#secure enclaves

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Forcing your computer to rat you out

Powerful people imprisoned by the cluelessness of their own isolation, locked up with their own motivated reasoning: “It’s impossible to get a CEO to understand something when his quarterly earnings call depends on him not understanding it.”

Take Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg insists that anyone who wanted to use a pseudonym online is “two-faced,” engaged in dishonest social behavior. The Zuckerberg Doctrine claims that forcing people to use their own names is a way to ensure civility. This is an idea so radioactively wrong, it can be spotted from orbit.

From the very beginning, social scientists (both inside and outside Facebook) told Zuckerberg that he was wrong. People have lots of reasons to hide their identities online, both good and bad, but a Real Names Policy affects different people differently:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/22/social-scientists-have-warned-zuck-all-along-that-the-facebook-theory-of-interaction-would-make-people-angry-and-miserable/

For marginalized and at-risk people, there are plenty of reasons to want to have more than one online identity — say, because you are a #MeToo whistleblower hoping that Harvey Weinstein won’t sic his ex-Mossad mercenaries on you:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies

Or maybe you’re a Rohingya Muslim hoping to avoid the genocidal attentions of the troll army that used Facebook to organize — under their real, legal names — to rape and murder you and everyone you love:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

But even if no one is looking to destroy your life or kill you and your family, there are plenty of good reasons to present different facets of your identity to different people. No one talks to their lover, their boss and their toddler in exactly the same way, or reveals the same facts about their lives to those people. Maintaining different facets to your identity is normal and healthy — and the opposite, presenting the same face to everyone in your life, is a wildly terrible way to live.

None of this is controversial among social scientists, nor is it hard to grasp. But Zuckerberg stubbornly stuck to this anonymity-breeds-incivility doctrine, even as dictators used the fact that Facebook forced dissidents to use their real names to retain power through the threat (and reality) of arrest and torture:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

Why did Zuck cling to this dangerous and obvious fallacy? Because the more he could collapse your identity into one unitary whole, the better he could target you with ads. Truly, it is impossible to get a billionaire to understand something when his mega-yacht depends on his not understanding it.

This motivated reasoning ripples through all of Silicon Valley’s top brass, producing what Anil Dash calls “VC QAnon,” the collection of conspiratorial, debunked and absurd beliefs embraced by powerful people who hold the digital lives of billions of us in their quivering grasp:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon/

These fallacy-ridden autocrats like to disguise their demands as observations, as though wanting something to be true was the same as making it true. Think of when Eric Schmidt — then the CEO of Google — dismissed online privacy concerns, stating “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

Schmidt was echoing the sentiments of his old co-conspirator, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it”:

https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/

Both men knew better. Schmidt, in particular, is very jealous of his own privacy. When Cnet reporters used Google to uncover and publish public (but intimate and personal) facts about Schmidt, Schmidt ordered Google PR to ignore all future requests for comment from Cnet reporters:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/how-cnet-got-banned-by-google/

(Like everything else he does, Elon Musk’s policy of responding to media questions about Twitter with a poop emoji is just him copying things other people thought up, making them worse, and taking credit for them:)

https://www.theverge.com/23815634/tesla-elon-musk-origin-founder-twitter-land-of-the-giants

Schmidt’s actions do not reflect an attitude of “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Rather, they are the normal response that we all have to getting doxed.

When Schmidt and McNealy and Zuck tell us that we don’t have privacy, or we don’t want privacy, or that privacy is bad for us, they’re disguising a demand as an observation. “Privacy is dead” actually means, “When privacy is dead, I will be richer than you can imagine, so stop trying to save it, goddamnit.”

We are all prone to believing our own bullshit, but when a tech baron gets high on his own supply, his mental contortions have broad implications for all of us. A couple years after Schmidt’s anti-privacy manifesto, Google launched Google Plus, a social network where everyone was required to use their “real name.”

This decision — justified as a means of ensuring civility and a transparent ruse to improve ad targeting — kicked off the Nym Wars:

https://epeus.blogspot.com/2011/08/google-plus-must-stop-this-identity.html

One of the best documents to come out of that ugly conflict is “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names,” a profound and surprising enumeration of all the ways that the experiences of tech bros in Silicon Valley are the real edge-cases, unreflective of the reality of billions of their users:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

This, in turn, spawned a whole genre of programmer-fallacy catalogs, falsehoods programmers believe about time, currency, birthdays, timezones, email addresses, national borders, nations, biometrics, gender, language, alphabets, phone numbers, addresses, systems of measurement, and, of course, families:

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

But humility is in short supply in tech. It’s impossible to get a programmer to understand something when their boss requires them not to understand it. A programmer will happily insist that ordering you to remove your “mask” is for your own good — and not even notice that they’re taking your skin off with it.

There are so many ways that tech executives could improve their profits if only we would abandon our stubborn attachment to being so goddamned complicated. Think of Netflix and its anti-passsword-sharing holy war, which is really a demand that we redefine “family” to be legible and profitable for Netflix:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

But despite the entreaties of tech companies to collapse our identities, our families, and our online lives into streamlined, computably hard-edged shapes that fit neatly into their database structures, we continue to live fuzzy, complicated lives that only glancingly resemble those of the executives seeking to shape them.

Now, the rich, powerful people making these demands don’t plan on being constrained by them. They are conservatives, in the tradition of #FrankWilhoit, believers in a system of “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”:

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

As with Schmidt’s desire to spy on you from asshole to appetite for his own personal gain, and his violent aversion to having his own personal life made public, the tech millionaires and billionaires who made their fortune from the flexibility of general purpose computers would like to end that flexibility. They insist that the time for general purpose computers has passed, and that today, “consumers” crave the simplicity of appliances:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

It is in the War On General Purpose Computing that we find the cheapest and flimsiest rhetoric. Companies like Apple — and their apologists — insist that no one wants to use third-party app stores, or seek out independent repair depots — and then spend millions to make sure that it’s illegal to jailbreak your phone or get it fixed outside of their own official channel:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

The cognitive dissonance of “no one wants this,” and “we must make it illegal to get this” is powerful, but the motivated reasoning is more powerful still. It is impossible to get Tim Cook to understand something when his $49 million paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

The War on General Purpose Computing has been underway for decades. Computers, like the people who use them, stubbornly insist on being reality-based, and the reality of computers is that they are general purpose. Every computer is a Turing complete, universal Von Neumann machine, which means that it can run every valid program. There is no way to get a computer to be almost Turing Complete, only capable of running programs that don’t upset your shareholders’ fragile emotional state.

There is no such thing as a printer that will only run the “reject third-party ink” program. There is no such thing as a phone that will only run the “reject third-party apps” program. There are only laws, like the Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that make writing and distributing those programs a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine (for a first offense).

That is to say, the War On General Purpose Computing is only incidentally a technical fight: it is primarily a legal fight. When Apple says, “You can’t install a third party app store on your phone,” what they means is, “it’s illegal to install that third party app store.” It’s not a technical countermeasure that stands between you and technological self-determination, it’s a legal doctrine we can call “felony contempt of business model”:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

But the mighty US government will not step in to protect a company’s business model unless it at least gestures towards the technical. To invoke DMCA 1201, a company must first add the thinnest skin of digital rights management to their product. Since 1201 makes removing DRM illegal, a company can use this molecule-thick scrim of DRM to felonize any activity that the DRM prevents.

More than 20 years ago, technologists started to tinker with ways to combine the legal and technical to tame the wild general purpose computer. Starting with Microsoft’s Palladium project, they theorized a new “Secure Computing” model for allowing companies to reach into your computer long after you had paid for it and brought it home, in order to discipline you for using it in ways that undermined its shareholders’ interest.

Secure Computing began with the idea of shipping every computer with two CPUs. The first one was the normal CPU, the one you interacted with when you booted it up, loaded your OS, and ran programs. The second CPU would be a Trusted Platform Module, a brute-simple system-on-a-chip designed to be off-limits to modification, even by its owner (that is, you).

The TPM would ship with a limited suite of simple programs it could run, each thoroughly audited for bugs, as well as secret cryptographic signing keys that you were not permitted to extract. The original plan called for some truly exotic physical security measures for that TPM, like an acid-filled cavity that would melt the chip if you tried to decap it or run it through an electron-tunneling microscope:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

This second computer represented a crack in the otherwise perfectly smooth wall of a computer’s general purposeness; and Trusted Computing proposed to hammer a piton into that crack and use it to anchor a whole superstructure that could observe — and limited — the activity of your computer.

This would start with observation: the TPM would observe every step of your computer’s boot sequence, creating cryptographic hashes of each block of code as it loaded and executed. Each stage of the boot-up could be compared to “known good” versions of those programs. If your computer did something unexpected, the TPM could halt it in its tracks, blocking the boot cycle.

What kind of unexpected things do computers do during their boot cycle? Well, if your computer is infected with malware, it might load poisoned versions of its operating system. Once your OS is poisoned, it’s very hard to detect its malicious conduct, since normal antivirus programs rely on the OS to faithfully report what your computer is doing. When the AV program asks the OS to tell it which programs are running, or which files are on the drive, it has no choice but to trust the OS’s response. When the OS is compromised, it can feed a stream of lies to users’ programs, assuring these apps that everything is fine.

That’s a very beneficial use for a TPM, but there’s a sinister flipside: the TPM can also watch your boot sequence to make sure that there aren’t beneficial modifications present in your operating system. If you modify your OS to let you do things the manufacturer wants to prevent — like loading apps from a third-party app-store — the TPM can spot this and block it.

Now, these beneficial and sinister uses can be teased apart. When the Palladium team first presented its research, my colleague Seth Schoen proposed an “owner override”: a modification of Trusted Computing that would let the computer’s owner override the TPM:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021004125515/http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-07-05.html

This override would introduce its own risks, of course. A user who was tricked into overriding the TPM might expose themselves to malicious software, which could harm that user, as well as attacking other computers on the user’s network and the other users whose data were on the compromised computer’s drive.

But an override would also provide serious benefits: it would rule out the monopolistic abuse of a TPM to force users to run malicious code that the manufacturer insisted on — code that prevented the user from doing things that benefited the user, even if it harmed the manufacturer’s shareholders. For example, with owner override, Microsoft couldn’t force you to use its official MS Office programs rather than third-party compatible programs like Apple’s iWork or Google Docs or LibreOffice.

Owner override also completely changed the calculus for another, even more dangerous part of Trusted Computing: remote attestation.

Remote Attestation is a way for third parties to request a reliable, cryptographically secured assurances about which operating system and programs your computer is running. In Remote Attestation, the TPM in your computer observes every stage of your computer’s boot, gathers information about all the programs you’re running, and cryptographically signs them, using the signing keys the manufacturer installed during fabrication.

You can send this “attestation” to other people on the internet. If they trust that your computer’s TPM is truly secure, then they know that you have sent them a true picture of your computer’s working (the actual protocol is a little more complicated and involves the remote party sending you a random number to cryptographically hash with the attestation, to prevent out-of-date attestations).

Now, this is also potentially beneficial. If you want to make sure that your technologically unsophisticated friend is running an uncompromised computer before you transmit sensitive data to it, you can ask them for an attestation that will tell you whether they’ve been infected with malware.

But it’s also potentially very sinister. Your government can require all the computers in its borders to send a daily attestation to confirm that you’re still running the mandatory spyware. Your abusive spouse — or abusive boss — can do the same for their own disciplinary technologies. Such a tool could prevent you from connecting to a service using a VPN, and make it impossible to use Tor Browser to protect your privacy when interacting with someone who wishes you harm.

The thing is, it’s completely normal and good for computers to lie to other computers on behalf of their owners. Like, if your IoT ebike’s manufacturer goes out of business and all their bikes get bricked because they can no longer talk to their servers, you can run an app that tricks the bike into thinking that it’s still talking to the mothership:

https://nltimes.nl/2023/07/15/alternative-app-can-unlock-vanmoof-bikes-popular-amid-bankruptcy-fears

Or if you’re connecting to a webserver that tries to track you by fingerprinting you based on your computer’s RAM, screen size, fonts, etc, you can order your browser to send random data about this stuff:

https://jshelter.org/fingerprinting/

Or if you’re connecting to a site that wants to track you and nonconsensually cram ads into your eyeballs, you can run an adblocker that doesn’t show you the ads, but tells the site that it did:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Owner override leaves some of the beneficial uses of remote attestation intact. If you’re asking a friend to remotely confirm that your computer is secure, you’re not going to use an override to send them bad data about about your computer’s configuration.

And owner override also sweeps all of the malicious uses of remote attestation off the board. With owner override, you can tell any lie about your computer to a webserver, a site, your boss, your abusive spouse, or your government, and they can’t spot the lie.

But owner override also eliminates some beneficial uses of remote attestation. For example, owner override rules out remote attestation as a way for strangers to play multiplayer video games while confirming that none of them are using cheat programs (like aimhack). It also means that you can’t use remote attestation to verify the configuration of a cloud server you’re renting in order to assure yourself that it’s not stealing your data or serving malware to your users.

This is a tradeoff, and it’s a tradeoff that’s similar to lots of other tradeoffs we make online, between the freedom to do something good and the freedom to do something bad. Participating anonymously, contributing to free software, distributing penetration testing tools, or providing a speech platform that’s open to the public all represent the same tradeoff.

We have lots of experience with making the tradeoff in favor of restrictions rather than freedom: powerful bad actors are happy to attach their names to their cruel speech and incitement to violence. Their victims are silenced for fear of that retaliation.

When we tell security researchers they can’t disclose defects in software without the manufacturer’s permission, the manufacturers use this as a club to silence their critics, not as a way to ensure orderly updates.

When we let corporations decide who is allowed to speak, they act with a mixture of carelessness and self-interest, becoming off-the-books deputies of authoritarian regimes and corrupt, powerful elites.

Alas, we made the wrong tradeoff with Trusted Computing. For the past twenty years, Trusted Computing has been creeping into our devices, albeit in somewhat denatured form. The original vision of acid-filled secondary processors has been replaced with less exotic (and expensive) alternatives, like “secure enclaves.” With a secure enclave, the manufacturer saves on the expense of installing a whole second computer, and instead, they draw a notional rectangle around a region of your computer’s main chip and try really hard to make sure that it can only perform a very constrained set of tasks.

This gives us the worst of all worlds. When secure enclaves are compromised, we not only lose the benefit of cryptographic certainty, knowing for sure that our computers are only booting up trusted, unalterted versions of the OS, but those compromised enclaves run malicious software that is essentially impossible to detect or remove:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

But while Trusted Computing has wormed its way into boot-restrictions — preventing you from jailbreaking your computer so it will run the OS and apps of your choosing — there’s been very little work on remote attestation…until now.

Web Environment Integrity is Google’s proposal to integrate remote attestation into everyday web-browsing. The idea is to allow web-servers to verify what OS, extensions, browser, and add-ons your computer is using before the server will communicate with you:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md

Even by the thin standards of the remote attestation imaginaries, there are precious few beneficial uses for this. The googlers behind the proposal have a couple of laughable suggestions, like, maybe if ad-supported sites can comprehensively refuse to serve ad-blocking browsers, they will invest the extra profits in making things you like. Or: letting websites block scriptable browsers will make it harder for bad people to auto-post fake reviews and comments, giving users more assurances about the products they buy.

But foundationally, WEI is about compelling you to disclose true facts about yourself to people who you want to keep those facts from. It is a Real Names Policy for your browser. Google wants to add a new capability to the internet: the ability of people who have the power to force you to tell them things to know for sure that you’re not lying.

The fact that the authors assume this will be beneficial is just another “falsehood programmers believe”: there is no good reason to hide the truth from other people. Squint a little and we’re back to McNealy’s “Privacy is dead, get over it.” Or Schmidt’s “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

And like those men, the programmers behind this harebrained scheme don’t imagine that it will ever apply to them. As Chris Palmer — who worked on Chromium — points out, this is not compatible with normal developer tools or debuggers, which are “incalculably valuable and not really negotiable”:

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_kGO22g/m/5Lt5cnkLCwAJ

This proposal is still obscure in the mainstream, but in tech circles, it has precipitated a flood of righteous fury:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

As I wrote last week, giving manufacturers the power to decide how your computer is configured, overriding your own choices, is a bad tradeoff — the worst tradeoff, a greased slide into terminal enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of which leads to the question: what now? What should be done about WEI and remote attestation?

Let me start by saying: I don’t think it should be illegal for programmers to design and release these tools. Code is speech, and we can’t understand how this stuff works if we can’t study it.

But programmers shouldn’t deploy it in production code, in the same way that programmers should be allowed to make pen-testing tools, but shouldn’t use them to attack production systems and harm their users. Programmers who do this should be criticized and excluded from the society of their ethical, user-respecting peers.

Corporations that use remote attestation should face legal restrictions: privacy law should prevent the use of remote attestation to compel the production of true facts about users or the exclusion of users who refuse to produce those facts. Unfair competition law should prevent companies from using remote attestation to block interoperability or tie their products to related products and services.

Finally, we must withdraw the laws that prevent users and programmers from overriding TPMs, secure enclaves and remote attestations. You should have the right to study and modify your computer to produce false attestations, or run any code of your choosing. Felony contempt of business model is an outrage. We should alter or strike down DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and other laws (like contract law’s “tortious interference”) that stand between you and “sole and despotic dominion” over your own computer. All of that applies not just to users who want to reconfigure their own computers, but also toolsmiths who want to help them do so, by offering information, code, products or services to jailbreak and alter your devices.

Tech giants will squeal at this, insisting that they serve your interests when they prevent rivals from opening up their products. After all, those rivals might be bad guys who want to hurt you. That’s 100% true. What is likewise true is that no tech giant will defend you from its own bad impulses, and if you can’t alter your device, you are powerless to stop them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Companies should be stopped from harming you, but the right place to decide whether a business is doing something nefarious isn’t in the boardroom of that company’s chief competitor: it’s in the halls of democratically accountable governments:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

So how do we get there? Well, that’s another matter. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I lay out a detailed program, describing which policies will disenshittify the internet, and how to get those policies:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

Predictably, there are challenges getting this kind of book out into the world via our concentrated tech sector. Amazon refuses to carry the audio edition on its monopoly audiobook platform, Audible, unless it is locked to Amazon forever with mandatory DRM. That’s left me self-financing my own DRM-free audio edition, which is currently available for pre-order via this Kickstarter:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

[Image ID: An anatomical drawing of a flayed human head; it has been altered to give it a wide-stretched mouth revealing a gadget nestled in the back of the figure's throat, connected by a probe whose two coiled wires stretch to an old fashioned electronic box. The head's eyes have been replaced by the red, menacing eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Behind the head is a code waterfall effect as seen in the credits of the Wachowskis' 'The Matrix.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[maddymoreau]

Listen I completely understand why Amata makes me leave Vault 101 despite the fact I resolved everything peacefully. What I can't understand is the fact I NEVER ONCE BEFORE LEAVING CAN CONFIDE IN MY CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND ABOUT MY FATHER DYING??!!

If they weren't going to give me the option why give me this quest RIGHT after his death?!?!!!

Amata telling me I can’t stay would’ve hit harder if she knew I had NO family outside the Vault.

What a missed opportunity.

I really am the LONE wanderer no one has my back in this game except Fawkes.

[thesaintelectric]

the problem isn't that the fallout show does new things* in the setting its that the sum total of the additions lead to a less thematically interesting story and also remove a lot of fan favourite aspects that made the setting unique

*new as in events that happened after the timeline of the games, there is nothing novel about the events

[mileena--kahnumm]

[sayruq]

The UK government has revoked the student visa of a Palestinian student who lost relatives in Gaza after she spoke at a demonstration at the University of Manchester. Dana Abuqamar, a law student who heads the Friends of Palestine Society at the University of Manchester, said the UK government revoked her visa on “national security” grounds, after claiming she was a risk to public safety. “The claim they are making is baseless and violates my rights as a resident here in the UK. My legal team has lodged a human rights appeal against this decision to revoke my student visa in my last and final year as a law student,” Abuqamar said, speaking to Al Jazeera English, confirming that her visa had been revoked. Last year, Abuqamar revealed that she had lost at least 15 relatives in Gaza after the Israeli army bombed a three-storey building in the besieged enclave. “During this genocide, the UK Home Office decided to revoke my student visa following public statements supporting the Palestinian right to exercise under international law to resist oppression and break through the siege that was illegally placed on Gaza for over 16 years,” said Abuqamar. “Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, but it seems to not apply to ethnic minorities, particularly Muslims and Palestinians like myself. We must reject the double standard in the application of human rights by public authorities and rise against this oppression.” A spokesperson for the UK Home Office said it did not respond to individual cases.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes of chaos and fear after the Israeli occupation forces bombed a school housing displaced Palestinian families opposite Nasser Medical Complex west of the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, after displacing civilians from other areas of the enclave. 📈 Current death toll in Gaza exceeds 37'953 Palestinians killed, while another 87'266 others have been wounded since Oct. 7th. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

GENOCIDE CONTINUES ON DAY 271: ISRAELI OCCUPATION REACHES OUT TO GAZA CLAN LEADERS, HAMAS WARNS OF RETALIATION FOR COLLABORATORS, ZIONIST COLONIAL SETTLERS CONTINUE RAIDING AL-AQSA MOSQUE, AL-QUDS BRIGADES SAY HOSTAGES ATTEMPTED SUICIDE AS THEIR TREATMENT BECOMES MORE SEVERE FOLLOWING REPORTS OF TORTURE IN ISRAELI PRISONS, SLAUGHTER OF CIVILIANS CONTINUES

On 271st day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 3 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 28 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 125 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

A number of Israeli hostages have attempted suicide in the detention of the Palestinian resistance. This is according to the Al-Quds Brigades, belonging to the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

In a statement, the Al-Quds Brigades said that several Israeli hostages in their care had attempted suicide due to the severe frustration they feel owing to their government's disinterest in recovering their detainees, and due to the deteriorating treatment they are receiving from their captors.

According to Al-Quds, as a result of the horrendous treatment of Palestinian prisoners at the hands of the Israeli occupation army in occupation prisons, including allegations of torture, rape, withholding of food and water, blindfolding, medical abuse and more, the Palestinian resistance group has taken a decision to treat their detainees harshly.

"Our decision in the Al-Quds Brigades to treat the occupation's prisoners in the same way as our prisoners inside the prisons, will remain in effect as long as the terrorist government continues its unjust measures against our people and prisoners. He who warns is excused," Al-Quds said in its statement.

In the meantime, one of the main reasons the Palestinian resistance factions cited for conducting Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, 2023, was the regular raids by Zionist colonial settlers of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied Al-Quds (Jersusalem), one of the holiest sites in Islamic religion.

Those raids continue to occur, with groups of dozens of Zionist colonial settlers storming the compound on Wednesday, while under the protection of the Israeli occupation army.

Local eyewitnesses reported today that groups of dozens of Zionist colonial settlers raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, touring the Mosque's courtyard and performing provocative Talmudic rituals as the occupation army protected the settlers.

The report also added that the Occupation Shin Bet Police stormed the Old City of occupied Al-Quds, turning the area into a military barracks, while hundreds of police were deployed to secure the area, in particular near the gates of the Al-Aqsa compound.

The Shin Bet also tightened security measures at the gates of the Old City, as well as Al-Aqsa Mosque, while imposing restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshippers.

In other news on Wednesday, July 3rd, the London-based Reuters news-wire service is reporting that the Israeli entity has been reaching out to the leaders of major Gaza clans, looking to find Palestinians that are not associated with Hamas or other Palestinian resistance factions to oversee the final stages of the occupation's plans in the Gaza Strip, and to eventually replace the Hamas movement in governing the enclave.

Reuters says the Israeli occupation remains under heavy pressure from the United States to bring an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, but does not want Hamas to retain control over the Strip.

As a result, the Israeli occupation's leadership is forming plans for the "day after" the end of the war, including forming a governing structure parallel to the Hamas government that has led the Gaza Strip since 2007, hoping to shape an alternative civil administration involving Palestinians that are not associated with the Palestinian Resistance movement.

Unfortunately for the occupation, this leaves few plausible options, with the current focus being on the heads of powerful Palestinian clans in Gaza, which the Israeli entity has been attempting to woo in recent days.

Speaking with Reuters, Senior Palestine Analyst at the International Crises Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, Tahani Mustafa, says the Zionist entity has been "actively looking for local tribes and families on the ground to work with them."

According to Tahani Mustafa, the Gaza Clans "don’t want to get involved, in part because they fear retribution from Hamas."

The threat is a real one for Gaza's Clan leaders, who fear retribution from Hamas, who, despite the Israeli occupation's determination to destroy the Resistance group, retains its control over large sections of the Palestinian enclave.

Sure enough, a correspondant with Reuters asked the director of Gaza's media office, Ismail Thawabteh, what the consequences would be for those who cooperate with the Zionist regime, who responded by saying “I expect the response to be deadly for any clan or party that agrees to implement the occupation’s plans. I expect the response to be lethal from the resistance factions.”

Occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged the challenges he will face in instituting a new governing structure in the Gaza Strip, claiming his government has reached out to Gaza's clans, but that Hamas "eliminated" them, adding that his Defense Ministry had a new plan, but would not elaborate on it, stating only that he was not willing to bring in the Palestinian Authority to govern in Gaza.

The Palestinian clans are made up of powerful families in the Gaza Strip, ones which do not have formal connections with the Hamas resistance movement, with each clan having a leader known as a "mukhtar", which under British rule, prior to the creation of the Israeli entity in 1948, were heavily relied on to govern.

Following Hamas' rise to power, the clans powers were limited by the religious movement, but were still allowed a certain degree of autonomy, while clans remain influential and own a number of commercial businesses and facilities in the Palestinian enclave

The Israeli occupation already retains contact with Gaza's clans in order to coordinate commercial shipments and deliveries, among other practical issues.

According to Reuters, clan leaders are reluctant to disclose contacts with the Israeli occupation, while others said the mukhtars would not cooperate with the Zionist entity.

One of Gaza's clan leaders that spoke with Reuters said he knew of calls other mukhtars had had with the Israeli authorities, but that "I expect that mukhtars will not cooperate with these games," citing anger with the occupation over its genocide of Palestinians in the Strip, which has killed a number of clan members and destroyed much of their property.

Meanwhile, the slaughter of civilians, along with the destruction of housing and public infrastructure in Gaza, continues into its 10th month as the occupation army bombs and shells various areas of the enclave.

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) continued on Wednesday with its attacks on the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, bombing residential homes and causing the deaths of a number of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, while local rescue crews were unable to reach sites due to the continued bombardment and gunfire from occupation drones.

In a new atrocity, Zionist warplanes bombed a residential house belonging to the Maqat family in the vicinity of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City, after which, local paramedic crews managed to recover the bodies of 7 civilians killed in the strikes, along with 7 wounded victims from under the rubble. The casualties were transported to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the city.

Simultaneously, Zionist artillery shelling pummeled the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City, while gunfire from occupation armored vehicles targeted citizen's homes.

Similarly, Israeli quadcopter drones fired at civilians in various areas of Gaza City, in conjuction with the violent artillery shelling of the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of the city.

An Israeli occupation fighter jet also fired a missile into the Al-Ghafri printing press on Jaffa Street, in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City, while another Zionist aircraft fired a missile into a residential apartment complex in the Zarqa neighborhood of Gaza City, leaving rescue crews to search the rubble for the dead and wounded.

In the meantime, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) is reporting that two civilians were wounded as a result of an occupation airstrike on a residential house belonging to the Kurd family, in the Beit Lahiya Project in Gaza's north, while the wounded were transferred to Kamal Adwan Hospital near the Jabalia Camp.

The Israeli occupation army also shelled several areas of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, as well as in the Al-Zahra'a area, and the Al-Mughraqa area, coinciding with intense occupation gunfire.

IOF warplanes also continue their bombardment of residential homes and apartment complexes in central and western Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Zionist entity continued its war crimes when it bombed a gathering of civilians attempting to return to their homes in the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of four Palestinians and wounding more than 17 others.

In another atrocity, an Israeli drone bombed a civilian vehicle in the Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp, in central Gaza, killing three more civilians and wounding several others who were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

In the meantime, areas northeast of the Jabalia Camp sustained intermittent artillery shelling from the occupation army, wounding a number of Palestinian civilians.

The crimes of the Zionist occupation continued with an airstrike that targeted a residential apartment in the Nuseirat Camp, in central Gaza, killing two Palestinians and wounding several others who were transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Local civil defense crews also managed to recover the bodies of 7 murdered Palestinians from the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, west of the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, including 5 completely charred bodies.

Later, on Wednesday afternoon, the Zionist army bombed a group of Palestinians in the Jahar al-Dik area near Al-Nuseirat, killing two and wounding others who were transferred to Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat Camp.

Due to the continued bombing of public infrastructure in the southern Gaza Strip, including water treatment plants, wells, and sewage systems, deep levels of sewage now run through the streets of Khan Yunis, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to reside after being displaced from one area after another, now being ordered into the city by the Zionist occupation army.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 37'953 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 10'000 women and well over 15'000 children, while another 87'266 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

July 3rd, 2024.

#source1

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#videosource

#graphicsource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[ranticore]

a young Florian, the de facto founder of ironwall & originator of the set of penal laws governing centaur citizens of the region. Florian was a close friend of the king and often expressed an ambition to 'unite' what were then quite disparate enclosures and enclaves under a single banner (the king's). he believed that the future residents of his city would be a beacon of pious humility, and that this would naturally lead to prosperity and divine favour.

at the time attitudes towards him were understandably mixed, but the offer of a huge amount of the king's land and the promise of a peaceful life was tempting. The original charter had the effect of rebranding every centaur as now resident in Ironwall and subject to its laws. Every centaur was considered a convert & subject of the king and God, whether or not they knew it. In a single stroke, it also rendered every centaur eligible for military service (men and women both, though only the men were given combat roles). Although he would later be considered misguided at best and a monster at worst, Florian died happy, with the complete faith that he had secured passageway to heaven for his people.

he was quite famous for wearing only black.

[probablyasocialecologist]

A statement by ex-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay released on Thursday in advance of a full report accused Israel of “committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities” in its assault on Gaza, which it launched after the Palestinian armed group Hamas led a deadly cross-border attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. “Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” said Pillay, whose report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30.

[...]

Within Israeli military camps and detention centres, the report found that thousands of Palestinians were subjected to “widespread and systemic abuse, physical and psychological violence and sexual and gender-based violence”. It added that male detainees were subjected to rape and attacks on their sexual organs. The COI said the “institutional mistreatment” of Palestinians was under direct order from far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The statement also found that many Israeli captives held in Gaza were subjected to “physical pain and severe mental suffering” and called for the immediate and unconditional release of those held in the enclave. Israel did not cooperate with the inquiry after arguing it had an “anti-Israel” bias.

10 October 2024

[anyab]

Here’s a round-up of the latest developments

Gaza’s hospitals continue to come under attack by Israeli forces. At al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, thousands of medical staff, patients and displaced people say they are trapped by Israeli forces who now control the complex. An Israeli attack killed a doctor at al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, according to the hospital’s director. The Palestine Red Crescent says that two health facilities in Khan Younis have been without water for five days.

A Tanzanian citizen has been confirmed to have been among the dead in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, according to the Tanzanian Foreign Ministry.

Israel has announced that it will allow two fuel trucks per day into Gaza to power water and sewage operations. Aid groups have said that will not be enough, while right-wing members of Israel’s own government oppose any move to allow water or fuel into the besieged enclave.

The Israeli parliament’s deputy speaker, Nissim Vaturi, has said that Israel should “burn Gaza now”, rather than send in fuel and water.

The Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel says that service has been partially restored after it was able to secure some fuel for its generators.

Fears mount in southern Gaza, where Israel has threatened to expand ground operations. Israeli bombing has targeted areas of southern Gaza, including Khan Younis, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people from the north of the Strip.

al jazeera

[doorhine]

"Israel is reported to have readied a proposal for a two-month truce that aims to secure the release of captives held by Hamas and other groups but without ending the war in Gaza.

US and Israeli press reported late on Monday that Israel is optimistic that it could conclude a deal with the help of the US. The plan comes against a backdrop of intensified combat in southern Gaza as well as increasing pressure on the Israeli government to find a deal to bring the captives home.

US website Axios quoted Israeli officials as saying that the proposal has been presented to Hamas through Qatari and Egyptian mediators. It includes a two-month truce during which all Israeli detainees in Gaza will be released.

Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the principles of the deal consist of three to four stages of captive release. Meanwhile, the Israeli military would withdraw from some areas of the enclave, but without ending the war.

Reports suggest that the US is pushing the plan with regional partners. The White House’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, is now in Cairo to discuss the deal, with plans to continue to Qatar."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Demon-haunted computers are back, baby

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

Image: Mike (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillwellmike/15676883261/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[rooksunday]

fluffcember day seventeen: snowed in

"Well, Commander, it seems we're to be sequestered here for some time."

Cody peered out of the small dwelling's window. At least, he attempted to do so: the metre plus of snow packed against the transparisteel somewhat hampered his peering efforts. He repressed a sigh—he'd become exceptional at the task—and turned on his heel to face General Kenobi.

"That does appear to be the case, sir," Cody allowed, re: sequestering.

Kenobi, for some Force-forsaken reason, looked delighted at the prospect. Cold flushed his pale cheeks and nose, like a terrible rash, and he kept rubbing his hands together as if to chase off a chill. Yet he continued to smile as brightly as a cadet handling their first ammunition.

Cody didn't understand the delight. He and Kenobi had been sent to speak to the leaders of a village that the 212th were to secure before some senator or other visited for a round of diplomatic handshaking, and they'd arrived in the middle of the planet's winter season. The day before, the village leaders had mumbled something about an oncoming cold front, and Cody had suggested he and the General repair to the Negotiator, but Kenobi had waved off the suggestion. What's a little cold to us, Commander?

Well, if that much snow could be dumped in the hour it took Kenobi and Cody to potter around the little house and note the lack of tea, apparently a massive obstacle, Cody didn't say. Couldn't say, mostly because of the insubordination, but he couldn't even allude to it in comms to his men, since all the comms were down.

So there they were, barricaded by a frozen fortification, in the—admittedly not unpleasant—dwelling that had been provided for their use during the talks. Apparently, the village frequented hosted overnighting traders from nearby enclaves, as part of the planet's trade route, and thus stores were regularly restocked by the locals. There was even a decent sized 'fresher for use.

All told, Cody and Kenobi wouldn't starve, or freeze, or smell too bad, which was frankly a superior set-up to most of their experience of the war.

But still—

"Can you use your lightsaber to carve a path through the snow?" Cody mused. "My blasters would be too messy."

Looking up from where he had been contemplating the knick-knacks on the mantle, Kenobi hummed. "I could. But consider this: why would I?"

"Because of the war? Sir?" Had Kenobi sustained a head injury that Cody didn't know about?

Again?

Kenobi waved his hand dismissively. "Of course, of course. And that's very important! But do you know what else is important, Commander?"

"No, sir."

Another wide, impossible smile. "Comms are down."

"Yes, sir."

"No one can contact us."

"No, sir."

"No one expects to contact us for a week."

At last, Cody began to understand. He cleared his throat. One more try. "Yes. Sir?"

"My dear Commander, you're very observant. Therefore I ask you this: how many beds do you see in this dwelling in which we find ourselves?" Kenobi asked, as he smoothed his neat beard.

Cody was very observant. He'd already made said observation upon their entering the building. Noted and dismissed as unimportant in the face of Kenobi's exploration of the tea arrangements, because if he'd allowed himself to ascribe importance to the facilities and the coming night… Well. The kettle wouldn't have been the only item with steam roiling from it.

"Just the one bed, sir." Cody cleared his throat again at Kenobi's—at Obi-Wan's—admonishing expression. Between the two of them, they had a shorthand of eyebrows and trailed fingertips and the soft quirk of familiar lips. For the first time all day, Cody permitted himself to acknowledge the language Obi-Wan was speaking. "Just the one bed, Obi-Wan."

The bright smile turned wicked.

"Just so. Care to investigate our accommodations, my dear Cody?" Obi-Wan asked.

Cody—for once, just Cody—smiled.

[imagineitdearies]

~ A Flawed Eternity ~

(AKA drabbles set in the Perfect Slaughter universe.) Thanks to my new author discord community for voting on this one! 🩵

In which Tyrus walks in on Astarion's 'alone time.'

~

Even though they’d cleared the tunnel under the river, secured the fishing hut and passage to sneak into the House of Healing, and had a half-reliable map of the Gauntlet of Shar, the war council had delayed an infiltration for almost a tenday merely arguing over who would go.

With the colder weather creeping in and battles stagnating into standoffs, Tyrus supposed they foolishly thought they had time.

Morfred wanted a larger group to ensure they had enough support. Jaheira said no more than three highly-skilled individuals, to give them better chances at stealth. Ganyl simply wanted to go, even though his entire enclave was against risking their leader, and it took two meetings just to talk him down. Halfred didn’t think the quiet assassination plan of Ketheric Thorm was a good idea in the first place. They all worried that Ketheric’s brother, Malus Thorm, could be too tight-lipped or ignorant of the Gauntlet’s secret entrance to be worth the risk of fighting first.

Astarion had given up on attendance for the last two meetings. But as designated ‘Leader of the Vampires,’ however underqualified Tyrus felt he was for such a role, he felt obligated to attend. Just so he’d have updates to give Astarion and the spawn army below, really. He and Astarion had come up with the idea of a quiet assassination to avoid further bloodshed, so they were already guaranteed a spot in the party if and when it was approved. Halsin was a tentative third in Ganyl’s place, though Jaheira wanted it to be herself who struck Ketheric’s killing blow.

Now Tyrus felt close to giving up himself. He left the meeting before its scheduled end when Jaheira and Halfred started a shouting match about the risks of trying Ketheric's son at the Waning Moon Tavern instead, and Messaged Ganyl to send word if a decision had finally been made. Then he crossed the road past the armory, over the short bridge and around the small, cheery fountain in front of their temporary abode of late, the Last Light Inn.

Tyrus let out a plaintive sigh of relief the moment he was through the doors and could shrug off the sapping weight of the Cloak of Dragomir, avoiding the occasional beam of sunlight until he reached the stairs and could head down to the basement floor. Most of the rooms were used for storage—but at the end, built around the low docks the inn now used to receive war supplies from the east, were a couple of suites that looked directly out over the Chionthar.

He hadn’t expected to find Astarion in their suite, really. His partner liked to socialize a lot more than Tyrus ever did. In their short time here, he’d already been chatting with some soldiers at the inn’s bar, meeting more often with Halsin, and playing enough lanceboard he now could beat Tyrus if he focused hard enough. Astarion was used to crowds, to strangers, while Tyrus still found himself seeking the safety of four walls and a single locked door.

As he reached the door, however, Tyrus thought that safety must have been an illusion as his ears picked up Astarion’s voice, loud and seemingly in distress.

“Ah!—ah, gods—Tyrus!”

Tyrus wrenched the door open in a panic, hurrying inside—

—and was confronted with the sight of Astarion in a bath, pale face flushed, eyes squeezed shut, steamy water sloshing around the fast pace of his wrist under the water as he tugged at his pink, erect cock.

Tyrus stared. Even as Astarion’s eyes wrenched open bleary and wide, his hand freezing in the water, Tyrus couldn’t stop looking. He’d seen Astarion’s cock before so many times—but in his defense, it’d been months. Only feeling the shape of it in Astarion’s trousers when their kissing progressed further, only seeing Astarion’s bare body offhandedly as they dressed. Now Tyrus could also admire how much more lively Astarion’s skin looked despite still being pale, how his half-submerged, muscled middle had softened into looking less malnourished and dehydrated thanks to a healthy diet.

After another second, Astarion relaxed a bit. He waved toward Tyrus with the hand that had a moment before held a death-grip on the wooden tub’s edge, smirking as he huffed, “Could you close that, love?”

Tyrus’s momentary shock at the man’s beauty faded, then, in time for his rational brain to kick in. “I can come back later—?” he started to offer.

“No—no, I . . .” Astarion interjected, only to hesitate. His eyes trailed away for a moment, uncertainty lining his face. 

Tyrus retreated back to the door. “I don’t want to interrupt,” he spoke in earnest, and smiled at Astarion when the other vampire tentatively met his gaze again. “Truly—I’d much rather you enjoy yourself, like you’ve been wanting to.”

“Not quite like how I’ve wanted to,” Astarion scoffed, though a moment later the lines on his face faded. “No, stay here, darling. If you’d like to. I’m only imagining you here anyhow.”

“That’s quite different,” Tyrus pointed out, though he went ahead and shut the door, locking it for good measure before turning back to Astarion.

“Is it? I was just thinking of you interrupting me like this,” Astarion smirked, gesturing at himself. The hand in the water wandered back between his legs and began to lightly stroke as he sighed, “Though in my head I skipped the part where a whole conversation would be necessary for you to join. Bring a stool?” he nodded at the floor just next to the tub.

Tyrus didn’t hesitate to obey. He grabbed a small cushioned one in front of the sheet-covered mirror and placed it so he could sit just next to the tub’s head. His stomach swooped at being this close to Astarion—at watching him stroke himself again, bare and exposed save for the flimsy distortion of the sudsy water.

He wanted to touch him. He wanted to help, or at least kiss Astarion. But he wouldn’t dare do a thing without checking, given how impossible it’d been for Astarion to be sexually intimate since Cazador’s death.

And Astarion was such a pretty sight just to watch, with his eyes shutting again and dark lashes on display, pink lips slightly parted. Meanwhile, his small breaths and huffs of pleasure as he built back into a rhythm sounded sweeter to Tyrus’s ears than any melody. Even the smell of him was delightful. That smoky, musky perfume he always had a slight hint of at the palace was now much more refined and strong thanks to their shopping in the city. It was already a feast for the senses, if not all of them.

But when Astarion’s other hand extended just a bit past the tub, palm up, Tyrus was quick to take it and enjoy a sense of touch as well. Astarion hummed and pulled their clasped hands down into the water, flattening Tyrus’s palm to rub against his inner thigh. Tyrus gratefully mimicked the movement, and next let Astarion’s hand overtop his guide him to gently handle Astarion’s ball sack, eventually taking over to stroke his erection in tight, quick motions Tyrus still remembered the rhythm of well. 

Astarion’s hand stayed cupped around his throughout it all, continually guiding and keeping control even as he sighed, “Tyrus . . . uh, I’ve missed these hands . . .”

“Would you like it if I did anything else?” Tyrus murmured, after another minute of nothing but stroking and listening to Astarion’s heavy breathing.

Astarion’s eyes shot open, head lifting to regard Tyrus with a furrowed brow. His hand slowed Tyrus’s to a stop. “Such as?”

Tyrus bit back the assertion of Anything, anything at all. Giving actual ideas would probably be more helpful, if Astarion didn’t have his own. “Kiss you. Your lips, your neck,” Tyrus started with. “Or . . . here,” smiling as his thumb idly swiped over the head of Astarion’s cock and his partner visibly shuddered in response. Letting his voice go a bit lower, as he pointed out, “I don’t need to breathe, after all.”

“Fuck,” Astarion swore, then gave a short, barking laugh. “This is what four months of celibacy has done to my sweet, virtuous partner? I didn’t think you even liked that sort of activity, darling.”

“I haven’t ever tried it, technically. At least not of my own accord, so,” Tyrus shrugged. 

The air went somber ever-so-slightly at his words. 

"Shall I?" Tyrus asked in hopes of dispelling it.

“Not this time, my love,” Astarion sighed, starting to move Tyrus’s hand again around him. “But . . . yes—kiss me, please. I think I just need a little bit more of something—”

Tyrus wasted no further time. They’d kissed goodbye only hours ago when he left for the council meeting, but it’d been more than a tenday since Astarion had kissed him like this. One of their first nights in this inn, in fact, before he’d grabbed one of Tyrus’s wandering hands by the wrist and ended things rather abruptly. But whatever else Tyrus did or did not feel in the mood for otherwise, he never got tired of kisses—Astarion’s free hand cupping his jaw close, lips so passionately pressing and sliding against Tyrus’s, tongue darting out to taste and in return welcoming him in.

His instinct was to bury his free hand in Astarion’s curls, but Tyrus gripped the tub’s edge instead. He didn’t want to risk the wrong touch ending this lovely, easy moment. Not when Astarion was so clearly enjoying his other hand’s touch at the moment, hips bucking up and splashing the water a bit more.

Sometime later, a small moan escaped Tyrus when Astarion slid his hand back to tightly cup the nape of his neck, angling Tyrus’s head for an even deeper, all-consuming kiss. Astarion’s hand tightened a bit further around Tyrus’s in the water, so he sped up his movements even more—and groaned with Astarion as the other elf wrenched free of their kiss and threw his head back, shouting “Tyrus!” shakily, his cock pulsing in Tyrus's grip, his spend streaking in the water as the press of his bent legs made the wooden tub slightly creak in protest.

Tyrus kissed down Astarion’s neck and bobbing adam’s apple, slowing his strokes with the guidance of Astarion’s hand as Astarion breathed harshly through the aftershocks. When at last Astarion released his grip on Tyrus in the water, head resting against the tub again, Tyrus went back to gently stroking his smooth inner thigh. He rested his forehead against the other man’s clavicle, listening to them both breathe for a moment before whispering, “Alright?”

Astarion huffed—and then he began laughing. A soft, lighthearted, warm sound Tyrus couldn’t help but smile at, and hoped never to forget as Astarion’s chest lightly shook underneath him. Then Astarion’s wet arm emerged from the water and wrapped around Tyrus, pulling him in just a bit closer despite the awkwardness of the tub between them.

“Oh, besides a sore wrist of late,” he chortled, laying his cheek against Tyrus’s head when his giggling finally stopped. “I did start to find some enjoyment, even managed an orgasm the last two times, though. And this? Hmm . . . this is nice.”

Tyrus smiled wider against his chest. Of course, after another minute his back twinged and he regretfully had to pull from Astarion’s embrace—but was grateful his partner quickly dried off and joined him on the bed, despite the fact only Tyrus still needed a trance.

Once they'd both changed and his lover was spooning him snugly from behind, Tyrus thought to ask, “Have there been other things you like to imagine? Any specifics that I should take into account?”

The entire line of Astarion’s body froze up behind him. “I . . . I wouldn’t say there’s much I’m sure about acting on, darling,” he said in a slow, careful voice. “It’s been hard enough just to imagine sex without the thought of a customer, or him, intruding. Once that’s less an issue, I—I should be back to normal.”

“Normal,” Tyrus huffed, shaking his head and hugging Astarion’s arm a little closer to his chest. Being around relatively ‘normal’ people of late had taught Tyrus just how far off he and anyone else from the spawn colony were likely ever to be from such an ideal. “But hand jobs with you guiding me, would you say that goes on the safe list?” he stipulated.

Astarion was quiet for a moment. Then he kissed the tip of Tyrus’s ear, repeating, “The safe list, what a sad state of affairs—but yes, I’d call that a success. We’ll have to see about your mouth. And perhaps, if you’re up for it, I think I'd enjoy some unconventional stimulation, just skin-to-skin.” A beat of silence, then Astarion’s voice came out so soft and uncertain, almost afraid, as he admitted, “I . . . I’d still like a break from anything so performative as full intercourse, if that’s alright . . . and, if you can forgive it, I may still just need time, before I can offer attentive service to you, love . . .”

Tyrus twisted under Astarion’s arm so he could face him—but only to wrap his arms tightly around him, tucking his chin into the crook of Astarion’s neck. Declaring, gently but firmly, “There’s nothing to forgive, and no service to worry about. You have always been so giving, love." Even more softly, he coaxed, "Now, let’s take care of you for a while?”

Tyrus felt his partner’s body shudder in his arms. Then, increment by increment, Astarion melted into the embrace.

“Gods, I do love you,” he whispered in answer.

[sayruq]

World Central Kitchen announced that it will resume operations in Gaza on Monday, almost one month after seven of its aid workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the enclave. The U.S.-based nonprofit group, founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, suspended operations in Gaza for four weeks after the workers were killed on April 1, according to a statement. The organization identified the aid workers as Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, a 25-year-old Palestinian; Lalzawmi (Zomi) Frankcom, a 43-year-old Australian; Damian Soból, a 35-year-old from Poland; Jacob Flickinger, a 33-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada; Security team members John Chapman, 57, James (Jim) Henderson, 33, and James Kirby, 47, all from the United Kingdom, were also killed in the attack.

Before halting operations, the organization had distributed more than 43 million meals in Gaza “and accounted for 62% of all international NGO aid,” WCK said in a statement. “The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire,” said Erin Gore, the nonprofit’s chief executive officer. “We are restarting our operation with the same energy, dignity, and focus on feeding as many people as possible.” WCK has 276 trucks carrying almost 8 million meals that are ready to cross into Gaza via Rafah, and will send trucks into the enclave via Jordan too, it said in a statement. The organization is also continuing to explore delivering food with the help of Open Arms, a Spanish humanitarian organization, and the United Arab Emirates.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Corey Walker

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday demanding that his administration produce evidence that Israel has blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza, accusing Biden of engaging in a “politically driven” campaign against the Jewish state.

In the letter, Cotton wrote that he condemned “the Biden administration’s threat to impose an arms embargo on Israel.” He added that the president has made “unreasonable demands” on Israel to ramp up humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, the neighboring enclave ruled by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

“Denying Israel military aid is in direct opposition to the will of Congress, as expressed in the Israeli security supplemental passed earlier this year,” Cotton wrote. “Unilaterally threatening to cut off aid by declaring Israel in violation of US law also ignores Congress’s oversight role. Your administration insists on protecting a terrorist organization in the name of humanitarian aid.”

Cotton demanded that the Biden administration release any “evidence” to congressional committees that Israel has systematically prevented humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip. The senator claimed that, if the Biden administration could not produce the desired evidence, then it should rescind its threats to Israel. 

The White House had sent a letter, addressed to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, expressing concern over what it said was a significant drop in aid deliveries to northern Gaza in recent months. The letter stated that the decline raised questions about Israel’s compliance with a National Security Memorandum (NSM) issued by the Biden administration earlier this year.

The memo requires US security aid recipients, including Israel, to ensure that humanitarian aid is not obstructed in areas where American-supplied weapons are being used.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes from renewed airstrikes by the Israeli occupation army targeting the town of Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, where a huge tower of smoke and dust rises over the city. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

209 DAYS OF GENOCIDE IN GAZA AS ISRAELI OCCUPATION CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES TO RAFAH INVASION

On 209th day of "Israel's" ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 3 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 28 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 51 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to reach countless hundreds, even thousands of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind while considering the scale of the mass murder.

As a result of the genocide of Palestinians by the Israel occupation army, Colombia's President, Gustavo Petro, has announced his administration will sever diplomatic ties with the Israeli entity.

The Colombian President made the announcement as part of the country's annual Labor Day celebrations, during which President Petro said that the Republic of Colombia would sever all diplomatic ties with the Israeli occupation on Thursday, due to the Netanyahu administration's tendency for genocide. President Petro further called the Israeli Prime Minister himself a "perpetrator of genocide".

In other news, the Israeli occupation's Security Service may be considering alternatives to the Rafah operation, an Israeli plan to invade Gaza's southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinian civilians have taken shelter in tent cities under the direction of the Israeli occupation army, in order to complete the supposed defeat of Hamas.

According to a report in the Palestinian news outlet, SAMA News Agency, the Israeli occupation's Security Services are deliberating on alternatives to a full-scale invasion of Rafah due to intense international pressure and outcry over a potential operation in the last city standing in the Palestinian enclave.

More than 1.4 million Palestinians have gathered in Rafah's tent cities, most having left their homes in northern Gaza following the start of the genocide, under the direction of the Israeli occupation army who told civilians the city was to be a "safe zone".

Since then, the Israeli occupation forces have repeatedly bombed and shelled the city, including, at times, the tents of civilians.

The report states that the Israeli Security Services considers that, "“in all cases, a focused military operation must be carried out on the Philadelphia axis” on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, under the supposed claim of “preventing smuggling routes for Hamas.”

The report added that the Security Services were also monitoring a "completely unusual" deployment of the Egyptian army near the border with Gaza, attributing the deployment to Egyptian fears that large numbers of Palestinians could stream across the border in the case of an Israeli assault on Rafah.

The Israeli Security Services said Egyptian army had deployed to areas where they previously had only Egyptian Police forces, which added army forces widely deployed with armored vehicles near the border.

The Security Services went on to say that Israeli army officers were preparing for a scenario similar to the 2012 operation, in which Palestinian mujahideen left Gaza for the Egyptian Sinai, seizing an armored vehicle before storming the Israeli border.

The report added that Israeli Security Services were considering a complete withdrawal from the Netzarim axis, seperating the northern and southern halves of Gaza, which constitutes a "heavy price" that the Israeli occupation was willing to pay as part of a hostage exchange deal with the Hamas Resistance movement. This despite continued Israeli calls for the "complete destruction" of the Hamas movement.

In further news, a number of American congressional Democrats signed a letter to US President Joe Biden, calling on the President to influence the Israeli occupation into not conducting an operation to invade the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

57 out of 212 Congressional Democrats signed the letter, asking the Biden administration to take all necessary measures to dissuade the Israeli entity's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from launching a full-scale invasion of Rafah.

"We urge you to invoke existing law and policy to immediately withhold certain offensive military aid to the Israeli government, including aid sourced from legislation already signed into law, in order to preempt a full-scale assault on Rafah," Democrats said in the letter.

The letter continued by saying, "an Israeli offensive in Rafah risks the start of yet another escalatory spiral, immediately putting the region back on the brink of a broader war that neither Israel nor the United States can afford."

"If the Israeli government will not uphold international law and protect civilians, then the United States must act to protect innocent life. We urge you to continue your work toward achieving a lasting ceasefire that will bring hostages home and build a path toward safety and security for all."

Meanwhile, the occupation's slaughter in Gaza slowed during negotiations for a hostage exchange deal, but did not stop, as several bombings targeted various sectors of the Gaza Strip, including the north, south and central axis.

In one example, Israeli occupation warplanes bombed a residential home in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening, martyring a civilian and wounding at least 5 others.

Video published by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) showed the recovery of the dead and wounded, including women and children, while massive destruction was evident resulting from the strike.

In the video, PRCS crew members can be seen filling black plastic body bags, including at least one with a very small body, likely a young child.

At the same time, Zionist artillery shelling targeted a residential house in the Al-Fukhari area, killing a woman, while occupation fighter jets bombed a residential building in the "Six-Martyrs" neighborhood of the central Jabalia Refugee Camp, in Gaza's north.

Occupation jets also bombarded the town of Al-Mughraqa, while also shelling the headquarters for an electricity distribution company in Al-Zawaida, both in the central Gaza Strip.

The Barracks at the entrance of Al-Zawaida were also targeted in a bombing, resulting in a number of casualties.

By dawn, the bombing and shelling was renewed when occupation warplanes bombed the city of Al-Zahra'a, north of the Nuseirat Camp, in central Gaza, killing at least 6 civilians, while yet another bombing targeted the northwest of the Nuseirat Camp, after which, paramedic and civil defense crews removed the bodies of three civilians killed in the strike.

IOF warplanes further bombed agricultural lands near the Ard al-Mufti police station in the Nuseirat Camp, wounding 9 civilians and damaging several homes.

Elsewhere, Zionist air forces bombarded the Qaa al-Qurain area, southeast of Khan Yunis, in Gaza's south, murdering yet another civilian and wounding several others.

Occupation aircraft also bombarded the Bani Suhaila, Abasan, and al-Kuzha'a neighborhoods, east of Khan Yunis.

Local civil defense crews in the Khan Yunis Governate announced that they had recovered the bodies of 6 civilians of various ages, killed in bombings targeting the Camp area of Khan Yunis .

In yet another atrocity, occupation warplanes bombed a residential building belonging to the Ishteiwi family, in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of two Palestinians and wounding a number of others, while several other Palestinians remain missing under the rubble.

IOF fighter jets also targeted a residential home in the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, while another bombing of the Wadi Al-Arayes area, east of the Shuja'iyya neighborhood, resulted in the deaths of two civilians who were taken to the Baptist Hospital.

A group of civilians were also targeted in an airstrike in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.

Occupation forces also continued to bomb the Sheikh Ajlin, Tal al-Hawa, and Al-Zaytoun neighborhoods of Gaza City.

The Israeli occupation additionally targeted the tents of displaced civilian families in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, while also bombing the town of Al-Shoka and the Al-Tanour neighborhood, east of Rafah City, resulting in the death of one civilian and the wounding of many others.

As a result of "Israel's" ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the death toll among the local population has risen further still, now exceeding 34'596 Palestinians killed, including over 14'690 children and 9'680 women, while another 77'816 others were wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

May 2nd, 2024.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews