ali the rat is dead

The ProPal crowd is insinuating themselves hard into leftist politics in the US and here in Austin, TX in general. For example, they are behind most of the ICE protests here in Austin, TX. Tomorrow, Sunday 2/28, they are meeting to organize? Rally? to protest the US and Israel attacking Iran. There has to be a way to confront this. They are meeting in the #1 Tech Incubator in Austin, which blows my mind. The groups are clearly aligned with Hamas. Hamas gets funding and military training from Iran. Also, it's my belief, but I don't have proof, they are funded by Qatar as well. As I've posted elsewhere, I have direct experience of them threatening physical harm; being anti-democratic; and I believe ultimately a danger to Jeffersonian Democracy. I need ideas on how to organize and fight this. Have any?

I am a member of the LGBT community. I grew up in an openly gay household in the 1980s. I volunteered in the AIDS vaccine trials from 1998–2002. I am bisexual. I am also a United States Army veteran and a public policy analyst. I do not define myself by any single one of those facts — but none of them are negotiable parts of who I am. Because of that lived experience, I want to be clear about why I hold the positions I do. My issue is not with equal protection under the law. I have consistently supported equal treatment. What I object to — and what I have directly witnessed and experienced — is the political co-opting of the challenges facing LGBT people as a means of redefining us around a warped and reductionist version of our sexuality. Identity politics, as it is practiced by the hard left, collapses a whole human being into one characteristic and then weaponizes that characteristic against political opponents. It redefines us not as full individuals — veterans, parents, professionals, people of faith, people of none, conservatives, liberals, independents — but as a voting bloc and a tactical instrument. I have personally experienced the consequences of rejecting that framework. I have been harassed, ostracized, and labeled for disagreeing with the prevailing narrative. I have watched members of my own community be treated as traitors simply for holding center-right or religious liberty positions. That is not inclusion. That is ideological enforcement. There is also a cost to this weaponization that the hard left rarely acknowledges. When LGBT identity is used as a political cudgel, it deepens polarization and social mistrust. It reinforces the perception that we are not citizens seeking equal protection, but activists seeking to compel cultural submission. That perception harms the very people it claims to protect. Equally troubling is the lefts selective application of "moral outrage". We see the radical lefts relentless activism domestically against religious bakers, small businesses, or cultural conservatives. Yet there is near silence from many of these same radical leftists regarding the execution, imprisonment, and brutalization of LGBT individuals by Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations and by regimes such as the Iranian mullah regime that governs Iran. In direct contradiction to the false narrative pushed by the radical left criticizing those Islamic terrorist and their rogue regime patrons' is not the same as "condemning all Muslims."

TLDR; The Pro-Palestine movement in Austin, TX is the most politically active in the state. Dramatically so. They are used a City Commission to open the discussion they wanted to have at City Hall. Who needs to know this? Who can use the open source software that allowed us to see this? I thought y'all may be interested in what I've created. Austin, TX does not make the news like NYC, LA, Toronto, or London when it comes to events in the Middle East. However, there's a lot going on under the radar because it's the state Capital and it can get pretty unseemly. I was shocked at the anger, hate, and lies spewed by the Pro-Palestinian crowd at a Austin City Council meeting I attended last year, so I wanted to analyze what they said. Austin, We Have a Problem. I created an open source software utility called Open Meeting Speaker Analyzer (find it on github), that uses what I call Private AI to download, transcribe, and then report on the sentiment of the Public Comments section of Austin City Council Meetings. Here's what I learned by looking at speakers who addressed Austin City Council from October 2023 to January 2026 concerning a proposed resolution calling for a cease fire in Gaza that came from the Austin Human Rights Commission: 180 On Topic Speakers 73% Pro Palestine 26% Pro Isreal 1% Neutral 23% Of all speakers addressing Austin City Council spoke on Gaza. Of all those speakers, there was only ONE Pro Palestinian speaker that acknowledge hostages and he was a Jewish. Many of the Pro-Israel speakers acknowledged the tragedy that has befallen the Palestinians. Let that sink in. The Pro-Palestinian movement is the embodiment of the Khartoum Resolution that the Arab League passed in 1967: No Peace, No Negotiation, No Recognition (of Israel), except they apply this to humans. They will not talk to anyone who disagrees with them. They'll yell at them, call them baby killers, and threaten. But they won't engage. The reason people could speak about Gaza at City Council Meetings because there was a resolution that City Council refused to hear. The resolution came out of the the Austin Human Rights Commission. The speakers at the AHRC meeting that brought the ceasefire resolution broke down like this:

Been thinking about all the ways to argue against the "Jews are colonizers" propaganda and I've been thinking about how to refine a common counter argument. It goes like this: colonizers come from another land, have allegiance to that land, and send back resources, so the real colonizers are the Arabs, not the Jews." While true, there's a weakness in the argument that I'd like to hear y'all's opinion on how to shore up. The weakness I think comes from the distinction between being a "conqueror" and a "colonizer". In my reading of history, I don't think the Arabs actually sent resources back to Mecca/Medina. Caliphates were established in all the territories they conquered and the resources went to those local/regional caliphs. Perhaps this is what's meant as "settler colonialism." If so, the stronger argument of the Arab conquest is that they are settler colonists, not simply colonists. It also seems to me that "settler colonialism" is a from of conquering...or maybe it's simply two words for the same things; a distinction without a difference. What do you think?