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This evening's music features soul band Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Enjoy!

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

-- Blaise Pascal

News and Opinion

Israel continues Gaza onslaught and strikes on southern Lebanon

Israel’s savage bombardment of Gaza continued Thursday as a series of strikes on residential buildings in the southernmost city of Rafah and elsewhere throughout the enclave killed dozens of civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported 170 deaths and well over 300 injuries in 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday. The single bloodiest strike was on a three-floor residential building in Rafah, killing 16 people. One of the families living at the site had relocated three times since Israel’s genocidal onslaught began on October 7, according to Al-Jazeera. In addition to the air strikes, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reported that ground troops are operating further south in the Gaza Strip than ever since the genocide began.

The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate, with reports Thursday that hepatitis C is spreading among children in Rafah. The city’s population, which was 300,000 prior to Israel’s onslaught, has exploded four-fold to 1.2 million. Tens of thousands of people are crammed into tents and under makeshift plastic sheeting amid heavy rain and the winter cold.

At a press briefing Thursday, UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese accused Israel of “a number of things that are highly illegal, highly unlawful.” She commented, “What has happened is over 100 days of relentless bombing—the first two weeks using 6,000 bombs per week, bombs of 2,000 pounds, in highly crowded areas.” Most Palestinians are now dying not only from the bombs, but “because there is not sufficient infrastructure to cure them from the wounds.” She added, “The number of kids who get amputated every day is shocking, one or two limbs. During the first two months of this (war) 1,000 kids were amputated without anaesthesia. It is a monstrosity.” ...

In remarks earlier in the day at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog underscored how Israel’s genocide in Gaza is part of an imperialist-backed regional war against Tehran. Herzog railed against an “empire of evil” emanating from Iran that needs to be confronted by a “strong coalition” of states. The Gaza population is “entrenched in a network of terror,” continued Herzog, which is funded by Iran. This rhetoric chimed with Netanyahu’s statements at his press conference vowing to pursue the war until a “decisive victory.”

The IDF has stepped up its strikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, including the use of white phosphorus shells in a strike Thursday, according to Lebanese authorities. In the West Bank, daily raids have claimed over 350 lives since October 7. In a raid in Tulkarem Thursday, Israeli forces killed eight people.

British Doctor on Witnessing Israel's Destruction of Gaza Hospitals, Horrific Injuries to Children

Who couldn't see this coming?

Netanyahu tells US he opposes creation of Palestinian state after Gaza war

Israel’s prime minister has told the Biden White House that he rejects any moves to establish a Palestinian state when Israel ends its offensive against Gaza, and that all territory west of the Jordan River would be under Israeli security control. Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to obstruct the establishment of a Palestinian state throughout his political career, despite occasional lukewarm endorsements of the idea.

His public statement on Thursday, however, represented his sharpest rebuttal of US foreign policy at a time when the Biden administration has expended huge domestic political capital to support Israel militarily and in international forums.

The White House responded by saying the US would continue working towards a two-state solution and that there could be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza when the war concluded. “There will a post-conflict Gaza, no reoccupation of Gaza,” the White House national security adviser, John Kirby, told reporters onboard Air Force One after Netanyahu’s speech.

In a further development, shortly after Netanyahu’s address, Mexico and Chile announced they had referred Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories to the prosecutor of the international criminal court for the investigation of possible “war crimes”. The Mexican foreign ministry said it had taken the step over growing concern about the latest escalation of violence and civilian casualties.

BREAKING: Netanyahu just declared “Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”

Ruling Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza forever, until they’re killed or driven out.

Endless occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Will this be your legacy @JoeBiden? pic.twitter.com/e2DcSaIhTK

— IfNotNow(@IfNotNowOrg) January 18, 2024

The additional irony is that when @RashidaTlaib says "from the river to the sea" she means that everyone within those borders should have equal rights.
When Netanyahu says "from the river to the sea" he absolutely does not mean that Palestinians would have equal rights. https://t.co/h2dWeEFPWx

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 18, 2024

'From the River to the Sea,' Bibi Pledges, As Biden Says He'll KEEP BOMBING YEMEN: Rising

Worth a full read, much better than the usual slop from The Guardian:

‘Different rules’: special policies keep US supplying weapons to Israel despite alleged abuses

Top US officials quietly reviewed more than a dozen incidents of alleged gross violations of human rights by Israeli security forces since 2020, but have gone to great lengths to preserve continued access to US weapons for the units responsible for the alleged violations, contributing – former US officials say – to the sense of impunity with which Israel has approached its war in Gaza.

An estimated 24,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed by Israeli forces since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, a death toll that has spurred condemnation of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the US president, Joe Biden, who has been criticized for failing to rein in Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza.

An investigation by the Guardian, which was based on a review of internal state department documents and interviews with people familiar with sensitive internal deliberations, reveals how special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel from US human rights laws, even as other allies’ military units who receive US support – including, sources say, Ukraine – have privately been sanctioned and faced consequences for committing human rights violations.

State department officials have in effect been able to circumvent the US law that is meant to prevent US complicity in human rights violations by foreign military units – the 1990s-era Leahy law, named after the now retired Vermont senator Patrick Leahy – because, former officials say, extraordinary internal state department policies have been put in place that show extreme deference to the Israeli government. No such special arrangements exist for any other US ally.

The lack of enforcement of the Leahy law in Israel appears especially troubling to its namesake. In a statement to the Guardian, the former Vermont senator said the purpose of the Leahy law was to shield the US from culpability for gross violations of human rights by foreign security forces that receive US aid and deter future violations. “But the law has not been applied consistently, and what we have seen in the West Bank and Gaza is a stark example of that. Over many years I urged successive US administrations to apply the law there, but it has not happened,” Leahy said.

The Israeli army detonates the last university it hadn't destroyed yet. A scene from the explosion of the Palestine University with 315 bombs. The university is owned by businessmen and is not affiliated with any political agenda.
Israel has destroyed all universities and about… pic.twitter.com/eVob3i5HEv

— Ramy Abdu (@RamAbdu) January 17, 2024

Gaza Internet Blackout Conceals Israel's Human Rights Violations—And Is Itself One

Human rights advocates sounded the alarm as Thursday marked the seventh straight day of a near-total telecommunications blackout in the Gaza Strip—the ninth and longest outage since Israel declared war in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7.

"For over 100 days, Gaza has endured on-and-off disruptions and internet shutdowns, with its people now facing the longest blackout since October," said Kassem Mnejja, a campaigner with the digital rights group Access Now.

"With the people of Gaza continually in the dark, documenting and sharing information about what is happening on the ground is increasingly challenging, if not outright impossible," added Mnejja, whose group is calling for a physical and digital cease-fire.

Paltel, a Palestinian internet service provider (ISP), said on social media last week: "We regret to announce that all telecom services in Gaza Strip have been lost due to the ongoing aggression. Gaza is blacked out again." ...

Sharing a new graph from the watchdog NetBlocks that shows network connectivity in Gaza throughout the war, Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, noted that the start of the current blackout coincided with International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings for the South African-led case accusing Israel of genocide.

The section of South Africa's 84-page application to the ICJ summarizing genocidal acts states that "Israel is deliberately imposing telecommunications blackouts on Gaza and restricting access by fact-finding bodies and the international media. At the same time, Palestinian journalists are being killed at a rate significantly higher than has occurred in any conflict in the past 100 years."

A Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate volunteer said last week that the group has evidence that at least 96 of the 109 Gaza reporters whose deaths it documented "were deliberately and specifically targeted by surgical Israeli strikes against them."

Jonathan Cook, worth a full read:

UK Chief Rabbi Blesses War Crimes in Gaza

Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, spoke at a public event at a synagogue earlier this month to extol the “outstanding” performance of the Israeli military in Gaza. He did so days before South Africa began to argue before the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Israel is committing genocide in the enclave. Whether Israel is eventually found to be perpetrating genocide may prove more a political decision than a legal verdict, given the pressures on the 15 judges from their respective national leaderships.

But it is indisputable that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. It is known to have killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and seriously wounded tens of thousands more. It has driven from their homes the overwhelming majority of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million — that is, Israel has ethnically cleansed them. Israel has repeatedly bombed the “safe zones” to which it has ordered civilians to flee, as well as critical infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and bakeries. It has imposed a “complete siege” that is denying food, aid and medicine, leading to mass starvation and the spread of lethal disease.

Video footage has shown Israeli soldiers in Gaza gleefully smashing up shops; stripping Palestinian men and boys to their underwear; and shooting civilians, including women, in the street as they carry white flags. Soldiers even executed three of Israel’s hostages trying to escape captivity and surrender with an SOS sign.

Yet Britain’s chief rabbi, the face of Judaism in the U.K., has raised his voice to call all of this “the most outstanding possible thing.” He has gone further: he has described the troops committing these crimes “our heroic soldiers” and revealed that his own son, Danny, is assisting with the attack on Gaza in the Israeli military. He has said he is “immensely proud” of him. Mirvis could have chosen a form of weaselly words of the kind Israel’s apologists more typically deploy. He could have argued that the Israeli military was carrying out its task in Gaza as best as it could in near-impossible circumstances. That the Palestinians killed in Gaza were unfortunate collateral damage as the Israeli military sought to eradicate Hamas.

But he didn’t. He called the undoubted war crimes being carried out over the past three months “the most outstanding thing.” ...

As the effective head of British Judaism, Mirvis is giving religious sanction to the carrying out of war crimes. Many of the soldiers in Gaza — a significant proportion of them religious — will now have reason to believe that the crimes they and their army have been committing over the past three months are blessed, that their mission is divinely ordained. In short, Mirvis has implied that killing Palestinians is God’s work. ... Mirvis has shown beyond doubt that extremist preachers are to be found not just in mosques but in synagogues too.

US carries out fifth strike against Houthis as Biden admits bombing isn’t stopping attacks

The US has carried out a fifth strike against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, even as Joe Biden acknowledged that bombing the rebels has yet to stop their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Late on Thursday US warplanes targeted anti-ship missiles that “were aimed into the southern Red Sea and prepared to launch,” according to US Central Command.

But in an exchange with reporters in Washington DC, the US president was frank about the efficacy of the US airstrikes. “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”

Soon after Biden’s remarks, Houthi militia launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at a US-owned tanker ship that hit the water near the vessel but caused no injuries or damage, according to the US military.

Biden’s comments came hours after the leader of the Houthis urged the Arab world to mount mass boycotts of Israeli goods as he claimed US and UK missile attacks launched on his country were a sign that the movement’s attacks on Israeli-linked commercial shipping was having an impact.

In an hour-long address carried on Arabic media channels and suffused with religious rhetoric, Abdulmalik al-Houthi said it was “a great honour and blessing to be confronting America directly”. Al-Houthi claimed the only effect of the recent missile strikes had been to improve his army and navy’s technology, and he ridiculed Joe Biden as “an elderly man that has trouble climbing the stairs of an aeroplane yet is travelling 9,000 miles to attack those that wanted to stand by the oppressed people of Gaza”.

He asked why countries that oppressed Gaza felt they had the right to label others as terrorists for fulfilling their religious duty to come to the help of Palestinians, a reference to Washington’s decision on Wednesday to give notice it intends formally to designate the Houthis as a terrorist group. He said the Houthis had been singled out because they were prepared to take practical steps to support the Palestinians, whereas the general position of the leaders of many Arab and Islamic countries remained lukewarm and weak.

Max Blumenthal: Israel’s Wider War

Israeli Military Chief Says Lebanon War Likely in Coming Months

Visiting troops near the northern border, head of Israel’s military, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, discussed the potential of war in Lebanon, saying the likelihood of a conflict in the coming months is “much higher” than it has been.

Lt. Gen Halevi said he believes Israel will be starting the war with more advantages than in the past, and that lessons learned in Gaza will be applied to the situation in Lebanon. Tens of thousands of troops are reportedly being readied for the new offensive. ...

Lt. Gen. Halevi was explicit about the goal, saying it is “very clear” that the military needs to allow Israeli citizens to return to their homes in the north, and this would be accomplished through a new conflict with Hezbollah.

Pakistan Launches Retaliatory Airstrikes in Iran Targeting Militant Groups

Pakistan said Thursday that it carried out airstrikes targeting militants in Iran, which came after an Iranian attack on Pakistani soil.

Pakistani officials said the strikes targeted seven locations used by ethnic Baloch militant groups known as the Balochistan Liberation Army and Balochistan Liberation Front. Pakistani warplanes and drones hit targets about 30 miles inside Iran in the Sistan and Balochistan province.

Iran condemned the strikes and said the attack killed nine foreign nationals, three women, four children, and two men. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it “condemns the unbalanced and unacceptable action of Pakistan in the drone attack on non-Iranian citizens in a village on the border wall of the two countries.”

NH Voters to Pressure Biden by Writing 'Cease-Fire' on Primary Ballots

With less than a week until New Hampshire's presidential primary on January 23, critics of U.S. support for Israel's war on Gaza are urging voters in the state to put "cease-fire" on the write-in portion of their ballots rather than Democratic President Joe Biden.

Because of a battle between the Democratic National Committee and New Hampshire leaders, Biden opted to keep his name off the ballot, which will include longshot challengers U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and Marianne Williamson. However, some of the president's supporters have been encouraging voters to write in his name next Tuesday.

3 Democrats Join GOP to Advance Backdoor Attack on Social Security

With the help of three Democratic members, the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee on Thursday advanced legislation to establish a fiscal commission that critics say is a trojan horse for Social Security and Medicare cuts.

The final vote to send the bill to the full House was 22-12, with Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Scott Peters (D-Calif.), and Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) joining every present Republican in supporting the Fiscal Commission Act.

The committee rejected four proposed Democratic amendments, including one supporting tax hikes on the rich to bolster Social Security and Medicare.

Wow.

Outrage as Oklahoma Republican’s bill labels Hispanic people ‘terrorists’

An Oklahoma lawmaker is facing backlash for proposing a discriminatory bill that deems people of Hispanic descent as “terrorists”.

The Republican state representative JJ Humphrey introduced the bill, HB 3133, which seeks to combat problems in the state, such as drug and human trafficking, and lay out punishments to those who have committed these “acts of terrorism”.

The punishment for such a crime would be forfeiting all assets, including any and all property, vehicles and money.

In addition to “a member of a criminal street gang” and someone who “has been convicted of a gang-related offense”, the bill defines a terrorist as “any person who is of Hispanic descent living within the state of Oklahoma”.

Judge in Trump case sets hearing over Fani Willis conflict-of-interest claims

The Georgia judge overseeing the racketeering case charging Donald Trump and allies with attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in the state has scheduled a hearing for February to weigh whether the Fulton county district attorney should be disqualified from prosecuting the charges. In a one-page order, the Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee set an evidentiary hearing for 15 February to address allegations raised by Trump’s co-defendant Michael Roman that the district attorney Fani Willis had an improper romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors.

The judge also ordered the district attorney to file a response to the allegations by 2 February. Earlier this week, Willis’s office had privately told at least two lawyers involved in the case that they intended to submit their written response by that date, people familiar with the matter said.

The case is unlikely to be dismissed outright even if the allegations are proven true. But that could result in the disqualification of Willis, which, under Georgia caselaw, would necessitate the disqualification of the entire Fulton county district attorney’s office, as well.

At issue is an explosive complaint from Roman – director of Trump’s 2020 election-day operations – that Willis should be relieved of bringing the case because of conflicts of interests arising from her ongoing relationship with a lawyer named Nathan Wade, whom she hired as a special prosecutor. The filing claimed Willis personally profited from the contract. Wade was paid at least $653,000 and potentially as much as $1m for legal fees as one of the lead prosecutors on the Trump case, and the filing alleged Wade then paid for trips he took with Willis to Napa Valley and the Caribbean.

Fanis Willis' LOVER Filed for Divorce on SAME DAY He Was Hired To Prosecute Trump

Hunter Biden to appear before House Republicans for private deposition

Hunter Biden has agreed to appear before House Republicans for a private deposition next month, ending months of defiance from the president’s son, who had insisted on testifying publicly.

The House oversight committee announced on Thursday that the two parties have come to an agreement for Hunter Biden to sit for a deposition on 28 February.

US third-party centrists file formal complaint over election ‘conspiracy’

The centrist group No Labels has filed a formal complaint with the justice department, asking it to investigate an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” to shut down its effort to secure ballot access for the 2024 presidential election. No Labels has not yet decided whether it will run a third party against Joe Biden and the Republican nominee, widely expected to be Donald Trump, in November’s presidential election. Critics say the effort would have the unintended consequence of hurting Biden and helping Trump.

Last week No Labels sent an eight-page letter to the justice department’s Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, and Nicole Argentieri, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division, accusing its opponents of violating federal law including racketeering and a number of criminal civil rights provisions.

“There is a group of activists and operatives and party officials who are participating in alleged illegal conspiracy to use intimidation, harassment and fear against representatives of No Labels, its donors and its potential candidates,” Dan Webb, a No Labels leader who has served as the US attorney in Chicago, told a press conference in Washington DC on Thursday.

The letter cites examples including a recent Semafor report on an 80-minute call organised by Matt Bennett, co-founder of the thinktank Third Way. One attendee explained on the call how they would dissuade candidates from running on a No Labels unity ticket: “Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone – everyone – should send the message: if you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it.”

In another case, Holly Page, a co-founder of No Labels, was allegedly approached by a representative of the Lincoln Project and told to walk away from the group. She was allegedly warned: “You have no idea of the forces aligned against you. You will never be able to work in Democratic politics again.”

Carbon released by sea floor bottom trawling ‘too big to ignore’

Scientists have long known that bottom trawling – the practice of dragging massive nets along the seabed to catch fish – churns up carbon from the sea floor. Now, for the first time, researchers have calculated just how much trawling releases into the atmosphere: 370m tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide a year – an amount, they say, that is “too big to ignore”.

Over the study period, 1996-2020, they estimated the total carbon dioxide released from trawling to the atmosphere to be 8.5 to 9.2bn tonnes. The scientists described trawling as “marine deforestation” that causes “irreparable harm” to the climate, society and wildlife.

The study – Atmospheric CO₂ emissions and ocean acidification from bottom trawling, written by a global team of climate and ocean experts – found that 55-60% of the carbon dioxide in the water released from the seabed by trawlers will make it to the atmosphere within nine years.

Trawling hotspots in the East China Sea, the Baltic, the North Sea and the Greenland Sea have the largest climate emissions, the study said. Carbon released from the sea floor also causes local acidification, reducing the oceans’ capacity to absorb carbon, the study found.

“We have long known that dragging heavy fishing nets – some as large as 10 747 jets – across the ocean floor destroys sea life and habitats,” said Dr Trisha Atwood, an aquatic ecologist at Utah State University and National Geographic’s Pristine Seas. “Only recently, we have discovered that bottom trawling also unleashes plumes of carbon, which otherwise would be safely stored for millennia in the ocean floor.” Sediment plumes from commercial trawling, not unlike vapour trails left by aircraft, can be seen from space.

Meadow brown butterflies ‘adapt’ to global heating by developing fewer spots

Female meadow brown butterflies who develop in warmer weather sport fewer spots on their wings, in an unexpected adaptation to global heating. The discovery was made by University of Exeter scientists who found that females whose chrysalises developed at 11C had six spots on average, while those developing at 15C had just three.

The findings may challenge lepidopterists’ long-held views about why butterflies have varying numbers of spots. The meadow brown, a common midsummer butterfly found on grasslands across Europe, has large eyespots on its forewings that are believed to startle and alarm predators. The eyespots also encourage potential predators to home in on the wing-edge where the spots are positioned, well away from the butterfly’s vulnerable body, enabling the insect to escape attacks with no more damage than tatty wings. ...

Prof Richard ffrench-Constant, from Exeter’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation and co-author of the study, said: “Our findings show that fewer of these hindwing spots appear when females experience higher temperatures during their pupal stage (in a chrysalis before emerging as a butterfly).

“This suggests the butterflies adapt their camouflage based on the conditions. For example, with fewer spots they may be harder to spot on dry, brown grass that would be more common in hot weather.

Also of Interest

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

They Call It Unconstitutional, But Don’t Impeach

South Africa's Case at ICJ Also Exposes the US and the West

Bibi Rejects Palestinian Statehood, Biden Says Bombing Yemen Doesn’t Work But Will Continue Anyway

Israeli army gassed my son ‘like Auschwitz,’ mother of slain Israeli soldier says

Israel Admits Palestinian Prisoner’s Torture Led to Death

New Zealand’s Māori king has called a rare nationwide meeting

Glenn Greenwald SOUNDS OFF On Ben Shapiro, Bill Ackman, Hypocrisy

Sunak faces election wipe out. Russia sanctions sink UK economy

A Little Night Music

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Sail On!

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Better Things

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Nobody's Baby

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Midnight Rider

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - I Learned the Hard Way

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Matter of Time

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Live At L'Olympia (2014)