Destruction in Gaza July 27, 2014. Photo by Oxfam / flicker.

Introduction and Old Regime Monarchy

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

In her introduction to this excellent series on the French revolution, Desan starts with a brief overview of what the revolution accomplished (prior to its overthrow by Napoleon’s dictatorship). The largest and most populous European country in 1789, France was also the first country in Europe to demand full equality for all its citizens – leading to rights for Jews and women and freeing of all slaves in French colonies.

The revolution would ultimately lead to 23 years of war. It would enlarge France’s borders and create eight sister republics in Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands

The Last King of France

Louis XVI was the last king of the Capetian Dynasty founded in 987 AD. He loved fishing and locksmithing and believed he was chosen by god to rule France. Immediately following his coronation he dispensed  the “royal touch” to 2400 of his subjects who sought to be cured of scrofula.*

His father Louis XV had discontinued the royal touch in response to Europe’s 18th century Enlightenment, which raised thorny questions about royal power. Louis XV had wanted the monarchy to be a social contract, rather than a divine right, as had Frederick II of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria. The three monarchs, along with Catherine the Great of Russia, were known as “benevolent depots” and practiced “enlightened absolutism.”

Desan describes Louis XVI as “pathologically indecisive.” Revolutionary leaders initially sought to share power with the king, but his youth (he was 21 when he was coronated, only two years before the revolution) and his inexperience would make power sharing impossible.

At age 15, he entered into an arranged marriage with the 14-year-old daughter of the despotic Hapsburg empress Marie-Terese. The French hated the Hapsburgs and despised Marie Antoinette for her frivolity and extravagance.

* Scrofula, a swelling of the neck lymph nodes, was the most common form of tuberculosis found outside lungs. Throughout Europe, the ability to cure it was viewed as proof a king was the legitimate heir to the throne. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738081X22001250

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/149323/149325

[Source: vertassets.blob.core.windows.net]

Lauren Smith

Covert Action Magazine

U.S. school kids, hospital patients, and prison inmates share food poisoning, while food liquidators boast they turn “trash into treasure.”

Operating in the shadows is easy in the United States secondary food market, as few question what happens to food that exceeds its expiration date in leading supermarket chains across the nation. Well, truth be told, expired food gets reprocessed, repackaged, relabeled, and resold to institutions, discount retailers and restaurants.

With scant regulations in place for repurposed food, and institutional purchasing specifications silent, food liquidators underbid their competitors and win contracts nearly every time. In the secondary food market, you get what you pay for, and never has the saying “garbage in, garbage out” been more appropriate.

No matter how much hot sauce or gravy is added as camouflage, spoiled food products are unfit for human consumption and cause foodborne illness. Here, what you don’t know can kill you.

[…]

Considering that food poisoning is an embarrassing indicator that reveals in its gory horror the systemic corruption of what turns out to be an unregulated food market, it is highly probable that there was undercounting back in 2011—especially in institutional settings. And it is more than likely that things are even worse in 2022.

When oversight agency reports are no longer published, it is clearly because industry statistics and agency performance metrics do not look good. Cover-ups at the federal level are routinely done by appointing incompetent or industry-compromised agency heads, and by defunding key reporting departments, and reducing analytic staff positions and field inspectors.

Despite oversight agency neglect, both schools and prisons have been independently studied for foodborne illness outbreaks. While these reports/articles are also outdated, their shallow analysis remains current. The accepted prevailing narrative blames foodborne illness outbreaks on food handlers that failed to follow U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) protocols for cleanliness and neglected to maintain the proper temperatures for food storage and service.

While not to detract from standards set by the USDA, there are no reports that expose the lethal dangers of the secondary food market. Moreover, unlike the primary food market, these repackaging facilities are not inspected, despite their erroneous claims of USDA or FDA certifications.

A media spokesperson for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explained that “the FDA doesn’t oversee meat and poultry, only dairy products.” And that “expiration dates are not regulated, only food safety.”

This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, food that is spoiled, contaminated, or toxic but within its expiration date is unquestionably unfit for human consumption. On the other hand, expiration dates are necessary as packaging, coloring and processing conceal food quality from consumers, as well as purchasing agents and food handlers.

When a food product’s expiration date is concealed by repackaging and relabeling, all food safety bets are off. The reselling of expired food is a black market in broad daylight.

Most individuals interviewed at the BOP for this article were not familiar with the existence of the secondary food market. Interviews included procurement personnel, a dietitian, an attorney, a policy analyst, and two media representatives. Only the National Food Service Administrator (NFSA) understood that, when bid specifications are silent on this fundamental go/no go criterion, food vendors selling fresh primary market products cannot compete fairly against secondary market expired food liquidators.

Undeniably, recycled food has a lower price point than fresh food. Thus, secondary food liquidators can dominate the market by selling inferior products.

[…]

Value and Shelf Life

However, in procurement, value and shelf life need to be decision-making factors, as well as the acquisition cost. For example, if cafeteria meals make school children, hospitalized patients, and prison inmates sick and perishable food products are being thrown out prematurely—because their shelf life was already compromised prior to delivery—the initial cost savings is immaterial.

[…]

Reporting “Problems with Food”

Presently, consumers can report “a problem with food” at “restaurants,” or they can report a rotten “egg,” etc., on the FoodSafety.gov website or on the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) webpage. However, evidence is required, such as the original container or packaging. This information is not readily available in institutional settings as most subsistence meals are devoid of their original packaging. It appears, by design, there is intentionally no place to report unsafe institutional food.

Recommendations are made on the FoodSafety.gov website to contact local health departments to report foodborne illnesses. However, in the case of federal prisons, no oversight authority inspects its kitchens.

[…]

Secondary Food Market

Yes, there are many ways to contract food poisoning in any kitchen by unclean conditions and the food handlers’ failure to observe USDA/FDA protocols, but the probability of illness is increased exponentially when food products are delivered already expired.

[…]

According to the USDA media representatives, the USDA’s FSIS does not inspect secondary food processing facilities. Therefore, repackaging facilities that advertise they have FDA and USDA certifications misrepresent themselves. However, most secondary food market liquidators do not have websites or list principals. This omission allows LLCs to form and dissolve easily when their contractual performance issues become so severe that their principals are debarred from bidding on government contracts.

[…]

Consider that there is no limit to the secondary market’s reselling capabilities. Expired food products travel a conga line until the liquidator finds a buyer so desperate, inept, or corrupt that it will purchase anything. For example, food rejected by restaurants and discount stores can be sold to schools. Food rejected by schools can be sold to hospitals and prisons. Finally, when prisons reject the delivery, it is sold to the military. Consider that every delivery and site inspection affects temperature and deducts time from expired products’ shelf life. Unquestionably, both factors further reduce product safety.

A former sailor stationed aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf during Operation Enduring Freedom reported that a food delivery contained beef stamped with REJECTED DOC (Department of Corrections). Still, the kitchen staff was ordered to cook and serve it because there was “a ship full of sailors and not enough food to last them until the next delivery.”

In prisons, food handlers who complain about serving meals that are not fit for human consumption are disciplined, relocated or fired.

“They had about 100 bags of rotten potatoes,” Pine said. “You could smell them,” and “they had black and green mold all over them.”

“They told me I was trying to start a riot,” Pine said. “I said: ‘No, you’re serving rotten potatoes. That’s going to get to the yard.”

[…]

Corruption in Prison Food Procurement

While most of the articles involving corruption in Miami FDC involve assault, rape and the smuggling of contraband, state-run and privately run facilities describe the mechanics of crime in food procurement. Bid specifications that eliminate primary market competition combined with manuals that allow expired and spoiled food items to be accepted by food handlers and that do not track rejected food create an environment ripe for kickbacks, bribes, and hush money.

However, prosecutions might be more embarrassing for BOP than simple staff dismissals. Moreover, keeping negative information from the public might have a higher value to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)—as its Attorney General is answerable to the president—than preventing and/or prosecuting white-collar criminals.

Consider that the following headline is not good publicity for the facility’s warden: Oregon DOC Food Manager Takes Over $1 Million in Bribes, Feeds Prisoners “Distressed” Food.

According to Prisonlegalnews.org, “between mid-2000 and December 2006, the Food Service Administrator (FSA) ‘supplemented’ his $79,000 annual salary with at least $1,132,000 in bribes and kickbacks from brokers who sold dubious quality food to the ODOC.

Under the FSA’s watch, daily food costs in Oregon’s prison system dropped from $3.95 per prisoner ($1.32 per meal) in 1997 to $2.38 ($0.79 per meal) in 2006—a 40 percent reduction.”

Wardens are evaluated on the cost to shelter inmates, and up-front savings are a more highly valued indicator than foodborne illnesses, which can mostly be swept under the rug or blamed on viruses.

According to the CDC, “Incarcerated people are more likely to have foodborne illness that is related to an outbreak than non-incarcerated people.”

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/12/06/black-market-in-broad-daylight/

Clever Journeys

In the 1960s, the sugar industry paid three Harvard scientists $50,000 to say that heart disease was most likely caused by saturated fat.

The nutritionists paid by the Sugar Research Foundation were Dr. Fredrick Stare, Dr. Robert McGandy and Mark Hegsted. It was Hegsted, deemed by Nestle as “a hero of nutritionists” who went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture.

In 1977, Hegsted helped draft the forerunner to the federal government’s dietary guidelines.

After these three scientists’ reports were published in JAMA, diets concentrating on low fat gained the endorsement of many health authorities.

Basically, the sugar industry used a similar mode of operation playbook the tobacco industry did.

A study of documents and old letters reveal how sophisticated the sugar executives were in swaying public opinion, They closely tracked the research and carefully cherry-picked which influential scientists to approach.

Decades of this misinformation campaign shaped improper nutritional advice and caused the rise of heart disease in America.

When the World Health Organization initially wanted a limit on sugar to no more than 10% of a healthy diet, America threatened to pull out their funding if they didn’t raise it to at least 25%.

In retrospect, it turns out that added sugars might be more of a risk factor for coronary heart disease than saturated fats, according to a 2015 paper published in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases.

The paper suggests that a diet high in added sugars can cause a three-fold increase in the risk of death due to heart disease.

Today, heart disease continues, and it remains the leading cause of death in the United States. About 620,000 people die of heart disease nationwide each year, about one in every four deaths.

Additionally, rates of obesity – which puts people at a higher risk of heart disease – have skyrocketed among both children and adults since the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

When we consider the politics, greed and manipulation that goes into government control and narratives, it makes us wonder about  alternative opportunities that may be available.

[…]

Via https://cleverjourneys.com/2023/12/31/feds-helped-manipulate-health-nutrition-data-for-decades/

Craig McKee

Global Research (first published 2016)

Thanks to the nearly four-decade investigation by human rights lawyer William Pepper, it is now clear once and for all that Martin Luther King was murdered in a conspiracy that was instigated by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and that also involved the U.S. military, the Memphis Police Department, and “Dixie Mafia” crime figures in Memphis, Tennessee. These and many more incredible details of the King assassination are contained in a trilogy of volumes by Pepper culminating with his latest and final book on the subject, The Plot to Kill King. He previously wrote Orders to Kill (1995) and An Act of State (2003).

With virtually no help from the mainstream media and very little from the justice system, Pepper was able to piece together what really happened on April 4, 1968 in Memphis right down to who gave the order and supplied the money, how the patsy was chosen, and who actually pulled the trigger.

Without this information, the truth about King’s assassination would have been buried and lost to history. Witnesses would have died off, taking their secrets with them, and the official lie that King was the victim of a racist lone gunman named James Earl Ray would have remained “fact.”

Instead, we know that Ray took the fall for a murder he did not commit. We know that a member of the Memphis Police Department fired the fatal shot and that two military sniper teams that were part of the 902ndMilitary Intelligence Group were sent to Memphis as back-ups should the primary shooter fail. We have access to the fascinating account of how Pepper came to meet Colonel John Downie, the man in charge of the military part of the plot and Lyndon Johnson’s former Vietnam briefer. We also learn that as part of the operation, photographs were actually taken of the shooting and that Pepper came very close to getting his hands on those photographs.

[…]

And the most stunning revelation in The Plot to Kill King – which some may question because the account is second hand – is that King was still alive when he arrived at St. Joseph’s Hospital and that he was killed by a doctor who was supposed to be trying to save his life.

[…]

The hospital story was told to Pepper by a man named Johnton Shelby, whose mother, Lula Mae Shelby, had been a surgical aide at St. Joseph’s that night. Shelby told Pepper the story of how his mother came home the morning after the shooting (she hadn’t been allowed to go home the night before) and gathered the family together. He remembers her saying to them, “I can’t believe they took his life.”

She described chief of surgery Dr. Breen Bland entering the emergency room with two men in suits. Seeing doctors working on King, Bland commanded, “Stop working on the nigger and let him die! Now, all of you get out of here, right now. Everybody get out.”

Johnton Shelby says his mother described hearing the sound of the three men sucking up saliva into their mouths and then spitting. Lula Mae described to her family that she looked over her shoulder as she was leaving the room and saw that the breathing tube had been removed from King and that Bland was holding a pillow over his head. (The book contains the entire deposition given by Johnton Shelby to Pepper, so readers can judge for themselves whether they think Shelby is credible – as Pepper believes he is.)

In fact, a second invaluable source was Ron Adkins, whose father, Russell Adkins Sr., was a local Dixie Mafia gangster and conspirator in the planning of the assassination even though he died a year before it took place. Ron told Pepper he had overheard Bland, who was his family’s doctor, tell his father that if King did survive the shooting he had to be taken to St. Joseph’s and nowhere else. As Pepper describes it:

He remembers Breen Bland saying to his father, ‘If he’s not killed by the shot, just make sure he gets to St. Joseph Hospital, and we’ll make sure that he doesn’t leave.’

Ron, who was just 16 when the shooting took place, was apparently taken everywhere by his father in those days, and he was able to recount many details of what happened as the assassination was planned and carried out.

“I definitely found him credible,” Pepper says. “I found him troubled, I found him disturbed in a lot of ways by things that went on earlier in his life.”

His deposition is also contained in the book, which Pepper explains was important so that readers could judge the statements for themselves.

“What I wanted to do was to make sure that the entire deposition of these critical moments and this critical information was there, so that one could go and read the depositions and see that I was being accurate,” Pepper says.

Besides describing what he heard Bland tell his father, Ron Adkins described the many visits made to Russell Sr. by Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover’s right hand man. Known to Ron as “Uncle Clyde,” the high-level FBI official often delivered cash to the elder Adkins for jobs he and his associates would carry out on behalf of Hoover. Among those the younger Adkins said were paid to supply information about the activities of Martin Luther King were the reverends Samuel “Billy”  Kyles and Jesse Jackson.

The basics of the official story

If you seek out any information from a mainstream source about James Earl Ray, you’ll find him described as the killer of Martin Luther King, just as Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan are labelled “assassins” in the murders of John and Robert Kennedy.

But once you read any or all of Pepper’s three books on the King slaying, you see very clearly that Ray is not a killer at all. Instead, he was a petty criminal who was a perfect “follower.” Like Oswald and Sirhan, Ray was set up to take the fall for an assassination that originated within the American deep state.

[…]

As the official story of the shooting goes, at 5:50 p.m. on April 4, Kyles knocked on the door of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel to let King and the rest of his party know that they were running late for a planned dinner at Kyles’s home. Kyles then walked about 60 feet down the balcony where he remained even after King came out of the room at about 6 p.m. (Although Kyles has maintained ever since that he spent the last half hour in the room, Pepper has proven otherwise.)

[…]

Members of a militant black organizing group the Invaders, who were also staying in the motel because of King’s visit, were told shortly before the shooting by a member of the motel staff that their rooms would no longer being paid for by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and that they had to leave immediately. When they asked who had given this order, they were told it was Jesse Jackson. At the time of the shooting, Jackson was waiting down by the swimming pool. Ron Adkins also identified Jackson as the person who called the owners of the Lorraine Motel and demanded that King be moved from a more secure inner courtyard room to an exposed room on the second floor facing the street.

The Memphis Police Department usually formed a detail of black officers to protect King when he was in town, but did not this time. Emergency TACT support units were pulled back from the Lorraine to the fire station, which overlooked the motel. Pepper also learned that the only two black members of the Memphis Fire Department had been told the day before the shooting not to report for work the next day at the fire station. And black detective Ed Redditt was told an hour before the shooting to stay home because a threat had been made on his life.

Just about a minute after King exited his room, a single shot was fired and the bullet ripped through King’s jaw and spinal cord, dropping him immediately. The shot appeared to come from across Mulberry Street. King was rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead just after 7 p.m.

[…]

The owner of Jim’ Grill, Loyd Jowers, would later admit to being part of the conspiracy to kill King, and he would be found responsible – along with various government agencies – for the killing in a 1999 civil lawsuit by the King family, which was represented by Pepper.

[…]

Liberto, an associate of Louisiana crime boss Carlos Marcello, turned out to be involved in the assassination also.

[…]

Setting up the patsy

One thing that many don’t know is that Ray was in prison in 1967, the year before the assassination, serving a 20-year sentence for a grocery store robbery in 1959. After a couple of unsuccessful escape attempts, Ray succeeded in breaking out of prison on April 23, 1967. Unknown to Ray was the fact that the escape had been orchestrated, because he had already been chosen as the patsy in the planned assassination of King, which was still a year away.

The warden of Missouri State Penitentiary was paid $25,000 by Russell Adkins Sr. to allow the escape (as confirmed by Ron Adkins). The money was delivered to Adkins by Tolson, and it was this same connection that would later be used to finance the assassination of King.

After his escape from prison, Ray went to Chicago for a few weeks where he got a job. But, worried about getting caught, he went to Canada, specifically Montreal, and took the name Eric S. Galt. His intention was to get a passport under a false name and to travel to a country from which he could not be extradited.

At the Neptune Bar in the Montreal dock area in August 1967, Ray met a mysterious figure who identified himself as “Raul.” Raul asked Ray to help him with a smuggling scheme, and Ray agreed. In the months ahead, Ray would do a number of jobs, including gun running, for Raul for which he was paid and given a car. Always, Ray had to wait to be contacted by Raul, who Ray said co-ordinated his activities right up until the day of the assassination.

At one point Ray was instructed to purchase a deer rifle with a scope (although Raul was not satisfied with the one he bought and made him exchange it for another). Ray was instructed to go to Memphis (he arrived April 3, 1968) and upon meeting with Raul in his motel was given the name of Jim’s Grill, where the two were to meet at 3 p.m. the next day.  He also handed the rifle over to Raul and always maintained that he never saw it again.

[…]

The shooter revealed

Another incredible revelation in The Plot to Kill King is the identity of the man who appears to have fired the fatal shot. Pepper learned his identity from Lenny B. Curtis, who was a custodian at the Memphis Police Department rifle range. Curtis told Pepper this in 2003, and Pepper recorded a deposition with him but kept it confidential out of fear for Curtis’s life. Only after his death in 2013 did Pepper reveal what Curtis had said – that the shooter was Memphis police officer Frank Strausser.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-plot-to-kill-martin-luther-king-survived-shooting-was-murdered-in-hospital-an-interview-with-william-pepper/5544005

Israeli soldiers surrounding Gaza border wall which is a model for the wall that Republicans and Democrats alike support funding at the U.S.-Mexico border. [Source: theintercept.com]

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Covert Action Magazine

Israel’s Expertise in Pacifying the Palestinians Is in High Demand by Capitalist Elites As Populations Around the World Grow Restive

As the world watches in horror Israel’s military assault on the people of Gaza, people are left to wonder why world leaders are not doing more to censure Israel and are allowing Israel to get away with mass killing.

Jeff Halper, an American-Israeli anthropologist who has written numerous books on Israeli history, has a clear answer.

He says that leaders of countries around the world are feeling more insecure as wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny capitalist elite and popular disaffection and the threat of rebellion grows.

Israel is revered precisely for its mastery of population-control techniques against the Palestinians, which many leaders want to emulate against dissident or minority groups within their own borders.

Part of Israel’s ace in the hole, according to Halper, is its development of a formidable weapons industry that allows it to supply high-tech weapons to countries around the world for the purpose of population control.

Israel is at the cutting edge in the development of surveillance satellites, weaponized and surveillance drones, Artificial Intelligence (AI) target identification systems, spyware gadgets and crowd control and cyberwarfare technologies, which it sells around the world.

Israel additionally provides training to police and military forces and supplies mercenaries who can be found in presidential guards and among the enforcers of drug cartels.

Because of their heavy reliance on Israeli military aid, many countries may make a show of criticizing certain Israeli excesses but do nothing to impede them, refusing to impose economic sanctions or embargoes or trying to cut Israel off from world trade.

Halper spoke during a webinar on December 6 sponsored by the War Industries Resistance Network and Massachusetts Peace Action. His presentation included a map which showed the huge number of countries to which Israel sells weapon systems.

Among them are countries run by dictators to which even the U.S. refuses to sell weapons, like Equatorial Guinea and Myanmar.

Israel is also China’s number two arms supplier and the top supplier to India, which purchases more than $1 billion per year.

Additionally, Israel is a supplier of arms to South Korea, Brazil, Russia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Turkey and Azerbaijan which used the arms to brutalize Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh.

Halper sees Israel as a key global enforcer of the world capitalist system whose arm sales extend to 191 countries (up from 130 eight years ago).

The Occupied Territories have functioned as a laboratory for testing new weapons and counterinsurgency techniques by Israel which collaborates closely with the U.S. military and allows for testing of its new weapon systems.

U.S. leaders are in love with Israel because they seek to emulate Israel’s success against the Palestinians in asymmetrical warfare, which they have failed at miserably in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and before that Vietnam.

U.S. leaders also see as a model for the U.S.-Mexico border the censor-laden wall that Israel built surrounding Gaza.

Halper warned that we are in danger of “all being Palestinized.”

All of this is by a global capitalist elite and its political representatives who are adopting ever more repressive measures in an attempt to sustain their wealth and power.

Funding Your Own Assassins

Israel’s claim to be fighting in Gaza in self-defense is undercut by the emergence of new details about its role in funding and propping up Hamas.

On December 10, The New York Times published an article entitled “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas” by Mark Mazetti and Ronen Bergman.

The article noted that, “for years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip—money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.” So too did three American presidents—Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden.

According to the Times, much of the money was dispensed to Hamas from suitcases by Qatari officials who were escorted into Gaza by the Mossad. The money allowed Hamas to divert some of its own budget toward military operations targeting Israel, including the October 7 attacks.

CovertAction Magazine has previously detailed how the Israeli billionaire class, whom Benjamin Netanyahu represents, has sought a state of permanent war as part of their governing strategy.

The billionaires grow rich from war and the Israeli war industry, and the creation of a terrorist threat legitimizes expanded military operations designed to wipe out the Palestinians and enhance the goal of establishing a “Greater Israel.”

Israel had been gripped with massive protests on the eve of the Israel-Gaza War against rising inequality and the attempt to subordinate Israel’s judiciary to the executive branch, with Netanyahu personally facing corruption charges.

Once the war broke out, the protests dissipated and Netanyahu could play his familiar role of uniting Israelis of all class backgrounds against a foreign enemy—which conveniently he and his ruling circle had helped to empower.

The October 31 issue of The New York Times had an article tellingly titled “They Refused to Serve. Now They’re Supporting Israel’s War Effort.” It profiled former coordinators of the anti-Netanyahu street protests who had once vowed not to serve in the IDF, but who were now supporting Israel’s war effort in reaction to the Tribe of Nova massacre and helping to organize clothing and military equipment drives for soldiers on the front lines of the war in Gaza.

No wonder then that Netanyahu’s government ignored warnings of the impending Hamas attack!

A Times article on December 20 was titled “After the Oct. 7 Attacks, Israelis Are Becoming More Politically Conservative.”

It emphasized that a) Israel’s peace camp had been driven virtually underground after the October 7 attacks; b) that being a leftist had now become a dirty word; and that c) Israelis had moved decidedly to the right on a number of issues, including support for settlers in the West Bank, endorsement of far-right politicians, and even the reestablishment of a military occupation of Gaza.

Tai Schneider, a columnist for the Times of Israel was quoted as saying “the trauma of what happened on Oct. 7 shifted Israeli society. It made them question the most basic tenets of whether they were safe in their homes. They are calling now for more—more military, more protection–more hard-line policies.”^[1] This is similar in many ways to what happened in the United States vis-à-vis 9/11.

The Times in its December 10 article emphasized as a motive for Netanyahu’s funding of Hamas his goal of wanting to establish a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

In 2012, Netanyahu told Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that having two strong rivals, including Hamas which does not recognize Israel’s legitimacy, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.

Shlomo Brom, a retired general and former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, said that “one effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to [create a] divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.” The division gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse to disengage from peace talks, noting that he can say, “I have no partner.”^[2]

This motive is totally perverse and undermines Netanyahu’s claim to have launched military operations to protect Israeli security— from an enemy that he financed, no less.

Chaos Agents

Netanyahu’s critics include Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, who stated that Israel was “controlled by “chaos agents” whose goal is to create a “human disaster” in Gaza, because “from the chaos we shall start again.”

“This is exactly the theory of the most radical, fundamental Muslim organizations,” of ISIS and al-Qaeda, Ayalon said.

He added that it is foolish to go to war without defining a political goal: “The military goal is never the end goal, military is a tool, war is not the objective…. Victory is never measured in military terms. So when we say ‘the day after,’ we are trying to define the concept of victory, and we are not doing it. It’s a huge failure.”

Dethrone King Bibi

On December 25, Haaretz’ lead editorial was titled “Dethrone King Bibi.” It argued that the conditions exist to resume the huge protests against Netanyahu and his government that shook Israel for months before October 7.

At that time, the protests were focused against Bibi’s dictatorial “judicial reform;” now, their focus will be “King Bibi’s” responsibility for creating the conditions that led to October 7 and the current war.

Haaretz wrote that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who bears the greatest blame for the security, diplomatic and social failures that led to the October 7 massacre and the outbreak of war. The thousands who protested on Saturday night in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Caesarea, calling for him to be deposed, prove that conditions have matured for the protests to be resumed and to expand the ranks of those taking to the streets.”

Haaretz went on to note that Netanyahu accepts no responsibility for that disaster of October 7, but blames the IDF, the intelligence services, the Oslo peace accords and “Yitzhak Rabin and those who continued his path,” the Israeli daily writes, and adds: “All of the above is enough without saying a word about the judicial coup he advanced in the service of the extreme Kahanist right, with its appetite for annexation and Jewish supremacy.”

Haaretz concluded by stating that “the time has come to demand from the one who wrought disaster on the State of Israel to vacate his throne and allow others the chance to repair what he has destroyed.”

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/12/28/american-israeli-anthropologist-suggests-that-we-are-all-being-palestinized/

by Dave DeCamp

AntiWar.com

Mohammed al-Sudani and his government are unhappy with the US for launching airstrikes in Iraq

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said his government is “heading towards” ending the presence of international forces in Iraq, which includes about 2,500 US troops, the largest foreign contingent.

Al-Sudani’s comments came after his government strongly condemned several rounds of US airstrikes in Iraq as a violation of sovereignty and a hostile act. In the latest strikes, the US said it targeted the Shia militia Kataib Hezbollah in retaliation for an attack on a US base, but al-Sudani’s government said civilians were also wounded in the US bombing.

“We are in the process of rearranging the relationship with the international coalition, as in light of the presence of capable Iraqi forces, the Iraqi government is moving towards ending the presence of the international coalition forces,” al-Sudani said at a press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Spain has 300 troops stationed in Iraq as part of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition. “My country, always at the request of the Iraqi authorities, will support the unity, sovereignty and stability of Iraq,” Sanchez said at the press conference.

Al-Sudani first came into office at the end of 2022 and made his first public comments on US troops in Iraq in 2023, when he expressed support for the presence of foreign forces. But he’s been under increasing pressure to get them out, especially now as Iraq has become a battleground between Shia militias and the US due to President BIden’s full-throated support for Israel’s Gaza onslaught.

The US has been resisting Iraqi efforts to expel its forces from the country since 2020 when a US drone strike in Baghdad killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. In the wake of the killings, Iraq’s parliament voted to expel foreign forces, but the US refused to leave. The US formally changed its presence in Iraq from a combat role to an advisory one in December 2021, but it did not withdraw any troops at the time.

If al-Sudani tries to expel foreign forces from his country, Washington could make things difficult for him. The US has leverage over Iraq because, since the 2003 invasion, the country’s foreign reserves have been held by the US Federal Reserve, giving Washington control over Baghdad’s dollar supply and the ability to devalue the Iraqi dinar. The US also keeps tight control over Iraq’s ability to pay its neighbor Iran for much-needed electricity.

[…]

Via https://news.antiwar.com/2023/12/28/iraqi-pm-says-baghdad-is-heading-towards-ending-the-us-military-presence-in-the-country/

Episode 24 What Happened to the Etruscans

The Mysterious Etruscans

Dr Steven L Tuck (2016)

Film Review

In the 14th century native Italian (ie Roman) culture began asserting itself in Renaissance Europe. According to Tuck, this was a culture the Romans inherited from the Etruscans. It led to a resurrection of bronze casting in 15th century Tuscany, especially of the Etruscans’ favorite hero Hercules. Many of the 15th century statuettes are of Etruscan reclining figures. Around the same time, the fasces reemerged as a marker of civil service (and is found on 20th century US dimes).

During the 18th century, European tourists flocked to Italy seeking the black and red figure vases the Etruscans had imported from Greece and which were erroneously promoted as Etruscan ceramics. This would lead to the popularity of red and black figured “Etrurian” interior design among well-to-do Brits. The Adam Brothers were especially famous for the “Etruscan Rooms” (with Etruscan-style light fixtures, flooring and wall coverings) they created for their wealthy patrons.

In the mid-18th century, English potter Joshua Wedgewood founded a city he named Etruria in Staffordshire as the site for his Wedgewood factory. Many of the items he manufactured, especially vases, were modeled on antique Greek pottery. Known as the “federal style,” it was especially popular in the US in the lead up to the revolution.

Etruscan pottery styles also inspired German architecture and interiors, with the Prussian palace at Potsdam (1802) the most famous. Around this time, architects of Tuscany were also adopting Etruscan-style masonry techniques and doors.

Etruscan DNA

Because cremation was so popular with ancient Etruscans, they left few bones behind to for DNA analysis. The best DNA evidence available shows current residents of the Tuscan cities of Casentino and Volterra are descended from ancestors who built the ancient Etruscan civilization.  This Etruscan DNA is also similar to DNA from the Anatolian peninsula dating from 3000 BC (but not more recent Anatolian DNA). This suggests Etruscans are among the oldest inhabitants of the Italian peninsula.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/239710/239655