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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Nina Simone

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features jazz singer Nina Simone. Enjoy!

^{Nina Simone - I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free}

“Actions may speak louder than words but patterns scream the loudest.”

-- Christine E. Szymanski

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News and Opinion

Ignore What Western Officials Say About Israel; Watch Their Actions Instead

Another fake, stupid story is making headlines in the mass media today about how bad and wrong President Biden secretly believes Israel’s actions in Gaza are. NBC News is now reporting that Biden has been referring to Benjamin Netanyahu as an “asshole” in private conversations and saying the assault in Gaza “has to stop”.

“Biden has grown steadily more frustrated with the rising Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza — now a reported 28,000 — and Netanyahu’s reluctance to pursue a long-term peace agreement,” NBC News reports.

Buried all the way down in paragraph 15 of the article, we get to the real story:

“Yet, even as Biden has escalated his rhetoric, he is not yet prepared to make significant policy changes, officials said. He and his aides continue to believe his approach of unequivocally supporting Israel is the right one.”

All the relevant information in this news story that’s getting so much attention today is contained in paragraph 15. None of the words outside of paragraph 15 matter. Paragraph 15 is the whole entire story.

The Biden administration keeps feeding these bogus stories to the press about how “frustrated” they are with Israel’s insistence on massacring civilians with unbelievable savagery, without ever actually making any meaningful policy changes or taking any meaningful actions to stop it. The White House has expressed “concerns” about Israel’s actions in Gaza in more than 20 statements, all without any actual, real-life steps having been taken to curb those actions in any way.

It’s absurd to pretend that the things Biden is privately thinking and feeling about Israel and Gaza are of any interest or significance when Biden is actively backing Israel’s atrocities and bombing anyone in the middle east who tries to stop them. Biden’s feelings aren’t going to stop kids from getting ripped to shreds by Israeli massacres Rafah.

(As an aside, it’s also absurd to pretend Biden thinks anything of any relevance at all given what we now know about the state of his cognitive decline. Even if he really did call the Israeli prime minister an asshole in private conversations, for all we know he was talking about a long-dead Israeli prime minister from his senate days like Ariel Sharon. Hell, he could’ve been talking about the president of Mexico.)

The White House could end this with a phone call, just as it ended the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon with a phone call in 1982. Israel is fully dependent on the United States to perpetrate these mass atrocities in Gaza, and the Israelis are fully aware of this. The genocidal massacres have continued in Gaza for four months because the US empire wants them to continue.

But the shitlib media have taken this ridiculously fake “Biden wants Netanyahu to stop but he just won’t” story and run with it. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell just got together with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to tell their brainwashed viewers that we’re looking at a “showdown” between the brave and righteous Biden and the sinister and murderous Netanyahu.

Really these institutions are just telling American progressives what they want to hear, in the same way Israeli officials provide liberal-sounding messaging for western audiences while spouting genocidal rhetoric in Hebrew to their own citizens. The Biden administration is feeding pleasing sound bites to the mass media about the president saying mean things about Netanyahu in order to placate their base, while having their foot firmly on the gas pedal of concrete actions toward continuing the genocide in Gaza.

This is just what Democrat presidencies look like. Republican presidents like Trump and Bush just come right out say things like they invaded Syria “to take the oil” and they invaded Iraq because God told them to, whereas the Bidens and the Obamas have to make it look pretty. Obama spent eight years feeding eloquent words to the public while continuing and expanding all the most depraved aspects of the Bush administration, thus accomplishing the necessary straddle of facilitating the violence and tyranny of the empire while simultaneously allowing liberals to feel good about themselves.

That’s why you’re seeing this phony song and dance about Biden and Netanyahu being secretly at odds, even while the Biden White House explicitly says “We’re going to continue to support Israel” when asked if they’ve ever threatened to withhold military support if Israel commits war crimes in Rafah.

Western officials keep babbling about how “concerned” they are about what’s happening in Gaza without actually doing anything. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, British Labour leader Keir Starmer, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly have all been making use of the word “concern” with regard to Gaza so as to be seen as publicly fretting about Israel’s actions without actually presenting any concrete opposition to them.

The correct response to all this lip service to the stated values of the liberal international order is to ignore their words and watch their actions. This is good advice for government policy on Israel and Gaza, and it’s good advice for all other government policy too.

Words can be used to spin narratives and manage perception in ways that concrete actions cannot. Disregard the narrative spin and the public statements and watch the concrete, physical movements of money, weapons and resources. That’s how you penetrate through the distortions of the propaganda matrix and distinguish fact from empty word stories.

Ignore their official public statements and the unofficial public statements they feed the press; watch their actions instead. Disregard what they say and watch what they do. That will show you their true position. That will tell you who they are.

Biden joins international calls for Israel to halt planned Rafah offensive

Joe Biden has added his voice to growing international calls for Israel to drop plans for an all-out military assault on the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, after a ferocious hostage rescue operation that killed dozens of Palestinians. Speaking after talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House on Monday, the US president said: “A major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than 1 million people sheltering there. ...

Biden said that the US had been working “day and night” on efforts to agree a six-week pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas as a stepping stone to a longer ceasefire. He said that “key elements of the deal are on the table” although gaps remained. ...

Earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, congratulated the soldiers who mounted the dramatic rescue of two Israeli hostages in the city, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled seeking shelter, describing it as a “perfect operation”. The Israeli military launched airstrikes on nearby buildings to support the rescue, killing at least 67 Palestinians. Hamas later claimed that other Israeli hostages were also killed in the bombardment.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, furiously rounded on the Israeli leader amid growing international alarm at the rising death toll in Gaza – which reached 28,340 on Monday – saying that Netanyahu “doesn’t listen to anyone”. Responding to Netanyahu’s statement that refugees in Rafah would be evacuated from the area before a major military offensive, Borrell said: “Where? To the moon? Where are they going to evacuate these people to?”

Will Egypt Ditch Camp David Accords If Israel Invades Rafah?

It is being widely reported based on press leaks that the Egyptian government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has privately threatened Israel. Cairo is said to have warned that the 1978 Camp David Peace Treaty will be suspended “with immediate effect” if the government of Binyamin Netanyahu tries to take over the Philadelphi Corridor at the Gaza-Egypt Border and if it expels the Palestinians of Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula at the Rafah border crossing as a result of an invasion of Rafah City. Israel attempted to convince an Egyptian delegation to Tel Aviv on Friday that Cairo should cooperate with the Israeli war plan, but allegedly was rebuffed.

The peace treaty has been the cornerstone of Egyptian-Israeli relations for nearly half a century.

The Egyptian government had not said much in public about these reports until yesterday. Mahmud `Abd al-Raziq of al-Khalij 35 reports reports that on Sunday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued a stern warning to Israel that any operation in Rafah City would have “severe consequences.” ...

In an interview with Sky News, the former deputy head of Egyptian military intelligence, Gen. Ahmad Ibrahim, had said that from his country’s point of view any Israeli take-over of the Philadelphi Corridor would constitute a breach of the Camp David Accords. He warned that Egypt’s military is “powerful.” ...

It seems clear that even countries that are more or less at peace with Israel, whether formally (Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates) or informally (Saudi Arabia) have their hair on fire about the proposed Rafah operation.

Although American newspapers depict Egypt as broke, desperate, and easily manipulated, my own estimation is that Cairo absolutely will not accept the Palestinians of Gaza as refugees on its soil. The Sinai is already a security problem for Cairo, and 2 million radicalized Palestinians would make it ungovernable. No amount of debt forgiveness would make such a bitter pill go down.

Biden FEEDS MEDIA With VENTS About Bibi While DOLING OUT Cash for Israel's GENOCIDE

EU Foreign Policy Chief to World Leaders: 'Stop Saying Please' and Cut Off Arms to Israel

The European Union's top foreign policy official said Monday that the Biden administration and other governments professing concern about the grisly death toll in the Gaza Strip should stop supplying so much weaponry to the Israeli military as it carries out one of the most devastating bombing campaigns in modern history.

Pointing to U.S. President Joe Biden's statement late last week that Israel's war on Gaza has been "over the top," E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said during a press conference in Brussels, "Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed."

Borrell then extended that suggestion to the rest of the international community, saying if governments believe that "this is a slaughter, that too many people are being killed, maybe they have to think about the provision of arms."

"Everybody goes to Tel Aviv, begging, 'Please don't do that, protect civilians, don't kill so many.' How many is too many?" Borrell asked. "It is a little bit contradictory to continue saying that there are 'too many people being killed, too many people being killed, please take care of people, please don't kill so many.' Stop saying please and [do] something."

Update: EU's Borrell on US+Israel:
"If you believe too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms"
"Everybody goes to Tel Aviv begging"
"Netanyahu doesn't listen to anyone. They're going to evacuate. Where? To the moon?"
"Stop saying please & do something!" pic.twitter.com/g8uiprUia2

— Rosie Birchard (@RosieBirchard) February 12, 2024

Bombs, Disease, Starvation: Canadian Doctor Describes the Desperate Situation Inside Gaza

Israel Is 'Obliterating Entire Families With Total Impunity' in Gaza, Amnesty Finds

In the wake of Israel's bombardment of Rafah in Gaza early Monday—and with the threat of a ground invasion looming—Amnesty International released a report detailing four strikes on the supposed "safe" zone that the organization said must be investigated as war crimes.

The strikes killed at least 95 civilians and 42 children, yet Amnesty could not find any evidence that the attacks—carried out against residential dwellings in December and January—hit legitimate military infrastructure or targets. Amnesty said its report shows "how Israeli forces continue to flout international humanitarian law, obliterating entire families with total impunity."

It is a war crime to either target civilians or indiscriminately pursue a military target in a way that harms civilians.

"Entire families were wiped out in Israeli attacks even after they sought refuge in areas promoted as safe and with no prior warning from Israeli authorities," Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International's senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement. "These attacks illustrate an ongoing pattern of Israeli forces brazenly flouting international law, contradicting claims by Israeli authorities that their forces are taking heightened precautions to minimize harm to civilians."

Israel BOMBS Medics Rescuing 6 Year Old Girl

Biden must do more to free Israeli-held US grandmother, rights group says

An influential Arab-American group sought to increase pressure on Monday on the Joe Biden White House to use its influence with Israel to help free a US-Palestinian grandmother detained by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank. Samaher Esmail’s family also alleges that she has been beaten and denied access to medical attention.

At a briefing in Washington DC, Robert McCaw of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the detention of Esmail – one of three US citizens recently arrested by the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza – had shown that being an American was “no protection from Israel’s discriminatory, abusive and violent targeting of Palestinians”.

According to a lawyer who visited Esmail last week, the 46-year-old grandmother was covered in bruises along her wrists, arms and back. She was also only semi-coherent. “The American government needs to do more to protect Palestinians, especially Palestinian Americans, from Israel’s government, and they should start now by securing the release of Samaher and all other Palestinian American prisoners,” McCaw said at Monday’s briefing.

Esmail’s sons Suliman and Ibrahim Hamed urged the US government to do more to demand their mother’s release from Israeli detention and return her home to the US for medical treatment. They said if she was guilty of anything, it was of being a Palestinian American woman “who dares to demand justice and express her opinion”, Suliman Hamed said. “My mom was viciously beaten and taken into unlawful custody by the Israel forces from the West Bank.”

Esmail was detained in a dawn raid in early February in the village of Silwad, according to accounts from family members. It was part of a sweep of military arrests that advocates say has affected hundreds of Palestinians since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. The IDF confirmed last week that Esmail had been arrested for “incitement on social media”, adding that “suspects arrested in the operation were transferred to the security forces for further questioning”.

Military Judge to Rule on C.I.A. Torture Program in Sept. 11 Case

A defense lawyer asked a military judge on Monday to dismiss the Sept. 11 conspiracy charges against a Saudi prisoner who was tortured in C.I.A. custody, describing the secret overseas prison network where the man was held as part of a “vast criminal international enterprise” that trafficked in torture.

Defense lawyers in the case have said for years that the case should be dismissed based on a rarely successful legal doctrine involving “outrageous government conduct.”

On Monday, Walter Ruiz became the first defender to present the argument to a military judge on behalf of Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who is accused of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers with money transfers and travel arrangements.
The interrogation and detention program as carried out on his client so “shocks the conscience,” he said, that Mr. Hawsawi should be dropped from the conspiracy case.

In a nearly daylong presentation, Mr. Ruiz used government documents to argue that the prisoner was sexually assaulted in his first month of detention, waterboarded by C.I.A. interrogators without permission, deprived of sleep and kept isolated in darkened dungeonlike conditions starting in 2003.
In order to build their cases against former C.I.A. prisoners, prosecutors had so-called clean teams of federal agents reinterrogate the defendants at Guantánamo Bay in 2007, without using or threatening violence.

But “no matter how many cleaners they bring into this court, they cannot clean it up,” Mr. Ruiz said. “It smells and reeks of coercion, torture, brutality and depravity.” ...

The timing of the argument suggests that Col. Matthew N. McCall, the fourth judge to preside in the case, will be able to decide the potentially case-turning issue before he retires later this year. The judge has a busy schedule of testimony about the C.I.A. program and the F.B.I. role in it this month and later in the year.

US Senate moves forward $95bn Ukraine and Israel aid package

After many setbacks and much suspense, the Senate appeared on track this week to approve a long-awaited package of wartime funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Republican opponents staged a filibuster to register their disapproval over a measure they could not block.

The Senate passed a procedural vote on Monday, voting 66 to 33, to move the bill forward.

Senators had worked through the weekend on the roughly $95bn emergency spending package, which cleared a series of procedural hurdles as it moved toward final passage. The chamber voted on the legislation on Monday night following hours of debate and a talking filibuster led by Republican senator Rand Paul and joined by a coterie of Donald Trump’s allies in the chamber.

On Monday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said the weekend votes demonstrated “beyond doubt that there’s strong support” for advancing the foreign aid package.

If the bill passes the Senate as expected, the bill would next go to the Republican-led House, where next steps are uncertain. Though a bipartisan majority still supports sending assistance to Ukraine, there is a growing contingent of Republican skeptics who echo Trump’s disdain for the US-backed war effort.

Senate $61B to Ukraine to stop Tump in 2024

Your tax dollars at work:

US spends more than $7m a year to keep up superyacht seized from Russian oligarch

The US government has said it is spending more than $7m a year to maintain a superyacht it seized from a sanctioned Russian oligarch, and urged a judge to let it auction the vessel before a dispute over its ownership is resolved. Authorities in Fiji seized the 348ft (106-meter), $300m Amadea in May 2022, pursuant to a US warrant alleging it was owned by Suleiman Kerimov, a multibillionaire sanctioned by the US treasury department in 2014 and 2018 in response to Russia’s activities in Syria and Ukraine.

Efforts to auction the yacht are being challenged by Eduard Khudainatov, who led Russian state oil and gas company Rosneft from 2010 to 2013. Khudainatov claims ownership of the Amadea, and has said it cannot not be forfeited because he has not been sanctioned.

In a court filing late on Friday federal prosecutors in Manhattan told the US district judge Dale Ho that the $600,000 average monthly maintenance bill for the Amadea has been “excessive”, justifying an auction. They also said talks to have Khudainatov pay for the yacht’s upkeep have broken down. Prosecutors have said in previous court filings that Khudainatov is acting as the Amadea’s “straw owner” to disguise Kerimov’s role, and that maintenance payments are essential to preserving a yacht’s value.

Khudainatov has until 23 February to reply to prosecutors’ request. In a statement, his lawyers said the motion to sell the vessel was “premature” and urged Ho to deny it until he “determines whether the seizure was unconstitutional”. The seizure came as Washington ramped up sanctions enforcement against people close to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, to pressure Moscow to halt its war against Ukraine.

Immigrant child laborers are being killed in US factories. Companies are walking away with fines

Duvan Thomas Pérez was just 16 when he was fatally injured while cleaning machinery at a Mississippi slaughterhouse. The penalty for the Mar-Jac Poultry processing plant was just $212,646 in federal fines and 17 safety citations, despite the incident being one in a series.

“Mar-Jac Poultry is aware of how dangerous the machinery they use can be when safety standards are not in place to prevent serious injury and death. The company’s inaction has directly led to this terrible tragedy, which has left so many to mourn this child’s preventable death,” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) regional administrator, Kurt Petermeyer, said in a statement last month.

But it was not the first time the factory had had a workplace death or faced citations for safety procedure violations in recent years. Despite previous incidents, and as the Mississippi factory became notorious, Mar-Jac continued to receive only fines.

Now experts, outraged at the latest death, are demanding stronger consequences for companies that violate safety procedures – and use child labor. Experts are also arguing that Pérez’s death highlights how immigrant minors may be more vulnerable to dangerous working conditions.

“The fines imposed by Osha on this particular poultry plant are not sufficient to deter massive exploitation of child migrants, especially undocumented child migrants,” Elora Mukherjee, a professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York, said. “The fine is more than $200,000, [but] the profits that this company and other [similar] companies make are far, far greater,” she said.

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SCOTUS SCORNS CO Trump Ballot Removal

Trump asks US supreme court to keep election interference case frozen

Lawyers for Donald Trump asked the US supreme court on Monday to keep on hold the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results while he prepares to challenge a recent appeals court ruling that found he was not immune from prosecution.

The former US president also asked the nation’s highest court to stay the US court of appeals for the DC circuit order that prevented him from seeking what is known as an “en banc” rehearing of the case by the full bench of appeals judges.

“President Trump’s application easily satisfies this Court’s traditional factors for granting a stay of the mandate pending en banc review and review on certiorari by this Court,” Trump’s lawyers John Sauer, John Lauro and Greg Singer wrote in the 110-page petition.

The petition argued that Trump had met the key tests for the supreme court to grant a stay because there was a strong likelihood it would hear the case and because without a stay, Trump would suffer “irreparable injury” if the case proceeded to trial in the interim.

DNC SUES RFK Jr In Ballot Access War

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Oil firms and green groups challenge Biden plan for offshore drilling leases

Oil and gas companies and environmental groups on Monday filed dueling legal challenges to the Biden administration’s five-year plan to offer drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

The petitions to a US appeals court come four months after the interior department unveiled a congressionally-mandated plan for offshore leasing that included just three sales, the lowest since the government began publishing the schedules in 1980.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), an oil and gas trade group, said it was challenging the policy because it would leave Americans at risk of relying on foreign energy sources. ...

Environmental group Earthjustice filed a separate petition challenging interior department’s plan on behalf of eight other environmental organizations. They allege the federal agency failed to adequately consider the health impacts the offshore drilling plan would have on local communities.

Climate Scientist Defeats Deniers, Hopes to Empower Others to Speak Out on Global Crisis in Media

Human Activity Pushing More Than 1 in 5 Migratory Species Toward Extinction: UN

As world governments gathered in Uzbekistan Monday for the United Nations conference on migratory species, they centered the theme "Nature Knows No Borders"—an idea that a new landmark report said must take hold across the globe to push policymakers in all countries and regions to protect the billions of animals that travel each year to reproduce and find food.

The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) marked the opening of the 14th Conference of the Parties (CMS COP14) to the United Nations biodiversity treaty by releasing the first-ever State of the World's Migratory Species report, showing that nearly half of migrating species are declining in population.

The crisis is especially dire for more than 1 in 5 species that are threatened with extinction, and 70 species listed under the CMS which have become more endangered, including the steppe eagle, the Egyptian vulture, and the wild camel.

The populations of nearly all species of fish listed in the U.N. treaty, including sharks and rays, have declined by 90% since the 1970s.

The two biggest drivers of endangerment and threatened extinction are overexploitation—including incidental and intentional capture—and habitat loss, and both are directly caused by human activity.

Seven in 10 CMS-listed species are threatened by overexploitation, while 3 in 4 of the species are at greater risk of dying out due to habitat loss, as humans expand energy, transportation, and agricultural infrastructure across the globe.

The climate crisis and planetary heating, pollution, and the spread of invasive species—thousands of which are introduced by humans—are also major threats to migratory species, the report says.

"Unsustainable human activities are jeopardizing the future of migratory species—creatures who not only act as indicators of environmental change but play an integral role in maintaining the function and resilience of our planet's complex ecosystems," said Inger Andersen, undersecretary-general of the U.N. and executive director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). "The global community has an opportunity to translate this latest science of the pressures facing migratory species into concrete conservation action. Given the precarious situation of many of these animals, we cannot afford to delay."

Great Lakes average ice cover drops to 6%, one of lowest levels ever recorded

The average ice cover over the five Great Lakes was just 6% last month, placing it among the least icy Januarys since records began 50 years ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

The Great Lakes – Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario – are located at or near the US-Canada border, and are connected by a network of smaller lakes and rivers that span a combined surface area of 95,000 sq miles, making it the largest freshwater system in the world.

While some year-to-year variation in ice cover is normal, scientists say global heating is driving ice loss and warmer water temperatures, and is likely to worsen if no action is taken soon.

“In direct response to warming air temperatures, we are observing rapid ice loss and warming summer water temperatures,” said Professor Sapna Sharma, an expert in environmental stressors on lakes at York University in Toronto. “If the planet continues to warm, 215,000 lakes may no longer freeze every winter and almost 5,700 lakes may permanently lose ice cover by the end of the century.”

The Great Lakes hold more than 20% of Earth’s freshwater, with half of that in Lake Superior, the largest and most northerly of the five. Ice records show a 25% drop in basin-wide ice cover, and a trend toward fewer frozen days across the Great Lakes since 1973. “There is a trend: a 5% decline in average ice cover per decade, which may not sound huge but it is a substantial decrease,” said James Kessler, a physical scientist and ice expert at Noaa’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab.

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Also of Interest

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

How the CIA Destabilizes the World

Chris Hedges: Israel Destroyed My University. Where is the Outrage?

Dutch Court Blocks Weapons Parts for Israel

What Has the Putin Interview Achieved?

25 Years of Venezuelan Defiance

Judge moves ahead with Fani Willis hearing but documents not turned over

Stone age wall found at bottom of Baltic Sea ‘may be Europe’s oldest megastructure’

Irish Politician Clare Daly Slams EU, US For Backing Genocide In Gaza

Rand Paul FLAMES Senate Dems After They RAM THROUGH $60B More for UKRAINE

Liberals Tie Themselves IN KNOTS Pretending Biden’s Not Demented!

Matt Hoh: Why No Ukraine Negotiations?

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A Little Night Music

Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddam

Nina Simone - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Nina Simone - Feeling Good

Nina Simone - I put a spell on you

Nina Simone - You Don't Know What Love Is

Nina Simone - Sinnerman

Nina Simone - I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl

Nina Simone - The House of The Rising Sun

Nina Simone - Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out

Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares For Me

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