Just Remember the Red River Valley... Futuristic!

 

In theMidnightHour,She Cried"MoreMoreMore..."

 With a rebel yell, she cried, "More, more, more..."

Hang on tight.  Here it comes... Welcome 2024.  

12.31.23.

Happy. New. Year.

 2024 walking through the door:

Anne Frank Hid in an Attic and Wrote. Her Palestinian Counterpart today will tell us what it was like constantly being on the run...

 and finding only more death and war where-ever you are sent.  This child survives, though many of her family members don't make it, and she tells us today what it is like viewing the deadly acts of angry old men who have nothing better to invest in than killing their way to ... something resembling a "win".

Even as hostages remain in captivity, and bodies are crushed under rubble, hope prevails in the littlest of hearts.  The young know so much more about life and living it for ourselves than those who are old and try to live their own dreams through others ever will...

Follow them. 

The young leaders who could teach us a thing about living as they go about learning and growing daily. For themselves, not for ancestors whose times are long past who try to buy the youth but gift them a destrutive future.

We're valuing the wrong things today, friends.  Close your old books and open some new ones?

On Paper, It's Easy to Have All the Answers

An NYT writer to the editor advises:

Amid the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza, the U.S. is urging Israel to scale back its military operations. Britain and Germany are calling for a sustainable cease-fire.  

Israel can inform the international community that it will accept a cease-fire in Gaza under the following two conditions:  

1) All of the hostages must be released before a cease-fire can begin.  

2) The purpose of the cease-fire will be to negotiate the disarmament of Hamas and its expulsion from Gaza.  After both conditions have been satisfied, the cease-fire will become sustainable. 

At that time, the U.S., the European Union, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Arab League and Israel can begin to negotiate the future governance and reconstruction of Gaza.  

I know, I know... the prevailing narrative is that the United States and the international community will rebuild Gaza once Israel is done pummelling their neighbor... What if, Israel is made to understand they will clean up their own messes and live in the community they create?

It feels good to destroy perhaps but don't they understand the animosity created by continually killing kids?

America has purchased the Iron Dome and made Israel's borders more secure than our own now.  It's time to help Israel gain independence and begin to fund its own defense, with private dollars from Jewish people worldwide who wish to contribute, but no more end runs around Congress with the executve branch unofficially declaring war worldwide by financing other country's defensive and offensive needs, and land grabs too.

The thing is, if you don't like what Russia is doing to Ukraine, how can you justify backing the religious extremists in Israel who have been seizing more and more lands for "their own"?  America should have cut the religious extremists off long long ago, in our own Republican party and in Israel.

The future is secular, with room for private people to freely practic their religions in pluralistic countries.  Religious states have gone the way of America's 1800s Native American displacement and removal policies:  we see them for the shameful crimes committed against humanity, and we are still reconciling the "sins of the White Father" who honestly believed that God wanted them to take lands for themselves.

Those days are gone, friends.  Wise up.  What works on paper doesn't play in the real world today.  Be smarter if you want to survive and live independent lives of peace.  Worship God, not the gun.  Most strong men are hypocrites who don't follow the laws they should be seeking to enforce in the name of justice for everyday people.

Hopefully 2024 will be a learning year for those busy dropping knowledge and never taking the time to understand how the world works past the grabbing for posterity part...

RIP Joey Meyer.

He was so much more than "Ray's boy". But then too, he was that...

I can't believe the skinny son, the lanky man on the sidelines -- who helped in recruiting and coaching his father's DePaul teams before leading his own rightfully to their successes on the court -- was 74.

My how the years fly by...  RIP to a good son, a good man, a sportsman in full Joey Meyer.

Meyer served as an assistant for his father for 11 seasons before taking over when Ray retired after coaching DePaul from 1942-1984. Joey Meyer got the Blue Demons into the NCAA tourney in each of his first five seasons. They reached the Sweet 16 in 1986 and 1987. Meyer went 231-158 in his 13 seasons as DePaul's head coach. Some of Meyer's top players included Rod Strickland, David Booth and Tom Kleinschmidt. Following his time at DePaul, the Chicago native coached in the NBA's developmental league and worked as a regional scout for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Whack-a-Mole.

You know the arcade game?  

That's what the Israeli Army is doing right now -- not so much soldiers facing up against soldiers on the underground battlefields where combatants take fire and kill in return...

They have the Pali people on the run, telling them "this place is safe" and then, "Now... go here!"

Whilst the people try to scramble to keep their children and elders safe, the Army gleefully laughs and sometimes apologizes:  "Whoops -- used too big a bomb for conditions;  sorry to have killed your kids~!"

Whack a mole. 

 While they scramble for safety, the Army rains down American-taxpayer-supplied weapons from above.  On an unarmed populace, killing primarily women and children...

Is Israel proud of this fighting force? Honestly?  

I am glad not to be a conspiracy thinker. You'd hate to think somebody was "paid off" to close their eyes on Oct. 7 to the Hamas attacks the Israeli intelligence agencies allegedly were warned was coming, only to provide political cover to Benyamin Netanyahu's right-wing religiously conservative administration that was floundering under charges of corruption and a judiciary power grab...

Now, as Israel shames itself by alleging it must kill children, women and unarmed civilians so that no more Palistinian terrorists arise from the rubble of Gaza to avenge their losses on the Israeli, (and American?), people... Netanyahu has united his country.

For now.  These are not ignorant people.  Worldwide, Israeli Jews must understand that Israel is redefining itself and remaking itself in the religious extremist settler's visions o the future of their country.  Will the secular Jews worldwise be able to influence Israel's future as much as the American evangelists and the American-Israeli lobbyists egging the U.S. Congress on to provide more heavy weapons to up the conflagration in the Middle East?

Maybe we greenlight Israel attacking Lebanon now?  Who's next?

Unless something changes internally in Israeli society and the moderates and progressives are able to wrest power away from the religious conservatives, America will not be able to continue supporting, and funding, Israel's push to power their way militarily to the End Times whereby God returns to the earth to sort the sheep from the goats, the living from the dead, and promising New Life to all believers...

(oh, and the Temple gets destroyed and rebuilt or something?, if you are looking at it from the non- literal-Biblical/American Evangelical Christian perspective)

That should be a protected minority viewpoint, not a foreign-policy goal disguised as latter-day prosperity gospel/manifest destiny project -- believe in whatever you wish and teach your children to value whatever you please -- but not one subsidized by U.S. taxpayers who do not share the American Evangelic Christian viewpoint nor the vision of a united Israel, from the river to the sea, that the religious Israeli extremist settlers believe is their birthright from their God.

Plenty of Room, and Money, in Maine for Migrants.

Why should border states and urban cities bear the fiscal burden of assimilating and welcoming the newcomers crossing our border daily?

It is wrong to use people as pawns, but Minnesota charitable agencies have brought thousands of immigrants and refugees over the past decades.  Let Maine do the same.

If they wish to limit American voters' choices in whether we acknowledge, or ignore, national issues, then let them also face the same budgeting, housing and language challenges the rest of the nation is experiencing at the lower levels of state and local government.

Don't isolate yourselves and then tell others how we can -- or can't -- address the issues facing the rest of the country...

Killing Children Because Your Women Have Allegedly Been Raped?

Come now... no child, of any religion or ethnicity, should be killed in revenge because of the sins of an adult man of his tribe.  It doesn't matter how many Jewish Israeli women were raped in Israel on October 7...

No amount of rapes of women justifies killing innocent children as revenge.  Period. 

You can make movies, you can wallow in facts, but you can't kill kids and call it justice because your women were attacked while the soldiers defending them let down their guard and the borders were overrun.

Next Year... in Jerusalem!

 Merry Christmas to our Christian friends and all those who celebrate!  Hope your holiday was happy, and your year ahead productive... we have work to do in 2024.  Make it a good one for many!  

Here comes the turn of the tide...

Double Down News

@DoubleDownNews

·

20h

Christmas is Cancelled in Bethlehem, Jesus birthplace. Palestinian Christians like their Muslim brethren exist under same brutal occupation, yet few know they exist This Christmas, spare thought for them & 20,000 bodies under rubble in Gaza Don't just pray for peace, demand it

Video link here: https://twitter.com/DoubleDownNews/status/1739238628318957760

It's Christmastime, there's no need to be afraid.

 At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish hate. And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy... throw your arms around the world at Christmastime.

But say a prayer, pray for the other ones... At Christmastime, it's hard, but when you're having fun? There's a world outside your window, and it's a world of dreaded fear...

Israel Bombed Areas It Ordered Gaza Civilians to Go, Visual Evidence Shows

 A New York Times investigation tracked Israel’s use of 2,000-pound bombs in south Gaza that are among the most destructive in Western military arsenals.  2 MIN READ

* All the ... Small Things

True Care.  Truth Brings...

---------------

Added:  Yester me, Yester you, Yesterday...

What happened to
The world we knew
When we would dream and scheme
And while the time away
Yester-me
Yester-you
Yesterday
Ooh, ooh

Mm, yeah
Where did it go? (Where did it go?)
That yester-glow
When we could feel
The wheel of life turn our way
Yester-me
Yester-you
Yesterday
Ooh, ooh

I had a dream so did you
Life was warm and love was true
Two kids who followed all the rules
Yester-fools and now
Now it seems (now it seems)
Those yester-dreams
Were just a cruel
And foolish game we used to play
Yester-me
Yester-you
Yesterday
Ooh, ooh

Read the Room.

We're so busy, all of us?, providing for our own that we don't take time to think:

Waiting to be fed in wartime Gaza. 21st century photo. Wapo.

What kind of secure future will a country make for itself living next to people so desperate to live like this? 

You shouldn't be kneecapping your neighbors, and their children, believing that (is) the final solution to your own misery amongst the riches...

You should be lifting them, educating them, and advising them. Turning the other cheek if they spit upon you even;  taking in kind from what assaults are meted out to you:  "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", no more, no less...

Instead, in these "every-man's-a-Kissinger!" days, we proudly boast of bleeding the other guys' teams out -- cackling like a Hillary Clinton over the Russian Army deaths, even as the number of Ukrainian conscripts dwindle... they boast "not a single American life was lost!" as though the Slavic Ukrainian Russian class of men don't count for U.S. accounting purposes...

There's a bigger way of life, of course. One not reliant on the technology and military hardware of the early 21st century, when our way of allocating resources more and more has our eldest "leaders", but not necessarily wisest political minds, more and more dependent on the whims of the wealthy "dreamers", promising technologies that whisk us away to Mars if only we survive here on Earth the messes being made in our name today.

God help us.

Give the People What They Want...

Donald Trump and Joe Biden both should be on that ballot in Nov. 2024 if that's what primary voters decide.  Democracy dies if the judicial branch, not the legislative represented by the American voting public, chooses our executive.

That's a no-brainer, one I would hope all nine Justices, the U.S. national news media, and opinion-makers from the man on the street to talking-head law professor experts would sign on to.

In America, the people choose their leaders. Not the elites, not the money, not the guns...

The American people. 

#BelieveInDemocracy

Luke3: "People Get Ready...

The Mission of John the Baptist
(Isaiah 40:1–5; Matthew 3:1–12; Mark 1:1–8; John 1:19–28)

1In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

3He went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight paths for Him.

5Every valley shall be filled in,

and every mountain and hill made low.

The crooked ways shall be made straight,

and the rough ways smooth.

6And all humanity will see God’s salvation.’ ”a

7Then John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit, then, in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9The axe lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

10The crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”

11John replied, “Whoever has two tunics should share with him who has none, and whoever has food should do the same.”

12Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

13“Collect no more than you are authorized,” he answered.

14Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

“Do not take money by force or false accusation,” he said. “Be content with your wages.”

15The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John could be the Christ. 16John answered all of them: “I baptize you with water,b but One more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.c He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.d 17His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

18With these and many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people. 19But when he rebuked Herod the tetrarch regarding his brother’s wife Herodias and all the evils he had done, 20Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

Remember when everybody swallowed hard and elected Joe Biden for the "stability" we were promised he'd bring...?

 Don't you wish wiser younger minds might have had the presence of mind back then to stand up to D party leaders and said, "I think a contested primary -- all the way to the finish -- will best serve our interests this year(2020).  Sorry, we're not dropping out to coaslesce around Joe Biden... If he wins, he wins by beating us, not because we quit to pave his way."

But they didn't, and here we are...

Back, way back when, when wiser more alert minds warned:  "Let's Go Brandon!" was not a snarky chant to be dismissed, but an indication that people -- some in the party -- wanted to bail on Biden as a candidate, nope, the party elders and media veterans insisted:  Can't dump Joe. He and Kamala carried us then, let them do it again...

And here we are today.  No bench built up ready to step up to the plate and start hitting -- no local candidates like Klobuchar poised for national leadership on important issues to younger, more fertile, non-property-owners just starting out...  They're our brightest, most flexible, most alert minds -- our young ones.

Nope, the elders said ignore them.  Here we still are, circling the drain with Hunter Biden issues, when instead of cutting the First Son loose to fend for himself as an independent adult, the party elders and media veterans counseled:  "He's Joe's last remaining child from his first family!  He's an untouchable.  There's that sob-sad backstory that has paved Joe's way in Washinton all these years"... forgetting that nobody likes to hear of special favors for special people's children -- no matter if that is business as usual in political and media patronage jobs...

And here we are today.

Most young voters, however, responded to question after question with answers showing that they see the worst in Israel. Few of them believe Israelis are serious about peace with the Palestinians. Nearly half say Israel is intentionally killing civilians. Nearly three-fourths say Israel is not taking enough precautions to avoid civilian casualties. And a majority oppose additional economic and military aid to Israel.

Sometimes I wonder how long it will take for those who rely on "fixers" to provide them with more palatable facts they can digest hearing, to realize they might simply be better stepping off for a bit and letting the game play on without interference?  It's still not a level playing ground, nobody in this country disputes that but if you leave the players alone, and stop trying to pick the winners and just let everybody honestly compete, wouldn't we be better off today?  Better represented, at least?  Listening to smarter, more creative thinkers who know the score and whose losses are not continually being subsidized?

Let Joe go... he's gone and done his duty for his country already.

This is wartime in America.  The promise of a peaceful stability under a stable elder statesman has not been realized.  Look ahead...

Arlington Moved Kissinger's Corpse In, and Ejected the Confederate Statuary.

 Eh, that don't impress me much...

Wake me up when the Change they deliver, as promised, is more than just symbolic wins, and quality of life returns to valuing a peaceful, growing kind and healthy world.  

("If you think you like destruction and death and burning things up, wait until you know a gentler, slower more human-paced life tempo.  Try it, you'll like it...")

Netanyahu Begins to Lose His Hold on His Country

The chief of staff of the military, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, spoke to soldiers in Gaza on Sunday and reminded them of the rules.

He urged them to “take two seconds” when they see unarmed people without shirts — a way of showing that they do not have explosives — and their hands held up. “And I want to tell you something just as important, and if it’s two Gazans with a white flag coming out to surrender, why would we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That’s not the I.D.F,” he said.

When people begin to understand they're being lied to, by leaders who were questioned about corruption and protested for their judiciary grabs before the war began, things in their civil society begin to break down when they realize that the violent (un?) authorized use of force traditionally employed against Others is indeed responsible for taking out three of their own -- in their prime living years -- sometimes all hell breaks loose... It's painful, but necessary (?) for bringing about Change in a civil society that refuses gentler calls to action and sees only Force and violence as the means to inaugurating structural changes that allow civil societies to grow and serve all their people.  To ensure long-term survival for all.

George Floyd mural in Gaza City.

Shorter version?

Israelis and Jewish and non-Jewish persons the world over are getting a sorry glimpse at how innocents are treated by the IDF in its pursuit of security over justice in maintaining Israel's survival bolstered by the finest military weapons U.S. taxpayers can provide. Israel is waking from a long slumber to learn, like America on 9-11, how vulnerable a mighty country can be... and like America, Israel was fooled into tranferring their impotent rage into attacking, killing and destroying innocents in other lands as a way of lashing out, instead of addressing the internal errors that led to the security breach the terrorists exploited...

There's so much work to be done, but the intelligence and will are not there like the gunman's need for dominance, thinking he can "bleed out" via his superior weapons, all life forms in other lands. That he can win via destruction alone, never thinking ahead to teh new world that will need to be created, and rebuilt, when his passions cease, his winnings never add up, and his own children are called upon to pay the price for his excessive and violent outbursts that prove so costly to so many without addressing or resolving the issues that made the country vulnerable to the attacks.

Be Better.  Take the lead from the people who ask questions, even under fire, who think ahead based on what we've learned in the past. The people who tell the truth and keep reaching for greater ways of knowing are the true leaders in life, even as they can be undervvalued by their own countrymen who choose force over reason, and think they can strongarm in solutions... even as they prove again and again, it takes more brainpower than that if we're ever to truly know peace living in a land that respects life and worships justice for all.

Make it a great week. Be big in the little things you do; know that life is about so much more than you, and your own, and perhaps the best way you can provide for them and their collective futures is to make good choices today, ones that don't just benefit some unjustly costing others their lives, livelihoods or dreams and fortunes.

An Ephiphany in Gaza.

 The one where the head of Israel's military realizes his troops are using unauthorized force to destroy Hamas... because to their eyes, everyone who moves and breathes in the territories is Hamas:

The chief of staff of the military, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, spoke to soldiers in Gaza on Sunday and reminded them of the rules.

He urged them to “take two seconds” when they see unarmed people without shirts — a way of showing that they do not have explosives — and their hands held up. 

“And I want to tell you something just as important, and if it’s two Gazans with a white flag coming out to surrender, why would we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That’s not the I.D.F,” he said.

Steep Learning Curve. Slow Growth. "These are people of the book, who work best with their minds, questioning always... Military skills on the ground? eyesight? not so good."

 "The soldiers are afraid to die protecting their country or their people".  An honest assessment of the way the I.D.F. wages wars:

Critics have seized on the shooting as an example of the Israeli military’s disregard for civilians in the territory. Since Israel responded to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack by mounting a military campaign in Gaza, nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, about 70 percent of whom were women and children, according to health authorities in Gaza.

General Halevi said it was the policy of Israel’s military to arrest people who lay down their arms and raise their hands. He said more than 1,000 such individuals had been taken into custody, and that valuable intelligence had been obtained as a result.

“We don’t shoot them, because the I.D.F. doesn’t shoot a person who raises their hands,” he said, using the acronym for the Israeli military. “That’s strength, not weakness.”

— The New York Times

Another Day Goes By... and still the children cry: "Put a Little Love in Your Hearts"

 Any unarmed man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The IDF sucks. Their eyesight. Can't tell a civilian from a Hamas warrior... Sad

 Countries that defend themselves like this, on another nation's taxpayers' dimes, aren't around for long...

That's honestly not anti-Semitism.  Without a strong independent military, every rabbit looks like a "threat" and must be annihilated...

They create more enemies than they protect their own people from, when they aren't killing their own accidentally too.  So sad.

Roman Catholic church officials said an Israeli military sniper shot and killed a mother and daughter on Saturday inside a church compound in northern Gaza where many Palestinian Christian families have taken refuge.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said that “one was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety” in the compound of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City. Seven more people were shot and wounded while trying to protect others there, the patriarchate said in a statement on Saturday.

“No warning was given, no notification was provided,” the patriarchate said. “They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish.”

Give the People What They Want?

 Itzik Horn, whose children Eitan, 37, and Yair, 45, were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, said the Israeli military’s killing of the hostages reinforced his belief that Israel must immediately reach a deal to free all the captives, even if it means releasing Palestinians being held in Israeli jails on terrorism charges.

“Let them free all the Palestinian prisoners we have here, all the terrorists — what do I care,” Mr. Horn said in an interview. “The most important thing isn’t to defeat Hamas. The only victory here is to bring back all the hostages.”

— Aaron Boxerman

I found out long ago...

 

While the Hostages Wait in Vain,

 Israel uses U.S.-provided weapons to attack cemeteries in Gaza.

Their rage is real, their fear is frightening, their will to survive strong but the Israel-Defense-Force is not up to the job of fighting Hamas.  They value their soldiers' lives too much to get the job done on the battleground, and expect the U.S. taxpayers to police the world to make it safe for Israel...

They aren't known as warriors, but people who question, who build connections, who inspire hope in trade... Criticial thinking skills are important to assess your strengths and your weaknessess.  I hope the wisest of the Jewish people will reconsider the criticism that this current war the country is waging on Gaza -- not Hamas, make no mistake -- is eroding any confidence that the country can keep peace in a region where cooperation is everything, and prosperity is welcomed by all who share in the blessings of wealth, God-given or man made.

For it's a small world after all, and what is done to one's brother is often a fate shared by whole tribal communities.  Cast your nets wider and start seeing all the humans, alive and dead, as your brothers and sisters in spirit.  Don't cheer all the bodies you've slain; start saving your own by targeting the warriors who would do you harm, not the children of those you identify as "less than"... 

The Holocaust showed us the folly of such thinking.  It's a shame Israel did not heed the lesson.  Cut their allowance until they do?

Jesus Wept.

 LIVE

Updated 

Dec. 15, 2023, 6:25 p.m. ET1 hour ago

1 hour ago

Israel-Hamas WarIsraeli Troops Accidentally Kill Three Hostages

Here’s what we know:

Israeli forces mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat during a battle in Shejaiye, a Hamas stronghold in northern Gaza, the military said.

• The three hostages had been abducted from kibbutzim on Oct. 7.