Music: Tom Misch — ‘It Runs Through Me’
Judge Engoron’s ruling is a detailed road map to Trump’s thievery
David Cay Johnston writes: The news about the eye-popping $355 million judgment against Donald Trump Friday minimized or even missed the real story in the judge’s richly detailed ruling. In justifying his findings of fact, New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s analysis of testimony in Trump’s seven-week civil fraud trial in Manhattan showed how everything Trump does is based on consistent and shameless cheating, deceiving, falsifying documents, and lying. The 92-page ruling establishes that Trump isn’t a business genius, a modern…
UN experts appalled by reported human rights violations against Palestinian women and girls
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: UN experts today expressed alarm over credible allegations of egregious human rights violations to which Palestinian women and girls continue to be subjected in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Palestinian women and girls have reportedly been arbitrarily executed in Gaza, often together with family members, including their children, according to information received. “We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children…
Systematic violation of human rights: The incarceration conditions of Palestinians in Israel since Oct 7
Physicians for Human Rights Israel: Since October 7th, any semblance of restraint has been cast aside regarding the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli incarceration and detention facilities. Forced disappearances, torture, and severe violations of human rights, particularly in terms of health, are now inherent in the practices and policies of Israeli security bodies responsible for Palestinians in custody. These actions have garnered support and, at times, were explicitly demanded by the political ranks. Simultaneously, the judicial system has allowed these…
A key withdrawal shows Ukraine doesn’t have enough artillery to fight Russia
The Associated Press reports: Dwindling ammunition threatens Ukraine’s hold on the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line under withering assault by Russian artillery. Defensive lines are in jeopardy. Ukrainian forces withdrew from the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region on Saturday after daily Russian onslaughts from three directions for the last four months. Avdiivka was a stronghold for Ukrainian positions deeper inside the country, away from Russia. A frontline city ever since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, the fortified settlement…
Denmark will donate its ‘entire artillery’ to Ukraine
The Kyiv Independent reports: Denmark has decided to deliver all the artillery rounds from its stockpiles to Ukraine, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told the Ukrainian Lunch at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 17. Artillery shells are among the most crucial military supplies for Ukraine, as they are used daily in high numbers on the Ukrainian battlefields. “If you ask Ukrainians, they are asking us for ammunition now, artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our…
Alexei Navalny and the West’s corruption
In 2021, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, said: We are here to honor Alexei Navalny, a man hounded, persecuted, beaten, poisoned, and jailed for standing up to a thuggish autocracy that is well on its way to classic totalitarian rule. His crime? Peacefully using his fundamental human right of freedom of expression to challenge a regime-held together by storm-troopers, violence, and murder. Navalny’s story is not a new one. In the decade before the collapse of communism,…
These birds score as high as primates in a puzzling cognitive test
Science Alert reports: Only some animals are known to fathom object permanence – the idea that something still exists even when it’s out of sight. Oriental pied hornbills (Anthracoceros albirostris) are one of the few with an advanced understanding, a new study confirms. It’s a clever skill that comes in handy when nesting females seal themselves out of sight in tree hollows, relying on their mate to bring them food. To lay and tend to their eggs in safety, female…
Music: Tom Misch — ‘Wander With Me’ ft. Carmody
Why are Israel and its Western allies targeting UNRWA?
About 20 countries have announced suspension of funding to UNRWA, the agency that has been providing services to Palestinian refugees since 1950. The official reason for the suspension was Israel’s accusation that a dozen UNRWA employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks. To understand the potential consequences of undermining UNRWA – especially amid a humanitarian catastrophe – host Steve Clemons speaks with Leila Hilal, a former adviser to the UNRWA commissioner-general, and Anne Irfan, lecturer…
Rep. Rashida Tlaib urges Michigan Democrats to vote against Biden in the primary
NBC News reports: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is urging Democrats in Dearborn, Michigan, to vote against President Joe Biden in the state’s upcoming Democratic primary. “If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted,” Tlaib said in a new video posted to social media on Saturday while standing outside an early voting location. She joined growing calls from progressive activists in Michigan to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 27 instead of…
Navalny’s body not in morgue where authorities said it was, aides say
The Moscow Times reports: Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s body is not in the morgue where authorities said it was brought after his death, his team announced Saturday. “Alexei’s lawyer and his mother have arrived at the Salekhard morgue. It’s closed, however, the colony has assured them it’s working and Navalny’s body is there,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter. “The lawyer called the phone number which was on the door. He was told he was the seventh…
Kremlin runs disinformation campaign to undermine Zelensky, documents show
The Washington Post reports: When news first emerged last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was preparing to fire his top military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, officials in Moscow seemed jubilant. They had been trying to orchestrate just such a split for many months, documents show. “We need to strengthen the conflict between Zaluzhny and Zelensky, along the lines of ‘he intends to fire him,’” one Kremlin political strategist wrote a year ago, after a meeting of senior Russian officials…
Biden administration is said to slow early stage of shift to electric cars
The New York Times reports: In a concession to automakers and labor unions, the Biden administration intends to relax elements of one of its most ambitious strategies to combat climate change, limits on tailpipe emissions that are designed to get Americans to switch from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, according to three people familiar with the plan. Instead of essentially requiring automakers to rapidly ramp up sales of electric vehicles over the next few years, the administration would give car…
Why Trump’s sleaziest criminal case is so important
David Corn writes: Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s indictment-o-rama, the politerati have considered the criminal case filed in New York City against the former president by District Attorney Alvin Bragg to be a sideshow. Though this case has key elements of a bona fide scandal—porn star! hush money! alleged extramarital affair!—pundits and politicos have struck a dismissive attitude toward Trump’s Stormy Daniels mess and the legal peril it poses him. Perhaps because it’s not as weighty a matter as…
In New York, the Trump brand is costing some condo owners
The New York Times reports: In the world of real estate, Donald J. Trump’s name has long been synonymous with luxury. At one of his buildings in Manhattan, a five-story waterfall slides down a wall of Breccia Perniche marble. White-gloved doormen, cascading chandeliers and panoramic views of the city’s skyline are the hallmarks of another. It’s that image of luxury, which he turned into a brand, that the former president held up as a rebuttal to the recent lawsuit that…