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"It may be that apartheid brings such stupendous economic advantages to countries that they would sooner have apartheid than permit its destruction."

-- Oliver Tambo

News and Opinion

The IDF Didn’t Just Target Hospitals, They Destroyed Individual Medical Machines

Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator Caroline Seguin reports that lifesaving medical equipment inside the hospitals in northern Gaza has been methodically destroyed, “smashed to pieces, one by one, to make sure no medical care could be provided anymore.”

“You have to ask: What is the motivation of such action? These machines are made to save people’s lives, mothers, fathers, children,” Seguin writes.

But we all know the motivation. The motivation is to make the Gaza Strip unlivable for Palestinians.

I mean, what excuses could the Israel apologists possibly produce for this one? Were Hamas hiding in the ventilators? Were the MRI machines being used as human shields? Was there a weapons stockpile in the defibrillator? Was the incubator moving in ways that made IDF troops feel unsafe? What’s the hasbara line on this, exactly?

Doesn’t look like there is one. After all the lies about Israel’s reasons for systematically destroying Gaza’s healthcare facilities, they’ve now dropped all pretenses and are openly targeting medical equipment itself for destruction. The goal was always to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable in order to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Max Blumenthal : Trump and Ethnic Cleansing

Israel says it will stick to agreed hostage demands after Trump causes confusion

The Israeli government has signalled it intends to stick to the hostage release schedule agreed in the ceasefire deal with Hamas, but warned that if the anticipated three surviving hostages were not released on Saturday, it would go back to war in Gaza.

The statement from the prime minister’s office ends nearly three days of confusion after Donald Trump’s declaration that Israel should demand Hamas release all the remaining hostages, more than 70 people, by Saturday or failing that, end the ceasefire.

Since Trump’s remarks, Benjamin Netanyahu and his government had been vague on how many hostages they wanted released on Saturday, but a spokesperson, David Mencer, confirmed on Thursday that the Israeli demand was for three hostages as laid out in the timetable of the ceasefire agreement.

“There is a framework in place for the release of our hostages,” Mencer said. “That framework makes clear that three live hostages must be released by Hamas terrorists on Saturday.” ...

The flow of aid into Gaza has increased under the ceasefire but Israel has not allowed bulldozers and other construction equipment gathered on the Egyptian border with Gaza to cross into the Palestinian territory, saying that was not part of the ceasefire agreement.

‘No to ethnic cleansing’: over 350 rabbis sign US ad assailing Trump’s Gaza plan

More than 350 rabbis, alongside additional signatories including Jewish creatives and activists, have signed an ad in the New York Times in which they condemn Donald Trump’s proposal for the effective ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. The ad, which was signed by rabbis including Sharon Brous, Roly Matalon and Alissa Wise, as well as Jewish creatives and activists including Tony Kushner, Ilana Glazer, Naomi Klein and Joaquin Phoenix, says: “Trump has called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish people say no to ethnic cleansing!”

The ad follows Trump’s proposal to “take over Gaza” and leave 2 million Palestinians who have survived Israel’s deadly onslaught against the narrow strip with “no alternative” but to leave their homes.

Trump has called on Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries to take in Palestinians – a proposal that has been met with widespread criticism from Arab countries and other allies while being condemned as an ethnic-cleansing plan.

Cody Edgerly, director of the In Our Name Campaign and one of the organizers of the ad, said it came at “a critical time as political redlines that were once thought immovable are rapidly shifting as the Trump-Netanyahu alliance takes hold again”. He said it had been “heartening to witness such a rapid outpouring of support from across the denominational and political spectrum”, adding: “Our message to Palestinians is that you are not alone, our attention has not wavered, and we are committed to fighting with every breath we have to stop ethnic cleansing in Gaza.” ...

In a news release accompanying the ad, Toba Spitzer, senior rabbi of congregation Dorshei Tzedek in Newton, Massachusetts, said: “It is vitally important that we in the American Jewish community add our voices to all those refusing to entertain this insidious plan. Hitler’s dream of making Germany ‘Judenrein,’ ‘cleansed of Jews,’ led to the slaughter of our people.”

Hamas Says It Will Release Three Hostages Saturday, Signaling Deal Back on Track

Hamas said on Thursday that it plans to release three Israeli hostages on Saturday as agreed under the ceasefire deal, and Israel appears to have backed down on its demands for more captives to be freed.

The Times of Israel reported that Israel is preparing to receive three hostages on Saturday despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backing President Trump’s threat that the genocidal war would be restarted if all hostages weren’t released.

Earlier this week, Hamas said it was postponing the hostage release, citing Israeli ceasefire violations, complaints that Israeli officials acknowledged were legitimate. ...

The Netanyahu spokesman also acknowledged that Israel still hasn’t begun negotiations on the second phase of the ceasefire deal. The lack of talks on the second phase is another violation of the agreement, as they were supposed to start on the 16th day of the ceasefire, which began on January 19.

Craig Murray: UN Peacekeepers Watch Civilians Massacred

On Jan. 26, at least 22 unarmed civilians in southern Lebanon were shot dead by Israel and 147 wounded in a massacre observed by heavily armed U.N. Peacekeepers who did not intervene. I asked the U.N. the very hard questions which nobody else is asking them.

The civilians were simply attempting to return to their homes in accordance with both U.N. Security Resolution 1701 and the current ceasefire agreement, and indeed UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, has a specific mandate under 1701 to assist displaced people to return.

So what has gone wrong with UNIFIL? Is this Srebrenica syndrome? What is the purpose of the heavy weaponry deployed by the U.N.’s best equipped peacekeeping force, if it can never be fired? Why is the U.N.failing to monitor the hundreds of Israeli breaches of the ceasefire agreement? Why is the U.N. serving on a committee under a U.S. general?

These and other questions I put to UNIFIL Spokesman Andrea Tenenti. I did so in my usual, I hope courteous, manner. The result is a fascinating conversation which I believe is an extremely important piece of documentation of institutional failure to confront Israeli and U.S. aggression at a critical time for the entire world.

Trump Suspends Funding to the National Endowment for Democracy

The Trump administration has frozen funding to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US-funded organization that meddles in elections and pushes regime change around the world in the name of “promoting democracy.”

According to The Free Press, an order from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the US Treasury Department that blocked the disbursement of funds to the NED has crippled the organization’s activities.

In 1991, Allen Weinstein, a co-founder of NED, acknowledged to The Washington Post that a lot of what the organization did was done “covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

Trump proposes nuclear deal with Russia and China to halve defense budgets

Donald Trump said that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the US adversaries to cut their own spending.

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,” Trump said.

While the US and Russia have held massive stockpiles of weapons since the cold war, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years”. He said that if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion”.

Trump said he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine. “One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say: ‘Let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”

"Frenzy of Warmongering": Critics of Munich Security Summit Warn of Musk, Rising Fascism in Europe

Pete Hegseth says ‘everything is on the table’ to end Ukraine war

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said “everything is on the table” to bring peace to Ukraine and suggested reducing the number of American troops in Europe could be part of any deal. European leaders are reeling from several abrupt US moves since Wednesday in relation to the Ukraine war and the continent’s security, which has been underpinned by the US since Nato was formed at the end of the second world war.

Speaking at the end of a Nato defence ministers meeting in Brussels, his first as Pentagon chief, Hegseth insisted the US had not already given too much away when he had said on Wednesday that Ukraine could not restore its pre-2014 borders – and instead emphasised the role of the US president in talks on the country’s future. ... Hegseth had also told allies the US was no longer “primarily focused” on European security.

The Kremlin welcomed the developments on Ukraine, but the statements prompted a sharp push back from European politicians in public and private at the Nato meeting, who voiced concern that too much had been conceded by the US already and that Ukraine and Europe were at risk of being excluded from discussions. ...

The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said Ukraine and Europe needed to be part of the peace discussions. “Any deal behind our backs will not work,” she said, and warned that too much had been conceded in public by the US. “Why are we giving them [Russia] everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started?” said Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister. “It’s appeasement. It has never worked.” ...

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister adept at smoothing over differences between Europe and Washington, said it was important Moscow understood that the west remained united, noting that Ukraine had never been promised that a peace deal would include Nato membership.

Zelensky desperation. Morale plummets

Trump says US prices ‘could go up’ as he threatens new tariffs on trade partners

Donald Trump threatened to ramp up his economic assault on some of America’s biggest trading partners on Thursday, vowing to impose new tariffs on countries that target products made in the US within weeks. The US will impose “reciprocal” duties, the president announced. “We want a level playing field,” he declared in the Oval Office, pledging to roll out a “beautiful, simple system” of new US import duties that match those imposed by other countries.

No new specific tariffs were announced, however, triggering a relief rally on Wall Street. Instead, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering the development of a comprehensive plan to address what the White House described as “longstanding imbalances” in the global economy.

Americans could face “some short-term disturbance” if the US imposes higher tariffs on foreign goods, Trump acknowledged. “Prices could go up somewhat short-term,” he said. “But prices will also go down.”

“What will go up is jobs,” claimed Trump. “The jobs will go up tremendously.”

The US commerce department, now led by the billionaire Howard Lutnick, will conduct studies and report back to the president at the start of April. No exemptions will be offered from any “reciprocal” duties introduced under the new plan, Trump suggested.

Tom Homan REFERS AOC For INVESTIGATION; Pam Bondi SUES Sanctuary Cities

US justice department sues New York over immigration rules

The US attorney general announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration is suing New York state over its immigration policies, accusing state officials of choosing “to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens”. Standing in front of federal agents who have been tasked with helping in Trump’s immigration crackdown, Pam Bondi echoed the president’s rhetoric as she vowed the justice department would take on communities that thwart federal immigration efforts.

Bondi said she was out to end New York’s “green light” law, which allows people in the state to get a driver’s license without citizenship or legal residency status. The law was enacted partly to improve public safety on the roads, as people without licenses sometimes drove without one, or without having passed a road test. The state also makes it easier for holders of such licenses to get auto insurance, thus cutting down on crashes involving uninsured drivers.

“It stops,” Bondi said. “It stops today.”

The lawsuit describes the law as “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them”. It highlights a provision that requires the state’s department of motor vehicles commissioner to inform people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency has requested their information. The justice department is asking the court to strike down the law. (Although the suit is civil, not criminal, Bondi caused confusion by saying that the justice department had “filed charges” against the state of New York.)

Eric Adams: U.S. Attorney, 5 DOJ Lawyers Quit, Refuse to Drop Corruption Case Against NYC Mayor

Judge blocks Trump from firing head of US agency that investigates corruption

A judge blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to fire the head of a body that protects whistleblowers and investigates corruption. Late on Wednesday Judge Amy Berman Jackson reversed the White House order sacking Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), and reinstated him in his post pending a court hearing set for 26 February.

It’s the latest legal roadblock in the president’s breakneck bid to decapitate almost every federal agency, with lawsuits piling up. On Wednesday eight inspectors general, who had been summarily dismissed in mass firings without Congress being given the statutory 30 days notice, filed a lawsuit asking for their sackings to be ruled illegal and for them to restored to their positions.

But Dellinger’s case appears set to test the legal limits of Trump’s ability to dismiss public officials. Dellinger was informed of his firing last week in a one-sentence email that did not specify the cause. A 1978 act of Congress creating Dellinger’s position specifies that “the special counsel may be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office”.

In her ruling, Jackson wrote: “This language expresses Congress’s clear intent to ensure the independence of the special counsel and insulate his work from being buffeted by the winds of political change.”

Mexican president blasts US for harboring drug cartels

Mexico’s president has accused the US of harboring drug cartels and American citizens of working with organized crime groups in Mexico, in a riposte to Donald Trump’s allegation of an “intolerable alliance” between traffickers and her government.

“There is also organized crime in the United States and there are American people who come to Mexico with these illegal activities,” Claudia Sheinbaum said during her morning press conference on Thursday. “Otherwise who would distribute fentanyl in the cities of the United States?”

The Mexican president’s comments follow a report published on Monday which showed that arrests of US citizens for offenses related to organized crime had increased by more than 450% during the tenure of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Sheinbaum called on Washington not just to help crack down on cartels in Mexico, but for the “United States to do its job in the US, to make the arrests that need to be made in order to halt the trafficking of drugs in its own country”.

World’s largely unprotected peatlands are ticking ‘carbon bomb’, warns study

The world’s peatlands are “dangerously underprotected” despite the colossal amount of climate-heating carbon dioxide already being emitted due to their destruction, a study has warned. Peatlands occupy just 3% of all land, but contain more carbon than all of the world’s forests. However, farmers and miners are draining the peatlands, releasing so much CO2 that if they were a country, they would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world after China, the US and India.

The first global assessment found that only 17% of the peatlands were within protected areas. This contrasted starkly with other valuable ecosystems such as tropical forests, where 38% were protected, and mangroves (42%).

Protection was even lower than the 17% average in the three nations with the most peatlands: Canada, Russia and Indonesia. The US and Brazil completed the top five nations, which contained almost three-quarters of all peatlands, and had higher proportions in protected areas. But the researchers cautioned that protected status on a map did not always translate to strong protection on the ground. The scientists said conserving and restoring peatlands was essential to keeping global heating below internationally agreed targets and limiting the damage to lives and livelihoods. ...

Peatlands were “ultra-high-value ecosystems”, said Dr Kemen Austin at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who led the study – but levels of protection were “dangerously low”. Peatlands not only store carbon, but also trap water, helping to prevent floods and droughts, and harbour many mosses and flowers, birds, fish and butterflies. “Their value for people, both locally and at the global scale, is just enormous,” she said. ...

Peatlands, also called bogs, fens, swamps, mires and muskeg, are wetlands where dead plant matter accumulates and decomposition is slow due to the material being waterlogged. However, draining or disturbing peatlands for farming, mining or roads and other infrastructure exposes the carbon to the air and leads to CO2 being released into the atmosphere. In total, the carbon stored in peatlands is equivalent to more than half a century’s worth of current global emissions.

US wildfire suppressants rife with toxic heavy metals, study finds

The US federal government and chemical makers have long concealed the contents of pink wildfire suppressants widely spread by firefighting aircraft to contain blazes, but new test results provide alarming answers – the substances are rife with cadmium, arsenic, chromium and other toxic heavy metals.

The suppressants are a “major” source of toxic pollution that causes heavy-metal levels to spike in the environment, and the products themselves contain metal levels up to 3,000 times above drinking water limits, the peer-reviewed research found.

The government and chemical makers have claimed up to 20% of aerial suppressants’ contents are “trade secrets” and exempt from public disclosure, so while there has been suspicion of the substances’ toxicity, the study is the first to confirm the metals’ presence. It also highlights the tension between protecting human health and property from wildfires by spraying highly toxic substances – about 440m gallons were sprayed between 2009 and 2021, the study noted.

“As rates of aerial fire retardant application have grown, likely so too have loadings of toxic metals released into the environment from their use, a trend which may intensify if wildfire frequency and intensity continues to increase,” the University of Southern California authors wrote.

The suppressants are a mix of water, fertilizer, and undisclosed ingredients, while the pink color comes from added dye to show firefighters where it has been sprayed. Metals are likely used as anti-corrosion agents to prevent the plane’s tankers from disintegrating, they authors wrote. The mix works by coating vegetation and lowering the amount of oxygen that could fuel the fire. The substance was dropped by as many as 25 aircraft daily to contain the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, and photos from it vividly convey the trade off, showing homes and property covered in hot pink suppression.

Also of Interest

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

‘Last nail in the coffin’: Israeli settlers push on with fresh West Bank land grab

Jordan’s Abdullah at White House, looking down the barrel of a gun

After returning north, Gazans struggle to envision any future

UN Says Israel Must Stop Killing Lebanese Civilians Trying to Return Home

Zelensky Says It’s ‘Not Very Pleasant’ That Trump Spoke With Putin First

Initial Thoughts on US-Russia Talks on Ukraine War as Ukraine and EU Have Nervous Breakdowns

Ukraine - The Beginning Of The End (Which Is Yet Far Away)

In The New Cold War, One Side Will Be Weaker and Less Prosperous

Droning the Pentagon

Climate crisis contributing to chocolate market meltdown, research finds

A ‘recipe for extinction’: can the US’s envied nature protections survive Trump and his ‘God squad’?

London’s first Roman basilica found under office block

Whacko Fmr. USAID Director John Bolton BRAGS About Grenade Award From USAID!

Trump OUTPLAYED The Deep State By Turning An Obama Program Into DOGE!

A Little Night Music

Freddie King - Yonder Wall

Freddy King – Remington Ride

Freddy King - Use What You've Got

Freddy King – I'm Tore Down

Freddie King - Hootchie Cootchie Man

Freddie King - You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Freddie King – Goin' Down

Freddie King - I Don't Know

Freddie King – Palace Of The King

Freddie King Live France 1973

Freddie King Live 1970