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"Sundays kill more people than bombs."

-- Charles Bukowski

News and Opinion

Israel Restarts Large-Scale Bombing of Gaza, Over 200 Killed

The Israeli military on Tuesday morning began launching large-scale airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, marking the full-scale resumption of Israel’s genocidal war.

As of about 5:00 am Gaza time, Al Jazeera reported that over 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes on homes and tents sheltering displaced Palestinians across the Strip.

Pictures and videos from Gaza that have surfaced online show there is a large number of child casualties. “Israeli bombardment has returned to Gaza, bringing massacres with it once again,” Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif wrote on X. “The bodies of children, killed in their sleep, lay scattered in the aftermath.”

The massive attack came about two weeks after Israel imposed a total blockade on aid and all other goods entering Gaza at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire deal. Israel violated the agreement by imposing the blockade, refusing to engage in negotiations on the second phase, and killing Palestinians throughout the truce.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday morning that he instructed the Israeli military to escalate in Gaza in response to Hamas rejecting US and Israeli terms for an extended temporary ceasefire. Hamas wanted Israel to stick to the deal it agreed to in January, which would have involved a permanent truce and full Israeli withdrawal.

Max Blumenthal : Israel’s Public Diplomacy

Israeli Blockade Leaves 1 Million Children in Gaza Without Basic Necessities 'Yet Again': UNICEF

After a four-day mission to the West Bank and Gaza, a top official for the United Nations' children's welfare agency on Sunday described the effects that Israel's blockade on all humanitarian aid into the latter territory has had on roughly 1 million children in recent weeks, and demanded that lifesaving essentials—currently "stalled just a few dozen kilometers outside the Gaza Strip"—be allowed into the enclave.

Edouard Beigbeder, Middle East and North Africa regional director for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), said that during his most recent trip to Gaza he witnessed how "1 million children are living without the very basics they need to survive—yet again," following Israel's decision in early March to once again block all aid in a purported effort to pressure Hamas into accepting a U.S. hostage release plan.

The blocking of food, water, medications, and other essential supplies is a violation of "international humanitarian law," said Beigbeder.

"Civilians' essential needs must be met, and this requires facilitating the entry of lifesaving assistance whether or not there is a cease-fire in place," he said. "Any further delays to the entry of aid risk further slowing or shuttering essential services and could fast-reverse the gains made for children during the cease-fire."

1 million children in #Gaza are struggling to survive without basic necessities.

Hundreds of thousands lack clean water and sanitation. Water is a basic human right that no one should be denied.

UNICEF and partners are working to deliver life-saving aid, but only a lasting… pic.twitter.com/mpgsnIsoNK

— UNICEF MENA - يونيسف الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا (@UNICEFmena) March 17, 2025

Israel's blockade has left a water desalination plant in Khan Younis without electricity, allowing it to run at just 13% capacity and "depriving hundreds of thousands of people from drinkable water and sanitation services," said Beigbeder.

He particularly warned of the blockade's impact on some of Gaza's most vulnerable residents—premature newborns and children under the age of two who need access to lifesaving vaccines and medical equipment that have been languishing in delivery trucks just outside the Gaza Strip for two weeks.

UNICEF has managed to deliver 30 continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines to aid premature newborns with acute respiratory syndrome, but Beigbeder warned that "approximately 4,000 newborns are currently unable to access essential lifesaving care due to the major impact on medical facilities in the Gaza Strip."

"Every day without these ventilators, lives are lost, especially among vulnerable, premature newborns in the northern Gaza Strip," he said.

Beigbeder's warning came as the operator of 10 charity food kitchens in Gaza told Al Jazeera that it has only been able to operate two distribution centers since Israel began blocking aid again following the cease-fire that began in January.

"We had 80 pots every day that we were serving to people," Omar Abuhammad, a coordinator with the Heroic Hearts organization, told the outlet. "Now we're working on about 20... As the main source of food for [people], we no longer have the ability to serve them."

Abuhammad said the organization had been able to serve about 40,000 Palestinians in Deir el-Balah each day before the newest blockade was imposed, but now it is only able to help 10,000 people daily.

Om Mahmoud, a displaced woman in Deir el-Balah, told Al Jazeera that she "used to rely on this simple community kitchen for food, but now even they are struggling to feed us."

"My children are crying at home from hunger and I have nothing to give them," said Mahmoud. "I can't afford to buy what we need. There's simply no way to survive."

Beigbader said that on the four-day mission to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, "nearly all of the 2.4 million children" living there are being "affected in some way" by Israel's continued assaults.

"Some children live with tremendous fear or anxiety; others face the real consequences of deprivation of humanitarian assistance and protection, displacement, destruction, or death. All children must be protected," said Beigbader. "UNICEF continues to do everything we can to protect and support children in the state of Palestine. We are repairing water systems, running mental health sessions, setting up learning centers, and advocating constantly with decision makers for access and for the violence to cease. But this alone is not enough."

Israel has demanded the release of 11 living hostages captured by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in exchange for extending the cease-fire by 50 days and allowing aid into Gaza, but Hamas has objected to the U.S.-drafted proposal because it does not include a firm timeline for a permanent cease-fire.

As Israel has blocked humanitarian aid to pressure Hamas to accept the cease-fire extension, it has also launched strikes in Gaza, including a drone strike that killed three men who a witness in the Bureij refugee camp said were collecting firewood due to the lack of cooking gas stemming from the blockade.

Israel had claimed the men were planting roadside bombs.

A woman at the scene told Al Jazeera that "the young men were busy, not very far away from me, collecting firewood. But without warning, a missile hit them. Some other people were injured. We climbed a hill to try to help them, and we were shocked to see a quadcopter overhead. We are so terrified."

Hani Mahmoud ofAl Jazeera reported on Monday that "this is not the first time we're seeing this happen since the cease-fire began on January 19."

"Just now, a drone is hovering above in the western part of Gaza City," Mahmoud said. "It is buzzing and casting fear on the population. The streets have been emptied of people because of concerns over more attacks."

“Another Round of Senseless Mass Killing”: Report from Gaza Hospital as Israeli Strikes Kill 400+

Every Administration Since Obama Has Been Bombing Yemen, Yet…

Something similar could be said about almost all Western policies except those which make the rich richer. “Is the policy working? No. Are we going to continue? Yes.”

Here’s the thing, AnsarAllah is the only nation in the world taking military action to try and stop the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. During the ceasefire, they stopped attacking ships trading with Israel. When Israel cut off all food and aid, they gave Israel four days warning: restore the aid or we start the attacks again.

Then they did, and then Trump figured that he’d start bombing Yemen again, which won’t do a damn thing except kill a few more people. The Yemenis genuinely don’t give a fuck, they’ve been bombed to hell and back again for the better part of two decades. Unless someone wants to invade and occupy the country, which would take troops in the six figures, I’d guess, there isn’t a damn thing military force will accomplish.

It is tiresome to keep saying this, but Israel, with the full support of many countries, including Britain, Germany and most importantly America (and my own nation, Canada, not that our help amounts to anything) is committing red letter genocide. There is no question about this, it is not “complicated” and there is no possibility of being a moral person, or even not a complete fucking waste of human skin, if you support genocide.

U.S. Kills Dozens in Yemen Strikes as Houthis Pledge to Disrupt Shipping in Solidarity with Gaza

Donald Trump: Iran will be held responsible for Houthi attacks

The US president, Donald Trump, has declared he will hold Iran directly responsible for any future attacks by Yemen’s Tehran-backed Houthi rebels, who have targeted US and other foreign ships in the Red Sea.

“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday. ...

Describing the Houthis as “sinister mobsters and thugs”, Trump warned any attack by the group would be met with “great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there”.

“Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” Trump alleged in his post. “They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, ‘Intelligence.’”

Trump Bombs Yemen, Pushes US Closer to War with Iran

Israelis making reverse aliyah:

Israelis moving to live in Europe ‘rejuvenating’ Jewish communities

Israelis making a new home in Europe have become vital to previously declining Jewish communities on the continent, boosting numbers, bringing a range of cultural influences and marking a fundamental change in the relationship between the diaspora and the Jewish state, research has revealed.

A report released on Wednesday by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research will detail for the first time a dramatic reversal of decades of net outflow to Israel from Jewish communities in Europe.

“We can say that culturally and demographically there is a real turning point. Possibly the end of an era,” said Dr Daniel Staetsky, the report’s author. “The founders of the state of Israel would never have imagined that it would be Israel that would be rejuvenating European Jewish communities, not the other way around.”

Recent Israeli government statistics show accelerating emigration from Israel, driven by factors including political polarisation, the high cost of living, the impact of wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and security concerns after the bloody Hamas raid into Israel of October 2023 and Iranian attacks.

The biggest destination remains the US but many of Europe’s Jewish communities have also received a significant demographic boost, with some that have been shrinking for decades due to an elderly population and a low birthrate now growing again.

Trump says he and Putin will discuss land and power plants in Ukraine ceasefire talks

Donald Trump is to speak to Vladimir Putin on Tuesday – with the two expected to discuss territory and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – after the Russian president last week pushed back on a US-brokered plan for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine with a series of sweeping conditions he said would need to be met.

The US president said on Monday that many elements of a final deal on Ukraine had been agreed but much remained, ahead of the call with his Russian counterpart. “I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The Kremlin confirmed on Monday that the two leaders were due to speak by phone, after Trump’s statement that he planned to discuss with Putin ending the war in Ukraine. The US president also said that negotiators had already talked about “dividing up certain assets”, including power stations. ...

US and Russian officials have engaged in discussions about Ukraine in recent weeks, with talks accelerating after Washington and Kyiv agreed on a proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire last week. Nevertheless, Putin in effect rejected the plan, instead outlining a series of conditions, including a halt to Ukraine’s rearmament and mobilisation, as well as a suspension of western military aid to Kyiv during the 30-day ceasefire. He also renewed calls for broader negotiations on a long-term settlement to the war.

Ukraine, which has agreed to the truce, accused Putin of seeking to prolong the war. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, has also consistently said the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized.

Macron/Starmer war trap; Bring UK back into EU and crush Trump

Trump administration pulls US out of body investigating Ukraine invasion

The Trump administration is withdrawing from an international body formed to investigate responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine in the latest sign that the White House is adopting a posture favouring Vladimir Putin.

The Department of Justice said it was pulling out of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA) two years after the Biden administration joined it with a commitment to hold Putin, Russia’s president, to account for the 2022 invasion and subsequent crimes committed by Russian forces.

An announcement by the justice department was expected later on Monday.

Leaked MEMO: Social Security SABOTAGE Could DESTROY System

Trump administration poised to ‘strand rural America with worse internet’ to help Musk, official warns

Small town USA is facing a “significant risk” that the Trump administration is going to abandon key elements of a $42.45bn Biden-era plan to connect rural communities to high-speed internet so that Elon Musk can get even richer, a top departing commerce department official warned in an email.

Evan Feinman, who headed up the so-called Bead program for the last three years, urged governors across the country to lobby their congressional del[eg]ations in Washington to stop the Trump administration from implementing plans he said could have “deeply negative outcomes” for American homes and businesses. “Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” Feinman said.

A copy of the email, which was first reported by Politico, was seen by the Guardian.

The Bead program, which stands for Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, was passed with bipartisan support in 2021 and aimed to connect tens of millions of underserved homes and communities in rural America to high speed internet. In administering the program, the Biden administration called on states to favor a certain kind of broadband technology – fiber – because it provides reliable and affordable service to consumers.

Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has said he wants to re-evaluate the Bead program and make it technology “neutral”. That change is likely to favor Musk’s company, Starlink, which owns about 62% of all operating satellites. It would be far less expensive for communities to be connected to high speed internet service through satellites, but most experts agree the service would not be as fast or reliable as fiber, and would cost consumers more.

Musker Fusker's lawless thugs are at it again:

US Institute of Peace says DOGE has broken into its building

Employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have entered the U.S. Institute of Peace despite protests from the nonprofit that it is not part of the executive branch and is instead an independent agency. The organization’s CEO, George Moose, said, “DOGE has broken into our building.” Police cars were outside the Washington building Monday evening.

The DOGE workers gained access to the building after several unsuccessful attempts Monday and after having been turned away on Friday, a senior U.S. Institute of Peace official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. It was not immediately clear what the DOGE staffers were doing or looking for in the nonprofit’s building, which is across the street from the State Department in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.

President Donald Trump targeted the organization and a few others in a Feb. 19 executive order that aims to shrink the size of the federal government. The administration has since moved to fire and cancel programs at some of those organizations. DOGE has expressed interest in the U.S. Institute of Peace for weeks but has been rebuffed by lawyers who argued that the institute’s status protected it from the kind of reorganization that is occurring in other federal agencies.

On Friday, DOGE members arrived with two FBI agents, who left after the institute’s lawyer told them of USIP’s “private and independent status,” the organization said in a statement. ... The nonprofit says it was created by Congress in 1984 as an “independent nonprofit corporation,“ and it does not meet U.S. Code definitions of “government corporation,” “government-controlled corporation” or “independent establishment.”

Brown University professor deported despite judge’s order, defying US court

A Brown University medical professor was deported to Lebanon over the weekend despite having a valid US work visa, defying a judge’s order blocking her immediate removal from the country.

Federal prosecutors on Monday alleged that they deported 34-year-old Rasha Alawieh after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” on her cellphone of prominent figures of Iran-backed Hezbollah. Alawieh told federal agents that she had recently attended the funeral of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective”, according to Reuters.

The case centering on Alawieh comes as Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has been escalating its immigration policies and targeting universities. ... Alawieh was detained at Boston’s Logan international airport on Thursday after a trip to Lebanon to visit family. Her cousin, Yara Chehab, filed a lawsuit soon after in Massachusetts federal court on her behalf.

On Friday, US district court judge Leo Sorokin issued an order scheduling a hearing for Alawieh on Monday – and said that the federal government must give 48 hours’ notice to the court before her removal from the country. ... Nonetheless, in clear defiance of Sorokin’s order from Friday, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) put Alawieh on a flight to Paris that presumably was a layover back to Lebanon.

On Sunday, Sorokin said in court documents that CBP had received notice of the court order but “nonetheless thereafter willfully disobeyed the order by sending [Alawieh] out of the United States”. Sorokin ordered the government to respond to the “serious allegations with a legal and factual response” and a description of their version of events by Monday morning, ahead of a scheduled court hearing.

ACLU Lee Gelernt to a judge over the Trump admin's response to Judge Boasberg's order:

"There has been a lot of talk the last couple of weeks about a constitutional crisis. I think we’re getting very close to that."

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) March 17, 2025

Trump Tells Deportation Judge GTFO In Standoff

Judge incredulous as administration contends verbal court order on deportation isn’t binding

A federal judge on Monday was incredulous at the contention by the Trump administration that his directive to turn around deportation flights wasn’t binding because it was made verbally.

District court Judge James Boasberg made the demand Saturday night as he temporarily halted deportations under wartime powers President Donald Trump had declared minutes earlier under a rarely used 18th century law. But planes were already en route to El Salvador.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit asked Boasberg to determine if the administration violated his order. But an administration lawyer on Monday wouldn’t answer many of the judge’s questions, saying the judge had no right to the information.

Stephen Miller (@stephenm): "A district court judge has no authority to direct the national security operations of the executive branch. The president is operating at the apex of his authority..." pic.twitter.com/aautEE0WDx

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 17, 2025

White House’s defense for not recalling deportations ‘one heck of a stretch’, says judge

The Trump administration claimed to a federal judge on Monday that it did not recall deportation flights of hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members over the weekend despite his specific instructions because that was not expressly included in the formal written order issued afterwards.

The administration also said that even if James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, had included that instruction in his formal order, his authority to compel the planes to return disappeared the moment the planes entered international airspace.

The extraordinary arguments suggested the White House took advantage of its own perceived uncertainty with a federal court order to do as it pleased, testing the limits of the judicial system to hold to account an administration set on circumventing adverse rulings.

An incredulous Boasberg at one stage asked the administration: “Isn’t then the better course to return the planes to the United States and figure out what to do, than say: ‘We don’t care; we’ll do what we want’?”

The showdown between the administration and the judge reached a crescendo over the weekend after the US president secretly invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport, without normal due process, Venezuelans over age 14 who the government says belong to the Tren de Aragua gang.

The underlying basis for Trump to invoke the statute is unclear because it historically requires the president to identify a state adversary, and Boasberg on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportations of five Venezuelans who had filed suit against the government.

Cop30 in talks to hire PR firm that worked for lobby seeking weaker Amazon protections

Edelman, the world’s largest public relations agency, is in talks to work with the Cop30 team organising the UN climate summit in the Amazon later this year despite its prior connections to a major trade group accused of lobbying to roll back measures to protect the area from deforestation, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.

The summit is set to take place in November in the city of Belém on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, which has been ravaged by deforestation linked to Brazil’s powerful agriculture industry. For the first time, the talks will be “at the epicenter of the climate crisis”, the summit’s president wrote last week. “As the Cop comes to the Amazon, forests will naturally be a central topic,” he added.

But now questions are being asked about a possible conflict of interest after his team confirmed to the Guardian and CCR that it is considering bringing in the American PR giant Edelman to work on the summit. As well as its past work with some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, Edelman previously developed a “communications strategy” and message “playbook” for a trade group representing major players in the Brazilian soy industry, according to US Foreign Agent Registration Act filings.

“Edelman’s conflicts of interest at a climate conference are almost too many to count,” said Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, which campaigns for the PR and ad industry to cut ties with fossil fuel clients. He said the agency “maintains at least a dozen contracts with fossil fuel polluters like Shell and Chevron”.

“These conflicts of interest make it impossible for Edelman to be effective advocates for Cop30’s agenda, and put the outcome of the talks in jeopardy.”

Also of Interest

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

Patrick Lawrence: The Zionists Within

US and Israel Consider Expelling Gaza Palestinians to Syria

Yemen's Health Ministry Says Majority of 53 Killed in US Strikes 'Were Women and Children'

Trump Bombs Yemen (Short Take)

‘I will spend my life rebuilding’: Gaza’s heritage sites destroyed by war

New Fighting Erupts at Syria-Lebanon Border as HTS Shells Lebanese Village, Deploys Tanks

USAID Funded Ukraine Group That Smears Americans

DOGE Going Dark as Evidence of Fabrications, Destructive Results and Citizen Anger Rises

Japan to deploy long-range missiles able to hit North Korea and China

Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown

Democrats Demand Hearing on 'Backroom Agreement' Between DOGE and DeJoy

From sewage and scum to swimming in ‘blue gold’: how Switzerland transformed its rivers

NEOCONS Drool As Trump INCHES TO War With Iran

A Little Night Music

The Trends - If You Don't Dig The Blues

Trends - Gonna Have To Show You

The Trends - Dance With Me Baby

The Trends - Thanks For A Little Loving

The Trends - You Sure Know How To Hurt A Guy

The Trends - Not Too Old To Cry

The Trends - Check My Tears

The Trends - (To Be) happy enough

The Trends - Don't Drop Out Of School