https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/10/21/true-anti-semites/
True Anti-Semites
A curious effect inevitably results when a trendy term, a slang neologism, or a catch-word is used to death. It loses all meaning along with its currency and is dropped from hip vocabulary. This fate impends for the hysterically abused pejorative “anti-Semitic”.
The term had a legitimate beginning, as used to describe the historic persecution of Jews in ignorant, Christian-indoctrinated Europe where vicious pogroms occurred in many countries over hundreds of years. It found its perfect application when applied to the industrial-scale murder of Jews by the monstrous Nazi death machine during WWII, which exposed the psychotic prejudice that fueled that detestable, methodical slaughter.
After the horror of the Holocaust was known to the world, the term underwent a subtle modification in connotation, from being a direct indictment of murderous prejudice, to being conceived as a kind of conceptual shield, a defense against any criticism of the de facto transformation, by violence, of Palestine, with its long established population of Arab people, into Israel.
The chief proponents and prime movers in this transformation, by which the state of Israel was created, from the initiator of the Zionist idea, Theodore Herzl, through Chaim Weitzmann, its forceful lobbyist and Israel’s first President, David Ben-Gurion, its first Premier, and Moshe Dayan, its early Military Chief, were all of one unified mind in regard to that process. Their intent was to colonize Palestine and forcibly eject the Palestinian people, and it was stated in speech and writing by all of them, without any equivocation or evasion. They agreed that the Palestinians they intended to displace, remove, and eliminate to create Eretz Israel, were, and would remain, their enemies, but that their expulsion was the only solution, and they would see to it that it was done.
The psychotic rape of European Jewry by the Nazis had done more than killed millions of them; it had created such deep and ineradicable horror in those who survived that it became the absolute determinant of their psycho-emotional response to expressed prejudice. Opposition to the inundation of Palestine by refugee European Jews after WWII was declared anti-Semitic by Zionist officialdom. This was a shift in use of the term that, in defending the influx of Jews, evaded the point of opposition: the overwhelming of the native population by Jewish immigrants. Driving this subtle shift in connotation was the determination of Zionist leaders to create a Jewish state, no matter that it could only be done by violence, and the theft of Palestinian land.
In 1948, after months of intermittent mayhem, Zionist organized military power attacked a people with scant means to defend itself. Palestinians were assaulted in their villages, brutalized and murdered, until some 700 thousand had been evicted from land their ancestors had held for centuries. Their claim to the land was historic occupation; the claim of Zionists—fantastic on its face—was based on imaginative legends in which a putative god of ugly, demented ferocity had helped them murderously subdue it thousands of years ago. This mythic yarn supposedly gave Jews clear title to a land where they had not lived for millennia.
After the Nakba—The Catastrophe, to Palestinians—Jewish rule was supreme. Hostility in Arab states erupted in wars that Israel, increasingly powerful, won decisively, while abuse of its captive people and serial theft of their land engendered disapproval in much of the world. As Israel evolved from its Socialist Labor beginnings into a massive Corporate Capitalist, militarist state, it strove to justify itself by making “anti-Semitism” the reason for any challenge of its right to do with Palestinians as it pleased. The dehumanizing terror Israel inflicted on them, created the backlash of Intifadas, which brought only greater violence from the apartheid military tyranny that Israel had become.
Guilt felt by the vastly wealthy, world Jewish elite for their having escaped Nazi bullets and ovens made them powerful advocates for the establishment of Israel, and they gave enormous sums to promote it, and fund Western political leaders to build influence in their nations. Their money bought slavish support for Israel in American and European governments, and succeeded in painting all criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism”, in spite of its brutal record of abusing, punishing, and killing Palestinian people.
Ever more rightist, viciously racist, and totalitarian in its elected status as a Jailer Society, self-mesmerized by its hoary mantra, “Never Again”, and denying any mercy to its victims, there seems now no other choice for Israel but to take its odious, insane inhumanity to the limit, though it will break them. Hence, their intent to raze Gaza and annihilate the Palestinians, for a suicidal Hamas attack that embarrassed the neo-Nazi Netanyahu regime and showed that Palestinian will to resist cannot be eradicated.
There is, at this moment, no knowing how the Gaza debacle will end. There may be a ceasefire and no invasion, freezing matters and guaranteeing unending misery, cruelty and strife. There may be madness that could trigger regional, or even world, war. All that is certain is that the threadbare cliche of “anti-Semitism” is dead, murdered in public—as Israel has murdered Palestinians— by its most fervent and cynical proponents, the Zionist monsters who own and run Israel. Its falseness will no longer suffice to camouflage the blatant historic villainy of that criminal state.
And what of the ugly prejudice toward Jews it was always used to condemn? Has its use eliminated that prejudice in the world? Or has it functioned to nourish it? Specifically, has its ghastly blitzkrieg against Palestinians won many hearts and minds to warm admiration of Israel? I think not. The horror of Israel’s inhumanity now seen openly has likely broadened and deepened prejudice against all Jews; a grim, ironic result, not deserved by Jews as a people, perpetrated against them by the Zionist criminals who claimed the whole race as complicit in their evil.
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https://bracingviews.com/2023/10/20/bidens-trigger-treats-for-ukraine-and-israel/
Biden’s Trigger Treats for Ukraine and Israel
The Exceptional Nation Promises More Bullets, Bombs, Guns, and Missiles
In an address to the nation from the Oval Office last night, President Biden promised more trigger treats* for Ukraine and Israel: at least $60 billion for Ukraine and at least $10 billion for Israel in an “aid” package that may reach $100 billion.
Biden repeated several tired cliches about America. That we’re the essential nation, the indispensable one, and also the arsenal of democracy. But maybe what we’re really truly “essential” for is guns and more guns, war and more war?
Biden assured us that sending scores of billions in weaponry was good for America: that those artillery shells and so on that shred Russian and Palestinian bodies are made right here in the USA. They’re job-creators, not body-manglers! Rejoice as America adds more jobs by providing more guns and ammo to Ukraine and Israel.
Biden, like so many in the Pentagon and the U.S. military, resorted to business-speak, explaining that this massive package of “aid” was an “investment” in national security that will pay Americans “dividends” down the road. Actually, all this weaponry will be bought the real American Way, with deficit spending, and the “dividends” will most certainly be more death and destruction and possibly even World War III.
Biden apparently sees only one course for both Ukraine and Israel: total military victory over their opponents. There was no mention of diplomacy, of ceasefires, of negotiation, of compromise. The only way out is through a massive number of dead, full stop.
Biden, who has a bad habit of pointing at the camera, and therefore America, for emphasis, did implore us not to give into hate in its various forms, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Yet it’s not easy to square an anti-hate message with $100 billion in mostly military aid so that Israel and Ukraine can squash and kill all the evildoers in their midst.
Biden, in sum, had a very grim message for America, and therefore for the world, one that embraced war and more killing as “essential” and “indispensable” because that’s the only course one can take when confronted by “pure, unadulterated evil.” And, anyway, war creates good-paying jobs in America. Trigger treats for all!
*I took the idea of “trigger treats” from a local gun shop that is displaying a sign for Halloween that reads “No tricks just trigger treats.”
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https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/10/22/the-us-empires-pr-crisis-in-gaza/
The US Empire’s PR Crisis In Gaza
The US-centralized empire is a giant network of allies, partners and assets spanning the entire globe. Many of the nations in this network, such as Israel, have strong ideologies and values systems that the empire must cooperate with to obtain their loyalty. But the empire itself has no ideology or values — it values nothing but planetary domination. The empire’s motives are no more ideological than the motives of a mugger are ideological.
So the empire has no ideology, but it is held together by cooperation with individual governments who do. The problem this creates is that sometimes the ideologies of those states cause them to do things that go against the interests of the empire as a whole. Israel can just up and decide to commit a genocidal massacre in front of everyone. Saudi Arabia can decide it’s going to dismember a Washington Post reporter with a bone saw. Proxies in Ukraine can keep saying Nazi things and sporting Nazi insignia in public. They do these things because unlike the top brass in the imperial power structure they are guided by ideology, with no regard for the need to preserve the empire’s image as a “rules-based international order”.
This often creates a PR crisis for the empire, because the public will cease consenting to the network of alliances, partners and assets if it becomes sufficiently aware of the depravity needed to hold it all together. This is typically easy to resolve because the US empire has the most sophisticated propaganda machine in the history of civilization, but that propaganda machine is operated by individuals — individuals who may have learned about Palestinian rights at university, or who were disgusted about the way their employer ran cover for Israel’s murder of Shireen Abu Akleh only to find out Israel did it and was lying. So they don’t always play along with the imperial machine in their reporting, thereby exacerbating the empire’s PR crisis.
The worst thing that could possibly happen, from the empire’s point of view, is for the public to start opening their eyes to its criminality. With Israel on a genocidal rampage as pro-Palestinian protesters flood the streets worldwide, we may be certain that the manipulators who are responsible for imperial perception management are in full crisis mode, because if a critical mass of people can pick apart this one lie, it opens up the possibility of their unplugging themselves from the whole propaganda matrix that keeps the empire operational.
The empire managers are standing by Israel’s side and doing everything they can to pretend its actions are right and just, but they are fidgeting uncomfortably, and behind the scenes we may be sure they’re in total damage control. That’s why we’re being slammed with such a mad deluge of propaganda right now, and that’s why they’re doing everything they can to censor and suppress and shut down voices who are critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
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“Hey what do you do for a living Caitlin?”
“Oh these days I mostly accidentally look at footage of dead Palestinian kids on my social media feed and cry and get called an anti-semite.”
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If you didn’t already know that Israel apologists use false accusations of anti-semitism to shut down criticism of Israel, you should know it now. When they’re trying to tell you Greta Thunberg is a closet Nazi sending out obscure Nazi dogwhistles, it’s right there in your face.
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If someone asked me to design the absolute worst place anyone could possibly detonate thousands of explosive munitions on, I’d probably come up with a densely populated area full of easily collapsed buildings wherein an extremely high percentage of the population are children.
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It should be clear to everyone by now that a huge percentage of the right wingers who criticized US proxy warfare via Ukraine did so only because they were worried it might take away from US proxy warfare via Israel.
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One of the reasons this specific bombing campaign is getting so much more public backlash than others is because the pro-Palestine movement has had generations to build, whereas when the US empire lays waste to a country using military explosives it’s normally a fast ordeal which moves from manufacturing consent to execution very quickly. By the time people figure out they were lied to about the justifications for a depraved war the empire is usually two or three new wars down the track. The Israel-Palestine issue has been just sitting there for decades, so there’s been time to accumulate popular opposition. Once someone learns about the realities of the Palestinian plight they very seldom abandon their support for it, so every newly-opened pair of eyes stays open on this issue for a lifetime.
Another major reason is because of humanity’s exponentially expanded ability to rapidly share information in recent years. Palestinians have become able to record the abuses of Israeli apartheid and bombing campaigns on their phones and upload them onto the internet, where they rapidly circulate on social media. This ability to rapidly circulate raw video footage has played a major role in Israel’s PR problem in recent years, because there’s nothing an Israel apologist can say that will have more impact than raw footage of an Israeli settler telling a Palestinian family that he stole their home because “If I don’t steal it, someone else is gonna steal it.” This killed off a lot of public sympathy for Israel in the lead-up to the current onslaught.
Another reason is because the pro-Palestine movement was carried on the tide of the global movement against apartheid South Africa, giving the world a framework to understand Israeli abuses and helping to build the base of a related cause.
Another reason is because many of us in colonized countries like Australia, the US and Canada recognize the patterns of what’s happening in Israel and see that there’s an opportunity for human history to get it right this time before the genocide machine really gets going.
Another reason is because it’s been widely accepted by western society that racism is a bad thing and the abuses which led to this particular bombing campaign are so clearly fueled by racism.
Another reason is because the abuses of the Israeli regime are so glaringly obvious and uncomplicated that they can override all the propaganda and cognitive biases we are swimming in in western civilization. All most people need is to really see it and wrap their minds around what they’re seeing, and truth does the rest of the work for them. That was the case before the Gaza massacre began, and it’s so much more so now.
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http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/a-financial-crisis-is-here-u-s-banks-are-closing-down-hundreds-of-branches-and-laying-off-thousands-of-workers
A Financial Crisis Is Here! U.S. Banks Are Closing Down Hundreds Of Branches And Laying Off Thousands Of Workers
I know that there is a lot going on in the world right now, but I just had to write about what is happening to our banks. High interest rates and chaos in the real estate industry are combining to put an enormous amount of pressure on our largest financial institutions. As a result, banks are getting very tight with their money, they are closing down hundreds of branches, and they are laying off thousands of workers. We are in the early stages of the worst financial crisis since 2008 and 2009, and I fully expect conditions to get even worse in the months ahead.
During the first week of October alone, U.S. banks closed a whopping 54 local branches…
Major US banks are continuing to close branches across the US, leaving an increasing number of Americans without access to basic financial services.
Bank of America axed 21 branches in the first week of October, according to a bulletin published by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Friday.
Wells Fargo shuttered 15, while US Bank and Chase reported closing nine and three respectively.
In total, some 54 locations had either closed or were scheduled to close between October 1 and October 7.
That is just one week!
Of course bank branches have been closing at a frightening pace for quite some time now.
Last year, U.S. banks shut down about 2,000 more branches than they opened…
Banks are closing branches faster than they’re opening new ones. U.S. banks closed over 3,000 branches last year while opening just 1,000. JPMorgan Chase led in branch closures last year, shuttering 144 branches, while opening 133. The trend will likely continue as banks face staunch competition for deposits and younger customers from online banks, fintech firms and Big Tech.
Unless you live under a rock, I am sure that you have noticed this happening in your own local area.
For many Americans, a “trip to the bank” is no longer just a few minutes away.
And our banks are also laying off staggering numbers of workers here in 2023…
The largest American banks have been quietly laying off workers all year — and some of the deepest cuts are yet to come.
Even as the economy has surprised forecasters with its resilience, lenders have cut headcount or announced plans to do so, with the key exception being JPMorgan Chase, the biggest and most profitable U.S. bank.
Pressured by the impact of higher interest rates on the mortgage business, Wall Street deal-making and funding costs, the next five largest U.S. banks have cut a combined 20,000 positions so far this year, according to company filings.
The banking industry is in trouble.
Big trouble.
And this is happening at a time when economic conditions are steadily deteriorating.
In fact, we just learned that the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has now fallen for 18 months in a row…
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. declined by 0.7 percent in September 2023 to 104.6 (2016=100), following a decline of 0.5 percent in August. The LEI is down 3.4 percent over the six-month period between March and September 2023, an improvement from its 4.6 percent contraction over the previous six months (September 2022 to March 2023).
“The LEI for the US fell again in September, marking a year and a half of consecutive monthly declines since April 2022,” said Justyna Zabinska-La Monica, Senior Manager, Business Cycle Indicators, at The Conference Board. “In September, negative or flat contributions from nine of the index’s ten components more than offset fewer initial claims for unemployment insurance. Although the six-month growth rate in the LEI is somewhat less negative, and the recession signal did not sound, it still signals risk of economic weakness ahead. So far, the US economy has shown considerable resilience despite pressures from rising interest rates and high inflation. Nonetheless, The Conference Board forecasts that this trend will not be sustained for much longer, and a shallow recession is likely in the first half of 2024.”
If things are this bad now, what is going to happen if the hot phase of World War III suddenly erupts in the Middle East?
At this point, nobody can claim that the economy is headed in the right direction.
During the first nine months of this year, the number of commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies was 61 percent higher than it was during the same period a year ago…
A wide array of U.S. businesses have struggled this year. In the first nine months of 2023, commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies have soared 61% year over year to 4,553, according to Epiq Bankruptcy, which provides U.S. bankruptcy filing data.
61 percent!
Let that number sink in for a moment.
And we have just learned that sales of previously owned homes have dropped to a level not seen since 2010 when the U.S. “was in the midst of a foreclosure crisis”…
Sales of previously owned homes dropped 2% in September from August to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.96 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales were 15.4% lower compared with September 2022.
This is the slowest sales pace since October 2010, during the Great Recession, when the market was in the midst of a foreclosure crisis. As a comparison, just two years ago, when mortgage rates hovered around 3%, home sales were running at a 6.6 million pace. The average rate on the 30-year fixed today is right around 8%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Speaking of home foreclosures, they are up 34 percent compared to the same time in 2022…
Home foreclosures are on the rise as Americans continue to grapple with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
That is according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which found that foreclosure filings – which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions – surged 28% in the third quarter to 124,539.
Foreclosures are up 34% from the same time one year ago.
A new economic crisis is here.
And the truth is that it is going to get a whole lot worse.
So even though things are not great now, enjoy these last few days of
relative stability while you still can, because war in the Middle East
will soon plunge the entire global economy into a state of great
turmoil.
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