Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best
And Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M
Bottoms up!
Posted by: KMRIA | Mar 21 2024 18:16 utc | 88
—————————————————————
I know your comment was meant in jest and to be taken as ‘tongue in cheek’ (at least I hope that was your point) but it is exceedingly difficult to see the bright side of the genocide in Gaza, therefore your comment is just a little off the track.
The near universal acceptance of genocide by starvation, murder and bombing, which has been allowed to continue for the last six month (six fucking months) without a military intervention by any government in the world is disgusting enough, but acceptance of this status quo by the majority of Western governments and the western media is beyond surreal.
Why don’t you sing a song about that KMRIA?

Posted by: Ed | Mar 21 2024 20:26 utc | 104

Posted by: Ed | Mar 21 2024 20:26 utc | 102
Ed, I was responding to another poster who seemed to be unhappy that b was calling out the bullshit of the NYT. The gist of his gripe was we should only be posting hard news rather than analysis/thoughts/feelings. I was disagreeing, in a lighthearted way, trying to make the point that a lot of us come here to find kindred spirits (or a least people who are awake). At least for me, that is a major part of MoA’s draw. Right? Sometimes you have to laugh so you don’t keep crying. It’s good to have this outlet.
Best!

Posted by: KMRIA | Mar 21 2024 20:46 utc | 106

I would love to hear reactions here to Mike Whitney’s piece up at the Unz Review,
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/whats-bugging-chuck-schumer/
Surprisingly he quotes approvingly (from the POV of getting the Schumer-Netanyahu story right) Tom Friedman in the NYT.

Posted by: Jane | Mar 21 2024 21:03 utc | 108

Posted by: Surferket | Mar 21 2024 11:01 utc | 5
Sorry, what did you say?
I missed that with the the continued bombing of the hospitals, civilians, women and children.

Posted by: Menz | Mar 21 2024 21:23 utc | 110

Ed, I was responding to another poster who seemed to be unhappy that b was calling out the bullshit of the NYT. The gist of his gripe was we should only be posting hard news rather than analysis/thoughts/feelings. I was disagreeing, in a lighthearted way, trying to make the point that a lot of us come here to find kindred spirits (or a least people who are awake). At least for me, that is a major part of MoA’s draw. Right? Sometimes you have to laugh so you don’t keep crying. It’s good to have this outlet.
Best!
Posted by: KMRIA | Mar 21 2024 20:46 utc | 104
——————————————————————
Okay, KMRIA, my bad. As I said, I assumed you meant it as ‘tongue in cheek’.

Posted by: Ed | Mar 21 2024 21:27 utc | 112

Here is the archived link to the NYT article that is central to b’s post.
https://archive.is/GDZbg

Why Isn’t More Aid Getting to Gazans?
By Gaya Gupta, Elena Shao, Amy Schoenfeld Walker and Lazaro Gamio
March 20, 2024
Even as international governments and aid agencies try to find air and sea routes for delivering food and supplies to Gaza, experts say land deliveries are still, in theory, the most efficient and cost-effective route.
But the aid getting into Gaza is not meeting the needs of an increasingly desperate and hungry population. As many as 1.1 million people could face deadly levels of hunger by mid-July, according to a new report from a global authority on food crises.
Humanitarian organizations have said that the problem is not a lack of available aid: The United Nations said it has enough food at or near Gaza’s border to feed the enclave’s 2.2 million people. Instead, humanitarian workers say they face challenges at every point in the process of delivering aid, through Israel’s security checkpoints and into an active war zone.
Here are some of the reasons why aid to Gaza has not helped people meet their basic needs so far.
The land delivery route is complex
Just two entry points into the territory are regularly operating, both in the south. Typically, aid must travel dozens of miles and make multiple stops, a process that can take three weeks.

Posted by: librul | Mar 21 2024 21:44 utc | 114

Jane @ 100:
Egypt has been under some form of martial or emergency law, and thus a de facto police state, for the past 40 years at least.
The authorities do this to suppress public protests, among other things. Egyptians have a lot to complain about (rising food prices and deteriorating economic conditions being the main reasons to complain) and you may be sure if they could complain about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the Egyptian government’s responses to the genocide in Gaza, they would.
Egypt: Alarming New Law Expands Military Power amid Fears of Popular Unrest as Economy Deteriorates

On Sunday 28 January 2024, the Egyptian parliament passed a bill on Securing and Protecting the State’s Public and Vital Facilities. The timing of the legislation, and the extensive domestic security powers it grants the military, indicate that Egyptian authorities seek to further transform the military into a police force and use it to suppress potential public discontent or mass protests through expanding their mandate to arrest civilians and refer them to military courts.
The law, which effectively turns the military into an internal security and judicial institution whenever the president deems fit, comes as popular discontent grows amid an economic free fall with soaring inflation, a severe foreign currency shortage, and record high external debt. President Abdelfattah al-Sisi has repeatedly spoken publicly about how he would deploy the military against popular protests, including once where he stated that “there is a plan for the army to deploy across Egypt in six hours.” President Sisi has also often dismissed any potential protest or public show of discontent as ill-intentioned attempts to undermine the state and its stability, most recently in a speech where he said that millions of people could be paid to mobilize on the streets and instigate chaos.
The latest expansion of the military’s powers solidifies the preexisting de facto martial law in Egypt. According to Article 200 of the constitution (amended in 2019), the military is granted broad powers to “preserve the constitution and democracy, protect the basic principles of the state and its civil nature, and protect the people’s rights and freedoms.” The article in effect gave the military powers that transcend those of any other institution, including the Supreme Constitutional Court.
The military has already enjoyed expansive powers allowing it to arrest civilians and refer them to military courts, including through Presidential Decree 136 of 2014 (amended in 2021). Law 136 of 2014 stipulated that the armed forces may assist police agencies in securing public and vital facilities, including public roads, electricity stations, gas pipelines, and railroads. Crimes committed on the premises of these facilities fall under the jurisdiction of military courts. The new law, which replaces and annuls Law 136 of 2014, not only includes the same provision that allows the military to arrest civilians and try them before military courts, but it also has added another article that gives military personnel powers to “face acts and transgressions that undermine the work of the state’s public facilities, or the services it provides, especially crimes that harm the society’s basic needs of goods and commodities.”
The new law uses vague wording that ultimately gives discretion to the President, or whomever he delegates, to identify what constitutes basic societal needs, and therefore gives him unrestrained powers to [determine] the military’s jurisdiction to arrest civilians and refer them to military courts. Since 2014, thousands of civilians have been tried by military courts and denied due process, with at least 363 documented cases of violations to the right to fair trial.
[Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies] believes that further consolidating military with policing and judicial powers, thereby putting the military on a collision course with popular discontent against economic and human rights policies, will only exacerbate the risk of instability. The only way out of the current crisis is to admit previous mistakes, end President Sisi’s monopoly over decision making, restore independence to state institutions, including accountability and oversight institutions, and open up of public space to allow citizen engagement in governance issues that impact their everyday lives.

Not much has changed since the time of Hosni Mubarak who became President of Egypt in 1981 (after Anwar Sadat’s assassination), declared a state of emergency and kept renewing that declaration every two or three years until his resignation in 2011. Subsequent governments in Cairo have revived the state of emergency again and again since then.
Emergency law in Egypt
The continuous state of emergency in Egypt also hinders and suppresses the development of grassroots community organisations that would not only assist Palestinian refugees but also provide aid to people in Gaza. Such organisations also have the potential to form rival political movements challenging the current political and military establishment in Cairo.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Mar 21 2024 22:04 utc | 116

The 4 boys mercilessly chased down and killed via drone , reminiscent off the 4 boys playing soccer on the beach. Zionists I saw with a finkelstein interview attempted to paint the boys as enemy combatants as they had come out of a building Israel claimed as hamas . No one will defend this latest attack its isn’t possible. I dont need to post the video as it’s everywhere as the latest outrage. Just another sad war crime to add to overflowing list.

Posted by: Hankster | Mar 21 2024 23:25 utc | 118

There’s was a family were we lived simply refused to have a TV in the house
Echo Chamber | Mar 21 2024 17:58 utc | 82

There’s (sic) was (sic) a family were (sic) we lived simply refused to have a TV in the house.
Aaannndd this prat lectures us on financial matters !

Posted by: Sarlat La Canède | Mar 21 2024 23:41 utc | 120

I don’t read the Times because I believe it. I read it because it is important to understand how American’s world view is being shaped. I also attempt to bring some reality to the comments section. Many of my comments are censored. On numerous occasions I have pointed out that in the run up to the Russian SMO, OSCE monitors reported that Ukraine was dropping two thousand shells a day on Donetsk. I also point out that Petrov Poroshenko, Angela Merkle and Emmanuel Macron have each publicly acknowledged that when Ukraine signed the Minsk accords, it had no intention of carrying its’ terms. All three have acknowledged that Minsk was only intended to buy time until Ukraine’s military was strong enough to act. Minsk was a fraud perpetrated against Russia and the world community. Had Ukraine acted in good faith after signing the Minsk agreements, the conflict would not have taken place. These are facts that the American public is not permitted to know.

Posted by: David | Mar 22 2024 2:17 utc | 122

Giving the New York Times to a human is like giving chocolate to a dog.

Posted by: Matthew | Mar 22 2024 3:13 utc | 124

Thanks, Giyane. I’m teaching that period at the moment. I go for Andrew Marvell’s “The Last Instructions to a Painter”:
Horse-leeches circling at the haem’rroid vein;
They suck the King, he them, they him again . . .
Pretty good portrait of US politics, except instead of the King you’d have to say the oligarchy.

Posted by: MFB | Mar 22 2024 5:43 utc | 126

Basil Fawlty (close enough) spends several years training with hezbollah to get caught at Texas border and tell the first usa officer he see he came to build a bomb and blow up Americans.
Comedy mossad that John Cleese is busy writing the episode
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/man-claiming-hezbollah-bomb-maker-stopped-texas-border-new-york-rcna143879&ved=2ahUKEwjZ6t-FnoeFAxVvkVYBHUONAT0QFnoECBcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw21eKc27JgzN1CxKa9-VpvE

Posted by: Hankster | Mar 22 2024 6:25 utc | 128

The Grey Lady is assumed to give an air of respectability among the petit bourgeoisie (currently known as the “professional managerial class”). It is talismanic, an apotropaic object that abjures facts, people, and narratives that threatens a fall from grace of their current class status. They will gladly pay regularly and devote much time to it and other markers of loyalty to the status quo, such as staring at CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC, etc. and believe such conditioning informative.
Like those who hold the Bible as they castigate others, but have never really read it (let alone understood it, its contexts, metaphor, allegories, symbolism, or its multiple authorial voices), yet will gladly hold it protectively as they regurgitate received learning in debate against evil-wrong-think… so too is the NYT a talisman to the willfully ignorant aspiring middle class as they regurgitate their rote conditioning to stay among the blessed materialist elect.
The threat of poverty is a scourge to whip the slaves into loving their master. In time the conditioning teaches the craven to love the whip and its whipping post, and welcome the order it brings to their world. You must repeat the lesson regularly, almost ritualistically, so as to be assured you are on the right side of history for selling away your dignity.
/cheep cheep!
/flies away

Posted by: titmouse | Mar 22 2024 8:11 utc | 130

Posted by: snake | Mar 22 2024 5:56 utc | 125
Amen to that brother.
Why I spend most of my time trying to expose those facts. Alas, GROUPTHINK is very strong within the BORG.

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Mar 22 2024 8:55 utc | 132

Not much has changed since the time of Hosni Mubarak who became President of Egypt in 1981 (after Anwar Sadat’s assassination), declared a state of emergency and kept renewing that declaration every two or three years until his resignation in 2011. Subsequent governments in Cairo have revived the state of emergency again and again since then.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Mar 21 2024 22:04 utc | 114
Egypt is a critical cog in the Israel-enabling machinery, even more so now since it has the only overland link to Gaza. There have been reports of the Sisi run martial-state (which has hotels with unpretentious names such as “The Armed Forces Hotel” near major resorts, even Kim Jung Un would blush) receiving an IMF bail out in lieu for opening Sinai to Palestinians when Israel finally does go through with its plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
The murmurs of ceasefire notwithstanding, that is what the situation seems to be evolving towards — the displacement of Gazans into Sinai, or perhaps their continued, sustained persecution in some manner or the other.
This presents with a rather interesting scenario as the Sinai is already rife with rebels who are definitely no friends of Zionists or Sisi. The Palestinians’ displacement would add new blood to their movement, and with Saudi Arabia’s NEOM and Jordan close by, each with natives who have their own particular set of unresolved grievances, the situation could develop into a wider conflagration that even Israel and its “rules based order” espousing enablers might find difficult, if not impossible to put down.

Posted by: Tranquilo | Mar 22 2024 9:59 utc | 134

Hankster @ comment 126 — cleaned-up Link
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/man-claiming-hezbollah-bomb-maker-stopped-texas-border-new-york-rcna143879

Posted by: gordonrussell | Mar 22 2024 10:55 utc | 136

“Re my post @8
Interview with congressman James Traficant in 2009. It’s short go watch it.
‘We’re controlling the expansionist policy of I****l, and everybody’s afraid to say it ..’
https://t.me/European_dissident/50104
ZioFascists own and control the media.
Rep/Dem , Indy/Green don’t matter what you think you support – you are complicit and guilty of genocide.
Not just in Gaza but everywhere that you have supported military actions by every dumb fuck since Nixon – who was probably the last honest man after ‘John’ got shot.
It’s probably why Tricky Dicky started recording his conversations without anyone knowing. And that’s probably why they had to threaten him with impeachment instead of shooting him too! Because he had them all on tape – especially when he told Kissinger to keep the ziobastards away from his Administration.
That’s when they got DeepThroat (FBI), CIA mockingbirds and the Grey Lady to put the knife into him through the setup watergate breakin and arrest – the Mossad crew Libby and co.
That’s the NYT and it’s dumbdumbs and any idiot who still believe their eyes as the sickozionazi ‘soldiers’ own selfies showing not just ‘war crimes’ – they are not in a war – but crimes against humanity. Just like every single potus has been committing since the 80’s. The worst being Clintons/Bush’s/Obamas and this current turd.”
Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 21 2024 12:57 utc | 23
Great post-I agree that Nixon was the last honest Prez despite his reputation as fashioned by WAPO and the Grey Lady..

Posted by: canuck | Mar 22 2024 11:22 utc | 138

There’s was a family were we lived simply refused to have a TV in the house
“Echo Chamberpot | Mar 21 2024 17:58 utc | 82
There’s (sic) was (sic) a family were (sic) we lived simply refused to have a TV in the house.
Aaannndd this prat lectures us on financial matters !”
Posted by: Sarlat La Canède | Mar 21 2024 23:41 utc | 118
‘Lecture’- is not the word I would use to describe Chamberpot’s posts, as it assumes the speaker is a teacher, a professor or some kind of expert- Chamberpot is none of those.
“Harangue” comes to mind as the word to describe Chamberpot’s ranting posts.

Posted by: canuck | Mar 22 2024 11:43 utc | 140

Shielding the Nation Starving Gaza
March 20, 2024
The editors of The New York Times know exactly what they’re doing when they cover Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians as though it’s a weather report, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/20/shielding-the-nation-starving-gaza/
…………………..
Forgive if already posted. And this key concluding section from Patrick Lawrence earlier piece also in Consortium News:

As to Israel, I am with Primo Levi as Mishra quotes him. “The Jewish state” had already proven a mistake when he made his much-disputed remark in 1985.
The truth of it has since been demonstrated a hundred times over. Israel has proven a failed experiment, incapable of conducting itself as a legitimate nation-state.
But whose mistake is Israel? It was the West, Britain in the lead, that created Israel by caving to the Zionists at the expense of indigenous Palestinians. This is the reality of power that should weigh most heavily on our shoulders. Israel ‘R’ us.
Britain’s abandonment of the 1920 Mandate brings us to one of the deeper characteristics of our time, our postwar edifice. This is the ever more complete disregard of those in power for the principles, standards and broadly accepted ethics that give form and coherence to a stable civilization and keep its public space clean and well lit.
In our crumbling edifice, everything is done according to its value as an expedient to a desired outcome. This, too, is a kind of depravity. And it is this depravity that produces the depravity we watch as we watch Israel’s effort to destroy an entire people.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/20/patrick-lawrence-authorized-atrocities/
“everything is done according to its value as an expedient to a desired outcome…”
This is key. Once we sacrifice values on the altar of desired outcomes we have lost the way as Western Civilization has assuredly done.
Somebody last century said of the West that ‘we are all Jews now’. This is profoundly accurate. It does not mean we share the ethno-religious identity or narrative-based grievance and victimhood derived from the HolyCause. Rather the transactional, atheistic, materialist modern mindset which values progress in terms of external measurable results not ethical fundamentals. This mentality, of which one could argue the Jews themselves are victims as much as anyone else, has not coincidentally been driving our modern world along with the rise of Western influence. (A materialist Faustian bargain indeed.) It accommodates depravity, genocide’, superstition, darkness, systematic mendacity and ultimately the compulsion to take elements fundamentally good and twist them into a perverse opposite in nature and spirit.
The value of hard work after years of learning skills in craftsmanship is sacrificed to debased mechanical imitations pushed by commercial bodies; bread, a nourishing staple for millennia is chemically altered from microbes in soil, to genetic information, to varietals (dwarfing to facilitate combine harvesters), glyphosated to prevent mold and natural fermentation which triggers sprouting making the grain both nourishing and digestible, mechanically mixed to reduce fermentation from twelve hours, which naturally elasticizes the gluten whilst making the dough nutritionally dense from the microbe populations, to ten minutes (time is money after all!) then risen without such’sourdough’ multi-microbial fermentation using single strain yeast which does not treat the flour only produces gas to make it rise, not to mention using ultra-refined white flour with additives sometimes months old.
In short(!) that which was healthy has become literally cancerous as the transactional, materialist, value free commercial notions of results-based profit have replaced old monarchies, feudal hierarchies and Church as ruling parts of a societal whole (why working class are often the most patriotic). There were issues, yes, but the replacement by this Jewish-materialist rule by mistaken mindset has proven far worse IMHO.
We are indeed all Jews now, victims not of an hyperbolized atrocity narrative used in show trials run by the victors to cover up their own atrocious war crimes, but of an ‘ends justifies the means’ materialist lowering of values across the board in all classes, or strata, of Western society.
Of course there are pockets of resistance in small and large ways, but the overall thrust is satanic, by which I mean the primacy of matter over spirit, the root downfall making Jews of us all, and again Jews themselves are as much victims of this fell wrong path as each of us, including many orientals and others world wide.
Ultimately, this is a global spiritual battle fought within each individual human heart, a place materialists insist has no existence or measurable relevance. How deeply, deeply wrong they/we are.
Meanwhile, as much as we might wish it otherwise, by furthering this modernist mindset, we are all complicit in what is happening each and every day in Gaza.
[Apologies for length; cannot easily edit whilst using cell phone]

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 22 2024 12:48 utc | 142

Who would pay to read the NYT? Well, I do. Not because I expect to find much in the way of facts, but because the choice of subjects, placement on the page, headline, and text all tell me something about how the US power structure wants the world to be viewed.
I used to read the Times for its news coverage, but that was a long time ago. Now I see it as the semi-official propaganda outlet of the corporate-industrial-political-military-information complex. You have to read between the lines, of course, to get any useful information out of it.
In the case of Gaza, the message I take away from the NYT is: “The US is trying very, very hard to alleviate the famine! But it’s all so complicated! And the trucks can’t get into Gaza! But we really, really care about the Palestinians!”
That’s all a pack of smooth lies, of course. But it helps distract the good-hearted readers from the utter brutality of what we are being forced to watch: the intentional starvation of some 2 million men, women, and children in a walled ghetto the size of Philadelphia. And the sadistic depravity of the Israelis who are carrying out this mass murder, and the criminal complicity of our own government.

Posted by: Clever Dog | Mar 22 2024 13:21 utc | 144

Jane 142
Re “Which they did, violently and without compunction or compassion.”
Further:
“The starting gun was the announcement by the British that they would be departing Palestine, in I think May 1947. It was all over in about a year. While still in-country British troops basically stood around and watched.”

Posted by: Jane | Mar 22 2024 13:44 utc | 146

“New York Times Readers Are The Least Informed Ones”
With apologies to B, I think the headliner ought to read ‘New York Times Readers Are The Most Misinformed’ The NYT is not a news org. It is a government sponsored mouthpiece. Nothing more, nothing less. Certainly not news, however.

Posted by: rgl | Mar 22 2024 15:03 utc | 148

DunGroanin | Mar 21 2024 12:57 utc | 23
But “Are you anti-Semitic?”
First words outta her mouth. What an old and tired playbook. It’s all they got.

Posted by: Share | Mar 22 2024 15:32 utc | 150

Makes me think of the totalitarians that demanded payment from the wife for the bullet
used to execute her husband.
Posted by: librul | Mar 21 2024 12:22 utc | 18
Like the Palestinians being forced to pay thousands for expenses relating to their homes being bulldozed?

Posted by: cc | Mar 22 2024 15:54 utc | 152

Yeah, right
Dont forget that some Hamas guys might turn against the Egyptian army by solidarity with their jailed MB.
These guys are so bright i expect anything from them.
Egypt, like most of the globe, is and has been on the verge of starvation since before Oct. 7th because Russian boats are not allowed to carry as much food as before for a cheap price.

Posted by: Minaa | Mar 24 2024 11:29 utc | 154

Now even David Cameron, foreign minister of the UK, admits that Israel is limiting aid arbitrarily and lying about access for aid.
Essentially that they are creating famine which means genocide:
https://youtu.be/6KW2xqDO7_g?si=n-BWTZWjSCw_V1_I

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Mar 24 2024 16:39 utc | 156