cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/46102456

Once again, we are reading the news of AI-hack-AI action.

Title:

Graham and Netanyahu Worked Together to Denounce International Criminal Court

Subtitle:

Senator Lindsey Graham helped to coordinate a group of lawmakers to rebuke the I.C.C., which was investigating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

It begins with the following - though the entire article is a worthwhile - if depressing - read:

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died this month at 71, worked privately with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to coordinate a bipartisan group of lawmakers to denounce the International Criminal Court investigation into Mr. Netanyahu just before the 2024 election, footage of their discussions shows.

The conversations were among roughly 400 hours recorded by the British filmmaker Alex Holder, who trailed Mr. Graham for roughly four years for a planned documentary project titled “Lindsey’s Game.” The footage of two discussions with Mr. Netanyahu about rebuking the I.C.C. was reviewed by The New York Times.

The calls took place just days before the 2024 election, on Oct. 29, as Mr. Graham was in Ohio, where he was campaigning with Donald Trump Jr. for Bernie Moreno in a Senate race, according to Mr. Holder.

The discussions underscore the significance of the relationship between Mr. Graham and Mr. Netanyahu and its impact, including with the senator’s colleagues. The two men were days away from an election that would return Donald J. Trump to the White House. Mr. Graham was a valuable interlocutor for Mr. Netanyahu even before that, but the call took place as the prime minister was prepared to discuss with Mr. Trump waging an increasingly expansive war against Iran.

Some drowned and others got caught up in crush, official says, as incident prompts criticism by other EU nations

At least 34 people have died trying to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after more than 40,000 migrants entered the tiny territory from Morocco in a matter of hours, triggering a political crisis for the Madrid government and unleashing a barrage of criticism from other EU countries.

The large influx of people arriving in Ceuta by swimming across from neighbouring Morocco or scaling the high border fence has caught the city of 85,000 off guard and resulted in what one local police association has called a “serious humanitarian crisis”.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who arrived in Ceuta on Friday, described the influx as “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” and said he would use all the state resources at his disposal to guarantee the safety of the people of Ceuta.

FIFA’s controversial plan to sell stakes in a World Cup company has been dealt what appears to be a fatal blow after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) joined UEFA and CONCACAF in rejecting it.

Gianni Infantino’s future as FIFA president now appears uncertain too, with the AFC statement also highlighting “fundamental weaknesses in FIFA’s consultation and decision-making processes that must now be addressed”.

Also relevant: Infantino’s senior adviser quits over World Cup investment plan

US Senator Lindsey Graham and Benjamin Netanyahu conspired to use sexual misconduct allegations against the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor to try and delay the court’s arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, it has emerged.

The revelation raises further questions about an intensifying intimidation campaign, documented by Middle East Eye last year, which targeted Karim Khan and the ICC over his office’s efforts to bring Gaza war crimes prosecutions against Israeli ministers.

The conversation was reported this week by the New York Times and was in recordings taken by British filmmaker Alex Holder, who followed Graham around for three years for a documentary on his relationship with US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu.

The phone call took place on 29 October 2024, just weeks before ICC judges announced they were issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant.

July 30, 2026

One. Two. As many as three successive barriers of gendarmes in riot gear, auxiliary forces, and Moroccan border police sealed off the Findeq border (Castillejos during the Spanish Protectorate era) with Ceuta at midnight from Thursday to Friday. Dozens of police vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and even a water cannon truck formed a perfectly organized security deployment designed to seal off the autonomous city. Thousands of undocumented migrants had poured into the city by sea and land throughout Thursday, in a human onslaught unprecedented since 2021.

The officers were keeping at bay the hundreds of young people who were throwing stones at them from the nearby hills, against a backdrop of a battlefield scene with vehicles with smashed windows and barricades made of traffic barriers. They stood firm at their posts, whilst thousands of people, mostly young men and minors, marched silently down the beach, splashing through the high tide, with no one to interrupt their procession of shadows as they made their way towards Ceuta. They passed just a few metres from the police lines, heading towards the breakwater that marks the European Union’s border in North Africa.

“We are expecting reinforcements in the next few hours so that we can stem this flow of people,” said a non-commissioned officer from the auxiliary forces (a para-police unit). The officers said they were awaiting a ‘zero hour’ to disperse the young people gathered on the hills of Castillejos, who were planning to storm the border fence, and to put a stop to the uninterrupted flow of Moroccans, groups of Moroccans and some sub-Saharan Africans into Spain.

Isaías, an official from the Castillejos Cerámica district – the closest to the Tarajal border post – would send women with children to spend the night in the village from the final security checkpoint. Dozens of people were spending the night in parks and camping by bonfires on the Findeq site, waiting to try to reach Spanish soil. “Nobody without papers is going to be able to get through up here,” he stated flatly. “Those going down there along the beach will carry on getting through. That’s a problem Spain has. It’s a matter of diplomacy,” he claimed, offering no further explanation.

No one was going home; whole families with children remained seated beside the access road to the Moroccan border. “We’ve come from Tangier. We have passports, but we don’t have visas. I have a job, but I have no future. We believe a better life awaits us in Spain,” confesses Said, a 47-year-old painter, with a distant look in his eyes, in the fluent Spanish spoken by Tangier natives across several generations. He is accompanied by his wife Nesma, aged 36; his daughter Romaisa, aged 12; and his son Tarik, aged two. “With the children, we can’t cross via the beach and the rocks, like all those other people. We’re hoping the border will open tomorrow and they’ll let us through freely,” said a confident Said, amidst groups of young people marching with swimming rings, ready to take to the water in the middle of the night.

Like many others waiting at midnight in Castillejos, they were confident that the following morning they would be able to cross the border without any problems, as if in a dream. This was based on unfounded information circulating on social media, which many believed with religious fervour beneath the full moon, obscured by the sea mist.

The migratory pressure on Ceuta has also shifted to Melilla, where the border with Morocco has been closed to prevent an influx of irregular migrants. Thousands of people, mostly young, have flocked en masse in recent days to both Spanish cities in a phenomenon amplified by digital media and social media.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/50125188

🌎 Humanity is truly living its best ClimateCatch22 dream:

The hotter > The more ACs > The more Electricity consumption > The hotter

⛵ Meanwhile the rich take advantage of the rising water levels, MOVING onto superyachts & forever cruiseships (for one last journey).

⛽ Burning through a cool $1 million of diesel per refueling.

GENEVA (AP) — European nations agreed Thursday to boycott the World Cup and all other FIFA competitions to protest Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in soccer’s biggest tournament to private equity investors.

Infantino’s secret project was revealed Tuesday to spin off its commercial operations in a new $20 billion subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) 20% owned by private investors. The core investor would be a New York investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Infantino wrote Tuesday to the 211 members — already the effective owners of FIFA as a non-profit association under Swiss law — that if they approve FFE their promised $10 million basic funding for the next four years will double to $20 million. He projected their FIFA funding through 2038 would be $86 million each, instead of about $36 million.

“This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football,” said UEFA, where Infantino was a long-time staffer and its CEO-like general secretary when he was first elected to lead FIFA in 2016.

cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/46062293

European nations have unanimously agreed to boycott all Fifa competitions until football’s global governing body drops plans to sell off stakes in the World Cup.

In an emergency meeting on Thursday, Uefa member associations voted 55-0 to boycott.