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After donating millions to key lawmakers, military contractors scored two provisions in an upcoming Pentagon funding bill allowing them to continue overcharging the government.

In recordings obtained by The Grayzone, a self-proclaimed soldier from Israel’s infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion detailed his unit’s killing of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American, and flaunted his genocidal views. After announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration has inexplicably pulled back. The Biden administration has balked after announcing plans to sanction five units of the Israeli military accused of wanton human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank. “Four of these units have effectively remediated these violations, which is […]

The post ‘Israeli soldier’ from notorious unit confesses to US citizen’s killing first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post ‘Israeli soldier’ from notorious unit confesses to US citizen’s killing appeared first on The Grayzone.

The Horror This excellent piece by Radly Balko at his newsletter on Trump’s fascist immigration is sobering. Like him, I don’t think people are taking this seriously enough. It’s a nightmare in the making and a percolating international crisis when most of the rest of the world rises up in horror at the most powerful nation on earth enacting a massive policy of ethnic cleansing. Some excerpts:  Trump has made 15 million deportations a central part of his 2024 campaign. And he’s stepped up the dehumanizing of immigrants he’ll need to get a significant portion of the country on board. Even if Trump gets distracted, it’s likely he’ll put Stephen Miller in charge of the plan. Miller is the only non-relative senior staffer who served the entirety of the first Trump term. And Miller won’t be distracted. Ridding the country of non-white immigrants has been a core part of his identity for his entire life. Miller himself has long made clear that the distinction that matters most to him is not between “legal” and “illegal,” but between white and non-white immigrants.

Acclaimed writer Mauro Javier Cárdenas used AI in his latest work to surprising effect.

The post How AI Helped Write a New Novel appeared first on Nautilus.

Anyone who is “looking at that” is someone who is contemplating taking away the right to contraception. For years people like me have been raising the alarm about birth control. All you have to do is read what the anti-abortion extremists have been saying. They will take it step by step (they say that too) and now that they got Roe v. Wade overturned they know that it works. They will not stop. Abortion and phony sexual morality are among the most important organizing principles of the right. Trump being their exalted leader, an adjudicated rapist and admitted sexual assaulter, five children with three different women, shows (just as it does with the plethora of other cult leaders, religious and otherwise) that patriarchy is the real basis of it. I suspect that Trump is going to come up with a “solution” on birth control that will look very much like his answer to the abortion problem. He will endorse “states’ rights” and say that’s what everyone has always wanted and he will deliver it.

The Extradition hearing of Dan Duggan, an Australian citizen and father of six who has been held in solitary confinement for 19 months in breach of U.N. conventions at the request of the United States, will be held this Friday in a Magistrate’s Court in Sydney. Astonishing details have emerged of his relationship with the Continue reading »

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu In Gaza, the echoes of violence have reverberated every single day for months. We are witnessing the erasure of an entire society in real-time, television cameras rolling, live-streamed, into living rooms across the planet, as children Continue reading »

“It’s not the word I would use”… As Western Australian Senator Fatima Payman breaks party ranks to condemn the Gazan genocide, Defence Minister Richard Marles, in defiance of the International Court of Justice and United Nations, is attempting to shield Israel and deter MPs from using the term ‘genocide’ . Last week Federal Parliament was Continue reading »

Those who curb real trade and expand financial sanctions don’t seem to understand the likeliness of a destructive outcome for all. The West is wrecking the foundations of its prosperity. The United States has struck another blow at free trade. This week, US President Joe Biden announced wide-ranging tariff increases, including to 100 per cent Continue reading »

The US is playing a high-risk legal game in refusing to fold its tent and walk away from the prosecution of Australian citizen Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes. A few weeks ago US President Joe Biden told reporters he was ‘considering’ Australia’s request to end the pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The Continue reading »

Knowing with any degree of certainty what motivates the behaviour and decision making of political leaders whose skill set is focused on creating public perceptions, is problematic. Accordingly, it’s prudent to look less at what they say and more at what they do or don’t do. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland Continue reading »

Tranche 2 Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terror Financing Laws Protect Us All. In 1988, I was a trainee detective with the Australian Federal Police working in Sydney, when Australia passed the Cash Transaction Reports Act 1988 (later renamed the Financial Transaction Reports Act). This was the beginning of the introduction of Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering Continue reading »

Newly declassified documents reveal how early and how much Australia knew of Israel’s genocide in Gaza after 7 October – and how it is failing to uphold its international obligations. Australia has a duty, under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention, to “undertake to prevent and punish” the crime of genocide, and to “employ all Continue reading »

The ruling by the High Court in London permitting Julian Assange to appeal his extradition order leaves him languishing in precarious health in a high-security prison. That is the point. The decision by the High Court in London to grant Julian Assange the right to appeal the order to extradite him to the United States Continue reading »

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Israel takes another step down the road to becoming an official rogue state: Israeli officials seized broadcasting equipment belonging to the Associated Press on Tuesday, arguing it was used to illegally provide a live feed to Al Jazeera, whose Jerusalem bureau was shuttered by officials earlier this month following the passage of a new foreign broadcast law. Press advocates have warned that the law creates a dangerous precedent for censoring independent news outlets in the region amid the ongoing war with Hamas. Israeli lawmakers passed the measure last month, empowering Israel’s communications minister to take action against any foreign media network that it says poses a national security risk.

Get out the Band-Aids, ballet flats are back in style. I’ve never taken a dance class in my life, but I’m going to cram my big, flat feet into these little honeys and wait for a huge, watery blister to take my life. My feet haven’t been bloody and shredded for fifteen years, so this summer, I am going to swell them up like Yorkshire pudding. Out are the comfortable sneakers designed for feet, and in are the hard-sided kayaks designed to take your breath away.

The blood stains on the back of these shoes are incriminating. It’s a sweaty, painful emergency that no Band-Aid on earth could begin to mitigate. These little rocket ship slippers have cut through to bone, but it’s all part of the journey. If I can focus my breath and quiet my mind, I can control the voice that’s begging to rip the feet from my legs. It’s amazing how you can continue to walk when you really, really shouldn’t.