Pans narrans. Bella horrida bella. “Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed.” -Maus
Cleveland, OH
Joined June 2013
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Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Mada Masr Editor-in-Chief Lina Attalah was fined LE3 million by the New Cairo Misdemeanor Court, which convicted her on charges of managing an unlicensed website, issuing an order for the website’s closure. Attalah was taken into custody after the issue of the ruling.
Tuesday’s session at the ninth circuit of the New Cairo Misdemeanor Court, presided over by judge Mohamed Mubarak, was temporarily suspended for deliberations after Attalah’s defense counsel requested time to review the case file.
After the court returned from deliberations, the judge ordered the courtroom cleared of everyone except Attalah and her defense counsel, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights’ executive director Hossam Bahgat, who was also present, told Mada Masr. The room then filled with plainclothes officers and guards, with a National Security Agency officer in attendance, he added.
The presiding judge and a Supreme State Security Prosecution representative returned to the session and the judge announced that the court has decided to stand by its rejection of all the procedural arguments presented by the defense, including requests to bring in any documentation or hear any witnesses.
The judge then asked the defense team to present its plea. The counsel insisted that it would not submit a plea as long as its requests were unanswered by the court.
The judge then abruptly asked for a lawyer unknown to any member of the defense counsel to be brought in, “in a move that astonished all those present,” said Bahgat, and announced that the court decided to appoint a lawyer for Attalah.
At that point, all members of the defense counsel cried out to reject the court’s appointment of a lawyer when the eight chosen lawyers were present. Attalah herself spoke to say she did not accept the court-appointed lawyer acting on her behalf, an objection the judge refused to have recorded in the session’s minutes.
"In an even more shocking move,” said Bahgat, the judge himself began to log down the requests of the court-appointed lawyer, without the lawyer having said a word. The judge then read out the conviction amid shouts and protests from the defense counsel.
The judge sentenced Attalah to the maximum possible penalty: a LE3 million fine, the closure of Mada Masr’s website and the confiscation of its property.
Security personnel then surrounded Attalah, lifted her off the ground and took her out of the courtroom, where she remains in custody in the courthouse.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Hundreds in the city of London gather outside Downing Street in an emergency protest demanding a UK arms embargo on Israel.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
🚨🇬🇧 Lidor Dafna filmed himself destroying one of the last remaining food production facilities serving a starving population, then posted the footage on social media as a trophy. The United Kingdom now faces a simple test: will it arrest and prosecute a man, who remains an active soldier of an army carrying out such crimes, or once again permit a perpetrator of genocide to walk freely on its soil and return to Gaza and Lebanon to continue committing his crimes? We have filed our complaint. Now it is up to the British authorities to act.
🇬🇧🚨The #HindRajabFoundation, has filed a criminal complaint in the United Kingdom against Lidor Dafna, an Israeli soldier serving in the 603rd Combat Engineering Battalion of the 7th Armored Brigade, for war crimes and genocide committed in the Gaza Strip. Dafna is now walking free in London, touring the city. ➡️ More → bit.ly/4kiw1mF
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Iran agreed with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan the necessity to force Israel out of Gaza, the West Bank, south of Lebanon and Syria.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
These vapid, thoroughly dishonest and corrupt foreign operatives have been arguing for years that sanctions only target the regime in Iran. Now when there’s talk about putting sanctions on their fave little ethno-state, they’re all flustered that the sanctions will hit ordinary people
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Significant even brave intervention by Oman foreign minister @badralbusaidi at Cambridge calling for the Gulf States to form a non-aggression pact with Iran and Iraq. Says US should no longer be primary provider of security in region, adding external partners have imposed the most damaging of the priorities - "the requirement that Iran be excluded. Not just excluded. Worse. Positioned as the threat against which regional security had to be organised."
He argues "What holds us back is that issues which ought to be handled at a regional level by the states of the Gulf themselves, are made more complex, more intractable and sometimes simply impossible to resolve because the region's security arrangements are insufficiently developed.
"And they are insufficiently developed because they have relied for too long on the involvement of external powers.
"The complications which stand in the way of successful resolutions to both the Iranian nuclear issue and the question of free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz are simply the latest effects of an unstable combination of power projection and dependency in the Gulf.
"In other words, the nuclear issue and the Hormuz issue are both impossible to resolve because external powers continue to define the terms of engagement, while regional powers are unable to take collective responsibility for making their own security arrangements and reach a consensus on them".
Says Iran "has for nearly half a century been systematically excluded from playing any meaningful role in the security arrangements of the region.
"An exclusion with profoundly negative consequences, not just for Iran, but for the region as a whole".
He says "Instead of a genuine security structure designed to maintain stable relations between the eight states of the Gulf, an unstable regional system has been constructed on the entirely false perception that there is a fundamental regional antagonism between Iran and the Arab states of the Gulf.
"There is no such fundamental antagonism. There are problems, yes, of course. But the plain fact is that Arabs and Persians have lived in peace around the Gulf for centuries. It’s not a matter of whether you’re friendly or hostile to Iran.
"Today, Persia is a fact, 93 million people and three thousand years of history. Roughly half of the Gulf littoral.
"Any Gulf security architecture that doesn’t include them is inherently unstable. It’s structurally unsound. And recent events expose the terrible cost of allowing the false perception of antagonism and exclusion."
"It is us, in the Gulf, who ultimately bear the responsibility for devising, developing and implementing a new regional security structure.
The time has come when it no longer makes sense just to blame everyone else.
We need to begin a new regional dialogue on Gulf security, and we need to do so before other solutions are imposed on the region which would effectively consolidate the pattern of dependency and exclusion for which we urgently need to find an alternative.
What is needed, instead, is a new and inclusive framework, involving all eight Gulf littoral states".
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
‼️ The House of Saud Bends the Knee in Tehran
Türkiye and Pakistan are just there to console the Saudis in their moment of humiliation.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the great beyond, Ali Khamenei and Qasem Soleimani are sharing a triumphant high five.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Netanyahu’s opposition now accuses him of treason for attempting to manipulate Israel’s military leadership into attacking Iran to preserve his political career
Last February, when Netanyahu and his Beltway Fifth Column manipulated Trump into a failed, economically disastrous war on Iran, the Pentagon Joint Chiefs followed in lockstep, and the Democratic Party leadership of Schumer and Jeffries quietly assented
פניתי הבוקר ליועצת המשפטית לממשלה בדרישה לפתוח בחקירה פלילית נגד בנימין נתניהו באשמת בגידה.
בחודש האחרון ראש ממשלת ישראל, בנימין נתניהו, לוחץ על ראשי מערכת הביטחון לנקוט צעדים שעלולים לייצר מיסקלקולציה מול איראן.
הניסיון לגרור את מדינת ישראל ערב הבחירות למלחמה, יחד עם הנכונות להקריב את חיילי צה״ל רק בשל חשש מהפסד בבחירות, הם בגידה במדינה, בביטחונה ובחיילי צה״ל.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
I find it amazing how Twitter was simply activated. Went from 0 tweets to coordinated attacks by Tommy Robinson, End Wokeness and other types who have never written about Brazil till today
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
In Brazil, if you are in line to vote inside the voting station you have a legal right to vote, meaning polls stay open past 5pm all the time. This is fake news. What happened was those polls were people were no longer voting closed and those where they did followed the extension
The major question in Brazil…
At exactly 5pm, a code is supposed to be entered that closes and locks the voting machines. Once a machine is locked, it can’t accept any more votes. It’s irreversible.
The Supreme Court extension was relayed a few minutes after polls were supposed to be closed and machines locked.
So… which machines were kept open? In what districts were those machines? And why weren’t they locked at 5pm?
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
🟢 Hamas is calling on the Arab League to hold an emergency meeting to confront Israel's policy of "re-starving" Gaza's population. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem urged groups and movements across the Arab world to "take action on the ground" and pressure all parties to stop the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
He said Israel's renewed starvation policy cannot continue "amid the silence of the concerned parties."
The call comes as Israel lets in about 34% of the 600 aid trucks a day required under the ceasefire, according to a report the Palestinian side prepared for the truce's mediators. The UN's World Food Programme has also cut food aid to 500,000 people in Gaza over funding shortages.
🎥 Saad Jamil & Ahmad Afash
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Gross. So sick of the egotistical self-marketing of Joe & Jill Biden, Kamala Harris, Brett McGurk & so much of this entourage.
The Biden years bequeathed us Trump II and some of the worst war crimes enablement in US history. Contrition, not self-congratulation, is in order.
My dad used to say, “Joey, when you get knocked down, get up.” I’ve leaned on those words my whole life, in politics and with my family, through the best days and the hardest ones. I write about that and more in my new book, PROMISE ME, AMERICA. It’s out November 17th, and you can preorder it now at PromiseMeAmerica.com. I’m looking forward to folks reading it.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
B’Tselem urgently calls on governments and international institutions to act now, using all means available under international law, to prevent the forcible displacement of Palestinian civilians, collective punishment and extensive unlawful destruction in Hebron. Israeli leaders are openly declaring their intentions, and actions on the ground have already begun.
Following the shooting near Hebron on 23 October, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz openly announced plans to forcibly displace Palestinian residents and carry out extensive destruction in the area.
In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “We will apply in the cities the successful offensive model we implemented in the refugee camps.”
That same model has already displaced more than 33,000 Palestinians in the northern West Bank. Now, Israeli leaders are threatening to bring the same mass displacement and destruction to Hebron.
Implementation has already begun. Israeli forces imposed a cordon on Hebron and Halhul, while the Civil Administration began demolishing Palestinian structures in the neighborhood of Farsh al-Hawa. At the same time, Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the establishment of four new settlement farming outposts in the South Hebron Hills.
Israeli leaders are openly announcing plans for collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes. These plans echo Israel’s devastating operations as part of the genocide in Gaza and mark a further escalation of its ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing as part of the Elimination Project in the West Bank: the systematic dismantling of Palestinian collective life while expanding settlements and entrenching permanent Israeli control.
The world cannot stand by as Israel continues its assault on Palestinians, waiting for yet more neighborhoods to be emptied and erased before intervening, despite what we have already witnessed in Gaza and the northern West Bank. Governments and international bodies must act now to prevent these crimes and protect Palestinian civilians.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Farmers in North Kordofan say their season has failed and herders say their livestock are skinny.
Families in North Darfur are migrating not out of fear now but hunger.
Farmers in Gedaref, depended on to feed the rest of the country, say they expect a 75% drop in harvests.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Yglesias makes the point that one should stay silent on unpopular issues so one can win elections and then do the unpopular thing.
That’s an endorsement of systemic lying and betrayal as a governing strategy.
Me: "Even if it was unpopular, are you saying the Democratic Party should not speak out against the president sending migrants who have committed no crimes to be tortured in a foreign gulag?"
@mattyglesias: "Yeah."
Me: "Just stay silent?"
Yglesias: "I think that sometimes, if you want to help people... you gotta win first."
Me: "They might be dead in three years time, by the time you win."
Despite all the arguments on this hellsite over the exact number of his Piker tweets, this was the part of my interview with Matthew Yglesias that really stood out to me. I was actually stunned by this response. Shouldn't politics also stand for something more than triangulation, polling and 4-D chess strategizing?
Full interview: zeteo.com/p/matt-yglesias-me…
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
IS CATHOLIC HEALTH GENERAL COUNSEL JAMES O’BRIEN A BRAZEN LIAR?
There are Causes and there are causes: upper-case “C” such as a genocide and lower-case “c” such as a worker unjustly sacked.
Herewith is a small “c” story. However, it is illustrative of what has become of our country when a medical doctor is treated as if he were an undocumented worker by a depraved medical system.
The dramatis personae include a lecher, a shyster, and a gaggle of nondescript, gray-on-gray bureaucrats, on the one hand, and a devoted and beloved pediatrician, on the other. If this story sounds Dickensian, that’s because it is: pristine Evil versus pristine Good.
Rudolph Baldeo came to the U.S. penniless from Guyana. When he took my course in political theory at Hunter College 35 years ago, Rudolph was a shipping clerk by day and a biology major by night. A brilliant student, one semester he took six science courses with ten labs and earned straight A’s.
Rudolph eventually won a full scholarship to Columbia University towards a PhD in biology but decided instead to pursue a medical career.
In sum, Rudolph’s life trajectory traced the proverbial American Dream.
For a quarter century, Dr. Baldeo invested his professional life in Pediatrics ER (Emergency Room) at Good Samaritan Hospital. He was loved and respected by his colleagues, staff, and patients alike.
Good Sam is owned by Catholic Health Long Island. Its subcontractor at the hospital is Progressive Emergency Physicians (PEP) headed by Dr. Raio. Raio’s claim to fame is that he was caught in an act of fellatio with his subordinate (and mistress) in the hospital parking lot.
One day, out of the blue, the Fellatio King decided to terminate Dr. Baldeo. It was speculated by hospital staff that Catholic Health/PEP was “getting rid of the dinosaurs” (Dr. Baldeo will turn 60 this year) and that Raio wanted to open up a spot for his golfing buddy.
Dr. Baldeo proved faithful in the wholeness of his being to Good Sam. It treated him in return as if disposable trash to be deposited in the gutter.
He was the perfect victim: diminutive stature, soft-spoken, and dark-skinned. It was just assumed that he would go quietly into the night.
But he wouldn’t. Dr. Baldeo decided to fight back.
I myself contacted Catholic Health General Counsel James O’Brien. O’Brien threatened me with a libel suit if I revealed all the sordid and squalid goings-on at the hospital: it was credibly reported that Good Sam overbilled Medicare/Medicaid patients and underreported child sexual abuse allegations.
Then O’Brien did something even more brazen: he purported in a letter to me that “Dr. Baldeo was not employed by the Hospital at any point.”
But Dr. Baldeo received multiple “Catholic Health Reappointment Approval” letters that “approved your application for reappointment as a member of the Medical Staff” in the “Department/Division” of “Pediatric Emergency Medicine” as an “Attending.”
How could Catholic Health at one and the same time “reappoint” Dr. Baldeo as a “member of the Medical staff” at Good Samaritan Hospital as an “Attending”—yet not be Dr. Baldeo’s employer?!
It is a sorry day indeed for our country when a major medical establishment carries on like a Las Vegas fly-by-night craps joint.
To be continued
If you would like to express your outrage at this gross injustice, you can contact these individuals at Catholic Health/PEP:
James O’Brien
[email protected],[email protected]
Bronwyn Pepple
[email protected]
Christopher Raio
[email protected]
Cornelia Munteam
[email protected]
Andrew Sama
[email protected]
Jennifer Brown
[email protected]
Cathy Cahill
[email protected]
Justin Lundbye
[email protected]
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Israel hat heute Nacht eine militärische Großoffensive gegen die für Muslime aller Welt heilige Stadt Hebron gestartet. Außerdem hat Netanyahu befohlen, das gesamte palästinensische Westjordanland abzuriegeln. Er macht dadurch vier Tage vor der Wahl in Israel auch das Westjordanland zu einem riesigen Freiluftgefängnis.
3,4 Millionen Palästinenser werden eingesperrt, verlieren Zugang zu ihrer Arbeit und damit ihr ohnehin ärmliches Einkommen, zu medizinischer Versorgung, zu einem letzten Minimum an menschenwürdigem Leben. Das ist völkerrechtswidrig. Die deutsche Regierung weiß das.
Anlass ist der Angriff zweier Palästinenser bei Hebron, der drei israelische Soldaten verletzte und zwei tötete. Das ist schlimm. Aber es ist nicht vergleichbar mit den über tausend Palästinensern, die im Westjordanland seit dem 7. Oktober 2023 von israelischen Siedlern, der israelischen Polizei und der IDF ermordet wurden. Meist ohne jeden Anlass. Kein einziger israelischer Täter wurde bisher rechtskräftig verurteilt. Israel hält das Töten von Palästinensern auch im Westjordanland für eine zentrale Strategie, die Palästinenser so zu entmutigen, dass sie ihre palästinensische Heimat den Israelis überlassen.
Die unzähligen Gitter, Straßensperren, schweren Eisentore und Checkpoints hatte Netanyahu bereits 2025 errichten lassen. Ich habe sie bei meinem letzten Besuch der Westbank im letzten Jahr besichtigen können. Schon damals ahnten die Palästinenser, was Israel plante.
Die deutsche Bundesregierung wird heute wie üblich milde protestieren. Doch sie wird weiter die gerade jetzt wichtigen Handelssanktionen gegen Israel blockieren, die von der Mehrheit der EU-Staaten zu Recht gefordert werden. Zynisch genehmigt die deutsche Regierung auch weiter Rüstungsexporte nach Israel. Erst vor vier Wochen hat sie trotz Gaza- und Irankrieg und trotz der täglichen Morde der israelischen Siedler im Westjordanland ein atomwaffenfähiges U-Boot in die israelische Hafenstadt Haifa geliefert, teilfinanziert mit deutschen Steuergeldern. Drei weitere, noch modernere U-Boote sollen folgen.
Unser Kanzler ist ganz offen Komplize eines kriminellen Regierungschefs, gegen den der Internationale Strafgerichtshof einen internationalen Haftbefehl wegen Kriegsverbrechen erlassen hat.
Die Bundesregierung interessiert sich nicht wirklich für das Völkerrecht. Sie heuchelt ihr Interesse nur vor. Strafverfahren gegen sie wegen Beihilfe zum Mord an Palästinensern werden von der deutschen Justiz eingestellt. Auf Weisung der Bundesregierung? Wer wie tausende Deutsche Netanyahu und seine Politik konsequent kritisiert, wird vor Gericht gestellt. Das erinnert an düsterste Zeiten.
Ich war früher so stolz auf Deutschland. Heute kann ich mich für diese Komplizen von Völkermördern nur noch schämen.
Bill Stearns 🍉 retweeted
Urgent Action: Third States Must Intervene to Stop Israel’s Mass Starvation and Intensified Genocidal Attacks on Gaza alhaq.org/advocacy/27977.htm…
