Guardian on the GOP caucus vote for Speaker candidate: "By a vote of 113 to 99, Scalise, currently the second-ranking House Republican, defeated a challenge from congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the judiciary committee and a far-right firebrand." And more, about Guardian same-day content. [UPDATED - segue to Hamas-Israel developments]
Wed., Oct. 11 Link. A close but not too close vote. I'd never before regarded "firebrand" as a synonym for asshole. Gym Jordan. Guardian's detail:
Still, the resultfell well below the 217-votethreshold needed to be elected speaker on the House floor, where Republicans
chaos and division triggered 15 rounds of balloting before the caucus
united behind McCarthy earlier this year. The timing of a potential
floor vote to elect Scalise remained uncertain on Wednesday afternoon,
when the House held a brief pro forma session and then went into recess.
If
all 433 current House members participate in the vote, Scalise can only
afford four defections within the Republican conference and still win
the speakership. As of Wednesday, at least 10House Republicans said they were not prepared to back Scalise, with several more still undecided.
“Obviously
we still have work to do,” Scalise said after winning the nomination.
[...]
Tom Emmer, unfortunately my Rep., don't blame me, I always vote against him; as House GOP whip will have to schmooze as well as whip, with Jordan having said he would "nominate" Scalise. Short of "He's The Man" support, perhaps. Continuing:
Emerging
from their conference meeting on Wednesday afternoon, a couple of
Jordan’s allies, including Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado,
indicated they would still support Jordan in the floor vote.
“We
had a chance to unify the party behind closed doors, but the Swamp and K
Street lobbyists prevented that,” Boebert said on X, formerly known as
Twitter. “The American people deserve a real change in leadership, not a
continuation of the status quo.”
It is surprising Boebert seemingly mirrored my belief that a House majority of the other party would be "a real change in leadership," but the guess here is she meant something different. More:
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican
from Georgia, said she would not support Scalise because of concerns
over his health, as the congressman is undergoing chemotherapy treatment
for blood cancer.
“I will be voting for Jim
Jordan on the House floor,” Greene said on X. “I like Steve Scalise, and
I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than
sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress.”
How very very thoughtful can Greene be, health first, power position - the other guy.
Typical Greene double speak. The report segues:
On Tuesday, the Republican chair of the House
foreign affairs committee, Michael McCaul of Texas, and the panel’s top
Democrat, Gregory Meeks of New York, introduced a bipartisan resolution
expressing support for Israel. As he entered the conference meeting on
Wednesday, Scalise said the resolution would be his top priority if he
ascends to the speakership.
“The first order
of business under Speaker Steve Scalise is going to be bringing a strong
resolution expressing support for Israel. We’ve got a very bipartisan
bill, the McCaul-Meeks resolution, ready to go right away to express our
support for Israel,” Scalise told reporters.
This post follows form, similarly seguing, to a Guardian same-date other item:
The
shock and horror of the massacres by Hamas in southern Israel have only
intensified as the days have gone by and the full extent of the
violence has emerged.
Young revellers slaughtered as they fled a music festival; babies
murdered with their parents; the very young and old taken hostage. This
atrocity may not be an existential moment for the state of Israel, as
the Yom Kippur war appeared to be 50 years ago. But for Israelis, and
for Jews worldwide, their belief in a homeland where they could be safe
after centuries of antisemitic persecution lies in tatters. The death
toll stands at more than 1,200: “Not since the Holocaust have so many
Jews been killed on one day,” said Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog.
Benjamin
Netanyahu’s far-right government of extremists has failed to keep its
contract with the people. Israelis are stunned that the army took so
long to arrive. An estimated 150 hostages are still held. Yet Haaretz reports
that the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, urged that the country
“strike Hamas brutally, and not take the issue of the captives into
account too much”. This is the kind of partner on whom Mr Netanyahu
still depends. While his political rival Benny Gantz has now joined an emergency national government, he is unlikely to be a moderating voice.
The history of this conflict is well established. The pressing need now is to address what lies ahead. [...] Palestinians
are not Hamas. Almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are children.
They should not have to ask their parents whether they will live.
Israel’s defence minister says that it is fighting “human animals”; a defence spokesman talks of emphasising “damage, not accuracy”; a security official says
that Gaza will be a “city of tents”. [Bomb them into the Stone Age did not work for the US in Vietnam] Whole neighbourhoods have been
obliterated by Israeli bombardment, often without the few minutes of
warning given in the past. Even after so many years of conflict,
families in Gaza have not known the relentlessness of this fear. More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 326 children.
If
you drop hundreds of tons of bombs on a densely populated area, large
numbers of people will die. If you cut off food, medicine, electricity
and water, they will die. Palestinians cannot live safely in Gaza. But
nor can they leave, even if they are willing to risk never returning.
Israel has bombed the only crossing point, to Egypt. Sieges are, as the
UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, stressed, a breach of international
law. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the European
Union’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, have rightly urged Israel
to abide by humanitarian law. The US, UK and others should do likewise.
US discussions with Israel and Egypt on brokering an aid corridor and potentially safe passage for civilians must be prioritised.
All the indications are that Mr Netanyahu will send in ground troops,
leading to many more Israeli and Palestinian deaths, and potentially
wider escalation – a particular peril given regional power shifts
drawing in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran. Hezbollah, the Lebanese
militant group, has warned that it would become involved. It has already
claimed responsibility for missile attacks.
It
is shameful that, while Palestinian and Israeli lives hang in the
balance, outsiders are using this catastrophe to promote their own
agendas, from Islamophobia and antisemitism to cutting US aid to
Ukraine. Social media platforms
– notably X, formerly Twitter – have allowed disinformation to run
rife. A tragedy is still unfolding in the Middle East. It is the duty of
the international community, however fractured, to work together to
limit the devastation.
Civilians are not combatants. For a non-military force, Hamas, discerning who is a warrior, who a bystanding civilian will be Israel's duty, which they likely will totally breach. They hold the power. The airforce. The bombs. The armor. The artillary.
Expect them to use it all in a most brutal way. Hope that they do not. Their track record of disproportionate retaliatory force mirrors Nazi tactics against Resistance actions during the Second World War. Hope they are more enlightened this time.
Besides near universal US MSM propaganda shouting the US should unquestionably support whatever Israel does in retaliation, there is disinformation on the Internet, per yet a third Guardian item:
Since Hamas
launched an attack on Israel on Saturday morning, X has been flooded
with disinformation and misinformation that has heightened tensions
across the globe. Disinformation refers to the deliberate spread of
false information, while misinformation is when someone unwittingly
spreads or believes the false information to be true.
Another video,
originating from TikTok but now unavailable there, has racked up 2m
views on X claiming to show high-profile Israeli generals captured by
Hamas fighters. In actuality, the video was originally published by the official YouTube channel
of the state security service of Azerbaijan last week, and shows
arrested former leaders of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh government.
A doctored document
suggesting that Joe Biden gave $8bn in assistance to Israel appeared on
X last week and was viewed 400,000 times. The faked memo was an edited
version of the US president’s July memo where he announced $400m in aid to Ukraine.
There is no such document on the White House website or social media.
The White House confirmed to NBC that the document was fake.
Russia
has been a longstanding culprit for spreading disinformation on X, and
appears to have been capitalising on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Monday the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair
of the Russian Security Council, tweeted:
“Well, Nato buddies, you’ve really got it, haven’t you? The weapons
handed to the Nazi regime in Ukraine are now being actively used against
Israel.”
Another video,
apparently showing Hamas thanking Ukraine for the sale of weapons it
plans to use against Israel, was posted by an X account linked to the
Russian mercenary group Wagner. It has since been viewed more than
300,000 times and amplified by far-right accounts from the US.
In February, the Pentagon’s inspector general reported that there was no evidence to date of weapons and aid to Ukraine being diverted to third parties, while Ukrainian intelligence this week accused Russia of placing “trophy” western weapons seized from battlefields in Ukraine with Hamas to undermine support for Kyiv.
As Gaza’s sole power station ran out of fuel amid
a tightening siege, hundreds of terrified people sought shelter in the
entry of the enclave’s largest hospital, huddling together as
bombardments rained down.
“The hospital is
completely full and things have started to run low. And this is only day
four,” said Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon at Gaza City’s main hospital,
al-Shifa.
“The
situation continues to deteriorate, the number of patients, especially
kids, that are coming in with horrendous injuries …” he said, his voice
trailing off. “This morning there was a child, a young girl, with
indescribable facial injuries whose mother is a doctor at al-Shifa who
was killed when their home was targeted. Last night, another 10-year-old
boy with also devastating facial injuries who was taken out from the
rubble of his home in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood.”
A
few hours after the Palestinian minister for energy said Gaza’s only
power station had enough fuel to last another 12 hours at most, Gaza’s
energy authority said the fuel had run out. The generators that many
across Gaza have struggled to keep running in order to power homes and
hospitals appeared on the brink of sputtering out without fuel, with no
deliveries available due to the closure of Gaza’s southern border
crossing with Egypt.
“Soon all services vital
for the survival of the population, including hospitals, will no longer
function,” said Gaza’s Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights.
The
Palestinian Civil Defence, responsible for search and rescue in Gaza,
said a large number of people remain trapped under the rubble of their
destroyed homes. The organisation said on Tuesday that its rescue
workers were unable to retrieve corpses from under the wreckage due to
Israeli airstrikes as well as a lack of supplies to be able to carry out
search and rescue work.
On Monday Israeli
officials promised a “complete siege” of Gaza, after an attack by Hamas
militants on Saturday that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead.
The
Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, ordered a cut to all
electricity, water, food and fuel supplies to the enclave, home to more
than 2.3 million people, almost half of whom are children. At least
1,100 people in Gaza have been killed by Israeli bombardments, and more
than 5,000 wounded.
Dror Sadot, a spokesperson
for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, decried the decision to
tighten Israel’s 16-year blockade of Gaza, which had already vastly
limited the movement of supplies including food, fuel and building
materials, into a total siege. “We are talking about war crimes and
collective punishment that Israel is implementing,” she said.
The secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, on Wednesday called for lifesaving supplies including food and water to be allowed in Gaza.
2.3 million people, a handful being Hamas agents, the rest civilian residents, where "Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, ordered a cut to all
electricity, water, food and fuel supplies to the enclave," surely shouts to the world that Israel does not care about civilian death and suffering, and only wants a disproportionate carnage, to "teach a lesson." The lesson learned will be a lifelong hatred of Israel and its people by the young of Gaza - those who are fortunate enough to survive - and the situation will prolong itself generations into the future.
There is no suggestion that the Hamas incursion was anything but a wrongful butchery. Not online, not at Crabgrass. It happened. Now, the world will see what comes next, from Israel, and it presages a very, very ugly outcome. With all the horsepower in their hands the Israelis can butcher the entire Gaza population. Short of that, too many innocent Palestinian civilians will be murdered.
It is ugly. The Hamas incursion was ugly. The Israeli response will be as ugly, and far more massive in scope, in all likelihood. The hope is that forecast does not come to pass; that Israel will use its disproportionate power in a surgical operation aimed to maximize Hamas punishment, while mindful of civilian innocence as to actions, while all happening will be hateful in spirit because each side in this mess hates the other, citizens as well as warriors.
Carnage will be unmatched by any earlier Israeli actions against Gaza. The world should watch critically, not giving Israel a free, unlimited ticket to extract revenge against the whole of Gaza's 2.3 million human beings.
Rhetoric in our nation so far suggests the rest of the world may watch fairly, but our "consensus builders" will whore full bore for Israel uber alles. Which would not be a good thing. There will be fault on both sides. It is the nature of war. Hamas did start this chapter of an ongoing hot-cold-hot war. Feet have been wiped on a negotiated, promised two state solution. Settlement incursion is continuous.
Retalitory might makes right? Clearly that is not so. The final chapter is not yet written. The world has no choice but to watch. And judge.
Judge fairly, please.
__________UPDATE_________
DISPROPORTION
Rockets were fired into southern Israel from Gaza, with no report of any widespread infrastructure or housing damage. AJ has a detailed summary of early Hamas incursions, (none into any major urban area, no mass housing disruptions), with this graphic at the end:
There is no better point to begin a discussion of disproportion. However it is current affairs now on the front burner, history for now back burner.
Guardian has good ongoing coverage. Presently Israel has not yet sent ground troops into Gaza. Arial bombing of densely populated Gaza urban areas is ongoing.
Israeli jets have pounded Gazan targets for days in retribution for a
weekend attack by Hamas militants who breached the border fence
enclosing the enclave and rampaged through towns and villages, killing
1,200 people, injuring over 2,700, and taking scores of hostages, the
Israeli military said.
At around 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, Israel’s
military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets
belonging to Hamas in Gaza. It did not provide details.
The death toll in Gaza has risen to 1,200, with around 5,600 wounded, Palestinian media reported, citing Gaza’s health ministry.
Biden
despatched his top diplomat, Antony Blinken, to the Middle East to show
Washington’s enduring support for Israel, seek to secure the release of
captives, including Americans, and prevent a wider war from erupting.
[...]
China's special envoy to Middle East expected to talk to Israeli officials today
China’s
special envoy on Middle East issues is expected to have a telephone
conversation with Israeli officials on Thursday, Israel’s Ambassador to
China, Irit Ben-Abba, told Bloomberg News.
China will likely talk
about the meeting later in the afternoon, during a regular briefing
held by the foreign ministry, the report said.
China’s foreign ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
[...]
Here is more detail from the phone call between
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, via Reuters.
The pair discussed the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Wednesday, in the first telephone call
between the two leaders since a China-brokered deal between Tehran and
Riyadh to resume ties.
The two leaders’ call came as Israel
carried out air strikes in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a deadly
attack by Palestinian Hamas militants in Israel.
Raisi and the Saudi crown prince discussed the “need to end war crimes against Palestine,” Iranian state media said.
The
Saudi crown prince, for his part, “affirmed that the Kingdom is making
all possible efforts in communicating with all international and
regional parties to stop the ongoing escalation,” Saudi state news
agency SPA said.
He also reiterated Saudi Arabia’s rejection of targeting civilians in any way, SPA added.
Asked
about Raisi’s call with the crown prince, a senior US State Department
official said Washington, which staunchly backs Israel in its fight
against Hamas, was in “constant contact with Saudi leaders”.
The
official added that the US was asking its partners with channels or
relations with Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Iran “to get Hamas to stand
down from its attacks, to release hostages, keep Hezbollah out (and)
keep Iran out of the fray.”
[...]
Israel’s bombing campaign has destroyed or
rendered uninhabitable at least 2,540 housing units in Gaza, OCHA said,
citing numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing.
Another 22,850 housing units sustained moderate to minor damage, it said.
The UN agency also voiced alarm at the significant destruction of civilian infrastructure damaged in the shelling.
Among
other things, it said sewage facilities serving more than a million
people had been hit by air strikes, leaving solid waste accumulating in
the streets, posing a health threat.22.07 EDT
More than 338,000 people displaced in Gaza: UN
More
than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza
Strip, the United Nations said, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue
to hit the Palestinian enclave.
“Mass displacement across the Gaza Strip continues,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Thursday.
By
late Wednesday, the number of displaced people in Gaza had risen by an
additional 75,000 people from the figure given 24 hours earlier,
reaching 338,934, it said.
Israeli forces said 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the onslaught - the worst in the country’s history.
In Gaza, officials reported more than 1,100 people have been killed in Israel’s sustained campaign of air and artillery strikes.
OCHA
said nearly 220,000 people, or two-thirds of the displaced people, have
sought shelter in schools run by the UN agency supporting Palestinian
refugees, UNRWA.
Another nearly 15,000 people
fled to schools run by the Palestinian Authority, while more than
100,000 were being sheltered by relatives, neighbours and a church and
other facilities in Gaza City.
IDF spokesperson says ground offensive will come 'when opportune and fit for our purposes'
A
ground offensive will be launched on Gaza “when opportune and fit for
our purposes”, IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus has just said in a
live update.
Ground forces are gathering at Israel’s southern border with Gaza.
IDF
spokesperson Jonathan Conricus is giving a live update. He is
discussing the tunnels under the Gaza strip, and says that the Air Force
is trying to attack those.
He claims that the IDF is “prioritising striking Hamas commanders”.
Reports from Gaza suggest that hundreds of civilians, including children, have died in IDF strikes.
Israel
Defense Forces spokesperson Jonathan Conricus is speaking now. He says
that 100 bodies, including those of children and infants, have been
recovered in Kibbutz Be’eri. The total population of the kibbutz before
the attack was about 1,200 people.
While we wait for that IDF update to begin, here is some analysis on where Saudi Arabi and Iran stand.
Saudi
Arabia’s de facto ruler and Iran’s president spoke by phone about the
war between Israel and Hamas, Saudi state media said early Thursday,
Analysts
say the war has dealt a heavy blow to a possible landmark normalisation
deal between Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites in Islam, and
Israel.
That process has been driven by US
President Joe Biden’s administration, with Riyadh bargaining hard for
benefits from Washington including security guarantees and help
developing a civilian nuclear programme.
After that earlier reporting Guardian shifted its coverage to a separate post (this screen capture) -
The Israeli government is under intense public pressure Thursday to topple Hamas as the latest Gaza war reaches its sixth day
ByThe Associated Press
October 12, 2023, 12:33 AM
Smoke
rises following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Thursday, Oct. 12,
2023. Israel's retaliation has escalated after Gaza's militant Hamas
rulers launched an unprecedented attack on Israel Saturday, killing over
1,200 Israelis and taking captive dozens. Heavy Israeli airstrikes on
the enclave has killed over 1,200 Palestinians. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
The Associated Press
In the Gaza
Strip, meanwhile, residents are facing ever-growing uncertainty after
the territory's only power plant ran out of fuel and shut down
Wednesday. Without power, communication is limited and information is
scarce.
Egypt has engaged
in intensive talks with Israel and the United States to allow the
delivery of aid and fuel through its Rafah crossing point, which
remained closed on both sides Thursday. However, Egypt pushed back
against proposals to establish corridors out of Gaza, saying an an
exodus of Palestinians from the enclave would have grave consequences on
the Palestinian cause.
The war, which has claimed at least 2,600 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate.
Here's what's happening on Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war:
At
least 1,417 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip and over
6,200 have been injured since the Israel-Hamas war began, Palestinian
health officials said Thursday.
Of the dead, nearly 450 are children and 250 are women.
The war has claimed at least 2,600 lives on both sides since Hamas launched its attack on Israel last Saturday.
TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Blinken
offered a statement with Herzog that touched on the same themes as his
earlier statement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“There
really are two paths before countries in this region and in many ways,
countries in this world. But here in the Middle East, there’s the path
of integration, cooperation, normalization and equal measures of
justice, opportunity, dignity for all peoples, including the
Palestinians,” Blinken said.
He
added: “Or there’s the path that Hamas has shown to the world these
last few days — terror, destruction, nihilism, a path that leads to
nowhere for anyone except to the darkest places in our souls.”
JERUSALEM
— Every Israeli soldier killed by Hamas militants so far in the latest
Israel-Palestinian war has been identified, the Israeli military
confirmed Thursday.
A total of 222 Israeli soldiers have died and their families have all been notified, a spokesperson for the military said.
BAGHDAD
— Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that
he has ordered the dispatch of humanitarian aid to the Gaza enclave,
currently under siege by Israeli forces
Disproportion, today, this Hamas-Israel current event. 338,000 Gazans displaced. No comparable displacement in Israel. Hospitals desperate for supplies in Gaza. No crisis in Israeli hospitals. Power out, sewage in the streets of Gaza. No comparable harm reported in Israel. And the IDF ground troops are yet to enter Gaza. They are massing to invade. Egypt planning food, medicine and other aid; no similar shortages in Israel.
In total, Israel suffered an incursion and deaths, some property damage. The entire citizenry of Gaza, millions, are being forced into collective suffering via bombing (pinpoint claimed by Israel, looking otherwise - indiscriminate - from most reporting).
BOTTOM LINE: What Israel is doing now fits that historical chart of what Israel did before - disproportionate destruction of Palestinian people and resorces; inflicting far, far grater suffering than Israel suffered.
Again, this is not saying Hamas was less than barbaric in its actions. It was. But this is saying Israel is equally barbaric, indeed killing more already these days, and retaliating on a far greater scale, now, as the Israelis have historically done.
There is no more suitable term than disproportionate retalitory barbarism. And we give Israel four billion in arms each year, every year, and in the UN Security Council Israel would have been suitably condemned multiple times already, had we not used the US veto power to favor Israel's unsuitable conduct.
The entire world has judged. Wake up to reality, despite what MSM spews. An apartheid state is being supported by our government. Lies repeatedly are being told to bolster the sad status quo.
Like it. Love it. It is the reality our MSM declines to tell. It is truth. Face truth.
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Israeli conduct is wholly unacceptable, so far, and will get much worse. They are savages in their response against civilians. Brutal because they hold the power.
BDS TIME! DO IT NOW! END VETO USE. LET THE WORLD JUDGE. BDS NOW!
BDS in the US will not happen. It should. These people need to be constrained. Yes, Hamas was brutal. That does not justify a clearly disproportionate pure terror campaign against 3.9 million civilians. Yet we cannot call it unprecedented. We set that precedent. Hence, we cannot judge. The world, however, can. Do not use the veto when the UN weighs this latest current event. Allow a vote.
No more to say here. It would only be detail. WATCH.
