From what I recall from actual history is that Israel/Palestine was a province of various empires from the Romans to the Ottomans or British depending on how you count things. The only time it was what you can call a country rather than a province would be under the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and even that is questionable.

Like I really don't understand the logic at work here. There was never a country. called Palestine but a geographic region called Palestine. The Pro-Palestinian logic is that out of the mixed population of Ottoman Palestine, it was the Muslim and Christians who were the true political nation and the Jews just lived there and were to have no say in the future of the place. That just doesn't make sense by the logic used by the Left for every other group in the entire world but for Jews three special rules seem to apply:

1. Jews do not have the right of self-determination as Jews because that is settler-colonialism.
2. At the same time, the various host nations are under no obligation to form a national identity that incorporates their local Jews. They only have to give us citizen results and then they can ignore us and treat us with benign or malign neglect but still demand absolute loyalty from us.
3. Jews must under no circumstances be treated as a true minority in the way that African-Americans in the United States are minority because reasons, that's why.

Our new AG announces that the DOJ is Trump’s personal law firm:

https://www.lawdork.com/p/ag-pam-bondi-says-trump-sets-doj

During the last administration, Trump tended to make a public show of backing down but quietly ignoring the Court orders. This was especially true on immigration decisions against him. You are being way too optimistic here.

Even Trump's team seems to be dismayed by this announcement. His chief of staff went bug-eyed at the press conference. This is most likely Trump prattling but this is Trump so he might be dumb enough to attempt and it gives a lot of people who really hate Israel another reason to make wild accusations, so everybody is going made about it despite it making no sense.

First, where would Israel send the Palestinians? Second, even if they could ethnically cleanse Gaza, why would they hand it over to the United States? During the early days of the Israel-Hamas War, Pro-Palestinian Westerners were arguing that there are going to be at least a million dead Palestinians at the end of it unless Israel is stopped right now. That did not happen. It did not even come close to happening but the people who made these accusations aren't retracting because being rhetorically correct is more important than being factually correct and they really just want to hate Israel.

No.

Oh yeah, another frustrating thing is that despite many Arab or Muslim Americans deciding they can't vote for Harris because of the Israel-Hamas War, many are going to be inclined to treat them as more of a part of the resistance than American Jews that got the message because they are "too true people of color" and Jews are "wypipo." A blog mate from LGM reported that at an anti-Trump rally in Denver the Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine people got into a heated argument.

American Jews got the message and voted for Harris. We need to fight against Trump because otherwise the United States looks like it will become a dictatorship and Musk's apostles are going to do a lot of damage and possibly collapse the American and global economies. There is a still a lot of having to save idiots from themselves though. What's worse, is that too many people aren't going to call people like her out on this because they don't want to appear Islamophobic. This person and everybody like her needs to be told how fishing dumb and hypocritical they are.

The problem with a lot of liberal-left critique of Israel is that it always takes an assume a can opener approach. If only Israel/Jews did X, Y, and Z than the Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims will magically and mystically become secular multicultural liberals because reasons. There is no evidence of this and Western critics just over look the popularity of Islamic theocratic politics from Morocco to Indonesia and the treatment of non-Muslims in every Muslim majority state because that is really inconvenient for them. They have no response to what Jews should do if the Palestinians really are serious about the "No Jews" and "we want Muslim Palestine" or basically know and approve of Jews getting screwed but don't want to say it out loud.

Benny Morris responds to Coates very harshly:

https://bennymorris.substack.com/p/response-to-coates

The thing that really angers me about this is the utterly hypocrisy of Muslims towards Jewish self-determination. They can speak at great length and passionate eloquence on Israel is a blot upon all of Islam and it is an utter colonial humiliation for any Muslim to live in country where the symbols are Jewish symbols, the public holidays Jewish holidays, and the culture, history, and literature are Jewish.

At the same time they and their Western allies really can't seem to comprehend that Jews don't want to be secondary subsidiary subjects of an official Muslim state that is part of an official Muslim world complete with heresy laws, apostasy laws, and crescent moons and Qu'ran quotes everywhere. Where Muslims can insult Jews and Judaism but Jews are in for a world of hurt if we say anything slightly critical about Islam. They want to be able to look us in the eye point to a map of Indonesia or some other distant place and say that they feel more of a connection to the people there than they are Muslim and we are not. At the same time, if we say we feel a closer connection to other Jews it is called dual loyalty and international conspiracy.

Guardian article on ICE gaming google to create an illusion of mass deportation:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/ice-us-immigration-deportations-google?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwY2xjawIRvUBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRXvvnQcz9DwGDQl1yd53CROlUbtO0Wc6qDH1GRliKGN5x_Xl1MHQr4IGw_aem_vnv3OT0tDrau0QdUVEIGNA

We have a new textbook definition of chutzpah:

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9a5c2ef66f806abbb9562e211258d1014a231ed01cd79ce52b9e3dab1531c00.png

The authority comes from nowhere. Trump and Musk are running the United States as dictatorship. Republicans in Congress are weak willed and will give Trump anything he wants rather than team up with the Democratic Party to maintain their power. Even if the Republicans in Congress were willing to team up with the Democratic Party, Trump or really Musk's answer will be "how many divisions to Congress have?" We can file lawsuits but Trump-Musk will ignore any verdict against them for the same reasons. Yesterday, Congressional Democrats were kept out of the USAID office despite a law saying that all members of Congress have access to federal office. Get this through your head, we are in a dictatorship.

500,000 women were getting treatment for HIV through PEPFAR in 2023. Get rid of PEPFAR and the HIV/AIDS rate in Africa is going to sky rocket.

There are more people like this in NYC and possibly other major cities with rent control/stabilization than you would think. For some reason, NIMBYs think these make for great stories to champion rent control/stabilization.

Do you prefer that with end of PEPFAR thousands of babies will be born with HIV infections every week -- in 2023, PEPFAR provided almost half a million mothers with retroviral medication?

I'd say more than half the country. Obviously Red America has been propagandized beyond the recovery point but you have lots of non-propagandized people with their heads up their posteriors at the danger we are in.

The problem with having the power of an empire is that eventually you are going to get a President that really wants to be Emperor. We are now in that situation.

Elon Musk and DOGE apparently gained full access to the federal payment system from the Treasury Department on Friday. This is the system that sends out money on behalf of the federal government. Musk just got a very powerful tool to crush his enemies. He also basically seems to be the President rather than Trump in terms of who is making a lot of decisions. Anybody who isn't freaking out right now is just useless.

We are watching a coup d'etat play out before our highs and people want to blame Democrats rather than the people actually doing the coup d'etat.

https://bsky.app/profile/whstancil.bsky.social/post/3lh353p4mtc2i

Musk's crew continues:

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/a-red-alert-for-democracy-the-patel-fbi-purge-begins

Jaybrid, is it always the Democratic Party's fault in your world view? Trump was open about what he was going to do and is doing what he says he was going to do. Being a citizen comes with agency. People should have paid attention and vote for the candidate that was not going to do a coup.

"Mister Voters, you could have saved the Republic, I gave you all the clues."

Trump is announcing steep 25% tariffs on America's biggest trading partners. The tariffed countries can get this steep tariff waived or lowered by bribing Trump in the open and there is nothing that can be done about this thanks to the infinite wisdom of the Supreme Court. We are being ruled by a literal gangster.

France is considering sending troops to Greenland to help the Danes:

https://ordinary-times.com/2025/01/27/open-mic-for-the-week-of-1-27-2025/#comment-4063674