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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Big Daddy Kinsey

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago bluesman and slide guitarist Big Daddy Kinsey. Enjoy!

^{Big Daddy Kinsey & the Kinsey Report - Bad Situation}

"Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other."

-- Carl von Clausewitz

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News and Opinion

Israel’s Savage Destruction Of Gaza’s Healthcare System Is Exactly What It Looks Like

Israel has ended its assault on the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, because there is nothing left to assault. The facility — the largest medical complex in Gaza where hundreds of civilians had been sheltering — is now an empty, unusable, burnt-out husk. Witnesses report hundreds of corpses in and around the complex, with video footage showing human body parts protruding from the earth and bodies with zip ties on their wrists.

Israel is currently doing its usual song and dance where it claims the hospital was a Hamas headquarters and everyone it killed there was a “terrorist”, but at this point the only people buying that schtick are the ones who desperately need to. This was a massacre of profound savagery. It’s as plain as day to anyone who isn’t deeply invested in pretending otherwise.

Israel, which at the beginning of the Gaza onslaught had adamantly denied that it would ever attack a hospital, has since launched hundreds of documented attacks on Gaza’s healthcare services and has destroyed most of its healthcare system. Just today the director-general of the World Health Organization announced that an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s al-Aqsa Hospital compound killed four people and injured seventeen.

A @WHO team was on a humanitarian mission at Al-Aqsa Hospital in #Gaza, when a tent camp inside the hospital compound was hit by an Israeli airstrike today. Four people were killed and 17 injured. WHO staff are all accounted for.

The team was at the hospital assessing the needs…

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 31, 2024

Oxford University professor Nick Maynard, who spent time working at al-Aqsa Hospital earlier this year, recently accused the IDF of “systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system” in Gaza.

“It’s not just about targeting the buildings, it’s about systematically destroying the infrastructure of the hospitals,” says Maynard. “Destroying the oxygen tanks at the al-Shifa hospital, deliberately destroying the CT scanners and making it much more difficult to rebuild that infrastructure. If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?”

Why indeed? If the objective is to target Hamas, why trash the hospital’s medical equipment? If the objective is to target Hamas, why destroy the whole complex and make it unusable as a healthcare facility?

Logically we can only conclude that it isn’t about targeting Hamas at all. It’s about destroying Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure.

Today, we witness the total ISraeli destruction of the most important, 700 beds specialty hospital in Gaza, Al Shifa Medical Complex. It was established 78 years ago during the British Mandate, the name Shifa meaning 'The House of Healing'; now turned into a 'House of Death' by… pic.twitter.com/l53luccMtz

— Dr. Mads Gilbert (@DrMadsGilbert) April 1, 2024

Why would Israel want to destroy Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure? The answer to that question has been clear for months: to make the land uninhabitable for the Palestinians. The same reason they’re deliberately starving Gazans, destroying their homes, continually moving them from place to place and bombing every “safe zone” they create.

This is naturally giving rise to a situation in which the inhabitants of Gaza will either die or flee to some other country — which just so happens to be exactly what Israel wants them to do.

It’s so obvious what’s happening here. Painfully obvious. Poke-you-in-the-eyeballs obvious. But we’re still subjected to a western political-media class who keeps forcefully telling us that this blatant ethnic cleansing campaign is not what it looks like. Telling us that all this starvation and destruction and elimination of healthcare services and the way it directly places pressure on the Palestinians to leave their homeland is just a series of coincidences arising from Israel’s “war” of “defense”. That only by pure happenstance does it look exactly the same as the advancement of an agenda that Israelis have sought to advance for generations.

Well I personally am through with having my intelligence insulted, and I hope you are too. The sky is blue, a spade’s a spade, the emperor has no clothes, and Israel is conducting a very obvious ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.

Miko Peled on Israel and genocidal mania

White House defends Shifa hospital massacre that killed over 400

The Israeli army’s withdrawal from Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Monday revealed that the complex had been turned into a killing field, with hundreds of bodies of men, women and children showing signs of mass summary execution, torture and mutilation. The massacre is among the largest in the nearly six-month-long US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has so far killed at least 32,000 people. According to Gaza’s government media office, the death toll of Israel’s assault on the hospital stands at over 400. In a statement Monday, the Euro-Med Monitor said that the total number killed, missing or injured could number over 1,500, in “one of the largest massacres in Palestinian history.”

Images shared widely on social media showed countless decomposed bodies being exhumed from the hospital’s courtyards, where they had been buried by Israeli bulldozers. The bodies included women and children, as well as men with their hands zip-tied together. Eyewitnesses told Al Jazeera and other media outlets that hostages were shot while handcuffed or thrown in ditches and buried alive by bulldozers. ... In its initial report on the massacre, based on on-the-ground reports, the Euro-Med Monitor reported that “hundreds of dead bodies, including some burned, and others with their heads and limbs severed, have been discovered both inside Al-Shifa Medical Complex and in the hospital’s surrounding area.”

The Biden administration, the leading sponsor of the Israeli genocide, defended the massacre, claiming Shifa hospital was a legitimate military target and alleging, without substantiation, that Hamas was using it as a headquarters. “There were Hamas fighters hiding in Al Shifa Hospital,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “Do not believe that this attack was on the hospital,” Miller added. “The attack was on the Hamas fighters that are hiding inside a hospital.” He added, “I don’t know why I don’t hear more people calling on Hamas to stop going into hospitals.”

White House spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre added, “So look, Hamas should not be operating out of hospitals, we have said that over and over again, and putting civilians at risk.”

“They’re operating out of hospitals, out of hospitals,” she added. “That’s what they’re doing. They’re embedding themselves in the civilian population. This is what they’re doing.” The White House responded to the massacre by directly green-lighting Israel’s planned assault on Rafah, where over 1 million displaced people are sheltering. Miller said that the scenario in which “Israel does nothing about the Hamas fighters that continue to exist in Rafah” is not an “acceptable alternative.” Jean-Pierre added, “We also know that there are Hamas operatives in Rafah as well. But if they’re going to move forward with military operations, we have to have this conversation. We have to understand how they’re going to move forward.”

Israel "Risking a Two-Front War, Maybe a Three-Front War," After Latest Strike Against Iran in Syria

Iran vows revenge after two generals killed in Israeli strike on Syria consulate

Iran has vowed revenge after Israeli war planes destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing at least 11 people, including a senior commander in the al-Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Iran’s leaders in Tehran described the targeting of a diplomatic mission late on Monday as unprecedented and promised a harsh response.

Iran said that several long-serving diplomats were killed alongside Brig Gen Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Zahedi’s deputy, Gen Haji Rahimi. It was also reported that Brig Gen Hossein Amirollah, the chief of general staff for the al-Quds force in Syria and Lebanon, was among the victims.

Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said: “We consider this aggression to have violated all diplomatic norms and international treaties.

“Benjamin Netanyahu has completely lost his mental balance due to the successive failures in Gaza and his failure to achieve his Zionist goals.”

Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, said Iran’s response to the strike would be “at the same magnitude and harshness”.

Teetering On WWIII? Israel attacks Iran In Syria

Matt Hoh: IDF Attacks Iran

Israeli Newspaper Details IDF's Creation of 'Kill Zones' in Gaza

Israel's military says it has killed around 9,000 militants in Gaza since October 7—and adamantly denies targeting civilians.

But new reporting published Sunday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz casts serious doubt on the IDF's estimate and details how the U.S.-armed military has established combat zones that have become death traps for ordinary Gazans.

The boundaries of such "kill zones" are not clearly marked, making it almost impossible for Palestinian civilians to know whether they are entering one. An Israeli reserve officer told Haaretz that "as soon as people enter" a kill zone, "orders are to shoot and kill, even if that person is unarmed."

"To a large extent, the tragedy in which three hostages were killed by the IDF is such a story," the newspaper reported, "since in fleeing from their captors the three entered a kill zone in the middle of the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City."

Significant discretion is given to Israeli commanders to decide whether to open fire on people near a kill zone. Unnamed Israeli soldiers told Haaretz that "there are commanders who will shoot at a building with a suspect in it even if there are civilians in the vicinity, while other commanders will act differently."

"For our commanders, if we identified someone in our area of operation who was not part of our forces, we were told to shoot to kill," said one soldier. "We were explicitly told that even if a suspect runs into a building with people in it, we should fire at the building and kill the terrorist, even if other people are hurt."

One Israeli commander described to Haaretz "incidents in which civilians tried to reach areas they thought the army had left, possibly in the hope of finding food left behind."

"When they went to such places, they were shot, perceived as people who could harm our forces," the commander said.

The new reporting points to a recent example documented by Al Jazeera in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it attacked "a terrorist" who was allegedly behind a rocket attack on southern Israel.

"Ostensibly, this was another statistic in the roster of dead Hamas militants," Haaretz reported. "However, over a week ago, other documentation of the incident surfaced on Al Jazeera. It showed four men, not one, walking together on a wide path, in civilian clothing. There is no one nearby, only the ruins of houses where people once lived. This apocalyptic silence in the Khan Younis area was shattered by a loud explosion. Two of the men were killed instantly. Two others were wounded and tried to continue walking. Perhaps they thought they had been saved, but seconds later, a bomb was dropped on one of them. You can then see the other one falling to his knees and then, a boom, fire, and smoke."

A senior IDF officer told the Israeli newspaper that the individuals who unwittingly entered a kill zone "were unarmed" and "didn't endanger our forces in the area in which they were walking." It was also not clear they were involved in the rocket attack.

"It's quite possible that Palestinians who never held a gun in their lives were elevated to the rank of 'terrorist' posthumously, at least by the IDF," Haaretz noted. As one officer who served in Gaza told the newspaper, "In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate."

Last week, Al Jazeera published video footage showing Israeli forces gunning down two unarmed Palestinians in northern Gaza, one of whom was waving a piece of white fabric. They are believed to have entered an Israeli "kill zone."

Israeli forces have killed more than 32,600 people in Gaza since October 7, according to Gaza health officials. One human rights monitor recently estimated that 90% of those killed were civilians, contradicting the Israeli military's estimate of the civilian-to-militant death ratio.

"One reason why the Israeli government, media, the Biden administration, et al. have been trying to undermine the credibility of Gazan casualty figures is to deflect from the fact that the IDF's own figures are almost certainly bullshit," foreign policy analyst Derek Davison wrote Sunday in response to the Haaretz story.

Brianna Rosen, a senior fellow at Just Security, argued that the "kind of indiscriminate killing" detailed in Haaretz's reporting "is illegal and falls far short of any gold standard for civilian harm."

Biden Skirting U.S. Law by Rushing More Arms to Israel, Says State Dept. Whistleblower Josh Paul

Four foreign aid workers and Palestinian translator killed in Israeli strike, Gaza officials say

Four foreign nationals have been killed in an Israeli strike in central Gaza, according to health officials in the occupied territory. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office reported the deaths late on Monday. The foreign aid workers were reportedly from Poland, the United Kingdom and Australia. The nationality of the fourth aid worker was not immediately known. A Palestinian translator was also reportedly killed.

The group was working for World Central Kitchen when a convoy in which they were travelling was hit by a strike south of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, local officials said. Footage showed the bodies of the five dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Several of them wore protective body armour with the charity’s logo. Hospital staff showed the passports of three of the dead – British, Australian and Polish.

World Central Kitchen said in a statement online: “We are aware of reports that members of the World Central Kitchen team have been killed in an IDF attack while working to support our humanitarian food delivery efforts in Gaza.

“This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should never be a target.”

Aaron Maté: Netanyahu On The Ropes

Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital after two-week raid leaving facility in ruins

Israeli forces have withdrawn from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza after a two-week raid that left most of the major medical complex in ruins, amid claims from Hamas that the Israel Defense Forces killed 400 people in the compound.

According to the IDF, the facility – Gaza City’s main hospital before the war – was used to harbour Hamas fighters. The army described the operation as one of the most successful of the nearly six-month conflict and cited the killing of of 200 militants including senior operatives. The claim they were all militants could not be confirmed.

However, the UN health agency said several hospital patients had died and dozens were put at risk during the raid. Palestinians who fled the facility described days of heavy fighting, mass arrests and forced marches past dead people, while the Hamas-run health ministry described the scale of the destruction inside the complex as “very large”.

Footage showed widespread devastation, with the facility’s main buildings reduced to burned-out husks.

“Dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, have been recovered from in and around the Al-Shifa medical complex,” the health ministry said, adding the hospital was now “completely out of service”.

Al Jazeera faces ‘security threat’ ban as Israel passes new law

Israeli legislators have approved a bill paving the way for a ban on Al Jazeera and other international news outlets perceived as posing a threat to security.

After the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promised to take prompt measures to force the end of Al Jazeera’s operations within the country, parliament granted senior ministers authority to shut down foreign news networks.

Netanyahu confirmed the decision on social media, declaring that the Qatari satellite television station will no longer be aired in Israel and vowing immediate action under the new law.

“Al Jazeera will no longer be broadcast from Israel,” Netanyahu wrote in a post on X after the law was approved in its final readings on Monday. “I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activity.” ...

Al Jazeera condemned Netanyahu’s remarks, calling them “a dangerous and ridiculous lie” and saying they were the prime minister’s justification “for the ongoing assault” on the media network and press freedom. In a statement, the network vowed to persist in its reporting with “boldness and professionalism”.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre expressed concern about the ban.

SITTING DUCKS?: US Troops At Severe Risk From Biden Gaza Pier

Rank-and-file union members back campaign to ditch Biden over Gaza

In Wisconsin, a campaign by anti-war voters to abandon Joe Biden during the Democratic primary has found an ally in the labor movement – but not from its traditional leaders.

Instead, the Listen to Wisconsin campaign, an effort inspired by the Michigan campaign to reject Biden during the primary over his military support for Israel, has earned the support of rank-and-file trade unionists and a statewide coalition of low-wage workers and immigrants angry about the president’s handling of the war. “Individuals in labor have been very active,” said Janan Najeeb, a Wisconsin organizer spearheading the Listen to Wisconsin campaign.

Israel’s war on Gaza has laid bare a divide within the labor movement – which has played out largely between union leaders in the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation, and the movement’s rank and file, many of whom have vocally opposed the war and turned to their unions as an avenue for political action. ...

In Wisconsin, they’re using the 2 April primary as a tool to increase the pressure on Biden. Workers affiliated with the grassroots group Wisconsin Labor for Palestine have allied with the Uninstructed campaign, helping organize a 30 March rally at the capitol and phone-banking to get out the vote. At a small Biden campaign event on 26 March at Madison Labor Temple – a meeting space for local unions – union members handed out leaflets encouraging workers to vote “uninstructed” in the primary.

“We’ve gotten changes in wording – now they’re willing to say ‘ceasefire,’” said Barret Elward, a member of the union representing faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin, of the Biden administration. “But I mean, it’s just pablum, it’s just messaging, it’s just a PR thing. Nothing has changed on the ground.”

The Uninstructed campaign has also picked up the support of a powerful network of immigrant and low-wage workers in Wisconsin. “We should not be giving all of this money to this genocidal war,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of Voces de la Frontera, whose advocacy arm has come out in support of the Listen to Wisconsin campaign. For members of the Latino voter network, Neumann-Ortiz said, voting “uninstructed” is also a way to voice their disapproval of Biden’s rightward shift on immigration.

Jeffrey Sachs: Biden Has DESTROYED Ukraine, More Funding Would Be INSANE

Pfffftttt!!!

Mike Johnson hints vote on Ukraine aid is up next despite threat to speakership

The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has raised expectations that a vote on funding for Ukraine could be imminent in the chamber, even at the risk of the Republican losing his leadership position. Johnson touted “important innovations” to a possible Ukraine package during an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, and he suggested a vote on a standalone bill could come soon after Congress returns from Easter recess on 9 April.

But the Louisiana Republican acknowledged forces in his party were trying to unseat him over his efforts to find a bipartisan solution to stalled US funding for Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia’s military invasion, which began in February 2022. The far-right extremist Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove Johnson in March, but she stopped short of calling it for a floor vote.

The White House, meanwhile, has warned that delays are costing Ukraine lives and territory because Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, “gains every day” Congress does not pass a funding measure. ...

Those innovations include efforts to placate Republican hardliners, who have cooled on continuing to support Ukraine financially with the war there now in its third year. They include a loan instead of a grant, or harnessing Russian assets confiscated in the US under the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (Repo) for Ukrainians Act.

“If we can use the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that’s just pure poetry,” Johnson said. “Even [former president Donald] Trump has talked about the loan concept, where we’re not just giving foreign aid, we’re setting it up in a relationship where they can provide it back to us when the time is right.”

Russia issues ultimatum to Ukraine

Google to destroy billions of private browsing records to settle lawsuit

Google agreed to destroy billions of records to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly tracked the internet use of people who thought they were browsing privately in its Chrome browser’s incognito mode.

Users alleged that Google’s analytics, cookies and apps let the Alphabet unit improperly track people who set Google’s Chrome browser to “incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing mode.

They said this turned Google into an “unaccountable trove of information” by letting it learn about their friends, favorite foods, hobbies, shopping habits and the “most intimate and potentially embarrassing things” they hunt for online.

Terms of the settlement were filed on Monday in the Oakland, California, federal court, and require approval by US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The class action began in 2020, covering millions of Google users who used private browsing since 1 June 2016.

Under the settlement, Google will update disclosures about what it collects in “private” browsing, a process it has already begun. It will also let incognito users block third-party cookies for five years. “The result is that Google will collect less data from users’ private browsing sessions, and that Google will make less money from the data,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.

Florida supreme court allows abortion measure on November election ballot

Florida residents will get the chance to vote on a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, the Florida state supreme court ruled on Monday, teeing up a dramatic electoral showdown over abortion access in a state that has become a haven for women fleeing southern abortion bans.

The decision is a victory for abortion rights activists – but one that was significantly tempered by a second decision also issued on Monday, in which the state supreme court ruled to uphold Florida’s 15-week abortion ban. That decision paves the way for a separate six-week abortion ban – passed in 2023 but on hold pending the outcome of the case over the 15-week ban – to take effect.

The six-week ban will take effect in 30 days. ...

The fight over the constitutional amendment will now become even more urgent – if it passes, it will restore the abortion access set to be curtailed by the six-week ban. Under the constitutional amendment proposed by the ballot measure, access to abortion would be protected until fetal viability, which is generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy, as well as in cases when a doctor deems an abortion necessary to protect a patient’s health.

In the meantime, the ban is set to have a staggering impact on abortion access across the southern US, since people outside Florida rely heavily on the state for abortions. Almost 10,000 people who received abortions in Florida in 2023 hailed from outside Florida, according to a recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute. That’s more than double the out-of-state abortion patients seen in Florida in 2020, before Roe fell.

Video shows California police fatally shooting teenager who was reported kidnapped

Newly released law enforcement footage captures the moment California police fatally shot an unarmed 15-year-old girl who was a reported kidnapping victim. On 27 September 2022, San Bernardino county sheriff’s deputies were searching for Savannah Graziano, who was feared abducted by her father Anthony Graziano after he had fatally shot her mother the day before.

Deputies cornered Anthony Graziano’s vehicle on the side of a freeway in Hesperia, 80 miles east of Los Angeles. When Savannah exited the vehicle, they opened fire and killed her. The shooting sparked national concern, with critics questioning how officers wound up killing the teenage girl they were tasked with rescuing.

Sheriff’s officials claimed following the shooting that it was unclear whether Savannah was shot by deputies or her father, and they said deputies didn’t realize it was her when she got out of the car. For nearly two years, they refused to release footage of the shooting.

But on Friday, the department disclosed nearly a dozen video files to the independent journalist Joey Scott, who filed records requests 18 months prior. The clips – which were shared with the Guardian and include helicopter footage – show deputies shooting at Savannah as she followed their instructions to move toward them. The videos also suggest deputies shot her after two officers remarked that it was the girl who exited. The footage, and the sheriff’s narration of the video, further make clear she was killed by deputies, not her father.

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Trump ALARMS Pro-Netanyahu Faction W/ Call to END Gaza War

Hillary Clinton SHAMES Voters for Hating Trump-Biden Rematch: ‘GET OVER YOURSELVES’

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‘Poison portal’: US and UK could send nuclear waste to Australia under Aukus, inquiry told

Australia could become a “poison portal” for international radioactive waste under the Aukus deal, a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear safety legislation has heard. New laws to establish a safety framework for Australia’s planned nuclear-powered submarines could also allow the US and UK to send waste here, while both of those countries are struggling to deal with their own waste, as no long-term, high-level waste facilities have been created.

The government introduced the Australian naval nuclear power safety bill in November last year. If passed, it will establish a nuclear safety watchdog, allow for naval nuclear propulsion facilities to be created, including for storing or disposing of radioactive waste from Aukus submarines. A second bill to enable the regulator to issue licenses was introduced at the same time. ...

Dave Sweeney, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s nuclear free campaigner, said the issue of waste disposal was “highly disturbing” and that the Aukus partners could see Australia as a “a little bit of a radioactive terra nullius”.

“Especially when it’s viewed in the context of the contested and still unresolved issue of domestic intermediate-level waste management, the clear failure of our Aukus partners to manage their own naval waste, the potential for this bill to be a poison portal to international waste and the failure of defence to effectively address existing waste streams, most noticeably PFAS,” he said.

The defence minister, Richard Marles, has previously accused the Greens of “fearmongering” when they raised similar concerns, saying the government would not accept waste from the other nations. However, the legislation allows for the creation of facilities for “managing, storing or disposing of radioactive waste from an Aukus submarine”, and defines an Aukus submarine as either an Australian or a UK/US submarine, and “includes such a submarine that is not complete (for example, because it is being constructed or disposed of)”.

Baltimore bridge collapse: temporary channel planned for ‘essential vessels’

Authorities are preparing to create a temporary alternate channel near Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge to allow “commercially essential vessels” to enter the city’s port. The deadly crumpling of the bridge after it was struck by a giant container ship last week created wreckage that has been blocking a crucial shipping lane into the port. Concerns have loomed about the disaster’s widespread toll on the local and national economy.

The unified command, a partnership of the federal and state agencies and emergency management consultants responding to the bridge collapse, announced the temporary channel on Sunday. It is an attempt to avert disaster at one of the nation’s busiest ports. “This will mark an important first step along the road to reopening the port of Baltimore,” Coast Guard captain David O’Connell, the federal on-scene coordinator for the response to the bridge collapse, said in a statement.

The temporary shipping channel will be created north-east of the main artery, near the bridge itself, according to city officials. It will be “part of a phased approach to opening the main channel”, they said in a press release. Olinda Romero, a representative of the US Coast Guard working with the unified command team, said the channel was currently being used by vessels that are “working hand in hand with the first responders” to clear the wreckage from the scene. It was not yet clear when it will be able to be used by “non-essential commercial vessels”, she said. ...

The Port of Baltimore is the ninth largest port in the US, in terms of overall trade volume. It handles more automobiles and light trucks than any other US port, and nearly 20% of US coal exports pass through Baltimore, data from the port show. It is also a crucial artery for the shipment of some farming equipment, construction machinery, and coal. Last year, Baltimore’s port handled about $80bn of cargo moving between the US and other countries.

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Also of Interest

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

The Revenge to Come

A Message to AIPAC: Only Gangs Kill Witnesses

The Nuclear Explosion That Makes US Aid to Israel Illegal

Beneath Germany’s Unshakeable Support of Israel

Israel likely tortured Palestinian to record rape confession, say rights groups

Ecocide a ‘Critical Dimension of Israel’s Genocidal Campaign’ in Gaza: Probe

Salt, air and bricks: could this be the future of energy storage?

On the trail of a killer: eight years after Berta Cáceres’ murder is there new hope for justice?

Let the music play: Mexico beach bands victorious after noise complaints

World Central Kitchen: Israeli Airstrike Kills 6 International Aid Workers & Palestinian Driver

Active-Duty U.S. Airman, Inspired by Aaron Bushnell, on Hunger Strike Outside White House over Gaza

Bibi ADMITS Jose Andres Aid Workers KILLED In Israel Strike

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A Little Night Music

Big Daddy Kinsey - I Am The Blues

Big Daddy Kinsey & Sons - Howlin Wolf

Big Daddy Kinsey ~ Good Mornin' Mississippi

Big Daddy Kinsey & Sons - Going to New York

Big Daddy Kinsey ~ Walking Thru The Park & Mannish Boy

Big Daddy Kinsey - Can't Let Go

Big Daddy Kinsey - You're Gonna Miss Me

Big Daddy Kinsey - Nothing's Too Good For My Baby

Big Daddy Kinsey - Ramblin' Man

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