Green Poisoned Lawns Of Florida And Elsewhere And The Myth Of Environmental Concern

All of the development and destruction of trees, wetlands, mangroves and more in Florida and elsewhere have been disastrous to wildlife, biodiversity, human health and to the overall health of the environment. Biodiversity is rapidly disappearing across the planet.

People do not need to rely on government, a nonprofit entity or something external, to help the environment and themselves and change their use of their own lands and properties and make them friendlier to wildlife, to human health, to rivers, lakes, oceans, biodiversity and the environment at large. Planting native plants and useful, beneficial trees counters some of the harm that has already taken place in Florida and elsewhere.

Turning lawns, or at the very least some sections of lawns, into native plant gardens, attracts wildlife, including birds, bees, butterflies, ladybugs and more. It adds beauty and color to areas. It helps absorb and filter rainwater. 

Planting Trees also has many benefits. Trees can counter global warming. They provide shelter, shade and food for all kinds of wildlife and people. Not all trees are created equal. Certain tree species provide far more ecological benefits than others in specific geographic locations. 

As long as people stay married to their harmful and destructive love for green lawns that require massive amounts of water, toxic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, the continued collapse of biodiversity, rising cancer rates, polluted rivers, lakes and oceans will continue. 

All the poisons and fertilizers people pour into the environment have to go somewhere. Green, useless grass that humans cannot eat is apparently more important than stopping rivers, lakes and oceans from turning into toxic sewers, with manatees, dolphins, birds, fish and other wildlife dying off.

Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, And The Green Lawn Obsession

 Many people complain about climate change. Many people complain about the loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation, even people that do not believe in climate change. 

But that does not mean people are willing to do anything about biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and climate change other than complain. 

Most people cannot do anything to impact almost everything on the macro level. Only a few people have the money, power and resources to change things on the macro level, and usually these people are the least likely to change anything, in that their lives are full of abundance and ease.

Here is one simple thing that millions of people can do, and that few will actually do. Reject green lawns as the standard for beauty, and change green lawns and other unproductive or minimally productive landscapes into biologically diverse landscapes. The amount of river, lake and ocean killing fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides required to keep green lawns has long been unsustainable. Lawns that look pretty comes at the expense of rivers, lakes and oceans made ugly, degraded and contaminated. Growing native plants and growing trees are within the power of millions, and still few do it.

Instead, the enormous waste of water continues to sustain unproductive lawns. The enormous amount of gasoline and energy continues to be wasted and continues to pollute in order to sustain unproductive lawns. Harmful chemicals and fertilizers continue to contaminate the environment in order to sustain unproductive lawns.

Native plants and select trees and other plants bring back bees, birds, butterflies, ladybugs and more animals that people decry the loss of but that few lift a finger to help by creating the conditions needed to bring them back. The right trees includes choosing trees that provide maximum environmental benefits, and are not chosen for arbitrary ornamental value.

Native plants and helpful trees will create new jobs for the jobs that are lost if unproductive lawns and landscapes cease to exist. Select trees and other plants, including native plants, provide animals food and shelter and can provide healthy food for people. People can then be less dependent on nutritionally limited store bought commercial foods that have their own negative environmental impacts.

Millions of people own millions upon millions of acres of green lawns. They can continue to waste enormous amounts of water, gasoline, river and ocean killing fertilizers, toxic chemicals, all to maintain a look, or they can turn those millions of acres into productive land that restores biodiversity, reverses environmental degradation and combats climate change. 

The choices people make on how to use their land makes a difference. The companies that want people addicted to green grass will fight to keep things as they are.  Millions of people sit on their millions of acres of unproductive, even harmful lands, in a time of collapsed biodiversity, changing climates, increased deforestation and environmental degradation. They may state the importance of combatting biodiversity collapse, climate change and environmental degradation, but if they really care, they will show it by how they use their land. 

YouTube Censoring Videos Opposing Hate And Anti-Semitism

A religious leader called for the violent destruction of Israel, the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of its Jewish population, and for war against the Jews. Is that hate speech? Or is opposing Jew hatred, or anti-Semitism, hate speech? I challenged this anti-Semitism in a video, and other anti-Semitism in another video, only to have the videos censored by YouTube. 

I appealed their censorship, which was quickly rejected with no explanation given other than that my videos violated their policies on hate. In other words, my videos which called out hate were themselves considered hate, perhaps because I cited the sources from which the hate emanated.

I have records of the censored videos. I challenge YouTube, or anyone for that matter, to show anything in the videos that in any way promotes hate, violence, bigotry or intolerance.

Social Media selectively censors. People that belong to one of social media's protected groups are given a pass even when they themselves spread hate, misery, violence, bigotry and intolerance. Those that challenge the hate and bigotry of the protected are censored and shut down.

Social media corporations censor content that has nothing to do with hate, violence or misinformation if it does not conform to how they want people to think or if it goes against who is not allowed to be challenged or criticized. They censor content using the excuse that what they do not like promotes hate.

Anti-Semitism and any form of hate and bigotry should be opposed regardless of its source. Hate and bigotry should not be protected when it comes from members of a religion or from anyone else, even when a religion or group are given special protection status by social media or others. Preferential treatment is something that causes harm in and of itself. Protecting the source of hate by giving them victim status or protected group status and not holding them accountable for their own hate and bigotry only adds to hate and bigotry and makes it worse.

Violence Keeps People Downtrodden, Including Many Black People. BLM, Carmine's, Candace Owens Interview

 An incident occurred in a New York City restaurant in which an Asian hostess was physically attacked by three black women from Texas. During an interview with Candace Owens, a Black Lives Matter leader justified the attack, insisting the three women legitimately attacked the hostess because the hostess uttered a racial slur. Unfortunately, neither Candace Owens or her other guest responded to this argument. 

BLM held demonstrations outside of the restaurant, demanding that the restaurant be shut down.

There is no way to prove or disprove the claim that a racial slur was issued, in that there are videos of the attack, but no clear audible. 

Even if a racial slur was uttered, there is no law on the books anywhere that allows someone to be physically attacked because of words, including racial slurs or other words of hate.

The BLM activist insisted that violence is justified in response to words. 

If this is what people want, then write it in the books. Make legal what far too many people pathetically already embrace: the use of violence based on reasons and standards that have nothing to do with self defense. 

And then do not be surprised when there is more of the same toxicity: more violence, more hate. 

Violence and hate and their acceptance keeps people downtrodden. Glorifying violence keeps people downtrodden. Violence is the mother to more violence. 

Racism, past injustices or hate used as an excuse to ignore, condone or promote violence and one's own hate and bigotry have been widespread for decades now the world over, and still its poison is ignored. 

Embrace or glorify violence, and in return expect violence, oppression, poverty and misery.

  

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, The Unlimited Power Of Social Media To Destroy

 YouTube should be an independent company and no longer part of a monopoly that has proven itself incapable of ensuring YouTube is not a platform for hate, violence, dehumanization, and misinformation.

Facebook is an unaccountable monopoly that has proven itself incapable of  not being a platform for hate, violence, dehumanization and misinformation. 

Facebook must be broken up into at least three different companies, if not more: WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.

There is no excuse for why these corporations, Twitter and others were allowed to evade regulation, accountability and liability, and for some to become monopolies. There is no excuse for allowing this to continue.  

The United States government has proven itself good at spending money that it does not have, propping up the stock market as though it is the only game that matters in the world, waging senseless wars and then abandoning allies, while failing completely to prevent monopolies, the concentration of power and wealth into the hands of a tiny few, and to regulate and hold accountable certain corporations.

Social media corporations are more than platforms for hate and misinformation. 

Social media corporations, including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter,  censor content that has nothing to do with hate, violence or misinformation, and that instead does not conform to how they want people to think. 

Their control of information is destroying freedom and the lives of many.

The monopolies need to be broken up. 

They all need to be independently regulated. 

War On Terror's Failure

 The war on terror is the use of terminology to cowardly avoid challenging political and religious ideologies that inspire and motivate terror. Beliefs, including religious beliefs, that inspire people to hate, to be violent, to be supremacists, must be challenged and repudiated.

At a time when the world should be mobilized to combat serious environmental threats, including but not limited to the massive decline in biodiversity, the poisoning of the planet with plastics, mercury, pesticides and numerous other poisons, the continued destruction of primary forests, mangroves and more, it is instead fighting religious battles that should have been left behind in the middle ages.  

Plastic Pollution: Workers Needed, Not Hype

 Plastic pollution is an environmental disaster. It must be addressed in a number of ways. This includes finding alternatives to plastic, reducing the use of plastic, and more. It is critically important for there to be universal proper waste management so that billions of people dependent on plastic in developing countries have proper ways to dispose of plastic trash instead of dumping it or openly burning it, thereby contaminating the air, everything around and themselves. 

When it comes to removing plastic already in the environment, the focus has been on volunteerism and technology. Both have their limitations. In many developing countries, many people cannot afford to be volunteers. Technology is limited as to what it can achieve, including the kinds of habitats where it can actually work. Technology, for example, cannot remove plastic from mangroves, forests, many shorelines, and many other habitats. 

What has been missing in regards to removing plastic already in the environment is employing people to remove plastic trash. Poverty is widespread in the world. People need work and the environment needs to be cleaned. Putting the two together means helping disadvantaged people by employing them to remove plastic pollution. Employed labor must become an integral part of removing plastic trash already in the environment.

If things continue as they are and plastic pollution is manipulated to serve certain selfish interests, while nothing of any significance is done, the outcome will be disastrous. Having millions of pounds of plastic trash continue to pour into rivers and oceans daily is not sustainable.

No One Religion Owns God Or Truth

One person's religion is superstition to many others. Religion is not science. It is based on beliefs, not facts. Many people insist their religious beliefs are facts, but they are not. They are beliefs, true to them and superstitions and fables to many others. 

People need to decide what they value more, conformity or freedom. Religion too often demands conformity. Freedom demands questioning. Taking away the right to criticize, to reject, to mock religion is taking away freedom itself. 

No religious ideology has the right to spread by force or to force anyone to submit. Religious violence and aggression must be challenged and repudiated. 

Religious freedom is being hamstringed when it is needed most. 

God is not exclusive. What a remote tribe believes in the Amazon or Congo is no less valid than the beliefs of those that insist God's message can only be found in certain books given to people in specific geographic locations. Those that insist only their God is the right god, only their religion is the right religion, only their religion and beliefs are the truth, and that only their prophet or prophets are the right prophets, have not died and returned to earth with a knowledge no one else possesses.

No religion has the exclusive right to God or truth. Rejecting religion does not necessarily mean embracing atheism. People can have faith in God or a higher power and be free of religion. Religion is a set of beliefs, not all of which might be good or beneficial, and some of which might be harmful and cruel. In some instances, religion is used as a shield that evil people hide behind. God is different than religion, and does not require religion to be believed in. No one religion owns God or truth.

 

YouTube As An Anti-Israel, Anti-Jewish Platform. Gaza And The Love Affair for Jihadists

 YouTube is too often used as a platform for demonizing Israel and inciting hatred and violence against Israel and Jews.

There are those that do everything they can to make Israelis appear demonic, even at times by the use of actors and scripted situations. There is no other conflict so thoroughly covered by cameras and video.  The anti-Israel crowd wants Israelis to be depicted in the worst ways imaginable. It is easier to seek the destruction of a nation and of a people by dehumanizing and demonizing them.

The theme of Israelis behaving badly attracts an enormous YouTube audience eagerly seeking validation for their hatreds and anti-Jewish stereotypes.  All war is sad and a crime against humanity. When it comes to Gaza, the conflict is inflamed by the anti-Israel crowd that completely excuses the jihadists that want the war and killings. Israel does not operate in a vacuum. It is not a country free of responsibility. But to pretend that the jihadist organizations and nations, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iran and its Lebanese occupation army Hezbollah, do not seek the murder of Israeli civilians and the complete destruction of Israel, and that they bear no responsibility for the wars and suffering of children and civilians in Gaza and elsewhere, is deceptive and dishonest. 

Demonizing Israel is used to unite people against a common enemy. Demonizing Israel is used by some in order to convert or keep people tied to a religion or hate group by focusing on the Jew as a figure to hate. 

Israel is used by every brutal, corrupt regime and organization on the planet to divert attention away from themselves, to unite people around an enemy to hate and despise, and to hide their own sins, crimes and evils by portraying Israel as the only source of what they themselves do. YouTube has made demonizing Israel and Jews readily available to billions of people worldwide in every language imaginable. In many places, people are taught to hate Jews, even when there are  no Jews in those countries. Few if any monitor the dissemination of hate and propaganda against Jews, especially when it is not in English and a few other languages.

Some people that do not want to appear anti-Jewish assert that they hate instead Zionists or Israelis, even though over a third of the world's Jewish population lives in Israel. They seek the same genocide, but pretend that because they use the word Zionist or Israeli instead of Jew, it makes the genocide they seek more acceptable. A tiny fringe group of anti-Israel orthodox Jews, disavowed by the vast majority of orthodox Jews and other Jews, believe only they are real Jews and that Israel must be destroyed. They are used by many people that hate Jews and that want Israel destroyed to legitimize their hatred and efforts to destroy Israel and slaughter Israeli Jews. 

YouTube selectively shields some against religious criticism, thereby legitimizing blasphemy and the suppression of religious freedom. When it comes to demonizing Israelis, actual people and not a religious belief, too often anything goes.

There are those that assert Israelis are not real Jews, as though they are not real human beings, and therefore are legitimate targets to attack. 

Others demonize Israel and Jews based on race, even though Jew is not a race. 

Others demonize Jews based on religion, falsely accusing Jews as being against God, another religions' prophets, or some other nonsense.

Many people are indoctrinated into believing killing Jews and driving them from the land is a religious obligation. This ensures endless bloodshed and no end to the conflict. War and more bloodshed has never been, and is not now the answer. Whether the answer is a one state or two state solution, or something else, is for Arab Palestinians and Israelis to decide. Whatever the answer might be, the one thing the answer is not is more war, killing and bloodshed.

No matter the murder, misery, corruption and atrocities committed by nations next to Israel or elsewhere, few care. If Israel is somehow not involved, few care about what happens in the world. This includes corruption, poverty, wars, slavery, terrible working conditions for millions, children recruited into violent jihadist organizations that help grown men rape and slaughter all over Africa and elsewhere, and much more. The conscience of the world rarely extends beyond its demonize Israel obsession. 

The world faces enormous environmental crises that threatens all human life. That is the only war that should be fought; to protect and save the environment and our future. Not the endless war against Israel and the Jews that achieves absolutely nothing good for humankind.

Instead, millions only care that Israel is destroyed. Demonizing and delegitimizing Israel helps achieve this genocidal dream that if realized would result in millions of people killed, Jew, Arab and others.

Those that provide a platform for hatred and demonization should be ashamed. But they are not. They are driven by greed. 

Those that purposely ignore, excuse, condone or justify the genocidal ambitions and actions of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iran, Hezbollah and all of the other jihadists organizations and nations, (including Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabab and others), and that free them from all responsibility for the misery they create, are complicit in their crimes. 

U.S., Afghanistan War. Taliban Ideology And Western Political Correctness

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat its mistakes. What were the lessons from Vietnam that should have raised red flags about going full scale to war in Afghanistan as opposed to limited operations with specific objectives? What were the lessons from the Soviet war in Afghanistan that the U.S. chose to ignore? Was it arrogance that made U.S. leaders believe they could achieve what the Soviets proved could not be achieved in Afghanistan? 

Why was there a full scale invasion? What alternatives were there and why were they not pursued?  Why is there no accountability for the leaders that waged the war and for the decisions they made? This includes every president and administration from Bush to Biden. Why the full scale war to begin with, the surges, and then the complete withdrawal and abandonment?

Why has there been little challenge to the religiosity and ideology of the Taliban? What the Taliban follows does not originate with them. Wars and battles are won not only by physical battle, but by defeating the ideologies and beliefs that lead to war. What the Taliban wants, what the Taliban follows, is not limited to Afghanistan. Instead of dismissing it as some kind of rare extremism, it needs to be objectively examined and recognized that it is widespread. Countries that support the Taliban and similar harsh ideologies are not held accountable. Nazism, communism, were openly challenged by the west. The west is afraid to challenge anything that goes under the banner of religion out of political cowardice and fear of offending. 

Secular democracies are strong because of the separation of church, mosque and state. Governments ruled by religion hide their rife corruption and oppression by pretending that they speak on behalf of god. 

Theocracies, no matter the shape, form, or religion they fall under, are almost always corrupt and dysfunctional. The west has become a timid place afraid to stand up on behalf of freedom and the dignity of individuals. This includes the unaccountable social media monopolies that control and manipulate information, schools, colleges and universities that indoctrinate, and more. The Taliban was brutal to minorities, women and girls. They were even brutal to Afghanistan's past, blowing up incredibly rare Buddhist statutes. What they believe, what they follow, is widespread and growing. Instead of dismissing the Taliban as an aberration, it is time to recognize the commonality and harm of the Taliban and the other violent fanatical religious organizations and nations. 

Yahoo News, Zack Linly, Reporting or Validating Prejudice? NYPD Tase Black Man On Subway

 

An article on Yahoo News, written Friday, July 16, 2021, by Zack Linly, has the title, " NYPD Officers Swarm and Tase Black Man On Subway After Accusing Him Of Letting Someone On Without Paying Fare". 

There are videos circulating about the confrontation and arrest on a New York subway train, July 6, 2021. People can draw their own conclusions about police conduct during the incident. One thing that needs to be pointed out is that even if a person thinks they are being arrested unlawfully, it does not give them the right to resist arrest. Resisting or fighting police is not a right. It leads to nothing but the serious escalation of violence and harm.

Reporting about the incident is one thing. Using the incident to validate stereotypes about police or any profession is unprofessional to say the least. Why Yahoo News allows unfiltered opinions that are gross generalizations and stereotypes, even race baiting, to pass as news is inexcusable.

This is the year 2021. It is not 1970. It is not 1960. It is not 1950. For many decades now, large city police departments in particular have diversified greatly. Policing long ago stopped being a white man, often Irish, profession. 

Here are a few of the pearls of wisdom from the article.....

"There's always going to be a rift between Black people and police officers as long as cops believe even the slightest challenge to their authority warrants their reckless aggression and uses of force no matter how minor the original offense was." 

"As if police officers aren't always cursing and talking recklessly to civilians they see a reason to cop (pun intended) an attitude with."

He also alludes to, "fragile blue egos". Perhaps he has independently conducted psychological testing on the hundreds of thousands of cops in the United states, and the thousands in New York City.

He apparently knows what is in the minds of hundreds of thousands of cops, what it is that these hundreds of thousands of separate individuals believe, and how they improperly, in his opinion, talk to civilians. 

As with all professions, there are the good and the bad. What does stereotyping the hundreds of thousands of men and women in a profession achieve? Cherry picking incidents here and there that supposedly validate prejudices and stereotypes does not result in better policing or anything else.

Israel And The Call for Genocide

 The conflict between Israel and Arab must stop being one side takes all with no middle ground. The position that there must be no Israel condemns Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to endless war. From the river to the sea as a call for there only to be a Palestine and for Israel to be destroyed is a call for genocide. It means countless deaths, maiming, wounds and misery on all sides. 

Over one third of the world Jewish population lives in Israel. Jews that were ethnically cleansed and that fled from countries all over the middle east and North Africa and their descendants form Israel's majority population. They cannot return to such places as Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Afghanistan, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Iran and elsewhere where they will face certain persecution and worse. Jews that lived in British controlled Palestine were called Palestinians. They and their descendants know that Israel is the only safe place for them and the other Jews of the middle east and Africa. 

Arguments made on behalf of Palestinian Arabs also applies for the Jews from the middle east and North Africa. Some argue that Palestinian Arabs were driven out from what is now Israel, ignoring those that fled because of war, and that therefore Israel must be destroyed. Palestinian Jews were also driven out from their homes and there were massacres against them in pre-Israel British controlled Palestine. Middle east and North African Jews were ethnically cleansed and driven out from their homes across the middle east and North Africa and forced to flee to Israel, where they are now told they must leave. Unlike Palestinian Arabs, who live throughout the middle east and North Africa, Jews will be persecuted or worse if they step foot on those lands outside of Israel. Israel absorbed its Jewish refugees from the middle east and North Africa. Arab nations did not absorb Palestinian Arab refugees, with few exceptions, preferring to keep this conflict unresolved and ongoing. 

If Arab armies did not attack the newfound state of Israel in 1948, things would be very different today. Years devoted to destroying the small state of Israel from its beginning onward have only given death, misery and pain. 

The word occupation is used a lot in order to dismiss the legitimacy of Israel. Jews have always been indigenous to what is now Israel and the middle east and North Africa. There were Jewish communities and Jewish tribes living throughout the middle east, including in Jerusalem and elsewhere in what is now Israel, and in North Africa for many centuries before the rise of Islam in the 7th century and after. 

Israel did not displace a nation. Palestine was British controlled and before that Ottoman empire controlled. There never was a nation of Palestine. The majority of  what was Palestine was given to a king and is now Jordan. Arabs, not just Jews, migrated to British controlled Palestine as economic opportunities opened up, many of them created by Jewish immigrants. If the king of Jordan was a Jew, the same hatred that is directed towards Israel would be directed towards Jordan.

It is not 1948. Pretending Israel does not exist over 70 years later and seeking its destruction dooms countless people to an endless cycle of war, violence and terror. Israel is the only nation in the world whose destruction is actively pursued. Many nations in this world were built on the ethnic cleansing of their indigenous populations. Yet no one calls for these nations to be destroyed, or for people to leave and give the lands back to the indigenous populations. People that scream Jews must leave Israel because Jews are not native, which is untrue, are not willing to leave themselves from the lands on which they live that were stolen from native populations.

It is not 1948. Millions of Israelis have been born on the soil of Israel and know nothing else. There are large cities, villages, towns, farms, factories and more in a small densely populated nation. Wishing Israel does not exist and trying to make Israel not exist is not going to magically make millions of Israelis and everything built on that land disappear.

Arab and Jew share a small piece of land. They need to figure out together how to share that land without killing each other. Seeking the destruction of Israel means seeking ethnic cleansing and genocide. There has been enough of that in this world. When people say they are against Israel's existence, or against Zionists, not Jews, and want Israel destroyed, that means they are in favor of the destruction, genocide and ethnic cleansing of one third of the world's Jewish population. They absolutely are against Jews. 

If someone truly cares about Palestinian Arabs, if someone truly cares about Jews, they must want an end to this war and fighting. They must do everything they can to get the two sides to see the humanity of the other. Israeli and Palestinian Arab must figure out how to resolve this conflict, through mutual acceptance and tolerance, with steep compromises and concessions made on both sides, without more killing. 

Hamas, Islamic Jihad; The Art of Brainwashing Children, Waging War, And Never Being Held Responsible

 It is politically incorrect to treat Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any of the other organizations determined to wipe Israel off the face of the earth as responsible adults. Instead, they are pampered and treated as victims that are not responsible for any of their actions. It is based on the premise by many that Israel should not exist to begin with, therefore any act of terror and aggression against Israel is legitimate, and any response by Israel is not. 

Hamas and Islamic Jihad made the decision to shoot rockets from densely populated Gaza into densely populated Israel. They knew full well that some of the rockets would fall short and kill and wound civilians in Gaza. They knew full well that some of the rockets would not be intercepted by Israel, and that these rockets would kill and maim civilians on the Israeli side. They knew full well that Israel would respond to the rockets and that civilians in Gaza, including children, would be killed and wounded. 

Those that argue only Israel is responsible for the loss of lives in Gaza, and that hold Hamas and Islamic Jihad once again responsible for nothing, set the stage for these organizations to wage the next war that will result in more children killed and wounded. 

Hating Israel or loving Israel has to become irrelevant. Emboldening violent people and violent organizations to wage war and terror must become relevant, and seen as the evil for which it is. 

It is summer now. Hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza and on the west bank are attending summer camps where they learn warfare, killing, hating Jews, hating Israel, instead of what children should be learning and doing at summer camps. 

Israeli and Arab, including the Arabs now called Palestinian, must learn to accept one another, or at least learn to live with one another without one side or the other believing war, terror and ethnic cleansing are the answer. 

It would have been better if  Jewish children and Arab children attend real summer camps together, instead of brainwashing military training camps that violate all rules about children being used and trained for war. Jewish and Arab children must learn that they live together on the same small piece of land that they must share together. They need to see each other as human beings so that there finally can be peace on that troubled land.

Russell Brand On Gabor Mate's Demonizing Israel, It's A Beautiful.... Genocide

Gabor Mate does not live in Israel and never lived in Israel. Russell Brand uses Gabor Mate to communicate the disdain and contempt Russell Brand has for Israel. Gabor Mate is a leftist from a Jewish and holocaust background spewing propaganda and untruths that gives cover to Russell Brand, a non Jewish leftist that despises Israel but does not want to appear anti-Semitic. Like many anti Israel leftists living in the comfort of Canada or the United States, Gabor Mate waxes on endlessly about how terrible is Israel. The life Gabor Mate has lived in Canada is nothing like the experience of many Israelis that originated from lands across the middle east and Africa, where many were ethnically cleansed. These Jews and their descendants form the majority population of Israel. Their experience, and the experience of many Israelis is very different than that of a North American man living a priviledged, soft life. 

Gabor Mate is not the only man from a Jewish background safe in the comfort of North America that thinks his Jewishness or a connection to the holocaust provides a special license to condemn Israel. These people pontificate endlessly about how horrible is Israel, as though every other nation on the planet is without flaw, and as though Israel does not face real threats to its very existence. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran, the hundreds of thousands of missiles and rockets aimed at Israel from all sides, the incitement and daily effort to kill Israelis, the suicide bombers Hamas would once again send into Israel from Gaza if given half a chance, renders shallow the feigned anger and tears from the many leftists that despise Israel. The many people raped, tortured and slaughtered by brutal regimes and terrorist organizations are off the radar for these leftists whose concern for humanity does not reach beyond their demonize Israel obsession. Fascism, rape, brutality, torture, sexual enslavement, other enslavement, brainwashing children to be violent religious fanatics, and murder are perfectly fine to these leftists just as long as it has nothing to do with Israel or the west.

There is a huge difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and wanting Israel destroyed. Legitimate criticism of Israel does not give a pass to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran and the others that are determined to destroy Israel. Those that want Israel destroyed demonize Israel and excuse or glorify its enemies. 

If the destroy Israel crowd gets what it wants - no Israel- then hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions, will be senselessly lost. It will not only be Israelis that are slaughtered. Countless people will be killed and maimed on all sides. 

Gabor Mate's distorted narratives, demonization, inciting hate and untrue anti-Israel propaganda are not beautiful, as Russell Brand enthusiastically states. Demonizing Israel and seeking its destruction means genocide and nothing less.

Many North American and Australian leftists are perfectly comfortable living on lands stolen from native people, yet are quick to incorrectly condemn Israel for the very things that do form the nations on which these leftists live. These leftists are too soft and comfortable to leave these lands and return them to the original native peoples. Their concept of justice is always about actions that other people must take, not themselves. Hypocrisy is not part of their vocabulary.

Instead of the usual parade of priviledged leftists living in the comfort of North America and the west, Jewish or not, it is rare to see an actual interview with an Israeli that knows first hand the reality of being Jewish in one of the many middle east and African nations from where most Israelis descended and cannot return. Places like Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, Jordan and more. These Jews and their descendants know that their back is to the wall, and that if Israel is destroyed, they have nowhere to go. Unlike priviledged leftists living in safe places, they know that the calls for genocide coming from Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and others are real. 

The only way to end this long standing conflict is not by distorted narratives, inciting hatred, and demonization. It is by doing everything possible to get the different sides to accept the humanity and existence of the other, and to reject war and terror and instead embrace tolerance and mutual acceptance.

 

The Goal To Destroy Israel Means Seeking Genocide And Nothing Less

Many Jew haters know that demonizing Israel is perfectly acceptable as long as their hatred of Jews is hidden behind the façade of being only anti Zionist or anti Israel. Seeking Israel's destruction, which means seeking genocide and the killing of millions of people on all sides, is not only politically correct in many circles, but also fashionable. 

There is an enormous difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and seeking the destruction of the nation of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish population. Critizing and wanting to change a government is legitimate. Seeking the destruction of a nation means genocide and nothing less, no matter how much this goal is sugarcoated.

There is no excuse for the continued dissemination of the most virulent anti-Jewish, anti-Israel defamation to continue without a response. Social media corporations censor many things arbitrarily. When it comes to demonizing Jews and Israel, there is little to no censoring.

There are videos circulating on social media openly calling for the complete destruction of Israel, which means genocide and nothing less.  A lot of people want this genocide. They pretend that Israel is demonic, while the enemies of Israel, who openly proclaim their goal to murder Jews and do every thing they can to murder Jews, are the opposite of demonic. To a Jew hater, murdering Jews is not murder but instead an act of virtue. This but one feature of the very sick world in which we live. 

Demonization is the step taken before embarking on murder and genocide. Humankind did not learn from history. Instead, we keep going down the same dark roads. Pathological Jew hate does not end with the murder of Jews alone. When Hitler was finished with his killing spree, over 50 million people were killed. When people that pathologically hate are given the weapons to act on their hate, many lives are destroyed. This happened in Rwanda, in Cambodia, in Congo, the former Yugoslavia and in other places. Hatred, demonization and then genocide occurred against Yazidis, Armenians and others and not just Jews.  

The little games that are played that it is Zionism, not Jews that should be driven out and murdered is of little comfort to the millions of Israelis that are Jews and that constitute over a third of the world Jewish population.

Only one country has no right to exist and must be destroyed, in the eyes of the many that hate Jews or Israel, means war and death, maiming and suffering for countless children and adults on all sides. 

Destroying Israel means genocide and the death and maiming of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people on all sides. 

The blatant hatred and demonization of Jews and Israel continues to be unaddressed or minimally opposed, no matter how pathological and destructive. Nazi Germany demonized Jews, which opened the door to genocide and the slaughter of millions of helpless people. 

Anti-Semitism, or the hatred of Jews,  must stop being fashionable and acceptable. 

 

Social Media Corporations: Big Brother Knows Best

 Social media giants are monopolies. Unlike monopolies of the past, there is no effort to break up social media monopolies. 'They are untouchable.

Social media corporations are protected beyond reason. They profit from published content, They censor content they do not like that has nothing to do with hate or the advocation of violence. Unlike conventional publishing companies, social media corporations are free of liability regarding the content they publish. 

The inability to sue these companies for the content they publish emboldens them. They censor whatever does not serve their political, religious and other narratives. They are big brother that controls access to information and that manipulates narratives. 

Screening out hate and the advocation of violence is reasonable, which these companies have failed miserably at. They go further, and are censoring content that has nothing to do with hate or the advocation of violence, under the guise that it does. They censor whatever does not suit their views.

One example is in regards to blasphemy. It is as if a theocracy now runs the United States. People are censored, punished and even killed in Pakistan and in some other countries for blasphemy. Blasphemy is not a crime yet in the United States. In the eyes of the social media giants, only they - no different than Pakistan's clerics, Iran's mullahs and other theocrats - can decide what people should think and say about religion. 

Democracy and freedom cannot coexistent with a few powerful corporations controlling information. Break up the social media monopolies. Make them responsible for the content they publish. Regulate how they wrongly censor content by regulating them.  Undo the huge mistake of letting these corporations become monopolies.

U.N. On How Israel Should Wage War - Stop Existing

 The U.N., many so called leftists and progressives and others condemn Israel for how it wages war, and most recently, for how Israel responded to Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket attacks. 

They have no answer for how Israel should respond to rocket and missile attacks other than to insist Israel should not exist at all. 

When Hamas, Islamic Jihad or another organization fires rockets from civilian areas, what is it that the U.N. and others suggest should be the response? 

How can war be waged against an enemy that entrenches itself amongst civilian populations? 

How many Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets and missiles fell short and landed on the civilian population they hide behind?  

War in and of itself is a crime against humanity. This does not stop the glorification of war and the martyrdom that many jihadists seek. How can war be fought against organizations and nations that openly proclaim their love for war, death and martyrdom, no matter how many civilians are harmed on all sides? 

How do you fight an enemy that uses civilians as shields?

The U. N. has no answers. The so called leftists and progressives have no answers. The anti-Israel crowd has no answer. They retreat to their stand by position - there should not be an Israel to begin with, or it should be made indefensible, so it is okay to seek Israel's destruction and not okay for Israel to defend itself against its own destruction and the genocide that many seek.

This is not about choosing one side or the other. It is recognizing the destructive trajectory that still can be stopped.

There will be other wars and more innocent lives lost if the violent extremists have the upper hand. Moderation is being lost. No one is winning these wars. Unless sanity prevails, wars will continue, and they will escalate in ferocity and in the number of people killed, maimed and crippled. 

The Leftists That Know Everything About Israel And The Jews That Live There

Jew is not a race. There are Jews that are Asian, African, black, white, brown, and everything in between. 

There are a number of non Jewish and Jewish leftists that damn Israel from the comfort of North America and Europe. They go into lengthy discourses about how terrible is the state of Israel, as though Israel exists in a vacuum, surrounded by peace loving free democracies in a world full of love and goodwill towards Jews and other minorities. They can only see Israel as a villain, never as a complicated, diverse nation facing very real threats of genocide towards its population. They are rigid ideologues that view Israel through the narrow prism of their own ideologies and biases.   

These leftists are quick to profess outrage and cry crocodile tears only for children that are killed in war and conflict if Israel is involved. All other children killed in war and conflict are dismissed, no matter how many suffer. 

They often elaborate on the history of white Zionists from Europe, ignoring Israel's majority population that did not descend from Europe.  The Jews that form the majority population of Israel - Jews that descended from the middle east and North Africa- where many were ethnically cleansed and forced to flee to the state of Israel, do not exist to these leftists. Or they are completely ignored.

Israel is strong militarily, but that does not mean that millions of people do not want Israel destroyed and actively work towards that goal. Demonizing one side and ignoring or supporting the genocidal goals of the other side is something many leftists are good at. They are elitists that believe only they know what is right, no matter how many suffer and die from their beliefs and agendas.

The Destroy Israel Crowd's Bloodlust

 The challenges between Israel and Palestinian Arabs include the fact that different people lay claim to the same small piece of land. If the land is divided into two states, peace is only achievable if there is the complete end of the conflict, and neither side makes any demands on the other. A two state solution means a Jewish majority Israel in one state, in which the Arab population has the same rights as the Jewish population, the nation remains a democracy, and an Arab majority in the other state.  A two state solution cannot be the recipe for further wars. If it can be achieved, it has to be the complete end of the conflict. 

A one state solution, only achievable if agreed upon by the different sides through peace and mutual acceptance, can be some kind of confederation or power sharing arrangement, in which both sides are invested in keeping the country stable, democratic and ultimately prosperous for all.  

Whatever the solution is to this long standing conflict, it can only come through mutual acceptance and toleration. Violence has achieved nothing. 

Gaza will have to be opened up. This densely populated enclave cannot be used as the launching pad for future wars. Whether a one state or two state solution is achieved, the people of Gaza will need freedom of movement. If  a two state solution is decided upon, a highway can be built connecting Gaza to the west bank.

There are a lot of people in the world that do not want this conflict to end peacefully. Looking at a map of the middle east and North Africa, it is easy to see that Israel is a tiny piece of land. Throughout the middle east and North Africa, there are many Islamic nations, most of which are Arab. There is room in the middle east, in the world, for one small Jewish state to exist in peace, with full rights for all its citizens, including Israeli Arabs. The never ending effort to seek Israel's annihilation has had disastrous consequences for all sides. The use of religion to keep the conflict going has to be resisted.

There are no other conflicts in the world where there is a determined effort to destroy a nation and commit genocide against its majority population. 

There has been over 70 years of war, terror and violence. There is no end in sight as the hatred, incitement, and calls for Israel's complete destruction continue unabated.

Many people that could care less about children, children dying in war, or anything about children or war and its victims, all of a sudden profess outrage whenever Israel is involved, including when Israel responds defensively to those attacking its civilian population. No matter how many people are slaughtered all over the world, all of it is ignored or disregarded if the killings cannot be used as propaganda against Israel. Murderers in the name of religion slaughter people by the hundreds and thousands daily. It is happening right now in Mozambique, Nigeria, Mali, Yemen, Libya, Mindanao, South Thailand, Afghanistan, Somalia, and many other places. Few if any care because human life has no value to an enormously large segment of humanity unless there is propaganda to be had against Israel.

Israel is an established nation. The struggle to destroy it means death, maiming and suffering on all sides. False Arguments against Jewish connections to the land, who are the Jewish people and more that are used to discredit Israel do not erase the fact that Israel is real and that its population is not willing to lie down and be slaughtered.

The never ending effort to demonize and delegitimize Israel, including by those who use the Palestinian Arab cause as a cover to disguise their hatred for Jews, condemns people to a never ending cycle of bloodshed, suffering and misery. 

There are those that argue that Israel is nothing but a colonial state occupied by invaders. Even if this argument were true, which it is not, then why do these hypocrites not condemn the lands on which many of them live? Arabs, Turks, Europeans and others invaded and colonized lands. Indigenous people in many places have been oppressed by dominant European, Arab and Ottoman empire conquerors. Yet there are no calls to destroy such places as Canada, The United States, Australia, and many other nations where indigenous people were displaced. 

More Jews were driven from their lands and homes throughout the middle east and North Africa than the number of Arabs that fled from what is now Israel during the 1948 war in which surrounding Arab nations attacked the newfound Jewish state. Jews have been ethnically cleansed throughout the middle east and North Africa. There were pogroms and massacres of Jews in Hebron, Iraq, Libya, Jerusalem, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, and many other places in the years and decades before and/or after a Jewish state was established. 

People argue the narratives over and over, believing if they can discredit every claim Jews have to exist in their own nation, then the grounds are formed by which the state can be attacked, destroyed and for there to be genocide. 

For people that believe in God or Allah, instead of trying to destroy Israel, they should consider that Israel is God or Allah's will, and that Israel's destruction is not the will of Allah.  

In light of the very real threats that Israel faces, it is an accomplishment that it still functions as a flawed democracy instead of as an authoritarian repressive state. Other countries that face far less serious threats internally and externally respond with complete repression and loss of civil rights. 

Sane people, no matter which side they prefer in this conflict, must recognize at some point where this conflict is going. 

There is a genocidal movement that labels themselves a resistance, even though they are fascists that hate Jews and are trying to wipe out the Jews of Israel. There are many on the left, not just extreme right, that support the genocidal movement to annihilate the Jewish population of Israel.  

The genocidal movement has Israel surrounded. 

The recent war in Gaza was a small window for what is to come if war mongers prevail. Israel's enemies, including Iranian and Muslim Brotherhood proxy armies, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and others, thrive on bloody conflict in which civilians on their side are killed while they are busy trying to kill civilians on the Israeli side in order to gain propaganda points. Hamas and Islamic Jihad knew that children were going to die in Gaza from Israel's response to their rocket fire and from their own rockets that fell short of Israel. They knew that when they fired rockets and hid in tunnels the civilians of Gaza had no such protection. They knew that they would win the propaganda war by waging war from densely populated Gaza because Israel, not them, would be held responsible for civilian casualties. The civilians and children of Gaza mean nothing to  Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They openly declare their love for death and their desire for martyrdom, no matter how many civilians are murdered in order for them to fulfill their bloodlust and demented vision of what God or Allah wants. 

Those that support Hamas and Islamic Jihad are their enablers. They scream at Israel for harming children, while they support the organizations that deliberately harm children. They give a green light for the violent fanatics to keep the killing going.

If the trajectory continues with fanatical death seeking bloodthirsty fanatics being embraced, defended and emboldened, here is what comes next.

Hezbollah has hundreds of thousands of missiles and rockets directed at Israel. Iran has already said that Israel will be wiped off the map within the next several decades. Hezbollah is Iran's army in Lebanon. Lebanon is no longer a free and sovereign state. 

Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and elsewhere, Iran in Lebanon with its Hezbollah army, Iran in Syria with proxy forces ready to attack Israel from that front,  and with many others eager to join the genocidal effort to wipe Israel from the map, a far bloodier war is imminent.

Hamas leaders, living the good life in the richest nation in the world, Qatar, want Gaza impoverished, militarized, and to be nothing more than a densely populated enclave with unprotected civilians above ground, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad safe in their tunnels and well stocked apartments below ground. Qatar is more than eager to import millions of underpaid foreign workers to do the labor in that pampered nation, and have others do the dying for them in the wars that they fund and encourage.

When hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles start firing from Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere towards Israel, there will not be hundreds of civilian deaths and children killed. The war that Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others seek; total war to destroy Israel, will result in the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

Israel will fight back in the only way it can to survive. It will inflict massive damage on Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere where the rockets and missiles are firing from. 

Is the hatred for Jews and Israel so great that this outcome cannot be prevented? The war that is coming can still be prevented. The recent Gaza war was only a tiny example of the massive bloodshed that will come if there is full scale war.  Babies, children, old people, young people, civilian and soldiers will die needlessly on all sides.

Jew Hatred Keeps Israel/Arab Conflict Intractable

 There is a difference between opposing Israel's government and wanting what many people want - genocide against the Jews and the destruction of Israel. 

When Hitler and his many followers embarked upon exterminating the Jews of Europe, they made it clear that it did not matter what a Jew did or did not do; they all had to be murdered. It did not matter if it was a baby or an old man. It did not matter if it was a man or women, or anything about the character of an individual. 

Demonizing and delegitimizing an entire people paves the way for genocide. It happened to Armenians. It happened to Cambodians deemed insufficiently communist by the deranged Khmer rouge. It happened to Tutsis in the 1990's. It happened recently to Yazidis, many murdered with their women and girls raped and made into sex slaves because they belonged to the wrong religion in the minds of the people that invaded their lands. These are but a few examples of the genocides and mass murders that people continue to inflict upon one another.

The capacity of people to hate, to kill, to form violent mobs, to harm and destroy is unlimited if unchecked. 

There are those that use religion to demonize Jews and justify war and harm against them. There are others that willfully and purposefully ignore the very real hatred against Jews that helps keep this conflict intractable. Many religious figures and others openly call for the destruction of the Jews, often using religion as the basis for the genocide they seek. Many others ignore this hatred or pretend it does not exist.

Anti-Semitism, defined as hatred against the Semites that are Jews, keeps the conflict alive. It thrives in religious and racial fanaticism and hate.  Mobs driven to Jew hating frenzies by their religious clerics and others are openly calling for war against the Jews. 

Jews that harm Arab civilians must be condemned and punished just as Arabs that harm Jewish civilians must be condemned and punished. Israel as a state is accountable for its actions. Anti-Semitism does not relieve Israel of its obligation to be responsible and ethical.

But to pretend that the pathological, widespread hatred towards Jews does not keep this conflict inflamed and unresolvable is either being delusional or deliberately deceptive.  

Much of the coverage of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs deliberately distorts narratives and images to make Israelis look horrible. Delegitimizing and demonizing Israelis or Jews does not bring either side closer to living in peace with one another. The more people are pushed and prodded to hate, the more they will hate and kill each other. There is way too much outside incitement keeping this conflict going.

To the Jew hater, the Jew can only be a malicious actor, never a reasonable human being responding to real threats. Millions upon millions of people the world over are fed narratives that Israel has no legitimacy and therefore must be destroyed. Without the ability to see one's enemy as an enemy that is still a human being instead of an irredeemable demonic figure, there is no way to end a conflict.

After the killing, after the senseless loss of lives, the senseless maiming and harm to people on both sides, nothing will have been resolved. Jew and Arab will still be stuck with each other on a small piece of land. There are people that incite, that want to keep this conflict inflamed, no matter the human cost on both sides. No matter how many wars are fought, no matter how many lives are senselessly lost, no matter how many people are maimed and crippled for life, nothing will change for the better. Jew and Palestinian Arab are married to each other whether they like it or not. Either they separate and figure out how to create two states on one small piece of land, or they mutually figure out how to live together in one state, an Israel/Palestine. Neither solution will be perfect. Both sides will have to make steep compromises and accept that a final resolution to this conflict will fall far short of everything they want. The only thing that is for sure is that war and violence, which the region has had more than its share of, resolves nothing.

Opposing Israel's Government But Not Supporting Hamas, Islamic Jihad And Their Cheerleaders

 Waging war in densely populated areas only leads to civilian casualties, including children. Wage war and you get war, and civilians on all sides suffer.

People that could care less about all of the mass slaughtering taking place in the world all of a sudden are stirred to selective anger when it comes to Israel. Their hatred, their incitement, their selective concern helps the killing continue and for peace to remain elusive. 

I oppose this government in Israel. Netanyahu should be long gone from the political scene. This is not a government that should be in power. 

I oppose the actions and governments of many countries. There are many things the U.S. has done that I oppose. There is a difference, however, in opposing the actions of a government, opposing the leaders of a government, opposing a government itself, and wanting the destruction not only of the government, but of the whole nation. Even though I oppose the actions of many governments, I do not support ever the destruction and ethnic cleansing of the people of any nation.

It is unfortunate that opposition to Israel takes the form far too often of seeking the destruction of the entire nation and the ethnic cleansing and genocide of its people. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran and many others make it clear that ethnic cleansing and genocide are their goals. 

The misuse of the word Zionist as a way to dismiss all of the human beings that live in a nation is a cynical manipulation of a word. Opposing the government of Israel and wanting the genocide of its people are too often intertwined. Many critics of Israel that despise the small country pretend that genocide is not on the table as they vent their selective self righteous anger, knowing full well that Israel is unique among nations of the world in that many of its enemies seek not a change of government, but the destruction of the entire nation.

I oppose this war and its escalation. Israelis and Palestinian Arabs must find a way to share the small piece of land without killing each other. Like it or not, they are stuck with each other. All the calls for war or genocide against the Jews are not out of love for Palestinians, even though they may pretend otherwise. It is out of hatred for Jews. The war they seek against Israel means not only the deaths of the Jews they despise, but also of countless Jewish and Arab children and countless other civilians on all sides.  

The pathological hatred for Jews, which manifests itself in many ways including the demonizing and delegitimizing of the millions of Jews that live in Israel, keeps the conflict inflamed. 

The sideline cheerleaders that excuse Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and company no matter what they do, and fault Israel for everything it does, are not helping anyone.

The calls for hate, war and violence by either side or by the supporters of either side takes Jew and Arab down a dark and ugly path. Death, maiming, and destruction are unfolding before our eyes. War and violence instead of peace, forgiveness, tolerance and reconciliation brings only misery and suffering. 

Israelis and Palestinian Arabs must find a way to share the small piece of land without killing each other. Like it or not, they are stuck with each other. .  

No matter which side a person supports, nothing justifies the deliberate attacking or harming of civilians. There are those that want this violence and death. Death and maiming will spin out of control if they prevail. Death, maiming and misery are already spinning out of control.

Police Behaving Badly And Social Media

 Police are public servants. They exist to serve and protect. They must be professional. They must abide by the law, which includes what is constitutional. They cannot make up their own rules.  

They must know when they have the lawful authority to question someone or ask for their identification. They must understand when arrests can or must be lawfully made. 

Public trust is eroded when police stop, harass or arrest someone unlawfully. An unlawful arrest not only erodes public trust, but is also criminal. At the same time, the failure to take proper police action, including for arrest, is also wrong.

This is not a problem that stems from the police alone. Far too many people abuse the 911 emergency system because they do not like the way someone looks. 

There needs to be accountability when people abuse the 911 system to have police run like lemmings to harass someone the caller wants harassed. People too often abuse the 911 system by falsely accusing someone of suspicious or criminal activity simply because they do not like the way the person looks.

Police must understand that calls to 911 are not always legitimate and that the people called upon do not suspend their constitutional rights. Police must know the extent and scope of their police authority. If police or deputies are unable to figure this out,  they should not be on the job. Calls to 911 regarding suspicious people, whatever that is supposed to mean, does not give police the right to suspend the so called suspicious person's constitutional rights.  

A lot of people on social media are having a field day catching cops behaving badly. There is a benefit to people understanding their rights and the scope and limits of police authority. In this day and age of cameras, cell phones and videos everywhere, knowledge is a powerful tool. As long as police operate within their lawful authority, they have nothing to fear. They must not make up their own rules. Cops must not be less knowledgeable than those that wish to provoke them. Ignorance is not bliss. Not for the public. Not for the police.

Working cops that patrol high crime areas often have better judgement, are less petty, and have better understandings of civil and other rights than cops and deputies that work low crime areas. High levels of violence helps cops that are good cops understand when to escalate situations, when to deescalate situations, when to know the difference, and how to have better police judgment in general. The exceptions include specialized units that pop in and out of high crime areas, never really understanding what is going on. Cops with bad tempers, violent cops, thin skinned cops, petty cops, cops with poor judgment, lazy cops that just take up space, cops that are clueless about laws, civil rights and the constitution, make easy targets for those looking to catch them on camera.

Knowledge empowers police and the public. 

The Racism About Who Can Be Racist

 Anyone from any race, ethnicity or religion can be an ignorant, narrow minded fool full of hate and ridiculous generalizations about those different from themselves. The double standards about accepting bigotry from some and condemning it from others only weakens the ability to stand against all hate and bigotry.

Retired While Still Employed: Police Reform

The purpose of police is serve and protect, not welfare. Unless a cop is disabled, everyone, with some other exceptions, from the lowest rank to the highest, belongs on the streets working. Policing should not be a lazy persons' profession. Unfortunately, countless millions of dollars are wasted on politically connected hacks, anointed favorites and others, with numerous off the streets cushy jobs and do nothing jobs. Policing is not unique among government jobs regarding laziness and do little to nothing positions. Taxpayers need to start paying attention to where their money goes. It should not be subsiding pampered officials, laziness, cronyism and other nonsense.

The amount of waste and inefficiency is staggering. Policing can be much better than what it is, which is not about to occur. The calls for police reform are clueless about what needs to be reformed and instead are about self serving, divisive agendas. 

Bad Cops Do Not Define Police. Police Reform Is Needed

 When cops commit criminal acts, including murder, they represent themselves, not policing as a whole. Policing is one of the only professions where the bad apples are used to define the entire profession. There are few other professions where the bad apples in the profession are often used to define everyone in the profession and the profession as a whole. 

R is a retired cop that is intelligent, courageous, conscientious, and was an overall excellent, hardworking cop. Bad cops do not define him. They never defined him. Anyone that judged him or judges him or anyone like him on the basis of the actions of another is incredibly narrow minded. 

When all police are defined by the actions of a few, it is not out of a quest for justice or for better policing. It is to fulfill an agenda that does not have the greater good in mind. Or it comes from narrow mindedness and ignorance.

As already discussed in previous videos ad nauseum, police reform is needed. Policing needs to be efficient, professional, and effective. Its core mission is to serve and protect by patrol. Patrol on foot, where cops walk assigned beats on foot and become integral parts of the neighborhoods they serve, is the only true community policing, and yet remains virtually nonexistent. Cops are needed on foot, especially in urban areas and in high crime areas. Serve and protect, performed by patrol, including by cops walking beats, is the core mission of policing.

The core mission is not to generate meaningless numbers or statistics. The core mission is not to create bureaucratic structures filled with do nothing positions, laziness, paper pushers, bureaucrats and more. Many off the street positions can be eliminated. For example, captains and lieutenants are already off the streets, and there is no need for both ranks. There are many areas, small and large, in which policing can be made efficient, cost effective and far better. Layers of police, police brass, exempt rank, other officials and more off the streets in cushy jobs must end.

Serve and protect through patrol is straightforward. It is too often subordinated to the agendas and whims of politicians, police brass that lick the boots of mayors and other politicians, and others.

Unfortunately, the discussion about police reform continues to not be had. Instead, police reform is used to score political points and serve political agendas.  

Animal Rescue Must Not Benefit Animal Cruelty

 When a cop that saw widespread dog fighting and animal cruelty did his best to get police to respond appropriately, for animal organizations to stop exploiting these crimes for their own gain, and for the people that commit these crimes to be brought to justice, all he received was animosity and scorn. 

To this day, dog fighters have greater chances of getting struck by lightning than ever getting arrested for dog fighting. Animal cruelty, an incredibly common, widespread crime, is rarely enforced.  Instead, there are ineffective animal organizations and token police teams conducting often ineffective, and at times harmful investigations. They act as the incredibly deficient substitute for what anyone in law enforcement should be doing when encountering animal cruelty and dog fighting. A widespread, appropriate police response to animal cruelty and dog fighting continues to be lacking.

Animal rescue, adopting a dog from an animal shelter, is on par to far too many with rescuing an animal from a true situation of abuse. Animal rescue has trivialized animal cruelty by equating the two. Trivializing animal cruelty, along with ignoring or exploiting real animal cruelty, benefits dog fighters and animal abusers by contributing to the continued lack of an appropriate, widespread police response to these crimes. 

Animal rescue must stop deterring people from addressing real animal cruelty. 

Systemic Stupidity In Universities On Systemic Racism In Policing

 There needs to be police reform. This is necessary in order to make policing more efficient, effective and professional. Serious discussions about reforming police are lost in the noise that police are rotten, policing is systemically racist, or that there should be no police. 

Police, especially in large urban areas, are more ethnically, racially and gender diverse than ever before. Police are present in almost every corner of the world. There are reasons for this that have nothing to do with a professors ranting that police were formed to capture runaway slaves. 

There are racist cops. They are not all white. But people with racist attitudes can be found in virtually every profession. Racists, and systemic racism, are not the same. Systemic racism is a term too often thrown out to shut down discussions and riddle the accused with guilt, while providing the accusers with self righteousness and immunity from responsibility.  

Why is a university professor dictating to a student what he should believe about the police? Why is a university professor so closed minded that she cannot see police as individuals with their own personalities that choose an occupation - policing - for a variety of reasons? Bad cops do not define policing. There are the good and bad in all professions.

Why have colleges and universities become places of indoctrination? Why are indoctrinators provided public funding? 

No country can prosper if there is not a certain level of social cohesion. If people are at each others throats, the ability to solve problems decreases while the propensity towards violence increases. Respectful conversations, consideration and thoughtfulness are lost in colleges and universities filled with pampered ideologues. The systemic stupidity and indoctrination in universities and colleges needs to stop being funded with taxpayers' money. Too many professors and teachers are privileged elitists freed from real work. They should no longer be afforded this luxury as they poison young minds, and hold back generations from learning what it means to think critically, independently and for themselves. 

Petty Policing Many Communities Want And Another Tragedy

 The recent death at the hands of police in California of a man that appears to pose no threat to the police or public, raises the question of what exactly are too many police trying to enforce? Like it or not, there are millions of people in the United States that are homeless, mentally ill, or that do not fit the norm of what far too many people in far too many communities deem acceptable. Stand out a little in far too many communities, and someone will call 911, even though there is no basis for the 911 call. Police will run like sheep to go after the person that was falsely called upon, after dispatchers, without doing any screening, take the call. 

Or police will see someone that does not fit the norm, and for some petty reason, or on some pretense,  harass someone that should be left alone. People that never should be harassed or arrested get harassed and/or arrested. Usually no one dies, but sometimes someone does, or gets hurt, for arrests that never should have taken place.

It is not enough to blame the police. Communities and their public and police officials set the norm for what they want police to do, and for who should be harassed.

Cops, which includes deputies, must stop being the petty enforcers of pettiness. 

Cops, especially in urban areas, especially in high crime urban areas, need to be assigned beats that they walk. In this way, their interactions with the public will be far different than that of cops driving around in vehicles. Cops assigned walking beats will know the people on their beat. They will serve as role models to children and youth. They cannot afford to be petty, thin skinned or vindictive and expect to be effective as walking beat cops. This is the only real, true community policing that exists, and yet no one fights for it.

Technology does not make for better policing. Technology is only an aid. Cops need to be on the ground. They need to be visible and present. Neighborhood, walking cops are needed. Get rid of the layers of fat, the many unnecessary positions, the unnecessary brass, the paper pushers, the bureaucrats, the clout, political favoritism and cronyism, the legions of people hiding in buildings, and return to the basic mission. Serve and protect through patrol, and make sure the patrol includes officers on foot assigned to neighborhood beats.

No matter the place, no matter the area, communities need to take responsibility for what their police and politicians are doing. If nonconformity deserves police responses, then expect more completely avoidable tragedies. 

True community policing is needed. Not number games policing, not petty policing. There was no excuse for the man in California to have been harassed and then arrested in the beginning. Unfortunately, this happens all the time. Petty policing, number games policing must end. Communities must learn to be more tolerant and stop unleashing police on those considered out of the norm.

If ever there will be true community policing - cops walking beats where they are fully engaged in the neighborhoods they patrol - there will be less disengaged cops that are clueless about the people they encounter.

If ever communities prioritize real community community, and stop using law enforcement to be the petty enforcers of nonconformity, everyone will be better off.

When Will Anyone Get Serious About Police Reform?

 The effort to delegitimize and stigmatize all policing should raise red flags about the motives of those that do this. Instead, it earns them places on public radio and elsewhere in the media.

In cohesive, small communities, police may not be needed. For the tiny minority of people living a tribal existence apart from the modern world, police are not needed. For the rest of the world, if police were not needed, they would have disappeared long ago.. The fact that there has been bad policing, bad cops, and that bad policing still exists, does not negate the fact that other than in a minority of areas, police are needed for public safety. 

Delegitimizing police in order to prove a narrative about racism or something else will not lead to better outcomes. Police reform and creating better policing does not come from biased narratives or from those with self serving agendas. Thanks to much of the media, experts at pandering, sensationalizing, and providing untruthfulness, there no longer is critical thought when it comes to policing or pretty much anything else. Thanks also to the pampered ivory tower world of academia, full of arrogance, laziness, self importance, dogma and political agendas wrapped up as scholarship,  cluelessness about police reform continues. No less important than reforming policing is the need to reform academia, yet they are ones often entrusted the responsibility for leading police reform.

Professionalizing police work, freeing it of cronyism, clout, political favoritism, number games and other shoddy police practices is not even in the discussion. The agenda when it comes to police is unfortunately not about really making policing better. Thus, when the dust clears months, maybe years from now, policing will be unreformed, unimproved, and worse. Unengaged, uninvolved, do as little as possible police work is the trajectory. It benefits police that are lazy and the legions of police and bosses in do nothing jobs, but not the public. Violent crimes and other crimes are not prevented from disengaged, inactive policing. 

Calls for police reform must move beyond grandstanding. They must move beyond self serving narratives. They must move beyond simplistic narratives that accomplish nothing. They must move beyond race baiting and narratives meant to divide and line the pockets of the race baiters. 

Policing should be a straightforward profession in which the basic mission is serve and protect through patrol. Cronyism, clout, political favoritism, number games and other shoddy police practices must be eliminated. Layers of bureaucrats, police officials in do nothing jobs and much more of the waste and fat must be cut from police departments. This requires a much lengthier discussion than the simplistic narratives now presented that want to reduce all of policing into one ugly pigeon holed box. Community policing must stop being manipulated and twisted into the convoluted nonsense it has now become. Cops in urban areas and especially in high crime urban areas, need to be on walking beats where they become integral parts of the neighborhoods they serve. This is true community policing. It is a very different job than what cops driving around in squad cars do. One is not meant to replace the other. It is meant to enhance the effectiveness of policing. The role of police is to serve and protect, accomplished by patrol, which is best achieved by having this patrol be by vehicle, by foot, and at times by bicycle.

What policing should be is a different issue than what cops should be. Better policing brings out the best in cops. Shoddy policing, including number games, rewards laziness, bad behavior, and more.

As for individual cops, short tempered cops, cops on power trips, violent cops, ill tempered cops, lazy cops, petty cops, thin skinned cops, ingratiating cops, cowardly cops, selfish cops are not needed. 

Policing needs to be reformed. This is not even being discussed in the charged grandstanding environment in which nothing good will result. Better policing is needed. Better policing will attract better people to the profession. This is not to say good cops do not already exist. They do. But too often, good cops are operating in departments engaged in bad policing that have no understanding of the core mission of policing.

Serious discussions about police reform, not loud grandstanding, is long past due. Otherwise, more decades will pass and nothing will change. Or even worse, policing will be a lazy person's profession where the goal is to do as little as possible so as to not rock boats and never make waves while employed by stagnant police departments.

Corporate Phoniness Regarding Racial Justice

 After the verdict in Minnesota, corporations are jumping on the bandwagon call for racial justice. 

Some of the corporations are vowing to give more to charity, including Black Lives Matter, by which the self professed Marxist co-founder of Black Lives Matter can buy more expensive real estate in white, wealthy neighborhoods. 

People do not need charity. People need jobs. Charities, many of them, have been some of the most unregulated frauds. Not just with where money goes and who gets enriched, but also with charities that are considered above board but run worthless, even harmful programs. 

If corporations are sincere about justice, they can stop paying their executives mega salaries with ridiculous compensation packages, often on the backs of the cheapest labor, fewest environmental and safety regulations they can find. They can also start making fair wages the priority, not themselves and stock prices. They can bring back the jobs they exported overseas.

If everyone inside of the United States turns blue tomorrow, and there are no longer differences in skin pigmentation, there will still be massively underserved communities across the United States. 

When corporations moved manufacturing to China and other places in the world that have the cheapest labor, with the fewest environmental and safety regulations, with the blessings of the politicians and others in their pockets, what did they expect? They turned China into a superpower that flexes its military muscle with its powerful military that U.S. corporations created by sending the manufacturing and industrial wealth and power of the United States to China. 

To Tim Cook of Apple, if he is so concerned about racial justice, then why are Apple products manufactured in China and not in underserved communities in the United States?  People need jobs, not words.

To Zuckerberg of Facebook, one of several social media monopolies with unregulated power to dominate markets, disseminate hate and lies, and now to arbitrarily censor free speech that has nothing to do with hate and violence; racial justice does not come from the suppression of opinions that have nothing to do with hate or violence. Justice is promoted by the free and open exchange of ideas, not their suppression.

Many are the corporate leaders and the politicians in their pockets that have done nothing to ensure Americans of all races and ethnicities are afforded the only real thing that lifts people out of poverty, creates racial justice, and strengthens families and communities:  jobs.

Jobs that pay living wages. Jobs that abide by fair environmental and safety standards. 

Vast communities without significant employment other than the black market narcotics trade is not the recipe for stability, peace, justice and harmony.

Bad Cops, Police Reform, And Wrong Directions

 The time is long past when policing, especially in large urban areas in the U.S., was a white, often Irish mans' profession. Many decades have past of concerted effort to create diversity in the hiring and promotion of police. Cops, especially in large U.S. cities, are more racially, ethnically and gender diverse than ever.

There are bad cops out there. Simplistic narratives about policing and who are the bad cops most often is not about weeding out bad cops as much as it is about validating biased narratives. The idea that police in general are a bunch of racist white men looking to harm nonwhites lives in the minds of many in the media and others that profit from race baiting and creating racial divisiveness. 

In all professions there are bad elements. Bad doctors that ruin lives. Bad dentists that drill into perfectly good teeth out of greed, ensuring that healthy teeth will never be as sound a they were before the dentist did what never should have been done. There are bad teachers, bad priests, bad rabbis, bad ministers, bad in every profession. In police work, bad cops, just like good cops, come in all races, religions, genders and ethnicities. 

There are over a million law enforcement officers in the United States. Armed with guns, there will be bad cops and deputies that gravely harm others. But the alternative, not having police at all because some are rotten is as idiotic as saying there should be no doctors because of the rotten doctors that destroy lives. Cops that properly serve and protect by active patrol reduce crime and violence and thereby save lives, to say nothing of police that save lives by individual acts of heroism. 

Some in the ivory tower of academia, an elitist world full of arrogance and privilege, reach their own biased conclusions under the cover of scholarship about what is the problem with policing. It is not productive that from their ranks the discussion about better policing is often led.

Cops are not children. If they lack moral codes by the time they are in their twenties, the time most people join police departments, no amount of training will make them better human beings. 

Bad cops are not a product of deficient training. Bad cops are a product of whatever made them morally deficient by the time they entered the police training academies. An ethical person without any police training that learns everything while on the job will still be a better cop than a morally, ethically deficient highly trained officer that goes through extensive training in a police academy with many hours of follow up training. 

Bad people in all professions must be screened out. This is no easy matter. It is a discussion that must not be limited to police. The bad apples of many professions cause great harm. 

Simplistic narratives about police reform accomplish nothing. Weeding out bad cops and not hiring them in the first place requires a far lengthier discussion than what a short blog or video can present.

The  notion that bad cops can be determined by the amount of complaints leveled against an officer is untrue. If two cops work in the same city, with one cop doing as little as possible, while the other cop properly patrols and does the job he or she is paid for, the working cop will receive complaints the lazy cop will never receive because the lazy, do nothing cop risked nothing, and never did anything more than take up space. A cop working a high crime area has a greater chance of receiving more complaints than a cop working a low crime area. Good cops that do their jobs conscientiously can still fall prey to fabricated, malicious false allegations. Vindictive supervisors, criminals and others with ill intent are known to make complaints against cops they want to punish. 

The Soviet Union and other communist regimes were known for making false complaints against people. Since when did the number of complaints all of a sudden make a person guilty? Especially because complaints are easily fabricated. It matters when it comes to police under the new expectation that accusations, no matter how false and malicious, are in and of themselves proof of guilt. When it comes to cops, if the number of allegations is the new standard for what determines a good cop from bad, then every officer working a high crime area will do as absolutely little as possible so there is never a complaint made. That kind of policing might protect the officer from vindictive allegations, but it will certainly not protect the public. The public is not only hurt from bad cops, but also from disengaged cops.  

Screening out bad cops will not be accomplished by simplistic interventions reminiscent of the Soviet Union. False allegations multiplied by any number does not all of a sudden become a positive. 

Police departments do not need violent cops, cops that cannot control themselves, thin skinned cops,  timid cops, or lazy cops that harm the public through their inaction. 

The police reform that is needed is still off the radar. Police should not be used by politicians and police brass to generate meaningless numbers. Police work must return to its basic mission of serve and protect through patrol. Patrol, especially in high crime urban areas, must include cops doing the only real community policing that ever existed - cops walking assigned beats where they become integral parts of the neighborhoods they serve. Working cops must stop supporting on their backs legions of  bureaucrats, paper pushers, upper brass and others that believe themselves exempt from policing and work by virtue of their rank.  

The nature of policing needs to be better. This means serve and protect through active patrol as the core mission, which includes patrol by foot in many areas. 

Good cops will thrive in environments that are professional, free of nonsense number games, cronyism, political patronage, and politics. Bad cops thrive in environments that promote cronyism and shoddy police work. 

 

Nonexistent Police Reform

There will never be police reform unless number games policing ceases to exist. Police departments and politicians, including mayors, misuse what policing should be when police are pushed to generate meaningless statistics, whether for arrests, traffic stops, traffic tickets, warnings, or something else. Numbers game policing is not the same as serving and and protecting through patrol. In fact, it detracts from effective patrol. 

Police reform, and ensuring good policing means ending number games. It also means ending clout, cronyism, political favoritism, all of which suck the life out of having professional police departments. Taking cronyism, politics, and number games out of policing is necessary for police reform and better policing. 

 In many urban areas, especially high crime areas, there must be patrol on foot. Cops in vehicles are not enough. There must be officers walking neighborhood beats. Cops on the ground walking assigned beats, where they learn well their neighborhoods and interact with people in ways that are completely impossible when cops drive around in vehicles, regrettably is of no priority. Cops walking beats in neighborhoods requires police that are physically and emotionally up to the challenge, and that are able to communicate well with the public. Cops walking assigned beats is true needed community policing. Because it does not line someone's pocket or provide political patronage, no one is interested.  

Police reform and discussions about policing too often center on the sensational, including by the media, and on self serving agendas. Also follow the money trail, and who profits from what is proposed, whether it is about training as the answer, community policing, or something else. 

If cops and deputies are pushed to generate arrests, write tickets and more, their interactions with the public will continue to be more negative than positive. Cops that actively and properly patrol are busy enough without having to generate meaningless numbers. 

911 calls must be better screened, and people must be held accountable when they misuse the 911 system. Police responding to 911 calls and in their interactions with the public must be professional. Thin skinned cops are no more needed than are timid cops. 

Police belong on the streets. Legions of paper pushers, unnecessary bureaucrats and police brass must end as police return to their basic mission of serve and protect by patrol.

Like it or not, violence and crime are not going away. Effective, good policing requires work and effort. The makeup of who are the police is dramatically different than from decades past, and is now more diverse than ever before. If the discussion about policing cannot move beyond the politics of race, then the only thing that changes is the racial mixture and gender of those who are doing the bad policing.

Police especially that work high crime areas face violent people and violent situations. They cannot be crucified every time they exercise the lawful and necessary use of force. If police fail to respond appropriately to violence and crime, the only ones that suffer are the public. No police, or poor policing, means more murders, more violent crimes, more innocent civilian lives lost. 

It is unfortunate that there is still no serious discussions about police reform, and no serious effort to make policing better. Instead, the conversation is controlled by a few with their own agendas, backed by a media with its own agendas, all to the delight of those police officials, politicians and others that are more than delighted to keep things as they are.