Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Debate" went up a little while ago.
A former Florida Democratic state lawmaker who has battled with Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the GOP presidential contender will be not merely a lame-duck governor but an "angry duck" upon his return to the state.
In an interview with The Washington Post, ex-state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith predicted that DeSantis — who is currently fighting an uphill battle in the GOP presidential primaries — would return to Florida in a weakened state.
"His political clout is severely diminished because of what's happened with his campaign," Guillermo Smith told The Post.
Still, Guillermo Smith acknowledged that DeSantis, whose political operation has lorded over Florida GOP lawmakers with an iron fist, would have some measure of power in Tallahassee.
"[H]e still has the veto pen," Guillermo Smith told the newspaper. "So I think rather than facing a lame duck governor, we're going to be dealing with an angry duck who will lash out."
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Even reporting from Gaza during the second intifada 20 years ago, when the Israeli military regularly invaded, bombed and flattened Palestinian neighbourhoods, did not feel especially unsafe compared with other regions. Not that the Israeli army was above killing people it knew to be journalists.
In 2003, an Israeli soldier shot dead the British documentary cameraman James Miller in Gaza. An inquest in the UK returned a verdict of unlawful killing. Israel declined to prosecute the soldier responsible but it did pay £1.5m in compensation, which Miller’s family said was “probably the closest we’ll get to an admission of guilt on the part of the Israelis”.
Miller’s killing looked to be part of a pattern of ill-disciplined Israeli soldiers shooting whoever they felt like – not only journalists but UN officials and aid workers as well as Palestinian children. The army was usually quick to try to cover up the killings but it did not appear they were coordinated.
Gaza looks very different today. As the CPJ and the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders say, the scale and nature of the deaths of journalists and their families suggests there is more going on than a few ill-disciplined soldiers taking pot shots at reporters, even taking into account the deaths of thousands of other Palestinians, including more than 8,000 children.
Certainly the message from some Israeli leaders is that journalists are fair game. Israeli politicians were quick to call for the “elimination” of a number of Palestinian journalists working for foreign news organisations who were falsely accused by a pro-Israel pressure group in the US of being “embedded with Hamas” on 7 October. Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, said they should be hunted down as terrorists, reflecting a widely held suspicion among Israeli officials that Palestinian journalists are an appendage of Hamas.
Miller’s family got a payout because he was British. Dead western journalists create more waves, which is presumably one of the reasons Israel has locked the foreign press out of Gaza during the present war. International news organisations now rely on those same Palestinian reporters targeted by Israel. They provide many of the pictures the rest of the world sees of the horror in Gaza.
Journalist Diaa al-Kahlout, who was detained by Israeli authorities along with dozens of other Palestinian men in northern Gaza on December 7, has described painful details of his 25 days in Israeli custody.
“There are no red lines for the Israeli army in dealing with detainees from Gaza,” al-Kahlout, who was released earlier this week, told Al Jazeera. “We were sitting in a situation of torture”.
Al-Kahlout, a Gaza-based correspondent for news outlet Al Araby Al Jadeed, said Israel’s Shin Bet security service interrogated him about his reporting and journalistic sources while in custody.
During this time, he also saw prisoners being “beaten and humiliated”, facing conditions that amounted to “torture”, he said.
Yesterday morning, a shell, resembling that from a tank, broke through the wall of the building where over 100 MSF staff and their family members were seeking shelter in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip. The five-year-old girl was critically injured by the strike and underwent surgery at the Gaza European Hospital. However, she later died of her injuries on 9 January. Three other people were slightly injured in the strike.
“We are outraged and deeply saddened by the death of yet another family member of our MSF staff,” says Thomas Lauvin, MSF project coordinator in Gaza. “This strike on civilians is unacceptable and, once again, goes to show that it doesn’t matter where you are in Gaza, nowhere is safe.”
“The shell did not detonate on impact, otherwise many more of our staff and their families would have most likely been killed,” Lauvin added.
Prior to the incident, MSF notified Israeli forces that the shelter near Gaza European Hospital was housing MSF staff and their families. Furthermore, no evacuation orders were issued before the strike. While MSF is not able to confirm the origin of the shell, it appears to be similar to those used by Israeli tanks. MSF has contacted Israeli authorities and is seeking further explanation.
Four MSF staff have been killed since the beginning of the war, in addition to numerous family members.
We reiterate our call for an immediate and sustained ceasefire in Gaza. Indiscriminate violence against civilians must end now.
Security camera video from a West Bank village shows a young man standing in a central square when he is suddenly shot and drops to the ground. Two others rushing to his aid are also hit, leaving a 17-year-old dead, moments before Israeli military jeeps roll in.
An Associated Press review of the video and interviews with the two wounded survivors showed Israeli soldiers opened fire on the three when they did not appear to pose a threat.
One of the wounded Palestinians was shot a second time after he got up and tried to hop away.
The threats were sent via Facebook on Oct. 9 to residents of Qusra, a Palestinian community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank: “To all the rats in the sewers of Qusra village we are waiting for you and we will have no mercy. The day of revenge is coming.”
Two days later, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, a group of masked and armed Israeli settlers struck the village in what would be the deadliest attack by settlers in the West Bank since the Israel-Gaza war began three months ago.
A Washington Post review of exclusive visuals of the attack, medical records and interviews with witnesses and first responders reveals that one of the Palestinians killed, 17-year-old Obada Saed Abu Srour, was shot in the back by settlers, probably as he was running from gunfire.
Israeli troops, meanwhile, did not forcefully intervene, despite their obligation under international and Israeli law to protect all residents of the West Bank, including Palestinians. Soldiers and police were photographed at the scene of the deaths only after the attack ended, even though troops stationed at nearby military outposts were within earshot of the gunfire and had views of an earlier attack by settlers, the visual evidence shows.
After arriving at the United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, ostensibly for a scheduled tour, three dozen rabbis and rabbinical students made their way into the U.N. Security Council's chamber to stage the latest high-profile demonstration demanding the United States end its opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza.
The rabbis—whose action was organized by Rabbis for Cease-fire, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, and IfNotNow—displayed banners with messages for U.S. President Joe Biden: "Biden: The World Says Cease-Fire," and "Biden: Stop Vetoing Peace."
The protest came weeks after the U.S. alone vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for Israel to end its bombardment of Gaza, which has killed at least 23,210 people, injured more than 59,100, and left thousands more missing and feared dead under rubble, as the population of the enclave faces starvation and disease stemming from Israel's blockade.
"[President Joe] Biden and the U.S. must stop vetoing peace and end Israel's bombing and starvation of Gaza," said IfNotNow.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We turn now to South Carolina, where President Biden delivered his second campaign speech of the year at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in 2015 eight Black parishioners and their pastor were shot dead by a white supremacist. Biden remembered the victims.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: On June 17th, 2015, the beautiful souls, five survivors — and five survivors invited a stranger into this church to pray with them. The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate, of rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison, a poison that’s for too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. Oh, it is. It’s a poison. Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America, not today, tomorrow or ever.
PROTESTERS: Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now!
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: That’s all right. That’s all right.
PROTESTERS: Ceasefire now!
AMY GOODMAN: As he spoke, Biden was disrupted by activists demanding a Gaza ceasefire.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Without light, there’s no path from this darkness.
PROTESTER: If you really care about the lives lost here, then you should honor the lives lost and call for a ceasefire in Palestine!
PROTESTERS: Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now!
AMY GOODMAN: As the protesters were removed from the church, supporters of President Biden began chanting “four more years.” He addressed the protesters.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I understand their passion. And I’ve been quietly working — I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza. I’ve been using all that I can to do that.
AMY GOODMAN: Without naming Donald Trump, Biden blasted the former president and leading 2024 Republican candidate as a loser who tried to overthrow the 2020 election results by urging his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. A number carried Confederate flags and wore white supremacist and far-right symbols.
Following the massacre at the Emanuel AME Church in 2015, following the mass funeral at the University of Charleston arena that thousands came out for, our next guest, Bree Newsome Bass, scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and removed the Confederate flag. As police officers shouted at her to come down, she shimmied to the top of the flagpole, took the flag in her hand and said, “You come against me with hatred. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today.”
BREE NEWSOME BASS: You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today!
AMY GOODMAN: While Bree Newsome was arrested, along with an ally, it was only after this action that the Confederate flag was formally removed from the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina at the time. She has faced fresh backlash after she didn’t mention slavery when asked about the cause of the U.S. Civil War during a recent town hall in New Hampshire.
Well, for more, we’re joined in Raleigh, North Carolina, by Bree Newsome Bass, artist, antiracist activist.
Bree, welcome back to Democracy Now! This certainly does take us back. As people debate whether it was Nikki Haley who ultimately forced the flag to come down, we’re going to the woman who actually took it down and risked your freedom to do it. Talk about why you did that then — ultimately, the Legislature would vote to take it down — and how you feel about what’s happening today.
BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yes. And thank you again so much for having me on.
You know, and I want to make it clear: Yes, I did scale the pole and take the Confederate flag down; this was an issue that people had been protesting for years and years and years. And that’s part of what made it so egregious in 2015, when we had the massacre at Emanuel AME and South Carolina refused to lower the flag, because part of the reason why they were refusing to lower the flag is that they had passed a law in the year 2000 saying that it couldn’t be lowered for any reason, after they moved it from the Capitol dome to the flagpole on the lawn, where it was at the time that I took it down. So this had been going on for years and years and years.
And Nikki Haley actually opposed taking the flag down, right up until those massacres occurred and the mounting political protest and, you know, the pressure made it where she basically had to, at that point, support the flag coming down. So, ideologically, she has never really had the stance of being opposed to either the Confederacy or — excuse me — symbols of the Confederacy, and certainly not opposed to racist policies. She went right from the governorship to serving in the Trump administration. And she’s had a number of incidents over the years, where the things that she says or the things that she does directly contradict with her claim of having led the way on taking the Confederate flag down. At one of her recent rallies, she played that song “Find Out in a Small Town,” you know, the song that people really raised a lot of concern about because it was obviously alluding to sundown towns and the racial violence that Black people have experienced here for decades and decades and decades. So this is not new for Nikki Haley. It just shows that she does not really represent antiracism in any real way.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bree, I’d like to ask you — in response to President Biden’s speech, you posted on social media, quote, “How the Black church is used as a prop for white politicians actually proves the point that racism is alive & well & strong.” Could you expand on that?
BREE NEWSOME BASS: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think that the whole way that the incidents in 2015, both the massacre at Emanuel AME, the refocus on the Confederate flag there in South Carolina, the formal ceremony around taking the flag down, and the way that American politics returns to those moments again and again and again speaks to how relevant it still is, the fact that Black churches are frequently used as, you know, political campaign stops for politicians.
In this case with Joe Biden, you know, he is clearly trying to make an appeal not just to Black voters, but really trying to fend off criticism that he is racist, that he is sponsoring a genocide. And that criticism is completely well founded, because he is sponsoring a genocide, and genocide is the most extreme form of racial violence that there is. And so, to use the pulpit at Emanuel AME in this manner, to make it a prop, essentially, for Joe Biden’s reelection bid, to me, is the greatest assault on truth. I know Joe Biden stood there in the pulpit and said that there is an assault on truth that’s happening right now. Joe Biden is, in many ways, leading that assault. And I know that he’s running against Donald Trump, who we know is also a serial liar, but Donald Trump is not the one who is currently in office right now. It is Joe Biden.
And this effort to use the church, not just the Black church, but the site of racial violence, of a mass murder, to deflect from the fact that Joe Biden himself is bombing churches, bombing mosques, bombing places of worship and murdering many civilians, people who have sought shelter in those places, it just exposes the complete hypocrisy of this entire situation and the vacuum of moral leadership at the top. And that’s why I took offense to it. I think that’s why many people who watched it took offense to it. I’m very glad that the young people stood up and protested, because even though they were few in that audience, they represented the majority of people worldwide.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting, Bree. The polls that have just come out today indicate that Nikki Haley is surging in the polls in New Hampshire. You referenced where she stood on the Confederate flag. I wanted to go back to 2014, when then-South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley suggested South Carolina had resolved its image problem and that having the Confederate flag at the Statehouse was fine because not a single CEO had complained. She was speaking at a gubernatorial debate.
GOV. NIKKI HALEY: You know, the Confederate flag is a very sensitive issue. And what I can tell you is, over the last three-and-a-half years I spend a lot of my days on the phones with CEOs and recruiting jobs to this state. I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag. What is important here is that we look at the fact that, yes, perception of South Carolina matters. That’s why we have everybody answering the phones, “It’s a great day in South Carolina.” That’s why we’re being named the friendliest state, the most patriotic state, and getting all these great accolades. But we really kind of fixed all that when you elected the first Indian American female governor, when we appointed the first African American U.S. senator.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Nikki Haley back in 2014. Bree Newsome Bass, your final comment?
BREE NEWSOME BASS: I mean, I think that says it all, right? So, first of all, she’s saying that it’s OK, the optics are OK. Right? We’re not talking about the substance. We’re not talking about the experience. We’re not talking about whether people are actually experiencing equal treatment under the law. Just the optics. So the optics are fine, because it’s not disrupting business, right? And then the other thing that she offers as evidence that everything is OK is the fact that she’s nonwhite, she is an Indian American woman, and then she points to other people in the administration — excuse me — who are nonwhite.
Well, that’s the entire problem right there. The idea is that so long as we can keep business going as usual, it doesn’t matter that there’s violence, it doesn’t matter that there’s racism. All that matters is the optics. And that is what Nikki Haley’s campaign represents in her falsely claiming that she led the way on taking the Confederate flag down. That’s what Joe Biden’s campaign represents in terms of thinking that all that matters is giving a speech at a church, and ignoring all of the churches that are being blown up and all of the Palestinians that are being killed, ignored the fact that young people are demanding a future, and we have people who are older who don’t seem to care at all that this assault in Palestine is disproportionately affecting children or killing children.
And then, in the case of Nikki Haley, again, she does not truly represent any of the things that she is claiming when it comes to being antiracist. You can say whatever words you want to say, you can put together whatever kind of events you want to put together, but the fact is that the truth is going to be the truth. We see what is actually happening.
And I support all of the disruptions, because the last thing that we need is to carry on business as usual when our democracy is absolutely under attack. Democracy is under attack worldwide. And genocide is the most extreme — the most extreme form of racial violence that there is. So there’s no way that we are fighting white supremacy simply by taking down a flag or having an event at Emanuel AME in the midst of genocide, in the midst of doing away with affirmative action, voting rights, the attack on abortion rights. This is where we are at. It’s a very dangerous place. And I hope that people look beyond the optics and support those people who are disrupting, because the last thing that we need is to carry on with business as usual.
AMY GOODMAN: Bree Newsome Bass, artist, antiracist activist. In 2015, following the massacre of the eight African American parishioners and their pastor by a white supremacist at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, Bree scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and removed the Confederate flag.
Next up, we go to the growing support for reparations in America. Stay with us.
San Francisco supervisors have joined the ranks of local legislative bodies calling for a sustained cease-fire in Gaza.
The Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday in favor of a resolution spearheaded by Supervisor Dean Preston that urges the Biden Administration and Congress to support a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas War, along with the delivery of humanitarian aid and the release of all hostages in the region. Supervisors passed the resolution in an 8-3 vote after Board President Aaron Peskin successfully overhauled the document’s language in an effort to gain wider support from his colleagues.
The resolution — which also condemns antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination — drew an outpouring of public feedback, including from hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who packed City Hall when it was introduced late last year. A similar scene played out Monday, when the board’s Rules Committee advanced the resolution and public comment lasted for several emotional hours.
The resolution passed as amended with an 8-3 vote. In addition to calling for a cease-fire, the resolution also condemns anti-Semitic, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks, as well as calls for humanitarian aid in the region and the release of hostages.
The amendment introduced by Board of Supervisor President Aaron Peskin calls for the Biden Administration to do the same. It further condemns Hamas's attack on Oct. 7 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response which has killed thousands.
A few dozen protesters on Tuesday evening urged the St. Louis County Council to pass a resolution demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
Local governments nationwide, including in St. Louis, have considered symbolic cease-fire resolutions calling for an end to Israeli assaults on the blockaded strip that have caused a humanitarian crisis. Resolutions have also supported Israel after the militant group Hamas killed about 1,200 and took more than 200 hostages in an attack launched on Oct. 7.
Haley Millner, a St. Louis County resident, said the Israeli bombardment of innocent civilians over the past four months amounts to genocide. Israel’s offensive has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians and displaced almost 85% of its population of 2.3 million. A quarter face starvation.
On a phone call last week, legal scholars convened a press conference to discuss the rocky road ahead and warn about the peril that could follow if higher courts grant Trump the sweeping immunity and unchecked power he craves. Speaking about the D.C. appellate court’s current consideration of Trump’s attempted power grab, attorney Norman L. Eisen put it in stark terms.
“It may be the single most important question confronting our democracy this year,” Eisen said. “There is no absolute immunity to prosecution!”
Eisen, a former Obama White House ethics czar who later helped the House Judiciary Committee build the case for Trump’s first impeachment, warned that appellate judges will essentially determine if an American president has king-like powers. He and others on the call said they expect the D.C. Court of Appeals to quickly reject Trump’s attempt to assert that a president has blanket immunity for whatever they do while in office, but they acknowledged that it will merely be a step on the way toward the showdown’s unavoidable conclusion at the Supreme Court—where three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump himself.
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