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"It's a shame cars don't run on cognitive dissonance."

-- Lewis Black

News and Opinion

The Empire Depends On Our Unwillingness To Look At Its Crimes

This entire sick dystopia is held together by psychological compartmentalization. By the fact that it’s more comfortable to avoid looking directly at the horrors of the status quo we live under, even though on some level we all know those horrors are there.

All the shitlibs you see cheering for Biden right now are on some level aware that he’s backing a genocide of unbelievable savagery that is inflicting unfathomable amounts of suffering upon our fellow human beings, but they avoid looking at this reality directly. All the information is right there right out in the open, but they cognitively squirm and twist away from it so that they see only Biden’s acts like slightly reducing America’s student loan debt and not being Donald Trump.

They do this because to really wrap their minds around the depravity of what Biden is doing would shatter their world. It would mean letting in some very scary truths about their nation, their government and their political system that they’d rather avoid noticing. It would mean a crushing deluge of cognitive dissonance until they dramatically revised their worldview into something that could allow for a Democratic president behaving like a complete monster. It would mean having to completely restructure their understanding of the world they live in.

That takes effort. It takes emotional labor. It takes a willingness to experience a high degree of psychological discomfort as you wade into the muck of reality to face the inconvenient facts you’ve been avoiding looking at your entire adult life. It takes a willingness to experience this unpleasantness not just intellectually, but emotionally and viscerally as well. You’ve got to look at it with your eyes and your mind and your heart and your guts. And you have to somehow find the time and psychological spaciousness to do all this in a society that is designed to keep ordinary people busy, tired, dysfunctional, and stressed out.

A vast globe-spanning empire is built on the foundation of how difficult it is to look directly at something that is extremely unpleasant to look at, about which you have been propagandized and indoctrinated your entire life into accepting as normal. In school we’re taught that we live in a democracy and that our government is basically good while other governments are bad and their countries are places you would not want to live in, and then in adulthood this false indoctrination is reinforced and built upon by propaganda from the mass media. Before we have time to learn how to think critically, we are spoon-fed a worldview designed by the powerful for the benefit of the powerful, and we will experience cognitive dissonance if at any time we are presented with information that contradicts it.

That’s the primary job of mass media propaganda: not so much to convince us to believe new stories about weapons of mass destruction or whatever, but to build and reinforce a worldview within us which is fiercely loyal to establishment power structures. That’s why the propaganda is served up in two different ideological flavors: one for the shitlibs and one for the rightists. You’re funneled into whichever mainstream, power-serving echo chamber best suits your conditioning and disposition, and then you are fed a power-serving worldview therein which you will zealously defend as the gospel truth.

It’s a highly effective trap, but it’s not inescapable. Anyone who’s ever escaped from an abusive relationship, a dysfunctional family or a cult knows that it is possible to find your way out of a psychological cage that has been built for you by a skillful manipulator, even if there were times in the past when you hadn’t even known the cage bars were there. The light of truth has a way of finding cracks through which to enter, and all it takes to start things off is a faint little glimmer.

We can fight the machine by creating as many of those cracks as possible, which in practice looks like doing everything we can to wake our fellow humans up to the abusive relationship we are in with the western empire. Finding as many ways as possible to show as many eyes as we can the murder, the injustice, the exploitation and the ecocide, not just intellectually but emotionally as well. Many of the indoctrinated are too far gone to be reached right now, or are too personally invested in the status quo they defend, but many others are right on the cusp of leaving the cult of the empire, ready to take the leap if they are just given a good enough reason to.

And to be clear, this is already happening. If this wasn’t already clear to you, Gen Z’s ferocious opposition to Biden’s butchery in Gaza should have driven this point home now. It is not a coincidence that the first generation to turn their backs on mass media indoctrination and start creating their own media and their own ideas is by far the best on Israel-Palestine right now. The humans have already begun shaking each other awake, and its happening most among the humans who are furthest from death.

Right now it feels like the empire is leaning very hard on our tendency to dissociate and look away. Their actions in Gaza look like they’re torturing someone to death in the town square and looking us all dead in the eyes while they do it, trusting that we’ll turn our gaze away and submit. But it isn’t working. People are looking more, not less. The western empire has never had more critical attention on it than it has right at this very moment.

Getting people to look at the empire’s real ugly face behind the mask of perception management is difficult to do, but it’s also the only thing we have to do. Once enough people start looking, the game is already over; it has already lost all its power.

Lost & Fearful in The Middle East

Of all the amateurish moments to arise as the Biden regime conducts its foreign policy, the White House’s official statement as B1–B bombers let loose over Iraq and Syria last Friday may be the taker of the cake. As the ordnance fell on 85 targets in seven locations, many of them outposts of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, our addled president felt compelled to insist, “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.”

How many times have we heard this since these latest operations in Iraq, Syria and Yemen began? Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, has said the same thing in the same words. Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, has, too. So has Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. So has John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman.

Once we are finished counting, we can consider the astounding stupidity that has led the Biden regime into this impossible contradiction. Reflecting the president’s compulsive support for Israel over the whole of his political life, the U.S. has incautiously stayed with the Zionist state as it seeks to widen the war all the way to Iran by way of Lebanon and Syria. Now, as the war runs straight up to the Islamic Republic’s borders, Biden and his people take to insisting they do not want that wider war the Israelis are bent on provoking. ...

Escalation, to take the most obvious problem, is not the right way to deescalate. You cannot begin bombing other nations — illegally, let’s not forget — while killing noncombatants in the process (as the Iraqis and Syrians have charged), and tell them in simultaneous statements that you do not wish to provoke conflict.

Well, you can, but you cannot expect to be taken seriously.

Canada Cuts UNRWA Funding as U.S. Kills Hezbollah Head in DRONE STRIKE, Pentagon Says 'Not at War'

Three dead as US drone strike targets Iran-linked militia leader in Baghdad

A US drone strike on a car in Baghdad has killed three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, including a high-ranking commander, officials said after a string of blasts were heard in the Iraqi capital.

The strike late on Wednesday came on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad. A crowd gathered as emergency response teams picked through the wreckage. Security forces closed off the heavily guarded Green Zone, where a number of diplomatic compounds are located, amid calls for protesters to storm the US embassy.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the commander who was killed had been targeted “in response to the attacks on US service members.”

The strike killed “a Kataeb Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on US forces in the region,” according to CENTCOM, which said there are “no indications of collateral damage or civilian casualties at this time.”

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Biden Expanding War?

Netanyahu rejects Gaza ceasefire deal and says victory is ‘within reach’

Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the terms of a ceasefire in Gaza proposed by Hamas and rebuffed US pressure to move more quickly towards a mediated settlement to the war, saying there could be no solution to Israel’s security issues except “absolute victory” over the militant group.

The Israeli prime minister also confirmed that the Israel Defense Forces had been instructed to commence operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

In a sharp rebuff to the Biden administration and the visiting US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Netanyahu said it would require months more fighting before Hamas was defeated.

Suggesting victory was “within reach”, the Israeli PM said: “There is no alternative for the military collapse [of Hamas]. There will not be a civilian collapse [of Hamas rule] without a military one.”

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official, told a news conference in Beirut that Netanyahu’s continued pursuit of war in Gaza showed the goal was “genocide” against Palestinians, and that a Hamas delegation led by senior official Khalil al-Hayya would travel to Cairo on Thursday “to follow up on” the negotiations within the framework of Egyptian-Qatari efforts.

Aaron Maté (The GrayZone) : Congress Wants War Without Declaring It

Lebanon rejects demands to push Hezbollah away from southern border

Lebanese caretaker Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, voiced on 6 February the nation’s rejection of recent Israeli and international demands seeking to push Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah, north of the Litani River, saying Beirut will not accept ‘partial solutions’ to resolving the cross-border conflict.

“Western countries demand the retreat of Hezbollah for about eight to ten kilometers north of Litani,” Bou Habib said in an interview with Nida al-Watan. “This is a formula that Lebanon rejects. [Beirut] will not accept ‘partial solutions’ that do not bring the desired peace and do not secure stability but will lead to the renewal of the war again and again.” Instead, the foreign minister called for a “comprehensive implementation of UN Resolution 1701.”

UN Resolution 1701 was issued following the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, which called for, among other things, respect for the Blue Line, a border drawn up by the UN in 2000.

Bou Habib expressed Lebanon’s demands in relation to the liberation of Shebaa Farms and the Kfarchouba hills, saying, "What we hear from some foreign ministers of the Western countries is that Israel is not in the question of this withdrawal, and our answer was that Lebanon will only accept a complete solution to all border issues with Israel, and half solutions do not work and will not [be accepted].” He also demanded that part of a potential deal be for Israel to “stop the air, land and sea violations that have exceeded 30,000 violations since 2006."

On 5 February, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that “time is running out” in relation to a diplomatic solution with Lebanon, adding to his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne during her visit to Israel that “if we do not reach a diplomatic solution on Lebanon, we will move militarily to return the residents of Israeli towns on Lebanon’s borders.”

Ex-UNRWA Official: Funding Cuts Make Donor Countries Complicit in Starvation of Gaza

‘Our last stop is Rafah’: trapped Palestinians await Israeli onslaught

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into the small southern Gaza border city of Rafah are being forced to contemplate being displaced once more as an Israeli offensive looms. Those who fled to the border city, almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, face a terrifying choice: stay in overcrowded Rafah – once home to 280,000 people – and wait for the attack, or risk moving north through an area of continued fighting.

Large areas are occupied by tented encampments, which have encroached even on some of Rafah’s cemeteries. Aid officials have described the city as a “pressure cooker of despair”, warning that a full-scale Israeli offensive on an area so overcrowded could cause large-scale loss of civilian life, and could be a war crime.

While Rafah has been hit by Israeli strikes throughout the war, the bombing and Israeli troops have been edging ever closer to the city, whose southern boundary is delineated by the mainly closed border with Egypt. Fears of an imminent Israeli assault have been increased by strikes closer to Rafah, including by Israeli gunboats that shelled the western road into the city on Wednesday. ...

Israeli officials have said that before any ground offensive in Rafah the military would coordinate with Egypt, which is becoming increasingly alarmed at the prospect of an offensive on its border, and would seek ways of evacuating most of the displaced people northward. However, it is not clear how, given the situation on the ground. More than half of Gaza is under Israeli military evacuation orders, while fighting and widespread destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure is continuing.

Saudis EMBARRASS Biden With Israel Rebuke

Japan's Itochu cuts ties with Israel's Elbit Systems, citing ICJ ruling

One of Japan’s biggest firms, Itochu, has decided to end its partnership with a major Israeli defence company due to Israel's ongoing war on Gaza.

Itochu Corp’s aviation unit will end its strategic cooperation with Israel's Elbit Systems by the end of the month after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians and do more to help civilians.

Itochu Aviation, Elbit Systems, and Nippon Aircraft Supply (NAS) signed a strategic cooperation memorandum of understanding (MoU) in March of last year.

"Taking into consideration the International Court of Justice's order on January 26, and that the Japanese government supports the role of the court, we have already suspended new activities related to the MoU, and plan to end the MoU by the end of February," said Itochu Chief Financial Officer Tsuyoshi Hachimura.

The Japanese firm had sought guidance from Japan’s foreign ministry who had told the company to observe the ICJ findings in “good faith”, a spokesperson for Itochu told CNN on Tuesday.

US man who says IDF kidnapped his mother calls on Biden to take action

A New Orleans-area man who has reported that Israeli troops kidnapped his mother – a US citizen – from a family home on the occupied West Bank Palestinian territory is asking Joe Biden’s White House to follow through on the president’s recent promise to respond “if you harm an American”.

Ibrahim Hamed said he realized that Biden’s remarks on Friday – “if you harm an American, we will respond” – came after the United States and Britain attacked Houthi targets in Yemen in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three US army troops. But he said the sentiment should apply equally even in the case of a Palestinian American who has been taken by Israeli troops. ...

In a prepared statement responding to a request for comment, the IDF said it had arrested Esmail “for incitement on social media”. The statement did not elaborate but said Esmail was arrested alongside others in Silwad who were then taken in “for further questioning”. Esmail remained in custody of the Israel prison service on Wednesday, a source with knowledge of her whereabouts said. ...

Neighbors called Hamed’s family in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna and told him that several IDF troops had pulled up in military vehicles and dragged away Esmail, 46, while she was beaten, handcuffed and blindfolded. Hamed said he received videos and pictures of the scene that greeted his mother as she was being taken. He could not believe that about 10 IDF troops had shown up to get Esmail, who he said weighed 110lb. ...

In addition to contacting the American embassy in Jerusalem, Hamed said he had solicited help from New Orleans’s congressman, the Democratic US House member Troy Carter. But he said he had “not heard anything government-wise” regarding his mother’s status. “There’s zero communication … I don’t know what’s going on,” Hamed said of his mother’s plight. “I feel as if they’re not giving enough attention to her.”

100 Jewish Cease-Fire Supporters Arrested Blocking Biden's NYC Motorcade Route

Around 100 Jewish American and allied activists were arrested in New York City Wednesday after they blocked President Joe Biden's motorcade route to protest U.S. complicity in Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinian people and to demand an immediate Gaza cease-fire.

The group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) led the Upper East Side demonstration, during which activists sat down in the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, where the president was attending a nearby fundraiser.

"As Jewish New Yorkers we want to make crystal clear that President Biden is not welcome in our city while he continues to fund and arm the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza," saidJVP's Jay Saper.

JVP activist Maya Edery noted that this is Biden's first visit to New York since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

"Instead of answering to the majority of his base that is calling for a cease-fire, he is meeting with corporate donors behind closed doors," Edery said.

US Military Advisors Deployed to Taiwan-Controlled Islands on China’s Coast

US military advisors have been deployed to Kinmen, a group of small islands that are controlled by Taiwan but located just off the coast of mainland China, Taiwan’s TVBS has reported. ...

The US typically sends special operations forces, such as US Army Green Berets, to act as advisors in Taiwan. The TVBS report said the advisors were sent to Kinmen for “long-term stations” at the Taiwanese military’s “amphibious camps.” Advisors were also sent to Penghu, an archipelago about 30 miles west of the main island of Taiwan.

The report said the deployment fulfilled the US’s 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which called for the US to increase its training of Taiwan’s forces. The 2024 NDAA, which President Biden signed into law in December, required the Pentagon to establish a “comprehensive” training program for the Taiwanese military.

Ukraine, Israel Funding DOOMED? As Senate Votes

Senate blocks bipartisan $118bn bill on US-Mexico border and Ukraine

The Senate blocked a bipartisan border and national security bill from advancing on Wednesday, as Democrats accused Republicans of bending to the political wishes of Donald Trump at the expense of their constituents.

The vote was 49 to 50, with 45 Democrats and four Republicans supporting the bill’s advancement. Sixty votes were needed to begin debate on the bill.

Most of the Republican conference opposed the bill’s advancement after complaining that the legislation did not go far enough in addressing the needs at the US-Mexico border, where arrests for illegal crossings have hit record highs. Five members of the Democratic caucus also voted to block the bill, out of concern about the severity of the border-security measures and the added funding for Israel’s military amid the war in Gaza.

The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, initially supported the bill’s advancement but then changed his vote – a procedural maneuver that would allow the chamber to revisit the proposal in the future.

Black and Hispanic voters deserting Democratic party in large numbers, poll says

Black and Hispanic voters are deserting the Democratic party in numbers that will present a concern for Joe Biden’s re-election effort, a poll has found.

Among Black Americans expressing a party preference, the Democratic lead over Republicans has dropped by almost 20% in only three years, according to the Gallup survey.

The Democratic lead among Hispanic adults and adults aged 18 to 29, meanwhile, also slid by almost the same degree, leaving the party with only a modest advantage.

Both groups, but especially Black voters, were key ingredients of the alliance that gave Biden a more than 7m-vote advantage over Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

DEM DISARRAY? Biden GAFFES Again, Hillary Clinton HITS Tucker Over Putin Interview, Pelosi's PEEVED?

US supreme court to hear arguments on keeping Trump off 2024 ballot

The US supreme court will hear oral argument on Thursday in one of the most high-stakes cases in American politics this century, thrusting a beleaguered court to the center of the 2024 election.

The court is considering whether Donald Trump is eligible to run for president. The novel legal question at the heart of the case, Donald J Trump v Norma Anderson et al, is whether the 14th amendment to the constitution prohibits Trump from holding office because of his conduct on 6 January 2021. Section 3 of the amendment says that any member of Congress or officer of the United States who takes an oath to protect the constitution and then subsequently engages in insurrection cannot hold office. That ban, the amendment says, can only be overridden by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress.

There is no precedent for the case. The 14th amendment, enacted after the civil war, has never been used to challenge the eligibility of a presidential candidate, but the idea began picking up steam after two conservative legal scholars published a 126-page law review article last summer arguing the amendment clearly disqualified Trump.

A group of Colorado voters sued under the law last year, relying on the theory to try to disqualify Trump from the ballot. After a five-day trial, a Colorado district court judge said Trump had committed insurrection, but was not disqualified because he was not an officer of the United States. The Colorado supreme court reversed that ruling in December, removing Trump from the ballot in a 4-3 decision. While lawsuits have been filed in dozens of other states seeking to remove Trump from the ballot, only Colorado and Maine have done so thus far.

The justices accepted a request from Trump to hear the case and expedited its review because of Colorado’s fast approaching 5 March primary. The compressed schedule and likely quick turnaround of the case means that oral argument – currently set for 80 minutes on Thursday – could offer an unusual level of insight into how the justices are weighing the arguments.

EPA tightens US pollution controls on soot

The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized long-awaited new limits on soot, the tiny air pollution particles emitted by sources as varied as power plants, factories, car exhaust and wildfires.

“Today’s action is a critical step forward that will better protect workers, families and communities from the dangerous and costly impacts of fine particle pollution,” the EPA administrator, Michael Regan, told reporters on Tuesday.

Also known as fine particle pollution, soot is one of the nation’s most widespread air pollutants. It is also one of the most dangerous, causing an estimated 85,000 to 200,000 excess US deaths annually; the tiny particles can become lodged in human lungs and sometimes even enter the bloodstream, triggering asthma attacks, cancer, and heart and lung disease.

The strengthened pollution controls, unveiled on Wednesday, will lower the annual soot standard to 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the previous standard of 12 micrograms.

In 2032 – the first year that regulators expect compliance with the standard to be required – alone, the new rule will prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths, the agency estimates. It will also result in health benefits valued at $46bn, including 290,000 lost workdays averted, 800,000 asthma symptoms avoided, and thousands of emergency room visits prevented, the agency says.

Also of Interest

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

Israel assaults Rafah, where one million Gaza refugees are sheltering with nowhere to go

Israel Kills Civilians in Syria

Regional Belgian government suspends arms export licences to Israel

MBS Says John Kirby Needs Some Mouth Wash

New York Times Defames Iraq's Militia As 'Foreign Elements'

Baghdad rejects neighbors 'settling scores on Iraqi soil'

Study Finds Media Giants NY Times, CNN and Fox News Pushing for US War in Yemen

‘Harassed constantly’: Imran Khan’s party fights state pressure in Pakistan election

Troubling Trends in Armenia Mirror Pre-War Ukraine

Out Of Control Anglo Immigration

Bibi REJECTS Hamas Ceasefire Proposal

Farmers are Fighting Back & NOT Giving In To The World Economic Forum!

Craziest Thing The NY Stock Exchange Has Ever Tried! w/ Carol Roth

HEADS EXPLODE Over Tucker Interviewing Putin!

Ukraine Terrible Day: Rus Bombs, Missiles Ukr, Avdeyevka Falling, 1K Casualties, Senate Rejects Aid

A Little Night Music

Chris Kenner - Land of a 1,000 Dances

Chris Kenner - Something You Got

Chris Kenner - Don't Let Her Pin That Charge On Me

Chris Kenner - My Wife

Chris Kenner - They Took My Money

Chris Kenner - That's My Girl

Chris Kenner - She Can Dance

Chris Kenner - Whats Wrong With Life

Chris Kenner - All Night Rambler