Together let's work to end the evil empire:
http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa_boycott.html
Monday, November 9, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Education and Inequality...
So there is new data out to the press confirming something I know painfully and personally. Education is not a an equalizer stronger than racism, rather a source of inequality. An example is an article that ran in the Washington Post.
The mainstream press just keeps skying away from stating that last bit. But I'm here as an example to say that financially a great education can make you far worst off than your local 8th grade drop out. What I find most appalling is the response from academia. Not only have they trotted out myths about the invaluable assets an education gives one...they have trotted out individual achievers. This is the classic myth of capitalism itself. All this supposed emphasis on critical thinking, and these people can't even get past a tired old myth of the rugged American individual who works his way up alone through effort? Really! Horatio Alger? Johny Appleseed? It's all that packaged as a black woman successful...and it's ridiculous.
I happened to watch a lecture given at the University of California given partly by diversity deans and such...and someone self made and really rich woman came out and talked about how generational wealth was a new things for blacks and we lack mentors. Of all the problems of the black community, I must admit this one never crossed my mind...perhaps I was too worried we were all going to die from violence, horrible health care rationed out by racists and poverty to think that far ahead..
The myths of the brilliant individual have a dangerous flip side. Because one black woman can make it, then apparently they all can, right? So something must be defective with 99% of blacks...Well, this is the myth of capitalism anyways. That somehow the success of one will lead others to follow. But how many people can be in the elite when the elite is by definition the few?
I knew all about this stuff in the 9th grade thanks to my local public library, but apparently today's college kids are so miseducated that Universities can actually pull the wool over their eyes...which makes sense. As to the invaluable assets a college education brings, mental enrichment probably is not one of them. Few things are as damaging to minds as the kind of education dispensed in many places. Killing all interest in anything by presenting bone dry boring lectures and shutting down the natural curiosity of students seem to be the real area of exceptional excellence for some professors I had. I actually loved subjects like Organic Chemistry and Calculus even as I sat watching as many decent and intelligent people in my class had their dreams of going into medicine evaporate like some of our lab experiments. Instead of addressing what a farce instruction has become from all I hear today instruction has become even worse. Now adjuncts read from Power points for about 9$ an hour with predictable results. In science by the nature of the subject we have to try to discover reality in the laboratory...people in other areas only have to discover where to copy and paste essays from...plagiarism is apparently the shortcut that keeps college kids able to work enough hours to eat. I was incredibly lucky to be able to find science related jobs, but if you study literature I suppose foaming coffee drinks may be a good prelude to your future anyways. Sadly, without analytical- quantitative skills, you will be quite slow to figure out what is going on around you. If universities really wanted to promote an educated populace they would force everyone to take a course in mathematical logic and statistics. Clearly just the student loan debacle they have cooked us into could provide endless subject matter.
I do think getting an education is especially worth it if you are a black American mainly for one reason...it makes it easier to leave for a socialist Western country. If you have a technical education as an engineer, medical doctor, or high level scientist there is the possibility to leave. That's right, I, a card carrying Hadash (Israeli communist party) member, am going to ironically suggest a very capitalistic and individualistic solution to this problem for those who can afford it. Screw society. Don't bother trying to improve it, heroes often get shot. And if you are a woman, you only have so much time on your hands to form a family. Taking a leadership role in a revolution might leave you very alone and childless, a price your male counterparts will not pay. Of course, someone has to lead the revolution....but start looking critically at how leftist organizations are run. Typically these groups have some older people who already have homes and children around. If they truly cared about you they would put themselves front and center in terms of martyrdom. Instead most of these groups include some wealthier old white men too eager to turn young vulnerable students into cannon fodder for causes that not so coincidentally increase their celebrity and power, albeit the imaginary power most leftists hold. Younger men are often too stupid to understand the issue with this. I'll never forget when I met Luke Rudkowski, and we happened to discuss how annoyed I was when I came very close to going to being imprisoned in a detention center due to helping refugees. I wasn't exactly part of a radical movement, rather just doling out medical care to children who for bureaucratic reasons had no country. These kids were the ultimate refugees. And most were not the relatively glamarous Syrian refugees in which case I might have been able to get the press on my side...but poor black African refugees who no one seemed to care about. Rudkowski seemed puzzled. "The more governments persecute you the more you will become a folk hero!" Someone needs to tell younger men like him that life is not a video game we are playing for coolness points...and some of us want everything such a young white guy would take for their birthright. We also deserve the right to live withing the framework of a society that helps us nurture families if we choose. It's amazing how many "leftists" particularly if they are Americans never think this through. These people will make all kinds of political noise about your right to kill your unborn children, but when it comes to you having a right to what they are born into...not so much....
Clearly, in reality, American society does not care about us . Do not forget that you can pack your bags, and go somewhere where people make sense. If you haven't joined the 11 black billionaires and are therefore part of the other 99.99% of black people...you might want to go somewhere where things like maternity leave, education or health care are rights not unaffordable goods on a market that always seems to be priced to exclude us. The truth is that if you leave the USA, you will suddenly realize that the democratic party- the electable left- is actually run by people who would be considered extreme right wingers almost anywhere else. Democracy is dead in the USA, and you have been made into collateral damage. I do not write this as a hypocrite. I dealt with immigration issues for years while I was completely broke to be able to get out of the USA.
If leaving America sounds crazy consider the following: Many African Americans risked their lives for the dream of getting to Canada...you might only to have to fill out some paperwork.
The mainstream press just keeps skying away from stating that last bit. But I'm here as an example to say that financially a great education can make you far worst off than your local 8th grade drop out. What I find most appalling is the response from academia. Not only have they trotted out myths about the invaluable assets an education gives one...they have trotted out individual achievers. This is the classic myth of capitalism itself. All this supposed emphasis on critical thinking, and these people can't even get past a tired old myth of the rugged American individual who works his way up alone through effort? Really! Horatio Alger? Johny Appleseed? It's all that packaged as a black woman successful...and it's ridiculous.
I happened to watch a lecture given at the University of California given partly by diversity deans and such...and someone self made and really rich woman came out and talked about how generational wealth was a new things for blacks and we lack mentors. Of all the problems of the black community, I must admit this one never crossed my mind...perhaps I was too worried we were all going to die from violence, horrible health care rationed out by racists and poverty to think that far ahead..
The myths of the brilliant individual have a dangerous flip side. Because one black woman can make it, then apparently they all can, right? So something must be defective with 99% of blacks...Well, this is the myth of capitalism anyways. That somehow the success of one will lead others to follow. But how many people can be in the elite when the elite is by definition the few?
I knew all about this stuff in the 9th grade thanks to my local public library, but apparently today's college kids are so miseducated that Universities can actually pull the wool over their eyes...which makes sense. As to the invaluable assets a college education brings, mental enrichment probably is not one of them. Few things are as damaging to minds as the kind of education dispensed in many places. Killing all interest in anything by presenting bone dry boring lectures and shutting down the natural curiosity of students seem to be the real area of exceptional excellence for some professors I had. I actually loved subjects like Organic Chemistry and Calculus even as I sat watching as many decent and intelligent people in my class had their dreams of going into medicine evaporate like some of our lab experiments. Instead of addressing what a farce instruction has become from all I hear today instruction has become even worse. Now adjuncts read from Power points for about 9$ an hour with predictable results. In science by the nature of the subject we have to try to discover reality in the laboratory...people in other areas only have to discover where to copy and paste essays from...plagiarism is apparently the shortcut that keeps college kids able to work enough hours to eat. I was incredibly lucky to be able to find science related jobs, but if you study literature I suppose foaming coffee drinks may be a good prelude to your future anyways. Sadly, without analytical- quantitative skills, you will be quite slow to figure out what is going on around you. If universities really wanted to promote an educated populace they would force everyone to take a course in mathematical logic and statistics. Clearly just the student loan debacle they have cooked us into could provide endless subject matter.
I do think getting an education is especially worth it if you are a black American mainly for one reason...it makes it easier to leave for a socialist Western country. If you have a technical education as an engineer, medical doctor, or high level scientist there is the possibility to leave. That's right, I, a card carrying Hadash (Israeli communist party) member, am going to ironically suggest a very capitalistic and individualistic solution to this problem for those who can afford it. Screw society. Don't bother trying to improve it, heroes often get shot. And if you are a woman, you only have so much time on your hands to form a family. Taking a leadership role in a revolution might leave you very alone and childless, a price your male counterparts will not pay. Of course, someone has to lead the revolution....but start looking critically at how leftist organizations are run. Typically these groups have some older people who already have homes and children around. If they truly cared about you they would put themselves front and center in terms of martyrdom. Instead most of these groups include some wealthier old white men too eager to turn young vulnerable students into cannon fodder for causes that not so coincidentally increase their celebrity and power, albeit the imaginary power most leftists hold. Younger men are often too stupid to understand the issue with this. I'll never forget when I met Luke Rudkowski, and we happened to discuss how annoyed I was when I came very close to going to being imprisoned in a detention center due to helping refugees. I wasn't exactly part of a radical movement, rather just doling out medical care to children who for bureaucratic reasons had no country. These kids were the ultimate refugees. And most were not the relatively glamarous Syrian refugees in which case I might have been able to get the press on my side...but poor black African refugees who no one seemed to care about. Rudkowski seemed puzzled. "The more governments persecute you the more you will become a folk hero!" Someone needs to tell younger men like him that life is not a video game we are playing for coolness points...and some of us want everything such a young white guy would take for their birthright. We also deserve the right to live withing the framework of a society that helps us nurture families if we choose. It's amazing how many "leftists" particularly if they are Americans never think this through. These people will make all kinds of political noise about your right to kill your unborn children, but when it comes to you having a right to what they are born into...not so much....
Clearly, in reality, American society does not care about us . Do not forget that you can pack your bags, and go somewhere where people make sense. If you haven't joined the 11 black billionaires and are therefore part of the other 99.99% of black people...you might want to go somewhere where things like maternity leave, education or health care are rights not unaffordable goods on a market that always seems to be priced to exclude us. The truth is that if you leave the USA, you will suddenly realize that the democratic party- the electable left- is actually run by people who would be considered extreme right wingers almost anywhere else. Democracy is dead in the USA, and you have been made into collateral damage. I do not write this as a hypocrite. I dealt with immigration issues for years while I was completely broke to be able to get out of the USA.
If leaving America sounds crazy consider the following: Many African Americans risked their lives for the dream of getting to Canada...you might only to have to fill out some paperwork.
Friday, October 23, 2015
Police Riots Are Back!
The world seems to be cracking open with violence and unrest not just in places like Syria. Swell spots like Cape Town and Seattle are explosive. But there seems to be an unfortunate pattern behind all of this few will speak openly about. It appears in many cases police are instigating riots undercover. There does seem to be a pattern.
I suspect that this is not actually a global conspiracy in the way people might imagine, rather similar circumstances playing out around the globe. Financialization and the crises of capitalism have eaten from almost all public budgets, except military and security budgets. Not every cop is a moron, or unaware that their buddies in the firefighters, public hospitals, and so forth are looking at shrinking budgets. Sadly the "proof" that security forces are necessary may often be a pre-planned riot made at the expense of peaceful protesters.
This violence against people masquerading as violence from within people is yet another part of the despicable upside down post-modern world we live in like the new paradigm of the boss who pretends to be your friend; but inverted and armed.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=356343461181561
I suspect not only are the security forces instigating violence, they are making sure they are the only ones doing it. I have been involved in many leftists protests, and annoyed at how ridiculously unanimously pacifist they are. When the state is violent and dishonest, it's surely not a coincidence that leaders continuously preach nonviolence. Granted, I would never act violently due to the personal moral convictions I hold...but I wonder if this is always the right tactic. Nonviolence would seem appropriate when you can garner lots of media attention and sympathy. On the other hand, when your story is decidedly a non-story in the eyes of everyone, like the homeless families in America being increasinly harassed by the police...maybe strategic limited violence is called for a la francaise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY6NlGGe6GI
I suspect that this is not actually a global conspiracy in the way people might imagine, rather similar circumstances playing out around the globe. Financialization and the crises of capitalism have eaten from almost all public budgets, except military and security budgets. Not every cop is a moron, or unaware that their buddies in the firefighters, public hospitals, and so forth are looking at shrinking budgets. Sadly the "proof" that security forces are necessary may often be a pre-planned riot made at the expense of peaceful protesters.
This violence against people masquerading as violence from within people is yet another part of the despicable upside down post-modern world we live in like the new paradigm of the boss who pretends to be your friend; but inverted and armed.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=356343461181561
I suspect not only are the security forces instigating violence, they are making sure they are the only ones doing it. I have been involved in many leftists protests, and annoyed at how ridiculously unanimously pacifist they are. When the state is violent and dishonest, it's surely not a coincidence that leaders continuously preach nonviolence. Granted, I would never act violently due to the personal moral convictions I hold...but I wonder if this is always the right tactic. Nonviolence would seem appropriate when you can garner lots of media attention and sympathy. On the other hand, when your story is decidedly a non-story in the eyes of everyone, like the homeless families in America being increasinly harassed by the police...maybe strategic limited violence is called for a la francaise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY6NlGGe6GI
Sunday, October 4, 2015
And now for real equality....
I'm getting kind of annoyed by all the rainbow flags on facebook. My 'yeah' for marriage equality is cynical and sarcastic..because I know full well gay marriage isn't really about equality at all. Of course I believe any two individuals should be able to marry. I also believe any three or four individuals should be able to marry. But let's be clear, gay marriage or plural marriage are about giving rights to people who are different from normative couples.
If we ever want equality, it's incredibly obvious if politically avaunt guard, that we actually need to start taking rights away from people. It may not sound kind or even democratic, but it is the only way towards a true equality for all Americans, married or not. In a world where everyone is respected equally, everyone could define their own relations as they see fit. If people see fit to sign up for sacred rights thousands of years old no one should stop them. Nor should anyone stop me from noticing that many wedding contracts are essentially the sale of a woman or in an even grimmer twist some families pay to get women off their hands. But giving extra rights to people for having some sort of religious and/or legal contract seems strange. No one even denies it is discriminatory, although few use the language of discrimination. Instead proponents trot out all kind of nonsense words like sacred, consecrate and so on which lack specificity not to mention reality. What marriage really does, as gay activists have spent over a decade pointing out, is give couples rights they would not get otherwise. These rights span from banal financial issues like taxation and retirement rights, to family issues like rights to visiting ones children when a partnership splits to just as important fuzzy rights like social respect. Over the course of a couple's lifetime this fuzzy issue of social respect has all kinds of implications on them and the children they produce. To this day it is not uncommon for people to refer to children conceived outside of marriage as illegitimate, or to discourage unmarried women from having children. The social stigma of singleness has a profound real negative effect on the lives of single people, although at it's base marriage is a legal agreement. As far as an actual argument for marriage, the most important one would seem that without it everyone would have to hire lawyers to negotiate the terms of their relationships...and hiring lawyers is almost never a good thing. Theoretically marriage harnesses traditions so old they won't go away, and bundles them with a bunch of benefits thereby encouraging marriage. If marriage is assumed to make people happy, then this is supposed to help everyone. Except it doesn't work that way. By bundling all these things together marriage is actually being discouraged in a larger and larger part of the population.
As society becomes more unequal, the real marriage equality issue is rapidly becoming who can afford to get married at all. While anyone can go to city hall and sign paperwork, the poor have some pretty strong disincentives from marriage. Just ask a recent university graduate. Women, in particular, have found that student loans, the price of education for almost anyone below the upper middle class function as an anti-dowry. But if those below the upper middle class fail to get a college degree or specific vocational training many of them are looking at a lifetime of precarious low paid work. Historically poverty has been almost defined by miserable working conditions: low level agricultural peonage leading the typical occupations of the poor. Now a growing number of the poor in the Western world do not actually work at all. As the sexual revolutions has slowly led many to equate marriage with family formation; the poor face an increasing issue. If their wages are so low and so insecure they could never afford a family, why marry at all? And in fact, many do not. So many do not that in American women in their twenties most babies are born to unmarried women. As one enlightened trophy wife told me "Marriage is about money and property and inheritance and if you don't have any money, well..." Marriage has become a tool through which upper middle class people cement their status in society and pass advantages on to their children. Marriage has also become a tool of certain kinds of women who want to duck out of actually pulling their own weight in society. Who in their right mind, if they actually belong to the progressive left, can stand for this? It doesn't take a sociologist to look around and realize how unfair this is. But then again, I'm probably overestimating the ability of observation among average people. A well educated man I know, a PhD in Physics no less, recently remarked to me "How do they do it?!" When I described a religious Israeli woman I knew with five children and no job. "No." I replied "The question isn't how they can do it, the question is how I the working single taxpayer can do it, because in some sense it's my job to support these kids because chances are, neither of their parents work." Seriously, how do we hard working single women drudge between our tiny apartments and long hours in usually rather joyless lives while not resenting married women, much more socially approved, who play with Popsicle sticks all day. The answer lies in the illusion of choice. But increasingly marriage is not a choice available to everyone. For the truly poor marriage is often an unfortunate choice to pin yourself to someone who might tip you over the edge financially. For truly poor men, even that might be a luxury. I am unfamiliar with the statistics, but if I had to guess, a truly impoverished man is probably many times more likely to end up in jail in the USA than a stable marriage.
People who really believe in social equality need to realize which fight is winnable. One potential fight would be creating a society in which people have anywhere nearly equal very good chances of marriage - a near impossibility considering some people are disabled in certain ways that make marriage unlikely. The winnable fight, is just taking the rights around marriage away. Everyone will have to grow up, fin for themselves, and come to personalized agreements over their property and life. Does that sound so awful? Why hasn't anyone encouraged this before?
If we ever want equality, it's incredibly obvious if politically avaunt guard, that we actually need to start taking rights away from people. It may not sound kind or even democratic, but it is the only way towards a true equality for all Americans, married or not. In a world where everyone is respected equally, everyone could define their own relations as they see fit. If people see fit to sign up for sacred rights thousands of years old no one should stop them. Nor should anyone stop me from noticing that many wedding contracts are essentially the sale of a woman or in an even grimmer twist some families pay to get women off their hands. But giving extra rights to people for having some sort of religious and/or legal contract seems strange. No one even denies it is discriminatory, although few use the language of discrimination. Instead proponents trot out all kind of nonsense words like sacred, consecrate and so on which lack specificity not to mention reality. What marriage really does, as gay activists have spent over a decade pointing out, is give couples rights they would not get otherwise. These rights span from banal financial issues like taxation and retirement rights, to family issues like rights to visiting ones children when a partnership splits to just as important fuzzy rights like social respect. Over the course of a couple's lifetime this fuzzy issue of social respect has all kinds of implications on them and the children they produce. To this day it is not uncommon for people to refer to children conceived outside of marriage as illegitimate, or to discourage unmarried women from having children. The social stigma of singleness has a profound real negative effect on the lives of single people, although at it's base marriage is a legal agreement. As far as an actual argument for marriage, the most important one would seem that without it everyone would have to hire lawyers to negotiate the terms of their relationships...and hiring lawyers is almost never a good thing. Theoretically marriage harnesses traditions so old they won't go away, and bundles them with a bunch of benefits thereby encouraging marriage. If marriage is assumed to make people happy, then this is supposed to help everyone. Except it doesn't work that way. By bundling all these things together marriage is actually being discouraged in a larger and larger part of the population.
As society becomes more unequal, the real marriage equality issue is rapidly becoming who can afford to get married at all. While anyone can go to city hall and sign paperwork, the poor have some pretty strong disincentives from marriage. Just ask a recent university graduate. Women, in particular, have found that student loans, the price of education for almost anyone below the upper middle class function as an anti-dowry. But if those below the upper middle class fail to get a college degree or specific vocational training many of them are looking at a lifetime of precarious low paid work. Historically poverty has been almost defined by miserable working conditions: low level agricultural peonage leading the typical occupations of the poor. Now a growing number of the poor in the Western world do not actually work at all. As the sexual revolutions has slowly led many to equate marriage with family formation; the poor face an increasing issue. If their wages are so low and so insecure they could never afford a family, why marry at all? And in fact, many do not. So many do not that in American women in their twenties most babies are born to unmarried women. As one enlightened trophy wife told me "Marriage is about money and property and inheritance and if you don't have any money, well..." Marriage has become a tool through which upper middle class people cement their status in society and pass advantages on to their children. Marriage has also become a tool of certain kinds of women who want to duck out of actually pulling their own weight in society. Who in their right mind, if they actually belong to the progressive left, can stand for this? It doesn't take a sociologist to look around and realize how unfair this is. But then again, I'm probably overestimating the ability of observation among average people. A well educated man I know, a PhD in Physics no less, recently remarked to me "How do they do it?!" When I described a religious Israeli woman I knew with five children and no job. "No." I replied "The question isn't how they can do it, the question is how I the working single taxpayer can do it, because in some sense it's my job to support these kids because chances are, neither of their parents work." Seriously, how do we hard working single women drudge between our tiny apartments and long hours in usually rather joyless lives while not resenting married women, much more socially approved, who play with Popsicle sticks all day. The answer lies in the illusion of choice. But increasingly marriage is not a choice available to everyone. For the truly poor marriage is often an unfortunate choice to pin yourself to someone who might tip you over the edge financially. For truly poor men, even that might be a luxury. I am unfamiliar with the statistics, but if I had to guess, a truly impoverished man is probably many times more likely to end up in jail in the USA than a stable marriage.
People who really believe in social equality need to realize which fight is winnable. One potential fight would be creating a society in which people have anywhere nearly equal very good chances of marriage - a near impossibility considering some people are disabled in certain ways that make marriage unlikely. The winnable fight, is just taking the rights around marriage away. Everyone will have to grow up, fin for themselves, and come to personalized agreements over their property and life. Does that sound so awful? Why hasn't anyone encouraged this before?
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
UN Schmoon...
When I first read that the Saudis were heading a UN body on human rights, I thought I was reading a parody. Saudi Arabia, isn't it the country where women can't even drive, and are just now being granted the right to vote in 2015? Saudi Arabia where people don't even bother registering female births so they can more easily kill them later if they get out of line? Saudi Arabia where they execute people by beheadings even for nonviolent crimes? Where they have a brand of Islam so extremists they gave us 9/11? Yes...
So it turns out all the Jewish conspiracy theorists are right? The UN is basically a big corrupt body bizarrely biased towards the Arab world...
I actually just feel sorry for anyone who had any faith in this sorry body of nonsense anymore. They can't handle refugees. They can't stop miserable wars. They can't fight for human rights...and they just sit around hating Israel all day long. Oh, but how could I forget 'him for her' a supposedly feminist campaign spearheaded by an actress and underwear model. Excuse me while I vomit.
Can someone please come up with an alternative body to help the world? This is a rather sad mess.
So it turns out all the Jewish conspiracy theorists are right? The UN is basically a big corrupt body bizarrely biased towards the Arab world...
I actually just feel sorry for anyone who had any faith in this sorry body of nonsense anymore. They can't handle refugees. They can't stop miserable wars. They can't fight for human rights...and they just sit around hating Israel all day long. Oh, but how could I forget 'him for her' a supposedly feminist campaign spearheaded by an actress and underwear model. Excuse me while I vomit.
Can someone please come up with an alternative body to help the world? This is a rather sad mess.
Monday, September 28, 2015
What to think of luck
In a world this sad
Does art even have a place
But in a world this sad
Is art the only hope?
In a world this sad
Does any thought matter anyways?
Slavery, murder, oppression
2015 brought back 1014
Child brides
Poverty
ISIS
American Capitalism
State sponsored murder
The failure of everything
But insanity and smiling
Smiling a little, ignoring the reality
Are we cruel? Are we crazy?
Are we colonists
Us in the candy box
Us in the white frothy crest of the world
We fought our way in, we think
Until something reminds us
It was all luck of birth
Monday, September 21, 2015
The Jerusalem Paradox
I'm a bit sad that the recent surge in refugees has been seen as a monumental and exceptional crisis. Africa and Asia have had more refugees for far longer; yet this was never a "crisis." Once again the world media and governing bodies are showing us that something only counts as a real problem if it affects white people. One truly aware of history would not be surprised. The savagery of the Western world has been on full display for centuries. Should anyone be surprised that the people who brought the world global colonialism are indifferent to the plight of supposedly lesser people?
The problems of the world seem eternally stuck. Equality, of the type dreamed of in the Haitian revolution or the French revolution, seems to be some pipe dream only a few pot smokers will cling to. The real question is how would equality even be enacted between very unequal populations. Are we, the non-Western, inherently savage, as savage as those who stomp on us? Has our lack of education and resources made us so idiotic that a psuedo-colonial rule is inevitable, if only to maintain some level of decency? Forgetting how we got into this situation, in which those above us are almost completely to blame, we should ask if we are better off running ourselves as a matter of practical survival.
Several of my acquintances are whimsically hopeful for the day the British will march back into the Levant and take over Israel again. For them as Israel born Jews, decades of liberation and self-rule have been somewhat disappointing. Yet they are sure there is one possibility even worse. They are deeply racist against Arabs...
From the Palestinian Arab perspective the original Zionists were a new sort of colonialist, even if in fact they were throwing off a type of colonialist opression themselves. And yet paradoxically, the more the supposedly colonial entity controls, the better the situation on the ground for many people. Haifa, a city of relative peace and near equality, is under full civil control of Israel. The polar opposite would be Gaza, where due to a combination of the Oslo accords and withdrawal, there is a fair amount of autonomy. There is also now a near total vacuum of human rights and dignity. Forgetting the question of blame- which lies with several parties including Israel- there is a more important question of how the madness will stop, how things can get better.
Paradoxically every "correct" move towards the autonomy and freedom of the people there seems to result in less freedom and autonomy. I am sure that if tomorrow Israel were to withdraw all interference from Gaza and grant it autonomy, we would welcome the world's 23rd or 24th Islamic dictatorship, with the requisite total death of hope for human rights, within less than two weeks. What moves towards democracy and autonomy did, most notably the Oslo accords, was unfortunately to increase the misery of those supposedly being liberated. No one seemed to notice that in a practical sense the Oslo accords cut millions of people of from getting decent education and health care because of their ethnicity. A few decades later, a radical turn for the worst, towards fundamentalist, shouldn't surprise anyone.
The question of the future of Jerusalem is in some sense a miniature question of the issues in the entire world right now. As radicalized religious militants are allowed to turn the area into a religious conflict zone, sadly few will remember that underlying this mess were cold political calculations about populations. Such calculations happened for the population of Jerusalem, and they happened in terms of entire national populations in the middle East. Not all variables were taken into account by anyone.
In 2015 some cynicism about the future is required in any calculation. Gone are the days when the world could look upon brave new ideologies for salvation. Every revolutionary who did not become a tyrant became sad. Simon Bolivar said he had plowed into the sea. Emma Goldman admitted she was just plain wrong. All that is left for it's great trial and subsequent failure is anarchism. And yet inherent in mass rule, is us the savage masses...and the question of whether we are capable of anything good. The stage for the trial of anarchism will probably not be Jerusalem. Under the eyes of the UN, the international media, the PA, the Israeli government, the global interest, and so on, Jerusalem will be anything but a throwing off of rules. The first failures of anarchy will happen unnoticed on the very edge of empire in places like Kurdistan...but the failure will probably come larger for those at the very center of civilization. Yet slowly the failures may bring a certain limited kind of progress in some cases. Hope, like savagery and injustice, springs eternal.
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