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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Pete Johnson

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Kansas City blues and boogie woogie piano player Pete Johnson. Enjoy!

^{Pete Johnson - Rocket Boogie}

"The food and fuel crisis that’s about to hit is the fault of the US and Israel. All US and Israeli allies should end the alliances and collaborate with nations around the world to establish a new order of international power."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

Mood of the Day?

On Monday, President Trump said on social media that “Israel never talked me into the war with Iran.”

On Tuesday, the State Department issued a press release which included the words “the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally.”

So I guess the official answer to the question of whether the US went to war with Iran at Israel’s request depends on the mood of the day and which administration figure happens to be speaking at the moment.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : How Trump Lost His War

Deadly Israeli attacks worsen Gaza’s water shortage crisis

Israeli forces in Gaza killed a water engineer and two drivers who transported water to displaced families over four days in mid-April, exacerbating severe shortages of clean water that are fuelling the spread of preventable disease. Israeli limits on the shipment of soap, washing powder and other hygiene products into Gaza have also forced prices up, adding to the challenge of keeping clean and avoiding infection in overcrowded shelters and tent encampments.

Over more than two and a half years of war, Israeli attacks have destroyed most of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including networks that provided clean water and removed and treated sewage. They have also repeatedly killed Palestinian civilians trying to maintain or restore them. ‘‘Since the beginning of the war, we have lost about 19 workers from water facilities who were carrying out repair and distribution work,” said Omar Shatat, the deputy director of Gaza’s coastal municipalities water utility. “Targeting has become part of the operational reality.’’

The most recent attack was a strike on al-Zein well in northern Gaza last Monday, when water engineers were working inside. The attack killed one, injured four and caused extensive structural damage to “a critical water source serving the surrounding population”, according to an incident report seen by the Guardian. The document warned that the disruption to water supplies would affect thousands of people.

Four days earlier, Israeli forces shot dead two drivers working for Unicef, the UN agency for children, at the main water collection point for northern Gaza. Two others were injured in the attack, which Unicef said threatened the humanitarian networks bringing clean water to hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza.

Laureline Lasserre, Médecins Sans Frontières’ emergency humanitarian affairs manager for Gaza, said people were getting sick because they could not access clean water and basic sanitation. “No clean water, no soap, overcrowded living conditions; this is the root cause of a huge proportion of what we treat every day,” she said. Many Palestinians have to choose between drinking, cooking and washing on a daily basis, she said. “The Israeli authorities have destroyed water infrastructure and are blocking humanitarians from providing alternatives. They are causing the water crisis and preventing the solution.”

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : US on a Cliff of Insanity

Lawrence Wilkerson: Araghchi Meets Putin as Russia Goes All-In on Iran

Anyone Still Arguing Trump’s Iran War Isn’t Illegal Will Soon Be Out of Excuses

In late February, President Donald Trump launched a war of choice with Iran that many legal scholars have called illegal for numerous reasons, including that the president received no authorization from Congress or the United Nations Security Council before carrying out the attack, and that the invasion was not started in self-defense.

Defenders of the war have nevertheless claimed that Trump’s decision to attack Iran is covered by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which allows the president to deploy military forces for up to 60 days so long as he provides the US Congress with notification within 48 hours of launching strikes.

With the Iran war set to surpass the 60-day threshold by the end of this week, legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, argued in an editorial published by The New York Times on Monday that time is about to run out for defenders of the deeply unpopular war.

The US attacks will “clearly be illegal” should they continue without any congressional approval, said Chemerinsky.

Chemerinsky predicted that Trump and Republicans in Congress will shrug off this deadline, even though the War Powers Resolution “doesn’t come with a check box for opting out.”

This would then put the onus on courts to declare the war illegal and demand its end, Chemerinsky continued, although he acknowledged that the chances of a court enforcing the War Powers Resolution were slim, given a long history of courts dismissing claims brought under the 1973 law.

Even so, he encouraged opponents of the war to file lawsuits aimed at ending the conflict, given that the alternative is to simply grant the president unchecked powers to launch wars of choice.

“The courts should simply hold that the War Powers Resolution requires the president to end our involvement in the war with Iran unless and until Congress authorizes it,” Chemerinsky concluded. “This shouldn’t be—and isn’t—different than any other injunction on any administration to comply with the law. Mr. Trump might disregard such an order. But that isn’t a reason for the federal judiciary to abandon its duty to enforce the law.”

Congressional Democrats have repeatedly forced votes on war powers resolutions that would end the Iran War, but each time have fallen short of the votes needed in the Republican-controlled Congress.

An April 16 war powers resolution in the US House of Representatives came one vote short of passing, with Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) joining nearly all Republicans in voting against it.

Chemerinsky pointed to the unwillingness of Congress to take responsibility for war powers as a reason for courts to intervene, and warned of dire consequences should they fail to declare the war illegal.

“In the face of congressional inaction, and without judicial enforcement, there are realistically no checks on the president’s ability to unilaterally wage war,” wrote Chemerinsky. “If the federal judiciary, up to and including the Supreme Court, won’t uphold its responsibility here, it will nullify our Constitution’s design that two branches of government should be involved when our country goes to war.”

Max Blumenthal : US Industry LOVES War

Iran Says Nearly Half of Iranians Killed by US-Israeli Bombing Campaign Were Civilians

An Iranian official said on Sunday that nearly half of the Iranians killed by the US-Israeli bombing campaign that lasted from February 28 to April 8 were civilians, as strikes pounded civilian targets throughout the war.

According to Tehran Times, Jamshid Nazmi, an advisor at Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, said that at least 3,468 were killed by the US-Israeli strikes. He said that 1,460 of the victims were identified as civilians.

The Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA), a US-based and US-funded NGO that’s very critical of the Iranian government, has put out similar numbers, though it has reported a higher number of civilians killed. The group said in its last update on the death toll on April 7 that it recorded the killing of 1,701 civilians, 1,221 military personnel, and 714 people yet to be identified, a total of 3,636 deaths.

Congressman Pushes Bill To Give Benefits To IDF Veterans

‘Israel must change direction’: Netanyahu rivals join forces for next election

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is facing the prospect of running against a rightwing-centrist super coalition in elections later this year after two of his most formidable political rivals combined forces in an attempt to oust him, inviting a third party leader to join them. In a move that some analysts compared to the centre-right coalition that removed Viktor Orbán from power in Hungary, the former prime ministers – rightwing Naftali Bennett and centrist Yair Lapid – issued statements announcing the merger of their parties, Bennett 2026 and Yesh Atid (There is a Future).

The move came as Netanyahu disclosed he had recently had a malignant tumour removed from his prostate, leading to questions about the timing of a disclosure that was vague on details and his wider health, with the latter now likely to be an election issue. “We are standing here together for the sake of our children. The state of Israel must change direction,” Lapid said standing alongside Bennett at a joint news conference on Sunday.

Bennett said the new party would be called Together and that he would be its leader. “After 30 years, it is time to part with Netanyahu and open a new chapter for Israel,” he said.

Bennet also invited Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff and leader of the Yashar party to join them. Polls suggest that a combination of the three parties would create the largest grouping in the Knesset. On Monday, Eisenkot asked Bennett to coordinate any future moves with him. Although Eisenkot has not formally announced whether he will join the coalition, he quickly welcomed the new grouping.

“The goal of winning the critical elections ahead of us is a shared one,” Eisenkot wrote, calling Bennett and Lapid “partners” and pledging to continue acting “responsibly and wisely” to achieve “the victory and change required for the state of Israel”.

Iran War's Real Ticking Timebomb: Imminent Energy & Food Crisis /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Steve Jermy

UAE Ditches OPEC, Oil Markets Scramble

Worker Killed by Ukrainian Drone Attack on Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

A Ukrainian drone attack on Monday killed a driver at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which has been under Russian control since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to a spokeswoman for the plant’s Russian-installed management, the attack marked the first time an employee was killed by a Ukrainian attack. “This is the first case when a Zaporizhzhia NPP employee was killed in a Ukrainian strike while at his workstation,” the spokeswoman said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

“Previously, our employees had only been wounded in such enemy attacks. The lone death was Andrey Korotky, who was killed in a terror attack by the Kiev regime in Energodar,” she added.

CPT. Matt Hoh : Will US Troops Kill Innocents?

Evil never sleeps.

US strike kills three on alleged narco boat as campaign death toll hits 185

The US military said on Sunday three men were killed when it struck a boat it claimed was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

This latest strike – which follows dozens of similar attacks on alleged drug boats in recent months – brings the US campaign’s death toll to at least 185, according to a tally compiled by Agence France-Presse.

As with many previous attacks, the US military’s southern command said on X that the boat hit was “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations” and that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes”.

The Trump administration has not provided definitive evidence that the vessels it has been striking since September are involved in drug trafficking, prompting debate about the legality of the operations.

Mexico warns US involvement in anti-drug operation should not be repeated

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said on Monday that her government told the United States, in a diplomatic note, that the unauthorized presence of US officials at an anti-narcotics operation in the northern state of Chihuahua should not be repeated.

The incident came to light after two US officials, along with two Mexican officials, were killed in a car crash on 19 April after the operation. Sheinbaum has said the federal government was not aware of the participation of the US officials, who were widely reported to be CIA officers.

“What we told [the US] was that the federal government didn’t know about the involvement of these people [in the operation] and we hope that it’s an exception,” Sheinbaum said in her daily morning press conference.

Mexico requested that “from now on, as has been done, our constitution and national security law should be followed”, Sheinbaum added, saying that the US had indicated its agreement.

On Saturday, Mexico’s security cabinet said in a statement that the US officials lacked formal accreditation to participate in security activities in Mexico and that one of them had entered the country as a tourist.

California billionaire tax proposal garners enough signatures to head to ballot

The backers of a proposal to levy a one-time tax on California billionaires say they have gathered enough signatures to place the measure on the ballot in November. The initiative has become one of the most politically contentious issues in the state over the past year, spurring tech moguls to spend tens of millions of dollars to oppose it. The campaign, which is sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West labor union, has collected more than 1.5m signatures, according to a statement from the organization. The measure required 870,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The proposed billionaires’ tax has coincided with a surge of political spending and attempts by some of California’s wealthiest residents to relocate assets to other states. While labor unions have pushed the initiative as a way to address costs of healthcare and food assistance, tech leaders and Governor Gavin Newsom have condemned the proposal and vowed to stop it from passing. The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires – including stocks, art, businesses, collectibles and intellectual property – to backfill federal funding cuts to health services for lower-income people that were signed by Donald Trump last year. The tax would apply retroactively to billionaires living in the state as of 1 January.

Advocates for the tax and members of labor unions held a press conference on Monday to announce they would turn in the signatures for ballot approval. Flanked by a row of healthcare workers holding signs including “keep hospitals and ERs open”, union members called for Californians to back the tax in order to save the state’s public health system and address inequality. “Ultra-wealthy billionaires have seen their fortunes skyrocket, even as food, rent, gas prices increase,” said Mayra Castañeda, a healthcare worker who campaigned for the proposal. “We say that those who have prospered from here in California can afford to invest a little more in keeping California running.”

California has more billionaires than any other state – a few hundred, by some estimates. Nearly half the state’s personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in its nearly $350bn budget, comes from the top 1% of earners. “Being taxed like every other resident will not hurt the billionaires,” Liz Perlman, a California labor leader, said at the press conference. “It will not reduce the number of yachts they get to waterski behind, but it will help our hospitals and the workers who have been unfairly punished by Trump’s cruelty.”

Tech moguls, including current and former chief executives from companies such as Google, DoorDash, Reddit, LinkedIn and Facebook, have poured money into the campaign against the tax.

US immigration agents left a refugee to die in the cold. His community is demanding justice

Since Nurul Amin Shah Alam’s death in February, the fear across Buffalo’s East Side has been palpable. Alam, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, who spoke no English and had mental health issues, was dropped by federal immigration officers outside a closed coffee shop in the middle of a brutal winter. He had spent months in custody following a confusing encounter with local law enforcement, then was released – alone, in the cold – far from the Rohingya community hub where he might have found help. Days later, he died.

Two months later, Rohingya refugees are carpooling in groups of four or five to get to work. Assemblyman Jonathan Rivera says he sees the same thing across his district, where immigrant congregations are emptying because people are afraid to leave their homes. Azimah Jalil, program director and co-founder of the support services hub Rohingya Empowerment Community (REC), said the news triggered memories of military violence in Myanmar. She thinks about her own father, who also struggles with poor vision and limited English. “What if what happened to Amin happened to my dad?” she said.

Yet out of that terror, something new is rising. Historically cautious about confronting state institutions, Buffalo’s Rohingya community is using Alam’s memory as a catalyst – pushing for the New York for All act, which would prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, and demanding accountability for the systemic failures that cost Alam his life.

The community the REC serves is unlike almost any other. The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar – a people the United Nations has called the most persecuted minority in the world. Since 1982, Burma’s citizenship law has formally excluded them from the country’s list of recognized ethnicities, and they have been denied citizenship in their own country. They have been stripped of the right to work, travel or attend school, and subjected to waves of military violence so severe that international investigators have called it genocide.

Currently, the New York for All act is a central point of negotiation in the delayed state budget, with a growing coalition of lawmakers and advocates demanding its full passage. For Jalil’s husband and REC co-founder Imran Fazal and the Rohingya community in Buffalo, the act represents far more than a legislative line item. It is an attempt to dismantle a pipeline of fear that feels hauntingly familiar to a people who have spent decades fleeing a predatory state. “As genocide survivors, we have endured immense hardship across multiple countries due to our statelessness,” Fazal said. “We never imagined that we would still have to live in fear – worried about police encounters or feeling confined to our homes.”

US supreme court hears whether smartphone location data warrants infringe users’ privacy

The US supreme court is considering whether sprawling warrants for smartphone location data infringe on Americans’ privacy rights and violate the constitution. Justices heard opening arguments in Chatrie v United States on Monday that concerned law enforcement’s reliance on so-called “geofence warrants” in difficult cases. The case was originally brought by Okello Chatrie, whose phone location data helped police in Richmond, Virginia, track him down after he robbed a bank at gunpoint and escaped with $195,000 in 2019. Chatrie pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but his lawyers argue none of the evidence against him should have been admissible in court.

A lawyer for the US Department of Justice argued that nearly any actions taken in public while in possession of a smartphone afforded no expectation of privacy. “An individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in movements that anyone could see, that he has opted to allow a third party to analyze for its own purposes,” the US solicitor general, a high-ranking lawyer for Donald Trump’s administration, has argued in legal filings.

Law enforcement is increasingly demanding that tech companies hand over sensitive phone location data on people at or near a site where a suspected crime occurred – anyone who falls within the radius of a virtual “fence”. These geofence warrants, rather than specifying their targets, instead compel tech companies to hand over data to police or the FBI on every electronic device in a particular place at a given time.

Privacy advocates and some legal experts view geofence searches as a dragnet that sweeps up innocent bystanders. “Just because you have a cell phone, should you be subjected to all sorts of law enforcement investigations because of crimes that may have happened in your vicinity?” said Paul Ohm, a law professor at Georgetown University, who submitted an amicus brief in the case. These warrants can lead to an individual’s phone location data being shared with the police simply because they “were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even worse – you weren’t, but your phone thought you were”, Ohm added.

After officers interviewed witnesses at the bank Chatrie robbed and reviewed security footage, they had no leads. In a geofence warrant request, law enforcement requested that Google provide phone location data for a 30-minute period before and after the robbery from all cellphones within 150 meters of the bank, bringing in Chatrie’s phone location data but also information on 19 other accounts. The detective on the case asked Google for more data on all of these people, but the tech company pushed back, and eventually he only requested further information on nine people. Towards the end of the investigative process, that number whittled down to three devices; one was Chatrie’s, and the information included an email address with his name.

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US supreme court weighs blocking lawsuits against Roundup makers alleging weedkiller causes cancer

Members of the US supreme court peppered lawyers for the former Monsanto Company with a barrage of questions over pesticide regulation on Monday, wrestling over whether federal law preempts state actions that permit consumers to sue companies for failing to warn of product risks such as cancer. The case, Monsanto v Durnell, centers on glyphosate – a weedkilling chemical used in the popular Roundup brand and numerous other herbicide products sold by the former Monsanto company, which is now owned by Germany’s Bayer.

The chemical has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015. Bayer, has spent the last decade fighting more than 100,000 lawsuits by people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma they blame on exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate weed killers. The company has paid out billions of dollars in jury awards and settlements.

In the Durnell case, as well as many others that have gone to trial, the jury found that Monsanto had failed to warn the plaintiff that glyphosate could cause cancer.

While maintaining that its products don’t cause cancer, Monsanto is asking the supreme court to rule that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (Fifra), it cannot be held liable for failing to warn of a cancer risk if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not found such a risk exists and not required such a warning. The EPA’s position is that glyphosate is “unlikely” to be carcinogenic.

If Monsanto prevails before the high court, it would make it harder for consumers to file such lawsuits, not just against Monsanto, but against other pesticide makers as well.

Heavy rain not ‘nearly enough’ to tame two wildfires in drought-stricken Georgia

Heavy rain slowed the progress of two sprawling southern Georgia wildfires over the weekend, allowing crews to make some progress in containing the blazes that have destroyed more than 100 homes.

Although the rain helped the firefighting efforts, it wasn’t “nearly enough to put the fires out” and crews responded to 10 new blazes throughout the drought-stricken state Sunday, the Georgia Forestry Commission said on Monday.

An unusually large number of wildfires are burning this spring across the south-east. Firefighters have been battling more than 150 other wildfires in Georgia and Florida alone.

Scientists say the threat of fire has been amplified by a combination of extreme drought, gusty winds, the climate crisis and dead trees and other vegetation.

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Also of Interest

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

Iran War: Narrative Dissolution as Ceasefire Continues Except in Lebanon

The Abuse of Language By Media and Government

Von der Leyen’s ‘Gaffe’ Hints at Pressure Building on Türkiye

Russia Still Seems To Have Hope For A Deal With Trump

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A Little Night Music

Pete Johnson and Joe Turner - Roll 'Em Pete

Pete Johnson ~ Dive Bomber

Pete Johnson - Pete's Lonesome Blues

Pete Johnson And His Boogie Woogie Boys - Cherry Red

Pete Johnson & Albert Ammons - Boogie Woogie Man

Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons - Pine Creek

Pete Johnson And His Boogie Woogie Boys - Lovin' Mama Blues

Pete Johnson Piano & Sextet - Rocket Boogie 88

Pete Johnson's Band - 627 Stomp

Pete Johnson - Climbin' And Screamin'

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