…some folk use TODAY, as a day of fucking thanks? Jesus Christ, can they just keep their mouths zipped while 20,000 and counting are murdered in Palestine and starvation is a’coming?
There is no fucking feast, no fucking Thanks to be Given, in the land of milk and honey and massively militarized citizens. Not just fucking pigs, and all the Blue Lives Matter Shoot Trayvon Again If He Twitches or Move backers. Not just the cancel culture creeps looking for one mis-placed colon or semi-colon or genitilia or pronoun. Not just the fools believing in some sort of sanity in the next run of human stain vying for Most Dangerous Man/Woman/They in the World, POTUS?
Look at that hole, that Thanks Giving:
One of my friends, who was one of my composition students in Spokane, he had a tough time at Thanks-Fucking-Giving. A young marine, just finished up Battle of Falluja, and he was out with a crew to pick up wounded and a dead soldier on this hallowed day.
He came back, with his real buddy in a body bag, and his two friends/comrades airlifted because of various torn limbs.
Jake just wanted to shower and hit the cot, chill out, put on loud music, close his eyes, and do what he could to relieve the trauma. Imagine that, a Marine who was forced to use uppers and steroids, who was forced to shoot to kill anyone with hands up or down in Falluja — man, teen, woman, grandparent, dog, what have you.
Yeah, it was the way, man. Kid from Spokane. Wrestler. Mom’s side Mexican. Old man a career Air Force dude. He wanted his son to go into the AF for easier duty. Jake answered honestly on the drug question: “Have you used pot in the past year?” He could have said no, but he was honest — “Yeah, about nine months ago at a wrestling party. The stuff was passed around, and I was certainly exposed to it passively and I might have puffed a couple of times from a bong.”
No way, Jose. No fly-boy school for you. Instead, he jumped into the Marines. Not so much that he was a patriotic guy, or dumbed down. He was hitting mental and physical walls in Spokane. He wanted more activity, action, and the propaganda was blaring 24/7 that going in would be serving the world, fighting Terror.
Big mistake. He went in around Thanksgiving, and then two Thanksgiving’s later, he brought his buddy back in a body bag in parts. Before that, in Falluja, he told the class a story when I had them write a narrative essay — SEE, significant emotional (life changing) event. I had some parameters, but basically it as a green light for anything.
Jake had many SEE’s, both positive (state champ in heavyeight wrestling; ending up in Mexico on his grandfather’s horse ranch) and negatives.
He was in a Stryker. The higher up team leaders told any team in a vehicle to not stop. Honk twice, flash the lights, but DO not STOP.
And, so, Private Jake was in the vehicle, a woman was crossing the road with a bag of bread and produce, and the Jar Heads honked, flashed headlights, and then just put peddle to the metal.
Bang, crack, pop, and, decapitation and woman’s body stuck under the vehicle’s manifold or exhaust.
The woman’s head was rolling into the gutter, and so, the vehilce DID stop, and Jake was ordered to go “pick up that fucking bitch’s head and bring it back while we fucking pull her fucking body out from under the rig. Just put the fucking cranium next to her pathetic body.”
He told the class how he felt: “Look, I’m a white guy, but my mom’s Hispanic and my grandparents are pretty dark Mexicans. This woman — he decapitated head — looked like my grandmother. Mi Abuela. Do you get it? They ordered me to bring the head back and just drop it next to the body. They all had weapons drawn — like there was going to be some Blackhawk Dawn shit — but we were in a neighborhood. This is crazy. I had buddies who said they rolled over kids. Fucking kids because they didn’t get out of the road quick enough. You don’t see these fucking stories on CNN or the local FOX station.”
Trauma. Forever trauma if you are human.
And that Thanks-Fucking-Giving? He was ordered to show up at the mess and NOT stay in his hootch. He was ordered to EAT with the officers, and to Stand and Salute the Commander in Chief (Cocaine Bush) on a live feed on the compound’s 70 inch TV screen.
“You’re not pussying out and crying in your beer, soldier. This is a national day of thanks, and the chaplain will be talking, and then President Bush is addressing us all. You can fucking deal with your fucking angst when you get shipped home. No fucking room for that here.”
Thanks-giving, Fallujah:
A fucking video game, ready for Xmas?
“Today, I woke up to learn that Six Days in Fallujah is back. After becoming mired in controversy, development on the game was stalled and it was canceled in 2009. Now it’s slated to be released sometime this year.
The original development studio went out of business but the game’s found a new home with developer Highwire Games and publisher Victura.
I’ve scoured articles from today and 2009/2010 to find an appropriate description of the game and why it exists. Peter Tamte, the game’s creator, seems to sum it up best in a 2009 Joystiq interview:
As we’ve watched the dialog that’s taken place about the game, there is definitely one point that we want people to understand about the game. And that is, it’s not about the politics of whether the U.S. should have been there or not. It is really about the stories of the Marines who were in Fallujah and the question, the debate about the politics, that is something for the politicians to worry about. We’re focused now on what actually happened on the ground.
The game’s been dubbed a ‘survival’ game and a ‘first person shooter.’ The creators, to this day, maintain the game’s purpose is to tell the tale of the brave men and women who fought in the war, from the US perspective. But “what actually happened on the ground,” can’t really be shown in a video game. At least not unless that video game faces civilian death head-on.”
Imagine now, with the dirtiest of the dirty, Israel, the IDF, the almost 100 percent of Jews in Israel wanting genocide, retribution, clearing of Arabs from Gaza. Compared to Fallujah.
My friend’s/student’s hatred of Thanks-Giving goes deep. He goes out hiking and camping and takes with him some pretty hi-powered rifles and shoots empty oil cans and rusty propane tanks.
I know he’s fucking pissed and angry now with this hell hole more of his military “comrades” are perpetrating. Jake got thrown in the drunk tank, and I bailed him out and let him slide in my college classes I taught. I even got him to come with me to a conference in Seattle on engaging students in a time of war. I intereviewed him on stage, and then gave my spiel. We got to hang out with the guest speaker, the headliner, David Zirin.
That was a highlight, a positive SEE he told me.
He had a hell of a time, though, from that point on; and called me in Spokane while he was standing on the Monroe street Bridge ready to jump. Shit, the shit he dealt with. Plus, all those uppers and all those steroids messed with his testosterone levels. Mood swings, massive alcoholism, pills, coke.
He ended up in a plumber apprenticeship, but that boss was a coke head, and they always made my big friend crawl under houses to do the digging and R & R.
He’s been off the bottle for three years. He finished a electrician’s apprenticeship. He’s working and living in Spokane. Some fucking Thanks-Giving.
He didn’t jump:
Neither did this fucking War Criminal:
Happy Fucking Thanksgiving:
Fucking Fallujah Selfies:
In the documentary, which is a follow-up to the Emmy Award-winning FRONTLINE film Once Upon a Time in Iraq, U.S. Marines, journalists and ordinary Iraqis share their experiences of what would become the bloodiest battle of the war, and how its consequences have reverberated for two decades.
As the documentary recounts, after insurgents in Fallujah killed four U.S. contractors and strung their bodies from a bridge, coalition forces planned an operation to clear the city of Al Qaeda and warned civilians to leave.
“The Americans threw down leaflets for us to read,” Nidhal Abed, who lived in Fallujah with her family, says in the documentary. “They’d drop them at night from planes and we’d find them on the ground in the morning. They said, ‘If you can get out, then go.’”
But many weren’t able to leave — Abed and her family included.
“The people who left had money, but we had nothing,” Abed says. “They could afford cars and had places to go outside the city. We didn’t have relatives to go to, so we had to stay and ask for God’s mercy.”
In the above excerpt, Abed describes what it was like to be a civilian family stuck in Fallujah as U.S.-led coalition forces closed in and the city was bombarded.
“About a week before they invaded Fallujah, the American army dropped the worst of the worst on us. Not just on Al Qaeda, but on the innocent people,” Abed says. “When we went to look for the bodies of our relatives, we found them crushed and flattened.”
It was a time of intense fear. “We were sitting with our kids, afraid of being attacked any moment,” Abed remembers.
Her first child, Mustafa, was two years old at the time.
“He was very young. He couldn’t understand. When there was bombing, he’d shake,” Abed says of her son. “He’d run and cling to me and my mother.”
“That was,” Abed adds, “before he was injured.”
Abed and her son’s story unfolds in full in Once Upon a Time in Iraq: Fallujah, a vivid accounting of the battle that left their lives — and those of many others — forever changed. Around 700 Iraqi civilians were killed over the course of the 2004 fight for Fallujah. Eighty-two U.S. servicemembers died during the street-by-street, house-by-house effort to clear Al Qaeda from the city, making Fallujah the deadliest battle involving U.S. Marines since Vietnam — and a defining chapter of a war that would continue for years to come.
Ahh, the money makers: According to U.K.-based Campaign Against Arms Trade, British companies provide 15% of the materials for the F35 stealth combat aircraft, which Israel is currently using to bomb Gaza. Suppliers for the F35 stealth fighter jets also include: U.S., Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, and France. (Jessica B at Mintpress)
Also sections on Spain, Belgium, and South Africa! Plus a spreadsheet of the international supply chain for the US F-35 stealth fighter, one of the aircraft Israel is using to bomb Gaza. Lockheed Martin’s MLRS M270 rocket launcher, which was used inside Gaza for the first time since 2006, was built in Europe by an international consortium of companies from France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute provided data on arms sales from Europe to Israel between 2013 to 2022 to EuroNews, showing Italy and Germany had supplied Israel’s military with weapons now being used on the ground in Gaza. It also said Germany had sent more than 1,000 tank engines to Israel. As of Nov. 2, Germany’s government has exported $323 million in arms to Israel — nearly 10 times more than it sent to Israel last year.
The Czech Air Force landed at the Israeli Hatzerim Air Base on Oct. 22. Military aircraft from the U.S. and Italy landed at Israeli Netavim Air Base in the last month. And a U.S. Air Force plane arrived to the Israeli Tel Nof Air Base on Nov. 16.
Several British Air Force planes have traveled to Tel Aviv from the U.K.’s Akrotiri military base in Cyprus in the last week. A plane belonging to arms manufacturer BAE Systems also arrived to the airbase recently.
Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, revealed that a Spanish mercenary is assisting Israeli forces in Gaza. Pedro Diaz Flores has been pictured there with the Israeli occupation forces. He previously fought in Ukraine, having become involved in the war through the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade.
“So I came for economy, for money. They pay very well, they offer good equipment and the work is calm. It is 3,900 euros [$4,187] per week, complementary missions aside,” Flores told El Mundo.
In October, British newspaper Socialist Worker — along with other publications — received an “advisory notice from the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee to not publish information related to British special forces operating in the Middle East.
“Reports have started to appear in some publications claiming that UK Special Forces have deployed to sensitive areas of the Middle East and then linking that deployment to hostage rescue/evacuation operations,” the D-notice said.
The Socialist Worker noted how the Daily Mail reported that the U.K.’s Special Air Service is on “standby in Cyprus” to rescue British hostages held captive in Gaza.
Additionally, Palestinians in Gaza have disclosed they’ve encountered soldiers with American flags on their uniforms. In the below video clip from Quds News Network, a Palestinian man tells an Al Jazeera reporter that his brother spoke in English to a male soldier donning an American flag on his uniform while trying to flee the strip. These claims remain unsubstantiated and it’s possible that soldiers with dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship are wearing an American flag patch without the Israeli military’s permission.
From Electronic Intifada: ‘Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza Wael al-Dahdouh was live on air when he heard the worst possible news: His family had been attacked by Israel.
His wife Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham and grandson Adam were all killed.
It has been almost a month since the massacre yet Wael has not had any space to grieve. He has continued reporting with great courage on the genocide being inflicted on his people.
“The pain of loss can never be described,” he said in an interview. “It was unbearable but I am a different person because of the profession I hold. I fully believe that God has pearls of wisdom and he is the one who provides a man with patience and strength.”
Wael believes that by documenting Israel’s crimes, he is fulfilling a duty to his family.
“I was determined to return to work and appear on the screen out of loyalty to their blood and the blood of all the martyrs. I refused to let the occupation achieve its goal of shattering this voice. So I overcame my pain to appear to the world again and convey my message and the message of every Palestinian suffering in Gaza.”
“Absolute horror”
Wael has witnessed all five of the previous major Israeli attacks on Gaza since December 2008.
“The 2023 war on Gaza is an absolute horror,” he said. “It is totally different and undoubtedly the bloodiest, the most destructive and the most monstrous. Throughout all the wars we have seen violence, destruction and injuries. But none comes close to this level of brutality and bloodshed.”
While Israel has bombed residential buildings without warning on many occasions, it is doing so far more frequently this time.
“It’s the first war when electricity was fully cut off, water was wholly cut off, and when crossings were completely closed for more than 25 days, preventing aid from entering the Strip,” he said.
I asked Wael when there will be peace and liberty in Gaza.
“When the occupation ends,” he said. “The occupation means aggression and the continuation of these painful images of destruction, horror and hardship. Its end will mean the return of Gaza, Palestine, and the Arab region to the hugs of peace, freedom, love, calm, security and every beautiful thing.”
Aged 53, Wael has no retirement plans despite everything that he has endured. He vows to keep working “no matter the cost.”
Journalists have paid a heavy price during this current war. More than 50 have been killed.’
…So I say, no thanks to Substackers telling me/readers “Happy Thanksgiving.” Matt Taibbi, Lee Fang, Sherman ALexie (Spokane Indian), Mickey Z, et al. Why? This is a foolish day to send out wishes. To readers, man, subscribers.
However, Cindy Sheehan from the list of quasi-famous Substackers had good words today.
Yes, we are here in the U.S. on stolen land made possible by genocide and there are many parts of the world where human loss is incomprehensible: I NEVER lose sight of that and I am always striving for peace and accountability. However, I do practice gratitude in my own daily life to help keep me strong for the struggle (and to keep my own self accountable).
+—+
Indigenous and pro-Palestinian activists in the US have replaced Thanksgiving celebrations with a fast in a show of solidarity with the victims of Israel’s bombing and siege of Gaza.
Freedom to Thrive, a group focused on prison abolition in the US, organised the ‘Fast For Gaza’ to stand “in solidarity with the people of Gaza” as part of wider campaign “in solidarity with the right of colonized people to resist.”
According to the group,
“we have chosen November 23rd, the fourth Thursday in November, in recognition that the ongoing genocide in Gaza is a continuation of the same setter colonial violence experienced by Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island.”
Paul Haeder, Author 