“Critical Noise”

29.02.2024 at Atelier Ziegrastrase 11.

This event is to support Palestine and the door money will be donated to the following organisations.

Gaza Mutual Aid Support:

https://gazamutualaid.substack.com/p/what-is-gmac

European Legal Support Center

https://elsc.support/

"the difference between a conspiracy and fact is time" isnt always true because some things are just genuinely loony and wrong but. boy oh boy is it true in too many cases

MIT scientists use a new type of nanoparticle to make vaccines more powerful

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-scientists-use-a-new-type-of-nanoparticle-to-make-vaccines-more-powerful/

MIT scientists use a new type of nanoparticle to make vaccines more powerful

Many vaccines, including vaccines for hepatitis B and whooping cough, consist of fragments of viral or bacterial proteins. These vaccines often include other molecules called adjuvants, which help to boost the immune system’s response to the protein.

Most of these adjuvants consist of aluminum salts or other molecules that provoke a nonspecific immune response. A team of MIT researchers has now shown that a type of nanoparticle called a metal organic framework (MOF) can also provoke a strong immune response, by activating the innate immune system — the body’s first line of defense against any pathogen — through cell proteins called toll-like receptors.

In a study of mice, the researchers showed that this MOF could successfully encapsulate and deliver part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, while also acting as an adjuvant once the MOF is broken down inside cells.

While more work would be needed to adapt these particles for use as vaccines, the study demonstrates that this type of structure can be useful for generating a strong immune response, the researchers say.

“Understanding how the drug delivery vehicle can enhance an adjuvant immune response is something that could be very helpful in designing new vaccines,” says Ana Jaklenec, a principal investigator at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and one of the senior authors of the new study.

Robert Langer, an MIT Institute Professor and member of the Koch Institute, and Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School, are also senior authors of the paper, which appears today in Science Advances. The paper’s lead author is former MIT postdoc and Ibn Khaldun Fellow Shahad Alsaiari.

Immune activation

In this study, the researchers focused on a MOF called ZIF-8, which consists of a lattice of tetrahedral units made up of a zinc ion attached to four molecules of imidazole, an organic compound. Previous work has shown that ZIF-8 can significantly boost immune responses, but it wasn’t known exactly how this particle activates the immune system.

To try to figure that out, the MIT team created an experimental vaccine consisting of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding protein (RBD) embedded within ZIF-8 particles. These particles are between 100 and 200 nanometers in diameter, a size that allows them to get into the body’s lymph nodes directly or through immune cells such as macrophages.

Once the particles enter the cells, the MOFs are broken down, releasing the viral proteins. The researchers found that the imidazole components then activate toll-like receptors (TLRs), which help to stimulate the innate immune response.

“This process is analogous to establishing a covert operative team at the molecular level to transport essential elements of the Covid-19 virus to the body’s immune system, where they can activate specific immune responses to boost vaccine efficacy,” Alsaiari says.

RNA sequencing of cells from the lymph nodes showed that mice vaccinated with ZIF-8 particles carrying the viral protein strongly activated a TLR pathway known as TLR-7, which led to greater production of cytokines and other molecules involved in inflammation.

Mice vaccinated with these particles generated a much stronger response to the viral protein than mice that received the protein on its own.

“Not only are we delivering the protein in a more controlled way through a nanoparticle, but the compositional structure of this particle is also acting as an adjuvant,” Jaklenec says. “We were able to achieve very specific responses to the Covid protein, and with a dose-sparing effect compared to using the protein by itself to vaccinate.”

Vaccine access

While this study and others have demonstrated ZIF-8’s immunogenic ability, more work needs to be done to evaluate the particles’ safety and potential to be scaled up for large-scale manufacturing. If ZIF-8 is not developed as a vaccine carrier, the findings from the study should help to guide researchers in developing similar nanoparticles that could be used to deliver subunit vaccines, Jaklenec says.

“Most subunit vaccines usually have two separate components: an antigen and an adjuvant,” Jaklenec says. “Designing new vaccines that utilize nanoparticles with specific chemical moieties which not only aid in antigen delivery but can also activate particular immune pathways have the potential to enhance vaccine potency.”

One advantage to developing a subunit vaccine for Covid-19 is that such vaccines are usually easier and cheaper to manufacture than mRNA vaccines, which could make it easier to distribute them around the world, the researchers say.

“Subunit vaccines have been around for a long time, and they tend to be cheaper to produce, so that opens up more access to vaccines, especially in times of pandemic,” Jaklenec says.

The research was funded by Ibn Khaldun Fellowships for Saudi Arabian Women and in part by the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Decryptions of Lesser Salomon Keys  (military cryptography).

Decryptions of Lesser Salomon Keys  (military cryptography).

Military cryptography and short analysis of demons of Lesser Salomon Key.

The author of these decryptions (and the article) is a human rights defender,

military cryptographist Ms.Popova,

a member of  worldwide Targeted Individuals community.

Human rights Libertad (Russia).

Ms.Popova, as a military cryptographist shows how to decrypt different codes,

economic, military and codes of deliberate crimes.

https://humanrightslibertad.tech/en-es-ru-cryptography-investigation-demons-of-lesser-salomon-key-ukraine-altar-of-pope-special-operation-eur-ils-gazprom-power-of-siberia

FLORIE NAMIR & FRANCK BIYONG team up on meditative new single...SILENCE IS MUSIC.... Out FEBRUARY 10th 2023 on BELIEVE DIGITAL

An investment firm led by former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper that is devoted to launching security companies in Israel has a new “success” story: helping that country’s military conduct secret mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza.

According to The New York Times, hundreds of Palestinians have been targeted by an “expansive and experimental” spying effort to “collect and catalogue” the faces of Palestinians. At times, civilians have been “wrongly flagged” as Hamas militants and then interrogated and tortured. [...]

Three out of five members of the Israeli company’s board of directors are Harper’s partners at Awz Ventures, meaning the former Canadian Prime Minister’s firm effectively controls Corsight.

Using Corsight’s spy tech, the Israeli military picked out Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha at a checkpoint in central Gaza in mid-November, as he was attempting to flee with his family to Egypt. He was separated, detained, and beaten. [...]

A former commander of this unit, retired Israeli Brigadier General Ehud Schneorson, is another of Harper’s advisory partners at Awz Ventures. According to a report in Israeli outlet +972 Magazine, Unit 8200 has also overseen an AI-based targeting system that has marked tens of thousands of Gazans for assassination. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid, @fairuzfan

Note from the poster @el-shab-hussein: The murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and possibly my own extended family members, wouldn't have been possible without the investment of Stephen Harper. It wouldn't have been possible without the settler colony known as "Canada" and its bloodthirsty genocidaires.

In all, at least 100 people set themselves on fire in the US and Vietnam to protest the war. After a long history on multiple continents as a tool of protest against religious persecution—the precedent on which Quảng Đức was drawing—these self-immolations cemented a new association in American culture between the tactic and anti-war activism. In February 1991, during the first US war in Iraq, Gregory Levey doused himself in paint thinner and perished in a fireball in a park in Amherst, Massachusetts, leaving behind a small cardboard sign that read, simply, “peace.” Malachi Ritscher, an experimental musician in Chicago, set himself on fire on the side of the Kennedy expressway during the morning rush hour one Friday in November 2006, after posting a long statement on his website explaining that he felt there was no other way for him to escape complicity with the “barbaric war” the US was then waging. He had been arrested at two previous anti-war protests. Scholars often associate the rise of political self-immolation in the 1960s with the rise of television: a spectacular form of protest for the society of the spectacle. But of course there are less painful ways for protestors to attract eyeballs. The reality is that self-immolation registers the near-total impotence of protest—and even public opinion as such—in the face of a military apparatus completely insulated from external accountability. It the rawest testament to the absence of effective courses of action. When war consists primarily of unelected men in undisclosed locations pouring fire on the heads of people we will never know on the other side of the world, there is very little that ordinary people can do to arrest its progress. But we still have our bodies, and it is in the nature of fire to refuse containment. To ask whether self-immolation is good or bad, justifiable or non-justifiable, effective or ineffective is in large part to miss the point, which is that it is an option, whether anyone else likes it or not. It illuminates our powerlessness in negative space, but it also affirms the irreducible core of our freedom, that small flame of agency that no repression can extinguish. Since Aaron Bushnell’s death by self-immolation this week in protest of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, his detractors have warned about the risk of “contagion,” suggesting that his protest will encourage imitators (who, they imply, share his alleged mental instability). There may or may not be additional self-immolators before the slaughter comes to an end, just as Bushnell was preceded by a woman, yet to be identified publicly, who burned herself outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta in December. But the purpose of lighting yourself on fire is not to encourage other people to light themselves on fire. It is to scream to the world that you could find no alternative, and in that respect it is a challenge to the rest of us to prove with our own freedom that there are other ways to meaningfully resist a society whose cruelty has become intolerable.

The Best News of Last Week - June 6, 2023

1. Biden orders 20-year ban on oil, gas drilling around tribal site in New Mexico

Hundreds of square miles in New Mexico will be withdrawn from further oil and gas production for the next 20 years on the outskirts of Chaco Culture National Historical Park that tribal communities consider sacred, the Biden administration ordered Friday.

The new order from Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland applies to public lands and associated mineral rights within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of the park. It does not apply to entities that are privately, state- or tribal-owned. Existing leases won’t be impacted either.

2. Groundbreaking Israeli cancer treatment has 90% success rate

An experimental treatment developed at Israel's Hadassah-University Medical Center has a 90% success rate at bringing patients with multiple myeloma into remission.

The treatment is based on genetic engineering technology. They have used a genetic engineering technology called CAR-T, or Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy, which boosts the patient’s own immune system to destroy the cancer. More than 90% of the 74 patients treated at Hadassah went into complete remission, the oncologists said.

3. Federal Judge Makes History in Holding That Border Searches of Cell Phones Require a Warrant

With United States v. Smith, a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances”. For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

4. Indigenous-led bison repopulation projects are helping the animal thrive again in Alberta

Indigenous-led efforts are reintroducing bison to their ancestral lands in Alberta, bringing back an iconic species that was nearly extinct. These reintroduction projects, such as the one led by the Tsuut'ina Nation, have witnessed the positive impact on the bison population and the surrounding wildlife.

The historical decline of bison numbers was due to overhunting and government policies that forced Indigenous peoples onto reserves. These initiatives aim to restore ecological integrity while fostering spiritual and cultural connections with the land and animals. Successful results have been observed in projects like Banff National Park, where the bison population has grown from 16 to nearly 100, providing inspiration for future wilding efforts.

5. Breakthrough in disease affecting one in nine women

Sydney researchers have made a world-first leap forward that could change the treatment of endometriosis and improve the health of women living with the painful and debilitating disease. Researchers from Sydney's Royal Hospital for Women have grown tissue from every known type of endometriosis, observing changes and comparing how they respond to treatments.

It means researchers will be able to vary treatments from different types of endometriosis, determining whether a woman will need fertility treatments.

6. Latvia just elected the first openly gay head of state in Europe

The country’s parliament elected Edgars Rinkēvičs to be its next president, Reuters reported prime minister Krišjānis Kariņš saying.

Rinkēvičs publicly came out as gay in November 2014, posting on Twitter: “I proudly announce I am gay… Good luck all of you.” In a second tweet at the time, he spoke about improving the legal status of same-sex relationships, saying Latvia needed to create a legal framework for all kinds of partnerships.

7. France bans short haul flights

The introduction of France’s short-haul flight ban has renewed calls for Europe to cut down on journeys that could be made by train. Last week France officially introduced its ban on short-haul flights.

The final version of the law means that journeys which can be taken in under 2.5 hours by train can’t be taken by plane. There also needs to be enough trains throughout the day that travellers can spend at least eight hours at their destination.

----

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation:

BUY ME A COFFEE ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog.

SUBCRIBE HERE for more good news in your inbox

The genocide is also experimentation on living beings

Israel is currently testing new weapons in Gaza, some of which will soon be sold globally as "battle-tested," according to Antony Loewenstein, an author who has written a widely acclaimed book on the issue.

For years, the Israeli defense sector has used Palestine as a laboratory for new weapons and surveillance tech, he told Anadolu, adding that this is also the case in the current ongoing war on Gaza.

One of the main reasons why "many nations, democracies and dictatorships support Israeli occupation" of Palestine is because it allows them to buy these "battle-tested" weapons, asserted Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.

Another aspect of Israel's war on Gaza has been the use of artificial intelligence technology, he said.

According to Loewenstein, AI has been one of the key targeting tools used by the Israeli military in its deadly campaign of airstrikes, leading to mass killings of Palestinians-now over 28,500-and damage on an unprecedented scale.

The current war on Gaza is "inarguably one of the most consequential and bloody," he said.

He described Israel's use of AI against Palestinians as "automated murder," stressing that this model "will be studied and copied by other nation-states" and Tel Aviv will sell them these technologies as tried and tested weapons.

In the last 50 years, Israel has exported hi-tech surveillance tools to at least 130 countries around the world.

To maintain its illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israel has developed a range of tools and technologies that have made it the world's leading exporter of spyware and digital forensics tools.

But analysts say the intelligence failure during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks casts doubts over Tel Avis's technological capabilities.

Israel's reliance on technology "is an illusion of safety, while imprisoning 2.3 million people under endless occupation," said Loewenstein, who is Jewish and holds Australian and German nationalities.

He described Israel's response in Gaza as "apocalyptic," stressing that the killings of Palestinian civilians, including children and women, is "on a scale of indiscriminate slaughter."

- 'BLOOD MONEY'

Loewenstein, who is also a journalist, said Israel has honed its weapons and technology expertise over decades as an occupying power, acting with increasing impunity in the Palestinian territories.

This led a small country like Israel to become one of the top 10 arms dealers in the world, he said, adding that Israeli arms sales in 2021 were "the highest on record, surging 55% over the previous two years to $11.3 billion."

In his book, Loewenstein explores thoroughly Israel's ties with autocracies and regimes engaged in mass displacement campaigns, and governments slinking their way into phones.

The Israeli NSO Group sold its well-known Pegasus software to numerous governments, a spyware tool for phones that gives access to the entire content, including conversations, text messages, emails and photos even when the device is switched off.

Israeli drones were first tested over Gaza, the besieged enclave that Loewenstein referred to as "the perfect laboratory for Israeli ingenuity in domination."

Surveillance technology developed in Israel has also been sold to the US in the form of watch towers now used on the border with Mexico.

The EU's border agency Frontex is known to have used Israeli drone technology to monitor refugees.

Loewenstein explains in his book that the EU has partnered with leading Israeli defense companies to use its drones, "and of course years of experience in Palestine is a key selling point."

"So again, one sees how there are so many examples of nations that are wanting to copy what Israel is doing in their own area in their own country on their own border," he said.

These technologies and "are sold by Israel as battle-tested," he said.

In other words, he contends that Palestinians essentially have become "guinea pigs," and despite some nations and the UN publicly criticizing the Israeli occupation, in reality "they're desperate for this technology for themselves for their own countries."

"And that's how in fact, the Palestine laboratory has been so successful for Israel for so long," he said.

In his exhaustive probe into Israel's dealings with arms sales around the world, he noted that the country has monetized the occupation of Palestine, by selling weapons, spyware tools and technologies to repressive regimes such as Rwanda during the genocide in 1994 and to Myanmar during its genocide against the Muslim Rohingya people in 2017.

"This to me is blood money. I mean, there's no other way to see that and again, as someone Jewish, who has spent many, many years reporting on this conflict, both within Israel and Palestine but also elsewhere, it's deeply shameful that Israel is making huge amounts of money from the misery of others," he said.

"This is not a legacy that I can be proud of."

- 'NO NATION ACTUALLY HOLDING ISRAEL TO ACCOUNT'

Profiting from misery is to some extent the nature of what capitalism has always been about, but Israel does this with a great deal of impunity, "because Israel does what it wants," said Loewenstein.

"There is no accountability, there is no transparency, there is no nation actually holding Israel to account," he added.

Israel's regime is shielded from any political backlash for years to come because nations are reliant on Israeli weapons and spyware, said the author.

Israel may not be the only player employing surveillance technology that leads to human rights violations, but it still plays a dominant role, which is why Loewenstein insists that it deserves singular attention.

Israel's foreign policy has always been "amoral and opportunistic," he said, calling on all nations to take a stand and hold Israel accountable, and acknowledge that the world is buying what Israel is selling.

In light of sharing Norman Finkelstein's quotes and videos because of the Israel-Hamas war, I just hope that more pple will know that he isn't a reliable ally of Palestinians. He has called the BDS movement a cult, and patronizingly lectured the Palestinian or pro-Palestine activists and academics who criticized him. You can read about it here:

It's important to note from the article that he opposes BDS because it would lead to the destruction of Israel, he was never an anti-Zionist to begin with:

And that's not even getting to his transphobia and enbyphobia, here he is complaining about they/them pronouns (Video can be viewed on Twitter):

And another interview where he calls gender-affirming healthcare, "experimental drugs" (video can be viewed on Twitter):

And even more transphobia from his latest book:

And him showing his antiblackness during an interview this year because guess what do most of the people he criticizes have in common? (Again, videos can be viewed in Twitter):

I don't want to dismiss Finkelstein's critiques of Israel, but I also want to emphasize that his reputation as an anti-Zionist is massively overstated and that he is simply a contrarian. Please remember that there are way better pro-Palestine activists and academics whose work you can be platforming.

I have a lot of thoughts about epistemology and the nature of procedural knowledge. Studying linguistics really impresses upon you just the sheer amount of human knowledge that is procedural and implicit. Languages are these huge, ridiculously complex systems, and even when it comes to the most thoroughly documented language in human history (English), you can still make an entire career documenting as-yet-unknown minutiae of some corner of a corner of the system. It's very difficult to impress upon non-linguists just how big and ill-understood languages are.

There is no book which explains the whole of English grammar. No one on earth knows the complete rule-set of English grammar. Not even for one dialect, not even for one single speaker. No one on earth could write a comprehensive treatise on English pronunciation. We do not know how English works. We do not know how any language works.

And yet, these systems are, in their entirety, already stored in the mind of every native speaker.

When it comes to synchronic information, I literally already know everything there is to know about my dialect of English. I know the timing of every articulation, the exact rules for verb and auxiliary and quantifier placement, the phonology, semantics, syntax, the lexical variation, the registers, all of it. I can deploy it effortlessly while I am thinking about something else. I can form reams of perfectly grammatical English sentences without a second thought. I can deploy the most arcane rules of wh-movement and quantifier raising and whatever else. With no effort at all.

Tens of thousands of people having been making careers trying to document these things, not for my exact dialect but for varieties essentially the same as mine, for 60 years in earnest. And they aren't close to done. And I already know it all. And so do they! They already know it too! The hard part is accessing it, putting it down on paper. That requires experimentation, systematic empirical investigation—science.

So what this has really impressed on me is how much of human knowledge is procedural. How much of it is known only in the doing. I'd wager that's the significant majority of what we know.

This is related to two thoughts that I have.

The first is about the value of unbroken lines of cultural inheritance. With language, the difference between native speakers and second language learners is stark. I think it's safe to say, per current research, that someone who learns a language in adulthood will simply never have the same command of it as someone who learned it in childhood. There are a variety of tests which consistently distinguish native from non-native speakers. You can get very good at a language as an adult learner, good enough for basically all practical needs (except being a spy), but there's a bar your brain just cannot meet.

The unfortunate fact about language is this: if the line of native-speaker-to-child transmission is ever broken, that language is lost. You can try to revive... something, if you want. Like was done with Hebrew in Israel. But it will not be the same language. And not just in the sense that, by the passing of time, all languages inherently change. In a much stronger sense than that. No matter how big a text corpus you have, no matter how well documented the language is, there is an immense body of implicit, undocumented, procedural knowledge that dies when the last native speaker does. And you cannot ever get it back.

I think, often, about the fact that so much human knowledge is procedural, is used and understood and passed on in illegible, difficult to codify ways. I think about the effect that a rapidly changing world has on this body of knowledge. Is it going to be essential for human prosperity? Probably not. But that doesn't mean that losing it will harmless. Certainly I expect much of it to be missed.

The second thought is about an epistemic distinction that I've had in my head for a long time, a distinction I'd like to refer to as that between a science and an art.

An art is any endeavor for which there is an established methodology, an established set of procedures and rules. These rules can be explicit and codified, like the rules of a game, or implicit, like the grammar of a language. They can be absolute or they can be mere guidelines. But in essence, an art is anything you can get good at. Math is quintessentially an art. Football is an art. Ballet is an art. Painting is an art. An art is any endeavor in which procedural knowledge is acquired and channeled and refined and passed on.

Art contrasts with science. A science is any endeavor in which one is shooting blind. Science is the domain of guesswork and trial-and-error. Sciences are those domains that do not lend themself to practice, because... what would you practice at? You cannot get better at science, because science is not about skill. Science is about exploration. It necessarily involves forging your own path, working with odd and faulty tools and odd and faulty ideas, trying to get them to work. Science only exists at the frontiers; when a path is well-tread enough that a body of procedure becomes known and practiced, that path is now art and no longer science.

This distinction is not a taxonomy. Everything we do involves a little bit of art and a little bit of science. Everything involves both a refinement of known skills and an exploration of new avenues. Of course there's a little bit of science in painting, there's quite a lot of science in painting. Every modern and contemporary art museum is full of it! And there's science in math, every once in a while. And there's art in biology and chemistry. Art and science are two modes of engagement, and different endeavors demand them of you in different ways.

Perhaps science is like a glider (you know, from Conway's game of life?), traveling ever outward, and with enough passes over the same area leaving art in its wake. And I think in some sense that all real human knowledge exists as art, that all endeavors capable of producing true insight are either arts or sciences buttressed by a great many supporting arts. Although maybe I'm wrong about this.

I think history is mostly science, and in large part history as a field seems to be on quite solid epistemic footing. So I don't want to convey the idea that science is inherently dubious; clearly from the above description that can't be my position. Nor is art inherently trustworthy—for instance I think jurisprudence is primarily an art, including religious jurisprudence, which of course I don't place any stock in. But I do think I'm getting at something with the idea that there are a range of epistemic benefits to working within an art that one lacks access to in a totally unconstrained science. This is also closely related to my ideas about abstraction and concretization schemes.

Language is an art, one of the oldest arts, but modern linguistics is more or less a science. Like any good science, linguistics has certain arts unique to itself—fieldwork and the comparative method come to mind—but the most vibrant parts of the field at present are science through-and-through. It's a science whose objects of study are arts, and I think maybe that's part of why I've become so aware of this distinction. Or, language is the ur-example of an art, the art from which (if I were to conjecture wildly) I think the cognitive machinery for very many other arts has been borrowed. But I don't really know.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

This morning I picked up my paper copy of the New York Times and I was greeted by an extremely graphic article about rape as warfare in Israel/Palestine on the front page. I put the paper down, but it got me thinking about the value of reading about violence. When is reading these testimonies bearing witness to history, and when is it masochism? How do you discern between productive discomfort and unnecessary anguish?

I don't expect you to have the answer to these because they are such immense questions and also things vary from person to person, but I am interested to hear your thoughts on the issue as a historian who is outspoken about the effects of secondhand trauma through genocide research. My degree isn't in history, but I'm an aspiring museum professional (if the job market isn't too cruel, lol. I'm open to other careers but I'm passionate about weaving archival materials into public storytelling so *gestures vaguely*). I also have a really thin skin. I tend to avoid graphic depictions/descriptions of violence, but sometimes I wonder what I'm missing by avoiding that.

Anyway! Feel free to answer this privately, publicly, or not at all if you're swamped with other things. Thank you for running such an informative and interesting blog!

Hi! Sorry this was buried in my inbox.

It's a good question, and I'm not sure how to answer it in regard to contemporary, ongoing events, vs. history. I do think that the 24/7 news cycle has exposed us all to an amount of suffering and stressful information that we're not like...designed to be able to handle.

So I'm going to answer you like a museum professional, and use that shared language. Back in 2009/10 I was a Collections Management Intern at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. This was before it opened to the public. While I was mostly cataloging, the staff was great about letting us listen on on ongoing higher level conversations.

I'm putting the rest of this under a cut, for reason which will be clear when you read what's under said cut.

Now, two of the (imo) most traumatic aspects of the history of that day, is 1) the photographs and footage of people who jumped from above the impact zones; and 2) the audio from phone calls and voicemails made from inside the planes, inside the towers, etc.

The museum handled those by making them optional. You want to listen to the last thing a woman in an office above the impact zone will say to her child? Ok. You have to make the choice to pick up audio mechanism, and press play. You want to watch footage of people jumping to their deaths to avoid burning to death? You have to make the specific choice to walk into a cordoned off vestibule, and view that material.

If you choose not to listen, or watch, you're not ignoring those histories or refusing to bear witness. You're fully cognizant of the fact that they happened, and you're simply choosing not to expose yourself to traumatic content. Bearing witness doesn't mean traumatizing yourself for the sake of bearing witness, you know?

I think it's enough to know that certain horrific things happened. Going that next step, looking at them, that's not necessary, and can't be rushed. When I was in undergrad I chose to focus on Ancient Near Eastern History as opposed to WW2 and the Holocaust because I know I wasn't ready to look too closely. I wasn't even really ready in grad school. It's really in the last 5/6 years that I've been able to do it. And I still don't think I'll ever be able to engage with detailed material about medical experimentation. But I know it happened. I know it was horrifying, and that's enough.

So, back to news media. I didn't see/read that article, but what I can say is that I appreciate when newspapers decline to put certain kinds of images on the front pages, and give the reader the option to look or not to look. I also appreciate when you're reading articles online, and you have to click multiple times to explicitly consent to view disturbing images.

The workers tell HuffPost they cannot in good conscience vote for Biden in the 2024 election given his ardent support for Israel. Nearly every worker, including those at Planned Parenthood, said they wished big reproductive rights organizations, which have the ability to endorse and help fund presidential candidates, had used their political power to demand a Democratic candidate that was a stronger advocate for abortion rights. ... Biden’s halfhearted support for abortion access had already soured many of the workers on his administration. Many said they can no longer support a candidate who barely says the word “abortion” and is working to restore a status quo that never gave marginalized people abortion access to begin with. Some said that Biden’s policy stance on immigration also contributed to their decision to not vote for him in November. Everyone said that Gaza was the last straw. ... Many of the U.S. workers became emotional when discussing what they described as genocide in the Gaza Strip. They told HuffPost they can’t ignore the racist history of the reproductive rights movement. “The truth is it plays right into our movement’s history of participating in reproductive coercion, injustice and genocide,” the reproductive rights leader who has met with the Biden administration told HuffPost, referring to the sterilization of Puerto Rican women who sought contraception and the experimentation on Black women’s bodies to create modern gynecological care. “What I see is our movement’s history repeating itself, and that is so dangerous.” “We’re not going to talk about the entire generations of Palestinians who are dead so, what, this man can stay in office?”

Down the road from where I live a friend came across a man tearing down pictures of Israeli hostages. You’ve probably seen the portraits by bus stops and railway stations. Activists print them off from sites highlighting the hostages’ plight and fly-post pictures of the men, women and children Hamas kidnapped.

As the hostages are civilians, my friend asked why would anyone want to destroy their pictures.

He was beaten up for his pains. Defending innocent Jewish civilians makes you an accomplice of Benjamin Netanyahu in London today.

And not just in London. Anti-Jewish hatred in the UK has exploded since Hamas attacked Israel – recorded incidents have doubled.  The violence my friend experienced is still rare, thankfully. But the fear of Islamist terrorism or just everyday thugs running riot is everywhere in the Jewish community, and to a lesser extent in wider society as well.

A drumbeat of stories builds the tension.

Belatedly and reluctantly, the Labour party disowned its Muslim candidate in the forthcoming Rochdale by-election. He had all the usual prejudices, and a few I had not heard about before.

He imagined that “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” were targeting pro-Palestinian politicians, and that the Israeli state had allowed Hamas to rape, shoot and burn alive 1200 of its people because it wanted a pretext to invade Gaza.

As I am writing this piece, there’s news of a (white) comedian, who describes himself as an “experimental fusionist” and an “absurdist laughter chef,” and is just as stupid as his description implies. In a scene redolent of medieval prejudice, he encouraged the audience at the Soho Theatre in central London to chant “get the fuck out” and “free Palestine” at a Jewish member of the audience.

Incidentally the Soho Theatre is on the site of the old West End Great Synagogue, built at a time when Jews were welcome in London

Before that Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, the Jewish chaplain of Leeds University, his wife and two kids were moved to a safe house on  police advice after receiving hundreds of death threats.

Online “activists” pointed out the rabbi had served in the Israeli Defence Force, and so presumably any number of violent threats were justified.

The justification, such as it is, would have carried more plausibility if incidents of hatred had not exploded as soon as the news of the Hamas massacres broke in October.  They were celebrations of anti-Jewish violence not a reaction to the violence of the Israeli armed forces.

If you doubt that there are reasons to be frightened, go to your nearest synagogue and see the guards. Or talk to the parents of Jewish children and hear them describe how Jewish schools tell pupils to discard uniforms that allow potential attackers to mark them out as targets.

All of this and much more is causing deep alarm in the Jewish community, and a dangerous reaction among right-wing Jewish pressure groups, who are getting the response to racism about as wrong as they possibly can.

Here’s how.

The Jewish right is caught up in the same paranoid ideology of the rest of the modern British right, and indeed of the Trumpian right in the United States. It sees the woke mind virus everywhere. It assumes that progressives have marched through the institutions and made them borderline antisemitic, if not all-out racist.

In the case of violence against Jews, the supposed triumph of wokedom means that ideologically compromised police officers will not protect Jews by standing up to far leftists and Islamists.

 The Campaign Against Antisemitism, has encouraged its allies in the Conservative government to introduce ever-greater restrictions on rights to protest. This week it was welcoming new punishments for demonstrators who desecrate war memorials (who could already be prosecuted under existing law) and who wear face coverings to conceal their identity.

I do not want to condemn the campaign out of hand. There’s no doubt the pro-Palestinian marches in London frighten Jewish people. Some  90% of British Jews say that they would avoid travelling to a city centre if a major anti-Israel demonstration was underway.

There is no doubt, too, that fear of violence is not just confined to Jews. It is everywhere, although we don’t like to talk about it.

People disappear in ​the UK for offending Islamists, and respectable society looks the other way. Before the rabbi at Leeds University, there was a religious studies teacher at a Yorkshire school. Three-years ago he showed his students a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. He still remains in hiding and is unlikely ever to return home.

The UK is nowhere near being the free country it pretends to be. I understand why so many are frightened. That said, you can still look at right-wing politicians and organisations and wonder where they are heading.

While praising Conservative ministers’ trifling changes to the law, which are little better than PR stunts, the Campaign Against Antisemitism denounces the police.

“For months now, we have been asking for tougher restrictions to be placed on these protests, which have made our urban centres no-go zones for Jews. While the police have failed the Jewish community and law-abiding Londoners, the Government, to its credit, is listening. These new laws will help address the mob mentality that we have observed in these protests. There is no justification for such scenes, and now, there will be no legal defence.”

Jewish leaders who work to protect the community told me on condition of anonymity that the attacks on the police make no sense. They consult with officers regularly, they say. The idea that the police are part of some woke conspiracy to ignore radical Islam and turn a blind eye to potential terrorism is ridiculous.

So it is, and it conceals a dangerous desire.

For if you think that conservatives are yearning to ban peaceful demonstrations, you are not wrong. Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman, his radical right home secretary last year, tried to force the police to do just that.

Braverman fell into anti-woke conspiracy theory and accused the police of taking a tougher approach to right-wing groups than to “pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour”.

The Met to its credit refused to buckle under the pressure. Officers told the politicians they could interfere with freedom of assembly only if there was a threat of serious disorder, and that the "very high threshold" has not been reached.

The right has not given up. Here is the Campaign Against Antisemitism again.

“The people of this country expect the lawlessness on our streets to be brought firmly under control, and with these changes there are now even fewer excuses for police inaction.”

The attack follows the Campaign’s previous denunciations of London’s liberal Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan (which I covered here). Khan has gone out of his way to defend London’s Jews, but is the centre of a far-right and at times a fascistic hate campaign from Donald Trump and others, simply because he is a Muslim.

Yearning for bans is hopeless from both a moral and practical point of view. Tactically, it is all wrong. I can think of nothing more likely to fuel conspiracy theories about Jewish power than the banning of demonstrations.

If they were turning into riots, it would be another matter, and they should be banned regardless of the conspiracy theories.

But they are not degenerating into riots, and in a free country, people should be free to protest. We do not want to be governed by the Western equivalent of Hamas, after all.

Equally if protestors are not engaged in violence or the incitement to violence, it is a waste of police time suppressing them: police time which – and forgive me if I am labouring the obvious – could be better spent countering authentic threats to Jews and everyone else.

For who on earth do right-wing Jewish groups think stand between them and Islamist terrorism? The Tory party? The comment desk of the Daily Telegraph? A professional loudmouth on GB News?

Or the police service they waste so much time and energy denigrating?

ive always loved eurovision as much as the next queer european fan of oddball experimental exuberant pop music but im ready to boycott it this year without a second thought since it’s steadily refusing to drop israel from the contestant list. is it really that hard for yall. gazans are dying

The Israeli authorities are using an experimental facial recognition system known as Red Wolf to track Palestinians and automate harsh restrictions on their freedom of movement, Amnesty International said today.  In a new report, Automated Apartheid, the organization documents how Red Wolf is part of an ever-growing surveillance network which is entrenching the Israeli government’s control over Palestinians, and which helps to maintain Israel’s system of apartheid. Red Wolf is deployed at military checkpoints in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, where it scans Palestinians’ faces and adds them to vast surveillance databases without their consent.

Source