ARRET PARAR

 

Revoked

 

Lies

 

How much more?

Nearly 300 bodies have been found in a mass grave in Gaza INCLUDING CHILDREN. They show signs of torture and in some cases were buried alive.

The White House calls the reports "deeply disturbing", and have therefore closed their eyes, put their fingers in their ears, and are chanting "nah nah nah nah I can't HEAR you!" over and over.

What will it take to end this nightmare? How much longer will it go on?

The real issues:

Between climate change and ubiquitous PFA/plastic contamination leading to infertility, the human race faces existential struggles for the next thousand years at least. More likely 5,000 years. And yet no one in power is even willing to consider that simple truth.

The human outlook in the years to come (assuming that our species survives, which is by no means certain) will be very different from modern sensibilities. With a steady decline in human fertility, protecting children will be a primary social obligation. Abortion will become irrelevant except out of medical necessity. War and its concomitant environmental damage will be universally unacceptable, although I fear that we're going to see a lot of wars in the meantime for habitable land (with the zone of habitability moving inexorably towards the poles) and resources.

The food chain will be...well, if we're lucky we'll only lose an incredibly broad range of flavors. Spices and luxuries such as vanilla and chocolate will be stories of legend at best. Local production will be the primary source of nourishment. Knowledge of preservation techniques will be extremely valuable. The worldwide contamination of water supplies will boost cancer levels through the roof. Anxiety and depression will hit levels heretofore unimagined, as will suicide and deaths of despair. The average human lifespan will be shorter than it has for tens of thousands of years.

And none of this was necessary. That's the thing that's hardest to take. Things didn't have to be this way. We knew better.

Welcome to my hole in the ground

Once again I'm effectively homeless online. I quit Reddit after the whole API thing; for some reason I didn't miss it. But I got involved again on Facebook, which I'd abandoned for years. I guess I really wanted a place to talk about politics.

It's probably me. There's an undeniable pattern. I get involved in political groups online, and end up being censored and/or banned for what I'm told are extremist comments. Now, as I see it, my comments are anything but extremist; the oligarchs are literally killing off the human race and rendering the Earth uninhabitable for life, but we're not allowed to even TALK about fighting back.

The latest round was particularly ironic, I think. I was on a Facebook group that was originally called "Guillotines for Billionaires", but was later called "Guillotines For A Better America", or something like that. I think the implication of violence was pretty clear, no? In fact, I was quite surprised that Facebook itself allowed the group to exist. It was pretty clear that the group wasn't hidden or anything, since we were hit by a surprisingly high number of DNC trolls. But in any case, I had fun making memes and being involved with the group. Until...

Someone posted a photo of a sign on a pillar that said something like "Thank a cop today", with a stick underneath that said "And pepper spray them". I commented "And kick them in the balls. HARD. And then take their gun." Okay, a little harsh, but all cops are bastards in my book. Nonetheless the INSTANT I tried to post that comment I got a message that my comment went against community standards - and that if I deleted it immediately I might "avoid potential account restrictions".

Now, there's nothing that gets me more angry than being told to shut up. So I quit the group and Facebook on the spot.

That's free speech in these days of late-stage capitalism; censorship by software, with no appeal allowed. The only places that have free speech are those where no one will hear you...like here.

So I'll be writing here and in the other digital holes in the ground, for now.

Israel's stalling game

As the grandson of four child survivors of a a genocide which is still denied by the descendants of the perpetrators, I can testify to the truth of this: nobody cares. Our land and homes remain stolen. The one and a half million men, women, and children dead remain unrecognized. Pundits and elites roll their eyes and say "get over it, already!".

For a little extra irony, Israel itself continues to refuse to recognize the historicity of that genocide, even though the International Association of Genocide Scholars has recognized it for over half a century. The government of the United States waited over a hundred years before recognizing the genocide. Prestigious American schools including many of the Ivy League have accepted millions of dollars from the government descended from the perpetrators to endow chairs that can only be filled by professors who deny the genocide.

Our people are dispersed throughout the world. In the decades following the genocide, some of us took what reprisals we could, assassinating some of those who'd given and carried out the orders. For a while, the activist organization of my people were the most feared terrorists in the world. But that was long ago. The last of the survivors died in the last ten or twenty years. And that's where things stand. There will never be an admission of guilt, never be any reparations. Which is exactly what Israel AND THE US plan for the Palestinians.