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In Spain, dozens of ships carrying civilian activists and loaded with humanitarian aid departed Barcelona on Monday, bound for the Gaza Strip. The Global Sumud Flotilla is the largest attempt yet to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg helped to organize the flotilla.

Greta Thunberg: “Israel are very clear about their genocidal intent. They want to erase the Palestinian nation. They want to take over the Gaza Strip. And if that doesn’t make people act, if that doesn’t make people go out of their couch and take action, fill the streets, get organized, then I don’t know what will.”

In Australia, peace activists held a nonviolent protest Monday blocking the entrance of Port Melbourne, demanding Australia suspend trade with Israel. Meanwhile, in Colorado, dozens of Jewish peace activists and allies rallied on Friday outside the Denver office of Senator Michael Bennet.

The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan.

Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington.

Legal experts say the case marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights. Afghanistan war veterans who know him say the case against Mavalwalla appears unjust.

What the ever-loving fuck. With the man-child's megalomania spiraling - rampant troops, despot banners, Ugandan exile, his "Consultational" right to hire and fire (especially black women) and the unctuous gifting of a big boy badge to rule them all - "a lot of people are saying" we've reached the "Mad Cow Dictator" phase. What to do. JB Pritzker on the "arrogant little man": "We are watching, and we are taking names." And humbly, on the curve toward justice of MLK's moral universe: "It doesn't bend on its own."

The Alaska fiasco exposed his "idiotic, incoherent, incompetent foreign policy...The man playing at being president has no idea what he is doing"; still, he boasted, the seven European leaders who then visited the White House to support Zelensky actually came from 38 countries - "We've never had a case where 7, plus really 28, essentially 35, well, 38 countries were represented here" - and, "They call me the president of Europe."

In Israel, thousands of protesters have blocked roads around the country, including a major highway in Tel Aviv, burning tires, calling for the return of the hostages still held in Gaza and an end to Israel’s war on the besieged strip. The protests were led by families of hostages, and part of a nationwide “Day of Disruption.”

Donald Trump has been accused of “turning the military on American citizens” after a Pentagon official confirmed that planning is under way to send National Guard troops to Chicago.

Illinois attorney-general Kwame Raoul also told CBS News that the president’s actions are both “un-American” and “unwise strategically”.

Accusing the president of “turning our military on American citizens in his ongoing attempts to move our nation toward authoritarianism,” he added:

His actions are not just un-American. They are unwise strategically. Our cities are not made safer by deploying the nation’s service members for civilian law enforcement duties when they do not have the appropriate training.

To be clear: We have made no such request for the type of federal intervention we have seen in Los Angeles or Washington DC. There is no emergency in the state of Illinois.

The declaration on Friday of widespread famine in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) should mark a turning point in the war. The IPC, which represents a fastidious survey of available data, is regarded as the international gold standard in nutritional crises.

Long-criticised by humanitarians in other emergencies for its overabundance of caution, the IPC’s declaration of Level 5 – “catastrophic” hunger – in Gaza is a significant moment. Famine, under the IPC’s exacting criteria, requires three critical thresholds to be passed: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation-related deaths, all of which are now visible in Gaza.

A quarter of all Palestinians in Gaza are starving – more than 500,000 people – with that number expected to rise to more than 640,000 within six weeks.

The more genetic history that is done, the more it is clear that ancient ethnonyms, the names given supposed ethnicities, put a variety of peoples under a single rubric. I talked recently about how the Phoenicians, long thought to be what we would now call Lebanese, were actually a multi-ethnic trading diaspora in which Greeks and Italians took a leading role in North Africa and Spain — even if they worshiped the god Baal and adopted a Semitic lingua franca.

This point is worth underlining at a time when the United States is seized with a paroxysm of white nationalism. “Whiteness” is meaningless as an ethnicity. Some 5% of self-professed whites in the South have recent African heritage. Courts recognized Arab-Americans as white in the early twentieth century when the category was essential for basic legal and property rights. Apartheid South Africa recognized the Japanese as “white” when they became for a while the world’s second largest economy. Most “national” “ethnicities” can be deconstructed. So it is important to recognize that “nations” are constructs. Certainly, the diverse Scythians were.

The secret of the greatness of the Scythian Empire was, like the secret of the greatness of the United States, its very ethnic diversity and ability to bring in new populations under a broadly similar culture.

On the issue of suddenly announcing that it would now arm the federalized troops in DC, the defense department did not immediately offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.

The step is an escalation in the federal government’s rare intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and came as nearly 2,000 national guard members are stationed in the city.

“Thank you again, thank you again,” Trump said, taking Roberts’s hand into both his own and shaking it vigorously. Then, as he began to step away, the president tapped Roberts on the arm in a gesture of buddy-buddy intimacy, and said: “Won’t forget.”

Supreme court watchers have wondered why Trump thanked the chief justice so effusively. Was it because the Roberts court had, exactly a year earlier, allowed Trump to stay on the electoral ballot even though he had inspired a violent mob attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021?

Could it have been that Roberts had written the ruling that immunised Trump from criminal prosecution for that January 6 insurrection and for any other criminal misdeed he might commit while in the White House?

Stephen Miller is apparently so racist he can’t even see nonwhite people on the streets of DC protesting his goons," historian Kevin Kruse commented on Bluesky. "Wait, is that what they meant by 'colorblind conservatism?'"

Pam Fessler, author and former correspondent for NPR, gave Miller a swift fact check in a post on X.

”Besides Miller's nastiness, he's wrong," she explained. "Guess what? A majority of DC residents, regardless of race, oppose Trump's unnecessary just-for-show federal takeover."

Podcaster Bob Cesca, meanwhile, warned Miller to be careful in antagonizing Washington, DC residents.

”I take comfort in the idea that, for the rest of his miserable life, he'll wonder how much phlegm and/or feces has been added to his restaurant meals," he joked on X.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Tel Aviv to call for an end to the war in Gaza and the release of hostages, one of the largest demonstrations in Israel since the start of the fighting in October 2023.

The rally on Sunday evening was the culmination of a day of nationwide protests and a general strike to pressure the government to halt the military campaign. “Bring them all home! Stop the war!” shouted the vast crowd, which had converged on the so-called Hostage Square in Tel Aviv plaza – a focal point for protesters throughout the war.

Ehab Nuor, a 23-year-old barber, lies flat on the sand behind entangled metal, hiding from heavy machine-gun fire, as hundreds of Palestinians scramble away, carrying backpacks in which they had hoped to collect food.

Nuor has come under fire from the Israeli military near food distribution centres on more than 10 occasions.