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THE ABSURD TIMES
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Illustration: Image in our minds about Israel today — the great Latuff
But first, a quick note about this coming series. There is so much rank stupidity in this country as not to be noticed on any commercial U.S. news outlet (much less, however more than by actually visiting one of the political rallies) that it is simply too much to ignore while we are, with our own tax dollars, subsidizing war crimes and mass slaughter as well as genocide, to overlook it. Still, the truth needs attention as it is happening and is still being suppressed.
I've decided to comment on the more idiotic internal nonsense they divert one's attention from the fascist war in the Middle East (and what is happening is laughable) and then present some straightforward reality on what is going on in your name. So, you can read both parts, read the first for some chuckles, or read the second part for information that is not getting through. This will probably result in several subsequent postings, far more than usual, but that will eventually settle back down in a week or so. Sorry if I'm helping to flood your e-mail for the next week or so. You can always "archive" them if you find you need to.
Again, I had decided to put together an edition on something other than the Murder Rampage in Gaza, and again forces that be and personal issues intervene. Still, I've decided to at least give it a start today and then move on with it. I mean, what the hell – if the Republicans can murder sanity, I've got a right to point out what it means, at least to me. If they don't care about anything but the Orange Man, I have a right to care about ME! One interesting idiocy to start out with: he says that number 47 should be held pure. That caught me by surprise, as 47 is the largest prime number after (12 + 1) – that was what he meant, right? Not in this universe, no way.
Speaking of pigs, he let "the genie out of the box"! Oh, and here is a call from me: VERMIN OF THE WORLD UNITE! Yes, now that the genie is out of the box, he knows that all of us are VERMIN. Seriously? He is running for President and the Republican Party fears him?
Christian Nationalism: This is almost too insane to try to explain because nobody of sound mind will believe I'm being accurate unless they have found this out by themselves. Even that sounds insane, but it is true. The comment I remember most about what the bible thumpers accept as truth is from the late and great Bill Hicks: "If I was Jesus and came back, the last thing I'd want to see is a cross!" But remember, this is faith, not fact, so reason and logic are helpless to help these people. It takes a huge and violent blow or series of physical blows to convince them of anything, and then they will circle the capital and attempt to occupy it. That was a feeble attempt to emulate Israel today, but the leaders of that faction are planning the next move right now: DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY ON THE FIRST DAY AND SEND THE MILITARY AFTER THE ENEMY."
But if we go into that, we should address the new Speaker of the House. For this, I highly recommend Bill Carville who was Bill Clinton's campaign manager (it's the economy, stupid) who is giving a series of talks on YouTube presenting facts about many Southern habits and beliefs. Much of this I learned from a 15-minute talk and I added a bit of my own observations just to make myself important. Ok, so here we go. Paragraph. It is a great example of "culture shock".
Smirk. Anyway, it seems that this Johnson character is one of the "short-timers" a kind of idiocy that still believes that the earth (and probably the universe) is only 6,000 years old. Now, there are three versions of INHERIT THE WIND on film and all of them are pretty easily accessed. It covers a fairly well-publicized legal case wherein a school teacher was teaching his students about Evolution and he was therefore breaking a law. God made us the way we are and that's that. We know this to be true because Bishop Usher calculated the ages of all the prophets in the OLD TESTAMENT and added them up. He even gave a time. All this is about all we need to know about the current state of the Republican party today. (Of course, the sun was not created until the fourth day, so that complicated things a bit when it came to deciding how long a day was.
Of course, the movie is much too jolly and optimistic as to what actually happened. Hunter Thompson correctly pointed out that the teacher was actually sentenced to a chain gang and murdered. Hunter stood on the fourth Amendment in his case (illegal search and seizure) rather than the first (which includes separation of church and state). The new Speaker of the House, who seems not to know who Thomas Jefferson was, decided that the amendment was designed to protect religion from the state, not to protect freedom from religion from the state.
One final personal note: when the Catholic Church in my home town Chicago tried to make official its ban on certain movies, the real BOSS, Mayor Daley, cited the First ammendment as best he could and said "When youse guys pay da property tax ya owes, den we talk 'bout yous guys passing da laws. Dats dat." My own father had explained it as best he could to Hizzoner and that's how it came out. The Chicago definition of the First Amendment. A far cry from Christion Nationalism.
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SubscribedHere is the latest up-to-date information on what we pay for in Gaza:
The Israel military raid on Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, is an "unprecedented attack on civilian society" in the "darkest time in modern history," that is being justified in the West by "a deep-rooted and frightening racism," says Dr. Mads Gilbert, who worked at Al-Shifa. "You don't do these things to people you consider equal." Dr. Gilbert is a Norwegian physician who just spent weeks in Cairo trying to enter Gaza to help his colleagues and has worked extensively in Palestine since 1981. "The civilian population of Gaza [have] done nothing wrong other than being born Palestinians in Gaza," he says. "Israeli impunity has reached a new level, and we are all sinking into that abyss of disregard for human life."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin the show in Gaza, where Israel is conducting a military raid on Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge or medical treatment. The Palestinian Authority has decried the raid as a violation of international law. There are reports Israeli troops have ordered all young men on the hospital grounds to surrender. Many Palestinian men are already being interrogated, some while being held naked and blindfolded. Israel has accused Hamas of placing a command center below Al-Shifa, but Hamas and hospital officials have denied the claim. Israeli tanks are now inside the hospital complex.
This is Dr. Ahmed al-Mokhallati, a plastic surgeon at Al-Shifa.
DR. AHMED AL-MOKHALLATI: And understand we can't look through the windows or doors. We don't know what's happening. We have tanks moving within the hospital. We can hear continuous shooting, and right now. But again, it's totally risky, the situation.
REPORTER: So, what are these sounds, Doctor? I'm hearing sounds.
DR. AHMED AL-MOKHALLATI: It's continuous shooting from the tanks. We don't know what to do. We are within the building. Israel within the building. They are in. We can't go between the hospital buildings at all for food. So, we are with each other, with the patients, with the civilians within the hospital. And it's totally risky, the situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Doctors in Al-Shifa are struggling to keep patients alive, including dozens of premature babies, amidst a lack of fuel and the ongoing Israeli military raid.
AL-SHIFA DOCTOR: [translated] I am standing here at the ICU at Al-Shifa medical complex. The department is suffering after the shutdown of electricity due to the lack of fuel. The Health Ministry warned about the lack of the fuel. This department today at dawn was struck directly by the Israeli occupation forces. Here also, the ICU and these children, who were on life machines and artificial respiration, were taken into the corridors of the ICU department. These people here were denied life support devices. They face the loss of their lives because there are no support machines or artificial respiration devices. Around 29 patients are facing this tragedy.
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined now by Dr. Mads Gilbert, Norwegian physician who's worked in Al-Shifa for years, just spent weeks in Cairo getting — trying his best to get into Gaza. He's a professor at University Hospital of North Norway and the Arctic University of Norway who's worked with Palestinians since 1981, was in Gaza there during the major Israeli bombardments of 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2014. Dr. Gilbert, where are you right now?
DR. MADS GILBERT: Right now I arrived this early morning in Johannesburg in South Africa. I will be on an invited speaking tour here on Gaza and Palestine, but with —
AMY GOODMAN: We just — we just have a few minutes, but I know that you've been speaking to people within Gaza, in Al-Shifa. Can you talk about the scene that we just described? What do you understand is happening there?
DR. MADS GILBERT: If I should choose today between hell and Al-Shifa, I would choose hell. I got a report yesterday from the minister of health that 20 out of the 23 ICU patients had died. Seventeen other patients died because of lack of supplies, oxygen and water. And three, if not five, of the 38 premature newborns have died because of this slow suffocation that the Israeli occupation army is exposing all the hospitals to by cutting electricity, oxygen and medical supplies. And it's — you know, it's beyond description. I'm out of words to describe this systematic, man-made slaughtering of patients in civilian hospitals.
And when I heard the crowd in the United States shout, you know, "No ceasefire," I think that's the only place on Earth where people are supporting Israel. And the other streets of the world are supporting a ceasefire, a human solution, a lift of the siege and a support for the people of Gaza. So this is a deeply divided world, and the lies are flying around like never before in any war.
And I think we need to keep our heads and our hearts calm now and understand that what we are seeing is an unprecedented attack on a civilian society, occupied by one of the most brutal and ruthless armies in the world, exercising a systematic attack on civilian healthcare, completely against international law and the standards that we want to apply, and being back-patted all the time by the U.S. president.
I mean, we're in the darkest time in modern history now. So far, if you look at the U.N. numbers, the U.N. numbers that are coming out every day in their fact sheets, 40,000 Palestinians have been killed or are missing under the rubble or have been injured for four weeks. Forty thousand. Six thousand of the killed and missing are children. When did that become defense of a country? When did it become decent to drag neonates out of their incubators and kill children? You know, the only explanation for this is a deep-rooted and very frightening racism, because you don't do these things to people you consider your equal. I'm extremely disturbed. I'm extremely upset. And I blame the European leaders and your president for this bloody bloodshed of people who are being completely defenseless.
And I talked to a colleague in Mustashfa Al-Aqsa in the south yesterday. He told me they were seeing influx of patients coming, walking from the north, having followed the Israeli command to leave the north, and they were being shot in the legs. And they were treating gunshots in the legs from people trying to escape the north. Forty percent —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Gilbert —
DR. MADS GILBERT: — of the [inaudible].
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Dr. Gilbert, I wanted to ask you what — the Israeli government continues to insist that Hamas is using the hospitals in Gaza as command centers and as underground headquarters storing weapons and even hostages. What is your response to these claims?
DR. MADS GILBERT: Twofold. Why are you in the media conveying these false claims continuously and taking the attention away from what is the real problem — namely, the continuous bombing and killing of people in Gaza? There is absolutely no proof, so far, that I know of, neither from U.S. intelligence nor from the Israeli intelligence, and we've heard these accusations for 16 years. Show us the proof. Show us the evidence. And don't forget that the Geneva Convention, the Fourth Convention, is telling the fighting parties to make both distinction and precaution. If it's a mixed military and civilian target, the civilian precaution takes priority over the military again. And they have been bombing not only Shifa and al-Quds, but lots of hospitals, with even bothering to claim that there is any military activity in that hospital. They bombed the Turkish. They bombed Al-Rantisi Pediatric Hospital. And we've all seen these ridiculous videos where they say, "Oh, here are Pampers in a pediatric hospital. It's got to be the terrorists." So I think this is a big sham, and I'm a bit worried that you in the media so easily are conveying these unsubstantiated accusations. And regardless, they don't have the right to bomb hospitals. That's very clear.
And now it's not only Al-Shifa. Now the al-Quds Hospital is being evacuated with all the patients and all the staff. And it is really a convoy of shame to the Western world and to the United States to see these hospitals, the last resorts in a dramatic assault on the civilian population in Gaza, who have done nothing wrong other than being born Palestinians in Gaza. And this convoy of misery is the result of a lenient attitude to the Israeli violations of international law through many, many years. The Israeli impunity has reached a new level, and we are all sinking into that abyss of the disregard for human life and humanity, as we are seeing this going on without anybody trying to stop the Israeli army.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mads Gilbert, we thank you for being with us, Norwegian physician who's spent decades working in Gaza, attempted to get in to go back to Al-Shifa but wasn't able to, now speaking to us from Johannesburg, South Africa.
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