The Evening Blues - 1-8-25



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Roy Gaines

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist Roy Gaines. Enjoy!

Roy Gaines - Too many miles between us

"Money is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralizing as earth, air and water. Men can employ it as a tool or they can dance around it as if it were the incarnation of a god. Money votes socialist or monarchist, finds a profit in pornography or translations from the Bible, commissions Rembrandt and underwrites the technology of Auschwitz. It acquires its meaning from the uses to which it is put."

-- Lewis H. Lapham


News and Opinion

Worth a click and a full read:

Chris Hedges: Genocide — The New Normal

Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Israel Avi Dichter was probably offering conservative estimates when he said:

“I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time. I think most people understand that [Israel] will be years in some kind of West Bank situation where you go in and out and maybe you remain along Netzarim [corridor].”

Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the U.S. has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden. ...

The genocide, and the decision to fuel it with billions of dollars, marks an ominous turning point. It is a public declaration by the U.S. and its allies in Europe that international and humanitarian law, although blatantly disregarded by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a generation earlier in Vietnam, is meaningless. We will not even pay lip service to it. This will be a Hobbesian world where nations that have the most advanced industrial weapons make the rules. Those who are poor and vulnerable will kneel in subjugation. The genocide in Gaza is the template for the future. And those in the Global South know it.

The “wretched of the earth” who lack sophisticated weapons, who do not have modern armies, artillery units, missiles, navies, armored units and warplanes, will strike back with crude tools. They will match individual acts of terror against massive campaigns of state terror.

Are Americans surprised at being hated? Terror begets terror. We saw this in New Orleans where a man who was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed 14 people when he drove his pickup truck into a crowd on New Year’s Day. We will see more of it. But let’s be clear. The U.S. started it. The moral void of the suicide bomber is birthed from America’s moral void.

AMB. Craig Murray : Lebanon and the IDF

The Biden Administration Declares That A Genocide Is Happening… In Sudan

The Biden administration, which has been intimately complicit in the genocidal atrocities being perpetrated in Gaza for the last 15 months, has just determined that a genocide is being committed in Sudan.

On Tuesday the Biden administration formally accused the Sudanese paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of committing genocide in the civil war that has been ravaging the country since April 2023, announcing sanctions on the group’s leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa along with seven RSF-affiliated companies.

“The RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken moralized in a statement regarding the decision, adding, “The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”

Sometimes all you can do is stare wordlessly at the absolute gall of these freaks.


This is after all the same Antony Blinken who just flatly denied that a genocide is taking place in Gaza in his final interviews with the press a few days ago, even as mainstream western human rights institutions like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unambiguously accuse Israel of committing genocidal crimes of extermination against Palestinians in the enclave.

This is the same Biden administration which has adamantly insisted on continuing to supply Israel with the weapons it depends on to continue its genocidal onslaught in Gaza, despite mountains of undeniable evidence that it is deliberately targeting civilians with deadly force and deliberately cutting off civilians from food, clean water and medical supplies.

And this is also the same Biden administration that has been sending weapons to the United Arab Emirates while conveniently ignoring the fact that the UAE is sending money and weapons to the RSF to use for its atrocities in Sudan.

“The UAE has been covertly shipping weapons to the RSF, but that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from pushing forward major arms sales to Abu Dhabi,” notes Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp regarding the announcement.

So the US is indirectly backing the genocidal atrocities it now denounces in Sudan, while aggressively defending the genocidal atrocities it is directly backing in Gaza.

This announcement comes as Biden and his handlers push through one last $8 billion weapons shipment to Israel in the last days of his term, a final blood-soaked punctuation mark on an ugly legacy of mass murder throughout Biden’s far-too-long political career.

And we can’t realistically expect it to get any better when the next soulless empire manager takes office. In a radio interview on Monday, president-elect Trump boasted of being “the best friend that Israel ever had,” pointing to the numerous concessions he made to the Zionist state during his first time in office.

“Well, I’m the best friend that Israel ever had,” Trump said. “You look at what happened with all of the things that I’ve gotten, including Jerusalem being the capital, the embassy getting built.”

Trump then reiterated his threat to Hamas that there will be “hell to pay” if the Israeli hostages are not released by the time he takes office, following earlier statements which suggested the US could become directly involved in the bombing of Gaza during Trump’s term.

The US government does not care about genocide, regardless of what bloodthirsty ghoul takes office or what political party they happen to belong to. Anytime genocide rears its ugly head in a way that is convenient for the interests of the empire, the empire at best will look the other way and at worst join right in with the slaughter.

The empire itself is the problem. When the empire remains murderous even after you get rid of the official elected leaders currently overseeing the murderousness, this tells you that it is the empire itself that’s the problem. The empire is what needs to go.

US Declares Genocide in Sudan But Refuses to Acknowledge Genocide in Gaza

While welcoming the United States' recognition that paramilitaries in Sudan have committed genocidal acts during the country's devastating civil war since 2023, human rights advocates on Tuesday said the declaration underscored the Biden administration's refusal to acknowledge what experts said is also clearly taking place in Gaza at the hands of the U.S.-backed Israel Defense Forces.

Both the mass killing of civilians in Sudan and Palestinians in Gaza "should be recognized and stopped," said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Biden administration officials reportedly hesitated to move forward with the declaration that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is fighting Sudan's military in a bloody civil war, is committing genocide, saying it could intensify criticism of continued U.S. support for Israel.

But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed off on the declaration on Monday, saying the RSF's acts of genocide include systemic violence against the Masalit, a non-Arab ethnic group, between April-November 2023 in the western region of Darfur.

Humanitarian workers reported that they counted 2,000 bodies in a single day during that attack, while the United Nations estimated as many as 15,000 people were killed in one city.

Hundreds of thousands of Masalit people have fled to overcrowded camps in neighboring Chad.

The RSF, said Blinken on Tuesday, has "targeted fleeing civilians, [murdered] innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies."

The paramilitary group has also blocked aid from getting to some areas, contributing to what the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) identified as famine in at least five districts in Sudan last month.

Palestine-based journalist Muhammad Shehada demanded to know how the Biden administration could determine genocide is taking place in Sudan while repeatedly denying the same in Gaza—even as the International Court of Justice has found Israel placed at risk Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide and numerous human rights groups have accused Israel of acts of genocide.

"Literally every single one of the crimes you [cite] to conclude a genocide is happening in Sudan are all being committed by Israel in Gaza; the very genocide YOU have been proudly funding, arming, and covering up," said Shehada. ...

"Blinken finds genocide in Sudan but not in Gaza," said Mark Seddon, director of the Center for United Nations Studies. "Really, you can't make this crap up."

Along with the State Department's determination, the U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday that it was sanctioning RSF leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, and seven companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the main international funder of the paramilitary group.

Roth pointed out that while private companies in the UAE were sanctioned, the U.S. did not name the government of the Middle Eastern country.

Last January, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) led a push to block a U.S. sale of $85 million in military equipment to the UAE, warning the country had "been violating the U.N. arms embargo in Darfur to support the RSF."

Trump To Hamas: ALL HELL Will Break Loose

Israeli Media Publishes Guide for IDF Soldiers To Avoid Arrest Abroad

The Israeli news site Ynet has published a guide for Israeli soldiers to help them avoid arrest for potential war crimes while traveling abroad.

The guide comes after an Israeli soldier visiting Brazil fled the country over an order from a Brazilian court to investigate him for potential war crimes based on social media posts that showed the destruction of Palestinian homes. ...

Israeli soldiers have been documenting war crimes in posts on social media, a practice the Israeli government is now advising against following the incident in Brazil. Israeli media has reported that pro-Palestinian organizations have filed 50 complaints in courts around the world against Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Women Have ZERO Sympathy For Children Of Gaza!

Military Action Against Iran Will Be a ‘Real Possibility’ Under Trump

Military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities will be a “real possibility” under the incoming Trump administration, Axios reported on Monday.

The report said Trump is expected to face an Iran crisis this year due to the country’s nuclear activity, although there is no evidence Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon, something that’s recently been acknowledged by the CIA.

Incoming Trump officials have called for a return to “maximum pressure,” referring to the previous Trump administration’s Iran policy. ... Trump advisors told Axios that the “maximum pressure” strategy might not work, making a military option possible. Sources said that Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer left a meeting with Trump in November believing it was highly likely he would either support Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities or order a direct US strike on Iran.

Qatar-Syria gas pipeline

US Issues License Allowing Transactions With Syria’s HTS-Led Government

The US Treasury Department on Monday issued a six-month general license to waive some sanctions on Syria to allow transactions with the new Syrian government that’s led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Qaeda that’s designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization.

For years, the US has imposed crippling economic sanctions on Syria that were designed to prevent the country’s reconstruction. The sanctions, which have a devastating impact on Syrian civilians, were part of the regime change effort against former President Bashar al-Assad, which ultimately succeeded when he fled the country on December 8 due to an HTS offensive. ...

The license does not lift any sanctions but allows certain transactions with the HTS-led government. According to the document, the general license allows “transactions in support of the sale, supply, storage, or donation of energy, including petroleum, petroleum products, natural gas, and electricity, to or within Syria” and “transactions that are ordinarily incident and necessary to processing the transfer of noncommercial, personal remittances to Syria, including through the Central Bank of Syria.”

11 Men Freed After 20+ Years of "Extreme Deprivation." Will Biden Close Guantánamo for Good?

As war chancellor, Green Party leader would triple Germany’s military budget

In the campaign for February’s early federal election, incumbent Economic Affairs Minister and Green Party candidate for Chancellor, Robert Habeck, is positioning himself as the most aggressive warmonger. At the beginning of December, after he had already declared that as Chancellor he would deliver Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev to attack targets deep inside Russia, he is now calling for a massive increase in defence spending in order to pursue German “power politics.”

Speaking to leading news weekly Der Spiegel, he said, “According to expert calculations, about three-and-a-half percent of our economic output will be needed for defence in the next few years.” Habeck, added in confirmation, “I agree. We have to spend almost twice as much on our defence.” And when the magazine asked him whether this was “affordable,” he replied, “Yes, and it has to be.” In the end, such a “large sum” could only be pre-financed through loans, but of course “the loans will have to be repaid at some point.”

This is a declaration of war against the population. The figure Habeck brought into play underscores that the German ruling class is working on the largest rearmament programme since Hitler. The Federal Ministry of Finance is forecasting a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of €4,210 billion for this year, 3.5 percent of which would correspond to a military budget of almost €150 billion. This would not be a doubling, but almost a tripling of the regular annual military budget. Without the existing €100 billion “special fund” for the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces), this is currently just under €52 billion.

The sum is gigantic. It almost corresponds to the entire social budget (€175.67 billion in 2024), seven times the education budget (€21.49 billion) or nine times the health budget for 2024 (€16.71 billion), which has already been massively cut in recent years. When Habeck stresses that the loans “will of course have to be repaid,” he is saying nothing other than in the end, there will be nothing left of the remnants of the welfare state. ...

There were “massive geopolitical power shifts,” Habeck says, adding ominously, “Only if we fully embrace this dimension can we provide the necessary answers. No more Mr. Nice Guy.” Germany, he says, “has to reinvent itself again, or it will no longer have the option of being able to reinvent itself. If we don’t change fundamentally, we will no longer play the role we have played so far in a competitive world. We have already fallen behind too much.”

Trump refuses to rule out using military to take Panama Canal and Greenland

Donald Trump is refusing to rule out using American military force to retake control of the Panama Canal and seize Greenland, citing economic security as a driving factor. Speaking at a Tuesday press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the incoming US president explicitly declined to give assurances against using military or economic coercion when pressed about his plans regarding Panama and Greenland.

“I can’t assure you on either of those two,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question. “But I can say this, we need them for economic security.”

The remarks came during a rambling session with journalists at his Florida resort home and will probably set off diplomatic alarm bells around the world as Trump prepares to return to the White House later this month with an agenda of muscular American nationalism.

Trump claimed the Panama Canal, which was transferred to Panamanian control in 1999 under a 1977 treaty, was being “operated by China”, an assertion that comes amid his repeated calls for the strategic waterway to be returned to US control. “The Panama Canal was built for our military,” Trump said. “Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It’s being operated by China. China! And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama, we didn’t give it to China.”

When it came to Greenland, Trump threatened economic retaliation against Denmark, noting that if that country resisted his territorial ambitions he “would tariff Denmark at a very high level”. His tough talk also extended due north, as he reiterated his interest in using “economic force” to make Canada into a US state and criticized US military support for one of its closest allies.

FBI BLOCKING Russiagate Inquiry To PROTECT Anti-Trump Zealots In Agency?! Aaron Mate

Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content

Meta will get rid of factcheckers, “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” and recommend more political content on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced. In a video message, Zuckerberg vowed to prioritise free speech after the return of Donald Trump to the White House and said that, starting in the US, he would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”. ...

Meta has more than 3 billion users globally. In a wide-ranging statement, Zuckerberg said Meta would also “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse” and “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.

He cited Europe as a place with “an ever increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative” and said: “Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down.”

Biden DOJ Sues Major Landlords Over Algorithmic Price Fixing

The U.S.Justice Department on Tuesday announced that it has added six landlords as defendants in an antitrust lawsuit that the agency initially filed against the real estate software company RealPage, which the DOJ accused of engaging in a price fixing scheme that allows reduced competition between landlords so they can increase rents.

At the center of the case is RealPage's "algorithmic pricing software," which generates rent price recommendations using software based on their and their rivals' "competitively sensitive information," which they submit to RealPage, according to an August statement from the Department of Justice regarding the initial complaint.

The new complaint alleges that the six companies—Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC; Blackstone's LivCor LLC; Camden Property Trust; Cushman & Wakefield Inc and Pinnacle Property Management Services LLC; Willow Bridge Property Company LLC; and Cortland Management LLC—"participated in an unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing, harming millions of American renters," according to a Tuesday statement from the Department of Justice.

The landlords collectively operate more than 1.3 million units in 43 states and the District of Columbia, according to the agency.

The Department of Justice alleges that in addition to using RealPages's "anticompetitive pricing algorithms," the companies coordinated in a number of ways, including "communicating with competitors' senior managers about rents, occupancy, and other competitively sensitive topics" and participating in "user groups" hosted by RealPage, during which landlords would discuss, for example, how to modify the software's pricing methodology and the companies' own pricing strategies.

"While Americans across the country struggled to afford housing, the landlords named in today's lawsuit shared sensitive information about rental prices and used algorithms to coordinate to keep the price of rent high," said Doha Mekki, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, in the Tuesday statement.

Two states, Illinois and Massachusetts, have also joined the suit as plaintiffs.

Annual ‘winners’ for most egregious US healthcare profiteering announced

The 2024 “winners” of the annual Shkreli awards, given each year to perpetrators of the most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction within the healthcare industry, have been released from the Lown Institute, an independent healthcare thinktank. The recipients are chosen by a panel made up of health policy experts, clinicians, journalists and advocates. The awards are named after Martin Shkreli, the infamous “pharma bro” who rose to international notoriety after increasing the price of lifesaving anti-parasitic drug Daraprim 50-fold. ...

ProPublica’s uncovering of a once-celebrated oncologist’s pattern of malpractice and trails of suspicious deaths came in at No 4. Dr Thomas C Weiner of Helena, Montana, reportedly subjected one patient to unnecessary cancer treatments for more than a decade, amid a myriad of other shocking revelations.

Lumakras, a cancer drug from Amgen that was granted accelerated FDA approval at a daily dose of 960mg, despite findings that a 240mg dose offered similar efficacy with reduced toxicity and risk of side effects, grabbed the third spot. “Pharma companies have that same incentive to get a return on profits,” said Patricia Kelmar, a senior director at the research group US Pirg and judge on the panel. “The healthcare industry is a business, and businesses will try to get the highest profits possible.”

At No 2 was the behemoth that is UnitedHealth and how it’s become the fourth-largest business in the nation. Doctors for United have reported pressure to reduce time spent with patients, and make patients seem as sick as possible through aggressive medical coding tactics.

In a highly competitive year, the top spot went to Steward Health Care, whose CEO, Ralph de la Torre, is accused of prioritizing private-equity profits over patient care. His financial scheming led to bankruptcy, leaving hospitals in shambles, employees laid off and communities with less healthcare access.



the horse race



Appeals court hears case that could dilute Black voters’ power in Louisiana

A federal appeals court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could further erode voting rights protecting minority voters or solidify that Louisiana’s legislative maps diluted Black voters’ power.

The fifth circuit court of appeals, which hears cases brought for appeal from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, will weigh in on Nairne v Landry, a case in which a federal judge in Louisiana ruled the Republican-controlled legislature had violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act with its newly created maps.

Section 2 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in voting processes and ensures electoral procedures are “equally open to participation” for people regardless of race. When states redistrict every 10 years, they often face legal challenges for hindering the voices of minority voters.

In Nairne v Landry, the plaintiffs successfully argued that Black voters’ political power in Louisiana was diluted and that they were not able to elect candidates they wanted, outside of a small number of districts that packed in Black voters. Louisiana’s maps have been the subject of multiple lawsuits since they were finalized.



the evening greens


Environmental groups sue FDA over refusal to tackle risky plastic packaging

A coalition of environmental groups has sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the use of highly toxic phthalates in plastic food packaging because the chemicals have been found to leach at alarming rates and present a serious health risk, especially for developing children.

The suit is the latest salvo in an ongoing eight-year battle in which advocates have pressured the FDA to ban the chemicals’ use in food packaging, but the agency has sided with industry that opposes the calls. Since 2016, the FDA has either illegally ignored petitions or rejected demands to revoke a 40-year-old authorization for the chemicals that is based on long-outdated science.

The health groups in a statement called the FDA’s refusal to restrict the chemicals “unconscionable”.

“The FDA is knowingly putting millions of people in the US at risk of life-altering health problems by continuing to greenlight uses of phthalates that contaminate our food,” said Katherine O’Brien, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of the suit’s lead plaintiffs. “FDA’s decision defies decades of science and the agency’s core purpose of keeping the food supply safe.”

World’s climate fight needs fundamental reform, UN expert says: ‘Some states are not acting in good faith’

The international effort to avert climate catastrophe has become mired by misinformation and bad faith actors, and must be fundamentally reformed, according to a leading UN climate expert.

Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change, said the annual UN climate summits and the consensus-based, state-driven process is dominated by powerful forces pushing false narratives and by tech fixes that divert attention from real, equitable solutions for the countries least responsible and most affected.

“The current climate regime was built in a way, maybe unconsciously, that locked in an ineffective approach that is blind to the disproportionate harms of climate change – and increasingly climate solutions – and the disproportionate benefits that the current situation is accruing to very few states and very few individuals,” said Morgera, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.

“We can observe that some states are not acting in good faith in very clear ways, which is the basis of any international regime. There is widespread disregard for the rule of international law, and also a very clear pushback on the science, and shrinking of civil spaces at all levels. Basically, the truth is out of the conversation. That is the problem – there is no space at Cop for the truth,” said Morgera.

“Fundamental reform is possible, if there is a willingness by the states and the secretariat, but it’s hard to see that at the moment.”

Fast-moving wildfire destroys homes as strong winds hit southern California

A fast-moving wildfire erupted in Los Angeles county on Tuesday, quickly consuming more than 1,200 acres and destroying homes in an affluent community along the Pacific Ocean.

Whipped by unusually strong winds, the fire prompted frenzied evacuations through winding roads in the Pacific Palisades, an area north of Santa Monica, with residents fleeing on foot as flames approached.

A “life-threatening” windstorm is impacting a large swath of southern California, fanning the destructive fire and complicating early containment efforts. The region could be seeing the strongest winds in more than a decade, bringing extreme fire risk to areas that have been without significant rain for months. ...

The fire broke out around 10.30am and by 3.30pm had burned more than 1,200 acres, with the city of LA declaring a state of emergency. More than 30,000 people were under evacuation orders, with 13,000 structures threatened.

The blazes were also reaching the areas around the Getty Villa, an art museum on the Malibu coast, with early evening reports that the blazes were approaching the grounds. The museum said earlier it had fire prevention measures in place and that the galleries and library archives were sealed off from smoke and protected by “double-walled construction”. The fire also approached the beach in Malibu near the Pacific Coast Highway.


Also of Interest

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

Meditations On Bono Receiving The Presidential Medal Of Freedom From Joe Biden

WaPo Editors - Ending The War Is Worse Than Losing

The Ghost of Jimmy Carter

FBI still hiding key Russiagate details, newly released document shows

Goals Behind Trump’s Tariffs: Cut Taxes on Rich & Escalate New Cold War on China

Smart CEOs Suck Up To Trump

Biden designates two new national monuments after advocacy from tribes

Aaron Maté : The FBI and Russia


A Little Night Music

Roy Gaines - Loud Mouth Lucy

Roy Gaines - Alabama Sue

Roy Gaines - Worried ´Bout You Baby

Roy Gaines - De Dat De Dum Dum

Roy Gaines - Send for Me

Roy Gaines & His Tuxedo Blues Orchestra - Every Day I Have The Blues

Roy Gaines - You're Right, I'm Left

Roy Gaines - Heavy Load

Roy Gaines - Bluesman for Life


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snoopydawg's picture

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then they should quit committing war crimes. And posting them for the whole world to see because they are proud of what they are doing.

If Jews want to stop the spread of antisemitism then they better start giving a shit for civilians in Palestine. If they see Palestinians as non humans then why should we care what people say about them?

Instead war criminals are being told how to decrease their chances of being arrested and many Jews are giving people a reason to be against them and their views. Either way Israel is trying to make it illegal for people to criticize either group.

Many of the Jews in Israel are not descendants of the Jews who were killed by Nazis. They are from European countries like Poland and Ukraine, ect.
From the Cook article I posted a few months ago it was the Zionists that got them sent to concentration camps and not warning them about what was happening. Then when the camps were liberated and Jews started migrating to Israel they were treated badly and sent off to their deaths.

Naomi Klein has an excellent article on how Jews are raised to see themselves as the victims. I’ll find it in a bit.

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4 users have voted.

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

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

The superior dead

How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war

It’s a simple fable of good and evil, in which Israel is unblemished in its innocence, deserving unquestioning support, while its enemies are all monsters, deserving of violence unbounded by laws or borders, whether in Gaza, Jenin, Beirut, Damascus or Tehran. It’s a story in which Israel’s very identity as a nation is forever fused with the terror it suffered on 7 October, an event that, in Netanyahu’s telling, will be seamlessly merged both with the Nazi Holocaust and a battle for the soul of western civilization.

In Germany, they speak of a Staatsraison, or reason of state – and in recent decades, its leaders have said that reason is protecting Israel. Israel has a Staatsraison too, related but different. Officially, it is Jewish safety. But integral to the state’s conception of safety is Jewish trauma. Building shrines to it. Erecting walls around it. Waging wars in its name.

Fusing 7 October to the Holocaust

In their place, at least in Israel and much of the western press, was a singular historical reference point for the attacks. I am speaking, of course, about the persistent and repeated comparison between 7 October and the Nazi Holocaust. In an inversion of actual power relationships, this analogy casts stateless Palestinians – living under prolonged Israeli siege, illegal occupation and apartheid – as the Nazis, and casts Israel – with one of the most powerful armies in the world, backed by the United States hyperpower, and a clear policy of expanding its land mass and erasing Palestinian presence in a baldly colonial manner – as their helpless victims.

This is a profoundly inflammatory story since, in the minds of many Israelis and their supporters, a return of a Holocaust-level threat justifies almost any response. As Abdaljawad Omar put it: “This colonial form of mourning transforms Palestinians into modern-day equivalents of the Amalekites, fueling a yearning for power, autonomy, and unchecked militarism. It engenders a racialized discourse that redirects the grief and anger of the Holocaust onto a people who simply existed where the state of Israel was to be established.”

Finish the job of the Nakba

This dangerous derangement found what may be its most explicit expression last December, when David Azoulai, head of the Metula Council in northern Israel, told an Israeli radio program his idea for what should happen to Gaza and the 2.2 million Palestinians who live there. In the view of this local politician, the Israeli navy should transport all the Palestinians left “to the shores of Lebanon, where there are already sufficient refugee camps” so that the strip “should resemble the Auschwitz concentration camp … The entire Gaza Strip should be emptied and leveled flat, just like in Auschwitz.”

He added: “Let it be a museum for all the world to see what Israel can do. Let no one reside in the Gaza Strip for all the world to see, because October 7 was in a way a second Holocaust.”

The idea of invoking Auschwitz in order to call for a new genocide – including the creation of new concentration camps – in the here and now, while somehow passing it off as a call for commemoration, was too much for the actual people who run the Auschwitz memorial. They responded with a social media post stating: “David Azoulai appears to wish to use the symbol of the largest cemetery in the world as some sort of a sick, hateful, pseudo-artistic, symbolic expression.

Remember that Israel had been warned months in advance that Hamas was planning on attacking Israel by not only 3 countries, but by the people who’s job it was to patrol the border and to watch for signs of an attack.
Israel moved 2/3rds of its military to the West Bank and they took 5 hours to send it back to the area. Plus the Nova concert was moved closer to the Gaza border and where the attack would come from 2 days before.
The one road out of the area was blocked. By the Israeli military? Dunno. And then the helicopters were sent in to keep people from being taken back to Gaza. The Hannibal directive was initiated.

Israelis are taught about the holocaust and to see the people of Palestine as less than human.

That’s why we’re seeing the military committing war crimes and posting videos on social media and why the Israeli women said that they don’t give a shit about the children of Gaza.

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2 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

my goodness, that naomi klein piece was long, that woman needs an editor! phew!

that said, she makes a number of good points which are worth wading through the piece for i guess. her documentation of the full court press of all of the israeli society's institutions to weaponize the holocaust and wave the bloody shirt of october 7 while silencing any narrative of the palestinian struggle to exist in the face of erasure by the israeli state is worth the price of admission.

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3 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

I can’t imagine what it would be like to experience this.
I’m lucky to live where I do. We have the east winds that get funneled through the canyons, but other than that we rarely have natural disasters. An occasional earthquake or high wind storms.

I hope these people will be taken care of better than the others on Biden’s watch. And all the other presidents who looked the other way when people were in need

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4 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i've been seeing assorted reports from la all day and it looks bad. not only will this be expensive, but i suspect that insurance for homes in many areas of california may become unobtanium or horrifically expensive, much like in areas of florida.

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5 users have voted.
dystopian's picture

Hi all, Hey Joe!

Thanks for the news and blues! Roy Gaines was a great player. Especially in his later stuff his intonnations often reminded me of Roy Buchanan. Lots of bending and choking with perfect control, often sharp bright attacks. I hear a distinct similarity. Likely merely convergent evolution... That Alabama Sue was rad for its time.

Chuckwalla are awesome lizards. We had one for a few years when I was a kid. Charlie, of course. Of course if they open up public lands for mining and drilling, it will hardly matter....

Thanks for the great sounds Joe!

happy trials all!

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4 users have voted.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

gaines also went jazzy on us for a while, which he is indeed quite skilled at. he does a nice version of wes montgomery's "bumpin' on sunset," which i'm pretty sure is up on youtube somewhere.

anyway, have a great evening and say, how much wood can those chuckwallas chuck! Smile

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2 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

hope you're better than yesterday. Speaking of unobtanium, CA has already lost some insurance companies, and more are likely to follow soon. I believe that they recently passed a law saying that if you sell insurance here, you have to sell fire coverage - I'll try to check on that tomorrow. Pacific Palisades is a really bad place to live, imo. Nize neighborhood and money and all that, but a large coastal zone keeps having bits fall into the sea, and, further away from the coast ... Some of these problems have been going on since I was in high school. Ah well, at least it isn't Ukiestan.

be well and have a good one

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3 users have voted.

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

heh, well, i'm still a little snotty, with a post nasal drip which leads to the occasional coughing jag, but generally speaking i'm on an upward trend. i went out and shoveled a little snow today and felt okay afterwards, so my energy is definitely improving.

yeah, i suspect that insurance is going to be a major problem in a lot of places as time marches on. i think most places in america are one climate disaster away from the sort of insurance problems that florida has.

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3 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

Were you in the major storm zone?

Our winter has been disappointing. 3 pilffy storms, but not much on the ground.
Cold tho.

Sam found a nice little mound of snow and did the doggy roll in it and got up smiling. It sure doesn’t take much to make her happy.

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3 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

about four to six inches and we might get another inch or two this weekend if the forecast holds up. not much to write home about, but it does beautify the place a little. Smile

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3 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

.

No money for Americans because it’s been sent to foreign countries.
People should have made a stink after East Palestine and how the people there were neglected and ignored. But then we had more disasters and people were neglected and ignored again. Now the California firestorms.
I think a general strike could change things in this country if people were serious about wanting things to change.
Pick a company to not buy anything from for a week and then move on to the next one. Or if enough people who could afford it stayed home…or any of the other ideas that would get our ruler’s attention. At least try something.

Larry Johnson.

IMG_1254.jpeg

The politicians in Washington dole out foreign aid like it is Halloween treats. Millions, billions, who cares? As long as the money is flowing. So, to give this some perspective, let me use the losses from the raging wildfire sweeping the hills surrounding Los Angeles:

Empty Hydrants: Firefighters faced a significant setback when numerous hydrants in Pacific Palisades ran dry. Chief Engineer Janisse Quiñones of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power confirmed that all water storage tanks in the area were depleted by 3 am Wednesday.

Budget Cuts: The LAFD is grappling with a significant $17.6 million budget cut for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the second-largest reduction among city departments. This could further strain their ability to combat future infernos, as reported by the NY Post.

Sending Gear to Ukraine: Joe Biden’s USAID has funded 16 Ukrainian fire departments with protective gear, motor pumps, chainsaws, and more by 2024, according to the organization’s reports. This has raised eyebrows, with figures like Elon Musk tweeting, “But what about California?” as LA burns.

The toll is sobering: two fatalities, over 1,000 buildings — schools, churches, and libraries included — destroyed. Palisades and Eaton fires spread across 26,000 acres with 0% containment reported.

LA sent some of its firefighting equipment to Ukraine and knew that the storage tanks weren’t mostly full.

Park City ski patrol went on strike during the holidays and the owners brought in scabs, but not enough to make a difference and the company lost a lot of money. They were asking for a $2 raise, but the company said no. It probably cost them 2-5 times that much in lost revenue and people being absolutely turked about their poor experience.

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3 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

ain't it good to know what the dark overlords think of americans?

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3 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

While Biden was talking about the fire situation he started talking about how he is a great grandpa.
Newsom and others erupted in cheers.

I just left twitter and my gawd the scenes of the fire are just heartbreaking.

Lots of rich people’s homes have burned. And apparently the insurance companies dropped their coverage a few months ago.

Trump was right. America has become a 3rd world shithole country.

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1 user has voted.

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