u/CosmicLars

Source: CourtneyBonneau on Twitter:

> What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s no double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?

Additional reporting by DropSiteNews on Twitter:

> Children Among 15 Killed Across Southern Lebanon in Saturday Strikes, 12-year-old Girl Hunted in Double-Tap

> Israeli forces killed 5 people across southern Lebanon on Saturday, according to Al Mayadeen, when strikes hit a wide stretch of towns including Burj Rahhal in the Tyre district — struck twice in the same day — and Nabatieh, where a civilian was killed and his injured daughter was hunted down with double-tap strikes.

> Saturday’s strikes also hit Zrariyeh, Tayr Debba, Barish, Maaroub, Kfar Rumman, Mayfadoun, Arnoun, Shehabiyeh, Nabatieh al-Fawqa, Kafra, Haris, Hadatha, Majdal Selm, and Mansouri.

> The daytime attacks followed a deadly overnight escalation in which 10 people were killed, including two children, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.

> Three died in Zrariyeh, two in Anqoun in the Saida district, and one in Mayfadoun where four others were wounded.

> Israeli warplanes and artillery also struck Jebchit, Deir al-Zahrani, Kfar Tebnit, Haboush, and areas around Bint Jbeil, where demolition operations continued in border towns.

> These workers are training AI to take their own jobs.

> There’s a hidden workforce powering the rise of ChatGPT, and nearly 1 in 5 of them have fallen into homelessness.

> We investigated America’s AI sweatshops, and found a new gig economy run by Big Tech.

Link: More Perfect Union on Youtube.

Further reading:

• Joshua Baru for Qhala: Data Workers in AI: A New Frontier of Labour Exploitation in the Global South

> Training AI systems has taken a heavy toll on Kenyan workers — many of whom earn just $2 an hour compared to $20 earned by their American counterparts — while also facing mental health challenges from the distressing content they are required to annotate. These reports are not isolated. Concerns over unfair labor practices in Kenya’s gig economy have been widespread, especially in AI data work, with multiple investigations warning of exploitative conditions.

• Eiffel Abedin for IHRB: Content moderation is a new factory floor of exploitation

> Data workers are often subjected to punishing work schedules of 18 to 20 hours a day in blatant violation of labour laws. A content moderator for a firm in Colombia, subcontracted by Meta and ByteDance, described having just seconds to react to a queue of 1,000 images a day. He told Equidem, “We have to moderate a lot of cases. In a normal shift, we have to go through 700 to 1,000 cases, which means we have to accomplish an average time of 7-12 seconds to moderate each case.”

Reporting by Stephen Prager for Common Dreams:

> Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez honored Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, on Thursday, in a display of solidarity as she faces sanctions from the United States over her outspoken advocacy against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

> Citing her work to document human rights violations over more than two years of conflict, Sánchez awarded Albanese the Order of Civil Merit, a knighthood granted to Spanish and foreign citizens for extraordinary services benefiting the state or society.

> “Public responsibility... entails the moral obligation not to look the other way,” Sánchez said in a social media post. “It is an honor to award the Order of Civil Merit to a voice that upholds the conscience of the world: Francesca Albanese.”

> Earlier this week, Sánchez petitioned the European Commission to intervene to stop compliance with the Trump administration’s efforts to punish Albanese, as well as members of the International Criminal Court who have brought arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

> Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has held the role of special rapporteur since 2022, a year before Israel launched a war in Gaza in response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. Human rights organizations and UN experts have described Israel’s assault as a genocide.

> In March 2024, Albanese released the UN’s first major public report, making the legal case that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe a genocide was being committed, referring to a litany of statements by Israeli officials establishing intent to destroy the Palestinian population.

> In addition to documenting Israel’s actions, she has published research demonstrating the “complicity” of nations that supply weapons and other support to Israel in what she has called a “collective crime” that they should also face responsibility for.

...

> “They want to silence everyone who demands an end to genocide, an end to the crimes,” she said.

Full report at CommonDreams.org.

Source: The Kobeissi Letter on Twitter (xcancel link)

From ResistanceTrench on Telegram:

> NO new messages exchanged between Iran and the US — Iran denies Axios report

> Follow-ups by Fars News Agency reporter indicate that so far no new written message has been exchanged between Iran and the US, and some news fabrications by Western media are pursued with specific objectives.

> According to this report, the claims made by the American media Axios and the British media Reuters are assessed more as attempts to influence global markets, especially to reduce oil prices, rather than being based on field realities.

> Last week, in response to the American side's 9-article plan, Iran presented its own 14-article proposal. In this correspondence, Iran's red lines and overarching views for ending the war were clearly explained and conveyed to the US through the Pakistani side.

> The Axios news website claimed a few hours ago that the White House believes that reaching a one-page agreement with Iran to end the war, as well as creating a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations, is within reach.

> However, follow-ups by the Fars reporter from two informed sources show that Iran has not yet responded to the latest message received from the US, which was transmitted through the Pakistani intermediary.

> Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced 4 days ago that the American side has sent a written response to Iran's proposal and this response is currently under review by the Iranian team.

> In this regard, a political source told the Fars reporter: "Axios often publishes the American side's wishes in the form of news, and such atmosphere-building can be a prelude to starting a new round of proposal exchanges."

> Also, Ali Rezaei, an economic expert, emphasized in an interview with Fars: "The media actions of Axios and other Western media should be analyzed within the framework of psychological operations; the main goal of this atmosphere-building is to reduce the West Texas Intermediate oil index and manage public opinion inside the United States."

The fake reporting by Axios can be found here (Archive link).

> Nothing illustrates the inversion of the international and moral order more than the genocide in Gaza and the shipment of tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel by Western nations, especially the United States, to sustain it. Part of this inversion is the unrelenting persecution of those who denounce the genocide — especially those who risk their lives to halt it and demand the rule of law.

> But the rule of law, it appears, is buried under the rubble in Gaza.

> And because of that Israel is able, with barely a word of protest by Western nations – Spain being one of the few exceptions – to abduct 175 activists aboard Sumud Flotilla 500 nautical miles from Gaza and 80 nautical miles west of the Greek island of Crete.

> This violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was accompanied by the usual Israeli brutality. Flotilla members from the 22 vessels that were intercepted and then transferred to the Israeli vessel NAHSHON were denied food, forced to sleep on the floor as it was flooded “repeatedly” with water, punched, kicked, dragged across decks with their hands tied and shot at with rubber bullets and live ammunition. Eventually, all but two flotilla members were transferred to Crete, with 36 requiring medical attention.

> Two of the leading activists on the flotilla, the Brazilian organizer of the flotilla, Thiago Avila, and the Spaniard Saif Abu Keshek, who is of Palestinian descent and who has organized Palestinian solidarity movements across Europe for over two decades, were not allowed to disembark when the vessel reached Ierapetra Port in southern Crete, although the ship was in Greek territorial waters

> They were kidnapped and taken to Israel.

Read the new Chris Hedges Report on his substack.

Ballsy. Critical support no doubt.

Source: DropSiteNews on Twitter (xcancel link)

> Professor Derek R. Peterson, a University of Michigan historian and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, thanked “pro-Palestinian student activists” during a graduation speech today, for “opening our hearts to the injustices and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

> Peterson teaches history and African studies at the University of Michigan, where he also became chair of the faculty senate in 2025.

Source: ResistanceTrench on Telegram.

> Fascinating footage released show an IRGC class at the org's staff college in the 90s, where future IRGC leader Hossein Salami teaches a course on asymmetric warfare, teaching officers how to drag out a war with the US by driving up economic costs and political turmoil. Iran has practiced for this war since 30 years ago.

> Forty-five year old social justice activist named Guido Reichstadter on Saturday morning was still perched atop the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC after first scaling the structure Friday afternoon in protest against President Donald Trump’s disastrous war against Iran, now in its third month, and the rapid and unregulated spread of artificial intelligence technology.

> As Reichstadter, who described himself as the father of two children with masters degrees in both math and physics, said in a video posted to social media on Friday: “Hi my name is Guido Reichstadter and I’m currently occupying the top of the Frederick Douglass memorial bridge in Washington, DC.”

> “I’m calling on the people of the United States,” he continued, “to bring an immediate end to the Trump regime’s illegal war on Iran and the removal of the regime power through mass nonviolent direct action and non-cooperation.”

...

> In his statement concerning AI, Reichstadter said he wanted to “urgently warn the people of the US and the world of the imminent danger we are in of crossing a point of no return towards the development of artificial intelligence which poses the risk of catastrophic harm to humanity, including human extinction.”

> "I call on the governments of the world to take immediate action to end this danger by permanently banning the development of artificial general intelligence and machine super intelligence,” he said. “I also call on the people of the world to exert all possible influence through nonviolent action to compel their governments to end this danger with all possible speed.”

Full Story at CommonDreams

Guido's xCancel link for videos & updates

Reporting by Tareq S. Hajjaj for Mondoweiss. Go give it a read.

> The Popular Forces were previously led by gang leader and Israeli collaborator Yasser Abu Shabab before he was reportedly killed by his own associates last December. Hamas government officials previously told Mondoweiss that the group is the largest, best-equipped, and most dangerous militia operating in Gaza.

> Today, most of these groups operate in the eastern sectors of Gaza that fall under Israeli military control. These include al-Duheini’s Popular Forces in Rafah and Khan Younis, Hussam al-Astal’s “Anti-Terror Strike Force,” and the so-called “Popular Defense Forces” led by Rami Hilles in Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood. Hilles and Astal are reportedly both former employees of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces.

...

> “Israel wants Palestinians to kill each other and steal from one another. It wants to destroy security in our society so it can control us,” Jehad al-Qatatti, a member of the Higher Committee of the National and Islamic factions, told Mondoweiss. “Targeting the police is designed to fracture society and hand over control to the militias. We will not allow that.”

Full Reporting @ Mondoweiss.