For a while now I’ve contemplated this: A specific weekly column that catalogs for posterity the latest examples of the Republican party and conservative movement in general’s descent into absolute, painfully stupid chaos. Last week, an entire piece could’ve been written on the unprecedented filibustering of Obama defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel — notice how many, usually shameful and embarrassing, things have happened in American politics over the past few years that have never happened before? — and the fact that it stemmed from the ongoing apoplexy over conspiracy-minded Republican House-members’ Great White Whale, Benghazi. But certainly there was more than that last week. There always is. And I think that’s why I haven’t really bothered trying to keep track of the madness: It would take up too much of my time. A column detailing the damn-fool lunacy that is the modern Republican party on a week-to-week basis would probably take two full days to write and be 8,000 words long. Who has the time, or the miraculously regenerating supply of Tylenol, for that?

So I guess the best thing to do is keep it to only the biggest, most pronounced embarrassments of the week. I realize that even those will be up for debate by many, but I’ll do my best to highlight what I can and if I leave out your favorite example of conservative stupidity on occasion, my sincerest apologies.

So, let’s begin.

With Friends Like These…

For those who still insist on playing the both-sides-are-equally-screwed-up game, please stop. Democrats and progressives do dumb shit all the time, true, but very little these days on the level of basing an entire campaign of political righteous indignation — one that’s helped to halt the confirmation of a presidential cabinet nominee — on a misinterpreted joke. Last week, conspiratorial rumors began circulating among Republicans on the Hill that Chuck Hagel had received money from a shadowy group called “Friends of Hamas.” This, as far as they were concerned, gave them even more reason to hold up Hagel’s confirmation besides simply the need to take a hostage in a desperate attempt to make somebody finally give a crap about Benghazi. One problem: there is no “Friends of Hamas.” The group doesn’t exist. And this week, we learned where the rumor, and the reference to the non-existent group itself, came from. Dan Friedman of The New York Daily News admitted that during a conversation with a GOP aide a few weeks back, he had asked, jokingly, what the Republicans were looking for that could be considered “anti-Israel” in fellow Republican Hagel’s background:

“So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the ‘Junior League of Hezbollah, in France?’ And: What about ‘Friends of Hamas?’ The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed.”

Ah, except that these days to give the benefit of the doubt to the Conservative Entertainment Complex is to court disaster. Hilarious disaster, but disaster nonetheless. The “Friends of Hamas” tip was quickly leaked to the Keystone Kops who now run Brietbart in the absence of its late namesake and the site’s Ben Shapiro ran with it, trumpeting it as a major exclusive. The meme was picked up by the usual suspects like Hugh Hewitt, Fox News and the increasingly adrift National Review and within days it was a talking point for giddy Republicans on the Hill. Again, a joke. A joke became an honest-to-God point of contention in the ugly and shameful fight over Chuck Hagel’s confirmation.

But here’s where it goes from profoundly stupid to fucking spectacularly stupid: When Friedman explained how the rumor had started, rather than accepting that explanation, Shapiro doubled-down on his hyper-serious indignation, writing:

“Since the original ‘Friends of Hamas’ story was written, the media has downplayed or ignored the myriad of borderline anti-Semitic Hagel comments regarding Iran and the State of Israel, as well as the ‘Jewish lobby.’ They have deliberately obstructed news coverage of Hagel’s well-documented supported base among friends of Hamas. Instead of asking Hagel to release the requested documents, the media has attacked Breitbart News.”

Yes, the responsible media haven’t paid attention to the story that was based on a joke, about a group that doesn’t actually exist, because they’re the responsible media and not an online fan ‘zine for idiots. The “Friends of Hamas” miasma perfectly typifies the current state of Republican thinking — namely, there is no thinking. There’s just a lot of knee-jerk reacting by grifters looking for viewers, readers and listeners and the very powerful men and women trying to avoid having their cushy D.C. jobs taken away by the millions of rubes who believe the word of those grifters as gospel.

Sleeper Sell

I already know that if I do continue to do this on occasion, most of what I post will be whatever latest conspiracy theory the right has either conjured out of thin air or desperately latched onto. But really nothing illustrates the state of a political organization better than its willingness to eat any amount of bullshit that’s ladled onto a plate in front of it, absent any evidence whatsoever that what it’s being asked to scarf down isn’t, in fact, bullshit.

Case in point: Al Jazeera America might possibly activate Al Qaeda terrorist sleeper cells in Detroit.

Yesterday on Fox News — of course — regular network contributor Lisa Daftari offered up the worrisome suggestion that Al Jazeera’s expansion to American markets would include Detroit, and Detroit, as you know, has a large community of expatriate Muslims who could be secret members of Al Qaeda and could therefore be, I guess, subliminally flashed the Queen of Diamonds by Al Jazeera and turned into active killers bent on the destruction of America. Or something. Daftari implored viewers to Google information about sleeper cells in Detroit. Unfortunately, if you do that, the dominant story that will come up is about a group of men who were accused of plotting to blow up Disneyland in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 but who were eventually cleared because the prosecutor may have purposely withheld exculpatory evidence.

Regardless, there are Muslims in Detroit and there are Muslims at Al Jazeera and since Muslims aren’t to be trusted because they’re all potentially terrorists be afraid — be very afraid. It’s the conservative way these days.

Macy Bray

I try to avoid any story about Donald Trump, mainly because nothing he does is of any consequence and everything he does is carefully engineered to keep people talking about him, and secondly because — well, fuck him, that’s why. Still, his recent suing spree has been so over-the-top desperate that it’s actually worth commenting on simply because it’s just that indicative of Trump’s cultural, to say nothing of intellectual, bankruptcy.

You probably already know about Trump’s suit against Bill Maher for breach of contract because the comic refused to pay him after making a joke on a late night show offering $5-million in exchange for proof from Trump that the alleged billionaire isn’t the son of an orangutan. As Maher responded perfectly, it speaks volumes about Trump — whom Maher calls a “rich idiot” — that for a little publicity he’s willing to actually allow a public debate to continue over whether he has his family reunions at the zoo.

Well, now Trump’s no doubt exhausted and embarrassed lawyer has issued a cease-and-desist letter — taking the gun out of his mouth long enough to do so — threatening to sue Angelo Carusone, who started an online and brick-and-mortar protest campaign aimed at getting Macy’s to drop Trump’s name brand from its stores and dump Trump as a celebrity spokesperson in commercials.

According to Trump and Trump’s attorney, Carusone owes the reality TV star $25-million for “mob-like bullying and coercion” and “intentionally disseminating misinformation.” If you’re quizzically staring at your screen right now and thinking, “Gosh, that sounds an awful lot like all Donald Trump does these days,” congratulations, you’ve graduated Summa Cum Laude from Irony U.

I mention Trump as an example of the stupidity of the GOP this week simply because, inexplicably, he continues to be coddled by Fox News and held up as a hero by its mercifully dying-off demographic of angry old white people. He’s brashness without brains and indignation without intellect — and, best of all, he puts on a good show. And that’s all that those who are easily enticed into the tent by the carnival barker really need these days.

Okay, that’s it — time to go take another handful of Tylenol. Or maybe Vicodin. Anyway, see you next week, I’m sure.

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On Nov. 11, 2012, the IDF targeted Ahmed Jabri, the head of Hamas’ military wing, in the Gaza Strip. Jabri was a senior Hamas operative who served in the upper echelon of the Hamas’ command. Israel claims he was directly responsible for executing terror attacks against Israel in the past.

Check out the footage of the aerial assassination that targeted Jabri’s car:

The assassination is apparently part of a much broader series of assaults from Israel against militant in the Gaza strip. From the Guardian

Reuters quotes Palestinian sources as saying nine people were killed in the strikes on Jaabari’s vehicle. Al-Jazeera says the attack killed Jaabari and five others, including Jaabari’s son.

The assault on Gaza appears to be ongoing. Since Donnison’s tweet of about 20 minutes ago, he has reported one more “explosion” in the north. A Twitter list of 421 people inside Gaza contains many mentions of new explosions.

Al-Jazeera reports that a rocket has been fired from Gaza into Ashkelon, over the northern border.

Al-Jazeera now reports that Israeli air raids continue on Gaza. It appears that a major offensive, called “Pillar of Defense” by the IDF, is indeed under way.

Hamas has stated that Israel has ‘Opened the gates of hell’ and is promising revenge attacks.

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By Bob Cesca: Americans have insufferably short memories and even shorter attention spans. The shiny-object spectacle of a major news event is captivating until another shiny object comes along and we’re on to something else. And if that event has no physical bearing on us personally — whether it’s geographically far away or victimizing people outside of our immediate demographic — we lose interest even faster.

So when there’s a massive oil spill way, way out there in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, we kind of lie to ourselves believing the oil will just, you know, disappear. It’s a similar mindset as when we throw away garbage. As long as it’s away from our ugly mugs, it’s no longer stinking up the place. Out of sight, out of mind.

The BP oil spill — the result of the Deep Water Horizon oil rig explosion two years ago tomorrow, April 20, 2010 — is just like that.

It’s not in our back yards. It’s not visibly hurting you and me personally. It’s not as pulse-pounding and dramatic as it was two years ago, with oil spewing from that underwater pipe live on streaming internet video while the oil rig burned like a nuclear explosion. Once the geyser of oil was capped, the debate about energy and oil production was over. The beaches looked clean (they’re really not so clean at all), and the nation went on to the next thing. And right around the corner was Fukushima — another energy-related disaster similar to the BP spill in so many ways, chief among them is the fact that our energy policies, our usage and our menu of choices are exactly the same as they were before the Deep Water Horizon exploded.

Yes, most people, irrespective of ideology or political party or environmental concern, have moved on. Personally, I’m as guilty as anyone else. I don’t blog about it as often as I did when it was happening in real time and, frankly, it’s a challenge to continuously stare a tragedy of that scale in the face all day every day. Even the best of us can suffer occasional bouts of outrage fatigue. In fact, I didn’t even remember the anniversary was this week until Ashby from my blog sent me this link about one of the many consequences of the spill and the toxic dispersants used to rinse away the barrels and barrels of nightmarish gunk.

Two years later, shrimp, crab and other sea life are turning up with horrific deformities. The dispersant acts as a mutagenic chemical, altering the genome of the life it infiltrates. So shrimpers and fishermen are pulling up large numbers of eyeless shrimp and crabs.

At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” [Louisiana commercial fisher Tracy] Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico],” she added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.”

As we were warned by various experts at the time, the dispersants could be more dangerous than the oil itself. Prior to being injected into the Gulf, Nalco, the manufacturer of Corexit, reported that there weren’t any toxicity studies performed on the dispersant. And, really, how could they ever determine what a million gallons of dispersant mixed with hundreds of millions of gallons of oil would do to animal and human life. But because dispersants would ameliorate the sight of sludge-covered sea gulls (they look bad on TV), BP dumped unprecedented amounts of Corexit and other chemicals into the oil-drenched water. If you remember the internet video of the leaking pipes, you might recall how dispersant was being pumped directly into the geysers of oil.

Only 11 people died in the initial explosion of the BP oil rig. Countless others could be contaminated with toxic chemicals, and nobody really knows the long-term genetic-level damage to the people who live near the spill, or who eat the seafood produced there. An estimated 210,000,000 gallons of oil is still in the water, either in the form of 10-mile-long slicks, or in tiny chemical globules. As consumers, we’re still sucking down oil like Coca-Cola (in our defense, we have few alternatives). The Obama administration, to its credit, is clamping down on drilling with new regulations, even though the president continues to push for an “all of the above” energy policy that includes oil, nuclear and natural gas — natural gas, by the way, is another massive environmental disaster waiting to happen. But we really haven’t advanced very far away from the old school sources of energy due to Big Oil lobbyists and Republican resistance against funding new energy technology with a moon-race caliber effort.

And so we can expect more of the same unless there’s a popular effort to remember and retaliate against the awfulness that occurred two short years ago in the waters of the Gulf.

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By Chris Woods: For some weeks in early winter 2009 the people of al-Majala, southern Yemen, had noticed a spotter plane overhead.

The aircraft, most likely American, wasn’t seen as a threat. After all, it had been seven years since the last US military action in Yemen, when a CIA drone had killed six al Qaeda-linked militants.

But everything was about to change. At 6am on December 17, a US Navy vessel stationed in the Gulf launched at least one cruise missile towards al-Majala.

The US target that day was Saleh Mohammed al-Anbouri, also known as al-Kazemi. The man was a known militant, who had allegedly been ‘bringing nationals from different countries to train them to become Al Qaeda members’, as stated in a later inquiry. He was linked to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a franchise of the global terrorist organisation which had launched multiple attacks against US interests in Yemen.

Al Anbouri had brought his wife and four young sons to live with his tribe in al-Majala. Also living in the hamlet was the extended al Haydara family, mostly women and children.  They had no known links to AQAP.

Al Anbouri told locals that after recently being released from prison, he wanted to ‘start a new life.’ On the morning of December 17, he and a group of other men were digging a well.

But then at least one BGM-109D Tomahawk cruise missile hit al-Majala. An Amnesty International investigation later forensically identified fragments, concluding:

This type of missile, launched from a warship or submarine, is designed to carry 166 cluster sub-munitions (bomblets) which each explode into over 200 sharp steel fragments that can cause injuries up to 150m away. Incendiary material inside the bomblet also spreads fragments of burning zirconium designed to set fire to nearby flammable objects.

Entire families killed

Within hours of the attack, news began circulating that a large number of civilians had died in al-Majala. The New York Times reported that night: ’some witnesses and local journalists in Abyan said a number of civilians were also killed in Thursday’s raids there.’ By the following day Al Jazeera was airing video images of shrouded corpses.

Forty-one civilians died in the US attack. Fourteen members of the extended al Haydara clan were killed, along with 27 members of the al Anbouri clan. Three more people later died when they stepped on left-over cluster munitions.

As a surviving woman later told reporter Jeremy Scahill, for Al Jazeera, ‘At 6am they were sleeping and I was making bread. When the missiles exploded I lost consciousness. I didn’t know what had happened to my children, my daughter, my husband. Only I survived with this old man and my daughter.’

Among those killed that day were 22 children. The youngest, Khadje Ali Mokbel Louqye, was just one year old. A dozen women also died, five of them reportedly pregnant.

Yet these numbers mask the many individual families annihilated in the attack. Mohammed Nasser Awad Jaljala, 60, his 30-year-old wife Nousa, their son Nasser, 6, and daughters Arwa, 4, and Fatima, aged 2, were all killed.

Then there was 35-year old Ali Mohammed Nasser Jaljala, his wife Qubla (25), and their four daughters Afrah (9), Zayda (7), Hoda (5) and Sheikha (4) who all died.

Ahmed Mohammed Nasser Jaljala, 30, was killed alongside his 21-year old wife Qubla and 50-year old mother Mouhsena. Their daughter Fatima, aged 13, was the only survivor of the family, badly injured and needing extensive medical treatment abroad.

The Anbour clan suffered similarly catastrophic losses. Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye died with his wife, son and three daughters. His brother Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye’s seven-strong family were also wiped out.

Sheik Saleh Ben Fareed, a tribal leader, went to the area shortly after the attack and described the carnage to Al Jazeera reporter Scahill: ‘If somebody has a weak heart, I think they will collapse. You see goats and sheep all over. You see heads of those who were killed here and there. You see children. And you cannot tell if this meat belongs to animals or to human beings. Very sad, very sad.’

The deaths represent one of the highest civilian death tolls of any recent US military operation.

Yet because the US is fighting a covert war in Yemen, it is unknown whether there has been any investigation into the deaths. Instead, the US has actively sought to cover up its role in the attack.

The intended US target of the attack, Al Anbouri, was killed that day, along with more than a dozen alleged militants. Only one has ever been identified – Abdulrahman Qaed Al-Zammari. Six bodies were rushed from the scene by ‘unidentified armed men’, according to reports, and buried in an unknown location.

For the Pentagon’s elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) – the group that captured Saddam Hussein and would later kill Osama bin Laden – the first US attack in Yemen in seven years must have seemed a success. A wanted terrorist and his alleged associates were dead.

Three weeks after that attack, General David Petraeus, then head of United States Central Command (Centcom) – and who now runs the CIA – met Yemen’s President Saleh in the capital Sanaa. In line with the covert nature of this new front in Obama’s war on terror, the two schemed to cover up the US role in the attack.

But Saleh was concerned. He ‘lamented the use of “not very accurate” cruise missiles…  mistakes were made,’ he said. Why were so many civilians killed in the attack?

According to the secret report of that meeting, later released by WikiLeaks, Petraeus was thrown by Saleh’s concern. ‘The only civilians killed were the wife and two children’ of Al Anbouri, he told the president. An aside in the cable notes that ‘Saleh’s conversation on the civilian casualties suggests he has not been well briefed by his advisors.’

Yet it was Petraeus himself who appears to have been poorly briefed that day.

Al-Anbouri’s wife Amina did die. So too her four sons Maha aged 12, Soumaya, 9, Shafika, 4 and two-year-old Shafiq. So did 39 other civilians, we now know.

Official inquiry

Days after the attack, Yemen’s parliament convened a Commission of inquiry into the security incidents in Abyan province. Made up of 14 representatives, the commission was led by Sheikh Hamir Ben Abdullah Ben Hussein Al-Ahmar, now deputy speaker of the Yemeni parliament.

The commission sought to discover what had really happened in al-Majala, travelling to the hamlet and questioning survivors. A spokesman for the sheikh told the Bureau this week that the inquiry ‘did not state that the American forces launched the attack’.

The commission found grisly evidence of a massacre. Although it concluded that al Anbouri and 13 other militants died, their deaths were overshadowed by those of 44 civilians. The effect of a cluster bomb-filled cruise missile had been particularly brutal:

When members of the Commission visited the cemetery where the victims were buried, they noticed that some members of the two families were buried in communal graves because their remnants could not be identified. Their bodies had been completely torn into pieces during the attack.

Naming the dead
The commission published its full investigation, in Arabic, on February 7, 2010. Included were the names, ages, genders, family relationships and clans of all 44 civilians killed, along with eyewitness testimony from survivors.

A month later Yemen’s parliament approved the commission’s findings in full, calling on the government to open a judicial investigation. According to Amnesty, ‘the same day, the Yemen government apologized to the victims’ families, describing the killings as a “mistake” during an operation that was meant to target al-Qa’ida militants, and said that committees would be established to provide compensation for the people killed and the property destroyed.’

This week Yemen confirmed to the Bureau that it had itself paid out compensation at local levels to affected families, but that ‘the American authorities did not get involved in this process in any way.’

For two years the US has been aware, in extensive detail, of all 44 civilians killed at al-Majala. Its direct role in the attack is clearly documented, and confirmed in leaked US diplomatic cables.

The Bureau this week asked the US Department of State and Centcom, which is responsible for US military operations in Yemen, the following questions:

• What investigations has the US carried out into the December 17 attack and the high number of reported civilian casualties? What were the conclusions reached?
• Specifically on the Yemen parliamentary commission findings – what further investigations were carried out into the reports of 44 named civilians killed in that attack?
• What disciplinary measures, if any, have been taken against US personnel involved in that attack?
• What compensation, if any, has been paid by the US to surviving members of the al-Hadra and al-Anbour families?

A State Department spokesperson, speaking on background terms, replied: ‘I don’t have any information for you with respect to the December 17, 2009 incident in question. I refer you to the Government of Yemen for additional information on its counterterrorism efforts.’

Centcom declined to discuss matters which may relate to US Special Operations.

The Bureau also asked the US Senate Armed Services Committee what investigations it has carried out generally into US military actions in Yemen, and specifically into the December 17 2009 incident. The committee replied that it was ‘not able to answer these questions’.

The names in full of civilians killed
The Yemen Commission report named all 44 civilians killed in the attack, which the Bureau has here translated. Three civilians were killed shortly after the strike, after stepping on cluster munitions. They were Khaled Mohammed Ali, Nasser Saleh Al-Soueidi and Mithaq Al-Jild. All 41 others died when the cruise missile hit, named as:

The dead from the Haydara clan:

Family of Mohammed Nasser Awad Jaljala

Family of Ali Mohammed Nasser Jaljala:

Family of Ahmed Mohammed Nasser Jaljala:

The dead from the Anbour clan:

Family of Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye

Family of Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye

Family of Mokbel Salem Louqye:

Family of Abdullah Awad Sheikh:

Family of Hussein Abdullah Awad Sheikh:

Family of Nasser Mahdi Ahmad Bouh:

Family of Mohammed Saleh Mohammed Ali Al-Anbouri:

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If you want serious political analysis, good journalism and real debate, you cannot rely on American network news to provide it. CNN, MSNBC and Fox are all engaged in a laughable ratings war that has seen journalistic standards disappear and political commentary plunge to the level of a reality show.

Thankfully, all is not lost and foreign broadcasters have filled the deepening chasm left by the warring American mega corporations. Al Jazeera, the BBC and RT (formerly Russia Today) have been mining the American television market providing excellent journalism and thought provoking commentary.

Given my own personal political persuasion and commentary style, I have always found Alyona Minkovski's show 'The Alyona Show' on RT to be the best of the foreign news/commentary programs. Alyona provides biting analysis, real journalism and lively debate on her show that broadcasts every evening at 6pm ET. Alyona is telegenic and articulate, making it an easy show to watch for an hour, but her originality and integrity really makes it something worth tuning into. Her guests range from DC politicians to UK Hip Hop artists and the debate never conforms to the beltway point scoring sessions you see on the American news networks.

Alyona recently did an interview on CSPAN about her show, and I'd urge everyone to check it out. Mark my words, Alyona will be a big force in journalism in the coming years, and during this interview, you'll see why:

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