Cows trying to scare Canada goose 

(via)

Israel as Contagion

There’s a narrative bubbling in certain areas of the left which seeks to tie American policing abuses to cross-training exchange programs some police departments do with Israeli counterparts. The narrative has its roots in Jewish Voice for Peace’s “Deadly Exchange” campaign, which uses the claim as a means of further its campaign to see Israel isolated and ostracized in global society. As the issue of police violence surges to its place at the top of the public’s deliberative agenda, the deadly exchange claim likewise attracted those eager for a anti-Israel or antisemitic hook. Just yesterday, new Labour leader Keir Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey – a prominent Jeremy Corbyn ally and one-time rival for party leadership – from her position in Labour’s shadow cabinet after she approvingly shared an article where actress Maxine Peake claimed, without evidence, that “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.” This is not true. Many have cited an Amnesty International report where, they say, it is proven that Israeli police train their American counterparts in human rights violations. But Amnesty has since come out and said explicitly that “Allegations that US police were taught tactics of ‘neck kneeling’ by Israeli secret services is not something we’ve ever reported.” This is not surprising, as the content of these exchange programs by all accounts rarely, if ever, focuses on what we might euphemistically call “interpersonal” or “tactical” elements of police activity (it generally concentrates on strategic questions regarding operational responses to mass atrocities – a subject upon which Israeli security forces sadly carry much expertise). So what is going on? The stock response from those objecting to the link is the simple but truthful observation that American police hardly need Israeli help on the subject of how to harass racial minorities. Some have argued that, because it is true that there are Israeli and American policing exchange programs (and apparently some Minneapolis officers had partaken), it is ipso facto fair to draw a connection between American abuses and those training seminars – without any regard to what actually is or is not done in those programs. The argument, in effect, a contagion theory: anyone who associates with Israelis, we can assume, is at least partially corrupted by the contact. They’re worse off coming out than coming in. In apologizing for her comment, Peake said something very interesting: she said “I was inaccurate in my assumption of American police training and its sources.” Assumption is the key word there: she had, presumably, read about Israeli and American police training together, and so she assumed that the bad American practices had Israeli roots. But the only evidence was the bare fact of contact – that’s what’s driving the narrative. Hence: contagion. This, I submit, is something antisemitism does. It allows such assumptions to become naturalized. They feel right. American police have done exchange training with counterparts in dozens of other countries, ranging from the UK to Germany to Mexico to Tanzania. Even those who take a dim view of, say, the Mexican police however would likely not jump from mere contacts to causality. If someone said “American police learned chokeholds from Tanzanian police,” they’d ask for evidence. If the only evidence is “there are exchange programs between American and Tanzanian police”, that likely wouldn’t be sufficient. But antisemitism gives a smoother cognitive ride down – it makes little connections look huge, and implausible leaps seem manageable. It is not accidental that the narrative is about Israeli police exchanges and not German or Mexican or Tanzanian ones. This is an unorthodox but I think ultimately more accurate way of understanding what antisemitism does. We think of antisemitism often as a motive: because I hate Jews, I think or say or do this thing. But antisemitism is as if not more often a force or process. We usually ask “did Burke or Long-Bailey say what they say because they hate Jews?” The answer to that may well be no. But that’s not that the right question. The right question is “did a particular way of thinking about Jews render what Burke or Long-Bailey said plausible or resonant in a way it otherwise would not have been?” And there I think it is quite clear that the answer is yes. It is because we think about Jews in a particular way that this contagion theory of Israeli culpability in American policing injustices – a narrative which objectively stands on such a thin reed – is plausible when it otherwise wouldn’t be. That is the work of antisemitism. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2CJ9UDi

bracha for flag burning on the 4th

 בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה אַדֹנָ-י אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ להשמיד אלילים

baruch atah HaShem Elokeinu Melech Ha’Olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu lahashmid elilim 

Blessed are you, the Lord our God, Sovereign of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with your commandments, and commanded us to destroy idols.

(it is also suggested you say the Shechechiyanu blessing if this is your first flag burning of the day)

Happy 4th!

This also seems good to say if you’ve dumped a statue of a colonizer in a river! 

We are sharing some of our favourite gifs each day this month for Antifa International’s fifth anniversary. Today: Nazi monuments being destroyed after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

If this offends you 😊 unfollow me 😊

And a note to confederates: these monuments weren’t kept because this was “history”. These monuments celebrated horrible things and we BLEW THEM UP.

Apparently this is not the first time police have tried to disguise themselves as Orthodox Jews before. This is so insidious.

@queermachmir not only that but I am wondering if they are hoping to intentionally strain black-Jewish relations by doing this. Seems a classic pattern in history, ruling class hopes to stoke hatred/blame on Jews so people don’t see the real problem.

How can you tell they're cops???

Many of the things that people think of as visually distinguishing about frum Jews have actual religious and cultural significance, and it can be very obvious when someone doesn’t know that and does them wrong as a result.

In this picture, the undercover cop is wearing a dark suit and a hat, but is not wearing tzitzit, the religious garment that all men from this community wear pretty much at all times. Not only that, but he has peyot (side curls) but does not have a beard, which flies in the face of the entire religious reason for having peyot. Additionally, although it isn’t shown in the picture here, one of the cops was also wearing a cheap plastic kippah from a completely different movement of Judaism (because I guess all Jews are the same to them?) and was seen blatantly doing things which would be considered to break the Shabbos.

The combined effect is like seeing a woman wearing niquab together with a mini-skirt  – it’s not only extremely off, but it’s honestly rather offensive. It looks like they bought a suit and fake, costume peyot from a racist halloween store that also sells costumes of “Mexicans” and “geishas”. 

There have been plenty of attempts by the ruling class to pit Jews and the Black community against each other before. Don’t fall for it when they try it now.

A Mujahideen fighter poses for a photo whilst Soviet airstrikes pound the mountains behind him. 

Soviet-Afghan War, 1980s.

NZ traditional haka for black lives matter, video posted june 3rd 2020

For those of you who don't know, this specific haka was written by a father to acknowledge his son's wrongdoing and basically tell him to get his shit together. It is also modernly used as a haka tautoko, or acknowledgement, in some contexts.

Y'all see how symbolic this is, right? It's both acknowledging current events as a show of solidarity, but also calling for world leaders to get their shit together and admit their wrongdoings and try to change things. This shit is powerful.

The user quobbo on tiktok did a little rundown analysis of it here:

How-To Survive A Deadly Global Virus  London-based designer Siedentopf has created original alternative masks for people to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

Sabrina for STATE shot by me

A man leaning over the edge to look over in to the crater of Aso San mountain, Kyushu, Japan, ca. 1906

by Herbert Ponting

Hans Prignitz Doing a Handstand on the Hamburg Michel, Photo by Jürgen Schadeberg, 1948

“Hans was so strong, so sure of himself – but there was nothing much to catch him if he fell”

Something very, very tragic has happened today. I hope people take something away from what I said also I hope every Basiji dies in a fire

The Dutch are making moves to make some changes after this outbreak