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"A king can stand people's fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking."

-- Will Rogers

News and Opinion

British High Court Grants WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange the Right to Appeal U.S. Extradition

Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi dies in helicopter crash

The hardline Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, has died in a helicopter crash in foggy weather in the mountains near the border with Azerbaijan. The charred wreckage of the aircraft, which crashed on Sunday carrying Raisi, as well as the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six other passengers and crew, was found early on Monday after an overnight search in blizzard conditions.

Fears had been growing for Raisi, a 63-year-old ultraconservative, after contact was lost with the helicopter on Sunday as it navigated fog-covered mountains in north-west Iran.

The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who holds ultimate power with a final say on foreign policy and Iran’s nuclear programme – said the country’s first vice-president, Mohammad Mokhber, would take over as interim president. The deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, was appointed as acting foreign minister.

“I announce five days of public mourning and offer my condolences to the dear people of Iran,” Khamenei said. Mokhber, like Raisi, is seen as close to Khamenei.

Under Iran’s constitution, a new presidential election must be held within 50 days.

Trita Parsi on Future of Iran After President & Foreign Minister Die in Helicopter Crash

ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Israeli PM and Hamas officials for war crimes

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court has said he is seeking arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

Karim Khan said his office had applied to the world court’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for the military and political leaders on both sides for crimes committed during Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.

He named Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, the commander of its military wing, considered to be the masterminds of the 7 October assault, as well as Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the group’s political bureau, who is based in Qatar, as wanted for crimes of extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape, sexual assault and torture.

In an extraordinary rebuke of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its conduct in the war in Gaza, Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian relief supplies and deliberately targeting civilians. Monday’s statement notably does not include any Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials, such as its chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, focusing instead on political decision-making.

Khan, the British ICC prosecutor, must request the warrants for the Hamas and Israeli suspects from a pre-trial panel of three judges, who take on average two months to consider the evidence and determine if the proceedings can move forward.

ICC ARREST Warrants For Bibi, Hamas Leaders

Gallant Says Israeli Operations in Rafah Will ‘Intensify’

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced Thursday that Israel will send more troops to Rafah and “intensify” operations in the city where around 1 million civilians are sheltering.

“This operation will continue with additional forces that will enter [the area]. Several tunnels in the area have been destroyed by our forces and more tunnels will be destroyed soon,” Gallant said, according to The Times of Israel.

“This operation will intensify, and Hamas is not an organization that can regenerate itself now,” he said.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : How Israel Has Changed

UN humanitarian chief delivers ‘apocalyptic’ warning over Gaza aid

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief has warned of “apocalyptic” consequences due to aid shortages in Gaza, where Israel’s military offensive in the southern city of Rafah has blocked desperately needed food. “If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it. That famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more. It will be present,” the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha.

“And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic.”

Griffith said 50 trucks of aid a day could reach the hardest-hit people north of Gaza through the reopened Erez crossing on the northern frontier. However, he added, the battles near the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in Gaza’s south meant the vital routes were effectively blocked. “So aid getting in through land routes to the south and for Rafah, and the people dislodged by Rafah is almost nil,” Griffiths added. “And we all said that very clearly, that a Rafah operation is a disaster in humanitarian terms, a disaster for the people already displaced to Rafah. This is now their fourth or fifth displacement,” he said. ...

Cogat, an Israeli defence ministry agency, said on Saturday that it was facilitating the delivery of food, water and aid into Gaza, including “hundreds of tents” for displaced people. Aid agencies, however, have repeatedly said their operations were regularly hampered by the Israeli authorities.

Israeli tanks and warplanes continued to bombard parts of Rafah over the weekend, while the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had fired anti-tank missiles and mortars at Israeli forces massing to the east, south-east and inside the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Alastair Crooke: The Two Israels

Israeli minister vows to quit war cabinet if PM fails to agree new Gaza plan

The Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has threatened to resign if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to adopt an agreed plan for Gaza, calling into question the future of the Israeli government. During a press conference on Saturday, Gantz announced that if a plan for postwar governance of the territory is not consolidated and approved by 8 June, his opposition National Unity party will withdraw from the coalition government. ...

“Personal and political considerations have begun to enter the most sacred parts of Israel’s defence,” Gantz told reporters. “Prime minister Netanyahu, I look you in the eye tonight and tell you: the choice is in your hands,” Gantz said. “The Netanyahu of a decade ago would have done the right thing. Are you willing to do the right and patriotic thing today?

“The people of Israel are watching you,” he added. “You must choose between Zionism and cynicism, between unity and factionalism, between responsibility and lawlessness – and between victory and disaster.”

His departure would leave Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, even more beholden to far-right allies who have taken a hardline on negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release.

On Thursday, defence minister Yoav Gallant challenged Netanyahu over the same issue, saying he would not permit any solution where Israeli military or civil governance were in the territory. Gallant’s comments were immediately backed by his fellow minister Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival in the emergency coalition, plunging Israel’s leadership into a highly public row.

Rights Advocates Demand Probe Into Reports That Israel Uses WhatsApp to Target Palestinians

The Palestinian digital rights group Sada Social on Saturday called for an investigation into Israel's alleged use of WhatsApp user data to target Palestinians with its AI system, Lavender.

The group, which is affiliated with the Al Jazeera Media Institute and Access Now, accused Meta, which owns WhatsApp, of fueling "the 'Lavender' artificial intelligence system used by the Israeli military to kill Palestinian individuals within the Gaza enclave."

As Common Dreams reported in April, the Israel Defense Forces has relied on AI systems including Lavender to target people Israel believes to be Hamas members.

At +972 Magazine, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham wrote that a current commander of an elite Israeli intelligence unit pushed for the use of AI to choose targets in Gaza. The commander wrote in a guide book to create the system that "hundreds and thousands" of features can be used to select targets, "such as being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently."

Sada Social asserted that it had found the Lavender system uses WhatsApp data to select targets.

"The reports monitored by the Sada Social Center indicate that one of the inputs to the 'Lavender' system relies on data collected from WhatsApp groups containing names of Palestinians or activists who are wanted by 'Israel,'" said the group in a press release. "The Israeli Lavender system, supported by artificial intelligence, identifies Palestinians by tracking their communications via WhatsApp or the groups they join."

The mention of Israel's use of WhatsApp data in Abraham's reporting also caught the attention last month of Paul Biggar, founder of Tech for Palestine.

"There's a lot wrong with this—I'm in plenty of WhatsApp groups with strangers, neighbors, and in the carnage in Gaza you bet people are making groups to connect," wrote Biggar. "But the part I want to focus on is whether they get this information from Meta. Meta has been promoting WhatsApp as a 'private' social network, including 'end-to-end' encryption of messages."

"Providing this data as input for Lavender undermines their claim that WhatsApp is a private messaging app," he wrote. "It is beyond obscene and makes Meta complicit in Israel's killings of 'pre-crime' targets and their families, in violation of international humanitarian law and Meta's publicly stated commitment to human rights. No social network should be providing this sort of information about its users to countries engaging in 'pre-crime.'"

Others have pointed out that Israel may have acquired WhatsApp data through means other than a leak by Meta.

Journalist Marc Owen Jones said the question of "Meta's potential role in this is important," but noted that informants, captured devices, and spyware could be used by Israel to gain Palestinian users' WhatsApp data.

Bahraini activist Esra'a Al Shafei, founder of Majal.org, told the Middle East Monitor that the reports that WhatsApp user data has been used by the IDF's AI machine demonstrate why privacy advocates warn against the collection and storage of metadata, "particularly for apps like WhatsApp, which falsely advertise their product as fully private."

"Even though WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, and claims to not have any backdoors to any government, the metadata alone is sufficient to expose detailed information about users, especially if the user's phone number is attached to other Meta products and related activities," Al Shafei said. "This is why the IDF could plausibly utilize metadata to track and locate WhatsApp users."

While Meta and WhatsApp may not necessarily be collaborating with Israel, she said, "by the very act of collecting this information, they're making themselves vulnerable to abuse and intrusive external surveillance."

In turn, "by using WhatsApp, people are risking their lives," she added.

A WhatsApp spokesperson told Anadolu last month that "WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government," adding that "Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested."

Al Shafei said Meta must "fully investigate" how WhatsApp's metadata may be used "to track, harm, or kill its users throughout Palestine."

"WhatsApp is used by billions of people and these users have a right to know what the dangers are in using the app," she said, "or what WhatsApp and Meta will do to proactively protect them from such misuse."

American Doctors Stranded in Gaza Ask for the US to End Support for Genocide

American doctors stranded in Gaza are asking for the US to cut off arms shipments to Israel. The physicians described a horrific scene of mass suffering in Rafah caused by the Israeli offensive in the city. President Joe Biden had promised to cut off shipments of some arms to Tel Aviv if Israeli forces attacked Rafah, a city that served as a refuge for over one million displaced Palestinians.

Speaking with the Washington Post, Dr. Adam Hamawy compared the suffering in Gaza to other war zones but said the victims are now children. “Think of the injuries that you see in war, with blood everywhere, with shrapnel that’s supposed to kill soldiers and military personnel and take out tanks and bunkers,” the former Army medic explained. “Now think about that going through a child’s body.” ...

Mahmoud Sabha, a second American doctor stranded in Gaza, wrote in the LA Times the physicians were “shocked by the cruelty” of the Israeli actions. He warned that cutting off the Rafah crossing has not only blocked the flow of aid but new aid workers to replace those rotating out. Sabha reports the health of the American doctors in Gaza is declining.

NYC Police BEAT DOWN Pro-Palestine Protesters In Brooklyn; NYPD NOT Deterred By Backlash

Police arrest six student protesters at University of Pennsylvania

More than a dozen pro-Palestinian activists, including six students at the University of Pennsylvania, were arrested after attempting to occupy a hall on the university campus late Friday.

The protesters were arrested around 9pm after trying to take over Fisher-Bennett Hall but had been met with a response from university and Philadelphia police, according to reports. The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that protesters caused the evacuation of an alumni event at the Penn Museum.

The effort to occupy the hall, which houses English, cinema and media studies, and music departments, comes a week after the university cleared a “Gaza solidarity encampment” from the university, leaving protesters scrambling to refocus their efforts.

According to the outlet, protesters may have tried to use wooden pallets, wire and overturned furniture to block three entrances to the hall. Makeshift barricades read “Free Palestine” and protesters chanted: “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.”

Police, some with riot shields and clubs, formed a barricade and pushed protesters out of the street. One police officer told the outlet that they “could not wait” to arrest individuals.

Slovak PM Robert Fico out of immediate danger four days after shooting, says deputy

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, is out of immediate danger but remains in intensive care four days after he was shot by a gunman, the country’s deputy prime minister has said.

“He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care,” Robert Kalinak, Fico’s closest political ally, told reporters.

“We can consider his condition stable with a positive prognosis,” Kalinak said outside the hospital in the central city of Banska Bystrica, where Fico is being treated. He added: “We all feel a bit more relaxed now.”

Kalinak said Fico would stay in the Banska Bystrica hospital for the time being, adding that his condition was still too serious to allow him to be transferred to a hospital in the capital, Bratislava.

Colorado voters to decide on abortion rights after measure qualifies for ballot

Voters in Colorado will have a say on abortion rights this fall after supporters collected enough valid signatures to put a measure on the ballot, part of a national push to pose abortion rights questions to voters since the US supreme court removed the nationwide right to abortion.

The Colorado measure officially made the ballot on Friday and would enshrine abortion rights into the constitution in a state which already allows abortion at all stages of pregnancy despite the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.

Since that 2022 decision, most Republican-controlled states have new abortion restrictions in effect, including 14 that ban it at every stage of pregnancy. Most Democratic-led states have laws or executive orders to protect access.

Florida’s other big November vote: will the state legalize weed?

The push to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida ramped up this week. Campaigners bankrolled by dominant players in the cannabis and CBD marketplace launched a $5m advertising blitz in support of a ballot measure in November’s election that has so far been overshadowed by publicity for the one on abortion rights.

Four commercials featuring retired military personnel, business owners, law enforcement officers and regular citizens began appearing on television, radio and the internet, leaning in heavily to themes campaigners believe will appeal to the 60% of voters amendment 3 needs to pass.

And while the financial backers of the Smart & Safe Florida political advocacy committee, most prominently Trulieve, a major operator of marijuana dispensaries, stand to harvest far greater profits if the Vote Yes campaign is successful, there is little to no organized resistance.

Florida’s Republican party passed a resolution opposing it, and the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, says he is concerned about the smell. But outside of that, nobody has yet set up any group or campaign to counter the tens of millions of dollars and corporate might invested by Trulieve and its allies, a coalition of other invested industry partners.

BIDEN Appeals To Black Voters In Morehouse Speech; Graduates Voice Opposition Over Gaza

Trump floats idea of three-term presidency at NRA convention

Donald Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the National Rifle Association in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration.

“You know, FDR 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” The ex-president and GOP presidential frontrunner said to the organization’s annual convention in Dallas, prompting some in the crowd to yell “three!” Politico reported.

Trump has floated a third term in past comments, even mentioning a prolonged presidency while campaigning in 2020. He has also tried distancing himself from this idea, telling Time magazine in April: “I wouldn’t be in favor of it at all. I intend to serve four years and do a great job.”

The 22nd amendment, which was enacted following Franklin Delano Rosevelt’s fourth term, limits the presidency to two terms.

Dr. Jill Stein & Michael Hudson: Fighting Russia & China to Last American: Destroying US From Within

Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought

The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.

A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C (1.8F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3C (5.4F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost.

A 3C temperature increase will cause “precipitous declines in output, capital and consumption that exceed 50% by 2100” the paper states. This economic loss is so severe that it is “comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently”, it adds.

“There will still be some economic growth happening but by the end of the century people may well be 50% poorer than they would’ve been if it wasn’t for climate change,” said Adrien Bilal, an economist at Harvard who wrote the paper with Diego Känzig, an economist at Northwestern University. “I think everyone could imagine what they would do with an income that is twice as large as it is now. It would change people’s lives.”

Bilal said that purchasing power, which is how much people are able to buy with their money, would already be 37% higher than it is now without global heating seen over the past 50 years. This lost wealth will spiral if the climate crisis deepens, comparable to the sort of economic drain often seen during wartime.

Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ ubiquitous in Great Lakes basin

Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are ubiquitous in the Great Lakes basin’s air, rain, atmosphere and water, new peer-reviewed research shows. The first-of-its-kind, comprehensive picture of PFAS levels for the basin, which holds nearly 95% of the nation’s freshwater, also reveals that precipitation is probably a major contributor to the lakes’ contamination.

“We didn’t think the air and rain were significant sources of PFAS in the Great Lakes’ environment, but it’s not something that has been studied that much,” said Marta Venier, a co-author with Indiana University. ...

The new paper is part of a growing body of evidence showing how the chemicals move through the atmosphere and water. Measurements found PFAS levels in the air varied throughout the basin – they were much higher in urban locations such as Chicago than in rural spots in northern Michigan. That tracks with how other chemical pollutants, like PCBs, are detected, Venier said.

But levels in rain were consistent throughout the basin – virtually the same in industrialized areas such as Chicago and Cleveland as in Sleeping Bear Dunes, a remote region in northern Michigan. The finding was a bit “puzzling” Venier said, adding that it probably speaks to the chemicals’ ubiquity.

Also of Interest

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

Craig Murray: Active Participants in Genocide

Egypt deploys military convoys to Gaza border as tensions with Israel flare

Ukraine SitRep: Kharkiv Incursion Forensics - Attacks On Russia And Russian Revenge

Iraq Wants UN Mission Gone by 2025

Red flag? Samuel Alito scandal casts further doubt on supreme court’s impartiality

US Affordable Housing Policy Works for Wall Street and Rich Developers, Not Renters

Republicans DEFUND US Military For Not Arming Israel

Anya Parampil's 'Corporate Coup' book launch in NYC

A Little Night Music

Lizzie Miles - Eh la bas

Lizzie Miles - Salty Dog and Lizzie's Blues

Lizzie Miles - A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Lizzie Miles - Hold Me, Parson

Lizzie Miles - Sugar Blues

Lizzie Miles - Yellow Dog Gal Blues

Lizzie Miles - Baby, Won't You Please Come Home

Lizzie Miles - Some of These Days

Lizzie Miles - Hot Lips

Lizzie Miles - Darkness on the Delta