The Supreme Court may take up a case challenging a ban on so-called “conversion therapy” for minors.
“Conversion therapy” has been described as a form of psychological torture, which purports to change queer people’s sexual orientation. The American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, and many other professional healthcare associations consider the practice harmful and say that it is based on pseudoscience. According to the Movement Advancement Project, the District of Columbia and 22 states currently have laws on the books banning the harmful practice for minors.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan on Monday in Baghdad and discussed a wide range of issues, including the escalation of violence between Gaza and Israel.
Saudi ambassador to Iraq Abdulaziz Al Shammari, and Abdulrahman bin Arkan Al Dawood, director general of the office of the minister of foreign affairs, also attended.
In a statement, Hamas commander has said that it launched attacks on the Israeli territory ‘in defense of Al-Aqsa’ which was stormed by Israeli settlers a few days ago. Al-Aqsa has been the flashpoint between Palestine and Israel. Hamas military commander Muhammad Deif, who released a recorded message after the attack, said the strikes were in retaliation for Israel’s “desecration of the Al-Aqsa" mosque in Jerusalem.
RAJI SOURANI: — the last 60 hours, I mean, Gaza subject to nonstop bombing. It’s ongoing all over the place. There is no single place you can call a safe haven in Gaza, airplane fighters, drones ruling all over the sky. And it’s your lottery number, whether it’s an apartment, whether it’s tower with hundreds of apartments, whether it’s a house, whether it’s a hospital, whether it’s a school, a shelter used by UNRWA. I mean, even the marketplace of Jabaliya, the biggest refugee camp in the Middle East for Palestinians — 300,000 Palestinians there — were bombed, and almost 80 have been killed, I mean, this morning, and tens injured in very, very critical situation. And all this is happening in the daylight, and no one is caring about that.
Netanyahu says Gazans should leave Gaza. Where to? Even we don’t have safe passage. And the minister of defense say, “We are going to cut electricity, water, food, oil” — everything, I mean, will be cut on Gaza. So, 2.4 million civilians in Gaza are subject to unprecedented situation, which it’s very genocidal.
It’s coming from the highest level in Israel. If they have a problem with Hamas, we have no problem. They can contact them. If they have with Jihad Islamic, with Fatah, with the fighters of the resistance, that’s fine. This is not our area of interest. But our area of interest, it’s the civilians, and the civilians who are really in the eye of the storm, and they are the subject for the Israeli ongoing crimes.
And still Mr. KK, the ICC prosecutor, keeps silent, doing nothing, moving nowhere in this conflict, and doesn’t hold Israel accountable for the ongoing crimes they committed over the course of years — suppression, oppression, killing, blockade, apartheid — name it. I mean, all the menu of the crimes are there, which listed at Rome Statute, and no one is moving. No one is moving to provide any level of protection toward Palestinian civilians.
Once and again, this is going on now. At the course of these 60 or 70 hours, I mean, we’re having hundreds of people have been killed. Just children, we have above 100 children have been killed. Women, almost the same number. And the worst yet to come. We are sure, and we know that.
AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli prime minister has told Gazans to leave. It’s unclear, of course, where you’d be able to go. Then they said that he was misunderstood, that he was saying you should leave the Hamas sites in Gaza. Can you respond to this, Raji Sourani?
RAJI SOURANI: This is nonsense. This is nonsense. He is leading Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. He is leading people who say Palestinians don’t exist, and who said, “Palestinians should leave. This is the land of Israel. This is the historical land of Israel, and we are taking over. There is no other state, and there is no other people. There is one people. There is one self-determination. It’s for the Israeli Jews.” So, he’s a big liar. It wasn’t a slip of tongue. He came after cabinet meeting and after a meeting with his top security and military people, and he was reading from a paper. So, it cannot be a mistake. He knows what he said, and he meant what he said. And I do believe what they are doing, deliberately, will lead to that, if this is continued and they don’t stop.
AMY GOODMAN: What level of support does Hamas have — Hamas is the government of Gaza — right now, since Saturday morning, the actions of the thousands or so Hamas fighters breaching the wall?
RAJI SOURANI: I don’t think it’s matter — I don’t think it’s matter of the people’s support or not. You have to know, when you are suppressed deeply by a criminal, belligerent occupation, when you are suffocated — do you hear? Do you hear the bombing?
AMY GOODMAN: We hear it.
RAJI SOURANI: And here right now the entire house shaking, while I’m talking to you. I’m living in the best area of Gaza — all right? — and should be away from every problem, but everything around us has been bombed. And you don’t know, never, your lottery number, when it can be. There is no safe haven in this place. I lived all my life in this part of the world. I lived the mathematics and the chemistry. But I never, ever witnessed anything as such. And I’m telling you, I mean, if the Israelis made it — and they did — the land incursion, situation will be much, much worse than this. Massacres will happen, I mean, to civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: You have heard, I assume, that Israeli tanks and military equipment are making their way to Gaza right now. So you’re being bombed by the air, but the question is: Will there be a total land invasion? Can you respond to what this means? Just to give people a sense, you’re talking about this strip of land, Gaza, that’s about the size of Detroit. There are about 600,000 people in Detroit. We’re talking about 2.4 million people. It’s one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Raji, if you could take it from there?
RAJI SOURANI: Exactly, Amy. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, as you know. And if the army comes in, it will be like elephant in the garden. But I don’t think any would love to be a good victim. They want to strip us not from our own security. They don’t want to strip us from the food of our children. They were not satisfied of having this criminal, belligerent occupation. They are not satisfied with the blockade. They are not satisfied with the killing and the bombing and [inaudible] wars that’s been happening in the last 10 years. But they want to do more. I think it’s not human to be a good victim. We are the stones of the valley. We have been here since ever. We will continue here forever. And I think, I mean, if the Israelis did that, that means they are just melting the people of Palestine, of Gaza, just to be one body defending their very existence. This is our right and obligation. As the French say, resistance, it’s not only, I mean, right, it’s your dignity, Amy. And people shouldn’t be good victim for a criminal, belligerent occupation.
When Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied Ukraine, the whole world stopped, and they said, “We cannot support Russia, and we have to support the Ukrainians against the occupation of the Russians. And we will support them not only politically. We will support them with money. We will support them with arms. We will support them with all what we can.” And they asked all the free people of Europe and U.S. to go and join the forces and to join the resistance in Ukraine against the occupation.
I don’t know why Palestinians, if they die, are a criminal; if we think, we are a criminal and terrorist; if we do peaceful intifada, we are terrorists. And when the Israelis doing massacres, one after another, they’re just being supported, as had happened yesterday, by U.S. and by major European countries. It’s shame. It’s shame to leave Israel practicing the rule of jungle in this way against the Palestinian civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m not sure if the —
RAJI SOURANI: All what we want — all what we want is simple and clear: end of occupation. We want dignity and freedom, period, like any other people on Earth.
AMY GOODMAN: Raji, I’m not sure if this is the blast we just heard, but Middle East Eye is reporting Israel just bombed the Islamic University of Gaza. Is that near you?
Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has urged all Muslims across the world to help the Palestinian people amid the Israeli regime’s relentless strikes on the Gaza Strip.
“We call on all Muslims to come to the assistance of the Muslim people of Palestine [and] respond to their loud cries for help,” the senior cleric said in a message on Monday.
Grand Ayatollah Sistani also urged all Muslims to do their utmost to "deter the aggressors," reclaim the usurped rights of Palestinians, and save them from Israel's onslaught.
He added that the Islamic land of Palestine should be saved from "usurping aggressor."
Calling up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists, Israel has declared a long war on Gaza in response to Operation al-Aqsa Storm, which started on Saturday.
The resistance fighters say they have waged the operation against the occupying regime in response to its decades-long campaign of bloodshed and destruction against Palestinians.
Till now, he had run as a Democrat, garnering a polling average of about 15% in the primary, according to RealClearPolitics. What will happen running as an independent is unknown. Some observers think Kennedy might pull more votes away from Trump than Biden, but the election is too uncertain and too crucial for comfort. A poll conducted by John Zogby Strategies for the American Values 2024 PAC, which supports Kennedy, looked at a matchup among Trump, Biden and Kennedy as the independent candidate. The result: Trump and Biden tied at 38% with Kennedy at 19%.
A victory over Biden by any of the Republican candidates would be a serious setback for the climate policies advanced by the Inflation Reduction Act, various White House initiatives and regulatory rulemaking. But a second Trump administration would create a climate catastrophe. Trump dismantled climate policies and rolled back more than 100 environmental rules governing clean air and water — without being particularly organized. In a second term, he’s pledged to radically transform the civil service, including environmental agencies. The stakes are too high and the margins are potentially too close for anyone concerned about the environment to view Kennedy as a safe vote for the climate.
“He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian,” McArdle said in an interview with the Times on the summer meeting. “They agreed on several positions, including the threat of the ‘deep state’ and the need for populist messaging,” the Times added, with McArdle claiming that she and Kennedy were “aligned on a lot of issues.”
“My perspective is that we are going to stay in touch in case he does decide to run,” McArdle said. “And he can contact me at any time if that’s the case.”
Further cementing his ties with the far right ahead of his “independent” launch, on October 6, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) announced that Kennedy and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would headline the CPAC “Investor Summit to Save America” in Las Vegas, Nevada, from October 18-21.
CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp praised Kennedy Jr. for “ensuring the constitutional right of medical freedom,” a reference to his anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Schlapp said that Kennedy joining the event was a reflection “of the splintering of the left-wing coalition that has gone full woke Marxist to the point that traditional liberals don’t feel welcome anymore.”
A who’s who of Trump co-conspirators will be joining Kennedy at the CPAC later this month, including Steven Bannon, fascist War Room host and former special adviser in the Trump White House; Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton; and Kash Patel, an intelligence operative who was chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller during the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Like Trump, Kennedy Jr. is able to exploit the broad antiwar sentiment in the working class by professing opposition to Biden and the Democrats’ escalating war in Ukraine. However, Kennedy’s antiwar facade suffered a serious blow this weekend following his latest pledge for unstinting military support for Israel’s war against the Palestinians.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
