As a species, we produce gardeners, devoted caretakers, and also arsonists.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
-
Top Biden administration officials have begun rewriting their ironclad support of Israel throughout the end of President Joe Biden’s term, now claiming to oppose Israel’s starvation policy in Gaza as it’s officially tipped into famine — a famine that they fully laid the groundwork for over the first 16 months of the genocide. In an interview with “The Bulwark” published Wednesday…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
-
If hallmarks of economic decline are everywhere apparent, it is Washington’s shameless participation in human genocide that has awakened many an American from their dogmatic slumbers. The United States has been a partner in human slaughter in Gaza, arming and funding, providing intelligence to and political cover for Zionist forces in Israel in their fanatical quest to establish a Greater Israel.
This blatant moral failing is the surest sign yet that the liberal West has failed. Liberalism was once a symbol of progress, bourgeoisie and workers and rural peasants banding together to overthrow feudalism and the divine right of kings.
Now it lists in the winds of modernity, an ethical cipher that maintains—like the artificial distortions of Mannerist art—a rhetorical posture of piety. Conservatives declare themselves part of an unfathomable messianic mission to establish mythical free markets and Christian rule, while liberal politicians repeat their multicultural platitudes in data-poor and poorly constructed sophistry that nobody believes.
Both—through their Republican and Democrat political wings—refuse to acknowledge their culpability, reflecting the absolute arrogance that accrues to those too long in power.
We Knew All Along
As the world comes awake to the sickening tango of death being tapped out on the rooftops of Gaza, statements like the following float through the media sphere, unaddressed and unpunished by the world’s leading states:
-
Evidently calling for collective punishment outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said, “It’s an entire nation that is out there that is responsible.”
-
Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi said Israel needs to “erase Gaza”
-
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich transparently disguising ethnic cleansing as “the right humanitarian option”
-
Revital Gottlieb of the Israeli Knesset said, “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be flattened…We need to stop talking about ‘humanitarian aid’.”
-
Another member of the Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, added, “Burn Gaza now. No more excuses.”
-
The New York Times reported that American leaders understood that mass civilian casualties were acceptable to Israeli leadership
-
Israeli lawmaker Moshe Saada justified widespread calls to “destroy Gaza”
Western corporate media has provided extensive cover for Israel’s criminal campaign, often by insisting everyone on air first answer the slighting question, “Do you condemn Hamas?”, as if this is the moral bedrock on which any opinion on Gaza must establish itself. Yet the corporate media deliberately hides the fact that under the Geneva Conventions, an occupied people have every right to resist, including employing violent means. None of the international rulings from 1967 onward are included in discussions that are ahistorical at best, farcical at worst. Gore Vidal was prescient when he called America the United States of Amnesia.
The feigned outrage and disgust by American pundits over the initial Hamas attack, liberal and conservative alike, only illustrates by contrast the utter callousness and emptiness of the public discourse. Seventy five years of oppression, racism, and bloodshed against Palestinians produced no such horror among the corporate intelligentsia.
And as author Chris Hedges rightly pointed out, “How can you trap 2.3 million people in Gaza, half of whom are unemployed, in one of the most densely populated spots on the planet for 16 years, reduce the lives of its residents, half of whom are children, to a subsistence level, deprive them of basic medical supplies, food, water and electricity, use attack aircraft, artillery, mechanized units, missiles, naval guns and infantry units to randomly slaughter unarmed civilians and not expect a violent response?”
Trump’s Vulgar Sycophancy
Though not the first to support the present ethnic cleansing, President Trump has embraced the Israeli mission with an enthusiasm that betrays his utter subjugation to those that would keep him in power, notably AIPAC. His love for Israel seems to be the means by which he has made a measure of peace with the National Security State, which wanted him imprisoned in his first term for his friendliness with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Now his administration has ratcheted up the vulgarity of American complicity in the Gaza genocide. For instance, he has:
-
Tied state aid to each state’s stance on Israel. This is a despicable policy that hitches domestic support to support for a foreign power, which no American citizen should be compelled to provide
-
Lifted a pause on 2,000-lb bombs, and a couple of ‘human rights’-linked oversight procedures, that had been put in place by the Biden administration as part of its feckless PR campaign to pretend to oppose the slaughter
-
Approved $7B in munitions and $3B in “emergency” bombs in February 2025 alone
-
Continues the Memorandum of Understanding from the Obama era under which the United States finances weapons procurement by Israel from U.S. defense firms
-
Congressional Reporting Service (CRS) notes enhanced military intelligence cooperation with Israel
-
Vetoed another UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire
-
Conducted “limited” strikes on Yemen Houthis, which are pro-Palestinian allies of Iran
-
Has floated various real-estate fantasies about turning Gaza into another riviera once all the unwanted Arabs are removed, while children are trampled by tanks, in a kind of breathtaking display of utter callousness
-
And much else, though he’s only been in office 8 months
Biden’s Liberal Narcissism
Setting aside the current administration, lest we slip into the fanaticism of the liberal, the more important point to remember is that Democrats are also morally bankrupt, if not as crass, and if marginally better in social uplift statistics. Because if we do not recognize this, the electoral pendulum that swings between corrupt neoliberal capitalist Democrat and corrupt neoliberal capitalist Republican will continue, while the majority suffer economic debasement at home and slaughter abroad.
The conservative critique that liberals prefer virtue signaling to principle is correct. It has been ever since Bill Clinton demonstrated that the New Democrats could win corporate money, co-opt business-friendly Republican policies, and sell them with the rhetoric of social empathy with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Coupled with a vigorous identity politics and companion campaign of discrimination against privileged and majority ethnic groups, it was a winning electoral strategy.
Clinton’s triangulation model proved an irresistible rationale for members of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), who claimed to hope to ‘do well by doing good.’ In the end, doing well meant maintaining their class privileges and material advantages while looking askance as their party practiced counterrevolutionary imperialism abroad, and instead hyping token reform at home.
Where has this left the liberal class? With the following:
The Biden administration was Israel’s most important military, financial, and political backer from the beginning of the genocide to the end of his term in office. We should set aside anonymously-sourced reports of Biden’s anger with Bibi and attend to the facts.
Aside from $3.8B in annual military aid, the Democrats sent emergency arms shipments, and provided additional financial and political support, including:
Military Supplies:
-
14,000 tank shells in an October 2023 shipment
-
More than 2,000 2,000-pound bombs, great for mass casualty attacks
-
15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells in a December 2023 shipment, including bunker busters
-
F-35 fighter jet parts and $1B in new arms shipments approval in March 2024, the second time Biden used the Arms Export Control Act to bypass pesky Congress to arm the genocidaires
-
Ongoing intelligence sharing, including satellite imagery and location tracking
-
Military advisors dispatched by the Pentagon to assist in Israeli attacks
-
Deployed U.S. warships to block regional intervention
-
Launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Israeli shipping
-
The Costs of War Project at Brown University, the United States spent nearly $18B in military aid to Israel in a single year
-
In August 2024, Biden approved a $20B arms shipment to Israel
Political Cover:
-
Vetoed three UN Security Council Resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and abstained from a fourth despite a death toll of some 30,000
-
Attacked the ICJ finding on Gaza as meritless and threatened sanctions on ICC officials
Financial Support:
-
Continued ongoing $3.8B annual military support deal, inked by the Obama administration, with no stoppage or even threat of stoppage
-
Added $14.5B in a Supplemental Aid Package in April 2024
-
Cut funding to UNRWA over unproven Israeli claims, devastating aid delivery. This means that the administration was blocking aid to Gaza while arming Israel
All of this despite a death toll exceeding 30,000 people (likely far higher), the vast majority of which were women and children. And despite famine. And despite hundreds of reported potential violations of international law (rendering bootless the token human-rights verifications attached to some aid).
And despite two leading Israeli rights organizations—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel—both released reports declaring Israel’s conduct in the war on Palestinians constitutes genocide.
(Even Grok wasn’t having it: “Israel’s actions in Gaza align with genocide indicators per ICJ’s plausible ruling, the UN’s “Anatomy of a Genocide” report, and Amnesty’s findings on intentional mass killings. US funding enables this horror—stop the slaughter.”)
Coda to a Catastrophe
Whatever the particular violent exploitation, there is bipartisan consensus. Whether participating in genocide in Gaza; sparking a bloody proxy war against nuclear-powered Russia in Ukraine; facilitating the wholesale destruction of Syria and whitewashing its terrorist leaders; aggressively working to disarm Iran while arming Israel; encircling China with military force; sanctioning every country that pursues a different model of economic development than Washington’s hegemonic system; or strip-mining Argentina through the IMF with the help of comprador elite. In any and every case, liberals and conservatives will always side with violent fascist imperialism over peaceful socialist mutualism because fascism doesn’t threaten capitalist profits. Rather it reinforces and amplifies them. Historical examples abound.
Is there a difference, then, between the two electoral fronts for corporate power? Let’s ask Hedges, “Of course, there’s a difference. It’s how you want corporate fascism delivered to you. Do you want it delivered by a Princeton educated, Goldman Sachs criminal or do you want it delivered by racist, nativist, Christian fascist?”
A quote from Noam Chomsky should suffice to close this chat: “I don’t know what word in the English language—I can’t find one—applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence of organized human life so they can put a few more dollars into highly stuffed pockets. The word ‘evil’ doesn’t even begin to approach it.”
The post America’s Bipartisan Shame first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
-
The US Commerce Department said on Monday that one of its agencies will take over operational responsibility to oversee US$7.4 billion in semiconductor research funds, saying that the private non-profit established under the Biden administration to handle that function “served as a semiconductor slush fund”. The National Institute of Standards and Technology will assume operational…
The post US voids Biden’s semiconductor research grant deal appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
-
The former top State Department spokesperson has admitted that the U.S. knew the Israeli government was systematically sabotaging ceasefire negotiations for months — even as he stood on the podium and spread the lie to the press and the public that it was Hamas standing in the way of a deal. In a report by Israeli outlet Channel 13 published Thursday, former Biden administration official…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
-
If one examines Donald Trump’s approach to world affairs since his entry into American politics, it should come as no surprise that he has worked to undermine the United Nations. The United Nation is based on international cooperation, as well as on what the UN Charter calls “the equal rights … of nations large and small.” It seeks to end “the scourge of war” and to “promote social progress” for the people of the world.
By contrast, Trump has advocated a nationalist path for the United States. Campaigning for the presidency in 2016, he proclaimed that “America First” would “be the major and overriding theme of my administration.” In his 2017 inaugural address, he promised: “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.”
Indeed, “America First” became his rallying cry as he championed an unusually aggressive nationalism. “You know what I am?” Trump asked a crowd in Houston. “I’m a nationalist, O.K.? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist!” Sometimes, his displays of superpatriotism―which appealed strongly to right-wing audiences―included hugging and kissing the American flag.
Given this nationalist orientation, Trump turned during his first administration to dismantling key institutions of the United Nations and of the broader system of international law. He withdrew the U.S. government from the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He also had the U.S. government vote against the Global Compact on Refugees, suspend funding for the UN Population Fund and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and impose sanctions on a key international agency, the International Criminal Court, which investigates and prosecutes perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
Nevertheless, many of these Trump measures were reversed under the subsequent presidency of Joseph Biden, which saw the U.S. government rejoin and bolster most of the international organizations attacked by his predecessor.
With Trump’s 2020 election to a second term, however, the U.S. government’s nationalist onslaught resumed. In January 2025, U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on her nomination to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, assailed the world organization, and promised to use her new post to promote Trump’s “America First” agenda. “Our tax dollars,” she argued, “should not be complicit in propping up entities that are counter to American interests.” Joining the attack, Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the committee chair, sharply criticized the United Nations and called for a reevaluation of every UN agency to determine if its actions benefited the United States. If they didn’t, he said, “hold them accountable until the answer is a resounding yes.” He added that “the U.S. should seriously examine if further contributions and, indeed, participation in the UN is even beneficial to the American people.”
Simultaneously, a new Trump administration steamroller began advancing upon UN entities and other international institutions viewed as out of line with his “America First” priorities. At his direction, the U.S. government withdrew from the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, refused to participate in the UN Relief and Works Agency, announced plans to withdraw from UNESCO, and imposed new sanctions on the International Criminal Court. In the UN Security Council, the U.S. government employed its veto power to block a June 2025 resolution demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and release of all hostages―a measure supported by the 14 other members of that UN entity.
The Trump administration has also worked to cripple the United Nations by reducing its very meager income. In July 2025, rescissions legislation sponsored by the administration and passed by the Republican-controlled Congress pulled back some $1 billion in funding that U.S. legislation had allocated to the world organization in previous budgets. This action will have devastating effects on a broad variety of UN programs, including UNICEF, the UN Development Program, the UN Environment Program, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the UN Fund for Victims of Torture.
Moreover, the administration’s fiscal 2026 budget proposes ending UN Peacekeeping payments and pausing most other contributions to the United Nations. Although U.S. funding of the United Nations is actually quite minimal―for example, dues of only $820 million per year for the regular UN budget―the U.S. government has now compiled a debt of $1.5 billion (the highest debt of any nation) to the regular budget and another $1.3 billion to the separate UN Peacekeeping budget.
The Trump administration’s hostility to the United Nations is sharply at odds with the American public’s attitude toward the world organization. For example, a Pew Research Center poll in late March 2025 found that 63 percent of U.S. respondents said that their country benefited from UN membership―up 3 percent from the previous spring. And 57 percent of Americans polled had a favorable view of the United Nations―up 5 percent since 2024.
Furthermore, a University of Maryland public opinion survey in June 2025 found that 84 percent of Americans it polled wanted the U.S. government to work with the United Nations at current levels or more. This included 83 percent supporting UNICEF, 81 percent UN Peacekeeping, 81 percent the UN World Food Program, 79 percent the World Health Organization, and 73 percent the UN Environment Program.
Nor was this strong backing for a global approach to global affairs a fluke. Even when it came to the International Criminal Court, an independent international entity that the U.S. government has never joined and that Trump had roundly denounced and twice ordered sanctioned, 62 percent of Americans surveyed expressed their approval of the organization.
Trump’s “America First” approach can certainly stir up his hardcore followers. But most Americans recognize that life in the modern world requires moving beyond a narrow nationalism.
The post Trump’s Assault Upon the United Nations is at Odds with U.S. Public Opinion first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
The US State Department’s latest Human Rights Report condemns Venezuela for serious abuses. Weaponizing human rights, accusations are selectively applied to serve a destabilization campaign. In this article, a mirror is held up to Uncle Sam to see how well “America the beautiful” holds up to the same charges, while also exposing the role of sanctions, compliant NGOs, and military threats in Washington’s hybrid war on Venezuela.
The carceral state
The US report indicts Venezuela for “arbitrary or unlawful killings.” Meanwhile, in the land of the free, police killings hit a record high in 2024. Impunity is high with charges brought against offending officers in fewer than 3% of cases. The FBI itself admits that transparency is hampered.
Prolonged solitary confinement, recognized as torturous, is widespread in US prisons and ICE detention centers, affecting over 122,000 people daily. A US Senate report on torture documented CIA abuses, yet meaningful accountability has failed. Hundreds of political prisoners languish in penitentiaries in the US and in Guantánamo, the majority of whom are people of color. Roughly 70% of local jail inmates are held in pretrial detention, often pressured with coercive plea deals, undermining equality before the law.
The US has the largest prison population in the world (about 1.8 to 2 million) and an incarceration rate over 2.5 times greater than Venezuela’s. Even after release, about four million citizens remain disenfranchised due to felony convictions, disproportionately affecting Black communities.
Freedom to protest
Washington faults Venezuela for limiting freedom of expression. Yet, numerous US states have passed or considered anti-protest laws (e.g., “critical infrastructure” bills) that civil-liberties groups warn chill peaceful assembly.
Reporters without Borders (RSF) observes, “the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history.” This accusation is particularly notable because RSF is strongly biased in support of the US and receives funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. Arrests and detentions of journalists surged in 2024; schoolbook bans spiked across 29 states. In April 2024, Congress reauthorized and expanded FISA §702, enabling warrantless surveillance according to legal scholars.
As the US-based Black Alliance for Peace observes, “domestic repression in the US colonial/capitalist core is imperative to support the aggressive militarism abroad.”
This coupling of domestic subjugation with the international is painfully evident with the US imperialist/Israeli zionist aggression abroad in Gaza, while pro-Palestine advocates are suppressed at home. Zionist curricula are being imposed at all levels of education; at least half of the US states now require so-called “Holocaust education.” Pro-Palestine faculty, students, and staff are being purged.
Washington’s accusation of Venezuelan antisemitism cites President Nicolás Maduro calling Israel’s assault on Gaza “the most brutal genocide” since Hitler. Its charge of antisemitism conflates Venezuela’s political criticism of the zionist state with hatred of the Jewish religion. If “antisemitism” includes Muslim Arabs, US culpability is so blatant that it requires no additional documentation.
Meanwhile, the US accuses Venezuela of failing to protect refugees and asylum seekers. This projection does not deserve any rebuttal other than to mention that the US has a documented history of family separation of migrants and deaths in custody.
Likewise, the world’s rogue nation does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and similar institutions, while reproaching Caracas for attempting to “misuse international law.” If anything, the Maduro government has gone out of its way to defend international law with initiatives upholding the UN Charter.
Social welfare
The US report scolds Venezuela for a minimum wage “under the poverty line.” Yet, its own federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009; insufficient to lift a full-time worker out of poverty.
A UN special rapporteur for human rights estimated that sanctions – more properly “unilateral coercive measures” – by the US and allies have caused over 100,000 excess deaths in Venezuela. Yet purported human rights NGOs Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRC), and the Washington Office on Latin American (WOLA) omit this glaring human toll in their reports on human rights in Venezuela.
Predictably, they make nearly identical evaluations of the Venezuelan human rights situation as does the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and the US State Department itself. Their reports (AI, HRW, WOLA, US, OAS) either ignore or, at best, make passing references to the sanctions. No mention is made of the illegality of sanctions under international law – they are a form of collective punishment.
In other contexts, the NGOs have acknowledged the horrific human impact of sanctions. Regardless, they were in a panic that the Trump administration might ease sanctions over the Chevron license, thus rewarding bad behavior. For these soft power apparatchiks of the US imperial project, the pain endured by the Venezuelans is worth it. WOLA has been particularly vocal about counseling against direct US military intervention, when sanctions afford an equally lethal but less obvious form of coercion.
Hybrid war on Venezuela
In his first term, Donald Trump levied a $15m bounty on Maduro, framing the Venezuela government as a transnational criminal enterprise tied to terrorism. This lowered the potential threshold for extraordinary US measures. Joe Biden seamlessly upped the bounty to $25m, which Trump then doubled on August 7.
Evidence-free allegations linking the Venezuelan president to the dismantled Tren de Aragua drug cartel, the fictitious Cartel of the Suns criminal organization, and the actual Sinaloa Cartel (which is in Mexico) were conveniently used to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is supposed to be a wartime measure. This is coupled with the designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and periodic threats of US military intervention.
This is from the country that is the world’s biggest launderer of illicit drug money and the largest consumer of illicit drugs. Even US agencies recognize that very few of these US-bound drugs move through Venezuela.
Most recently, the US deployed an additional 4,000 troops and warships to the Caribbean and around Latin America. Venezuela responded by mobilizing its navy in its territorial waters.
Leading Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado expressed her “immense gratitude” for the imperialist measures against her country. In contrast, thousands of her compatriots took the opposite stance and marched in protest. Venezuela-American Michelle Ellner calls the US policy “a green light for open-ended US military action abroad, bypassing congressional approval, sidestepping international law.”
Weaponizing human rights for regime change
Venezuela is caught in a hybrid war that is as deadly as if it were being bombed. Washington’s strangling of its economy, making wild accusations against its leaders, sponsoring opponents, and threatening armed interventions are all designed to provoke and destabilize. Venezuela’s response is best seen as self-defense against an immensely powerful foreign bully that exploits any weakness, imperfection, or lapse in vigilance.
The US weaponizes human rights to overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Its exaggerated or outright fabricated allegations are echoed by the “human rights industry.” Where problems exist, they must be viewed in the context of US economic warfare, which has strained Venezuelan institutions. North Americans genuinely concerned about Venezuelan human rights should be highly skeptical of corporate media reports and recognize the need to end US interference. Escalating provocations will only necessitate Venezuela’s greater defensiveness.
The post US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
The US State Department’s latest Human Rights Report condemns Venezuela for serious abuses. Weaponizing human rights, accusations are selectively applied to serve a destabilization campaign. In this article, a mirror is held up to Uncle Sam to see how well “America the beautiful” holds up to the same charges, while also exposing the role of sanctions, compliant NGOs, and military threats in Washington’s hybrid war on Venezuela.
The carceral state
The US report indicts Venezuela for “arbitrary or unlawful killings.” Meanwhile, in the land of the free, police killings hit a record high in 2024. Impunity is high with charges brought against offending officers in fewer than 3% of cases. The FBI itself admits that transparency is hampered.
Prolonged solitary confinement, recognized as torturous, is widespread in US prisons and ICE detention centers, affecting over 122,000 people daily. A US Senate report on torture documented CIA abuses, yet meaningful accountability has failed. Hundreds of political prisoners languish in penitentiaries in the US and in Guantánamo, the majority of whom are people of color. Roughly 70% of local jail inmates are held in pretrial detention, often pressured with coercive plea deals, undermining equality before the law.
The US has the largest prison population in the world (about 1.8 to 2 million) and an incarceration rate over 2.5 times greater than Venezuela’s. Even after release, about four million citizens remain disenfranchised due to felony convictions, disproportionately affecting Black communities.
Freedom to protest
Washington faults Venezuela for limiting freedom of expression. Yet, numerous US states have passed or considered anti-protest laws (e.g., “critical infrastructure” bills) that civil-liberties groups warn chill peaceful assembly.
Reporters without Borders (RSF) observes, “the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history.” This accusation is particularly notable because RSF is strongly biased in support of the US and receives funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. Arrests and detentions of journalists surged in 2024; schoolbook bans spiked across 29 states. In April 2024, Congress reauthorized and expanded FISA §702, enabling warrantless surveillance according to legal scholars.
As the US-based Black Alliance for Peace observes, “domestic repression in the US colonial/capitalist core is imperative to support the aggressive militarism abroad.”
This coupling of domestic subjugation with the international is painfully evident with the US imperialist/Israeli zionist aggression abroad in Gaza, while pro-Palestine advocates are suppressed at home. Zionist curricula are being imposed at all levels of education; at least half of the US states now require so-called “Holocaust education.” Pro-Palestine faculty, students, and staff are being purged.
Washington’s accusation of Venezuelan antisemitism cites President Nicolás Maduro calling Israel’s assault on Gaza “the most brutal genocide” since Hitler. Its charge of antisemitism conflates Venezuela’s political criticism of the zionist state with hatred of the Jewish religion. If “antisemitism” includes Muslim Arabs, US culpability is so blatant that it requires no additional documentation.
Meanwhile, the US accuses Venezuela of failing to protect refugees and asylum seekers. This projection does not deserve any rebuttal other than to mention that the US has a documented history of family separation of migrants and deaths in custody.
Likewise, the world’s rogue nation does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and similar institutions, while reproaching Caracas for attempting to “misuse international law.” If anything, the Maduro government has gone out of its way to defend international law with initiatives upholding the UN Charter.
Social welfare
The US report scolds Venezuela for a minimum wage “under the poverty line.” Yet, its own federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009; insufficient to lift a full-time worker out of poverty.
A UN special rapporteur for human rights estimated that sanctions – more properly “unilateral coercive measures” – by the US and allies have caused over 100,000 excess deaths in Venezuela. Yet purported human rights NGOs Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRC), and the Washington Office on Latin American (WOLA) omit this glaring human toll in their reports on human rights in Venezuela.
Predictably, they make nearly identical evaluations of the Venezuelan human rights situation as does the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and the US State Department itself. Their reports (AI, HRW, WOLA, US, OAS) either ignore or, at best, make passing references to the sanctions. No mention is made of the illegality of sanctions under international law – they are a form of collective punishment.
In other contexts, the NGOs have acknowledged the horrific human impact of sanctions. Regardless, they were in a panic that the Trump administration might ease sanctions over the Chevron license, thus rewarding bad behavior. For these soft power apparatchiks of the US imperial project, the pain endured by the Venezuelans is worth it. WOLA has been particularly vocal about counseling against direct US military intervention, when sanctions afford an equally lethal but less obvious form of coercion.
Hybrid war on Venezuela
In his first term, Donald Trump levied a $15m bounty on Maduro, framing the Venezuela government as a transnational criminal enterprise tied to terrorism. This lowered the potential threshold for extraordinary US measures. Joe Biden seamlessly upped the bounty to $25m, which Trump then doubled on August 7.
Evidence-free allegations linking the Venezuelan president to the dismantled Tren de Aragua drug cartel, the fictitious Cartel of the Suns criminal organization, and the actual Sinaloa Cartel (which is in Mexico) were conveniently used to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is supposed to be a wartime measure. This is coupled with the designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and periodic threats of US military intervention.
This is from the country that is the world’s biggest launderer of illicit drug money and the largest consumer of illicit drugs. Even US agencies recognize that very few of these US-bound drugs move through Venezuela.
Most recently, the US deployed an additional 4,000 troops and warships to the Caribbean and around Latin America. Venezuela responded by mobilizing its navy in its territorial waters.
Leading Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado expressed her “immense gratitude” for the imperialist measures against her country. In contrast, thousands of her compatriots took the opposite stance and marched in protest. Venezuela-American Michelle Ellner calls the US policy “a green light for open-ended US military action abroad, bypassing congressional approval, sidestepping international law.”
Weaponizing human rights for regime change
Venezuela is caught in a hybrid war that is as deadly as if it were being bombed. Washington’s strangling of its economy, making wild accusations against its leaders, sponsoring opponents, and threatening armed interventions are all designed to provoke and destabilize. Venezuela’s response is best seen as self-defense against an immensely powerful foreign bully that exploits any weakness, imperfection, or lapse in vigilance.
The US weaponizes human rights to overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Its exaggerated or outright fabricated allegations are echoed by the “human rights industry.” Where problems exist, they must be viewed in the context of US economic warfare, which has strained Venezuelan institutions. North Americans genuinely concerned about Venezuelan human rights should be highly skeptical of corporate media reports and recognize the need to end US interference. Escalating provocations will only necessitate Venezuela’s greater defensiveness.
The post US Human Rights Report on Venezuela Doesn’t Pass the Mirror Test first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
Photo: AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump came into office promising to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now, six months later, his high stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska may have put the United States and Russia on a new path toward peace, or, if this initiative fails, could trigger an even more dangerous escalation, with warhawks in Congress already pushing for another $54.6 billion in weapons for Ukraine.
After emerging from the meeting, Putin correctly framed the historical moment: “This was a very hard time for bilateral relations and, let’s be frank, they’ve fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War. I think that’s not benefiting our countries and the world as a whole. Sooner or later, we have to amend the situation to move on from confrontation to dialogue.”
Trump said he will follow up by talking to NATO leaders and Zelenskyy, as if the U.S. is simply an innocent bystander trying to help. But in Ukraine, as in Palestine, Washington plays the “mediator” while pouring weapons, intelligence, and political cover into one side of the war. In Gaza, that has enabled genocide. In Ukraine, it could lead to nuclear war.
Despite protests from Zelenskyy and European leaders, Trump was right to meet with Putin, not because they are friends, but because the United States and Russia are enemies, and because the war they are fighting to the last Ukrainian is the front line of a global conflict between the United States, Russia and China.
In our book, War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, which we have now updated and revised to cover three years of war in Ukraine, we have detailed the U.S. role in expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders, its support for the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, its undermining of the Minsk II peace accord, and its rejection of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine after only two months of war in 2022.
We doubt that Donald Trump fully grasps this history. Are his simplistic statements alternately blaming Russia and Ukraine, but never the United States, just a public façade for domestic consumption, or does he really believe America’s hands are clean?
At their first meeting in Saudi Arabia on February 18, senior U.S. and Russian negotiators agreed on a three-step plan: first to restore U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations; then to negotiate peace in Ukraine; and finally to work on resolving the broader, underlying breakdown in relations between the United States and Russia. Trump and Putin’s decision to meet now was a recognition that they must address the deeper rift before they can achieve a stable and lasting peace in Ukraine.
The stakes are high. Russia has been waging a war of attrition, concentrating on destroying Ukrainian forces and military equipment rather than on advancing quickly and seizing a lot more territory. It has still not occupied all of Donetsk province, which unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine in May 2014, and which Russia officially annexed before its invasion in February 2022.
The failure of peace negotiations could lead to a more aggressive Russian war plan to seize territory much faster. Ukrainian forces are thinly spread out along much of its 700 mile front line, with as few as 100 soldiers often manning several miles of defenses. A major Russian offensive could lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian military or the fall of the Zelenskyy government.
How would the U.S. and its Western allies respond to such major changes in the strategic picture? Zelenskyy’s European allies talk tough, but have always rejected sending their own troops to Ukraine, apart from small numbers of special operations forces and mercenaries.
Putin addressed the Europeans in his remarks after the Summit:
We expect that Kyiv and the European capitals will perceive [the negotiations] constructively, and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works, will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.
Meanwhile, more U.S. and NATO troops are fighting from the relative safety of the joint Ukraine-NATO war headquarters at the U.S. military base in Wiesbaden in Germany, where they work with Ukrainian forces to plan operations, coordinate intelligence and target missile and drone strikes. If the war escalates further, Wiesbaden could become a target for Russian missile strikes, just as NATO missiles already target bases in Russia. How would the United States and Germany respond to Russian missile strikes on Wiesbaden?
The U.S. and NATO’s official policy has always been to keep Ukraine fighting until it is in a stronger position to negotiate with Russia, as Joe Biden wrote in the New York Times in June 2022. But every time the U.S. and NATO prolong or escalate the war, they leave Ukraine in a weaker position, not a stronger one. The neutrality agreement that the U.S. and U.K. rejected in April 2022 included a Russian withdrawal from all the territory it had just occupied. But that was not good enough for Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, who instead promised a long war to weaken Russia.
NATO military leaders believed that Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the fall of 2022 achieved the stronger position they were looking for, and General Milley went out on a limb to say publicly that Ukraine should “seize the moment” to negotiate. But Biden and Zelenskyy rejected his advice, and Ukraine’s failed offensive in 2023 squandered the moment they had failed to seize. No amount of deceptive propaganda can hide the reality that it has been downhill since then, and 69% of Ukrainians now want a negotiated peace, before their position gets even worse.
So Trump went to Alaska with a weak hand, but one that will get weaker still if the war goes on. The European politicians urging Zelenskyy to cling to his maximalist demands want to look tough to their own people, but the keys to a stable and lasting peace are still Ukrainian neutrality, self determination for the people of all regions of Ukraine, and a genuine peace process that finally lays to rest the zombification of the Cold War.
The whole world celebrated the end of the Cold War in 1991, but the people of the world are still waiting for the long-promised peace dividend that a generation of corrupt, war-mongering leaders have stolen from us.
As negotiations progress, U.S. officials must be honest about the U.S. role in provoking this crisis. They must demonstrate that they are ready to listen to Russia’s concerns, take them seriously, and negotiate in good faith to achieve a stable and lasting agreement that delivers peace and security to all parties in the Ukraine war, and in the wider Cold War it is part of.
The post US-Russia Talks: the Choice Between Peace and Escalation first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
We live in an era where nearly everything is characterized as a “distraction.” From the genocide in Gaza to the rollback of of trans rights, and most recently, the ongoing scandal around the so-called “Epstein files.” After hyping up plans to release the files, which Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested included an Epstein “client list,” the Justice Department reversed course on July 7 with an…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
-
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
— Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh
There is a good chance that very shortly the United States will overtly join its proxy Israel in attacking Iran. Only a fool would be surprised. Plausible deniability only goes so far. Pipe dreams perdure as the nuclear war that could never happen gets closer to happening.
That Donald Trump is a diabolic liar and his administration is composed of depraved war criminals is a fact.
That those who bought his no foreign wars bullshit were deluded is a fact.
That Trump fully supports the genocidal lunatic Netanyahu is a fact.
That the U.S.A. is already supporting Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran is a fact.
That the American electorate is always fooled by the linguistic mind control of its presidents is a fact.
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” George W. Bush said at a staged pseudo-event on October 7, 2002 as he set Americans up for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It was all predictable, blatant deception. And the media played along with such an absurdity. Iraq obviously had no nuclear weapons or the slightest capability to deliver even a firecracker on the U.S. The same is true for Iran today.
Trump is, after all, a United States President. The job’s requirements insist that he be a war criminal at the head of a terrorist state, and that he support the apartheid state of Israel’s killing regime, as the United States has done since its founding – actually long before.
The CIA and its ilk provide the shifting propaganda narratives that take many forms: smooth, blustery, halting, etc., but they are all aimed at creating two minds in the American population by sending mixed messages (a Trump specialty), creating mental double-binds, and using various techniques to mystify people’s experience of reality and truth. The CIA always liked to attract literary types to its propaganda efforts. Their objective is to create through verbal contradictory word usage a sense of schizoid confusion in the population. To provide pipe dreams for those who feel that their politician will set things right next time around. Or to provide ex post facto justifications for the last president’s innocence.
Think of the bullshit media headlines such as “Trump is weighing his options” or “Trump weighing Involvement” about attacking Iran. As I wrote about Trump and Iran in June 2019 – “The War Hoax Redux – in a repeat of what I wrote about Bush and Iraq in February 2003 by simply substituting names:
As in 1991 and 2003 concerning Iraq, the MSM play along with Trump, who repeatedly says, or has his spokespeople say, that the decision hasn’t been made [to attack Iran] and that the U.S. wants peace. Within a few hours this is contradicted and confusion and uncertainty reign, as planned. Chaos is the name of the game. But everyone in the know knows the decision to attack has been made at some level, especially once the propaganda dummies are all in place. But they pretend, while the media wait with baited breath as they anticipate their countdown to the dramatic moment when they report the incident that will “compel” the U.S. to attack.
Now that Biden has made sure a terrorist runs Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon is rendered weak, allowing Israel full control over their air spaces, and Gaza pulverized and genocide well underway, the pieces are in place for Trump to bomb Iran.
Commentators often blame the actions – like Trump’s vis-à-vis Iran – on pressure from the so-called “deep state.” Excuses abound. But there is no deep state. The official American government is the “deep state.” The use of the term is a prime example of the efficacy of linguistic mind control. The use of words that have contradictory meanings – contronyms – to create untenable double-binds that result in mental checkmate. Create false opposites to frame the mind control.
Innocence – give a sardonic laugh! These are the men who have waged endless wars, overt and covert, for decade upon decade, have dispatched special forces and CIA death squads throughout the world, and support genocide in Gaza and the destruction of Russia as their bosses require. Those who seek the office know this. Only those who are known to pledge allegiance to American imperialism and the love of war are allowed anywhere near the U.S. presidency. The present war on Iran has been long in the making, as has the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Russia, China, etc.
These bloodthirsty hyenas with polished faces come in all varieties, from Slick Willy to Dumb Georgie to Smiling Barack to Gross Don to Malarkey Joe and around and around we go again and again. Each is cast to perform the script – to speak the lingo – appropriate to his actor’s ability and his looks (let’s not forget this), but to serve the same ends. If it were not so, the U.S. would have stopped waging non-stop wars long ago. It’s simple to understand if one retains a smidgeon of logic.
If you think otherwise, you are deluded. I will not waste much time explaining why. The historical facts confirm it.
The U.S.A. is a warfare state; it’s as simple as that. Without waging wars, the U.S. economy, as presently constituted, would collapse. It is an economy based on fantasy and fake money with a national debt over 36 trillion dollars that will never be repaid. That’s another illusion. But I am speaking of pipe dreams, am I not?
And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their indifference and ignorance of its ramifications throughout the society and more importantly, its effects in death and destruction on the rest of the world. But that’s how it goes as their focus is on the masked faces that face each other on the electoral stage of the masquerade ball every four years. Liars all.
But they all speak the double-speak that creates pipe-dreams on the road to nuclear war.
Will we ever stop believing them before it is too late?
The post Playing and Being Played on the Road to Nuclear War first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
Less than two years ago, the administration of President Joe Biden announced what tribal leaders hailed as an unprecedented commitment to the Native tribes whose ways of life had been devastated by federal dam-building along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.
The deal, which took two years to negotiate, halted decades of lawsuits over the harm federal dams had caused to the salmon that had sustained those tribes culturally and economically for thousands of years. To enable the removal of four hydroelectric dams considered especially harmful to salmon, the government promised to invest billions of dollars in alternative energy sources to be created by the tribes.
The post Trump Administration Abandons Deal With Tribes To Restore Salmon appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
-
Israel Has Wiped Out Over 1,000 Entire Families
International Middle East Media Center, 27 May 2025Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.
For we are sick at heart, our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children. And for thinking of that other Child, of whom the poet Luke speaks. The infant was taken up in the arms of an old man, whose tongue grew resonant and vatic at the touch of that beauty.
And the old man spoke; this child is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel, a sign that is spoken against. Small consolation; a child born to make trouble, and to die for it, the First Jew (not the last) to be subject of a “definitive solution.” He sets up the cross and dies on it; in the Rose Garden of the executive mansion, on the D.C. Mall, in the courtyard of the Pentagon.
That was Father Daniel Berrigan’s statement read in court in October 1968 during the trial of The Catonsville Nine. On May 17th, 1968, with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson presiding over 500,000 + American troops waging war against Vietnam, nine people, including Father Daniel Berrigan and his brother Father Phillip Berrigan, entered a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland and removed draft files of those who were about to be sent to Vietnam. They took these files outside and burned them with home-made napalm, a weapon commonly used on civilians by the U.S. forces. They were sentenced to federal prison.
Less than a month after their sentencing, the Republican Richard Nixon was elected U.S. president on a campaign promise that he had a “secret peace plan” to end the U.S. war against Vietnam. He did the opposite, intensified the war, spreading it to Laos and Cambodia, killing millions. He was reelected in 1972 while committing this carnage. He won 49 out of 50 states. The war ended in 1975 with a U.S. defeat.
My name is Aaron Bushnell, and I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest but, compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
That is the statement of Senior Airman (SRA) Aaron Bushnell, 25 years-old, who martyred himself when he immolated himself outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25, 2024, to protest the Israel-U.S genocide of Palestinians. Aaron had previously said: “What would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now”
Right now is still now, 16 months later and ongoing.
I am writing this on a piece of paper but you will most probably read it on a screen, the same screens that have provided ample news and views of the burning of Palestinian children in Gaza, another new Land of Burning Children. If you have not seen such pictures, it is because you have turned away in what Jean Paul Sartre called “bad faith,” knowing what they contain and demand of your conscience, but hiding that radicalizing truth from yourself.
Those pictures demand, at the very least, that you condemn and never support those who carry out these atrocities – in the U.S.A. that means Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, first and foremost, neither of whom you can you ever again support by saying he is or was “the lesser of two evils” – just as Martin Luther King, Jr. did when he was jolted by photographs of dead and napalmed Vietnamese children in early 1967 in William Pepper’s Ramparts magazine’s photographic essay, “The Children of Vietnam.” King was so sickened by the photos that he, against all advice, publicly turned vociferously against the U.S. war against Vietnam, and was therefore assassinated by the U.S. government the following year, one month before the Catonsville protest that was less than three weeks before the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy.
If you follow King’s example and reject evil, you will not be assassinated, but you will have redeemed your soul.
Thanks to Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, many know that paper burns at Fahrenheit 451.
But at what temperature do children burn? Do you need to know?
The history of American presidential politics has often been a tale of the election of “the lesser of two evils.” And that justification has been used time-and-again to support the savage killing of innocent people around the world. The presidential elections of this century tell that story very clearly, just as many decades of history confirm U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing attempts to exterminate the Palestinian people.
The lesser of two evils apologists have been very active in recent years, defending their indefensible politicians.
A good friend of mine, a small monetary contributor to the Democratic party and a consistent voter for Democratic presidential candidates, has long accused me of going easy on Donald Trump. This began during the presidential campaign in 2016, but had its roots previously in my critique of Barack Obama (following that of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) who in the words of the late Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report “may go down in history as the most effective – and deceptive – imperialist of them all.” He wrote this in the foreword to Jeremy Kuzmarov’s searing documentation of Barack Obama’s war crimes of bombing seven Muslim countries, destroying Libya, and engineering a coup d’état in Ukraine, Obama’s Unending Wars. My friend’s opinion is shared by many other friends and extended family members who won’t read my writing. Without saying it, they imply that I am an apologist for Mr. Trump and unfairly oppose the Democratic warmongers, Obama and Biden, whom they consider peace lovers.
Other friends and associates, traditional Democrats, enthusiastically voted for Barack Obama in 2008 after eight years of lies, crackdowns on civil liberties (the Patriot Act, etc.), and the endless savage wars waged by Republican George W. Bush’s criminal administration. The eight prior years of Democrat Bill Clinton’s reversal of economic safeguards for the poor, his endless bombing and sanctions against Iraq resulting in his acceptable deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children, and his destruction of Yugoslavia and the bombing of Serbia, gave them pause, but Bush’s policies were so evil that Obama seemed like a breadth of fresh air in comparison. [Admission: I have voted for one U.S. president in my lifetime – McGovern in 1972.] But soon Obama showed them his true colors and they became disconsolate. And when in 2016 it became apparent that the Democrats, led by Obama and Hillary Clinton conjured up Russiagate to make certain that the reality-TV Trump not get elected but he did, they moved gradually toward Trump’s camp. Now they say that I have been too hard on Trump, who, they maintain, is a man of peace, despite his complete and longstanding support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, his interventions in Syria and the bombing of Yemen, his policy on Ukraine during his first term that was a continuation of the policy pursued by the Obama administration, and his lack of an executive order when taking office this year ending all support for Ukraine.
Both sides tout their peacemaker presidents as they may, shouting peace, peace, while there is no peace. That the U.S. has a permanent warfare state seems lost on them. That they are being played by a sycophant media that thrives on gamesmanship while supporting the warfare state never really penetrates their thinking.
Nevertheless, between easy and hard, I have given much thought to their judgments, only to conclude that both groups are falsely driven by desperate emotions, ahistorical naïveté, and wishful thinking. For it was clear before every presidential election since 1964 (with the possible exception of Democratic Senator George McGovern in 1972) that we were being taken for a ride by bi-partisan thugs for the American Empire, Trump surely not excluded. But pipe-dreams prevailed and the empire rolled on, driven by a propaganda machine second to none.
That propaganda machine is now so powerful because it is so obvious. It’s like those advertisements that mock the products that they are selling only to sell more. Considering themselves too smart for such stupidity, the most well-meaning and intelligent individuals are caught in its tentacles; they have had their minds occupied by its cognitive infiltration. Something so obvious just couldn’t be true for them; couldn’t convince anyone but the most stupid. This is Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
Do they consider the sights and sounds of the U.S.-Israel genocide of Palestinians real? Do they ask, “What is Truth?” Do they, like Pontius Pilate, wash their hands and declare their innocence of the blood of Palestinians even as they stand behind their chosen presidential genociders?
Yet I have concluded that it is not primarily propaganda or intelligence that has created this bifurcated checkmate, this stasis of thinking wherein two sides aggressively assert their leaders’ good intentions as opposed to the other. What is presented as terribly complex and confusing is unheard-of-simple, to paraphrase the great Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak. It is heretical to say so, but it is so: Too many people have lost their minds, they are alienated from their own experience and the logic of simple facts. And by doing so have buried their consciences. The Scottish psychiatrist Ronald Laing put it this way in 1967:
There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically ‘normal’ forms of alienation. The ‘normally’ alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those that are labeled by the ‘normal’ majority as bad or mad.
The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.
We need only consider the one simple example of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians. It has been going on in plain sight for sixteen months under President Biden and four months under President Trump with his full continuing U.S. support. No American can honestly say they didn’t know this genocide was being carried out by their country. According to Israel’s Defense Ministry, as reported on May 28, 2025 by antiwar.com, “The US has delivered 90,000 tons of bombs, guns, and other military equipment to Israel since October 7, 2023, to support the genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to numbers from the Israeli Defense Ministry. The Defense Ministry said Tuesday that the 800th plane carrying US weapons arrived in Israel in the morning, and 140 ships have also delivered US equipment in the nearly 600 days since October 7.”
Knowing about this genocide where well over 50,000 + Palestinians at a minimum, more than a third of them children, have been killed, burnt alive, bombed apart, and far more wounded and starved to death with Biden and Trump’s full support, should make any person who has retained one scintilla of humanity reject these bloodthirsty killers instantly and forever.
But it is not so. They retain the support of their ardent followers. They excuse them. Men who burn children alive are not rejected outright, but are found to have redeeming qualities by their political supporters. Something so inconceivably terrible is happening in full view, but what it signifies about Biden and Trump, the Democrats and the Republicans, is let slide, as if genocide were just a minor foible. These men are often elected by their followers as the lesser of two evils, as if the genocidal slaughter of innocents were a lesser evil. As if …. so many as ifs. So many excuses.
Yes, it is unheard-of-simple. While there are endless U.S. wars of aggression and massive slaughters of innocents one could cite to make a case against the support of U.S. leaders, this one example should suffice. You either unequivocally accept or reject those who support genocide. No ifs, ands, or buts.
At what temperature do children burn? Do you really not know?
Palestinian children injured in Israeli air raids are being treated at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip
[Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images]
Child casualties in Gaza a ‘stain on our conscience’: UNICEF
ALJAZEERA, 25 Oct 2023Jake Tapper has sunk his teeth into the most Jake Tapper of stories. At present, he is in the midst of an aggressive book promotion tour of his co-authored “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” where he finds himself pontificating on how the media “missed” the Biden aging story, waxing poetic about how “politicians lie, White Houses lie, power is an aphrodisiac. We need to all remember that and not take at face value anything we’re told.”
I won’t run through the well-worn criticism of Tapper’s self-serving about-face, namely from right-wing media, which has correctly noted that Tapper was one of the very people he’s now criticizing. This isn’t a criticism Tapper has sufficiently addressed—he told Piers Morgan on Monday that he “wished [he] had covered the story better.” But it’s also not the most interesting, or relevant, part of Tapper’s book tour and the broader recriminations of the Biden aging story. The right gets to ding Tapper and many in mainstream media as phony blowhards, and that’s a clean hit (though these same right-wing media personalities are, of course, notably silent on Trump’s visible cognitive decline). But what’s more useful analysis, and more illustrative of how the corporate media functions, is that the Biden aging story, such as it is, is the perfect low-calorie pseudo-scandal. It is, in other words, the platonic Jake Tapper Story.
What do I mean by that? First, let’s lay out some basic facts: Was Biden in visible cognitive decline for years? Yes. Did outlets like CNN take part in downplaying and covering it up in service of power? Almost certainly. Is this story, as Tapper told Piers Morgan, “maybe even worse than Watergate”? Possibly, but not in the way Tapper means it. Watergate, despite being used as a synonym for major political scandal, was a ticky-tack transgression compared to Nixon’s myriad war crimes and illegal military actions in Southeast Asia. Watergate was broadly understood to just be the lowest-hanging fruit—evidence of a much broader regime of elite corruption and lawlessness.
What is the Biden aging story evidence of? Tapper never really says beyond bromides about “power corrupting.” As with Watergate, Biden’s inner circle covering up Biden’s rapid mental decline probably doesn’t crack top five most offensive things Biden did, chief among them wholeheartedly supporting a genocide in Gaza for 15 months. And this is what makes it the perfect Jake Tapper story.
As I laid out in a Citations Needed podcast episode about Tapper’s schtick back in 2018, the platonic Jake Tapper story is one where he can look adversarial and play the role of Handsome Newsman Speaking Truth To Power while harping on a story that, when it’s all said and done, offends no traditional centers of power, namely corporate interests or the military state (and its attendant pro-Israel lobby).
The platonic Jake Tapper story is one where he can look adversarial and play the role of Handsome Newsman Speaking Truth To Power while harping on a story that, when it’s all said and done, offends no traditional centers of power, namely corporate interests or the military state.
This is Tapper’s wheelhouse. But this time, he’s not attacking Democrats from the right. He’s attacking Democrats from an even better place—nowhere—in what amounts to a post-ideological process criticism. Yes, Biden World lying about the President’s declining mental state had disastrous consequences for Democrats, but it’s a years-old story, and involves nothing systemic except for broader concerns over gerontocracy (which, despite their occasional merits, also neatly avoid any discussion of class conflict). And Tapper is effectively taking on a man nearing the end of his life, long after he’s out of power.
This is consistent with Tapper’s usual sweet spot of attacking Democrats from the right for being insufficiently pro-empire or pro-austerity. Tapper rose the ranks of Salon, ABC News, and eventually CNN by hounding the Obama White House, and Democrats in general, over a wholly fabricated “debt crisis.” He then proceeded to repeatedly attack the Squad in bad faith as a matter of course and spent weeks mugging over Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, removing the fourth wall altogether and producing a two hour prime time special promoting a Stabbed in the Back myth for the Biden White House.
Meanwhile, as I detailed in part for The Nation last year, in over 15 months of co-hosting the influential Sunday news show State of the Union during the Gaza genocide under Biden, Tapper never once platformed a single Palestinian guest, while giving ample platform to a revolving door of Biden officials, Israeli spokespeople, and two softball interviews with Israeli Prime Minister—and fugitive from international justice—Benjamin Netanyahu.
Consistent with his yawning through the genocide under Biden, Tapper mostly ignores it under Trump and only chimes in to frame the latest Israeli war crime in terms favorable to Israel. Even worse than never bothering to interview a single Palestinian, his Sunday news show, since Israel recommenced its genocide on March 18, hasn’t brought up Gaza as a topic once. In nine episodes, nine hours of “agenda-setting” Washington programming, Tapper and co-anchor Dana Bash have not broached the subject of Gaza at all, despite the fact that the United States is directly involved in the killing over of 1,309 children and injuring 3,738 more, and arming and funding a deliberate hunger campaign that Human Rights Watch, and over 760 other human rights groups, call “the deliberate starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare.”
And when Gaza is mentioned on Tapper’s other program—his afternoon show, The Lead—Tapper dutifully parrots the Israeli line, including prefacing any story about Israel bombing hospitals and schools with the baseless conspiracy theory that “Hamas regularly takes shelter in hospitals and schools.” As I noted last month, Tapper led the media charge last September fabricating an “antisemitism” scandal out of whole cloth to smear Rep. Rashida Tlaib (which he sheepishly walked back but never apologized for), while letting Tlaib’s Republican colleagues repeatedly smear her as a “terrorist” without an ounce of pushback. Indeed, Tapper has long run down the list of insipid pro-Israel talking points without any meaningful criticism of its apartheid system or its recent, openly genocidal policies beyond the safe and ponderous noncriticism of “are you killing too many civilians?” handwringing.
So Tapper has found the great scandal of the Biden years, and it is, of course, not one that upsets anyone at the Pentagon, the US Chamber of Commerce, the editorial boards of the New York Times or the Atlantic or AIPAC. The Biden aging story is the perfect pseudo-scandal for corporate media, and thus the perfect Jake Tapper story: vaguely true, but ultimately of peripheral importance, scapegoating a handful of Biden flunkies and, most important of all, it allows Tapper to polish his Speaking Truth to Power brand without speaking truth to anyone in a position of actual power.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Nvidia beat quarterly sales expectations as customers stockpiled its AI chips before fresh US curbs on China exports took effect, but the same restrictions will slice off US$8 billion in sales from the company’s current quarter, forcing it to offer a forecast below Wall Street estimates. Shares of the world’s most valuable semiconductor firm still…
The post Nvidia reveals sales hit from US export curbs on China appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
On May 15, 2025, the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, the last facility there capable of providing cancer treatment, ceased operations. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, “Israel’s targeting of the hospital has made it impossible to provide medical care due to the danger posed to medical staff and patients.” The following day, May 16, Joseph R. Biden, 46th President of the United States, was diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
Joe Biden is the person most responsible for the destruction of Gaza’s last cancer treatment center. His decision to give Israel a free hand in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza beginning in October 2023 led to the destruction of hospitals, homes, schools, and even the tent camps where victims had fled.
The post Biden’s Fate And Israel’s Sadistic Revenge appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Just as Nazi Germany sought the total elimination of Jewish life, the state of Israel, with full U.S. support, is now openly pursuing the systematic annihilation of the people of Gaza, the acceleration of mass displacement in the West Bank, and the denial of Palestinian nationhood itself. Those who dare to speak out are vilified, censored, or stripped of their livelihoods, ensuring complicity through coercion. The Black Alliance for Peace rejects this moral and political blackmail. True solidarity demands courage—refusing to be silenced or pacified as we witness, document, and resist this ongoing genocide. History will judge not only the perpetrators but also those who stood by in cowardly silence.
BAP will not allow false accusations of antisemitism to be cynically weaponized as a political tool to suppress dissent, shield Israel from accountability, and provide cover for cowards in “Western” governments. The prevention of genocide is a duty of all of humanity, and threats and symbolic gestures are not enough. The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom issued a statement this week condemning Israel for depriving Palestinians in Gaza of urgently needed humanitarian aid. While the state of Israel, as an occupying power, has a legal responsibility to provide aid, simply providing aid is not the issue. Israel imposed the blockade of food, water, fuel, and medicine creating and perpetuating ethnic cleansing, a genocidal act, a crime that most of the Western powers have supported by either giving material aid to Israel or doing nothing to prevent these war crimes.
Now the UK, Canada, and France have issued a late, ineffectual, and hypocritical call for Israel to allow aid into Gaza, yet even at this late stage, they fall short of taking any legitimate action to stop the continuous unfolding horror. The Genocide Convention is clear – states have a responsibility to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. As the states of the “West” are unwilling to prevent and punish genocide, and they have shown time and time again that they are, then more decisive action is needed.
The project of the zionist occupation is premised on the destruction of Palestinian life, culture, and community – it is the zionist occupation’s existence in this form that has resulted in this 19-month-long genocidal campaign and emerging Final Solution against the Palestinian people. The current positions of states of the “West” that call for aid while legitimizing the occupation of Palestine will at best enable limited and momentary relief, while ensuring the maintenance of this white supremacist, genocidal project. Instead, there must be immediate & concrete measures taken against the racist fascist zionist occupation that goes by the name of “Israel” – arms embargo, economic sanctions, suspension of credit, goods produced from any part of “Israel,” and the arrest and prosecution of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders and further warrants for other genocide enablers such as Joe Biden and Donald Trump!
Those with the power to do so can either take such measures or abdicate their humanity. Palestine will not be free until Zionism, along with all white supremacist ideologies, is defeated. BAP will continue to do everything in its power to ensure the final defeat of global white supremacy that is materially grounded in imperialism.
We have chosen the side of humanity. Our lives, like the lives of Palestinians, are inextricably bound by this historical imperative.
The post Justice Demands Action against Zionism, not Hypocritical Rhetoric from the States of the “West” first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The brief videos posted by a group called Seniors 4 Better Care to YouTube look just like the political ads that take over the airwaves during campaign season. The voiceover in one breezy video claims without context that former President Joe Biden “broke” Medicare, the popular government insurance program for seniors, and that only President Donald Trump can “fix it.
In 2020, this columnist and many other people observed that Joe Biden was not a healthy man. His confusion and his strange and angry outbursts, such as telling a voter who questioned his position on the second amendment that he was, “Full of shit,” are now legendary. Robert Hur, appointed special counsel investigating whether Biden had improperly held classified materials, not only described Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory” but gave examples of troubling lapses for a man who was president and expected to run for office again.
“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse.
The post Corruption, Lies, Biden’s Health And Trump’s Victory appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
President Joe Biden’s military pier installed for a short time off the coast of Gaza last year lacked basic planning and was far more dangerous to U.S. soldiers than previously known, a new report finds. The Department of Defense Inspector General has found in an investigation that 62 of the 1,000 U.S. military members carrying out the ill-fated operation were injured, with one person…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
President Joe Biden’s military pier installed for a short time off the coast of Gaza last year lacked basic planning and was far more dangerous to U.S. soldiers than previously known, a new report finds. The Department of Defense Inspector General has found in an investigation that 62 of the 1,000 U.S. military members carrying out the ill-fated operation were injured, with one person…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Never forget the evil done to the United States when Biden pardoned an accomplice to mass murder deeply involved in both the creation of the COVID-19 virus and bio-weapons development. Speculations surround his most likely profiteering from the various “pandemics” over the years, and the sudden jump in his family net worth after leaving Federal employment.
To quote:
“A pardon for ANY OFFENSES AGAINST THE UNITED STATES.”
Think about that. The actual text of the pardon reads:
The post The Crimes of Anthony Fauci first appeared on Dissident Voice.I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, …
HAVE GRANTED UNTO DR. ANTHONY S. FAUCI A FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON FOR ANY OFFENSES against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.”
Biden was never declared unfit for office while serving, so this is also unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny. It’s worth a try, though, I suppose.
The big legal issue with this pardon is that it is for crimes not named.
The Constitution addresses presidential pardons in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, known as the Pardon Clause. The exact wording is:
“Article II, Section 2, Clause 1:
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
Does the wording above mean that a president can give a blanket pardon for any offenses against the United States, or do the offenses have to be named?
The most notable example of a blanket pardon is President Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford granted Nixon “a full, free and absolute pardon… for all offenses against the United States which he… has committed or may have committed or taken part in” during his presidency. This pardon did not enumerate particular offenses. This blanket pardon was never challenged in a court of law. Therefore, a precedent was not set by the courts.
Some like to point to President Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon for Vietnam-era draft evaders as a precedent. However, that pardon specified a category of offense and was not a blanket pardon for crimes not enumerated. That said, this pardon was also never challenged in a court of law.
As neither case was challenged in a court of law, many legal scholars still debate whether a pardon must specify offenses in detail. It seems to me that now is the time to question whether a blanket pardon for all crimes not enumerated reflects the framers’ intent when they wrote the Constitution. Of course, another, more straightforward solution would be for Congress to pass a law articulating what that phrase actually means. However, it is still up to the Supreme Court to determine the literal meaning of the Constitution.
This principle was solidified in Marbury v. Madison (1803), which affirmed that “it is the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”. While Congress’s interpretations can shape constitutional discussions and legislative actions, when the Constitution lacks clarity, the courts—particularly the Supreme Court—ultimately determine the meaning of constitutional phrases.
That said, there may be an easier route to prosecute Anthony Fauci.
The DOJ can work with state prosecutors to uncover crimes. If the DOJ, during a joint investigation, finds evidence of a crime that has been pardoned federally, that evidence can still be shared with state prosecutors. State authorities may use that evidence to pursue state charges, as the presidential pardon does not extend to state offenses.
So, even if a presidential pardon blocks federal prosecution for the pardoned acts but does not shield the person from state prosecution, the DOJ can share evidence with state prosecutors if the conduct violates state law.
The DOJ can investigate and acquire federal documents related to monetary misconduct, ethical breaches, and even manslaughter, which can then be shared with state attorneys general and prosecutors.
Furthermore, that evidence could be shared with other governments.
A final note: the COVIDcrisis made many people rich; they used psychological bioterrorism to scare government officials into reacting in ways that benefited those parties significantly.
Yes, there is no debate that the COVID-19 crisis triggered what many analysts and organizations describe as the largest upward transfer of wealth in modern history.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States saw a dramatic upward transfer of wealth, primarily benefiting billionaires and the wealthiest households:
- Billionaire Wealth Surge: U.S. billionaires’ combined wealth jumped from $2.9 trillion in March 2020 to $4.7 trillion by July 2021-a gain of $1.8 trillion, or about 62% 1, 2, 3. By early 2023, this growth reached $1.7 trillion, with the nation’s roughly 700 billionaires holding more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans combined 4.
- New Billionaires: The number of U.S. billionaires increased, with dozens joining the ranks during the pandemic 5.
- Wealth Gap: While the typical American household’s net worth increased (partly due to stimulus payments and higher home values), richer households gained far more-adding about $172,000 to their net worth from 2019 to 2021, compared to just $500 for poorer households 6. The richest 25% of households still held over 80% of the nation’s wealth 6.
- Inequality Worsened: The share of national wealth owned by the top 1% continued to rise, reaching around 45%, while the bottom 50% received just 10% of total income 7.
In summary:
The pandemic accelerated and magnified existing inequalities, with America’s wealthiest corporations, individuals, and households capturing a disproportionate share of the economic gains while millions faced job losses and hardship. This dramatic shift was driven by rising asset prices, stock market gains, and policy responses that disproportionately benefited those who already held significant wealth, deepening the divide between the richest Americans and everyone else.Conclusion:
The pandemic increased billionaire and millionaire wealth at unprecedented rates and deepened inequality in the United States, marking it as a period of historic upward wealth transfer.Fauci is the figurehead; he must be brought to justice, as must the other public officials, scientists, and physicians who profited enormously from the lies and half-truths.
But in the end – many people and institutions need to be brought to justice for the damages done to the American people. It is the job of the FBI and the DOJ to determine how this upward money transfer happened in the United States during the COVIDcrisis and who benefited via illegal means. This includes government officials, politicians, scientists, big pharma, and hospital systems that have profited enormously. Which government officials wrote the policies that aided and abetted this upward transfer of wealth and why?
This can not be swept under the rug as just another F/U by big government.
We, the people, deserve answers.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
US President Donald Trump’s administration plans to rescind and modify a Biden-era rule that curbed the export of sophisticated AI chips, a spokeswoman for the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday. The regulation was aimed at further restricting AI chip and technology exports, dividing up the world to keep advanced computing power in the United…
The post Trump to rescind and replace Biden-era AI chip export curbs appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of 2025 as President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs — the first time the country’s economy has declined in three years. In the last three months of 2024, the U.S. economy increased by an annualized rate of 2.4 percent. However, in the wake of massive tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and other actions that have led to economic…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Trump administration is working on changes to a Biden-era rule that would limit global access to AI chips, including possibly doing away with its splitting the world into tiers that help determine how many advanced semiconductors a country can obtain, three sources familiar with the matter said. The sources said the plans were still…
The post Trump officials eye changes to Biden era AI chip export rules appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
Democratic voters overwhelmingly say that the U.S. should restrict military assistance to Israel until it stops its assault on civilians in Gaza and respects the rights of Palestinians, new polling finds. According to a Data for Progress-Zeteo poll released last week, 71 percent of likely Democratic primary voters say that the U.S. should end its arms transfers to Israel until it “stops…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26. (Photo by Roger D. Harris)Avelo Airlines has entered into a controversial agreement with US immigration authorities to operate deportation flights, sparking protests from coast to coast. Activists, legal organizations, and local communities are mobilizing against the carrier’s role in deportations. The controversy reflects a broader reckoning with the US’s long and bipartisan history of immigration enforcement.
Ultra-low budget airline flies gamblers, Hillary Clinton, and now deportees
Avelo Airlines started off flying gamblers in 1989 as Casino Express. Rebranded in 2005 as Xtra Airlines, it provided air transport for the Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign among other ventures. Current CEO and former United Airlines CFO Andrew Levy acquired the carrier in 2021, renamed it Avelo, and expanded from charter flights to low-cost commercial operations.
Following its California launch on a Burbank-Santa Rosa route, Avelo developed a hub at Tweed New Haven Airport in Connecticut. Avelo continued to expand destinations, most notably with its recent agreement to make federal deportation flights from Arizona starting in May. The “long-term charter” arrangement for the budget airline headquartered in Houston, TX, is with the US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement Agency (ICE).
Chilling realities of ICE deportation flights
Research by the advocacy group Witness at the Border tracks ICE flights. Costly military deportation flights have largely been discontinued, leaving the dirty work to charter carriers such as Avelo.
An exposé by ProPublica revealed appalling conditions on ICE deportation flights by a similar charter carrier, GlobalX. The report states: “Flight attendants received training in how to evacuate passengers but said they weren’t told how to usher out detainees whose hands and legs were bound by shackles.
Leaving aside the issue of human decency, the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “90-second” rule for accomplishing a full evacuation from an aircraft is impossible to achieve with passengers in chains.
Private security guards and an ICE officer accompany these ICE Air flights and are the only ones allowed to interact with the deportees, including even talking to them. But only the professional flight attendants, who are FAA certified, are trained in how to evacuate passengers in an emergency.
So if a plane crashes on the runway, ProPublica cautions, the rules are for the flight attendants to leave the aircraft for safety and abandon the shackled prisoners. Unfortunately, this grim scenario is not hypothetical.
Snoopy’s airport
On April 26, protesters lined the entrance to what locals affectionately call Snoopy’s airport. The Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, named after the late cartoonist who lived in Sonoma County, is an Avelo Airlines hub. The Democratic Party-aligned Indivisible called the “profiting from pain” protest at the California wine country airport against Avelo’s plan to carry out deportation flights.
One protester flew an upside-down US flag, a signal of “dire distress in instances of extreme danger,” according to the US Flag Code. A sign proclaimed: “planes to El Salvador are just like trains to Auschwitz – a prison without due process is a concentration camp.”
“Boycott Avelo,” was the message on one young woman’s sign that implored, “travel should bring families together, not tear them apart.”
An Immigrant Legal Resource Center activist passed out wallet-sized “red cards” at the demonstration. She reported that nearly a thousand northern Californians have taken their training in recent weeks to defend their friends and neighbors who, regardless of immigration status, have certain rights and protections under the US Constitution.
At the grassroots level, communities are organizing and resisting. The North Bay Rapid Response Network hotline for reporting immigration enforcement activities dispatches trained legal observers and provides legal defense and support to affected individuals and families. Other resources include VIDAS, Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, Legal Aid of Sonoma County, and Sonoma Immigrant Services.
Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, New Haven Airport, CT, April 17. (Photo by Henry Lowendorf)New Haven no-fly zone
Blowback against the nativist anti-immigrant wind was also evident across the continent in New Haven, CT. This Avelo Airlines hub city along with the state capital, Hartford, are both designated sanctuary cities. The state of Connecticut itself has also enacted measures limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
These politics reflect the demographics of urban Connecticut, which are now largely Latino and African American. Non-Hispanic whites, using Census Bureau terminology, are an urban minority.
According to local organizer Henry Lowendorf with the US Peace Council, the vast majority in New Haven are “adamantly opposed to the airline massively violating human rights with no judicial process and dumping people in a concentration camp in El Salvador.”
Over 200 protested Avelo Airlines on April 17 for the second Tuesday in a row, responding to a call by Unidad Latina en Acción, the Semilla Collective, and others. Led by immigrant rights activists, speakers included local and state officials. Even US Senator Richard Blumenthal spoke out against Trump’s immigration outrages.
Avelo currently benefits from a Connecticut state exemption from fuel taxes, which subsidizes its hub operations in New Haven. The pressure is on for Avelo to either cancel the deportations or pay the fuel levy.
The state Attorney General William Tong demanded that Avelo confirm that they will not operate deportation flights from Connecticut. But the airline has refused the AG’s request to make public their secret contract with the Homeland Security.
The continuity of US deportation policy
Aside from the heated rhetoric, the New York Times reports “deportations haven’t surged under Trump” although he has taken “new and unusual measures.” These have included deporting people to third countries far from their origins and invoking the eighteenth century wartime Alien Enemies Act.
The NYT concludes that deportations “fall short” from being the threatened mass exodus and, in fact, “look largely similar” to what was accomplished by Joe Biden. Despite all the drama and an initial surge of arrests, the pace of deportations under Trump has been slower than under Biden.
Barack Obama still retains the title of “deporter in chief” with 3.2 million individuals expelled. And Joe Biden still holds the recordfor the most expulsions by a US president in a single year if migrant removals under the Title 42 Covid-era public health provision are included (technically “expulsions” but not “deportations”).
Going forward, however, we can rest assured that Trump will try to beat those records. Lost in the mainstream discourse on the migrant controversy is the reality that US policy, such as sanctions, are a major factor driving migration to the US. This takes place in the context of the largest immigration surge into the US ever, eclipsing the “great immigration boom” of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26. (Photo by Roger D. Harris)Protests expand to other Avelo cities
A petition is circulating with some 35,000 signatures to-date demanding cessation of the Avelo deportation flights. According to the petition, a leaked memo discloses that Avelo’s decision to enter the deportation business was financially motivated to offset other losses.
Boycott Avelo protests have expanded to other destinations served by the airline, including Rochester NY, Burbank CA, Daytona Beach FL, Eugene OR, and Wilmington DE. The campaign against Avelo is growing – locally, regionally, and nationally.
As the sign at the boycott Avelo protest in Santa Rosa reminds us: “immigration makes America great!”
The author at the Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26.The post ICE Contracts Avelo Airlines to Fly Deportees first appeared on Dissident Voice.
Listen now · 8:03