This needs to STOP.

 This family needs justice. People with disabilities, especially things like autism, suffer enough, they are the most vulnerable, they don’t deserve to be abused. 

Let’s remember who train our cops! The fucking Israel Occupation Forces! 

Puppets for Israel and Zionism… how embarrassing

I’m sorry, but it’s a pathetic sight to see so many famous and public figures tripping over and slobbering over themselves and each other blathering and spitting out hasbara zionist talking points and lies so they don’t upset Israel and hopefully even please Israel. You can tell they’re just repeating what they’ve been instructed to say, or what they’ve heard other Israel apologists say, because they repeat it over and over, one talking point after another, and they don’t go any deeper than the talking points themselves, because they haven’t actually thought about these things, they’re just parroting. So if you start asking questions, they deflect deflect deflect in one way or another. Watching these people do this is pathetic enough; but when they’re actually intelligent people, even if I disagree with them on many other things, it’s kind of embarrassing, because they have to spew these hasbara zionist talking points and lies that tend to be quite obviously abhorrent, whether because they’re just plain hypocritical and contradictory or they make them look puzzlingly foolish because they have to appear to believe ridiculous and implausible things or just plain insanely horrific because they’re trying to justify genocide and/or ethnic cleansing, or at least murdering thousands upon thousands of children. 

(No, I’m not cleaning up my run-on sentences. Sometimes I like them, because they’re a closer representation of my actual thoughts.) 

Watching them I can’t help sometimes thinking, oh you poor puppets… 

But I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them for willingly publicly embarrassing and shaming themselves in front of the entire world, and for putting themselves on the historical record, just for the sake of defending a psychopathic theocratic ethnostate committing genocide against a people they’ve oppressed and imprisoned and dehumanized and brutalized in every way possible.

Do I condemn Hamas?

The question so many are so obsessed with: Do you condemn Hamas?!

I’ll come right out and say it: No, I don’t condemn Hamas!

Why should I? I reject the premise of the question. 

[Sure, go ahead and add me to your “terrorism watchlist” if that makes you feel better. It’s not as if I’m going to give up my right to free speech. I have principles, y’all.]

To declare up front that you condemn Hamas for the alleged “atrocities” committed on Oct 7 is begging the question—and I mean the true form of begging the question that is a form of fallacious logical reasoning. You cannot begin the discussion by asking me to assume the very conclusion you are intending to argue for. 

Besides, what does it matter whether I condemn Hamas? What is the point of the question? What are you trying to accomplish? It seems the point is purely to begin the conversation from a place of prejudice against the Palestinians. Furthermore, the question, Do you condemn Hamas?, assumes adequate knowledge of the events of Oct 7, something I am unwilling to simply give to you even just for the sake of argument, because it really matters here what actually took place. (I will get into that discussion in another essay.) To grant you that assumption would be to give in to your prejudice against the Palestinians. The problem with that is that the origin of that prejudice is inherently causally related to the very thing for which Hamas is “on trial”, so to speak. For, that prejudice derives from the oppressor and occupier who created the very situation the Palestinians are resisting and fighting against; and that very resistance is what lies at the heart of the issue that Oct 7 brought to the table. Thus, to give in to your prejudice against the Palestinians and against Hamas would bias the conversation in a way that is significantly relevant to the topic of the conversation itself, and is antithetical to the purpose of the conversation. 

And being antithetical to the conversation is precisely the point of biasing the discussion against the Palestinians from the outset; because it is a way of undermining the conversation and ultimately shutting it down.

People say their heart is in Gaza

I started calling it a GENOCIDE on October 12.
And on October 6 I knew almost nothing about the Palestine-Israel issue.
All it took me was five days of obsessively learning as much as I could take in—reading, listening to audio, watching videos, etc.—to see clearly what was beginning to unfold before the world’s eyes. In all honesty, I truly don’t understand why I could figure out in only five days what too many people haven’t yet figured out after years of being aware of far more than I ever was before Oct 6. I’m not being condescending; if anything, besides being confused, I am alarmed. 

I know I should have been writing months ago—or rather, posting my writing that I have actually been doing bit by bit. Aside from personal life and health issues, in all honesty this genocide and ethnic cleansing and all of the media surrounding it have been mentally and emotionally consuming in a way that so often leaves me in a kind of mental paralysis. And it’s been a little traumatizing too. If I do sleep, I wake up tossing and turning and my first awake-aware thoughts are of the Palestinians, of Gaza… I cannot help it, I think about almost nothing else but the Palestinians—yes, the West Bank too, I know. 

I don’t know why I have become consumed by this. There is no rational, logical, historical reason that I care so much. I can rationalize it, of course, that’s easy. The question is, why this issue? Why the Palestinians? Why have I not been this moved and mentally and emotionally consumed by some other atrocious current injustices? I have not a single connection to Palestine or any Palestinians, or to Israel or Israelis; and I am an atheist, though raised in a Roman Catholic family, both immediate and extended on both sides. I knew pretty much nothing about the Palestine-Israel issue my whole life. The only thing I had learned about 15 years ago from a friend who’d been there is that it’s an apartheid state. That struck me and stayed with me. He was trying to explain to me what it was like, and trying to be careful because he knew how delicate the issue is for so many people; but I think he must have seen the genuinely thoroughly puzzled look on my face, and then he used the word apartheid, and that was all I needed to hear, then I understood—shocked, as I wasn’t expecting it, but I understood nonetheless. And so that stuck with me, the word apartheid being attached to Israel.

There is no logical beginning to writing my thoughts on the Palestinians and the current affairs and state of things in Palestine. Anywhere I try to begin, I end up adding prefatory tangents to either contextualize or give background or depth or chronological order or to lay out the perspective from where I am coming. It feels like such a swirling mess inside my head and in my heart. It’s like a whole section in a library has been thrown on the floor: a whole section of stacks of rows of books pulled from the shelves and tossed on the floor: this is what it feels like inside my head, navigating my own mind. 

But my heart? Navigating my own heart feels like…

Perhaps if I come up with a suitable metaphor one day I will add it here. 

No vote for Genocide Joe

Israel’s attack and slaughter and torture and ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians has brought out in clear view who people really are and what they really believe in and stand for. People are showing their true colors. 

I will not apologize for refusing to vote for Biden this November. I absolutely cannot, in good conscience, give my vote to someone who is not just complicit in genocide, but is actively participating in it. Not passively. Actively. This genocide and everything Israel is doing literally would not be possible at all without the United States. I don’t care what Biden and his ghouls say publicly, they have made it very clear that they do not care one iota about Palestinian lives. But, you’ll ask, don’t I care about domestic issues affecting Americans’ lives? Yes, of course! Reproductive healthcare and abortion access are extremely important to me! Lack of such healthcare and access is already having grave consequences, disgusting consequences, outrageous and shocking and enraging and terrifying consequences. That will only get worse if these misogynistic and sadistic Rs get their way. And it makes me sick to my stomach to think of how many girls and women would be hurt, and all the different ways in which they would be hurt. 

However. 

If I truly care about the rights and the safety and wellbeing and autonomy of women and girls, then I care about it for all women and girls, period.

I’m going to say it. Free Palestine! From the river to the sea!

I don’t care if you put me on your “terror watchlist”. It’s time to say it. Now that the US has blocked the UN Security Council’s resolution for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, the United States of America has given it’s public stamp of approval for Israel to carry through with its genocide and extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza. The United States of America is not just complicit but is a partner in these most heinous and horrific war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As a natural born citizen of the US, I am so deeply ashamed, and I am so sorry to the Palestinians that my government is so cruelly hypocritical and doesn’t think your lives have equal value to your oppressors. 

We deserve to be attacked. We just guaranteed that we will be. We just signed every Gazan Palestinian’s death sentence. We just made Americans and Israelis so much less safe in the world. So don’t be surprised. I’m not justifying it, not condoning it, not excusing it. Just predicting. So, don’t be surprised.

Truth about Israel Defense Forces

This was 17 years ago. It was the same then as it is now; it was the same then as it was for decades prior. 

When will people get it? I just do not understand how people don’t see that the Palestinians have been shit on by nearly everyone for 100 years. I cannot wrap my brain around how it is that people think their suffering doesn’t matter. Or worse, that their suffering is necessary. Or necessarily dismissed as “collateral damage”. 

Those young men were courageous; it’s possible they couldn’t go back to Israel after speaking out.

Palestinian Lives Matter

 

Stop the genocide of Palestinians

Has it gone too far to change?

I never get tired of this…

 

Ukrainian sisters and brothers

Putin makes me so enraged I cannot express the kind of anger and contempt I have towards him. 

Ukraine deserves the whole world to step up and stand by their side as sisters and brothers and say to Putin “No! You mess with them, you mess with us all. We’re sick of your shit! So fuck off!” Ukraine deserves the freedom from bullying and threats; they deserve to be respected. 

And frankly, Russia deserves to be free from Putin, too. 

Drink Bleach!

Ahahahaha! I love it.

 

(If you don’t get why I love this, well, then I can’t help you…)

Sister Machine Gun

Life before the internet and social media took over...

Do you remember having to pick up a music magazine made of paper that you had to read in order to learn about musicians and bands you didn't know before? 

Burn.

Yemen Can't Wait.

 "The U.S. government is complicit in starving these children."

Snog

Wow, this brings back memories...
“Shop” suddenly popped into my head the other day. Followed shortly by this, of course. (I forgot how fun Snog’s lyrics always are...)

(Hmm, it just occurred to me that Sahar Tabar in her most zombiesque p'shopping and make-up kind of reminds me of my chihuahua... 
(Sadly, even with the pale eyes, because she's going blind, so her eyes look milky blue, one a lot more than the other due to corneal damage.))

Joe Biden.

This is personal to me. It moved me and almost brought tears to my eyes. 

This is the Joe Biden we need. And we can't let him forget that. 

 

Pieces of me are falling away…

…I hope they fall into the wind and are carried away as beautifully as this carries me away…

 

…I need to be carried away…

 

.m.

At what point do I stop still thinking sometimes about suicide?

[re]new[ed] life: [our]
reason to live

 

We are a nation of Immigrants

[Sorry I have been so silent. Difficult times for me. But I will suddenly have a little more free time, to post what I have been meaning to post.]

I go through phases of being into Gogol Bordello, so I'd forgotten about this, but it seems pretty goddamn fucking appropriate right now.

get ready Trump: you'll be going down soon enough.