Saturday, June 15, 2024

Gaza . . . but first some music thoughts due to an e-mail

Apologies to Denise who e-mailed the public account (common_ills@yahoo.com) about her favorite singer.  Each week, on Saturday,we highlight female musicians.  We highlight many,  Every week will include Diana Ross (a friend who does not get nearly enough attention -- where's her honorary Academy Award -- starring in three films in the 70s, the first African-American woman to serve as an Academy Awards host, nominated for Best Actress for LADY SINGS THE BLUES and she's repeatedly performed on the Academy Awards) and Cher (who can tick me but I still love her).  


For the most part, I can put up any female artist.  There are three that are problematic.  

Two are alive and total bitches.  And they'll never be up here.

Natalie Cole and Aretha Franklin were great ladies and I was lucky to know them both.  They had a serious feud.  That was between them.

The two women that I'm not naming?  We're not talking feud, we're talking hatred.  They hate other women artists.  They have repeatedly gone out of their way to trash female artists (including friends of mine -- and, yes, Diana's on the list of women that they've trashed) to the press.  And it gets back to everyone when you do that.  They'll call me or someone else for a comment and we'll all be playing a round of telephone letting everyone else know that X and Z have trashed another woman again.


X and Z really don't have careers in that they couldn't make it on their own -- they hail from groups.  And they have a lot of anger and a lot of hatred for other women.  They often won't go on the record with their name so it will appear in print as something like "A recording artist who asked not to be named . . ."  They're bitches and they're hateful bitches. 


And they don't get posted here.


The third one that's problematic for me is dead -- Donna Summer.


I was hoping that the HBO documentary could have provided peace.  It should have not have been her daughters' responsibility to get honest for Donna.


But they did.  Applause to them.  


And I thought I could highlight Donna as a result.


But her most vocal fans are  idiots.  I'm not in the damn mood.  I don't know what your damn problem is but, Twinks, stop lying for her.


"Oh, I always liked her and that was so unfair the lies that were told."

They weren't lies you self-loathing idiots.


She said it.


In fact, she said many anti-gay things.


There's a liar online who pretends he was in Florida when the thing was almost said but not said and he can swear to it. And he's cited over and over even though he clearly was not where he says he was -- dates don't line up.  


Donna said many anti-gay things.  I knew Donna.  I could take her with the drugs.  Couldn't take the homophobia.  It was apparently always present according to people like Giorgio Moroder who worked with her early on.  

I knew her right before it kicked in and she became openly homophobic.


It ruined our friendship.  Boo-hoo.

Donna had a great voice and was an innovator and a legend.  And I'm fine with highlighting her if we're honest.  


But I'm not highlighting someone we're going to lie about.  


Yes, she said AIDS was a punishment from God.  She said many more things, but, yes, she said it.  I know it.  She knew it.  Most of the music industry knew it in real time.


I saw a new lie that's popped up to defend her -- saw it this week for the first time.


'It's a lie!  And she sued NEW YORK MAGAZINE for printing it!  And she won!'


Liberace sued THE DAILY MIRROR for implying he was gay and he won.  So I'm not sure that Donna winning would have proven anything.


However . . .


She didn't win.  Both sides agreed not to go forward with the case.  It never went to court.  We'll come back to why it was dropped.


But Donna didn't win.  Like Liberace, she and her team attacked the article and said it caused harm and distress and pretended it was the reason her awful MISTAKEN IDENTITY album bombed.


The album was a flop and it was a flop because of the crap that it was -- very bad reviews -- and because of the way she destroyed her own career.  


ALL SYSTEMS GO had already flopped.  But it was a noble flop.  She sounded great on that album.  She followed it up with  ANOTHER PLACE IN TIME which also flopped and that wasn't a noble flop.  She worked with a cookie-cutter production team that tried to make her sound -- and she let them -- like any other faceless artist on their assembly line.  There's not one decent vocal performance on that album.  She doesn't get to soar once.  She rides the vocal range on the title track to ALL SYSTEMS GO and other songs on that album, but ANOTHER PLACE IN TIME is a piece of crap that wasn't arranged for her voice and that isn't a Donna Summer album.  Her fans had already fled but everyone grasped that the payola hit "This Time I Know It's For Real" was garbage and beneath Donna's singing talents. 


There was also her heavily publicized country album -- country music -- which fortunately never materialized -- but I believe she started sporting that ugly blond wig when trying to talk that up -- the same ugly blond wig she wore on the cover of MISTAKEN IDENTITY.


And self-loathing Twinks, grasp that she also ran from the title Queen of Disco.  


She ran her audience off.


But, here's the other thing about that lawsuit?  Get your facts right.  It was not the first mainstream magazine -- NEW YORK -- to print what Donna said about AIDS.  ROLLING STONE had already printed it twice -- the second time when the British group Bronski Beat was calling her out for her statement.  There were many others as well over the years.

But that's not what Donna sued them for.


This is the sort of thing that just makes me want to scream, throw this laptop at the wall and never, ever get online again.


This lying, this stupidity, this whoring.


When I'm dead, if you hear someone calling me a bitch, don't have a hissy fit.  I can be a real bitch.  I've said here forever and a day that I'm not a nice person.  And that's okay.  


Donna did what she did.  And you can lie to yourself all you want but you look ridiculous when you do.


Donna did not sue NEW YORK over the AIDS comment she made in the early 80s.


She sued over Paul Jabara.  


MISTAKEN IDENTITY was supposed to have included his song "We Are Gonna Win."  Paul co-wrote many hit songs such as the theme to THE MAIN EVENT and Donna's "Last Dance."  


Donna did not include it on MISTAKEN IDENTITY.  People were outraged and furious by that -- people in the industry -- and they spoke to NEW YORK.  


Donna lied and said in response that the song was "seven years old" -- her excuse -- and that's why it wasn't on the album. 


Now the song was sought out by Donna and recorded seven years prior, that much is true.  It's also true that she asked him for a song because she was trying to do an apology for her AIDS remark.


(As I've noted in Ava and my "TV: The four stories of LOVE TO LOVE YOU, DONNA SUMMER    ," I told Donna it wasn't going away until she apologized.) 


And she recorded it.


But just like she couldn't get honest about what she'd said in the 80s, she wasn't honest in her public remarks or court room filings.


It is correct that she recorded it in 1984.  She'd realized with the response to CATS WITHOUT CLAWS (tepid) and to her amazing vocal on "There Goes My Baby" that her career was in trouble and that she'd lost fans as a result of the AIDS remark.  Which is why she asked Paul specifically to write her an anthem that she could present to the LGBTQ+ community as a sign that she embraced them still (she meant "now").  


But where she was lying?

 She re-recorded the song and did so for the MISTAKEN IDENTITY project.  And she knew Paul was struggling with AIDS when she re-recorded it.  He would die about a year and a week after MISTAKEN IDENTITY was released.


So she's a liar.  Or was.  And it's a shame she didn't get honest before she died.


What the idiot fan boys don't seem to grasp is that AIDS comment took place after BAD GIRLS.


Donna found Jesus.  Silly me, I hadn't caught the Amber alert when he apparently went missing. But Donna found him and she wanted to be sure everyone knew how close she and Jesus were because, apparently, Jesus had asked her to stand in judgment on everyone.


The little liars and fools have no idea that Donna repeatedly spoke about how she would be giving up popular music, how she would be doing gospel records (Christian contemporary but she generally said "gospel" -- no gospel label wanted hre), how she was taking this song and that song out of her performances and how she intended to take even more out.  This, by the way, is when Donna's touring starts collapsing.  No one wants to hear her garbage songs like "He's A Rebel" (not the Crystals' classic, this was one of her 'gospel' songs -- sample lyric "Ooh he's a rebel, written up in the Lambs book of life") or "Forgive Me" (sample lyric "As you prayed for those who crucified you").  If you're paying your hard earned money to see Donna Summer in concert, you're wanting to hear her moan and groan through "Love To Love You Baby."  And you're disturbed that not only did she not sing that  song but that she's telling the Christian contemporary music press that she's about to drop "Hot Stuff" from her act as well.


She was also saying, from the stage, "not Adam and Steve" and other homophobic remarks.  In the documentary, her own sister talks about this on camera.



So I'm just not in the mood for some underfed and under-educated twinks to go all over the internet with their damn lies.


Donna sued NEW YORK and then dropped the suit over what they published about how she was supposed to have included Paul's song on the album, how it was supposed to be seen as her apology for her AIDS remark from years prior.  That's what she sued for.  And NEW YORK found out that, yes, she did record the song in 1984 but, oops, she also re-recorded it for MISTAKEN IDENTITY.  ATLANTIC RECORDS provided them with a studio recording.  I don't think Donna got any money out of the lawsuit but I know she agreed to settle when she found out that her public lies and her lies in court documents were going to be exposed or she could walk away from the lawsuit. 


And I thought the documentary would have stopped all the lies from little twinks who so hate themselves that they will bend over backwards to act as though Donna was never homophobic.


Are you exhausted from the above?  Me too.  We're probably not going to have much on Gaza.


 But back to Denise and her e-mail.  When I read your e-mail, Denise, my plan was to immediately post and to start with a song from your artist -- YA, for short -- and explain that the first time I heard that song, I had to know who the songwriter was because it's such a great song.


And then I started to type.


And stopped.  


The songwriter's a loud mouth -- and a closet case.  Don't you love these women who say, "I haven't had a boyfriend since 1992 because I'm so busy with my work."  No, you haven't had a beard since 1992 and the whole industry knows you are a lesbian and thinks that there's nothing wrong with that but wonders why you can't come out after all of these years.  It's pathetic.  


But I was still going to highlight YA and do so with a song that the unnamed songwriter wrote.  But the Spidey senses started tingling and said check out big mouth's Twitter feed first.  As I feared, she's a genocide junkie.  Yep, it's all over her Twitter feed (as well as a photo of her standing to next to -- and hugging -- a homophobe).  She hates Palestinians and is actively cheering on genocide.  Well . . . as actively as anyone with both feet in the closet can.


So, no,


YA is someone who's been highlighted at this site, Denise.  In fact, your pick of her sixth best song, if you'll use the search button at the left hand side of this site, you'll see that we have highlighted it at least once.  


It's not been during the Saturday music posts that start up with the pandemic.  The reason we post every day even holidays is because when this site started a reader e-mailed that she would be alone for the holidays and was wondering if we would be posting?  Because of that we did.  Nothing worse than being alone on the holidays.  With the pandemic, we were all suffering and it seemed like it was something we could do here -- highlight great music -- that might make someone's day a little better.


But we have highlighted YA here.  She was a strong singer and I think her third album was something she could really be proud of.  It's still a strong album today and we will highlight her -- in fact, we'll go with your number one pick -- next Saturday.

Donna is on the no list because people are lying and I'm not going to pimp lies.  If I post her -- and hopefully I will be able to before the site goes dark -- it'll be because "Dinner With Gershwin" is an amazing song or "On My Honor" or whatever.  But while liars are pretending she didn't say the AIDS remark and that she didn't go through a very public and very homophobic phase, I'm not noting her.


As for the two hateful bitches? I will never note them here.  Well, maybe if they die, I'll note them in some way.  Maybe you'll see their obit on TV and pop over here and see a video of "Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead."

And to be really clear, that's why I noted Aretha and Natalie, not everyone gets along.  And that's fine.  But the two I'm talking about hate everyone -- including each other -- and insult every woman, rip them apart.   


Aretha and Natalie had a problem, a personal one (and I sided with Aretha on that, then and now).  It wasn't the end of the world.  But a female singer who thinks she's going to rip apart every other singer and wants to mainly do so through reporters who will quote her and let her go unnamed?


No, those two bitches will never be highlighted here.


Let's move over to a DEMOCRACY NOW! segment earlier this week.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We end today’s show with the first military and intelligence officer to publicly resign over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Jewish American Army Major Harrison Mann resigned from his role at the Defense Intelligence Agency after a 13-year career. The DIA is essentially the Pentagon’s CIA.

In a letter explaining his resignation he posted online last month, Mann wrote, quote, “This office does not only inform policy. It facilitates, and, at times, directly executes policy … and the policy that has never been far from my mind for the past six months is the nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel, which has enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. As we were recently reminded, this unconditional support also encourages reckless escalation that risks wider war,” he wrote.

Mann submitted his resignation November 1st, just over three weeks into Israel’s assault on Gaza. His separation from the military became effective last week. Harrison Mann joins us now from Washington, D.C.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Harrison, if you can go back to November and talk about what drove you to decide to separate from the U.S. military? You’re a U.S. Army major who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency. And explain exactly what your role was and what the DIA does.

HARRISON MANN: Yes, and thank you for having me.

So, just in terms of what I was seeing, what drove my decision back in October is, even in the first weeks after October 7th with the start of the Israeli air campaign on Gaza, it was really clear that they were prepared to inflict huge numbers of civilian casualties, which they did and which your — you know, a trend your last guest described in really heartbreaking detail. So, there was a very high tolerance and willingness to inflict civilian casualties, which we already saw. We already saw the autoimmune response from U.S. and Israeli adversaries or Iranian proxies in the region, with, I think, the first Houthi attacks starting in mid-October.

And really, beyond those risks and the humanitarian cost, it was really clear, both at the national level and from what I was hearing from the senior leadership in my community, that our support for Israel was going to be really unshakable and unconditional, no matter how many people they killed and how they conducted the war. And my job at the time was assistant to the director of, basically, the Middle East and Africa office for the agency, who is also the official who oversaw the Israel crisis response, so I was very well placed to understand some of the higher-level discussions happening about the war and about U.S. support to the war. And that really left me feeling hopeless that we were going to condition or moderate our aid or our support in any way.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and, Harrison Mann, I’m wondering if you could talk about, from the perspective of what the Defense Intelligence Agency, the kind of information it was collecting even before the events of October 7th and this new war. To your knowledge, has there ever been a situation like Gaza, where, basically, people were in an open-air prison, where the Israelis essentially controlled all ingress and egress from the territory and were able to cut off any kind of contact with the outside world whenever they wanted to?

HARRISON MANN: Yeah, I mean, there’s certainly been other conflicts, including in our region, where other forces did some level of siege or cut off access to the population they were attacking. And I think the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen against the Houthis, which, until recently, had wound down, was probably the next closest example of a man-made humanitarian crisis cutting off the entry of food and medication while bombing the population.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of what were the — why you decided specifically in the first few weeks, as the conflict began, to resign? What were the main reasons that you felt you had to resign?

HARRISON MANN: I mean, fundamentally, I understood that every day that I was going to go into the office, I was going to be contributing to the Israeli campaign. That was something that DOD was supporting. It was something that DIA was supporting. And I think it’s open that we have a very close intelligence relationship with Israel. And so I was tangentially involved in that. And I kind of got more and more discouraged and hopeless that we were going to stop, U.S. was going to stop, its support. And I understood early on, and was unfortunately validated in this, that nobody was going to come tell me to stop. Nobody at any level in my chain of command, even people who I think were sympathetic to what was happening to the Palestinians, was going to ask me or anybody I worked with to reconsider the support that we were facilitating.

AMY GOODMAN: Harrison Mann, you’re an American Jew, as well as an Army major working at the DIA. How did your Jewish background influence your decision?

HARRISON MANN: My Jewish background, you know, influenced both my service and my decision to leave. I have a very distinct memory of several years ago going to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Israel on a trip that was actually sponsored and hosted by the IDF. And you go through that museum, and you see all these sights of the Holocaust victims. And then, at the end, there’s this giant blowup photo, that I think is still there, showing a lot of U.S. Army soldiers interspersed with Holocaust camp survivors, and they’re attending a service led by a U.S. Army rabbi after their camp has been liberated. And that, I think, seeing that photo, which I hadn’t seen before, was like one of my proudest moments of my service, understanding that I got to wear the same uniform and be in the same army as the men who liberated that camp.

And today, seeing photos of charred bodies and burnt corpses and starved, emaciated children that are from, you know, 2023, 2024, not the '40s, it's impossible not to make that connection. And I guess it forced me to realize that that’s what I was contributing to in the same uniform, instead of saving those people. And so, I think the situations are not perfectly analogous, but the moral logic was very clear to me, because I’m Jewish.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about more recent events, like this weekend, and as your role as a DIA officer, if you could explain what’s really going on here, talking about the role of U.S. intelligence support in Israel’s war on Gaza. This is national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaking on CNN from Paris.

JAKE SULLIVAN: The United States has been providing support to Israel for several months in its efforts to help identify the locations of hostages in Gaza and to support efforts to try to secure their rescue or recovery. I’m not going to get into the specific operational or intelligence-related matters associated with that, because we need to protect those. I can only just say that we have generally provided support to the IDF so that we can try to get all of the hostages home, including the American hostages who are still being held.

DANA BASH: So, I understand that intelligence, U.S. intelligence, assisted. But will you say anything about U.S. personnel, U.S. weapons?

JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, the one thing I can say is that there were no U.S. forces, no U.S. boots on the ground involved in this operation. We did not participate militarily in this operation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, no boots on the ground, Jake Sullivan says to Dana Bash of CNN. He’s talking about this weekend, when more than 270 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli military operation that freed four Israeli hostages in Nuseirat, in Gaza. Israeli intelligence officials told The New York Times — this is in an article today — that U.S. military officials in Israel provided some of the intelligence about the hostages rescued on Saturday. According to the Times, the Pentagon and the CIA have been providing information collected from drone flights over Gaza, communications intercepts and other sources about the potential location of hostages. While Israel has its own intelligence, the United States and Britain have been able to provide intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel cannot collect on its own, The New York Times reports. So, Harrison Mann, talk more about this and what kind of support was, it looks like, provided this weekend. And then go more generally into, well, President Biden more recently said he’s approving a billion dollars more of just outright weapons to Israel.

HARRISON MANN: Yeah, I think the operation this weekend is a kind of unusually public example of the value of intelligence support that the U.S. provides to Israel, which is — you know, we’ve had a long-standing and very strong relationship, and usually it’s not discussed. But I think this weekend we saw how intel support, even if it’s for a goal that I think is nominally, you know, quite — something that’s difficult to dispute, which is rescuing hostages, can nonetheless contribute to operations that kill what looks like a very large number of civilians. And I think it’s also indicative of the value of the intel support that we give Israel. And I just highlight that because that’s the area that I worked in or adjacent to, and it’s another form of valuable support that we give Israel that helps them prosecute this war. And it’s another less discussed form of leverage that we also have over the Israeli government.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Harrison Mann, I’m wondering, your moral concerns about what was going on in Gaza, to what extent you shared it with other fellow military or defense intelligence people, and what advice you would have to those in the military or the intelligence community that are still grappling with their ethical concerns.

HARRISON MANN: So, for the first months after I initiated my resignation process, which did not actually conclude until last week, I was really kind of afraid. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about this with anybody, because nobody else was discussing it. And it felt like it was way outside of our norms and outside of what would be culturally acceptable where I worked. But in April, when I finally shared my resignation — my resignation letter with my office, I got really overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback from the people that I worked with, and I discovered that there were a lot of people who felt pretty much the same way that I did and also felt like they could not openly discuss their concerns. And since I’ve publicized my letter, more people from both my office and elsewhere in the Department of Defense and the military have also reached out.

And, you know, my number one piece of advice, or kind of tough love here, is understanding, again, that nobody is going to tell you to stop. I do not think we are near an end to this conflict, and so you are nowhere near the end of being finally told that you can stop participating in it. And so, understanding that, you then have to realize that moderating your level of support and participation is a choice, the same way that going to work tomorrow and continuing to support the Israeli campaign is a choice.

And I know that what I did is not feasible for a lot of people. I understand that. I know other folks in our line of work who have asked for a transfer or who have asked their supervisor, “Hey, I’m going to keep doing all of the portfolios you give me, but find somebody else for Israel.” I think another possibly effective option is asking for an assurance, in writing, that what you’re doing is both legal and consistent with your organization’s ethical standards and values statements. That’s something I wish I had done, which I think would have given some people pause, because we’re asking each other, we’re asking our subordinates, to do a lot of these things and contribute to this conflict, without really pausing to think about the ethical dimension. And that’s something I’m guilty of, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Harrison Mann, we have —

HARRISON MANN: And just finally — sorry. Go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead. Go ahead.

HARRISON MANN: I would just finally say, if you can’t do that, just start talking about it, and letting somebody that you work with know that they’re not alone might be incredibly valuable in and of itself.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 10 seconds. What effect did the protests have on you? Do they make it inside?

HARRISON MANN: The campus protests?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

HARRISON MANN: It was further indication about whether or not I was on the right side of history and, you know, how I’d be able to look back at this years from now, which is what helped drive my decision not to be part of this.

AMY GOODMAN: Harrison Mann, Jewish American U.S. Army major, recently resigned from the Defense Intelligence Agency over the Biden administration’s policy in Gaza.

That does it for our show. To see others who have resigned, our interviews, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.


Mike Prysner (EMPIRE FILES) reports:

On June 4 Major Harrison Mann went public that he resigned from his position in the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as from the Army, in protest of the Gaza genocide, saying “I’m confident saying it’s certainly some measure of ethnic cleansing.” Highly inconvenient for the Pentagon, given Maj. Mann is a decorated officer, is Jewish, is a Middle East expert, and is willing to go on mainstream news shows to say his piece. 

While Mann got the most coverage, he’s not the only one to take public action. On March 31, Senior Airman Larry Hebert took 40 days leave from his unit based in Spain and used it to wage a hunger strike in front of the White House, holding a sign reading “Active Duty Airman Refuses To Eat While Gaza Starves.”

On June 7, he dropped his paperwork filing for a Conscientious Objector discharge. When I spoke with him after filing, he told me:

One key value they teach us in the Air Force is ‘Integrity First.’ They explain this as doing the right thing when nobody’s watching. Today, I feel like many of us are doing the wrong thing while everyone is watching. 

Filing CO status publicly is quite rare, as most opt to do it quietly to avoid reprisal. But Senior Airman Hebert is not alone in doing this.

On June 5, Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt, who is in the same unit as Aaron Bushnell, publicly announced via social media he too made the decision to file as a conscientious objector over the genocide, while backing an Appeal For Redress (which allows active-duty troops to petition Congress with their grievances).

His turning point was at Bushnell’s official memorial service on Lackland Air Force Base. He left a small Palestinian flag on the vigil table, the only reference at the entire ceremony to Bushnell’s cause. He told me:

I was moved by Aaron’s final message and his determination to shake us out of our comfortable lives and draw our eyes towards the atrocities happening in Gaza.

I believe it is unconscionable to expect military personnel to comply with genocide in blatant disregard for domestic, humanitarian and international laws.

It is highly significant for a US-backed operation to draw such resistance from within the ranks: the dramatic action of Bushnell, the high-profile resignation of Maj. Mann, two simultaneous public Conscientious Objector campaigns with scores of others following suit in secret.

Many others have decided to end their military careers, and join the pro-Palestine movement while they ride out the remainder of their contracts or find ways to get discharged medically.



Yvonne Murray (RTE) has an important question:

It has been nearly a week since the UN Security Council voted for a ceasefire to end the war in Gaza.

With 14 votes in favour and a Russian abstention, it was an overwhelming endorsement by the UN’s most powerful body of the three-phase peace plan that US President Joe Biden put forward at the end of May.

So, where's the peace?


Very good question.  Where is the peace?  


This assault has been going on now for over eight months.  This is outrageous.  An ongoing genocide is taking place and it's outrageous. ALJAZEERA notes:


The Palestinian refugee agency of the United Nations (UNRWA) must be allowed to work unhindered in Gaza, Group of Seven (G7) leaders say as the wealthy nations wrapped up day two of their annual summit in Italy.

“We agree it is critical that UNRWA and other UN organisations and agencies’ distribution networks be fully able to deliver aid to those who need it most, fulfilling their mandate effectively,” G7 nations said in their final communique.


And the best the Israeli government can come up with is 'a tactical pause'?  [The much covered pause contains no real details other than opening and closing hours and it comes from a government that's lied non-stop so we won't jump in that story -- that non-story -- until we see someting in play and how it actually works.]  That is unacceptable and the world should make that clear.  Australia's ABC NEWS observes, "Despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire, an agreement to halt the fighting still appears distant more than eight months since the war began."   ALJAZEERA notes, "The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says more than 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip require immediate medical treatment for acute malnutrition."   And EURO NEWS notes, "UN agencies say over one million people in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July."   and


When an NBC News video crew visited Gaza last month, the Israelis had been attacking Rafah. The crew shot footage of what appeared to be destroyed U.N. vehicles. It also found footage of a family in northern Gaza using grass and wild greens to make soup.

“Instead of flour, we ate the rabbit feed and the hay meant for cows,” one little girl told NBC News, when asked to explain what life was like in northern Gaza before she and her family fled to Rafah.


Today.  Nathan Morley (VATICAN NEWS) reports:

Reports carried on WAFA, the Palestinian news agency, suggest 19 Palestinians, including women, children and a baby, were killed and scores of others wounded in Israeli air strikes targeting homes in eastern Gaza City.

Other reports put the death toll at 28, but the figures are not confirmed.

Elsewhere, as Gaza endures a blistering heatwave, footage posted on the internet shows Israeli bulldozers demolishing damaged homes near Rafah.

The scenes on the ground in Gaza are horrifying.

 The United Nations is reporting that more than 330,000 tons of solid waste is piling up in and out of populated areas of the Gaza Strip, creating a huge health hazard. Much of it is now literally boiling in temperatures which have exceeded 40C this week. 


Gaza remains under assault. Day 253 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 Gaza Health Ministry on Saturday said 37,296 Palestinians have been killed and 85,197 injured in Israeli attacks since October 7.

The toll includes 30 people killed and 95 other injured in the 24 hours to noon on Saturday, the ministry said.."   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:

  



April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
 

As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."


The following sites updated:









  •  

    Iraq snapshot

    Friday, June 14, 2024.  Crooked Clarence Thomas lies again, a lifeguard backed by right-wing nuts is trying to further erode LGBTQ+ rights, Jeffrey St. Clair reflects on the recent slaughter in Gaza and much more.

    Starting in the US where confidence in the Supreme Court remains at an all time low.  As Mike noted earlier this morning "Crooked Clarence Thomas can't stop lying."  Now lying would be a problem for anyone -- even a young child.  However, Crooked Clarence isn't a young child.  He is a justice on the Supreme Court  who has now served (poorly) for over thirty years.  And when he can't follow the rules, who is he to offer judgment on anyone?  The hypocrisy leaves the mind reeling.  

    So there are three more trips that his billionaire sugar daddy paid for that, oops!, Crooked Clarence forgot to disclose.  This is not the behavior of an ethical judge.  This is the behavior of a crook and crooks are not supposed to be judges.  They're certainly supposed to appear before judges but they are not supposed to sit on the bench.  

    It is past time for Crooked Clarence and Offending Alito to be pulled from the Court.  But we also desperately need term limits on the Supreme Court.  That is long overdue.

    Stephen Johnson Field sat on the Supreme Court from 1863 to 1897.  From WIKIPEDIA:

    Field insisted on breaking John Marshall's record of 34 years on the court, even when he was no longer able to handle the workload. His colleagues asked him to resign due to his being intermittently senile,[14] but he refused, at one point John Marshall Harlan urged Field to retire. Finding him dozing in the robing room. Harlan later related what happened next: “The old man listened, gradually became alert, and finally, with his eyes blazing with the fire of youth, he burst out, ‘Yes, and a dirtier day’s work I never did in my life.'”[15]

    In March 1896, he wrote what would be his final opinion on behalf of the Court, but remained on the bench for another twenty months, finally retiring on December 1, 1897.[16] Field would become the last veteran of both the Taney Court and the Chase Court to remain on the bench. He would remain the longest serving member of the Court until his record was surpassed by William O. Douglas, who served from 1939 to 1975.


    We need laws changing this from a life time appointment because for the American people this is now becoming a lifetime sentence -- where we have to wait for these corrupt bastards to die in order to get justice.


    When Crooked Clarence refuses to properly disclose, he stains his own image and he stains the Court's image.  This should not be allowed to happen.


    Let's note this from Ava and my "Media: The lying pundits with a focus on Jonathan Turley:"


    MEDIAS TOUCH is a good outlet and produced good content.  But we cringed over one this week where a woman wanted to talk about the assault on women's rights.


    We don't think the assault exists?

    We know it does.  And it's a good topic for a commentary -- for many commentaries.  But the woman seemed to doubt that or to feel that she needed to shore up the case by citing an attack on Civil Rights.  Citing?  A whispered aside, at best.  And why do that?


    There's more than enough reason to make a commentary on the assault on Civil Rights -- many commentaries (and Roland S. Martin regularly does a great job with those commentaries on his own podcasts).  The way the woman utilized this was confusing and weakened her presentation.


    If she was attempting to note the reality that the fright-wing wishes to strip all of us of our rights (which is, in fact, true), she left out the LGBTQ+ community and that's a huge omission because that community is and has been the test case for the fright-wing in their efforts to destroy rights and to create a climate of hate.


    And it has been with those efforts that the hate mongers have shown their hand; however, too few want to see reality -- or maybe their own latent homophobia prevents them from seeing reality.


    The Supreme Court is a dishonest and crooked body that has handed down outrageous rulings over the last four years.  And, yes, DOBBS is one of those outrageous rulings.  So were the rulings in ALEXANDER V SOUTH CAROLINE NAACP and SFFA V HARVARD/UNC.  They are disgusting rulings that ignored precedent and trashed settled law.  


    But the worst attack on Americans came in 303 CREATIVE LLC V ELENIS. 


    And this is where Turley comes in.  He had already begun his flirtation with The Federalist Society.  Within a few years, his exposure had led to full blown hate.  He began offering pro bono help behind the scenes to many offensive and disgusting cases.  On CREATIVE LLC, he began insisting that Lori Smith -- the homophobe -- was being denied her religious right to practice homophobia.  He worded differently but that's the reality.


    Lori was a known liar who had no standing to sue and her case was a joke that only became more outrageous after the verdict when it was learned that the person she cited in court papers as having requested she make a same-sex wedding site for him (a) never made that request, (b) was straight and (c) was married to a woman and had been for over 15 years. She's just a cheap little liar and you have to wonder how she justifies that in her so-called faith?


    The verdict in that case created two sets of citizenship.  Straight people are entitled to all rights but gay men and lesbians only have rights if those rights do not offend the homophobia of some religious nutcase. That's what the verdict was. 


    Turley went all in on that case and you can read his Tweets and his columns -- even if he kept hidden his interactions with Lori Smith's attorneys.  With DOBBS and the other cases?


    He was less vocal and had to keep things hidden.  In our society, sadly, you can fully attack the LGBTQ+ community and get away with it. Turley and the fright-wing know that they have to step more lightly when it comes to attacking others.  So with attacks in other areas, these are steps to eliminating rights.  Steps.  Affirmative action has largely been struck down in college admissions due to the Crooked Court. DOBBS?  It, as Turley repeatedly insisted, turned the issue over to the states.  Many of these states,Turley failed to note, had already prepared for this day and had laws in place to destroy reproductive rights.


    They chip away at a specific right.  But with Lori Smith's case, they went back to overturning equality and all the decisions that involved equality over the Court's history to argue that gays and lesbians only have rights if 100% of America agrees they should have them.


    That's what they want to do with reproductive rights and with Civil Rights but they know they have to move slowly there.  And part of the slow move is to lie and attack the rights of women and people of color in an attempt to soften public reaction to the coming onslaught.


    The fakery is part of the process and the plotting and scheming start long before we're aware of it. 



    And again, we're seeing how destructive that case was.  They've got a new on teed up thanks to a priss pot named Jeffrey Little who's an appalling piece of work and whose 'delicately' aged face would have gotten him cast in a late 80s TV movie as an AIDS patient.  Sadly, Little wants to do his acting in court.  Piece of garbage is a lifeguard in California and by golly he can't be expected to raise flags because he's a delicate flower so nutso is suing. Robin Abcarian (LOS ANGELES TIMES) reports:


    Little claims in his lawsuit that the Progress Pride flag in question symbolizes and advances “a range of controversial religious and moral views, including about the family, the nature of marriage and human sexuality including the promotion of certain sexual practices, and the identity, nature and purpose of the human person.”
    Sexual practices? I think he’s reading an awful lot into a swatch of brightly colored fabric.

    Little also claims that he is opposed to the flag because it has been “featured prominently during Gay Pride parades around the world, including those in which adults wear little to no clothing while in the presence of children.”

    Excuse me, Los Angeles lifeguard says what?

    Has the good captain not noticed how many people are running around L.A. beaches nearly naked on your average sunny day? I mean, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a bikini and dental floss these days. In fact, it’s sometimes hard to tell who is wearing a thong and who is actually naked.

    But hey, as long as they don't ask for your sexual orientation while you are caught in a rip tide, even lifeguards are allowed to be bigots, at least in private.

    Imposing their religion on the rest of us is where I draw the line, though. Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015. Gender is not binary. Trans people exist and deserve respect. Flying the Pride flag is a symbolic way of saying, "You belong too."


    There is so much wrong with this nonsense and garbage and the Crooked and Corrupt Supreme Court brought us here.  In a functioning legal world, even with that disaster opinion  from 303 CREATIVE LLC V ELENIS on the books, Little wold have no right to hide behind his so-called religious beliefs to refuse to do his job duites.

    Raising flags?  That's part of the job.  And whatever the flag is?  That's also part of the job.


    B-b-b-but my religion!!!!

    Your religion may tell you that  you can't work on the Sabbath.

    Your religion does not tell you that you can't raise a flag.

    In addition, you raising flags for your job?

    If we work, we have job duties.  And the whole world knows that our job duties do not necessarily reflect our own personal beliefs no matter how deeply felt.  

    Little Jeffrey Little was big enough to express his distaste for LGBTQ+ people.  He can do that anytime he wants.  Doing so on the clock might get him fired -- probably should.  But raising a series of flags is not an endorsement of anything other than what the state says should be displayed.

    If he doesn't want to do what the state says, he is free to quit.

    His bigotry does not get rewarded in a functioning legal system.  

    Pamela Manson (UPI) notes that he is pressing this court case (with right wing backing, I'm sure) despite the fact that the state attempted to work with him:


    The Fire Department issued assurances last week that Little will not be personally responsible for the raising or lowering of the Progress Pride flag as part of his job for the remainder of June, according to attorney Paul Jonna, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm that represents the lifeguard captain.

    However, the department insisted that Little must still ensure his subordinates comply with the requirement and that he will need to renew his request for a religious accommodation every year, Jonna said Monday.

    Nothing's good enough for these freaks.

    And I get  some of the homophobia, it is understandable.  Ava and my piece that we pulled from above,  that piece was re-written three different times over three different days before it was published and the original draft included some reality:  Little boys are horny.

    Meaning?

    They play with themselves, they play with animals, they play with each other, they will stick their erect penises in a vaccume extension, in spout water pours out of into  tub, they will stick it anywhere.  .  Then they grow up and some are in such a panic that they go overboard like little Little's doing.

    As children, they did circle jerks and mutual masturbation and what have you.

    And they do that because they're horny.  And then some of them start to mess around with females.

    You do get how that f**ks with their minds?

    These same-sex experiences that they don't want anyone to know about -- but that many of had in childhood -- are left behind.  Their shame over what they did as horny boys is replaced with the lie of what happened and they then lie to themselves  that they are so big and strong that they overcame The Big Gay and so others can as well!  


    That's the lie that's always been behind conversion 'therapy.'  So when you find yourself talking to man who believes in conversion' therapy' or wants to insist that it's a matter of choice, you need to grasp that this idiot believes that because they've confused humping, handly, squeezing and mouthing whatever was handy when they were horny with actually being gay and so they think they fought off being gay and if they did it then everyone can.

     These idiots were not gay, they were horny.  

    And if we would grasp that basic fact about these homophobes, if we would grasp and discuss it, it would cut down on some of the homophobia -- mainly because these homophobes would stop expressing his homophobia as they grasped what their words revealed to the rest of us and how every time they went off on this topic, we were all looking them in the face trying to figure out whether they just gave each other hands jobs, went down on each other or maybe went all the way to cornholing -- a term so well known by so many males for a reason.

    Jeffrey Little does not belong working for the state.

    If his so-called 'religious' beliefs are so firm that he can't raise a flag?  He needs to quit.  Because other people have religious rights as well.

    Me?  As a cancer survivor a few times over, it's my deeply held belief that no God would want us to harm any group of people.  No God would preach or teach intolerance.

    Guess what?  A lot of people hold religious beliefs in this country that incorporate that attitude.

    If his religious view is intolerant, he needs to find another job and not work with the public.  Maybe he could become a minister.  I'm sure he'd love to be around young kids.  

    But whatever he does, he shouldn't be allowed to work in his current job.

    If he's given the right not to raise the flag because of his passionate fantasies -- sorry, 'beliefs,' -- about gay people, he doesn't need to be employed.

    And if you don't live in California and you disagree with me?  SHUT THE F**K UP.

    That's where I live.  And you're telling me that a lifeguard is going to be given a pass to be homophobic.

    Let's travel this slippery slope.  

    Where does it end?

    I do not feel safe having my tax money paying his salary.  He's not a real life guard.

    He's a loon who won't raise a flag.

    So if someone's drowning in the ocean, is he going to try to save them?  Even if he thinks they might be gay?  Or knows that they are?



    My concern is that  he's just going to watch them drown and again say, “as I was under the impression that I would not have to deal with working in these conditions.” 

    He is a danger to himself in others and cannot work public safety.

    Today, his religious views say no to the Pride flag.  Tomorrow?  His religious views say he can't give  Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to certain people.  


    He is not fit and he is not qualified for a public safety job.

    Public safety is a social contract in which we are all equal and we are all deserving.  Jeffrey Little doesn't believe that.  His ass needs to be fired and fired immediately.  Him on the beach is a big question mark for public safety and questioning whether or not a lifeguard will rescue someone in need is the first indication that they are not qualified for their job.



    And the hate group backing him up is the Thomas More Society.  They're a group of Catholic freaks who are okay with priests molesting children but not okay with women having rights or with public safety measures (see their cases during COVID) and they're part of the crazy liars who tried to overturn the election:


    The Thomas More Society has been aligned with the presidential administration of Donald Trump.[37] Trump appointed Sarah Pitlyk, a special counsel to the society, to a federal district judgeship.[38]

    In 2020, after Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, the Thomas More Society established the Amistad Project as part of an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.[6] Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that the election was marred by voter fraud.[6] The project was led by former Kansas Attorney General (and later Liberty University professor) Phillip Kline,[6][39] although his law license was suspended.[39] The effort was tied to Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign who was also special counsel to the Thomas More Society.[6] The Amistad Projects filed lawsuits on behalf of supposed "grassroots" groups (with titles such as the "Pennsylvania Voters Alliance" and "Wisconsin Voters Alliance") in the swing states won by Biden (ArizonaGeorgiaMichiganPennsylvania, and Wisconsin). All the suits were rejected or dismissed by the courts.[6] Ellis's tie to the society and the project suggested "a coordinated effort to flood the nation's courts with repetitive litigation" allowing Trump to continue to claim that the election results remain contested.[6]

    On December 14, 2020, ahead of the electoral college vote, Amistad Project attorney Ian Northon accompanied a group of self-described "Republican electors" in Lansing who were attempting to cast Michigan electoral votes for Trump, despite Biden winning Michigan and being previously certified as the winner. Northon claimed the "electors" were "fulfilling their constitutional duty."[40] The fake "votes" cast by the pro-Trump "alternate electors" have no legal standing.[41][42]

    On December 22, 2020, after the electors had cast their votes, the Amistad Project sued in D.C. federal court on behalf of a variety of plaintiffs: ten voters, five organizations, and eight state legislators. The two Michigan legislators listed as plaintiffs later requested to be dropped from the suit, feeling that the suit that was filed differed too strongly from what they had agreed to.[43] The project sued, among others, Vice President Mike Pence, governors, election officials, and legislative officials in the battleground states; the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and the electoral college itself.[44] The group asked the court to (as the district court later described in denying the request) "declare unconstitutional several decades-old federal statutes governing the appointment of electors and the counting of electoral votes for President of the United States; to invalidate multiple state statutes regulating the certification of Presidential votes; to ignore certain Supreme Court decisions; and, the coup de grace, to enjoin the U.S. Congress from counting the electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and declaring Joseph R. Biden the next President."[45] The suit was derided by legal community for the substance of its arguments, the broadness of its goals, and for naming the Electoral College as a defendant, with notes that the Electoral College is not something that exists, but a process that happens.[46]

    On January 4, 2021, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg denied the society's motion for a preliminary injunction, noting that plaintiffs lacked standing, the case was filed in the wrong court, and that plaintiffs made no effort to serve the other side. Boasberg wrote that in addition to those procedural problems, "the suit rests on a fundamental and obvious misreading of the Constitution. It would be risible were its target not so grave: the undermining of a democratic election for President of the United States."[47]

    Michael Gableman, the former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court who led a state-funded investigation into unfounded allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, was hired by the Thomas More Society[48] after being fired by the politician who hired him, Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly Robin Vos, in August 2022.[49]



    By the way, does Jeffrey Little's religious beliefs  allow Paul Jonna -- Jeffrey Little's attorney -- to wear lipstick?  There are hardly any public photos of him where he's not wearing lipstick and that's not just my opinion, I've got a photo shoot later today and an artist is already here to do her magic.  I checked with her -- you know my eyes -- and she's an expert and, yes, Paul Jonna is wearing lipstick in photo after photo.

    I can't imagine that if your religious beliefs tells you that you can hate LGBTQ+ people these same beliefs also tell you it's okay to hang out with men who wear cosmetics.  So maybe Jeffrey Little needs to start praying and maybe Thomas More needs to stop being so desperate for attorneys that they take in men who wear make up.


    We've got so much to cover but we have stop for a moment for Barbra Streisand.  Some people are e-mailing the public account insisting that I'm not calling her out when I should be.  If you missed it, this week Barbra made a statement about the mythical rapes of October 7th.  I really have more important things to do -- as should you -- then get caught up in that.  It was a stupid comment from an uniformed woman.  If you've missed it -- and maybe this isn't in the media? -- James Brolin and his woman-beating son Josh have been all in on go-go-go Israel.  So she's surrounded by that.  THE NEW YORK TIMES -- her gospel (because she's an idiot) has repeatedly pimped the lie of rapes.  (Again, no woman has come forward.  There is no proof.  The allegations made were just more lies from a corrupt government.)


    Barbra is an idiot.  She reads NYT, she praises it.  She even praised Frank Rich when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House.  If you're not familiar with Rich's body of work, before politics he did movie reviews.  And no one, not even John Simon, trashed her more than Frank Rich.  But there was idiot Babs praising him and linking to him because he said what she wanted to hear about Bully Boy Bush.  Despite the huge and preening ego -- or maybe because of -- Barbra praised a man she should hve ignored.  

    This is a woman, please note, who has bragged for years about her lack of education and laughing about how she was close to 30 before she knew who won The Civil War.  And not just bragged about to those of us who know her, you can find her bragging and laughing about it to the press.


    So, no, the fact that Barbra has hopped onto the lie about the mythical rapes does not surprise me.  Nor should it surprise anyone.


    Now we are jumping into Jeffrey St. Clair's latest COUNTERPUNCH column:


    The bodies of children and women, the old and young, shredded by shrapnel, riven with bullets, some with severed limbs and others with perforated eyes. 

    “There were children everywhere, there were women, there were men,” said Karin Huster, who was working at Al-Aqsa with Médecins Sans Frontières. “We had the gamut of war wounds, trauma wounds, from amputations to eviscerations to trauma, to TBIs, traumatic brain injuries. Fractures, obviously, big burns. Kids completely grey or white from the shock, burnt, screaming for their parents — many of them not screaming because they are in shock.”

    The tempo of the attack increased. The bombings and the gunfire and the tanks and the helicopters. The frenzied sounds of a war machine at full-throttle. For thirty minutes it went on. For an hour. For an hour and a half. It seemed interminable for those seeking shelter on the ground, cowering in buildings and the hospital. And then it was over, finally. And there were only the cries for help from the shattered streets and collapsed buildings. The cries of parents carrying dead children in their arms, the cries of children looking at the gutted bodies of their parents.

    What had just happened? Why had this refugee camp at Nusierat, home of so many homeless people, so many Palestinian families who had been displaced by bombs time and time again, come under such a savage sustained attack from the air and the ground, an attack that destroyed 90 homes and apartment buildings? An attack of such fury that it left the streets scattered with severed arms and legs, the bodies of children and their mothers and grandfathers left to bleed out in the marketplace that seemed to be a target of the attack. What could possibly justify this slaughter, this killing, this destruction that one Palestinian refugee in Nuseirat said felt like “Doomsday”?

    When the Israelis finally left, they took four people with them, four hostages who had been rescued by Israeli commandos and evacuated in helicopters that were stationed at or near Biden’s hapless “humanitarian” pier that had, coincidentally or not, just been reassembled and re-moored to the beach in central Gaza, after breaking apart in high seas last month. 

    When the Israelis finally left with the four rescued hostages, who’d been captured by Hamas on October 7 while attending the Nova rave just outside the Israeli security fence that pens in and isolates northern Gaza, they left behind 274 dead Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women. They left behind 700 wounded, many in critical condition, many of whom seem likely to die in the coming days and weeks.

    The great rescue mission turned into the worst massacre to date in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, leaving the streets of Nuseirat, in the words of Abu Asi, “halls of blood.” 

    This morning, ALJAZEERA reports:


    Medical sources have told Al Jazeera that 20 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids on different areas in the Gaza Strip since dawn today.

    Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports that Israeli forces targeted a house in Deir el-Balah, and killed at least two Palestinians. Four others were critically injured, among them children.

    “Talking to the parents, they said they were playing in the courtyard when the air strike took place,” Khoudary said.

    “There has been a couple of targets in Nuseirat and Bureij. The air strikes are ongoing from north to the south, despite the ceasefire negotiations.”


    THE NATIONAL notes, "Three women were killed in an attack on a home near Hedar roundabout, in western Gaza city, and a child was killed in bombardment on the city, sources said."  And THE GUARDIAN notes:

    In the north of the Gaza Strip where Palestinians have been hit hardest by hunger, residents say they are surviving on bread alone due to acute shortages of vegetables, fruit and meat.

    Reuters reports that food that can be found in markets is being sold at exorbitant prices: a kilo of green peppers, which cost about a dollar before the war, was priced at 320 shekels or nearly $90. Traders demanded $70 for just a kilo of onions.

    Um Mohammed, a mother of six in Gaza City, told the news agency:

    We are being starved, the world has forgotten about us.

    Except for the flour, bread, we have nothing else, we don’t have anything to eat it with, so we eat bread only.


    Gaza remains under assault. Day 252 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, "Gaza death toll reaches 37,232 with 85,037 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:

      



    April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
     

    As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."



    We'll wind down with this from Marjorie Cohn (TRUTHOUT):

    On June 4, a coalition of active-duty service members, veterans and G.I. rights groups launched a campaign called Appeal for Redress V2 to encourage military personnel to tell Congress to stop funding genocide in Gaza. Israel’s genocidal operation, now in its ninth month, has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 85,000.

    The campaign is sponsored by Veterans For Peace (VFP), the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, About Face: Veterans Against the War and the Center on Conscience & War. It is modeled after the 2006 Appeal for Redress issued during the occupation of Iraq. During that campaign, almost 3,000 active-duty, Reserve and Guard personnel sent protected communications to their members of Congress urging an end to the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Appeal for Redress V2 was formulated to help G.I.s directly tell their representatives that they oppose U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    “We will not stand by silently while genocide unfolds,” Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, stated at a June 4 press conference announcing the campaign. “We refuse to be complicit” in the “unspeakable carnage,” said Bettancourt, who is seeking separation from the U.S. military as a conscientious objector.

    Kathleen Gilberd, executive director of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild and my coauthor for Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent, told Truthout there has been an increase in the number of applications for conscientious objection (CO) and other types of honorable discharge from the military. “Many military personnel have serious objections to the U.S. support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians,” Gilberd said.


    The following sites updated: