Here are the 58 House members who voted against sending Israel $26 billion more for war on Gaza. IL progressive Democrats voted no except for Rep. Danny Davis and Rep. Jan Schakowsky who claimed she had “reservations” but voted YES.
From the killing fields
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda
Duda says NATO member Poland is ready to host nuclear weapons targeting Russians.
“If our allies decide to deploy nuclear arms on our territory as part of nuclear sharing, to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank, we are ready to do so,” — Fakt Daily.
Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman
“We also recognize that most of this money will remain in the United States. The United States will become richer and will receive additional dividends by providing assistance to Ukraine. — Guardian
Petrov is correct. According to the Washing Post (11/29/23):
Here is the best-kept secret about U.S. military aid to Ukraine: Most of the money is being spent here in the United States. That’s right: Funds that lawmakers approve to arm Ukraine are not going directly to Ukraine but are being used stateside to build new weapons or to replace weapons sent to Kyiv from U.S. stockpiles.
More Quotables
UAW Pres. Shawn Fain
“We’re going to carry this fight on to Mercedes and everywhere else!” he said, referring to the next election on the union’s calendar, at Mercedes-Benz facilities in Alabama. — Washington Post
Representative Tony Gonzales (R-Texas)
"I serve with some real scumbags," Gonzales said.
"Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties," the Texas Republican said. "Bob Good endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around in white hoods at night. Now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime." — Newsweek
Chicago Alderman, Andre Vasquez
$70 million for migrant aid got Chicago City Council approval Friday after a long, contentious debate. The vote highlighted continued tensions between some Black and Latino alders. But Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) warned fighting and withholding funds only helps those trying to "divide us" before the DNC.
"Do you want to see 11,000 people inside of shelters or outside of buildings?" he asked. "[Migrants] do not disappear because the money doesn't show up."
Day 786 of the proxy war in Ukraine. More than 500,000 casualties. 6 million displaced.
Pres. Biden and Democratic strategist David Axelrod have aligned with Christo/fascist election-denyer, House Speaker Mike Johnson in pushing for billions more in weaponry to be sent to Israel and Ukraine. It’s another lesson for voters in how war-mongering factions come together when it comes to feeding the war machine.
Axelrod, who runs the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, has been bashing UC student protesters critical of campus-sponsored racists and right-wing extremist speakers coming onto campus.
But Axelrod, who calls those opposed to more weapons shipments “Putinists,” has been conspicuously silent about USC’s barring of class valedictorian Asna Tabassum from giving her graduation speech. His free-speech arguments are matters of convenience, it seems.
I should mention that Cold Warrior Sec. of State, Antony Blinken is an Institute alum.
Columbia students demand an end to genocide in Gaza
More than 108 arrests were made, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a news conference Thursday evening.
The students were “peacefully protesting for divestment from genocide,” said one of the organizers, Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
If university officials thought that getting rid of the encampment or arresting more than 100 protesters, would persuade students to give up, they may have been very wrong. — New York Times
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Ordinarily, you might have assumed these students would be the shock troops in the anti-Trump election campaign. But certainly not when a real-time genocide is unfolding in front of them.
There’s little I want more than to see Trump and the MAGAs routed in November. It shouldn’t be that difficult with Dems running with tons of money behind them and a 10 million national voter advantage against the most hated man in the world. But it will be near impossible with them running as the war party and with much of its base of young activists protesting the war on Gaza and being repressed, blacklisted, and arrested on campuses like Columbia.
Hidden history
An article in Foreign Affairs reveals the "hidden history" of diplomacy that could have ended the war.
In the midst of Moscow’s invasion in 2022, the Russians and the Ukrainians almost finalized a peace agreement. Negotiations began on February 28 at one of Lukashenko’s spacious countryside residences near the village of Liaskavichy, about 30 miles from the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. On March 3 and March 7, the parties held a second and third round of talks, this time in Kamyanyuki, Belarus, just across the border from Poland. The Ukrainian delegation presented demands of their own: an immediate cease-fire and the establishment of humanitarian corridors that would allow civilians to safely leave the war zone. It was during the third round of talks that the Russians and the Ukrainians appeared to have examined drafts for the first time.
Charap and Radchenko’s article in FA reveals the many other opportunities that the US and Russia had to avoid an all-out war in Ukraine—a war that has proven to be protracted, unwinnable by either side, and that has become a slaughterhouse for hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians.
So the obvious question is: What happened? How close were the parties to ending the war? And why did they never finalize a deal?
Putin has claimed that Western powers intervened and spiked the deal because they were more interested in weakening Russia than in ending the war. He alleged that Boris Johnson, then the British prime minister, had delivered the message to the Ukrainians, on behalf of “the Anglo-Saxon world,” that they must “fight Russia until victory is achieved and Russia suffers a strategic defeat.”
At the time, and in the intervening two years, the willingness either to undertake high-stakes diplomacy or to truly commit to come to Ukraine’s defense in the future has been notably absent in Washington and European capitals.
The Istanbul Communiqué called for the two sides to seek to peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea during the next 15 years.
FA’s optimistic conclusion (It’s not mine)
Today, when the prospects for negotiations appear dim and relations between the parties are nearly nonexistent, the history of the spring 2022 talks might seem like a distraction with little insight directly applicable to present circumstances. But Putin and Zelensky surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war. They might well surprise everyone again in the future.
It has been clear for some time that neither Russia nor Ukraine can win this war, as neither will achieve the political goals for which they are fighting. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia militarily, even with Western support in the form of arms and ammunition and the training of Ukrainian soldiers. Even the delivery of “miracle weapons”, which has been demanded by laymen time and again, will not be the hoped for “game changer” that could shift the strategic situation in Ukraine's favour. At the same time, however, there is an increasing risk of even greater escalation, leading to a military conflict between NATO and Russia and the real danger of a nuclear war.
The war could have been prevented, had the West accepted a neutral status for Ukraine – which Zelensky was initially quite willing to do – renounced NATO membership and enforced the Minsk II agreement on minority rights for the Russian-speaking population. The war could have ended in early April 2022 if the West had allowed the Istanbul negotiations to be concluded. It is now once again, and possibly for the last time, the responsibility of the “collective West” and especially the USA to set a course towards a ceasefire and peace negotiations.
Iran’s counterattack yesterday marked the first time they have launched a direct military assault on Israel, despite decades of provocation dating back to the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Western media is dutifully repeating verbatim, White House talking points about Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile attack against Israel. They go something like this. The Iranian attack was fruitless. 99% of Iranian drones and missiles were shot down, thanks mainly to the US. Israel should declare “victory” and not launch another attack. If they do, the US won’t take part, but their defense of Israel is “ironclad”.
Whatever the hell all that means.
Five ballistic missiles hit the southern Nevatim Air Base, a US official said, damaging a C-130 transport plane, an unused runway, and empty warehouses. Four additional ballistic missiles struck the Negev Air Base, but no significant damage was reported, he added. — Haaretz
There was little mention until this morning that the two Israeli air bases were struck by at least nine Iranian missiles that penetrated Israel's air defense systems, causing damage to some US-supplied aircraft. I had to read the Israeli media for that. Neither was there any mention of yesterday’s uprising by thousands of Palestinians who protested at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and took down sections of the apartheid wall.
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. will not take part in a counter-offensive against Iran, an option Netanyahu's war cabinet favors after a mass drone and missile attack on Israeli territory, according to officials.
Weekend Quotables
The New York Times editorial board called on the U.S. to condition military aid to Israel, writing that "Netanyahu has turned his back on America and its entreaties," and "The United States cannot remain beholden to an Israeli leader fixated on his own survival and the approval of the zealots he harbors."
The World Bank
Half of the world's 75 poorest countries are experiencing a widening income gap with the wealthiest economies for the first time this century in a historical reversal of development, the World Bank said in a report on Monday.
The differential between per capita income growth in the poorest countries and the richest has widened over the past five years, according to the report.
"For the first time, we see there is no convergence. They're getting poorer," Ayhan Kose, deputy chief economist for the World Bank and one of the report's authors, told Reuters.
We've lost. Truth must be told. The inability to admit it encapsulates everything you need to know about Israel's individual and mass psychology. There's a clear, sharp, predictable reality that we should begin to fathom, to process, to understand, and to draw conclusions from for the future. It's no fun to admit that we've lost, so we lie to ourselves. — Haaretz
Dr. Charles Perlmtutter, president of the World Surgical Foundation
“Genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got. This is dehumanization. The purpose of this is to kill a population.” — Democracy Now
Oh Oh Oh Ozempic! (*To the tune of Magic by Pilot)
Whoever wrote the Ozempic song, which only has four words, is probably going to make a shit ton more money than the guys who wrote Magic. In any case, I’d really like to do a Hitting Left show on the new generation of super drugs being oversold with jingles and images of reimagined pain-free, athletic, and romance-filled lives for us seniors. Maybe I will. But for now, the story is all about how capitalism creates shortages of basic needs, like housing, food, and medicine.
Remember how a shortage of diapers and baby formula during the height of the pandemic caused a crisis for low-income families? One in every three parents in the US faced a real challenge getting their hands on an adequate supply of diapers, according to the Institute for Research on Poverty.
Oh oh oh it's magic you know Never believe it's not so
Then there was a manufactured life-or-death crisis of vaccine shortages caused by market manipulation and what became known as vaccine apartheid (inequality), where distribution was limited to the wealthier countries and communities by market factors or government policy. With the wealthiest nations controlling the vaccine’s production and distribution rights, third-world countries as well as poor and Black communities in the US encountered debilitating economic, social, and health-associated problems.
Drug shortages in the United States have reached an all-time high. Supplies are low for everything from lifesaving injections to diabetes medications, according to data from the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which tracks shortages. Among the medicines affected are the popular diabetes drug Ozempic, lifesaving allergy treatment epinephrine, child-friendly forms of the common antibiotic amoxicillin, chemotherapy medications, and injections hospitals commonly use in intensive care.
Many of the drugs are generics. The shortages mean patients must now visit multiple pharmacies to find a drug or wait longer to receive a key treatment, get second-choice substitutes, or pay more if a generic drug is unavailable but the brand-name version is. Shortages can also put patients at higher risk of medication errors as hospitals scramble to adjust doses.
Ozempic, a diabetes drug, is not-so-subtly being marketed as a quick fix for obesity, increasing sales to fad dieters and creating shortages for diabetes patients, who must pay more or seek out substitutes. It makes me wonder how a nation can afford lifelong treatments for so many people, with sticker prices for each patient ranging from about $900 to $1,300 every four weeks and rising.
Many generic drug makers have left the business or offshored to countries where labor is cheaper, such as India. There are few suppliers left to pick up the slack and compete with Big Pharma. It isn’t easy to jump-start manufacturing of a particular drug, especially the sterile injectables that are so tricky to make and that hospitals use so often.
The war economy
According to the World Bank, the number of people living in extreme poverty has increased by roughly 100 million to nearly 700 million; a significant share live in conflict regions. For the global economy, fuel and food shortages caused by war are exacerbating post-pandemic inflation that had already reached multi-decade highs in most of the world. This comes on top of a generalized rise in economic distress around the world as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the US, production demands have shifted away from badly needed goods and services to supplying the weaponry for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Supply chain disruptions have also been a major factor contributing to inflation, although some of the strain on supply can be traced to a manufactured surge in demand. Viewers are bombarded day and night with TV ads for new-generation drugs aimed primarily at an aging and obese population.
The US and Europe had inflation rates of over 5% even before the war. The war(s) make the situation even worse.
Before the seemingly unending and unwinnable war in Ukraine, both Russia and Ukraine accounted for a quarter of global wheat exports, with Russia being a major supplier of fossil fuels, especially to Europe. These, the assault on Gaza, and the growing contention with China are causing massive disruption in the supply chain and sea lanes, which in turn drive up prices and increase added pressures on the lives of poor and working people in the West.
Current drug shortages in this country are just one more symptom of war capitalism in crisis. Believe it’s so.
The IDF has destroyed 45,000 buildings in Khan Younis alone. 55% of the city is obliterated. Human rights groups are calling the city unlivable. You would have to be the dumbest person alive to believe Israel was only targeting terrorists. — Cenk Uygur
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Hunger in Gaza is overshadowing the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a typically joyous festival during which families celebrate the end of Ramadan. In Istanbul, thousands of worshipers gathered at the Aya Sofya Mosque for prayers, some carrying Palestinian flags and chanting slogans in support of people in Gaza, where the United Nations and partners warn that more than a million people are under threat of imminent flood and famine with little aid allowed in.
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Yes, it’s genocide, says Warren.
What a shame that Sen.Elizabeth Warren failed to run in the Democratic primaries this time around as a critic of US policy on Gaza. It might have given those 500,000 “uncommitted” voters something to vote for.
Last week, Warren went where no other US senator, including Bernie Sanders, has dared to tread when she called out Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza by its name, “genocide.”
“If you want to do it as an application of the law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday while taking audience questions during an event at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts.
After initially voicing support for Israel following the events of Oct. 7th, Warren, like many Democrats, has grown increasingly vocal in her criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration.
Warren says she’s not hung up on the word genocide, maintaining that the focus on the war in Gaza should go beyond a “labels argument.”
“For me, it is far more important to say what Israel is doing is wrong. And it is wrong. It is wrong to starve children within a civilian population in order to try to bend to your will. It is wrong to drop 2000-pound bombs, in densely populated civilian areas.”
In January, she floated the idea of imposing restrictions on military aid to Israel, saying on X that the U.S. “cannot write a blank check for a right-wing government that’s demonstrated an appalling disregard for Palestinian lives.”
Let’s see if she stays firm on that when the war budget comes to a vote.
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It’s a ‘mistake’…
In contrast to Warren, Pres. Biden called Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza a mistake. “What he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden told Spanish-language broadcaster Univision.
A mistake? Does he mean like — Oops, we killed 33,000 civilians, mostly women and children, with starvation, disease, and those US-supplied bombs and missiles?
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And finally…A revolt brewing at State
State Department staff sent at least eight internal dissent memos to express disagreement with US policy on Israel and Gaza during the first two months of the war, according to the Independent.
That’s not counting last week’s protest resignation of State Department official Annelle Sheline.
A further memo was sent last month from the US embassy in Jordan, warning of increasing instability across the region due to Israel’s ongoing war, according to a person familiar with the matter, bringing the total number to at least nine.