Before he died, Pope Francis called for peace in Gaza. Will anyone listen?

 Al Jazeera English

Pope Francis died today at the age of 88 following a prolonged illness. Just yesterday, in his Easter Sunday address in Saint Peter’s Square in Vatican City, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church chose to express his “closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people”.

He went on to state that he was “think[ing] of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation” – a toned-down reference, of course, to Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has officially killed more than 51,200 Palestinians since October 2023. . . .

[T]he pope deserves praise for utilising what would be his final platform to call for a ceasefire in Gaza – at a time when the world appears all too content to allow the mass slaughter of Palestinians to proceed indefinitely. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Faux feminism has left the planet

AL JAZEERA ENGLISH

On Monday, April 14, six elite American women blasted off into space from west Texas on a self-piloting rocket ship developed by the space technology company Blue Origin, owned by bazillionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The “crew” of the much-ballyhooed all-female flight – marketed by Blue Origin as a giant leap not only for womankind but for the entire world – included pop star Katy Perry, television personality Gayle King, and Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez, author of the children’s book The Fly Who Flew to Space and the organiser of the wannabe feminist space excursion.

In preparation for the star-studded spectacle, Elle magazine ran a fawning cover story on the “historic mission”, which the magazine described as “the first time anybody went to space with their hair and makeup done”. By the end of the article, which is basically a continuous succession of aneurysm-inducing lines, one finds oneself with little hope for the world aside from that an asteroid would strike and just put an end to it all.

Perry, for example, is quoted as declaring that “we are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut”, while also sharing the scintillating logistics of celebrity space travel: “I was like, What am I going to wear?” Then there’s an exchange between Sanchez, who predicts that “we’re going to have [eye]lash extensions flying in the capsule!”, and King, who wonders if the lashes will “stay on”, prompting the response from Sanchez: “Mine are glued on. They’re good.”  READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Deterrence Theory: Signalgate isn’t the scandal

 THE BAFFLER

On Saturday, March 15, the United States launched large-scale air strikes on Yemen, killing at least fifty-three people, including five children, by Tuesday. The U.S. military continues to pound the country with daily strikes in an open-ended operation that has also destroyed such infrastructure as a cancer hospital in northern Yemen.

As per the official imperial narrative, the U.S. armed forces are going after Yemeni “terrorists,” i.e. the Houthis (formally Ansar Allah), who govern the most populous sections of the country and are forever maligned as diabolical proxies of Iran—America’s preferred nemesis and the bogeyman invoked to justify all manner of U.S.-backed bloodshed worldwide. Among the Houthis’ recent transgressions are repeated attacks on American and other warships and commercial vessels in the Red Sea, conducted in solidarity with Palestinian victims of the ongoing U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip. Lest Yemenis doubt America’s renewed bloodthirsty intentions in their own territory, current U.S. commander in chief Donald Trump has warned the Houthis that they will be “completely annihilated.” READ MORE AT THE BAFFLER.

Media Find Ways to Minimize Israel’s Murder of Paramedics

 FAIR

Israeli soldiers on March 23 massacred 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ongoing US-backed genocide has officially killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The slaughter took place before dawn, as a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck from the Palestinian Civil Defense service endeavored to respond to a lethal Israeli attack on another ambulance, which had itself been attempting to rescue victims of an Israeli airstrike.

Eight Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, six Civil Defense workers and one UN staff member were murdered by Israeli gunfire. Their mutilated bodies were bulldozed into a mass grave, their vehicles crushed and buried as well.

The initial Israeli narrative was that nine of the emergency responders were militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously…without headlights or emergency signals.”

As it turns out, however, all headlights and emergency signals were very much on—not that it’s fine to massacre people for driving with no lights, of course. When, after a week of negotiations with Israeli occupying forces, another convoy was finally permitted to access the mass grave and unearth the bodies, the mobile phone of massacre victim Rifat Radwan was found to contain footage of the lead-up to the assault, which shows the clearly marked rescue vehicles advancing with emergency lights on. A barrage of Israeli gunfire then persists for more than five minutes, as Radwan’s screen goes black and he bids farewell to his mother. READ MORE AT FAIR. 

The US is in all-out kidnapping mode, and no one is safe

Al Jazeera English

Last week, the United States admitted it had wrongfully deported 29-year-old Salvadoran citizen Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has now joined the burgeoning population of El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which specialises in terrorising confined people. Married to a US citizen and the father of a five-year-old autistic child, Abrego Garcia arrived in the US more than a decade ago after fleeing gang violence at home.

The CECOT is the pride and joy of Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s self-proclaimed “coolest dictator in the world”, who delights in posting extravagant Hollywood-worthy videos of the sadistic reception and internment of the deportee “terrorists” that the Donald Trump administration is now funneling to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia is one of hundreds of new such additions to the CECOT facility – where it appears he may remain, despite the administration’s full acknowledgement that his deportation transpired “because of an administrative error”.

When the judge overseeing the case of the wrongful deportation determined that Trump and company must return Abrego Garcia to the US, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt snapped: “We suggest the Judge contact President Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.” READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH