160 Comments

The Honestly podcast was challenging and compelling. You covered a lot of ground. It helped me put together several of the strands of your biography and your overall work. Good job!

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Bari is a Zionist backing the current genocide. Gross.

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Yeah, well, as it turns out, we live in a very complicated world right now. That's what religious war is all about : losing family and friends when you suddenly discover that YOU are damned sure that THEY are on the wrong side of the fence.

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Do me a favour: please provide your definition of 'Zionist' for me and my readers.

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And, um, genocide.

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I was coming to that next...

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Hi Paul. I don’t know much about Bari Weis, and don’t want to step into a war of whose definition of what gets a win on this stack, but my understanding of what Zionism means is a movement of Jewish people from the various parts of the diaspora to some greater Israel, defined as a place from say modern day Iraq to the Med. The founders of the movement (e.g., Herzog) were not theists, bur atheists, but who nevertheless used Judaism as a lever to promote the movement among those who did.

Whether intentional or not, the “repatriation” involved moving others out of the way, oftentimes by force. The Palestinians, while not a racial group but an ethnicity, got the short end of the stick. This led to the rise of violence in reply, much like how the Mafia arose in Sicily as a rebellion against the overbearing French occupation.

As far as genocide, I rather would call it ethnocide, since Israel has not called for murdering all Arabs. However, kind of hard to refute a “cide” of any definition when listen to the Israeli leaderships’ statements, and those of people in this country (Jared Kushner for example) that Gazan land is prime real estate.

I recommend to you Max Blumenthal’s 51 Day War for some background. In Britain, George Galloway has much background on this subject.

No hate mail, please.

Blessed Pascha to you.

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I don't want to step into a war either. But if you are suggesting that the Jews (as usual) are trying to murder all the Arabs to get their hands on some 'prime real estate' ... and especially if you are suggesting this without any mention of the fact that every Arab country has vowed to wipe out the entire nation of Israel since 1948, and has often tried to do so ... it is difficult to take your case seriously.

In terms of the history of Israel - all of this may be true, but at this point it is largely academic. 'Zionism' means 'support for the state of Israel.' If you oppose 'Zionism' in 2024, you oppose the existence of that state. It is, in my view, then incumbent on you to spell out what that means in practice. In my experience, people are reluctant to do this, preferring to use code words like 'Zionist' to cover their tracks.

Speaking as a Brit, you ought to probably be made aware that George Galloway is a man who is really not to be quoted on this or any other subject. He's a self-promoting fanatic who is probably most famous for praising Saddam Hussein and promoting ethnic division for his own benefit.

None of this is to defend the current Israeli government's actions in Gaza, which are appalling. But they are not happening in a void either. There is no good or easy way out of the situation in the middle east at this point.

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Well, I was always told the purpose of Israel was to create a safe homeland for the Jews. Didn’t work out as planned. At best another example of good intentions gone awry. IMO it was a mistake. A mistake we now have to live with as is common in life.

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I am disappointed in your reply, though I have always promoted your work and have great affection for you and what you espouse through your work and conferences. Having said that, how does one explain the many Jewish people who oppose Zionism as not comporting with their values, including Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate (Canadian), Katie Halperin, Jill Stein, and Glen Greenwald, to name a few who opine on this issue.

There is serious debate over here on these subjects, and I think it is unfair to categorize opponents as anything other than critics. It is an old canard to say anyone who opposes Zionism wants Israel wiped out. Like saying supporting Irish independence meant death to all Protestants.

What Israel does or doesn’t do is really up to them, but know that we in the US have many problems, and outright military and financial support of any nation state, Israel or any other is not what our founders had in mind and should not be coerced one way or the other; we’re also going broke BTW.

As for the Arab nations and their calls for Israel’s destruction, note that none have done anything for the Palestinians, who are the focus of the discussion, and not the other peoples of the region.

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"Whether intentional or not, the “repatriation” involved moving others out of the way, oftentimes by force."

I question only your use of the past tense "involved". Arguably, especially when the West Bank is included within the field of vision, the "moving others out of the way" is an ongoing project.

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Paul, also in re Saddam Hussein, we backed him and his odious regime for years as long as he fought Iran, a nation we and Britain had dirtied up (promoting the Shah and ousting Mossadegh). This is part of my point; keep out of these various adventures embarked upon to make millionaires billionaires…

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I quite agree. UK/US foreign policy is certainly at the root of much of this. I've never been any defender of that. On the other hand, my enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend. My policy personally is always to stay out of it ...

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agree

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Francesca Albanese as leading expert already has provided it in this context, verdict pretty clear. Why, um, this biased doubt?

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No, I will not do your homework for you.

But I will give you a clue to start out: https://thegrayzone.com

Look at their coverage and see if you can debunk it.

You are a British ex-pat living in Ireland - do you know the history of the Irish people's solidarity with the Palestinians? If you are going to wade into the territory you'd better know the history.

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I know very well what 'Zionist' means, just as I know what 'genocide' means. I just wanted to hear you justify your own use of these words. I was 90% sure you would be too gutless to do so, and it looks like I was correct. I've met plenty of people like you before.

The person 'wading into the territory' of the middle east conflict here is you, my friend. I never write or talk about it, largely because I have no expertise on the subject. I imagine this also applies to you.

As for Ireland: I'm an Irish citizen, and this country is my home. As such, I am capable of distinguishing between the Irish state and the Irish people. This would be something worth you thinking about, if you were the thinking type.

Now, back to Twitter with you.

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Gabor Mate can explain Zionism to you:

https://youtu.be/7tqsJnViMbo

Your old pal Naomi Klein can as well:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel

As Morris Berman said the other day:

"1. The Israelis/Zionists are not real Jews. Real Jews stand for justice and freedom, not the slaughter of innocents. 1st century A.D.: A Roman centurion asked Hillel to summarize the message of the Torah in the time that he (the centurion) cd balance himself on one foot. Hillel said: "That which is hateful to you, don't do it to others." Are the Israelis doing what Hillel said?

2. Together w/Naomi's speech: now is the time to read this, if you haven't already: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Ilan Pappe.

3. The admins at Columbia, Yale, NYU, etc. are complete scumbags, the dregs of humanity.

mb"

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Read recently that rather than the "Israel/Hamas War" it would be more accurately called the "US-Israel Crucifixion of Gaza".

All roads lead back to the fact of the US imperium. For any still under the delusion the United States isn't a blight on the world, well, Harold Pinter said it best in his Nobel acceptance speech:

“The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Worldwide, in 2024, that spell is finally wearing off.

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Thanks for that. I don’t think most folks know about these issues as they are swept under the rug, along with the deaths of our own military personnel and countless innocents. As you can see from my comments to Paul, and his unfortunate reply, the spell you refer to is very, very powerful. I love my country, but it is getting harder and harder.

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I ceased loving it years ago, when I learned what my mom had believed and taught me as a kid it stood for - human rights - turned out to be part of the masquerade Pinter wrote about. So I left. I consider myself a political and cultural exile from a brutal, collapsing empire, oligarchic surveillance state, and cultural void.

It's a stolen country, a continent-wide crime scene, designed by and for slavers (now wage rather than chattel, but slavers nonetheless).

Best takes on that hellhole:

https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/

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Hi- What I love about my country is, I suppose, what most people care for- a geographical rootedness to the good familiar; my neighbors (even those who wish me ill, if any), the land/nature of the place, the little things that formed my existence, my kin…. I despise my government and much of its past and current malfeasance oft done to promote the gain of wicked people or “our precious democracy”.

The supporters of this death culture are quick to label opponents as violent extremists, mental cases, radical bomb throwers, and the like- nowadays, with the advent of AI and who knows what the Machine can engineer you (so to speak) to be first cousin to Herman Goering or something that fits their plans.

Speaking as an Orthodox Christian, all of this crap is and should remain terra incognita-the hatreds, the labeling, the endless wars, the lies upon lies…. I hear no one speaking of peace. All about the narrative, and God help you if you are on the other side if that.

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Honestly, there was probably never a way anything of the scale of the US government, not to mention the USA itself, could be anything other than a malignant and ruinous insult to creation.

At this point, all a person of any integrity can do is laugh at the absurdity of that monstrous agglomeration of buffoons as it tumbles towards its ignominious conclusion.

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We can enjoy watching the spectacle of the ship's sinking from the observation deck of the Titanic.

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Excellent, priceless ! Touché !

I shall add that even if "we" are not living in the continental U.S. we can still watch the ship sinking from the observation deck of the Titanic...

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Thinking about your comment and challenging myself to find some positive aspects of the ludicrous Moloch that is America:

- It still has many independent artists I like and respect.

- Good baseball.

- The national parks are fascinating reminders of what the place must have been like before it was destroyed by idiots and assholes.

- Looks like it will end soon.

👍

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Thanks Optera. The Machine, as Paul often reminds us, has a mind of its own, and is a monster of our own creation. Take the current mess for example. Did either of ask for CBDC? Nope. Constant surveillance? War on the world? Plastic galore? Big Pharma? Big agriculture? Forever chemicals? No, no, no, no, no, and no. But here we sit, on the heap of our exudate. It will be our undoing, whether regional or otherwise.

Don’t get too despondent though. I see you have a keen sense of history and despite the obvious shortfalls of this life, you can still see some goodness. Baseball. I was quite a fan as a kid, mainly in 1969; actually saw Mickey Mantle hit a home run at old Yankee Stadium. Got disenchanted with pro spirts once it became too corporate, but still like the game- fond memories of many a sand lot game in my youth. Peace to you and yours.

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Speaking as a foreigner, I am always surprised at how much I like America, and Americans, whenever I visit. I am always primed against it, being the home of the Machine, Babylon, foreign policy monstrosity, etc. And all of these things are true. Still, American culture to me is often quite appealing, its people are friendly and the independent spirit they often have is something I wish we had in Europe sometimes. I hope America can survive the disaster of the US empire.

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"I’ll tell you what an anti American is: it’s what government call those who honor America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity. There are millions of these anti Americans in the United States. They are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms, though they would call it common decency. They are not vain, they are people with a wakeful conscience, the best of American citizens. Sure, they disappear from view now and then but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional. " - Martha Gellhorn, War Correspondent

My problem is I could never stop judging the American government and American culture (a business culture, frankly) in moral terms, and in moral terms it is in both cases more or less the heart of darkness.

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Thank you, Paul. Please remain my brother.

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"I hope America can survive the disaster of the US empire." Thank you for your good wishes. You express my own doubter's prayer.

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100% we will survive this

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The U.S. may be the home of the Machine, but I still feel deep down that the origins of the Machine are to be found... in France, and maybe in the alliance of France's enlightenment with the U.S.'s founding fathers who COULD HAVE BETRAYED their English heritage in setting up the Republic. The Machine did not spread out from U.S. culture, but from France, and way back when. France... the birthplace of the French revolution, and its modernity, but also "la fille aînée de l'Eglise", the eldest daughter of the Church.

I too, am charmed by the friendly, independant spirit of my fellow countrymen... not all of them but some of them., and lots of people I have met on this site (yeah, you too, Optera).

The U.S. came out on top after WW1 and 2, and we have still not forgotten it... particularly in Europe...

And I hope that not only America/the U.S. can survive the disaster of empire, but... America's European colonies now, too...

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Hey...

I don't think that you have YET lived long enough outside of the U.S. to truly appreciate everything that your country still stands for ?

I was born at a time, in a social milieu where I learned to believe that every voice counted, that every person had something interesting ? important to contribute to the social dialogue, that when your faucet started leaking, it was best to have a plumber, and not a doctor at hand, and that the.. NOBLE PROFESSION of plumber, trash collector was vital to the PUBLIC GOOD.

I don't think that I am particularly naïve... but I sure see a bunch of people with jaded appetites and childish and childlike disappointment about their lot in life. Don't you ? Lots of... griping coming from people who have roofs over their heads, running water to flush their toilets, and ROADS TO DRIVE THEIR CARS ON...

And I have never seen so many... people who consider themselves to be poor because they can't afford what they think the "rich" people have... That makes me very sad, and bewildered...

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Unfortunately, some of us are going down with the ship- but c’est la guerre.

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That spell has never had any effect on me, as you'll know if you know of my work going back nearly three decades (there is no reason you would have read my early books, of course.) The US has indeed been a blight on the world in foreign policy terms, and my country, Britain, has tagged along on its coat tails. However: this does not lead me to conclude that Israel's enemies are my friends. The whole thing is a hot mess, but here we are.

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Agreed. The Machine wanted oversimplification of Russia/Ukraine and now it wants the same for Palestine/Israel.

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The thing about a "spell" is that those who are under the influence of one often are unaware of it.

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Very good, again. That's why thinking is a process that requires going back over what you have already observed/thought at least once, if not several times to see what has changed since you looked at it last. Changed... in the world, but in you, too, and the tricky part is that you have no way of knowing exactly WHERE it has changed. And you never will...

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It's definitely not the first time that the State of Israël has been a hot mess for... (burgeoning) empire. I don't see too many people interested in making the comparison between Roman law/politics and Jewish law/politics that would be useful to try to understand why Israel regularly becomes a hotbed, and why tensions are so high., or why the political state of Judea got wiped off the map by the Romans way back when.

I like the thought that Israels enemies are not my friends. It takes me back to "Dune", for my own particular cultural references, when Paul says something along the lines that his father did not realize that the enemies of his enemies were not necessarily his friends. Good point. A very good argument for the third term that opens up a manichean world.

As I have said elsewhere here, it is one thing to talk about the U.S.'s political power, and another to talk about what its... colonies would like it to be/do. The fact that its colonies ? seem to rave regularly about autonomy and independance is... problematic.

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Can't speak to Pinter as a playwright but as a political thinker he was a bog-standard leftwing hack.

That said, many of his criticism of American empire are correct. But like a lot of ideologues, when it came to that sort of criticism he seemed unable to separate the country from its government.

Of course, we are at the stage now where US foreign policy is merely serving as a wedge for a larger globalist homogenization, something that a more measured (i.e., sane) critic of the U.S., Canadian political philosopher George Grant, predicted decades ago.

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Well, when it comes to separating America from its government, Morris Berman likes to quote George Carlin's, "Where do you think our leaders come from, Mars?" And in that sense, Pinter and every other critic of American foreign policy who would condemn both the nation and the citizenry of the nation who elected the leaders formulating and implementing those policies, has it right. This despite Gellhorn's true statement about a relative handful of seeds beneath the snow.

There are still millions of those seeds (okay at least a million, I hope, unless they too got out, in which case God bless them), but in a nation of hundreds of millions of violent idiots and hustlers on the make, a couple of million decent people... Look The White Rose Society were Germans too. Their existence, however, didn't excuse the millions who voted Hitler into power.

Nor will a relative handful of wakeful consciences excuse the tens of millions eager to pull a lever for the "instinctive fascist" (not my words, that'd be his niece) Trump in November, or the undead neoliberal zombie Biden (my words, and you wanna talk about a hack!?). The country is a moral void, a cesspit, which was basically Pinter's issue with the place, and would be more than a sliver of Americans' issue with it too if they were not so catastrophically stupid, and frankly, complicit in all the atrocities, imperial and otherwise.

Again, this moral void has been documented for years now at a place like Berman's blog, where a daily litany of links from commenters roll in about the macabre idiocy and pervasive violence of the population yanking levers for everyone from Nixon to Biden.

America has been called a fragment society of the British mercantile class. As the Steinbeck quote went, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." In fact, this is a criticism Berman has of Chomsky, who Berman contends has spent his whole life mistakenly insisting Americans would do the right thing if only they were not bamboozled by the powerful. Berman counters the American government and Americans themselves are in fact involved in what more closely resembles political ""consensual sex".

Never read Grant, seems interesting, though Red Toryism strikes me as a sort of refurbished social democracy for righties squeamish about being associated with lefties, and even a relatively small (in terms of population) nation like the UK could only ever devolve into the soul-crushing monstrosity it is now. In that way he strikes me initially as a self-deluded person, or perhaps someone history has simply rushed past. I note he died at the tail-end of the Thatcher government and wonder what he would think of the UK, or a figure like Sunak, today.

All of this is moot, however. There is no way a teetering civilization this corrupt, violent, dumb, and festooned with hydrogen bombs on hair-trigger alert does not tumble into nuclear annihilation. The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. That way of life enabled me to compose and send forth this ineffectual missive, and at some point the price will be something like my children's bodies being sucked into a mushroom cloud and incinerated. Seems like a bad bargain to me.

And that hack, Pinter? He was a peace activist too. "The United States is a monster out of control. Unless we challenge it with absolute determination American barbarism will destroy the world." So corny, right? America, and most Americans, can and will very much deservedly go to hell:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hundreds-of-millions-will-die-in-minutes-if-nuclear-war-breaks-out-in-russia-or-china/ar-BB1kNTWo

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"America, and most Americans, can and will very much deservedly go to hell."

That's insane. And thus not worth responding to.

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Insane? Perhaps. Certainly uncharitable, but again, we're talking about the nation and people responsible for the looming murder of my children. If you can dispassionately stand by as people murder *your* children, by gum you are quite the Christian indeed!

Speaking of old Professor Berman, he finally concluded that though most Americans deserve what's coming, their comeuppance was ultimately pointless, as they are too stupid to understand what they are being punished for.

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You write as if there are no other actors on the world stage, or as if the U.S. is not under the influence of something bigger than itself. The U.S. may, in a sense, be the spearpoint of the Machine, but it's not the Machine itself. How much responsibility individual Americans bear for the rise of its imperial foreign policy should be left up to God to decide, not to college professors or random people on the internet. Historically speaking, you can play only the hand you are dealt, the opinions of modern woke chowderheads notwithstanding: "If we had been there we wouldn't have slain the prophets." Yeah, right.

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Technically, the German people did NOT vote Adolf Hitler into power. Adolf Hitler came into power when the various parties haggling for power in the Weimar Republic could not make any compromises, particularly the political power on the left, as a matter of fact, and Hitler was appointed Chancellor when the Republic... failed.

The German people I know are keen on having this distinction made, and I can definitely understand them.

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What a bunch of slippery bullsh*t., "technically..." 🙄 Typical of the American right, forever striving to assign Nazism to the left as they queue up to vote Trump. Of course, you all duck out as soon as the facts about how the "National Socialists" treated communists and actual socialists is raised. Look, Debra, I moved 7.000 miles overseas NOT to have to listen to this sort of nonsense from American liars and fools. Stop @'ing me already. I'd have blocked you ages ago if Substack permitted it.

The actual facts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power

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I'd appreciate it if you could keep your conversations on here respectful, however strong your opinions might be, please. Everyone is human, and nobody has a monopoly on truth.

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I am going to respond in a very emotion way to this comment, and will not make excuses for that.

As it turns out, I am a very logical person to support what you wrote, Optera. You are living outside of the MOTHER COUNTRY right now. You too, have a different vision of it from OUTSIDE than what you might have of it INSIDE. That is understandable and very inevitable, by the way, although that just might not make you happy in the very long run. You may already have noticed just how much the outside/inside business tends to eat away at your soul in the very long run, because.. IT DOES.

And maybe this is the, um.. REAL problem, the outside/inside business.

I think that it is essential to remember that the Anglo Saxon origins of the colonisation of the New World are all about founding A NEW JERUSALEM. Yep. A new Jerusalem. So... could that maybe have something to do with the intense feelings of loyalty that could be involved between Israel and the United States ? Could there be something in the European, Anglo Saxon origin of the United States and its governing institutions that continues to tie Israel's future to the U.S ? This may all be... mythology to many people who seem to have a religious love for the.. scientific ? truth, but hey, denying and discounting mythology because of your.. scientific ? religious beliefs is a little silly and misguided, isn't it ?

When you get down to it, belief remains belief. In my opinion.

When I was a young woman, I heard the... propaganda that you wrote above, and it had an enormous effect on me. But your "teaching" there is not the only way of looking at the problem, and the events. There are other ways of looking at them, and other people have different ways of looking at them. Just how much can you ? we ? tolerate that other people have different ways of looking at events ? I'm not sure at all.

There is something else that I think that you don't want to see here. Almost everybody I know who speaks in the way you do about U.S. crimes can NOT see what is going on outside.. or inside. They CAN NOT SEE just how eager the colonized are to be colonized. They can not, or will not see how active the colonized are in embracing the American way of life, for example. After more than 40 years in France, I have had a long time to see this now, and it leads me to believe in the long run that NOBODY can take away from you what you have not already conceded, somewhere. The tricky part is that due to our Christian heritage, so many people are very eager to identify with... the victims. Does this make us more civilized, to identify with the victims ? Does it keep us in our place ? More importantly, does it have some DISADVANTAGES that we cannot see ? When you are in the position of having power, and having authority, when PEOPLE DECIDE (and not necessarily you...) that you have power and authority, should you be identifying with a victim (important word, victim. Remember that the word "victim" connotes a passive... feminine position, and it goes hand in hand with a religious sacrifice in our minds. Still.) ? For sure, I believe strongly that people who have power and influence should be able to feel that it is worthwhile and necessary to put their power and influence TO THE SERVICE of ?... the common good ? (a nebulous concept, admittedly)

To sum up, I will not follow you down the road of maintaining that the U.S. has been masquerading as a force for universal good. But I sure as hell can tell you that after WW 1, and its bloodbath, the U.S. WAS INVESTED WITH A MAGICAL ROLE OF SAVIOUR in Europe, and... it still is...

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"Zionist": a word used by antisemites to try and mask their antisemitism. Gross.

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"I'll take 'Psychological Projection' for $1000 please, Alex."

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Did you actually listen to the interview? If anything, he brought a perspective to her and her listeners that is in opposition to war and destruction. Even if what you say about Bari is true, that doesn’t mean there is no good reason to bring a humble, Christian perspective to her podcast. If Hitler himself gave me a platform to tell the Nazis about peace, humility, and God’s love, I would take it.

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the wonderful last sermon of Rev Michael Dowd.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le1TzMsGXkg

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Things went strange today for this evangelical, Pentecostal type. Today after time spent in prayer to the Father I had a revelation of the fellowship of the Archangel Michael and Mother Mary who as friends (I needed archangelic help) both helped me deal with a sudden bout of temptation and the presence of the tempter and I had an experience of the difference between veneration and the worship which belongs alone to the persons of the Trinity. For me veneration means the respect and reverence due to someone above you, better, with more authority. Unlike Jesus, Mary didn’t have the taste and feel of humanity combined with deity, but is supremely, beautifully perfectly human. Michael is angelic naturally and is pleased to serve, help, protect me Hebrews 1:14 and I now have new unseen friends to call upon and be with. Despite their being so far above me Mary and Michael in a peculiar way were my servants and brethren, at my side not above me. The greatest in the kingdom of God are servants of all as it says. Strangely wonderful. It is all a gift of grace to the imperfect not gradual attainment of spiritual worthiness. I will be exploring this. By the way no icons were needed. With a bit of quick thinking and use of my reasoning mind I was able to place the experience into my Biblical framework. Whew! Laughing at myself.

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Definitely puts the whole, "We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses..." in a new light! Yes, we are literally surrounded by them, supported and upheld by their prayers.

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I have always thought that particular verse, Hebrews 12:1, was a real stretch to cover the phenomena. For me it refers to those heroes and heroines of the faith referred in chapter 11 who persevered in faith through difficulties and are examples to us to walk in faith and perseverance. They are witnesses to and testify to the principle of persevering faith and trust. Hebrews 12:1 doesn’t mean they are hovering about in the unseen world around us. It’s a scripture IMO simplemindedly, grabbed and taken out of context to justify the real fellowship we may at times have with the departed and angels. I don’t think the verse can really bear the weight of the doctrine placed upon it. I look to other scriptures for understanding this.

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It seemed to resonate with your experience if taken at face value? A similar sentiment is echoed again later in the same chapter:

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect…”

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Good point!

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The early Church didn't seem to have had a problem with the traditional reading of this verse. I suspect that the notion that the cloud of witnesses simply refers to examples who testified to the principle of perseverance is a late Protestant development. Catholics, Orthodox, traditional Lutherans, and the more high-church Anglicans all accept the traditional view.

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Very thought-provoking, thank you.

I have a very analytic mind that I am at peace with now, after many years...

While I think that it is necessary to make distinctions between Mary's... sacrifice ? and Jesus's in the Christian faith, I feel that it is unfortunate that Protestantism as a whole disqualified Mary's sacrifice next to Jesus, (her station at the Cross...) and also the great importance of her claim ? to be a HANDMAID of the Lord at the moment when Jesus was conceived. (SERVANTS... the most powerful as servants)

Yes, yes, yes, to grace. It is so hard for modern man to ACCEPT RECEIVING GRACE.

But... why shouldn't the reasoning mind be able to accept grace ?

And much... thinking inside and outside the reasoning mind has brought me to the conclusion that grace... can also be a tremendous force of.. destruction in certain contexts. Hard to understand, or fathom, but I believe that it can...

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I thought it was a great interview. And as for Bari, if you listened to her in depth coverage of the war, you would hear her interviews of Palestinians as well as Israelis. She does really try to respect both sides of an argument. She is not a Christian and yet treated Paul with respect which says a lot in this day and age.

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I don’t understand May and Paschal, but then so much old wisdom becomes new all the time. Every one, of course feels like they didn’t quit make their points just right; I guess there is one exception that we know of. It is the exhilaration in your head , when from out of nowhere, thoughts that pop in , that tie all such loose ends together that validate your course and launch you forward, the gifts of the unseen, that make the pursuit worthy. Perhaps you could say did I leave something on the table or did God?

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Paul, would you ever consider writing a historical/sci-fi style fiction work? Having read your fiction I think you’d have a kick ass couple of stories up your sleeve. Especially from a “memoir” type perspective. Love your work, as always. Looking forward to the Machine book!

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I'm looking to host an informal, in-person meetup in Mid-Michigan. If anyone is close by and interested, hit me up!

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Mid-Michigan, like Lansing or more like Mt. Pleasant. Typing from SE Mich.

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We're in Flint. We could host at our house / urban farm, meet at a brewery a few blocks away (Tenacity) , or maybe down in Fenton.

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I'm in Ann Arbor. Fenton or Flint would be good by me.

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I have been attending an Orthodox parish for several months and participating in their choir (with the blessing of the head priest). It has been deeply meaningful to me. Around this time last year, I had been attending a Reformed Baptist church and felt ready to be baptized in their tradition, but after listening to some Abbey members here, decided to attend a few Orthodox services and read more about Orthodox theology before committing. I found that I resonated much more with Orthodox theology and traditions, and am now again considering baptism.

How do I know whether I am ready to marry God?

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The base prerequisites are found here - Matthew 11:28-30 and John 7:37-39, Mark 1:40-42 simple need

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You will know.

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'Deeply meaningful' and 'resonated' are words I identify with as newly Orthodox. God bless your endeavours.

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Study the Scriptures. Our fallen nature will not naturally resonate with Truth.

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It's different for everyone, and best to consult with your priest. Us converts can be a bit intemperate at first, when everything is a new wonder. I knew I was in the right place almost right away, but only after going through my first Lent, and *especially* my first Holy Week and Pascha, did I really begin to understand who Christ is. As I said to my wife at this time, it took going through that to at last understand what it meant to be a Christian, making everything before that seem pale and shadowy (this despite having been baptized elsewhere years and years before).

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Your priest should help you with this.

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I thought the Honestly podcast was excellent - every time she asked a hard question I thought you had a pretty brilliant answer and could relate it well to other ideas. I love the Honestly podcast and was happy to see you 'show up' in it this morning!

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Happy (Western) Easter! We just began the Triduum with a beautiful liturgy, the incense wafting out into the cool still early spring air afterward. Creation is itself liturgical.

I want to share an interesting story (I've been waiting with eager anticipation for the monthly salon). It's about a confrontation between real estate developers and a relatively new shrine in Toronto. It's not exactly a holy well; it is centred around a garden with a filled-in swimming pool, but partakes of many of the same characteristics of sacred landscape and healing stories. The story is also interesting because of the writer's perspective, which is pretty representative of the city's cultural leadership: i.e., somewhat skeptical and perhaps siding more with the developers even though championing "green", "progressive" values. Nonetheless, I find the article very well-written and illuminating about ecology, the sacred, and the Machine.

https://torontolife.com/deep-dives/real-estate-developer-vs-catholic-marian-shrine/

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Tomorrow, Good Friday, we commemorate the most consequential day in history. Ground zero was Israel and seems to still be the case. Alot more blood will be shed there before God puts this all to an end. Everyone seems to be shocked about how tragic our lives are, all the death and lies, callousness and cruelty experienced by so many, but we crucified God so what do you expect? Love your enemy is still a radical statement. Imagine if more of us took it to heart and really tried it. Its counterintuitive to forgive but its the nuclear bomb in the war for our Souls.

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I commend Russell Brand’s commentary on Ireland Votes No on both referendums to change the 1937 Irish constitution. A real gut punch to the nation’s elite chattering class.

Brand responds to a brilliant analysis published in Spiked, including this seasonally apropos gem:

“Even Easter 1916 is an embarrassment to a new elite that prefers to pool its sovereignty in the EU rather than stand up for the territorial sanctity of the republic.

That young men and women died in order that Ireland might govern itself is mortifying to these knowledge-industry elites who prefer to be governed from Brussels…they distance themselves even from the ideals of Irish independence…

To the rest of us, though, …it makes sense. People want to feel connected to history, to place, to their own part in the story of their community. The elite’s suggestion that we disavow all of this is ultimately a demand that we disavow ourselves.”

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I understand what you mean but I think it’s a bit too easy when we blame all and sundry on ‘elites’. Read the comments section of Unherd and you will see that just about every ill affecting to modern world is explained by what these guys call ‘the blob’ or the ‘metropolitan elite’.

It borders on conspiracy theory. Surely there is not one thing called ‘the elite’. Certainly in the UK those who wield power have a range of opinions and backgrounds. The big popular newspapers such as the Daily Mail have considerable power to control the news agenda - e.g there has a recent report documenting a massive increase in children poverty but newspapers prefer to obsess about Nike’s new England football strip. They are very different from the Guardian reading left-liberals who dominate certain institutions - e.g Universities. Then there are those who control the vast swaths of wealth and have influence over government decisions through lobbying. I think it’s a complicated picture.

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I’m going out on a limb here because this isn’t secure knowledge for me, more impressions from my very partial and under-informed perspective.

I can see what you mean that the picture is complex, but it could be that it appears complex but actually is quite simple. Power always rests in few hands; it’s never widely distributed. People who think alike do tend to gather together in certain professions (teaching, the media, HR… it’s been my misfortune in life not to have foreseen that careers in both publishing and teaching really weren’t going to be all that congenial for me…)

So where power consolidates, more power accrues fresh from the universities you rightly identify as lefty conditioning factories, since graduates will likely want to work somewhere they feel their views will be endorsed. In that sense, almost zero executive power resides with those who read the Daily Mail (what influential person would be seen dead with a copy of the Mail?), though that constituency has some voting power at election time. Add to this an ever-increasing acceptance of activism even in the workplace, enabled by HR depts. If this continues for 20 years and more - and I remember the astroturfing aggressive Left even when I was at university in the 1980s - it cannot be surprising that a critical mass develops and the rolling scrum gets the ball over the line.

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A group I forget to mention are the tech giants and advertisers. They ultimately are primarily concerned with money - and seem utterly cynical in this respect. Like Paul I have no time for woke HR departments, but like him I am also deeply critical of the ideology of industrial capitalism - which has actually transformed into something which is better described as ‘tech-feudalism’. And in my opinion these guys form a more powerful ‘elite’ than all the HR depts and universities put to together. But again I still would argue there is no one elite.

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Count me in on the “tech feudalism” hypothesis. However my post was aimed squarely at the Irish situation. When I lived there (1988-1994) a preoccupation with national identity and history was obsessive (and part of its charm.) To see that overthrown by a pan-Euro-identified political class — most ironically Sinn Fein (“ourselves alone”) — has distressed me deeply as have the horrible public policies that have flowed from woke sellouts.

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There is something that we are not seeing about the tech issue.

In France, the word used to talk about the Internet industry is the word "virtuel". If you look carefully at this word, you can see the Latin root "vir" in it, and that root means "man", as in a man with a tool.. between his legs. (admittedly not a nice way of putting it, but I couldn't find anything better this morning. Incidentally, I do not intend this as an insult whatsoever, but as... an observation.) That means that the "virtuel" field ? is one associated with a male identity, and that is very very important to us at a time when so many women are wearing pants, smoking cigarettes, writing and publishing novels, even conducting orchestras. Not only are so many women doing these things, but they do not seem to be content with doing these things... they want to do even more ! The more they want to do to feel... powerful ? AS POWERFUL AS men ? the more that bottoms out THE NECESSARY DIFFERENCE between men and women that we need to feel individually and socially, and creates sexual and social tension that we... pay for.

When you take a look at the golden age in Athens, there was a lot of social and sexual tension, because that is what democracy fosters, as a political/social system. Democracy and not feudalism...

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We are the problem with the world. We are too lazy to do the hard work of sustaining liberty. We are too self absorbed in what we can extract from our neighbor by the power of government. We are unwilling to stand firm against bad ideas, bad government, bad policies. We are too happy to be led.

h/t GK Chesterton

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A fav Chesterton quote of mine goes something like — the poor complain about being badly governed; the rich complain about being governed at all.

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That is a good one.

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