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I can predict once the Russia-Ukraine peace deal is done, Trump will go after Venezuela hard with sanctions and try take out Maduro. If everything fails, a false flag and direct bombing-invasion will happen. Why will the US do it? The answer is below for you. Gn.

Anyone who believes the government cares about climate change is literally a fucking retard. The gov drops thousands of bombs a day blowing things to pieces all over the world with zero concern for the atmosphere… but you drive a Prius? Idiot.

AI Labour will replace Human Labour. THIS WILL HAPPEN. Any donkey can see this coming. Labour in its rawest form creates value. Real value. If AI Labour is owned by a centralised entity, all value capture of labour will be centralised and that’s the fall of society. The reason why Neuralink was started was to allow humanity a chance in such a scenario. Society is already falling apart from simple centralisation. Twitter before Elon. Facebook. Google. AI magnifies the issue. An optimistic future is decentralisation and power to the people.

This may seem like a trivial example but it allows an important concept to be explained simply. When anyone can write whatever they want (free speech), a sense-making layer is so useful because it can sort out the facts quickly and simply (Community Notes). This allows free speech to flourish while minimizing dis/mis-information. At scale, this is probably *the* feature that stops government censorship and keeps the responsibility for content moderation in the hands of the crowd vs in the hands of a closed room of bureaucrats. Europe’s DSA vs Community Notes will be an important proof point in this vein.

After 9/11 we wasted $6TN+ & sacrificed thousands of American lives fighting wars with ill-defined objectives in Iraq & Afghanistan. Now we’re at risk of making the sequel: a ground invasion into Gaza with no clear plan is a recipe for a prolonged no-win war that will be bad for Israel & bad for the U.S. If the U.S. is going to fund this war now or backstop it later, it’s vital we understand the objectives & likelihood of success *now*. Here’s what’s about to play out: 1.Israel mounts a ground invasion of Gaza imminently. 2.Hezbollah strikes Israel from the North, making good on its threat for Israel crossing the red line of invading Gaza. 3.Once Israel is in a two-front war, the U.S. is effectively forced to engage militarily. 4.Iran-backed militias in Iraq & Yemen attack U.S. targets in the Middle East, making good on their threats if the U.S. engages in Israel. 5.Civilian casualties in Gaza cause other countries to turn their backs on Israel, while radicalized Palestinians back Hamas 2.0 to fill the leadership vacuum in Gaza.

The Harvard student groups who co-signed the anti-Israel letter are simple fools. But it’s not productive for companies to blacklist kids for being members of student groups that make dumb political statements on campus. Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas. I’ve been as vocal as anyone in criticizing left-wing cancel culture (see my first book “Woke, Inc.”), but it’s bad no matter who practices it. It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive “DEI” pledges. And it’s not great now if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel. This isn’t a legal point, it’s a cultural point. I say this as someone who vehemently disagrees with those Harvard student groups. Those calling for blacklisting students right now are responding from a place of understandable hurt, but I’m confident that in the fullness of time, they will agree with me on the wisdom of avoiding these cancel-culture tactics.

This is 2nd Lt. Adar Ben Simon, 20 an IDF search and rescue officer. On Saturday she was leading a goup of bootcamp recruits when she texted her sister: "9 terrorists coming at us. I'm with bullets in the chamber" She hid her recruits and along with fellow commanders engaged the terrorists. She was killed in the gun battle - most of her recruits survived.

Anti-Zionist Jews from Jerusalem marched in Sheikh Jarrah with Palestinian flags. We, as Jews, have lived here in peace with Muslims for centuries. We are Jews who are against Zionism and Israel. We are not Zionists, we are just Jews. #FreePalastine

Either you’re pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas. You can’t be both. Some things to note about this current conflict: (thread)

@Ike_Saul Best response ive read 👍👍

People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine. I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can. Let me start with this: It could have been me. That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured. I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it. It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me. In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948. That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel. The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now. Are Israelis and British people "colonizers" because of this 20th century history? Sure. But that view flattens thousands of years of history and conflict, and the context of World War I and World War II. I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it. You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up. American partisans have a narrow view of this history, and an Americentric lens that is infuriating to witness. As Lee Fang perfectly put it, "Hamas would absolutely execute the ACAB lefties cheering on horrific violence against Israelis if they lived in Gaza & U.S. right-wingers blindly cheering on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians would rebel twice as violently if Americans were subjected to similar occupation." And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza. Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this. I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context: You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace. You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising. And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle: 1) Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too. Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank. 2) Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own. There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this. So, why did this happen now? I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it. Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do). Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance. Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence. Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea. I'm pro-not-killing-civilians. I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons. I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head. I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes. I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages. I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process. I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore. Whatever this is, I want none of it.

@richimedhurst The Israeli leaders were the ones restricting Gaza. The Israelis that were partying and killed were innocent civilians.

"Hamas attacked a rave" is such an indictment of Israel. How can Israelis party outside after shoving 2.1 million Palestinians inside a ghetto, controlling their food, electricity, water, movement, and sea access? They're supposed to be grateful to Israel for that? What a joke!

It's not about hypocrisy. The point of highlighting the contradiction in supporting both Ukraine and Israel is to show that western imperialists do not actually stand for what they claim to stand for, and that their entire framing of where they stand in these conflicts is a lie. Supporting one group that's fighting a hostile occupation and opposing another that's doing the same would only be hypocritical if your support really was based on opposing occupiers and supporting people's right to self-determination. Supporting one group that's full of neo-Nazis who hate Jews while supporting another in the name of supporting Jewish people would only be hypocritical if your support actually had anything to do with protecting marginalized groups. In reality the empire just supports who it supports because that's where its interests happen to be advanced in each instance. Having Ukraine as a proxy advances US strategic interests against Russia and having Israel as a proxy advances US strategic interests against Iran and Syria. They're not hypocritical at all; they're perfectly consistent. They're grabbing power and control in whatever way's most convenient, in perfect alignment with their actual values. To be a hypocrite is no great evil in and of itself; we're all a bit hypocritical in some ways. What absolutely IS a great evil is inflicting violence and destruction throughout the world in order to pursue planetary hegemony while lying about your reasons for doing so. THAT'S why we highlight the contradictions. Not to show that the empire and its supporters are hypocrites, but to show the far greater evils hidden behind those contradictions.

A few notes on the Israel-Palestine conflict: 1) After the 2006 war against Hezbollah, the IDF learned the lesson to never underestimate that group again. Many Israeli military analysts and officials still use the word “defeat” when talking about this conflict. I traveled to Israel 15-20 times from 2009-19 to work w/IDF personnel on air defense matters, and I found their focus to be almost exclusively on Hezbollah as the primary threat. Everyone I spoke to took it as a given that there would be another war with Hez, and that it would be a fight to the finish this time. 2) However, I found that they generally underestimated Hamas. While Hez was considered a strategic military threat, Hamas was seen as a group that could carry out appalling acts of violence against soft targets, but little more. They had good reason to think that, since Hamas had never demonstrated significant capability to plan, coordinate, or work under fire. In 2014, the IDF paid a price for this. After three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered, Israel made a ground incursion into Gaza. But Hamas was well-prepared. They had learned and adopted tactics Hezbollah employed in 2006 - especially getting up close to mitigate Israel’s air and artillery advantages. Hamas launched infiltration attacks via tunnel and small boat, and had even prepared the paragliders we’ve seen in recent days (though they didn’t use them). IDF ground forces rolled in expecting Hamas to scatter as they always did, but Hamas was ready to fight. Six “brigades” of 2,500-3,500 fighters each were deployed along the front with Israel, each with its own mix of infantry, anti-armor, mortar, and rocket forces. A complex and robust network of tunnels had been built that allowed Hamas fighters to pop up in ambush, and escape when things got too heavy. Tunnels were booby trapped, and networks of IEDs awaited the Israelis at every turn. They used snipers and mortars in support of their ground forces w/an efficiency they’d never demonstrated before. As a result, the IDF took real casualties, and the ground assault was stalled before it made significant inroads. 3) In both the 2006 & 2014 wars, the Israelis responded to difficulties on the ground by pulling back and bombarding the fuck out of a wide area with air and artillery strikes. The devastation in southern Lebanon and Gaza was so severe and photogenic that world opinion began to turn against Israel. In 2014, some 2,000-2,500 were killed, and 10,000+ wounded, by the Israeli assault on Gaza, 60-70% of them civilians, and whole areas of the city were leveled. In other words, Israel gave Hamas *exactly* what it was hoping for. I have to imagine Hamas is hoping for a similar outcome here. They are likely well-prepared for a ground assault, though it’s up in the air whether they’re prepared for the scale of forces israel will bring to bear this time. In any case, it will be difficult for Israel to accomplish anything that will feel like a sufficient response to these atrocities without suffering further propaganda losses internationally (something we might blithely dismiss, but which a state like Israel cannot afford to do). 4) In 2014, Hamas bragged that it had AA heavy machine guns and various types of MANPADS. They never used them, so we’re not sure if they really have AA capability, but if they do, and can places any constraints on Israel’s ability to operate in the air, this operation will be significantly complicated. 5) It’s not muh Zionist propaganda that Hamas puts weapons, fighters, and admin centers in critical civilian areas, including schools, mosques, and hospitals. They do do that, and it creates conditions that guarantee any Israeli assault will kill a lot of civilians. If you think that is propaganda, you don’t understand the jihadist mentality. They write about it in their own documents, the goal to provoke overwhelming reactions that kill Arab civilians. (More later)

Left: Countries that have sent lethal aid to Ukraine. Right: Countries that recognize the State of Palestine.

K. I’ve kept an eye on this Israel situation for the past few days. Here’s what I’ve learned, & here are my blunt & honest thoughts: 1. Israel chose to ignore intelligence from Egyptian officials about a major attack coming from Hamas. 2. Multiple former IDF soldiers & Israeli intelligence personnel have come forward online and said there’s a zero percent chance Israel was unaware of this attack beforehand or couldn’t have prevented it. 3. We just watched unsophisticated terrorists on hang gliders soar into one of the most heavily-defended & surveilled countries on the planet. 4. Within 48 hours of the attack, we’re now suddenly seeing enormous support for an American war with Iran and the genocide of the Palestinian people. I’m witnessing American pastors and formerly level-headed influencers in our world completely lose their minds and call for genocide. It’s unsurprising, but insane to watch. If the events of the past three years have taught me anything, it’s that when people get whipped into an emotional frenzy, critical thinking completely goes out the window. People become highly suggestible and will rush to extremely dangerous conclusions without thinking about the consequences. I think this is what we’re all witnessing with this situation in Israel. I’m reminded of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. In both scenarios, the American government received intelligence in advance of the attacks, but chose not to prevent the attacks. Why? The American government was willing to sacrifice the lives of American citizens in order to advance its geopolitical goals. Pearl Harbor gave the justification to enter WWII. 9/11 gave justification to invade the Middle East & drastically expand the American military industrial complex & our surveillance apparatus. They were brutal & extremely traumatic events for the American public to witness. The emotional trauma caused people to get whipped into an emotional frenzy. America wanted ONE THING in response to these attacks: The blood of our enemies. I see the same psyop playing out now. People are whipped into a frenzied bloodlust. In their frenzied bloodlust, people are overlooking some SERIOUSLY important facts here, notably: 1. The fact that none of this adds up, 2. innocent civilians are being threatened with genocide, and 3. Escalated violence in the Middle East and a war with Iran both risk ***the rest of the planet getting dragged into WWIII.*** What happened in Israel this weekend was obviously gut-wrenching and awful to witness, but I do not trust Israel’s so-called “intelligence failure”, nor do I trust the snakes in Washington calling for war with Iran, & I sure as hell no longer trust any of the emotionally-frenzied influencers calling for explicit genocide of innocent civilians. This was a defining moment in history, similar to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, COVID, the beginning of the Ukraine war, etc, and a lot of people just got played. Hard. People responded by going full mask-off, exposing themselves as reckless & incapable of exercising sound judgment in moments of chaos and heightened emotion. And we’re now at the brink of WWIII because of it. This is all worth noting. There’s a high likelihood there will be more chaos throughout the rest of this decade. There will be more psychological operations. There will be more moments in time in which cooler heads ought to prevail, but people will get whipped into an emotional frenzy instead. Keep your wits about you, & be cautious in whom you allow yourself to be influenced by. Recognize that governments & intelligence agencies spend enormous resources waging psychological operations on social media nonstop when stuff like this goes down. Remember that when chaos is at its peak, history shows there is ALMOST ALWAYS a hidden agenda being played out, & that hidden agenda is ALWAYS designed to prey on our base emotions to facilitate a desired end-result. Pray for world peace tonight. Thanks. 🤙

Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel is an atrocity that has justifiably been compared to 9-11. By deliberately targeting and rounding up civilians for rape, kidnapping and murder, including at a music festival (where there is no conceivable military target), Hamas has put itself in the Al Qaeda category. Israel is within its rights to dismantle and destroy the organization. That said, one of the purposes of a terrorist outrage is to provoke an escalatory response that ultimately backfires. After 9-11, the U.S. plunged into two decades of wars in the Middle East that cost untold blood and treasure, unleashed staggering murder and mayhem, changed the geopolitical map in unfavorable ways for the U.S., and squandered the sympathy of the world. Bin Laden must be smiling in Hell. Now many of the same U.S. figures who miscalculated so badly after 9-11 are screeching for Israel to “finish them” or braying for a larger war with Iran. This is exactly the wrong advice. Our leaders should be encouraging a cool-headed response that finds the right balance between achieving a just and legitimate military objective, minimizing civilian casualties, and avoiding the risk of a wider war. Let us hope and pray that the Israeli government finds that balance.

Israel has completely cut off the water supply to Gaza. 2 million civilians, including one million children, are now without water in Gaza. Yet another war crime. Where is the International Criminal Court? Just imagine the global outrage if this were happening in Ukraine.

Reminder When the US rampaged through the Middle East killing more than a million people nobody cared When Obama was drone striking weddings nobody cared When Albright said killing 500,000 Iraqi children was worth it nobody cared When Hillary laughed at destroying Libya and killing their President nobody cared We are currently starving countless children with sanctions and nobody cares We didn't call our country a terrorist nation, didn't demand our leaders be charged with war crimes, and to this day still honor and respect them