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The Mixed Emotions of November 9th

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h/t rocksunderwater (public domain)

In Germany, November 9th is a day of very mixed emotions.

In 1923, this was the date on which the “Beer Hall Putsch” took place, a failed violent coup led by Hitler and the Nazis to overthrown the Weimar government. The following April, Hitler was convicted of high treason and sentenced to five years in prison (the bare minimum sentence). While in prison, Hitler was given various privileges, and he wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf. By the end of the year, Hitler was released, and he pivoted the Nazi party to seek power via legitimate means. Ten years later, Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany.

Fifteen years to the day after the Beer Hall Putsch, in 1938, came Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On that night, the German authorities stood by as Hitler’s Storm Troopers and members of the Hitler Youth stormed Jewish businesses and buildings, synagogues and schools, hospitals and homes, breaking their windows and ransacking the property. While the Nazis claimed the violence was a spontaneous reaction to the murder of a Nazi official, it was instead a well-planned attack, thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, and the Nazis demanded the Jewish community pay a huge “Atonement Tax” of 1 billion Reichsmarks, and any insurance payouts to Jews were seized by the government.

As bad as those memories are for Germany, an entirely different memory of November 9th was created in 1989, when after a tumultuous summer, the Berlin Wall came down. JD Bindenagel was the career State Department officer serving as the deputy chief of mission at the US mission in East Germany’s capital of Berlin, and he described it like this in 2019:

On Nov. 9, 1989, there was no sign of revolution. Sure, change was coming—but slowly, we thought. After all, the Solidarity movement in Poland began in the early 1980s. I spent the afternoon at an Aspen Institute reception hosted by David Anderson for his new deputy director, Hildegard Boucsein, with leaders from East and West Berlin, absorbed in our day-to-day business. In the early evening, I attended a reception along with the mayors and many political leaders of East and West Berlin, Allied military commanders and East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel. Not one of us had any inkling of the events that were about to turn the world upside down.

As the event was ending, Wolfgang Vogel asked me for a ride. I was happy to oblige and hoped to discuss changes to the GDR travel law, the target of the countrywide demonstrations for freedom. On the way, he told me that the Politburo planned to reform the travel law and that the communist leadership had met that day to adopt new rules to satisfy East Germans’ demand for more freedom of travel. I dropped Vogel off at his golden-colored Mercedes near West Berlin’s shopping boulevard, Ku’Damm. Happy about my scoop on the Politburo deliberations, I headed to the embassy. Vogel’s comments would surely make for an exciting report back to the State Department in Washington.

I arrived at the embassy at 7:30 p.m. and went directly to our political section, where I found an animated team of diplomats. At a televised press conference, government spokesman Guenter Schabowski had just announced the Politburo decision to lift travel restrictions, leaving everyone at the embassy stunned. East Germans could now get visitor visas from their local “People’s Police” station, and the East German government would open a new processing center for emigration cases. When an Italian journalist asked the spokesman when the new rules would go into effect, Schabowski fumbled with his papers, unsure—and then mumbled: “Unverzueglich” (immediately). With that, my Vogel scoop evaporated.

At this point, excitement filled the embassy. None of us had the official text of the statement or knew how East Germans planned to implement the new rules. Although Schabowski’s declaration was astounding, it was open to widely varying interpretations. Still dazed by the announcement, we anticipated the rebroadcast an hour later.

At 8 p.m., Political Counselor Jon Greenwald and I watched as West Germany’s news program “Tagesschau” led with the story. By then, political officer Imre Lipping had picked up the official statement and returned to the embassy to report to Washington. Heather Troutman, another political officer, wrote an on-the-ground report that the guards at Checkpoint Charlie were telling East Germans to get visas. Greenwald cabled the text of Schabowski’s announcement to Washington: East Germans had won the freedom to travel and emigrate.

As the cable arrived in Washington, I called the White House Situation Room and State Department Operations Center to discuss the report and alert them to the latest developments. I then called Harry Gilmore, the American minister in West Berlin.

“Harry,” I said, “it looks like you’re going to have a lot of visitors soon. We’re just not sure yet what that rush of visitors will look like.”

We assumed that, at best, East Germans would start crossing into West Berlin the next day. In those first moments, the wall remained impassable. After all, these were Germans; they were known for following the rules. Schabowski had announced the visa rules, and we believed there would be an orderly process. East Germans, however, were following West German television coverage, as well. And, as it turned out, they decided to hold their government to its word immediately.

I headed home around 10 p.m. to watch events unfold on West German television. On my way to Pankow, I was surprised by the unusual amount of traffic. The “Trabi,” with its two-cycle engine and a body made of plasticized pressed-wood, spewing gas and oil smoke, was always in short supply. Perhaps one of the most striking symbols of East Germany’s economy, those iconic cars now filled the streets despite the late hour—and they were headed to the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint. Near the checkpoint, drivers were abandoning them left and right.

Ahead of me, the blazing lights of a West German television crew led by Der Spiegel reporter Georg Mascolo illuminated the checkpoint. The TV crew, safely ensconced in the West, was preparing for a live broadcast. Despite the bright lights, all I could make out was a steadily growing number of demonstrators gathering at the checkpoint. From the tumult, I could faintly hear yells of “Tor auf!” (Open the gate!) Anxious East Germans had started confronting the East German border guards. Inside the crossing, armed border police waited for instructions.

Amid a massive movement of people, fed by live TV, the revolution that had started so slowly was rapidly spinning out of control. The question running through my mind was whether the Soviet Army would stay in its barracks. There were 380,000 Soviet soldiers in East Germany. In diplomatic circles, we expected that the Soviet Union, the military superpower, would not give up East Germany without a fight. Our role was to worry—the constant modus operandi of a diplomat. But this time, our concern didn’t last long.

When I arrived home around 10:15 p.m., I turned on the TV, called the State Department with the latest developments, and called Ambassador Richard Barkley and then Harry Gilmore again: “Remember I told you that you’d be seeing lots of visitors?” I said. “Well, that might be tonight.”

Just minutes later, I witnessed on live television as a wave of East Berliners broke through the checkpoint at Bornholmer Strasse, where I had been just minutes earlier. My wife, Jean, joined me, and we watched a stream of people crossing the bridge while TV cameras transmitted their pictures around the world. Lights came on in the neighborhood. I was elated. East Germans had made their point clear. After 40 years of Cold War, East Berliners were determined to have freedom.

Bindenagel was elated, the German people were elated (Bindenagel gave more detail in a video interview here, and Deutsche Welle has a host of anniversary articles and interviews here), and the West (broadly speaking) was elated.

A certain KGB agent stationed in East Germany and assigned to work with the Stasi (the East German Secret Police) was most certainly not elated, and grew increasingly frustrated in the weeks that followed. The BBC described the agent’s reaction like this:

It is 5 December 1989 in Dresden, a few weeks after the Berlin Wall has fallen. East German communism is dying on its feet, people power seems irresistible.

Crowds storm the Dresden headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police, who suddenly seem helpless.

Then a small group of demonstrators decides to head across the road, to a large house that is the local headquarters of the Soviet secret service, the KGB.

“The guard on the gate immediately rushed back into the house,” recalls one of the group, Siegfried Dannath. But shortly afterwards “an officer emerged – quite small, agitated”.

“He said to our group, ‘Don’t try to force your way into this property. My comrades are armed, and they’re authorised to use their weapons in an emergency.'”

That persuaded the group to withdraw.

But the KGB officer knew how dangerous the situation remained. He described later how he rang the headquarters of a Red Army tank unit to ask for protection.

The answer he received was a devastating, life-changing shock.

“We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow,” the voice at the other end replied. “And Moscow is silent.”

That phrase, “Moscow is silent” has haunted this man ever since. Defiant yet helpless as the 1989 revolution swept over him, he has now himself become “Moscow” – the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

For Putin, this was the beginning of the fall of the great Russian empire, and everything Putin has done since was been an effort to restore the greatness of Great Mother Russia, with himself as her leader and savior.

On this November 9th, it is the Germans and West who are worried and Putin who is elated, as Donald Trump prepares to take office. Putin dreams of an end to US military support for Ukraine, a diminished US role in NATO (if not a complete withdrawal from the alliance), and a weakening of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement between the US and the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

On this November 9th, Putin’s dreams are looking closer to becoming a reality.

On this November 9th, Moscow is no longer silent.

The Other Problematic Subject Trump Hid

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

In this post:

Overview
Russia’s involvement
H. R. McMaster’s observations
Olivia Troye’s observations

~ ~ ~

Overview

Before the September 10th presidential debate, did you notice Trump and his campaign never backed off on the Arlington National Cemetery brouhaha?

Did you notice they actually leaned into their desecration of the cemetery with a campaign event?

The profanement of war dead is a taboo which would have ended other politicians’ campaigns and political careers. Why did the Trump campaign continue so firmly in this direction?

Did you notice how much this offensive behavior sucked up attention from Trump’s other deficits as a candidate and a human being?

Did you notice how much less we were laughing at his campaign after ANC but before Trump’s disastrous debate performance?

The violation of regulations and norms at ANC appear to be redirection: if the candidate and campaign act out badly enough, the subject is changed. The left would stop laughing at him.

Trump’s campaign tried to flip the public’s perspective of the ANC to make Trump the victim. They found Gold Star family members willing to stick their necks out for him to rationalize the offensive behavior. Very DARVO if you think about it; his campaign abused the law, norms, the rights of others, he walked on the graves of war dead for his own benefit, but somehow he’s the victim.

But again, this was and is redirection. What have they been trying so damned hard to hide? It’s something far worse than desecrating a national cemetery for war dead, violating regulations and assaulting a federal employee in the process.

Is Trump responsible for those killed in Afghanistan during his administration and through the withdrawal during Biden’s first year in office because of his negotiations with the Taliban and his subsequent hurried order to withdraw?

Is it because both former Homeland Security and Counter terrorism advisor to Mike Pence Olivia Troye spoke out at the Democratic National Convention decrying Trump’s leadership?

Is it because Trump’s former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster published a book released within days of the brouhaha at the ANC – a book in which Trump and his White House appear to be unfocused, unserious, and in thrall to hostile foreign nations?

Is it because Troye and McMaster know exactly how much blame Trump personally bears for those Gold Star dead on whose graves he campaigned?

~ ~ ~

Russia’s involvement

Many of you read Marcy’s post about Trump’s effort to hide his attempt to assassinate Mike Pence on January 6. Special Counsel Smith likely has all he needs for prosecution, but Trump doesn’t want his voters to know more about his threats to Pence’s life.

I believe Trump is also trying to hide something more from his potential voters: his role in the losses experienced up to and during the U.S. final pullout from Afghanistan. He may have been badly played by joint efforts by Russia and the Taliban, ultimately damaging the U.S. military’s efforts to depart in an orderly fashion without U.S. troop and coalition force casualties while leaving a functional Afghanistan government behind.

I’m sharing a partial timeline at this link which includes events related to Afghanistan during Trump’s term in office.

One thing stuck in my craw back when we tried to crowd source a timeline about a then-unknown issue an unidentified whistleblower reported about in 2019.

Why the hell was Russia so deeply engaged in the US-Taliban negotiations? It stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Unfortunately the media’s attention was swept away by the revelation of Trump’s attempted quid pro quo with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

After so many troops had been killed by Taliban, attributed to cash bounties offered by Russia, why was Russia involved in negotiations?

There was push back about Trump inviting the Taliban to Camp David to negotiate a deal – a move which would have legitimized the Taliban – thereby preventing Trump from going through with the invitation.

Did Putin encourage Trump to extend this invitation in order to undermine U.S. foreign policy, making us look weak enough to cave to a terrorist organization?

Why has this issue not been revisited by the media instead of going on and on for years now about Biden’s execution of the exit from Afghanistan?

When talking heads complained Biden should have either refused to honor Trump’s agreement and extend the exit past August 31, did they take into consideration possible traps which may have been set up by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vladimir Putin should the agreement not be effected as negotiated?

Granted, while Pompeo was negotiating with the Taliban and Russia over the terms of the US’s exit, there had been a little problem with an Iranian missile launch which failed and John Bolton’s departure from his role as Director of National Intelligence. Perhaps the media’s attention was redirected by these events as much as the brouhaha building over a then-unknown whistleblower and their complaint.

And yet after all the tension over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the subsequent investigations, the apparent inclusion of Russia in the Afghanistan exit negotiations received scant attention.

Why is this not a topic for discussion now, when the guy ultimately responsible for the terms of withdrawal is running again for office?

The same guy who signed off on the agreement having made no effective response to troop deaths after Russian bounties were reported?

~ ~ ~

H. R. McMaster’s Observations

During the September 10 debate, Kamala Harris demonstrated just how easy it is to manipulate Trump. She brought up one of his obvious obsessions and he fell for it like Wile E. Coyote tripping into Road Runner’s Acme-branded holes.

It wouldn’t take much for Putin to do the same thing repeatedly. He’s had plenty of time and resources to learn about Trump’s narcissistic foibles and he’s likely applied this knowledge on a regular basis.

I’ve been reading H. R. McMaster’s latest book, “At War With Ourselves.” I must point out that McMaster isn’t a reliable narrator; it’s not clear if he played a game with the meaning of “collusion” or if he genuinely believed Trump didn’t collude with Russia in order to win the 2016 election.

But McMaster’s recollection of the Trump White House’s toxicity, riddled with internecine drama like Henry VIII or Louis XIV’s court, depicts a weak leader manipulated by many both inside the White House and out.

You can experience the flavor of the problem through Nicolas Niarchos’s review for The New York Times in which he describes how China’s Xi bent Trump over:

As McMaster writes in “At War With Ourselves,” the president could sometimes be kept on the straight and narrow with a clever dose of reverse psychology (Xi Jinping wants you to say this, Xi Jinping wants you to say that). But just as often, McMaster shows Trump to have been an unpredictable waffler who undermined himself to the advantage of his competitors on the world stage.

In November 2017, President Trump visited China on the third leg of a 13-day trip around Asia. It was his “most consequential” destination, McMaster explains. As they flew to Beijing, he warned Trump that Xi would try to trick him into saying something that was good for China, but bad for the United States and its allies. “The C.C.P.’s favorite phrase, ‘win-win,’” he recalls telling his boss at one point, “actually meant that China won twice.”

Trump seemed to hear him, but in the Great Hall of the People, the president strayed from his talking points. He agreed with Xi that military exercises in South Korea were “provocative” and a “waste of money” and suggested that China might have a legitimate claim to Japan’s Senkaku Islands. McMaster, his stomach sinking, passed a note to Gen. John Kelly, the chief of staff: Xi “ate our lunch,” it read.

McMaster described Putin’s effort to influence Trump during the 2017 G20 summit. Putin pressured Trump on shipments of Javelins to Ukraine, the same kind of arms shipments which were a bone of contention during the RNC’s efforts to draft a platform in 2016, and again during the run-up to Trump’s quid pro quo attempt with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

To appeal to Trump’s optimistic interpretation of the U.S.-Soviet alliance during World War II, Putin showed Trump a video of Russia’s Northern Fleet salvaging the USS Thomas Donaldson, a 7,200-ton Lend-Lease ship that a German U-boat had sunk in the arctic in 1945, before it could deliver its cargo of Sherman tanks. The idea was to evoke the memory of the United States and the Soviet Union as allies during World War II and to keep alive the pipe dream of conciliation with Putin’s Kremlin as the best way to advance both countries’ interests.

Putin used his time with Trump to launch a sophisticated and sustained campaign to manipulate him. Profilers and psychological operations officers at Russia’s intelligence services must have been working overtime. Even as the meeting stretched into its second hour, Putin did not run out of material. To suggest moral equivalence between U.S. interventions in Latin America and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin cited the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy declaration by U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt in 1904–5 stating that the United States could intervene in a country’s internal affairs if that country were engaged in chronic wrongdoing.

At the dinner later that evening, as the two leaders squared off for a long conversation, Putin handed Trump a list of ideas for collaboration, including the development of an amusement park near Moscow. I wondered if Putin hoped the list would leak, or if he planned to leak it later, to revive stories of Trump’s failed pursuit of business deals in Russia, feed the Russian collusion narrative, weaken Trump, and divide Americans further. (188-189)

It’s unfortunate for us that McMaster was no longer NSA when Trump met with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018; he might have written about that as he did the 2017 G20. We can only imagine how much worse Putin’s discussion with Trump was in Helsinki if Putin felt he’d achieved some success with his G20 ratcheting on Trump’s weaknesses.

What’s infuriating and frustrating about this text is McMaster’s dismissive attitude about “Russiagate” and allegations of “collusion” which he blames for increasing Trump’s defensiveness on a number of topics – but as already noted, this is what makes McMaster unreliable as a narrator.

And yet McMaster’s conflict about the intimacy of Trump’s relationship with Putin may have been the last straw leading to his termination as NSA.

JUST A few days after Russian assassins deployed the nerve agent in Salisbury, poisoning Sergei Skripal and his daughter, a story appeared in the New York Post with the headline “Putin Heaps Praise on Trump, Pans U.S. Politics.” When I walked into the Oval Office that evening, on another matter, the president had a copy of the article and was writing a note to the Russian leader across the page with a fat black Sharpie. He asked me to get the clipping to Putin. I took it with me. When I got home that night, I confided to Katie, “After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump.”

News was breaking about the poisoning in England, and I was certain that Putin would use Trump’s annotated clipping to embarrass him and provide cover for the attack. The next morning, I stuck to procedures and gave the clipping to the White House Office of the Staff Secretary, which manages any paper coming into and out of the Oval Office. I asked them to take their time clearing it and to come back to me before sending it to Putin via his embassy in Washington. Later, as evidence mounted that the Kremlin and, very likely, Putin himself had ordered the nerve agent attack on Skripal, I told them not to send it.

I told Trump, “Mr. President, do you remember the article and note you told me to send to Putin? I didn’t send it. Putin would almost certainly have used the note to embarrass you, alleviate pressure over the Skripal incident, and reinforce the narrative that you are somehow in the Kremlin’s pocket.”

Trump was angry. “You should have done what I told you to do, General.” “Mr. President, you can be angry at me, but you have to know that I was acting in your interest.” (308-309)

How often had Trump sent mash notes to Putin during his term in office? Was he sending them even during McMaster’s tenure as NSA but through another contact?

What were the prompts for these missives? Did any exchanges between Trump and Putin out of the public’s eye shape Trump’s agreement with the Taliban and the subsequent withdrawal from Afghanistan?

Did Trump have any exchanges like this which may have led him to take no action as U.S. troops were killed after it was learned Russia offered bounties on our service persons serving in Afghanistan?

Has Trump been sending mash notes to Putin even after leaving office through other contacts?

~ ~ ~

Olivia Troye’s observations

McMaster waited until three years after the U.S. exited Afghanistan to share his experience working in Trump’s White House. Publication date of his book was August 27, 2024 — three days before the third anniversary of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan and the day after Trump and his campaign violated ANC regulations profaning war dead.

Olivia Troye didn’t wait; her speech at the DNC convention this August wasn’t her first public statement about Trump’s foreign policy and general leadership. Two months after she left her role in 2020, she unloaded on the Trump administration particularly on Trump for his narcissistic approach to protecting the nation as the COVID pandemic unfolded.

She not only wrote a pointed Twitter thread but published a campaign video in which she as a lifelong Republican said she was voting for Joe Biden after her experience working in the Trump administration.

She unloaded again ten days before the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan in 2021, in response to ill-informed smears by right-wing mouthpieces, some of whom had been obstructive about the Special Immigrant Visa program (SIV) which should have helped more Afghan allies enter the U.S.

Olivia of Troye @OliviaTroye

🧵There were cabinet mtgs about this during the Trump Admin where Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan. He & his enablers across gov’t would undermine anyone who worked on solving the SIV issue by devastating the system at DHS & State.(1/7)

11:29 AM · Aug 20, 2021

I tracked this issue personally in my role during my WH tenure. Pence was fully aware of the problem. We got nowhere on it because Trump/S. Miller had watchdogs in place at DOJ, DHS, State & security agencies that made an already cumbersome SIV process even more challenging.(2/7)

11:29 AM · Aug 20, 2021

I met w/ numerous external organizations during my White House tenure who advocated for refugees & pleaded for help in getting US allies through the process. I got the phone calls & letters as the homeland security & CT advisor to Pence…(3/7)

11:29 AM · Aug 20, 2021

The system wouldn’t budge, regardless of how much this was argued about in National Security Council mtgs. The Pentagon weighed in saying we needed to get these allies through the process-Mattis/others sent memos. We all knew the urgency but the resources had been depleted.(4/7)

2:08 PM · Sep 17, 2021

The fear of people across the Trump Admin to counter these enablers was palpable. There were numerous behind closed door meetings held-strategizing how to navigate this issue. The Trump Admin had FOUR years…(5/7)

11:29 AM · Aug 20, 2021

..Trump had FOUR years-while putting this plan in place-to evacuate these Afghan allies who were the lifelines for many of us who spent time in Afghanistan. They’d been waiting a long time. The process slowed to a trickle for reviews/other “priorities”-then came to a halt.(6/7)

11:29 AM · Aug 20, 2021

To people like Ben Domenech, JD Vance & others who are making blanket statements & pushing narratives of convenience on Afganistan-especially on the SIV/allies issue-please, just stop. Your comments are uninformed & also hurtful. We see right through you.(7/8)

11:29 AM · Aug 20, 2021

Grateful for everyone advocating the urgency of getting our allies evacuated out of Afghanistan ASAP & those who are doing everything they can to help. It’s the least we can do for these individuals & it’s a matter of national security. The world is watching.(8/8)

11:29 AM · Aug 20, 2021

By the time Troye wrote this there were roughly 2300 U.S. troops on each of three shifts protecting the remaining facilities and personnel – a number wholly disproportionate to the number of Afghan fighters Trump’s agreement with the Taliban released from Afghan government detention.

There simply weren’t enough personnel to do everything well, thanks directly to Trump.

There were aggravating circumstances with the Taliban violating the agreement, thanks to Trump.

There was ample frustration trying to help Afghan citizens who’d helped the U.S. thanks to Trump allowing his little racist attack dog Stephen Miller to undermine the exit.

It would be nice if any credible journalist with experience covering defense and active war zones ever asked Olivia Troye if she observed any difficulties added to the withdrawal from Afghanistan by Russia or its proxies, or other hostile foreign nation, in addition to the obstructions created by Trump’s worst minions.

It’d be nice if journalists asked Troye if she ever observed exchanges as McMaster did, between the White House and Russia which were not made known to the public but were not classified.

Taking both Troye’s and McMaster’s observations into consideration, Trump fucked up Afghanistan for the sake of his re-election campaign and possibly ego stroking by Putin, leaving Biden a massive mess to clean up just as he fucked up the pandemic response. In both cases Americans died because of Trump’s fuckery.

And Trump had zero problems kissing Putin’s ass along the way.

~ ~ ~

Once again, the question: which part of this related to Afghanistan did Trump and his campaign believe needed to be obscured so badly they were willing to profane American war dead to that end?

Pandora’s Box Opened: Netanyahu’s Double-Tap Fuck-You

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[NB: Note the byline. Portions of this post may be speculative. / ~Rayne]

I wrote a while back about Israel, discussing Israel’s repeated intelligence “failures” as not mere fuck-ups but fuck-yous.

This week’s attacks by exploding electronic devices intended for Hezbollah — attributed to Israel without any denial so far — are yet more fuck-yous delivered using an indiscriminate approach and a double tap.

These fuck-yous blew open Pandora’s box — and then some.

~ ~ ~

On Tuesday nearly 3000 pagers blew up in Lebanon. These one-way pagers are believed to have been distributed to Hezbollah members as a means to bypass Israel’s surveillance of cell phone communications. More than 30 people were killed including children.

On Wednesday during funeral services for persons who died the previous day, walkie-talkies or handheld radios were detonated in Lebanon. 12 more people died and approximately 3000 were injured.

The exploding walkie-talkie attack was the double tap: when persons who escaped a targeted attack gather during a response afterward, a second attack is launched retargeting those same persons. We’ve seen this technique employed by Russia in Ukraine, using secondary attacks to take out first responders aiding the injured and dying in a first attack, or at funeral services for the dead.

It’s a questionable practice; former President Obama had been criticized for its use with drone attacks as double taps may violate the Geneva Conventions and U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996.

But both Tuesday and Wednesday’s attacks may have violated the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons regardless of the double tap on Wednesday, as the armed devices constituted booby traps which are prohibited.

These attacks are yet more proof that Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership has gone rogue having repeatedly refused to comply with multiple treaties including the Geneva Conventions.

~ ~ ~

This time, though, Israel doesn’t have the excuse that IDF may have made a mistake.

These attacks were premeditated, planned out and executed over months if not years. Front companies were used to obtain components and distribute assembled devices; in the case of the pagers, it’s believed a Hungarian registered firm BAC Consulting may have been a key intermediary between a Taiwanese manufacturer and the ultimate distribution of the devices.

Nonprofit OSINT investigator Bellingcat followed evidence between the pagers and Taiwan electronics firm Gold Apollo, noting that BAC Consulting listed as an employee a “ghost”; this person can’t be traced to any real  human, suggesting strongly BAC is an intelligence front.

The operation’s timeline needs to be fleshed out more fully; it’s not clear whether some actions believed to be related to the operation behind this week’s attacks are intended solely for plausible deniability.

02-MAY-2020 — BAC Consulting appears in Hungarian business records but appears now to have been shuttered the same year.

21-MAY-2022 — BAC Consulting registered as a new company in Hungary, according to Hungarian Justice Ministry records. It was listed as a retailer of telecommunications products, management consulting, jewelry making, and fruit cultivator — a rather odd assortment of goods and services.

The business was not engaged in manufacturing according to a spokesperson for Hungary’s prime minister; they also said “the referenced devices have never been in Hungary,” suggesting BAC acted as a broker or trade intermediary.

XXX-2022 to AUG 2024 — Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Gold Apollo exported exported approximately 260,000 pagers over a two-year timeframe. The majority shipped to the EU and US with no records of pagers shipped to Lebanon during that same timeframe. The company received no reports of Gold Apollo pagers exploding.

SUMMER 2022 — Modified pagers containing PETN-adulterated batteries for which BAC was an intermediary began shipping into Lebanon.

APR-MAY 2024 — A Lebanese security source said the pagers had been imported to Lebanon five months ago.

The pagers may have been imported into Lebanon months ago, but they must have been planned out well before that given the prevailing description of the handheld improvised exploding devices (IEDs).

Acceptance of the pagers must have been worked out far earlier — which brand would the users be willing to use, how would they be distributed without raising questions, what could go wrong tipping off the plot between the time the first pagers were fitted up with explosive PETN and detonators, where could the IEDs be assembled without intelligence leaks, so on.

Which brings us to leaks by a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group Handala whose attacks on websites were first noted by computer security expert Kevin Beaumont back in May this year.

After the pager IED explosions on Tuesday, Handala published information about the pagers’ production claiming they had exfiltrated data from Israeli sources Vidisco and Israeli Industrial Batteries Ltd. (IIB).

Vidisco is an Israeli-based developer and manufacturer of X-ray inspection systems; IIB is a manufacturer of batteries which is 51% owned by Sunlight Group as of February 2023. Both appear to be contractors to Israel’s military. Breachsense indicates both firms were hacked and credentials of employees at both firms were leaked though no customer credentials have been.

Handala’s brief about the data it hacked published Wednesday explained the operation:

The operation of the last two days was a series of joint actions of the Mossad and Unit 8200 and a number of shell companies of the Zionist regime! Handala’s hackers, during extensive hacking in recent hours, were able to obtain very secret and confidential information from the operations of the past days, and all the documents will be published in the coming hours!

The summary of the operation is as follows:

* This supply chain attack has taken place by contaminating the batteries of Pagers devices with a special type of heat-sensitive explosive material in the country of origin of the producer!

* Batteries have been contaminated with these explosives by IIB (Israeli Industrial Batteries) company in Nahariya!

* Mossad was responsible for transporting contaminated batteries to the country of origin of the producer!

* Due to the sensitivity of explosives detection devices to these batteries and the need to move them in several countries, Mossad, in cooperation with vidisco shell company, has moved the mentioned shipments!

*Vidisco company is an affiliated company of 8200 unit and today more than 84% of airports and seaports in the world use X-rays produced by this company in their security unit, which actually has a dedicated backdoor of 8200 unit and the Zionist regime it can exclude any shipment it considers in the countries using these devices and prevent the detection of sabotage! ( The complete source code of this project will be published in the next few hours! )

* Contaminated shipments have reached Lebanon through the use of Vidisco backdoor and after traveling through several countries!

* All the factors involved in this operation have been identified by Handala and soon all the data will be published!

* Handala has succeeded in hacking Vidisco and IIB and their 14TB data will be leaked!

More details will be published in the coming hours

(Unit 8200: Israeli Intelligence Corps group)

Beaumont published a short write-up about Handala’s information dump to date, noting the likelihood that Handala is connected to Iran through IP addresses, their talking points, and the targets of their efforts.

Beaumont also asks:

Are the claims credible?

Handala has not yet provided proof of data exfiltration of these organisations. On reaching out, one company above said they are suffering from “IT issues”.

In prior claims by Handala, they have been credible around victim names.

If the battery claims are credible; it is not possible to assess as no evidence has been provided to date.

I’ll note that Handala’s English is very good, though in the age of ChatGPT it may be generated for clarity to English-speaking audiences.

There was no mention of specifics related to handheld radios by Handala in these early releases and if they were likewise products produced by the same after-market suppliers, specialized modifiers, and distribution network.

Reports indicate some of the radios were made by Japanese manufacturer ICOM though ICOM said the model IC-V82 identified was discontinued a decade ago. As damage to recovered radios displayed blast damage in the battery area, it’s possible the radios were retrofitted with explosives or replacement batteries were manufactured with explosives. Because radios and their batteries are larger than pagers, this would explain the larger blasts associated with the radios.

~ ~ ~

Do read the essay by American researcher and hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang at the link embedded at the phrase “Pandora’s box” above. Huang is deeply concerned about these attacks relying on handheld electronics:

Not all things that could exist should exist, and some ideas are better left unimplemented. Technology alone has no ethics: the difference between a patch and an exploit is the method in which a technology is disclosed. Exploding batteries have probably been conceived of and tested by spy agencies around the world, but never deployed en masse because while it may achieve a tactical win, it is too easy for weaker adversaries to copy the idea and justify its re-deployment in an asymmetric and devastating retaliation.

…

I fear that if we do not universally and swiftly condemn the practice of turning everyday gadgets into bombs, we risk legitimizing a military technology that can literally bring the front line of every conflict into your pocket, purse or home.

I share this concern,  one I’ve had for over a decade beginning with reports in 2009-2010 of Chinese-made counterfeit electronics ending up in the U.S. military’s supply chain, compounded by reports in 2018 of unauthorized chips added to server motherboards.

Oversight and investigation into these problems were thwarted by geopolitical, intelligence, and corporate interests.

Huang included a nifty visual representation of an electronics supply chain with his essay:

Every point along the supply chain can be breached, whether the items are new or used or refurbished. Huang’s 2019 presentation at BlueHat in Israel on supply chain security looks in detail at the likely points in chip and board production for unauthorized modifications; he doesn’t look far outside manufacturing, though.

What terrifies me is that Israel’s operation revealed far more than supply chains are now threatened. They’ve shown every hostile entity in the world how to wreak massive chaos in ways we haven’t fully imagined.

~ ~ ~

The IEDs have and will continue to attract attention. This week’s double tap attacks made it clear that the proliferation of small electronic devices on which we rely so heavily are the means to destroy both individuals and groups of people.

The information leaked by Handala makes it easy for hostile entities to attempt the same for their own aims.

The attacks have already spurred renewed discussion about onshoring more of our supply chain.

But what concerns me the most is what we’ve learned about the application of X-ray devices in our supply chain and elsewhere.

If Handala could obtain information about this operation — assuming everything revealed so far is truthful and in no way distorted — what other entities may have preceded Handala in breaching Vidisco’s data? How much lead time do they already have toward something similar to this week’s double tap attacks?

If the public and leaked information about Vidisco is accurate, just how badly are U.S. scanning systems compromised? Have we already been allowing Israel  (or other opportunists using Israel’s methods and means) to distribute IEDs inside the U.S.? Have our U.S. tax dollars doled out as aid to Israel paid for both the violation of Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, and now the wholesale compromise of our own national security?

If hostile entities have obtained this same information about Vidisco’s X-ray systems, how badly have our import scanning capabilities been compromised?

If the public and leaked information about Vidisco is accurate and 84% of the world’s airports use its scanning equipment, how badly are our screening systems at U.S. airports compromised?

Imagine for a moment phones and radios on planes containing PETN-adulterated batteries triggered with a single call.

Imagine laptops and tablets triggered with a single remote prompt over onboard WiFi or wireless networks.

~ ~ ~

In June 2017 amid the WannaCry and modified Petya attacks, the Department of Homeland Security and the Travel Safety Administration rolled out heightened security measures including increased scanning of electronic devices.

By the end of July 2017, handling of smaller electronics changed:

… The TSA will now require “all electronics larger than a cell phone” to be removed from carry-on bags and placed in their own separate bin for X-ray screening with nothing on top or below, similar to how laptops have been screened for years. …

At the time the measures appeared to be related to potential threats related to cyber attacks.

Now one might wonder if the changes were intended to increase the use of X-ray screening related specifically to explosives and not just cyber attacks.

We aren’t likely to receive any answers to inquiries about the triggers for these changes.

What we should understand now, though, is that much of this could be performative. The X-ray scanning systems, if tampered with the way they were to admit pagers and radio IEDs into Lebanon, could be absolutely useless for detecting rigged devices.

~ ~ ~

It’s clear we are going to have to rethink our entire screening system at all ports after Netanyahu’s latest fuck-you.

He surely must have known he was opening Pandora’s box when he authorized the detonation of pagers and handheld radios.

I must admit the first thought I had after the initial shock upon hearing about the attacks was this: if Netanyahu had this capability to take out a group of targets this neatly, why didn’t he try this approach with Hamas?

If Netanyahu felt he could expend political capital on violations of international law, why instead is he systematically overseeing the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, schools, humanitarian aid systems, women and children instead of having neatly excised Hamas in Gaza using these handheld IEDs?

Why? Because fuck you is a likely answer.

President Biden’s Address to the Nation

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

In case you missed his remarks broadcast and streamed Wednesday evening, here is a video and a transcript.

Alternate source: https://www.c-span.org/video/?537306-1/president-biden-addresses-nation-decision-drop-2024-race
(Caveat: the transcript at C-SPAN is awful)

Transcript:

My fellow Americans, I’m speaking to you tonight from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. In this sacred space, I’m surrounded by portraits of extraordinary American presidents. Thomas Jefferson wrote the immortal words that guide this nation. George Washington showed us presidents are not kings. Abraham Lincoln implored us to reject malice. Franklin Roosevelt inspired us to reject fear.

I revere this office, but I love my country more. It’s been the honor of my life to serve as your president. But in the defense of democracy, which is at stake, I think it’s more important than any title. I draw strength and find joy in working for the American people. But this sacred task of perfecting our union is not about me, it’s about you. Your families, your futures.

It’s about we the people. And we can never forget that. And I never have. I’ve made it clear that I believe America is at an inflection point. On those rare moments in history, when the decisions we make now determine our fate of our nation and the world for decades to come, America is going to have to choose between moving forward or backward, between hope and hate, between unity and division.

We have to decide: Do we still believe in honesty, decency, respect, freedom, justice and democracy. In this moment, we can see those we disagree with not as enemies but as, I mean, fellow Americans—can we do that? Does character in public life still matter? I believe you know the answer to these questions because I know you the American people, and I know this: We are a great nation because we are a good people. When you elected me to this office, I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth. And the truth, the sacred cause of this country, is larger than any one of us. Those of us who cherish that cause cherish it so much, the cause of American democracy itself. We must unite to protect it.

In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.

So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation. I know there was a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.

Over the next six months, I will be focused on doing my job as president. That means I will continue to lower costs for hard-working families, grow our economy. I will keep defending our personal freedoms and civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose. I will keep calling out hate and extremism, making it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period. I’m going to keep speaking out to protect our kids from gun violence, our planet from climate crisis as an existential threat.

I will keep fighting for my Cancer Moonshot, so we can end cancer as we know it because we can do it. I’m going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy—Supreme Court reform. You know, I will keep working to ensure American remains strong, secure and the leader of the free world.

I’m the first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world. We will keep rallying a coalition of proud nations to stop Putin from taking over Ukraine and doing more damage. We’ll keep NATO stronger, and I will make it more powerful and more united than any time in all of our history. I will keep doing the same for our allies in the Pacific. You know, when I came to the office, the conventional wisdom was that China would inevitably pass, surpass the United States.

That’s not the case anymore. And I’m going to keep working to end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war. We are also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.

You know, we’ve come so far since my inauguration. On that day, I told you as I stood in that winter—we are stood in a winter of peril and winter of possibilities. Peril and possibilities. We are in the group of, we were in the group of the worse pandemic in the century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. We came together as Americans. We got through it. We emerged stronger, more prosperous and more secure.

Today we have the strongest economy in the world, creating nearly 16 million new jobs—a record. Wages are up, inflation continues to come down, the racial wealth gap is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. We are literally rebuilding our entire nation—urban, suburban and rural and tribal communities. Manufacturing has come back to America. We are leading the world again in chips and science and innovation. We finally beat Big Pharma after all these years to lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors.

And I’m going to keep fighting to make sure we lower the cost for everyone, not just seniors. More people have health care today in America than ever before. I signed one of the most significant laws helping millions of veterans and their families who were exposed to toxic materials. You know, most significant climate law ever, ever in the history of the world. The first major gun safety law in 30 years.

And today, the violent crime rate is at a 50-year low. We are also securing our border. Border crossings are lower today than when the previous administration left office. I’ve kept my commitment to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. I also kept my commitment to have an administration that looks like America and be a president for all Americans. That’s what I’ve done.

I ran for president four years ago because I believed and still do that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake. That is still the case. America is an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world. That idea is that we hold these truths to be self-evident.

We are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We’ve never fully lived up to it—to this sacred idea—but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.

In just a few months, the American people will choose the course of America’s future. I made my choice. I’ve made my views known. I would like to thank our great vice president, Kamala Harris. She is experienced, she is tough, she is capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country.

Now the choice is up to you, the American people. When you make that choice, remember the words of Benjamin Franklin hanging on my wall here in the Oval Office, alongside the busts of Dr. King and Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.

When Ben Franklin was asked, as he emerged from the convention going on, whether the founders have given America a monarchy or a republic, Franklin’s response was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” A republic, if you can keep it. Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands. My fellow Americans, it’s been the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years.

Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as the president of the United States, but here I am.

That’s what’s so special about America. We are a nation of promise and possibilities. Of dreamers and doers. Of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. I’ve given my heart and my soul to our nation, like so many others. And I’ve been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people. I hope you have some idea how grateful I am to all of you.

The great thing about America is, here kings and dictators do not rule—the people do. History is in your hands. The power’s in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. You just have to keep faith—keep the faith—and remember who we are. We are the United States of America, and there are simply nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together. So let’s act together, preserve our democracy. God bless you all and may God protect our troops. Thank you.

~ ~ ~

This is an open thread.

Gaza: Unending Cannon Fire and Steel Helmets

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Before Congress’s Easter week break earlier this year, there had been negotiations to allow Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress. He was not granted that opportunity though reports indicated vacillating opinion in the House and Senate.

It would be a grave mistake to allow Netanyahu such a platform; it would confer legitimacy to his policy toward Gaza.

That policy includes genocide. The U.S. may support the right to self defense of nation-states, but it cannot ever support genocide – not even the appearance of doing so by allow a mass murderer a platform.

Gaza’s history, the complexity of geopolitics involved, along with Netanyahu’s narcissistic intransigence and stifling U.S. policy prevent the Biden administration from openly calling Netanyahu’s actions genocide.

But the genocide of Gazans isn’t something new. It’s part of decades of increasing repression. One only needs to look at a map and the numbers — hell, even satellite photos taken over time — to know this situation didn’t develop in the last handful of months.

It continues with the repeated attacks on and murder of humanitarian aid workers who have been trying to fend off famine.

We’ll need far more than maps and numbers to stop this mass murder.

The Congressional GOP caucus allowing Netanyahu to address Congress next month does absolutely nothing to discourage his policy of genocide – rather, it encourages it.

OVERVIEW

In a nutshell, Gaza is a population the size of Houston crammed into an area the size of Las Vegas — more than 2 million people crammed into 141 square miles. There are only three crossings in and out, two guarded by Israel and one by Egypt, with the perimeter surrounded by a double fence line on three sides and the ocean on the fourth.

Gaza has been under blockade since 2005 following the second Intifada, though Israel has closed the region off and on since 1991.

Israel tightened the blockade after Hamas was elected to power (2006); this change in power was a response to the blockade and the ineffectiveness of the Palestinian Authority to address Gazans’ needs.

After nearly twenty years of Israel’s tightening stranglehold punctuated with fuel restrictions (2007), closed crossings thereby blocking food (2008), and an ongoing need for humanitarian aid (2010-on), it can hardly be surprising a rebellion by Hamas occurred.

Americans have been looking away for years, avoiding the obvious build up to October 7, 2023. We can’t look away any more.

Look at this rather dispassionate map of Gaza before October 7, prepared by the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. These were the facts on the ground before October 7 with which the U.N. and other aid organizations had to work to address Gaza’s needs not met by occupier Israel.

(source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – occupied Palestinian territory, via Wikimedia)

Could Americans live with this, in this? Could they raise children under these conditions, essentially inside a large double fenced cage from which land and housing has been stolen?

Can we begin to understand why there are tunnels in and out of Gaza?

What are we defending by looking away?

AMERICANS’ PERCEPTION

The politics of the past which have long shaped and conditioned global public opinion are being used as a means to prevent us from seeing more clearly what’s going on in Gaza and across the Middle East.

At least a couple of commenters at this site have mentioned the 1960 movie Exodus, a fictionalized account of Israel’s founding as a nation-state. This film has colored Americans’ perception of Israel for 63 years, in concert with a lack of education about the entire Middle East.

Americans don’t even learn about their own internal conflicts like the Tulsa race massacre or the cause and effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act. They learn little about the history of conflicts abroad, and about the history of Arab and Persian worlds, they learn even less.

What Americans have learned in K-12 public education is that Nazi Germany and its totalitarian dictator were evil and responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust – a wholly accurate depiction. Children are exposed to the primary text Anne Frank’s diary and fictional texts like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Students are conditioned to see Israel’s creation and statehood as a positive, constructive response to the persecution and genocide of Europe’s Jews in 1930-1940s.

This is the lens through which Americans view the film Exodus.

The American public has been further conditioned by foreign terror attacks of 1990s and 2001, shaping and shaped by government response. As events unfolded, U.S. media coverage rarely ever examined the events from a decolonizing perspective.

All of this material has conditioned much of the U.S. to afford wide latitude to Israel.

U.S. foreign policy which supports democracies and affirms independent sovereign nation-states’ right to self defense reinforces that latitude.

Looking the other away has been cultivated for a lifetime, further reinforced by a fear of being called anti-Semitic if Israel’s policies and actions are called into question.

Jews are not Israel. Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu, just as Gaza is not Hamas.

And yet all of Gaza is suffering for Netanyahu’s fuck-up, while Jews abroad and a majority of Israelis at home are confronted with the fallout.

By fuck-up I mean one massive intelligence failure followed by many others.

INTELLIGENCE FAILURES

After looking at recent history of Gaza and the conditions in which Gazans live, the October 7 attack isn’t much of a surprise.

What was a surprise: Israel’s intelligence failures the October 7 attack exposed.

Israel has a history of using targeted intelligence to eliminate potential threats, including extrajudicial execution. Why Israel did not act effectively to prevent October 7 looks as stunningly bad as George W. Bush’s failure to respond pre-emptively to al Qaeda’s threat against the U.S. in August 2001.

Israel’s leadership and military knew there was a threat. Netanyahu failed to ensure Israel was protected.

New York Times report says Israel knew about Hamas attack over a year in advance

Netanyahu failed to do his job for an entire year – but his follow-up to his massive fuck-up is obliterating the population of Gaza.

The attack on October 7 wasn’t the only problematic intelligence failure.

Israel has been less than forthcoming about its operations; though its intelligence knew of the existence of tunnels, it can’t explain how it missed a tunnel as large as the one near the Erez crossing at the border with Egypt.

Israel finds large tunnel adjacent to Gaza border, raising new questions about prewar intelligence

Nor can Israel explain deadly attacks on facilities which were alleged to be supported by intelligence but violate international law. Too many of the attacks have been proven unjustified by follow-up reporting, the most common of which is the excuse Hamas has used tunnels beneath buildings which later prove to be false.

Also poorly rationalized is the use of artificial intelligence to target Hamas, again leading to destruction of civilian infrastructure and civilian deaths. This is a form of human experimentation in addition to yet more war crimes.

The January 24 attack on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) sheltering thousands of Gazans was beyond the pale:

A United Nations building sheltering displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza was hit by Israeli tank fire Wednesday, killing at least nine people and injuring 75 others, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza.

Israel’s military said it “currently” ruled out that an Israeli aerial or artillery strike hit the UNRWA Khan Younis Training Center. The IDF also said a “thorough review of the operations of the forces in the vicinity is underway.”

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on X that the entire center, one of the largest UNRWA facilities in Gaza, was sheltering 30,000 people, and is clearly marked as a UN site.

The White House said it is “gravely concerned” by the strike.

(source: CNN, January 25, 2024)

The attack followed months of strikes on other UN and humanitarian aid facilities. The UNRWA attack also suggests a possible fuck-you to the U.S. as there was no apparent advance notice to the Biden administration let alone the UN.

Israel initially denied responsibility for the attack on the UN refugee compound. It later claimed UN personnel were aiding Hamas as a rationalization for the attack.

You’ll note Biden got the CIA involved in negotiations after the IDF attacked UNRWA:

Biden to deploy CIA director to help broker major Gaza deal

That CIA director William Burns has been called upon to perform a diplomatic mission is an indication something bad happened with the January bombing of UNRWA, beyond the obvious human rights violation such an attack on a humanitarian mission represents.

Something deeply wrong occurred requiring a person at the highest levels of security clearance to be involved. I can’t help but think the IDF killed a CIA agent or an important asset, perhaps as a fuck-you, perhaps as a means to disrupt US intelligence, or both.

The UNRWA assault was followed by the bombing of Rafah during the Super Bowl when Americans would be distracted — Rafah, where Palestinian civilians had been told to go to avoid IDF bombing.

Israeli strikes hit Rafah after Biden warns Netanyahu to have ‘credible’ plan to protect civilians

95 civilians including 42 children were killed during this attack on Rafah. This was hardly a surgical effort intended to take out Hamas alone.

The attack on Rafah looked like yet another fuck-you to the Biden administration even after months of repeated embarrassing appeals to Netanyahu to protect civilians and allow humanitarian aid, of which one of the earliest came a couple weeks after the October 7 attack:

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke this afternoon with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The President welcomed the release of two additional hostages from Gaza earlier today, and reaffirmed his commitment to ongoing efforts to secure the release of all the remaining hostages taken by Hamas – including Americans – and to provide for safe passage for U.S. citizens and other civilians in Gaza.  The President also underscored the need to sustain a continuous flow of urgently needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza.  The President updated the Prime Minister on U.S. support for Israel and ongoing efforts at regional deterrence, to include new U.S. military deployments.  They  agreed to speak again in the coming days.

(emphasis mine; source: The White House, October 23, 2023)

The deaths of more than 100 Gazans attempting to receive food aid in March was yet another likely fuck-you. Israel was supposed to have arranged for the aid delivery which should have included security. Instead there have been claims IDF fired on Palestinians causing a stampede toward the aid trucks.

Mark Regev, the Israeli prime minister’s special adviser, initially told CNN that Israeli forces had not been involved. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) spokesman, said soon after that soldiers had not fired directly on Palestinians seeking aid, but rather fired “warning shots” in the air.

On March 8, after an internal investigation, the IDF released a timeline suggesting that the aid convoy began to cross into northern Gaza accompanied by its tanks at 4:29 a.m. A minute later, at 4:30 a.m., the IDF said its troops fired “warning shots” toward the east to disperse crowds before firing at “suspects” who they claimed posed a threat. At 4:45 a.m., the military said it fired more warning shots.

But CNN’s analysis of dozens of videos from the night and testimonies from eyewitnesses’ casts doubt on Israel’s version of events. The evidence, reviewed by forensic and ballistic experts, indicated that automatic gunfire began before the IDF said the convoy had started crossing through the checkpoint and that shots were fired within close range of crowds that had gathered for food.

(source: CNN, April 10, 2024)

Israel claims the deaths were cause by trucks running into Palestinians; they’ve resisted calls for full, unedited video of the mass shooting, which does nothing to bolster their claims that the IDF did not fire on the swarm of desperate Palestinians.

The airstrike on World Central Kitchen aid workers in clearly marked vehicles is a massive fuck-you which has been blamed on intelligence:

(source: Al Jazeera, April 2, 2024)

IDF missed the center of the logo identifying the World Country Kitchen aid vehicle by centimeters. Accident, my ass; if they targeted a driver in a left-hand drive car the IDF nailed them.

None of this makes sense, this absolute refusal by Netanyahu to be reasonable and rational let alone moral and ethical if Netanyahu is truly focused on eliminating Hamas and only Hamas. Instead these attacks on civilians look organized and systemic – as if the cruelty was the point.

REGIONAL EFFECTS

Saudi Arabia’s absence in news coverage related to negotiations is also troubling; is it because the U.S. media is blind or is it because there’s little to report? Netanyahu trashed Qatar for its efforts, further heightening regional tensions; Egypt and Lebanon have been engaged in negotiations, with Lebanon being bombed on one occasion under the ruse that Hezbollah deserved it though the paramedic center it struck contained no Hezbollah, and in at least one other incident, children were killed.

Could this simply be part of the messy proxy war with Iran, which is more easily seen in the attacks by and on the Houthi in the Red Sea affecting private shipping and military targets.

Israel’s April 2 airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria offers a much more direct example of tensions between Israel and Iran; with this attack Israel exercised a total disregard for Syria’s sovereignty and international law.

It also showed Netanyahu cares not one whit whether his government widens the Israel-Hamas war, escalating regional tensions.

NETANYAHU’S BAD FAITH

The repeated intelligence and military failures and cack-handed political decisions can’t be explained away in relation to attempts to destroy Hamas or to recover hostages – not when Israel killed three of its own hostages.

Especially since Netanyahu supported Hamas for years to prevent a more legitimate Palestinian Authority from pursuing a two-state solution.

Nothing makes sense except that Netanyahu is ethnically cleansing Gaza. Calling the goal or operation “Absolute Victory” or “Total Victory” doesn’t imply a narrow targeted effort.

Is it possible he is doing so for his own corrupt criminal purposes while he is still free and not prosecuted and incarcerated for corruption, relying on national security, political, and religious rationales as cover?

By criminal purposes I mean Netanyahu is continuing the assault on Gaza as a means to delay his trial (imagine Trump using this excuse), and clearing Gaza for some benefit to the missing Saudis (possibly oil and gas development offshore).

Is Netanyahu not only using this genocide to delay his trial but as a means to earn a payout like the $2 billion Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner received, perhaps as a payout for assassinating Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani, damaging Iran’s missile program, and greenlighting the murder of a Saudi-born U.S. journalist?

Is Netanyahu clearing Gaza because he wants more Trump property development — and Kushner has already indicated interest in oceanfront property in Gaza?

Is Netanyahu blowing off Biden because this entire genocide is a form of election interference intended to drive down Biden’s polling numbers, because Netanyahu wants Trump in the White House who’ll condone his complete obliteration of Gaza? Is Netanyahu killing Gazans because he wants an equally corrupt leader who’ll ensure he gets all the support he needs, politically and personally?

Is this the point at which Arendt‘s thinking about statelessness matters (see Ed Walker’s essay here), because so long as Palestine is not a second state, its claims to its own natural resources can be blown off and its obstructive people blown away by profiteers?

Energy firms face legal threat over Israeli licences to drill for gas off Gaza (15-FEB-2024)

Offshore Gas Field Could Help Gaza Recovery (23-NOV-2023)

Saudi Arabia Can No Longer Raise Oil Output For Cash (21-FEB-2024)

Perhaps this is why Netanyahu appointed problematic officials ultra-nationalists Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir whose interests in a peaceful accord with Palestinians in Gaza are likely nil.

Consider Ben Gvir’s 2007 conviction for incitement to racism and supporting terrorism. Why would such a person be appointed as National Security Minister if peace was the intention?

Ben-Gvir convicted of inciting to racism

Consider also Smotrich’s disregard for the Palestinian Authority circa 2015, bolstering Hamas:

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

There had to be a point to all this deliberate fucking around with Hamas, something Netanyahu was willing to throw Israeli lives at, something for which Gazans were expendable.

U.S. POLICY CHALLENGES

Meanwhile, the politics of the past and Americans’ ill-formed perceptions have locked the US into a position where it can’t move against Netanyahu without criticism or worse for being anti-Israel, at a time when the US must also rely on intelligence from Israel and other Middle Eastern countries in order to protect oil and gas which are under attack by Iran-backed Houthi.

Except for a blip in January this year, note how there’s little media coverage about the response of oil markets and fossil fuel countries affected by the Houthis’ attacks. This absence combined with relatively stable oil market prices suggest the Biden administration has been told to put up and shut up to maintain the global economy – or the Biden administration’s investment in U.S. oil production has offset Middle East oil production burps.

(source: West Texas Intermediate/NYMEX price per barrel via Macrotrends)

It’s not clear how much the U.S.’s continued support of Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza are spurring Iranian support of the Houthis, but fighting off the attacks comes at the expense of U.S. defense spending in other areas of the world including Ukraine.

It also comes at the expense of resources necessary to stem nuclear proliferation in the region, which includes Iran. Iran has continued to rebuild its uranium refining since Stuxnet, and is now expanding capacity at two locations.

Normalization of Israel-Saudi Arabia relations has been an aim of U.S. policy, including a two-state solution.

The Abraham Accords and possible Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia. The Biden Administration has followed agreements reached during the Trump Administration that normalized or improved relations between Israel and four Arab or Muslim-majority states—the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Biden Administration officials have said that any further U.S. efforts to assist Israeli normalization with Muslim-majority countries would seek to preserve the viability of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ongoing efforts to deepen security and economic ties between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco could drive broader regional cooperation—including on various types of defense. After China helped broker diplomatic normalization between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Administration has declared that Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia is a U.S. priority. Any negotiations toward that end would likely consider Saudi security and civilian nuclear demands, as well as a pathway toward a two-state solution. Congress has passed and proposed legislation encouraging expanded and deepened regional cooperation involving Israel.

(source: Israel: Major Issues and U.S. Relations, Congressional Research Service, September 27, 2023)

Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the two-state solution, in spite of the fact his policies treat Gaza and Palestine as a separate state on which it can declare and go to war instead of conducting a police action within the same country. He wants it both ways — to conduct a war and treat the persons in that separate state as non-citizens, but failing to protect the civilian minority citizenry of that same state if it is part of Israel. Yet hanging onto this single state including occupied territory so tightly has not brought Israel any more security.

It’s as if it has never occurred to Netanyahu that Israel’s security might actually depend on ending occupation of Gaza and allowing its citizens to govern themselves.

Consider the aphorism that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This applies not only to Israel but to the U.S.; we cannot continue to support continued intransigence when it comes at a cost to our nation’s security. Is the bilateral aid in a 10-year memorandum of understanding which the U.S. negotiated with Israel worth more than the current and future cost of the unending Israel-Hamas war to our nation?

CONCLUSION

There is a limit the U.S. must find and define when it comes to support for Israel. We may believe in the right of sovereign independent nation-states to self defense, but we have failed as a nation when it comes to identifying and fighting just wars. The response to the terror attacks of 9/11 offers the best example of this failure; we spent roughly eight trillion dollars and nearly a million U.S., Iraqi, and Afghans’ lives on what should have been a measured police effort.

A substantive portion of that failure was in no small part based on hidden agendas including continued access to cheap oil.

We should have learned from our failures; other nations including Israel should have learned by observation.

We did not win hearts and minds though we had the sympathy of the world on 9/12, just as Israel did on October 8. Instead the U.S. used its hegemonic power to strive for more than a narrowly tailored effort to find and hold the terrorists accountable.

Look what it earned us more than two decades later, when combined with our handling of Netanyahu.

Israel should have learned already they are failing to win security and a durable peace, and in writing that I don’t mean Netanyahu because the man has proven repeatedly since October he is incapable of anything more that overreaching destruction. The Israeli people need to look long and hard at what has and has not worked for the last 60-70 years.

In a eulogy over a young kibbutz member killed by Palestinians in 1956, Israeli Commander-in-Chief of the Israel Defense Forces Moshe Dayan said,

… Let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we declare their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate. …

In essence Dayan’s eulogy exhorted Israelis not to let down their guard, to embrace the steel helmet and cannon to continue to settle the land, even as he acknowledged the theft of land by colonization and occupation.

Israel has its own lessons to learn, which is that of colonizer which must share a small patch of land at the risk of permanent conflict inside its own borders and beyond.

Under Netanyahu’s leadership, it has given no indication it is learning anything at all about its own history, its reputation and security with its neighbors and across the world, or how it will be seen as history is written.

___________

[Front page photo: satellite image by Maxar published in Business Insider showing Gazans fleeing to north Gaza after IDF told Gazans to leave southern Gaza ahead of bombing. Gazans had already fled to south Gaza 2-3 weeks earlier at IDF’s order.]

Open Thread: Cuellar, Collared

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It’s Friday afternoon and we’re much in need of an open thread.

Centrist Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX-28) gave us something to talk about to start off this thread. The Department of Justice announced today Cuellar and his wife Imelda have been indicted:

An indictment was unsealed today in the Southern District of Texas charging U.S. Congressman Enrique Roberto “Henry” Cuellar, 68, and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, 67, both of Laredo, Texas, with participating in two schemes involving bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering. Congressman Cuellar and Imelda Cuellar made their initial court appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dena Palermo in Houston.

As DOJ notes in its press release, An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

That said, you’d think a guy with a J.D. would at least avoid the appearance of bribery and money laundering, let alone foreign influence after the last nine years of Trump-y foreign influenced corruption.

Maybe Cuellar thought his firm grip on his House seat over the last 19 years was a permission slip. Maybe his DINO status and the inability of the state of Texas to hold corrupt asshats like state AG Ken Paxton fully accountable assured Cuellar he wouldn’t have to deal with the DOJ.

Whatever the case, Cuellar and his spouse are going to go through something and TX-28 Democrats are unfortunately going to have to come up with a backup plan if Cuellar ends up proven guilty, especially since Cuellar was uncontested in the March primary.

Again, this is an open thread.

 

Three Things: Goodbye, Good, Buy? Good – Bye!

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Given the quantity of news today worth discussing but not necessarily worth an entire dedicated post, I’m going to pull together three topics under this umbrella.

Consider this an open thread.

~ 3 ~

Goodbye – Mitch McConnell will step down as Senate minority leader, three years ahead of his retirement from the Senate.

I didn’t see this coming today, but then it probably should have been expected given the bullshit going on with the federal budget negotiations.

Hapless House Leader Mike Johnson has screwed up the negotiations in a whole bunch of ways, allowing the GOP’s vulnerabilities to be exposed each time a new sticking point surfaces to halt progress.

This past week, as one example, it was a poison pill amendment to halt prescriptions of abortion drugs like Plan B for dispensing through pharmacies and by mail. Oh, we can work with that – just look at what happened in Kansas post-Dobbs, when voters turned out in August 2022 to defeat a GOP effort to pass a state constitutional amendment banning abortion.

Not to mention the hassle of an evidence-free impeachment by the House of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas which the Senate must now consider for conviction and removal. Way to make GOP senators look both absurd and racist at the same time thanks to Johnson’s leadership in the House.

McConnell says the recent death of his wife’s family member reminded him of his mortality, which encouraged him to step down and take a seat in the back.

I think at 82 years of age, in iffy health, McConnell simply doesn’t want to have to sweep up after the rogue elephants in his party any longer.

~ 2 ~

Good, buy? – President Biden signed an executive order prohibiting the sale of Americans’ personal data to politically-adversarial countries like China and Russia.

This is an important measure which Congress should take up and write into legislation so that future expansions of privacy protections can be added as amendments.

It’s bothered me that so much personal data is freely available – your driver’s license or state ID and your property taxes are just a couple examples of data anyone can locate and use without any real friction like fees or documented requests kept on file.

But pair that data with purchasing habits acquired by data brokers and the accrued data is highly weaponizable.

It’s not a little thing for persons who are politically active, or even prone to exercising their First Amendment right of free speech.

The Department of Justice has deterred at least four assassination plots targeting persons in the U.S., stopping them before someone died as ordered by a foreign government. Imagine how easy it is to find a target and profile them to make the assassination fast and easy using personal data acquired from data brokers for mere pennies. No more assigning teams of personnel for surveillance – just buy the data, hack a few local area internet-connected cameras, and dispatch a killer.

Or send a drone, like Trump did to Iran’s General Soleimani, likely breaking norms against such assassinations.

Knowing that personal data is less likely to be acquired by hostile foreign governments might make some Americans more comfortable with making purchases which might create data sold by brokers.

Or, maybe not.

~ 1 ~

Good – Bye! – Trump could only post a $100 million bond today against the $454 million he owes in the E. Jean Carroll defamation NY state business fraud case.

It’s a pretty solid indication he’s broke. It should be a familiar feeling because he’s declared six business bankruptcies before.

Heck, given that many bankruptcies under his belt, this one he should be able to file on his own in his sleep. Maybe he’ll be able to save on attorneys’ fees by doing much of the work himself.

~ 0 ~

Bonus: Michigan’s primary results = so many bad hot takes.

I mentioned this in the wee hours this morning on Mastodon; the first take I saw in Washington Post missed a critical point about the way Michigan’s primaries are conducted, and how that affects the poll results.

RayneToday @[email protected]

There’s a critical problem with this analysis of the Michigan primary results: there are crossover voters who voted for Nikki Haley who will vote for Biden in November. The “uncommitted” vote may actually be a smaller percentage of total Democratic voters because of this practice of crossing over during the primary.

Unlike neighboring Ohio, voters aren’t locked into a party and can cross back in November. See 2000 primary when McCain won the Michigan primary. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/27/4-takeaways-michigan-primary/

Feb 28, 2024, 01:14

Union members are encouraged to do this though it may depend on circumstances surrounding the candidates.

The percentage of Democratic votes are not as they appear; there will have been Democratic voters who threw behind Nikki Haley, making Trump’s win margin look smaller than it is, while also making the “uncommitted” Democratic vote numbers appear larger as a percentage of the total vote.

I am absolutely certain this took place; I was asked by Democratic voters who planned to crossover which not-Trump GOP candidate would optimize this approach.

Of course in my opinion the best fuck-you to Trump is voting for a woman of color.

With regard to the “uncommitted” vote, what should be noted is where the most votes occurred in highest concentrations. Dearborn, where the largest number of Muslim and Arab-heritage voters live in Michigan, would obviously be expected as the location of the largest number of “uncommitted” votes.

For large news outlets to trumpet as a headline the protest vote sent a message is rather misleading, especially when most of these outlets couldn’t be bothered to report on the crossover vote.

Again, this is an open thread.

Putin’s Other War of Attrition

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Alexei Navalny, Russia’s opposition leader and founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, died today as a complication of Vladimir Putin’s trumped-up imprisonment.

Reports indicate Navalny died of an embolism, though no independent autopsy has been scheduled. Putin had previously tried to poison Navalny with nerve agent novichok, the same poison used against former double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018.

Navalny’s work documenting Russia’s corruption tweaked not only Putin but his underbosses and capos.

The example in the video above, centered on the family of Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, offers a reason why Putin targeted Navalny: the Russian emperor is an organized crime overlord whose henchmen have hollowed out Russia.

This is a key reason, too, why Russia is engaged in a war of attrition against Ukraine. It can’t muster the military might to take out Ukraine because its defense department has been riddled with leaks siphoning off the resources needed to build a first world credible military, just as Chaika and his family have bled Russia’s law enforcement and tax revenue structure.

While we can thank this hollowing out for preventing an absolute blow-out against Ukraine, the Russian military as it exists continues to offer the corrupt regime opportunities to vacuum more resources out of the country.

Navalny’s continued existence was a threat to what was yet another of Putin’s war of attrition – the one of organized crime against the Russian people.

It has not helped that the Republican Party has been aiding and abetting Putin’s antidemocratic efforts against Russians by supporting Putin’s useful idiots, most especially Donald Trump.

It has not helped that useful idiots like Tucker Carlson have been so eager to kneel down before Putin and kiss his ring.

Former ambassador and academic Michael McFaul was blunt in his assessment: “Putin killed Navalny, let’s be crystal clear about that.”

Though Navalny had been declared a political prisoner by Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Putin certainly did nothing to ensure the safety and longevity of Navalny, who had been transferred to high security penal facility IK-3 in late December 2023.

How convenient for Putin to have Tucker Carlson interview him the week before Navalny died out of the public’s view in thinly-populated western Siberia, providing a synthetic gloss of western approbation over Putin’s criminality.

Navalny may have lost this war of attrition but he was right: “Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”

If Navalny had not continued to pose a threat to Putin’s regime, he would have been ignored.

Finally: War Criminal Dead at 100

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Henry Kissinger died today, age 100.

I am posting an image of the headlines at the top of Google News this hour because I don’t trust myself to write much about this man.

Polarizing barely describes Kissinger’s approach to foreign policy. So many of the challenges we’ve faced since Kissinger left the Nixon administration are blowback and blowback upon that blowback from his bullshit.

And by bullshit I’ll point to his unlawful war on Cambodia, as just one example. Nixon may have started the unauthorized bombing but Kissinger’s support ensured it would continue.

Beloved chef and travel journalist Anthony Bourdain put it best in his 2010 book, ‘A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines’:

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”

You will hear that quote above often this week because there have not been enough people who have distilled Kissinger’s wretchedness into less than 100 words as Bourdain did.

I wish I could but the size and scale of Kissinger’s evils outstrip my ability.

~ ~ ~

This is an open thread. Leave your comments about Kissinger and war crimes here rather than pollute other threads.

Three Things: This Week’s Massive Dickhead Award Goes To…

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This last week was bad. We were swamped with dickheads, more so than usual, and some of them bigger dickheads than the usual fare.

There are so many it’s worth assessing who was the champion dickhead this week.

Below are my top three. Tell us in comments who you’d have picked for this week’s Massive Dickhead Award.

~ 3 ~

WINNER: Rep. Patrick McHenry (R, NC-10)

This asshat became the Acting House Speaker after the ultra-fascist faction of the GOP House Caucus led by Matt Ephebophile Gaetz forced the feckless Kevin McCarthy out of the speaker’s role.

McHenry chose to come out swinging rather than settling calmly and rationally into the speakership.

Within hours of McCarthy’s removal, McHenry booted Nancy Pelosi out of her office while she was out of D.C. escorting Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s body back to California. She was not accorded a reasonable amount of time to attend the funeral service and return to D.C. to clean out her office.

He then blew off the Congressional delegation in need of air transportation to California for Feinstein’s funeral.

…the House Republican leadership did not allow a plane to transport the late Senator’s colleagues from DC to SFO. After the late Senator passed, Rep. Zo Lofgren contacted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to request air transportation for colleagues to attend the memorial service.

This is a courtesy any delegation is traditionally afforded to allow members to travel together to honor a member who passed away. But, Rep. Lofgren, who’s the delegation representative, never heard back from McCarthy. According to Thompson, she made the same request of Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry but also didn’t get a response.

“It’s just sad commentary on the House Republican leadership where they wouldn’t allow a plane to come back so her colleagues can pay tribute to this great legislator, great Senator remarkable leader,” Thompson said. “I’m assuming some people will not be able to make it because of that.”

Sloppy if not arrogantly thoughtless. A slap at the state which is the fifth largest economy in the world, with the largest congressional delegation, as if McHenry doesn’t think anything of winning Democratic seats in California.

There have been 39 representatives and senators who’ve died in office since 2000, and at no time has there been such a pointed dickishness toward the congressional delegation traveling to funeral services, regardless of the political party in control of the House or Senate.

But this is McHenry’s SOP, has been since at least 2008. He demonstrated his sloppy thoughtless arrogance then:

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon told a North Carolina lawmaker Tuesday that he couldn’t re-air a video he’d shot in Baghdad after accusations surfaced that he breached operational security in detailing enemy rocket attacks.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican, traveled to Iraq with other lawmakers for the first time on March 22. The video was the second incident stemming from that trip that has drawn unwanted attention to McHenry. Earlier, he was criticized for berating a guard in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone for not allowing him into a gym there because the congressman did not have the proper identification credential.

The new criticism stems from a video that was featured on his Web site last Friday. Shot in the Green Zone, it showed McHenry gesturing to a building behind him and saying that one of 11 rockets “hit just over my head.” Then he named two other places struck by the rockets.

As in 2008, his unthinking reflexive behavior is a sign McHenry is not capable of governance, only peevish pettiness which pisses on the American public and their needs for rational effective government.

Our country deserves and needs better than massive dickheads who believe owning the libs is the job for which the American public pays them. It’d be nice to think the GOP thinks so, too, but they actually allowed McHenry to pull this bullshit and spit on congressional comity at a time when it’s most needed to negotiate a budget. Thanks to North Carolina’s persistent partisan gerrymandering, the GOP ensures both NC-10 and the country are stuck with this prize-winning jerk, at least through the 2024 election.

~ 2 ~

SECOND PLACE: Vladimir Putin

Killing 50 civilians including a child with a missile, wiping out half the village of Hroza while its residents interred a loved one is both a war crime and the height of dickishness.

Way to win hearts and minds, Pooty, you kidnapper and murderer of children.

You’d think he’d have learned something from U.S. errors in places like Iraq and Afghanistan but nope. He just doubles down on his criminality.

Added asshole-ishness: this agitprop trying to stir up shit between the U.S. and Israel immediately after the attack by Hamas.

Unlike Putin, POTUS can walk and chew gum, isn’t hiding in their ill-gotten fortress of solitude, and isn’t obsessed with toxic nostalgia for the past like the decades-plus effort to restore the USSR.

The U.S. also has a defense budget larger which makes Russia’s look like nothing – we can manage more than one challenge.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? All Russia has in its arsenal is cheap influence operations amplified by cringelords?

Speaking of cringelords…

~ 1 ~

THIRD PLACE: Elon Musk

Why this guy bothers with American citizenship is beyond me given his reluctance to respect its government.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday sought to force Elon Musk to sit for a deposition as part of an ongoing investigation about his purchase of Twitter, now known as X.

The SEC said Musk failed to appear for testimony as required by a May subpoena despite agreeing to show up last month at the SEC’s office in San Francisco.

Musk waited until two days before the scheduled date to notify the SEC he would not appear, regulators said. They’re now seeking a court order to force Musk to comply.

Musk’s response this week was pure DARVO:

Elon Musk called for an overhaul of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, the same day the agency sued him in an effort to compel him to testify about his purchase of Twitter, the platform now known as X.

“A comprehensive overhaul of these agencies is sorely needed, along with a commission to take punitive action against those individuals who have abused their regulatory power for personal and political gain. Can’t wait for this to happen,” Musk wrote on X in response to news of the SEC suing him.

So predictable: deny the abuse, reverse victim-abuser order. Poor Musk is the victim, won’t somebody deal with the mean old SEC?

The acquisition of Twitter by this narcissistic git very much needs investigation. As noted previously, Musk was so desperate to avoid Delaware’s Chancery Court after he sued to stop his acquisition last year that he threw in the towel and proceeded to buy Twitter.

What is it that Musk doesn’t want revealed in public record?

An alleged proponent of free speech, Musk appears to have shrugged off an egregious persecution of civil rights though it’s his platform which has been at the heart of the Saudis’ charges and death sentence against Saudi citizen Mohammad Alghamdi for their tweets.

Besides blowing off the SEC’s subpoena and blowing off free speech, Musk also managed to both screw up his own company’s product and spit in the face of media outlets which have continued to bolster the sagging social media platform.

Musk decided headlines make tweets look bad so he’s had them removed. Before the change if a news outlet included a link to a news article in their post, the article’s headline would appear next to an image served from the link so that users would know what the link was about and the tweeter could add a prefacing blurb in the tweet’s body.

Now the user must allocate their post’s text to adding a headline. Jay Peters at The Verge does a better job of explaining the problem (red markup mine on image below):

In short, Musk stiffed news media the most with this move which he claims improves the platform’s aesthetics.

Ri-ight. Because all the white supremacists and TERFs and other haters don’t damage the platform at all.

Bloomberg’s finally coming around about the moral argument against the former bird app, but it’s infuriating they can’t see the business argument is right there, too, thanks to Musk’s constant degradation of service.

What happens when journalists are targeted by intelligence operatives because Musk has decided maintaining privacy of personal data shared with the former Twitter is now an inconvenience, or that data is just another fungible to be harvested without regard to users’ privacy and security and the FTC’s consent decree?

~ 0 ~

Honorable Mention:

Matt Gaetz, because a pumpkin has more smarts and savvy than this shit stirrer who launched the ouster of Kevin McCarthy thereby setting McHenry loose to be a bigger dick than usual.

At some point we need to call Gaetz and his wrecking crew anarchists because that’s what they are – they don’t give a fuck about the republic and keeping it, they just want to destroy it.

Let’s hope this next week we run into fewer dickheads.

Who’s on your list of Massive Dickheads from this past week? Who has screwed over more people and undermined democracy in a big way? Share your nominees in comments.

This is an open thread.