Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues harmonica player Jerry McCain. Enjoy!

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."

-- Thomas Jefferson

News and Opinion

The Media When IDF Soldiers Get Killed Vs When A Hospital Patient Is Burned Alive In Gaza

Nothing illustrates the malfeasance of the mass media like the vast disparity between how they’re covering the killing of four 19 year-old IDF soldiers by Hezbollah versus their complete lack of interest in a 19 year-old hospital patient who was burned alive by the IDF in Gaza.

A shockingly horrible headline appeared in Sky News on Monday reading, “Israel names teenage soldiers killed in Hezbollah drone attack — as ‘23 die’ in Gaza school strike.” It opens with the even more horrid paragraph “Israel has named the four teenage victims of a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base — as at least 23 people were reportedly killed in an attack on a central Gaza school.”

Notice the scare quotes and passive language in Sky’s use of “23 die”, and the way these active duty combatants are being framed as innocent little children who were the “victims” of an unprovoked attack which “killed” them. The killings in Gaza are always framed by the mainstream press as “deaths” which passively happen, always couched in doubtful language like “reportedly” and “according to the Hamas-run health ministry,” whereas Israelis are always “victims” who are “killed”.

Interesting how Sky News have now deleted this post (without explaining)

It was interesting how 19 year old Israeli *soldiers* in a military base during a war, elicited more sympathy than innocent Arab babies killed by Israel

The Instagram is still up:https://t.co/IgmGFiE6oT pic.twitter.com/ICL1Y7o7Ty

— Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) October 14, 2024

The western media’s propagandistic use of language to frame Israel in a sympathetic light and Palestinians in an unsympathetic light is widespread, and has been extensively documented. All the way back in January The Intercept published a study showing that outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times used wildly different language to describe the killings of Israelis on October 7 than the killings of Palestinians in the months since, with inflammatory words like “slaughter”, “horrific” and “massacre” used consistently with the former and never with the latter. Another report by The Intercept this past April revealed that this is not an accident; a leaked internal memo from The New York Times reveals the outlet’s staff receiving explicit instructions to avoid specific language that harms Israeli information interests.

Look at the way Sky News names the armed Israeli soldiers killed in battle while framing them as innocent little babies who were slaughtered by monsters, and contrast this with the fact that you’re not seeing the name Sha’ban al-Dalou anywhere in the mainstream press.

Sha’ban al-Dalou was also 19 years old when he died, but unlike those Israeli soldiers, he was a civilian lying in a hospital bed, and he died a much more painful and horrific death than them.

If you’ve been on social media at all recently, you may have seen the gut-wrenching footage of al-Dalou burning to death in a hospital bed while still connected to his IV after an Israeli airstrike on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, desperately crying out for help in a blazing inferno.

As of this writing, al-Dalou’s name appears exactly one time in any article I can find on Google News, and it’s from Middle East Eye.

The Middle East Eye write-up reads as follows:

“Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student at Al-Azhar University in Gaza and a memoriser of the Quran, was burned alive after an Israeli air strike hit Al-Aqsa Hospital which killed three others.

“Sha’ban, who was forcefully displaced last year after Israeli forces destroyed his home, had just started his university studies in September 2023.

“Last week, Sha’ban miraculously survived an Israeli strike on a mosque that claimed 20 lives.

“Sha’ban and his mother perished in a fire after Israel attacked the hospital engulfing the tent camp for displaced civilians in Gaza.”

Any mentions I can find of al-Dalou’s death in the mainstream press do not name him, referring to him only as a “man” or a “person” (not a “teenager”) who died in a fire.

“Videos from the scene appeared to show one man being burned alive as bystanders could do little but watch,” The Washington Post reports.

“In multiple videos shared on social media and verified by NBC News, at least one person could be seen reaching their hands out from the flames as they were burned alive,” reports NBC News.

Contrast this with the solemn, reverent way Sky News reads out the names of the four IDF soldiers in its segment on their deaths, repeatedly emphasizing the fact that “all four were just 19 years old.”

Sky News, which Rupert Murdoch sold to Comcast in 2018, has been working overtime to spin Israel’s surging criminality in a positive light these last couple of days. Its Sunday evening report on the Hezbollah attack which killed the four soldiers made not one single mention of the fact that the attack was on a military base throughout the entire segment, leaving the audience with the impression that Hezbollah had attacked an Israeli shopping center or something. A Sky News write-up on London’s response to Iran’s missile strikes on Israel came under fire for using a photo of the burning medical center in Gaza where al-Dalou was killed as its feature image, implying that the burning building was caused by Iran and not Israel.

The massive disparity between the way the mainstream press report on Israeli deaths versus Palestinian deaths is evidence that the mainstream press are propaganda services for the US-centralized power alliance. But it is also evidence that Palestinians are not viewed as human beings by the western political-media class.

As Lebanese writer Lina Mounzer recently wrote, “Ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

Max Blumenthal : How Israel Uses and Abuses the Media

Haaretz: Israeli Government Done With Ceasefire Talks, Seeks Annexation of Gaza

Israeli defense officials told Haaretz on Sunday that the Israeli government is not seeking to revive ceasefire talks with Hamas and is now pushing for the gradual annexation of large portions of the Gaza Strip.

The report came about a week after Israel ordered Palestinians living in northern Gaza to evacuate to areas south of the Netzarim corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military. With the evacuation order came a major escalation in Israeli military operations in the north focused on the Jabalia refugee camp, which has been under complete siege.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has reported that Israeli forces in Jabalia are carrying out a “scaled-down” version of the “general’s plan,” an outline for the complete ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and the killing of any Palestinians who choose to stay, whether by military action or starvation. The UN’s World Food Program said Saturday that no food aid has entered northern Gaza since October 1.

Scott Ritter: Is Israel Plotting Its Own Defeat in a Catastrophic War with Iran/Hezbollah?

Israeli airstrike kills more than 20 in Christian town in northern Lebanon

More than 20 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Christian town in northern Lebanon, prompting Hezbollah to fire rockets at Tel Aviv, as Israel’s multifront war continues to escalate.

It was also a particularly bloody 24 hours in the Gaza Strip. Four people were killed in an Israeli bombing of a hospital courtyard in central Gaza, another strike on a nearby school used as a shelter killed at least 20 people, and a drone strike killed five children playing on the street in al-Shati camp in Gaza City, according to local health authorities. Rights groups say Israel is seeking to forcibly expel the remaining population of northern Gaza in a ferocious renewed campaign on the besieged Palestinian territory. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports of civilian casualties in the three incidents on Sunday and Monday.

The bombing in Lebanon on Monday afternoon that struck Aitou, a Maronite village near the northern city of Tripoli, hit a small apartment building, killing 21 people according to the Lebanese Red Cross. Footage from the scene broadcast by Lebanese TV channels showed a heavily damaged building, destroyed cars, and dead and injured people lying on the street as people dug through the rubble.

Aitou is far from Hezbollah’s power centres in Beirut and the south and east of the country. The village’s mayor, Joseph Trad, told Reuters the building had been rented to families displaced by the war. The strike was one of several over the past two weeks targeting areas thought to be “safe”, including the bombing of a displacement centre in the southern town of Wardaniyeh last week. Israel is also facing international criticism for at least three violations that have injured five members of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.

On Monday, Italy, the UK, France and Germany released a joint statement condemning Israel for repeatedly attacking UN peacekeepers. “These attacks must stop immediately,” they said, adding deliberate attacks were against international law.

Ex-U.S. Army Major Who Resigned over Gaza Warns Against Biden Sending 100 U.S. Troops to Israel

US intervention points to growing concerns over Israel’s air defences

As Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah and Iran has escalated, it has begun to show a degree of vulnerability. A Hezbollah drone evaded Israel’s much vaunted air defences on Sunday and struck a military canteen when it was busy with soldiers eating dinner. Four were killed and 58 wounded, seven seriously, at a location 40 miles south of the Lebanese border.

The drone that hit the canteen of the Golani base near Binyamina appears to have been part of a synchronised attack that allowed it to elude the country’s well organised air defences. Three drones flew from Lebanon over the Mediterranean, and though they were all initially spotted, and two shot down, the other was able to reach its target.

Why the third drone got away, eluding fighter jets, helicopters and the Iron Dome defence system, is a subject of urgent inquiry by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Hezbollah has been refining its attack strategy, and timing the drone attack with rockets helped complicate the picture for the defenders.

Drones may fly more slowly than missiles, but the Iranian-designed carbon-fibre models used by Hezbollah are hard to see and difficult for radar to pick up, a task made more complicated because they are flown deliberately low. Manoeuvrable, this drone, said to be Sayyad 107, resisted GPS guidance jamming, possibly because it used Russian or Chinese alternatives. ...

Israel’s air force said on Monday it intercepted more than 80% of incoming drones – 221 out of 1,200 that have been fired at the country during the war so far have got through. But an increase in the number of attacks and the growing sophistication of what remain relatively cheap to produce weapons will increase the risk of Israeli casualties as the fighting continues. However, the number of civilian and military casualties caused by Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Gaza remains far greater.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Can the US Say NO to Israel?

'Unspeakable Cruelty': Israeli Strikes on Gaza Hospital, Refugee Camps Kill Dozens

Dozens of Palestinians were killed and many more wounded Sunday and Monday by Israeli attacks on a Gaza hospital and multiple refugee camps, where victims included people queueing for food and a group of children at play.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said at least 10 Palestinians were killed and at least 70 others wounded Monday by Israel Defense Forces shelling of hungry people waiting for flour at a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp, where dozens of homes were reportedly destroyed since Saturday.

Medics said the victims from Monday's strike included many women and children. An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said the IDF operates "only against terrorists" and that the attack is being investigated.

Earlier on Monday, at least four people were killed and dozens more wounded in an IDF airstrike on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital compound in Deir al-Balah, where Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza were sheltering. The strike caused an inferno that raged through the densely packed tent encampment. Video footage of the attack recorded by journalist Saleh al Jafarawi showed at least one person burning alive as horrified bystanders looked on unable to help.

"We woke up to smoke, flames, fire, and burning pieces falling on the tents from every direction," survivor Om Ahmad Radi toldAl Jazeera. "The explosions terrified us in our tents and outside where we live behind al-Aqsa Hospital."

"The fire trucks couldn't get here," Radi added. "There were so many burned and charred bodies all over the place. The amount of fire and explosions was enormous. We witnessed one of the most horrible and brutal nights."

The Gaza Ministry of Health said most victims were women and children. An IDF spokesperson claimed without evidence that the airstrike targeted a "command and control center" used by Hamas, the Palestinian group that led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Responding to the attack on social media, U.S. Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said that "Israeli forces launched missiles at al-Aqsa Hospital, where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in tents and receiving the very limited healthcare services available."

"ISRAELI FORCES BURNED THEM ALIVE! Can you see the hand?" she said, referring to a graphic image of one of the victims. "This is the extermination of a whole people!"

The image of hospital patients, tethered to IVs as American-supplied Israeli bombs ignite fires around them in Gaza, may well stand as the defining image of this horror. pic.twitter.com/4SDsDRrQVD

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) October 14, 2024

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American member of Congress— called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "genocidal maniac" who "is burning Palestinians alive, bombing hospitals, starving people, and killing aid workers."

Last week, an independent panel of United Nations experts said that Israel "has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."

On Sunday, an IDF artillery attack targeting a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp housing forcibly displaced Palestinians killed at least 22 people including 15 children and injured at least scores more.

"There seems to be no end to the horrors that Palestinians in Gaza are forced to endure," U.N. Acting Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya said in a statement Monday. "There really is no safe place in Gaza for people to go.

Earlier Sunday, at least five Palestinian children were killed and at least a dozen others, including women and children, were injured as Israeli forces bombed a group of children playing in the al-Shati refugee camp, according toThe Palestine Chronicle. Some observers said the massacre evoked memories of a 2014 Israeli attack that killed four boys playing soccer on a beach in Gaza City. ...

Gaza Government Media Office Director-General Ismail Al-Thawabta said over the weekend that Israeli forces have killed more than 300 Palestinians in northern Gaza since the start of the latest IDF offensive there earlier this month. Al-Thawabta accused Israel of waging a "criminal war of extermination" and said it is blocking fuel and other critical supplies from reaching hospitals in northern Gaza. ...

On Sunday, the United States—which has provided Israel with tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid and diplomatic cover including vetoes of multiple U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolutions—said it would deploy around 100 troops to the key Mideast ally to operate an advanced anti-missile system, sparking further fears of a wider regional war that would likely include an attack on Iran.

"When will our country stop funding this madness?" Tlaib asked Monday. "When?"

“Stop Profiting Off Genocide”: 200 Arrested at Jewish Voice for Peace Protest at NY Stock Exchange

Police arrest pro-Palestinian protesters outside of New York Stock Exchange

New York City police arrested numerous pro-Gaza protesters outside the New York Stock Exchange on Monday after a demonstration highlighting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.

Demonstrators voiced chants such as “Let Gaza live!” and “Up up with liberation, down down with occupation!” and managed to get inside a security fence outside the exchange on Broad Street in downtown Manhattan. They then sat down and waited for police to take them into custody, according to the Associated Press.

Jewish Voice for Peace, which organized the protest, said: “200 Jews are risking arrest risking arrest in the largest act of civil disobedience in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.”

“Stocks are rising while children are dying. As Israel drops bombs on homes, schools, and hospitals in Gaza, Wall Street booms, and all the members of Congress who invest in these companies get richer every day,” Jay Saper of Jewish Voice for Peace, said in a press release.

West Short AD Missiles Ahead Iran Strike, No Strike Iran Oil Nuclear Sites; Zelensky Conflict Freeze

North Carolina hurricane recovery team relocated amid threat of ‘armed militia’

Government emergency workers in the US responding to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina were relocated over the weekend amid concerns that “armed militia” could pose a threat to their safety.

According to an email obtained by the Washington Post, a US Forest Service official sent out a message warning that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately”. The message said that soldiers with the national guard “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA”.

The Appalachian county of Rutherford incorporates the mountain towns of Rutherfordton, Forest City and Chimney Rock, which were badly hit by Helene floodwaters that tore away homes, washed out roads and killed dozens. The politicization of the response to Helene and later Milton has provided a recruitment opportunity for white supremacist groups who have assembled in devastated regions that government emergency services have struggled to reach as part of a recruitment drive and PR effort. ...

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that white nationalist groups, including Patriot Front, had joined recovery efforts in Florida and in the Carolinas. An X post from western North Carolina read: “We in Patriot Front are here to help out the local communities … Our politicians can hem and haw and switch over quickly to their talking points about Israel, but we truly are supporting our communities and being America first.” ...

In the weeks since Helene hit the region, US government officials have battled misinformation, including conspiracy theories that the hurricane was manipulated by the government in part to force people off their land to make way for lithium mining projects.

‘They will vote against Harris’: Arab Americans in Michigan desert Democrats over Gaza

That the Trump campaign would open an office in Hamtramck, a tiny city of around 28,000 people north of downtown Detroit, less than a month before the election, speaks to a particular curiosity of the 2024 presidential race. About 40% of Hamtramck’s residents are of Middle Eastern or north African descent, 60% are believed to be Muslim Americans, and the city has an all-Muslim city council.

Last week, as Israel was expanding its war into Lebanon and continuing its daily bombardment of Gaza, scores of locals – many immigrants from Bangladesh, Yemen and other Arab- and Muslim-majority countries – lined Joseph Campau Avenue to attend the official opening of Trump’s office. “Peace in the Middle East will not happen under a Harris administration – she’s too weak,” said Barry Altman, a Republican party candidate who is running for a seat in Michigan’s house of representatives next month, and who was running the new Trump campaign office on a recent afternoon. “Trump is the only hope for peace.”

Altman is not alone. Last month, Amer Ghalib, the Democratic mayor of Hamtramck, announced his endorsement of Donald Trump after meeting the former president at a rally in Flint, Michigan, where the pair spoke for about 20 minutes. ...

Angry with the Biden administration – and, by extension, Kamala Harris – for its support for Israel, Arab Americans may be willing to overlook Trump’s history of closeness with Israel’s hard-right leaders. “If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was,” he said last week. “I will support Israel’s right to win its war.”

Yet national polls show Arab Americans slightly favoring the former president; others are increasingly vocal in support of the Green party’s Jill Stein.

Kamala FINALLY Confronted With The Question No One Will Ask!

Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?

It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy – Earth’s largest migration of creatures – sinks to the ocean floor, removing millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year.

This activity is one of thousands of natural processes that regulate the Earth’s climate. Together, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions.

But as the Earth heats up, scientists are increasingly concerned that those crucial processes are breaking down. In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.

There are warning signs at sea, too. Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets are melting faster than expected, which is disrupting the Gulf Stream ocean current and slows the rate at which oceans absorb carbon. For the algae-eating zooplankton, melting sea ice is exposing them to more sunlight – a shift scientists say could keep them in the depths for longer, disrupting the vertical migration that stores carbon on the ocean floor.

“We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September. “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” he said. ... Reaching net zero is impossible without nature. In the absence of technology that can remove atmospheric carbon on a large scale, the Earth’s vast forests, grasslands, peat bogs and oceans are the only option for absorbing human carbon pollution, which reached a record 37.4bn tonnes in 2023.

‘Very concerning’: BP dilutes net zero targets as global retreat from green standards gathers pace

In early 2020, Bernard Looney had one clear goal as the incoming chief executive of BP: to convince the world to see the oil company differently. For a time, he did exactly that. In a glossy, high-concept London campaign launch, the BP boss set out 10 new aims for the company, the most significant being BP’s transformation to a net zero energy company by 2050. Within months, he reinforced the rebranding with a pledge to cut the company’s oil and gas production by 40% from 2019 levels by the end of the decade.

At the time, his strategy even won the approval of Greenpeace – a feat few oil executives can boast. But by early 2023, BP had watered down the 40% cut to a 25% reduction after the war in Ukraine caused oil prices to surge, doubling the company’s profits. Within months, its greenest ever chief executive was ousted from the company amid revelations about undisclosed relationships with colleagues. His green plans have followed suit.

It emerged last week that BP plans to abandon its curbs on fossil fuel production in favour of targeting several new investments in the Middle East and the Gulf of Mexico. The news angered climate campaigners, but surprised very few. BP’s green retreat has arguably been the most brazen in the industry – from a grandstanding green agenda to a fresh focus on fossil fuels – but the backtrack from environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards is gaining pace among the world’s biggest companies and investors.

The term ESG was first coined by the UN in a 2004 report entitled Who Cares Wins. It provided companies and investors with a model for implementing the ideals of responsible investing in their spending plans. By 2015, the idea of ESG had evolved from being a talking point to a set of standards which could, and should, be measured. But in recent years, companies and investors in the US and Europe have begun to chafe at the requirements to disclose their ESG credentials, and retreated from the commitments themselves – often to protect their profits.

Oil companies are not alone in scaling down their green promises. Volkswagen has quietly dropped a voluntary target to cut CO2₂ emissions from passenger cars and light commercial vehicles by 30% between 2015 and 2025 in favour of making the same cuts between 2018 and 2030. And Unilever – the conglomerate that owns brands including Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Vaseline, and which is widely credited with pioneering the ESG movement – signalled earlier this year that it would abandon or water down a string of ESG pledges amid a growing backlash from investors and politicians.

Woman pleads guilty over attempt to smuggle turtles by kayak into Canada

A woman who wanted to smuggle turtles across a lake and into Canada by hiding the creatures using socks in a duffle bag has pleaded guilty to a smuggling charge.

Wan Yee Ng was arrested in June in Vermont as she was about to enter an inflatable kayak with the bag of 29 eastern box turtles and paddle across Lake Wallace to the border with Canada, according to an affidavit filed in federal court.

Eastern box turtles are a protected species and have vivid, orange and yellow markings atop a dark brown shell, They are sold on the black market in China for $1,000, the Associated Press reported.

Ng pleaded guilty to a single count of attempting to smuggle eastern box turtles and faces up to 10 years in prison and as much as a $250,000 fine.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: Extermination Works. At First.

Israel’s Motto Is “We Can Have Peace Tomorrow If We Just Kill A Few More People Today”

How Blinken turned the diplomatic corps into a wing of the military

Israeli Tanks Smash Into UN Peacekeeper Base in Southern Lebanon

War on Gaza: Israel has lost its humanity as it celebrates its power to kill

Fake Reports Of Missile Transfers To Russia Are Used To Sanction Iran

Risk of nuclear war rising amid global conflicts, Nobel peace laureate says

Trio of professors win Nobel economics prize for work on post-colonial wealth

Nasa’s Europa Clipper sets sail for Jupiter’s icy moon to study habitability

CNN Called Out LIVE For 'Gaza Genocide' Lies

Appellate Court DESTROYS Trump’s Prosecutor- Ready To TOSS OUT $450 Million Verdict!

The Plan Is To Mass Starve The People In Gaza & It’s Already Being Implemented!

A Little Night Music

Jerry Mc Cain - I got the Blues all over me

Jerry McCain - She's Tough

Jerry McCain - Twist 62

Jerry McCain - Courtin' In A Cadillac

Jerry McCain - The Jig's Up

Jerry McCain - Juicy Lucy

Jerry "Boogie" McCain - East Of The Sun

Jerry McCain - 728 Texas

Jerry McCain - Love Whip

Jerry McCain - Steady