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The Dems are clearly struggling in the polls, and their old fallback stories like "racist walls", "global warming" and abortion don't seem to be motivating voters anymore. Silly voters are hung up on things like high interest rates, the cost of food and gas, soaring crime, rising homelessness, streets of filth and decay, and the world at war. Prominent Dems are even admitting that there's a crisis at the border now, which exposes their poor judgement of the past two elections. So what's the one thing that clearly unites Dems? Division. They know that they can whip their dolt horde into a frenzy any time they want with the help of some selective editing and a carefully cultivated (fake) backstory. The G Floyd story was a classic example: a Dem AG holds back bodycam footage that is highly exculpatory (shows the victim fighting with police and saying that he couldn't breathe while he was still walking, or in the cop car by himself), a heartwarming story about a new Gentle Giant fills the airwaves, and suddenly anyone with any pertinent information to share is in danger of being cancelled as a racist monster. Months of rioting ensue. Kamala's heart soars past Cloud Nine. Most importantly, the Dems' media outlets can hail them as champions of the little guys again. YAY! So what if a few cops are ambushed and killed, thousands more are assaulted, and there's a couple billion dollars worth of damage to people's businesses and homes... It's no big deal. Knowing that it's gonna happen is easy. It's their go-to. But if we, as conservatives, want to combat their false narratives, we probably need to have at least some idea of what their narrative is actually gonna be and when it's gonna happen. When is easy: in the summer when it's hot and miserable, American cities gagging on the smell of feces, the days are long and the nights are warm so kids want to be out, and there are brown outs so people have no AC. Eventually someone will be shot, and someone will catch it on video who will sell it to BLM, BLM will edit it to make the cops look bad as usual, and the Dem hate/division machine will be back in business. All they need is for the AG to be a Dem so that the bodycam footage can't expose the truth/spoil the fun. I think they're hoping for nicely editable footage of a muslim victim. That way they can make fans of all the new pro-Palestinians, win back all the muslim voters (who only pretended to be abandoning them), and bring Al Jazeera into the fold. Where? There's a large muslim population in Minnesota, those guys have proven that they're down for rioting and violence, the police force there is already mistrusted, the leaders are malleable, the AG has already run this scam, Omar is there to be the professional crier... Is it too perfect? I'm pretty sure that the folks at CNN and MSNBC already have their story ready to go, they just need to insert the names. "Earlier today in _________, Minn, police officers shot and killed troubled teen Mohammed Al-something-ah while he was just returning from prayers at his grandmother's house. Mo was a delightful child blah blah blah. Everyone who knew him said that he was perfect. A lot of people here say the cops are racist, _% of people incarcerated in this county are _______ 😱" I don't think they'll choose NY because too many wealthy people own real estate there, and there are too many synagogues there to vandalize, which is bad for business. There can't be minority-status victims on the other side. When? The M Brown shooting occurred in early August, at the peak of summer, G Floyd was killed on May 25th. IMO Aug is too close to the election, they will want months and months of hate beforehand. Also the weather will cool off too soon and the days will get shorter... it's too close to bad rioting weather. May long weekend is when summer weather really arrives in Canada, I think the Dems are looking for a June victim. That way they can get 3 solid months in before the weather cools off. You heard it here first: June, Muslim, Officer Mustard in the study with the revolver.

When a leftist or a minority does it, it's always ok, so whether or not it's hate speech depends on who's talking. Examples of "OK hate speech": https://www.westernstandard.news/news/trudeau-calls-the-unvaccinated-racist-and-misogynistic-extremists/article_a3bacece-2e14-5b8c-bf37-eddd672205f3.html Got it?

It seems universities are teaching their college age children to trigger themselves over anything they or their radical professors don't like to hear. For example, when someone like Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro visit a left-leaning university, they are met with liberal students who are easily traumatized and readily insecure. It makes for entertaining video, but it illustrates how powerful the left has gotten with its bullshit take on "hate speech".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7534595/

Jan 6 is the day we almost lost our democracy. No joke, no hyperbole. We were exactly ONE person away from a constitutional crisis unlike anything the country has seen before: Mike Pence. If the Vice President had followed Trumpco's criminal scheme, had caved to the pressure and threats, had been cowed by Trump's rabid mob, howling for his death, we very well could have fallen into some state of chaos or civil war. I disagree with almost everything Pence has ever said politically, but that day he stood strong, did his duty and upheld his oath to defend the constitution. That day he was heroic. And I still continue to be shocked and appalled that Republicans want to put back in office the man who tried to overthrow our government.

No other nation has come remotely close to delivering the amount of military aid to Ukraine as the USA. Why he did not lend or lease equipment may be that it cannot be returned or that Ukraine couldn’t be expected to repay. I don’t honestly know, but Biden has been pushing Congress continually for military aid to Ukraine and the GOP’s been putting on the brakes. I have studied International Relations. Republicans love to pretend that it’s very simple and based on “America does whatever the hell it wants and everybody does what we tell them,” but the real world doesn’t work that way. Obviously.

You are so full of sh__ The Proud Boys were very well known as a violent white supremacist threat long before Trump told them to “Stand By.” As President, he had definitely been briefed on the groups who posed domestic terror threats, and Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were at the top of the list. Trump was telling the Proud Boys to be ready to engage in political violence. For F’s sake… have you ever seen photos of them at protests? They come dressed in bullet proof tactical vests, like armed soldiers. Here’s a photo of Enrique Tarrio. He looks like he’s dressed for combat. Because he is.

"Calling those charged in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol "hostages" is a grotesque comparison, the White House said on Monday after Republican former President Donald Trump called for those jailed over the riot to be released. "It is grotesque to make those type of comparison," White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One just days after the third anniversary of Trump supporters' 2021 attack as legislators were certifying President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory." https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/jan-6-hostages-rioters/2024/01/08/id/1148736/ Not sure I'd call them hostages, but they're definitely political prisoners. The left has turned the DNC into banana lunatics who answer only to globalist dictators. I hope Trump will be up to the task of putting these cultists down - it isn't 2016 anymore and he's 8 years older. It might be time for someone like Vivek Ramaswamy to step in as leader of the free world.

I went back a number of posts between you two and I still have no clue what you mean by 'reversing it'. I never saw AG mention reversing anything and the post you're replying to just suggests change, which I gather you are in favor of anyway. Btw, if our dollar was worth $1.05 American I don't see how an outboard motor would cost so much more here than there.

The REALITY is that you have ZERO ACCESS TO REALITY. The SCOTUS is the only court that matters. The rest of you degenerates can go pound sand, or each other.

Hydroxychloroquine, A Drug Trump Promoted To Treat Covid-19, Linked To 17,000 Deaths, Estimates Show Joshua CohenJan 7, 2024, A bottle of pills of hydroxychloroquine sit on a [+] AFP via Getty Images The former president, Donald Trump, repeatedly promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine in the spring of 2020, as both a preventative against and treatment for Covid-19. He did this despite the drug not having proven effectiveness or safety. According to a study published in the February 2024 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, the pharmaceutical has now been linked to approximately 17,000 deaths. The drug known as an anti-malarial for decades, hydroxychloroquine, was prescribed to patients by some doctors during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic “despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits.” Authors of a new study—a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials involving 44 separate cohort studies—estimate that 16,990 Covid-19 patients in the U.S., France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Turkey died as a result of taking the drug. This translates into an 11% increase in the mortality rate among Covid-19 patients. According to researchers, the toxicity of hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19 is partially due to its severe cardiac side effects. Former President Trump made it a habit in the spring of 2020 to preside over daily briefings conducted by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, where he continually embraced preventive and therapeutic use of hydroxychloroquine. Notably, the President’s advice directly contradicted guidance from the nation’s federal public health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were plenty of warnings at the time from clinical researchers and senior public health officials alike, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, about the unproven, experimental nature of hydroxychloroquine and the concern that it might do more harm than good. And this wasn’t the only time Trump gave unsound medical advice to the American people. You may recall when in April 2020 Trump infamously suggested that bleach or other disinfectant chemicals could be useful to combat coronavirus infections. In the spring of 2020, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, accidental poisonings as a consequence of people ingesting bleach or other household cleaners spiked in America, doubling from their levels a year before. This takes nothing away from the positive work of the Trump Administration during the Covid-19 pandemic, igncluding its efforts initiating Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. This program has been hugely successful, as measured by the pace at which Covid-19 vaccines and treatments were developed and launched. But Trump’s issuance of unwarranted treatment recommendations left a lot to be desired. All such governmental advice must be tightly regulated and given only by those with the requisite knowledge and expertise. This is not to say that there aren’t things that could improve at U.S. public health agencies, including messaging by medical experts. But in the end those in government disseminating messages to the public ought to be officials whose expertise isn’t in doubt. They may make mistakes, but they’re qualified practitioners of medicine or have a clinical science background. Trump did not have this. He never should have gone to the podium and addressed the American people touting unproven therapies or dangerous substances. The moral of this story is that when presidents with no medical expertise contravene public health entities, expect trouble. This is particularly the case when a president like Trump takes center stage, upstaging rigorously trained medical professionals rather than leaving all actual healthcare decisions and guidance up to them. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2024/01/07/trump-promoted-hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-a-drug-now-linked-to-17000-deaths/?sh=3108819d2fcd

No it isn't. It's a peaceful protest gone wrong, thanks to Federal plants helping incite violence. The videos clearly show something different than what you dipshits have been clamoring about, so the notion of a Jan 6 insurrection will become nothing more than a woke fantasy in 2025.

Trump Derangement Syndrome requires you to make a stoopid post like that, so I won't hold it against you. Your post IS incorrect, however, so we do need to address that. Post sources stating that Trump said that he "Promised to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one to crack the heads of anyone who protests against him". We'll also concentrate on the word "him" as you're clearly trying to depict him as a dictator.

Can Biden lead the free world at the time of existential challenge? It depends on some key variables. Will there be stairs involved?

Enrique Tarrio was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison. You can go read the court papers if you want. Trump is obviously a Putin stooge. That’s why Trump is happy to hand Ukraine over to Putin.

LOL - love it!!!! That and shark-week are my faves.

Sorry, I meant to refer to the US law, but really I’m interested in people’s opinions. After all, the decision to permit hate speech in America has been legislated from the bench, not by law.

I'm so sorry - i totally forgot about his degree from the Community College of Facebook. And here i was treating him like an uneducated plebeian. When i SHOULD Have been treating him like a mis-educated one

College teaches critical thinking, which is why most college educated people can see right through Trump’s lies. As I said, the Maine SoS applied Maine law, and the US Constitution. No matter which decision she made, it was subject to judicial appeal, so why are you upset with her decision? It’s clearly not a final decision, so don’t get your panties all twisted up. I’m almost certain the SCOTUS will rule in Trump’s favor on this. If they were seriously thinking of declaring him ineligible, they’d rush to do it before the primaries, but they’re taking their time and their ruling will probably be in April or May, after Super Tuesday. It would be a disaster to rule him ineligible after eighteen states have already held their Presidential primaries. But, we shall see.

Israelis and Palestinians are both trapped by the dangerous fantasies of history The illusions, projections and selective histories of both sides have brought us to the current moment. These narratives compete with one another, but in another way are complementary versions of the same story Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail (JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via Getty Images, Carl Court/Getty Images) M.G. Conford is the writer and director of the documentaries Through The Eyes Of Enemies, Not On Any Map, and Fragments of Jerusalem. He is an associate professor of film at Toronto Metropolitan University. Just over 30 years ago, I was travelling between Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, filming a documentary, Through The Eyes of Enemies, which charted the reactions to the signing of the initial Oslo peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. It was a high-water mark, the cresting of hope, and everywhere I went in the region you could feel its rise. It’s not that the tensions had evaporated; they most certainly had not. But there was a shimmer of possibility and people throughout the region – not all people of course, but sizable majorities – were almost giddy with the incipient change. At the White House in 1993, Israeli and Palestinian leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands in front of U.S. president Bill Clinton after signing peace accords.Ron Edmonds/The Associated Press Thirty years later, at this most terrible and devastating moment in the Middle East, so far from that one of hope, it’s important to understand both sides’ illusions, projections and selective histories that have brought us to this point. These narratives compete with one another, but in another way are complementary versions of the same story. The ironies abound. The Jewish people have been placed in the position of “colonialists” when they themselves were desperately searching for an escape from the horrific antisemitism in Europe that had wiped out the vast majority of them. The Palestinians have been cast as the fierce and implacable foe the Jews have always feared when they were the ones being dispossessed and impoverished. Duelling fantasies of history as well: the original Zionist myth of a land without people for a people without land, entirely ignoring the people that were already on the land. The Palestinian denial of the ancient and deep connection of Jews to the same land, claiming there had never been a temple in Jerusalem, that Jews had not been the original refugees, expelled from the same land many centuries earlier, and that they did not carry it with them wherever they had wandered. And more: Israelis claiming Palestinians all left voluntarily in 1948, rather than the many chased out by the Israeli army; and Palestinians, willfully ignoring the many Jewish refugees chased from their own homes in Arab lands. Throughout, the twinned wounds of homelessness and national yearning mirror one another. The past decades have been a tragedy of lost opportunities. But it helps not at all to point fingers of blame. This has been a blood sport in the region for nearly a century already, each side prepared with the recitation of a sad litany of atrocities (Deir Yassin, Hebron in 1929, Hebron again in 1994, bombings in Netanya, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and on and on) to justify their actions. The past decades have also brought less and less contact between the populations. Since the early 2000s, the Separation Wall (or Security Fence, or what have you) has not only hemmed West Bank Palestinians in; it has also severed much of the opportunity to encounter one another in daily life. And that lack of human contact is an essential part of the problem. The rise of maximalist voices – the Jewish settler and Greater Israel movement on one side, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with their mirroring claims to all the land, on the other – amplify disinformation and make other voices faint and hard to hear. Bullet holes show through the window of a kindergarten in Kibbutz Be'eri, one of the communities attacked by Hamas.Christopher Furlong/Getty Images It should not need to be stated: The brutality of Oct. 7 was not justified in any way by political or historical injustice. The acts of cruel and gratuitous violence were simply crimes against humanity, committed by a group, Hamas, that is dedicated to wiping out both the state of Israel and all Jews living within it. To not unequivocally denounce them, to see them as part of a legitimate fight for freedom for Palestinians, is an act of moral confusion. The last time I saw such horrific images of dead bodies was in 1994 when I was working for CNN as a freelance film editor in Jerusalem and was called in early one morning for duty. For the next 24 hours, I edited story after story about an extremist Jewish religious settler, Baruch Goldstein, massacring 29 Muslims and injuring more than 100 at prayer in a mosque in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Those images haunted me for months after. They too depicted an act against humanity, to be condemned absolutely, without equivocation. In each the role of religion, the way in which images of the enemy are embedded in the holy narratives of each people, cannot be ignored. Religious right-wing settlers will whisper to you that Palestinians are Amalek, the hated Biblical enemy, and thus there is a special sacred injunction to wipe them out. “Do not spare them,” the Bible says, “kill every man and women and child.” Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, made reference to wiping Hamas out like Amalek. This denigration of the humanity of Palestinians contributes to the acceptance by many Israelis of the massive and criminally indiscriminate bombing campaign in Gaza, which too must be condemned, and halted. Islamic texts, meanwhile, have numerous hateful references to Jews. One hadith that notably says “if the Jew will hide behind a tree even the tree will say come and kill him” – is echoed in official pronouncements from Hamas. No one can doubt that the fundamentalist Islamic credo they follow had a large part in the celebratory attitude of the attackers; one telephoned to excitedly tell his mother that he had “slain 10 Jews” with his own hands. Baruch Goldstein carried out his slaughter one week after the biblical tale of Amalek was read in synagogue. On Oct. 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 dead and mutilated bodies were strewn across the killing fields near Gaza, with the details of gruesome barbarity filmed in real time by the murderers, you could hear over and over again the triumphant shouts: “God is Great.” Portraits of captured Israelis cover a wall in Tel Aviv on Dec. 28, more than 11 weeks after militants took scores of people into Gaza from surrounding communities.AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images Israeli tanks sit near the southern Gaza border, while smoke rises from air strikes over central Gaza. As the new year began, Israel said it would scale back troop numbers but continue the offensive for months more.Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters, Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images Wounded Palestinians get care at a Khan Younis hospital on New Year's Eve, when Gaza's health ministry raised the region's death toll to more than 21,800 people and rising. The Hamas-run ministry's tally does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.Mohammed Dahman/The Associated Press Israelis were deeply shocked by the insensitivity of much of the world to the deliberate and cruel slaughter of their friends and families on Oct. 7, and by how rapidly they were painted as aggressors, as somehow deserving to be massacred in their homes and beds or while out in a field listening to music. Meanwhile Palestinians, witnessing the continuing obliteration of entire extended families, wonder in fury and anguish if the deaths of their many thousands of civilians actually count. The pain among families on both sides is raw and utterly shattering. But images of the dead and wounded also quickly became instrumentalized as fodder in a global propaganda war, with supporters of each side blinding themselves to the essential humanity of the other. In late October, I listened to a “Teach-in for Palestine” at the university at which I teach. Sponsored in part by the faculty association, I had expected, or at least hoped, that the teach-in would be an opportunity to learn about the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to engage in critical thinking and listen to opposing viewpoints. Where else if not universities should such discussions take place? But that is not what I experienced. I was surprised that not once was the name of Hamas mentioned, nor any sympathy evinced for the Israeli victims of the massacre. Had people attending not seen the almost unbearable pain in the face of the Israeli mother whose two daughters, aged 8 and 15, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza? The grandmother whose school-age grandchildren were shot and killed? Was there no room for empathy, or any distinction between just cause and heinous crime? A protest banner in Montreal decries the events in Gaza as a genocide.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press It became clear that the lives of slaughtered Israeli civilians, many of them peace activists, were not thought to be worth mentioning, though the words “genocide” and “massacre” were used often to describe the policies of Israel. Genocidal. Neo-Nazi. These are terms that freeze thought. Even setting aside for a moment any inaccuracy or barbed callousness, they simply allow no space for discussion. The term “colonizers” was used frequently, and I wondered how the Jewish family from Yemen that had travelled by donkey and foot to escape persecution in that country, or the 85-year-old man born in Iraq and now a hostage of Hamas, were colonizers, let alone “white” and “European” (the most common modifiers added to “colonizer”). This was sloppy and simplistic thinking, affixing labels to a morally complex problem. A world of binaries, of cartoon heroes and villains, has infected discourse in almost every public forum. As someone who has tried to make sense of this conflict through a series of films over the course of nearly 30 years, and who has vehemently disagreed with the injustice of many Israeli policies, the inability of students, and more than a few professors, to deal with this complexity was heartbreaking. I should say that I attended the event over Zoom, as I’d had to go to the dentist an hour or so before to treat a broken filling, and my mouth was still numbed. My dentist seemed shaken by something and I assumed it was the events in the Middle East. But actually it was something closer to home. His friend, a Jewish doctor, had received a message on his office answering machine that morning. He asked me if I’d like to hear it, as his friend had shared the recording with him. This is what it said: “Dr. –, you f*cking Jew, Hitler killed six million of your people then you came to our land and now you are killing our children. We will come for you and kill you and kill your whole family, we will kill your wife, kill all your children, you motherf*cking Jew.” That was the end of the message. I have filmed in the middle of a demonstration on the streets south of Damascus, amid thousands shouting “Death to Israel, Death to America, Death to the Jews.” I have seen the scrawled graffiti on Israeli walls saying “Death to Arabs,” and in the West Bank saying “Kill the Jews.” I have seen the rictus of hate distorting faces on both sides of the conflict. But somehow none felt as chilling as listening to that recorded message in a dentist’s chair in Toronto. Perhaps because while this was an almost expected part of the landscape there, here, in multicultural, liberal Toronto, it felt like the upswell of hatred was now overflowing all boundaries, and seemingly reaching, well, everywhere. Meanwhile, at my university’s law faculty (dedicated to social justice and equity), 74 students – nearly one-quarter of the student body – released a statement saying that “all forms of Palestinian resistance” are justified. This statement came out within two weeks of the Hamas massacre. Slogans have replaced thought. And slogans are not adequate to what is a moment of real existential fear on both sides. 'Make hummus, not walls,' reads graffiti in Bethlehem on a barrier between the occupied West Bank, on this side, and Israel on the other.Maja Hitij/Getty Images More than 20 years ago I made a film (Not On Any Map) highlighting “unrecognized” Arab villages within Israel. These villages were created by state policies (similar to the policies in areas of the West Bank that Israel still controls) that prevent Israeli Arabs from getting building permits, running water, electricity, schools or medical clinics in the makeshift villages where they’ve been living since being evicted from their original villages soon after 1948. For making such a film, I was swung at by a right-wing settler and called an antisemite. (When I told him I was Jewish, he sputtered, in mimicry of an old Borscht Belt comic, “That’s the worst kind.”) The most acute current existential fear felt by Palestinians, as a nation, is around the forced movement of the population away from their homes in Gaza. In it, they detect clear echoes of the Nakba of 1948, when they were never allowed to return once the fighting had ceased. Such existential fears were amplified when Israeli Knesset member Ariel Kallner, among others, declared a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ‘48.” And they were further intensified when extremist religious settlers in the West Bank distributed pamphlets saying “You have one last opportunity to escape to Jordan. Afterward we’ll drive you away by force from our holy land.” Existential fear in Israel is equally deep. Israelis see the 150,000 Hezbollah missiles aimed at the north, along with those in Gaza. They see surrounding countries with largely Muslim populations that have, for most of Israel’s history, been hostile or at least deeply antagonistic to it. They see forces backed by Iran in Syria and in Yemen, and the Iranian regime itself, all committed to the death and destruction of the only Jewish state, created as a safe haven in a world that has shown time and again its violence and hostility. The latest wave of antisemitism throughout the world ­– including the shockingly rapid return of the most hateful caricatures of Jews – has paradoxically, and sadly, provided concrete reminder of the need for such a haven. For Palestinians, decades of dallying by Israel paired with the unchecked rise of settlements and worsening brutal repression in the West Bank contribute to their conviction that they are being played – that Israel has no intention of allowing a viable state of Palestine to exist, ever. Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad proclaimed on Lebanese television that Hamas will repeat Oct. 7-like attacks again and again and again until Israel is completely annihilated. “We will,” he says, “remove that country.” The return of the most elemental existential fears of both sides is what makes this current round of fighting so fierce and unrelenting. And that very fierceness paired with the continuing brutality only fuels ever-greater extremism, hatred and rejection on both sides. Israelis take shooting lessons in the West Bank settlement of Migdal Oz.ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images There has now been a decade or more of agreed-upon “wisdom” within Israel that a two-state solution is no longer possible, that there are too many settlements, that there is no functioning Palestinian governmental entity, that there will never be agreement on Jerusalem or the right of return, that there is no plan for all of this. Such wisdom has led to the Netanyahu conception (which Israelis call the conceptzia). The idea that the conflict can be “managed,” that the Palestinian people will accept their oppression and the control of the Israeli state over their lives, that Hamas can be a tool in keeping the Palestinians divided. This has manifested in the odious term “mowing the grass” to indicate a periodic incursion of forces or of bombing to keep resistance in check. After Oct. 7, does anyone think this is truly sustainable? There is only one way out of this morass. It has been the only way since the UN partitioned the land into what was supposed to have become two states, but because of the rejection of both Palestinians and the surrounding Arab states, never did. The tragedy is that one state, Israel, eventually thrived, and the other, the stillborn Palestine, and its people, remained in a state of perpetual impoverishment. And the suffocating and humiliating occupation that has gotten only worse these past 30 years plays directly into the hands of extremists such as Hamas. So yes, Palestine – and Palestinians – must be free, for their sake, and for the sake of the Israeli people as well. But not, as the slogan goes, from the river to the sea. And Israel must be safe and secure, its people free from the fear of attack. But also not in some mythical “Greater Israel” – from river to sea – and not at the cost of the endless domination of another people. The view from Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian neighbourhood in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, includes the golden Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound around it. Access to the mosque, built on the site of ancient Jewish temples, is a contentious issue for Israelis and Palestinians.AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images Tent camps of displaced Palestinians stretch into the distance in Rafah, on the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt. Refugees from the north fled in droves to this southern city before Israel's ground offensive began.MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images Out near the edge of Jerusalem, in Kiryat HaYovel, there’s a park that contains a large playground sculpture by Niki de Saint Phalle. It is known locally as HaMifletzet, the monster. Neighbourhood children play there, gleefully sliding out of the monster’s mouth. The artist intended it as a kind of lesson in resilience, but it’s hard not to read it as some great and insatiable Moloch. The danger of both sides being swallowed by such a malignant Moloch, the Canaanite god who jubilantly welcomed the sacrifice of children, is enormous. Israel must take extreme care. No one who has seen the horrific acts of brutality and murder in the Hamas videos can deny Israel’s right to pursue the perpetrators and do what it must to prevent their recurrence. But does anyone believe that the children and women killed by the massive aerial bombing in Gaza deserve such a fate? Or that their surviving relatives will not be filled with even more hate and desire for vengeance? Hamas, in its deliberate and cynical embedding within the civilian population, both invites and celebrates every Israeli bomb that kills the innocent, knowing it will only further inflame hatred in the region. And the anger, the hatred, the violence and the desire for vengeance from both sides threaten to overwhelm all else. But vengeance too is a kind of fantasy. For nothing – not the sorrow, not the anger, no hatred and no act of vengeance – can bring back the dead. And nothing will bring back the world as it was before Oct. 7. What is needed now is what is nearly impossible to achieve when the bullets and missiles and bombs are flying, when the wounds of grief are so recent, when blood is still in the air: a recognition of the depth of each other’s traumas. The terrifying cruelty of the brutal massacre and the hostage situation; the terrifying cruelty of the bombs that cannot distinguish between a child and an armed fighter; the horror of helplessness; the unrelenting wave of anger and heartbreak. All can be felt with the simplest of thought experiments: Your small child. Your son. Your daughter. Your mother. Your father. Your brother. Your sister. Events of the past few months are building a mountain of hate that will remain long after the dead are counted. And yet the future is still ahead. And to have a livable future requires a radical rethinking. If the loudest and angriest voices are allowed to dominate, in the region and outside of it, there is no hope whatsoever, and without hope the cruel calculus of fear, intimidation and violence is sure to reign. When I spoke to Palestinian philosopher and educator Sari Nusseibeh at a similar moment of strife, he said that though a change of conception might appear inconceivable in such a moment, “the distance from the present to the future is like a pane of glass. Just the thickness of a pane of glass.” What is required of us – and what the acts of continuing violence make so difficult to attain – is to hold the image of the other as a human being, as a mother, a child, as a wise old man or woman (or foolish young one), and, against all the urging toward hatred and vengeance, to make that, and that alone, the priority. Amos Oz once wrote that the imagining of the other is a moral imperative. It is, he said, “the most powerful antidote to fanaticism.” A dove flies over a ruined house in Khan Younis on Nov. 28, during a truce between Hamas and Israel. It lasted seven days before fighting resumed.Saleh Salem/Reuters For years, the right-wing in Israel – and Hamas in their way – have promulgated the notion that the peace process was an illusion, a mirage. But what events have shown is that the delusion, the Fata Morgana, was that there could ever be normality without finding a peaceful, negotiated settlement to the issue. Polls back in 1993 – before a cruel wave of Hamas suicide bombings and the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin undermined belief in the possibility – had support for a peace treaty among both Palestinians and Israelis running above 65 per cent. Since then, the far right in Israel and Hamas have shared the same goal: to put a halt to any possibility of the peaceful division of the land into mutually recognized stable states of Israel and Palestine. Even in the past few weeks, Mr. Netanyahu has boasted how he has stopped a Palestinian state from coming into existence in the past and how he will also in the future, arguing that the Hamas attack shows why he is right to do so. It is exactly this thinking which has brought us to where we are now. The sole way to escape the cycle of violence is to clearheadedly renounce all the maximalist and eliminationist fantasies and the dehumanizing caricatures that have led, and will continue to lead, to the horrifying shedding of the blood of thousands of men, women and children. In an interview I filmed before he passed away, the Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua said that the weight of history and mythology was killing the people of the region, dominating and crushing them. “We have finally to ask ourselves,” he said, “are such things worth more than the small joys and pleasures of life itself?” Israeli soldiers carry a fallen comrade's coffin in Tel Aviv on Jan. 1.Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters If there is any meaning to be gained from all these lost lives, it can only be this: to acknowledge that there will be no final victory, that five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will not be wiped from the map, and that neither will seven million Jewish Israelis. And to begin, yet again, the slow and painful work of accepting that no one’s victimhood eclipses the requirement to acknowledge the other’s, and to begin rebuilding the foundation – already begun these 30 wasted and blood-filled years ago – of two states, with security and freedom and sovereignty for each. Otherwise all that will come of the latest bitter brutal episode in this shared tragedy is children and their children and their children’s children doomed to repeat the cycle, to live their lives in fear and hatred. And on and on. A friend, usually vociferous, with whom I have often argued about the conflation of Zionism and colonialism along with the interpretation of various details of history, seemed subdued when I last saw him, his mood pained in much the same way as my own. The past no longer matters, he said. We should only talk about the future. In many ways this seemed the wisest thing I had heard these past months. Precisely in the depth of horror and revulsion at the current violence, in the anger and bereavement at the immense and devastating loss of innocent lives, perhaps there is paradoxically a glimmer of hope, of clarity, that the current state of things is both unsustainable and unbearable. As former Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Zayyad, now 83, said in an interview I filmed with him more than 15 years ago: “How long can this continue? Will we go on killing one another forever?” When Yitzhak Rabin agreed to sign the accord with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat just over 30 years ago, he sounded a simple clarion call in his speech: Enough of blood and tears. Enough! He did not say enough of Jewish blood and tears, but the blood and tears of both sides. Do we have the ears to hear those words now? https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-israelis-and-palestinians-are-both-trapped-by-the-dangerous-fantasies/

Boys! @robosmith finished college. He's trained in the art of follow the leader. Adept at hating America. He has a degree in destroying everything he touches. Hell, he's so well educated that he even uses these illegals as slave labor. A little respect please...

So you have a conspiracy theory that it's a conspiracy to appease conspiracy theorists. I see. Oh what a tangled web we weave.....

Two things can be true at the same time.

absolutely. It's not a crime if it's for trump! That's part of the oath now - we pledge to uphold and defend the laws of the united states of america and the constitution, unless it's trump. Eff that guy." Honestly - i'm surprised at the level of hypocrisy. I mean, we all can be sometimes guilty of cutting a little slack when it's someone we like, or hate as the case may be. Like how we tend to believe biden is guilty of serious crimes with fairly limited evidence and such. But this was beyond the pale. Like - this was out and out blatant PROVEN false accuasations, deliberate attempts at fraudulently attacking the man, ACTUAL TRANSCRIPTS of them discussing how they'll do whatever it takes to get rid of him, and they are ABSOLUTELY FINE with it. A super powerful gov't police force actively interfering with a president unlawfully - But jan 6 was the day democracy almost fell to a small unarmed group of protesters. yeash.

I doubt that they will this year. Doing so will only hammer home the fact that in 4 years biden has done nothing to address their issues and keep their voters at home. And how can you sell your message that trump will be divisive and destabilizing if cities are burning under your watch? No - i think they'll be quiet this year if the dems have anything to say about it But if trump wins...... Plan for 2025 to be one spicey year

Funny you should use those words when your whole post is exactly that.

Well we do put lipstick on it.

In the mind of the dems and their supporters..... that IS bashing them!!!

Democrats are like the aliens from Mars attacks who kept on saying "we come in peace" while killing people. Democrat politicians do the same thing, they talk about freedom, liberty and democracy all the while they working hard to remove people from ballots, shut down primaries and arresting their political opponents.

So are you saying that ALL the other states didn't follow the law when they said no to removing Trump from the ballot. She based her decision on ONE states decision and who is to say what Trump did was an insurrection. I don't see anyone being charged with insurrection inside or outside of Trumps inner circle. Democrats are gaslighting everyone into thinking a simple riot was an "insurrection" that is why they treat Jan 6th like a holiday, the day we almost lost our Democracy and some grand conspiracy. When all it was is simple mob mentality and things getting out of control. Democrats have been violently rioting for years attacking everything from federal buildings, police stations and various retail and food service establishment prior but this was a line that couldn't be crossed.

Nope, but I do know the SCOTUS will burn that b*tch and her hubris to the ground. I'm looking forward to that, and I hope you are too.

A big difference is Canadians have a choice of parties for their one party rulers.

The main issue is not terrorosm or housingg, health or education though they are important issues too. Neither of you speak of real issue. The real issue is that we are bringing in people of incompativle culture to that of Canada. Among these people would be those who are women haters, hating Jews and Christians, wanting to close bars and ban alcohol and impose their subhuman violent beliefs whixh lashes women for refusing to wear the f*cking hijab. Death and destruction to the religion and those f*cking clergy which allows or orders or encourages lashing womem, https://www.timesofisrael.com/woman-in-iran-receives-74-lashings-for-not-covering-hair-violating-public-morals/

Of course, because you’re a conspiracy theorist. Your whole schtick is to put together “This COULD have POSSIBLY happened… therefore, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED.” You live in a world of make believe and fantasy. “Fifty secret agents could have infiltrated Riker’s prison and they could have killed him and they could have left without a trace,” but just because that could have happened, it doesn’t mean it happened. Or, as former President Shlthead would say, “A lot of people are saying that Epstein was murdered,” but a lot of people saying something doesn’t make it true. You make stuff up and lie.

Biden is supplying weapons to Ukraine. Trump would engineer Ukraine’s surrender. So the difference here is night and day.

Here’s your problem: You think everything is politics. There is LAW. It’s written. It must be obeyed. Donald Trump is a sack of shlt. Born with all the money in the world, he he spent his entire life being disgusting — cheated on all four of his wives, engaged in non-stop business fraud, and believes that laws don’t apply to him. As in, literally filing a motion with the Supreme Court stating that he is exempt from criminal laws. So now all the Trump fools think there’s no such thing as law, there’s just whatever Donald says. But it doesn’t work that way. There’s the US Constitution, and there is Maine state law, and there is the court system. Maine has different laws; their law says that if someone challenges somebody’s eligibility to be on a ballot, it’s the Secretary of State who MUST decide. So she heard both sides, read the U.S. Constitution, saw that the little tub of shlt threw his rebellion and failed, so then she did her job, like she was supposed to. Now her decision goes to court, which the little tub of shlt is allowed to do, and we’ll see what his friends on the Supreme Court say. Most likely, they’ll agree that insurrection is just dandy if you’re one of their friends.

Its amazing she took the ONLY state that ruled to remove Trump from the ballot, while every other challenge has been shot down to remove him from the ballot. I will be willing to bet she wants to run for higher office and this was a good way to get her name in the news.

this is going to be a real problem for the SCOTUS they have to rule on the 14th but then it gets them into a predicament, they have to look at article 2 where it says the state legislatures have the duty to appoint the delegates to the EC in any manner they may see fit. now when it comes to article 2 of the Constitution the SCOTUS will have to decide are primaries part of the system to choose delegates to the EC or not. IF they are then it is up to the state legislature to say how they will be run those primaries and who can run. under Article 2 state legislatures don't even need to hold elections they can just appoint who ever they want and tell them who to vote for at the EC. of course IF they did this I am sure the people of their state would be really mad and they would not have a job for too long GOD BLESS AMERICA

I have to ask why can't Trumpers / MAGA people can't see what Trump is doing. Trump does lie a lot that is a fact. do they think he is lying when he says he wants to be a dictator for a day? They cheer that and IF he does get reelected he will try to go for it, then he will shut down the MSM all except for FOX and he will have one of his most faithful goons run that so they don't say anything against him. and he will lock up everybody he thinks is against him including some of his MAGA followers. then seeing he has suspended the Constitution he will then declare himself President for life like his buddy Putin. and after he does that he will go back to his low IQ followers and say see I was only a dictator for a day like I said I would and they will cheer and say see he didn't lie Trump isn't a dictator like we said he wouldn't be , Trump is President for life. it will be the end of the USA as we know it. GOD BLESS AMERICA

Well here we are. One week into 2024. Tree and decorations are down. The SCOTUS will deal with Colorado's election nonsense a month from now. Anyone wanna guess at the outcome? Gaza is now a pile of rubble. Ukraine has lost 20% of its land and is out of men, money and time. BRICS continues its erosion of the USD, and it's been downgraded. Trump still leads in US election polling while Biden gives his first campaign speech to openly display his extreme TDS. The US border is still wide open and Mayorkis is being impeached. Biden also faces impeachment while his son is being dragged through the coals. Here in Canuckland, the political opposition makes our PM look stupid on a daily basis. The weakness and stupidity of western leaders is inviting other nations to fill the vacuum of power. Gas prices are rising again, which will drive inflation up too. All in all...the Libbies should be proud of themselves. They have driven destruction of the western world to the breaking point. One of our fine Libbies has admitted to having illegals working for him. Slavery is returning to the USA. 2024 is going to be very interesting. I wonder if the tampoon machines in the mens' washroom will survive...

Oh look, when faced with a fact a leftie goes into 'whataboutism' mode. I'm shocked. Are you shocked? I'm shocked. And the fbi actually were charged and convicted for what they were accused of doing, sooooooo

You can join in, just bring some caviar and champagne. All those carrying large doses of TDS will be turned away at the door. Also new crystal balls will be provided to replace those tarnished by TDS induced drivel, along with instructions on how to emulate the Biden hair sniff.

BIDEN WOULD NEVER EVER NEVER CUT BACK TRUMPS RULES OR OPEN THE BORDER!!!!!! HE WOULD NEVER DO THAT!!!!! DUUUUUUUHHAHHAHAAHAUUUUHHH!!!!! "yes he did, right here specifically". YOU"RE DAMN RIGHT HE DID, BECAUSE TRUMPS RULES WERE CRAP AND WE NEEEEDED TO OPEN THE BORDER MORE!!! DUH DUH DUH DUH!! ..... DUH! (run and hides). I mean - he doesn't even miss a beat

Psst! Hey, dumbass! Read below! Biden Signs Executive Orders Reversing Trump Immigration Policies. U.S. President Joe Biden signed executive orders Tuesday to start to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, including an attempt to reunite families that had been separated at the U.S.-Mexican border. “I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy,” Biden said while signing the orders. https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_biden-signs-executive-orders-reversing-trump-immigration-policies/6201520.html An attempt to reunite families on THIS side of the border, of course, because the old pedophile wants to keep our borders secure. lol You see, dumbass, you defending that illegitimate president on this issue demonstrates how much of a liar you actually are. You hate this country every bit as much as Joe Biden does, and can't wait to completely flood this county with illegal aliens.

You have to treat others the same way you want to be treated

There is much wrong with that. Sorry. And while the appeal will straighten that out the fact is that doesn't make her attack on democracy right. If the police catch a thief and put back something the thief stole from your house, the thief is still in the wrong.

It was her job to rule on the objection. She held a hearing and she ruled. The ruling is subject to appeal. She said she will abide by whatever the final appeal determines. Nothing wrong with that. Basically, this issue will head to the US Supreme Court, they are heavily biased towards Trump. Whether she ruled for or against Trump is irrelevant; the issue is going to the US Supreme Court either way, so don’t get your panties all twisted up over her ruling.

That's what the forum is all about. If you don't like it, don't spend your time here complaining about it.

Future Liberal voters maybe. Trying to appease Trudeau's globalist masters along with the WEF. Suckholing to the UN. Probably all three.

Ya, you ignore all the measurements and data compiled by NASA satellites over decades and the scientists on the ground actually measuring rates of glacier melt and latch on to political hacks and snake oil salesmen with no scientific credentials like Marano. You never question their motives and sources because they are telling you exactly what you want to hear. Talk about gullible, you set new standards.