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“When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.”

-- Émile Durkheim

News and Opinion

When Yemen Does It It’s Terrorism, When The US Does It It’s “The Rules-Based Order”

The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.

The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism.” Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.

One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in. One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.

In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people, “history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.” DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.

So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that’s still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide.

That’s right kids: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the middle east, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action.

It just says so much about how the US empire sees itself that it can impose blockades and starvation sanctions at will upon nations like Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to bow to its dictates, but when Yemen imposes a blockade for infinitely more worthy and noble reasons it gets branded an act of terrorism. The managers of the globe-spanning empire loosely centralized around Washington literally believe the world is theirs to rule as they will, and that anyone who opposes its rulings is an outlaw.

What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people. The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will.

We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise. Our world can never know health as long as these monsters remain in charge.

Nasser hospital targeted in Gaza, ten killed in the West Bank

According to the human rights organisation Euro-Med Monitor, at least 120 mass graves have been established to bury the dead, including in residential neighbourhoods and courtyards, wedding halls, stadiums, hospital courtyards, schools and mosques. Israel’s murderous campaign in Gaza claimed another 163 lives between Tuesday and Wednesday and injured another 350. Close to 25,000 people have now been officially recorded killed since October 7, and over 61,500 injured. ...

Writing at the end of last year, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh Professor Devi Sridhar referred to a study in the Lancet in the early 2000s which found that crude mortality rates are on average increased sixty times by conflict and mass displacement. Applying that prediction to Gaza, Sridhar explained, “the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population—close to half a million human beings—dying within a year.” This and more is the fascist Israeli government’s intended outcome. According to Israel’s Channel 12, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told heads of local councils located near the border with Gaza that he anticipated the war continuing into 2025.

The genocide is being sped along by the IDF’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure—21 of the 35 hospitals in Gaza are no longer functioning. Early Wednesday morning, a staff member and a patient in intensive care were wounded by Israeli fire in the Jordanian field hospital in Khan Younis. Jordan accused Israel of a “flagrant breach of international law.” The nearby Nasser hospital has also come under repeated attack. Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud expressed Gazans’ fear that the same destruction will be visited on the south as in the north of the Strip, where “the vast majority of healthcare facilities were attacked, destroyed and left severely damaged to the point that they’re pushed out of service completely”.

On Wednesday night residents reported the most intense assault on the area so far, with tanks just metres way from the hospital. ... Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah, explained, “The strikes have not stopped over the last few hours across the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that Israel says that they’re moving to a completely new phase with low-intensity bombing,” referring to the United States government’s lying claims that Israel is scaling back its offensive.

Israeli forces are also disrupting the distribution of extremely limited supplies of aid. According to United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, between January 1 and 10, just three of a planned 21 deliveries of humanitarian aid were able to reach the northern part of Gaza, with convoys blocked by the IDF.

Bibi SNUBS US: War Until 2025

Blinken Affirms BLANK CHECK to Israel at WEF as Bibi Privately SNUBS Biden

Ten people killed in Israeli strikes on West Bank, Palestinian officials say

Ten people have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinian officials have said, as tensions in the territory continue to soar. Five people were killed inside the Tulkarem refugee camp, the Palestinian health ministry said, while an official at the camp told the AFP news agency that it was besieged by aircraft, tanks and “heavy numbers of the Israeli army”.

The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an airstrike during a raid on Tulkarem, adding that “a number of terrorists were killed”.

A separate incident near Balata refugee camp, east of the city of Nablus, killed five fighters with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party. ...

On Wednesday, the BBC reported that the Israeli military had been accused of targeting a group of Palestinian civilians with no connections to militant groups and who posed no threat to Israeli forces.

On 7 January a number of Palestinians – including four brothers – were killed in an Israeli strike near the city of Jenin. The BBC reported that “relatives of the men killed, witnesses in the area at the time, and a paramedic at the scene” provided evidence that the men were not members of an armed group.

Max Blumenthal & Miko Peled : Where is the War in Gaza Going?

Houthis hit US cargo ship with drone after redesignation as global terrorists

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have targeted a US-owned cargo ship with a kamikaze drone just hours after Washington put the group back on its list of global terrorists.

The drone smashed into the Genco Picardy bulk carrier late on Wednesday, 70 miles (110km) southeast of Aden, causing a fire that was soon extinguished, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organisation. It added: “Vessel and crew are safe and proceeding to next port of call.”

The attack was a clear rebuke to the Biden administration for its announcement earlier on Wednesday that it was reassigning the Houthis to its list of “specially designated global terrorists”.

Washington officials said they would design financial penalties against the Houthis to minimise harm to Yemen’s 32 million people.

The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, told Bloomberg: “I think we need to look at all the tools we have in the toolbox … Obviously, we have been using sanctions against a number of people in Iran and we need to look at how we can step that up if this behaviour continues.”

Biden FAILURE As Houthi Attacks Increase

US Launches Fourth Round of Strikes Against Houthis in Yemen

The US launched another round of missile strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, marking the fourth time the US has bombed the country since last Friday.

US officials told AP that the strikes were launched from US Navy warships and submarines. The attack came after the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, struck a US-owned cargo ship with a drone in the Gulf of Aden. ...

The US strikes in Yemen have significantly escalated the situation in the region as the Houthis have expanded the scope of their targets to American commercial shipping. The Houthis have shown no sign of backing down in the face of the US military and have repeatedly stated they won’t stop attacking Israeli-linked shipping until the Israeli onslaught in Gaza ends.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Biden's Foreign Failures

Bernie Sanders backs US attack on Yemen

On Sunday, the 100th day of the US/Israeli war on Gaza, Bernie Sanders appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” program and declared his support for attacks by the United States and Britain on Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The ongoing attacks, which began on January 11, mark a major escalation of the US-led war in the Middle East and prefigure a direct attack by Washington on Iran. ...

On Sunday, CNN moderator Jake Tapper began his interview with the “progressive” senator from Vermont by raising President Biden’s “dramatic escalation in the Middle East” and noting:

A top House progressive, [Pramila] Jayapal, said the president should have gotten, and in fact needed, permission from Congress, calling the strikes an unacceptable violation of the Constitution. Do you agree with her? Were these strikes illegal?

Sanders brushed aside the unilateral and illegal character of Biden’s action, saying:

What I do think, the president has the right to respond on an emergency basis to the disruption of international shipping brought about by the Houthis. On the other hand, he’s got to get to Congress immediately. Congress has a right to declare war, not the president of the United States. So I hope this issue gets to Congress immediately.

Of course, as Sanders well knows, Biden has no intention of seeking congressional authorization for the already escalating war on Yemen, nor has the Vermont senator publicly pursued the matter since the CNN interview.

In reality, Sanders was brought onto Sunday’s program to perform a political function for the Biden administration and the US war machine. His role is to provide a “left” imprimatur to the latest escalation, under conditions of mass popular opposition to the Israeli genocide and Washington’s central role in arming and overseeing it, as well as the expansion of the war throughout the Middle East. Sunday’s program followed the previous day’s mass anti-genocide protests around the world, including marches of 300,000 in London and 100,000 in Washington D.C.

Iran hails strikes in Pakistan as it is warned of ‘serious consequences’

Iranian military officials were hailing one of the biggest projections of force in its recent history as Pakistan warned Tehran of “serious consequences” to a “completely unacceptable” attack in Pakistan’s Balochistan that left six dead or injured including two children.

Iran said its attack mounted on Tuesday using “precision missile and drone strikes”, destroyed two strongholds of the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl in the Koh-e-Sabz area of Pakistan’s south-west Balochistan province.

The missile strikes were part of Iran’s sweeping reprisals across Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and Pakistan, designed to exact revenge for a suicide bombing mounted by Isis-K, the Afghan branch of Islamic State, that killed 85 Iranians in the south-eastern city of Kerman on 3 January.

Iran claims that Israeli intelligence has been working with Isis-K, but the geographic breadth of the Iranian response adds to the fears of a further escalation of violence throughout the region sparked by the 7 October attacks by Hamas and Israel’s bombardment in Gaza.

Seeking to pre-empt criticism that it had violated Pakistan’s sovereignty, Iran said the attacks on terrorists were no different from the kind of assassination operations mounted by the US across the Middle East and Asia. Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, said “there is no more important issue for Iran than its security”.

“We Gave Your Money To UKRAINE!” – German Official To Protesting Farmers

House Panel to Take Up Backdoor Attack on Social Security

Social Security defenders are sounding the alarm ahead of a Thursday House Budget Committee hearing and vote on the Fiscal Commission Act, bipartisan legislation that opponents say is a ploy to fast-track cuts to the popular New Deal program without political accountability.

"This commission is a poison pill designed to slash Social Security and Medicare behind closed doors," Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said in a statement ahead of Thursday's markup. "The White House has accurately stated that such a commission is a 'death panel for Medicare and Social Security.'"

Altman warned that House Republicans, who have made a so-called fiscal commission a top priority, are "rushing to advance" the Fiscal Commission Act so they can attempt to tie it to must-pass government funding legislation. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the chair of the House Budget Committee, said in late November that appropriations bills are a "likely vehicle" for the fiscal commission.

"Democratic leadership should respond that our earned benefits are non-negotiable, and that they will not accept a commission under any circumstances," said Altman. "Instead, any legislation on Social Security should go through regular order so that Congress can debate it in the sunlight."

Social Security Works is urging members of the public to call their representatives and express opposition to the Fiscal Commission Act ahead of Thursday's committee hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am ET.

Google promised to delete location data on abortion clinic visits. It didn’t, study says

A year and a half has passed since Google first pledged to delete all location data on users’ visits to abortion clinics with minimal progress. The move would have made it harder for law enforcement to use that information to investigate or prosecute people seeking abortions in states where the procedure has been banned or otherwise limited. Now, a new study shows Google still retains location history data in 50% of cases.

Google’s original promise, made in July 2022, came shortly after the supreme court’s decision to end federal abortion protections. The tech giant said it would delete entries for locations deemed “personal” or sensitive, including “medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, and abortion clinics”. It did not provide a timeline for when the company would implement the new policy. Five months after that pledge, research first reported by the Guardian and conducted by tech advocacy group Accountable Tech in November 2022 showed that Google was still not masking that location data in all cases.

At the time, Google said it prioritized user privacy and that it had implemented the changes to its location retention policies in early 2022 “as promised” but that the system must not have detected that the user had visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in some of the cases.

In its newest study, which the Guardian reviewed exclusively, Accountable Tech found that the company still wasn’t deleting location history in all cases as promised, though Google’s rate of retention improved slightly. The rate of retention of location information decreased from 60% of tested cases, a measurement taken five months after Google’s pledge, to 50% of tested cases in the most recent experiment. The director of product of Google Maps, Marlo McGriff, disputed the findings of the study. ...

Accountable Tech replicated its 2022 study to measure Google’s progress. Researchers used a brand new Android device to direct themselves to abortion clinics then tested what location data was stored about their trip. This time the researchers ran eight tests in seven states: Pennsylvania, Texas, Nevada, Florida, New York, Georgia and North Carolina. In four out of eight of the tests, the route to the Planned Parenthood was retained in the device’s location history, though the name of the clinic was scrubbed. Data on searches for for abortion clinics was still retained in the web and activity history as in the researchers’ first test.

Biden PANICS: Will He LOSE NH Primary?

Maine judge delays Trump ballot decision until US supreme court ruling

A judge in Maine placed on hold the state’s attempt to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, saying the outcome of the former president’s appeal depended on a ruling by the US supreme court on a similar effort in Colorado.

“The court concludes that it lacks authority to stay judicial proceedings as requested by President Trump,” the Maine superior court justice, Michaela Murphy, wrote in an opinion released on Wednesday.

“The court concludes, however, that it does have authority … to remand the matter to the secretary [of state] and order her to issue a new ruling once the supreme court issues its decision.”

The supreme court is due to hear oral arguments in the Colorado case on 8 February. In Colorado and Maine, the 2024 presidential primaries are scheduled for 5 March.

Florida Dems Ride ABORTION to FLIP 11+ DeSantis District Even As Biden SINKS LOWER in Polls

Greenland losing 30m tonnes of ice an hour

The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour due to the climate crisis, a study has revealed, which is 20% more than was previously thought. Some scientists are concerned that this additional source of freshwater pouring into the north Atlantic might mean a collapse of the ocean currents called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is closer to being triggered, with severe consequences for humanity. ...

“The changes around Greenland are tremendous and they’re happening everywhere – almost every glacier has retreated over the past few decades,” said Dr Chad Greene, at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US, who led the research. “It makes sense that if you dump freshwater on to the north Atlantic Ocean, then you certainly get a weakening of the Amoc, though I don’t have an intuition for how much weakening.”

The Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years and in 2021 researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point. A recent study suggested the collapse could happen as soon as 2025 in the worst-case scenario. A significant part of the Greenland ice sheet itself is also thought by scientists to be close to a tipping point of irreversible melting, with ice equivalent to 1-2 metres of sea level rise probably already expected.

The study, published in the journal Nature, used artificial intelligence techniques to map more than 235,000 glacier end positions over the 38-year period, at a resolution of 120 metres. This showed the Greenland ice sheet had lost an area of about 5,000 sq km of ice at its margins since 1985, equivalent to a trillion tonnes of ice. The most recent update from a project that collates all the other measurements of Greenland’s ice found that 221bn tonnes of ice had been lost every year since 2003. The new study adds another 43bn tonnes a year, making the total loss about 30m tonnes an hour on average.

The scientists said: “There is some concern that any small source of freshwater may serve as a ‘tipping point’ that could trigger a full-scale collapse of the Amoc, disrupting global weather patterns, ecosystems and global food security. Yet freshwater from the glacier retreat of Greenland is not included in oceanographic models at present.” The influx of less dense freshwater into the sea slows the usual process of heavier salty water sinking in the polar region and driving the Amoc.

EU bans ‘misleading’ environmental claims that rely on offsetting

Terms such as “climate neutral” or “climate positive” that rely on offsetting will be banned from the EU by 2026 as part of a crackdown on misleading environmental claims.

On Wednesday, members of the European parliament [MEPs] voted to outlaw the use of terms such as “environmentally friendly”, “natural”, “biodegradable”, “climate neutral” or “eco” without evidence, while introducing a total ban on using carbon offsetting schemes to substantiate the claims.

Under the new directive, only sustainability labels using approved certification schemes will be allowed by the bloc. It comes amid widespread concern about the environmental impact of carbon offsetting schemes, which have often been used to justify labelling products “carbon neutral”, or imply that consumers can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse.

“This new legislation puts an end to misleading advertising for supposedly environmentally friendly products and thus enables consumers to make sustainable choices,” said Anna Cavazzini, the Green MEP and chair of the Committee of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection.

US climate scientist’s defamation case over online attacks finally comes to trial

A lawsuit first instituted over 10 years ago, brought by an esteemed climate scientist over alleged defamation by a rightwing blogger and an analyst, goes to trial this week. The 2012 court case was brought by the University of Pennsylvania earth and environmental scientist Michael Mann, who is alleging that online attacks on his work amount to defamation.

The litigation targets two writers: Rand Simberg, analyst at the rightwing thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute, who published a piece comparing Mann to a convicted serial child molester, and the National Review blogger Mark Steyn, who in a blogpost favorably quoted Simberg and called Mann’s research “fraudulent”. (Mann originally went after both publishers as well, but in 2021 a court ruled that neither the Competitive Enterprise Institute nor National Review could be held responsible for the attacks.) ...

The attacks on Mann came as part of a wider campaign against him by a network of climate skeptics connected to the fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch, experts have said. ...

Opening statements in the case will begin on Thursday and will be livestreamed, with the trial scheduled to run through at least 6 February, and its completion to be decided by a jury verdict.

Also of Interest

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

Technicality Could Sink Genocide Case v Israel

Journalists Rebel Over Gaza Coverage in Australia

The US, Israel Have Lost Battlefield Control – Houthis Have Attacked US Destroyer, Hit Greek-US Owned Bulker; Iran Has Hit US Base in Kurdish Capital, Erbil

The Weird Pro-Biden Messaging

Ukraine Copies Russia's 'Active Defense' Tactic

‘Control the narrative’: how an Alabama utility wields influence by financing news

Holocaust Survivor Marione Ingram Decries Climate of Censorship After Her Hamburg Talks Are Canceled

Palestinian Artist Samia Halaby Slams Indiana U. for Canceling Exhibit over Her Support for Gaza

US citizen Gonzalo Lira abandoned to die in Ukraine

Phil Giraldi: Intel and Truth in Brussels

Dark Day for Ukraine: Krynky Bridgehead Collapse, Rus Captures Veseloye; German Crisis Protests Grow

Scott Ritter visits Donbas!

A Little Night Music

Little Johnny Taylor - Part Time Love

Little Johnny Taylor - Somewhere Down The Line

Little Johnny Taylor - Everybody Knows About My Good Thing, Pt. 1 & 2

Little Johnny Taylor - Somebody's Got To Pay

Johnny Taylor - Cheaper To Keep Her

Little Johnny Taylor - You're Savin' Your Best Loving for Me

Little Johnny Taylor - Since I Found A New Love

Little Johnny Taylor - If You Love Me (Like You Say)

Johnnie Taylor – Who's Making Love