“Palestine”, so declared in the course of Roman conquest, has never been a sovereign power but a suzerainty through all of its existence.
“The Palestinians” have never before been a People, but given 70+ years of the Arab Apartheid that stranded the refugees of 1948, one may grant that the Palestinians are a unique People desperate for autonomous, responsible, and responsive modern governance.
We know the Palestinians are not getting that governance.
This is the kind of “governance” meted to Palestinians by Hamas:
The topic is perennial: “The Poles did nothing to stop Hitler”; “The Poles murdered the Jews”; “The Poles were the worst of anti-Semites”; etc. So here is one fast response to all of that.
The Holocaust may be unique in this overlooked way: it was an event so damning of the character of our species that it has been and may remain visited universally over time. The experience of it has given over to the memory of it. Each soul that visits The Holocaust, and there are many ways now, will experience and respond to it differently.
Compiled by the Polish American Librarians Association, a new list of recommended reading emphasizes books that effectively examine inflammatory questions that may never be fully answered or understood but continue to be asked: Did Poles collaborate with the Germans? Why did Poland have the largest Jewish population of any country in Europe? Why did the West disbelieve information about the death camps that was gathered by the Resistance? Why didn’t more Jews resist? Why was Poland the only country in which the death penalty was imposed for Christians harboring Jews? Why was the response of the Catholic Church so meek? Why, by far, are there more Polish names on the roll at Yad Vashem of Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews than any other nationality?
Three million Poles were also taken by the Holocaust.
And there’s no denying the theft and inhabiting of Jewish property by the Poles.
Nonetheless, lose the black-and-white thinking.
For the energetic, two lesser known proper nouns might be worth a look-up in relation to The Holocaust: “Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter”; “Michael Kellogg” (The Russian Roots of Nazism).
I had left the nouns — Kellogg and Scheubner-Richter — without URLs to encourage readers of the thread to make a little bit of effort to know the true kernel of The Holocaust.
The inspiration for this post was a “Stop the Lies” (Facebook Group) video showing a well-informed Israeli taking apart an argument made by a pro-BDS type standing up for the “suffering of the Palestinians under occupation”, an Orwellian trope if ever was. Here’s the truth:
The nationalism may be off-putting for showing little regard for the Palestinian main base — those who are ruled — in light of the politically corrupt and suppressive atmospheres maintained by both the PLO/PA (the “phantoms of the Soviet”) and the Islamist Hamas. Israelis may benefit from more widely acknowledging the general political insecurity of the Palestinians (whose repression really is hideous) and the intent of their leaders to keep them intellectually disinformed, misguided, and deeply weaponized (the basic message being “The Jews stole your land and God wants you to take it back!”).
Palestinian laws associated with collaboration and cooperation with Israelis have been barbaric (I haven’t looked in a while, but the general condition remains that of war and thus the military occupation and [COGAT] presence in aspects of Palestinian life (http://www.cogat.mod.gov.il/en/about/Pages/default.aspx ).
Pro-Israel liberals may wish to look over the “talking point” that would be the defense of Pro-Israeli Palestinians and Palestinian dissidents who need security for speaking their minds and for civil action.
I may note that the Jewish Liberation Story — the Exodus from Egypt — has stood signal as God’s affront to human power for almost 6,000 years. In that narrative, God commands Moses while having at the same time control of Pharaoh. While Jews treat Moses with reverence, none ever conflate or confuse Moses with God (he was lucky to have been rescued from among the reeds; spoke with a stutter or lisp (I think — he was most imperfect); and seemed to need a sidekick for courage. Moses was . . . merely human. He didn’t part the waters: God did.
Jesus, rabbi; the first Christians; was it really a Seder?
BackChannels will leave the gathering and weighing of history’s slim evidence to the curious, but as depicted by da Vinci, inspired by The Bible, and inscribed now in the intellectual awareness and evolution of mankind, The Last Supper changed the character of the world.
Here’s “the rest of the story” — at least about the painting.
The burning of Notre Dame is beyond sad, profoundly sad, cosmically sad, and sad beyond belief.
Pile on the adjectives — there is nothing that will come close.
What history have you seen?
Think of the history it has seen (start year: 1160 A.D.)
Tonight: grief.
One may hope that grief shared worldwide.
Did you work at Notre Dame or in any of the businesses serving its limitless parade of tourists?
One may hope the governments of Paris and France, first, then God, and then everyone else considers your well being especially this night. Tomorrow will not be just another day.
Tomorrow: expect to read about economic and environmental impacts, the destruction (and possibly saving) of priceless art, and the modern memory of an architectural space that has been ever consoling, reassuring, always there, defining “normal” by day, and beautiful, so I have heard, at night.
North American Continental Appetite for Narcotics –> Cash –> Central / South America –> Cartel –> Gangs –> Related Violence –> Corruption of Authorities –> General Insecurity –> Displacement of Population | Northern Mass Migration
If you’re on the Soviet / post-Soviet flavored Left / Far Left Progressive Movement, the same that might obtain its image of the world from, say, 927+ or Mint Press, at least consider reading Christopher Dickey’s report on the Cuba-Venezuelan connection and the InSight Crime series on narcotics trafficking and the accumulation of wealth by nominally “communist” and “socialist” so-called “leaders” in captive Central and South American states.
In familiar Orwellian fashion, the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left simply ignores the sustained Soviet / post-Soviet investment in the underworld and what it does to societies everywhere it travels.
Related: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/08/16/craig_unger_untold_story_of_trump_russia_partnership_laundered_money_via_his_real_estate.html – 8/16/2018. Craig Unger: “Trump says he has no contacts with Russia. I found 59 people who were intermediaries between Trump and Russia, and I traced them over the years and found not just hundreds of millions, perhaps, but billions of dollars in money laundering from the Russian mafia using Trump properties. But you had criminals living in Trump Towers, and the FBI was chasing mobsters and found they weren’t living in Brooklyn. They were living in Trump Tower.”
According to Karen Dawisha, recently deceased, the Soviet as administered by the Party Nomenklatura had in place in the mid-1980s a contingency plan for its own dissolution (just in case) — source: Putin’s Kleptocracy — so when the state dissolved (Dec. 25, 1991), the assets it had controlled were released to the “privileged of the The Party”. While the state transitioned into its federated form, the state was essentially lawless and without power to impose order on the chaos that ensued. (Aside: the power of the sovereign to police Russia has been always weak in terms of recognized police assets x area x population — the space has been historically underserved in that regard). The “Vory” coming out of the Gulag would present an especially egregious challenge to the new state and, so BackChannels believes, would be incorporated into the “mafia state“, effectively centralizing organized crime in the shadows beneath Vladimir Putin’s full sweep of power.
Now take in Craig Unger’s observations and blend with Russia’s Soviet / post-Soviet obligations and relationships involving all but support for Communism, which ideology was effectively neutralized by the official disempowerment of “The Party” at the end of the Cold War: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria | PLFP, PLO, Hezbollah, et al. | other former Communist Party alignments and former Loyalist (White Russian) extensions from the Imperial Period.
Russia’s mafia state, narcoterrorism, integration with big “transnational crime organizations (TCOs)” . . . — Oh! Add a few other states with their active criminal and terrorist funding portions and then imagine the money sloshing about in the pockets of the middlemen — the facilitators, the smugglers — who can’t spend all that dirty loot without cleaning it up some.
NOW, good civic minded citizen (who knows not to ask too many questions), imagine receiving it clean.
What would you do with it?
What if it stopped arriving?
In recent years and now weeks, money laundering scandals have surfaced in various ways: “Panama Papers”; HSBC; Danske Bank; Norde Bank.
The gum shoes and journos do their investigative things; we get the information and the infotainment; and we cluck: “How awful!
Wait a minute — that cash, indecipherable from other cash — is in someone’s economy serving as capital or reserves or as loose dough attractive to business, charity, labor . . . everyone for everything.
Is there a price? A benefit?
One generation does the crime — and behold: Las Vegas.
And the next: good educations; good businesses; good jobs; decent enough rule of law.
Good people.
Delivered every which way: America’s Addicted: 2.5 million souls.
In the pipeline and driven by corporeal and financial insecurity associated with corruption, crime, and related impoverishment and violence: Central and South American mass migration.
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