10/24/2023

more on that bad joan crawford book

first up, here's the book discussion i did with ava and c.i. about the joan crawford book i read and reviewed:

Books (Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)

1summerread

As we did in 2021, we're attempting to again increase book coverage in the community. After a review posts, we try to do a discussion with the reviewer. This go round, we're talking to Rebecca about her "robert dance - a lousy writer - knows damn little about joan crawford." The book's Robert Dance's FEROCIOUS AMBITION: JOAN CRAWFORD'S MARCH TO STARDOM. You did not like the book?

Rebecca: I hated it. I thought it would be a fascinating book. Joan Crawford became a movie star in the 20s during the silent film days, was still a star in the 30s as we got movies with sound, continued to be a star in the 40s and the 50s and even the 60s. She had affairs with everyone -- Yul Brenner, Clark Gable, you name it -- it's a very lively life. Unless you're reading this dull book. His sentences are often not actual sentences.

You noted one example in your review.

Rebecca: And I could have noted so many more. There was no editor of this book or those sentences or the many factual errors would never have made it into print. And what's really sad is this book was published by a college university -- The University Press of Mississippi. And let me repeat: DULL! You have to be a lousy writer, a really lousy writer, to write a book about Joan Crawford and have it turn out such a snooze.

Talk about the surprise in the book?

Rebecca: Sure. He has -- if it's true -- some actual news in the book. CONFIDENTIAL was a monthly magazine in the fifties. It attracted a lot of attention and a lot of lawsuits because it was supposedly exposing famous people. They exposed Tab Hunter being gay, for example. They made sexual claims about Dorothy Dandridge, for example. They were always being sued. Robert Dance reveals that after Joan Crawford married her last husband, PepsiCola exec Al Steele, CONFIDENTIAL editor Howard Rushmore went to the FBI to determine whether or not Joan was ever arrested for prostitution or had ever made a porn movie. If what he's reporting is true, that's a book in itself. Was the FBI providing CONFIDENTIAL magazine with dirt on American citizens? He doesn't even appear to realize that what's he's reporting is not normal nor is it known. What an idiot.

You took awhile reading this.

Rebecca: Right. It was so hard to get through. I'd planned to have the review done the weekend before. I couldn't. I was mentioning that to Elaine and she ended up helping me because she was reading a book and wrote "Howard Zinn's A PEOPLE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES."

It was very frustrating -- reading the book.

Rebecca: It was. And there was a section that I thought was wrong and that I'm bringing to this discussion because I wanted to check with you, C.I. This is from the book and the film is WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?:

The film was a bigger hit than almost anyone expected and took in $4.5 million in the United States and that much again overseas. For the last quarter of 1962, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was the third top grossing film after The Longest Day and Girls! Girls! Girls!, and number one for Warner Bros. Simple arithmetic shows the amount of money Crawford made: $9 million less the cost of $850,00022 equals $8,150,000, and multiplying that number by Crawford’s 15 percent of the net brings her payday to over $1.2 million. This was more money than the cool million Elizabeth Taylor was paid for Cleopatra, widely heralded at the time as the biggest salary ever paid a film star. With later releases, television rights, VHS and DVD sales, there might still be an income being generated sixty years later.

Rebecca (Con't): C.I.?

You're right. The writer's an idiot. Nobody gets rich off net points. The writer probably doesn't even understand the concept of "rolling break even." At any rate, BUCHWALD V PARAMOUNT was the case Art Buchwald brought against PARAMOUNT over COMING TO AMERICA. In 1982, he pitched KING FOR A DAY and it was supposed to be made with Eddie Murphy in the starring role with PARAMOUNT taking out an option for it in 1983 and then putting it through rewrites before dropping it in 1985. In 1987, PARAMOUNT developed COMING TO AMERICA which Buchwald argued was his treatment. The court agreed. Time for money. Paramount argued that the film did not have a net profit. Yes, it had $288,000,000 from ticket sales but, due to all the casts, there was no profit. The court disagreed with the accounting but, to make it go away, they tossed out $900,000 and the suit was over. Net profits are chump change. You want a percentage of the gross and you want a percentage of the first ticket sold. Joan Crawford nor did Bette Davis. They got a percentage on the film on the net profit. Using the net -- not the gross -- Joan got $150,000 for her percentage and Bette Davis got $75,000. They didn't have equal percentage and Bette also took out a loan which they took from her percentage. Joan did not get a million dollars or even a half a million dollars. She got $150,000. Bette objected and argued she was being ripped off. She demanded an audit but those were the figures. And the film did not show a huge profit in terms of net. Equally true, the idiot author has the actual domestic rentals wrong. He can claim "simple arithmetic" all he wants but he doesn't understand net profit. Again, his figures -- for rentals, not ticket sales -- are wrong. But even if they were correct, the profit overseas is always lower than the gross from rentals or ticket sales. Overseas requires more expenses and less profit. And, again, Joan got $150,000 for the film from her percentage participation -- it was from the net profit, not the film's gross profit. The $150,000 figure was widely known and widely reported. She did not make more than Elizabeth Taylor made for CLEOPATRA and, for the record, Elizabeth got more than a million for that film. Elizabeth's salary for the film was one million. The film went beyond its planned shooting schedule. When she went into 'overtime,' on top of her one million dollars salary, she was entitled to $50,000 a week extra. She was also smart enough to demand a percentage of the gross -- not the net, the gross.

Rebecca: And that's why I saved that topic for the discussion. I knew you'd know. The only thing I recommend about this book are the photos. He has access to forgotten photos from her MGM days some of which may have never been seen before and these photos from the 1920s and 1930s are gorgeous -- great pictures of her, yes, but truly photographic art as well.

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Previous book discussions this year.

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end of book discussion piece.

2nd. i had some other questions for c.i. and i was talking about how maybe i wasn't fair to the author because, for example, when joan worked with some 1 on more than 1 film and - c.i. cut me off right there. 'no, he didn't.' i was like, 'you read the book?' nope. but from what i'd said about other issues c.i. was sure that he didn't do that on all the actors. c.i. said 'i'll give you 1 example. go back and look at ''whatever happened to baby jane?'' and see if he noted it was maidie norman's 2nd film.' i looked after we talked and no he didn't. as c.i. pointed out, maidie was in 'torch song' with joan in 1953 and then, in 1962, in 'whatever happened to baby jane?' c.i. said that from my description of the man who wrote the book she knew he wouldn't have done that for african-american performers. she was correct.

in other news, these people are dead to me:

Bradley Cooper, Courteney Cox, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Bob Odenkirk, Constance Wu, Tiffany Haddiah, Aubrey Plaza, Zack Snyder and Shawn Levy are just some of the celebrities who added their names to the document circulated by a group of Hollywood leaders who launched a website called No Hostage Left Behind. Those who are actively involved in the coalition include Gal Gadot and Amy Schumer.

what a sad list of losers and closet cases. bradley, for example, should have come out years ago. his affair with victor garber during 'alias' was not an industry secret. watching him pretend to be with this woman or that is cringe worthy. the people of gaza? courney cox and company don't care about them. courtney didn't care about michael j. fox either. makes me now wonder about all the things she said about him - rude things. i took them to be true in real time. now i wouldn't believe her if she told me at noon that the sun was out - i'd check for myself.

here's some people on the right side of history:

Channing Tatum, Florence Pugh, Diplo, Alyssa Milano, Quinta Brunson, Yara Shahidi, Dua Lipa, Sandra Oh, Jeremy Strong, and Joaquin Phoenix, among many others, signed the letter requesting an end to the "devastating loss of lives and unfolding horrors" in Israel and Gaza.

"We ask that, as President of the United States, you call for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Gaza and Israel before another life is lost," the letter, published by the Artists 4 Ceasefire organization, reads. "We believe all life is sacred, no matter faith or ethnicity and we condemn the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians."

praise for mark ruffalo as well.

let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'

Tuesday, October 24, 2023. The Israeli government continues to the assault on Gaza while in the United States some people think they don't have to do their damn jobs -- that would include a judge who ran for the position well after marriage equality was the law of the land but thinks now that she doesn't have to follow the law. Despite being a judge. Despite being on the bench. She doesn't have to follow the law. That and much more.

Starting with the assault on Gaza, ALJAZEERA reports:

The emir of Qatar has called on the international community to restrain Israel in its fight against Hamas, saying Israeli forces should not be given a green light for unconditional killing in the besieged Gaza Strip.

In his opening speech at the Shura council’s annual session on Tuesday, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani also said the continuing war was a dangerous escalation that threatened the region.

“We are saying enough is enough,” he said. “It is untenable for Israel to be given an unconditional green light and free licence to kill, nor it is tenable to continue ignoring the reality of occupation, siege and settlement.”

And this is before the ground invasion of Gaza is truly underway. Owen Jones (GUARDIAN) points out:

If I knew then what I know now. For many of the guilty men and women who plunged Iraq into blood and chaos, this became something of a stock phrase. When, in 2004, the then Tory leader, Michael Howard, was asked if he would still have supported the British government’s motion backing the war – only 16 Conservative MPs rebelled a year earlier – he replied: “If I knew then what I know now, that would have caused a difficulty. I couldn’t have voted for that resolution.” “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have voted that way,” protested Hillary Clinton during her doomed first campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. “If I knew then what I knew now, I wouldn’t have voted for it,” said Labour’s then deputy leader, Harriet Harman, a few weeks later.

Prepare yourself for the revival of this phrase. As the calamity of Israel’s onslaught against Gaza becomes apparent, those who cheered it on will panic about reputational damage and plead their earlier ignorance. Do not let them get away with it this time.

The claim was nonsense even in the context of the Iraq cataclysm. As the Chilcot inquiry later concluded, Blair was warned that an invasion “would increase the threat from al-Qaida” and other groups. As a result, the inquiry did “not agree that hindsight is required”, noting that everything from “internal strife in Iraq” to Iranian intervention to the rise of al-Qaida was “explicitly identified” before the war. Warnings of the disaster to come were not confined to private intelligence briefings to Blair. From the lack of weapons of mass destruction – as former foreign secretary Robin Cook detailed in his resignation speech – to violent strife to a boost for al-Qaida, the coming disaster was widely predicted in public. There was no shortage of evidence to justify the then-secretary general of the Arab League warning that the war would “open the gates of hell”.

[. . .]

Israel is dropping leaflets on northern Gaza warning that civilians who remain there may be considered an “accomplice in a terrorist organisation”, self-evidently arguing that non-combatants can be considered fair game. Leaving aside that southern Gaza is itself being bombed, contrary to Israeli claims that it’s a safe zone, and that many are unable to flee – not least the injured and infirm – this is a public confession of what could amount to future war crimes.

When the supposed relative “moderate” foreign minister, Eli Cohen, declares that Gaza’s territory will shrink thanks to Israeli annexation, he is simply stating a longstanding open Israeli commitment. After all, when Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, declares her support for Israel’s territory compromising the biblical territory of Judea and Samaria – that is, the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – she merely echoes Netanyahu’s promoting a map of “Greater Israel” before the UN.

From collective punishment – by depriving innocent people of water, food, energy and medicine – to indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, there are no excuses. The UN is warning of “mass ethnic cleansing”, has denounced “crimes against humanity” and is even arguing that “there is a risk of genocide” against the Palestinians. A ground invasion has not even begun, but what will happen next is clear. So here is a prediction. As it is, just 3% of Britons say there “definitely should not be an immediate ceasefire”, the same proportion as those who believe the Earth is flat. As the atrocities mount, the public mood will be a mixture of horror and fury at those complicit in one of the great crimes of our time.

They should have to face reality and their responsibilities for the killings. But that group never does. That group, remember, includes Glenneth Greenwald who restyled himself -- after the Iraq War turned out as deadly as so many of us knew it would -- as an opponent and would spend years attacking anyone who pointed out that he was cheerleader for the Iraq War. He has blood on his hands. Chris Hedges never ever notes, "Hey, I'm the guy who lied on the front page of THE NEW YORK TIMES and falsely linked Iraq to 9/11 in October of 2001." They don't take accountability. They don't do admissions of guilt. They just lecture and hector everyone else while pretending that's not blood we see dripping from their hands.

Don't let anyone who pushes for violence and further attacks on the Palestinian people get away with covering up and denying their roles in this.

Helen Regan, Kareem El Damanhoury and Jomana Karadsheh (CNN) report, "Aid agencies are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as doctors warn an Israeli blockade on fuel means many more vulnerable babies and wounded people in hospitals will soon die. One agency says at least 2,000 children in Gaza have been killed in the past few weeks." There is no denying what's going on and there's no excuse for cheering it on. Any who do are doing so with full knowledge of what's going on.

Brett Wilkins (COMMON DREAMS) notes:

A U.K.-based Palestinian journalist took a Sky News presenter to task during a weekend interview in which the 23-year-old Gaza native challenged the Western media's misleading framing, double standards, and lack of critical context during coverage of Israel's war on the Gazan people.

Yara Eid—who is from Gaza City but lives in Edinburgh—pushed back after the Sky newsreader said that "it has been two weeks since Hamas first launched its attack on Israel that saw 1,400 people killed," and "since then, Palestinian officials say more than 4,000 people have died in Gaza."

Eid noted that the presenter referred to the Israelis murdered by Palestinian militants as being "killed," while describing Gazans slain by Israeli bombs, missiles, and artillery as having "died."

"I think language is really important to use because, as a journalist, you have the moral responsibility to report on what's happening," she said.

"Palestinians don't just die, they get killed," Eid stressed. "They are actually being subjected to ethnic cleansing, to genocide for the last 75 years."

"And you also mentioned that this is a Hamas-Israel war. This is not it," she said. "And framing it as such is very misleading because it poses the thing that Israel is an equal power, but it's an occupying power and it has the responsibility of protecting all civilian lives and children in Gaza."

"You need, as a journalist, to report on what's happening and say it as it is," Eid asserted.

Eid shared that 30 members of her immediate family—including 17 children—were killed by Israeli occupation forces.

The young journalist also said her best friend, Ain Media photographer Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi, was shot dead by Israeli troops. He is one of at least 20 journalists and 35 United Nations personnel who have been killed by Israeli bombs or bullets since the start of the war.

Again, what's happening is happening in full view of the world. THE DAILY PRINCETON notes the following open letter by some members of Princeton's faculty and student body:

Dear President Eisgruber,

We write as bereaved members of the Princeton community — faculty, students, alumni, and staff — to express our unequivocal outrage over the tragic loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives during the past week as the region seems to careen uncontrollably towards an all-out regional conflagration. There is never any justification for the targeting of civilians, whether it be assaults on Israeli towns or the aerial bombardment and total siege of the Gaza Strip.

We firmly believe that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political one. The ongoing Israeli assault upon the Gaza Strip must be stopped. We call upon the leadership of the University as well as that of elected officials in New Jersey and Washington D.C. to do everything possible to bring an end to the targeting of civilians by the relentless bombing of hospitals, homes, roads, schools, universities, and infrastructures of survival in the Gaza Strip. The international community must force Israel, Hamas, and all parties to the conflict to adhere strictly to the letter of international law, first and foremost by putting an immediate and complete halt to the unchecked collective punishment currently being deployed against Palestinians in Gaza. The free flow of humanitarian assistance must be assured for the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza who currently have no access to food, clean drinking water, fuel, electricity, and medical relief.

We write to voice our profound concern over the widespread dehumanization and erasure of Palestinian life in the United States and throughout the Western world, in the media, public discourse, and official governmental statements. This political environment constitutes a clear and present danger to Palestinians, while also serving to justify rising threats to and criminalization of free speech and academic freedom around the demand to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories. University students and student organizations who issue statements critical of Israeli policies or express solidarity with Palestinians are continuously subjected to harassment, intimidation, imperiled job prospects, and threats to their personal safety. We demand continuous and ironclad guarantees of the freedom of speech for our faculty but especially for our students, including concrete protections from harassment, intimidation, and discrimination. Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students have been attacked for their views, whether expressed or imputed, whether online or in the real world, but also on the basis of their identity alone, as we recently saw in the heartbreaking case of a six-year-old Palestinian-American child in Illinois being stabbed 26 times in his own home.

We welcome your statement of October 10 emphasizing that Princeton embraces both Israelis and Palestinians as part of its community, and that the situation is deeply distressing for us all. We appreciate the efforts made by the administration to reach out to Jewish community members as well as those with Israeli citizenship to check on their well-being. We find it unacceptable, however, that Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students were not and have not been accorded a similar show of respect and care. We call upon the University administration to do everything in its power to ensure that all Princetonians are recognized and feel safe and seen in this moment of accelerating grief, horror, and outright danger.

This is an epochal moment in the history of the Middle East. “In the nation’s service and the service of humanity,” we affirm. We call upon the University administration to uphold the values that Princeton stands for. We serve the nation and serve humanity by collectively working for peace and justice.

This list is as of 4:30 PM on October 21, 2023. To view a full list of signatories, please see this continuously updated document. To sign the letter, please see this link.

On yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW! one segment included Amy Goodman speaking with human rights attorney Raji Sourani whose home had just been bombed by the Israeli government.

AMY GOODMAN: We have just been joined on the phone by Raji Sourani, who put this message out after Israel bombed his home in Gaza City. He said, “By a miracle, I survived with my family. My house destroyed tonight by [an] Israeli bombing, at 8:25 p.m. The area I’m living in Gaza city Tal Al Hawa was subject to bombing for almost two hours by F16 rockets. I lived with my beloved wife and son the [longest two] hours and the most horrific time in my life, where the three of us sure we are not going to survive and we will surely die in any coming bomb. We hear the F16. We hear the rocket launched roaring and the explosion whom for 25 consecutive times thinking will take our life.”

Raji Sourani, we have just reached in Gaza. Can you hear us? Raji Sourani is the award-winning —

RAJI SOURANI: Yes, yes, yes, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: — human rights lawyer —

RAJI SOURANI: I can hear you.

AMY GOODMAN: — and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza.

RAJI SOURANI: I do hear you very well.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi, Raji. We can hear you, as well. Can you tell us what happened? People all over the world expressing concern, as you are a renowned human rights attorney, with your family, not knowing what had happened. What happened?

RAJI SOURANI: I think the world should be worried about the crimes going on against Palestinian civilians, who are for the 18th consecutive day in the eye of the storm. They are the target. They are the target of the F-16s, of the cannons, of the gunships, day or night, 25 hours a day. They almost destroyed — they destroyed Gaza. I mean, it’s unbelievable, this army targeting only civilians and civilian targets — towers, houses, hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, shelter places, ambulances, nurses, doctors, journalists. This is the most political army — this is the most political army in the world. This is the mighty Israel, its might and power targeting civilians. They are doing war crimes, crimes against humanity, persecution for 2.4 million people for the last 18 days.

Unfortunately, this colonial, racist West supporting them by all ways and means. They are supporting them with money, with guns, with airplanes, with all what they need to do this crime. They are complicit by supporting them politically and militarily and politically. It’s shame this is happening in the 21st century, while these war crimes not secret enough. It’s projected live on air, and the entire world see it. And the ICC prosecutor, who issued warrants against Putin because he committed war crimes against civilians, because he invaded and made occupation to Ukraine, and here we have this prolonged military occupation, we have prolonged blockade, which is criminal, suffocated people here, we have five consecutive wars, and this is the sixth, and he is doing nothing. He is doing nothing except, you know, freezing the investigation of the war crimes committed by Israel and the Israeli army.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, you’re talking about the —

RAJI SOURANI: Gaza in unprecedented crisis —

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, you’re talking about the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan?

RAJI SOURANI: Yes, yes. He is complicit. He is selectively dealing with the Rome Statute, with the investigations, and he’s politically charging the International Criminal Court. Shame on him. He didn’t say one statement, since day one 'til this moment. He should be the backbone of the victims who are suffering in this part of the world. And he sees that, and he knows that, and he receives reports about that. And he's doing nothing.

So, U.S. and Mr. Biden — I’m saying to him — you are complicit. You are part of these crimes, because you are allowing, with your arms, civilians to be targeted and killed. We have almost 1,200 people for almost two weeks under the wreckage and under the destroyed houses, unable to be recovered. We have 57 families deleted, don’t exist anymore, because 20, 25, 30 of them have been killed in one second. We have churches targeted, and people died in it. We have mosques, people sheltered in it, and they were killed. Why you are allowing this to happen? Why you are seeing, watching, supporting Israel? Israel right of defense? Or it should be protecting civilians at the time of war. IHL, international humanitarian law, and human rights, Rome Statute, it’s there —

AMY GOODMAN: Raji —

RAJI SOURANI: — simply, Amy, to protect —

AMY GOODMAN: Raji —

RAJI SOURANI: — civilians at a time of war. And nobody is protecting us. We are the target of the Israeli army. They want to evict Gaza, and they create a new Nakba. They don’t want anybody in Gaza. They want us to leave. We are not leaving. We are the stones of the valley. We have been here since ever, and we will continue forever. We will not be part of the Israeli plan to evacuate Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, if you can tell us what happened to your own family? When was your house bombed? And were you dug out from the rubble?

RAJI SOURANI: I’m living in Rimal area, Tal Al Hawa, the nicest place in Gaza. I have my own villa, and it’s nice, with very nice garden. It’s a two-story building. It’s me and my wife Amal and my son Basel. And we were, like everybody, I mean, you know, at our home, watching what’s going on. And out of the blue, the bombing began, began in our area — nothing special, nothing unique, nothing consist danger; otherwise, my sense will tell me, I mean, you know, I have to leave, or I will ask my wife and son, I mean, at least, to leave. But there is nothing, I mean, in that part. It’s entirely civilian, and I can tell — and I have always the reason, I mean, to say that.

And I have — the bombing began, and we thought, yes, I mean, this might be one bomb here or there. But it was very close. And the second, and then we began to realize and feel, you know, there is something big wrong happening, because sound getting closer, closer and closer. We were holding — I mean, we were not thinking or realizing that we are going to survive. That’s not easy. And I was thinking of a lot of things, I mean, my life, how I didn’t really, you know, leave like everybody leave. Should I leave, or should I stay? Why we move just in that place two minutes before the rocket of F-16, GBU-38, hit? And I felt the heat of the flame, and I saw the ball of fire. And every time, especially this one, I thought it’s our end. And this was last one, I mean, with the hit directly to my house, and the house was literally destroyed. Lucky enough, I just moved from the place where we are staying, upon the request of my son, to one tiny corridor inside the house. And if we were where we were, we are gone. We are gone.

So, we waited almost half an hour, unable to speak any words, unable to do anything. And we were really, I mean, a state of human shock. And I waited 'til, you know, there was some siren of ambulances remotely, and that means usually the bombing stopped, and they get the green light to come in. Then we began to climb our way out. But it was rather a mission impossible. And we were lucky, I mean, you know, to get out. And when we get out of the place, we just moved to my brother's house, which is like 800 meters away from the place we are staying. This happened on the 18th. But since then 'til today, I can assure you one thing, that the entire area is of Tal Al Hawa completely abolished almost. Two-thirds of it doesn't exist. This really beautiful area of Gaza doesn’t exist anymore.

So, we survived. We were lucky. But our neighbors, I mean, they lost 29 members, Habboush family, and others and others and others and others and others. We are collecting data. We are collecting information. This is unprecedented. I never, ever thought in my life civilians can be the target of war. They are not with Hamas.

Hamas insulted them, insulted their intelligence, insulted their military. We can understand that. In two hours, they were able to destroy the security wall, which America — which U.S. took it as the standard, and many other countries. And they destroyed it in 15 minutes, and they were able to enter. And they took over 11 military strongholds of Israel, and they killed and captured many of them. And they get back to them in Gaza, and we can understand why they are angry with them. And they took the headquarters of Gaza commandment of the Israeli military army, and they arrested generals, colonel and others, and they brought them, I mean, to Gaza. Israel has the right to be angry, absolutely angry, because Hamas showed their intelligence and their military capability means nothing, and they destroyed this illusion in two hours.

But why they are revenging from us? They should rebel from Hamas. Hamas still, I can assure you, functions like a Swiss watch in Gaza, and they are not affected. I can tell that. I can see that. We feel that. They are unable to minimize their power. They are unable to silence them. They are unable to locate where their soldiers are who were taken as prisoners of war. They are unable to do anything for them. That’s why they are revenging from us. This is the shame on the army. I mean, there is rules of engagement between the army, between the resistance movement and any army. But why civilians are the target? This is the big question. This is shame this is happening, I mean, to us. And I’m telling you —

AMY GOODMAN: Raji —

RAJI SOURANI: — the reason they wanted — yes.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you — the leaflets that were dropped this weekend on Gaza, addressed to residents of Gaza, reading, “Urgent warning to the residents of Gaza: Your presence north of Wadi Gaza is putting your lives at risk. Anyone who chooses not to evacuate from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south of the Gaza Strip may be identified as a partner in a terrorist organization.” These on leaflets. I don’t know if you saw these leaflets, but you have made a decision with your family not to move south. Can you respond to what they’re saying, that anyone who chooses not to evacuate may be identified as a partner in a terrorist organization?

RAJI SOURANI: We have been here since ever, and we will stay forever. And no power on Earth will take me from here. We are the stones of the valley. They have to understand that. And even if they destroy once and again houses on our heads, even if they took our life, we are not moving anymore. Simply, we suffered from the Nakba 75 years. They committed massacres. They killed thousands of Palestinians. They pushed us out. And now it’s time for us not to do that again, at least willingly. We cannot be part of Mr. Bibi’s plan to evacuate Gaza. He said it, from a written statement, in a press conference day one: Gazans should leave Gaza. Where to? Where to? If anybody should leave, people like Mr. Bibi, not us. Enough for the occupation. We want dignity, freedom, end of this belligerent, criminal occupation. Now people from south of Gaza began to come back to north in thousands, because there is no safe haven in Gaza, no safe place in Gaza. And we are not going to be a tool in the hands of racist, criminal, rightist Israeli prime minister. No way. We are not going to do that. We are going to stay in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji Sourani, I want to thank you so much for taking this call, human rights attorney, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Please be safe. I know that it’s extremely difficult, with now the death toll at 5,000. Raji has chosen to stay in Gaza City near his home. People should go to our interviews with Raji over these last two weeks, of course, and beyond, before that. I also want to thank Jehad Abusalim, scholar and analyst from Gaza, executive director of The Jerusalem Fund. Thank you so much both for being with us.

Next up, “Do not use our death and our pain to bring death and pain of other people and other families.” The message of Noy Katsman about their brother Hayim, an Israeli peace activist killed in the Hamas attack. We’ll speak with Noy, as he says, “Not in my name. Not in my brother’s name.” Stay with us.

Turning to the United States . . .

Karen Danao (QUOTE AMBITION) reports on Nausicaa who decided last summer to see a doctor because she felt she was a trans woman in a male body. Instead, she found out she was born intersexed which cleared up a lot -- at 14 she was bothered by lumps in her chest and thought she had cancer. Now, she's able to see that was her breast developing and why. At the time, the doctor had told her that sometimes the body's hormones got confused. It also explained why she had a woman's hairline and a woman's hands.

No, idiots like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, life is not as simple as your simple and ignorant minds think it is. It's never that simple. And I pray that the hate you toss out comes right back at you 100 times greater.

Let's turn to another idiot, Dianne Hensley. She's a judge in Texas. Let's make clear, Texas elects their judges. Dianne, a very strange looking woman who has rough skin on her cheeks that looks like rug burns, chose to run for the office of judge. And some idiots elected her to that office. She now has a problem with that office as Debapriva Bhattacharya (MEAWW) explains:

Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley has refused to perform wedding ceremonies for same- couples and decided to take her fight over religious beliefs to the state's Supreme Court.

The Texas Commission on Judicial Misconduct sanctioned Hensley in 2019 for conducting marriages exclusively between heterosexual couples. Shortly afterward, Hensley filed a lawsuit arguing that the commission punished her because of her faith, reported Daily Mail.

Idiot, you ran for public office. You have to perform your public duties as required by the government.

You know there was a mayor a few months back, in another state (not my state California or Whack Job Dianne's) who announced he wasn't going to sign the permit for a Pride parade due to his personal beliefs.

Hmm.

As the ride at Disney Land says, "It's a small world after all." I didn't know him. But . . . I did know his boyfriend. And conveyed that the closet case could stop grandstanding and sign the damn permit or I'd be happy to out and closet case who was using his office to harm the LGBTQ+ community.

I don't get where anyone thinks that they can run for elected office and then insist that they need to discriminate and break the law because of their religion.

November 8, 2022. That's when Dianne last ran for election.

2015. What's that? When the US Supreme Court decided OBERGEFELL -- the verdict that granted marriage equality.

Meaning?

Dianne knew the law before she was a judge and she knew the law after she was a judge.

A justice of the peace performs marriages. The law says marriage equality. If she didn't want to perform them, she shouldn't run for office. A justice of the peace is supposed to follow all the laws -- not pick and choose.

She chose to run and she needs to uphold the law. Anything other than renders her unfit for office and she needs to be removed from the bench.

Michael Signorile (THE SIGNORILE REPORT) notes:

On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court decided to take up the case of a Texas justice of the peace who was sanctioned because she refused to marry same-sex couples based on her religious beliefs—and she’s planning to take her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wait, you must be asking yourself, Haven’t we been here before?

Yep.

[. . .]

Fast forward to 2023, and that is not so clear anymore. The current Supreme Court—with Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, put on the court by Trump—has ruled in favor of blatant discrimination, all in the name of religious freedom. And Thomas and Alito may now have the chance to “fix” yet another “problem” they claim the court created.

The Waco, Texas, justice of the peace at the center of the current case, Dianne Hensley, refused to perform same-sex marriages in 2019 based on her religious beliefs as a Christian. She was formally sanctioned by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct. She filed a lawsuit, arguing her rights were violated under the Texas Religious Restoration Freedom Act. The case was dismissed by a state district judge, and that decision was upheld upon appeal. Hensley then appealed to the very right-wing Texas Supreme Court, and it decided on Friday to take her case.

Hensley’s lawyers at the First Liberty Institute, a Christian nationalist law firm with ties to corrupt, viciously anti-LGBTQ Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, are using the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision last June in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, in which the court’s conservatives ruled that a Colorado web designer can’t be forced to serve same-sex couples seeking wedding websites based on her religious beliefs—even though no same-sex couple had actually sought the web designer’s services. Per the Texas Tribune:

Justin Butterfield, an attorney for Hensley at First Liberty Institute, has maintained throughout the lawsuit that religious liberty is Hensley’s right as a citizen.

Her rights as a private citizen do not trump her elected responsibilities and duties as a public servant. A judge who refuses to follow the law should not be on the bench. And this is a very slippery slope. Some people insist that their religion, for example, renders them opposed to the death penalty. So could a judge on a bench in the US refuse to follow the laws regarding the death penalty by citing 'religious freedom'? Hell no. Nor could he or she get away with saying, "God told me to rule innocent on this mass murderer so that's what I'm going to do." You do not get to break or ignore the laws when you're a judge. And if she can't comply with the law, she needs to take herself off the bench immediately.

In fact, since we're all supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, she should resign. Her homophobia is the same as racism or sexism. If she can't treat all US citizens the same, she shouldn't be trusted to rule from the bench.

That also applies to pharmacists, by the way. J Lysikatos (WEALTHY LIVING) reports:

A transgender man in Kansas City has alleged that a pharmacist at the retail giant Costco refused to sell him insulin syringes, which did not require a prescription, upon learning he intended to use them for testosterone injections. This incident is the latest in a series involving pharmacists allegedly denying medical supplies to transgender patients.

Did the pharmacist skip the oath? There is an oath:

"I promise to devote myself to a lifetime of service to others through the profession of pharmacy. In fulfilling this vow: I will consider the welfare of humanity and relief of suffering my primary concerns. I will promote inclusion, embrace diversity, and advocate for justice to advance health equity.

The Supreme Court should never have sided with hate merchant and LIAR Lori Smith to begin with. Her case was made up and she's a proven liar who will probably rot in hell or some equivalent for pretending to be a Christian while lying to the Court. To pretend that she had a right to discriminate based on her religion was bad enough. But we're no longer talking some dingy idiot who fancies herself a wedding planner. We're talking about judges and medical professionals.

You don't want to sell insulin syringes to some people? Then quit. You took an oath and you're not following it. You need to be fired and fired immediately. I'm insulin dependent and I'm sure there's something about my life that hate merchants like Lorie Smith would attack me for. But if they're judges or they're medical professionals, they aren't allowed to use any prejudice to deny me my equal rights or my healthcare needs.

Mark Burns, a MAGA supporter and pastor, announced he’s opening a Christian military school despite fabricating details of his military experience.

During the 2016 presidential election, Burns was a fierce supporter of former President Donald Trump. He spoke at the RNC and was a dedicated surrogate for the former president.

Burns had claimed that he served in the Army Reserves but in 2016, it was revealed that Burns actually served in the South Carolina National Guard, Politico reported.

He had also claimed to be a graduate of North Greenville University, but the school confirmed he had only attended the institution for one semester, according to Politico.

Earlier this month, Burns announced plans to open the Burns Military Academy, writing in a Facebook post that the school’s mission is to provide “an affordable, pro-American education with a strong emphasis on biblical teachings.”

I'm sorry, I've read the article 3 times now and I'm not finding anything in it where he takes a moment to apologize for lying about his service. Second, "a strong emphasis on biblical teachings"? Googling tells me that "lying is generally considered a sin in Christianity." Did Mark Burns get a waiver on that? It would appear that instead of opening any type of school, he should be working on his beliefs with some member of the clergy because he clearly has failed the Lord and the Lord's teachings. Third, calling it "Burns Military Academy"? That's bearing false witness. It will have no connection at all to the US military. Confronted on that, noted liar Mark Burns insists "we are in the Army of the Lord." Well the kids may be, but I kind of think your past lying and your current lying would result in you getting kicked out of "the Army of the Lord." The liar insists that 'we' (he's royalty?) "believe in teaching our students good morals" -- apparently lying is a moral act.

I wouldn't know. I'm concerned with ethics, not morality.

The great comedy team of Nichols & May used to send up that nonsense. Elaine May would say, "It is a moral issue. And to me that's so much more interesting than a real issue."

Exactly.

Charlatans needs 'moral' issues to distract from their many failures at real issues. Case in point, Ronald DeSantis who has destroyed Florida as he has attacked the LGBTQ+ community, the African-American community, women who believe in using their brains and education itself. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd (TIME MAGAZINE) reports:

New College of Florida, the small liberal arts college historically ranked among U.S. News and World Report’s top 75 institutions, has fallen 24 places. Now it risks dropping out of the top-100 category entirely.

This double-digit tumble is due in part to Governor Ron DeSantis’ overhaul of the school to transform it into a decidedly right-wing institution—a “Hillsdale of the South,” in reference to the conservative college in Michigan. DeSantis appointed right-wing activists to the board of trustees, replaced the college’s president and other administrators with political allies who have no experience in higher education, and gutted one-third of the faculty along with the diversity and equity department. The board has even relocated students to hotels to accommodate incoming athletes’ use of campus living spaces.

This type of college takeover is a new, more sinister development in a longstanding conservative practice. The right has spent decades creating parallel and competing structures in areas including political news, social media, and even consumer goods. This time, instead of offering students a conservative alternative in higher education, DeSantis and his allies are gutting an existing institution from the inside.

And they hope this is just the beginning. The right-wing activists behind New College’s transformation are encouraging other governors and administrators to replicate their example, stressing that all public colleges can be “captured, restructured, and reformed” if conservative leaders embrace their model. This push will imperil students’ access to a comprehensive college education, especially in the liberal arts and social sciences where the right’s attacks are targeted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If your a parent paying for your child's education at New College of Florida, I would immediately file a lawsuit against Ronald DeSantis. He has plunged the value of a diploma from that college. I paid for my kids' college. I paid for my college because my parents didn't like my major and just knew that if they told me, right before I started freshman year, that they'd only pay if I majored in what they wanted, that I'd fall in line. I never fall in line and I don't let anyone bully me. So I worked two and three jobs every semester. One semester I worked four jobs. (Don't cry, by junior year, the trust fund kicked in.) So if you're someone in the same boat I was and you're paying your own way, I would also immediately file a lawsuit against Ron DeSantis because you were paying for a college in the top 75 of all colleges in the nation. Thanks to Ronald DeSantis, however, you're no longer getting that. In fact, parents and students might want to get together and consider a class action lawsuit.

New content at THIRD:

The following sites updated:

book and homophobic chynna phillips

1st off, i'm glad so many of you enjoyed the book review. candace e-mailed to tell me she's a joan crawford fan and bought the book last thursday on amazon and found it to be 'poorly written, poorly fact checked and generally a snooze throughout.' i would agree with that. he - the author - seemed to briefly wake up during the 40s and then went back to sleep right after. it wasn't just a bad book, it was a very dull bad book.

new content is about to start going up at 3rd estate and that will include my discussion of the book with ava and c.i. as i suspected, the book has another huge flaw.

as for chynna phillips, what a huge disappointment. i was talking to c.i. about this and we both know michelle phillips and it's like, 'what?' chynna didn't learn homophobia at home. chynna pretends to be a christian but her mother - a non-believer - is 1 of the most compassionate people in the world. 1 of her big causes is the homeless and the elderly and she takes meals to all sorts of people. she really gives back. and c.i. talked about paul mitchell. he gave a portion of his profits to the homeless and as soon as michelle found that out, she was calling every 1 she knew trying to get them to switch to paul mitchell products for that reason. she really gives back and then some.

i have no idea what happened to chynna because she was not raised that way. but there she was, on sunday, glorifying hate merchant victoria jacskon who has a long, long history of expressing public hatred for gay people. that's who chynna wants to call a friend?

chynna, i'll pray for your withering soul.

let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'

Monday, October 23, 2023. The assault on Gaza continues as US government orders all non-essential personnel out of Iraq.

As ALJAZEERA notes in the video above, the Israeli government bombed Gaza overnight killing hundreds. Abeer Salman (CNN) adds:

Some 436 people, including 182 children, were killed in overnight Israeli strikes on Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.

The majority of those killed were from the southern part of Gaza, the ministry added.

The total death toll since the war began has risen to 5,087 killed, including 2,055 children and 1,119 women, the ministry said.

Wafaa Surafa, Samy Magdy and Samya Kullab (AP) report:

A premature baby squirms inside a glass incubator in the neonatal ward of al-Aqsa Hospital in the central Gaza Strip. He cries out as intravenous lines are connected to his tiny body. A ventilator helps him breathe as a catheter delivers medication and monitors flash his fragile vital signs.

His life hinges on the constant flow of electricity, which is in danger of running out imminently unless the hospital can get more fuel for its generators. Once the generators stop, hospital director Iyad Abu Zahar fears that the babies in the ward, unable to breathe on their own, will perish.

“The responsibility on us is huge,” he said.

The thought of those babies dying has Sarah Silverman wetting herself as she tries to construct a joke about it and has Jamie Lee Curtis cackling in joy. They are the wrong side and history should judge them accordingly. Of last night's raids, Jon Queally (COMMON DREAMS) reports, "The Israeli military continued to pummel Gaza with airstrikes on Sunday, including residential neighborhoods in the south, as a top IDF commander said the bombing would now intensify ahead of an expected ground invasion. Despite urging Palestinians and others caught in Gaza to flee the northern areas, bombings that claimed the lives of yet more civilians—including children—were reported in Khan Younis and the city of Rafah." REUTERS notes a raid on a West Bank refugee camp, "Residents told Reuters that Israeli forces raided the camp and carried out widespread arrests, as they clashed with gunmen and some youths who threw stones. The Israeli army has not issued a statement about the incident." Adnan el-Bursh and Sean Seddon (BBC NEWS) report:

At the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza, they are running out of material to cover the dead with.

The bodies are stacked in a courtyard outside, prayers are said, and relatives collapse to the floor wailing in grief.

Inside the hospital, doctors battle to patch up the walking wounded and save the gravely injured - but stores of medicine and supplies are dwindling by the day.

A BBC Arabic reporter witnessed a facility overwhelmed with casualties where doctors were racing to finish procedures before moving on to the next patient.

Some of the images which have emerged from the hospital on Sunday are too graphic to share. Children - including at least two babies - are among the dead.

"This is a trapped population with nowhere to run," Rabbi Brant Rosen tells Michael Smith on LAW AND DISORDER RADIO which will begin airing later today on WBAI and throughout the week around the rest of the country on various radio stations. The other male host slobbers over serial plagiarist Chris Hedges and his work at THE NEW YORK TIMES while failing to inform listeners that work at NYT included front paging the lie -- THE LIE -- that Iraq was connected to 9/11 and doing so in October of 2001 -- even before Judith Miller did her damage. They cheapen their program by bringing him on and they cheapen it further by joining him in blaming "woke" people for the assault on Gaza. They need to get their s**t together and do so quickly. Liars like Chris Hedges do not pull the unconvinced over to your side, they only gives those on the fence more reason to hesitate.

Becky Sullivan (NPR) reports on the Israeli bombing of the Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza:

Soon after the building was hit, churchgoers and other Palestinians rushed to the heap of concrete slabs and debris in an attempt to rescue those trapped in the rubble.

"It was very painful to hear 'my mother is inside,' 'my son is inside,' 'my sister is inside,' " said Elias al-Jeldah, a Palestinian Christian who arrived on the scene shortly after the airstrike. "People were frantic. People were so scared."

Among the dead were several relatives of former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, whose father is Palestinian. "The Palestinian Christian community has endured so much. Our family is hurting badly," he wrote on the social media site X.

In spite of Thursday's strike, hundreds of people have continued to shelter at the St. Porphyrius Church in the days since.

Palestinian Christians who chose to remain at the Orthodox church and the nearby Catholic church said they felt they had nowhere else to go, even as Israel has urged people to evacuate from Gaza City to the southern half of the territory.

The church "seems to be the only place that can take us," said Ayyad. "We Christians have no one in the south."

Churches across the region memorialize the victims

Among the churches holding services to memorialize those killed in Gaza was one of the most sacred sites in Christianity: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site in Jerusalem's Old City that is said to be where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.

There, on Sunday, steps away from the elaborate marble shrine that surrounds what many believe to be Jesus' tomb, the patriarch of Jerusalem and All Palestine — the branch of Orthodoxy to which the St. Porphyrius Church belongs — held a prayer service for the victims.

When not bombing churches, the Israeli government bombs mosques. Saturday, Usaid Siddiqui (ALJAZEERA) reported, "Israel says it struck a mosque in Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, with Palestinian medics reporting at least one person killed." Friday, Karen Zraick and Ameera Harouda (NEW YORK TIMES) reported:

An Israeli airstrike hit the grounds of the historic Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, on Thursday night, according to church officials and witnesses.

The church compound, comprising a chapel, seven buildings and a courtyard, was full of Christian families from the Gaza Strip, witnesses said. They said the airstrike happened around 7:30 p.m., when dinner was being distributed.

Videos and images from the scene showed rescuers digging through rubble, working with flashlights late Thursday and into Friday. The chapel was not struck.

Chao Deng (WALL STREET JOURNAL) also noted Friday, "The Israeli military said that a blast Thursday night on the St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church campus in Gaza City was the result of its airstrike." Saturday, Najib Jobain, Joseph Krauss and Samy Magdy (AP) reported, "The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened Saturday to let a trickle of desperately needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off and began pounding it with airstrikes following Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago. Just 20 trucks were allowed in, an amount aid workers said was insufficient to address the unprecedented humanitarian crisis. More than 200 trucks carrying 3,000 tons of aid have been waiting nearby for days." Jon Queally (COMMON DREAMS) explains:

Guillemette Thomas, MSF's medical coordinator for Gaza, said Saturday that inside Gaza "we have an extremely high number of injured people arriving in hospitals, very serious patients requiring complex care. According to our colleagues who still work at Shifa hospital, the hospital will soon run out of fuel and therefore electricity. This means that all the patients currently in intensive care units connected to ventilators and babies in incubators will die because of the lack of electricity. Operating theaters will no longer be able to function, patients will no longer be able to be operated on and the number of victims will increase significantly in the coming hours."

Thomas warned that those in the intensive care were "just the tip of the iceberg," warning that all injured and sick people Gaza remain at severe risk.

Human Rights Watch was among those who suggested that the refusal to allow fuel into Gaza—and the absence of efforts to restore or repair devastated the electricity grid or water systems—makes the paltry level stand out as intentionally inadequate.

"While aid agencies struggle to squeeze a few trucks of humanitarian aid into southern Gaza via Egypt, the Israeli authorities are keeping their crossings with Gaza closed and refusing to flick the switch for the water and electricity supply," said Tirana Hassan, HRW's executive director. "There is no excuse for denying water, food, and medicine to Gaza's civilian population. It is cruel and contrary to international law."

Doctors Without Borders adds, "We are in touch with some of our colleagues who are supporting teams from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, particularly in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where MSF had provided care for burn victims for years. Today, medical staff suffer the same fate as the rest of Gazans: they have been constantly bombed for the past 10 days. Our colleagues tell us that many doctors and other health workers have died since the start of the Israeli offensive."

CBS NEWS notes, "Israel plans to step up its attacks on the Gaza Strip starting Saturday as preparation for the next stage of its war on Hamas, Israel's military spokesman said. Asked about a possible ground invasion into Gaza, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters Saturday night that the military was trying to create optimal conditions beforehand." And the Israeli government is counting on more weapons from the US government based on the personal promises of President Joe Biden. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) reports:

With more than 4,100 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis already dead as Israel bombards the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a surprise attack led by Hamas, progressive groups on Friday pushed back against U.S. President Joe Biden's effort to further arm Israel.

"In the face of massive suffering in Gaza and disregard for international law by the Israeli government, the U.S. must not provide additional military aid or weapons that would cause more deaths," the National Priorities Project (NPP) at the Institute for Policy Studies said, demanding that U.S. use its diplomatic power to push for a cease-fire.

"The Israeli military's onslaught on Gaza has not protected civilians. It has instead targeted them," NPP asserted, pointing out that while cutting off Palestinians in the Hamas-governed territory from essentials like food, water, medicine, and electricity, Israel has bombed residential, religious, medical, and educational buildings over the past two weeks.

Andre Damon (WSWS) notes the United Nation placed the Gaza death toll at 4, 137 on Friday and that, "Over the past week, US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have all visited Israel to give their unequivocal endorsement of the genocidal policies of the Netanyahu regime, which is widely despised within Israel and by Jewish people around the world." They're not only increasing the killings, the Israeli government is also arresting activists. Sophie Squire (UK SOCIALIST WORKER) reports:

As the Israeli state prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza, soldiers and settlers have stepped up their brutality against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Mayar Derbashi, a charity worker in Hebron , told Socialist Worker, “A dire and savage onslaught is unfolding in Gaza.

“In the West Bank, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in arrests. Before 7 October there were about 5,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention. In less than two weeks, that number has doubled, exceeding 10,000.

Yet Joe Biden wants to give more weapons and more US tax dollars. His visit accomplished nothing and Ralph Nader really nails that down at DISSIDENT VOICE:

If President Joe Biden were a pony, instead of a perennial warhorse (e.g., gung-ho for Bush/Cheney’s criminal destruction of Iraq), he would have his tail between his legs on his return from a one-day trip to Israel. He failed to achieve any immediate, critical objectives while the ongoing destruction of Gaza and the defenseless Palestinians continues.

Did Biden get Israel and Egypt to allow the exit of hundreds of American citizens fleeing the Gazan firestorm? No!

Did Biden open up corridors for humanitarian aid to the babies, children, women, elderly and other civilians in Gaza who had nothing to do with the October 7 Hamas homicide/suicide attack on Israelis? No!

To the contrary, earlier in the week he cruelly ordered his UN Ambassador to veto a widely supported resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.

Did he forcefully double down on his earlier counsel to the Israeli government to obey the laws of war, then and now, being openly violated? No! He continued his silence after the Israeli Defense Minister ordered his soldiers with the genocidal command, “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water…” That death sentence includes patients in hospitals who must endure the carpet bombing of this long-time blockaded tiny strip of desert land holding 2.3 million people. (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).

Joyce Chediac (LIBERATION!) notes what Joe's visit to Tel Aviv means on the world stage, "This extraordinary visit of a U.S. president to a war zone is a full endorsement of Israel’s decision to cut off food, electricity and water to Gaza; of its bombings of several medical facilities and ambulances, schools, mosques, bakeries and UN food storage facilities; and its repeated bombing of the Rafa border crossing with Egypt, making it impossible for Gaza to retrieve 1,000 tons of supplies waiting there to be picked up. It is a green light for whatever else Israel chooses to do." WORKERS WORLD points out, "Gaza’s territory is roughly the same size and holds the same population as Chicago. One can hardly imagine what sort of horror the current bombing means for the people who are themselves mostly refugees or their descendants, where there is no functioning economy, where half the population are children, and where the Israeli blockade makes it near impossible to leave. There are good reasons that not only Palestinians but also some Western political leaders have called Gaza the largest open-air prison in the world." Eric London (WSWS) cites Joe Biden's plan to give $14 billion to Israel and points out that since 1948, the US taxpayers have already forked over $260 billion to the Israeli government. Of Joe's Thursday night TV address, Eric offers, "Over 20 years ago, then-president George W. Bush used the same language to justify launching imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which were to last 20 years, kill more than one million people, and cost more than $8 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. A 2022 report published by the Pentagon admitted that each taxpayer paid $8,278 for the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, though the true figure is likely an order of magnitude higher."

Funding this assault and providing more weapons for it and verbally praising it means the US government is also responsible -- legally responsible -- for the genocide being carried out. Graham Peebles (DISSIDENT VOICE) observes, "Peace is impossible whilst these destructive ideals dominate." At TRUTHOUT, Marjorie Cohn (former president of The National Lawyers Guild) writes:

In retaliation against the Palestinians in Gaza for Hamas’s October 7 killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians, Israel has intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza to a “complete siege.” Israel is slaughtering Gazans, cutting off their food, water, electricity and fuel, ordering more than 1 million of them to leave their homes and then bombing their evacuation routes, and trapping them with nowhere to escape.

Israeli forces are amassing tanks on the border in preparation for an imminent invasion. The United States is sending massive firepower to help Israel.

“Complete siege” is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. It “explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza,” Raz Segal wrote in Jewish Currents.

Israel has turned its incremental genocide of the Palestinian people into full-fledged genocide — with the unconditional support of the U.S. government.

“There is a plausible and credible case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza, as a significant part of the overall Palestinian population, as a protected group,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) wrote in its October 18 emergency legal briefing paper titled “Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide.”

Dana Elborno (TRUTHOUT) writes, "Amid the death and destruction from the shower of bombs dropping on Gaza like rain, truly the thing that has forever changed me is seeing how the world is turning into a hate mob against a civilian population, a majority of whom are refugees, the majority of whom are children, all of whom have been living besieged for 16 years. It is the media coverage priming the public to accept mass atrocities by using hateful and racist rhetoric that has left me feeling the most hopeless and scared. This incendiary and dehumanizing language used to describe Palestinians is going to contribute to genocide in Gaza and increasing violence against Muslims in the U.S., like the stabbing to death of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian 6-year-old in Illinois." Gregory Shupak (COMMON DREAMS) also addresses the media coverage:

Recent editorials in leading liberal U.S. newspapers have consistently presented the unrelenting mass terror that Israel inflicts on Palestinians as legitimate.

Media outlets have endorsed Israel's assault on Gaza, and America's funding of the attack, while criticizing those who offer even mildly dissenting views. American publications have repeatedly conferred on Israel's violence a virtuousness, even as it mows people down - a generosity not afforded to its Palestinian counterpart.

On 12 October, The Washington Post ran an editorial praising US President Joe Biden for his "unreserved condemnation of Hamas's terrorism," saying: "In that respect, Mr. Biden's firm words also stand in welcome contrast to the equivocations by a small number of the left-wing members of Congress in his own party, which White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre specifically repudiated."

The link to Jean-Pierre's words indicates that the "equivocations" the Post objects to are statements that "suggested the Hamas attack on Israel should be considered in context with previous actions by Israel," as well as those that "opposed US military aid for Israel on social media and called for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict."

A day before that editorial was published, the human rights groups Mezan, al-Haq, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights jointly documented that, just in the period between midday 10 and 11 October, Israel destroyed entire neighborhoods of al-Qarm, Ezbet Abdrabbo, and al-Sikka, with rescue teams "recover[ing] dozens of bodies" while "others are still under the rubble"; "target[ed]" Gaza's Islamic University and bombed the Al-Fakhoura Scholarship Program building," assaults that combined to kill 57 Palestinians, including 20 children. They further noted Israel's air strikes and shelling of the Middle Area District's agricultural lands and "residential areas, most notably in the three densely populated refugee camps of Al-Bureij, Al-Nusairat, and Deir al-Balah", killing at least 49 Palestinians, 15 of them children.

Media analysis also comes from Mohammed El-Kurd at THE NATION:

I and a few other Palestinians have been hopping between TV channels and radio stations to talk about the atrocities unfolding in Gaza, most of which are absent from headlines, and we have encountered similar hostility. Producers invite us, it seems, not to interview us for our experiences or analysis or the context we can provide, but to interrogate us. They test our answers against the viewer’s inherent bias—a bias well-fed through years of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian rhetoric. The bombs raining down on the besieged Gaza Strip become secondary, if not entirely irrelevant, to our televised trials.

While I don’t expect pleasantries on air, I want accurate reporting. On the UK’s LBC radio, last week, host Rachel Johnson (sister of the former prime minister) took a break from repeatedly interrupting to question me—in fact, indict me—about unverified, word-of-mouth reports of Palestinian fighters “decapitating and raping” Israelis. She didn’t mention the various videos of Israelis mutilating, stomping, and urinating on Palestinian corpses, many of which are readily available to 83,000 subscribers of an Israeli Telegram channel named “Terrorists_are_dying.”

Such unsubstantiated claims were—and still are—all over the news. The Independent (UK) plastered its Chief International Correspondent Bel Trew’s “impossible to verify” reports of “decapitated women and babies” on its front page. Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg reported then redacted “rapes.” On CNN, a teary-eyed Sara Sidner confirmed live, based on Israeli official sources, that “babies and toddlers were found with their heads decapitated,” then apologized on Twitter (now X) that she was “misled,” following a statement, again, from Israeli official sources admitting there is no information confirming the claim that “Hamas beheaded babies.”

This is a familiar playbook. A claim is circulated without evidence; Western journalists spread it like wildfire; diplomats and politicians parrot it; a narrative is built; the general public believes it, and the damage is done.

It may seem trivial to place such weight on the manner of killing, given the fact of killing, but such language isn’t without consequences. On Monday, an Illinois landlord attacked his Palestinian American tenants, seriously injuring a woman and killing her 6-year-old child. “You Muslims must die,” he yelled as he stabbed them each over a dozen times. Joe Biden said he was “shocked and sickened” by the attack, as if he could divorce himself from a claim he had made days before that he’d seen “pictures of terrorists beheading children” (a claim he quietly retracted hours later).

Conjuring rape and decapitation feeds on Islamophobic tropes. Simultaneously, it works hand in hand with the Israeli regime’s PR strategy, which has sought to equate Hamas with ISIS in the audience’s imagination, resurrecting the culture that brought forth the “War on Terror.”

Robin Andersen (DISSIDENT VOICE) also contemplates the effect of the slanted media coverage:

On October 7, the AP reported that US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.” On October 9, The Times of Israel quoted Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian directed his threat at all Gazans on October 10, declaring, “Kidnapping, abusing and murdering children, women and elderly people is not human.” He then announced, “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”

In a piece published on October 8 titled “Media Calls The Attack On Israel Unprovoked: Experts Say That’s Historically Inaccurate,” the Huffington Post pointed to the Israeli government’s “apartheid against Palestinians” as a provocation. It quoted IfNotNow, an American Jewish group that opposes Israeli apartheid, expressing their dread for the loss of life and loved ones, Israelis and Palestinians alike. It continued, “Every day under Israel’s system of apartheid is a provocation. The strangling siege on Gaza is a provocation. Settlers terrorizing entire Palestinian villages, soldiers raiding and demolishing Palestinian homes, murdering Palestinians in the streets, Israeli ministers calling for genocide and expulsion” are all provocations.

Indeed, multiple international human rights groups have defined the long-term Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as a system of apartheid. The death toll on each side exposes the false assertion that Israeli violence is always retaliatory and that of Palestinians is “unprecedented.” The UNOCHA documents 6,407 Palestinian deaths since 2008, compared to 308 Israeli fatalities. Gregory Shupak reported that since 2001, more than ten thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, with “nearly 9 out of 10 deaths this century have been on the Palestinian side.” In addition, the Israelis have made daily life in Gaza miserable. As UK journalist Jonathan Cook wrote, “[Gaza’s] inhabitants—one million of them children—are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to proper health care, drinkable water, and the use of electricity because Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.” But voices such as Shupak and Cook are virtually absent from US establishment news coverage of the violence.

The Hamas attacks were taken out of the context of ongoing violence, presented without cause, and in narratives that see only Hamas violence but have rarely featured or condemned equivalent Israeli violence against Palestinians. Establishment media’s one-sided pro-Israel coverage, established over many years, fed into the growing consensus that a major retaliation by Israelis would be forthcoming. Early corporate news reporting seemed to confirm its inevitability, with almost no voices of reason or caution allowed to enter the militarized revenge frame coalescing around a major attack.

The verbiage used by the New York Times on the Tribe of Nova music festival also illustrates Big Journalism’s sensationalized, inaccurate reporting. The Times wrote that the “massacre of its youth” and Israel’s “75-year-old quest for some carefree normalcy” met the “murderous fury of those long-oppressed Palestinians who deny the state’s right to exist.” The language of the Times’ report—using “murderous” and denial of Israel’s “right to exist,” with “long-oppressed Palestinians”—makes a mockery of what Gazans have experienced. Additionally, it is not true that Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exist. A quick look at the US State Department’s summation of the 1993 Oslo Accords states that the Palestinian Authority “renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace” and Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians,” concessions that undergirded the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. But Rashid Khalidi has called out the “empty words about a two-state solution while providing money, weapons and diplomatic support for systematic, calculated Israeli actions that have made that solution inconceivable.”

Dylan Saba (IN THESE TIMES) analyzes the media coverage:

On October 8, the morning after Hamas launched an attack from the Gaza strip that killed 1,400 Israelis, Ha’aretz—Israel’s paper of record — published an editorial laying blame for the massacre squarely on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government. “The disaster that befell Israel,” the editorial board wrote, “is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” Netanyahu “completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession” and “embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.” It was a damning and powerful indictment.

Two days later, Ryna Workman, the student body president of NYU Law School, sent out a newsletter to classmates as Israel’s retaliatory assault on the Gaza Strip was well underway. Expanding on the Ha’aretz editorial board’s language, Workman wrote that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” Workman also affirmed their solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression.

Almost immediately, they faced a torrent of backlash in the form of online disparagement and right-wing media attention. In response to pressure, the dean of the law school publicly condemned Workman’s remarks. By the evening, the law firm Winston & Strawn, where Workman had planned to work after graduating, publicly withdrew their job offer without so much as a phone call. The university then unilaterally removed Workman from their position as student body president without any disciplinary process, and threatened further charges — all for daring to speak out.

Workman is not alone. Across the US, people speaking out on behalf of Palestinian human rights and against Israeli war crimes, apartheid policies, and settler-colonial expansion that have been unfolding over nearly eight decades are facing a wave of McCarthyite backlash directly targeting their future careers and livelihoods. Students at other prominent universities have faced the same: the leaders of Harvard University student groups were doxxed and smeared for signing a statement also expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Their names and faces were plastered on a mobile billboard truck that roamed around campus for days, and a “College Terror List” circulated online accusing them of antisemitism. Several also lost job offers. A Berkeley law professor published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring legal employers not to hire his own students and smearing them as antisemitic.

Chip Gibbons (Defending Rights and Dissent) noted earlier this week:

Right now, Arab-American civil rights organizations are reporting an uptick in harassment, including FBI visits to mosques and FBI and ICE detention of Palestinian nationals.

Politicians are pressuring activists to cancel First-Amendment protected assemblies and boasting to the press that police will be monitoring them.

The media for its part, instead of serving as a critical watchdog on government abuses of power, including repression of dissent, has helped to whip up this atmosphere. They are conflating protesters with terrorists, pushing politicians to condemn them. They have devoted attention to critiquing the social media posts of college students.

When journalists have asked critical questions, they have been rebuked by officials. During a State Department news conference after several independent journalists asked questions about the impacts of Israel’s bombardment on civilians, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller chastised the journalists stating “Some of the questions I am getting today do seem to ignore the fact that Israel just had 100s of its citizens killed, taken hostage[…]some of the questions seem to pretend that Israel should not be able to conduct operations to be able defend itself and hold accountable terrorists that killed civilians.”

Defending Rights & Dissent will not be silent as some seek to degrade our democracy and pull the country backwards by imitating the worst abuses of the McCarthy and post-9/11 eras.

The media has to lie to sell the war, the US government has to crack down on free speech to keep people ignorant. It's the only way to keep the killing going.

Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani is the Prime Minister of Iraq. At ARSHARQ AL-AWSAT, he writes:

"We reaffirm our unwavering stance regarding the Palestinian right to establish an independent state with Al-Quds as its capital."

This is Iraq's steadfast position, reiterated at the United Nations General Assembly in September this year. It remains the cornerstone of our support for the Palestinian cause, aimed at ensuring the Palestinian people's legitimate rights, peace, independence, security, and sovereignty in their own state.

Today, we stand by this principle following the tragedy at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital and the relentless bombardment of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip. This indiscriminate aggression by Zionist forces has resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.

Recognizing Iraq's historical regional role, Baghdad immediately initiated intense diplomatic efforts upon the outbreak of the conflict in the occupied Palestinian territories. I engaged in a series of telephone conversations with Arab leaders, emphasizing the crucial need for unified Arab and Islamic support for the Palestinian cause. I stressed the importance of de-escalation, upholding human rights, and exerting pressure on the Zionist entity to cease its aggression in the occupied territories and start negotiations that halt the conflict and work towards equitable solutions for the Palestinian people.

During my discussion with US President Joseph Biden, I emphasized the imperative of preventing further escalation in Gaza, halting the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, addressing the deepening humanitarian crisis, facilitating the opening of humanitarian corridors, and ensuring the delivery of essential aid to the people of Gaza, who are enduring the hardships of war and an unjust blockade.

The remarks occur at a time when the US government is evacuating personnel from Iraq. DW reports:

The US State Department on Sunday ordered the departure of all non-emergency embassy personnel and their families from its Baghdad and Erbil embassies in Iraq, "due to increased security threats against US personnel and interests."

The State Department also issued a travel advisory to US citizens, warning them not to go to the Middle Eastern country. "Do not travel to Iraq due to terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, civil unrest, and Mission Iraq's limited capacity to provide support to US citizens," read the advisory.

Vivian Salama (WALL ST. JOURNAL) adds, "The State Department said it ordered eligible family members and nonemergency U.S. government personnel on Friday to depart the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. consulate in Erbil 'due to increased security threats against U.S. personnel and interests'." Here's the advisory in full:

Travel Advisory
October 22, 2023

Iraq - Level 4: Do Not Travel

O K U T

Updated to reflect the ordered departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel and eligible family members.

Do not travel to Iraq due to terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, civil unrest, and Mission Iraq’s limited capacity to provide support to U.S. citizens.

On October 20, 2023, the Department ordered the departure of eligible family members and non-emergency U.S. government personnel from U.S. Embassy Baghdad and U.S. Consulate General Erbil due to increased security threats against U.S. government personnel and interests.

Country Summary: U.S. citizens in Iraq face high risks to their safety and security, including the potential for violence and kidnapping. Terrorist and insurgent groups regularly attack Iraqi security forces and civilians. Anti-U.S. militias threaten U.S. citizens and international companies throughout Iraq. Attacks using improvised explosive devices, indirect fire, and unmanned aerial vehicles occur in many areas of the country, including Baghdad and other major cities. In an emergency, consular services to U.S. citizens in Iraq are limited due to severe restrictions on the movements of U.S. government personnel.

Demonstrations, protests, and strikes occur frequently throughout the country. These events can develop quickly without prior notice, often interrupting traffic, transportation, and other services, and sometimes turning violent.

Do not travel near Iraq’s northern borders due to the continued threat of attacks by terrorist groups, armed conflict, aerial bombardment, and civil unrest. U.S. citizens should especially avoid areas near armed groups in northern Iraq, which have been targeted with aerial strikes by neighboring countries’ militaries.

U.S. citizens should not travel through Iraq to engage in armed conflict in Syria, where they would face extreme personal risks (kidnapping, injury, or death) and legal risks (arrest, fines, and expulsion). The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has stated that it will impose prison sentences of up to ten years on individuals who illegally cross the Iraq-Syria border. Additionally, fighting on behalf of or supporting designated terrorist organizations is a crime under U.S. law that can result in prison sentences and large fines in the United States.

Because of security concerns, U.S. government personnel in Baghdad are instructed not to use Baghdad International Airport. Due to risks to civil aviation operating in the Baghdad Flight Information Region, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has extended for an additional two years its Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) prohibiting certain flights at altitudes below 32,000 feet. For more information, U.S. citizens should consult the Federal Aviation Administration’s Prohibitions, Restrictions, and Notices.

Read the country information page for additional information on travel to Iraq.

If you decide to travel to Iraq:

Establish your own personal security plan in coordination with your employer or host organization or consider consulting with a professional security organization.
Draft a will and designate appropriate insurance beneficiaries and/or power of attorney.
Discuss a plan with loved ones regarding care/custody of children, pets, property, belongings, non-liquid assets (collections, artwork, etc.), funeral wishes, etc.
Share important documents, login information, and points of contact with loved ones so that they can manage your affairs if you are unable to return as planned to the United States.
Visit our website for Travel to High-Risk Areas.
Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
Follow the Department of State on Facebook and Twitter.
Review the Country Security Report for Iraq.
Visit the CDC website for the latest Travel Health Information related to your travel.

Prepare a contingency plan for emergency situations. Review the Traveler’s Checklist

Kat's "Kat's Korner: Those new Rolling Stones' gems aren't zirconia" went up Sunday.

The following sites updated:

Music

Jordan Ward: Tiny Desk Concert

3 hours ago

KBLA - Tavis Smiley's talk radio

Biggest celebration of African property and lifestyle returns for its 7th year

3 hours ago

Ann's Mega Dub

Chynna Phillips is a Homophobic witch - boycott Wilson Phillips Oct 23rd concert

14 minutes ago

Ruth's Report

Former Secret Service agent Paul Landis' revelations

2 hours ago

Oh Boy It Never Ends

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

3 hours ago

The World Today Just Nuts

FLASH GORDON

15 hours ago

Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)

Rolling Stones

15 hours ago

Trina's Kitchen

Air Fryer Potato Wedges in the Kitchen

15 hours ago

SICKOFITRADLZ

The Exorcist and The Exorcist: Believer

15 hours ago

Mikey Likes It!

3 strikes he's out

15 hours ago

Like Maria Said Paz

It's time to rejoice, like that in Lily Tomlin scene from 9 TO 5

15 hours ago

Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude

robert dance - a lousy writer - knows damn little about joan crawford

18 hours ago

10/22/2023

Chynna Phillips is a Homophobic witch - boycott Wilson Phillips Oct 23rd concert

reposting ann's piece (and agree with ann 100%):

Chynna Phillips is a Homophobic witch - boycott Wilson Phillips Oct 23rd concert

Never would have thought Chyna Phillips was a Karen. Turns out, she's far worse. She's a homophobic witch.

Rebecca just called me. She left a comment at Chynna's video that just went up about 30 minutes ago, the video is:

Victoria Jackson Hosts California Healin' Group!

And, no, I'm not reposting it. So they won't allow Rebecca's comment to go up. She noted that she never expected Chynna to be a homophobe but here she is platforming Victoria Jackson and making nice with her. Again, by the way, not the firs time.

If you don't know the slut Victoria Jackson, consider yourself lucky. She was the worst member of SNL ever. That's why they don't invite her back. She had no talent and played a breasty slut in every skit because she thought that was comedy.

Today, she lies that she's a Christian.

April of this year, The Los Angeles Times reported:

More than 30 years ago, Victoria Jackson performed a handstand on “Saturday Night Live” to praise the “freedom to express myself any way I like” in America.

Now, she’s among the Tennessee residents speaking out against the LGBTQ community and its efforts to celebrate Pride this year.

Jackson, who was part of the “SNL” cast from 1986 to 1992, appeared at a city council meeting in Franklin, Tenn., where the Pride festival was on the docket Tuesday. She was among the scores of residents who appeared to make the case for, or against, Pride during the meeting.

That is who 'Christian' Chynna chooses to promote. F**K YOU AND KISS MY BLACK ASS.

I'm so sick of these fake asses. Chynna has no soul clearly -- I'd argue that should have been obvious just from listening to her sing.

But F**K YOU, Chynna and F**K your husband too. You can both go to hell, you crazy ass homophobe.

ADDED:

Turns out Chynna will be on stage with Wilson Phillips on Oct. 23rd at Thunder Valley Casino and Resort. Boycott them. I doubt the Wilson sisters -- Carnie and Wendy -- are homophobes but a message needs to be sent as a war on LGBTQ+ people is carried out in this country: Homophobia is not acceptable. And it's not Christian. As someone raised in the church -- the Black church -- I think I know a great deal more about Christ than White Karen Chynna who discovered Jesus only after she was a do-nothing house wife who needed to do something for media attention. Also go read Rebecca's "robert dance - a lousy writer - knows damn little about joan crawford" -- it's a great book review.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude

10/24/2023

more on that bad joan crawford book

Books (Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)

book and homophobic chynna phillips

Churches across the region memorialize the victims

Travel Advisory
October 22, 2023

Iraq - Level 4: Do Not Travel

10/22/2023

Chynna Phillips is a Homophobic witch - boycott Wilson Phillips Oct 23rd concert

Chynna Phillips is a Homophobic witch - boycott Wilson Phillips Oct 23rd concert

Victoria Jackson Hosts California Healin' Group!

About Me

Links

Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude

10/24/2023

more on that bad joan crawford book

Books (Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)

book and homophobic chynna phillips

Churches across the region memorialize the victims

Travel AdvisoryOctober 22, 2023

Iraq - Level 4: Do Not Travel

10/22/2023

Chynna Phillips is a Homophobic witch - boycott Wilson Phillips Oct 23rd concert

Chynna Phillips is a Homophobic witch - boycott Wilson Phillips Oct 23rd concert

Victoria Jackson Hosts California Healin' Group!

Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude

Travel Advisory
October 22, 2023