Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and soul singer Sugarpie Desanto. Enjoy!

"America talks a big game for a country whose chief exports are Marvel movies and human suffering."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Biden, Blinken, and the Emperor's New Rules

The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes.=

In contrast to U.S. actions, in nearly every speech or interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the "rules-based order." But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law, or some other set of rules he has yet to define. What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?

We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter's prohibition against the threat or use of military force, and we have always insisted that the U.S. government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.

But even as the United States' illegal wars and support for allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have reduced cities to rubble and left country after country mired in intractable violence and chaos, U.S. leaders have refused to even acknowledge that aggressive and destructive U.S. and allied military operations violate the rules-based order of the United Nations Charter and international law.

President Trump was clear that he was not interested in following any "global rules," only supporting U.S. national interests. His National Security Advisor John Bolton explicitly prohibited National Security Council staff attending the 2018 G20 Summit in Argentina from even uttering the words "rules-based order." 

So you might expect us to welcome Blinken's stated commitment to the "rules-based order" as a long-overdue reversal in U.S. policy. But when it comes to a vital principle like this, it is actions that count, and the Biden administration has yet to take any decisive action to bring U.S. foreign policy into compliance with the UN Charter or international law.

For Secretary Blinken, the concept of a "rules-based order" seems to serve mainly as a cudgel with which to attack China and Russia. At a May 7 UN Security Council meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that instead of accepting the already existing rules of international law, the United States and its allies are trying to come up with "other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else."

The UN Charter and the rules of international law were developed in the 20th century precisely to codify the unwritten and endlessly contested rules of customary international law with explicit, written rules that would be binding on all nations.

The United States played a leading role in this legalist movement in international relations, from the Hague Peace Conferences at the turn of the 20th century to the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945 and the revised Geneva Conventions in 1949, including the new Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians, like the countless numbers killed by American weapons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.

As President Franklin Roosevelt described the plan for the United Nations to a joint session of Congress on his return from Yalta in 1945:

"It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries - and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join. I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the results of this conference as the beginning of a permanent structure of peace."

But America's post-Cold War triumphalism eroded U.S. leaders' already half-hearted commitment to those rules. The neocons argued that they were no longer relevant and that the United States must be ready to impose order on the world by the unilateral threat and use of military force, exactly what the UN Charter prohibits. Madeleine Albright and other Democratic leaders embraced new doctrines of "humanitarian intervention" and a "responsibility to protect" to try to carve out politically persuasive exceptions to the explicit rules of the UN Charter. 

America's "endless wars," its revived Cold War on Russia and China, its blank check for the Israeli occupation and the political obstacles to crafting a more peaceful and sustainable future are some of the fruits of these bipartisan efforts to challenge and weaken the rules-based order.

Today, far from being a leader of the international rules-based system, the United States is an outlier. It has failed to sign or ratify about fifty important and widely accepted multilateral treaties on everything from children's rights to arms control. Its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and other countries are themselves violations of international law, and the new Biden administration has shamefully failed to lift these illegal sanctions, ignoring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' request to suspend such unilateral coercive measures during the pandemic.

So is Blinken's "rules-based order" a recommitment to President Roosevelt's "permanent structure of peace," or is it in fact a renunciation of the United Nations Charter and its purpose, which is peace and security for all of humanity?

In the light of Biden's first few months in power, it appears to be the latter.

Israel's Assault on Gaza Left 400,000 Without Regular Access to Clean Water: Oxfam

Israel's deadly 11-day assault on the Gaza Strip left an estimated 400,000 of the occupied territory's roughly two million people without access to a regular supply of clean water, a humanitarian nightmare that is driving calls for immediate international aid and an end to the 14-year Israeli blockade.

In addition to killing more than 240 Palestinians—including dozens of children—and displacing tens of thousands, Israel's aerial and artillery bombardment further devastated Gaza's infrastructure, from sewage systems to electricity lines that power the coastal enclave's water desalination plants.

The result, as Oxfam International's Shane Stevenson put it Tuesday, is that "hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza will soon have no access to basic hygiene." According to Oxfam, nearly a fifth of Gaza's population lacks access to safe water.

"Electricity cuts and the destruction of office buildings have forced many small businesses to come to a halt," Stevenson said. "Israel's authorities have stopped the bombing but are now restricting fuel deliveries [upon which Gaza is dependent for its electricity]. They have also closed most of the Gaza fishing zone, meaning nearly 3,600 fishermen have now lost their daily income and food."

To both rebuild in the wake of Israel's latest onslaught and confront "the root causes of the conflict," Stevenson argued that the international community "must ensure concrete political action to bring an end to the occupation and the ongoing blockade," which has severely limited Gaza's ability to obtain the materials necessary to develop robust clean water infrastructure.

A temporary cease-fire paused Israel's bombing campaign last week, but not before the attacks did severe damage to Gaza's core civilian services. While lack of access to clean water has long been a crisis in the besieged territory, Israel's fresh wave of airstrikes worsened the emergency by damaging critical pipes and sending untreated sewage water into densely populated areas, heightening contamination risks.

"Even before the recent hostilities," Oxfam pointed out, "the average daily consumption of water was just 88 liters per capita—far below the global optimal requirement of 100 liters." ...

According to a UNICEF report released Tuesday, nearly 48 million people across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe are in need of clean water and sanitation services, including 1.6 million in the occupied Palestinian territories. The child-focused aid agency stressed that people in those regions are frequent victims of deliberate, war-related attacks on water infrastructure.

"Water resources and the systems required to deliver drinking water have been attacked for centuries," the new report notes. "All too often, the human dependence on water has been exploited during conflict. Nearly all of the conflict-related emergencies where UNICEF has responded in recent years have involved some form of attack hindering access to water, whether directed against water infrastructure or through incidental harm or tactic used by a party to the conflict."

Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF's director of emergency programs, said in a statement that access to clean water "is a means of survival that must never be used as a tactic of war."

"Attacks on water and sanitation infrastructure are attacks on children," Fontaine added. "When the flow of water stops, diseases like cholera and diarrhea can spread like wildfire, often with fatal consequences. Hospitals cannot function, and rates of malnutrition and wasting increase. Children and families are often forced out in search of water, exposing them, particularly girls, to an increased risk of harm and violence."

'There Needs to Be a Global Outcry': Palestinians and Allies Decry Israeli Mass Arrests

Human rights defenders on Tuesday continued to condemn the ongoing mass arrests of hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel who have participated in recent protests against forced displacement and settler attacks in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that killed 248 people.

According to Israeli police, 1,550 Palestinians have been arrested since May 9 during "Operation Law and Order," a campaign targeting majority Arab cities and towns in Israel. West Bank officials say Israeli forces have killed 25 Palestinians, including four under the age of 18, in the occupied territory since May 10. Israeli authorities claim five of the victims tried to attack Israeli security forces.

The Nation reports Israeli police say the arrests are meant to "settle the score" with Israel's Arab citizens by punishing those who have protested against ongoing state and state-sanctioned oppression. Palestinians and their advocates around the world condemned the arrests as hypocritical collective punishment and as another example of Israeli apartheid, noting that there have been no mass arrests of members of Jewish mobs that in recent weeks have brutally attacked Arab people and property throughout Israel.

Israeli police have arrested Jewish suspects, including two men allegedly involved in the May 10 murder of Mousa Hassouna, a 32-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, and two men and a minor for alleged attempted murder and terrorism in connection with a May 12 mob attack on a Palestinian citizen of Israel that was broadcast on live television.

However, most Jews who have attacked Palestinians have done so with impunity. Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American poet and activist, tweeted Monday that "apartheid inside Israel is when Jewish Israeli mobs chant 'Death to Arabs' and brutalize Palestinians in their neighborhoods, while the cops do nothing, only for those same cops to conduct mass arrests of Palestinian citizens two weeks later."

Hassan Jabareen, general director of Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement that "the massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli police last night is a militarized war against Palestinian citizens of Israel."

"This is a war against Palestinian demonstrators, political activists, and minors, employing massive Israeli police forces to raid the homes of Palestinian citizens," Jabareen added.

On Sunday, Jewish settlers protected by Israeli security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, brutally assaulting worshippers and arresting numerous Palestinians there. Repeated attacks on Al-Aqsa—Islam's third-holiest site—and the imminent forced expulsion of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem sparked widespread protests in Haifa, Yafa, Lydd, Nazareth, and other cities and towns earlier this month.

The mass arrests come amid a fragile ceasefire between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants following 11 days of Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment that killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, while wounding around 1,900 others and displacing tens of thousands more. Thousands of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza by Palestinian fighters killed 13 people, including two children.

The arrests also coincide with a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who faced widespread criticism during the Israeli onslaught for giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu what journalist Aaron Maté called "a green light... to continue massacring Palestinian civilians."

Middle East Eye reports Palestinian citizens of Israel have taken to social media to warn others of the arrest threat. According to the outlet, one widely shared post reads: "This is a declaration of war, the Israelis will storm more than 500 homes to kidnap our children and youth."

"This is not just an attempt at intimidation, and it is not just a policy of intimidation," the post continues. "This is an unprecedented war on Palestinians at home, and it will be carried out under the cover of a humiliating silence. Our people must act now and immediately to thwart this war."

Majd Kayyal, a Haifa-based activist, told Al Jazeera that "the Israeli police lost their ability to frighten and terrorize the Palestinians. This is why they launched this campaign."

"They want to restore this feeling of terror in us, to teach us a lesson," added Kayyal. "But they also want to disrupt Palestinian unity, which is what this uprising is all about."

Other Palestinian citizens of Israel say the arrests are the latest demonstration of how Arabs are treated as second-class citizens or worse.

Although Israel claims its Arab citizens—who make up about 20% of the nation's population—enjoy equality under the law, the U.S. State Department has repeatedly accused Israel of practicing "institutional and societal discrimination" toward its Arab citizens, around 40% of whom live in poverty due largely to an inferior education system and other basic societal inequities.

US to reopen Palestinian diplomatic mission in Jerusalem

The US will reopen a mission in Jerusalem to manage diplomatic relations with Palestinians, which had been downgraded by the Trump administration, the US secretary of state has said. On a trip to the Middle East designed to shore up last week’s ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, Antony Blinken also announced the Biden administration would ask Congress for $75m (£53m) in aid for Palestinians, including $5.5m in immediate aid for rebuilding Gaza. He had earlier pledged at a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the US would not allow Hamas to benefit from those funds.

The plans for a new envoy and details of a large aid package, which also included 1.5m doses of Covid vaccines, were announced after a meeting with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

“As I told the president, I’m here to underscore the commitment of the United States to rebuilding the relationship with the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people, a relationship built on mutual respect and also a shared conviction that Palestinians and Israelis alike deserve equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity,” said Blinken, who was on his first trip to the Middle East as secretary of state.

Underlining the US commitment to a two-state solution, he also criticised settlement activity in rare public remarks for senior members of this administration. Under Donald Trump there had been barely any criticism of Jewish settlers.

Blinken did not give a date for reopening the consulate general in Jerusalem, which historically operated independently from the US mission to Israel.

Mysterious airbase being built on volcanic island off Yemen

A mysterious airbase is being built on a volcanic island off Yemen that sits in one of the world’s crucial maritime chokepoints for energy shipments and commercial cargo. While no country has claimed the Mayun Island airbase in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, shipping traffic associated with a prior attempt to build a massive runway across the 3.5-mile-long island years ago links back to the United Arab Emirates.

Officials in Yemen’s internationally recognised government say the Emiratis are behind this latest effort as well, even though the UAE announced in 2019 it was withdrawing its troops from a Saudi-led military campaign battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

“This does seem to be a longer-term strategic aim to establish a relatively permanent presence,” said Jeremy Binnie, the Middle East editor of the open-source intelligence company Janes, who has followed construction on Mayun for years. He said it was “possibly not just about the Yemen war and you’ve got to see the shipping situation as fairly key there”. ...

The runway on Mayun Island allows whoever controls it to project power into the strait and easily launch airstrikes into mainland Yemen, convulsed by a bloody, years-long war. It also provides a base for any operations into the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and nearby east Africa.

Lawmakers request investigation into Postal Service's covert operations program

The bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday requested an investigation into a branch of the U.S. Postal Service in the wake of reports that it carried out online surveillance of Americans’ social media posts.

Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to Postal Service Inspector General Tammy Whitcomb urging her to open an investigation in the Postal Services' Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP).

The request comes a month after Yahoo News reported on a March bulletin sent out by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS). The bulletin cited iCOP concerns about potential protests planned for March 20 based on “online inflammatory material” and posts on social media platforms Parler and Telegram, and noted that iCOP was “currently monitoring these social media channels for any potential threats.”

Maloney and Comer on Tuesday expressed “concern” that iCOP was being used to “perform intelligence operations on First Amendment activity.”

“These activities raise serious questions about the scope of the program, the extent of sharing of information among law enforcement agencies, and whether USPIS has the authority to conduct such an operation,” the committee leaders wrote.

This is an excellent piece worth a click. Here is a bit to whet the appetite:

Emily Wilder’s Firing Is No Surprise: AP Has Always Been Right-Wing

The Associated Press has received an enormous amount of criticism, including from its own staffers, for firing Emily Wilder, 22, after hiring her as a news associate just 17 days before. According to AP, Wilder was let go for “violations of AP’s social media policy.” AP’s action was clearly in response to a right-wing pressure campaign targeting Wilder for her activism in college supporting Palestinian rights. Though appalling, however, none of this should be a surprise. AP has been notably conservative since its founding in 1846, with a long history of bowing to the demands of the powerful — with its many talented journalists often forced to fight its management to get the news out. While other wire services such as United Press International and Reuters have not always covered themselves in glory, AP’s history demonstrates significantly more bias.

AP has long been one of the most important news organizations in the world. A nonprofit cooperative with over 1,000 member papers, it produces 2,000 stories per day, with its reporting often the main or only coverage of many stories. ... That’s why it’s crucial to understand AP’s perspective. It’s arguably baked into its DNA: AP was created by Moses Yale Beach, the publisher of the New York Sun, who arranged for five New York newspapers including the Sun to share the cost of covering the Mexican-American War. In retrospect, the war was a straight-up theft of Mexican territory, including all of California, by the U.S. It was justified by shameless deceit by President James K. Polk, as both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant accurately said. Yet it was covered by AP as the fulfillment of America’s manifest destiny, reflecting Beach’s fervent belief that the U.S. should seize as much territory as possible. ...

This general point of view continued with AP’s coverage of the wars between Indigenous people and the federal government after the U.S. Civil War. ... As union organizing and worker revolts burgeoned in the early 1900s, AP became notorious among progressives for its reactionary coverage. After a huge 1913 mine worker strike in West Virginia, the socialist magazine The Masses pointed out that AP’s local representative was a member of a military tribunal judging the strikers. ... AP’s conservatism continued for the rest of the century. Seymour Hersh, who worked for AP from 1962 to 1967, later said editors there were “timid on Vietnam” and that he could not have written his 1970 exposé of the My Lai Massacre for the wire service. In 1984, at a time of great fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan “joked” before a radio address that “I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”An AP reporter filed an article on this, but editors didn’t publish it — until other news outlets ran the story. That same year, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger asked AP not to run what it knew about the launch of a military satellite. AP happily obeyed. ...

[Check out the article for more. - js]

Krystal Ball: Biden ABANDONS Public Option At WORST Possible Time

Moderna jab stops Covid transmission in people aged 12 to 18, trial finds

Mass vaccination of children against Covid-19 moved a step closer as Moderna became the second manufacturer to announce successful trial results, showing its vaccine can stop transmission in people aged 12 to 18.

Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine has already been given emergency approval for adolescents aged 12 to 15 in the US by the regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), after its trials were said to show better efficacy even than in participants aged 16 to 25. It has begun a trial in young children, from six months to 11 years old.

The results from both companies suggest that mass immunisation of schoolchildren could be on the cards this year, beginning in the US, which could in theory end the anxieties of parents, pupils and teachers and allow schools to function more normally. Pfizer applied for emergency use authorisation for 12- to 15-year-olds in Europe at the end of April.

Half of American adults fully vaccinated against Covid, Biden officials say

Half of adult Americans have now been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, the Biden administration said on Tuesday.

Joe Biden previously set a goal of having 70% of adults with at least one dose by 4 July. Vaccine hesitancy or resistance remains a problem, particularly among Republicans, with the rate of shots administered slowing. ...

The White House has ramped up vaccine distribution as coronavirus cases and deaths have fallen. There are three vaccines in use and the US has increased the number of shots it is exporting.

Jeff Stein: Centrist Dems BALK At Tax Hikes On The Rich

Briahna Joy Gray: Biden FLAGRANTLY REJECTS His Own Campaign Promises

DC Attorney General Sues Amazon for Alleged Monopolistic Price-Fixing

Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine on Tuesday sued e-commerce giant Amazon, accusing the world's largest retailer of monopolistic price-fixing, stifling competition in the online retail space, and depriving consumers of choice.

The lawsuit (pdf), filed in D.C. Superior Court, accuses the Seattle-based company—which controls between 50% and 70% of all U.S. retail sales and upon which over two million independent, third-party sellers (TPSs) rely—of "anti-competitive business practices."

According to a statement from Racine's office:

Amazon fixed online retail prices through contract provisions and policies it previously and currently applies to third-party sellers on its platform. These provisions and policies, known as 'most favored nation' (MFN) agreements, prevent third-party sellers that offer products on Amazon.com from offering their products at lower prices or on better terms on any other online platform, including their own websites.

These agreements effectively require third-party sellers to incorporate the high fees charged by Amazon—as much as 40% of the total product price—not only into the price charged to customers on Amazon's platform, but also on any other online retail platform. As a result, these agreements impose an artificially high price floor across the online retail marketplace and allow Amazon to build and maintain monopoly power in violation of the District of Columbia's Antitrust Act.

The effects of these agreements continue to be far-reaching as they harm consumers and third-party sellers, and suppress competition, choice, and innovation. [The Office of the Attorney General] is seeking to put an end to Amazon's control over online retail pricing, as well as damages, penalties, and attorney's fees.

"Amazon has used its dominant position in the online retail market to win at all costs," said Racine, a Democrat. "It maximizes its profits at the expense of third-party sellers and consumers, while harming competition, stifling innovation, and illegally tilting the playing field in its favor."

“America on Fire”: Historian Elizabeth Hinton on George Floyd, Policing & Black Rebellion

Well, gosh, here's a big surprise:

Congress Misses Symbolic Deadline for Police Reform

A year ago today, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes. Since then, Democrats in Congress have spoken out forcefully about the need to change policing in the U.S., and President Joe Biden declared on April 28 that he wanted a police reform bill passed by the anniversary of Floyd’s death. But those efforts have largely fallen flat.

That Congress missed today’s artificial deadline is not necessarily a surprise to organizers, who were frustrated that after so many overtures to the cause — including an embarrassing stunt in which members wearing traditional Ghanaian kente cloth kneeled on the floor of the Capitol — the House still passed a bill that gave millions of additional dollars to police. Biden, instead of signing a deal, will meet with Floyd’s family for the first time in-person since his death. And even if Congress does pass a bill in the weeks or months that follow, some advocates are skeptical that it would fundamentally change the way police operate.

In March, the Justice in Policing Act passed the House on a 220-212 vote. Though the bill was all but guaranteed to die in the Senate, Democrats celebrated its unlikely prospects for enforcement. “We’re proud of this legislation, which will fundamentally transform the culture with bold, unprecedented reforms,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference on the bill’s passage.

But to Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns at Color of Change, the pageantry was “troubling.” He told The Intercept that “it feels like an effort to make [JPA] the end-all-be-all.” After a jury convicted Chauvin of murder last month, congressional staffers told Axios there was a sense of relief in the Capitol that Chauvin’s conviction alleviated pressure to pass a police reform package. Meanwhile, organizers renewed a push to further policies that prevent violent interactions with law enforcement in the first place, rather than simply trying to hold police accountable after they’ve already caused harm to someone, as was the aim of most congressional negotiations, Roberts said.

George Floyd family urges Biden to pass police reform bill as it stalls in Senate

“Say his name,” said seven-year-old Gianna Floyd. In bright sunshine outside the west wing of the White House, family members and lawyers raised their fists and said her father’s name in chorus: “George Floyd!” They were marking exactly one year since the police murder of Floyd, an African American man, in Minneapolis shook America with months of nationwide protests against racial injustice and demands for police reform.

On Tuesday the family brought that conversation to Washington. Joe Biden, whose own family has been haunted by grief, apparently demonstrated an empathy many found lacking in his predecessor, Donald Trump, during a private meeting of more than an hour. Floyd’s brother, Philonise described Biden as a “genuine guy” and told reporters the family had a “great” discussion with him and Vice-President Kamala Harris. “They always speak from the heart and it’s a pleasure just to be able to have the chance to meet with them when we have that opportunity to,” he said. ...

America’s racial reckoning across business, culture and society has not yet been matched by legislative action. Biden had set a deadline of Tuesday for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which contains reforms such as a ban on chokeholds, to become law. It passed the House of Representatives in March but is faltering in the Senate where Republicans object to a provision ending qualified immunity, which shields officers from legal action by victims and families for alleged civil rights violations. The family urged quicker action.

Philonise said pointedly: “If you can make federal laws to protect the bird which is the bald eagle, you can make federal law to protect people of colour.” ...

Some observers have suggested that Biden should use his bully pulpit to push Congress harder. The anniversary came as a warning that patience could wear thin. ...

Legislation has been pursued in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to increase accountability or oversight of police; 24 states have enacted new laws.

New York district attorney convenes grand jury in Trump criminal inquiry

New York prosecutors have convened a special grand jury to consider evidence in a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s business dealings, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

The development signals that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was moving toward seeking charges as a result of its two-year investigation, which included a lengthy legal battle to obtain Trump’s tax records.

The person familiar with the matter was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity. The news was first reported by the Washington Post.

Cyrus Vance Jr, the Manhattan district attorney, is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into a variety of matters such as hush-money payments paid to women on Trump’s behalf, property valuations and employee compensation.

Vance has been using an investigative grand jury through the course of his investigation to issue subpoenas and obtain documents. That panel kept working while other grand juries and court activities were shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Krystal and Saagar: Yang SINKS To Third In Major NYC Mayor Race Shake Up

Florida governor signs law against tech firms de-platforming politicians

Under Florida’s Stop Social Media Censorship Act, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed on Monday, social media giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter could be fined up to $250,000 a day for every statewide political candidate removed from their platforms, and $25,000 a day for other candidates.

Users must be warned if fact checks or other notices of disputed information are attached to posts. Those users, or the Florida state attorney, can sue tech companies for violations.

“We took action to ensure that ‘We the People’, real Floridians across the Sunshine State, are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites,” DeSantis said.

“Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.” ...

Democrats warned that the new bill was unconstitutional and would leave taxpayers on the hook for the costs of failed efforts to defend it.

‘A huge surprise’ as giant river otter feared extinct in Argentina pops up

“It was a huge surprise,” said Sebastián Di Martino, director of conservation at Fundación Rewilding Argentina. “I was incredulous. An incredible feeling of so much happiness. I didn’t know if I should try to follow it or rush back to our station to tell the others.”

The cause of the excitement was the sighting, last week, of a wild giant river otter – an animal feared extinct in the country due to habitat loss and hunting – on the Bermejo River in Impenetrable national park, in north-east Argentina’s Chaco province. The last sighting of a giant otter in the wild in Argentina was in the 1980s. On the Bermejo, none have been seen for more than a century.

Di Martino captured the otter on his phone while kayaking. “It reared up, so its white chest was visible, which I recognised as the giant river otter [Pteronura brasiliensis]. At this point, your legs go weak and your heart starts beating faster.”

There are two possible explanations for the otter’s return. “The closest known populations of giant otter, which is endangered globally, are in the Paraguayan Pantanal, which could connect with this river from a distance of over 1,000km. That’s the simplest explanation,” said Di Martino. “The other possibility is that there’s a remnant population of the species in Argentina that’s gone undetected. These animals live in family groups, and this was a solitary individual, which we think came from a group.”

This is an interview, here is the set up and a couple of questions to get you started if you're interested:

‘The food system is racist’: an activist used a garden to tackle inequities

Karen Washington is a New York-based community activist and urban farmer who coined the term “food apartheid” to describe the structural inequalities in America’s food system. It’s by design not accident, she argues, that people of color are denied access to nutritious affordable food, farmland and business opportunities in the food industry.

For more than 35 years, Washington has pushed the predominantly white food justice movement to tackle the root causes of these inequities through transformative grassroots action and political pressure. She is the co-founder of the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, the Black Urban Growers and most recently the Black Farmer Fund, a community wealth building organization investing in Black food entrepreneurs.

Washington, 67, currently divides her time between her home and community garden in the Bronx, New York, and upstate in Orange county, where she started the Rise and Root farm in 2014 after retiring as a physical therapist. ...

In 1988, while working as a physical therapist you co-founded the Garden of Happiness, a community garden across the street from your house on an abandoned plot of land being used as a dumping ground for garbage. What motivated you and how easy was it to get people interested?

At the time a lot of my patients had food-related health problems – type 2 diabetes, hypertension and obesity – which led to problems like stroke, end-stage renal disease, amputations, blindness. I’d look in the kitchen and find the cookies, cake and sodas. These were people who grew up on farms, got all their food from the fields, whose parents were never sick, but had now succumbed to a food system which was killing them. The bottom line is that it’s too hard to access healthy food and too easy to get unhealthy and fast food. In this area it was mostly Puerto Ricans and southern Blacks so it was heaven for them to find a spot to grow food that they were used to growing at home, and they passed on a lot of that technique and wisdom to me.

Black farmers have long been disenfranchised by racial discrimination in agriculture and finance, and through systemic exclusion from federal programs. As a result, the number of Black farmers plunged from nearly 1m in 1920 to fewer than 50,000 today. What are the barriers facing farmers of color today?

Land, resources and capital, without a doubt. Out of 57,000 farmers in New York state, only 139 are Black. The average income of a white farmer in the state is $48,000 a year, for a Black farmer its minus $910 a year, and these inequities persist across the country. This is why I’m raising hell out here, talking about injustice. We started the Black Farmer Fund in 2019, and last year we raised $1m without a cent from the city or state which will go to Black farmers and businesses in food. If you want small farmers to get access to money from the USDA or the state, you have to make the process more simple. The current system is set up for us to fail and be disenfranchised.

Shell climate trial: court weighs oil giant's environmental responsibility

Turkey struck by ‘sea snot’ because of global heating

When seen from above, it looks like a brush of beige swirled across the dark blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. Up close, it resembles a creamy, gelatinous blanket of quicksand. Now scientists are warning that the substance, known as sea snot, is on the rise as a result of global heating. The gloopy, mucus-like substance had not been recorded in Turkish waters before 2007. It is created as a result of prolonged warm temperatures and calm weather and in areas with abundant nutrients in the water.

The phytoplankton responsible grow out of control when nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are widely available in seawater. These nutrients have long been plentiful in the Sea of Marmara, which receives the wastewater of nearly 20 million people and is fed directly from the nutrient-rich Black Sea.

In ordinary amounts, these tiny, floating sea plants are responsible for breathing oxygen into the oceans, but their overpopulation creates the opposite effect. Under conditions of stress, they exude a mucus-like matter that can grow to cover many square miles of the sea in the right conditions.

In most cases, the substance itself is not harmful. “What we see is basically a combination of protein, carbohydrates and fat,” said Dr Neslihan Özdelice, a marine biologist at Istanbul University. But the sticky substance attracts viruses and bacteria, including E coli, and can in effect turn into a blanket that suffocates the marine life below.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Oracle Boasted That Its Software Was Used Against U.S. Protesters. Then It Took the Tech to China.

‘Last international brigader’, survivor of Spanish civil war, dies aged 101

Court: UK mass surveillance unlawful under European rules

America’s Chief Exports Are Marvel Movies And Human Suffering: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Blinken pledges Washington’s full support to Israel and peanuts for the Palestinians

Iran Election Preview

Report: US Troops Will Be Out of Afghanistan By July

AP Firing Shows Right-Wing Hypocrisy, Illusion of ‘Objectivity’

Andrew Yang’s wife hits back over New York ‘tourist’ cartoon

Why Biden Is Not a Transformational President

IG Report Shows Top Trump Officials at EPA Hid Threats of Toxic Dicamba Herbicide

Democracy Now: Marcus Smith “Died Like an Animal” When Cops Hogtied Him. Police Have Known for Decades It Can Kill

Aaron Mate: Chevron colludes with US judge to persecute attorney Steven Donziger

Krystal and Saagar: Biden Decides To REPEAT Obama’s FAILURES

A Little Night Music

Sugarpie Desanto - I want to know

Sugarpie Desanto - Soulful Dress

Sugarpie Desanto - Going Back To Where I Belong

Sugarpie Desanto - Open Your Heart

Sugar Pie DeSanto & Etta James - In The Basement

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Baby It Ain't Right

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Do The Whoopie

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Git back

SugarPie DeSanto - A Little Taste Of Soul

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Go Go Power