---

---

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Paul deLay

---

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Portland harmonica player Paul deLay. Enjoy!

^{Paul deLay - Worn Out Shoes}

"Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril."

-- William Lloyd Garrison

---

News and Opinion

Australians Being Massacred Shouldn’t Bother Us More Than Palestinians Being Massacred

On March 16 of this year, Reuters published an article titled “Israeli strikes kill 15 people in Gaza over past day, Palestinian medics say”.

Does anyone remember the 15 Palestinians who died on March 16, 2025?

Does that day stand out in anyone’s memory as particularly significant in terms of mass murder?

No?

Same here.

I honestly can’t remember it at all. This would have been during the tail end of the first fake “ceasefire”, a couple of days before Trump signed off on Israel resuming its large-scale bombing operations in Gaza, so this wasn’t one of those days with huge massacres and staggering death tolls. It doesn’t exactly stand out in the memory.

I have no idea who those people were. I don’t know their names. I never saw their pictures flashing across my news feed. I never saw any western officials denouncing their deaths, or media institutions giving wall-to-wall coverage to the news of their killing. So I don’t remember them.

15 civilians were killed in the massacre targeting Sydney's Jewish community. A day in which Israel massacres 15 Palestinian civilians in Gaza would be at the low end of the average in 2+ years of genocide.

Israel's atrocities and the impunity they receive are undoubtedly the…

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 15, 2025

I saw a tweet from Aaron Maté yesterday:

“15 civilians were killed in the massacre targeting Sydney’s Jewish community. A day in which Israel massacres 15 Palestinian civilians in Gaza would be at the low end of the average in 2+ years of genocide.

“Israel’s atrocities and the impunity they receive are undoubtedly the number one driver of anti-Semitism worldwide. And to show how little Israel and its apologists care about anti-Semitism, many are exploiting the Sydney massacre to justify Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state; baselessly blame Iran; and demand more censorship of anti-genocide protests.”

Indeed, the worst people on earth are using the Bondi Beach shooting to argue for crackdowns on free speech and freedom of assembly to silence Israel’s critics online and on the streets, in Australia and throughout the western world. And when 15 Palestinians were killed by Israel on March 16, the west barely noticed.

I don’t remember the 15 Palestinians who died during that 24-hour period in mid-March, but I will always remember the Bondi Beach shooting. Someone could mention it to me thirty years from now and I’ll know exactly what they’re talking about. My society made an infinitely bigger deal about the deaths of 15 westerners in Sydney, Australia than the deaths of 15 Palestinians in Gaza, so it will always stick in my memory.

Hell, I can’t blame it all on society; if I’m honest I made a much bigger deal about it myself. I’ve felt sick thinking about the shooting ever since it happened, partly because I know it’s going to be used to roll out authoritarian measures and stomp out free speech in my country, but also partly because I’ve felt so bad for those who died and their loved ones. Even after spending two years denouncing the way western society normalizes the murder of Arabs and places more importance on western lives than Palestinian lives, I’m still basically doing the same thing myself. I’m a damn hypocrite.

I wasn’t born this way. This was learned behavior. If I had my slate cleaned and could see the world through fresh eyes it would never occur to me that I and my society would ever see 15 people being murdered in Australia as more significant than 15 people being murdered in Palestine. I would expect them to be viewed as exactly as terrible.

And they should be. Palestinians don’t love their families any less than Australians do. Australian lives aren’t any more significant or valuable than Palestinian lives. There is no valid reason for the world to have focused any less on the 15 people who were killed in Gaza on March 16 than on the 15 people who were murdered on Bondi Beach. But it did.

When a dozen Jews are massacred in Australia, the world is in mourning.

When a dozen Palestinians are massacred every day in Gaza, the world celebrates it as a ceasefire.

— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) December 15, 2025

Sunday was an awful, dark day. Hundreds of lives have been directly devastated by this tragedy, thousands more indirectly, and in some ways the nation as a whole has been changed. The trauma will reverberate in the victim’s families for generations. The sorrow is palpable and ubiquitous. It’s everywhere; in the streets, at the supermarket. There is catastrophe in the air, and people around the world are feeling it.

And this is appropriate. This is what 15 deaths ought to feel like. This is what it feels like when you see mass murder inflicted upon a population whose murder hasn’t become normalized for you.

That’s all I’ve got to offer right now. Just the humble suggestion that every massacre of Palestinians should shake the earth just as much as the Bondi massacre has. Every death toll out of Gaza should hit us just as hard as the death toll out of Sydney did. Feel how hard this hits, and then translate it to the people of Gaza. This is happening there every single day.

In trying to get people to care about warmongering and imperialism what we’re really trying to do is get people to widen their circle of compassion to the furthest extent possible. To extend their care for the people around them to include caring about violence and abuse against people even on the other side of the world, who might not look and speak and live as they do. Maybe even extending it so far as caring about the non-human organisms who share our planet with us.

As Einstein wrote in a condolence letter toward the end of his life,

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

Humanity won’t survive into the distant future unless we grow into a conscious species, and part of that growth will necessarily include widening our circles of compassion to include our fellow beings around the world. If we can’t do that, we’re not going to make it. We’re too destructive. We hurt each other and our environment too much. We destroy everything around us trying to shore up wealth and resources for ourselves, and it simply is not sustainable. It’ll get us all killed eventually.

Wow!

This magnificent woman completely shut down a Zionist “journalist” who tried to exploit the attack on bondi beach to push an agenda.

If you see this, you’re a legend pic.twitter.com/thFekwhHEs

— ADAM (@AdameMedia) December 14, 2025

The Bondi kill*r has done this before

Australian PM rejects Netanyahu’s linking of Palestine recognition to Bondi beach attack

Australia’s prime minister has rejected accusations from his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, that Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state earlier this year had contributed to Sunday’s deadly antisemitic terrorist attack on Bondi beach in Sydney.

In an interview with national broadcasters, Anthony Albanese was asked if he accepted “any link between that recognition and the massacre in Bondi”.

“No, I don’t,” Albanese said, adding: “Overwhelmingly, most of the world recognises a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East.” ... Albanese did not directly respond to Netanyahu’s accusation that he had “replaced weakness with weakness and appeasement with more appeasement” when fighting antisemitism.

“This is a moment of national unity where we need to come together … We need to wrap our arms around members of the Jewish community who are going through an extraordinarily difficult period,” Albanese said. “My job is … to make it clear that Australians overwhelmingly stand with the Jewish community at this difficult time.”

Tensions between Australia and Israel have been high since August, when Israel revoked the visas of Australian diplomats in occupied Palestine, which Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, said at the time was an “unjustified reaction, following Australia’s decision to recognise Palestine”.

Desperate Zionists Call For Muslim Expulsion To Protect Israel

ICC Rejects Israeli Bid to Thwart Gaza War Crimes Probe

Appellate judges at the embattled International Criminal Court on Monday rejected Israel's attempt to block an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes committed during the Gaza genocide.

The ICC Appeals Chamber dismissed an Israeli challenge to the assertion that the October 7, 2023, attacks and subsequent war on Gaza were part of the same ongoing "situation" under investigation by the Hague-based tribunal since 2021. Israel argued they were separate matters that required new notice; however, the ICC panel found that the initial probe encompasses events on and after October 7.

The ruling—which focuses on but one of several Israeli legal challenges to the ICC—comes amid the tribunal's investigation into an Israeli war and siege that have left at least 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and 2 million more displaced, starved, or sickened.

The probe led to last year's ICC arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation. The ICC also issued warrants for the arrest of three Hamas commanders—all of whom have since been killed by Israel.

Important ICC judgment today in the Situation in the State of #Palestine. The ICC Appeals Chamber dismisses Israel's appeal against the PTC decision on Israel's request for an order to the Prosecution to give an Art 18(1) notice from 21 November 2024https://t.co/7UJ5fiI6bX pic.twitter.com/iQBfZMrSfm

— Sergey Vasiliev (@sevslv) December 15, 2025

Israel and the United States, neither of which are party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, vehemently reject the tribunal's investigation. In the US—which has provided Israel with more than $21 billion in armed aid as well as diplomatic cover throughout the genocide—the Trump administration has sanctioned nine ICC jurists, leaving them and their families "wiped out socially and financially."

The other Hague-based global tribunal, the International Court of Justice, is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by more than a dozen nations, as well as regional blocs representing dozens of countries.

University of Copenhagen international law professor Kevin Jon Heller—who is also a special adviser to the ICC prosecutor on war crimes—told Courthouse News Service that “the real importance of the decision is that it strongly implies Israel will lose its far more important challenge to the court’s jurisdiction over Israeli actions in Palestine."

Although Israel is not an ICC member and does not recognize its jurisdiction, Palestine is a state party to the Rome Statute, under which individuals from non-signatory nations can be held liable for crimes committed in the territory of a member state.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Monday's decision, calling it "yet another example of the ongoing politicization of the ICC and its blatant disregard for the sovereign rights of non-party states, as well as its own obligations under the Rome Statute."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington, DC-based advocacy group, welcomed the ICC decision.

“This ruling by the International Criminal Court affirms that no state is above the law and that war crimes must be fully and independently investigated," CAIR said in a statement. "Accountability is essential for justice, for the victims, and survivors, and for deterring future crimes against humanity.”

U.S. Companies Line Up for Lucrative Gaza Contracts Under Trump

ICC's Karim Khan says 'senior UK official' threatened him over Israel investigation

The British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has accused a senior British government official of threatening to withdraw the UK's funding and support for the court if he pursued arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Middle East Eye understands the official to be the then foreign secretary and former prime minister David Cameron. The allegation is contained in a statement submitted by Khan to the court which describes details of an alleged campaign of threats faced by the prosecutor in the leadup to his office requesting warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in May 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The statement, submitted on Wednesday to the ICC's appeal chamber in response to an Israeli request for Khan to be removed from the investigation and for the warrants to be dropped, appears to corroborate MEE's previous reporting which uncovered many details of efforts to undermine Khan, including Cameron's explosive phone call to the prosecutor. ...

As the preparation of warrants continued, Khan said his office came under increasing diplomatic pressure from a number of states urging him to delay or abandon applications against Israeli officials. This included a 19 April call from a senior US official warning of “disastrous consequences” if the warrants were pursued, which Khan says he rejected, citing a lack of meaningful cooperation from Israel and no change in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza.

Further pressure followed, including a 23 April phone call to Khan from “a senior UK government official” who warned that arrest warrants against Israeli leaders would be disproportionate and could lead to the UK withdrawing funding from the court. MEE can confirm, as it has previously reported, that the phone call referenced by Khan was with Cameron. During the call, according to sources with knowledge of the matter, Cameron told Khan that applying for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant would be “like dropping a hydrogen bomb”. Cameron said it was one thing to investigate and prosecute Russia for a “war of aggression” on Ukraine, but quite another to prosecute Israel when it was “defending itself from the attacks of 7 October”.

Later in April, 10 US senators wrote to Khan threatening sanctions against him and the ICC if warrants were issued. On 26 April, Netanyahu publicly criticised the ICC on social media, rejecting any attempt to undermine Israel’s right to self-defence. Khan also described meetings on 30 April and 1 May with representatives of western states and US officials, which he characterises as efforts to persuade him not to proceed. In a 1 May call, US Senator Lindsey Graham warned that pursuing warrants against Israeli officials would trigger US sanctions. Sanctions on Khan were imposed by the US in February. Other members of his office and a number of court judges have also been targeted.

Breaking Down Drop Site’s Interviews with Hamas Leaders & Massacre in El-Fasher

Syria Attack Highlights Deployment of US National Guard to Overseas Conflicts

An attack that targeted US troops in central Syria on Saturday has drawn attention to the presence of National Guard soldiers in the country and their use in combat zones in the Middle East and Africa.

The attack, perpetrated by a member of the Syrian government’s security forces, killed two members of the Iowa National Guard and a civilian interpreter. Another three members of the Iowa National Guard were injured.

“Sending National Guard members to die in undeclared wars is a betrayal of both the Constitution and the people who serve,” Dan McKnight, the founder of Bring Our Troops Home, wrote on X.

Aaron Maté : Syria, Rob Reiner and Free Speech

Israeli settlements in West Bank growing at highest level since 2017: UN

The expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is at its highest level since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking such data, according to a report by the UN chief seen by AFP on Friday.

In 2025, "plans for nearly 47,390 housing units were advanced, approved, or tendered, compared with some 26,170 in 2024," the report said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the "relentless" expansion, saying it "continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian State."

"These figures represent a sharp increase compared to previous years," he added, noting an average of 12,815 housing units were added annually between 2017 and 2022.

Merz blames US/Trump for rapid German economic decline

AMB. Chas Freeman : Trump and US Hegemony

Russia seeks $230bn in damages from Euroclear over seized assets

Russia’s central bank has said it is seeking $230bn (£170bn) in damages from Euroclear, as the Kremlin fired a warning shot against the use of Russian frozen assets to aid Ukraine. The Russian central bank said on Monday that it was claiming 18 trillion roubles, according to local state media reports about the case launched last week.

EU leaders will decide later this week whether to use €210bn in Russian frozen assets to provide Ukraine with a loan to fund its defence and keep the economy afloat. Most of the assets, €185bn (£162bn), are held at the Euroclear central securities depository in Brussels, which is the keeper of most of the Kremlin’s immobilised money. EU officials have argued that the plan is legally sound because Russia remains the owner of its sovereign wealth, which was frozen in European jurisdictions days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Moscow, however, said that using the assets is theft and has threatened to seize European private investors’ holdings in Russia. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who has assumed a key role in peace talks, wrote on X that Russia “will win in court” and “get [the assets] back”, adding that the EU, the euro currency and Euroclear “will suffer’” from the plan.

While judges in EU countries will not recognise Russian court judgments, analysts expect Russia to seek enforcement in countries with ties to Moscow. “The Bank of Russia may attempt to enforce a Russian court’s decision against Euroclear in China, Hong Kong, the UAE, Kazakhstan and other friendly jurisdictions, if such assets can be identified,” Gleb Boyko from the NSP law firm told Reuters.

EU officials said they are working on measures to discourage other countries from aiding any Russian legal action against Europeans, as well as safeguards to protect EU member states with assets in Russia from “illegal expropriation”.

Putin's Air Blitz SMASHES Ukraine, Trump BEGS For Peace

Venezuela accuses Trinidad and Tobago of taking part in US seizure of oil tanker

Venezuela has accused the government of Trinidad and Tobago of taking part in the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast last week, as Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro continues to reverberate across the region. In a statement on Monday, the Maduro regime accused Trinidad and Tobago of participating in “the theft of Venezuelan oil, committed by the US administration on 10 December with the assault on a vessel transporting this strategic Venezuelan product”. ...

Earlier on Monday, the government of Trinidad and Tobago had announced it would allow the US military access to its airports in the coming weeks following the recent installation of a radar system. The Caribbean nation said the radar was being used to combat local crime and would not serve as a launchpad for attacks on any other country. The Venezuelan statement, posted on Telegram in the name of the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, accused T&T prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, of turning the Caribbean nation “into an aircraft carrier of the American empire against Venezuela” in an “act of vassalage”. ...

Earlier on Monday, T&T announced that the US would use its airports for activities “logistical in nature, facilitating supply replenishment and routine personnel rotations”, according to a statement from its foreign ministry. It did not provide further details.

Domestic critics of the T&T government had already warned that the country risked being drawn into Trump’s campaign against Maduro. Amery Browne, an opposition senator and T&T’s former foreign minister, accused the government on Monday of being deceptive in its announcement. Browne said that T&T has become “complicit facilitators of extrajudicial killings, cross-border tension and belligerence”. He added: “There is nothing routine about this. It has nothing to do with the usual cooperation and friendly collaborations that we have enjoyed with the US and all of our neighbours for decades.” ...

Persad-Bissessar initially said a US C-17 aircraft that landed in Tobago was carrying marines to assist with a road construction project. But after images of the radar installation emerged, she admitted at least 100 marines were in the country, along with a military-grade radar unit – believed to be a long-range, high-performance AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR, which the US defence company Northrop Grumman says is used for air surveillance, air defence and counter-fire.

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : How Close is WWIII?

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar says ICE agents pulled over her son in Minnesota

Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar told a Minneapolis broadcaster that her son had been stopped over the weekend by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, after Donald Trump ordered an operation targeting the Minnesota city’s Somali population.

“Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by [ICE] agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go,” Omar said on Sunday in an interview with WCCO.

She added that her son, who she did not name, had earlier been praying at a mosque when ICE agents arrived and entered, before leaving without incident. She noted that he “always carries” his passport with him.

Following that encounter, Omar said she told her son, “just how worried I am, because all of these areas that they are talking about are areas where he could possibly find himself in and they are racially profiling, they are looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented.”

Trump Officials Falsely Claim Citizens Must Carry Immigration Docs to Prove Their Status

Federal law enforcement agencies are detaining US citizens who do not carry proof of their citizenship in what civil rights advocates describe as a flagrant violation of constitutional rights—and a top Trump administration official is claiming the government has the authority to do so.

A Somali-born Minnesota man was alarmed by the practice last Tuesday when immigration agents tackled him, handcuffed him, and arrested him, refusing to accept his REAL ID as proof of his legal residence in a video that was widely circulated on social media.

The man, who identified only as Mubashir, was placed into a chokehold and forced to his knees in the snow on his way to get food in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which has a large Somali population.

ICE detain U.S. citizen for "looking" Somali—use illegal chokehold to tackle him to ground.

Man repeatedly begs agents to look at his digital passport ID—they refuse.

Drove him 7 miles away before releasing him alone into Minnesota snow storm—told him to "walk home" in freezing… pic.twitter.com/I07pT2ptVN

— LongTimeFirstTime (@LongTimeHistory) December 10, 2025

As the Sahan Journal describes:

Mubashir said he told officers multiple times that he is a US citizen and asked if he could show them his ID. Officers ignored him, dragged him in the snow, and pushed him into a car as witnesses yelled and blew whistles, according to the video of his arrest.

The arrest occurred as federal agents walked into nearby businesses in the Somali-heavy neighborhood, questioning people and asking them to show their passports. Mubashir said he was in the car with officers for about 20 minutes, asking them repeatedly if he could show them his ID. They refused, he said.

According to the report, officers asked if they could photograph Mubashir to check whether he's a US citizen—likely to run his information through a facial recognition application that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acknowledged it uses during immigration stops, including on US citizens without their consent.

Mubashir declined to have his photo taken, asking: "How would a picture prove I’m a US citizen?”

He was later taken to a federal building that houses an immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. Only after having his fingerprint taken was Mubashir allowed to present his ID and given permission to leave.

Officers refused to drop him back off at Cedar-Riverside, instead telling him to walk home more than seven miles in the midst of a snowstorm, which had led authorities to issue a weather advisory.

“I deserve to be here like anyone else—I’m a US citizen,” Mubashir said. “I can’t even step outside without being tackled—no question—because I’m Somali.”

"I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say 'police.' That's embarrassing," Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said to Mubashir during a press conference on Wednesday.

According to legal experts, there is no requirement under US law that American citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment's notice.

In comments to KQED, a public radio station in San Francisco, earlier this month, Richard Boswell, a law professor at the University of California Law School, called it “most troubling” that US citizens have felt the need to carry their ID to avoid harassment.

“There is no reason why government officers can or should be questioning people about their citizenship without any reason to suspect that they are noncitizens who are here unlawfully,” he explained.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noncitizens must carry proof of their legal status, such as a green card or a foreign passport with stamps indicating a lawful visa.

About two dozen states require residents to identify themselves if stopped by law enforcement. But none require citizens to carry a physical ID at all times, except in specific cases, such as operating a motorized vehicle.

And, as Bree Bernwanger, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, explained, “there is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them." Unless police have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the US unlawfully, she said, "there shouldn’t be a reason to have to carry your papers, because immigration agents aren’t supposed to stop people or detain them."

But as backlash rolled in from the video of Mubashir's arrest, the man leading Trump's mass deportation crusade, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, seemed to falsely suggest via social media that citizens are required to carry proof of their citizenship.

"One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A REAL ID is not an immigration document," he wrote in response to a post about Mubashir's arrest, which noted his citizenship.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, responded that "in no way does the INA require citizens to carry immigration documents" and that Bovino is "just letting his jackboot thugs presumptively detain whomever they like."

Immigration lawyer Jared McClain later noted on social media that, in response to a class-action suit arguing against indiscriminate workplace raids, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) argued that an Alabama construction worker, who was kept in handcuffs even after presenting multiple REAL IDs to agents, had still not done enough to prove his citizenship, according to the federal officers.

"This is the official policy—not a one-off," McClain said.

Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the filing was "official confirmation that ICE HSI believes that it can, in fact, detain US citizens for immigration checks, and keep them handcuffed while they have their biometrics run."

"That is a chilling assertion," he said.

ProPublica found in October that at least 170 Americans have been detained by immigration agents, sometimes for days, with some having been "dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot."

But months after the report was published, top administration officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—continue to emphatically deny that any US citizens have been detained during the second Trump administration.

At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Noem abruptly left before Democrats could grill her on reports that citizens had been arrested, claiming she had to speak at a different committee hearing. Reports later found that the hearing had already been cancelled, leading to accusations that Noem misled Congress.

In response to Bovino's assertion that REAL IDs are not immigration documents, Nicole Foy, a reporter at ProPublica, told the Border Patrol commander: "We've been trying to request an interview with you for months now about the enforcement operations you're leading and the detention of US citizens."

"Why does a US citizen need to carry immigration documents?" she asked. At press time, Bovino had not publicly responded to Foy's question.

US green card holder sues ICE over claims of ‘violent assault’

A US immigrant with legal status and her two American children have filed a lawsuit against ICE, after they were hospitalized following a “violent” and “unlawful” detention in Massachusetts. Hilda Ramirez Sanan, a green card holder who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, and her two US citizen children were “illegally and forcefully detained”, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit says Ramirez Sanan and her children were detained while accompanying her brother-in-law to a court hearing in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on 26 September. When they arrived at the courthouse four unmarked ICE vehicles “surrounded and blocked” Ramirez Sanan’s car, according to the lawsuit. “Within seconds, and without stopping to identify themselves, ask any questions, or give any warnings or orders for the passengers to follow, the officers surrounded the car and used a sharp tool to shatter both the front and back windows on the driver side, hitting Ramirez Sanan and [her brother-in-law] with shards of glass,” the lawsuit says.

Lawyers said ICE officers then “then violently arrested Ramirez Sanan”, “by forcefully twisting her arms back to handcuff her, kicking her, and smashing her against the ground face-first – all in front of her terrified children”.

“The officers also reached into the car to unbuckle her 13-year-old son’s seatbelt and grabbed his arms to forcibly pull the child – who is on the autism spectrum – out of the car,” lawyers for Ramirez Sanan, 50, said. “ICE officers questioned the shaking, crying 13-year-old about his legal status, age, and who he lived with. An officer threatened to arrest the 13-year-old if he did not answer or produce proof of legal status, despite his age, obvious distress, and disability.”

The ICE officers then attempted to force Ramirez Sanan into one of the unmarked vehicles, the lawsuit said. They only desisted when local police asked them to check Ramirez Sanan’s identification, according to the lawsuit. After the incident Ramirez Sanan and her children were taken by ambulance to the emergency room. Her lawyers said she suffered a concussion, bruising, and a radial nerve palsy from her arm was twisted while ICE officers handcuffed her.

---

---

Democrat on ousting Republican in Pennsylvania’s ’swingiest’ county: ‘Partnering with ICE is a losing proposition’

Only 40 miles north of Philadelphia, Bucks county has gained a reputation as the “swingiest” county in the swing state of Pennsylvania and one of the most pivotal political bellwethers in the country.

Party registration in the county is almost evenly split among Democrats and Republicans. Joe Biden won it in 2020, Donald Trump triumphed there in 2024. November’s elections there were local – but a hot race for county sheriff drew much wider attention as a microcosm for America’s contentious debate around immigration policy – and the result signaled a shake-up in how the county approaches enforcement.

In the second Trump administration, incumbent sheriff Frederick Harran, a Republican, had joined many other conservative law enforcement officials across the nation and signed an agreement to work with the federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency. ... Danny Ceisler, a 33-year-old army veteran who worked at the Pentagon and for Pennsylvania Democratic governor Josh Shapiro’s administration, stood against Harran as a Democrat for sheriff. In his campaign, he pledged to terminate the partnership with ICE.

And Ceisler won, not even narrowly. His 23,000 extra votes was an 11% victory over Harran, who had been a law enforcement officer for more than three decades. ... “People were choosing between: do they like what Donald Trump is doing with ICE? Or do they want to see it happening in Bucks county?” said Ceisler, whose term starts in January. He added: “And in a county that Donald Trump won just a year ago, we are now sending a message to law enforcement all over the country that partnering with ICE is a losing proposition.”

---

---

Glaciers to reach peak rate of extinction in the Alps in eight years

Glaciers in the European Alps are likely to reach their peak rate of extinction in only eight years, according to a study, with more than 100 due to melt away permanently by 2033. Glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later, with more than 800 disappearing each year by then. The melting of glaciers driven by human-caused global heating is one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Communities around the world have already held funeral ceremonies for lost glaciers, and a Global Glacier Casualty List records the names and histories of those that have vanished.

About 200,000 glaciers remain worldwide, with about 750 disappearing each year. However, the research indicates this pace will accelerate rapidly as emissions from burning fossil fuels continue to be released into the atmosphere. Current climate action plans from governments are forecast to push global temperatures to about 2.7C above preindustrial levels, supercharging extreme weather. Under this scenario, glacier losses would peak at about 3,000 a year in 2040 and plateau at that rate until 2060. By the end of the century, 80% of today’s glaciers will have gone.

By contrast, rapid cuts to carbon emissions to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C would cap annual losses at about 2,000 a year in 2040, after which the rate would decline. Previous studies have focused on the volume of ice lost, given its contribution to rising sea levels that threaten coastal towns and cities. Individual glaciers, however, are also important as water sources and tourist attractions for many communities, and often have spiritual significance for local people. ...

Many glaciers hold spiritual significance, for example Māori culture regard them as ancestors. The Māori political leader Nā Lisa Tumahai visited the melting Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere in 2022 and told the Global Glacier Casualty List: “This mighty glacier, a presence once so physically commanding, is shrinking into oblivion. [It] has been subdued, humiliated by the actions of humans. “To see this retreating giant is to understand impermanence, to understand the real and terrible results of industrialisation, of climate change.”

The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, analysed more than 200,000 glaciers from a database of outlines derived from satellite images. The researchers used three global glacier models to assess their fate under different heating scenarios.

Fox News: SACRIFICE Christmas Tree To Protect AI Data Centers

Bushfires ravage Western Australia as temperatures soar

Extreme heat and bushfires have ravaged the parched landscape of Western Australia. With temperatures expected to continue soaring above 40C (104F) over the coming days, the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe heatwave warning across much of the south-west.

The conditions follow bushfires in New South Wales this month, which resulted in the destruction of homes and loss of life. Severe heatwave warnings have also been issued for later this week in parts of South Australia and New South Wales, as a ridge of high pressure moves eastward, bringing blazing sunshine to much of the region.

---

Also of Interest

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

The US supreme court’s TikTok ruling is a scandal

‘It was a matter of conscience’: Ahmed al-Ahmed’s family reveal why he risked his life to disarm alleged Bondi shooter

EU Sanctions Swiss Intelligence Expert Jacques Baud

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rebuked for Backing Trump’s March Toward War With Venezuela

Apologist for Pinochet Dictatorship Will Be Next President of Chile

Higher US Profits Are WHY The US Can’t Compete (American won’t re-industrialize)

DISASTER Interview For Erika Kirk With Bari Weiss On CBS

---

A Little Night Music

Paul deLay - Mean Old World

Paul deLay - Keep On Drinkin

Paul deLay - Fourteen Dollars In The Bank

Paul deLay - Too Old to Scold

Paul deLay - Tiger In Your Tank

Paul Delay - Blues in the night

Paul deLay - It Isn't Easy Being Big

Paul Delay Band - Bess And Ernie's Rib Joint

Paul deLay Band - Who Will Be Next

---