Music: Wolfgang Haffner — ‘Hippie’
‘Man-made famine’ charge against Israel is backed by mounting body of evidence
Peter Beaumont writes: The accusation by the UN and other humanitarians that Israel may be committing a war crime by deliberately starving Gaza’s population is likely to significantly increase the prospect of legal culpability for the country, including at the international court of justice. Amid reports that the Israel Defense Forces are hiring dozens of lawyers to defend against anticipated cases and legal challenges, the charge that Israel has triggered a “man-made famine” by deliberately obstructing the entry of aid…
U.S. calls for immediate Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal in draft UN resolution
The Guardian reports: The US has drafted a new UN security council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and hostage deal in Gaza, amid mounting pressure on Israel to halt its military campaign and allow the delivery of substantial amounts of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory. The CIA and Mossad spy chiefs, William Burns and David Barnea, were expected to arrive in Qatar on Friday in the hope of clinching an elusive truce-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas. Speaking…
We are about to witness in Gaza the most intense famine since World War Two
Alex de Waal writes: Gaza is already the most intense starvation catastrophe of recent decades. The death toll from hunger and disease may soon surpass the body count from bombs and bullets. The Famine Review Committee reported this week that Gaza is facing “imminent famine”. The Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) system, set up 20 years ago, provides the most authoritative assessments of humanitarian crises. Its figures for Gaza are the worst ever by any metric. It estimates that 677,000 people,…
America First Legal, a Trump-aligned group run by Stephen Miller, is spoiling for a fight
The New York Times reports: The legal group has filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asserting that “woke corporations” like Disney, Nike, Mattel, Hershey, United Airlines and the National Football League discriminate against white males. It has filed lawsuits arguing that school districts in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and Arizona promote “radical” pro-transgender and pro-gay attitudes. It has filed amicus briefs to protect Florida minors from drag shows and former President Donald J. Trump from a federal jury trial….
Leonard Leo, Koch networks pour millions into groups prepping for potential second Trump administration
NBC News reports: Huge funding from influential conservative donor networks is flowing into groups affiliated with a conservative venture aimed at creating a Republican “government-in-waiting,” including over $55 million from groups linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo and the Koch network, according to an Accountable.US review shared exclusively with NBC News. Launched by the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, Project 2025 is a two-pronged initiative to develop staunch conservative policy recommendations and grow a roster of thousands of right-wing personnel…
Putin staged an elaborate election charade. So why did some Western media outlets play along?
Anne Applebaum writes: There was no election in Russia last weekend. There was no campaign. There were no debates, which was unsurprising, because no issues could be debated. Above all, there were no real candidates, bar one: the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, the man who has just started his fifth, unconstitutional term in office. Russians did line up at polling stations, but these were not actually polling stations. They were props in an elaborate piece of political theater, a…
Planet-eating stars hint at hidden chaos in the Milky Way
Nature reports: Stellar detectives have identified seven stars that recently dined on a rocky planet. The study doubles the number of binary stars known to have consumed a planet, and questions the perception that mature solar systems harbouring Earth-like planets are usually stable. The findings, published in Nature on 20 March, show “strong evidence of planet ingestion”, says Jianrong Shi, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing. The planets seem to have been eaten during their stars’ relatively…
Music: Magnus Öström — ‘Mary Jane Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’
Meet the Israeli ‘traitors’ standing against the war in Gaza
Channel 4 News: While opposition to Israel’s conduct in Gaza is voiced around the world, in Israel support for the war is still strong, but we speak to one of only two people imprisoned for refusing to serve in the army.
U.S. and U.K. doctors in Washington to warn of IDF’s ‘appalling atrocities’ in Gaza
The Guardian reports: A delegation of American and British doctors is in Washington DC to tell the Biden administration the Israeli military is systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes. The doctors, who have recently returned from volunteering at Gaza’s besieged hospitals, are expected to meet White House officials and senior members of Congress this week to warn that pledges of increased aid to Palestinians under bombardment are largely meaningless without an immediate…
A statement from Jewish Americans opposing AIPAC
A statement from Jewish Americans opposing AIPAC says: We are Jewish Americans who have varying perspectives. We’ve come together to highlight and oppose the unprecedented and damaging role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allied groups in US elections, especially within Democratic Party primaries. We recognize that the purpose of AIPAC’s interventions in electoral politics is to defeat any critics of Israeli government policy and to support candidates who vow unwavering loyalty to Israel, thereby ensuring…
How the unedifying ‘lessons of Iraq’ reappraisals obscure the war’s real lessons
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic Party candidate Bill Clinton distinguished himself from the Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush with regard to Bosnia by supporting a “lift and strike” policy. Armed with weapons from the old Yugoslav Army, Bosnian Serbs were on a rampage, and a United Nations embargo was preventing Muslim Bosniaks from being able to defend themselves, even as the Bush administration looked on. Clinton’s proposal would lift the arms blockade and…
Former Giuliani associate names names in shocking video that Fox News won’t air
HuffPost reports: Former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas made some startling accusations during a House Oversight Committee impeachment inquiry hearing on Wednesday, but don’t expect to see it air on Fox News. Parnas, who helped Donald Trump by attempting to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden, told the committee that various GOP politicians and members of the conservative media purposely spread disinformation about the current president. And he named names, including Fox News host Sean Hannity and Rep. Pete Sessions,…
Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory
Gavin Schmidt writes: When I took over as the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I inherited a project that tracks temperature changes since 1880. Using this trove of data, I’ve made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has. For the past nine months, mean land and sea surface temperatures have overshot previous records…
Ancient viruses helped speedy nerves evolve
Science News reports: Ancient viruses have really gotten on our nerves, but in the best of ways. One particular retrovirus — embedded in the DNA of jawed vertebrates — helps turn on production of a protein needed to insulate nerve fibers, researchers report February 15 in Cell. Such insulation, called myelin, may have helped make speedy thoughts and complex brains possible. The retrovirus trick was so handy, in fact, that it showed up many times in the evolution of vertebrates…