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"Biden is doing all the very worst things Democrats claimed Trump would do if re-elected. If it had come out in 2020 that Trump was plotting a genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign in which his victims would be cut off from humanitarian aid, the shrieking from Democrats would have broken glass."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Israel Plans to Attack Lebanon Because Israel Is Not Winning Against Hamas

Once in a great while, things so speak for themselves that there is not much point in going on overmuch. Israel is not winning against Hamas. So it plans to take on a much tougher opponent, Hezbollah, which will be the result of executing on its plan to enter and occupy Lebanon up to the Litani River. This is not the way clear-thinking people operate.

But as Alastair Crooke explains (more on this soon), the Israelis recognize that they are no longer feared militarily in their ‘hood. Maintaining that fear is fundamental to Israeli citizen’s sense of security. Proof comes via Israel having had to pull its citizens out of the border to Gaza and Lebanon and not having been able to turn things around so they can return. Although I cannot prove a negative, Crooke and some Twitterati maintain that this effective loss of territory very much puts Israel on the back foot, since Israel historically has used buffer zones as an interim step in increasing the area under its control, and understands the risks when that process goes the other way.

Despite the assumption by many military experts at the start of the Israel campaign in Gaza, that the IDF would prevail given its much greater resources and ease of resupply, here we are, over 100 days in, and Israel is not all that much closer to victory, save in exterminating the Palestinian population in Gaza, as opposed to eliminating or at least crippling Hamas. Israel has not killed any of the leadership of Hamas’ military wing. Israel has not rescued any hostages. It is not clear how many Hamas fighters Israel has killed, but its claim of 10,000 versus the 27,000 dead reported in Gaza seems unreasonably high, particularly given admissions that schemes like flooding the tunnel system have not worked very well.

Hamas has been retaking Northern Gaza after Israel claimed to have secured it. And on top of that, as an article in today’s Links pointed out, Israel is having to husband its artillery use in Gaza in light of global shortages. So they plan to take on Hezbollah with less than a full magazine? ...

Without belaboring the issue, there is no reason to think Israel will win against Hezbollah. It was eventually beaten in 2006. Hezbollah is a much better fighting force than then while Israel is no better and perhaps worse. Among other things, Israel is betting on the US entering the conflict and saving its bacon, when Scott Ritter has warned that recent war game have shown Israel to lose against Hezbollah even when the US saddles up. And those didn’t factor in the Houthis interfering with ship getting to Israel’s ports. On top of that, the US has brought aerial refueling planes after the supposed drone attack on an outpost in Jordan that killed three service members. Many observers claim that means the US feels it needs to keep its jets in the air so as not to have them destroyed on the ground. That would have to complicate air support for Israel in Lebanon.

In other words, this plan seems, to be polite, a reckless gamble. Yet the Israelis seem fanatically committed to moving ahead with it.

Netanyahu rules out ceasefire deal that would mean Gaza withdrawal

Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not accept any ceasefire deal that requires the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners or the departure of Israeli troops from Gaza, as the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said he was willing to travel to Cairo to discuss the proposals.

Haniyeh said the group’s aim remained to end Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and secure a full pullout of Israeli forces from the territory.

Although it was known Israel would struggle to accept such terms, Egypt, Qatar and the US are hoping to see if the two sides can be persuaded to accept a ceasefire lasting at least a month, which offers the chance for almost all the hostages to be released.

The proposal, described as a framework, was hammered out between Egypt, Qatar, the US and Israel on Sunday during talks in Paris. The location of the talks meant Hamas negotiators could not be present.

Netanyahu poured cold water on any deal that required Israeli soldiers to leave Gaza permanently without a clear military victory. He said the war in Gaza was not “another round” with Hamas and he would not end it without achieving Israel’s goals.

Undercover Israeli Raid on Jenin Hospital Draws Condemnation

Israeli special forces disguised as doctors kill three militants at West Bank hospital

Israeli forces dressed in doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes have killed three Palestinian militants in an undercover operation in a hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

A border police counter-terrorism unit and a unit from the internal security forces, known as the Shin Bet, entered Ibn Sina hospital on the outskirts of the city’s refugee camp early on Tuesday, CCTV footage of the aftermath of the operation showed.

The units made their way to a room on the third floor and shot all three men in the head using pistols fitted with silencers in an attack that took less than 10 minutes from start to finish, Israeli media said.

A staff member who saw the attack told the Israeli daily Haaretz that only a few of the 12 or so special forces entered the room and shot the wanted persons; the others spread out over the hospital and the main entrance to prevent any disturbance. Israel’s military did not provide details on how the three were killed.

Israel said the dead men were Mohammad Jalamana, a spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, Basel Ghazawi, of Islamic Jihad, and his brother Mohammed. All three were allegedly active in the umbrella force known as the Jenin Battalion, a newly formed group that has engaged Israeli forces in fierce fighting during raids in the lawless city over the past two years.

Hamas regroups in northern Gaza to prepare new offensive

Hamas militants have returned to northern Gaza, where they are mobilising against Israeli forces and rebuilding a system of governance, aid officials, Gaza residents, analysts and Israeli officials say. Elsewhere in Gaza, Hamas administrators and police maintain firm control of the south, where much of the population is concentrated, though civil order is breaking down in central regions.

The apparent resurgence of Hamas in areas seized and cleared by Israeli troops during the nearly four-month offensive underlines the difficulties Benjamin Netanyahu faces in meeting his pledge to “crush” the militant group. Eyal Hulata, who until January 2023 was the head of Israel’s national security council, said: “We are hearing more, unfortunately, of the recovery of [an] insurgency in both central and northern Gaza … We’re hearing more and more that Hamas are doing policing in northern Gaza and governing trade, and that is a very bad outcome.”

Michael Milstein of the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based thinktank, said Hamas had re-established control in parts of Gaza that the Israel Defense Forces seized after bloody fighting last year. This included much of the ruined northern zone, including Shaati camp, the refugee camps of Jabaliya, Shejaiya, and Gaza City.

Milstein said: “Hamas control these areas. There is no chaos or vacuum because it is the workers of Gaza municipality or civil rescue defence forces, who are effectively part of Hamas, who are enforcing public order. Hamas still exists. Hamas has survived.

“The IDF version is that in the northern part of Gaza the basic military structure of Hamas was broken … That only works with a conventional army but not for a flexible guerrilla operation like Hamas. We are already seeing individuals as snipers, setting booby traps and so on.”

Biden's Middle East Policy "Leading Us into a War Whose Aims We Have Not Defined"

Biden says he has decided how US will respond to Jordan drone attack

Joe Biden has said he has decided how to respond to a drone strike in northern Jordan which killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more, as the Iran-backed militia that Washington blamed for the attack said it had suspended anti-US operations. As Washington pondered its response, Kataib Hezbollah announced the suspension of all its military operations against US troops in the region, claiming the decision was intended to prevent “embarrassment” to the Iraqi government.

Biden told reporters that he held Iran responsible for the drone strike on a US base on the Jordanian-Syrian border on Sunday, “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons” to Kataib Hezbollah.

Asked if a direct link to Iran for Sunday’s attack on the Tower 22 base had been established, Biden replied that “we’ll have that discussion”. However, the president added: “I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for.”

The remarks reflect the precarious balance the administration is seeking to strike between deterring further attacks and satisfying US public opinion with decisive action while containing the risk of sparking a direct conflict with Iran. Most military analysts have predicted that direct retaliation on Iranian territory is unlikely for that reason.

US officials have suggested that the US response would come in phases rather than all at once. “It’s fair for you to expect that we will respond in an appropriate fashion and it is very possible that what you’ll see is a tiered approach here, not just a single action, but essentially multiple actions,” John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday.

Biden Weighs IRAN REVENGE, Puts US Troops in Iraq 'ON STANDBY' To Jump Into Israel-Hamas War

Democrats Demand Blinken Explain Unapproved Arms Transfers to Israel

After the Biden administration twice bypassed Congress to approve arms transfers to Israel as it wages a genocidal war on Gaza, 19 U.S. lawmakers on Monday asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to explain the "highly unusual" transactions.

"The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) requires the State Department, on behalf of the president, to provide Congress advance notification of government-to-government foreign military sales of defense equipment. That notification is designed to allow Congress the opportunity to raise questions or objections before a sale is complete," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Blinken led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jim McGovern, both Massachusetts Democrats.

The AECA also contains an exemption to the notification requirement if the secretary of state certifies the existence of an "emergency."

However, the letter asserts that "it is highly unusual for the president to bypass congressional oversight through an emergency declaration."

"In fact," the legislators noted, "since the AECA was passed into law, an emergency declaration authority has only been used 18 times in nearly 50 years."

On December 9, Blinken informed Congress of an emergency determination expediting the transfer of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition, even though lawmakers had not yet reviewed the transaction.

Then, citing the "urgency of Israel's defensive needs," the secretary of state on December 29 notified lawmakers of a new emergency determination for the sale of $147.5 million in equipment including fuses, charges, and primers for 155mm artillery shells that Israel already purchased from the United States.

The lawmakers said they are "troubled by the decision to provide equipment for 155mm shells, which over 30 U.S.-based civil society organizations warned poses 'a grave risk to civilians' and are 'inherently indiscriminate' when used in densely populated areas like Gaza."

U.S.-supplied weapons have caused many of the more than 100,000 Palestinian casualties—dead, wounded, and missing—during the 116-day Israeli assault on Gaza. The letter acknowledges that the bulk of Palestinian victims have been civilians, "including thousands of children."

As the lawmakers noted:

The Leahy Laws set a clear standard that the U.S. should not provide assistance to foreign security force units if there are credible allegations that a unit has committed a "gross violation of human rights." In addition to those provisions, the Biden administration released a revised conventional arms transfer policy in February 2023 that "makes it clear that under this administration, the United States will utilize a holistic approach to conventional arms transfers and adherence to our agreements on the use of U.S.-origin defense equipment by our allies and partners, compliance with the law of armed conflict, and respect for human rights."

The letter asks Blinken to answer a series of questions regarding how the State Department determined an emergency existed, whether it adhered to its conventional arms transfer policy, and what measures were implemented to reduce risks to civilians.

"Congress and the American public deserve thorough answers on how this policy was applied for these two emergency transfers," the lawmakers wrote. "Use of a national emergency waiver does not exempt the U.S. government from assessing whether arms sales are consistent with these policies."

In a Tuesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller insisted that "the process that the secretary followed is the process that the law prescribes."

"I see this described all the time as 'bypassing Congress,' but in fact what we're doing is following the statute that Congress passed," he added.

Israel bombed British doctors on 'de-conflicted' site in Gaza

An Israeli air strike hit a compound in Gaza housing doctors working for a UK charity a month after the Israeli military told British counterparts the site had been "de-conflicted", MPs heard on Monday.

Foreign Affairs Committee chair and Conservative MP Alicia Kearns raised concerns about the attack during a parliamentary debate following Friday's ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Gaza genocide case against Israel.

The compound in the southern Gaza town of Al-Mawasi held staff from the UK's Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) and the US-based International Rescue Committee (IRC), headed by former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who were part of an emergency medical team working at nearby Nasser Hospital.

Around 6am on 18 January, the facility was hit by a bomb which Kearns said was dropped by an F-16 jet. MAP has previously said the strike left several of the staff and a bodyguard with non-life threatening injuries and severely damaged the compound. ...

A month earlier, on 22 December, she said it was confirmed through UK defence channels that the Israeli military had "logged the co-ordinates of the humanitarian base and de-conflicted it, marking it as a protected sensitive and humanitarian site".

Ukraine war disasters grow as profits pour in

Ukraine’s top general refuses request from Zelenskiy to step down

Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked his most senior military commander, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to step down on Monday but the popular general refused, triggering speculation that he will be dismissed instead.

Tensions between the two have been simmering for weeks amid the failure of Ukraine’s summer counter-offensive but the suggestion that Zaluzhnyi could be forced out nevertheless came as a shock to many.

Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP and ally of the general, told the Guardian that he understood that “yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so”.

He blamed personality clashes for the conflict. “Personally I think this is a bad idea. There are not fundamental issues between them but Zelenskiy’s office has been concerned that Zaluzhnyi has been making political not military statements,” Goncharenko said.

AaronMaté: (The GrayZone) - Ukraine On Its Last Legs

Belgian port blockaded as farmer protests spread across Europe

The Belgian port of Zeebrugge was blockaded on Tuesday, causing gridlock on surrounding roads as a wave of farmer protests spread across Europe. Authorities at the North Sea port, one of the biggest in Europe, said all access roads were blocked by 5pm (1600 GMT) on Tuesday, in a demonstration that will hit commercial trade, including imports and exports of food to and from the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia.

“Every single road into and out of the port is blocked. No trucks can get in, cars are being let in and police and the harbour master are trying to find a safe way for these trucks to wait on the side of the road,” said a spokesperson for the port authority for Antwerp-Zeebrugge.

Farmers plan to block the port until midnight on Wednesday in a protest over the prices they receive for food, blamed on cheap imports, and the impact of EU environmental policies. Tractors bearing slogans such as “Minister for a while, farmer for life” and “Do you like bread, meat or fries? You won’t get them without farmers” reflected the anger many farmers say they feel about what they claim is a lack of understanding among politicians about the precariousness of their positions.

Farmers said the port was targeted because they felt it received economic support at the expense of farmers. The Algemeen Boerensyndicaat (ABS, General Farmers Syndicate) union has called on its members to join the protest, threatening further chaos in Belgium just as EU leaders descend on the capital to discuss aid to Ukraine.

“The farmers are desperate, really desperate. We’ve warned the government for years that this would happen,” said the ABS policy officer, Mark Wulfrancke. “We want respect from our government, the European government. The only way to show that respect is to make a policy that is farmer friendly, food friendly. We need a correct price,” he said.

Russell Brand on Tucker Carlson: INDIE MEDIA is Elites' BIGGEST THREAT, They Tried To DESTROY ME

Mitch McConnell’s Plan to Sabotage Social Security From Within

Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans have a problem. They hate Social Security, because it is popular, effective, and doesn’t make any money for their billionaire donors. But their voters love Social Security. Ninety-four percent of Republicans oppose benefit cuts.

McConnell understands the political dangers of being openly hostile to Social Security. So instead, he is plotting to sabotage it from within. The latest instrument of that sabotage is Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the billionaire-funded American Enterprise Institute. Biggs is McConnell’s pick to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB), which “provides advice and recommendations to the President, Congress, and the Commissioner of Social Security on matters related to the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income programs and policies.”

If confirmed to the SSAB, Biggs would have increased influence with policymakers and the media. Biggs has a long history that shows how he would use that influence: To push for Social Security cuts that would devastate working and middle class Americans, while shielding billionaires from paying their fair share into the system.

Biggs served as an associate commissioner of Social Security under former President George W. Bush and was instrumental in Bush’s push to privatize Social Security. His goal was to hand the American people’s earned benefits over to Wall Street. Thankfully, the Bush privatization push failed due to massive grassroots opposition.

Biggs supports raising the retirement age, and has testified before Congress that people should work longer. In his words:

Go back to 1950, when we had a highly industrialized economy. You had coal miners, and farmers, and factory workers. The average age of initial Social Security claiming then was 68. Today, when your biggest on the job risk is, you know, carpal tunnel syndrome from your mouse or something like that, it’s 63... [T]he idea that we can’t have a higher retirement age, I think it just flies in the face of the fact that people did, in fact, retire later in the past, and today’s jobs are less physically demanding than they were in the past.

Nurses, firefighters, auto workers, and so many others would be surprised to hear that their jobs aren’t physically demanding! Biggs seems to think everyone has a cushy, billionaire-funded desk job like his, and would be happy to work until they die.

Biggs also wants to turn Social Security from an earned benefit into a poverty-level flat benefit. That means huge cuts for middle class workers who’ve been paying into the program their entire lives. It would destroy Social Security’s political popularity by turning it into a welfare program—a sitting duck for Republicans to make even larger cuts.

What Biggs doesn’t want is for his billionaire donors to pay their fair share into Social Security. He doesn’t want the American people to know that if billionaires pay into Social Security all year long on all of their income, not only can we protect Social Security—we can expand benefits.

Andrew Biggs is an enemy of Social Security, and we need to keep him off the SSAB. The Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing on the nomination this week, and the Senate may hold a vote soon. Democrats have a majority in the U.S. Senate, and they must stand united to protect Social Security from Mitch McConnell’s saboteur.

Illinois board votes unanimously to keep Trump on primary ballot

The Illinois board of elections has voted unanimously to keep Donald Trump on its primary ballot, rejecting objections brought by voters who challenged Trump’s eligibility on grounds that he had aided in insurrection on January 6.

The decision was made on narrow procedural grounds, and is almost certain to be appealed. It is just the latest in a mixed series of official rulings on whether Trump can appear on the ballot amid a wave of challenges to his candidacy in multiple states.

Officials in Colorado and Maine have ruled that Trump cannot appear on their ballots, though those decisions are facing further legal challenges, while Illinois becomes the latest state where officials have rejected attempts to boot Trump from the ballot.

The US supreme court has scheduled oral arguments on this question for next week, and will likely have the final say on whether Trump is constitutionally ineligible to run for president because of his actions leading up to the January 6 attack at the US Capitol.

At issue in this particular case was the question of whether or not the board of elections has the authority and jurisdiction to interpret constitutional questions. Matthew Piers, an attorney representing the objectors, argued the board “not only has the authority to determine an objection based on the United States constitution, but indeed you have the clear mandatory duty to do so”.

A California town will vote on banning factory farms. What does that mean for the rest of the US

This year voters in Berkeley, California, will get to choose whether to ban factory farms in its city limits – marking the first time in the US that such a measure has been put on the ballot. It may seem like an unusual mandate for a city that presently has no factory farms. (There’s a horse race track field that would be shut down if the measure passes.) But the activists behind the ballot initiative say it’s part of a broader strategy to ban this type of industrial style of livestock production in which cattle, chickens and pigs are held in confined spaces before slaughter.

If successful in Berkeley, a liberal San Francisco Bay Area town that’s often been at the forefront of US environmental policy, the method can be replicated elsewhere, they say. “We can pave the path to abolishing factory farming,” said Cassie King, an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, one of the groups that pushed for the measure. ...

Ninety per cent of livestock in the US are raised in factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). This type of industrialized agriculture has long been the target of animal welfare and environmental advocates, who point to their cruel treatment of livestock, as well as their threat to public health through contamination of air and waterways.

But there appears to be an appetite for change. A 2019 poll showed that 57% of likely US voters support greater oversight for animal farms, and 43% say they support a ban on new CAFOs. In 2021, New Jersey senator Cory Booker reintroduced legislation known as the Farm System Reform Act, which would place a moratorium on new and expanding CAFOs, as well as phase out the largest ones by 2040. As debate approaches over the next farm bill – the package of agriculture policies that’s renewed every five years – hundreds of local, state and national advocacy organizations wrote a letter endorsing the inclusion of the farm system reform act.

And last year, the supreme court upheld California’s Proposition 12, which bans the sale of pork, chickens and veal within the state if it comes from farms that confine pigs in small cages.

‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show

The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels. A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal.

Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This “Keeling curve” has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific works of modern times.

The fossil fuel interests backed a group, known as the Air Pollution Foundation, that issued funding to Keeling to measure CO2 alongside a related effort to research the smog that regularly blighted Los Angeles at the time. This is earlier than any previously known climate research funded by oil companies.

In the research proposal for the money – uncovered by Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, and published by the climate website DeSmog – Keeling’s research director, Samuel Epstein, wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify “changes in the atmosphere” caused by the burning of coal and petroleum. “The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.

Also of Interest

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

Everything Israel Wants To Destroy Is Hamas

Hamas’ Official Account

Israeli army knows bombing tunnels can spread toxic gases, report says

And This God Has Granted To Me, That I shall live to see the destruction of my enemies.

Ukraine SitRep: No Chance To Win - Zero Democracy - Power Scuffle

Roger Waters dropped by BMG over Israel comments

Democratic Senators Push DEA to 'Swiftly Deschedule' Marijuana

Why are moths attracted to lights? Science may finally have an answer

Israeli Cabinet Members Join Event Calling for Ethnic Cleansing & Resettlement of Gaza

Pentagon Spox GASLIGHTS 'Conflict Is CONTAINED'

FT report, EU planning to destroy economy of Hungary

A Little Night Music

Magic Sam – Walking By Myself

Magic Sam Blues Band - Every Night And Every Day

Magic Sam ~ What Have I Done Wrong

Magic Sam – You Don't Have To Work

Magic Sam – Keep On Doin' What You're Doin'

Magic Sam Blues Band - That's All I Need

Magic Sam ~ Easy, Baby

Magic Sam – Hoochie Coochie Man

Magic Sam Blues Band - Lookin' Good