The Evening Blues - 6-2-26
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This evening's music features r&b singer Ann Cole. Enjoy!
Ann Cole - Got My Mojo Working
"One way or another
This darkness got to give"-- Robert Hunter
News and Opinion
The UK Is Getting Even Crazier In Defense Of Israel
The UK is getting crazier and crazier in its defense of Israel. Now they’re canceling the visas of mainstream normie political pundits for criticizing the state of Israel, and investigating people for antisemitic hate crimes when they denounce Zionists who aren’t even Jewish.
American progressive commentator Cenk Uygur and his nephew Hasan Piker have both been denied visas by the British government, saying they were blocked from entering the country because of their criticism of Israel.
“I’ve been banned from the UK,” Uygur said in a tweet. “I tried to get on a flight to London to attend SXSW London and give a speech at Oxford. I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!”
“the uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel,” said Piker in a repost of his uncle’s statement. “the west is betraying ‘liberal values’ for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become israel.”
the uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel. the west is betraying "liberal values" for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become israel. https://t.co/UqQG1dogOI
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 31, 2026
This is a significant escalation from London, because neither Uygur nor Piker could reasonably be described as politically extremist in any way. They’re essentially just Bernie Sanders progressives who sit well within the mainstream US political Overton window; I personally don’t follow either of them because they are both far too aligned with the Democratic Party for my liking.
This move is yet another win for the UK’s extremely powerful Israel lobby. Two weeks ago the Jewish Chronicle ran a story titled “Social media influencer Hasan Piker must be banned from Britain, say Jewish leaders,” subtitled “Online agitator who said Zionists were like ‘Nazis’ and refused to condemn Hamas poses a threat to British Jews.”
So the pressure campaign appears to have paid off.
This comes as the Metropolitan Police launch an investigation into an incident in which actress Helen Mirren was called an “evil Zionist bitch” by a man on the street last year, saying in a statement that “We are aware of a video circulating online, showing a man and a woman being subjected to antisemitic verbal abuse in Tower Hill.”
To be clear, Helen Mirren is not Jewish, so she can’t have been a victim of “antisemitic verbal abuse”. She is however an avowed supporter of the state of Israel, which makes her a Zionist.
In a 2023 interview with Israeli media, Mirren stirred up controversy with her remarks on her 1967 visit to the Zionist ethnostate, saying, “I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.”
British police are investigating the guy who called non-Jew Helen Mirren a ‘Zionist bitch’ — under hate speech laws for antisemitism.
Now, it’s antisemitic to criticise non-Jews for supporting Israel.
It was never about antisemitism, and always about protecting Israel.
— Tiberius (@tiberiusfiles) May 31, 2026
This just says so much about the true nature of the artificially manufactured panic around “antisemitism” in the west. That a woman who is not Jewish can be framed by law enforcement as the victim of an antisemitic hate crime because someone criticized her support for Israel is an admission that this has always been about protecting the interests of the Zionist state, rather than protecting Jews.
Jewishness or Judaism never entered into the equation here; a person who isn’t Jewish was criticized for supporting a genocidal apartheid state, and nothing more. Yet the person who uttered that criticism is now under investigation for antisemitic abuse, because in the eyes of British law enforcement, “antisemitic abuse” just means criticizing the state of Israel.
Western governments will tell you that it is antisemitic to equate all Jews with the state of Israel, and then in their very next breath they will tell you that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism. These two statements are completely contradictory; they cannot both be true. If it’s wrong to equate all Jews with the state of Israel, then it’s wrong to equate criticism of the pro-Israel political ideology with a hateful attack against all Jews.
But that’s how insane the west’s support for Israel is making everything. They’ve got everyone performing impossible mental gymnastics and feats of Orwellian doublethink in order to reconcile the official narrative with reality.
Col Douglas Macgregor: The Israel First White House
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Monday that Iran would be in a “direct confrontation with the enemy” if Israel doesn’t halt its attacks in Lebanon.
Earlier in the day, Iranian media reported that Tehran halted negotiations with Washington over Israel’s continued attacks and escalations in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel planned to launch strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs, but appeared to have backed down after a call with President Trump. Iran had also warned that it could target northern Israel if Netanyahu went ahead with the strikes.
Netanyahu made clear in his statement on the call that he intended to continue the war in southern Lebanon. “Tonight, I spoke with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens—Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut,” he said. “This stance of ours remains unchanged. In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”
Axios reported that Trump had lashed out at Netanyahu during the call, calling him “fucking crazy” over Israel’s escalations in Lebanon, but, according to Israeli media reports, the US and Israel have previously put out leaks about the two leaders being at odds to keep Iran off guard. An Israeli official also told Ynet earlier on Monday that Israel had coordinated with the US on the threat to attack Beirut.
Larry Johnson: Iran Abandons Talks & Threatens to Retaliate Against Israel
Iran threatens to suspend peace talks after ‘violation of ceasefire’ in Lebanon
Iran has indicated it will suspend peace talks with the US in protest against Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, threatening the collapse of negotiations with Washington as the two sides skirmished amid a faltering ceasefire. The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said: “The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts. The US and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation.”
A news agency aligned to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tehran was suspending its participation in talks designed to end the blockade of the strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump has said the US was not yet informed of Iran suspending talks but suggested he was not opposed to a halt in negotiations. “I think we’ve been talking too much, if you want to know the truth,” the US president told NBC News. “I think going silent would be very good, and that could be for a long time.”
The US would not begin another military escalation immediately if negotiations fell through, Trump added, but would maintain its blockade on Iranian ports. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to go and start dropping bombs all over there,” he said. “We’ll just go silent. We’ll keep the blockade. [The] blockade is a piece of steel.”
Trump said he had spoken with Netanyahu and, via intermediaries, with Hezbollah as he sought to broker a new ceasefire. He wrote in a Truth Social post that Netanyahu had agreed “there will be no troops going to Beirut”, although it was not immediately clear if that would halt airstrikes against the city’s southern suburbs. He also said he had a “very good call with Hezbollah” and “they agreed that all shooting will stop”.
Lebanon’s embassy in Washington later confirmed that both Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to a “reciprocal cessation of attacks” including Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs. Netanyahu said he told Trump that “if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens, Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon,” he added, contradicting Trump’s claims that a full ceasefire had been agreed.
Prof. John Mearsheimer : Will Israel Veto an American Peace?
‘A shock to all Lebanese’: Israel sends a message as it takes ancient fort
When Hussain Alawieh used to take tourists to Beaufort Castle, they would marvel at the view. The ancient hilltop fort, captured nearly 1,000 years earlier by Crusaders, still offered the same sweeping panoramic views of south Lebanon and the Litani River that empires fought over for a millennia. On Sunday, the view from the castle was obscured by white phosphorus smoke, the toxic incendiary munition providing a smoke screen for advancing Israeli soldiers. Out of the fog rose an Israeli flag, and the castle, for the first time in 26 years, was once again conquered.
In the age of drones and surveillance blimps, the value of the ancient hilltop fort is diminished. But to both Israelis and Lebanese, its capture carried psychological weight in a conflict that for six weeks had ground to a deadlock. “The raising of the Israeli flag and the flag of the Golani Brigade above the castle caused a shock to me and to all southerners and Lebanese people,” said Alawieh, a tour guide based in south Lebanon.
The castle, Alawieh explained, was a symbol of steadfastness and of resistance in south Lebanon. Its thick stone walls helped it survive Israeli aerial bombing in the 1980s when it was used as a base by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and again when Israel carried out a detonation in the castle upon its withdrawal in 2000. “Raising the Israeli flag above it is intended to send a message of psychological domination and defeat to the population, conveying that the ‘sites you considered impregnable have fallen’,” said Alawieh.
As Israel’s soldiers patrolled the castle, its warplanes dropped bombs on south Lebanon, leaving little time to absorb the new loss of territory. The city of Tyre was pounded with airstrikes on Sunday, leaving smoking craters where residential buildings had once stood. Entire neighbourhoods of one of south Lebanon’s oldest and most populated cities were covered in rubble and immense plumes of smoke rose above its homes.
Both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah issued condemnations of the escalation, but neither seemed to able to stop it. “[The resistance] has never claimed to prevent invasion or occupation of territory, nor has it claimed to posses an armament balance,” said Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah MP, on Sunday, adding the group would work to prevent the Israeli military from “consolidating control” over the areas it has already occupied.
Lebanon war: Has Trump completely lost control of Netanyahu?
‘This Must Stop’: Call Grows for US Lawmakers to Pass Lebanon War Powers Resolution
As Israel’s deepening invasion of Lebanon threatens to derail peace talks between the US and Iran, American lawmakers are facing pressure to pass a war powers resolution to limit US involvement this week.
In recent days, despite a ceasefire agreement in April, Israel has ordered the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands more Lebanese civilians from their homes in the country’s south, and declared all areas south of the Zahrani River a combat zone.
In what Defense Minister Israel Katz has described as a continuation of its “Gaza model,” the Israel Defense Forces have systematically razed dozens of villages across southern Lebanon.
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who introduced the war powers resolution in April, said, “This must stop.”
“Our country should not be assisting or supporting indiscriminate bombings and forced displacement anywhere, including Lebanon,” Tlaib said on social media Monday, responding to a report that the death toll had climbed above 3,400 since Israel launched its assault on Lebanon in March. “We must pass the Lebanon war powers resolution this week.”
This must stop.
Our country should not be assisting or supporting indiscriminate bombings and forced displacement anywhere, including Lebanon.
We must pass the Lebanon War Powers Resolution this week. https://t.co/lHVDlIzTwQ
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) June 1, 2026
The brief resolution would require the US to end unauthorized military cooperation with Israel within seven days of being passed, which proponents said may also limit the ability of the US military to share intelligence and coordinate targets with Israel.
Tlaib and other progressives like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) initially pushed for the resolution to be brought to a House vote during the week of May 18, but it was kicked until after lawmakers returned from recess.
In the meantime, several cosponsors have signed onto the resolution, bringing the total up to 17. They include Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.), who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
War powers votes can be introduced by any member of Congress and do not need the support of the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson (La.).
A coalition of anti-war groups led by Just Foreign Policy organized a letter-writing campaign to tell members of Congress to support the resolution. The groups say supporters have sent nearly 24,000 letters to Congress so far.
“Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has killed more than 3,000 people since March 2nd, displaced over 1.2 million—a fifth of the country’s entire population—and caused over $14 billion in destruction. Hospitals bombed. Entire villages erased,” they said. “Rashida Tlaib’s resolution... is the only legislative tool that can force a vote and thus every member of Congress to take a position about this war on the record.”
Spokespeople for the Democrats on the House Foreign Relations Committee did not respond when asked by Common Dreams whether members planned on supporting Tlaib’s resolution.
Congress VOTES on @RepRashida 's Lebanon War Powers Resolution THIS WEEK
US-backed Israeli war in Lebanon is killing thousands of innocent civilians and destroying chances for an end to the disastrous war on Iran!
Write your member of Congress NOW:https://t.co/VnvjIEn8A7 https://t.co/0oWhyqKfyw
— Just Foreign Policy (@justfp) June 1, 2026
Israel has been accused of ramping up its attacks on Lebanon as a means of sabotaging peace talks between the US and Iran. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, wrote on social media Monday that “the ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”
It was reported by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency on Monday that Tehran was backing away from talks with President Donald Trump in response to Israel’s escalation in Lebanon. The country’s foreign ministry said the US “bears direct responsibility both for the violations of the ceasefire against Iran and for the violations committed by the Zionist regime against Lebanon.”
However, after phone calls with a Hezbollah intermediary and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said on Truth Social that “talks were continuing at a rapid pace,” and “there will be no Troops going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way have already been turned back.”
Netanyahu responded to the reports by saying that he planned to launch more attacks against Lebanon’s densely populated capital if Hezbollah did not stop attacking Israel, and that Israel would “continue operating in southern Lebanon as planned.”
Laith Marouf | Iran vs Israel: The Secret Tactic Defeating Israel
Schumer Among Top Dems Who Marched at NYC Israel Parade With Accused ‘War Criminal’ Smotrich
Numerous headlines over the weekend focused on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision not to attend the city’s Israel Day Parade on Sunday, with Israeli fficials condemning his absence and outlets emphasizing that he was breaking “with a decades-long political custom because of his support of Palestinian rights.”
But with the Israeli government’s approval rating plummeting among the US public, including Jewish Americans, since Israel began its US-backed assault on Gaza more than two-and-a-half years ago, progressives were asking not why Mamdani skipped the parade—but why top Democratic officials such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) chose to take part in it, especially considering the involvement of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
The International Criminal Court requested a warrant for Smotrich’s arrest last month over his efforts to forcibly expel thousands of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, a violation of international law. He has played a key role in efforts to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have ramped up since October 2023, when Israel began attacking Gaza’s entire population of over 2 million Palestinians in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. He also publicly called for the “annihilation” of Gaza in 2024.
The New York Times reported that Smotrich was not part of Israel’s official delegation that was sent to take part in the annual parade, whose theme this year was “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” but he marched nonetheless.
The Israeli government sent about 10 members of the Israeli Knesset to take part in the event, including two members of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit Party. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who said last year that Israel was “rushing toward Gaza being wiped out,” was also part of the delegation.
As Smotrich was joining establishment Democratic figures from New York state in the parade—including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, US Rep. Dan Goldman, Attorney General Letitia James, and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin—Ben-Gvir on Sunday was publicly calling for the Israel Defense Forces to “flatten” Beirut’s suburbs in the IDF’s incursion into Lebanon—“a direct incitement to mass civilian destruction,” according to Middle East Eye.
“Why is it controversial for Zohran to skip a parade because of his principles but not for Democratic politicians to march with a fascist bigot like Smotrich?” asked Ben Rhodes, a former national security official under the Obama administration.
Unbelievable that Mamdani has gotten flak for skipping a parade that Smotrich—who is proudly overseeing the West Bank’s ethnic cleansing and annexation—and Eliyahu—who suggested nuking Gaza and bombing humanitarian aid—are marching in. https://t.co/POoGaidS3o
— jasper nathaniel (@infinite_jaz) May 31, 2026
At the parade, Schumer spoke about his view that Jewish Americans’ “security and our safety is never safe as long as we lack a place of refuge, a homeland,” but Ali Abunimah, director of Electronic Intifada, wondered how the Senate leader’s involvement in a parade with officials who have openly called for ethnic cleansing would make hundreds of thousands of Muslim New Yorkers, including thousands of Palestinian Americans, feel about their own safety.
“How can all New Yorkers feel safe, especially Muslims and Palestinians, when the New York City police commissioner marches with genocidal criminals like Smotrich for the same supremacist cause?” said Abunimah, suggesting Commissioner Jessica Tisch should be removed for her involvement in the parade. “Would Mayor Zohran Mamdani keep a police chief who marched with [the Ku Klux Klan]?”
The city’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter called for Smotrich to “be arrested to face justice for his horrific crimes against Palestinians and humanity,” and said that “every politician who marched with him aligned themselves with Israel’s crimes.”
Along with the participation of Smotrich and Eliyahu, Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed noted that at the parade, the flag of the IDF’s Golani Battalion, which was behind the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics in Rafah last year, was displayed at the event.
During the "Israel Parade" in NYC, the Golani Battalion's flag of the Israeli army was raised.
It is the one that slaughtered the 15 paramedics in Rafah & buried them in the most heinous crime in our lifetime, let alone its history.
This is terrorism incitement, not free speech https://t.co/uqMNWlxO94 pic.twitter.com/Tvp87yHlAA
— Abubaker Abed (@AbubakerAbedW) June 1, 2026
Beth Miller, the political director for Jewish Voice for Peace, took issue with a statement by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that condemned Mamdani for not taking part in the parade, calling it “the city’s largest and most visible Jewish celebration.”
“It’s antisemitic to conflate Jews and Israel. Which is exactly what the ADL is doing by calling the ‘Israel Day Parade’ a ‘Jewish celebration,’” said Miller. “As a Jewish person who lives here, I’m pretty fucking glad we finally have a mayor who isn’t at a parade celebrating atrocity crimes.”
Ryan Grim of Drop Site News pointed out that while New York City was welcoming the Israeli delegation, including officials from the country’s extreme right, commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur were barred from entering the United Kingdom. Both have vehemently criticized Israel and were flagged as potentially not being “conducive to the public good.”
Journalist Krystal Ball of the online show “Breaking Points” said sardonically that the two concurrent events displayed “Western values.”
Col. Larry Wilkerson: Iran’s Quds Force chief: Red Sea Chokepoint next Hormuz
Do US War Crimes Doom the World to Endless War and Chaos?
On May 24, Iran rejected President Donald Trump’s latest fake peace deal, confirming that he had misrepresented what Iran had agreed to and that the two sides are still very far apart, on nuclear enrichment, on control of the Strait of Hormuz, on peace in Palestine and Lebanon and on lifting U.S. sanctions, paying war reparations and Iran’s $100 billion in frozen assets.
Iran’s conditions for a peace agreement are necessarily uncompromising, in response to the U.S. record of using negotiations as cover for sneak attacks, and the charade of one-sided “ceasefires with Israeli characteristics,” in which the U.S. and Israel routinely ignore and violate every ceasefire they agree to, including the present ones in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
Since no agreement with the United States or Israel is worth the paper it’s written on, it’s hard to imagine an agreement that would really protect Iran from future attacks. Without a more radical change in U.S. policy, the United States and Israel will keep attacking Iran, in open violation of the U.N. Charter, no matter what they all agree to.
The only effective ways Iran has found to protect its land and its people are to build strong military defenses, including the capacity for devastating retaliation, and to retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, regardless of the impact on the world’s oil and gas supply and the global economy.
By attacking Iran, the United States and Israel forced it to defend itself and triggered a war that is reshaping the Middle East and possibly the world.
Losing this war is forcing the United States to finally start reevaluating the neoconservative tactics it has blindly substituted for a rational U.S. foreign and military policy since the 1990s: sanction; threaten; bomb; kill; destroy; occupy; escalate; leave countries mired in violence and chaos — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine and Lebanon — never admit defeat; never question American exceptionalism or superiority.
The systematic U.S. disdain for the rule of international law that undergirds this policy appears to make peace impossible in today’s world. But the final sinking of the neocon dream in the troubled waters of the Persian Gulf provides the U.S. and the world with a historic chance to recommit to a more peaceful and democratic international order.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has effectively exempted itself from the entire system of treaties, international laws and agreements that are supposed to govern international affairs, starting with the U.N. Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force between countries, and the Geneva Conventions, which protect civilians, prisoners-of-war and wounded soldiers and sailors from the impacts of war.
These treaties were drawn up and universally adopted in the wake of the Second World War, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” as the U.N. Charter says in its preamble. President Roosevelt returned from his Yalta conference with Churchill and Stalin in 1945 to tell a joint session of Congress that they were designing the United Nations as a “permanent structure of peace.”
“It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries — and have always failed,” FDR told Congress. “We propose to substitute for all these, a universal organization in which all peace-loving Nations will finally have a chance to join.”
The U.N. Charter codified and strengthened the age-old common law prohibition against international aggression, and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy in the 1928 Kellogg Briand Pact, which German leaders tried at Nuremberg were sentenced to death for violating.
However, amid overblown Western triumphalism after the end of the Cold War, a new generation of U.S. leaders, like Madeleine Albright and Dick Cheney, came to see the U.N. Charter and Geneva Conventions as obstacles to their ambitions to further expand U.S. global power by more widespread and unrestricted use of military force.
Believing that the new imbalance in military power freed them from compliance with post-1945 treaties and conventions based on the hard-earned wisdom of past leaders in two world wars, the U.S. and its allies unleashed their armed forces to attack and invade other countries, torture, rape and kill prisoners, and massacre civilians.
U.S. officials assumed that the new military imbalance so greatly favored the United States that neither the U.N., international courts, other powerful countries, nor even the entire people of the world could enforce the rules of international law and the laws of armed conflict on the United States if it chose to ignore them.
It is ironic, and deeply frustrating and confusing to U.S. officials, to find out that what they hailed as a position of overwhelming power and impunity has led them to squander America’s day in the sun and waste the chance that its great good fortune provided to improve the quality of life for Americans and their neighbors.
The supposedly unlimited freedom of action attained by disdaining and trampling international law and institutions has proved to be a double-edged sword. There is no such thing as unlimited military power, short of the mass suicide of nuclear war. The idea that America’s virtually unlimited investment in weapons and war would give it the final word in every dispute was a mirage, as even Trump is now finding out.
As Americans reexamine the state of the world and the conflicts by which warmongering U.S. leaders have tried to define it, it is obvious that war and military power do not lead to peace or prosperity, for Americans or anyone else. The more countries the Pentagon and the C.I.A. take aim at, the more people they kill and the more resources our leaders throw at them, the more other people all over the world rightly come to see the United States as a threat to their own lives and futures.
Governments around the world face difficult choices between meeting the needs and aspirations of their own people or complying with the hegemonic and undemocratic demands of the United States.
After holding itself up as the champion of democracy and freedom for 250 years, the United States is only accelerating its own decline by wasting trillions of dollars, and what little is left of the world’s goodwill, on this failed, ill-fated bid for global imperial power.
When the United States rose to great power in the first half of the 20th century, its leaders were wise enough to recognize that exercising naked imperial power would not succeed in a world still fighting to free itself from the ravages of European colonialism. So FDR and his colleagues based the U.N. system on sovereign equality between nations, and created a framework for international relations that the whole world could agree to.
Like all legal and political systems, the success or failure of the U.N. system rests on whether the most powerful countries will agree to live by the same rules as the others. The veto is a poison pill that corrupts the system, as Albert Camus predicted when it was unveiled in 1945.
“If this report is accurate, … it would effectively put an end to any idea of international democracy,” Camus wrote in Combat, the underground French Resistance newspaper he edited. “The world would be ruled by a directorate of five powers… The Five would thus retain forever the freedom of maneuver that would be forever denied the others.”
However, the U.N. has developed the “Uniting For Peace” process, which allows the General Assembly to hold Emergency Special Sessions (ESS) on international problems when a veto prevents the Security Council from acting to resolve them. The General Assembly used that process to resolve the Suez Crisis in 1956 and it has been using it, albeit intermittently and inadequately, to address the crisis in Palestine since 1997.
In response to a request from the General Assembly in its Emergency Special Session on Palestine, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must end without delay. And so, the General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel must bring “to an end without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories… and do so no later than” September 2025.
Israel did not comply, so the General Assembly must take further steps, such as an arms embargo and an economic boycott. But it does have the means to do so and just needs to muster the political will.
While the United States and Israel commit systematic and barbaric war crimes, presuming themselves immune from accountability, the world is slowly — too slowly — coming to grips with the international cooperation needed to enforce the “permanent structure of peace” that all countries have agreed to live by, and on which the lives of millions of vulnerable people and the future of humanity depend.
While U.S. leaders are finally realizing that they do not have the power to intimidate and conquer the whole world, the American people are gradually understanding that we have an even greater power, the power to refuse to fight their criminal wars, and to insist on making peace and cooperating with all our neighbors on this small planet that we all share.
While Americans oppose more military aid to Israel, Congress is inserting something even deeper and more insidious into the US military budget (NDAA): US integration with the Israeli military!
Tell Congress: Reject Section 224 of the NDAA. No military integration. No weapons and… pic.twitter.com/CCQhlZJMG7
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 29, 2026
Khanna Vows Amendment to Kill ‘Insidious’ Effort to Deepen Military Ties Between US, Israel
US Rep. Ro Khanna on Sunday said he will introduce an amendment to kill a provision tucked inside the sprawling 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would deepen ties between the American and Israeli militaries.
Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote on social media that he would work to ensure the provision, Section 224 of the NDAA, is removed from the bill in the House Armed Services Committee, which is set to mark up the $1.15 trillion legislation on Thursday. The provision, according to legislative text unveiled last week, would “require the secretary of defense to designate an executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, including bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”
Khanna’s pledge to spearhead committee efforts to remove the provision came after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—who has partnered with the California Democrat in pushing for the full release of the Epstein files—condemned Section 224 on social media and vowed to “offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor” if it survives the House Armed Services Committee.
“We are a sovereign country,” Massie wrote.
And I will be offering an amendment in the committee itself to strip section 224 out, @RepThomasMassie.
Trump can't kill the Massie/Khanna partnership no matter how much he posts on Truth Social. https://t.co/4Dz4ks84XH
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) May 31, 2026
Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, noted last week that while the US and Israel “already work together heavily on missile defense,” Section 224 “would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more.”
“It also proposes ‘network integration’ and ‘data fusion.’ In other words, the US military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data. If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the US has with any other country in the world,” Freeman wrote. “The result could well be a US political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the US into military conflicts in the Middle East.”
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Ex-Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell sounds alarm over political interference
Jerome Powell, the former chair of the Federal Reserve, has warned that a single act of political interference in monetary policy could permanently destroy public trust in the central bank. As Donald Trump’s administration continues to test the Fed’s longstanding independence, Powell said in a speech on Sunday night that the institution was in the midst of a “stress test”.
Powell, who was accepting the 2026 John F Kennedy Profile in Courage award in Boston, stepped down as Fed chair last month, and was succeeded by Kevin Warsh, but remains on its board of governors.
Legal protections insulating monetary policy from politics “have served the public well” across administrations of both parties, Powell argued in his acceptance speech. “If any administration finds a way to remove Fed officials over policy differences,” he added, “then future administrations will do so as well”. He spoke as the supreme court weighs a highly anticipated decision on the fate of the Fed governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump attempted to fire last August. Powell did not mention Trump, or Cook, by name.
“The public would lose faith that the central bank will make decisions based only on what’s best for all Americans,” Powell said. “The Fed’s credibility would be lost.” Fed decisions were made “based only on our best economic analysis of what would most benefit the people we serve”, Powell said on Sunday. “We do not take into account the fortunes of any political party or politician.”
Several protesters arrested at New Jersey ICE facility as clashes continue
On Monday afternoon, over an hour south of Newark, a few dozen protesters outside the New Jersey state legislature in Trenton condemned Democratic governor Mikie Sherrill’s decision to send in the state police to Delaney Hall, the Newark immigration detention center that has seen more than a week of chaotic and often violent clashes.
Across the street, two people silently held a giant “NO CONCENTRATION CAMPS” sign. Members of local chapters from Indivisible, a national movement behind the No Kings protests, held handmade posters reading “Gov Sherrill, stop lying about Delaney Hall” and “NJ Staties were the aggressors” – a reference to Sherrill and state attorney general Jennifer Davenport’s calling the anti-ICE protesters “violent”.
On Friday Sherrill had announced that state law enforcement would be taking over policing duties outside the detention center from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to try to lower tensions after eight days of confrontations with supporters of immigrants being held inside. But the situation remains tense, with more attendees visiting the Delaney Hall protests in recent days, either to support detainees being released or stand with other protesters facing law enforcement.
Officials in New Jersey said earlier that several protesters were arrested overnight for defying a curfew at Delaney Hall. Davenport posted on X that a group of individuals “had come to the protest armed with helmets, shields, or gas masks, [and] deliberately refused to comply with repeated orders to leave the area”, resulting in their arrest. The New York Post, which had journalists at the scene, reported the number of arrests was at least between 20 and 25 – and published photographs of several people being led away in cuffs by state police. A social media post from advocacy groups, including the Immigration Coalition, late on Sunday said there were “over 46 Delaney Hall protesters … arrested”.
CBS News reported that state officers in riot gear, and others on horseback, rushed the crowd less than 15 minutes after issuing a dispersal order to people gathered outside a half-mile exclusion zone around the facility, some of the scenes captured on a video posted to YouTube by bystanders. At the state legislature protest, Diane Herbert Cooper, a member of an Indivisible chapter in nearby Camden county, grew emotional on the mic addressing the crowd, recounting what she had witnessed. “Sherill made it worse,” Cooper continued. “That is 100% true — the state police did not make it any better, they made it worse.”
Minnesota Republicans rebuked for Derek Chauvin moment of silence
The Minnesota Republican party’s decision to hold a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, has angered the state’s attorney general – who was the lead prosecutor in the case.
Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said Saturday’s gesture at the state Republicans’ annual convention in Duluth was “an act of profound cruelty” to Floyd’s family and “disrespectful” to Minnesota’s law enforcement personnel.
Alluding to how the murder had happened six years earlier almost exactly, Ellison added: “To honor the man convicted of murdering George Floyd – days after the very anniversary of that terrible day – is an act of profound cruelty to the Floyd family and to every Minnesotan who believes in accountability under law. “To honor a man who disgraced his oath to uphold the law and his badge is disturbing. And to honor a man who damaged the reputation of the brave men and women who protect our communities night and day is disrespectful.”
According to the local station Fox 9 News, the Minnesota Republican party granted the request of a delegate on the second morning of its two-day gathering to recognize Chauvin, who was sentenced to a 22-and-a-half-year prison term in 2021 for the second-degree murder of Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020. Attenders reportedly stood in silence for about 10 seconds before the start of official business for the day.
The disgraced officer received a separate, concurrent 21-year sentence in 2022 for violating Floyd’s civil rights during their encounter, in which Chauvin knelt on his victim’s neck for more than nine minutes. Chauvin has had a succession of appeals rejected and was moved to a low-security facility in Texas in August 2024 after surviving a stabbing in prison in Arizona nine months earlier.
Tech billionaires have shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead of the 2 June primary election in California, in an unrivaled attempt to influence who gets to run the state that Silicon Valley calls home. The industry has used a cover-all-bases approach, funding candidates and ballot measures big and small, contributing to what looks to be the most expensive primary season in California history. The goal, experts say, is to gain both political and regulatory leverage that will perpetuate dominance in business.
“This money is flowing in the direction of politicians that can be influential in defining the regulatory agenda for the next five years,” said Francesco Trebbi, a public policy professor at the University of California in Berkeley. “Reinforcing the cycle of economic power produces political power, and political power further establishes economic power. So, this cycle is ongoing.”
Combing through campaign finance filings with California’s secretary of state, the Guardian found:
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent $82m since January, more than any other donor, to fight a billionaire tax that’s up for a vote on the November ballot.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan has received more donations than any other candidate, including from top executives at Google, Amazon, Snap, LinkedIn, Reddit and Palantir.
Crypto mogul Chris Larsen has funded three Super Pacs with $26m to sway campaigns across California, including giving $1m to back a primary candidate for state insurance commissioner.
Google and Meta have collectively funded a Super Pac with $10m to back assembly and senate candidates in local district races across the state.
Silicon Valley money is flowing toward city primaries as well as state-level ones, with tech-backed Pacs sponsoring voter guides suggesting how to vote on local tax measures.
The vast amount of spending that’s been disclosed in public records probably isn’t even the half of it, Trebbi said. People looking to sway election outcomes often fund dark money entities that aren’t traceable through campaign finance filings.
Wildfires devastating richer areas but fewer hectares burned globally
“Devastating” wildfires ripped across the wealthier parts of the world in 2025, a study has found, even as globally, the area ravaged by flames fell. Catastrophic blazes claimed lives, homes and jobs last year in California, Canada, Europe and South Korea. But the 335m hectares burned was the second-lowest since 2002, the review found, largely owing to the expansion of African farms that have fragmented landscapes and hampered the spread of large savannah fires.
The disasters in 2025 included a Scottish “megafire” that torched more than 100,000 hectares – contributing to the UK breaking its record for burned area – and the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, which were among the most destructive in US history.
Record-breaking blazes in Spain and Portugal burned more than half a million hectares, while South Korea had its biggest and deadliest wildfire season on record.
Fires accounted for more than 38% of insured losses from weather disasters in 2025, the study found. “2025 shows that a ‘quiet’ fire year globally can still be devastating,” said Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study. “We are seeing a growing disconnect between total area burned and real-world impacts.” Changes in land use mean wildfires burn less of the planet than they have historically done, but global heating is creating conditions allowing them to spread, increasing the danger at what researchers call the wildland-urban interface, where people are most at risk.
Google requests permission to release 32m mosquitoes in California and Florida
Google wants to “stop bad bugs with good bugs”, and it’s not talking about coding. The tech company has asked the US government for permission to release up to 32 million sterilized mosquitoes in California and Florida. As part of its successful “Debug” program, Google is tapping into its tech expertise to raise an army of sterile male mosquitoes to lower the number of illness-spreading bugs. Mosquitoes – the world’s deadliest animal – kill more people than any other creature in the world every year by spreading lethal diseases such as dengue, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya and malaria.
A notice from the federal register shows the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing Google’s request to release up to 16 million mosquitoes annually, in Florida and California, over the span of two years. The EPA will decide whether to greenlight Google’s request for an experimental use permit after a public comment period, which ends on 5 June.
Male mosquitoes don’t bite or carry disease. One of the main approaches Google is testing involves rearing male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacteria, called wolbachia, which stops them from having offspring with wild female mosquitoes. When an infected male tries to mate with a wild female, her eggs won’t hatch; Google explains in a blogpost: “the population gets smaller with each generation.”
While it may sound unusual for big tech to venture into labs and rear bacteria-infected mosquitoes, Google’s parent company – Alphabet – is no stranger to science. Verily Health, a health and AI company that began as a “moonshot” project at Google X, has been a key driver behind the Debug program for years. Verily, an Alphabet subsidiary until earlier this year, uses technology and data science to combat diseases and other global health problems. As of December 2024, Google fully acquired Debug – removing it from Verily’s portfolio, Verily said in an email to the Guardian.
Google’s approach isn’t unique. The company is drawing on a scientific method called the sterile insect technique, which experts have used on a variety of problematic bugs for decades. Eric Caragata, an assistant professor at the University of Florida who specializes in mosquito-microbe interactions, told USA Today that using the wolbachia bacteria for sterilization had been done for about 15 years.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Hedges Report: The War on Terror Created the Age of Trump
Nothing more dangerous than a Netanyahu scorned
War On Iran: After Israel Threatened Beirut Iran Announced To Further Reduce Global Oil Supplies
Americans Today Have Little To Be Proud Of
Big D Dysfunction: Why The Democrat Party’s Latest Comedy of Errors is a Tragedy of Strategy
Ben Jennings on Israel’s strikes on Lebanon – cartoon
A Little Night Music
Ann Cole - I´ve Got A Little Boy
Ann Cole - Darling, Don`t Hurt Me
Ann Cole - I've Got Nothing Working Now
Ann Cole - In The Chapel
Ann Cole - Easy Easy Baby
Ann Cole - Are You Satisfied
Ann Cole - Summer Nights
Ann Cole - Nobody but Me
Ann Cole - Each Day
Comments
Good evening Joe, love the quote.
You can't overlook the lack, Jack
of any other highway to ride.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --