Under Donald Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel, federal attention to tracking far‑right groups has reportedly waned, enabling neo-Nazi, militia and accelerationist groups to mobilize and recruit new members more openly and easily. One of the most active of these groups is The Base, a violent paramilitary network that promotes accelerationism; a doctrine calling on followers to hasten the collapse of society through acts of terrorism.
As the Guardian recently reported, “In its early history, part of what first piqued the interest of authorities was the Base’s courting of military veterans who could help drill its foot soldiers in a series of training camps across the US. Eventually implicated in an assassination plot, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, the Base went so far as to have a fortified compound and cell in Michigan, led by a US army dropout.”
According to the Guardian, “Online evidence from its various accounts, several of which live on Russian servers to avoid censorship on American sites, shows the Base has real plans for a national gathering this summer where members intend to train in paramilitary drills as in years past.
The Counter Extremism Project reported that in mid-February, Rinaldo Nazzaro, the leader of the The Base, “released a video on a Russian video streaming platform. … [that] was labeled as an interview for the Greek chapter of the neo-Nazi skinhead group Combat 18 earlier in the month.
Nazzaro promoted The Base and accelerationism, claiming, ‘As conditions continue to deteriorate in our countries, we can potentially use that as an opportunity for us to gain power [in a specific geographic area].’
Nazzaro also praised the Atomwaffen Division (AWD) and confirmed that former AWD members are currently in The Base. Nazzaro also claimed that a member of The Base had been present at the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, but that he attended as a member of a different organization. Nazzaro criticized white supremacists who were celebrating the 2024 election of Donald Trump, repeating that there was no political solution and stating that white people could only be saved via ‘extra-constitutional’ tactics. Nazzaro concluded by encouraging Europeans to contact him on several platforms and join The Base.
Another post soliciting financial support, read: “The Base in [the] USA is preparing for an upcoming national training event. This one might be our most attended training event in [the] USA in a while. We could really use some financial support to help our members with travel expenses.”
The post continued: “When you donate money to the Base, you’re investing in a White Defense Force that’s aiming to protect white people from political persecution and physical destruction.”
The Guardian pointed out that “The Base … published a new photo of armed members claiming to be in the midwest, which follows a trend in 2025 of the group bragging about its unafraid American presence. As a sort of taunt to its enemies, on the day of Trump’s inauguration the Base released a photo of four members somewhere in Appalachia, in what was the largest number of American members in one photo in over a year
“’The upcoming national training event indicates that the group is seeking to grow and is willing to take the risk of advertising it publicly in advance,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst of far-right terrorism who has been following the Base’s movements for close to a decade. ‘The Base appears to be actively seeking to grow in the US.’”
Fisher-Birch notes that while small in numbers,
An event entails planning, coordination, travel and face-to-face meetings between different regional groups, indicating that they operate in an environment where they view the potential amount of risk as acceptable. The group has previously stated multiple times that being a member or training with them is a risky endeavor; however, planning a meetup, which they will inevitably use for propaganda purposes, is a different approach than even a year ago, when the group advertised regional activities.
The Guardian reached out to the FBI for comment and a spokesperson said it only investigates people who have or are planning to commit a federal crime and pose “a threat to national security”.
“Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity,” spokesperson said. “Membership in groups is not illegal in and of itself and is protected by the first amendment.”
The resurgence of groups like The Base is no coincidence. It’s happening in a political climate where monitoring far-right extremism is being downplayed, defunded, or outright ignored. Trump’s FBI has de-prioritized domestic white supremacist threats, creating a vacuum that paramilitary groups are rushing to fill. By looking away, the administration has opened the door for extremists to recruit, organize, and train with alarming speed. The danger isn’t just that these groups are growing, it’s that they’re doing so with fewer obstacles than ever.
Broad economic sanctions, most of which are imposed by the U.S. government, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people each year — disproportionately children. This week the Lancet Global Health journal published an article that estimated that number at about 564,000 annually over a decade. This is comparable to the annual deaths around the world from armed conflict.
Sanctions are becoming the preferred weapon of the United States and some allies — not because they are less destructive than military action, but more likely because the toll is less visible.
And who wouldn’t want this journalist in the trenches fighting with you for truth?
It was an honor to have her on my show, which airs July 30, 6 pm PST at KYAQ.org. Finding Fringe. DV gets the show early! Listen here.
And, remember, Gaza now, but China in 2027, we will see blood. These fucking war lords and tech LGBTQ+ and straight/cis fucking devils want war with China.
TWENTY TWENTY SEVEN — the year of the GOAT: The US is conducting intensive military exercises around the Pacific on a scale, intensity and tempo, not seen since the Cold War. In the meantime, frontline US and NATO troops are actively deploying and rehearsing war. Some top-level US officials have calendared 2027 as the date for war to start. Is the die already cast for war with China?
Here, Abby Martin signed on to this petition, as I did, and this was 10 months (Jan 2023) before the most current Jewish State of Murdering Maiming Starving Polluting Poisoning Thieving Occupied Palestine GENOCIDE:
Open Letter to US Congressional Representatives marking our opposition to the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) January 25, 2022
WASHINGTON, DC: The undersigned chapters and members of the Democratic Socialists of America and other allied organizations and individuals strongly condemn Congress’s use of industrial policy and other elements of the proposed US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) to counter China as part of a new Cold War fueled by US imperialist interests, which further destabilizes geopolitical relations and jeopardizes efforts toward greater global cooperation on issues affecting everyone worldwide.
We call on members of Congress to oppose this aggressive escalation and push back on the narratives that have fueled rising anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, marked by increased anti-Asian racism and violence. We oppose the USICA and other legislation that calls for increased military budgets, further militarization of the Asia Pacific region, and fosters anti-Chinese propaganda efforts, all based on nothing more than perceived threats to US geopolitical interests. Elected members of the US Congress have the duty to prioritize the needs and concerns of their working-class constituents instead of those of arms manufacturers and defense contractors who have fueled decades of endless war at the expense of genuine global cooperation and common prosperity for working-class people everywhere.
We believe that US industrial policy should not be built upon imperialist ambitions that serve only to drag the world into a new Cold War. We believe that working people in the US and elsewhere deserve policies that invest in public works programs, climate resilience, infrastructure, healthcare, and more. The US Innovation and Competition Act is not created for those purposes; instead, it is overwhelmingly focused on preserving US global hegemony by fabricating narratives aimed at painting China as a threat and riling up global conflict in an effort to undermine an increasingly multipolar world. If enacted, the bill would ramp up interference in the sovereignty of nations throughout the world, establish an anti-Chinese federal bureaucracy, intensify the militarization of US global policies, and continue the legacy of US industrial policy being weaponized against socialist movements globally. This legislation will promote confrontation and conflict with China, escalate the potential for military conflict between nuclear powers, and hinder global cooperation needed to address critical issues like climate change.
For these reasons, we strongly condemn the USICA and urge members of Congress to oppose the bill and call for an end to US policies that threaten hundreds of millions of people in the Asia Pacific region and could spiral into worldwide conflict.
Abby Martin and I talked about the fact that this empire of chaos, terror, amnesia and in my words, empire of agnotology, is on crack and Ritalin. In a 24-hour news cycle, there are literally hundreds of stories on the WWW that would be of interest to journalists and educators like myself and hard-working media mavens like Abby.
[Fifty Fucking Years Ago, published.]
One My Lai Massacre (500 killed, dozens wounded, raped, maimed) every week in Gaza. Where is the outrage? Real time genocide, as they say, Cell Phone/Telegram/TikTok produced fucking genocide:
Stop calling this “Netanyahu’s war” when the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis support the genocide. This is a fully radicalized society—that’s why Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions are necessary. on X, Abby Martin
“We knew that Israel had intended to starve the Palestinians in Gaza since October 9, 2023 when Israel announced explicitly its plan to starve the Palestinians in Gaza. For 20 months, the governments of the world were on notice and had many opportunities to stop what’s happening. There are arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the war crime of starvation against Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Gallant. In fact, the International Court of Justice itself in January, recognized there is famine and starvation in Gaza. That creates a mandatory obligation. Countries MUST act to stop starvation. So it creates a legal obligation for every country in the world to step in and end this starvation and famine in Gaza today. So what must happen now? Governments can [should] act through the General Assembly because the United States keeps exercising its veto at the Security Council. When that happens, the General Assembly has the authority to call upon peacekeepers to accompany humanitarian convoys into Gaza to protect the convoys and bring aid.”
This below was Goddamn Five Months Ago:
Abby was just in Bogota, for that fiasco: The Hague Group. Listen to her go off on those countries that didn’t even sign on, that is, in the interview above.
She said that of all the folks she’s interviewed for her various platforms, but mostly Empire Files, the grassroots activists and organizers and on the ground folk she most closely aligns to. Or empathizes with, and/or valorizes with a small “v”. But Corbyn is her hero.
Bring in the fucking navies, man, all those logistics personnel to get the food, meds, doctors/nurses, clean water, psychologists, media, tents and prefab homes to these people NOW!
A CALL TO CONSCIENCE: AN APPEAL TO THE LEADERS OF THE WORLD
The tragedy unfolding in Gaza is a test of our shared humanity. Entire families are being murdered. Children — even babies — have been killed. Others are wasting away from hunger. This appalling disregard for human life and dignity must end, for it is a violation of the most basic moral code.
Malaysia calls on all world leaders to act with urgency. Every government that believes in international law, every nation that claims to value human life, must speak with one voice.
In this regard, I urge all those with influence over Israel to find the courage to act decisively. I especially appeal to US President Donald Trump to use that influence to press for an immediate end to the killing, stop the indiscriminate bombings, and ensure that humanitarian aid reaches those in need without obstruction.
This is the hour for moral leadership. This is the time to uphold the values we claim to defend.
Malaysia stands ready to work with all nations—North and South, East and West—to bring relief to Gaza, and to restore the basic principles of humanity. Let us not be remembered as those who stood by. Let us be guided by our conscience, to answer suffering with compassion, and to pursue peace for the sake of our humanity.
I gave her the honorific that she, like so many others, not only know what that leash is, but she and others just yank out the bloody peg holding truth back.
“The U.S. military is the largest institutional polluter in the world. There is no corporation or industry that compares to the damage and devastation done by the U.S. war machine,” Martin told Watchdog host Lowkey.
She’s got skin-kin-amigos-colleagues in the game — she did that documentary years ago, 2019. Gaza Fights For Freedom
Yes indeed, her work with Telesur is what got Empire Files up and running, and the sanctions against Venezuela, that forced EF to go to a subscription basis.
We did not get into the new documentary on the military industrial complex under the umbrella of US’s Military:
She’s making the rounds now as the film is about to be final edited, cut, sound-enhanced and soon to be released:
There’s emphasis on the carbon and polluting and poisoning footprint of the military, for sure. I want to get into other issues tied to the +Military Legal Retail Energy Oil Chemical Mining Education Surveillance Prison Policing Finance Banking Real Estate Entertainment PR Congressional Transportation Ag Pharma Medical COMPLEX.
All the harms done not just through direct kinetic forces shooting and sniping, but the overall psychological harm, that collective consciousness of trauma, that epigenetic force of a military and the uniforms and badges and pips and medals and camo and flyovers and complete saturation of military mindset as well as the first hand, second hand and third hand damage wars do to entire generations and beyond.
Forget about just the toxins and the depleted uranium and land mines. It’s the terror of those drones, or the threat of war, or the respective countries in USA’s and 14 Eyes’ gun sights having to spend time and resources and valuable human lifetimes to fend off the enemy, or the threat of war, or coup or sanctions.
We need a Military Madness Offensive Weapons footprint calculator like we do for water (water footprint) or ecology (ecological footprint). Even those two standard bearers of sustainability education do not put in the PSYCHOLOGICAL and SOCIOLOGICAL harms done to places without water or those places with degraded and deadly water caused by industrial and post-industrial (data centers, AI, etc) for- profit endeavors.
Do this for each part and paint smear on a B-2 bomber. Life Cycle Analysis/ Assessment of a coffee maker? Or the coffee that gets put into that Kureig? Oh, that is a fun experiment — where the coffee is grown, how, by whom, in which system of exploitation, which systems, who owns the finca, who works the finca, which Western company owns the brand, and then where the coffee fruit goes, or gets dried and then roasted, and then the criss-cross of all this raw product throughout the global chain, and then, packaging, transporation, marketing, middle men, and alas, in that Trader Joe’s as Trader Joe’s brand organice (is that beyond organic, or shade tree or frair trade or co-op locally owned coffee?)
So, let’s do the same thing for just ONE US Mercenary product, hell, just a bloody set of boots, which ones, Timberline?
[Belleville Boot Company and Rocky Boots were recently selected to supply the U.S. Army with about 36,700 pairs of newly-designed Jungle Combat Boots.]
This system of destruction — the greatest polluter and enemy of the earth — relies on that complex +Military Legal Retail Energy Oil Chemical Mining Education Surveillance Prison Policing Finance Banking Real Estate Entertainment PR Congressional Transportation Ag Pharma Medical COMPLEX. And relies on the thousands of Boeing’s and GE’s and all the cool companies on planet earth who are hiring cool kiddos and youth and adults to do the bloody Faustian Bargain.
Hell, in fact, some of those major Defense/Offensive Industries have parent and partner companies, so, at GE, for example, you can work on sustainability:
About GE Vernova
GE Vernova Inc. (NYSE: GEV) is a purpose-built global energy company that includes Power, Wind, and Electrification segments and is supported by its accelerator businesses. Building on over 130 years of experience tackling the world’s challenges, GE Vernova is uniquely positioned to help lead the energy transition by continuing to electrify the world while simultaneously working to decarbonize it. GE Vernova helps customers power economies and deliver electricity that is vital to health, safety, security, and improved quality of life. GE Vernova is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., with approximately 75,000 employees across approximately 100 countries around the world. Supported by the Company’s purpose, The Energy to Change the World, GE Vernova technology helps deliver a more affordable, reliable, sustainable, and secure energy future.
So your brother is at the other division of GE:
(GE) has a history of involvement in the military and defense industry, including the production of weapons and military equipment. While GE Aerospace focuses on engines and related systems for aircraft, they also have a history of manufacturing weapons and weapon systems. GE produced the M134 Minigun and the GAU-8 Avenger cannon, among other systems. They also supplied components and systems for various military aircraft and naval platforms. GE has also been involved in the development of jet engines for military aircraft.
We all get folded into this evil machine, this war machine, at every level, even all those community colleges with drone programs! Here, from California, where Abby and her family reside:
City College of San Francisco (Link) Diablo Valley College (Link) Gavilan College (Link) Los Medanos College (Link) Mission College (Link) Ohlone College (Link) Santa Rosa Junior College (Link) Skyline College (Link) West Valley College (Link)
Santa Ana College (Link) Coastline College (Link) Orange Coast College (Link) Cypress College (Link) Fullerton College (Link)
In Israel, ‘Death to Arabs’ chants are common—but ‘Death to leftists’ is also heard. To ultranationalists, leftists are AIDS and Arabs are the common cold. You have to purge those tying your hands before carrying out the final solution — Abby Martin on X
It was 80 years ago that George Orwell’s book Animal Farm was published. The last words of the book sum up what we have now been experiencing in Amerika:
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which. (Internet Archive, p 71)
Orwell chose the pig to signify the smartest of animals, those who can learn quickly due to their high intelligence amongst the animal world. His reference to ‘Man’ was that of someone who is oppressive and tyrannical. Allow me to introduce you to Donald ‘The Trump’, ruler of Amerika.
So, we have a contradiction to all that we, as little school kids and civics students, were taught. Instead of honoring the ‘Salt of the Earth’ which Orwell’s pigs represented, Donald ‘The Trump’s’ Amerika honors the ‘Man’ from the novel. Herding up the undocumented then shipping them out, nullifying the right to dissent AKA Protest, cutting away a Safety Net to help us pigs, cutting medical care, AKA Medicaid, along with funding for proper government to give tax breaks for a fraction of 1% of Amerikans, all done to create a Big Beautiful Amerika following the guidelines of Project 2025.
The neighbor around our corner was out mowing her tiny lawn. She is a 50-something medical office worker who hollered this to my wife: “No one is going to lose their medical coverage, except those damn illegals. That is where the fraud is bankrupting us!” By her anger, one could see her in 1930’s Germany waving her finger at those ‘Damn Jews’, wishing them all away. In Donald ‘The Trump’s’ Amerika there have to be scapegoats to ease the pain of the corporate noose around her neck. When she or her family member needs an emergency operation and or a nursing home bed, who will be there to pay the $ hundreds of thousands? When her son’s young daughter needs food sustenance and there is no SNAP money to keep her nourished after he is out of work and his unemployment is terminated…
Who else becomes the ‘Man’ in a new Amerika? Could it be the absentee landlord who keeps raising the already too-high rent? Or the cable TV provider that gets away with higher charges? Perhaps the private medical insurance company that pushes everyone into Medicare Advantage so as to NOT have to cover them properly. Maybe it’s the politicians who have the BEST health coverage our tax dollars pay for, and turn a blind eye (for decades) to us pigs in need.
What the MAGA phenomenon should teach us is what Orwell meant by the end of his novel.
The messy scrap between the Trump administration and Harvard University was always more than a touch bizarre. On June 4, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the university was “no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs.” It had not pursued the Student Exchange Visa Program (SEVP) in good faith and with transparency, nor adhered “to the relevant regulatory frameworks.” The university had failed to furnish the government with sufficient information “to identify and address misconduct”, thereby presenting “an unacceptable risk to our Nation’s security”.
The nature of that misconduct lay in foreign students supposedly engaged in any number of scurrilous acts vaguely described as “known illegal activity”, “known dangerous and violent activity”, “known threats to other students or university personnel”, “known deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel”, and whether those activities “occurred on campus”. Harvard had failed to provide any useful data on the “disciplinary records” of such students. (The information on the three miscreants supplied in the lists was not just inadequate but useless.) Just to make Trump foam further, Harvard had “also developed extensive entanglements with foreign countries, including our adversaries” and flouted “the civil rights of students and faculty, triggering multiple Federal investigations.” While the proclamation avoids explicitly mentioning it, the throbbing subtext here is the caricatured concern that the university has not adequately addressed antisemitism.
In various splenetic statements, the President has made no secret of his views on the university. On Truth Social, we find him berating the institution for “hiring almost all woke, Radical left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’”. The university was also hectored through April by the multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism to alter its governance processes, admissions and hiring policies, and academic programs. The administration demanded via an April 11 letter to Harvard’s president that a third party be hired to “audit” the views of students, faculty, and staff to satisfy government notions of “viewpoint diversity” that would also include the expulsion of specific students and the review of “faculty hires”. Extraordinarily, the administration demanded that the audit “proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching-unit basis as appropriate.” Harvard’s refusal to accede to such demands led to a freezing of over $2.2 billion in federal funding.
On May 22, the Department of Homeland Security cancelled Harvard’s means of enrolling students through the SEVP program or employing J-1 non-immigrants under the Exchange Visitor Program (EVP). In its May 23 filing in the US District Court for Massachusetts, the university contended that such actions violated the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act. They were “in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”
The June 4 proclamation proved to be another sledgehammer wielded by the executive, barring non-immigrants from pursuing “a course of study at Harvard University [under the SEVP program] or to participate in an exchange visitor program hosted by Harvard University”. The university successfully secured a temporary restraining order on June 5, preventing the revocation from taking effect. On June 23, US District Judge Allison D. Burroughs granted the university’s request for a preliminary injunction, extending the temporary order. “The case,” wrote Burroughs, “is about core constitutional rights that must be safeguarded: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech, each of which is a pillar of a functioning democracy and an essential hedge against authoritarianism.” The “misplaced efforts” by the government “to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this Administration’s own views, threaten these rights.”
On July 21, the parties again clashed, this time over the issue of restoring the funds frozen in federal research grants. Burroughs made no immediate decision on the matter but barely hid her scepticism about the government’s actions and inclinations. “If you can make decisions for reasons oriented around free speech,” she put to Justice Department senior attorney Michael Velchik, “the consequences are staggering to me.”
Harvard’s attorney Steve Lehotsky also argued that the demands of the government impaired the university’s autonomy, going beyond even that of dealing with antisemitism. These included audits of viewpoint diversity among faculty and students, as well as changes to the admissions and hiring processes. The demands constituted “a blatant, unrepentant violation of the First Amendment.” The issue of withdrawing funding was also argued to be a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires an investigation, the holding of a hearing, and the release of findings before such a decision is made.
Velchik, very much in the mood for sophistry, made less of the antisemitism issue than that of contractual interpretation. Under government contracts with institutions, language always existed that permitted the withdrawal of funding at any time.
If Trump were serious about the MAGA brand, then attacking universities, notably those like Harvard, must count as an act of monumental self-harm. Such institutions are joined hip and all to the military-industrial-education complex, keeping America gorged with its complement of engineers, scientists, and imperial propagandists.
Harvard has also shown itself willing to march to the music of the Israel lobby, which happily provides funds for the institution. The extent of that influence was made clear by a decision by the university’s own Kennedy School to deny a fellowship to Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, in early 2023. While the decision by the morally flabby dean, Douglas Elmendorf, was reversed following much outrage, the School had displayed its gaudy colours. Little wonder, given the presence of the Wexner Foundation, which is responsible for sponsoring the attendance of top-ranked Israeli generals and national security experts in a Master’s Degree program in public administration at the university.
Trump is partially right to claim that universities and their governance structures are in need of a severe dusting down. But he has shown no interest in identifying the actual problem. How wonderful, yet unlikely, it would be to see actual reforms in university policies that demilitarize funding in favor of an enlightened curriculum that abhors war.
Q: How long did you teach mathematics at Cal State University, Northridge?
David Klein: I was there for a little more than three decades. Before that, I taught at UCLA and USC, and before that at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. There, I got into some trouble. I was arrested for taking over a U.S. Senator’s office along with half a dozen Quakers in protest of weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. I also had a little run-in with the Ku Klux Klan and was sued by right-wing Central American students for bringing in speakers they didn’t like. They sued me for “mental anguish”. Of course, the suit was thrown out of court, but it was a distraction. So, when I got the position at CSUN, I was very happy to get a permanent position there.
Q: So “mental anguish” …. that’s a recurring theme of the critics.
DK: Yes, it’s one of their tools. Claiming to feel bad about what we talk about.
Q: How did you become interested in Israel-Palestine?
DK: Well, it was kind of gradual. When I was a kid, I was very pro-Israel. And then in college, I started to have doubts and talked to more people. And the more I learned, the more obvious it was that this was a settler colonial state that was engaged in pretty much what the United States did to the Native Americans. And then there was a real spike in my understanding and activity with the 2009 “Cast Lead” assault on Gaza by Israel. That really increased my activism. It was just a new level of outrage that I and many people felt.
Q: I understand you didn’t talk about politics in your mathematics classes, but that you were otherwise active. What did you do, and what attacks or censorship did you experience?
DK: That’s right. I was careful not to bring it up in my classes since it didn’t really have direct relevance. But I was the faculty advisor for Students for Justice in Palestine and for the Student Green Party and a few other student groups. So, I created a webpage, a BDS resource webpage on the university server from my faculty webpage. Then, I wrote an open letter that was signed by many CSU faculty, administrators, and students to the chancellor of the entire CSU system, demanding that CSU end the study abroad program in Israel for a variety of reasons.
That got some news coverage and brought a lot of attention to my website. So, that was the start of a lot of attacks.
There were hundreds of calls to my university president that I be fired. There were some threats, some kind of death threats. There were some threats to the administration to withhold financial contributions. There was just lots of slander. Some of it came from the campus itself, but it was mostly outside from the Zionist Organization of America, a group called AMCHA, and other groups. And then there were some politicians who joined in the attacks. The local congressman, Brad Sherman, and a California assembly member, Bob Blumenfield, who later became a city council member.
An Israeli-supported law firm pressured then Attorney General Kamala Harris to prosecute me. And they separately asked the Los Angeles City attorney to do that. But those requests came to nothing. Still, I was required to produce massive amounts of emails, anything regarding Israel-Palestine, and regarding logistical planning to bring in guest speakers Ilan Pappe and Norman Finkelstein. These threats and demands went on and on for a long time. And on my website, I posted a page of the threats, the nasty comments, and the calls for my removal. They were signed by doctors and other professionals, but used really low-level language. The ugliness that it brought out was amazing.
Q: So you were part of organizing and hosting famous academics such as Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappe. How did those visits go, and what were the results?
DK: The Norman Finkelstein visit lasted a week. He gave three lectures, and there was a group of us who wanted to hire him at CSUN after he lost tenure at DePaul University. And so that included 30 faculty members from various departments, including the science departments and social studies, social science departments, and a wide range. And it was going well. We got the approval of a department that wanted to hire him, the journalism department, and it went up to the top, and we were all set to go. And then, at the last minute, it was vetoed by the campus president. Norman asked me to write an article about the whole thing, which I did.
The visit of Ilan Pappe came later in 2012. We had to have campus police escorts because of the threats. But he was very persuasive and compelling. Both of these guests were. The students were very engaged and it went well.
Q: I know that there was a big campaign to prevent the tour by Ilan Pappe, but ultimately, the presidents of several CSU universities defended his right to speak. Is that correct?
DK: Three of the campus presidents wrote a letter defending academic freedom. It was an open letter, but it went to the chancellor of the entire CSU system. The visits went smoothly logistically because of that. And it was pretty rare that campus presidents would stand up for academic freedom and freedom of speech for speakers like Ilan Pappe, who very strongly promotes Palestinian human rights.
Q: You’ve been an active supporter of the cultural and academic boycott of Israel. Why do you think this is important?
DK: It’s an important part of the general Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Academics and culture are very important within Israel. And so this particular aspect of BDS lends what we think is special leverage to isolate the Zionist state because of its actions. Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the persecution and genocide of Palestinians. Maya Wind’s new book, “Towers of Ivory and Steel”, documents that very clearly. Focusing on academics is very pertinent to what’s going on. And the cultural boycott has a very large impact. Everybody recognizes when a famous artist, a singer, or a musician refuses to go to Israel and states the reasons.
Q: But critics of Israel and supporters of BDS are under attack. Do you think the censorship and attacks are the same as in the past? Or is it getting worse?
DK: It’s getting much worse. The accusation of anti-semitism has been weaponized. Students, teachers, and professors are facing frivolous lawsuits. Students are facing expulsions. Faculty are facing job loss. Both are facing arrests and deportations for opposing genocide because it might hurt the feelings of the killers. Zionist students and outside advocates of genocide claim to feel unsafe because of demonstrations against Israel’s genocide. And they call human rights activists “anti-semitic”. Even the Jewish activists. And so it’s much more intense now than in the past. They were just sort of getting warmed up on people like me, and now they’ve really sharpened their knives.
Q: Do you have any strategy suggestions for campus activists who oppose the genocide happening in Gaza?
DK: Yes. I think we would do well to be less defensive and go on the offense. Pleading academic freedom and denying that we’re anti-semites is not really going very far. I think we need to move in the direction of accusing the accusers. Israeli soldiers are intentionally killing babies and children, shooting boys in their testicles, torturing doctors to death, and more broadly, carrying out the extermination of the entire Palestinian people. These are the worst of the worst. And we need to point to them, not just defend ourselves from their empty accusations.
By defining opposition to genocide as antisemitic, they’ve turned antisemitism into a virtue. Hitler could have only dreamed of this kind of linguistic transformation. And in this sense, the Zionists are the biggest antisemites on the planet. They’re the worst of humanity. So I think that the least vulnerable among us should take the lead, especially US-born tenured professors.
And we should focus on where the real power is. For K-12 schools, it is the school boards. But for almost all colleges and universities in the United States, whether they’re public or private, the board of trustees is the institution’s highest decision-making or governance body.
Members of the board are typically very rich. They have a lot of political power within the country, not just in universities. To give one example, Miriam Adelson is on the USC Board of Trustees. Miriam Adelson was married to the late Sheldon Adelson. He was a very rich billionaire. Both of them are rich billionaires. And Miriam Adelson’s Foundation contributes $200 million each year to Israel. And she was one of the biggest Trump donors as well. So, there are a lot of university trustees like that. They come from weapons manufacturers, the oil and gas industry, and other major corporations. And they’re overwhelmingly Zionist.
University presidents, who appear to be in charge of their campuses, serve at the pleasure of the boards and can be hired and fired at the whim of these boards of trustees. So the boards of trustees are the real power at universities. They are behind the persecution of opponents of genocide. The college presidents who do cave in to the Zionist censors should face no-confidence votes from their faculty senate on campus. But, there really hasn’t been enough focus on the boards of trustees. And I think that’s the next step. There are a number of people who are coming to the same conclusion on campuses and universities.
A lot of research would be involved to find out who these people are, what their background is, expose them to the public, and show what they’re doing, and try to get them kicked out. Replace them with decent human beings. It’s like you’re either for genocide or against it. If you don’t care, that doesn’t say much good about you. So being anti genocide is the minimal criterion for human decency. After all, if they’re going after and attacking people who are trying to stop a genocide, that makes them horrible human beings, and they shouldn’t be in charge of anything.
Q: Do you have any final comments?
DK: I think the importance of the Palestinians’ fight for survival can hardly be overstated. Their struggle is not only for themselves, but it’s at the forefront of a worldwide struggle against global fascism. And that includes the climate catastrophe, because global fascism can only accelerate planetary suicide.
David Klein is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at California State University, Northridge (CSUN).
There are three names attached to the Trump administration’s newly published AI Action Plan. One is the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the other two are Silicon Valley luminaries. The first is David Sacks, a member of the so-called Paypal mafia, the group of hyper successful founders or early employees of the company….
The Trump administration has released a new artificial intelligence blueprint that aims to loosen environmental rules and vastly expand AI exports to allies, in a bid to maintain the American edge over China in the critical technology. President Donald Trump marked the plan’s release on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) with a speech where he laid out…
The rise of modern capitalism created and reflected the industrial technological revolution. The technology of the steam engine, coal, oil, and gas energy grids, and machinery, the railroads, automotive technology, and the telegram and telephone were all essential technological changes enabling the creation of the factory and industrial mass production. The new industrial technology shaped the nature of productive relations in the machine age, making possible both industrial production itself in the factory and the distribution of supplies and goods that sustained productive and market relations. Vast concentrations of capital and corporate power crystallized in the Robber Baron era of the late 19th century. This was an era of sociopathic accumulation that dehumanized and exploited workers, while creating gaping inequality. The labor unions that arose in its wake created a powerful corrective that also nurtured class solidarity and a sense of the common good.
The shift to post-industrialism was associated with the rise of a powerful new set of capitalist elites and new corporate centers of production, finance, and communication. In the 21st century, Silicon Valley became the symbol of the new post-industrial high-tech world. It would become the showcase of the new high-tech companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, which were becoming the first trillion-dollar companies, led by tycoons such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Peter Thiel, all fabulously wealthy members of the Big Tech power elite. Silicon Valley introduced itself as a modern miracle, bringing unprecedented new productivity and prosperity that would benefit both owners and workers, and contribute to the betterment of the general population with magical new products such as the personal computer, the iPhone, and the new internet-based world of online culture and communication on social media. This new world revolutionized the economic and social spheres, while also having major uses and implications for politics and the military. Because billions of people globally now have iPhones or personal computers, with access to the new online universe of the internet and social media, Silicon Valley seemed to open up not only a transformative new economy for entrepreneurs and knowledge workers but a transformed, newly connected world of online social communication and relationships.
This is not entirely an illusion. The online world does open up new social connections and political connections, with social media being a powerful new tool for the younger generation to build new friendships, communities, and politics. But Silicon Valley’s fantastic new array of electronic communications and online connections may also prove to be a gateway to weak social relations and ultimately the end of strong face-to-face social relationships, as well as democracy itself. We face a sociocidal transformation fueled by high tech, with Silicon Valley also proffering its own politics of authoritarianism. Sociocide is the process by which human connection is largely severed, and individuals are only concerned for themselves. A sociocidal society is one in which solidarity is nonexistent and meaningful human relationships are destroyed.
Several sociocidal forces emerge directly from the economic restructuring created by huge Big Tech firms, especially the “Magnificent Seven,” whose individual worth now reaches into the trillions: Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and Tesla. One is the interest of these corporate high-tech elites, much like their corporate counterparts in other spheres, in eroding the face-to-face workplace and social ties that can challenge their power. In the workplace, that translates into the intensified attack on secure employment, unionism, and a collective physical workplace. The intent is to weaken the social relations of workers in the workplace – and more broadly, to subvert the solidarity and face-to-face connections of people throughout society that can challenge authoritarianism in both work and politics.
Focusing first on the workplace, the Magnificent Seven play a special role here by creating and developing the technology – including the personal computer, iPhone, internet apps, AI, robots, and social media — that allows corporate elites to create a precariat of dispersed and contingent workers, increasingly separated from each other, while also replacing millions of workers and transferring their jobs to robots and other AI inventions.
The most rapid replacement of workers by robots and AI is in high-skill jobs. Matt Sigelman, president of the Human Resources Institute, summarized his Institute’s widely circulated report on AI, saying, “There’s no question the workers who will be most impacted are those with college degrees, and those are the people who always thought they were safe.” He indicates that: “Companies in finance, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, have some of the highest percentages of their payrolls likely to be disrupted by generative A.I. Not far behind are tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Meta.”
Tech workers, talented and highly trained, are developing the tools allowing their companies to eliminate many of their own jobs. Meanwhile, employers are also using robots to replace low-skill workers. The sociocidal tech impulse of Silicon Valley, as in other sectors, is embraced because of its profit-saving capacity. And the fastest way to increase profit is to reduce wages, usually by weakening relations among employees or busting unions.
The Magnificent Seven have used their overwhelming economic power to directly undermine unions, the most effective form of worker social relations and organization. In January 2024, Elon Musk, now legendary for his anti-union and broader right-wing views, filed a lawsuit in federal courts to declare unconstitutional the National Labor Relations Board, which protects and regulates workers’ right to organize. In August 2024, just before his re-election, Trump joked with Musk about firing workers, complimenting Musk during a two-hour conversation on X for firing Tesla workers who wanted to strike. “They go on strike,” Trump said to Musk, “and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone.’” Trump then added, “You’re the Greatest!” The UAW filed labor charges against both Trump and Musk for the unfair labor practices that the two had celebrated; Musk’s Tesla had clashed with union activists for years, and the NLRB in 2021 had found that the non-union Tesla violated labor laws when it fired a union organizer.
One of Musk’s Magnificent Seven compatriots, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, quickly joined in Trump and Musk’s union-busting party, filing a copycat suit to make the NLRB and unions unconstitutional. Here, we see the world’s two richest men, leaders of the High-Tech Robber Barons, exploiting economic size to reap the fruit of their technology’s economic power. They are seeking a revolutionary breakdown of workplace social relations, moving from the sociopathy of the first Gilded Age to the sociocide of today’s Gilded Age.
The Magnificent Seven’s power undercuts workplace social relations and fiercely attacks union solidarity in the name of free-spirited libertarianism running rampant in Silicon Valley. The broader corporate success in drastically weakening unions is key to sociocide in the entire US labor force and has been achieved not only by the anti-union fervor of corporations since the New Deal but also by the zeal of the Republican Party from Reagan through Trump to make the destruction of labor solidarity and unions a top political priority.
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The above is an excerpt from Charles Derber’s most recent book, Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, and the Quest for Democracy.
With the Trump imperium passing the half-year mark, the posture of the US empire is ever clearer. Whether animated by “America First” or globalism, the objective remains “full spectrum dominance.” And now with the neocon capture of the Democrats, there are no guardrails from the so-called opposition party.
Call it the “new cold war,” the “beginning of World War III,” or – in Trump’s words – “endless war,” this is the era that the world has entered. The US/Zionist war against Iran has paused, but no one has any illusions that it is over. And it won’t likely be resolved until one side decisively and totally prevails. Ditto for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Likely the same with Palestine, where the barbarity of war worsened to genocide. Meanwhile, since Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the empire is building up for war with China.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the empire’s war on the world assumes a hybrid form. The carnage is less apparent because the weapons take the form of “soft power” – sanctions, tariffs, and deportations. These can have the same lethal consequences as bombs, only less overt.
Making the world unsafe for socialism
Some Western leftists vilify the defensive measures that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua must take to protect themselves from the empire’s regime-change schemes. In contrast, Washington clearly understands that these countries pose “threats of a good example” to the empire. Each subsequent US president, from Obama on, has certified them as “extraordinary threats to US national security.” Accordingly, they are targeted with the harshest coercive measures.
In this war of attrition, historian Isaac Saney uses the example of Cuba to show how any misstep by the revolutionary government or societal deficiency is exaggerated and weaponized. The empire’s siege, he explains, is not merely an attempt to destabilize the economy but is a deliberate strategy of suffocation. The empire aims to instigate internal discontent, distort people’s perception of the government, and ultimately erode social gains.
While Cuba is affected the worst by the hybrid war, both Venezuela and Nicaragua have also been damaged. All three countries have seen the “humanitarian parole” for their migrants in the US come to an end. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was also withdrawn for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. The strain of returning migrants, along with cuts in the remittances they had sent (amounting to a quarter of Nicaragua’s GDP), further impacts their respective economies.
Higher-than-average tariffs are threatened on Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exports to the US, together with severe restrictions on Caracas’s oil exports. Meanwhile, the screws have been tightened on the six-decade US blockade of Cuba with disastrous humanitarian consequences.
However, all three countries are fighting back. They are forming new trade alliances with China and elsewhere. Providing relief to Cuba, Mexico has supplied oil, and China is installing solar panel farms to address the now-daily power outages. High levels of food security in Venezuela and Nicaragua have strengthened their ability to resist US sanctions, while Caracas successfully defeated one of Washington’s harshest migration measures by securing the release of 252 of its citizens who had been incarcerated in El Salvador’s torturous CECOT prison.
Venezuela’s US-backed far-right opposition is in disarray. The first Trump administration had recognized the “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó, followed by the Biden administration declaring Edmundo González the winner of Venezuela’s last presidential election. But the current Trump administration has yet to back González, de facto recognizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is also reeling from a side-effect of Trump’s harsh treatment of migrants – many are returning voluntarily to a country claimed by the opposition to be “unsafe,” while US Homeland Security has even extolled their home country’s recent achievements. And some of Trump’s prominent Cuban-American supporters are now questioning his “maximum pressure” campaign for going too far.
Troubled waters for the Pink Tide
The current progressive wave, the so-called Pink Tide, was initiated by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018. His MORENA Party successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by an even greater margin in 2024. Mexico’s first woman president has proven to be perhaps the world’s most dignified and capable sparring partner with the buffoon in the White House, who has threatened tariffs, deportations, military interdictions, and more on his southern neighbor.
Left-leaning presidents Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are limited to a single term. Both have faced opposition-aligned legislatures and deep-rooted reactionary power blocs. Chilean Communist Party candidate Jeanette Jara is favored to advance to the second-round presidential election in November 2025, but will face a challenging final round if the right unifies, as is likely, around an extremist candidate.
As the first non-rightist in Colombia’s history, Petro has had a tumultuous presidential tenure. He credibly accuses his former foreign minister of colluding with the US to overthrow him. However, the presidency could well revert to the right in the May 2026 elections.
Boric, Petro, Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi, and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met in July as the region’s center-left presidents, with an agenda of dealing with Trump, promoting multilateralism, and (we can assume) keeping their distance from the region’s more left-wing governments.
With shaky popularity ratings, Lula will likely run for reelection in October 2026. As head of the region’s largest economy, Lula plays a world leadership role, chairing three global summits in a year. Yet, with less than a majority legislative backing, Lula has triangulated between Washington and the Global South, often capitulating to US interests (as in his veto of BRICS membership for Nicaragua and Venezuela). Regardless, Trump is threatening Brazil with a crippling 50% export tariff and is blatantly interfering in the trial of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of insurrection. So far, Trump’s actions have backfired, arousing anger among Brazilians. Lula commented that Trump was “not elected to be emperor of the world.”
In 2021, Honduran President Xiomara Castro took over a narcostate subservient to Washington and has tried to push the envelope to the left. Being constitutionally restricted to one term, Castro hands the Libre party candidacy in November’s election to former defense minister Rixi Moncada, who faces a tough contest with persistent US interference.
Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party is embroiled in a self-destructive internal conflict between former President Evo Morales and his former protégé and current President, Luis Arce. The energized Bolivian right wing is spoiling for the August 17th presidential election.
Israeli infiltration accompanies US military penetration
Analyst Joe Emersberger notes: “Today, all geopolitics relates back to Gaza where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before.” Defying Washington, the Hague Group met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza to “take collective action grounded in international law.” On July 16, regional states – Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – endorsed the pledge to take measures in support of Palestine, with others likely to follow. Brazil will join South Africa’s ICJ complaint against Israel.
At the other end of the political spectrum are self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and confederates Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. As well as cozying up to Trump, they devotedly support Israel, which has been instrumental in enabling the most brutal reactionaries in the region. Noboa duly tells Israel’s Netanyahu that they “share the same enemies.”
In February, the US Southern Command warned: “Time is not on our side.” The perceived danger is “methodical incursion” into our “neighborhood” by both Russia and China. Indeed, China has become the region’s second-largest trading partner after the US, and even right-wing governments are reluctant to jeopardize their relations with Beijing. The empire’s solution is to “redouble our efforts to nest military engagement,” using humanitarian assistance as “an essential soft power tool.”
Picking up where Biden left off, Trump has furthered US military penetration, notably in Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Panama, and Argentina. The pandemic of narcotics trafficking, itself a product of US-induced demand, has been a Trojan Horse for militarist US intervention in Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, and threatened in Mexico.
In Panama, President José Mulino’s obeisance to Trump’s ambitions to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive protests. Trump’s collaboration in the genocide of Palestinians motivated Petro to declare that Colombia must leave the NATO alliance and keep its distance from “militaries that drop bombs on children.” Colombia had been collaborating with NATO since 2013 and became the only Latin American global partner in 2017.
Despite Trump’s bluster – what the Financial Times calls “imperial incontinence” – his administration has produced mixed results. While rightist political movements have basked in Trump’s fitful praise, his escalating coercion provokes resentment against Yankee influence. Resistance is growing, with new alliances bypassing Washington. As the empire’s grip tightens, so too does the resolve of those determined to break free from it.
Once again, the American police state is choosing to protect predators, not victims.
Jeffrey Epstein—the hedge fund billionaire/convicted serial pedophile and sex trafficker—may be dead, but the machinery that empowered and protected him is still very much alive.
You see, the Epstein case was never just about Epstein—it was about the entire edifice of power that shields the ruling class, silences victims, and erases accountability.
Thus, the latest about-face declarations from the Trump administration—that Epstein had no client list, that he did, in fact, kill himself, and that there’s nothing more to discuss or investigate so we should just move on—have only reinforced what many have suspected all along: the system is rigged in order to protect the power elite because the power elite are the system.
In this age of partisan politics and a deeply polarized populace, corruption—especially when it involves sexual debauchery, depravity, and predatory behavior—has become the great equalizer.
With the reemergence of Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost in the public discourse, we are once again reminded of just how deep the rot goes.
Politics, religion, entertainment, business, law enforcement, the military—it doesn’t matter the arena or affiliation: all are riddled with the kind of seedy, depraved behavior that gets a free pass when it involves the powerful.
For years, the Epstein case has stood as a grotesque emblem of the depravity within America’s power elite: billionaires, politicians, and celebrities who allegedly trafficked in sex with young girls while insulated from accountability.
Both Clinton and Trump are renowned womanizers who have been accused of sexual impropriety by a significant number of women over the years. In fact, The Rutherford Institute represented Paula Jones in her landmark sexual harassment lawsuit against then-President Clinton—a case that helped expose how far the political establishment will go to shield its own.
So you have to wonder… when President Trump, who has used his administration’s war on human trafficking to justify expanding the government’s police state powers, quietly dismantles the very government agencies tasked with investigating and exposing sex trafficking… what exactly is going on?
The message from the top is clear: there will be no accountability.
This isn’t justice. It’s a double standard—one set of rules for the untouchables, and another for everyone else.
If it looks like a cover-up, smells like a cover-up, and appears to benefit all the usual suspects, is it so far-fetched to suspect that the government is once again closing ranks to protect the members of its power elite?
We’ve seen it before: from the CIA’s MK-Ultra experiments and the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations to CIA black sites and NSA mass surveillance.
Each time, secrecy protected the powerful and betrayed the people.
And it will keep happening—again and again—unless we confront the truth hiding in plain sight: that abuse of power is not an aberration of the system—it is the system.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the shadow economy of sex trafficking, where power, profit, and predation converge.
Give any one person—or government agency—too much power and allow them to believe that they are entitled, untouchable, and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will be abused.
We see this dynamic play out every day in communities across the United States.
A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs a civilian hospital and gets away with it.
It’s no coincidence that the same administration dismantling offices tasked with fighting human trafficking is also defunding the few agencies left to hold law enforcement accountable.
This is how the system works, protecting the untouchables—not because they’re innocent, but because the system has made them immune.
Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sex crimes, government corruption, or the rule of law.
Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.
Denver-based activists are seeking to shut off Flock ALPR (Automated License Plate Recognition) cameras in their city after reports indicate that the footage collected is being used for ICE arrests and to infringe on abortion rights.
Flock ALPR cameras take photos of the license plates of passing cars, and are used by law enforcement throughout the country to track down vehicles.
According to data reviewed by 404 Media, although Flock does not have a direct contract with ICE, the agency obtains data from Flock cameras through requests made to local law enforcement.
The US government intends to publish a plan on Wednesday that calls for the export of American AI technology abroad and a crackdown on state laws deemed too restrictive to let it flourish. According to a summary of the draft plan seen by Reuters, the White House will bar federal AI funding from going to…
Impotence takes various forms. Before the daily massacres, incidents of starvation and dispossession of Palestinians taking place in the Gaza Strip with primeval cruelty, international impotence in the face of actions by the Israeli state has become a mockery of itself. The calls to end the war in Gaza grow in number, even among Israel’s allies, but little in substance is being done about it. What matters are statements that speak to a wounded conscience that do little to alter anything on the ground.
One such statement, released on July 21, proved to be yet another one of those flossy effusions made by, as Macbeth might have said, idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The idiots numbered many: 28 international partners, including the foreign ministers of 27 states and, obviously not wanting to miss out, the EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management. All, bar Australia, were from Europe. “We, the signatories listed below, come together with a simple, urgent message: the war in Gaza must end now.”
The statement goes on to mention the drearily obvious. “The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity.” The “drip feeding of aid and inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of food and water” deserved condemnation. The deaths of over 800 Palestinians (the numbers are most certainly higher) while seeking aid was “horrifying”. Even here, the language lacked rage. Israel’s “denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.” The government “must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law.”
To that end, Israel was called upon to restore the flow of aid and enable the work of the United Nations and humanitarian NGOs to resume in the Strip. This is obviously something that the Netanyahu government is conscious of avoiding, given the systematic program of controlled starvation and deprivation being inflicted.
To add balance, the statement also notes the plight of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, their continued detention also something to be condemned. They were to be immediately and unconditionally released with a negotiated ceasefire being the best way of doing so.
The signatories do go so far as to acknowledge the dangers and intentions of Israel’s administrative measures that seek “territorial or demographic change in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The E1 settlement plan announced by Israel’s Civil Administration, if implemented, would divide a Palestinian state in two, marking a flagrant breach of international law and critically undermine the two-state solution.” The West Bank is also recognised in similar light, with the signatories urging a cessation to the violence taking place against Palestinians and a halt to the building of settlements across the territory “including East Jerusalem”.
These statements are always interesting for what they omit. No toothy measures to address the maltreatment of Palestinian civilians are stipulated, other than an encouragement of “a common effort to bring this terrible conflict to an end”. A benign, most unthreatening promise is made: the prospect of taking “further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a political pathway to security and peace for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region.” This may be code for recognition of a Palestinian state, fanciful given the systematic pulverisation of the people who would inhabit it. The signatory list also omits Germany and, most importantly of all, the United States, Israel’s arch guardian and evangelical sponsor.
The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, gave us a flavour of feelings in Washington about the signatories in a post on X. “How embarrassing for a nation to side [with] a terror group like Hamas & blame a nation whose civilians were massacred for fighting to get hostages released.” In another post that made a vague shot at justifying the unjustifiable, the ambassador absolved Israel in its conduct; only the militant group Hamas deserved exclusive blame. The nations in question had “put pressure on @Israel instead of savages of Hamas! Gaza suffers for 1 reason: Hamas rejects EVERY proposal. Blaming Israel is irrational.”
The Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar, ever lurking in the twilight of alternative reality, reasoned the statement away, much as relatives would the views of a demented, unloved aunt. “If Hamas embraces you – you are in the wrong place.” Praise from the group was itself “proof of the mistake they [the signatory countries] made – part of them out of good intentions and part of them out of an obsession against Israel.”
While the various foreign ministers were flashing their plumage of principles and international humanitarian law, the Israeli Defense Forces had busily commenced an operation on a part of Gaza they have yet to level: Deir al-Balah. Given its importance as a humanitarian hub that still houses UN staff and guesthouses, more slaughter is imminent.
Till Israel assumes the status of a pariah state it seemingly craves to become, its rogue army confined and depleted, its economy humbled and isolated, the industrial appetite for slaughter and dispossession will only continue. The Palestinians will be left to be relics of moral anguish, banished to the footnotes of bloodied history along with many more statements of concern and sheer impotence.
When the U.S. Constitution became operational on March 4, 1789, it didn’t include a people’s recall referendum/initiative for president and other federal officials. And still hasn’t. Only 19 states so far have voted them into their constitutions—beginning with Nebraska in 1897 and up to Mississippi, the last so far, in 1992.
We can only speculate why the Constitution’s Framers omitted a national recall in their lengthy deliberations in drafting the rules governing this young nation. They seem to have counted on a provision that a House impeachment and a Senate trial could oust a president. Somehow, they could not conceive of an autocratic or impaired president failing to uphold the Constitution, ruling a cowardly Congress, ignoring the courts, and crowning himself as the nation’s first lifetime dictator.
For starters, they obviously did not want a parliament or royalty to rule, nor voting by women, the property-less, and Native Americans. After all, how could the uneducated read or understand such ballot issues as budgets, taxes, war, corruption, property lines, gerrymandering, and the like? Besides, political leaders and officeholders recognized that voters might oust Senate and House members, Supreme Court judges.
Also, logistics of conducting a nationwide referendum or initiative was a factor, much less paying millions for it. Interestingly, it certainly hasn’t been a problem in electing a president in our 250-year history.
It also took a century before people recognized that state legislators failed to pass laws desperately needed. As an election expert on Ballotpedia’s website explained the origin of such oversight:
By the late 19th century, many citizens wanted to increase their check on representative government. Members of the populist and progressive movements were dissatisfied with the government; they felt that wealthy special interest groups controlled the government and that citizens had no power to break this control. A comprehensive platform of political reforms was proposed that included women’s suffrage, secret ballots, direct election of [legislative] senators, recall elections and primary elections.
The theory of the referendum process was that the individual was capable of enhancing the representative government. The populists—who believed citizens should rule the elected and not allow the elected to rule the people—and the progressives took advantage of methods that were already in place for amending state constitutions, and they began pushing state legislators to add an amendment that would allow for an initiative and popular referendum process.
Thus, the recall referendum/initiative system was born in those 19 states—but not for a president and other federal officials.
Soon, recalls took out mayors, judges, and two governors (North Dakota in 1921, California in 2003) and nearly California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. He won by 69.1 percent of the vote, having raised $70 million for media promotion. And he also campaigned around the state to “meet-and-greet” voters. The estimated cost to California taxpayers: $215 million. Last year, Newsom faced yet another recall by opponents who then failed to get the required 1,311,963 petition signatures in time to make the state ballot.
A presidential recall referendum would require a Constitutional Amendment by passage from Congress and state legislators—and approval by 38 states with a seven-year deadline to gather signatures. So prospects for expelling Trump do seem bleak. But all the 27 Amendments once had the same challenges and met them despite geographic distances and lacking today’s electronic communication systems.
But the majority of states passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) within the first year. Trump has three and a half years left to continue wreaking havoc on the American public and exchanging democracy for a dictatorship. If his first six months is any indication of peoples’ reaction to his rule, it brought at least five million angry protesters to the streets in a “No Kings” demonstrations against him a day before his 79th birthday. So consider what his continuing violations of the Constitution and democracy will do to destroy both during this term.
However, a new factor about election numbers can now foretell favorable outcomes if a recall movement gets started:
If the political marker of 3.5 percent of a nation’s voters opposes a dictator, the regime will fold, according to extensive long-term quantitative research noted recently by Harvard University professor Erica Chenoweth . America’s electorate was 154,000,000 in 2024, so 3.5 percent means it would take only 5.4 million voters to win a Constitutional Amendment referendum for recalling Trump.
Another factor is that far more millions would be voting in a Trump recall election than in 2024. For example, those five million No Kings protesters have family and friends who vote. So do those who couldn’t or wouldn’t participate. Then, add Trump’s social and healthcare victims affected by his “Big, Beautiful” budget-cutting bill he just signed into law. Like the 71, 258, 215 currently enrolled in Medicaid who will lose its benefits. Not to mention recipients’ families and friends. The 41 million on Trump’s chopping block for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) certainly would vote for a recall Amendment. So would the 73.9 million receiving Social Security benefits he is threatening. Include, too, the tens of thousands of federal employees (plus family/friends) who have just been fired/laid off by Trump’s hatchet man Elon Musk.
Multiply the total by 3.5 percent.
Republicans in Congress who voted for that bill because of Trumpian and donor threats can count that percentage. If they can’t or won’t, furious and outspoken constituents in town halls or at campaign rallies will awaken them in the months before the 2026 mid-term elections. So will public confrontations of state legislators.
In such a hostile constituent climate, it would seem to be fairly easy for them to ignore heavy pressure by Trump and donors to pass a recall Amendment. He will, of course, veto it, but Congress can override the veto with a two-thirds affirmative vote in both houses (House: 290; Senate: 67). Apply that 3.5 percent to those totals.
Another supportive factor for a recall Amendment is the historical precedent of success by people finally ridding their countries from years of repressive and rapacious rulers. The French did it with revolution and guillotine, beginning in 1789. Our revolution began brewing in 1775 and took eight years of war to free us from Britain’s mad King George III. Both bloody uprisings were inspired and patterned by the achievement of democracy and people’s rights, first won 800 years ago in England. That’s when its barons forced King John to apply the royal seal approving Magna Carta (the Great Charter) June 15, 1215 on Runnymede meadows.
That monumentally important document ended immunity for imperious, narcissistic kings under the centuries-old “Divine Right” policy, starting with the feckless King John’s tyrannical reign (1166-1216). Most of its 63 clauses set out the rights of subjects and kings, established British law, and influenced the authors of both the U.S. Constitution and France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
John was a pampered, favored youngest son of Henry II and one of four brothers. He inherited a fortune, vast taxable properties in England and whole sections of France. With a lascivious nature, he married twice and had numerous mistresses despite often being away with the army to fight the French from stealing his holdings. His early struggle to seize the throne revealed deviousness, murderous ambition, insecurity, paranoia, physical cowardice—and greed. As a king, he jailed opponents, bullied absolute loyalty from his officials and the army, stole lands from the nobility. Worst of all, he never ceased extorting excessive taxes from the elite, commoners, and the English church.
Sound like a president we know?
The bad years began for King John in 1209. He was briefly excommunicated for opposing Pope Innocent III’s choice of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury. He suspected the candidate’s involvement with the growing unrest of barons and the people. After an attempted assassination in 1212 in the 14th year of his reign of terror, John went after the barons he suspected of the deed. But they had banded together, began drafting Magna Carta (chiefly protecting themselves from future kings), and raised an army against him for a civil war.
Only fear of certain defeat by the barons and a near-empty treasury could have brought a humbled King John to use negotiation to escape Magna Carta’s clauses. He had no intention of obeying them—especially the security clause (61) permitting 25 barons to seize his property and “distrain” him if he disobeyed the charter. He even got the Pope to annul the document a month later. The war ended with John’s death from dysentery the following year. By 1225, Magna Carta was in force.
This extraordinary historical event could now be repeated almost exactly 810 years later, lacking only the same solution: a final uprising of the high and low classes to strip Trump of his office and fortunes by a recall Amendment. It’s not so wild a dream at all.
We don’t have the vast organizational obstacles of the 13th century that took 17 years to put Magna Carta in place. But we do have the same furious energy and zeal of King John’s outraged public to oust a dictator and save the Constitution and democracy.
Consider that some 500 national organizations exist—MoveOn, Indivisable, and SEIU to Win Without War, Greenpeace, Patriotic Millionaires, and ACLU—to set up a nationwide alliance for such a cause.
The speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of the recent No Kings protest against Trump’s dictatorial regime shows what’s possible when a coalition is galvanized for a great historical cause. Its organizers in the 50-50-1 group (“50 states, 50 protests, one movement”), American Opposition, and Indivisible linked 193 powerful progressive “partners” driven by a singleness of purpose: to depose Trump and his regime.
So why not a repeat of this astonishing logistical success for a national recall referendum? Millions of volunteers would be more than willing to knock on doors, do teach-ins and phone-banking, lead rallies and marches, design signs and flyers, write articles, stuff envelopes, send emails and other electronic “reach-outs,”—and contribute funds large and small for expenses.
Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors against the American people will only get worse if we do nothing in the next few weeks. Let’s get to it!
In March this year, the Trump administration effectively shuttered the Voice of America, a broadcasting vehicle for the selective promotion of US policy and culture for over eight decades. Nearly all of its 1,300 staff of producers, journalists and assistants, including those working at the US Agency for Global Media, were placed on administrative leave. Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s appointment to lead the Voice, was unflattering about that “giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer.” Last month, Lake confirmed that layoff notices had been sent to 639 employees.
The motivations for attacking VOA were hardly budgetary. The White House cited a number of sources to back the claim that the organisation had become an outlet of “radical propaganda.” VOA veteran Dan Robinson features, calling it “a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting leftist bias aligned with partisan national media.” The Daily Caller moaningly remarks that VOA reporters had “repeatedly posted anti-Trump comments on their professional Twitter accounts, despite a social media policy requiring employee impartiality on social media platforms.” The Voice, not aligned with MAGA, had to be silenced.
The measure by Trump drew its inevitable disapproval. VOA director, Michael Abramowitz, stuck to the customary line that his organisation “promotes freedom and democracy around the world by telling America’s story and by providing objective and balanced news and information, especially for those living under tyranny.” Reporters Without Borders condemned the order “as a departure from the US’s historic role as a defender of free information and calls on the US government to restore VOA and urges Congress and the international community to take action against his unprecedented move.”
As with much criticism of Trump’s seemingly impulsive actions, these sentimental views proved misguided and disingenuous. Trump is on uncontentious ground to see the Voice as one dedicated to propaganda. However, he misunderstands most nuttily that the propaganda in question overwhelmingly favours US policies and programs. His quibble is that they are not favourable enough.
Prohibited from broadcasting in the United States, VOA’s propaganda role was always a full-fledged one, promoting the US as a spanking, virtuous brand of democratic good living in the face of garden variety tyrants, usually of the political left. Blemishes were left unmentioned, the role of the US imperium in intervening in the affairs of other countries considered cautiously. Loath to adequately fund domestic public service providers like National Public Radio (NPR), the US Congress was content to fork out for what was effectively an information arm of government sloganeering for Freedom’s Land.
The VOA Charter, drafted in 1960 and signed into law as Public Law 94-350 by President Gerald Ford on July 12, 1976, expressed the view that “The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world by radio. To be effective, the Voice of America must win the attention and respect of listeners.” It stipulated various aspirational and at times unattainable aims: be reliable on the news, have authoritative standing, pursue accuracy, objectivity and be comprehensive. America was to be represented in whole and not as any single segment of society, with the VOA representing “a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.” US policies would be presented “clearly and effectively” as would “responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.”
The aims of the charter were always subordinate to the original purpose of the radio outlet. The Voice was born in the propaganda maelstrom of World War II, keen to win over audiences in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories. Authorised to continue operating by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1946, it continued its work during the Cold War, its primary task that of fending off any appeal communism might have. Till October 1948, program content was governed under contract with the NBC and CBS radio networks. This troubled some members of Congress, notably regarding broadcasts to Latin America. The US State Department then assumed control, authority of which passed on to the newly created United States Information Agency (USIA).
In such arrangements, the objective of fair dissemination of information was always subject to the dictates of US foreign policy. What mattered most, according to R. Peter Straus, who assumed the directorship of VOA in 1977, was to gather “a highly professional group of people and trying to excite them about making the freest democracy in the world understandable to the rest of the world – not necessarily loved by, nor even necessarily liked by but understood by the rest of the world.” The State Department left an enduring legacy in that regard, with the amalgamation of its Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs with the USIA in 1978 during the Carter administration. Furthermore, prominent positions at the Voice tended to be filled by career members of the diplomatic corps.
Given that role, it was rather rich to have the likes of Republican Congresswoman Young Kim of California question Trump’s executive order, worried that closing the Voice would effectively silence a body dedicated to the selfless distribution of accurate information. Accuracy in that sense, alloyed by US interests, would always walk to the dictates of power. Kim errs in assuming that reporting via such outlets, emanating from a “free” society, must therefore be more truthful than authoritarian rivals. “For a long time now, our reporting has not been blocked by adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea,” she claimed in March. “Now, we are ourselves shutting off the ability to get the information into those oppressed regimes to the people that are dying for the real truth and information.” As such truth and information is curated by an adjunct of the State Department, such people would be advised to be a tad sceptical.
The falling out of favour with Trump, not just of the Voice, but such anti-communist creations of the Cold War like Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, is a loss for the propagandists. Arguments that stress the value of their continued existence as organs of veracity in news and accuracy, correctives to the disinformation and misinformation of adversaries, are deludedly slanted. All forms of disinformation and misinformation should be battled and neither the Voice’s critics, nor its fans, seem to understand what they are. VOA and its sister stations could never be relied upon to subject US foreign and domestic policy to rigorous critique. Empires are not in the business of truth but power and effect. Radio stations created in their name must always be viewed with that in mind.
David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, held meetings in Washington this week seeking help from US officials to convince countries to take hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who Israel plans to ethnically cleanse from Gaza, Axios reported on 19 July.
According to two sources, the Israeli spy chief told White House envoy Steve Witkoff that Israel has been in talks with Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya to accept Palestinians as refugees.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims his government’s goal of expelling much or all of Gaza’s population will be “voluntary” for Palestinians, US and Israeli legal experts say it would constitute ethnic cleansing and a clear war crime.
In the 1970s, during the height of the farmworker movement, United Farm Workers leader César Chávez often rallied supporters with the phrase “Sí se puede” (“Yes we can”)—a slogan coined by UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta in 1972 during Chávez’s 25-day fast in Phoenix, Arizona. Today, as undocumented farmworkers face aggressive immigration enforcement in California’s fields, a darker refrain might be more fitting: “Cuidado con ICE”—watch out for ICE.
Farmworkers say they feel like they are being “hunted like animals,” as they desperately try to avoid getting swept up by Donald Trump’s “crackdown on immigration,” the Guardian’s Michael Sainato recently reported.
During interviews with farm workers and farmworker organizers, Sainato pointed out that “Raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have caused workers to lose hours and income, and forced them into hiding at home.”
Trump has been all over the map in defining his policy toward undocumented farm workers. In April, according to Fruit Growers News, “Trump suggested that farmers could help retain key workers by submitting letters of recommendation to delay deportations and support legal re-entry.
“‘A farmer will come in with a letter concerning certain people saying, they’re great, they’re working hard, we’re going to slow it down a little bit for them and then we’re going to ultimately bring them back. They’ll go out, they’re going to come back as legal workers,’ Trump said during the Cabinet meeting.”
In late-June, CNBC reported that Trump told Fox News that “We’re working on [a plan] right now. We’re going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away.”
Trump added: “What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers, where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He’s not going to hire a murderer. When you go into a farm and he’s had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren’t going to do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away. It’s a problem.”
That plan, which would put farmers in charge of immigration enforcement, “alarmed workers’ rights advocates, who suggested they were being asked to surrender ‘their freedom to their employer’ just to stay in the country,” the Guardian noted.
“You can’t go out peacefully to do things, or go to work with any peace of mind anymore. We’re stressed out and our kids are stressed out. No one is the same since these raids started,” one farm worker told the Guardian. “We are stressed and worrying if it continues like this, what are we going to do because the rent here is very expensive and it has affected us a lot. How are we going to make ends meet if this continues?”
Of the more than 2.6 million farm workers in the US, most are Hispanic, non-citizen immigrants. According to the Department of Agriculture, around 40% of crop workers — roughly 500,000 individuals – are undocumented.
In a recent Iowa rally, Trump “claimed the administration is looking into legislation to defer immigration enforcement on farms to farmers. ‘Farmers, look, they know better. They work with them for years.’”
“They have really demonized us with the word ‘criminals’,” Lázaro Álvarez, a member of the Workers’ Center of Central New York and Alianza Agrícola, said. “Despite the fact we are undocumented, we pay taxes. We are invisible to the government until we pay taxes, and we don’t receive any benefits.”
Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, said: “Everything that he’s doing to detain these workers is unconstitutional. They don’t have a document signed by a judge. They don’t have a court order. They want to just eliminate protections of farm workers who are currently here and have been working in the field for 20 to 30 years.
“These workers who have not committed any crime are being taken by people who are masked, are not wearing a uniform and don’t have a marked vehicle, so they are essentially being kidnapped.”
One undocumented farm worker told Sainato: “We worked through Covid. We worked through the wildfires in Los Angeles. We get up at 4am every day. No one else is willing to work the eight-, 10-hour days the way we do. We’re not criminals. We’re hardworking people trying to give our kids a better life. And we contribute a lot to this country.”
One day, a young prince died in the city of Unch in the Indian subcontinent. The boy had had great respect and love for a Shia Ismaili Pir Shams. (Pir means saint and Shams means Sun – Saint Sun.) The king was devastated; he ordered his magistrates and jurists to get a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad because only he could revive the prince. Failure to do so would result in severe punishment for them and their families. They went to Pir Shams and begged him to come because otherwise they would be victims of the king’s wrath.
Pir Shams came to the palace and, without invoking Allah, held the prince by arm who then came back to life. The prince recognized Pir Shams and they both left the palace. The nonbelievers were stunned. They shamed Pir Shams and charged him with acting like God. Pir Shams and the boy left the town. When it dawned upon Pir Shams, while he was meditating, that he had played the role of God, he removed his skin from head to toe as penalty. He, with the boy, returned to the city and gave his skin to the people.
Pir Shams and the boy were hungry but no one wanted to give or sell them food. Eventually, Pir Shams was able to get raw mutton, but was unable to get fire to cook it, so he prompted the Sun to descend and thus was able to cook the mutton.
The people were terrified by the heat and started burning, and they thought the Day of Judgement had arrived.
Once the mutton was cooked, the Sun went back to its celestial abode.
(This Ismaili saint Pir Shams — died 1356 CE — should not be confused with Mawlana Rumi’s spiritual mentor Shams Tabrizi — 1185–1248 CE).
The People’s Sun — today’s reality
350,000 people are homeless in NYC as of April 2025.
53% of New Yorkers’ debt has gone up due to high food costs. The number is 62% for New Yorkers, with children, who are under more debt.
$4200 is the rent New Yorkers pay for 1 bedroom apartment — the highest in the country.
Prior to losing the Democratic primary for NYC mayor in June 2025, Andrew Cuomo had been governor of New York state from 2011 to 2021. He was accused of cheating and screwing immigrant workers who cleaned the subways during the COVID 19 pandemic.
The people of New York City, when Cuomo was governor, suffered many cuts in Medicaid, public schools weren’t provided enough money because of austerity measures, and it was the same with the New York City’s subway system.
Corruption, inequality, injustice, police brutality, unemployment, underpaid, overworked, frustrated New Yorkers screamed enough is enough. They brought Zohran (means Sun) on the NYC mayoral platform making so many people happy. Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Party was also supported by the Working Families Party. He won the primary.
Zohran Mubarak
Zohran Mubarak to the US ruling class.
The word “mubarak” is of Arabic origin but is also used in many non-Arab countries and means “auspicious, blessed, lucky propitious, happy.” It is used in greetings such as Eid Mubarak,” “Diwali Mubarak,” Christmas Mubarak,” Wedding Mubarak,” “Ramzan Mubarak,” etc.
Gheraoe-d (Encircled or Besieged)
“We were gheraoed by every Age,
No one ever came to our rescue!
Then, one day, we gheraoed them,
And every tyrant shouted his rage.
No reason to worry:
We shall rise soon despite the pain.
And every city which is now dark
Will see the light once again.”
The rise of a people’s Sun burned the tyrants badly. The tyrants — the elites, racists, and moneyed class of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party; the Israeli Lobby; Israeli assets; Israeli agents; the billionaires; the media moguls; corporate bosses; Modi’s Hindutva supporters; and so many others shouted their rage.
Mamdani’s parents Mira Nair, a filmmaker, and Mehmood Mamdani, an academic, are Indians. So why are Modi’s supporters opposing Mamdani? Well, answering a question, Mamdani uttered the truth: like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a “war criminal” too.
Trump is 50% wrong, Mamdani is not a communist otherwise he would have said: “Let’s nationalize all industries; tech companies; universities; pharmaceutical companies; all financial institutes, including banks; Trump Towers, and so on and make common people’s life easy and give each family a house, free education, free healthcare, 10 hour work week, etc.”
Trump is 50% correct on the lunatic thing. Mamdani is a lunatic because:
Only a lunatic would think about providing free bus service for the common people.
Only a lunatic would criticize the 24/7/365 Israeli genocide of Palestinians, and risk losing easy-election-campaign money and support from the Israel Lobby to win the New York Mayor’s election with free trips to Israel.
Only a lunatic like Mamdani would refuse to be an Israeli asset. He could have become one of the Israeli assets like Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, and uncountable others in the Congress, US government, state governments, news media, universities, corporations, armed forces, and so many other organizations. Don’t be surprised, Israel is over the entire US body — like an end-of-life stage of cancer. Only people like Mamdani can save this sick state of affairs and people like Kshama Sawant and her Workers Strike Back can make it alive again.
In the first week of November 2026, Trump will most probably see 100% lunatic in the US House with the name of Kshama Sawant. The US desperately needs her, and many more like her.
“Zohran the Destroyer” is the title given by Fox TV’ reporter. Zohran is the destroyer, indeed. New York City is stinking with the Farts Of Xenophobes which he is going to eliminate and make it a nice smelling city.
“Civilised people in America don’t eat like this,” says US House representative Brandon Gill (Republican from Texas). He was criticizing Mamdani for eating with hands rather than fork, knife, and spoon. A photo of Gill’s father-in-lawDinesh D’Souza, of Indian origin had been posted eating with his hands.
The “civilized people” use hands to accumulate all the money for themselves, to send arms and ammunition to Israel and other countries to kill people, to sign bills cutting Medicaid, etc., and so on.
Many more such criticisms have been hurled, suffice it to say much hatred has been spewed against Mamdani.
Interrogation by US-based Israeliagents
“Do you recognize Israel as a state? Does it have a right to exist?” and six other questions asked by Politico’s Jason Beeferman and Jeff Coltin were all related to Israel and antisemitism.
“Does the State of Israel have the right to exist?” was the question Steven Colbert asked on his show.
“The first foreign visit by a mayor of New York is always considered significant. Where would you go first?” was one of the questions asked by one of the moderators David Ushery during the June 4, 2025, NBC Democratic mayoral primary debate.
Mamdani’s reply: “I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five Burroughs and focus on that.”
“Mr. Mamdani, can I just jump in? Would you visit Israel as mayor?” was the question by the Israeli agent Melissa Russo, pretending to be another moderator, who just couldn’t accept Mamdani’s concern for New Yorkers.
Mamdani’s reply: “I’ve said in a UJA [United Jewish Appeal? – Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Inc.] questionnaire that I believe that you need not travel to Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers. And that is what I will be doing as the mayor. I’ll be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and I’ll be meeting them wherever they are across the five Burroughs, whether that’s in their synagogues and temples or at their homes or at the subway platform because ultimately we need to focus on delivering on their concerns.”
Agent Russo was mad: “Answer just yes or no. Do you believe in a Jewish state of Israel?”
Mamdani: “I believe Israel has the right to exist …”
Agent Russo jumped in: “As a Jewish state?”
Mamdani:: “As a state with equal rights.”
Now Mamdani was attacked by Cuomo, an Israeli asset running for NYC mayor. Watch the entire video of this exchange after 1:56 here.
Israel has occupied Palestine and has been existing, expanding, and executing Palestinians regularly. So the question wasn’t: As a mayor, will you stop the genocide and end Palestinians’ misery?
The battle begins
All the forces arrayed against Mamdani are going to use full power with all means, right or wrong, available at their disposal to defeat Mamdani in the election. They’ll go to any extreme because, this time it’s a people’s candidate and not a billionaires’ candidate — which is never acceptable in the US.
Mamdani should counter his opponents as he did during the June 12 second and final debate. When Cuomo, whose PACs received $25 million from billionaires, went after Mamdani’s inexperience, Mamdani shot back:
“To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace, I’ve never cut medicaid, I’ve never stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the MTA, I’ve never hounded the 13 women who have credibly accused me of sexual harassment, I’ve never sued for their gynecological records, and I have not done those things because I am not you Mr. Cuomo. And further more the name is Mamdani, m-a-m-d-a-n-i, learn to get it right.”
Mamdani has a once in the US lifetime chance to change things, if not in the country, then at least in the most populated city.
The country’s major newspaper, the New York Times, during the 2024 presidential election, refused to publish hacked information on Donald Trump and his VP candidate JD Vance, but in case of Mamdani, it didn’t hold off on publishing hacked information, supplied by one “who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race.” The info was about Mamdani’s 2009 college admission form. The paper had stopped endorsing any candidates except presidential but it criticized Mamdani in an editorial which “effectively served as an anti-endorsement,” Gabe Whisnant noted in Newsweek.
Mamdani should always remember his middle name Kwame, named after independent Ghana’s first Prime Minister and then President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, “Pan-Africanist visionary” who was voted as “Africa’s Man of the Millennium.” By the grace of Uncle Sam, in the form of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Nkrumah was overthrown, like many others before and after him, while he was on a state visit to China and Vietnam in February 1966.
Nkrumah wrote in his book Dark Days in Ghana what methods the US uses in ousting foreign leaders:
“It has been one of the tasks of the CIA and other similar organizations to discover … potential quislings and traitors in our midst, and to encourage them, by bribery and the promise of political power, to destroy the constitutional government of their countries.”
Former Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York lost in 2024 when the AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) poured in $20 million to help their opponents. Bush and Bowman had called for ceasefire in Gaza.
This happens regularly to many candidates. Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard were the victims too. More than two decades back, Alexander Cockburn pointed out,
“Don’t you think that if Arab-American groups or African-American groups targeted an incumbent white liberal, maybe Jewish, congressperson, and shipped in money by the truckload to oust the incumbent, the rafters would shake with bellows of outrage.”
“All the powers of predatory capitalism, militarised fascism and genocidal Zionism have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.”
Don’t be Obama or Sanders
As President, Barack Obama had a great opportunity to change the course of ruthless capitalism that it has been on for many decades. He and his advisors instead strengthened those very forces who were responsible for the 2007-2008 financial crisis by bailing them out.
Multimillionaire Obama is a system’s man who is making millions and is ever ready to protect it when he senses even slight danger as he did it in 2020 when it seemed Bernie Sanders might overtake Joe Biden.
Bernie Sanders, an independent (but works with the Democratic Party), had twice, in 2016 and 2020, a chance to form a third party when he lost the presidential candidacy to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, respectively. His supporters were crazy for him and he could have changed the course of history. But no, he betrayed his cause and his supporters, and supported Hillary and Biden, instead.
So Zohran, don’t be like Obama or Sanders. If the anti-people-forces succeed in derailing your pursuit, join hands with Kshama Sawant and Jill Stein to form a third party. If Elon Musk with his hundreds of billions could make a third party, America Party, you could do too with your millions of voters, as the following video of yours acknowledges the voting power of people. Even if you’re elected, the Israel Lobby, the New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and all others will try to make your victory as miserable as they can as Cuomo had done with former mayor Bill de Blasio during his 2014 – 2021 rule.
Let the battle begin. May the good for the people triumph this time.
The second term of US President Donald Trump has been full of commentary about other nations – both official and unofficial – that often signals the administration’s intentions, even without formal policy declarations. In turn, when Trump has thrown darts at certain governments, his statements immediately become headlines that spark debates – and at times uncertainties – in the countries he addresses.
Latin America has been one of Trump’s favorite targets. One need only recall that during his first election campaign, he said that Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras were breeding grounds for criminals.
It’s time to choose your “–ocracy,” the one you think best fits a US society and system in free fall. There are some choices to suggest. We live not only in a plutocracy, it is also at the same time both a kakistocracy and a thanatocracy. What it isn’t any longer is a democracy, and it hasn’t been one for some time now. Our efforts should thus be directed at making it the kind of democracy it’s supposed to be.
Let’s explain these terms so that you can make an informed choice. In doing so, let’s start with plutocracy because it’s the one getting the most attention lately.
The New York Times has published an op-ed by a genocide scholar who says that he resisted acknowledging the truth of what Israel is doing in Gaza for as long as he could, but can no longer deny the obvious.
It’s an admission that may as well have come from The New York Times itself.
In an article titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies named Omer Bartov argues that “Israel is literally trying to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza,” and denounces his fellow Holocaust scholars for failing to acknowledge reality.
“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” Bartov writes. “Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer, and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”
And resist he did. In November 2023, Bartov wrote another op-ed for The New York Times saying, “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening.”
Apparently, he is seeing the proof now and has stopped resisting what has been clear from the very beginning. And it would seem the editors of the Gray Lady have ceased resisting as well.
In an internal memo obtained by The Intercept last year, New York Times reporters were explicitly told to avoid the use of the word “genocide”, as well as terms like “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory”.
“‘Genocide’ has a specific definition in international law,” the memo reads. “In our own voice, we should generally use it only in the context of those legal parameters. We should also set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not, unless they are making a substantive argument based on the legal definition.”
Earlier this year, the American Friends Service Committee cancelled its paid advertisement in The New York Times calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, saying the outlet had wanted them to change the word “genocide” to “war” in order for their ad to be published.
What is significant is that even experts who’ve been resisting acknowledging the reality of the genocide in Gaza because of their bias toward Israel have stopped doing so, and that even the imperial media outlets most fiendishly devoted to running propaganda cover for that genocide have run out of room to hide.
The Israel apologists have lost the argument. They might not know it yet, but they have. Public sentiment has turned irreversibly against them as people’s eyes are opened to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, and more and more propagandists are choosing to rescue what’s left of their tattered credibility instead of going down with the sinking ship.
Truth is slowly beginning to get a word in edgewise.
During President Donald Trump’s second term, education has remained a central battleground in American politics. Republicans claim that classrooms have become hotbeds of “woke” indoctrination, accusing educators of promoting progressive agendas and tolerating antisemitism. In contrast, Democrats argue that conservatives are systematically defunding and dismantling public and higher education precisely because it teaches values like diversity, equity, and inclusion. While these partisan skirmishes dominate headlines, they obscure a much deeper and more enduring issue that encompasses all of these issues and more: the influence of corporate and military power on public education.
For decades, scholars have warned that corporations have steadily infiltrated the classroom—not to promote critical thinking or democratic values, but to cultivate ideologies that reinforce capitalism, nationalism, and militarism. Critical media literacy educators, in particular, have drawn attention to the convergence of tech firms and military entities in education, offering so-called “free” digital tools that often serve as Trojan horses for data collection and ideological control.
One striking example is the rise of programs like NewsGuard, which uses public fears over fake news to justify increased surveillance of students’ online activity. Relatedly, in 2018, the Atlantic Council partnered with Meta to perform “fact-checking” on platforms such as Facebook. In 2022, the US Marine Corps discussed developing media literacy training. It remains to be seen what training, if any, they will develop. However, what is known is that a large global player has entered the media literacy arena: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While NATO presents its initiatives as supportive of media literacy and democratic education, these efforts appear to be oriented more toward reinforcing alignment with its strategic and political priorities than to fostering critical civic engagement.
NATO was created in 1949, during the Cold War, as a military alliance to contain communism. Although the war officially ended in 1991, NATO has expanded both its mission and membership. Today, it encompasses more than thirty member nations and continues to frame itself as a global force for peace, democracy, and security. But this self-image masks real conflicts of interest.
NATO is deeply intertwined with powerful nation-states and corporate actors. It routinely partners with defense contractors, tech firms, think tanks, and Western governments—all of which have a vested interest in maintaining specific political and economic systems. These relationships raise concerns when NATO extends its reach into education. Can a military alliance—closely linked to the defense industry and state propaganda—credibly serve as a neutral force in media education?
In 2022, NATO associates collaborated with the US-based Center for Media Literacy (CML) to launch a media literacy initiative framed as a strategic defense against misinformation. The initiative included a report titledBuilding Resiliency: Media Literacy as a Strategic Defense Strategy for the Transatlantic, authored by CML’s Tessa Jolls. It was accompanied by a series of webinars featuring military personnel, policy experts, and academics.
On the surface, the initiative appeared to promote digital literacy and civic engagement. But a closer look reveals a clear ideological agenda. Funded and organized by NATO, the initiative positioned media literacy not as a means of empowering students to think critically about how power shapes media, but as a defense strategy to protect NATO member states from so-called “hostile actors.” The curriculum emphasized surveillance, resilience, and behavior modification over reflection, analysis, and democratic dialogue.
Throughout their webinars, NATO representatives described the media environment as a battlefield, frequently using other war metaphors such as “hostile information activities” and “cognitive warfare.” Panelists argued that citizens in NATO countries were targets of foreign disinformation campaigns—and that media literacy could serve as a tool to inoculate them against ideological threats.
A critical review of NATO’s media literacy initiative reveals several troubling themes. First, it frames media literacy as a protectionist project rather than an educational one. Students are portrayed less as thinkers to be empowered and more as civilians to be monitored, molded, and managed. In this model, education becomes a form of top-down, preemptive defense, relying on expert guidance and military oversight rather than democratic participation.
Second, the initiative advances a distinctly neoliberal worldview. It emphasizes individual responsibility over structural analysis. In other words, misinformation is treated as a user error, rather than the result of flawed systems, corporate algorithms, or media consolidation. This framing conveniently absolves powerful actors, including NATO and Big Tech, of their role in producing or amplifying disinformation.
Third, the initiative promotes a contradictory definition of empowerment. While the report and webinars often use the language of “citizen empowerment,” they ultimately advocate for surveillance, censorship, and ideological conformity. Panelists call for NATO to “dominate” the information space, and some even propose systems to monitor students’ attitudes and online behaviors. Rather than encouraging students to question power—including NATO itself—this approach rewards obedience and penalizes dissent.
Finally, the initiative erases the influence of corporate power. Although it criticizes authoritarian regimes and “hostile actors,” it fails to examine the role that Western corporations, particularly tech companies, play in shaping media environments. This oversight is especially problematic given that many of these corporations are NATO’s partners. By ignoring the political economy of media, the initiative offers an incomplete and ideologically skewed version of media literacy.
NATO’s foray into media literacy education represents a new frontier in militarized pedagogy. While claiming to promote democracy and resilience, its initiative advances a narrow, protectionist, and neoliberal approach that prioritizes NATO’s geopolitical goals over student empowerment.
This should raise red flags for educators, policymakers, and advocates. Media literacy is not a neutral practice. The organizations that design and fund media literacy programs inevitably shape the goals and methods of those programs. When a military alliance like NATO promotes media education, it brings with it a strategic interest in ideological control.
Educators must ask: What kind of media literacy are we teaching—and whose interests does it serve? If the goal is to produce informed, critically thinking citizens capable of questioning power in all its forms, then NATO’s approach falls short. Instead of inviting students to explore complex media systems, it simplifies them into a binary struggle between “us” and “them,” encouraging loyalty over literacy.
True media literacy must begin with transparency about who and what is behind the curriculum. It must empower students to question all forms of influence—governmental, corporate, and military alike. And it must resist the creeping presence of militarism in our classrooms. As educators, we must defend the right to question, not just the messages we see, but the institutions that shape them.
Under the guise of public health and personal empowerment, this initiative is nothing less than the normalization of 24/7 bodily surveillance, ushering in a world where every step, heartbeat, and biological fluctuation is monitored not only by private companies but also by the government.
In this emerging surveillance-industrial complex, health data becomes currency. Tech firms profit from hardware and app subscriptions, insurers profit from risk scoring, and government agencies profit from increased compliance and behavioral insight.
This convergence of health, technology, and surveillance is not a new strategy—it’s just the next step in a long, familiar pattern of control.
Surveillance has always arrived dressed as progress.
Every new wave of surveillance technology—GPS trackers, red light cameras, facial recognition, Ring doorbells, Alexa smart speakers—has been sold to us as a tool of convenience, safety, or connection. But in time, each became a mechanism for tracking, monitoring, or controlling the public.
What began as voluntary has become inescapable and mandatory.
The moment we accepted the premise that privacy must be traded for convenience, we laid the groundwork for a society in which nowhere is beyond the government’s reach—not our homes, not our cars, not even our bodies.
RFK Jr.’s wearable plan is just the latest iteration of this bait-and-switch: marketed as freedom, built as a cage.
According to Kennedy’s plan, which has been promoted as part of a national campaign to “Make America Healthy Again,” wearable devices would track glucose levels, heart rate, activity, sleep, and more for every American.
Participation may not be officially mandatory at the outset, but the implications are clear: get on board, or risk becoming a second-class citizen in a society driven by data compliance.
What began as optional self-monitoring tools marketed by Big Tech is poised to become the newest tool in the surveillance arsenal of the police state.
Devices like Fitbits, Apple Watches, glucose trackers, and smart rings collect astonishing amounts of intimate data—from stress and depression to heart irregularities and early signs of illness. When this data is shared across government databases, insurers, and health platforms, it becomes a potent tool not only for health analysis—but for control.
Once symbols of personal wellness, these wearables are becoming digital cattle tags—badges of compliance tracked in real time and regulated by algorithm.
And it won’t stop there.
The body is fast becoming a battleground in the government’s expanding war on the inner realms.
In the eyes of the surveillance state, these could be red flags—justification for intervention, inquiry, or worse.
RFK Jr.’s embrace of wearable tech is not a neutral innovation. It is an invitation to expand the government’s war on thought crimes, health noncompliance, and individual deviation.
It shifts the presumption of innocence to a presumption of diagnosis. You are not well until the algorithm says you are.
The government has already weaponized surveillance tools to silence dissent, flag political critics, and track behavior in real time. Now, with wearables, they gain a new weapon: access to the human body as a site of suspicion, deviance, and control.
While government agencies pave the way for biometric control, it will be corporations—such as insurance companies, tech giants, and employers—who act as enforcers for the surveillance state.
Wearables don’t just collect data. They sort it, interpret it, and feed it into systems that make high-stakes decisions about your life: whether you get insurance coverage, whether your rates go up, whether you qualify for employment or financial aid.
As reported by ABC News, a JAMA article warns that insurers could easily use wearables to deny coverage or increase premiums based on personal health metrics, such as calorie intake, weight fluctuations, and blood pressure.
It’s not a stretch to imagine this bleeding into workplace assessments, credit scores, or even social media rankings.
Employers already offer discounts for “voluntary” wellness tracking and penalize nonparticipants. Insurers give incentives for healthy behavior—until they decide unhealthy behavior warrants punishment. Apps track not just steps, but mood, substance use, fertility, and sexual activity—feeding the ever-hungry data economy.
We now face the quiet erosion of autonomy through the normalization of constant monitoring.
We must ask: when surveillance becomes a condition of participation in modern life—such as employment, education, and healthcare—are we still free? Or have we become, as in every great dystopian warning, conditioned not to resist, but to comply?
That’s the hidden cost of these technological conveniences: today’s wellness tracker is tomorrow’s corporate leash.
Once health tracking becomes a de facto requirement for employment, insurance, or social participation, it will be impossible to “opt out” without penalty. Those who resist may be painted as irresponsible, unhealthy, or even dangerous.
This is not merely an expansion of healthcare. It is the transformation of health into a mechanism of control—a Trojan horse for the surveillance state to claim ownership over the last private frontier: the human body.
Once biometric data becomes currency in a health-driven surveillance economy, it’s only a matter of time before that data is used to determine whose lives are worth investing in—and whose are not.
This isn’t a left or right issue.
The conquest of physical space—our homes, cars, public squares—is nearly complete.
What remains is the conquest of inner space: our biology, our genetics, our psychology, our emotions. As predictive algorithms grow more sophisticated, the government and its corporate partners will use them to assess risk, flag threats, and enforce compliance in real time.
The goal is no longer simply to monitor behavior but to reshape it—to preempt dissent, deviance, or disease before it arises.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on 14 July that Hungary will not participate in financing US weapons for Ukraine, even if Washington formally proposes the initiative to the EU.
“I would like to emphasize that Hungarian money, Hungarian weapons, and Hungarian soldiers will not be sent to Ukraine.
Nothing will be sent there,” Szijjártó stated during a press conference in Budapest following a meeting with Moroccan Minister of Industry and Trade Ryad Mezzour.
Despite this, he expressed support for US President Donald Trump’s so-called peace efforts, stating: “No one has done as much for peace in Ukraine as Trump.”
Dmitri Trenin on the intermediate results of the “special diplomatic operation”
The war will not end in 2025. It will not end after the end of hostilities in Ukraine.
We need to realize that the current conflict is not about Ukraine as such.
This is a proxy (so far) war of the West against Russia. And this confrontation itself is part of an ongoing world war, in which the West is fighting to maintain world hegemony. This will be a long war, and the United States, with or without Trump, will remain our adversary. At stake for us in this struggle is not the status of Ukraine, but the existence of Russia.
President Donald Trump thought he had gotten the deal terms and the cover story right, and also the prize for himself (the Nobel Peace Prize ).
The deal was that under cover of an authorized leak to the press from Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eldridge Colby, that the US was running out of ammunition for Israel’s war with Iran, for the Ukraine war with Russia, and for US military stocks at their DEFCON levels, Trump would pause ammunition deliveries to the regime in Kiev, and then persuade President Vladimir Putin to agree to an immediate ceasefire in exchange.
That’s the ceasefire which, since February, Trump has been asking Putin to announce at a summit meeting between the two of them. That’s also the fourth ceasefire in the row which Trump has been counting as his personal achievements – between Pakistan and India on May 10; between Iran and Israel on June 23; and between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda on June 27.
Only the scheme has failed.
A Moscow source in a position to know explains: “The Russian calculus recognizes the tipping point [for US arms supplies to the Ukraine]. Until then the General Staff will grind away methodically, slowly. Then when the Western supplies run low, we will hit fast and hard. If you total the June attacks, the picture emerges clearly that Putin has chosen the Oreshnik option – without firing it yet — over compromising on Trump’s terms. The outskirts of Kiev are burning like never before.”
There are American exceptionalists who insist they thought of this before — in 1943, in fact, when Walter Lippmann spelled out what has come to be called (by Ivy League professors) the “Lippmann Gap”. This is no more nor less than the ancient maxim — don’t bite off more than you can chew. But in Lippmann’s verbulation: “Foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power. I mean by a foreign commitment an obligation, outside the continental limits of the United States, which may in the last analysis have to be met by waging war. I mean by power the force which is necessary to prevent such a war or to win it if it cannot be prevented. In the term necessary power I include the military force which can be mobilized effectively within the domestic territory of the United States and also the reinforcements which can be obtained from dependable allies.”
From the Russian point of view, the first two of Trump’s ceasefires have been clumsily concealed rescues for Pakistan and Israel; the Congo-Rwanda terms remain undecided; and the “necessary power” to reverse the defeat of the US, its “dependable allies”, and its proxies in the Ukraine has already been defeated. It won’t be Putin, however, to announce publicly that Trump has no “comfortable power in reserve”.
That, however, was Putin’s private message to Trump in their telephone call on July 3. “Russia would strive to achieve its goals,” was the way Putin allowed his spokesman to disclose: “namely the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, the bitter confrontation that we are seeing now. Russia will not back down from these goals.”
This is the reason Trump later acknowledged: “[I] didn’t make any progress with him today at all.” It’s also the reason Trump beat a retreat from failure. “I’m very disappointed. Well, it’s not, I just think, I don’t think he’s [Putin] looking to stop. And that’s too bad. This, this fight, this isn’t me. This is Biden’s war.”
Here are the pieces of the intelligence assessment assembled in Moscow which led to the escalation of drone and missile attacks on Kiev since last Thursday night.
The first announcement came from the Pentagon on July 1. “The Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low.” The sources were authorized to identify Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, “after a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles”. “The Pentagon had been dividing munitions into categories of criticality since February, over concerns that the DOD was using too many air defense munitions in Yemen…Plans were in place to redirect key munitions, including artillery shells, tank shells, and air defense systems, back to the U.S. homeland or to Israel.”
Source: https://www.politico.com/
Note the timing, according to Politico’s “three people familiar with the issue…The initial decision to withhold some aid promised during the Biden administration came in early June, according to the people, but is only taking effect now as Ukraine is beating back some of the largest Russian barrages of missiles and drones at civilian targets in Kyiv and elsewhere. The people were granted anonymity to discuss current operations. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.”
Colby has been the brains behind the strategy of sequencing Trump’s wars according to the bite-off-and-chew rule. But he has not been acting alone. He reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, a Jewish financier of Trump’s campaigns whose wealth has been accumulated in part from the US defence industry and from his one-time stake in Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi.
The Colby-Feinberg idea was not to admit there was a “Lippmann gap”, but instead to persuade Trump the Israel war should take priority over the Ukraine war; and that if that choice was made public, the Jewish lobby would prevail over the Ukraine lobby in supporting the president. Trump was also persuaded to acknowledge publicly there is a domestic shortfall of weapons, and in private get Putin to accept the ceasefire Trump had been promoting since their first telephone call on February 12.
Trump dutifully announced at the NATO summit on June 25: “we’re going to see if we can make some [arms] available, they’re very hard to get. They [Ukraine] do want to have the anti-missile missiles, as they call them the Patriots, and we’re going to see if we can make some available. You know, they’re very hard to get. We need them, too. We were supplying them to Israel and they’re very effective. 100 percent effective. Hard to believe how effective. And they do want that more than any other thing, as you probably know.”
Trump then tried with Putin on the telephone on July 3. He “once again raised the issue of ending the hostilities as soon as possible,” Putin’s spokesman Yury Ushakov confirmed Trump’s ceasefire pitch in the Kremlin read-out.
But Putin said no ceasefire now. “In turn, Vladimir Putin noted that we still continued the search for a political, negotiated solution to the conflict…the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs…Russia will not back down from these goals.”
“I’m not happy about that,” Trump said five hours later. “No, I didn’t make any progress with him today at all.”
Another hour went by and Trump repeated: “Yeah, very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, ’cause I don’t think he’s there. I don’t think he’s there.”
In Moscow an official source noted: “He is not telling why Zelensky is not there, not signing on the terms.”
Trump followed on the morning of July 4 in a telephone call with Vladimir Zelensky to discuss new Patriot missile and other arms deliveries to the Ukraine.
After the call with Zelensky, Trump was uncharacteristically silent. Zelensky did all the talking instead. “We spoke about opportunities in air defence and agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies. We have also agreed to a meeting between our teams. We had a detailed conversation about defence industry capabilities and joint production. We are ready for direct projects with the United States and believe this is critically important for security, especially when it comes to drones and related technologies.”
“We also touched on mutual procurement and investment,” Zelensky added — “we exchanged views on the diplomatic situation and joint work with the U.S. and other partners.”
This was a reference to proposals from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to run down his remaining stocks of Patriot missiles and their radar and launch batteries; send them to Kiev; and buy more from the US. The list of US arms shipments which have been halted reportedly include 155mm artillery rounds, Patriot air defence systems, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Stinger, AIM-7 and Hellfire missiles.
As the Kremlin interpreted the call, there was no sign from Trump that he was asking or telling Zelensky to accept any of the Russian terms which have been tabled in Istanbul.
At the State Department, spokesman Tammy Bruce stumbled awkwardly over what to admit was the Feinberg-Colby plan which Trump had accepted, and what alternatives remained for the Ukraine. The decision-making had come from the Pentagon, not from State, Bruce claimed. She then read out from a prepared script quoting a White House press release and a statement from Colby. “We don’t make decisions about the shipping of weapons,” Bruce said. “The DoD statement made clear that they have robust options as we continue to work to assist Ukraine when it comes to the options they might have from the DoD, and I don’t doubt that. So we should, I think, be cautious about judging the nature of what has just occurred, considering our commitment that remains for the country of Ukraine.”
Left: State Department statement by Tammy Bruce. Right, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell reads out prepared script. For more on the gap between DoD and State, read this.
“A capability review is being conducted,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell read out, “to ensure US military aid aligns with our defense priorities, and we will not be providing any updates to specific quantities or types of munitions being provided to Ukraine, or the timelines associated with these transfers,” he said. “We see this as a common sense pragmatic step …to evaluate what munitions are sent and where. But we want to be very clear about this last point. Let it be known that our military has everything that it needs to conduct any mission anywhere, anytime, all around the world.”
In fact, as Colby said, the “capability review” had already concluded and Feinberg had agreed with the White House in early June — before Israel launched its war on Iran on June 13. As the US and Israel fired far more ordnance at Iran than Colby and Feinberg had anticipated, they became nervous at the backlash this caused at State and National Security Council. “The Department of Defense continues,” Colby told the New York Post, “to provide the President with robust options to continue military aid to Ukraine, consistent with his goal of bringing this tragic war to an end. At the same time, the Department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach to achieving this objective while also preserving US forces’ readiness for Administration defense priorities. Department of Defense leadership works as a cohesive and smoothly-running team under the leadership of Secretary of Defense Hegseth. This is yet another attempt to portray division that does not exist…America’s potential adversaries know all of this and are acting accordingly.”
Putin has acknowledged publicly there has been no movement from Washington or Kiev towards the Russian end-of-war terms. “These [Russian, US-Ukrainian] are two absolutely opposing memorandums,” he told the press, “but that is precisely why talks are set up and held – to find ways to bring positions closer. The fact that they were diametrically opposed does not seem surprising to me, either. I would not like to go into details, as I believe it would be counterproductive – even harmful – to get ahead of the talks.”
From Ushakov’s read-out of the July 3 call, it is clear Trump and Putin were unable to agree on a date for a new round of Istanbul negotiations. “The two presidents will naturally continue communicating and will have another conversation soon,” Ushakov reported. This is Russian for don’t call me, I’ll call you.
The General Staff then launched its largest air attack on Kiev since the war began, continuing the operation from the night of July 4 through the night of July 5. The majority of the weapons used were Russian and Iranian drones. According to Boris Rozhin, the leading military blogger in Moscow, “it is not entirely clear how the supply of missiles for the Patriot air defence system — if the United States will allow them — will save Ukraine from the growing flow of Gerans [and Gerberas ]. Shooting down the Geran heroes with Patriot missiles is absolutely pointless from an economic point of view.” July 4 Min 22:54.
Oleg Tsarev, a leading Ukrainian opposition politician based in Crimea, commented “several thoughts about the termination of the United States’ supply of some weapons to Kiev. This is certainly great news, but we should not forget that, firstly, we are not talking about stopping the supply of all weapons, but only about some of the names, and secondly, the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the entire European Union, all Western countries, on which we do not strike. And thirdly, Ukraine is largely holding the front with drones and electronic warfare, and with the supply of these components they have no problems and none is foreseen.”
The Moscow consensus now is to escalate westwards from the front on the ground, and by air attack on Kiev, and wait for Trump. “Either Trump agrees on fresh direct shipments, or he will pretend that indirect shipments are a compromise, or he will abandon Zelensky to his fate. So we talk peace and keep moving on all fronts, keep hitting everything military. It is fast reaching the point where even if there was no Israel sector, Iran sector, Yemen sector, the US cannot save Ukraine. The US and Europe certainly can’t defeat Russia. That’s the calculus.”
Having figured out how to parlay presidential authority in foreign affairs in order to sidestep the Constitution, President Trump is using his immigration enforcement powers to lock up—and lock down—the nation.
At the center of this campaign is Alligator Alcatraz, a federal detention facility built in the Florida Everglades and hailed by the White House as a model for the future of federal incarceration. But this is more than a new prison—it is the architectural symbol of a carceral state being quietly constructed in plain sight.
With over $170 billion allocated through Trump’s megabill, we are witnessing the creation of a vast, permanent enforcement infrastructure aimed at turning the American police state into a prison state.
Yet be warned: what begins with ICE rarely ends with ICE.
Trump’s initial promise to crack down on “violent illegal criminals” has evolved into a sweeping mandate: a mass, quota-driven roundup campaign that detains anyone the administration deems a threat, regardless of legal status and at significant expense to the American taxpayer.
Tellingly, the vast majority of those being detained have no criminal record. And like so many of the Trump administration’s grandiose plans, the math doesn’t add up.
Making matters worse, many of these detained immigrants are then exploited as a pool of cheap labor inside the very facilities where they’re held.
The implications for Trump’s detention empire are chilling.
At a time when the administration is promising mass deportations to appease anti-immigrant hardliners, it is simultaneously constructing a parallel economy in which detained migrants can be pressed into near-free labor to satisfy the needs of industries that depend on migrant work.
What Trump is building isn’t just a prison state—it’s a forced labor regime, where confinement and exploitation go hand in hand. And it’s a high price to pay for a policy that creates more problems than it solves.
As the enforcement dragnet expands, so does the definition of who qualifies as an enemy of the state—including legal U.S. residents arrested for their political views.
In Trump’s prison state, no one is beyond the government’s reach.
Critics of the post-9/11 security state—left, right, and libertarian alike—have long warned that the powers granted to fight terrorism and control immigration would eventually be turned inward, used against dissidents, protestors, and ordinary citizens.
That moment has arrived.
Yet Trump’s most vocal supporters remain dangerously convinced they have nothing to fear from this expanding enforcement machine. But history—and the Constitution—say otherwise.
Our founders understood that unchecked government power, particularly in the name of public safety, poses the most significant threat to liberty. That’s why they enshrined rights like due process, trial by jury, and protection from unreasonable searches.
Those safeguards are now being hollowed out.
Trump’s detention expansion—like the mass surveillance programs before it—is not about making America safe. It’s about following the blueprints for authoritarian control in order to lock down the country.
The government’s targets may be the vulnerable today—but the infrastructure is built for everyone: Trump’s administration is laying the legal groundwork for indefinite detention of citizens and noncitizens alike.
This is not just about building prisons. It’s about dismantling the constitutional protections that make us free.
A nation cannot remain free while operating as a security state. And a government that treats liberty as a threat will soon treat the people as enemies.
This is not a partisan warning. It is a constitutional one.
We are dangerously close to losing the constitutional guardrails that keep power in check.
The very people who once warned against Big Government—the ones who decried the surveillance state, the IRS, and federal overreach—are now cheering for the most dangerous part of it: the unchecked power to surveil, detain, and disappear citizens without full due process.
Limited government, not mass incarceration, is the backbone of liberty.
The Founders warned that the greatest threat to liberty was not a foreign enemy, but domestic power left unchecked. That’s exactly what we’re up against now. A nation cannot claim to defend freedom while building a surveillance-fueled, prison-industrial empire.
Trump’s prison state is not a defense of America. It’s the destruction of everything America was meant to defend.
We can pursue justice without abandoning the Constitution. We can secure our borders and our communities without turning every American into a suspect and building a federal gulag.
If we continue down this path, cheering on bigger prisons, broader police powers, and unchecked executive authority—if we fail to reject the dangerous notion that more prisons, more power, and fewer rights will somehow make us safer—if we fail to restore the foundational limits that protect us from government overreach before those limits are gone for good—we may wake up to find that the prisons and concentration camps the police state is building won’t just hold others.
Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza has been fueled by a surge in deliveries of military-grade jet fuel from U.S. providers. In this visual, we expose the companies and governments complicit in this supply chain, while highlighting grassroots efforts to track and disrupt this deadly cargo through direct action, boycott campaigns, and community resistance.
Congressional passage of Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” provides the latest evidence that human greed, despite its primitive nature, remains alive and well.
Perhaps most noticeably, the legislation provides for over $3 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and their corporations. This largesse is facilitated by slashing over $1.4 trillion in healthcare and food assistance for low-income Americans and increasing the national debt by $3.3 trillion. Estimates reveal that at least 16 million Americans will lose health care coverage and 7 million people (including 2 million children) will lose food aid or have their food aid cut significantly. Meanwhile, according to the Yale Budget Lab, the nation’s top 0.1 percent―people with an annual income over $3.3 million―will receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average. Condemning the legislation, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declared simply that it “takes from the poor to give to the wealthy.”
Other measures in the legislation supporting the wealthy and their businesses at public expense include financial subsidies for coal, oil, and gas companies, the opening of opportunities for oil and gas corporations to drill on public lands (including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve), and the reduction of royalty fees for such fossil fuel drilling.
Of course, this kind of class legislation and the greed that inspires it are nothing new. Throughout history, some people have amassed great fortunes, often with the assistance of governments and other powerful entities. Kings, princes, and their courtiers provided themselves with castles, vast landed estates, and other perquisites of wealth, while millions of their subjects lived in miserable huts and dug a few potatoes out of their fields in a desperate effort to survive. In later years, this situation was replicated to some extent as business titans garnered great wealth by exploiting workers in factories, mines, and fields.
Although this pattern of economic inequality was viewed as immoral by every great religious and ethical system, it did have a brutal logic to it. After all, in these situations of overall scarcity, some people would be poor and some would surely die. By contrast, growing rich helped guarantee survival for oneself and one’s family.
But with the advent of the industrial revolution, these tragic circumstances began to dissipate, for human beings increasingly possessed the knowledge, skills, and resources that had the potential to produce decent lives for everyone. Indeed, as science, technology, and factory output advanced and produced unprecedented abundance, there was no longer any morally justifiable basis for the existence of hunger, homelessness, and mass sickness.
In these altered conditions, avarice has become increasingly irrational―the driving force behind irrational men like Donald Trump and his billionaire friends, who, even as millions of people live and die in poverty and misery, seek to wallow in great wealth.
Gandhi put it concisely when he declared, decades ago: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
Fortunately, over the course of human history, humane thinkers, social movements, and political parties have worked to rein in untrammeled greed in the interest of a better life for all humanity. In recent centuries, they have recognized the fact that sharing the wealth is not only a moral stance, but a feasible one.
Let’s hope, then, that despite this brazen and regressive move by the Trump administration to bolster economic privilege at the expense of human needs, the forces favoring human equality and compassion will ultimately prevail.
