Here is the link to the comic on Go Comics: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2023/11/12Post by @beingliberalView on Threads
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Blog, blog against the dying of the light"
Sunday, November 19, 2023
Here's a great Doonesbury cartoon
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Today's News: My List about the Israel-Hamas War
Matt Gurney: What I watched Hamas do The screams I heard on Monday weren't fake. The monsters at the door weren't actors in a lot of latex. These monsters were real.[Graphic warning] I have just seen the raw footage from Hamas terrorists of their attacks on 7 October. The screams of civilians murdered in their cars, babies slain in Disney pyjamas, children begging for “daddy” as he is blown up, the dead spat on.
— Benjamin Butterworth (@benjaminbutter) November 2, 2023
As they mercilessly…
I view these clips with something of a trained eye, and noted quickly that the shootings are methodical and efficient. The attack force was well-drilled and organized. The killers are mostly task-oriented and focused. They had objectives and stuck to them. But that doesn't mean they weren't having the time of their lives. The National Post's Sabrina Maddeaux was there on Monday as well, and in her column about the briefing, she made a point of flagging something I'd noticed too — glee. Pleasure. Delight. Whooping cheers, selfies with the boys (carefully framed to put dead or captured Jews in the background), huge grins. The attacks were efficient, but not joyless. The Hamas terrorists are thrilled to be doing what they're doing.
Reuters: Hunted by Hamas: 27 hours of slaughter and survival inside Israel’s Kibbutz Be’eriThe survivors in the Re’im shelter played dead for hours. Ms. Yosefzon was shot in the leg and her boyfriend in the arm. Their two other friends were dead. All the while, they could hear shooting and yelling in Arabic outside.Eitan Halley, 28, a student, was drifting in and out of consciousness on the floor. He was full of shrapnel, and the fragments of someone else’s skull lay on his leg. Two of the friends he had arrived with had been killed. “I saw the face of death,” he said.
Washington Post Hamas envisioned deeper attacks, aiming to provoke an Israeli warThe survivors, just beginning to process the nightmare they endured, spoke in the days after the attack. Many described how spouses, children or grandparents were killed by the Hamas gunmen who had invaded their homes. Some were shot dead, others burned alive. In some homes, entire families were slaughtered or kidnapped.“It’s like a 9/11,” said kibbutz secretary Alon Pauker, referring to Al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, but with a difference: “You know everyone who died.”Some of the survivors cried as they spoke, others were stoic. Some were enraged, their ire directed at the killers but also at Israel’s leaders, who they said had failed to fulfill their most fundamental duty – protecting them.Like many Israelis, whose sense of security has been shattered by the attacks, they wanted to know how Hamas militants had so comprehensively breached Israel’s border defenses, and why the army they trusted had been so taken by surprise and taken so long to respond.Anger at the government is intense. Some ministers who have tried to visit the injured in hospitals or displaced survivors have been berated and forced to leave.The Israeli state “failed us totally,” said kibbutz secretary Pauker.
Even if its current leadership is effectively destroyed, she said, Hamas and its followers will continue to regard Oct. 7 as a victory. That’s partly because the group unquestionably succeeded in focusing the world’s attention on the Palestinian conflict, she said.“It’s the first time I can remember that Hamas has become so prominent on a global scale,” Katz said. “So many people have already forgotten Oct. 7 because Hamas immediately changed the discussion. It put the focus on Israel, not themselves. And that’s exactly what they wanted.”
If Hamas wants a ceasefire, we'd be seeing Israeli hostages being let out of tunnels. The people of Gaza want and deserve an end to the war. Hamas sees it in their interests to keep it going. It values hostages more than the Palestinian people.
— Mark Bourrie (@MarkBourrie) November 6, 2023
Sunday, November 12, 2023
Oddities and funny stuff: from the Valeriepieris circle to a bull riding a motorcycle
This blew my mind pic.twitter.com/tPzssWkyrG
— Time Capsule Tales (@timecaptales) October 6, 2023
Wednesday, November 08, 2023
Today's News: Ain't it the Truth!
Just a whole bunch of comeuppance news tonight.
Conservative MP's are now complaining in the HoC that Liberals are calling out their disinformation on social media. Also, complaining the Speaker shuts off their microphone when they act like children. Priceless.
— Tom Whittaker (@whittakertp) November 7, 2023
Scrimshaw has an interesting column about the recent "Trudeau is Toast!" polling: Comebacks, Challenges and the Connoisseur's CurseBecause the issue with the Convoy wasn’t what they were saying, it was the fact that residents couldn’t leave their fucking homes for 3 weeks, the biggest single non-governmental source of employment closed for weeks, and the honking and the fumes fucked with people’s health https://t.co/DAyTEbFThx
— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) November 7, 2023
I am afraid Trudeau isn't going to get another two years - I expect Poilievre and the entire CPC are trying every trick in the book to get Singh to abandon his agreement with Trudeau next spring -- but I expect the Liberals will be ready for that one, too....Poilievre has spent millions – which he has to spend, and good for him – on a relentlessly positive ad campaign. It’s Harper’s sweater vest, except with a bigger ad buy behind it and Poilievre’s kids are young enough to look cute in the B-roll.... The kids do look cute, and he looks normal.It’s also not going to matter when the Liberals eventually go on air with an ad blitz of their own about crypto as a way to opt out of inflation and banning all vaccine mandates and all the other crank lunacy that Poilievre’s said. We see them trial ballooning the eventual TV spots with all these digital videos – they’ll find the one that works best and hit him with it, in time. Will it matter? It’ll probably blunt his rising favourables (up to 40% per Abacus, and the ascent coinciding with the ad blitz’s start), when it comes. But what will matter is how the economy is when the election’s called, and whether people come to believe that Poilievre will win.Another two years of columns from everyone about how Trudeau’s dead and Poilievre’s inevitable will probably have the effect of hurting Poilievre....
2/
— Kathryn Mathias (@KathrynMathias1) November 7, 2023
Fed cons: housing crisis is still Trudeau's fault
Feds to municipalities: here's an incentive to do something about the housing crisis
Munis start to work with feds on addressing housing crisis
Con premiers to Fed Libs: butt out
Fed cons: it's still Trudeau's fault
Saturday, November 04, 2023
Today's News: Updates about the Israel-Hamas War
The pro-Palestinian protesters in DC today called for wiping Israel off the map entirely. That’s genocide. pic.twitter.com/fkAfzxOQHi
— John Aravosis 🇺🇸🇬🇷🏳️🌈 (@aravosis) November 5, 2023
Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Father of the U.S.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 5, 2023
Today, anti-Israel protesters desecrated his statue.
🇺🇸🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/Sgm4CgBkKu
Enough with this bullshit, this is vandalism and is not a peaceful protest. How quickly we forget #Israel's dead? #Hamas is still holding 240 hostages they aren't surrendering! It's as difficult to differentiate between Palestinians and Hamas as it is between Americans and #MAGA! https://t.co/oKhrqD9mo8
— Celestial Sojourner (@CSojourner) November 5, 2023
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Halloween part deux
Happy Halloween!
It’s ok to consider Reeses Pumpkin Peanut Butter Cups as a fruit during Halloween season.
— TG ☕️ (@TG22110) October 22, 2023
Canadian politicians, past and present, trick or treating as kids. Generated by AI.
— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) October 16, 2023
Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister (2015 to Present)
Leader of the Liberal Party (2013 to Present)
Parliamentarian (2008 to Present) pic.twitter.com/00aDTYFpKv
Canadian politicians, past and present, trick or treating as kids. Generated by AI.
— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) October 15, 2023
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario (2018 to Present) pic.twitter.com/bTwPYWVscE
Canadian politicians, past and present, trick or treating as kids. Generated by AI.
— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) October 15, 2023
Tommy Douglas
Premier of Saskatchewan 1944 - 1961
Leader of the federal NDP 1961 - 1971
Parliamentarian (1935 - 1944, 1962 - 1968, 1969 - 1979) pic.twitter.com/KVYvfFk2nJ
Monday, October 30, 2023
Today's News: using the Israel-Hamas War to promote antisemitism
Insane footage on Russian social media from Makhachkala in the North Caucasus region, where there have been several anti-Semitic protests this weekend.
— max seddon (@maxseddon) October 29, 2023
A crowd of people, some with Palestinian flags, broke into the airport in search of passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv. pic.twitter.com/MZxyvxi6T3
My alma mater @Cornell just posted this advising students to avoid the Kosher dining hall. pic.twitter.com/IVWGdRoYzy
— Jamie Weinstein (@Jamie_Weinstein) October 29, 2023
Berkley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky - Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses nowI will not sign a letter that describes the barbarous Hamas pogrom - live streamed by the death squads as they hacked, dismembered, burned and shot civilians at close range - as a "military action." 🦁 https://t.co/Fq2nOBUayk
— Tom Watson (@tomwatson) October 29, 2023
I am a 70-year-old Jewish man, but never in my life have I seen or felt the antisemitism of the last few weeks....On Friday, someone in my school posted on Instagram a picture of me with the caption, “Erwin Chemerinsky has taken an indefinite sabbatical from Berkeley Law to join the I.D.F.” Two weeks ago, at a town hall, a student told me that what would make her feel safe in the law school would be “to get rid of the Zionists.” I have heard several times that I have been called “part of a Zionist conspiracy,” which echoes of antisemitic tropes that have been expressed for centuries.I was stunned when students across the country, including mine, immediately celebrated the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7. Students for Justice in Palestine called the terror attack a “historic win” for the “Palestinian resistance.” A Columbia professor called the Hamas massacre “awesome” and a “stunning victory.” A Yale professor tweeted, “It’s been such an extraordinary day!” while calling Israel a “murderous, genocidal settler state.” A Chicago art professor posted a note reading, “Israelis are pigs. Savages. Very very bad people. Irredeemable excrement…. May they all rot in hell.” A UC Davis professor tweeted, “Zionist journalists … have houses w addresses, kids in school,” adding “they can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” There are, sadly, countless other examples....if you listen to what is being said on college campuses now, some of the loudest voices are not advocating for a change in Israeli policies, but are calling for an end to Israel. Students regularly chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “We don’t want no two states, we want all of 48,” referring to going back to 1948 before Israel existed.
MY LATEST: "Ask yourself, Are You Really for Palestine, or Do You Just hate Jews?"
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) October 29, 2023
The 10-7 HAMAS terror attack has revealed many Social Justice Warriors need to embrace their inner anti-semitism rather than hide it behind concern for dead children. We would respect you more if… pic.twitter.com/vUmWNpscBK
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Today's News: What rough beast is coming in the Israel-Hamas War?
Until I read Tom Friedman's column in the New York Times, I didn't understand what was happening in the Israel-Hamas War - particularly why so many people around the world are demonstrating against Israel. Friedman writes Israel: From the Six-Day War to the Six-Front War:
Friedman goes on to explain all of these "fronts", how challenging they are to manage, and how difficult it is going to be for Israel to fight this war.If you care about Israel, you should be more worried than any other time since 1967. Back then, Israel defeated the armies of three Arab states — Egypt, Syria and Jordan — in what became known as the Six-Day War. Today, if you look closely, you’ll see that Israel is now fighting the Six-Front War.This war is being fought by and through nonstate actors, nation-states, social networks, ideological movements, West Bank communities and Israeli political factions, and it is the most complex war that I’ve ever covered. But one thing is crystal clear to me: Israel cannot win this six-front war alone. It can win only if Israel — and the United States — can assemble a global alliance.Unfortunately, Israel today has a prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a ruling coalition that will not and cannot produce the keystone needed to sustain such a global alliance. That keystone is to declare an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and overhaul Israel’s relations with the Palestinian Authority so that it becomes a credible, legitimate Palestinian partner that can govern a post-Hamas Gaza and forge a broader two-state solution including the West Bank.If Israel is asking its best allies to help the Jewish state seek justice in Gaza while asking them to look the other way as Israel builds a settlement kingdom in the West Bank with the express goal of annexation, that is strategically and morally incoherent.It won’t work. Israel will not be able to generate the time, the financial assistance, the legitimacy, the Palestinian partner or the global allies it needs to win this six-front war.
Monday, October 23, 2023
Today's heroes: Travis Dermott, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Yocheved Lifshitz
This is allyship in action! 🏳️🌈🏒🏳️⚧️
— Dr. Kristopher Wells (@KristopherWells) October 21, 2023
Travis Dermott is the first player to challenge the NHL’s @PrideTape ban! #StickUpForPrideTape https://t.co/gNy17vMb4z
Travis Dermott is on a one-year, two-way contract with the Coyotes.
— Dan Robson (@RobsonDan) October 22, 2023
He is not a player who has leverage in the NHL.
Within a sports culture and league that overtly discourages using the NHL’s platform to take a principled stand, this defiance took courage. https://t.co/ovr7BWx9vF
Dermott told Yahoo Sports why he did it:Sounds like Travis Dermott’s use of @PrideTape is only the beginning of a group of NHL players using the symbol to show support for the LGBTQ+ community and to push back against the NHL’s cabal of exclusion.
— Ian Kennedy (@IanKennedyCK) October 22, 2023
“You want to have everyone feel included and that’s something that I have felt passionate about for a long time in my career. It’s not like I just just jumped on this train. It’s something that I’ve felt has been lacking in the hockey community for a while. I feel like we need supporters of a movement like this; to have everyone feel included and really to beat home the idea that hockey is for everyone.”
Her name is Yocheved Lifshitz, age 85, and her 83-year-old husband is still being held prisoner. The Times of Israel also reports:In the last second, 85-year-old Israeli hostage released from her Hamas captors reaches her hand back to the terrorist who kidnapped her and says “shalom” - meaning both goodbye and peace in Hebrew.
— Lior Hamovitz 🌍 (@LiorHamovitz) October 23, 2023
That’s the difference. pic.twitter.com/KucQQQ7oLt
The Lifshitz couple, who were among the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, were peace activists and regularly transported patients from Gaza to receive medical treatment in hospitals across Israel.
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Dueling videos -- Trudeau vs Poilievre
As the apple-chomping clip spread on social media, reporters remembered the Trudeau clip too, even though the comparison isn't equivalent:This is Pierre Poilievre ⬇️! He is so full of himself, he thinks he is having a Matt Damon moment in Goodwill Hunting, “How yah like them apples?”
— MP Ryan Turnbull 🇨🇦🇺🇦 (@TurnbullWhitby) October 20, 2023
Watch him side step questions about his populist, Trump-like politics.
Can you say smug, arrogant, and condescending?#cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/1W6OdzYNX8
In the Globe and Mail, Shannon Proudfoot wrote a useful analysis - Getting to the Core of Poilievre's biting "apple" interview where she talked about what was really happening during this exchange:Surely you can't be comparing PMJT respectfully engaging a teenager on the substance of a woman's right to choose with Poilievre's dismissive apple chomping arrogance. #cdnpoli https://t.co/nslwL7XICx
— Harry P ✌️❤️🇨🇦 (@HarrysNotes) October 21, 2023
Yes, good points....Sure, Mr. Urquhart’s question was muddled – though show me a journalist who says they’ve never framed a question badly, especially when nervous, overworked or out of their element, and I’ll show you someone with their pants on fire. It’s perfectly clear what he was getting at. Mr. Poilievre is free to reject the premise of the question and deploy all of his considerable rhetorical talents to dispute it, because that’s the way this works.But kicking a journalist in the shins over and over to throw them off balance so you can run away, then turning the exchange into a social-media flex is telling on yourself.In order for this scenario to be the delicious come-uppance its fans believe it to be, you have to see Mr. Poilievre – leader of a major political party, a lifelong politician and, if the polls are right, the next prime minister – as the underdog here, not the overworked local reporter just trying to ask a guy from Ottawa a couple of questions in an apple orchard.
The article went on to quote Poilievre's fantasy platform stump speech, concluding with this:...When asked why Canadians should trust him with their votes given his demonstrable track record of flip-flopping on key issues and what some consider his use of polarizing ideologically-infused rhetoric suggesting he simply takes pages out of the Donald Trump populist playbook, Poilievre became acerbic.Ultimately the answer was: “Common sense.” We’re going to make common sense common in this country. We don’t have any common sense in the current government,” he said.
“I’m going to cut spending, cut waste so that we can balance the budget and bring down inflation and interest rates. If you want to be able to pay your mortgage again, if you want to be able to afford rent then you have to vote for Pierre Polly because I’m the only one with a common sense plan that will bring back the buying power of your paycheck,” he said sounding as if an election was just around the corner.
So how do we like them apples now?Richard Cannings NDP Member of Parliament for South Okanagan - West Kootenay issued a statement on Poilievre’s Okanagan visit saying the Conservative Party leader’s talk is simply a performance act.“Poilievre puts on a good show, but that’s all it is - a performance. He gets up and says all the right things, but then fights to save big bosses a few dollars at the expense of working people.“Poilievre isn’t who he pretends to be. He doesn’t work for regular people; he works for rich CEOs.”Cannings cited a number of instances over Poilievre’s 20 year career that highlight the contradictory nature of his claims including his support for a $60 billion tax giveaway to big businesses while cutting services for ordinary Canadians.“Two times, he voted against having a minimum wage,” Cannings said adding that he’s tried to block dental care for Canadian families, despite having full coverage as an MP for almost 20 years.“Canadians are struggling to find affordable housing and pay for grocery bills, and they deserve to have someone in Ottawa that has real solutions to their problems. And Poilievre isn’t that person - he’s proven it over a twenty-year political career.
Thursday, October 19, 2023
Courageous people
Heather Kuttai's resignation letter (Oct. 16, 2023) to Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe.
— Sean Tucker (@SeanTucker16) October 17, 2023
Kuttai served for 9 years as a Commissioner on the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.
(Letter posted in CBC Sask story by @jessieanton_ ) pic.twitter.com/806Vbe45H6
Sunday, October 15, 2023
Comments about the Israel-Hamas War
Yes, I can understand why people around the world are angry and terrified about what is happening in Gaza to the Palestinians.An important message for the world to hear from the IDF International Spokesperson, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht. pic.twitter.com/e9rmcgLgex
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 15, 2023
There will be a ceasefire when Hamas unconditionally surrenders. If you hear your legislators ask for a ceasefire, tell them to pressure Hamas to surrender.
— Ethan Wolf 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@ethanmwolf) October 14, 2023
Saturday, October 14, 2023
I read the news today, oh boy!
We are, right now, living through another historical moment....For we have gone from being in a political moment to a historical one.I use the words somewhat eccentrically, to distinguish between events that are simple enough to be fully explicable ("political") and those that are too complex to be defined ("historical"). ...The distinction also has a moral dimension. To exist in history is to have passed beyond the pieties and slogans of the political. History is tragic: politics is not. History is glorious. It is also fatal.The two great competing ideologies of the 20th century, fascism and communism, were both self-consciously historical movements. As Czeslaw Milosz brilliantly noted in his classic study "The Captive Mind," it was precisely the abstraction of communism, its claim to have attained the summit of morality and to have incorporated into itself all possible contradictions, that made it so meticulously horrifying. In similar fashion, fascism contained a kind of blankness at its core: the self-glorifying violence of the state simultaneously concealed and revealed the emptiness of its founding concept, the national tribe.The lesson every government should have learned from the bloody 20th century, one written in blood across the tortured soil of old, very old Europe, is very simple: Avoid history at all costs. History is too big, too abstract, too dangerous. Avoid men with Big Ideas -- especially stupid men with Big Ideas. Take care of politics: let history take care of itself. In a word, don't play God.
...Hamas, the militia that controls the Gaza Strip, managed to surprise and outmaneuver the most powerful military in the Middle East last Saturday — storming across the border, overrunning more than 30 square miles, taking more than 150 hostages and killing more than 1,300 people in the deadliest day for Israel in its 75-year history.With meticulous planning and extraordinary awareness of Israel’s secrets and weaknesses, Hamas and its allies overwhelmed the length of Israel’s front with Gaza shortly after dawn, shocking a nation that has long taken the superiority of its military as an article of faith.
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
The Israel-Hamas War: stories of courage, stories of terror
They were killed waiting for the bus, dancing at a festival, doing morning chores and hiding as best they could. Searching bullet-riddled houses, streets and lawns, Israeli soldiers are still finding them.The soldiers, retaking control of the kibbutzim, towns and settlements near the Gaza Strip that came under attack by Palestinian terrorists over the weekend, have recovered body after body after body.Hamas gunmen, hitting more than 20 sites in southern Israel, killed more than 1,000 people, including women and children, and abducted an estimated 150 more people... Palestinian gunmen attacked Israeli civilians in all the mundane places of a Saturday morning in southern Israel — at an outdoor festival and in their homes, on familiar roads and in the middle of town — places where soldiers and the police were as surprised by the violence as neighbors, families and friends.
Another family's story from this tweet:
If you don't live in Israel or consume Israeli media, you don't know who Yair Golan is. He is a 61-year-old retired Major General in the Israel army and a former parliament MP. Spend a minute to read this story.Yesterday, when IDF and the police were in complete chaos, Golan put on his old uniform, took his weapon, and drove into the war zone multiple times to rescue civilians under fire. He rescued two young adults hiding under a bush after 260 of their friends were murdered at an outdoor party. He answered a call from a journalist that his son was hiding under fire and simply said, "Give me his location, and I will bring him back home." An hour later, the son called his father from Golan's car.Golan collected a small crew and went in and out of the war zone, rescuing dozens of people while exchanging fire with Hamas terrorists. He is 61, he could have stayed home, but he chose to risk his life for people he does not know.Golan is one of the strongest voices from the Israeli left and was constantly attacked by the right wing in Israel. But when the time came, he was first fighting the barbaric attack. The same brain wiring that supports peace, is often the same wiring that drives people to do the right thing.A true hero.By the way, he is not the only one. Major General Noam Tivon, also 61, drove from Tel Aviv, joined the troops on the ground and rescued his son and grandkids. He stayed and help the troops fight the terrorists that were still there.
Adar and Itai Berdichevsky from Kfar Aza hid their 10-month-old twins in a mamada (air-raid shelter), while they waited for the militants in the house to divert the terrorists' attention from the children.Both served in the army, both were officers, there were weapons at home, and the guys did not give up and, wounded, shot until the last bullet while they had strength left...Adar and Itay died. On the threshold of their house lay the corpses of 7 terrorists.The kids were alone in the room for 13 hours.They are safe, surrounded by love and care.They were found by Itaya’s brother and father Adar, who had been fighting the terrorists all this time, saved dozens of people, but were unable to get to their loved ones in time.