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This evening's music features soul singer mentored by Otis Redding Arthur Conley. Enjoy!

"A guy stole my phone. Wasn’t sure where he was staying so I had to set fire to the entire neighborhood. A lot of people died, but it’s his fault for being where noncombatants are. He was using his neighbors as human shields. He is 100% responsible for their deaths, not me."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

The Insane Idea That Nations Get To Do War Crimes Whenever Something Bad Happens To Them

One of the most destructive ideas in modern times is this notion that it’s fine and appropriate for governments to act like monsters whenever anything bad happens to their country. We saw it happen with the United States after 9/11, and we’re seeing it now with Israel.

Dropping military explosives on children is just as wrong now as it was on October 6th. Wars of aggression were just as wrong on September 12th 2001 as they were on September 10th. But there’s this idiotic belief in mainstream culture that a nation experiencing a traumatic event means it gets to go on a murderous rampage until it feels better.

As soon as the Hamas attack occurred we were inundated with messaging from the western political/media class which conveyed the idea that because something bad happened to Israel, Israel now gets to do a little genocide, as a treat. This is stupid nonsense, and should be rejected by all thinking people.

No other aspect of human life works like this. A normal guy isn’t permitted to go on a shooting spree at his wife’s workplace just because she cheated on him with Kyle from marketing. He’s not even allowed to be mean to customers at work or he’ll get fired. The rules don’t stop applying to normal people just because something bad happened to them; only when we’re thinking about the giant power conglomerates known as governments is this sloppy thinking ever taken seriously.

In fact, in other aspects of life we understand that after a traumatic event it’s actually important to protect our friends and loved ones from making bad decisions in the emotional heat of the moment. You wouldn’t let your sister get an ugly face tattoo after a nasty breakup. If you saw your friend stumbling around with his car keys in one hand and a bottle in the other after losing his job, you wouldn’t tell him you stand with him and support whatever it is he’s getting ready to do. You’d understand that people can make unwise decisions after something bad happens to them, and you’d do what you can to help steer them away from it.

But when we extend our thinking out to the world’s deadliest military forces — precisely the things toward which we should be most careful about bad decision-making — all that goes out the window. All of a sudden “You’re either with us or against us” is framed as a perfectly sound and reasonable position to have on issues like multiple full-scale ground invasions, and if you don’t “Stand with Israel” while it bombs Gaza, Lebanon and Syria that means you’re an evil terrorist supporter who probably hates Jews.

The death toll from Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza has already more than doubled the death toll from the Hamas attack, and we can expect it to keep multiplying because there’s no meaningful opposition to the bloodshed. The United States, who as an indispensable backer of Israel could end all this with a word, has refused to draw a single red line on what Israel may or may not do if it wishes to retain US support — even its indiscriminate use of white phosphorus, which violates international humanitarian law. War crimes are being committed not just openly but announced in advance as Tel Aviv commits itself to the collective punishment of Palestinians with a complete siege of Gaza, and Israel’s allies have no objection to this.

And it’s pretty bad in the general western public as well. Because of the frenetic propaganda campaign by the western press in the wake of the Hamas attack, a new CNN poll finds that half of Americans have been successfully convinced that because something bad happened to Israel, Israel is “fully justified” in raining hellfire on a giant concentration camp in which half the population are children.

The moments after a scary and traumatizing event are the very moments we should be most vigilant against abuses by the nation affected by it. Instead we’re doing the exact opposite as a society and silently agreeing that certain nations get a hall pass on war crimes and mass murder whenever something bad happens to them. At the exact time when the light of wisdom needs to be shining at its very brightest, we’re allowing it to be flushed down the toilet.

And now as anti-war voices like Trita Parsi, Branko Marcetic and Connor Echols have noted, we’re looking at a conflict that could easily escalate and expand to include other nations in the middle east and the US alliance. All because the world decided that we are now on a temporary holiday away from reason and compassion.

This needs to stop. We need to be thinking rationally not just about the current violence but the factors which led to it. That means taking a full accounting of the apartheid abuses which gave rise to Hamas and the Palestinian resistance, ending those abuses and righting the wrongs. It means negotiations. It means diplomacy. It means reparations. It means making concessions. It means sitting down and talking. It means acknowledging the problem so that it can be fixed.

And all of this can be avoided for as long as Israel and its allies want to strut about huffing about how they have special license to kill Palestinians now because blah blah victim story. At this point in history, just as after 9/11, war looks so very, very easy and peace looks so very, very difficult. But it’s at these exact moments that we need to be pushing hardest for peace, because this is when it actually matters.

This is where the rubber meets the road, folks. This is where the real work of creating a healthy world takes place.

“We Will Never Leave”: Human Rights Lawyer Raji Sourani in Gaza City Refuses to Be “Good Victim”

Iran warns of ‘pre-emptive action' on Israel in ‘the coming hours’

Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, warned that a “pre-emptive action” against Israel could be expected “in the coming hours”, signalling a potential escalation in the conflict.

In a live broadcast to state television, Amirabdollahian said “the leaders of resistance groups will not allow the Zionist regime to act in any way it likes in Gaza” while referencing his meeting with the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, on Saturday.

“All options are open and we cannot be indifferent to the war crimes committed against the people of Gaza,” he said. He added, "If we don’t defend Gaza today, tomorrow we have to defend against these [phosphorus] bombs in the children’s hospital of our own country."

Russia and China diplomacy for war off-ramp. Isolated Biden goes to Israel

As it gives Israel green light for genocide, US prepares war against Iran

Israel’s war on Gaza has been accompanied by a massive expansion of the US military presence in the region, led by the deployment of two aircraft carriers and their associated battle groups. The dispatch of an armada of over a dozen warships to the Middle East is not simply to threaten Hamas, which has no navy. The United States is preparing for a much broader conflict in the Middle East, including war with Iran.

The US is using the present crisis to put into effect long-standing plans for a war with Iran, as the Middle Eastern front of the US war with Russia and war plans against China. On Saturday, Austin announced that the US would double its military assets deployed in the Middle East, sending a second carrier strike group, led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the region. ... Earlier in the week, the US Air Force announced deployment to the region of squadrons of F-15, F-16 and A-10 fighter aircraft. Each nuclear-powered carrier strike group has a total personnel of up to 8,000 sailors, airmen and Marines, meaning that over 15,000 troops have been deployed to the Middle East in the span of just over one week, alongside dozens of other aircraft and thousands of support personnel.

These plans could not have been put into practice at the drop of a hat. There are indications that the Netanyahu government and US intelligence agencies had some degree of advance knowledge of an attack from Hamas, though they were shocked by the scale of the rebellion. In any case, the Israeli regime had planned for an all-out war against the Palestinians, in part to deflect from its escalating internal social and political crisis. The United States, for its part, has used the crisis to put into effect its own plans for escalation against Iran. US officials have made clear that the aircraft carriers are targeting Iran. On Friday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, “There is a risk of an escalation of this conflict, the opening of a second front in the north, and, of course, of Iran’s involvement… It’s why the president moved so rapidly and decisively to get an aircraft carrier into the Eastern Mediterranean, to get aircraft into the Gulf, because he wants to send a very clear message of deterrence.” ...

In an interview on 60 Minutes, Biden seemed to imply support for opening a second front in the war and attacking Lebanon’s Hezbollah political party. “Going in and taking out the extremists, Hezbollah is up north but Hamas down South, is a necessary requirement,” Biden said, adding, “Iran constantly supports Hamas and Hezbollah.” ... The United States has planned for a war against Iran for decades. In January 2002, following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, then-President George W. Bush called Iran part of an “Axis of Evil” that included Iraq, which the United States invaded and occupied the next year. Inside the White House, Bush administration officials were fond of the saying, “Boys go to Baghdad, but real men go to Tehran.” ...

The free rein given to Israel to commit mass murder against the population of Gaza, and the intensifying US war plans against Iran, must be seen in the context of the eruption of what is, in effect, the initial stages of a third world war.

US-led diplomatic effort fails to ease Palestinians’ plight in Gaza

An intense US-led diplomatic effort failed on Monday to ease the plight of 2 million Palestinians trapped under bombardment in Gaza, with supplies of water, food and medicine all running out, raising the prospect of a humanitarian disaster.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, arrived back in Israel after a tour of the five Gulf Arab states and Egypt as part of an ongoing but faltering diplomatic mission. US media reported that Joe Biden was considering a trip as an already dire situation drastically deteriorated.

Trucks carrying badly needed supplies have waited for days at Egypt’s border crossing with Gaza but repeated Israeli strikes and a diplomatic stalemate with Cairo have meant they have been unable to enter. An Israeli airstrike hit the border crossing again on Monday evening, a BBC journalist in Gaza reported, the fourth time the area has been bombed since the war began.

Residents of the strip, which is ruled by Hamas, said strikes overnight between Sunday and Monday were the heaviest yet as the conflict entered its 10th day.

Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says

An Israeli woman who survived the Hamas assault on settlements near the Gaza boundary on 7 October says Israeli civilians were “undoubtedly” killed by their own security forces.

It happened when Israeli forces engaged in fierce gun battles with Palestinian fighters in Kibbutz Be’eri and fired indiscriminately at both the fighters and their Israeli prisoners.

“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she told Israeli radio. “There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling.

The woman, 44-year-old mother of three Yasmin Porat, said that prior to that, she and other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave.

‘It will be worse than Hamas’: order to evacuate strikes fear into north Israel

Amid the spectacular scenery of northern Israel, where the mountains roll away into views of Lebanon and Syria, it is deceptively quiet. At this time of year, the area is normally full of the last of the Jewish high holiday season’s tourists, making the most of the cooler weather to hike and go apple picking.

Instead, on Monday, the Israeli defence ministry gave an unprecedented order for residents of 28 villages and kibbutzim within 2km (1.25 miles) of the blue line that separates the country from Lebanon to evacuate south. The state is gearing up for the possible outbreak of hostilities with Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia backed by Iran, at the same time as the new war with Hamas in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

The northern front, like the southern one before it, is emptying, after repeated rocket and missile attacks and border skirmishes in recent days with Hezbollah and Palestinian factions active in Lebanon. The mood across Israel is frantic, trust in the army and the state dimished.

For the communities living here, the evacuation order is not just about history repeating itself, or the occasional volley of rockets that set off air raid sirens. It is also frightening for its novelty. The odds of escalation with Hezbollah, Palestinian factions in the occupied West Bank – or even a head-on collision with Iran, after years of “shadow war” across the region – are higher than they have ever been.

Joe Biden’s decision to send a second aircraft carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean this week to bolster Israel’s defences and deter “any state or non-state actor” from entering the fray has essentially thrown down the gauntlet to Tehran, and much of the Israeli media is enthusiastic about launching a “pre-emptive attack” on Hezbollah.

Israeli Ambassador to UK Claims 'There Is No Humanitarian Crisis' in Gaza as Catastrophe Unfolds

Clean water is running out, hospitals are overwhelmed by thousands of airstrike victims, more than a million people have been displaced, and thousands have been killed, but Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom refused on Monday to even acknowledge that a humanitarian disaster is underway in the occupied Gaza Strip.

Asked during a Sky News appearance about her view of the Gaza crisis, Israeli diplomat Tzipi Hotovely said that "there is no humanitarian crisis."

Pressed by anchor Kay Burley to explain what, then, is happening on the ground in the besieged enclave, Hotovely replied, "There is a war in Gaza, a war that Hamas started by committing a horrible massacre on innocent Israelis."

Hotovely went on to claim that Israel is trying to prevent the deaths of innocent Gazans, even as the country's military heavily bombs civilian areas—damaging and destroying hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential buildings—and refuses to agree to a cease-fire to let people escape the enclave.

Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, called Hotovely's denial of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza "pure gaslighting."

"Not only is there a humanitarian crisis, Israeli security officials have warned for years that failure to address it could lead to exactly what we’re seeing now," Duss wrote on social media. "Tragically, Israeli (and U.S. and E.U.) politicians chose not to listen. And here we are."

The Israeli diplomat's remarks came shortly after Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), warned that "an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding under our eyes" as Gaza remains under complete siege and near-constant bombardment.

As of today, my UNRWA colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance," Lazzarini said Sunday. "As I speak with you, Gaza is running out of water and electricity. In fact, Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity. If we look at the issue of water—we all know water is life—Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life. Soon, I believe, with this there will be no food or medicine either."

FREE SPEECH DOOMSDAY? Israel-Palestine USED By Global Elites To Censor: Michael Shellenberger

Israel and Colombia in ferocious diplomatic spat over Hamas war

The row began one day after Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attacks when Petro used his official X account to denounce what he called “neo-Nazi” efforts to destroy the Palestinian people, freedom and culture. ...

The next day Petro returned to social media to comment on claims by Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Galant, that his troops were fighting “human animals” in Gaza. “This is what the Nazis said about the Jews,” tweeted Petro. “All this hate speech will do, if it continues, is lead to a Holocaust.” Over the coming days, Petro – who has declined to strongly condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas – repeatedly used social media to criticize Israel’s military response. ...

The row escalated further on Sunday as Israel publicly scolded Petro for what it called his “hostile and antisemitic statements”, announcing that it would halt security exports to the South American country and had summoned Colombia’s ambassador, Margarita Manjarrez, for an official reprimand. “It was made clear to the ambassador that her president’s statements were received in Israel with shock given Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack, in which more than 1,300 Israelis were murdered and over 150 innocent civilians were kidnapped,” Israel added.

Minutes later Colombia’s leader hit back, declaring: “You do not insult the president of Colombia. If foreign relations with Israel must be suspended, let’s suspend them. We do not support genocides,” Petro added, again comparing Gaza to Auschwitz. ...

Petro is not the only Latin American leader whose response to the conflict has irked Israel. Last week Israel’s ambassador in Mexico voiced disappointment that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador had not taken “a more energetic stance” towards the crisis and been more forceful in its condemnation of Hamas by using the word terrorism. López Obrador said he respected Israel’s position: “But we do not want war. We do not want violence. We are pacifists.”

Yellen Says the US Can Afford to Fund Wars in Gaza and Ukraine

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted on Monday that the US could “certainly” afford to fund the war in Ukraine and Israel’s onslaught on Gaza as the White House is looking for more military aid for both conflicts.

Yellen’s comments came a day after President Biden said the US could fund both wars. “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history — not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense,” he said on 60 Minutes.

Israel Rejects Zelensky Visit

Israel has rejected a request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit the country that was made in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack, The Times of Israel reported on Monday.

Axios reported last week that Zelensky requested to make the trip to Israel in a show of solidarity. Citing Hebrew-language reports, the Times said Zelensky was told “the time is not right” for a visit.

It looks like the (Police) State of Georgia is furtively hiding some things:

Georgia refuses to release evidence from police shooting of Cop City activist

The state of Georgia is refusing to release evidence tied to the police shooting and killing of an activist protesting a police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”, prompting concern from police accountability experts who say this sets a “frightening” precedent.

District attorney George Christian released a 31-page report earlier this month concluding that the 18 January shooting of Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, was “objectively reasonable”. ...

The Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI), the agency charged with the investigation, also announced that the evidence would not be released to the Paez Terán family or to the public because the movement itself is the subject of a separate “criminal investigation and prosecution”. That evidence includes “photographs, audio witness interviews, crime scene drawings and reports, forensic lab reports … and body camera (video and audio)”.

Jon Feinberg, a Philadelphia civil rights attorney and incoming president of the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP), called the announcement “unique and chilling”.

The state’s Rico, or racketeering, indictment issued last month is the reason behind withholding the evidence. That indictment alleges that 61 people belong to a criminal conspiracy in connection with opposing Cop City. The case will probably drag on for years, well beyond the two-year statute of limitations for any lawsuit the family might have been interested in pursuing if their attorneys could obtain the investigative file.

Experts across the nation were stunned at the state’s decision.

Jim Jordan WINS Over More GOP Members In Speaker Race HOURS Before House Vote

‘No normal seasons any more’: seed farmers struggle amid the climate crisis

Once upon a not-so-distant time, the growing season for the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Green Things Farm Collective followed a steadfast trajectory. “We reliably had rainy springs and early summers, then hot and dry in late July and August, with the rains picking up again in September,” said Stacy Mates, Green Things’ seed company manager. “For a crop like lettuce seed, it was perfect.”

Within this decade, Mates has noticed that the previously familiar cycle “has changed dramatically. What we’ve gotten the last three years is drought in June and then torrential rains in July and August,” causing complete lettuce seed crop failures two years running. This year, after golf ball-sized hail, numerous severe thunderstorms and 75mph winds, a first crop of seed never matured. Mates treated a second crop with kid gloves, trellising the plants and covering them with shade cloth in hopes they’d survive another deluge. By late September, Mates had managed a solid harvest, with enough seed to sell.

Farmers are already fighting many battles in a growing season: beating back powdery mildew on cucumbers, hornworms devouring tomato leaves and strawberries plagued by verticillium rot. But for the farmers who grow the seeds that wind up in our seed packets and undergird our horticultural adventures, production has become ever more difficult. So difficult, in fact, that Green Things recently decided it would call it quits on growing for seeds. Mates can’t say for certain just how much climate change is to blame for production challenges, only that its role is undeniable.

“We are not having normal seasons any more”, said Lane Selman, an agricultural researcher at Oregon State University and founder of a seed-producer community called the Culinary Breeding Network. As the northern hemisphere shakes off its hottest summer on record, intensifying weather events threaten the variety we take for granted when we page through winter-delivered seed catalogues, dreaming of a bountiful spring.

“Every seed company is facing these problems, but they probably wouldn’t want to tell you that,” said Alan Sparks, an industry veteran who consults for Baker Creek Seeds. “‘We’ve got everything in control! Everything’s gonna be OK!’ But it’s not OK.”

Water level at Amazon port in Brazil hits lowest point in 121 years amid drought

The water level at a major river port in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has hit its lowest point in at least 121 years, as a historic drought upends the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and damages the jungle ecosystem. Rapidly drying tributaries to the mighty Amazon river have left boats stranded, cutting off food and water supplies to remote jungle villages, while high water temperatures are suspected of killing more than 100 endangered river dolphins.

The port in Manaus, the region’s most populous city located where the Negro river meets the Amazon river, recorded a water level of 13.59 meters (44.6ft) on Monday, according to its website. That is the lowest level since records began in 1902, passing a previous all-time low set in 2010.

Some areas of the Amazon have seen the lowest rain levels from July to September since 1980, according to the Brazilian government disaster alert center Cemaden.

Brazil’s science ministry blames the drought on this year’s onset of the climate phenomenon El Niño, which is driving extreme weather patterns globally. In a statement earlier this month, the ministry said it expected the drought will last until at least December, when El Niño’s effects are forecast to peak.

Worth a full read:

Revealed: how a little-known pollution rule keeps the air dirty for millions of Americans

A legal loophole has allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency to strike pollution from clean air tallies in more than 70 counties, enabling local regulators to claim the air was cleaner than it really was for more than 21 million Americans.

Regulators have exploited a little-known provision in the Clean Air Act called the “exceptional events rule” to forgive pollution caused by “natural” or “uncontrollable” events – including wildfires – on records used by the EPA for regulatory decisions, a new investigation from the California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian reveals.

In addition to obscuring the true health risks of pollution and swerving away from tighter control on local polluters, the rule threatens the potency of the Clean Air Act, experts argue, at a time when the climate crisis is posing an unprecedented challenge to the health of millions of Americans.

Where the EPA – the US agency monitoring air quality – has agreed to exclude bad air days from analysis, “we may have a sort of stable, relatively rosy picture when it comes to our regulatory world in terms of air-quality trends,” said Vijay Limaye, a climate and health epidemiologist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non-profit advocacy group.

The truth is more complicated, and the air dirtier. “The true conditions on the ground in terms of the air that people are breathing in, day after day, week after week, year after year, is increasingly an unhealthy situation,” Limaye said.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen

The roots of Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza

Israel Is Just A Nonstop Bombing Campaign With A Flag

Spanish Minister Says Netanyahu Should Be Brought Before ICC for War Crimes

Israel not responsible for safety of civilians in northern Gaza, former vice prime minister says

Egypt Says Israel Is Not Cooperating on Delivering Humanitarian Aid to Gaza

Israel Readying Emergency Regulations Allowing Arrest of Journalists for Factual Reporting

Hezbollah Defeated Israel in 2006 — Can It Again?

Israel’s Gaza Ground Invasion Delayed Due to Fears of Hezbollah Attack

Rob Urie: Is It Fascism Yet?

Human Rights Watch Condemns Israel’s Collective Punishment on Gaza, Urges Biden to Help Restore Aid

Israel Has NO STRATEGY After Bombing Hamas

A Little Night Music

Arthur Conley ~ Sweet Soul Music

Sam Cooke (1964) - 1st Recording of: Sweet Soul Music (as ‘Yeah Man’)

Arthur Conley - Burning Fire

Arthur Conley - Funky Street

Arthur Conley - Lets Go Steady

Arthur Conley - Shake, Rattle, Roll

Arthur Conley - I've Been Loving You Too Long

Arthur Conley - Something You Got

Arthur Conley - You Don't Have to See Me

Arthur Conley - Hear Say

Arthur Conley - Ha! Ha! Ha!