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This evening's music features delta blues singer and guitarist Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes. Enjoy!

"America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society."

-- Peter Kropotkin

News and Opinion

I Envy The Palestinians

I envy the Palestinians. Not for what they’re going through, obviously, but for what they have. Their supremely authentic culture, with its deep roots and ancient connection to the land.

One of the very, very few good things that the Gaza holocaust has brought into this world is a deluge of footage of Palestinians living their lives, interacting with each other and relating to their loved ones as they find ways to get by in this nightmare. Westerners like me have been quietly watching these video clips on our little screens in our homes, and watching the various films, documentaries and shows that have been made about Palestinian life over the years, and taking it all in.

And it’s just so very moving. Palestinians are such amazingly beautiful people. How tender they are with each other. How real and organic their spirituality is. How deeply they love their culture in all its unique expressions. How profoundly intimate their connections with each other are, both between individuals and with their community as a whole.

I’m a white Australian. We just don’t experience such things. The indigenous inhabitants of this land were massacred, robbed and displaced just as the Palestinians are today, and my ancestors were brought to this continent from Ireland and Scotland by circumstances beyond their control. Now for the most part it’s just this shallow, vapid civilization whose primary cultural identity consists of not getting too worked up about things. We live with this perpetual vague state of alienation and dysphoria buzzing in the background of our consciousness, because we have no roots here.

My husband Tim is an American of Irish descent and has had much the same experience. That’s just what it’s like for white people in the colonized world. We have no connectedness. No historical depth. No real culture. No real grounding. That’s why we’re always reaching around for something other than what we have, whether it’s more money and more possessions or a return to the religion of our grandparents or New Age spirituality or substance abuse. Our experience here just doesn’t feel quite right. We don’t feel like we belong.

Then we look at the Palestinians and how starkly their society contrasts with our own, and we can’t help but feel a sense of deep longing. They live so naturally and so warmly. It just looks right.

And I am quite certain Israelis feel the same way when they look at Palestinians. Here they are with this ridiculously fake culture of AI and electronic dance music, speaking a strange new version of a dead language that Zionists reanimated a few generations ago so they could LARP as middle easterners and pretend the “Israel” of today has anything whatsoever in common with the historic Israel of Biblical times. And then they look over at the people who were living there before them with their deep roots and vibrant authenticity, and they feel envy. And their envy turns to spite. And their spite turns to hate. And their hate turns to genocide.

There are other reasons for the hatred Israelis feel toward Palestinians, to be sure — the entire apartheid state depends on their being aggressively indoctrinated into viewing the lower-tiered inhabitants of the land as less than human. But jealousy surely plays a part.

And I hope they don’t succeed in wiping out the Palestinians. I hope they don’t succeed in driving them off their land. It would be such a loss to the whole world for a thing of such beauty to be snapped from its roots and cast into the dustbin of history. Apart from all the other reasons to feel heartbroken about the abuses we are witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank, there’s the fact that our world is losing one of the most breathtakingly beautiful things it has ever birthed into existence.

If these freaks succeed in stomping out Palestine, I think it will genuinely feel like losing a loved one. I think many people around the world will feel the same way.

I desperately hope this doesn’t happen. If I were a different sort of person with a different sort of spirituality, I would say I pray this doesn’t happen. In a world that’s increasingly fake and fraudulent, we can’t afford to lose Palestine.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Killing Without Purpose

Israeli Attacks Kill Dozens of More Palestinians in Gaza

The Israeli military killed at least 38 Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday, medical sources told Al Jazeera, as US-backed Israeli attacks continue to pound targets across the Strip.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier in the day that at least 25 Palestinians had been killed and 89 wounded in the previous 24-hour period, a total that only accounts for dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals.

The ministry also said that since Israel restarted its genocidal war with massive airstrikes on March 18, at least 855 Palestinians have been killed, and 1,869 have been wounded.

Collapsing Apartment Buildings in Yemen: Wise and Just?

Trump Says He Will Continue Bombing Yemen for a ‘Long Time’

President Trump on Wednesday claimed that the US’s daily airstrikes on Yemen have been “very successful” and vowed the bombing campaign would continue for a “long time.” ...

Since the Trump administration launched the bombing campaign, the Houthis have restarted attacks on US warships and resumed firing missiles at Israel, operations they ceased when the Gaza ceasefire went into effect on January 19. Despite this, President Trump claims the Houthis want “peace.”

“The Houthis are looking to do something. They want to know, ‘How do we stop? How do we stop? How can we have peace?’ The Houthis want peace because they’re getting the hell knocked out of them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“They want us to stop so badly… They’ve got to say, ‘No mas.’ But I can only say that the attacks every day, every night… have been very successful beyond our wildest expectations… We’re going to do it for a long time. We can keep it going for a long time,” the president said.

Why All Israeli Prime Ministers Have Fake Names! w/ George Galloway

Israel parliament defies protests to pass law tightening grip over judges

Israel’s parliament has passed a law expanding elected officials’ power to appoint judges, in defiance of a years-long protest against Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to drive through judicial changes. The approval of the bill, which opposition parties say will make judges subject to the will of politicians, comes as Netanyahu’s government is locked in a standoff with the supreme court over its attempts to dismiss the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara and Ronen Bar, the head of the internal security agency.

Opposition parties, which have filed a petition with the supreme court challenging the vote, said in a joint statement: “This government is undermining the foundations of democracy, and the entire opposition will stand as a strong barrier against it until every attempt to turn Israel into a dictatorship is stopped.”

The justice minister, Yariv Levin, who sponsored the bill, said the measure was intended to “restore balance” between the legislative and judicial branches.

Currently judges in Israel, including supreme court justices, are selected by a nine-member committee composed of judges and lawmakers, under the justice minister’s supervision. The new law, which would come into effect at the start of the next legislative term would increase political control over appointments. The committee would still have nine members: three supreme court judges, the justice minister and another minister, one coalition lawmaker, one opposition lawmaker, and two public representatives – one appointed by the majority and the other by the opposition.

Iran Responds to President Trump’s Letter Proposing Nuclear Talks

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that Tehran has responded to President Trump’s letter proposing nuclear talks that was sent to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni.

“The official response comprises a letter wherein our viewpoints regarding the status quo and Mr. Trump’s letter have been fully laid out and relayed to the other side,” Araghchi said, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency.

Araghchi said the message was delivered through Oman, which has a history of mediating between the US and Iran. He reiterated Iran’s opposition to direct talks with the US in the face of Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign,” which has involved increasing sanctions and threats of military action.

But Iran is leaving the door open to negotiations through intermediaries, something Aragchi also reaffirmed. “Indirect negotiations, though, can continue, as they existed in the past,” he said.

DoJ lawyers say detained Tufts student was sent to Louisiana before court order

Lawyers for the US government on Thursday argued in court in Boston that they had transferred a doctoral student at nearby Tufts University to immigration detention in Louisiana before a court had ordered that she should not be removed from Massachusetts without prior notice.

At a hearing on Thursday morning in federal court, a lawyer for the student, a Turkish national, withdrew an emergency motion filed the previous day requesting that the government produce her after she was shipped off to Louisiana. The motion and one from the government were sealed.

Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was sent to detention in the south on Wednesday after being snatched off the street outside her home on Tuesday.

The court had ordered Ice not to move her out of the Massachusetts court district but justice department lawyers on Thursday said Ozturk’s transfer to Louisiana took place before the judge ordered her to be kept in Massachusetts.

At Thursday morning’s federal court hearing in Boston, district judge Indira Talwani issued an order giving the government until Friday to answer why Ozturk was being detained.

Rubio boasts of canceling more than 300 visas over pro-Palestine protests

The US state department is undertaking a widespread visa-review process, revoking hundreds of visas and placing hundreds more under scrutiny, targeting mostly foreign nationals engaged in pro-Palestine activism, according to official statements.

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, confirmed the scale of the crackdown, announcing that he has canceled visas for more than 300 people he called “lunatics” connected to campus pro-Palestine protests in the US, with promises of action to continue daily.

Asked by reporters during a visit to Guyana in South America to confirm reports of 300 visas stripped, Rubio said: “Maybe more than 300 at this point. We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.” ...

The Trump administration has simultaneously implemented other restrictive measures, including pausing green card processing for certain refugees and asylum seekers and issuing a global directive instructing visa officers to deny entry to transgender athletes, of which there are very few.

Judge orders participants in Signal chat group blunder to preserve all messages

A federal judge on Thursday ordered that the Trump administration preserve all Signal messages exchanged in the now-infamous Signal group chat in which officials conducted a high-level military operation on the unclassified commercial app and inadvertently included a journalist.

The temporary restraining order from James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, compelled defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, CIA director John Ratcliffe and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to save their texts from 11 to 15 March.

Boasberg made clear that his order was aimed at ensuring no messages from the Signal chat were lost – the group chat was set to automatically delete messages after a certain time period – and not because he decided the Trump administration had done anything wrong. ...

The lawsuit was brought by the non-profit transparency and watchdog group American Oversight, which accused the officials in the Signal chat of flouting the Federal Records Act, which requires government communications by agency officials to be preserved.

Boasberg is set to decide at a later stage whether the disappearing message function of the Signal chat violated federal records retention laws. American Oversight complained that the discussion in the Signal chat amounted to policy deliberations that needed to be retained.

Putin's terms; UN trusteeship, elections, military victory

Flight bookings between Canada and US down 70% amid Trump tariff war

Airline travel between Canada and the US is “collapsing” amid Donald Trump’s tariff war, with flight bookings between the two countries down by over 70%, newly released data suggests.

According to data from the aviation analytics company OAG, airline capacity between Canada and the US has been reduced through October 2025, with the biggest cuts occurring between the months of July and August, which is considered peak travel season. Passenger bookings on Canada to US routes are currently down by over 70% compared to the same period last year. ...

But the steep decline suggests that the current capacity cuts do not even begin to cover the current disinterest in traveling to the US.

The dramatic drop in bookings suggests that Canadian travelers are holding off on making reservations, probably due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the tariff war. ... Beyond the trade dispute, some Canadians say they feel increasingly uneasy crossing into the US following several high-profile incidents of foreign visitors being detained by Ice.

End of an era for Canada-US ties, says Carney, as allies worldwide decry Trump’s car tariffs

Canada’s prime minister has said the era of deep ties with the US “is over”, as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action. Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be “no turning back”.

He told reporters: “The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.”...

Trump announced on Wednesday that he would impose a 25% tariff on cars and car parts shipped to the US from 3 April in a move experts have predicted is likely to depress production, drive up prices and fuel a global trade war. ...

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, bluntly described Trump’s decision as wrong, and said Washington appeared to have “chosen a path at whose end lie only losers, since tariffs and isolation hurt prosperity, for everyone”. France’s finance minister, Eric Lombard, called the US president’s plan “very bad news” and said the EU would be forced to raise its own tariffs. His German counterpart, Robert Habeck, promised a “firm EU response”. “We will not take this lying down,” he said.

South Korea said it would put in place a full emergency response to Trump’s proposed measures by April. ... The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, said Tokyo was putting “all options on the table”. Japan “makes the largest amount of investment to the US, so we wonder if it makes sense for [Washington] to apply uniform tariffs to all countries”, he said.

US judge calls heat in Texas prisons ‘unconstitutional’ but does not order AC

A federal judge on Wednesday found the extreme heat in Texas prisons was “plainly unconstitutional” but declined to order the state to immediately start installing air conditioning, which could cost billions. The ruling affirmed claims brought by advocates of people incarcerated in Texas, where summer heat routinely soars above 100F (38C) for weeks. But they will have to continue pressing their lawsuit later in a trial.

The lawsuit was initially filed in 2023 by Bernie Tiede, the former mortician serving a life sentence whose murder case inspired the movie Bernie. Several prisoners’ rights groups then asked to join his legal fight and expand it to encompass all Texas prisoners. The lawsuit argues the hot conditions in the state facilities amount to cruel and unusual punishment, and seeks to force the state to install air conditioning.

Texas has more than than 130,000 people serving time in prisons, more than any state in the US. Only about a third of roughly 100 prison units are fully air conditioned and the rest have either partial or no electrical cooling.

“This case concerns the plainly unconstitutional treatment of some of the most vulnerable, marginalized members of our society,” US district judge Robert Pitman wrote in his ruling on a request for a temporary injunction against the state. “The Court is of the view that excessive heat is likely serving as a form of unconstitutional punishment.”

But the judge said that ordering the state to spend “hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to install permanent air conditioning in every [prison]”, could not be accomplished before such an order would expire. Pittman said he expected the case would proceed to trial, where advocates for prisoners can continue to argue their case.

New York clerk refuses to enforce Texas effort to punish abortion provider

A New York county clerk on Thursday refused to enforce a Texas court fineagainst a New York doctor accused of mailing abortion pills across state lines – a move that tees up a dramatic showdown between states that protect abortion rights and those that have banned the procedure. The clash will probably end up in front of the US supreme court.

In December, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, sued Dr Margaret Carpenter in a Texas court for allegedly mailing abortion pills to the Lone Star state, which bans virtually all abortions. After Carpenter did not show up to a court hearing earlier this year, a Texas judge ruled against her, ordering her to pay a $113,000 penalty and stop sending abortion pills to Texas.

New York has, however, enacted a “shield law” that forbids state officials from extraditing abortion providers to other states or complying with out-of-state court orders. In his statement refusing to enforce the Texas fine, the acting Ulster county clerk Taylor Bruck cited the law.

“In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office. Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” Bruck said in a statement.

Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Texas may challenge New York’s shield law through a lawsuit. Although a number of blue states have passed shield laws since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, they have never been put to the legal test. The case will also probably serve as a bellwether for the future of interstate relations between anti-abortion states and pro-abortion rights states.

Trump withdraws Elise Stefanik’s UN nomination to protect GOP House majority

Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was pulling US House representative Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, a stunning turnaround for his cabinet pick after her confirmation had been stalled over concerns about Republicans’ tight margins in the House.

Trump confirmed he was withdrawing the New York Republican’s nomination in a Truth Social post, saying that it was “essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress”.

“We must be unified to accomplish our Mission, and Elise Stefanik has been a vital part of our efforts from the very beginning. I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress,” the president said, without mentioning who he would nominate as a replacement for his last remaining cabinet seat. ...

Stefanik had been in a state of limbo for months, not able to engage in her official duties as a member of the 119th Congress or to participate in the action at the UN. The vacancy of a permanent US ambassador was happening at a critical moment for the international body as the world leaders had been discussing the two major wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.

Fossil fuel companies get direct email line to Trump for exemption requests

Donald Trump’s administration has offered fossil fuel companies an extraordinary opportunity to evade air pollution rules by simply emailing the US president to ask him to exempt them. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set up a new email address where what it calls the “regulated community” can request a presidential exemption from their requirements under the Clean Air Act, which is used to regulate dangerous toxins emitted from polluting sources.

Operators of power plants that burn coal or oil, linked to tens of thousands of deaths each year in the US via the mercury, arsenic and other carcinogens emitted through their air pollution, have until Monday to ask Trump to allow them to bypass clean air laws.

“The president will make a decision on the merits” of each request, which can be for up to two years and be renewed, according to the EPA website. Helpfully, the EPA’s site provides a template for these requests, including pointers as to how to successfully ask for an exemption.

Trump pledged as a presidential candidate to repeal environmental laws if he got $1bn in campaign donations from oil and gas companies. While he didn’t reach that figure, Trump did receive tens of millions of dollars from the industry and has said that the US needs to “drill, baby, drill” through unfettered fossil fuel expansion, rejecting the scientific consensus that burning coal, oil and gas is causing a worsening climate crisis.

As president, Trump has set about dismantling pollution rules. Dozens of rollbacks by the EPA have targeted regulations that were intended to save nearly 200,000 lives in the US by 2050, as well as prevent millions of asthma attacks, heart and respiratory problems and other public health harms.

US could see return of acid rain due to Trump’s rollbacks, says scientist who discovered it

The US could be plunged back into an era of toxic acid rain, an environmental problem thought to have been solved decades ago, due to the Donald Trump administration’s rollback of pollution protections, the scientist who discovered the existence of acid rain in North America has warned.

A blitzkrieg launched by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on clean air and water regulations could revert the US to a time when cities were routinely shrouded in smog and even help usher back acid rain, according to Gene Likens, whose experiments helped identify acidic rainwater in the 1960s.

While drastic improvements in America’s air quality have seemingly consigned acid rain to a problem belonging to a bygone era, Likens said if rules curbing toxic emissions from power plants, cars and trucks are aggressively scaled back, the specter of acid rain could again haunt the US.

“I’m very worried that might happen, it’s certainly not impossible that it could happen,” Likens, 90, told the Guardian. Likens is still involved in a long-term monitoring project, stretching back to 1976, to sample rainwater for acidity but this program has just had its funding cut by the Trump administration.

“I hope we don’t go back to the old days, so these rollbacks are very alarming,” Likens said. “I care about the health of my children and grandchildren, I want them to have clean air to breathe. I care about clean water and clean and healthy soil, I want them to have that too.”

Wildfires rage on in North and South Carolina as more firefighters arrive

At least a half-dozen large wildfires continued to burn in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina and North Carolina on Thursday, leading to states of emergency and evacuations as firefighters deployed from other parts of the US to help bring the blazes under control.

In North Carolina, progress was being made in containing two of the largest wildfires burning in the mountains, but officials warned that fire danger remained from dry and windy conditions.

The news was worse in South Carolina, where two fires nearly doubled in size on Wednesday.

Hundreds of people have been asked to leave their homes in the two states. Wednesday’s dry weather led to several new fires in western North Carolina and prompted the state’s governor, Josh Stein, to declare a state of emergency in 34 western counties. At least nine fires were active in that part of the state, officials said.

Also of Interest

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

The Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics

The Signal fiasco is obscuring an essential question: why are we bombing Yemen?

Losing Academic Freedom

Israel Kills Palestinian Journalist Hossam Shabat as US Media Look Away

Trump's Rewritten 'Deal' With Ukraine Is Imposed Indentured Servitude

Pete Hegseth’s Arabic tattoo stirs controversy: ‘clear symbol of Islamophobia’

Why Trump’s 25% tariffs on autos could backfire

Absolutely Massive Collapse In Travel From Canada To America Incoming

'Cuts to the Bone': Leaked Trump Doc Shows Feds Plan to Slash Up to 50% of Agencies' Staff

DOGE wants to cut the Pentagon — by 0.07%

House Speaker Johnson Threatens to Defund Federal Courts

EU appears to back down on carbon levy on international shipping

Signalgate BURNS Israeli Intel

A Little Night Music

Roosevelt Booba Barnes (and the Playboys) - How Long This Must Go On

Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes - Heart broken man

Roosevelt ''Booba'' Barnes ~ Tin Pan Alley

Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes - Thrill Is Gone

Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes - Louise Louise Blues

Roosevelt Booba Barnes - Ain t Going To Worry About Tomorrow

Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes - Blindman, I pity the fool

Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes - How Many More Years

Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes - Scratch My Back