The Evening Blues - 9-20-24
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago guitarist and bandleader Dave Specter. Enjoy!
Dave Specter & Jorma Kaukonen - How Low Can One Man Go?
"Those that think that wealth is the proper thing for them cannot give up their revenues; those that seek distinction cannot give up the thought of fame; those that cleave to power cannot give the handle of it to others. While they hold their grasp of those things, they are afraid of losing them. When they let them go, they are grieved and they will not look at a single example, from which they might perceive the folly of their restless pursuits - such men are under the doom of heaven."
-- Zhuangzi
News and Opinion
On War Crimes And Western Hypocrisy
The death toll has risen to 12 from Israel’s terror attack in Lebanon on Tuesday which detonated explosive materials hidden in thousands of pagers. Another 20 people were then killed in another attack on Wednesday with a second wave of explosions, this time using walkie talkies and home solar energy systems.
The total death toll now sits at 32. Two children and four healthcare workers are among the dead. Thousands have been injured.
As you would expect, western empire managers are getting really squirmy about this. White House spokesman John Kirby adamantly refused to answer any questions involving Israel’s responsibility for the attacks during a press conference on Wednesday, despite Israel being widely reported as the responsible party, with outlets like The New York Times citing US officials as their source.
“I’m not gonna speak to the details of these incidents,” Kirby said repeatedly when questioned about Israel’s role and what the US response will be.
It goes without saying that if a government like Russia, China or Iran were even suspected of being responsible for similar attacks, Kirby and his fellow podium people would be not just naming the suspected aggressor but fervently denouncing the attack as an act of terrorism.
And it is here worth reminding readers that in 2017, a leaked State Department memo explained in plain language that it is standing US policy to overlook the abuses of US allies while denouncing the abuses of US enemies in order to undermine enemies and show other countries the perks of being aligned with the United States.
The memo showed neoconservative empire manager Brian Hook teaching a previously uninitiated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that for the US government, “human rights” are only a weapon to be used for keeping other nations in line. In a remarkable look into the cynical nature of imperial narrative management, Hook told Tillerson that it is US policy to overlook human rights abuses committed by nations aligned with US interests while exploiting and weaponizing them against nations who aren’t.
“In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights,” Hook explained in the memo.
“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote. “We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them. For this reason, we should consider human rights as an important issue in regard to US relations with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. And this is not only because of moral concern for practices inside those countries. It is also because pressing those regimes on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
If this happened to an Israeli child it would be the only story on the news pic.twitter.com/2A5n3BIWiP
— Tim Barker (@_TimBarker) September 18, 2024
It’s tedious going “If Group X did this western politicians and pundits would condemn it but because Group Y did it they’re fine with it” over and over again, but it’s important to highlight these discrepancies because they show how we’re being deceived.
Westerners are indoctrinated from birth into believing they live in a society that is basically good with governments that, while imperfect, are still far superior to the tyrants and corrupt autocrats of the global south. In reality the western power structure centralized around the United States is the single most murderous and tyrannical force on earth by an extremely massive margin, but that obvious fact is always omitted from the indoctrination curriculum.
By pointing out the glaring discrepancies between the way the western political-media class responds to things like Israel turning electronic devices into thousands of bombs placed throughout civilian populations and the way they respond when other groups detonate explosives among civilians, you’re helping to punch holes in the veil of indoctrination they have cast over our collective understanding of the world. The more you recognize that you only see your society as good and others as bad because of the way world events are framed by western news media and politicians, the closer you get to having your “Are we the baddies?” epiphany.
Hypocrisy and contradiction are not great moral evils in and of themselves, but they often run cover for great moral evils. The fact that we are trained to think about the world by people who facilitate great evils perpetrated by their own side when they’d condemn identical evils committed by their enemies shows that they do not stand against evil, and are deeply evil themselves.
Recognizing the problems in our world is the first step to solving them. That’s what the propagandists and empire managers work to prevent us from doing, and that’s what we try to do by pointing out the glaring plot holes and inconsistencies in their narratives over and over again.
The correct thing to do when western leaders talk about human rights or denounce abuses by enemy governments is to mock them and dismiss them. They’re not saying anything true about their actual values and beliefs; if they were there wouldn’t be so much hypocrisy in the way they denounce governments they don’t like for offenses they ignore and make excuses for in governments they do like. They’re never saying what they’re saying to stop human rights abuses or make the world a better place, they’re only saying what they’re saying to undermine their enemies so that the western empire can rule the world and be the only one administering abuse.
And the same is true of the mainstream western press. You’ll see them completely ignore the abuses of US-aligned governments while showing immense interest in alleged abuses by empire-targeted groups, often on very flimsy evidence. Mock them and dismiss them when they act like they care about human rights abuses. They don’t care. They just want to make sure the abusive power structure they conduct propaganda for is the one in charge.
Will Israel’s Terrorist Attacks On Lebanon Trigger All Out War? w/ Ghadi Francis & Rania Khalek
Israel bombards southern Lebanon after Hezbollah chief vows ‘punishment’
Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon late on Thursday, hours after Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, threatened “tough retribution and just punishment” for the wave of attacks that targeted the organisation with explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies.
The Israeli military said it had hit hundreds of rocket launchers which it said were about to be used “in the immediate future”.
The bombardment included more than 52 strikes across southern Lebanon, the country’s state news agency NNA said. Three Lebanese security sources told the Reuters news agency that they were the heaviest aerial strikes since the conflict began in October.
As Israeli jets roared over Beirut in a show of force earlier in the day, Nasrallah threatened retribution against Israel “where it expects it and where it does not”. ...
Nasrallah admitted that the explosive attacks – the biggest security breach for Hezbollah since its foundation in the 1980s – had been a major blow to the organisation. The attacks “crossed all red lines”, Nasrallah said.
"Declaration of War": Hezbollah Girds for Israeli Invasion of Lebanon After Mobile Device Attacks
Yes, Israel’s Pager Attack on Lebanon Is Terrorism
The massive unfolding attack in Lebanon targeting personal electronics belonging to members of Hezbollah, which has so far killed at least 20 people and wounded roughly 3,000, is already beyond doubt Israel’s work. The attack that began on Tuesday has continued into a second day, with more reports of other personal communication devices exploding, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens of others at a funeral on Wednesday for people who had been killed in the first attack the day prior.
The ongoing attack, which can only be described as terrorist in nature, is unprecedented in its scope and method, but the nature of its indiscriminate attack is far from unique for Israel. In fact, Israel’s doctrine of inflicting massive harm to civilians is named after the area of Beirut, Dahiya, where this very attack was centered. The most recent development marks a shocking advancement in Israel’s wholesale disregard for human life but it is not new, even if you would never learn that from reading the Western press.
The New York Times team of Patrick Kingsley, Euan Ward, Ronen Bergman, and Michael Levenson covered the attack, and while they did name Israel as the culprit, it worked to include Israel’s blatantly false PR angle that it was a targeted attack.
The Times reported:
According to American and other officials briefed on the attack, Israel hid explosive material in a shipment of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon. The explosive material, as little as one or two ounces, was inserted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. According to one official, Israel calculated that the risk of harming people not affiliated with Hezbollah was low, given the size of the explosive.
The Times also wrote that “the blasts appeared to be the latest salvo in a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that escalated after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7,” giving this an aura of mere military activity, rather than a blatantly imprecise and deadly attack on a civilian population. American whistleblower Edward Snowden, cited on this site yesterday, correctly summarized the focus and impact of the attack:
What Israel has just done is, via *any* method, reckless. They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara provided a reality check, perhaps most pertinent for Western audiences:
For our viewers around the world, it is probably helpful to do some “role-play” here. Imagine if 1,200 people, active in the Pentagon, State Dept. and CIA, had pagers explode in their faces, arms, and abdominals. How would you think the U.S. would feel about that?
The Times notes Israel’s “long history of using technology to carry out covert operations against Iran and Iranian-backed groups” as if it were some impressive technological achievement. But really, in order to understand what Israel is doing here, we must look at its track record of indiscriminate attacks. And this is, in fact, not only historically relevant but strategically and geographically relevant as well.
The name of the Dahiya Doctrine stems from the Dahiya quarter of Beirut that Israel targeted and leveled during the 2006 war, a quarter where many families affiliated with Hezbollah lived. In 2008, then military Chief of Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot (later chief of staff and centrist minister), coined the doctrine and outlined “what will happen” to any enemy that dares attack Israel:
What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on [the village] and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.
Israel applied this method already in its 2008-9 Gaza onslaught. The United Nations “Goldstone Report” of 2009 concluded that Israel had conducted a “deliberately disproportionate attack, designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population,” and noted that the Dahiya Doctrine “appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.” Just to reiterate: “Punish, humiliate, and terrorize.” That last word, “terrorize,” should give us all pause, especially in this particular context.
The recent Gaza onslaught has in its way been the implementation of this doctrine into full-blown genocide. This is not surprising, since the vein of deliberate harm to civilians as a logic of “warfare” has been in the DNA of this doctrine to begin with.
So now, Israel is blowing up pagers. The prospect of this being called an act of terror by Western media appears to be very low. That is still considered a radical notion, when it comes to Israel because terror is a political term that is only reserved for enemies of the West. For the readers of The New York Times, it is just a “latest salvo” and not a reflection on the nature of Israel itself.
Netanyahu frustration, Middle East conflict delayed
Two Israeli Soldiers Killed, Eight Wounded as Hezbollah Rockets Strike Northern Israel
Hezbollah is still reeling after multiple explosive pager and walkie-talkie attacks earlier this week killed more than three dozen across Lebanon and Syria, with leader Hassan Nasrallah promising retaliation. Exactly when and what form this will take is anyone’s guess, but the ongoing tit-for-tat strikes continued Thursday, with anti-tank rockets fired into northern Israel.
Hezbollah reported firing at Israeli troops in the Ramim Ridge area. The strikes wounded at least eight people in the area, though their identities are not clear. Officials say two were seriously-to-moderately wounded, and the rest lightly so. Later reports said that two Israeli soldiers were killed in the strikes.
Will the historic UN vote for sanctions on Israel change reality for Palestinians?
Canada abstained when the United Nations general assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for sanctions on Israel on 18 September 2024, objecting that the resolution “aligns with boycott, divestment, sanctions, which Canada firmly opposes”. This formulation, hypocrisy aside, actually turns the truth on its head. Launched in 2005, the non-violent, anti-racist BDS movement, inspired by the South African anti-apartheid struggle and the US civil rights movement, has consistently advocated for Palestinian rights in alignment with international law.
BDS calls for ending Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid and upholding the right of Palestinian refugees to return and receive reparations. It is the UN general assembly that is finally beginning to “align” itself with the urgent task of applying international law consistently, even to Israel. As Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN human rights official, puts it, the international court of justice (ICJ) ruling makes BDS “not only a moral imperative and constitutional and human right, but also an international legal obligation”. Far from being yet another UN vote, this is historic. It is the first time ever that the general assembly has called out Israel’s apartheid regime and the first time in 42 years that it has called for sanctions to end its illegal occupation, as determined by the ICJ in July. ...
Regardless, Palestinians have no illusions whatsoever that justice will shine on us from the ICJ or the UN, the latter being historically responsible for the 1947-49 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of most Palestinians, and the establishment of Israel as a settler-colony over most of the area of historic Palestine. The utter failure of the international legal system, dominated by Euro-American colonial powers, to provide the necessary, unambiguous, legally binding foundation for stopping the world’s first televised genocide, let alone delivering justice, speaks volumes.
We have international law on our side. We have the ethical high ground as an Indigenous people fighting a depraved, genocidal system of oppression to achieve our rights. Ethics and the law are necessary in our or any other liberation struggle, but they are never sufficient. To dismantle a system of oppression, the oppressed invariably need power as well: people power, grassroots power, intersectional coalition power, solidarity power and media power, among other forms. ... As the struggle that ended apartheid in South Africa has shown, ending state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s system of oppression, especially through the non-violent tactics of BDS, is the most effective form of solidarity, of building people power to help dismantle structures of oppression.
Prof. John Mearsheimer : Is Israel on the Brink?
Kamala launches belligerent new Cold War ad blitz
Brazil top judge accuses X of ‘willful’ circumvention of court-ordered block
In the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil’s top court, a senior judge has accused X of a “willful, illegal and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block – and imposed a fine of R$5m ($921,676) for each day the social network remains online.
The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since 30 August, on Wednesday became accessible to many users in Brazil after an update that used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno.
This allowed some Brazilian users to access X without the need for a VPN – which is also prohibited in the country.
Late on Wednesday, X described its reappearance in Brazil as an “inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users”.
But the influential supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes – who ordered the original ban as part of an attempt to crack down on anti-democratic, far-right voices – on Thursday described the move as a deliberate attempt “to circumvent the court’s blocking order”.
Money-laundering charges dropped against bail fund in Cop City protest case
Money-laundering charges are being dropped against a bail fund swept up in an unprecedented case involving 61 people accused of a criminal conspiracy while protesting against the controversial Georgia police training center known colloquially as “Cop City”.
Deputy attorney general John Fowler unexpectedly told Fulton county superior court judge Kimberly Esmond Adams and attorneys for several of the case’s defendants in a hearing this week that he was dropping charges underlying 15 of the 18 counts included in the Rico, or racketeering, indictment.
The charges targeted the Atlanta Solidarity Fund (ASF), one of nearly 100 similar organizations across the country that help arrested protesters with bail, legal defense and related needs. The group is at the center of the state’s case; its three members are mentioned more than 120 times in last September’s 109-page indictment.
The fund’s members still face racketeering charges in the case, months from trial. It is the first time a state Rico law is being used to prosecute this many defendants in connection with a protest or social movement, experts have told the Guardian. Rico charges are usually reserved for use against organized crime. ...
Several people who were in the courtroom said Fowler called the decision “a close call” – to which Judge Esmond Adams responded: “Let’s be clear – you dropped these charges because you knew they wouldn’t prevail.”
US opens civil rights investigation into Mississippi sheriff’s office after torture of Black men
The US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into a Mississippi sheriff’s department whose officers tortured two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said Thursday.
The justice department will investigate whether the Rankin county sheriff’s department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and whether it has used racially discriminatory policing practices, according to assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke.
Five Rankin sheriff’s deputies pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hours-long attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. A sixth officer, from the Richland police department, was also convicted in the attack.
Some of the officers were part of a group so willing to use excessive force they called themselves the “Goon Squad”. All six were sentenced in March, receiving terms of 10 to 40 years.
The charges followed an Associated Press investigation in March 2023 that linked some of the officers to at least four violent encounters since 2019 that left two Black men dead.
Social media and online video firms are conducting ‘vast surveillance’ on users, FTC finds
Social media and online video companies are collecting huge troves of your personal information on and off their websites or apps and sharing it with a wide range of third-party entities, a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff report on nine tech companies confirms.
The FTC report published on Thursday looked at the data-gathering practices of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The majority of the companies’ business models incentivized tracking how people engaged with their platforms, collecting their personal data and using it to determine what content and ads users see on their feeds, the report states.
The FTC’s findings validate years of reporting on the depth and breadth of these companies’ tracking practices and call out the tech firms for “vast surveillance of users”. The agency is recommending Congress pass federal privacy regulations based on what it has documented. In particular, the agency is urging lawmakers to recognize that the business models of many of these companies do little to incentivize effective self-regulation or protection of user data.
“Recognizing this basic fact is important for enforcers and policymakers alike because any efforts to limit or regulate how these firms harvest troves of people’s personal data will conflict with their primary business incentives,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “To craft effective rules or remedies limiting this data collection, policymakers will need to ensure that violating the law is not more lucrative than abiding by it.”
CEO Pay Has Risen 1,085% Since 1978, But for Workers? Just 24%
Chief executive officers at the largest companies in the United States saw their compensation surge by 1,085% from 1978 to 2023, compared with only a 24% increase for typical worker pay, according to an annual report published Thursday.
The Economic Policy Insitute (EPI) analysis focuses on the 350 largest publicly owned U.S. firms by revenue.
"Since CEO pay is mostly stock-based—and the value of stocks changes frequently—calculating it is not entirely straightforward," the report explains, so EPI uses "a backward-looking measure—realized compensation—and a forward-looking measure—granted compensation."
CEOs' annual realized compensation in 1978 was $1,874,000 in 1978, but rose to $22,207,000 last year—the 1,085% increase. Meanwhile, private-sector workers were making $57,000 a year nearly half a century ago, and have only seen that rise to $71,000. The figures were adjusted for inflation.
"The realized CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 290-to-1 in 2023, in stark contrast to the 21-to-1 ratio in 1965," the report says. "Over the last two decades, the ratio has been far higher than at any point from the 1960s to the early 1990s."
BUSTED! NC GOP Gov Candidate Mark Robinson's Bizarre Porn Emails EXPOSED
North Carolina Republican candidate for governor called himself ‘black Nazi’ – report
North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Mark Robinson, referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” on a pornography website’s message board, according to a new CNN report about the current lieutenant governor who has already been marked by scandal and controversial comments.
According to CNN’s reporting, Robinson referred to himself as a “perv” in archived messages because he “enjoyed watching transgender pornography”. The messages were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa”, a pornographic website that includes a message board.
He also expressed support for reinstating slavery. “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few,” he wrote in October 2010. In March 2012, during the Obama administration, he wrote: “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!”
Robinson, North Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor, is facing the Democrat Josh Stein, the state attorney general, in November. Republicans have reportedly been pressuring Robinson to withdraw from the race as rumors swirled about CNN’s report on Thursday. North Carolina’s deadline for a candidate to drop out is also Thursday and the deadline to remove his name from the ballot has passed.
In a video posted to social media, Robinson accused his opponent of leaking the story to CNN and vehemently denied making the comments.
Dems Have "No Hope" of Winning Election Warns Green Party VP Candidate Butch Ware
Hopeless sheepdogs of the Democrat party:
Uncommitted movement declines to endorse Harris – but warns against Trump presidency
The Uncommitted National Movement announced that it will not endorse Kamala Harris for president, saying on Thursday she failed to respond to the movement’s requests that she meet with Palestinian families in Michigan and to discuss a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza by 15 September.
“Vice-President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her,” Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted leader and delegate from Michigan, said during a press conference on Thursday. ...
However, the movement’s leaders who helped mobilize more than 700,000 Americans to vote “uncommitted” or its equivalent in Democratic party primaries throughout the nation also acknowledged the danger of Donald Trump winning the election.
“At this time, our movement opposes a Donald Trump presidency whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing,” said Alawieh. “And our movement is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency, given our country’s broken electoral college system."
Elite US universities rake in millions from big oil donations
Prestigious US universities are raking in millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. And one university even appears to have owned a petroleum company from which it has earned millions of dollars, according to a spate of new reports produced by student organizers.
The six analyses, released Wednesday, focus on American University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Princeton University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and University of California, San Diego. They were written by campus organizers at each respective institution and released by Campus Climate Network, an international student-led coalition that is pushing colleges to cut ties with big oil. “Fossil fuel companies are hijacking our universities to perpetuate their own toxic industry, and we students are not having it anymore,” Will Kattrup, a research lead at Campus Climate Network, said on Wednesday.
The researchers scraped tax forms for publicly disclosed donations to universities from oil companies’ charitable arms, scoured schools’ boards for names linked to fossil fuel interests and tracked conflict of interest statements in published academic articles to document fossil fuel funding. Students from public universities also filed public information requests to obtain additional financial information.
Since 2003, the researchers found, the six schools have together accepted over $100m in fossil fuel industry-tied funding, defined as money from fossil fuel companies or their charitable arms. Millions more in funding are coming from firms that “enable” the fossil fuel industry, the students said, such as banks that fund oil expansion or groups that have spread climate disinformation. These numbers are sure to be understatements, the students said, as most university research centers do not disclose their donors publicly, and as some students only tracked contributions over the past decade.
The six schools also published a collective 1,507 academic articles funded by oil and gas interests, raising the students’ concerns about bias. And the universities have placed numerous fossil fuel-tied individuals on various boards, including in some cases on governing boards which are often responsible for setting institutions’ policies.
Sweden cuts tax on flying despite admitting it would increase emissions
Campaigners have accused the Swedish government of doing “everything in its power to stop climate action” after it cut a tax on flying, despite admitting that it would increase emissions. The flight tax, aimed at cutting pollution from aviation, was introduced in 2018, amid the rise of the “flight shame” (flygskam) movement popularised by Greta Thunberg.
But in its budget for next year, presented on Thursday, the centre-right coalition, which depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, said that from 1 July 2025 the tax would no longer apply. The move is expected to cut ticket prices from Sweden by 80 SEK (£5.93) on European flights and 325 SEK (£24.09) on those outside Europe. ...
Although the move is likely to increase flying, and in turn lead to a rise in emissions, the government claims that overall its budget will cut emissions. It also announced a cut in taxes on wages, pensions, savings and petrol. Miljöpartiet, the Swedish Green party, accused the government of being in “number-crunching denial”
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
When the Clintons Did Haiti: Keep the Natives From Breeding
Earth will briefly have a second ‘mini moon’ this autumn
Pepe Escobar : What Does Putin Want?
A Little Night Music
Dave Specter - Chicago Style
Dave Specter w/ Tad Robinson - That's How Strong My Love Is
Dave Specter & Barkin' Bill Smith - Bluebird Blues
Dave Specter - Same Old Blues
Dave Specter - Blues from the Inside Out
Dave Specter - The Hollywood Park Shuffle
Lurrie Bell & Dave Specter Band - I'm Ready
Floyd McDaniel w/Dave Specter - Every Time
Dave Specter - At Whit's End
Dave Specter - March Through The Darkness
Comments
Well duh…
.
Biden owns the Lebanon attacks because he hasn’t reigned in Israel, but does Lebanon, Iran and Syria own the constant attacks on their countries because they haven’t laid any consequences on Israel? Lebanon doesn’t seem to want to cause much damage in Israel or use enough weapons to do so even though they showed that they could when they flew a drone and showing they knew where they could do a lot of damage.
Israel has been attacking Syria for how long and yet they never did anything in return. I’m not advocating for more war, but I don’t understand why they let Israel off the hook?
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
In small ways, everyday, the world restrains itself
....from effective counter-actions toward Israeli aggression... and avoids decoupling sanctions triggered by Israel's human rights violations. The world holds back on terrorism-triggered withdrawal from policies that support Israel's immoral actions and it resists institutional standards that demand withdrawal from consortiums that support Israel. The world resists the systematic withdrawal Israel investments and partnerships, and resists proportional matching aid to victims of Israeli terrorism. The world ignores the opportunity to reestablish diplomatic relations and humanitarian aid to nations harmed by Israel's terrorism — in the pursuit of world peace.
The world wide absence of war-crimes relief must therefore be regarded as a deliberate policy that facilitates global awareness of the immediate horrors that are erupting out of the soul of Israel, and that are defiling established decency standards in the civilized world. Whether this unspoken policy emerges from ignorance and intimidation or whether it comes from patience and enlightenment — its proactive effect is the same.
The lack of violent objections and repercussions against these Evil acts raises the world's revulsion response toward Israel — and imprints this evil pattern in the collective consciousness of the global population. This globally shared experience helps to establish an heritable epigenetic instinct that recoils from the pattern of (Old Testament-style) psychopathic cult behavior. In the current case, it mimics the psychopathic God of the Old Testament, worshipped by the Israel cult. If the strategy of constant aversion works the way it should, it will build a rejection reaction to this embedded evil that has re-emerged in our species.
The Positive emerges out of the excessively Negative.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
evening snoopy...
to be fair, israel owns the lebanon pager attacks. it is them showing the world who they are. biden owns those attacks to the extent that american funds and other resources may have been used to arrange them.
lebanon has indeed struck back at israel, and israel has managed to keep the results of the attacks out of the news. i read somewhere a story that suggests that lebanon hit israel's equivalent of the u.s.' nsa and caused 20 or so deaths and considerable damage. not to mention that lebanon's base level of attacks on northern israel continue to displace 80,000 zionist settlers and do periodic damage to the israeli military.
i suspect that syria is just not in a position to respond to israel's repeated attacks.
You know what’s infuriating for me, living in Germany?
That in Germany, anyone condemning Israel and Zionism can, with official backing, be labelled a neo-Nazi and anti-Semite.
Not only that, they may even find themselves “de-banked” — having their account suddenly closed by their current bank, while at the same time every other bank, under pressure from the government, refuses to allow them to open a new one.
Here, you can be
Hang in there.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening lotlizard...
i'm sorry that freedom of speech is not available in your area. it is starting to shrink in my neighborhood as well.
This mind virus will envelop
....all of the morally comatose West and bury its civilization.
Unless the West flips completely and shakes off the evil overlords that are exploiting them. Good riddance either way. The positive will prevail.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
Hey, joe!
I am reading and watching and gettin'edumacated by the ebs tonight.
Thanks, dear friend!
That top article featuring the leaked the official position of when we scream human rights abuse and when we don't is fascinating. In plain English, simple terms, I now totally understand why we do not sanction allies who practice stoning and beheading. Really simplifies the issue.
Have a wonderful weekend, and I suggest you look for some good music to entertain you and yours. Feel free to ask the site members for assistance. Lol!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
yep, it's pretty amazing how much noise about human rights a nation like the u.s. can make when it constantly demonstrates that it cares so little about them.
heh, my listening queue is pretty full for a while. fortunately, it's all good stuff.
have a good weekend!
Pure animals without a shred of decency
I won’t watch the video because I have been too immersed in death by ……. Israeli troops. I don’t need to see anymore.
Palestinians mutilated, tossed off rooftop by Israeli forces in West Bank’s Qabatiya
There is no Hamas in the West Bank and not one person in government has condemned what Israel is doing there.
Nor has one spoxperson condemned the terrorist attacks in Lebanon nor will they condemn Israel bombing an apartment building in Beirut today. Israel is saying that 20 Hezbollah leaders were killed in the attack.
On the bombing of the building:
Miller and Kirby also insist that they didn’t know Israel was going to blow people up, but have they condemned the attacks?
Jonathan Cook writes about Israeli troops throwing people off buildings.
The more definitive the proof of Israeli atrocities, the less they get reported
I have much more to say, but I can’t find any words that haven’t been said many times before in the last 11 months.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
hey snoopy...
i meant to mention this before, if you go about a half hour into the first video (rania khalek & ghadi francis) they address the question you had about lebanon's seeming hesitancy to strike back at israel. it's an interesting discussion.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. I really
liked he Brubeck cover
Have a wondeerful weekend, be well and have a good one
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 --
evening el...
have a great weekend!
Hi bluesters
Hi all, Hey Joe!
Thanks for all the great sounds Joe! Sorry about that news...
Been too busy at the desk here. Busier than a democratic country trying to avoid being couped by the USA! Busier than Elliot Abrams arms supplier and Vicky Nulands cookie baker. Busier than Kamala's PR team.
Hope all are well!
happy trails!
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
evening dystopian...
ah, for the simpler days that one could be busier than a one-armed paper hanger.
have a great weekend!