Perry Farrell is of two minds regarding the second Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination for Jane’s Addiction.
“I would like the world to view Jane’s in the same light as the greats, but that’s as far as it goes,” he tells Billboard
in the midst of the Horns, Thorns en Halos Farewell Tour by Porno For
Pyros, his other band with Jane’s drummer Stephen Perkins. “I don’t
really get off on trophies. I’ve always kind of felt like I’m on my own
island. It’s nice of them to consider me, (but) I’m not so sure I belong
there.”
A vanguard of the alternative rock scene, Jane’s Addiction was
previously nominated for the Rock Hall in 2017. The on-and-off group’s
fourth and most recent studio album, The Great Escape Artist,
was released during 2011, and it’s released two live albums since, in
2013 and 2017. A non-album single, “Another Soulmate,” came out in 2013.
The group toured during 2022 and 2023 with original bassist Eric Avery
back in the lineup but not guitarist Dave Navarro, who was struggling with effects from long COVID. The group has reportedly been in the studio working on new material as well.
[. . .]
Asked if he wants people to vote for him, Farrell, a co-creator of
Lollapalooza, responded, “That’s up to you. If you’re gonna do it, check
off Cher’s box, too.” He also voiced support for an eventual induction
for the MC5, which has been nominated six times. Jane’s currently ranks
12th in the fan voting for the Rock Hall. Public votes can be cast via vote.rockhall.com.
Good for Perry. Cher's always had a following in the alternative rock music field. Remember, Kurt Cobain performed Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" onstage. In other music news, BBC reports:
Singer-songwriter Raye could make Brit Awards history later if she becomes the most-awarded artist in a single year.
The
star has already broken records by getting seven nominations, beating
the previous record of six held by Craig David, Gorillaz and Robbie
Williams.
And the 26-year-old has one award in the bag - songwriter of the year, which was announced in advance.
She will face competition in other categories at Saturday's ceremony from Dua Lipa, Olivia Dean and J Hus.
I hope she wins every award she's up for. I say that now. If you'd asked me last Friday, I would have said, "Martha Raye's got a music album? I thought she passed away years ago."
I had never heard of Raye. Then, Saturday last weekend, this goes up at THE COMMON ILLS.
I love Saturdays at THE COMMON ILLS. C.I. posts those music videos and there are always things I see that make me smile because they're songs I love but there are also songs that I honestly do not know -- old ones, new ones. Raye was new to me. On that video alone, I listened to her album MY 21ST CENTURY BLUES and I love it. My favorite song on it is "Buss It Down."
Friday, March 1, 2024. Marianne Williamson delivers a major speech in
San Francisco, THE NEW YORK TIMES mythical rape 'report' continues to
fall apart, instead of answering questions about that report the paper
is trying to figure out who is speaking to the press, and much more.
Marianne
Williamson announced Wednesday that she was unsuspending her campaign
for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and was back in the
race.. She spoke at an event in San Francisco last night.
Excerpt.
Marianne
Williamson: The Battle of Gettysburg was the battle at which it was
decisive. Once the North won that battle, it was decisive that the
Union would in fact survive. So Abraham Lincoln himself went to the
battlefield. And his words, of course, in The Gettysburg Address is
that the men who died there -- for the North -- he said that they had
given their last full measure of devotion so that a government of the
people and by the people and for the people would not perish from the
earth. My message to you is, once again, although we don't already know
this, is it's perishing now. It's perishing on our watch because we
are for all intents and purposes a government of the corporations and by
the corporations and for the corporations. And ever since particularly
CITIZENS UNITED and the unlimited permission given to corporate forces
to flood our political system with the undue influence of their money,
at this point, they hold Washington hostage. Washington is a system of
legalized bribery. I can tell you from being in the belly of that
beast, this is how the system operates. If you don't have, I mean huge
money -- I don't mean money, I mean huge money -- Remember the President
has a billion dollars for this campaign. If you don't have either huge
amounts of money or access to people with huge amounts of money, you
don't have a chance of being anywhere near the pinnacles of power in
this country. And that's why you might ask yourself, 'Well given all
the things we've been talking about tonight, why don't they pass
policies in Washington that make it better? Why don't they pass
policies that help the average American?" That's because there are so
few average Americans in that place. And how much power is exerted to
make sure the average American either doesn't get in or once they do get
in they're manipulated to the point where there's just more suckers for
the same establishment? There's only one way to override this at this
point. And that is for a peaceful revolution -- a peaceful revolution at
the ballot box. John F. Kennedy said that those who keep us from
peaceful revolution make violent revolution inevitable. So I believe
that we are at a crossroad. I think we all know that we're at a
crossroad. But like I said before, this is a moment for data analysis. I
didn't say anything tonight that everybody here doesn't already know. I
mean maybe I gave a statistic or two that you might not have
considered. But in general it's like the dots are scrambled. It's not
like the dots aren't there. And it's not that we're stupid people.
It's that we've been trained -- we've been trained to expect too
little. We've been trained to farm out our best critical thinking. And
we've been -- even those of us who are Democrats -- we've been trained
to give up the democratic process. We've returned to Tammany Hall
politics -- to men around a table a hundred years ago who got together
with cigars and decided who the candidates would be and would come up
with these ridiculous policies like, "Oh, no, no, we don't primary an
incumbent president." Tell that to those of us who remember Lyndon B.
Johnson because Eugene McCarthy primaried him, Bobby Kennedy Sr.
primaried him. We didn't think that was weird. We thought it was
democracy. People primary sitting senators all the time. People
primary sitting Congress people all the time. But we've just been 'oh!
oh! oh!' This is codependency now. Because the DNC said "Oh, no, we
have to go with Joe. The DNC says we're going with Joe." Who the hell
is the DNC? I'll tell you something, political parties are not
mentioned in the Consitution. And George Washington, in his farewell
address, warned us about them. He said, he predicted -- and, man, this
one rings true -- he said they could form factions of men who were more
loyal to their party than to their country. John Adams would then say
he saw political parties as the greatest threat to our democracy. And I
-- many of us in this room -- grew up in a time when political parties
sat in the background. We still honored that democratic principal that
political power lies in the hands of the people. The people would make a
decision in a primary who to nominate. The party would have nothing to
do with it until the people had chosen and then they would step in.
But, of course, they decided once Bernie Sanders came along, "Oh, we're
not going to have any of that." And then they got away with that. And
then they did it the next time and they got away with that. And now
they don't even pretend. Now they don't even pretend. And we're just
going along. So I ran for president because I feel that we need an
economic u-turn -- an economic u-turn in this country. Because I feel
we're like a ship headed for the iceberg here and that one major party
just heads right towards it and another major political party heading
more slowly and will hit it at a different angle. We have one major
political party representing a total nose-dive for our democracy because
you can't have a thriving democracy where you don't have a thriving
middle class. And the other major political party is moving in the
direction of a managed decline. These political parties do not just chop
wood and carry water for these corporate forces, they are huge
corporate forces. So seems to me we need to turn the ship around. Now I
was very enthralled by Franklin Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights
which would include universal healthcare, Medicare For All, tuition free
college and tech school, a complete elimination of the college loan
debt by using The Higher Education Act. It would include all of the
things we've mentioned. It would include things like ramping down
fossil fuel extraction rather than ramping it up which all of those
presidents of the modern era -- Democrats and Republicans -- end up
falling in line with Big Oil. Now one of them pretends not to. See,
one of them has learned what we want to hear so will say things like
"I'm the Climate President" and will even make sure that there are
healthy investments in green energy in The Inflation Reduction Act and
we say, "Oh, that's so good! There are these wonderful, wonderful, very
beneficial in the Inflation Reduction Act. Oh, yes. Oh, yes." Guess
what? It's a classic purse thief distraction technique. That same
president has given more oil drilling permits than even Trump did. That
same president okayed The Willow Project. That same president must
know that all of the investment in dirty energy completely nullifies the
investments in healthy, green energy. We are suckers if we're okay
with that. And all of the presidents in the modern era -- Republican or
Democrat -- are willing to fall in line -- obviously -- with the defense
industries. And so what we need is a guaranteed living wage. What we
need is guaranteed sick pay. All of those things. And we need to
repudiate the permanent war machine. Americans are figuring this out.
We need to play peace games, not just war games. We need a peace
academy, not just military academy. We need armies of peace builders
just like we have armies of military personnel. We need a peace academy,
not just a military academy, because we need to learn to wage peace.
Even Donald Rumsfeld said we need to learn to wage peace.
The
speech was broadcast live on YOUTUBE (2,844 views -- those may not
include live views) and TWITTER (9448 views). (TWITTER -- I don't work
for Elon Musk and I don't have to indulge him.)
It
was a major speech covering many important topics and explaining why
she was back in the race -- a candidate unsuspending their campaign is
news -- it's always news in the rare times that it happens. Most
infamously, it happened in 1992 when H Ross Perot came back into the
race.
So news outlets can hire reporters to
cover just Taylor Swift or just Beyonce, but there's no one who could
cover a speech in a major US city -- one also broadcast live over the
internet?
That's rather sad and one more sign of a democracy in peril.
And
I'd rather money be spent covering the arts than covering sports so
let's add in all the reporting that took place after the Superbowl
ended. I think everyone who wanted to see it, watched it. The coverage
in the days after the game was not needed.
Gaza.
ELETRONIC
INTIFADA continues to cover the mythical rapes of October 7th that have
still not been documented. And the revelations that THE INTERCEPT and
others have turned up in the last days.
New doubts are emerging about the New York Times’s coverage
of sexual violence during the October 7 Hamas-led attack — and the paper
owes its readers an open and transparent explanation.
What’s more, its reporting on this issue has become so questionable
that it should assign new reporters to go over the entire story again.
Independent researchers scrutinized the online record,
and raised serious questions about Schwartz. First, she has apparently
never been a reporter but is actually a filmmaker, who the Times
suddenly hired in October. You would expect the paper to look for
someone with actual journalistic experience, especially for a story as
sensitive as this one, written during the fog of war. Surely the paper
had enough of its own correspondents on staff who could have been
assigned to it.
Next, the researchers found that Schwartz had not hidden her strong
feelings online. There are screenshots of her “liking” certain posts
that repeated the “40 beheaded baby” hoax, and that endorsed another
hysterical post that urged the Israeli army to “turn Gaza into a
slaughterhouse,” and called Palestinians “human animals.”
(Just this morning, more evidence emerged online; Schwartz apparently also served in Israeli Military Intelligence.)
Finally, one of her co-authors on two of the reports was Adam Sella, who is her nephew. ********* [see note added below]*****
Let’s pause here. What would happen if the Times suddenly
hired a Palestinian filmmaker with no journalistic background, who had
recently publicly “liked” posts that called for “pushing Israeli Jews
into the sea,” to co-write several of its most sensitive and contested
reports?
After Anat Schwartz’s online history became public, she locked down
her accounts and then deleted much of the incriminating content.
The New York Times imposes strict rules on its reporters to
maintain the appearance of objectivity. Reporters are not supposed to
attend demonstrations of any kind, wear campaign buttons, or post
opinions on social media. By hiring Anat Schwartz, the paper clearly
violated its own guidelines, and it should publicly explain and
apologize.
And her partner in this, Adam Sella, is the nephew of Anat Schwartz’s partner, and they’re not married. In fact, Amy, The New York Times,
they requested a correction from us, because we had initially said that
it was her nephew, which I think in the context of America and other
countries you would say. If you’re somebody’s longtime life partner, you
would say, “Oh, yeah, this is my nephew.” OK, they’re not blood
relatives, and they emphasize that she’s not married. Fine, we corrected
that.
My question is: Where are the corrections in The New York Times piece? The New York Times
has grave, grave mischaracterizations, sins of omission, reliance on
people who have no forensic or criminology credentials to be asserting
that there was a systematic rape campaign put in place here. And to
publish this article at a moment when Israel was intensifying, after
that brief pause where captives were exchanged — intensifying its
genocidal attack against the people of Gaza, this played a very, very
significant role. And the more we learn about this, the more we discover
that the reporting tactics that The New York Times used are
certainly not up to the standards that the newspaper claims to be
promoting. They will not issue any corrections on what has already been
documented to be very problematic sins of commission and omission in
this piece.
Inside the newsroom, the article was met with praise from editorial
leaders but skepticism from other Times journalists. The paper’s
flagship podcast “The Daily” attempted to turn the article into an
episode, but it didn’t manage to get through a fact check, as The
Intercept previously reported.
(In a statement received after publication, a Times spokesperson said,
“No Daily episode was killed due to fact checking failures.”)
The fear among Times staffers who have been critical of the paper’s
Gaza coverage is that Schwartz will become a scapegoat for what is a
much deeper failure. She may harbor animosity toward Palestinians, lack
the experience with investigative journalism, and feel conflicting
pressures between being a supporter of Israel’s war effort and a Times
reporter, but Schwartz did not commission herself and Sella to report
one of the most consequential stories of the war. Senior leadership at
the New York Times did.
Schwartz said as much in an interview
with Israeli Army Radio on December 31. “The New York Times said,
‘Let’s do an investigation into sexual violence’ — it was more a case of
them having to convince me,” she said. Her host cut her off: “It was a
proposal of The New York Times, the entire thing?”
“Unequivocally. Unequivocally. Obviously. Of course,” she said. “The
paper stood behind us 200 percent and gave us the time, the investment,
the resources to go in-depth with this investigation as much as needed.”
Shortly after the war broke out, some editors and reporters
complained that Times standards barred them from referring to Hamas as
“terrorists.” The rationale from the standards department, run for 14
years by Philip Corbett, had long been that Hamas was the de facto
administrator of a specific territory, rather than a stateless terror
group. Deliberately killing civilians, went the argument, was not enough
to label a group terrorists, as that label could apply quite broadly.
Corbett, after October 7, defended the policy in the face of
pressure, newsroom sources said, but he lost. On October 19, an email
went out on behalf of Executive Editor Joe Kahn saying that Corbett had
asked to step back from his position.
“After 14 years as the embodiment of Times standards, Phil Corbett has
told us he’d like to step back a bit and let someone else take the
leading role in this crucial effort,” Times leadership explained. Three newsroom sources said the move was tied to the pressure he was under to soften coverage in Israel’s favor. One of the social media posts
that Schwartz liked, triggering the Times review, made the case that,
for Israeli propaganda purposes, Hamas should be likened at all times to
the Islamic State. A Times spokesperson told The Intercept, “Your
understanding about Phil Corbett is flatly untrue.” In a statement
received after publication, “Phil had asked to change roles before Joe
Kahn even became executive editor in June 2022. And it had absolutely
nothing to do with a dispute over coverage.”
Since the revelations regarding Schwartz’s recent social media
activity, her byline has not appeared in the paper and she has not
attended editorial meetings. The paper said that a review into her
social media “likes” is ongoing. “Those ‘likes’’ are unacceptable
violations of our company policy,” said a Times spokesperson.
The bigger scandal may be the reporting itself, the process that
allowed it into print, and the life-altering impact the reporting had
for thousands of Palestinians whose deaths were justified by the alleged
systematic sexual violence orchestrated by Hamas the paper claimed to
have exposed.
Another frustrated Times reporter who has also worked as an editor
there said, “A lot of focus will understandably, rightfully, be directed
at Schwartz but this is most clearly poor editorial decision making
that undermines all the other great work being tirelessly done across
the paper — both related and completely unrelated to the war — that
manages to challenge our readers and meet our standards.”
The
story never should have run. There were no facts. There was no
evidence. We have stated over and over here that it is mythical rapes
until they have survivors or victims (victims if the females died).
I'm sorry I'm not in the mood for crap. I'm going try to be nicer
than I was to the actress who called me last night and begged me to help
with the effort on those mythical rape victims. But I can't make any
promises.
That was last night. This morning"
One
e-mail changed a little bit in the 43 times it was sent. You got the
wrong one. You can't shame me. Not on the topic of the assault. I get
it, you want us to all grab the Israeli government's hymnal and sing
the chorus to "Rapes Took Place October 7th And My Heart Knows It
Happened." You got the wrong one.
(A)
I was assaulted years ago as a child. So I really don't need to hear
from you sentences like, "Imagine if you were assaulted . . ." _____, I
was. I don't have to imagine. And what kind of sicko (a) wants me to relive that trauma? (B) "You have said over and over,
'Believe all women.''' One more time: You got the wrong one. I never
said that and I never would say that. Check the archives and you'll see
that I have long rejected that nonsense. I do not believe in that
blanket nonsense. Some men lie, some women lie. More to the point, I
am a thinking person and I would be an idiot to turn off my brain and
march along blindly. There are women who came forward with charges
against Donald Trump. I don't like Donald and never have. I believed
some of the women, I didn't believe them all. If you were serving on a
jury, you'd listen to the information and process it using your best
skills. That's not "believe all women." I've never argued that and I
never would. Some women I believe, some I don't. Some I can't
determine. (C) "It is your duty to call out these rapists." What
rapists? As with the women who allegedly were raped, we don't know
anything about who raped anyone.
I hear your claims. I've heard them repeatedly in the media. Where's your proof?
Some of you liars on this are bringing back in the beheaded babies lie.
That is a lie. There is no proof to that. But it could have happened.
A sword swipe, a head comes off. Yeah, that can happen. But you're
telling me that in the hours an assault took place on October 7th, as
Israelis scrambled to get to safety and hopefully Israeli forces scrambled to fight the attack, Hamas took
time to rape. And to gang rape. Wow.
Doesn't
play. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. But it doesn't play. If you
pitched me that, I'd say that was a huge plot point error and that the
audience will never believe it. This was
an attack lasting hours not days. That the audience -- aware of all the
money that's gone into the Israeli military alone would never believe
that attackers would gang rape on site of the attack because they would
be in fear of being caught. They might drag someone away to rape them
after the attack but to stop everything and conduct a gang-rape? Again,
it doesn't play. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. But it doesn't play.
It didn't play. It was never believable.
Recently,
the United Nations raised the issue of Palestinian girls and women
being abused and raped in Israeli custody. That likely has happened. A
woman being held somewhere is much more likely to be assaulted than a
woman out in the open in the midst of a raid, attack, charge whatever.
If evidence emerges that it did happen, we'll note that evidence. We did note the UN announcement because it is news.
But,
please note, I didn't use it to slam feminists or the women who pretend
they're feminists even though they're just Me-ists. Feminism is only
to be acknowledged and practiced by Me-ists when they can personally
benefit from it. Like the joke about certain African-American male
celebrities who reach out to the Black community only when they're in
the midst of a scandal and therefore, the joke goes, suddenly remember
they're Black.
Part
of the propaganda on the rape myth (it's a myth until they find females
who were raped) was to try to turn woman against woman. And, in the
US, various ugly spirited women -- and balding women if you think about
it -- used their celebrity to sneer at other women for not embracing
and standing up for these non-existent rape victims.
And
that was bad enough. I don't need some egotistical bitch who made
everyone miserable on her so-so TV show and was such a bitch that they
weren't willing to meet her quote so she'd pop up on the spin-off
lecturing me about feminism. A queen bee who persecutes other women
telling me what feminism is?
That was bad enough. But then we had others coming forward and damning feminists for promoting the mythical rapes.
Excuse
me. I'm a feminist. I'm not the feminist. Ava and I, at THIRD,
present a feminist view on the media, we don't write "the" feminist
view.
Because there's not one universal voice or opinion.
It
was amazing to watch as a narrative emerged that bashed feminists for
(a) not speaking out for the mythical rape victims and (b) bashed
feminists for speaking out on the mythical rape victims.
That's what it finally came down to.
A lot of writers who never do a thing for feminism or feminists kept attacking us -- regardless of what we did or did not do.
I
think it's highly more likely that women in custody were raped -- it's
true of women in custody in any country including the US. So I won't be
surprised if the investigation the UN is calling for -- on what has
happened to Palestinian women in Israeli custody -- finds actual
evidence and proof. But as a feminist and as a rape victim, this
feminist does not use rape for propaganda.
We
should wait for proof. Listen to women, absolutely. But there were no
women to listen to with regards to October 7th and what I'm left with
is the impression that women were used to sell war (how it has looked
the entire time) and that's not about feminism. THE NEW YORK TIMES has a
lot to answer for as do various American celebrities -- Julianna, Mayim
and other balding actresses.
Instead of answers from THE TIMES, they're circling the wagon and trying to figure out who's talking to the press. Charlotte Klein (VANITY FAIR) reports:
TheNew York Times is conducting a leak investigation following a report in The Intercept about a yet-to-be-aired episode of The Daily
addressing explosive claims of sexual violence committed by Hamas on
October 7. Management in recent weeks has pulled at least two dozen
staffers, including Daily producers, into meetings in an
attempt to understand how internal details about the podcast’s editorial
process got out, according to multiple sources familiar with the
matter. The investigation, I’m told, is being led by Charlotte Behrendt,
the paper’s director of policy and internal investigations.
In late January, The Intercept reported that the Times had planned to air an episode of The Daily weeks earlier that was based on a December Timesinvestigation, led by Pulitzer Prize–winner Jeffrey Gettleman and coauthored by freelancers Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella,
about how Hamas “weaponized sexual violence” in the October attack on
Israel. But the paper shelved that episode “amid a furious internal
debate about the strength of the paper’s original reporting on the
subject,” according to The Intercept, which noted that a new script was
drafted that “offered major caveats, allowed for uncertainty, and asked
open-ended questions that were absent from the original article, which
presented its findings as definitive evidence of the systematic use of
sexual violence as a weapon of war.” The Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grim
suggested that producers and the paper faced a conundrum: “run a
version that hews closely to the previously published story and risk
republishing serious mistakes, or publish a heavily toned-down version,
raising questions about whether the paper still stands by the original
report.” (Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander
told The Intercept that the paper does not comment on ongoing reporting
and that “there is only one ‘version’ of any piece of audio journalism:
the one that publishes.”)
It’s highly unusual for the Times to conduct a leak
investigation, with multiple staffers saying this is the first such
internal probe they can recall taking place. “It’s not something we do,”
said one. “That kind of witch hunt is really concerning.” Though
information has leaked out in the past—it’s par for the course for a
newsroom as sprawling and influential as the Times—this
disclosure presumably cuts deeper because it described internal
decision-making around a story that had yet to be published.
That's
not a good look for any outlet. It's an especially poor look for THE
TIMES. It was four years ago, remember, that they were dismissing the
Hunter Biden laptop. But more to the point, it was October 18, 2020 that they published an article everyone wants to forget
-- a fairy tale about how THE NEW YORK POST -- a threadbare publication
that has nowhere near the newsroom THE TIMES does -- had massive
pushback on their own Hunter Biden laptop article. [Added 3/1/24 at
10:23 PM actual date of NYT 'report' on the NY POST article and also
provided link And, by the way, 'tabloid' is not an insult or broadside.
It's what THE POST is and has been going back to the days of Dorothy
Schiff -- there are tabloids and there are broadsheets.] That
anonymice 'report' was questionable for the lack of facts and
on-the-record sources -- and the pretense that NY POST has an actual
newsroom of any significance -- they're run on the cheap. But it's even
more appalling when you grasp that THE TIMES believes it can
investigate and report on other outlets but that no one should do the
same on them.
[Added 3/1/24 at 2:53 pm -- I think we need Jeremy and Ryan's discussion with Amy on today's DEMOCRACY NOW!
We'll note it in Monday's snapshot -- and it will go up here in about
two hours in its own post but since the snapshot is reposted I want to
be sure the video of their discussion is in this snapshot.]
Gaza remains under assault. Day 147 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza
by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.
But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge
for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel,
the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover
for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.
Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily
basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to
school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe
Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll.
The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom
believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The
slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US
Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned
the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of
Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted,
"More than
1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza --
have
been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million
women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million
people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." AP
noted yesterday that the death toll stood at 30,035 with
over 70,000 injured and thousands missing. Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained
on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000
Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of
their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe
Lazzarini Tweeted:
And the area itself? Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive
has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole
neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been
blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are
still standing, but most are battered shells." Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery
by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and
Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing
destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate
of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second
World War."
At least 13 children are dead in Gaza because of malnutrition and hunger, Hamas said, citing data from the Gaza Health Ministry.
The
deaths are "a declaration of failure of the international community and
the United Nations in carrying out their tasks in protecting children
from starvation," it said in a statement today.
"We
renew our call on the United Nations and international relief
institutions to take urgent action to save children and civilians in the
Gaza Strip, especially in the Gaza and North governorates, and not to
submit to the dictates of the criminal Zionist occupation," Hamas said,
referring to Israel.
The organization also urged the
international community to help deliver food aid and medical assistance
to the enclave urgently "to avoid the increasing catastrophe of famine."
Sunday, my "Kat's Korner: Melissa Manchester's back" went up. It's my review of Melissa Manchester's new album RE:VIEW which is her re-exploring her songs. I didn't note the review here on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday and the reason why is that I was dragging through this week. I wrote it Sunday and it took forever and I was exhausted -- thank you to C.I. for editing, by the way, as always. I'm glad so many of you enjoyed the Magic Mountain part. That was two sentences originally and C.I. said I should expand on it so I did. I think it makes the review.
At BNN, Sakchi Khandelwal also praises the album, concluding, "In a landscape often dominated by fleeting trends and the relentless pursuit of the next big thing, Melissa Manchester’s RE: VIEW
stands out as a profound statement on the enduring nature of quality
music and the unbreakable bonds it forms. As listeners delve into this
nostalgic journey, they are reminded that some voices, like
Manchester’s, are truly timeless."
You should really check it out. Here's her dueting with Dolly Parton on "Midnight Blue."
That is the most perfect collaboration for 2014. The way they blend their voices, the way they hit the notes. It's magic.
I also like Rhiannon Giddens' "The Ballad of Sally Anne."
On April 12, Oh Boy Records will release, My Black Country: The Songs
of Alice Randall, an 11-track collaborative album that celebrates the
Black female experience in Country and Folk music. The new project
includes contributions from Rhiannon Giddens, Valerie June, Leyla
McCalla, Allison Russell, Sunny War, Adia Victoria and more.
Alice
Randall is nationally known as author of The Wind Done Gone, her 2001
reinterpretation of Gone With the Wind, that focuses on Black
perspectives. Prior to her debut novel, Randall wrote numerous songs,
(including Trisha Yearwood’s #1 hit, "XXXs and OOOs") that were recorded
by mainstream country artists who are all white. Randall has been one
of the few Black female writers on Nashville’s Music Row.
“Because
all the singers of my songs had been white, because country has
white-washed Black lives out of country space, most of my audience
assumed the stars of my songs were all white." Randall wrote in a release.
The
second preview from the upcoming project is Rhiannon Giddens’ powerful
reinterpretation of “The Ballad Of Sally Anne.” The song first appeared
on Mark O’Connor’s 1991 album The New Nashville Cats. The track delves
into the harrowing reality of lynching in the American South,
I'm looking forward to that. I really loved Rhiannon's THERE IS NO OTHER.
Thursday, February 29, 2024. Marianne's back in, Joe's slow on the
uptake, Junior steps on more corpses as he tries to climb the political
ladder, the 30,000 mark has been passed in Gaza and much more.
We start in the US with major campaign news. Marianne Williamson announced yesterday that "as of today, I am unsuspending my campaign for president of the United States."
The
moment is important for a number of reasons. First, if you suspend you
campaign, you can start it back up. Something Ron DeSantis reminds
himself daily as he waits to see Donald Trump convicted. So it's
teachable. Second it also shows the need for something more. Marianne
suspended her campaign. And then we ended up with Michigan's primary
this week which was noteworthy for a number of reasons including that
despite having suspended her campaign on February 7th, this week she
still got 3% of the vote. She beat the forgettable and unlikable Dean
Phillips who was still in the race. She didn't campaign, she did do
meet-and-greet, buy ad time, phone bank, media, you name it. And she
beat Dean Phillips giving it presumably his best shot.
There
is a hunger for something more and there is a need to push the
Democratic Party presidential candidate -- whomever that may be -- to
fight for the American people.
Yesterday, her campaign released a video of her explaining why she was unsuspending. You can also read that at her website:
As of today, I am unsuspending my Presidential campaign.
All of us have noticed America’s political dynamics are
moving in a disturbing direction. Donald Trump’s power is on the
incline, and President Biden’s is on the decline. More and more people
are saying the quiet part out loud: that despite the fact that the
President deserves credit for many of his accomplishments, he is clearly
a weak candidate to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.
I, however, am not. My ability to arouse in Americans
the angels of our better nature is the most powerful antidote to Trump’s
dark and authoritarian vision.
I suspended my campaign because we were losing the horse
race. But there is something much bigger than the horse race that’s at
stake here. In the words of Mohammed Ali, ‘When the mission is right,
the odds don’t matter.”
We cannot sit idly by while the D.C. political class
sleepwalks this country into disaster. Too many have followed the
directives of the status quo for too long, but we are awakening now. We
are ready to act, to take the wheel of history into our hands and turn
it in another direction.
We need a President who stands for a new beginning in
America, and whether I can help do that as President or in some other
way, unsuspending the campaign is a necessary next step.
We will win on the promise of restoring America’s middle
class and waging peace both domestically and internationally. From
#MedicareForAll to #CeasefireNow in exchange for the hostages, from
tuition free college and tech school to a guaranteed living wage, from
waging peace to repudiating America’s forever war machine, from
subsidized child care to ending America’s War on Drugs, our platform is
the winning one.
I will respond to the cult-like personality of Donald
Trump with a light-filled vision of hope and possibility. We will become
once again a “government of the people, by the people, and for the
people” at a time when corporate interests have taken Washington
hostage.
I hope you are as moved by this vision as I am. You have
supported the campaign before, and I hope you feel moved to support it
again.
We must rise to the occasion like never before; so much
is riding on what we do now. Even if the most I can do is influence the
President, that in itself is a goal worth striving for. For those of us
who are deeply committed to Trump not returning to the White House,
it’s imperative that we do everything possible to help mount a winning
campaign in 2024.
I hope you will help me do this. There is no time to
waste. Please give generously so we can restart the engines and race to
the top.
They also released the video below that gets to why she is running and why you should care.
Marianne
Williamson: I'm Marianne Williamson and when I was growing up, America
had a vibrant middle class. The average American worker had decent
benefits, could afford a home, could afford a car, could afford a yearly
vacation, could afford for one member of the couple to stay home if
they wished and could afford to send their kids to college. But over
the last fifty years, there's been a massive transfer of wealth to the
tune of 50 trillion dollars from the bottom 90% of Americans to the the
top 1% -- decimating America's middle class. We all owe President Biden
a debt of gratitude for defeating President Trump in 2020. But with
the things that they're going to be throwing at us in 2024? We need to
submit to the American people an agenda of fundamental economic
reform: universal healthcare, tuition-free colleges at state colleges
and universities, higher education including tech schools, paternity and
maternity leave, free child care and a guaranteed living wage. These
are things that are considered moderate positions in every other
advanced democracy . But in the United States, people have been trained
to expect too little. The American people have been played. What the
Democratic Party should do is to truly return to the principles of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- not just alleviate their suffering but
offer them genuine economic reform, not just help people survive in an
unjust system, the Democratic Party should end an unjust system.
Washington DC, with a few brave exceptions, is filled with two major
categories of leaders: Those who don't even care about all the suffering
that is going on out there and those who do not have the moral courage
to fix it. Let me in there, I will.
That's a powerful message and she's speaking to us.
I don't know a kind way to say this so let's not try to pretty it up: Who the hell is Junior speaking to?
My
phone hasn't stopped ringing since the e-mail his campaign sent out
late yesterday afternoon "Let’s send a powerful message" (afternoon my
time -- PST).
Marianne just spoke about the needs of the American people.
Bobby Kennedy Junior can't do that.
Junior yammered away for over 1600 words and the only time "you" were mentioned was to beg for money.
What did he offer instead?
More
attempts to climb on top of the shoulders of his father and the late
President John F. Kennedy. For variety, he threw two more men in the
mix -- Martin Luther King Jr. -- mentioned only in passing -- and
Malcolm X. The last one, that was the most offensive.
Right
now, as you read this, you're in the world and you're trying to learn
and grow. Some people stop. Junior stopped growing long ago. Which is
why he offers the Whitest and most insulting take on Malcolm X you
could imagine. I can remember when, in the 80s, his take began to
become a dominant take. Articles and books appeared. It was a
different take than the spit-on-Malcolm take that was so popular among
many. But I don't know that it was a better take. At least when the
enemy spits on you, they realize you're a force -- even in death -- to
be reckoned with. The new Malcolm was more like a child who returned
from a journey and was petted on the head. That's 'history' in Junior's
warped mind.
In fairness, it's history he was
'taught.' Lucy Hughes-Hallett wrote an excellent book entitled
CLEOPATRA: HISTORIES, DREAMS AND DISTORTIONS. The 1990 book is a must
read for critical thinkers and traces how history is flexible and how in
one time period one thing is emphasized and in another it's something
else. Same person: Cleopatra. But the history and the stories a
society tells itself change over time.
Bobby's
become fixated on the last century and that's becoming ever more
clear. It's the 21st century and he can't cope with it.
And
it's bad enough that Junior keeps trying to pretend he can speak for
his father (who does have eight other living children) and his uncle but
now he's trying to speak for MLK and Malcolm as well?
"What's next?" a friend asked over the phone, "His donation plea where he channels the ghost of Kitty Genovese?"
Exactly.
He's useless as THE DAILY SHOW made clear this week.
AMYGOODMAN:
We begin today’s show in Michigan, where President Joe Biden won the
Democratic primary Tuesday but faced a significant backlash over his
support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Biden won about 81% of the vote,
but over 100,000 voters, or more than 13%, cast their ballots for
“uncommitted.”
In recent weeks, the group Listen to Michigan urged Democrats to vote
“uncommitted” to pressure Biden to call on Israel to end its assault on
Gaza. Organizers of the campaign had said they were hoping for 10,000
“uncommitted” votes, pointing to Donald Trump’s win of less than 11,000
votes in 2016, to show the significance of that number. Tuesday’s vote
shows they got 10 times that amount.
Michigan is the first major battleground state in the general
election to hold its primary. It’s also home to one of the largest Arab
American populations in the country. Top White House officials visited
Michigan earlier this month to meet with Arab and Muslim leaders after a
number of them refused to meet with Biden’s campaign manager.
The movement to vote “uncommitted” will likely spread to other
states. Organizers of the movement are holding a call with supporters in
Minnesota, which will vote next week, and Washington state, which holds
its primary March 12th.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. James Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute. His new opinion piece for Pakistan Today is titled “Why the USA
Continues to Fail the Arab World.” He’s joining us from Utica, New
York. We’re also joined by former Democratic Congressmember from
Michigan Andy Levin. He’s joining us from Southfield, Michigan.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! You’re a former
congressmember, Andy Levin. You’re also a former synagogue president.
Talk about this “uncommitted” campaign. For every six votes President
Biden got yesterday in the primary, “uncommitted” got one. Talk about
the organizing effort and what message that you hope that those who
supported “uncommitted,” like yourself, sent to President Biden.
ANDYLEVIN: Well, good morning, Amy and everyone. I don’t have much of a voice left, so sorry about that.
It was really an incredible thing, Amy. You know, I’ve been
organizing for peace for 40 years, and I’ve rarely seen such an organic
and authentic movement come together in, as you say, just three weeks.
And we got over 100,000 people to vote “uncommitted.” This was something
that grew up out of the Arab American and larger Muslim communities in
Michigan, but it had great power among progressives, among Jewish
people, Christians, Muslims, people of other faiths, people of no faith.
College campuses were aflame about this.
And the idea was that Michigan has this “uncommitted” box on our
ballot, because, remember, this is a presidential primary, and some
other states do the same thing. You’re voting to send delegates to a
convention, so you could vote to send delegates “uncommitted.” And, in
fact, we won so many votes, I believe we will send at least one delegate
from two congressional districts: the 6th District, represented by
Debbie Dingell, and the 12th District, represented by Rashida Tlaib.
I think the significance of this, Amy, is that the president’s
people, and maybe the president himself, there’s a danger that they see
this as sort of like a political problem: “We need to send surrogates.
We need better messaging. People just need to realize what a disaster
Trump would be, which, of course, we can never let him get near the
White House again. So they’ll come around all of this.” No. This is war.
This is the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people, leveling
whole neighborhoods, most of the Gaza Strip. We don’t just want you to
use a better message.
The message from us to the president yesterday was: You must change
course. You must change course for the sake of your political reelection
and because it’s the right and necessary thing to do from every point
of view, including U.S. national security interests, for God’s sake. The
message to the president is: Stop treating what Bibi Netanyahu says as
the boundary of the possible. You’ve got to move towards an immediate
and permanent ceasefire and an end to this carnage, free all the
hostages, free political prisoners among the Palestinians, including
leading longtime prisoners who — if you don’t like Hamas, free Marwan
Barghouti, who’s been in prison for so long, whom many Palestinians
might support to change the situation there. So, we really need actual
change in policy, and I think we sent that message strongly last night.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Andy Levin,
I wanted to ask you — I was particularly struck by the turnout. The
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said this was a record
turnout on Tuesday for a presidential primary. Compared to, for
instance, South Carolina, where only 4% of Democrats voted in the
primary, here we had over, it looks like, 50%? Could you explain this
issue of turnout, as well?
ANDYLEVIN:
Well, one thing is that there were more — quite a greater number of
Republicans voting, or people voting in the Republican primary than the
Democratic primary. That’s also something that’s not great for President
Biden. But there was some sense of a contest on that side, right? Even
though we all know that Nikki Haley was going to trail by a wide margin.
But it is remarkable, Juan. Think about it. We have an incumbent
Democratic president running for reelection. We all know he’s going to
be the nominee. Most Democrats feel like maybe he’s done a really great
job in other areas. Personally, I was really proud to serve with him in
the 117th Congress. I’m proud of the Investing in America agenda that we
passed, having some, at least a semblance of, industrial policy in
America for the first time in many decades, and on and on. But what’s
remarkable is that this 100,000-plus people who voted “uncommitted,”
almost all of them, Juan, wouldn’t have showed up but for this. They’re
mad at the president. They would have stayed home.
And our message was: Wait a minute. That would be a disaster if you
stayed home. He won’t get the message. He won’t understand. Come out and
express your rage. Shake your fist at the president and say, “Look,”
for most of them, “I voted for you in 2020. I’m really mad at you right
now, and I have to tell you.” So, that, I think, juiced turnout.
And look at East Lansing, where Michigan State University is. Look at
Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is. It’s not just Dearborn
and Hamtramck, with our incredible, beautiful concentration of Arab
American and other Muslim voters. It’s also young people across the
state and progressives across the state who said, “We’re your base. We
want to win in November. In order to win, we want peace now.”
AMYGOODMAN: Andy Levin, the last time we talked to you, you were a congressmember. You were running for reelection. AIPAC,
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had invested millions in
Democratic primaries to defeat progressives who supported Palestine. You
were one of those they were trying to defeat. You’re a self-described
Zionist who supports a two-state solution. But earlier, before that
primary, a former president of AIPAC described
you as “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the
U.S.-Israel relationship.” Can you talk about what happened to you then?
You lost that election. But do you see your point of view being
embraced much both in Michigan and around the country in a way that AIPAC never imagined?
ANDYLEVIN:
I do, Amy. I mean, basically, they spent millions of dollars of dark
money. They raised a huge amount of so-called hard money for my opponent
in that primary, who basically toed the AIPAC
line completely. And now they say they’re going to spend $100 million
in 2022, and evidently they’ve already raised $44 million to take out
progressives in Democratic primaries. And much of their money is coming
from Republican billionaires, who don’t have any place in a Democratic
primary. And shame on us, as Democrats, if we continue to allow
Democratic candidates to take Republican money in Democratic primaries.
But here’s the situation. This avalanche of mostly dark money coming
to try to interfere with Democratic primaries is running into a tsunami
of upset by Democratic base voters who say, “The Jewish people deserve
self-determination. What about the Palestinian people? And, in fact,
there is no peace and security for the Jewish people in the Holy Land
unless and until we realize the political and human rights of the
Palestinian people. And we have to love each other. We have to support
each other. We have to find a way to live together.” And, yes, this is a
huge rebuke to that point of view that we must support the Israeli
government no matter what they do.
I mean, why are we letting Bibi Netanyahu set the boundary of the
possible? This man has never been for a just peace for one day in his
life. He has actively opposed Palestinian self-determination his whole
career. Like some other people we know, he’s fighting to stay in office
so that he doesn’t go to jail. I mean, come on. You can support the
people of Israel and the people of Palestine without supporting these
horrible policies and this horrible war.
I mean, you know, think of the average — I think of myself, Amy, 40 years ago, when I was a college student. And if I read what The New York Times reported, for example, that the U.S. was supplying 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, and the IDF
was dropping them not just on densely populated areas but on places
where they had told the Palestinians to flee, and then, at the end of
the article, “By the way, we’ve sent 5,000 more of one type of
2,000-pound bombs to Israel since October,” that Andy Levin 40 years ago
is not unlike college students and other young people all around
Michigan’s campuses and working people, saying, “Whoa! This is
unacceptable.” And we showed the president that we don’t accept it
yesterday.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I’d
to bring in James Zogby to the conversation, get your reaction to the
vote in Michigan, and also whether you think that this “uncommitted”
movement could spread across the country, especially now as we head into
Super Tuesday on March 5th.
JAMESZOGBY:
Well, look, number one, I want to thank Andy Levin for his leadership.
He made an enormous difference here, and we’re so pleased to be
partnering, as we were, in this campaign.
Secondly, I think, message sent. A hundred-plus thousand
“uncommitted” votes, much larger than anyone anticipated, makes a point:
President Biden, you ignore this vote at your risk.
And thirdly, I think, there, frankly, is not a need to go any
further. And I think that it’s very clear. We can extrapolate from the
rest of the states what the turnout would be in November if we ignore
this issue and continue to ignore this issue, not only, as the
congressman said, with the Arab American vote, but with young voters,
Black voters. We’ve done polling. My brother John has done polling on
this among American voters, not just Arab American voters. The impact
that the Gaza war is having on voters under 29, the impact it’s having
on Black, Latino and Asian voters, who are core to the Democratic
coalition, is very clear.
We just wanted to make a point in Michigan. It was the place to make
the point. But, frankly, it can also be read in Virginia. It can be read
in Georgia. It can be read in Pennsylvania. You ignore this war, and
you continue to offer nothing but anodyne, “Well, we’re really with you,
and we feel bad, too, and we’re paying attention and working every
day,” that does not cut it at this point. There is genocide unfolding.
People want it to end. The president either is going to have to act
decisively to end it, or it’s going to have an impact in November.
And as the congressman said it, as the organizers of this movement
have been very clear, this is not the abandon Biden movement. This is
the, for God’s sake, shape up or you might lose in November Biden
movement. And the fact is, is that the president has to listen and
change. It’s going to be too late for some. The fact that 30,000 have
already died, that famine is on the way, that genocide has continued is
going to mean a lot of people are going to say, “I can’t do this. I just
can’t do it.” But if there’s to be any effort at all made to bring some
voters back, something dramatic has to happen and change from the White
House to say, “Let’s give him another shot.”
But, frankly, right now we’re having trouble finding that message.
And I think Michigan sends a very strong signal, that doesn’t have to be
repeated anywhere else. Look, when I saw the Emerson College poll out
the day before this vote, I said, “Message sent.” They had 11%. We got a
little — you know, we did a little better than that. They said youth
vote was voting “uncommitted.” We did that. We showed that. In college
towns across the state, we won. “Uncommitted” won in Dearborn. It beat
Joe Biden. “Uncommitted” won in Hamtramck. It beat Joe Biden. Those are
the two concentrations of Arab American voters. The president needs to
pay attention. And I hope he does. And, you know, I hope he does in a
way that is decisive and clear and actually turns the corner.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, James
Zogby, of course, in Michigan, the participation of elected officials
like Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and other local Michigan officials did
have an impact on that vote. Do you see other Democratic Party officials
in other states following that lead?
JAMESZOGBY:
Well, look, we’ve already seen city councils in 70 cities do this. And
that number is growing. There is, not just among Arab American, like
— you know, we saw a lot of that in Michigan. We also saw Black
officials. We saw progressive Jewish officials. And as important as
Rashida was, Andy Levin was an important message sender here that this
is a broader movement for justice. And let’s not forget that. City
councilwoman in Detroit came out just a couple of days before the vote,
saying, “I am with 'uncommitted.'” That’s important, having Black
elected officials, Arab American elected officials, progressive Jewish
elected officials saying, “We want this to end, and we want President
Biden to make a difference.” That’s important.
And so, yeah, I think this is going to have a sort of an effect
across the country. And we don’t need to do it in other states. We just
don’t, because the message is very clear. Number one, you know in
Michigan there’s no way to create an electoral map that you win in
November. But, number two, we can extrapolate what happens in Michigan
and say, “Hmm, it’s going to happen in Virginia. It’s going to happen in
Georgia. You’re going to lose youth vote, Black vote, Arab American
vote. And you don’t win Pennsylvania if that’s the case.”
So, I think, you know, I’ve been doing this for a long, long time,
and I know that these voter groups have to have a reason to turn out. I
think what was important about this — and, Congressman, I thank you and
others for it — was that you gave people a reason to turn out. These
“uncommitted” voters would not have turned out, and they would not turn
out again in November, if they didn’t have a reason to turn out. We gave
them a reason with “uncommitted.” Joe Biden’s got to give them a reason
in November.
AMYGOODMAN:
And talk, Jim Zogby, about the other states. Talk about Minnesota and
other states who are now, apparently, adopting this “uncommitted” vote.
But in Michigan, what’s different — right? — is it’s actually printed on
the ballot. And I think you can also add — I mean, most people didn’t —
they talked about Dean Phillips, but Marianne Williamson, who suspended
her campaign, came in third, and she was the one Democrat for a
ceasefire. So you could probably add her votes to the “uncommitted”
votes.
JAMESZOGBY:
[inaudible], for example, the Arab community said, “Let’s back Marianne
Williamson, even though she dropped out,” because she’s on the ballot
and there is no other option. Look, let me say, I’m not going to
discourage anybody from trying to do it in other states. I just — like I
said, I don’t think you need to. And I would rather have energy focused
on city council resolutions and getting people to sign on to ceasefire
resolutions across the board.
There is a — I did the Palestine statehood resolutions in 1988 with
Jesse Jackson. We passed them in 11 states. We got to the national
convention, had the first-ever debate from the podium on a minority
plank. After that, everybody continued doing it, but without Jesse in
the mix, we never had the momentum to carry it through.
We had a number of ideal things come together in Michigan: a huge
concentration of Arab Americans, the support of elected officials, local
elected officials, mayors, state reps, etc., city council people. We
also had Congressman Levin, who was great on college campuses in terms
of mobilizing and bringing people forward, and a great collection of
organizers and a budget to make it happen. We’re not going to have that
in Minnesota. We’re not going to have that in other states. And so, I
don’t want to see people set up for failure. And so, I think you take
what happened in Michigan, you extrapolate it to your state, you send
the message to President Biden: “It happened here. It can happen
elsewhere.” There’s no need to try to replicate what can’t be
automatically replicated, given the ideal composition of forces in
Michigan that made this happen.
And so, I, frankly, think — I don’t know what’s going to happen in
other states, but I don’t want to take a defeat in Minnesota, because
it’s not even on the damn ballot, and say, “Oh, look, it’s” — and give
the other side a crowing rights. They’re going to try whatever they can
do to crow and say we really didn’t — “They didn’t accomplish anything,
because 81% still voted for Joe Biden.” Well, of course 81 voted for Joe
Biden. But that’s not going to mean November, because in the Emerson
poll, Joe Biden is losing by two points. Eleven percent “uncommitted,”
and Joe Biden loses by two points, hmm, does that — DMFI, Democratic
Majority for Israel, don’t you get what that means? That means that you
need that 11% to come to your side in order to put you over the top. We
can say that in every state without having to go through this whole
process, especially when it’s not even on the ballot and you can’t
really get the same outcome you get in Michigan.
AMYGOODMAN:
We’re going to end with Andy Levin. You come from a political dynasty.
Your uncle was the late senator who headed the Armed Services Committee,
Carl Levin, I’m sure a close friend of President Biden; your father a
congressman, as well, Sandy Levin. What do you think they would say at
this point about this movement, about this demand and grassroots
organizing?
ANDYLEVIN:
Well, Amy, Uncle Carl passed away, as you know, several years ago. My
dad is 92 and going strong. And he is really proud of what I’m doing.
He, you know, was involved in helping Soviet Jews flee to Israel. You
know, he supported U.S. policy for a two-state solution forever. But I
think he understands that there is no way now, after 54 years of
occupation and things going in the wrong direction, there’s no way
forward unless the president of the United States steps up and leads
much more strongly as a peacemaker.
And, look, I’m going to end on a hopeful note. Joe Biden, with this
long history of chairing the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate
— and, you know, he says he’s known all the Israeli leaders, all the
Palestinian leaders. You’ve got to step up, Mr. President, and now end
this carnage and lead a diplomatic effort, not a military effort, to end
this conflict. It can be done. You’ve got to step up and do it, both
because it’s the right thing to do and because your politics depend on
it. As Jim Zogby said, the other states are fine. Michigan is a must-win
state. Minnesota isn’t, you know, for example. He’s going to win
Minnesota anyway, I think. But you’ve got to win Michigan to put the
Electoral College math together. And I think it’s just going to be hard
to do unless you change course. So let’s get going.
AMYGOODMAN:
Well, clearly, President Biden is hearing people. When he was with Seth
Meyers the other night, the late-night comic, in an ice cream store, as
he was licking his mint chip ice cream, a reporter asked a question
about a ceasefire, and he said, yes, he thinks it’s going to happen on
Monday. That surprised both Israel and Hamas. We’ll see what happens.
But it was on the eve of the Michigan primary that he said that. Andy
Levin, I want to thank you for being with us, former Democratic
congressmember from Michigan, and James Zogby, president of the Arab
American Institute.
Over the next two newsletters I’ll look at very
two different elections that are thousands of miles apart but similarly
fractured by the war in Gaza. Today we will be in a midwestern state in
the US, and tomorrow we’ll be in a small town in the north of England.
Stay tuned.
Normally,
an uncontested Democratic primary race with an incumbent president
running is not big news. But in Michigan a group of relentless
grassroots activists turned what was supposed to be an uneventful
election into a symbol of the dissatisfaction and anger at Joe Biden over his continued support of Israel in the war in Gaza.
Though the president has sharpened his criticism of Israel’s military response, the damage, in the minds of many voters, has been done. Vetoing
the latest UN security council resolution that called for an immediate
ceasefire and supplying military aid to Israel has earned Biden the
stark moniker of “genocide Joe”, a reference to the allegations made by South Africa that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israel has strongly denied.
The
campaign, Listen to Michigan, started just a few weeks before the
primary election, urging the public not to vote for Biden and instead
vote uncommitted, to pressure the president to support an immediate and
permanent ceasefire. They were more effective than even they had hoped,
with the uncommitted movement receiving more than 100,000 votes.
Though Biden still won by 80%, the uncommitted movement has rattled the
White House, as they wonder if this is a sign of what is to come in the
run up to the November general elections.
This morning, Wafaa Shurafa and Kareem Chehayeb (AP) report, "Israeli troops fired on a crowd of Palestinians waiting for aid in Gaza
City on Thursday, witnesses said. More than 100 people were killed,
bringing the death toll since the start of the Israel-Hamas war
to more than 30,000, according to health officials." The horrors in
that single sentence. The assault continues, the death toll is now over
30,000 and those in need were fired on by Israeli forces. It's
horrific.
The towering figure underscores a horrific, months-long ordeal
for Palestinians inside the strip, during which Israel’s bombing and
ground campaigns have displaced the vast majority of the population and
created a dire humanitarian crisis.
In all, 30,035 people have been killed so far, the ministry
said Thursday, adding that the number of injured is over 70,000.
30,000. Gaza remains under assault. Day 146 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza
by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.
But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge
for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel,
the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover
for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.
Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily
basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to
school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe
Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll.
The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom
believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The
slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US
Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned
the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of
Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted,
"More than
1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza --
have
been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million
women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million
people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." As
noted earlier in the snapshot, the death toll now stands at 30,035 with
over 70,000 injured and thousands missing. Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained
on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000
Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of
their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe
Lazzarini Tweeted:
And the area itself? Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive
has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole
neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been
blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are
still standing, but most are battered shells." Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery
by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and
Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing
destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate
of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second
World War."
If the bombs and the bullets don't kill you in Gaza, there's still starvation. ALJAZEERA reports:
Six children have died from dehydration and malnutrition
at hospitals in northern Gaza, the Health Ministry in the besieged
Palestinian territory has said, as the catastrophic humanitarian
situation in the besieged enclave worsens.
Two children died at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the
ministry said on Wednesday. Earlier it reported that four children died
at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, while seven others
remained in critical condition.
Larissa Gao (NBC NEWS) reports,
"Reports that at least six more children in northern Gaza
have died of dehydration and malnutrition are 'horrendous,' the U.N.
agency for Palestinian refugees said on X today. The United Nations
Relief and Works Agency also called for 'unimpeded access' across the
enclave and an immediate cease-fire." At COMMON DREAMS, Phyllis Bennis addresses this topic:
Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s actions in Gazaplausibly constitute genocide. The world’s most influential judicial body ordered Israel to stop killing civilians and to admit more humanitarian aid.
And worse, the U.S. has joined Israel’s efforts to incapacitate Gaza’s most important relief agency.
Just hours after the Court’s decision was announced, Israel alleged
that 12 Gazan employees of the UN’s Relief Works Agency (UNRWA)—the
primary body responsible for providing humanitarian support to Palestine refugees—were Hamas members connected to the October 7 attacks.
Defunding the agency further undermines Palestinians’ access to water, food, medicine, shelter, and fuel.
For more than half a century UNRWA has provided all the services in
Gaza that would ordinarily be provided by a government. Most of Gaza’s
doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and street sweepers are UNRWA
employees. Without UNRWA, all the other U.N. agencies and nonprofits
would be unable to carry out their crucial work in the region.
Instead of waiting for these investigations to play out, the Biden administration immediately cut
its entire aid allocation to UNRWA, despite the agency’s irreplaceable
role in getting desperately needed aid into Gaza. Many key U.S. allies
followed suit, and the U.S. Senate voted to explicitly bar UNRWA from receiving future humanitarian aid.
Some in Washington suggested they might redirect UNRWA funds to organizations like UNICEF and the World Food Program,
but UNICEF and WFP together have less than 70 staff on the ground in
Gaza—UNRWA has over 13,000. U.S. officials themselves had admitted
earlier that UNRWA was “the only game in town” in terms of getting any significant aid into Gaza.
The impact of these cuts
on the already threatened lives of 2.3 million displaced Gazans—as well
as millions more Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan,
Lebanon, and Syria—can hardly be overstated. Defunding the agency
further undermines Palestinians’ access to water, food, medicine,
shelter, and fuel—and alongside ongoing U.S. military support for
Israel, makes Washington complicit in genocide.
Thousands of Palestinians—especially babies, children, pregnant women,
and the elderly—will die as a result of these cuts. And the millions of
Palestinian refugees throughout the region will lose the only
international agency in the U.N. system that’s mandated to protect their
rights, including their right to return someday to their homes in
what’s now Israel.
As
we wind down. Aaron Bushnell. He took his own life on Sunday to protest
the assault on Gaza. That is news. It needs to be noted and we did
note it. Some of you are e-mailing asking what I think about it? I
really haven't. I've noted it here but refrained from offering personal
thoughts. Clearly, he weighed his decision. Clearly, it's sad when
anyone takes their own life. Clearly, as well, sometimes, in the world
we live in, there is no choice involved in suicide. Conditions, lack of
access and opportunities, and realities being what they are, a person
is forced into that decision. It is news, his action was news, and we
covered it. Some of you don't want to hear about it in the snapshot
anymore and I can understand and that's why I'm putting this at the
bottom so you could read the above before bailing.
I
don't know him and I don't know his friends or family. I won't try to
speak for him and I am bothered that others have. So I can understand
why some of you are sensitive to the coverage -- any coverage -- of
this. When I learned Monday that a group was organizing some sort of
'memorial' for this weekend, I found that sad and distasteful. That may
be for others but it's not for me. It feels like someone trying to use
the death to promote themselves.
This same
group, by the way, was egging on a US veteran to kill himself a few
years back. You may remember that and remember that we called them out
for it. Tomas Young did not end up taking his own life. He died of
natural causes. It was his decision to make but, it became clear if you
paid attention, that he was moving away from taking his own life -- but
people weren't paying attention to Tomas, they just saw the headlines
and the news coverage to come and kept pushing suicide as a political
protest to Bully Boy Bush. That's why we called it out. When he
initially announced his decision, that was his decision and I believe we
covered it here as that. But, again, it became obvious that he was
moving away from that decision despite various 'personalities' --
including a 'rocker' as well as the elderly girlies -- demanding that it
happen.
If there's a news development, we will
certainly note it but I do understand that for many of you -- for
various reasons -- this is a topic you'd prefer we close the book on now
that it's been covered here. Heard and respected.
