Cedric's Big Mix: 2024-04-07

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- THE KOOL AID TABLE

MEDICAL MIRACLE LAUREN BOEBERT -- THE ONLY KNOWN LIVING HUMAN BEING BORN WITHOUT A BRAIN -- CONTINUES TO SET THE STANDARD FOR TASTE AND DECORUM.

WORD EMERGED OVER THE WEEKEND OF BOE-BOE'S WILD AND DRUNKEN WAYS AT A DONALD TRUMP PARTY. REACHED FOR COMMENT, BOE-BOE TOLD THESE REPORTERS -- MUST CREDIT BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- -- "SURE, I GOT S**T FACED BUT A GIRL'S GOT TO PARTY. SURE I GOT S**T FACED BUT LIFE CAN'T BE ALL JUDGMENT AND SCORN, GIRL'S GOTTA KICK UP HER HEELS AND GET THOSE LEGS IN THE AIR! I HAD SO MUCH FUN. THEY SAY JASON ALDEAN WAS THERE AND EATING THE HOT WINGS AND YOU KNOW THAT MOTHER F**KER IS FAT SO HE ATE WAY TOO MANY AND HE GOT THE SQUIRTY DUKES! INSTEAD OF EMBARRASSING HIM, I GOT DOWN ON MY KNEES AND STARTED MOUTHING ON THE WET SEAT OF HIS JEANS SCREAMING 'MILK, MILK, LEMONAIDE, AROUND THE CORNER FUDGE IS MADE!' SURE I GOT S**T FACED BUT THAT'S WHAT HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUTS DO EVEN AT THE AGE OF 36. YEE-HAW!"

BOE-BOE STOPPED SPEAKING FOR A MOMENT TO BURP LOUDLY AND SHAKE HER HEAD BEFORE ASKING, "WHAT WERE WE TALKING ABOUT AND WHO ARE YOU? WHY AM I STANDING HERE IN JUST A PAIR OF MARJORIE TAYLOR GREEN'S GRANNY PANTIES? "

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

THE TIMES OF LONDON quotes Former Royal Artillery officer-turned-author Christopher Lincoln-Jones stating, "The British Army would under no circumstances have fired on that convoy even if we could positively identify a Hamas gunman getting into one of the cars. You would know that every single person travelling in the car would die. It would be inconceivable that the British or the Americans would do that. The fact the Israelis destroyed all three cars is utterly unforgivable." He's referring to the Israeli government killing the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers this week. Australia's ABC notes, "The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said the killing of the seven aid workers from WCK was 'not an isolated incident'. As of March 20, at least 196 humanitarians, including at least 175 UN workers, had been killed since the start of the war on October 7, the OHCHR reports." Josef Federman (AP) observes:

Israel enjoyed broad international support following the Oct. 7 massacre, which was the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust. However, that goodwill has been replaced by impatience and outrage as conditions in Gaza worsen.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials whose death toll doesn’t distinguish between civilians and fighters. International aid officials say roughly one-third of Gaza’s population is dealing with catastrophic hunger.

Initial expressions of solidarity from Israel’s allies have given way to calls for a halt to the fighting. Meanwhile, the U.N. world court, looking into genocide allegations against Israel, has ordered Israel to do more to protect Gaza’s civilians.

This isolation appeared to peak on March 25, when the U.N. Security Council, over Israeli objections, passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire. The U.S. infuriated Israel by allowing the resolution to pass.

Things have only worsened for Israel since then, especially following its killing of seven aid workers in what it says was an errant airstrike. Six of the victims were volunteers from countries allied with Israel, antagonizing them and outraging U.S. President Joe Biden. The alleged Israeli airstrike on an Iran’s embassy in Syria and Netanyahu’s efforts to shutter the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera have further alienated allies.

Today, THE WASHINGTON POST notes, "Israeli strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza earlier this week were 'carried out in serious violation' of the military’s procedures and were a 'grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification' that the convoy of vehicles was carrying Hamas operatives, according to the findings of an Israeli military investigation released Friday. The aid group has emphasized that its convoy had coordinated its route with Israeli military officials." The Israeli government has 'completed' their 'investigation' into their own actions and it was all just a mistake, you understand, and complete accident and, here we'll even fire two people over it so it's all good, we're done, we're good here.

Not everyone rushes to agree with that nonsense.

BBC NEWS notes:

[T]he World Central Kitchen (WCK), which is calling for an "independent commission" to be created to investigate the killings.

The charity says Israel's military "cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza".

Without "systemic change" within the military, there will be "more military failures, more apologies and more grieving families", the statement adds.

The charity says the "root cause" of the "unjustified" attack is the severe lack of food in Gaza and calls on Israel to "dramatically increase" the volume of aid travelling by land.

The 'investigation' insisted the problem was a "misclassification" -- a bag was mistaken for a rifle.

So what? The Israel government wants the world to believe that nonsense? Will they be sending all IDF members for an eye check? Ensuring that all visual prescriptions are worn?

This is nonsense.

Before they attacked the three vehicles, they knew what the three vehicles were, they knew why they were there and they knew where they were headed. I don't believe the lie that a bag looked like a rifle to begin with but even if it had there is the reality that they knew this was the World Central Kitchen aid workers and they still launched their attack.

At COUNTERPUNCH, Jeffrey St. Clair notes:

In the anodyne language of military slaughter, it’s called a “triple tap”–three successive strikes to make sure you’ve eliminated your target–the target in this case being the occupants of three vehicles of the World Central Kitchen, who’d just unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food to a warehouse in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

The cars were white and clearly marked with the humanitarian group’s logo. The route was in a deconfliction zone that had been cleared by the IDF for travel. The vehicles’ trip and purpose to Deir al-Balah had been coordinated with and pre-approved by the IDF. None of this mattered to the IDF officials operating a Hermes 450 drone that stalked the cars from above as they left the food warehouse.

Or perhaps it did matter. Perhaps the intent of the strike was not just to kill the humanitarian aid workers, but to kill humanitarian aid to Gaza altogether.

How else to explain the logic of the IDF officers who ordered a drone strike on the first car after the convoy left the warehouse, then when survivors of the missile strike scrambled into the second car and called the IDF to describe being attacked, ordered a strike on the second car and then as the occupants of the last car rushed to rescue their injured colleagues, ordered a third missile strike, killing all seven aid workers.

If this was the goal of these murderous missile strikes, it seems to have succeeded. Within hours of the killings, World Central Kitchen executives announced it was suspending operations in Gaza and that the ship that sailing toward Gaza with aid shipments would return to Cyprus. WCF’s announcement was swiftly followed by ANERA, which runs the second largest humanitarian operation in Gaza after UNRWA, suspending its work in Gaza.

Rebecca Abou-Chedid, board member of the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), told CNN that her group had tried to coordinate with the IDF, yet had one of its aid workers, Mousa Shawwa, killed in an Israeli airstrike. “There’s something called ‘deconfliction’ in these war zones, where you let the military know where you’re going to be providing aid, where you’re staff is living, where they’re sheltering. And we did that. We confirmed the coordinates just a few days before the house that Mousa was living in was struck and that is why, with a heavy heart, we had to suspend operations…As you see, Mousa had been working for the day. He still had his Anera vest on and he came home and he was struck by a missile and many of his family were also injured. So we can’t keep people safe at home. We can’t keep people safe in the field delivering aid, like our colleagues were at World Central Kitchens, who also let the Israelis know exactly when their convoy would be traveling. We spent a lot of time talking about getting aid into Gaza, by air, by land, by sea. But less time, I think, talking about the fact that it’s human beings that reliably distribute that aid. And it’s a network that was built up by organizations like Anera over decades. We have over 20 staff in Gaza, but we have over 450 volunteers who make sure that that aid is distributed in a calm, safe, reliable manner. If that network falls apart, you can’t deliver aid by remote control. You can’t recreate that network. And that’s the red flag that we have been waving for weeks.”

The WCF convoy was attacked along a 1.2-mile stretch of the Al-Rashid Coastal Road, near the temporary pier, built from the rubble of bombed buildings, that has been used by WCF and other aid groups to unload humanitarian goods that reach Gaza by sea.

“Knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed the WCK workers so that donors would pull out & civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the Occupied Territories. “Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.”

The IDF actually has a protocol for military strikes against humanitarian organizations. Let that sink in. The IDF has a protocol for strikes against humanitarian organizations. And the protocol is this, according to Haaretz, “the Army’s procedures state that those who must give the final approval for activities against sensitive targets, such as aid organizations, are senior officers at the ranks of division commander, commanding general, and even chief of staff.”

And this wasn’t the first time, WCF aid workers had been attacked by the IDF. Only two days earlier, an IDF sniper fired on a WCF car on its way to a food warehouse in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, shattering the car’s windshield. WCF filed a protest with the IDF.

Zachary Basu (AXIOS) recaps mounting US outrage:

Zoom in: Outrage over the Israeli strikes that killed members of José Andrés' world-renowned nonprofit bubbled over Tuesday, with Biden issuing a statement torching Israel for failing to protect civilians and aid workers.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Biden's closest ally in the Senate, said on CNN Thursday that the U.S. should condition its aid if Israel invades Rafah without a humanitarian plan: "I've never said that before. I've never been here before," Coons added.
Former Obama aides Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes sharply criticized Biden after a Politico report described him as "privately enraged" by the WCK strikes: "These stories only make him look weak," Favreau argued.
Richard Haass, a pillar of the foreign policy establishment, called Thursday for the U.S. to consider "sanctions" on Israel: "I'm sorry it's come to this," the former diplomat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Biden's favorite program.
Even first lady Jill Biden has urged her husband to "stop [the war], stop it now," Biden privately recounted at a meeting with Muslim community members on Tuesday.

The big picture: 55% of Americans said in a Gallup poll last month that they disapprove of Israel's actions in Gaza — crossing the majority threshold for the first time, even before the new wave of outrage over the WCK strikes.

Outrage is mounting all over the world. EURONEWS reports:

The death of a Polish humanitarian worker in Gaza has sparked a new diplomatic crisis between Poland and Israel.

Polish President Andrzej Duda criticised a comment by the Israeli ambassador as "outrageous," while the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw said it was summoning him for a meeting.

A 35-year-old Polish man was killed along with six others while distributing food to Palestinians under siege, working with the organisation World Central Kitchen. Israel has labelled the incident a “mistake” due to a misidentification, despite pictures showing that its vehicles were clearly marked.

As the outlet goes on to note, the Israeli government's response came via their ambassador to Poland -- Yacoy Livne, who immediately rushed to blame . . . the Polish and their "extreme right and left." BBC NEWS points out, "Livne has been heavily criticised for his reaction to their deaths. "

"Kat's Korner: COWBOY CARTER slays them all"

"Krazy Katha" and "Declare Your Ignorance"