LITTLE AMERICA
Beyond US military and economic support for Israel as its imperial outpost in the region, an estimated 160,000 Americans live in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are some of the most active participants in the ongoing campaign of terror against the indigenous Palestinian population.
Israeli settler terrorism as a movement also draws inspiration from two Americans infamous as the godfathers of the campaign of settler violence against ordinary Palestinians.
An American doctor from Brooklyn, Baruch Goldstein, murdered 29 Muslim worshippers (and injured 125) in a mass killing in Hebron in 1994. His grave became a site of pilgrimage for Israeli extremists. Prior to entering the Knesset, Israeli minister for national security Ben-Gvir had a portrait of Goldstein displayed in his living room.
Goldstein was a follower of another American, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right religious Kach party that was eventually banned in the US under anti-terrorism laws. He also founded the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a far-right terror organisation which both inspired and maintains links to the English Defence League (EDL), and which launched several terror attacks of its own on US soil in the 1970s.
THE GREAT AI HOAX
The Mechanical Turk was a machine built in 1770 that supposedly beat Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin at chess. It toured for 84 years before being destroyed in a fire and, although many suspected it was a scam, it was only revealed to have been a hoax as late as 1834. It seems obvious now, but it was essentially a box with a person inside. Today, we call this the AI revolution.
“AI” is one of the most hyped technologies of my lifetime, and yet its real-world results either don’t work, are inaccurate, annoying, and/or thoroughly depressing. Supposedly fully-automated super tech is frequently revealed to be thousands of low-paid workers in a trench coat.
Amazon’s online remote labour marketplace even takes the name “Mechanical Turk” for its business. Tens of thousands of remote workers filling the gaps where AI has been oversold. This has been called “ghost work”, jobs like data labelling and content moderation, often paying as little as £1.45 per hour.
Tech companies need human workers, often in the global south, to impersonate chat bots, drive automated cars and remote control delivery bots. In 2017, the app Expensify admitted using human labour, outsourced through Amazon Mechanical Turk, to transcribe receipts it said were processed using “smartscan technology”.
You can download a printable copy of the poster here.
LITTLE AMERICA
I’m fascinated by the idea of how the US/Israel relationship will be talked about historically in another 100 years or so (if there is anyone left to talk about it). You have what is for all intents and purposes, a US imperial colony in the Middle East. It serves US geopolitical and military interests in the region. They are the closest of allies. But Israel also has more spies in the US government and military than any other nation, it spends millions on interfering in US elections to push pro-Israel politicians who will back Israel no matter what the cost to their country or their party, Israel has even militarily attacked US forces in the region (USS Liberty) and murdered US citizens in Palestine without consequence.
American Evangelicals love Israel because they think all the Jews on Earth have to return to Israel so they can die in the apocalypse which will herald the return of Jesus. While Israeli Jewish supremacists believe their US Christian supporters are essentially heathen idol worshippers who are little more than pawns in God’s plan for the glory of Greater Israel. It is perhaps the most berserk international relationship in history.
No matter who won the election the genocide was going to continue, but with Trump it will be even worse, if that’s possible to imagine. Four more years of genocide, ethnic cleansing and military aggression from the Middle East’s nuclear-armed US colony. Maybe liberals might stop making excuses for this horror now that Trump will be responsible for arming and enabling the carnage, rather than Biden/Harris. A sliver of a silver lining on a pit of horror and despair.
XMAS GIFT GUIDE?
If you are in need of a festive gift or two can I direct you towards my fully-functioning website shop?
I had a couple of people ask where they could get my stuff now the Museum of Neoliberalism closed, which made me worry that I’d made too big a deal about it shutting down and some people might have thought I had gone fully into hibernation. But I’m still going and I will post out anything and everything you order from the blasted assemblage of nonsense I call my website.
XMAS CARDS
Also I should mention my bleak old collection of Xmas cards, which have been in a mainstay in my shop since I started doing this. I also have the smaller A7 Blair Xmas card, which is probably even more disturbing than a painting of Santa eating a dog. Also still got the AKIRA nativity Xmas card in stock (and as a print!).
PATREON
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If you’re able to support my work via Patreon I’ll send you a copy of this zine documenting all the work I made last year. This is the only way you can get a copy, it’s not for sale anywhere else. I’ll be making a new zine for 2024 too. |
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Thanks for reading!
