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“Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

-- Elie Wiesel

News and Opinion

Tone Policing Opposition To Genocide

US senator Chris Coons sat across from journalist Aaron Maté on the train on Monday, which is about the worst place you could possibly choose to sit if you’re a powerful official in a government that’s in the middle of backing an active genocide.

As any journalist of sound conscience would, Maté seized the opportunity to begin questioning Coons on camera about his support for Israel’s ongoing massacre of civilians in Gaza and to ask him why he isn’t supporting a ceasefire.

Coons immediately became indignant that Maté was questioning him. He avoided addressing the questions he was being asked for a long time, responding only to repeatedly demand that Maté cease talking to him and to ask him who he is and how he got a seat on the train.

“This is a quiet car,” Coons admonished.

“I understand, but children are dying sir,” Maté replied. “They’re being killed with our weapons. US weapons are killing kids in Gaza.”

“Please stop,” Coons kept repeating, ignoring the irony that “please stop” is all anyone is asking of the US-backed human butchery that is taking place in Gaza.

As British rapper and activist Lowkey noted on Twitter, Coons has received over a quarter million dollars from pro-Israel lobbying groups over the years.

Sen. @ChrisCoons sat across from me on the train. With Israel using US weapons to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians, including 4600+ children, I asked him why he refuses to call for a ceasefire: pic.twitter.com/uW7oBBX0Il

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 13, 2023

Over and over and over again Coons tried to make the exchange about how Maté is being inappropriate and unprofessional and speaking the wrong way in the wrong venue, instead of the fact that the US government is directly funding and supplying a genocidal massacre that has killed thousands of children and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

When all of this is over most of us will have regrets that we didn’t do more, but Aaron Maté won’t be among them.

I recommend watching the clip of the exchange if you haven’t seen it yet, because it’s such a perfect illustration of the way opposition to Israel’s Gaza massacre is being aggressively tone policed by those who support it. Ever since the mass slaughter of Gazans began last month there’s been a freakish trend of working to shut down opposition to this atrocity by attacking the way people are opposing it, rather than attempting to address their concerns.

One good example of this was British prime minister Rishi Sunak’s statement ahead of a peace march scheduled for Armistice Day, claiming to plan such a demonstration on that date was “provocative and disrespectful”. Sure Rishi, Armistice Day is a completely inappropriate time for demonstrators to be literally calling for an armistice.

A recent tweet by Rupa Marya, an Associate Professor of Medicine with the University of California in San Francisco reads, “I’m going to remember forever the day that Israel was shelling hospitals, killing fleeing refugees and shutting off the electricity for NICU babies in incubators, the president of UC system sent us an email expressing concern about anti-Semitism & telling us to behave ourselves.”

This is another good example of what I’m trying to point to here. People are trying to stop an active genocide and the leaders of western institutions keep trying to make the conversation about whether or not those efforts are “antisemitic”, which none of them seem to be able to define in a way that is distinct from criticism of the Israeli government for war crimes and well-documented atrocities.

A few days ago The New York Times ran a front-page article titled “After Antisemitic Attacks, Colleges Debate What Kind of Speech Is Out of Bounds,” which opens with a story about a Jewish college freshman having the horrible horrifying antisemitic experience of seeing a poster on campus which referred to Gaza as a “modern-day concentration camp”. The Times quotes the student who underwent this unspeakable trauma as saying the mood on campus “is not pro-Palestinian, it’s antisemitic.”

For the record many experts agree that Gaza can rightly be described as a giant concentration camp, not least among them the great Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein. But rather than discuss the abuses which gave rise to this crisis in the first place, outlets like The New York Times are working to make the conversation about antisemitism instead.

New reports from Mintpress News and The Intercept reveal that the massive 400 percent increase in antisemitic incidents across the United States that the mass media keep reporting is a statistic from the Anti Defamation League which includes pro-Palestine demonstrations as instances of antisemitism — even demonstrations by Jewish organizations. It turns out if you label all opposition to Israel “antisemitism” and then Israel murders thousands of children, you will inevitably see a large spike in “antisemitism” as you defined it.

Really this is all just garden variety manipulation by the western empire to shut down opposition to the political status quo. Any time a large movement emerges in opposition to the agendas of the ruling power structure you see the information ecosystem flooded with highly amplified concern trolls wagging their fingers at the tone and tactics of the movement to try and kill off the energy and drag the whole thing into inert pedantic quibbling.

That’s what you’re seeing with all the concern trolling about the popular chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” by the way. Palestinian rights activists will tell you the phrase means they want all Palestinians to be free from tyranny and abuse, and at most that they support the dismantling of the apartheid regime of Israel, but Israel supporters will look you dead in the eye and insist that the chant is a call for the genocide of Jewish people. In reality it’s no more a call for genocide than supporting the end of Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa was a call for genocide, but they re-interpret the slogan in the most negative way possible to mean something the people saying it have never intended, and then the powerful institutions of the western world start treating it like a hate crime.

All of this is just a large-scale version of the manipulation employed by Senator Coons on the train to get Aaron Maté to stop talking to him. It’s all designed to divert attention away from the actual crime that is happening and get people shaking their fists at the specific methods of the people who oppose that crime. The whole objective is to grind the conversation down into insignificant quibbling about manners and decorum so people stop drawing attention to the blood-spattered elephant in the room.

And of course another reason the powerful place so much emphasis on politeness and etiquette whenever they are confronted is because they are all acutely aware that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and that people can decide at any time to stop playing by the rules and simply tear down the ruling power structures which commit mass atrocities in their name. As long as everyone’s worried about being perceived as sufficiently well-mannered, the people will never awaken to their true power.

Aaron Mate removed from train for questioning Sen. Coons about Gaza

As always, Hedges is worth a click and a full read:

Chris Hedges: The War According to Hamas

CAIRO, Egypt: Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian resistance leader, shortly before Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, laid down the fundamental rules for warfare against the Israel. The rules by al-Araj, not a member of Hamas, provide the Palestinian lens for the incursion by Israeli forces in Gaza. While Israel’s superior firepower — its air force, missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, drones, naval forces, mechanized units and artillery — make it possible to inflict huge numbers of Palestinian casualties, most of them civilians, while Israel can level whole neighborhoods and turn hospitals, schools, power stations, water treatment plants, bakeries, mosques and churches into piles of concrete, this does not translate into a defeat of the Palestinian resistance groups.

Al-Araj argued that the fight with Israel cannot be measured with body counts. The Israelis will be able to kill far greater numbers of Palestinians. Resistant movements, he wrote, always suffer disproportionate losses. In the independence war in Algeria, between 1954 and 1962, upwards of 1.5 million Algerians — or around 10 percent of the population — were killed by the French. In the airport in Algiers, the country’s capital, is a huge sign that reads: “Welcome to Algeria. Land of a million Martyrs.”

“We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers,” he wrote.

The fight with Israel, al-Araj reminded Palestinians, must “follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza.” Never defend “fixed points and borders.” Draw the enemy into an ambush, accomplished by light resistance and tactical withdrawals. Strike the flanks and the rear. The calculus of asymmetric warfare is very different from conventional war. And what Israel defines as success, including the seizing of territory, numerous deaths and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings, matters little to the resistance fighter.The goal of Palestinian fighters is to remain elusive, to carry out lightning strikes and recede back into the rubble or the vast tunnel network under Gaza.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, says it partially destroyed more than 160 Israeli military targets in Gaza, including more than 27 tanks and vehicles in the past two days. On Nov. 11, the Al-Qassam Brigade says it lured Israeli soldiers to a burning car in the West Bank and blew up their vehicles with an IED. On Nov. 10 the Al-Qassam Brigades, Saraya Al-Quds, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, say they allowed the Israelis to advance without significant opposition during the day. In the evening they ambushed the Israeli forces west of Tal al-Hawa, in the areas around Al-Shifa Hospital, west of the Al-Shati refugee camp and west of Beit Lahia in the northern part of the Gaza strip. Israel unleashed a heavy bombardment, the Palestinian fighters said, in an attempt to rescue its soldiers. Israel reportedly suffered high numbers of casualties. On Nov. 9, Al-Qassam Brigades say they ambushed Israeli soldiers in Juhr al-Dik, targeting them with an anti-personnel rocket. The Israeli soldiers were killed, they said, at “point blank range.” On Nov. 6, the Al-Qassam Brigades say they destroyed five Israeli tanks with Yassin 105 rockets in northwest Gaza City. On Nov. 2 Al-Qassam Brigades claimed they destroyed six tanks and two military vehicles in one hour northwest of Gaza City. “The number of casualties is significantly higher than what the enemy’s leadership has announced,” said Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the Al Qassam Brigades. ...

In every war, information is weaponized. But to rely exclusively on the Israeli narrative is to be deceived, not only about the war crimes Israel carries out but the nature of the war itself. The Palestinians understand their foe. They have had a lot of experience. They knew this was coming. I suspect the fighting in Gaza will continue for a long time. Israel paid a high price on Oct. 7 when Palestinian fighters breached its borders. It will pay an even higher price in Gaza.

Ray McGovern: (fmr CIA) - More Gazan genocide before any ceasefire.

US rights group sues Biden for alleged ‘failure to prevent genocide’ in Gaza

A New York civil liberties group is suing Joe Biden for allegedly failing in his duty under international and US laws to prevent Israel committing genocide in Gaza. The Center for Constitutional Rights’ (CCR) complaint on behalf of several Palestinian groups and individuals alleges that Israel’s actions, including “mass killings”, the targeting of civilian infrastructure and forced expulsions, amount to genocide. The CCR said that the 1948 international convention against genocide requires the US and other countries to use their power and influence to stop the killing.

“As Israel’s closest ally and strongest supporter, being its biggest provider of military assistance by a large margin and with Israel being the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II, the United States has the means available to have a deterrent effect on Israeli officials now pursuing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the complaint argued.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, asks the court to bar the US from providing weapons, money and diplomatic support to Israel. It also seeks a declaration that the president, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, are required “to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel’s commission of genocidal acts against the Palestinian people of Gaza”. These include pressing Israel to end the bombing of Gaza, to lift its siege of the territory and to prevent the forcible expulsion of Palestinians.

The CCR, which won a landmark case in the US supreme court in 2004 establishing the rights of prisoners held by the US military at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, said that the Hamas cross-border attack on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 abducted, does not provide a legal justification for the scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including 4,600 children, and displaced 1.5 million people.

The lawsuit comes as the international criminal court investigates Israel and Hamas for alleged war crimes. But legal scholars say that genocide is a harder crime to prove and question whether the president can be forced to find that Israel is committing genocide and is therefore under an obligation to act. President Bill Clinton refused to recognise the systematic murder of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 as genocide in order to sidestep the legal obligation to intervene. He later apologised to the Rwandan people.

Biden SLAMMED for Israel/Gaza ‘MISINFORMATION’ By 100+ STATE DEPARTMENT Employees: Internal Memo

US officials sign memo criticizing White House for ‘unwillingness to de-escalate’ Israel-Hamas war

One hundred US government officials from the state department and international development agency have signed an internal memo criticizing the White House for “disregarding the lives of Palestinians” and for showing an “unwillingness to de-escalate” in the Israel-Hamas war.

The memo, obtained by Axios, gives a glimpse of the intense internal opposition to Joe Biden’s strategy in the five-week war. The US president has maintained firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself following the 7 October Hamas attack while urging greater humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians in the besieged enclave.

The memo, which Axios reports was organized by a “junior diplomat” within the state department, blames Biden for failing to counter Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza. It says that the Biden administration has “doubled down on our unwavering military assistance to the [Israeli government] without clear or actionable redlines”.

Meanwhile, Israel has proceeded to cut off electricity and aid to Gaza, which the memo says “all constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity under international law”.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Why Biden & Co. want wars.

Israeli forces at gates of Gaza’s main hospital with hundreds trapped

Israeli forces have reached the gates of Gaza’s largest hospital as hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies, remained trapped inside. Thousands of people have fled al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but health officials said the remaining patients were dying due to energy shortages amid intense fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants.

At least 32 patients, including three premature babies, had died over the past three days, Gaza’s health ministry said. Life-saving equipment such as incubators cannot run without fuel to run generators. “Yesterday I had 39 babies and today they have become 36,” Dr Mohamed Tabasha, head of the paediatric department at Shifa, said in a telephone interview on Monday with Reuters. “I cannot say how long they can last. I can lose another two babies today, or in an hour.”

Israel has imposed what it calls a “complete siege” on Gaza for more than a month, allowing in only a trickle of supplies. The Israeli military said it was providing safe corridors for people to escape intense fighting in the north and move south, but Palestinian officials inside Shifa said the compound was surrounded by constant heavy gunfire. Fighting has been concentrating in a tightening circle around Shifa’s gates since Israeli ground forces entered Gaza.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has repeatedly said Hamas operates from bunkers underneath Shifa. This has been denied by Hamas and hospital staff. UN officials and rights experts have stressed that hospitals should never be used by Palestinian armed groups to hide, nor should those claims be used by Israel as a pretext to attack them.

Israel DECLARES TOTAL CONTROL Of Gaza

Gaza officials stop updating death toll amid health system collapse

For the third day in a row, Gaza’s Health Ministry did not release an updated death toll of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, amid the near-total collapse of the enclave’s healthcare system. “Following the collapse of services and communications at hospitals in the north, the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza did not update casualty figures,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Sunday.

On Friday, the last time the death toll was updated, it stood at 11,078 deaths, 27,490 people injured, and 1.6 million internally displaced. During the first month of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, over 300 Gazans died each day. This likely means that the death toll has already passed 12,000. ...

US officials once again reiterated their unequivocal support for Israel’s genocide on Monday. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing, “Israel has the right to defend itself. They have the right to defend itself. And so we’re going to support Israel in doing that.” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan added, “Our position is that Israel has the right to go after Hamas,” adding that Israel is attacking “the tools and infrastructure of its terrorism.”

For the second day in a row, Sullivan refused to answer whether Israel was committing war crimes. One journalist stated: “Israel has killed around 11,000 Palestinians and rising. Two-thirds of those are women and children. The situation in the hospitals is dire. Israel has dropped an astronomical amount of ordnance in very pre-builtup areas. Is Israel, in your view, abiding by the laws of war?” Sullivan replied, “I said yesterday, I, Jake Sullivan, standing here, I’m not in a position to be judge and jury to make that determination. It’s a legal determination.”

Critically, the White House is making these statements against the background of the publication of internal documents in which US government employees categorically assert that Israel is violating international law.

Hamas Says It Discussed Freeing 70 Hostages in Exchange for Five-Day Truce

Hamas’s armed wing said Monday that it discussed with Qatari mediators a deal to free up to 70 Israeli hostages in exchange for a five-day ceasefire and the release of some Palestinian prisoners.

“Last week there was an effort from the Qatari brothers to release the enemy captives from women and children, in return for the release of 200 Palestinian children and 75 women detained by the enemy,” said Abu Ubaida, spokesman for al-Qassam Brigades, according to Reuters.

“The truce should include a complete ceasefire and allow aid and humanitarian relief everywhere in the Gaza Strip,” Ubaida said. He added that Israel was “procrastinating and evading” the price of the deal.

Israel Is Testing New Weapons on Gaza as Arms Dealers Profit from Gaza War

RAF admits to making 17 military flights to Israel since Gaza bombing began

Flight logs tracking aircraft from RAF Akrotiri, the UK’s vast air base in Cyprus, show the RAF flew military transport aircraft to Tel Aviv, Israel’s capital, every day from 13 to 26 October.

Declassified has counted 33 RAF flights from Cyprus to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport since Israel began bombing Gaza. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) told Declassified it had sent 17 flights into Israel’s capital but the time period for this number is unclear. ...

The exact nature of UK military aid to Israel remains unclear. The discovery of a large number of transport flights could make defence secretary Grant Shapps, who is in charge of the UK military, vulnerable to questioning by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has said the body is investigating evidence of war crimes perpetrated during the bombing campaign in Gaza.

US military fighting with militias in the Middle East intensifies

‘Free Speech’ Fans Call for Censoring TikTok as Chinese Plot to Make Israel Look Bad

Axios (10/31/23) reported that in a two-week period, TikTok saw “nearly four times the number of views to TikTok posts using the hashtag #StandwithPalestine globally compared to posts using the hashtag #StandwithIsrael.” As a result, the conservative outrage machine kicked into high gear.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R–Wisc.), who serves on the House select committee investigating China’s Communist Party, took to the web publication Free Press (11/1/23) to sound the alarm: TikTok’s Chinese ownership meant that a dangerous foreign power was using social media to sway public opinion against Israel. His solution was clear: It’s “time for Congress to take action. Time to ban TikTok.”

This is interesting for a few reasons, but chief among them is that the Free Press was started by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, one of a handful of conservative journalists who banded together to assert the federal government exerted too much control on Twitter before it was acquired by Elon Musk (NPR, 12/14/22). The company’s liberal corporate governance, they asserted, had suppressed conservative ideas (Washington Post, 12/13/22).

Weiss even signed the Westminster Declaration, a vow to protect “free speech”: “Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices,” it said. These “large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.” Now the Free Press fears the internet is too free, and should be cleansed of ideas deemed hurtful to the Israeli government.

Gallagher said that “TikTok is the top search engine for more than half of Gen Z, and about six in ten Americans are hooked on the app before their 17th birthday.” This is worrisome, he said, because TikTok “is controlled by America’s foremost adversary, one that does not share our interests or our values: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

This brings Gallagher, and other GOP lawmakers, to the conclusion that the US must ban TikTok. “We are ceding the ability to censor Americans’ speech to a foreign adversary,” he said–suggesting that censorship isn’t altogether wrong, it’s just wrong when committed by an undesirable entity. He pointed out that “for a century, the Federal Communications Commission has blocked concentrated foreign ownership of radio and television assets on national security grounds.”

This indicates that Gallagher, in the name of anti-Communism, doesn’t think the market should decide which media consumers can access. Instead, this must be highly regulated by a powerful federal agency. So much for his commitment to “get big government out of the way.”

He’s hardly alone. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.), who once blasted (10/20/20) what she saw as censorship against conservative voices at Facebook and Twitter, called for a ban (NBC, 11/1/23), saying “It would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) concurred, saying in a statement, “For quite some time, I have been warning that Communist China is capable of using TikTok’s algorithm to manipulate and influence Americans.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) wants a ban (UPI, 11/7/23), and the New York Post editorial board (11/6/23) approvingly cited Gallagher’s Free Press piece.

Hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who has called for punitive action against Harvard University students who made pro-Palestine statements (Wall Street Journal, 10/11/23; Business Insider, 11/5/23), “said TikTok should ‘probably be banned’ for ‘massively manipulating public opinion’ in favor of Hamas and stoking anti-Israel animus,” the New York Post (11/1/23) reported.

CNN (11/5/23) also insinuated that TikTok is skewing public opinion and reported that the Biden administration is monitoring the situation, saying the president’s aides “are also warily monitoring developments like how the Chinese government-controlled TikTok algorithm just happens to be prioritizing anti-Israel content.”

If this freakout about TikTok seems selective, that’s because it is. Since Musk took over Twitter, hate speech and antisemitism have run amok on the platform (Washington Post, 3/20/23; LA Times, 4/27/23), but congressional Republicans and their journalistic allies on the social media beat aren’t clamoring for an intervention into the mogul’s extremist influence on US discourse.

Republicans have been looking to ban TikTok, howling about its Chinese ownership, since the Trump administration, but the call became all the more real when the state of Montana banned the app completely (FAIR.org, 5/25/23). TikTok is banned on US government devices (CBS, 3/1/23); in liberal New York City, the same is true for city government devices (NPR, 8/17/23). Given all that, the concept that the Republican-held House could push to ban TikTok completely, on the grounds that it allows too much criticism of Israel, is no laughing matter.

Some of this vitriol toward TikTok is purely cynical. The Washington Post (3/30/22) reported that “Facebook parent company Meta,” a major competitor to TikTok, worked with “one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok.”

But the history of US politics has been defined by periodic moral panics about the subversion of American values through media. The Grant administration took tight control of the US Postal Service out of fear that sexual content circulated through the mail was degrading the nation’s moral core.

The advent of film spawned local and state censorship boards throughout the country, starting with Chicago in 1907. The Supreme Court held in 1915 that film was “a business pure and simple,” and thus not protected by the First Amendment—a decision not reversed until 1952. In the mid–20th century, anti-Communist zealots in the House of Representatives persecuted numerous Hollywood writers and actors, based on the suspicion that they were indoctrinating the American public with socialist ideas through the movies.

In the 1980s, Tipper Gore, wife of then-Sen. Al Gore (D–Tenn.), started a campaign that forced record labels to put warning stickers on albums with “explicit lyrics” (New York Times, 1/4/88).

The current rhetoric against TikTok is not only a hypocritical attack on free speech, it’s an insinuation that the only reason people could be critical of Israel is manipulation by a foreign government. There’s no way people from all walks of life could simply be horrified by what’s happening in Gaza; those devilish Chinese Communists must be warping their minds.

In fact, the Washington Post (11/13/23) found that TikTok was not even unique among social networks for the gap between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel support in public posts. It said:

But Facebook and Instagram, TikTok’s US-based rivals, show a remarkably similar gap, their data show. On Facebook, the #freepalestine hashtag is found on more than 11 million posts—39 times more than those with #standwithisrael. On Instagram, the pro-Palestinian hashtag is found on 6 million posts, 26 times more than the pro-Israel hashtag.

Any move by elected officials to ban TikTok should be taken seriously; it’s not just about the app’s videos about terrible first dates and secret menu items. Free speech is a principle. When so-called defenders of free speech advocate censorship because they find certain political ideas too dangerous, be very worried.

Militarized Police 'Indiscriminately' Attack Nonviolent Stop Cop City March With Tear Gas

Militarized state and local police on Monday attacked a peaceful protest against the construction of the so-called "Cop City" training center outside Atlanta, Georgia with "less-lethal" weapons including tear gas, pepper balls, and flash-bang grenades, journalists and activists there said.

Hundreds of #StopCopCity activists marched from a park toward the Weelaunee Forest in suburban DeKalb County early Monday morning. Some carried large and elaborate puppets, others had saplings to plant in woodlands bulldozed during construction, and a few carried banners reading "Block Cop City" and "Viva Tortuguita"—a reference to forest defender Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, aka "Tortuguita," who was fatally shot 57 times with live ammunition by police during a January raid on a protest camp.

SCOTUS Unveils FAKE Ethics Code After Scandals

US supreme court announces ethics code amid pressure over gift scandals

The US supreme court has finally responded to mounting pressure over a spate of ethics scandals engulfing some of its senior rightwing justices by publishing its first ever code that sets out the “rules and principles that guide the conduct of members of the court”.

The 14-page document follows months of increasingly sharp criticism of the justices and their failure to apply to themselves basic ethical rules that bind all other judges in the US. Even as they released the code, however, the justices maintained their defensive posture, insisting in a brief statement that the furore of recent months had been a “misunderstanding”.

The statement said that the absence of a code had led in recent years to the “misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules”.

The newly published code is signed by all nine justices, and lays out the basic guardrails within which they are expected to behave. The first page states baldly that “a justice should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities”. In a section labelled “Outside Influence”, the code says that the nine members of the court should not “knowingly convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the justice”.

Although the new code is designed to quell the growing disquiet over the court’s ethical standards, the instant reaction to the guidelines was not effusive. Several experts on judicial ethics pointed out that it lacks any mechanism for enforcement, leaving the justices in effect to police themselves.

Biden Aides: NO CAPACITY To Be President

Man who stormed US Capitol in face paint files paperwork for congressional run

The man who donned face paint and a horned headdress to storm the US Capitol at the 6 January insurrection has filed paperwork for a potential congressional run in Arizona as a libertarian.

Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman”, became one of the most recognizable symbols of the insurrection, as media showed him walking the halls of the Capitol and standing at the dais in the US Senate.

He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding and was sentenced to 41 months in prison. He was released early in March. ...

The right-leaning eighth district seat will be open in 2024 as Debbie Lesko, the Republican representative, announced she would not seek re-election. Since her announcement, a flood of Republican contenders have entered the race.

Report confirms governments’ fossil fuel expansion plans would blow 1.5°C limit

Today the UN published the 2023 Production Gap Report, confirming governments’ plans to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than is compatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C, despite climate promises. By 2050, planned fossil fuel production is projected to be 350% above levels consistent with the 1.5°C limit.

The report shows that since 2019, the global production gap has stayed largely the same – meaning that while there has been an increase in renewable energy deployment, governments have continued with planned fossil fuel production that is incompatible with achieving global climate targets. It emphasizes that an increase in renewable energy does not automatically translate to a decrease in fossil fuels at the scale and pace necessary. Renewable deployment must go hand in hand with active government policies to reduce fossil fuel supply and other mitigation measures to increase the effectiveness of the transition.

The report stresses that fossil fuel production must start declining immediately in order to align with 1.5°C pathways and raises the alarm on the risks associated with continuing to expand the production gap in terms of stranded assets and equity in the transition.

Recent Oil Change International analysis shows that just five Global North countries – U.S., Canada, Australia, Norway, and the UK – will be responsible for over half (51%) of all planned oil and gas field developments from now to 2050.

These countries with high incomes, diversified economies, and outsized historical responsibility for causing the climate crisis, claim to be climate leaders while planning new oil and gas extraction incompatible with a livable future. This new report confirms that such countries should phase out oil and gas production fast and provide finance in countries with less capacities.

Thousands evacuated as Iceland braces for imminent volcanic eruption

Iceland braces for volcanic eruption as prime minister reassures residents

Iceland’s prime minister has sought to reassure the nation as it braces for a volcanic eruption and the Reykjanes peninsula continues to be hit by hundreds of earthquakes.

Between midnight and early afternoon on Monday, the Icelandic meteorological office detected about 900 earthquakes as seismic activity between Sundhnúkur and Grindavík in south-west Iceland continued near the capital, Reykjavik. In recent days, a magma tunnel has formed under the peninsula, stretching out into the sea.

It comes after thousands of earthquakes have been recorded in recent days, amid warnings of the significant likelihood of the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupting within days. ...

Although the size and intensity of the activity was decreasing, the met office said the volcanic hazard assessment remained unchanged, with the country in a state of emergency. ...

In a speech in the Icelandic parliament, Katrín Jakobsdóttir said Friday’s evacuation of the town was done “with the safety of the residents in mind” but shared her sympathy with those forced to leave their homes.

Also of Interest

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

Gulf Arab Regimes’ Fake Outrage Over Gaza

Israelis Keep Hurting Their Own PR Interests By Talking

The Familiar Propaganda of US Media Makes Horrors in Gaza Possible

‘Leave the gold in the ground’: Ecuador’s forest guardians mobilise against illegal mining in Amazon

Wolves have returned to California after nearly 150 years. Not everyone is happy

We Are Not Numbers: Palestinian Journalist Ahmed Alnaouq Mourns 21 Family Members Killed by Israel - YouTube

Bibi CRACKS DOWN On Dissent As He DODGES Accountability

NY Times Writers Jazmine Hughes & Jamie Keiles Resign, Join Letter Against Israeli War on Gaza

“Mossad Could Stage False Flag Attack On U.S.” – Said U.S. Army One Day Before 9-11 !

Jill Stein Flip - Flops AGAIN On Peter Daou!

Cameron 2.0. Annalena warns Putin, winter umbrella. Ukraine Korea miracle. Freeze Russia out.

A Little Night Music

Hogman Maxey - Duckin' and Dodgin'

Hogman Maxey - Stagolee

Hogman Maxey - Worried Blues

Hogman Maxey - Black Night Is Fallin'

Hogman Maxey - Fast Life Woman

Andy Mosely And Hogman Maxey - I Know I Got Religion

Hogman Maxey - Hard Headed Woman

Hogman Maxey - Brother Mosely Crossed the Water