feezer06's Corner

Also, what prompted the Second Intifada (on paper), was that a Jewish politician went to visit the Temple Mount after the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf illegally excavated and dumped over 10 dump-trucks' worth of priceless artifacts within the Temple Mount.

And they slaughtered thousands of our civilians for it.

Fuck this article, but the headline spot on.

A Jewish man merely visiting the holiest place in the entire Jewish religion, that Jews aren't allowed to go near to "respect" the religion that built over it, and that alone prompted slaughtering thousands of our civilians.

And people try to, "Well... both sides" it.

"Wellllll, a Jewish politician visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque made Muslims scared that they'd make changes to it, so you can understand why--"

a) Like when they "made changes" to our holiest site in the world by destroying and dumping tens of tonnes of our holiest artifacts??

b) A Jew visiting a Mosque shouldn't prompt slaughtering thousands of Jews.

I shouldn't have to say that.

And don't, "Well, apartheid--" me:

This was just after the Camp David Summit.

Just after the Israeli government agreed to all of Yassir Araf's demands for Palestinian statehood and then some: All of Gaza, 96% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem as the capitol, plus full monetary reparations for those displaced in 1948 War that they started.

And Arafat responded by not just rejecting statehood, but his Waqf by vandalizing and destroying ten dump-trucks worth of the holiest Jewish artifacts from the holiest Jewish place in the world.

And Jews were (and are) expected to be completely fine with it.

"They destroyed literally tonnes of our holiest artifacts, but we visited their mosque, so it's really all the same."

"They stabbed, shot, and blew up thousands of our civilians across a bloody summer, but one of our guys visited their mosque, so tit-for-tat."

Fuck that.

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If you disagree with me about any of this, that's fine.

I don't care.

See, the Waqf's illegal excavation of the Temple Mount has a part two: The Temple Mount Sifting Project. We know where all the rubble was dumped, and this organization, with the help of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, has spent decades sifting through it for all the priceless archeological treasures.

But one of the most important elements of an archeological find, perhaps the most important element, is the context. Not only where it was found, but how deep. What was above it? What was it above?

And all of that context was permanently, irrevocably destroyed. If a 3000 year old shard is found, we have to ask: has it been there for three thousand years? Or could it have spent two thousand years elsewhere before being moved?

If the Temple Mount hadn't been desecrated, we'd find that shard in a layer of debris that would prove how long it had been there. But as is, we can't be totally certain. We can't prove it.

I've volunteered with the sifting project twice. The first time, I found a piece of Herodian tile--that is, the specific type of tile that he used in all his major building projects, which we also see at Masada.

I held in my hands corroboration of the contemporary account of Herod renovating the Temple and adding the retaining walls and plaza that are still standing today, the structure the Dome of the Rock was built on.

But that evidence, and every other piece of evidence the project finds, has, and always will have, an asterisk.

A bit of room for doubt that will always be there, because the religious authority descended from the conquerors of the land deliberately destroyed the evidence of the cultural history that predated their presence.

And yet, somehow, we are the real imperialist colonizers, and our presence is the real desecration.

When you factor in the fact that Jews are so so few, the amount of material culture within the archaeological is infinitesimally more finite, especially when compared to say the Roman Empire or the Arab Conquest. The scale and depth of just this incident of Temple Mount looting (note the Jordanian government also did significant damage during their occupation of the West Bank, this is not an isolated incident) is unimaginable.

Every single person on this planet thinks about dark and taboo things. It's literally the most normal thing in the world.

Happy Pride ya’ll!! 

The Taliban.

Russia signs military partnership with the Taliban.

Hi, that was me. You do realize not everyone is keyed into the exact same new outlets as you all the time, yes? You do also realize that misinformation on social media is rampant, yes? You can argue your point without demonizing people who demand evidence for extreme claims.

Rashida Tlaib?

‘‘There’s a kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust. . .’’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

"accusations and false accusations of antisemitism are wielded against people of color and women of color by bad-faith political actors, and weaponizing antisemitism is used to divide us.”

Cori Bush?

"Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) is under fire from Jewish groups and her opponent in the upcoming Missouri Democratic primary for fundraising and associating with an antisemitic activist who once said she wants to burn “every Israeli” alive."

Perhaps you mean commentators like Hasan Piker?

If you care about humanity you should care about Ukrainians too and russia has launched one of the bloodiest, cruelest and heaviest attacks on Ukraine’s capital today

In the middle of the night, when people are sleeping, they started bombing civilian districts with all types of missiles

Lots of buldings damaged, many injured and yet unknown about the exact number of casualties

One of the biggest cities in Europe is all on fire being bombed to ground all because the little goblin and his ppl don’t want Ukraine to exist anymore

They want us to sign a peace deal that’s essentially capitulation and give up everything we have, what we fought for

Please, just look up information and spread the word

I know the news barely talk about Ukraine anymore, especially in the US. I know because I live here and I got asked about what’s the situation back home for the first time in MONTHS recently, in months… and every time I don’t know what to say because it is bad, still really really bad and people need help

I have friends in Kyiv, I am constantly anxious about them. I have my family and friends in other cities and I am constantly worried and scared for them

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

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One, holy shit Ryuko and Mako get a room. Could they get more gay? I’m not entirely sure. Just… the way Ryuko looks at her, she’s the only person who keeps her calm, god… Mako I think is obviously head over heels for Ryuko and has been since episode 1 but I think Mako might be like pansexual for everybody all the time in a romantic sense. But in a platonic sense Ryuko is very much her only bff. Anyway, that’s a pay off if I’ve ever seen one.

NASA I would say is the most infamous example. Like it or not, NASA got to where it is today through Operation: Paperclip, most notably through the recruitment of Werner von Braun, who during WWII developed the V1 and V2 rockets along with other devastasting technology and horrific exploitation and murder of Jews, Roma, and political prisoners. I vehemently condemn the clemency afforded to von Braun and all the other Nazi scientists recruited by Operation: Paperclip and similar operations conducted by other members of the Allied powers. However. Given a choice between these scientists continuing to make weapons of war or putting their skills towards the development of a space program, I heartedly choose the latter. Initially, von Braun did work to make weapons for the US, but eventually he was put to work on the fledgling space program. Technology initially conceptualized for war was used to put people in space, to put people on the moon.

On the other side of the Cold War, the Soviet space program also used technology initially developed for war. The rocket that launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, was designed initially as the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The Vostok rocket, which would launch the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space, was also a variant on a modified R-7. Both the Soviets and the Americans were using missile technology that could have been used for horrible things, but instead they used it for space travel. The space race was an extension of Cold War hostilities between the West and the Soviets, but it was an example of a competition that did not involve war. It was a competition of intelligence, of science, and I am absolutely not discounting all the animals and people that died in the process of developing such technology.......but it's nothing compared to what it could have been has these hostilities been expressed through combat.

Even today, people complain about space programs being expensive, about the money going to NASA and other countries' programs as being money that could be used to feed or house people....but that money could have also gone into war. The massive amounts of fuel that go into a space rocket launch is fuel that could have been used to fuel tanks and missiles and warplanes. The brilliant minds employed in every step of a space mission are minds that could have been used to develop weapons, but instead they are used to push the boundaries of human exploration and understanding of the cosmos.

Additionally, astronauts and cosmonauts and taikonauts and all other space travellers become national and international heroes who have made incredible achievements not through being champions of war, but through being explorers. They are figures that people can rally around and be proud of, but they are not soldiers. In the US, NASA has close associations with the military, and many astronauts are former military pilots, but NASA is not military. NASA and other space agencies actively demonstrate that there are ways other than war to achieve greatness.

Another great thing about space travel is that explorers and adventurers have been heroes in public consciousness for a long time- just look at the way cowboys and pioneers and Christopher Columbus have been glorified in American culture. But unlike the global navigators and explorers of the Columbian age, and unlike the pioneers of the age of American westward expansion, and unlike so many other explorers in history, there is no concern with displacing and exploiting the indigineous people and biomes and resources in the lands explored when it comes to outer space. Perhaps this would become an issue if we discovered alien life on other planets, but that has yet to happen. For now, it's just us Earthlings in the vastness of space. Humans landing on the moon didn't displace or exterminate any native Moon-dwellers. Space travel allows humans to express the natural human desire to explore and discover without the prevalent side-effect of such exploration that occurs on Earth.

Finally, space travel is unifying. These days, a lot of space travel is cooperative. The International Space Station is an excellent example of this, with five participating space agencies, and its predescessor, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission, became known as the "handshake in space" in the midst of the Cold War. Putting cameras and people far enough in space to be able to look back at Earth as a single planet really puts things into perspective. We are one planet, as far as we know, alone in the universe. We really only have each other. Space travel has proven time and time again that it can unite us, and I believe it still can. Christina Koch, one of the four astronauts who last week went farther into space than any human had ever gone before, said that "we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.” And I think that's what we need to hear.

וְשָׁפַט֙ בֵּ֣ין הַגּוֹיִ֔ם וְהוֹכִ֖יחַ לְעַמִּ֣ים רַבִּ֑ים וְכִתְּת֨וּ חַרְבוֹתָ֜ם לְאִתִּ֗ים וַחֲנִיתֽוֹתֵיהֶם֙ לְמַזְמֵר֔וֹת לֹא־יִשָּׂ֨א ג֤וֹי אֶל־גּוֹי֙ חֶ֔רֶב וְלֹֽא־יִלְמְד֥וּ ע֖וֹד מִלְחָמָֽה׃

"And He (G-d) shall judge among the nations and arbritrate for the many people, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation against nation shall not take up a sword, and they shall not learn war any longer." Isaiah 2:4

What is the transformation of war technology into space exploration techonology but a fulfilment of this prophecy? The missiles are beaten into space travel rockets, the fighter pilots into astronauts. Legions of scientists are learning space exploration instead of war. Nations who would otherwise be engaged in war cooperate in space.