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"It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners."

-- Albert Camus

News and Opinion

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Willing Executioners

Run, the Israelis demand, run for your lives. Run from Rafah the way you ran from Gaza City, the way you ran from Jabalia, the way you ran from Deir al-Balah, the way you ran from Beit Hanoun, the way you ran from Bani Suheila, the way you ran from Khan Yunis. Run or we will kill you. We will drop 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs on your tent encampments. We will spray you with bullets from our machine-gun-equipped drones. We will pound you with artillery and tank shells. We will shoot you down with snipers. We will decimate your tents, your refugee camps, your cities and towns, your homes, your schools, your hospitals and your water purification plants. We will rain death from the sky.

Run for your lives. Again and again and again. Pack up the pathetic few belongings you have left. Blankets. A couple of pots. Some clothes. We don’t care how exhausted you are, how hungry you are, how terrified you are, how sick you are, how old, or how young you are. Run. Run. Run. And when you run in terror to one part of Gaza we will make you turn around and run to another. Trapped in a labyrinth of death. Back and forth. Up and down. Side to side. Six. Seven. Eight times. We toy with you like mice in a trap. Then we deport you so you can never return. Or we kill you.

Let the world denounce our genocide. What do we care? The billions in military aid flows unchecked from our American ally. The fighter jets. The artillery shells. The tanks. The bombs. An endless supply. We kill children by the thousands. We kill women and the elderly by the thousands. The sick and injured, without medicine and hospitals, die. We poison the water. We cut off the food. We make you starve. We created this hell. We are the masters. Law. Duty. A code of conduct. They do not exist for us.

But first we toy with you. We humiliate you. We terrorize you. We revel in your fear. We are amused by your pathetic attempts to survive. You are not human. You are creatures. Untermensch. We feed our libido dominandi – our lust for domination. Look at our posts on social media. They have gone viral. One shows soldiers grinning in a Palestinian home with the owners tied up and blindfolded in the background. We loot. Rugs. Cosmetics. Motorbikes. Jewelry. Watches. Cash. Gold. Antiquities. We laugh at your misery. We cheer your death. We celebrate our religion, our nation, our identity, our superiority, by negating and erasing yours.

Depravity is moral. Atrocity is heroism. Genocide is redemption. ...

There are no legal constraints. There is no moral code. There is only the intoxicating thrill of demanding greater and greater forms of submission and more and more abject forms of humiliation. ...

Rafah is the prize at the end of the road. Rafah is the great killing field where we will slaughter Palestinians on a scale unseen in this genocide. Watch us. It will be an orgy of blood and death. It will be of Biblical proportions. No one will stop us. We kill in paroxysms of excitement. We are gods.

IDF Whistleblower REVEALS TORTURE CAMPS To CNN

Democrats and Republicans: US enablers of Israeli onslaught on Rafah

The week begins as Israel is stepping up its genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza, both in Rafah, the last unoccupied portion of the enclave, and throughout the Gaza Strip. ... The imperialist powers of the US-NATO axis, above all the Biden administration, are fully culpable in this latest stage of the Gaza genocide, which has lasted for seven months. Biden is currently engaged in political posturing, in an effort to defuse the mass opposition among students and working people to the Israeli genocide. But his cynical and insincere “criticisms” have not had the slightest effect on the actual conduct of Israeli military operations, nor are they intended to do so.

While a number of Democrats issued hand-wringing professions of concern over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza Sunday, the essence of US policy in the region was summed up by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Graham denounced suggestions by his interviewer, Kristen Welker, that Biden had withheld only the largest weapons, such as 2,000-pound bombs, which would cause thousands of civilian deaths if use in a congested space like Rafah. Why couldn’t Israel accomplish its purpose with precision weapons and kill fewer people, Welker asked.

Graham responded:

Well, I think it’s impossible to mitigate civilian deaths in Gaza as long as Hamas uses their own population as human shields… Listen, you know, here’s what I would say about fighting an enemy who wants to kill you and your family. Why did we drop two bombs—nuclear bombs—on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? To end a war that we couldn’t afford to lose… when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision. Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose and work with them to minimize casualties.

As a matter of historical fact, the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Truman administration was not necessary to “end a war.” Rather, it was intended to demonstrate that American imperialism was willing and able to use nuclear weapons and slaughter tens of thousands of innocent civilians to secure its global domination. Graham, echoing similar statements by Representative Tim Walberg five weeks ago, is advocating a policy of mass murder: Palestinians remaining in Gaza should simply be killed.

What the media presents as a significant conflict within the US political establishment involves, at most, tactical considerations. The Biden administration continues to arm and defend Israel as it escalates its genocidal assault on Rafah. The Democrats and Republicans joined hands last month to pass nearly $100 billion in additional funding to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the preparation for war against China. And they are united in their crackdown on protests against the genocide within the United States.

“Displacement Has Been Weaponized”: Gaza Reporter Akram al-Satarri on Israeli Attack & Fleeing Rafah

Israel deepens offensive in Rafah and re-enters northern areas of Gaza

Israeli troops have continued their offensives across Gaza, deploying tank fire, artillery bombardment and airstrikes against Hamas militants in the most intensive round of fighting for weeks. In the far south of the devastated territory on Monday, witnesses reported helicopter strikes and street battles in Rafah as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) consolidated their hold on neighbourhoods east of the strategic Salah al-Din road, which bisects the city.

In the north, the IDF advanced into Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya, both areas in which fierce battles were fought early in the seven-month war. Officials estimate that as many as 500,000 people have fled Rafah since being told to evacuate by the IDF before their first attacks around and in the city a week ago. Roads heading north and west are choked with cars, trucks, trolleys and pony carts laden with people and their possessions

The fighting has forced many big aid organisations to shut down or reduce their operations across Gaza, amid increasingly acute shortages of fuel, food and clean water. The risks to aid workers in Gaza were again made clear when a UN vehicle was hit on its way to a hospital on Gaza. ...

Israel has described its latest return to the north, from where it pulled out most of its troops five months ago, as part of a “mopping-up” stage of the war to prevent fighters from returning, and said such operations had always been part of its plan. But analysts said the new clashes underlined the failure of the IDF to secure much of Gaza, after a campaign that has brought massive destruction, the displacement of about 2 million people and the deaths of more than 35,000, according to Palestinian officials.

Jake Sullivan SNAPS At Journalists In WH Press Briefing, Says Israel Isn't Committing GENOCIDE

‘Total outrage’: White House condemns Israeli settlers’ attack on Gaza aid trucks

The White House has condemned an attack on an aid convoy heading to Gaza by Israeli settlers who threw packages of food into the road and set fire to the vehicles. Video of the incident on Monday at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, showed settlers blocking the trucks and throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and drifts of rice and flour across the road.

Late on Monday, photos began circulating on social media showing the trucks on fire.

Israel has faced heavy international pressure to step up the flow of aid into Gaza, where international organisations have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis threatening a population of more than 2 million people. “It is a total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys coming from Jordan, going to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

“We are looking at the tools that we have to respond to this,” he added. “We are also raising our concerns at the highest level of the Israeli government and it’s something that we make no bones about – this is completely and utterly unacceptable behaviour.”

Police do not appear to have intervened to stop the looting, though four people including a minor were later reported to have been arrested. This is not the first time that settlers have tried to stop the flow of aid to Gaza, which is already only a fraction of that needed by the population of the embattled territory.

Scott Ritter : How Isolated Is Israel?

US Senator Suggests Israel Nuke Gaza

Anti-war voices on Monday fiercely condemned U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham's suggestion that Israel would be within its rights to drop nuclear weapons on the Gaza Strip, seven months into an assault that has killed at least 35,091 Palestinians and injured another 78,827.

"Why did we drop two bombs—nuclear bombs—on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? To end a war that we couldn't afford to lose. You don't understand apparently what Israel is facing," Graham (R-S.C.) toldNBC News' Kristen Welker on "Meet the Press" Sunday.

"So when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision," Graham said of World War II. "Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can't afford to lose and work with them to minimize casualties."

As the pair discussed U.S. President Joe Biden's effort to use arms shipments to try to push Israel to more precisely target Hamas, Graham added: "Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state."

Responding on social media Monday, Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis declared that "madness is taking over the West."

CodePink pointed to the pro-Palestine protests at U.S. colleges and universities and said that "it is despicable that a sitting senator can go on live TV to support nuclear bombing Gaza, but students protesting a genocide are made out to be a threat."

Lindsey Graham To Israel: NUKE GAZA

5-Year-Old in Gaza Survives Weight of Building Dropped on Her by Israeli Bomb

Footage of a young girl rescued from beneath the rubble of a building in central Gaza overnight is among the latest graphic images to emerge from the Palestinian enclave as Israel intensifies its military assault and anger grows over U.S. complicity in the carnage that has left over 35,000 people—mostly innocent men, women, and children—dead and hundreds of thousands of others missing, severely wounded, or displaced.

Civil Defense teams in Gaza, who spoke to the young child by the name "Tulin," dug her out by hand after following her cries for help. "Where's my mom?" the girl can be heard saying in Arabic.

"Having survived the weight of a building being bombed to pieces on her fragile body, Tulin is crying for her mother," said Rawan Arraf, a lawyer and the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice. Arraf was among those who reported that Tulin's mother did not survive the bombing.

"Tulin's mama was murdered by the genocidal Israeli regime," Arraf said. "More than 19,000 children have been orphaned; 6,000 mothers have been murdered."

"The bomb that killed her family was most likely American. As an American, your tax money paid for it," said Trita Parsi, executive vice president for Responsible Statecraft, a U.S.-based foreign policy think tank.

Zero arrests in UCLA mob assault on peaceful Palestine protest

Much more detail at the link:

UCLA attackers exposed: meet the violent Zionist agitators LA police haven’t arrested

On April 30, thirty people were injured when a mob of Zionist hooligans savagely assaulted the pro-Palestine UCLA encampment shortly before midnight. For over three hours, local and campus police stood down as the masked thugs assaulted students, journalists, and even officers of the law with fireworks volleys, pepper spray, and metal pipes. Though multiple attackers have been identified by community members on social media, to date there have been no arrests of pro-Israel goons.

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier composed by anonymous sleuths claiming involvement with the UCLA student protests which apparently identifies some of the attack’s perpetrators. The students emailed the document to the UCLA administration and police (UCPD), as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. It contains detailed information about the identities of those who were filmed carrying out wanton violence.

Los Angeles-area police have arrested droves of students protesting Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, accusing over 40 students and journalists of “conspiracy to commit burglary” for attempting a sit-in on school grounds. Yet local authorities have made a grand total of zero arrests in the coordinated Zionist mob assault against UCLA anti-genocide protesters on April 30.

The LA Times has reported that local law enforcement is relying on sophisticated facial recognition technology to hunt down the attackers. But as the UCLA sleuths’ dossier makes clear, many assailants have already been identified by matching their identities with social media profiles.

The UCPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about whether the persons identified in the dossier were under investigation, or had been taken into custody.

‘Our struggles are connected’: Atlanta protesters link Cop City to Gaza war

The student-led protests at Emory University in Atlanta have distinguished themselves from others occurring across the US in at least one way: protesters are seeking transparency about and divestment from Israel but also from a $109m police training center known as “Cop City”. A broad-based movement against the training center, now in its fourth year, has drawn national and global headlines, particularly after police shot and killed one environmental protester at a campsite in a public park last year – the first such incident of its kind in US history. ...

[M]ultiple interviews at the school by the Guardian reveal that the issue of Cop City and its connections to Israel, have been on the minds of at least part of the student body – and the faculty – for some time, especially after Emory’s president, Gregory L Fenves, allowed Atlanta police on to campus in April 2023, when students set up a camp on the school’s quad protesting against Cop City. ...

Emory undergraduate student Oren Panovka was at the protests last year and this year. Sitting on a stone bench bordering the school’s grassy quad dotted with oak, pecan and maple trees on a recent afternoon, he gestured across the campus. “Just look around,” he said, pointing to names on some of the buildings nearby. “Names like Woodruff, Cox – some of the biggest donors to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Then there’s Rollins, Blackstone, who are on the [Emory] board of trustees,” said Panovka, who like many students involved in the Emory protests of recent weeks, is Jewish.

He was explaining why students were demanding the school reveal involvement with and divest from Israel and Cop City, seeing the two as connected. Foundations bearing the names of Woodruff – a former longtime head of Coca-Cola, and Cox – a global communications, automotive and mass media company, have each given $10m to Cop City. These same foundations have donated generously to Emory. Board members are also linked to donations backing the project. ...

Students across the metro area – not just at Emory – have also long been protesting against a direct connection they see between policing in Atlanta and Israel: the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (Gilee), a non-profit program that sends US police officers to Israel and vice versa, for training and other activities.

INTERVIEW: The conspiracy to silence Julian Assange

Kristi Noem banned by two more Native tribes in South Dakota

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who was once considered one of Donald Trump’s top vice-presidential contenders, has been banned from nearly one-fifth of the state after two more tribes voted to prohibit her from their lands. The move by the Yankton Sioux tribe and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe last week follows criticism from the governor who has – without evidence – accused tribal leaders of “personally benefiting” from drug cartels. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes banished Noem earlier this year. ...

Her dispute with South Dakota tribes heightened after remarks she made at a forum in March, accusing tribal leaders who had been critical of her catering to drug cartels. “We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say, ‘Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.’”

The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate said it had moved to ban Noem after she made statements that were “injurious to the parents of tribal children”, Kelo, a local TV station reported. In a statement announcing the ban in April, the Rosebud Sioux said the decision was based not only on Noem’s recent comments but an “ongoing strained relationship” with the governor, who took office in 2019.

The tribe cited Noem’s support of the Keystone XL pipeline, her opposition to checkpoints on reservation borders established by the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux during the pandemic, and her support of the removal of “significant sections” of Native American history from state social-studies standards, among other issues.

“Governor Noem claims she wants to establish meaningful relationships with tribes to provide solutions for systemic problems. However, her actions as governor show blatantly otherwise,” the tribe said in a statement.

FBI CAUGHT Setting Up Trump in Classified Documents Case!

Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in five key battleground states, new polls show

Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in five crucial battleground states less than six months out from election day, new polls showed.

The surveys from the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College put the former president up in Pennsylvania (three points), Arizona (seven), Michigan (seven), Georgia (10) and Nevada (12). Biden led by two points in Wisconsin.

All leads bar Trump’s in Georgia and Nevada were within the margin of error.

Biden's FAVE CNN Anchor Panics: HE'S LOSING

13% of 2020 Swing State Biden Voters Won't Be in 2024 Because of Gaza: Polls

Approximately 13% of poll respondents in six swing states who voted for U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020 but would not vote for him again said that his foreign policy or Israel's war on Gaza were the most important issues determining their vote.

The figure comes as part of a new set of polls released Monday from The New York Times, Siena College, and The Philadelphia Inquirer that show former President Donald Trump narrowly leading Biden in 5 out of 6 crucial battleground states.

"We have warned that this would happen for months, and the Democratic Party didn't give a damn," author and organizer Daniel Denvir wrote on social media in response to the news. ...

One voter the pollsters spoke to was 30-year-old Gerard Willingham, a Georgia web administrator who voted for Biden in 2020 but said he would vote for a third party candidate in 2024 because of Biden's response to Israel's war on Gaza.

"I think it's made quite a bit of difference in that it made me more heavily than in the past push toward voting for a third party, even if I feel that the candidates almost 100% won't win," Willingham said. "It's starting to reach into my moral conscience, I guess."

The polling comes after Biden has spent the last seven months providing military, financial, and moral support for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it wages a ground and air assault on Gaza that the International Court of Justice ruled could plausibly be a genocide. Only last week did Biden threaten to withhold certain weapons from Israel if it launches a full ground assault on Rafah, but several observers pointed out that Israel's incursions into Rafah so far should already qualify. Further, the poll was conducted from April 28 to May 9, so many respondents would have given their answers before Biden's May 8 remarks.

Palestinian rights and progressive activists have spent the primary season trying to persuade Biden to switch course on Gaza, launching "uncommitted" campaigns that won two delegates to the Democratic National Convention in the key swing state of Michigan. The poll provides further evidence that Biden's support for Israel's war is a real electoral liability.

"There is a cottage industry of political columnists who have said for months that these voters don't exist, only live in Brooklyn and Berkeley and on Twitter, TikTok, etc.," said Hamid Bendaas, communications director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. "To the extent that Biden and his advisers are buying into it, they are costing him the election."

Trump pledges to scrap offshore wind projects on ‘day one’ of presidency

Donald Trump has vowed to immediately halt offshore wind energy projects “on day one” of a new term as US president, in his most explicit threat yet to the industry and the latest in a series of promises to undo key aspects of the transition to cleaner energy.

Trump repeated false accusations about wind projects as being lethal to whales during a rally on Saturday in Wildwood, a resort city on New Jersey’s coast, promising to stamp out an industry that has been enthusiastically backed by Joe Biden.

“We are going to make sure that that ends on day one,” Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, said of the offshore wind farms. “I’m going to write it out in an executive order. It’s going to end on day one.”

The twice-impeached former president, currently facing four separate criminal indictments, said aquatic wind turbines “cause tremendous problems with the fish and the whales”. He added that whales “come up all the time, dead,” comparing a beached whale carcass to Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and rare Republican critic of Trump.

“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said of the wind turbines. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”

Hundreds of ‘emaciated’ and stranded pelicans turn up along California coast

Hundreds of starving and stranded brown pelicans have turned up along the California coast in recent weeks in what wildlife advocates have described as a “crisis”.

In Newport Beach in southern California, lifeguards came upon two dozen sick pelicans on a pier last week. The Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, the non-profit caring for the animals, said they had treated more than 100 other birds who were anemic, dehydrated and extremely underweight.

“They are starving to death and if we don’t get them into care, they will die,” said Debbie McGuire, the center’s executive director. “It really is a crisis.”

Bird Rescue, a non-profit that operates wildlife centers in northern and southern California, reported taking in more than 235 sick pelicans in the past three weeks. At least 40% of the pelicans have significant injuries after becoming entangled in fishing line and hooks, the non-profit said.

The California department of fish and wildlife (CDFW) confirmed in a statement last week that high numbers of the federally protected species are showing signs of malnutrition. The agency said that since late April it has received increased reports of brown pelicans stranded from Santa Cruz county to San Diego county, and that wildlife rehabilitation facilities “began admitting an unusually high number of debilitated pelicans”.

Banks have given almost $7tn to fossil fuel firms since Paris deal

The world’s big banks have handed nearly $7tn (£5.6tn) in funding to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions, according to research. In 2016, after talks in Paris, 196 countries signed an agreement to limit global heating as a result of carbon emissions to at most 2C above preindustrial levels, with an ideal limit of 1.5C to prevent the worst impacts of a drastically changed climate. Many countries have since promised to reduce carbon emissions, but the latest research shows private interests continued to funnel money to oil, gas and coal companies, which have used it to expand their operations. ...

Researchers for the banking on climate chaos report, now in its 15th edition, analysed the world’s top 60 banks’ underwriting and lending to more than 4,200 fossil fuel firms and companies causing the degradation of the Amazon and Arctic. Those banks, they found, gave $6.9tn in financing to oil, coal and gas companies, nearly half of which – $3.3tn – went towards fossil fuel expansion. Even in 2023, two years after many large banks vowed to work towards lowering emissions as part of the Net Zero Banking Alliance, bank finance for fossil fuel companies was $705bn, with $347bn going towards expansion, the report says.

US banks were the biggest financiers of the fossil fuel industry, contributing 30% of the total $705bn provided in 2023, the report found. JP Morgan Chase gave the most of any bank in the world, providing $40.8bn to fossil fuel companies in 2023, while Bank of America came in third. The world’s second biggest financier of fossil fuels was the Japanese bank Mizuho, which provided $37.1bn.

London-based Barclays was Europe’s biggest fossil fuel financier, with $24.2bn, followed by Spain’s Santander at $14.5bn and Germany’s Deutsche Bank with $13.4bn. Overall, European banks stumped up just over a quarter of the total fossil fuel financing in 2023, according to the report.

Also of Interest

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

Ex-US military intelligence official says he quit over ‘moral injury’ of Gaza war

Parents of over 900 Israeli soldiers urge IDF to call off ‘death trap’ Rafah attack

The Secret History of Israel’s Role in Genocide in Colombia

You Can’t Run Industrial Policy OR A War Economy Under Neoliberalism

Where Have All the Babies Gone? Falling Birthrates All Over the World Alarm Leaders, Businessmen, Economists

Delinquencies on Office Property Loans at Banks Are at 8 Percent While Office Loans the Banks Sold to Investors Show 31 Percent in Trouble

The Media Mogul Trying to Buy Baltimore’s Mayoral Race

British Columbia ‘extremely concerned’ as wildfire threatens to destroy town

Columbia-Affiliated Union Theological Seminary Votes to Divest from Israel’s War on Gaza

Kamala Harris' PHONY Attempt To Be Authentic, Veep Drops F-BOMB In Speech

Columbia professor doubles as NYPD snitch

Private spy freaks out over US student protests

Kiev blame game. Kharkov debacle

A Little Night Music

Big Maceo - Chicago Breakdown

Big Maceo - Kidman Blues

Big Maceo - Big City Blues

Big Maceo Merriweather - Have You Heard About It

Big Maceo Merriweather - Worried Life Blues #2

Big Maceo Merriweather - Ramblin' Mind Blues

Big Maceo - Since you been gone

Big Maceo Merriweather - It's All Over Now

Big Maceo Merriweather - Bye Bye Baby

Big Maceo Merriweather - Texas Stomp