Music: Andrew Cornish — ‘Falling Leaves’
U.S. blocks Security Council motion blaming Israel for Gaza aid convoy massacre
The Times of Israel reports: Amid American opposition, Arab nations failed Thursday overnight to get immediate support for a UN Security Council statement that would have blamed Israeli forces for the more than 100 reported deaths as Palestinians in northern Gaza swarmed an aid convoy. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, told reporters after an emergency closed council meeting on the deaths, that 14 of the 15 council members supported the statement put forward by Algeria, the Arab representative on…
Bernie Sanders slams Biden’s ‘totally absurd’ Israel policy: ‘You can’t reconcile it’
Senator Bernie Sanders talks with Alex Wagner about the “almost an unprecedented humanitarian disaster” Israel has created in Gaza and the urgency and volume of relief needed to prevent hundreds of thousands of children from starving. Sanders says “not another nickel” should go to the Netanyahu government as long as it continues “the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.”
Deadly chaos at Gaza aid convoy is a symbol of the desperation enveloping the territory
Politico reports: The chaos punctuated by heavy Israeli fire that killed 115 Palestinians trying to get bags of flour from an aid convoy highlights the desperation of the hundreds of thousands struggling to survive amid the devastation of northern Gaza after nearly five months of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Residents say they have taken to searching piles of rubble and garbage for anything to feed their children, who barely eat one meal a day. Many families have begun mixing…
Israeli MP denounces ‘tsunami of fanatic nationalism’ in Israel
Over the past five months, Israel’s war on Gaza has caused mass devastation and led to more than 30,000 deaths. In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague found that there was a plausible risk that Israel may be committing genocide. While the ICJ case has been met with opposition from Israel’s political class, there have been those who have voiced support. Israeli parliament member Ofer Cassif has been an outspoken supporter of the ICJ procedures…
Putin failed to conquer Navalny or Ukraine. He’s had better luck with Trump’s GOP
Gil Duran and George Lakoff write: Alexey Navalny was one thing Vladimir Putin can never be: heroic. Navalny’s murder, carried out by Putin’s agents in an Arctic Circle prison on February 16, is a testament to this fact. The dictator could only beat him by killing him — or so he believed. Even now, Putin continues to fear his murdered opponent. He refused for weeks to hand Navalny’s body over to his family for burial. The punishment for Navalny’s crime…
Indigenous peoples deserve as much protection as the threatened environments they inhabit
Robert Williams writes: Over 600,000 tourists travel to Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area each year, and many will catch a glimpse of the Great Migration: the famed trek of more than one million wildebeests and thousands of zebras, gazelles and other animals crossing over the Mara River into Kenya and back. Yet the Tanzanian government believes it can attract many more tourists seeking the safari adventure of a lifetime: five million by 2025, bringing $6 billion with them per year, according…
AI is consuming drinking water from the desert
Karen Hao writes: One scorching day this past September, I made the dangerous decision to try to circumnavigate some data centers. The ones I chose sit between a regional airport and some farm fields in Goodyear, Arizona, half an hour’s drive west of downtown Phoenix. When my Uber pulled up beside the unmarked buildings, the temperature was 97 degrees Fahrenheit. The air crackled with a latent energy, and some kind of pulsating sound was emanating from the electric wires above…
Music: Andrew Cornish — ‘Yellow Beetle’
Biden’s planned airdrop of food to Gaza is a ‘major policy failure’ says former USAID official
The Independent reports: Jeremy Konyndyk, who led USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Obama administration and oversaw humanitarian air drops to Nepal, the Philippines and Iraq, described the potential US plan to drop aid by air as a “major policy failure” on the part of the Biden administration. “When the US government has to use tactics that it otherwise used to circumvent the Soviets and Berlin and circumvent Isis in Syria and Iraq, that should prompt some really…
Israel has yet to provide UN with evidence to back UNRWA 7 October attack claims
The Guardian reports: A month after Israeli allegations that a dozen United Nations staff were involved in the 7 October Hamas attack, UN investigators have yet to receive any evidence from Israel to support the claims, though they expect some material to be forthcoming “shortly”. The allegations against the 12 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) led 16 major donors to suspend contributions totalling $450m at a time when more than 2 million Gazans are…
How Biden aides are trying to shield the president from protests
NBC News reports: President Joe Biden’s team is increasingly taking extraordinary steps to minimize disruptions from pro-Palestinian protests at his events by making them smaller, withholding their precise locations from the media and the public until he arrives, avoiding college campuses and, in at least one instance, considering hiring a private company to vet attendees. The efforts have resulted in zero disruptions at events the White House or the campaign have organized for Biden in the five weeks since he…
New York Times union blasts leak investigation over Israel stories
The Washington Post reports: The union representing New York Times employees accused the company Friday of targeting employees with Middle Eastern or North African backgrounds in a weeks-long investigation into leaks from its newsroom regarding the paper’s coverage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. In a letter obtained by The Washington Post, NewsGuild of New York president Susan DeCarava said that managers have singled out particular employees — “targeted for their national origin, ethnicity and race” — who…
DOJ says ’60-day rule’ doesn’t apply to Trump’s trials — he can be in court during the election
The New Republic reports: Amid an ongoing spar over when Donald Trump’s classified documents case will begin, the Justice Department has clarified once and for all that he cannot continue to delay his legal trials by claiming that he has to focus on the election. On Friday, Judge Eileen Cannon asked about the DOJ’s “60-day rule” against taking actions that might affect an upcoming election. But the DOJ said that the “60-day rule” does not apply to Trump’s actual trials,…
How to picture AI
Jaron Lanier writes: A technology by itself is never enough. In order for it to be of use, it needs to be accompanied by other elements, such as popular understanding, good habits, and acceptance of shared responsibility for its consequences. Without that kind of societal halo, technologies tend to be used ineffectively or incompletely. A good example of this might be the mRNA vaccines created during the covid epidemic. They were an amazing medical achievement—and yet, because of widespread incomprehension,…
Ancient Greek antilogic is the craft of suspending judgment
Robin Reames writes: In Syracuse, 2,500 years ago, there was a famous teacher of rhetoric named Corax. This new discipline was in high demand: mastery of persuasive speaking, it was hoped, led to fame and wealth. As the story goes, Corax’s most talented student was Tisias. Corax agreed to teach Tisias with the understanding that the student would pay when he won his first court case. Tisias advanced so rapidly through his lessons that Corax wanted Tisias to hand over…