Opinion
Under the slogan ‘Gaza is Ours, Forever’, a large number of Israeli extremists and right-wing politicians met in the settlement of Be’eri, near the Gaza border region, on October 20-21.
The group represented the who’s who in the Israeli right, far right and ultranationalists. They included Israeli Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, May Golan and Bezalel Smotrich, as well as ten MKs of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
The event, entitled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza”, was organized by one of Israel’s most extreme settler movements, Nachala, led by the notorious Daniella Weiss.
“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the ocean. Yeah, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
This racist pseudo-joke, uttered by Tony Hinchecliffe at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27, has been virally shamed. It’s even been denounced by Team Trump itself. But I bring it back into the limelight for a moment for several eerily linked reasons.
In two dozen words, followed by a snort of guilty laughter, this “joke” describes, indeed, encompasses, a serious slice of how humanity is destroying Planet Earth. To begin with, Hinchecliffe is right about the “floating Island of garbage.” There is such a phenomenon, the presence of which no doubt deserves far more concern and attention than it gets.
“I’m just a consumer” is a phrase I often heard on shop floors during my youth when I lived in Columbus and other places in the U.S. It’s worth noting managers and department heads shared those feelings.
I admit I can understand why, and there are at least four good reasons for such sentiments.
Spending that Paycheck
First, we buy the merchandise we need in the weekly grocery store with the income from our employment, then run to pay the rent or mortgage, utilities, car payment, and so on. Spending that paychec reinforces that “I’m just a consumer” feeling. Writing these lines, I recall a coworker who often whined aloud how “it feels like I live for my car!” She wasn’t able to save for things she really wanted because the car, house, appliances, and so forth always needed repair and replacing.
The first Germans Hitler sent to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich were labor organizers and social activists. If you think you are immune from a similar fate at a concentration camp established by Donald Trump, you are deluding yourself.
Dachau’s ovens mass-burned the corpses of countless political prisoners. Many were Jews, but many were not… including gays, non-Christians, cultural “sub-humans,” feminists, gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Social Democrats, Communists, democracy activists and “others” very possibly similar in some ways to you yourself. Likewise, Bergen-Belsen, where over 35,000+ dissident bodies lay lifeless (including that of Anne Frank).
In case you were wondering these are the camps where Hitler exterminated people:
Major Extermination Camps (Primarily for Systematic Killing)
Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland)
Maybe you’ve heard some of the buzz about “Project 2025.” What is it — and what would it mean for you and your family?
Project 2025 is a proposed “transition plan for a new Republican administration” put together by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. It’s an in-depth list of what conservative groups will push for in the event of a Trump victory in the fall.
https://davidswanson.org/hes-a-senile-demented-fascistic-buffoonish-sadistic-thug/
He’s a wealthy scam artist snake oil salesman who’s cheated and stolen his whole life and conned his way into being president just a few years ago, and while president did pretty much whatever the establishment told him to do, even while giving speeches like an angry narcissist with a third-grade vocabulary. Then he tried to stay president, but his brownshirts turned out to be mostly brownnosers. Now you think he should get your “anti-establishment” vote?
He’s a serial rapist, abuser, and convicted felon who promises to use courts, police, and military to target his enemies, and you think he should get your “law and order” vote?
The Democrats have ripped you off and catered to people just like Trump your whole life, so you figure the solution is to put one of the oligarchs they’ve given all of your money to in power where he can squeeze the last dimes out of you?
[This important and delayed compilation is a bit longer than usual but it
takes 7 minutes to read if you do not open links. Please forward to others
at least sections you think they need to see. This post is also at my blog
for easy share:
https://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2024/10/olives-hope-and-more.html ]
Today is the last day we work on our olive trees at the museum gardens in
Bethlehem (80 trees). Earlier last week we picked olives in our own home
garden in Beit Sahour. This is a form of resistance but it is also
physically and mentally healthy exercise that gets us to understand both
the blessings and the challenges of life. As a communal event, we receive
help from volunteers (local and international) and we get to feel
camaraderie and friendship while we also discuss the horrors of starving
people of Gaza, of children body parts blown by US bombs, of what motivates
genocide, geopolitics, and of our role and purpose in life. T see
pictures/reports on activities at our institute, check out our facebook