The Winners Are ...

Don't Forget to Send a "Thank-You" Note to Your Congressional Delegation!

Can one summarize the sick state of the Union in a single statement? Probably not, but if this were a competition, the winner might be:

From Judging Freedom, an interview with Jeffry Sachs.

Four presidents: that makes clear this was a bipartisan project. The real winners are what George Carlin famously called “the real owners of this country.” More explicitly, they can be summed up in a term coined by Ray McGovern: the MICIMATT, which stands for Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex. This interconnected web ensures perpetual war and profiteering at the expense of the common good. The price paid by the people is captured perfectly in this extensive — though still incomplete — list:

For the original X/Tweet follow this link

Read the full article here

Here is some more we can do better::

1. Universal healthcare

2. Retirement benefits independent from work history

3. Free public education

4. Basic income for all

5. Funding cut of the war economy and militarism by 90 percent

6. Nuclear disarmament — sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

No such progress, of course, is deemed possible in a society that idolizes violence and violence only.

Where there are winners, such as Finkelstein’s observation, there must also be losers. For the most inane statement of 2024, I nominate this gem:

The economy is booming, and everyone knows it - except for the American people.

With their affiliations, here are the authors of this brilliance:

1. Marijn A. Bolhuis International Monetary Fund mbolhuis@imf.org

2. Judd N. L. Cramer Harvard University judd.cramer@gmail.com

3. Karl Oskar Schulz, Harvard University, karloskarschulz@college.harvard.edu

4. Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Ah, Lawrence Summers! The older generation might remember him as the Clinton administration economic adviser who championed welfare "reform" that was enacted in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. What a masterful move in safety-net-shredding!

American-Israeli Genocide Convention Violations

1. Veterans for Peace

A letter from Veterans for Peace directly addresses the last item on Daou’s list, namely government-sponsored war crimes. The letter demands that the U.S. Department of State immediately suspend ongoing shipments of military weapons and munitions to Israel, arguing as follows:

We make this demand because of apparent violations by the Department of State officials and staff of the requirements of the Foreign Assistance Act, Arms Export Control Act, Leahy Laws, the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy (NSM-18) of February 2023, the U.S. War Crimes Act and the Genocide Implementation Prevention Act. Those laws individually and collectively prohibit transfers of weapons and munitions to Israel if there is credible evidence the arms will be used by Israel to commit, or aggravate risks that Israel will commit: genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.

Clear enough for those who can read, but apparently that does not include the vast majority of U.S. Congress.

2. Amnesty International

The organization issued a report titled You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza. Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, summarized the report as follows:

Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

3. Human Rights Watch

This report, Extermination and Acts of Genocide: Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water, highlights another another facet of Israeli methods:

Since October 2023, Israeli authorities have deliberately obstructed Palestinians’ access to the adequate amount of water required for survival in the Gaza Strip.

4. United Nations Special Committee

In its report Israel’s Warfare Methods in Gaza Are Consistent with Genocide, the U.N. committee stated:

Through its siege over Gaza, obstruction of humanitarian aid, alongside targeted attacks and killing of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated UN appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice, and resolutions of the Security Council, Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation, and serious injury, using starvation as a method of war and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population.

5. Doctors Without Borders

The organization published a report titled Gaza Death Trap: Doctors Without Borders Report Exposes Israel’s Campaign of Total Destruction.

Christopher Lockyear, Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), stated:

The recent military offensive in the north is a stark illustration of the brutal war the Israeli forces are waging on Gaza, and we are seeing clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped, and bombed. What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza.

6. Haaretz - Part I

Haaretz continues to provide critical, fact-based documentation of the ongoing war crimes in Gaza and published the article, A Massive Database of Evidence, Compiled by a Historian, Documents Israel's War Crimes in Gaza. The following snippets convey some of the information:

Footnote No. 379 of the carefully researched, wide-ranging document that historian Lee Mordechai has drawn up contains a link to a video clip. The footage shows a large dog gnawing something amid bushes. "Wai, wai, he took the terrorist, the terrorist is gone – gone in both senses," says the soldier who filmed the dog eating a corpse. After a few seconds, the soldier raises the camera and adds, "But what a gorgeous view, a gorgeous sunset. A red sun is setting over the Gaza Strip." Definitely a beautiful sunset.

The report Dr. Mordechai has compiled online — Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War — constitutes the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. It is a shocking indictment composed of thousands of entries relating to the war, to the actions of the government, the media, the Israel Defense Forces, and Israeli society in general. The English translation of the seventh, and to date latest version of the text, is 124 pages long and contains over 1,400 footnotes referencing thousands of sources, including eyewitness reports, video footage, investigatory materials, articles, and photographs.

7. Haaretz - Part II

Lawlessness in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor has this as its subtitle:

"Of 200 bodies, only 10 were confirmed as Hamas members": IDF soldiers who served in Gaza tell Haaretz that anyone who crosses an imaginary line in the contested Netzarim corridor is shot to death, with every Palestinian casualty counting as a terrorist — even if they were just a child.

8. +972 Magazine

In Israel Storms Northern Gaza’s Last Hospital as Remaining Residents Forced South, +972 Magazine — an independent Israeli-Palestinian publication — details the end phase of a three-month campaign of ethnic cleansing and destruction in the northern city of Beit Lahiya:

In the morning hours of Dec. 27, Israeli army forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital compound in Beit Lahiya, culminating a nearly week-long siege of the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza.

9. More

Noura Erakat, a legal scholar and human rights attorney, has compiled a more comprehensive list of Genocide Convention violations. You can view it here.

Welcome to 2025

As a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” — see How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge — prepares to retire, the nation braces for an incoming administration led by a president who also harbors a taste for apartheid and genocide. The behavior of the president-elect raises questions about incipient frontal lobe disorder. Clearly, in our democracy, talented handlers could even make a vacancy look “presidential.”

The internecine battles among Republican kleptocrats, featuring outsized egos and endless personal attacks, have already begun. The drama may entertain, but its consequences will deepen the devastation of the most vulnerable in our society and accelerate the growth of their number.

As an opening salute for the New Year, consider sending a message to your congressional delegation, thanking them for their pivotal role in delivering the "stunning" accomplishments discussed above. With a little bit of luck, you’ll get a reply containing the usual self-congratulatory rhetoric.

Upton Sinclair might have said it best: "It’s difficult to get politicians to understand something when their campaign contributions depend on their not understanding it." The most important step is to forward the full exchange to your friends. They are your real audience. Forget about the politicians.