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ceasefire
Death Toll in Gaza Surpasses 50,000 as Israeli Strikes Persist
"It's displacement under fire," one Gazan said on Sunday.
Mar 23, 2025
Over 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since Israel began its campaign in the enclave, local health officials said Sunday. The grim milestone was reached at the end of a week of deadly strikes by Israeli security forces that upended a fragile cease-fire that went into effect in January.
Gaza's Health Ministry also announced that there have been over 113,200 people injured since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel and took roughly 250 people hostage and killed over a thousand others—prompting Israel's fierce and deadly campaign.
On Sunday, Pope Francis, in his first public appearance after weeks of hospitalization, said that he is "saddened by the resumption of heavy Israeli bombing on the Gaza Strip, causing many deaths and injuries."
"I call for an immediate halt to the weapons; and for the courage to resume dialogue, so that all hostages may be released and a final ceasefire reached," he said.
In January, Hamas and Israel agreed to a cease-fire that paused hostilities and saw 25 living Israeli hostages released in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention.
Hamas wanted to open talks for the second phase of the deal, that was supposed to see Israel fully withdraw from the enclave and Hamas release remaining living hostages. Israel instead wanted to impose the terms of a new cease-fire presented by the Trump administration, according to NPR, and refused to hold the talks regarding a permanent end to the war.
Israel commenced bombing Gaza again on Tuesday.
"Israel brazenly resumed its devastating bombing campaign in Gaza killing at least 414 people in their sleep, including 174 children, and again wiping out entire families in a matter of hours. Palestinians in Gaza—who have barely had a chance to start piecing together their lives and continue to grapple with the trauma of Israel’s past attacks—have woken up once more to the hellish nightmare of intense bombardment," wrote Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's secretary-general, in a statement on Tuesday.
Since Tuesday, 673 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Sunday update from the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Overnight into Sunday, Israeli strikes hit the southern Gaza Strip, killing at least 26 Palestinians, including a Hamas leader and numerous women and children, according to the NPR. The Israeli military ordered people to leave the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in the southern city of Rafah, the outlet reported.
"It's displacement under fire," one Gazan in the city of Rafah toldNPR. "There are wounded people among us. The situation is very difficult," he said.
The Washington Post also reported Sunday that Israeli political and military leaders are considering plans for a new ground campaign in Gaza that "could include a military occupation of the entire enclave for months or more."
The outlet reported that "the new and more aggressive tactics, according to current and former Israeli officials and others briefed, will probably also include direct military control of humanitarian aid; targeting more of Hamas's civilian leadership; and evacuating women, children, and verified noncombatants from neighborhoods to 'humanitarian bubbles' and laying siege to those who remain—a more intense version of a tactic employed last year in northern Gaza."
Israeli forces also drew condemnation on Friday after bombing the only cancer hospital in the Gaza Strip. Israel Defense Forces troops carried out an airstrike on the abandoned Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor, where the IDF launched what it called a "limited ground operation" earlier this week.
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Biden's Enduring Legacy: Awful. No Worse
If ever there was a searing, sanctimonious self-immolation in presidential politics, this was it and the costs are incalculable.
Feb 01, 2025
It’s time to assess former U.S. President Joe Biden’s legacy. It has been a catastrophe. Or, worse.
Domestically, his most influential legacy is that he turned the country over to Donald Trump, the most repellant, dis-qualified, should’ve-been-easy-to-defeat candidate for president ever. It is the end of the epoch of liberal democracy and the beginning of an era of oligarchic fascism. Nothing less.
Internationally, he lost the U.S.’ proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and scarred the U.S. forever as an unrepentant perpetrator of genocide. It is the end of post-Cold War primacy for the United States and the beginning of its persona as a rapacious, predatory rogue state that objectively disdains human rights, democracy, and the international rule of law. Nothing less.
The combination of the two effects amounts to a massive, unprecedented comedown, an unparalleled destruction for the U.S. in its own house, and in the world. It’s hard to see how either will ever be recovered. That is Biden’s essential legacy.
Domestically, Biden refused to prosecute Trump for his public attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Brad Raffensperger tape was known about on January 3, 2021, more than two weeks before Biden ever even took office. You know the tape, “All I want is for you to find me 11,780 votes.” That is prima facia proof of federal election interference, a felony.
It is the end of post-Cold War primacy for the United States and the beginning of its persona as a rapacious, predatory rogue state that objectively disdains human rights, democracy, and the international rule of law. Nothing less.
Prosecution should have begun on January 20, 2021, the day Biden took office. Instead, Biden waited two-and-a-half years before even opening a formal investigation. It gave Trump more than enough time to run out the clock with his trademark Deny, Deflect, and Delay tactics.
Similarly, the matter of fake electors. They, too were uncovered even before Biden took office, when former Vice President Mike Pence refused to accept them on January 6, 2021. They, too were prima facia evidence of federal election interference, a felony. They, too, were left uninvestigated and unlitigated for two-and-a-half years, an unfathomable dereliction by the only person in world in a place to see that the law was simply enforced.
The damage to the country is incalculable. Trump will never face accountability. If Biden had simply done his job, Trump would now be sitting in an orange jumpsuit in some minimum security federal prison, instead of reveling in his second coronation. Biden ensured that the Rule of Law does not apply to the wily, wealthy, and powerful. In doing so, he undermined the public’s respect for and confidence in that Rule of Law.
Then, Biden’s refusal to step aside for a more able candidate in the 2024 election ensured that no one could mount a winning campaign. The psychotically delusional ego behind it—that he was busy running the world—is insufferable. And it was a conspiracy among all of the top ranks of the Democratic party to hide his infirmity, until it was no longer possible.
Let’s stipulate—with an overabundance of generosity—that former Vice President Kamala Harris did as good a job as she could. The most telling fact of the Democrats’ loss was that Trump won by just over 2 millions votes, while 19 million people who had voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Harris in 2024. By a roughly 3-to-1 margin—nearly 6 million people—those who stayed home reported that they would likely have come out and voted for Harris but for Biden’s support for the Israeli genocide.
There you have it. The Democrats’ own supporters would not support the Democratic nominee because of Biden’s unconscionable, barbaric, intractable policy in Gaza. Biden owns all of the dimensions of his party’s defeat and the loss of all of the branches of government to Trump. THAT is his domestic legacy. Nothing else matters.
Internationally, it is just as much of a debacle.
The Democrats began menacing Russia in 1994, when former President Bill Clinton announced the eastward expansion of NATO to include formerly Soviet-bloc countries. They continued it with the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, in 2014, overthrowing a Russia-leaning government and installing a Western-leaning neo-fascist state. Biden was the Obama administration’s quarterback on that coup.
Biden, on the brink of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, refused to even discuss Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer of a European-wide security framework. It was Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, who said that the U.S. wanted “to weaken Russia,” and make this invasion “a strategic failure for Russia.”
And it was the Biden administration that made colossal miscalculations about Russia’s military weakness, the U.S.’ military prowess, and the likely efficacy of economic sanctions. More than 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, and almost $200 billion squandered, for that mistake. To put that into perspective, the U.S., with five times Ukraine’s population, quit Vietnam when, after eight years of fighting (not three years), it could no longer stomach the loss of 58,000 men.
The humiliation of the U.S. loss in Ukraine is not yet fully revealed because a formal settlement encoding the loss has not yet been reached. But most of the world’s nations are happy to have seen Russia bloody the U.S.’s nose.
Of all of the damages Biden inflicted on the U.S., none are as egregious, as unforgivable, or irreparable, as the damage to the U.S.’ reputation for his lusty, unremitting, sadistic support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
For a few weeks after Hamas’ October 7 attack, the Israeli response was framed as “self-defense.” But as Israeli officials publicly declared that they were going for expansion of the Israeli state, to Damascus, Syria, and beyond, it quickly became clear that a genocide was taking place.
The International Court of Justice said that a “plausible case” for genocide had been brought. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the minister of defense. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared genocide. The Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, stated that ethnic cleansing was underway.
The worst part was Biden’s and Harris’ claim to be “working around the clock” for a cease-fire, when, in fact, he was encouraging the genocide while precisely working to prevent a cease-fire. A more perfidious, demonic pretense could not be contrived.
Thanks to Biden, the U.S. will never live down that it is a savage, predatory, genocidal state, enforcing by mass murder of innocent, defenseless women and children, the imposition of a Western colonial regime into a third world country in order to steal their land and the riches beneath it. All the world sees it. None will forget it.
Finally, lest anybody think I am some kind of crypto-conservative, I have voted for every Democratic presidential nominee since George McGovern, in 1972. It was the rank and file Democrats of Biden’s own party who expressed their revulsion of that party and Biden’s handiwork by staying away from the polls and handing Donald Trump the presidency and both houses of Congress.
If ever there was a searing, sanctimonious self-immolation in presidential politics, this was it and the costs are incalculable. The damage will reverberate for decades and might never be recovered.
It will be all but impossible for the Democratic Party to accept responsibility for the catastrophe it has inflicted on America, through its head, Joe Biden, and the complicity of all of the party’s upper echelon. It will, thus, ensure that nothing will change. We desperately need a new party that reflects the interests and needs of the American people and not those of the party’s corporate owners. Change cannot come too soon.
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Trump Admin Reportedly Implements Widespread Freeze on Foreign Aid—Except to Israel and Egypt
"Guess which country was exempted…?" wrote the investigative outlet Drop Site News.
Jan 24, 2025
The State Department on Friday reportedly issued guidance that it is freezing almost all U.S. foreign assistance—with exceptions for emergency food aid and foreign military financing for two U.S. allies, Israel and Egypt—according to a cable obtained by multiple outlets.
"Guess which country was exempted....?" wrote the investigative outlet Drop Site, in response to the cable, which independent journalist Ken Klippenstein shared on social media.
The aid carve out for Israel follows 15 months of nearly unqualified U.S. support for the Israeli government during its military campaign on the Gaza Strip, which began after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the local health officials. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Sunday, but Israel has since then attacked the city of Jenin in the West Bank.
Other traditional U.S. allies, like Ukraine and Taiwan, are not listed among the waivers to the pause. Trump has been a longtime critic of NATO, which Ukraine hopes to join, and has been critical of the scale of U.S. support for Ukraine as it battles an invasion by Russia.
On Monday, his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order calling for a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign development assistance in order to assess "programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy." But this latest memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to embassies worldwide, further fleshes out that directive.
The U.S. "shall not provide foreign assistance funded by or through the department and USAID without the secretary of state's authorization or the authorization of his designee," according to the cable, which was referring to the United States Agency for International Development.
Additionally, "no new obligations shall be made for foreign assistance until such times as the secretary shall determine, following a review" and "for existing foreign assistance awards, contracting officers and grant officers shall immediately issue stop-work orders."
Politico, which also obtained Rubio's memo, reported that "it had not been clear from the president's [Monday] order if it would affect already appropriated funds or Ukraine aid. The new guidance means no further actions will be taken to disperse aid funding to programs already approved by the U.S. government, according to three current and two former officials familiar with the new guidance."
"State just totally went nuclear on foreign assistance," one State Department official toldPolitico.
In fiscal year 2023, the most recent year with complete government reporting, the U.S. spent $68 billion in foreign aid obligations, on topics ranging from economic development, to health and the environment. Ukraine was the top recipient of foreign aid that year, with $17 billion obligated, and Israel came in second, with $3.3 billion.
According to The Associated Press, which also obtained the cable, the order was particularly disappointing to humanitarian officials who hoped that health clinics and other health programs worldwide would be spared from the funding freeze.
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