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The following is a brief biography of Fredric Brown (1906-1972) from the Goodreads website (at www.goodreads.com/author/show/51503.Fredric_Brown):
"Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
"Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons."
“Martians, Go Home” is a broad satire of the human race as seen through the eyes of a billion jeering, invulnerable Martians who arrive not to conquer the world but to drive it crazy.
The following is a brief biography of Fredric Brown from the Goodreads website (at www.goodreads.com/author/show/51503.Fredric_Brown):
"Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
"Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons."
Fiction Week! The Girl Who Spun Gold by Virginia Hamilton, Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon Quashiba, a peasant girl, is about to be made queen because the king believes that she can spin and weave golden things. A tiny creature comes to save her under the condition that she has three chances to guess his name right. (West Indian) via Goodreads; images via The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon
From Goodreads - The New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments continues—and so do the thrills and danger for Jace, Clary, and Simon.
What price is too high to pay, even for love? When Jace and Clary meet again, Clary is horrified to discover that the demon Lilith’s magic has bound her beloved Jace together with her evil brother Sebastian, and that Jace has become a servant of evil. The Clave is out to destroy Sebastian, but there is no way to harm one boy without destroying the other. As Alec, Magnus, Simon, and Isabelle wheedle and bargain with Seelies, demons, and the merciless Iron Sisters to try to save Jace, Clary plays a dangerous game of her own. The price of losing is not just her own life, but Jace’s soul. She’s willing to do anything for Jace, but can she still trust him? Or is he truly lost?
Love. Blood. Betrayal. Revenge. Darkness threatens to claim the Shadowhunters in the harrowing fifth book of the Mortal Instruments series
***********************************************
My Review:
After reading this I think the title should be changed to City of Horny Teenagers.
"Hey honey, a demon war is upon us. What do you say we go make out."
I'm thinking a little less of the "hey I wanna go rip your clothes off and do you" and more of the " Let's kick some demon ass and put an end to this" probably would have been a lot better. Now don't get me wrong, I do like a bit of some romance going on in my books, but honestly when it takes over the main story it makes me want to toss my breakfast. I really do hope Jace and Clary finally get it on in the last book and I hope they do it in the beginning because I really do not want to have to go through another 500 pages of the "Yes I want to, but I want to make sure Jace is Jace". In fact I hope everyone gets a little in the first part of the book so we can get on with the rest of the story. I want to see a little more demon ass kicking going on.
Now that I got my gripe out of the way, I believe I can carry on with the rest of the review. In my reviews of the previous books I complained about the writing and how immature it seemed. I do have to say that it has been improving steadily since book 3. I'm a bit more happier that I don't feel like I'm reading a short story created by a 12 year old. The problems that the characters are getting into or out of seem a bit more mature than the beginning. I'm quite happy to see the clan growing up (sniff..sniff). Clary still is a bit reckless, but I can understand that a bit more considering she was raised by Jocelyn. It's always better to tell your kids the truth instead of hiding it from them.
I can't wait to see how the last book will play out.
See here on Goodreads..
www.goodreads.com/book/show/2309008.Three_Centuries_of_En...
I have it somewhere... just for browsing!
...is a stain you can't wipe off”
- Lil Wayne -
www.goodreads.com/quotes/341363-confidence-is-a-stain-you...
Kachinas are spirit beings in western Pueblo religious beliefs, often represented through masks and dolls, as shown here. This snapshot is from a wonderful book by Barton Wright entitled ‘Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary’, which Adam got for me in a recent trip to New Mexico. I devoured it from cover to cover — and it’s given me a vision for my next art project: an interactive Kachina World with animatronics dolls. Each of the kachinas depicted in these pictures could be characters in that interactive play, dancing to the music and giving you inspiration about the spirits they represent. It was so nice of Adam to give me this marvelous book — he immediately thought of me and thought I should have it. :)
Learn more about Kachinas:
Learn more about the Kachinas book:
www.goodreads.com/book/show/1966616.Kachinas
View photos of our related Wonderbots experiment:
Moments of Hafiz Books and Poetry Group
We have been keeping up with what the people need, and have been
watching what they read. It not always easy but we keep our ear to
the ground for what if often not seen, and aim to bring new awareness
to the people about information and projects that are important to
our lives. Sometimes it is simply just important to honor an old
activist, or someone who has done something special, spirituality and
missing knowledge which has been preserved etc etc....
In 1999 and 2000, the computer and video game industry reached
unparalleled heights with the introduction of new video game
consoles. Sega's Dreamcast was the first 128-bit console and Sony's
Playstation 2 consisted of a 300-MHz processor that allowed users to
not only play games, but also watch DVDs and listen to audio CDs. The
year 2000 also saw sales in the computer and video game industry
reach $ 6.02 billion. Think about it. It shouldn't be so hard to
support independent art projects, spiritual music, real culture, that
which lives it, serves it, picking up a cd or two, a few books and t-
shirts from time to time... Opening your heart up to things that
people do to make our lives more interesting, and spiritual.
For all the new folks, here's the idea...if just 100 people, out of
the billions of people on this Earth, could commit....
* The $10-a-month support idea
Ok, talk about the efforts of everywhere who are doing good things,
here we are, by the skin of our teeth, so to speak. In the near
future, we'd like to say, "We've had about ten new people per month
sign up for the automatic $10- a-month donation service". For some
its good enough to donate when you can, or when we send out these
reminders. We want to take this opportunity to thank all of you, to
wish you a happy new year, and to wish blessings upon you and your
relations. The situation is always interesting, that's one thing you
can count on in the world of "Namaspirit".
We have forwarded an update from Goodreads, where we are working on
our new book and where we have a few online groups "jumping off", in
support of the music, yoga, healing arts, weaving/fiber arts people
that are a big part of not only our lives but the truth movement as
well. We invite you to take a moment to take an interest in one of
these books or music cds today. Look at how life is interconnected
and learn something new, get in touch with a contact who might enjoy
something we have to share, and don't be a window shopper!
We are making it our job to explore these online platforms, and are
very curious about how the ego can take root and feed off the tech
trends and new technologies. With greater technologies, comes a
potential for greater forwarding power among people, greater
communication channels and awareness making capabilities. However,
since the lies of 911 and the corporate deceit, we have also noticed
a greater fear state among people in this country. We have noticed
that often people do not have the spirituality to manage their new
tech tools for the benefit of all, you would think that efforts to
help people, music meets cause projects and books with missing
knowledge would be easily talked about, the missions of non-profit
orgs would be completed, people would have gathering power and would
enjoy recognizing each others purposes. But no! People find it hard
to lift a finger for a weaving art show that promotes Peace via unity
metaphors, porn stars have 100000000 thousand friends on myspace but
can't forward an event invite for an art meets cause show, everyone
can blog from their cell phones but its hard to send a link to help
someone find a book? www.myspace.com/getthereal100monkeybook
NON-PROFITS?
To make us feel like all economic structures of power in our world
ARE NOT focused on gaining more power and that some economic entities
have philanthropic commitments, the Secret Societies have established
a support and promotional system through tax code manipulation that
empowers an organization to do "good work" for the peoples interests.
Or to at least LOOK as though they are but the actions are based in
churning confused non comprehensive dysfunction.
One activist who has enjoyed the Namaspirit efforts to support and
promote independent writers and poets has a new book out. Look for
reviews of this book in future updates which we forward like the one
below. Of all the books we have become aware of in the past few
cycles, the one called "After the Event" need honorable mention
today. The book is a conglomeration of autobiographical events
surrounding the period of time following the authors "awakening", an
event in itself, to the dynamic fact of his lifelong post hypnotic
control. That "awakening" has been in the midst of another global
event called, "The Quickening" which is not properly understood.
"After the Event" uses the authors intimate understanding of the
unconscious mind from his "awakening" to explain a few of the many
events of "The Quickening" created and coordinated by the ancient
spiritual factions of the planet to demonstrate their inherent,
potential control by the unconscious mind over humanity, in general.
A natural focus of human instinct documented by the book is love, or
how it can be used to control us in naturally positive ways, as well
as negative ways. The exploitation of sexuality and physical beauty
of the female by corporate interests for profit and control of
American humanity can be seen in the authors fixation on it which
were inherent in the usurpation of his natural prerogatives in
western society as they were and are balanced against his instincts
to protect his children. What is illustrated is that the greater need
of human existence IS the securing of the well being of the next
generation IF the dependence of it upon our actions is invoked
through awareness of the threat against it and a focus on parental
love instead of sex. That the authors experience is described showing
that the invocation was accomplished directly through an exclusive
link to his unconscious existence, that the unconscious, not the
conscious mind is in control of life relating to these primary
matters and the conscious will not know or be able to intervene in
the actions taken in a persons life, with respect to a humans primary
purpose. Humanities abandonment of the fundamental recognition and
use of the unconscious mind can be seen as the reason for its lack of
control over its actions or the existence of war and pollution which
threaten the next generation widely.
Through the inherent truth telling within "After the Event", of what
has been "taboo" within European society, then imposed upon the
world, the long term value to all humanity of this book reside in the
potential deeper acceptance and understanding of our unconscious
existence.
About Non-profits this author has said, "Non Profits & Their Service
To Their Stated Purposes over the years my activism has lead me to
contact many non profit organizations for environment, justice,
peace, freedom, liberty and a few other areas.Without fail I found
that there was a fear of losing their job because they worked too
hard to achieve their stated purposes. The bigger they were
(supposedly more secure) the more sensitive they were to this.
I had to face the fact that they were captive to the various donating
entities the organizations were supported by large donations from big
corporations they were not responsive to going after those
corporations to correct the problems caused by their doing
business.After examining the process and laws that non profit
corporations are created with I realized that the ones that had
memberships were given better conditions to operate but then they
were beholden to a greater mediocrity as they were in a position to
please so many different donors and the donors were not necessarily
aligned with the same methods or means of achieving the stated
purposes. Or when this was seen their activities were compromised
again for different reasons. In all, after a time, the understanding
was complete that fears of loosing their jobs had controlled and
compromised the non profits no matter which area they came from.
Sadly, this explained how there could be so many non profits in
existence and still, all the worthy causes were totally unmet with
adequate action to address the stated purposes.Another realization
offsets this somewhat. The people are not as educated into the
corruption's controlling the upper levels of global economics as they
were when the idea of non profits was instituted, so the expectations
and the ability of the people donating and expecting action as well
as those acting was compromised. Essentially it came to a point where
media's role of education and providing truth was seriously to blame
for the peoples lack of function wherever they were."
We at the Namaspirit studio can agree, and have seen a ever growing
lack of interest in art meets cause efforts. People in america seem
to have lost interest in collective spaces which have provided much
needed space for us to come together as real culture interested in
happenings that actually serve our communities. Hipster scenes with
the abundance to make things happen are a new generation that do not
recognize any causes, and they tend to be exclusive more than
collective. That makes it harder for artists with a higher purpose to
slip through the cracks from time to time with art shows that open
the doors to a healthier inner place from time to time. People have
let their collective spaces for such purposes fall into the clutches
of the dark factions who restrict access to these spaces. And people
have forgotten to look closer at the orgs and companies that claim to
be in support of these green efforts by humanity to bring some sanity
into the gross plane world. Recently Woody hemp paper company went
under because people wouldn't differentiate the real hemp paper
company served by people who actually are interested in future
generations of children and the creation of green alternatives that
keep trees living. About 20 other companies fronted as hemp paper
makers, supplying questionable product, wearing the robes of the
underdog, causing people to believe they were something they were
not, and forced the real paper making underdogs to go under with
their corporate deceit. Our author has documented that kind of
happening, and produced these websites to help create awareness about
the issue which threatens all who share the spirit of independent
projects. Please visit his pages at:
algoxy.com/poly/corporate_control.html
algoxy.com/poly/emergency_powers_statutes.html
He has t-shirts, a cd commentary and books ready for those who are
both compassionate and extra-circumvent. Be interested in the efforts
of those who make learning fun with projects and edutainment created
for those who enjoy the alternatives to mainstream programming, mind
control and distraction. Those alternatives are created, by the
people for the people, brick by brick, in the world of coffee, see
weed, hip hop, skateboarding, Yoga and spiritual practices, online
platforms..............
Get Involved!
Begin forwarded message:
I spent the day (a day off work) reading and kickstarting my project on Goodreads to read 52 books this year.
Most ladies are looking for wealthy men who will throw flashy parties for them, provide classic cars, pay their utility and personal bills as well as provide the very basic needs. They therefore resort to sugar daddy dating sites where they meet wealthy singles looking for "teen love" and sugar babies.
www.goodreads.com/story/show/610813-find-a-sugar-daddy-in...
One of my goals for the coming year is to read more. Today's objective: Finish "Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting." Yes, it's a book adapted from the TV show "Supernatural." (My name is Laura and I'm addicted to Supernatural.) I actually picked this book up at the new Books-a-Million in Edwardsville, Ill. after the mid-season finale when they killed off the beloved character. Anyway, lazy day. Trying to relax and enjoy after cleaning my house!
www.goodreads.com/user/show/657343-lauranette +1 in comments
My poor kids. If they only knew what mom was doing when she asked to borrow some Barbies...
Goodreads Review - For everyone who was that girl.
For everyone who knew that girl.
For everyone who wondered who that girl was.Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents are recently divorced and it doesn't take long before their lassitude and Kerry's desire to stand out--to be memorable in some way--combine to lead her down a path she knows she shouldn't take. Kerry wanted attention. She wanted love. But not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead.
Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction--not just to sex, but to male attention--Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn't matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.
From the early rush of exploration to the day she learned to quiet the desperation and allow herself to love and be loved, Kerry's story is never less than riveting. In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a girl tries to control a boy by handing over her body, when the touch of that boy seems to offer proof of something, but ultimately delivers little more than emptiness.
Kerry Cohen's journey from that hopeless place to her current confident and fulfilled existence is a cautionary tale and a revelation for girls young and old. The unforgettable memoir of one young woman who desperately wanted to matter, Loose Girl will speak to countless others with its compassion, understanding, and love.
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My Review - My 41 year old self is screaming at her telling her to get her head out of her ass and wise up. Sleeping around will do nothing for you. My 20 something year old self understands why she did what she did. You see I was like her in a way in which I was trying to seek approval and love to get out of a bad home situation. I never slept with as many men and boys that she did, but I still was that pathetic young girl who was so desperate to get out of a situation that I tended to attach myself to any guy who would have me around. Along the way I did have some very serious relationships with people whom I really did love. However what I should have done was to find myself first before trying to couple myself with someone else.
You have to have an open mind to read Kerry's story. If your easily offended I suggest you bypass this book and read something else. Their are some very cringe worthy moments in here.
Kamera: Nikon FM
Linse: Nikkor-N Auto 24mm f2.8 (1970)
Film: Rollei P&R 640 @ box speed
Kjemi: Rodinal (1:25 / 13:30 min. @ 20°C)
- Have you ever had that feeling that something just is not right?
- Not only does it not feel right; it feels terribly, terribly WRONG!
At approximately the exact same time that I had UN-affiliated assignments in the occupied West Bank (2007-2011), there was also a truly remarkable investigative journalist named Max Blumenthal (b. 1977) doing ground work for his book ‘Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel’ (publ. 2013).
In his book, Blumenthal exposes the Israeli zionist apartheid society as it was a little over a decade ago - his book was a warning to the World, and it depicts a critical point in time when Israel was starting to truly blend and merge their expansionist old-school, Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940) European-influenced fascist political apparatus together with the American mad 'rabbi' Meir Kahane (1932-1990)-imported extremist religious and messianic influence from the USA that I myself could see first-hand with the illegal jewish fundamentalist settlers - sick, violent settlers who to a large degree are AMERICAN JEWS - in the Occupied Territories.
[--> Please do see this must-see video of the psycho demented and totally insane extremist settler jew Miriam Levinger (1937-2020) from Brooklyn, New York - she was the wife of Moshe Levinger (1935-2015); influential genocidal leader of the Gush Emunim settler movement.
Today, the Gush Emunim movement is represented by Daniella Weiss (b. 1945), leader of the Gush Emunim successor movement called Nahala, or Nachala - please do see her revealing presentation of the Nachala organisation here. <--]
Like Blumenthal, I also saw Israeli society - but I was not fully able to put into words what I actually saw back then. This book does:
New America Foundation: Max Blumenthal presents Goliath (2013)
And today, 10 years later - Israel has gone full-on genocidal.
The Zionists have to be stopped - NOW.
TRANSCRIPT - MAX BLUMENTAHL PRESENTS 'GOLIATH' (2013)
Peter Bergen: Welcome to the New America Foundation - it's our pleasure to welcome Max Blumenthal to discuss his new book ‘Goliath - Life and Loathing in Greater Israel’. Max is a journalist who's written for a variety of Publications; the New York Times, the LA Times, Daily Beast, The Guardian and so on; also the author of the 2009 book ‘Republican Gomorrah’ inside the movement the shadow the party which was a New York Times bestseller, and Max is going to talk about the big themes and stories in his book and then I'll engage him in a bit of Q&A and then throw it open to your questions; thank you Max.
Max Blumenthal: Thanks a lot Peter and thanks to the New America Foundation and to Anne-Marie Slaughter (b. 1958). I know she can't be here now, but I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this book and have this discussion here. I think I forgot to bring my coffee, which I need. I need this desperately. I was actually kind of hoping if the event wasn't going to be cancelled, that it could at least be pushed forward cuz I'm kind of a night owl and I wanted a few extra hours of sleep but… that was a joke.
I want to start the talk actually by discussing the issue of speech suppression around this issue, just really briefly. I understand there has been some kind of effort or complaints about my presence here, and throughout my book tour there have been attempts to shut down various events that I appeared at; all of which were rejected and rebuked.
Someone named Naftali Bennett (b. 1972) just spoke at the Brookings Institution and there was no effort to prevent him from speaking at the premier think tank in Washington - and I don't really know if there necessarily should be; even though Naftali Bennett recently endorsed a decision by the National Civil Service administration of Israel to bar religious Jewish women from volunteering in hospitals after 9:00 p.m. for fear that they would date Arab doctors.
This was a decision made under pressure from the anti-micegenation group Lehava, and Bennett; who is the Economics Minister of Israel and the head of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, which advocates annexing 60% of the West Bank and depriving Palestinians, occupied Palestinians, of citizenship, consigning them to Jordanian residency and permanent fifth class status, was welcomed at the premier think tank with very little outcry in Washington DC - so there's definititely a double standard and a disturbing wind of repression.
We also saw it recently, when Harvard's Hillel House banned the former speaker of the Knesset and the former head of the Jewish Agency, Avraham Burg (b. 1955); barred him from speaking for their audience. Apparently, Avraham Burg was too controversial to hear from. A student at SUNY Binghamton, who was a member of the Hillel House at his university, was ousted from Hillel for attempting to host Iyad Burnat (b. 1973); the Oscar nominated Palestinian filmmaker, for attempting to host a Palestinian at this discussion.
A children's art exhibition of children's art from the Gaza Strip was shut down in San Francisco after a campaign of suppression from the local Jewish federations, and these enforcers actually celebrated shutting down an exhibition of children's art, as if they had achieved something; some kind of pro-israel Victory.
Ansche Chesed, which is a synagogue in New York, recently shut down a panel on Israeli democracy, that was to have included J.J. Goldberg (b. 1949) of the Jewish daily, The Forward - who has attempted; and completely failed, to savage my book - who is a former Israeli member of the Israel Border Police - not exactly someone you would describe as a delegitimizer. But even this discussion was too much to host at a premier conservative synagogue in New York.
TribeFest, the annual gathering of the Jewish Federations, ousted a group of young Jews who attempted to discuss human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, called ‘Young, Jewish and Proud’ - barred them from appearing at its annual conference.
And then there is the situation inside Israel where journalists like Uri Blau (b. 1977) of Haaretz have been prosecuted for revealing illegal assassinations carried out by the Israeli Army. There was this week a request by the Israeli police, for all Israeli media to provide all photographs of the protests; which I'm going to discuss later on, against the Prawer Plan - the plan to remove 40,000 indigenous Bedouins from their homes.
There have been attacks on NGOs in Israel - Human rights NGOs, including mainstream human rights NGOs like Peace Now; there have been attacks on the New Israel Foundation, attempts to paint them as anti-semitic - these attacks have been carried out from the heart of the Knesset.
And for Palestinian journalists the fate has been much worse. Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip were assassinated in a car marked with the letters ‘TV’ on top of the car during the November 2012 escalation because they were affiliated with a Hamas run TV channel - they had no operational involvement in terrorism. And when the Newseum in Washington attempted to recognize them, along with all of the journalists around the world killed in the line of duty; including journalists who worked for Syrian State TV, advancing propaganda for Bashar al-Assad (b. 1965), pro-israel groups - discourse suppressors - moved in to scrub their name from the ceremony. Richard Engel (b. 1973), the NBC bureau chief; when he spoke at the ceremony, would not condemn that - he would not condemn that in any explicit terms.
Al-Wattan, the Palestinian TV channel in Ramallah, has had its offices raided and is unable to get its equipment back from the Israeli Army - and therefore is unable to broadcast outside Ramallah. So I understand this kind of repression on a very intimate level through my reporting, and I'm not surprised by it based on what I saw in Israel / Palestine - but I am impressed whenever anyone stands up to this suppression, as the New America Foundation has done, and as many other groups that have hosted me on my tour; and have given people the opportunity to hear my reporting and hear my ideas, and to engage with me, and to criticize me.
I want to talk about that reporting: I want to talk about this book which I wrote, which I started writing in 2009 after Israel elected the most right-wing government in its history, and this book is a portrayal of Israel / Palestine during the culmination of a transitional phase which began at the end of the Second Intifada (2000-2005) with the rise of a regime of hafrada, or separation - unilateral separation - imposed on the West Bank and Gaza - which drove bellicose and even anti-democratic attitudes in Israeli society, as Palestinians essentially disappeared from Israeli life; and there was a parallel trend of radicalization in Palestinian society as a result of this unilateral separation.
The book begins with Operation Cast Lead - the three-week assault on the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and 2009 - and right as we speak, the Gaza Strip is plunged into darkness - the situation has not really changed. They've had blackouts for a month; their main power generator, which was destroyed during this assault, along with 80% of all arable land in the Gaza Strip - along with the American University, along with the Islamic University, along with the Souhari chicken farms - was destroyed.
During this destruction, Israel was carrying out national elections, and the war drove the elections and helped drive the right-wing trend - as 95% of Israelis supported the war during its first week; including the Meretz party, the most left-wing party on the Zionist spectrum.
Daniel Bar-Tal (b. 1946), who is a political psychologist who I interview in my book - he's a world-renowned figure because of his work on trauma studies, and specifically on how prolonged conflict has impacted the Israeli psyche, and who did the most extensive survey on Israeli attitudes after and during Operation Cast Lead - and Akiva Eldar (b. 1945), the Israeli journalist, summarized his findings:
«Israeli Jews’ consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering» - the fighting in Gaza dashed the little hope Bar-Tal had left that this public would exchange the Drums of War for the Cooing of Doves.
The peace process had long been extinguished by this point, along with the Oslo era, and politicians had arisen like Avigdor Lieberman (b. 1958), who was campaigning under the banner of the Yisrael Beiteinu party; a mostly Russian party with a simple promise: ‘No loyalty, No citizenship’ - in other words, if Palestinian citizens of Israel failed to declare their loyalty to the Jewish State, they would be rapidly stripped of their citizenship and removed through various sundry means.
There was also Tzipi Livni (b. 1958) - who was the current peace negotiator, and at the time was the Foreign minister and was running for the prime minister's office - who declared: «Our troops behaved like Hooligans in the Gaza Strip - which I demanded of them» - this was an appeal to votes; while Ehud Barak (b. 1942) - then the Defense minister and the head of the Labor Party - boasted before a Russian audience that he would «Whack a terrorist on the toilet» - which was a direct quote from Vladimir Putin (b. 1952); what Putin said about his campaign in Chechnya; and this was Barak's attempt to outflank Lieberman, who many feared would actually be elected Prime minister; especially after Lieberman swept High School mock elections. Lieberman was the voice of the Israeli youth according to the Center for the Struggle Against Racism, which is an Israeli NGO. 68% of Israeli Jews by 2006 said they would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab; nearly half said they wouldn't allow an Arab into their home, and 63% agreed with the statement «Arabs are a security and demographic threat to the State». The subsequent polls by Camille Fuchs of the Israel Democracy Institute show that those trends have held every subsequent year afterwards.
So Lieberman comes into power as the most bellicose of those campaigning; as foreign minister - the third most popular party was Yisrael Beiteinu - Netanyahu emerges as the winner - and I enter; I kind of enter the scene. I decided to take my first extended reporting trip in May 2009 after completing ‘Republican Gomorrah’, my first book, and I used the same methodology as I did in ‘Republican Gomorrah’ to report on this book. Of course, I had to clear a few more hurdles - I sought to immerse myself in the key institutions of Israeli society and at the flash points of conflict and crisis on the ground; and one of the hurdles I had to clear was to get through Ben Gurion International Airport - this is a lot easier for me than it might be for many of you; certainly more easier for me than it was for Anna Lekas Miller, who is a journalistic colleague of mine, who has written for the Daily Beast’s Open Zion, and was recently deported and sent away for at least 10 years without explanation - ostensibly because she's half Lebanese; she's of the wrong ethnicity. Nour Joudah - who is a Palestinian American teacher who was working at the Quaker School in Ramallah - was also deported for 10 years without explanation; presumably because she was of the wrong ethnicity. Ali Gharib; who's here now, and George Hale, who is an American journalist working for Maan News, recently reported that over 100 Arab Americans a year are deported by the State of Israel. Someone who was hassled and humiliated at Ben Gurion International Airport was Donna Shalala (b. 1941); the former Secretary of Health and Human Services under Bill Clinton, ostensibly because she was of the wrong ethnicity - she is Lebanese. Ironically, she was on her way to a conference of college presidents in Israel on how to fight Palestinians and Palestine solidarity organizing on campus. So her detention for two to five hours at Ben Gurion was sort of poetic justice.
I have a much easier time entering - I’m asked; am I Jewish, are my parents Jewish or my grandparents Jewish; what Hebrew school did I go to, what two holidays do I celebrate? I say, you know, do I celebrate any holidays? I say yes; they say: Which ones? And I say I'm in the Secret Service, not the army of God - so Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana; and then sometimes I'll contrive an Israeli girlfriend, which really makes the security officers happy because we may help offset the demographic threat together; so I'll declare that we're going to get married, and have lots of Jewish babies - actually when I did this once, I was waved through an additional security check and didn't have to have my bags hand checked. I understand this Jewish privilege that I gain as soon as I enter the the Israeli controlled frontiers of the Holy Land to be an essential ingredient in this book, that I don't think a Palestinian American journalist - who may have been more talented than me - could have done this book, because they could not have gained access to as many places as me. Many places are simply off limits to you, and when I hang out with my Palestinian American friends in Ramallah, whose friendship I gained here in the US - they often ask me if I can get them through Qalandia; basically sneak them through this checkpoint so they can go to the beach - They're basically stuck in this occupied Bantustan, while I am free to go wherever I want - and I have far less connection to the Holy Land than they and their families do. That is something that I don't take lightly. It's part of the burden of my reporting.
So one of the institutions that I sought to insinuate myself into was the Knesset, which was the base of Lieberman's plan, and the right’s plan to strip Palestinian citizens - the 20% minority - of their citizenship rights, or to further consolidate institutional discrimination. I witnessed a hearing of the Constitution committee; in which leaders of mainstream Human Rights NGOs were basically brought before the Knesset, to declare their patriotism and to beg the government not to investigate their funding, and to accuse them of being funded by Europe and to accuse them of anti-Semitism and to incite against them through billboard campaigns; accusing them of taking money from secret European funders. Part of this campaign was carried out by the right-wing student group Im Tirtzu; which was ironically being funded by pastor John Hagee (b. 1940), the leading Christian Zionist pastor in the United States - a foreign funder who has said on camera before his congregation that when the Antichrist returns, he will be «homosexual and half Jewish as Hitler was, with fierce features». You know, a very wonderful individual. They had no problem taking money from him.
The Constitution committee was headed by David Rotem (1949-2015); who is advancing laws to strip Human Rights NGOs of their funding - again; more speech suppression. And to Rotem's left sat Michael Ben-Ari (b. 1963) - who is a member of the Kach party, which has been outlawed and is identified by the FBI as a terrorist group - he was elected under the National Union party - he was a former deputy of Meir Kahane (1932-1990), who was banned from the Knesset in 1988 for racist incitement - but mainly because he threatened to deprive Yitzhak Shamir (1915-2012) and the Likud party of votes, or split the Likud party's base.
And I interviewed first Ben-Ari in his office with my colleague David Sheen - and Ben-Ari made some interesting points to us - because this was someone who had been covered so intensely by the Israeli media - he was always on camera; his histrionics in the West Bank, attempting to prevent outposts from being evacuated, his rampaging with his followers through Jaffa; the Palestinian ghetto of Tel Aviv, chanting «Jaffa for Jews - Arabs out!». He was always on the news, but he had not been able to successfully pass one law; and I said «Why?» He said; «Because Likud is doing it for me - Kahane has won! The governing parties are doing what Kahane wanted to do and are advancing his vision»; and he almost admitted that he had become superfluous - and so, through becoming superfluous he had to continue to try to outflank Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud; moving further to the right, to the point where he told me that «I will never say that Palestine is Jordan, that Jordan is Palestine» - which is kind of what you often hear settlers saying - «Jordan is Israel, it's OURS and it belongs to the Jewish people» - that's how far he was willing to go.
So you have Rotem then, at the head of the Constitution committee - which is an important committee, because Israel has no Constitution - Israel has no National identity - the Supreme Court has ruled that identity can only be afforded according to ethnic identity - Jewish or Arab - not Israeli - so the Constitution committee and the Supreme Court are kind of making it up as they go along. And I interviewed Rotem at his home in Efrat; which is a mega settlement in the West Bank - and Rotem told me that what he was doing, was to advance the will of the Israeli public - what the majority really wanted. And I said, «Well, this is the tyranny of the majority - I mean you've introduced a bill, for example, that will authorize the acceptance to communities law, which will authorize communities of under 500, to be able to discriminate on the basis of race or religion; and this bill, by the way, has passed» - and he said; he looked me in the eye and he said: «The tyranny of the majority is the heart of democracy, and it's not tyranny if the majority wants to strip the minority of its rights». I'm slightly paraphrasing, but not much.
This is the straightforward style that I got from right-wingers. It was also figures like Ehud Barak, who was then the leader of the Labor Party, who supported a bill to force all new citizens of Israel to take loyalty oaths to the Jewish and Democratic State - this was of course first introduced by Meir Kahane - and Haaretz, when Barak supported this bill, Haaretz declared that Kahane was the real leader of the Knesset; that his legacy had triumphed.
There is a new law being debated in the Knesset; it was being debated this morning - it's one of the many laws which is being advanced to basically overrule a Supreme Court ruling and there are also many other laws that are being advanced to strip the Supreme Court of its power, or to stack the Supreme Court with right-wingers - one of those bills will require all Supreme Court Justices to perform military service; which would prevent an Arab from serving on the Supreme Court. And this new law being debated relates to the 60,000 non-jewish African refugees who are living inside Israel right now. These are people who have fled Janjaweed in Darfur; they’ve fled repression in Eritrea, they've fled poverty and genocide across Africa, and they've come to Israel, partly because it's the only industrialized country with a land bridge - connected by land to Africa - through harrowing treks through the Sinai desert, but also partly because they've heard that this place might be a sanctuary; because it claims to embody the lessons of the Holocaust: «Never Again». And what happened to them when they entered Israel, is that they were stripped of their right to work, were prevented from working, and basically concentrated in South Tel Aviv and places like Ashkelon, among the poorest and neediest of Jewish Israeli Society; creating a kind of a new crisis.
On May 23rd 2012 there was a fullscale race riot in Tel Aviv - barely covered in US media - with hundreds of thugs rampaging through African areas in Tel Aviv; smashing the storefronts of African businesses, attacking any African they could find - it was preceded and followed by days of fire bomb attacks on African schools and African homes across Israel. Before the race riot, a group of top Israeli legislators and cabinet ministers appeared before a crowd of a thousand in South Tel Aviv - Miri Regev (b. 1965) - who was the chairman of the Interior committee in the Knesset - declared that the Africans are a Cancer in the body of Israel - this was a sentiment that most Jewish Israelis agreed with, according to the Times of Israel, according to a poll by this newspaper. And that incitement; that kind of racist incitement - which is doubled in 2012, according to the Israeli Committee Against Racism - has led to these attacks on Africans and spurred this crisis.
To respond to the crisis, the Knesset first passed an amendment to the anti-infiltration act, which would allow the police to arrest any African on the street and detain them without charges, for as long as three years. It also established funding for the Saharonim internment facility in the Negev desert; where currently thousands of non-jewish Africans are sleeping in shipping containers - entire families. The government calls it an internment center - former speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin (b. 1939) called it a concentration camp. I don't know what to call it, but I would volunteer my opinion that it reminds me of Manzanar; which was the camp that held Japanese Americans during World War II, after they were deemed to possess enemy race blood - and Benjamin Netanyahu has explained explicitly, under pressure from figures like Ben-Ari and Rotem, why these Africans have to be held in this camp and ultimately deported - 100% have to be deported, because they threaten the Jewish character of the State - in other words; they threaten the Jewish demographic majority - there is no path to citizenship for these non-jewish Africans; and even when they attempted to convert en mass to Judaism, they were denied that opportunity - there is no path to asylum for them. Over 99.7% have been denied asylum - because they are of the wrong ethnic group and threaten to upend the ethnocratic structure of the Jewish State, and Netanyahu makes no secret of this.
The new law I mentioned, will propose an alternative solution - I think it's been passed in the Knesset, it’s been authorized. Under the alternative solution, because the Supreme Court struck down the amendment to the anti-infiltration act, Africans will be able to leave a new detention or internment facility during the day - they'll have to check in three times a day - they will not be allowed to work - and at at night they have to report back and sleep in this facility, because they cannot sleep among the Israeli public, they can't be allowed that opportunity. It reminds me of what James Loewen (1942-2021) called sundown towns during the Jim Crow era in the US, when African-Americans were barred through various ordinances from being in US cities and towns, including Chevy Chase, Maryland after dark - so through this new alternative solution; Israel could become the world's largest Sundown town.
This is part of a process which began in 1948 - non-jewish Africans are experiencing it, but Palestinians were the original victims - and the original anti-infiltration act was passed in 1954 to uproot tens of thousands of Palestinians who had attempted to reunite with their families, with their farmland, after 1948 - so it's important to see this as a continuous process - not as Ari Shavit (b. 1957), the Israeli author portrays it; as something terrible that happened, but needed to happen for him to be born - the argument he advanced in the New Yorker. But something that, you know, we just have to get over, and let bygones be bygones. It has to be seen as something that's happening every day to Palestinians, on both sides of the Green Line. And Lieberman, and the rightwing, the religious nationalist camp - Lieberman is a secularist - they understand it that way; they do understand it as a continuous process - but they understand it as a continuous process that needs to be finished, because there is this ethnic minority inside Israel which they consider a Trojan Horse or a Fifth Column.
Their number one enemy is Haneen Zoabi (b. 1969) and the Balad party - Zoabi is a Palestinian Israeli legislator who I spent a decent amount of time with; I interviewed her in my book - I profiled her and her mentor Azmi Bishara (b. 1956), who's been exiled after being accused of spying for Hezbollah; and Zoabi, after sailing on the Free Gaza Flotilla (2010) and being almost physically attacked in the Knesset upon her return, for denouncing the bloody raid on the top deck of the ship, has become the most hated woman in Israel.
The real reason that she's hated, and the Balad party is hated, and Bishara is hated, is because of the Haifa Declaration; because the kind of transformations that they have called for: They have demanded that Israel become a state of all its citizens, whether without religious or ethnic preferences, and for that reason; and that reason alone, they have been declared traitorous and a threat - actually, in a letter issued by the Shin Bet in 2007; by then Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin (b. 1956) - he singled them out, and declared that if they threatened in any way the Jewish or Democratic State, they would be prosecuted. Many have since been prosecuted, and he insisted on the right to surveil any of their activists - a Balad leader from Jaffa; Sami Shehadeh (b. 1975), told me that he doesn't tell their party membership this; but the entire party leadership is currently under surveillance - and that also goes from my left-wing Jewish dissident friends in Israel, who participate in anti-occupation protests - many of them have been called in for Shin Bet interrogations. But the issue is, that they have challenged the ethnocratic character of the State, and Lieberman and the right see them as traitors and want to remove them - and this is partly why Lieberman and the right have the hearts and minds of Jewish Israeli youth, the majority of Jewish Israeli youth; who declare year after year that they'll refuse to sit in a classroom with a fellow Arab - whose psyche has been impacted by the policy of hafrada, or separation - who has grown up in the post Oslo era and see the peace process as one big joke; who admire Naftali Bennett (b. 1972), who just spoke at Brookings.
And so the Cry of this generation is to finish ’48 - ’48 is not finished. We hear this cry in the letter of state-funded rabbis - hundreds of religious authorities, who are State appointed - declaring that it is against Jewish law to rent apartments to non-jews, and we hear it in the letter issued by their wives, declaring that it is against Jewish law for Jewish women to date Arab men, for Jews and Arabs to have relationships. And we see it in the burgeoning anti-miscegenation movement that they inspired; through groups like Lehava, which have issued kosher certificates to businesses that refuse to employ Arabs and other non-jews, which have pressured landlords to stop renting to non-jews; including Palestinian college students in Safad.
We see it in the youth who they have inspired, the youth who attacked Jamal Julani; the 19-year-old Palestinian in Zion Square; in the center of Jerusalem - right near where I lived for several months - chanting «Death to Arabs», and «A Jew is a soul, an Arab is is a son of a Bitch» - which happens to be a favorite chant of the fans of the Beitar Jerusalem Football Club. And they beat him into a coma because a 15-year-old girl friend of theirs had complained that he had made a pass at her - she admitted to lying later on - but this carries echoes of the submerged past of the United States and of the lynching of Emmett Till (1941-1955). At the courthouse, one of the perpetrators boasted that his only regret was that he didn't kill Julani; while Bentzi Gopstein (b. 1969) - the head of the anti-miscegenation group Lehava; whose sister group Hemla has received State funding - declared that these youth lifted Israel's national pride off the floor.
We see the calls to finish 1948 in the recent initiative of the World Zionist Organization; an executive arm of the Israeli government, to move 100,000 Jewish settlers into the Galilee - which is inside the Green Line - in order to balance the Arab demographic threat. This idea of demographic balancing is anachronistic and peculiar in this era, but it is also essential to maintaining the Jewish character of the State of Israel. And we see the calls to finish ’48 in the Prawer Plan - which was introduced by Benjamin Netanyahu's policy and planning chief Ehud Prawer - to remove most of the indigenous Bedouin population, living in unrecognized villages in the Negev desert.
I did a lot of reporting in the Negev desert, which you'll find on the pages of Goliath. I reported on the destruction of Al-Araqeeb, which is one of the first unrecognized villages to be targeted under this plan, which had not been announced at the time. And I wrote about arriving to the village at night, being hosted by the villagers and waking up to the sound of bulldozers and watching homes be tossed away like empty crates, watching their residents, including a young girl, sit out on her bed in the middle of the desert and basically watch her future destroyed. I wrote about how that village has been destroyed 51 times - 51 times since I witnessed its destruction; and I wrote about how the Jewish National Fund - a 501(c) nonprofit in the United States; which is funding the destruction of Al-Araqeeb and supporting the Prawer Plan, plans to build a forest in collaboration with GOD TV - an Evangelical Christian Zionist TV network in the UK - which has declared its intention to beautify the land of Israel for the return of the Messiah - and they will build a Pine Forest in the heart of the Negev desert on top of the ruins of Al-Araqeeb.
This was one of many of the villages that have been targeted under the Prawer Plan - there are 80,000 Bedouins living in unrecognized villages - unrecognized village means that you're unable to hook up to the public water supply; you can't connect to the public electricity grid, even though if you see these villages as you're driving through the Negev - most lay under electricity wires - they're unable to have public health clinics, public schools, and all of their construction is declared illegal - illegal simply because they are of the wrong ethnic group.
There are Jewish settlements - that are small Jewish towns; placed right near these unrecognized villages - which are free to hook up to public services and get massive State subsidies - so there's clearly a sense of inequality - and under the Prawer Plan, 40 to 70,000 indigenous Bedouins will be forced from their homes. Their villages will be generally bulldozed, and they'll be moved to undisclosed locations - there's no map right now, so we don't know where they'll be moved; or to places like Rahat and Houra, which are two of the only towns that the State of Israel has built for its Arab population; and which are in effect Indian reservations that exist at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. According to the OR movement, which is a para-governmental group; an arm of the Jewish National Fund - Rahat and Houra were built to «concentrate the Bedouin population». This really eerie rhetoric of concentration is present, again.
I visited this September along with my colleague from Mondoweiss, Allison Deger, and a few other colleagues, a village called Umm al-Hiran; which was the next village on the chopping block - and we met with its residents and they told us of an unending - unending stream of dispossession and removals, until they finally wound up in this village - which has now been authorized for destruction by the Israeli government. They have already had to repeatedly bail out their sheep - which are impounded by the Israeli Green Patrol to deprive them of sustenance, and they actually have to pay bail on their sheep - and they told us about a group of settlers - this is inside the Green Line, but they called them settlers - and they called them the ‘Jews in the Woods’; and I said: «What are the ‘Jews in the Woods’ - is this like a Mel Brooks movie, like Robin Hood: Men in Tights or something? Like, this sounds unusual». And we drove through the Yatir Forest at night - it was kind of like a scene from a horror movie, where the teenagers hear a sound in the basement and they go into the dark basement. And we're going through this dark forest built by the Jewish National Fund right next to Umm al-Hiran, and we finally arrive at the base of the forest, and we come to this compound - surrounded by barbed wire and fences - and our colleague Phil Weiss gets out and starts shaking the fence and says «Shalom! Shalom!» and suddenly the gate opens, and we're inside talking to one of the village leaders - who is one of the heads of the town council of Hiran - and he tells us that the Bedouin are the real occupiers - that the Bedouins are building illegally and trying to take over Israel, and it's his job to help remove them and replace them with legal construction. The night before, he and the fellow residents of Hiran had gone into Umm al-Hiran to stake out lots; which they would take over after the residents of Umm al-Hiran were forced into the Indian Reservation of Houra. All of Hiran was built by the Jewish National Fund and all of the new village will be supported by the Jewish National Fund, which was just Fed’ed and celebrated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (b. 1959) in Canada, in Toronto.
So the residents of Umm al-Hiran have started connecting with the other residents of unrecognized villages and getting ready for the November 30th Day of Rage against the Prawer Plan; and this took place recently - it required the New York Times to finally report on the Prawer Plan; and they called it a resettlement plan - they didn't call it what it was; which is an expulsion plan. It was another whitewash by the New York Times; and something that I think validates the reporting in my book.
And Avigdor Lieberman responded to these protests - which were very very vehement - people were fighting for their very lives; they're fighting for their ancestral land there and they were fighting for their very future - and Lieberman declared «Nothing has changed since the tower and stockade days - we are fighting for the lands of the Jewish people and there are those who intentionally try to rob and seize them» - he said that about the Bedouins; this is inside the Green Line - again, I haven't left the Green Line in this entire discussion. I will do so during Q&A; and I've done extensive reporting on the West Bank and on what's happening inside the Gaza Strip.
This is happening inside the area of Israel that will be legitimized under a two-state solution, what some call «Democratic Israel». And it is happening before our very eyes; unlike what happened in 1948 - it's happening and it's being filmed on cell phone cameras; it's being filmed by news crews, it's being reported in our media - and we're all well aware of it. And our government has said nothing about it. The State Department has said nothing to condemn it. The Obama Administration has said nothing to condemn it - there's no initiative in Washington to stop it - and there may not be.
And there's very little effort to stop - from my vantage point - the trends that I described, that are corroding Jewish Israeli Society - that are bringing to power figures like Lieberman; who is engaged in a pact with Netanyahu, that will allow Netanyahu, that will merge his party with the ruling Likud party; allowing Netanyahu to stay in power till 2017 and making Lieberman his natural successor. There is nothing being done - very little external pressure - to stop figures like Shimon Gapso from emerging as Mayors and local leaders of places like Nazareth Illit - Gapso has said that he will fight tooth and nail to prevent any non-jewish symbols from being displayed in his town; including Christmas trees on Christmas, and that he's merely carrying out the legacy of Herzl and Ben Gurion. There's nothing being done to prevent figures like Aryeh King (b. 1973); who fundraises in the US, from being elected to the Jerusalem Municipal Council - this is someone who recruits what he calls «strong men» to physically remove Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem and replace them with Jewish settlers - and has done so repeatedly.
All of the trends in my book will intensify under the current status quo; encouraged right here in Washington. I come to a lot of conclusions in my book, and I'll come to further conclusions in my talk with Peter - I'm not going to pull any punches - and I'm sure there will be people in this audience who will disagree with my conclusions. But what I think can't be denied is that facts on the ground are troubling and unsustainable, and that they will not change the trends that I describe in my book - they will only intensify as long as the current status quo is maintained. Thank you.
Peter Bergen: Well, Max, thank you for much to think about. The critiques of your book seem to be not so much about the facts - many which; you know, you've obviously done an amazing reporting job - it's more about the tone in the book, and specifically words like ’pogrom’, and the chapter headings ’Concentration Camp’ and ‘Night of Broken Glass´ - which of course is a an echo of Kristallnacht - so, tell me about your decisions to name these chapters - and what was your intent?
Max Blumenthal: Thanks for that question; which I haven't had much of a chance to answer - but definitely the content of those chapters inspires the titles - and I quoted Reuven Rivlin (b. 1939); who is the Grand Old Man of the Likud party - who is an eighth generation Israeli sabra; whose father translated the Quran into hebrew - who tried to give Haneen Zoabi (b. 1969) the chance to talk after the Mavi Marmara; expressing his disgust with the Saharonim desert facility and the whole plan to basically put non-jewish Africans in an internment Center - and he simply said «It’s un-jewish to have a concentration camp in our country» - I’m somewhat paraphrasing - he explicitly used the term concentration camp in an interview with Haaretz - so did the Israeli architectural NGO Bimkom - so do many Israelis who are campaigning against the Saharonim facility - and I think what they're doing is; they're taking the lessons of the Holocaust and looking at it from a universalist perspective - and simply saying Never Again to anyone - and that the Holocaust, as horrible as it was; and though it can't be compared to anything in terms of scale - should inspire us today; to combat against human rights abuses, and to combat against racist incitement and anti-democratic laws - you know, it all began with anti-democratic laws and with racist incitement. And as Martin Luther King (1929-1968) said - «The ultimate conclusion of racism is genocide». So, the critics of these chapters apparently hate the universalist perspective on the Holocaust and the idea of Never Again to anyone; and they simply want to enforce a segregationist perspective on the Holocaust, where you can't see the events of Kristallnacht and think about that - even though you've been raised to see the Holocaust and Nazi Germany as the ultimate Evil - you can't think of that when you see right-wing thugs singling out people in South Tel Aviv for their ethnicity and smashing their storefronts and firebombing their homes; because they are of the wrong ethnicity and have been declared a threat to the State. It simply stems from that; and I did want to invoke these lessons with those chapter titles, and the universalist perspective of this history; as so many Jewish Israelis in this book from across the political spectrum do.
Peter Bergen: And judging by what you've just said; for you the peace process is sort of a mirage - I mean, John Kerry’s efforts will yield nothing; and if that's the case - what are your - and you know, you don't have to answer if this is sort of outside of your lane - but I mean; what are realistic ideas about the future accommodations that are necessary?
Max Blumenthal: I've always seen it as my role as a journalist to offer a critique but not necessarily to offer a solution. In my first book I offered a pretty slashing critique of the Republican party - I think the book has been vindicated by the path the Republican party has taken under the control of the Christian right and the Tea Party - and I didn't really offer the Republican party a solution for resolving its crisis - and in this case, in my book - whatever perspective you come from, you're not going to find me preaching to you about a solution - although my analysis and my framing has offended some people - I do think that the two-state solution first of all has never been earnestly seriously proposed - the Palestinians have always been offered a kind of Bantu state, and have always been offered sort of a recipe for political fragmentation between Gaza and the West Bank - they've never been afforded the opportunity to elect their own leadership; they've never been offered control of their own borders - the borders have never really been set - they've never been offered control of their own airspace, of their own water - which mostly sits beneath the mega settlement of Ariel - and details were just leaked of what the Israelis want; which the US will probably support over Palestinian demands, given the composition of the US negotiating team - former AIPAC staffer Martin Indyk (b. 1951) and WINEP analyst David Makovsky - figures like that - the Israelis want the Jordan Valley, and they want early warning stations across the West Bank - they want to still have a security presence in the West Bank; which means that the West Bank will remain occupied. Meanwhile there's no discussion about the Gaza Strip; which the United Nations has warned will become uninhabitable by 2020 - because of food insecurity; because of lack of ability to get clean water; the anemia rate for children is close to 50%; child deformities are at, I think one out of four; birth complications; the fact that fishermen from Gaza have been driven into poverty because they can't move beyond the 3 kilometer perimeter - they're now trying to import fish through the tunnels; the illegal tunnels through Rafah - which is insane for a territory that's on the Mediterranean coast, and 80% of those tunnels have now been filled with sewage by the ‘coupvolutionary’ regime of Egypt - the military coup regime of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (b. 1954) - who is the former liaison to Ehud Barak on collaborating in the Sinai - so the Gaza Strip is in this very unusual situation where you have 1.7 million people who are not really allowed to export goods. I report at the beginning of my book, that Israeli administrators who administer The Siege are actually counting the calories that each resident of the Gaza Strip is entitled to - because they're able to control the lives of Gazans to that degree - to the degree of how many calories they eat. In the words of Dov Weissglas - the former aide to Ehud Olmert and longtime peace negotiator - «The residents of Gaza should be put on a diet but not allowed to starve» - so that's the situation they're in. It's not addressed by the peace process.
You asked about looking beyond it - yes, we have to look beyond this failed idea of two states and look at some of the ideas that might have been proposed by Ian Lustick (b. 1949); the University of Pennsylvania political scientist who talked about the possibility of a bi-national state - in other words, looking beyond the idea of Palestinian sovereignty or a Palestinian State; towards the idea of equality for all people - equal rights for all people between the river and the Sea.
Ali Abunimah (b. 1971) has just written a really interesting proposal for a single state - which the Israeli human rights NGO Zochrot has actually put forward - a blueprint for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees inside Israel-Palestine - an actual, physical blueprint where their communities can go, without uprooting Israeli Jews - so there are all these interesting proposals out there. There's the Haifa Declaration that I mentioned, from the Balad party; which is very similar to the kind of situation that allowed for a treaty between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and offers that kind of scenario - but as long as we continue on the path that we're on - as I said, the trends will continue - and the possibility for reconciliation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians will just get further and further away - I've seen it on both sides of the wall; just radicalizing attitudes.
Peter Bergen: Which years were you living there and reporting, when you were doing [the book]?
Max Blumenthal: In 2009 till this September [2013], and I didn't get to report on my trip in August and September in this book. I spent about a total of one year on the ground, and maybe four and a half years doing writing and research.
Peter Bergen: What do you think the overall impact of the Arab Spring - for want of a better term; or Arab Awakening is perhaps a better term - has been on the Israeli sort of political consciousness?
Max Blumenthal: The immediate impact has been very positive for Benjamin Netanyahu; who's pointed to Syria and pointed to the chaos in Egypt and said; «This is what will come to OUR shores and what will occur in the West Bank if we give up ONE inch». He's also used it to kind of highlight Israel as Ehud Barak portrayed it; as a ‘Villa in the Jungle’ - kind of invoking the famous phrase that Theodore Herzl used - ´The rampart of civilization against barbarism’ - «Look at the barbaric Arabs killing each other, and how dare you ask us to change?», he said. «We are an island of stability in a sea of tumult» - so it sort of benefited Netanyahu and his political imperatives and his effort to carry out a policy of peace without peace - which is essentially occupation maintenance. It's helped him push back against any US pressure, but I don't think that in the end it's going to be very positive for the kind of imperatives that Netanyahu seeks, and for the State of Israel as this kind of fortified ‘Villa in the Jungle’ - which actually to me resembles more of a Masada type fortress.
[...]
...like that—it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation -
www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/live-in-the-moment
Ornamental figurine or statuette or any material (except cloth) one or a pair www.todaysposting.com/TPAssignment.php?TP=456
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
by Bob Bruhin
Giveaway ends June 04, 2021.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Via: Book Giveaway For Walking the Eraserhood
bob-bruhin.com/2021/05/20/book-giveaway-for-walking-the-e...
My full review is on Goodreads:
This excellent translation is our best source on the life of Irena Sendler. The research is thorough and come alive through the many interviews the author conducted with Irena herself and the people who knew her. Most notable is that Ms. Mieszkowska lets Irena tell her own story in her own words. It provided much of the source material for the beautiful PBS documentary, Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers.
It was the request of Irena herself that her biography begin with the story of four high school girls from Uniontown, Kansas—half a world away and half a century from the terrifying experiences that defined her early life. That was Irena Sendler, a selfless person doing what she considered her moral duty.
yenir.
anadolu alıcı, yemişen olarak da bilinir.
bitkisi ağaç şeklindedir.
meyveleri sarı, turuncu ve kırmızı renktedir. bu albümdeki alıç fotoğraflarında kırmızı olanlar en olgunları ancak sarıyken de yenebilir. ekşimsi tatlı bir lezzeti var. olgunlaştıkça ekşiliği azalır.
latince: crataegus orientalis
ingilizce: haw, thorn apple, hawthorn
www.agaclar.org/agac.asp?id=722
www.wikiwand.com/tr/Adi_al%C4%B1%C3%A7 (adi alıç)
www.wikiwand.com/en/Crataegus_orientalis
kaynak kitap: www.goodreads.com/book/show/10662496-t-rkiye-nin-a-a-lar-...
From Goodreads - The author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be delivers her most ambitious and powerful novel to date: a captivating story of two very different women who build an unexpected friendship: a 91-year-old woman with a hidden past as an orphan-train rider and the teenage girl whose own troubled adolescence leads her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask.
Nearly eighteen, Molly Ayer knows she has one last chance. Just months from "aging out" of the child welfare system, and close to being kicked out of her foster home, a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse.
Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.
The closer Molly grows to Vivian, the more she discovers parallels to her own life. A Penobscot Indian, she, too, is an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past. As her emotional barriers begin to crumble, Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life - answers that will ultimately free them both.
Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.
***********************************************
My review -
If your a lover of history, this is the book for you. They're not many books out there that can make me shed a tear or two (in truth their is not much that can make me cry period), but this one had the tears welling up and spilling out. All I can say is thank goodness I was sitting in my car alone while waiting for my husband to get out of work.
The orphan trains that were spoke of in the book existed between 1854-1930. These trains would take orphaned or abandoned children from the east coast to the Midwest. Some of the children would be adopted into loving families. Others were indentured to families to work on the farm as labor or to work in the house helping take care of the children and other household duties. Many were abused, beaten, sexually molested, raped, or thrown out to fend for themselves. The really sad part is that these children really had no rights what so ever and many times were not believed if they complained. These were the castaways that no body really wanted.
The story goes back and forth between 2011 Maine and the 1930's and 1940's in Minnesota. We have two main characters, Vivian and Molly.
In this story Vivian was one of the orphan train children. She was an Irish immigrant who was orphaned in New York City. She was handed over to what was called the Children's Aid Society for care and was then placed on one of these trains. Molly is a Native American teenager who has been tossed into bad Foster Homes since she was little. Molly tries to steal a book from the library and is given 50 hours of community service. Molly is directed towards Vivian, who is 91 at the time, to help clean out her attic.
While Molly is helping Vivian with the attic, Vivian's story about her childhood is being told. Molly comes to find out that she and Vivian are not that much different in how they grew up and an unlikely bond grows between the two ladies.
As a mother, reading Vivian's story is quite painful at times to hear. Children did not have many rights during the time Vivian grew up so they could be beaten, made to work long hours with no food, piss poor living conditions, and a host of other things. I think what really ticks me off is that the organizations like the Children's Aid Society ignored what was going on. They knew what kind of life some of these children were going to have and they had no qualms about releasing them into the care of what I would call Monsters. I understand that times were different from now, but how can you look at a child and do what some of these people did. I don't think I will ever understand.
The story is not entirely about the abuse. Vivian and Molly both have their share of some happy moments especially between the middle to the ending of the book. It shows you that even under the most dire circumstances that if you want to survive, you can. Your life is what you make it out to be. The actions in your past should not define who you are. Yes they happened, and yes they really sucked, but you can rise above all the hardships and negativity that you have suffered through. That is why I gave this 5 stars and would highly recommend it.
So honored to have gotten this wonderful review!
www.amazon.com/stores/John-Russell/author/B08HWYTKPT?ref=...
From Goodreads - Orphan Tessa Gray, sixteen, crosses the ocean from New York to find her brother Nate in Victorian London, her only possession a clockwork angel necklace from her mother. She is ignorant of her power to transform; the Dark sisters are not. They kidnap her for the Magister, who wants to marry Tessa and claim her power.
Shadowhunters, warriors of angel blood, battle demons and keep the peace in the Downworld of vampires, warlocks and other supernaturals. Orphan teen Shadowhunters Jem, Will, and Jess rescue Tessa and agree to help save Nate. Vengeful vampire Lady Camille Belcourt and her current lover, warlock Magnus Bane provide entrée to the Magister's secret Pandemonium Club.
**************What I didn't like:
I was hoping to love this like I did the Mortal Instruments series, but so far it's nothing to write home about. The whole book was pretty ho-hum, predictable, and just a wee bit unbelievable. Clockwork people? Seriously? When I think of Victorian London, shadow hunters, and downworlders that is the last thing that comes to mind. I have a very active imagination, but this just seems way too out there to actually believe. I'm still going to read the rest of the series and I am hoping it makes more sense and is a bit more believable.
Will - I think we could have done without another angsty character. He is so flippin melodramatic. I swear that boy has more issues than a church full of pregnant nuns.
Jessamine - If I were Tessa I think I would have slapped that girl silly. She's pretentious, snooty, and ungrateful.
What I did like:
Tessa Gray - I like her. She's bold and although she is a bit shy, I think she may grow into her character and what will be in store for her later on. She has a pretty groovy power. It's different and I like that she is not just another shadowhunter with a chip the size of a small family car on her shoulder. I have high hopes for her and if I'm disappointed you will see a grown woman probably cry.
Charlotte & Henry - Possibly, not the most ideal leaders of the London Institute, but they can handle it better than the clave thinks they can. I don't trust the clave. I'm not sure why, but I think it will be their fault if any kind of upcoming war is coming.
Magnus Bane - Who does not like Magnus? (I hear nothing but crickets). He is such a central lovable character in these books that if anything were to ever happen to him, once again you would have to see a grown woman cry...AGAIN! If I were single, I would date Magnus.
Camille - I wondering why myself. She's a tad evil and self absorbed, but there is something about this vampire that I have come to admire and respect. I even liked her in the Mortal Instruments book. She knows how to get what she wants. Is that really such a bad trait??
Jem - The only other being that has ever been as calm as Jem is and I think that was the Buddha.
If I could give another half star I would. I don't hate the book, but I'm not impressed so far. This time it's the story line. If it weren't for all the characters that I loved, I probably would have only given this 1 1/2 stars. If the other two books live up to my expectations I will come back and increase my rating.*********************************
My review -
Willcox, AZ, (1877, pop. 3,796) • Pinterest
• Pablo B. Soto (1857-1947), was born in gold rush town Concord, CA • house built by Delos Hutchins Smith (1840-1909), sold in 1884 • Pablo & his Mexican born wife, Amelia lived here until c. 1910 —Willcox by Kathy Klump, Peta-Anne Tenney
During the final years of the Indian Wars, Willcox was a military shipping point for goods & troops necessary to defeat the Apache Indians, whose leader, Geronimo (1829-1909), surrendered in 1886 • became an important SE Arizona commercial center • goods unloaded at Willcox Railroad Station were transported to Army forts, mining camps, & ranches by freighting companies owned by Pablo Soto & Henry A. Morgan • they also operated mercantile establishments on Railroad Ave.
• Pablo Soto is said to have been one of Tucson, AZ's 1st school teachers, early 1880s • moved to Willcox, found a job as a salesman for Norton & Stewart general merchandise store • hired by Virginia born merchant John C. Fall, once owner of the J.C. Fall store & the Arizona (silver) Mine at Unionville, Nevada • Fall once refused a $750K offer for the mine • closed it in 1880, a victim of declining silver prices caused by rising silver production in the American West, & the "demonetization act" (Coinage Act of 1873) • virtually penniless, Fall moved to Willcox • Forgotten Nevada • Mark Twain, Unionville, Nevada —Literary Traveler
• in 1888, after 6 yrs. as Fall's bookkeeper, Pablo & his brother Mariano J. Soto became partners in the firm, renamed Fall & Soto Brothers • in 1893, they became Soto Brothers & Co. (Soto Brothers Mercantile), probably shortly before Fall's death • established the town's 1st banking operation • involved w/rancher James J. Riggs (1870-1911) in the development of the Chicago and Arizona Copper Company 's Juniper mine in Dos Cabezas • after several years of prosperity, the Panic of 1907 severely damaged their businesses • sold their general merchandise business • Pablo moved to Los Angeles where he spent the rest of his life
• National Register # 87000744, 1987 • NRHP Continuation Sheet