Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features West Coast blues guitarist Smokey Wilson. Enjoy!

"The age in which we live can only be characterized as one of barbarism. Our civilization is in the process not only of being militarized, but also being brutalized."

-- Alva Myrdal

News and Opinion

South Africa calls on ICJ to order Israel to end Rafah offensive

South Africa has asked the international court of justice (ICJ) to urgently order Israel to end its assault on Rafah, halt its military campaign across Gaza, and allow international investigators and journalists into the territory. In a court hearing, lawyers for South Africa expanded a written request for judges to issue an emergency order to stop the offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.

They argued that seven months into the war, which has killed more than 35,000 people and reduced much of Gaza to rubble, the scale of suffering was now so intense that a total ceasefire was needed to get food, medicine and other aid to its desperate population.

Prof Vaughan Lowe KC told the court that a destructive campaign in Rafah, the last corner of Gaza that has not faced a ground invasion by Israeli forces, would destroy “the foundation of Palestinian life” in the territory.“If the court does not act now the possibility of rebuilding a viable Palestinian society in Gaza will be destroyed, at least for the lifetime of those who survive the current horrors of Gaza.”

South Africa also demanded access for reporters and war crimes investigators to Gaza, to collect and preserve evidence of potential war crimes. “The details are not always easy to verify because Israel continues to bar independent investigators and journalists from entering Gaza, and over 100 journalists who were in Gaza have been killed since Israeli attacks began,” Lowe said. “Israel cannot block investigations by independent investigators and then say the court cannot proceed because there is insufficient evidence against it.”

Why Israel is in deep trouble: John Mearsheimer

Red Cross and UK Foreign Office to discuss plan to visit Palestinians in Israeli detention

Red Cross officials are to hold talks with the UK over a Foreign Office plan to visit Palestinian detainees held by Israel. Critics say this bypasses a duty on Israel under the Geneva conventions to give the Red Cross access to detainees.

Israel has suspended the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from access to Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack on 7 October, and says it will not rescind the policy until Hamas grants access to Israeli hostages.

Thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli detention. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said he was deeply troubled by reports of inhumane treatment of detainees.

Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC director for the near and Middle East, is in London to hold talks with the Foreign Office in which the issue of ICRC access to detainees and the implications of the UK alternative are due to be discussed.

David Cameron, the foreign secretary, has unilaterally negotiated a deal with Israel in which two UK legal observers and an Israeli judge would visit some prisoners. Details have not been published. The deal came after UK government lawyers visited Israel to underline Britain’s belief that denying access to the ICRC was a breach of the Geneva conventions.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on President Biden's "Pathetic" Diplomacy and Israel's War in Gaza

US completes installation of floating pier to deliver aid to Gaza

The US military has said the installation of a floating pier for the delivery of humanitarian aid off Gaza has been completed, with officials ready to begin ferrying supplies into the territory, where much of the population faces imminent starvation owing to the continuing Israel-Hamas war. Ordered two months ago by the president, Joe Biden, the US military transported the system overnight from the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 20 miles north of Gaza. ...

The full operation will involve pallets of food and other humanitarian aid being loaded on to ships in Cyprus and transported to a large floating dock a few miles off the Gaza coast, where they will be put on trucks. Smaller US naval ships will take the trucks the last few miles to the floating pier, near the end of the militarised Netzarim corridor. The trucks will be driven off the ships and along the pier roughly 500 metres to the landing zone, where the pallets will be unloaded for collection by UN vehicles.

According to officials, the delivery of food and other crucial aid is expected to start within 24-48 hours. ...

Central Command said the UN would receive the aid and coordinate its distribution in Gaza, although it was not immediately clear which UN agency would be involved. The US has designated the World Food Programme as its partner in delivering food inside Gaza. The UN relief agency Unrwa has by far the most staff and resources in the besieged coastal territory, but Israel refuses to deal with it.

‘Barbaric’: Palestinian lorry drivers recount settlers’ attack on Gaza aid convoy

Palestinian lorry drivers delivering aid to Gaza have described “barbaric” scenes after their vehicles were blocked and vandalised by Israeli settlers, preventing humanitarian supplies reaching the territory where much of the population face imminent starvation. Drivers and contractors who were targeted on Monday at the Tarqumiya checkpoint in the occupied West Bank also said Israeli soldiers escorting the convoy did nothing to stop the attack.

The incident sparked international condemnation after videos emerged on social media that appeared to show Israeli settlers throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground and at least one vehicle being set ablaze.

Yazid al-Zoubi, 26, said between 50 and 60 lorries had set out in the convoy. “We were carrying oil, sugar and other things and driving from the Tarqumiya crossing,” he said. “We left in a convoy with an army vehicle in front of us and an army vehicle behind us, and we took a special army road that civilians could not cross. Suddenly, after 20 minutes on the road, near the crossing, we were surprised by at least 400 settlers. They attacked us. The rest of the drivers and I escaped from the vehicles after the settlers starting throwing stones at us.’’ Zoubi said the situation escalated when the settlers started breaking the windscreens of the lorries and piercing the tyres, then climbed on to the vehicles and threw packages of food into the road. ...

Zoubi said that during Monday’s attack the Israeli soldiers escorting the convoy stood back and watched as the settlers rampaged. “We are shocked and surprised that the army did not provide us with any kind of protection,” he said. “Even though they were present and watching what was happening. The army was at the service of the settlers.’’

Zoubi said the drivers fled the scene but that when they returned later to retrieve their belongings, they were attacked by the settlers, some of whom were armed. ‘’At that point the army gathered us and ordered us to raise our hands on the walls,” he said. “The settlers were free to terrorise us. I have never been attacked so brutally before. The state of terror I experienced is indescribable. Even now I have nightmares at night. My psychological state is broken, I cannot think properly, I can’t sleep. I cannot work. We are not smugglers. We agreed to transport goods legally from the crossing under the watch and supervision of the Israeli authorities.”

“Resist the Normalization of Evil”: Israeli Reporter Amira Hass on Palestine and Journalism

'Dark Times': Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé Detained, Interrogated by FBI

In what one observer called "a whole new level of insanity and paranoia," renowned Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé—a staunch critic of Zionism—was detained and interrogated this week by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as he entered the United States at Detroit's airport.

In a Wednesday Facebook post, Pappé said that he was questioned by FBI agents for two hours after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Monday.

He wrote:

The two-men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world! Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the "conflict" (seriously this what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America... What kind of relationship [do] I have with them?

"They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?" he added, "and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter."

"I know many of you have fared far worse," Pappé wrote, referring to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian plastic surgeon and rector of Glasgow University in Scotland who last month was denied entry to Germany—and by extension all 29 Schengen Area nations—before the ban was overturned earlier this week.

"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel's becoming very soon a pariah state, with all the implications of such a status," he added.

Pappé's treatment sparked outrage among Palestine defenders.

"The detention and interrogation of internationally renowned Israeli anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé at Detroit airport by the FBI is latest in the long list of episodes of intimidation and bullying across the West to defend the indefensible—the Israeli genocide of Palestinians," University of California, Berkeley history professor Ussama Makdisi said on social media Wednesday.

Entrepreneur and geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand said, "We've reached a whole new level of insanity and paranoia."

Pappé, 69, is a scholar of Palestinian history at the University of Exeter in England. He's published over 20 books including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, an examination of the Nakba expulsion of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist militants—who sometimes massacred Palestinians to sow terror among them—during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s.

He has also been a leading Israeli critic of Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 125,000 people since the October 7 attacks. During a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Pappé asserted that Israel's current onslaught is "even worse" than the 1948-49 ethnic cleansing in many ways.

"What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza," he said. "Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse."

Pappé's latest title, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, details "how pro-Israel lobbying groups influence the Middle East policies of Britain, the U.S., and others."

Reacting to the author's detention, ACLU human rights lawyer and New York University professor Jamil Dakwar said, "One wonders if this 'VIP welcome' related to his anti-genocide activism and his new book."

Video: Students Force Police Off Campus!

Riot police arrest 50 people at UC Irvine and clear pro-Palestinian encampment

Hundreds of police officers in riot gear launched a crackdown on a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Wednesday at the University of California, Irvine, arresting 50 people and threatening students and faculty with batons and munitions.

Campus police and officers from across the region descended on the southern California public university after students with a Gaza solidarity encampment occupied a campus lecture hall. Photos and footage from the protest show sheriff’s deputies and other police officers grabbing students, pointing “less lethal” weapons at them and arresting students and at least one tenured professor with zip-ties.

Law enforcement officers cleared the encampment, which had been in place for more than two weeks and removed demonstrators from the building. The arrests at UC Irvine in Orange county mark the latest militarized responses to protesters in California and in campuses across the US. The crackdown follows a violent police raid and mass arrests at UCLA earlier this month.

A UC Irvine spokesperson, Tom Vasich, said in an email on Thursday morning that 50 people were arrested for “disrupting university operations in violation of university policy and state laws” and were “cited for violations including failure to disperse and trespassing”. The police response occurred after the school declared the demonstration a “violent protest” when students entered the building. Activists said the building was empty at the time.

Police formed a barricade while an officer on a loudspeaker declared an unlawful assembly and threatened to deploy “less-lethal ammunitions, chemical agents, police batons, Tasers or any force deemed necessary which would cause significant risk of serious injury to those who remain”, video showed.

16 Dems Help GOP Pass Israel Security Assistance Support Act

Despite U.S. President Joe Biden's threat to veto the Israel Security Assistance Support Act, 16 Democrats in the House of Representatives on Thursday voted alongside 208 Republicans to pass the bill, which will now head to the Senate.

House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Chair Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) introduced H.R. 8369, which his office claimed "curbs President Biden's misguided efforts to withhold critical security resources appropriated in U.S. law by compelling the delivery of defense weapons to Israel as they fight to protect themselves against radical terrorists."

The House vote was 224-187, with only three GOP members opposing the legislation—Reps. Warren Davidson (Ohio), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), and Thomas Massie (Ky.)—and six Republicans and 13 Democrats not voting.

The Democrats who supported the bill are Reps. Matt Cartwright (Pa.), Angie Craig (Minn.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (N.C.), Lois Frankel (Fla.), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (N.J.), Greg Landsman (Ohio), Jared Moskowitz (Fla.), Frank Pallone (N.J.), Mary Sattler Peltola (Alaska), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), David Scott (Ga.), Darren Soto (Fla.), Thomas Suozzi (N.Y.), and Ritchie Torres (N.Y.).

"These 16 House Democrats just voted with Republicans to ignore U.S. human rights law and fast-track weapons to Israel," the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project said on social media, listing the lawmakers. "Shameful."

Noting that the bill would cut off funds from the National Security Council as well as the Defense and State departments until withheld weapons were sent to Israel, Justice Democrats declared, "These are the fringe extremists of the Democratic Party."

Robert Fico, Slovak patriot

Robert Fico stable after shooting as Slovakia’s president-elect calls for unity

The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, is in a stable condition but “not out of the woods yet”, officials have said, as the country’s president-elect pleaded for unity after a shooting that laid bare the deep political divisions of recent months.

The shooting, the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader in more than 20 years, sent shockwaves across the continent, with leaders linking the violence to an increasingly febrile and polarised political climate across its countries in the run-up to European parliament elections in June.

“It is shocking to see that someone can become the victim of his political ideas. Three weeks ahead of the elections, that is extremely alarming,” said Belgium’s prime minister Alexander De Croo, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. “Let’s make it an intense campaign when it comes to words, but not beyond that.”

US supreme court sides with agency curbing predatory lending despite conservative challenge

The US supreme court on Thursday upheld the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism in a challenge brought by the payday loan industry, handing a victory to Joe Biden’s administration and a setback to the agency’s conservative critics.

The 7-2 decision reversed a lower court’s ruling that the CFPB’s funding design –drawing money each year from the Federal Reserve instead of from budgets passed by lawmakers – violated a provision of the US constitution giving Congress the power of the purse.

Clarence Thomas, who wrote the ruling, said that the CFPB’s funding design complied with the constitution’s “appropriations clause”, which vests spending authority in Congress.

“Under the appropriations clause, an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes,” the conservative justice wrote. “The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements.”

The CFPB was established under a law signed by Barack Obama in 2010 to curb the kind of predatory lending that contributed to the 2007–2009 financial crisis. The agency has delivered $19bn of relief to consumers including a $3.7bn settlement in 2022 with Wells Fargo.

Texas governor pardons man who killed Black Lives Matter protester in 2020

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas issued a full pardon on Thursday to a former US army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020 during nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice. Abbott announced the pardon just minutes after the Texas board of pardons and paroles disclosed it had made a unanimous recommendation that Daniel Perry be pardoned and have his firearms rights restored. Perry has been held in state prison on a 25-year sentence since his conviction in 2023.

The Republican governor had previously ordered the board to review Perry’s case and said earlier that he would sign a pardon if recommended. The board, which is appointed by the governor, announced its unanimous recommendation in a message posted on the agency website, and Abbott’s pardon swiftly followed.

A jury in Austin had convicted Perry of murder in the death of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, an air force veteran who had been legally carrying an AK-47 while marching in a Black Lives Matter protest. Perry was working as a ride-share driver in July 2020, when he turned his car on to a street crowded with demonstrators and shot Foster before driving off.

Perry’s case became a rallying point for conservatives, who called on the governor to ensure his release. Court records released in April showed that in the weeks leading up to the murder, Perry sent racist messages about protesters, shared white supremacist memes and talked about how he “might have to kill a few people” who were demonstrating outside his house. In a 76-page filing containing Perry’s private and public communications, he compared the Black Lives Matter movement to “a zoo full of monkeys that are freaking out flinging their shit”.

Biden asserts executive privilege to block release of special counsel interviews

Joe Biden asserted executive privilege to stop House Republicans obtaining recordings of his interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s retention of classified information after his time as a senator and as vice-president to Barack Obama.

In a letter reported by the New York Times and other outlets on Thursday, the White House counsel, Edward Siskel, told the Republican chairs of the House judiciary and oversight committees: “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them and use them for partisan political purposes.

“Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally protected law enforcement materials from the executive branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate.”

The two chairs, Jim Jordan of Ohio (judiciary) and James Comer of Kentucky (oversight), both close allies of Donald Trump, have led Republican efforts to ensnare Biden in damaging investigations including a sputtering impeachment.

Biden’s retention of classified information was discovered as Trump, Biden’s opponent in this year’s election, came to face 40 criminal charges on the same issue.

Biden proposes end to new leases in US’s largest coal-producing region

The Biden administration on Thursday proposed an end to new coal leasing from federal reserves in the most productive coal mining region in the US as officials seek to limit climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions from burning the fuel.

The Bureau of Land Management proposal would affect millions of acres (millions of hectares) of federal lands and underground mineral reserves in the Powder River Basin area of Wyoming and Montana.

The immediate impact is likely to be limited because coal leases take many years to develop and demand has flagged in recent years. But the proposal drew a harsh pushback from Republicans in Congress, coming just weeks after the Biden administration unveiled an air quality rule that could force many coal-fired power plants to reduce their pollution or shut down.

Thursday’s proposal was made in response to a 2022 court order that said two federal land management plans drafted for the Powder River Basin during the Trump administration failed to adequately take into account climate change and public health problems caused by burning coal.

In response, the Biden administration is issuing plans that would stop further coal leasing in the region while preserving existing leases. The plans are subject to a 30-day public protest period before they become final.

Ron DeSantis signs bill scrubbing ‘climate change’ from Florida state laws

Climate change will be a lesser priority in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes under legislation signed on Wednesday by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, in a move which experts say ignores the reality of Florida’s climate threats.

The legislation, which comes after Florida had its hottest year on record since 1895, also bans power-generating wind turbines offshore or near the state’s lengthy coastline.

Florida is facing rising seas, extreme heat, flooding and increasingly severe storms.

The legislation takes effect on 1 July and also boosts expansion of natural gas, reduces regulations on gas pipelines in the state, and increases protections against bans on gas appliances such as stoves, according to a news release from the governor’s office.

Sea otters use tools to open hard-shelled prey, saving their teeth, research reveals

Floating on its back in the waters of California’s Monterey Bay, a sea otter takes a shelled animal and strikes it against a rock sitting on its chest to break open the prey.

This behavior, documented in footage from researcher Chris Law, is seen in relatively few animals and allows the otter to access food without damaging its teeth. A new study, which will be published in the journal Science on Friday, sheds light on the threatened species’ tactics.

Researchers found that when there’s a decline in their preferred food sources, such as abalone and sea urchins, sea otters that use tools are able to consume larger prey like crabs and clams and reduce dental injuries. Most sea otters that do this are female, according to the study. That is probably because the tools allow them to overcome a smaller body size and weaker biting ability to meet calorie demands, said Law, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, who led the study.

The study looks at sea otters in Monterey Bay on California’s central coast, which is home to the southern sea otter population. The animal once occupied waters from Alaska to Baja California, until the fur trade drove them to near extinction. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has explored the idea of reintroducing sea otters along the west coast. The population slowly increased due to conservation efforts in the 1970s, and there are roughly 3,000 in California today.

Groups like the Center for Biological Diversity have backed sea otter restoration, citing the important role the animals could play in helping restore the region’s crucial, yet decimated, kelp forests.

Also of Interest

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

The Al-Aqsa Flood Operation Is - Despite All Damage - Effectual

Why Did the US Spend $320 Million on a Rube Goldberg Pier For Gaza?

New Palestine Protest/Free Speech Threat: House Oversight Committee Targets 20 Pro-Palestinian Organizations, Such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Demanding Treasury Produce Suspicious Activity Reports, Including on Employeees

New Poll Shows Nearly Half of Democratic Voters Disapprove of Biden’s Handling of Gaza Crisis and Campus Protests

Israel’s Ground Forces Are Even Worse Than I Believed

Won’t you please come to Chicago? Cheri Honkala on the Democratic National Convention

Niger PM Says US Threats Led to Withdrawal Order

Black holes observed colliding when universe was only 740m years old

Scientists find buried branch of the Nile that may have carried pyramids’ stones

A Little Night Music

Smokey Wilson - Standing At The Crossroads

Smokey Wilson - Thanks For Making Me A Star

Smokey Wilson ~ I Wish I Was Single

Smokey Wilson - You Better Watch Yourself

Smokey Wilson - Fine little mama

Smokey Wilson - You Don't Love Me

Smokey Wilson - Blues For Big Town

Smokey Wilson - 44 Blues

Smokey Wilson - You Don't Drink What I Drink

Smokey Wilson - How many more years