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This evening's music features blues rock guitarist Elvin Bishop. Enjoy!

"There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used… Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they though of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.”

--  Gil Bailie

News and Opinion

Thoughts On The Israeli Embassy Staff Killings

Two staff members of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC have been shot and killed by a man who shouted “Free Palestine” and reportedly told police “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza” after his arrest.

The entire western political/media class is ferociously decrying this as an antisemitic attack, despite the shooter’s clear and unambiguous motives against the state of Israel rather than the Jewish faith, and despite one of the two victims being a Christian from Germany.

So let’s get one thing clear from the beginning: two Israeli embassy staffers getting shot in Washington DC is less newsworthy than tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed in Israel’s genocidal land grab. It is less important. It deserves less attention. It is not the main story. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the main story.

Many are suggesting that this was some kind of false flag attack to change the narrative and rescue Israel’s image on the world stage as public sentiments turn against its genocidal atrocities. I see no evidence for this at this time. I’ve been predicting that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza will give rise to violent extremist attacks, because that’s just what happens when you do profoundly evil things in full view of the entire world. There may be nothing more to it than that.

The real story here is how the entire western political/media class has expressed more outrage and sympathy over the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers than tens of thousands of Palestinians in history’s first live-streamed genocide. The coverage of the story is the story, because it exposes how little regard the western empire has for the lives of non-westerners. Palestinians are not regarded as fully human, so their deaths by daily genocidal massacres are considered less worthy of attention than a double homicide in Washington DC.

Western institutions regard Muslims and Arabs and people with darker skin as subhuman vermin whose extermination should be met with an emotional response ranging somewhere between indifference to glee. Our civilization views itself as morally superior to Nazi Germany while continuing basically the same atrocities under basically the same ideology.

That’s the real story here. That’s the real lesson.

Stop being antisemitic; there are only two (2) violent deaths we're permitted to focus on today, and neither of them happened in Gaza. https://t.co/BLHgwaL7Rd

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 22, 2025

CNN’s Dana Bash is already suggesting that “Free Palestine” is a call for violence against Jews, and ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt is citing the embassy staff shooting as evidence of the need to deplatform pro-Palestine voices.

Bari Weiss Blames Israel Critics for Enabling Tragic Violence

Children and elderly are dying from starvation in Gaza, says health minister

Twenty-nine children and elderly people have died from starvation in Gaza in the last two days, the Palestinian Authority health minister has said , as Israeli strikes killed at least 52 people since dawn amid a renewed military offensive across the territory.

The warning came as food aid is expected to start reaching Palestinians in Gaza this week after Israel began allowing limited goods through after nearly three months after global pressure to lift the blockade and halt a newly expanded offensive.

Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said on Thursday about 90 trucks, out of almost 200, carrying medicine, wheat flour and nutrition supplies, had entered Gaza. Laerke said aid groups were facing significant challenges distributing the aid because of insecurity, the risk of looting and coordination issues with Israeli authorities.

However, the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Thursday that Palestinians in Gaza had yet to receive aid deliveries that had crossed over the border and that sending so few trucks was an “invitation for killing” because of the risk of mobbing.

“I can prove that nobody has received [aid]. No civilian has received anything yet. In fact, say most of these trucks are still in Kerem Shalom at the border, inspected, but not into Gaza,” Younis al-Khatib, the president of the Palestine Red Crescent society, told reporters. “It’s very hard to hide the rush or the looting that will happen,” he added.

Gabor Maté on Gaza: 'The Moral Issue of Our Time'

Israeli Strikes Kill 104 Palestinians in Gaza Over 24 Hours

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Thursday that Israeli attacks killed at least 104 Palestinians and wounded 247 over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed Israeli strikes continue to pound the Strip.

The Health Ministry said the bodies of three Palestinians killed by previous Israeli attacks were also recovered from the rubble. “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. ...

Reuters reported that flour and other aid finally reached some of Gaza’s most vulnerable areas days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would allow a “basic” amount of food to enter the territory, a step he made clear was taken to ensure US support for his genocidal war.

Bakeries in southern Gaza began making bread after being closed for about two months, but Palestinian officials told Reuters that many more aid trucks are still stuck at the border crossings, and the small amount of aid is nowhere near enough to make up for the blockade.

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Netanyahu Killing Babies

Gaza Health Ministry Publishes Names of 16,506 Children Killed by Israeli Military Since October 2023

On Thursday, Gaza’s Health Ministry published a list of 16,506 Palestinian children it has identified who have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza since October 2023.

The first 27 pages list 917 babies who didn’t make it to their first birthdays. The list also includes 4,365 children killed between the ages of one and five, 6,101 who were between six and 12, and 5,124 who were between 13 and 17 years old.

The full 486-page list includes names, ID numbers, birth dates, ages, and how the children were confirmed killed, whether by the Health Ministry’s own records or through reports from their families.

The US has continued to back Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza despite the mass slaughter of children.

Undaunted by Attacks, Online Educator Ms. Rachel Elevates Stories of Gaza's Children

Amid accusations that her social media posts about children in Gaza spread "pro-Hamas propaganda" and even that she is paid by the designated terrorist group—a claim that was amplified by The New York Times last week—the megapopular children's entertainer and educator known as Ms. Rachel is showing no signs that she plans to stop advocating for young Palestinians.

Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, featured a visit with a three-year-old Palestinian girl named Rahaf in her latest post Wednesday on Instagram, where her 3 million followers have seen numerous posts from her in recent months about children in Gaza.

"This is my friend, Rahaf, from Gaza. Meeting her and her wonderful mama Israa changed my life," wrote Accurso in the post's caption, explaining that the Palestine Children's Relief Fund facilitated the mother and child's medical evacuation to the U.S. after Rahaf lost both her legs in an Israeli airstrike.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ms Rachel (@msrachelforlittles)

The video post showed Accurso and Rahaf singing and dancing in matching pink headbands, but Accurso shared in the caption that the visit included a difficult moment when she spoke with Rahaf's brothers and their father, who are still in Gaza.

One minute I was pretending to be bunnies with Rahaf and the next minute I was video chatting with her two adorable, young brothers in Gaza, as her mom, Israa, held the phone up for me. I watched Israa look at them proudly, like I look at my son. It was a drastic snap back into reality. I imagined myself holding the phone in the U.S. with my daughter, now a double amputee from an airstrike, away from my son in Gaza, unable to help him. I felt like I was going to throw up and came back into the moment. "I hope to meet you one day!" I happily said, in my classic Ms. Rachel voice but with tears in my eyes.

Israa tells me that they no longer eat while video chatting with her sons. Her sons are so hungry and have so little food. They look about 5 and 7 years old. About my son's age.

[...]

I ask Israa what she did for work. She answers that she was a teacher and taught math. I think about how Israa and I are both teachers. We both love our children with all of our hearts. We want the same thing for them. But my son will have dinner tonight, a story and snuggle with me, school in the morning… and hers won't. If the situation was the other way around, what would I hope Israa would do for me?

The post was just the latest of many pleas for an end to Palestinian children's suffering by Accurso, a former music teacher who until recently was mostly known for her YouTube videos geared toward toddlers, featuring nursery rhymes and early language lessons.

In other posts she has shared photos of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl whose voice was heard in a phone call she made to emergency workers before she was killed, alone in a car, in an airstrike in Gaza in January 2024; reflections on the suffering of Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas in October 2023; and messages demanding an end to Israel's blockade on all humanitarian aid that began in March.

"When you hear about the thousands and thousands of children killed in Gaza, do you hear a statistic or think of individual children like precious Rahaf?" wrote Accurso last week after her first visit with Rahaf. "When you hear about the kids being blocked from aid do you think about sweet kids like Rahaf becoming malnourished? Trying to make it controversial to speak for these children and staying silent shows that you are saying some children's lives are more important than others—it's based in anti-Palestinian racism. It's not a crime to want the children of Gaza to have food, water, and medical care—keeping it from them is."

Her advocacy for Palestinian children has garnered the attention of the organization StopAntisemitism, which called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Accurso is funded by Hamas.

A number of progressive journalists condemned the Times last week for asking her whether the accusation was true, with one saying the question was "dangerous journalistic malpractice."

NYT asked, in all seriousness, Ms. Rachel if she was paid by Hamas and that woman went straight back to using her massive & influential platform to continue talking about the suffering and humanity of Palestinian kids.

— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) May 21, 2025

"Ms. Rachel has freaked out the entire media class because she has shown how easy it is to humanize Palestinians and treat them with compassion while the mainstream media has spent 19 months doing precisely the opposite," said Alex Foley of the Accountability Archive, which collects records of public figures backing Israel's assault on Gaza. "She's not a political actor and that's what makes it so powerful. She's just a person who looked out and saw the common humanity in people who are suffering and said this is intolerable."

In an interview with Mehdi Hasan at Zeteo last week, Accurso said that while policymakers in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere have "tried to make it controversial" to speak out about Israel's impact on Palestinian children's lives, "I think it should be controversial to not say anything."

Writer Alon Mizrahi called Accurso "the biggest dissident in America" after she posted her latest video with Rahaf.

"American culture instructed her to hate Palestinian kids, to see them as nonhuman, to rejoice in their destruction, and to support it," said Mizrahi. "She said no; she chose to humanize them more, and she persisted and did not succumb to immense hate and pressure. She should have our admiration forever for this. She is a hero and an icon."

How To Erase a People

Iran would view US as ‘participant’ in any Israeli attack on its nuclear sites

Iran has said it will hold the US responsible for any Israeli attack on its nuclear sites in remarks that set a fraught backdrop for the fifth and probably most important round of talks between Iran and the US on the future of Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, issued the warning on Thursday after reports appeared in the American media claiming US intelligence understood Israel was planning an attack on Iranian nuclear sites – with or without American support – if the talks broke down.

The report may be accurate or an attempt by the US to strengthen its negotiating hand before the indirect talks in Rome, which are being mediated by Oman. Israel has repeatedly said it will attack Iran’s nuclear sites, while Donald Trump has said the US will do so if the talks break down.

In a letter to the UN, Araghchi said: “Iran strongly warns against any adventurism by the Zionist regime of Israel and will decisively respond to any threat or unlawful act by this regime.” He said Iran would view Washington as a “participant” in any such attack, and Tehran would have to adopt “special measures” to protect its nuclear sites and material from any attacks or sabotage. Araghchi said the UN nuclear inspectorate, the IAEA, would only be subsequently informed of such steps.

In a separate statement released on Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Israel would receive a “devastating and decisive response” if it attacked Iran. ... Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Tuesday that US demands for Tehran to stop refining uranium were “excessive and outrageous”, his most unequivocal statement that Iran will not abandon the capacity to enrich. But he said he did not expect the talks with the US to succeed.

Federal judge blocks Trump admin. from revoking Harvard's ability to enroll international students

Trump administration halts Harvard’s ability to enroll international students

The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status. On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration notified Harvard about its decision following ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The records request comes as part of an investigation by the homeland security department in which federal officials are threatening the university’s international student admissions. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted a copy of the letter on X, formerly known as Twitter. In it Noem said: “I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.”

“The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status,” Noem continued. Noem justified the decision by saying: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements … Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.”

The former governor of South Dakota also accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.

A Harvard spokesperson called the government’s action “unlawful” in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.

Sumy buffer, Russian breakthrough

Putin Says Russia Will Create a ‘Buffer Zone’ Along Ukraine Border

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that Russian forces have been instructed to create a “buffer zone” along the Ukraine-Russia border as fighting continues to rage despite President Trump’s push for a peace deal.

“I have already said that a decision was made to create the necessary security buffer zone along the border. Our armed forces are currently solving this problem. Enemy firing points are being actively suppressed, the work is underway,” Putin said in a meeting with members of his government. ...

It’s not clear where exactly Putin wants to establish the buffer zone, but a Russian lawmaker called for security corridors to be established in Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions, suggesting Ukraine stands to lose more territory as the war drags on.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Ukraine’s Last Chance for Peace

US supreme court blocks religious charter school in split ruling

The US supreme court on Thursday blocked an attempt led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education that challenged the constitutional separation of church and state.

The 4-4 ruling left intact a lower court’s decision that blocked the establishment of St Isidore of Seville Catholic virtual school. The lower court found that the proposed school would violate the US constitution’s first amendment limits on government involvement in religion.

The conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, leaving eight justices rather than the full slate of nine to decide the outcome. Barrett is a former professor at Notre Dame Law School, which represents the school’s organizers.

When the supreme court is evenly divided, the lower court’s decision stands. The justices did not provide a rationale for their action in the unsigned ruling. It was not disclosed how each member of the bench voted, though it is likely that the three liberal-leaning justices favored upholding the block and if that was indeed the case it poses the intriguing question of which conservative-leaning justice joined them.

Parties in favor of religious charter schools can be expected to try to bring another case that will wind its way to the supreme court but not cause Barrett to recuse herself, probably in hopes that as a religious conservative she would support public funding of religious charter schools.

Trump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custody

The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody. The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.

The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”. Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.

The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid. ...

The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”

Trump’s tax bill to cost 830,000 jobs and drive up bills and pollution emissions

A Republican push to dismantle clean energy incentives threatens to reverberate across the US by costing more than 830,000 jobs, raising energy bills for US households and threatening to unleash millions more tonnes of the planet-heating pollution that is causing the climate crisis, experts have warned.

A major tax bill passed by the Republican-held House of Representatives on Thursday morning will, as currently written, demolish key components of climate legislation signed by Joe Biden that has spurred a record torrent of renewable energy and electric vehicle investment in the US.

Under the reconciliation bill, tax credits for cleaner cars will end this year, with incentives for wind, solar and even nuclear energy projects scaled down and then eliminated by 2032. Clean energy manufacturing tax credits will be axed by 2031, while Americans seeking to upgrade their homes to cleaner or more energy efficient appliances will get no further subsidy after the end of this year.

“This bill is worse than what people envisioned – it pulls the rug out from facilities banking on these incentives, it raises everyday household costs by hundreds of dollars and undercuts any sort of action on climate change,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director at Energy Innovation, a non-partisan climate policy thinktank. “You can’t overstate how significant this will be in weakening the US’s position. With inflation, tariffs and rising electricity use, it really couldn’t come at a worse time. It’s a really damaging bill.”

Since the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, more than $320bn has flowed mostly to Republican-held districts in the form of new clean energy development and electric car construction. A further $522bn in investment is in the pipeline but is now menaced by the Republican bill’s removal of tax incentives. “You’re talking about half a trillion dollars of investment at risk from these changes,” said Orvis. “Over 10 years, we found that these changes would reduce US GDP by over $1tn.”

AI could account for nearly half of datacentre power usage ‘by end of year’

Artificial intelligence systems could account for nearly half of datacentre power consumption by the end of this year, analysis has revealed. The estimates by Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of the Digiconomist tech sustainability website, came as the International Energy Agency forecast that AI would require almost as much energy by the end of this decade as Japan uses today.

De Vries-Gao’s calculations, to be published in the sustainable energy journal Joule, are based on the power consumed by chips made by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices that are used to train and operate AI models. The paper also takes into account the energy consumption of chips used by other companies, such as Broadcom.

The IEA estimates that all data centres – excluding mining for cryptocurrencies – consumed 415 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity last year. De Vries-Gao argues in his research that AI could already account for 20% of that total.

He said a number of variables came into his calculations, such as the energy efficiency of a datacentre and electricity consumption related to cooling systems for servers handling an AI system’s busy workloads. Datacentres are the central nervous system of AI technology, with their high energy demands making sustainability a key concern in the development and use of artificial intelligence systems.

By the end of 2025, De Vries-Gao estimates, energy consumption by AI systems could approach up to 49% of total datacentre power consumption, again excluding crypto mining. AI consumption could reach 23 gigawatts (GW), the research estimates, twice the total energy consumption of the Netherlands.

Trump Administration Illegally Withheld EV Charger Funds

Key congressional Democrats on Thursday welcomed a government watchdog's finding that the Trump administration unlawfully withheld appropriated funds for building electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the United States‚ a decision that came as advocacy groups joined a related lawsuit filed by state attorneys general.

Shortly after returning to office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to pause disbursement of funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, specifically mentioning the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program.

In response, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and one of its agencies, the Federal Highway Administration, in February canceled previously issued guidance for the NEVI program and suspended plans that states had submitted for grant money—which led to calls for Congress to stand up to the administration's "illegal attempts to halt legally mandated funding."

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in its Thursday decision that the department violated the Impoundment Control Act: "DOT is not authorized to withhold these funds from expenditure and DOT must continue to carry out the statutory requirements of the program. While DOT cannot withhold these funds under the ICA, DOT could propose funds for rescission or otherwise propose legislation to make changes to the NEVI Formula Program for consideration by Congress."

Politico reported that "the GAO could issue similar rulings in the coming months, as the independent, nonpartisan watchdog agency works through at least 39 investigations into whether the Trump administration violated the Impoundment Control Act. GAO rulings are nonbinding but could influence Congress' response to... Trump's freezing of billions of dollars lawmakers intended to flow to specific programs and projects, as well as the many ongoing lawsuits challenging the president's tactics."

In a Thursday statement about the GAO findings, U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said, "This legal decision affirms what we've long known: The president is breaking the law to block funding Congress passed on a bipartisan basis and that is owed to the American people—simply because he disagrees with it. This plain fact is unacceptable—and it cannot stand any longer."

"Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law by wide margins and specifically provided funding for every state to build out a network of chargers for the electric vehicles that families are increasingly turning to and that are being made right here in America, she continued. "These investments should be getting out the door—creating new jobs and helping Americans get where they need to go without interruption—but President Trump has illegally choked this funding off."

"These bipartisan investments need to start flowing immediately—as do the hundreds of billions of dollars in other investments President Trump is holding up," she added, taking aim at his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director. "I don't care about Russ Vought's personal interpretation of our spending laws; the Constitution is clear, and President Trump simply does not have the power of the purse—Congress does."

Also of Interest

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

Israel’s Final Solution for Gaza

Doctors and whistleblowers in delayed Gaza film threaten to pull out

Violent Israeli settlers under UK sanctions join illegal West Bank outpost

Two dozen Maine residents to begin 40-day hunger strike in solidarity with Gaza

Sectarian Tensions Erupt Across Syria, Posters Call for Religious Tax on Christians

A 21st Century Stamp Act

FTC investigates media watchdog over Musk’s X boycott claims, document shows

Israel, Gaza And The Hierarchy Of Victims

Mahmoud Khalil Testifies Before Immigration Judge and Holds His Child for First Time

A Little Night Music

Elvin Bishop & Los Lobos - What the Hell is Going On

Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Driftin' Blues

Elvin Bishop – Raisin' Hell (Live)

The Elvin Bishop Band – Rock My Soul

Elvin Bishop – Let It Flow

Elvin Bishop – Arkansas Line

The Elvin Bishop Group – Crazy 'Bout You Baby

Elvin Bishop – Stealin' Watermelons (Live)

The Elvin Bishop Group – Tulsa Shuffle

Elvin Bishop - Soundstage 1979 (w/Mighty Joe Young & Son Seals)