Reading

Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 04:57
The Elders today call for governments providing military assistance to Israel to review their approach, and set conditions for any future provision. They warn that Israel’s renewed military campaign in Gaza risks fuelling an escalating cycle of mass atrocities. Israel’s disproportionate response to the horrendous terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October – which the Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 04:55
At the very core of the Israel-Palestine conflict are Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and immoral siege – with the help of Egypt – of Gaza. For Palestinian hostilities against Israel to cease, at the very least, these have to end. There are other more negotiable issues including the return (or compensation) of Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 04:54
The AUKUS arrangements between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia envisage the transfer of nuclear-propulsion technology and nuclear-powered submarines to the Royal Australian Navy – what policy wonks call the First Pillar. This does little to advance Canberra’s security but does much to confirm that Washington is keen to keep other powers in the Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 04:53
I live in the inner west/southwest of Sydney, traditional lands of the Gadigal, Wangal and Darug-speaking peoples. Our built heritage traces the area’s development and amplifies its desirability, economic viability, and people’s quality of life. According to Time Out, Marrickville and Enmore are some of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world. Australia’s short history of Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 04:51
Western capitals now openly acknowledge the reality that their proxy war in Ukraine has run out of steam. Desperate new policy directions are being discussed in NATO circles. But a decision to end the war will be taken only by Moscow. An article by Big Serge, Russo-Ukrainian War: The reckoning on 16 November 2023 offered an in-depth detailed analysis by a military expert of how the war is Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 04:50
I came across an interesting quote made last month by a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick about the ongoing IDF assault on Gaza. “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.,” Brick said. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 03:47

An Israeli whose family members were held by Palestinian militants tells of friendly fire deaths and complains, “We used to think the IDF knows what it’s doing.” Meanwhile, freed captives detail “horrifying captivity trauma” from Israeli bombings.  A relative of newly-released Israeli captives has publicly accused the Israeli military of killing its own people and says Tel Aviv is blocking the victims’ families from speaking out.  In testimony delivered to Israel’s finance committee on December 3, Noam Dan, whose cousin’s […]

The post Relative of Israeli captives confirms ‘3 hostages killed by Israeli fire,’ blasts military first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Relative of Israeli captives confirms ‘3 hostages killed by Israeli fire,’ blasts military appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 03:26

After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 primary victory, her campaign got a call from a representative of the pro-Israel lobby offering to raise big money and start a relationship with the group.

The post AOC Was Offered $100,000 by AIPAC to “Start the Conversation.” She Turned Them Down. appeared first on The Intercept.

Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 02:30
Not. Gonna. Happen. There were no Confederate flags, but the high school band still struck up “Dixie” as a fight song at pep rallies before integration finally reached Greenville, South Carolina in 1970. A recent arrival in the “New South,” I was called Yankee now and again. It was strange then. That “heritage” seems even stranger now. Anna Venarchik, herself an Alabama native, writes about the legacy of The United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC over decades very successfully retconned the Civil War as something other than bloody treason by an entire region of the country to prevent the future I saw at a northern Virginia Waffle House. That too was a Lost Cause.  “They all think we’re white supremacists but they don’t want to bother to find out,” said one member on a Zoom Venarchik attended this decade.” Who “they” were went unsaid. “I am interested in people understanding that the organization is a forward-looking organization,” a youngish septuagenarian from a New York chapter told Venarchik, before reversing herself and declining an interview.
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 01:00
Liz Cheney floats third-party run Former Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, has made a splash on her book tour (“Oath and Honor”) in a series of interviews. She pulls no punches about the depths of Republican Party degradation she witnessed before her ouster from Congress after voting for Trump’s Jan. 6 impeachment. She is determined to do “whatever it takes” to prevent a second Trump term, including a third-party run for president (Washington Post): “Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Cheney said in a Monday interview with The Washington Post. But, she said, “I happen to think democracy is at risk at home, obviously, as a result of Donald Trump’s continued grip on the Republican Party, and I think democracy is at risk internationally as well.” Given her appeal to independents, former Republicans and some Democrats, many Trump critics in both parties have noted that a presidential run by Cheney could undercut her stated goal of defeating Trump, because it could draw some votes away from President Biden.
Created
Wed, 06/12/2023 - 00:00

Sex-positive women are kinky and down for anything with anyone, all the time.

Sex-positive women take a strong positive stance on having sex with me, instead of being wishy-washy like my ex-wife.

Sex-positive women are hot. Not all hot women are sex-positive, because I have met some hot women who do not want to have sex with me, but I’m pretty sure all sex-positive women are hot. That’s why Bumble uses the chili pepper emoji to indicate sex-positivity, which is appropriate, because a small red vegetable commonly associated with hotness is definitely adequate to represent the entire spectrum of sex-positivity.

Sex-positive women are open-minded, and by “open-minded,” I mean accepting of me and not saying, “That’s weird, Brian,” like my ex-fiancée.

Sex-positive women are impulsive and adventurous. They don’t say things like, “Could we do a phone chat first?” or “Would you be willing to share a last name before we meet in person?” Looking me up on LinkedIn is not sex-positive.

Sex-positive women are politically liberal, which means generous with sending pics and stuff.

Created
Tue, 05/12/2023 - 23:50

On February 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. It initiated a Department of Defense program that resulted in the rounding up and incarceration of about 122,000 individuals of Japanese descent. They were to be placed in federal “relocation centers” that would popularly become known as “internment camps.” As it happened, they were neither. They were prisons set up to house and so violate the civil and human rights of a despised and racially different group defined as “the enemy.” Although that executive order did not, in fact, mention a specific ethnic or racial group, it was clearly understood that the prisons were not being established for citizens or... Read more

Created
Tue, 05/12/2023 - 22:49
Why Israel Is Performing So Badly Against Hamas

It has become clear that Israeli forces are not succeeding at taking out Hamas. Israel’s own estimate of Hamas casualties from October 7th to the ceasefire was one to two thousand Hamas deaths. This is almost certainly an overstatement, for obvious reasons.

Maps of the Israeli invasion show control of a fair chunk of Northern Gaza, but it isn’t full control: they still get attacked by Hamas in most of these areas. Videos of Hamas attacks often show amazing levels of Israeli incompetence, most often lack of infantry screens for tanks.