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"It says so much about US politics that Biden’s most vulnerable political weak point is the fact that he’s sponsoring a genocide, but Republicans can’t attack him on that point because they support the genocide too."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Israel Signals Readiness To Launch Invasion of Southern Lebanon

Israeli troops carried out a logistics supply drill, with an eye launching “identical operations In the northern sector.” The drill signals part of what officials refer to as ongoing preparation for invading Lebanon.

Northern commander Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin spoke of the determination to allow displaced civilians to return to the Israeli north, declaring “we are constantly strengthening our readiness to launch an attack in Lebanon.” ...

The international community has been scrambling to get a border deal between Israel and Lebanon, and to forestall any potential war. Although these efforts continue, the reports have been that Israel put a deadline of March 15 on a deal. Talks are expected to pick up pace during Ramadan, which runs from March 10-April 9.

In the meantime, Israeli preparedness continues, with Army Chief Herzi Halevi reportedly ordering Brig. Gen. Chico Tamir, the former deputy commander of the northern corps, to prepare “several possible plans for a ground operation in Lebanon.”

George Galloway: Israel Has DESTROYED Itself as Yemen, Iran, Lebanon Prepare for War

Rami Khouri on Israeli Attacks in Lebanon, Suffering in Gaza & "Amateurish" U.S. Foreign Policy

First aid ship to Gaza leaves Cyprus port in pilot project

An aid ship that has been docked in Cyprus for close to a month has finally set sail for Gaza, taking almost 200 tonnes of aid in a pilot project to open a new sea route for aid to a population on the brink of famine. A video showed the Open Arms boat departing the Mediterranean island’s southern port of Larnaca at an unknown time early on Tuesday. Government officials in Cyprus had said the exact timing of the vessel’s departure would not be released for security reasons.

However, maritime tracking sites showed the Open Arms in the eastern Mediterranean, slowly heading for Gaza. The boat is towing a barge containing flour, rice and protein as well as water and medicines – provisions that are desperately needed in the besieged coastal strip. While the journey usually takes about 15 hours, the aid boat and its accompanying barge were travelling at about 3.7 knots, making a timeframe for the voyage of up to two days more likely.

The mission, mostly funded by the United Arab Emirates, is being organised by the US-based charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), while the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms is supplying the ship. WCK’s founder, José Andrés, and its chief executive, Erin Gore, said: “Our goal is to establish a maritime highway of boats and barges stocked with millions of meals continuously headed towards Gaza.” According to WCK and statements in the Israeli media on Tuesday, the Open Arms will dock at a jetty at a beach site in northern Gaza, which is being built by the charity.

WCK said it was creating the landing jetty with material from destroyed buildings and rubble. It had a further 500 tonnes of aid amassed in Cyprus, which would also be dispatched, it said.

State Dep Spox CRUMBLES Pressed On Israel Med Staff TORTURE

UK pressing for ‘full explanation’ of alleged abuses after Gaza hospital raid

A UK Foreign Office minister has called for an investigation into a report that medical staff in Gaza faced violent and humiliating treatment in detention after an Israeli raid Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis – at the time the largest functioning hospital in the Palestinian territory – was raided over several days by Israeli forces in an attack that began on 15 February.

At the time, doctors said that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ground troops stormed the premises after cutting off roads to the medical centre and shelling its facilities. The attack forced patients, medical personnel and displaced civilians sheltering at the hospital to flee, and at least 13 patients died in the aftermath, staff said, mostly due to a lack of electricity needed to run equipment such as ventilators.

The IDF described the raid as “precise and limited” and based on intelligence that Hamas militants were operating from the complex and may have kept hostages there. The military later said it had apprehended about 200 suspects during the operation. According to a BBC investigation published on Tuesday, dozens of medics from Nasser were among that number.

Three sources described being blindfolded, forced to strip to their underwear, and repeatedly beaten and subject to other cruel and humiliating treatment during detention. Dr Ahmed Abu Sabha, 26, said that he was held for a week, during which time muzzled dogs were set on him and his hand was broken by an interrogator.

Responding to a question from the Labour MP for Cynon Valley, Bethan Winter, Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell told the Commons that the British government was pressing for “a full explanation and investigation”. ... Commenting on Mitchell’s remarks, Sacha Deshmukh, the chief executive of Amnesty International UK, said: “It’s not good enough for Andrew Mitchell to say the UK will press the Israeli authorities to investigate these harrowing allegations. We know from years of so-called ‘investigations’ conducted by the Israeli military authorities into abuses committed by their forces in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that there’s a vanishingly small prospect of there being any accountability whatsoever."

UAE THREATENS To TANK Israel Economy Over Gaza Aid

Israel has killed over 400 people waiting for aid in Gaza

Israel has killed more than 400 Palestinians as they wait for aid deliveries, with 11 aid seekers killed on Tuesday in Gaza City, said the government media office in Gaza.

Residents of Gaza City, north of the besieged enclave, were waiting for aid around the Kuwait roundabout when they were targeted by tanks positioned in the area. At least 25 people were also wounded the attack, paramedics from al-Shifa Hospital told Al Jazeera.

The killings are the latest in a spate of attacks on civilians during attempted aid deliveries, even as the US pushes for more humanitarian assistance for the enclave. Over 100 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded last week when Israeli forces fired at an aid convoy in Gaza City's al-Rasheed Street. The incident has since been dubbed the "Flour Massacre", as residents of Gaza City were seeking flour and other food in an area that has been completely cut off from aid by Israeli forces.

The Gaza government media office said in a statement on Tuesday that more than 400 people had died in such a manner "What the occupation army is doing in targeting citizens waiting for aid proves the falsity of all talk about attempts to alleviate the reality of suffering in the northern Gaza Strip, and confirms that the starvation policy is the title of the occupation’s current plan, in addition to the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing it is carrying out," said the statement.

Palestinian boy killed by Israeli police during clashes in East Jerusalem

A Palestinian boy has died after being shot by Israeli border police at a refugee camp in East Jerusalem in the first such fatality in the Israeli-annexed territory during Ramadan.

The child – who was variously reported as being 12 or 13 years old – suffered a fatal gunshot wound during clashes between residents of the Shuafat refugee camp and police.

In a statement, Israeli border police said violent riots broke out in the camp for the second consecutive night and that during the unrest, a single shot was fired by an officer towards a suspect “who endangered the forces while firing aerial fireworks in their direction.”

“The suspect was apprehended, arrested, and transferred for medical treatment,” the statement said. Police later told the AFP news agency that the boy had died from his wounds. ...

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated five people wounded by Israeli fire.

Canada memorial to Ukrainian soldiers in Nazi unit removed after protests

A controversial memorial to Ukrainian soldiers who served in a Nazi unit during the second world war has been removed from a Canadian cemetery following years of protests by community groups who described the shrine as “painful” and offensive.

The cenotaph, which had stood in the privately owned St Volodymyr Ukrainian cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, was removed on Saturday.

The memorial, erected in 1988, was a tribute to the First Ukrainian Division, better known as the Waffen-SS “Galicia” Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division, a volunteer unit under the command of the Nazis.

The cenotaph has long been a source of tension between Canada’s Ukrainian diaspora – many of whom had survived Stalin’s campaign of mass starvation and held strongly anti-Soviet views – and Jewish and Polish communities, who see the cenotaph as a tribute to a Nazi division believed to have committed widespread murder.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre welcomed the “elimination, albeit overdue” of a memorial that “honoured and glorified individuals who served in a Nazi military unit and were complicit in war crimes committed during the Holocaust, ultimately distorting Holocaust history”. But a subsequent statement from the cemetery that the monument had been transported to “enable its repair” raised questions over whether the removal was temporary.

Macron looking ridiculous. NATO is getting weaker

White House announces $300m stopgap military aid package for Ukraine

The Pentagon will rush about $300m in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10bn to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced on Tuesday.

It’s the Pentagon’s first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn’t until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren’t just out of replenishment funds, but $10bn overdrawn.

The announcement comes as Ukraine is running dangerously low on munitions and efforts to get fresh funds for weapons have stalled in the House because of Republican opposition. US officials have insisted for months that the United States wouldn’t be able to resume weapons deliveries until Congress provided the additional replenishment funds, which are part of the stalled supplemental spending bill.

The replenishment funds have allowed the Pentagon to pull existing munitions, air defense systems and other weapons from its reserve inventories under presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, to send to Ukraine and then put contracts on order to replace those weapons, which are needed to maintain US military readiness.

“When Russian troops advance and its guns fire, Ukraine does not have enough ammunition to fire back,” said the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in announcing the $300m in additional aid.

Aaron Maté - (The GrayZone) : Nuland and the Leaked German Plot

Furious Hungary summons US envoy over Biden’s ‘dictatorship’ comment

Hungary summoned the US ambassador over comments by the US president, Joe Biden, who said the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, wants a dictatorship. ... During a campaign event in Philadelphia, Biden referred to his rival’s meeting with the Hungarian politician: “You know who he’s meeting with today down at Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship.” ...

Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, dismissed the American president’s words as “lies”. In a press conference on Tuesday, he said the American ambassador in Budapest, David Pressman, had been summoned and met with a senior Hungarian official earlier in the day.

“We asked the ambassador to show us the quote, with location and time,” Szijjártó said, denying that Orbán ever said what Biden described. “This is a very serious insult.”

Szijjártó continued: “We are not required to take such lies from anyone, even if that person is the president of the United States.”

Special counsel says he was doing his job when he criticized Biden’s memory

Robert Hur, the justice department special counsel assigned to report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, told Congress he was just doing his job when he shook up the US election campaign by criticizing the president’s apparent inability to recall certain events.

In his report released in February, Hur, a Republican former US attorney under Donald Trump, recommended Biden not be charged for possessing classified documents. But he infuriated the president’s Democratic allies by making repeated references to Biden’s age and memory as one reason for not indicting him, saying jurors would see him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

“My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information willfully,” Hur said in his opening remarks to the House judiciary committee. “I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind. For that reason, I had to consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial.”

He defended his comments about Biden’s recollections, saying: “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the attorney general my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.”

Republicans are also unhappy with Hur’s finding that Biden should not be charged, arguing it was evidence of double standards at the justice department. A different special counsel, Jack Smith, has indicted Donald Trump for allegedly taking government secrets with him after leaving the White House and, unlike Biden, conspiring to keep them out of the hands of investigators. The justice department also decided last year not to bring charges against Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, after classified documents were found at his home.

Thailand election body seeks to dissolve progressive party that won 2023 vote

Thailand’s election commission has said it will seek the dissolution of the progressive Move Forward party – which won last year’s general election – after a court ruled that the party’s proposal to amend a royal anti-defamation law was unconstitutional.

The commission said that after studying a constitutional court’s ruling from January, its members unanimously agreed to file a case with the court seeking the party’s dissolution because they believe the proposal was an attempt to overthrow Thailand’s constitutional monarchy.

It was unclear whether the court will accept the petition.

Move Forward’s progressive agenda has resonated among millions of young and urban voters and it won a stunning victory over military-backed parties in a May election.

But its plan to change lese majeste laws outraged conservative lawmakers allied with the royalist military who torpedoed the party’s attempts to form a government. If the party is dissolved, its leaders could be banned from politics for 10 years.

TikTok Ban PASSES HOUSE: Anti-Palestine WITCH HUNT or "National Security Threat"?

The State of the Union is "Failed"

If there were any question that this nation is a failed state, the recent State of the Union (SOTU) address makes the case and removes any doubt about the depth of decline. The constitutional requirement that the president, “... from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union…” is now an extravagant combination of nonsense, mendacity, and war propaganda that reveals the depth of rot in the U.S. body politic.

The SOTU address is an opportunity for serious issues to be addressed but which are instead discussed as sophomoric saber rattling as members of congress jump up and down clapping like trained seals as the president pledges to stop Putin, stand up to Putin and not back down to Putin who we are told is on the march and sowing chaos throughout all of Europe. While democrats over acted the republicans sat and frowned. So-called journalists give undue attention to the pantomime and draw phony conclusions based on the theatrics. Corporate media play an important part in aiding and abetting the spread of obfuscations, confusion, and outright lies. ...

Of course the president is the star of the show and Joe Biden didn’t disappoint. His active and enthusiastic participation in Israel’s war crimes has lowered his already anemic approval ratings, and now thousands of primary election voters are casting ballots for “uncommitted” as opposed to the incumbent president. What better moment to pretend that he and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in opposition to one another than to put on a show at the State of the Union address? The clumsiness of the performance made it all the more outrageous when the president pretended to insult Netanyahu on camera. Democratic senator Michael Bennet began the charade with Secretary of State Blinken and Transportation Secretary Buttigieg by his side as extras in the movie. ...

The response to millions of people expressing outrage over genocide was treated as a public relations stunt, which is what SOTU and the U.S. presidency have become. ... Giving serious attention to Biden, the State of the Union, or the congress can only lead to being scammed. The devolution of the political process is always more obvious in an election year and shows that the state of the union is one of failure.

Nearly 50% of US parents financially supporting adult children, study finds

Nearly half of US parents provide some kind of financial support to their adult children, who are grappling with higher food and living costs than they did, a new study has found.

The study – conducted by Savings.com – found that young, working-class Americans were not substantially benefiting from the recovery of the country’s economy, as “evidenced by high employment, falling inflation, and economic growth”. That has forced many of them to continue to rely on their parents to help cover costs of living.

The average age of adults receiving financial help from their parents – sometimes at the risk of the parents’ retirement security – was 22, according to the study. And while parents surveyed in the study on average said their adult children should become financially independent by 25, many were supporting those children beyond that milestone.

Of parents providing support, 21% were helping millennials (age 28-43) or members of gen X (age 44-59). Millennials and gen X adult children were on average given between $907 and $960 each month by their parents. Gen Z adults (between 18 and 27) were getting more help from their mothers and fathers, averaging about $1,515 monthly.

Notably, many adults from gen Z still have college and university expenses. The most common expenses parents covered for adults across those three generations were groceries, food, cellphone bills, rent, mortgages, tuition and health insurance.

Biden clinches Democratic nomination, with Trump closing in on Republican

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won primary elections in Georgia and Mississippi on Tuesday, with Biden sealing the Democratic nomination.

Both men captured nearly all the votes cast so far in what had become token state primaries, along with the primary for Democrats Abroad and the Republican caucus in Hawaii. Biden also won the Northern Mariana Islands primary Tuesday morning, earning 11 delegates.

In Georgia, a nascent effort to register opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the war in Gaza could not be easily expressed with “no preference” protest votes in Georgia, because the ballot does not provide a way to do so.

Legal action could end use of toxic sewage sludge on US crops as fertilizer

New legal action could put an end to the practice of spreading toxic sewage sludge on US cropland as a cheap alternative to fertilizer, and force America to rethink how it disposes of its industrial and human waste.

A notice of intent to sue federal regulators charges they have failed to address dangerous levels of PFAS “forever chemicals” known to be in virtually all sludge.

The action comes as sludge has contaminated farmland across the country, sickening farmers, killing livestock, polluting drinking water, contaminating meat sold to the public, tainting crops and destroying farmers’ livelihoods.

The practice “doesn’t pass the straight face test”, said Kyla Bennett, policy director for the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) nonprofit, which filed the notice. “EPA has known for years that there is PFAS in biosolids but they are sitting on their hands, and I can think of no better ways to contaminate America than PFAS in pesticides and PFAS-laden biosolids,” she said. “We’re going to get the EPA to start regulating this shit, literally.” ...

Sludge is a mix of human and industrial waste that is a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process. Its disposal is expensive, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows it to be spread on cropland as “biosolid” fertilizer because it is also rich in plant nutrients. But public health advocates have blasted the practice because the nation spends billions of dollars annually treating water only to take the toxic byproduct, insert it into the food supply and re-pollute water. Maine became the first state to ban biosolids after it found PFAS had highly contaminated crops or water on at least 73 farms where sludge had been spread. The state recently established a $70m fund to bail out affected farmers.

Tornadoes, shrinking ice and early syrup: how hottest winter hit the US

The US has just experienced its hottest ever winter, with record-breaking temperatures driving away snow and ice and causing the coldest months to feel bizarrely balmy in many parts of the country. Swaths of the lower 48 states had a “lost” winter, with many of the coldest winter states – New York, Vermont, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and New Hampshire – all setting new record heat levels for the season, which concluded at the end of February, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

Overall, the winter was 5.4F (3C) hotter than the long-term average, a huge 0.8F (0.4C) increase on the previous record set in the winter of 2015-2016. The US hasn’t had a warmer winter in 130 years of record keeping, and possibly before this too.

“It was quite a jump on the previous record – it wasn’t a photo finish, it was a decisive new record,” said Karin Gleason, chief of monitoring section at Noaa’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Instead of snow, many regions got rain, with the winter coming in as one of the wettest on record, particularly in the US west, which saw a series of atmospheric rivers hit during February. Los Angeles received three times its average rainfall during February, resulting in the wettest February in decades for the city.

Average temperatures are rising year-round, due to climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels, but the data shows that the coldest regions, and the coldest times of year, are generally warming at the fastest rates of all, according to Gleason. “We will still have cold weather in the winter, but this year we just had one real episode of cold weather the rest of it was very mild,” she said. “The overall trend is that we are trending to warmer winters.”

Also of Interest

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

Crocodile Tears For Gaza While Backing Its Destruction

US Media and Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of ‘Beheaded Babies’ Stories

How Israeli army brutality killed a disabled Palestinian man

The American Empire in (Ultimate?) Crisis: The Decline and Fall of It All

Israeli Genocide Causing 'Complete Psychological Destruction' of Gaza Children

A Gaza Sea Port Theater

Jewish Progressives Stage Sit-In at Hakeem Jeffries' Office to Protest AIPAC Influence

New Storyline in Wall Street Journal: “Russia Is Running Out of Missiles” Shifts to “Russia Can’t Keep Up Production Forever”

French Defense Reports Acknowledge Ukraine Is Done With

George Galloway gives his first Commons speech as Rochdale MP

Social Security IN THE BALANCE, Trump Considers CHANGES To Benefits Policy

FEDS Spying on ‘EXTREMIST’ GAMERS?! Shocking GAO Report REVEALED

New Report DEBUNKS Biden Gaslighting On Inflation

A Little Night Music

Bob Brozman - Chopping Wood Blues

Bob Brozman - Devil's Slide

Bob Brozman - Death Come Creepin

Bob Brozman - Zonky

Bob Brozman : Dinah

Bob Brozman - Look at New Orleans

Bob Brozman - One Steady Roll

Bob Brozman and David Lindley - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

Bob Brozman - Down The Road

Bob Brozman - I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate