Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
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Acting on orders from the White House, immigration agents have arrested a Columbia University graduate for deportation due to his leadership of campus protests against Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza last year.
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is reportedly married to an American citizen and had had permanent residency in the US, but his green card has been revoked by the State Department as the Trump administration works to deport everyone they can possibly get away with deporting for criticizing Israel.
This is the equivalent of the Australian government revoking the permanent residency of my American husband Tim and deporting him because of our work criticizing the Gaza holocaust. The suffering that can be unleashed by a policy like this in the United States is hard to fathom.
This comes as we learn that the US government will be using AI to compile lists of people suspected of expressing support for Hamas on social media, and as the Trump administration announces that funding will be killed for any schools which allow “illegal protests” in support of Palestinians on their campuses.
I have said it before and I will say it again: there is no greater threat to free speech in our society than Israel and the western governments who support it. Civil rights are being stomped out throughout the western world to shut down all criticism of Israel.
We’re now seeing escalations in western Zionism’s assault on civil rights on a daily basis. Pretty much every day I’m reading about at least one western government silencing criticism of Israel with some new authoritarian abuse. Zionism is the number one threat to free speech in our society.
Westerners need to understand that Israel and the west’s support for it are a direct threat to our personal freedom. This is about YOU now. If you didn’t have enough compassion to oppose Israel for its genocidal atrocities, you should at least now oppose it to protect yourself.
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Trump supporters are falling all over themselves trying to justify Trump’s assaults on free speech the same way Bush supporters fell all over themselves to justify the authoritarianism of the Bush administration. Republicans haven’t changed. They think they have but they haven’t.
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This happens as opposition to Israel becomes more urgently needed than ever. Israel has cut off all electricity to Gaza, which is expected to cripple Gaza’s water supply by killing power to critical desalination plants. Once again this genocidal apartheid state is targeting civilians with deadly force in order to advance its depraved agendas, but anyone who wants to criticize such things is being aggressively targeted by increasingly tyrannical measures throughout the western world.
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The most horrifying thing about all the footage of HTS thugs massacring people in Syria is not the violence itself, it’s how happy its perpetrators are in the videos. Grinning. Laughing. Joking. It’s deeply disturbing how easily people can be turned into monsters.
I’ve been on the receiving end of shrieking vitriol ever since I started this gig for opposing the western empire’s regime change operations in Syria. Got a good dose of it last December when the operation finally succeeded. Now look. Look where it landed.
Always oppose the empire.
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There’s a video going around of young British men at some kind of pro-Ukraine event advocating sending British troops to Ukraine, and when the interviewer asks them if they themselves would volunteer to go put their own boots on the ground they act shocked and start stammering about how they’re conscientious objectors and are not physically fit enough.
It’s fascinating how often you’ll see this sort of response from western armchair proxy warriors when you suggest that they should go and fight in this military intervention they’re so keen on perpetuating. They often cannot seem to comprehend why anyone would think it’s a compelling point that they are pushing the continuation of a war that they themselves would never agree to fight in, which is just so very revealing. It shows that they see the idea of other people fighting and dying in a war as a completely different and unrelated category to the idea of themselves fighting and dying in a war.
It shows that they don’t view the people who fight in wars as fully human, with dreams and fears and families just like they have, who don’t want to die a violent death any more than they do. It’s genuinely never occurred to them to put themselves in the shoes of the people who are fighting and dying and getting their limbs blown off, and to think about what it would be like if the same thing were happening to them.
It’s like a video game to these people. They don’t see it as real in the same way their own lives are real. A war is something they watch unfold on social media and cheer and boo like a sporting event, not something involving real people who are just as capable of suffering and loss as they are.
A majority of Ukrainians now oppose the war and want a negotiated settlement as quickly as possible. If you want this horrific war to continue and yet you are not on front lines serving in the Foreign Legion, then you should definitely shut the fuck up. If you want Ukrainians to keep throwing their lives into a war against their will when you yourself are unwilling to do the same, then you have failed to mature as a human being on this planet. You lack a functioning empathy center in your brain, and it’s a major character flaw, and you should go fix it.
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