Title should be "A handful of greedy humans have been so shitty for so long that they've made the world's oceans toxic".

Sounds like Sunak is trying to pry medical assessment out of the hands of doctors/other current professionals and into the realm of the more "economically motivated" shall we say. As well as potentially downplaying just how serious a concern the state of mental health response is in...I was going to say Britain but in a lot of countries honestly.

As of the latest updates I can find, it sounds like the attack was in fact very limited. Assuming the unnamed sources are correct and this was the Israeli response that American and Israeli officials talked about, perhaps this will end the regional escalations. Of course we'll have to see how this develops, but maybe the posturing will be over for now given that both Israel and Iran limited themselves to largely symbolic attacks in turn.

I'd be careful about considering Israel's defense as a complete success, or at least an easy one. According to Israeli sources cited in this article, achieving that result cost Israel as much as $1-1.3 billion USD, and I can't find out if that includes the price of interception by other countries - a lot of the heavy lifting was done by the USA after all. Given that they say that's the cost for Israel specifically, I don't think it does but I can't find sources. Regardless, it's a big bill for an attack that everyone knew was coming days in advance and gives a sense of the economics involved in an open war several times more intense.

Oh FFS. This had better be an extremely limited response to Iran's response to Israel's bombing of an embassy. Here's hoping it's just the same type of symbolic attack that Iran made last weekend - all show and no intent. Just Israel refusing to let anyone else have the last word.

Anything more serious and things are about to become very messy and even more expensive. Although it would explain why Israel is suddenly arranging to get dozens of jets from the US in the last month or so. Lord knows they don't seem necessary if the only goal is to keep blowing up Palestinians.

MF LOAD LETTER

When your printer is voiced by Samuel L. Jackson.

Sorry this is a long one, but it's packed with lots of info about Israeli treatment of prisoners. Tried to keep each point brief.

It's not a recent development. Here's a trailer for a 2014 ABC News Australia documentary called Stone Cold Justice - the TL:DR is that for decades IDF have taken and tortured Palestinian youths, coercing them into signing confessions so they can be convicted in court. Here's the full "Stone Cold Justice: Israel’s torture of Palestinian children" documentary if anyone wishes to watch it.

Josh Paul resigned from a position as a director for the US State Department after war came to Gaza because of his ethics. Here he's talking about an investigation he directed of the rape of a 13-year-old boy in an Israeli prison as requested by Defense for Children International - Palestine. His department found the allegations to be credible, and when they asked the Israeli government for explanation the IDF raided the DCIP the next day and declared them a terrorist organization (a move condemned by multiple human rights groups, the UN, and 9 EU nations).

Here's an article about Israel's policy of "administrative detention" by which large numbers of Palestinians are held without trial or even charges for an AVERAGE of a year. "Before October 7, the number of Palestinians held by Israel under administrative detention was already at a 20-year high. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, there were 1,310 Palestinians imprisoned without charge or trial at the end of September, including at least 146 minors. Since then, Israel has dramatically increased its use of administrative detention, pushing the number of detainees to over 2,000 within the first four weeks of the war. (That’s out of a total of roughly 7,000 Palestinian prisoners.)" It's just taking hostages with a less offensive name.

Yesterday Israeli national security minister Ben Gvir made a social media post with a last line that translates to: "The death penalty for terrorists is the right solution to the incarceration problem, until then - glad that the government approved the proposal I brought." The incarceration problem he's referring to is a lack of space to hold all the prisoners/hostages Israel is taking, and he's advocating for executions until more prison cells are built.

"The complaint comes after The Daily Beast first reported in January that the court-appointed special monitor in Trump’s New York business fraud case had buried a bombshell claim in a footnote to a status report: A mysterious $50 million loan, which Trump reported owing to one of his own LLCs, “never existed.”

Imagine engaging in so much fraud that a 50-million-dollar discrepancy is a footnote on your court-appointed watchdog's status report.

Thanks mate, I don't follow that community myself but I am pretty sure I've seen his face before. The video was entertaining.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is an embarrassing wreck of insanity, drama, and poor education and she's not alone in her club of like-minded fans of chaos and governmental sabotage. I'd be surprised if Republicans implode before the election, but less so than at the start of the year given that Republicans Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher have already resigned in protest. If the legitimately extremist Republicans prove to be more serious than usual about their political brinkmanship then I don't know what to expect honestly.

Dammit, I don't even particularly like reality-show style forced drama on TV much less in nation-defining government. "Will government agencies completely shut down because of blocked funding?" "Is a President allowed to do whatever he wants even if it's criminal for the rest of us? Tune in next week to find out!"

But what if people don't want to see their country jump 100+ years backwards with regards to citizen rights and equality? As of August of last year, "Abortion has been on the ballot in seven states since that landmark court decision one year ago and in each instance, in red states and blue states, anti-abortion advocates have lost." Also, same-sex marriage has federal legal protection.

I thought it was hilarious that one of the disturbing agendas was just "woman" - like there's no clarification required to toss half of humanity under the bus. So I watched the video (I don't know Coney, but it's just him making fun of this insane preacher) and it's essentially that bad. The preacher says, and I quote, "She's headstrong and stubborn, constantly arguing with Ash. Typical woman" then laughs and apologizes but never says anything else about her. The mental athletics involved in the preacher's conclusions would make him a master of any gym.

One more for the moon road then:

I'll stop now.

This news is frustrating:

• I am put off by the judge ruling against it because "it's unfair to shareholders". It's unfair to a lot of people, especially in the wake of layoffs. If the law does not protect the basic necessities for working Americans, then the law needs changing.
• How many of Elon's workers could get paid a living wage for that $56bn? If he passed it up could he stop trying to oppose unions and make some life-changing concessions for his employees?
• Even putting that aside, how is that money going to change Elon's life? As in the daily experience of what he eats, vacation opportunities, housing, etc? Because money is kind of like water - it's incredibly important if you don't have enough, but once you have more than you could use the only reason to keep hoarding it is restricting others' access for pride, greed, or leverage (i.e. purchasing influence).

I'm not even as far left of center as I probably sound. I believe that different economic classes should exist or people aren't motivated - you need to pay surgeons well in order to get enough surgeons. However, "the floor" should be raised to ensure housing/food/utilities security at the cost of "the ceiling" being lowered (or existing at all). Oxfam says a wealth tax of 5% on multi-millionaires/billionaires would solve world hunger in 10 years, lift 2 billion out of poverty, and much more. As of 2023 the bottom half of the USA, as in about 170ish million citizens, only have access to 3% of America's wealth while the top 10% control just over 66% of wealth. Deals like this, coupled with the mass layoffs across multiple industries, is only making that obscene inequality worse.