I am way behind in reading and replying to comments. But I am supper glad I saved them for getting to when I could. This comment from Suze is outstanding. I will first post the link she left it on, then her comment. Hugs. Scottie
I have visited Palestine twice….both in the early 2000’s. Kids were on the streets of Ramallah and Raffa everyday selling whatever they could for tourists spare change. I bought street food (falafel) for about ten kids one day…garnered a LOT of interest from Israeli police who seemed to think it was a strange activity. Those kids watched out for me though and led me to some truly wonderful shops where I could easily bargain. I made it a priority to purchase food every day in a Palestinian area to bring back to my hostel or hotel. On my last day in Rafah I was saying goodbye to a few kids and a funeral procession started down the street. One of the kids, a boy of about six, grabbed my hand and pulled me into a shop. I asked if he was okay and he said “missy, you stay off street, men are angry. I keep you safe” That little boy, if he has survived is a man now and I wonder about him every day. I get that Israel is all about their “homeland” but frankly it is the Arabs homeland too and they are treated like fourth class citizens. Apartheid is alive and well in the land.
Media call this a war. It is not. It is a slaughter, it is a state-driven terrorism with the goal of genocide, against a people with no air force or anti-missile technology to help them. They are sitting ducks in a pen, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to fight back. The Gaza civilians, women and children are not Hamas, they have no weapons to fight with. All they can do is suffer and die. Israel tries to justify it saying they were attacked, Hamas started. One boy hits another boy doesn’t give the struck boy the right to kill the other boy’s entire family and neighborhood. Israel lies about allowing food and other aid into Gaza because it is about causing as much hurt, pain, and destruction as possible. The Israeli government think they are above any attempts to stop them and have the right to do what ever they want to anyone they like. We need to show them they are wrong. Hugs. Scottie
With the Israel-Hamas war entering its 100th day, there is growing international concern about the increasing civilian death toll in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to continue the assault. Meanwhile, vigils were held in Israel in support of those who remain held hostage in Gaza. Charlie D’Agata reports.
Over 23,000 Palestinians dead, about 11,000 are children, most of the rest are women. There are an estimated 2 million people homeless and displaced, with no shelter or food in the winter cold and rain. Israel said it won’t stop, it says it will continue what it is doing all through 2024. Their plan is for an incredible dense small area reservation tightly controlled by Israel, which hopes to force the Palestinians to become so desperate they will either overwhelm the Egyptian border or die off and leaving until there are no Palestinians left. Israel has said they are working to force deport the all Palestinians from Gaza and the West bank. This is a land grab genocide by Israel. Different officials in the government admit it. Bibi brags about knifing the US in the back as he has demanded more money, he laughs as he claims he prevented any attempt to form a two-state solution. He is as racist against Palestinians as republicans are toward brown people. Hugs. Scottie
Now 100 days old, the latest Israel-Hamas war is by far the longest, bloodiest, and most destructive conflict between the bitter enemies.
The law he touts that would allow local police to arrest people they “think” are not here legally and a local judge gets to order their immediate removal. Guess what that means in reality? Arrest all brown people, charge them, quickly send them to Mexico at gun point … learn later they were here legally, or maybe even citizens. Ah who cares, they republican leaders get their nice white straight cis ethnostate where they are complete rulers over how people live. Hugs. Scottie.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
“… the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal”.
Department of Public Safety troopers stand guard over migrants in a detention area Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, in Eagle Pass as a surge of migrants push across the border.
William Luther
WASHINGTON — Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas is doing everything to stop border crossings short of shooting migrants because the Biden administration would “charge us with murder.”
“We are deploying every tool and strategy that we possibly can,” the governor said in an interview with conservative commentator Dana Loesch. “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
The comments came during an appearance on Loesch’s show last week in which Abbott was asked what he believed was the “maximum amount of pressure” he could implement to secure the border.
The third-term Republican responded that the state is using “every tool that can be used, from building a border wall to building these border barriers.” He also touted the new Texas law empowering state officials to remove people from the U.S. who they suspect of being in the country illegally.
The clip was aired on Loesch’s program again Thursday without the line about shooting migrants. A version of the audio was also posted on social media by Heartland Signal, a progressive radio show based in Chicago.
Abbott said Friday that he was asked to point out where he was drawing the line on what the state can legally do to secure the border.
“I pointed out something that is obviously illegal,” Abbott said. “It’s that simple.”
The comments come as the Biden administration has sued the state to stop a slew of Abbott’s border security efforts, including the new deportation law, which is set to take effect in March and threatens to upend longstanding precedent leaving immigration enforcement solely to the federal government. The law would allow any law enforcement officer in Texas to arrest migrants accused of unlawfully entering the state from Mexico and empower judges to order their removal.
Abbott also has strung miles of razor wire along the border and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande, which the Biden administration is also fighting to have removed in a separate court battle.
But Abbott still has faced pressure from some conservatives to do more, and some in the GOP have called for the use of deadly force to stop suspected traffickers. Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged as much during a campaign stop in Texas last summer, saying those breaking through border barriers and displaying “hostile intent” should “end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety last month found no wrongdoing by agency officials after six troopers working for Abbott’s border security initiative alleged mistreatment of migrants last summer.
The complaints included an email from a DPS medic describing “inhumane” treatment of migrants he witnessed while deployed in Eagle Pass. The email said troopers had been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande and told not to give water to asylum-seekers even in extreme heat. The agency’s inspector general found that most of the incidents raised by the troopers did happen, but concluded that DPS officials did not violate law or agency policy.
Benjamin Wermund is the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at ben.wermund@houstonchronicle.com. He covers the Texas delegation and the many ways the state and its leaders shape national politics and policy. He’s a Texas native and a diehard Spurs fan.
People like Abbott are precisely the reason why laws exist. He has no moral compunction against murder, but luckily realizes it could land him in prison.
A U.N. court began hearings this week on South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide — a bid to stop the conflict in Gaza and document what the Palestinian ally calls Israeli forces’ “genocidal conduct.” The U.S. calls the case “meritless.” Anita Powell reports; Patsy Widakuswara contributed.
He must never become president, nor anyone who supports his garbage. He was so stupid and unable to understand, ruled by money and desperate for power he was easily controlled by dictators and the wealthy. Hugs.
One of Europe’s most senior politicians recounted how former U.S. President Donald Trump privately warned that America would not come to the EU’s aid if it was attacked militarily.
“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020, according to French European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was also present at a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” Trump also said, according to Breton. “And he added, ‘and by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense,’” Breton said about the tense meeting, where the EU’s then-trade chief Phil Hogan was also present.
That says everything we need know about his attitudes regarding America itself. Every fucking thing is about him and his overwhelming self-entitlement.
He was hoping to extort our NATO allies to get money to pay back his bankers — the russian oligarch’s. If he’s allowed into power again he will raid the treasury. There is no doubt in my mind. That’s exactly what he will do.
Especially if he manages somehow to float this idea that anything a President does while in office is “official duties” and he cannot be tried for it later.
I bet this made daddy Putin very pleased. Trump’s a good little daddies boy. Look how he beams at the sight of Putin. The former first hooker doesn’t get a smile out of Trump like this.
SUZE HARTLINE
Scottie's Playtime 