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This evening's music features Chicago blues singer and guitarist J.B. Lenoir. Enjoy!

"The western-backed genocide in Gaza should be showing everyone that western governments don’t make the odd-looking foreign policy decisions they make because they understand foreign policy better than ordinary people. They make those decisions because they are corrupt and evil.

That’s always been the case, it’s just far more obvious now. You can see just by looking at how universal support for Israel is among US officials and lawmakers compared to the general public that any random schmoe off the street is more likely to make correct and moral foreign policy decisions on behalf of these governments than the empire managers in charge.

And that’s why real democracy is continually subverted in those nations. If the people were actually in charge of the foreign policy decisions made within the imperial core, the empire would no longer be inflicting the violence and tyranny necessary for its continued existence."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Biden Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza

Biden is fighting for demockery by hiding the actions of his administration from the voting public and congressional oversight.

Biden uses loophole to keep 100 arms sales to Israel under the radar amid Gaza war

The US is reported to have made more than 100 weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza, but the deliveries escaped congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval.

The Biden administration has become increasingly critical of the conduct of Israeli military operations in Gaza and the failure to allow in meaningful amounts of humanitarian aid, with the death toll now over 30,000 and with famine looming. But it has kept up a quiet but substantial flow of munitions to help replace the tens of thousands of bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny coastal strip, making it one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.

The Washington Post reported that administration officials informed Congress of the 100 foreign military sales to Israel in a classified briefing. Few details are known of the sales, because keeping each one small meant their contents remained secret, but they are reported to have included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid. The White House spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, declined to comment on the report on Wednesday.

The Arms Export Control Act makes significant exceptions for arms sales to close allies – a limit of $25m for ‘major defense equipment’, defined as big-ticket items that require a lot of research and development, but the limit rises to $100m for other “defense articles” like bombs.

“This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy thinktank, said.

How U.S. Military Support Is Undercutting Ceasefire Talks, Prolonging War

Bullets Found at Gaza Flour Massacre Site Belie Israel's 'Stampede' Claim

Bullet wounds caused by the same type of large-caliber ammunition used in several Israel Defense Forces rifles and machine guns undercut Israeli officials' dubious claim that most victims of last week's "Flour Massacre" near Gaza City died in a stampede, one human rights monitor said Wednesday.

Gaza officials said at least 118 Palestinians were killed and 760 others injured when Israeli troops shot and shelled a large crowd of starving people waiting for food distribution in the al-Nabulsi Roundabout area south of Gaza City on February 29. Israeli officials said many or most of the victims were trampled as the large crowd of people starving due to Israel's siege and blockade of Gaza desperately rushed aid trucks.

However, Dr. Mohammed Salha, the acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, told reporters last Friday that more than 80% of Flour Massacre victims treated at the facility suffered gunshot wounds. A United Nations team that visited al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City found "a large number of gunshot wounds" among the 200 or so patients being treated there.

On Wednesday, the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, which is investigating the massacre, said that many victims suffered injuries from 5.56x45 mm NATO bullets, which are used in various guns carried by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops including M4 and Tavor assault rifles and IWI Negev light machine guns.

"A sample of 200 dead and injured victims revealed that they were indeed hit by this type of bullet, and that the bullets were discovered and examined at the massacre site along with shrapnel found in the bodies of the wounded and dead," the group said.

Israel imports some of its 5.56 mm rounds from the United Kingdom, where Palestine advocates are calling for an investigation and the suspension of arms exports to the country.

This investigation from @EuroMedHR is startling: the UK Govt must investigate claims that UK-exported 5.56x45mm NATO bullets were used in Israel's Flour Massacre.
Given what we know already, continuing to license arms exports to Israel is unconscionablehttps://t.co/hTNeqBenfU

— ICJP (@ICJPalestine) March 6, 2024

The World Must Calculate the Real Gaza Death Toll

Since the Hamas raid penetrated the multi-tiered Israeli border security on October 7, 2023 (an unexplained collapse of Israel’s defensive capabilities), 2.3 million utterly defenseless Palestinians in the tiny crowded Gaza enclave have been on the receiving end of over 65,000 bombs and missiles plus non-stop tank shelling and snipers.

The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, “no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.”

The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains—just about everything.

The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm; bulldozed many cemeteries; and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.

With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm, and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine, and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death and injury toll. But for different reasons. Hamas keeps the figures low to reduce being accused by its own people of not protecting them, and not building shelters. Hamas grossly underestimated the savage war crimes by the vengeful, occupying Israeli military superpower fully and unconditionally backed by the U.S. military superpower.

The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the “official” rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism.

It was especially astonishing to see the most progressive groups and writers routinely use the same Hamas Health Ministry figures as did the governments and outside groups backing the one-sided war on Gaza. All this despite predictions of a human catastrophe in the Gaza Strip almost every day since October 7, 2023 by arms of the United Nations, other besieged international relief agencies on the ground, eyewitness accounts by medical personnel, and many Israeli human rights groups and brave local journalists in that strip, the geographic size of Philadelphia. (Unguided Western and Israeli reporters and journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza by the Israeli government.) (See the open letter, titled “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe,” to President Joe Biden on December 13, 2023 by 16 Israeli human rights groups that also appeared as a paid notice in TheNew York Times.)

Then came the December 29, 2023 opinion piece in The Guardian by the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar. She predicted half a million deaths in 2024 if conditions continue unabated.

In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024 Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes:

The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine—a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known. Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.

Tharoor quotes Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council: “We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions,” and “Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.”

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer, said “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, according to the Post, warned of an “‘unknown number of people’—believed to be in the tens of thousands—lying under the rubble of buildings brought down by Israeli strikes.”

Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said, “All people in Gaza are at imminent risk of famine. Almost all are drinking salty and contaminated water. Healthcare across the territory is barely functioning,” and “Just imagine what this means for the wounded, and people suffering infectious-disease outbreaks… many are already believed to be starving.”

UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, the Palestinian Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders are all relating that the same catastrophic conditions are getting worse fast.

Yet, and get this, in this article, the Post still stuck with the “more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began.”

Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98% and 99% of Gaza’s entire population has survived—albeit the sick, injured, and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!

From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

Imagine Americans, if this powerful U.S.-made weaponry was fired on the besieged, homeless, trapped people of Philadelphia, do you think that only 30,000 of that city’s 1.5 million people would have been killed?

Daily circumstantial evidence of the deliberate Israeli targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructures requires more reliable epidemiological estimates of casualties.

It matters greatly whether the aggregate toll so far, and counting, is three, four, five, six times more than the Health Ministry’s undercount. It matters for elevating the urgency for a permanent cease-fire, and direct and massive humanitarian aid by the U.S. and other countries, bypassing the sadistic cruelty against innocent families of the Israeli siege. It matters for the columnists and editorial writers who have been self-censoring themselves, with some, like the Post’s Charles Lane, fictionally claiming that Israel’s military doesn’t “intentionally target civilians.” It matters for accountability under international law.

Above all, it lets weak Secretary of State Antony Blinken and duplicitous President Biden be less servile when Netanyahu dismisses the low death toll by taunting them: What about Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki?

As a percentage of the total population being killed, Gaza can expose the Israeli ruling racist extremists to a stronger rebuttal for ending U.S. co-belligerent complicity in this never-to-be-forgotten slaughter of mostly children and women. (The terrifying PTSD on civilians, especially children, will continue for years.)

Respecting the more accurate casualty toll of Palestinian children, mothers, and fathers presses harder for permanent cease-fires and the process of recovery and reparations for the survivors of their holocaust.

Israel Still Blocking US-Funded Flour Shipment Into Gaza

Israel is still blocking a US-funded flour shipment into the Gaza Strip that was announced by the White House 46 days ago, a US official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich initially said he blocked the shipment because it was going through the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, known as UNWRA. About two weeks ago, US officials said Israel agreed to unblock the shipment and send it through the World Food Program, but it still hasn’t entered Gaza, where children are dying of starvation. The flour is stuck at the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the US in January that he would allow the shipment to go through, but he has not been true to his word. The US official did not elaborate on why the flour continues to be blocked. ...

Instead of using its leverage on Israel, the US began dropping aid from planes over Gaza over the weekend and carried out another airdrop of about 36,000 meals with the Jordanian Air Force on Tuesday. Oxfam said the airdrops “mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior US officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza.”

Worth a click and a full read:

Leaked Israel lobby presentation urges US officials to justify war on Gaza with ‘Hamas rape’ claims

Two prominent pro-Israel lobby groups are holding private briefings in New York City to coach elected officials and well-known figures on how to influence public opinion in favor of the Israeli military’s rampage in Gaza, The Grayzone can reveal. These PR sessions, convened by the UJA-Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council, rely on data collected by Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster and pundit. A source who was present during several meetings provided Luntz’s slides to The Grayzone. Participants were informed that the presentations and data contained in the slides were strictly confidential, the source said. ...

The Luntz-tested presentations on the war in Gaza urge politicians to avoid trumpeting America’s supposedly shared democratic values with Israel, and focus instead on deploying “The Language of War with Hamas.” According to this framing, they must deploy incendiary language painting Hamas as a “brutal and savage…organization of hate” which has “raped women,” while insisting Israel is engaged in “a war for humanity.” ...

Luntz’s Gaza war presentation puts his poll-tested tactics back in the Israel lobby’s hands, urging pro-Israel public figures to stay on the attack with incendiary language and shocking allegations against their enemies. In one focus group, Luntz asked participants to state which alleged act by Hamas on October 7 “bothers you more.” After being presented with a laundry list of alleged atrocities, a majority declared that they were most upset by the claim that Hamas “raped civilians” – 19 percent than those who expressed outrage that Hamas supposedly “exterminated civilians.”

Data like this apparently influenced the Israeli government to launch an obsessive but still unsuccessful campaign to prove that Hamas carried out sexual assault on a systematic basis on October 7. Initiated at Israel’s United Nations mission in December 2023 with speeches by neoliberal tech oligarch Sheryl Sandberg and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and speaking fees from Israel lobby organizations, Tel Aviv’s propaganda blitz has yet to produce a single self-identified victim of sexual assault by Hamas. A March 5 report by UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence Pramila Patten did not contain one direct testimony of sexual assault on October 7. What’s more, Patten’s team said they found “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence.” ...

To make their arguments stick, Luntz recommends pro-Israel forces avoid the exterminationist language favored by Israeli officials who have called, for example, to “erase” the population of Gaza, and to instead advocate for “an efficient, effective approach” to eliminating Hamas.

Three sailors dead after Houthis strike ship in Gulf of Aden, US says

Three sailors have died and others have been injured after a Houthi missile attack on a ship in the Gulf of Aden, US officials have said – the first fatalities of crew of commercial shipping since the Houthis began launching strikes at ships in waters off Yemen last year.

The officials told US news agencies that the crew of the MV True Confidence had abandoned ship after the attack, which was claimed by the Houthis. ...

The bulk carrier was drifting with a fire on board after being hit at about 9.30am GMT on Wednesday 50 nautical miles south-west of Aden, the vessel’s owner and operator said.

“The vessel is drifting,” the Liberia-registered owner True Confidence Shipping and Greece-based operator Third January Maritime Ltd said in a joint statement, adding that there was no current connection with any US entity.

The marine security firm Ambrey said the ship had been struck and had sustained damage, adding that a rescue operation was “under way with parts of the crew already in lifeboats”.

Briahna Joy Gray: WH UNDER pressure, VOTERS demand BIDEN to stop Israel's REIGN OF TERROR in Gaza

After Michigan success, Biden ballot protest movement heads to Georgia

A protest movement in Georgia – a swing state that President Biden narrowly won in 2020 – is seeking to apply pressure to the incumbent over his support of Israel before the 12 March Democratic primary election.

On Monday, a group of multifaith and multiracial groups called the Listen to Georgia Coalition launched the Leave It Blank campaign, which urges voters to submit a blank ballot next Tuesday. The push follows a similar grassroots effort – Listen to Michigan – in which more than 100,000 voters marked their ballots “uncommitted” last month.

Biden’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza, where more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past five months, has been a major point of contention for Democratic voters. A majority of Democrats favor a presidential candidate who doesn’t support military assistance for Israel, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Made up of some 300 people from groups including the Georgia Muslim Action Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace Action and Arab Americans 4Ward, the Listen to Georgia Coalition highlights the growing discontent among voters who helped Biden win the state by 11,800 votes in 2020. Some 57,000 Arab Americans live in Georgia, and coalition participants hope their effort garners 1,200 blank ballots, equivalent to the votes needed for a 10% margin of victory for Biden.

At a press conference in the Georgia statehouse on Tuesday, the group said it hoped the effort would serve as a wake-up call for the Democratic party and President Biden, who it said is at risk of losing the 2024 presidential election if he does not demand a ceasefire in Gaza. “The people of Georgia do not want our tax dollars spent overseas funding a genocide,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a civil rights attorney and board member of Cair Action – a new political arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations – said at the conference. “We want our tax dollars spent here at home, helping people across our state.”

Scott Ritter: GAME OVER for Victoria Nuland as Russia Destroys Neocon Agenda in Ukraine

Rus Destroys Odessa Drone Base, Novomikhailovka Falling; NATO Plays w/ Fire, EU Saudi & Sudan Shells

Russian missiles strike near Zelenskiy and visiting Greek prime minister

A deadly Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa appeared to land near President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and visiting Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who described the moment of the bombardment as “intense”.

The attack on port infrastructure on Wednesday killed five people and left an unspecified number of wounded, according to Ukraine’s navy.

“We heard the sound of sirens and explosions that took place near us,” said Mitsotakis, who was holding talks with Zelenskiy. “We did not have time to get to a shelter. It is a very intense experience,” Mitsotakis added, through an interpreter in Odesa.

Ukraine stepped up its own attacks behind Russian lines with the apparent killing of a Russian election official on Wednesday with a car bomb and a drone assault on a metal plant.

Russia and Ukraine have increased aerial attacks as Moscow’s troops advance on the frontlines and Kyiv faces a shortage of manpower and weapons.

In Prague, French President Macron repeats call to send European troops to Ukraine

Yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to the Czech capital for talks on nuclear energy and on escalating the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Polls show mass popular opposition in Europe, by 68 percent of French people and 80 percent of Germans, to Macron’s call to send European troops to fight Russia in Ukraine. It comes after German army plans were revealed to send long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine for strikes on targets in Russia. Nonetheless, Macron doubled down on these staggeringly reckless proposals, which open the path to escalation to World War III between NATO and Russia, including the use of nuclear weapons.

At a press conference with Czech President Petr Pavel, he said: “My comments were clear, thought out, and precise. … For two years we have repeated at each press conference that war has returned to European soil. We have revealed how much military materiel we have already delivered, how much we have already spent. Is this our war, or isn’t it?” In fact, an overwhelming majority of the French people does not think it is their war. Macron contemptuously dismissed public opinion, however, instead calling to intensify France’s existing partnership with the United States and the Czech Republic to send artillery and shells to Ukraine. He said, “We are at a time in Europe where it is fitting not to be cowardly.”

Macron admitted that his policy risks nuclear war but cynically blamed this on Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said, “Who is threatening, whatever we say or do, to use nuclear weapons? President Putin. All of you, turn to him and ask him what his strategic limits are. But if each day we explain what our limits are, faced with someone who has none and who started the war, I can tell you, defeatism is stalking us. … [Be] careful about the message that is stalking us.”

What is “stalking” Macron and other NATO leaders? The Ukrainian puppet regime they armed against Russia is suffering a military debacle, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead and the Ukrainian army in retreat after having lost Avdiivka. Moreover, as all of them know their plans to escalate the war face explosive popular opposition. But nonetheless, they are conspiring to intensify attacks on Russia, gambling that the Kremlin may ultimately be intimidated and back down. Macron’s admission that he does not know Putin’s strategic limits for the use of nuclear weapons—like his call not to state what strategic limits the European powers might have—only underscores the staggering recklessness of this policy.

Macron’s attempt to blame the war entirely on Russian aggression is a lie, flagrantly contradicted by his comments on sending European ground troops to fight Russia in Ukraine. Indeed, he cited the many escalations NATO countries have carried out in their arms deliveries to Kiev, none of which resulted in Russian military action against NATO. On this basis, he argued that Russia will not decide on how the war escalation proceeds—that is, that the NATO imperialist powers, not Russia, are driving the war. Macron said, “At each step over the last two years, people said, if you send tanks, there will be retaliation. If you send planes, there will be retaliation. If you send medium-range artillery shells, there will be retaliation. We all did all of that, after having all said that we would not. … The pace of escalation is not defined by the Russian side, it is defined by a consensus between everyone.”

This amounts to claiming that Putin, who has warned that further NATO escalation risks civilization-ending nuclear war, is just bluffing. While he tells the public that Russian aggression is responsible for the war, Macron asserts without any proof that Russia will not take drastic action and that a consensus between the NATO powers will be able to control the extent of whatever escalation they provoke. But there is no justification for this complacent argument.

‘Explosive growth’ in petrochemical production poses risks to human health

Chemical pollution tied to fossil fuel operations poses serious risks to human health, warns a new analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

Citing data from dozens of studies, the report points to an alarming rise in neurodevelopmental issues, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and certain cancers in young people taking place amid what the paper’s author calls “explosive growth” in the petrochemical industry. Between 1990 and 2019, rates of certain cancers in people under 50 increased dramatically. Meanwhile, fossil fuel use and petrochemical production have increased fifteen-fold since the 1950s, according to the report.

“One of the major factors driving climate change is also increasing our exposures to chemicals that are adversely impacting health,” said the report’s author, Tracey Woodruff, a professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). “Typically people say cancer is a disease of the aging, but now we’re seeing it increasing in people under 50.”

The report points to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), chemicals commonly found in plastics and other products that interfere with healthy hormonal function, as a key threat.

“Numerous medical societies, government agencies, and systematic reviews have concluded that exposure to chemicals and pollution, including EDCs is an important risk factor for multiple diseases and health inequities and probably contributes to these increases,” the report notes, adding that increases in disease and petrochemical production at the same time “alone cannot be interpreted as causal”.

Phil Landrigan, an epidemiologist at Boston College who was not involved with the study, said he agreed with the paper’s conclusions. “All of this plastic is laden with over 10,000 chemicals,” Landrigan said. “These chemicals include carcinogens, developmental neurotoxicants, endocrine disruptors and hundreds more that have never been tested for toxicity.” He added that these chemicals leach out of plastics where they can cause a range of ailments including cancer, cardiovascular disease and infertility.

80% of Americans test POSITIVE For SCARY Chemical Found in Cheerios, Linked To INFERTILITY: Study

Microscopic plastics could raise risk of stroke and heart attack

Doctors have warned of potentially life-threatening effects from plastic pollution after finding a substantially raised risk of stroke, heart attack and earlier death in people whose blood vessels were contaminated with microscopic plastics. Researchers in Naples examined fatty plaques removed from the blood vessels of patients with arterial disease and found that more than half had deposits contaminated with tiny particles of polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

Those whose plaques contained microplastics or nanoplastics were nearly five times more likely to suffer a stroke, heart attack or death from any cause over the following 34 months, compared with those whose plaques were free from plastic contamination. The findings do not prove that plastic particles drive strokes and heart attacks – people who are more exposed to the pollution may be at greater risk for other reasons – but research on animals and human cells suggests the particles may be to blame.

“Our data will dramatically impact cardiovascular health if confirmed because we are defenceless against plastic pollution,” said Dr Raffaele Marfella, first author on the study at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Naples. “The only defence we have available today is prevention by reducing plastic production.” Because plastic pollution is ubiquitous, reaching across the entire planet, Marfella said even if society succeeded in the massive task of slashing plastic pollution, any health benefits from the cleanup would not be seen for years.

The doctors embarked on the research after noticing a rise in strokes and heart attacks in patients who would normally be considered low risk. Marfella and his colleagues wondered whether plastic pollution might be involved in damaging people’s blood vessels by driving inflammation.

More than 400,000 songbirds killed by organised crime in Cyprus

More than 400,000 songbirds were trapped and killed in Cyprus last autumn as part of a recent increase in wildlife crime, according to a new report.

Organised crime networks use decoys and speakers playing birdsong to lure these small birds – including garden favourites such as robins and sparrows – to land in bushes or orchards, where they catch them with “mist” nets or branches covered in glue. They are then sold via the hidden market to restaurants to be eaten as a local dish called “ambelopoulia”, which consists of pickled or boiled songbirds.

The report, drawn up by BirdLife Cyprus with support from the RSPB and the Committee Against Birds Slaughter (Cabs), found that 435,000 birds were killed this way in autumn 2023 alone. While the number caught has been trending downwards over the past decade, last year marked an increase of 90,000 from 2022.

Martin Hellicar, the director of BirdLife Cyprus, said: “Despite the very good progress made in recent years, this autumn was a reminder that this can be quickly reversed if enforcement resources are not maintained.”

Cyprus is a stepping stone for many birds on huge autumn migrations between their breeding grounds in Europe to overwintering grounds in Africa each year. Blackcaps, flycatchers, chiffchaffs, willow warblers, reed warblers and Cetti’s warblers are among those being targeted, many of which are in steep decline in the UK. The practice of trapping songbirds for human consumption was outlawed in Cyprus in 1974 but it continues to be carried out on an industrial scale.

Also of Interest

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

The Myth of Israel as ‘US Aircraft Carrier’ in Middle East

Hunger and starvation intensifying in Gaza

Palestinian fishermen face death as they try to feed starving Gaza

Oscar Winners Who Don’t Speak Out On Gaza This Weekend Will Be Complicit In Genocide

Israel's Cruelty Is Concealed by Its Decentralization

Victoria Nuland, Major Force Behind Failed Project Ukraine, Retires Unexpectedly

Patrick Lawrence: The Russians in Ukraine

Ukraine SitRep: The Slow Grind - New Bombs - Calling For Talks

‘Sad and debilitating’: rural midwesterners contend with well water tainted by livestock waste

New Pakistan Gov't Marks Return of "Bourgeois Old Guard" as Jailed Imran Khan Looms Large

White House caught in media CROSSFIRE: Messaging starts to SLIP and SLIDE on ISRAEL

Kathy Hochul Gone ROGUE?? Gov Deploys 750 NAT'L GUARD Members To POLICE NYC Subway

A Little Night Music

J.B. Lenoir - Talk to Your Daughter

J.B. Lenoir - I Lost My Baby

J.B. Lenoir - The Mojo

J.B. Lenoir - Voodoo Music

J.B. Lenoir - Feelin' Good

J.B. Lenoir - Vietnam Blues

J.B Lenoir - Let's Roll

J B Lenoir - How Much More

J.B. Lenoir - I Feel So Good