President Biden has abandoned our fundamental values of humanity, liberty, justice, and human rights – and continue to send weapons and aid to Israel despite Israel facing Genocide charges at ICJ and looming famine in Gaza. It revolted many Americans, especially young students, and they took to the streets as well as in campuses to protest Genocide taking place in Gaza and apartheid policies of Israel in Gaza and West Bank. Supporters of Israel want to smother these voices of protest, and House of Representatives has passed “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.” Under this Act, expanded definition of antisemitism will make any negative comment about Jews or Israel may become a hate crime. We can criticize USA, but not Israel, and we can burn American flag but not Israeli flag. Believing canonized Gospels that Jews killed Christ will become a crime. This is an assault on our liberties.

Antisemitism slogan has become a weapon of choice to smother all critical voices against Israeli atrocities taking place in Gaza which has caused over 34,000 innocent Gazans deaths including thousands of children and almost total erasure of Gaza infrastructure, hospitals, schools, houses, and farming land.

Antisemitism weapon is being used to demonize protesting students by our politicians and media as Antisemites to divert attention from genocide taking place in Gaza. Politicians, media, and other pundits are spinning full throated as if Antisemitism is the actual serious atrocity and not Genocide and destruction of Gaza. Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is not only serious assault on our freedom of speech but also another diversion tactic to take away focus on Gaza Genocide.  

What will be the next diversion? Another Law for American citizens to take oath of allegiance to Israel also?    

F. Sheikh

As per NYT today, the ceasefire negotiations are deadlocked over duration of ceasefire as Hamas is demanding permanent ceasefire whereas Israel agreeing to only temporary ceasefire of few weeks. The biggest hurdle is the Biden Administration itself which has lost its credibility as honest mediator and being accomplice in Genocide and impending famine in Gaza. It is clear to Palestinian negotiators that Biden’s main concern is the release of Israeli hostages and improve his chances of re-election. Biden has no empathy for Palestinians. Anthony Blinken is trying hard to trap Palestinians in a temporary ceasefire of few weeks in exchnge for some hostages released, and then further few weeks of temporary ceasefire till all the hostages are released. It may improve the Biden’s chances of getting re-elected. I think Biden Administration’s proclamations that temporary ceasefire will lead to permanent ceasefire is a bait to entice Palestinians into temporary ceasefire and for public consumption.

After Biden is re-elected, temporary ceasefire will end, all the hostages would have been released, and Biden may again give green light and free hand to Israel to go after Hamas in Rafaa even at the risk of second genocide in Gaza. West Bank may not be safe either, as Netanyahu may find any excuse to go in West Bank and turn it into Gaza. Biden being self-proclaimed Zionist, will stand by its promise of ironclad support of Israel and provide all the weapons and our tax money Israel needs- perhaps for the final solution.  

posted by f.sheikh

Dozens of books have disappeared from Warsaw to Paris. The police are looking into who is taking them, and why — a tale of money, geopolitics, crafty forgers and lackluster library security.

Some excerpts;

In April 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, two men arrived at the library of the University of Tartu, Estonia’s second-largest city. They told the librarians they were Ukrainians fleeing war and asked to consult 19th-century first editions of works by Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s national poet, and Nikolai Gogol. Speaking Russian, they said they were an uncle and nephew researching censorship in czarist Russia so the nephew could apply for a scholarship to the United States. Eager to help, the librarians obliged. The men spent 10 days studying the books.

Four months later, during a routine annual inventory, the library discovered that eight books the men had consulted had disappeared, replaced with facsimiles of such high quality that only expert eyes could detect them. “It was terrible,” Krista Aru, the director of the library, said. “They had a very good story.”

At first, it seemed like a one-off — bad luck at a provincial library. It wasn’t. Police are now investigating what they believe is a vast, coordinated series of thefts of rare 19th-century Russian books — primarily first and early editions of Pushkin — from libraries across Europe.

Since 2022, more than 170 books valued at more than $2.6 million, according to Europol, have vanished from the National Library of Latvia in Riga, Vilnius University Library, the State Library of Berlin, the Bavarian State Library in Munich, the National Library of Finland in Helsinki, the National Library of France, university libraries in Paris, Lyon and Geneva, and from the Czech Republic. The University of Warsaw library was hardest hit, with 78 books gone.

In Russia, Pushkin is a national icon with the status of Shakespeare but the familiarity of a friend. A Romantic poet, novelist and playwright, aristocrat, libertine, writer on freedom and empire, he brought Russian literature, and the Russian language itself, into modernity before dying in a duel at age 37, in 1837.

“In Russia for the past 200 years, there were not four elements in nature but five, and the fifth is Pushkin,” André Markovicz, the pre-eminent translator of Pushkin into French, said.

“Pushkin is the mirror of all the epochs of Russia,” Markovicz said. In Ukraine today, Pushkin has become a reviled symbol of Russian imperialism since the brutal Russian invasion and people have toppled statues to him.

Full Article

posted by f.sheikh