Seeing “Victors” Rewrite History

Vera Rubin Was a Pioneering Female Astronomer. Her Federal Bio Now Doesn’t Mention Efforts to Diversify Science.

The edits to the webpage offer a glimpse into how far the Trump administration will go in refusing to acknowledge today’s inequalities as it purges federal initiatives promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

Vera Rubin was an astronomer who earned the National Medal of Science for her research on dark matter, an invisible substance that makes up much of the universe. Credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Rubin Collection

During his first presidential term, Donald Trump signed a congressional act naming a federally funded observatory after the late astronomer Vera Rubin. The act celebrated her landmark research on dark matter — the invisible, mysterious substance that makes up much of the universe — and noted that she was an outspoken advocate for the equal treatment and representation of women in science.

“Vera herself offers an excellent example of what can happen when more minds participate in science,” the observatory’s website said of Rubin — up until recently.

By Monday morning, a section of her online biography titled, “She advocated for women in science,” was gone. It reappeared in a stripped-down form later that day amid a chaotic federal government response to Trump’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

While there are far more seismic changes afoot in America than the revision of three paragraphs on a website, the page’s edit trail provides an opportunity to peer into how institutions and agencies are navigating the new administration’s intolerance of anything perceived as “woke” and illuminates a calculation officials must make in answering a wide-open question:

How far is too far when it comes to acknowledging inequality and advocating against it?

“Vera Rubin, whose career began in the 1960s, faced a lot of barriers simply because she was a woman,” the altered section of the bio began. “She persisted in studying science when her male advisors told her she shouldn’t,” and she balanced her career with raising children, a rarity at the time. “Her strength in overcoming these challenges is admirable on its own, but Vera worked even harder to help other women navigate what was, during her career, a very male-dominated field.”

That first paragraph disappeared temporarily, then reappeared, untouched, midday Monday.

That was not the case for the paragraph that followed: “Science is still a male-dominated field, but Rubin Observatory is working to increase participation from women and other people who have historically been excluded from science. Rubin Observatory welcomes everyone who wants to contribute to science, and takes steps to lower or eliminate barriers that exclude those with less privilege.”

That paragraph was gone as of Thursday afternoon, as was the assertion that Rubin shows what can happen when “more minds” participate in science. The word “more” was replaced with “many,” shifting the meaning.

“I’m sure Vera would be absolutely furious,” said Jacqueline Mitton, an astronomer and author who co-wrote a biography of Rubin’s life. Mitton said the phrase “more minds” implies that “you want minds from people from every different background,” an idea that follows naturally from the now-deleted text on systemic barriers.

She said Rubin, who died in 2016, would want the observatory named after her to continue her work advocating for women and other groups who have long been underrepresented in science.

It’s unclear who ordered the specific alterations of Rubin’s biography. The White House, the observatory and the federal agencies that fund it, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

The observatory’s page on diversity, equity and inclusion was also missing Thursday afternoon. An archived version from Dec. 19 shows that it described the institution’s efforts “to ensure fair and unbiased execution” of the hiring process, including training hiring committee members “on unconscious bias.” The DEI program also included educational and public outreach efforts, such as “meeting web accessibility standards” and plans to build partnerships with “organizations serving audiences traditionally under-represented” in science and technology.

Similar revisions are taking shape across the country as companies have reversed their DEI policies and the Trump administration has placed employees working on DEI initiatives on leave.

If the changes to Rubin’s biography are any indication of what remains acceptable under Trump’s vision for the federal government, then certain facts about historical disparities are safe for now. But any recognition that these biases persist appears to be in the crosshairs.

The U.S. Air Force even pulled training videos about Black airmen and civilian women pilots who served in World War II. (The Air Force later said it would continue to show the videos in training, but certain material related to diversity would be suspended for review.)

One of Rubin’s favorite sayings was, “Half of all brains are in women,” Mitton said. Her book recounts how Rubin challenged sexist language in science publications, advocated for women to take leadership roles in professional organizations and declined to speak at an event in 1972 held at a club where women were only allowed to enter through a back door.

Jacqueline Hewitt, who was a graduate student when she met Rubin at conferences, said she was inspired by Rubin’s research and how she never hid the fact that she had kids. “It was really important to see someone who could succeed,” said Hewitt, the Julius A. Stratton professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It felt like you could succeed also.”

Rubin was awarded the National Medal of Science by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993. The observatory, located in a part of Chile where conditions are ideal for observational astronomy, was named after her in 2019 and includes a powerful telescope; it will “soon witness the explosions of millions of dying stars” and “capture the cosmos in exquisite detail,” according to its website.

Mitton said the observatory is a memorial that continues Rubin’s mission to include not just many people in astronomy, but more of those who haven’t historically gotten a chance to make their mark.

“It’s very sad that’s being undermined,” she said, “because the job isn’t done.” (Snip)

Peace & Justice History for 1/30

Longest. January. Ever. But it’s also Fred Korematsu Day-Woot!

January 30, 1948
Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in Delhi by an assassin, a fellow Hindu, who fired three shots from a pistol at a range of three feet.
An American reporter who saw it happen
January 30, 1956
As Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the pulpit, leading a mass meeting during the Montgomery, Alab
ama, bus boycott, his home was bombed. King’s wife and 10-week-old baby escaped unharmed. Later in the evening, as thousands of angry African Americans assembled on King’s lawn, he appeared on his front porch, and told them:
“If you have weapons, take them home . . . We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence . . . We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. and wife Coretta Scott, 1960
January 30, 1968
The Tet (lunar new year) Offensive began as North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched surprise attacks against major cities, provincial and district capitals in South Vietnam.
Though an attack had been anticipated, half of the South’s ARVN troops (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) were on leave because of the holiday. There were attacks in Saigon (the South’s capital) on the Independence Palace (the residence of the president), the radio station, the ARVN’s joint General Staff Compound, Tan Son Nhut airfield, and the United States embassy, causing considerable damage and throwing the city into turmoil.
January 30, 1972
In Londonderry (aka Derry), Northern Ireland, unarmed civil rights demonstrators were shot dead by British Army paratroopers in an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” The protesters, all Catholics, had been marching in protest of the British policy of internment without trial of suspected Irish nationalists.
British authorities had ordered the march banned, and sent troops to confront the demonstrators when it went ahead. The soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters, ultimately killing 14 and wounding 17. By the end of the year 323 civilians and 144 military and paramilitary personnel would be dead.


Mural: Bloody Sunday martyrs
Eyewitness accounts 
January 30, 2010

Thousands of protesters from across Japan marched in central Tokyo to protest the U.S. military presence on Okinawa.
Some 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan, with more than half on the southern island of Okinawa. Residents have complained for years about noise, pollution and crime around the bases.

News about the protest (This link is to the 2016 protest; P&J’s link for the 2010 protest links to Not Found.)
January 30, since 2011 Fred Korematsu Day

Fred Korematsu
Fred Korematsu, was born in Oakland, California, to a Japanese-American family. When World War II broke out Japanese-American citizens were subject to curfews and, following an executive order from Pres. Roosevelt,
were sent to internment camps. Fred Korematsu refused to go and was convicted and sent to a camp.

He challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944 the Supreme court ruled against him. Finally in 1983, a Federal court in San Francisco overturned the original conviction. In 1988 Congress passed legislation apologizing for the internments and awarded each survivor $20,000.
The “Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution” is observed every January 30th and in an increasing number of states.

“Protest, but not with violence. Don’t be afraid to speak up. One person can make a difference, even if it takes 40 years…” – Fred Korematsu 
More about Fred Korematsu 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january30

Debunked: 61-98% of Trans Youth Desist During Puberty

As I have written and posted I love Ethel’s videos.  She presents the facts with an easy to listen to rhythm and tone.  She uses facts to present the medical studies and medical science for trans people not emotion, feelings, or guess work.   She presents the sources she uses and gives the details of how the conclusions were reached and the validity of the studies.  Such as to if it is peer reviewed, how large the sample size, and the conclusions of the data match what the person pushing the information is claiming it does. Often Ethel catches bigots simply lying by claiming a study shows negative results when in fact the studies and data present a positive or are completely opposite from what the haters claim. 

Plus for those who would rather read than listen she provides a transcript of the videos she does and again as I mentioned she supplies her sources so others can look up the studies / data themselves to show she is telling the truth.  That is why you never see videos by trans haters such as the TERFs trying to claim she lied.  If you care about the facts and wish to have the information to combat the lies of bigots please check out her other videos supporting trans people and debunking anti-trans lies.  Hugs

Watch all our videos debunking gender ‘critical’ fascism here! –    • Debunking Gender ‘Critical’ Fascism  

Today’s video debunks the myth that between 61-98% of all trans youth desist if we take a ‘wait and see’ approach, exposing the linguistic sleight of hand used by those set on undermining gender affirming care as the only ethical approach. #ProtectTransKids

Hi, welcome to Essence of Thought with me, Ethel Thurston, as your host.

Trump order targets transgender troops and ‘radical gender ideology’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/28/trump-transgender-troops-military-hegseth/

tRump is old and … intellectually challenged so he can not understand gender identification.  A lot of older people can’t handle the changes in society and the acceptance of new ways to be / live.  As far as the religious fanatics pushing the hate against LGBTQ+ people including trans people are cis people who do not feel a disconnect between their sex organs and their feelings of who they are in society.  Just as the same religious straight people can not understand the attraction gay people feel.  They don’t feel that way themselves, so don’t see being cis and straight being the only acceptable way to live as a problem. Instead they think because they don’t feel that way then no one else does so it must be a choice.  Or a mental defect to be cured.  They refuse to accept medical science / medical studies and all the evidence that it is real, exists, and normal.  We learn as a society and we as we grow in understanding we learn to accept new things.  Medical science and medical research tell us that being trans and gay is normal, also that medical care that affirms those feelings is important along with necessary.   Just because I don’t like a food or feel like I want to eat it, doesn’t mean no one likes it or don’t want to eat it.  But liking a food I don’t doesn’t mean it is a mental illness or makes a person unfit.  

saying that the U.S. military has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists” and that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty.”

 

It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

 

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.

 

Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who has said that “being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences,”

The above by the drunken wife abuser accused sexual predator Hegseth is wrong.  The only complication and differences caused by having transgender people in the military is not the trans people but the fundamentalist religious people / Christians like Hegseth who feel the entire LGBTQ+ is an abomination to his god and so shouldn’t be allowed to exist.   Or worse mix with the real children of god, people with good morals like the drunken wife abuser accused sexual predator Hegseth. This issue over transgender people in the military reminds me of when Clinton tried to make it legal for gay people to be out in the military.   Senator Sam Nunn went on a Navy ship and said no real service member wanted to be sleeping near, working next to, or using the bathroom facilities with the dreaded gay person, which some churches were desperate to keep from being accepted and live openly in society.  The anti-gay people claimed all sorts of horrors if gay people were allowed to service openly from the collapse of the military to mass exit of members.   None of that happened, the military stayed the world’s best and there was no mass fleeing from the service. 

These same people with the same hater mind set made the same claims about first black people being allowed to serve, and then when the military was desegregated.  The same was said of women in combat roles.  It always comes from the haters who use their personal bigotry as the metric for how everyone should be and feel.  And they never admit when all the horrors they claim will happen if those they are against get equality and inclusion never happen.  They just pick a new target and repeat the same attacks and hates.  Now it is the trans people’s turn to be accused of all the horrible things that blacks were, the gays were, that never were true.  Trans people have served openly for some time, studies show that they do not harm the military or lower the military readiness / effectiveness in any way.  Sadly far too many of our general public who know nothing about the military or who never served think they are experts and again feel that everyone has the same bigotries, racist, and misogynistic feelings they do.  Being in other countries or even different parts of the US will open closed minds.  Harris did not lose by much, she almost won.  It is too bad these hateful ignorant people are going to be able to enshrine their hates and bigotries into law and hurt so many people in the next few years. But remember if we can get the House then most of the damage can do with the passing of laws will stop, and if we can regain the Senate we can stop hateful ideolog judges from being installed.   It is up to us to get out the vote.   Hugs

  ==================================================================

The executive order took aim at transgender individuals in personal terms, noting that physical and mental health conditions make them “incompatible” with military service.

January 28, 2025 at 12:28 a.m. EST
 
The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
 

President Donald Trump on Monday night issued an executive order targeting transgender service members and an array of other people, saying that the U.S. military has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists” and that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty.”

 
 

The list of conditions identified could affect tens of thousands of people depending on how it is interpreted. It cites diagnoses “that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, and prior psychiatric hospitalization.”

The order calls for the Pentagon to adopt updated policies on the medical standards required for military service. It also takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

 
 

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it adds.

 

The order builds on a previous directive, issued hours after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, overturning a 2021 Biden administration measure that permitted transgender troops to serve openly, which reversed an earlier ban from Trump’s first term in office. The new executive order does not immediately ban transgender individuals from serving, but it directs the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, to revise medical standards and submit a report to the president outlining steps to comply with the directive.

While the Defense Department does not keep track of the number of transgender personnel across the force, the latest shift in the long-running policy back-and-forth could impact thousands of service members. It also represents one aspect of a far-reaching Trump administration effort to roll back diversity initiatives across the government.

 
 

Trump signed the new transgender order along with others calling for the reinstatement of troops who were discharged during the Biden administration for refusing coronavirus vaccines; the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion offices in the Defense Department; and the creation of an “Iron Dome for America,” Trump’s vision for expanded missile defense.

Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard soldier who has said that “being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences,” promised in his first remarks to reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that he would ensure implementation of Trump’s priorities, which also include ordering the military to guard the southern border.

“This is happening quickly,” he said. “Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting.”

 
 

In a November podcast, Hegseth said personnel receiving medication related to gender transitions would be unable to serve effectively.

Advocates for transgender people have said that there may be as many as 15,000 in the U.S. military. A 2016 Defense Department survey found that about 9,000 identified as such. Both figures represent less than 1 percent of the 2 million people who serve in the active-duty, reserve or National Guard components of the military.

For decades, the military considered transgender people to be sexual deviants who were unfit for service. But in 2016, after a year-long policy review, the Obama administration repealed a ban on transgender service, citing the value of ensuring that all qualified individuals were able to serve their country in uniform.

 

“We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer forces to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified — and to retain them,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at the time.

 

The repeal followed the Obama administration in 2011 overturning the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which prohibited gay service members from serving openly, and the 2015 repeal of a ban on women serving in a wide array of jobs in ground combat units.

After taking office in 2017, Trump announced a ban on transgender military service in a series of tweets, without notifying key defense officials. The move triggered a scramble in the Pentagon, with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordering another policy review.

 

In 2018, Mattis adopted a new policy with Trump’s tacit support that softened the full ban, effectively prohibiting new transgender service members from joining the military but allowing those already in uniform to stay on.

The ruling was challenged in court, but the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s partial ban in 2019. The military began enforcing that policy later that year.

President Joe Biden quickly reversed Trump’s ban in an executive order after taking office in 2021.

A Brain Cleanser from Lit Hub

Snippets from my this week’s newsletter, with links.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is published in The Evening Mirror.
In January 1845, the greatest goth in literary history published what would swiftly become his most famous poem: “The Raven.”

Poe first sold the poem (for $9, the equivalent of about $375 today) to the American Review, where it would appear—under the pen name “Quarles”—in the February 1845 issue. It was published concurrently in the January 29 edition of The Evening Mirror, prefaced by a note from editor Nathaniel Parker Willis, who called it “the most effective single example of ‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’” Well, sure.
 
“The Raven,” if for some reason you don’t know it, is a narrative poem about a young scholar who, sitting alone on a bleak December night, mourning his lost love Lenore, is visited by a raven, who torments him by speaking, over and over again, a single word. Poe later wrote that he knew he wanted this word—“nevermore”—to be repeated throughout the poem, but finding the idea of a person uttering it too implausible, he struck upon “the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.”
 
Well, it worked pretty well, you might say. The poem, writes Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn, “made an impression probably not surpassed by that of any single piece of American poetry. It was widely copied, parodied, and one humorist even took over a page of the Mirror to suggest five alternatives as to the relation of Lenore to the poet.”
 
One-hundred-eighty years later, it may be still unsurpassed, though contenders abound. Either way, as you have probably noticed, the parodies and tributes have never stopped. We shall be quoting it forevermore.

MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM

In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane

A Brief and Incomplete Survey of Edgar Allan Poes in Pop Culture

The Greatest Goths in Literary History

YEP, STILL SLAPS
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—            
Only this and nothing more.”
–EDGAR ALLAN POE, “THE RAVEN”
In other (old)news this week
Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to his daughter, pooh-poohing the bald eagle as the symbol of America, and instead championing the great and noble turkey (January 26, 1784) • John Millington Synge’s play The Playboy of the Western World premieres at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin and causes a riot (January 26, 1907) • The first part of Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw is published in Collier’s Weekly magazine (January 27, 1898) • Franz Kafka begins work on his novel The Castle at the mountain resort of Spindermühle (January 27, 1922) • Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is published anonymously in London (January 28, 1813) • Thomas Jefferson sells his library to the government after the Library of Congress burns down (January 30, 1815) • Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters premieres at the Moscow Art Theater (January 31, 1901) • The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is published (February 1, 1884) • Great American Iconoclast Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is published (February 1, 1962) • David Foster Wallace’s eerily prescient Infinite Jest is published (February 1, 1996).
(snip-More)

I hope you enjoyed it! These newsletters are free, and are great for brain/heart health breaks.

Peace & Justice History for 1/28

January 28, 1992
Nuclear production at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal – a complex used for both power plants and nuclear weapon munition manufacture – was permanently closed after repeated revelations of environmental contamination in the surrounding land and water supply, 25 miles northwest of Denver. Following closure, the facilities were completely dismantled and the site cleared.
 
The principal product of Rocky Flats was the fissionable plutonium trigger or “pit” at the core of every nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal. Since its construction in 1951 it was managed at different times by Dow Chemical, Rockwell International and EG&G. Dow and Rockwell paid fines in the tens of millions of dollars and were ordered to pay damages in the hundreds of millions to local residents for the environmental damage.
Despite the residual plutonium contamination on the 6500-acre site, it has been transferred by the Department of Energy to the Fish and Wildlife Service (Interior) as the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge.
Rocky Flats Right to Know
January 28, 1995

Soldiers’ Mothers Committee members
Over 100 members of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia went to a Red Army training camp to reclaim their sons. Since its founding in 1989 the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee had worked to expose human rights violations within the Russian military and has consistently supported a true alternative service option for conscientious objectors.
The Mothers Committee earned the 1996 Right Livelihood Award 
This link takes us to the Right Livelihood Award main page. Apparently 1996 is too far back, or I didn’t search it correctly. P&J’s link goes to an error page on the site. -A.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january28

What we must now fight against what is pushed worldwide by the wealthiest people.

The Rare Religion Post That Is Also Informational and Heartening Even For the Non-Christian

Rare because I rarely post such. Pastor Bolz-Weber says all this so well, and it is what I learned when I was young and growing up; what I work to apply in my own (and in no one else’s) life. I’m not proselytizing or trying to “draw anyone in.” This helps to explain why and how I feel as I do about justice and peace, and love and understanding and all that, including hope and light. Enjoy with a mind that can absorb without feeling there’s gonna be a “come forward” moment, because there’s not one. (Other than to Christians who feel as we do, but wonder about Zionism and Nationalism being as bad as they are.)

Heresy and Checkpoints by Nadia Bolz-Weber

Some thoughts from breakfast this morning. Read on Substack

In Christmas Sermon, Palestinian Theologian Condemns Enablers of Gaza  Genocide
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac

This morning I had a quick breakfast with another Lutheran pastor. This of course is not terribly remarkable in the scheme of things, except for the fact that the breakfast took place in the Kingdom of Jordan, a few feet away from the Dead Sea and my colleague had to cut the breakfast short so he could return home to his family, but he was anxious about all the military check point between here and there.

“How far of a drive is it” I asked.

“If I had a car and could drive straight there, about an hour. But my hope is that it will only take 8 hours.” He accepted that he may in fact not even make it home at all tonight.

Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Lutheran Pastor who lives and serves a church in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. Christians have been here since the day the Spirit blew through them on the day of Pentecost, so Munther and my other Palestinian Christian friends can get slightly annoyed when well meaning Christians from the West ask “when did your family convert?”.

Um, over 2,000 years ago?

Munther and I are in Jordan right now for a conference – 60 academics and church leaders from 17 countries gathered over the last several days for a consultation on Christian Zionism (belief that Jewish people have a “divine right” to the land here – using a few verses in a 4,000 year old text to have authority over foreign policy and global political realities of today), and the impact of that on Christians in the Middle East; a few days together in a majority Muslim country, across the Dead Sea from the State of Israel to talk about Christian folks’ business: how do the theological beliefs of one group of Christians impact the lives of another group of Christians halfway across the planet?

Many of us grew up with some form of Christian Zionism, I know I did. Perhaps it stemmed from a desire to be faithful to what we have been told, or a desire to help usher in the second coming of Christ (ala The Late Great Planet Earth) so he can come back and destroy the world and take us up to heaven (described this week as science fiction theology), or a desire to assuage the guilt left over from the unspeakable atrocities and genocide of the holocaust.

It will take me time to metabolize what I heard over the last few days. Christian Zionism is widespread, and far reaching in it’s impact, and I am committed to try and maintain the humility it takes as a US citizen and a Christian to consider people like Munther and my friend Mitri Raheb as reliable narrators of the impact on the ground in Palestine.

Palestinian Christians should be listened to by us, their siblings in Christ.

Munther Isaac appeared in ‘Til Kingdom Come (2020), an Israeli documentary about American Christian support for Israel.[20] In the film he explains his view to pastor William Bingham that Christian Zionism contributes to the oppression of Palestinians. After their conversation, Bingham calls Isaac an anti-semite and says that Palestinians do not exist. – Wikipedia

This morning before Munther left to make his way home, he told me a story of a family in his church. For over 150 years they have rightfully owned and inhabited their land outside Bethlehem – a beautiful parcel dotted with olive trees, often hundreds of years old themselves.

Israeli settlers (whose actions are deemed illegal by the UN Security Council)
who for years have been attempting to take this family’s land, confronted them at their gate recently, demanding the family leave. The family showed them their ownership documents – dating back from Ottoman rule, then Jordanian rule through to Israeli rule. The settlers angrily lifted up their Bible and said “We have documents too. God gave us this land!”


As I mentioned, I am overwhelmed by all I heard this week and will try and write more later for those who are interested, but for now I wanted to report how one word stood out for me in a particular way during the conference, and that word is: heresy.

19th century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher defined heresy as, “that which preserves the appearance of Christianity, and yet contradicts its essence

So perhaps that is the correct word for when, with all the trappings of Christianity behind us, we who seek to justify or maintain our dominance over another group of people use the Bible to prove that our domination`is not actually an abuse of power at the expense of others, but is, indeed, part of “God’s plan”. Because there you have the appearance of Christianity (Bible verses and God-talk) contradicting its essence (love God, and love your neighbor, blessed are the meek, etc…).

Is it not heresy when slavery is established as “God’s will”; when the subordination of women is established as “God’s will”; when discrimination against queer folks is established as “God’s will”, when the taking of one people’s land by another people is established as “God’s will” (hello, manifest destiny), when the executive VP of the National Rifle Association claims that the right to buy an assault rifle is “not bestowed by man, but granted by God”? When a self-justifying message is heretically delivered in God’s name it brings with it a poison that infects the deepest parts of us and when the poison spreads, so does the violence.

When you can say that God Almighty is co-signing on your dominance over another group of God’s children, then every means is justified, right to the end. Every inch of land stolen, every suicide bombing enacted, every act of violence committed, every weapon used, every checkpoint and illegal detention, every child who dies, every tower that falls to the ground – all of it covered under some sort of bullshit spiritual umbrella policy. There are no means that need justifying if we claim God as our patron and guide.

And I imagine God is just about sick to death of it.

As I claimed in my book about sexual shame and religionwe should never be more loyal to a doctrine or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming people we re-think those teachings. Amen?


Speaking up for Palestinians often comes at a cost. Those of you who have done it know. I also know, but am frankly too tired to care right now. So, if based on my recounting of the stories of my friends and colleagues, anyone is moved to called me anti-semitic, please open up the notes app on your phone and feel free to write it there but I will delete your unfounded accusations if you leave them here.

My apologies for the edge in my writing voice. We are all exhausted and as my friend Jodi just texted me, “this month has been two years long already.”

Thank you for reading. I am genuinely sending my love. Please pray this ceasefire holds. And for those waiting on the side of a road right now to return to the rubble of their homes. And for the hostages and prisoners who were released yesterday. I cannot imagine the trauma.

More soon…

In it with you,

Nadia

Some clips of TizzyEnt. I like this guy because he is short and factual. Clarity of thought. Sort of like Beau of the fifth Column was.

They did / are doing what? Again!

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) wants to make ballot initiatives impossible.FL already requires 60% support to pass—abortion rights & legal weed failed despite 56-57% support in 2024.Last decade, voters passed amendments to end gerrymandering & restore voting rights, which DeSantis also undermined

Stephen Wolf (@stephenwolf.bsky.social) 2025-01-24T13:26:16.599Z

Several other intelligence agencies continue to favor the natural-origin theory, and there is no evidence SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, was in any laboratory before the outbreak.

The conspiracy nut jobs are in power now, who needs evidence and facts for something to be true.

So Jared can build luxury beachfront condos.

All that valuable oceanfront property. Much too nice for those dirty people. The Israeli military has already done a good job of demolition. We need to rebuild for people who will appreciate the beauty of the place and be willing to pay to maintain it. /s