The corruption within the occupation is alarming. Let me introduce you to Yair Katz, chairman of the Israel Aerospace Industries(IAI) workers' union. IAI is a state-owned company and its largest.
Recently, he threatened to use "doomsday weapons" against Israel's enemies. It prompted me to research this man.
>Yair Katz was arrested in 2017 on suspicion of corruption at IAI. Katz, 36, who serves in the senior management of the IAI and has been a member of its powerful workers’ union for four years, was arrested on suspicion of coercing employees into joining the Likud party, police told the court in a hearing to extend his remand. https://www.timesofisrael.com/welfare-ministers-son-named-as-suspect-in-iai-corruption-probe/
He eventually got nothing, and the case virtually disappeared from the news.
The Likud party is Netanyahu's government. The IAI company is a stronghold for him.
>For some two decades, Haim Katz has represented employees of IAI, Israel's largest state-owned firm, whose current roster numbers 16,000. https://www.defensenews.com/interviews/2015/03/22/iai-labor-chief-helped-propel-netanyahu-s-win/
Before Yair Katz became chairman, his father controlled the workers' union at IAI. He was also arrested for corruption, but nothing came of it.
Haim Katz is an Israeli politician. He currently serves as the Minister of Tourism. He was the Minister of Labor, Welfare and Social Services from 2015 to 2019, and served as a member of the Knesset for One Nation between 1999 and 2003, and for Likud between 2003 and 2023. (Wikipedia)
The events below happened recently and are quite alarming.
>On May 6, 2024, the Israel Aerospace Industries workers’ union has announced a labor dispute and is threatening to disrupt the company’s supply to its customers. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2024/05/09/israeli-labor-dispute-could-disrupt-production-of-arrow-3-weapon/
From the article (emphasis mine):
The dispute, announced Monday, follows the Israeli Finance Ministry’s demand that it regulate so-called salary anomalies found within the state-owned defense company. The government is seeking the return of hundreds of millions of shekels that IAI employees received over multiple years without governmental approval, contrary to what is customary in state-owned firms. But the union describes the anomalies as incentives, claiming they are primarily meant to help with employee retention. The union wants the salary deviations to be incorporated into the company’s budget.
So, what we have here is a dispute between the union and the state over "salary anomalies."
From the same article above:
The union added that if the Finance Ministry does not meet its demands, the supply of the Arrow 3 air defense system to Germany, which is the largest defense deal in the history of Israel and the company, will be among the disrupted programs. The workers’ union and the company itself are united in the union’s demand to incorporate the alleged salary anomalies into the company’s budget.
On June 12, 2024, the state capitulated to their demands.
>The Israel Aerospace Industries workers’ union has reached an agreement with the government’s Finance Ministry where so-called salary anomalies previously provided to company employees will be recognized as special retroactive grants, according to the union. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2024/06/12/israel-aerospace-industries-union-reaches-agreement-with-government/
The IAI workers' union practically controls the entire company, and Yair Katz bribes/blackmails employees to support the Likud party. It's being hidden as salary anomalies. Also, his father had the same position before him and is now a powerful politician. Furthermore, it seems to me that Germany has a role to play in this matter. They certainly wanted that air defense system that the union threatened to interfere with, and one of the articles mentioned a meeting with German officials. It is worth noting that the deal involved $3.5 billion and it's a significant weapon deal.
It may have something to do with Germany's new deportation law.
>The existing law requires that would-be citizens be committed to the “free democratic fundamental order,” and the new version specifies that antisemitic and racist acts are incompatible with that.
>The Interior Ministry said that the law on residence will be changed so that approving or promoting “a single terrorist crime” is grounds for a “particularly serious interest in expulsion.” That means that in future a single comment that “glorifies and endorses a terrorist crime on social media” could constitute a reason for expulsion. The government has said that issues such as antisemitism, Israel’s right to exist and Jewish life in Germany are being given a greater weight in the citizenship test applicants have to undergo. https://apnews.com/article/germany-deportation-approval-extremism-online-7e849a4c7b15c5edbbeb063264ffbaaa
The excuse from Chancellor Olaf Scholz about last month's knife attack is silly. One white cop dies, and it's an excuse to enact a severe law? If only our politicians were this quick and effective with cops that execute black people... I believe the only changes in this legislation relate to Israel and that the IAI's union coerced Germany to add those new laws. This Yair Katz has an enormous amount of power. His union can halt weapon production and meddle in major deals with other countries. He is now threatening to use "doomsday weapons."
Any thoughts about all this would be much appreciated.
I'm in the liminal space between the living and the dead. Where past, present and future blur into a nightmarish existence of what should have been, could be and must become—a spirit with no home yearning to come into being. I'm in hell, probably.
I remember that strip club story posted here on lemmygrad, and the video was alarming, but I did learn a little about that from Blackshirts and Reds. Certainly, the West wants Ukraine on their side to further exploit them, and that includes their women. Their hatred of Russia is also rooted in anti-communism; they still think of it as a communist country, and they see Ukraine as a victim of communism. Maybe, without realizing it, they hate Russians because the soviet union didn't permit exploitation by Western capitalism. For those countries, it's less about race and more about that. Capitalism and white supremacy are now strongly linked together, and white people feel entitled to everything. They become enraged when people don't comply with their demands. In the end, it's anti-communism and white supremacy that guides them. The thought of all humans becoming 'equal' is, to white people, a significant loss of privilege, which is their biggest fear.
Regardless of any proclamations, they see Ukrainians as untermenschen, Bandera learned it the hard way and Zelensky is learning now.
True, it doesn't mean they genuinely consider them more 'white' than Russians or part of the West. However, I do think they are trying. Most likely because of the war. It's useful propaganda and helps the liberals gather support against Russia, a people they despise with passion.
Ukrainians are a separate nation. This was never doubted under USSR.
I know that Lenin and Stalin recognized the differences and granted Ukraine self-determination. But again, I do believe liberals are trying very hard to separate them completely. They want them on the side of the West rather than anything close to Russians.
Meme title, but this is a serious post, lol.
Those who accuse others of being authoritarian should scrutinize their own government and acknowledge the extent of its cruelty. Liberals often claim opposition to 'authoritarianism,' yet if we define it as the use of political violence while in power, then the United States, also appropriately recognized by some as the Great Satan, is remarkably proficient at it. It has created numerous wars and committed countless atrocities worldwide. However, liberals do not perceive these actions as authoritarian because they do not target white people. In fact, at the 2003 Oscars, renowned documentary director Michael Moore was booed when he criticized Bush and the Iraq war. Those who condemned Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine with utmost contempt also supported George W. Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq. Patriotism permeates every aspect of American society, including the entertainment industry, known for its liberalism and pro-war stance. Movies like American Sniper glorify murderers, while video games such as Call of Duty depict war as thrilling and honorable, always involving conflicts with heroic white guys against foreign bad guys. For decades, Hollywood movies have vilified Arabs and Russians, shaping the American subconscious through endless propaganda films. When not in a WW2 setting, in the game Call of Duty, Arabs or Russians are depicted as villains, both with exaggerated accents, hailing from supposed authoritarian countries. George W. Bush is seldom labeled a tyrant because liberals did not consider Iraqis equal to themselves; instead, they deemed them innately guilty. In contrast, Putin is denounced as authoritarian because Ukrainians are perceived as white and innocent. At the same time, Russians are depicted as brutish orcs, a pejorative frequently used against them on social media. When it comes to Palestine, Muslims are assumed guilty simply by existing, while Israeli settlers are viewed as innocent by virtue of their whiteness. According to the USA, all races are created equal, but one is considered more equal than others.
Liberals think of Russia and Ukraine as two completely separate states, even though they were once united. Yet, many contest the validity of that unity, claiming that Ukrainians never wanted to be part of the USSR. Today, liberals wrongly believe that threats of violence made them remain until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Despite being similar societies, liberals consider them two distinct nations. One is a white nation, and the other is a nation of 'brutish orcs.' Joe Biden's remarks on the day of Russia's attack on Ukraine emphasize this. "The next few weeks and months will be hard on the people of Ukraine. Putin has unleashed a great pain on them. But the Ukrainian people have known 30 years of independence, and they have repeatedly shown that they will not tolerate anyone who tries to take their country backwards."
He was referring to 30 years of "independence" from the USSR.
On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation committed its worst offense yet: attacking whiteness, its influence, and its power. Biden stated in this same speech, "This is a dangerous moment for all of Europe, for the freedom around the world... It was always about naked aggression, about Putin's desire for empire by any means necessary — by bullying Russia's neighbors through coercion and corruption, by changing borders by force, and, ultimately, by choosing a war without a cause. Putin's actions betray his sinister vision for the future of our world — one where nations take what they want by force. But it is a vision that the United States and freedom-loving nations everywhere will oppose with every tool of our considerable power."
It's framed as liberation when the whites engage in political violence, whereas it's labeled as invasion or terrorism when different people do the same. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, killed its people, and stole oil, they were not deemed guilty of any crimes. One of the first laws Americans undemocratically enacted in Iraq was the privatization of their oil. Similarly, Zionist settlers who perpetrated countless atrocities against Palestine, then and now, are regarded as innocent and freedom-loving people. On October 7, 2023, Hamas committed an evil crime; they tried to defend their oppressed people against white supremacy and killed "innocent" settlers. They have committed the classic and unforgivable crimes of fighting back against white supremacy.
The terrorist attacks against the Great Satan on September 11, 2001, had nothing to do with Iraq; nevertheless, it did manufacture consent for U.S. aggression. Iraq was considered guilty just by being an underdeveloped Muslim nation, and Palestinians deserved to be replaced by settler-colonists on a similar basis. The WMD lie was quick to convince liberals of war due to their belief in Iraq's involvement in those terrorist attacks.
A Washington Post poll was conducted two years after 9/11 and revealed that 69% of Americans at the time believed Saddam Hussein was “personally” involved in the 9/11 attack. Even more staggering, 82% believed Saddam provided assistance to Osama bin Laden. Both were utterly false.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/9-11-and-iraq-the-making-of-a-tragedy/
They deemed Saddam Hussein guilty by association, blamable simply for being Arab. Racism and prejudice against Arabs/Muslims run deep within the fabric of Western society. A poll in 2015 found that 30% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats approved of bombing the city of Agrabah, the fictional city in Disney's Aladdin.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/12/18/political-ignorance-and-bombing-agrabah/
If it sounds Muslim, it must be bombed, in their opinion. On a related note, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner who had a beard and wore a turban related to his Sikh faith, was wrongly profiled as an Arab Muslim and murdered by a white American. The murder occurred four days after 9/11. Any Arab, or perceived to be such, is guilty of the crime of being nonwhite and thus deserves to die.
If we define 'authoritarianism' as an infringement of personal freedom, then, too, the Great Satan is an expert. In Joe Biden's speech on the first day of the Russo-Ukrainian war, he concluded with, "... Liberty, democracy, human dignity — these are the forces far more powerful than fear and oppression. They cannot be extinguished by tyrants like Putin and his armies. They cannot be erased by people — from people's hearts and hopes by any amount of violence and intimidation. They endure. And in the contest between democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subjugation, make no mistake: Freedom will prevail."
What is this freedom and democracy that Western politicians keep speaking of? In 2016, the United States was one of three countries voting against an anti-Nazi resolution at the United Nations. Ukraine and Palau were the other two that voted no. Russia and China have promoted this resolution for more than a decade, and the international community, that is, the Western world, has voted no or abstained every time.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2023/combating-glorification-nazism-neo-nazism-and-other-practices-contribute
In the Global North, freedom means the right to spread intolerance rather than guaranteeing that people victimized by bigotry are safe from it. Freedom is the ability to criticize your government rather than having the power to transform it fundamentally. Those dangerous liberties in the Western world are letting people be homeless and jobless instead of providing them with a home and a job. In America, at least, you are free to sleep outside, as liberals will proudly proclaim.
When the Great Satan declares itself as the world's central authority, questioning and challenging it becomes the responsibility of all. The USA, without a shred of self-awareness, claims to be the supreme authoritative figure of this entire planet, and they accuse all who challenge them of being dictators. A country whose population is less than 5% of the world, currently with over 20% of the world's prisoners, was acting concerned regarding the Soviet's gulags. Those who perpetrated a war on a Muslim country and killed hundreds of thousands are now worried about Uyghurs in China. If someone points this out, liberals express their superior impenetrable wisdom and say we are engaging in 'whataboutism.' The liberals consider themselves all-knowing; anyone else is deemed to be inferior and, therefore, must obey them. They insist on peaceful debates with political enemies, and they expect oppressed people to uphold this principle—meanwhile, Western governments pillage the Global South and kill its people. I wonder if people in Palestine, Africa, or South America care about their knowledge of fallacies. Or their obsession with 'Western democracy,' virtually fetishizing ancient Greece at this point. Liberals don't need to read books or research a subject; instead, they only wish to win debates using their self-perceived superior logic skills and innate enlightenment. About the Uyghurs, those who have never researched the subject, who can't even spell Uyghur correctly, are certain that China is killing them en masse. Of course, they are merely parroting Western media. They do not understand that profit-driven entities have a capitalist bias; this includes the whole of the imperialist snake—the Western world.
By aligning with LGBT, the incompetent imperialist left-wing causes the right wing to be more anti-LGBT. No one is born homophobic or transphobic; such prejudice is a creation of society. Liberals are fueling queerphobia by being incompetent with all issues in the U.S. and promoting lgbt rights concurrently. Assuming religious beliefs are not involved, hatred of lgbt stems from there. The friends of liberals become the enemy of right-wingers. Liberalism, in the U.S. sense of the term, has become linked to lgbt.
A common saying within reactionary circles is, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times."
In this scenario, it goes over their heads that the weak men took power over the strong men. It is similar to how they think Jews are inferior and, yet, they control the world. In their view, weak men are wealthy liberals elite who are creating hard times. However, in reality, liberals are not weak; they hold a great deal of power and are very dangerous. Their association with weakness comes in part from LGBT. Reactionaries believe it's an ideology or attitude—a flaw in an individual's character. In the U.S., they think that problems are arising because men are getting weaker and that lgbt derives from white, wealthy liberal families.
I've heard many of them claim there are just a few black transgender people or none at all. From this, we can see their racism mixing with other reactionary beliefs. For them, black people cannot be trans due to being stereotyped as brutish, violent, homophobic individuals. Thus, only affluent white people can be affected by the imaginary gay agenda destroying the country. Another more liberal belief is that white people are considered boring and, therefore, look for attention by claiming to be LGBT. Again, this is racist due to a liberal mischaracterization of black people as being "cool" and "urban." On a related note, veganism is often considered a "middle-class" white people's movement, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Polls have revealed that black individuals in the U.S. are much more likely to be vegan or vegetarian due to poverty and probably other reasons, which also tells us that veganism isn't a costly diet; rather, it is the opposite. White people are altering history, presenting a false representation of the black nation within the U.S., and depriving them of their roots.
Imperialism shapes the global south and, in return, influences the Western world—the superstructure of exploiter and exploited experience changes. Rainbow imperialism creates anti-LGBT sentiments in the Global South while also reinforcing harmful religious beliefs by exploiting and keeping them poor.
globalvillagespace.com reported on May 05, 2023, "President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused his political rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, of being “LGBT,” ahead of next week’s elections. Erdogan’s government views LGBT ideology as an American and European “religion,” alien to Turkish morals. “We know that Mr. Kemal is an LGBT person,” Erdogan told a rally in the city of Giresun on Thursday. “CHP is LGBT, IYI party is LGBT, HDP is LGBT,” he continued, listing off the political factions in Kilicdaroglu’s six-party National Alliance bloc."
(The website also believes it is an ideology.)
This inaccurate view these reactionaries have about us is an ideology itself. A person's environment—the superstructure—determines their beliefs. If we apply the environment part to LGBT, it does not explain why so many conservative and religious parents have children who are queer. Also, there were records of trans people living within Turtle Island before colonialism. Therefore, it's not new or an ideology derived from family, but I digress.
Turkish President Erdogan capitalizes on his people's distrust of the United States, a distrust created by imperialism. They associate LGBT as a product of their enemy, of their domestic political enemies as well, similar to what right-wingers are doing in the West. Consequently, it results in two reactions in the Western world: The reinforcement of the false belief that mainly white people belong to lgbt and that the Global South is queerphobic by nature.
When it comes to the reactionary belief of innate violence tendencies in nonwhites, Donald Trump gave this speech on Saturday, March 16, 2024, at a campaign rally at Dayton International Airport: "They are sending them from all over the world, not just South America and Latin America but also Asia and Africa. Last night, twenty-two people arrived from the Congo. Now, the Congo is a very nice place, I would imagine. You ask them where they came from, and they'll say prison. Now, these are rough people. They are coming from Africa, they are coming from Asia, from the Middle East. These young people were in jail for years; if you call them people, I don't know if you call them people. In some cases, they are not people, in my opinion, but I'm not allowed to say that because the radical left says that's a terrible thing to say. These are animals, and we have to stop it. We have so many people being hurt so badly and being killed. They are sending their prisoners to see us, and they're bringing them right to the border. They are tougher than anybody we have in the country. These are hardened criminals. And we got hundreds of thousands of them, and we are not gonna take it." I transcribed this from a YouTube video of the speech.
Clearly, reactionaries view nonwhites as violent and brutish. When we connect the liberal belief that black people are "cool and urban," we gain a false perception of them and of white people. For white individuals, it creates a notion that they are boring and continually look for attention to look cool, so they identify and consider themselves to be lgbt for that reason, a view promoted by HBO comedian Bill Maher. Similarly, they associate themselves with "trendy" movements, such as veganism, for the same reason. The belief that POCs are innately violent promotes the idea that they are too "brutish" to be queer, as well as that they are queerphobic. Consequently, it separates black people from LGBT, which they are just as much a part of as white people—further undermining black communities. Polls have revealed people of color are more likely to be queer than white people.
HuffPost reported on October 19, 2012, "According to the report, released by Gallup earlier this week, 4.6 percent of African Americans responded "yes" when asked if they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, along with four percent of Hispanics, 4.3 percent of Asians and 3.2 percent of Caucasians." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-gays-lgbt-community_n_1989859
The importance of intersectionality has never been greater. And never let anyone believe that lgbt is a trend of white people or let anyone convince you that it is.
Correct, but I dislike that liberals point that out when the Western world has done the same. They are either ignorant of those laws or think liberalism and their politicians are allowed to get away with it. If we confront them, they always say that's "whataboutism."
Emily Harding: The self-centered piece is this completely self-defeating debate, where you have people saying, well, why are we sending all of these resources off to Ukraine? Why are we spending all this money on Ukraine, when we really should be keeping it here for a fight in the Pacific? Or, we really should be keeping it here for domestic priorities? It’s just the wrong way to look at it. First of all, from a basic numbers perspective, I think Angus King of Maine has a really good speech on this, the money that we spend on Ukraine doesn’t leave the U.S. It goes to the U.S. defense industry. It goes to U.S. companies that send aid to Ukraine. The vast majority of it stays here.
It truly baffles my mind that anyone can believe this BS. The defence industry is a private, profit-driven entity. It is funded by taxpayers, with wealthy white men pocketing all the profits.
What Putin has done with his invasion of Ukraine is say: I don’t care about any of that. I want the world system to be remade in a way that I like. I want to prove that the U.N. is pointless, that the U.S. is weak, that U.S. democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be. And I want the U.S. fighting inside by itself against itself, rather than using its vast global power to ensure a safer, more prosperous globe. Chinese have looked at that and said, we like that idea. What we want is a world that’s made safe for Chinese business. We want to be able to run the world the way that we think it should be run. We don’t care about personal freedoms. We don’t care about democracy. What we care about is making money for us and for our businesses. So we’re on board with that as a plan too. Let’s see how we can disrupt this global system in our favor.
What she accused China of doing is what the U.S. does—100% projection.
The entire transcript is a bunch of nonsense and cope.
I'm in the middle of Against Empire by Parenti. It's good, but I enjoyed Blackshirts and Reds more. Parenti is a great writer, and he is easy to understand, so I will continue to read his stuff. As for novels, I ordered 2001: A Space Odyssey not too long ago and will try to read it sometimes. I have manufacturing consent sitting on my bookshelf, plus some others from Chomsky I haven't read yet. I bought them during a short anarchist phase I had and grew out of very quickly after reading Lenin's stuff. Often, I buy books and end up never reading them. Uhh I should stop doing that and download them illegally instead.
I don't really support Putin, but rather only his anti-imperialist position.
The massacre was obviously the work of NATO. Russia doesn't gain much from this, considering they're already in Ukraine and Putin won the election. And NATO is inhuman enough to pull something like this out of desperation to destabilize Russia. It's another horrible tragedy committed by the heartless ruling class of the empire.
