news

On the live stream at aljazeera.com: "People here are disappointed, but not surprised." And anticipating an escalation in violence.

Highly anticipated ruling over

The reading of the ruling has now ended.

The ICJ demanded Israel, among others, to try to contain death and damage in the Gaza Strip but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.

— 🇳🇱/🇿🇦/🇮🇱 International Criminal Court in The Hague:

1. The court has ruled 15 to 2, that the State of Israel must immediately abide by all the provisional measures as established.

2. The court has ruled 16 to 1 that anyone who incites genocide against the Palestinian people must face immediate punishment.'

3. The court has ruled 15 to 2 that the State of Israel must prevent the destruction, and commit to the preservation, of any evidence of its crimes against the Palestinians.'

@Middle_East_Spectator

The Hague International Court of Justice: The court found that the reports and evidence provided by South Africa were reasonable ; Some of the rights that South Africa is seeking make sense.

🚩 @ResistanceTrench

The Hague Court: Israel must end the siege and take measures to meet the needs of the besieged people.

🚩 @ResistanceTrench

The Hague court: Israel seems to have committed war crimes and violated the genocide conventions, but the court needs more time to issue its final opinion.

In response to Hamas military operations, Israel has committed war crimes and subjected Gaza residents to collective punishment.

This court requested Israel to stop the military operations against the residents of Gaza.

🚩 @ResistanceTrenc

The court finds that there is sufficient basis for South Africa to have filed its complaint at the court, and rejects Israels request for the case to be thrown out.

The court has "taken note" of statements made by senior Israeli officials, including Yoav Gallant's saying that the IDF are "fighting human animals" and President Isaac Herzog's words that "an entire nation out there is responsible" and that there are no "uninvolved" civilians.

The International Court of Justice determines 'at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible, the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from Genocide'.

https://www.icj-cij.org/multimedia-live-original

The judge is making SA's case better than they did.

Who else is staying up? I legit can't fall asleep, waiting for the verdict.

One former pharmacy staff member told investigators that a doctor once asked if the staffer could “hook up” someone with a controlled substance “as a parting gift for leaving the White House.”

what a bro

The office dispensed controlled medications like Ambien and Provigil without verifying the patient’s identity.

hell yeah dude

It let people grab over-the-counter medicines from open bins.

this should be standard practice

upwards of $640,000 in taxpayer funds were wasted in just three years, though that number is fuzzy, because so many records were poorly kept and even handwritten.

waaaahhhhhh, half a million dollars went to giving people whatever drug they want. Under communism we'll be able to snort Z class drugs whenever we want. /joking

White House medical staff also regularly asked for brand-name medications like Ambien and Provigil instead of the generics because “their patients prefer using the brand name drugs,” a practice that contradicted military policy. Those two drugs alone cost the government $144,520 over the period from 2017 to 2019, whereas the generics would have cost $2,064, according to the report.

smdh, these people don't know the store brand soda and chips come from the same factory line.

The investigation also focused on improper record-keeping practices. The White House’s pharmacy did not keep records of controlled substances in accordance with federal law. For example, records detailing the receipt of fentanyl, ketamine, morphine, and Ambien at the White House’s pharmacy were handwritten, illegible, crossed-out, and error-filled, the report said.

Fentanyl

Fentanyl

Former White House Medical Unit medical providers told investigators that ineligible White House staff members received controlled substance prescriptions and free specialty care, including surgery, at military facilities. Even though the office was only supposed to cover care for 60 enrolled patients, the office instituted its own policy that effectively let any of the 6,000 people working in or around the White House seek health care services. Those were all inappropriately billed to the Defense Department.

Good actually, now expand it to the rest of us

Officials also offered aliases to executive branch VIPs for “enhanced privacy.” They would remove the patient’s actual name from the electronic medical record and use alternate demographic data and identifiers. Walter Reed eventually had to waive almost $500,000 in outpatient care fees for senior government officials from 2017-2019, partially because they were unable to bill patients who got this treatment.

I went in with the intent to only quote some parts for people allergic to reading articles, but this article fucking rules.

Staff and former staff also described a toxic culture in which they were not able to deny directives from senior leadership.

again, cry more. Welcome to working for a living you lanyard dipshits

Is stuff getting done? Yeah. Is it being done appropriately or legally all the time? No.

based

Military Health System officials were unable to identify which organization was responsible for overseeing the office, though it is governed by the rules of the Navy, according to the medical unit. But the Navy told investigators that it was not in charge; the Defense Health Agency, which coordinates care on behalf of the different branches of the military, and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center were. Walter Reed told investigators that it supplies the White House’s pharmacy, but that Walter Reed was not in charge of it. The Defense Health Agency admitted to investigators that the White House Medical Unit actually has “no clear line of oversight.”

Catch-22 lanyard edition

“A trained pharmacist would say, ‘OK, we need to document this. This isn’t Pez candy that we’re handing out like we’re a giant Pez dispenser.’”

shut up and dispense pills. Yes you are.

“It’s sort of head-scratching that you have the highest level of government conducting business in that manner that would never be acceptable anywhere else.”

O RLY?

The White House did not comment.

weird case with potentially terrible ramifications for tattoo artists

Adam Johnson tweet...

This is good news, the CIA has always been lukewarm on this particular genocide so this could signal a face-saving pivot to a ceasefire now that Israel has suffering too many combat loses.

Nitter

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68086188

Link - https://twitter.com/ProgIntl/status/1750211378613510332

The state plans to carry out the first U.S. execution via nitrogen hypoxia with Kenneth Smith, who survived an earlier attempt to execute him by lethal injection

Death to America, and death to the South in particular. Scorch that motherfucking earth.

Do warcrime, get BTFO

https://archive.ph/3Bv8L

The soldiers had been planting explosives as part of a plan to demolish Palestinian neighborhoods close to the border when Gazan militants fired on them, according to Israeli officials.

Israel says a buffer zone would protect its people; critics say the policy could be a war crime.

Israel was trying to demolish part of a Palestinian neighborhood as it pursued a plan to create a buffer zone between Gaza and Israel when around 20 Israeli soldiers were killed Monday in an explosion, according to three Israeli officials and an Israeli officer involved in the demolitions. The explosion on Monday occurred after Gazan militants fired toward a tank guarding an Israeli unit that had been setting explosives inside Palestinian buildings on the border in central Gaza with the intention of demolishing them, according to a news briefing given by the Israeli military on Tuesday. In the firefight, the explosives went off, killing many of the soldiers inside, the military said. Israel wants to demolish many of the Palestinian buildings close to the border in order to create what they describe as a “security zone,” according to the three officials, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

Two of the officials said that Israel’s goal was to create a buffer of up to roughly six-tenths of a mile along the entire length of Israel’s roughly 36-mile border with Gaza. At its narrowest point, the territory is less than four miles wide.Their intention is to make it harder for militants to repeat a raid like that of Oct. 7, in which roughly 1,400 people were killed and abducted, according to Israeli estimates, and which prompted the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents of southern Israel. One of Israel’s war goals is to create conditions that will persuade Israeli evacuees that it is safe to return home. Some of the demolished areas are a few hundred yards from Israeli neighborhoods that were attacked. Asked about the creation of a buffer zone, the military said its forces were “locating and destroying terror infrastructures embedded, among other things, inside buildings,” which it said was necessary to implement a defense plan for southern Israel. The military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in a news briefing on Tuesday that the soldiers who were killed had been involved in an operation to “create the security conditions for the return of the residents of the south to their homes.’’

The idea of a buffer zone gained such momentum in Israeli discourse that the State Department spoke out against it in December, because it would effectively reduce the size of Gaza, a process opposed by the U.S. administration.John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, repeated that objection on Tuesday, when asked at a White House news briefing about Israel’s moves to create a buffer zone. “We do not want to see the territory of Gaza reduced in any way,” Mr. Kirby said. “We won’t support that.” However, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, speaking during a visit to Nigeria, said that the United States was open to a temporary buffer zone, though solely to enable Israelis who had fled homes along the Gaza border after Oct. 7 to return. “If there need to be transitional arrangements to enable that to happen, that’s one thing to happen,” Mr. Blinken said. “But when it comes to the permanent status of Gaza going forward, we’ve been clear, we remain clear about not encroaching on its territory.”

To Palestinians, the practice is cruel and would keep Gazans in an already crowded enclave from being able to return to their homes. Critics of Israeli policy say the practice is part of a wider disregard for civilian housing and property. The majority of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged during the war, according to United Nations estimates, and more than 25,000 Gazans have been killed, according to Gazan officials. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said a systematic demolition of Palestinian border homes could constitute a war crime because they pose no immediate threat to Israel.

“There is simply no provision in the Geneva Conventions for what Israel is doing along the border, which is kind of a pre-emptive clearing of property,” Mr. Rajagopal said in a phone interview. “On a particular property by property basis, Israel can take action — but not on a widespread basis across the entire border,” Mr. Rajagopal said. “Israel, as the occupying power, has an obligation not to engage in what’s called wanton destruction of property.” The military did not respond to a request for comment on the claims.

While Israel has never formally announced the demolition of Palestinian border homes, the concept of a buffer zone lining the length of the Gazan border has been widely discussed by the Israeli news media since early December, when the idea was reported by Reuters. Israeli ministers have also hinted of plans to create such a buffer zone since the first weeks of the war. Eli Cohen, the foreign minister at the time, said that after the war, “the territory of Gaza will also decrease.” Days later, Avi Dichter, the agriculture minister, spoke of creating “a margin” along the Gaza border. “No matter who you are, you will never be able to come close to the Israeli border,” Mr. Dichter said.

Ten people have been arrested as dozens of activists clash with Victoria police at a pro-Palestinian rally at the Port

I've seen so much distressing footage about this, and so many people calling for activists to post their footage public on twitter. I caution comrades against this, do not post photos and videos of people's faces at actions online without editing them, dont live stream a protest, the internet will be there tomorrow, the revolution will not be televised, do not give your footage to the media, they'll spin it and say 'police were forced to use pepper spray' because they suddenly have a clip of someone telling them to fuck off

reminder to clean up your devices if you're doing hectic shit in the streets, fascists will tell us the cops don't pay attention to us, but I know of as many leftists who have been raided as I do nazis