96° Jeff Tomsik - 2 votes

97° Tony L - 2

99° Djimon Hounsou - 2

A Short Leave Of Absence

I am heavily engaged in another project, which will take up all my time and energy for the next five or six weeks.

It's for a very good cause (otherwise I wouldn't bother), but it means I will not be able to blog again until about the middle of February.

Our community blog, Winter Patriot dot com, is still active, and in fact there's a fine new post there from McJ called "Qassam Rockets", to which I direct your attention.

Please join the discussion there, if you wish ... and take good care.

I'll be back as soon as I can.

100° Akihiro Sato - 1 vote

Israeli Airstrikes Kill Hundreds In Gaza

After months of a sickeningly brutal blockade, in which more than a million people have been deprived of life's essentials, the blockaders have escalated the "conflict".

The first wave of "retaliation" was a series of airstrikes in which -- according to reports -- 60 warplanes attacked 50 targets, killing more than 200 people and injuring at least 400 others.

The assault continues even now, with threats of more air attacks and a world-wide propaganda campaign against the victims.

The "elected" "leaders" of many western nations are disgorging the propaganda, and major "news" services are catapulting it, with the usual assistance from the blogosphere, including some allegedly dissident elements [to which I would be ashamed to link].

We can expect every Israeli action to be explained as a "reaction" to an endless series of provocations, for which the Telegraph gives some context:

Nine Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza since [...] September 2005.

Over the same period, at least 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces in Gaza, according to figures compiled by B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group.

According to the Guardian,

The raids [...] took place mid-morning rather than at night [...] Some of the missiles struck densely populated areas as children were leaving school. Parents rushed into the streets to search for them.

From MSNBC:

Civilians rushed wounded people in cars and vans to hospitals because there weren't enough ambulances to transport all the dead and wounded.

"There are heads without bodies .... There's blood in the corridors. People are weeping, women are crying, doctors are shouting, " said nurse Ahmed Abdel Salaam from Shifa Hospital, Gaza's main treatment center.
[...]

"There is a time for calm and there is a time for fighting, and now is the time for fighting," said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, vowing to expand the operation if necessary.

With an Israeli election just six weeks away, it will almost certainly be "necessary".

It will be done "properly", too, as Ha'aretz notes [via the Angry Arab]:

"Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel's international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip. Livni instructed senior ministry officials to open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign, in order to gain greater international support for Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip."

UPDATE: The horror and the propaganda continue, as Israel pounds Gaza for a second day.

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Christmas And The GWOT [3]: Sell Your Stocks And Run

There's something incomparably obscene about being at war at Christmas -- let alone a war of choice, let alone a war with religious underpinnings that's billed as just and righteous, but -- like all the wars of my lifetime -- just happens to be about money, and power, and oil ...

... all of which takes me back to one of the first posts I ever wrote for this humble and frozen blog, four years ago today:

Some days I just cannot get past the utter depravity of it all. We've got cold-blooded mass murder; routine torture; blind, blinded, blinding patriotism; and a media-inspired madness that has self-described Christians clamoring for all manner of grotesque and inhuman cruelty. Merry Christmas to all.

And it gets worse: Now we're supposed to believe that this horror is justified by the president's claim that God speaks through him. Oh really? What kind of God would tell anyone to do this? What kind of America would allow it?

Words fail me. Or at least, I don't have any more words of my own.

Listen to Pye Dubois, writing for Max Webster:

Oh War

Oh war, it's been done before
that's what they say
I wasn't there, they say there's one today
I don't care, I'm not there today

'cause I'd say "fuck you" instead of "thank you"
your choice under your breath
oh say go to hell
I'll go American express

Oh war, history says you're in it
your sister's boyfriend's in it
so so long, soldier,
wash your socks and guns
and just remember
if you don't see a profit,
sell your stocks and run

'cause I'd say "fuck you" instead of "thank you"
your choice under your breath
oh say no to hell
I'll go American express

It's especially dismal to see how little has changed in those four years, and how much of the so-called anti-war opposition has become pro-Obama and therefore meaningless -- or worse!

But there's nothing left but to keep going.

Best wishes to all my online friends.