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"Netanyahu delivered a speech commemorating 100 days of Israel’s war on babies and journalists and hospitals and residential buildings saying “We will restore security to both the south and the north. Nobody will stop us — not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.”

If I was standing on the right side of history, I don’t think the side I was standing with would be saying that not even The Hague can stop them from killing everyone they want to kill."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

We Could Try Simply NOT Provoking A Wider War Via The Continued Destruction Of Gaza

The US has carried out another air raid on Yemen, with targets reportedly including the international airport in the capital city of Sanaa. This comes a day after US and UK airstrikes on Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Red Sea commercial vessels.

For weeks Yemen’s Houthi forces have been greatly inconveniencing commercial shipping with their blockade, with reports last month saying Israel’s Eilat Port has seen an 85 percent drop in activity since the attacks began. This entirely bloodless inconvenience was all it took for Washington to attack Yemen, the war-ravaged nation in which the US and its allies have spent recent years helping Saudi Arabia murder hundreds of thousands of people with its own maritime blockades.

Yemen has issued defiant statements in response to these attacks, saying they will not go “unanswered or unpunished”.

The U.S. can have a multi-decade long blockade on Cuba and it’s normalized.

Israel can have a decade and a half long total air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza and it’s normalized.

But Yemenis block some ships to stop a genocide and all the sudden it’s indefensible.

— James Ray (@GoodVibePolitik) January 13, 2024

The Biden administration’s dramatic escalation toward yet another horrific war in the middle east has been hotly criticized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who argue that the attacks were illicit because they took place without congressional approval. This impotent congressional whining will never go anywhere, since, as Glenn Greenwald has observed, the US congress never actually does anything to hold presidents to account for carrying out acts of war without their approval.

But there are some worthwhile ideas going around.

After the second round of strikes, a Democratic representative from Georgia named Hank Johnson tweeted the following:

“I have what some may consider a dumb idea, but here it is: stop the bombing of Gaza, then the attacks on commercial shipping will end. Why not try that approach?”

By golly, that’s just crazy enough to work. In fact, anti-interventionists have been screaming it at the top of their lungs since the standoff with Yemen began. All the way back in mid-October Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi was already writing urgently about the need for a ceasefire in Gaza to prevent it from exploding into a wider war in the region, a position Parsi has continued pushing ever since.

As we discussed previously, Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza is threatening to bleed over into conflicts with the Houthis in Yemen, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, and even potentially with Iran itself — any of which could easily see the US and its allies committing themselves to a full-scale war. Peace in Gaza takes these completely unnecessary gambles off the table.

And it is absolutely within Washington’s power to force a ceasefire in Gaza. Biden could end all this with one phone call, as US presidents have done in the past. As Parsi wrote for The Nation earlier this month:

“In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was ‘disgusted’ by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. He stopped the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a phone call that ‘this is a holocaust.’ Reagan demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Begin caved. Twenty minutes after their phone call, Begin ordered a halt on attacks.

“Indeed, it is absurd to claim that Biden has no leverage, particularly given the massive amounts of arms he has shipped to Israel. In fact, Israeli officials openly admit it. ‘All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US,’ retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick conceded in November of last year. ‘The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.’ ”

In the end, you get peace by pursuing peace. That’s how it happens. You don’t get it by pursuing impossible imaginary ideals like the total elimination of Hamas while butchering tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. You don’t get it by trying to bludgeon the middle east into passively accepting an active genocide. You get it by negotiation, de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.

The path to peace is right there. The door’s not locked. It’s not even closed. The fact that they don’t take it tells you what these imperialist bastards are really interested in.

Netanyahu insists on fight until ‘total victory’ as Israel marks 100 days of war

Israelis have marked 100 days of war with a 100-minute pause in the working day and rallies to call for the return of hostages held in Gaza, but little relief from the anxiety that has gripped the country since Hamas launched its 7 October attacks. ...

Normal life is returning to the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other cities, but many shops and restaurants are still shut and hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilised. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address on Saturday that the war against Hamas would continue “until the end, until total victory”.

“We are continuing the war … until we achieve all of our goals: eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel,” he said.

Analysts and military officials in Israel have said the conflict could continue for many months, even a year. Many Israelis describe a continuing “existential fear”, compounded by the threat of a further war with Hezbollah along the country’s disputed northern border. Two Israelis died when an anti-tank missile possibly fired by Hezbollah hit their home on Sunday.

In Gaza, where Hamas has put up stiff resistance to Israel’s air and ground campaign, the war continued without let up. Israel’s offensive has killed at least 23,968 people, mostly women and children, according to an updated toll from the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah.

How long can Israel's war on Gaza continue?

Israel risking serious escalation by killing Hezbollah leaders, say diplomats

Israel’s recent targeted assassinations of senior Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon risk a serious escalation between the two sides in their three-month border conflict, diplomats have said.

Diplomats who spoke to the Guardian said the targeted killings of two Hezbollah commanders in the aftermath of Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel in October risked rupturing the fragile understanding between the sides over what constituted a dangerous escalation. ...

While Israel has long targeted members of Palestinian armed groups, as well as others in its sights – including key Iranian nuclear scientists – since the end of the highly destructive 2006 Lebanon war it has avoided targeting senior Hezbollah figures in intelligence-driven strikes. ...

Although both sides have been firing across the Lebanon-Israel border, sometimes multiple times a day, observers have noted the targeted killings as a new departure in the conflict. “We had not seen anything like that before,” said one senior diplomat. “It definitely represents an uptick [in the conflict] and we need to see where it takes us, whether it is part of a pattern.” Among concerns is that a new pattern of assassinations of Hezbollah figures could “stretch the elastic” of restraint to breaking point. ...

For those whose analysis hews close to that of Hezbollah’s viewpoint, the assassinations are also evidence that the rules governing the conflict over the past month are fraying seriously. “We are still in a war with some rules,” said Dr Ali Hamie, who has appeared on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television as a commentator. “The assassinations have crossed a line. We can see the signs of the war … expanding [more] than evidence of moves to stop it.”

Bibi To US 'This Is Your War' After 100 Days

NOW: We've brought Biden's atrocities to his front lawn.

Since October 7th, US-backed Israeli forces have killed over 10,000 children in Gaza. The blood is on Biden's hands!#March4Gaza #LetGazaLive pic.twitter.com/rM8UlFRcUl

— CODEPINK (@codepink) January 13, 2024

Report: Biden Fed Up With Netanyahu. Critics: Sure Doesn't Look Like It

The beltway news outlet Axios on Sunday reported that President Joe Biden and other administration officials are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Israeli government's intransigence on the situation in Gaza, but critics outraged by unwavering U.S. support for the "genocidal" attack on Gaza that has been ongoing for 100 days had this to say: Where's the substantive evidence for that?

Axios cited one unnamed official familiar with the hidden sentiments of the White House, who said, "The situation sucks and we are stuck. The president's patience is running out."

The outlet also quoted Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a close ally of the president, who argued that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyu "has given Biden the finger" at nearly every turn. Administration officials, added Van Hollen, "are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again."

When I’m frustrated with people and running out of patience with them I too circumvent congress to send them infinite bombs and artillery shells https://t.co/0TKXZXlO3T

— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) January 14, 2024

But critical observers like journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept met the new reporting with deep skepticism.

"Let's unpack this: We are supposed to believe Biden's 'patience is running out' with Israel while he offers full political support, gives 'emergency' munitions to fuel the slaughter in Gaza, and is trying to shield his 'great, great friend' Bibi from international law?" tweeted Scahill. "Okay."

Prof. Mearsheimer: Israel's Unsuccessful Legal Assertions at the International Court of Justice

Worth a full read:

Biden Admin Deployed Air Force Team to Israel to Assist With Targets, Document Suggests

Targeting intelligence — the information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons — has played a central role in Israel’s siege of Gaza. A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. Air Force sent officers specializing in this exact form of intelligence to Israel in late November.

Since the start of Israel’s bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’s strike on October 7, Israel has dropped more than 29,000 bombs on the tiny Gaza Strip, according to a U.S. intelligence report last month. And for the first time in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza since at least early November, ostensibly for hostage recovery by special forces. At the time the drones were revealed, U.S. Gen. Pat Ryder insisted that the special operations forces deployed to Israel to advise on hostage rescue were “not participating in [Israel Defense Forces] target development.”

“I’ve directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts,” said President Joe Biden three days after the Hamas attack. But several weeks later, on November 21, the U.S. Air Force issued deployment guidelines for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, headed to Israel. Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting.

“They’re probably targeting people, targeting officers,” Lawrence Cline, who served as an intelligence engagement officer in Iraq before retirement, told The Intercept. Targeting intelligence refers to the identification and characterization of enemy activities including missile and artillery launches, location of leadership and command and control centers, and key facilities.

Alastair Crooke: US Lured Into Battlescape in Gaza, Yemen and now Iraq

White House Conducts Additional Strike in Yemen

The US followed up its widespread bombing of Yemen by conducting another strike early Saturday morning. The second attack came as Biden is facing criticism among his political and Middle East allies for starting a war with the Houthis.

US officials reported that Saturday’s strike targeted a radar facility that was missed during Thursday night’s initial attack. US Central Command posted on X, “The strike was conducted by the USS Carney (DDG 64) using Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles and was a follow-on action on a specific military target associated with strikes taken on Jan. 12.” ...

The White House’s assertion that the strikes are justified to ensure international trade is questionable. For most of the past nine years, Washington and Riyadh have maintained a blockade of Yemen, leading to a humanitarian crisis in the Middle East’s poorest country. The US has also attempted to substantially restrict trade with North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Red Sea tensions simmer as all sides warn of possible further attacks

Tensions remained high in the Middle East on Sunday as western leaders, the Houthis and their allies all warned of possible further action in the aftermath of Friday’s US-UK bombing of rebel-held areas in Yemen. As initial briefings from the US suggested that only about a quarter of the Houthis’ missile and drone attack capability had been destroyed, reports emerged of two boats trying to threaten a merchant ship in the southern Red Sea.

A Houthi supporter said on Sunday that the group’s attacks on merchant shipping travelling the busy waterway south of the Suez Canal would continue “because they are at war with Israel”. Hussain al-Bukhaiti said that if the US and UK continued to bomb Yemen, Houthi forces would attack western warships “maybe using hundreds of drones and missiles,” which would represent a significant escalation. Not all the ships targeted since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October have had Israeli links. ...

The leader of Hezbollah, a Houthi ally, said all ships in the southern Red Sea were now in danger. Hassan Nasrallah said the US bombing on Friday “will harm the security of all maritime navigation” because “the sea has become a theatre of fighting, missiles, drones and warships”. ...

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said late on Saturday that his country would pursue its war against Hamas relentlessly and would not be halted by the international court of justice, which has begun hearing a case brought by South Africa accusing it of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. “No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks, referring to Iran and its allied militias, the Houthis and Hezbollah.

Palestinian journalist Ahmad Bdeir killed in Israel strike near Gaza hospital

Ahmad Bdeir of Hadf News is the 115th journalist to be killed by Israel since the brutal war on Gaza began.

Palestinian journalist Ahmad Bdeir was killed in an Israeli strike near a hospital in Gaza on Wednesday.

Bdeir, who was killed in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, was working for Hadf News.

Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it "condemns the murder" of Bdeir, calling on the international community to "put pressure" on Israel to "stop the massacre of journalists" in Gaza.

The Gaza government media office said that 115 journalists have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel began its war on Gaza on 7 October. Israel's air and ground assault has so far killed more than 23,350 people in Gaza.

Collective west fantasy world and its constant failure to assess Russia accurately

Congress agrees on stopgap bill to fund federal government into March

US congressional leaders have agreed on a two-tranche stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government funded into March and avert a partial government shutdown starting late next week, US media reported on Saturday. ...

The agreement comes just before the 19 January first funding deadline for some federal agencies, such as the Department of Transportation. Other agencies, such as the defense department, have until 2 February.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House speaker Mike Johnson announced on 7 January that Congress had agreed to a $1.59tn spending deal, the first step in the process to fund the government.

The agreement set up some arguments on what that funding would be spent on. Johnson said in a statement that the top-line figure includes $886bn for defense and $704bn for non-defense spending. But Schumer, in a separate statement, said the non-defense spending figure will be $772.7bn. Johnson on Thursday held private meetings with some of the hardline Republicans who have been pushing for deeper spending cuts.

Texas officials block US border agents from helping three drowning migrants

A Texas congressman said Saturday that three people, including two children, who were seeking asylum in the US drowned while trying to reach the US near the border city of Eagle Pass, where the Biden administration says Texas has begun denying access to border patrol agents.

Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, accused the state of failing to act amid escalating tensions between Texas and the US government over immigration enforcement. Cuellar said the people who drowned were a mother and her two children, an eight-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. “This is a tragedy, and the state bears responsibility,” Cuellar, who is the top Democrat on the House appropriations committee’s subcommittee on homeland security, said in a statement. ...

Cuellar, whose district includes the Texas border, said Mexican authorities alerted border patrol of three people in distress struggling in the river late Friday. He said federal agents attempted to call and relay the information to Texas national guard members at Shelby park with no success. Border patrol agents then visited the entrance park, but were “physically barred by Texas officials from entering the area”, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement provided to CNN.

“The Texas governor’s policies are cruel, dangerous, and inhumane, and Texas’s blatant disregard for federal authority over immigration poses grave risks,” DHS said.

How the monster Bill Clinton and the corporate behemoths for which he stands destroyed a popular artform:

How Corruption and Greed Led to the Downfall of Rock Music

Nikki Haley rides Iowa momentum, but likely for second place

One day before the Iowa caucuses, Nikki Haley addressed an energized crowd at a barbecue restaurant in Ames, just a few miles from Iowa State University. Despite the freezing temperatures, the room was filled to capacity with campaign volunteers, journalists and a few undecided caucus-goers.

“This is truly cold,” Haley said. “But we’re going to keep on going anywhere and everywhere. We’re going to go all the way until the last hour because we know what situation we’re in.”

Haley’s own situation has improved in recent days, as the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN has gained momentum in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. After trailing Florida governor Ron DeSantis for months, the latest Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll showed Haley in second place in Iowa, winning the support of 20% of likely Republican caucus-goers compared to DeSantis’s 16%.

But the poll also underscored the profound challenges that Haley – and any other Republican not named Donald Trump – faces in the quest for the nomination. Trump easily beat all of his opponents in the Iowa poll, capturing the support of 48% of likely caucus-goers. Even if Haley can squeak out a second-place finish in Iowa, the results are unlikely to answer the question that has shaped the entire Republican primary: how can any candidate defeat a former president who remains overwhelmingly popular with the party’s base?

Vice President GABBARD??? RFK Jr. Mulls Tulsi Ticket as Polls Show HISTORIC Popularity

A fossil fuel plant is leaving Louisiana families with ‘barely enough water for your toothbrush’

Katie Mazarac just wanted to give her daughter a bath. It was late summer evening, and the small Louisiana fishing community where she and her then 18-month-old live had been plagued by water issues for months. ... By August, Mazarac was used to saltwater coming out of her faucets. But that night, she turn on the bathtub faucet and barely any water came out at all. “I called my mom, because I thought maybe a water line busted in my house,” she said. But it wasn’t a broken water line, and it wasn’t just her house; it seemed all of Venice, Louisiana, was dealing with low water pressure, her mother said. ...

This happened at least five more times before October, said Mazarac. The sudden loss of water disrupted personal lives and businesses in Plaquemines parish, a coastal community at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Local leaders told residents to use less water whenever possible. But all the while, an oil and gas company next door continued drawing millions of gallons of water from the municipal water supply, to construct one of the country’s largest fossil fuel projects ever built.

Public records obtained by the Guardian reveal that in some months between May and October of 2023, the liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer Venture Global used up to a quarter of all water in Mazarac’s beleaguered district. “We’re being told to conserve water,” resident Jordan Biggs said in September, “but Venture Global is getting to use all the water from our pumping stations to build cement for their big plant. And it’s just really disheartening.”

Venture Global, which is on track to rival Qatar as one of the world’s leading LNG exporters, is not building just another oil and gas project: the massive, multibillion-dollar export terminal in Plaquemines parish is the highest-financed LNG project in history. Amid a historic LNG boom, Venture Global is positioning itself to be the country’s leading LNG exporter, and the new 630-acre (255-hectare) site will be one of its largest terminals. Construction began on the export terminal in 2021. The project has forged ahead despite Venture Global’s other Louisiana terminal racking up hundreds of permit violations, and even as its own clients, such as BP and Shell, pursue the company for reneging on contracts (CEO Michael Sabel told the Wall Street Journal last month that the company is too “busy winning” to worry about the complaints).

In coastal Plaquemines parish, drought contributed to periodic water pressure issues last year from June to November. That in turn shut off air conditioners and hot water heaters, threatened to break machinery, and sometimes forced schools and the local daycare to close. ... Public records confirm that Venture Global was, in fact, consistently the largest consumer of water in the Port Sulphur water district. Venture Global was the top commercial water user in the district in July, August and September. Venture Global’s only project in Plaquemines so far has been construction of its LNG terminal.

While construction on Venture Global’s new terminal soldiered on, residents said that their water wasn’t potable even as their water bills increased. On 14 August 2023, the parish government issued “an urgent plea” on its official Facebook page, addressed to “all residents, requesting their immediate engagement in curbing their water usage”. Citing “a surge in water demand”, the notice asked residents to take shorter showers, reuse water and “postpone non-essential activities that require high water usage”. That same month, Venture Global used over 1m gallons (3.8m liters) of water, or 13% of the water in the district.

PR giant Edelman worked with Koch network, despite climate pledges

Edelman, the world’s largest public relations company, was among the Charles Koch Foundation’s highest-paid vendors in 2022, a 990 tax disclosure form shows, alarming climate advocates.

The PR giant has made numerous climate declarations over the past decade, including making a pledge to eschew projects promoting climate denial. Partnering with a part of the Koch network, which has long worked to sow climate doubt, calls those pledges into question, said Duncan Meisel, the executive director of Clean Creatives, a non-profit pushing creative agencies to cut ties with fossil fuel polluters.

“A relationship with the Koch network … puts them totally out of step with their stated climate commitments,” said Meisel.

An Edelman spokesperson said the company’s contract with the foundation ended one year ago.

But that was “well after” Edelman published climate statements that should have ruled out such a contract, said Meisel, who shared the 2022 tax document with the Guardian. Edelman made its first-ever formal declaration to eschew work on campaigns that deny global warming nearly a decade ago, in 2014.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: The Case for Genocide

Israel Dismisses Genocidal Intent as ‘Random Assertions’

If You’ve Just Started Paying Attention To US Foreign Policy

Turns Out “Israel Has A Right To Defend Itself” Meant “Israel Has A Right To Commit Genocide”

Israel’s War on Palestine and the Global Upsurge Against It

The US/UK attack on Yemen and the global eruption of imperialist war

Striking Yemen From Afar Will Not Achieve Anything

The Sun Sets Slowly—Then Quickly

Trump Hits Haley on Social Security, But Critics Note He's No Better

Democracy Now: MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words

Ray McGovern: Is CIA infiltrating & undermining the ICJ with anti-war "lawfare"?

A Little Night Music

Josh White - One Meat Ball

Josh White - Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out

Josh White - There's A Man Goin' Around Taking Names

Josh White - Midnight Special

Josh White - Blood Red River

Josh White - Careless Love

Josh White - Strange Fruit

Josh White - Prison Bound Blues

Josh White - Jim Crow Train