Thursday, January 25, 2024

Hey Hamas and Israel and their allies and apologists, did you ever consider it was God that swallowed Jonah and did not cough him up until he did what God wanted him to do?

 

    I am pretty sure most Christians and Jews believe a whale swallowed Jonah, but it was God that swallowed Jonah and did not cough him up until he agreed to do what God had asked him to do.

    A few days ago, a classmate of mine at Crestline Elementary School in the upscale white Birmingham suburb Mountain Brook, Alabama, aka The Tiny Kingdom, started replying to my comments at the Australian Hamas apologist Caitlin Johnstone’s Substack Newsletter, where I had tangled with quite a few of Caitlin’s readers over Caitlin and them blaming Israel and America for everything going on in Gaza since Hamas's brutal October 7, 2023 attack in Israel. 

    Peter and I had some mostly cordial back and forth, which I reported in an earlier post at this blog. He then made a proposal that the UN, or someone, buy land in Sudan on the Red Sea, and the Palestinians would move there and have their own country. Peter then revised his proposal twice, as I recall, but the gist of it remained the same.

https://tinykingdomblacksheep.blogspot.com/2024/01/some-proposed-solutions-to-war-in.html

    I encouraged Peter to spread his proposal far and wide, but as far as I could see, he only put it into a comment at Caitlin Johnstone’s Newsletter, where Peter was not well received. 

   I put Peter’s proposal into Caitlin’s Substack Newsletter and into retired war correspondent Hamas apologist Chris Hedges’s Substack Newsletter, where neither Peter’s proposal nor I were well received. 

    Peter comment under yesterday’s Hey Chris Hedges and other Hamas apologists: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off post at this blog, led to a lot back and forth between us, and this morning I left him something to ponder.

Peter Rodes Robinson

Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October
Asa Winstanley
Reactivated “Hannibal Directive” was ordered from top, Israeli journalists confirm.  
Hamas is blamed for killing 1200 Israelis. Wouldn't it be interesting if the TRUTH is that Israel killed a substantial percentage of that number?
This protocol (often referred to as the Hannibal Directive) was standard IDF policy for decades.
>>They write that “the instruction was to stop ‘at any cost’ any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, using language very similar to that of the original Hannibal Directive, despite repeated promises by the defense apparatus that the directive had been canceled.”<< 
 
If this is TRUE (and the fact that it is being reported by Israeli journalists makes me think it is) do you encourage the spread of this knowledge?

Sloan Bashinsky
I have read several times about that at the Hedges and Caitlin forums, and it may well have happened when Israel’s police and military tried to stop the attack and prevent even more hostages from being taken back to Gaza.
But what does that have to do with the sex atrocities the Guardian reported, which I had seen reported quite a few times elsewhere? Every time I mentioned rape at the Hedges and Caitlin forums, I was told it was Israeli propaganda and how many people Israel's’s police and military killed at the scene of the Oct 7 attack. 
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Christian theologian, who wrote The Cost of Discipleship, comparing “cheap grace” with the real deal, said, "Silence in the face of Evil itself is Evil, God will not hold us harmless”. He and others who tried to kill Hitler were caught and put into concentration camps and executed.
I don’t think I would care for the karma of people who keep giving Hamas a free pass.

Peter Rodes Robinson
https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathancook/p/why-the-guardians-hamas-mass-rap

Peter Rodes Robinson
I am extremely skeptical that soldiers going into battle with the fourth largest army in the world would be taking the time to rape women.

Sloan Bashinsky
Using your reasoning, why would Hamas be so stupid as to pick a fight with the 4th largest standing Army in the world, unless Hamas wanted that army to obliterate Gaza, trying to obliterate Hamas? And to get that outcome, Hamas’s soldiers raped unarmed female civilians during the raid, and kidnapped unarmed women and children and took them back to Gaza. 

Peter Rodes Robinson
Sorry, I couldn't confirm "fourth largest military". On a per capita basis Israel is number two, spending slightly more than the US. On total defense spending, Israel is close to Canada , and about a third of the UK budget.

Sloan Bashinsky
The size and $pending for IDF is not really relevant. Peter, you simply cannot trust everything either side, or the press, say. You have to use common sense, and both sides of the brain, to know something awful happened on October 7, unlike anything before, to cause Israel to attack Gaza in this way. 
 
Peter Rodes Robinson
All of the initial reports about Oct 7 came from the Israeli side, and I believed them 100%. Only later did I start to use common sense and both sides of my brain.

Sloan Bashinsky
I was skeptical of both side’s reports, from the beginning. But as you and I both concluded, Hamas wanted an over the top response from Israel, so what really happened on Oct. 7 to produce the over the top response, Peter? It had to be something terrible. 

Peter Rodes Robinson
What if Israel killed half of the dead civilians on Oct 7? What if the "rapes" were mostly fabricated? It's still awful, right?
The difference is that this scenario does not support the "Arabs are inhuman" meme.

Sloan Bashinsky
What if Israel and military on Oct. 7 did what I would have done, if I were there and my wife and children were being attacked and about to be killed, or raped, or kidnapped back to Gaza, to suffer horribly. And I had a gun with only 6 bullets in it, which would be useless to defend my family and me. So, I kill my family and then I kill myself. Because the alternative is much worse. There is always the risk of hostages being kited by the rescuers or by the hostages takers, if the rescuers go in with.guns blazing.
Islam has proved many times how inhumane it can be. Hamas’s charter called for the destruction of Israel. That’s humane? Or is it genocide? Two rhetorical questions. 
 
Peter Rodes Robinson
"the alternative is much worse"
But this is the useful narative. "A fate worse than death." If you want to demonize your enemy, saying that they killed your soldiers just doesn't carry a lot of weight, or even that they killed your civilians, but saying that they raped your women. "Ahhh. They must be demons."

Sloan Bashinsky
You argue like someone who never married and had a wife and children, whom you would have protected with your life, and you loved them enough not tlet them be raped and slaughtered by terrroists. Please take your argument up with Israel, in Israel, in person, face to face. :-) 
And while you are there, straightening out Israel’s leaders, present your solution for Israel staying in Palestine and the Palestinians all moving to Sudan, financed by the UN, Israel, America, or whomever :-) 
 
Peter Rodes Robinson
"raped"
There it is again. You see fire fights are not enough to make you hate the enemy. 
I get the feeling that you are still more offended by October 7th than by the 30,000 dead, killed by Israel, since.

Sloan Bashinsky
I am offended by Oct 7 and what it produced, and who produced it, and who keeps giving Hamas a free pass, including you, who suggests Israel should stay in Palestine and the Palestinians should leave, when who needs to leave is Israel.

  • Peter Rodes Robinson
    What do you think the Palestinians should do? 
    Bibi is making it clear that the prospect of a two-state solution is null. I think it has been a convenient myth which has been used to molify the Palestinians up to now.
    So what do you think the Palestinians should do? 

    Sloan Bashinsky
    Hamas has seen to it that the Palestinians are fucked. If the Palestinians want to leave Gaza, and thus stop providing Hamas cover, then they should petition the UN for help doing that. That’s what your proposal is about, isn’t it? Start selling your solution to the UN, to Ajazeera, to CNN, to the Guardian, to President Biden, to Israel. Then perhaps expect howls of disapproval from Hamas apologists, and perhaps death threats from Islam. 
Peter Rodes Robinson
If a way is prepared for the Pals to go to Hala'ib-Palestine, what would stop the Hamas members from going?

Sloan Bashinsky
Nothing, but that is not relevant to the assignment God gave to you, and your way is forward with your best effort. 
 
Peter Rodes Robinson
At this point I'm trying to get my proposal to a Palestinian woman.

Sloan Bashinsky
good :-)

     Today:

Sloan Bashinsky 

Below is a link to an absolutely brutal Netanyahu-bashing Guardian article today:  

"Hamas official says ‘no chance’ hostages will return to Israel after Netanyahu rejects deal.

"The prime minister said he rejected the terms of a deal which included Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza”. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/22/israel-gaza-war-hamas-hostages-release-benjamin-netanyahu-rejects-deal 

Taking the approach you and others took to yesterday's Guardian article about the Hamas rape atrocities on October 7, I would conveniently ignore today’s Guardian article, which would be as idiotic as ignoring yesterday's Guardian article. 

The Las Vegas odds of the 2 Guardian articles happening in succession were about zero, howver the God odds were 100 percent. Same for the odds of you meeting me online after not seeing me since the 1950s.

Today’s Guardian article left me thinking you need to promote your proposed solution of moving he Palestinians to Sudan as if their lives depend on it and your soul depends on it. 

Consider how it went for Jonah in the Bible after he declined to do what God had asked him to do :-). 

I have experienced countless times that there is no hiding from God, and it matters not whether people believe God exists :-)

Peter Rodes Robinson
Yes I will ignore the new Guardian article. I don't feel any personal responsibility to fix the situation. I've done far more than the average person by thinking deeply on what is a possible solution.
I posted the proposal again in the Scott Alexander Open Thread 342 yesterday. If you think it is a good proposal you should go there and say so. Other voices mean much more than mine.
I seldom get support; almost everyone says it's impossible. Of course they don't post any solutions.

Sloan Bashinsky
You saw how ill-received I am at Caitlin’s place and over at Chris Hedges’s place, before and after I posted your solution at both places. It’s your proposal, which perhaps could be likened to Moses parting the Red Sea, if it comes about, and how you shepherd it is between you and God, Peter. 
 
Peter Rodes Robinson
Hah! You think God has plans for me and none for you? What are the Las Vegas odds of two 81-year-old guys from Crestline Elementary...

Sloan Bashinsky
I’ve been consciously dealing with God’s plans for me since early 1987, and mostly I have not cared for God’s plans for me, and if you have been experiencing similar for that long, or longer, or even shorter, then you know what mean :-) Your solution is unique, you are a Hamas apologist, and you have a far great chance, therefore, than I to be received by the Palestinians and Hamas, than do I, who cannot abide Hamas or Israel’s behavior starting October 7. Before that, I wasn’t paying much attention to that miasm, other than I knew it was and remains biblical, it's a religious war, and it’s not going to stop for so long as Israel is in Palestine, Islam will see to that. 
Me, as president, I would abandon Israel and release all of America’s UFO files on same day, and hope the latter took everyone on the planet’s minds off whatever was bothering them in that moment in time and space :-). Meanwhile, as opportunities arise, I will keep shooting off my mouth and painting bullseyes all over myself :-), surrounded by MAGAs, Republicans, Democrats and Bible thumpers, who don’t seem to care for much, if anything, I say or write about anything that matters to them :-)

Peter Rodes Robinson
I seldom think about God's plans for me, but of course, that's not a data point.

     I felt like it was time for me to move on.

    I spend a good bid of time each day wondering if what I’m doing is in sync with God, and my dreams and other ways of “hearing” let me know.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

By Sloan Bashinsky at No comments:

Hey Chris Hedges and other Hamas apologists: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off

 

    Once upon a time, The Guardian newspaper, based in England, sent two of its U.S.-based journalists to Key West to interview me and other homeless people I knew and city officials about how the city treated its homeless people. The journalists told me that when they went to interview the people running the city’s homeless shelter, and told them that they already had interviewed me and a homeless woman friend of mine, the people running the shelter were freaked out and didn’t want to talk with the journalists. 

    After I moved back to Birmingham in 2019 and thanks to an inheritance no longer was homeless, I paid for my Key West homeless friend to take Greyhound through Birmingham, where we visited for a short while, and then Greyhound carried her to her mother’s city in Missouri, where my friend lived until she had a massive seizure and died. I then did a podcast about her, which got over 340,000 complete watches after it was launched on YouTube and then was seeded into the Torrent system.

Homeless outlaw cowgirl shaman with the blues saved Key West from Hurricane Irma obliteration 



    A very different kind of homeless report was in my email yesterday:
 
The Chris Hedges Report
CHRIS HEDGES
JAN 19

The cartoonist Joe Sacco invented nonfiction graphic journalism, marrying rigorous and detailed reporting with illustrations that leap off the page and give his stories a texture, depth and power that is hard for most writers to match. He pioneered this work with nine issues on the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation from 1993 to 1995. The nine comics, later published as the book
The Chris Hedges Report with cartoonist Joe Sacco about his iconic books Palestine and Footnotes 


Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
Once upon a time, The Guardian newspaper, based in England, sent two of its U.S.-based journalists to Key West to interview me and other homeless people I knew and city officials about how the city treated its homeless people. The journalists told me that when they went to interview the people running the city’s homeless shelter, and told them that they already had interviewed me and a homeless woman friend of mine, the people running the shelter were freaked out and didn’t want to talk with the journalists.
 
The October 7 Guardian article below was in my Apple newsfeed yesterday morning. It helps explain why Israel’s leaders and military went insane after the October 7 attack. Unable to beat Israel militarily, Hamas hoped Israel would do precisely what it has done in Gaza, so that the entire world would turn against Israel. 

This former practicing attorney says Israel is guilty of massive war crimes in Gaza, and Hamas very much wanted those massive wars crimes to happen, and for people like Chris Hedges, who ought know better, to ignore what Hamas did, and lay 100 percent of the blame on Israel and America, which is guilty of aiding and abetting Israel’s massive war crimes in Gaza, is absurd.


Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attack, which was Hamas hope..

Guardian aware of sexual assaults for which multiple corroborating pieces of evidence exist

Warning: contains graphic descriptions

10:00 EST Thursday, 18 January 2024

In videos from 7 October, the body of a young woman is lying face down in the back of a pickup truck, stripped to her underwear, one leg bent at an unnatural angle. One of the men sitting next to her pulls her long hair as armed men around him shout praises to God. 
Footage of the lifeless corpse of Shani Louk, a 22-year-old Israeli-German national, paraded around the streets of Gaza was some of the first to surface on 7 October, as the scale of the horror visited on sleeping families in kibbutzim neighbouring the strip and people partying at a nearby rave started to become clear.
In the more than three months since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, the atrocities the militants committed have been well documented. Israel is still grappling with the trauma: entire families burned alive, torture and mutilation, children and elderly people ripped from the arms of their loved ones, seized as hostages.
Emergency responders risked their lives in the fighting on 7 October and several days afterwards to rescue the wounded and retrieve the dead. The chaos meant there were significant failings in preserving evidence of gender-based violence and what is coming to be seen as the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war by Hamas.
Israel’s top police investigations unit, Lahav 433, is still poring over 50,000 pieces of visual evidence and 1,500 witness testimonies, and says it is unable to put a number on how many women and girls suffered gender-based violence.
By cross-referencing testimonies given to police, published interviews with witnesses, and photo and video footage taken by survivors and first responders, the Guardian is aware of at least six sexual assaults for which multiple corroborating pieces of evidence exist. Two of those victims, who were murdered, were aged under 18.
At least seven women who were killed were also raped in the attack, according to Prof Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a legal scholar and international women’s rights advocate, from her examination of evidence so far. The New York Times and NBC have both identified more than 30 killed women and girls whose bodies bear signs of abuse, such as bloodied genitals and missing clothes, and according to the Israeli welfare ministry, five women and one man have come forward seeking help for sexual abuse over the past few months.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims, and the burned or disfigured state of some of the bodies, morgues were preoccupied with identification and did not have the time or capacity to test for sexual assault using rape kits, said the police spokesperson Mirit Ben Mayor. Lack of trained personnel was also a problem: according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, there are only seven forensic pathologists in the entire country.
Zaka, Israel’s emergency response organisation, usually works in cooperation with police at the scenes of terrorist attacks so the authorities can gather evidence before Zaka removes the bodies. Many have said since the attack that they wished they had realised at the time that, although they were trying to treat the dead with respect, they were also contaminating crime scenes. Most Zaka workers are conservative ultra-Orthodox men: several have said that they “didn’t think of rape at all”.
The victims’ bodies were also released as quickly as possible from morgues to their families for the swift burial required by Jewish tradition, and crucial evidence buried with them.
Some posthumous forensic examination is still possible, but it is unlikely that the full extent of the gender-based violence committed on 7 October will ever be known. 
The Guardian spoke to a Zaka volunteer, Simcha Greeneman, who said in one kibbutz he had come across a woman who was naked from the waist down, bent over a bed and shot in the back of the head. In another house, he discovered a dead woman with sharp objects in her vagina, including nails.
At the Shura military base in central Israel, where most of the dead were taken, the reservist Shari Mendes, who was tasked with washing the female bodies and preparing them for burial, told reporters: “We have seen women who have been raped, from the age of children through to the elderly.
“We were in such a state of shock … Many young women arrived in bloody shrouded rags with just their underwear, and the underwear was often very bloody. Our team commander saw several soldiers who were shot on the crotch, intimate parts, vagina or shot in the breasts,” she added.
The most detailed witness account of rape is from a young woman who attended the Supernova music festival, where more than 350 young people were killed. The witness, who was shot in the back, said she was hiding in vegetation just off route 232 when a large group of Hamas gunmen arrived, who between them raped and killed at least five women.
“They laid a woman down and I understood that he is raping her … They passed her on to another person,” she told police in a video reviewed by the Guardian. “And he cuts her breast, he throws it on the road and they are playing with it.”
For more Guardian journalism follow this channel
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One raped woman was “shredded to pieces” and another “stabbed repeatedly in the back while she was being raped”, the same witness said in an interview with the New York Times. The witness has provided police with photographs of her hiding place, and another survivor hiding in the same spot has testified that he saw at least one woman being raped.
One of the festival’s organisers, Rami Shmuel, who returned to the scene the day after the attack, has described finding the bodies of three young women “naked from the waist down, legs spread”.
“One had the face burnt,” he said. Another was “shot in the face” while the last had been “shot all over the lower part of her body”.
One woman who survived gang rape at the rave was being treated for severe mental and physical trauma, police said, and was in no condition to speak to investigators.
In addition to the gender-based violence committed on 7 October, there are worries for the safety of the women still in Hamas captivity in Gaza.
Renana Eitan, the head of psychiatry at the Ichilov Tel Aviv medical centre, previously told the Guardian that of the 14 freed hostages still under her care – including children – several had been subjected to or witnessed sexual abuse. The US state department has said that the week-long truce between Israel and Hamas in November broke down because the militants refused to release the remaining women in its custody, over fears they would speak publicly about sexual violence.
Orit Sulitzeanu, the director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, said: “Everyone is looking for that golden piece of evidence, a woman survivor who testifies publicly about what happened to her. But think about it: someone suffering with that kind of trauma, why would they put themselves through that? Sexual violence is underreported everywhere. This is no different.
“I don’t think it is currently in the survivors’ best interests to go to the police, and I think the investigations into all the atrocities are going to take a very long time.”
Rape and sexual assault are considered war crimes and a breach of international humanitarian law. Hamas has denied the accusations of sexual violence.
On Monday, UN-appointed independent experts said that “given the number of victims and the extensive premeditation and planning of the attacks”, mounting evidence of rapes and genital mutilation pointed to possible crimes against humanity.
Israeli intelligence officials, experts and sources with direct knowledge of interrogation reports of captured Hamas fighters believe units that attacked were beforehand given a text that drew on a controversial and contested interpretation of traditional Islamic military jurisprudence, claiming that captives were “the spoils of war”. This potentially legitimised the abduction of civilians and other abuses, without being an explicit instruction to do so.
In at least two unsourced videos of interrogations of alleged Hamas members, which Israeli officials say they did not authorise for release, the men are heard talking about instructions given to rape women.
Linking suspects in custody to specific crimes was likely to be very difficult, Halperin-Kaddari said, although Israel intends to open criminal proceedings as soon as possible. 
Individual victims will be able to file complaints amounting to crimes against humanity charges against Hamas at the international criminal court in The Hague, and the court is also expected to open a specific investigation into sexual violence on 7 October.
Halperin-Kaddari said: “An international investigation has more potential because the level of evidence is not as high as that in criminal proceedings, where you have to have a specific individual and specific victim and prove what happened beyond all reasonable doubt.
“To prosecute the overall scope of the atrocities and the degree of cruelty … We have enough for that already.”

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

By Sloan Bashinsky at No comments:

Cult Busters: Israel, Hamas, America, and social media

 

    The Some proposed solutions to the war in Palestine, which surely would please Melchizedek and Father Abraham  post introduced a fellow from my class at Crestline Elementary School in the “poor side” of Mountain Brook, aka The Tiny Kingdom. I had not seen or heard from him since then. 

    Here is our private message conversation after I published his proposal for ending the war in Palestine.

Peter
One must wonder how many decades people will cling to the vision of a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians while the facts on the ground move continually in the other direction. Nor is a one-state solution any more plausible. Time for a new idea. The fundamental problem for Israel and the Palestinians is that there are 5 million stateless Palestinians and Israel will never accept them as citizens because they are not Jewish. Historically no Arab country has welcomed them either. 

In the past month, both Jordan and Egypt have repeatedly declared that their borders would not be opened to receive even one Palestinian—not as a way to deny humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under attack but rather as a countermove to deny Israel the opportunity to empty the West Bank and Gaza of as many Palestinians as possible. Jordan’s fears are not unfounded, and its redline of refusing to admit Palestinians remains unlikely to change for several reasons.

https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/21/jordan-s-redline-on-admitting-palestinians-is-unlikely-to-change-pub-91077 

Without a country, the Palestinians will never be free. I see one possible solution: the world should buy a country for the Palestinians. It would not be cheap. Rebuilding Gaza after Israel destroys it will also not be cheap, but the world will pay for it. Here is my proposal. The idea when first proposed was to buy a less-developed part of Sudan bordering Egypt with a size close to that of Israel. A refinement is to negotiate a deal with the micronation self-proclaimed as the "Islamic Republic of Hala’ib Triangle". This entity covers 7,950 square miles (20,580 sq km), comparable to the size of Israel (8,630 sq mi). 

https://micronations.wiki/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Hala%27ib_Triangle 

Set aside the claims of Sudan and Egypt for this area, and focus on justice for the current inhabitants which number about 1500. I'm proposing a payment of $1 million US per resident, infants included. The nominal cost would be $1.5 billion, about the cost of 2 to 3 weeks of bombs to be dropped on the Gazans. Also a grant of ten acres of their choosing per resident. Hala'ib lies between Sudan and Egypt and borders the Red Sea to the east. I believe the best approach is that the current residents, mostly Bedouins, would have citizenship in the new country along with the Palestinians. They would be suddenly rich, of course, which would not be a new phenomenom for Bedouins. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1982/01/31/saudi-arabiafrom-bedouins-to-oil-barons/bef09597-7dd2-481c-9a85-1041320e0a63/ 

The 1500 rich Bedouins and the five million not-rich Palestinians would be the citizens of the new country which might be called the Hala'ib-Palestine Alliance. Hala'ib-Palestine would be far enough away from Israel that continued hostilities would be unlikely in addition to being pointless. Many persons claim that the Palestinians would never accept the idea of moving away from the birthplace of Islam. Not living in the birthplace of Islam does not seem to be a problem for the rest of the nearly 2 billion Muslims. A quick poll of the Palestinans in between bombardments and sniper attacks could resolve that question. There would need to be a threshold for final approval on both the Hala'ib and the Palestinian sides.

Of course a proposal which looks very good to those directly involved will probably be repugnant to Sudan and Egypt, so those countries must be dealt with. One possibility: offer to redirect the aid that the US gives Israel (approximately $4 billion per year) for ten years: $2 billion per year to Sudan, and the same for Egypt. Set a one-year deadline for agreement: if either country does not agree, all of the money goes to the other country. Regardless, the establishment of the new country would proceed under UN and US protection.The new country should include a nature preserve for the Nubian wild ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_wild_ass 

t should also include a large interior area which is reserved for nomadic occupation only. In addition a strip of land one mile thick along the Red Sea plus land for an airport and various parcels for government installations should be under permanent government control. The oceanfront area could be leased for resort development. The land remaining after the grants to the original Hala'ib residents would be divied up among the Palestinians. Enlist a coalition of nations to build a new Palestine in the new country. The US can contribute the money it would otherwise spend replacing the buildings and infrastructure in Gaza that Israel has turned into rubble. Israel can rebuild what it has destroyed in Gaza.

SB
I will say this one more time. What is going on in Palestine is a religious war, and religious fanatics are driving it, and have driven it for a very long time. I tell you this again, because I have dealt with religious fanatics for a very long time, and they are deranged and cannot be reasoned with. You see how nuts some people I engage at Chris Hedges and Caitlin Johnstone’s substacks are. They are fanatics. Certain they are right. No chance of thinking they are wrong. That said, I encourage you to present your proposal into both of those forums, yourself, and into any other forums in which you participate, and get it to President Biden, if you can, and to the the top dogs in the US Senate and House of Representatives, if you can, and to Al Jazeera, maybe they will publish it, which would be terrific. And to NPR All Things Considered, and to Fareed Zakaria at CNN, and Anderson Cooper and Erin Burnett at CNN.

Peter
Wow! Well, I updated Caitlin. Paso a paso.

SB
This is your project, and it’s a good project, and I think you need to present it everywhere you can, after you see how Caitlin’s place responds to it, which might help you tone it up again.

Peter
I'll certainly try to keep on improving, and looking for new places to post it.
Pretty crazy folks over at Caitlin's blog. They think the Israelis are going to move somewhere else.

SB
Here’s my take on them, which is not meant to diminish what Israel is doing, which is terrible. Caitlin and most of her followers were terribly abused in childhood. They identify with the people of Gaza, and with the Palestines generally, as if they are the people of Gaza, and the Palestinians. Hamas are the protective the good parents they never had growing up. Thus, it is not possible for them to entertain even a sliver of thought that Hamas has done this to them to gain favor in the world and for Israel to lose favor.

Peter
Certainly possible. It's more in the psychological realm than I normally go. I see a lynch mob. Lynch mobs are seldom angry about nothing. The focus of their anger has transgressed in someway, and for sure Israel has transgressed. Mobs are not interested in moderation. They have one goal in mind and that is to exact justice as they see it as quickly as possible. Calm voices and seeing both sides are not appreciated.
Mobs make all of the members feel powerful. Almost all humans enjoy feeling powerful.

SB
Lynch mob is a good assessment, but in this case, the people leading Israel and IDF need to be lynched. So I give Caitlin and her followers attaboys for that. But why can’t they see the whole picture? That brings in their psychology. That’s the last thing they want to hear or deal with, and if I drop that on them, I would not be surprised if they try to lynch me.

Peter
I understand these motivations, they don't bother me particularly. What dismays me about Caitlin's group so many like it is the attachment to unreality. They don't like my proposal because the Palestinians have to move. They want the Israelis to move. Well a case could be made that that would be more just, but it's a complete fantasy. They imagine some combination of forces will impel this to happen. I ED what if Israel says that have any NATO country attacks them they will respond with nuclear missiles. The answer was "return fire". So they would torch the world and the Palestinians from their mob mentality.
Some of them immediately turned on you and me as well. I'm not slow to block the worst cases.

SB
Israel definitely will use it nukes, if it feels sufficiently threatened, and I have made that comment several times in Hedges and Caitlin's forums, and it doesn’t faze them. Here’s the deal, though, When I see someone obsessing over something going on a long way from where they are, as if their very lives are at risk, too, then that’s the tip-off that they identify with the victims, whose plight punches every one of their internal wounded buttons, and they respond accordingly.

Peter
Thumbs up

SB
This is what Hamas did to Israel on Oct 7. Israel went insane. Here we are, and Hamas is pleased, it got what it wanted to get.

Peter
Thumbs up

Peter
Some day the historians will see Oct 7 as a brilliant stroke. I think we are going to see some real change now, which has not happened in 75 years.

SB
Psychiatry and Psychology call what the remote obsessors are doing, projection. I don’t yet see how real change is possible. Hamas gambled the entire farm that Israel’s reaction would turn the entire world against it, but Hamas did not factor in America, and especially, the American right, but even Joe Biden is furious with Hamas, but he does not really know why. Israel is sitting on huge stockpiles of American weapons and munitions, put there by America for its own military, but Israel controls the warehouses and is drawing down the inventory to pursue this war. Biden was worried the war In Gaza would expand, and it is doing that. Biden beefed up the US Naval presence there, and now look what’s going on in the Red Sea. And at the Lebanon border. We soon could be in WW III. Thank you, Hamas, a brilliant strategy. Thank you, Israel. Thank you, President Biden, Donald Trump, the American Christians and Jews for Israel. Well, that would be serous change. 

Peter
You blame both sides and I don't blame either side! I'm probably angrier with Israel, but that is emotion, not rationality. All this leaves you and I in a place where we can communicate.
America and Israel are becoming isolated. I don't think there is any other country in the world where the general public supports the US and Israel.

SB
I blame both sides, because both sides contributed to where we are now. I blame America, because it should have kept its nose out of Palestine and the Middle East altogether. I have been around the Globe twice, and have traveled in Europe and the Caribbean, and Americans, in the main, don’t know, and don’t care, how the rest of the world views America. America really needs to turn inward and look at itself in the mirror for a good while. But projection and finger pointing are so much more comfortable and fun and exciting. Joe Biden sucks. His son sucks. The Democrats remind me of the mythical Fulakwi tribe, forever getting lost and gathering in a circle and sitting down and holding hands and closing their eyes and chanting, “Where the fuck are we? Where the fuck are we?" Donald Trump and the MAGAs and the Republican Party and the Christian right Supreme Court Justices are something else entirely. They are America’s blossoming version of The Third Reich.

Peter
Thumbs up

SB
Be thankful you are able to live in the Dominican Republic. My younger friend, who does the tech work for my books and our podcast told me last night that he thinks he will be happier, and safer, living somewhere else, but other countries, including Mexico, don’t want any more American ex pats.

Peter
Most people are friendly to me here.

SB
I’m talking about the governments of other countries, they don’t want more American ex pats. I spent a lot time on Tortola and Dominica in the Caribbean, in he latter 1990s. Loved it. I no longer have a passport, and am not well enough to leave America anyway. I’m gonna go down with the ship. I worry for my children and their families.

Peter
Yes

Peter
My health is remarkably good. I haven't been to a doctor in at least 5 years probably longer..

SB
I’m jealous of your good health, and also happy for you.
Part of our last podcast is about Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. My tech friend  gathered enough evidence to persuade the Feds to prosecute Meadows for faking where he lived so he could run for Congress there. Some Rumble clients learned of the podcast and cut out clips of it they especially didn’t like and posted the clips at Rumble and Rumble took the clips down. Rumble is very right wing. You Tube never gave us a link for that podcast. Lots of people who piss off Trump start receiving death threats, is what I’m getting at. So it won’t surprise me if I am made extinct. That’s why viewers of he podcast can see only me, and why Bob is not Bob’s real name.

Peter
My memory is terrible, but it doesn't seem to be getting a lot worse. I'm actually learning tricks such as when I lay something down I try to visualize it in my praying for about 10 seconds after I let go of it. If I do that I can pretty much remember where I put it.
In my brain
I hope the best for you. Of course both of us have already beaten the averages.

SB
Lucky you, when I had vertigo about a year ago, and an ER did an MRI to see if I had a stroke (no), they called the government, because they had never seen anything like my brain. I snuck out of there and changed back into my usual shape and drove home.

Peter
Lol

SB
https://tinykingdomblacksheep.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-more-books-he-writes-ant-longer-he.html

"Grandfossil’s tales to his grandchildren, a different sort of last will and testament"

Peter
Thumbs up
I received no useful feedback at Caitlin's substack. Sad.

SB
Cults, or if you wish, religions, are not open to change, or to anything that challenges their views.

Peter
Thumbs up

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

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