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"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

News and Opinion

"Gaslighting & Cherry-Picking": How Israel Is Defending Itself at World Court on Charges of Genocide

Western Empire Bombs Yemen To Protect Israel’s Genocide Operations In Gaza

The US and UK have reportedly struck over a dozen sites in Yemen using Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets, backed by logistical support from Australia, Canada, Bahrain and the Netherlands. A statement from President Biden asserts that the strikes against “targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels” are a “direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea”.

What Biden does not mention in his statement about his administration’s “response” to Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea is the fact that those Red Sea attacks are themselves a response to Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza. Also unmentioned is the fact that the strikes took place after the first day of proceedings in the International Court of Justice in which Israel stands accused by South Africa of committing a genocide in Gaza.

So the US and the UK just bombed the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide. Not only that, they bombed the very same country in which they just spent years backing Saudi Arabia’s genocidal atrocities which killed hundreds of thousands of people between 2015 and 2022 in an unsuccessful bid to stop the Houthis from taking power.

The Houthis, formally known as Ansarallah, threatened ahead of the attack to fiercely retaliate against any strikes from the US and its allies. Abdulmalik al-Houthi, who leads the Houthi movement, said that the response to any American attack “will be greater than” a recent Houthi offensive which used dozens of drones and several missiles.

“We, the Yemeni people, are not among those who are afraid of America,” al-Houthi said in a televised speech. “We are comfortable with a direct confrontation with the Americans.”

An unnamed US official who informed Huffington Post’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed about the imminent strikes on Yemen shortly before they occurred complained that the airstrikes “will not solve the problem” and that the approach “doesn’t add up to a cohesive strategy.”

Ahmed has previously reported that behind the scenes, officials in this administration have been getting increasingly nervous about the risk of Biden igniting a wider war in the middle east. This latest escalation, along with the Houthi pledge to retaliate, adds a lot of weight to this concern.

Biden has now bombed Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, all to ensure Israel can continue slaughtering Palestinian women and children.

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) January 12, 2024

And all for what? To protect Israel’s ability to conduct a months-long massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.

This is what the US empire is. This is what it has always been about.

These people are showing us exactly who they are.

We should probably believe them.

DAY 2 Israel on Trial: Jeremy Scahill On WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW About South Africa's Genocide Case

"A Breach of Yemeni Sovereignty": Biden Becomes Fourth U.S. President to Bomb Yemen

US and UK strike Houthi sites in Yemen in response to ‘unprecedented’ attacks

The US and Britain launched air and missile strikes in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, aimed at halting attacks on ships in the Red Sea, Washington and London have announced. Joe Biden, the US president, said American and British forces, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands were involved in the overnight attack, which appeared to target a dozen sites in the country.

In a statement, he said: “These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.

“These attacks have endangered US personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardised trade, and threatened freedom of navigation.”

Biden also said he would be willing to authorise further attacks on Yemen if Houthi attacks on shipping did not stop. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary,” he said.

Initial reports suggested that as many as a dozen sites in Yemen had been targeted, aimed at military targets, using fighter jets and ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, suggesting a broad assault intended to quickly deter the Houthis. A Houthi official said that “American-Zionist-British aggression against Yemen” had seen raids launched on the capital, Sana’a, in the area of the port city of Hodeidah, and the cities of Saada and Dhamar.

Fears of Wider War as US, UK Bomb Yemen

The United States and United Kingdom on Thursday launched air and missile strikes on Yemen as part of the international effort to end Houthi rebels' attacks on Red Sea shipping, with the armed group warning earlier that such aggression "will not go without response."

Thursday's U.S.-led attacks on Yemen fueled fears of a wider Middle East war amid Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza and escalating retaliation by Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Houthi forces—who have been waging a decadelong civil war against Yemen's government and a Saudi-led coalition—began launching missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking shipping traffic in the Red Sea in response to Israel's Gaza onslaught. Earlier this week, the Houthis launched a sophistical barrage of 21 missiles and drones at U.S. and U.K. warships taking part in a multinational "security" initiative in the crucial waterway.

Critics warned that attacking Yemen risks setting off a powder keg in the Middle East and possibly beyond.

"If the objective is to stop Houthi attacks without escalating matters toward a full war, then bombing them has proven quite inefficient in the past. Just ask the Saudis," Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said on social media Thursday.

"Moreover, bombing them very likely will escalate matters, which means that not only will the attacks not be stopped, but the broader war that [U.S. President Joe] Biden seeks to prevent will likely become a reality," he continued.

"Indeed, if the objective is to stop them, a cease-fire in Gaza is far more likely to succeed," Parsi added. "The Houthis have declared that they will stop if Israel stops, and during the six days there was a ceasefire (in November), there was only one attack in the Red Sea that can be attributed to the Houthis."

U.S. forces have launched drone and other airstrikes against Yemen since the George W. Bush administration. There have also been occasional U.S. ground raids in the Middle Eastern country, including one in January 2017 that killed Nawar al-Awlaki, an 8-year-old American girl. Her American father and brother were killed in separate U.S. drone strikes during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

Responding to the attack, U.S Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on social media that Biden "needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle east conflict. That is Article I of the Constitution. I will stand up for that regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House."

Antiwar.com news editor Dave DeCamp lamented that "Biden has now bombed Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, all to ensure Israel can continue slaughtering Palestinian women and children."

Meanwhile, CNN anchor Erin Burnett seemed to welcome the development, declaring "finally" when announcing the attacks on air.

Blinken, Middle East failure. South Africa ICJ case begins

Global trade falls amid Houthi attacks on merchant ships in Red Sea

Global trade fell in December as Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea disrupted operations. The boss of the world’s biggest shipping line has said it could take months before the trade route is safe to traverse.

Global trade dropped by 1.3% in December, with a significant fall in shipments in the Red Sea driving that fall, according to figures from IfW Kiel.

A report by the German economic institute found that the number of containers travelling daily through the Red Sea fell by 60% from 500,000 in November to 200,000 last month. ...

On Thursday, the Iranian navy confirmed it had seized an oil tanker associated with a Greek shipping company in the Gulf of Oman, prompting fears the disruption could escalate and spread to the Gulf.

Separately, Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of the global shipping company Maersk, said the Red Sea disruption could last for months. He said the attacks by Houthi militants were “brutal and dramatic” and could lead to further inflation across the global economy.

Iran seizes oil tanker with links to US in Gulf of Oman

The Iranian navy has seized a US-linked oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman as part of a long-running dispute with the US over an American court order a year ago that seized Iranian oil on the tanker and unloaded the cargo in Texas.

Official Iranian news agencies said on Wednesday that the tanker had been taken on the authority of an Iranian court order, but the news will add to the growing tensions about freedom of navigation in the region as a result of repeated Houthi rebel attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

The Houthis say their attacks are designed to disrupt the Israeli economy and the naval forces protecting Israel, primarily the US’s, as a result of the war in Gaza. ...

Although the Houthis are given arms and training by Iran, the seizure of the tanker St Nikolas off the coast of Oman by six masked soldiers on Thursday morning is not directly related to the Houthi attacks.

The vessel, which was carrying Iraqi oil bound for Turkey, changed course after the boarding and headed in the direction of Bandar-e-Jask in Iran. ... “The navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran seized an American oil tanker in the waters of the Gulf of Oman in accordance with a court order,” the official IRNA news agency said. The seizure had been in retaliation for “violation committed by the Suez Rajan ship … and the theft of Iranian oil by the United States,” it added. Iran has responded with tit-for-tat measures in the past after seizures of Iranian oil shipments.

Most want to flee ‘pressure cooker’ of southern Gaza, UN refugee deputy says

Southern Gaza is turning into a “pressure cooker”, where the majority of people – faced with dwindling food, inadequate water sanitation, overcrowding and a crumbling hospital service – want to flee, the deputy director of the UN agency for Palestinians has said.

Scott Anderson of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), who is engaged in daily negotiations to gain Israeli permissions for aid convoys to enter and move around Gaza, said it was in “a full-time emergency” and just six of the 21 planned convoys to the north of the territory had been granted access since January despite a UN security council resolution in December calling for relief to be stepped up.

“The truth is I have not seen any change in the reality on the ground since the passing of that UN resolution. There has been no reduction in either the number of Israeli or Egyptian inspection checks since the resolution was passed,” he told the Guardian.

Anderson, who first worked for UNWRA in 2008 after 21 years in the US army, has his office in Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, where from the roof he can look across at a sea of makeshift tents. “There were 280,000 people here. Now there’s 1.4 million. It’s very difficult for any community to absorb that many people in that short amount of time. And let’s say this graciously, the sewage networks in Gaza weren’t the most robust before the conflict.” He added: “Certainly we do worry about the pressure cooker, and I think if there was an opportunity, most people would flee to Egypt.”

The mass displacement of Palestinians, he said, was having a deep impact on societal bonds. “It’s very family based society, or almost tribal based. Those family dynamics have been interrupted, because now people are around people that they were never near before. It’s impacted how society functions and some of the constraints have come off.

Today's ICJ hearing was devastating. Horror after horror, laid out in plain sight for all to see.

South Africa spoke for millions around the world desperate for this massacre to end — and put the UK & US government to shame for their deplorable silence, cowardice and complicity.

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) January 11, 2024

Can South Africa's court case against Israel end war in Gaza?

Netanyahu and IDF downplay mounting Israeli deaths and severe injuries in Gaza

The price paid by Israelis for the Netanyahu government’s genocidal assault on Gaza is being concealed to shore up public support for the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. The mounting toll of deaths and severe injuries in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) threatens public confidence in the government’s declared military objectives of eradicating Hamas, securing the return of the remaining 140 hostages and forever ending any security threat to Israel.

Public confidence in the government is already rock bottom. These is widespread anger over the exposure of claims that it received no warnings of Hamas’s October 7 attack, the fact that military forces were stood down to facilitate this and provide a justification for moving against the Palestinians, and that the IDF’s helicopter and tank assault on Hamas fighters was responsible for killing hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

As of last Monday, at least 185 Israeli soldiers had been killed since the ground invasion of Gaza began on October 27, including nine reservists, combat engineers, killed when a tank stationed nearby fired shells at a building as the soldiers were assembling explosives to demolish a tunnel. This is already nearly three times the 67 soldiers killed in the month-long assault on Gaza in 2014, but there is a growing belief that IDF deaths have been underreported, given the government’s tight censorship of information related to military casualties, with every press release regarding wounded soldiers requiring approval.

Adding to suspicions of underreporting, the IDF had initially, unlike in previous wars, refused to disclose the number of wounded soldiers. Only in December, when Haaretz planned to publish its report on the number of soldier casualties based on hospital sources, did this change. Haaretz reported “a considerable and unexplained gap between the data reported by the military and that from the hospitals,” with hospital data showing the number of wounded soldiers was “twice as high as the army’s numbers.” Yedioth Ahronoth reported that “the cumulative numbers since October 7 are astronomical: More than 2,000 soldiers, policemen and other members of the security forces have been officially recognized as disabled.” ...

On Monday, the IDF released data showing that nearly 13,000 soldiers have required some level of medical care since the start of the war, with 2,335 transferred for treatment in hospitals, including 155 soldiers who suffered eye injuries and 298 who suffered damage to their hearing. The data revealed that about 9,000 soldiers have received psychiatric treatment since the start of the war, with nearly one quarter unable to return to combat, and 275 soldiers are receiving treatment at a rehabilitation centre for significant mental health complications.

Majority of debtors to US hospitals now people with health insurance

People with health insurance may now represent the majority of debtors American hospitals struggle to collect from, according to medical billing analysts. This marks a sea change from just a few years ago, when people with health insurance represented only about one in 10 bills hospitals considered “bad debt”, analysts said.

“We always used to consider bad debt, especially bad debt write-offs from a hospital perspective, those [patients] that have the ability to pay but don’t,” said Colleen Hall, senior vice-president for Kodiak Solutions, a billing, accounting and consulting firm that works closely with hospitals and performed the analysis.

“Now, it’s not as if these patients across the board are even able to pay, because [out-of-pocket costs are] such an astronomical amount related to what their general income might be.” Although “bad debt” can be a controversial metric in its own right, those who work in the hospital billing industry say it shows how complex health insurance products with large out-of-pocket costs have proliferated.

“Obamacare” plans – that is insurance plans people buy as individuals on state exchanges – are notorious for such high deductibles. Federal regulations allow insurers on state exchanges to charge an individual as much as $9,450 out of pocket in 2024 – not including monthly payments called premiums. That limit is predicted to grow to $14,100 by 2030. And because healthcare costs are rising faster than wages, those expenses are predicted to eat up an ever-larger share of Americans’ paychecks.

Ohio woman won’t be indicted for abuse of corpse after miscarriage, grand jury decides

The case against Brittany Watts, the Ohio woman facing indictment for abuse of a corpse after she had a miscarriage, will not be moving forward, a grand jury decided on Thursday.

The Trumbull county, Ohio, grand jury declined to indict Watts, who was reportedly turned in to police after a miscarriage in September, by returning a “no-bill” in her case. Watts’s case had sparked nationwide shock and outcry, as reproductive health and justice advocates held it up as an example of how pregnant people can easily end up facing criminal consequences – especially in the wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade. ...

Watts reportedly miscarried into a toilet in September, when she was roughly 22 weeks into her pregnancy. She tried to remove the mass that clogged the toilet, then went to the hospital, where a nurse reportedly alerted the police. Watts had previously shown up at the hospital with signs that her water had broken prematurely, according to CNN. That condition can make it impossible for a pregnancy to continue and, if left untreated, can lead pregnant people to slip into deadly sepsis – which has happened in other states post-Roe.

Ohio’s “abuse of a corpse” charge hinges on whether someone has treated a corpse in a way that would “outrage reasonable community sensibilities”. Had Watts been convicted of the fifth-degree felony, she could have spent a year behind bars.

California city to pay $5m to family of Willie McCoy, who police shot 55 times

A California city has agreed to pay $5m to the family of a 20-year-old who was sleeping in his car when police approached and shot him 55 times in 2019.

The city of Vallejo, north-east of San Francisco, said in a statement on Wednesday that the city council approved the payout to the relatives of Willie McCoy, an aspiring Bay Area rapper fatally shot by six officers in a case that sparked national outrage. McCoy was in his car at a Taco Bell on 9 February 2019 when the police arrived and quickly fired a barrage of bullets into his vehicle.

Police claimed McCoy had “moved his hands downward” toward a gun, but body-camera footage did not capture that and instead appeared to show that he had been startled awake and moved his hand to scratch his shoulder. The footage also showed that officers had not tried to wake him or announce they were police before pointing firearms at his head. Before McCoy awoke, officers said: “If he reaches for it, you know what to do,” and “I’m going to pull him out and snatch his ass.”

The killing sparked protests in California and significant backlash after a consultant hired by the city concluded that “the 55 rounds fired by six officers in ~3.5 seconds is reasonable based upon my training and experience as a range instructor”.

Prosecutors declined to file charges against the officers. The case escalated scrutiny of the Vallejo police department, which has an extensive history of brutality and misconduct scandals. From 2010 to 2020, the city had one of the highest rates of police killings in California, and more than a dozen officers have shot multiple civilians on the job without facing consequences. A 2020 investigation by local news site Open Vallejo revealed that some officers commemorated their shootings by bending the points of their badges each time they killed someone.

#NEVERNIKKI: Rand Paul Launches HALEY TAKEDOWN Campaign

Pattern found in world’s rainforests where 2% of species make up 50% of trees

Just 2% of rainforest tree species account for 50% of the trees found in tropical forests across Africa, the Amazon and south-east Asia, a new study has found.

Mirroring patterns found elsewhere in the natural world, researchers have discovered that a few tree species dominate the world’s major rainforests, with thousands of rare species making up the rest.

Led by University College London researchers and published in the Nature journal, the international collaboration of 356 scientists uncovered almost identical patterns of tree diversity across the world’s rainforests, which are the most biodiverse places on the planet. The researchers estimate that just 1,000 species account for half of Earth’s 800 billion trees in tropical rainforests, with 46,000 species making up the remainder.

“Our findings have profound implications for understanding tropical forests. If we focus on understanding the commonest tree species, we can probably predict how the whole forest will respond to today’s rapid environmental changes,” said the lead author, Declan Cooper, from the UCL centre for biodiversity and environment research. “This is especially important because tropical forests contain a tremendous amount of stored carbon, and are a globally important carbon sink.”

The team of scientists demonstrated that while African tropical forests have fewer total species compared with the Amazon and south-east Asia, their diversity follows the same pattern. The analysis is based on more than 1m tree samples across 2,048 hectares (5,050 acres) of rainforest at 1,568 locations. They found that about 2.2% species made up 50% of the trees across the biome.

‘Astounding’ ocean temperatures in 2023 intensified extreme weather, data shows

“Astounding” ocean temperatures in 2023 supercharged “freak” weather around the world as the climate crisis continued to intensify, new data has revealed. The oceans absorb 90% of the heat trapped by the carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, making it the clearest indicator of global heating. Record levels of heat were taken up by the oceans in 2023, scientists said, and the data showed that for the past decade the oceans have been hotter every year than the year before.

The heat also led to record levels of stratification in the oceans, where warm water ponding on the surface reduces the mixing with deeper waters. This cuts the amount of oxygen in the oceans, threatening marine life, and also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide and heat the seas can take up in the future.

Reliable ocean temperature measurements stretch back to 1940 but it is likely the oceans are now at their hottest for 1,000 years and heating faster than at any time in the past 2,000 years.

The most common measure of the climate crisis – global average air temperature – was also driven up in 2023, by a huge margin. But air temperatures are more affected by natural climate variations, including the return last year of the warming El Niño phenomenon.

“The ocean is the key to telling us what’s happening to the world and the data is painting a compelling picture of warming year after year after year,” said Prof John Abraham, at the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, part of the team that produced the new data. “We’re already facing the consequences and they will get far worse if we don’t take action,” he said. “But we can solve this problem today with wind, solar, hydro and energy conservation. Once people realise that, it’s very empowering. We can usher in the new energy economy of the future, saving money and the environment at the same time.”

Also of Interest

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

The ICJ Genocide Case Is No-Win For The Rules Based Order

Yves on day 1 of International Court of Justice Genocide Hearing”

Palestine SitRep: Court Hearing - Netanyahu's Concession

Poland Resists Cooperation With Nord Stream Sabotage Investigation

Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe

Tennessee after-school Satan club holds first meeting despite protests

Starbucks sued over claims of labor and human rights violations in making of products

Knesset Member Faces Expulsion for Backing South Africa Genocide Case

Krystal BREAKS DOWN Israel's Genocide Defense

Israel’s MOST Brazen Lies About Hamas!

A Little Night Music

Hot Tuna – Winin' Boy Blues

Hot Tuna – Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning

Hot Tuna – Killing Time In The Crystal City

Hot Tuna – Water Song

Hot Tuna – Mann's Fate

Hot Tuna - I Know You Rider

Hot Tuna - Watch the North Wind Rise

Hot Tuna – I Wish You Would

Hot Tuna – Keep On Truckin'

Hot Tuna - Full Concert - 03/04/88 - Fillmore Auditorium