This is an anti-Fuentes post, please read it
Nicholas J. Fuentes is a political commentator and aspiring politician via his America First movement. Here is a basic rundown of his beliefs using very clinical language as someone who follows online politics semi-regularly:

• He does not believe in democracy and wishes to take power through non-democratic means. (He is willing to overthrow the United States and kill politicians for his political goals)
• He believes America should be put first. (Cut off all foreign aid, cease trade with other nations, completely lock down borders, potentially take land from other nations in war)
• He believes the United States is a Christian nation. (The church, specifically the Catholic church should have power over the state- including but not limited to education and policy, that the Pope should have a large say in decision making, that freedom of religion should be abolished)
• He believes that Caucasians descending from Western Europe are the superior race, intrinsically. (White people, excluding ethnic Jews, should hold all the power in America as they, in his eyes, are the superior race. Nick usually gets around this by saying that race is "real" and that races are simply "different", usually with the examples such as Black people being good at music, Asians being good at math and White people building Rome. He believes these are genetic differences which make different types of people inherently incompatible.
• He believes race-mixing is immoral and unethical. (Previously describing it as "degenerate", this is mostly off the basis that white genes are superior and thus shouldn't be "tainted" by other ethnic groups. Again, he distinguishes ethnic Jewish people from Western Europeans.)
• He believes that America is in the midst of a "holy war" and that Jewish people must die for his side to win, and that God is on his side.
• He does not believe the Holocaust happened in the way shown in history books. (Last I've seen, he's not quick to give specifics on what he thinks did happen, but he does not believe in the reported death toll at the very least)
• He believes there are some kind of Jewish "powers that be" responsible for Jewish people's representation in media & politics and that they maliciously conspire against American values. (Again, he's intentionally vague when discussing this because there is no basis to give details on, but in broad strokes he believes Jews run the world and that Hollywood, Senators, news outlets, the CIA are in on it)

Fuentes gains power when you try to shut him down like this. When you blindly hate him, or advocate for his killing- like I've seen many angry people in this subreddit do, that gives him power. When you group him into this umbrella of Nazism and then say nazis should die, that gives him power.
It feeds into his de-platforming, cancel culture, the notion that Jewish people are trying to suppress his message because it's the "truth". People fall into America First because everyone else simplifies it and angrily comes at Nick's throat without engaging with his talking points or rhetoric.
It's okay to be angry. Fuentes is a snakey person who is likely going to use Kanye like he used him in 2022. His goal is political power first and foremost. He wants to be a dictator. He wants to overthrow the United States. But it is such a bad look when the Kanye fans here are just screaming "KILL THE NAZI, BEHEAD NICK FUENTES". For one, the killing of political enemies is not okay- it's unamerican, it's the type of shit Fuentes himself advocates for. Don't stoop to that level. And two, it's straight up a bad look for the community, we look unhinged, we look brash, we look unintelligent. I get it that most of you guys are probably 14-17 and that's totally fine I'm not speaking down to you- but you need to sit down and treat this topic with the upmost maturity and nuance.
This is a lot bigger than us not getting Vultures 2 or whatever. Don't lose your minds and go fucking crazy like WestSubEver did, but also don't infantilize Ye. Hold him responsible, hold Nick responsible and discuss this politics shit with seriousness.

For what it's worth I got 44/55 on the MCQ on the same practice test, or 80% Original is here https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-european-history-ced-practice-exam.pdf
You can also just do some or skim them if you don't have the time, which is understandable, 100% fine by me. Just be honest, that's all
FIRST SAQ
a. Napoleon's imposition of republican systems on various puppet states. During his wars of conquest, Napoleon would occupy various territories, and set up republics in them, for instance, the Batavian Republic. These were nepotistic in many ways, yet even so, they still partially preserved many of the ideals held by the Jacobins and other related parties. This ultimately shows a specific conflict: that of contemporary republicanism vs. traditional monarchism, which would go on to be a defining ideological issue later on in the century.
b. Napoleon's authoritarian policies. Consolidating his territories, he would institute various laws, such as the Napoleonic Code, building an efficient bureaucracy to maintain them. However, these laws not only reflected traditional treatment of groups such as women, but also were backed up by actions such as the repression of the press, and Napoleon's later coronation as emperor. These actions reeked of tradition, calling back to the older monarchies of Europe, rather than the modern parliamentary states.
c. The Nazi occupation of large portions of Europe. In 1939, having previously annexed Czechoslovakia and Austria, Germany would declare war on Poland, thus setting World War II into motion. They occupied large swathes of territory, and would force their own ideological ideals of national and racial superiority onto others. They attempted to create a new Europe, essentially, dominated by "superior" peoples, but they found great resistance from the masses, who resented these policies, wanting to maintain their old conceptions of nationality. This shows how the struggle between the Nazis and other groups was focused on imposing something new on others who had preferred traditional methods, similar to how Napoleon's newer ideas were not well received by some of the territories he conquered, who preferred older ways.
SECOND SAQ
a. The increase in population brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The discovery of new technology such as the steam engine and of agricultural implements such as the seed drill (from the Agricultural Revolution, closely linked to the Industrial Revolution) allowed for more food, which naturally meant more people could fed, which led to a higher populaton. Cities like Vienna would want to accomodate the growing masses of people who were to live in their realms, and would act accordingly, embarking on infrastructural projects such as the one shown in the map to do so.
b. An attempt to encourage centralization. Austria at this time was composed of many different ethnic groups, including but not limited to Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Croats, and others. They had little in common, and this caused issues, especially in Bohemia and Hungary. To help combat this, Austria may have wanted to make their capital seem grander and more luxurious in a way, which would encourage nationalism (a rising trend around this time) and to hopefully keep the country together. This shows a trend in which countries would increasingly focus on centralization, as seen even in areas such as Germany, which would later unite in 1871.
c. The de-emphasis of luxury in narrow areas, as opposed to "specialized" areas instead. Vienna, like many other cities in Europe is very old, and most of the streets are narrow and organically made. People seemed to have been comfortable with this previously, yet as the 19th century developed, new ideas on architecture began to grow in popularity, as people advocated for the creation of areas specifically designed for leisure and similar purposes. This is indicative of the fact that people saw cities less as natural phenomenons, but more like artificial constructs which could be efficiently managed and built, similar to, say, Hausmann's architectural rennovations in Paris.
THIRD SAQ
a. Parliament went from supporting intersections between church and state to outright despising it. Around 1517, when Martin Lutther released his Ninety-Five Theses, England was still Catholic, and Henry VIII even published a pamphlet defending the Catholic faith. However, around 1533, when the Church refused to annull his marriage, he established the Anglican Church, becoming Protestant and breaking from Catholicism. However, the English government still had a close relationship with the church. This would change with the rise of movements such as Puritanism, a vaguely Calvinist movement. The Puritans believed the Anglican Church was corrupt in many ways, and some, namely the Pilgrims, even advocated total separation. Puritans were well represented in Parliament, which allowed them to attack the church from the state, which ultimately culminated in the English Civil War, and the beheading of Charles I. This demonstrates that overtime, Parliament (the state) turned against Anglicanism (the church), showing a marked separation of church and state.
b. The English Civil War did not really end religious laws in the country. As was typical of every country at the time, 16th century England possessed numerous religious laws, including some based around heresy. This did not change with the rise of the Puritans, who established strict religious laws of their own, for example, restricting the rights of Roman Catholics. The continuity here is that religious ideas still held massive sway when it came to English law.
c. A disillusionment with religious rule. Both the Reformation and the English Civil War had religious undercurrents, with the Reformation promising a return to a purer form of Christianity, and the English Civil War partially centered around the idea that the king was leading a "popish" (pro-Catholic) plot to restore the religion in the country. Later philosophers including Thomas Hobbes and John Locke would have seen these conflicts, with the hindsight to judge them, and would begin proposing newer ideas of governing which were not based on religion. This shows that the damage caused by tension between these two groups came to such a severe extent that some began seeing secularism as a possible solution, which would be adopted later on in England.
DBQ
Even though old attitudes towards women continued to persist, overall, World War I greatly changed the lives of European women, as shown by the increased involvement of women in manufacturing, and their heightened participation in conflict.
Traditionally, women in Europe had restricted rights. They could neither properly represent themselves legally, nor vote. Wives were thought to be subservient to their husbands, and only suitable for domestic duties. The Victorian ideal of a perfect wife was one who would constantly occupy herself with housework and maintaining order in the family. Women who tried other roles were considered rough, tomboyish, or rustic, which were all seen as negative qualities. In a nutshell, they were second class citizens. Some, especially wealthier women, would gain respect as cultured authors, examples include Jane Austen and George Sand (who had to use a male pseudonym). However, overall, women were simply seen as inferior to men, who controlled the bureaucratic structures of Europe. Yet, less than a decade after WWI, many European countries granted women the right to vote.
The magazine Votes for Women published an article on November 26, 1915, which shows a woman personifying the concept of chivalry presenting the idea of women's equality to a man, who is advocating for more political representation for soldiers (Document 1). Now this is a political cartoon in a newspaper, and so it was meant to reach a broader audience of politically informed citizens. It is worth pointing out that this was published shortly after the sinking of the Anglia, in which female nurses died prioritizing wounded servicemen. The idea was that women were simply dignified enough to obtain legal equality, and that changes in legislation were overdue because of this, an idea the newspaper would've been effective enough at promoting. In addition, a memoir written by Maria Botchkareva in 1919 explains her life as a peasant and an officer (Document 6). This is as close to a direct perspective as you can get, it quite literally comes from a woman who experienced the war first-hand. Botchkareva explains that although man of the men in her unit were hesitant to advance, the women were brave enough to do so, showing that women were just as capable in military matters as men were, thus providing a justification for women to vote. Seeing as all the men had left for war, women had taken up manufacturing roles, being 40.4% of the industrial workforce in France in 1917 (Document 7). This reflects the increased involvement of women in manufacturing jobs. Countess de Courson's book The French Woman during the War, published in 1916, shows how difficult maintaining the war effort was for many peasant women, and their resolve to continue to do so anyways (Document 3). Again, this is evidence of the fact that women were seen as capable contributors to their homelands, another justification for giving them the right to vote. Madeline Ida Bedford wrote a poem in 1917 showing the upwards economic mobility of women during the war (Document 4). This helps support the idea that women had a greater and more significant role in economic affairs, related to manufacturing. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the war left many wives alone from their husbands. This undoubtedly gave them a large amount of time to reflect over societal conditions, and aided the rise of the suffragette movement as they had more time to think independently.
The counter-argument to be held, supported by two pieces of evidence, argues that the war was ultimately insignificant in transforming the role of women. The first comes from Paul von Hindenburg's letter to German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg in 1916, arguing that women shouldn't be encouraged to pursue various occupations, and that they were only really suited for specific ones (Document 2). However, Hindenburg, though an important general, was extremely conservative (and old). Therefore, his views are not sufficiently representative of contemporary European trends. As a matter of fact, by arguing against the trend of women's involvement in manufacturing and war, he implicitly confirms his existence, only further advancing the pro-change argument. There is also a letter from G. F. Wilby to his fiancée Ethel Baxter in 1918, arguing that she should continue with her feminine occupations, and not meddle in what he considered masculine affairs (Document 5). Wilby, however, was just a private, and although any source of historical information can be valuable, again, one private is not totally representative of the ideas of the general population. Even then, in the same manner as Hindenburg, Wilby supports the idea that the condition of women changed significantly during the war, as by arguing against it, again, he implicitly supports it.
LEQ
The Italian Renaissance focused on human beings as ends to themselves, whereas the Northern Renaissance focused more on people's connection to God and religion, as seen by the advocacy of thinkers such as Petrarch of a better understanding of the human condition, and the advocacy of thinkers like Erasmus of "purification" and a closer connection to God.
Italy before the Renaissance was dominated by city states which had grown into greater powers. Examples include Florence, Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, and others. These states were representative republics (although sometimes despotates) in theory, but oligarchies in practice. Furthermore, even if it hadn't existed in almost a millennium, the shadow of the Roman Empire lurked on the states and their culture. This emphasized both indivdualism and an obsession with classical Rome/Greece. Meanwhile, northern Europe was largely composed of monarchies with close ties to the Catholic Church. Controversies over issues such as indulgences and tithes may well have resulted in increased religious dialogue, various criticisms, and the exploration of newer paths in regards to Christianity.
When Petrarch discovered Cicero's letters to Athens, it helped spark a revolution in Italian thought. People began to abandon the old scholastic trifecta of law, medicine, and theology, for example, but instead adopted the study logic, rhetoric, and grammar. This, combined with the neo-Platonist idea that various concepts such as beauty transcended life, and that humans could understand these concepts, gave birth to humanism, which in turn sparked the Italian Renaissance. This put special emphasis on human beings, who were now seen as special and worthy of study. This is in contrast to the Northern Renaissance. As the power of the Italian city states began to decline in the late 15th century, many of the ideas spread beyond the Alps to areas such as the Holy Roman Empire, which helped create the Northern Renaissance. However, unlike the Italian Renaissance, the Northern Renaissance focused more on religious subjects. Erasmus, a Catholic nonetheless, frequently criticized the actions of the pope, and wrote In Praise of Folly as a criticism of Christianity in his era.
Now although religion was an element of the Italian Renaissance, as the peninsula remained devoutly Catholic and ancient works were even interpreted under religious lenses, it was in a humanistic framework. The fact that people were so willing to emulate pagans shows that religious scruples were not really that significant, and the main focus of humanism, and by extension the Italian Renaissance, was still, by the end of the day, the human being. This is also seen in Italian depictions of God, which portrayed him in a similar manner to Zeus, with a prominent white beard. The thinkers of the Northern Renaissance were also not entirely opposed to humanism, however, they did not view the human as important of an end goal as God and the Christian faith.

I was actually planning on heading to Pripyat anyway when the war broke out. The pandemic was still raging, and folx weren't taking the Omicron variant seriously enough, so I decided to get the heck out of dodge. My fulfilling, precious life of lonely, fearful solitude was being put at risk. I was looking for a place so secluded and remote that would in theory completely diminish the risk of myself catching COVID - a zero COVID, socially distanced paradise.
I had watched that Chernobyl miniseries during first lockdown, and that's where I got the idea to travel to Pripyat – a Utopian sanctuary devoid of people and their pesky germs. The lethal amounts of radiation wouldn't be an issue; like any science-respecting, COVID-fearing person living through a literal Global pandemic I owned half a dozen hazmat suits, and I would simply slip one on before entering the Exclusion Zone. As for food, the area is teeming with two-headed fauna and bright, glowy flora to snack on, and I was sure if I paid enough for delivery GrubHub would be more than willing to drop me a care package every now and again.
I was in the midst of packing my essentials (lateral flow tests, masks, vaccine passport) for the trip ahead when the news broke about Ukraine. I couldn't believe it. I immediately took to Reddit to vent about my frustration at having my heckin' holiday cancelled, the inconvenience of which would cost me thousands of pounds and very possibly my own life, when I saw hundreds of brave Redditors gearing up to travel to Ukraine and take down Putin. Not wanting to be left out, and having already paid for my ticket, I announced that I too was joining the war effort.
A bunch of us quickly set up a Discord chat, and before long we were arranging a meet up on the outskirts of Ukraine. These folx – my comrades in arms – were the salt of the Earth. Though none of them had any combat experience outside of Call Of Duty and Fortnite, their enthusiasm and virtue more than made up for any disadvantage or weakness this might have on their performances during the heat of battle.
There was our sub's admin, SpoogeSock69 – he had fought his own personal war against the legions of anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-lockdown chuds that had attempted to brigade our carefully crafted safe space during the pandemic, and after months of tirelessly banning folx, deleting posts and removing comments he now had the salty demeanour and grungy, unwashed visage of a grizzled war veteran.
Our squad mates included pit mommy PibbleLover42, who brought her sweet, gentle angels Duke and Butterfly along with her to Ukraine; a fabulously flamboyant and extremely muscular trans school teacher from Oklahoma, I believe she was called Dave; and FunkoPop collector, anti-worker Marxist and Just Stop Oil protester Tarquin Baxter-Plummouth III. Like I said, salt of the Earth. I'll never forget the experience or smell of meeting them all in person for the first time.
We all felt it was our patriotic duty to fight for Ukraine, even though none of us were born or lived there, and despite us living in fear for our lives for the past two years we were more than willing to get blown apart, shot or nuked for the sake of defending foreign soil. Not that any of us thought there was even the slightest chance that would happen. We were all supremely confident that we would all make it back in one piece by Christmas.
Our boosted band of rebels retained that naïve confidence all the way up to Ukraine, with Tarquin demonstrating in our cramped train cabin some impressive karate moves he had almost mastered in his two years as a white belt. We swapped pandemic war stories over soy lattes as Dave stitched our personal pronouns into our army fatigues. “This will help our comrades identify us properly on the battlefield,” Dave lisped to herself, admiring her own handiwork. It was unanimously decided that SpoogeSock69 would lead our squad into battle, with his patchy, thinning neck-beard and invaluable experience as Reddit admin easily winning him command of our small but hearty battalion.
After a lengthy train journey, we began our trek towards our army barracks, almost losing Tarquin to a sprained ankle in the process. We arrived around midday to uproarious applause from the locals and our new army friends. General Xelensky (No Fly Zone Be Upon Him) was in the command centre tent, pouring over battle plans, bank statements and maps alongside Lieutenant Stiller and Sergeant Penn.
With a ray of sunlight literally casting a halo behind him, General Xelensky (NFZBUH) looked up from his map and made direct eye contact with me. He rushed over, his torn green shirt flapping behind him in the wind like a heckin' super hero cape, and shook our hands. His eyes glistened gratefully with thankful tears, he was that pleased to see us. He turned to the rest of our new platoon and declared “The war is won.”
We were bundled into the mess hall for a celebratory banquet whilst Tarquin was given urgent medical attention for his sprained ankle and awarded a Rainbow Heart for his life threatening injury. General Xelensky (NFZBUH) introduced us to the Azov battalion, the bad boys of the Ukrainian military. Their ironic, tactical and purely satirical adoption and usage of the Swastika inspired fear and shame in the enemy, as it was a reflection of their Nazi nature. I had to admire their method actor like dedication to their roles as they tossed out anti-Semitic slurs and showed us videos they had taken of them bravely beheading Russian POWs.
Suddenly, our celebratory feast was cut short as a bomb landed nearby, blasting out the mess hall in an instant. The explosion knocked me asunder, and if not for my mask – on which I had embossed the words “BORN 2 KILL” in glittery cursive – I would surely have died. I'm not ashamed to admit I pissed and shit myself. Everyone did – even General Xelensky (NFZBUH).
I gathered myself and bolted it outside, my face covered in ash and soot from the blast. After the battle was over, I lashed myself and prostrated at the moral altars of Reddit and Twitter for unintentionally performing my heroics throughout the conflict in blackface. In that moment however, all I could think of was finding my comrades or a foxhole to quiver in. Bullets were whizzing by, bombs were dropping all over the heckin' place, and the General had vanished into thin air. It was crazy, total pandemonium.
Another explosion sent my flying through the air. I landed hard on the ground and everything went into slow motion, I must have been experiencing shell-shock. It was like that scene from Saving Private Ryan. I turned my head just in time to see PibbleLover42 get mauled by her faithful hounds; evidently the poor things had been startled by all the gunfire and explosions.
Butterfly's flower crown had been knocked askew in the commotion, and she was now busy chomping down on her owner's leg while Duke tore out her throat. Skipping by through a hail of bullets, Dave turned on her heel and dove straight towards Duke as though caught in a tractor beam and jammed her finger in the dog's bunghole in a (I assume) desperate attempt to save Pibble. Sadly, all this did was give Duke a throbbing erection and cause him to lock his jaw around Pibble's neck.
Still caught in a daze and not quite believing my own eyes, I drunkenly pivoted myself in no particular direction, slack jawed and bleary eyed. In the distance, a figure I couldn't quite make out was barking orders into the ether and stomping his foot impotently, a rifle limply slung around his waist. It was SpoogeSock69, our fearless squad leader. He was yelling something at the Russians about “brigading” and “Rule 1”, and he appeared to be sobbing.
I think he cracked up right then and there, because the next thing he did was sprint out into the open, right towards the Russians. I tried to call out to him, to get his ass back behind cover, but it was too late. Spooge was shredded apart in an instant, his plump, lifeless body absorbing bullets like an old sponge. I waited for him to respawn nearby until it slowly dawned on me that this wasn't going to be like my video games.
Burrowing into the dirt like a worm, I attempted to craft myself a foxhole but hit blocks of bedrock pretty much instantly. I had no weapon with which to defend myself. The Ukrainians had never even offered us weapon load-outs or perks. A couple feet away, one of my new Azov brethren/sistren/otheren (I didn't catch their pronouns) took a bullet to the knee before getting one straight through the cranium. I scrambled out of my tiny crater and over towards his dead body. I snatched his radio and attempted to call in an air strike on our location, but it was to no avail. All I got back was a burst of crackling static and a bunch of garbled Ukrainian.
It struck me in that moment that perhaps I should have learned a bit of the language before shipping over here.
Shrugging, I threw down the radio and army crawled my way towards the command tent, which was now ablaze. Shielding my eyes and mask from the roaring inferno, I sprinted inside to save the maps, bank statements and General Xelensky's (NFZBUH) treasure chest of gems and jewels. It was this act of selfless bravery that netted me the Ukrainian Medal of Honour.
As I staggered out, the enormous weight of the treasure chest I was carrying on my back threatening to buckle my knees as flames licked at my heels, Dave sashayed her way towards me, her rainbow-coloured helmet bobbing about wildly atop her head. She handed me a rifle and told me PibbleLover42 had sadly passed away – the gaping wound in her neck had left her wide open to COVID.
Ahead of us, cresting the hill in his snug Yeezys and Baby Yoda onesie, our comrade Tarquin took a pin out of his grenade and held it aloft. Instead of chucking it towards the enemy, Tarquin scooped out his phone with his free hand and began livestreaming himself to his thousands of followers on Tik-Tok. “This horrid war is destroying our planet. I will not stand idly by and let this happen. Join me, comrades, and strike a blow at climate change and--”
That's as far as he got, as the grenade went off in his hand, gibbing him right there on that mound. I fell to my knees, lifted my arms and let out a muffled wail of despair. The Russian scourge were advancing fast on our position, all hope seemed lost. We were surrounded.

This is Antonio Scurati's monologue for April 25th, a national holiday in Italy commemorating the Allies' victory and the Italian resistance movement against Nazi Germany and the Italian Social Republic (Fascists). This text was intended to be read on RAI television, the Italian equivalent of the BBC. However, Georgia Meloni and her government decided to censor this monologue, deeming it dangerous and attempting to manipulate European and Italian history by giving fascism an honorable place in it. Italian far right government claim that what we've learned about Fascism since World War II was concocted by left-wing politicians who manipulated facts. Italian journalists, oppressed by the constant censorship and manipulation of news, are now on a five-day strike in protest.
"Giacomo Matteotti was assassinated by fascist henchmen on June 10, 1924.
They waited for him outside his house, five of them, all squadristi from Milan, professionals of violence hired by Mussolini's closest collaborators. Honourable Matteotti, the secretary of the Unitary Socialist Party, the last one in Parliament still openly opposing fascist dictatorship, was kidnapped in the heart of Rome, in broad daylight, under the sun's light. He fought to the end, as he had fought all his life. They stabbed him to death, then mutilated his body. They bent him over to fit him into a hastily dug grave with a blacksmith's file.
"Mussolini was immediately informed. Besides the murder, he stained himself with the infamy of swearing to the widow that he would do everything possible to bring her husband back. While he swore, the Duce of fascism kept the victim's bloodstained documents in the drawer of his desk." "In this false spring of ours, however, we commemorate not only Matteotti's political murder but also the Nazi-Fascist massacres perpetrated by the German SS, with the complicity and collaboration of Italian fascists, in 1944. Fosse Ardeatine, Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Marzabotto. These are just some of the places where Mussolini's demonic allies massacred thousands of unarmed Italian civilians in cold blood. Among them were hundreds of children and even infants. Many were burned alive, some beheaded." "These two coinciding tragic anniversaries - spring of '24, spring of '44 - proclaim that fascism was throughout its historical existence - not just at the end or occasionally - an irredeemable phenomenon of systematic political violence, murder, and massacres. Will the heirs of that history acknowledge this, once and for all? Unfortunately, everything suggests that it will not be so. The post-fascist leadership, having won the elections in October 2022, had two options: repudiate its neo-fascist past or try to rewrite history. Undoubtedly, it chose the latter."
"After avoiding the subject during the election campaign, the Prime Minister, when forced to confront it by historical anniversaries, stubbornly adhered to the ideological line of her neo-fascist culture of origin: she distanced herself from the indefensible atrocities perpetrated by the regime (the persecution of Jews) without ever repudiating the fascist experience as a whole, she blamed only the Nazis for the massacres committed with the complicity of the Republican fascists, and finally denied the fundamental role of the Resistance in the Italian rebirth (to the point of never mentioning the word "antifascism" on April 25, 2023)." "As I speak to you, we are once again on the eve of the anniversary of the Liberation from Nazism and Fascism. The word that the Prime Minister refused to pronounce will still beat on the grateful lips of all sincere democrats, whether they be left, center, or right. As long as that word - antifascism - is not uttered by those who govern us, the specter of fascism will continue to haunt the house of Italian democracy."
Antonio Scurati (born 25 June 1969) is an Italian writer and academic. A professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the IULM University of Milan, mass media scholar, and editorialist for the Corriere della Sera, Scurati has won the main Italian literary prizes. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize for his novel M: Son of the Century (2018), which is part of a planned tetralogy dedicated to Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism. It was at the top of the charts for two consecutive years, was translated into over forty countries, and is set for a television series produced by Sky Original in 2024.
This post isn't a news story or a joke; it's a firsthand account of what's currently unfolding in a European country that's regressing in a troubling direction. I'm sharing it because it's crucial for people to be aware, and I'm genuinely alarmed by the situation. It's deeply offensive to French, Spanish, British, Eastern European, Jewish, American, and all other Europeans, or individuals whose grandparents or family members were victims of Nazi fascism during World War II. I come from a family with ties to Nazi fascism, but unlike others, I don't refer to that era as "the golden era." Instead, I see it as a dark and shameful period marked by the worst atrocities in history. I'm disgusted by the actions of my relatives during that time. If I've violated any rules, I apologize to the moderators, but it's crucial for people to grasp the severity of what's happening once again in Europe.

This movie is currently playing. It's about the church getting the missionaries out of Germany a week before the start of WW2. It's not produced by the church, but it is "faith promoting". Here's what rubbed me the wrong way:
* They say right out that Hitler's invasion of Poland was miraculously delayed by a week to give time for 30+ missionaries to be evacuated to Denmark. So god delayed an entire war so a few missionaries could escape, but forgot to get 6 million Jews out??
* There are references throughout the movie to Hitler's attitudes toward Mormons. For example, Hitler liked genealogy research (because people could prove their pure lineage, no Jews in the family tree), and Hitler admired the church's fasting program and thought it could be adapted to the Reich to collect money. These references were sprinkled through the movie, then a notice at the end said they were all true. Are Mormons so desperate for praise and acceptance that they brag that Hitler admired the church? Sick.
* No mention was made of 17 year old Helmuth Hubener who fought Nazi propaganda and was excommunicated and beheaded, a total disgrace to the church.
* No mention of J Reuben Clark pushing for visas for church members to escape, but denying visas for church members with Jewish surnames.
* No mention of Heber J Grant's kiss up to Nazis leading up to the war.
* No mention that the majority of LDS German members supported Hitler.
* The general attitude of the movie was that Mormons were the stars of God's effort to protect them, and the rest of Germany, especially Jews, be damned.
I'm sure TBM's ate it up. But once again, it was a blatant example of the lack of discernment on the part of church officials to recognize pure evil.

I had some fairly good discussions with a bio-primitivist who thinks the only hope for humanity is an anti-tech revolution. So, I just thought I'd copy some of the dialogue here to get people's feedback on whether they think the arguments would be useful for helping convince anti-tech sympathising people in their own life to reconsider some of their positions. Or at least that it might be elucidating in getting a better understanding of where anti-tech people are coming from. And obviously if you sympathise more with them, then we can carry on the discussion here too.
Their ideology is similar to some anarcho-primitivists in that essentially they'd like to just burn everything down to try and get as close to hunter-gatherer life as possible, 'hiding between the cracks' of the feudal war-lords that would rise up. But, crucially they accept the history of some tribes keeping slaves and like the idea of the able-bodied male dominance hierarchies that would likely occur.
Here's an index of the topics covered that I've copied over:

• A. Is primitive society superior to modern society?
  • Positive & Negative Liberties
  • The Cloud Virtue Hypothetical
• B) Do the problems with modern society arise due to Technology or are they due to other factors such as Capitalism/the state/Hierarchy.

And here's a link to the full discussion between multiple people:
A Collaboratively Edited Discussion on Anti-Tech Politics
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A. Is primitive society superior to modern society?

Positive & Negative Liberties

Theo: I think anprims are deluded in believing primitive life will be a life of egalitarian freedom, but it is what makes them anarchist in my mind, like still wanting to work towards a world of ending dominance hierarchies and maintaining positive liberties.
Potash: Primitive life has been proven to be far more free than modern life, if it is egalitarian is a different story. Positive Liberty is a vague-ry that doesn’t really mean anything.
Theo: Positive liberty is an essential concept, otherwise we’d have no frame of reference for many of the harms that people commit against each other.
At its most extreme, taking care of someone while they’re in a coma only to afterwards drop them in the middle of a desert to die of thirst is still harming them. Regardless of the fact they’d be free in a negative liberty sense of there being no government taking away their shoes for taxes in the desert or whatever.
Potash: I think the man in the desert would have plenty of freedom. He could use his natural ability to take advantage of his environment. It’s far from a death sentence. If he were able to survive, then subsequent freedom would ensure as he and no one else controls the path his life takes.
Theo: That wasn’t the kind of scenario I meant. I’ll try to be more clear:
You’re lying unconscious after being thrown from a dune buggy you wrecked. Whilst out driving a dune buggy myself I find you at the centre of these vast desert sand dunes that stretch out for 100s of miles of just pure layers and layers of shifting sand as far as the eye can see. I nurse you back to consciousness, but you’ve still got a broken leg, then rather than driving you out of the hills of sand dunes, I leave you to die.
Surely you think I’ve committed an unethical act by not offering you access to positive liberties?
You’re free from the constraints of oppressive governments in that scenario, but you’re not free to be able to do much of anything other than just waiting to die.
This is just basic tribal social contract stuff, a kid is drowning in quicksand, you can offer him a branch, which would increase his access to a tool that would increase his positive liberties to move around and breathe.
A strong and skilled hunter is all alone in the jungle having fun and able to kill lots of animals to grow fat, he comes across an emaciated kid who is going to be stunted for life due to malnutrition if you don’t share some of your hunted meat with him. You give him some meat, you increase his access to food, you increase his positive liberties in life.
Potash: Fair enough, but I don’t think positive liberty is as decisive in determining one’s level of freedom as negative liberty is in most cases.
Primitive societies certainly do not “trample” on positive liberties enough to make them less free than us. They still have far more freedom than we have.
In what ways do primitive societies deprive people of positive liberty?
Theo: No one in a primitive society has many positive liberties themselves, and so doesn’t have any ability to offer others much.
In modern societies there are often hospitals, libraries, public transit, etc. So these societies are superior by that metric.
And to take away modern people’s positive liberties and try and forever reduce people and all their progeny to a life without these positive liberties is cruel.
Potash: I don’t understand how not having access to public transit makes you a fake anarchist.
I think Modern society deprives us of positive liberty by taking away from us our right to live in our natural habitat, and by greatly devaluing community and relationships.
Theo: I think what would make someone a fake anarchist is the bombing people back to the stone age who don’t consent to that happening to them, whilst claiming to be an anarchist.
Potash: I think Modern society deprives us of positive liberty by taking away from us our right to live in our natural habitat, and by greatly devaluing community and relationships.
Theo: I agree it does that to a lot of people. I think we should organize to resist that, just in a way that preserves other positive liberties.
Potash: Not everything can be planned out in advance. Conditions, and not decisions, are the primary driver of any society.

The Cloud Virtue Hypothetical

Theo: I might bite the bullet on the quality of life being slightly worse for the average person day to day in modern capitalist societies vs. a fairly egalitarian tribe in the past living in ignorance of a different way of life. I just think there’s still more virtue in striving for a society beyond capitalism and unjustified hierarchies.
Many people are concerned with remedying a net pain vs. pleasure calculus first and foremost, whereas I’m mostly concerned with people being able to express capabilities that help them achieve goals that satisfy a higher order happy flourishing vs. painful stultifying dichotomy.
Happy flourishing (eudaimonia) is what’s pursued in virtue ethics, by formulating a working balance of character virtues which help you both know what would give you some meaning at a certain stage in your life experience and help you achieve it.
As opposed to preference utilitarianism which is less willing to accept a high degree of suffering and is more interested in getting everyone to a global calculus of their interests being fulfilled thereby achieving a good degree of wellbeing.
As opposed further to by hedonistic utilitarianism, which is even less willing to accept suffering, seeks global pleasure calculus.
As opposed even further by negative utilitarians who are simply concerned with the best ways of avoiding suffering and so are most often anti-natalists.
Primitive tribes might be experiencing the most consistent access to low-level happy flourishing, a perfect balance of not seeking out too much pleasure, and not worrying about small amounts of pain. So, I can see why for example to some depressed person this low level feeling of peace and tranquillity at just being able to find consistent access to small pleasures would be super appealing.
The problem is the lack of complex goals. High level cultural achievement. High level critical thinking. Replaying complex conversations one had in the day and having complex feeling about these international communications. The positive liberty to experience these things. The negative liberty not to have these experiences stripped away from you by a network of anti-tech revolutionaries.
So, by different metrics primitive society is superior, but for me it’s not.
Complex tasks are conducive to my bedrock philosophical interest to have the opportunity to experience high quality happy flourishing above all else.
Potash: Imagine there are two societies, one society where people do not have the ability to transform into clouds. And another where people can transform into clouds. Some people in the second society feel that transformation into a cloud is one of the most important character flourishing aspects of life, and that to not have this ability would be a deprivation of their positive liberties. But the people in the first society feel zero need to transform themselves into clouds and feel quite content with their lives as they are. There is no objective evidence as to if the ability to transform into a cloud is beneficial, and if we are worse off without it.
And so, as an objective observer, would it make sense to conclude that the people in the first society are being depraved of their positive liberties because they cannot transform themselves into clouds?
Theo: I wouldn’t use the word deprived as they’d be simply ignorant of that possibility, but I’d say on a metric of who has access to the most positive liberties the cloud people do yes, so it’s a superior society in my view.
Potash: I think I should elaborate on the cloud metaphor a little. Imagine that the people living in the first society are substantially more content and satisfied with their lives then the people living in the second society. Lets say that most of the people living in the second society do not transform themselves into clouds regularly, and that again there is no objective evidence that suggests that transforming oneself into a cloud is beneficial. Of course, those who transform themselves into clouds don’t feel that way, but they are obviously biased.
Theo: I don’t know, I thought in the initial way you described it, the only difference in the societies was that one could turn into clouds, and that it was a challenging task to master hence the personal testimonies of most flourishing experience of their lives, so regardless of the abstract nature of the experience, feels like it’s one positive liberty they have on the other society.
So what’s the difference now making the first society so much more contented?
Potash: Knowing that the people in the first society are objectively more satisfied with their lives, do you still consider the cloud bearers to be superior?
Theo: Ignorance that some people can master the skill of turning into clouds happens to make the first society more contented, and that’s the only difference? Probably still the cloud people are superior. Because I trust their testimony that even though they don’t have as much net contentment, they’re gaining happy flourishing that is more meaningful to them.
Potash: No, lets say that the mechanism which allows people to turn themselves into clouds has several reverberating effects which lead to the second society being less contented and that impacts everyone there, even those who don’t transform themselves into clouds. Does this change your answer?
Theo: I think by the metric of ability to achieve that high-level happy flourishing it’s superior, and if I had the choice of happening to be born into that situation I would, so long as I had hope I could work to make egalitarian access to it.
Potash: Now lets imagine that the people in the second society live lives that are under the control and regulation of large organizations which they are hopeless to influence. Such as the cloud company and the CSA (Cloud Safety Agency). Would you still consider the second society superior?
Theo: Depends if there’s a reasonable chance that people can successfully rebel against this agency whilst maintaining access to cloud mastery.
Potash: Lets say that these agencies are necessary for the functioning of the cloud society. Basically, what’s more important. Positive or Negative Liberty.
Would you agree that primitive societies have greater negative liberty then modern societies?
Theo: Yeah if there’s no reasonable hope of rebelling against the company and I just had to witness the company harming people with no ability to grow a movement to at some point stop it then I’d just prefer the society where it didn’t exist at all.
Potash: Would you agree that primitive societies have greater negative liberty then modern societies?
Theo: Probably on average yeah, compared to the average modern society today.
Though there’s a certain comradery to women and men, black and white all getting fucked by corporations, whereas it would depress me for the clan chief to be decreeing that women can’t come on the hunt, and the tribe next door are savages, etc.
Potash: XD c’mon man.
Theo: It was a mostly throwaway comment lol, I agree more negative liberty to get skilled up and run away to hunt on your own for the most part and stuff.

B. Do the problems with modern society arise due to Technology or are they due to other factors such as Capitalism/the state/Hierarchy.

Theo: At what point in time do you think we lost control/opened pandora’s box?
Potash: Probably around the industrial revolution.
Theo: Good quote on technological determinism:[7]

The technological imperative is a flawed concept espoused by determinists, which states that the use of any technology is inevitable and that once a technology is in place, it is irreversible. That is, if a technology is developed, then it will eventually be used and cannot be abandoned. Gun apologists lean heavily on this imperative, refusing to acquiesce any type of firearm technologies—even those that are particularly heinous and unnecessary, such as military-grade personal weaponry, bump stocks, and armor-piercing ammunition, which have no reasonable application for civilian use. A common refrain is the slippery slope argument that gun reformists will take away all guns if given the opportunity. This would not only would be virtually impossible to accomplish (there are more than 400 million guns in the United States) but unconstitutional as well. The technological imperative of guns is the wrongful assumption that because these weapons exist, we have no choice but to accept their place in society and we mustn’t regulate them in the slightest, for this would be an infringement upon our rights.
Contrary to the determinist’s view, however, is that we do in fact have dominion over our technologies. In his book Giving Up the Gun, Noel Perrin gives a detailed account of the sixteenth-century Japanese, who nearly abandoned all guns in their society. By this time in history, firearms were nearly ubiquitous throughout the modern world. The warrior class of Japan, however, saw long-range guns as cowardly and shameful weapons; firearms were more efficient than swords, but they “overshadow[ed] the men who use them.” Honor is an essential component of Japanese warrior culture, and at least for a short period of time, the use of firearms was relegated to lower-class soldiers only.
Upper-class nobility and the samurai fought with swords and spears in hand-to-hand combat. Swordplay was regarded as a “danger-laden ballet, while a scene of extended gunplay comes out as raw violence.” Despite this virtuous resistance to firearms, the Japanese did not abandon guns entirely. By the end of the sixteenth century, invasions mounted by Korea and China reintroduced firearms back into circulation so that Japan could remain competitive on the battlefield and stave off its enemies. Afterward, guns remained highly regulated in Japan, with manufacturing only permitted by special licensure from the government. In some ways, Japan had been able to nearly quit firearms altogether, but they were dragged back into gun culture because of the need for self-preservation. Perrin closes his book by saying, “This is to talk as if progress—however one defines that elusive concept—were something semidivine, an inexorable force outside of human control. And of course, it isn’t. It is something we can guide, and direct, and even stop. Men can choose to remember; they can also choose to forget.” Still today, Japan often ranks lowest compared to other countries in terms of firearm-related deaths, and guns remain mostly irrelevant in Asian countries.

Potash: Technologies which have failed to make headway have done such because they are too inefficient to be used, not out of any moral self righteousness.
Theo: I’ve just never read a convincing argument for how technology became this monolithic self-propagating system at some stage in our history, whether industrial revolution or agricultural or whenever, there’s no clear line in the sand, we brought tech into this world, we can also regulate and arrest it’s development.
Clay: I fully grant that due to the way all technologically advanced societies are organized today that there are a great many people for whom it can be said that they had very little choice but to help society keep trending towards technological development. So, it’s not nearly the same as someone who’s been a hunter-gatherer all their life with a bow and arrow choosing whether to learn to use a gun.
Still, a big-tent leftist movement, and the socialist movement within it, and the anarchist movement within it can work to opportunistically strike at all the right moments in which governments and corporations are weak. And in doing so bring about the kind of world socialist revolution Ellul envisioned, which can then finish off bringing about the kind of ‘spiritual’ anti-technique revolution Ellul envisioned. Such that people only engage with technology in creative ways they desire.
Potash: I didn’t know you were religious.
Theo: Clay isn't and neither am I, but I agree with this in the broad sense of the term spiritual, acknowledging the feat of ‘consciousness moving’ it would take.
Potash: I didn’t know you were religious.
Theo: I’m not, I’m just using a broad use of the term spiritual, to acknowledge the feat of ‘consciousness moving’ it would take.
Potash: The idea you are propagating is a deeply religious one. Well, an idea which has its roots in the same place as religion.
Theo: There’s an overlap for sure.
Potash: Tell me, why do you think the idea of a creator has had such a profound impact on human societies? Basically every people known to man has a religion. And even plenty of people who don’t subscribe to any religion personally still believe in/are open to a creator, such as deists or agnostics.
Theo: I’m talking more about transcendental feeling, not belief, where for example you watch a sunset and it helps you contemplate your smallness in the universe, and so take a more stoic attitude to your problems in your life, it’s viewing your life in reflection to cosmological forces, not tribal, and not necessarily supernatural or religious.
Potash: That’s different. Why do you think the idea of a creator is so appealing to us?
Theo: Lots of factors, including that we look for patterns to help us survive, like a tiger’s tracks in the mud, but it can lead us down dumb paths like conspiracy and fundi religion too.
Potash: That’s true, but I think we want to believe that everything is going according to a plan and that belief doesn’t end with religion. People vastly overestimate the power ascribed to governments/people in power. For example, anything happening under a certain president is typically considered to be his fault.
People want to believe that everything goes according to a plan. That our problems arise from the wrong people being in charge, and we can solve them by putting the right people in charge.
Or in short, that the path societies take is determined by decisions more so than conditions.
And so, by default most people will absolve technology from the blame for its results. Afterall, if decisions and not conditions are the source of our problems then how could technology (conditions) be to blame? Obviously, we’ve just been “using it wrong bro”
Theo: I’m full of contempt for people like this, like swing voters.
But you can be pessimistic about the difficulty of shifting material conditions, and still want to vote the lesser evil people in to have some small tiny difference. It just needs to be matched with a strong grassroots movement taking action like striking and ecotage.
This is like the argument that left-anarchists are naive about human nature, left-anarchists are so worried about environmental conditions being able to ferment monsters, like the nazi party that we want to put so much care into building strong institutions that offer loads of advantages to people at a young age: Anarchists Are Not Naive About Human Nature
Potash: This has very little to do with electoral politics, that was just an example of the overall principle.
Theo: I know you’re talking about broader trends, but it’s your go to example for how this manifests, and I’m agreeing partially that it does manifest in that way, but it can be subverted in that case, and it can be subverted more broadly socially also.
Potash: Not anarchists, everyone. Even me, even qpoop, even Ted. Though I’d like to think that we do so less so than most others.
Theo: That sounds like the more religiously dogmatic position.
Potash: This is something that is intrinsic in human nature. Just as confirmation bias, everyone has it, some just less so than others.
Theo: No one has proved we’re way more biological determined than environmentally determined, or that that would prescribe primitivism. You’re mashing together politics, philosophy and psychology in an incoherent way.
Potash: There are definitely ideas which people have that have a basis in biology. Confirmation Bias is universal in humans.
Theo: Even if that’s the case, there’s still a massive gulf of missing premises you’d need in order to build the argument that we need to have an anti-tech revolution.
Potash: You’re getting too out of hand with this. All I’m saying is that we are predisposed to believe that the world is planned out, and therefore that technology plays a negligible role in determining the shape of society.
Theo: Meh, marxists have been around for an age worrying about tech and exploitation keeping generations enslaved on a materially determined path, anprims like Zerzan who used to be marxists just took it the next level in wanting primitive communism.
Potash: That was me at first. That was what I believed when I was like 13.
Political Debates in 2025 will probably just be over Woke National Bolshevism or Futurist Italian Fascism is better at beheading judeo capitalists and implanting robo cocks.
Theo: I’m comfortable not knowing whether I’ll ever have an impact in shifting macro material conditions, I hope a pebble I throw has a domino effect in the long-long term after I’m dead, but who knows.
The memories that make me happy are like taking a 20 year old Slovakian kid from a squat in Nottingham to the west coast of Ireland to live with a farmer for a year and doing road blockades against a dangerous gas pipeline. Just showing people a dramatically different quality of life.

Youtube's algorithm can easily lead someone down an anti-"woke" and right wing rabbit hole from clicking on Star Wars videos. while also punishing and demonetizing creators for saying anything relating to sex, suicide, or fascism regardless of the context because the algoriem cannot understand context.
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I watched a video on the sexualization of young girls and the video had to censor uses of the word rape and pedophile. in a video discussing the sexual assault of young girls.
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it's funny when watching videos about adult cartoons like Family Guy, American Dad, South Park, and the Simpsons who have jokes about pedophila, rape, suicide, and nazis but the youtubers who discuss these shows cannot say words like suicide or rape as they would get demonetized as it is not "advertiser friendly" friendly despite the very shows they discuss make jokes about the topics air on TV with commercials.
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the issues are connected social media platforms priotized the most shocking and divisive content as that gives high engagement which is often shocking content, so social media platforms did nothing to moderate fascist shit. until news broke that beheading videos, pro-suicide videos, and fascist propaganda was infesting Facebook, YouTube and the rest.
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the advertisers panicked and said "WTF, why are our ads on neo-Nazi videos and beheadings. so social media sites finally acted but at this point the sites got to big for human moderation so they had to use algoriems that did not understand nuance to flag any videos that say words like Nazi or suicide even if its purely educational.
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all while still being right wing radicalztion machines that make young kids into Star Wars and video games into far right fascists.

I do not consider myself a progressive for a few reasons. I believe that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense (though the decision to defend a car dealership during a riot as a 17-year-old was questionable). I have a nuanced view on gun rights and know that criminals can and do obtain guns illegally. However, the main issue on which progressives and I disagree is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and considering the facts, I feel that we really should agree. If you haven't figured it out by now, I am a pro-Israel Zionist.
Israel: A Progressive Island in a Sea of Barbarism
Overall, Israel is a socially-progressive country and the only such country in the Middle East. The Jewish state grants equal rights to all citizens, and its large Arab minority has full representation in the Knesset. Arab citizens of Israel also have more rights than Arabs outside of Israel and a much higher standard of living. Israel is also one of the only countries in the Middle East where homosexuality is legal and arguably the only one where homosexuality is both legal and accepted, as while it is legal in Jordan, the West Bank, and Lebanon (I think), many people in those countries are still willing to murder gays. Same-sex marriages are not performed in Israel, but that is because civil marriages in general are not performed in Israel, meaning interreligious marriages aren't performed either. The Israeli government nonetheless recognizes same-sex marriages performed abroad and gives same-sex couples the right to adopt. If you want to know just how accepting Israels are of the LGBTQ+ community, then look no further than Tel Aviv, which is considered one of the gayest cities in the world and annually has the second-largest Pride parade in Asia. For comparison, the Palestinian Pride parade begins on a roof and ends on either a sidewalk or in a person's digestive tract.
To say that the rest of the Middle East lags behind Israel in terms of social progress would be an understatement. Only a couple other Middle Eastern countries allow homosexuality, and social taboos still make it de facto illegal in those countries. In Saudi Arabia, women were not allowed to drive until a few years ago and still cannot leave their homes without a man, whether it be their father, husband, or even son. Saudi Arabia and a few other Middle Eastern countries also prescribe the death penalty for homosexuality, though Saudi Arabia allegedly hasn't enforced said law recently. That said, in the equally-theocratic Iran, the death penalty for homosexual acts is enforced. Plus, like I said, there are still millions of people in the Middle East that would behead you or throw you off a roof for being gay. It's so bad that the term "conservative" doesn't really describe them. This might sound racist, but "uncivilized" or "barbaric" are probably more apt terms. In terms of progressiveness, Israel blows them out of the water.
Based on these facts, I feel that progressives would have every reason to not only support Israel's right to exist, but also to stand with Israel in the current war and oppose Palestinian statehood. An independent Palestinian state would, in all likelihood, result in another quasi-theocratic Islamic state in the Middle East where women and non-Muslims are second-class citizens and queer people lose their heads. That progressives support an independent Palestinian state and thus tacitly support another Islamist dictatorship baffles me. If progressives are really the pro-LGBTQ+, pro-democracy people they are, then why don't they support Israel? From what I can tell, the simple reason is antisemitism.
Antisemitism: A Left-Wing Phenomenon
The anti-racist movements of recent years have given rise to a new kind of hate among its supporters, most notably a "new antisemitsm." But hate, like war, never changes, and the "new" antisemitism really isn't anything new. The "new" antisemites say the same things about Jews as the "old" antisemites. They both say that Jews only care about themselves and view all goyim as beneath them; they just do so in different contexts. The Nazis said that the Jews were plotting to destroy Germany from within and undermine German culture. The progressives of today say that the Jews are perennial oppressors that have infinite wealth and privilege solely for being Jewish. The antisemites of old said that Jews kill Christian babies and use their blood in religious rituals. The progressives of today say that Jews kill Palestinians for no reason. The parallels are undeniable.
Indeed, progressives often view Jews as white, when many Jews don't consider themselves white. Granted, white supremacists tend to hate Jews for not being white; there's a reason why Jews are sometimes called "Schrödinger's whites." The fact that Jews are one of the most successful demographics in America and the wealthiest religious demographic means that Jews are often viewed as white in discussions of white privilege. In the minds of progressives, the logic is simple: White people are oppressors, Jews are white, and Jews are therefore oppressors.
The issue with this line of logic is that it is not only false but completely ignorant. Nearly every country in history with a Jewish population persecuted its Jews. They forbade Jews from owning property, denied them citizenship, expelled them, and, in some cases, killed them. By far the worst instance of anti-Jewish persecution was the Holocaust, in which some 6 million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis in order to achieve a racially-pure society. And yet, according to one poll, one-fifth of Zoomers (who tend to be progressive) deny the Holocaust. Additionally, 70 percent of Zoomers believe that Jews are always oppressors. I believe that these two statistics are related, that Holocaust denial among Gen-Z (my generation) is a direct result of the belief that Jews can only oppress and can never be oppressed.
Now, I am in no way accusing all leftists of antisemitism, nor am I suggesting that antisemitism is nonexistent among rightists. There's a reason George Soros is one of the right's favorite scapegoats. However, the right has overwhelmingly come out in support of Israel and condemned support for Hamas among supposed progressives. The fact that progressives keep finding themselves on the wrong side of the Israeli-Palestinian debate just hurts progressive causes, and the smallest damage to a cause can completely destroy a movement.

As someone who has been with the cause of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian state since as long as I can remember it has been very revolting to see the incessant Anti-Jewish vitriol and support for Hamas on Muslim twitter. This is something that I would largely try to ignore but recently and quite alarmingly I have seen this type of content being spouted by certain Ahmadi users to a lesser degree aswell. As someone who has watched Muslim public opinion for multiple Hamas-Israel conflicts this is the first time I have seen such unabashed antisemitism on Ahmadi twitter and also some of the Sunni figures that I have great respect for as intellectual work. I have seen comments such as "Jews=terrorists" to filth such as "Hitler was right' ' even from Ahmadis. I just want to highlight our position as Ahmadis on the issues of Israel, Hamas and Jews:

Hamas

Hamas is a terrorist organization. It regards all Jews in Israel as combatants as they per Hamas they are all settlers so their blood as Halal, Muslim twitter is infested with videos of their leaders making such comments. When Hamas fires thousands of Missiles at Israel it aims at civilian targets, may they be residential buildings, schools, and hospitals, it does not care about civilian lives whatsoever. The fact of the matter is that on October 7th, Hamas did kill children, women and the elderly. Were the Israeli reports severely exaggerated? Yes they were, they counted their military reservists among civilians and made 100s of completley fabricated stories of bogus atrocities like rapes, beheadings etc. But this does not change the fact that Hamas militants opened fire on civilians in many instances on October 7th. Our Khalifa, Hadhrat MIrza Masroor Ahmad ATBA has condemned Hamas numerous times and in this recent conflict as well:

“Even in a state of war, Islam does not permit the killing of women, children, elderly and innocent civilians. The Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) gave strict instructions against doing so… In this recent escalation of the war, Hamas made the first move and attacked Israeli citizens. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that innocent people have been unjustly killed by the Israeli army, Muslims should ensure that they always adhere to the teachings of Islam.” https://www.pressahmadiyya.com/press-releases/2023/10/global-muslim-leader-calls-for-de-escalation-of-palestine-israel-wa

Hamas itself as a movement was created by Israel for the sole purpose of weakening and delegitimizing the Palestinian cause altogether and destroying any peace settlement or return of land. This support for Hamas has continued into the term of the psychopath, Benjamin Netanyahu wo said:

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history

Hamas Apologist refutation:

1. This conflict did not start on October 7th: Agreed the Palestinian people have suffered extreme violence from the Israeli state and Jewish settlers. Palestinians under Israeli law are treated worse than Animals and Gaza is no more than a prison camp whose residents, mostly children and young people, seem to have no future. All this does not justify targeting and firing at civilians in any moral, religious or philosophical code and Certainly not Islam.
2. Israeli atrocities: Agreed, the atrocities that the Israeli state from its inception are unmatched as in the Nakbah alone half of Palestinians lost their homes and ancestral land. It is also true that in every conflict against the Palestinians, Israel has had no regard for civilians. Although it is true they don't aim to target civilians they absolutely do not care if civilians are present in the building or house they bomb. All this does not justify targeting and firing at civilians or shooting missiles at civilian targets in any moral, religious or philosophical code particularly not Islam.
3. Hamas treatment of POWs: Again yes it is true that Hamas has by and large treated most of its prisoners well in this specific conflict although they were exceptions to this. And yes this does also prove that Hamas by and large is composed of disaffected innocent youth who see no future for themselves and more than likely belonged to a family displaced in one of the many Israeli expulsions of the Palestinians or has lost family members to Israeli bombings. However, this does not suddenly make the Hamas organizations good or pure or its intention non-maleficent. As it justifies killing of Jewish civilians as well as targeting and firing at civilians or shooting missiles.

Israel
Another common and absurd misnomer on social media is that every Israeli is somehow responsible for the actions of Israel. How can a citizen of any state be responsible for all of its actions? Are then, Naoozubillah, the extreme right wing Israelis who claim that Palestinian populace is directly responsible for the actions of Hamas the De-facto Government of Gaza right? Israeli society itself is quite fragmented society in itself with differing opinions and attitudes towards Palestinians. For example, much of the Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews of Israel (13%) are non- or anti-Zionists and most do not serve in the Israeli military. Not to mention Palestinians who were granted Israeli citizenship to maintain face in 1948 also number around 21%. Then there are the far left Israelis who have also protested the Palestinian plight. Nearly half of Israelis believe in the formation of a viable Palestinian state while many more are against the apartheid state that Israel has become to the Palestinians. It is also true to say that the far, far right racists in Israel have more power, influence and support among Israelis than any other time in Israel's short history.
Jewish People
The most revolting and non-Islamic thing I have seen on social media is pure hatred and encouragement of violence against the Jews. Not even the respectable Sunni intellectuals have taken a stand and it has even appeared on the fringes of Ahmadi social media. It is truly sad as some of the most wonderful, kind and helpful people I have ever met in my life have been Jews. Much of it comes from the lack of knowledge, for instance it is claimed that Allah scolded the Bani Israel time and again but what many Muslims fail to realize is that at the same time the Quran calls the Bani Israel the best people of their time (Quran 2:48). Or that the Prophets AS that the Jews opposed were also Jews themselves be it Ishaaq, Yaqub, Ayyub, Yusif, Musa, Haroon, Daud, Suleman, and Isa etc as were the followers of the said Prophets AS. The story of the Jews is a public story. Yes, Allah admonishes them like all people but also rewards them immensely. They also seem to have amnesia to the fact that the Quran urges to learn from the People of the Book and the Prophet SAW also many a times followed the laws of the Jews when a matter had not been made clear. It is also important to mention that the Jews along with the Christians are given a status far above all other non-Muslims as People of the Book. It is also important to mention that many of the Great Sahabah RA were Jews like Abdullah bin Salaam or that two of our Ummul Mumineen were Jews: Safiyah RA and Rayhannah RA. Infact, the Prophet SAW said to Safiyah RA to tell his Wives Aishah (daughter of ABu Bakr RA) and Hafsa(daughter of Umar RA):

And how are you two better than me, while my husband is Muhammad and my father is Harun, and my uncle is Musa?" Tirmidhi 3892

We do disagree with the Jews on their mistakes (some enormous ones) and we need not follow them in their numerous errors however to ignore their entire is also a travesty. All of this is not my personal opinion but the opinion of the majority of the Muslims of the past, this is why the safest lands for the Jews till the end of colonialism were Muslim lands. Be it during the inquisition or the fleeing of the Nazis. There is no religion closer to Tawheed (excluding Islam) than Judaism.
Closing
How can one fight for the rights of the Palestinians to be treated with dignity and respect or how can one rally against the brutal murder of 10s of thousands of Palestinians of Gaza if they have no consistent moral reasoning? To defend the humanity of the Palestinians you must recognize the humanity of the Jewish people aswell. To really change the situation of the Palestinians, it is incumbent to change the opinions of the West, India and China. When Muslims use antisemitic vitriol and hate speech it is not just a hypocritical, racist moral and religious failing but also a disservice to the Palestinian people and their struggle.
​

12-minute read.

Azerbaijani trader is helping Russia bypass oil sanctions, selling $33 billion in 2023 alone: Wall Street Journal

In the early days of the Ukraine war, data trickled out showing that a mysterious firm called Nord Axis had become one of the biggest global traders of Russian oil.

This and several other obscure firms were keeping Russia's most important industry afloat by finding new places to sell the oil, generating billions of dollars in revenue for President Vladimir Putin's war.
This network of 80+ ships, one of the world's largest fleets, was organized by a trader from Azerbaijan named Etibar Eyyub, who assembled a clandestine trading and shipping empire that now moves vast quantities of oil to buyers in China, India and other new markets.
The Azeri trader exported $33 billion in Russian crude and fuel in 2023. That's 1/5th of Russian exports.
The U.S. Justice Department has homed in on Eyyub and his (also Azeri) associate Tahir Garayev, a founder of a UAE-based firm.
source, source,

NatSec Armen Grigoryan about Russia's role in Nerkin Hand ceasefire violation

REPORTER: Russia and Azerbaijan have amplified the criticism of the EU border mission after the decision to increase the numbers. Russia calls it a "fake" mission and says the CSTO should be deployed instead.
GRIGORYAN: Russia was unable to prevent the incident in Nerkin Hand. The EU observers had no access to Nerkin Hand, only Russia does. The truth is, the EU observers play a stabilizing role and we will continue to support their presence.
REPORTER: Is it true that Russian servicemen blocked the access of EU observers to Nerkin Hand?
GRIGORYAN: Yes. We will take steps to address that issue. [hmmmmm]
MARKUS RITTER (EU Mission chief): Nerkin Hand is the only section that is blocked by the Russian FSB agents. We knew from the beginning that there would be problems in this area.

... NatSec Armen Grigoryan about Armenia's foreign vector

REPORTER: Russia's deputy foreign minister said Armenia's foreign vector is "fluctuating" and that it can lead to a loss of sovereignty for Armenia.
GRIGORYAN: We are not "fluctuating", we are diversifying Armenia's defense and foreign policy transparently. Our diversification is oriented not only toward the West but also India and several other states. The pre-2020/2021 defense system that Armenia was part of turned out to be completely dysfunctional. We will continue to pursue security guarantees. We are firmly committed to implementing this policy.

... NatSec Armen Grigoryan about Russia's pro-Azerbaijan stance

REPORTER: Russia's ambassador to Azerbaijan described the 19 September 2023 ethnic cleansing as an "anti-terror operation".
GRIGORYAN: Russian peacekeepers were supposed to ensure Armenians' rights to live in Nagorno-Karabakh. Now if a representative of the state with these peacekeepers makes such comments, it must be judged by the public. I think the Armenian public is very good at judging such statements.
source, source,source,

EU's civilian border observer mission marks the 1st anniversary of the deployment

It began on 20 February 2023 with the deployment of 100 observers. Their numbers will double soon. The mission has conducted 1,720 patrols so far.
ARMEN GRIGORYAN (NatSec): We deem it unacceptable the groundless criticism in the address of the Mission sounding from various countries. We support the Mission to implement its mandate at its full scale. We are thankful to over 20 EU member states for their contribution. We hope to see representatives of every EU state. We also welcome Canada's decision to join it and the interest shown by Norway.
At the same time, Armenia does not want to be only a consumer of security. We have informed Brussels of our willingness to contribute to the EU Common Security Defense Policy in the format of civilian missions.
The Mission has increased the EU's popularity in Armenia. //
source, source,

PM Pashinyan is in France to witness the entry of French resistance hero Missak Manouchian to Pantheon

Dozens of people, including government members, gathered yesterday to pay tribute to Resistance fighter Manouchian.

80 years after his execution [by Nazis], France pays tribute to this orphan of the Armenian genocide who became a hero of the Resistance

PM Pashinyan, Defense Minister Papikyan, and others attended the official ceremony held today.
MACRON: Thanks for coming, Nikol. Very brave of you to join the International Criminal Court. Sorry for the losses on February 12; Azerbaijan's response was disproportionate. They should resume the negotiations with Armenia and secure the necessary conditions for the return of Nagorno-Karabakh refugees. France wants to see a stronger economic connection between Europe and Central Asia, so we support your Crossroads of Peace and the trade routes passing through Armenia. France will continue to promote peace and deliver weapons to Armenia. Missak was a great guy.
PASHINYAN: Missak was a great guy indeed. Thanks for the economic, political, and defense cooperation. This year you are invited to Yerevan to attend the ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of Charles Aznavour. Azerbaijan should respect Armenia's territorial integrity. //
The official ceremony.

... what was Missak Manouchian's role in WW2?

Manouchian led a 100-member group known as the Manouchian Group. They committed nearly all acts of armed resistance in the Paris metropolitan region between March and November 1943. The members included Armenians, Jews, Poles, Italians, and others.
Dozens of them were arrested and executed by German military court. To discredit the Resistance, the authorities invited French celebrities to provide widespread coverage of their trial and punishment.
The Vichy authorities launched a propaganda campaign to discredit the Manouchian Group. They created a poster that became known as Affiche Rouge (Red Poster). It featured several members with their ethnicities and personal information. Germans distributed 15,000 copies and presented the Group as "Jews and foreigners who are conspiring against French life".
It reportedly backfired because some supporters of the Group began scribbling "They died for France" on the propaganda posters and placed flowers under them.
source, source, source, source,

Armenia and France will cooperate in cinematography

The national cinema centers of Armenia and France have signed a cooperation agreement in the areas of movie heritage, training, education, and co-production. Armenia will have a pavilion in the European Film Market on the sidelines of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
source,

Russia briefly arrests and releases an Azerbaijani man accused of beheading an elderly Armenian man in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 and organizing attacks on the Armenian community of Russia

Kamil Zeynalli is a fitness blogger. He is accused of organizing attacks on members of the Armenian community in Russia and war crimes during Azerbaijan's invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. He is accused of beheading an unarmed Armenian man. The video of the beheading was circulated on the internet and verified by Bellingcat investigators as authentic.
Zeynalli was arrested by Russian authorities at Domodedovo Airport on his way to Azerbaijan. Armenian authorities confirmed that they launched an international manhunt for the murder suspect. Zeynalli said the manhunt was launched in May 2023 but another report suggests 2020.
Russian authorities informed Zeynalli that he will have a court hearing tomorrow, but his lawyer said Russian authorities are "not allowed" to extradite him to Armenia because the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan "prohibits" Russia from doing so.
Azerbaijan contacted Russia to "protect his rights". Zeynalli was released after a few hours and will be allowed to fly to Azerbaijan. His lawyer thanked Russian authorities for "showing humanity". No official explanation was provided for the release.
source, source, video, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source,

famous Russian military bloggesoldier commits suicide after being pressured and called a traitor for stating that 16,000 Russian troops died during the monthslong effort to capture Ukraine's Avdiivka

Andrei Morozov (aka Murz), who has been fighting for Russian-occupied Donetsk since 2014 and provides coverage of the ongoing war, recently revealed Russia's losses in Avdiivka.
MOROZOV: Avdiivka. We have 16,000 dead. Sixteen... thousand. A 10-year-long Afghanistan. Four months of burning meat in destroyed vehicles. Why do I need your free apartments after the war? So I can decide which one to hang myself in out of shame? //
The commanders rebuked him for the post and forced him to remove it. Morozov committed suicide and left a note:
MOROZOV: Today you pressured me to remove my Telegram post under the threat of not delivering ammunition and armored vehicles anymore. You, in turn, were pressured by the political whores, the likes of Vladimir Solovyov [Kremlin propagandist], who are too cowardly to come to a frontline and pull the trigger. Well, I'll do it myself. I'll shoot myself if no one else wants to do it, and you will receive the tanks and quadcopters. //
Shoygu reported to Putin that Avdiivka was taken with "minimal" losses.
video, source, source,

Turkey displays its domestically produced 5th gen fighter jet "KAAN"

the first flight took 13 minutes. The aircraft registered a speed of 230 knots and reached an altitude of 8,000 feet

The development began in 2010. They involved a British firm to help with the design in 2017. The KAANs are reportedly expected to replace the F-16 fleet.
On Wednesday Russia expressed readiness to support Turkey with the jet project.
source, source, source, source,

prosecutors ask the court to ease the pretrial detention conditions for the head of "Synergy" tech firm accused of conspiring with economy ministry officials to rig a procurement tender

Ashot Hovhannisyan was arrested among 2 other company employees and several ministry officials. Today he was released under bail after prosecutors informed the court that the suspect had been cooperative and no longer poses a threat to the investigation process.
PM Pashinyan recently fired Economy Minister Kerobyan who is considered a suspect as part of the same investigation. Kerobyan was placed under house arrest. They all deny wrongdoing.
source,

update: Russia shared the list of Armenian migrant workers and their earnings with Armenian authorities in 2023, prompting a crackdown on tax evasion

Armenia has a law that requires Armenian residents to pay at least (currently) 20% income tax regardless of where they work. This law is not new. Residents were informed repeatedly that they are required to disclose their income earned abroad, said the IRS.
The law was practically impossible to enforce so in 2020 the CIS republics reached an agreement to share income information of migrant workers for enforcement.
Russia sent the list of names and incomes in 2023 for the first time ever, prompting Armenian authorities to calculate the amounts of unpaid taxes dating back to 2020. They sent out letters to 1,000 workers for the missing payments.
The tax rate is 13% in Russia and 20% in Armenia. That means Armenian residents who paid 13% in Russia are required to pay the remaining 7% in Armenia.
Several workers organized a protest, saying they didn't know they were supposed to pay it.
The IRS chief said they will be lenient and won't arrest assets since this is a relatively new practice and the workers might have also paid other fees outside of Russia's 13% tax, and that with this enforcement they are trying to introduce a new culture of prompt tax payments rather than solving a budget issue since the total amount owed to IRS isn't big. He issued a reminder that self-disclosing the income has been a requirement since January 2018.

... WARNING

Similar enforcement is likely planned for income earned outside of CIS republics: Armenia will automatically receive income information as part of an OECD cooperation starting in 2025.
more,

Some draft evaders have already paid $37,000 to freely return to Armenia after the adoption of the new law. Here is how the process works.

MP SARGSYAN: The bill was signed into law by the President and has been active. We already have a small number of citizens who have applied and paid ֏15 million, which means they won't have to serve upon their return.
After landing at the airport they were accompanied to the law enforcement department where they filled out paperwork about their intent to pay the penalty. They are not being arrested but they are briefly barred from leaving the city until the penalty is paid and the criminal case is formally dropped. // [unclear on power of attorney]
There are 4 other options for paying a smaller sum in exchange for a shorter army service. Those options are still being refined and will become available soon. The sum collected from a 2-year evader is calculated to be approximately enough to hire an army contractor for 2 years, to "balance" it out.
The law applies to those above the age of 27. Up until now, they didn't have a legal path to return without being jailed, said the author of the bill.
source,

trial continues for motorcade police officer accused of fatally striking a pregnant woman in 2022

An officer stood at the center of the road to stop the pedestrian traffic to allow the PM's motorcade to pass. A pregnant woman was struck and killed by one of the passing police vehicles while crossing the street.
The evidence reportedly shows that the woman didn't notice the officer's initial warning not to cross.
The defense (driver) had requested a double forensic and video recording examination of the available materials. The prosecutors and the woman's family objected. The court sided with the prosecution.
The driver blames the traffic cop. Had she not listened to the traffic officer, she would have continued to cross and gotten out of the way, says the defendant. The video seemingly shows how the woman crosses most of the street, then stops and takes a step back before being struck by the speeding vehicle.
source, source,

interior ministry released the results of an EU-funded survey about public trust towards police \ 1,800 residents were called between January 11-25

65% believe the internal situation is safe.
Level of trust toward police: 45% high, 27% medium, 22% low.
Overall attitude toward the police: 57% positive, 27% neutral, 15% negative. (66% in provinces, 47% in Yerevan)
Biggest threat to public safety: 30% narcotics, 22% petty crimes, 15% corruption & abuse of power, 11% road safety.
Passport & visa department: 66% positive
Patrol Police: 63% positive
Community police: 51% positive
Do they respond quickly? 58% yes
Are they fair and respectful to you? 53% yes
Are they professional? 50% yes
Is the amount of force used by them justified? 44% no, 24% yes, 22% neutral
Are you satisfied with their handling of road safety? 64% yes
Are they good at maintaining public order during rallies? 5% yes [lol]
Are they good at handling domestic violence incidents? 38% yes, 27% don't know
Are they good at combatting narcotics? 32% yes, 33% no, 18% neutral
Are the police reforms visible? 53% got better, 27% remained the same, 9% got worse.
Are women capable of being officers? Multiple departments were listed. The "yes" is in the 72%-86% range. Only 43% believe female officers can be good at controlling violent crowds.
Should there be more female officers? 48% yes, 24% no, 25% neutral
82% agree that female officers can do a better job at helping female domestic violence victims.
source, source, source,

78% of Azerbaijani citizens support a peace agreement with Armenia

19% are against it
source,

anti-corruption: authorities arrest request permission to arrest the head of health inspection agency over alleged bribery

Kristina Abrahamyan is accused of accepting a bribe from the director of "Violeta" medical center.
source,

prominent ruling party MP is hospitalized for heart stenting

Gagik Melkonyan
source,

insects invade pine trees near Lake Sevan, prompting a research that could lead to major changes near Sevan

Earlier we learned that over 8,200 pine trees had dried in Sevan Park. The investigation has revealed that another 4,000 are dying, bringing the total affected area to 400 hectares.
Scientists have discovered a large number of harmful beetles and other pests. Some of them are new to the area. They were likely introduced by unsuspecting construction companies that used infested wood, believe the scientists. They noted the large number of wood brought by the organizers of the "Sevan Summit" last year. The organizer said they imported the wood from Dubai. Scientists don't know whether the wood was thoroughly inspected or not.
In 2017-2022 most of the imported untreated wood came from Turkey and Russia. The treated wood came mostly from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Canada, and the US.
The climate also had an impact on pines. The shores stretching from Noratus to Martuni were yellow for several months in 2023. Park agents say it was because the winter brought little snow, followed by sharply hot weather; the trees didn't have time to adapt. This weakens the tree and allows bugs to more easily destroy it, said scientists. This was observed in the 1950s as well.
Scientist Karagyan believes the primary cause of the ongoing pine issue is climate change, with the pests greatly contributing to the problem. Scientists advise cutting the damaged trees and moving them elsewhere. The nature ministry is studying the findings.
The authorities were waiting for the results of the scientific study to launch the campaign to eradicate the pests. Armenia has requested Japan to share its experience with this issue.
In the long term, they plan to introduce other types of trees near Lake Sevan because these pine trees are too vulnerable to pest and climate issues. The ministry says these trees are not meant for Sevan's climate and were planted too close to each other during the USSR. As a result, a 50-year-old tree doesn't have the expected dimensions.
The ministry wants to gradually replace these pines with Caucasian Pines that are more durable and better adapted for the Sevan climate. They are cooperating with Switzerland to create a list of trees that suit the best. There is a new decade-long program funded by Switzerland that aims to analyze Armenia's forests and assist with the planting process.
source,

Yerevan plans to build 400 wheelchair ramps and crosswalks for blind residents this year: video

The city has allocated ֏100 million and presented the design options on Wednesday. There will be three types of ramps. The surface will be made out of unpolished basalt to reduce slipperiness.
Strips of bumpy yellow tiles will be used on sidewalks to guide blind residents to crosswalks. More crosswalks will have audio devices for blind pedestrians.
source,

Armenia launches new seismic network and computing center to process data from Armenia and around the world

A new seismic network and a computing center have been launched in Armenia as part of the Seismic Network Expansion in the Caucasus and Central Asia program, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
It comes to replace an outdated center created in 2012. It will use new sensors with very high sensitivity and enable scientists to record all earthquakes.
8 stations were installed across Armenia. The data will be used to create probabilistic seismic hazard maps and zoning.
source,

You’ll remember me calling out the Morbid podcast a while ago, and now another relatively popular podcast called Killer Instinct has rushed together a Moors Murders episode too. It went live yesterday (Valentine’s Day) because she’s doing a theme for the month of February around “Killer Couples and Scorned Lovers”, which is another point to make in itself but whatever. I noticed a lot of inaccuracies in Savannah Brymer’s latest podcast episode, so I’m going to break down these mistakes by the order I heard them appear in. There are some really trivial issues that I’ve chosen to ignore - these are the ones that I feel are significant enough to point out so that people don’t get the wrong impression on Brady, Hindley or the Moors Murders:

MYRA HINDLEY’S EARLY LIFE

• Even though she was born in Crumpsall, it is not the suburb of Manchester where she grew up. She was born in Crumpsall’s maternity hospital, but spent her entire childhood growing up in another suburb a few miles away called Gorton.
• It’s never been confirmed that her father, Bob Hindley, came back from WWII with PTSD - that is just an admittedly-reasonable assumption made about him. He did come back an alcoholic, though. He beat Nellie (her mother) on the regular - typically when he had had a drink - but it needs to be noted that Myra Hindley was incredibly inconsistent with her accounts of recalling the abuse that she supposedly received at her father’s hands. She even told a girlfriend later on in her prison years that her mother beat her too.
• It is acknowledged that she was bullied, but what is just as important to acknowledge is that she was not ostracised because she always fought back. Savannah does not mention that bullying was part of the culture she grew up around in the rough slum of Gorton (not excusing it obviously, but just putting it into context that it was pretty dog-eat-dog at times so it’s not like Hindley was exclusively targeted), and how her father taught her to defend herself with violence, which earned her a fair bit of respect too.
• She also didn’t find it particularly difficult to make friends - she had a small circle of very close friends (although she mostly parted from them when she got involved with Ian Brady) but preferred it that way.

It’s not so much discussing Hindley’s childhood that was the issue here, though. These are relatively trivial. It was her retelling of Brady’s childhood that was more problematic.

IAN BRADY’S EARLY LIFE

• Savannah really glosses over the first few months of Brady’s life. Firstly, there is very little concrete information on the identity of Brady’s father. His mother (Peggy, who was a single and unmarried 27-year-old tearoom waitress living with a friend in a Glasgow suburb) told other people that Brady’s father had died three months before he was born, but this has never been accurately ascertained and even Brady himself was quite sceptical of that story. Some very reputable authors over the years have implied (though I don’t want to imply these directly because Peggy isn’t here to defend herself) that Peggy hadn’t become pregnant by her own choice and that there was more to the story than she was telling people. Given how illegitimacy and being a single mother were major taboos in Glasgow in the 1930s - as well as misogyny being rife - if this was the case then her excuses otherwise were perfectly understandable and I don’t want to sound like I’m judging her character on this. ** Savannah also glosses over that Peggy really struggled to provide for her son. She was forced to move out of the home she was living with her friend in and into a tenement flat in the Gorbals, which to this day remains one of the most deprived and violent slums in Glasgow. The room they occupied was dank and unhygienic, and even though she usually called a babysitter in, it isn’t known to what extent Brady may have been left alone in that cold flat whilst Peggy was having to work extra hours just to be able to provide for the two of them.
  
• Ian Brady did admit to abusing animals as a child - namely throwing cats out of windows “and things like that” because “everybody did in the Gorbals”. He later backtracked on those admissions and claimed that he had never abused an animal in his life. But the stories about him beheading cats and rabbits etc. are all unconfirmed (and whether many these acts were even witnessed by the people who later told these stories to journalists, or were just heard somewhere along the grapevine, is unknown too) so take them with a grain of salt.
  
• Brady didn’t “drop out of school” at 15, 15 was a normal age to leave school back then. But he did leave with no significant qualifications because of how little he applied himself, and the fact that he was a delinquent.
  
• The story around his early girlfriend, Evelyn, is also not entirely confirmed - specifically the reports that the relationship ended because he threatened her with a flick-knife. It was undoubtedly his fault that the relationship ended, but the straw that broke the camel’s back is unknown and there are many reports as to what actually happened. Savannah falsely states that he was arrested and charged for that incident, which he wasn’t - it was never reported. He had simply been charged on either seven or nine counts (I’m not sure which is the correct number as they have both been recorded) of housebreaking and theft, and that was what ignited his move to live back in with Peggy (who was by now in Manchester).
  
• I’m not sure on the claim that Brady’s co-workers at Millwards “really enjoyed him” holds up. By all accounts, his co-workers found him very surly and unfavourable. His boss, Tommy Craig, actually stated that because “he was so bad tempered about anything that upset him”, he would have considered sacking him if it hadn’t been so difficult to get a replacement and he ended up just writing Brady’s bad behaviour off for the sake of keeping the peace in the office. He recalled that Brady was only “adequate and no more” at his job.
  

BRADY AND HINDLEY’S EARLY RELATIONSHIP

• They weren’t “immediately drawn” to each other. Hindley claimed that she was immediately drawn to Brady, but Brady wasn’t interested in her at all for months. About six months after she first started working there, she would write entries in her diary about how in love with Brady she was, and then this all fell apart in October of that year (1961) when there was some sort of altercation in the office that Hindley inadvertently ended up getting involved in, which caused Brady to stop speaking to her for months. But Hindley didn’t stop trying to get his attention, and she succeeded in December when he caught her reading a poetry book on her lunch break and showed interest in it. A couple of weeks later, they went out on a pub crawl after dancing together at the office Christmas party.
• The point Savannah made about the letters Hindley was writing to her friends about Brady need to be put in far more context. For one thing, these were never called into evidence. Then Savannah says something that sounds like complete nonsense: **>“You guys have heard of the sandwich method, where you say something really good, and then you give little bit of a critique, and then you say something really good again. It's like compliment, critique, compliment. That's basically how she formatted these letters.”
• That sounds like an invented detail to me. There is one account of an instance where Hindley said something bad about Brady in a letter, and what had happened was that she wrote a letter to one of her friends in her presence, which instructed her to retain the letter and hand it to the police if needs be. This account is according to that friend. She detailed how she feared for her safety because she believe Brady had drugged her one night and she had no clue what he might have done to her whilst she was unconscious. She then apparently listed the names of up to three men (though Hindley said she couldn’t remember this) who she believed might also have been in danger from Brady. Hindley later retrieved this letter from the friend and presumably destroyed it, because there’s no surviving copy of the letter. This account was never called into evidence against her because when the friend disclosed it to police, word got out and she became the victim of a local hate campaign so she decided to withdraw her statement.
• Savannah then alludes to a common narrative that Hindley altered her appearance for the sake of pleasing Brady. She did start dressing differently, but there’s no real evidence that Brady was this influence on her (there have been loose connections drawn by biographers onto Hindley trying to resemble a female Nazi concentration camp guard named Irma Grese, because she possessed a photo of her). She also falsely states that it was around this time that Hindley bleached her hair - photographic evidence shows that Hindley had actually been bleaching her hair years before meeting Brady (linked photo shows her on holiday in Blackpool in 1958 with bleached hair - she was sixteen years old in the photo).

THE MURDERS

I’ve been researching these murders for several years now for the sake of establishing the truth around what we know, because so many commentators misreport them. I could spend all day writing about these accounts, because if you know anything about this case you’ll know that Brady and Hindley later told vastly different stories as to how they happened. A lot of biographies on the case don’t clarify these details and so piecing together all of the versions of these accounts that I have at my disposal, I have prepared my own explanation of these accounts pre-prepared on the first three victims so far (Pauline Reade, John Kilbride and Keith Bennett) so if you want to read them, click on their names. *Be warned that their victims were all children, and there are very upsetting details of sexual abuse and rape contained in them.*. I’ll do the same for the final two victims - Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans - when I get around to it, and they’ll be posted in MoorsMurders.
That being said, what I will talk about here are the blatant errors where evidence contradicts what Savannah states.

• First of all, Pauline Reade was not “on her way home from a school dance” when she was abducted. She was walking to a dance at a railway club in nearby Openshaw and it was not a school event. Her parents knew she was walking there alone, but because Gorton was one of those areas where “everyone knew everyone” her mother was reassured that she’d know people at the dance. It was early in the evening and Pauline was actually really early for the dance.
• Like Savannah acknowledges, Pauline knew Myra Hindley - but what happened is that Hindley offered her a lift to the dance but asked if they could go to Saddleworth Moor first to look for a glove she said she had lost that day, to which Pauline accepted. Savannah’s retelling of Pauline’s actual murder is consistent with both Brady’s and Hindley’s accounts.
• John Kilbride was not one of three children, he was one of seven.
• What Savannah neglects to mention here is that Hindley and Brady hired a car for this abduction. They did not abduct John in the same van that they abducted Pauline Reade in.
• By all accounts and evidence, John’s throat was not cut. Hindley stated that Brady had told her that he attempted to cut John’s throat with a serrated/blunt blade, but that didn’t work and so instead Brady strangled him to death with a ligature. Brady claimed that he manually strangled John. But by the time John’s body was found two years later, it was so badly decomposed that the coroner could not establish a definitive cause of death, so based on these accounts we can only assume that John was strangled in some way.
• The retelling of Keith’s abduction and murder is almost entirely incorrect. First of all, Keith was walking to his grandmother’s house when Hindley (Brady either was or wasn’t there, read the write-up I linked above for more explanation) approached him. Hindley never claimed that she waited in the van as Keith was being killed either - she said that she was told to wait at a raised plateau on the moor with her binoculars (maybe after half a mile of walking into the moor).
• The retelling of Lesley’s abduction and murder is mostly consistent, but I need to clarify that they did not audiotape her murder. They audiotaped themselves attempting to restrain, gag and undress Lesley, and the reason I want to highlight this is because this recording was sixteen minutes long. We don’t know how long either her sexual assault or murder lasted afterwards, meaning that even though what was recorded on that tape was absolutely despicable and sickening, the full extent of her horrific ordeal is unimaginable.
• Most of the retelling of Edward Evans’ abduction and murder - as well as the aftermath - is consistent. But there is one clarification I should make, and that is that David Smith (Hindley’s brother-in-law who witnessed the murder) was not a “man” - he was a 17-year-old boy who Brady had been grooming for several months. He was actually six days younger than Edward Evans was.

AFTERMATH

• The evidence pertaining to Lesley Ann Downey (I.e. the nine pornographic photos they took of her) were not found in the home - they were found in one of two deposited suitcases locked away in the left-luggage office at Manchester Central Station. Brady and Hindley had dropped them off there in advance of Edward’s murder.
• Savannah’s interpretation of Brady’s trial account of Edward’s death is incorrect. Brady never claimed that “somebody else” killed Edward - he admitted that he hit Edward until he “shut up” but that it wasn’t his intent to kill him, and claimed that it was David Smith who strangled him (which he much later admitted wasn’t the case, and that he strangled Edward as David watched in sheer horror and panic). Because Edward’s official cause of death was listed as “cerebral contusion and haemmorhage of the skull due to blows to the head, accelerated by strangulation by ligature”, Brady tried to twist that to make it seem like David killed him, but the truth was that Edward would have died from the axe blows alone - he just would have died more slowly and excruciatingly. Brady only strangled him to accelerate his death - presumably so that Hindley’s grandmother (who was upstairs) wouldn’t wake up from her tablet-induced sleep. *There are a couple of smaller inaccuracies relating to the defence that I won’t go into because there isn’t much point.
• Savannah also glosses over how exactly it was that Hindley and Brady came to confess. It is true that Brady’s admission to the Sunday People journalist (Fred Harrison) in 1985 was the first time (at least the first recorded time) that he admitted to being responsible for the deaths of Pauline and Keith, but it didn’t instantly trigger Hindley’s confessions. The letter Keith Bennett’s mother wrote to her wasn’t until more than a year later, and Hindley did not confess to police until 1987.
• Police didn’t necessarily like Hindley’s tears during her confessions were performative - she actually had to be tranquilised during the confessions because it was so difficult for her to recall certain details - but they did believe that she had given a very calculated confession and she was perhaps more involved than she had let on.
• There are a few complicated reasons why a second trial did not go ahead - to say it was because “they were already serving life sentences” is reductive. Brady would have been mentally unfit to stand trial for one, and also Pauline Reade’s father actually objected to it because her mother had suffered a psychotic break with everything that had happened - it wouldn’t have been good for her to have to be put through all of that when they had only just laid their daughter to rest after 24 years of not knowing. There are other considerations that are too complicated to go into for the sake of this post.
• One of the most common lies that gets spread around this case is that Ian Brady was moved to Ashworth in 1985 after he was diagnosed as a psychopath. This was not his diagnosis - he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and acute paranoia. He was acknowledged as a psychopath back when the definition of that term was more all-encompassing, even in the years prior to 1985, but those definitions don’t hold up now. By the time of his death in 2017, Brady was acknowledged instead to have had a complex personality disorder with narcissistic and (sexually) sadistic traits, as well as paedophilia.
• It is also irresponsible to even entertain the question of “I'm interested to know what you think about Keith and his remains, and were they found, were they not found, and everything that comes along with that”. Russell Edwards is a charlatan, and what was actually found was a piece of plant material. Keith Bennett’s brother (Alan) has evidence that Edwards orchestrated this search as part of a publicity stunt to promote his upcoming book on the case, which has seemingly now been shelved because of all the backlash. There is plenty of evidence on the internet that discredits Edwards and his entire team.

And remember, whenever someone says "the federation wouldn't do that", oh yes they fucking would.
CW: sweet lovey dovey romantical moment, an exploration of the role of exterminators as thought police, lockheed martin sales pitch
Memory transcription subject: Jackson Kern, UN-Venlil Interspecies Liaison
Date [standardized human time]: September 19, 2136
There were certain pleasures you just couldn't take from a man. As long as he had a rock and a stick, or a rock and an unloaded rifle, he could play hit-the-rock-with-the-stick. And if he was playing it with a rifle, instead of a stick, he could be made to mow the entire base's lawn with a pair of scissors by a super swole drill instructor.
Learned that one the hard way.
Anyway, one such pleasure was the aspect of pleasurable company. No, I wasn't thinking about that kind, although I supposed it did technically apply as well.
If you dropped me in the middle of the Sahara Desert, armed with nothing but my wits and this really cool bone I found being picked by vultures, which I would inevitably give a name because I'd lose my shit in a place like that, I could probably claw my way back to civilization by drinking camel blood until I could use Bobby Bone to signal a helicopter.
Without the bone, I would have a problem, though.
Anyway, what I meant by pleasurable company was friends. Good people were everywhere, and even if you couldn't find any, you could always draw a face on a volleyball and talk to it like a crazy person. If you didn't have at least a volleyball to talk to, or even a voice in your head if you were really desperate, I couldn't help you.
It was a testament to the natural charm of the human race that, even on an alien world and surrounded by people who wanted me dead, I had managed to gain allies. Three of them, to be exact.
One computer hacker who'd make one hell of a guy in the chair: check! One lovely exterminator lady who probably knows where bodies are buried: check! One mentally damaged purple terrorist who not even Saul Goodman could save from prison time: also check!
I kind of wondered what Kalkey was doing. I hoped he was alright.
Anyway, not even the cold black void of space could stop a man from having game. Even if I wasn't technically in the cold black void of space. And my game was still technically Black Ops: Russian Winter levels of steaming dogshit.
But having dogshit game did not mean I could not pull. On the contrary, in fact, I did pull. I pulled arguably the finest woman on all of Venlil Prime. That was why I was here.
There was a certain kind of woman who you wanted because she made your little soldier stand at attention. You looked at her, with a fat ass and curves and all that shit, and you thought 'damn, that bitch is fine as hell'.
Needless to say, Jelim was not that kind of woman. I mean, I do love a woman in uniform, but there was something more than just looks to her. She was intelligent, confident, charismatic, and all those other things that made the little Jack Kerns in my brain start going 'AWOOGA! AWOOGA!' with their eyeballs popping out of their heads like in those ancient cartoons.
I was never the best at English class, even though I did technically speak it, so you know it meant something when I say I would genuinely write love poems about her.
Yes, love poems. Those cheesy, Hallmark story type love poems that made you gag when you read them, too. I don't play about my love poems.
At the moment, however, I was not writing love poems. I didn't think I'd be any good at it anyway, but it was the thought that counted here. Probably. Hopefully. Moving on. At the moment, I was trudging up the steps to Jelim's one-bedroom apartment. I had on a red polo shirt, black pants, some cologne I stole from a Russian's corpse, and a concealed pistol.
Plus, like, underwear and all that. I wasn't going to just raw-dog the jeans like that.
I had my pistol tucked in my waistband, because people were out to get me, and I had a bouquet of flowers tucked in a plastic bag because I cared about Jelim a lot more than I cared about the environment. In my defense, the people I knew probably cared about it even less.
I knocked on her door in a secret knock that was so secret that she didn't even know it, and she opened it a few seconds later. As always, she looked beautiful. Granted, she'd look beautiful even if she had crawled through mud and dead fish for six miles, but that was beside the point.
"Damn. You look beautiful." What can I say? I tell it like it is. I didn't really know what aliens did to look nice, but she had obviously done it. She'd even put on some touches just for me here and there, if the eyelashes were anything to go by.
"Thanks, love. I try my best." she chirped. Just hearing her call me her love sent tingles down my spine, like I was in a firefight but in the best way possible. She reached out her hand. "Shall we?"
I took it, letting her lead me into what I had to admit was a damn nice place. I used to be entertaining the idea of having Salvek talk to me through an earpiece throughout this whole process, so that I could spit better game to Jelim, but that was a dumbass idea so I dropped it. "Damn nice place." I said. "Looks good."
Holy shit, maybe I should have made Salvek talk me through this. If I fumble a woman I'm already dating, there's no hope left for me.
"Oh, just wait until you see what I've still got in store." You see, this was good game. This was the kind of game that had powers over people. Christ, it's like she has a fucking voodoo doll. Salvek had this kind of game, making him probably the only computer scientist I knew who had the ability to talk to women. Me? I had the kind of game that came with being super duper jacked.
As it turned out, what she had in store was romantic as all hell. Like that one black dude from that old movie who was like 'come over here and kiss me on my hot mouth, I'm feeling romantical' except she wasn't black nor was she a dude.
There was a romantic dinner, or at least an attempt at a romantic dinner, laid out on the table. I saw two dishes, which looked like if a plate had spent some time in the Moscow Radioactive Exclusion Zone, both filled with some sort of green... thing?
What the fuck is that? It looks like the kind of shit you see in swamps. Speaking of, what even is that shit you see in swamps?
"I don't know how palatable this is for you, but it's genuine Nishtal algae." That's what it is! Algae! Those tiny microscopic plant things! "I've been, uh, saving it for a special occasion."
I sat down across from Jelim, giving my algae goop the stink-eye in what I hoped was the least obvious way possible. "It looks delicious," I lied. "Very healthy."
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if eating it didn't just kill me outright. If you took a Geiger counter to this... sludge, I'd bet it would start fucking clicking.
Not that I told Jelim that, of course. Hearing any insult against her was like getting a beatdown from six big brolic black men with names like Requis or Jontavious, and I wasn't trying to give myself a beatdown today.
I took a tentative sip of the goop. It tasted... palatable. By palatable, I meant choke-down-able, but it looked like one of the 'unmentionables' in the Putingrad sewers so I let it slide.
"Is it good?" Jelim asked tentatively. She was a bit nervous, and I wasn't very good at reading people so that probably meant she was a lot nervous.
I thought for a bit, figuring out how to phrase 'this tastes like ass' in an inoffensive way. "It's made with love. That's what matters."
"Oh, no, I hated making it." Jelim chuckled. "I'm a terrible cook." Yeah, I can tell.
I thought of something else to say, because no way in hell was I gonna tell her that. "You said work had you down." I changed the subject. "Can I, like, help with that?" Honestly, I wasn't sure if I wanted to help. If you set a litter of puppies on fire and you didn't feel bad about that, I didn't know what to tell you.
"So, this is going to take some explaining." Jelim sighed. Her vibrant eyes hardened with the thousand-yard stare. "Predator Disease, as it is officially defined, is a catch-all mental condition treatable only by lobotomy, electroshock therapy, or heavy medication and contracted by exposure to predator taint. It's why we burn the bodies," she explained. Most of that sounds like bullshit to me, but okay.
"Of course, most of that is bullshit." Huh. Surprisingly self-aware, for an alien. "Predator Disease, as it really is, is a blanket term that can define anything from 'danger to oneself and others' to 'really likes trains' or even just 'loser with no friends'." Whoa. Holy shit. These people are drinking the stupid juice big-time. "A lot of times, you can get diagnosed just for not conforming to the system."
Whoa. Fuck stupid juice, these people are drinking the Nazi juice big-time. Fucking 1984 Thought Police juice.
"You..." I really did not want to ask this question. I really, really did not want to ask this question because this answer was not going to be the one I wanted to hear. "You said that people can be lobotomized? Because they're not complying with the system?"
Jelim shifted uneasily in her chair. "That's standard policy."
"And exterminators are the ones who handle the lobotomizing?" Please, dear Lord in Heaven above us God, who sacrificed His only son Jesus Christ as penance for our sins... I wasn't even Christian. Nor was I religious.
Jelim's thousand-yard stare changed from the stare of a man who had seen terrible things to the stare of a man who had done them. Even if she technically wasn't a man. "Too many do."
All that glittered was not gold. Jelim had, unfortunately, overseen this lobotomizing. She had to have. "Answer me honestly," I said. "Did you, at any point in time, 'treat' somebody for this illness?"
"Only the ones that needed treatment." Huh. Well, that's a start. That is a promising start. "I mean, just because most of the diagnoses are for things like deviance or noncompliance doesn't mean there aren't actually dangerous people out there." Fair. I could totally see a Venlil Alex Kruger running around after all this terrorist shit.
"Define for me exactly who needs treatment."
"Anybody whose condition makes them a danger to themselves or others." That answer was quick, given with practiced ease. "If they ask me to assess somebody who doesn't qualify, I fudge the test."
That's my girl! That's my fucking girl! "Oh, thank god." I chuckled. "For a second, I thought I was dating a Nazi, holy fuck." She looked at me funny. "The Nazis did a lot of bad shit. It's a long story." I slid my plate of goop toward the center of the table. "Yeah, and I'm really not hungry anymore."
Jelim stood up, took both our plates, and dumped them in a convenient food-dumping place. "I had it custom-installed," she explained. "My job tends to ruin the appetite." She sat back down.
"Yeah, that figures." For the record, I was not an eloquent man. If I knew something better to say at the moment, I would've said it. "Exterminators do shit. Like, actually really fucked up shit."
That thousand-yard stare was actually starting to get really worrying. "Yeah, it's... hard, knowing that. I don't know how some of these people sleep at night." Oh, it's actually really easy. Just close your eyes, think happy thoughts, and start counting sheep. You'll be out like a light!
She clacked her beak dryly, despite the fact she had been drinking goop just a few minutes ago. "You know, it's funny, this was so romantic and then we had to start talking about Predator Disease." She sounded almost mournful, which was usually a sign that something was wrong.
"Isn't that why you brought me here?" I asked. "So I could listen to you infodump about the way the Federation silences its dissidents?" She flinched at that last part. I noticed.
"Yeah, that." Well, damn. Credit where credit's due, that is an honest woman. "I wanted to know where I stood, morally, I mean. If I could still deserve to look you in the eye."
Fuck it. Fuck it. I may as well just say it. "You're an angel." She really was. Beautiful, alien, intelligent, maybe not a series of rotating wheels of fire, but you can't win 'em all. "You are a ray of light surrounded by clouds and I love you for it." Damn. I'm spitting some serious shit right now.
It had just occurred to me how badly Jelim could've turned out. The thing about vegan fascism, like any other fascism, was that it had one really fucking good propaganda machine. I had yet to see any of it, of course, but I figured that you didn't need to shout your message that loud if you could just silence all the other voices.
The thing about propaganda machines, even the really fucking good ones, was that they were never 100% effective. Something always fell through the cracks. "I'm an exterminator," said thing scoffed. "'Angel' is supposed to be a job requirement."
"I don't think angels get very far there." I had my opinions already formed about the Extermination Guild. They weren't good.
"Of course they don't," snapped Jelim. "The system is broken, and morality dictates you change it, but changing the system makes you its enemy. It's a battle you can't win." She paused for a moment. "The whole thing is built on fear, you know. Or, at least, that's what I choose to believe. The Federation is designed to protect and serve its constituents, and the exterminators are a symptom of that, but they're too paranoid to see change as anything but a threat. They lash out at it, like some kind of wounded animal."
"They've been fighting for their survival for, what, the past hundred years?" I replied. "I can't imagine what that's done to the Federation as a society."
"Nothing good." Yeah, that was just about the understatement of the century. "Honestly, the more I think about the Federation, the less I can justify it. It's an ancient system, one designed to remain stagnant, and it'll do anything to ensure that stagnation."
"Why, though?" I had to ask. "Evolution is the natural flow of life, you can either adapt or die." Judging by her face, this was resonating so far. The Federation brainrot had not kicked in. "So why in hell would they choose not to adapt?"
Jelim shrugged. At least, I recognized it as a shrug. "Quite frankly, I don't have the slightest clue why."
That gave me an idea. A really cool one, actually. "What about new cultures and things? I mean, with three hundred worlds, there's gotta be a fucking crazy melting pot somewhere."
"Oh!" Jelim chirped, also having had a really cool idea. "That just gave me the most wonderful idea." She got up and went back into the living room. I followed her. "I've been wanting to show someone this for ages." She held in her hands the big-ass book from that small table in the corner. An actual book. I hadn't seen one of those in ages.
"What is it?" I asked. "A big-ass book?"
"This," she explained, settling in one of the chairs, "is a collection of all the Krakotl culture's myths and legends from before first contact." Her voice turned sour. "All the surviving ones, anyway."
"They're usually told in song form." Jelim flipped open to a page near the middle of the book. I sat down in my own chair, which I found to be small as hell. I switched to the couch real fast. "Can I sing for you?"
I nodded. "Don't have to ask me twice."
She read the book, closed it, and put it to the side. "I never could understand this one," she said. "It's too metaphorical."
"Maybe I can figure it out," I suggested. "I'm no expert, but sometimes it just takes a different perspective on things."
"That's the idea." Then she stood, doing whatever singers do just before they start to sing. She cleared her throat. Then, like the choir that sang on the birth of Jesus, she began to sing.
"And here came they all from high in the sky, here came they all from on high," It was beautiful. Like the voice of an angel singing Jesus hymns, or the best Christian choir on two worlds. "And they broke the world with their steel from the sky, and all we had would die," Damn. That got dark.
"And all that we fought, for all that we bled, all it was in vain. It all was for naught, our heroes made dead, through cinder and through flame," This was a lament. A lament for a lot of shit. It was like if the Jews wrote songs about the Holocaust camps. At least, that's what I got out of it.
"They burned and they broke, and they left us no hope, submit or be destroyed," In Russia, people would conceal messages in their songs. Apparently, on Nishtal too. Even if I wasn't sure what that message was. "Our world became choked, by a gleaming foil rope, of empathy devoid," Jelim really did have a beautiful singing voice. Beautiful and tragic. She could make a killing as an opera singer of something.
"They poured us like steel into the cast of their whim, to burn out who we are. And those who did see, they did sing loud this hymn, to shield us from the stars." Her voice wavered on some of the high notes. I didn't mind.
"I sing for you here to keep who we are, until it may return. We sing far and near and we sing near and far, for song they cannot burn." She ended her song on the most beautiful note, such that it would make angels weep. I, not being an angel, did not.
"That was beautiful," I said. "Gives off war song vibes, but not good ones. Like, really, I think you lost that fucking war." Did the Federation, like, colonize Nishtal? Hernan Cortez that shit? I paused for a bit, rubbing brain cells together. "Sounds like the songs the Russian rebels used to sing, except less angry and more sad. Did the writer go through, like, an existential trauma?"
Jelim looked proud, for a moment, but there was also a sense of sorrow to it. Probably because it was a really sad song. "Not really, but it is really wordy. A lot of poetic prose, which was typical of a lot of works of the time." What time? "If it were produced later, I'd have assumed it was about an Arxur raid, but I don't know how it would make sense in the time period."
I had just realized I didn't even know when this was made. Normally, knowing that helped in understanding things. "When was this made?"
"Actually during the later stages of the uplift of Nishtal. It's one of the few surviving works from that period," Jelim explained. "It's funny, the rest are so upbeat and uplifting, it really does make you wonder why this one is so dark. I really don't know what was running through this guy's head."
"Sometimes, artists do stuff just for the shock value," I ventured. "I once heard of a guy who smeared his own shit on a canvas and tried to sell it to a museum. Asked for a lot of money, too."
"Well, yeah, but that's either a tax break or a sign of mental illness." The idea came to me that I should ask if Jelim would have had him sent away, but that was a stupid idea so I didn't actually go through with it. "I got Salvek the job."
He got the job. It's not what you know, but who you know! Or something like that. He could now take down a terrorist group while sipping Venlil gamer soda from his mother's basement, and honestly, I had to respect the hustle. "Thank you. It means a lot for him." And it was a lot safer than being shot at. That was another bonus.
"I still don't understand how he'll help, but you seem to have your head on straight. I trust you."
"I'm telling you, you need to look into electronic warfare." I started up a Lockheed Martin sales pitch. "It's an entirely new, uncontested field of combat. Winning engagements would be like taking candy from a baby."
"I'll keep that in mind the next time somebody shoots at me," Jelim scoffed. "I'll be sure to hack the bullets away."
"No, I mean, like, in space. Targeting sensors, missile guidance, all that shit is electronic." This was less LockMart salesman and more über autist, but I didn't care.
"That's an excellent point, but I'm not in space, am I?" Jelim chirped. "You have great ideas, but you need to stick to the here and now. You're a detective, not a soldier. Think detective."
I was a soldier, and you could tell I was a soldier because I needed other people to tell me how to think. "What if we just arrested every single terrorist?" Even if I didn't do it very well. We have evidence. Lots of it. We can lock these people up.
"That's what we're doing, Jack."
"Oh."
Jelim sat next to me on the couch. There were chairs, probably for parties or gatherings or some shit, but they were uncomfortable as hell. "We need to take things slowly, in stages, to ensure nobody slips through our net. Rest assured, we have them all under surveillance." Oh. That made a lot more sense. "Do you, uh, mind staying the night?" she chirped. That shit had me giggling like a six year old child with unrestricted internet access. By seven, they had probably seen too many beheadings to giggle. That was how things were.
Granted, I kept it suave and smooth on the outside. I had to play it cool. "Shit, I'd love to!" Great. Real smooth, Casanova. "Let me tell Salvek, so he doesn't think I died."
JackedMF: I'm gonna stay the night at jelims house
Salvek: what am I supposed to do about it
JackedMF: know? I don't want you thinking I died bro
Salvek: nobody thinks that
Salvek: I'm not sure if you even can be killed atp
You know what? I was going to take what I could get. A compliment was a compliment.
Naturally, I showed it to Jelim. "Look at this, he thinks I'm Rambo."
"You see, that is a remarkably civilian perspective to have." Jelim looked at the datapad, blinked once, and then flexed her talons. Damn sharp talons, too. "Claw in the right place, and things die fast."
Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said about how being an exterminator fucks somebody up. Like, you can tell she's seen some service.
"When did you join the Extermination Guild?" I asked. "Random question, I know, but I figure I should learn."
"When I was twelve." Oh. That explains it. "My parents are both former exterminators, active duty at the time, but they never forced any of it on me. I joined up of my own free will."
"Why? Twelve is, like, really young to be handling a flamethrower." That was a stupid question. If I had realized it was a stupid question, I wouldn't have asked it, but I didn't and now here we were.
"Honestly, I think I fell in love with the uniform." I had read somewhere that fascist societies loved their uniforms. I had also read a lot of other things about fascist societies, but I could only vaguely remember those. "All the pride and duty and service came after the fact."
I nodded, more to show I was interested than anything. "Figures. The Navy sure whipped me straight." It was the war that whipped me straight. The Navy just gave me discipline.
"Did you love the uniform?" Jelim joked. It was only kind of funny, but I could respect the hustle.
"I loved the money."
"You would never have joined the exterminators," she laughed. "It took me fourteen years and, honestly, I forget how many awards I have." She trailed off. Damn. That is a scary motherfucker right there. Even I haven't forgotten how many medals I have. "It took me fourteen years for me to finally make decent money at this job."
"You would have loved the military. Word for word. That's exactly what it was like." Besides the flamethrowers, of course. And the fascism. "Or the CIA, but the CIA is more hush-hush about it."
"The CIA?" Jelim asked. "Jack, you always forget that I don't know Earth. I don't know humanity like you do."
"Think exterminators, except spies. And without any flamethrowers. The only real connection is that they both do a lot of shady shit."
Jelim looked briefly offended, briefly confused, and briefly like 'oh yeah I did that shit'. Then she got real quiet. Like, real real quiet.
"You're not half bad, though. You're actually a decent human being. Krakotl being. Whatever you are, you're a good one." I tried to salvage the situation.
"Yeah, I'm a good person," she said. "I can count the number of good people I know on one claw." She wrung her head in what I assumed was sorrow. "If the CIA is anything like the exterminators, it needs to change. Adapt or die."
I nodded. "Damn straight. Adapt or die."
Jelim curled up closer to me, because her exterminator brain equated this with a romantic moment. I wasn't going to complain, of course, but I did find it a bit weird. "We could do it, you know." Huh? "Make a change." Oh. Huh. I was expecting that to go somewhere else.
"You could do it." I was supportive of my girl, of course I was, but I was also realistic. That was the important part. "I'm just a soldier."
"You're a human. About the finest specimen of one I've seen." That was flattering, but probably not true. I had done some shit. "I need someone to guide me, to show me what evil is necessary and what's better off excised." I honestly wasn't sure what that word meant. Last I heard, it was talking about cancer tumors. "Without you, I'd be lost. Shackled by chains I can't even see."
She looked up at me. I looked down at her. "Together," I said. "We'll do this together."
Yeah, exterminators by and large were mostly pieces of shit. Some of them, though? Some of them weren't half bad.
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WHY ARE MISTREATED MUSLIMS MORE VIOLENT ON AVERAGE THAN OTHER MISTREATED PEOPLE?
Are the Germans thrown out of Pomerania, Silesia, Sudetenland, etc., during or just after 1945 entitled to wage war, engage in terrorism, etc., to get their land back? How about the Greeks tossed out of Turkey after World War I (1914-1918)? How many Chinese airliners have the Tibetans blown up? Why is it that, in this post-colonialist, post-Cold War era (since 1992), although most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims? How oppressed were Toronto’s Muslims such as to justify a few organizing a terrorist plot, many or most of whom had been born in Canada? How poor were they, how oppressed were they, how unequal is Canada's GNI, how meddling has Canada's foreign policy been in the past hundred years, etc.? Likewise, does Israel oppress the Palestinians in the semi-occupied territories any worse than (say) Saddam, Assad, and Fahd oppressed their respective nations’ peoples, if one uses the past half century of general conditions as a measuring stick? Is Israel’s recent treatment of the Palestinians as second class citizens any worse than the Muslim treatment of Jews and Christians as dhimmis over the centuries? How much Islamic terrorism (i.e., “blowback”) did the godless Communists in the Soviet Union suffer when it occupied half a dozen Muslim countries in central Asia? Why did America, despite occupying no Muslim countries then, suffer far more blowback than the Soviet Union did? Scott Atran, a research scientist, published in the "New York Times" (2003) his findings that suicide bombers generally had more educated and affluent personal backgrounds (SES). We have to look to religious culture and political philosophy, not just sociological/economic/political administrative causes, for terrorist activities being resorted to more commonly by some people compared those in other civilizations. Lots of mistreated, oppressed, poor people live in this world in societies with greatly unequal incomes that could provoke envy. But not all societies produce equally large numbers of suicide bombers. Such sociological economic/political/military variables (i.e., input) as poverty, income inequality, political oppression, percentage of young men unemployed, recent experience with imperialism/colonialism, family size, experiences with swift and sure retaliation by the victims of terrorism, exported morally rotten media influence, etc., simply don't explain the vast differences in output (i.e., non-state terrorist activities in the post Cold War period since 1992, especially when done internationally by groups far from home) when comparing Islam's record to China's, India's, Latin America's, Black Africa's, etc. Marxist influence, which pervades political science's analytical work still, needs to be rejected when it denies these ideological variables have influence independent of any material means.
Ideas have consequences. The Marxist paradigm that economics drives culture exclusively is simply false. The superstructure of ideology also influences the mode of production. The sociological, materialistic approach has its uses, but it is distinctly limited. It has a secular bias as well. Non-religious people have major trouble thinking faith seriously motivates religious people's actions. This bias needs to be discarded from standard political science analyses of social movements and policy making. Ideological variables may not be easily put into covariant regression analyses, because they have a psychological, mental reality that’s hard to quantify. For example, how can a political scientist quantify appeasement vs. “shift and sure retaliation” as effective deterrents to terrorism? Similarly, to what extent does the West’s cultural decadence and moral rot, as reflected in its media that’s exported around the world, set off opposition by social conservatives elsewhere in the world? A crude means of “explaining” variations in the amount of terrorism for each nation (post-1992), however, would be to set up a covariant regression analysis using all those standard sociological variables about poverty (i.e., per capita GNP, etc.), unequal incomes (i.e., GNI), oppression (potentially quantifiable using Freedom House rankings or Amnesty International reports), recent experience with someone else's imperialism/colonialism, the unemployment rate for males 15-40 (as a stand-in for “angry young men”), etc. As described further below, various social scientists actually have ground out such analyses, to the detriment of the thesis that ignorance (i.e., lack of education), poverty, and economic inequality are the main drivers of terrorism. But then, add in a variable for the percentage of a nation's population that's Muslim (or has strong convictions about Islam’s relevance to politics), and then how much better the fit becomes!
Let's consider another way the ideological variable manifests itself when comparing Islam with other civilizations. Both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. led movements that deliberately chose to use non-violent methods to gain their political ends. To resort to terrorism and guerilla warfare is an easy option for a mistreated group of people, but these exceptional men creatively chose a more ethical means to gain their political ends. Is it conceivable for widespread political movements using non-violent methods to develop within an (oppressed) Islamic nation? After all, such tactics would have been effective against the Israelis on the West Bank, for unlike the oppressed under Stalin and Hitler, but like the British Raj and the white Southern segregationists, the Zionists weren't going to engage in routine mass slaughters to hold onto power because of their traditions of democracy and constitutional rights.
What specific right-wing Christian religious leaders today advocate specifically religious military crusades? Where are the radical Christian theorists, politicians, and terrorist leaders who are equivalents to Islamist leaders like Qutb and Khomeini? A key point of Spencer's "Religion of Peace" is that all the traditional right-wing religious bogeymen that people like Kevin Phillips and Chris Hedges cite have far less dangerous records and aspirations than the Islamists' do. We have all sorts of Muslim jihadists around the world engaged in terrorist activities of one kind or another based upon their interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith. Christian leaders like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, the late Jerry Falwell, etc. lead no terrorist groups, but simply wish to restore through democratic electioneering 1950's America culturally, minus legal segregation. Even the Reconstructionists certainly aren't looking to create a domestic theocratic bloodbath, as Spencer shows. The empirical evidence of the world today is that the Bible, by itself, simply doesn't inspire the same level of religiously motivated violence by its believers as the Quran’s do.
What about the Buddhist monks who killed themselves to protest Diem's regime in South Vietnam? When they died, they didn't kill others also. How many Muslims have done the same in Palestine and elsewhere? Of course, Hindu civilization has produced both Gandhi and the BJP’s terrorism. But where is the Muslim “Gandhi”? Where is the Palestinian “Martin Luther King”? What major political pacifist figure has appeared in Islam to off-set the actions of Muslim terrorist groups? How much terrorism do about 1.1 billion Indians produce compared to a similar number of Muslims? (And in India’s case, Muslim Kashmiri rebels produce much of its terrorism). A fundamental difference arises here, as Robert Spencer explains (Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, pp. 175, 199):
The frequency and commonality of such acts of violence [by adherents of any religion]--and how close they are to each religion's mainstream--is determined to a great degree by the actual teachings of each religion. Islamic apologists like to point to Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph as examples of Christian terrorists, but there are three reasons why McVeigh and Rudolph are not equivalent to bin Laden and Zarqawi: *They did not even attempt to justify their actions by reference to Christian Scripture and tradition. *They were not acting on mainstream Christian teachings. *There are not large Christian groups around the world dedicated to implementing the same teachings. The difference between Osama bin Laden and Eric Rudolph is the difference between aberrant acts and aberrant teachings. Any human being with a belief system can do abominable things. But abominable acts are more likely to come in greater numbers and frequency when they are encouraged and perpetuated by religious texts and those who teach from them. . . . To adopt [Islamophobia as a useful analytical tool] is to accept the most virulent form of theological equivalence, and to affirm, against all the evidence, that every religious tradition is equally capable of inspiring violence.
Although Spencer is mistaken about Rudolph concerning his first bulleted point above, this comparison still holds overall. As of this writing (2007), for example, the last American abortion clinic bombing happened about ten years ago. (And many of them were deliberately timed to avoid killing people as opposed to destroying unoccupied business property). Hindu civilization produces its share of terrorism, but much less than Islamic civilization, even when the sociological variables are taken into consideration. After all, India is poor, has an unequal distribution of wealth (what country doesn't?), had recent experience with Western imperialism/colonialism, has lots of unemployed young men, etc., etc., etc., but still doesn't produce as much terrorism in percentage terms as the Arab Muslim world. How much terrorism does India produce in percentage terms compared to a few million Arabs in Palestine? A non-quantitative factor such as ideology has to used to explain the difference. (And, of course, Genesis 16:11-12 does also!) Also, are India's tax dollars being deliberately appropriated to fund terrorist activities in India or abroad, such as Iran does today and Libya did in the past? Whether or not an official governmental policy exists in this area also speaks of a crucial difference.

WHY DOES PALESTINE PRODUCE MORE TERRORISM THAN TIBET?

Let’s illustrate how oppressed people with different ideologies can react differently to the same general stimuli of oppression using the case of Tibet. What's happened in the generation or more since the Chinese invasion of 1949, relative to what happened in Israel/Palestine since 1948, as a cause of continuing terrorism by non-governmental groups? How many buildings have the Tibetans bombed in Shanghai and Beijing in recent decades? The remoteness of the United States from the Middle East, or the imbalance in total population between the United States and any Arab country, didn't keep the 9-11 hijackers from attacking on American soil. Have the Chinese have the Tibetans tightly controlled ala internal passports and a veritable wall like the Israelis have built against the Palestinians along the Gaza's border? After all, the Chinese found a way to get to Tibet and control it, right? They even found a way to invade India (northeast Assam) in 1962, which totally shocked Nehru at the time. (Despite being one of the founders of the non-aligned movement of nations, he had trusted Mao too much). What keeps Tibetans from getting around in China, especially if they were motivated by extreme hatred for their national enemy and desired to kill them? (He who has a will can find a way, bad roads or not). How much terrorism do roughly 3.5 million Palestinians produce in the semi/formerly occupied territories? (Including, well, amongst themselves!) If there are about 2.1 million ethnic Tibetans in Tibet itself (World Almanac, 2005), the difference in population hardly explains the difference in the amount of terrorism produced by political oppression, poverty, unequal incomes, colonialism/imperialism, “angry young men,” etc., or any other sociological variable that could be named. After all, why aren't the Tibetans attacking the roughly half million ethnic Chinese in their midst the way the Palestinians attacked Israeli settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or Jews in Israel itself? They wouldn't have to travel far to do such suicide bombing then, right? Furthermore, about 4 million fellow Tibetans live in nearby provinces of China. After the latter revolted in 1956 and the revolt spread to Tibet itself by 1959, Chinese troops crushed their rebellion and almost totally suppressed Buddhism. How much “blowback” have these acts of oppression and colonialism by China generated to date from native Tibetans? Human nature is indeed violent, but different cultures restrain or promote this sinful tendency better than others. Since human nature is universally evil, all men have sinned (Romans 3:23), and anyone of any religion can commit evil, does that commonality make Christianity and Islam equal in potentially producing violence from its adherents? Are traditional Christians and Muslims, based on their respective religious beliefs separate from the materialistic, power-seeking desires of most governmental leaders to conquer new territory, equally likely to engage in moral atrocities and wars? This generalization does not hold, for the reasons Robert Spencer elaborates at length in "Religion of Peace" and his "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)." It's simply blindness to believe all religions, all cultures, all nations are equally politically violent by tradition, or would be equally likely to resort to abominable tactics to gain political freedom. The end doesn't justify the means.
What is it about Islamic culture in general, and the Arab Islamic culture in particular, that produces an extremist minority that so willingly undertakes such disproportionate responses? If Israel's recent war against Hezbollah in Lebanon was disproportionate and thus morally condemnable, the same goes even more for any terrorist activities by the mistreated aimed at the oppressor nation’s civilians. Consider the comfortable middle class or at least working class backgrounds of many of the suspects in the recent terrorist plots exposed in the Toronto area of Canada and in Britain, as well as the prior bombings in London: Why do these people hate their own societies when they themselves personally have experienced relatively little mistreatment in "the House of War"? All these Muslim terrorist plots that keep getting exposed or even become operational in the United States, Canada, Britain, etc., are further evidence of this problem. Some ethnic Albanians, for example, recently wanted to launch an assault on Fort Dix. (Some thanks we got from them for bailing out the Kossovars from the tender mercies of the Serbs, eh?) Just how poor, oppressed, mistreated, etc., etc., etc., are these Western Muslim plotters? Did the Toronto Muslims suffer such terrible agony from having lower incomes than the rich in their country that their envy made them lash out by planning to behead the Canadian prime minister? Remember, Canada is a county that punishes Christians who criticize publicly Muslims too harshly under hate law provisions. A Muslim apologist can’t just stop by claiming explaining that a history of the personal experience of oppression and imperialism motivates all Islamic terrorist activities, when that explanation may fit well (say) the Chechens against the Russians, but obviously doesn’t explain the the Western Muslim terrorist plots as well. Sociological variables alone don't explain why (say) aggrieved Tibetans haven't blown up skyscrapers in Shanghai, but British-born Muslims wish to blow up the Tubes. Islamist ideology correlates much better than poverty, personal experience with oppression, a high GNI index for a given nation, etc., with those who become terrorists. (This scholarly research project has actually been untaken repeatedly, as is explained below). Muslims, on average, are much more apt to resort to political violence, such as revolts, when faced with the same levels of political oppression, poverty, economic inequality, etc., compared with people in other civilizations because of their entitlement mentality, that only True Believers should rule, not infidels or pagans. Of course, their "right" to attack back really doesn't exist . . . if we believe that revealed commandments found in the Sermon on the Mount trump natural law theory.

IDEOLOGY, NOT SOCIOLOGICAL VARIABLES, EXPLAIN WHY MUSLIMS TURN TO TERRORISM MORE OFTEN THAN OTHER MISTREATED PEOPLE

Muslim nations also have levels of violence that aren’t the worst forms of terrorism. For example, governmental forces and/or vigilante groups enforce the Sharia law's provisions on people, such as by harassing women who aren't wearing headscarfs/veils and/or walk in public without a male relative's company, attacks on liquor stores, etc. The activities of the Front for the Defense of Islam (FDI), as led by Habib Mohammad Rizieq Shihab in Indonesia, constitute a case in point. Carrie Nation (1846-1911), famous for her one-woman crusade of chopping up liquor bottles in saloons in the name of Christ, was nothing compared to this guy. According to Bret Stephens (Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2007, p. A18), this vigilante group gets away with an amazing level of lawlessness: “Squads of FPI militants have forcibly shut down hundreds of brothels, small-time gambling operations, discos, nightclubs and bars serving alcoholic beverages. They also have stormed ‘unauthorized’ Christian houses of worship, attacked peaceful demonstrators from Indonesia’s renascent Communist party, trashed the office of the Nation Commission on Human Rights and rampaged through airports looking for Israelis to kill.” If it's a matter of the West's decadence and moral rot that's setting these people off, why don't we find similar tiny minorities of (say) fundamentalist Christians in the United States blowing up Hollywood studios and burning down “adult” book stores? For this reason also, there's much more systematic sympathy among general Muslim populations favoring, rationalizing, excusing, "explaining," etc., etc., etc., terrorist actions that target Western/Christian civilians. Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her autobiography “Infidel” (p. 270) dismisses the explanations for the 9-11 attacked as springing from Muslim frustrations over Israel, Palestine, and the West’s moral decadence, instead saying, “It was about belief.” She attacked articles “about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violence” as being “fairy tales [having] nothing to do with the real world I knew . . . People theorized about poverty pushing people to terrorism; about colonialism and consumerism, pop culture and Western decadence. . . . None of this pseudointellectualism had anything to do with reality.” Hirsi Ali rejected the explanation that the motive for these attacks stemmed from America’s support for Israel and Arab/Muslim frustration over Palestine’s problems. After all, the hijackers on 9-11 weren’t Palestinians, and none of them left letters about Palestine: “This was belief, I thought. Not frustration, colonialism, or Israel: it was about a religious belief, a one-way ticket to Heaven.” (As quoted by Cecil E. Maranville, “A Page on the World Infidel,” World News and Prophecy, September-October 2007, p. 13). So, Why is this tiny minority mostly Muslim at this point in world history? In the post Cold War era, almost all the Third World terrorism inspired by Marxist and (non-Muslim) nationalist ideals have long since ended. Oddball exceptions, such as Nepal's communist guerrillas, still pop up here or there. But since Marxism was plainly revealed to be “the god that failed” after the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Marxist ideology no longer inspires many young men to live uncomfortable, dangerous lives while fighting in the jungles, hills, and mountains against their nations’ governments in order to produce many “inevitable revolutions.”
Unless Muslims living in the West are willing to publicly repudiate violent jihad and any intention of imposing the Sharia on Muslim and non-Muslim countries, they should be deemed to be dangerous radicals on the same level as the KKK, neo-Nazis, and Communists. Moderate Muslims have to be told to clean house, and put down and attack Islamist ideology, including by publicly (not merely privately) renouncing any intention of imposing the Sharia on Muslim and non-Muslim nations, including any provisions related to jihad and dhimmitude (which, is based on the legal theory that a subject Christian or Jewish population receives "protection" in return for a suspended jihad). Unfortunately for moderate Muslims, violent jihad is deeply imbedded in their faith’s primary sources (the Quran, the Hadiths, and the rulings of the four legal schools that make up the Sharia before the doors of revelation (“gates of ijtihad”) closed). By comparison, the weight of tradition and primary religious sources favoring religious warfare (Crusades) in early Christian sources is almost nothing, especially before the Roman Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) That's why this ideological variable matters, that Muslims for ideological reasons are far more apt to resort to using force to gain political ends while citing publicly or privately a religious justification. By comparison, the IRA wasn’t interested in imposing Catholicism on the recalcitrant Protestants in Ulster, but wanted “One Ireland” in the name of nationalist ideology, much like nationalist guerrillas engaged in anti-colonialist wars during the Cold War Period. The ideological variable explains why Islam has such bloody borders, to use Huntington's terminology. Muslims are today being mistreated in places where their spiritual or physical ancestors aggressively invaded in the past. When they are being truly mistreated today, it’s often mere blowback, as the chickens of their ancestors’ sins come home to roost some centuries later. That doesn't make it morally right, from a Christian viewpoint, since revenge is evil. But we shouldn't excuse terrorism for this reason when it's Muslims attacking Christians, Jews, or Hindus likewise. Also notice sometimes, such as Bosnia and Kosovo, other (nominally mostly) Christian nations intervened to end the mistreatment of Muslims by the Orthodox Serbs. How many times in recent history have Muslim nations intervened to stop a Muslim nation from attacking a (nominally) Christian one?

WHY DOESN’T WESTERN MEDIA DECADENCE CAUSE CHRISTIAN TERRORISM?

The recent controversy over Dinesh D’Souza’s book, “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11,” concerns the degree to which Western moral decadence, especially as found in media sources, cause Islamic terrorism. Robert Spencer replied on-line to such reasoning: “We could be the most moral people on earth and the jihad would continue nevertheless. The Qur'an (9:29) directs Muslims to fight Jews and Christians, not just immoral Jews and Christians. What has changed in the last 25 years is the material ability of Muslims to pursue the jihad imperative. After all, Egyptian jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb was enraged by the immorality of the dancing at a church social in Colorado in the late 1940s; how immoral do you think that dancing really was, compared to today's standards? Yet despite its relative innocuousness, it still enraged him. He would not have been pacified by anything short of full Islamic separation of the sexes, and the covering of women. In other words, he would not have been satisfied by anything short of our islamization.” Hence, to a certain degree, the Islamists’ violent tendencies against the West would still happen even if the West’s Christians (and Jews) were perfectly virtuous, even if they hadn’t engaged in imperialism or had supported Israel, since our mere existence as “the other” is enough to justify theoretically jihad for them. The mere existence of people who aren't Muslims, but are of any other faith, is sufficient excuse to justify jihad or any other aggressive actions by those upholding Islamist ideology. Now conservative Christians in America, much like conservative Muslims, find lots to condemn morally on TV and in movies, music, videos, etc., since sex, violence, and curse words apparently pump up ratings and sales and/or are deemed artistically “authentic” by the creative cultural elite that produces these media products. The conservative Jewish movie critic Michael Medved's "Hollywood vs. America" is a very detailed listing of many, many (now) fairly recent major movies and what bad social tendencies are reflected in them. But, of course, do evil words and images justify terrorist attacks? How many fundamentalist Christians bomb Hollywood studios, modern art museums, adult book shops, or Broadway theaters? Conservative Muslims need to learn some Voltairian/Enlightenment-style tolerance. Their political culture’s general lack of tolerance is a major defect, which reveals the West’s objective superiority in this regard before the millennium begins. The point of a book like Robert Spencer's "Onward Muslim Soldiers" is to document the ideological/theological sources of jihad/Muslim aggression that can't be reduced to sociological/economic explanations. It presents the other half of the story, similar to a book like Coulter's "Slander," that one isn't apt to see printed in the pages of the New York Times or to hear from a liberal academic.
Islamist jihadist ideology is like Communism and Nazism: They are all intrinsically aggressive ideologies intended for "export." The Islamic history that liberal apologists for Islam wish to overlook (excepting the Crusades), from 632 to 1798, proves this. Even if the West behaved perfectly non-imperialistically and wasn't morally degenerate, conservative Muslims would still have ideological motivations for attacking us as "infidels," since they believe all the world should be converted to a Muslim-ruled "Caliphate" government. Notice the historical ideological continuity in the following statements (as quoted in Efraim Karsh, "Islamic Imperialism: A History," p. 1): "I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah"--Muhammad's farewell address, 632. "I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah."--SaLaden, 1189. "We will export our revolution throughout the world . . . until the calls 'there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah' are echoed all over the world--Khomeini, 1979. "I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad--bin Laden, 2001. Bin Laden's more generic ideological motivations also need consideration, not merely those based on recent political grievances, if liberals are going to cite a terrorist’s propaganda as a primary source. Again, an implied materialistic, non-ideological interpretation of political history must be rejected. Ideas have consequences.

DO POVERTY, OPPRESSION, UNEQUAL INCOMES, ETC., EXPLAIN WHY WESTERN MUSLIMS TURN VIOLENT?

Academic research studies and other careful observations have confirmed that poverty, economic inequality, and/or low levels of education have little to do with why Muslims join terrorist groups. For example, generally using 2003-2004 data, Alberto Abadie, in his heavily statistical exercise, “Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism,” found that poverty as measured by GDP (or alternatively the United Nations’s Human Development Index and the inequality measurement of GNI), didn’t correlate significantly with terrorist activities once other variables are taken into account, such as linguistic fractionalization, the presence of geographical factors like remote jungle or mountainous areas and/or countries occupying large areas. (A large country that has rather remote, inaccessible “sanctuary” areas is more likely to develop and sustain terrorist groups than one that doesn’t, all other factors held equal). However, he did find that a lack of political rights did positively correlate with terrorism until a particular threshold is reached: The most repressive countries (such as North Korea) have less terrorism than partially free nations like Russia, perhaps because the repressive state apparatus successfully stops more terrorism than it encourages.
Other researchers have found education and affluence positively correlate with those who join terrorist groups. For instance, Marc Sageman, the author of “Understanding Terror Networks,” a psychiatrist once with the United States Navy and CIA, and now at the University of Pennsylvania, found most Arab terrorists to be “well-educated, married men from middle- and upper-class families, in their mid-20s and psychologically stable.” In his study of 172 mujahidin, he found more (three-quarters) to be upper- or middle-class than poor, more married than single, educated than illiterate. Some 90% came from intact families, and 63% had gone to college as opposed to the 5-6% common in developing countries. They normally had serious family and job responsibilities, since 73% were married and a strong majority had children. Three-quarters of them had professional or semi-professional occupations, such as being engineers, architects, and scientists. His research stressed social bonds that were formed with fellow Muslims, such as those formed while having felt lonely and alienated in Western countries, helped draw them into terrorist activities. As the Los Angeles Times reported Sageman’s findings: “With the exception of Persian Gulf Arabs raised mostly in devout households, many extremists became religious as young adults . . . Young Arab men [living in the West] find companionship and dignity in Islam. The social connection usually precedes their spiritual engagement, he says. In mosques, cafes and shared apartments, religion nurtures their common resentment of real and imagined sufferings.” Scott Atran, in “Discover,” noted people with an ideological cause resort to terrorism when they know they can’t win in a fair (open) fight. He emphasizes the suicide bombers’ sanity, high status levels, and education. A surprising number had graduate degrees, well-paying jobs, and solid families which they willingly sacrificed for their cause. One survey (2005) of three Middle Eastern columnists produced by Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) shared their belief that cultural and religious factors caused terrorism, not poverty. The three columnists, Abdallah Rashid Al-Ittihad), Muhammad Mahfouz (the Saudi Gazette), and Abdallah Nasser al-Fawzan (Al-Watan) particularly noted the influence of sheiks inciting young men to join in terrorist operations. Claude Berrebi of Princeton concluded in his 76-page paper, “Evidence about the Link Between Education, Poverty and Terrorism Among Palestinians,” that participation in Hamas and PIJ terrorist activities that higher standards of living and higher educational levels are positively correlated with participation in these two groups. (See www.danielpipes.org/blog/55 for these references). Clearly, all this evidence shows poverty and ignorance need not drive people into terrorist activities by themselves.
Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova found (as per a public opinion poll done in 2001 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research) that generally the more educated, less impoverished Palestinians favored terrorist activities against Israel somewhat more than lesser educated, more impoverished Palestinians. When comparing a sample of Lebanese Hezbollah members who died violently with a general population sample of the same ages, they found that the former had a poverty rate of 28% but the latter 33%, although this difference was deemed to be statistically insignificant. But the Hezbollah militants were more apt to be better educated than the general population, which was a statistically significant difference. They also note Berrebi’s study (2003) of 285 Palestinian terrorists, which found that less likely to come from impoverished families and much more likely to be better educated than the general Palestinian population. When focusing on 48 Palestinian suicide bombers, Berrebi found their poverty rate to be less than half than that of the general Palestinian population (roughly 14% vs. 32%). They note that Berrebi’s data fits well with Nassra Hassan’s (2001) informed comment: “None [of the suicide bombers] were uneducated, desperately poor, simple minded or depressed. Many were middle class and, unless they were fugitives, held paying jobs. More than half of them were refugees from what is now Israel. Two were sons of millionaires.” When generally correlating national per capita GDP with international terrorist incidents, they found that no relationship existed between the two variables once the respective national levels of civil liberties were taken into account: “Once one accounts for the fact that poorer countries are less likely to have basic civil liberties, there is no difference in the number of terrorists springing from the poorest or richest countries.” They also found no significant affects from higher illiteracy levels causing more terrorism. After making their general survey, they cautiously conclude: “The evidence we have presented, tentative though it is, suggests little direct connection between poverty or education and participation in terrorism.” (See “The Journal of Economic Perspectives,” “Education, Poverty, and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?,” vol. 17, no. 4, fall 2003, pp. 125-142). Krueger, a professor of economics and public policy at Princeton, later wrote in the introduction to “What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism” (2007) that “Although there is a certain surface appeal to blaming economic circumstances and lack of education for terrorist acts, the evidence is nearly unanimous in rejecting either material deprivation or inadequate education as an important cause of support for terrorism or of participation in terrorist activities.” Hence, the standard liberal paradigm, that poverty, ignorance, and economic inequality cause the world’s problems, clearly doesn’t explain the origins of terrorism. Hence, it’s sensible to look beyond changes in sociological variables to ideological ones instead in order to account for terrorism appearing in some places much more than others.