News
The Biden Administration’s Absurd Justification For Its Yemen War
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/d500826c1b49426aef17780535093ec3/href
On Monday the US launched its eighth wave of airstrikes in its new war against Yemeni forces, which it has now formally titled “Operation Poseidon Archer”. The strikes are aimed at breaking a Red Sea shipping blockade which the de facto authorities in Yemen have implemented to pressure Israel and its allies into ceasing the genocidal onslaught in Gaza.
At a press briefing on Monday, Principal Deputy State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel uttered a now-familiar Biden administration line when asked if the war would escalate to involve US boots on the ground.
“First, as it relates to the Houthis, the United States is not interested in any escalation, but it is never acceptable for malign actors to target international vessels, to target legitimate commerce that is flowing through the Red Sea,” Patel said. “We’re talking about international waters that allow 30 percent of global container shipping to flow through those waters — 15 percent of seaborne trade. This is a waterway that is vital. And we will always take appropriate steps to hold those accountable that put things like legitimate commerce, civilians, U.S. personnel, in harm’s way.”
https://medium.com/media/d76d4b09d7eff5ac5eb50b43158a706b/href
Ever since the Biden administration began bombing Yemen, its official spinmeisters have been babbling about commerce and global container shipping to justify it. The unspoken premise behind this justification is that an active genocide should be permitted to continue with zero economic repercussions of any kind, for Israel or anyone else.
It’s just taken as a given by empire managers and their defenders that the money must keep flowing and the gears of capitalism must keep turning at the same rate they were turning before Israel began massacring tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, if not faster. That the horrors being unleashed in Gaza should have no material impact on the rest of the world whatsoever.
The empire will permit you to think thoughts and feel feelings about the butchery in Gaza quietly in the privacy of your own head, and under the right circumstances it will even permit you to attend pro-Palestine demonstrations and share your opinions on social media. But as soon as it comes to physically interfering with the gears of the imperial machine, they’ll blow your guts out.
This is of course absurd. The horrors in Gaza should be affecting the whole world. Our lives should not be proceeding normally, and it’s freakish and obscene that they do. It’s a sign of a profoundly sick civilization that so many of us in the west are able to lose ourselves in idle entertainment and laugh and stuff our faces with snacks and go out on the town while the nightmare in Gaza continues to unfold.
Gaza should be stopping us in our tracks. Hell we should be disrupting the economy ourselves — we shouldn’t have to wait for impoverished Yemenis to do it for us. We should be holding general strikes and stopping ships and disrupting everything we can possibly disrupt in order to force western civilization to look at what it’s supporting in Gaza and bring this mass atrocity to a screeching halt. Instead we’re just sleepwalking through life like we always do while people in the poorest nation in the middle east bravely fight our battle for us.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "When you see how effective the Houthis have been at using Yemen's critical location to shut down Red Sea traffic, you understand why the US spent years backing a horrific genocidal military campaign trying to get rid of them. pic.twitter.com/kL3fYDqJlY / Twitter"
When you see how effective the Houthis have been at using Yemen's critical location to shut down Red Sea traffic, you understand why the US spent years backing a horrific genocidal military campaign trying to get rid of them. pic.twitter.com/kL3fYDqJlY
The empire is not entitled to expect that all commerce keep flowing normally during an active genocide. Israel is not entitled to have zero consequences for its actions, and its trading partners are not entitled to be unaffected by those consequences. The idea that it’s normal and appropriate to use any and all measures to prevent Israel’s atrocities from having any material impact on commerce — up to and including starting a new American war — is self-evidently ridiculous.
It’s been an incredibly draining past 100 days for those of us who’ve been following events in Gaza. There’ve been days when I couldn’t believe the sun dared to shine. The premise that there shouldn’t even be a slight economic downturn as a result of this madness, and that it’s fine to start a war to make sure there isn’t, deserves to be dismissed with extreme disdain.
We live in a dystopian world where it’s completely normalized to subvert human interests to commercial interests, to toss tens of thousands of lives into the incinerator for wealth and convenience. Where war profiteers rake in vast fortunes for selling instruments of mass murder to genocidal governments, and where the most powerful empire in history declares a war to defend shipping containers at the cost of human life.
Don’t ever let these sick freaks convince you that this is normal.
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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 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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Biden Has Started Another US War
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/1dd58e6a7ebaaebf0a09eff35542d316/href
The Washington Post has an article out titled “As Houthis vow to fight on, U.S. prepares for sustained campaign,” with “sustained campaign” being empire-speak for a new American war.
“The Biden administration is crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen after 10 days of strikes failed to halt the group’s attacks on maritime commerce, stoking concern among some officials that an open-ended operation could derail the war-ravaged country’s fragile peace and pull Washington into another unpredictable Middle Eastern conflict,” the Post reports.
The Post acknowledges that “sustained military campaign” means “war” in the ninth paragraph of the article, saying the anonymous US officials cited in the report “don’t expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.” Which is about as reassuring as a pyromaniac saying he doesn’t expect he’ll be burning down any more houses like all those other houses he’s burned down.
The Washington Post on Twitter: "The Biden administration is crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen, stoking concern about derailing the war-ravaged country's fragile peace and pulling Washington into another unpredictable Middle Eastern conflict. https://t.co/DCggoOphXJ / Twitter"
The Biden administration is crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen, stoking concern about derailing the war-ravaged country's fragile peace and pulling Washington into another unpredictable Middle Eastern conflict. https://t.co/DCggoOphXJ
This bizarre refusal to just call a war a war also appeared in a recent press conference with Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, who acted shocked and aghast that reporters would even ask if repeatedly bombing a country would qualify as being at war with them.
“Is it now fair to say that the U.S. is at war in Yemen?” Singh was asked by a Reuters reporter on Thursday.
“No, we don’t seek war,” Singh replied. “We don’t think that we are at war. We don’t want to see a regional war. The Houthis are the ones that continue to launch cruise missiles, antiship missiles at innocent mariners, at commercial vessels that are just transiting an area that sees, you know, 10 to 15 percent of world’s commerce.”
In a follow-up several questions later, Singh was asked by a reporter from Politico, “You said that we are not at war with the Houthis, but if — you know, this tit-for-tat bombing — we’ve bombed them five times now. So if this isn’t war, can you just explain this a little — a little bit more to us? If this isn’t war, what is war?”
“Sure, Lara, sure, great question, I just wasn’t expecting it phrased exactly that way,” Singh replied with a laugh and a smirk. “Look, we are — we do not seek war. We are — we do not — we are not at war with the Houthis. In terms of a definition, I think that would be more of a clear declaration from the United States. But again, what we are doing and the actions that we are taking are defensive in nature.”
https://medium.com/media/c4aef7ad5c35562f41c93da3bfa6d8dd/href
It is worth noting that since that Thursday press conference the number of US strikes on Yemen has increased from five to seven as of this writing.
It is also worth noting here that, per Singh’s absurd definition, the US has not been at war since the end of WWII, as there has not been a “clear declaration of war” since June 5, 1942. The only wars the US has officially declared through congress in accordance with its own constitution have been the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and the two world wars.
If you go by this definition the US is among the more peaceful nations in the world, since it hasn’t been at war in eight decades. In reality the US is the single most warlike and murderous nation of modern times with wars of aggression that have killed millions and displaced tens of millions just in the 21st century alone, and plays some role in most of the world’s major international conflicts.
Singh’s claim that the US attacks on Yemen are “defensive in nature” is also self-evidently absurd; Yemeni forces weren’t even attacking American commercial vessels until the US began attacking them. Only the US could launch unprovoked attacks on a foreign nation on the other side of the planet and call it self-defense.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains:
“Before the US began bombing the Houthis, Ansar Allah officials made clear they would only stop attacking Israeli-linked commercial shipping if the onslaught on Gaza ended. Instead of pressuring Israel to end the slaughter in Gaza, President Biden chose escalation, and now the Houthis are targeting US commercial shipping, and several US merchant vessels have been hit with missiles.”
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "US Prepares for Open-Ended War Against the Houthis in YemenBiden has bombed Yemen seven times in just over a week and the Houthis are not backing down as they welcome confrontation with the USby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #Biden #Gaza https://t.co/5ZSMVHuueD pic.twitter.com/sBHQ787FkO / Twitter"
US Prepares for Open-Ended War Against the Houthis in YemenBiden has bombed Yemen seven times in just over a week and the Houthis are not backing down as they welcome confrontation with the USby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #Biden #Gaza https://t.co/5ZSMVHuueD pic.twitter.com/sBHQ787FkO
Indeed, the only reason Houthi forces began attacking ships in the Red Sea was to pressure Israel and its allies into ceasing the ongoing massacre that has been taking place in Gaza since October 7. As usual the world’s most murderous and powerful government is framing its horrifying acts of extreme aggression as innocent defensive responses to unprovoked attacks, when in reality the US empire is bombing Yemen in order to facilitate the genocide of Palestinians.
And while we’re on the subject of Gaza and Yemen it’s probably worth pointing out that according to US empire managers the stated goals of both campaigns have been completely unsuccessful. A new report by The Wall Street Journal says that according to US intelligence Israel is nowhere remotely close to eliminating Hamas, with only 20 to 30 percent of the group having been killed since October. Asked by the press on Thursday if the strikes against the Houthis are working, Biden replied “Well, when you say ‘working’ — are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”
So they’re raining military explosives on impoverished middle easterners to maintain their status quo domination, under the pretense of goals which they themselves admit are not being achieved. Just another day in the empire, I guess.
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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 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 Rawpixel (public domain).
Reports on the Austin, Texas, Guaranteed Income Pilot now available
The Urban Institute just published its 12-month findings for the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot, plus a policy recommendations memo for the Austin City Council, which is seeking to understand how direct cash can assist in addressing the city’s housing affordability and homelessness crisis. The memo was produced in collaboration with the Jain Family Institute. See […]
Reports on the Austin, Texas, Guaranteed Income Pilot now available
Register Now for the 2024 BIEN Congress in Bath, UK
The 2024 BIEN Congress is being held in Bath, UK, from 29-31 August. You can now register at the conference website.
Bibi Rejects Palestinian Statehood, Biden Says Bombing Yemen Doesn’t Work But Will Continue Anyway
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/32f297c3098ed24517a3403d2ae36fdb/href
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Benjamin Netanyahu said he opposes Palestinian statehood and that Israel must control everything from the river to the sea on the same day Joe Biden said the repeated bombing of Yemen isn’t deterring Ansarallah but they’re going to keep bombing anyway.
“In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu told the press on Thursday, saying he has made this position clear to the White House.
Asked by the press on Thursday if the strikes against the Houthis are working, Biden replied “Well, when you say ‘working’ — are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”
An unusually honest day for empire managers.
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Zionism does not work. It was tried, and it turns out it doesn’t work. If the forced existence of your artificial ethnostate requires ceaseless war and the periodic massacring of large numbers of children, then your plan for your artificial ethnostate isn’t working out and a new plan is needed.
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Talking about October 7 without talking about the mountains of Israeli abuses which gave rise to it is the same as lying.
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Normal person: It’s bad to massacre tens of thousands of civilians.
Crazy person: Oh so you’re saying you hate Jews then. You’re saying Jews shouldn’t defend themselves. You want all the Jews to die so there won’t be any more Jews because you hate Jews. Jews Jews Jews Jews Jews.
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Israel apologists would have you believe there’s been a sudden worldwide emergence of “Hamas supporters” everywhere rather than a normal and entirely predictable worldwide opposition to genocide.
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A lot of the footage of explosions in Gaza we’ve been seeing are not from airstrikes but detonations of explosives planted in the buildings. We’re watching the controlled demolition of an entire civilization.
Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده on Twitter: "The Israeli army detonates the last university it hadn't destroyed yet. A scene from the explosion of the Palestine University with 315 bombs. The university is owned by businessmen and is not affiliated with any political agenda.Israel has destroyed all universities and about... pic.twitter.com/eVob3i5HEv / Twitter"
The Israeli army detonates the last university it hadn't destroyed yet. A scene from the explosion of the Palestine University with 315 bombs. The university is owned by businessmen and is not affiliated with any political agenda.Israel has destroyed all universities and about... pic.twitter.com/eVob3i5HEv
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Once it was accepted that a Jewish ethnostate dropped on top of an already existing country was not only necessary but so necessary that any and all means must be used to maintain it, atrocities were inevitable. A one-way track to genocide and ethnic cleansing was already set.
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When I look at this awful trainwreck of a world we’re leaving to younger generations it infuriates me that older generations are constantly bitching at them. How can we have any attitude toward the young but total bare-hearted contrition? We should be on our knees begging them to forgive us for having failed them so spectacularly, but instead we’ve got the gall to wag our fingers at them and lecture them about pronouns and TikTok.
“Hurr, durr, they look at their smartphones too much and they don’t know how to change a tire and they use they/them pronouns!” Shut up you fucking wanker. You burnt up their biosphere you piece of shit. You’re tossing them from the womb into a dying world of war and chaos and injustice and exploitation and you have the temerity to tell them they’re doing it wrong? Fuck you.
I hope they ignore us, personally. I hope they keep rewriting the rules of this dogshit society we’re leaving them and knocking down every pillar of our culture. Everything we older generations have done has taken our world to the brink of environmental collapse and nuclear brinkmanship, so I hope they keep shrugging off the old rules of this profoundly sick civilization and trying new things and blazing new trails in the hope of steering clear of the disaster we placed on their horizon.
We shouldn’t be mocking and lecturing them, we should be humbly apologizing and trying to learn from them and help them. We are failures. They are humanity’s last and only hope.
To the young: I am so, so sorry, from the very bottom of my heart. I hope you succeed in clawing your way out of the madness your predecessors left you in and create a healthy world, a healthy world which will look nothing like the one we made for you. I am on your side, whatever you need.
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Israel has lost the argument. The western empire has lost the argument. The mass media have lost the argument. Mainstream western culture has lost the argument. Capitalism has lost the argument. Our systems have failed us as massively as anything can fail. Time for something new.
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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 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
Video: councillor quits Labour in tears over Gaza slaughter
Kirklees councillor Ammar Anwar resigns during council meeting as Labour mayor sits stony-faced – but party panicking behind scenes after reports of further impending resignations
Kirklees councillor Ammar Anwar resigned from the Labour party last night, delivering his tearful resignation speech to a council meeting as senior Labour figures, including the mayor, sat stony-faced.
Labour’s control of the council is now in danger. Nineteen councillors had already issued a statement rejecting Starmer’s support for Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians and Anwar’s resignation is thought to be just the first of a string of councillors quitting, triggering panic among Labour officials who are said to be meeting behind the scenes to try to stem the tide.
As Taj Ali, who published video of Anwar’s speech, pointed out, Labour has already lost control of four councils – Burnley, Oxford, Norwich and Hastings – because of the complicity of Starmer and his front-bench cohort for Israel’s genocide, forced transfer and crimes against humanity:
'My 5-year-old daughter saw images of what was going on in Gaza. She said to me, "dad, what have you done about the videos you were watching?"' pic.twitter.com/kx9edDVKPd
— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) January 17, 2024
While Anwar was comforted by a colleague at the end of his speech, the last few seconds of the clip shows hard-faced Labour figures
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When Yemen Does It It’s Terrorism, When The US Does It It’s “The Rules-Based Order”
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/12c47f8e16fb959a69a20d33d51b0307/href
The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.
The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism.” Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.
One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in. One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "US Re-Designates Houthis as 'Specially Designated Global Terrorists'The designation will hamper aid deliveries and could complicate a peace deal between the Saudis and Houthisby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea #Gaza https://t.co/6bXDM0MdiU pic.twitter.com/K8mj2itz2f / Twitter"
US Re-Designates Houthis as 'Specially Designated Global Terrorists'The designation will hamper aid deliveries and could complicate a peace deal between the Saudis and Houthisby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea #Gaza https://t.co/6bXDM0MdiU pic.twitter.com/K8mj2itz2f
In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people, “history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.” DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.
So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that’s still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide.
That’s right kids: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the middle east, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action.
U.S. Central Command on Twitter: "Today, in response to these continuing threats and attacks, the United States announced the designation of Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist - Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisorhttps://t.co/D5d8MylujK pic.twitter.com/pSFUzCR7qk / Twitter"
Today, in response to these continuing threats and attacks, the United States announced the designation of Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist - Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisorhttps://t.co/D5d8MylujK pic.twitter.com/pSFUzCR7qk
It just says so much about how the US empire sees itself that it can impose blockades and starvation sanctions at will upon nations like Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to bow to its dictates, but when Yemen imposes a blockade for infinitely more worthy and noble reasons it gets branded an act of terrorism. The managers of the globe-spanning empire loosely centralized around Washington literally believe the world is theirs to rule as they will, and that anyone who opposes its rulings is an outlaw.
What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people. The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will.
We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise. Our world can never know health as long as these monsters remain in charge.
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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 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
Prison Escape Foiled After Guards Asked To Sign Farewell Card
A planned breakout from Long Bay jail has been thwarted after the farewell card for the culprit was accidentally circulated to the guards for signing.
“Like any workplace, when someone is about to leave we like to send a card around for everyone to write a funny little message on it wishing them well at their new location,” admitted lifer Frank “The Axe” Haffey. “Unfortunately some dill wasn’t sure who to give the card to next and they left it on the table in the guard’s break room. Next thing you know the screws have busted into my cell and have found my tunnel.”
“Frank’s been a pretty popular guy here so when we found out he was leaving we had a whip around for a present and bought him a giant oversized card so we could wish him all the best,” said Haffey’s cellmate Danny “Kneecapper” Walsh. “We got him a gold plated shiv with his name engraved on it and had enough cash left over to toss in a $50 Myers voucher and a box of snout.”
Several of the guards signed the card before the head warden checked the records and discovered that Haffey wasn’t due for parole until the year 2035. While most of the guards were unsure who Haffey was and had simply written “all the best”, one had written a clever limerick and another had drawn a cartoon of the convicted murderer relaxing on a beach in Mexico with a beer in his hand.
“We knew something was amiss when we smelt a cake being baked in the prison laundry,” admitted the prison governor Leonard Godber. “Then when all the inmates gathered together during the afternoon tea break in the number plate painting factory for an impromptu farewell party I ordered a search of all the cells.”
Peter Green
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Independents select Palestinian Leanne Mohamad to stand against Streeting
Mohamad wins democratic vote among Redbridge Community Action Group members
Redbridge Community Action Group (RCAG) has selected local Palestinian woman Leanne Mohamad to stand against arch-Labour right-winger Wes Streeting in Ilford North at the next parliamentary election. Ms Mohamad won selection among three potential candidates, by a vote of RACG members.
One local member, Muhammad Rehan Saeed, said:
We have voted a Palestinian woman to take on Wes Streeting and Labour at the next election in Ilford North. A fitting choice to stand against the genocide supporters.
Labour is in disarray in Redbridge – which covers Ilford North and Ilford South constituencies – with the Independents now the largest opposition group, after two landslide by-election wins and a resignation. Streeting, one of Keir Starmer’s main mouthpieces for his support for Israel’s genocide and other war crimes in Gaza. With neighbouring Tower Hamlets already run by Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire party after a landslide in the last council and mayoral elections and Newham Independents romping home in recent by-elections and scheduled elections, Labour and Streeting, who has been the target of protests and boycotts by outraged locals for his Gaza weaseling, have cause to be worried.
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Turns Out “Israel Has A Right To Defend Itself” Meant “Israel Has A Right To Commit Genocide”
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/2a708849d49752a076d8abc612182f7a/href
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Axios has a ridiculous new article out citing multiple anonymous US officials titled “Biden ‘running out’ of patience with Bibi as Gaza war hits 100 days”. The Biden administration keeps leaking to the press trying to put separation between their guy and the genocide in Gaza, and they are so fulla shit. Biden has had the ability to end this mass atrocity since day one. The slaughter continues because Biden wants it to. He owns this.
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Netanyahu delivered a speech commemorating 100 days of Israel’s war on babies and journalists and hospitals and residential buildings saying “We will restore security to both the south and the north. Nobody will stop us — not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.”
If I was standing on the right side of history, I don’t think the side I was standing with would be saying that not even The Hague can stop them from killing everyone they want to kill.
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Turns out “Israel has a right to defend itself” actually meant “Israel has a right to commit genocide, and no other countries have a right to stop it.”
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "Yeah yeah. The hospitals are Hamas, the ambulances are Hamas, the UN buildings are Hamas, South Africa is Hamas. Everyone we don't like is Hamas. https://t.co/cX0BCLft6j / Twitter"
Yeah yeah. The hospitals are Hamas, the ambulances are Hamas, the UN buildings are Hamas, South Africa is Hamas. Everyone we don't like is Hamas. https://t.co/cX0BCLft6j
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We’ve been seeing reports of Israeli sniper drones shooting and killing people in Gaza, which is probably a good time to note that Gaza has long been a live laboratory for the military industrial complex. Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies there — just like has been happening in Ukraine and in Africa — and that data will be used for the benefit of the war machine and the arms industry.
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It’s so dopey how Israel apologists will yell at you if you criticize Israeli criminality without mentioning Hamas and October 7. Literally everyone knows about Hamas and October 7. Literally everyone acknowledges that Hamas attacked Israelis out of hostility to the state of Israel. Everyone, including Hamas and its most enthusiastic supporters, fully acknowledge that this happened.
Meanwhile Israel and its supporters have adamantly denied the reality of what’s been happening in Gaza since October 7. The western press have been wildly biased in favor of Israel and have been guilty of mountains of journalistic malpractice with their pathetic coverage of the ongoing Gaza massacre. The majority of westerners are still ignorant of the extent to which Israel had been abusing and killing Palestinians prior to October 7.
It is therefore necessary to talk about these things to spread awareness and counteract the propaganda and distortion, and it is not necessary to continually mention Hamas and October 7 while doing so. Literally everyone acknowledges the occurrence of the October 7 attack, while a vast percentage of the population is either uninformed or actively lying about the occurrence of all Israeli crimes from the Nakba on. Only one of these two things requires more emphasis.
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "Get ready for the western press to greatly increase its use of the phrase "Iranian-backed Houthis" while still never using the phrase "US-backed Israelis". pic.twitter.com/0xzGCs1wBG / Twitter"
Get ready for the western press to greatly increase its use of the phrase "Iranian-backed Houthis" while still never using the phrase "US-backed Israelis". pic.twitter.com/0xzGCs1wBG
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Israel demanding that everyone condemn the Hamas attack is like a bunch of thugs punching a man in the face over and over and then demanding that everyone condemn him for hurting their hands. The Hamas attack was the natural result of Israel’s abuses upon the Palestinian people.
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In the mind of the empire simp, the violence of the empire’s enemies always comes completely out of nowhere, without provocation and for no reason. Ansarallah started attacking ships in the Red Sea because they’re pirates who hate freedom of navigation. Hamas attacked Israel because they’re evil and hate Jews. Putin invaded Ukraine because he’s evil and hates democracy. Grown adults portray the enemies of the empire the same way the children’s cartoon show Captain Planet portrayed its villains, cackling evilly about how they’re going to dump toxic waste into the ocean for no reason other than to hurt the environment.
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I’ve honestly never gotten used to being called an anti-semite, even after three months of getting it nonstop. It has never stopped being shocking to me that someone would accuse me of harboring the same prejudices which gave rise to the Holocaust in response to my criticisms of horrific mass atrocities backed by the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. It’s just absolutely deranged, despicable behavior, and I am consistently shocked to see grown adults behaving that way in public without the slightest hint of shame.
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Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "Mass media employees are every bit as psychopathic as the empire they administer propaganda for. https://t.co/BMDGfwiTaU / Twitter"
Mass media employees are every bit as psychopathic as the empire they administer propaganda for. https://t.co/BMDGfwiTaU
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Someone asked me if I have any advice for dealing with the anxiety which comes with discovering that the western empire is the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth, and that we’ve been lied to about this our entire lives.
The painful emotions which come up when we discover an uncomfortable truth aren’t problems which need to be dealt with, they’re feelings which need to be felt. Let the grief, anguish, rage, shame, fear, or whatever it might be say everything it needs to say to you, in the same way you’d let a beloved child tell you about their feelings and concerns. You wouldn’t push the child away or treat them like a problem, you’d hear them out and give them a cuddle and let them know you care about them and that you’ll keep them safe. Once you’ve consciously felt a feeling all the way through and heard out everything it needs to say to you, its energy will dissipate.
Uncomfortable truths and uncomfortable feelings need to be met in the same way: head-on, with an open mind and an open heart. Moving into a truth-based relationship with life means wanting to see everything: uncomfortable truths about the world, uncomfortable truths about ourselves, and uncomfortable feelings we haven’t been allowing full expression to. It can be painful at times, even downright terrifying, but it’s also the only path to health for both our species as a collective and ourselves as individuals.
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