In this video from 2015, Democracy Now! covers Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge.”

“The Israeli veterans group, Breaking the Silence, released testimonies of more than 60 Israeli officers and soldiers which it says illustrate a “broad ethical failure” that “comes from the top of the chain of command.” More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the assault, the vast majority civilians. On Israel’s side, 73 people were killed, all but six of them soldiers. During the 50-day operation, more than 20,000 Palestinian homes were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. We hear candid video testimonies from the soldiers and speak to former Israeli paratrooper Avner Gvaryahu, director of public outreach at Breaking the Silence.”

Please listen to the soldiers who participated in this routine “lawn mowing” operation, as they testify about a fraction of the war crimes that were casually committed by the Israel army against Palestinian noncombatants. These admissions show a persistent state of mind, and that Israel has always intentionally and indiscriminately targeted civilians, and proves that the IDF is knowingly committing war crimes against the residents of Gaza.

This did not begin on October 7th. 🇵🇸

Full video here.

Bill Bramhall

Public education dollars were never meant for privatized corporate charter schools or Christian Academies. Period.

Evangelicals come to mind

S 🇵🇸 O 🇵🇸 L 🇵🇸 I 🇵🇸 D 🇵🇸 A 🇵🇸 R 🇵🇸 I 🇵🇸 T 🇵🇸 Y 🇵🇸

FLASHBACK: Nazi apologia - Benjamin Netanyahu said that “Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews.”

According to Netanyahu, Adolph Hitler did not want to kill Jewish people, it was Palestinians who convinced and coerced him. (source)

Fortunately, Germany did not allow his lie of Holocaust revisionism to go unchallenged. Germany accepted full responsibility for the Holocaust and would not absolve themselves from the responsibility for the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazis.

Holocaust experts also publicly condemned Netanyahu’s Holocaust revisionism and Nazi apologia. (source)

And just because this isn’t crazy enough, Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair—who also espouses white supremacy and Nazi apologia—has long been the darling of Germany’s rightwing AfD Party and known white supremacist websites like the Daily Stormer. (source) (source)

Just putting this back up front because it is imperative that people understand how much Netanyahu and Likud hate Palestinians — enough to claim that “Palestinians are the real Nazis,” and enough to absolve Adolph Hitler of agency for his heinous crimes against humanity. Worse still, Netanyahu is using his Holocaust revisionism as a basis for leading Israel to commit collective punishment and genocide against all Palestinians.

For clarity: Giving Ukrainians the ability to defend themselves against a hostile foreign invasion is not what is killing Ukrainians. IT’S THE RUSSIAN MILITARY AND THEIR INVASION OF UKRAINE THAT IS KILLING UKRAINIANS.

Sorry, but you can’t just delete the agency of the country that instigated war by committing an illegal invasion, and magically shift blame away from Russia.

And what happens to Ukrainians is very well documented—you need look no farther than Bucha and Mariupol to see what the Russian army does to Ukrainian civilians once they have seized their land.

This is a nonsensical Russian propaganda talking point, and unsurprisingly, Republicans + Libertarians + ignorant ass tankies who think they’re somehow defending “communist Russia” have been regurgitating the same idiotic rhetoric ever since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Hopefully hearing Marjorie Taylor Greene speak the rhetoric exposes just how incredibly stupid it sounds. Because it IS stupid.

Until Trump, there was was no other time in modern American history that Republicans would have argued against defending a country from a Russian invasion. Russia is the aggressor here, and as Marjorie Traitor Greene admitted herself, Ukraine is not in NATO, and Ukraine was not even seeking NATO membership when Russia invaded their sovereign state.

“… if you can take the mere existence of NATO as something so intolerable that Russia simply had no choice but to invade a country that wasn't in NATO then I guess you can believe anything.”

Russia could end the war instantly, just by turning its army around and going back home to Russia.

SN: To be sure, the United States has done and is still doing A LOT wrong; the U.S. has committed its own share of war crimes and has supported war criminals in other countries in exchange for oil and other natural resources—so yes, we can and we should be doing everything in our power to demand that America does everything it can possibly do to prevent Israel from committing any further war crimes and illegal land grabs in Palestine, but this one specific issue is about Ukraine, not Palestine.

Borrowing from another post, but it’s very apropos here:

“Tankies are not leftists. They think they are, which is both funny and sad. If they were, they wouldn't support Vladimir Putin, a far-right leader engaged in ethno-nationalist imperialism. It's your ideas and values that make you a leftist, not how much you hate the US.”

We can agree with one thing without having to agree with everything that America does.

Every enemy of America isn’t “good” just because they oppose America; and Russia has a very long history of its own war crimes and extensive human rights abuses.

This may be a stupid question but do you really believe MTG is funded by Putin? In my head she's too fucking stupid to be calculating enough to actually enrich herself.

I don't know if she is actually getting money from the Kremlin or she's just a moron who loves to believe whatever conspiracy theorist nonsense she's told, but I think it's pretty clear she is either being handled fairly directly by Russian intelligence or is closely plugged into sophisticated Russian propaganda systems. Example A, Marge submitting an amendment to the Ukrainian aid bill insisting that aid not be disbursed until the Ukrainian government allegedly stopped "oppressing Hungarians in Transcarpathia." This is a key part of the Orban regime's anti-Ukraine talking points that has in turn been directly amplified by Russia, but it is so specific and so obscure (not to mention, there's literally zero chance Marge knows what any of those words or issues mean, or could find Transcarpathia on a map) that there's no way she organically came up with it on her own. She's also been otherwise echoing word-for-word Russian propaganda about them being "the defenders of Christianity" by invading Ukraine, which is one of Putin's preferred/favorite narratives and plays into the function of the Russian Orthodox Church as a Kremlin booster. Hence, if Marge is directly repeating Putin's personal justifications, I'd say it is more likely than not that she's getting something out of it.

As I have said before, it is pretty clear that Putin is ordering Trump to get the House GOP to stall Ukraine aid in exchange for help in the election, and there is a significant chunk of the House GOP that is eager to suckle at the Russian propaganda teat in all circumstances. (See: Hunter Biden's laptop being a Russian disinformation operation from the start that got exposed when the House GOP impeachment effort went up in flames.) We have also consistently had networks of Russian agents and Russian money be exposed in Europe, where they are offering financial incentives to EU politicians to serve as Kremlin shills. Russian dirty money has beyond doubt entered the Republican Party at many, many levels; we had that whole investigation about how Trump and the Russians have been working in concert for a long time. Now, because getting Trump in power again is so important for the Russians, and the Russians' help is so important for Trump in trying to stay out of jail, the corruption is pretty systemic.

In short, I figure it is only a matter of time if/when we find out that the most stridently pro-Russian members of the Treason Caucus are actually being paid by or otherwise benefiting from Russian lobbyists, because they are fascist traitors who love money, will kiss Trump's ass in any circumstances, and are willing to do anything in the name of undermining America, Ukraine, Biden, and Western democracy in general. We know it is the way Russian destabilization, disinformation, and influence operations customarily work, and that they have previously and consistently worked in cahoots with MAGA, so yeah. If Marge and Co. aren't active Russian assets, financially or otherwise, I would be very surprised.

Sza - Love Galore

��Staggering’ rise in women with reproductive health issues near DRC cobalt mines – study | Women's health | The Guardian

Women and girls living in cobalt-mining communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are reporting a “staggering” rise in serious reproductive health issues, including miscarriages and birth defects, according to a new report.

An investigation published by the UK-based human rights group Rights & Accountability in Development (Raid) and the Kinshasa-based NGO Afrewatch said that women and girls living around cobalt mines reported experiencing irregular menstruations, urogenital infections, vaginal mycoses and warts.

"Queer Jews say Free Palestine"

Poster spotted on Smith St, Melbourne in advance of the annual Pride street Party