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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Boozoo Chavis

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features zydeco pioneer Boozoo Chavis. Enjoy!

^{Boozoo Chavis - Paper in My Shoe}

"The press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth."

-- Chris Hedges

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News and Opinion

The Western Media Brought Gaza To This Point

Benjamin Netanyahu is now explicitly saying that the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza is a precondition to ending the slaughter in the besieged Palestinian territory.

The Times of Israel reports:

“Responding to those who are pushing for an end to war in Gaza, Netanyahu says he ‘is ready to end the war, under clear conditions that will ensure the safety of Israel — all the hostages come home, Hamas lays down its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the Strip… Gaza is totally disarmed, and we carry out the Trump plan. A plan that is so correct and so revolutionary.’

“This represents the first time the US president’s plan for moving Gaza civilians out of the Strip has been presented as an Israeli demand for ending the war.”

Trump’s stated plan for Gaza is to remove “all” Palestinians from the enclave and never allow them to return. Netanyahu is here saying that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is Israel’s ultimate military objective.

By stating that the implementation of "the Trump plan" in Gaza is a condition for ending the war, Netanyahu is stating clearly that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is the objective. https://t.co/aKTVGrexRX

— Mairav Zonszein (@MairavZ) May 21, 2025

Which has been obvious from the very beginning. On the 20th of October 2023, a mere 13 days after October 7, I myself posted the following

“Israel’s being so obvious about wanting to do another land grab. The solution to every problem is to move Gazans off the land they’re on to somewhere else. It’s like a guy at a nightclub pushing you and pushing you to drink a drink he handed you; at a certain point you realize he’s probably not really interested in making sure you have enough to drink.”

It’s been so transparently obvious this entire time that Israel’s entire objective is to remove Palestinians from a Palestinian territory so their land can be used for Israel’s own purposes — but you’d never have known it from looking at the western press.

For the last year and a half the western media have been brazenly lying to the public by framing this as a “war with Hamas” instead of the naked ethnic cleansing operation it clearly is. They’ve been manufacturing consent for this murderous land grab by babbling about hostages, terrorism and October 7 when Israel’s mass atrocity in Gaza has never, ever been about any of those things. It has only ever been about taking Palestinian land away from Palestinians.

Israel has returned to full-scale slaughter in Gaza—and Western media outlets have returned to the same disastrous coverage of the past 18 months, writes @AssalRad.https://t.co/2MaHATRtVA

— The Nation (@thenation) April 14, 2025

If the western press had been doing actual journalism, Israel would never have been able to bring Gaza to this point. Because the western press have instead been administering propaganda this entire time, Gaza is now an uninhabitable pile of rubble full of desperate, starving people, allowing Israel and the Trump administration to argue that the humanitarian thing to do is to evacuate them all immediately.

The western media’s refusal to acknowledge this — combined with a year and a half of wildly biased headlines, indisputably slanted coverage, and extensively documented top-down pressure in mass media institutions to cover Israel’s onslaught in a positive light — stifled much of the public opposition to this genocidal land grab that we would likely have seen otherwise. This journalistic malpractice allowed Israel’s western backers to support this mass atrocity with impunity, which in turn allowed Israel to act with impunity.

None of this would be possible if the west had an actual free press whose job is to create an informed populace. But we do not have an actual free press whose job is to create an informed populace — we have imperial propaganda services disguised as news.

Now that Israel has pulled back the curtain and acknowledged what we are looking at here, some in the western press have begun pivoting to wag their fingers at Netanyahu in order to preserve their image. And fine, whatever, we need as much help as we can get. But never forget what these monsters did to help create this nightmare in Gaza.

IDF FIRES on EU Diplomats in West Bank

Israeli troops fire ‘warning shots’ at 25 diplomats visiting occupied West Bank

Israeli troops fired “warning shots” towards a group of 25 diplomats visiting Jenin in the Israel-occupied West Bank on Wednesday, prompting a wave of outrage and calls for an investigation from world leaders and ministers. Footage shows a number of diplomats giving media interviews when rapid shots rang out nearby, forcing them to run for cover. The delegation comprised ambassadors and diplomats representing 31 countries, including Italy, Canada, Egypt, Jordan, the UK, China and Russia.

The group was on an official mission organised by the Palestinian Authority to observe the humanitarian situation there. The Israeli military said the visit had been approved but the delegation “deviated from the approved route” and Israeli soldiers fired warning shots to distance them from the area. The Canadian, British, French and other European ministers summoned Israeli ambassadors in their respective capitals to explain the “unacceptable” incident, which will fuel already growing international anger and concern as Israel continues its offensive in Gaza and ramps up the expansion of settlements in the West Bank that are illegal under international law.

Germany, a longtime Israel ally, condemned what it called “unprovoked firing,” while Canada, Turkey and the EU demanded an investigation. “We expect an immediate explanation of what happened. It’s totally unacceptable,” Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told a press conference. Four Canadian diplomats were part of the group. A spokesperson for UN secretary general António Guterres also urged Israel to conduct a “thorough investigation”.

“It is clear that diplomats who are doing their work should never be shot at, attacked in any way, shape or form, and their safety, their inviolability, must be respected at all times,” said the spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric. Egypt said the incident “violates all diplomatic norms”. The Palestinian foreign ministry accused Israel of having “deliberately targeted” the diplomatic delegation with live fire. The IDF said it regretted “the inconvenience caused” and that senior officials would contact diplomats to inform them of the results of its internal investigation into the incident.

U.K. MP Jeremy Corbyn & EU MP Lynn Boylan on Europe Pressuring Israel to Halt Atrocities in Gaza

For first time, Netanyahu names ethnic cleansing of Gaza as official war aim

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time officially stated that an Israeli war aim is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, openly stating what had been the unspoken goal of Israel since October 7, 2023. In a news conference, Netanyahu said that Israel “is ready to end the war, under clear conditions that will ensure the safety of Israel – all the hostages come home, Hamas lays down its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the Strip… Gaza is totally disarmed, and we carry out the Trump plan. A plan that is so correct and so revolutionary.” ...

In February, US President Trump declared that “The US will take over the Gaza Strip.... We’ll own it.” He said the US will “level it out” and “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs.” Trump explicitly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, stating that other countries will “build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”

Netanyahu’s declaration stands as an exposure of the Biden administration, which falsely claimed that it was seeking to create the conditions for a “two-state solution” even as it funded, armed and defended the Israeli genocide. In reality, the total occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always the aim of the Netanyahu government, which used the events of October 7 as a pretext to carry out this plan.

Netanyahu’s statement marks a public confirmation that “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” announced by Netanyahu earlier this month but launched at full scale following Trump’s trip to the Middle East last week, will be the means by which Israel seeks to carry out the forcible displacement of the Palestinian people in Gaza from their homeland.

It confirms, moreover, that a central aim of Trump’s trip to the Middle East was creating the diplomatic preconditions for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Trump was warmly embraced by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, with the Qatari government giving Trump the gift of a $400 million jumbo jet to serve as his private plane while he was scheming the mass killing and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Last Friday, as Trump was leaving the region, NBC News reported that the White House has been actively negotiating with governments throughout the region to accept the displaced Palestinian people. The leading candidates which have emerged are Libya and Syria, two states whose governments were overthrown by US-backed Islamist insurgencies.

"The Worst It's Ever Been": U.K. Surgeon in Gaza Warns Kids Are Bearing Brunt of Israeli Assault

The Hostile Takeover of Gaza Relief

With over half a million people in Gaza on the brink of starvation and aid groups warning of an “imminent famine,” Israel has agreed to allow a token number of relief trucks into the besieged enclave. But what’s entering Gaza now isn’t humanitarian aid, it’s a Trojan horse.

A new, U.S.-backed private aid scheme staffed by former C.I.A. operatives, ex-Marines, and mercenaries tied to Israeli intelligence and Wall Street elites has been deployed in Gaza under the guise of relief. The project is led by a shady NGO registered in Switzerland just months ago, and human rights groups are calling it what it is: a hostile corporate takeover of the aid sector, designed to militarize relief, displace civilians and profit from Gaza’s agony.

At the heart of this scheme is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a nonprofit created in February and backed by Israeli authorities. Despite Gaza requiring a minimum of 500 aid trucks per day to meet basic survival needs, the Israeli military allowed just 1 percent of that to enter this week.

GHF, which now controls the operation, was launched by individuals with no background in humanitarian work — David Papazian, formerly with the Armenian National Interests Fund; Samuel Marcel Henderson; and David Kohler, CEO of Kohler Co. They are corporate executives, not aid workers.

According to a leaked internal proposal circulated in May, GHF plans to establish four “secure distribution sites” in Gaza capable of feeding just a fraction of the population (300,000 people), while giving the Israeli military and its contractors full operational oversight.

Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill 82 as Aid Still Hasn’t Reached Palestinians

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli strikes killed at least 82 Palestinians and wounded 262 over the previous 24-hour period, as aid that has entered Gaza still hasn’t reached the starving population.

The Health Ministry’s figures are based on the number of dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals and morgues. “There are still a number of victims under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them,” the ministry said.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Wednesday that the majority of the supplies from a few dozen aid trucks Israel allowed to enter Gaza this week have been loaded onto UN trucks. But he said the supplies couldn’t be taken out of the Kerem Shalom crossing area because the road the Israeli military had given them permission to use was too unsafe.

Dujarric said that the limited supplies that have entered Gaza are “nowhere near enough to meet the needs in Gaza, which are vast, which are tremendous. Much, much more aid needs to get in.”

Aaron Maté : Are US/Iran Talks Going Anywhere?

George Washington University student banned after pro-Palestinian graduation speech

A graduation speech at George Washington University has resulted in the graduate being banned from the campus after she used the platform to criticize the university’s ties to Israel and express support for Palestinians.

During Saturday’s commencement for the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, part of GWU in Washington, DC, graduating senior Cecilia Culver delivered remarks to the graduating class of nearly 750.

Culver condemned the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, criticized GWU’s connections to Israel, and urged the audience to withhold donations from the college and push for financial transparency, as well as for the college to divest from Israeli-linked companies.

“I am ashamed to know my tuition [fee] is being used to fund this genocide,” Culver said from the stage. “I call upon the class of 2025 to withhold donations and continue advocating for disclosure and divestment.”

University officials later said Culver had not followed her pre-approved remarks. They later announced she would be barred from campus and university-sponsored events.

Last chance ultimatum. Europe prepares to blame Trump

Trump Repeats "White Genocide" Falsehoods in Meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa

Trump ambushes South African president with video and false claims of anti-white racism

Donald Trump ambushed the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, by playing him a video that he falsely claimed proved genocide was being committed against white people under “the opposite of apartheid”. The hectoring stunt on Wednesday set up the most tense Oval Office encounter since Trump’s bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. But Ramaphosa – who earlier said that he had come to Washington to “reset” the relationship between the two countries – refused to take the bait and suggested that they “talk about it very calmly”.

Trump has long maintained that Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists who ruled South Africa during its decades of racial apartheid, are being persecuted. South Africa rejects the allegation. Murder rates are high in the country and the overwhelming majority of victims are Black.

What began as a convivial meeting at the White House, including lighthearted quips about golf, took a sudden turn when Ramaphosa told Trump there is no genocide against Afrikaners. Trump said, “We have thousands of stories talking about it,” then ordered his staff: “Turn the lights down and just put this on.” Sitting next to Trump before the fireplace, Ramaphosa forced a smile and turned to look at a big TV screen as Trump’s South Africa-born billionaire ally Elon Musk, JD Vance, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and diplomats and journalists from both countries looked on.

The video included footage of former South African president Jacob Zuma and firebrand opposition politician Julius Malema singing an apartheid-era struggle song called Kill the Boer, which means farmer or Afrikaner, as supporters danced. Ramaphosa quietly but firmly pushed back, pointing out that the views expressed in the video are not government policy.

Ramaphosa acknowledged there is crime in South Africa and said the majority of victims were Black. Trump cut him off and said: “The farmers are not Black.” The conspiracy theory of a white genocide has long been a staple of the racist far right, and in recent years has been amplified by Musk and rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson.

Markets PANIC Over Trump Bill's Exploding Deficit

US Senate passes ‘no tax on tips’ bill in unanimous vote

The US Senate passed the No Tax on Tips Act on Tuesday after the Nevada senator Jacky Rosen brought the bill up for a unanimous consent request.

“This bipartisan bill is a good idea. It has support from Democrats and Republicans, so we should pass it, well, as soon as possible, without any poison pills,” said Rosen, a Democrat, on the Senate floor.

The bill was introduced in the Senate in January 2025 by Senator Ted Cruz and a bipartisan group of co-sponsors which included Rosen and the Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto.

No objections were made by Rosen’s request, resulting in the passage of the bill, which now goes to the House.

The bipartisan bill will create a tax deduction of up to $25,000 for cash tips reported to employers by workers for withholding purposes on payroll taxes, with a cap on the salary for eligible workers at $160,000 annually. The bill calls for the US Department of Treasury to issue a list of occupations that traditionally receive tips within 90 days of the bill’s enactment.

Mahmoud Khalil blocked from holding son for first time by Ice

Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, was not allowed to hold his newborn son after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials refused to allow a contact visit between him and his family, his lawyers said on Wednesday.

Instead, Khalil, 30, was forced to meet his month-old baby for the first time behind glass, after his wife, Noor Abdalla, traveled from New York to the Louisiana detention facility where he has been detained since March, his legal team said. Ice officials and a private prison contractor denied the family’s request for a contact visit, citing the detention center’s no-contact visitation policy and unspecified “security concerns”, lawyers said.

Abdalla, a US citizen who gave birth to their first child last month while Khalil was in detention, said she was “furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system that dares to call itself just”.

“After flying over a thousand miles to Louisiana with our newborn son, his very first flight, all so his father could finally hold him in his arms, Ice has denied us even this most basic human right,” she said in a statement. “This is not just heartless. It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse.”

Trump Admin CAUGHT Faking Gang Invasion

Judge rules White House violated order by deporting migrants to South Sudan

A federal judge has ruled the US government’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan “unquestionably” violated an earlier court order. Brian E Murphy, the US district judge in Massachusetts, made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent removal of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries.

On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the Trump administration could not let a group of migrants being transported to countries that were not their own leave the custody of US immigration authorities.

Lawyers for seven men – including Burmese, Laotian, Mexican and Cuban nationals – deported on Tuesday were told that their clients were given little more than 24 hours notice that they were being expelled from the US. Murphy, the judge, said that little amount of time was “plainly insufficient”. An eighth man in the group was a citizen of South Sudan, according to the Department of Homeland Security. ...

Last month, Murphy had issued an injunction that required any people being removed to a third country to receive due process. After reports of the apparent South Sudan flight, the judge told Elianis Perez, a justice department lawyer: “I have a strong indication that my preliminary injunction order has been violated.”

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Plants produce more nectar when they ‘hear’ bees buzzing

Plants can “hear” bees buzzing and serve up more nectar when they are nearby, scientists have found.

The research suggests that plants are a more active partner than previously thought in their symbiotic relationship with pollinators. The behaviour could be a survival strategy that favours giving nectar and sugar to bees over so-called nectar robbers that do not offer plants any reproductive benefits.

“There is growing evidence that both insects and plants can sense and produce, or transmit, vibro-acoustic signals,” said Prof Francesca Barbero, a zoologist at the University of Turin, who led the research.

The findings add to the “truly astonishing” multitude of ways that plants can perceive their surroundings, including the presence of beneficial and harmful insects, temperature, drought and wind, Barbero added. In future, the team suggested, buzzing noises could be used on farms as an environmentally friendly way of enhancing the pollination of crops.

The scientists are not yet sure how the plants might be listening in. They could rely on mechanoreceptors, cells that respond to mechanical stimulation such as touch, pressure or vibrations. “Plants do not have a brain, but they can sense the environment and respond accordingly,” said Barbero.

Fires drove record loss of world’s forests last year, ‘frightening’ data shows

The destruction of the world’s forests reached the highest level ever recorded in 2024, driven by a surge in fires caused by global heating, according to “frightening” new data. From the Brazilian Amazon to the Siberian taiga, Earth’s forests disappeared at a record rate last year, losing an area the size of Italy to agriculture, fires, logging and mining, according to analysis from the University of Maryland hosted on Global Forest Watch.

In tropical regions, home to the most biodiverse and carbon-dense forests on the planet, fire became the leading driver of loss for the first time since global records began. However, fire is not a natural part of tropical ecosystems. Boreal forests in Canada and Siberia continued to burn last year. Prof Matt Hansen, co-director at the University of Maryland’s Glad Lab, who led the analysis, described the new figures as “frightening”, while Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of Global Forest Watch, said the update was “unlike anything we’ve seen in over 20 years of data”.

In 2024, forest loss in Brazil reached rates far above any level recorded under the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, fuelled by fire and the worst drought on record in the Amazon. The country accounted for 42% of all primary rainforest loss in the tropics, losing more than 25,000 sq km (10,000 sq miles). The data differs from Brazil’s official statistics, which uses a different definition of deforestation that does not include fire.

In Bolivia, the loss of previously untouched forest continued to rise, ranking second behind Brazil in overall loss for the first time, driven by drought, fire and government policies promoting agricultural expansion for soya, cattle and sugar cane. The loss of Bolivia’s primary forest has increased nearly fivefold since 2020, reaching more than 14,000 sq km (1.4m hectares).

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Congo-Brazzaville, loss of pristine rainforests reached the highest levels recorded. The countries are home to the Congo basin rainforest, the world’s second largest after the Amazon.

State Farm pursues additional 11% rate increase in California after emergency rate hike approval

Condo owners and renters could see a larger jump in insurance costs as State Farm General pursues an overall 30% rate increase for homeowner policies in California. This comes just a week after the company was granted a 17% emergency interim hike, down from the nearly 22% increase it originally requested, following a ruling approved by the insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara.

State Farm confirmed to the Guardian that it plans to seek an additional 11% rate hike the company had proposed last year. First reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, State Farm says these increases are necessary due to “severe capital depletion”, especially after the devastating Los Angeles county wildfires.

If approved, the average annual premium could rise by about $600 for homeowners, $163 for condo owners and $30 for renters, the Chronicle reported. A spokesperson for the California department of insurance told the Guardian that a rate hearing on the same request is scheduled to “get to the facts”. “They want more? We want more data, more transparency, more policyholders served, and more policies written in wildfire distressed areas,” a spokesperson for the department said in a statement. “State Farm wanting a rate increase doesn’t change the law. All rates must be justified so consumers don’t pay more than is required.”

The increase will apply to all of the roughly 1 million homeowners State Farm insures in the state.

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Also of Interest

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

Trump Sanctions Reportedly Halt ICC Work

Treasury Bond Auction Is Extremely Weak

Imposing 500% tariffs on nations that trade with Russia will backfire

Ideology-Driven, Inflationary Trump Tax and Tariff Policies Losing War With Bond and Currency Markets

White South African ‘refugees’? The jokes write themselves

Wyden Exposes Which Phone Carriers Don't Notify Customers​ About Government Surveillance

UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers

How three terrorist groups formed the Israeli Defence Forces

Piers Morgan tells Mehdi Hasan: YOU WERE RIGHT On Israel!

Who is DC shooting suspect Elias Rodriguez and what was his motive?

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A Little Night Music

Boozoo Chavis - Suzy Q

Boozoo Chavis - Pass Me a Dozen Eggs

Boozoo Chavis - I Want to Play with Your Poodle

Boozoo Chavis - Dog Hill

Boozoo Chavis - Gone À La Maison

Boozoo Chavis - Blues All Around My Bed

Boozoo Chavis - Dance All Night

Boozoo Chavis - You're Gonna Look Like a Monkey

Boozoo Chavis - Zydeco Festival, Plaissance, LA

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