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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Will "Son Brimmer" Shade

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Memphis blues musician and leader of the Memphis Jug Band, Will "Son Brimmer" Shade. Enjoy!

^{Will Shade & Charlie Burse (Original Members of the Memphis Jug Band) - Kansas City Blues}

"If America ever passes out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: America died from a delusion she had Moral Leadership."

-- Will Rogers

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News and Opinion

Israel Says It’s Anti-Semitic To Invoke The Genocide Convention Over Gaza

South Africa has invoked the Genocide Convention, formally launching a case at the UN’s international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide for its mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip. Israel immediately responded by (deep sigh) accusing South Africa of “blood libel”.

Blood libel, for those who don’t know, refers to the way medieval Europeans would falsely accuse Jews of murdering Christians in blood sacrifices in order to justify persecuting them. Which is to say, Israel has responded to South Africa’s accusations by accusing South Africa of anti-semitism.

South Africa is formally accusing Israel of genocide. Responding with “that’s antisemitic” is not gonna cut it. pic.twitter.com/YPYR7VLo6K

— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) December 29, 2023

False accusations of anti-semitism are all Israel and its defenders have left. It’s the only tool left in their toolbox. Once you’ve exhausted the “But Hamas!” and “But October 7!” excuses they make for Israel’s deliberate butchery of civilians via airstrikes and siege warfare, false accusations of hating Jews is all that remains.

And it’s so sick, because it exploits a healthy impulse in those of us who oppose racism and genocide, and does so in order to defend racist acts of genocide. It causes people who care deeply about human rights to take a step back and say “Hold on, am I guilty of embodying the same hateful prejudices which led to the Holocaust?” and shuts us down and shuts us up, even as Israel rolls out its own holocaust against Palestinians.

It exploits a noble, healthy inclination we cultivate in ourselves in good faith in order to support the horrific genocidal nightmare in Gaza in entirely bad faith. It exploits our good nature to advance a profoundly evil cause. It’s despicable. It’s depraved.

Israel apologists always speak as though all critics of Israel are constantly obsessing over Jews, when nothing remotely like that is happening. It’s a fantasy. The only reason people like me ever make any mention of Jewishness is because 90 percent of the arguments made by Israel’s defenders rely on babbling about Jews and antisemitism, and those arguments need to be addressed.

If Israel’s defenders weren’t constantly babbling about Jews and antisemitism, it would never even occur to me to think about those things in relation to what’s happening in Gaza, and I’m quite sure the vast majority of people on my side of this issue are the same. When you see mass atrocities of unfathomable horror unfolding in real time in a nonstop deluge of video and photo evidence, the very last thing on your mind is what religious faith the perpetrators espouse. It’s not something normal people think about.

Throughout my life I’ve had a positive view of Jews and Jewish culture because so many of the people I’ve admired and been influenced by have been Jewish, but other than that it’s not something that I’ve really thought about much. This notion that opposition to the criminality of the Israeli government is driven by a demented hatred of Jewish people is a complete work of fiction. People in our society simply do not feel that way about Jews. Real antisemitism does exist, but it’s a small fringe view. Normal people just want the mass slaughter of children and the ethnic cleansing to stop.

If I saw someone murdering a child, there are many things I might say and do, but the very last thing that would ever occur to me would be to wonder what religion he is. It’s the silliest, most nonsensical narrative in mainstream politics and media today.

And that’s why fewer and fewer people are buying it. There’s only so many times the boy can falsely cry wolf before the villagers stop running to his defense. Hopefully this desensitization that Israel and its apologists have created doesn’t have dark consequences in the future. It’s just one more ugly thing they have birthed into the world that the rest of us will have to bring consciousness to.

South Africa Files Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice over "Genocidal" Gaza War

Israel Accused of GENOCIDE By South Africa, US Kills Houthis in Red Sea; Rising Debates HAMAS RAPE

Israel to withdraw some troops from Gaza amid new campaign planning

Israel is withdrawing some troops from Gaza but preparing for an intense campaign to continue there for “six months at least” as well as expanding preparations for a Lebanon war, a senior official has said.

There is growing international pressure to curb an offensive that has so far killed nearly 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. Even Israel’s staunchest ally, the US, which rejects calls for a ceasefire, has started pushing the government to scale back the ferocity of its attacks.

Plans to send some reservists home from Gaza, confirmed on New Year’s Eve, mark the start of a new stage in the war, a senior official told Reuters, and may be presented as a partial response to those demands.

But Israel still expects heavy fighting in Gaza for much of 2024 as it hunts for senior Hamas leaders, even if there are fewer troops on the ground.

“This will take six months at least, and involve intense mopping-up missions against the terrorists. No one is talking about doves of peace being flown from Shejaiya,” the official said, referring to a Gaza district that has been the scene of heavy battles. Reuters did not identify him by name.

Israel RETREATS? Bibi SHUT DOWN By Court

Biden administration approves “emergency” sale of howitzer shells to Israel amid intensification of ethnic cleansing in Gaza Strip

Israel’s relentless onslaught on the Gaza Strip is leaving residents with the choice of “death or displacement,” Palestinian envoy to the United Nations Majed Bamya said Friday. Bamya’s concise summation of the horrendous conditions on the ground produced by the genocidal assault received fresh confirmation as Israeli forces bombarded an aid convoy in northern Gaza, stepped up attacks in Khan Younis, and killed several displaced people in an air strike in Rafah. American imperialism once again demonstrated its complicity in the genocide by announcing the sale of thousands of howitzer shells to Israel.

The Rafah strike hit a residential building Thursday, claiming at least 20 lives. Earlier the next day, a UN aid convoy came under fire while traveling along a route designated for humanitarian supplies to northern Gaza. Over 800,000 people in northern Gaza have been left without any access to medical care and only extremely limited aid deliveries by the Israeli military. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), stressed that the agency “coordinates its movements with the Israeli authorities,” underscoring that the attack was intentional.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry in the West Bank released a statement accusing Israel of deliberately restricting aid supplies into Gaza. Current aid “does not even meet the bare minimum of what is required,” which alongside indiscriminate bombing is part of its policy of “genocide.”

According to the international aid group Mercy Corps, around half a million people in Gaza currently face “catastrophic hunger and starvation.” “The amount of lifesaving goods being allowed inside Gaza is a drop in the ocean and has not yet increased to the level necessary to meet Gazans’ basic and critical needs, even after the opening of the Kerem Shalom border crossing,” commented Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice president of global policy and advocacy for Mercy Corps. “Once trucks reach their destination, the safe delivery of any kind of assistance is almost impossible due to the ongoing and unstopping security risks.”

A further warning from the World Health Organisation illustrates how Israel is also using disease to implement its genocidal policy. WHO president Tedros Ghibreyesus stated that records show almost 180,000 cases of upper respiratory infections, 136,400 cases of diarrhea, half of which are in children under the age of 5, and 55,400 cases of lice and scabies. There were also 5,530 cases of chickenpox, 42,700 cases of skin rash, 4,683 cases of acute jaundice syndrome, and 126 cases of meningitis.

Israeli military brass admits failures in Gaza

Virginia senator Tim Kaine condemns Biden’s arms transfer to Israel

Virginia senator Tim Kaine has added his voice to a rising chorus within the Democratic party questioning the Biden administration’s legislatively unconstrained transfer of US munitions to Israel.

In a news release on Saturday, the Democratic senator – a member of the Senate armed services committee – said weapons transfers must come under congressional oversight.

“Just as Congress has a crucial role to play in all matters of war and peace, Congress should have full visibility over the weapons we transfer to any other nation. Unnecessarily bypassing Congress means keeping the American people in the dark,” Kaine wrote. “We need a public explanation of the rationale behind this decision – the second such decision this month,” he added.

On Friday, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had approved the sale of 155mm projectiles and related equipment valued at $147.5m, an increase from an earlier approved order for tens of thousands of rounds of the heavy artillery munitions.

Ray McGovern: What Can Stop the Siege of Gaza?

As Death Toll in Gaza Rises, Israeli Officials Fear Possible Genocide Charges at ICJ

Top officials in the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli government have reportedly been warned by a top legal expert that the International Court of Justice could issue an injunction requiring the country to halt its bombardment of Gaza, following a motion filed by South Africa last week.

Haaretz reported that the Israeli "security establishment and the state attorney's office are concerned" that the court could soon take action to force a cease-fire to protect civilian lives.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi is among those who have been warned that South Africa's petition could be successful, the outlet reported, and a hearing on how the government should deal with the matter was held Monday at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

As Common Dreams reported last week, South Africa said in its complaint to the ICJ that it is "gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants," and called on the ICJ to take action to force Israel to "immediately cease" its attacks on Gaza's 2.3 million residents.

At least 21,978 Palestinians have been killed and 57,697 have been injured in Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza since the IDF began its bombardment in retaliation for Hamas' assault on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,139 people.

Matt Hoh: Is the IDF in Retreat?

Israeli Military Says Gaza Slaughter Will Continue for All of 2024

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday that it would withdraw some troops from Gaza but that it expects the brutal assault on the enclave to continue through the entire year of 2024, The Times of Israel reported.

IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military was “adjusting” its “fighting methods to each area in Gaza” to prepare for a long conflict. “Tonight, 2024 will begin. The goals of the war require lengthy fighting, and we are prepared accordingly,” he said.

Hagari said the IDF was taking these measures “out of the understanding that we will be needed for additional missions and continued fighting during the entire coming year.” He said that some “of the reservists will return to their families and work this week.” The Times later reported that the IDF was pulling a total of five brigades out of Gaza.

Four percent of Palestinians in Gaza dead, wounded or missing since war began

At least 187 Palestinians were killed in Gaza by Israeli bombardment over the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said on Friday. That brought the total death toll in the enclave to more than 21,500 since war broke out on 7 October. Almost 56,000 have been wounded by Israeli attacks during that period, and 7,000 are missing - believed to be dead and buried under rubble.

That means that nearly four percent of the besieged enclave's population has been killed, wounded, or missing since the war began.

The United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (Unrwa) said on Friday that 308 people sheltering in its facilities had been killed and 1,095 injured since 7 October. The statement came just hours after a UN aid convoy was fired on by Israeli soldiers.

US Military Sinks Three Houthi Boats in Red Sea, Killing 10

The US military sank three vessels belonging to Yemen’s Houthis during a confrontation in the Red Sea on Sunday, killing 10, as tensions continue to rise in the region due to the US-backed Israeli slaughter in Gaza.

According to US Central Command, four Houthi boats were attacking and attempting to seize the container ship Maersk Hangzhou, which was struck by a missile a day earlier. CENTCOM said helicopters from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower responded to the Hangzhou’s distress call and then engaged with the Houthi boats. ...

The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, confirmed the incident and said at least 10 of their navy personnel were killed. The Houthis have been launching attacks on Israel-linked shipping in protest of the assault on Gaza and have vowed they won’t back down in the face of the US Navy.

The Houthis said the boats the US attacked were “performing their humanitarian and moral duty… to prevent Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine from passing through the Red Sea.”

Bolton calls for US strike against Iran and regime change

Iran rejects US and UK calls to end support for Houthi Red Sea attacks

Iran has rejected US and British calls to end its support for attacks by Houthi rebels on Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea and claimed the accusations were baseless interference as its navy dispatched a destroyer to the vital shipping lane.

The Alborz destroyer, operating as a military vessel of the 94th flotilla of the Iranian navy, crossed the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and entered the Red Sea on Monday. It came as Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council (SNSC), met Mohammed Abdulsalam, the Houthi spokesperson, praising the rebel fighters’ “brave actions” against “Zionist aggression”.

Tensions between the US and the Iranian-backed Houthis, who are keen to send a message of support to Hamas in Gaza, rose to a new high on Sunday when the US military said its helicopters had sank three Houthi vessels and killed 10 militants after a clash in the middle of the Red Sea, one of the world’s most important trade waterways.

The Houthi ships had attacked a commercial ship belonging to the Maersk shipping company, the latest of nearly 20 attacks that have led some shipping companies to abandon the Red Sea route altogether. ...

The Houthis have said the attacks, which have been disrupting the Red Sea for more than three weeks, will continue until Israel allows full supplies of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Israel supreme court strikes down Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul law

Israel’s supreme court has overturned a law at the heart of Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial overhaul project, potentially plunging the country into political crisis as it fights a war in Gaza and faces the spectre of regional escalation.

The judges ruled on Monday by a slim majority of eight to seven to throw out a law that curtailed the court’s own powers, saying it would severely damage Israel’s democracy.

In July, after seven months of debate, the government passed a law scrapping the “reasonableness” clause that allows Israel’s unelected supreme court to overrule government decisions.

The ruling to throw out that legislation, made in a historic first full sitting of the 15-member court, could reignite tensions that roiled Israel over the summer and split the unity government in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October attacks.

The judicial overhaul project led to months of mass protests that brought Netanyahu’s government under domestic and international pressure. It widened already deep religious, ethnic and class divides in Israel, threw the military into chaos and damaged both its currency – the shekel – and relations with allies. The US president, Joe Biden, at the time was critical of the plans.

Attrition war depletes Ukraine. Russia sends powerful SMO message

Biden Again Warns the US Could Fight Russia Directly If Congress Doesn’t Approve More Ukraine Aid

President Biden on Friday called again for Congress to approve more spending on the war in Ukraine, claiming that if Russian President Vladimir Putin is successful in its war, it could risk pulling the US into a direct confrontation with Russia.

Biden made the comments in a statement on a Russian attack on Ukraine that was said to be the largest of the war. According to Ukrainian authorities, Russia fired over 150 missiles and drones across the country and killed 31 people.

The president claimed that the stakes of the war extend beyond Ukraine to the US’s European NATO allies. “When dictators and autocrats are allowed to run roughshod in Europe, the risk rises that the United States gets pulled in directly,” he said. ...

Putin recently responded to the claim, calling the idea that he has his eyes on NATO territory “nonsense.”

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Even CNN Is QUESTIONING Maine’s INSANE Decision to Kick Trump Off Ballot

Trump gaining ground among Latino voters, poll shows

A new poll indicates former US president Donald Trump is gaining ground among Latino voters, wiping out incumbent Joe Biden’s lead among the crucial, but diverse, voting bloc.

A USA Today and Suffolk University survey showed Trump was ahead with 39% support among Latino voters surveyed, compared to Biden’s 34%, signaling a slump since 2020, when Biden garnered 65% of the approval from Latino voters.

The data also highlights a broader trend of decreasing support for Biden among various key demographic groups, including young voters. The decline in support among Latinos is seen as a canary in the coal mine for Democrats, signaling potential challenges in retaining a key part of the electoral coalition that built Biden’s election victory in 2020.

Trump leads among young voters under 35 with 37% support over Biden’s 33%, a stark drop from Biden’s 24-point lead among the voting group in 2020.

However, although Biden was losing support among these groups of voters, they tend to lean toward third-party candidates instead of Trump, according to the poll which was conducted 26-29 December among 1,000 likely voters. Twenty per cent of Hispanic and Black voters surveyed said they would support someone other than Trump or Biden, while 21% of younger voters indicated the same outcome.

AIPAC vs. AOC & The Squad: Pro-Israel Lobby Group to Spend $100M to Target Progressive Lawmakers

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World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis, scientists say

The hottest year in recorded history casts doubts on humanity’s ability to deal with a climate crisis of its own making, senior scientists have said. As historically high temperatures continued to be registered in many parts of the world in late December, the former Nasa scientist James Hansen told the Guardian that 2023 would be remembered as the moment when failures became apparent.

“When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed,” he said. “Not only did governments fail to stem global warming, the rate of global warming actually accelerated.”

After what was probably the hottest July in 120,000 years, Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is widely seen as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years. Now director of the climate programme at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York, Hansen said the best hope was for a generational shift of leadership. ...

His comments are a reflection of the dismay among experts at the enormous gulf between scientific warnings and political action. It has taken almost 30 years for world leaders to acknowledge that fossil fuels are to blame for the climate crisis, yet this year’s United Nations Cop28 summit in Dubai ended with a limp and vague call for a “transition away” from them, even as evidence grows that the world is already heating to dangerous levels.

Red alert in Antarctica: the year rapid, dramatic change hit climate scientists like a ‘punch in the guts’

The drop in floating ice was particularly abrupt. In the middle of winter, the frozen part of the Southern Ocean was about 2.5m square kilometres less than the 40-year average. That is an area a little larger than western Europe. Scientists are cautious by nature, and have stressed it remains open to debate whether this change is mainly attributable to global heating caused by burning fossil fuels and deforestation. But it is clear that the air is warming and most of the heat trapped by increased greenhouse gases is absorbed by oceans.

A study by Australian researchers in September found hemispheric wind patterns this year and last would usually have been associated with above-average sea ice cover. They concluded that link appears to have been broken, probably due to ocean warming between 100 and 200 metres below the surface.

Experts have different ways of describing the sea ice decline. Tony Press, a former head of the Australian Antarctic Division, says it is “statistically not predictable”. What does that mean? “There’s a chance that it could come back again, but there’s also a very, very high chance that sea ice in Antarctica has moved into a new state,” Press says. “You would not be an alarmist if you said you were really worried about that.”

Researchers say a permanent fall in sea ice is likely to accelerate ocean warming, as dark water absorbs more heat than ice and amplify the rate of global sea level rise by removing a buffer protecting the continent’s ice shelves. It will also have an immediate impact on species that rely on it for food, breeding and refuge – not just penguins but krill, fish and seals.

Press, now an adjunct professor at the University of Tasmania, says along with other changes it should be seen as the “waking of a sleeping giant” that will reverberate globally. He describes the evidence of a slowdown and potential collapse of the Southern Ocean overturning circulation, in particular, as a “wake-up call”. The overturning circulation originates in the cold and dense waters more than 4,000 metres down off the Antarctic continental shelf. It spreads to ocean basins globally, bringing oxygen to the depths and nutrients to the surface. Australian scientists found freshwater from melting Antarctic glacial ice was already reducing the water density and slowing the circulation.

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Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust

Saving Israel by Ending Its War in Gaza

US Congress: ‘We Stand With Genocide’

Mainstream media wasn't good for US foreign policy in 2023

From America’s Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia’s Guillotine

Nearly 200 names linked to Jeffrey Epstein expected to be made public

Bill Clinton NAMED 50x As 'Doe 36' In Epstein Court Docs, 100s Of Associates Set To Be REVEALED

Tributes Pour in For John Pilger

Media FLIPS on Ukraine As World ABANDONS US

The Nation smeared The Grayzone for telling uncomfortable truth about October 7

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A Little Night Music

Memphis Jug Band - Stealin' Stealin'

Will Shade - Better Leave That Stuff Alone

Memphis Jug Band - On The Road Again

Memphis Jug Band - Cocaine Habit Blues

Furry Lewis & Will Shade - Muscle Shoal Blues

Memphis Jug Band - He's In The Jailhouse Now

Will Shade And Furry Lewis - The Train

Memphis Jug Band - Insane Crazy Blues

Tuba Skinny - Sun Brimmer's Blues

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