza. White phosphorous burns 1400 degrees Fahrenheit and will continue to burn as long as it is exposed to air. It will burn human flesh down to the bone and fragments or remnants must be removed or will risk reigniting.

Israel has dropped more bombs and missiles on Gaza, an area the size of Philadelphia, than the United States dropped on the entirety of Afghanistan in any one month period during the height of the US war in Afghanistan. They have admitted to bombing over 12,000 targets and Euro-med Human Rights Monitor estimates the bombings have delivered over 25,000 tons of explosives and have contravened several international laws of war.

War is terror. Ceasefire NOW.

From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!

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Since there is a deliberate and concerted effort on the part of many to define the phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” as a call for the genocide of the Jewish people from Israel, it is important for those of us that use this phrase to correct this false narrative.

The majority of us that use this phrase envision either a single free state or two free states in what is now Israel and Palestine. In these free states we envision no discriminatory rules or laws based upon an individual’s religion or ethnic or national origin. We envision Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists and other religious or non-religious peoples living together between the river and the sea with no restrictions on movement within any state, no harassment from members of other communities, no rules that burden or unburden one group above another.

We envision the right of return for all peoples forced to flee their homes in the last 100 or so years, and just compensation for the land and property theft of the past. We envision reparations for the systemic burdens and Apartheid placed upon Palestinian and Israeli Arabs by the British and Israeli governments. We envision a system of truth and reconciliation to atone for past oppression similar to what transpired in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Freedom for Black South Africans did not require the elimination of white South Africans. Freedom for Northern Ireland did not require the elimination of Catholics. Freedom for Palestine does not require the elimination of Jews in Israel.

Intentionally conflating the phrase “From the River to the Sea…” with the elimination of the Jewish people is similar to conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The two are not the same, but their linkage serves to dismiss the validity of the opinions and perspective of the oppressed Palestinians and the people that support and defend their human rights. Claiming that the elimination of the Jewish people from Israel is the goal of anyone who uses the phrase is a fear mongering tactic that serves the narrative of dehumanizing the Palestinian people and supporters while stoking hatred of Palestinians in the people of Israel.

In the UK the Labour Party has suspended MP Andy McDonald pending an investigation for saying, “We won’t rest until we have justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty,” at a protest for Palestine solidarity. UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has called for police to take action against people using the phrase, or even waving the Palestinian flag. Braverman describes the phrase as, “widely understood as a demand for the destruction of Israel.”

While the original founding documents of Hamas did not mention the phrase, Hamas’ updated foundational document of 2017, which is a major shift in tone from its earlier declaration, has added the phrase in section 20 (emphasis added):

20. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

Since Hamas uses this phrase and Hamas has been roundly demonized in the western media, some people may conclude, whether honestly or not, that the phrase must have evil intent and truly seek the elimination of the Jewish people from Israel. That reading, however, negates other parts of the 2017 document, such as,

16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Still, many profess the antisemitism of the phrase. defining it in oppressive and even genocidal terms. But before the updated Hamas document of 2017, another political group in Palestine used a variation of the phrase. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party had this language in their 1977 Party Platform (emphasis added),

a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

And the 2011 Likud Platform uses this language, “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” As well as, “The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”

When all people are free from the river to the sea and the conditions are in place for all to thrive, then Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.

fromtherivertotheseapalestinewillbefree.com

Imagine a Gunman

Imagine a gunman (they are almost all men) actively shooting into a crowded auditorium.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

What is the appropriate response?

And imagine this auditorium has had all its doors locked by the gunman and there is no way for anyone to escape. That the gunman has surveilled all of the people in the auditorium for decades, has put rules in place to control their movement, how much water they have, how much food, and how much electricity.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

He stands and watches from a balcony. Chooses a target. Bang.

Do you explain why he has the right to slaughter the people in the auditorium? How one or two of them committed some atrocity against him last week or last month?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Is this gunman exercising the right or the “duty” of self-defense?

Ten dead. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Do you send the gunman more ammunition and defend his actions? Do you point out targets for the gunman? And what do you do when you see people outside defending the gunman and sending him supplies?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Would you call for a temporary halt to the shooting, so the people under attack can have a snack or cup of tea before the shooting starts up again?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Or, maybe, do you cry out that the gunman must stop? Must cease fire.

Do you desperately tell everyone you can about the ongoing slaughter to try and get more people to demand it end?

Twenty dead. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Do you shame and expose and call out the people supporting the gunman? People who have some power to take action on behalf of a group or a nation, do you demand that they stop participating in the slaughter and instead demand it end?

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Or do you close your eyes and ears to the carnage and focus your attention on your own existence? Your own struggle to get by and try to live a decent life.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

When the shooting is happening is not the time to defend and explain the shooter’s actions.

First stop the shooting.

Then, try to understand why the shooting happened and put in place conditions that will help prevent it happening again.

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza TODAY.

TODAY we need to do what we can to make them stop.

The Craters in the Israeli Military Story

After the bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17 was widely attributed to the Israeli Military, Israel denied it had bombed the site and shared evidence that the cause was a misfired rocket from inside Gaza. While western governments and media were quick to support the Israeli story, others have called out their evidence as unconvincing and misinterpreted.

One of the arguments put forth by the Israeli military and its supporters to deny responsibility for the explosion at Al-Ahli hospital that killed dozens of internally displaced Gaza refugees was that the aftermath of the blast showed no large crater typical of other Israeli bombings.

The Daily Mail quoted Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari as saying, “The walls stay intact. There are no craters in the parking lot. These are the characteristics that show it was not an aerial munition that hit the parking lot.”

The craters in question are common at some other bombing sites that Israeli military has claimed responsibility for such as the multiple bombings of the Jabalia Refugee camp.

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Damage in the courtyard of Al-Ahli hospital

Craters left from the Israeli bombing of Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza

In contrast to the extensive denial of responsibility at Al-Ahli hospital, the Israeli military was quick to claim responsibility for the attack on an ambulance convoy at Al-Shifa Medical Complex that killed at least 15 and wounded 50. Images from the scene of this attack show many bodies of dead and injured civilians, but none I have seen show any crater or any collapsed walls. It seems the telltale evidence of an aerial munition causing large craters is missing from this bombing that Israel has admitted to.

Israeli airstrike on an ambulance convoy in front of the gate of the Al-Shifa Hospital

This, of course, is not proof that Israel is at fault in the Al-Ahli bombing, but provides some clarification that the absence of craters is not strong evidence that they are not at fault.

Never. Again. (and again)

As I write these words there are children screaming outside of my window. And while they and I are safe in rural NJ, and they are screaming in joy as they play in an inflatable bouncy castle, I know there are children in Gaza screaming. They are screaming in terror. Because Israel has brought terror upon them. They are screaming because their sibling has been murdered, or their parent, or their entire family, or their leg has been blown off in the bombing campaign or been crushed as their building has been deliberately bombed into rubble. Or they have been blinded by shrapnel. Or they are screaming from their life experience of terror, bombs, lack of food and intermittent water and electricity.

And they are not the first nor will be the last screaming children, they scream like the Native American and First Nations children displaced and beaten and abused in settler attacks, forced marches, deprivation and boarding school torture and abuse screamed. They scream like the enslaved children in the Americas, stolen from their homeland or born to or descended from those who were. Who were beaten, abused, neglected, separated, raped, and forced to labor for vile people who saw them as property. They scream like the children of Apartheid South Africa, controlled, deprived, and when they dared resist, massacred. They scream like the Jewish and Roma and other marginalized children put into concentration camps, met with all manner of horrors, many ultimately murdered by people who saw them as less than human. And like the German and Japanese children facing the firebombing of cities and nuclear weapons.

~~~

The western news media use specific language to drive a particular narrative when discussing Israel and Palestine. The brutal attacks from Hamas against settlements near Gaza on October 7, 2023 are invariably called unprovoked and are also called unprecedented. It seems only the Israeli side “responds” to aggression, and is never the aggressor. Both of these characterizations are clear and plain lies.

Unprecedented

After the Holocaust during WWII in which several million Jewish people and members of other marginalized groups were systematically murdered, so many pledged “never again” but, as we have seen in Gaza and more broadly in Palestine, have instead supported “never” again and again.

Israel was born from genocide and born in genocide. It took the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from over 500 villages across Palestine to forcibly create the state of Israel against the will of the Arab residents of the land. This is known as the Nakba, which translates to “catastrophe.”

When media promote the narrative that the attacks on civilians by Hamas are unprecedented in Israeli history, they are deliberately erasing the reality of the Nakba and the lived experiences of the Palestinian Arab population. While for the Holocaust the slogan might be “Never Forget”, for the Nakba it is “Never Remember.” In fact, Israel bans the reference to Nakba in Palestinian textbooks and prohibits institutions from holding commemorations of the Nakba.

From the perspective of many, the Nakba was not just a historic period in the creation of Israel, but is an ongoing practice of the settler colonial Israeli state. The refugees created during the Nakba are refugees today, with no state of their own and no right to return to the homes they were driven out of. And, indeed, displacement is ongoing.

Unprovoked

Even more profuse than the promotion of the Oct 7 attacks as unprecedented, the narrative that the bloodshed was unprovoked is ubiquitous in western media.

It was not unprovoked. Hamas explicitly stated its primary reasons for the attacks. And while we do not need to accept their stated reasons as the only reasons, we can at least start there to understand why they took these actions. Calling the action “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas explains the primary reasons as Israeli incursions and violence at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the ongoing settlement expansion and related violence in the West Bank.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem is managed by Jordan under an international agreement. During Ramadan in 2023, Israeli police began to evict Muslim worshipers from the mosque nightly who had attempted to stay overnight. On April 3, Israeli Police detained a Jewish activist from Temple Mount Administration after reports they were planning to perform a ritual sacrifice at the Temple Mount. On the night of April 4 Israeli Police stormed the mosque, using stun grenades, rubber bullets, and batons, injuring at least 50 people and arresting 400. They stormed the mosque again on April 5.

Palestinians have been dispossessed from their homes and land since before Israel declared its independence in 1948. In the early years this dispossession came at a rapid pace, resulting in hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to neighboring nations. In 1967, Israel invaded Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, eventually occupying the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip. After this occupation, Israel began to take more Palestinian land through construction of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. While it ended the settlement project in Gaza in 2005 and dismantled its settlements, Israel continues to expand settlements and dispossess Palestinians in the West Bank. Palestinian farmers have fled their villages in the West Bank as recently as August 2023 due to Apartheid laws, settler harassment and violence and, dehumanization by Israeli Defense Forces including severe restriction of movement.

The Israeli town of Sderot is about a half a mile from Gaza at its nearest point. It was founded in 1951 as a development town to house Jewish immigrants and was initially populated by 80 families. After decades of expansion, largely from new immigrant populations, it had a population of 30,000 in 2021. By 2010 the city was 94% Jewish and less than 1% Arab. On October 7 the police station in Sderot was the site of a major battle between the armed Hamas fighters and Israeli Defense Forces.

But, before there was Sderot, there was Njad. Njad was a Palestinian Arab village with an estimated population of 620 in 1945, all Muslim. Njad was destroyed in May 1948 during Operation Barak.

Because of its proximity, and its history, Sderot is a frequent target of rockets from Gaza. Sderot is also home to “Sderot Cinema” or the “hill of shame” where residents sometimes go to watch bombings of Gaza, and sometimes cheer when the bombs fall.

As the bombs fall today, I wonder if anyone is on that hill, and how they are responding.

~~~

It is not contradictory to understand oppressed peoples’ reasons for rebelling, to support their right to rebel against occupation and colonialism, and to still see specific actions against specific targets as gross human rights violations. It is contradictory to describe those actions by Hamas as terrorism while describing the genocide in Gaza by the Israel Military as ‘self defense.’

Bombing Philly

As of October 24, Israel has dropped over 8000 bombs on Gaza, which is about the size of Philadelphia. Many of us remember the destruction in Philadelphia when the police dropped 1 bomb back in 1985 on MOVE and destroyed 60 homes.

Imagine 8000 bombs on Philadelphia. And imagine a wall around Philadelphia and a blockade that prevents anyone from leaving without special permits and permission. Imagine hostile warships patrolling the Delaware River and the Philadelphia airport destroyed and airspace controlled. And imagine no power, no electricity, no properly supplied and functional hospitals.

Imagine being told to evacuate North Philadelphia because it will not be safe for you to stay there as the bombing happens and to go to the south where you will be safe. And then being bombed on the road to the south, and then being bombed in the home, or the school, or the hospital you sought refuge in, in South Philadelphia.

And imagine surviving that bombing and being taken to the hospital where the doctors try frantically to stabilize you and operate on you to save your life. On the hospital floor. In a hallway. Without anaesthesia. Or water. Or electricity. Or, where they tell you you are going to die now, and hold your hand, for only a minute, because they have to go and see if they can save the life of the next victim.

And imagine this latest violence is on top of a history of bombing and destruction occurring every two to five years. Imagine being 25, and having survived 5 wars of aggression from the military occupying and controlling your city. The same military force that drove your grandparents off of the land and out of the home they and their ancestors lived in for centuries. Imagine living with them and their trauma and with the generational and original trauma you are experiencing now.

How would you feel? How would you want to respond? How much oppression can you endure?

Gazans don’t have to imagine this. All of them are living it. And thousands of them are being murdered as we watch.

Witnessing Genocide

What we are witnessing, if we are paying attention, is an escalation of the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel.

It is the same overarching story of settler colonialism. Like the genocides committed by settlers in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other nations as they were formed and grew through the displacement of the indigenous peoples of those lands.

After murder and displacement and the destruction of hundreds of communities of Palestinian Arabs. After the invasion and occupation of neighboring nations. After the broad settlement of Israelis on occupied lands. After harassment and sabotage and violence against the indigenous by settlers forced more of the indigenous residents to abandon their land. After several previous mass bombings of Gaza. After the imposition of Apartheid laws in Israel against Arabs. After the bulldozing of homes and infrastructure and ongoing depopulation and displacement, we now have more bombing of Gaza, more genocide, more murder of people, more collective punishment.

And the world watches.

And some cheerlead and excuse the genocide and materially support Israel in its actions. And the US blocks a mild security council resolution calling for restraint. And sends more weapons. More tools of genocide to carry out the elimination and displacement of people previously restricted to a concentration camp disguised as a city. Full of refugees and the children of refugees and the children of the children of refugees.

And some shout, (and some whisper)…STOP! And some march, and talk, and write, and teach, and learn and speak. And we look for any lever, any button, any means to slow the genocide. And there are too few levers, so we go about the difficult task of building the levers, of finding the cracks in the facade and desperately, by hammer and pen, and keyboard, and placard, and speech, and fingernail, apply pressure to the cracks. To chip away. To reveal the truth. To develop a new understanding of the reality under the facade.

Exposing genocide is a first step to ending genocide.

How we get from genocide to post-genocide to reconciliation to freedom is a tough path, but not an untrodden path. There are many on it already.

Truth and Reconciliation, Reparations, Right of Return, Landback

It is of course for the victims to determine what the appropriate remedies are to begin to make them whole, but here are some general thoughts on what it will take to change the structural dynamics that underpin the oppression.

Reparations

For stolen land and homes and property

For denial of human rights and dignity

For denial of economic opportunity

For restriction of movement

For physical harm

For bombing and rocket fire

For deaths of family members

For emotional harm

Guarantees of freedom and recognition and respect for Human Rights

Physical freedom

Equal access and treatment under the law

Equity in education, economic opportunity, access to goods and services, ownership of property

Right of return

Decolonization

How do we take steps in this direction?

How do we make the cost of continuing genocide greater than the cost of ending it? The cost of perpetuating oppression greater than the cost of halting it? The cost of maintaining Apartheid greater than the cost of dismantling it?

Boycott, divestment, and sanctions on Israel. Exposing Israeli Apartheid and oppression so the public see the horrors and understand the dynamics of the relationship between the Israeli oppressor and oppressed Palestinian. Globally shaming Israel for Apartheid and violence until they understand that the cost of continuing the oppression and genocide is greater than the cost of ending it. Then, working with all parties to restore recognition and protection of universal human rights and appropriate reparations for harms committed.

Free Palestine!

What Right Does a Nation Have to Exist?

Does any nation have the right to exist?

No.

The shortcut to get to the point is to ask this question: Does Nazi Germany have the right to exist?

There are certainly other examples, but none as visceral from the past century.

Beyond that, we can become more nuanced and examine to what extent is a nation its government and to what extent do the actions of a government represent and reflect on the validity of a nation. Put simply, governments are people with power that exercise control over the rules by which the residents of a nation live and the rules by which their nation interacts with others.

No government has the right to exist.

This is widely understood and practiced extensively by the US and other global and regional powers, incessantly interfering in governments of nations with less power. Unfortunately, there are few nations with a functional moral compass that genuinely and strategically use their influence to support human rights rather than use their power and influence to obtain more power and influence.

Do nations have the right to autonomy and non-interference? No.

As functions of the self-determination of the peoples within their borders and insofar as they equitably uphold the human rights of all residents within their borders, governments and nations have the right to participate in the global network of nations unimpeded. However, when governments fail to uphold these basic elements of existence and when they actively and independently interfere in the autonomy of other nations, they forfeit their freedoms to act without interference or influence of others.

Nations have the duty to act together through international organizations such as the UN to reign in abuses of human rights or national sovereignty committed by other nations. As individuals, we have the duty to collectively join together and impact these issues through boycotts, and by pressuring private and public entities to divest and sanction nations that abuse human rights.

The end of Apartheid in South Africa was influenced by significant external pressure from individuals, organizations, and governments, which served to support the incessant actions from South Africans to make the change happen. We must do the same to end Apartheid in Israel.

Why I Say: Free Palestine!

The Palestinian people have faced genocide and oppression for more than 75 years at the hands of Zionists, the Israeli government, and with the full and active support of western nations including the UK and US. During the Nakba, which began in the 1948 Palestine war and is ongoing today, Palestinian Arabs have been relentlessly attacked, terrorized, murdered, and have fled their homes in great numbers for their safety. Over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled their homes and became refugees and over 500 Arab villages were depopulated and destroyed by Zionist militias and, after declaring independence, by the Israeli government in 1948.

Since a war with Syria, Jordan and Egypt in 1967, Israel has occupied the Golan Heights (which it illegally annexed in 1981), Gaza Strip, and West Bank. It has enacted upon the peoples of these occupied territories criminal, dehumanizing, and oppressive conditions that control the populations while continuing to steal their land, drive residents from their homes and villages and incentivize and create new settlements open only to Israeli Jews in the West Bank.

Movement is strictly controlled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where permission is required to move from one area to another, military checkpoints control movements, and certain roads and areas are off limits to travel by Palestinian Arabs. Even where Palestinians own clear title to their own land, Israel controls construction and rarely approves any building permits for Palestinians (while constantly building new communities on Palestinian land for Israeli settlers). Israel regularly destroys Palestinian homes and buildings in the West Bank where it continues to drive people off of their land. This expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied territories and the continued actions creating additional refugees are violations of international law. Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank routinely destroy water sources used by Palestinians, destroy Palestinian crops, takeover grazing lands, and uproot or cut down the olive groves of Palestinian farmers.

Israel controls nearly all outside access to the Gaza Strip and has effectively blockaded it since 2005. Gaza is fully dependent upon Israel and the UN for regular access to electricity, water, food, medicine, and other goods required for survival. Israel does not allow consistent power and water access for Gaza and Gazans frequently have only a few hours per day in which water and power are available. While Gaza is on the Mediterranean Sea, access to Gaza by boat is also blockaded by Israel and fishermen are restricted to certain areas allowed by the Israeli Navy. Israel exerts full control over Gaza and West Bank airspace. Israel controls the land inside the wall/fence separating Israel and Gaza, enforcing a no-go zone near the border via live fire from Israel. During the Great March of Return protests in Gaza in 2018 and 2019 tens of thousands of protesters challenged the no-go zone while calling for the right of refugees from Israel to return to their homes and communities and for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted. Israel killed 189 protesters during this protest.

The United Nations has passed hundreds of General Assembly resolutions concerning Israel and its actions, over 225 United Nations Security Council Resolutions (with many more Security Council Resolutions with wide support being vetoed by the United States including the recent resolution condemning attacks against civilians calling and for the protection of civilians and humanitarian aid during military actions), and 45 resolutions from the UN Human Rights Council. Many of these resolutions have been ignored by Israel as they continue their occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

Human Rights

Civil Rights

Dignity

Freedom

For these and many other reasons I say: Free Palestine!

The Tale of Mister Morton’s Steakhouse

(to the Schoolhouse Rock tune, “The Tale of Mr Morton”)

This is the tale of Mister Morton’s

A Steakhouse down in DC

It is the subject of our tale

And when the protesters yell,

What’s Mister Morton’s to do?

Mister Morton’s sat Judge Kavanaugh

Mister Morton’s sat

Mister Morton’s took his order

Mister Morton’s took

(yes, sir, right away)

Mister Morton’s was complicit

Mister Morton’s was

Morton’s Steakhouse is the subject of the scrutiny

For the argument was full of flaws

Mister Morton’s knew about the ruling

Mister Morton’s knew

Mister Morton’s grew defiant

Mister Morton’s grew

Mister Morton’s was very angry

Mister Morton’s was

Morton’s Steakhouse was the target of attention

After the Court struck down those laws

The subject is abortion

That's a person’s human right

It's who or what the judgement is about

And the precedent overturned

That is the action (word)

That gets the people up and out

Mister Morton’s said it was an outrage

Mister Morton’s said

The people replied in the evening

“No,” is what the crowd of people said

Mister Morton’s grew very nervous

Mister Morton’s grew

Morton’s Steakhouse cried, “what about privacy?”

And the protesters said “fuck you!”

The crowd chanted

and called him out

that’s what the protesters did

(We Won’t Go Back)

Brett finished eating his dinner

Then ducked out the back and hid

Mister Morton’s talked to the media

Mister Morton’s talked

Mister Morton’s stood by Kavanaugh

And the protesters, it mocked

The Supreme Justice was a nervous man

When the protesters showed up he ran

Kavanaugh made a quick retreat

Kavanaugh he made

Kavanaugh prayed he’d get away

Kavanaugh he prayed

Kavanaugh was ornery

Kavanaugh he was

Until the people showed up with a megaphone

Who says the people can't protest?

Now the Women are unhappy

And Trans folk and NB’s, too!

And no matter what the Court says

We’ll do what we need to do

The American Dream is a Nightmare

The American Dream is a nightmare.

The American Dream as it was sold to us, and surely it was sold to us, is a lie and a myth perpetuated to allow an empowered class to experience leisure supported by a disempowered class.

Unlike most other commodities, we don’t pay for the American Dream in dollars, but nothing comes for free. And while this dream does not have a monetary cost, it has a greater cost. It is the cost of our environment. It is the cost of our mental and physical health. It is the cost of our empathy, of community, of solidarity. It is the cost of our safety. It is the cost of our fellow Americans lives. And it is the cost of our imaginations.

Buying into this myth, which is sold to us in advertisements for food and clothes and houses and cars, and is taught to us in school and church and media, is buying into consumption as a path to comfort and success. It is buying into a potential to improve or maintain the conditions of life by competing for artificially scarce resources. It is buying into an economic structure that thrives on waste. An economic system that demands that we each need to acquire the necessities of life and the luxuries of life individually rather than collectively. That teaches us to take care of ourselves and our families whether or not that comes at the expense of someone else.

When we pay The American Dream’s cost to our imagination, we give up our power. We acquiesce to the myth that someone else, someone smarter, or more important than us solved these problems for us, we just need to go along. This is not an incidental, nor an accidental, cost. These systems are ingeniously constructed to suppress our ability to resist. To suppress our ability to imagine different ways, to imagine better systems.

What if we could consider and imagine alternatives? What if?

We need a new dream.

My dream is a society organized around plenty. An America in which we do not struggle to survive, but we participate to thrive. An America in which food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical care, utilities, all of the necessities of a fulfilled life are provided for collectively. For Free.

An America in which we all work less and provide for each other. A 10 hour work week in which we help create and maintain the goods necessary for life. and then in our non-work life we create what we like, we care for each other, we learn, we teach, we live.

It could be a relatively easy transition. We already produce great surpluses of food, clothing, housing, transportation. The structures could be remade to serve people’s needs rather than to profit the few.

But it won’t be an easy transition, because it means resetting the centers of power from the individual, to the collective. And the people currently in power have built and maintained all of the existing structures to maintain that power for themselves, no matter the cost.

That does not mean it can’t be done, only that we will have a harder time doing it and we will have to do it both inside and outside of the existing system. And this is already happening. Mutual aid and grassroots community cooperative structures are out there. We need more of them.

What is your dream.

The Trouble With Normal

One of the many tools that the folks in power use to build and maintain their power and control over the people is defining what is acceptable and what is not. They use a wide variety of methods to do this. Laws, social norms, peer pressure, education, media and the control of language are a few of these methods.

The word Normal can be defined as “conforming to a regular pattern” or “occurring naturally.” Using terms such as “Normal” in ways that define and amplify human differences or in ways that create the illusion that there is some inherent natural order to the rules of social interaction make it easier for people in power to maintain that power.

Outside of its meaning in a strict scientific process of measuring commonalities in a population and variation from those commonalities, the word Normal has little usefulness in helping humans make sense of the world around us.

Why be Normal

When used to describe human behaviors or human traits, Normal is a box in which we can place acceptable or desirable human behaviors or traits in order to exclude other traits and behaviors. This is often extraordinarily harmful. Defining some human traits as normal and others as not normal provides a foundation for racism, for sexual puritanism, for gender reductionism, for ableism, for ageism, and all kinds of other harmful and dangerous divisions.

Utah Phillips aptly illustrates the way the use of normal constrains us in the following story.

We were in the Grand Union, [a] supermarket, getting some food, over by Greenwich or Cambridge, one or the other, with old Dorothea Brownell, Morrigan's godmother - now this is education! A little kid was fussing at the checkout counter, stuck in one of those baskets - it's all the lights in those places, make kids crazy, we all know that, don't we? Well, and the kid was fussy, and the parents were ragging on the kid, and... I get them to laugh, and the parents laugh, and the checkout person laughs.

Morrigan starts punching me in the side, and said - yelling at me! - she said, "Why can't you be normal?"

And old Miss Brownell rapped Morrigan on her shin - rudely - with her cane, and said: "He is normal - what you meant to say is 'average.'"

The new Normal.

Capitalists often concern themselves with what is normal because they have to both manipulate and react to human behavior in order to make profit. They measure what is considered to be normal behavior in the economic system in order to reduce and eliminate costs while reaping rewards. One of the favorite phrases in corporate boardrooms is the “new normal.” Especially as we move into a more steady state life with COVID-19 persisting, capitalists need to know how this has changed “normal” behaviors. The problem here is that what they consider normal is just manufactured and controlled rules of human interaction that were created by humans. It is no more normal to buy an orange in a store vs, for instance, picking an orange off of a tree. There is nothing normal about human beings being allowed to starve to death because other human beings own and control the distribution of food, especially when those that control the production and distribution of food waste enormous amounts of that production annually.

Human actions can certainly be judged as more desirable or less desirable, but it is not helpful in understanding and assessing human behaviors when we use the term normal to define them. Slavery, murder, hatred, racism, could all be considered normal human behaviors but are certainly not desirable. Compassion, cooperation, sharing, and generosity also could be considered normal human behaviors and are definitely more desirable behaviors in comparison to others. When we understand this we can better see why the term normal distorts our ability to assess the quality of human interactions in relation to our current social structures.

When we start to wean ourselves away from the concept that our current social and economic structures are somehow normal, we can begin to imagine, and build, better systems in their place.

On Nine Eleven

The hijacking of flights on September 11, 2001 and the use of those hijacked aircraft to attack buildings in New York and Virginia, as well as the failed attempt which crashed in Pennsylvania, was a tragedy.

The response by the US government, supported by the American public, was a greater tragedy.

George W Bush, who barely won the presidency with the help of the Supreme Court halting recounts in Florida, saw his approval rating go up to 86%. Mayor Rudi Giuliani was named Time’s Person of the Year. Overt US nationalism exploded with American flags flying everywhere, as did anti-muslim hate crime, which grew 1600% in 2001. Anti-muslim hate crime in the US remains at about 5x the rate it was at prior to 9/11.

After the attacks on 9/11 the US Government and media set into motion its latest plans for war. The US Government always has plans for war. It is how empires function. Always planning and waiting and instigating for a triggering action that will give them the cover they need to bend the will of the people towards another war, another bombing, another “intervention” to expand the empire and gain strategic advantage and access to wealth and resources.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex lied. “They hate our freedoms,” said George Bush who should have known that they mostly hated our actions, especially our use of Saudi territory to attack Iraq in the first Iraq war. And, of course, the US Government strung together a relentless litany of lies to propagandize the public that Saddam Hussein was evil and was a threat to the US culminating in Colin Powell’s infamous presentation to the United Nations Security Council. The US media pushed all of these lies out to the pubic with virtually no dissent.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex concealed evidence. It continues to conceal evidence gathered in the FBI investigation of 9/11, some of which, it is expected, implicates Saudi Arabia. Biden has ordered that more of that evidence be declassified over the next 6 months.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex rejected opportunities to avoid war. The Taliban made overtures to turn over Osama Bin Laden to a neutral party for trial before 9/11 (for the US Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, and for the USS Cole attack). The US Government ignored the offers. The Taliban made a similar offer after the US began bombing in 2001, which was rejected by the Bush administration.

Empires require propaganda as well as brute force to maintain themselves and the US Government has developed one of the most impressive propaganda systems in the modern era. Through the education system and what is described as the “free press.” the US Government conditions the US public to believe an underlying narrative that it manipulate to generate desired responses for or against whatever it chooses.

The free press of course is a lie. When you have a commercial media apparatus dependent on advertising dollars for survival, and those advertisers are national and international corporations, that press is not free. The influence is constant and powerful. While MSNBC launched a regular program with Phil Donahue in the summer of 2002, they promptly cancelled it in February 2003, when it was the highest rated show on the network, for its potential of becoming “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda” as the US Government and the rest of the commercial media beat the drums for war in Iraq. Even when it was airing, the network put significant pressure on Donahue to slant the content, calling for two conservative or pro-war guests for every liberal or anti-war guest.

So thus was born the “war on terrorism” and the nation applauded, not realizing that terrorism was not an entity with whom you could go to war. Terrorism can be used outside of war, but is also a tactic of war and is inevitably practiced by both sides in nearly every war.

As Howard Zinn said, “How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?”

And hundreds of thousands died. And millions were harmed in so many ways. And the world is no safer.

And on top of the casualties and deaths at the hands of our military was the loss of our freedoms. George Bush and the US Congress did more harm to our freedoms after 9/11 than the terrorists did. We got the Department of Homeland Security, enhanced spying, the Patriot Act, torture and detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

The US Government response to 9/11 was a greater tragedy than the terrible tragedy of 9/11.

Essential Workers

All too often, it takes a crisis to cut through the socialized propaganda that we consider reality and help us better understand the actual reality in which we are living.

For example, in the US we had an understanding of our safety and security, built up by years of educational and media propaganda, prior to 9/11 that was drastically altered by 9/11. Reality itself didn’t change. We were not less safe on 9/12 than we were on 9/10. But the event shook loose some of the built up layers of our misunderstanding of reality.

So, with COVID-19, have the false fortifications of who and what is important for our functioning society and economy been shaken and dislodged. The term Essential Workers has grown from being rarely heard outside of the disaster response field to being ubiquitous. and our understanding of who is essential has undergone a significant transformation.

This should move us to a concerted examination of how we fulfill our needs in a modern society and an explosion of assessment, criticism, and the rise of alternative structures and methods of organization in order to fulfill our needs. But the existing system has such an inherent powerful capacity to resist change, that this will happen, as usual, only on the margins.

But what has broken past those margins, thanks to the crisis, is a truer understanding of who are the essential workers in our economy.

Humans need food, clothing, and shelter as the most basic needs to survive, and, of course, much more than that to sustain us socially and intellectually, but we will start with the basics. Who provides these things in a modern society? The capitalist myth that is part of the great facade cracked by the Covid-19 crisis is that we each provide these things for ourselves. Through the falsehood described often as rugged individualism, we individually procure the means (money) of obtaining our basic needs through the market. The market, the propaganda continues, is built upon the principles of fairness and competition. This is bullshit.

Every type of economy is an interdependent series of cooperative interactions. Some roles in each economy are more essential for the fulfillment of basic human needs than others. So, we have learned a bit better that the food producers, food preparers, and food transporters are among the most important, or most essential workers in our modern society. These are things that the vast majority of people no longer do for themselves and, as such, are fully reliant on other people’s work in order to survive. Having peeked behind the facade, we now see and cannot unsee (though the propaganda will continue to resist acknowledging the reality) that farmers and fieldworkers, food processors and transporters, and people working at the point of sale, be it grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants or online, are essential workers. They cannot stop their work without the great risk of many people suffering. This understanding is a breakthrough. These workers, commonly among the least well compensated and most marginalized, are as important to the function of society as the workers who provide and maintain water, electricity, and communications infrastructure.

It is long past time we recognize this essential work and compensate it accordingly.

People Are Revolting

I have a daily podcast called People Are Revolting.

I started People Are Revolting to amplify the hundreds of stories of everyday people who stand up for or against what is happening in their neighborhood, their town, their ecology, their nation and their world.

The podcast reflects my own opinions only in the curation of what I include and what I exclude. Why are people revolting? The Why matters. The goals matter. The underlying beliefs of the people revolting matter.

I intentionally chose the title People are Revolting for its double meaning. It is a fun phrase because it tweaks the language in a way that makes you think. It is not my original thought. It came from the title of a Jim Hightower album from 1995: The People are Revolting (In the Very Best Sense of That Word). Like the title, the content of the podcast is not original. The words are seldom ever mine, I rarely even comment beyond the news story I am sharing on each episode. But the twist in the title is important. Are good people revolting? Are good people opposing revolting people. Are revolting people revolting?

It is not only good people that are standing up and fighting back against the harms to their life or the lives of others. But it is those stories that I seek out and retell.

Often, Revolting people Revolt. I don’t tell those stories. The opinions of the protesters that fight to uphold and extend White Supremacy should not be amplified. They are among those lighting the world on fire and stoking the inferno. They are making the world a more hostile and unlivable place for others. Ensuring that some people and communities do not have the opportunity to be successful and live fulfilled lives.

While I find that one useful tactic for resisting those that choose to spread division and hatred is to ignore them, to deny them an audience, to suppress the spread of their ideas, that is only one of many tactics that need to be employed and by itself it will fail. Another important tactic is to counter their message with both a direct refutation of their positions and policies and an amplification of alternatives. I hope People Are Revolting serves to amplify the alternatives through the stories and words of people taking action

Our Social, Economic and Political structures have been designed to resist our efforts to change them for the better, to reshape them into structures that support all individuals or to replace them with ones that do. Our challenge is to devise the right plan to disarm the oppressive elements of these structures and the groups and individuals that support them, and to effectively deploy the right tactics and methods to fulfill that plan.

Ultimately, we need to deprive the individuals and groups who want to uphold unfair and harmful systems of support, of audience, of trust.

Often, those fighting to uphold oppression have identified real issues in peoples lives but have chosen harmful solutions and resistance to change as their coping mechanism. As such they are supporting the status quo and are reinforcing the systems already resistant to improvement. This is a great advantage they have on their side.

We need to make it clear to the widest audience possible that their solutions are harmful and that better solutions are available. This is an enormous task. One that we must dedicate our lives to if we hope to shift the momentum.

Our broad goals must be

• To expose oppressive systems

• To propose, build, and promote better alternatives

• To discredit and oppose harmful changes that claim to offer solutions

Our tactics must be open and flexible and considered carefully for each fight. We need to make sure the tactics used do not compromise the goals of the change we seek. It is not enough to replace one oppressive system of control with another. There are no benevolent dictators. Violence has the greatest potential of disrupting a transition to a better, more equitable world. In almost all cases it should be avoided as it will decrease the chances of a better outcome. In very narrow circumstances in which people are faced with violence every day, violence may be a necessary part of the resistance.

Our goal on this planet is not to arm the defenseless but to disarm the violent, through strategy, not force.

If We Had a Justice System

I am outraged.

I am disappointed.

What I am not, and have not been for a very long time, is surprised.

We don’t have a Justice System in the US, we have a legal system.

If we had a Justice System police would face charges for killing unarmed and non-threatening individuals.

If we had a Justice System police would face charges for killing a bystander.

If we had a Justice System police wouldn’t smash in the door of someone’s home in the middle of the night to serve a search warrant for drugs. If we had a Justice System there would be no search warrants for drugs.

If we had a Justice System the courts would prosecute not only the officer that failed to shoot Breonna Taylor, but also the officer that shot her, and the officer that killed her. And the officer that sent them there.

But, we don’t have a Justice System in the US we have a Legal System. And Black people, other People of Color, and Poor People of all races and backgrounds are more often crushed by it than they are served by it.

In one sense our Legal System is broken, but, more appallingly, it is working exactly as it is designed. The Legal System is designed to support and defend the wealthy and their property and in the US the wealthy and the property owners are mostly white. And thus, the US Legal System is a pillar of white supremacy and , as it stands, needs to be abolished.

For Breonna Taylor.

…and for so many others

The Lesser Asshole

When your primary tactic is to berate and shame people into voting for your candidate, you undoubtably have a lousy candidate.

When you ramp up the same tactics that you indignantly claimed were disqualifying when used by supporters of another candidate, namely, attacking and smearing anyone who is not praising your chosen one, your politics are bankrupt.

The language that real champions of the poor and marginalized refined to define and reveal the subtle (or not so subtle) actions and inactions that keep the poor and marginalized poor and marginalized has once again been coopted by the wealthy and powerful. “Privilege,” is now being used by the privileged to attack the privileged for acting privileged.

I am enormously privileged.

I have the privilege of being a member of the race that committed multiple genocides in what would become the United States, not a member of the races of the victims of these genocides.

I have the privilege of identifying as, and being identified as, a member of the dominant gender in the social structures developed in the United States. The gender that has always created and enforced the rules that others are made to live by.

I have the privilege of being born in a rural town gentrified into a desirable suburb to the nearest big city thanks to those socialist highways and marginal public transit.

I have the privilege of growing up in a time when there were good blue-collar jobs available that could generate enough income to support a family of five and that my father had one of those jobs and I had a comfortable, middle class childhood.

I have the privilege of getting a good job with a good company that has decent benefits including health insurance.

I am undoubtedly more privileged than most people.

I am more privileged than the people that are stuck in grossly segregated and underfunded and underperforming public schools that your candidate fought to keep there rather than allow them to be bussed to better schools.

I am more privileged than the people, disproportionally people of color, that your candidate facilitated the imprisonment of with his Crime Bill.

I am more privileged than the majority of the Afghanis, Iraqis, Sudanese, Libyans, Syrians, Pakistanis and countless other nationalities that your candidate incinerated in wars and “actions” and assassinations. The dead and the disfigured and the destitute that lost their livelihoods, their limbs, their lives.

I am more privileged than the tens of thousands of Americans that die annually because they lack health care. Tens of thousands of dead Americans that could not afford health care, because your candidate cares more about maintaining private insurance profits at the expense of those lives. Even with all of my privilege I understand full well the power of the private insurance industry to destroy lives. My “good” insurance stopped paying for my medication a few years ago sending me into a long declining health spiral that landed me disabled for 6 months, largely bedridden. Privilege isn’t everything when someone’s profits are on the line.

I am more privileged than the tens of thousands sent back to their countries of origin by your candidate. Back to poverty, back to harassment, back to brutality, back to death. Simply because they lacked the privilege of being born on the right side of an imaginary line.

I am more privileged than the numerous women whose personal space or intimate privacy your candidate has violated. I have the privilege of not fitting the profile of the people your candidate chooses to victimize, though in this case especially, it is not my privilege that matters, but your candidate’s privilege. His privilege to victimize and not be confronted or challenged or diminished by his actions. His privilege to be believed because of his race, gender, wealth, job, social status.

Of what use is any of my privilege if I don’t use it to stand up to the privilege of your candidate and against the horrible things he perpetrated.

It does not matter to me that he is the lesser asshole.

The privilege to vote, a privilege that many have fought for and died for, and for which many others continue to do so, is a privilege I take seriously. I promised myself when I turned 18 that I would never hold my nose and vote.

If you nominate an asshole, I will not vote for him.

But you won’t care. Because you are acting like my choice to vote for a better candidate is a more horrifying action than a sexual assault, or a racist legal system, or a murdered Iraqi child.