Hopefully we get to the trials of G’cide enablers in our lifetime. Their names should be on everyone’s lips of how low and corrupt they are -absolutely no moral compass.
The West has some good ideas. The problem is how jealously they guard them, natural law and human rights for example. The French take pride in their revolution, but they didn’t want Vietnamese studying in Paris to go home and start their own. If you’ve seen Indochine, it’s clear who Tanh represents. Regarding Gorman and Ghassan, I stopped listening to them around the same time I stopped listening to Al Jazeera.
It's easy to hate the soldiers, they’re the face of imperialism, remember though they’re just enforcers. People like Gorman and Ghassan are among the exploiters, like the rubber plantation owner in Indochine; pardon, I just re-watched the film, so I’m seeing connections.
Lastly, this kind of piece is what literature is for. Before Al-Aqsa Flood, I’d been working on a period piece in ancient Palestine and the Levant, one that the described the Roman occupation. My project also served as a dialogue between Greek Philosophy, Buddhism, and the Judaic cults, including Christianity and Samaritanism. Although I think I was headed in the right direction, I’ve had to practically start over. The philosophy was sound but not the politics. I have some sincere, very strong critiques of Judaism--theological and philosophical--but I was worried even then about being slandered as antisemitic. I can see Prof. Podur being slandered for writing this before Oct. 7th, and if Siegebreakers had been just a little more prophetic about the genocide.
Well, I don’t give an F who thinks I’m anti-semitic now. If your cause is just, be assertive as possible and we might see a trial like this in our lifetimes. I mean it’s difficult enough to defeat the empire militarily, but the information war seems just a difficult, in it’s own way. Thanks for sharing this Justin and andreas 5 for even another version.
This gave me a needed moment of peace. I'm struggling with the depth and breadth of the participation in this genocide. I keenly want to see these morally bankrupt cowards held to account.
I have to commend Justin on his ability to imagine a world where our sense of what is happening is not entirely a social and media construct. A world in which consistency matters to the "many social media influencers, NGO actors, politicians, and media spokespeople" who are proud of being unmoored and hence free to better follow the trends that they claim to set.
Historically, such a tribunal is only ever done to the losing side of a war, here a future revolution. I do believe such a (pre-)trial would go rather differently, though, at least for the Gormans of the world. A few paragraphs in I realized with horror ;-) that Justin has made me write alternate universe fanfic to his speculative future history:
Sushil: "First of all, Mr. Gorman, I have to ask: do you condemn the genocide?"
Gorman: "Your honor, why, yes, of course I condemn genocide. If now this is what has transpired that it now is - was then - why, then it has to be condemned, surely."
Sushil: "Please do not call me "your honor". You may call me "Mr Sushil" or simply "moderator". But this was the opposite of your position at the time, is this correct?"
Gorman: "Your... ehm, Mr Moderator, as best as I can recall, nobody at the time, really no-one, used any of those terms. In our defense, we did talk about dis-proportionality, it is less loaded, you are on the safe side with dispro... portionality, you have to understand, it was a different time. It was not an important issue, except to [stops himself], well, what you - we - now regard as the, ehm, perpetrators [laughs nervously].
Sushil: "But you did have guests on your show who called out the genocide. They made reference to ICJ verdicts, the Amnesty international reports, real-time video evidence, the Johannesburg declarations?"
Gorman: "Well, your honor, you called them "guests", but that is not really what they were... Not at the time, see. You are of course now welcome as guests on my show [laughs]... but if I can recall any of them at all [looks nervously at the juror bench], they were booked as detractors. Just between you and me - I never really listen to the detractors. For that matter I hardly listen to my actual guests, haha [laughs nervously].
Not listening riles people up, makes for good ratings - a bit like being in front of a tribunal, eh? [catches himself] Your honor, no disrespect. [pauses]
[continues] Hindsight is 20/20, I was never really invested or had much of an opinion on the topic, myself, see? Too bloody, bloody complex... And we covered so many topics... I dimly remember we got only medium ratings but half-decent ad metrics, so a management decision was made to run with it. Again, this is all, what, now five years ago, before the breakdown, before the revolution even, so much has changed.
How was anyone supposed to know y'all would become... important later on, in the future? [looks out at jury who make a point to listen to him intently which disorients him further]
I mean, I remember when I first had the MAGA people on, I did not take them seriously, either, before they [stops himself]... so hard to keep track... ah, those were the days... I'm sorry, what was the question again? [seems bewildered]
Sushil: "In your program you repeated lies about October 7th, for which there was no evidence, even implying that you had yourself seen videos of rapes or beheadings, allegations for which no evidence existed. Do you admit that you were lying?"
Gorman: "I don't think I was lying, to the best of my knowledge. Of course we were ill-informed, there may have been bias, as we know now... hindsight, a bit like the WMD Ira... - was it Iran? - situation, amirite? October 7th... the music festival that got bombed? No, hostage situation, I do remember, I am good at my job [laughs].
Sushil: "About your specific and repeated claims you saw videos of rapes or beheadings, for which there is no evidence..."
Gorman: "Horrible stuff [stops himself], I mean, that is a normal human response to tragedy. Actually I make it a point to never look at any videos... no, I play hard ball on TV but the war porn always made me queasy, I never look at anything.
Let me tell you, images drive ratings like nothing else but I never really trusted images even well before we could just have computers generate them... if you know how the sausage is made you become a vegetarian [laughs. Seems flustered that nobody laughs with him].
[lowers voice] But when you're in the business so long you get the gist of a story by the vibes, see... how a story feels. [keeps going] If it bleeds, it leads. How could one defend a ter... [stops himself] that attack on that music festival, how would that have made me look? Ahm, I mean, how were we supposed to know that tragedy would later turn out to have been abused politically to justify... what happened later on."
Sushil: "In 2024 alone, during the first peak of the genocide, the transcripts of your show list 93 mentions of October 7th, of which 33 got more than 3 minutes of airtime, including 7 features of 15 minutes or more all misrepresenting the events with little to no evidence..."
Gorman: "Look, your honor - moderator, back then it was a - management decision - to always begin the story about the Middle East [stops nervously] I mean about West Asia, on October 7th, that is just professional framing, everyone did that, so yes, we did it too, I suppose [coughs]... you are right [sweats nervously]. But that only served as a hook, stage setting, I don't think it ever occurred to me to actually research... I mean so much to do, the business moves fast. We had people on for this kind of stuff, terr... [stops himself] military experts... [voice falls off]
of course, knowing what we know now [looks at the jury box], it may have been unfortunate to have booked some of those people."
I’m sure Morg… I mean Gorman, will live out his final years in an open-air prison camp on South Georgia Island, where he will need to grow all his own food and collect rainwater to survive. Sadly, he will only be provided with a few turnip seeds and a single bucket. Maybe the other (ostensible?) Englishman with a dodgy Welsh name (Evan Davies? Iwan Williams? Those Welsh names all sound the same to me) could be sentenced to share an open-air cage with Mo… I mean Gorman, you know, just for laughs?
An interesting thought experiment. The sentencing of Ghassan (MH) reminds me a little of The Last Emperor ending up as a normal citizen anonymously sweeping the streets.
Hopefully we get to the trials of G’cide enablers in our lifetime. Their names should be on everyone’s lips of how low and corrupt they are -absolutely no moral compass.
The West has some good ideas. The problem is how jealously they guard them, natural law and human rights for example. The French take pride in their revolution, but they didn’t want Vietnamese studying in Paris to go home and start their own. If you’ve seen Indochine, it’s clear who Tanh represents. Regarding Gorman and Ghassan, I stopped listening to them around the same time I stopped listening to Al Jazeera.
It's easy to hate the soldiers, they’re the face of imperialism, remember though they’re just enforcers. People like Gorman and Ghassan are among the exploiters, like the rubber plantation owner in Indochine; pardon, I just re-watched the film, so I’m seeing connections.
Lastly, this kind of piece is what literature is for. Before Al-Aqsa Flood, I’d been working on a period piece in ancient Palestine and the Levant, one that the described the Roman occupation. My project also served as a dialogue between Greek Philosophy, Buddhism, and the Judaic cults, including Christianity and Samaritanism. Although I think I was headed in the right direction, I’ve had to practically start over. The philosophy was sound but not the politics. I have some sincere, very strong critiques of Judaism--theological and philosophical--but I was worried even then about being slandered as antisemitic. I can see Prof. Podur being slandered for writing this before Oct. 7th, and if Siegebreakers had been just a little more prophetic about the genocide.
Well, I don’t give an F who thinks I’m anti-semitic now. If your cause is just, be assertive as possible and we might see a trial like this in our lifetimes. I mean it’s difficult enough to defeat the empire militarily, but the information war seems just a difficult, in it’s own way. Thanks for sharing this Justin and andreas 5 for even another version.
Thanks so much, Justin.
Even if there is "no end in sight", we must envision a future when justice will prevail.
This gave me a needed moment of peace. I'm struggling with the depth and breadth of the participation in this genocide. I keenly want to see these morally bankrupt cowards held to account.
I love the "Do you condemn israel?" game.
Gorman and Ghassan seem oddly familiar. I think I may spend the rest of my life figuring out who they could be ;)
Thanks for posting this.
I have to commend Justin on his ability to imagine a world where our sense of what is happening is not entirely a social and media construct. A world in which consistency matters to the "many social media influencers, NGO actors, politicians, and media spokespeople" who are proud of being unmoored and hence free to better follow the trends that they claim to set.
Historically, such a tribunal is only ever done to the losing side of a war, here a future revolution. I do believe such a (pre-)trial would go rather differently, though, at least for the Gormans of the world. A few paragraphs in I realized with horror ;-) that Justin has made me write alternate universe fanfic to his speculative future history:
Sushil: "First of all, Mr. Gorman, I have to ask: do you condemn the genocide?"
Gorman: "Your honor, why, yes, of course I condemn genocide. If now this is what has transpired that it now is - was then - why, then it has to be condemned, surely."
Sushil: "Please do not call me "your honor". You may call me "Mr Sushil" or simply "moderator". But this was the opposite of your position at the time, is this correct?"
Gorman: "Your... ehm, Mr Moderator, as best as I can recall, nobody at the time, really no-one, used any of those terms. In our defense, we did talk about dis-proportionality, it is less loaded, you are on the safe side with dispro... portionality, you have to understand, it was a different time. It was not an important issue, except to [stops himself], well, what you - we - now regard as the, ehm, perpetrators [laughs nervously].
Sushil: "But you did have guests on your show who called out the genocide. They made reference to ICJ verdicts, the Amnesty international reports, real-time video evidence, the Johannesburg declarations?"
Gorman: "Well, your honor, you called them "guests", but that is not really what they were... Not at the time, see. You are of course now welcome as guests on my show [laughs]... but if I can recall any of them at all [looks nervously at the juror bench], they were booked as detractors. Just between you and me - I never really listen to the detractors. For that matter I hardly listen to my actual guests, haha [laughs nervously].
Not listening riles people up, makes for good ratings - a bit like being in front of a tribunal, eh? [catches himself] Your honor, no disrespect. [pauses]
[continues] Hindsight is 20/20, I was never really invested or had much of an opinion on the topic, myself, see? Too bloody, bloody complex... And we covered so many topics... I dimly remember we got only medium ratings but half-decent ad metrics, so a management decision was made to run with it. Again, this is all, what, now five years ago, before the breakdown, before the revolution even, so much has changed.
How was anyone supposed to know y'all would become... important later on, in the future? [looks out at jury who make a point to listen to him intently which disorients him further]
I mean, I remember when I first had the MAGA people on, I did not take them seriously, either, before they [stops himself]... so hard to keep track... ah, those were the days... I'm sorry, what was the question again? [seems bewildered]
Sushil: "In your program you repeated lies about October 7th, for which there was no evidence, even implying that you had yourself seen videos of rapes or beheadings, allegations for which no evidence existed. Do you admit that you were lying?"
Gorman: "I don't think I was lying, to the best of my knowledge. Of course we were ill-informed, there may have been bias, as we know now... hindsight, a bit like the WMD Ira... - was it Iran? - situation, amirite? October 7th... the music festival that got bombed? No, hostage situation, I do remember, I am good at my job [laughs].
Sushil: "About your specific and repeated claims you saw videos of rapes or beheadings, for which there is no evidence..."
Gorman: "Horrible stuff [stops himself], I mean, that is a normal human response to tragedy. Actually I make it a point to never look at any videos... no, I play hard ball on TV but the war porn always made me queasy, I never look at anything.
Let me tell you, images drive ratings like nothing else but I never really trusted images even well before we could just have computers generate them... if you know how the sausage is made you become a vegetarian [laughs. Seems flustered that nobody laughs with him].
[lowers voice] But when you're in the business so long you get the gist of a story by the vibes, see... how a story feels. [keeps going] If it bleeds, it leads. How could one defend a ter... [stops himself] that attack on that music festival, how would that have made me look? Ahm, I mean, how were we supposed to know that tragedy would later turn out to have been abused politically to justify... what happened later on."
Sushil: "In 2024 alone, during the first peak of the genocide, the transcripts of your show list 93 mentions of October 7th, of which 33 got more than 3 minutes of airtime, including 7 features of 15 minutes or more all misrepresenting the events with little to no evidence..."
Gorman: "Look, your honor - moderator, back then it was a - management decision - to always begin the story about the Middle East [stops nervously] I mean about West Asia, on October 7th, that is just professional framing, everyone did that, so yes, we did it too, I suppose [coughs]... you are right [sweats nervously]. But that only served as a hook, stage setting, I don't think it ever occurred to me to actually research... I mean so much to do, the business moves fast. We had people on for this kind of stuff, terr... [stops himself] military experts... [voice falls off]
of course, knowing what we know now [looks at the jury box], it may have been unfortunate to have booked some of those people."
that is the sincerest form of flattery!
I’m sure Morg… I mean Gorman, will live out his final years in an open-air prison camp on South Georgia Island, where he will need to grow all his own food and collect rainwater to survive. Sadly, he will only be provided with a few turnip seeds and a single bucket. Maybe the other (ostensible?) Englishman with a dodgy Welsh name (Evan Davies? Iwan Williams? Those Welsh names all sound the same to me) could be sentenced to share an open-air cage with Mo… I mean Gorman, you know, just for laughs?
Und es werden kommen hundert gen Mittag an Land
Und werden in den Schatten treten
Und fangen einen jeglichen aus jeglicher Tür
Und legen ihn in Ketten und bringen vor mir
Und fragen: Welchen sollen wir töten?
Und an diesem Mittag wird es still sein am Hafen
Wenn man fragt, wer wohl sterben muss.
Und dann werden Sie mich sagen hören: Alle!
Und wenn dann der Kopf fällt, sag ich: Hoppla!
Und das Schiff mit acht Segeln
Und mit fünfzig Kanonen
Wird entschwinden mit mir.
All our dreams of restorative justice are exaggerated. And yet we dream them.
An interesting thought experiment. The sentencing of Ghassan (MH) reminds me a little of The Last Emperor ending up as a normal citizen anonymously sweeping the streets.