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This evening's music features brit blues bandleader John Mayall. Enjoy!

"The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages."

-- Banksy

News and Opinion

Netanyahu meets with military leaders on details of Israeli conquest and annexation of Gaza

As murderous military assaults as well as death from starvation intensify, details of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for the total conquest and annexation of Gaza are coming to light. On Tuesday, one day after Netanyahu’s official announcement, a high-level strategy meeting was convened in Tel Aviv to finalize Israel’s military operations. According to a detailed report in the Washington Post, the meeting brought together Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Eyal Zamir, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Major General Itzik Cohen, head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Operations Directorate.

The central topic discussed was the practical implementation of the directive to occupy the remaining parts of Gaza not currently under Israeli control. Several military options were laid on the table, including the full encirclement of major refugee camps, followed by enhanced air strikes, drone operations and special forces raids to “liquidate remaining Hamas elements.” Unnamed Washington Post sources present in the meeting emphasized that the Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, still home to hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, would now be considered combat zones.

The report said Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Zamir expressed strong reservations. He warned of the risk of mass civilian casualties, further unrest in the occupied West Bank, regional spillover and the immediate endangerment of the more than 50 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Gaza. The sources said Zamir told Netanyahu, “We are paving the road to chaos, not security,” a statement that was reportedly met with indifference. Netanyahu, determined to press forward, told attendees, “Political leadership makes the call. The military executes the call.” Katz backed him, saying, “There will be no more hesitation. The time to neutralize Gaza entirely has come.”

While elements within the Israeli government and military remain deeply divided on this course of action, the fascist Netanyahu government has made clear it will force compliance from the IDF leadership or remove those who resist. As one senior official told Israel’s Channel 12: “The army must fall into line. This is a matter of survival for the State of Israel.” After 22 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza, the Zionist regime is now stating openly what it has refused to admit publicly all along. The objective is a total restructuring of the Strip under Israeli rule. It is an open-ended occupation with no exit strategy, no plan for Palestinian self-rule and a prerequisite for ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Such a blatantly criminal undertaking would be impossible without the support of the US. Speaking on Army Radio, Israeli national security analyst Ehud Etzion made it plain: “The United States has given Netanyahu carte blanche to occupy Gaza. This is not simply diplomatic cover, this is active endorsement.” On Tuesday, while declining to directly endorse Israel’s occupation plan, President Trump told reporters, “So Israel is going to have to make a decision… It’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.”

Israel's Plans to "Empty Out" Gaza and Annex West Bank

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

Armed with Azure’s near-limitless storage capacity, Unit 8200 began building a powerful new mass surveillance tool: a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Revealed here for the first time in an investigation by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, the cloud-based system – which first became operational in 2022 – enables Unit 8200 to store a giant trove of calls daily for extended periods of time.

Microsoft claims chief executive, Satya Nadella was unaware of what kind of data Unit 8200 planned to store in Azure. But a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 sources from the company and Israeli military intelligence reveals how Azure has been used by Unit 8200 to store this expansive archive of everyday Palestinian communications. According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based storage platform has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

Thanks to the control it exerts over Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, Israel has long intercepted phone calls in the occupied territories. But the indiscriminate new system allows intelligence officers to play back the content of cellular calls made by Palestinians, capturing the conversations of a much larger pool of ordinary civilians.

Intelligence sources with knowledge of the project said Unit 8200’s leadership turned to Microsoft after concluding it did not have sufficient storage space or computing power on the military’s servers to bear the weight of an entire population’s phone calls. Several intelligence officers from the unit, which is comparable to the US National Security Agency (NSA) in its surveillance capabilities, said that a mantra emerged internally that captured the project’s scale and ambition: “A million calls an hour”.

The system was built to sit on Microsoft’s servers behind enhanced layers of security developed by the company’s engineers with Unit 8200’s instructions. The leaked Microsoft files suggest that a large proportion of the unit’s sensitive data may now be sitting in the company’s datacentres in the Netherlands and Ireland. Disclosures about the role of Microsoft’s Azure platform in the surveillance project come as the US tech giant faces pressure from employees and investors over its ties to Israel’s military and the role its technology has played in the 22-month offensive in Gaza.

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : US Troops In Gaza?

Israel issues forced displacement orders amid fears of full occupation in Gaza

The Israeli military has put parts of Gaza City and Khan Younis under new enforced displacement orders amid fears that the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is preparing to order the full occupation of the Palestinian territory later this week.

Israel’s security cabinet is expected to meet on Thursday evening and sign off on plans for an expanded operation despite reported serious misgivings from senior military officers. The order for Gaza – euphemistically described by the Israel Defense Forces as an “evacuation” – is the latest in dozens of such announcements that have displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population, many on multiple occasions.

The orders came as the US president, Donald Trump, said any decision over expanded Israeli control in Gaza was up to Israel. “As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

Many people had returned to Gaza City only relatively recently after long periods of displacement to find their homes war-damaged and looted, with even doors and windows stolen in some cases.

As Gaza’s health ministry reported that five more people had died from starvation in the coastal strip, which has been plunged into a devastating hunger crisis owing to Israel’s complete block on aid entering earlier this year, Jordan reported an aid convoy of 30 trucks that had left for Gaza had been attacked by militant Jewish settlers on entering Israel. After the attack, the second in days, Jordan accused Israel of failing to act to prevent repeated assaults.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : A Brief History of Israel

Only 1.5% of Gaza cropland left for starving Palestinians due to Israel’s war

Israel’s destruction of Gaza has left starving Palestinians with access to only 1.5% of cropland that is accessible and suitable for cultivation, according to new figures from the UN. This is down from 4% in April, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), suggesting Israel has continued to target Palestinian farmland since initiating a complete blockade in early March, severely restricting aid from entering the Gaza Strip, where 2 million starved people are trapped.

Before the conflict, Gaza was a thriving agricultural hub, where farmers and ordinary Palestinians cultivated a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains for local consumption. According to the FAO, agriculture accounted for around 10% of the Gaza Strip’s economy, and more than 560,000 people, or a quarter of the population, were at least partially supported by agriculture and fishing.

Israel has targeted food sources – orchards, greenhouses, farmland and fishers – since the beginning of its siege on Gaza in October 2023. By 28 July 2025, Israel had damaged 86%, the equivalent of almost 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres), of farmland in the Gaza Strip – up from 81% in April, the FAO said. While just under 9% of cropland is still physically accessible, only 1.5% – the equivalent of 232 hectares – is both accessible and not damaged by the Israeli offensive. ...

In northern Gaza, Israeli tanks and bombs have destroyed or damaged 94% of what was among the most fertile, productive land in the territory, and Palestinians have no access to the remaining 6% of their cropland. In Rafah, near the Egypt border, 79% is flattened and the rest has been blocked as part of Israel’s so-called military corridor. Last week, Israeli forces partially demolished a seed bank in Hebron, in the West Bank, destroying tools and equipments used to used to reproduce heirloom seeds.

US Labor Leader Kidnapped, Beaten By IDF: IGNORED By US Diplomats

Israeli Forces Kill 135 in Gaza Over 24 Hours, Including 87 People Attempting To Get Aid

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli forces killed 135 Palestinians and wounded 771 over the previous 24-hour period as US-backed Israeli attacks and IDF massacres of desperate people seeking aid continue.

The Health Ministry said another three bodies were recovered from the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, where ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them at this time,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.

Gaza hospitals also recorded five more starvation deaths due to the Israeli blockade. “This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition to 193, including 96 children,” the ministry said.

The majority of the violent deaths, 87, were among Palestinians attempting to reach aid, and another 570 aid seekers were injured. The ministry said that since the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating in Gaza, at least 1,655 aid seekers have been killed and 11,800 injured.

Max Blumenthal: The Epstein Files & Rise of Anti-Israeli Sentiments in the US

Protests in Beirut as Lebanon Cabinet Discusses Hezbollah Disarmament

Hezbollah supporters marched in the streets of Beirut today, expressing opposition to US demands that the Lebanese government fully disarm the movement. It comes as the Lebanese cabinet is meeting to discuss possible avenues to such disarmament.

The government is reportedly keen to monopolize control of all weapons in the country, though Hezbollah has made it clear that disarming while Israel is still occupying Lebanese soil and launching near daily attacks is a non-starter, and the US has made clear they have no intention of trying to get Israel to stop attacking.

Given Hezbollah is such a substantial force and the Lebanese Army generally is not, it’s not clear how the government could impose a disarmament against their wishes. Though today’s cabinet meeting is being presented as “decisive” on the issue, Shi’ite ministers withdrew from the talks and they postponed the vote until next week.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem spoke to the crowd in Beirut, reiterating opposition to disarmament, and calling for a national consensus on resisting Israeli attacks. He added that they remain ready to defend themselves in a broad war if Israel further escalates the situation.

US Blinks, Withdraws Deadline, Offers Trump-Putin Meeting, Putin Says Yes But NO To Meeting Zelensky

Alastair Crooke: Did Trump Just Trigger NUCLEAR War? Putin is Preparing

Trump threatens 50% tariffs on India over ties to Russia and Brics bloc

The White House is placing an additional 25% tariff on imports from India, bringing total tariffs up to 50%, in retaliation for the country’s purchase of oil from Russia, according to an executive order signed on Wednesday morning. India has 21 days to respond to the potential tariffs before they go into effect. The tariffs will be tacked on to a 25% tariff on India Donald Trump set last week as a “penalty” for the country’s trading relationship with Russia.

Last week, the president wrote on social media that India had “always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of energy”.

“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,” he wrote.

Trump had signaled on Tuesday that he would imminently announce new tariffs, telling CNBC that the country was “fueling the war machine” against Ukraine.

India has said that it feels unjustly singled out for its trade relationship with Russia. In a statement on Wednesday, the country’s ministry of external affairs said that its imports “are based on market factors and done with the overall objective of ensuring the energy security of 1.4 billion people in India. We reiterate that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable. India will take all actions necessary to protect its national interest,” the statement read.

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Does Trump Understand the Russians?

Trump plans 100% tariffs on chips but spares companies ‘building in US’

Donald Trump said he would impose a 100% tariff on foreign computer chips, likely raising the cost of electronics, autos, household appliances and other goods deemed essential for the digital age. “We’ll be putting a tariff on of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors,” Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. “But if you’re building in the United States of America, there’s no charge.”

The Republican president said companies that make computer chips in the US would be spared the import tax. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a shortage of computer chips increased the price of autos and contributed to an overall uptick in inflation. Trump and Cook were meeting on Wednesday to discuss an agreement for Apple to invest $100bn in manufacturing in the US over the next four years. That comes after the iPhone maker already pledged to invest $500bn domestically earlier this year. With Apple’s new investment, the total figure is now at $600bn.

Apple has been propped up as an example of a tech company that’s based in the US but conducts much of its manufacturing abroad. The vast majority of Apple’s products are made in China, for example, with about 90% of iPhones assembled there. Cook has met with Trump several times since the president took office to discuss more manufacturing in the US.

Nvidia, one of the largest chip makers in the US, would likely be exempt from the tariff because the company has manufacturing facilities in the US.

Israeli Rabbi THREATENS Trump With Epstein Files

Here’s What Congress WON’T Ask The Clintons About Epstein!

FBI report disproves Trump’s claim of a Biden-era out-of-control crime wave

When Donald Trump fought for and won the 2024 presidential election, his victory was built partly on the false assertion that Democrats were responsible for an out-of-control crime wave in the US, with murders and rapes at record highs.

Figures released by the FBI on Tuesday, however, confirm that the nation was as safe as it ever had been during the final full year of the Biden administration. Every category of crime decreased in frequency, and violent crime in particular dropped to levels not seen since the 1960s, per the report.

The bureau’s annual Reported Crimes in the Nation Statistics report reflects a 4.5% year-on-year decrease in all violent crime nationally in 2024, with murder and non-negligent manslaughter falling 14.5% from the 2023 figure. Reported rapes were down 5.2% from the year before, while aggravated assaults and robberies declined 3% and 8.9% respectively.

The figures belie Trump’s oft-repeated fear-mongering during the election campaign that “soft-on-crime” Democrats had fueled surging crime rates, particularly in major cities under their control. In May 2024, for example, Trump told reporters attending his hush-money trial in Manhattan that New York prosecutors were fixated on his prosecution while “people are being mugged and killed outside … [I’ve] never seen anything like it in my life”.

Yet the FBI report shows that murders in cities with more than 1 million residents declined by 19.1%, the highest percentage of any category of crime, while rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults showed drops of between 1% and 9.8%.

Border patrol agents jump out of rental truck and ambush people at LA Home Depot

US border patrol agents carried out a raid outside a Home Depot in Los Angeles on Wednesday, with officers jumping out of an unmarked rental truck and chasing and arresting more than a dozen people.

Videos of the operation, and federal officials’ statements boasting about the detentions, have raised questions about whether the US government was complying with a federal court order halting indiscriminate raids in the region due to evidence of racial profiling. That ruling, upheld last week by an appeals court, followed reports of Latino US citizens getting swept up in LA raids and accounts of undocumented people being targeted based on their appearance and whether they spoke Spanish.

Clips of the early morning raid by Home Depot in the Westlake neighborhood, near MacArthur Park, showed masked, heavily armed officers jumping out of a yellow truck from Penske, a private rental company, and people fleeing. Day laborers often gather outside Home Depot stores looking for work and have been subject to aggressive immigration raids in southern California.

One day-laborer present for the Wednesday raid told the Los Angeles Times that the Penske truck pulled up to the parking lot around 6.45am, with the driver telling people gathered in Spanish that he had work to offer. Someone then rolled up the back of the truck, and masked agents, including one in a cowboy hat, jumped out as people scattered, the witness said.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in an email that agents arrested 16 undocumented people from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua. Border patrol and DHS spokespeople did not respond to inquiries about the arrest tactics and whether agents had been targeting specific people.

‘Horrific’: report reveals abuse of pregnant women and children at US Ice facilities

A new report has found hundreds of reported cases of human rights abuses in US immigration detention centers.

The alleged abuses uncovered include deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, mistreatment of pregnant women and children, inadequate medical care, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, inadequate food and water, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, and child separation.

The report, compiled by the office of Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat representing Georgia, noted it found 510 credible reports of human rights abuses since 20 January 2025.

His office team’s investigation is active and ongoing, the office said, and has accused the Department of Homeland Security of obstructing congressional oversight of the federal agency, which houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Ossoff said the government was limiting his team’s access to visit more detention sites and interview detainees.

Under the second Trump administration, a Guardian analysis found average daily immigration arrests in June 2025 were up 268% compared with June 2024, with the majority of people arrested having no criminal convictions. And US immigration detention facilities are estimated to be over capacity by more than 13,500 people.

Krystal ENDS Cory Booker's Career

Chemical pollution a threat comparable to climate change

Chemical pollution is “a threat to the thriving of humans and nature of a similar order as climate change” but decades behind global heating in terms of public awareness and action, a report has warned.

The industrial economy has created more than 100 million “novel entities”, or chemicals not found in nature, with somewhere between 40,000 and 350,000 in commercial use and production, the report says. But the environmental and human health effects of this widespread contamination of the biosphere are not widely appreciated, in spite of a growing body of evidence linking chemical toxicity with effects ranging from ADHD to infertility to cancer.

“I suppose that’s the biggest surprise for some people,” Harry Macpherson, senior climate associate at Deep Science Ventures (DSV), which carried out the research, told the Guardian. “Maybe people think that when you walk down the street breathing the air; you drink your water, you eat your food; you use your personal care products, your shampoo, cleaning products for your house, the furniture in your house; a lot of people assume that there’s really great knowledge and huge due diligence on the chemical safety of these things. But it really isn’t the case.”

Over eight months, as part of a project funded by the Grantham Foundation, Macpherson and colleagues spoke to dozens of researchers, non-profit leaders, entrepreneurs and investors, and analysed hundreds of scientific papers. According to the DSV report, more than 3,600 synthetic chemicals from food contact materials – the materials that are used in food preparation and packaging – alone are found in human bodies, 80 of which are of significant concern. Pfas “forever chemicals”, for example, have been found in nearly all humans tested, and are now so ubiquitous that in many locations even rainwater contains levels regarded as unsafe to drink. Meanwhile, more than 90% of the global population breathes air that breaches World Health Organization (WHO) pollution guidelines.

When these chemicals contaminate our bodies, the results can be disastrous. The report found there were correlational or causal data linking widely used chemicals with threats to human reproductive, immune, neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory, liver, kidney and metabolic systems. “One of the main things that came out quite strongly was links between pesticide exposure and reproductive issues,” said Macpherson. “We saw quite strong links – correlation and causation – for miscarriage and people basically struggling to conceive.”

Research Finds Plastics Can Lead to Disease, Disability & Premature Death

'Graveyard of Corals': Bleaching Led to Great Barrier Reef's Worst Die-Off on Record

After last year's climate-fueled bleaching in Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef, large swaths of the GBR suffered the worst coral die-off since records began, a government report revealed Wednesday, prompting renewed calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as reef conservation and restoration.

The GBR "experienced unprecedented levels of heat stress, which caused the most spatially extensive and severe bleaching recorded to date," the Australian Institute of Marine Science's (AIMS) annual report states.

AIMS studied the health of 124 coral reefs between August 2024 and May 2025 and found that northern and southern branches of the approximately 1,400-mile (2,300 km) GBR suffered the "largest annual decline in coral cover" ever recorded since monitoring began nearly 40 years ago.

Data collected last year from aerial surveys showed that 75% of the GBR had been bleached amid record heat driven by the worsening climate emergency. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned in March 2024 that the bleaching would likely be the worst the world had ever seen.

The new report confirmed that "the 2024 event had the largest spatial footprint ever recorded on the GBR, with high to extreme bleaching prevalence observed across all three regions" of the GBR.

According to AIMS:

In 2025, hard coral cover declined substantially across the GBR, although considerable coral cover remains in all three regions. Regional declines ranged between 14% and 30% compared to 2024 levels, with some individual reefs experiencing coral declines of up to 70.8%. These declines are primarily attributed to coral mortality from the 2024 mass coral bleaching event, compounded by the cumulative impacts of two cyclones in December 2023 and January 2024, freshwater inundation, and some crown-of-thorns starfish activity.

In 2025, 48% of surveyed reefs underwent a decline in percentage coral cover, 42% showed no net change, and only 10% had an increase. Reefs with stable or increasing coral cover were predominantly located in the central GBR.

Scientists described the resulting seascape as a "graveyard of corals."

AIMS research lead Mike Emslie told Agence France-Presse that the "number one cause" of GBR coral decline "is climate change."

The problem is by no means limited to the GBR. A mass global bleaching event has devastated more than 80% of the world's coral reefs over the past two years, affecting 82 countries and territories.

Prior to the current die-off, the last major GBR bleaching event occurred in 2014-17, when scientists said nearly one-third of its coral died and approximately 15% of all reefs worldwide experienced major coral deaths.

"These impacts we are seeing are serious and substantial and the bleaching events are coming closer and closer together," Emslie said in a separate interview with The Guardian.

"We will ultimately get to a tipping point where coral cover can't bounce back because disturbances come so quickly that there's no time left for recovery," he warned. "We have to mitigate the root causes of the problem and reduce emissions and stabilize temperatures."

AIMS called for greater global efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions fueling planetary heating, "continued good local management," and more interventions "to help corals adapt and recover."

Larissa Waters, leader of the Australian Greens and a federal senator representing Queensland, on Monday urged the governing Labor Party to "follow the science, set 2035 targets at net-zero, stop new coal and gas, or risk losing our reef, its immense biodiversity, and the 60,000 jobs it sustains."

Your tax dollars at work:

JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip

JD Vance’s team had the army corps of engineers take the unusual step of changing the outflow of a lake in Ohio to accommodate a recent boating excursion on a family holiday, the Guardian has learned.

The request from the US Secret Service was made to “support safe navigation” of the US vice-president’s security detail for an August outing on the Little Miami River, according to a statement by the US army corps of engineers (USACE).

Vance was spotted in the south-western Ohio area on 2 August, his 41st birthday, according to social media posts that noted he was seen canoeing on the river, a tributary that Caesar Creek Lake feeds into.

One source with knowledge of the matter who communicated with the Guardian anonymously alleged that the outflow request for the Caesar Creek Lake was not just to support the vice-president’s Secret Service detail, but also to create “ideal kayaking conditions”. The Guardian could not independently confirm this specific claim.

The news raises questions about whether Vance’s office was potentially exploiting public infrastructure resources for his personal recreation at a time when the Trump administration has cut billions of dollars in foreign aid, scientific research and government jobs as part of its “efficiency” drive.

Also of Interest

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

When One of the World’s Most Powerful Nations Is Run By Spoiled Children

UN experts call for US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to be dismantled

'Largest civilian flotilla in history' to set sail for Gaza

The “Trump Bridge” Could Lead To Russia’s Expulsion From the South Caucasus

By Punishing India Trump Is Creating More Tariff Damage For The U.S.

GHF Whistleblower X Tucker EXPOSE Secret Funding Behind Gaza Starvation

A Little Night Music

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers – Stand Back Baby

John Mayall – Things Go Wrong

John Mayall – Vacation / Walking On Sunset / Laurel Canyon Home

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers – The Same Way

John Mayall – Good Times Boogie / Change Your Ways

John Mayall - Plan Your Revolution

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers – All Your Love

John Mayall – The Bear

John Mayall – Hideaway

John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers - Set 2 - 06/18/82 - Capitol Theatre