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In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung alongside swastikas, underlining the organizers' belief that Nazism was entirely consistent with American ideals.

NAZI TOWN, USA tells the largely unknown story of the German American Bund, an organization of Nazi sympathizers on American soil.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=g9HmV_-EE8g

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A man wanted just two slices of cheese on his sandwich, so when his wife used three slices in his grilled cheese sandwich, he became irate.

Angered at the sight of all the extra cheesiness, James DePaola became agitated and violent, yelling at the woman, Michele DePaola. According to WSB-TV, DePaola then ripped the landline out of the wall so his wife couldn’t call the police and reportedly screamed at her intensely. The couple’s 12-year old daughter who witnessed the incident called the police to the scene, according to Athens-Clarke County police.

James DePaola was charged with obstruction of a 911 call and criminal trespass/damage to property over what the police now refer to as “the grilled cheese incident”. DePaola has a history of “abusive behavior,” and was often “excessively critical and controlling of day to day things in life” like sandwiches, apparently.

read more: https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-guest-decrying-migrant-crime-previously-arrested-after-getting-violent-over

The Bengal famine of 1943 killed more than three million people in eastern India. It was one of the worst losses of civilian life on the Allied side in World War Two.

There is no memorial, museum, or even a plaque, anywhere in the world to the people who died. However, a few survivors remain, and one man is determined to gather their stories before it is too late.

'Hunger stalked us'

"Many people sold their boys and girls for a little rice. Many wives and young women ran off, hand-in-hand with men they knew or didn't know."

Bijoykrishna Tripathi is describing the desperate measures people took to find food during the Bengal famine.

He is not sure of his exact age, but his voter card says he is 112. Bijoykrishna is one of the last people to remember the disaster.

He talks faintly and slowly about growing up in Midnapore, a district in Bengal. Rice was the staple food, and he remembers its price rising "by leaps and bounds" in the summer of 1942.

read more: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/single-post/bengal-famine-tracking-down-the-last-survivors-of-ww2-s-forgotten-tragedy

Under President Javier Milei, Argentina’s government has cut funds to community kitchens, sparking mass protests.

Buenos Aires, Argentina – It is an unusually hot Friday morning but the line outside the communal soup kitchen in Merlo — a town on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina — is particularly long, stretching around the block.

Some of the people waiting are first-timers, fidgeting with empty plastic containers in their hands. Many have jobs. Still, the rice stew the soup kitchen is ladling out could be their only meal of the day.

Similar scenes have been playing out across Argentina in recent weeks. As inflation skyrockets, advocates and everyday citizens are warning of a hunger crisis that could ravage the country’s poor.

Much of the outcry has been directed at libertarian President Javier Milei. Less than three months into his term, Milei’s administration has implemented a series of austerity measures that have slashed government spending — including funds already allocated for soup kitchens, or “comedores”, like the one in Merlo.

“Demand for food has doubled in recent months,” said Liliana Soledad Loto, 38, one of the soup kitchen’s cooks and a leader of the social organisation Somos Barrios de Pie.

“We have seen many more people come, including people with jobs, people who work in construction or in factories and still cannot make it to the end of the month. These people don’t come because they want to. They do it because they need to.”

The institution where she works, the Padre Mugica soup kitchen, is one of approximately 38,000 social organisations that distribute meals to Argentinians in need. Together, they serve an estimated 10 million people, out of a total population of 46 million.

But advocates say the number of people experiencing food insecurity could be even higher, with some of the neediest individuals going uncounted.

That is because some communities, particularly in marginalised areas, have informal systems to address hunger: neighbours helping neighbours individually, by offering free meals or even a simple cup of milk to children in need.

read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/a-growing-hunger-argentinas-soup-kitchens-battle-mileis-spending-cuts

Rights activists condemn the law that would punish LGBTQ people as well as those who promote gay rights with years in prison.

Ghana’s parliament has voted to pass a controversial bill to severely restrict LGBTQ rights, in a move that has been condemned by rights activists.

A coalition of religious and traditional leaders sponsored the legislation that is favoured by most lawmakers and that passed in parliament on Wednesday.

The bill would punish those who take part in LGBTQ sexual acts, as well as those who promote the rights of gay, lesbian or other non-conventional sexual or gender identities with time in prison.

The bill, one of the harshest of its kind in Africa, still has to be validated by the president before entering into law, which observers believe is unlikely before a general election in December.

Activist groups have called the “Human Sexual Rights and Family Values” bill a setback for human rights and urged President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government to reject it.

But the legislation is widely supported in Ghana, where Akufo-Addo has said gay marriage will never be allowed while he is in power.

Commonly referred to as the anti-gay bill, it received sponsorship from a coalition comprising Christian, Muslim, and Ghanaian traditional leaders, finding substantial backing among members of Parliament.

Gay sex is already illegal in the religious West African nation, but while discrimination against LGBTQ people is common no one has ever been prosecuted under the colonial-era law.

Under the provisions of the bill, those who take part in LGBTQ sexual acts could face imprisonment ranging from six months to three years.

The bill also imposes a prison sentence of three to five years for the “wilful promotion, sponsorship, or support of LGBTQ+ activities”.

read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/ghanas-parliament-passes-anti-lgbtq-bill

Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has also gone out of service due to a lack of fuel for generators.

Six children have died from dehydration and malnutrition at hospitals in northern Gaza, the Health Ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory has said, as the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave worsens.

Two children died at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the ministry said on Wednesday. Earlier it reported that four children died at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, while seven others remained in critical condition.

read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/children-die-of-malnutrition-in-gaza-hospitals-health-ministry

In one example, Israel claimed an image showed aid trucks entering Gaza when they were actually driving away.

A damning analysis of the argument presented by Israel’s lawyers in its defense against South Africa’s genocide case finds that Israel’s legal team made false or misleading claims about evidence that it submitted to the court, undermining its arguments that its massacre in Gaza is justified.

This includes assertions, the lawyers argued, that Israel had good reason to carry out raids of hospitals across Gaza like Al-Shifa in Gaza City, for instance, and that it has allowed a sufficient amount of humanitarian aid into the region, when closer analysis by Forensic Architecture, a research group at Goldsmiths, University of London, finds in its report released this week that Israel’s lawyers misrepresented its evidence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In one instance, the group found that an image of a line of trucks carrying humanitarian aid that Israeli lawyers claimed were driving into Gaza was actually an image of trucks driving away from Gaza toward the Egypt-Israel border in order to be “checked” and likely dismissed by Israeli forces and protesters.

Using open-source satellite imagery, videos and 3D stills, the group found that, in all, Israel’s defense team incorrectly labeled, annotated or testified about nine pieces of visual evidence it submitted to the ICJ in its case last month in order to bolster their claims.

One photo presented by the Israeli legal team showed what they claimed was a rocket launch testing site for Palestinian forces next to a water desalination plant — but, according to Forensic Architecture, what Israeli lawyers labeled in the photo as the launch site actually aligns with craters left by the types of bombs that Israel has been dropping on Gaza.

read more: https://truthout.org/articles/israel-made-false-claims-about-its-own-evidence-in-icj-defense-analysis-finds/

YouTube link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RoPv3ZF9bAE

The no-bid micro contracts awarded to vendors at the center of a bribery scandal are rife with wildly inflated costs, an analysis finds.

How much does it cost NYCHA to change a lightbulb?

In one case, more than $708 per bulb.

That’s the rate the housing authority paid one vendor, who submitted a total bill of $4,250 to replace six LED bulbs and covers at Throggs Neck Houses in The Bronx, according to records reviewed by THE CITY.

Another vendor billed NYCHA $4,985 to replace one door to a compactor room. Yet another charged $4,875 to put in slip resistant rubber treads on a stairway with 15 steps — a cost of $325 per step.

When law enforcement officials arrested 70 current and former NYCHA workers on bribery charges earlier this month, they identified small no-bid contracts for apartment repairs, awarded to select vendors in exchange for cash to superintendents, as the source of corruption.

What prosecutors didn’t say was that many of the bills submitted by the vendors who win these so-called micro-purchase contracts raise serious questions about whether NYCHA wound up paying them hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of taxpayer dollars in inflated costs over the years.

All of these bills had one thing in common, a review of contract data by THE CITY found.

The vendors sought compensation as close to the maximum allowed at the time on each contract, regardless of the work performed. Micro contracts have a built-in incentive for vendors to bill for just below the maximum allowed — $5,000 until late 2019, $10,000 since — no matter what the scope and value of the task at hand is.

read more; https://www.truthdig.com/articles/nyc-housing-authority-paid-out-708-for-replacing-a-single-lightbulb/

State media says men were convicted by court which has been criticised for punishing activists and protesters under guise of terrorism

Seven Saudi men were executed on Tuesday, the highest number put to death in one day since 81 were killed in March 2022.

The Specialised Criminal Court (SCC) convicted the men on terrorism charges, accusing them of betraying "their homeland, threatening its stability and endangering its security", the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported, citing the Interior Ministry.

The men's names were listed in the SPA announcement, which is often the only information released about executions in the kingdom, but with little further detail.

Riyadh has now executed 31 people this year, after putting at least 172 people to death in 2023, rights groups monitoring executions in Saudi Arabia have said.

There were no public records or media reporting of any of the cases of the men executed on Tuesday, the European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) and UK-based Reprieve told Middle East Eye.

read more: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-puts-7-men-death-largest-execution-years

Norwegian salmon farms are taking huge amounts of wild fish from West Africa, mining the food security of the region, according to a report from the U.K.-based NGO Feedback. The analysis comes as the industry faces a wave of public opposition after revelations of high mortality rates and the sale of fish deemed unfit for human consumption, along with accusations of antitrust violations by the European Commission.

The report, titled “Blue Empire,” was produced with other organizations including Greenpeace Africa and The West African Association for the Development of Artisanal Fishing and published in January. It quantifies the use of fishmeal and fish oil imported from Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia in the production of feed for salmon farms in Norway, the world’s main producer of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).

According to the report, in 2020, Norwegian salmon farms required almost 2 million metric tons of edible wild fish to produce fish oil intended for feeds that produced nearly 1.5 million metric tons of farmed salmon.

Up to 7% of these wild fish (123,000-144,000 metric tons) were small pelagic species caught along the coasts of West Africa, where they could have fed between 2.5 million and 4 million people, according to the report. Other major suppliers of fish oil to Norway are Denmark, the United States, Peru and Iceland.

“The Norwegian salmon farming industry, which is the biggest in the world, has an enormous feed footprint and a huge appetite for wild caught fish,” Natasha Hurley, director of campaigns at Feedback, told Mongabay.

Norway exports most of its farmed salmon: In 2023, the country exported 1.2 million metric tons, valued at $11.6 billion, with the majority going to Poland, France and the United States, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council, an industry marketing group. An increasing share of its exports goes to emerging markets, such as China, Hurley said.

read more: https://news.mongabay.com/2024/02/norwegian-salmon-farms-gobble-up-fish-that-could-feed-millions-in-africa-report/

Bashar Murad said he wants to use his song to ‘illustrate’ the difficulties Palestinians face in order to be heard.

Palestinian pop singer Bashar Murad is hoping to represent Iceland at the Eurovision Song Contest in May and bring “a Palestinian voice to the main stage”.

Iceland is expected to pick its contestant on Saturday for the annual song competition, which is being held in the Swedish city of Malmo.

Murad is competing in the national final with a song co-written by Einar Stefansson of the Icelandic band Hatari, known for raising a banner showing Palestinian flags during the 2019 Eurovision Contest.

While the competition bills itself as a non-political event and can disqualify those it considers to be in breach of the rule, the global political backdrop frequently weighs in on decisions.

In 2022, Russia was banned from participating in the contest after several countries called for its removal due to its invasion of Ukraine.

In light of the war in Gaza, some artists have called on the competition organisers to also exclude Israel from the competition.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises the competition, said last week that they were scrutinising the lyrics of Israel’s song submission for possible references to the October 7 Hamas attack, which would go against the rules of the competition.

Israel has threatened to drop out of the competition if its song, Eden Golan’s, October Rain, is rejected.

read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/27/palestinian-singer-running-to-represent-iceland-at-eurovision-contest