Peace In Palestine/Baby Angel

 

photo by Amjad Doumani

Peace In Palestine

The “Ceasefire Carols” for peace in Palestine were well received in downtown Toledo at Promenade Park on Saturday night. We even picked up some new singers for next week’s performance. Nice!

Hear us in this clip: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1Clx7ZgAie/?igshid=NmUwNWViZjkxNw%3D%3D

The welcoming turnout gives me hope that the vast majority of human beings do desire peace, do not desire the deaths of more innocents, and do want to bring an end to the Israeli bombing of Gaza permanently. It gives me a warm feeling that perhaps not all people on Planet Earth are heartless bastards. There are people who care, who have a moral center, and who aren’t easily persuaded to think genocide is a “necessary thing.”

I realize there are still quite a few heartless types out there, but their voices are being drown out by Ceasefire Carolers worldwide and celestial choirs of angels who herald the birth of the Christ child. The baby Jesus, according to the Gospel account in Matthew 2:16-18, almost didn’t make it to his first birthday because of King Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents. There seems to be a parallel between that story and current events, don’t you think?

Sleep in heavenly peace, little ones, who will never experience a holiday here on this plane of existence. May we never forget you.

You know that the world is broken when a country is given the freedom to annihilate another people as the world watches in real time. This should shake each and every one of us to the core. --Michel Moushabeck, If Jesus Was Born Today, Would He Be Under Rubble?

Baby Angel

by C.A. Matthews

 

Most folks who put up a Christmas tree in their homes have a decorative ornament or two that holds a special meaning for them. It could be a handmade ornament given to them by their child or grandchild. It could be an ornament given to them as a present by a very special person in their life. It could be an ornament that honors a milestone in a family’s life—a “first Christmas for baby” ornament or a “first Christmas together as a couple” ornament are two such that come to mind.

Or it could be simply an ornament that was purchased because it was beautifully crafted and looks absolutely perfect on the Christmas tree. Art and beauty lend a message that this is a season full of love and wonder. Whatever the meaning behind a special ornament, it usually is given a position of honor on the tree so that all can gaze upon it and contemplate the special meaning it symbolizes.

We’ve collected so many special ornaments over the decades that it’s sometimes difficult figuring out where to place them on our medium-sized Christmas tree. As time goes by, I’ve even forgotten why I found a particular ornament special to begin with. Imagine that!

What was I thinking? I ask myself every December as I take some of them out of the storage box. These “lost meaning” decorations usually get put on toward the bottom or on the backside of the tree. Sort of filler ornaments, you could say. But sometimes, an older ornament takes on a new meaning, a new kind of specialness than it had before. It deserves a more prominent place on the tree.

Baby Angel is one example.

Baby Angel was given to me by my late father when I was pregnant with my first daughter. Now, that fact alone makes it a special ornament in and of itself. But in recent years, we’ve acquired many more flashy angel ornaments. Baby Angel was hung toward the back of the tree more often than not. Just one angel among many.

This year when I took Baby Angel out of storage I immediately put her in a place of honor in the front part of the tree. Baby Angel reminded me instantly of all the tiny infants slain by Israeli carpet bombing and by Israeli soldiers who forced their doctors away from their incubators in Gazan hospitals, leaving them to die all alone in the cold and dark.

Not exactly a “warm holiday season” thing to contemplate over a mug of hot cocoa, is it?

But it’s reality. Get use to it. The surviving family members of these murdered infants will have to learn to live with it, even if they’re murdered, in turn, by US-provided bombs. Bombs dropped on their refugee camp in the south of Gaza that crushes them under rubble or dismembers them in an explosion. Or they'll die slowly through starvation and disease because Israel has turned off their water, and food and medicine can’t be delivered under the hail of Israeli bombs and their control of the only exit points in Gaza.

I don’t think Baby Angel will ever not remind me of these massacred innocents from now on.

Over 70% of the civilian deaths in Gaza have been women and children. Not soldiers or terrorists but mothers with their children. Children who will never get to celebrate another birthday or holiday. Children who will never get to go to school again or play football with their buddies. Children who pose no threat to anyone except to those who commit a genocide against an entire group of indigenous people so they can steal their land and resources.

Baby Angel will hang on our Christmas tree in a place of honor to commemorate all the babies who became victims of the genocide in Gaza…. In a season that celebrates a baby who survived Herod’s slaughter of the innocents and whose family became refugees who fled to Egypt. It seems appropriate.

Holy infants so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace. In this world, there is none.

From a "Ceasefire Carol":

Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Safety for fathers, mothers, and child
Holy infants alive with smiles
Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now!

Related Articles and Interesting Links to Contemplate Over Cocoa:

If Jesus Was Born Today, Would He Be Under Rubble? https://truthout.org/articles/if-jesus-was-born-today-would-he-be-under-rubble/

All The Propaganda Is Splattering Against A Solid Wall Of Reality https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/all-the-propaganda-is-splattering

The IDF is just shooting at anything that moves https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/the-idf-is-just-shooting-at-anything

Biden Staffers Hold Historic Vigil Outside White House Calling for Ceasefire https://truthout.org/articles/biden-staffers-hold-historic-vigil-outside-white-house-calling-for-ceasefire/

The United States Is Losing Allies On Gaza https://popularresistance.org/the-united-states-is-losing-allies-on-gaza/

Senate Passes Massive $886 Billion National Defense Authorization Act https://news.antiwar.com/2023/12/13/senate-passes-massive-886-billion-national-defense-authorization-act/

Increasing Civilian Suffering In Gaza Is Part of the Official Plan of the Netanyahu Government https://stevendonziger.substack.com/p/increasing-civilian-suffering-in

Israel admits to “immense” amount of “friendly fire” on 7 October
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-admits-immense-amount-friendly-fire-7-october

Nearly Half of All Israeli Munitions Dropped on Gaza are Imprecise ‘Dumb’ Bombs  https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/15/nearly-half-of-all-israeli-munitions-dropped-on-gaza-are-imprecise-dumb-bombs/

Israel Apologists Are Psychopaths https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-apologists-are-psychopaths

If children are being slaughtered by the thousands in a horrific massacre and someone tries to make the conversation about what words and phrases you’re not allowed to use when opposing that massacre, the correct thing to do is to tell that person to shut the fuck up.

Time for a Transnational Uprising Against a Reckless Escalation of the Arms Race? https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/09/time-for-a-transnational-uprising-against-a-reckless-escalation-of-the-arms-race/

20 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know About the War on Gaza
https://worldbeyondwar.org/20-things-youre-not-supposed-to-know-about-the-war-on-gaza/

US Palestinians Feel Helpless as Our Tax Dollars Fund Our Families’ Destruction https://truthout.org/articles/us-palestinians-feel-helpless-as-our-tax-dollars-fund-our-families-destruction/

Israel Used US-Supplied White Phosphorous in Attack on Southern Lebanon https://news.antiwar.com/2023/12/11/israel-used-us-made-white-phosphorous-in-attack-on-southern-lebanon/

Israel Is Wiping Out Gaza’s Journalists: A Tribute https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/15/israel-is-wiping-out-gazas-journalists-a-tribute/

Words Are Never Quite Enough https://riwaq.substack.com/p/words-are-never-quite-enough

Jewish Demonstrators Block Bridges in 8 U.S. Cities to Demand Ceasefire in Gaza https://truthout.org/articles/jewish-demonstrators-block-bridges-in-8-u-s-cities-demanding-ceasefire-in-gaza/

The Forcible Transfer of 85% of Palestinians in Gaza Is a Crime Against Humanity https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/12/the-forcible-transfer-of-85-of-palestinians-in-gaza-is-a-crime-against-humanity/

US Veto of Ceasefire Resolution Reflects Its Colonial View on Whose Lives Matter https://truthout.org/articles/us-veto-of-ceasefire-resolution-reflects-its-colonial-view-on-whose-lives-matter/

What US Got Most Crucially Wrong in UN Veto
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/10/what-us-got-most-crucially-wrong-in-un-veto/

‘Israel-Hamas War’ Label Obscures Israel’s War on Palestinians
https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/12/israel-hamas-war-label-obscures-israels-war-on-palestinians/

Ukrainian Trial Demonstrates 2014 Maidan Massacre Was a False Flag  https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/13/ukrainian-trial-demonstrates-2014-maidan-massacre-was-a-false-flag/

Unilateral Sanity Could Save the World https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/14/unilateral-sanity-could-save-the-world/

Chris Hedges: The Death of Israel  https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/chris-hedges-the-death-of-israel/

Israel has no intention of minimizing civilian casualties. It has already killed 18,800 Palestinians, 0.82 percent of the Gazan population — the equivalent of around 2.7 million Americans. Another 51,000 have been wounded. Half of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N. All Palestinian institutions and services that sustain life — hospitals (only 11 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are still “partially functioning”), water treatment plants, power grids, sewersystems, housing, schools, government buildings, cultural centers, telecommunications systems, mosques, churches, U.N. food distribution points — have been destroyed. Israel has assassinated at least 80 Palestinian journalists alongside dozens of their family members and over 130 U.N. aid workers along with members of their families. Civilian casualties are the point. This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinians. The objective is to kill or remove 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza. 

IDF Kills 3 Shirtless Israeli Hostages Waving White Flag; Calling for Help in Hebrew https://www.commondreams.org/news/idf-kills-3-shirtless-israeli-hostages-waving-white-flag-calling-for-help-in-hebrew

The IDF Are So Good At Killing Israelis They Should Consider Joining Hamas https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-idf-are-so-good-at-killing-israelis

It’s so hard to say who’s in the right in this conflict. On one side you’ve got facts and evidence and a nonstop deluge of raw video footage documenting massacres of civilians day after day after day, but on the other side you’ve got people calling you an anti-semite if you disagree with them. It’s very complicated.

Latin America and the Caribbean Stand With Palestine: Israel Viewed as a US Proxy https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/latin-america-and-the-caribbean-stand-with-palestine-israel-viewed-as-a-us-proxy/

All Guns Are B*stards

 

All guns are bastards...

I was going to entitle this week's posting a bit more politely, but then something got the better of me. There is no such thing as a "good gun" like there's no such thing as a "good Nazi". (You can read why in last week's blog.) Guns--specifically AR-15 assault weapons--were designed with one purpose in mind and one purpose only: To kill human beings as fast and as efficiently as possible. 

That's it. AR-15s aren't for growing crops or helping you cross the street. They're for killing people.  (Only psychopathic mass murderers would be remotely interested in owning one.) They kill people so effectively it takes a DNA test to identify the remains. They serve no purpose for hunting because you can't eat a deer carcass riddled with lead. So, get it out of your head right now that any human-killing weapon has a dual purpose and that somehow it should be available for sale at your local Walmart. It doesn't, and it shouldn't.

As a parent, my heart is aching. I can't begin to fathom how the families of Uvalde, Texas, are coping with life without their dear babies, their school friends and teachers. What happened there was unspeakable and beyond comprehension. But Americans should have been prepared--we've been in this situation before. Only last week the bloodshed was in Buffalo, New York, and it involved a white supremacist 18 year-old shooting and killing innocents while they shopped for groceries in a predominantly African American area of town.

Why are we seeing this nightmare mass shooting scenario repeat itself over and over and over again? Why do police officers--or better called "publicly-funded security guards for the one-percenters' property"--act like chickens and cluck off whenever common folks' lives are at stake? Why does our government keep pouring billions into an institution that doesn't serve the people and, in the end, only serves the military-industrial complex's bottom line? What could we be doing to prevent this horror from happening again? 

My friend Sean Nestor explains it much better than I can, so please read his comments below. The article links provide good insights as well.

The time has come for more than just our "thoughts and prayers." We need faith in action in order to save lives. We need actual gun control and well-funded social services. Americans need to demilitarize the police and end our bloated military's senseless violence and resource grabs overseas. We need...

A Kind and Just Society

by Sean Nestor

There is a lot of high-profile gun violence local and nationally, but simply spending more money on more police and more weapons for police isn't going to change that. The only thing that will actually prevent violence is building a kind and just society, not one that gleefully throws people to the wolves.

There's a popular idea here in the United States that everybody's problem is theirs alone to deal with. It's appealing because it justifies us abdicating certain responsibilities. But the problem with it is that we wind up with a growing number of people leading miserable lives with no meaningful help who then turn around and make their problems everyone's problems by way of a violent tragedy.

We've also built an extremely dysfunctional economy, one where we give all our time to jobs that overwork and underpay us, leaving us little time for ourselves and our families, much less our communities. And because of that arrangement, we're all tired and moody and looking for easy answers, for quick solutions. 

Expect politicians across the aisle to line up and start pitching them to you in the coming weeks and months.

Unfortunately, reality is that there are no quick and easy solutions for the kind of extreme problems we're facing. We're either going to get serious about dramatically altering the nature and character of the country we live in, or we're going to suffer through ever-increasing violent tragedies.

If we really want to end violence, we need to accept that it will take a multi-generational effort of getting back to what the Constitution calls "promoting the general welfare." Keep people out of desperate states, and you'll keep people from acting out against innocent people in misdirected rage. 

In the near-term, that is going to look like a massive reinvestment in social programs--including universal healthcare--and a serious reevaluation of our cultural tendency to dump every social problem onto cops. In the long-term, that is going to look like moving away from militarism and capitalism as our predominant modes of operation.

These are political problems with political solutions. Whether we decide to enact them or not comes down to what work we're willing to undertake to make them happen.

Amen, Sean! Now...

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“More than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine.” --Washington Post

 

Related Articles:

 

The AR-15 Has No Business Being in the Hands of Civilians

https://truthout.org/articles/the-ar-15-has-no-business-being-in-the-hands-of-civilians

Shootings Aren't a Sign America is Broken. It's Working Exactly As Intended.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/25/shootings-arent-a-sign-america-is-broken-its-working-exactly-as-intended 

Cops Didn't Stop the Uvalde School Shooting (And They Might Have Made It Even Worse) https://theintercept.com/2022/05/25/texas-uvalde-shooting-school-police/

Guns, Guns, Guns, Guns, Guns, Guns, Guns, ENOUGH!

https://www.directleft.com/p/guns-guns-guns-guns-guns-guns-guns?s=r

 

To End Mass Shootings, We Need to Change the Deeper Structure of Life in the US  https://truthout.org/articles/to-end-mass-shootings-we-need-to-change-the-deeper-structure-of-life-in-the-us/

 

Uvalde Police Didn't Move to Save Lives Because That's Not What Police Do

https://www.rsn.org/001/uvalde-police-didnt-move-to-save-lives-because-thats-not-what-police-do.html

 

AR-15s Were Made To Explode Human Bodies. In Uvalde the Bodies Belonged to Children  https://www.rsn.org/001/ar15s-were-made-to-explode-human-bodies-in-uvalde-the-bodies-belonged-to-children.html

 

Mass Shootings Are a Symptom of the Declining US Empire's Fascist Reaction

 https://rainershea.substack.com/p/mass-shootings-are-a-symptom-of-the

 Seen on Twitter:

See? The Onion gets it. Why don't our "real journalists" and "real politicians"? #GunControlNow https://t.co/9eg84NLrmN

— C.A.M.@ TheRevolutionContinues.com (Pls read & RT) (@cynthianna3) May 25, 2022

The country where little kids get their brains blown out in 2nd grade classrooms wants to export its way of life around the world.

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) May 25, 2022

Is anybody ever going to bother to ask what about American society creates so many people that want to go out and kill as many people as they can in the first place?

— Black in the Empire (@blackintheempir) May 25, 2022

Thoughts & prayers are empty with inaction. 19 Children dead & 2 adults. We need a nation-wide ban on assault weapons.

— Radical Jesus (@RadicalJesus4) May 25, 2022

These Democrats are using another crisis (this time a mass shooting) to get people to “vote blue no matter who” instead of using their power to fight for & pass popular gun safety legislation.

— Ryan Knight ☭ (@ProudSocialist) May 25, 2022

crazy how people are saying the solution is to arm teachers when three armed cops encountered the shooter first & did not stop him. huge hole in the “good guy with a gun” camp’s reasoning, unless we’re admitting that cops are not the good guys.

— nora🍒 (@noriekate) May 25, 2022

Kids Who Die
—Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

— Average NATO abolisher (@mrviscat) May 25, 2022

It's definitely not a coincidence that the nation which serves as the hub of a globe-spanning empire that's held together by mass murder and war propaganda and mass-scale psychological manipulation is the only nation with a mass shooting epidemic. But this will never be studied.

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 25, 2022

 ***

Dear friends, the shooting at Robb elementary in Uvalde, Texas has shaken us to our core. 

Just 60 miles from the southern border, the senseless murder of 19 children and two adults is yet another heartbreaking and infuriating consequence of lawmakers' failure to prioritize the safety of families over their political self-interest. These are the names of the confirmed victims:

Uziyah Garcia
Amerie Garza
Xavier Lopez
Tess Mata
Ellie Garcia
Rojelio Torres
Jose Flores
Jailah Silguero
Jayce Luevanos
Nevaeh Bravo
Jackie Cazares
Annabelle Rodriguez
Eliahana Torres
Makenna Lee Elrod
Lexi Rubio
Eva Mireles
Irma Garcia

We shouldn’t have to say it, but no parent should fear taking their child to school, afraid they’ll never come home. No parent should worry that the last thing we tell our kids in the morning is the last thing we’ll ever tell them. No parent should spend schooldays wondering “Am I going to see my kid again?”

Families Belong Together was founded to fight for the safety of children – whether at the U.S. southern border or in a school fifty miles away. When we value children, we do everything in our power to protect them, keep them safe, and keep them with their families. We continue to fail them time and again when we default to violence rather than putting systemic, common sense and humane policies in place that would very obviously keep them safe. 

In our grief we commit to working collectively to seek justice for the children and families whose lives were stolen this week. Together we must build a country that prioritizes the health and safety of children, no matter where they’re born, the color of their skin, or what papers they hold.

In sadness and hope,

Erin Mazursky, Interim Managing Director
Families Belong Together 

***

Tell Congress: BAN Assault Rifles.

Uvalde. Sandy Hook. Las Vegas. Sutherland Springs. Pulse Nightclub. San Bernardino.

Every single one of those massacres was done with an AR-15: an assault rifle that the NRA called “America’s Rifle.”

At this moment, the ghouls of the NRA and gun manufacturers are celebrating and partying at a lavish NRA conference in Houston.

Gun manufacturers like Daniel Defense, the merchants of death that sold the rifles used in Uvalde and Las Vegas, make blood-soaked millions while children are massacred.

For the good of the republic, and to save our lives, those that profit off mass murder like Daniel Defense must be destroyed.

Congress has a choice: cowardice or courage. They must hear from us NOW in this critical moment that assault weapons MUST BE BANNED.

Tell Congress: BAN assault rifles now.

An overwhelming majority of Americans – 63% in a recent survey – want assault weapons banned.

No civilian should ever own one. They are so lethal, even police are afraid to stop mass shooters wielding them.

A tiny minority of armed lunatics and an evil gun industry protecting their profits spend millions buying off politicians who throw their hands up and blame anything but the guns for mass shootings.

It’s. The. God. Damned. Guns. And Congress needs to hear from thousands of righteous Americans like you that we have had ENOUGH of massacres, death, and grief.

Today, we channel our pain and rage into action. Tell Congress: BAN assault rifles now.

Thanks for standing up.

– Progressive Reform Network