“AIPAC and their Republican mega-donors are targeting Black and brown Democratic incumbents with the same right-wing playbook across the country,” warned Rep. Cori Bush.
Source: AIPAC’s Dark Money Arm Unleashes $100 Million Blitz on Progressives
Military might alone is hardly enough for any country to acquire and sustain its legitimacy. Neither does economic influence or clever diplomacy. For legitimacy to be maintained, it requires much more than this, starting with the very basic premise that the spirit of international law was not meant to prolong war, but to end it.
Source: To Defend Israel’s Actions, the US is Destroying the Int’l Legal System it once Constructed
Murdoch Media’s persistent references to supposed “leftist media” in Australia is a strategy employed to convince its audience that it is the only source of “truth”, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
BREAKING NEWS: Independent Australia joins forces with MFW to help adopt a #MurdochFreeWorld.
MFW has been fighting the good fight for many years. A fight against the malign journalism, practices and policies of Australia’s dominant media network, News Corp.
Source: MFW and IA vs Murdoch mafia
The was also a concerted campaign by a conservative activist group Advance, who according to Crikey, introduced a ‘new, nastier brand of politics’ in an attempt to win the Dunkley by-election for the opposition.
Source: The biggest loser – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Qantas appears to be jacking up the price of fares to pay for a time-limited promotion. That is illegal under the Consumer & Competition Act.
Source: Qantas gets customers to pay surcharge during promo. What’s the scam? – Michael West
Israel’s Minister For National Security demands All Aid to Gaza be cut. Ex- Terrorists have always advocated politics before Religion. He’s a Zionist and a Jew. However, all Jews around for 3000yrs aren’t Zionists around for less than 200yrs and the two shouldn’t be conflated. Zionists wish to change Judaism into an idolatrous cult. If you’re anti-Zionist you’re not antisemitic the two aren’t equivalent.
To feed children, treat the wounded, and save innocent lives, the U.S. must restore UNRWA’s funding.
Zionists Celebrate Jews don’t
The United Nations Children’s Fund said at least 10 kids in a northern Gaza hospital have died of malnutrition and dehydration—and many more are “fighting for their lives.”
The collapsing of the two categories, Judaism and Zionism to become synonymous seems to me to be a very dangerous, even foolish thing to do. Yet, to my amazement it seems many Jews are doing precisely that. It would be fair to say that such is representative of the deeply conservative Jewish establishment in Australia.
Zionism and Judaism are they claim, one and the same, with an attack, even a critical response to the former, meaning that one necessarily opposes, indeed even despises the latter. The charge of antisemitism is then hurled, usually with great vehemence.
World Peace Foundation executive director Alex de Waal explained the starvation inflicted on the Palestinians is uniquely horrific in recent history. “Nothing is comparable in terms of the speed and the concentrated effort at destroying what is essential to sustain the life of people – nothing compares to Gaza over the last 75 years. The speed of deterioration of humanitarian conditions is absolutely terrifying,” he said.
Source: US Vetoes UN Resolution Condemning Israel for Flour Massacre – ScheerPost
Modern Israel has existed for 860 months, yet the past 5 will define its culture, its values, and the very basis of its religious inspiration before the bar of history for generations to come.
Either way, without a “change of heart” in the most Biblical sense of the phrase, Israel will remain an armed fortress, a failed pariah state, and a liability to Western civilisation.
Source: Horror in Gaza and the shallowness of Western civilisation – Pearls and Irritations
Israel spends and invests hundreds of millions of $$ in the Media and influences Western narrative as if they have something to hide. The Video “The Lobby” in the USA was banned all at the hands of the Israeli government to hide their clandestine activities. Today they are Elon Musks best clients on X
The Israeli government covertly meddled into American Jewish politics from the 1950s to 1970s, and they did so to quash Jewish criticisms of the 1948 Nakba — the mass dispossession and expulsions of Palestinians during Israel’s founding — and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Israeli diplomats who oversaw the furtive campaign were at one point assisted by Wolf Blitzer — today the host of CNN’s primetime show “The Situation Room.”
Source: How Israel Crushed Early American Jewish Dissent on Palestine
Some conspiracy theories are more than enlightening
Blitzer edited two magazines run by AIPAC’s founder that took hard-line pro-Israel stances like supporting Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
One of the jobs, during the 1970s, was as Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, an independent newspaper in Israel. The other was editing publications that were joined at the hip with AIPAC. The Israeli government reportedly used Blitzer’s two hats to launch a stealth attack on Breira, an American Jewish group that had recently gained fame for criticizing Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians; Breira folded soon after. One historian has linked its demise to AIPAC’s subsequent pressure to quash critical American discussion about Israeli policy. Blitzer’s dual roles suggest that he helped to stifle the conversation.
Source: Wolf Blitzer Worked for Two Outlets Run by AIPAC Founder
IT HAS BEEN a good few weeks for decency, decorum and democracy. Voters in Dunkley gave the Albanese Government a solid vote of confidence in Saturday’s by-election.
Source: Labor rebuilding Australia’s international integrity decimated by the Coalition
The Australian government remains silent, continues to call Israel “our friend”, and rewards Israel’s war machine in a new contract with the Israeli arms firm Elbit. The Federal Government sends more troops to the Middle East while starving Palestinians in northern Gaza are massacred as they desperately seek food for their families, babies in Gaza are dying of starvation and dehydration and the IDF sexually abuses and rapes Palestinian women prisoners.
Source: Palestinians in Gaza massacred, starved and raped – Pearls and Irritations
There is growing international pressure for an investigation into the massacre by Israeli forces of at least 112 Palestinians killed in an open area of Gaza City while waiting among thousands for food and other humanitarian aid on Thursday. More than 750 people wounded, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health on Thursday.
Source: International Pressure To Investigate Israeli Massacre Grows – ScheerPost
As over 100 Palestinians are killed by Israeli forces while gathering for food aid in Gaza City, we speak to Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who in November became the second of only five U.S. senators to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. In January, he traveled to the Rafah border crossing in Egypt to witness the system of humanitarian aid deliveries, which he described on the Senate floor as a “complicated, bizarre inspection process.” Merkley is now calling for the U.S. to bypass Israel in order to directly send aid to Gaza. Because of the United States’ relationship to Israel — “more closely tied than any situation in the world” — Merkley says, “It’s the United States that has leverage to address this situation, and the world expects us to take the lead.”
Opposition to U.S. support for the Israeli government has reached an unprecedented level. While neither the Biden Administration nor the leadership of either party on Capitol Hill appear to be listening at this point, the majority of Americans now clearly want a change in U.S. policy. If U.S. policy was simply the fault of a powerful lobby, it would be easier to change. Unfortunately, it is far more complicated than that, and understanding the dynamics of U.S. policy is critically important if we are going to change it.
We speak with Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim of The Intercept about their exposé of a major New York Times piece into alleged mass rapes committed by Hamas militants on October 7 that raises serious questions about the accuracy of the story. The Times article was headlined “’Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” and its release in late December helped the Israeli government to justify the ongoing war on Gaza and to paint pro-Palestine supporters abroad as not caring about sexual violence. One of the reporters of the Times piece, Israeli freelancer Anat Schwartz, is being investigated by the Times for her social media activity, which included dehumanizing language and endorsements of violence against Palestinians in Gaza. ”The New York Times has grave, grave mischaracterizations, sins of omission, reliance on people who have no forensic or criminology credentials to be asserting that there was a systematic rape campaign put in place here,” says Scahill, who criticizes the newspaper for not issuing any corrections for their flawed reporting. We also hear from Ryan Grim about how the flawed Times article touched off “extremely intense debate” inside the newsroom. “They’re used to external criticism, but the amount of internal criticism they’re getting has them on the back foot,” he says.
“He questioned not only our election victory, but more significantly, the right of the British people to peacefully protest against a slaughter in Gaza. … He deliberately tried to conflate protests and demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people, most of them not Muslims by the way, — he tried to make it a Muslim thing, but it isn’t a Muslim thing, … hundreds of thousands of people … demonstrating their revulsion at the slaughter in Gaza and the support for it from the British government, the British Labour opposition and the vast majority of the British media. Hundreds of thousands have marched, but millions share their revulsion.”
Fuck Voting
Then, regardless of how many votes Biden won by, electoral or popular, the House simply refuses to certify the electoral college votes of enough states that the minimum of 270 isn’t reached. Under the 12th Amendment, like with the election of 1876, that throws the election to the House, where each state has one vote.
While a majority of Americans live in a state run by Democrats, a majority of the states themselves are run by Republicans. Each state gets one vote for president in the House, and right now 26 state delegations are GOP-controlled, meaning that a majority of the House would simply vote to put Trump back into the White House, 26-23 (Pennsylvania’s delegation is 50/50). All totally legal.
Source: Opinion | MAGA’s Plan to “Legally” Steal the 2024 Election | Common Dreams
Why isn’t Trump in Jail? Anyone else would be by now and ready to be paroled
Despite having been indicted four times in three separate jurisdictions, prosecutors are still having immense difficulty in actually holding former President Donald Trump accountable for his alleged crimes. One former federal prosecutor said that’s no accident based on his firsthand knowledge with the justice system.
Rather than rising to the moment, our courts seem to be succumbing to the uncertainty of it all, delaying justice again and again rather than demonstrating the power of our judicial system to operate responsibly. In the current context, should such failure continue, justice delayed could all too easily become democracy denied.
Source: Trump Justice Delayed Is Democracy Denied | The Smirking Chimp
Forget Wong’s wobbliness, the persuasive pull of the Genocide Convention, and Canberra’s concerns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Cash, contracts and jobs drawn from the military industrial complex continue to sneak through the guards.
But yesterday’s announcement by Meta (Facebook’s parent company) that it will stop paying for Australian news content poses a different kind of threat to media freedom.
Source: How will Meta’s refusal to pay for news affect Australian journalism – and our democracy?
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on the Great Flour Massacre committed by the Israeli army on Black Thursday, February 29, 2024 in the south of Occupied Gaza City at Dawar al-Nabulsi, Rasheed Street. OCHA says that the Gaza Ministry of Health ‘reported that 104 Palestinians have been killed and 760 were injured in the early morning hours of 29 February on Al Rashid Road southwest of Gaza city, warning that the actual death toll is likely to be higher as medical teams are struggling to handle the situation with limited
Source: Black Thursday: Israel’s Great Flour Massacre in Gaza kills over 100 Civilians, wounds Hundreds
The very denial by Israel saying it wasn’t us to each and every incident in this war is a denial that there even is a war going on. Israel’s whole propaganda campaign has been to treat every event as a single issue and decontextualize the very reason there is a war in the first place. They don’t want the History of Israel and its existence at the cost of Palestinians brought into relief.
It’s a criminal offense for teachers in Israel to stray off the official line at any level in an Israeli’s education. This event will be sold as “Hamas and the UNRWA did this we only shot in the air to disperse the trucks and they prevented COGAT from doing the generous job they have always done”
Continuing the relentless assault on civilians in Gaza, Israeli troops killed more than 100 starving Palestinians waiting for flour from aid trucks yesterday. Emboldened by US complicity, Israel persists in acting with impunity in Gaza.
Source: Israel’s Flour Massacre in Gaza Is a Horrific War Crime
Over 100 Israelis stormed Erez Crossing at the northern tip of Gaza yesterday afternoon in the most significant attempt to re-establish Jewish settlements in the Strip since the war began. A small number managed to cross several hundred meters into Gaza before being intercepted by Israeli soldiers, while around 20 others entered the area between the two walls comprising the barrier that encages the Strip. There, they established an “outpost” in the style seen commonly in the West Bank, building for several hours without the army or police interfering.
Source: Israeli settlers cross into Gaza, build ‘symbolic’ outpost
the U.S. was alone among the Security Council’s 15 members in opposing the statement, which Algeria put forth during an emergency session called after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd gathered near a convoy of aid trucks in Gaza City.
Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., indicated that the U.S. objected to the statement’s assignment of blame to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). A draft of the statement pointed to reports that “over 100 individuals have lost their lives, with approximately 750 others sustaining injuries due to opening fire by Israeli forces at a large gathering awaiting food aid.”
Source: US Blocks Security Council Statement Condemning IDF Killing of Gazans Seeking Aid
One wonders if this war will continue in time for Israel to ceasefire at Trump’s request?
The only good thing about what’s happening in Gaza is that it’s waking westerners up to the fact that everything they’ve been told about their society, their media and their world is a lie. Cracks are appearing in the illusion, and those of us who care about truth, peace and justice need to help draw attention to them. From there, real change becomes a genuine possibility.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone: How the Imperial Media Report on an Israeli Massacre
Israel will ceasefire on Trump’s request leaving Biden naked and gone
Creating conditions that threaten the survival of all or part of a given population is part of the very definition of genocide under international law. To feed children, treat the wounded, and save innocent lives — and avoid being complicit in genocide — the U.S. must restore UNRWA’s funding and use its leverage to compel an immediate cease-fire in the conflict.
If Israel’s intention had been to demonstrate some good will in averting any insinuation that genocide was taking place, let alone a systematic policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian population, little evidence of it has been shown. If anything, the suspicions voiced by South Africa and other critics aghast at the sheer ferocity of the campaign are starting to seem utter plausible in their horror.
Source: Conscious and Unconscionable: The Starving of Gaza – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Israel gets more WELFARE
The president has prioritized military spending over helping American families cover the rising costs of child care.
Source: Biden Is Bankrolling Israel’s War Amid Growing Financial Hardship at Home
Amanpour expressed “real distress” over Israel stories being changed, while other staffers described a climate that is hostile to Arab journalists
Source: Amanpour Confronts CNN Brass About “Double Standards” on Israel Coverage
Victories
It is tough to measure the effect of BDS on company ledgers or Israel’s economy: the movement is largely decentralised, with activities happening locally and nationally run by different groups and individuals.
But companies are cutting ties with Israel – most recently the German sportswear brand Puma, a BDS target since 2018, which announced in December that it would not renew its contract with the Israel Football Association (IFA).
Source: Britain Wants to Ban Boycotts of Israel. Does That Mean They’re Working? – ScheerPost
A botched system upgrade has created a backlog of parliamentary expense claims that won’t be made public until later this year, writes Belinda Jones.
Source: Transparency in limbo as MP expense data held from public
In recent years, we have witnessed three individual politicians who have used the techniques of the authoritarian leader, fear, negativity, misinformation and lies. I refer to Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and the now opposition leader Peter Dutton. All have used the methods of an authoritarian ruler.
There will be no election in Israel only a forever war
When governments clearly fail to uphold international law, and instead selectively invoke it when it suits their interests, how should concerned citizens respond? We should not despair. Instead, these governments should be publicly exposed, vociferously challenged and voted out, for the sake of a better world, including a “rules-based international order,” where the rules apply to all.
Source: Lessons on genocide from Xinjiang and Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
The fact that the New York Times assigned its investigation of October 7 sexual assault claims to Anat Schwartz, a non-journalist with anti-Palestinian beliefs and ties to the Israeli military, is an extreme reflection of the paper’s unflagging pro-Israel bias.
Beneath these surface layers of anti-Palestinian bias, though, there may be a deeper and simpler issue. As Noam Chomsky and his late coauthor Edward Herman argued in Manufacturing Consent, one of the defining biases of mainstream media in general — of which the New York Times was emblematic long before the beginning of these dramatic recent conflicts of interest — has been a deep deference to and ideological affinity with the US national security state.
That was true of how they covered the Vietnam War when Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon were carpet-bombing that country to crush a peasant revolution. That was true of the Iraq War when the Times uncritically published the George W. Bush administration’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction.” We should not be surprised to discover that it’s true about Gaza, where the mass slaughter and displacement of civilians is being carried out with American funds and American weapons.
Source: The New York Times Has an Ugly Anti-Palestinian Bias
There are two criminal organizations involved in Oct 7th, The Militant arm of Hamas and the current Israeli Government. No resolution is possible until both are removed
In Palestine, however, the era of collective punishment endures. For decades, Israel has demolished the homes of Palestinians accused of terrorism, even before any judicial conviction, leaving their families homeless for the sole purpose of vengeance, humiliation and intimidation. This also affects residents of East Jerusalem, who can lose their residency rights because of a relative’s actions. Like many states at war, the IDF also targets neighborhoods, shelling whole buildings to reach a suspect and, since the attacks of 7 October, turning its fire on an entire city: every resident of the Gaza Strip is having to pay for Hamas’s massacres.
Israel and its allies moved heaven and Earth to prevent a legal debate over its military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem from happening. This past week in The Hague, the debate finally took place.
Source: World Court Hearing on Legality of Israeli Occupation Ends Following Week of Testimony – ScheerPost
What we do notice is Israel when cornered by witness to their actions doesn’t respond too quickly but when they have their narrative in place everything else is drowned out. October 7th there’s no mention of the number of Israelis killed. The three hostages they shot have been all forgotten. The journalists killed are never talked about. While Hamas issues official Statements that aren’t a flood of propaganda and tend to be more measured than anything that comes out of Israel. This leads one to believe what’s being said is less based on fact than it is propaganda and Israel Hasbara Batallion. This was a COGAT-supervised operation. Israel Run
Hagari said during the press conference that a private contractor was coordinating the aid distribution, although he did not name the contractor. Vox reached out to the IDF and to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) for more information but did not receive a response by press time.
Source: More than 100 in Gaza killed trying to get aid – Vox
“The heinous crimes carried out by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups since October 7 are the abhorrent legacy of decadeslong impunity for unlawful attacks by all parties and Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians,” the group said. “The international community’s long-standing unwillingness to act to hold perpetrators to account has fueled grave abuses.”
Source: ‘Enough Is Enough’: Former Top Sanders Aide Urges Israel Arms Embargo
My life in northern Gaza since October 7 has been one unending nightmare. Fear, anxiety, hunger, thirst, and cold have become my daily companions. I am unable to comprehend the gravity of our situation, nor come to terms with the losses. Our lives here cannot be understood or explained in any rational way.
olddogthoughts 
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