Okay, we'll move quickly most likely. A few e-mails to the public account (common_ills@yahoo.com) note that I missed an hour of posting. Only one?
I've addressed this in community newsletters but for the drive-bys who are not community members, especially Saturday after midnight through Sunday night, if I miss an hour or two, it's most likely because Ava and I are very involved in a piece for THIRD. For one aspect of the piece we're writing (we're close to the conclusion which will bring in a Joni Mitchell album), we had to do non-stop research which included calling friends in Oregon to find out about X (a hateful piece of garbage who should never have been platformed), hunting down interviews X gave and going through those and so much more. So, so much more. We're taking on X and the notion that CRAPAPEDIA is a reliable source. As soon as this is done and posted, we will be on the phone with Marcia and Rebecca to do a quick conversation about the book they reviewed (conversation for THIRD).
So we're moving quickly.
Iraq yesterday, why? A few e-mails asked. We still cover Iraq. And there was enough of interest to cover it in depth last night. If this site goes on much longer, the "Iraq snapshot" will just become "The snapshot." Hopefully, they'll be kicking US troops out soon. Obviously, no US president is ever going to pull them out. So our only hope is the Iraqi people kicking them out (something the Iraqi people have wanted since 2004).
A number of e-mails to the public account (sorry, I haven't gone to the community e-mail account) are saying that I didn't note this or I didn't note that.
I get that your podcasts and the articles you write and this and that are very important to you.
But do you get the fact that I don't work for you?
If I've got the time and I think it's worth noting, I'll share your work here. But that will be my decision, not yours.
Some of you who did not get noted on Friday or Saturday are in a tizzy because, as one male podcaster put it, "You even noted THE VIEW!"
Yes, I did. They had audience reaction regarding the debate and I found that more interesting than what the circle jerk media was serving up.
And some of you especially -- I agree with Mike and his choice for "Idiot of the week" -- shouldn't have been commenting on the debate. You're not living in this country, so shut up.
I can't remember who the grinning loon was but there was some YOUTUBE video that the creator wanted noted and just the grin on his face was enough to say, "Oh, hell no."
I'm not interested in your agenda to get Donald Trump elected or your stupidity to get Donald Trump elected. Joe Biden won the debate. You can muddle it up all you want but if one person lies non-stop, the other person just has to stand there and they're the winner.
That is how a debate works.
If you're a liar, you don't win.
Lying that American women are giving birth and then aborting the baby that they just gave birth to? That's a lie, it's a stupid lie and maybe if more women were in the media -- as opposed to masculine identifying women who sleep with their male co-hosts despite both being married at the time -- we would have seriously addressed that issue. Yes, we noted THE VIEW here because when you get women around a table, you're going to hear what the corporate and male identifying media regularly leaves out.
Instead of things like that, we got a media in search of drama and ratings -- deciding to forgo the normal day-after debate practice where they fact check. Instead, they thought they had a 'story!!!!!!' and they did real damage. Joe may be the nominee in November. And the party was not helped by this f**king nonsense.
Nor was the country.
Do you not get what Donald Trump would do in a second term?
I do. And that's why I decided in 2021 that I'd be voting for whomever the Democratic Party nominee was. The 2025 Project would destroy America. And, check this site, we didn't start covering it this year. We've been covering that for some time. Knowing what the plan is if Donald gets elected, I don't know how you justify the crazp that went down.
And there are certain of you that I never, ever want to hear on domestic politics because you're, frankly, so damn stupid. As a poli sci major, I really don't talk campaign politics with most people. There are friends that will tell you that I completely shut them out on this topic. So your podcast that you think you made great points in? It really didn't impress me, so sorry.
The last three days have been about trying to put a panic into the American people. I don't play that game, I never play that game.
If the party wants to replace Joe, they will. If that happens, it will be news.
Gossip, however, should remain on TMZ and not on public affairs programming pretending to be news.
It was the perfect storm -- journalists who are naturally lazy (and lice, Joan Crawford was right) wanted to conjecture and not do their job. People who want Donald to win were working overtime to attack Joe and those who never supported Joe on the left were now gleeful and eager to take him out.
Maybe they succeeded. We'll find out in the next few days. But for me, all they did was whore and hustle and the American people deserved better -- a lot damn better.
Moving to Gaza . . .
Israeli troops descended on Shujayea, in northern Gaza City, with tanks and drones on Thursday. Residents who remained in the neighbourhood told Al Jazeera and the AFP that they felt trapped by the Israeli strikes and intense fighting.
Israeli troops are expecting to remain in Shujayea for weeks, the Jerusalem Post has reported, with the Israeli army seeking to destroy Hamas tunnels it “missed during the first time through”, months after the Israeli army claimed to have “dismantled” Hamas in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Today, The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor noted:
The Israeli army continues to use its tanks to deliberately run over live Palestinian civilians and crush their bodies, in addition to using civilians as human shields, in the ground operations of its crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing since 7 October 2023.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor field team documented a compound and comprehensive crime against a civilian family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. The family was attacked with gunfire and bombs after Israeli forces stormed their house on Thursday evening, 27 June. They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours despite their injuries in their home, near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, where they were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.
In his testimony to the Euro-Med Monitor team, the elderly woman’s son, Muhannad Al-Jamal, 28, said: “We were living in Al-Nazaz Street in Al-Shuja’iya, east of Gaza, when at approximately 10 a.m. on Thursday we were surprised to hear the sound of shelling and explosions. We made an unsuccessful attempt to leave. All around us was chaos. We went inside, up to the first floor, and sat in a room in the center of the house. As we were sitting there, we noticed that Israeli tanks were moving closer to the area. Then the bombing started to get more intense, and I saw that many of the tanks had turned and were now positioned on the adjacent land of our neighbours, bulldozing and destroying it before raising the Israeli flag on the property. I was with my mother, my three sisters, and niece in the room. We were very careful not to make any noise. At the end of the afternoon or before sunset, the tanks began firing shells toward my brother's ground floor flat in our home. I got my family together and we sat in one of the rooms, reciting the Shahada (a statement of belief that Muslims recite before death) and waiting to see what would happen to us.
"After sunset, we heard gunfire in the street, and then I realised that the soldiers had stormed the house after blowing up a wall. When they found us in the room, they started firing at the walls randomly and threw five bombs amid gunfire. They were shouting in Hebrew, and we did not understand what they were saying. I was hit by shrapnel in my back, along with my sisters. My mother was struck by a large piece of shrapnel in her chest while my sisters were screaming, "We are civilians." The soldiers then moved forward one by one, yelling, "Shut up," before dragging me away. They forced me to take off my clothes and put me against the wall. After my mother and sisters entered with a female soldier, the soldiers pointed their weapons at me for half an hour.
“They asked me to carry my mother on my back. After that, a different soldier ordered me to place her on a stretcher, so I did. I then carried her with another soldier out through the opening that the army attack had made. We then went to a nearby area and were placed in a tank, where I placed the stretcher in front of me before exiting. After that, they brought me back to the house. They later took me down and handcuffed me. My sisters were at the tank's door when a soldier arrived at roughly 9:45 p.m. and asked them to wait before he removed the handcuffs and put shackles on my hands and a blindfold on my eyes. He stopped me on a sand hill, and he was shining a laser at me. I felt that they were going to execute me. Then he turned on the tank and ordered me to get into it. It was a different tank from the one my mother was in. Later, the tank shifted and swung around. After that, they dropped me in what appeared to be a set of stairs, and I had no idea where I was. I was asked to follow their directions as I moved. This went on for about 15 minutes while rude remarks were made. Then I was grabbed by the neck by one of the soldiers. After I moved fifty meters, they put me in yet another tank. I moved in, then they took me down and put me in a tank that contained the stretcher that we used to transport my mother. Later on, the tank moved.
“I had assumed that we would be taken to a medical facility so that my mother could be treated, but instead they tackled me and my mother, putting her on the ground. After a few minutes, I realised we had arrived at the Mushtaha Roundabout, at the end of Al-Nazzaz Street. I inquired as to my location. "Your mother will be taken by ambulance," he said. My mom was on the ground, unconscious. There were two tanks on the right and left surrounding the roundabout. After the soldiers entered the tank, it started to move backward and ran over my mother.
"When I saw the scene, I thought I had gone insane and began to cry and scream.... I fled, fearing for my life, as the tank on the right tried to run me over. However, the two tanks moved in another direction, and the tank on the left was trying to run my mother over once more, but that did not happen. Afterwards, the tanks pivoted and pointed their weapons towards me. Out of fear, I hid by taking cover. All I could hear as I started to scream was the sound of gunfire. Dogs were getting closer to my mother's body and I shoved them away as they were going to eat her body. This was on Friday just after midnight, around 1 a.m. The soldier in the tank knew where he had placed her and was able to avoid her, but he deliberately ran over her. I could not bear the situation amid the heavy gunfire, and I could not carry my mother after the tank ran over her. I was shocked by what had happened, but I could hardly cover my mother and ran from the place, thinking if there had been an ‘ambulance,’ as he said, he would not run over her. I went looking for my sisters, as I did not know their fate. I kept crying as I walked through the intense gunfire until I came across someone on a balcony who offered me a bottle of water and directed me along a safe route that would get me to my friends' location in a stairwell. I made every effort to get in touch with my sisters, and eventually I found out that they were receiving medical care at Baptist Hospital. They inquired about my mother, so I told them."
His sister, Areeji, 30, added to the Euro-Med Monitor team: “When the soldiers stormed our house and started shooting and throwing bombs, we told them that my mother was injured and dying. We noticed that she had a large wound, and a female soldier arrived to provide first aid. We observed her attempting to treat her repeatedly, and I witnessed my mother on the verge of death. After they had taken my brother, they held us for a while before telling us to head to Salah al-Din Street. When we asked about my mother, they said they would take her to the hospital. Then, they gave us a green light (torch) and we started to move. We were injured and bleeding, and we had a one-and-a-half-year-old baby girl with us. When we got to the area before the Shuja'iya intersection at 11:30 p.m., there were tanks there, a lot of gunfire, and I waved the green light (torch) until we passed. No one was following us until we got to the Baptist Hospital."
Euro-Med Monitor has previously documented many instances of the Israeli army killing Palestinian civilians by intentionally running over live civilians with military tanks.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 268 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that the Israeli military has killed least 43 people and wounded 111 who arrived in hospitals in the 24 hours to Sunday. The toll from the war since October 7 rose to 37,877 killed and 86,969 injured." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
ALJAZEERA notes, "The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claims it attacked the Israeli port city of Eilat with drones, Al Jazeera Arabic reports." This follows last week's claim that they joined with Houthis in Yemen in an attack on Israel's Haifa port.
The following sites updated:
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Idiot of the week7 hours ago
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The Strange Death of José de Jesús, Part 119 hours ago
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The media is full of liars1 day ago
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