The Evening Blues - 12-19-23
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features blues harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite. Enjoy!
John Lee Hooker, Charlie Musselwhite - That's Alright
"The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization."
-- Mercy Otis Warren
News and Opinion
Going Mask-Off About The Two-State Solution Lie
The entire position of the pro-Israel side of the Gaza debate is hinged on the premise that there is no limit on the number of innocents you can morally kill when pursuing a military objective. From their point of view, not only is it perfectly acceptable that ten thousand children have been killed by Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, it would be perfectly acceptable if it was 100 thousand, or a million. As far as the Israel supporter’s moral framework is concerned, Hamas could have killed one-tenth the number of Israelis it killed on October 7 and Israel can kill ten times the number of children it has killed, and Israel’s actions in Gaza would still be justified.
For normal, psychologically healthy people, this position looks deranged. Of course there’s a limit on the number of innocent people it’s acceptable to kill while pursuing military objectives, especially objectives that could be resolved non-militarily. The only exceptions would be situations in which there is no other option besides either defeating your enemy by any means necessary or facing your own annihilation. Since there is no rational argument that Hamas poses an existential threat to the state of Israel, and since there were options for responding to October 7 without dropping a single bomb, there is no argument to be made that it’s acceptable to kill all these innocent human beings while pursuing the (completely unattainable) goal of wiping out armed resistance to Israel militarily.
Peace could be obtained by negotiating with the Palestinian resistance and achieving a deal that works for everyone. The uneasy, abusive status quo of October 6 could also be returned to by simply addressing the massive, spectacular failures of Israel’s military and intelligence services which let October 7 happen in the first place. When you weigh these two options against the option of killing a thousand children a week in a military offensive in Gaza, both of them are self-evidently superior in the eyes of any normal, healthy person.
A peaceful resolution isn’t impossible, it just isn’t desired. It isn’t desired because Israel has long sought to further expel Palestinians from their land, and the “war on Hamas” provides cover for that goal. The claim that Israel has no other choice but to snuff out tens of thousands of lives in the name of fighting Hamas is patently false; it doesn’t need to, it just wants to. Ultimately their argument is “We need to kill all those people because we really really want to,” which is not a valid defense.
John Mearsheimer: Israel is choosing 'apartheid' or 'ethnic cleansing'
‘Well, You Dropped the Atom Bomb,’ Netanyahu Tells Biden
The insanity of Israeli’s actions in Gaza were exposed for all to see – all those in the world who don’t value Palestinian lives – when its army killed three half naked men waving a white flag and then discovered they were Israeli hostages. A tragedy, no doubt. But that tragedy has unfolded for Palestinians thousands and thousands of times over. ...
And this week even Joe Biden seemed to be having enough. He warned donors in Washington, including a former AIPAC president, that Israel is “starting to lose… support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.” Biden then told the donors that Netanyahu justified the bombing by likening it to Hiroshima and the carpet bombing of Germany. Yes, you heard that right:
It was pointed out to me — I’m being very blunt with you all — it was pointed out to me that — by Bibi — that “Well, you carpet-bombed Germany. You dropped the atom bomb. A lot of civilians died.”
Biden says he responded, “Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War Two to see to it that it didn’t happen again.”
Matthew Hoh: What Have We Learned From Ukraine and Israel?
UN delays vote calling for Gaza ceasefire as US objects to resolution wording
The United Nations security council has postponed a vote calling for a sustainable cessation of hostilities in Gaza to give more time for diplomats to meet US objections to the wording of the draft resolution. The vote had been due on Monday in New York but the US said it could not support a reference to a “cessation of hostilities”, but might accept a call for a “suspension of hostilities”.
The Arab countries negotiating the text said they had been encouraged to see that the White House was apparently trying to find wording that it could support – as opposed simply to vetoing resolutions, the position it adopted on the call for a humanitarian pause on 18 October and for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire on 9 December 9.
Divisions within the US administration have been growing with some officials saying the US is misunderstanding the scale of disillusionment in the Global South over US perceived hypocrisy in calling out Russian war crimes in Ukraine, but finding a multitude of reasons to justify the large scale killings of Palestinians in Gaza.
A range of US diplomats have visited Jerusalem to urge the Israeli government to adopt different military tactics, but with only limited success, and a US support for a suspension of hostilities at the UN, if it happened, would be a clear signal of US frustration with the Israeli government.
The US has also previously rejected cessation of hostilities resolutions at the 15 strong security council due to the absence of clear criticism of Hamas for its killing of more than 1,000 Israelis, including many women and children on 7 October. The latest draft prepared by the United Arab Emirates simply condemns all acts of terrorism, and calls for all hostages to be released unconditionally.
Starvation as a Weapon of War: Human Rights Watch Denounces Israel for Denying Gaza Access to Food
US defence secretary reasserts support but urges Israel to change tactics in Gaza
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has held talks with Israeli officials about shifting away from large-scale aerial and ground operations in the Gaza Strip to a new phrase in the war focused on the precise targeting of Hamas leaders.
“Hamas should never again be able to project terror from Gaza into Israel. This is Israel’s operation; I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms,” Austin told reporters after meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in Tel Aviv on Monday. He added that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza was “both a moral duty and a strategic imperative”.
Austin’s comments were followed by remarks from Gallant, who said: “I can tell you that soon we will be able to distinguish between different areas in Gaza … We will continue to operate in Gaza with different levels of intensity, perhaps sooner in the north.” Gallant said the new phase would allow some of the 85% of people in Gaza displaced from their homes to return to the northern part of the strip.
Austin was the latest in a steady stream of senior figures in the Biden administration to visit Israel since the unprecedented attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken as hostages. The trip to Israel is part of a wider Middle East tour, as the conflict in Gaza threatens to spill over into a regional conflagration.
Washington, Israel’s closest ally, has provided intense military and diplomatic cover for the war in Gaza, where the death toll is approaching 20,000, but last week Joe Biden warned that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing”.
IRAQ FLASHBACKS: U.S. Announces MILITARY INTERVENTION as Red Sea Attacks Continue
Pressure Mounts on Netanyahu to Reach New Deal With Hamas After IDF Killed 3 Israeli Hostages
The Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming under increasing domestic pressure to reach a new hostage deal with Hamas after the Israeli military mistakenly killed three Israelis who escaped from captivity in Gaza. ...
Family members of Israeli hostages in Gaza met with ministers in Netanyahu’s war cabinet on Saturday and called for Israel to cease its current operations and work toward another deal with Hamas. More than 100 Israeli women and children were released as a result of the last deal with Hamas, and over 130 Israelis remain captive in Gaza, although some are dead.
Netanyahu’s government faced backlash after it was revealed that the war cabinet blocked Mossad chief David Barnea from restarting hostage negotiations in Qatar, where Hamas political leaders are based. But now it appears some diplomacy has resumed as Barnea met with Qatar’s prime minister in Europe on Friday, and Doha said it’s involved in diplomatic efforts to reach another pause in the Israeli onslaught in Gaza.
Israel is not a country, it's a decades-long military operation. https://t.co/nLVKBvIEpd
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 18, 2023
Auschwitz Museum Decries Israeli Mayor's 'Sick' Call to 'Empty' Gaza
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland on Sunday decried what critics called genocidal remarks by the mayor of an Israeli town who said all of Gaza should be ethnically cleansed of Palestinians and turned into a museum like the notorious Nazi death camp.
"The whole Gaza Strip needs to be empty. Flattened. Just like in Auschwitz," Metula Mayor David Azoulai said in a radio interview on Sunday, according toThe Times of Israel. "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."
In response, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, southern Poland wrote on social media that "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."
"Calling for acts that seem to transgress any civil, wartime, moral, and human laws, that may sound as a call for murder of the scale akin to Auschwitz, puts the whole honest world face-to-face with a madness that must be confronted and firmly rejected," the museum added. "We do hope that Israeli authorities will react to such shameful abuse, as terrorism can never be a response to terrorism."
Pope ACCUSES Israel Of TERRORISM After Christians Shot At Church
Cardinal condemns ‘cold–blooded’ killing of two women in Gaza church
The shooting of a mother and daughter allegedly by an Israeli military sniper in a church compound in Gaza City was a “cold–blooded killing”, the most senior Catholic cleric in England has said.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, said the shooting did “nothing to further Israel’s right to defend itself”.
The two women were killed inside the Holy Family parish in Gaza City on Saturday, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Most of Gaza’s Christian families have taken refuge in the compound since the start of the war.
Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar were shot as they walked to the sister’s convent, the patriarchate said. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety.
“Seven more people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others inside the church compound. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish, where there are no belligerents.”
They Stole a Country in Full Bloom
Israeli troops go on looting and vandalism spree across Gaza
Since Israel launched a ground operation in Gaza in late October, footage has emerged of troops carrying out violent and provocative acts that appear to have little to do with furthering their stated aim of destroying Hamas. This has included theft, destruction of businesses and properties, vandalism, and the installation of Israeli and Jewish symbols across Gaza’s neighbourhoods.
Such behaviour has been blamed on indiscipline, but analysts believe it is also a form of “psychological warfare”.
In one example of theft, a soldier bragged about stealing a silver necklace from Gaza to take back to his girlfriend in Israel. Another troop stole a rug from a Palestinian home. In a post shared on a popular Facebook group, an Israeli officer gloated about seizing a host of sealed makeup items to take to Israel as “gifts from Gaza”. Another clip shows a soldier setting fire to scarce food and water supplies.
“There is a long history of Israeli soldiers vandalising the homes of Palestinians they invade,” Laleh Khalili, an academic and researcher at the University of Exeter, told MEE. “During the Nakba and successive wars of conquest in the historic lands of Palestine, in Lebanon in the early 1980s, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories during successive invasions, such behaviour has been rife,” she added. “Israeli soldiers have left graffiti - often using quite violent, even genocidal, language; defecated in kitchens; looted valuable personal items; destroyed everyday objects and belongings; and taken trophy photographs of themselves.”
Khalili said that the idea of a disciplined Israeli military was “a myth”. “The military is made of conscripts, most of them committed Zionists who believe in their right to settle anywhere between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea,” she said. “The ranks of the officers of the Israeli military are populated with some of the most fanatical settler types who - like the right-wing elsewhere - have always been drawn to militaries and other coercive institutions.”
Palestinian says soldiers sent him into Hamas tunnel strapped with bombs
A Palestinian civilian detained by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip has described being bound and strapped with explosives before being forced into a tunnel suspected to be used by Hamas. Hakim, 30, told Middle East Eye that the Israeli soldiers were using him as a human shield as they sought Hamas fighters underground.
The Palestinian, who wished to be identified only by his first name and was released two days ago, said he was one of the dozens of men seen in photographs and video bound and stripped to their underwear by Israeli troops. One soldier, he recalled, told him he wanted to send him to his God, before taking him to a Hamas tunnel.
“He made me wear a belt filled with explosives, and placed a GoPro camera on my head along with a rope around my waist,” Hakim told MEE. According to the Palestinian, he was then pushed into the tunnel and ordered to explore it to see if there were any fighters inside.
“They were prepared to explode the tunnel using my body if the camera on my head showed any fighters inside,” he said. “I was 100 percent sure I was going to be killed at that moment, but then they pulled me out of the tunnel when they found nothing inside.”
According to Hakim, a 15-year-old boy was subjected to the same treatment. The boy, who had been detained with Hakim, survived and was released three days later, he said.
Justice Thomas Threatens QUITTING To Get Rich
Clarence Thomas’s salary complaints sparked rightwing fears he would resign
Clarence Thomas told a Republican congressman that US supreme court justices should get a pay raise or “one or more” would quit, prompting “a flurry of activity” among rightwingers because his “importance as a conservative was paramount”, ProPublica said in its latest hard-hitting report on questionable ethics at the high court.
Cliff Stearns, the Florida Republican Thomas spoke to in 2000, told the non-profit newsroom: “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.” At the time, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, would have nominated a replacement if any justice had resigned. Republicans held the Senate, which would have conducted the confirmation.
ProPublica said Thomas spoke to Stearns on a flight after giving a speech at Awakening, a “‘conservative thought weekend’ featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials”, held in Sea Island, Georgia, in January 2000. Thomas’s trip was paid for by event organisers, ProPublica said, adding that the justice’s reported 11 free trips on his annual disclosure form that year but not the trip to Awakening, “an apparent violation of federal disclosure law”. ...
ProPublica said the justice was struggling financially at the time of his conversation with Stearns. The site published a letter dated 11 January 2000 in which the congressman told the justice: “Just a note to let you know how much I enjoyed visiting with you on the flight back from Jacksonville to Dulles. I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of the supreme court. As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted. We must have the proper incentives here, too.” ...
ProPublica also reported that “during his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved.” The justice received a $1.5m advance for his memoir and gifts from rich individuals.
Trump seeks to dismiss Georgia election case by claiming political speech
Donald Trump’s lawyer asked a judge on Monday to throw out the Georgia criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, contending the indictment violated the former president’s first amendment rights by charging him for so-called core political speech.
The motion to dismiss the election interference case brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, was similar in scope and theory to Trump’s request to throw out the federal indictment in Washington DC that was rejected this month.
Trump’s filing, submitted after a court hearing on the issue, directly attacked the charges that he and his allies violated Georgia’s racketeering statute in trying to reverse his 2020 election defeat, including his 2 January 2021 call pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes.
The 19-page motion sought to reframe the indictment as an attempt to criminalize Trump’s political speech, arguing that the former president’s repeated lies that widespread fraud corrupted the vote count were supposedly aimed at prompting investigations by state legislatures. “It was directed at the bodies responsible for conducting government business, the bodies with the information in their possession, the bodies undertaking the investigations, and the bodies vested with the authority of adjudicating such complaints,” Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow wrote.
The motion also argued that Trump’s claims of election fraud were protected by the constitution’s first amendment because the US supreme court had previously decided the government could not criminalize speech on disputed political issues just because it determined the views to be false.
RECORD LOW: 34% Approve Of Biden's Job As POTUS; CNN's Acosta Told To 'GET OUT OF THE BUBBLE'
Monsanto ordered to pay $857m to ex-students of Seattle school for toxic leaks
A jury in Washington state on Monday ordered Bayer’s Monsanto to pay $857m to former students and parent volunteers of a school north-east of Seattle who claimed that chemicals known as PCBs made by the company leaked from light fixtures and made them sick, according to an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The jury found the company liable for selling polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) used in the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington. The verdict included $73m in compensatory damages, and $784m in punitive damages, according to Henry Jones, an attorney at the law firm Friedman Rubin, who represents the plaintiffs.
A statement from Monsanto called the award “constitutionally excessive” and said the company will move to have the verdict overturned or reduced.
The US supreme court has said that punitive damages should generally be capped at nine times compensatory damages, because larger awards would violate defendants’ due process rights. The verdict marks the latest trial loss for the company, which already faced $870m in verdicts from alleged PCB exposure at the Sky Valley center in other cases.
The company is appealing those previous verdicts.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
US lawmaker: Backing Israel is the 'path of least resistance'
The Total Defeat Of Ukraine Is Coming Into Sight
Scott Ritter: On Speaking Plain ‘Putin’
The Myth That Putin Was Bent on Conquering Ukraine and Creating a Greater Russia
Survivors of deadly Maui blaze face displacement after displacement
Europe’s cities are turning on the car
Israel's War on Children: Journalist Describes Destruction in Gaza, Escaping to Egypt with Family
Palestinian American Woman Tries to Save Family After Mom Dies Awaiting Evacuation from Gaza
Israelis REJECT ANNEXING Gaza As Gov Floats 'Migration'
A Little Night Music
Charlie Musselwhite - Times Gettin' Tougher Than Tough
Charlie Musselwhite, Harvey Mandel, Barry Goldberg – Lost Love
Charles Musselwhite - Candy Kitchen
Charley Musselwhite's South Side Band – Strange Land
Charlie Musselwhite, Harvey Mandel, Barry Goldberg – I'm Losin' You
Charles Musselwhite Blues Band – Little By Little
Charles Musselwhite Blues Band – A Nice Day For Something
Charlie Musselwhite - Sloppy Drunk
Charles Musselwhite - Stranger
Comments
People who start wars
don't get to dictate the peace. I'm not sure the Palestinians understand things yet, if they did they'd be happy to accept Israel's right to exist and promise not to start any wars, heck they could stop shooting rockets and surrender. Until they do the war is on.
evening ban nock...
well then, if people who start wars don't get to dictate the peace, then israel can end "all of this" by putting down their arms, returning all of the land and property that they have stolen over the last 200 years, make recompense for all of the people that they have harmed and humbly beg the palestinians for forgiveness for zionist greed and arrogance.
Heh….
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
You, sir, ARE THE
BOMB, BABY!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Hi bluesters
Hi all, Hey Joe!
Great sounds man! What a blower!
Don't know if you knew of this guy, Jim Ladd, probably the top LA FM DJ for many years. He is the one on Roger Water's Radio KAOS, and 'the last DJ' of Tom Petty infamy. He was big. A voice of my youth. His 'InnerView' I think was syndicated nationally.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/jim-ladd-dies-longtime-los-230243799...
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-12-18/jim-la...
Thanks for the great soundscapes!
be well all!
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
Indeed.
I am a member of Ladd's "Tribe," the one he mentioned on his shows... Rest in peace...
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
evening dystopian...
heh, no, i never ran across jim ladd, it sounds like the west coast lost a major tastemaster, though. in the mid-atlantic we've had a bunch of underground/free-form radio deejays who have made a major impact over the years and turned me and my friends on to lots of great music in my younger days.
have a good one!
I remember Ladd
Great Dj, a lost art against todays looped pre-recorded shows of forgettable songs.
Wasn't he on KLOS?
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
yes mostly KLOS
Hi E1,
yeah man, he was mostly KLOS, but did a stint at KMET in between KLOS tenures. Before either his original breakthrough was at the knac, KNAC (Long Bch.).
take care!
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
Right… “the path of least resistance.”
.
Bunch of nonsense that congress supports Israel over Palestinians because it’s just easier. Let’s leave out that anyone who doesn’t support Israel will find that they have someone running against them and with tons of money from Israel and its supporters. Israel has already admitted that they are spending $100 million to get the people who don’t support them out of office. We saw how much money they spent to make sure that Nina Turner didn’t win her election. Just imagine if Russia had a super pac and was pledging $100 million to oust people who were supporting Ukraine. Yeah…it’s not hard to imagine how many people would be calling them Putin’s puppets. Good gravy the sheer fcking hypocrisy.
What a slimy weasel.
Got an ear worm tonight: If I only had a brain. seems appropriate tonight..I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out.
BTW I wonder how acceptable it would be if people were protesting against a Russian bagel shop after they started the SMO? In fact haven’t a few Russians been targeted already?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
evening snoopy...
of course himes is a slimy weasel. he's a politician, so by definition ...
i have read here and there of incidents of people of russian ethnicity being harassed and/or discriminated against in the u.s. since the start of the ukraine fiasco, so i guess it happens, though i don't have any sort of sense of how prevalent it is.
LOL
Russian dressing is being re-labeled Freedom Dressing.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Groan…
I can guess what team color is doing that. How many people would be supporting Ukraine if democrats hadn’t done their Russia Russia Russia is bad and daily 2 minutes of hate? Many of them had to know that Ukraine was corrupt and that it was full of Nazis and would have a problem with hundreds of billions being thrown at it while more Americans have gone into poverty.
BTW I haven’t seen one diary on the growing homeless population or how many kids are going to bed hungry. They bitched and moaned when Manchin voted against the minimum wage and the child tax credit, but they went silent the week after that.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
ProPublica published a letter
It is a failure of all American citizens to worship a Constitution that they cannot comprehend because it is not written in plain contemporary English, forcing them to rely on moral slime like Clarence Thomas to tell them what it says.
This is the Original Sin that is allowing the State to fail.
Think ahead.
evening pluto...
heh, i think that the problem is not so much that americans couldn't learn to interpret the constitution, the problem for the conservatives is that people like clarence thomas agree with them as to whom the law should favor and they are intellectually nimble enough to reverse engineer the language of their opinions to reflect that favoritism. regular people couldn't be relied on to favor the "correct" class of people.
I am sure that this will be appealed and I am no fan of Trump!
More info can be found here:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-colorado-supreme-court/
evening humphrey...
i would expect that trump's people will be filing a suit shortly and appeal it to the end of the line if necessary.
I’m waiting to see how the supremes rule on the real estate
case against Trump. I don’t understand how the judge could rule against him like he did without there being a trial first. He just made up what he thought Trump’s estate was worth even though there wasn’t any bank saying that they got jilted. In fact the banks said that is how a lot of their loans work. And besides Trump paid them back in full so no harm or foul. And one banker blew the prosecutions case up.
And the classified documents case is just as silly when Biden, Pence and Clinton did the same thing. Especially Biden.
I’m sure y’all have heard about the 10 inch binder that has been missing for 2 years, but now the media is making a big deal about it. Seems like the intelligence agencies are worried about what Trump plans to do with it since it has details about how they tried to destroy his presidency. They should be worried if all the information comes out. It’s what Mueller and Durham did their best to cover up with their bogus investigations. Stay tuned because this might get fun.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
yeah...
i'm no big fan of trump, but that real estate case appears to be as phoney as a 3 dollar bill and the judge appears to be a member of the marsupial family. of the suits filed against trump, it appears to be the most egregiously wrong, though some of the others appear to me to just be legal harassment or lawfare as they say these days.
One should be able to make the obvious connection
...between the current bogus charges and the hypocritical impeachment charges levied against Trump.
Zelansky was prodded by the Neocon ghouls who staffed the US Embassy in Kiev to ask Trump to send long-range war weapons for the Nazi troops sent to attack and kill the ethnic Russians villagers who lived on the former Soviet regions lining the western Ukraine-Russian border. This, along with the fake Minsk II Ceasefire Agreement was backed by the European NATOcons in order to provoke Russia into a military response. Trump resisted and was impeached.
All of this has been of one piece.
The fate of the US is that its Nincompoops will prevail, thanks in large part to the corroded, incomprehensible, and functionally irrelevant US Constitution that entraps and suppressed the will of the People. **
Of course, Trump was the political nincompoop who put many of these neocon judges and bureaucrats into place. Psychopaths, all.
Both Parties fear Trump because he is also the unanticipated Pied Piper of the vast ocean of nincompoops who populate the US. Their great numbers can flip any US election. If the election is not properly rigged.
______________
** This is a situation that only I, alone, can see, apparently. Not something requiring immediate action. The manifestation of the failed state remains the same whether or not the corrupted constitution is factored in.
[edit = typos and footnote]
Taibbi
Exactly…declared guilty before any trial…so much for saving democracy from Trump. Biden has been a bigger dictator than Trump ever tried being.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
heh...
i keep asking myself, are these crazy, moron democrats trying to make me feel sympathy for trump or what?
Demcrats need to know...
the only reason I would ever, ever vote for Trump, was if he was in jail, or headed there.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
i see what you mean. the appeal of a president running the country from a jail cell is almost too good not to vote for. every recent president i can think of belongs in jail, so if the next one started out there, what an advance for the country and mankind!
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs.
Musselwhite's always a good listen.
Seems that the cops of the world have found something else somewhere else to produce. Phil's song should be played 3 or 4 times daily on all stations until it sinks in and we stop this shit.
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 evening!
In South Korea
...the issue of corruption of the administration of justice, under the current president, in his role as the former Prosecutor General of South Korea, and as a senior prosecutor before that, and currently, along with his proxy, the current Minister of Justice Han Dong-hun, is finally shaping up as a campaign issue, for the upcoming general elections for the National Assembly on April 10.
The presentation of the administration of justice as a new kind of dictatorship is finally being addressed in this editorial below. Hanohoe was an exclusive group of military officers who executed military coups and supported the dictators Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan. Roh, another military officer was Chun's right hand man, also involved in the massacre of public resistance at Kwangju in 1980. Roh became a transitional president between the dictatorship period, and the transition to the sixth republic. (Roh was in office during the 1988 Olympics).
Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, Yoon Suk-yeol and Han Dong-hoon
Yoon and Han totally politicized and corrupted the administration in South Korea for years. This corruption protected corporate friends, and family members involved in crimes and corruption, and was used to prosecute labor figures, and leading figures in the political opposition and media. The dictatorship of prosecutors isn't something that is threatening to occur, it's been going on for years.
Yet, Han apparently is going to be appointed interim director of the PPP (conservative party) emergency committee because the party leader, stepped down before the end of his term. Inside the party a struggle for power is ongoing, as traditionally senior members of the national assembly are being requested by the Yoon faction of former public prosecutors to abandon their seats in safely conservative electoral districts, so Yoon division people can be nominated to run for those seats and get elected.
PPP seeks to install justice minister – Yoon’s right-hand man – as interim leader
Han has been trying to put opposition leader Lee Jae-myung in jail for some time now. There are four separate ongoing prosecutions. At the same time, the democrats in the National Assembly intend to authorize a special investigation into the corruption of the president's wife, the scope of the investigation isn't determined yet, and the bill if passed may be vetoed by the President, which will look bad for the election campaign. Even conservative newspapers have recommended that the first lady be removed from the presidential office, and in effect confined to her private quarters where she will do no further harm. "Cut off the tail, to protect the head." Yoon and Han have protected the first lady from prosecution for years. Even though multiple criminal complaints have been filed over the years, the prosecutors invariably made a no-suspicion determination and thwarted prosecution. Summons, were ignored, and warrants for evidence were never issued. The first lady has admitted in the so called 7 and a half hour recording of conversations with a reporter she "trusted" that she spoke to Han Dong-hun regularly. There are new allegations that in a recent four month period they communicated "hundreds of times." The allegations today in the independent media is that the Minister of Justice has, in effect, been acting as the First Lady's defense attorney. Han, as Justice Minister, is technically, also the respondent in a lawsuit appeal by Yoon of findings by the Disciplinary Committee of the Justice Department that Yoon acted unethically and unprofessionally in four separate charges as Prosecutor General. Rather than be suspended Yoon resigned to run for President, and sought an injunction in a legal review which he lost in the first trial review. Han has a huge conflict of interest, and basically seems to have laid down on the final appeal. He will have to resign as Justice Minister to become the party's interim leader. The Justice Minister is supposed to be a non-partisan office. My understanding was that Yoon's final hearing was today.
I've been posting on corruption of the administration of justice in South Korea for over three years. For most of that time, people have said- oh, that's fake news. This is what Yoon's campaign to suppress media is all about, since becoming president, using the KCC and the Korean Communications Standards Commission to shut people up. Previously, the Yoon division also prosecuted people for criminal libel, and campaign law violations for printing "fake news" during election cycles.
Great blues from Charley Musselwhite! Thanks Joe.
語必忠信 行必正直
evening soryang...
wow, that's a pretty tangled web of corruption that korea has going there. figures that joe biden would be betting his chips on a corrupt dictator wannabe.
have a great evening!
Hmm
The rest of the tweet:
impoverished nation where 70 percent of its population is in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
The reason? Because the Houthi of Yemen demand Israel stop committing genocide against the people of Gaza.
Our choice was between pressuring Israel to agree to a ceasefire, or a war with the Houthi.
We chose war.
It speaks volumes about who Americans are as a collective.
PS: I don’t think this will end well for either the U.S. or Israel.
yep...
can't let anybody stop the genocide.
Bingo…
Biden would rather let Israel continue its genocide and let globalists lose millions every day from the Houthi"s actions than tell Bibi to let food, water and medical supplies into Gaza. It seems a no brainer to most rational people…
Larry Johnson talks about how if the defense ships have to leave the area to go get more missiles then the air craft carrier will be undefended or it will have to leave too which will be a huge blow to the US power.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Well look at that…
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Appros to nothing
.
but here’s a short video of Ogden from its Catholic Church St. Joseph
https://www.stjosephogden.org/
You can see how Ogden is snuggled up to the mountains. I live 10 blocks south of the church which is left in the video. My mom sat my buttocks on the pew back when everyone was standing. One of the most prominent memories of my time growing up at the church. The church was built in 1805 and it is absolutely beautiful inside. I remember when it was packed with people, but those days are long gone.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Didn't expect this
There's not much left of the Art 9 restriction on military operations. This won't help Kishida's faltering public support. What's next send a warship to the Gulf of Aden, to help the US there?
語必忠信 行必正直