Say no to authoritarianism, say yes to socialism. Free Palestine 🇵🇸 Everyone deserves Human Rights

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Cake day: August 18th, 2023

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  • So you say

    Interesting way to start, considering I linked three articles.

    The history of the phrase has no bearing on the current use of the phrase. Kind of like when Biden said “I am a zionist.” It meant something totally different when he was coming up than it does today.

    The articles covered both historical and modern usage. Zionism is the same ideology as when it started, in fact that has become only more obvious since this genocide started.

    I’ll quote from each article, including the two you linked, as they all support the reality that it is an emancipatory slogan.

    Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine-Israel program at the Arab Center Washington D.C., has written extensively about the meaning of the slogan before and since Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7, which led to Israel’s current bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

    “It’s an expression of Palestinian nationalism and it’s an expression of a demand for Palestinian freedom or self-determination,” said Waxman. “I think Palestinian self-determination need not come at the expense of Jewish self-determination. Nor do I think Palestinian freedom has to be considered a threat to Jewish rights.”

    Simply put, the majority of Palestinians who use this phrase do so because they believe that, in 10 short words, it sums up their personal ties, their national rights and their vision for the land they call Palestine. And while attempts to police the slogan’s use may come from a place of genuine concern, there is a risk that tarring the slogan as antisemitic – and therefore beyond the pale – taps into a longer history of attempts to silence Palestinian voices.

    The use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” has come under particular scrutiny in the last three months. When Palestinians, or anyone on the left, has used the phrase to demand a free Palestine—as in the popular chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—those on the right have disingenuously argued that it is calling for the death of all Jewish people in Israel.

    In 2021, the Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer argued that those who saw genocidal ambition in the phrase, or indeed an unambiguous desire for the destruction of Israel, did so due to their own Islamophobia.

    It was instead, he argued, merely a way to express a desire for a state in which “Palestinians can live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them”.

    Preventing any possibility of a Palestinian state has always been Israel’s policy, one that the settlement building in the Occupied Territories is meant to ensure. This policy has been intensified under Benjamin Netanyahu, who in January 2024 publicly vowed to resist any attempt to create a Palestinian state and to maintain Israeli control from the river to the sea.

    It is often maintained that the slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ expresses a genocidal and antisemitic intention. But this is generally not the case. On the contrary, the slogan has historically been used to articulate a wide variety of political strategies for Palestinian liberation

    Denying such demands seems as self-evident to most Israeli Jews as the air they breathe. It is this denial that has led to the dehumanization of Palestinians and has culminated in the genocidal mood that is prevailing in Israeli Jewish society today and in the assault taking place now in Gaza. This should be viewed as the real problem and not the legitimate chant of ‘from the river to the sea: Palestine will be free’.

    In Israel, Haaretz journalist Ravit Hecht wrote that the slogan is a call ‘for ethnic cleansing, similar to the one that took place in the Gaza ‘envelope’ [on October 7]… It’s not about a return to the 1967 borders or a cessation of the occupation, but the annihilation of the Jewish national home and the expulsion of Jews from this place.’"

    Ravit Hecht is a zionist. Having a liberal leaning on a fascist ideology doesn’t make it any less fascist. It’s to the surprise of no one that zionist propaganda is deliberately used to de-legitimize the emancipatory slogan, used by the ones they oppress and ethnically cleanse, and project the mentality of genocide which Zionists are doing as we speak.

    From Revit Hecht, among many other racist remarks such as Palestinians being a ‘murderous and barbaric culture’:

    Hamas did what it did in the most horrific manner one could imagine. The organization’s defenders preach this, covering it with pseudo-intellectual blather and a specious discourse about human rights. If human rights interested them, they would enthusiastically support Israel’s war against Hamas, an organization that primarily oppresses its own people.

    Anyone denying the right of a nation to defend itself after an attack, the cruelty of which can not be expressed in words, with the people who perpetrated it vowing to repeat it at the first opportunity; anyone who fails to distinguish between the way the IDF conducts itself in the Gaza Strip and the way Hamas treated its victims, is collaborating with an antisemitic attack. Sometimes it’s because such a person is himself or herself antisemitic, even if they are Jewish.

    the people on the opposite side of that statement hear it very, very differently.

    The other side being Zionists, who purposely de-legitimize and project the zionist ideology of ethnic cleansing onto the emancipatory slogan of the people they oppress and ethnically cleanse. You’re only proving the point myself, SmilingSolaris, and everyone down voting your responses.






  • How incredibly inhumane. Immigrants built this country. If anyone here isn’t the descendant of an immigrant; they are an either an descendant of a native American to survived the genocide, or of a chattel slave who survived the anti-black violence that’s been prevalent in this country for over a hundred years.

    If the ideal version of America is supposed to be freedom and democracy where anyone looking to make a better life for themselves is welcome, then anti-immigrant sentiment is anti-american.






  • Yet Chomsky’s world-view does not leave space for Ukrainian agency. It is the “US and Britain” who have “refused” peace negotiations in Ukraine, Chomsky tells me, in order to further their own national interests, even as the country is being “battered, devastated”

    Chomsky is pointing out that the US, who Ukraine is still very dependent on for military weapons, and Russia, who is invading Ukraine, have the power here. That’s the reality of imperial hard power, they don’t give a shit about Ukrainian Sovereignty. They only care about economic resources. Of course Ukraine should have sovereignty, the issue is that the US and Russia have no interest in respecting their sovereignty. They have robbed Ukraine of it for financial gain. Imperialist powers always rob countries of their sovereignty and natural resources.

    On February 24th, Putin invaded, a criminal invasion. These serious provocations provide no justification for it. If Putin had been a statesman, what he would have done is something quite different. He would have gone back to French President Emmanuel Macron, grasped his tentative proposals, and moved to try to reach an accommodation with Europe, to take steps toward a European common home.

    The U.S., of course, has always been opposed to that. This goes way back in Cold War history to French President De Gaulle’s initiatives to establish an independent Europe. In his phrase “from the Atlantic to the Urals,” integrating Russia with the West, which was a very natural accommodation for trade reasons and, obviously, security reasons as well. So, had there been any statesmen within Putin’s narrow circle, they would have grasped Macron’s initiatives and experimented to see whether, in fact, they could integrate with Europe and avert the crisis. Instead, what he chose was a policy which, from the Russian point of view, was total imbecility. Apart from the criminality of the invasion, he chose a policy that drove Europe deep into the pocket of the United States. In fact, it is even inducing Sweden and Finland to join NATO — the worst possible outcome from the Russian point of view, quite apart from the criminality of the invasion, and the very serious losses that Russia is suffering because of that.

    So, criminality and stupidity on the Kremlin side, severe provocation on the U.S. side. That’s the background that has led to this. Can we try to bring this horror to an end? Or should we try to perpetuate it? Those are the choices.

    At least use quotes from a full interview instead of from someone intentionally framing snips that go against statements Chomsky has already said.

    https://chomsky.info/20220616/

    Most Taiwanese want no change from the current situation. They don’t want any escalation whatsoever.

    But that image of Lloyd Austin announcing the deployment of U.S. forces to four new bases, in addition to five U.S. bases where U.S. troops are deployed in the Philippines, making a total of nine, potentially, in days and months to come, that’s precisely the wrong image and precisely the wrong direction that the U.S. should be going in. The United States, the Biden administration and a larger foreign policy elite, I’m sad to say, has hijacked our foreign policy and is currently escalating military tensions with China at precisely the moment we need to be moving in the other direction. We need to be drawing down U.S. military bases and forces in the region, while building up our diplomatic presence.

    The U.S. Has 750 Overseas Military Bases, and Continues to Build More to Encircle China

    Sixty percent of Taiwanese support maintaining the “status quo,” with 34 backing it “indefinitely,” and 26 percent favoring either declaring independence or unifying with China at a later date, depending on the conditions.

    https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2024/12/05/2003828000

    Reflecting on our conversation, I came across a passage in an essay from Chomsky’s 1970 book At War with Asia. “As long as an American army of occupation remains in Vietnam, the war will continue,” he wrote. “Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place. Those who had been calling for ‘negotiations now’ were deluding themselves and others.” These words seem to me to be more applicable to the war in Ukraine than anything Noam Chomsky said during our conversation 53 years later.

    Russia completely withdrawing is still the correct thing for Russia to do. Good luck convincing Putin, many thousands in Russia have already been arrested for protesting the war. See what Chomsky has said on the anti-war movement in the US and it’s effects on the US withdrawing, then see if that’s applicable to the citizens of Russia protesting the war having an impact on Russia foreign policy. The US does not have the power to force Russia to do a full withdrawal, and that’s assuming the US is interested in protecting Ukrainian Sovereignty which it’s not. Chomsky is critiquing US foreign policy and how it fails to be in any genuine interests of protecting Ukrainian Sovereignty.


  • The longer the war persists, the more destruction and devastation there will be, the more what’s called collateral damage elsewhere, massive starvation because of the closing off of Black Sea exports — there’s some relaxation of that, but we have little information about it — threat of nuclear war increases, and perhaps most significantly of all, and least discussed, is the fact that as the war continues, the limited efforts to deal with the overwhelming crisis of climate destruction, those reverse.

    2nd part of the DemocracyNow interview

    Now Putin has moved on to the anticipated escalation, “targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the last few weeks and stepping up its strikes in the eastern region of the country.” Putin’s escalation to the U.S.-U.K.-Israel model has been rightly condemned for its brutality — condemned by those who have accepted the original with little if any objection, and whose ghastly gamble laid the groundwork for the escalation, exactly as was warned throughout. There will be no accountability, though some lessons may have been learned.

    https://chomsky.info/20221116-2/

    Is reading the headline as far as you got? The US was incredibly brutal when invading Iraq. That doesn’t mean Russia isn’t also very brutal when they target civilians and civilian infrastructure, it means the US has historically been more brutal than Russia currently is when the US invaded other sovereign countries. If you think Chomsky doesn’t consider Russia’s invasion criminal, brutal, and unjustifiable, that’s just not correct. If you actually read the interviews, his analysis is on what aspects of US foreign policy are prolonging the conflict. The US has never cared about Ukrainian Sovereignty, the US only cares about continuing US foreign policy of Neo-colonialism. Funding Ukraine militarily was/is the correct thing to do, that doesn’t mean the US in invulnerable to criticism in all aspects of it’s foreign policy on Ukraine. Like how they went weak on sactions, or how they refused to give iron dome tech to Ukraine.

    Yet those who take a “Genocide is okay because it’s expensive or hurts my fee-fees to oppose 🥺” position gets a pass from you on one genocide, but infinite criticism and accelerationism for the other.

    What drugs are you smoking? I’ve never been ok with any genocide for any reason. Unlike many liberals who were fine with Biden funding genocide because “it’s not an important issue”. I’ve always been against genocide and accelerationism. Quote me proving otherwise or get your pathetic strawman out of here.



  • Until the question of doing anything about it comes up, in which case it very quickly turns to “Well, suddenly I’m a fiscal conservative” or “Russia has Legitimate Security Interests 🥺”

    No, I’ve always supported arming Ukraine fighting against imperialism. My criticism of the US and Europe has been that they were not sending enough and should send in troops to assist Ukraine in fighting back against Russia. My other criticism was that the US was not genuine with the process for a ceasefire, regardless of whether Russia is serious or not (it’s still a critical pressure point) and instead prioritized prolonging the war with Russia the same way the Afghanistan proxy war was used against the USSR, at the cost of Ukrainian lives. Russia may have legitimate security interests concerning NATO from a geopolitical standpoint, but the invasion is unjustifiable and only justifies the necessity of a security pact. I’d prefer a different security pact where all European countries participate Democratically, since the US only cares about NATO as a form of US Hegemony and not about the well-being and sovereignty of any European country.

    Isn’t that the exact position you criticized mainstream Dems for, just on Palestine?

    I criticized the Dems and the Republicans for funding, defending, and facilitating a genocide. As anyone with a conscience should. We should be doing everything possible to fight back against imperialism and genocide. That’s what international law is supposed to be about.