Monday, August 31, 2020

Forty Legislative Reforms Which I Think Most Minor Parties and Independents Would Support

     1. End the wars and bring the troops home: Dismantle at least 800 overseas U.S. military bases, and drastically reduce the number of countries in which at least one U.S. troop is deployed (which is currently about 160).

     2. Repeal the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, repeal any and all A.U.M.F.s (Authorizations for the Use of Military Force) against Afghanistan and Iraq, and end the national state of emergency over the Korean conflict.

     3. Repeal or amend the War Powers Act, strictly requiring congressional declaration of war before troops can be deployed to a new country.

     4. End torturous “enhanced interrogation” and extraordinary rendition (illegal torture abroad).

     5. End warrantless wiretaps, and stop spying on American civilians and our allies abroad.

     6. End entangling alliances, end all foreign aid, and exit N.A.T.O. (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

     7. Prohibit the use of drone warfare, and the deployment of drones in foreign countries, without a congressional declaration of war (and, if possible, the host nation's permission).


     8. Abolish active registration for the Selective Service (i.e., military draft).
9. Repeal the “Clinton omnibus crime bill” (a/k/a the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) in its entirety.


     10. Ensure equal protection under the law: Stop denying due process and fair trials to terror suspects and suspected undocumented immigrants. If they're not made subject to our protections, then they shouldn't be held subject to our laws.

     11. Amend the 13th Amendment to prohibit involuntary servitude in all cases of punishment for committing victimless crimes.

     12. End police brutality by taking away police officers' rights to kill during unlawful arrest and “have sex with people in their custody” (i.e., raping people).

     13. Protect children by amending child trafficking laws, and making age of consent laws more uniform.

     14. Respect the principle that the just powers of government derive from the consent of the governed, by making participation in all government programs voluntary, and by repealing taxes on all harmless productive economic activities.

     15. Require that constitutional justification for all new bills and departments, must be included within the bill.

     16. Require sunset clauses for all new legislation, strictly adhering to the Constitution's two-year limitation for all military-related expenditures.

     17. Achieve free, fair, and open elections, by improving ballot access for minor parties and independents.

     18. Annually audit, and eventually end, the Federal Reserve System, sending its powers back to Congress. Additionally, ban Fractional Reserve Banking and prosecute it under anti-usury laws.

     19. Balance budgets, achieve fiscal solvency, and produce surplus budgets A.S.A.P. to pay down the debt.

     20. Let states experiment with Universal Basic Income, the Negative Income Tax, and state public banks.

     21. Let states and communities experiment with Land Value Taxation and Community Land Trusts.

     22. De-politicize issues related to science, medicine, the environment, technology, budgets, finance, banking, the judiciary, election fairness, governmental ethics, redistricting, the arts, etc..

     23. Protect the planet and the people over profits by creating a blueprint for ecologically sustainable production.

     24. Shorten medical patents, to allow generics to come onto the market sooner, to reduce medical prices.

     25. Reduce medical prices by eliminating unnecessary taxes on health goods and services.

     26. Legalize alternative medicine and make vaccines optional.

     27. Reduce medical costs by allowing non-profit medical organizations to operate tax-free.

     28. Let non-profits operate tax-free, because they cannot be taxed without being forced to operate at a loss.

     29. Clarify Roe v. Wade: Craft a nationwide amendment on abortion which clarifies the meaning of a “reasonable state restriction to abortion access”.

     30. De-politicize the issue of abortion by ending all involuntary taxpayer funding of abortion services.

     31. Legalize growing cannabis at home; in order to 1) lower marijuana prices, 2) eliminate all excuses for federal intervention in marijuana on interstate commerce grounds, and 3) eliminate the need for state licensing and permits for growing.

     32. Take cannabis / marijuana off of Schedule I, as it is not a drug that lacks legitimate medical uses.

     33. Fight for a free, fair, and open economy by eliminating all unfair subsidies to business, and by prohibiting government from contracting with monopolies.

     34. Increase the use of the federal government's antitrust power to break up monopolies.

     35. Amend the 1935 Wagner Act (N.L.R.A.) to make it easier to form a second union in a workplace or collective bargaining unit.

     36. Restore the full right to boycott, and engage in secondary labor actions, by repealing the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.

     37. End the trade war, and re-negotiate N.A.F.T.A. so that importers and exporters are not unfairly targeted for taxation.

     38. Fix our nation's crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.), as long as areas other than the Bos-Wash corridor on the East Coast receive a fair share of transportation spending.

     39. Make the Postmaster General a cabinet-level position again, and allow the U.S. Postal Service to receive taxpayer funds.

     40. Help the poor, homeless, and refugees, by legalizing mutual aid. Remove barriers to providing humanitarian aid; by legalizing squatting and camping, lowering residency duration requirements in order to claim homesteading rights, etc.. Additionally, prohibit housing subsidies whenever and wherever the number of empty residences exceeds the number of people in need of permanent shelter.





     The set of proposals listed above were developed in connection with the policies I called for in my earlier outline of a platform for a yet-to-be-founded hypothetical Humanitarian Party. That platform can be viewed at the following link: http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/towards-free-united-populism-proposal.html








Written on August 30th and September 1st, 2020

Published on September 1st, 2020

Message to Progressives and Environmentalists in Lake County, Illinois Regarding My Campaign


     What follows are excerpts from posts which I made to the Facebook Groups “Lake County IL Environmentalists”, “Clean Air Lake County Community Support”, “Northern Illinois Progressive Candidates, Electeds, and Activists”, and “Illinois Against the TPP” on August 29th, 2020.


     Hi everyone. I'm running as a write-in candidate for U.S. Representative from Illinois's 10th district (the northeast corner of the state).
     I support peace, a fair and free economy, taxing destruction and waste instead of harmless productive activity, and balancing budgets through reducing unnecessary military expenditures not necessary to our defense.
     I also support promoting local solutions to environmental problems, to guard against the risk that the E.P.A. could continue to be put up for sale to corporate and pro-pollution interests.
     Furthermore, fixing our economy will make it easier to decrease our national debt. I also support amending the 13th Amendment to get rid of as many forms of involuntary servitude (i.e., slavery) as possible, both within the criminal justice system and outside of it.

     I want to reform taxes so that they focus on environmental issues. I will promote Land Value Taxation, one of the two revenue sourcing systems which Howie Hawkins has proposed for funding the Green New Deal. The other revenue sourcing system, the Negative Income Tax, is also a step in the right direction as far as improving income taxes goes, but I'd eventually like to eliminate all taxes on earned income (unearned income is a different issue though).
     With Land Value Taxation, local governments would be urged to increase natural resource extraction fees, and increase taxes on land degradation and blight (as well as vacant land, abandoned properties, land hoarding), while reducing taxes on income, sales, consumption, and building value).
     Additionally, I support Community Land Trusts (C.L.T.s) as well as community air trusts and community water trusts. C.L.T.s should be created, in each county in America, as voluntary associations which are non-profit and untaxed. They would be untaxed because they would be the entities doing the taxing of land; charging land occupancy fees and land degradation fees. C.L.T.s would help align each community's economic future with its future need for ecological sustainability. 
     I believe in dual federalism, triple federalism, and subsidiarism: the most local authority possible, should handle environmental issues, as long as that authority is competent enough to handle the issue. Not all environmental problems are nationwide issues; some of them are local. Furthermore, no county would willingly allow itself to be polluted. That is why we must ensure that the federal government never has the right to determine which areas may be polluted, or have nuclear materials stored, without that community's consent, and without proper compensation for the adverse health effects. Federal environmental standards can help, but having environmental standards is not SO important, that such standards should OVERRIDE local and state environmental regulations, if those regulations can be better than the nationwide standard. That is why localities must be free to set higher environmental standards than the national standard.
     For each community to have a C.L.T. (a non-profit, untaxed voluntary association which help guard against the risk of the E.P.A. continuing to be bought and sold by pro-pollution interests. I would align myself with environmental conservationists, and also the decentralists within the Green Party, but I would also promote C.L.T.s as a quasi-"private", somewhat property-rights-oriented solution to environmental problems (because they would be non-profit and untaxed, and therefore unaffiliated with the state and federal governments).

     I also support bioregionalism, the idea behind the Cascadia independence project. I believe that bioregionalism will help prevent unnecessary federal intrusion into local environmental problems, and restore local rights without allowing states to use states' rights as a justification to dismantle environmental protections.
     If I am elected to Congress, I will spread awareness of Land Value Taxation, Community Land Trusts, and bioregionalism on a national level. This will help the current generation of environmental law students, and other voters, get a free education about these little-known ideas, and start a conversation about what needs to become an important topic in American political discourse: ENVIRONMENTAL TAXATION.
     These ideas are important because they could reduce unemployment, reduce waste of land, decrease economic inequality, and reduce environmental degradation, all at the same time.

     I want to help create a free and fair economy by building a Mutualist Party, while offering new and unique alternatives to traditional neo-liberal policies like those of my opponent Brad Schneider, like re-orienting taxation to focus on environmental issues (such as the need to tax blight and land degradation).
     On trade issues, I support "alter-globalization", in which we would have 1) localized social safety nets, alongside 2) open and fair trade, not unregulated free trade, and 3) free movement of people. We would also have 4) cultural and economic globalization, but not global government; and 5 & 6) the consumer would have the right to fully boycott (and unionize) and refuse to purchase all products (repeal Taft-Hartley).
      Please consider writing-me in against Democrat Brad Schneider and Republican Valerie Ramirez-Mukherjee. Read sections 13 and 14 of my platform to learn more about my views on the environment and Land Value Taxation (which is also part of my plan to balance budgets, lower prices on goods, and increase the purchasing power of the dollar).




     See this link to learn more: http://www.facebook.com/groups/586988188625917/






Written as separate posts on August 29th, 2020

Edited together and published on August 31st, 2020

Friday, August 28, 2020

Joe Kopsick for Congress Advertisement: Investigate Maxwell and Epstein, and Pass the Safe Kids Amendment



Click on image, and/or open in new tab or window, to enlarge and see in full detail





Original image created on August 28th, 2020

Published on August 28th, 2020
Edited on August 31st, 2020

Edited and Expanded on September 11th, 2020

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Door Hanger Advertisement: Write-In Joe Kopsick for U.S. House of Representatives on November 3rd, 2020 (Versions #2, #3, & #4)










Click on images, and/or open in a new tab or window, to enlarge and see in full detail



Created on July 30th and August 26th, 2020

Published on August 26th, 2020
Edited on August 29th, 2020

Advertisement: Write-In Joe Kopsick for U.S. House of Representatives on November 3rd, 2020 (Versions #2, #3, & #4)








Click on images, and/or open in a new tab or window, to enlarge and see in full detail




Images created on July 30th and August 26th, 2020

Published on August 26th, 2020

Edited on August 29th, 2020


Friday, August 21, 2020

Most Likely Paths to Electoral College Victory for the Libertarian and Green Party Presidential Nominees in 2020


Click on image, and/or open in a new tab or window, to enlarge





Note:

Libertarians had more support in 2016 in California than they did in
Delaware, Nevada, Vermont, and West Virginia
(by percentage of the popular vote in each state).

The map above does not reflect that fact, because
it is extremely unlikely that the Libertarian Party would take California
away from the Democrats; furthermore, that would require a landslide.

It would only require a smaller plurality of Electoral College votes,
for the Libertarian Party nominee to win.
That would require winning Delaware, Nevada, Vermont, and West Virginia,
but winning California would not be necessary.

The Libertarian Party nominee could still receive the most votes in the Electoral College
if the candidate were to win California, but not the other four states mentioned above.

Source:















Click on image, and/or open in a new tab or window, to enlarge

Source:











Images created and published on August 21st, 2020

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Image Series Regarding Sexual Assault Allegations Against Presidential Candidates








Click on the link below to learn more about which candidates
have the best chances of being elected president, and why:













Images created between April 16th and August 20th, 2020

First two images originally appeared in
"Can We Please Elect a President Who Isn't a Sex Offender?: Presidential Candidates Poster",
published to this blog on April 16th, 2020.

That blog entry can be viewed at the following link:

Monday, August 17, 2020

Why I Support Autonomy, But Not Statehood, For Palestinians

Table of Contents



1. Autonomy, Not Statism

2. Democracy and Majority Rule as Potential Problems

3. Establishing Free Movement by Reviving the 1947 U.N. Plan

4. Why Communal Governance?

5. Ending Territorialism in Government

6. Conclusions








Content



1. Autonomy, Not Statism

     I don't support the creation of a Palestinian state, but I do support increased Palestinian autonomy (and, if possible, total Palestinian autonomy).
     However, the fact that I don't support statehood for the people of Palestine (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights), is nothing against the Palestinians. It's just that I believe that political statism is a bad influence on governance, and makes it more likely that efforts to help the Palestinian people will result in episodes of violence.

     A political state is traditionally defined as an entity which is capable of wielding a credible monopoly on the legitimate use of force, violence, or coercion, within a given territory, in the pursuit of its legitimate political and legal goals and aims.
     Thus, the state intrinsically legitimizes violence, because by definition, the state cannot operate unless it uses legitimized forms of violence (i.e., war, and the police use of force to enforce laws). If the state stops using force, it ceases to be a state, and becomes a non-statist, non-violent governmental entity, which operates through persuasion, argumentation, debate, and keeping a wide range of non-violent resolution possibilities open.
     Basically, I don't want to risk turning what are now considered terrorist groups, into legitimate political entities.

     It's not that entities like Hamas and Hezbollah don't perhaps deserve to be considered legitimate governments - after all, Hamas and Fatah are real political parties, and Hamas and Hezbollah do protect people physically, provide military training for them, and provide them with aid, like an army or a humanitarian army would do - I would simply rather avoid legitimizing both 1) entities currently considered "terrorist groups" by the U.S. government, as well as  2) existing political states, in any way. To do so would be to risk further legitimizing political violence.
     And, to be honest, I don't want to risk legitimizing existing political states, by associating them with entities that provide actual aid, protection, shelter, and arms training, to the people who support them.
     If you look at the definition of the state, and compare it to the definition of a terrorist group, you will see that both of them use violence in order to achieve political goals, as part of their definitions. The only difference between them is that a political state has been successful at establishing lasting and well-defined borders.
     The fact that a group has begun to enforce laws and levy taxes, and claims that everyone in a certain area must follow those laws and pay those taxes, is what makes it a "legitimate political entity", but only because the form of political organization which is currently nearly universally accepted among the peoples of the world, is the model of the territorially contiguous, exclusive and monopolistic, centralized state. But the fact that such a group is successful at intimidating people and existing governments into respecting its authority, does not itself guarantee that a state's own subjects will not be terrorized by it, nor does it guarantee that the consent of the governed will be respected (when it comes to duly delegating authorities to the government from the people). Unless threats subside, as a way for the government to enforce its aims, the intimidation that the people feel due to their government's actions, will fester, and grow into revolutionary and insurrectionary movements.
     Government cannot fulfill its intended role of a civilizing influence on people, if it is busy legitimizing violence, as a matter of its everyday duties. That is why we need government to reject monopoly, the legitimization of violence, and territorialism: the most harmful features, as well as the key defining features, of the state. And, most importantly, we need to reject statism in government, whose practitioners (statists) use violence, threats, coercion, and pressure, as their routine tools of enforcement.
     We do not need more statism in the world, but we do need more autonomous regions, and we need localities to have more control over what happens in the regions. Therefore, I support autonomy for Palestinians, Catalonians, Scots, the people of Rojava, etc., but not statism.



2. Democracy and Majority Rule as Potential Problems

     If political division turns out to be a stumbling block to the establishment of a united Palestinian state, then a possible solution could be to make each of the three Palestinian regions - the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights - into its own state, or into its own autonomous zone.
     If each Palestinian area became a state, and the State of Israel continued to exist, then this could be termed "the Four-State Solution". But if each of the three Palestinian territories, and the Jewish territories, were each autonomous, that would be a stateless solution featuring four autonomous zones.
     I believe that autonomy of regions is a better solution than a democratic state, in terms of fostering the best representation, and the most freedom, for individuals and localities.

     The fact that the Gaza and the West Bank combined are politically divided, a Palestinian state, and majority rule within that potential state, would be likely to result in the political oppression of somewhere between 60-80% of the people. Given the fact that Hamas is more popular in Gaza, and Fatah is more popular in the West Bank, it's likely that a State of Palestine could result in divided government, gridlock, or even civil war. 
     About 40% of Palestinians support Hamas, 40% support Fatah, and 20% are monarchists. That's why the establishment of a Palestinian state would be tricky. If the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, were to be united into a single Palestinian, state, then it would be difficult to pull off without oppressing at least 60% of the people.
     Think about it: If Fatah ruled, then the 40% of Palestinians who prefer Hamas and the 20% who prefer a monarchy might not feel represented. If Hamas ruled, the 60% who prefer either Fatah or a monarchy would not feel represented. If the monarchists ruled, then 80% of the people would not feel represented.
     It's possible that establishing a Palestinian state ruled by a Fatah-led majority coalition, or a Hamas-led majority coalition, could result in only "mild oppression" (by which I mean those who prefer other parties would be represented in government, but might not necessarily feel fully represented). Still, if they say they don't feel represented, then we should take them at their word, that they need better representation. Full, adequate and satisfied, and responsible representation - with as fully consensual and voluntary participation in government as possible, should be the goals.
     So should fully voluntary association and cooperation be the major goals of any and all negotiations between Hamas, Fatah, and the monarchists, and freedom of mutual aid to help people when governments cannot do so or refuse to do so.
     So should assurances that no minority group be oppressed, and that a government be created which is incapable of oppressing minority groups. Perhaps a high supermajoritarian threshold should need to be passed - like 80% or 90% - to ensure that the smallest voting bloc (the monarchists) are no more than 50% upset with whatever legislative change is occurring at any given moment.



3. Establishing Free Movement by Reviving the 1947 U.N. Plan

     Whether we pursue statism and sovereignty, and territorially contiguous and united polities (political entities) or not, in my opinion, we should turn to the original United Nations plan to divide the Holy Land, from 1947, for inspiration and guidance on resolving the Israeli-Arab Conflict.
     In that plan, the Jerusalem / Bethlehem area would have become a U.N.-protected international zone, with the remainder of the land being broken up into six sections (three of them parts of a Jewish state, shown in aquamarine; and three of them parts of an Arab state, shown in golden).







     I'd like to draw your attention to the two "four corners" points, one near Nazareth (labeled "North Four Corners" in the second image) and the other at north end of Gaza (labeled "South Four Corners").
     In each of those places, Israeli and Palestinian authorities could easily build a bridge over a tunnel, so that the two Palestinian corners connect through a tunnel, and the two Israeli corners connect through a bridge (or vice-versa).
     Free interior movement could have easily been established within the two states. Establish free interior movement in both states, and then open the borders up when it's safe enough. The Israeli/Palestinian borders could have been opened up - to allow free movement between Arab-majority and Jewish-majority areas - only when it would have become peaceful enough for both sides to consider do so in concert with each other.
      It's as easy as that! Perhaps it could have worked, if this detail about bridges and tunnels had been added to the U.N. plan. Adding a simple bridge-and-tunnel at those two locations could have changed history, and provided a new potential solution to providing freedom of travel in areas plagued by problems related to border disputes, enclaves and exclaves, and overlapping and overcomplicated jurisdictional boundaries.

     If the  United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (of 1947, U.N. Resolution 181) could have been workable for people on both sites, then why was the plan rejected by the Palestinians? Because it would have allowed Jewish sovereignty in the homeland, which to them was intolerable, in any way, shape, or form.
     But can we blame them for not being able to tolerate this? It's not as if there are no Jewish people to whom Jewish sovereignty is tolerable! In fact, there are at least 18,000 rabbis in Brooklyn, and at least 100,000 Jews worldwide (perhaps even many more) who acknowledge that YHVH (G-d) is the sovereign of the Jewish people, not the Israeli state, nor the Israeli Armed Forces!
     [Note: For more information about criticism of Jewish sovereignty from a Jewish perspective, please watch Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro's speech at the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn, New York on June 11th, 2017, for more information, at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcjO2nNz09k]
     This means that there can be a multi-faith solution that recognizes the equal and full human rights of both Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land, and doesn't involve the existence of a state of Israel. The fact that there are thousands of rabbis who reject Jewish sovereignty, means that there is no reason why rabbis and imams couldn't work together to solve this issue in a non-political context based on morality, human rights, and reaching an understanding across faiths.

     To be clear, I understand that there is already a limited form of Palestinian autonomy within the Israeli state; that is not what I am asking for. The degree of autonomy which the Palestinian Liberation Authority has, is so small that it is intolerable.
     For example, the Israelis refused to seat elected officials from the Hamas party in 2006. More Palestinian autonomy within the State of Israel might look good on paper, but it probably won't fully solve the problem, because the Palestinians would be left with something less than full sovereignty.

     The resolution to this conflict could involve a single-state Holy Land, with full autonomy for Jews in predominantly Jewish areas and communities, and full autonomy for Arabs and Muslims in predominantly Muslim communities. Such a plan, in my opinion, should involve Jewish autonomy, rather than statehood, and even then, only over areas which are designated parts of a "Jewish state" on the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan map.
     This would require the State of Israel to not only return to pre-1967 borders and give those lands to the new Palestinian authorities; it would require the State of Israel to give back additional lands (lands which are now situated near the State of Israel's boundaries with Gaza and the West Bank).

     Such a plan could also involve partial U.N. control. Perhaps the U.N. could administer Jerusalem, or the greater Jerusalem area. Perhaps the U.N. could guard only the external borders, providing the troops necessary to do so, while leaving Jews and Arabs to govern and protect Jerusalem jointly. 
     Another potential solution is that the U.N. could administer a joint capital city area, so as to allow both the Jews and the Palestinians to claim adjacent parts of Jerusalem as the capital "cities" (really, neighborhoods of Jerusalem, or multi-village groups of Jerusalem's suburbs).
     From those "capital cities", the autonomous zones or communities could be governed, as either centralized federations, or decentralized confederations, depending on what each group wants. I would recommend decentralized confederations of communities, so as to allow the maximum degree of autonomy.




4. Why Communal Governance?

     If the possibility of a United Nations -administered Jerusalem was not so far-fetched, then the idea of Jerusalem being run differently from the way other communities nearby are run, should not be considered so far-fetched. So, then, why shouldn't each community have a chance to govern itself – for the most part – autonomously?
     After all, the mode of governance which the Jewish people are supposed to be following, is that of the Sanhedrin, the courts of 23 rabbis in each community. Jerusalem's Sanhedrin is supposed to have 71 rabbis. Jewish law treats Jerusalem differently, but not because it is the “capital of the Jewish people”. The G-d of Abraham never designated Jerusalem any sort of “capital”. Instead, because it's a high-population city, and because it's considered a holy city. The point is that each community could govern itself, more or less, the way it wanted. That's libertarian communalism, a form of which is Bookchinism, the mode of governance currently being practiced in Rojava.
     Another reason why communal governance should be viewed as preferable to statism - as a solution to keeping Jews safe while they are in the Holy Land - is that political sovereignty, and such a thing as "a Jewish political entity" is not supposed to exist, until the Messiah (Mashiach) arrives. The covenant between G-d and the Jewish people was made when the people of Moses were in the desert; they had not yet arrived in the area now considered Israeli lands, and G-d's promises to the Jewish people were not conditional upon creating Jewish sovereignty, territorially contiguous government, political government, nor segregated living nor treatment favoring Jews.
     There is nothing in Judaism which requires Jews to practice segregation, or territorially contiguous government which requires all people in a given territory to submit to Jewish law. Jews can set up an eruv - a wire - to outline an area in which Jews will be free to carry items outside of their homes during Shabbat, but the eruv is only a symbolic boundary. Jewish definitions of what is public vs. what is private property, regarding eruvin, does not necessarily conform to the actual state of property ownership and territorially exclusive political entities which exist on the ground today. Furthermore, areas designated as part of the eruv do not include people's homes! So there is no reason why an Arab home or village could not exist -and even exercise full autonomy or sovereignty - right in the middle of a Jewish area.
     [Note: For more information about eruvs, see the following link: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/615-the-eruv-a-jewish-quantum-state. This article calls the eruv "An interesting alternative to the territorial exclusivity claimed by many of the world's religions - and indeed nation states."]


An image taken from the article mentioned above.

Yellow = parts of the eruv

White squares and rectangles = people's homes
(and potentially, Arab homes inside of a Jewish community)



     Given these facts, is there any reason why we cannot, or should not, have statelessness and communal autonomy, with free travel and free movement of labor and capital, in the Holy Land? Absolutely not!
     The only potential problem is communities dealing with individuals who come to them to do harm. They must be dealt with on an individual basis, because collective punishment is a war crime, and because only individual human beings make decisions. They sometimes conspire to commit the same crimes, but still, you cannot blame an entire people for the crimes of one of them. Kristallnacht got started, and the Great Synagogue of Warsaw was set ablaze, because a single Jew shot an ambassador, and all Jews were blamed.
     We must not tolerate mass punishment, mass deportation, forced deportation, internal deportation, or deportation for work purposes; neither for Jews, nor for Palestinians, nor for any other human beings. We must find a way to end borders, and territorially contiguous governance (wherein the state dominates all and individuals have neither freedoms nor rights, but may only follow orders).





5. Ending Territorialism in Government

     Still, communal and regional autonomy only protect individual rights so much. Austrian social democrat and Marxist Otto Bauer proposed "National Personal Autonomy", which would enable each individual to file a form with a civil registry of their existing nation-state, notifying them as to which nation they would like to become a part of.
     Why do we even have territorially contiguous governance, when nearly all governments are capable of transporting goods and services to their subjects even when they're abroad, and considering that no reasonable person would choose to be protected by a nation whose infrastructure is too far away from him to provide him with any real protection?
     It is not necessary for governments to preclude people from membership (i.e., citizenship) solely based on their location, if that government is capable of delivering what it needs to deliver in order to make that person a citizen in full standing.
     [Note: To learn more about territorial governance, statism, and the critiques against them and possible solutions to them, look up topics like Panarchy, National Personal Autonomy, and Functional Overlapping and Competing Jurisdictions.]




6. Conclusions

     I should mention that I recognize and admit that I, as an American, should not talk about what another country should to do restore autonomy to oppressed people living within it, unless I also talk about similar problems in my own country. A country damages its own credibility in diplomatic negotiations, if it is guilty of the same crimes and human rights violations which it is trying to get other parties to those negotiations to take seriously.
     The United States of America, just as well as the State of Israel does to the Palestinians, needs to provide reparations to the Native Americans, and give them as much autonomy over their own affairs as possible. Additionally, the U.S. should decentralize, and afford more autonomy to communities, in the same manner which I have recommended that the political entities in the Holy Land decentralize. 
     I believe that decentralizing powers to the regions will not only help protect the rights of racial and ethnic minorities, but also that it will accelerate the process of delivering greater autonomy to under-served communities (which are not well connected to well-developed cities that have already-built infrastructures which are capable of sustaining and rapidly improving the local economies of such small towns which are in need).

     When considering possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the wider Israeli-Arab conflict, we should not resign ourselves to believing that this is a millennia-old dispute that can never be solved.
     Political solutions can help solve this problem, if and only if "political solutions" ceases to mean "violent solutions". We need non-violent conflict resolution, and we need to let as many people as possible run their own lives, if we want these conflicts to end, without relying on too much supervision from the international community.
     But again, political solutions are not the only solutions which should be tried. There is still a chance for multi-faith negotiations to work, as long as parties to the negotiations focus on achieving mutual respect of holy places and burial sites, and keeping most of Jerusalem accessible to people of all faiths (except for those parts of Jerusalem and the Holy City which all parties involved will agree should be occasionally off-limits to certain groups of people on the basis of faith, in the interest of preventing riots and showing respect to pilgrims).

     What solution would you propose, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amicably, and to address the problem of the legitimacy of political violence?







Originally Written on July 19th, 2020
Edited, Expanded, and Published between August 17th and 19th, 2020

The title of the article has been changed several times.