Treating a state as a god is a very frightening endeavor. It confers upon mortals a level of veneration that we do not deserve and will always abuse.
– Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
This week’s featured post is “An Authoritarian Economy is a Bad Economy“. As an experiment, I’ve cross-posted that article on Substack. If you’re on Substack, take a minute to comment. As on WordPress, subscription is free.
This week everybody was talking about Trump rigging the 2026 elections
At the moment the standoff in Texas continues: Texas Republicans want to give Trump the five extra congressional seats he wants by redrawing the district boundaries. (I mean, why bother trying to convince voters to support you when you can just rearrange your supporters and get the same result?) Democrats can’t vote the proposal down, but do have enough seats to deny Republicans the quorum needed to hold a vote.
If Democratic legislators were in Texas, the state police could hunt them down and drag them to the Capitol. So they’ve left the state.
Like many observers, I suspect the Democrats can’t stay out of Texas forever. In Texas, the legislature is considered a part-time job, and paid accordingly. Most of the Democrats have other jobs that they will eventually lose, or businesses they can’t run from a distance. Many have children who will need to start school soon.
So eventually, Trump will get his new map and probably his five seats.
Because Democrats believe in democracy more than Republicans do, most Democratic states can’t be as easily gerrymandered or re-gerrymandered as Texas. Governor Newsom has come up with a somewhat bizarre plan to gerrymander California, but we’ll see if he can pull it off.
While I sympathize with the urge to fight fire with fire, the gerrymander wars are bad for democracy.
To see why, imagine a state that has 5 congressional districts, each with six voters. In the beginning, every district has 3 Orange voters and 3 Purple voters. Now imagine that we create a sixth district by plucking one Purple voter out of each of the original five.
We still have 30 voters, but now we have five districts with a 3-2 Orange majority and one district with a 5-0 Purple majority. The parties still have 15 voters each, but Orange now gets a 5-1 advantage in its congressional representation.
Now think about what that change does to the internal politics of each district. In the original configuration, each party has three voters. So the only way to get a majority is to get somebody from the other party to cross over. Both parties then are motivated to run candidates as close to the center as possible, or ones who have some other appeal to opposition voters. (Maybe they’re just well-known trustworthy folks.)
But in the gerrymandered configuration, Orange’s only motivation is to hang on to its base. If it gets all three of its voters to show up, it wins 5 out of 6 districts. Meanwhile, any Purple candidate in the sixth district is a sure winner, so there’s no reason not to run the most radical Purple they can find.
Here’s the lesson: The more balanced the districts are, the more likely it is that the winners will have cross-party appeal and feel motivated to work across the aisle when they get to Congress. The more gerrymandered districts there are, the more important party loyalty becomes.
Robert Hawks sees the gerrymandering wars as a step in the direction of civil war. Some states have always been redder or bluer than other states, but now states are self-identifying as members of the red or blue team.
In the meantime, Trump has another shortcut planned: Redoing the census so that red states can get more representatives and blue states less.
I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024. People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
As with so many of Trump’s executive orders, doing this legally would require a constitutional amendment, because the 14th Amendment says representatives “shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
The word used is “persons”, not “citizens” or “legal residents”.
The point of all these shenanigans, and the ones undoubtedly still to come, is that Trump knows he’s unpopular and that his party will lose any honest election at this point.
and Gaza
The escalation continues:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that his plan to seize control of Gaza City and the remaining sliver of Gaza not already under Israeli control will involve displacing the population and taking control of the entire Gaza Strip.
In other news, Israel targeted and killed a well-known Al Jazeera journalist.
Anas al-Sharif … one of Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces in Gaza, was killed while inside a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night. Seven people in total were killed in the attack, including the Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and the camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster. … The Israel Defense Forces admitted carrying out the attack, claiming the reporter was the leader of a Hamas cell – an allegation that Al Jazeera and Sharif had previously dismissed as baseless.
This week I read Peter Beinart’s new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. I found it to be an excellent analysis of the folly of the policies of the Netanyahu government, as well as the political attitudes that make those policies possible.
The objection I always run into when I try to discuss the Palestine/Israel conflict is “You’re not Jewish, so you can’t possibly understand.” And while there is some truth to that — nothing in my personal or family background is comparable to the Holocaust — I can’t accept the idea that only Jewish opinions are valid.
Beinart, on the other hand, is Jewish, and is well educated in his religion and its culture. He criticizes Israel’s Gaza war, and the Jewish-over-Palestinian supremacy that this war is the culmination of, from the inside. He is aware of the Holocaust, he was deeply affected by the horror of Hamas’ October 7 attacks, and he wants to be able to raise his Jewish children in a world where antisemitism (in all its forms) endangers them as little as possible.
And yet he is horrified by what is happening in Gaza, and even more horrified that it is happening in the name of Judaism.
A central message of the book is that Jews need to change the story they tell about themselves. The self-image many Jews have of being history’s perpetual victims (and never the victimizers of someone else) has never been true, even within the Jewish tradition itself. He notes that even the Biblical Book of Esther, one of the classic stories of Jews surviving attempted genocide, ends with the Jews themselves killing 75,000 of their enemies. Joshua’s conquest of Canaan is quite bloody, with little indication that the Canaanites deserved their fate.
He cuts through many of the myths and fallacies that justify keeping the Palestinians subjugated. Israel’s “right to exist”, for example, does not imply a right to Jewish supremacy within the state of Israel.
He makes a distinction between Judaism (a religion) and Israel (a state), and argues that criticism of Israel need not imply antisemitism. Conversely, conflating Judaism and Israel makes an idol of the state of Israel. (That’s the source of the treating-a-state-as-a-god quote at the top.)
But most importantly, he argues that the current policies are a very bad way to keep Jews safe.
Ziad al-Nakhalah, who at the age of three saw Israel murder his father when it massacred Palestinians in Khan Younis in 1956, currently heads Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israel has already killed more than one hundred times as many Palestinians in Gaza in this war as it killed back then. How many three-year-olds will still be seeking revenge sixty-nine years from now?
As I have argued in this blog before, Hamas is not an organization, it is an idea. It embodies Palestinians’ urge for revenge and distrust of any possible peace with Israel. No matter how many Hamas militants Israel kills in Gaza, its ranks will be refilled by those who survive when their friends and relatives did not.
Seeing this, Beinart argues that he and his children (and Jews everywhere) are less safe because of the current war. I fear, though, that as realistic as Beinart tries to be, he has missed the full horror of what’s going on in Gaza.
Yes, some of the Gazans who survive will hate Israel with an undying passion. But what if there are no survivors? That’s where Netanyahu’s logic leads.
and Ukraine
Trump is meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday, with the goal of stopping the Ukraine War that Trump said he could end in 24 hours.
This is a bad idea for any number of reasons. First, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023, accusing him of responsibility for the war crime of kidnapping Ukrainian children. If Putin comes to the US, we should arrest him, not hold a summit meeting with him.
Second, Ukraine is not part of these talks, raising the possibility that Trump and Putin will work out a deal that Trump will then demand Ukraine implement, despite having no role in negotiating it.
Putin comes to the meeting with a “peace” plan that is like all his previous proposals: If Ukraine gives up something real (sovereignty over Ukrainian provinces that Russia doesn’t fully occupy), Putin will agree to something ephemeral (a ceasefire he could break at any moment). People throw the Munich analogy around far too often, but this is a case where it really applies: In the Munich agreement of 1938, Czechoslovakia gave up territory to Hitler, only to be totally defenseless when Hitler decided to seize the rest of the country a few months later.
Ukraine’s European allies have already supported President Zelensky in rejecting such an agreement.
But the final reason this is a bad idea is that we know what will happen: Whenever Trump meets with Putin, he comes out repeating Putin’s talking points. Recently, Trump has made noises about being “disappointed” with Putin’s intransigence about Ukraine, but nothing ever comes of his disappointment. He recently let an ultimatum deadline go by without any action.
Putin is the alpha in this relationship and Trump is the beta. That’s been true ever since they met in Helsinki in 2018, and Trump came out saying that he trusted Putin’s account of events more than that of the US intelligence services. He will come out of Friday’s meeting saying that Ukraine needs to give Russia territory, without any guarantees from the US or anybody else that Putin can’t just start the war up again as soon as he thinks he can win.
Ukraine will rightly reject this proposal, and then Trump will once again paint Zelensky as the obstacle to peace, returning to where Trump feels most comfortable: by Putin’s side.
and you also might be interested in …
Jay Kuo looks at the cushy offers ICE is making to new recruits, and deduces that they must be having a hard time finding people who want to sign up.
NASA has two satellites specifically devoted to monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — the leading cause of climate change.
NASA staffers who work on these two carbon dioxide monitoring missions have been asked to draw up plans that NASA could use to terminate those missions, and that’s according to current and former NASA employees. And if NASA were to put those plans into action, which could happen as soon as early October, one of the missions would likely burn up in the atmosphere, so it would be completely destroyed permanently.
The satellite data also turns out to have other uses.
But these missions can also measure plant growth, which is totally unexpected and super powerful. NASA has turned that into maps that are used for agriculture, like, to predict crop yield. So farmers actually use this information as well, and they rely on it.
There’s nothing wrong with the satellites, and the missions they support cost about $15 million a year, a small fraction of what it cost to build the satellites and launch them. The motive to ignore (and in one case destroy) them seems to be that the Trump administration doesn’t want us to know how much CO2 is in the atmosphere.
mRNA technology is a huge recent advance in vaccine production. mRNA vaccines are quicker to invent and quicker to produce than standard vaccines. They saved millions of lives worldwide during the Covid pandemic.
But RFK Jr. has decided (for no apparent scientific reason) that they’re unsafe. So 22 federal contracts worth half a billion dollars just got cancelled. One of the cancelled contracts is for a bird flu vaccine. If that virus should happen to mutate in a way that spreads human-to-human, we could be in big trouble.
and let’s close with something above and beyond
I think I’ve mentioned the Smithsonian photo contest before, but this week I notice the drone category. This photo, titled “Dragon“, is an aerial view of badlands in Utah.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
The idea of religious belief systems defines the dumb ass theology of both Xtianity and Islam which dictates how believers MUST believe – based upon highly edited and defined theological positions accepted as Cannon. Jews prioritize the Torah commandment: Justice Justice Pursue – found in the 5th Book of Jewish Torah Common Law – as the definition of faith. The brain-dead propaganda pictorial 1st grader pics embrace the Way of the Goyim and how they “BELIEVE IN” their bull shit trief other gods.
“It’s always something.” Roseanne Roseannadanna”
If we thought th
One proposal to eliminate partisan gerrymanders is to eliminate districts altogether and have representatives elected at-large within states. We already do this when we elect delegates in presidential primaries and electors in the general election. One argument against at-large legislators is that they would have no reason to pay attention to their constituents, and would be more beholden to the party leadership. All I can say is that my current congressman doesn’t listen to me at all as he’s a member of the opposing party. I don’t see how he could be any less attentive if he was at-large.
What you’re seeing in Ukraine right now is what losing looks like. NATO thought it could break Russia with sanctions, but that failed miserably [1]. Under neoliberalism, NATO’s war industry has atrophied so badly that Europe’s stockpiles are empty [2] and Russia produces 4 times as many munitions as the entire alliance [3]. NATO’s delusional fixation on epic maneuver warfare meant that that the best Ukrainian armies it could equip (some of the best on Earth, I should add) were wasted in disastrous offensives in Zaporizhzhia in 20203 and Kursk in 2024, which got Ukraine’s best units destroyed achieving no strategic goals. The result of these decisions is that the AFU has become so depleted that the average Ukrainian infantryman is a conscript over the age of 45 who was given 6 weeks of training before being sent to the front to die [4], and they burn through these infantrymen so quickly that they have to strip support personnel for infantry in order to hold the line [5]. This is a death spiral for the AFU, plain and simple. Russia’s massive advantage in munitions for firepower will produce so many casualties that the AFU is going to become less and less effective as it cannibalizes itself for infantry, until it eventually won’t be able to hold ground anymore. At that point, the Russians will be able to go wherever they want and dictate whatever terms they feel like to a shattered Ukraine.
In short, NATO has lost this war, just like how Germany had lost WW1 by mid-1917. The decisions that led to this defeat were all made under Biden, but Trump gets to decide exactly how NATO loses. This could mean agreeing to a harsh and unfavourable settlement for Ukraine, or it could mean continuing the war until the AFU collapses like the German army at the end of WW1. Trump being Trump, I think he’s going to drag things out as he flails around trying and failing to get a settlement that doesn’t make him look like a loser… until the AFU collapses anyways.
If anyone disagrees, thinks this war is still winnable, and wants it to continue, consider this: keeping the Ukrainian army in the field means finding a massive new source of Ukrainian biomass for manpower, quadrupling NATO’s production of war materiel so these new soldiers have the firepower to match Russia, and doing this all in 6-12 months before the AFU enters the final stages of its collapse. How exactly will this be done? If NATO couldn’t do this in the last 3 years, how will it do this now? And if NATO can’t do this, are you ever going to be able to get a better deal than what Russia is offering at the moment?
My apologies for all these citations, but in my experience liberals will accuse you of being a Russian agent doing disinformation if you point out that this war is going badly for NATO. I’d like to avoid these kinds of conspiracy theories and focus on the material reality of industrial war, which you can read about in these sources:
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/leadership/directors/eds23/brief/russia-was-classified-as-high-income-country
[2] https://www.kyivpost.com/post/47363
[3] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/07/16/is-russia-producing-a-years-worth-of-nato-ammunition-in-three-months
[4] https://kyivindependent.com/inside-ukraines-desperate-race-to-train-more-soldiers/
[5] https://kyivindependent.com/transfer-of-air-force-personnel-to-infantry-continues-despite-scandal/
Al-Sharif had been photographed posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Whether this made him a “Hamas leader” himself isn’t clear, but it does suggest he was sympathetic to Hamas. Imagine an Israeli journalist posing with Netanyahu – would anyone buy that they weren’t at least on the same page?
“A journalist took a picture with the head of his local government, so he deserved to die.”
-A liberal I guess?
Well, that’s what you would say if an Israeli journalist was killed after being photographed with Netanyahu and embedded with the IDF, right?
I haven’t read Beinart’s book, but it’s important to not look at the Gaza conflict from one side and present it as if Israel has sole control over it.
No Arab state has come to the aid of Gaza, not even their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank who could have launched an intifada. Iran tried through their proxy Hezbollah, with the result that Hezbollah’s command structure was destroyed and Iran was shown to be a paper tiger. Egypt has not opened the Rafah Crossing either. In fact, to my knowledge, no country has offered to accept Gazan refugees (although some Gazans have managed to leave and take refuge in other countries). If anyone says this is because they don’t want to facilitate “ethnic cleansing,” do they think that is worse than “genocide,” or do they not believe that this is a genocide and only use that word for its emotional effect? It’s an odd genocide that could be ended by the victims at any time, simply by leaving, assuming someone wants to take them in. I doubt if the inmates of Auschwitz or Treblinka would have remained there if the Nazis had been willing to let them leave and other countries had been willing to accept them.
Israel has faced existential and actual threats to its existence since it was established. For the most part, those threats have ended, except for Hamas. While Hamas may be an “idea,” it’s also the duly elected government of Gaza. Just as Nazism is also an idea, it was possible to remove Nazis from power in Germany. The same can be done with regard to Hamas in Gaza, as none other than the Arab League has demanded. If that means neo-Hamas members will persist elsewhere as neo-Nazis do, at least they won’t be in charge anymore.
The people of Gaza are suffering, that much is unquestionable. If the countries willing to engage in performative actions like boycotting Israel or “recognizing” Palestine aren’t willing to do anything substantive, what does that say about them?
How Error progresses throughout the course of Human history.
Israel Information Center Ithaca
internationalscholars·israelinformationcenterithaca.wordpress.com
Once the focus is the connection between The Torah and the real necessity for the endowed title of an existing National Israeli State, Karaites are an unity opportunity .
There is no presumptions of against the family circles of the Cohens which evolved into the various, and even those names of Levy, assuming all efforts to reestablish their…
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Historical Narrative: Timeline of Key Events and Figures
Tzeddukim (Sadducees): A Jewish sect active during the Second Temple period, known for their rejection of oral law and emphasis on the written Torah.
Karaites: Emerged in the 8th century, rejecting rabbinic authority and relying solely on the Hebrew Bible for religious practice.
Saadia Gaon (882–942 CE): A prominent Jewish philosopher and legal scholar who integrated Jewish thought with Islamic philosophy and emphasized rationalism.
Rambam (Maimonides, 1135–1204 CE): A key figure in Jewish law and philosophy, known for his works like the Mishneh Torah and Guide for the Perplexed.
Shlomo (Solomon): Often refers to King Solomon, known for his wisdom and contributions to Jewish thought, particularly in the context of the Hebrew Bible.
David: King David, a central figure in Jewish history, known for uniting the tribes of Israel and establishing Jerusalem as the capital.
Philosophical/Jurisprudential Argument: Key Concepts
Pardes vs Greek logic:
Pardes: A method of interpreting Jewish texts that includes four levels: Peshat (literal), Remez (hint), Drash (interpretative), and Sod (mystical).
Greek Logic: Refers to the rational and philosophical frameworks established by Greek philosophers, emphasizing deductive reasoning and empirical evidence. Saadia Gaon and Rambam, though themselves deeply engaged with rediscovered Greek thought, fiercely opposed the Karaites and placed them under excommunication, just as the ancient P’rushim did to the Tzeddukim.
Common Law vs. Statute Law:
Common Law: A legal system based on judicial decisions and precedents rather than written statutes, allowing for flexibility and adaptation.
Statute Law: A legal system based on written laws enacted by a legislative body, providing clear and codified rules. Both Tzeddukim and Karaites denied the Sanhedrin’s legislative review authority.
Both prioritized “belief systems” over the Torah’s demand for judicial justice—restoring damages, making peace between Jews.
The Karaim, while not as radical as Samaritans, still rejected the prophetic mussar of NaCH as binding precedent.
Theological Critique: Key Issues
Assimilation: The process by which Jewish communities adopt elements of surrounding cultures, potentially leading to a dilution of Jewish identity and practice. Karaites, like the ancient Tzeddukim, reject the revelation of the Oral Torah at Horev. This rejection undermines the core of Jewish law as a judicial common law system. Both movements embraced Greek deductive logic over Rabbi Akiva’s Pardes inductive method—the loom that weaves warp and weft to form Talmudic law.
Avoda Zara (Idolatry): The worship of foreign gods or practices that contradict Jewish Oath brit alliance which continuously creates the chosen Cohen people through the dedication of tohor time-oriented Av commandments throughout the generations, often critiqued in the context of historical interactions with other cultures and religions.
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First let’s address the Title of this piece. Karaites like the Tzeddukim reject the revelation of the Oral Torah which the After meal blessing remembers the Tzeddukim attempt to cause Israel to forget the Oral Torah. Both the ancient Tzeddukim of the Lights of Hanukkah ignoble disgrace of that pre-New Testament Civil War; and the Karaites who relied upon Greek deductive logic to determine that a mezzuzza on the door post must include the 10 commandments – neither the ancient nor the stupidity of the Middle Ages from about 900 CE which aroused the indignation of:
Saadia Gaon (882–942 CE) and the even more famous Maimonides (1135–1204) heretics – both men highly assimilated to the rediscovery of the recently rediscovered ancient Greek texts which had dominated the ancient Tzeddukim to originally reject the revelation of the Oral Torah at Horev; nonetheless both scholars absolutely rejected the Karaite heretical movement and placed the Karaite supporters into a charem excommunication just as did the ancient P’rushim to the Tzeddukim sons of Aaron.
Both Saadia and the Rambam violated the Torah commandment not to duplicate how the Goyim worship their Gods. Commonly referred to today as “ASSIMILATION”. The re-discovery of the ancient Greek texts by the Muslim invasion of Spain re-opened the Tzeddukim Civil War can of worms – some thousand years after the P’rushim lit the Hanukkah lights, the Rambam embraced Roman statute law which effectively abandoned the study of Talmudic common law. Cults of personality rabbinic personalities, like for example Yosef Karo, dominated the determination of halacha rather than Sanhedrin courts room common law jurisprudence.
The revelation of the Oral Torah at Horev, 40 days following the Sin of the Golden Calf, on Yom Kippur: rabbi Akiva’s kabbalah known throughout the Talmudic and Gaonic Midrashim literature as “PARDES” p’shat, drosh; remiz, sod. This logic format radically differed from the ancient Greek deductive reasoning based upon the model of the 3-Part syllogism. The Talmudic codification of the kabbalah of rabbi Akiva’s 4-Part Pardes inductive logic, Ordered both the 6 Orders of the Mishna and its Gemara commentary thereon based upon the working model of a LOOM.
A loom as warp & weft opposing threads. The codification of Oral Torah common law into the written Talmud seeks to employ Pardes inductive precedent based learning as the basis to shape and determine the Jewish, chosen Cohen people, cultural identity as a people. The Talmud prioritized judicial common law as the basis of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai. Tzeddukim and Karaism rejected the definition of faith as the righteous pursuit of judicial common law justice which dedicates, think korban, the sanctification of common law courtrooms/Sanhedrins making fair restoration of damages inflicted by Jews upon other Jews as the WAY to make shalom among the divided and conflicting Jewish people.
Both the Tzeddukim and Karaim instead embraced the Goyim assimilation which defines faith as belief in some theologically determined God belief-systems. The Rambam would write his ‘Mishna Torah’ statute law code based upon Greek and Roman statute law which organizes law into judicial categories like farmers sell eggs by the dozen. T’NaCH & Talmudic common law bases itself upon rabbi Yechuda Sha’s common law upon the Book of D’varim having a second Name: Mishna Torah. The latter means “Common Law”. Rabbi Yechuda’s Mishna, a common law judicial system. The D’varim judicial mandate empowers the Sanhedrin Federal Court-room system to have Legislative Review (A second interpretation of Mishna Torah) over all governments, kings, or Tribal Prince lead governments.
Both the ancient Tzeddukim and Middle Ages Karaim rejected the prioritization of common law Sanhedrin courtrooms as having the mandate power of Legislative Review. Both the Tzeddukim and Karaim rejected the common law basis of law that later court Judicial ruling stand upon prior Sanhedrin common law courts judicial rulings – like as codified in the 6 Orders of rabbi Yechuda’s Mishna.
The later Karaim did not go as far as did the ancient Samaritans. The latter rejected the Oral Torah prophetic mussar as codified throughout the NaCH prophets and Holy Writings! None the less, the Karaim rejected the masoret of the NaCH as prophetic mussar precedents which make a Mishna Torah common law re-interpretation of Written Torah based on positive/negative commandment precedents & T’NaCH prophetic mussar. The much later Talmudic common law codification employs a 70 faces to the Torah blue-print diamond facet re-interpretation of employing halacha contained within Gemara sugyot as the precedents by which to view the language of the Mishna based upon a different Gemara halachic perspective.
Hence the Baali Tosafot common law commentary to the Talmud likewise jumps off the dof of any given Gemara to re-interpret a given Gemara sugya views from a wholly different sugya perspective. Much like and similar to a building contractor reads a blue-print which contains a front/topside views. Ancient Greek deductive reasoning logic – basically flat or two-dimensional. Hence 19th Century Hyperbolic Geometry refuted Euclids 5th Axiom of plain geometry.
Both the assimilated Tzeddukim, Dark Ages Karaim, and Middle Ages Rambam – they all rejected or did not grasp the Pardes Kabbalah of logic. The warp/weft loom of the Talmud’s most essential definition of Oral Torah as judicial common law Mishna Torah – Legislative Review. This conflict even dates back to kings David and Shlomo! The prophet Natan warned David not to copy the ways of the Goyim and build a massive Cathedral like church/Temple. The Jerushalmi Talmud carries this 3 opposed by 3 Tannaim dispute over the issue whether king David after conquering Damascus established that city as a City of Refuge with its own small Sanhedrin Federal Capital Crimes Courtroom.
Just as king Shlomo’s son at Sh’Cem rejected the advise given by king Shlomo’s elder advisors, so too young king Sholomo likewise rejected the prophetic mussar of the prophet Natan; king Shlomo decided to construct a grand duplication of how Goyim civilizations worship their Gods; king Shlomo worshipped avoda zara when he ordered the construction of the First Temple and failed to judge the Capital Crimes case of the two prostitutes dead baby before a Great Sanhedrin Federal court in Jerusalem.
The Talmud refers to this error as “Descending Generations”. This idea starkly contrasts with Calvin’s theology known as “Predestination”. The descending generations idea views down stream generations comparable to ripples consequent to a stone striking a pond. Once a powerful influential leader, such as either king Shlomo or the Rambam, made their respective decisions. Shlomo prioritized duplicating who the goyim worshipped their Gods by constructing a grand Temple; while Rambam embraced the sh’itta of the T’zeddukim and sought to convert the Talmud not into a polis city state but rather into a statute law syllogism Greek logic belief system which perverted faith away from judicial justice which makes fair restitution of damages unto a belief system theology which prioritizes the Ego ‘I believe’ avoda zarah which perverts the God of Israel unto just another treif Av Tuma monotheisist god. Monotheism, by definition profanes the 2nd Sinai commandment.
I ain’t reading all that – Free Palestine!
Naturally a silly Goy from a foreign country ass-umes that “it” already knows everything. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Go wag your tail.
Peace a noun, while shalom a verb. The verb requires trust. No trust No Shalom. The noun simply a nice name and nothing more. Hence political rhetoric employs continuously the Pie in the Sky bull shit of “Peace”.
Learning out to discern like from like defines “understanding. Another example:
Distinguishing between Mercy from Pity
johncoyote·john-coyote.com
Have mercy.
Have mercy Pretty girl, she told me. Chameleons faces we do have. We have become strangers to our self, forgot who we were. Once we were whiskey drinking people, who ….
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John mercy not the same as pity. Mercy the 4th tohor middah of the Oral Torah revelation at Horev which the church categorically denies. Torah law, something which the NT writers systematically refused to define. Torah law a legal judicial common law jurisprudence and determination of government rule – known as “Legislative Review”. Wherein the Sanhedrin common law courts not only can declare a law passed by the Legislative or Executive Branches as unconstitutional. Legislative Review takes Judicial government one step further. The Great Sanhedrin court re-writes the questioned constitutionality of a law passed by Congress or the Executive and thereafter re-introduces this court re-written law. This process known as “Mishna Torah”.
The 4th middah of the Oral Torah stands separate and distinct from pity. Torah common law stands upon precedents. Torah commandments qualify as legal precedent in this common law legal system. Three precedent by which a person can interpret the middah of Mercy: 1. The commandment to slaughter all inhabitants of Canaan Man, Woman, and child. 2. The commandment to make eternal war against Amalek. 3. The commandment to kill the stubborn and rebellious child.
The Torah oath brit alliance – actively entails blessing and curse polarities. If actions have their consequences like the ripple effect of a stone thrown into a pond, then these 3 negative commandments listed above they prevent a Torah curse to curse the people of Israel. No pity shown not to the people of Canaan, nor to Amalek, nor to the child who qualifies as a rebellious son. Herein distinguishes the tohor middah of Mercy from the notion of taking pity upon someone or something.
Interesting but has nothing to do with my comment.
Peace a noun, while shalom a verb. The verb requires trust. No trust No Shalom. The noun simply a nice name and nothing more. Hence political rhetoric employs continuously the Pie in the Sky bull shit of “Peace”.
Learning out to discern like from like defines “understanding. Another example:
Distinguishing between Mercy from Pity
johncoyote·john-coyote.com
Have mercy.
Have mercy Pretty girl, she told me. Chameleons faces we do have. We have become strangers to our self, forgot who we were. Once we were whiskey drinking people, who ….
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John mercy not the same as pity. Mercy the 4th tohor middah of the Oral Torah revelation at Horev which the church categorically denies. Torah law, something which the NT writers systematically refused to define. Torah law a legal judicial common law jurisprudence and determination of government rule – known as “Legislative Review”. Wherein the Sanhedrin common law courts not only can declare a law passed by the Legislative or Executive Branches as unconstitutional. Legislative Review takes Judicial government one step further. The Great Sanhedrin court re-writes the questioned constitutionality of a law passed by Congress or the Executive and thereafter re-introduces this court re-written law. This process known as “Mishna Torah”.
The 4th middah of the Oral Torah stands separate and distinct from pity. Torah common law stands upon precedents. Torah commandments qualify as legal precedent in this common law legal system. Three precedent by which a person can interpret the middah of Mercy: 1. The commandment to slaughter all inhabitants of Canaan Man, Woman, and child. 2. The commandment to make eternal war against Amalek. 3. The commandment to kill the stubborn and rebellious child.
The Torah oath brit alliance – actively entails blessing and curse polarities. If actions have their consequences like the ripple effect of a stone thrown into a pond, then these 3 negative commandments listed above they prevent a Torah curse to curse the people of Israel. No pity shown not to the people of Canaan, nor to Amalek, nor to the child who qualifies as a rebellious son. Herein distinguishes the tohor middah of Mercy from the notion of taking pity upon someone or something.
Selective Memories
loboteroIn Saner Thought
Historical Events
NOTE: This is not necessarily about the current mash-up in Gaza just a few observations that I have made in my many years.
I would like to reiterate that I am NOT anti-Jew, personally I do not give a shit about their religious beliefs.
This post is more about the selective memories of the American people than it is about the current situation.
WARNING: This post may include some offensive language that may offend the sensibilities of some readers….so if you are easily offended then maybe this post is not for you.
The date is 04 November 1979….US ally Iran has had months of protests against the policies and tactics of the Shah and on this date Iranian students stormed the walls of the US embassy in Tehran breaching them and taking 52 Americans hostage which were held for 444 days until their release on 20 January 1981.
Since that fateful day Americans have despised anything remotely Iranian. (There so much more to that action than just a bunch of pissed off students)
To this day they, Iran, can do nothing right in the eyes of most Americans….for they are evil.
The date is 08 June 1967….during the 6 Day war when Israel was fighting against the combined forces of the Arab nations.
The US signit ship, USS Liberty, was patrolling in the Eastern Mediterranean….when suddenly the ship was attacked by Israeli jets and gunboats….the attack left 34 American sailors dead and 174 wounded.
Yet Americans ignore this murderous attack and support Israel in everything they do….why?
If you are interested, which you are not, I have a post the has articles about this attack….fucking read them and see what our good ally is capable of doing.
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Prior to the outbreak of the 2nd Israeli War of Independence, commonly referred to by Goyim as the June 6 Day War, France – not the US – functioned as the key ally to the Jewish state. Charles de Gaulle duplicated the British treachery. In 1939 PM Chamberlain’s London passed the 2nd White Paper which sealed the borders of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate to Jews seeking to flee from the Nazi barbarians. FDR supported the British White Paper betrayal of the League of Nation Balfour Declaration Palestine Mandate of 1922 when the US closed its borders as well to all European Jews seeking refuge from the Nazi barbarians. Neither Churchill nor FDR consented to bomb the rail lines leading to the Death Camps, despite this Nazi abomination clearly known and exposed by 1942.
President Truman, to his great credit, the first country to recognize the independent Jewish state in 1948. Eight years following Israeli Independence England and France engaged a military alliance with Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion. England and France sought to seize the Suez Canal away from Nasser after the Egyptian President nationalized the Suez Canal as a means to pay off the huge expense required to build the Aswan Dam/Nasser Lake.
England and France mutually faced the collapse of their respective empires. Both Algeria and Vietnam demanded their National Independence and freedom from their French aristocratic feudal over-lords. The loss of the crown of the British empire – India & Pakistan directly threatened the First World Great Power status of England post WWII. Hence both London and France consoled the collapse of their respective world empires by dreaming of stealing the Suez Canal away from Nasser’s Egypt.
Incompetent France and England both failed to seize the Suez Canal, despite tiny Israel’s success at capturing the whole of the Sinai desert from the Egyptian Army. What a disgrace! President IKE compounded this 2nd tier status of both England and France in the Middle East by insisting that Israel return the captured Sinai and England and France peddle their papers elsewhere. Israel obeyed the command of President IKE – the post WWII Super-Power of the Planet Earth.
The USSR successfully competed with the dominance of the US when it acquired nuclear capabilities in August 1949. Both President IKE and Secretary Stalin directly rejected the notion that England and France could seize the Suez Canal. Such a radical action would have dramatically changed the balance of power in the Middle East, wherein England and France would sit as equals to the US and USSR. President IKE forcibly declared: “HELL NO!”
The French turn to betray Israel came just prior to the outbreak of the June War of 1967. President Nasser swore that in this war the Arabs would complete the Nazi Shoah and throw the Jews into the Sea. Tel Aviv took Nasser serious and ordered the digging of mass graves. The June War of ’67 turned out to become the 2nd Israeli War of Independence! Charles De Gaulle like PM Chamberlain before him betrayed the French alliance with Israel, by declaring French neutrality just prior to the outbreak of hostilities. London and Paris gambled that Nassers’ horse would win the Derby Race. Ooops.
During the June War President LBJ – tied down in Vietnam. LBJ too broke faith with President IKE just like he might have involvement with the Kennedy assassination! President IKE demanded that Israel return the Sinai back to Egypt in return for both Stalin and himself slapping London and Paris as second rate powers in the Middle East. LBJ permitted England and France to become the chief authors of UN Security Council Chapter VI Resolution 242. A UN Chapter VII Resolution resulted in the Korean War. UN 242, despite being merely a Chapter VI “suggestion” has evolved unto a “Pie in the Sky” ONLY two-state solution dictate! This Resolution constitutes revisionist history which pretends that Israel lost the June 1967 War; that Israel merely illegally occupies Samaria and Gaza! This UN propaganda stinks as bad as the UN joining Hamas in the Oct7th 2023 pogrom invasion of Israel; and the ICC declaration which assumes that Israeli leaders bear the Shoah guilt of genocide!
LBJ elevated England and France back to a first tier status in determining the balance of power in the Middle East by allowing the European disgraceful lie that pretends that Arabs did not lose the June 1967 War. That England and France as first tier Great Powers have the right to dictate to Israel the terms of UN peace, known collectively as UN Resolution 242. Where does the USS Liberty fit into this equation of betrayal?
Prior to the June 1967 War the US in no shape manner or form qualified as a major ally of the Jewish state. Post the ’67 War with the coward betrayal by De Gaul, only then did the US become the key major power ally of the Jewish state. The USS Liberty served the purpose as a spy ship. It had acquired key information of Israeli strategic tank formations positioned within the Sinai desert. It attempted to communicate these critical Israeli tank formations using a code that the Mossad knew that the Soviets had broken and deciphered. Israel could ill afford to permit the Egyptians to gain this critical information. Therefore the IDF bombed the USS Liberty spy shit into submission.
DISGRACEFUL. The story of a Jewish convert to the Catholic Church during the Xtian Shoah pogroms.
Ehrenberg lived during a time when antisemitism was prevalent in many parts of Europe, including Germany. This period saw the rise of nationalist movements and ideologies that often scapegoated Jews for various societal issues. The rise of the Nazi Party in the 1930s brought about extreme antisemitic policies, culminating in the Shoah.
This environment profoundly affected Jewish intellectuals and communities, including Ehrenberg. As an assimilated Jewish intellectual who converted to Catholicism, Ehrenberg likely encountered antisemitism firsthand, which directly influenced his perspectives and writings. His experiences provide an assimilationist traitors’ counter-narrative to the prevailing antisemitic attitudes of his time. Hans Ehrenberg converted to Xtianity in 1926.
His conversion was significant in the context of the rise of Hitler to power. Especially as it reflected the complex interplay between his former Jewish heritage and his active engagement with Xtian theological dogma. Ehrenberg’s experiences and perspectives as a Jewish convert to Catholic Xtianity contributed to his philosophical and theological explorations, particularly regarding the relationship between Judaism and Xtianity.
Ehrenberg’s views as a Xtian convert regarding the Talmud and Judaism reflect the broader tensions between Judaism and Xtianity during this time of Xtian pogroms. After converting to Xtianity in 1926, Ehrenberg felt a need to reconcile his Jewish heritage with his new faith. This often led earlier Jewish converts to adopt openly hostile & critical views of their former faith which prioritized the righteous pursuit of justice as faith and fear of Heaven. His hostility did not limit itself to only the Talmud. His coward racial hatred included the Hebrew T’NaCH as the foundation of Jewish common law legalism. The Talmud which asserted a central to Jewish law and tradition following its publication in about 450CE. Ehrenberg joined their ranks of the many other assimilated “Reform Jews” who grew to despise the Torah obligation to pursue judicial justice among the Jewish people.
A Jewish Xtian convert caused the Church of Rome in 1242 to burn all the hand written Talmudic manuscripts in Paris. This stark precedent aroused the Nazi book burnings in the 1930s. Ehrenberg’s work often exposed his hostile relationship between Judaism and Xtianity. His reflections on the Shoah and the Church’s evil responses directly influenced his views on interfaith denunciations which sought to invalidate any need for church to acknowledgment its Av tuma past war crimes and guilt against Humanity.
Many Jewish intellectuals and other leaders during and after the Shoah expressed their deep absolute revulsion and anger at the Catholic Church’s immoral indifference to the plight of Jews. Particularly the cowardly and utterly immoral crimes committed under Pope Pius XII, who betrayed “its” sub-human moral authority to speak out against the atrocities committed by both the Nazis and the Allies.
Jewish intellectuals and leaders denounced Pius XII for not speaking out forcefully against the Nazi regime or the Allied White Paper and US closing its borders to Jewish refugees, and refusal to bomb the rail-lines leading to the Death Camps. This “sentiment”, widespread among Jewish communities and intellectuals during and after the war. Ehrenberg did not denounce the guilt of the Xtian church. But he did denounce the Talmud in his writings, reflecting his negative perspective on its impact upon shaping the cultures and customs observed by the chosen Cohen people.
Ehrenberg criticized the Talmud as a source of legalism and as a barrier to understanding the essence of faith. He viewed it as contributing to a rigid interpretation of Judaism that he believed violated the Gospel Good News doctrine. In his works, he often and repeatedly articulated his negative views on the differences between Jewish and Xtian thought, often positioning the Talmud in a despicable light. His ignorance of T’NaCH and Talmud as common law which rejects Roman statute law exposes his racial bias coupled with his total ignorance of what separates and distinguishes Jewish common law ruled by lateral courtrooms from vertical State bribed and employed Judges and prosecuting attorneys whose job served to defend and maintain the statute laws imposed by the State and their bureaucrats. This total failure to discern between the Jewish concept of faith – which revolves around judicial fair compensation for damages inflicted – with the Xtian notion of faith, which employs theology and creeds to define a Top-down dictate how the faithful sheep MUST believe in God.
As the genocide in Gaza reaches its final stages, Israel’s remaining supporters are flailing to find some way to blame anyone but Israel for the nightmare that’s unfolding. Some, like Anonymous here, have settled on blaming America’s other Middle Eastern client states like Egypt for not helping Israel facilitate a second nakba and “forcing” Israel to destroy Gaza’s population through starvation. If this thinking seems familiar, this is where you’ve seen it before:
“At the same time, the Nazis carried out early experiments with deporting Jews from Germany. They also considered forcibly relocating entire Jewish communities to what they considered distant, undesirable, or isolated places. They explored plans to establish a reservation for Jews in the Lublin district of German-occupied Poland. They also considered sending Jews to Madagascar, an island off the African coast. Ultimately, these plans were too hard to carry out. So, the Nazis looked for other solutions to get rid of the Jewish population in Germany and in German-occupied territories.”
At the end of the day, Zionism is just the Jewish version of central European ethnic nationalism. That kind of nationalism always ends in the same place, whether it’s the OUN’s massacres of Poles in Galicia, the Ustase’s massacres of Serbs in Yugoslavia, the nazis’ and their local collaborators carrying out the holocaust across Europe, or Israel starving the population of Gaza to death. Zionism even came out of Austria-Hungary like all of those nationalism. Jews couldn’t accept that this is what we were embracing because we deluded ourselves into thinking we were somehow different from our neighbours in Europe. We aren’t.
Got it, you can’t stand the idea of Jewish self-determination, but are willing to go to the barricades in support of a Palestinian ethnostate. Hamas is just the Arab version of central European nationalism. Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was a close ally of Hitler who offered to assist with the Holocaust in Palestine.
It’s fascinating how you would rather that the people of Gaza die than allow them refuge in a foreign country. So you share Hamas’ strategy of sacrificing them in service of the real goal of Israel’s obliteration.
I know you’re going to bleat how “criticism of Israel isn’t antisemitism,” but Holocaust reversal and accusing Jews of being “Nazis” is definitely antisemitism. It’s on the level of saying that BLM is no different from the KKK.
Of all the genocides of the 20th century, of course Alpha 1 had to invoke the one where the perpetrators were Ukrainians and the one where the victims were Serbs. Tankies, still mad that Bill Clinton didn’t let Comrade Milosevic finish Brezhnev Doctrining the Volkerabfalle.
In a better world, it certainly would be preferable and more noble to have balanced districts, and for California to keep out of the fray. We’ve seen how being noble works out though; it merely allows the authoritarians to grab more power. It’s time to play the game by their rules. Newsom’s November ballot measure is triggered only if Texas or other red state pass their redrawn maps (without new census data to support). Someone has to meet these people head on, even if it isn’t the preferred way.
This is true. But democracy isn’t a homicide pact where we agree to get murdered by one side. The gerrymander wars are bad for democracy… but not fighting them is worse for democracy.
If we escalate we might get a civil war. But we might not. If we don’t escalate we lose the civil war anyway. Republicans will murder people i love.
We fight the fights we can or we die.
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