Rohingya atrocities

Seabass wrote:
They put her in a friggin' comic book for god's sake.

Seabass wrote:Don't get me wrong—I like her, compared to most of them—I'm just saying, let's try to keep a little perspective...

arugula2 wrote:

The_Piper wrote:What is she obfuscating, I don't get it? Her personal anecdote was probably unnecessary but I don't see harm in that either.

Can't keep it short, sorry. Too layered, and it's mostly backstory. Kudos for responding to the substance of the post. My answer is the 4 paragraphs after this one - the remainder of the post addresses the rest of the speech. Puerto Rico was a minor observation, but it's telling. I don't expect "the history of Palestine" to make these emotional deflections obvious... and if it's subtle, it's because she's signaling. She/her staff put a lot of thought into the speech (that's why her difficulty in sticking to the bullet points in front of her is also telling: it means she/her staff haven't fully landed on a message).

Anyway - the anecdote. It's about US terrorism against Puerto Rico. Far from being unnecessary, it's a sharp criticism of US foreign policy, so it applies here. I'll skip the tangent about Puerto Rico as a window into US crimes against humanity - if you're interested, check out the history... and if you do, please consider Cuba and the Philippines too, as those 3 territories are the same skeleton in that massive closet. I suggest Philippines first, and squaring how T.Roosevelt talks about the territory with how his deputy Taft does as governor there. Goes a long way in explaining the modern world.

The people she's signaling to are her constituents, many of whom swarmed the streets of New York waving Palestinian flags & screaming about crimes against humanity. Right before that happened (which has obviously caught most politicians by surprise) she was trying to cozy up to conservative Jewish organizations in her city. By their own account, it was a long time coming (Jewish Insider). That's important in understanding AOC's political calculus after 2 years in office. She's taking specific steps to build alliances within Congress, by ingratiating herself to influential groups her conservative Dem colleagues rely on. A year ago she got a lot of shit for refusing to pay into the DNC mafia racket, and she's now sending checks to right-wing Dems who don't want her money because she's still in Pelosi’s doghouse (ignore the Politico framing... the point is she's sending checks to campaigns who'd be getting paid through DNC - a direct reversal of her stance a year ago). Money from small dollar donations her voters were pretty sure were earmarked for progressive causes.

Anyway, her pivot to conservative Jewish orgs is part of that same stealth rebranding effort (I'll leave guesses about why she's trying to rebrand for another time). The April 6th Jewish Insider article refers to an interview she gave the day before to JCRC-NY, 29 minutes into which, the host finally asks a question about Israel, and she gives a tortured answer that tries as much as possible to equivocate (that's why it's tortured). I queued up the question, but you can skip exactly 2 minutes ahead for her answer. The question is only interesting because it says outright that "American Jews" support a 2-state solution contingent on Israeli security - which is borderline slanderous, because American Jews are now mostly turned off by that argument. Many flag-wavers are among them.

Those^ 3 paragraphs come together in the anecdote like this: The US committed crimes against humanity in Puerto Rico; and the US is now committing crimes against humanity in Gaza, via Netanyahu. But that part’s missing, see? I strongly suspect her notes made it clear (albeit more tactfully than I just did), and that she adjusted on-the-fly (during the speech or right before)... and I sensed this "adjusting" throughout. So the Puerto Rico thing hangs like a Florida chad, which is exactly why you thought it was "unnecessary", when in fact it was the point of the speech. Material for a staffer memoir, maybe.

...
The speech, snapshot:

- concerns are apparently over "the rights of Palestinians and Israelis alike that have been impacted..."
- but then says "this is not about both sides", it's "about an imbalance of power"
- wonders if communities in PR "were practice for this", but doesn't make the US role explicit, though she comes close. Only the people she's signaling to will likely get the analogy, making it (I think) deliberately weaker, and even irrelevant to most others. (See quoted post)
- double emphasis on Congresswomen being barred from entering Israel, with more indignation here than anywhere else in the speech
- absurd claim that there’s no ‘standing up’ for Gaza because that would "...force us to confront the incarceration of children at our border", which we're "scared" to do

The last one's a double-whammy... 1) Who's she talking about? Her colleagues in Congress? And who'd they be standing up to, if not Biden? (Even the TYT producer thinks that's what she means.) The simplest explanation is that she's too scared to directly call out the administration's actions in Gaza... yet that's what she's criticizing in the same breath. And 2) the reason we don't stand up is now the embarrassment of the southern border? It's not the billions of dollars in cash and military equipment, plus logistical support, that she SIGNALED was the reason when she brought up Puerto Rico? Of course it is. Then what were the mentions of children at the border (and Gazan children) if not props in response to criticism about her seesawing stance on border detentions in the previous 3 months? (Meaning it’s awkward & opportunist, in addition to distracting from the Gaza question.)

Anyway, I bring a generous assumption... suggesting she's in over her head with foreign policy, and that this is her stumbling through it. That would be fine, up to a point. But she's sharp, and it shouldn't take more than a few weeks of conversations with her staff & any number of experts (or her 2 colleagues) who'd be thrilled to educate her on a messy (if not exactly complicated) history. What Palestinians need is for people like her to eliminate - not regurgitate - ambiguity, false equivocation, and diversion.

But realistically, that’s just a suggestion/excuse - I don’t think it’s the case. I think this is a politician trying to please everyone & anger no one (which itself displays the same naïveté I guess).

Added: almost forgot. "Do Palestinians have a right to survive?" is a gimmick talking point, designed to mask the real question, which is "Do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves?" (Those two are linked: the reason for Israel's unilateral cease-fire a few days ago is Palestinians quote-unquote "surviving", in part thanks to Iran/Hezbollah.) Her back-room dealing & sucking up to conservative Dems & their right-wing donors explains the watered-down talking point. What's weird is, her ambiguous comment about the US blocking a statement at the UN is also related, I think accidentally. She's talking about China's Sec.Council resolution calling for a cease-fire, which the US blocked several times. (China is a de facto ally of Israel - so infer what that says about the US here.) The US has blocked dozens of resolutions on behalf of Israel over the decades, including some that broadly affirm all people's right to self-defense against occupation & apartheid.

The word “apartheid” is also not new for West Bank & Gaza. Apartheid S.African governments were Israel’s steadiest allies since the 40's, alongside the US (infer what that says about the US here) and the Mandela revolution saw the freeing of Palestine from occupation as a natural extension of itself. In the earliest days (40s & 50s), when the US’s dual role as the world’s main arms supplier & last global enforcer of white supremacist colonialism hadn’t fully gelled (the latter is bc France & Britain would be expelled almost everywhere... Middle East history is a microcosm of that power shift between the 3 empires, but so are Indochina & most of Africa) one could frame this racist support in terms of preserving the state of Israel as a kind of British mistake. US governments since then have shown their cards by explicitly defending Israel’s illegal occupations, illegal attacks on Gaza, illegal expansion of settlements, and illegal apartheid laws, bc Israel is their best non-NATO customer for weapons & their best leverage against the Arab states.

There’s a reason it’s mostly young, uncorrupted Americans protesting: standards have shifted. The US position has corroded even “civilized” conversation about Palestinians. Used to be, political Zionism itself was being questioned. Today, when Bernie is asked if people should be using words like “apartheid” to describe Israeli apartheid, he says no. That’s the degrading effect of US policy on good people’s values.

Hermit wrote:Kudos for aragula's arugula2's take on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in post #1970 and Seabass's reply to it and to post #1971.

Seabass wrote:

arugula2 wrote:Only on Twitter at the moment... local pest Max Blumenthal heckling what he calls the "soft-handed little chickenhawk" Adam Schiff, who showed up for his photo-op a few hours ago at the anti-eviction sit-in on Capitol Hill (one in a string of poseurs doing this today and yesterday). Mainly trying to get Cori Bush & Jesse Jackson's air of legitimacy to rub off on him.

Martin Luther King Explains the Three Evils of Society (Grassroots DC)

arugula2 wrote:it’s also not hard to sort out what real wokeness sounds like. It calls for the re-constructing of institutions, firmly centered on justice.

The_Piper wrote:Thanks for the reply. I'm going to keep it brief, If we wantto keep democrats in the majority in the house, democrats in conservative states need to be supported. Otherwise Rep's like AOC are even more disempowered*. Republicans being in control is much worse for you and I than feckless Democrats holding the majority. I'd rather channel the rage toward Manchin and Sinema, who are shitting on progressives. And of course towards Republicans who are shitting on everyone but the very rich and corporations.

"All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn't have any following. They're four people and that's how many votes they got."

"While there are people who have a large number of Twitter followers, what's important is that we have large numbers of votes on the floor of the House."

"It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it, right?"

arugula2 wrote: