Link Blog
Zionism on the Brink: The Gaza War Beyond Netanyahu - ZNetwork
A good number of analysts have tried to explain how Israel became a decidedly right-wing society and how young people, in particular, have emerged as the gatekeepers of Israel’s version of suicidal nationalism. The explanation, however, should be straightforward. Israel’s far-right extremism is simply the natural evolution of Zionist ideology which, even in its most “liberal” forms, was always predicated on ethnic hatred, a sense of racial supremacy and predictable violence.
Windows open, enjoying cool, fresh morning air and an episode of The Computer Chronicles: The Macintosh Computer on the Internet Archive. 1985 and they already had the Apple Laser Writer on the market and IBM already had a color graphical interface. There’s even a pundit segment with a guy irritatingly predicting (correctly) that Apple would struggle getting into the business world. I was surprised that a visual database, FileVision, already existed. Also, a vector drawing app, GEM Draw, was already available on IBM with a much larger, color screen. GEM was a graphical windowing for the Atari ST computers and was IBM PC compatible.
Joan Westenberg explains The Overton Window:
You know how you’ll hear a politician say something and think, “Holy shit, did they really just say that out loud?”
And then a few years later, that batshit crazy idea is suddenly mainstream policy?
It’s called the Overton Window, and once you understand it, you’ll see it everywhere.
More of this should be done in the US:
Aline Sousa: The unsung heroes putting climate solutions into practice | TED Talk
The improper handling of waste is the third largest source of methane emissions in the world, says Aline Sousa, but waste pickers like her help reduce this environmental impact. She dives into the monumental effort of the often-overlooked people making sure recyclables, compostables and trash end up in the right places — and calls for better recognition of these key players on the frontline of fighting climate change.
Neat, Mike Grindle took a bit of inspiration from my MPU post on OBTF and fit it into his own workflow.
Humans of the future will ask why we refused to act and we will rightly be condemned for our failure.
Antarctic temperatures rise 10C above average in near record heatwave | The Guardian
Ground temperatures across great swathes of the ice sheets of Antarctica have soared an average of 10C above normal over the past month, in what has been described as a near record heatwave…
The globe has experienced 12 months of record warmth, with temperatures consistently exceeding the 1.5C rise above preindustrial levels that has been touted as the limit to avoiding the worst of climate breakdown.
A clever trick to cast the perpetrators of violent settler colonialism and apartheid as the noble ally that just wants to live in peace. And sad that so many Americans, including many liberals, buy the lie.
American politicians love saying, “Israel has the right to defend itself” as if it was a sales motto. Because if you actually look at what Israel is doing, it is anything but defending itself. Israel has a policy of invading other countries' territory, occupying their land, and carrying out political assassinations on foreign soil. “Defense” is revisionist propaganda.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists Israel’s war against Gaza is the “deadliest conflict for journalists the organisation has documented in 30 years.”
Al Jazeera journalist, cameraman killed in Israeli attack on Gaza
Al Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi have been killed in an Israeli air attack on the Gaza Strip.
The reporters were killed when their car was hit on Wednesday in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, according to initial information…
The Gaza government media office has put the figure at 165 Palestinian journalists killed since the war began.
On X Mohamed Moawad, the managing editor of Aljazeera, shared this post by Ismail Al-Ghoul
Let me tell you, my friend, that I no longer know the taste of sleep. The bodies of children and the screams of the injured and their blood-soaked images never leave my sight. The cries of mothers and the wailing of men who are missing their loved ones never fade from my hearing.
I can no longer bear the sound of children’s voices from beneath the rubble, nor can I forget the energy and power that reverberates at every moment, turning into a nightmare. It is no longer easy for me to stand before the rows of coffins, which are locked and extended, or to see the dead people more than the living who are fighting death beneath their homes, not finding a way out to safety and survival.
I am tired, my friend…
Ismail Al-Ghoul, Al Jazeera Correspondent in Gaza
I volunteered as an escort at a couple of abortion clinics in Memphis during the mid 1990s. Those anti-choice people didn’t like us much.
An excellent podcast described as is a “call to action for movement work and mutual aid efforts around the country.”
Radical Acts of Care: From Underground Abortions to Militant Clinic Defense | Truthout
In this episode, Hume and host Kelly Hayes discuss the work of abortion self-help activists who provided illegal abortions in the 1970s, as well as militant clinic defenders, who repelled right-wing efforts to blockade abortion clinics in the ’80s and ’90s.
Joan Westenberg: Make Small Men Feel Small Again - YouTube
We’ve been tiptoeing around the assholes for far too long.
Walking on egg-shells.
Trying not to set them off.
And we’re sick of it. We’re sick of the chest-thumping, hate-spewing, fear-mongering fuckheads who think the ability to remember 14 words in a specific order gives them the right to run the world. The men who are so scared of change they’d rather burn everything down than admit maybe, just maybe, they don’t have all the answers.
Trump is totally unhinged.
Trump tells supporters they won’t have to vote in the future: ‘It’ll be fixed!’ | The Guardian. From his rally Friday night:
“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it anymore…
“You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…
I’m not Christian. I love you. Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
Fantastic.
“Vance VP” - Marsh Family parody adaptation of “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, on JD Vance - YouTube
Here’s our less-than-impressed profile of yet another populist politician with highly flexible morality, worrying contempt for democratic process and discourse, but big funding and a big mouth who’s happy to tap into ordinary people’s fears while claiming to be an example of their dreams.
Another day, another school in Gaza bombed. 30 killed. The war crimes and genocide continue.
A wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting central and southern Gaza have killed at least 50 people and injured an estimated 200, with one strike hitting a school where thousands were seeking shelter…
Wounded people poured into the nearby Aqsa hospital, while images from Deir al-Balah showed families carrying injured children for treatment.
Given the recent circulation of a Hannah Arendt quote that may or may not be factual, here are a few sourced articles about her:
Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception and the Psychology of Defactualization
Disinformation and Democracy | Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities:
The US is increasingly on its own with Israel.
Britain drops its challenge to ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders | The Guardian
Labour has announced its biggest step yet in overhauling the UK’s approach to the Middle East, dropping its opposition to an international arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu despite pressure from Washington not to do so.
Downing Street announced on Friday that the government would not submit a challenge to the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, whose chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking a warrant against the Israeli prime minister.
The Majority Report discusses Kamala Harris' response to the protests of Netanyahu’s visit to Congress. They also dig into Netanyahu’s various lies, his denial of the humanity of Palestinians and the fucked up warm welcome by many in Congress including many Democrats.
The Congress people there to cheer him on are complicit in his war crimes as is Biden. I’m guessing her policies in this area will be better than Biden but only a little. Time will tell.
Of course, much of Gaza is now rubble and uninhabitable. While the official death toll is now around 40,000, recent reporting on a Lancet study suggests the number is much higher, likely above 186,000 and still going higher this very moment.
The Guardian reports on her meeting with Netanyahu stating that she “pressed him on the ‘dire’ humanitarian situation in Gaza in talks that she described as frank, adding ‘I will not be silent’.”
In comments that were closely watched for signs of a shift from Joe Biden’s policy approach, the US vice-president said after the meeting: “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.”
War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, met with a standing ovation by the US Congress, appealed for more weapons which would enable Israel to “finish the job faster” in Gaza.
I’m sure it’s on record who in Congress continues to support Israel’s war crimes and genocide.
“Netanyahu drew one of the clearest lines yet between the supply of U.S. weapons and Israel’s genocidal assault of Gaza, essentially straight out saying that the slaughter has been made possible by U.S. assistance — and that the speed of Israel’s genocide is scaled to how many U.S. weapons they receive.”
The Kamala Harris Campaign launch video is so good:
The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty, where we can all afford health care, where no one is above the law.
Truthout reports on a potential Polio Outbreak in Gaza:
Advocates for Palestinian rights are demanding that the Biden administration take urgent action to stop a potential outbreak of polio in Gaza after the virus that causes the deadly disease was found in Gaza’s wastewater, threatening an epidemic that would be nothing short of catastrophic.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says that Biden bears responsibility to respond to the crisis after funding Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health and sanitation systems, which has created conditions ripe for a deadly epidemic.