Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Stax r&b singer Eddie Floyd. Enjoy!

"An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead."

-- Carl Jung

News and Opinion

Israel Continues Its War On Journalism

An Israeli airstrike destroyed the press office of the Lebanese news broadcaster Al Mayadeen on Wednesday night, continuing Israel’s historically unprecedented military assault on the press.

Also in continuation of Israel’s war on journalism, the IDF has published the names of six Al Jazeera reporters who it claims are actually members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing as evidence documents which it claims Israeli forces found in Gaza. These allegations would mark these journalists as legitimate military targets.

Al Jazeera has denounced these claims as unfounded, saying in a statement, “The Network views these fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide.”

There is of course no reason to ever believe any claim Israel makes about anything whatsoever absent mountains of independently verifiable evidence, after the mountains of lies it has churned out over the last year. The fact that western news outlets are treating these allegations as plausible is evidence of their propagandistic nature.

Israel claims everyone it wants to kill is Hamas. The journalists are Hamas, the hospitals are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the aid trucks are Hamas, the schools are Hamas, the mosques are Hamas, the water infrastructure is Hamas, the civilian homes are all Hamas, and Hamas is hiding behind every woman and child in Gaza. The only exception to this rule is in Lebanon, in which case everyone Israel wants to kill is Hezbollah.

Israel hates truth, which is why it kills journalists at every opportunity and blocks them from entering Gaza. This is because truth tends to have a marked anti-Israel bias. 

Journalists Find No Evidence of Israeli Claim That Hezbollah Money Stash Is Under Beirut Hospital
The hospital gave reporters unrestricted access
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Lebanon #Israel #Beirut #Hezbollah #gold https://t.co/JzmW4Vb1gv pic.twitter.com/Zqq2LeRgG4

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) October 22, 2024

We saw this illustrated recently when Israel announced that there’s a secret Hezbollah bunker underneath a hospital in Beirut, so the press simply sent a bunch of reporters to go investigate because Israel can’t block the press from entering Lebanon like it can in Gaza. Even western outlets like the BBC and Sky News entered the hospital and interviewed medical staff, reporting that they found no trace of evidence supporting Israel’s claims and that the hospital staff all denied the existence of any Hezbollah bunker on the premises. And you may be sure those outlets would have eagerly reported any sign of Hezbollah if they were given the opportunity. 

Criminal institutions need to function in the dark. They cannot function in the light of visibility and critical journalism and inconvenient video footage. That’s why the mafia murders witnesses. That’s why the inner workings of the US war machine are shrouded in government secrecy. That’s why Julian Assange spent five years in a maximum security prison. And that’s why Israel does everything it can to kill and obstruct journalists who tell the truth about its crimes.

CPJ Head Condemns Israel's Deadly War on Journalists in Gaza as IDF Threatens Al Jazeera Reporters

Israel Calling Journalists Terrorists Decried as 'An Attempt to Preemptively Justify Their Murder'

Seasoned observers of Israeli disinformation campaigns on Wednesday responded with pointed skepticism to a claim by the country's military that half a dozen Al Jazeera journalists are linked to militant Palestinian resistance groups.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Wednesday that intelligence recovered during the ongoing invasion of Gaza revealed that Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki are affiliated with either Hamas—which governs Palestine's coastal enclave and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

This, the IDF said, "unequivocally proves that they function as military terrorist operatives of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip."

However, critics accused Israel of targeting the six journalists for exposing Israeli war crimes to the world.

"There's a very clear reason why Israel has been killing journalists," asserted U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:

After killing over 175 journalists in Gaza, Israel is now threatening and smearing 6 Al Jazeera journalists covering the carnage in northern Gaza. As @jeremyscahill says, every journalist should condemn these horrific attacks and call for their protection. Enough. pic.twitter.com/eUNeYjXUik

— Laila Al-Arian (@LailaAlarian) October 23, 2024

As the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy noted:

Shabat... wrote Tuesday: "I'm a reporter on the ground in North Gaza, and I'm here to tell you that no aid has entered the besieged area for the past 21 days. The Israeli and American governments are spreading inaccurate information.

Al-Sharif yesterday posted a video of children killed, one with their head literally blown off. He just posted a video of civil defense crews working five hours to rescue a child.

University of Edinburgh professor Nicola Perugini noted that some of the six journalists "are covering the new phase of the genocide, the complete depopulation of northern Gaza."

"The aim is to transform the last witnesses into killable targets," he said.

The Israeli army is releasing fabricated dossiers framing several Al Jazeera journalists as "Hamas operatives." Many of them are covering the new phase of the genocide, the complete depopulation of northern Gaza. The aim is to transform the last witnesses into killable targets. pic.twitter.com/q0FIXVEUid

— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) October 23, 2024

Al Jazeera —which is banned from operating in Israel but is the only major international media network on the ground in Gaza, as Israeli authorities prohibit foreign reporters from entering the besieged strip—denies the IDF's claim.

Others noted that Israeli forces have killed numerous Al Jazeera workers as part of a war on journalists in which at least 128 media professionals have been killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The United Nations says more than 170 media workers have been killed by Israeli forces.

"This is an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder," Scahill said of Israel's claim against the six Al Jazeera journalists.

"Anyone claiming Israel has offered 'irrefutable' proof to back up these allegations is either ignorant of the systematic campaign of lies, propaganda, and fake news unleashed by Israel or is trying to aid and abet the murder of more journalists," he added. "That is what is irrefutable."

Palestinian journalists are risking their lives to share the truth about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. They must be protected.

— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) October 23, 2024

CPJ said on social media that it "is aware of accusations made by the Israel Defense Forces against several journalists in Gaza accusing them of being members of militant groups."

"Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence," the group noted. "After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the IDF previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007—when he would have been 10 years old."

The Paris-based international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed multiple complaints at the International Criminal Court alleging "war crimes against journalists in Gaza," including the apparently intentional targeting of media professionals.

In one filing, RSF said it "has reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians" and accused Israel of "an eradication of the Palestinian media."

In June, the Gaza Project—an investigative journalism initiative led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—"analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured."

The project found "a chilling pattern" of journalists who "may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press."

In one case that enraged journalists and others around the world, at least one IDF member sent 19-year-old Palestinian reporter Hassan Hamad text messages threatening him and his family if he did not stop documenting Israel's assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, millions more starved or sickened, and much of the territory in ruins.

Hamad refused. Earlier this month, Israeli forces assassinated him in a drone strike on his home in the Jabalia refugee camp.

U.S. citizens working in media have also been harmed by Israeli forces while on the job in Gaza and Lebanon, where IDF bombardment and invasion have killed and wounded thousands of people.

On Tuesday, a dozen members of U.S. Congress led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged the Biden administration—which supports Israeli with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—to investigate Israeli attacks on journalists including Dylan Collins, who was with a group of six other reporters covering cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon when an IDF tank opened fire on their position despite their clear identification as press. Collins and five others were injured, and Lebanese Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed.

Israel's targeting of American journalists predates the current war and includes the 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Multiple probes have concluded Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted by an IDF sniper as she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank.

The Escalating Crisis in the Middle East (w/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report

Blinken discusses mass extermination plan with Netanyahu, pledges “ironclad commitment” to Israel

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to hold a “friendly and productive” discussion about the Israeli government’s plan—known as the “General’s Plan”—to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza and kill all Palestinians who remain. While the extermination plan was not mentioned in the public readouts from either government, US officials told multiple newspapers that it was a central focus of the discussion.

In its report of the meeting, the Washington Post wrote:

US officials told Netanyahu there is a “perception” that Israel is pursuing a strategy of “isolating the north, telling people that if they don’t leave they’re effectively targets and denying food to go in,” said the official.

When Israeli officials made pro forma claims that this was not the official government policy, “US officials then insisted that Netanyahu should ‘go to greater lengths’” to say that publicly, the official said, adding that the Israelis declined to make such a commitment. In other words, US officials acknowledged that they were aware of the Netanyahu government’s mass extermination plan, and when they asked it to publicly declare that it was not the policy, the Israeli government refused.

In response to this blunt declaration, Blinken issued a communique declaring the United States’ blanket support for Israel: “The Secretary reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” and pledged to continue “ongoing efforts by the United States and its partners” to support Israel. ...

The significance of Blinken’s visit is clear: He has given the United States’ stamp of approval for the ethnic cleansing, mass starvation and ultimate annexation and settlement of northern Gaza by Israel. The communique’s assertion that the United States is calling for more food to enter Gaza constitutes nothing but wartime disinformation, aimed at hiding the fact that the United States government fully supports and enables the genocide of the Palestinian people.

Prof. Mohammad Marandi | Iran's Response to Israel's Attack: What Happens Next Will Stun the World!

Israel opens its festival of chest-thumping, sabre-rattling and dick-waving...

Strike on Iran will make world understand Israel’s might, says defence minister

Planned airstrikes on Iran will make the world understand Israel’s military might, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said. The Middle East has been braced for more than three weeks for a threatened Israeli response to Iran’s 1 October missile attack, which was in turn a reprisal for Israel’s killing of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Gallant visited aircrews at Hatzerim airbase on Wednesday and made clear that Israel still intended to strike back. “After we attack in Iran, they will understand in Israel and elsewhere what your preparations have included,” Gallant told the crews in a video distributed by his office.

On X, Gallant added more about his exchange with the air force personnel. “In my conversation with them I emphasised – after we attack Iran, everyone will understand your might, the process of preparation and training – any enemy that tries to harm the state of Israel will pay a heavy price,” the minister said.

The extent of Israel’s target list has been the subject of protracted conversations between Israeli leaders and the Biden administration, which has urged them not to strike Iran’s oil industry infrastructure or its nuclear programme. Washington fears a cycle of escalation, particularly in the last two weeks before the US presidential election.

"This Is Just Terrorism": Israel Bombs World Heritage Site in Lebanon, Threatens Major Hospital

Israeli War on Lebanon Sparks Cholera Resurgence

Israel's invasion and intense bombardment of Lebanon—including recent attacks on hospitals and other medical infrastructure—have sparked a potentially catastrophic health crisis in the country, with cholera and other diseases spreading among the more than a million people who have been displaced over the past month.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was working to stem the spread of cholera after Lebanon's health ministry confirmed the country's first known case of the bacterial disease since a deadly outbreak that began in October 2022.

Particularly vulnerable to the worsening public health crisis are the hundreds of thousands of children who have been displaced by Israel's bombing and ground attacks. The United Nations Children's Fund stressed that cholera is a severe threat to kids under the age of 5, the unvaccinated, and those suffering from malnutrition.

The humanitarian group Save the Children said Tuesday that "over 400,000 children forced from their homes by the escalating conflict in Lebanon are at risk of skin diseases, cholera, and other waterborne diseases due to overcrowded, basic conditions in collective shelters and a lack of water and sanitation facilities."

"Ethnic Cleansing": Israeli Group B'Tselem Calls for World to Stop Israel's Siege of Northern Gaza

Israel's Ferocious Bombing of Northern Gaza Halts Polio Vaccination Effort

Israel's intensified bombardment of northern Gaza—which according to Palestinian officials has killed or wounded more than 1,700 people since early October—has forced a halt to the third phase of a polio vaccination campaign scheduled to begin Wednesday.

"Due to the escalating violence, intense bombardment, mass displacement orders, and lack of assured humanitarian pauses across most of northern Gaza, the Polio Technical Committee for Gaza—including the Palestinian Ministry of Health, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and partners—have been compelled to postpone the third phase of the polio vaccination campaign, which was set to begin today," WHO said in a statement Wednesday. "This final phase of the ongoing campaign aimed to vaccinate 119,279 children across northern Gaza."

"The current conditions, including ongoing attacks on civilian infrastructure, continue to jeopardize people's safety and movement in northern Gaza, making it impossible for families to safely bring their children for vaccination, and health workers to operate," the agency continued.

On Tuesday, UNRWA staffers in northern Gaza issued a desperate plea to the international community as Israeli forces continued to massacre Palestinians and besiege area medical facilities. More than 100,000 wounded and sick Palestinians urgently need medical treatment that is unavailable as area hospitals cannot operate.

"People are just waiting to die," UNRWA said. "They feel deserted, hopeless, and alone. They live from one hour to the next, fearing death at every second."

BBC DEBUNKS Israel Hospital Gold Bunker Lies

Israelis told to urgently leave Sri Lankan tourist areas after terrorist threat

Israel’s national security council has warned Israelis to immediately leave popular tourist areas in southern Sri Lanka after threats of a possible terrorist attack.

According to the council, Sri Lankan authorities had informed it of “a terrorist threat focused on tourist areas and beaches” around the popular surfing area of Arugam Bay in the south of the island.

Local police did not specify the nature of the threats or who had issued them but it was made clear they were directed against Israelis living and travelling in Sri Lanka.

In response, Israel’s security council designated the Arugam Bay area as a level four threat and urged any citizens present to take precautions including hiding their Jewish identity and not gathering together in large groups.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : BRICS vs G-7: Economic or Military?

Putin calls for alternative international payment system at Brics summit

Vladimir Putin has opened the expanded Brics summit by issuing a call for an alternative international payments system that could prevent the US using the dollar as a political weapon.

But the summit communique indicated that little progress had been made on an alternative payment system.

Speaking at the summit in the Russian city of Kazan, Putin said: “The dollar is being used as a weapon. We really see that this is so. I think that this is a big mistake by those who do this.” He said that nearly 95% of trade between Russia and China is now conducted in rubles and yuan.

The move to de-dollarize the world economy unnerves some Brics members – notably Brazil and India – that do not want their rapidly expanding club to become solely pro-Chinese and anti-western.

Russia is working on creating a settlement and payment infrastructure that would bypass the Swift payment system based in Belgium.

Aaron Maté : Zelenskyy's Victory Plan

Justin Trudeau pressured to resign by backbench MPs within own party

Disgruntled members of Canada’s Liberal party have given Justin Trudeau an ultimatum: decide early next week if you want to stay on as leader, or face the prospects of a caucus revolt.

The prime minister met with Liberal lawmakers in a closed-door caucus meeting on Wednesday where 20 MPs – none of them cabinet members – called on their leader to resign before a likely electoral drubbing in the next election.

Two dozen lawmakers also signed a letter calling on Trudeau to make his decision by 28 October, but failed to give any clear consequence.

There are 153 Liberal members of parliament, suggesting the mutiny still lacks widespread support. Although questions over Trudeau’s political future are mounting, no alternative leader for the party has stepped forward to oppose him.

In his ninth year as prime minister, Trudeau is deeply unpopular and facing calls within his party to step down to avoid an embarrassing electoral loss that could push the party to a distant third-place finish. The CBC Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives have a nearly 20-point lead over the governing Liberals.

US public schools burned up nearly $3.2bn fending off rightwing culture attacks

Attacks targeting American public schools over LGBTQ+ rights and education about race and racism cost those schools an estimated $3.2bn in the 2023-24 school year, according to a new report by education professors from four major American universities. The study is believed to be the first attempt to quantify the financial impact of rightwing political campaigns targeting school districts and school boards across the US. In the wake of the pandemic, these campaigns first attempted to restrict how American schools educate students about racism, and then increasingly shifted to spreading fear among parents about schools’ policies about transgender students and LGBTQ+ rights.

Researchers from UCLA, UT Austin, UC Riverside and American University surveyed 467 public school superintendents across 46 US states, asking them about the direct and indirect costs of dealing with these volatile campaigns. Those costs included everything from out-of-pocket payments to hire to lawyers or additional security, to the staff member hours devoted to responding to disinformation on social media, addressing parent concerns and replying to voluminous public records requests focused on the district’s teachings on racism, gender and sexuality.

The campaigns that focused on public schools’ policies about transgender students often included lurid false claims about schools trying to change students’ gender or “indoctrinating” them into becoming gay. This disinformation sparked harassment and threats against individual teachers, school board members and administrators, with some of the fury coming from within local communities, and even more angry calls, emails and social media posts flooding in from conservative media viewers across the country.

In addition to the financial costs of responding to these targeted campaigns, the study revealed other dynamics, the researchers said. “The attack on public officials as pedophiles was one I heard again and again, from people across extremely different parts of the country: rural, urban, suburban. It speaks to the way that this really is a nationalized conflict campaign,” said John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of the study. The frequency with which both school board members and school superintendents were “being called out as sexual predators – it was really frightening”, Rogers said.

Superintendents from across the country told the researchers how these culture battles had affected their schools, and cut into resources they would have preferred to spend on education.

Prominent Muslim Democrat Demands Answers After Being Kicked Out of Harris Rally in Michigan

US Elections & Imperial Overstretch - Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Cop29 host Azerbaijan set for major fossil gas expansion

Azerbaijan, the host of the Cop29 global climate summit, will see a large expansion of fossil gas production in the next decade, a new report has revealed. The authors said that the crucial negotiations should not be overseen by “those with a vested interest in keeping the world hooked on fossil fuels”. Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, and its partners are set to raise the country’s annual gas production from 37bn cubic metres (bcm) today to 49bcm by 2033. Socar also recently agreed to increase gas exports to the European Union by 17% by 2026.

The Cop29 summit, starting on 11 November, comes as scientists say that continued record carbon dioxide emissions means “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”. The International Energy Agency said in 2021 that no new fossil fuel exploitation should take place if CO₂ emissions were to fall to zero by 2050.

But in 2023 Socar pushed 97% of its capital expenditure into oil and gas projects, the report found. The company launched a “green energy division” a few weeks after Azerbaijan was appointed as Cop29 host, promising investments in wind, solar and carbon capture technologies. But according to the report, Socar’s renewable operations remain insignificant.

Azerbaijan’s climate action plan was rated “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) in September. “Azerbaijan is among a tiny group of countries that has weakened its climate target [and] the country is doubling down on fossil fuel extraction,” said the CAT analysts. Azerbaijan and Socar had also been accused of human rights violations, the report said. The authors said defeating the climate crisis required civil society to have freedom of speech and protected human rights.

“Given Socar’s pivotal role in Azerbaijan’s economy and its close ties to the country’s political elite, its influence will surely be felt throughout the climate negotiations in Baku,” said Regine Richter at the German NGO Urgewald, lead author of the report. “As we prepare for Cop29, we cannot but ask ourselves: did we put the fox in charge of the henhouse?”

Also of Interest

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

War & the Constitution

Assange’s Measure of Justice From the Council of Europe

Craig Murray: A Very Peculiar Triumph

Ukraine - Zelenski Begs Russia To Renew Deals He Had Botched

The U.S. Continues Its Terror Campaign Against Cuba

New York Times Attacks “Peace-peddling” Jill Stein as the Presidential Race Comes Down to the Wire

‘We don’t know where the tipping point is’: climate expert on potential collapse of Atlantic circulation

Texas county reverses classification of Indigenous history book as fiction

Kamala Harris ‘WORD SALAD CITY’ Answers FAIL TO IMPRESS Undecided Voters: CNN Town Hall

World Powers Unite Against U.S. Economic Control! w/ Mark Sleboda

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : While Israel Waits

A Little Night Music

Eddie Floyd - On A Saturday Night

Eddie Floyd - Big Bird

Eddie Floyd - Raise Your Hand

Eddie Floyd - Got to Make a Comeback

Eddie Floyd - Knock On Wood

Eddie Floyd - Bring It On Home To Me

Eddie Floyd - Stay With Me

Eddie Floyd - Don't Rock The Boat

Eddie Floyd - Holding on with both hands

Eddie Floyd - People, Get It Together