“The Piers Morgan Question”

 

“The Piers Morgan Question”

words and photos by C. A. Matthews

So much going on this past week and at least some of it makes me feel… hopeful?

There were good turnouts at the two local third anniversary events I attended. We could be witnessing the last days of the apartheid state of Israel. A leaked CIA report says as much. We could be seeing a possible way of getting humanitarian aid and food into Gaza if the Israelis start a shooting match among themselves and their fascist government falls apart. Is it only a matter of time until these sociopaths/psychopaths screw themselves over?

More hints in the news gave me hope. The Greens of England and Wales have adopted a resolution stating that “Zionism is racism.” Amen! Let’s not hold back any longer about the truth of who runs the “Jewish supremacist state” as Norman Finkelstein has labeled it. 

Finkelstein gave a lecture in town while on his book tour for Gaza’s Gravediggers...

 ...Professor Finkelstein framed his talk around with what he called “The Piers Morgan Question”. If you were a guest on Piers Morgan’s TV show in the first year of the genocide, you could expect to be asked, “Do you condemn what Hamas did on October 7?” The professor stated that one must always give their answer to that question with a persuasive argument that includes both facts and an appeal to reason. But he admits that everyone on air felt forced to answer, “Of course, I condemn Hamas!” or else they’d never be invited back on the show and might be labeled as antisemitic or worse by the public.

So, how does one answer “No!” to the question without being discredited or kicked out of the conversation? The facts of that day alone make it difficult, but to persuade others one must always put the facts into the context of history. Once the history of Gaza is known, it’s much harder to condemn the actions of Hamas.

Finkelstein shared the analogy of Nat Turner’s Rebellion. In 1831, the “question” would have elicited the response, “I wholeheartedly condemn what Nat Turner did!” But in the 21^st century, we know the context of the facts and the motivations that drove the actions Turner and his men took, and some see them nowadays as American heroes. They were enslaved with no hope of ever gaining their freedom. They had little choice—either they fought the whites who enslaved them or they would die as slaves.

The parallels of what has happened in Gaza are undeniable. Eighty percent of Gazans are refugees or descendants of refugees from the Nakba, and children make up about 50% of the population. UN officials and Israelis alike have labeled Gaza as “a huge concentration camp” over the last several decades—this during what could be called Gaza’s most “prosperous era”...

 

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Childhood's End

 

Childhood’s End: Three Years of Murdering, Maiming, Bombing, Starving, and Deporting Children

by C. A. Matthews

Some anniversaries aren’t worth celebrating, but they are worth noting.

I participated in a short interview with a local university sociology professor and his student this past week. One of the questions they asked me was: “How have you changed personally because of joining this (pro-Palestine) movement?”

Three years into the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people and what hasn’t changed me?

Things certainly aren’t going back to the way they were prior to October 7, 2023. Little did I—or anyone, really—know that we’d be observing a livestreamed genocide on our computing devices for three straight years, all the while observing nothing positive in our governments’ reactions to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians—and so many of them children— at the hands of the IDF. I don’t know how being exposed to such a lack of compassion, empathy, and concern for others on such an immense scale wouldn’t change a person’s outlook on life unless the person was already spiritually and morally dead inside.

Three years of knowing that your government doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the health, safety, and security of children in Gaza—or the West Bank or Lebanon or Iran or Cuba or Venezuela, for that matter.

Three years of watching these little ones die from preventable diseases because your “ally” Israel won’t allow sufficient food, medicines, medical supplies, or Doctors Without Borders from entering their open air prison.

Three years of realizing the horrors of children and adults trapped under tons of rubble having to have emergency amputations without anesthesia...

...Honestly, I don’t know anymore if it’s just me who has gone insane because I can’t stand knowing so many horrific details about what’s happening in the world, or it’s the rest of the world that is insane for allowing them to occur in the first place...

 

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No One Has To Tell You That You Are Free

by C. A. Matthews

As the seasons change and the sun sets earlier and earlier each evening, I feel an overwhelming urge to crawl into a cocoon and go to sleep and escape from all the hubbub. It’s so tempting just to close your eyes and forget all about the latest tragedy, infamy, or insanity, isn’t it?

Alas, the world won’t let me rest. It calls to me—or rather it shouts at me—and tells me to continue to speak up, point things out, write about life, and march in the streets. The Revolution won’t happen while I’m sitting in my favorite chair with a nice hot cup of tea and a cozy ball of fluffy cat purring beside me. It just doesn’t work that way.

After I came home from giving a presentation on The Resistance History of the United States, all I could say to myself was “No one really gets it. Most Americans will never understand how important resisting our oligarchic oppressors is. They think they can just walk into a voting booth on November 3, and presto-chango magically everything instantly gets better. Maybe not perfectly better, but definitely better than before. At least they’ll be a few less annoying people to threaten their health and safety for the next four years. Well, until the people they voted for start annoying them.”

I wish I could relax and be as trusting in the power of the duopoly to do good as other Americans, but unfortunately reality kicks in—and kicks me hard in the seat of my pants. I know that it doesn’t make a bit of difference who is in the “majority” in Congress or who actually sits in the White House—or even on the Supreme Court, for that matter any more.

Web sites such as Open Secrets demonstrate how the two halves of the duopoly/uniparty both serve their donors (oligarchs) unquestionably. If a politician does as their told only by those who write the biggest checks to their campaign fund, then they’re not working in the public’s best interests, are they? They’re working for their own self-interests—and the interests of their insanely rich bosses, the oligarchs...

...Sorry to break it to my fellow Americans, but walking into a voting booth or standing on a street corner with a “Trump wears diapers!” sign isn’t going to save us from the desperate situation we find ourselves in. It can’t. It wasn’t meant to. Ever...

 

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Why I Dislike Most Celebrities (Except for Two)

 

Why I Hate Dislike Most Celebrities (Except for One Two)

by C. A. Matthews

(I was going to say “Why I Hate...” but I didn’t want the AI ‘bots reading my stuff calling me a “hater” at some point. They’ll be busy calling me antisemitic anti-cementic by then anyway.)

This past week’s ruckus over pop singer Ed Sheeran dropping his fellow performer, the rapper Macklemore, from his big stadium tour (and then consequently being dropped by his own backup band and all his opening acts) demonstrates to me that there is such a thing as poetic justice.

Justice is now being served on Sheeran as he deals with millions of fans unfollowing him on social media, being labeled a “coward” and a “zionist”, two adjectives that don’t paint a very pretty picture of him. How Ed is being treated by the public doesn’t surprise me. I truly believe some celebrities deserve a good hard kick in the arse now and then to remind them that they, too, are only human.

This is the theme of this piece: We are all human beings, and, as such, we all have human rights. One of the more important rights is the right not to be ethnically cleansed by white colonizers who stole your homeland. This is where Ed Sheeran totally dropped the ball.

Celebrities like Ed Sheeran entertain the notion that just because they’ve reached a certain level of fame or celebrityness they’ve somehow become something better than us mere mortals. They have become superhuman or superior to the rest of the struggling masses on this planet. They don’t need to consider anyone else’s feelings but their own. We see this mindset in Ed’s choice of billionaire friends, the NFL New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft...

 

...But there is one “celebrity” I hold a great deal of admiration for. She’s not a pop singer or a movie star, but she has been in the limelight quite a bit over the past three years. I’m talking about Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Here’s a short review of her latest book, When The World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine. (Available from Other Press.)

“When the world sleeps, it falls on us, we the people, to wake it up--and now more than ever the world needs an awakening.”

So begins Francesca’s memoir of how she became the champion of human rights we see today on the world stage. Each chapter is a story of a friend or acquaintance who has shaped her outlook on Palestine and life in general. Each person helped her to take the next step in her personal development, steps necessary to deal with the stress of working pro bono for the United Nations. Each person poses a question that we all need to answer for ourselves...

 

To learn more about why I don't like most celebrities (and read the rest of the review of Francesca's book), please copy or click on the following link: 

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Well, Duh! (The Bleedin’ Obvious)

by C. A. Matthews

“I told you so!” was the first title I came up with for this rant, but then I thought Nobody likes a person who tells them ‘I told you so.’ Another title idea was, “It’s as clear as the nose on your face,” but it seemed a bit long. I finally settled on one of my British husband’s favorite sayings: “It’s bleedin’ obvious, itn’t it?” Then I realized most Americans have no clue what that phrase means, so here’s the short definition: “Well, duh!”

Everything in the news this past week made me say, “Well, duh! It’s bleedin’ obvious! Why is this particular piece of news being reported only now by the mainstream media? Oh, I know you know why—it wasn’t advantageous for the oligarchs’ narrative earlier on—but why would they report the bleedin’ obvious they’ve ignored for so long unless now they have an ulterior motive?”

If you haven’t guess what I’m referring to yet, here’s the big headline from an Israeli newspaper: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn’t Brief Israel’s Security Chiefs

Well, duh! Even in the first few days after October 7 there were mentions in the press about how the Egyptians and even the US had given the Israelis intel about a possible uprising coming out of Gaza. Now all of a sudden we’re getting the mainstream media in both the West and Israel admitting this nugget of damning evidence along with juicy details. Not only did the Egyptians warned Netanyahu personally, but also high ranking people from the UAE did. Repeatedly. Still, Netanyahu did nothing with the intel and told his security chiefs nothing.

Along comes The New York Times (not to be bested) with this headline: Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year (before 2023). Not to be outdone, CNN boldly made this statement: US intelligence warned of the potential for violence days before Hamas attack. PBS even mentioned that Hamas had posted video of a mock attack on social media weeks before the border breach. And last but not least, IDF wall spotters have snitched and said they’d been seeing suspicious things happening over in Gaza, but their commanders wouldn’t listen to their reports.

I’m starting to see a definite pattern here, aren’t you? Well, duh...

 

To see more evidence of a pattern (and learn about another whopper told by the Liar-in-Chief), please copy or click on the following link: 

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Applying The Resistance Principles

Applying The Resistance Principles--The Resistance History of the United States (Part 3)

by C. A. Matthews

If you’ve read the preceding two articles (Patterns of Resistance and Resistance Is A Lifetime), you’re probably wondering, “What now? We know Tad Stoermer’s nine resistance principles and their historical examples, but what can we do with this information? We’re still at a lost as to the how, when, and where the Revolution starts.”

My response to this is, “Start using the resistance principles to topple the corrupt capitalist system. Things will fall into place as we take action. But they won’t if we don’t.”

I’ll admit it’s easier said than done, but we can’t sit on the sidelines and hope for the best. If we want to make the world a better place for ourselves and our children/grandchildren, then we have to get out there and start making a difference. Today...

...You may ask, “Where do we begin? There are so many things wrong in this country—the entire world for that matter. We’re confused as to where to start.”

It is overwhelming. In an earlier article, I discussed the Chaos Pattern the oligarchy uses to confuse and overwhelm us while they make tons of money for themselves. But we can’t allow the oligarchs’ tactics fog our brains. Let’s start by reviewing the resistance principles and picking one idea that we think will get the revolution going.

So let’s start with Principle 6: Ideas Matter. What matters to you? Focus on what you want to change in the world and go from there on how you will resist...

...I’ll start with an idea that has been bothering me for a long time. I’m tired of the endless wars for oil, the degradation of our planet and its climate, and the genocides of Palestine, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere sponsored by the US. That’s sort of three different ideas, but they all revolve around one central problem: the American war machine and its associated military-industrial complex (MIC).

The idea that matters most to me is shutting down the war machine and everything it entails—its propaganda aspects, its manufacturing of arms/drones, its murdering of people and planet, its destruction of peace and unity in the world through the bullying behaviors of our current and past presidents. Following Principle 6, I know what I’m fighting for and not simply what I’m against...

 

To learn more about how you can use the principles of resistance to bring about a better world, please copy or click on the following link: 

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Resistance Is A Lifetime

Resistance Is A Lifetime: The Resistance History of the United States (Part 2)

by C. A. Matthews

For an introduction to Tad Stoermer’s The Resistance History of the United States and a discussion of the first four principles of resistance, check out last week’s post The Patterns of Resistance. Here is a brief listing of the first four:

Principle 1: Beware False Prophets—Learn to Recognize False 
Resistance

Principle 2: More Weight—Refuse to Validate the Lies

Principle 3: My Enemy’s Enemy—Your Ally Doesn’t Have to Be 
Pure

Principle 4: Force the Fight, Even When You’re Losing

On to the remaining five!

Principle 5: Resistance Is a Lifetime, Not a Moment

You might not want to hear this but single dramatic acts of defiance are only the beginning of your fight. “Real resistance requires persistence to keep pursuing your goal and resilience to withstand the inevitable counterattacks without breaking.” (Stoermer, p. 332)

Resisters must build their capacity for sustained resistance so they can overcome numerous setbacks and adapt to new threats. In other words, a revolution is a lifetime commitment. It’s not for the faint hearted.

The oligarchs, our oppressors, know they can wait out our first hint of confrontation—a protest, strike, or walkout. They know from past experience that most can’t sustain defiance for very long. Resisters will fold withing days or weeks, not years. Life happens. The oligarchs’ strategy is to outlast the resisters and make simply surviving so tough that people will give up and go back to life as “normal.”

The oligarchs waiting us out works since most resisters don’t realize that persistence is necessary. We must keep our eyes on the goal, even when things seem impossible. Resilience is another trait that helps us recover from the inevitable blows. Resisters must adapt, recover, and build new support networks, to continue on with the unglamorous, mundane, grinding fight.

Nobody said it was going to be easy. You could lose it all—family, friends, home, job, your life. Are you willing to make such a commitment to the cause? “Your persistence—your refusal to quit no matter how long it takes—is what they [the oligarchs] can’t plan for, can’t budget for, can’t outlast.” (Stoermer, p. 335)

“This is the hardest of all the principles because it demands the most. A moment of courage you can summon when adrenaline runs high. A lifetime of resistance requires something deeper—an unshakable core that sustains you when no one is watching, when the world has moved on, when you’re exhausted and alone.” (Stoermer, p. 334)

 

To learn more about the historical figures behind the principles of resistance (and how all nine were used and can be used today), please copy or click on the following link: 

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