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"Government is full of people who think they know what's best for others and can rationalize compelling them to accept it."

-- James Cook

News and Opinion

Only Truth And Clear Seeing Can Lead Us To Peace And Harmony

The Independent has an article out titled “Inside a southern Gaza hospital: Screaming orphaned children, amputee toddlers and the stench of rotting flesh,” which begins as follows:

“A badly burned toddler screaming for the mother he doesn’t know is dead — and screaming because doctors do not have enough painkillers to relieve his suffering. An eight-year-old boy whose brain is exposed as bombing damaged parts of his skull. A teenage girl, her eye surgically removed, because every bone in her face is smashed. A three-year-old double amputee, whose severed limbs are laid out in a pink box beside him.

“And in the background is the stench of rotting flesh as maggots ‘creep out of untreated wounds’.”

These horrors are all caused by a genocidal onslaught that is being backed to the hilt by the US government, who just single-handedly blocked a UN resolution demanding a ceasefire to end this nightmare. Instead of focusing on the unfathomable depravity of all this, Americans are being propagandized into worrying about a completely fictional epidemic of university demonstrators chanting for the genocide of Jews.

There are, by all appearances, millions of people who now believe that there's an epidemic of students marching around chanting "gas the Jews" and "kill all Jews."

I've asked around 100 people in the last week for examples. Nobody can give one, let alone show an epidemic.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2023

But for all the efforts to spin, justify and distract from the mass atrocity Israel and its allies are perpetrating in Gaza, more and more people are opening their eyes to what’s happening, and are ceasing to fall for the propaganda any longer.

This is largely because for the last two months the horrific images described in text by The Independent have been cascading down our social media feeds in jarringly graphic photos and videos. Those who’ve only been peripherally aware of Israel’s actions in Gaza may find those descriptions astonishing, but for anyone who’s been following the Gaza massacre it’s just a verbal description of what we’ve been looking at since October.

It’s much, much harder to propagandize the public into accepting military atrocities when they have decent visibility into how those atrocities are actually manifesting as they inflict themselves on human flesh. In an age where photos and videos of events can go viral within minutes of their occurrence, and in an area where it’s still possible to upload some footage onto social media, it’s far more difficult to persuade people to believe this is anything other than what it is.

If everyone on earth could really truly see what’s happening in Gaza, and actually viscerally grasp and appreciate what they were seeing, the killing would end tomorrow. It would end tomorrow because the entire world would force an end to it by any means necessary. These atrocities would no longer be tolerable by humanity’s collective consciousness once they had been fully seen.

I saw a video the other day of Palestinian parents sifting through charred remains of little hands and legs trying to identify their kids.

But congratulations on this. https://t.co/NYVowhS3wY

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) November 15, 2023

And really all of humanity’s problems are like this. If everyone could really see and deeply comprehend how horrific war is, war and militarism would end immediately. If everyone could really see and deeply comprehend how insane and self-destructive ecocide is, ecocide would end immediately. If everyone could really see and deeply comprehend the horrors of poverty, abusive prison systems, police brutality and institutional injustice, these things would no longer be permitted to exist in our society.

Seeing is all that’s required for humanity to begin moving out of dysfunctionality and towards health. That’s true regardless of what scale of humanity you’re talking about, from the largest problems of global civilization right down to the subtlest dysfunctionality in the inner processes of the individual. Once enough seeing has happened, the dysfunctionality cannot continue.

Corruption and malfeasance doesn’t stop until it has been exposed to the public. Abuse doesn’t stop until the abusiveness has been clearly seen for what it is and brought to an end. Addiction and other self-destructive behavior patterns don’t abate until the inner dynamics which drive them have been brought into consciousness and seen clearly. Self-realization only occurs when there’s been a clear seeing into the nature of awareness and perception.

Seeing is crucial to ending dysfunction at every scale of human life. That’s why Julian Assange figured that the best way to help the world would be to find a way to make it easier for the public to see what’s going on behind the veils of secrecy that the powerful enshroud themselves with, and that’s why Assange is now currently in prison. Those who want more health and harmony are always trying to find ways to make things more seen, while those who want to preserve the status quo of domination and dysfunction are always trying to keep things hidden.

In this sense we actually are kind of looking at a struggle between light and darkness, because there is an ongoing battle between the impulses within our species to make things seen and the impulses to make things unseen. On one side you have real journalism, true education, authentic activism and dedicated inner work trying to bring the unseen into the light of awareness, and on the other side you have government secrecy, censorship, propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and the war on journalism trying to obstruct and obfuscate the truth from the public eye. Those who desire peace, health and harmony will always find themselves on the former side, while those who desire domination, destruction and exploitation always find themselves on the latter.

They just struck the specific apartment he was in https://t.co/DGuIK9yvZd pic.twitter.com/uiw9C2xqT7

— worms cited (@christapeterso) December 8, 2023

That’s why Israel has been systematically exterminating journalists, artists and academics in Gaza, and why it tries to restrict internet access and communications as much as it can get away with. It’s why the US empire is imprisoning Julian Assange and continually working to control what information the public sees online while hiding a tremendous amount of its activities behind government classification. It’s why the abusive husband works to isolate his wife from her friends and family and tells anyone who says anything about his abusiveness that it’s none of their business.

Inside the PRO-ISRAEL INFORMATION WAR: Lee Fang

The US is by far the most destructive, murderous and depraved regime on this planet, far more so than Israel on its own. https://t.co/AeBCxV4I30

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 8, 2023

UN chief vows to go on seeking ceasefire in Gaza despite US veto

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has vowed he will not give up seeking a ceasefire in Gaza after the US wielded its veto to block the move at the security council on Friday, leaving the UN without a clear route map to stop the conflict lasting many months.

Speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar, Guterres did not directly criticise the US in his address but said the security council was “paralysed by geostrategic divisions”. He added world institutions “are weak and outdated, caught in a time warp reflecting a reality of 80 years ago”.

Guterres spelled out why he had employed article 99 of the UN charter to use his extraordinary powers to force the security council to address the crisis in Gaza. “I urged the security council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and I reiterated my appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.

“Regrettably, the security council failed to do it, but that does not make it less necessary,” he said. “I will not give up.”

As it stood, he said the previously passed UN resolution calling for more humanitarian aid is not being implemented, straining the credibility of the UN. Guterres had expended every effort to build a momentum for a ceasefire, and the wreckage of Friday leaves diplomats with few short-term options.

U.S. Vetoes U.N. Gaza Ceasefire as Biden Veers Far from Global Consensus; Death Toll Tops 18,000

Netanyahu Says He Appreciates US Veto of UN Gaza Ceasefire Resolution

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday said he appreciated the US vetoing a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and vowed to continue his war in the besieged enclave, which has killed at least 18,000 Palestinians.

“Other countries must also understand that it’s impossible to support the elimination of Hamas on one side and on the other to call for the end of the war, which will prevent the elimination of Hamas,” Netanyahu said.

“Therefore, Israel will continue our just war to eliminate Hamas and achieve the war’s other objectives that we set,” he added.

Josh Paul, Who Quit State Dept. Over Gaza, Slams Latest U.S. Weapons Sale to Israel

Biden under scrutiny after bypassing Congress to supply tank shells to Israel

The Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza has come under intensified scrutiny after it revealed it had bypassed Congress to supply tank shells, and was reported not to be carrying out continual assessments of whether Israel was committing possible war crimes. ...

On Saturday the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency published a declaration saying that the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had invoked emergency powers to supply nearly 14,000 tank rounds to Israel, waiving the requirement to consult Congress under the Arms Export Control Act.

The Washington Post cited unnamed officials as admitting that in Israel’s case, the US was not following guidelines that Biden himself had established in February requiring all arms transfers to foreign governments be subject to rigorous and continual examination of the recipient’s record on the Geneva conventions and other global norms for conducting warfare.

A memorandum on arms transfer policy said no weapons supplies should be authorised if the US assesses “that it is more likely than not” that they would be used to commit, facilitate or aggravate the risks of war crimes or crimes against humanity, “including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects”.

Administration officials were quoted by the Washington Post as admitting that the US had not been conducting “real-time assessments of Israel’s adherence to the laws of war”, because of lack of access to intelligence being used by the IDF to plan operations, or information about the intentions of IDF commanders.

Israel USED U.S. Provided White Phosphorus, WaPo Says; Biden BYPASSES CONGRESS To Arm Bibi

Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

The aerial bombing campaign by Israel in Gaza is the most indiscriminate in terms of civilian casualties in recent years, a study published by an Israeli newspaper has found. The analysis in Haaretz came as Israeli forces fought to consolidate their control of northern Gaza on Saturday, bombing the Shejaiya district of Gaza City, while also conducting airstrikes on Rafah, a town on the southern border with Egypt where the Israeli army has told people in Gaza to take shelter.

The full death toll from the past 24 hours was unclear but the main hospital in central Gaza, at Deir al-Balah, reported it received 71 bodies, and 62 bodies were taken to Nasser hospital in the main southern city of Khan Younis, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Haaretz published an analysis by Yagil Levy, a sociology professor at the Open University of Israel, which found that in three earlier campaigns in Gaza, in the period from 2012-22, the ratio of civilian deaths to the total of those killed in airstrikes hovered at about 40%. That ratio declined to 33% in a bombing campaign earlier this year, called Operation Shield and Arrow.

In the first three weeks of the current operation, Swords of Iron, the civilian proportion of total deaths rose to 61%, in what Levy described as “unprecedented killing” for Israeli forces in Gaza. The ratio is significantly higher than the average civilian toll in all the conflicts around the world during the 20th century, in which civilians accounted for about half the dead, according to Levy.

“The broad conclusion is that extensive killing of civilians not only contributes nothing to Israel’s security, but that it also contains the foundations for further undermining it,” Levy concluded. “The Gazans who will emerge from the ruins of their homes and the loss of their families will seek revenge that no security arrangements will be able to withstand.”

The Democratic Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza genocide perpetrated by Israel. https://t.co/6qMIvawzsP

— Refaat in Gaza (@itranslate123) December 4, 2023

Israel’s murder of Palestinian author Dr. Refaat al-Ar’eer sparks global outrage

The December 6 targeted assassination of gifted English teacher, author, translator and Palestinian rights advocate Dr. Refaat al-Ar’eer in Gaza by the US-backed Israel Defense Forces has provoked mass outrage across the globe. Dr. al-Ar’eer, a professor at the Islamic University in Gaza, which has since been destroyed by the IDF, is one of over 17,400 Palestinians who have been murdered by the IDF in the last two months. The assassination of al-Ar’eer is one of the more heinous atrocities carried out by the Israeli government as part of its campaign to suppress all those who speak out against the genocide. According to human rights group Euro-Med Monitor, al-Ar’eer, along with his brother, sister and four of their children, was killed on Wednesday when an Israeli airstrike “surgically targeted the apartment” in Gaza where he was staying.

A gifted and beloved academic, “the voice of Gaza” inspired thousands of Palestinians to learn English, read Shakespeare and see the humanity in Jewish people, in spite of the occupation. Prior to his killing, al-Ar’eer edited two books, Gaza Writes Back and Gaza Unsilenced, and contributed to several others, including 2022’s Light in Gaza: Writing Born of Fire. A regular contributor to Palestinian and left-wing news sites, including Electronic Intifada, al-Ar’eer also co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers, following Israel’s 2014 military campaign “Operation Protective Edge” in order to help young Palestinians who survived not only cope but explain to the world the story of military occupation.

“Refaat in Gaza” was one of many Palestinians, including photojournalist Motaz Azaiza and filmmaker Bisan Owda, who have become known to workers and youth all over the world for posting on-the-ground updates from Gaza that not only cut through the lies of the capitalist press, but also expose the reality of Israel’s war crimes. ...

While millions of people around the world are mourning the killing of al-Ar’eer, “the Voice of Gaza,” the mainstream Western press, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times—more than 36 hours after his death was made public—have yet to write an article. Their silence on his assassination and the targeted killing of Palestinian journalists, healthcare workers and academics over the last two months exposes them as nothing more than stenographers for the US government and its policy of genocide against the Palestinians.

The assassination of al-Ar’eer, carried out by the fascistic regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, with the direct complicity of the Biden administration and the NATO powers, is not only a war crime, but a serious warning to opponents of genocide around the world. Terrified of the global mass movement against the war and unable to stampede public opinion with ahistorical lies that Zionism is synonymous with Judaism and the efforts of capitalist governments to criminalize anti-war opposition as “antisemitic,” the Israeli ruling class, “America’s strongest ally in the Middle East,” is resorting to murdering its political opponents and even those who provide objective reporting.

Chris Hedges "The Genocide in Gaza"

Zelenskiy to visit Washington in bid to break Senate deadlock on Ukraine aid

US President Joe Biden has invited his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the White House, days after his administration warned it would run out of money for Ukraine aid in weeks unless feuding US lawmakers act. The meeting on Tuesday is intended “to underscore the United States’ unshakeable commitment to supporting the people of Ukraine as they defend themselves against Russia’s brutal invasion,” the White House said in a statement Sunday.

“As Russia ramps up its missile and drone strikes against Ukraine, the leaders will discuss Ukraine’s urgent needs and the vital importance of the United States’ continued support at this critical moment.”

Republican senators last week blocked $106bn in emergency aid primarily for Ukraine and Israel after conservatives balked at the exclusion of immigration reforms they had demanded as part of the package.

Zelenskiy’s office also said on Telegram on Sunday that the Ukrainian leader would arrive in Washington on Monday and that he would meet Biden during a working visit that would include “a series of meetings and discussions.”

Zelenskiy has also been invited to address US senators on Tuesday morning in the Capitol, a Senate leadership aide said. A private meeting between Zelenskiy and US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson will also be held in the Capitol on Tuesday, Johnson spokesperson Raj Shah said in an email to Reuters.

Ray McGovern: What Happens When Government Lies Are Exposed

Closed-door meeting thwarts bid to let Atlanta residents vote on Cop City

A back-room meeting between local power brokers in Atlanta, including a top aide to the city’s mayor, led to the last-minute scuttling of an ordinance that could have helped people get to vote on whether to build a controversial police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”. Mounting a referendum campaign allowing voters to decide on Cop City is one of many strategies opponents to the center have adopted in a movement that has gained worldwide attention while taking on concerns ranging from police militarization to environmental racism and deforestation in an era of climate crisis. The center is planned for a 171-acre footprint in a forest south-east of Atlanta.

A coalition of voting rights and pro-democracy law firms in the US drew up the ordinance to codify how the city would verify and count voter signatures on petitions to place questions on ballots in general, since the training center campaign is the first such local democracy effort in the capital of Georgia’s 176-year history – and no such process exists.

But in a meeting behind closed doors during the city council meeting last week, where the city councilwoman Liliana Bakhtiari was planning to introduce the ordinance, a deputy chief of staff to the Democratic mayor, Andre Dickens, objected to wording that would have made the process for handling petitions effective immediately, thus covering the Cop City referendum effort, according to a person who was in the room and spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. Bakhtiari returned to the meeting and never introduced the ordinance. Neither the mayor’s office nor Bakhtiari returned requests for comment.

“There’s an anti-democratic tendency here,” said Rohit Malhotra, a member of the referendum coalition, in a public zoom call on Thursday night on the latest developments in the referendum. “They need to stop debating this behind closed doors.”

The ordinance effort came as the referendum had been stalled for three months, with boxes of petitions sitting uncounted in city hall. Atlanta appealed a judge’s decision about who was eligible to collect those signatures and said in September it wouldn’t start counting and verifying them until after 14 December, when a federal appeals court hears oral arguments in the case.

Hunter Biden Could Face CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS If He Fails to Appear at Deposition

HILLARY Takes Charge Of Biden 2024 Campaign

Cop28: China ‘would like to see agreement to substitute renewables for fossil fuels’

China would like to see nations agree to substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels, the country’s chief climate official has said, as nations wrangled over the weekend on the wording of a deal on the climate crisis.

Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, would not be explicit on whether China supported or opposed a phase-out of fossil fuels, which more than 100 governments are pushing for at crucial climate talks, the Cop28 UN summit.

But he did indicate that he and his delegation were engaging positively to try to find a compromise on the contentious issue, which has become the focal point of the fortnight-long negotiations, now reaching their final stages in Dubai and scheduled to end on Tuesday.

He gave an indication of what China sees as a possible compromise, by referring to a joint statement made with John Kerry, the US climate envoy, at a meeting in Sunnylands, California, in November. “We had this language which said that both China and the US will massively promote renewable energy deployment and use it to gradually and orderly substitute oil, gas and coal power generation, so that we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Xie said through an interpreter at a small press conference attended by the Guardian on Saturday evening.

He added: “I’ve also heard another option for the language [in a Cop28 agreement] that is to gradually reduce the share of fossil energy in the global energy mix.”

UN sets out roadmap to combat global hunger amid climate crisis

Reforming the world’s food systems will be a key step in limiting global temperature rises, the UN has said, as it set out the first instalment of a roadmap for providing food and farming while staying within 1.5C. Food production is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, with research suggesting that as much as a third of global food could be at risk from global heating.

Agriculture and livestock farming are also major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing roughly a 10th of global carbon output directly, and more than double that if the conversion of natural habitat to farming is included. Until now, however, the UN has held back from setting out in detail how the world can both meet the nutritional needs of a growing population, which is forecast to reach 10 billion by 2050, and reduce global greenhouse gases to net zero by the same date. The latter is required to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Maximo Torero, the chief economist for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told the Guardian: “We need to act to reduce hunger, and to stay within 1.5C. This is about rebalancing global food systems.” For instance, he said, in some parts of the world there was over-consumption of protein, but in other regions people did not get enough protein. Some regions could benefit from using less chemical fertiliser, but other areas were not using enough. In some regions, livestock rearing should be intensified, but in others the focus should be on restoring degraded pasture land.

The roadmap will be laid out over the next two to three years, starting with a document published at Cop28 in Dubai that contains 20 key targets to be met between 2025 and 2050, but little detail on how they can be met. Further detail on how the aspirations can be achieved will be set out in future instalments at the next two Cop summits. The targets include: reducing methane emissions from livestock by 25% by 2030; ensuring all the world’s fisheries are sustainably managed by 2030; safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030; halving food waste by 2030; eliminating the use of traditional biomass for cooking by 2030.

Torero said the plan would not include calls for a meat tax, which some experts have advocated, but would examine measures to tax sugar, salt and super-processed foods, and better food labelling.

Also of Interest

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

What US Got Most Crucially Wrong in UN Veto

‘Israel-Hamas War’ Label Obscures Israel’s War on Palestinians

Zionist Suppression in Congress

“Stop Murdering Thousands Of Children,” Said The Evil Crazy Nazi

Ralph Nader on Israeli Government’s War Crimes – Enabled & Defended by Biden & Congress

Israel Supporters Would Defend Literally Any Israeli Atrocity

Thousands in Guernica, Spain draw link between 1937 fascist bombings and Gaza genocide

‘People will die in the streets’: Gaza dreads onset of winter as disease rises

Outrage as US Congress Slams University Chiefs Over Supposed ‘Anti-Semitism’ on Campuses

Groundbreaking graphic novel on Gaza rushed back into print 20 years on

Sisi poised to win power again, but Egyptians’ minds are on Gaza

Matt Taibbi – CTI Files #4: The Hamilton 68 Connection (or Russiagate Never Dies)

Revealed: the oldest black hole ever observed, dating to dawn of universe

Gaza Doctor Begs for World's Help as Hunger & Disease Spread

Peter Beinart & Omer Bartov on UPenn President Resignation, Gaza & the Weaponization of Antisemitism

Behind Bibi Netanyahu's FAILED PLAN To BUY PEACE By Propping Up HAMAS: Zach Beauchamp

Israel Plans LEBANON, Yemen War

Israel APOLOGIZES For 'Abu Ghraib' POW Images

Pollster: Why Israelis Want Bibi GONE

Biden CAN’T STOP Fearmongering About Russia!

A Little Night Music

Cash McCall - It's Wonderful (To Be In Love)

Cash McCall - S.O.S.

Cash McCall - I'm In Danger

Cash McCall - When You Wake Up

Cash McCall - You Mean Everything To Me

Cash McCall - I'll Always Love You

Cash McCall - More Power to You

Cash McCall - Let's Get A Thing Going On

Cash McCall ~ Blues 99

Cash McCall - Stoop Down

Cash McCall - Slice of that pie