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"Israel and its apologists permanently lost the argument as soon as they started telling you it’s racist to oppose genocide. From that point on there was no reason to listen to them or engage them in any way."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Worth a full read:

Chris Hedges: The New Dark Age

It is 200 miles from where I am in Cairo to the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. Parked in the arid sands in the northern Sinai of Egypt are 2,000 trucks filled with sacks of flour, water tanks, canned food, medical supplies, tarps and fuel. The trucks idle under the scorching sun with temperatures climbing into the high 90s. A few miles away in Gaza, dozens of men, women and children, living in crude tents or damaged buildings amid the rubble, are being butchered daily from bullets, bombs, missile strikes, tank shells, infectious diseases and that most ancient weapon of siege warfare — starvation. One in five people are facing starvation after nearly three months of Israel’s blockade of food and humanitarian aid.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has launched a new offensive that is killing upwards of 100 people a day, has declared that nothing will impede this final assault, named Operation Gideon’s Chariots. There will be “no way,” Israel will stop the war, he announced, even if the remaining Israeli hostages are returned. Israel is “destroying more and more houses” in Gaza. The Palestinians “have nowhere to return. [The] only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip,” he told lawmakers at a leaked closed-door meeting. “But our main problem is finding countries to take them in.”

The nine-mile border between Egypt and Gaza has become the dividing line between the Global South and the Global North, the demarcation between a world of savage industrial violence and the desperate struggle by those cast aside by the wealthiest nations. It marks the end of a world where humanitarian law, conventions that protect civilians or the most basic and fundamental rights matter. It ushers in a Hobbesian nightmare where the strong crucify the weak, where no atrocity, including genocide, is precluded, where the white race in the Global North reverts to the unrestrained, atavistic savagery and domination that defines colonialism and our centuries long history of pillage and exploitation.

We are tumbling backwards in time to our origins, origins that never left us, but origins that were masked by empty promises of democracy, justice and human rights. The Nazis are the convenient scapegoats for our shared European and American heritage of mass slaughter, as if the genocides we carried out in the Americas, Africa and India did not take place, unimportant footnotes in our collective history. In fact, genocide is the currency of Western domination. Between 1490 and 1890, European colonization, including acts of genocide, was responsible for killing as many as 100 million indigenous people, according to the historian David E. Stannard. Since 1950 there have been nearly two dozen genocides, including those in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Rwanda.

The genocide in Gaza is part of a pattern. It is the harbinger of genocides to come, especially as the climate breaks down and hundreds of millions are forced to flee to escape droughts, wildfires, flooding, declining crop yields, failed states and mass death. It is a blood-soaked message from us to the rest of the world: We have everything and if you try and take it away from us, we will kill you. Gaza puts to rest the lie of human progress, the myth that we are evolving morally. Only the tools change. Where once we clubbed victims to death, or chopped them to pieces with broadswords, today we drop 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps, spray families with bullets from militarized drones or pulverize them with tank shells, heavy artillery and missiles. ...

Campaigns of mass killing unleash the feral qualities that lie latent in all humans. The ordered society, with its laws, etiquette, police, prisons and regulations, all forms of coercion, keeps these latent qualities in check. Remove these impediments and humans become, as we see with the Israelis in Gaza, murderous, predatory animals, reveling in the intoxication of destruction, including of women and children. ... The genocide in Gaza has imploded the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It mocks every virtue we claim to uphold, including the right of freedom of expression. It is a testament to our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. We cannot, having provided billions of dollars in weapons and persecuted those who decry the genocide, make moral claims anymore that will be taken seriously. Our language, from now on, will be the language of violence, the language of genocide, the monstrous howling of the new dark age, one where absolute power, unchecked greed and unmitigated savagery stalks the earth.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : US Christian Zionists Attack Free Speech

Netanyahu vows to ‘take control’ of Gaza as UK, France and Canada threaten action against Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will “take control” of all of Gaza, as three key allies attacked his “egregious” escalation of the military campaign and blockade on humanitarian aid. Britain, France and Canada attacked Israel’s expansion of its war as disproportionate, described conditions in Gaza as “intolerable” and threatened a “concrete” response if Israel’s campaign continues.

Earlier that day, Israel’s military declared an entire city a combat zone, airstrikes killed more than 60 people, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said Israel’s army would “wipe out” what remains of Palestinian Gaza.

“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response,” the three allied governments said in a statement on Monday. Netanyahu responded to the message, saying Israel will continue to defend itself until total victory was achieved. “The leaders in London, Ottawa and Paris are offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities,” Netanyahu said.

International pressure over a looming famine forced the Israeli prime minister to announce on Sunday night that he would ease the 11-week siege of Gaza to prevent a “starvation crisis”. Nearly 24 hours later the UN said nine trucks of aid had been cleared to enter. This is less than 2% of daily shipments before the war, when Palestinians in Gaza were well fed and the strip had its own agricultural sector, and will make no meaningful difference to the crisis now gripping most of its 2.3 million population.

Britain, France and Canada described Israeli measures as “wholly inadequate”, warned it risked breaching international law and called for “a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles”.

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Is Trump in Netanyahu’s Pocket?

As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

As Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate Khan Younis in advance of what it calls an “unprecedented attack” on Gaza, much of Washington remains largely unmoved, even as Canada and European countries threaten “concrete actions” if Israel does not scale back its offensive. Despite reports of growing pressure from the Trump administration to increase aid into Gaza, where widespread famine looms, the White House continues to publicly back Israel. National security council spokesperson James Hewitt told the Guardian in an email: “Hamas has rejected repeated ceasefire proposals, and therefore bears sole responsibility for this conflict,” maintaining the policy stance inherited from the previous Biden administration despite mounting evidence of humanitarian catastrophe. ...

Despite Israeli promises to “flatten” Gaza, opposition from Congress – and mainstream Democrats more broadly – has been largely muted. While the besieged territory faces what the World Health Organization (Who) calls “one of the world’s worst hunger crises”, more than three dozen members of Congress from both parties recently appeared in an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) video in celebration of Israel’s 77th birthday. In New York, leading mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo held up an Israeli flag in the city’s annual Israel Day Parade on Sunday.

This political genuflection comes as a March Gallup poll shows American support for Israel has dropped to 46% – its lowest point in 25 years – while sympathy for Palestinians has risen to a record 33%. Democrats reported sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis by a three-to-one ratio. ... While the lawmakers voice their concerns, their impact on policy remains limited, representing the growing disconnect between Washington policymakers and public sentiment. That the grassroots movement for Palestinian rights in the US has grown more subdued – in large part due to an aggressive crackdown by the Trump administration against the universities that were host to last year’s protests – may take some of the pressure off for them to act. ...

Whether US voices calling for change in US policy and a wind-down of the catastrophic war are just shouting in the void, may become clearer in the coming days.

Israel Supporters Turning AGAINST Netanyahu?

Israel ADMITS: 'We Are Destroying Gaza, The World Has Not Stopped Us'

Smotrich: Allowing ‘Minimal’ Aid Into Gaza Will Ensure Israel Can ‘Destroy’ the Strip

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that allowing “minimal” aid into Gaza will ensure Israel has continued support from its “friends” to continue with its goal of “destroying” the Palestinian territory.

Smotrich’s comments came after more than 70 days of Israel’s total blockade on Gaza and a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would allow a “basic” amount of food to enter the territory, and the five aid trucks reportedly entered Gaza on Monday, the first trucks since March 2.

Smotrich said allowing a minuscule amount of aid to enter Gaza will allow “for our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and The Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory.”

Netanyahu made similar comments on Monday, saying that allowing “minimal” aid into Gaza was about maintaining support from the US. “Our best friends in the world – senators I know as strong supporters of Israel – have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge,” he said.

“We must avoid famine, both for practical reasons and diplomatic ones. Without international backing, we won’t be able to complete the mission of victory,” the prime minister added.

"The Suffering Is Beyond Description": Report from Gaza as U.N. Warns 14,000 Babies Could Soon Die

Prostate Cancer Has A Right To Exist. Biden’s Tumor Has A Right To Defend Itself.

Joe Biden reportedly has an aggressive form of prostate cancer which has spread to his bones.

On this day we must all stand in solidarity with Biden’s cancerous growth. Prostate cancer has a right to exist. Biden’s malignant metastatic tumor must be given everything it needs to defend itself from unprovoked attacks by radical oncologists.

None of the people wishing Biden well today have ever really stood for anything. Nobody who chides those who are celebrating his cancer diagnosis actually cares about human beings. They inhabit a different moral universe from the rest of us. One where politeness and decorum matter more than human lives. One where it’s more important to preserve one’s political image in the eyes of the establishment than it is to oppose an active genocide. One where a rude tweet about a blood-soaked monster provokes more outrage than daily footage of children ripped to shreds by western-supplied munitions.

Those who are applauding Biden’s tumor today are obviously not saying that cancer is good. They are saying that Biden’s victims matter more than the rules of imperial etiquette. They are saying the mountains of human corpses he created matter more than protecting the feelings of those who believe he’s a swell guy. They are rejecting the empire’s demand that they dehumanize and dismiss all those people who were killed, crippled, displaced, traumatized and bereaved by the abuses of this fugitive from The Hague in order to demonstrate docility and obedience to their masters.

When Biden finally dies there will be people falling all over themselves to sanctify his image and grieve him as a kind and beneficent leader, and there will be those lining up to piss on his grave. The latter group will be of far greater moral quality than the former, no matter what they try to tell you.

Gideon Levy: 'Israel won't care about sanction threats'

US closes Office of Palestinian Affairs, dedicated channel to Washington

The United States has officially closed its Office of Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem, according to an internal state department memo seen by the Guardian, in effect eliminating the Palestinians’ dedicated diplomatic channel to Washington.

The closure, which took effect on Friday, follows through on the secretary of state Marco Rubio’s announcement earlier this month that the office would be merged into the US embassy in Jerusalem.

“Please be advised that the OFFICE OF PALESTINIAN AFFAIRS JERUSALEM, USOFFICE, will be closing at the end of the day on Friday, May 16, 2025,” the memo said.

The quick shuttering comes just as Israel acts on plans to expand its military operations in Gaza that have killed hundreds of Palestinians over recent days. More than 100 Palestinians were killed on Friday, and on Monday, Gaza’s health ministry said 136 people had been killed by Israeli strikes in the last 24 hours, driving the total death toll to 53,486. Hamas took about 250 hostages during its October 2023 attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

“This decision will restore the first Trump term framework of a unified US diplomatic mission in Israel’s capital that reports to the US ambassador to Israel,” Tammy Bruce, a state department spokesperson, said in the beginning of the month, though she insisted the move “is not a reflection on any outreach or commitment to outreach to the people at the West Bank or to Gaza”.

From a Palestinian Refugee Camp to Columbia: Mohsen Mahdawi Graduates After Being Jailed by Trump

Mohsen Mahdawi, released from Ice custody, graduates from Columbia

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, released just over two weeks ago from federal detention, crossed the graduation stage on Monday to cheers from his fellow graduates. The Palestinian activist was arrested by immigration authorities in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview. He was detained and ordered to be deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.

Several students cheered for Mahdawi, 34, who was draped in a keffiyeh as he walked across the stage. He blew a kiss and bowed, one video showed. Then he joined a vigil just outside Columbia’s gates, raising a photograph of his classmate Mahmoud Khalil, who remains in federal custody.

“It’s very mixed emotions,” Mahdawi told the Associated Press. “The Trump administration wanted to rob me of this opportunity. They wanted me to be in a prison, in prison clothes, to not have education and to not have joy or celebration.” He is one of several international students who have been detained in recent months for their advocacy on behalf of Palestinians. ...

For Mahdawi, who earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Columbia’s School of General Studies, the graduation marked a bittersweet return to a university that he says has betrayed him and other students. “The senior administration is selling the soul of this university to the Trump administration, participating in the destruction and the degradation of our democracy,” Mahdawi said.

Putin-Trump call. High stakes and great risks for both leaders

The Guardian's slanted coverage of Trump's phone call with Putin:

Trump and Putin hold phone call but Kremlin refuses Ukraine ceasefire

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have held a rare phone call, which the US leader described as “excellent”, but the Kremlin refused to agree to a ceasefire in the war with Ukraine, despite pressure from Washington and European allies. Speaking to reporters in Sochi after the two-hour conversation on Monday, Putin described the call as “very meaningful and frank” and said he was prepared to work with Ukraine on drafting a memorandum for future peace talks.

However, the Russian leader declined to support the US-proposed 30-day unconditional ceasefire, which Ukraine had already agreed to – and which Washington had framed as the call’s primary objective. Putin also suggested his country’s maximalist objectives in the war with Ukraine were unchanged. ...

Trump’s statement after the call with Putin also suggested the US would be stepping back from the negotiations. He said the conditions for a deal could only be negotiated by the “warring parties”, despite his earlier claim that he could end the war in a single day. Trump later said it would be “great” to hold peace talks at the Vatican, but again suggested the US could abandon its involvement, telling reporters that if there is no progress: “I’m just going to back away.” ...

Despite previously demanding an immediate ceasefire and backing Europe’s ultimatum for Russia to halt hostilities, he now appears to be once again easing off pressure on Moscow. He made no mention of his previous threats to impose sanctions on Russia if it did not agree to halt the fighting. Moscow has consistently rejected extended ceasefire proposals, arguing they would give Ukraine time to rearm and regroup at a time Russian forces are making battlefield advances.

JP Morgan chief warns of ‘complacency’ as markets look past credit downgrade

JP Morgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, warned on Monday that investors were being too complacent as markets shook off news that the US has lost its last triple-A credit rating amid fresh concern over the federal government’s burgeoning debt pile.

Credit ratings agency Moody’s dealt a blow to Washington on Friday when it stripped the US of its top-notch rating, downgrading the world’s largest economy by one notch to AA1 and become becoming the last of the big three agencies to drop its triple-A rating for the US.

The announcement unnerved markets on Monday morning, but stock markets had recovered by the end of the day.

Speaking at JP Morgan’s annual investor day meeting in New York, Dimon warned against complacency. “We have huge deficits; we have what I consider almost complacent central banks. You all think they can manage all this. I don’t think [they can],” he said. Dimon said he saw an “extraordinary amount of complacency” and added that he believes the possibility of stagflation – a recession with rising prices – was far higher than investors believe.

Moody’s downgrade came as Donald Trump struggles to push his “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill through Congress, Moody’s said it expected the US budget deficit to keep rising. “Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” Moody’s said, announcing its downgrade. “We do not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory spending and deficits will result from current fiscal proposals under consideration.”

Oregon spent funds meant for addiction services on prosecutors and police gadgets

The state of Oregon, which has long struggled with one of the worst drug-addiction crises in the US, last year announced $20m in grants to help connect people to substance-use services. The funds, the governor and lawmakers said, would go to counties to support a “treatment first” approach, encouraging jurisdictions to get drug users into recovery programs, instead of arresting and jailing them.

Some local governments, however, have spent the taxpayer-funded grants to beef up law enforcement. Budget documents obtained by the Guardian through public records requests reveal that several counties have put the money toward hiring prosecutors, acquiring police gadgets and police vehicles, and covering sheriff costs. Washington county, the state’s second-largest jurisdiction, budgeted twice as much of its funds for police and district attorney salaries as it did on community programs, while two other counties used the money for laser devices that are meant to detect drugs but have been criticized as useless.

Counties have said their law enforcement investments are geared toward getting people treatment. But some recovery organizations and advocates for people with addiction said the spending was a misuse of funds meant to help people in need, and an example of governments prioritizing policing over investing in services to address an urgent public health crisis. The state has ranked last in the nation for treatment access while overdoses have surged to five deaths a day.

The counties’ spending choices also come as addiction service providers across the state are grappling with significant budget cuts, with some non-profits forced to put would-be patients and clients on long waitlists before they can get help.

Lawyer for Venezuelans deported to El Salvador prison arrested

The head lawyer of a human rights group representing the families of Venezuelan immigrants imprisoned in El Salvador after being deported from the United States has been arrested. Ruth López, an outspoken critic of President Nayib Bukele, was detained late on Sunday under an order from the prosecutor’s office which accused her of “embezzlement” when she worked for an electoral court a decade ago, the human rights group Cristosal said in a statement. The prosecutor’s office confirmed the arrest in a post on X.

López runs Cristosal’s anti-corruption and justice division and has been a vocal critic of Bukele’s sweeping arrests of 85,000 mostly young men without due process under the state of exception that began in 2022.

Neither López’s family nor her legal team knew where she was taken after police removed her from her home shortly before midnight on Sunday. “The authorities’ refusal to disclose her location or to allow access to her legal representatives is a blatant violation of due process, the right to legal defence and international standards of judicial protection,” Cristosal said in a statement.

The arrest is part of an accelerating government crackdown on civil society and the free press as Bukele is apparently emboldened by his close relationship to the Trump administration, which is paying El Salvador to hold deported immigrants in its prison system.

At least 50 migrants sent to El Salvador prison entered US legally

At least 50 Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a prison in El Salvador had entered the United States legally, according to a review by the Cato Institute. The report, published by the libertarian thinktank on Monday, analyzed the available immigration data for only a portion of the men who were deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), and focuses on the cases where records could be found.

“The government calls them all ‘illegal aliens.’ But of the 90 cases where the method of crossing is known, 50 men report that they came legally to the United States, with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point,” Cato said in its report. This number aligns with broader trends among Venezuelan migrants, many of whom entered the country either as refugees or through a Biden-era parole program that granted two-year work permits to those with US-based sponsors.

“The proportion isn’t what matters the most: the astounding absolute numbers are,” reads the report. “Dozens of legal immigrants were stripped of their status and imprisoned in El Salvador.”

Cato’s analysis goes against the Trump administration’s justification for sending the men to El Salvador, saying that only undocumented people were deported. The report says that 21 men were admitted after presenting themselves at a port of entry, 24 were granted parole, four were resettled as refugees, and one entered the US on a tourist visa.

Bees face new threats from wars, street lights and microplastics

War zones, microplastics and street lights are among the emerging threats to the bee population, according to scientists. Bee experts have drawn up a list of the 12 most pressing threats to the pollinator over the next decade, published in a report, Emerging Threats and Opportunities for Conservation of Global Pollinators, by the University of Reading.

Increasing war and conflict around the world is harming bees, the scientists warn. This includes the war in Ukraine, which has forced countries to grow fewer crop types, leaving pollinators without diverse food throughout the season.

The researchers found microplastic particles were contaminating beehives across Europe, with testing from 315 honey bee colonies revealing synthetic materials such as PET plastic in most hives. Artificial light from street lamps has been found to reduce flower visits by nocturnal pollinators by 62%, and air pollution has been found to affect their survival, reproduction and growth.

Antibiotics, used in agriculture, have made their way into beehives and honey. They have also been found to affect the behaviour of pollinators including reducing their foraging and visits to flowers. Pesticide “cocktails” also play a significant and emerging role; although some pesticides are now regulated to be kept below “safe” limits for bees and other wildlife, research has found they can interact with other chemicals and cause dangerous effects.

Dogs are being trained to weed out eggs of invasive spotted lanternflies in US

The spotted lanternfly, a leaf-hopping invasive pest first detected in the US a decade ago, has steadily spread across the East coast and into the midwest with little getting in its way. But now researchers are deploying a new weapon to slow its advance: specially trained dogs with the ability to sniff out the winged insect’s eggs before they hatch.

Harmless to humans, spotted lanternflies can damage trees and fruit crops, and feed on the sap of over 70 different species of host plants. Since late last year, four of the dogs have been scouring parks in the Cleveland area in search of egg masses hidden around trees, shrubs, park benches, landscape rocks and bridge pillars. Each egg mass can produce 30 to 50 spotted lanternflies.

So far, the dogs have uncovered more than 4,000 of the masses, meaning they’ve helped eradicate as many as 200,000 of the sap-sucking bugs that damage grapes, fruit trees, hops and hardwoods, said Connie Hausman, senior conservation science manager at Cleveland Metroparks. In just a few hours in April, the dogs found about 1,100 egg masses at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Hausman said. ...

The dogs were trained through a research project led by a group at Virginia Tech University, which is setting out to slow the spread of the insects that are native to eastern Asia and recognizable for their distinctive black spots and bright red wing markings. A grant from the US Department of Agriculture facilitated the project, unofficially called the Canine Citizen Science Study. Professors at Virginia Tech partnered with researchers at Texas Tech University to call on dog owners to put their pets to work.

Also of Interest

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

Amnesty Urges War Crimes Probe Into US Bombing of Yemen Migrant Jail

Jonathan Cook: BBC’s Shameful Interview With UNRWA Chief

Israel's New Gaza Operation Should Be Called 'Chariots of Genocide'

Gaza 'Aid'

America’s Military Power Is A Legacy Asset

In 'Call to Duty' for 'Civic Courage,' Free Speech Champions Challenge Trump Assault on Key Rights

'Nonprofit Killer' Pulled From GOP Tax Bill—For Now

Village where Israelis and Palestinians live together to promote peace faces 80% Israeli tax on NGO funding

Witkoff Says US ‘Cannot Allow’ Any Iranian Nuclear Enrichment

Nuclear Winter from a Pakistan-India War Could Kill 2 Billion

Rooting Out the Root Causes in Ukraine

Donald Tusk: next two weeks will ‘decide future of Poland’

Making Gaza Unlivable: Israel Intensifies Attacks as Netanyahu Vows to Seize All of Gaza

A Little Night Music

Dizzie Gillespie - St. Louis Blues

Dizzy Gillespie - Blue 'n Boogie

Dizzy Gillespie - Blues After Dark

Dizzy Gillespie - Blues Walk

Dizzy Gillespie - A Night In Tunisia

Dizzy Gillespie and his Orchestra - Salt Peanuts

Dizzy Gillespie - Congo Blues

Dizzy Gillespie - The Bluest Blues

Dizzy Gillespie - Dizzy's Blues