The Evening Blues - 10-16-24

Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 10/16/2024 - 3:06pm

eb1pt12

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lazy Lester

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features swamp blues harmonica player Lazy Lester. Enjoy!

^{Lazy Lester – I Done Got Over It}

"The Iraq invasion was about more than just advancing geostrategic objectives; it was also an information-gathering operation. It answered a lot of questions. What happens when we do this? What happens when we completely obliterate international law in front of everyone to do something extremely evil? Are there any consequences? Do we lose any allies? Does the world turn against us? Can we continue advancing our stranglehold of this planet by any means necessary, with any amount of violence and depravity necessary, without having to pay any meaningful price?

The answers to those questions explain why the US empire has continued to behave in the way it’s behaved in the years since."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Another Phony Biden PR Stunt About Humanitarian Aid In Gaza

The Biden administration is performing another PR stunt about getting humanitarian aid into Gaza as election day approaches.

The White House has given Israel a 30-day notice that it needs to improve humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip or risk losing military aid—a deadline which you will notice conveniently falls after US election day on November 5. [also, just after the delivery of the thaad system and the 100 american troops. -js]

Rather than releasing this information itself, the Biden administration published it in its customary manner by laundering it through Axios as a letter that was “obtained” by the outlet and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid, thereby framing this as a news story and not a White House press release.

Not only does the 30-day deadline fall after election day, it also falls after Israel’s planned attack on Iran in response to Iran’s retaliatory missile strike on Israel. Anonymous officials have told The Washington Post that Israel will be launching this attack before the election in the US.

Report: US Gives Israel Until After the US Election To Ease Starving of Palestinians
Biden admin sent a letter to Israeli leaders calling for steps to be taken within 30 days
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Gaza #Israel #Palestinians https://t.co/N1sTkqhiae pic.twitter.com/c5sFEdkzKe

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) October 15, 2024

This narrative the Biden administration is trying to insert into public consciousness is already falling apart. The Washington Post’s John Hudson reports via Twitter:

“Biden’s spokesmen at the White House and State Department declined to say the U.S. will restrict arms sales to Israel if it continues to block aid, raising doubts for some about the seriousness of the U.S. warning.”

Hudson also cited the analysis of former senior Biden administration official Jeremy Konyndyk, now the president of Refugees International, regarding this development:

“After the past year, Netanyahu will be understandably skeptical that Biden will put real teeth behind this sort of warning. He has blown through every guardrail the U.S. has tried to erect, and has done so with total impunity so far.”

If this was a real thing with real teeth and not an incredibly cynical eleventh-hour election ploy, it would have happened a full year ago. As with all words the US government releases about Israel, it can be safely ignored without missing out on anything of value. The Biden administration’s actions speak for themselves, and have done so for a year.

Ignore their words. Watch their actions. If you just look at the material actions of the US government and Israel and mentally mute all their mountains of verbiage about it, you simply see a big country pouring weapons into a little country who uses them to attack its neighbors.

If you tune out all the words expressing “concern” for the people of Gaza, about how Israel must do more to get humanitarian aid to civilians and try to kill fewer people, about how sad and tragic and unfortunate this whole thing is but it’s oh so very important that Israel has the ability to “defend itself”, and plus Hamas and Hezbollah are hiding behind the civilians and blah blah blah blah — if you tune all that out and just look at the raw data of what’s happening, you just see a state raining hellfire on civilian populations packed full of children and using siege warfare to starve hundreds of thousands of people.

Ignore their words and watch their actions. That’s how you sort out fact from fiction in an information environment that’s saturated in propaganda and manipulation — not just with Israel, but with everything. Watch where the war machinery is going, where the money is going, and where the resources are going, and ignore all the words about why it makes perfect sense for this to be happening. Do this and you’ll have an infinitely better understanding of what’s going on in the world than you could ever hope to glean from watching CNN or Fox News.

Yeah, right! Pull the other one.

US warns Israel of potential halt to arms transfers if Gaza aid is not distributed

The Biden administration has warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers, if it does not take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, exhorts Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.

The four-page missive, dated 13 October, was sent to Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, and Ron Dermer, the strategic affairs minister, and came to light after being posted on social media by Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist who works for Axios, after apparently being leaked. Its authenticity was confirmed by a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, at a news briefing on Tuesday. ...

Miller said the US side had intended the letter to be a private diplomatic communication and said its timing was not influenced by next month’s presidential election, which features a knife-edge contest in the battleground state of Michigan, where many Arab American voters have voiced anger over the White House’s support for Israel’s conduct of the war.

Biden Threatens Israel Arms Embargo AFTER Election

Clear acknowledgement that the administration knows 620i is being violated.

Under U.S. law, this renders Israel ineligible to receive American weapons or security assistance https://t.co/Qtgqrhqye3

— Dr. Annelle Sheline (@AnnelleSheline) October 15, 2024

Worth a full read:

Gaza at risk of becoming ‘graveyard of international law’

A prominent Palestinian human rights lawyer whose Gaza home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the early weeks of the war has called on western powers and global institutions to do more to prevent the territory becoming “the graveyard of international law”. Raji Sourani, who founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 1995 and was a key member of the South African legal team that took Israel to the international court of justice on a charge of genocide, met the UK attorney general last week to urge him to assume a leadership role in defending humanitarian law.

At the age of 70, Sourani has spent more time battling Israel in the domestic and international courts than probably any other Palestinian lawyer. He believes the world is at a turning point.

In October 2023 his two-storey home in Gaza was blown up with a 900kg bomb shortly after he gave an interview to Amy Goodman, the founder of the leftwing independent broadcaster Democracy Now. Sourani escaped with his wife and son and returned to inspect the ruins the following day. He is sure that his house was deliberately targeted. Like many, he had vowed never to leave Gaza, but he was persuaded that if he stayed he would be killed, and now lives in exile in Cairo.

Imprisoned six times, he has been accused by Israel of being a terrorist in a suit and tie. Sourani argues that if his faith in the power of law to bring accountability had been better rewarded in the Israeli and international courts, the violence of the last year might not have happened.

Last week, delivering the Edward Said lecture in London, Sourani shifted from quietly spoken wonder at the double standards of the west over Ukraine and Gaza to an angry prediction that Israel still intended to expel all Palestinians into the Sinai. Speaking to the Guardian, he said he was not sure of the extent to which the west was aware it was jeopardising something precious by shielding Israel from the legal consequences of its actions.“The situation is bleak, black and bloody,” he said. “There are people who want Gaza to be the graveyard of international law. In whose interest is that? Either you have the rule of law or you have the rule of the jungle. There is no in-between. At present it is the powerful and mighty that are winning.”

Israel Is Routinely Shooting Children in the Head in Gaza: U.S. Surgeon & Palestinian Nurse

Israel Reportedly Massacres Family of Virginia Man in Gaza, Including US Permanent Resident

The Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations on Tuesday led condemnation of Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza that killed at least 14 Palestinians—including the mother of an American citizen who was a permanent U.S. resident—and demanded that the Biden administration stop supplying Israel with arms.

In a statement Tuesday, CAIR "called on the Biden administration, the U.S. State Department, and elected officials in Virginia to demand that the Israeli government cease its attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza after the mother of an American citizen, a U.S. resident, and other family members were reportedly executed in a repeat Israeli attack on their family residence, despite the family's pleas to Israeli authorities to stop the bombing and allow the evacuation of surviving family members."

This, after "an American citizen and Virginia man of Palestinian descent informed CAIR that his family home in Gaza was bombed in an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp."

"There were reportedly 15 people in the house, seven of them children, including the man's mother, a lawful permanent resident of the United States," said CAIR, which did not identify any of the individuals described.

CAIR continued:

After the initial Israeli military strike on the family residence, the U.S. resident mother and an unknown number of relatives were reportedly injured but alive, trapped under the rubble. In an effort to rescue the survivors, the family contacted Israeli authorities, providing them with the residential address and GPS coordinates of their home to arrange for the safe passage of an ambulance. However, the Israeli military apparently used that information to bomb the house a second time and then targeted the ambulance as it attempted to rescue the survivors, killing the doctor and several children. Only a 7-year-old boy survived the incident.

The attacks came amid intensified Israeli bombardment of Jabalia and other parts of Gaza that killed 50 Palestinians on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Israel—which receives tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and diplomatic support including vetoes of multiple United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions—is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health and international agencies, Israel's 375-day assault on Gaza has killed or wounded more than 150,000 Palestinians, including at least 10,000 people who are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings. Millions more Palestinians have been forced from their homes—often several times—starved, and sickened.

"This is a documented Israeli war crime of the execution of a U.S. resident and her extended family in Gaza," CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement. "The only option the Biden administration has is to stop supplying Israel with American weapons, funded by our nation's taxpayers, which are being used to kill our citizens, legal permanent residents, and their families."

"The Biden administration has shown little concern for the mass killing of Palestinians, but perhaps it can be moved to recover the body of a U.S. resident who is also the mother of an American citizen," Awad added. "There must be an immediate cease-fire to end Israel's genocide."

While President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee—have repeatedly affirmed their unwavering support for Israel, multiple media outlets reported Tuesday that the Biden administration recently threatened to cut off U.S. arms shipments if the Israeli government does not take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days.

"No need to wait 30 days," CAIR said in a separate statement earlier Tuesday.

Phil Giraldi : Israel’s October Surprise

The October conspiracy: Biden administration escalates toward war with Iran

With less than three weeks before the 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration has deployed US combat troops to Israel as part of an agreement with the Netanyahu government to attack Iran. There is a long history of events taking place in October which have major effects on an upcoming US presidential election. By deploying US troops to Israel, the Biden administration is not so much seeking to impact Kamala Harris’s electoral prospects, as to ensure that plans for military escalation are underway before the election takes place. Instead of an “October surprise,” it is an “October conspiracy” to massively expand US involvement in war throughout the Middle East.

On Wednesday, Biden held a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss joint plans related to Iran. During the call, Netanyahu informed Biden that “he was planning to target military infrastructure in Iran,” according to a US official, who described the call to the Washington Post. The Post reported that “the prime minister’s stance factored into Biden’s decision to send a powerful missile defense system to Israel, both officials said.” In other words, Biden signed off on Netanyahu’s plans to attack Iran and made it clear that the US would provide “boots on the ground” to support such an operation. On Sunday, the Defense Department made the official announcement that it would send a THAAD missile defense system to Israel, operated by about 100 US soldiers.

The deployment of these combat troops opens the door for a much greater expansion of direct US involvement in the Middle East war. In an interview with CNN, retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton threatened, “If those troops are harmed in any way, that could then result in the US being dragged into the war, and that could have significant consequences beyond what we imagine at this point.” In the days following the call with Biden, Israel dramatically escalated its attacks against the population of Gaza and directly attacked United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon, advancing across the “blue line” in Lebanon in defiance of a UN mandate. ...

By announcing that the US is sending troops to Israel amidst this carnage, the Biden administration is demonstrating the complete hostility and contempt of the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign for mass anti-war sentiment. It also demonstrates the futility of all efforts to stop the genocide by appealing to any section of the political establishment, which is entirely complicit in slaughter on an industrial scale.

AMB Chas Freeman : Will Israel Attack Iran w/o the US?

Israel Plans To Strike Iran Before US Presidential Election

Israel is planning to launch its expected attack on Iran before the US presidential elections are held on November 5, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

An unnamed official told the Post that waiting any longer could be perceived as weakness and that the planned strike “will be one in a series of responses” to the Iranian ballistic missile barrage that was fired at Israel on October 1, which came in response to a series of Israeli escalations.

A source close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Post that while Israel was coordinating with the US to some extent on its plans to attack Iran, it wouldn’t wait for a green light from the US. “The person who will decide on the Israeli response to Iran will be [Netanyahu],” the official said.

UK Court Rules Fired Professor's Anti-Zionist Views Are 'Not Antisemitic'

An employment court in the United Kingdom this week published its full ruling in the case of David Miller, a University of Bristol professor whose firing due to alleged antisemitism was deemed wrongful by the same tribunal earlier this year.

In February, the Employment Tribunal found that Miller was unjustly dismissed in 2021 from his position as a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol following complaints by Jewish students who felt "unsafe and unprotected" on campus.

Miller argued before the tribunal that Zionism—the movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine—"necessarily calls for the displacement and disenfranchisement of non-Jews in favor of Jews, and it is therefore ideologically bound to lead to the practices of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide."

Employment Judge Rohan Pirani wrote in the tribunal's new unanimous 120-page judgment that Miller's views on Zionism are "worthy of respect in a democratic society," are "not incompatible with human dignity," and are not in "conflict with the fundamental rights of others."

Pirani said Miller's stance "amounted to a philosophical belief" and that while it was "ill-judged to express himself in the way he did," his actions were legal, "not antisemitic, did not incite violence, and did not pose any threat to any person's health or safety."

In a social media post on Tuesday, Miller welcomed the tribunal's finding that his beliefs are "protected" and are not—as the University of Bristol attempted to argue—"akin to Nazism."

"It is self-evident that racism is wrong and offensive to human dignity," Miller added. "Zionism, being inherently racist, imperialist, and colonial, is therefore also offensive to human dignity. It is because I believed this and was 'prepared to say it out loud' that I believe I lost my job."

In the tribunal's ruling, Pirani wrote that Miller's views on Zionism were "related to his area of academic expertise and research and were informed by that research and expertise."

According to the decision:

The claimant went on to explain what he regards as the overtly racist and colonial framing within the works of Zionism's founding ideologues. He also references the fact that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have found Israel to be "an apartheid state." The claimant gave examples in his evidence of what he regards as "racist laws" which he claims are a necessary corollary of Zionism and Israel's laws regarding emigration or "return."

"We conclude that [Miller's views] have played a significant role in his life for many years," Pirani wrote. "We are satisfied that they are genuinely held. He is and was a committed anti-Zionist and his views on this topic have played a significant role in his life for many years."

Numerous pro-Palestine academics, artists, media professionals, and others have been fired or otherwise punished in Western nations since before the current war on Gaza for which Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice. Such incidents have increased dramatically since last October. Jews who support Palestinian liberation and oppose Israeli crimes in Palestine and beyond have not been spared from such repercussions.

The U.K. tribunal's judgment stands in stark contrast to a pair of bills passed since last October by the U.S. House of Representatives declaring that anti-Zionism is antisemitism and affirming the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) controversial working definition of antisemitism, which, while not explicitly mentioning anti-Zionism, includes "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" and "claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor."

Pirani's ruling cites a professor who noted that the IHRA definition is "controversial," with "some believing that it is imprecise and can be used to conflate criticism of the policies of the Israeli government and of Zionism with antisemitism."

Wars, debt, climate crisis and Covid have halted anti-poverty fight – World Bank

Wars, debt, the climate crisis and the pandemic have combined to halt progress in the fight against poverty, the World Bank has warned. The Washington-based institution said on current trends it would take more than three decades to lift the near-700 million people living on less than $2.15 (£1.64) a day above the widely accepted definition of extreme poverty.

In its Poverty, Prosperity and Planet report, the World Bank said the setbacks of recent years meant the goal set by the UN of ending extreme poverty by 2030 was already impossible to hit.

Largely because of rapid growth in China, the global poverty rate fell from 38% in 1990 to 8.5% in 2024, but the rate of progress has come to a halt since 2019, and the figure is expected to decline only modestly, to 7.3%, by 2030. ...

Axel van Trotsenburg, the World Bank senior managing director, said: “After decades of progress, the world is experiencing serious setbacks in the fight against global poverty, a result of intersecting challenges that include slow economic growth, the pandemic, high debt, conflict and fragility, and climate shocks.

“Amid these overlapping crises, a business-as-usual approach will no longer work. We need a fundamentally new development playbook if we are to truly improve people’s lives and livelihoods and protect our planet.”

Report: Ukraine Considers Ceding Territory to End War With Russia

The Ukrainian government is considering options to end the war with Russia that would involve ceding territory, Der Spiegel reported on Sunday, citing a Ukrainian official.

The report said it was the first time since Russia’s invasion in February 2022 that the Ukrainian leadership has considered a deal that wouldn’t involve it getting back all of the territory Russian forces have captured since February 2022.

Under a peace deal that was on the table in March and April 2022, Russia would have withdrawn its forces back to pre-invasion lines. But that deal was discouraged by the US and other NATO countries, who urged the Ukrainians to fight.

Dennis Kucinich, US foreign policy and government spending

Walgreens to shut 1,200 US stores with stock trading near 30-year lows

Walgreens Boots Alliance said on Tuesday it would shut 1,200 stores over the next three years as the new CEO, Tim Wentworth, plots a turnaround at the struggling pharmacy chain operator hit by sluggish consumer spending and low drug reimbursement rates.

The company also narrowly beat Wall Street’s lowered estimates for fourth-quarter adjusted profit, and forecast fiscal-year earnings that were mostly in line with expectations. Its shares jumped 5.4% to $9.50 in pre-market trading. ...

Pharmacy chains are facing multiple challenges as consumers avoid high-priced grocery items and pressures mount on payments they receive from drug middlemen for filling prescriptions.

Uncommitted Co-Founder Abbas Alawieh on U.S. Election & Family in Lebanon Fleeing Israeli Bombs

the evening greens

About 80% of countries fail to submit plans to preserve nature ahead of global summit

More than 80% of countries have failed to submit plans to meet a UN agreement to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, new analysis has found.

Nearly two years ago, the world struck a once-in-a-decade deal in Montreal, Canada, that included targets to protect 30% of land and sea for nature, reform billions of dollars on environmentally harmful subsidies and slash pesticide usage. Countries committed to submit their plans for meeting the agreement before the biodiversity Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, which begins this month – but only 25 countries have done so.

The other 170 countries have failed to meet the deadline. The world has never yet met a single target set in the history of UN biodiversity agreements, and there had been a major push to make sure this decade was different.

Analysis by Carbon Brief and the Guardian shows that some of the most important ecosystems on the planet are not covered by National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).

Only five of the 17 megadiverse countries, home to about 70% of the world’s biodiversity, produced NBSAPs: Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico. Suriname was the only Amazon rainforest nation to submit a plan, and no Congo basin nations had produced NBSAPs by the deadline. Canada, Italy, France and Japan were the only G7 nations to meet the deadline. The UK has submitted a technical document to the UN convention on biological diversity but is not expected to publish its plan until the beginning of 2025, citing the change of government.

Amnesty Report Reveals 'Alarming' Human Rights Abuses in Extraction of EV Minerals

A transition away from the fossil fuels that have powered vehicles across the globe for decades, worsening the climate emergency, is sorely needed—but an analysis out Tuesday warns that companies spearheading the shift toward electric vehicles must do so while obeying internationally recognized human rights principles, and exposes how the firms have exploited communities in pursuit of minerals for EV batteries.

In a new report, Recharge for Rights, Amnesty International ranked the human rights records of 13 major EV manufacturers, including China-based BYD, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, and Mitsubishi, on a scale of 1-90.

None of the companies scored higher than 51, with Amnesty researchers identifying the companies' practices of forced evictions to make way for mining, subjecting workers to dangerous conditions, violating Indigenous peoples' rights, and exposing communities to environmental harm.

"While some progress was made, across the board, the scores were a massive disappointment," said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty.

The companies have all stepped up mining development efforts as the International Energy Agency has said demand for minerals used in EV batteries—including cobalt, lithium, nickel, and copper—is expected to increase ninefold between 2024-50. Mineral industry analysts say more than 350 new mines will need to be opened by 2035 to meet demand.

But in the rush to extract the minerals, Callamard said, the companies are "putting immense pressures on mining-affected communities."

"The human rights abuses tied to the extraction of energy transition minerals are alarming and pervasive and the industry's response is sorely lacking," she said. "As demand for electric vehicles increases, manufacturers must ensure people's human rights are respected."

Previous research by Amnesty has found that "industrial cobalt is linked to forced evictions in the Democratic Republic of Congo," said Callamard. "Car companies need to use their massive leverage as global minerals buyers to influence upstream mining companies and smelters to mitigate these human rights risks."

The report ranked companies on whether they have publicly available human rights policies, monitor human rights due diligence, and remediate human rights grievances.

BYD, the world's second-largest EV manufacturer, performed the worst on the group's scorecard, with 11 out of 90. Along with Hyundai and Mitsubishi, also low performers, the company published little to no information about its human rights due diligence.

"None of these three multinationals published information demonstrating that they are trying to understand the human rights impacts of their battery metal sourcing," said Amnesty. "None of the three companies reported mapping these supply chains, nor demonstrated that they had identified specific risks."

Mercedes-Benz was the highest performing company with 51 out of 90, indicating "a moderate demonstration of alignment with international standards."

Mysterious gooey blobs washed up on Canada beaches baffle experts

They are slimy on the outside, firm and spongy on the inside and surprisingly combustible. And in recent months, they have been washing up on the shores of Newfoundland. The depths of the Atlantic have long held mysteries, but the riddle of the mysterious white “blobs” spotted on the beaches of the eastern Canadian province has baffled both residents and marine scientists. ...

The gooey shapes aren’t the first blobs to excite locals. In 2001, residents discovered the Fortune Bay “Blobster” sea monster that had washed ashore – a ragged and oozing white mass. Months later, however, researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland concluded it was part of a decomposing sperm whale corpse.

These new blobs don’t appear to be linked to whales, despite commenters in the Beachcombers of Newfoundland and Labrador Facebook group suggesting they could be “whale boogers”, “whale sperm” or “whale vomit” – all of which have been ruled out. Dave McGrath, a resident of Patrick’s Cove, speculated that the substance could be discharge from ships travelling to and from the Come By Chance refinery, 80km north of Patrick’s Cove.

Federal scientists have also been on the case but have produced few leads. So far, they know more about what it’s not than what it is. It’s not a petroleum hydrocarbon, a petroleum lubricant or a biofuel. A full battery of tests could take months.