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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Larry McCray

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues rock guitarist and singer Larry McCray. Enjoy!

^{Larry McCray - Arkansas}

"Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature."

-- Albert Camus

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News and Opinion

Israel's Rescue Massacres Civilians and Censors Media

The Israeli government could have freed everyone that was held by Hamas since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, if it had continued the truce and negotiations that were taking place in November and December of 2023. The government has even killed some of the hostages in its attacks on Gaza, using the people it claims to care so much about as pawns, bargaining chips to serve nefarious ends at opportune moments.

One such moment took place on June 8, 2024, when Israeli forces used humanitarian aid trucks as cover to rescue four hostages while also killing an estimated 274 Palestinians. These same forces killed journalist Abdalah Aljamal along with his wife and his father, and then claimed without proof that the family was holding one of the captives in their home. The entire operation was consistent with Israel’s past actions. It came on the heels of a massacre at a school that killed 40 people seeking refuge there, which came on the heels of an attack on a refugee tent camp in Rafah which also killed at least 40 people.

War crimes are nothing new for Israel, but large scale public protest is new and, despite Israel’s stranglehold on corporate media and the political duopoly, represents a threat to continued support. What is a genocidal apartheid nation to do? It has to continue the attack on human beings in Palestine and on any opposition to its client state. ...

It comes as no surprise that Israel increased its activities that would have been called “malign influence” if committed by other nations. The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs utilized AI bots and other means to target Black lawmakers like Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Ritchie Torres, who, ironically, were always on board with support for the zionist state. Yet no stone can be unturned in a time of crisis when students in the liberal class are targeted for arrest and other forms of repression. ICC and ICJ condemnation is very dangerous, even when it is inadequate and lacks any meaningful enforcement measures.

HUNDREDS of zionists have spammed the Bad Faith account (apparently thinking it's Patreon? These aren't intelligent people) trying to get me deplatformed from the app. Again: a foreign country targeting an American journalist with the goal of making it impossible to earn an… pic.twitter.com/QClLAU1oUm

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) June 9, 2024

That conundrum explains why Briahna Joy Gray and others are targeted. Brute force does the job when public opinion goes south. Making an example of a prominent person is a warning to others. We are all to be terrorized, fearing damage to professional lives and personal harassment as the Biden administration dithers with announcements of dead on arrival peace agreements that neither they nor the Israelis are serious about concluding.

Israeli tanks advance in Rafah as fleeing Palestinians ‘face death and starvation’

Israeli tanks rolled into the western part of Rafah on Thursday as the city came under intense helicopter, drone and artillery fire in what residents described as one of the worst bombardments of the area so far.

The assault on Rafah has driven out more than a million Palestinians who had been sheltering there, forcing them into areas with little or no access to food, water or shelter. The UN has warned that more than a million people are expected to “face death and starvation by the middle of July”.

Joe Biden had warned he would cut off the supply of US weapons if Israel went ahead with an attack on Rafah, in part because of the lack of an adequate humanitarian plan for all the civilians who would be displaced, but the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his war cabinet launched the attack anyway over a month ago.

The Biden administration has yet to slow the flow of arms in response, arguing that Israel had yet to carry out “major operations”.

People living in Rafah described the level of fighting as devastating, however. “There was very intense fire from warplanes, Apaches [helicopters] and quadcopters, in addition to Israeli artillery and military battleships, all of which were striking the area west of Rafah,” a resident told Agence France-Presse.

Former Israel negotiator Daniel Levy: THIS is Israel's real goal

Amid Cease-Fire Talk, Israel's Siege Still Causing Child Starvation in Gaza

The United Nations relief agency for Palestinians said Thursday that Israeli authorities continue to hinder aid efforts by failing to approve requests for delivery and permits, as two other U.N. agencies separately issued dire warnings about large-scale starvation in Gaza this week.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Israel has frequently denied the agency's aid-related requests, The Guardian reported. The World Health Organization said Thursday that there have been 32 cases of deaths from malnutrition in Gaza—mostly of children below five years old—since October 7 and warned of the “catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions” faced by a significant proportion of Gazans.

The WHO statement followed a U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) warning that humanitarian access in southern Gaza had "declined dramatically" and that 3,000 malnourished children there are "at risk of death," having been cut off from life-saving care due to the Israeli military offensive in Rafah.

"Horrific images continue to emerge from Gaza of children dying before their families' eyes due to the continued lack of food, nutrition supplies, and the destruction of healthcare services," Adele Khodr, a UNICEF regional director, said in a statement.

With #Israel blocking some 2,000 aid trucks at #Rafah crossing, WHO is reporting "catastrophic hunger" and "famine-like conditions" in besieged #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/NEEeBWHADB

— Palestine Info Center (@palinfoen) June 13, 2024

The U.N. Security Council passed a cease-fire resolution on Monday that bolstered the three-phase peace plan of President Joe Biden. Neither Israel nor Hamas has yet publicly accepted the full range of terms outlined in the resolution.

The U.N. agency reports on child starvation came alongside renewed calls for Israel to open humanitarian corridors in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in announcing $404 million in new humanitarian relief funds for Palestinians, said on Tuesday that while Israel has taken steps to address "obstacles to the delivery of assistance," it "can and must do more."

Many international agencies and humanitarian groups have gone further in their condemnation of Israeli's aid policy, arguing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is using starvation as a weapon of war, as Common Dreams has reported.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) echoed that concern on Wednesday on the U.S. Senate floor.

"Blocking humanitarian aid and creating the conditions for famine is not only an act of extreme cruelty—using starvation as an act of war—but it is a violation of both American and international law," he said. It is a war crime."

In January, the International Court of Justice, the U.N.'s top court, ruled that Israel must prevent acts of genocide and "take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have reported that Israel hasn't complied with the ruling, and this week's reports add to the evidence that Israel is noncompliant.

"We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza," Tamara Alrifai, UNRWA's director of external relations, told The Guardian.

Some Israeli officials have accused UNRWA of ties to Hamas and to terrorism, but an independent review led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna found that Israel hadn't provided evidence of the claims.

Israel's hostility to aid workers, more than 200 of whom have been killed in the war, has led to massive disruption to humanitarian efforts. "Israel continues to severely restrict supplies of food, water, medicine, and fuel to the territory," Al Jazeera reported Wednesday.

The problems for the malnourished children in southern Gaza are particularly pronounced.

"Unless treatment can be quickly resumed for these 3,000 children, they are at immediate and serious risk of becoming critically ill, acquiring life-threatening complications, and joining the growing list of boys and girls who have been killed by this senseless, man-made deprivation," UNICEF's Khodr said.

Treating malnourished children requires the continuous use of therapeutic food and formula for six to eight weeks, as well as other medical support, according to UNICEF. But with Rafah under siege and insufficient supplies, that's very difficult to provide.

"We need better operating conditions on the ground, with more safety and less restrictions," Khodr said. "But ultimately, it is a cease-fire that children need most."

Blinken ceasefire confusion. Gantz out. UNSC Russia abstains

Oxfam Joins Case Calling on High Court to Stop UK Arms Sales to Israel

As government data showed the British government has approved more than 100 arms licenses for Israel since it began bombarding Gaza in October, the humanitarian group Oxfam on Thursday joined a legal case demanding the U.K. High Court intervene in the country's continued weapons sales in the interest of protecting Palestinian civilians.

Oxfam said the court "has been presented with evidence that Israel is not complying with the legal obligations that apply during armed conflict." Human rights experts have said for months that Israel is blocking crucial humanitarian aid and failing to take steps to protect civilians, as in its recent attacks on encampments in Rafah and at Nuseirat refugee camp, where at least 274 Palestinians were killed in the Israel Defense Forces' operation to rescue four Israeli hostages.

Oxfam joined Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and U.K.-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) in calling on the High Court to order the Secretary of State for Business and Trade to suspend all licenses of weapons and military equipment for Israel, and to stop granting new licenses.

At a Royal Courts of Justice hearing on Thursday, Oxfam was granted permission to act as an intervener and provide a witness statement outlining the conditions the group has seen in Gaza since October.

"Gaza is fast becoming completely uninhabitable," said Halima Begum, chief executive of Oxfam Great Britain. "More than 37,000 people have been killed and a further 84,000 have been wounded, the majority children. At least 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza are facing famine and children are dying of starvation. As long as Israel is killing Palestinian civilians in apparent contravention of international law, the U.K. government has a responsibility to stop selling it arms."

Begum called on the U.K. to use "all the diplomatic leverage it has to push for an immediate and lasting cease-fire."

Capt. Matt Hoh : Israel and War Crimes

Washington is not telling truth about the Gaza pier

The Biden administration wants you to believe the U.S. is leading international efforts to get humanitarian relief into Gaza and that supplies are “flowing to Palestinians” via the military’s pier operation there. On Monday, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced that to date,1,573 tons of aid had been delivered from the pier to the beach, including 492 tons since it reopened on Saturday after some bad weather knocked it out of commission last month.

But supplies from the pier aren’t flowing to Palestinians, and never really have.

Hardly any food from the pier on the Gaza coast has actually reached starving Gazans since it became operational on May 17. The World Food Program (WFP) said only 15 trucks from the pier reached its warehouse inside Gaza for distribution from May 17-18, and that no aid came from the pier from May 19–21. In Rafah specifically, no aid will reach Palestinians in need so long as Israel’s military offensive persists. WFP halted all deliveries to Rafah on May 21 due to Israel’s invasion of the city.

In addition, on Sunday, the WFP announced that it “paused” distribution of any more humanitarian aid from the pier due to security concerns after a U.S.-backed Israeli operation killed nearly 300 Palestinians the day before. WFP is the U.N. agency in charge of coordinating deliveries from the pier into Gaza. The 492 tons of aid the Pentagon just boasted about will sit in warehouses on the beach until further notice. Meanwhile, the U.N. says that all humanitarian operations in Gaza are on the brink of collapse.

Blinkiman is a champion gaslighter:

Blinken says some Hamas changes to Gaza ceasefire proposal ‘not workable’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that some of the amendments proposed by Hamas to the United States’ proposal for a truce in Gaza are not “workable”, but efforts to reach an agreement are continuing.

Speaking from Doha alongside Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani on Wednesday, Blinken said Israel’s war on Gaza will continue “as a result” of Hamas’s response.

“Hamas has proposed numerous changes to the proposal that was on the table. We discussed those changes last night with Egyptian colleagues, and today with the prime minister,” Blinken said. “Some of the changes are workable. Some are not.”

Washington had presented the plan late last month, saying that it would lead to an “enduring” ceasefire in Gaza.

Hamas submitted its response jointly with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Tuesday, describing it as “responsible” and “positive”. ... The discrepancy between Hamas’s position and the US proposal is unclear. On Tuesday, Blinken squarely blamed the Palestinian group for the failure to reach an agreement.

US claim it has no information on Israeli torture 'remarkable and wrong', says rights group

A leading human rights group has lashed out at the Biden administration for saying it has no information on recent reports of Israel torturing Palestinian detainees in a military base in the Negev Desert. "The fact that the US government appears not to have information from the Israeli government on detention conditions and torture allegations is remarkable and wrong," Sarah Yager, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, told Middle East Eye.

"Clearly US officials should have eyes on Israel's conduct. If they truly don't, that needs to change – including knowing whether or not detainees are being tortured," she added, noting that US weapons have been "supporting Israel throughout their Gaza campaign".

Over the past several weeks, several US media outlets have reported that Israeli detention centres have been using torture on Palestinian detainees, with the focus being on the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev Desert.

Most recently, the New York Times published a three-month-long investigation into the treatment of Palestinians at Sde Teiman. The report found systematic sexual abuse and torture perpetrated against detained Palestinians, with one account of that treatment revealing one detainee "died after they put the electric stick up" his anus. ...

MEE reached out to the State Department for comment on these reports, and a spokesperson said: "We are deeply concerned by these reports and are looking into these and other allegations."

Rep. Gaetz and Sen. Vance Request Information About State Department’s Role in Ukraine ‘Enemies List’

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday seeking information about the State Department’s ties to a Ukrainian organization that compiled a list of hundreds of individuals and organizations who oppose US military aid to Ukraine.

The NGO Texty.org.ua included Antiwar.com and several of its staff members in the report, which was titled “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the US impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it.” Gaetz and Vance’s letter noted that the list included 116 House Republicans and 21 Republican senators.

Gaetz and Vance described the report as a “substantively thin piece, largely an excuse to smear a large group of Americans who have been skeptical of aid to Ukraine in one form or another. But it is being broadcast as a part of a coordinated media strategy that has all the hallmarks of a US-targeting influence operation.”

G7 Leaders Agree To Provide Ukraine With $50 Billion Using Frozen Russian Assets

Group of Seven leaders agreed at a summit in Italy on Thursday to give Ukraine $50 billion using frozen Russian Central Bank assets, a step that marks a significant escalation in the economic war against Russia.

The plan is to provide the $50 billion to Ukraine by the end of the year in the form of a loan, which will be paid back using profits from the approximately $280 billion in frozen Russian assets held by the US and its allies.

The idea is seen as a compromise between the US and Europe, as President Biden wanted to steal all of the frozen Russian funds to give to Ukraine. But the vast majority of the money is held in Europe, and EU leaders were hesitant to do that.

‘Pervasive failings’: Phoenix police kill civilians without justification, US says

The Phoenix police department routinely discriminates against people of color and kills civilians without justification, the US Department of Justice announced in an investigative report on Thursday.

The government found a “pattern or practice” of the police department using excessive force and violating the civil rights of Black, Hispanic and Native American people. In a first finding of its kind against any US police department, the justice department also concluded that Phoenix police unlawfully detain unhoused people and dispose of their belongings. The justice department further uncovered police discrimination against people with behavioral health disabilities when officers are dispatched to help with people in crisis, and found that police had violated the rights of people engaged in protected speech.

The sweeping three-year-investigation into the department’s “pervasive failings” follows a steady stream of scandals surrounding police brutality and extraordinarily high rates of killings by officers in the Arizona city. In recent years, the Guardian revealed cases of Phoenix officers attacking and injuring a young woman during a minor traffic stop; burning a teenager on hot pavement while restraining her; and facing accusations of sexual assault on the job.

The justice department said certain laws, including drug and low-level offenses, were enforced more severely by Phoenix officers against Black, Hispanic and Native American people than against white residents who engaged in the same conduct. Investigators found that Phoenix police use “dangerous tactics that lead to force that is unnecessary and unreasonable”.

US woman faces up to 30 years in prison over bong water

A woman who was pulled over by Minnesota police officers faces up to 30 years in prison after a bong containing water that tested positive for methamphetamine was discovered in her car, despite Minnesota decriminalizing drug paraphernalia last year. The case shows how some are still affected by harsher laws from the “war on drugs” era.

Jessica Beske of Fargo, North Dakota, was pulled over in Polk county, Minnesota, while driving on Highway 59 when deputies reportedly smelled marijuana coming from Beske’s car, the Minnesota Reformer reported.

Officers allege that they discovered a bong, a glass container containing a “crystal substance”, and other drug paraphernalia in the 43-year-old’s car. In court documents viewed by the Guardian, Beske wrote that police found three pieces of drug paraphernalia that “tested positive for meth”. She added that she was charged with first-degree drug possession based on the weight of the “glass paraphernalia and bong water” despite the water only containing residual amounts of substance. ...

Despite the latest decriminalization laws in Minnesota, bong water is still treated as a controlled substance due to an existing law.

Clarence Thomas took additional trips funded by Harlan Crow, senator reveals

The US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took at least three additional trips funded by the billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow that the conservative justice failed to disclose, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee said on Thursday.

Crow, a Texas businessman and Republican donor, disclosed details about the justice’s travel between 2017 and 2021 in response to a judiciary committee vote last November to authorize subpoenas to Crow and another influential conservative, according to the committee chair, Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat representing Illinois.

“The Senate judiciary committee’s investigation into the supreme court’s ethical crisis is producing new information – like what we’ve revealed [on Thursday] – and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said.

Thomas has previously come under criticism for failing to disclose gifts from Crow. Most recently, Thomas last week belatedly revised his 2019 financial disclosure form to acknowledge that Crow had paid for his “food and lodging” at a hotel in Bali, Indonesia, and at a California club.

But the recent filing by Thomas failed to disclose that Crow had paid for his travel by private jet related to the Bali and California trips, and an eight-day excursion on a yacht in Indonesia, omissions that were revealed on Thursday in a redacted document that Durbin’s office said contained travel itineraries where Crow had provided the justice with transportation.

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Hillary Clinton endorses challenger for Jamaal Bowman’s New York House seat

Hillary Clinton endorsed the primary challenger in representative Jamaal Bowman’s vulnerable re-election race in New York.

The former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate gave her support to George Latimer, the Westchester county executive who has received significant support from the pro-Israel lobby group Aipac. ...

Hours after Clinton’s announcement, Senator Bernie Sanders said in a post to X that he would be speaking at a rally for Bowman, hosted by the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“AIPAC, funded by rightwing billionaires, supports extremist Republican candidates. They will spend $100m against progressives this year, including $25m against [Bowman],” said Sanders, referring to the pro-Israel lobby. ...

The upcoming race between Bowman and Latimer has grown increasingly contentious as the candidates’ divided stances on Israel’s deadly war in Gaza has become the focus.

Biden’s Spews Complete GIbberish! He’s Just Making Noises Now

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Russia’s war with Ukraine accelerating global climate emergency, report shows

The climate cost of the first two years of Russia’s war on Ukraine was greater than the annual greenhouse gas emissions generated individually by 175 countries, exacerbating the global climate emergency in addition to the mounting death toll and widespread destruction, research reveals.

Russia’s invasion has generated at least 175m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), amid a surge in emissions from direct warfare, landscape fires, rerouted flights, forced migration and leaks caused by military attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure – as well as the future carbon cost of reconstruction, according to the most comprehensive analysis ever of conflict-driven climate impacts.

The 175m tonnes includes carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), the most potent of all greenhouse gases. This is on a par with running 90m petrol cars for an entire year – and more than the total emissions generated individually by countries including the Netherlands, Venezuela and Kuwait in 2022.

Historically, governments have accounted poorly for the climate cost of war – and of the military industrial complex more broadly. Official data is extremely patchy or nonexistent due to military secrecy, and there is limited frontline access for researchers. The economic cost of the greenhouse gases, which will have global consequences, is even less well understood.

But according to the new report by the Initiative on Greenhouse Gas Accounting of War (IGGAW) – a research collective partly funded by the German and Swedish governments, and the European Climate Foundation – the Russian Federation faces a $32bn (£25bn) climate reparations bill from its first 24 months of war.

Unexpected number of whales currently swimming off the coast of New England

A research flight made 161 sightings of seven different species of whale on 25 May south of Martha’s Vineyard and south-east of Nantucket, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said on Thursday. The sightings included 93 of sei whales, one of the highest concentrations of the rare whale during a single flight, the agency said.

Other highlights included two orcas – an uncommon sight off New England – one of which was toting a tuna in its mouth, Noaa said. There were also endangered North Atlantic right whales as well as humpback, fin, minke and sperm whales, the agency said.

The sightings do not necessarily represent 161 individual whales, because observers could be sighting the same animal more than once, said Teri Frady, the chief of research communications for Noaa’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. However, the observers clearly reported “a lot of whales”, Frady said. ...

“It is not unusual that there are a lot of whales in the area this time of year. But since we do not survey every day, or in the same areas every time we fly, catching such a large aggregation with such a variety of species on one of our flights is the exception rather than the rule,” Frady said.

Clean v green: ‘disgust wins out’ over eco ideals when doing laundry, study finds

How often should you wash your clothes? Doctors don’t really know, but the decision is more cultural than medical, anyway. Worried about leaving the house in sweaty shirts or stained shorts, people often chuck clean clothes in the laundry basket after wearing them just once.

But the urge to avoid whiffy garments carries a climate cost that has largely been ignored. New research shows that feelings of disgust and shame encourage excessive clothes washing even among those who care about their carbon footprint.

Swedish scientists surveyed a representative sample of 2,000 people and found that when asked, in effect, to air their dirty laundry, their fear of being seen as unclean overpowered environmental identities.

When it comes to behaviours, “disgust simply wins out”, said Erik Klint, a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, Sweden, and lead author of the study. “The study shows that the higher our sensitivity to disgust, the more we wash, regardless of whether we value our environmental identity highly.”

Klint and his colleague knew from previous research that many people do not link their laundry to the environment, despite washing machines draining energy and water. After seeing that studies to alter habits had mostly failed, the researchers decided to explore the societal dimensions that make people overwash clothes. They found a high sensitivity to disgust, shame or violations of cleanliness norms was associated with frequent use of washing machines. They found no such effect for environmental beliefs.

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Also of Interest

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

The Enduring, Racist Trope of Palestinian Rejectionism

US Involved in Israeli Massacre of 274 Palestinians

Official Israel social media account declares 'there are no innocent civilians' in Gaza

Palestinian Scholar Detained by Israeli Police for Alleged Incitement to Terrorism

Remembering the Good Job Market Of the 70s

Florida sees rare flash flood emergency with more heavy rain ahead: ‘We are in trouble’

Eagle attacks, red invaders and a genetic bottleneck: inside the fight to save arctic foxes

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A Little Night Music

Larry McCray - Don't Need No Woman

Larry McCray - Delta Hurricane

Larry McCray - Drinkin' Liquor And Chasin' Women

Larry McCray - Sugaree

Larry McCray - Blues is my Business

Larry McCray - Same Old Blues

Larry McCray - Soulshine

Larry McCray - All Along the Watchtower

Larry McCray w/ Kyle Dillard - Born to Play the Blues

Larry McCray w/ Allman Family Revival - One Way Out

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