Read & Resist – April 7

Read & Resist – April 7

• When War Crimes Rhetoric Becomes Battlefield Reality: The Slippery Slope to Total War on Iran – “Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place servicemembers in a profoundly challenging situation. As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the presidents’ words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return. “
• Trump threats cause dilemma for US officers: disobey orders or commit war crimes – “Asked what confidence he had that someone in the chain of command now would intervene to stop Trump, Lewis simply replied: “None.” “He has consistently purged the military of anybody who he thinks would stand up to him or resist him,” he said.
• ‘Food security timebomb’: a visual guide to the Gulf fertiliser blockade– “Roughly half of global food production depends on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. Without it, crop yields would tumble, pushing up prices of household staples including bread, rice, potatoes and pasta, and would also make animal feed more expensive. Some of the world’s poorest countries are among the most vulnerable to fertiliser price rises.”
• UN warns of record hunger, 45 million more at risk, if Iran war continues– “This would take global hunger levels to an all-time record, and it’s a terrible, terrible prospect,” Skau said, with 319 million people, already a historic high, currently acutely food insecure.
• Republican Islamophobia Has Reached Shocking New Levels – JUST WOW. I cannot even with this rhetoric. How. HOW?
• The Ugly History Behind the Olympics’ New Gender Test – “The founder of the Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, hated women’s sports—he didn’t think women should compete at all—and the early Olympics had very few sports available to women because of this.”
• DOGE Attacks on Social Security Have Left Millions in the Lurch– “Sometimes, she said, she receives a push notification urging her to log into her account for an update, only to find “an advertisement about something the government has recently done, like ‘We just signed the whatever executive order.’”