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"If only the Democrats who rallied so aggressively against a fictional conspiracy between Trump and Russia could harness that same energy to oppose a real genocide by Biden and Israel."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Washington’s enablers of Israeli genocide in Gaza

The scenes of destruction and mass death at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, in the wake of the pullback from the premises by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), are among the most horrific the world has witnessed since the barbarism of the Nazis in World War II. Hundreds of bodies lie strewn through the rubble of what was once the largest place of healing in the Gaza Strip. Witnesses describe the “stench of decomposing bodies” and having to step over body parts to walk through the wreckage. Israel is engaged in a war of extermination with no limits. This war depends on an endless flow of weapons and financial support from the United States, Britain, Canada and the European Union (with Germany in the lead), without which the genocide could not continue.

As these horrors were being carried out, the Biden reelection campaign held a fundraising event Thursday at Radio City Music Hall in New York, where three Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, joined forces in defense of the current US policy. Hundreds of protesters were outside showing their support for the Palestinian people. Inside, several individuals were able to stand up to denounce the Israeli genocide and the Biden administration for supporting it.

The response of the three presidents was to reaffirm their solidarity with Netanyahu. Biden declared, “You can’t forget that Israel is in a position where its very existence is at stake.” This was said as the existence of the Palestinians is being wiped out through bombs and mass starvation. Obama lectured the protesters on the need to “listen,” that is, to shut up and let experienced warmongers like himself and Biden make the decisions. The bulk of the audience, comprised of multi-millionaires paying huge sums for admission, applauded. The entertainers who participated in the program (Colbert, Queen Latifah, etc.) were fawning in their approval. All are covered in shame.

The Radio City Music Hall event raised a record $26 million, as the Democrats laughed and joked with bankers and billionaires. Trump and the Republicans aim to top that figure this week with an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, put on by hedge fund billionaire John Paulson. Both parties are political instruments of the super-rich, unshakably committed to the defense of the profit system at home and American imperialism abroad. The homicidal sentiments enveloping the ruling class as a whole were given voice last week by Michigan Republican Congressman Tim Walberg, who called for a quick destruction of the enclave, on the model of “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” the Japanese cities annihilated by US nuclear bombs in August 1945. ...

The line-up of Democratic presidents at the Radio City Music Hall shows why the mass protests have been entirely ineffective in changing government policy. All three presidents are identified with the development of the war policy of American imperialism over the past three decades. ... Once again, in the 2024 elections, the trade unions and the pseudo-left groups are seeking to suppress any independent struggle by the working class and insist that it is necessary to support Biden and the Democrats in order to prevent the victory and reelection of ex-President Trump. Biden is supposedly the only hope for defending democracy in America, as if this 81-year-old doddering war criminal is all that stands in the way of fascist dictatorship.

INTERVIEW: John Mearsheimer Dismantles Israel's Reckless Campaign in Gaza

Charities halt Gaza aid after drone attack that killed seven workers

The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza seems likely to worsen after charities announced they are suspending operations in the territory in the aftermath of an Israeli drone attack which repeatedly targeted a clearly identified convoy of international aid workers, killing seven.

The strikes on a team from World Central Kitchen (WCK) led the charity – along with other aid organisations such as Anera, which helps refugees around the Middle East, and the US-based Project Hope, which focuses on healthcare – to announce on Tuesday that it would pause operations in Gaza to protect its staff.

Calling the decision an “unprecedented step”, Anera said the killings, “alongside the loss of numerous other aid workers and their families, has led our team to conclude that delivering aid safely is no longer feasible”.

“While we understand the severe consequences this suspension will have on the Palestinian population, the escalating risks associated with aid delivery leave us with no choice but to halt operations until our staff regain confidence that they can do their work without undue risk,” a statement said. ...

Aid ships organised by WCK arrived in Gaza on Monday carrying 400 tonnes of food and supplies – enough for 1m meals – in a shipment funded by the United Arab Emirates, after a successful pilot run last month. However, workers had only offloaded 100 tonnes before the drone attack led the charity to order the vessels carrying the remaining aid to return to Cyprus.

“A War Machine Out of Control”: Israel Keeps Attacking Aid Workers as Gaza Faces Famine

'Indictments Now,' Says UN Expert After Israel Massacres World Central Kitchen Workers

The United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories demanded criminal consequences for Israeli officials on Tuesday after the country's forces attacked a World Central Kitchen convoy in the Gaza Strip, killing seven workers and sparking global outrage.

"Israel is crossing every possible red line, still with full impunity," Francesca Albanese wrote in a social media post, noting that the Israeli military's attack on the WCK convoy came on the same day that it bombed Iran's consulate in Syria.

"Sanctions now," Albanese wrote. "Indictments now."

The International Criminal Court, the global body tasked with trying individuals for war crimes, is currently investigating alleged Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Early accounts described the Israeli attack on the WCK convoy on Monday as a singular strike, but reporting and on-the-ground testimony have since made clear that Israeli forces launched three successive strikes on the vehicles.

WCK described the attack as "targeted," given that the convoy coordinated its movements with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the vehicles were clearly marked with the humanitarian aid group's logo. Photographs released in the wake of the attack show that an Israeli missile tore through the WCK logo on the roof of one of the targeted vehicles.

According toHaaretz, "an Israeli drone fired three missiles one after the other" at the convoy, reportedly believing that a suspected "terrorist" was traveling with the aid workers.

"At some point, when the convoy was driving along the approved route, the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route ordered the drone operators to attack one of the cars with a missile," the Israeli newspaper reported, citing unnamed IDF sources.

After the first car was hit, survivors attempted to flee and transfer the wounded into the other cars—at which point Israeli forces launched missiles at the two remaining vehicles.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes "unintentionally" killed innocent WCK staffers, but the Haaretz reporting indicates the IDF knowingly launched several lethal attacks on the aid convoy. ...

Hours before Monday's attack, CNN reported that the Biden administration is "close to approving the sale of as many as 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel, in a deal expected to be worth more than $18 billion."

"Netanyahu is killing journalists, doctors, and humanitarian workers indiscriminately (or maybe discriminately) and doing everything in his power to provoke a war with Iran, but Biden is just sending more fighter jets," Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, wrote in response to the CNN story.

Biden Donor: U.S. Intentionally STARVING Gaza

‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza

Dr Fozia Alvi was making her rounds of the intensive care unit on her final day at the battered European public hospital in southern Gaza when she stopped next to two young arrivals with facial injuries and breathing tubes in their windpipes. “I asked the nurse, what’s the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old,” she said.

The Canadian doctor’s heart sank. These were not the first children treated by Alvi who she was told were targeted by Israeli soldiers, and she knew the damage a single high-calibre bullet could do to a fragile young body. “They were not able to talk, paraplegic. They were literally lying down as vegetables on those beds. They were not the only ones. I saw even small children with direct sniper shot wounds to the head as well as in the chest. They were not combatants, they were small children,” said Alvi.

Children account for more than one in three of the more than 32,000 people killed in Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Tens of thousands more young people have suffered severe injuries, including amputations.

Nine doctors gave the Guardian accounts of working in Gaza hospitals this year, all but one of them foreign volunteers. Their common assessment was that most of the dead and wounded children they treated were hit by shrapnel or burned during Israel’s extensive bombardment of residential neighbourhoods, in some cases wiping out entire families. Others were killed or injured by collapsing buildings with still more missing under the rubble.

But doctors also reported treating a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest. Some of the physicians said that the types and locations of the wounds, and accounts of Palestinians who brought children to the hospital, led them to believe the victims were directly targeted by Israeli troops. Other doctors said they did not know the circumstances of the shootings but that they were deeply troubled by the number of children who were severely wounded or killed by single gunshots, sometimes by high-calibre bullets causing extensive damage to young bodies.

This Means Much Larger Conflict!

Iran decides on response to Israeli strike that killed top commanders

Iran’s supreme national security council has decided on a “required” response to the Israeli strike on Damascus on Monday night that killed three top commanders in Iran’s al-Quds force and four other officers, state TV has reported.

No further details were provided about the meeting of the key decision-making body, but the president, Ebrahim Raisi, who chaired the meeting, said Iran would retaliate at the time of its own choosing – the standard formulation used by the Iranian regime when faced by such setbacks.

“After repeated defeats and failures against the faith and will of the resistance front fighters, the Zionist regime has put blind assassinations on its agenda in the struggle to save itself,” Raisi said on his office’s website.

The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state in Iran, also vowed revenge, saying: “We will make them regretful about the crime and similar acts.” ...

The UN security council will discuss the strike on Tuesday at a meeting requested by Russia. Iran’s mission to the UN warned that the strike could “potentially ignite more conflict involving other nations” and called on the security council “to condemn this unjustified criminal act”. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, condemned the attack on Iran’s diplomatic premises, calling on “all concerned to exercise utmost restraint and avoid further escalation”, his spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Ex-Israeli Negotiator Slams Netanyahu, Biden & U.S. Arming of Israel

Amid Gaza Genocide, Palestinians Renew Push for UN Membership

As the official death toll from Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip approached 33,000 on Tuesday, Palestinians renewed their yearslong effort to have Palestine recognized as a United Nations member state.

Thanks to a 2012 resolution, Palestine can currently participate in the sessions and work of the U.N. General Assembly as a nonmember observer state and maintain a mission at the global organization's headquarters.

On Tuesday, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority's ambassador to the United Nations, sent a short letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres requesting that the Security Council review Palestine's pending membership application from 2011.

Stop the Genocide. Recognize Palestine. End the occupation. Dismantle the apartheid.
Without justice, there can never be peace. #FreePalestine https://t.co/kHdu66RDc1

— Mona Abuamara StandWith (@MonaAbuamara) April 2, 2024

The letter came after the ambassador told Reuters on Monday that "the intention is to put the application to a vote in the Security Council this month"—specifically, at an April 18 ministerial meeting.

The chairs of the Arab Group, Organization of Islamic Cooperation Group, and Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement also wrote to Guterres as well as the presidents of the Security Council and General Assembly on Tuesday to support the application and highlight that 140 U.N. member states recognize Palestine.

As Reuters detailed:

An application to become a full U.N. member needs to be approved by the Security Council—where the United States can cast a veto—and then at least two-thirds of the 193-member General Assembly.

The U.S. mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan said that the Palestinian Authority had not met the required criteria for statehood in its 2011 bid for full U.N. membership and "has only moved further from the goals it should achieve since."

"In addition, whoever supports recognizing a Palestinian state at such a time not only gives a prize to terror, but also backs unilateral steps which are contradictory to the agreed upon principle of direct negotiations," Erdan said.

Israel has become increasingly isolated on the world stage since launching its devastating assault on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7. In addition to killing and injuring over 100,000 Palestinians in less than six months, Israeli forces have displaced most of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million residents and severely restricted the flow of humanitarian aid—causing people to starve to death.

NATO Tries to 'TRUMP PROOF' Ukraine AID: Anti- Democratic?

Ukraine military draft age lowered to boost fighting force

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed a bill to lower the mobilisation age for combat duty from 27 to 25, a move that should help Ukraine generate more fighting power in its war with Russia.

The move expands the number of civilians the army can mobilise into its ranks to fight under martial law, which has been in place since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The bill had been on Zelenskiy’s table since it was approved by lawmakers in May 2023, and it was not immediately clear what prompted him to sign it. Parliament has been discussing a separate bill to broadly tighten draft rules for months.

Zelenskiy separately signed a second bill requiring men who were given military waivers on disability grounds to undergo another medical assessment.

A third bill he signed aimed to create an online database of those eligible for military service. Both those bills could potentially help the military draft more fighters.

Cruel month of March for Ukraine. Robots enter war

Peru president Dina Boluarte under pressure amid ‘Rolexgate’ scandal

Peru’s first female president, Dina Boluarte, is embroiled in a scandal over her alleged possession of a collection of Rolex watches and luxury jewellery that has put her at the centre of a corruption investigation. The unpopular leader shook up her cabinet on Monday, swearing in six new ministers, after a rash of resignations following reports that she owned jewellery worth £400,000 ($502,700) despite earning a monthly presidential salary of around $3,320.

The “Rolexgate” scandal continues to engulf Boluarte’s government days after police rammed open the front door of her residence in Lima on Friday in search of the watches – the first time in Peru’s history that the police have forcibly entered the home of a sitting president.

After launching an investigation last month, prosecutors ordered the raid after Boluarte said she was too busy to attend a hearing last week. She had failed to declare the origin of three watches from the high-end brand, including one worth £11,150, as well as other items such as a £43,000 Cartier bracelet. Boluarte claimed on Saturday she was the victim of a plot and, in a televised address flanked by ministers, denied she was “corrupt or a thief”.

The scandal began when La Encerrona, a popular Peruvian news podcast, analysed 10,000 images from the presidential Flickr account, revealing Boluarte’s undisclosed collection of luxury watches and jewellery. ...

Boluarte, 61, a mid-level civil servant before she became Castillo’s running mate, claimed that the watches and other jewellery were the fruit of a lifetime of work. But such claims were upended during the raid on her home when police discovered a guarantee for one of the luxury watches dated July 2023. “This is not a surprise for Peruvians,” said Alvaro Henzler, president of Transparencia Perú, an anti-corruption NGO. “We don’t know if she is corrupt, or not. But we know she is not telling the truth.”

TULSI Weighed As RFK VP, Voters REVOLT Against Biden, Biden LARGER THREAT To Democracy Than TRUMP?

US aiming to ‘crack the code’ on deploying geothermal energy at scale

A limitless supply of heat exists beneath our feet within the Earth’s crust, but harnessing it at scale has proved challenging. Now, a combination of new techniques, government support and the pressing need to secure continuous clean power in an era of climate crisis means that geothermal energy is finally having its moment in the US.

Until recently, geothermal has only been viable where the Earth’s inner heat simmers near the surface, such as at hot springs or geysers where hot water or steam can be easily drawn to drive turbines and generate electricity.

While this has allowed a limited number of places, like Iceland, to use geothermal as a main source of heating and electricity, it has only been a niche presence in the US, providing less than 1% of its electricity. But this could change dramatically, offering the promise of endless, 24/7 clean energy that can fill in the gaps of intermittent solar and wind generation in the electricity grid.

“Geothermal has been used for over 100 years, limited to certain geographic locations – but that is now changing,” said Amanda Kolker, the geothermal laboratory program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). “As we penetrate the grid with renewables that are not available all the time, we need to find a base load, which is currently taken up by gas. There aren’t really many options for zero-emissions base load power, which is why geothermal is entering the picture.”

Geothermal capacity could increase 20-fold by 2050, generating 10% of the US’s electricity, according to a recent road map released by the US Department of Energy. Joe Biden’s administration has also funded new projects aimed at pushing forward the next generation of geothermal that aim to make the energy source available anywhere on America’s landmass, not just easy-to-reach hot springs.

Also of Interest

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

Israel and the U.S. are Gangster States

How Netanyahu will use the U.N. ceasefire resolution to prolong Gaza’s genocide

Israel Keeps Getting More Murderous

UK Ignores Its Lawyers’ Warnings on Arms to Israel

We Were Lied Into the Gaza Genocide. Al Jazeera Has Shown Us How

As those fleeing al-Shifa get to south Gaza, they recount Israeli torture

Ukraine - When Opining War Experts Can't Read Maps

How the Electric War Is Redrawing the Ukraine Map – In Black

Niger to Biden: Pack Up Your Forever War and Go Home

Study Finds Wall Street Mega Banks Have Overstated Income for Years on Commercial Real Estate Loans They Sell to Investors

Ghost kitchen - The Grayzone live

Phil Giraldi: US a Rogue Power

A Little Night Music

Bobby Marchan ~ Get Down With It

Bobby Marchan - You Can't Stop Her

Bobby Marchan - Chickee Wah-Wah

Bobby Marchan - What Can I Do

Bobby Marchan - I've Got A Thing Going On

Bobby Marchan - You Won't Do Right

Bobby Marchan - I Gotta Sit Down And Cry

Bobby Marchan - You Better Hold On

Bobby Marchan - Shake Your Tambourine