Iranian Security Forces Molested and Killed Teen Protester

An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran's security forces, according to a leaked document from Iran.  The document shows what happened to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami who vanished from an anti-regime protest in 2022.  Her body was found nine days later. The government claimed she killed herself.

Marked "Highly Confidential", the report summarizes a hearing on Nika's case held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - the security force that defends the country's Islamic establishment. It includes what it says are the names of her killers and the senior commanders who tried to hide the truth.

It contains disturbing details of events in the back of an undercover van in which security forces were restraining Nika.  One of the men molested her while he was sitting on her.  Despite being handcuffed and restrained, Nika fought back, kicking and swearing.  Nika's fighting back provoked the men to beat her with batons.

Nika Shakarami's disappearance and death were widely reported, and her picture has become synonymous with the fight by women in Iran for greater freedoms. As street protests spread across Iran in the autumn of 2022, her name was shouted by crowds furious at the country's strict rules on the compulsory veil [hijab].

Just before she vanished, Nika was filmed on the evening of 20 September near Laleh Park in central Tehran, standing on a dumpster setting fire to hijabs. Others around her chanted "death to the dictator" - referring to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. What she could not have known at the time is that she was being watched, as the classified report makes clear.

Bodies of Hospital Patients Found in Mass Graves in Gaza

A growing number of international bodies are demanding an independent probe into mass graves recently discovered at multiple Gaza hospitals that were raided by Israeli troops ― revealing hundreds more Palestinian deaths as Israel’s military offensive in the besieged enclave surpasses 200 days.

Gaza health officials said that Palestinian medics have uncovered more than 300 bodies at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, which Israeli troops occupied until their April 7 withdrawal. The U.N. Human Rights Council said Tuesday that medics found even more bodies in several mass graves on the grounds of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, which was once the territory’s largest medical complex. Israeli forces conducted a two-week siege on the al-Shifa before withdrawing on April 1.

“The harrowing discovery of these mass graves underscores the urgency of ensuring immediate access for human rights investigators, including forensic experts, to the occupied Gaza Strip to ensure that evidence is preserved and to carry out independent and transparent investigations with the aim of guaranteeing accountability for any violations of international law,” senior Amnesty International official Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement last week .

The Israeli military has claimed that those whom they arrested and killed were militant fighters. But journalists, doctors and other witnesses say most of the victims were civilians or health care workers.  Journalists on the ground in Gaza like Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud said that the bodies being found in the mass graves include women, children, patients and medical staff. Some of the corpses found at Nasser were found naked with their hands bound, according to Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office.

According to Gaza journalist Bisan Owda, some of the bodies found in the mass graves at Nasser did not have organs, skin or heads. Footage from Owda shows a massive number of body bags surrounded by piles of dirt ― presumably from medics continuing to dig out corpses from the graves ― while family members try to identify their loved ones. She shows one of the corpses in a body bag who had a cast on their leg, signaling they were likely a patient at the hospital when they were killed.

 

Delays Help Russia

The Story of an Ill-Behaved Bitch

Remember Mitt Romney, who strapped his dog Seamus to the roof of his car for a 12-hour road trip? And Florida senator and Medicare fraudster Rick Scott, who adopted a dog when he ran for governor, named him Reagan, and then abandoned him for doing dog things?  Well now we have South Dakota governor (and college dropout) Kristi Noem.  She was previously best known as the COVID-denying governor of one of America’s top rectangular states-- but she has now added dog killer to her résumé.  In a new book to be released next month and shared with The Guardian, Noem says she killed her “untrainable” 14-month-old hunting dog Cricket after it ate a local family’s chickens. 

According to Noem, Cricket was an incorrigible dog. So incorrigible that at one point, Noem used an electronic collar to force the dog to behave. That didn’t work, and one day on the way home from a pheasant hunt—which Cricket ruined by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life” (i.e., acting like a dog)—Cricket attacked a local family’s chickens, grabbing them "one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

Noem, who had just witnessed Cricket's enthusiasm with wild birds, didn't stop to think that she couldn't be trusted in the presence of domesticated birds.  Instead, she decided that it was her dog's fault, and decided to get rid of her. “I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, claiming she was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” (no evidence of that, btw).  Noem decided that Cricket was “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” and  that she “had to put her down.”

Oh, but she wasn’t done. As it happens, her dog murder touched off a mini-killing spree. “After it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”  And that’s when she iced the goat. 

Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.”

The story was met with widespread condemnation online.  The Democratic National Committee said: "If you want elected officials who don't brag about brutally killing their pets... vote Democrat."   Meghan McCain, the daughter of 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, said: "You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc - but not from killing a dog."

 

Gossip - Real Power

Teasing Tesla

Freaky Dust Storm Turns Athens Orange

A dramatic orange haze has descended over Athens as clouds of dust have blown in from the Sahara desert. It is one of the worst such episodes to hit Greece since 2018, according to officials.

Greece had already been struck by similar clouds in late March and early April, which also covered areas of Switzerland and southern France. The skies are predicted to clear on Wednesday, says Greece's weather service.

Air quality has deteriorated in many areas of the country and on Wednesday morning the Acropolis in Athens was no longer visible because of the dust. The cloud has reached as far north as Thessaloniki.  Greeks with respiratory conditions have been urged to limit the time they spend outdoors, wear protective masks and avoid taking physical exercise until the dust clouds clear.

The Sahara releases 60 to 200 million tons of mineral dust per year. Most of the dust quickly descends to Earth, but some of the small particles can travel huge distances, sometimes reaching Europe.  The atmosphere especially in southern Greece has become stifling because of the combination of dust and high temperatures.

Dust plumes from the Sahara are not uncommon across Europe and can vary in intensity, however, they tend to occur most often during the spring and autumn. This current event across the Eastern Mediterranean was caused by an area of low pressure over Libya that brought strong southerly winds, drawing in high concentrations of dust and sand from North Africa into Greece. The southerly winds also brought hot desert air with them. Temperatures rose to well above the average for late April across the Greek mainland and islands, with 36.6C recorded in the Chania region of Crete. 

 

Brutal Takedown of Marjorie

“The Daily Show” guest host Dulcé Sloan tore into Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene amid the far-right lawmaker’s attempt to oust Mike Johnson as House speaker over his push for aid to Ukraine.  Greene has “the strongest Karen energy I have ever seen,” Sloan cracked after airing a montage of her attacks on Johnson.

“Damn,” said Sloan. “Last time I saw a white lady that pissed about a bill, she was getting kicked out of a Chili’s. I don’t know if she’s going to get Mike Johnson fired, but she’s definitely getting store credit for something.”

Sloan then debuted a new nickname for conspiracy theory-peddling Greene. “The crazy thing is if Capitol Hill Karen does get the speaker fired, that’ll be the second time in six months,” she noted, before telling Republicans the harsh truth that: “If you’re constantly firing speakers, maybe the problem is with you.”

India's Modi Accused of Hate Speech Against Minorities

India's opposition has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of Islamophobic remarks after he claimed his opponents would distribute people's wealth to "infiltrators" if they won power.  Modi told a rally the opposition Congress wanted to distribute wealth to "those who have many children". His remarks were widely seen as referring to India's Muslim minority.

Modi made the comments during an election rally in Rajasthan state, when he was talking about the Congress party's manifesto.  He alleged that the manifesto said it would "take stock" of the gold women traditionally save in India and redistribute it. "And their earlier [Congress] government had said that Muslims have the first right over the nation's wealth," Modi alleged. "This means that they [the Congress] will collect people's wealth and distribute it to whom?" he asked the audience. "To those who have more children. To the infiltrators. Should your hard-earned money be given to infiltrators?"

Modi was referring to a 2006 speech by Manmohan Singh, who was then prime minister when Congress were in office, where he spoke about empowering minorities so they could share in the fruits of development.  The Muslim community has often been stereotyped as having many children. But experts say that this claim is distorted and opens the community up to prejudicial treatment.

Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has often been accused of singling out India's minority communities, especially Muslims.  Rights groups say that they face discrimination and attacks, and have been forced to live as "second-class" citizens under Modi's rule.

Opposition leaders across parties have criticized the prime minister's comments. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge defended his party's manifesto, saying that it was "for every Indian" and it talks about equality and justice for all. He called Modi's remarks a panic-filled "hate speech" and a ploy to divert people's attention from the opposition having performed better than his BJP in the first phase of polling.  "In the history of India, no prime minister has lowered the dignity of his post as much as Modiji has," he said. Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP, Saket Gokhale, called Modi's remarks "hateful and divisive" against the Muslim community and urged people to lodge complaints about the speech with with India's electoral authorities.

The First American Victims of Zombie Deer Disease

Two Wyoming hunters have become the first Americans to die from "zombie deer disease" after eating infected venison.  

Experts have been warning for years that the nearly 100 percent fatal chronic wasting disease (CWD) - which leaves deer confused, drooling, and unafraid of humans - could jump from animals to people.  But a new study says that it has already happened - in two hunters who died in 2022 after eating contaminated venison.  One of the victims, a 72-year-old man, suffered 'rapid-onset confusion and aggression,' as well as seizures. He died within a month.

He was diagnosed after his death with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a brain-wasting condition similar to chronic wasting disease (CWD).  The hunter's friend also died from the disease but there were limited details about his condition in the research published last week in the journal Neurology.

 CWD is nicknamed "zombie deer disease'"because it causes parts of the brain to slowly degenerate to a spongy consistency and animals will drool and stare blankly before they die.  There are no treatments or vaccines, and the disease is 100 percent fatal.

The exact route of transmission is not fully understood, but it is thought that it is spread animal to animal by eating forage or water contaminated by infected feces or exposure to carcasses.  Direct contact, including saliva, blood, urine and even antler velvet during annual shedding may also contribute to the transmission of the pathogen. Any deer that dies on a farm must be tested for chronic wasting disease.  Because the disease is so contagious, if one animal test positive, the entire herd is considered infected.

Map of CWD-infected wild herds, based on March 2024 data from state wildlife agencies & the USGS

 The condition is thought to only infect animals like deer, elk, reindeer, caribou and moose.  Chronic wasting disease was initially discovered in 1967 in captive deer in Colorado.  It has now been found in animals in at least 32 states, four Canadian provinces and four other foreign countries, according to the CDC.   The three states with the largest distribution of CWD-infected deer are Kansas (49 counties), Nebraska (43 counties), and Wisconsin (43 counties).   The most recent case in deer was in Kentucky last fall, according to the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife. 

Social Media Goes Crazy Over Tay Tay's New Album

Slash and Chris Stapleton - Oh Well

If Being in Debt in China Isn't Bad Enough, the Government Kicks You While You're Down

Qin Huangsheng once imagined a better life in the city when she left her home village to become a factory worker at age 16.  Now, in her early 40s, she has $40,000 in personal debt and a base salary of $400 a month. Debt collectors are hounding her. She is blocked from buying tickets on China's high-speed rail, just one of the penalties the government is increasingly imposing on people who don't pay their bills.

People across China are being weighed down by their debts and a system that penalizes them for not paying the money back. Beijing is cracking down on delinquent debtors by seizing their salaries or restricting them from getting government jobs, as well as curbing their access to high-speed trains and air travel. Many are forbidden from buying expensive insurance policies and told they aren't allowed to go on vacation or stay in nice hotels. Authorities can detain them if they don't comply.

The number of people on a publicly available government delinquency blacklist has jumped by nearly 50% since late 2019 to 8.3 million today. Courts can put people on the blacklist when they don't fulfill judgments against them to pay money back or are deemed to be not cooperating with legal proceedings.

 

A black market has emerged to serve people on the blacklist. In one case, Shanghai authorities busted a ring of scalpers who were booking high-speed rail tickets on behalf of debtors who were barred from doing so themselves. In early 2021, authorities tracked down a debtor who had been using the service and took him into custody, according to a local court.

 

Unthinkable Possibility

Drowsy Don on Trial

Malice With No Forethought

Idaho is Facing a Doctor Shortage Due to Abortion Ban

Idaho, already in a doctor shortage, is losing doctors who specialize in obstetrics and gynecology.  Last week, Idaho medical leaders said the state's workforce shortage is exacerbated by doctors’ confusion about how to practice medicine under Idaho’s abortion ban that only allows abortion if it is needed for the mother’s life — not their health.

And they pleaded with lawmakers for a health exception, which would allow a doctor to terminate a pregnancy to prevent significant harm to a patient, not just prevent their death. For example, if a patient’s water broke early and infection was setting in before a fetus was viable, a physician could treat the infection, which may involve terminating the pregnancy, without fear of prosecution.  “Idaho is digging itself into a workforce hole that will take many years, if not decades, to fill. But before we can stabilize the environment and move forward, we have to stop digging. And we need more clarity in our laws to help with that,” said Susie Pouliot Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association.

If a provider is prosecuted under Idaho’s abortion law, they face two to five years in prison and could have their medical license suspended or revoked. Idaho also has a civil enforcement law, allowing doctors to be sued for at least $20,000 by any family members of a person who obtained an abortion.  But legislation modifying Idaho’s abortion ban isn’t likely this year. The Idaho Legislature has already finished most of its business for the 2024 session and has recessed until April 10 to give itself time to address any potential vetoes issued by the Governor.

Arizona is More Than Two Time Zones Away

The Black Keys - This is Nowhere

Convicted Felon Dies of Cancer

O.J. Simpson, the decorated football superstar and Hollywood actor who was acquitted of charges he killed his former wife and her friend but later found liable in a separate civil trial, has died. He was 76.   The family announced on Simpson's official X account — formerly Twitter — that Simpson died Wednesday after battling cancer. Simpson's attorney confirmed to TMZ he died in Las Vegas.

Simpson earned fame, fortune and adulation through football and show business, but his legacy was forever changed by the June 1994 knife slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.  Live TV coverage of his arrest after a famous slow-speed chase marked a stunning fall from grace for the sports hero.

The public was mesmerized by his “trial of the century” on live TV. His case sparked debates on race, gender, domestic abuse, celebrity justice and police misconduct.  A criminal court jury found him not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to family members of Brown and Goldman.

Twelve years later, following an outpouring of public outrage, Rupert Murdoch cancelled a planned book by the News Corp-owned HarperCollins in which Simpson offered his hypothetical account of the killings. It was to be titled, “If I Did It.”   Goldman’s family, still doggedly pursuing the multimillion-dollar wrongful death judgment, won control of the manuscript. They retitled the book “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.”

Shortly after he lost his book deal, Simpson led five men he barely knew into a confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers in a cramped Las Vegas hotel room. Two men with Simpson had guns. A jury convicted Simpson of armed robbery and other felonies.  Imprisoned at age 61, he served nine years in a remote northern Nevada prison, including a stint as a gym janitor. He was not contrite when he was released on parole in October 2017. The parole board heard him insist yet again that he was only trying to retrieve sports memorabilia and family heirlooms stolen from him after his criminal trial in Los Angeles.

The Heisman Trophy Trust, who made Reggie Bush return his trophy for receiving "improper benefits", decided to post a tribute to Simpson on its X account.  The move was widely condemned on social media.  An attorney for the Goldman family said that Simpson still owed the Goldmans more than $114 million at the time of  his death.

Dengue Fever Outbreak in Central America

At least 20 people have died, and more than 30,000 have been infected by a wave of dengue in Central America, where Guatemala and Panama have the highest death toll this year.  The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned last week that Latin America and the Caribbean will experience their “worst dengue season,” accumulating 3.5 million cases and more than 1,000 deaths this year.

The most affected in the Central American region is Guatemala, with nine deaths and about 10,200 cases, including 38 severe cases, according to data from the Ministry of Health. Last year, 118 people died in Guatemala, and 72,000 were infected by this disease transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

In Panama, according to official information, seven people have died, and more than 3,200 cases have been recorded, of which 16 are severe. In all of 2023, there were 18 deaths and more than 16,500 infected in this country.  “It is important to keep environments clean and thus avoid the increase of mosquito breeding sites,” warned the Ministry of Health of Panama. In Honduras, there have been four deaths, and 8,000 cases have been registered, according to official data.

“There has been an increase from one week to another from an average of 100 cases [to an average] of 800 to 900 and more,” warned the spokesperson for the Honduran Ministry of Health, Miguel Osorio.

In Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, there are officially no dengue deaths this year. Managua reports 1,545 cases, but there are another 17,300 under investigation. In El Salvador, there were more than 1,100 people affected by dengue. Last year there were 6,000. Costa Rica reports 6,000 cases.

It is “a cause for concern since it represents three times more cases than those reported for this same date in 2023, a record year with more than 4.5 million cases reported in the region,” said PAHO director Jarbas Barbosa last week.  “This will probably be the worst dengue season that has been had in America,” he warned.

A True Champion and a Leader

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley has gone viral this weekend for saying unambiguously that transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.  Staley said she supported transgender athletes during a press conference ahead of the Gamecocks’ NCAA Tournament championship game after she was pressed by Dan Zaksheske, a reporter for the conservative sports website OutKick.

Zaksheske asked Staley her opinion on the inclusion of “biological males” in women’s sports. “If you are a woman you should play,” Staley responded. “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play.” Staley appeared to realize the import of her statement, and perhaps the attempt to bait her ― but said she didn’t care. “So now the barnstorm of people are going to flood my timeline and be a distraction to me on one of the biggest days of our game, and I’m OK with that. I really am,” she said.  The next day, the Gamecocks went on to win the NCAA women’s basketball championship, defeating Iowa 87-75. 

The participation of transgender athletes in sports at all levels ― from elementary school to collegiate athletics ― has been under attack by conservative lawmakers and organizations. Staley’s comments came only two days before a new blow to transgender inclusion in sports. On Monday, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which governs around 83,000 student athletes, announced a policy that essentially bans all transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. It is believed to be the first college sports organization to solidify this policy.

According to the new policy, all NAIA student athletes can participate in male sports. But for women’s sports, the policy says that only student athletes whose “biological sex is female” can participate as long as they have not begun any “masculinizing hormone therapy.”  The policy, which was approved 20-0 by NAIA’s Council of Presidents, will go into effect Aug. 1, 2024.

The NCAA, on the other hand, has allowed transgender athletes to compete if they adhere to the guidelines of the international sports governing bodies but has been generally quiet on pressure to pull events from states that bar trans athletes from competitions. “College sports are the premier stage for women’s sports in America and the NCAA will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition for all student-athletes in all NCAA championships,” the NCAA said in a statement released hours after the NAIA announcement.

Since 2019, when the Alliance Defending Freedom ― a conservative legal group which has drafted many anti-trans bills ― first sued a Connecticut school for allowing transgender athletes to participate in sports, the existence of transgender athletes has dominated the news cycle.  To date, 24 states have passed legislation barring transgender women and girls from playing in women’s sports, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

 

For Heavens Sake!

Musk is Screwing Up Over in Europe Too

Two years ago, Elon Musk was celebrated as a hero when he opened a factory in a sleepy town outside of Berlin.  But now he is back, dealing with an act of sabotage by eco-activists, which has resulted in the plant being shut down for more than a week.

Musk has now become entangled in a local culture war, making his shining factory a lightning rod for a range of critics-from local citizens to environmental activists, left-wing militants and far-right politicians.  In recent weeks, nearly two-thirds of Grünheide's residents voted against Tesla's application for an extension of the plant. The company has also been targeted by climate-change skeptics opposed to their country's green-technology transition, while trade unionists have mobilized against Musk's no-union policy.  Musk has called the eco-activists "dumber than a doorstop" for their criticism of electric vehicles.

63-year-old pensioner and Grünheide resident Manuela Hoyer hopes he won't expand the plant.  Hoyer is one of the central figures organizing opposition to GigaBerlin, as Tesla calls its plant. She and her allies scored a victory last month when 62% of residents voted in a nonbinding referendum to deny Tesla's bid to knock down 250 acres of local woodlands to make room for more factory buildings, a train yard and a daycare center.  "Our concern is about the water protection areas in the forest," she said. GigaBerlin sits amid acres of pinewood forests and country roads winding past lakes whose shores are dotted with bungalows and boat docks.

Tesla's arrival in the town has mainly translated into higher rents, higher prices, more heavy truck traffic and unfamiliar faces. Official statistics suggest most of the 12,000 jobs created by the plant have gone to outsiders, with unemployment in Landkreis Oder-Spree (the county where Grünheide is located), steady at around 6%.

Ecuador Invades Mexican Embassy in Quito; Obrador Cuts Ties

Mexico is cutting ties with Ecuador after police stormed the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian Vice-President Jorge Glas.  Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said they had "forcibly entered" the embassy in a "flagrant violation of international law".

Glas took refuge in the embassy last December after Ecuador issued an arrest warrant against him for alleged corruption.   Glas served as Ecuador's vice-president between 2013 and 2017. He was relieved of his duties because of mounting corruption allegations against him. Later that year he was sentenced to six years in jail in connection with corruption at the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Prosecutors said he took $13.5m in bribes.

He was released from prison in November but Ecuadorian authorities then issued another arrest warrant alleging further allegations of corruption, triggering Glas to seek refuge in the Mexican embassy.  On Friday, Mexico said it had granted Glas political asylum "after a thorough analysis" of the situation - an action Ecuador said was illegal.   "Ecuador is a sovereign nation and we are not going to allow any criminal to stay free," Ecuador's Presidency said in a statement. It said Glas, who had been "sentenced to imprisonment by the Ecuadoran justice system", had been arrested and "placed under the orders of the competent authorities".

Photographs from the scene show police scaling a wall and metal fence at the embassy's closed entrance.  Mexico's Obrador said he had ordered the immediate suspension of diplomatic ties as a result.  "Police from Ecuador forcibly entered our embassy and detained the former vice-president of that country who was a refugee and processing asylum due to the persecution and harassment he faces.  "This is a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico." A number of diplomats were injured in the incident, according to Alicia Bárcena, Mexico's secretary of foreign relations.

Tension between the two countries has been mounting in recent days. On Wednesday, Mr Obrador made remarks, considered "unfortunate" by Ecuador, about violence during last year's election - won by Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa.   The following day Ecuador declared the Mexican ambassador a persona non grata and said she should leave the country.

Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus - II Most Wanted

Millenial Wars

 

Haven't We Lost Enough Lives in Gaza?

José Andrés, the renowned chef who founded World Central Kitchen (WCK), condemned Israeli officials after troops killed seven of his charity’s workers who were delivering food and supplies to starving Palestinians in Gaza ― leading the aid group to pause its desperately needed work in the region.

Andrés confirmed that WCK lost “several of our sisters and brothers” in the Israeli attack. The workers were traveling in a convoy of three cars traveling from Deir al-Balah in Central Gaza to deliver food to starving people in the North.  Two of the cars in the convoy were armored vehicles branded with the charity’s logo on their roofs so Israeli forces would know not to attack them. WCK also said the convoy was driving in a deconflicted zone.  WCK had also been coordinating movements with the Israeli military.

Saif & Damian the day they were killed by Israel

Despite those safety measures, Israeli troops (using so-called precision intelligence and the most technologically advanced weaponry) bombed the convoy as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse. The WCK warehouse had just received more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid that had arrived via sea route. According to some reports and geolocation of the area, Israel launched three strikes on the cars in succession.

“I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family,” Andrés wrote of the victims on X, formerly Twitter. “These are people...angels...I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless...they are not nameless.”   The innocent aid workers killed by Netanyahu's IDF are:

• 25-year-old Saifeddin Issam Aya Abutaha (Palestine) 
• 43-year-old Lalzawmi (Zomi) Frankcom (Australia)
• 35-year-old Damian Sobol (Poland)
• 33-year-old Jacob Flickinger (U.S./Canada)
• 57-year-old John Chapman (U.K.)
• 33-year-old Jim Henderson (U.K.)
• 47-year-old James Kirby (U.K.)

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon,” Andrés said. “No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”

Israel’s preventable attack on WCK workers threatens aid ships from being able to actually deliver life-saving aid to Palestinians facing a dire humanitarian crisis.   Three aid ships coming from Cyprus arrived in Gaza with 400 tons of food and supplies organized by WCK, but 240 tons of that cargo had to be sent back as a result of Israel’s shocking attack and WCK’s subsequent pause in operations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the attack was “unintentional” but failed to articulate exactly what the intention of the attack actually was.  He flippantly remarked that the killings were also something that “happens in war.”  Historically, Israel’s probes into its own military have rarely produced results that hold the army accountable. 

The Israeli military has killed more than 200 humanitarian workers in Gaza since launching its military offensive, following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in which some 1,200 people were killed and another roughly 250 were taken hostage. More than 30,000 people have since been killed in Gaza, and it’s believed that more than 12,000 of them were children.  

 

Reverend Warnock Schools Speaker Mike Johnson Over his Ignorance and Hate

Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock hit House Speaker Mike Johnson with a lesson in faith after Johnson called it “outrageous and abhorrent” for President Joe Biden to proclaim that Easter Sunday was Transgender Day of Visibility.

Johnson joined a number of critics, including former President Donald Trump and Caitlyn Jenner, who knocked Biden over the proclamation-- even though International Transgender Day of Visibility has been held on March 31 every year since it was established in 2009.  The event only coincided with Easter due to a quirk in the lunar calendar. 

Warnock, who is senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, took to CNN to criticize Johnson over his claim that the Biden White House “betrayed the central tenet of Easter” with the move.  Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that,” Warnock told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He continued: “This is just one more instance of folks who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith. Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down but as a bridge to bring all of us together.”

 

GOP Is Using White Women Victimhood to Stoke Anti-Immigrant Fear

Republicans who are pushing for more restrictive immigration policy ahead of a pivotal election year continue to lean on an old strategy in their appeal to voters: broadly framing immigrant men as dangerous next to imagery of young white women victims.

In 2015 it was Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who was fatally shot on a San Francisco pier. A year later, Sarah Root, a 21-year-old Iowa woman, was killed in a crash involving a drunk driver. In 2018, 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts was killed while jogging in her rural Iowa hometown. Now, it’s Laken Riley, a Georgia college student killed last month while also jogging.

All were white women, and their deaths, linked to immigrant men, became flash points in Republicans’ push for hard-line immigration policies. Led by Donald Trump, the party is using these deaths to call for policies like mass arrests, detention camps and militarized deportations, and pairing that with violent anti-immigrant language.

The rhetoric — which recalls the nation’s long history of racist attacks against men of color by casting them as threats to white women — also threatens the safety of immigrants, advocates say.  Trump has highlighted the 22-year-old Riley’s death during campaign rallies and on social media, referring to her as an “American daughter.” 

Deborah Kang, an associate professor at the University of Virginia who studies U.S. immigration and border policy, said such language about security highlights a much longer history, especially in the American South, of white supremacists fighting to protect white women from perceived threats posed by men of color. She added that it echoes a kind of nationalist paternalism.  “So for Trump, one could argue that protecting the homeland and protecting so-called White womanhood are two sides of the same fight,” she said.

 Trump, whose administration once orchestrated the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border as an migration deterrent, has also complicated efforts to address immigration. He publicly denounced the federal immigration bill, which was subsequently tanked by Senate Republicans, arguing that it wasn’t politically advantageous for Republicans to help address issues at the border before the election.

Kang said voters should focus on at least one key fact.  “Multiple studies conducted by demographers, sociologists and economists have shown that historically and in fact, for centuries, immigration is actually associated with lower crime rates,” she said. “Despite that statistic, immigrants throughout history have been routinely scapegoated for a host of problems in the nation at any given time.”

“I think it’s being used politically to get those votes,” Jason Riley, Laken Riley’s father, said in an interview. “It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that."   

Rob Tibbetts, the father of Mollie Tibbetts, directly criticized the use of her death to defend conservative immigration policies.  “I encourage the debate on immigration; there is great merit in its reasonable outcome. But do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist,” Rob Tibbetts wrote in 2018.

Anti-immigrant messaging continues to fuel concepts like the “great replacement theory,” the belief that there’s an ongoing conspiracy to take power away from white Americans by growing the number of non-white people in the country. That notion has been linked to several incidents of hate-fueled violence, like mass shootings in El Paso, Buffalo, New York and Pittsburgh. It’s also become enmeshed with far-right anti-democracy groups, Cruz said.

“It’s really racist, problematic narratives that I think have become quite popular, especially with some members of the GOP that have continued to spew the great replacement theory,” Cruz said. “It’s incredibly problematic, and we’re trying to keep an eye on it. We get a sense that it’s only gonna get worse as we get closer to the general election.”