Gaza
Opposing The Gaza Genocide While Supporting Biden Is A Dishonest, Nonsensical Position
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/3841536c6c6c99359aaf33db976199b4/href
Nobody who claims to oppose the Gaza genocide while simultaneously supporting Joe Biden actually opposes the Gaza genocide. They’re just saying what needs to be said to win approval in the political sector they want the approval of. They’re not taking a moral stand, they’re cultivating an image. They’re building a brand.
One of many possible examples of this ridiculous posturing is Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has called Israel’s atrocities in Gaza “an unfolding genocide” while continuing to support and defend the US president who’s currently backing that genocide, and who recently attended one of the pro-Palestine campus demonstrations which her president recently smeared as “antisemitic protests”.
What AOC is doing here is attempting to straddle the impossible divide between what progressive Democrats claim their party is about and what it’s actually about in real life. She’s paying lip service to opposing injustice, supporting a ceasefire and siding with anti-genocide activists because that’s the sort of thing progressives are supposed to do, while simultaneously throwing her political support behind an administration that is facilitating injustice, keeping the genocide going, and smearing those who protest against it.
You really couldn’t put together a more incoherent position if you tried. You can’t acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide without also acknowledging that the Biden administration has been actively participating in that genocide. If you acknowledge that Biden is guilty of genocide, then you are acknowledging that he is guilty of the most horrific crime a state leader can possibly commit short of initiating a nuclear exchange.
Tamara Nassar on Twitter: "Maybe you can ask him about the mass graves https://t.co/k6Ae20Ui7T pic.twitter.com/iUQjRq6avS / Twitter"
Maybe you can ask him about the mass graves https://t.co/k6Ae20Ui7T pic.twitter.com/iUQjRq6avS
Once you’ve acknowledged that Biden is guilty of doing pretty much the worst thing any state leader could possibly do, you’ve crossed a threshold. After such an acknowledgement, it is not logically or ethically coherent to follow it by saying you support him anyway because at least he’s a bit nicer to LGBT people than Donald Trump would be, or because he might try a tiny bit harder to reduce global warming.
You’ve acknowledged that he is participating in genocide. Genocide. There’s no “but” that could possibly follow that. It’s like saying “Sure my husband’s a serial killer, but he’s great with the kids.” If someone said that to you, the only conclusion you could possibly come to is that they’re really not all that bothered by the serial killing.
Those who support Israel’s actions in Gaza are the worst people on earth, but at least their position has some kind of integrity. They’re not contradicting themselves by pretending to oppose what they’re actually fine with. They’re not tearing themselves in half trying to straddle two completely incompatible positions while smiling for the camera and pretending it doesn’t hurt. They’re not posturing as compassionate anti-imperialists while serving the evil empire.
Those who are supporting Biden while opposing the destruction of Gaza do not have any kind of integrity. They’re just wearing whatever mask is politically convenient based on the way the winds are blowing on a given moment, while continuing to support the US-centralized empire which cannot be sustained without nonstop tyranny and bloodshed. They are providing social media-friendly soundbites which pay lip service to peace, while their true loyalty lies with the globe-spanning power structure whose existence makes peace impossible.
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It Is Everyone’s Responsibility To Help Save Gaza
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/dadba7b91b1c008bac17c57d52d22093/href
I think one of the reasons it took so long for student protests against the Gaza genocide to kick into high gear in the US might be because it took some time for the collective realization to dawn that nobody in charge is interested in ending this nightmare.
If Trump had won in 2020, it may not have taken so long for this to occur. Progressive-minded students would have understood from the beginning that the president is an immoral Israel-coddling imperialist, and we may have been seeing these campus protests that are freaking out the empire managers today a lot sooner.
But because it was Biden and not Trump, there was this background assumption that surely the grownups in charge would take care of this thing. Surely they won’t let this go on for very long. Surely they’re just walking a careful diplomatic line while negotiating a ceasefire in the near term, as any government that cares one iota about human rights would be doing.
It took half a year for that illusion to be dispelled. Half a year for people to really start going, “Oh shit. They’re really just going to keep these atrocities going. Nobody in charge cares about stopping this.”
Half a year to see that nobody in the White House is going to save Gaza, none of their elected lawmakers on Capitol Hill are going to save Gaza, nobody anywhere in their government is going to save Gaza — not even the ordinary members of the public in the older generations are going to save Gaza.
Half a year to see that the responsibility for ending an active genocide had been passed all the way down to a bunch of wide-eyed college kids.
Which would of course be a horrifying thing to realize, and would in fact be a profoundly jarring indictment of our entire civilization. But that is indeed what has happened. And you can see how it would take some time for young people to come to understand and process such a thing.
And to be clear, no part of this should be accepted by anyone. The fact that nobody in the world’s most powerful government is taking any responsibility for ending the continual mass atrocity in Gaza proves that government does not deserve to exist, and that it needs to be completely dismantled from top to bottom — including and especially the unelected aspects of that government which are not officially acknowledged. The fact that it has fallen to a bunch of university students to begin causing any meaningful problems for this genocidal regime is obscene, and should never have happened.
Those university students should not be responsible for standing against this genocide, and in truth the responsibility is NOT all theirs — it is ours as well. Each and every one of us are responsible for doing everything we can to end this horror.
None of us can end it single-handedly, but we can all do something every day to help end it collectively. The machine is far too big and powerful for any one person to deal it a fatal blow, but we can all throw sand in its gears to make it harder and harder for it to continue.
We can do this by making our opposition known in every way possible, and by drawing public awareness to the sadistic savagery that’s being perpetrated in Israel with the help of its western allies we live under. Using any medium and platform we can make use of, we can help people understand the ways the imperial media have been manipulating public understanding of this genocide and minimizing their own government’s responsibility for it so that they can really understand the severity and urgency of this issue.
The US-centralized empire is heavily dependent on soft power, which means it needs to maintain a good public image in order to continue functioning — that’s what all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley information control, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood is all about. If enough people start working to destroy the empire’s public image by spreading awareness of its depravity in Gaza, it will be forced to retreat or risk losing the credibility of the soft power manipulation systems it has put so much energy into maintaining over the years.
All positive changes in human behavior of any scale are always preceded by an expansion of consciousness. By spreading consciousness throughout our society about what’s happening in Gaza, we throw sand in the gears of the imperial murder machine and make it harder and harder for it to keep rolling forward. And it is our responsibility to do exactly that, in every way we can.
This world is so sick because nobody takes responsibility for the things that are happening in it. The rich and powerful shore up more and more wealth and power while offloading the responsibility for it onto others. They destroy the biosphere while offloading the consequences onto ordinary people, while telling us we just need to ride our bikes more and consume less in order to fix the problem. They start wars and back genocides abroad while refusing to provide for the needful at home, and if you complain they tell you you just need to vote harder next election. They take all of the power and none of the responsibility.
We can’t have a healthy world until we reverse this dynamic, and like all matters concerning responsibility that means it begins with the face in the mirror. We all need to step up to the plate and take responsibility for turning this catastrophe around, and in 2024 that means starting with the genocide our own governments are actively facilitating.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Israeli AI ‘using WhatsApp data’ to target Gaza families for bomb strikes
‘Lavender’ AI set to prioritise hitting targets at home with their families and is said to be using WhatsApp data for its process – but how is Israel getting hold of it?
Israel’s AI system for targeting people for murder in Gaza uses WhatsApp data among its targeting criteria, according to a report in the Israeli 972 magazine and analysis by Paul Biggar of Tech for Palestine.
The platform is marketed as encrypted ‘end to end’, supposedly offering complete security, and WhatsApp told Middle East Monitor that:
WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government. For over a decade, Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested. Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
However, a 2021 Freedom of Information Request to the FBI revealed that WhatsApp’s owner provides ‘near real-time’ information to US authorities – not the content of messages in most cases, but of who is sending and receiving messages:
WhatsApp will produce certain user metadata, though not actual message content, every 15 minutes in response to a pen register [a special type of federal request], the FBI says. The FBI guide explains that most messaging services do not or cannot do this and instead provide data with a lag and not in anything close to real time: “Return data provided by the companies listed below, with the exception of WhatsApp, are actually logs of latent data that are provided to law enforcement in a non-real-time manner and may impact investigations due to delivery delays.”
This potentially fits with reports in Israeli media that Israel is using an artificial intelligence platform named ‘Lavender’ to identify thousands of human targets in Gaza and flag them for an airstrike, with WhatsApp data forming a key part of the AI’s decision process, based on the WhatsApp connections of supposed ‘militants’ – and that the system is designed to kill large numbers of civilians. One source told 972 that when Lavender identifies a target, Israeli forces:
bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.
But of course, people are in WhatsApp groups of all kinds of topics and for all kind of reasons – and merely being in a group which has a ‘militant’ member is no guarantee of any kind of ‘guilt’ – even if the right to resist occupation is disregarded, as Israel, the US and UK do.
This pattern raises the possibility that Israel is obtaining WhatsApp data, whether directly or from the US government. Another possibility is that Israel is accessing the data through the notorious ‘Pegasus’ hacking programme that has been shown to target WhatsApp users, hijacking their phones through WhatsApp even, in the later Pegasus versions, if they don’t open any suspicious links. Journalists, politicians, human rights activists and others are known to have been hacked by governments using the software, including its use by the Saudis against dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
So serious was the issue that in 2021 tech firm Apple sued NSO, the maker of Pegasus, for targeting Apple users. NSO claimed that the software is used only against ‘terrorists’ – as which Israel, the UK, US and some others have designated Palestinian resistance groups – but there is clearly no guarantee that the definition of ‘terrorist’ is not extended in practice to anyone targeted by Israel. Biggar has accused WhatsApp’s owners of breaking international law and violating human rights.
Facebook, which belongs to the same Meta parent group as WhatsApp, has been accused of shutting down the circulation of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist posts and treating the term ‘Zionist’ as hate speech. In 2020, the company admitted changing its algorithms to filter out left-wing news and analysis from users’ feeds while allowing right-wing propaganda to flow unchecked.
However Israel is accessing the WhatsApp data it is said to be using to target Palestinians and their families, undoubtedly a war crime, the news that it is doing so is a warning for those who dissent from Establishment narratives and use ‘private’ messaging services to do so.
Meta continued its statement to Middle East Monitor:
Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
The US and UK governments, however, continue to insist that Israel is following international law and recognised human rights standards, even as it murders tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children.
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Gen Z Just Might Save The World
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/d1587843865d1eef643dd69fd79882e8/href
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Kids are taking over university campuses around the world for the noblest possible reason anyone could do such a thing in 2024. There are so many reasons to feel pessimistic, but Gen Z’s fierce opposition to the Gaza genocide is a massive reason to have hope for the future.
I talk all the time here about the need for a collective awakening and revolution in order to turn this disaster of a civilization around, but it could turn out that what ends up saving humankind is as mundane as a superior generation of humans emerging out of the information age and replacing inferior generations who’ve been far more indoctrinated by mass media propaganda.
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Northeastern University brought in the police to break up a pro-Palestine demonstration, claiming antisemitic slurs and hate speech were being used by the demonstrators, but witnesses say it was actually pro-Israel counter-demonstrators who’d been shouting the antisemitic slogans, and a video confirms this. The pro-Israel agitators got some 100 demonstrators arrested by standing near them and shouting “Kill the Jews”, but they themselves were not arrested.
Whoever got this on video is a goddamn hero. Now nobody can deny that this has been happening.
Max Blumenthal on Twitter: "Northeastern University crushed an anti-genocide protest because someone was heard shouting, "Kill the Jews."At :10, it is clear a pro-Israel counter-protester holding an Israeli flag was the one who uttered that phraseYet another Zionist hate crime hoax https://t.co/yA6CnRdNUV pic.twitter.com/xlnzFOanli / Twitter"
Northeastern University crushed an anti-genocide protest because someone was heard shouting, "Kill the Jews."At :10, it is clear a pro-Israel counter-protester holding an Israeli flag was the one who uttered that phraseYet another Zionist hate crime hoax https://t.co/yA6CnRdNUV pic.twitter.com/xlnzFOanli
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I keep seeing people expressing bafflement at the way Biden keeps alienating his base by shamelessly perpetuating the human butchery in Gaza. Doesn’t he care about getting re-elected?, they ask.
No, Biden does not care whether he gets re-elected, and neither do his empire manager handlers. What matters to them is advancing imperial interests in the middle east, not winning some pretend political puppet show that only exists to entertain and divert the common riff raff. They will happily lose the election and hand the genocidal baton off to Trump and his empire manager handlers who support all the same agendas as Biden’s.
Biden loses literally nothing of material relevance by being a one-term president, so there’d be no reason for him to step back from all the agreements he’s made with the inner workings of the empire to get him where he’s at now even if he wanted to.
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One of the weirdest things happening right now is how empire managers and propagandists are claiming these campus protests are being fueled by foreign influence from evil regimes, even as the Israeli PM openly influences state governments to crack down on those protests.
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If you’ve been shocked by the lies and propaganda your government and your media have been churning out about Gaza, it would probably be a good idea to take another look at what they’ve been telling you about Ukraine too. And Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Yemen while you’re at it.
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The New York Times has a new Pentagon press release disguised as news reporting titled “A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China,” subtitled “With missiles, submarines and alliances, the Biden administration has built a presence in the region to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.”
It’s exactly what it sounds like: it describes the US empire’s military encirclement of China, but frames it as a defensive action to counter “Beijing’s expansionist goals” rather than the extreme act of aggression and military expansionism that it actually is. If China started surrounding the US with war machinery like this it would be World War Three instantaneously.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: ""Beijing's expansionist goals" pic.twitter.com/O3zGzOKws0 / Twitter"
"Beijing's expansionist goals" pic.twitter.com/O3zGzOKws0
One of the dumbest things the imperial media ask us to believe is that the US empire is surrounding its #1 geopolitical rival with war machinery for defensive purposes, in response to “expansionist goals” by that rival who has zero war machinery anywhere near the United States.
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So many of the awesome anti-imperialists I follow and admire got their start years ago supporting Palestinian rights. Israel-Palestine is like a gateway drug for anti-imperialism and anti-war activism for a lot of westerners, because the issue is so mainstream-adjacent due to the west’s intimacy with the Israeli state.
The Gaza genocide is going to give rise to a real antiwar movement in the west if the empire managers can’t find a way to stomp it out. Which is why they’re trying so hard to do exactly that — but their attempts thus far have been pathetic failures, and have only made things worse for them.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Mx. Granger, Wikmedia Commons (CC0 1.0 DEED)
Biden Wanted To Sanction An Israeli Battalion But He Didn’t Because Israel Said No
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/afb81c01df3db02c5a6da88e66aaf06c/href
The Biden administration has reportedly canned its plans to issue sanctions on an extremist IDF unit for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank, following backlash from Israel and its high-powered supporters within the US government.
The State Department has put on hold its intention to impose sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces “Netzah Yehuda” battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank and is reviewing the issue in light of information Israel provided in recent days, U.S. sources familiar with the issue said.
Why it matters: The review is part of a consultation process outlined in an agreement between the U.S. and Israel. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also been under extensive pressure from the Israeli government, members of Congress and some senior Biden administration officials to reconsider the possible sanctions.
The big picture: The Biden administration had intended to withhold U.S. military aid and training from the Netzah Yehuda battalion — an unprecedented move in the history of relations between the countries.
Assal Rad on Twitter: "-Story gets out that Blinken is ignoring Israeli human rights abuses-PR story appears that Biden admin is going to do something-Israel publicly acts outraged that laws may apply to them-Biden admin quietly decides to do nothingWhat a perfect summary of this admin pic.twitter.com/8QjM2v9NvD / Twitter"
Story gets out that Blinken is ignoring Israeli human rights abuses-PR story appears that Biden admin is going to do something-Israel publicly acts outraged that laws may apply to them-Biden admin quietly decides to do nothingWhat a perfect summary of this admin pic.twitter.com/8QjM2v9NvD
As Dr Assal Rad has highlighted on Twitter, this decision follows a sequence of events in which ProPublica revealed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was ignoring his own State Department’s recommendation to sanction Israeli military units that have been credibly accused of human rights abuses like rape and torture, after which Blinken announced that he was preparing to issue sanctions after all. This announcement was met with outrage from Israel and its apologists, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu penning a furious screed calling the planned sanctions “the height of absurdity and a moral low”. Those planned sanctions are now canceled.
Or to put it more simply, the Biden administration had planned to sanction an IDF battalion, but it didn’t because Israel said no.
Which would be about par for the White House under Joseph R Biden, who throughout his too-long political career has received more campaign funding from the Israel lobby than literally anyone else in Washington. As Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi recently explained in an article for Foreign Policy, this administration’s adamant refusal to set any limits whatsoever with the Israeli state is a dramatic deviation from the norm, with other presidents frequently displaying a well-documented willingness to give Tel Aviv a smack whenever it got too insane.
Assal Rad on Twitter: "Reporter: Evidence at Gaza mass graves show torture and signs of being buried alive, Palestinians called for an independent investigation, what's wrong with that?Patel: We're asking IsraelReporter: You're asking the accused to investigate itself?Patel: We're asking Israel pic.twitter.com/fIWO3MHPwv / Twitter"
Reporter: Evidence at Gaza mass graves show torture and signs of being buried alive, Palestinians called for an independent investigation, what's wrong with that?Patel: We're asking IsraelReporter: You're asking the accused to investigate itself?Patel: We're asking Israel pic.twitter.com/fIWO3MHPwv
This incident with the IDF battalion sanctions is a good example of the way the Biden administration has had a standing policy of pretty much just letting Israel write its own rules for itself in Washington. We saw this illustrated yet again in a recent exchange at a press briefing with Deputy State Department Spokesman Vedant Patel, who when asked about the mass graves being discovered in Gaza kept defending the administration’s line that this was something Israel needs to investigate for itself.
Here’s a transcript:
PATEL: Go ahead, with the glasses.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: The Gaza civil service today held a press conference this morning, which was televised, and they said that evidence showed that many of those pulled out from the three mass graves that they found, including children, were tortured before being killed. Some even showed signs of being buried alive, along with other crimes against humanity that they accused Israeli forces of. They called for an independent forensic investigation. This administration repeatedly says that it asked Israel — the Israeli Government — to investigate itself.
As a mediator for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, how does it ever make sense that the United States asked the accused party to examine itself and provide reports that you have previously said that you actually trust? What’s wrong with an independent, scientific, forensic investigation? I mean, if there — if the results of such an independent investigation prove the accusations to be baseless, then that would be in Israel’s favor, wouldn’t it?
PATEL: So as it relates to the continued reporting about — we’re seeing about these mass graves, first, National Security Advisor Sullivan spoke a little bit about this yesterday, but we continue to find these reports incredibly troubling. And that’s why yesterday you saw the National Security Advisor call for this to be thoroughly investigated. We want to see these facts looked into. And simultaneously, we’re continuing to press the Government of Israel for more information. The IDF has spoken to this in some sense already, but we are continuing to press them for additional information.
QUESTION: But why not have an independent, forensic scientific — which the Palestinians are calling for?
PATEL: We think this does need to be thoroughly investigated, but in terms of the modality, we continue to want to see some additional information from the Government of Israel before we make other assessments.
QUESTION: But you’re asking the accused to investigate itself.
PATEL: We believe that through a thorough investigation, we can get some additional answers. We’re also hoping to continue to get more information from the Government of Israel on this.
QUESTION: But to his —
PATEL: Guita, go ahead.
Have you ever seen anything more absurd?
Having a position that literally every accusation of Israeli criminality in Gaza just means Israel needs to investigate itself is exactly the same as having a position that Israel can commit any crime it wants with no consequences whatsoever, because obviously Israel is never going to convict itself of any wrongdoing. But that is indeed the Biden administration’s position.
The message that Israel has been consistently getting from Washington from October 7 onward is, do whatever you like. Commit whatever crimes you want to commit. Our support is unconditional and there will be no consequences for any of your actions, ever. And Israel is certainly taking up every bit of slack it’s being given on that front.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via U.S. Embassy Jerusalem (CC BY 2.0 DEED)
Video: Israel targeted SIX international aid groups that had shared their coordinates
Groups hit repeatedly when IDF knew where they were, killing aid workers and their families
A still from the NYT video shows a traumatised aid worker
A New York Times investigation has revealed that at least six international aid groups working to help starving Palestinians in Gaza were targeted by Israeli forces – hit despite having repeatedly shared their locations with the Israeli military. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from France, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) based in the UK, the US International Rescue Committee, Anera from the US and the Red Cross/Red Crescent from Switzerland were all hit, along with the well-known repeat attack on three World Central Kitchen (WCK) vehicles spread across a 2.4km distance.
The analysis of photographic evidence and communications between the groups and the IDF has been published today. The IDF claimed that the WCK attack was a ‘mistake’ and admitted that the WCK workers had reported their locations and movements as requested to – but the attacks on five other groups also known to have communicated their positions establishes what was already clear: the attacks were intentional.
Some of the attacks targeted the aid workers’ homes, killing them and multiple family members including children. Watch below:
The UK continues to arm and assist Israel, despite several British citizens being among those murdered. Israel has slaughtered well over forty thousand civilians since 7 October, mostly women and children, and is starving two million more. The country is on trial for genocide before the ICJ, which has repeatedly ordered Israel to stop killing and starving Palestinians.
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Quashing University Protests And Banning TikTok To Make The Kids Love Israel
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/4435e36db734d23de7b565f669651057/href
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It’s just a tough situation, with victims on both sides. On one side you’ve got people being slaughtered in droves by genocidal massacres and siege warfare, while on the other you’ve got people whose feelings get hurt when these atrocities are opposed. Hard to say which is worse.
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I have dedicated every day of my life to the project of spreading awareness of the depravity and deceitfulness of the western empire, but I will never write anything more effective toward this end than what the empire is doing itself on university campuses right now.
I mean, you kind of have to wonder what they’re thinking. “Yeah, that’s it. Violently quash pro-Palestine protests at universities, ban TikTok to ensure the suppression of pro-Palestine content, and saturate the boomer media with obvious propaganda. That’ll make the kids love Israel.”
https://medium.com/media/9dc4da954a62b39d06fae11ac1cdab9a/href
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Meanwhile the US empire is still playing games with each and every one of our lives by continually taking insane risks in its world-threatening brinkmanship with a nuclear superpower. It turns out last month the Biden administration secretly sent Ukraine long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which Ukraine has reportedly already used to attack a Russian base in Crimea.
In 2022 when Ukraine first started urging the United States to send it the ATACMS— which has nearly four times the range of the HIMARS weapons the US has been supplying — Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately responded with a warning that their use on Russian territory would make the US a direct participant in the conflict, and Russia would respond accordingly. Crimea is considered Russian territory by the Russian Federation.
In an article published in Antiwar last year titled “ATACMS: Be Very Afraid of This Acronym,” West Suburban Peace Coalition president Walt Zlotow wrote that this missile system “has potential to draw the US and NATO into all out war with Russia”:
ATACMS are long range US missiles that can strike up to 190 miles. Top US officials, likely including President Biden, are seriously considering giving ATACMS to Ukraine in their battle to take back all Russian gains in Ukraine, including Crimea. They can reach both Crimea and the Russian mainland.
If so used by Ukraine to attack Russia, it may be a missile too far that could ignite Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Further escalation into nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US/NATO alliance seeking Russia’s defeat becomes more likely.
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Biden proclaimed it “a good day for world peace” when he signed the World War 3 bill which will pour weapons of death and destruction into Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. This is the inverted reality the US-centralized empire premises its narratives about itself upon. They’ve got the mainstream public espousing a completely backwards and upside-down worldview, which is why we live in a completely backwards and upside-down civilization.
Michael Tracey on Twitter: "Biden just signed the mammoth war funding bill. "It's a good day for world peace," he says, without a hint of irony. New arms shipments will flow to Ukraine within hours. It's a shame Trump couldn't be there for the signing ceremony, they could've bonded over their shared support pic.twitter.com/wWLCcR0Crc / Twitter"
Biden just signed the mammoth war funding bill. "It's a good day for world peace," he says, without a hint of irony. New arms shipments will flow to Ukraine within hours. It's a shame Trump couldn't be there for the signing ceremony, they could've bonded over their shared support pic.twitter.com/wWLCcR0Crc
The Ukraine war funding part of the bill was actually reportedly pushed through with behind-the-scenes collaboration between Trump and Republican lawmakers. Anyone who still buys Trump’s “ending the wars, fighting the deep state” schtick is a fucking moron.
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When Israel’s genocide funding made it through the House, Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted, “The US Congress just overwhelmingly passed a much appreciated aid bill that demonstrates strong bipartisan support for Israel and defends Western civilization. Thank you friends, thank you America!”
And he’s not wrong. The US congress does have massive bipartisan support for Israel, and pouring war machinery into that genocidal apartheid state does in fact bolster the blood-fueled machine of nonstop murder and tyranny that is “western civilization”.
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Human thriving arises from curiosity. Curiosity about the way our material universe operates leads to advances in science, and all the benefits that come with it. Curiosity about how our civilization’s power structures operate leads to an understanding of how the world really works, which will lead to the emergence of a truth-based society if realized on a collective level. Curiosity about our own consciousness and inner processes leads to self-realization, and the harmonious way of moving in the world which flows from it.
If a healthy humanity exists in the future, it will be above all a deeply curious species. The values of competition, greed and domination which currently drive the way our civilization operates will have given way to curiosity, humility and discovery. We will have cultivated a humble but intense curiosity about ourselves, about each other, about our collective societal dynamics, and about our natural world.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Israeli captive in Gaza says IDF has killed 70 captives and shames Netanyahu
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a US-born Israeli, wishes his parents a good Passover – and says Netanyahu and his far-right government should be ‘ashamed’
A US-born Israeli held captive in Gaza has said on video that Israel’s military has killed seventy of his fellow captives and that Israeli PM Netanyahu and his far-right government ‘should be ashamed of yourselves’.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 24-year-old Californian-born Israeli taken captive on 7 October, went on to tell his parents that he loves them and hopes they somehow manage to have a happy Passover:
Goldberg-Polin, who at 24 years old will have served in the Israeli military, has lost part of his left arm, presumably under fire on 7 October last year, although it is unclear from what he says whether he was wounded by Palestinian fighters or by Israeli forces. It is now well known – admitted by the IDF and freely discussed by Israeli newspapers, though still ignored by UK media and politicians – that Israeli helicopters and tanks killed ‘immense’ numbers of Israeli citizens under the IDF’s ‘Hannibal doctrine’ of killing potential hostages. His performance is passionate, but it is, of course, unknown whether he was speaking under duress.
Relatives of Israeli captives killed in Gaza have also accused the Israeli military of killing them; the IDF is known for sure to have killed three hostages who had escaped, stripped to show they were no threat, and were calling out in Hebrew, while waving a white flag, for soldiers not to shoot. Israel is holding around nine thousand Palestinian hostages, who have been arbitrarily detained and imprisoned without trial. The EU is calling for an independent investigation of the hundreds of executed Palestinian captives currently being unearthed behind Al Shifa hospital after Israel’s raid there. Israel has murdered more than 40,000 civilians, mostly women and children.
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Video: thousands gather for Gaza at Columbia as professor condemns uni’s ‘day of shame’
History professor Christopher Brown describes scandal of university president setting riot police on peaceful anti-genocide demo and condemns craven congressional testimony
Thousands have again gathered on the lawns of Columbia University in New York, despite the attempted repression of the university’s management and the New York police – where they heard speeches from faculty members as well as students against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the authorities’ attempts to silence them:
Despite the state’s aggression, which has included the use of riot police and state troops in various locations – and the shameful demonisation of peace protesters by politicians and pro-Israel lobby groups willing to collude in Israel’s war crimes, mirroring the tactics used in the UK – the protest movement is growing and the US public is increasingly aware and condemning of Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
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In This Dystopia, Opposing A Genocide Is Considered Worse Than Committing One
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/f1f7ca17c1b03eaf52ab5a7d596e97a2/href
All the frenzied shrieking about pro-Palestine protests at universities these last few days makes it clear that our civilization is so twisted and insane that it sees protesting a genocide as far worse than committing one. Which is about as backwards as any society could possibly be.
Seriously, try to imagine a crazier, more upside-down civilization than one which gets more angry at people protesting genocidal atrocities than it does at people committing them. A civilization where people wear their pants on their head and walk backwards all day? That would be less crazy. A civilization where the dogs own the people and the children go to work while the parents go to school? That would be less crazy.
It’s as wrong as you can possibly get anything in this world. It’s actually hard to imagine how anyone could get anything more wrong. If you’ve accepted daily massacres of innocent civilians as the baseline normal and appropriate thing, and regard any opposition to this as a freakish and evil abomination, then you’re as screwed up and confused about reality as any other stark raving lunatic in town. Maybe worse.
To view nonstop mass military slaughter as moral and opposition thereto as immoral is to live in a mental moral universe that has been flipped on its head. It’s to inhabit a reality tunnel that has become completely divorced from reality. But that’s the kind of mainstream worldview that the political-media class in this society are working to indoctrinate us into day in and day out throughout our entire lives.
Briahna Joy Gray on Twitter: "I had to scroll past *four* college campus stories, including two protest-critical opeds (John McWhorter & Bret Stephens) before I got to the much delayed coverage of hundreds of Palestinians found in mass graves. https://t.co/b57txq0M3o / Twitter"
I had to scroll past *four* college campus stories, including two protest-critical opeds (John McWhorter & Bret Stephens) before I got to the much delayed coverage of hundreds of Palestinians found in mass graves. https://t.co/b57txq0M3o
I just saw a tweet from the commentator Briahna Joy Gray saying that in order to find any mention in The New York Times of the hundreds of Palestinians in mass graves that are being discovered in Gaza, she had to scroll past no fewer than four stories about pro-Palestine protests on college campuses — including two op-eds which criticized the protesters.
What kind of warped, fucked up dystopia is this where that’s the kind of mainstream news outlet people are getting their information and ideas from? Our entire civilization is saturated with reality-distorting propaganda like this, and it’s making people insane. It’s got our moral compasses flipped 180 degrees from our true north, and our inner sensemaker tuning in to frequencies of nothing but garbled static.
That’s how crazy they need us to be to keep us supporting a globe-spanning empire that literally cannot exist without nonstop violence and tyranny. They need us thinking up is down and black is white. They need us not just unable to tell the difference between right and wrong, but actually believing that wrong is right and right is wrong. So they pound our collective consciousness day in and day out with extremely aggressive psyops in the form of mass media propaganda to ensure that our insides are scrambled around enough to consent to the amount of depravity necessary for our rulers to continue dominating this planet.
This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal, as Aaron Bushnell said moments before lighting himself on fire in protest of the genocide in Gaza. A society where mass graves get less media attention than university protesters. A society where more political firepower is going into stopping pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses than ending Israel’s murderous assault on an enclosed enclave packed full of children. A society where trying to stop a genocide is considered evil, and committing one is considered good.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.