The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."
So
it was shocking -- in a good way, for once -- to hear these words from
Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, as he vetoed a bill that would
have banned puberty blockers and hormones and gender-affirming surgeries
for trans and nonbinary minors in Ohio and blocked transgender girls
and women from participating in sports as their chosen gender:
“Were
House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the state, that
the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the
two people who love that child the most -- the parents,” DeWine said in
prepared remarks. “Parents are making decisions about the most precious
thing in their life, their child, and none of us, none of us, should
underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions.”
DeWine,
by situating his opposition to the bill on the chosen battlefield of
far-right activists -- parents’ rights -- was tapping into an idiom that
is at once deeply familiar to me and yet has almost entirely disappeared
from our national political discourse: that of a mainstream, Midwestern
Republican. It is a voice I know well because it is one I heard all my
life from my Midwestern Republican grandparents.
It
is no mere coincidence that state legislatures, in addition to banning
reproductive healthcare, are banning gender-affirming transition
procedures for trans people, working to revoke the legal status of
marriage equality for same-sex couples, banning classroom discussions of
race, gender, and sexuality in the public schools and libraries, and
criminalizing drag story hour for children. In addition, many
Republican-dominated state governments are limiting access to the ballot
box for marginalized populations to ensure continued Republican control
of power.
Historian Amanda Tyler defines
Christian nationalism as “a political ideology and cultural framework
that seeks to merge American and Christian identities, distorting both
the Christian faith and America’s promise of religious freedom.”
Christian nationalism relies on the mythological founding of the United
States as a “Christian nation,” singled out for God’s providence in
order to fulfill God’s purpose on earth. Christian nationalism demands a
privileged place for Christianity in public life, buttressed by the
active support of government at all levels.
Anthea Butler distinguishes, more specifically, the definition of white Christian
nationalism: “Simply put, it is the belief that America’s founding is
based on Christian principles, white protestant Christianity is the
operational religion of the land, and that Christianity should be the
foundation of how the nation develops its laws, principles and
policies.”
Though
I rarely offer comparisons between the German Third Reich’s ascension
to power and the contemporary United States – since to do so could
trivialize one of the most horrific episodes in human history – I am
nonetheless haunted by certain parallels that demand voicing.
I
am troubled by multiple similarities between that time not so very long
ago and the events transpiring today. I highlight in particular the
parallels in Nazi portrayals and understandings of sex, sexuality, and
gender with white Christian nationalism’s divisive and brutal agenda
that is anti-feminist, anti-reproductive freedom, anti-lesbian,
anti-gay, anti-bisexual, anti-transgender, anti-gender nonconforming,
and anti-sexuality education in schools.
Tuesday, January 2, 2024. The assault on Gaza continues, Joe Biden continues to search for a spine, and much more.
The
government of Israel is pulling a small number of troops from Gaza and
some outlets are trying to distort this into some sort of end of war or
move towards a cease-fire. It is nothing of the sort. They're being
pulled so that the Israeli government can attack other areas. CNN's Amir Tal and Charbel Mallo note that the Israeli military is also now attacking Lebanon and Syria. NBC NEWS adds, "Israel says it will withdraw five military brigades, including many reservists, from the Gaza Strip this week in an effort to pace itself for an expected long-term conflict and to mitigate damage to its economy."
The number of Palestinians killed by Israel since October 7 is more than 20,000 according
to the Gaza Health Ministry, although no one can give an exact number
under these circumstances. As I write, in early December, Israel has
just bombed a residential bloc in the crowded Shuja’iyya district in
Gaza City, destroying 50 more houses on top of their residents. The amount of destruction brought upon the people of Gaza, unseen since 1948, suggests one thing: Israel’s clear intention to depopulate Gaza, a plan that Tel Aviv tried to implement in the past but has never succeeded at.
While grieving the dead, Gazans are also mourning the loss of
familiar landscapes as major landmarks in Gaza City turn to rubble.
Israel seems intent on eradicating not just Gaza’s future, but its past.
Churches, universities, cultural sites and the city’s main archive, which housed more than 100 years of historical records, have been destroyed in airstrikes. In early December 2023,
Israel bombed the Great Omari Mosque, the largest mosque in the city
and the site of thousands of years of history spanning multiple faiths.
On that site is believed to have stood the temple of Dagon central to
the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, which later became a Byzantine
church to the patron god of Gaza, Marnas, which Rome then destroyed to
build a Christian church, whose ruins were used to build the mosque.
But Gaza’s people, known for their love for spices and chiles
(brought to the Arabian Peninsula through Gaza’s old seaport), have
always been stubborn. The coastal enclave has been conquered and
destroyed numerous times in the past 3,500 years;
the city’s symbol is the phoenix, rising from the ashes. Alexander the
Great lost three battles before conquering Gaza; the Allied Forces
during World War I, more than two millennia later, lost two.
Gaza was the last Palestinian city to convert to Christianity, around the year 400. After the Islamic conquest of Palestine, in 636, a strong Christian minority remained (although it has dwindled to 1,000 people in recent years, as young Christians fled the occupation).
In 1948, the Greater Gaza district included 45 villages,
mostly agricultural communities. All of these villages were ethnically
cleansed by Zionist militias seizing the land. The Palestinians from
these villages ended up as refugees in what became the Gaza Strip,
a tiny territory that makes up 1.3% of historic Palestine. Between May and October 1948, the population of Gaza tripled, from 100,000 to 300,000.
Today, the population is 70% refugees. Since 2007,
Gazans have been living under a tight Israeli land, air and sea
blockade, suffocating their potential and their ability to lead a normal
life. The unemployment among young people has risen to 70%. Hundreds of Palestinians have died waiting for Israel to issue permits for access to medical care. In 2007, my sister, 26 at
the time, needed a minor surgery, but her application to leave Gaza was
denied for a week; when she was finally able to have the surgery, she
was unable to handle it, and she lost her life.
Gaza remains under assault. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza
by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.
But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge
for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel,
the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover
for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.
Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily
basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to
school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe
Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll.
The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom
believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The
slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US
Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned
the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of
Palestinians in Gaza is now well over 20,000. NBC NEWS notes, "The vast
majority of its 2.2 million people are displaced, and an estimated half
face starvation amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis." ABC NEWS notes, "In the Gaza Strip, at least 20,915 people have been killed and more than
54,900 others have been wounded by Israeli forces since Oct. 7,
according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and the Government Media
Office." Actually, that figure has already been updated. ALJAZEERA notes,
"The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose to 21,978." That's an
increase of nearly one thousand since Friday. What is the magic number,
by the way, the death toll that moves Joe Biden to action? Friday, THE GUARDIAN notes,
"The ministry reported that 55,243 people had been
wounded. It said 195 people were killed and 325 injured in the last 24
hours." In addition to the dead
and
the injured, there are the missing. AP notes, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." And the area itself? Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive
has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole
neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been
blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are
still standing, but most are battered shells." Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery
by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and
Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing
destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate
of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second
World War." Max Butterworth (NBC NEWS) adds, "Satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies on Sunday reveal three
of the main hospitals in Gaza from above, surrounded by the rubble of
destroyed buildings after weeks of intense bombing in the region by
Israeli forces."
In Palestine
the turn of the year was marked by continuing horror. In the final days
of 2023 Israel only accelerated its plan to massacre and displace as
many Palestinians as possible.
The terror state continued to flatten whole neighbourhoods in Gaza
with its bombs. And it targeted those left homeless with a bloody ground
assault. The Red Cross wrote last week that Israel’s war has now forced
1.9 million people out of their homes.
Most are now internally displaced within Gaza and have been forced to
shelter in makeshift tents that do little to keep out the rain or the
cold. Ibitsam, who lives in Deir el-Balah,
in central Gaza, told Socialist Worker, “People have nowhere but
streets. Hundreds and maybe thousands are homeless in Gaza as people’s
houses and shelters are full. Gazans don’t only die from rockets but
also from cold, dirt, diseases and hunger.”
Zahrat, who lives near Nablus, in the West Bank, told Socialist Worker that watching from close by is “terrifying and heartbreaking.”
“The bombing is now intensifying to increase the death toll, and
homes are being demolished over the heads of their owners without
warning. And the Israelis are killing journalists to prevent the truth
from reaching the world. This is a war of deliberate killing and
extermination of civilians.
“The remaining population lives in fear, without food, without
shelter, without electricity, and in the open in this cold weather. I
don’t understand how the world could have celebrated Christmas and New
Year. While the children of the world received gifts, the children of
Palestine were under bombardment.
“Save what is left of Gaza by pressuring your governments across the world to stop this war.”
Palestinians are still trying to count the dead after Israel bombed the Maghazi
refugee camp, in central Gaza, on Christmas Eve. After the attack,
Israeli said it “regretted” how many civilians had been killed because
its soldiers “accidentally” used the wrong kind of bombs.
An Israeli Defence Forces spokesperson said that “the type of
munition did not match the nature of the attack, causing extensive
collateral damage that could have been avoided.”
The Maghazi camp was one of the areas Israel had instructed
Palestinians to evacuate to and which it had labelled “safe”. The
official death toll following the attack currently stands just under
100, but residents of the camp say that figure is likely to rise.
Ahmed Maghari, a resident of Maghazi, said, “We pulled out so many
body parts that we can’t even estimate the total number of deaths yet.
In each home, there’s a minimum of 50 people.
“A lot of them are displaced Palestinians from other parts of Gaza
who were forced to flee their homes. They’re all in pieces, and we’re
pulling them out with our bare hands,” he added.
“We’ve now gathered at least two piles of body parts.”
If the scale of death at Maghazi was unintentional, as Israel
suggests, that must mean the numbers of dead after every other massacre
it commits are intentional.
Delegates at the United Nations
(UN) last month finally passed a resolution on the war on Gaza. But
rather than calling for an immediate ceasefire, as millions of people
across the world are demanding, it instead is just a promise for more
aid.
Western powers have repeatedly blocked calls for a break in Israel’s
bombardment. They ensured only language acceptable to Israel was
contained in the final motion.
The resolution now says the UN will “facilitate and enable the
immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at
scale.” Farcically, the West prevented the UN from calling for an end to
Israel’s targeting of its own agencies in Gaza.
The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees was hit by Israeli troops last
week. “Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from
northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli army,” Thomas
White, director of the agency in the Gaza Strip, said in a statement.
“Our international convoy leader and his team were not injured but one
vehicle sustained damage,” he added.
In total, 180 UN facilities have been targeted by Israel, including
schools and medical facilities. Even if the UN were to take a tougher
line, Israel would likely ignore it. Since 1968 it has broken over 30 UN
resolutions.
Millions of workers and young people have protested in the UK and
internationally, outraged by the slaughter carried out by Israel in Gaza
with the explicit aim of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. Their
anger is directed not only against Netanyahu’s fascist government, but
their backers in Britain’s parliament and paymasters in the United
States.
But Britain’s Stop the War Coalition (STWC) and its
political leader Jeremy Corbyn have sought to limit all protests to
placing pressure on the Conservative government, and its de facto allies
in the Labour Party, to shift from their naked support for Israel and
instead demand a ceasefire.
Week after week, the Israeli war machine grinds on and the mountain
of Palestinian corpses grows while governments have either made their
appeals for “pauses” or ceasefires in the United Nations, or abstained
like the UK—all knowing that the US-Israel axis will ensure the genocide
continues unabated.
In the mouths of everyone from President
Macron in France to the despotic rulers of various Arab regimes, calls
for a ceasefire are a transparent cover for their active collusion with
Israel in its efforts to ethnically cleanse Gaza, to be followed by the
West Bank and Israel itself. Yet the more bankrupt this perspective has
proved, the more Stop the War insists that success will come by just
getting more people onto the streets.
December 9 saw the seventh
national march demanding a ceasefire since October 7 and the last
scheduled to take place until January 13 next year. The lead-up to that
march saw the campaign for Britain to demand a ceasefire go down to a
catastrophic defeat. On November 15, the first UK vote of any kind was
held on Israel’s genocidal assault, on a Scottish National Party’s (SNP)
ceasefire amendment to the King’s Speech.
In the weeks before
this vote, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer became a hate figure for
millions because of his justification of war crimes by citing Israel’s
“right to self defence”. Facing a backlash, more than two dozen Labour
councillors quit, while thousands wrote condemning the party’s position
and demonstrations took place outside MP’s constituency offices.
On
November 11, 800,000 marched in London demanding a ceasefire in the
biggest protest in the UK since the 2003 march against the Iraq War.
Despite this, and after five weeks of mass murder, Starmer did not budge
an inch—just four days later whipping his MPs to oppose the ceasefire
amendment. The SNP’s motion met with a resounding No, with 293 against
and just 125 in favour. A large portion of the Tory Party’s 350 MPs were
not even required to cast a vote to ensure its defeat.
Close to three quarters (142) of Labour MPs followed Starmer’s order
to abstain. Only 56 voted for a ceasefire. As the WSWS wrote, “Not one
of the Labour MPs who broke with Starmer’s orders in this vote has any
intention of breaking with the Labour Party or waging any fight against
its pro-genocide majority. Few were thinking about saving anything other
than their chances of re-election.”
In the vote’s aftermath,
eight members of Labour’s frontbench resigned or were sacked and the
party machine rumbled on. Most who did resign professed their continued
loyalty to Starmer, with Labour Friends of Israel member Jess Phillips’s
“Dear Keir” resignation letter noting her “heavy heart”, pride in “your
Labour Party” and pledge to “do everything I can to deliver a Labour
government…” Most of these scoundrels will be back on board in due
course.
More revolting still was the refusal of a single nominally
“left” MP to break from the party, after weeks of near blanket refusal
to even criticise Starmer by name for his criminal collusion with
genocide.
In the US, Joe Biden remains
committed to the slaughter as it continues to destroy his chances of
re-election. He stands on the world stage exposed as a scared and
elderly man not fit to lead a nation as evidenced by his refusal to show
true leadership and demand an immediate cease-fire. Instead of
demanding what is required, he continues to back the slaughter and
supply weapons. Jordan Shilton (WSWS) notes, "The far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can
only proceed with such aggression because it knows it enjoys the
unconditional support of US imperialism and its European allies. In the
latest example of this fact, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken declared
an emergency situation to bypass the requirement to obtain
congressional approval for the sale of M107 155mm shells worth close to
$150 million to Israel. The shells are typically fired from howitzer
guns and will enable the IDF to continue its indiscriminate bombardments
of densely populated areas."
March 31, 1968, then-President LBJ declared,
"Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination
of my party for another term as your President." If Joe can't find his
spine, it's time for him to start crafting his speech announcing he will
not seek re-election because he's destroying the party currently.
Young people are not motivated to vote for him, they are horrified by
his actions. Muslim Americans who had to live through the witch hunts
following 9/11 are not on board with a second term of Joe Biden. He
should not be allowed to drag the entire political party down with him.
The
only way he can be re-elected currently is for the media to fall in
line and lie for him. That's what the silencing is about.
Janine Jackson: Depending
on when you hear this, the Rutgers/New Brunswick chapter of Students
for Justice in Palestine might be the most recent campus group to be suspended for what administrators called “disruptive and disorderly conduct,” and “failure to comply with university or civil authority.”
SJP
is a student-activist network of campus groups in support of
Palestinian lives and liberation, and naturally very active now in the
midst of Israeli military attacks on Gaza that, as we record, have
killed some 20,000 Palestinians minimally, injuring and displacing
orders of magnitude more.
Calls for a ceasefire, at least, are
growing in this country and around the world, but that’s in the face of
ever-more aggressive, top-down efforts to shut those calls, and the
people making them, down. If we are to resist what many are calling a
new McCarthyism, we need to inform ourselves of what and where the
concerns are, and to stay in conversation with one another.
Here to help us with both of those is Wadie Said, professor of law and dean’s faculty fellow at the University of Colorado Law School, and author of the book Crimes of Terror, out from Oxford University Press. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Wadie Said.
Wadie Said: Thank you for having me.
JJ: Listeners will have heard the unsettling reports—more, it seems, each day—of not only student groups being shut down on campus, but powerful people calling for publishing lists of the names of any students who even sign a petition, so that they can be denied future jobs.
We’ve
seen editors and journalists and other workers fired, forced out or
reprimanded for indicating in any way that they oppose, not even the
state of Israel, but the killing and harming and displacing of thousands
and thousands of people. Poetry and art events canceled, just for
suggesting support for Palestinians, and many of it coming with this
kind of fig leaf of: This targeting—which to be clear, we do hope ruins
your life—it isn’t just because you don’t support Israel in all of its
actions, but because, by our reckoning, you insufficiently oppose Hamas
and what it does.
It is lost on few people who are paying attention that we are living in a
very disturbing moment for an aspiring democracy, and it’s within this
context that we see the piece that you recently co-authored with Anthony O’Rourke for Dissent,
in which you warn that this is potentially moving beyond private
institutions like universities or Wall Street companies using their
power to sanction or to intimidate—not that that doesn’t mean real,
material harm—but moving to federal law enforcement facing pressure to
employ a particular federal statute that kicks a number of other things
into play.
And you note that this tool wasn’t even at the hands of the FBI during the COINTEL Program,
which some of us will remember from the 1960s. So there are levels of
troubling things happening here, but let’s get started with: What is the
statute that you’re talking about, and why are you concerned that it
could come into play right now?
WS: The ban on providing
material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations, with the
law that was passed by Congress as part of a larger omnibus bill that
purported to reform both—and, I use “reform” in the most euphemistic
sense of the word, it was actually a kind of crackdown on immigration to
this country, and also on habeas corpus rights for federal and state
prisoners, where the avenues for relief were significantly narrowed.
And
within the confines of this larger bill, there was an element that
purported to take on the problem of terrorism. And this was in 1996 that
the law was actually passed. So it predates the September 11 attacks by
over five years. And the way the law works, is it gives the secretary
of state the authority to designate organizations, provided that they’re
one, foreign; two, engage in terrorist activity; and three, that
terrorist activity hurts American national security, or other foreign
interests or economic interests of the United States.
And this is a
finding that’s completely within the province of the secretary of
state. So this isn’t something that you or I or anyone else can
challenge in a court. In fact, the only way to challenge a group being
designated as a foreign terrorist organization is if someone were to
argue, well, you got the wrong group, or you got the name wrong, or
something like that. Just on purely administrative basis. There’s no
substantive basis to challenge this.
And once the group is
designated as an FTO, or foreign terrorist organization, individuals,
wherever they are, are prohibited from providing what is called material
support. And when the law was passed in 1996, the idea was that there
was a problem in the United States that Congress was cracking down on,
terrorist organizations raising money via humanitarian or charitable
activity.
And the idea was that Congress made a finding in passing
this law that money is fungible, and so money for legitimate charitable
activity—the government never challenged that the activity in question
was charitable activity. They just said that if a terrorist group is
raising money for charity, that frees up money for buying weapons and
conducting violent activity. And it can be banned as such. It can be
criminalized as such.
The interesting thing here of—well, there
are many interesting things, but some of the interesting things here
are, for example, one, this bill created a list of foreign terrorist
organizations, but it was passed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, which was a decidedly domestic act. And there’s no corresponding list of domestic terrorist organizations.
Two,
this purported problem of terrorist organizations raising money in the
United States under the cover of humanitarian activity, I personally
have never seen, and I’ve been following this law since it was passed,
and litigating it and studying it for over 20 years. And I do have to
say I have never seen evidence that this was a really pressing problem,
that the United States was somehow a way station for terrorist
organizations to raise money under cover of charitable activity. So
there’s that issue as well.
And then, the final issue is that the
concept of material support, money and weapons and things like this,
tangible items that contribute to an organization’s illegal ends or
illegal goal, that has expanded to include things like free speech. So
in 2010, the Supreme Court, in a case called Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, decided that “material support” in the form of speech could be criminalized.
So
the group of the day is Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement; if I
wanted to say, “Hey, you need to work according to international law and
be less violent and use peaceful means to pursue your goals and get
away from violence,” I could be prosecuted for providing material
support to a foreign terrorist organization, provided that that support
is done in coordination with, or under the direction of, the foreign
terrorist organization.
The key stop that the Supreme Court put in
place, because they realized that this was going after what was
otherwise protected free speech, the key stop or safety valve provision
that they put in, well, they said, provided the speech that is being
criminalized with material support has to be “in conjunction with,” or
“at the behest of,” a terrorist organization. Independent advocacy is
not covered.
So that’s why when we see, for example, the Brandeis
Center (which is not affiliated with Brandeis University, as my
co-author Tony O’Rourke has pointed out several times), and the ADL,
when they make the call
for students, pro-Palestinian activist students, to be investigated
under this law, it’s disingenuous for numerous reasons, but primarily
because there is no evidence, as far as I know of, that these students
are acting in coordination with or at the behest of Hamas, for example.
So
this is a kind of an interesting gray area, where the call to
investigate and the concept of material support, it’s broad enough that
perhaps the FBI or other federal agencies could investigate. It may not
lead to criminal charges, but the fact of an investigation is enough of
an impediment and enough of a chill to be alarming to those of us who
believe that free speech rights should be much better protected.
JJ: Absolutely. And I think the word “chill” is of course important here. There was, listeners may know, a Senate resolution
that condemned anti-Israel, pro-Hamas student groups. And that
language—you don’t have to be a historian or a regional expert to
understand that “anti-Israel,” “pro-Hamas,” is very inexact language,
and intentionally broad and leading. And you can hear the echoes of it.
If you were someone who condemned the US invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq, there were people online who called you pro–Al Qaeda or whatever,
but it didn’t necessarily, although it did in some cases, come with this
law enforcement, federal definition that that speech was in fact in
support of a foreign terrorist operation.
So I think what we’re
trying to say, or what I’m trying to say, is there’s a whole lot of
discretion involved here by federal law enforcement: who they choose to
identify as a threat, what they call material support, who they use it
against, who gets to bring the cases. These are kind of the questions
that you’re bringing up in that piece, that it’s not like, this is a law
and it’s just being applied. This is a law with a whole lot of
discretion being very particularly or potentially particularly applied.
WS: Of course. And I think one of the things that I
identified, again, many years ago, when I was a federal public defender
and working on a case involving material support charges, and I’ve
talked about this quite a bit in terms of my writing, but I initially
saw it in the context of a terrorism prosecution, where you see how the
material support law has what I call a double selectivity problem.
The
first is, “Who gets on the list?” So it’s not every group that engages
in—not every non-state group, it has to be said; these are all non-state
actors, with the one exception of the Iranian, it’s kind of confusing,
the Iranian Republican Guard, but they call themselves the Islamic
Republican Guard, that’s part of the Iranian government. So that’s the
one exception to the whole apparatus that targets non-state groups, with
the one exception of this Iranian group, but basically targets these
non-state groups.
So there’s a question of who gets on the list,
OK, which is 100% within the discretion of the secretary of state. It’s
not something that you or I can say anything about or influence.
And
then there’s a question of, even if a group gets on the list, it
doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone’s going to be prosecuted for
providing material support to any particular FTO, because, like you
mentioned, this is all discretionary. Prosecutors have basically
unreviewable discretion to bring these type of cases, provided they’re
free of overt bias, which is almost impossible to prove.
Silencing
also includes burying reality about Israelis reacting against the
slaughter. Which is why 60 MINUTES avoids Tal Mitnick and it's left to Omri Wolfe (WSWS) to report:
Tal Mitnick, an 18-year-old conscript to the Israeli Defense Forces
(IDF), refused to serve and was sentenced to a 30-day prison term.
Mitnick is one of hundreds of Israeli teenagers who have refused
military enlistment this year to protest the Palestinian occupation. His
refusal became a lightning rod in Israeli politics because of his
sentence and the sharply worded political statement he published on
social media, tearing down the arguments of the defenders of genocide.
Fortress Israel always requires an endless stream of fresh recruits,
guaranteed through Israel’s conscription laws, which mandate military
service for both men and women, including reserve duty until age 40 or
beyond.
Israel is a garrison state. Its navy strictly controls
the shared coastline with the Gaza Strip; pilots crisscross the skies to
carpet bomb the Palestinians or evade air defenses en route to Iran;
drone pilots operate the densest reconnaissance network in the world;
intelligence agents capture and process millions of signals a day; spies
conduct assassinations abroad; and engineers maintain a massive nuclear
arsenal, the Iron Dome missile shield, and sophisticated cyber
operations. The West Bank is crowded with young foot soldiers guarding
illegal settlements, patrolling endless checkpoints, and meting out
military justice against an occupied population.
Military service
functions as a pipeline to private industry, and placement in
competitive military units is a prerequisite to specialized careers. The
question, “In what unit did you serve?” is the Israeli equivalent of
“How’s the weather?” and a non-answer may invite condemnation.
Mitnick’s
decision to refuse would therefore be a courageous act of defiance at
any time. Amid the xenophobic anti-Palestinian hysteria whipped up to
justify genocide in Gaza, it assumes even greater significance. Despite
widespread enlistment exemptions granted for religious, health, and
increasingly mental health reasons, the Zionist state views Mitnick’s
refusal under conscientious objector status as treasonous and,
consequently, is making an example of him.
While first-time refusal often carries a sentence of 7-10 days,
Mitnick has been sentenced to thirty days’ imprisonment, after which he
will again be called up, again refuse, and face further punishments to
act as a deterrent to others contemplating similar protests against the
war crimes of the Israeli state.
Mitnick published a statement
on Twitter/X, stating, “Violence cannot solve the situation, neither by
Hamas, nor by Israel. There is no military solution to a political
problem.” He lays out the political problem in clear and powerful
language: “Before the war, the army guarded the settlements, maintained
the murderous siege on the Gaza Strip, and upheld the status quo of
apartheid and Jewish supremacy in the land between the Jordan [river]
and the [Mediterranean] Sea.”
Miss Piggy made talking pigs looked so cute. Then again, she was a puppet. Allie Stuckey? What's an Allie Stuckey? Imagine Miss Piggy without the charm, without the feminine wiles, without the brains and without the humor. without the talent but with the smell of corn chips and piss cloaking her and you've got Allie Stuckey.
Last week, like most Americans, we learned of Allie's existence. Prior to THE MAJORITY REPORT WITH SAM SEDER, Allie Stuckey had been confined to her sty.
Every child deserves a mother and a father, Allie oinks. But before you think she's trying to help children get adopted or bemoaning the reality of children whose parents pass away when they're young, grasp that she's just an ugly bigot. Well . . . ugly and stupid.
Sam and the crew dissect some of her stupidity. Stream the video for that.
Portly Pig Allie Stuckey rages about the Supreme Court decision OBERGEFELL V HODGES because if other people have rights, she's not pleased with what she has.
"Only God," piggie snorts can define marriage. Whose God? The Hindu God? The Muslim God? The Christian God? The Hebrew God? There are a lot of gods worshiped in the US.
She can't live and let live because she's too pig headed, too ugly and too anti-democracy. Maybe it is time to kick people out of the United States -- you know, the ones who don't actually believe and practice democracy.
If you don't support basic freedoms, then you really don't belong in this country. Let's kick Allie out and let her resettle in Afghanistan where they also believe that a god trumps democratic rights.
She keeps invoking THE BIBLE and God and it's mainly to remind you of just how stupid she is.
Marriage, she insists, citing her God and BIBLE, is between a man and a woman. She specifically cites Genesis, for example. Okay. What about Genesis 26:34 and 28: 6 -9? Does she want to explain how Esau fits with her 'knowledge'? Or maybe she wants to flip over to Genesis 29:15 - 28? That would bring her to the Biblical figure of Jacob. What do Esau and Jacob have in common? The same thing that they have in common with Elkanab, David, Samuel and Solomon -- among other Biblical figures. Not one of them is in a relationship with one man and one woman -- no, all those men have multiple wives and it's in THE BIBLE so, according to the 'logic' of the Talking Pig, it must be what God wants and what God has ordered.
Carrollton trash -- we understand she was a big 'party' gal but that just might be a mean rumor -- born in Dallas and inflicting her garbage education on the rest of us.
She's one of those people Maria McKee sang about in "Why Wasn't I More Grateful?"
Some people want and want and want what they don't have
'Til it keeps ‘em awake at night in their bed just twitchin' Some people like to complain about ev'ry little thing Some folks just never stop bitchin'
Why
wasn't she more grateful? Because she couldn't stop bitching. Among
the 'causes' she's taken up in the last seven days? Protesting a calendar geared
to dads -- featuring attractive women -- fully clothed. Yes, that's how
pathetic she is and how empty her life is.
This
is not an activist. This is a busybody. A meddler. Someone whose own
life is so pathetic and empty that she can only find satisfaction in
attempting to destroy others.
On
BEWITCHED, her name was Gladys Kravitz. On LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE,
she was called Harriet Oleson. On ROSEANN, it was Kathy Bowman.
Worthless people who have nothing better to do than be a busybody.
Allie
Beth, believe there's this thing called The Golden Rule. Why don't you
look into it sometime -- and why don't you learn THE BIBLE that you
pretend to know.
As Whitney
Houston rightly told MTV all those years ago, "We're all God's
children." Maybe find some meaning in your currently pathetic life and
stop picking on others. Otherwise why don't you just go wee-wee-wee all
the way home and then stay there.
Jobi e-mailed, "Just want to say, especially after Christmas edition, too much is pushed off on Ava and C.I."
We
agree. We didn't intend for it to got that way. If you missed it, the last edition was Ava and C.I. and Stan, Ann, Rebecca and Trina joined
in to help out. We -- Dona, Jess, Jim and Ty -- planned to help. Or
intended to. The problem was no one planned. Ava and C.I. did what
they usually do. They started their piece on the media (that they do
every week) early in the morning on Sunday and were done with it in
about four hours. (Researching on BILLBOARD and counting added to the
time they spent.) Then they said goodbye to one another (Ava's home is
next to C.I.'s) and Ava went straight to sleep while C.I. got some posts
for THE COMMON ILLS in the queue and then went to sleep. They thought
we'd be calling later that day. We didn't. (And Jess didn't care to.
Jess lives with Ava and their child.) By Sunday night, Ava and C.I.
thought, "Well, they're going to say something Christmas Day." By
Christmas Day Night, they feared we were going to propose working
Tuesday night to which they say, "Oh, hell no." So they started working
on trying to do a quick edition. We just spend too much time with
family and friends enjoying the holiday and they got stuck with the
edition. We'll plan better next time.
Still on last week's edition, Rhonda notes all the music listened to while working on the last edition was Diana Ross.
Yes,
Ava and C.I. usually listen to Diana when working on their media piece
each week. That's why Diana always has at least one spot. All Diana?
That tends to happen -- check the archive -- when Ava and C.I. steer an
edition.
Bradley e-mailed, "Where are the book discussions?"
We're
not sure yet if we'll be doing those in 2024. How it works is that a
community member posts a review at their site and then Ava and C.I.
speak with them for the book discussion here. How it also works is that
community members vote on the books of the year for Martha and
Shirley's yearly summary. Once ballots are out -- for the book you
liked most in the year -- we stop reviewing.
Which
brings up the next question. Colin e-mailed that he was glad Ava and
C.I. noted Ryan Grim's book in "Media: The shell game continues." "But where was the review of it?"
It
ran in the Saturday before of POLLY'S BREW -- a community newsletter.
That was the last day for book reviews in the community because the
ballots went out the next day. Many book reviews appear in the
community newsletters. And Ava and C.I. write for everyone of the
newsletter's (the gina & krista round-robin, POLLY'S BREW, HILDA'S
MIX and LA PAZ) each week. So there are topics they address there and
they're also on a book review rotation for each one of those
newsletters.
Teadore
writes, "Can you please up your music content? Even if you're just
reposting Kat's music reviews every time, I'd appreciate it."
We would too. We've got a music feature planned for next edition. We'll see if we can do one music feature each month in 2024.
What's the weirdest thing to you about the transdebate?
Ty,
Ava and C.I. have noted how strange it is that 'concerned' people keep
whining about trans women competing with women but that no one seems
'concerned' about trans men competing with men -- in football, in boxing,
in whatever.
Clarice Schillinger, leader of the PA Moms For Liberty, has been charged with drunkenly punching teenagers at her daughter's birthday party, after supplying these underage guests with liquor. Clarice explains, "I only assaulted those kids to stop them from reading" pic.twitter.com/ngWYevGpQj
"Crispy Calamari in the Kitchen"
-- Trina reviews AIR FRYER COOKBOOK FOR BEGINNERS: EFFORTLESSLY GRILL,
ROAST AND BAKE HOMEMADE MEALS: YOUR COMPLETE GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS WITH
QUICK, TASTY & HEALTHY RECIPES.
"Vincent Price and Universal"
-- Marcia reviews John L. Flynn's 75 YEARS OF UNIVERSAL MONSTERS and
Vincent Price's I LIKE WHAT I KNOW: A VISUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
"3 books to skip" -- Kat reviews Bertill Nordahl's CAT SEVENS, CARLY SIMON AND LEONARD COHEN AND ALL
THE OTHERS, David Redford's NEIL& JONI: 2 LIVES, 21 ALBUMS and Ellen Sanders' ROCK AND ROLL
WOMENHOOD: CASS ELLIOT, GRACE SLICK, LINDA RONSTADT, FANNY AND MORE.
"Elizabeth Taylor -- two books" -- Ruth covers Katy Holborn's ELIZABETH TAYLOR: AN ELIZABETH TAYLOR BIOGRAPHY and
Gian-Luca di Rocco's WOMEN IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT: CHARTING SOCIETAL
PROGRESS THROUGH THE FILMS OF ELIZABETH TAYLOR AND JANE FONDA 1944-1981.
Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty, "Ava" started out this site as five students enrolled in journalism in NY. Now? We're still students. We're in CA. Journalism? The majority scoffs at the notion.
From the start, at the very start, C.I. of The Common Ills has helped with the writing here. C.I.'s part of our core six/gang. (C.I. and Ava write the TV commentaries by themselves.) So that's the six of us. We also credit Dallas as our link locator, soundboard and much more. We try to remember to thank him each week (don't always remember to note it here) but we'll note him in this. So this is a site by the gang/core six: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. (of The Common Ills).
