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This evening's music features r&b singer Wynonie Harris. Enjoy!

"Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them."

-- Euripides

News and Opinion

Trump floats deporting US citizens with criminal backgrounds

On Monday, US President Donald Trump announced that he intends to assert the power to deport any person from the country, including US citizens. This announcement confirms that the attack on birthright citizenship—or the constitutional guarantee of irrevocable and equal rights to every person born within the country’s borders—is an attack on the rights of the entire population, immigrant and native-born alike. It is a measure consciously aimed at paving the way for the police-state repression of all opposition to Trump’s regime and the interests of the financial oligarchy it represents.

Trump made the announcement during a dinner for House Republicans hosted at his luxury golf resort in Doral, Florida. In his remarks, he introduced this new policy as the immediate next step in the massive military-style raids targeting immigrants that are already underway. He claimed that his new administration was already “tracking down the illegal alien criminals,” and he boasted about “throwing them the hell out of our country” with “no apologies.” Trump indicated that the next phase of this campaign of repression would target “violent repeat offenders” who are US citizens.

“I don’t want these violent repeat offenders in our country any more than I want illegal aliens from other countries who misbehave,” he said. “They’re repeat offenders by many numbers. I want them out of our country. I also will be seeking permission to do so,” he said. “We’re going to get approval ... to get them the hell out of our country,” he declared. “Let’s see how they like it.” ...

His detailed comments on the subject made clear that these plans represent something more than his trademark fascistic rambling. “Let them be brought to a foreign land and maintained by others for a very small fee, as opposed to [being] maintained in our jails for massive amounts of money, including the private prison companies that charge us a fortune. Let them be brought out of our country, and let them live there for a while. Let’s see how they like it,” he said.

There is no precedent in US history—or procedure in the American legal system—for the deportation of citizens who were born in the US to natural-born parents. It recalls the feudal era punishment of “abjuring the realm,” as well as the practice in the British Empire of sentencing people to “transportation” to the colonies.

Max Blumenthal: The Christian Zionist Leading the ICJ

With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability. The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on Jan. 14, to become prime minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda.

Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak. The Ugandan judge rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah.

In a previous advisory case on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Sebutinde insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. In fact, she concluded that Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims. Sebutinde’s opinion opened with a lengthy history of the Israel-Palestine conflict that blended well-worn Zionist propaganda with the Old Testament. In rejecting her colleagues’ ruling declaring Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal, she resorted to accounts of the Jewish presence in the biblical land of Israel, omitting any mention of U.N. resolutions or international law. ...

Her opinion was so extreme, and so shot through with theological commentary, it prompted Uganda’s ambassador to the United Nations, Adonia Ayebare, to declare her “ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.” After probing deeper into Sebutinde’s bizarre dissent, a Princeton University graduate student named Zachary Foster discovered that large sections of it had been plagiarized from sources including neoconservative operative Douglas Feith and the Jewish Virtual Library. ...

Sebutinde’s fanatical adherence to Israel’s agenda does not appear to be the product of manipulation or enticement, however. The views expressed in her dissent on the South African case were much more likely a reflection of the Christian Zionist belief system she developed as a member of Watoto, a Pentecostal megachurch in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. It was there that Sebutinde says she developed her worldview under the tutelage of a Canadian pastor and End Times aficionado named Gary Skinner. ... Since he founded Watoto in 1984, Skinner has instilled a virulently anti-Arab strain of Christian Zionism in his congregation of 36,000 in Kampala.

Netanyahu to Meet Trump in D.C. as Israel Escalates War on West Bank Amid Gaza Ceasefire

Unrwa closure imminent as last-bid attempts to stop Israeli ban fail

The main UN agency serving Palestinians in the occupied territories, including Gaza, looks likely to be shut down on Thursday as Israel defied widespread international support for the agency in a move Unrwa predicted would “sabotage Gaza’s recovery and political transition”.

Unrwa’s banning looks certain, as Israel’s high court of justice refused a last-minute request to intervene to suspend the law forbidding the agency from operating in Israel.

Palestinians in the war-devastated Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are expected to be hardest hit by the ban, including about 30,000 Unrwa workers.

The imminent closure comes as Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, emphatically rejected suggestions from Donald Trump that Palestinians from Gaza should be “cleaned out” to Egypt and Jordan, describing the idea as an “act of injustice”.

Israel, with the backing of the Trump administration, will cut ties with Unrwa from Thursday, amid condemnation from aid groups as well as US allies, including the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, who demanded that it retract its order and said Unrwa was “irreplaceable”. Unrwa has brought in about 60% of the food aid that has reached Gaza since the war began.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Should Trump Trust Netanyahu?

Trump order targets pro-Palestinian activists to ‘combat antisemitism’

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to “combat antisemitism” that asks agencies to explore ways to deport pro-Palestinian activists, including student protesters.

The US president’s order instructs federal agencies to identify available civil and criminal authorities in order to “combat antisemitism”, specifically by deporting resident aliens – such as students with visas – who were found to have broken the law during protests.

Department and agency leaders will be required to provide recommendations to the White House within 60 days. It also instructs the Department of Justice to investigate pro-Hamas graffiti and intimidation, including incidents on college campuses.

The order appears to target students and other activists who engaged in pro-Palestinian demonstrations following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli war in Gaza.

Aaron Maté : The Costs of Shunning Diplomacy

Ukraine reels from ‘worst-case scenario’ suspension of US foreign aid

Ukraine is reeling from the shock decision by the Trump administration to pause all US foreign aid programmes immediately, as a variety of projects in the country – from military veteran rehabilitation programmes to independent media and anti-corruption initiatives – have effectively been stopped overnight.

It was seen as inevitable that the incoming administration would overhaul USAid, the US development agency, but there was an expectation that spending on Ukraine, or at least some of the most critical programmes, would be subject to a waiver – or there would at least be a winding-down period.

Instead, a “stop work” order issued last Friday has left hundreds of projects without funding, initially for a 90-day review period. Attempts by the Kyiv USAid office to save funding for some of the most important programmes have reportedly been rebuffed in Washington. ...

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his government would prioritise the most important USAid-funded programmes and try to cover them with alternative funding solutions.

Warmongering Think Tanks EXPOSED with Researcher Nick Cleveland-Stout

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (w/ Yanis Varoufakis) | The Chris Hedges Report

OpenAI ‘reviewing’ allegations that its AI models were used to make DeepSeek

OpenAI has warned that Chinese startups are “constantly” using its technology to develop competing products and said it is “reviewing” allegations that DeepSeek used the ChatGPT maker’s AI models to create a rival chatbot. OpenAI and its partner Microsoft – which has invested $13bn in the San Francisco-based AI developer – have been investigating whether proprietary technology had been obtained in an unauthorised manner through a technique known as “distillation”. ...

Wednesday OpenAI said that it had seen some evidence of “distillation” from Chinese companies, referring to a development technique that boosts the performance of smaller models by using larger, more advanced ones to achieve similar results on specific tasks. A spokesperson for OpenAI said: “We know that groups in [China] are actively working to use methods, including what’s known as distillation, to try to replicate advanced US AI models.

“We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more. We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology and will continue working closely with the US government to protect the most capable models being built here.”

OpenAI, which has itself been accused of using data without permission or a licence from publishers and the creative industry to train its own models, has already blocked unnamed entities from attempting to distill its models.

Ex. Sen. Bob Menendez SENTENCED To 11 YEARS In Prison, BEGS Trump For Pardon! Robby Soave

Ex-senator Bob Menendez sentenced to 11 years in prison for bribery conviction

The Democratic former US senator Bob Menendez was sentenced in federal court on Wednesday to 11 years in prison over his 2024 conviction for taking bribes, including receiving gold bars in exchange for doing favors for Egypt and for New Jersey businessmen.

Last year he also became the first former senator to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent.

The US district judge Sidney Stein handed down the custodial sentence at a hearing in court in New York City.

Menendez was an influential and long-serving lawmaker and high-profile figure in the Democratic party.

He spent almost 19 years representing New Jersey in Washington DC. He was found guilty last July on all counts after being indicted on 16 felony charges, including bribery and fraud. Menendez reluctantly resigned from the Senate last August, proclaiming his innocence. ... Menendez, 71, had pleaded not guilty and has vowed to appeal.

Trump orders opening of migrant detention center at Guantánamo Bay

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.

Trump signaled earlier on Wednesday that he intended to issue an order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to open a center in order to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.

“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”

The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea, which is separate from the high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaida on the US.

Trump tariff weapon. Russia economic growth

Federal workers decry Trump attempt to force mass resignations as ‘cruel joke’

Federal workers and their advocates on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration’s attempt to encourage them to resign en masse, describing an unprecedented email from the government’s human resources department office as a ham-handed attempt to create hostility in their workplaces and offer a false promise of an easy transition out of government service.

On Tuesday, the US office of personnel management (OPM) sent nearly all of its 3 million employees an email offering them deferred resignations and warning that, if they choose to stay, they may be laid off or reassigned.

The message shows signs of being connected to Elon Musk and the “department of government efficiency”, the effort sanctioned by Donald Trump that puts the multibillionaire entrepreneur in charge of dramatically downsizing Washington DC’s federal agencies. While Trump is far from the first president to promise Americans a leaner and more responsive government, the attempt to cut federal workers regardless of their titles has sparked alarm for its potential impact on the range of services these agencies provide. ...

“It’s obvious that this is a scam built on a Musk template,” a federal employee told the Guardian on condition of anonymity. “Taking this buyout – a voluntary separation – would mean forfeiting benefits like the pensions many of us are building toward, or reduced pensions for those who would be eligible. It’s a cruel joke and the various mocking lines about thanking people for their service are salt in the wound.”

A second federal employee described the email as heedless of the arrangements many workers already had, noting that before the Covid-19 made remote work common, they only occasionally worked in their office. They also noted how the email outlined four pillars of a “reformed federal workforce” that were either misleading or already standard parts of government employment.

White House rescinds spending freeze on federal loans and grants

A US judge granted a restraining order to stop a federal funding freeze despite the Trump administration rescinding it on Wednesday, after conflicting messaging from the White House led to further confusion after days of chaos.

In a brief memo, the White House office of management and budget (OMB) said it rescinded a policy it announced on Monday that temporarily paused trillions of dollars in government support for everything from social services to security programs, in Trump’s first policy reversal since taking office last week.

The announcement of the funding freeze had thrown into question whether the government would continue honoring its obligations to pay for an array of programs, including the health insurance for disabled and low-income Americans provided by Medicaid.

However, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, attempted to downplay the OMB’s retraction of its original memorandum. “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo,” Leavitt wrote on X. ...

Trump put federal funding in his crosshairs shortly after taking office, pausing disbursements under Joe Biden’s signature legislative programs to fight the climate crisis and improve the nation’s infrastructure. But this week’s memorandum went even further, blocking outlays for programs that had stood for years, often with bipartisan support.

Deadly D.C. Plane Crash Comes Months After Congress Ignored Warning About Traffic at Reagan Airport

Trump’s approval rating dips after rush of executive orders, poll finds

Donald Trump’s popularity has fallen somewhat as an early rush of executive orders – including renaming the Gulf of Mexico and attacking birthright citizenship – are fairly unpopular with Americans, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The Republican president has cracked down on immigration and attempted to radically gut the government, with respondents to the three-day poll – which closed on Sunday – expressing increasing disapproval.

Overall, Reuters said, the poll showed 45% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance as president, down slightly from 47% a week before. His disapproval rate was slightly larger at 46% – an increase from 39% the week before. The poll had a margin of error of about 4 percentage points.

Donald Trump appeals his New York hush-money conviction

Donald Trump has appealed his hush-money conviction, seeking to erase the verdict that made him the first person with a criminal record to win the presidency. The president’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday, asking the state’s mid-level appeals court to overturn his conviction last May on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The case, involving an alleged scheme to hide a hush-money payment to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 Republican campaign, was the only one of his criminal cases to go to trial.

A notice of appeal starts the appeals process in New York. Trump’s lawyers will have an opportunity to expand on their grievances in subsequent court filings.

Study of more than 600 animal and plant species finds genetic diversity has declined globally

Genetic diversity in animals and plants has declined globally over the past three decades, an analysis of more than 600 species has found. The research, published in the journal Nature, found declines in two-thirds of the populations studied, but noted that urgent conservation efforts could halt or even reverse genetic diversity losses.

Dozens of scientists internationally reviewed 882 studies that measured genetic diversity changes between 1985 and 2019 in 628 species of animals, plants, fungi and chromists (a type of organism), forming what they have called “the most comprehensive investigation” of changes in genetic diversity within species to date.

The study’s lead researcher, Assoc Prof Catherine Grueber of the University of Sydney, said within-species diversity – referring to the variation between individuals of the same species – enabled a population to better adapt to changes in its environment. “If a new disease comes through, or there’s a heatwave, there may be some individuals in the population that have certain characteristics that enable them to tolerate those new conditions,” she said. “Those characteristics will get passed on to the next generation, and the population will persist instead of going extinct.”

Maintaining genetic diversity in wild and domesticated species formed a key component of one of the goals adopted at the biodiversity conference Cop15 in 2022. Many of the leading causes of genetic diversity loss were the same culprits as for declines in populations, Grueber said: “Things like habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, new diseases.”

The researchers found ecological disturbances in 65% of the populations they studied, including human harvesting or harassment and changes in land use. But they noted that genetic diversity loss occurred even when no disturbances were reported, suggesting a “background level of genetic diversity loss across species”.

The Senate just confirmed Lee Zeldin as EPA Administrator.

He took $420K from Big Oil, pledged to undo climate protections, and has been all-in with Trump, backing corporate polluters at the expense of working people.

Zeldin is a disaster for our planet and a win for Big Oil. https://t.co/Dt2RCOlgYr

— Sunrise Movement (@sunrisemvmt) January 29, 2025

Los Angeles to review wildfire alert systems after lethal blazes

Los Angeles county officials on Tuesday approved an outside review of how alerts functioned when fire ravaged the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods earlier this month. After the wind-driven wildfires broke out on 7 January, evacuation orders for some neighborhoods – including the part of Altadena where the majority of deaths occurred – came long after houses were reported to be on fire.

Several residents who lost homes in the Eaton fire in Altadena have said they received no notifications about their neighborhoods. For others, the first warning was an urgent text message in the middle of the night. ...

A 2024 hazard mitigation plan directed the city’s emergency management department to assess gaps in alert and warning systems in areas with poor cellphone connectivity and then implement a solution to ensure alerts reach people. But that goal was given a “medium” priority level and a long-term timeline, with completion expected sometime in the next 10 years.

Meanwhile the county’s hazard mitigation plan, last updated in 2020, did not include a focus on emergency alerts or public notifications. Instead its high-priority goals had to do with educating people about wind’s impact on wildfire risk and with community wildfire protection.

Issues with alert systems have been a common issue in recent years. After-action reports and investigations revealed problems in the 2017 Tubbs fire, which killed 22 people in Santa Rosa; the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people in Paradise; the Woolsey fire, which started the same day and killed three in Malibu; as well as in Colorado’s 2021 Marshall fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 homes outside Denver; and in Hawaii’s 2023 Lahaina fire, which decimated that historic town and killed 102.

Green sea turtles cold-stunned by Florida snow recover at marine center

An arctic blast that brought a rare snowfall to northern Florida last week left green sea turtles as far south as St Augustine suffering from a condition known as cold-stunning.

Seventeen sea turtles that were found stranded along Florida’s north-eastern Atlantic coast were brought to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, north of West Palm Beach, where they are rehabbing.

“When it’s cold on land, it’s also cold in the ocean. And that led to a number of turtles being beached or very debilitated and just floating in the water,” said Dr Heather Barron, the chief science officer and veterinarian at the center.

The staff named the rescued turtles after beverages, and they painted their new names on the back of their shells. Veterinarians are treating them with antibiotics, fluids and intravenous nutrition.

Also of Interest

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

Trump Has Caused A Constitutional Crisis

Patrick Lawrence:Where Have All the Liberals Gone?

‘It will devastate people’: Palestinians despair at looming Unrwa closure

Palestinians Brace for More Violence as Israel Expands Its Offensive on the West Bank

‘Conspiracy Theory’ Is Now Fact: Greater Israel Has Arrived

Halt Of USAID Exposes Malign Foreign Influence

The Bogus Justification for AI Uptake and the Real Reason for the Scam

Fact or fiction? Trump repeats false claim that US sends condoms to Gaza

Trump revokes temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelans

The Death of DEI

RFK Jr. SHREDS Dem Senators in Confirmation Hearing!

Tulsi FLIPS on Snowden After Warhawks Freak

Liz Warren DESPERATELY Defends Big Pharma In RFK Hearings!

A Little Night Music

Wynonie Harris - Bloodshot Eyes

Wynonie Harris - Good Rockin’ Tonight

Wynonie Harris - Put It Back

Wynonie Harris - Shake That Thing

Wynonie Harris -Sittin' On It All The Time

Wynonie Harris - All She Wants To Do Is Rock

Wynonie Harris - Rock Mr. Blues

Wynonie Harris - Keep On Churnin' (Til The Butter Comes)

Wynonie Harris - Night Train

Wynonie Harris - Rot Gut

Wynonie Harris - Playful Baby

Wynonie Harris - Mr. Dollar