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"The people I do condemn are the political class internationally who, with one voice, put out statements supporting “Israel’s right to self-defence,” a right they grant to the oppressor but deny to the oppressed."

-- Craig Murray

News and Opinion

The ever cheerful Chris Hedges has another reminder about what time it is.

Chris Hedges: Fascism Comes to America

The parting gift, I expect, of the bankrupt liberalism of the Democratic Party will be a Christianized fascist state. The liberal class, a creature of corporate power, captive to the war industry and the security state, unable or unwilling to ameliorate the prolonged economic insecurity and misery of the working class, blinded by a self-righteous woke ideology that reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness and bereft of any political vision, is the bedrock on which the Christian fascists, who have coalesced in cult-like mobs around Donald Trump, have built their terrifying movement.

Trump, as the writer Jeff Sharlet points out, has morphed from the Elmer Gantry huckster of politics — holding out the illusion that we can all get rich like him — to the peddler of dark conspiracies about the deep state and pedophiles running the Democratic Party, to full blown fascism. If he comes back to power the nihilistic violence that plagues the country, with over 500 mass shootings this year alone, will explode. Conspiracy theorists will threaten and murder “enemies” and “traitors” with impunity. The judiciary, law enforcement and legislative bodies — currently in a state of paralysis — will be transformed into organs of personal and political vengeance. The censorship by stealth practiced by Silicon Valley and the Democrats will become crude, overt and pervasive. The military, already infested with commissar-like Christian fascist chaplains, will be led by true believers such as retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn. It can happen here, as Sinclair Lewis predicted.

Blaming Russia, or third party candidates who never poll in significant numbers for the election of Trump and the rise of Christian fascism, is infantile. The Libertarian Party received 1.2 percent of the vote in the last presidential election. The Greens, 0.26 percent. The death blow to democracy is not those who vote for fringe parties, but apathy. Eighty million eligible voters did not vote in the last presidential election, no doubt because they did not expect much to change in their lives whoever was in office. And they were probably right. The root cause of our political distress lies with a liberal class that places corporate and personal profit above the common good. Liberals have conspired, since the presidency of Bill Clinton, to strip the country of manufacturing, and with it, jobs that sustained the working class. They have been partners in the transformation of democratic institutions into tools to consolidate the power and wealth of corporations and the ruling oligarchs. They forgot the fundamental lesson of fascism. Fascism is always the bastard child of bankrupt liberalism. This was true in Weimar Germany. It was true in Italy. It was true in the former Yugoslavia with its warring ethnic factions. And it is true in the United States.

And now we will all pay. ...

We were warned. The seeds of fascism, like the climate emergency, were apparent decades ago. The leading scholars of fascism told us that unless American society halted its slide to ever greater levels of social inequality and returned democratic power to a betrayed populace, fascism would metastasize and consume the state. The ruling class, blinded by greed, a lust for power and willful ignorance, was as deaf to these warnings as they were to those of climate scientists.

US Out of Ammo Israel, Ukr; Israel Delays, Blockade continues; Saudi Iran Talks, BRICS Peace Plan

Biden proclaims unlimited support for Israeli onslaught on Gaza

Tuesday’s speech by US President Joe Biden plumbed the depths of political reaction. As the Israeli army was systematically leveling residential buildings throughout Gaza, Biden gave the Netanyahu government a green light to carry out mass murder. The only purpose Biden’s tirade served was to inflame public opinion, generate as much hatred against Palestinians as possible, and justify whatever crimes Israel carries out. After this speech, it is impossible for his government to disassociate itself from anything the Israeli government has done or will do. Indeed, the inclusion of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris, who stood zombie-like behind Biden, was intended to underscore the message: This is the policy of the American government.

Biden’s remarks, predictably, incited Israeli war crimes. Immediately following the speech, Israel began using white phosphorus to create firestorms in civilian areas – a crime under international law. Israel bombed the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East on Tuesday, alongside countless other multi-story buildings. Israel continued to deny the Palestinians food, water, and electricity, in line with the pledge by Prime Minister Netanyahu that any areas that resist the Israeli occupation will be reduced to “ruins.”

Biden's language comes close to promoting and legitimizing genocide. The resistance by Palestinians was a manifestation, Biden began, of “pure, unadulterated evil.” These words echoed the statements yesterday of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the Palestinians “animals.” Netanyahu’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” To assert that one is dealing with “pure evil” is to remove events from any rational analysis. In this Manichean world view, “evil” can only be addressed through elimination, extermination and killing.

Biden did not call for a ceasefire. He did not call for peace talks. He did not call for mediation or arbitration. He did not call on Israel to exercise restraint. He did not warn about the incalculable bloodshed that would result from an Israeli invasion of Gaza. Full of inflammatory references to the Israeli victims of the Palestinian incursion into territory illegally occupied by Israel, Biden did not make a single reference to the Palestinian victims of Israeli violence. Over the past 75 years, countless tens of thousands of Palestinians have been massacred by Israeli troops and the fascist forces now represented in the Israeli government. None of these murders prompted condemnation by the United States, let alone a declaration that the Israeli perpetrators were the embodiment of “evil.” ...

Among the most shameful of Biden’s statements was his attempt to associate the resistance of the Palestinians against the Israeli apartheid regime with genocide of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust. “This attack on Israel,” Biden said, “brought to the surface painful memories and scars left by a millennium of antisemitism and genocide.” This is a total perversion of history. The Palestinians have no historical connection to the murderous anti-Jewish pogroms and antisemitism that form a critical part of European history. They played no role in the Holocaust. During the Second World War, while Jews were being exterminated by the millions, the United States kept its borders closed. In 1939, the SS St. Louis, a ship carrying over 900 Jewish refugees, was turned away from the US and forced to return to Europe, an episode that was emblematic of US indifference to the persecution of Europe’s Jews.

Here’s The ONLY WAY This Conflict Ends! – Scott Ritter

Craig Murray: Condemnation

There have been decades of photos of dead Palestinian women and children, and kids being beaten, humiliated and imprisoned by Israeli soldiers. The historic killing rate in this “conflict” has been fairly consistent at about 40:1. None of this ever caused more than a raised eyebrow and a mild tut-tut from the western “liberal” Establishment. I can’t recall camera crews ever pursuing any Zionist politicians down the street demanding that they use the word “condemn” of the latest Israeli atrocity.

The paroxysm of hatred in the political and media class, unleashed by a single day of the boot being on the other foot is instructive. It is particularly instructive in their near complete unanimity — what percentage of the discussion on broadcast TV or radio have you heard this last 48 hours given over to Palestinian or pro-Palestinian voices?

Yet it is very plain from social media that the public is by no means as unanimous in their support of Israel as are the political and media class. But then the public are not bought and paid for.

Asymmetric warfare tends to be vile. Oppressed and colonised peoples don’t have the luxury of lining up soldiers in neatly pressed uniforms and polished boots, to face off against the opposing army in an equality of arms. A colonised and oppressed people tends, given the chance, to mirror the atrocities perpetrated on them by their oppressor.

This of course feeds in, always, to the propaganda of the Imperialist. A paroxysm of resistance by the oppressed always ends up portrayed by the Imperialist as evidence of the bestiality of the colonised people and in itself justifying the “civilising mission” of the coloniser.

US CONFIRMS Bibi Warned Days Before Attack

FURIOUS Israelis SHOUT DOWN Bibi LIVE On TV

Netanyahu sets up emergency Israeli unity government and war cabinet

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced an emergency wartime government, as pressure mounts for the establishment of corridors to allow aid and medicine into the Gaza Strip and to allow civilians to leave.

Benny Gantz, a senior opposition figure and former defence minister, joined the government for the duration of the conflict. Netanyahu, Gantz and Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, are forming a “war cabinet” as Israeli troops continued to build in the south of the country in preparation for an expected ground invasion.

In a televised address late on Wednesday, Netanyahu described atrocities that took place during the weekend attack by Hamas militants, who he said shot children in the head, burned people alive, raped women and beheaded soldiers. “Every Hamas member is a dead man,” he said. “We will crush and destroy it.” Gantz told Israeli citizens that the newly formed government was “united” and ready to “wipe this thing called Hamas off the face of the Earth”.

Inside Gaza, the enclave’s sole power station ran out of fuel, adding to the looming catastrophe particularly for hospitals. “Soon all services vital for the survival of the population, including hospitals, will no longer function,” said the Mezan centre for human rights in Gaza.

Mahmoud Matar, a surgeon in Gaza, said hospitals were “completely overwhelmed with the number of injuries and the number of dead”. He told the BBC: “The smell of death is all around now in Gaza. There is no water, there will be no electricity, and we have very bad network connection. I am currently looking for water to drink.”

Palestinian Journalist: Latest Violence Shatters Notion That Israeli Apartheid Is Sustainable

Arab ministers urge Israel to resume talks on two-state solution

Arab foreign ministers have urged Israel to meet its international obligations as an occupying power and return to negotiations on a two-state solution that provides a viable state for Palestine. At an emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on Wednesday, ministers underlined “the importance of resuming the peace process and starting serious negotiations between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel”.

The move is part of a twin track – and largely Saudi-led – initiative designed to de-escalate the crisis, but also make Israel accept that its refusal to negotiate has led to the collapse in relations with Hamas.

The Biden administration has privately expressed disappointment that Saudi Arabia – far from condemning the brutal attacks by Hamas at the weekend – is maintaining that the violence would not have occurred if Palestinians had been granted the independent state they have demanded for decades.

The Saudi stance is being compared unfavourably by Washington to the willingness of the United Arab Emirates to explicitly denounce the crimes committed by Hamas. The UAE fully normalised ties with the Israel after the 2019 Abraham Accords, but Riyadh has not, despite dangling a potential rapprochement.

Since the unprecedented Hamas onslaught on Saturday, Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi minister of foreign affairs, has been on the phone to Gulf and western leaders – including speaking to the UK foreign secretary James Cleverly – seeking to de-escalate the crisis. A Saudi statement afterwards urged the international community “to come together to meet the aspirations of the brotherly Palestinian people”. The read-out also referred to the need to protect unarmed civilians as a result of the military operations. The initial Saudi statement blamed the escalation on “the continued occupation” and “the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights”.

Report from Gaza: Two Palestinians Describe "Horror" on 6th Day of Israel Bombing Besieged Enclave

Israeli Airstrikes Have Killed Over 320 Children in Gaza: Health Ministry

Israel's retaliatory airstrikes across the Gaza Strip after Hamas' weekend attack have killed at least 1,100 people in the besieged enclave, including 326 children, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Wednesday. ...

Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP), which has documented cases of over 2,400 Palestinian kids killed by Israeli forces and settlers since 2000, has so far confirmed 105 of the 326 deaths.

"Intensive Israeli bombardment throughout the Gaza Strip, lack of electricity, Israeli airstrikes on telecommunications infrastructure, and the unprecedented rate of daily child fatalities has resulted in a lag between confirmed fatalities by DCIP and the overall total child fatalities published regularly by the Ministry of Health in Gaza," the group said.

Responding to the new Ministry of Health figure, Yonah Lieberman, a co-founder of the American Jewish group IfNotNow, asked on social media, "Where is the outrage we saw when Israeli children were killed?"

DCIP's Miranda Cleland said that from her time with the organization, she has learned that "all the dead Palestinian babies in Gaza won't humanize Palestinians to the Israeli war machine, funded by the U.S. government, cheering on their killings."

EU Bureaucrats THREATEN Online Speech About Israel, Michael Shellenberger Says ‘BACK THE HELL OFF’

Is Israel’s War a US War? “Free Speech Advocates” Demand Silencing of Israel’s Critics. Is War w/ Iran Inevitable? & Israeli Media Calls for Restraint

The Guardian shows off its propaganda skills at headline writing:

Slovakia’s pro-Russia former PM reaches deal to form coalition government

Slovakia’s populist former prime minister, Robert Fico, has said he has reached agreement with centre-left and nationalist parties to form a three-party coalition government that could return him to office for a fourth time. “We have agreed that we want to form a government together,” Fico said on Wednesday of the deal, which includes Hlas, a moderate breakaway party from his own Smer-SD party, and the ultra-nationalist Slovak National party (SNS). ...

The new government is expected to scale back support for Ukraine in line with Fico’s campaign pledges to halt military aid to Slovakia’s eastern neighbour, and to move the country closer to Hungary in a further regional shift away from political liberalism. ...

Under the agreement, Smer will appoint the prime minister and six other ministers, Hlas the parliamentary speaker and seven cabinet ministers, and SNS three ministers. Fico said he hoped to represent Slovakia at the next EU summit in late October.

“Specific names and ministries will be included in the coalition agreement,” he said. “I will present the list of ministers to the president in a short time.” It was not clear when the president, Zuzana Čaputová, might swear in the new government.

Ukraine Official ADMITS They’re Losing The War!

Zelenskiy fears Middle East conflict could hit military aid to Ukraine

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he fears that the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel and US politics could threaten military support for his country, as he made a surprise visit to Brussels where Nato defence ministers are meeting.

“I want to be honest with you, of course it is a dangerous situation for people in Ukraine,” he said on his first visit to Nato headquarters since Russia’s 2022 invasion, making an in-person plea for continued assistance at a time when turbulence in the US Congress threatens to disrupt aid for Kyiv and the world’s attention is drawn to the crisis unfolding in the Middle East.

Zelenskiy called for more weapons and air defences to tide his country through another winter of Russian attacks likely to target power stations and energy infrastructure.

But as the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, announced a fresh $200m (£162m) military contribution to Ukraine, Zelenskiy suggested Hamas’s attack on Israel at the weekend could be among the factors posing a risk to his country’s defence against Russia.

“If there are other tragedies in the world, there is only a certain amount of military support to share, and Russia hopes that support will be divided,” Zelenskiy told reporters at the Belgian parliament. “There will be challenges with the American elections, and I talked to our partners and they said the support will stay, but who can tell that the support will stay, nobody knows.”

Hey looky! NATO has found a pipeline that it cares about how it got damaged.

Nato vows to respond if Finland-Estonia gas pipeline damage is deliberate

Nato has promised a “determined” response if damage to an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia proves deliberate, as investigators said traces of an “external, mechanical force” had been found on the seabed. Amid widespread media speculation about the likelihood of Russian sabotage, Risto Lohi of the Finnish national bureau of investigation told a press conference in Helsinki on Wednesday: “There is reason to suspect an external force … caused the damage.” The force, he added, “appears to have been mechanical, not an explosion”.

The agency’s chief, Robin Lardot, said marks had been found on the seabed at the site of the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline. Its operators said it would take at least five months to repair the pipeline, meaning it was unlikely to come on stream again until April 2024. But Lardot said the investigation into aggravated vandalism was in its “very early technical stages” and could take several more days because of poor weather and the large search area. The bureau was working to “find facts and analyse them”, he said.

Finnish authorities announced on Tuesday that a sudden fall in pressure in the pipeline recorded on Sunday had been caused by extensive damage that “appeared to be deliberate”.

Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Wednesday that if the damage to the Balticconnector was “proven to be an attack on Nato critical infrastructure … it will be met by a united and determined response from Nato”.

Mace, MTG, Boebert HOLD Back Votes For Scalise; Jim Jordan Offers Support

Supreme court conservatives appear skeptical South Carolina Republicans discriminated against Black voters

The supreme court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical on Wednesday that South Carolina Republicans discriminated against Black voters when it redrew one of the state’s congressional districts to make it friendlier to the GOP.

During two-hours of oral argument on Wednesday, the court’s conservative justices aggressively poked holes in a three-judge panel’s ruling earlier this year finding that Republicans had unlawfully moved around 30,000 Republican voters out of South Carolina’s first congressional district to make it more Republican. Chief Justice John Roberts, a key swing vote on the court, seemed unconvinced by the evidence the lower court had accepted, saying at one point the challengers were asking the court to embrace arguments that “would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisdprudence”.

A decision reversing the lower court would leave South Carolina’s map in place in a major win for Republicans, who control six of the state’s seven congressional districts. Meanwhile, requiring the state to redraw the map would likely make its first congressional district, represented by Republican Nancy Mace, more competitive.

The central question in the case, Alexander v South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, is whether South Carolina Republicans violated the US constitution when they drew new lines for Mace’s district after the 2020 census. In order to make it more safely Republican, they added conservative counties to the district and removed 30,000 Black voters in Charleston – 62% of those in the county – into the neighboring district. Republicans have defended their actions by saying their goal was political and that they did not consider race when drawing the districts.

Much of Wednesday’s hearing focused on evidence, specifically expert reports, that the trial court had accepted as proof that Republicans relied too much on race in their drawing of maps. John Gore, an attorney representing South Carolina Republicans, sought to convince the justices that the lower court had made a “clear error” in how it evaluated that proof. Roberts appeared wary that the challengers hadn’t offered any direct evidence of discrimination or alternative maps to explain how Republicans could have achieved their stated goal without taking race into account. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also seized on the lack of alternative maps to show that the challengers in the case had not overcome the presumption of good faith that lawmakers were entitled to.

Worth a full read:

‘A sacrifice zone’: East Palestine’s wastewater is flooding into this Ohio community

Mounted on the wall above Mark Mills’ head was a model of a large northern pike. “This area is one of the most southerly places in the country that you can catch them,” said Mills, the mayor of Coshocton, a town of 11,000 people in Ohio’s Appalachian foothills. Coshocton’s natural beauty and outdoor pursuits industry attract thousands of people worldwide, generating $60m annually for the local economy. The local visitors bureau sends packages to people in countries as far away as Poland.

But Mills and many other locals are afraid all this is now under attack: in recent weeks, thousands of gallons of wastewater from February’s toxic chemical derailment site in East Palestine 100 miles to the north are being delivered to an injection well outside the town. Owned by Buckeye Brine, a private company, the injection wells will see the wastewater pumped thousands of feet underground for storage. It has become a major concern for Coshocton residents and fueled protests.

“If you pump millions of gallons of something into the ground, at some point it’s going to affect everyone,” Mills told the Guardian recently. “It doesn’t take a Nasa scientist [to know] that all it takes is one geological occurrence or ground shifting [and] we’re going to be stuck with this issue.”

Cleanup [from the Norfolk Southern derailment] has lasted months and produced tens of millions of gallons of wastewater laced with vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen. Ohio’s emergency management agency reported in August that crews had collected and disposed of 88,500 tons of hazardous and solid waste and 28m gallons of “surface and groundwater categorized as hazardous waste”. Buckeye Brine told the Guardian that the wastewater being injected underneath Coshocton is rainwater and runoff from vehicles cleaned after operating in the affected site. The federal and Ohio environmental protection agencies say the wastewater has been treated to drinking water safety levels. ...

“The EPA says that it’s safe. My question then is: why pump it in the ground?” Mills said.

Politicians, not public, drive U-turns on green agenda, says UN biodiversity chief

Government backtracking on environmental promises is being driven by politicians and vested interests, not the public, the acting UN biodiversity chief has said, as he called for greater support for those experiencing short-term costs from green policies.

David Cooper, acting executive secretary for the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD), told the Guardian he believed the public mood was not moving against greater environmental protections, and that vested interests opposed to action on the climate crisis and nature loss were trying to frustrate progress.

The comments come after a series of backtracks on climate commitments by the UK government and a political backlash against nature restoration policies in the EU from farming, forestry and fishing industries.

Less than a year after governments agreed this decade’s targets to halt the destruction of the natural world, Cooper said that while meeting some climate and biodiversity targets required short-term tradeoffs, they were vital for maintaining a habitable planet now and in the future.

“I don’t accept that the public mood as a whole is moving against the environment. The public as a whole, and particularly young people, see this as more and more important,” said Cooper. “We see some backtracking in different parts of the world but a lot of this is political groups trying to find wedge issues to gain a marginal advantage in an upcoming election,” he said. “When the public are allowed to express their views, they come up with good decisions.”

Exxon reinforces support for fossil fuels with deal to buy shale giant for $60bn

Oil giant ExxonMobil agreed to buy the shale group Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5bn in a deal that places a vast bet on a future for fossil fuel production in the United States.

America’s largest oil and gas deal in more than two decades will increase Exxon’s dominance in the Permian Basin shale field, at the heart of the country’s transformation into the world’s biggest oil producer.

Shares in Exxon have almost doubled over the past two years as oil and gas prices rose sharply. Its takeover of Pioneer – an all-stock transaction – capitalizes on this market rally.

While the Biden administration has sought to hasten the shift towards renewable energy in the face of the climate crisis, this acquisition underlines the confidence of America’s largest oil company that fossil fuel output will not be significantly hampered in the coming years.

With shareholders in Pioneer set to vote on the proposed tie-up, Scott Sheffield, the operator’s chief executive, declared the combined fracking giant would create value for them “for decades to come”.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

The Blood of Gaza Is on the West’s Hands as Much as Israel’s

Sen. Graham Says ‘We’re in a Religious War,’ Calls to ‘Level’ Gaza

NYT: US Intelligence Shows Iranian Leaders Were Surprised by Hamas Attack

Israel Fostered The Rise Of Hamas, Even After It Turned To Terror

The Silence of the Bears – Russia Is Reorienting Towards the Arabs

U.S. Plans To Ethnically Cleanse Gaza

Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village

Rep. McCaul Confirms That Egypt Warned Israel Before Hamas Attack

I Try To Avoid The Word Genocide

Ray McGovern: A Matter of Justice

White House Plans to Request Military Aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan

Ukraine SitRep: Storming Andivka - Ukrainian Losses

Amazon linked to trafficking of workers in Saudi Arabia

Afterglow of cataclysmic collision between two planets seen for first time

The THREE BIGGEST LIES Israeli Propaganda Is Spreading Right Now!

YES – They Actually Created & Funded Hamas!

Ukrainian Church In Philadelphia Erected Nazi Monument!

300K Israeli Fighters Prepare For GROUND OPERATION, Blinken Tells Bibi: U.S. 'Not Going Anywhere'

Biden 'LIED' About Beheaded Babies, Personally Seeing Pictures Among Israeli Victims?

Rand Paul SHUTS DOWN Hawk Lindsey Graham's Call To BOMB IRAN?; Ukraine Aid AT END OF ROPE: WH

Justin Trudeau Is COMING For Joe Rogan With MANDATED Media Licensing, CONTENT LIMITS?!: Rav Aurora

Zelensky panics as attention and resources shift to Israel

A Little Night Music

Smokey Smothers - I Ain't Gonna Be No Monkey Man No More

Smokey Smothers - I've Been Drinking Muddy Water

Big Smokey Smothers - Honey, I ain't teasin'

Big Smokey Smothers - Come on rock little girl

Big Smokey Smothers - Twist With Me Annie

Smokey Smothers - The Case Is Closed

Smokey Smothers - I Got My Eyes On You

Smokey Smothers - Give It Back

Big Smokey Smothers - Do Your Thing

Big Smokey Smothers - 41st Street Boogie