On Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at least two armed men opened fire in the Sharona Market in Tel Aviv, Israel. Three people were killed and at least seven wounded — one in critical condition, four in serious condition.

The attack, according to an Israeli spokeswoman, occurred in two different locations in the market, which is full of upscale shops and restaurants. Israeli police “neutralized” two gunmen, meaning either detained or killed them; one is reportedly being treated at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Hareetz reports that the gunmen are Palestinian, “said to be disguised as ultra-Orthodox Jews” before opening fire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency security meeting when informed of the incident. It is being called a terror attack.

The attack is likely one in a long line of terror attacks against Israel by Palestinians enraged over Israeli military incursion into Palestinian territory in the West Bank and Gaza, the discrimination toward and second-class citizenship status of Palestinians in Israel, and other issues.

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In an interview published Thursday, June 9, 2016, Democracy Now! asked Jill Stein, contender for the Green Party nomination for president: “You’ve been trying for months to reach out to Bernie Sanders, because you acknowledge that there are many similarities in your program and his, to join forces. What’s been the response from the Sanders campaign, and what are you hopeful for now?”

Stein replied:

Well, the response over the last several weeks has been the same as the response over the last several years. And in fact, the Green Party reached out to Bernie Sanders before the last election to see if he might be interested in running on the Green Party ballot line. And that was in 2011. And basically, we haven’t heard back yet, so I’m not holding my breath that we are going to.

And in fact, I think it was just yesterday that Senator Sanders announced that he would be meeting with President Obama to basically stay the course and to essentially move his campaign inside of the Democratic Party, which I think is a mistake and would be essentially an abandonment of the movement that has been built. We’ve seen many very principled and powerful efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within over the course of many years, and Democratic Party keeps marching to the right.

So, you know, my hope, as Senator Sanders himself said, is that this is a movement, it’s not a man. And my hope is that the movement will continue. And we’ve offered — I’ve offered, basically, to put everything on the table and to see how we can work together and explore…what it would take in order for that to happen—to run a joint ticket…

You can read the letter Stein sent to Sanders after the New York primary, calling for “possible collaboration,” here.

Democracy Now! reminded her that Sanders, in July 2015 and elsewhere, promised not to run third party, fearing that would steal votes away from the Democratic candidate and hand the White House to the Republicans.

Yet there may be evidence Sanders’ stance is softening. Salon reported one week ago:

Before a rally in Santa Monica, Senator Bernie Sanders was asked by KABC-TV 7 News political reporter Elex Michaelson about the offer by Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, for him to run with the Green Party. Sanders response left open the door to running as a Green. He could have easily rejected the offer of a Sanders-Stein ticket, instead he said: “Right now, our goal is to win the Democratic nomination.”

Stein told Rolling Stone that Sanders “has been really quite consistent in expressing disinterest in independent third parties over the last many years. After the beating that he is getting — this real, purposeful, I think, sabotage by the DNC — we’ll see if he’ll have a change of heart. I don’t know.”

Stein is heavily courting Sanders supporters, as the Green Party platform closely aligns with Sanders’ beliefs and principles.

Bernie Sanders, for now, refuses to drop out of the Democratic contest.

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As many as 600 witches put a hex — a curse — on convicted rapist Brock Turner, his father, and case judge Aaron Persky on Tuesday night, June 7, 2016. Brock Turner, a student at Stanford University, raped an unconscious, intoxicated woman; his father wrote that a prison sentences was a steep price to pay for “20 minutes of action”; Judge Persky gave Turner only 6 months in jail (a sentence already cut in half), saying Turner had “less moral culpability” since he was drunk, and that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”

Witches from around the world, mostly women but some men, organized on Facebook to coordinate the hex. It was launched by Melanie Elizabeth Hexen, a midwife and bellydance teacher from rural Iowa. She said, “We all felt so much injustice and anger and sadness and the need to connect on a psychological level with other people who felt the same and could do something about it.”

Hexen recommended the following curse:

In the most holy name of Hecate, the Goddess of Life and Death, She who holds the key to the underworld, let this rapist meet justice. Let him be destroyed.

Brock Allen Turner we hex you.
You will be impotent
You will know constant pain of pine needles in your guts
Food will bring you no sustenance
In water, your lungs will fail you
Sleep will only bring nightmares
Shame will be your mantle.
You will meet justice.
My witchcraft is strong. Our witchcraft is powerful. The spell will work. So Mote it be.

One of the male witches explained his process: “I lit a seven-day candle, glued his picture to it, and wrapped it with cording. I meditated and offered blessings to the Goddess, specifically about [how] the lack of justice in his sentence caused harm to women. I then ‘hexed’ the harm onto the candle to be burned out.”

Others incorporated feces, urine, menstrual blood, spit, and other substances into the ceremony — smeared on an image of Turner before burning.

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On Tuesday, June 14, 2016, the Santa Clara, California, District Attorney’s office removed Judge Aaron Persky from an upcoming sexual assault case.

Persky gave Brock Turner, a student at Stanford University, a 6-month jail sentence for raping an unconscious woman with an object — resulting in an enormous backlash, including a petition to remove Persky from power, which over 1.2 million people signed. Prosecutors had asked for a 6-year sentence.

Persky had said since Turner was intoxicated he had “less moral culpability” and that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him” (Turner is in a local jail, not state prison; he will likely be out in just 3 months for good behavior).

District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the decision to remove Persky was “rare and carefully considered.” Further, “We lack confidence that Judge Persky can fairly participate in this upcoming hearing.”

The new case involves a male nurse, Cecil Webb, accused of touching the genitals of an anesthetized woman before her surgery at a hospital in late 2014.

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“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it.”

Those were Republican Senator John McCain’s words on the Orlando, Florida, shooting, offered to the press Thursday morning, June 16, 2016.

A Florida man who pledged allegiance to ISIS, but also expressed vehement hatred for homosexuals, massacred 49 people, wounding 53, at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday night.

“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it,” McCain said, “because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaida went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures, utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq. So the responsibility for it lies with President Barack Obama and his failed policies.”

The Seattle Times described McCain as “visibly angry.”

McCain doubled down when prodded. “Directly responsible. Because he pulled everybody out of Iraq, and I predicted at the time that ISIS would go unchecked and there would be attacks on the United States of America. It’s a matter of record, so he is directly responsible.”

ISIS indeed formed after American troops left Iraq (though unquestionably the American invasion itself destabilized Iraq and widely attracted and birthed new terror groups, some of which later formed ISIS, making one wonder if George W. Bush is also “directly responsible” for the Orlando shooting, following McCain’s logic).

But the Obama administration played a slightly greater role than simply withdrawing. A classified Pentagon report from August 2012, exposed in May 2015, revealed the U.S. supported Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Muslim Brotherhood, and other extremist groups in their fight against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad (this was later acknowledged by the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency). The report predicted these extremists would combine to form something like the Islamic State, helpful in “unifying the jihad” against Assad, but warning it could “create grave danger” to the region. The U.S. decided to continue supporting the extremists despite this risk.

That is how ISIS came to be; who it targets is also determined by foreign policy. It is commonly acknowledged, by Western intelligence agencies and by ISIS itself, that primary ISIS (and other terror group) targets are nations involved militarily in “Muslim lands” — such as the U.S., currently battling ISIS in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Facing criticism for blaming the president, by early Thursday afternoon, McCain was already trying to walk back the comment — sort of — on Twitter: “To clarify, I was referring to Pres Obama’s national security decisions that have led to rise of #ISIL, not to the President himself.”

McCain seemed to be changing his tune from “direct” to “indirect” blame of the president, making a distinction between Obama’s decisions (indirect) and the idea that Obama literally committed the shooting (direct). A simple distinction between Obama’s decisions and Obama himself makes less sense, as one would be hard-pressed to separate Obama from Obama’s decisions.

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