2023: The Year Humanity Died – ScheerPost

Gaza may be annihilated, but it’s not going anywhere. When the dust of war settles, it will sit on our global conscience for generations to come. It will be a permanent stain on our humanity. The children of Gaza will not forget, if they survive. The living will remember, and the dead will haunt us forever. Gaza will be remembered not only as the crime of the century, but also as the site of our greatest shame, where humanity failed.

2023 will go down in history as the darkest in Palestine––the year humanity died.

Source: 2023: The Year Humanity Died – ScheerPost

Christmas Eve in Gaza

How Much of My U.S. Taxes in 2023 Went to Israel’s Gaza War

ARLINGTON, VA, UNITED STATES - 2023/12/09: Parents with their kids holding a sign with Our tax dollar are killing kids like me written on it as they join in a demonstration. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather at Pentagon City Metro in Arlington and then march to the City with Palestinian flags and banners, calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)

We might not like it, but as Americans, we all pay into Israel’s war on Gaza. How much did you give?

Source: How Much of My U.S. Taxes in 2023 Went to Israel’s Gaza War

Private Equity are Dishonest

Why Can Only the Rich and Powerful Go Bankrupt? | The Smirking Chimp

The real question is whose interests those lawmakers are pursuing. Are they working for the vast majority of Americans, or are they beholden to those at the top? The recent history of bankruptcy — right up to Rudy Giuliani’s use of it last week — provides a clear answer.

Source: Why Can Only the Rich and Powerful Go Bankrupt? | The Smirking Chimp

Old Dog Thought- What are Israeli kids fed at school to become ultra- right-wing theocratic nationalists? It’s neither Science or History that’s for sure

Fighting Fake News with REAL, 29/12/23, Truth In Humor, LNP Social Welfare, Prayer and the Problem, Idiot Savant, Dutton is the Difference,

#9 TOP IA STORY OF 2023: ABC complaint over Insiders’ collaboration with Murdoch’s News Corp

Coming in at ninth in our most popular stories of the year is one by former ABC journalist and now star IA columnist Alan Austin – who always features in our top ten – with this incisive December story about his former employer and its growing relationship with the Murdoch media.

Source: #9 TOP IA STORY OF 2023: ABC complaint over Insiders’ collaboration with Murdoch’s News Corp

Murphy Report on gambling reform delayed by sports bet lobby – Michael West

Gambling reform, sports betting

Six months after the late Peta Murphy’s parliamentary committee report on online gambling was released, the Albanese Government is yet to make its response. Freedom of Information documents show why. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has been busy conducting secret consultations with “key stakeholders”. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling unpack the government’s form on gambling reform.

Source: Murphy Report on gambling reform delayed by sports bet lobby – Michael West

Number 4 for 2023: A farce only a monster could love – » The Australian Independent Media Network

‘No’ voters have not only denied First Peoples a means to improve their systemically disadvantaged lives they have also endorsed Dutton’s Trumpification of Oz politics where truth, integrity and fidelity are entirely dispensable.

Source: Number 4 for 2023: A farce only a monster could love – » The Australian Independent Media Network

A Growing Butcher’s Bill: Israel’s War Spending – » The Australian Independent Media Network

A “temporary security zone on the perimeter of Gaza and an inspection mechanism on the border between Gaza and Egypt” will be established in accordance with “Israel’s security needs”. The zone will also serve to prevent “smuggling of weapons into the territory”, which sounds much like the original blockade, lasting 14 years, that was meant to achieve the same purpose.

The Israeli PM is, however, promising that the destruction of Hamas will take place “in full compliance with international law”, begging the question what sort of international law he is consulting. Given various official statements from Netanyahu’s cabinet and the Israeli Defence Forces, it must be either a law of jungle provenance or one applicable to animal kind. That same standard of legal analysis has permitted the generously expansive massacre of over 20,000 Palestinians, a staggering number of them children, the ongoing flattening of Gaza, and the utter destruction of critical infrastructure.

Given that Israeli law, alongside military and administrative policy, does nothing other than encourage the radicalisation of Palestinians and the fertilising of the Jihadist soil, this is charmingly delusionary.The current war will simply prove to be the same as previous ones, protean, adjustable, and shape changing. Conflict will simply continue by other means, a continued growth of flowering hatreds, leaving Israel a butcher’s bill of shekels and casualties it is only now chewing over.

 

Source: A Growing Butcher’s Bill: Israel’s War Spending – » The Australian Independent Media Network

SAM HARRIS: SAVANT IDIOT

SAM HARRIS: SAVANT IDIOT

Two Jews one who’s fanatically irrational literally voicing the same doctrines  Nazis once espoused of Jews on Palestinians.  The other is intellectually quite the opposite and provides substance to the fact why Jews are historically regarded as the most educated rational well-read people on the planet. Israelis and their ultra-right-wing supporters are not included in this cohort.

But Mr. Harris doesn’t just extenuate the genocide. He implicitly endows it with a positive content. Every Muslim—including every Muslim child—he enlightens listeners, is an actual or potential suicide bomber imperiling Western civilization. Isn’t it only a flea’s hop to infer that Israel is doing the (secular) Lord’s work in Gaza as it wages a civilizational war against “deranged” Muslim culture and even if one million children—pardon me: children who have been “rigged to explode”—might die? Mr. Harris somehow construes that it takes enormous moral courage to expose this Muslim peril on Piers Morgan’s program. Indeed, it takes as much courage as the German professor in the midst of the Nazi holocaust who sounded the alarm that “parasitic” Jewish culture was imperiling Aryan civilization.

Mr Harris proclaims that “This is the issue: we are dealing with a suicidal death cult.” I’m afraid, however, that the real issue is this: We are dealing with a Ziontology murder cult; and Mr. Harris is one of its gurus.

Source: SAM HARRIS: SAVANT IDIOT

Watchdog Submits Evidence of Israeli Executions of Gaza Civilians to UN, ICC – ScheerPost

Fatima and Ahmed al-Khaldi were killed, and their 4-year-old son Adam (right) was severely wounded, during a December 21, 2023 Israeli raid on their Gaza City home.

Watchdogs= Journalists, UN workers, Medical Professionals Israel managed not to kill

A prominent European human rights group on Monday submitted a report to the International Criminal Court and United Nations special rapporteurs documenting “dozens of cases of field executions carried out by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.”

Source: Watchdog Submits Evidence of Israeli Executions of Gaza Civilians to UN, ICC – ScheerPost

Gloves fall from the blood soaked hands – Pearls and Irritations

Tel Aviv, Israel. 18th Dec, 2023. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, listens to a question during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, following their bilateral meeting, December 18, 2023 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Image:Alamy/ Chad McNeeley/DOD Photo/Alamy Live News

ISIS held Public Executions they were nothing compared to what Israel is currently handing out and calling collateral damage. It’s rabid blindly killing Israelis in its blistering blind revenge. Or does it have another more cold and calculated plan to gain a majority between the river and the sea. Beachside real estate is already on sale online in Gaza. It’s been stepped back and called a joke by embarrassed Israelis

It beggars belief that many strong and wealthy nations let the U.S. and Israel have their way of violence. The US has rampant gun crime, a collapsing social system, homelessness and disillusionment and rife drug epidemics. Israel is a military colonial-settler Occupier with a violent past and present. “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, was Abraham Lincoln’s sage warning. Israel is so divided by racism, history and disputed orthodoxy that it cannot withstand this latest hell hole and still expect to have societal cohesion. There will be the added strain of withstanding anti-Israel (not anti-Semitic) sentiments from the global community.

Are we truly going to let such heartless and internally crumbling nations guide us into the future?

Source: Gloves fall from the blood soaked hands – Pearls and Irritations

Forced transfer, ‘Moral Imperative’ and Colonial Contempt

 

1) Israel created Hamas 2) It broke the peace to mow the grass killing children 3) Constantly blaming the victims of a 17-year blockade. 4) Gaza was turned into a concentration camp. 5) Israel was turned into the 4th most armed nation and the world’s biggest and most active illegal colonizers. 6) While Australia yelled “stop the boats” it also yelled “Go to the Israeli nationally sponsored colonizer invasion”

Netanyahu listed three prerequisites for “peace” and no mention of the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza and under the threat of being killed by the IDF’s bombing. “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.” Of course, Netanyahu requires international complicity and insisted that the international community “should blame Hamas for the massive civilian casualties of the current war”. No, it shouldn’t. Israel is bombing Gaza on the pretext of eliminating Hamas, to sustain a thorough ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people.

Source: Forced transfer, ‘Moral Imperative’ and Colonial Contempt

Opinion | 2023: The Year Humanity Died | Common Dreams

Palestinian man mourns child wrapped in cloth in Gaza on December 19, 2023

A man mourns as he holds the wrapped body of a Palestinian child who was killed overnight by Israeli bombing at a hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 19, 2023.

(Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)

When the dust of the war on Gaza settles, it will sit on our global conscience for generations to come.

Source: Opinion | 2023: The Year Humanity Died | Common Dreams

US Foreign Policy Is a Scam Built on Corruption – Pearls and Irritations

Biden's Two-Year Foreign-Policy Report Card

Biden is a practicing Catholic

It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon. This overhaul should start in 2024 by rejecting any more funding for the disastrous Ukraine War and Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Peacemaking, and diplomacy, not military spending, is the path to a US foreign policy in the public interest.

 US Foreign Policy Is a Scam Built on Corruption – Pearls and Irritations

and

Pope Decries Arms Industry Profits for Pulling ‘Puppet Strings of War’

 

US presidential election: How Donald Trump plans to wield power if he wins back White House

Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Nevada this month.

Switching to Russian Rule

Washington: Since beginning his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump has said the “termination” of the Constitution would have been justified to overturn the 2020 election; told followers, “I am your retribution”; and vowed to use the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries – starting with US President Joe Biden and his family.

Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.

Source: US presidential election: How Donald Trump plans to wield power if he wins back White House

Old Dog Thought- In 1948 they were gifted Israel. Now in 2023 they’re stealing Palestine and Syria. What next Lebanon?

Fighting Fake News with REAL 28/12/23, Every Picture Tells a Story, False Equivalence, Over 100 Journalists Killed, Voluntary Ethnic Cleansing?, Dutton Cancels Xmas,

Education Doesn’t Solve the Pay Gap. Experts Say They’re Not Surprised. – ScheerPost

The gap exists across industries but is bigger in higher-paying fields, leading to more calls for policies that aid women in the workforce.

Source: Education Doesn’t Solve the Pay Gap. Experts Say They’re Not Surprised. – ScheerPost

Major Australian employment service accused of claiming credit for work jobseeker found herself | Unemployment | The Guardian

People are seen outside a Centrelink office

Welfare advocates claim Australia’s unemployment system has rewarded job service providers, even when they have not helped jobseekers.

Source: Major Australian employment service accused of claiming credit for work jobseeker found herself | Unemployment | The Guardian

Beetaloo Madness: protestors, farmers, First Nations unite to fight US gas frackers – Michael West

“A carbon bomb” which can blow out Australia’s emissions by 20%, is how plans to fracking the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin are described by climate activists. As Federal subsidies for Darwin’s petro-port mount, Dominic Geiger tours the north to check out the damage so far and protest at a court case involving American-backed gas fracker Tamboran Resources.

Source: Beetaloo Madness: protestors, farmers, First Nations unite to fight US gas frackers – Michael West

Put up or shut up – » The Australian Independent Media Network

There may be really good arguments for alternatives to renewable energy – but O’Brien hasn’t given us one yet and Rinehart frankly should have pulled her funding if the IPA can’t do far better than the drivel they have presented as ‘research’ on this occasion. It’s time to put up or shut up.

Source: Put up or shut up – » The Australian Independent Media Network

How Young Karl Marx Got Radicalized

There was a time when the majority of Ashkenazi Jews, 80 % of the world’s Jews, leaned towards the Left, Democracy, Peace and Secularism. Not however, in Israel where ultra Right- Zionism flourished and the once moderate Likud Party lost control. Israel’s extreme right-wing even assassinated Yittzak Rabin in 1995 for his want of peace and his signing of the Oslo Accords. “Amir studied law and computer science, as well as Jewish law at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies.[4][5] Amir was strongly opposed to the Oslo Accords. He participated in protest rallies against the accords on campus, was active in organizing weekend bus outings to support Israeli settlers, and helped found an illegal settlement outpost.

He and Dr,Ely David the current wannabe Israel’s propagandist and Dr. Goebbels on “X” seems to have a lot in common Yigal Amir.

Karl Marx started out in a liberal milieu where the primary concern was abolishing religious authoritarianism. In time, he came to believe that abolishing capitalism was necessary for true freedom — and that only the working class could do it.

Source: How Young Karl Marx Got Radicalized

The false equivalence of the colonised and coloniser – Pearls and Irritations

Smoke and flames billow after Israeli forces struck a high-rise tower in Gaza City, October 7, 2023.

Following Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel that caused more than 1,200 fatalities, there was a barrage of injunctions from Western mainstream media, politicians, and pundits insisting that anybody wishing to express an opinion on the events and the ensuing Israeli war crimes and genocide in Gaza, first denounce Hamas before expressing any other view. The failure to explicitly do so or any attempt to put events in their historical context or emphasise the root causes of the conflict were interpreted as condoning Hamas’s actions (that the speaker was a Hamas sympathiser) and conflated with antisemitism.

By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master? — Walter Rodney

Source: The false equivalence of the colonised and coloniser – Pearls and Irritations

Palestine Solidarity Crackdown: Challenges in the US and Europe

Al-Shabaka spoke with Layla Kattermann of the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) and Diala Shamas of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) for further insight on this suppression of mobilization. Together, they detail some of the intimidation tactics and punitive actions taken by governments across North America and Europe and offer concrete advice for how to resist such efforts to stifle Palestine solidarity.

Source: Palestine Solidarity Crackdown: Challenges in the US and Europe

Over 100 Journalists Killed in Less Than Three Months – CounterPunch.org

Ceasefire now. End the occupation. And never forget the people who were killed for giving us a glimpse of the truth.

Source: Over 100 Journalists Killed in Less Than Three Months – CounterPunch.org

Palestinians Say Netanyahu ‘Confessions’ Reveal Truth of ‘Genocidal War’ in Gaza

Benjamin Netanyahu holds a map of the Middle East without Palestine

Israel like Germany should no longer be allowed a voice in their fascist demand to rid Palestinians of their homeland.” Voluntary migration” at the point of a gun is not just an Oxymoron but a crime against humanity. Netanyahu’s rapist lies have been” I’ll put it in a little bit if it hurts I’ll take it out” and ” I’m only defending Israel against Hamas” “All Palestinians even babies are Hamas therefore…..” “From the river to the sea is Jewish”

The Foreign Ministry said that the Israeli prime minister’s push for what he terms “voluntary migration” shows that ethnic cleansing of the besieged enclave is the real goal of the ongoing bombing and ground invasion.

 governments in the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. have rejected any plans to transfer the population of Gaza to another country, according to Middle East Eye. Both Egypt and Jordan have refused to accept large numbers of Gazan refugees, wanting to avoid a repetition of the first Nakba, in which Israel forced more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948.

Netanyahu admits he’s pushing for the expulsion of Gaza’s population under the label “voluntary migration” “Voluntary” as in leave Gaza or die by starvation, airstrikes, diseases, bullets or under an IDF bulldozer! Israel destroyed 2/3 of all buildings in Gaza’s northern half

Source: Palestinians Say Netanyahu ‘Confessions’ Reveal Truth of ‘Genocidal War’ in Gaza

Netanyahu Advocates Ethnically Cleansing Palestinians of Gaza: Believe him the First Time

The extremist, fascist government of Binyamin Netanyahu continues to press its monstrous, illegal and most of all completely implausible plan to push the 2.2 million Palestinians of Gaza out of the Strip into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula or into other Arab countries. Netanyahu also pledged to continue the high-intensity campaign against the people of Gaza.

Netanyahu’s plans to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians of Gaza, which have been echoed by many other Israeli politicians, including cabinet members, aren’t just plans to commit crimes against humanity. They are also highly implausible fantasies. The hard line, fascist government that Netanyahu has cobbled together dreams big, but just isn’t that powerful in the real world, and nor does the Biden administration want to see the Palestinians ethnically cleansed. Though, if it somehow did happen, no doubt Washington would put lipstick on that pig for Israel’s sake, as well.

Source: Netanyahu Advocates Ethnically Cleansing Palestinians of Gaza: Believe him the First Time

Old Dog Thought- Guernica was a civil war. Gaza is an invasion to drive Palestinians out of the concentration camp

Fighting Fake News with REAL, 27/12/23, Jesus was a Palestinian Jew, Guernica to Gaza, News, 250 dead in 24hours, Is there any Palestinian Jews?, Israel locks the UN and any other observers out,

Cricket 2023: Hall of Famer Michael Hussey bats for Usman Khawaja in speaking out on human rights

Usman Khawaja batting at the MCG on Boxing Day.

Usman Khawaja’s former teammate Mike Hussey has strongly endorsed the Australian opening batsman’s humanitarian stance following the International Cricket Council’s latest refusal to let Khawaja share his message about the loss of civilian life in the Israel-Gaza war.

Source: Cricket 2023: Hall of Famer Michael Hussey bats for Usman Khawaja in speaking out on human rights

In First, Britain Likely Generated more Electricity from Wind/Water/Hydro than Fossil Fuels in 2023

By Grant Wilson, University of Birmingham; Joseph Day, University of Birmingham; and Katarina Pegg | – There are many milestones to pass in the transition from a high to low-carbon sustainable energy system. There is the first hour without coal, or oil, or gas generation (or all of them together) and the point when the last coal, oil or gas power plant (or all of them together) are finally retired. Another milestone that feels important is the first year when renewables generate more electricity than fossil fuels. For the past three months we have been tracking the data for Great

Source: In First, Britain Likely Generated more Electricity from Wind/Water/Hydro than Fossil Fuels in 2023

Egypt Floats Plan To End Israel-Hamas War. The Proposal Gets A Cool Reception. | HuffPost Latest News

Word of the proposal came as Israeli airstrikes heavily pounded central and southern Gaza.

Israel and Hamas on Monday gave cool public receptions to an Egyptian proposal to end their bitter war. But the longstanding enemies stopped short of rejecting the plan altogether, raising the possibility of a new round of diplomacy to halt a devastating Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian plan calls for a phased hostage release and the formation of a Palestinian government of experts to administer the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, according to a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat familiar with the proposal.

Source: Egypt Floats Plan To End Israel-Hamas War. The Proposal Gets A Cool Reception. | HuffPost Latest News

Pope and Pastor: “Prince of Peace rejected by the futile Logic of War;” “Christ in the Rubble”

The schism of the Reformation was never healed, but people in the two spiritual traditions can agree on one thing, which is that the hunger, thirst, cold, homelessness, wounds and death stalking the 2.2 million Palestinians of Gaza at the hands of the extreme right wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, aided by President Joe Biden, makes this Christmas different.

Source: Pope and Pastor: “Prince of Peace rejected by the futile Logic of War;” “Christ in the Rubble”

Why does the Christian West ignore Palestinian Christians’ plight? | Opinions | Al Jazeera

Archbishop Alexios of Tiberias visits Saint Porphyrius Orthodox church in Gaza City, which was severely damaged in an Israeli airstrike on Thursday. At least 18 people were killed [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Since October 7, Israel and its allies have tried to put the war in Gaza within the “war on terror” framework, actively comparing Hamas to ISIS. Many who instinctively equate Palestinians with Muslims have indeed fallen for this false narrative.

But the brutal war Israel has waged on Gaza has not targeted “only terrorists” as it has claimed. Instead, it has massacred Palestinian Muslims as well as Palestinian Christians in what legal scholars agree amounts to genocide.

The Christian community in Gaza has lost at least 21 members so far. This may sound like a small number, but given they were only 1,000 before the war, these massacres threaten to eliminate the Christian presence in the strip for the first time in almost 2,000 years. Proportionally speaking, the death rate of Palestinian Christians is double that of the entire Palestinian population in Gaza.

And yet, the leaders of Christian-majority countries in the West have remained shockingly silent on the plight of Palestinian Christians. United States President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, has said and done nothing to protect fellow Catholics in Gaza, who have also been targeted by the Israeli army.

This falls in line with decades of unwavering Western Christian support for the racist Israeli state, which has threatened the Christian presence in the holy lands for decades.

Source: Why does the Christian West ignore Palestinian Christians’ plight? | Opinions | Al Jazeera

Further | They Deem Us Weeds: This Is What It Means To Be Unspeakable | Opinion

A Palestinian man at Gaza's Al-Aqsa Hospital mourns as he holds the body of a relative killed in Israeli airstrikes

Sorry to those weary. But the horror in Gaza churns on, and we can’t look away. Israel’s emblematic killing of three of their own – pleading in Hebrew – is one awful sliver. Add killing 109 members of one extended family, a mother and daughter in a Catholic church, a 12-year-old being treated for an amputated leg; hospitals already a “bloodbath” stormed, bombed, its medical staff detained; hunger, hubris, lies; broken children pulling friends from rubble, and “human cruelties (too) intolerable to utter aloud.”

“There is nowhere for flesh to hide in Gaza; nothing with a pulse is spared,” writes one appalled observer. “Explosions merge into one another, and vibrant lives are burned, mangled and turned into unidentifiable carnage.” In this “war against defenseless civilians” whose death toll now creeps up to 20,000 – now 19,667, 70% women and children – it was perhaps foreseeable Israeli soldiers would eventually kill three captives “mistakenly identified as a threat.” What made it shocking was the revelation that Yotam Haim, Samar Al Talalka and Alon Shamriz, men in their 20s from Kibbutz Kfar Azza and Hura, were deliberately shirtless to show they were unarmed, shouting “Help us”

Source: Further | They Deem Us Weeds: This Is What It Means To Be Unspeakable | Opinion

From Guernica to Gaza – CounterPunch.org

On December 10, 2023, Spain, the only Western nation with the moral fortitude to express its outrage at the Gaza carnage, held a solidarity event in the Basque city of Guernica’s market square, the same square that was bombed by the Nazis and Fascist forces way back in 1937. An aerial view depicts a massive Palestinian flag (the size of the entire square) in mosaic form the tesserae of which were held by citizens, trade unionists, artists, anti-war and anti-fascist groups, along with a large depiction of Picasso’s image depicting the mother, her child in her arms, crying to the high heavens.

And for a whole minute the sirens blazed in solidarity with Gaza’s mothers and children.

Viva Espana. Viva Palestina.

Source: From Guernica to Gaza – CounterPunch.org

Israeli PM vows no let-up in war against Hamas

A Gaza health ministry spokesman says many killed in a strike on Maghazi were women and children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep up the fight against Hamas militants while Palestinians have mourned more than 100 people who Gaza health officials say were killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Source: Israeli PM vows no let-up in war against Hamas

Old Dog Thought- This is a Xmas that will be long remembered for the slaughter of children

May be an image of text that says 'IF WE WERE ANI WISER, WE'D BE ATHEISTS. MET'

Fighting Fake News with REAL, 26/12/23, Every Picture Tells a Story,

The Origins of Christmas

Today’s holiday culture wars continue an ancient struggle, as Nat Parry explores in this adaptation from his book, How Christmas Became Christmas: The Pagan and Christian Origins of the Beloved Holiday.

Source: The Origins of Christmas

Maaate! Sportsbet pulls off the trifecta – duds politicians, punters, and the taxman too – Michael West

Sportsbet, online gambling

“Bet with mates, start a multi-together!” says Sportsbet. Meanwhile, Australia’s biggest bookie has pulled off a multi of its own. Wally the Chartered Accountant and Michael West reveal how Sportsbet and its accountants KPMG have cooked up a souffle of goodwill to take the Tax Office for a lap around the track and funnel the losses of Australian punters to their corporate maaates overseas.

Source: Maaate! Sportsbet pulls off the trifecta – duds politicians, punters, and the taxman too – Michael West

Does Israel do enough to control its arms sales? – Globes

Tank in South Sudan civil war

That brings us to the myriad reports in the global and local media about Israeli weapons finding their way to entities that are “controversial”, to put it mildly. For example, reports about Israeli surveillance technologies being used by the government of South Sudan against its citizens; Israeli weapons used by the government in Myanmar in its violent persecution of the Rohingya minority; and Israeli guns used in the killing of thousands of civilians in the Philippines.

Source: Does Israel do enough to control its arms sales? – Globes

97Journalists Slaughtered in Gaza

Human impact and fighting

  • Thousands of Palestinians were again forced to flee their homes, this time after the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders in the central Gaza Strip. Since a United Nations Security Council resolution was passed on Friday without a clear call for a ceasefire, there has been a surge in aerial bombardments in central Gaza.
  • Israeli air raids killed more than 400 people in Gaza in the past 48 hours. Gaza’s Government Media Office said more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7. The death toll from Hamas’s attack on Israel stands at nearly 1,140, revised from 1,400.
  • At least 101 journalists have been killed since October 7, according to the Government Media Office, which also said more than 50 media offices have been completely or partially destroyed by Israeli attacks. Al Jazeera Arabic’s cameraman Samer Abudaqa was among those killed in Israeli strikes.
  • The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it continues to operate at its medical point in Jabalia, northern Gaza, despite incessant shelling of the area. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also said on X: “As the conflict intensifies and the horror grows, we will continue to do our part. We will not give up.”

No, Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital was not a Hamas Command Center; Biden endorsed an Israeli Lie

A Washington Post investigation found Israel’s evidence “falls short” of showing that Hamas used the facility as a command center.

Source: No, Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital was not a Hamas Command Center; Biden endorsed an Israeli Lie

Israeli Airstrikes Kill 76 Members of One Gaza Family

Gazans mourn victims of an Israeli airstrike

“This war must end,” said the head of the United Nations agency where one of the victims worked. “No more families should endure the pain and suffering that Issam’s family and countless others are experiencing.”

Source: Israeli Airstrikes Kill 76 Members of One Gaza Family

Dozens of Elderly Gazans ‘Executed’ by Israeli Troops: Monitor

An injured elderly Palestinian man is helped after an Israeli airstrike

Euro-Med Monitor said 1,049 elderly men and women have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7.

Source: Dozens of Elderly Gazans ‘Executed’ by Israeli Troops: Monitor

Invoking the Genocide Convention

Old Dog Thought-Xmas from a Kangaroo Court

Fighting Fake News with Real, 25/12/23, Xmas Cards, Robert Scheer, Dutton’s Power saving device, Israel’s Moral Self Destruction, Gaza’s only Guilt,

Scam of the Week

‘It will get ugly’: Nepo babies brace for billionaire inheritance battles

The sordid world of Succession is being played out in real life.

Meanwhile, Swiss bank UBS for the first time found a greater number of new billionaires entered the exclusive club through inheritance rather than grit in 2023, underlining how the wealth transfer is intensifying.

Bitter feuds over inheritance are about to become much more common in the world’s richest families as the greatest wealth transfer in history picks up pace.

Source: ‘It will get ugly’: Nepo babies brace for billionaire inheritance battles

PRESS CONFERENCE: US Judge Allows Lawsuit Against CIA by Assange Visitors to Move Forward