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Israel

OpEd: The Harassment Campaign Against Nancy Pelosi Continues, as it Should
The Former House Speaker has been regularly accosted by pro-Palestine protestors at events and outside her home, refers to them as Russian and Chinese "agents" as the ghost of Joseph McCarthy smiles down on her

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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a career swamp creature and stock trader extraordinaire, has had a rather rough go of it lately. Her high-society lifestyle has been consistently interrupted in recent weeks by peasant protestors who hold a less than favorable opinion of her continued and seemingly unconditional support of Israel.

Last month Pelosi spoke at a fundraiser in Seattle’s Westin Hotel that was disrupted by protestors demanding answers regarding her support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

These individuals, many of them female Californian progressives who’ve likely voted for Pelosi in the past, must feel a sense of betrayal that she’s not paying proper lip service to their “current thing,” in this case the indiscriminate slaughter and rampant human rights violations taking place in Gaza.

The reality is that, like all other establishment stooges, Pelosi has long been a steadfast and loyal supporter of Israel.

Perturbed over having her swanky fundraising event interrupted by unclean commoners, she decided to go on CNN days later and express her potent disdain for the hecklers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSf-U9_-pok

You can hear the displeasure in her voice when she says “They’re outside my house all the time” just before she makes the completely unfounded, McCarthyesque claim that these protestors are somehow doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.

These individuals, regardless of whether or not you agree with them, are exercising their constitutional rights to protest not just the war in Israel, but the role that the U.S. Government is playing in facilitating that war.

Nancy “Wrap-up smear” Pelosi does not like their position, so she defaults to the establishment Democrat’s standard operating procedure when faced with true dissent: labeling her critics agents of the Kremlin.

Even if you take the same stance as Pelosi on the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the U.S.’s role in said conflict, try to see what she is doing through an objective lens.

Nancy Pelosi frames this conflict—and any other foreign polciy issue you can point to—exclusively from the perspective of Vladimir Putin’s objectives. The Democratic Party has fostered this pathology not only among its members but also among its leadership.

Because these protestor’s views in this instance happen to align with Putin’s, then clearly they are in allegiance with Russia. Do you see how this works?

The most alarming thing about this rhetoric, especially in the post-Russiagate era, is how it actually works with certain Democrat audiences, particularly those who still consume the diseased filth oozing from the mouths of the corporate media punditry.

Another red flag worth mentioning from Pelosi’s CNN appearance is the way she brought up the FBI. Towards the end of the clip, she says “I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”

The idea that she has the right to call on the FBI to investigate people, who were exercising their constitutional rights, based on some completely concocted connection she’s invented in her head is about as authoritarian as it gets.

Even the New York Times, which typically reports very favorably on Nancy Pelosi, was unwilling to defend her for that quip.

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In a statement, a spokesperson for Ms. Pelosi pointed to a social media post by Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and professor at Columbia University, who wrote that “Putin benefits from continued war in Gaza and expanded chaos in the Middle East.”

The spokesperson said Ms. Pelosi would continue to focus on “stopping the suffering in Gaza” and demanding that all hostages be released…

“Speaker Pelosi is acutely aware of how foreign adversaries meddle in American politics to sow division and impact our elections, and she wants to see further investigation ahead of the 2024 election.”

Russia has expressed support for a cease-fire in Gaza, and Mr. Putin has used the conflict to criticize the United States’ role in the Middle East. Russia has also meddled in the United States’ past two presidential elections. (The New York Times, January 28, 2024)

Pelosi’s next run-in with protestors was caught on camera in front of her San Francisco home. This time she put a more conservative spin on her accusations, telling her heckler to “go back to China.”

Fast forward to this Wednesday, Pelosi was once again inundated with protestors inside the U.S. Capitol Building from the organization CodePink who screeched and jeered at her as she approached a vote to send additional funds to Israel.

Now, you might not agree with these protestors, you might think they’re just another posse of soy-guzzling libtards, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have every right to do so. There are plenty of the garden-variety conservatives who were out there championing free speech when campuses shut down speaking engagements by Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopolis over “hate speech” and making Liberals feel “unsafe,” who are now cheering when pro-Palestine demonstrations are shut down for the exact same reason.

It’s total hypocrisy.

Take Israel out of the equation for a moment and consider the greater implications at play here. This fracturing of the Left is a net positive for the America First crowd. Not only are they finally breaking from these establishment politicians, they are actively harassing them. You may not agree with their reasoning, but this could be catastrophic for Biden if he is indeed their choice for 2024.

Consider what Pelosi said during her CNN spot:

“I have every confidence that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be President and Vice President of the United States, I know we will carry the House and that we can improve our numbers in the Senate, and we’re going to do it because we’re going to own the ground with our organizing. We’re going to have a message of values for our country, and we’re going to have the resources to get the job done.”

What’s the “message of values” she’s speaking of? Feeding the Military Industrial complex with the blood of innocent civilians in Gaza and reluctant, conscripted soldiers in Ukraine? Good luck getting people who hate you enough to follow you around the country screaming their disapproval to organize strongly enough to counter the momentum behind Donald Trump.

The only way to counter this damage is to pull the old switcheroo with Gavin Newsome on the grounds that Biden is incapable of serving, and then have Newsome, the master of identity politics, posture as though he’s going to reign in Israel. And even if that is the play, AIPAC and the Israel lobby—arguably the most powerful special interest in Washington—will be none too pleased.

I, for one, am happy to see this, and I hope it continues through to November.

17 Judges at Hague Permit Genocide Proceedings Against Israel, Order Leaders to Limit Fatalities

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Friday marked the decision of the highest court of the United Nations to permit the prosecution of a genocide case against Israel in relation to its military operations in Gaza.

The charges were filed by South Africa, who petitioned the court to order Israel to cease its military offensive in Gaza. In October 2023, the territory-based militant organization Hamas launched an attack against Israel, prompting Israel to declare war on Hamas.

At the Hague, seventeen judges of the International Court of Justice rendered their verdict.

Without mandating a cease-fire, the court also urged Israel to attempt to limit casualties and destruction during the offensive. Additionally, the 17 judges ordered six so-called provisional measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza.

Editorial: Joe Biden and the Rebranded Neocons
The decrepit pawn in the Whitehouse escalates our involvement in the Middle East without Congressional approval as the International Court of Justice prepares to hear case against Israel

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Everything that we’ll cover in this piece, from the escalation to the trampling of the constitution, should come as no surprise, as anyone who’s been paying close attention to the situation in Gaza, for longer than just the last couple months, should have seen it coming from miles away.

In case you haven’t heard, the U.S. funded war between Israel and HAMAS is escalating. The Biden Administration, in partnership with the United Kingdom, has now bombed more than 16 sites in Yemen on the pretense that the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia, has been attacking and impeding Israeli and “Israel-connected” (aka American) ships in the Red Sea in retaliation for the aforementioned U.S. funded destruction of Gaza.

Regardless of your views on the bombing campaign that Biden initiated, there are a couple of indisputable points worth considering.

First, despite the fact that these attacks had been planned weeks in advance, they were carried out without congressional approval or debate. A number of representatives have made objections to the strikes on the grounds that they are illegal and unconstitutional.

It is worth noting, in case anyone was wondering, that it is a matter of debate whether the American President has the constitutional authority to order the use of military force without the proper congressional approval in this instance.

Secondly, even if you think Biden’s decision to bomb these targets without congressional approval was the right call, you cannot deny that his actions have now caused the war to escalate to include the use of American combat forces.

Now, instead of simply sending an endless stream of taxpayer dollars to another country on the other side of the world, we will potentially also soon be paying with the lives of our brothers, our sisters and our children in uniform.

 

Democrats and the Bush-Era Neocons, Reunited at Last

The title of this section is actually slightly misleading, as this unholy reunion of establishment Democrats and the political representatives of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) otherwise known as Neoconservatives, had actually occurred more than half a decade ago, in the immediate wake of Hillary Clinton’s defeat by Donald Trump in 2016.

It was one of the most under-discussed things in progressive and liberal circles at the time. The Democrats, who were enjoying the limelight and clout awarded by a more polished President and a well oiled propaganda machine during the Obama Era, were in the process of assimilating the then radioactive and discredited neocons.

The reasoning was simple: both factions loathed Donald Trump as he posed an existential threat to them all. Democrats (and establishment Republicans as well) hated him because he was their biggest political enemy after years of uncontested uniparty-rule. The neocons loathed Trump because he sought to put an end to all wars and enact non-interventionist policy, essentially neutering the MIC.

In any other time, this budding union would have been looked on by Democrat voters with horror and dismay, however, the Trump Derangement Syndrome that had afflicted such huge swaths of the population at that time must also have been accompanied by some kind of amnesia. No one batted an eye once the same forces that were almost universally hated by the end of the Bush-era were now on the side of establishment Democrats.

Though it may have seemed like they were quietly getting the old band back together, the truth was that they never really parted ways.

One of the things that the security state and its representatives often do is prime the conditions for future wars while fighting current wars. Obama was still drone bombing civilians in the Middle East (including an average of 72 bombs dropped per day in 2016 alone) while the likes of Victoria Nuland were busy escalating tensions with Russia. A confrontation with Russia had been in the works for a long time at that point and it never would have happened if the neocons were actually reined-in during the Obama era.

Vladimir Putin was the new up and coming boogeyman for the denizens of the West to hate and fear, so developing an angle where Donald trump was an agent of the Kremlin served two purposes. This is how the Russia-Collusion hoax was born.

Soon, once disgraced neocons like Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland, Mike Rogers. Jamie Fly, etc. would grace left-wing media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, pontificating to us plebs about the dangers Donald Trump poses to Democracy.

Democrats frequently rationalize this alliance as a simple union of convenience: a pragmatic and transitory partnership imperative for the limited objective of obstructing Trump. However, that is a patent pretext and, to put it mildly, unpersuasive for a multitude of reasons. Long before anyone believed Donald Trump could accede to power, a reunification of Democrats and Neocons was taking place; this alliance is based on shared objectives, perspectives, and policies.

For instance, one of Dick Cheney’s foremost foreign policy advisers during the Bush administration was Victoria Nuland. Nuland, who was married to one of the most influential neocons, Robert Kagan, transitioned without difficulty from the Bush White House to the Obama State Department, then to the Clinton campaign’s chief foreign policy adviser, and now is second in command in Joe Biden’s State Department.

The ramifications of this reunion are significant and enduring. By a wide margin, neocons have caused considerably more harm to the United States and the world than any other single group. They were the masterminds behind the Iraq invasion and the accompanying deceit, the post-9/11 global torture regime, and the prevailing political atmosphere that stigmatized dissent.

Keep all of this in mind as we fast-forward to today.

 

Unconstitutional Escalation?

The United States had ceased bombing Yemen for roughly a year now, that is, until last Thursday when the Biden Administration decided it was going to bomb 16 different sites in that country.

To provide some critical backstory, there had been a somewhat informal ceasefire between the Houthis and the Saudis for the last year, which by the way was a war that had started under President Obama, who extensively helped the Saudis by decimating Yemen and creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, until the recent bombardment and deprivation taking place in Gaza of course.

Regardless of the various excuses being bandied about, what Biden and the UK did was, by definition, an escalation. We weren’t bombing Yemen, and now we are.

The primary justification you’ll see for for this escalation, among others, is the often misrepresented War Powers Resolution (or Act) (50 U.S.C. §§ 1541-1550).

Section 1541(c) of the War Powers Resolution states:

“The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.“

None of the three scenarios cited above indicate that the President can take unilateral offensive military action without the consent of Congress.

Former Michigan Congressman Justin Amash recently broke it down on X:

The first two (scenarios) allow the president to take offensive military action but only with Congress’s express approval (Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war). The third authority allows the president to take defensive military action without Congress’s approval in the event of a specific type of national emergency, a sudden unforeseen attack on the United States (happening too quickly for Congress to meet) necessitating immediate action to protect Americans.

It’s for this last situation (or for situations in which the president introduces forces into hostilities unlawfully) that the War Powers Resolution provides for the oft-mentioned 48-hour report to Congress (§ 1543) and 60-day (up to 90-day) timeline (§ 1544). If there’s an attack in progress on the United States (i.e., currently happening), we expect the president to respond swiftly to neutralize the attack and protect Americans—and then we will hold the president to account.

The Framers of the Constitution agreed at the debates in the federal convention of 1787 that the president should have the “power to repel sudden attacks” but not the power to otherwise introduce forces into hostilities without congressional approval.

The War Powers Resolution does not confer any new authority on the president to take offensive military action without congressional approval—nor could it under our Constitution. It instead checks the president when, as the Framers contemplated, the president introduces our Armed Forces into hostilities to repel a sudden attack.

The belief that Presidents have no limitations on their power is one that came about during the Bush-Cheney era, particularly when they exploited 9-11 to usher in radical theories of executive power under Article Two of the Constitution.

You’ll see people argue that The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001 which was passed shortly after 9/11 authorizes the President to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks, or harbored said persons or groups.

The argument seems to go back and forth endlessly. Putting aside the legal jargon, as I am not a law scholar, we can judge the merit of this authorization by it’s fruit.

This authorization was a neocons wet dream. It was first used to go after Al Qaeda and, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service published May 11, 2016, has since been used “37 times in connection with actions in 14 countries and on the high seas.” The countries that have been targeted via this authorization include Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Remember when Obama and Hillary iced Gaddafi? The AUMF was cited in that instance as well.

It is not hard to see that the founders were opposed to the idea of a standing army at the ready to be used at the discretion of a President. The President is only commander-in-chief once there is a war declared by Congress. The arguments that Biden had the authority to attack Yemen is a neocon’s argument, as they were the ones who dreamt up the AUMF, well before 9-11, as the ultimate workaround to initiate endless wars.

The AUMF should be repealed.

Reposted from: The Post-Liberal

Houthis: The United States Will Pay a ‘Heavy Price’ for Biden Strikes in Yemen
Which begs the question: is U.S. involvement in Israel's war actually making Americans safer?

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On Friday, the Shiite Houthi terrorist organization issued a dire threat against American President Joe Biden, stating that he will “pay a heavy price” for approving airstrikes against Houthi assets in Yemen alongside the United Kingdom.

Thursday marked the joint declaration by the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defense that they had successfully orchestrated dozens of strikes against strategic Houthi targets with the objective of constraining the terrorists’ capacity to disrupt global shipping. In October, the Houthis, who assert their legitimacy as the Yemeni government, initiated hostilities against Israel in retaliation against the bombing campaign in Gaza.

The Houthi group declared its intention to initiate actions against commercial vessels “connected to Israel” in the vicinity of Yemen. The term “connected to Israel” is applied liberally to any vessel belonging to the United States, as the U.S. is typically seen across the Middle East as Israel’s primary partner and facilitator.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea and the Suez Canal—critical international maritime routes—lies in the waters offshore of Yemen. Consequently, between January 2023 and January 2024, commercial shipping traffic in the region decreased by 90 percent annually, inundating African ports with vessels en route around the Cape of Good Hope.

In 2021, under the administration of President Joe Biden, the Houthis were removed from the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations maintained by the State Department. Biden authorized an agreement in September, just prior to the Hamas attack on Israel, to unfreeze $6 billion worth of Iranian assets in exchange for Iran’s release of five American hostages. It was emphasized by the Biden administration that “This does not constitute a ransom.”

“Washington and London must acknowledge responsibility for aggravating the situation at the Red Sea, and the militarization of the body of water,” Brigadier General Abdullah bin Amer, a Houthi leader in the terror group’s “Moral Guidance Department,” said on Friday, according to the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV. “They must be ready to embrace a heavy price, and bear all the deleterious consequences of this open aggression.”

Bin Amer promised that the Houthis would “target their bases across the region in case the United States and the United Kingdom increase their attacks.” He also insisted the Houthis would continue their “operations in the Red Sea,” meaning the disruption of international commercial shipping.

An additional Houthi spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, verified the airstrikes on Friday, stating that the United States and the United Kingdom bombed 73 Houthi strategic assets without specifying what was targeted.

“The American and British enemy bears full responsibility for its criminal aggression against our Yemeni people, and it will not go unanswered and unpunished,” Saree warned.

Hussein al-Ezzi, a Houthi political leader, was quoted as saying, “Washington and London must prepare to pay a heavy price. Our country came under sneak and massive air, ship and submarine strikes. Doubtless, the attacks will cost them dearly.”

The British Ministry of Defense offered information on their bombing campaign, saying “One was a site at Bani in north-western Yemen used to launch reconnaissance and attack drones. A number of buildings involved in drone operations were targeted by our aircraft.”

“The other location struck by our aircraft was the airfield at Abbs,” the Defense Ministry statement continued. “Intelligence has shown that it has been used to launch both cruise missiles and drones over the Red Sea. Several key targets at the airfield were identified and prosecuted by our aircraft.”

“Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces—together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands—successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen,” President Biden said in his own statement, “used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways.”

Are Joe Biden and the Neocons Leading the US into a Major War in the Middle East?
American officials told HuffPost that Biden cannot be reined in and that Israeli officials are "absolutely determined" to start a conflict in southern Lebanon.

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In light of the Israeli assault on Gaza, which has escalated tensions in the Middle East, US officials are cautioning that President Biden’s decisions may precipitate a major regional conflict.

US officials told HuffPost that the repercussions could be catastrophic should Israel incite a full-scale conflict in southern Lebanon. One official stated,  “Every scenario shows this would escalate into something terrible… whether in terms of counterterrorism or war with Iran.”

Many members of the Biden administration, according to the official, feared that unwavering US support for Israel might inspire Israeli authorities to expand their operations into Lebanon. Israel substantially worsened the situation last week when it executed a drone strike in Beirut, resulting in the demise of a high-ranking Hamas representative engaged in hostage negotiations.

“I’ve been trying to keep an avalanche from falling on Lebanon and so have a lot of people,” the US official said. “The problem is no one can rein in Biden, and if Biden has a policy, he’s the commander-in-chief ― we have to carry it out. That’s what it comes down to, very, very, very, unfortunately.”

According to another US official, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer are “hell-bent on seizing this moment to expand the war into southern Lebanon and deliver some mythical imagined death blow to Hezbollah.”

Although the United States dispatched Amos Hochstein, Biden’s Israeli-born energy envoy, in an effort to mediate a diplomatic resolution between Israel and Hezbollah, there has been no advancement thus far.

administration is formulating a response strategy for a “protracted regional conflict.” The Israeli offensive against Gaza is not limited to Lebanon; the United States and its allies have issued threats to target the Houthis in Yemen for their violations of commercial shipping connected to Israel in the Red Sea. Furthermore, the United States is already embroiled in a low-level conflict with Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, which has the potential to escalate significantly.

President Biden, rather than exerting pressure on Israel to cease its assault on Gaza and defuse tensions with Hezbollah, continues to offer Israel unwavering military and political support while opting for regional escalation. The officials who spoke with HuffPost reaffirmed that the Biden administration does not intend to impose any restrictions on Israeli military aid.