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News and Opinion

The Worst Thing About The Gaza Holocaust Is Knowing It Will Happen Again

The official death toll from the Israeli assault on Gaza has continued to climb at about the same rate it was climbing before the ceasefire went into effect, despite the ceasefire more or less holding. This is because the pause in the slaughter has given Palestinians the opportunity to dig up the remains of those who’ve been buried under the rubble all this time, allowing some to be added to the Gaza Health Ministry’s count.

Even if the ceasefire continues to hold, we can expect the death toll from violent trauma to keep climbing for a very long time. The footage we are seeing from places like Rafah and Jabalia are completely apocalyptic, with hardly any visible structures remaining even partially vertical in some areas. Many of the dead have been lying there for over a year. Many would have died slow, agonizing deaths over hours or days trapped beneath the wreckage without the possibility of rescue.

“Contrary to western propaganda, Gaza health authorities took a conservative approach to casualty figures, listing only recovered identified bodies,” journalist Craig Murray wrote on Twitter. “Now hundreds of unaccounted bodies are being dug from the rubble daily. Mothers are digging for the skeletons of their children.”

We are getting new photos from Northern Gaza. Not a single building has been left standing. Levels of destruction we have not seen even at the sites of nuclear bomb explosions pic.twitter.com/TPmQSEYNO2

— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) January 19, 2025

I remember back in the early days of the Gaza holocaust you’d get mobbed by Israel apologists on social media if you described what you were seeing as carpet bombing. They’d show photos of Dresden or Hamburg and say “THIS is what REAL carpet bombing looks like!”, and those photos looked exactly like the footage we are seeing of the wreckage of Gaza today.

This was a deliberate and methodical demolition of a civilization. An entirely intentional operation to turn a densely populated area into an uninhabitable wasteland, with the goal of eliminating and displacing a population who were deemed undesirable because of their ethnicity.

And it’s very possible that operation will resume in a few weeks’ time. President Trump is now on record saying he is “not confident” that the ceasefire will continue through all three phases, dishonestly claiming “It’s not our war. It is their war.”

To whatever extent you can call the methodical carpet bombing of a defenseless population a “war”, the US government has been equally as responsible for waging it as Israel. Insiders from the Israeli military and government have stated over and over and over again that the assault on Gaza would not have been possible without US assistance, which the US could at any point have chosen to withhold this entire time. Israel depends on the US about as much as any foreign US military base does, so the White House has always had more than enough leverage to force it to stop its ethnic cleansing campaign.

And this is to say nothing of the assault on the West Bank being waged by Israeli forces and extremist settlers, with no apparent pushback from the Trump administration. This comes as Israel’s Shin Bet agency declares that its “multi-front war” is now focused on the West Bank. Trump has appointed virulent Zionists to his cabinet like Mike Huckabee and Elise Stefanik, who are highly supportive of Israel annexing the West Bank in its entirety.

The most horrific thing about the Gaza holocaust is knowing that it’s going to happen again. Even if this ceasefire somehow manages to hold, some other nightmare will be unleashed by the US-centralized empire somewhere else in the world in the coming years.

We can be absolutely certain that it will happen again because nothing has been done to ensure that it doesn’t. No major policy changes have been put in place. Nobody has been punished — not the government officials responsible, nor the media who ran cover for their criminality this entire time. They torched the place and then walked away scot-free, just like they did with Iraq.

The reason nothing has been done to prevent other Gazas from happening again is because they want other Gazas to happen again. The US empire depends on nonstop violence and abuse to maintain its planetary domination; it’s not going to intentionally hamstring itself from using those tools wherever it needs to.

The US empire will continue terrorizing and abusing the world until it is brought to an end, as surely as an object will continue falling until it hits something.

Egypt, Jordan Reject Trump Plan to "Clean Out" Gaza; Palestinians Return to N. Gaza in Historic Day

Trump’s Gaza proposal rejected by allies and condemned as ethnic cleansing plan

Donald Trump’s proposal that large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “just clean out” the whole strip has been rejected by US allies in the region and attacked as dangerous, illegal and unworkable by lawyers and activists. The US president said he would like hundreds of thousands of people to move to neighbouring countries, either “temporarily or could be long-term”. Destinations could include Jordan, which already hosts more than 2.7 million Palestinian refugees, and Egypt, he added.

“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over.’”

Gaza’s population before the war was 2.3 million. Jordan, and Egypt have both made clear they will not take refugees from Gaza. On Sunday, the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said his country’s rejection of any displacement of Palestinians was “firm and unwavering”. ...

There would be little trust in any offer of temporary relocation outside Gaza to allow reconstruction, given a history of repeated displacements starting with the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel. At the time, many thought they were just leaving temporarily, and for decades held on to the keys for homes they hoped to reclaim.

Omer Shatz, a lecturer in international law at Sciences Po Paris and international criminal court (ICC) counsel, said Trump’s comments were a “call for ethnic cleansing” that echoed calls from extremist Israeli politicians and public figures dating to the start of the war.

Ray McGovern : Does Trump Favor Ethnic Cleansing?

Alastair Crooke : Trump, Netanyahu, and Collision

Palestinians to return to northern Gaza after deal on Israeli civilian hostage reached, says Qatar

Mediator Qatar has announced that an agreement has been reached to release an Israeli civilian hostage and allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, easing the first major crisis of the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Qatar’s statement early on Monday said Hamas would hand over the civilian hostage, Arbel Yehoud, along with two other hostages before Friday. And on Monday, Israeli authorities will allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.

The office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement said the hostage release would take place on Thursday and confirmed that Palestinians would be able to move north on Monday. ...

Under the ceasefire deal, Israel on Saturday was to begin allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza. But Israel put that on hold because of Yehoud, who Israel said should have been released on Saturday. Hamas accused Israel of violating the agreement. The release of Yehoud and two other hostages is in addition to the one already set for next Saturday, when three hostages should be released.

In addition, Hamas in a statement said the militant group had handed over a list of required information about all hostages to be released in the ceasefire’s six-week first phase. The Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed it had received the list.

Why the Biden wrecking crew prevented a ceasefire

Digging Out the Bodies From the Rubble

Rescuers in Gaza have already recovered hundreds of bodies from under the rubble in Gaza in less than a week since the ceasefire began, Gaza officials reported on Wednesday, with thousands of more Palestinians’ bodies still trapped.

The Palestinian civil defense agency and medical facilities have reported that since the ceasefire began on Sunday about 200 bodies have been recovered from under debris.

As many as 248 deaths have been added to the official death toll, with health facilities reporting they have received 54 bodies in the last 24 hours — a mix of those rescued from the rubble and Israel’s apparent ceasefire violations in recent days.

This has brought the total death toll of the genocide to 47,161 people, according to official counts, with over 111,100 injured.

As the rescue efforts demonstrate, the true toll is likely far higher, with thousands of people still missing.

Israel Confirms Troops Not Leaving Lebanon By Monday Deadline

Surprising few people except perhaps Amos Hochstein, who guaranteed this wouldn’t happen, Israel confirmed Friday that they will, in fact, not be withdrawing from Lebanon by the deadline set out in the ceasefire, which was 60 days and arrives overnight Sunday into Monday.

There were reports Thursday that Israel was seeking US permission to extend that period by 30 days, but even that isn’t necessarily a firm number. There is, as of yet, no concrete timeline for Israel to end the occupation of southern Lebanon.

Israel invaded Lebanon on October 1, after months of airstrikes killing vast numbers of civilians. The ceasefire was reached November 26, though Israel has continued to attack Lebanon during that period, committing hundreds of violations.

Israeli troops are also systematically destroying civilian homes in towns and villages across southern Lebanon, with multiple fires being set daily. In the handful of villages they’ve actually left, Lebanese troops and returning families are finding the area effectively demolished.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/01/23/the-chris-hedges-report-americas-a...

“Putting dangerous technology in dangerous hands” — MIT PhD students Prahlad Iyengar and Richard Solomon discuss their school’s collaboration with Israel’s extermination campaign and how dissidents are being suppressed.

Zelensky Says US Military Aid To Ukraine Has Not Been Paused

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that US military aid to Ukraine had not been stopped, comments that came a day after a leaked memo revealed Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a 90-day pause on most foreign aid.

“I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” Zelensky said at a press conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, according to AP.

While Ukraine receives some military aid through the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, the vast majority of the weapons it has received from the US have gone through the Pentagon under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI).

EU Ursula...NOT MY FAULT, blame Putin

Trump threatens ‘disciplinary action’ for USAid staff ignoring foreign aid freeze

Donald Trump urged US Agency for International Development (USAid) workers to join the effort to transform how the federal government allocates aid around the world in line with his America first policy. His administration threatened “disciplinary action” for any staff ignoring the its orders, issued days into Trump’s second presidency.

A sharply-worded memo sent Saturday to more than 10,000 staff at USAid offered further guidance to Friday’s “stop-work” directive that effectively put a sweeping freeze on US foreign aid worldwide. The memo, reviewed by Reuters, laid out expectations for the workforce on how to achieve Trump’s goals.

“We have a responsibility to support the President in achieving his vision,” Ken Jackson, assistant to the administrator for management and resources, wrote in the internal memo, titled “Message and Expectation to the Workforce”.

“The president has given us a tremendous opportunity to transform the way we approach foreign assistance for decades to come,” the memo said.

Reuters confirmed the authenticity of the memo with several sources.

South Korean president indicted for insurrection over martial law decree

South Korea’s prosecutors indicted the impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, on Sunday on charges of leading an insurrection with his short-lived imposition of martial law on 3 December, the main opposition party said. The charges are unprecedented for a South Korean president, and if convicted, Yoon could face years in prison for his shock martial law decree, which sought to ban political and parliamentary activity and control the media.

His move set off a wave of political upheaval in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, a top US ally, with the prime minister also impeached and suspended from power and a number of top military officials indicted for their roles in the alleged insurrection. ...

Anti-corruption investigators last week recommended charging the jailed Yoon, who was impeached by parliament and suspended from his duties on 14 December.

A former top prosecutor himself, Yoon has been in solitary confinement since 15 January, when he become the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested, after days of defiant, armed standoff between his security detail and arresting officials. ...

Insurrection is one of the few criminal charges from which a South Korean president does not have immunity. It is punishable by life imprisonment or death, although South Korea has not executed anyone in decades.

Donald Trump says residents of Greenland want to be part of US

Donald Trump has said he believes the US will take control of Greenland, after details emerged of a “horrendous” call in which he made economic threats to Denmark, which has said the territory is not for sale.

Speaking onboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said: “I think we’re going to have it,” and claimed that the Arctic island’s 57,000 residents “want to be with us”.

“I do believe Greenland, we’ll get because it really has to do with freedom of the world,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the United States, other than we’re the one that can provide the freedom.” Since his re-election, Trump has reiterated his interest in acquiring the Arctic island, which is controlled by Denmark but has a large degree of autonomy.

His latest comments follow a “horrendous” phone call with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, during which Trump was said to be aggressive and confrontational in his attempt to take over the island. Five current and former senior European officials told the Financial Times that the call had gone very badly. “It was horrendous,” said one of the sources. “It was a cold shower,” another told the paper. “Before, it was hard to take seriously, but I do think it is serious and potentially very dangerous.”

Trump was reported to have threatened Denmark, a Nato ally, with targeted tariffs, essentially taxes on Danish exports to the US.

Trump GOES TO WAR With Colombia Over Military Deportation Flights

Colombia rejects US military flights with deportees and sets off feud with Trump

Colombian president Gustavo Petro blocked two US military aircraft carrying deported Colombians from landing in his country, prompting a feud with Donald Trump who enacted emergency tariffs and other retaliatory measures. The US president responded fiercely in a post on his Truth Social network when he was informed that two repatriation flights from the US to Colombia had been denied landing clearance.

Trump wrote that flights had “a large number of Illegal Criminals” and said the landing-denial order was given by “Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro”, who he said “is already very unpopular amongst his people”. He accused Petro of jeopardizing US national security and public safety and directed his administration “take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures”.

The measures include doubling tariffs on Colombian exports to the US to 50%; a ban and visa revocations on the Colombian government officials “and all Allies and Supporters”, and enhanced inspections of all Colombian nationals and cargo entering the US and what he called “national security grounds”. ...

In response, Petro ordered an increase of import tariffs on goods from the US in retaliation to Donald Trump’s announcement of tariffs on Colombia and sanctions on Colombian government officials. Petro, in a post on Twitter/X, said he ordered the “foreign trade minister to raise import tariffs from the U.S. by 25%”.

“American products whose price will rise within the national economy must be replaced by national production, and the government will help in this regard,” the post continued. The US is Colombia’s largest trading partner, with exports including crude petroleum, coffee and cut flowers. The back-and-forth between the two leaders depicted the rising tensions between central and south US governments and Washington over US deportation flights. Mexico had also reportedly refused to receive a similar flight on Saturday, according to US officials cited by Reuters and NBC News.

Immigration raids in Chicago begin days after ‘border czar’ claimed officials were ‘reconsidering’

US federal authorities have begun immigration raids in Chicago, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) statement confirmed on Sunday, just days after incoming “border czar” Tom Homan said officials were “reconsidering” after details leaked into the press.

In a statement, Ice said its agents, along with the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP and the US Marshals Service, had begun conducting “enhanced targeted operations” in Chicago “to enforce US immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities”.

That comes as the Washington Post reported that Ice officials have been directed by Trump administration officials to increase daily arrests from a few hundred to 1,200 to 1,500.

The outlet said Trump was disappointed with the deportation campaign so far, citing four people with knowledge of the briefings, and Ice field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing quota targets.

Chicago, which Trump administration officials have warned would be ground zero for immigration enforcement actions, has been on edge over the initiation of deportation raids. Many of the regions’ estimated 400,000 undocumented people are believed to have stayed home to avoid possible interactions with federal law enforcement.

CNN Anchor In DISBELIEF Trump's Approval Ratings Go THROUGH THE ROOF

How the world has responded to Trump’s Paris climate agreement withdrawal

World leaders, senior ministers and key figures in climate diplomacy have, one by one, reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris agreement this week, in response to the order by Donald Trump to withdraw the US from the pact.

The prospect of the world keeping temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as the treaty calls for, was damaged by the incoming US president’s move. Hopes of meeting the target were already fast receding, and last year was the first to consistently breach the 1.5C limit, but the goal will be measured over years or even decades and stringent cuts to emissions now could still make a difference.

Along with withdrawing from the Paris agreement, Trump abolished many of the limits and incentives to reduce fossil fuel use, and signalled his intention to continue to back big oil. The US is the world’s leading exporter of gas, and oil production rose to record levels under Biden. These factors could counter the progress made with renewables across the country in recent years, in part owing to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Adair Turner, the chair of the Energy Transitions Commission thinktank, said Trump’s actions could add about 0.3C to global heating and spur other countries to dial back on their carbon-cutting efforts.

However other countries have made progress without, or even in spite of, the US before. After all, Trump also began the process of withdrawal during his last presidency, although it only took effect as he was leaving office. Before that, international agreement on climate action was held up for years under George W Bush’s presidency.

The US now joins only a handful of failed or war-torn states, including Libya, Iran and Yemen, in rejecting the 2015 accord. While the US has long been one of the world’s top two biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions – along with China – its significance has diminished as developing countries rapidly increase their share of global carbon output.

Should Los Angeles be in such a rush to rebuild after the devastating wildfires?

Gavin Newsom signed a $2.5bn wildfire relief package this week, with the goal of helping Los Angeles “rebuild faster”. Both the California governor and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, pledged to suspend environmental and other regulations to make rebuilding homes and businesses easier. Donald Trump has reportedly said he wants the city to recover quickly so that the 2028 Olympics, which Los Angeles is hosting, can be “the greatest Games”.

But many environmental and urban planning experts say that Los Angeles should actually be pausing, and taking a moment to consider how and where to safely rebuild communities located in high-risk wildfire zones.

“Why are we building to burn?” asked Char Miller, an environmental historian at Pomona College, and author of Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs the California Dream. While it makes sense that politicians would embrace the optics of getting Angelenos back into their homes as soon as possible, he said, reconstructing without any other major changes means that, once again, “You’re going to build and you’re going to burn.”

“There are lots of reasons to consider whether or not the public – the state taxpayers, the federal taxpayers – should be spending billions of dollars to fight these fires and rebuild in places that we know are highly flammable,” echoed Stephanie Pincetl, the director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at the University of California Los Angeles. “Unfortunately, we’re having a very hard time contemplating a different kind of building in a different kind of place.”

Trump tells US government to override California water policies if necessary

Donald Trump on Sunday issued an executive order directing the federal government to override the state of California’s water management practices if they are found to be ineffective. The order comes two days after the president visited the Los Angeles region, which has been devastated by a series of wildfires that have killed at least 28 people and burned more than 35,000 acres.

Trump has falsely claimed that Democratic governor Gavin Newsom and other officials refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires.

His order directs federal agencies to “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries”. It orders the US Bureau of Reclamation to deliver more water and hydropower through the Central Valley Project, a network of dams, canals and other infrastructure, even if that conflicts with state or local laws. It also orders the White House budget office to see whether it can attach conditions on federal aid to the state to ensure cooperation.

It is not clear whether those changes would bolster California’s firefighting abilities. Water shortages during the height of the disaster caused hydrants to run dry in some parts of Los Angeles, but local officials say that is because they were not designed to deal with such an enormous disaster. Newsom has previously pointed out that the reservoirs in southern California were full when the fires erupted and that no amount of water could have contained brush fires whipped by 100mph winds.

Also of Interest

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

Another Journalist Arrested In Another Western Nation For Wrongthink About Israel

Returning to Devastation

Danish company Maersk exports cargo from illegal Israeli settlements to the U.S.

Trump To Put Steve Witkoff in Charge of Iran Negotiations

New ICJ President a Christian Zionist Influenced by End Times Theology

Trump: Zelensky Passed on Deal, ‘Decided To Fight’

How The Chinese Beat Trump And OpenAI

Tech Oligarchs PANIC Over China DeepSeek AI DOMINANCE

Fossil Fuel Industry Could End Up Paying Tens of Billions for LA Wildfires and Deceiving the Public on Climate Change for Decades

CIA now backs lab leak theory to explain origins of Covid-19

Trump's Plan to Raid Middle Schools

China Makes All Our Stuff – So Why Do We Hate Them? w/ Danny Haiphong

A Little Night Music

Count Basie - Swingin' the Blues

Count Basie - Easin It

Count Basie - Shiny Stockings

Count Basie - Jumpin’ At The Woodside

Count Basie - Red Bank Boogie

Count Basie - Green Onions

Oscar Peterson & Count Basie - Slow Blues

Count Basie - Splanky

Count Basie - Blues in Hoss' Flat

Count Basie - Open The Door, Richard!