The Evening Blues - 2-26-25



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Barbeque Bob

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Piedmont blues guitarist Barbeque Bob. Enjoy!

Barbecue Bob - Going Up The Country

"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses."

-- George Bernard Shaw


News and Opinion

All These Israeli Agendas Were Planned Long In Advance

Israel has announced that it will continue to occupy parts of Syria and Lebanon indefinitely, and that the new Syrian government is forbidden to have a military presence south of Damascus. Israel has also sent tanks into the West Bank for the first time in decades, saying they will remain for at least a year. A week earlier, Netanyahu vowed to “finish the job” against Iran with the help of the Trump administration.

The middle east is being dramatically restructured in alignment with longstanding Israeli objectives. Gaza has been destroyed and Trump is pushing a plan for permanently removing all Palestinians from the enclave, and they’re already working on doing the same to the West Bank. Syria has been wholly regime changed allowing Israel to grab up large swathes of land and strategic control. Hezbollah has been significantly weakened and Israel effectively controls southern Lebanon. Who knows what awful things they’re working on with Iran.

And I guess it’s worth mentioning as all this unfolds that there are mountains upon mountains of evidence that Israel knew the October 7 attack was coming and intentionally allowed it to happen, thereby manufacturing support for the advancement of all these agendas. Just the other day a new Hebrew Ynet report alleged that Mohammed Deif almost called off Operation Al-Aqsa Flood at the last second because Hamas noticed Israel wasn’t mobilizing against the coming attack despite their immense surveillance capabilities, suspecting it could be a trap. Well it looks like it was a trap — just maybe not the kind Hamas officials suspected.

Israel ‘wants to extend first phase of Gaza ceasefire deal’ as talks stall

Israel is seeking to extend the first stage of the ceasefire agreement in the war with Hamas in Gaza and is prepared to resume fighting if there is no progress in crucial talks this week, according to reports.

Israel’s Kan Radio, along with Ma’ariv, a daily newspaper, reported on Tuesday that informal talks were under way aimed at extending the first 42-day stage of the ceasefire, which expires on Saturday. Official internationally mediated negotiations on how to implement the second stage – which would involve a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territory – were supposed to begin weeks ago, but have been repeatedly postponed as the fragile truce has lurched from crisis to crisis.

An extension of stage one would involve further hostage releases in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, but Israeli officials are sceptical of the idea’s workability. ...

The ceasefire is at an impasse before the scheduled release of four Israeli bodies on Thursday, after Israel decided to postpone freeing 600 Palestinians last weekend.

Much more at the link:

‘No rules’: Gaza’s doctors say they were tortured, beaten and humiliated in Israeli detention

Dr Issam Abu Ajwa was in the middle of performing emergency surgery on a patient with a severe abdominal injury at al-Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza when the soldiers came for him. “I asked them what they were doing coming into the operating theatre,” he says. “One of the soldiers pointed at me and said: ‘Are you Dr Issam Abu Ajwa?’ I said: ‘Yes, that’s me.’ And then the beating began.”

Still in his surgeons’ scrubs, the 63-year-old Abu Ajwa says he was dragged from the operating room before being handcuffed, blindfolded and stripped. He was then put in a military truck with other doctors, nurses and medical staff and driven away from the hospital. Less than 24 hours later he was in a detention facility in Israel, beginning what he describes as months of brutal and constant violence and abuse.

“There were no rules,” he says. During interrogations, he says he was tortured and beaten. “They would throw me on the ground. One would hit me on the head while the other opened my ear and poured water inside,” he says. “There was a bathroom [in the interrogation room] … [they] would take a toilet brush and tell me ‘today we are going to brush your teeth.’ I was tied up, blindfolded and three or four of them held my face, pinned it down and kept scrubbing.” Abu Ajwa says they broke his teeth: “They have no humanity.”

Under international law, healthcare workers like Abu Ajwa should be protected from attacks by warring parties and be allowed to continue providing medical care to all who need it. Yet by the time the January ceasefire came into effect, more than 1,000 medical staff across Gaza had been killed and many hospitals bombed to rubble – attacks which a UN Human Rights Council commission concluded amounted to war crimes.

Hundreds more medical staff who survived the airstrikes and ground assaults were arrested, illegally transferred across the border and disappeared into Israeli prisons, including dozens of doctors. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 297 doctors, nurses, paramedics and other healthcare workers from Gaza were detained by Israel during the war.

Israeli Settlements Leader: Trump's Takeover Plan Will "Make a Much More Beautiful Gaza"

At Least 6 Gaza Babies Die From Hypothermia Amid Israeli Blockade

Local medical professionals said Tuesday that at least half a dozen babies have died this week in Gaza amid winter weather and Israel's ongoing blockade of the obliterated Palestinian enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people are living in tent encampments and other unheated makeshift structures.

Dr. Saeed Salah, the medical director at Patients' Friends Benevolent Society Hospital in Gaza City, told reporters that three infants died on Monday and three more on Tuesday from complications due to exposure to the cold.

"In the past two weeks, we admitted eight newborns suffering from severe cold injuries," Salah said. "Three of them died within hours of arrival. They were only a day or two old, weighing between 1.7 and 2 kilograms (3.7-4.4 lbs.)."

"All of these children arrived with low temperatures, shortness of breath, and cold extremities that reached the point of freezing," Salah toldThe Washington Post by phone Tuesday. "These children live with their families in tents and destroyed homes and suffer from a lack of supplies that help provide them with the necessary warmth, especially with the Israeli intransigence in bringing in the necessary fuel."

Pepe Escobar : The Resistance Gathers

Hamas Says Agreement Reached on Release of Palestinians That Israel Delayed

Hamas said on Tuesday that a deal had been reached to secure the release of over 600 Palestinians from Israeli jails that Israel had delayed.

Under the ceasefire deal, Israel was supposed to release the Palestinians on Saturday after Hamas freed six Israeli hostages, but Israel refused to over Hamas’s handover ceremonies, which it said were “humiliating.”

Hamas said a solution had been reached that would involve the group releasing the bodies of four Israeli hostages and Israel freeing the Palestinians simultaneously. “They will be released simultaneously with the bodies of the Israeli prisoners agreed to be handed over during the first phase, in addition to the corresponding Palestinian women and children,” Hamas said.

The agreement was reached in Cairo, where Hamas had sent a delegation led by one of its officials, Khalil Al-Hayya, for negotiations. Hamas also said that a new set of Palestinian prisoners would be released, as well as the more than 600 that were supposed to be freed on Saturday. The Israeli news site Ynet reported that the Israeli bodies would be handed over by Hamas to Egyptian authorities in private, with no public ceremony.

Israel Damascus BOMBING RAID, INVADES West Bank

Israel strikes targets in southern Syria after demanding demilitarisation

Israeli warplanes have carried out several airstrikes on military targets outside Damascus and in southern Syria, as Israeli officials warned the country’s army not to move south of the capital city.

Israeli jets struck military sites late on Tuesday in the town of Kiswah, south of Damascus, as well as in the southern province of Deraa, local Syrian media reported.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the strikes in southern Syria and warned that Israel “will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon”. Katz added that “any attempt by the Syrian regime forces and the country’s terrorist organisations to establish themselves in the security zone in southern Syria will be met with fire”.

On Sunday the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, demanded the complete demilitarisation of southern Syria.

Censorship Of Nazi Speech BACKFIRED: Nadine Strossen

Trump May Have STRUCK Mineral Deal With Zelensky In Exchange For Peace

Trump says Zelenskyy set to visit White House on Friday to sign minerals deal

Donald Trump has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal to pay for US military aid to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion. ...

According to the Financial Times, which first reported the deal, the new terms of the deal did not reportedly include the onerous demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from exploiting the resources, which include rare earth metals and Ukrainian oil and gas resources. ...

It was more favourable to Ukraine than the original deal proposed by Washington, but did not include references to long-term security guarantees that Kyiv wanted to receive in the deal. ... Asked what Ukraine would receive in the deal, Trump said: “$350bn, military equipment and the right to fight on.”

EU plan to crush Kaliningrad fails

Putin Says Trump’s Proposal To Halve Military Spending Is a ‘Good Idea’

Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed a proposal from President Trump to cut military spending in half as part of a potential three-way arrangement between the US, Russia, and China.

“I think it’s a good idea. The US would cut by 50%, and we would cut by 50%, and then China would join if it wanted,” Putin said in an interview on Monday.

The Russian leader said he couldn’t speak for China but said Moscow could “come to an agreement with the US, we’re not against it.” He added that it was a “good proposal, and we are ready for a discussion about this.”

“NO MORE REGIME CHANGES!” – Pledge From Trump Envoy

US consumer confidence plunges in February in its biggest decline in four years

US consumer confidence plummeted in February, the biggest monthly decline in nearly four years, a business research group said on Tuesday, with inflation seemingly stuck and a trade war under Donald Trump seen by a growing number of Americans as inevitable.

The Conference Board reported that its consumer confidence index sank this month to 98.3 from 105.3 in January. That’s far below the expectations of economists, who projected a reading of 103, according to a survey by FactSet. The seven-point drop was the biggest month-to-month decline since August of 2021.

Markets on Wall Street immediately drooped. The S&P 500 fell 0.7%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.7%. The Nasdaq declined 1.4%.

Respondents to the board’s survey expressed concern over inflation with a significant increase in mentions of trade and tariffs, the board said.

The Conference Board’s report on Tuesday said that the measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for income, business and the job market fell 9.3 points, to 72.9. The Conference Board says a reading under 80 can signal a potential recession in the near future. The proportion of consumers expecting a recession over the next year jumped to a nine-month high, the board said.

Trump defends Musk as backlash to federal workers ultimatum grows

Donald Trump has stepped in to defend Elon Musk from a mounting backlash in his own administration after some cabinet members told US federal workers to ignore the billionaire entrepreneur’s demand that they write an email justifying their work.

The US president was driven to intervene amid the first signs of internal dissension over the disruptive impact of Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which Trump has authorised to seek mass firings in the federal workforce and reduce supposed waste and corruption.

Newly confirmed cabinet officials, including the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, told underlings not to comply with a weekend order from Musk for all staff to send an email detailing their past week’s work by midnight on Monday or face termination.

As other government departments added to the pushback, the office of personnel management (OPM) issued a statement advising employees to respond but removed the sacking threat, while giving agency heads the authority to excuse staff from Musk’s demand. ...

Cabinet officials will face Musk on Wednesday as the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that the tech billionaire will join Trump’s first cabinet meeting despite not being a member of the cabinet.

Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk's "Chaotic Blitz" at DOGE, Living in a Tech Dystopia, Luigi Mangione

More than 20 Musk staffers resign over Doge’s ‘dismantling of public services’

More than 20 civil service employees resigned on Tuesday from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services”.

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.

The former government employees said that they had been visited in the office by individuals wearing White House visitor’s passes, who interrogated employees about their political loyalty, work experience as well as their colleagues in the federal workforce. The letter also denounced the widespread worker layoffs that Doge has put into effect.

The mass resignation of engineers, data scientists and product managers is a temporary setback for Musk and the Republican president’s tech-driven purge of the federal workforce. It comes amid a flurry of court challenges that have sought to stall, stop or unwind their efforts to fire or coerce thousands of government workers out of jobs.

U.S. Representative Thomas Massie : Do We Still Have a Constitution?

Newsom threatens to pull funds unless California cities crack down on homelessness

California’s governor warned cities and counties that they could lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding if they do not make progress in clearing out encampments and tackling homelessness. Gavin Newsom’s comments on Monday, while announcing $920m in funding to address the crisis, come as he escalates efforts to push local governments to take greater action. Last summer, Newsom told counties he could withhold state support if they failed to do more homeless encampment sweeps.

“We want to see results. We have to address unsheltered homelessness, encampments and tents,” Newsom said. “We have been too permissive … we need them cleaned up. We’re providing unprecedented support, now we need to see unprecedented results. If we don’t, we’re not going to continue to fund excuses, [we’re] not going to continue to fund failure.”

California’s homelessness crisis is the worst in the US with roughly one-third of the country’s population of unhoused people, which experts attribute to a lack of affordable housing in the state. A 2023 count found that more than 180,000 people in the state were experiencing homelessness, including 123,000 people who were unsheltered or living outside on the streets in tents, trailers, cars and makeshift shelters.

Cities in California and across the US have begun cracking down on homelessness with harsher anti-camping policies following the US supreme court’s ruling last year that cities can criminalize unhoused people for sleeping outside – even when there are no shelter spaces available.



the evening greens


US anti-pipeline activists say charges against them ‘meant to intimidate’

Climate activists who tried to disrupt the completion of a fossil-fuel pipeline through Appalachian forests will appear in court in Virginia on Tuesday to face serious criminal charges that they vehemently deny. The Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) was pushed through by the Biden administration in mid-2023 – overriding court orders, regulatory blocks and widespread opposition to the 300-mile (480km) fossil fuel project. Biden’s decision triggered a wave of non-violent protests and civil disobedience against the pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia as work crews rushed to finish construction of the pipeline through sensitive waterways and protected forests.

In one case, on 16 October 2023, a group of activists descended on Peters Mountain in Giles county with a banner that read “Respect existence or expect resistance”. They blasted music and one person chained themselves to an excavator with a sleeping dragon, while others sang protest songs and chanted “Doom to the pipeline”. The MVP excavator operator was able to exit and leave the area, according to the police report.

Over the next few weeks, a total of 10 activists were charged with conspiracy to defame the reputation of a business, a misdemeanor most commonly used in civil disputes, and two felonies: conspiracy to commit unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, known colloquially as the joyriding charge, and abduction of the MVP machine operator.

On Tuesday, two of the 10 will face trial for the misdemeanor conspiracy charge and a preliminary hearing for the felonies, which carry a maximum combined sentence of 16 years. “These are absurd charges meant to intimidate. I was exercising my right to free speech and protest and am not guilty of conspiracy or abduction or joyriding. The real conspiracy was how the pipeline got pushed through without judicial and environmental oversight,” said one of the accused. “It is a slippery slope for the state to accuse ordinary people of a conspiracy charge used in corporate slander and malfeasance cases … I am willing to take the risk of jail time to shed light on that in open court.”

“The charges are bullshit and I’ve decided to face the state which is trying to silence any dissent – whether it be against pipelines, Cop City or the genocide in Palestine. We live in the heart of the imperial core, so we have to take action even if it comes at a personal cost,” said River, not their real name. The remaining eight reached an agreement with prosecutors to be convicted of interfering with the property rights of another person, a misdemeanor. They will be given a suspended sentence with 50-100 hours community service, and must collectively pay almost $5,000 restitution to the county for police overtime.

California faces worsening drought despite recent heavy rainstorms

Dramatic rainstorms earlier this month brought more than 6in of rain to the California mountains – a full month’s worth of rain in little more than a day – but the deluge wasn’t enough to reverse a worsening drought trend that is set to intensify further in the coming weeks and months. ...

Such “weather whiplash” – a telltale sign of the climate crisis – looks to shift the semi-arid south-western corner of the US back toward drought as the month of March approaches. This year’s rainy season is looking more and more like just a rainy week for southern California and other parts of the western US dependent on the Colorado River. Looming just beneath the veneer of muddy roads and fresh mountain snow is the reality of worsening drought.

What had been the driest start to a rainy season in history for most of southern California – with just a fraction of an inch of rain falling from early October through late January – is now looking to return to a weeks-long dry pattern, according to current projections from the National Weather Service. No additional significant rains or snows are in the forecast for at least the next two weeks, and possibly longer.

Current snowpack in the southern Sierra mountain range in California is well below average for the beginning of March, echoing a pattern among the entire “lower basin” of the Colorado River catchment, including most of the state of Arizona – plus the desert cities of Las Vegas and southern California, which pipe in water from the river over a complex system of aqueducts and canals. Mountain snows during the winter months are crucially important to the healthy flow of the Colorado during the spring and summer months, and this year, they haven’t come. The snowpack across the multi-state region currently sits at just 25% of normal. Annual snowpack in the region typically peaks around 1 March before the spring melt season begins.

With the south-west under the influence of a La Niña weather pattern, which typically results in drier winters across the southern United States, that means time is running out for the approximately 40 million people who depend on water from the Colorado River. “We are near a tipping point on the Colorado,” said Greg Pierce, an urban planner who directs the UCLA Water Resources Group.

Wildfire debris washes up on LA beaches after major rainstorm

Los Angeles county beaches are contending with the aftermath of recent wildfires and winter storms as debris from the Palisades fire and urban runoff are carried to the shoreline. After last week’s major rainstorm, beaches in southern California have been littered with timber, twisted metals, construction materials and charred silt and sediment originating from the Palisades fire, which started on 7 January and killed at least 29 people.

The Los Angeles county department of beaches and harbors said last week that officials were monitoring beach conditions and ocean water quality. Maintenance crews were working to remove large pieces of debris from the shore, and the department advised beachgoers to avoid visible fire debris and stay out of the ocean water where advisories were posted.

The department of public health lifted the ocean water quality rain advisory last week for all Los Angeles county beaches except those affected by fire. Beaches from Las Flores beach to Santa Monica state beach were still under advisory warnings.

Just days after the fires began, winds carried ash and charred debris up to 100 miles (161km) offshore. Since then, wind and waves have spread the charred material along the county’s coastline.


Also of Interest

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

The West, Not Russia, Drove the Ukraine Conflict

Ukraine Timeline Tells the Tale

Does Trump Really Have A Plan For Ukraine?

Iran Says Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Are a ‘Grave Threat’ to the World

Larry Ellison’s Dark Vision for OUR Future

Tiresome Reminder Of China’s Tech and Industry Lead

‘I felt nothing but disgust’: Tesla owners vent their anger at Elon Musk

Glenn from Moscow: A Special Preview of Interview with Key Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin


A Little Night Music

Barbecue Bob - Barbecue Blues

Barbeque Bob - It's Just Too Bad

Barbecue Bob Hicks - Motherless Chile Blues

Barbeque Bob - Mississippi Heavy Water Blues

Barbeque Bob - Poor Boy A Long Ways From Home

Barbecue Bob - She's Coming Back Some Cold Rainy Day

Barbecue Bob - Yo Yo Blues No. 2

Barbecue Bob - Chocolate To The Bone

Barbecue Bob - Twistin' Your Stuff


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Comments

I begin to think the California Democrats are perhaps the worst of the breed.
Then again, I think there is only species at work.
this is not a reflection of a drug, alcohol or mental illness epidemiology.
It is SIMPLY and SOLELY the result of policies impacting wages, employment opportunities,
rent and realty controls but most of all allowing developers to make the rules.
Housing is a human right.
Those fuckers working the all night party in California government aint human beings, so they dont know the first thing about it.

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joe shikspack's picture

@kelly

it appears to me that california has some seriously clueless dems who are utterly lacking in human decency. if they are different from other elected democrats, it's really hard to tell.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

perhaps epstein was a relic of a time before israel could tap everybody on earth's phone and steal all of their data.

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QMS's picture

.
is fascinating
thank you for putting it out here
would not otherwise be aware of
this quality content

cheers

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question everything

joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

pepe is an interesting journalist with really good sources. i was glad to see the judge add him to the regular roster.

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snoopydawg's picture

.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/the-frog-or-the-scorpion-do-demo...

There are lots of great things in it, but this is my favorite.

In fact, Trump and Musk are about to complete the billionaire coup against the FDR State they began with the failed Wall Street Putsch of 1933, a literal attempt to create their own fascist state. Unlike then, today’s “party of the people,” also billionaire-led, choose not to interfere.

I posted this last week. Anyone read it?

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democratic-party-fecklessness/

One of my favorite Nation writers, Dave Zirin, has a piece worthy of attention: “Why Democrats Won’t Throw a Real Punch.” I’m sure you can guess the reason(s). I’ll tell you why it matters in a second. Zirin starts with this:

Masses of enraged, terrified people are looking at the analog, slow-motion leadership of Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer and the zero-calorie rhetoric of House leader Hakeem Jeffries and want them replaced by people who know how to fight. As The Nation has reported, when Democratic politicians have shown up to protests, people aren’t cheering their presence. They are howling at them to do more.

On the bipartisan pro Israel rally.

How are Democrats ever to hold themselves up as the alternative to Trump if they travel the same dirty road, but in different cars? Answer: They can’t, and voters are responding accordingly.

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Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

thanks for the article. it's good, though i rather imagine that most thinking people have already concluded that we are on our own. the system is the problem and the democrats are an integral part of the system.

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enhydra lutris's picture

There's a headline up there about "no more regime changes" above a Jimmy Dore video titled No More Coups. It sounds like Elon should maybe step up and fire about 76% of the CIA, because, after all, that's really what they do. They aren't trained at inintelligence gathering or interpretation.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris @enhydra lutris

perhaps they can use the usaid model and get rid of the regime changers and doers of dirty deeds and fold the remaining portion of information gatherers and analysts under the state department or something like that.

have a great evening!

eta:

just saw this:

Power back on in Chile after blackout leaves millions in dark

Power has been restored to most of Chile’s 19 million people after the country’s most disruptive blackout in 15 years, the government said, as authorities lifted a strict curfew imposed when the outage left 98% of the population without electricity.

Chilean interior minister Carolina Tohá said on Wednesday that electricity had largely returned to Chile’s 14 afflicted regions, although 220,000 residents remained without power.

Restoring power proved to be more problematic in the country’s north, where a fault in a backbone transmission line first triggered the outage that set off a chain reaction of power plant and transmission line shut-downs across the South American nation. Exactly how that happened remains under investigation. ...

Leftist president Gabriel Boric pointed his finger at energy transmission companies and vowing that authorities would investigate the firms involved. The faulty transmission line was installed by energy transmission company ISA InterChile, he said. ...

Critics encourage the state to take a more active role in planning electric infrastructure in Chile, where private companies have operated electricity – and other key services – since the 1973-90 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

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soryang's picture

The deliberate attacks and destruction of the health care infrastructure in Gaza, and the targeting and torture of health care providers is particularly disgusting. A significant part of military training, involves recognizing this behavior as an unacceptable violation of international law. I thought it was a no brainer. This sort of subject matter training used to come with notice that these sorts of tactics and treatment was what one could expect from the "enemy." For these fundamentals of international law. like rules of proportionality, and avoiding the targeting and killing of civilians, to be blatantly disregarded and in fact, materially supported, by the US, is a repudiation of everything taught by the US government itself to its service members.

Here's a link to Yoon's final defense arguments being described in Hankyoreh.

Unrepentant, Yoon blames Pyongyang for his impeachment

It's a specious cynical defense that is misleading and dishonest. Yoon accuses the majority opposition party of being in league with communist North Korea, China, and Russia. He claims his attempted coup only looked like an attempt to impose martial law, but was really only a "warning" to the people. He then made a formulaic apology for causing "confusion and inconvenience." This implies that his actions to overthrow the constitutional government are just misunderstood. Then he attempts to bargain with the Constitutional Court, by making false commitments to being receptive to a shortening of the presidential term, and making efforts to achieve other unspecified "reforms."

One other comment he made is of special significance.

Addressing the young people who were arrested after their involvement in the chaos that erupted at the Seoul Western District Court, Yoon said he felt “sorry” about their plight.

“Although I declared martial law for the people and for the country, I feel sorry for having created confusion and inconvenience for the Korean people in the process,” Yoon continued.

“Some young people are in a tough spot because of what happened while I was being taken into custody. I feel sorry and my heart goes out to them.”

These young people Yoon refers to are the insurrectionists in the streets, who oppose the impeachment and dismissal of Yoon from office, and seek to intimidate judges, politicians, media, and opposition demonstrators with violence. Many of these have been arrested.

Assemblyman Yoon Sang-hyun, a long time assembly rep, who was the son-in-law of the former dictator Chun Doo-hwan, comes from a pro-Japanese colonial legacy family, spent an extensive period in the US getting graduate degrees in "international relations" in the DC area. This representative encouraged the riotous crowds outside the presidential residence and outside the Western Branch District Courthouse which was pillaged by violent demonstrators. He met with President Yoon in detention.

I found out today, that Assembly member Yoon was directly implicated by the president himself allegedly in a recorded phone conversation with Myung Tae-kyun, a political broker currently in jail, who assisted Yoon and his wife interfering in the party internal nomination processes, unlawful political activity in South Korea. The Myung Tae-kyun investigation may have been what immediately triggered the martial law announcement. On the other hand, it may represent the dam breaking on a career of corruption and law breaking by the president since he became a senior prosecutor. There was a profound belief on his part that corrupted law enforcement and judicial processes would always be available to protect himself, his supporters, and his wife, and to intimidate and attack his accusers. Inevitably this would fall apart and the veil of the rule of law would eventually be shattered as the excesses of Yoon and his wife were ultimately exposed. So the Myung Tae-kyun disclosures were just the culmination of what was bound to occur anyway, a coup d'etat for Yoon and company, along with the new right extremists, to take control of a government they would never otherwise be able to dominate to their complete satisfaction.

It's unfortunate that US leadership, encouraged by Korean and Korean American NGOs, bought into the Yoon democracy mythology to build the new anti-China security architecture in Northeast Asia. If the US is still hoping to support their alliances and security in the region, they should cut their losses now, and stop trying to steer South Korea where it doesn't want to go. Forget the Bye, Bye Miss American Pie routine.

One of the questions now, is whether the coterie of Yoon/Han prosecutors will go back to their old ways to ensure Yoon's former protege Han Dong-hun, (who cleverly supported Yoon's impeachment to distance himself), becomes the next president of South Korea. Han's MO is the exact same as Yoon's, so the US should avoid supporting him, and maintain an arms length distance. Failure to do so will further damage the stability of the region.

Really enjoyed the Cory Doctorow video Joe! Thanks so much for the EBs.

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語必忠信 行必正直

joe shikspack's picture

@soryang

yeah, that "no rules" article ticked me right off. i know that there was a time when international law meant something and the u.s. taught its military to avoid breaking it.

i am concerned that this may not be the case any longer since the revelations of what u.s. soldiers (and the cia) did in afghanistan and some other recent conflicts.

as the article is testimony to, the civilian leadership of the u.s. and israel has no respect for international law and breaks it repeatedly and apparently with impunity.

thanks for the update from korea, i certainly hope that yoon gets what's coming to him and his replacement is not more of the same.

have a good one!

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soryang's picture

@soryang

This is a good representation of what I was trying to describe above. The street violence continues. Good point by Tim S.

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語必忠信 行必正直

soryang's picture

@soryang

I have to make a note of this because I left TK's discord community when I disagreed with his analysis of polling projections for the 2024 National Assembly elections in South Korea. It's not that I'm smarter than TK whom I respect. I had been watching one of the top polling analysts in South Korea break down polling, the way a political scientist does for several years. Yet, when I told TK polls before the general election were overestimating public support for the PPP candidates because they were manipulated to favor the right, he said he didn't believe it, or it was a conspiracy theory or something like that. Now he's come around big time. (I found I was involuntarily unsubscribed by youtube from my favorite analyst's channel a few days ago).

Typically, the S.Korean pollsters oversample the voters on the right compared to progressives. I think he means right wing voters also lie and represent themselves as "center."

All the institutions in South Korea are being manipulated by the far right, mainstream media, the military, judiciary, prosecutors, police, the National Assembly, universities and colleges, labor unions, etc. When they can't be manipulated in some fashion, they are physically attacked. They proceed this way, because they can't earn public support. 60 percent of South Koreans still want Yoon impeached/ dismissed from office. Lies and deception are the right's stock in trade. When that fails they resort to violence. What's astounding is that elected representatives on the right support this.

In the picture above showing a riot at Ewha University, a woman's college, the fascist street thugs are attacking a peaceful demonstration of mostly women, with weapons, steel pipes and in one instance a sharp farming implement (called a homi). Clearly, aggravated assaults with deadly weapons are taking place.

TK's second comment in the thread is a reference to the Myung Tae-kyun political scandal investigation I described above which threatened to bring down Yoon's administration.

(edited for clarity)

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