Top World News

Last month, some House members publicly acknowledged that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. It’s a judgment that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unequivocally proclaimed a year ago. Israeli human-rights organizations have reached the same conclusion. But such clarity is sparse in Congress.And no wonder. Genocide denial is needed for continuing to appropriate billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, as most legislators have kept doing. Congress members would find it very difficult to admit that Israeli forces are committing genocide while voting to send them more weaponry.Three weeks ago, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution titled “Recognizing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Twenty-one House colleagues, all of them Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors. They account for 10 percent of the Democrats in Congress.In sharp contrast, a national Quinnipiac Poll found that 77 percent of Democrats “think Israel is committing genocide.” That means there is a 67 percent gap between what the elected Democrats are willing to say and what the people who elected them believe. The huge gap has big implications for the party’s primaries in the midterm elections next year, and then in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.One of the likely candidates in that race, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), is speaking out in ways that fit with the overwhelming views of Democratic voters. “I agree with the UN commission's heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,” he tweeted as autumn began. “What matters is what we do about it – stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.” Consistent with that position, the California congressman was one of the score of Democrats who signed on as co-sponsors of Tlaib’s resolution the day it was introduced.In the past, signers of such a resolution would have reason to fear the wrath — and the electoral muscle — of AIPAC, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong lobby. But its intimidation power is waning. AIPAC’s support for Israel does not represent the views of the public, a reality that has begun to dawn on more Democratic officeholders.“With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in Gaza undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reported this fall. Notably, “some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations.”Khanna has become more and more willing to tangle with AIPAC, which is now paying for attack ads against him. On Thanksgiving, he tweeted about Gaza and accused AIPAC of “asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.” Khanna elaborated in a campaign email days ago, writing: “Any politician who caves to special interests on Gaza will never stand up to special interests on corruption, healthcare, housing, or the economy. If we can’t speak with moral clarity when thousands of children are dying, we won’t stand for working Americans when corporate power comes knocking.”AIPAC isn’t the only well-heeled organization for Israel now struggling with diminished clout. Democratic Majority for Israel, an offshoot of AIPAC that calls itself “an American advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies within the United States Democratic Party,” is now clearly misnamed. Every bit of recent polling shows that in the interests of accuracy, the organization should change its name to “Democratic Minority for Israel.”Yet the party’s leadership remains stuck in a bygone era. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, typifies how disconnected so many party leaders are from the actual views of Democratic voters. Speaking in Brooklyn three months ago, she flatly claimed that “nine out of 10 Democrats are pro-Israel.” She did not attempt to explain how that could be true when more than seven out of 10 Democrats say Israel is guilty of genocide.The political issue of complicity with genocide will not go away.Last week, Amnesty International released a detailed statement documenting that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” But in Congress, almost every Republican and a large majority of Democrats remain stuck in public denial about Israel’s genocidal policies.Such denial will be put to the electoral test in Democratic primaries next year, when most incumbents will face an electorate far more morally attuned to Gaza than they are. What easily passes for reasoned judgment and political smarts in Congress will seem more like cluelessness to many Democratic activists and voters who can provide reality checks with their ballots.Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

Kenyan parliament says UK army training unit ‘dismissed most complaints as false, without publishing its findings’A report by the Kenyan parliament into the conduct of troops stationed at a British military base close to the town of Nanyuki in Kenya has alleged human rights violations, environmental destruction and sexual abuse by British soldiers.The inquiry into the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) was carried out by Kenya’s departmental committee on defencе, intelligence and foreign relations.The establishment of a survivor liaison unit to offer legal aid to victims of crimes linked to Batuk personnel.For the British and Kenyan governments to negotiate “mechanisms to hold Batuk soldiers accountable for child support”.The creation of a military-linked crimes taskforce to oversee investigation and prosecution of offences committed by foreign military personnel. Continue reading...

Mexico’s Senate has selected Ernestina Godoy, a longtime legal adviser to President Claudia Sheinbaum, as the new attorney general

Images and videos taken in 2020, a year after he died in jail, show the late sex offender’s homeUS politics – live updatesHouse Democrats released photos and videos from Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island on Wednesday, offering a rare glimpse into a secretive place where Epstein is alleged to have trafficked young girls.The new images and videos show Epstein’s home, including bedrooms, a telephone, what appears to be an office or library, and a chalkboard on which the words “fin”, “intellectual”, “deception” and “power” are written. Several photos show a room with a dentist chair and masks hanging on the wall. The New York Times reported that Epstein’s last girlfriend was a dentist who shared an office with one of his shell companies. The videos appear to be a walk-through of the property. Continue reading...

Spain's former King Juan Carlos has published a memoir titled "Reconciliation" in an attempt to repair his tarnished reputation

The family of a Colombian fisherman has filed a formal complaint accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of murder.Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina was killed Sept. 15 in a U.S. military strike on a boat in the Caribbean, and the 42-year-old fisherman's wife and four children filed the complaint Tuesday with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) alleging the United States committed human rights violations in an “extra-judicial killing," reported The Guardian.“From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats," reads the filing. "Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings.""U.S. President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein," the filing adds.The family's lawyer, Daniel Kovalik, told the Washington Post that the man's wife and children had been left without their breadwinner and were also facing threats after speaking out about his killing.“Their world has been turned upside down,” Kovalik said.Carranza was killed in the second missile strike of the Trump administration's bombing campaign against alleged drug smuggling boats, but his family said he was a fisherman who trolled the water for marlin and tuna.“This morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility," Trump posted on Truth Social the day Carranza was killed.The president claimed the crew of that boat was from Venezuela, but the Colombian government soon identified them as Colombian.“We think this is a viable way to challenge the killing of Alejandro," Kovalik said. "We are going to seek redress for the family. We want the US to be ordered to stop doing these boat attacks. It may be a first step but we think it it’s a good first step.”Carranza's family is seeking compensation, although their attorney acknowledged the IACHR doesn't have the authority to enforce its recommendations.“They also want the killings to stop,” Kovalik said. “We hope that this can be at least part of the process of getting that to happen.”Hegseth is facing scrutiny over his verbal directive that led to the killing of two survivors of the first boat strike, on Sept. 2, and the Carranza family's IACHR complaint cited Washington Post reporting on that incident.

Exclusive: Analyst claims UK officials deleted alert to threat of genocidal violence by paramilitaries to protect UAEWarnings of a possible “genocide” in Sudan were removed from a UK risk assessment by Foreign Office officials, according to a whistleblower whose testimony raises fresh concern over British failures to act on the atrocities unfolding in the war-ravaged country.The threat analyst said they were prevented from warning that genocide could occur in Darfur by Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials in a risk assessment collated days after Sudan’s brutal civil war erupted in April 2023. Continue reading...

The death toll from a high-rise apartment fire in Hong Kong has risen to 159