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This evening's music features delta blues singer and songwriter Kansas Joe McCoy. Enjoy!

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

-- Oscar Wilde

News and Opinion

Israel's Mask Is Slipping w/ David Hearst

The latest chapter of Israel’s occupation of Palestine has raged on for nearly the last year, marking a significant shift in the decades-long clash that has already initiated the demystification of the mythology behind Israel.

Truth continues to be the first casualty of war in this particular struggle, as it has been massacred, through the killings of journalists in Gaza and the censorship of dissidents, throughout the conflict along with the Palestinians themselves.

Unfortunately for Israel, however, the state’s lies and brutality this time are too severe to escape the eyes of the global stage, and even its own people.

Israel Is Rape

A new poll published at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies has reportedly found that 65 percent of Israeli Jews oppose criminal charges for IDF troops accused of gang raping a Palestinian prisoner to the point of severe injury, preferring only internal measures within the Israeli military be taken instead. Only 21 percent believed the accused rapists should be criminally prosecuted, with the remaining 14 percent unsure.

Middle East Eye reports:

A new poll has suggested a majority of Israelis believe the prison officials accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee should not face criminal charges and just be disciplined by the army.

“Late last month, nine Israeli soldiers were arrested for the alleged rape of a Palestinian detained in Sde Teiman, a facility in southern Israel’s Negev desert.

“Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, many Palestinians detained by Israeli forces have said they were sexually abused by troops at Sde Teiman.

“However, no one had been arrested for the abuse until 29 July, when military police raided the facility, clashed with the soldiers and took them into custody.

“The incident created a backlash in Israel, with a far-right mob, that included an MP and minister, storming the detention centre and a military court in protest against the arrests.

“Five of those detained were released to house arrest on Tuesday, pending a potential decision by the army to file indictments.

“On Sunday, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) revealed that 65 percent of Israeli Jews thought that the five should be punished only by the army and not face criminal charges.”

Israel has seen demonstrations that have become known as “right to rape” rallies ever since the arrests, with protesters demanding the accused rapists be allowed to walk free without any consequences for their actions.

Earlier this month an Israeli reporter named Yehuda Schlesinger sparked outrage with an appearance on Israel’s Channel 12, during which he not only supported the accused rapists but called for the IDF to formally implement raping Palestinian prisoners as a matter of state policy.

One of the accused was invited on to Israel’s Channel 14 to defend himself and tell his side of the story, while wearing a mask to hide his identity.

To be clear, this is for a widely witnessed gang rape for which there is hard video evidence.

Israel is a deeply sick society, with a deeply sick attitude toward rape. A 2011 poll published by Haaretz found that 61 percent of Israeli men don’t view forced sex with an acquaintance as rape, and that only seven percent believe marital rape is a thing.

Rape is abundant in the Israeli military and is almost never punished — an important thing to keep in mind when Israelis tell pollsters that IDF troops should only face internal disciplinary measures as opposed to criminal charges. In 2022 The Jerusalem Post reported that 1,542 incidents of sexual assault complaints were received by the IDF in the year 2020, and that of these, only 31 indictments were filed.

During the initial right-to-rape protests in Israel, The New York Times outdid itself with the unbelievably obfuscatory headline “Unrest at Army Bases Highlights a Long Battle for Israel’s Soul”, with neither the headline nor the sub-headline making any mention of rape at all.

California State University professor Asad Abukhalil quipped on Twitter, “The headline is actually accurate if you understand that Israel’s soul is rape.”

And he has a point. Rape is deeply interwoven throughout the fabric of Israeli society. In a sense, Israel is rape.

The phrase “every accusation is a confession” has been thrown around a lot since October, and for good reason. People who are deeply messed up and dysfunctional inside don’t typically have the internal resources and creativity to come up with accusations out of thin air, so they tend to just accuse people they don’t like of whatever they have going on inside themselves. If you ever have to deal with a malignant narcissist or sociopath in your personal life, you can often understand their behavior a lot better by mentally reversing the accusations they level at people and interpreting them as confessions about themselves.

Israel and its defenders shrieked and hollered so fervently about unsubstantiated rape rumors on October 7 because they themselves have a perverse relationship with sex and bodily sovereignty. Which should not be surprising given that Israel itself is a state that is built on the notion that you can simply take what you want from people because it is owed to you. The entire society is based on this premise.

This has nothing to do with Jewishness or Judaism. It’s just the attitude any population will develop if they are indoctrinated from birth into believing it’s their right to take things that belong to other people, which is precisely what was done to the Palestinians when a modern apartheid ethnostate was dropped on top of them out of nowhere by western colonizers and their western backers.

Just like the ongoing mass atrocity we are witnessing in Gaza, this fondness for rape is just one of the many, many symptoms of the injustice and abusiveness that the state of Israel is founded on and built from.

First-Ever DNC Panel on Palestinian Rights: We Need to “Restore the Soul of the Democratic Party”

After Meeting With Blinken, Netanyahu Backs US Gaza Proposal That Includes His Demands

After meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement backing the new Gaza hostage and ceasefire proposal from the US, which includes the Israeli leader’s demands and doesn’t include a permanent truce.

According to The Times of Israel, the statement was the first time Netanyahu publicly backed the US proposal even though it included his demands. Hamas rejected the proposal a day earlier due to the added conditions. Israeli officials later told Axios that Netanyahu only said he accepted the US proposal because he knew Hamas wouldn’t accept it.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Hamas said the US proposal lacked a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The group also said that the US proposal would ensure Israel maintains control of the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and the Netzarim Corridor, a piece of land that separates northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip.

Blinken says Gaza ceasefire talks ‘may be last opportunity’ for hostage deal

The US secretary of state has said during a visit to Israel that the current round of ceasefire talks is “maybe the last opportunity” to broker a truce and a hostage and prisoner swap in the 10-month-old war in Gaza. Antony Blinken met Israeli officials, including in a three-hour one-on-one with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Monday during a 24-hour trip to Tel Aviv before he travels on to Egypt. ...

After the meeting, Blinken told reporters that Netanyahu “supports” the ceasefire proposal, according to the Associated Press. ... US officials have been accused of being too optimistic in their regular claims that negotiators were on the verge of striking a deal. But on Monday Netanyahu’s office also put out a rare public statement backing the US bridging proposal. ...

The latest negotiations began in Doha last week and are expected to resume in Cairo on Wednesday or Thursday, but optimism from international mediators at the close of two days of Qatar negotiations has not been matched by Israel or Hamas.

In its first official comments since the new round of talks began, Hamas said on Sunday night that the latest proposal on the table was a capitulation to Israel that “responds to Netanyahu’s conditions”, negating the possibility of future talks. Hamas is not directly participating in the latest round and is instead being briefed on developments by the mediators Qatar and Egypt. Israel, too, has expressed an unwillingness to compromise on points such as the withdrawal of troops from the Gaza-Egypt border.

DNC Won’t Budge on Israel Support, Even as Genocide Sets Region Ablaze, w/ Ali Abunimah

Democratic party’s 92-page platform lacks a call for arms embargo on Israel

The US Democratic party on Sunday unveiled its platform for November’s presidential race – but nowhere in the 92-page document does it mention an arms embargo on Israel, a key demand by uncommitted delegates at the party’s four-day convention in Chicago and a central demand by Gaza war protesters gathering in the city.

The platform, which was to be voted on on Monday, instead described a wishlist of domestic Democrat objectives, among them growing the economy, combatting inequality and the protection of reproductive rights.

Reportedly, the document was finalized before Joe Biden stepped away from his White House re-election bid. And it contains both a focus on the achievements of the US president’s four years in the Oval Office and the now-discarded plans for a second term, including “healing the soul of America”.

The curbing of arms to Israel is the motivating issue for millions of younger voters whose support Kamala Harris hopes to secure after replacing Biden at the top of the party’s ticket for November. Meanwhile, Harris and the rest of the Democratic party are convening as US diplomats scour the Middle East for an elusive ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has been waging war in retaliation for Hamas’s 7 October attack.

The issue of a ceasefire, which has divided moderate and progressive members of the party, was not formally discussed in committee hearings when the document was being drafted, according to the Washington Post.

Israel perpetrating war crimes in plain sight in Gaza, says ex-UK diplomat

Israel is “flagrantly and regularly” committing war crimes in Gaza, according to a former British diplomat who recently resigned over ministers’ failure to ban arms sales to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Mark Smith, who resigned as a counter-terrorism official at the British embassy in Dublin after raising complaints about the sale of British weapons to Israel, told the BBC on Monday that he believed Israel to be in breach of international law. Smith told Radio 4’s Today programme: “When you look at what constitutes a war crime, it’s actually quite clear, even from what you see in open source on the TV, that the state of Israel is perpetrating war crimes in plain sight.

“Anybody who has a kind of basic understanding of these things can see that there are war crimes being committed, not once, not twice, not a few times, but quite flagrantly and openly and regularly.”

Smith’s exit became public over the weekend after a resignation email was leaked in which he accused senior members of the Israeli government of “open genocidal intent”. In a message that was sent to hundreds of officials and advisers, Smith said there was “no justification for the UK’s continued arms sales to Israel, yet somehow it continues”.

The resignation came as the British government carries out a review of its export licensing rules for arms to Israel. ... While that review goes on, lawyers have submitted claims to the high court in London of Palestinians being tortured, left untreated in hospital and unable to escape constant bombardment. The lawyers are seeking a court order blocking further arms sales because of what they say is a clear risk that the weapons would be used to commit breaches of international humanitarian law.

I was arrested at Heathrow Airport under the Terrorism Act, Sec 12 because of my reporting.

6 police officers were waiting for me at the entrance of the aircraft.

I was held for almost 24 hours and questioned.

I believe I'm the first journalist to be arrested under this… pic.twitter.com/pbf6q5dXIf

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) August 19, 2024

US Threatens Iran With ‘Cataclysmic’ Consequences If It Strikes Israel

A US official threatened Iran on Friday that it would face “cataclysmic” consequences if it attacked Israel in response to the Israeli killing of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

A senior US official told AFP that the US “would encourage the Iranians — and I know many are — not to move down that road because the consequences could be quite cataclysmic, particularly for Iran.”

University of California bans encampments and face masks

The president of the University of California has announced that the system would enforce bans on encampments as well as the use of masks to “conceal identity” in guidance that comes as schools across the US are planning for protests in support of Gaza similar to those that roiled campuses across the country. ...

Before classes began this week, Drake clarified policies around prohibiting encampments and “unauthorized structures” as well as masking in order to hide identity and refusing to reveal one’s identity to university personnel. He also directed university leaders to strictly and consistently enforce the rules.

The announcement comes as students, too, have been planning for the fall semester. At UCLA, student organizers with the Palestine Solidarity Coalition (a network that emerged from the school’s spring encampment and includes Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and UC Divest) spent their summer holding workshops, called the People’s University for a Liberated Palestine. As the new academic year begins, “students are also getting organized to spread education about divestment”, said Marie Salem, a PhD student and media liaison for the coalition.

Student protest efforts at the school may be hamstrung by the legal and academic disciplinary charges still hanging over more than 200 students arrested when police cleared the school’s encampment in May. The majority of those arrests were on misdemeanor charges, which the Los Angeles city attorney’s office handles. A spokesperson for the office told the Guardian that it had received five referrals on those cases. There is a one-year period in which charges can be filed. The county district attorney’s office, which handles felony charges, did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian, but told the Los Angeles Times in August that all UCLA cases “are currently under review”. At least 55 students who were arrested in May also received letters from the university threatening to place a hold on their academic records or withhold their degrees.

Collapsing Ukraine in hopes of removing Putin

Moscow Says Ukraine Destroyed Russian Bridge With Western-Provided Missiles

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday that Ukrainian forces used Western-provided missiles to destroy a bridge in the Glushkovsky district of Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the missiles were likely launched using the US-provided HIMARS rocket systems, which the US has been supplying to Ukraine since 2022.

“For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram. “As a result of the attack on the bridge … it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed.”

Washington DC council member arrested on bribery charges

A Washington DC council member has been arrested on charges of accepting $156,000 in bribes in exchange for using his political position to help private companies secure public contracts for violence prevention. Trayon White, a Democrat and former unsuccessful mayoral candidate who has also previously been accused of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories, was arrested after FBI agents raided a luxury high-rise apartment where he had been staying in the capital’s Navy Yard neighbourhood, on Sunday, the Washington Post reported.

His arrest followed a US Department of Justice investigation. White made a brief appearance in court on Monday and a judge agreed to release him while he awaits trial, according to the Post. The judge told him that if convicted, he faces a maximum 15 years in prison.

White, 40, represents Ward 8, a predominantly Black area in south-east Washington marked by urban deprivation and gun violence. He chairs the council’s committee on recreation, libraries and youth affairs – which oversees several public agencies.

In a statement, the justice department alleged that White had accepted bribes in exchange for using his position to pressure officials with two agencies, the department for youth rehabilitation services and the office of neighborhood safety and engagement, to extend contracts worth $5.2m for two companies that provided violence intervention services.

The statement said White had been captured on video agreeing to accept bribes that were calculated at 3% of the total value of the contracts. He had accepted separate payments of $35,000 in cash on four occasions stretching back to June, with the most recent exchange taking place on 9 August.

Ten states join lawsuit against Live Nation and seek triple damages

Attorneys general from about two dozen US states are going after three times the monetary damages originally sought against Live Nation Entertainment and its ticket-selling unit, Ticketmaster. In an updated version of a lawsuit first filed in May, the states allege the concert giant monopolized markets across its industry.

The attorneys general had sought damages under state law in the initial version of the lawsuit. By adding claims under the federal anti-monopoly law, states can seek three times the monetary damages, a penalty for especially egregious conduct known as treble damages. On Monday, 10 states joined the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court. The District of Columbia and 26 states added claims for treble damages on behalf of their residents.

The US justice department and several states sued three months ago to break up Live Nation, arguing the concert promoter and Ticketmaster illegally inflated concert ticket prices and hurt artists. ...

The lawsuit says Live Nation directly manages more than 400 musical artists and controls about 60% of concert promotions at major venues. According to the complaint, Live Nation owns or controls more than 265 concert venues in North America, and through Ticketmaster controls roughly 80% or more of big venues’ primary ticketing for concerts.

Pediatric doctor describes tragedies in Gaza at first Palestinian human rights panel at DNC

A pediatric doctor who has treated patients in Gaza during the war told the Democratic party faithful about the horrors she witnessed there – children who lost their entire families, suffered debilitating injuries and amputations. So many left on their own that a term was coined: wounded child, no surviving family.

Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan was part of a panel centered on Palestinian human rights at the Democratic national convention, the first time the Democratic party has directly hosted an official panel on the topic. Haj-Hassan is one of dozens of medics who sent a letter to Joe Biden’s administration in July to share what they have witnessed while caring for people in Gaza.

Attendees, who numbered in the hundreds, wiped away tears as Haj-Hassan described what she saw and as other panelists detailed the losses they’ve experienced among family members in Gaza.

The panel comes as Democrats convene in Chicago for a remade 2024 US election and rally around Kamala Harris, a more energetic choice than Biden was for many. Harris as the nominee gave “uncommitted” organizers – who launched a widespread anti-war protest vote during the primaries – hope that a ceasefire and changed Israel policy could be on the horizon. But they say they’re still waiting for Harris to articulate how she’s different from Biden on the issue.

Uncommitted wanted a prime spot on the main stage for Haj-Hassan to give voice to the Gaza war. So far, they have been granted the panel and a meeting space for press conferences, albeit far away from the center stage. One day into the convention, the organizers say they still want a main-stage speaking spot for a Palestinian American leader, something they have not heard back on from the DNC.

Casey Means was a Stanford-educated surgeon. Her brother Calley was a lobbyist for pharma and the food industry. Both quit their jobs in horror when they realized how many people were being killed by the systems they participated in. This is an amazing story.

(0:54) Who Are… pic.twitter.com/1oIVLvPlAv

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 16, 2024

‘Exceptionally difficult’: grueling wildfires test the resolve of US crews

It’s still early in the wildfire season for the American west, but it’s already shaping up to be a tough and, in some cases, record-breaking year. Oregon has seen more fire than any year on record, with almost 1.5m acres (607,028 hectares) scorched in recent weeks as huge wildfires, primarily caused by lightning strikes, have exploded across the region. Nearly 70 major fires are burning across the US this week alone, primarily in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and California, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC).

“This season has been exceptionally difficult, especially because it started earlier than normal,” said Jessica Neujahr, a public affairs officer with the Oregon department of forestry. “These conditions we saw in July are conditions we would normally see in August.”

All this is putting a huge burden on resources, including the firefighters tasked with keeping things under control, with states having to call in backup from as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand. Last month, the NIFC put the US at a preparedness level 5, its highest level of fire activity, meaning resources for fighting fires are heavily or fully committed. The US has only reached that level in July four times in 20 years. Oregon alone had 9,300 firefighters responding to fires, Neujahr said.

After a relatively quiet year in 2023, California’s fire season has also kicked off early. Last month, the Park fire exploded into one of the state’s fastest-growing fires and the fourth largest. Experts warn that acreage does not indicate how destructive a wildfire is, but the measurement does offer insight into how quickly it has grown.

Improved weather in both states is expected to offer some relief but the NIFC forecasts that much of the west will face significant fire potential until the end of September.

Also of Interest

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

Israel’s “Shared Values” With The West Are Tyranny, War And Genocide

In Gaza, Israel's Dehumanization of the Palestinians Has Reached a New Height

Media Claim "Hamas Rejects ..." Deal That's Not Offered

I’M SPEAKING!

Televisions, fridges and water pumps: why solar power means a brighter future for Gujarat’s salt farmers

As the world gets hotter, could helping trees migrate northwards protect them?

Thousands March on DNC in Chicago to Demand End to War on Gaza

PRICE CONTROLS? KAMALA Unveils New Economic Agenda

A Little Night Music

Kansas Joe McCoy - What's The Matter With You?

Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy - Pile Driver Blues

Kansas Joe McCoy - Well, Well

Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie - I Want That

Kansas Joe McCoy & Harlem Hamfats - Weed Smoker's Dream

Kansas Joe McCoy - Something Gonna Happen To You

Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy - Mister Tango Blues

Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie - I'm Wild About My Stuff

Kansas Joe McCoy - The World's A Hard Place To Live In

Kansas Joe McCoy - I'm Alright Now