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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Tarheel Slim

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Tarheel Slim. Enjoy!

^{Allen Bunn (Tarheel Slim) - Too Much Competition}

"We laugh at sheep because sheep just follow the one in front. We humans have out-sheeped the sheep, because at least the sheep need a sheep dog to keep them in line. Humans keep each other in line. And they do it by ridiculing or condemning anyone who commits the crime, and that’s what it’s become, of being different."

-- David Icke

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News and Opinion

It’s An Awkward Time To Be A Liberal Israel Supporter

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a recent interview that his job “is to keep the left pro-Israel,” which is just sad. Being a liberal Israel supporter these days probably feels like being a defense attorney for an accused murderer who won’t shut up about how much he loves murdering.

A Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land was assaulted and injured by a gang of Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Susya before being abducted by Israeli soldiers on Monday. Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians were reportedly transferred from the Israeli military to the police for questioning, and as of this writing are still detained. [Ballal has been released now. -js]

No Other Land is a documentary about Israeli abuses toward Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, which makes the lynch mob assault by the settlers not only ironic but completely vindicating of Ballal’s work. These freaks are so consumed by hatred and Zionist brain rot that they actually thought they’d advance their cause by attacking Palestinians in the West Bank in response to a documentary about the mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Everyone sees the tragic irony here, yes?

A Palestinian made a documentary about the injustice and brutality of Israel’s occupation and then Israeli settlers and soldiers illustrated the literal point of the film. https://t.co/YIfIPz9BOW

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) March 24, 2025

This happens as Israel adds two more bodies to the mountain of Palestinian journalists it has deliberately killed in Gaza. Al Jazeera reporter Hossam Shabat and Palestine Today TV correspondent Mohammad Mansour were both killed in separate airstrikes in different parts of the Gaza Strip on Monday, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed in the Gaza holocaust to 208.

Israel is murdering journalists and persecuting documentary filmmakers because Israel hates truth. It kills press workers in Gaza for the same reason it blocks western reporters from entering the scorched Palestinian territory: because Israel doesn’t want people to see the full picture of its atrocities.

This comes after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz made amazingly explicit statements of genocidal intent last week, telling the entire population of Gaza that they will face “total devastation” if they do not find some way to overthrow Hamas themselves and return all the hostages.

They’re just getting more and more brazen with this stuff. More and more often, to a further and further extent, Israel is showing its true face to the world.

The other day Israel demolished Gaza’s only specialized cancer treatment hospital and an adjacent medical school in its ongoing systematic destruction of the enclave’s entire healthcare system with the goal of making it unlivable.

They’re trying so hard to normalize attacking hospitals. pic.twitter.com/E3Akv7jKjp

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) March 24, 2025

Shortly thereafter, Israel bombed another hospital in Khan Younis, killing a member of Hamas’s political bureau as well as a 16 year-old boy. The imperial media fell all over themselves to churn out headlines announcing that Israel had targeted a Hamas leader in a strike on a hospital — as though bombing hospitals is this perfectly acceptable thing we should all view as normal now — but we all know these same media outlets would be shrieking their lungs out if any of the empire’s enemies did this exact same thing.

As Jonathan Cook points out in a recent essay, this is the same as if Hamas had bombed the hospital Benjamin Netanyahu stayed at earlier this year in retaliation for his crimes. And we can all imagine the reaction of the western political-media class if that had happened.

Speaking of Netanyahu, a new report from the Israeli outlet Ynet says that after the October 7 attacks the prime minister angrily ordered the IDF to massively expand its bombing campaign without intelligence on who they were hitting, demanding that they just bomb as many buildings as possible entirely for the sake of bombing them.

According to the report, on October 9, 2023 the IDF told Netanyahu that they were bombing 1,500 targets per day because that’s what they had the intel to justify, and Netanyahu angrily demanded to know why they weren’t launching 5,000 airstrikes instead, telling them “I’m not interested in targets. Take down houses, bomb with everything you have.”

"Netanyahu erupted in anger [on Oct 9], yelling & banging on the table. 'Why not 5,000?' he scolded the Chief of Staff. 'We don't have 5,000 approved targets,' Halevi replied. 'I'm not interested in targets,' Netanyahu retorted 'TAKE DOWN HOUSES, BOMB WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE'" pic.twitter.com/iNpYmLoSnt

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) March 21, 2025

So that’s what Israel has been up to lately. It’s just getting uglier and uglier, and people who purport to stand for equality and justice are having a harder and harder time squaring their ideological positions with their steadfast support for the genocidal apartheid state.

Liberal Zionists like Bernie Sanders have tried to reconcile their support for Israel by pinning the blame entirely on Netanyahu. A recent tweet by Sanders reads, “Netanyahu has not allowed any aid into Gaza in 22 days. He broke the ceasefire, resuming a bombing campaign that has killed more than 50,000 people. Now he is threatening a long-term occupation of Gaza. NO MORE MILITARY AID TO NETANYAHU’S WAR MACHINE.”

One of the biggest scams being peddled by Democrats today is this frantic campaign to spin Netanyahu as meaningfully separate and distinct from everything Israel is — instead of the perfect embodiment of it — to protect Israel’s image while it commits genocide and ethnic cleansing.

They’re working overtime to hang this whole mess on the prime minister, so that when it’s all over and the final solution to the Palestinian question has been carried out, he can take the sins of the Zionist state and the entire US-centralized empire with him when he leaves office without anything ever needing to change about status quo US foreign policy. They’re repeating the George W Bush playbook.

Netanyahu didn’t create the genocidal racism in Israel, the genocidal racism in Israel created Netanyahu. He rode already-existing sentiments within Israel to power, and has relied on them to stay in power ever since. You could not ask for a better representative of everything Israel is than Benjamin Netanyahu — nor indeed a better representative of everything the US empire stands for.

Liberal Zionists are having a hard time reconciling their positions of antiracism and social justice with their support for Israel because at the end of the day western liberalism is just as fraudulent and deceitful as Zionism is. We all watched them passively allow the Democratic president to turn Gaza into a pile of steaming blood-soaked wreckage and then demand everyone vote for his vice president. Democrats hold their worldview in place by psychologically compartmentalizing away from the atrocities their government commits in the here and now, while singing fondly about innocuous whitewashed historical revisionist versions of their civil rights heroes who died decades ago.

Democrats are an inseparable part of the US empire and its abuses, just as the US empire is an inseparable part of Israel and its abuses. It’s all one big mess of depravity, with liberals tasked with the increasingly difficult assignment of placing a warm progressive face on one of the darkest chapters in human history.

Phil Giraldi : Israel Attacks Free Speech in the US

Hamdan Ballal: Oscar-winning Palestinian director released from Israeli detention

An Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was attacked by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces has been released from detention. Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians left a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they were being held on Tuesday. Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.

The three had spent the night on the floor of a military base while suffering from serious injuries sustained in the attack, according to Ballal’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel. Ballal told reporters that the settlers beat him in front of his home and filmed the assault. He said he was held at an army base, blindfolded, for 24 hours and forced to sleep under a freezing air conditioner. “All my body is pain,” he told the Associated Press. “I heard the voices of the soldiers, they were laughing about me … I heard ‘Oscar’ but I didn’t speak Hebrew.”

Tsemel, representing the three men, said they received only minimal care for their injuries from the attack and said she had no access to them for several hours after their arrest. ... Tsemel said Ballal and the other detained people had been accused of throwing stones at a young settler. They deny the allegations. All three Palestinians were driven to a hospital in the city of Hebron.

Palestinian residents said about two dozen settlers – some masked, some carrying guns and some in military uniforms – attacked the West Bank village of Susya on Monday evening as residents were breaking their Ramadan fast. Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones, they said.

Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she heard her husband being beaten outside their home as she huddled inside with their three children. She heard him screaming, “I’m dying!” and calling for an ambulance. When she looked out the window, she saw three men in uniform beating Ballal with the butts of their rifles and another person in civilian clothes who appeared to be filming the violence.

Aaron Maté : Trump Rejects Peace

Press freedom groups condemn targeted killing of two journalists in Israeli strikes

Press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza on Monday, who died in separate targeted airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces.

Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, was killed by an airstrike on his car in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya. Video reportedly from minutes after the airstrike, which has not been verified by the Guardian, shows people gathering around the shattered and smoking car and pulling a body out of the wreckage.

Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was also killed on Monday, reportedly along with his wife and son, in an airstrike on his home in south Khan Younis.

In the hours after the deaths, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Palestinian press freedom organisations released statements condemning the attacks. “CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director.

“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour. Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”

George Galloway : The World as I See It!

Israel Has Killed 270+ Gaza Children Since Ditching Cease-Fire Last Week, Says NGO

Since fully abandoning a two-month cease-fire in the Gaza Strip a week ago, the Israel Defense Forces have slaughtered more than 270 children in the Palestinian enclave, the global charity Save the Children said on social media Tuesday.

"Bombs falling, hospitals destroyed, children killed, and the world is silent. No aid, no safety, no future," said Save the Children humanitarian director Rachael Cummings. The group also noted that the death toll since October 2023 has topped 50,000.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that since March 18, the IDF has killed at least 792 people and injured 1,663, bringing the totals over the past 18 months to 50,144 dead and 113,704 wounded. Thousands more are missing and presumed dead.

Save the Children says more than 270 Palestinian children have been killed in the week since Israel resumed its war on Gaza, marking some of “the deadliest days for children since the war began”.

LIVE updates: https://t.co/qXx5k45aiq pic.twitter.com/uPsXo2bjPU

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 25, 2025

On Monday, Drop Site News' Sharif Kouddous reported that the ministry "released a 1,516-page document listing the names of over 50,000 Palestinians confirmed killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. There are a total of 474 pages listing 15,600+ children's names. The first 27 pages the age is listed as 0—children under 1 year old."

In addition to the 876 infants under age 1, Drop Site detailed on social media, the IDF has killed at least 1,686 toddlers (1-2 years), 2,424 preschoolers (3-5 years), 5,745 elementary school students (6-12 years), 2,837 young teens (13-15 years), and 2,045 older teens (16-17 years).

The outlet noted that "this toll does not include deaths from indirect causes such as starvation, disease, or the thousands still missing under the rubble. Researchers have said the actual toll could be three to five times higher."

The spreadsheet with the list of children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, 2023 is 474 pages. Those listed as 0 (less than a year old) is 27 pages long. A confirmed total of 15,613 children killed in direct Israeli military attacks as of this week. https://t.co/gKTzhJaPzH

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) March 25, 2025

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that "when the first explosions in Gaza this week started around 1:30 am, a visiting British doctor went to the balcony of a hospital in Khan Younis and watched the streaks of missiles light up the night before pounding the city."

Dr. Sakib Rokadiya then headed to Nasser Hospital's emergency ward, which soon filled with people harmed by the strikes. "Just child after child, young patient after young patient," he said. "The vast, vast majority were women, children, the elderly."

The AP shared more accounts from healthcare providers at the largest hospital in southern Gaza, including Dr. Feroze Sidhwa:

Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon from California with the medical charity MedGlobal, rushed immediately to the area where the hospital put the worst-off patients still deemed possible to save.

But the very first little girl he saw—3 or 4 years old—was too far gone. Her face was mangled by shrapnel. "She was technically still alive," Sidhwa said, but with so many other casualties "there was nothing we could do."

He told the girl's father she was going to die. Sidhwa went on to do some 15 operations, one after another.

When Israel fully ditched the cease-fire last week, after many violations since mid-January, Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children's regional director, said that "children and families in Gaza have barely caught their breath and are now being plunged back into a horrifically familiar world of harm that they cannot escape."

"These airstrikes come as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain displaced, their homes destroyed and uninhabitable, with tents all that stand between them and explosive weapons designed for wide reach," he pointed out. "Children are the most vulnerable to explosive weapons. Their lighter bodies are thrown further by the blasts, and their bones are softer and bend more easily, with higher risk of secondary injuries and long-term deformities and disabilities. Their small bodies have less blood to lose—a death sentence when emergency services can't safely operate and reach them."

"Children who survive the onslaught will not be able to receive adequate medical care or even basic pain medication, following the government of Israel's restrictions on and denial of medical supplies and the fuel hospitals need to function," Alhendawi continued. "This cannot be what world powers allow children to return to. When children are slaughtered en masse, humanity's moral and legal foundations crumble. We have seen it for ourselves: The only way to ensure children and families are protected as international law requires is through a cease-fire. This time, it must be definitive—the constant threat of war cannot be left hanging over their heads."

He added that "until then, even wars have laws, and those laws are clear. Civilians must be actively protected, with concrete steps taken to avoid and minimize civilian casualties. There is no military imperative that can justify atrocity crimes. And the international community must use all available means—exhaustively, not selectively—to ensure international law is upheld. Anything less is a global failure—not a mistake, not a regrettable dilemma, but a total dereliction of legal duty. Failure to act now risks the annihilation of children and their futures."

Global demands for a renewed cease-fire have mounted over the past week as Israel has returned to a full-blown military assault, backed by a U.S. government now controlled by President Donald Trump and Republican majorities in Congress.

"During the 42-day cease-fire families in Gaza could finally fall asleep knowing their loved ones would still be beside them when they woke up," Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy lead for the occupied Palestinian territories, said Monday. "Even though aid that entered was not enough—far from enough—it was something. The price of food stabilized. Supermarkets reopened. Bakeries began running again. Many people even went to their homes or what was left of it, and tried to repair and rebuild, however little they could."

Khalidi explained that "Oxfam, through its partners has been able to initiate emergency water trucking across the Gaza Strip, and are maintaining some other aid programs, such as multipurpose cash transfers, despite the severe challenges that all humanitarian workers now face around lack of protection."

"For the past 535 days, Israel has been systematically weaponizing lifesaving aid, inflicting collective punishment upon the population of Gaza," she continued. "The denial of food, water, fuel and electricity is a war crime and a crime against humanity. Many within the international community are enabling this by their silence, inaction, and complicity."

Oxfam called for a permanent cease-fire, the safe return of Israeli hostages and illegally detained Palestinian prisoners, "unfettered aid at scale," and other governments to stop transferring arms to the involved parties. The group also said that "we reiterate our call for justice and accountability for all those affected."

Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and a Hamas leader who has since been confirmed dead.

10 Years of War on Yemen: Leaked War Plan Chats Overshadow U.S. Deadly History Targeting Yemen

US Killed 25 Civilians in First Week of Renewed Bombing Campaign in Yemen

US airstrikes on Yemen killed at least 25 civilians and wounded 28 others in just the first week of the Trump administration’s renewed bombing campaign against the Houthis, according to the Yemen Data Project (YDP).

The YDP released a report on Tuesday analyzing 38 strikes on Yemen the US launched from March 15 to March 21 and found that 55% of the bombings hit non-military targets. The report said the US attacks marked the heaviest and deadliest week of bombing in Yemen since the final months of the US-backed Saudi-UAE air war on the country in early 2022.

The report found that more civilians were killed in the first week of the Trump administration’s bombing campaign than were killed in the 12 months of US- UK strikes on Yemen that were conducted under the Biden administration from January 2024 to January 2025.

Clown World:

Mike Waltz's Theory: Jeffrey Goldberg HACKED His Way Into The Signal Group Chat!?!

Judge rules Columbia protester can’t be detained as she fights deportation

A federal judge in Manhattan blocked immigration officials from detaining Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and legal permanent resident the Trump administration is trying to deport for taking part in Gaza solidarity protests.

The 21-year-old green card holder, who has lived in the US since she was seven years old, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, arguing the government is “attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike”.

The US district judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said in court that the government had not laid out enough facts about its claims against Chung, who is originally from South Korea. Buchwald granted the temporary restraining order Chung had requested, which also prohibits the government from moving her outside the jurisdiction of the southern district of New York. ... In ordering the US not to transfer Chung out of the district, Buchwald said: “No trips to Louisiana here.”

Chung’s lawsuit alleged that immigration officials moved to deport her “from the only country she has ever known” after she was identified in news reports as part of a group of protesters arrested after a sit-in at a library on the campus of Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia.

Chung was given a ticket for “obstruction of governmental administration”, a common protest citation, according to her suit, filed by Clear, a clinic at the City University of New York law school. But days later, the US government “began a series of unlawful efforts to arrest, detain, and remove Ms. Chung from the country –because of her protected speech”, her lawyers alleged.

Does Columbia still merit the name of a university?

It was never about eliminating antisemitism. It was always about silencing Palestine. That is what the gagging of protesting students, and now the gagging of faculty, was always meant to lead to. While partisans of the Israeli-American mass slaughter in Gaza may have been offended by their protests, large numbers of the students whose rights of free speech have been infringed upon via draconian punishments were themselves Jewish.

Many of those faculty members who are about to be deprived of academic freedom and faculty governance, and perhaps fired, are themselves Jewish, indeed some are Israelis. If it were ever really about discrimination, the university would have taken action against the ceaseless harassment of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and faculty, and their allies and supporters, instead of endorsing and enabling it. ...

We should not mourn what Columbia has become, for as great as it may have been, none of this is entirely new. Before the current expulsions and suspension, Columbia once in its history expelled a student for non-violent protest: in 1936 for protesting against offering a platform to Nazis. In 1953 its president signed a letter pronouncing communists unfit to teach. Columbia trustees fired two faculty members for opposing the first world war on pacifist grounds, while student conscientious objectors were arrested and jailed.

Columbia has long been run more like the vast, wealthy business and real estate empire that it is, than as an educational institution. It is a place where trustees, donors and powerful professional schools dictate its policy, not the rest of its faculty. In the spring of 2024, two-thirds of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted no confidence in a president who bowed to outside pressure, threw her faculty under the bus, and called in the NYPD for the first time since 1968. Her successor has outdone her, further garlanding Columbia’s already rich repressive traditions with groveling obeisance to government dictates that were promoted and eagerly seconded by shameless collaborators within the university.

After Friday’s capitulation, Columbia barely merits the name of a university, since its teaching and scholarship on the Middle East, and soon much else, will soon be vetted by a “senior vice provost for inclusive pedagogy”, in reality a senior vice provost for Israeli propaganda. Partisans of Israel, infuriated that scholarship on Palestine had found a place at Columbia, once named it “Bir Zeit on the Hudson”. But if it any longer merits the name of a university, it should be called Vichy on the Hudson.

Zelensky Major Meltdown As US Agrees Russia Sanctions Relief; Complains Kiev Excluded; EU Objects

Well, sort of..

Russia and Ukraine agree to ‘eliminate the use of force’ in Black Sea

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea after parallel talks with US negotiators in Saudi Arabia, though the Kremlin said a maritime ceasefire would start only if it received sanctions relief on agricultural exports. Donald Trump said that the US was reviewing the Russian conditions after the Kremlin insisted it had negotiated concessions with the White House that would mark the first major recision of sanctions since the full-scale invasion of 2022.

The warring parties also agreed to implement a previously announced 30-day halt on attacks against energy networks and to expand its scope, but resolving fundamental issues, including any division of territory, remains far off. ...

The ceasefire would begin immediately after the White House released the statements, Zelenskyy said, although the Russian demand for sanctions relief in the Black Sea means the conditions for a halt in fighting at sea have not been accepted by Moscow.

US war plans leak shows Five Eyes allies must ‘look out for ourselves’, says Mark Carney

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has said the inadvertent leak of classified military plans by senior US officials means that allied nations must increasingly “look out for ourselves” as trust frays with a once-close ally.

Speaking a day after it was revealed that a journalist was accidentally included in a group chat discussing airstrikes against Yemeni rebels, Carney said the intelligence blunder was a “serious, serious issue and all lessons must be taken”. He said it would be critical to see “how people react to those mistakes and how they tighten them up”.

Canada is one of the members of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, alongside Australia, New Zealand and the UK and the leak of classified information is likely to put further strain on the group as it weighs how seriously the current American administration takes the handling of top secret information.

The revelations came as Canada grapples with a rapidly deteriorating relationship with the United States, its largest trading partner and closest military ally. “My responsibility is to plan for the worst, is to think about the most difficult evolution of the new threat environment, what it means for Canada and how do we best protect Canada,” Carney said during a campaign stop on Tuesday. The prime minister called a snap election on Sunday.

“Part of that response is to be more and more Canadian in our defence capabilities, more and more Canadian in our decisions … We have to look out for ourselves.”

Hands Off Social Security: Drastic DOGE-Backed Changes Put Benefits for Millions at Risk

Doge cuts allow Musk to cash in with SpaceX and Starlink contracts, ex-workers warn

Elon Musk appears to be laying the groundwork to privatize some space and satellite operations now under the authority of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), or steer lucrative contracts toward his SpaceX and Starlink companies, former agency employees say.

They’re sounding the alarm as at least four other federal agencies have reportedly begun pushing new contracts toward Musk’s Starlink satellite internet company. Musk, the world’s richest man, has been tasked by Donald Trump with drastically slashing the federal government workforce and costs.

The situation raises conflict of interest questions for one of Trump’s closest allies who backed him with millions of dollars of funding in the 2024 election. Musk boasts that his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) “slashes spending”, but critics say he’s using his position to steer government funding toward his companies.

Noaa could offer the biggest prizes yet for Musk, presenting the opportunity for SpaceX to have a commanding financial advantage in a commercial US space market expected to grow to a value of nearly $2tn in value over the next decade. Already Doge likely has access to competitors’ confidential business information at Noaa, former employees at the agency say.

More importantly for the public, it would put control of the nation’s communications infrastructure in the hands of a rightwing billionaire. Noaa’s activity quietly touches the basic functions of daily life, and everything from dependable cellphone service to how Americans connect to the internet to weather forecasting is at stake, five former Noaa employees who spoke with the Guardian said.

Rising fears of Trump tariffs pummel US consumer confidence to four-year low

US consumer confidence plunged to the lowest level in more than four years in March, with households fearing a recession in the future and higher inflation because of tariffs. The Conference Board said on Tuesday that write-in responses to the survey showed “worries about the impact of trade policies and tariffs in particular are on the rise”, adding: “There were also more references than usual to economic and policy uncertainty.” The survey’s measure of future expectations hit a 12-year low and breached a level associated with an economic downturn.

Separately on Tuesday, the ratings agency Moody’s cautioned that the US’s fiscal strength was on track for a continued multi-year decline, as budget deficits widen and debt becomes less affordable. In a report, it said the country’s fiscal health deteriorated further since Moody’s lowered its outlook on the US triple-A rating in November 2023.

Donald Trump’s on-and-off-again tariffs have been panned by economists for sowing confusion and uncertainty that they said was making it challenging for businesses to plan ahead, to the detriment of the economy. The US president on Monday indicated that not all of his threatened duties would be imposed on 2 April and some countries may get breaks, but at the same time said tariffs on imported automobiles were coming soon.

“Consumers are rattled,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. “At great personal risk, we will opine that the chaos in Washington has something to do with this. The decline in consumer sentiment since the November election can no longer be written off as a coincidence.”

Trump administration claims details of mass deportations are state secrets

The Trump administration invoked the “state secrets” privilege to avoid providing more information to a federal judge regarding this month’s highly contentious immigrant expulsions to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. The administration’s invocation of the privilege is a further escalation in Donald Trump’s immigration-related battle against the federal judiciary.

According to a court filing submitted by justice department officials on Monday evening, “no further information will be provided” to the federal court in Washington DC based on the state secrets privilege. The filing said the case deals with Trump’s complete and absolute authority to remove “designated terrorists participating in a state-sponsored invasion of, and predatory incursion into, the United States”.

In response to the Trump administration’s invocation, the federal judge in the case said that if the administration would like to provide more information about the Alien Enemies Act operation, they should do so by 31 March.

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on 15 March to expel Venezuelan immigrants in the US. That day, 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadoran men were placed on planes and sent to El Salvador, where they were then quickly detained in a massive “terrorism” prison run by the Salvadoran government. For over a week, a federal judge has attempted to compel the Trump administration to release information about the operation.

The Trump administration has said all of the Venezuelans expelled are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the gang “infiltrated” the US at the direction of the Venezuelan government. An intelligence document contradicts the Trump administration’s allegations. News reports, identifying some of the Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador, have published evidence and claims from family members that they are innocent and not members of the gang.

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Trump UNSEALS FBI Russiagate Docs

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US honeybee deaths hit record high as scientists scramble to find main cause

Honeybee deaths have hit record highs in the US, with the unprecedented loss of colonies pushing many beekeepers close to ruin as scientists scramble to identify the main cause of the huge declines. Commercial beekeepers have reported losing more than 60% of their colonies, on average, over the winter, according to an ongoing Project Apis m. survey that covers more than two-thirds of America’s managed bees.

This enormous rate of decline is higher than record reductions seen last year and is on track to be the “biggest loss of honeybee colonies in US history”, according to Scott McArt, an associate professor of entomology at Cornell University. McArt said that the extraordinary rate of loss became apparent during this winter’s mass movement of honeybee hives to California to pollinate the vast almond crop there.

Honeybees, although introduced to the US, have become vital to the agricultural system by pollinating half of all crops, including apples, berries, pumpkins, melons and cherries. Beekeepers are increasingly struggling to maintain the bee numbers necessary to undertake this work. “Something real bad is going on this year,” said McArt. “We have been seeing high losses year after year but if anything it is getting worse, which is troubling. Some places are having devastating losses and there was a shortfall in pollination in some almond orchards this year. Whether these impacts will cascade to other crops remains to be seen, it’s certainly possible.” ...

The loss of bees, both captive and wild, in the US is already starting to limit the supply of some food crops and is reducing the yield of honey. The declines are part of a broader crisis in the insect world where species are being wiped out at an alarming rate. Researchers warn that the loss of insects imperils basic functions of life on Earth, such as food production, the flowering of plants and waste disposal. ...

The latest, record leap in honeybee losses is now being investigated by staff at the US Department of Agriculture, which is analyzing bees, wax and pollen to determine if parasites and viruses are to blame for the deaths. However, cuts in staff numbers by Donald Trump’s administration has required Cornell University to step in and take on further required research to determine if the samples have been affected by pesticides. It will take around a month before scientists haver a better idea as to the main drivers of the latest losses.

‘Protect our future’: Alaskan Indigenous town fights destructive uranium mine project

For generations, the people of Elim have subsisted off the forests and waters of north-west Alaska: hunting caribou and bearded seals in the late winter, gathering bird eggs and wild greens from the tundra in early spring, and fishing the salmon run in the late summer. The Iñupiat community of 350 people lives on one of the state’s most productive and biodiverse fisheries, an inlet of the Bering Sea called the Norton Sound. They refer to their land as Munaaquestevut, or “the one who cares for us”.

“We depend on the land to put food on the table, to keep our tribe healthy. We have a subsistence economy with a cash overlay,” said Emily Murray, a resident of Elim and vice-president of Norton Bay Watershed Council, a non-profit tribal organization focused on regional water quality. “We’ve been doing this for generations upon generations.”

Now, an intensifying global competition for critical minerals and the priorities of a new administration threaten to put their land, their fishery and their lives at risk, members of the community say. This summer, the Canadian mining company Panther Minerals is set to start exploration for a uranium mine at the headwaters of the Tubuktulik river, adjacent to Elim’s land. David Hedderly-Smith, a consultant to Panther and the owner of mining claims for the property, has said the site could become the “uranium capital of America”.

The people of Elim have opposed the mine since last May, when Panther Minerals announced its intention to apply for exploration permits. In interviews, they said they feared for their health, and spoke of the cancer and contamination that followed uranium mining on Navajo land in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. “If [the river] becomes contaminated, it will have an impact on the whole Bering Sea. That’s the way I see it,” said Johnny Jemewouk, a resident of Elim.

Last summer, Elim successfully pressured the Bureau of Land Management, which manages a small portion of the claim, to deny Panther Minerals’ exploration permit on the land. In December, a regional tribal consortium passed a resolution “categorically” opposing the mine. However, Alaska’s department of natural resources (DNR), which manages most of the land, has so far refused Elim’s requests for a consultation – and brushed aside over a hundred comments from the community over plans for the mine. In October, they granted Panther Minerals a four-year exploration permit, which will allow the company to start drilling wells and taking uranium core samples this June.

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Also of Interest

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

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Max Blumenthal: Jeffrey Goldberg’s ‘War Chat’

Was This 'Leak' Accidental Or Is It Pro-War Psyops?

Trump’s Retaliation Against South Africa

Bernie and AOC Sheepdog for the Democrats

NYC Dem Socialist Mayoral Candidate Mamdani Maxes Out Fundraising

I’m a vet for bees – I think I might be the only one in the US

From foul to fuel: how a seaweed problem could power the Caribbean

1,400+ Arrested in Turkey as Erdoğan Jails Istanbul Mayor & Intensifies Authoritarian Crackdown

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A Little Night Music

Tarheel Slim & Little Ann – Number Nine Train

Tarheel Slim & Li'l Ann - Close To You

Tarheel Slim & Little Ann – It's Too Late

Tarheel Slim & Little Ann - Security

Tarheel Slim & Little Ann - Forever I´ll Be Yours

Tarheel Slim & the Larks - Eyesight to the blind

Tarheel Slim - Let's Have a Ball

Tarheel Slim - No Time At All

Tarheel Slim & Little Ann – Wildcat Tamer

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