Another day, another atrocity committed by the IDF

The Israeli military hit a school and killed over 30 people, 23 of whim were women and children trying to find refuge from the constant bombardment unleashed on the people of Gaza by the Israeli government.

An Israeli strike early Thursday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed more than 30 people, including 23 women and children, according to local health officials. The Israeli military said that Hamas militants were operating from within the school.
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Witnesses and hospital officials said the predawn strike hit the al-Sardi School, run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees known by the acronym UNRWA. The school was filled with Palestinians who had fled Israeli offensives and bombardment in northern Gaza, they said.

Ayman Rashed, a man displaced from Gaza City who was sheltering at the school, said the missiles hit classrooms on the second and third floor where families were sheltering. He said he helped carry out five dead, including an old man and two children, one with his head shattered open. “It was dark, with no electricity, and we struggled to get out the victims,” Rashed said.

The stories are heartbreaking. It is tempting to turn away, just to avoid becoming depressed at the sheer level of inhumanity of display.

What happens to our bodies in excessive heat

It is astonishing that with record heat waves year after year, there are still those who refuse to acknowledge that we are experiencing dangerous levels of global warming, who not only ignore the warnings but even threaten journalists who write about it.

Almost four out of every 10 journalists covering the climate crisis and environment issues have been threatened as a result of their work, with 11% subjected to physical violence, according to groundbreaking new research.

A global survey of more than 740 reporters and editors from 102 countries found that 39% of those threatened “sometimes” or “frequently” were targeted by people engaged in illegal activities such as logging and mining. Some 30%, meanwhile, were threatened with legal action – reflecting a growing trend towards corporations and governments deploying the judicial system to muzzle free speech.

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The myth of morality of the Israeli Defense Forces shattered

It is almost always the case that in wars, soldiers behave abominably, committing all manner of crimes against civilians. Every government defends its troops from accusations of atrocities but those claims are disingenuous.

The Israeli government’s claims of the morality of the Israeli Defense Forces, that its troops do not commit atrocities and that any deaths of innocent people were ‘tragic mistakes’ that occurred while they were targeting Hamas fighters, are being seen around the world as increasingly hollow, and their boast that the IDF is the most ethical armed force in the world would be laughable if the whole thing were not so tragic. If someone were to spray automatic weapon fire in a crowded shop resulting in many deaths and injuries, we would not excuse that action because that person was trying to kill just one person in the crowd. And yet, that is what we are being asked to do by the government of Israel and the IDF, who have been indulging in massive air and ground attacks in Gaza, what has been rightly described as the worlds’ largest open-air prison.

Amnesty International has castigated the IDF for standing by while armed settlers attack Palestinians in the West Bank.
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How some jail and prison systems exploit inmates and families

Some time ago, I wrote about how some US prison systems charge inmates and their families for things that we on the outside get for free, such as email accounts with Gmail and Yahoo.

Inside prisons, e-messaging companies are quietly building a money-making machine virtually unhindered by competition—a monopoly that would be intolerable in the outside world. It’s based in a simple formula: Whatever it costs to send a message, prisoners and their loved ones will find a way to pay it. And, the more ways prisoners are cut off from communicating with their families, the better it is for business.
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For many years, phone calls from jails and prisons were unregulated, allowing private telecommunications providers to charge as much as $1 a minute for a call. After years of organizing by prisoner rights advocates, the Federal Communications Commission voted in 2013 to cap the costs of interstate phone calls, calling it a first step toward ending the exorbitant costs of staying in contact. Two years later, the commission extended the cap to intrastate calls. But after five prison phone providers, including Securus, filed separate petitions challenging the FCC’s decision, the ruling was overturned—leaving pricing entirely in the hands of private companies, with charges ranging from 96 cents to as much as $18 for a 20-minute call.

Prisoners also had to buy tablets and pay twice the market rate to download songs. And that is not all. If families transfer money to inmates to pay for the songs, the jail takes a cut of that as well
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Trump’s post-conviction incoherent rant

The day after his conviction on 34 criminal counts, serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) gave a typically rambling and incoherent press conference at which he recycled the usual litany of grievances and falsehoods. He left without taking any questions, showing how nervous he is about the implications of the verdict.

Jimmy Kimmel gave a pretty good rundown of the day’s events.

One point that Kimmel made bears emphasizing. When politicians are in deep trouble, a common ploy is to have a press conference with their partner by their side to show their loyalty. This is especially the case if there is sexual infidelity involved. And yet, Melania Trump has maintained total silence before, throughout, and after the trial and never showed up even once during the proceedings. What does it say that she cannot be bothered to put out even a pro forma statement of support?

This cartoon illustrates how far we have entered uncharted waters with a person who not only is openly contemptuous of truth and the rule of law but has managed to get so many leaders of his party to be complicit in his actions.

Whatever happens is good for Trump – according to his supporters

It has become drearily predictable. Whatever happens, however objectively bad it may be, serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) will say it is good for his election campaign, and the process is playing out once again in the aftermath of the 34 felony convictions that he just received from a jury.

Let’s be clear. It strains credulity to argue that being convicted of a single felony, let alone 34, is good for you and SSACFT and his acolytes must know it. Sure, it might make your supporters angry and fired up but it is unlikely to win over anyone who is not already strongly committed to you. And yet they are pretending that this is the best news ever. What would they have said if he had been acquitted?

It is clear that the outrage machine had been prepared in advance of the verdict. The ratcheting up of calls for violence has produced increasingly violent rhetoric, including calls for ‘war’.

Ever since the trial began, pro-Trump commentators—and Trump himself—have been priming MAGA online ecosystems to claim foul play if the jury found him guilty. The response to his felony conviction was predictably swift, with many characterizing it as a declaration of “war” from the “deep state.” Incendiary rhetoric about how the guilty verdict was a sign of America’s collapse reverberated from the mainstream right all the way to the fringes.

“As of today, with this fake guilty verdict against Trump, America is no longer the United States,” wrote Joey Marianno, a pro-Trump political commentator, to his 466,000 followers on X. “We are a third-world shithole heading for a Civil War. I have no desire to see this country to unify. There’s no country to unite. We are long past that.”
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Ali Alexander, a far-right conspiracy theorist, did not mince words either. “Today is Jan. 6th for the entire nation,” he wrote on Telegram to his 12,000 subscribers. “This is worse than the Civil War. Respectfully.”

That kind of rhetoric even made it to the airwaves. “We have been calling it lawfare,” said Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro.“I think lawfare is far too soft, it’s far too benign. This is warfare.”

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Trump’s obsessions may have sunk his defense

This article describes the dramatic moments during the last moments of the trial of serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT).

I had thought that getting a unanimous guilty verdict would be difficult, that there might be at least one juror who might hold out, causing a mistrial, which the MAGA crowd would see as a vindication of their hero.

Despite his bluster about the process itself, former President — and now convicted felon —Donald Trump secretly confided to advisors that one juror in his Manhattan criminal trial would come to his rescue.

After he was found guilty on all 34 felony counts, Rolling Stone reported Thursday that Trump’s hopes of a man on the jury he reportedly referred to as “my juror” were evidently dashed. Reporters Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng wrote that Trump had his eye on one male juror in particular whose body language he interpreted as friendlier than the rest.
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It wasn’t immediately clear which juror the Trump team was paying attention to. It could have been juror #2, an investment banker who said during the voir dire process that his primary source of news was Truth Social — the ex-president’s far-right social media platform. It could have also been juror #8, who is a retired wealth manager from the Upper East Side, and is originally from Long Island (traditionally more conservative than the rest of the New York City metro area).
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An acquittal on all 34 counts would have been unlikely, given that Trump has never prevailed in any civil — and now criminal — court proceeding in New York. But the defense was hopeful that they could at least have one or more jurors refuse to sign onto a guilty verdict, thus hanging the jury and effectively ensuring the former president wouldn’t get a new trial until after the election, if ever.

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Understanding the verdict

As I said in my initial reaction to the verdict, I was surprised that serial sex abuser and now convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) was found guilty on all charges. I had heard many legal experts opine before that of all the cases that were brought against him, this was the weakest as it hinged on a combination of fairly esoteric offenses and that the key witness against SSACFT Michael Cohen was himself someone who was an admitted liar. Since a conviction requires a unanimous verdict that is beyond reasonable doubt, all it required was for one juror to hold out for there to be a mistrial, which would be trumpeted by the Maganuts as an acquittal.

In addition, SSACFT is a former president and though that should not be a factor in their consideration, jurors are human and I thought that it was unlikely that jurors would convict him unless they thought that the case was a slam dunk. The fact that the unanimous verdict came in on all counts in the relatively short time after about 10 hours of deliberations seem to indicate that they indeed thought it was a fairly easy decision.
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