#hama mike

[the-gershomite]

G.I. Joe #17 -November 1983- Marvel Comics

"Loose Ends"

script by Larry Hama

pencil art by Mike Vosburg

inked by Jon D'Agostino

letters by Joe Rosen

colors by George Roussos

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Sen. Bernie Sanders displayed photos of starving Palestinian children on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday to explain his decision to boycott an upcoming speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Democratic and Republican leaders formally invited to address a joint meeting of Congress amid Israel's catastrophic assault on Gaza.

The monthslong military campaign has had appalling impacts on Palestinian children, Sanders (I-Vt.) emphasized in his floor remarks Monday, blasting U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for eating "fine steaks" at fundraising dinners with his "billionaire friends" while Israel's army blocks critical food aid from entering Gaza, causing kids to starve to death.

"This is a photograph of a child in Gaza taken by Getty," said the Vermont senator as an aide displayed a picture of an emaciated Palestinian child.

The photo was one of several that Sanders showed during his speech, stressing that there are thousands of children in Gaza suffering acute malnutrition as a "direct result of Netanyahu's policies—Netanyahu, the man Speaker Johnson has invited to address Congress."

"No," Sanders said, "I will not be in attendance for that speech."

Watch Sanders' remarks in full:

Sanders is one of many progressive U.S. lawmakers expected to boycott Netanyahu's speech to Congress, the timing of which remains unclear after the Israeli prime minister's office denied reporting by Punchbowl and other outlets that the date was set for June 13—a day U.S. President Joe Biden is scheduled to be out of the country.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the roughly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Axios on Monday that she expects the boycott of Netanyahu's speech to be "large," noting there are "a lot of people who are extremely upset he is coming here."

According to Axios, "Jayapal said she has spoken to several lawmakers who went to Netanyahu's 2015 speech [to Congress] but said they will not attend this time."

Speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) signaled that she would join the congressional boycott, saying the Israeli prime minister "shouldn't be here."

"I don't think that it is productive for a Republican or a Democrat to invite him," she added.

Netanyahu stands accused by the International Criminal Court of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including the "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare" and "willfully causing great suffering." Last month, the ICC's prosecutor formally applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as several Hamas leaders.

Whatever the date of his speech to the U.S. Congress, protests are expected to greet the prime minister upon his arrival in Washington, D.C.

Recent survey data has shown that a majority of Americans oppose Israel's war on Gaza and want the Biden administration to cut off U.S. arms sales to the country.

"He's an indicted felon in Israel with an indictment as a war criminal at the ICC and they've invited him to speak here! Shame," James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, said of Netanyahu late Monday.

[shihlun]

Kaizo Hayashi

- The Most Terrible Time in My Life

1994

[hilacopter]

I'll admit I didn't know who this Mike Pollock guy was until now as I've never really been a Sonic fan, but seeing Hamas stans piss and shit themselves over him literally just acknowledging and wanting the return of the Israeli hostages, not saying anything anti-Palestine, has been strangely cathartic, if a bit infuriating. Like they'll throw a temper tantrum over a Jew that's not even a Zionist wishing for abducted innocent civilians to return home safely, meanwhile I see the third person this week who turns out to want me dead for being born here and just go "damn, another one to the pile.". Like I've seen his responses in the twitter thread and his stance seems to be peaceful and humanitarian. But nooooooo he's actually an (((evil Zionist))) because he... wants for both sides to live in peace instead of for Israelis to be murdered for existing. Ok but also the reason I'm making this post is because it's because of this I found out Mike Pollock is the voice actor for Greg from Ratatoing, a character I've been ironically obsessing over for ages and now will probably do so even more.

[cantsayidont]

October 1983. That's it, that's the show — Cobra Commander (left) and his cadre of opportunists, mountebanks, and scoundrels plot against each other in a scene from G.I. JOE #16. The punchline:

You might well ask what the Commander is planning to do with that wine glass, since he's wearing a full-face helmet. Writer Larry Hama addresses just that point eight issues later, in G.I. JOE #24:

This is really the thing that has kept this ridiculous series alive (it was later revived by other publishers, and recently passed issue #300): Larry Hama's weird sense of humor and flair for eccentricity. The plots are frequently not much and the heroes are mostly no deeper than the plastic action figures on which they're based, but the ludicrous villains are consistently entertaining.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ten years ago this August, a white police officer killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. What happened on Canfield Drive that day sparked a nationwide movement to save Black lives, end police brutality, and make safety a reality for all people. As a registered nurse, pastor, and local activist, I spent over 400 days protesting alongside thousands of my fellow community members. I will never forget the brutality we faced in response to our calls for humanity. Police used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, noise munitions, batons, shields, fists, and boots against us. The Missouri National Guard called us “enemy forces.” Our government labeled us “Black identity extremists.” Many politicians condemned us. Those of us on the front lines were traumatized, but we knew that time would prove we were on the right side of history — and it did. Time will prove the same for the students currently protesting across the country. From Columbia University in New York City to Washington University in St. Louis to The George Washington University in Washington, DC, thousands of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and their allies of different faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds have engaged in overwhelmingly nonviolent civil disobedience in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to their universities’ complicity in violation of those rights. For years, politicians, university administrators, and media figures across the political spectrum have professed their commitment to free speech, diversity, and inclusion. They have feigned concern about the state of free speech and dissent on college campuses. Yet when presented with organized, disciplined, nonviolent protest in support of a moral cause that is routinely stigmatized, many of those same people have championed violent, repressive crackdowns intended to crush dissent. We have all seen the footage of armed officers using pepper spray, rubber bullets, fists, and boots against students, faculty, and their allies without provocation. We have all witnessed the cowardly response from too many university administrators, some of whom would rather risk or inflict violence on their own community members than grapple with calls for divestment. We have all heard the stories of students arrested, assaulted, suspended, evicted, banned, smeared, humiliated. Despite knowing what happened nearby in 2014 and expressing support for the Ferguson protesters, Washington University administrators in St. Louis summoned dozens of law enforcement officers to a protest where students, faculty, and other community members were peacefully gathered. Some were brutalized. Officers were filmed beating and body slamming a 65-year-old professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Steve Tamari, who was later hospitalized with multiple broken ribs and a broken hand. Steve is my friend and I am thankful he’s alive. I met him and his wife, Sandra, both Palestinian-Americans, when they joined us in the streets during the Ferguson Uprising. Protesters are now being smeared as violent and antisemitic. Let me be clear: Trespassing, setting up tents, and carrying signs are not violent. Condemning a government that has killed more than 14,5000 children in seven months and created a humanitarian catastrophe is not antisemitic. Beating, tackling, pepper spraying, and shooting rubber bullets at people is violent. The January 6 insurrection was violent. Denying the humanity of the many Jewish people who are participating in the encampments is antisemitic.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) for Teen Vogue on police and government repression of social movements such as the Ferguson protests and the campus protests over the Gaza Genocide (05.14.2024).

Rep. Cori Bush wrote an insightful op-ed in Teen Vogue calling out police and government's role in creating violent crackdowns on social movements such as the campus protests against Israel's genocide campaign in Gaza and the Black Lives Matter movement. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/cori-bush-student-protests

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Liel Leibovitz

According to sources in and out of the U.S. government familiar with Fenzel’s reports and advocacy, nearly every claim presented by the USSC as fact seems to have been lifted directly, sometimes verbatim, from the websites of highly partisan pro-Palestinian organizations, including the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) and the far-left Israeli NGO B’Tselem, which accuses Israel of apartheid and receives vast support from European governments and from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

In the past 12 months, 13 Israelis were murdered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and 17 in the West Bank—not counting those slaughtered on Oct. 7, 2023—while doing nothing more provocative than driving home or stopping for gas. The number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by Israelis under such conditions over the same time period is zero.

But the story the administration has been telling anyone who will listen is very different. By scrubbing any mention of the daily violence directed by Palestinian terror operatives against Jewish civilians living in the West Bank from his reports, Fenzel has eliminated the clear retaliatory motive for the vast majority of attacks by Israelis against West Bank Palestinians. Thinly laundered reports from expressly anti-Israel organizations, designed to support an illusion of innocent Palestinians being violently attacked by bloodthirsty Israelis, paint a picture of an Israeli equivalent to the Palestinian atrocities of Oct. 7, lending itself an easy “both-sides” posture meant to ease the way to creating a new Palestinian state in both the West Bank and Gaza. With an executive order now in place, the Biden administration has all the tools it needs to crack down on any form of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria, and on anyone, in Israel or stateside, who supports it.

[makeminebronze]

Iron Fist pt 2

[marktaylor-canfield]

Bernie Sanders Refuses To Attend Netanyahu Address To Congress - MTC REPORT

[news4dzhozhar]

Updates from just the past few days

[the-gershomite]

G.I. Joe #15 -September 1983- Marvel comics

"Red-Eye to Miami!"

script by Larry Hama

pencil art by Mike Vosburg

inked by Jon D'Agostino

letters by Rick Parker

colors by Denny O'Neil

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Sanders reups vow to boycott ‘war criminal’ Netanyahu’s address to Congress | The Hill

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) re-upped his vow to boycott “war criminal” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress and again slammed the leader’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal,” Sanders said in a statement released on Saturday. “He should not be invited to address a joint meeting of Congress. I certainly will not attend.”

Sanders’ rebuke of Netanyahu and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza comes as he was officially invited to address Congress, The Hill first reported on Friday. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sent Netanyahu a formal invitation that was also signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). The address is expected “as soon as the next eight weeks or soon after August recess,” a source familiar told The Hill.

The progressive Democrat previously said he would not attend any speech by Netanyahu in Congress, saying last week that Israel created “the worst humanitarian disaster in modern history.” That week, Johnson was pushing to get Netanyahu to address Congress. Schumer, who previously slammed the prime minister and called for new elections in the country, said he was open to signing the invitation.

In his statement on Saturday, Sanders said it was a “sad day” for the U.S. that Netanyahu was invited by leaders of both political parties. He reiterated that Israel has the right to defend itself following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the southern part of the country where around 1,200 Israelis were killed and around 250 were taken hostage. But, the Vermont senator, strongly criticized Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, slamming it for the number of civilians killed, the damage to the infrastructure and the destruction of the health care system in the region.

“Israel does not have the right to kill more than 34,000 civilians and wound over 80,000 – 5% of the population of Gaza. It does not have the right to orphan 19,000 children. It does not have the right to displace 75% of the people of Gaza from their homes,” Sanders said.

“It does not have the right to annihilate Gaza’s health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers,” he continued. “It does not have the right to bomb all 12 of Gaza’s universities and 56 of its schools, or deny 625,000 children in Gaza the opportunity for an education.”

He also said Israel does not have the right to block humanitarian aid and the Jewish state is in violation of the “American and international law.”

“It does not have the right to condemn hundreds of thousands of children to death by starvation,” he said while also voicing his support for International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

“The ICC is right,” Sanders said. “Both of these people are engaged in clear and outrageous violations of international law.”

[dragoneyes618]

"My decision to step down is not just about my views on Israel or anti-Semitism. Yes, the most serious incidents I have faced have been driven by Islamists, whether it was Muslims Against Crusades or the convicted murderer Ali Harbi Ali. But more broadly, all MPs are suffering increased levels of threats, to the point that we now regard abuse and graffiti as low-level. And it’s that build-up that has eventually gotten to be too much.

You mentioned the October 7 issue. What’s going on there is that it’s developed into a polarized debate in which there’s no center ground. There’s no nuance. If you are for Israel’s right to defend itself and eradicate Hamas, then you’re branded a genocidal baby-killer by those on the other side who don’t share that view. There’s no ability to have a reasoned debate the two.

I understand everyone’s horror at the loss of life in Gaza, but when people push for a cease-fire and you challenge them, saying, “And then what?” — they have no answer."

- MP Mike Freer

[head-post]

House of Representatives failed to pass a separate bill on aid to Israel

The US House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a Republican-led bill that would provide $17.6 billion to Israel.

The vote passed 250 to 180. With 166 Democrats and 14 Republicans opposed, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill.

Many who voted against the bill both called for greater protection of human rights in the region and cited Israel’s ongoing offensive against the Gaza Strip.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that the bill is “even worse than we expected” and “if this bill gets to the House, it will be dead on arrival.”

Read more HERE

[cantsayidont]

January 1987. Perhaps the quintessential '80s comic, the long-running Marvel G.I. JOE series is a loopy mixture of flag-waving American interventionism, shameless marketing hustle, mindless violence, berserk obsession with ninjas, and the lingering specter of the Vietnam War. Ideologically indefensible and remarkably silly, it's redeemed mainly (if barely) by longtime writer Larry Hama's streak of weird deadpan humor and flashes of genuine eccentricity.

It also stands as an unexpectedly prescient preview of a whole category of today's real-world villainy. The main bad guys in G.I. JOE are mostly a motley collection of grifters, opportunists, and mountebanks whose greed, ego, buffoonery, and backstabbing would be laughable if they were less heavily armed. Cobra Commander (deliberately never named or unmasked on panel) is a former used car dealer who's built a terrorist organization as one part multilevel marketing scam to two parts Libertarian/AnCap militia, with a philosophy that's pure Gordon Gekko. Destro is an old-money arms-dealing aristo who turns up his nose at the Commander's incoherent faux-populism and lunatic underlings, but not enough to not do business with them. Most of their named lieutenants are ridiculous bottom-feeders driven by petty grudges and the urge to talk big and dress up. No one ever accused this book of being sociopolitically astute, but almost any of its recurring villains could easily have a thriving political career today. What a world we live in …

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dartagnan at Daily Kos:

As anti-Israel protests have spread across many of the country’s most prestigious college campuses this week, several Republicans in Congress have sought to burnish their pro-Israel credentials by calling for the U.S. military to respond.  Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton exhorted President Joe Biden to send in National Guard units, while obliquely encouraging motorists to run over protestors. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley similarly demanded a militarized federal response “to protect Jewish Americans,” while Mitch McConnell and John Thune penned a letter, signed by 25 of their fellow GOP senators, calling the demonstrators “anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs” and demanding that “federal law enforcement” respond.

Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson paid a visit to Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday where he was greeted by catcalls and boos. Upon leaving, Johnson also declared he would be demanding that Biden deploy the National Guard to quell the protests if they continued.  As Adam Serwer, writing for the Atlantic, observes, these reflexive calls by Republicans for a military response to protests seem to be less rooted in genuine concern that the protests pose a serious danger to the public or Jewish people than “because these powerful figures find the protesters and their demands offensive.” Serwer points out that school administrators have, when necessary, called in local police to address potential violence, harassment, and property damage, and thus far, the protests do not evince the kind of “mass violence and unrest” that would normally suggest the need for federal involvement. He also notes that such a deployment of federal troops would likely escalate the protests. 

Without debating the relative merits or lack thereof of the protests themselves, then, it’s important to note that these demands for a federal militarized response are coming almost entirely from one side of the political aisle. As Serwer points out, they echo the same sentiments Republicans expressed in 2020 in response to the protests by Black Lives Matter over the police murder of George Floyd. 

In other words, thus far we have seen a markedly asymmetrical, political response by Republicans to  campus protests this week. But we are also witnessing something else: an explicit acceptance of a militarized solution to protests where Republicans find it politically advantageous. Notably, another well-known Republican has also proposed sending the U.S. military and National Guard units to quell anticipated public protests, albeit of a far different nature, should he be afforded another term in office. That person is Donald Trump, and the people he proposes to target are those Americans he suspects would turn out in the hundreds of thousands to protest the policies he intends to implement.

Prominent Republicans such as Tom Cotton, Donald Trump, and Mike Johnson are demanding a militaristic response to end the pro-Palestinian protests across the nation's campuses as a way of burnishing their pro-Israel Apartheid bona fides.

Such a response would further escalate protests instead of quell them.

See Also:

Vox: Student protests are testing US colleges’ commitment to free speech

The Nation: The Crackdown on Campus Protests Is Happening Everywhere