Blinken again bypasses US Congress to send munitions to Israel
“US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used emergency authority to approve the sale of $147.5 million of 155 mm artillery shells to Israel on 30 December, bypassing the standard congressional review for arms sales for the second time since the start of the war on Gaza.
A State Department spokesman said on Friday that “given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer.”
Earlier this month, Blinken used the same emergency process to approve the sale of 14,000 tank shells, worth more than $106 million, to Israel.
The emergency sale of artillery shells comes as Israel’s military intensifies its bombing campaign in Gaza.”

Posted by: Perimetr | Jan 1 2024 10:41 utc | 103

Israeli officials ‘concerned’ ICJ could charge Israel with genocide
Israeli officials are concerned the International Court of Justice could charge the state with genocide in Gaza, Haaretz reported on Monday. According to the Israeli daily, a senior legal expert dealing with the case has warned the military leadership that there is a “real danger” the court will issue an injection calling on Israel to halt its military action in Gaza. The military and the state attorney’s office are now preparing to deal with the complaint filed by South Africa on Friday. A hearing will take place Monday at the foreign ministry. South Africa launched a case for the ICJ to declare that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its military campaign in Gaza. The submission from Cape Town, which says that Israel is in breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention, calls for a halt to Israel’s military operations in the besieged enclave. It said:
Such an order is necessary in this case to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people. Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza. We have requested that the ICJ declare on an urgent basis that Israel is in breach of its obligations in terms of the Genocide Convention, should immediately cease all acts and measures in breach of those obligations and take a number of related actions.
Morning update
It’s just over 8 am in Palestine and Israel on the 87th day of the war on Gaza. The new year began in the besieged Palestinian enclave with Israeli bombing as the death toll near the 22k mark. Here are the major developments from the last few hours:
“Heavy tank shelling was reported Monday morning in refugee camps in the central and northern Gaza Strip.
Several people were killed and wounded in air strikes on Khan Younis, according to medics.
Palestinians across the West Bank marked the new year with rallies calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Israeli forces raided West Bank cities and arrested several people, local media reported.
An armed drone was shot down over Iraq’s Ain al-Assad air base, which houses US forces.”
https://niqnaq.wordpress.com/

Posted by: Menz | Jan 1 2024 11:16 utc | 105

PQ wrote: “This is why I find the revision of the Auschwitz plaque and subsequent criminalization of serious historical analysis of the narrative so troubling.”
My dear fellow, you have hit the nail on the head.
ALL historical narratives, by their nature, are open to constant re-examination and revision as different people across time bring to them different perspectives and heretofore unknown or unconsidered information.
The basis of Holocaust denial legislation is that the narrative/truth has been established, once and for all (“established facts” — established by whom, how etc. we must not ask), perfect and immutable. This is, literally, the definition of dogma as elaborated by the Church in late antiquity.
Even questioning dogma means claiming that truth can be questioned, in other words that truth may not be “perfectly” true. Doing so used to result in people being brought before the Inquisition as heretics. Since being heretics was the reason for their prosecution, it was assumed that everything they said in self-defense was a lie. In short, they were — literally — dammed if they maintained their stance, regardless of their defense. and damned if they didn’t recant. The punishment was to be drawn and quartered (the limbs pulled off the body by four draft animals). The remaining torso, while still alive, was burnt at the stake, the internal organs gouged out and exposed to the flames in order to make the death more painful. All to the glory of God, Holy Mother the Church and “doctrinal purity”.
We’re not quite at the point for those accused of Holocaust denial, but the Zionists are up to it: think of the systematic torture in Israeli prisons, the mutilated and burnt bodies from the bombing, the amputations without anesthetics (over 1,000 performed on children in a desperate effort to save them) and the Palestinian men in the huge pit buried alive: basically the same sadistic malice.
In any event, either the Holocaust is a historical narrative, hence open to constant re-appraisal, or it is dogma, absolute, immutable, and calling it into question merits severe punishment (for the time being, mostly fine and/or imprisonment, with an occasional targeted assassination here or there).
Happy new year.

Posted by: RJPJR | Jan 1 2024 11:26 utc | 107

.michaelj72 | Jan 1 2024 6:21 utc | 97
***…British Defense Secretary said earlier today “If the Houthis continue to threaten lives and trade, we will be forced to take the necessary and appropriate action.”
Citing sources, the newspaper said that Grant Shapps’ comments were a “last warning” if Sanaa does not stop conducting operations, noting that the Western response would likely be “limited” but “significant”……”***
Shapps happens to be Jewish. As for his “last warning” to the Houthis — well, whatever the UK Political Establishment’s whoring shit-pixies get up to will be nothing new …. the RAF pretending to be Saudi airforce (plus some SAS as their on the ground target-markers) have for years been batch-murdering Houthi civilians in Yemen anyway.

Posted by: Cynic | Jan 1 2024 12:07 utc | 109

If the UK does send one of its two US-aircraft carriers to war with the Houthis, perhaps it’s a cunning plan by the UK regime to conveniently get rid of a leaking, badly assembled white elephant?

Posted by: Cynic | Jan 1 2024 12:16 utc | 111

We can expect the ‘unknown European cuntry’ (aka fascist entity fronting up for Israel’s genocide) to be le petit roi’s France,….
Posted by: Rubiconned | Dec 31 2023 17:13 utc | 16
Germany.

Posted by: MAKK | Jan 1 2024 13:24 utc | 113

DJG 114
The rules based order doesn’t abide by the rules, but Putin does. When enemy inverts reality your preventing genocide gets converted into ‘ if you noticed it you must have done it, why can’t you be normal like everybody else and look the other way ‘.
Putin has gained so much legitimacy from USUKIS 70 years of illegal wars, but legitimacy doesn’t translate automatically into to power.

Posted by: Giyane | Jan 1 2024 13:41 utc | 115

Zionism was invented in the 1890’s . . .
Posted by: rosross | Jan 1 2024 3:47 utc | 93
=================
No, it was not invented in the 1890s.
There were strong Zionists organizations all over Europe and in much of the rest of the world. To establish this point one need only look at the list of attendees at the First Zionist Congress.
And the roots of openly discussed and named Zionism by various Jewish worthies can be found in earlier centuries.

Posted by: Jane | Jan 1 2024 14:03 utc | 117

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/10/live-updates-us-pull-aircraft-carrier-eastern-mediterranean-netanyahu-says-war
Why is the US pulling one carrier from the East Med, just as is ships try to confront the Houthis in the Red Sea?
‘Pulled’ to where exactly?
Is this the first sign the US is backing away from supporting Israel’s genocide?

Posted by: Rubiconned | Jan 1 2024 14:13 utc | 119

@Posted by: Perimetr | Jan 1 2024 10:41 utc | 103
Blinken belongs in a docket at a Nuremberg-type trial.
And don’t execute him. He belongs in a public cage.

Posted by: librul | Jan 1 2024 14:20 utc | 121

.British Defense Secretary said earlier today “If the Houthis continue to threaten lives and trade, we will be forced to take the necessary and appropriate action.”. . .
Posted by: Cynic | Jan 1 2024 12:07 utc | 109
========
The language here if of the severe but regretful nanny meting out discipline to unruly charges.
I can only hope they get a good hiding for their nannyish hubris.
The world has really had enough of this hoity-toity Brtish BS.
As for Blair chairing some kind of committee to resettle Palestinians—does he even realize that is a crime?
Blair turns my stomach.
He is, actually, the cause of a lot of the mayhem in the ME since 9/11.
Without his imprimatur the USA would never had gone ahead with the Iraq invasion.

Posted by: Jane | Jan 1 2024 14:21 utc | 123

FYI:
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/01/01/717418/Iran-Alborz-destroyer-Red-Sea-Bab-al-Mandab-strait-Navy-flotilla-
“Iran’s Alborz destroyer has passed through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and entered the Red Sea amid rising tensions in the region.
The Iranian Navy’s 94th flotilla of warships, comprising of Alborz destroyer, entered the Red Sea on Monday amid heightening tensions in the strategic maritime route, Tasnim news agency reported.”
“In a stern statement on Sunday, Yemen’s Armed Forces warned the United States that Washington bears full responsibility for the consequences of a deadly attack by the US Navy on Yemeni boats in the Red Sea.”

Posted by: Trubind1 | Jan 1 2024 14:33 utc | 125

FYI: Beginnings of “Sirens Calls” …Interested like everyone else of what Hezbollah Nasarallah will say come 3rd:
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/01/01/717406/PRO-PALESTINIAN-PROTESTERS-SOLIDARITY-MARCH-TOWARDS-US-CONSULATE-ISTANBUL
“The demonstrators marched towards the US Consulate on Sunday after Islamic NGOs made a call for a protest march on New Year’s Eve to protest the aid to Israel, which has been pounding Gaza since October 7.
The protesters held up banners reading (Turkish) “We are cursing Israel’s partner in crime, USA.” Another placard read, “Patron of the Zionist gang USA, get out of the Middle East.”
https://english.almanar.com.lb/2013717
“Hezbollah Says Israeli Threats Worthless, Presses on with Border Strikes”
“The Israeli enemy is in no position to force the resistance fighters away from the border with occupied Palestine and to return tens of thousands of displaced settlers to northern settlements,” Sheikh Qassem told a mourning service in Beirut’s southern suburb.”

Posted by: Trubind1 | Jan 1 2024 14:45 utc | 127

Re: Raids outsize the Gaza Fence
The daily SITREP often has reports of attacks in the Gaza Envelope.

Posted by: Exile | Jan 1 2024 15:17 utc | 129

@ Jane 118
“Why isn’t Congress—or at least someone in Congress—screeching about this?”
The only one I’ve seen so far is Tim Kaine (D – Va). I forgot to copy the url for this blurb, but it would have been on Al Jazeera or Middleeasteye. I have not seen a single reference to his remarks, which are pretty bland, in any US media.
*********************
US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia called on the Biden administration to explain why it has twice moved to transfer weapons to Israel without congressional oversight. 
The US sold an estimated $147.5m of weapons under an emergency clause requiring the immediate sale of munitions. 
“Just as Congress has a crucial role to play in all matters of war and peace, Congress should have full visibility over the weapons we transfer to any other nation,” said Kaine who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“Unnecessarily bypassing Congress means keeping the American people in the dark. We need a public explanation of the rationale behind this decision – the second such decision this month,” added the senator.
The earlier decision Kaine referred to was a $106.5 million sale of 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition, which the Biden administration also bypassed congressional oversight to send.
**************************

Posted by: teri | Jan 1 2024 15:26 utc | 131

If the IDF pushes ordinary people on the West Bank too far the ranks of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will swell and they’ll soon be taking RPG fire in alleyways.
I expect that is what the IDF is hoping for. They imagine if they provoke the W.B far enough they can give them the Gaza treatment.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jan 1 2024 8:12 utc | 101
That’s the whole point of the petty tyranny Palestinians have to live with, like schoolchildren having to spend hours going through more than one checkpoint to school, etc. the hope is that they’ll either emigrate or blow a fuse and justify a shooting.

Posted by: Delhiliterally | Jan 1 2024 15:36 utc | 133

I am not optimistic about writing to politicians because they know that people are limited to two candidates both of whom are loyal to Israel, the majority of voters have short memories while pro-israel donors have long memories since they actually have an agenda on the topic, and most Americans don’t care about what isn’t in front of them on the TV, and Fox News etc is careful to keep it off the screen at election time.
My preference is economic pressure. In the end, it’s all about the Benjamins.

Posted by: Delhiliterally | Jan 1 2024 15:41 utc | 135

“…This is an admission that the official historical record is a propaganda battle. 2.5 million deaths were erased in a day as “Commie Propaganda” and that Jews became the main victim is definitely not Zionist propaganda….” pq@104
The narrative of the Camps as always been highly political.
And for two reasons, firstly the Communists were the only party consistently reporting the real nature of Nazi crimes- the west insisted on suppressing them until, after the discoveries of Belsen, Dachau and Buchenwald, in the west by horrified and communicative Allied soldiers, that became impossible. Alexaner Werth reports that his account of the discovery of Maidanek near Lublin in 1944 was turned down by the BBC who told him that he had fallen for “Russian propaganda” (his report is a shocking and detailed description of the way that Maidanek and Auschwitiz worked.)
Secondly because the entire Holocaust infrastructure was shaped by its origins as profitable capitalist industry. Industry in which every neo-liberal (and Austrian school) dream of the “proper subordination” of labour was fulfilled. Right down to the end when, having been exploited to the limit of the body’s capacity the slave labourer was transferred from starvation rations to no rations.
Which raises another point of interest the primary means of despatching victims throughout the Holocause years was neither gas chambers not bullets but famine and exposure: in the year after Barbarossa began two million Russian POWs died of exposure and starvation in POW camps- there was no shelter and they received no food.
The United States ruling class – which had inspired the Nazis in their racial theories, anti-communism and eugenic practices (the killing of mentally deficient, insane and autistic people as well as homosexuals, members of ‘inferior’ or dangerous races and all opponents of capitalism)- was the last country to accept, long after Germany had done so and the Collaborationist classes of Europe had confessed their crimes, that the regime in which they had invested so much, morally and financially had gone one up on banning Jews from Country Clubs and Universities and massacred them.
Paradoxically the US Establishment only adopted the Holocaust cause when it had been trivialised into a spiteful campaign against Jews as Jews. But even that was a lie: the objection to Jews was justified on the basis that they gave birth to communist ideas. Judeo Bolshevism.
Holocaust denial, which will only increase so long as it is a semi-legal or illegal activity, shielded from the full light of vigorous and honest debate, is an important theme in the revival of Nazism and other forms of fascism required by the crises that imperialism cannot solve except by violence and war.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 1 2024 15:51 utc | 137

“US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia called on the Biden administration to explain why it has twice moved to transfer weapons to Israel without congressional oversight. ”
Posted by: teri | Jan 1 2024 15:26 utc | 131
They just want to be able to share credit for the resupply. All aid bills to Israel bypass committee with the consent of all members.

Posted by: Delhiliterally | Jan 1 2024 16:00 utc | 139

@ bevin | Jan 1 2024 15:51 utc | 137
Hear, hear! All true.

Posted by: Cabe | Jan 1 2024 16:49 utc | 141

fyi
JUST NOW! Massive Explosions Shakes Israel; Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, Kyrat Shimona Hit; This is Huge!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgaydOVpi9E [13 mins

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jan 1 2024 16:55 utc | 143

Jaime, at 84, quoted re Lavrov: “LAVROV stated that Russia country will not agree to a settlement in the Middle East that affects Israel’s security and does not provide for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
============
If the UN General Assembly were to revisit Resolution 181 thrusting Jews from far away onto the Palestinian homeland, they would notice that in accord with well-known historical and cultural features of Jewish religion and culture, the respect for Palestinian dignity and honour that were called for was already in the planning to be violated. It would be unthinkable, knowing what we know, to allow European convert Jews to settle there.
The large war that seems to be in the offing, by the force of the Hamas coup and the willingness of Gazans to be martyred for their homeland, is turning out to be the war to end the Jew World Order.
An outcome of Palestine for the Palestinians can still be reconciled with a settlement that preserves Israel’s security in a far more stable way than in an ever-contested Palestine. The Jewish community, by the usual foresight of its leaders has already arranged a far better fallback homeland for themselves. A Brit Jew billionaire has bought a swath of Patagonia three times the size of Palestine, and for several years now it has been guarded by Israeli security. The new order in Argentina seems to be well suited to this, with the new president readying to convert to Judaism.
It’s hard to fathom the compromises Putin is always ready to endure to assure Jewish interests. Whatever his private agenda, let’s hope it does not come in the way of reason and justice here.

Posted by: sarz | Jan 1 2024 17:13 utc | 145

146
“How about optimism as a New Year’s resolution? There are going to be many independents now.
It’s not an either / or choice. All actions add up. ”
================================
I agree.
Avoid predicting outcomes.
Just do it.
And do it again.
Check it off on your calendar every day.

Posted by: Jane | Jan 1 2024 18:07 utc | 147

Bertrand Russell’s last letter 1970 on Palestine
It could have been written yesterday
12 mins and well worth listening to:
Britain’s Most Famous Philosopher on Zionism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egfCTz-ZuZU

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jan 1 2024 18:18 utc | 149

https://t.me/rnintel/6509
This video purports to show the houthi boats being blasted. I have some difficulty believing this. It looks old video quality and the fire is not from a helicopter , more a deck gun from some Somali pirates a decade or so ago. But anyway that’s telegram info. Some smart person could look and find it was published a long time ago. Although I did see the houthi post up martyr images of those that died. Usa lies so much I’m cynical regarding their PR, was it a group of Taliban or a boy with his goat herd.

Posted by: Hankster | Jan 1 2024 19:10 utc | 151

“That depends on whether your morality thinks that helping USUKIS genocide the Muslim populations of Yugoslavia , Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and Yemen.”
===
Attention KGB and USSR (c.f. “70 years”) fanboys:
https://avarchives.icrc.org/Picture/49009
“These were bad Muslims in Chechnya, opposing the will of God’s chosen, the Sainted Spook”.

Posted by: robinthehood | Jan 1 2024 19:42 utc | 153

robinthehood 153
Best to leave other people’s marriages alone, otherwise you the interferer always get the blame.
It wasn’t the Chechnyans who annoyed the Soviets, it was FUKUSIS and its prehistoric Great Game of realising that they had somehow forgotten in their westerly migrations to colonise Russia.
The poor Chechnyans got the full rage of a thousand years of Great Game provocations.
I would say that after the latest provocation in Ukraine, the next small country to piss off Moscow, however tiny, will also end up getting flattened.
Everyday Putin flexes his index finger on the Kinzal trigger pointing to Tel Aviv, then he puts it back in a velvet-lined casket for another day. Or have I been watching too many James Bond films ?

Posted by: Giyane | Jan 1 2024 20:17 utc | 155

Giyane 154
I noticed the British accent. Of course, someone with that accent could be anywhere.
I cannot judge the missile footage. No idea what I am looking at.
The latter half of the video contains footage of a number of protests in cities around the world. That looked genuine to me. Quite a lot from Boston, Mass., USA, starting around 10:30. .

Posted by: Jane | Jan 1 2024 20:20 utc | 157

The best course for us armchair warriors is the economic boycott.
Already McDonald’s is closing restaurants in the Muslim world, and business is down in the US.
Starbucks has already lost 11 billions, much of it can be blamed on the ongoing recession/ inflation, but some of it is already being blamed on boycotts.
Sooner of later, their political support of the zionist state it will hurt their pocketbooks, and hopefully will loosen their grip on our corrupt politicians.
Keep it up!
Posted by: Delhiliterally | Dec 31 2023 18:23 utc | 28
##################
I can’t tell if you’re naive or a troll. So, kudos to you for the ambiguity.
Boycotts won’t change anything like voting doesn’t change anything.
Money is created out of thin air, why would any of these “losses” matter when the entire economic game is rigged all over the West?
These corporations control the governments in the West. Only in China and Russia do the corporations have to answer to the state.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Jan 1 2024 20:31 utc | 159

Why isn’t Congress—or at least someone in Congress—screeching about this?
It is infuriating!
An American citizen
Posted by: Jane | Jan 1 2024 14:09 utc | 118
###############
It is well understood that AIPAC owns Congress. You’re complaining about the symptoms, not the cause of the disease. And no, I’m not talking about Jews or even Israel. I’m talking about the incentives for politicians to cater to outside interests because their home constituency isn’t important to them, which is a flaw inherited from the early Republic when no one could imagine the weaponization of campaign funding or the pols living full-time in DC.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Jan 1 2024 20:35 utc | 161

Posted by: Giyane | Jan 1 2024 20:32 utc | 160
###################
We already know that Palestine will be Arab, we just don’t know exactly when or how.
Trust in Allah.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Jan 1 2024 20:37 utc | 163

Jane
Comment 143 looks to me like clickbait.
Maybe 2 kilos of anglers dried maggot eggs for people who are hungry for Gaza news.

Posted by: Giyane | Jan 1 2024 20:42 utc | 165

@ Giyane | Jan 1 2024 19:51 utc | 154
Not sure what you are smoking … or tripping on poor acid … most in this video is supported elsewhere … that said, OMT does gild the lilly somewhat at times
from Al Jazeera
Hamas carried out dozens of attacks against Israeli forces: Spokesman Abu Obeida
Abu Obeida, spokesman of Hamas’s armed wing the Qassam Brigades, says the group has destroyed 71 Israeli military vehicles fully or partially in the past four days.
“Our fighters have confirmed the killing of 16 Zionist soldiers and injured dozens [of] others, carrying out 42 military missions,” Abu Obeida said in a statement.
He said the attacks included shelling Israeli positions and targeting them with explosive devices as well as clashes from “distance zero” and the booby-trapping of homes and tunnel shafts where the Israeli military was operating.
According to Abu Obeida, Hamas fighters also brought down two Israeli surveillance drones in Gaza as they continued to fire rockets towards Tel Aviv.

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jan 1 2024 20:54 utc | 167

Megatron
@Megatron_ron
BREAKING:
⚡ 🇮🇱 Yedioth Ahronoth:
“Nova Concert victims sue Israel”
42 victims of the Oct. 7 Nova concert have filed a civil lawsuit against the IDF, police, and Israel’s internal security service.
Lawsuit alleges negligence and a failure to act on warnings of a potential security threat.
Several victims have already decided to publicly comment that the Israeli army fired at them out of control. A police investigation also confirmed that many of the October 7 victims were killed by the IDF.
https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1741857083463467431

Posted by: Menz | Jan 1 2024 21:02 utc | 169

Hey Canuck
Happy New Year!
Yes man is not not a very civil creature! I spent some time over the years working with West coast tribes the Canadian tribes seem to be in a better place then ours over all. I am thinking the tribes up by the Alberta oil field maybe not so much. Like the Dakota tribes, or Navaho Hopi. Where oil and water have been used over and over again to make life difficult. The tribes in Canada were great to work with on wild salmon, vs farmed salmon. In the states if you don’t have a casino you struggle along in poverty.

Posted by: Susan | Jan 1 2024 21:26 utc | 171

the UK does send one of its two US-aircraft carriers to war with the Houthis, perhaps it’s a cunning plan by the UK regime to conveniently get rid of a leaking, badly assembled white elephant?
Posted by: Cynic | Jan 1 2024 12:16 utc | 111
“HMS Queen Elizabeth is intended to carry 36 fighter jets. She has just eight aboard – and that isn’t the end of the problems”
LEWIS PAGE
22 September 2023 • 6:00am
Lewis Page
HMS Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier

Posted by: canuck | Jan 1 2024 21:39 utc | 173

I would like to know why many Countries have not broken off Diplomatic relations with the gangster state of Israel? also an Arab Army should have entered Gaza by now through Egypt to take those Zionist thugs on.
Posted by: Englishman | Jan 1 2024 21:52 utc | 174
Well said Englishman.
+1

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jan 1 2024 22:11 utc | 175

In 1521 the Aztecs sacrificed 80,000 captives from other tribes in one day
Posted by: canuck | Jan 1 2024 19:27 utc | 152
Pales in comparison to the European captives sacrificed by the Nazis during WW2.
Perhaps in light of that the current colonization of Europe by the brown skinned masses is well deserved …

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jan 1 2024 22:12 utc | 177

Yes, white people genocided indigenous peoples but the Indigenous tribes also genocided fellow tribes. In 1521 the Aztecs sacrificed 80,000 captives from other tribes in one day:
Posted by: canuck | Jan 1 2024 19:27 utc | 152
Completely ludicrous. It never happened like that. In one day they would have needed 100 priest sacrificing 1 captive every minute. It would have needed the place to keep the captives captive. It was never a genocide, for the wars were not intended to kill the enemy but to take captives. The captives were fed for weeks or even months and then sent to the butchery: the heart and the blood for the gods and the meat for the people.
The lie is obvious. This practice was not new and was used for many years, if not centuries.
It was never a genocide, for they needed a constant set of captives, and thus a pool of enemies, alive and in good health. If eradication would have occurred, no more captive, very bad for their gods and the sun.

Posted by: Naive | Jan 1 2024 22:32 utc | 179

If you research this , it’s a very significant parcel of land …
Posted by: Hankster | Jan 1 2024 22:49 utc | 180
I should have said it more explicitly. I got hanged on my own “snark petard”.
I meant to say the “we purchased land for a new state” nonsense is starting again just like it did 100 years ago.
Next they’ll claim land deeds are translatable into national boundaries.
“A land without a people for people without a land” and nonsense like that again.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jan 1 2024 22:58 utc | 181

USA sells lots lots shells to IDF.. surely we had thought the cupboard was bare for such armaments….for Ukraine… is Z fuming he aint top of the list….or maybe he cannot pay but was expecting a gift.. ?

Posted by: Jo | Jan 1 2024 23:33 utc | 183

machine translation will give you the gist

Posted by: Badger | Jan 1 2024 23:40 utc | 185

One expects good Muslims to do their duty …
Posted by: Don Firineach | Jan 1 2024 21:05 utc | 170
################
And what exactly does Allah (SWT) command Muslims to do?

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Jan 2 2024 0:16 utc | 187

Hankster | Jan 1 2024 22:49 utc | 180 ….
Aren’t supposedly ‘other’ Oligarchs of the Bill Gates type in on the Patagonia bolt-hole stuff as well?

Posted by: Cynic | Jan 2 2024 0:27 utc | 189

Why won’t any country that could kill the rat that keeps shitting in the world’s flour do so?
Isn’t the answer obvious?
The rat’s claws and teeth are longer and stronger than you have been willing to believe!
The jew world order has already metastasized, eh?
Now what?

Posted by: DuchessAndBob | Jan 2 2024 0:46 utc | 191

Menz! God love the Irish!! Best of the day – thanks!

Posted by: DuchessAndBob | Jan 2 2024 0:50 utc | 193

@ Badger #184. On the failure to realiza enlightenment values in the imperial west
Mattias Desmet recently gave a talk in which he expressed his view on the why of the failure of Enlightenment values, and a remedy for those within the beast.
The bar talked a bit about his last book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, introduced by Grieved. Whilst Desmet skips over class issues, the psychological aspect is worthy of a look imo.
I cannot link to source ZH, so i impose upon barflies, posting much of the speech. Skip over with ease, or not.
The issue is linked directly to Palestine genocide although would be best discussed on open thread.

Mattias talking:
Dear Audience
As some of you might know, I wrote a book, titled “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.” It is about a new kind of totalitarianism that is emerging now, a totalitarianism which is not so much a communist or fascist totalitarianism, but a technocratic totalitarianism.
I have articulated my theory on totalitarianism on so many occasions. I will only present the gist of it here and move on to a problem which is particularly relevant for an address in a political institution such as this parliament: the perversion of political discourse in the Enlightenment tradition.
Here is in a nutshell what I articulated on totalitarianism throughout the last years: totalitarianism is not a coincidence. It is a logical consequence of our materialist-rationalist view on man and the world. When this view on man and the world became dominant, as a spontaneous consequence, a new elite ánd a new population emerged. A new elite that excessively used propaganda as a means to control and steer the population; and a population which lapsed more and more into loneliness and disconnectedness, both from its social and its natural environment.
These two evolutions, the emergence of an elite that uses propaganda and a lonely population, reinforced each other. The lonely state is exactly the state in which a population is vulnerable for propaganda. In this way, a new kind of masses or crowds emerged throughout the last two centuries: the so-called lonely masses.
People fall prey to mass formation to escape a pervasive feeling of loneliness and disconnectedness, induced by the rationalization of the world and the ensuing industrialization of the world and the excessive use of technology. They merge together in fanatic mass behavior because this seems to free them from their lonely, atomized state.
And that is exactly the big illusion of mass formation: belonging to a mass doesn’t liberate a human being from its lonely state. Not at all. A mass is a group that is formed, not because individuals connect to each other, but because each individual separately is connected to a collective ideal. The longer a mass formation exists, the more solidarity they feel for the collective and the less solidarity and love they feel for other individuals….
Today, here, in the Romanian parliament, a political institution, I address politicians. I want to tell you that politicians have a particular responsibility in these times of emerging totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt said, is a diabolic pact between the masses and the political elites. Political elites need to contemplate –scrutinize the ethical qualities of their speech. There is something wrong with political discourse. This is what I intend to say: political discourse is perverted.
For instance, we got used to the fact that politicians, once they are elected, never do what they promised to do in their election speeches. How far are we removed from political virtue as described by Aristotle. For Aristotle, the core of political virtue was the courage to speak the Truth, or, to use the Greek term, Parrhesia, bold speech, in which someone says exactly this what society doesn’t want to hear, but which is necessary to keep it psychologically healthy.
I am not so much accusing individual politicians here; I am addressing political culture in general. And even more, I am talking about a perversion that is inherent to the entire tradition of Enlightenment. Our society is in the grip of a specific type of lying, a kind of lying that is historically speaking relatively new, that emerged for the first time after the French Revolution, when the religious view on man and the world was replaced by our current, rationalist-materialist worldview. What am I talking about when I refer to this ‘new kind of lie?’ I am talking about the phenomenon of ‘propaganda.’
Propaganda is everywhere around us. Public space is saturated with it. Recent years have illustrated that abundantly, during the coronacrisis, during the Ukraine crisis, and now, even more clearly, during the coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict on both mainstream and social media.
It is not that I do not understand the motivation of those who choose for propaganda. They often start from good intentions. Or at least: somewhere, they do believe in their good intentions. Read the work of the founding fathers of propaganda, such as Lippman, Trotter, and Bernays. They believe that the only way for the leaders to keep control in society and to prevent society of lapsing into chaos is propaganda.
The leaders cannot overtly impose their will anymore to the population. Nobody would accept that within a materialist-rationalist society. Hence, the only way to make the population do what the leaders want, is to make them do what the leaders want without them knowing that they do what the leaders want. In others words: the only way to control the population is through manipulation.
The people in favor of propaganda will argue that we can never tackle the challenges of climate change and viral outbreaks through democratic means. They will ask: ‘Do you think people will voluntarily give up their cars and flying holidays? To escape disaster, we need technocracy, a society led by technical experts, and to install technocracy, we need to mislead the population, we need to manipulate them into technocracy.’
First of all, I want to tell you that I don’t believe technocracy is a solution to the problem. But that’s not what matters most. Let me tell you something: to try to create a good society for the human being through manipulation, is a contradictio in terminis. The essence and core of a good society is exactly the ethical quality of public discourse. Man, in the end, essentially is an ethical being, and to pervert man’s speech is to pervert man itself; to pervert political speech is to pervert society itself.
To give up sincerity in order to create a good society is to try to build a good society by giving up immediately, from the beginning, the essence of a good society (!). Truthful speech is not a means towards an end, it is the end in itself; sincere speech is what makes us human and humane.
This is crucial to understand: propaganda is not a historical coincidence, it is a structural consequence of rationalism. If you consider the psychological structure of our current society, it’s fair to say that propaganda is the major guiding principle. In a remarkable way, the pursuit of rationality during the tradition of Enlightenment didn’t lead to more Truthful speech, as the founding fathers of this tradition believed. Science would replace questionable religious and other myths; society would finally be organized according to reliable information instead of subjective conjectures. Now, a few centuries later, this turned out to be an illusion. There has never been as much unreliable information as now in public space.
The materialist-rationalist view on man and the world, in a strange way, rather led to the opposite of what it expected. As soon as we started to conceive the human being as a mechanistic, biological entity, for whom the highest attainable goal was survival, it became rather unfashionable to try to speak the Truth. Speaking the Truth, the Ancient Greeks knew that very well, doesn’t maximize your chances on survival. The Truth is always risky. ‘No one is hated more than he who speaks the Truth,’ Plato said. Hence, within a materialist-rationalist tradition, speaking the Truth is something stupid to do. Only idiots do it. That’s how the fanatic pursuit of rationality led us astray, straight into the dark wood of Dante, ‘where the right road is wholly lost and gone.
This materialist-rationalist view on man and the world—why do we actually cling to it? It loves to present itself as the scientific view on man and the world. Let me tell you that this is nonsense. All seminal scientists concluded exactly the opposite: in the end, the essence of life always escapes rationality, it transcends the categories of rational thinking. To name only one major scientist: in the preface of a book of Max Planck, Einstein claimed that it is a mistake to believe that science originates from supreme logical-rational thinking; it originates from what he called a capacity for ‘einfühlung’ in the object one investigates, which means as much as ‘a capacity to empathically resonate with the object you are investigating.’
Rationality is a good thing and we need to walk the path of rationality as far as possible, but it is not the end goal. Rational knowledge is not a goal in itself; it is a stairway to a kind of knowledge that transcends rationality, a resonating knowledge, the kind of supreme intuition the martial arts of the Samurai culture aimed for throughout their technical training. It is at that level that we can situate the phenomenon of Truth.
This brings us closer to an answer to the question: what is the remedy to the disease of totalitarianism? Can we do something about totalitarianism? My answer is simple and straight: yes. The powerless do have power.
Propaganda-induced mass formation is a fake, symptomatic solution for loneliness. And the real solution lies in the Art of Sincere Speech. My next book, which I am writing now, is all about the psychology of Truth. Truth, by definition, from a psychological point of view, is resonating speech, it is speech which connects people, from core to core, from soul to soul, speech that penetrates through the veil of appearances, through the ideal images we hide behind, the imaginary shells we seek refuge in, and reconnects the shivering and disconnected soul of one human being to that of another human being.
Here we observe something crucial: sincere speech is the real cure for loneliness—it reconnects people. As such, it takes away the root cause of the major symptom of our rationalist culture—mass formation and totalitarianism. And at the same time, sincere speech also inhibits this symptom in a more straightforward way. It is well known that, if there are some people who continue to speak in a sincere way when mass formation is emerging, the masses do not go to the ultimate stage where they start to think it is their duty to destroy each and everyone who doesn’t follow the totalitarian ideology.
At every moment we chose to speak out in a sincere way, no matter where this happens, in a newspaper or a television interview, but equally well in the presence of only one other person at the kitchen table or in the supermarket, we help to cure society from the disease of totalitarianism.
You have to take this literally. Society, as a psychological system, is a complex dynamical system. And complex dynamical systems have the fascinating characteristic of so-called sensitivity to initial conditions. To put it simple: the smallest changes in one minor detail of the system affect the entire system. For instance, the smallest change in the vibration pattern of one water molecule in a boiling pot of water changes the entire convection pattern of the boiling water.
Nobody is powerless. And hence, every single one of us is responsible. Each and everyone who speaks a sincere word and succeeds in truly connecting as a human being to another human being, in particular a human being with a different opinion, deserves to be mentioned in the books of history, much more than a president or a minister who engages in propaganda and fails to show the courage to speak sincerely.
The more I study the effects of speech on the human being and on humans living together, the more hopeful I become and the more I see that we will overcome totalitarianism.
We shouldn’t be naïve when we talk about the Truth. Endless are the atrocities in history committed by people who believed they possessed the Truth. Truth is an elusive phenomenon; we can enjoy its presence from time to time, but we can never claim it or possess it.
Sincere speech is an art. An art we have to learn step by step. An art we can progressively master. That’s exactly why I started workshops on the Art of Speech—workshops in which we practice that art in the same perseverant, disciplined way as any other art is practiced.
Practicing this art implies that we overcome our own fanatic convictions, and even more, our own narcissism and ego. Truth speech is this kind of speech which penetrates through what I call ‘the veil of appearances.’ To practice it, you have to be willing to sacrifice your ideal image; your public reputation. That is exactly what the Parrhesia in Ancient Greek culture meant: speaking out, even if you know that those who find their stronghold in the world of appearances will target you.
Truth-telling can make you lose something. That is for sure. But it also gives you something. To be more psychologically precise: Truth speech makes you lose something at the level of the Ego and win something at the level of the soul. I am quite fascinated by the way in which sincere speech leads to psychological strength.
I think Mahatma Gandhi provides us with a splendid historical example. A few years ago, I started to read his autobiography. I did so at the moment I started to realize that the only efficient resistance against totalitarianism is non-violent resistance. Of course this only applies to internal resistance, resistance from within the totalitarian system. External enemies can destroy totalitarian systems from without. That’s for sure.
But internal resistance, as I mentioned, can only be successful if it is non-violent in nature. All violent resistance will rather speed up the process of totalitarization, just because it is always used by the totalitarian leaders to create support in the masses to destroy each and everyone who goes against the system. Once I realized that, I became interested in what Gandhi had to say in his autobiography.
I was happily surprised to see the title: “Experiments on Truth.” And from the first pages, I learned that for Gandhi, the core and essence of non-violent resistance is sincere speech. His entire life, Gandhi tried to improve the sincerity of his speech. He did so in a simple, almost childish and naïve way, wondering every evening how sincere he had spoken that day, where he had lied or when he could have spoken more accurately or sincerely.
And here is something important: in the beginning of his biography, Gandhi mentions something magnificent. He says: I actually had no major talents. I was not handsome as a man, I didn’t have much physical strength, I was not intelligent at school, I was not a good writer, and I was not talented as a speaker. But he had this passion for sincerity and Truth. And this man, devoid of any major talents, but with a passion for sincere speech, this man did something even the strongest army in the world couldn’t do: he kicked out the English of India.
The better you start to see the almost endless horizon of possibilities offered by speech, the more you realize: it is words that rule the world. The human being can use words in a manipulative way, as pure rhetoric, indoctrination, propaganda, or brain-washing trying to convince the Other of something it doesn’t believe in itself. Or it can use words in a sincere way, trying to convey something to a fellow human being it feels inside itself. That is the most fundamental and existential choice human beings face: to use words in one or the other way.
Dear politicians of Romania and abroad, this is what I want to tell you today: it’s time for a metaphysical revolution. And you are ought to play a major role in it. The series of crises our society goes through are nothing else than a metaphysical revolution, which, essentially, boils down to this: the switch from a society that functions according to the propaganda principle to a society that is oriented towards Truth.
We need a new political culture, a culture that re-appreciates the value of Truth Telling. We need a new political discourse, a political discourse that leaves the shallow, hollow rhetorics, and propaganda behind and speaks from the soul, from the heart; we need politicians to become true leaders again, leaders who lead rather than mislead the population. Mattias Desmet

Posted by: suzan | Jan 2 2024 0:57 utc | 195

If you want to understand, as difficult as it will be, try not to think like a Westerner.
Listen to this video if you want to understand the Islamic position.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Jan 2 2024 0:28 utc | 190
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“Try not to think like a Westerner blah blah blah”
Meaning what, exactly? Try to think.
I know the basic history of the Jews living under Islamic societies. Maybe that is what “thinking like a Westerner” means.
The video adds a few interesting details.
Certainly it didn’t cast any further light on my question.
It does not explain “the Islamic position” vis-a-vis what Arab (or Islamic) nations can or might do to stop the thugs in Zionistan, and why they are not doing anything noticeable (aside from the Houthis of the Yemen).

Posted by: Jane | Jan 2 2024 1:24 utc | 197

Suzan 195
Not a fan of Desmet.
He got is all wrong with covid.
A fancy way of blaming the victims for finding themselves trapped in totalitarian circumstances.
I don’t really see what he says that is of relevance to the situation in Palestine.

Posted by: Jane | Jan 2 2024 1:31 utc | 199