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Category: United States

  • Socialist Women In Texas Vow To Take On Abortion Bans

    Dozens of Texans packed into a Methodist church in San Antonio, Texas for the “Women’s Socialism Conference,” organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The gathering was the first of its kind in Texas. Attendees traveled to San Antonio from across the state and the country to talk about the issues that women face in Texas and how socialist ideas and policies could be a solution.

    According to Destiney Peña, an organizer with the PSL in San Antonio, the conference challenges the narrative that Texas is a “lost cause” politically, or a “state full of Trump supporters,” rather than a state with a diverse range of political opinions.

    The post Socialist Women In Texas Vow To Take On Abortion Bans appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump’s First Four Months

    Today marks four months since would-be dictator Trump took office. How is the progressive resistance doing in its urgent battle to prevent what Trump and the MAGA want to impose?

    In early February, a few weeks into this time of testing, I identified our objectives over the next two years as “making as many advances as we can on local and state levels while preventing as much damage as possible to the primary MAGA targets: US democracy, human and civil rights, including internationally, organized labor and programs that benefit low- and moderate-income working people, and the natural environment on which all life depends.” I put forward five areas of focus, five tactics, that I thought were critical for successful resistance: street heat, local/state/federal government, courts, media and publicity, and outreach.

    I think the most important development over these months has been the emergence of massive, repeated, and geographically widespread street heat, millions of us demonstrating in state capitols, in DC, at Tesla dealerships, in thousands of towns in every single state. The high point so far was three and a half million of us in the streets for the April 5 “Hands Off” actions, but the many other national days of action, beginning with 50501’s February 5 mobilization, have all been critical to building a widespread spirit of resistance.

    June 14, No Kings Day, is the next major nationwide action, and with 880  actions already on the calendar, there is reason to believe this will be bigger than April 5. We should all do whatever we can to make it so!

    These actions have undoubtedly strengthened those of us taking part in them and others: law firms, Harvard and other major universities, judges, media figures, faith leaders, and more. Indeed, courage is contagious, and on that front, we should feel good about what we have accomplished so far.

    As far as the courts, according to the Associated Press, as of today, 158 Trump executive orders, or 76% of them, have either been blocked or are pending, with 49, or 24%, taking effect. These are not good numbers for the Trumpfascists and a sign that they are going to have a hard time doing all that they want to do.

    It’s also significant that the Supreme Court has, in several cases, refused to do Trump’s bidding. There are clear signs that not just the three liberal judges but also some conservatives, especially Roberts and Barrett, have substantial concerns about Trump’s efforts to dominate both Congress and the courts.

    What about Congress? As I write, the Republicans who run the House of Representatives with a tiny majority struggle to pass the reconciliation bill, ridiculously named the “Big Beautiful Bill,” they have been working on for months. If eventually passed, and that’s a definite “if,” the Republican-run Senate is by no means ready to approve what the House comes up with. There are many internal differences, some strongly felt, both within the overall House and on the part of more than a few Senators in relation to how and what the House is doing.

    That is why many groups, right now, are organizing to mobilize massive pressure on members of the House. All of us should be flooding House members demanding, if Democrats, that they speak out and do whatever they can to frustrate MAGA plans. Even more important, pressure is needed on Republicans, especially those who are in Congressional districts that are expected to be competitive in 2026.

    As far as media and publicity, our actions in the streets and the growing willingness of people and organized groups from a broad mix of backgrounds to speak up and resist have had an impact on more than the usual progressive media sources. The Wall Street Journal (!), as one big example, has been very critical of Trump, mainly for his poor leadership when it comes to the economy, especially the tariff debacle. Every once in a while, Fox News people have had specific criticisms of what the Trump Administration is doing. Overall, in no way has the mass media, and certainly not progressive media, including social media, been cowed into silence and submission.

    There are other indicators that the progressive resistance should take heart and keep on with our absolutely essential work:

    -Where have the MAGAs been when we have demonstrated repeatedly in the streets, including the streets in deep red states? I’ve heard of very, very few instances of any substantive, MAGA, in-person street opposition. This has to be in part because, as polls have shown, there is a lot of discontent among a significant percentage of Trump voters about his handling of the economy, particularly the tariff debacle.

    -Bernie Sanders and AOC deserve a loud shout-out for the leadership they gave with their Fight Oligarchy tour of mainly red states, drawing thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of people to their rallies. That’s a huge example of the kind of outreach much needed over the coming months and years.

    There is something special about this demonstration of the power of age and youth joining together, which has also been reflected in many of the street actions. Bernie and AOC are showing in action how to take on the MAGAs in a way that also builds a strong, independent people’s movement not controlled by the corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic Party.

    -And what about Pope Leo 14? The Catholic Church, as male-dominated and hierarchical as it still is, has decided to continue the more progressive direction that the late Pope Francis worked to advance. We now have a new Pope from Chicago, an American who has already made clear he will speak out for those whom the Trumpists are demonizing and deporting, criminalizing, and hurting. For those who believe in a higher power, it could be seen as a sign that, despite Trump, despite Gaza, despite so many reasons not to have hope, there is hope.

    It really is true that there ain’t no power like the power of the people, organized, and the power of the people doesn’t stop.

    The post Trump’s First Four Months first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Infrastructure Failure In The United States Of America

    Recent events in America’s air transport system suggest that the system is becoming more prone to dangerous failures. Those failures include a January 29 mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and a passenger jet Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport; a harrowing near miss between a landing passenger aircraft and an unauthorized business jet crossing the runway; a plane taxiing to the gate in Denver when an engine caught fire leading to the evacuation of all passengers, all of whom survived; and a blackout of air traffic controllers’ screens for 60 to 90 seconds at Newark Liberty International Airport.

    The post Infrastructure Failure In The United States Of America appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Bruce Springsteen Lambastes “Treasonous” Trump During Start of European Tour

    bruce-springsteen-en-concert-en-allemagne-en-juillet-photo-sipa-ap-georg-wendt-1694060256.jpg
    Speaking at a concert in Manchester, the American singer-songwriter said his country was “in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”

    Musicians protesting against political leaders and government policies have a long and distinguished history in the United States. Bruce Springsteen, 75, one of the country’s most beloved singer-songwriters, lambasted President Donald Trump this week at a concert in Manchester, England, during the first leg of his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour.

    Here is a transcript of Springsteen’s remarks:

    Introduction to Land of Hope and Dreams

    Good Evening!

    It’s great to be in Manchester and back in the U.K. Welcome to the Land of Hope & Dreams Tour! The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ‘n’ roll in dangerous times.

    In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.

    Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!

    Introduction to House of a Thousand Guitars

    The last check, the last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me. It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other.

    Introduction to My City of Ruins

    There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

    In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

    In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.

    They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society.

    They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.

    They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

    A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.

    The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.

    In a statement, the White House lashed out at Springsteen saying that “the 77 million Americans that elected President Trump disagree with elitist and out-of-touch celebrities like Bruce Springsteen. Bruce is welcome to stay overseas while hardworking Americans enjoy a secure border and cooling inflation thanks to President Trump.”

    On Friday, Mr. Trump responded on his social media platform, saying that the rocker is “just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country.”

    He added: “Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

    Dating back to pre-Revolutionary War times, protest music has always had its day. “Yankee Doodle” was ordered played by the Marquis de Lafayette after the British surrender at Yorktown. The music of the abolition movement celebrated African musical traditions.

    During the Great Depression Woody Guthrie sang about refugees forced of their land and migrating across the country. Billie Holiday singing Abel Meeropol’s 1939 anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit” was a catalyst for the civil rights movement. Paul Robeson sang about mistreated workers. Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Marvin Gaye and others crafted songs protesting, racism, social injustice, and the foolhardiness of the Viet Nam War.

    In 2003, at a concert in London, The Chicks (then known as The Dixie Chicks) spoke out against George W. Bush and the Iraq War, triggering a backlash that had an enormous effect on its career. At the time, The Dixie Chicks were one of the most popular American country acts. After the statement was reported it triggered a backlash from American country listeners. The group was blacklisted by many country radio stations, received death threats and was criticized by other country musicians.

    In addition to his tour, later this summer, Springsteen will release a new album collection that will include dozens of “never-before-heard” songs from previously unreleased records.

    The post Bruce Springsteen Lambastes “Treasonous” Trump During Start of European Tour first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump Proposes Tax-Increases on Poor to Fund Tax-Cuts on Rich

    On May 17, MSNBC, a Democratic Party propaganda-site, issued an “opinion” article that was loaded with links to its sources, including Republicans, and the article honestly represented what it reported, and its sources were entirely credible, so that that article actually constituted news, and not only this, but it is very important news for every American: Donald Trump’s proposed tax-legislation would, if passed into law, include front-end-loaded (short-term) tax-cuts for the poor, and back-end-loaded — indeed PERMANENT — tax-cuts for multimillionaires and billionaires, so as to pay for the increased spending that Trump wants for just two federal Departments — the Defense Department and the Homeland Security Department (both of which Departments most other nations’ Governments classify as being for national security or the military and so are called “defense spending”) — and decreased spending on every other federal Department (including all services to the poor).

    So: on the taxes side, Trump wants increases on the poor and decreases on the rich; and, on the spending side, he wants spending increases on the military, and spending decreases on everything else.

    If you want to see the MSNBC News report, click here; and, if you want to see the analysis that I did on Trump’s proposed federal budget, click here.

    A further indication of Trump’s priorities as to how he intends to spend U.S. taxpayers’ dollars was provided also on May 17, at The Arab Weekly, headlining “US said to be developing ‘a plan’ to move one million Palestinians to Libya: In exchange for resettling the Palestinians, the administration would release to Libya billions of dollars of funds.” Some important background on why Palestinians refuse to relocate out of Palestine, is that any who do, will thereby lose their legal right of return because that territory will then be taken by Israel and resettled by Zionist Jews, so that the result would then be a total defeat of the Palestinians by Israel — all of their legal rights will have been lost. And whatever they might ‘gain’ would be at gunpoint — NOT as part of any authentic deal that they had participated in. (And, indeed, the recipients of those American taxpayers’ billions of dollars will have been NOT any Palestinians, but, instead, whatever Libyan ‘government’ would be agreeing to accept the Gazans.) And then, that would be a million Gazans whom Netanyahu won’t need to slaughter in order for Trump and his friends to be able to build their hotels and resorts on the Mediterranean Sea, at the sandy beaches which had formerly been the Gaza beachfront of Palestine.

    According to the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2), all proposed international agreements, or “treaties,” that the U.S. Government joins, have first been passed by a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate. However, ever since 1974, that provision of the U.S. Constitution has routinely been violated. (It’s done on the theory that if the Executive and the Legislative branches both want to violate it, then the treaty will be simply relabeled a “congressional-executive agreement” — CEA) — which is negotiated between those two Branches and approved not by any two-thirds vote, but only by a 50% majority in both Houses, just like any regular law does that gets to a President’s desk for his/her signature. This verbal trick against the Founders’ intention when they wrote the Constitution, makes far easier for America’s billionaires to get the treaties that they want. The U.S. has had a traitorous Government like this ever since 1945, when the Declaration-of-War clause became no longer functional — and thus the military-industrial complex started to rule the U.S. Government — which also was achieved by means of a form of CEA.)

    The post Trump Proposes Tax-Increases on Poor to Fund Tax-Cuts on Rich first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Reinstates Funding to Propaganda Outlet

    The brief freeze and rapid partial reinstatement of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding in early 2025 helped expose it as a US regime-change tool. Created to rebrand CIA covert operations as “democracy promotion,” the NED channels government funds to opposition groups in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, meddling in their internal affairs.

    Regime change on the US agenda

     In 2018, Kenneth Wollack bragged to the US Congress that the NED had given political training to 8,000 young Nicaraguans, many of whom were engaged in a failed attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Wollack was praising the “democracy-promotion” work carried out by NED, of which he is now vice-chair. Carl Gershman, then president of the NED and giving evidence, was asked about Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who had been re-elected with an increased majority two years prior. He responded: “Time for him to go.”

    Seven years later, Trump took office and it looked as if the NED’s future was endangered. On February 12, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk froze disbursement of its congressionally approved funds. Its activities stopped and its website went blank. On February 24, Richard Grenell, special envoy to Venezuela, declared that “Donald Trump is someone who does not want to make regime changes.”

    Washington’s global regime-change operations were immediately impacted and over 2,000 paid US collaborating organizations temporarily defunded. A Biden-appointed judge warned of “potentially catastrophic harm” to (not in her words) US efforts to overturn foreign governments. The howl from the corporate press was deafening. The Associated Press cried: “‘Beacon of freedom’ dims as US initiatives that promote democracy abroad wither.”

    However, the pause lasted barely a month. On March 10, funding was largely reinstated.  The NED, which “deeply appreciated” the State Department’s volte face, then made public its current program which, in Latin America and the Caribbean alone, includes over 260 projects costing more than $40 million.

    US “soft power”

    Created in 1983 under President Ronald Reagan following scandals involving the CIA’s covert funding of foreign interventions, the NED was to shift such operations into a more publicly palatable form under the guise of “democracy promotion.” As Allen Weinstein, NED’s first acting president, infamously admitted in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” In short, NED functions as a “soft power arm” of US foreign policy.

    The NED disingenuously operates as a 501(c)(3) private nonprofit foundation. However, it is nearly 100% funded by annual appropriations from the US Congress and governed mainly by Washington officials or ex-officials. In reality, it is an instrument of the US state—and, arguably, of the so-called deep state. But its quasi-private status shields it from many of the disclosure requirements that typically apply to taxpayer-funded agencies.

    Hence we encounter verbal gymnastics such as those in its “Duty of Care and Public Disclosure Policies.” That document loftily proclaims: “NED holds itself to high standards of transparency and accountability.” Under a discussion of its “legacy” (with no mention of its CIA pedigree), the NGO boasts: “Transparency has always been central to NED’s identity.”

    But it continues, “…transparency for oversight differs significantly from transparency for public consumption.” In other words, it is transparent to the State Department but not to the public. The latter are only offered what it euphemistically calls a “curated public listing of grants” – highly redacted and lacking in specific details.

    NED enjoys a number of advantages by operating in the nether region between an accountable US government agency and a private foundation. It offers plausible deniability: the US government can use it to support groups doing its bidding abroad without direct attribution, giving Washington a defense from accusations of interference in the internal affairs of other countries. It is also more palatable for foreign institutions to partner with what is ostensibly an NGO, rather than with the US government itself.

    The NED can also respond quickly if regime-change initiatives are needed in countries on Washington’s enemy list, circumventing the usual governmental budgeting procedures. And, as illustrated during that congressional presentation in 2018 on Nicaragua, NED’s activities are framed as supporting democracy, human rights, and civil society. It cynically invokes universal liberal values while promoting narrow Yankee geopolitical interests. Thus its programs are sold as altruistic rather than imperial, and earn positive media headlines like the one from the AP cited above.

    But a look at NED’s work in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba suggests very much the opposite.

    Venezuela

     Venezuela had passed an NGO Oversight Law in 2024. Like the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act, but somewhat less restrictive, the law requires certification of NGOs. As even the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) – an inside-the-beltway promoter of US imperialism with a liberal gloss –  admits: “Many Venezuelan organizations receiving US support have not been public about being funding recipients.”

    The pace of Washington’s efforts in Venezuela temporarily slowed with the funding pause, as US-funded proxies had to focus on their own survival. Venezuelan government officials, cheering the pause, viewed the NED’s interference in their internal affairs as a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. In contrast, the US-funded leader of the far-right opposition, Maria Corina Machado, begged for international support to make up for the shortfall from Washington.

    WOLA bemoaned that the funding freeze allowed the “Maduro government to further delegitimize NGOs” paid by the US. Hundreds of US-funded organizations, they lamented, “now face the grim choice of going underground, relocating abroad, or shutting down operations altogether.”

    With the partial reinstatement of funding, now bankrolling at least 39 projects costing $3.4 million, former US senator and present NED board member Mel Martinez praised the NED for its “tremendous presence in Venezuela… supporting the anti-Maduro movement.”

    Nicaragua

     Leading up to the 2018 coup attempt, the NED had funded 54 projects worth over $4 million. Much of this went to support supposedly “independent” media, in practice little more than propaganda outlets for Nicaragua’s opposition groups. Afterward, the NED-funded online magazine Global Americans revealed that the NED had “laid “the groundwork for insurrection” in Nicaragua.

    One of the main beneficiaries, Confidencial, is owned by the Chamorro family, two of whose members later announced intentions to stand in Nicaragua’s 2021 elections. The family received well over $5 million in US government funding, either from the NED or directly from USAID (now absorbed into the State Department). In 2022, Cristiana Chamorro, who handled much of this funding, was found guilty of money laundering. Her eight-year sentence was commuted to house arrest; after a few months she was given asylum in the US.

    Of the 22 Nicaragua-related projects which NED has resumed funding, one third sponsor “independent” media. While the recipients’ names are undisclosed, it is almost certain that this funding is either for outlets like Confidencial (now based in Costa Rica), or else is going direct to leading opponents of the Sandinista government to pay for advertisements currently appearing in Twitter and other social media.

    Cuba

     In Latin America, Cuba is targeted with the highest level of NED spending – $6.6 million covering 46 projects. One stated objective is to create “a more well-informed, critically minded citizenry,” which appears laughable to anyone who has been to Cuba and talked to ordinary people there – generally much better informed about world affairs than a typical US citizen.

    Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez criticized the NED’s destabilizing activities, such as financing 54 anti-Cuba organizations since 2017. He advised the US administration to review “how many in that country [the US] have enriched themselves organizing destabilization and terrorism against Cuba with support from that organization.”

    Washington not only restored NED funding for attacks on Cuba but, on May 15, added Cuba to the list of countries that “do not fully cooperate with its anti-terrorist efforts.”

     The NED: Covert influence in the name of democracy

     Anyone with a basic familiarity with the Washington’s workings is likely to be aware of the NED’s covert role. Yet the corporate media – behaving as State Department stenographers and showing no apparent embarrassment – have degenerated to the point where they regularly portray the secretly funded NED outlets as “independent” media serving the targeted countries.

    Case in point: Washington Post columnist Max Boot finds it “sickening” that Trump is “trying [to] end US government support for democracy abroad.” He is concerned because astroturf “democracy promotion groups” cannot exist without the flow of US government dollars. He fears the “immense tragedy” of Trump’s executive order to cut off funding (now partially reinstated) for the US Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of the Voice of America, Radio Marti, and other propaganda outlets.

    Behind the moralistic appeals to democracy promotion and free press is a defense of the US imperial project to impose itself on countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Those sanctioned countries, targeted for regime change, need free access to food, fuel, medicines and funding for development. They don’t need to hear US propaganda beamed to them or generated locally by phonily “independent” media.

    The post US Reinstates Funding to Propaganda Outlet first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • America’s Impact on the Global Thermostat

    America is targeting a hotter planet… Bring it on!

    That’s the only plausible explanation for the Trump administration’s gung-ho push for 100% fossil fuels and as much coal burning as possible while trashing mitigation of climate change, which is characterized as an expensive hoax, a farce, a threat to the U.S. economy, plus massive roll backs of environmental regulations that force American businesses to spend more to keep America’s environment clean. Based upon these cutbacks of environmental regulations, they’re clearly ignoring climate change.

    But the property/casualty insurance industry has no choice in the matter. They are forced to recognize the damage caused by climate change. And, Boy, Oh Boy! are they ever squealing!

    More to the point: Climate Change has Trapped the Unites States in a vicious Property Insurance Maelstrom that is negatively impacting homeownership, much more on this sensitive subject follows.

    It’s indisputable that the U.S. is intentionally turning up the thermostat at the same time as the world is trying to tone it down. The United States pulling out of the Paris ’15 climate accord is already influencing others to join the U.S., Libya, Iran, and Yemen as the only countries not party to Paris ’15.

    But pulling out of Paris ’15 is only part of the hotter climate equation: “Under the Trump administration, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions levels are estimated to rise up to 36 percent higher than current policy by 2035.” (“The Trump Administration’s Retreat from Global Climate Leadership,” Center for American Progress, Jan. 21, 2025). This certainly helps guarantee a hotter planet.

    In addition to withdrawing from Paris ’15, the U.S. has signaled its intent to go one step further and withdraw from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, est. 1992). This is the underlying framework, “the father of international cooperation on climate change” that led to meetings such as Paris ’15. Abandonment will freeze-out the U.S. from any future global climate change negotiations and set a dangerous precedent. This could trigger a domino effect among nations questioning climate obligations and destabilizing the global consensus the Paris Agreement represents.

    Already, Argentina’s President Javier Milei is reconsidering his country’s commitment to Paris ’15. Already, countries such as Germany are cutting back on mitigation commitments. Already, several brand-name corporate commitments to cut CO2 emissions by 2030 are out the window. Already, the fossil fuel industry is reneging on reduction of CO2 emissions promises.

    Yet, the more the U.S. abandons efforts on global warming, the more property insurance companies abandon insurance altogether or crank up moonshot rates, for example, according to Insurify (a website partnered with major insurance companies) 15 States Facing an Imminent Insurance Crisis, October 4, 2024.

    Moreover, the overall insurance industry is feeling the heat as explained in a message from a senior officer of Allianz SE, the world’s largest insurance company: “Climate, Risk, Insurance: The Future of Capitalism,” March 25, 2025).

    Unfortunately, the world, other than the property/casualty insurance business, is truly out of touch with the gravity of climate change. Yes, “global warming” is a universal catchall phrase that everybody knows, but “global warming” is too hackneyed to trigger a strong emotional response, and it fails miserably at describing the depths of the biggest challenge in human history. For starters, serious disruptive danger is brewing at both poles and spreading across the land. It’s the reason why 350 polar scientists called an emergency meeting (see below) to warn the world: “Antarctica is starting to come unglued.” This is the nightmare of nightmares.

    Already, according to Mau Lau Observatory, CO2 emissions, the primary cause of global warming, are flashing red at 430 ppm. According to an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report: “In 2016, a worldwide body of climate scientists said that a CO2 level of 430 ppm would push the world past its target for avoiding dangerous climate change.” (MIT Climate Portal).

    And, making matters worse yet, it was only a couple of months ago when the aforementioned 350 polar scientists held an urgent ad hoc session in Australia to declare an Antarctic emergency on course to catastrophically cascade because of global warming.  That emergency session of November 2024 sent a chilling message to the world: “The experts’ conclusion, published as a press statement, is a somber one: if we don’t act, and quickly, the melting of Antarctica ice could cause catastrophic sea levels rise around the globe.” (Source: “Emergency Meeting Reveals the Alarming Extent of Antarctica’s Ice Loss,” Earth.com, Nov. 24, 2024)

    “Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea-level rise is possible within our lifetimes,’ the team warned in their statement,” Ibid.

    Shortly after that spooky news item, another unnerving announcement: Immense methane leaks discovered for the first time in Antarctica. To say “this is troubling” is an understatement. Rapusia.org, March 14, 2025, “Massive Methane Leaks Detected in Antarctica,” Posing Serious Climate Risks: “A team aboard the Sarmiento de Gamboa research vessel observed large columns of gas escaping from the ocean floor, with some extending up to 700 meters (2,300 feet) long and 70 meters (230 feet) wide.” These leaks are whoppers. The methane (CH4) molecule is extremely proficient at blanketing atmospheric heat.

    Anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is indisputable. Global mean temperature has increased far-far beyond nature’s normal course. NASA claims: “The rate change since the mid 20th century is unprecedented over millennia… Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” (Evidence, NASA)

    Climate change is frustrating; public interest is declining. Climate change/global warming is cast aside as no big deal by people in positions of authority, no worries, blah-blah-blah, whilst perpetrators lose interests in mitigation efforts, with governmental policies abandoning the issue, the reality of global warming falls onto the shoulders of the insurance industry, which is abandoning coverage in some regions and raising prices across the board because of ‘never-witnessed-before’ damage. The property insurance biz is experiencing a crisis. They’re the first ones to admit it

    Along the way, every homeowner is getting hosed by insurance rates because of climate change: “Even if you haven’t suffered direct damage, you’re paying for increasingly extreme weather.” (“Nobody’s Insurance Rates are Safe from Climate Change,” Yale Climate Connections, Jan. 14, 2025)

    How does this end? Does the world, out of necessity, become insurance-less? Here’s how Insurance Europe views the dilemma: “The statistics are alarming, as is the destruction happening across Europe and beyond, and this makes the urgency for action undeniable. Cutting greenhouse gases remains a priority.”

    Yet, confusion reigns supreme as the world’s largest economy, the U.S. at $30 trillion GDP, rejects the IPCC claim of human-caused climate change as a threat to society. This is completely rejected. But how can the White House ignore: “Homeowners Insurance Has Soared Over 50% in These States,” CNBC, May 9, 2025. In Florida, a homeowner with fair credit and $350,000 in dwelling coverage could expect to pay $9,462 a year, or $789 a month for insurance in 2024. Climate change is a costly protagonist.

    And more troubling yet: “South Florida Homes for Sale Quadruple as Residents Leave En Masse,” Newsweek, May 11, 2025. As of April 2025, 52,000 listings versus 12,000 a few years ago, hit the South Florida market like a ton of bricks. Are people running-scared?

    Confusion about U.S. climate change policy, and its consequences, is hitting American homeowners with a loud thud that reverberates from coast-to-coast as speculation about a RE-recession builds, in large part, fueled by climate change: “The Climate Crisis is Set to Erase $1.47 Trillion in US Home Values,” Business Insider, Feb. 4, 2025. According to the study, 40% of the losses will come from “climate abandonment communities.”

    When will the Trump administration address this ongoing threat to homeownership? It’s an issue that’s well beyond State’s Rights; it’s a national failure with fossil fuel CO2 emissions trapping heat, upending five-thousand years of a Goldilocks climate system. Exxon scientists saw this coming decades ago. Now, it’s become a national nightmare and an emergency in the face of diminishing guarantors.

    “How to end this madness?” is the question of the times.

    The post America’s Impact on the Global Thermostat first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Calls for Resistance Against the Accelerating Imperialist War on Black/African Peoples in Our Americas

    The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace condemns the increasing militarist aggression by U.S. imperialists in Our Americas that targets Africans, indigenous peoples and poor communities and calls for regional pan Africanist strategy and anti imperialist unity to defeat the war on Africans and colonized people at home and abroad. The increase of violence in the region, whether in Haiti, Ecuador or the Caribbean, through armed paramilitary groups often with ties to neo colonial puppets and the US/West, is used as a justification to expand U.S./NATO militarism, economic domination, and interventionism in the region to guarantee full spectrum dominance.

    African peoples, along with indigenous communities, across Our Americas bear the brunt of U.S.-led militarism, often with deadly interactions between state forces and armed groups in poor neighborhoods leading to fatal consequences for the masses, as part of a broader effort to expand militarism in the region. This must be framed as an escalation of war on Africans, colonized and poor communities at large by US imperialist forces to maintain its hegemony over the region, particularly against what it sees as threats to its interests from Russia and China.

    The State Department’s recent designation of armed paramilitary groups in Haiti as both Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists to use as the justification to continue violating the sovereignty of the Haitian people, clear out and occupy land, and operate with even more impunity. The  U.S.-orchestrated Multinational Security Service Mission (MSS) in Haiti that has only further degraded safety and violated national sovereignty has not slowed down any of this violence, in fact it has increased. Now, declaring Haitian armed paramilitary groups as terrorists will only serve as justification for further militarized assaults on the nation and its people, with little regard for their wellbeing. Amidst a three month long teachers strike, the Executive Board of National Union of Haitian Educators (UNNOH) wrote, “in the current context of cynically manufactured chaos—orchestrated by powerful international criminals and their local collaborators—” and call for international mobilization amid a “silent genocide.”

    Looking at another assault on Africans in Our Americas, on April 13 in Ecuador, Daniel Noboa declared himself president in a still contested run off election amidst heavy militarization at the polls, which the Revolución Ciudadana opposing candidate Luisa Gonzalez has publicly denounced.  Despite attempts to limit international observers , the North South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, in partnership with Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano and Global Black, were able to observe intentional oppressive tactics by Ecuadorian state forces leading up to and throughout the electoral process that have not subsided post-election.

    Furthermore, cases like the Guayaquil Four become all too normalized as the war on poor African communities in Ecuador intensifies through US-led militarism as President Noboa changes the constitution to allow foreign military bases, along with reaching a “strategic alliance” with private mercenary Blackwater’s Erik Prince to “fight organized crime.” Prince also negotiated contracts in Haiti last month to provide attack drones and training for an anti-gang unit. The increase in violence in the region also means profits for the private mercenaries, not to actually address violence against African peoples throughout the region, including in the United States, but to use as a proxy to intervene and support their geopolitical and imperialist interests.

    The expanding role of SOUTHCOM not just in Haiti, Ecuador or the Caribbean but throughout the region, particularly through joint military exercises such as Operation Tradewinds with militaries in the region under the command of the US and NATO and increased military bases, from the Panama Canal down the Pacific Coast, is not unrelated to this expanding crisis of violence throughout the region. The war on crime, war on drugs and war on terror have exposed the parallels behind the use of state violence as a trojan horse for resource extraction whether in West Asia, including the genocidal onslaught in Palestine, violence against Yemen, Lebanon and the people of Syria, or the expanding use of violence in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana or Suriname for resource extraction of fossil fuels. US imperialism is using the same playbook to justify its presence, expansion and full spectrum dominance.

    While member states of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have condemned the intervention in Haiti, they do so while also upholding the Kingston Declaration , continuing a historic trend in the region of supporting neocolonialism in Haiti led by Brazil. Whether officially sanctioned as a UN mission or not, Western interventions have never been the answer for the Haitian people. More importantly, the lack of solidarity with Haiti undermines the sovereignty of all nations as Haiti is used as a laboratory for the rest of the region. It was precisely the lack of solidarity with Haiti that Nicaragua highlighted as to why they did not sign the Tegucigalpa Declaration – “[the text must] reject the extortions against and express unequivocal solidarity with the brotherly people of Haiti without external interventions.”

    BAP invites organizations and individuals to join the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network as a platform to collectively develop regional Pan-Africanist strategy to oppose intervention in Haiti, a core demand of the Zone of Peace campaign, through mass based popular struggle. As Haitian Flag Day approaches on May 18th, we call for renewed and strengthened solidarity with the people of Haiti, in connection with all African peoples, oppressed peoples, and popular movements of Our Americas struggling to free our region of US military and economic dictates.

    The Black Alliance for Peace asserts the right of African/Black peoples across Our Americas to self defense and organized resistance in response to this escalating imperialist war against the masses of our people, whether in Port au Prince, Guayaquil, or Los Angeles. No compromise, no retreat!

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  • Trump Is Making America Constitutionally Literate—By Violating the Constitution

    Few modern political figures have done more to prompt spontaneous national discussions about the Bill of Rights and constitutional limits on government power than Donald Trump—if only because he tramples on them so frequently.

    Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

    Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

    First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

    Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

    Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

    Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

    Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

    Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

    Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

    Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

    Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

    Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

    Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

    Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

    In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

    Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

    For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

    “We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

    Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

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  • U.S. President Doubts He Must Adhere to the U.S. Constitution

    U.S. President Trump, when asked by NBC News on May 4th whether he is required to carry out — never violate — the U.S. Constitution, said, “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.” The Oath of Office that he has twice taken, is “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Trump does not think that as President he is obligated by that oath to never violate the U.S. Constitution. He said this right there, on May 4. Here is the excerpt where he said this, from the interview, starting where the interviewer asked the question, up to where she abandoned the matter:

    Kristen Welker: Your secretary of state says everyone who’s here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr. President?

    President Donald Trump: I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.

    Kristen Welker: Well, the Fifth Amendment says as much.

    President Donald Trump: I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials. We have thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.

    Kristen Welker: But is — 

    President Donald Trump: Some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth. And I was elected to get them the hell out of here and the courts are holding me from doing it.

    Kristen Welker: But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?

    President Donald Trump: I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation.

    Kristen Welker: Is anyone in your administration right now in contact with El Salvador about returning Abrego Garcia to the United States?

    She abandoned the matter, though it is the most important matter that any U.S. citizen ought to consider regarding the President; and, so, continuing any further with her canned list of questions there, was displaying her incompetence. For example, she could have asked him, “What did you twice swear to as you took the Presidential Oath of Office?,” but chose not to. She could have asked him “Why do you need to be told this by your lawyers, though it’s right there in the Oath that you twice swore to?” But she chose not to.

    On May 11 (exactly a week later), Politico headlined “Hill leaders question Trump’s attempted Library of Congress takeover.” It IS the library of Congress; it is part of the Legislative Branch, not of the Executive Branch; and, so, it is controlled by the Congress if America still has a Constitutional Government. But, according to Politico’s report, this is merely a political squable between all Democrats, on the one hand, versus almost all Republicans, on the other. “Congressional Democrats have castigated Trump’s moves at the library and have called for Congress to end the president’s power to nominate the top librarian.” However, the real question here is not “the president’s power to nominate the top librarian.” It is instead whether the Congress will uphold the Constitution by slamming down, with at least near unanimity, the President’s ability to hire or fire anyone to act in that capacity WITHOUT A PRIOR congressional vote on any such decision.

    Maybe it is not ONLY the President who is spitting upon the U.S. Constitution, but the members of Congress also. The congressional oath of office is:

    “I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, …”

    Is “mental reservation or purpose of evasions” what the people who voted for such traitors had voted for? This is why America has been proven, time and again (at least after 1980) to be a dictatorship, ruled by its political megadonors, who always get their ways, while the public do not.

    Has the rot in Washington reached so deep that it IS the Government? Apparently so.

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  • President Trump’s Proposal to Eliminate Income Taxes: Can It Be Done?

    In February, President Trump said that tariffs would generate so much income that Americans would no longer need to pay income taxes.

    The latest plan, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, is to abolish income taxes for people who earn less than $150,000 yearly. That move would affect roughly 75% of workers, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. On its face, this could narrow the wealth gap by boosting disposable income for low- and middle-income households without raising taxes on the wealthy — a politically clever alternative to progressive tax hikes.

    Eliminating the burden of income taxes is an exciting proposition, due to savings not just in money but in man-hours — the time spent anguishing over ledgers, forms and receipts. In 2024, according to the Tax Foundation, Americans spent 7.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements. That is equivalent to 3.8 million full-time workers—roughly the population of Los Angeles — doing nothing but tax paperwork for the full year.

    The question is, can tariffs and DOGE replace income taxes? If not, how else could the government fund itself? Is a growing debt bubble that is now carrying a $1.2 trillion interest tab, which must continue to expand just to sustain itself, the only alternative?

    How Eliminating Middle Class Taxes Would Affect the Budget

    In a March 21 article titled “Ending Taxes Below $150,000 Would Lose $10 to $15 Trillion,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concludes:

    Even if enacted in a targeted manner, we estimate such a change would reduce revenue by roughly $10 trillion through 2035 if applied to income taxes only and $15 trillion if applied to employee-​side payroll taxes as well. …

    If enacted relative to current law, ending taxes on income below $150,000 would boost debt by $12 to $18 trillion with interest, increasing debt-​to-​GDP to between 145 and 160 percent – compared to 118 percent under current law.… Importantly, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the proposal would be contingent on achieving budget balance first.

    Dividing the $10 trillion lost over 10 years (2025–2035) gives a $1 trillion loss per year on average, though there may be year-to-year variations. Trump’s team proposes to offset this loss with savings from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and new tariff revenues, but the math doesn’t look good.

    The Prospects from Tariffs and DOGE

    Elon Musk’s DOGE has identified significant areas of federal “waste, fraud and abuse,” but the program was originally projected to save $2 trillion by slashing misused funds. At Trump’s cabinet meeting on April 10, Musk said he expects the agency to find $150 billion in savings in fiscal year 2026, a number significantly lower than even the $1 trillion he said in February he was confident DOGE would find.

    Tariffs remain Trump’s primary funding mechanism. He has frequently referenced the 19th century, when there was no income tax, and tariffs were the principal source of revenue for the U.S. government. In his Liberation Day speech on April 2, he said, “From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation, and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been.” Trump’s particular hero is Pres. William McKinley, whose 1890 tariff of nearly 50% was a high point of the tariff policy.

    The problem is that in the 19th century, the U.S. government had far fewer costs. Among other expenses, there was no Social Security, no Medicare and no trillion dollar interest to be paid to investors.

    As originally proposed, Trump’s tariffs included a 10–20% universal tariff and up to 60% on Chinese imports. At that rate, the Tax Foundation estimated that the tariffs could raise $1 trillion over a decade ($100 billion/year) after accounting for reduced imports, while the Tax Policy Center put the figure as high as $2.8 trillion ($280 billion/year).

    These projections remain speculative, since the results of the trade deals being negotiated are yet to be reported. On April 30, the president stated that negotiations had already resulted in $8 trillion in promised investment in U.S. production, an impressive number, but investments take several years to manifest as new tax income.

    For the near term, DOGE cuts at $150 billion per year and tariffs estimated at $280 billion per year would cover less than half the trillion dollar loss projected from middle-class tax cuts. And that is without touching the $1.9 trillion deficit already projected by the Congressional Budget Office, something Commerce Sec. Lutnick said would have to be eliminated before income tax relief could be considered.

    The Elephant in the Room

    Even if new trade deals manage to cover the full deficit, the unprecedented federal debt will continue to loom. Currently standing at $36.21 trillion, the debt comes with interest payments projected to hit $1.2 trillion in 2025. That works out to $3.3 billion per day. In effect, all of our middle-class income taxes are being spent just to pay interest to bondholders, foreign and domestic.

    Interest costs are expected to rise from 9% of federal revenue in 2021 to 23% by 2034, crowding out federal priorities like infrastructure and healthcare. And that assumes bond buyers keep rolling over the debt at current rates. For FY 2025, an estimated $9.2 trillion — fully a quarter of the debt — will come due and need to be refinanced. What if foreign countries, which hold approximately 30% of the debt, decide to invest elsewhere?

    The most efficient to fill the trillion dollar hole left in the budget if middle-class income taxes are eliminated might be to take an axe to the trillion dollar interest tab and the federal debt sustaining it. But how?

    Even Quantitative Easing Won’t Work to Eliminate the Interest Burden

    Many economists think new rounds of quantitative easing (QE) are necessary, as the only way to keep Treasury interest rates low. QE is a maneuver by which Treasury debt is purchased by the Federal Reserve with newly issued bank reserves. The debt could theoretically be eliminated by having the Fed buy the securities as they come due. Assuming $9.2 trillion in debt maturing annually, the whole debt could be moved onto the books of the Fed in about four years, and since the Fed is required to rebate its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, this could theoretically eliminate the interest burden. But there are two wrinkles:

    (1) The Fed is not allowed to buy federal securities directly from the Treasury. It primarily conducts its open market operations, including QE Treasury purchases, through primary dealers, a select group of large financial institutions designated by the Fed to act as its counterparties in the open market.

    (2) Ever since 2008, the Fed has been paying interest on the banks’ reserve balances (IORB), which counts in the costs it deducts from the profits it returns to the Treasury. The rate on IORB set by the Fed is 4.4% as of May 2, 2025, while the average interest rate on the federal debt is approximately 3.3% for the fiscal year-to-date 2025.

    Thus if the Fed were to buy $9.2 trillion in federal securities this year, it would receive $9.2 trillion × 3.3% in interest but would have to pay IORB on the same $9.2 trillion at 4.4% to the banks, a net loss to the Fed. In effect, the banks would be receiving the interest rather than the Treasury, unless a couple of laws were changed, and changing them would no doubt meet with heavy resistance from the powerful banking lobby.

    Why, you may ask, does the Fed feel it needs to pay interest on bank reserves? Good question. It’s a monetary policy tool designed to curb inflation by setting a floor on the fed funds rate, the rate at which banks lend to each other. Since banks won’t lend at rates lower than they can safely earn from the Fed, it’s a way to keep interest rates high. But the result has been that the banks have simply reduced their lending. Why lend to risky local businesses when they can sit back and collect a safe and ample return from the Fed itself?

    It’s a controversial windfall to the banks, to support an interest rate that is itself controversial. But the bottom line is that the Fed is not able to bail out the government from its trillion dollar interest tab. What then is to be done?

    A Radical Alternative Whose Time Has Come

    Given the president’s predilection for 19th century economics, he could go a bit further back than to President McKinley. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, avoided a crippling national debt by resorting to the funding mechanism of the American colonists: let the government print the money directly, not through a banker-controlled central bank but through the Treasury. The government could buy back its debt with U.S. Notes or “Greenbacks,” as permitted under the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) and declared legal by the Supreme Court. These new currencies could then be used to repurchase maturing Treasury securities debt- and interest-free.

    Critics will cry “hyperinflation,” arguing that the newly-issued currency would flood the economy, spiking demand and prices. But if new money is directed to productive investments — for example infrastructure, energy, and healthcare — supply and demand will rise together, stabilizing prices. The Chinese demonstrated this in the 25 years from 1996 to 2025, when their domestic money supply was inflated from 4,840 CNY (Chinese yuan) to 320,526 CNY, or by 5500%; yet the price level remained stable and low. For a fuller explanation with data, see my earlier article here.

    To ensure that the Greenbacks finance growth, a national infrastructure bank could channel funds into projects such as affordable housing, high-speed rail, broadband, the power grid and large water and transportation projects. China is again the modern model. It has three giant “policy banks” assigned to implement the policies of the government, including China Development Bank, the world’s largest infrastructure and development bank. A U.S. version could prioritize projects with high economic returns, vetted by transparent, DOGE-like algorithms to prevent waste and cronyism.

    We desperately need infrastructure funding, and the current federal budget has no room to adequately address those needs. A viable proposal for a national infrastructure bank, H.R. 4052, currently has 47 cosponsors. The bank would use off-budget financing on the model of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the federal financial agency that rebuilt the country’s infrastructure during the banking crisis of the 1930s. For more information, see the NIB Coalition website.

    For state and city governments, public banks on the model of the Bank of North Dakota could address local infrastructure needs. See my earlier article here and the Public Banking Institute website.

    Prosperity Without Debt

    It has been argued that “just printing the money” would jeopardize the federal government’s credit rating. Perhaps, but we wouldn’t need credit if we could create our own, debt-free. To repeat an editorial directed against Lincoln’s debt-free Greenbacks attributed to the 1865 London Times, which may be apocryphal but nevertheless demonstrates the possibilities:

    If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North American Republic during the late war in that country, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debt. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.

    Lincoln’s Greenback policy was indeed destroyed, along with the president who dared to implement it. But the U.S. government is powerful enough today to pull that “mischievous financial policy” off. A Greenback-funded debt buyback could offer a way to pay down debt without interest costs, while spurring growth through targeted investments monitored through a national infrastructure bank and local public banks to absorb demand productively. In several years, the whole $1.2 trillion interest tab could be slashed from the budget, making our trillion dollar middle-class income tax payments that barely cover that expense unnecessary.

    The full budget could even be funded with Treasury-issued Greenbacks, eliminating the need for taxes at all. DOGE has demonstrated the possibilities for monitoring the government’s expenditures transparently and accountably with artificial intelligence. And as AI progressively replaces jobs, the government will need some form of universal basic income to supplement or replace worker salaries, perhaps “Social Security for All.”

    Granted, that raises new issues around the privacy and programmability of a government-issued digital currency. But as Cornell Prof. Robert Hockett argues in his book, The Citizens’ Ledger, these can be overcome with cryptographic protections. For people leery of digital government-issued dollars, the Treasury could exercise its constitutional power to issue coins and paper dollar bills. Those are all complicated issues for another article, but the possibilities are provocative. We can escape the debt trap engineered by a private banking system that creates money as debt at interest – and escape the middle-class income taxes paying for that interest – by returning the sovereign power to issue money to the Treasury.

  • This article was first posted as an original to ScheerPost.com.

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  • Russia, the Defeat of Nazism, and the Collaborationist West

    On May 9 Russia welcomed twenty-seven heads of state from around the world to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the conclusion of the Great Patriotic War, which ended in victory over the Nazis, one of the greatest achievements in Russian history, and one that would make any nation justly proud.

    The United States likes to portray the defeat of Nazism as a glorious U.S. achievement, with a nod to British, Canadian, Australian, French and a few others for their supporting roles. This ignores the central fact that the Wehrmacht had been ground nearly to pulp by the time the U.S. invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, an event that 80 years of Hollywood fantasies have attempted to transform into the key battle of the war. In reality, however, this much-delayed opening of a second front in the European war occurred when Hitler’s troops had been reduced to mostly children and old men, the military-aged soldiers having perished in gargantuan numbers on the Eastern front. Tens of millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians were also killed there, a large majority deliberately starved by Hitler, who looked to eliminate Slavic peoples and re-populate their territories with a civilized master race of “Aryans.”

    U.S. mind-managers have dispatched this immense Russian agony to Orwell’s memory hole, along with the suffering of the Chinese, who lost about half as much as the USSR on the battlefield (which was still an enormous total) in horrendous camps, and in “scientific” laboratories that treated them like experimental rats. British, French, and American losses, especially civilian deaths, were but a tiny fraction of these.

    The ferocity of the battles fought in Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk defies description and is well beyond the West’s impoverished moral capacity to even begin to apprehend. Three million Nazi soldiers invaded the USSR with the launching of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941.  This represented eighty percent of the German Army, almost all of whom were either killed, captured, or wounded over the subsequent three years. Meanwhile, the USSR not only fought the invading Germans, but also ardent Nazi-supporters in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, along with other European countries that facilitated German military operations and replaced fallen German soldiers in battle.

    Both Churchill and FDR accepted that it was the USSR that defeated the Nazis. Western supplies helped, but it was the heart and determination of the Red Army that brought the Nazi beast down.

    After the war, the Western powers obscured this story with a fanciful tale of being the most heroic human rights champions in history. But it was actually the Red Army that shot anti-Semites while Western myth-makers re-invented the Jew-haters as anti-Communist freedom fighters worthy of admiration.

    Renewing the Cold War it had initiated in 1917 in reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution, Washington imposed a “cordon-sanitaire” in order to eradicate Communism in Western Europe, a broadly-defined demon class that included major elements of the wartime anti-fascist resistance and trade union movements while those who had accommodated Nazism or gone into hiding faced no such exclusion.

    Today’s inheritors of collaborationist Europe have redoubled their attacks on Russia with economic sanctions and anti-Russian “human rights” tribunals, all in the name of a “never again” anti-genocide crusade that lacks even the slightest pretense of concern for Israel’s ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people.

    Our problems go far beyond Donald Trump.

    Source:

    “Victory Day: Rescuing the Truth,” La Jornada, May 10, 2025 (Spanish)

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  • Commemorating Mummy: Reflections on Mother’s Day

    Commercial gimmicks are sometimes impossible to beat off. Their stench and pull follow, even as you look the other way. One occasion is most prominent in this regard.  Nostrils get clogged and eyes get fogged, and the message is this: Remember Mommy.

    Mothers’ Day is rarely more than the draw and pull of extracted business and mined guilt. This is the worshipped and leveraged, the human breeder elevated and remembered, if only for one day. It resembles, in some ways, the link between poverty and the church box of charity. Give a few coins and save the child. Your conscience can rest easy.

    The day itself denigrates the mother in false respect and guilts the family for ignorance of that fact. It sanctifies a family relation for reasons of commercial worth. Suddenly, Mummy escapes her metaphorical sarcophagus, the nursing home, the flat, and finds herself seated at the end of a table with regrets. The hideous spectacle follows. The grumbling, the sneers. Mummy wonders what she is doing there. Monument? Reminder? A disgusting reminder to die off? Thoughts turn to the will.

    It was not necessarily intended that way. In the aftermath of the American Civil War (1861-65), Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, proposed that women unite in common cause and promote peace. In time, it would become the Mother’s Day Proclamation. In 1908, the idea became more concrete with West Virginian Anna Marie Jarvis’s church memorial in honour of her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis.  Ann Jarvis had been a committed peace activist, aiding wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

    On May 9, 1914, US President Woodrow Wilson officially announced the establishment of Mother’s Day as a national observance to be held annually on the second Sunday of May. Such observance was to involve the display of the American flag on government buildings and private residences “as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”

    Mother’s Day in Australia only took off with Sydney’s Janet Heyden, who insisted in 1924 on remembering the aging mothers at Newington State Hospital, many of whom had been widowed by the calamitous slaughter of the First World War.  As an activist, she encouraged local schools and businesses to furnish the ladies with donated gifts.  In its more modern iteration, it has evolved into a family affair.  As Australian historian Richard Waterhouse benignly describes it, “It’s not just about recognising the role of mothers, though that’s still there, but it’s really recognising Mother’s Day as a day in which families can get together.”

    As with other days of elected memory, Mother’s Day draws in the retail and restaurant dollars.  Guilty emotions are easy fodder for the capitalist impulse.  Unremarkably, it was the United States that propelled its commercialisation, beginning with card companies like Hallmark and enterprising florists keen to make a profit.  Jarvis, so instrumental in establishing the tradition, took to loathing it, attacking such marketing gimmicks as “Mother’s Day Salad”.  For years, she harangued politicians, organised protests, and sought audiences with presidents to arrest the trend towards commodification.  Such efforts eventually exhausted her, leading to a lonely, poor death in a sanatorium.

    Even as the Second World War raged, the scope of merchandise in anticipation of the day burgeoned.  An April 1941 issue of New York’s Women’s Wear Daily notes how “Mother’s Day as a gift event has continued to grow in importance, and is now second only to Christmas”.  In Dallas, one Margaret Evans, promotion manager of A. Harris & Co., enthused at the growing number of departments offering gift choices for the occasion.  These included bags, gloves, hosiery, handkerchiefs, toiletries, and jewellery.

    Eventually, women’s libbers cottoned on to the idea that a commemorative occasion supposedly emphasising the importance of mothers had been hijacked and shamelessly exploited.  In 1971, a pamphlet issued by the Adelaide women’s liberationists suggested that the woman remained invisible, a chained martyr to the home, a slave to domestic chores, and the cult of domesticity.  Mother’s Day was that one occasion of the year that a woman’s invaluable role in the home was acknowledged, and even then, only imperfectly.  Such a mother’s “basic needs”, including a degree of independence from their children, remained unmet.  But the pamphlet went further, arguing that women “renounce [their] martyrdom” and reenvisage themselves as human beings and “not just ‘mum’.”

    The nexus with children was also a point of comment in that decade.  Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution took solid aim at the distorting role played by parenting and mothering in the formation of children. Implicit in her argument was that both the mother and the child needed emancipation.  It remains a pertinent point, even as the swamp of commercialisation looks deeper than ever.

    The post Commemorating Mummy: Reflections on Mother’s Day first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Abandons ‘Hamas Disarmament’ Demands In Gaza Truce Talks

    The US government has dropped its demand for Hamas to disarm as a precondition for a ceasefire in Gaza, Egyptian sources revealed to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

    “US negotiators conveyed to Egyptian intermediaries that the issue of Hamas’s disarmament could be addressed at a later stage, rather than being an immediate requirement for a ceasefire agreement,” the Qatari-owned news outlet reports.

    The unnamed source added that US President Donald Trump’s “inner circle” is convinced of the “futility” of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy to free the captives via military pressure, believing that no military option will help save the Israeli captives in Gaza.

    The post US Abandons ‘Hamas Disarmament’ Demands In Gaza Truce Talks appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Missouri Puts Profits Over People’s Lives with New ICL Facility

    Early this year, as snow froze into sheets of solid ice, covering the ground for weeks, almost 20% of St. Louis Public School students were unhoused. Meanwhile, in warm town halls, former city Mayor Tishaura Jones praised a proposed new hazardous chemical facility, displaying the city’s economic priorities. St. Louis’s northside has long been subjected to the environmental effects of militarization, from the radiation secretly sprayed on residents of Pruitt Igoe and Northside communities in the 1950s, to the dumped cancer-causing Manhattan Project radioactive waste that poisoned ColdWater Creek. A proposed new Israeli Chemical Limited (ICL) facility in north St. Louis would not only be another colonial imposition, but it also poses disastrous environmental risks for the entire state.

    A new ICL facility would further establish St. Louis as a hub of militarization and an exporter of global death and destruction. In St. Charles, Boeing has built more than 500,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits, known as JDAMS. An Amnesty International report tied these to attacks on Palestinian civilian homes, families, and children, making our region complicit in war crimes. In addition to hosting the explosives weapons manufacturer Boeing, Missouri is home to Monsanto (now Bayer), which produced Agent Orange. What’s lesser known is that Monsanto is responsible for white phosphorus production in a supply chain trifecta with ICL and Pine Bluffs Arsenal. White phosphorus is a horrific incendiary weapon that heats up to 1400 degrees F, and international law bans its use against civilians. From 2020 to 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered and paid ICL for over 180,000 lbs of white phosphorus, shipped from their South City Carondelet location to Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. White phosphorus artillery shells with Pine Bluff Arsenal codes were identified in Lebanon and Gaza after the IDF unlawfully used them over residential homes and refugee camps, according to the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Another ICL facility, combined with the new National Geo Space Intelligence Agency that analyzes drone footage to direct US military attacks, would put North St. Louis squarely on the map for military retaliation from any country seeking to strike back against US global interventionism.

    Within a mile of the Carondelet ICL site, the EPA has identified unsafe levels of cancer-risking air toxins, hazardous waste, and wastewater discharge. The new facility would be built within 5 miles of intake towers and open-air sedimentation ponds that provide drinking water to St. Louis. An explosion or leak could destroy the city’s water supply and harm eastern Missouri towns along the Mississippi.  ICL has committed multiple Environmental and Workplace Safety violations, including violating the Clean Air Act at its South City facility. In 2023, they were declared the worst environmental offenders by Israel’s own Environmental Protection Ministry after the 2017 Ashalim Creek disaster, and were fined $33 million.

    ICL claims the new North City site is a safe and green facility for manufacturing lithium iron phosphate for electric vehicles; however, lithium manufacturing is hardly a green or safe process. Lithium and phosphorus mining require enormous amounts of freshwater – a protected resource – resulting in poisoned ecosystems and a limited water supply for residents and wildlife in the local communities where they are sourced.

    In October 2024, a lithium battery plant in Fredericktown, Missouri, burst into flames, forcing residents to evacuate and killing thousands of fish in nearby rivers. The company had claimed to have one of the most sophisticated automated fire suppression systems in the world, yet it still caused a fire whose aftermath continues to affect residents today, with comparisons being drawn to East Palestine, Ohio. Meanwhile, in January, over 1,000 people in California had to evacuate due to a massive fire at a lithium facility, the fourth fire there since 2019. Despite ICL claiming that the new site will use a ‘safer’ form of lithium processing, it’s clear that lithium facilities are not as safe as profit-driven corporations claim them to be.

    Missouri leaders repeatedly prioritize corporate profits over people via tax abatements. ICL is receiving 197 million dollars from the federal government. The city is forgiving a $500,000 loan to troubled investors Green Street to sell the land to ICL and is proposing a 90% tax abatement in personal property taxes for ICL, plus 15 years of real estate tax abatements. This is a troubling regional trend, considering that in 2023, St. Louis County approved $155 million in tax breaks to expand Boeing, also giving them a 50% cut in real estate and personal property taxes over 10 years. Corporate tax breaks in the city have cost minority students in St. Louis Public Schools 260 million dollars in a region where 30% of children are food insecure. Over 2000 people in St. Louis city are homeless.  Enough babies die each year in St Louis to fill 15 kindergarten classrooms. Black babies are 3 times more likely to die than white babies before their first birthday, and Black women are 2.4 times more likely to die during pregnancy. Spending public funds on corporate tax breaks instead of directing them toward food, housing, and life-saving medical care for black women and babies is inexcusable. Why does a foreign chemical company with almost 7 billion in earnings need so much funding from our local and federal government at the expense of our residents?

    Officials cite ‘job creation’ as a major reason to expand ICL. Still, the new facility is only expected to create 150 jobs, and there is no evidence that these jobs will be given to people in the community where it is being built. Investing in black and minority businesses would lead to actual self-sustaining economic development.

    Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, local tax breaks, the backing of former Governor Mike Parsons, and approval from city committees, the facility’s opening is not a done deal. The St. Louis City Board of Alders could still intervene. Stopping a facility with this much federal and international backing would require massive pushback from Missourians. Residents deserve more information and input in this process, especially considering the city’s resistance to hearing public comments. Notably, when locals submitted a Sunshine request for the ICL permit in March, it was so heavily redacted that it was unreadable.

    This facility would turn local black neighborhoods into environmental and military sacrifice zones, and our response to city, state, and federal leaders should be a definitive and resounding No!

    CODEPINK Missouri has a petition to stop the building of the ICL facility in St. Louis.

    The post Missouri Puts Profits Over People’s Lives with New ICL Facility first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why the Republican Party Is Trying to Cut Healthcare to the Poor

    On May 7, the AP headlined “House GOP backing off some Medicaid cuts as report shows millions of people would lose health care,” and reported:

    House Republicans appear to be backing off some, but not all, of the steep reductions to the Medicaid program as part of their big tax breaks bill, as they run into resistance from more centrist GOP lawmakers opposed to ending nearly-free health care coverage for their constituents back home.

    This is as a new report out Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that millions of Americans would lose Medicaid coverage under the various proposals being circulated by Republicans as cost-saving measures. House Republicans are scrounging to come up with as much as $1.5 trillion in cuts across federal government health, food stamp and other programs, to offset the revenue lost for some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks.

    “Under each of those options, Medicaid enrollment would decrease and the number of people without health insurance would increase,” the CBO report said.

    The Republican President Donald Trump presented to Congress on May 2 his proposed federal budget for 2026.

    On May 2nd the U.S. White House — which has made clear that it’s beating the drums for war against China — headlined “Office of Management and Budget Releases the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Skinny Budget” and reported that “The Budget, which reduces non-defense discretionary by $163 billion or 23 percent from the 2025 enacted level, guts a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security. … Defense spending would increase by 13 percent, and appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security would increase by nearly 65 percent, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources they need to complete the mission.” His budget “guts a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security,” and health care for the poor is part of that “weaponized deep state” he is referring to, which Republicans say must be cut in order to provide these “historic increases for defense and border security.”

    All of those increases would go towards paying the suppliers (such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.) to the enormously militarized police-state, at the very same time that the health, education, and welfare, of the voters, will be reduced by $165 billion or 23% below the current level.

    Here are some more details regarding what that “weaponized deep state” (to use the White House’s phrase for it) consists of:

    The White House’s May 2 “Major Discretionary Funding Changes” says that:

    For Defense spending [ONLY the Defense Department, NOT including the approximately $700 billion yearly of annual U.S. military spending that is being paid out from OTHER federal Departments], the President proposes an increase of 13 percent to $1.01 trillion for FY 2026; for Homeland Security, the Budget commits a historic $175 billion investment to, at long last, fully secure our border. Under the proposal, a portion of these increases — at least $325 billion assumed in the budget resolution recently agreed to by the Congress — would be provided through reconciliation, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources needed to complete the mission. This mandatory supplement to discretionary spending would enable the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, among others, to clean up the mess President Trump inherited from the prior administration and harden the border and other defenses to protect America from foreign invasion.

    Therefore, approximately $1.7T of total military spending is being sought by Trump (including the 13% increase to the Defense Department), while he is proposing to cut all other discretionary spending (which had previously constituted the other 47% of all U.S. Government annually appropriated federal spending (and which was previously around $800B per year) to be cut down now by $165B to around $635B total, or about 37% of all annually appropriated federal spending. Only the +13% for the Pentagon, and the +65% for the Department of Homeland Security, are increased, while everything else is getting cut drastically in order to make those increases possible.

    So, while around $1.7T will be going to the military, only around $635B will be going to pay all of the other discretionary spending (including any non-military portion of the DHS). That will cut the percentage of the Government’s discretionary spending on non-military purposes down from its prior approximately 47% of the federal budget, down to approximately 37% of all of the Government’s discretionary spending.

    Medicaid — health care to the poor — is on their chopping block so that the Defense Department portion of that $1.7T military cost that the U.S. Government will be paying in 2026 will be increased by 13% (and so that any non-military portion of the 65% increase to the DHS will also be paid).

    Looking further at WHAT is being cut the most, the White House document shows that the only part of the Department of Education that will be increased — by $60 million — is “Charter Schools,” the part that privatizes public-school education, which is the part that billionaires want to increase (since their hedge funds etc. will be owning much of it). Meanwhile, Title 1 and K-12 federal spending will be reduced by $4.535 billion; and the program to incentivize colleges to “to engage with low-income students and increase access” will be cut by $1.579 B.

    The Department of Health and Human Services will cut $4.035 from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), $1.970B from the Refugee and Unaccompanied Alien Children Program, $1.732B from AIDS and financial-assistance health programs, $3.588B from CDC and Prevention programs, $17.965B from NIH, $1.065B from programs working with addicts to help them reduce their addictions.

    The Environmental Protection Agency will be cut $2.460B for Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds, and under a billion dollars each for such programs as the Hazardous Substance Superfund.

    The Department of Housing and Urban Development will be cut by $26.718B that goes to programs for the poor.

    The Treasury Department will be cut by $2.488B for the IRS.

    The National Science Foundation will be cut by $3.479B and by an additional $1.130B for “Broadening Participation.”

    Most of the other cuts will be below a billion dollars.

    Are these massive reallocations away from programs to the needy (and from some other areas such as scientific research), into instead the military and border security, reflections of the public’s will in a democracy?

    On February 26, I reported that:

    On February 14, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling,” and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.

    An important point to be made here is that both #s 4&5, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid, are “discretionary federal spending” (i.e., controlled by the annual appropriations that get voted into law each year), whereas #s 1&2 (Social Security and Medicare) are “mandatory federal spending” (i.e., NOT controlled by Congress and the President). So, Trump and the Republicans are going after the poor because they CAN; they can’t (at least as-of YET) reduce or eliminate Social Security and Medicare. However, by now, it is crystal clear that Trump’s Presidency will be an enormous boon to America’s billionaires, and an enormous bane to the nation’s poor. The aristocratic ideology has always been: to get rid of poverty, we must get rid of the poor — work them so hard they will go away (let them seek ‘refugee’ status SOMEWHERE ELSE).

    Trump is increasing the military and border security, and decreasing education, assistance to the poor, Medicaid, federal law enforcement, and even Social Security and Medicare (the latter two by laying off many of the people who staff those bureaucracies).

    Therefore, the Republicans’ effort to cut health care to the poor is merely a part of their overall effort to cut Governmental help to the nation’s poor; and all of this is being done in order to increase federal purchases of armaments from corporations such as Lockheed Martin, who make all or most of their profits only by selling to the U.S. Government and to its allied Governments.

    However, on many levels, the greatest amount of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and sheer corruption, is actually in the only federal Department that has never been audited: the Defense Department. This means that Republicans are reallocating from the neediest to the greediest. (NOTE: I have equal contempt for both of America’s political Parties, but this reallocation is specifically a Republican specialty. So, this isn’t merely a matter of opinion. It is a historical fact.)

    The post Why the Republican Party Is Trying to Cut Healthcare to the Poor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump to rescind and replace Biden-era AI chip export curbs

    US President Donald Trump’s administration plans to rescind and modify a Biden-era rule that curbed the export of sophisticated AI chips, a spokeswoman for the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday. The regulation was aimed at further restricting AI chip and technology exports, dividing up the world to keep advanced computing power in the United…

    The post Trump to rescind and replace Biden-era AI chip export curbs appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

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  • Expulsion and Occupation: Israel’s Proposed Gaza Plan

    Killing civilians wholesale, starving them to convince those unaffected to change course, and shepherding whole populations like livestock into conditions of further misery would all qualify as heinous crimes in international law.  When it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza, this approach is seen as necessary politics, unalloyed by the restraints of humanitarianism.  When confronted with these harsh realities on the ground, unequivocal denials follow: This is not happening in Gaza; no one is starving. And if that were the case, blame those misguided savages in Hamas.

    As the conflict chugs along in pools of blood and bountiful gore, the confused shape of Israel’s intentions continues in all its glorious nebulousness.  Pretend moderation clouds murderous desire.  There is no sense that those unfortunate Israeli hostages captured by Hamas in its assault on October 7, 2023, matter anymore, being merely decorative for the imminent slaughter.  There is even less sense that Hamas will be cleansed and removed from the strip, however attractive this idea continues to be.

    Such evident limits have not discouraged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, who have decided that more force, that old province of the unimaginative, is the answer.  According to the PM, the cabinet had agreed on a “forceful operation” to eliminate Hamas and salvage what is left of the hostage situation.

    A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, Brigadier-General Effie Defrin, has explained on Israeli radio that the offensive will apparently ensure the return of the hostages.  What follows will be “the collapse of the Hamas regime, its defeat, its submission”.  Anywhere up to two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza will be herded into the ruins of the south.  Humanitarian aid will be arranged by the Israeli forces to be possibly distributed through approved contractors.

    The IDF chief of staff, Lt. General Eyal Zamir, confirmed that the approved plan will involve “the capture of the Strip and holding the territories, moving the Gazan population south for its defence, denying Hamas the ability to distribute humanitarian supplies, and powerful attacks against Hamas.”

    Within the Israeli cabinet, ethnocentric and religious fires burn with bright fanaticism.  The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich remains a figure who ignores floral subtlety in favour of the blood-stained sledgehammer.  He remains that coherent link between cruel lawmaking and baffling violence.  “Within a few months,” he boasts, “we will be able to declare that we have won.  Gaza will be totally destroyed.”  With pompous certitude, he also claimed that the next six months would see Hamas cease to exist.

    Such opinions, expressed at the “Settlements Conference” organised by the Makor Rishon newspaper in Ofra, a West Bank settlement, give a sense of the flavour.  Palestinians are to be “concentrated” on land located between the Egyptian border and the arbitrarily designated Morag Corridor.  As with any potential abuser keen to violate his vulnerable charges while justifying it, Smotrich tried to impress with the idea that this was a “humanitarian” zone that would be free of “Hamas and terrorism”.

    The program here is clear in its chilling crudeness.  Expulsion, relocation, transfer.  These are the words famously used to move on populations of a sizeable number in history, often at enormous cost.  That this should involve lawmakers of the Jewish state adds a stunning, if perverse, poignancy to this.  They, the moved on in history, the expelled and the condemned wanderers, shall expel others and condemn them in turn.  Smotrich also points the finger at desperation and hopelessness, the biting incentives that propel migration.  The Palestinians will feel blessed in their banishment.  “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

    Impossible to ignore in Smotrich’s steaming bile against the Palestinians is the broader view that no Palestinian state can arise, necessitating urgent, preventative poisoning.  In addition to the eventual depopulation of Gaza, plans to reconstitute the contours of the West Bank, ensuring that Israeli and Palestinian traffic are separated to enable building and construction for settlements as a prelude to annexation, are to be implemented.

    The issue of twisting and mangling humanitarian aid in favour of Israel’s territorial lust has raised some tart commentary.  A statement from the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a forum led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), does not shy away from the realities on the ground.  All supplies, including those vital to survival, have been blocked for nine weeks.  Bakeries and community kitchens have closed, while warehouses are empty.  Hunger, notably among children, is rampant.  Israel’s plan, as presented, “will mean that large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies.”

    The UN Secretary General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator have confirmed that they will not cooperate in the scheme, as it “does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.”

    The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have made the same point.  Despite all being solid allies of Israel, they have warned that violations of international law are taking place.  “Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and a Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change”.

    To date, a promise lingers that the offensive will only commence once US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar takes place.  But no ongoing savaging of Gaza with some crude effort at occupation will solve the historical vortex that continues to drag the Jewish state to risk and oblivion.

    The post Expulsion and Occupation: Israel’s Proposed Gaza Plan first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Martial Law Disguised as Law and Order: The Oldest Trick in the Authoritarian Playbook

    “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison

    We are being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

    Let’s not mince words: President Trump’s April 28 executive order is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook: martial law masquerading as law and order.

    Officially titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” this order is a “heil Hitler” wrapped in the goosestepping, despotic trappings of national security.

    Don’t be fooled by Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric, cloaked in patriotic language and the promise of safety.

    This is the language of every strongman who’s ever ruled by force.

    The White House claims the order will “empower state and local law enforcement to relentlessly pursue criminals and protect American communities.” But under this administration, “criminal” increasingly includes anyone who dares to exercise their constitutional rights.

    The order doesn’t merely expand policing—it institutionalizes repression.

    It sets us squarely on the road to martial law.

    If allowed to stand, Trump’s executive order completes our shift from a nation of laws, where even the least among us had the right to due process, to a nation of enforcers: vigilantes with badges who treat “we the people” as suspects and subordinates.

    Without invoking the Insurrection Act or deploying active-duty military forces, Trump has accelerated the transformation of domestic police into his own paramilitary force.

    With the stroke of his presidential pen, he has laid the groundwork for a stealth version of martial law by:

    • Expanding police powers and legal protections;
    • Authorizing the DOJ to defend officers accused of civil rights violations;
    • Increasing the transfer of military equipment to local police;
    • Shielding law enforcement from judicial oversight;
    • Prioritizing law enforcement protection over civil liberties;
    • Embedding DHS and federal agents more deeply into local policing.

    All of this has occurred without congressional debate, judicial review, or constitutional scrutiny.

    For years, we have watched as the government transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military: outfitted with military hardware and trained in battlefield tactics.

    However, this executive order goes one step further—it creates not just a de facto standing army but Trump’s own army: loyal not to the Constitution or the people but to the president.

    This is the very danger the Founders feared: a militarized police force answerable to a powerful executive, operating outside the bounds of the law.

    This is martial law without a declaration.

    Today, law enforcement is equipped like the military, trained in battlefield tactics, and given broad discretion over who to target and how to respond. But these are not soldiers bound by the laws of war. They are civilian enforcers, wielding unchecked power with minimal oversight.

    And they are everywhere.

    Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Flashbang raids on family homes. Riot police in small towns. SWAT-style teams deployed by federal agencies. Drones overhead. Mass surveillance below.

    We are fast approaching a reality where constitutional rights exist in name only.

    In practice, we are ruled by a quasi-military bureaucracy empowered to:

    • Detain without trial;
    • Punish political dissent;
    • Seize property under civil asset forfeiture;
    • Classify critics as extremists or terrorists;
    • Conduct mass surveillance on the populace;
    • Raid homes in the name of “public safety”;
    • Use deadly force at the slightest provocation.

    In other words, we’ve got freedom in name only.

    It’s the same scenario nationwide: in big cities and small towns alike, militarized “warrior” cops—hyped up on power—ride roughshod over individual rights by exercising almost absolute discretion over who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

    This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence has already ensured that unarmed Americans—many of them mentally ill, elderly, disabled, or simply noncompliant—will continue to die at the hands of militarized police.

    From individuals shot for holding garden hoses to those killed after calling 911 for help, these tragedies underscore a chilling truth: in a police state, the only truly “safe” person is one who offers no resistance at all.

    These killings are the inevitable result of a system that rewards vigilante aggression by warrior cops and punishes accountability.

    These so-called warrior cops, trained to act as judge, jury, and executioner, increasingly outnumber those who still honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the public.

    Now, under the cover of executive orders and nationalist rhetoric, that warrior mentality is being redirected toward a more dangerous mission: silencing political dissent.

    Emboldened by Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz and target so-called “homegrown” threats, these foot soldiers of the police state are no longer going to be tasked with enforcing the law—they will be deployed to enforce political obedience.

    This is not a theory. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.

    We are living in a creeping state of undeclared martial law.

    The militarization of police and federal agencies over recent decades has only accelerated the timeline toward authoritarianism.

    This is how freedom ends—not with a loud decree, but with the quiet, calculated erosion of every principle we once held sacred.

    We’ve come full circle—from resisting British redcoats to submitting to American forces with the same disdain for liberty.

    Our constitutional foundation is crumbling, and with it, any illusion that those in power still serve the public good.

    For its part, Congress has abdicated its role as a constitutional check on executive power, passing sweeping authorizations with little scrutiny and failing to rein in executive overreach. The courts, too, have in the past sanctioned many of these abuses in the name of national security, public order, or qualified immunity. Instead of acting as constitutional safeguards, these institutions have largely become rubber stamps.

    Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come to embody the very abuse the Founders fought to resist. Only now are the courts beginning to show glimmers of allegiance to the Constitution.

    This is not about partisanship. This is about power without restraint.

    As tempting as it is to place full blame on Trump for this full-throttle shift into martial law, he is not the architect of this police state. He is its most shameless enabler—a useful frontman for the Deep State in its ongoing war on the American people.

    As we warned in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

    We ignore these signs at our peril.

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  • Escalating Think Tanks


    On 2 May Foreign Affairs published an article, “Will China Escalate?: Despite Short-Term Stability, the Risk of Military Crisis Is Rising,” by Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP).

    There are many claims made in the article by Tony Zhao who seemingly looks at China, a 5000-year old Asian civilization, through a western lens (similar to the western-centric analysis made by John Mearsheimer).

    Zhao asserts that Beijing views itself vis-à-vis the United States as in a “strategic stalemate.”

    Comment: What exactly is meant by stalemate? And what statement emerging from Beijing attests to it viewing itself as in a stalemate? The chess metaphor applied to China is a cultural faux pas, as the popular strategizing board game the Chinese play is weiqi (go in English). Draws/stalemates are not a weiqi strategy and are rare.

    Zhao: “Trump’s early second-term actions have strengthened Beijing’s conviction that the United States is accelerating its own decline, bringing a new era of parity ever closer.”

    Comment: It is not just Beijing’s conviction. There are plenty of reputable economics/financial experts warning of a US economic decline (see Michael Hudson, Richard Wolff, Yanis Varoufakis, Peter Schiff, Ellen Brown, Sean Foo, Jeffrey Sachs, etc) as well as military experts speaking to a drop off in US military superiority (see Andrei Martyanov, colonel Douglas Macgregor, Scott Ritter, etc).

    Economic data reveal that the US has been overtaken by China on real GDP/PPP, and economic indicators point to the US potentially heading into recession with a -0.3% growth in Q1 2025, while China’s growth in Q1 2025 was 5.4%.

    Zhao warns that the current stalemate may not last and that over the next four years the “risk of a military crisis will likely rise as the two countries increasingly test each other’s resolve.”

    Comment: It is obvious how the US is testing China’s resolve. But how exactly is it that China is testing the US’ resolve — other than as a defensive response to US machinations? Zhao does not give any examples of this. Vague, unsubstantiated statements should be greeted with extreme skepticism, and such statements speak to a writer’s professionalism and credibility.

    Zhao: “The risk of a U.S.-Chinese military crisis could sharply escalate if Beijing further closes the capability gap with Washington and perceives international indifference to Taiwan’s status, grows frustrated with nonmilitary efforts to unite Taiwan with China, and foresees more pro-Taiwan leadership in Washington and Taipei.”

    Comment: The logic behind this sentence is perplexing. Is Zhao suggesting that China should maintain a capability gap so that it is inferior to the US? Furthermore, there is no international indifference to Taiwan’s status. As of June 2024, 183 countries have established diplomatic relations with China under the One China Principle, which acknowledges Taiwan as an inalienable part of China. Depicting China as “frustrated” is contrary to the longstanding stoic image that China usually projects. Xi Jinping is definitively not a fulminating, blustering politician as is commonly found in Washington. As for military efforts to “unite Taiwan with China,” the famous Chinese military strategist Sunzi (Sun Tzu) wrote in The Art of War (Chapter III- “Attack by Stratagem”): “In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.”

    Zhao does admit, “Beijing has shown similarly little inclination to initiate near-term military conflict, even over issues of core national interest such as Taiwan.” He obviates this by following up with: “This restraint, however, has been underwritten by a military buildup, spanning conventional and nuclear forces, that Chinese officials see as critical to shifting the balance of power with the United States.”

    Comment: The Chinese military build-up is, arguably, a necessity given the belligerence of the US toward whichever nation does not adhere to its demands. That Taiwan has a form of de facto independence is attributable to the US inserting its 7th Fleet into a Chinese civil war to protect the losing KMT side from the Communist forces (see William Blum, “1. China 1945 to 1960s” in Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II). Moreover, the US has been unfaithful in its adherence to the One China Policy that it effectively ratified in the 1972 Shanghai Communique.

    Zhao: “[China’s] seemingly contradictory surges in economic and diplomatic outreach and its military muscle flexing, evident in high-profile drills near Australia and Japan in February, are, in China’s view, actions characteristic of the great power it believes it has become.”

    Comment: There have been no official reports of China conducting military drills near Australia in February 2025. The live-fire drills were held in international waters, 150 nautical miles far beyond Australia’s territorial waters. The Global Times noted the Chinese drills were “fully in accordance with international law and customary practices” and they were “completely different with the Australian military aircraft’s intrusion into China’s airspace” — a serious violation of international law. As for the “high profile drills … near Japan in February,” a web search only revealed China carrying out drills in the Gulf of Tonkin and off Taiwan’s southwest coast. Japanese media noted the drills off Taiwan, none near Japan.

    Zhao: “For its part, the Trump administration is beefing up the United States’ military deterrent against China amid growing concerns about Beijing’s aggressive actions in Asia.”

    Comment: This is farcical. How is it that China whose military spending is effectively 52% of US military spending would cause the US to increase its deterrence? (see table below) What are China’s “aggressive actions”? Backwards logic and unsubstantiated allegations.


    Chinese and US military spending compared Source: CEPR, 17 Dec 2024

    Zhao: “Senior Defense Department officials aren’t fully aligned on the importance of Taiwan to U.S. strategy. Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, for example, has said that ‘Americans could survive without it’ and is pushing instead to thwart China’s broader regional dominance.”

    Comment: What is the importance of Taiwan to the US besides as part of a military containment zone? Does the US’ military encirclement of China convey peaceful intent? Also, what evidence is there that China wants to dominate outside its borders? China rejects hegemony and seeks win-win relationships.

    Zhao writes of “the ratcheting up of tensions sparked by the trade war …”

    Comment: Which actor is primarily responsible for ratcheting up tensions? Which actor started the tariffing? This information is important and relevant and needs to be identified and conveyed to the reader

    *****

    It is clear who is the aggressor. China is not ringing the US with military bases. China is not stoking Hawaiian separatist sentiment from the continental US. Are Chinese warships plying US waters?

    Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a think tank and publisher described as an “influential ruling class organization” whose members come predominantly from the corporate business community which finances the CFR.

    Zhao is listed as a senior fellow at the CEIP, which was ranked as the world’s number one think tank in 2019. Imagine that: such ill-thought-out journalism from a high-ranking think-tank fellow.

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  • The Non-explosive Iranian Bomb

    The non-existent Iranian bomb has lesser importance to the existing bombs that threaten the world. United States (US) demands that Iran promise to halt pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile developments distract from the real intent of US actions — deter other nations from establishing more friendly relations with Iran and prevent them from gaining a correct perspective on the causes of the Middle East crises.

    The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) created a potential for extensive political, economic, and social engagements of the international community with Iran. The investments would lead to attachments, friendships, and alliances and initiate a revitalized, prosperous, and stronger Iran. A new perspective of Iran could yield a revised perspective of a violent, unstable, and disturbed Middle East. Israel and Saudi Arabia would finally receive attention as participants in bringing chaos to the Arab region. Economies committed to Iran’s progress and allied with its interests could bring pressure on Israel and Saudi Arabia to change their destructive behaviors.

    Because arguments with Iran could have been approached in a less provocative and insinuating manner, the previous demands were meant to provoke and insinuate. Assuredly, the US wants Iran to eschew nuclear and ballistic weapons, but the provocative approach indicated other purposes — alienate Iran, destroy its military capability, and bring Tehran to collapse and submission. For what reasons? Accomplishing the far-reaching goals will not affect the average American, lessen US defense needs, or diminish the continuous battering of the helpless faces of the Middle East. The strategy mostly pleased Israel and Saudi Arabia, who engineered it, share major responsibility for the Middle East turmoil, and consistently try to use mighty America to subdue the principal antagonist to their malicious activities. During the 2016 presidential campaign, contender Donald Trump said, “Many nations, including allies, ripped off the US.” President Donald Trump has verified that statement.

    Noting the history of US promises to leaders of other nations – give up your aggressive attitudes and you will benefit – the US promises make the Ayatollahs skeptical. The US reneged on the JCPOA, sent Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to the World Court and eventual death (although his personal compromises were the key to the Dayton Accords that ended the Yugoslavian conflict), directly assisted NATO in the overthrow of subdued Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, pulverized Iraq after sanctions could not drive that nation to total ruin, rejected the Iranian pledge of $560 million worth of assistance to Afghanistan at the Tokyo donors’ conference in January 2002, and, according to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, disregarded Iran’s “decisive role in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands of wanting 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government.” Tehran has always sensed it is in a no-win situation. Regardless of its decisions and directions, the U.S. intends to pulverize the centuries old Persian lands.

    If the US honestly wants to have Iran promise never to pursue nuclear and ballistic missile weapons, it will approach the issues with a simple question, “What will it take for you (Iran) never to pursue these weapons?” Assuredly, the response will include provisions for the US to withdraw support from a despotic Saudi Kingdom in its oppression of minorities and opposition and propose that the US eliminate financial, military and cooperative support to Israel’s theft of Palestinian lands, oppressive conditions imposed on Palestinians, daily killings of Palestinian people, and expansionist plans. The correct question soliciting a formative response and leading to decisive US actions resolves two situations and benefits the US — fear of Iran developing weapons of mass destruction is relieved and the Middle East is pointed in a direction that achieves justice, peace, and stability for its peoples.

    Despite the August 2018 report from Trump’s U.S. Department of State’s Iran Action group, which “chronicle Iran’s destructive activities,” and consists of everything from most minor to most major, from unsubstantiated to retaliatory, from the present time to before the discovery of dirt, Iranians will not rebel in sufficient numbers against their own repressive state until they note the end of hypocritical support by western powers of other repressive states. Halting international terrorism, ameliorating the Middle East violence, and preventing any nation from establishing hegemony in the Arab world starts with Trump confronting Israel and Saudi Arabia, two nations whose records of injustice, aggression, oppression, and violation of human rights exceed that of the oppressive Iran regime.

    Otherwise, it will occur on a Sunday morning; always occurs in the early hours on the day of rest. It will come with a roar greater than the sum of all shrieks and screams ever uttered by humankind, rip across fields and cities, and burn through the flesh of a part of the world’s population.

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  • The US-Ukraine Minerals Deal

    The agreement between Washington and Kyiv to create an investment fund to search for rare earth minerals has been seen as something of a turn by the Trump administration.  From hectoring and mocking the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the cameras on his visit to the US capital two months ago, President Donald Trump had apparently softened.  It was easy to forget that the minerals deal was already on the negotiating table and would have been reached but for Zelensky’s fateful and ill-tempered ambush.  Dreams of accessing Ukrainian reserves of such elements as graphite, titanium and lithium were never going to dissipate.

    Details remain somewhat sketchy, but the agreement supposedly sets out a sharing of revenues in a manner satisfactory to the parties while floating, if only tentatively, the prospect of renewed military assistance.  That assistance, however, would count as US investment in the fund.  According to the White House, the US Treasury Department and US International Development Finance Corporation will work with Kyiv “to finalize governance and advance this important partnership”, one that ensures the US “an economic stake in securing a free, peaceful, and sovereign future for Ukraine.”

    In its current form, the agreement supposedly leaves it to Ukraine to determine what to extract in terms of the minerals and where this extraction is to take place.  A statement from the US Treasury Department also declared that, “No state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

    Ukraine’s Minister of Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko, stated that the subsoil remained within the domain of Kyiv’s ownership, while the fund would be “structured” on an equal basis “jointly managed by Ukraine and the United States” and financed by “new licenses in the field of critical materials, oil and gas – generated after the Fund is created”.  Neither party would “hold a dominant vote – a reflection of equal partnership between our two nations.”

    The minister also revealed that privatisation processes and managing state-owned companies would not be altered by the arrangements.  “Companies such as Ukrnafta and Energoatom will stay in state ownership.”  There would also be no question of debt obligations owed by Kyiv to Washington.

    That this remains a “joint” venture is always bound to raise some suspicions, and nothing can conceal the predatory nature of an arrangement that permits US corporations and firms access to the critical resources of another country.  For his part, Trump fantasised in a phone call to a town hall on the NewsNation network that the latest venture would yield “much more in theory than the $350 billion” worth of aid he insists the Biden administration furnished Kyiv with.

    Svyrydenko chose to see the Reconstruction Investment Fund as one that would “attract global investment into our country” while still maintaining Ukrainian autonomy.  Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House of Foreign Affairs Committee, thought otherwise, calling it “Donald Trump’s extortion of Ukraine deal”.  Instead of focusing on the large, rather belligerent fly in the ointment – Russian President Vladimir Putin – the US president had “demonstrated nothing but weakness” towards Moscow.

    The war mongering wing of the Democrats were also in full throated voice.  To make such arrangements in the absence of assured military support to Kyiv made the measure vacuous.  “Right now,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on MSNBC television, “all indications are that Donald Trump’s policy is to hand Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, and in that case, this agreement isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on.”

    On a certain level, Murphy has a point.  Trump’s firmness in holding to the bargain is often capricious.  In September 2017, he reached an agreement with the then Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to permit US companies to develop Afghanistan’s rare earth minerals.  Having spent 16 years in Afghanistan up to that point, ways of recouping some of the costs of Washington’s involvement were being considered.  It was agreed, went a White House statement sounding all too familiar, “that such initiatives would help American companies develop minerals critical to national security while growing Afghanistan’s economy and creating new jobs in both countries, therefore defraying some of the costs of United States assistance as Afghans become more reliant.”

    Ghani’s precarious puppet regime was ultimately sidelined in favour of direct negotiations with the Taliban that eventually culminated in their return to power, leaving the way open for US withdrawal and a termination of any grand plans for mineral extraction.

    A coterie of foreign policy analysts abounded with glowing statements at this supposedly impressive feat of Ukrainian diplomacy.  Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council think tank’s Eurasia Centre, thought it put Kyiv “in their strongest position yet with Washington since Trump took office”.  Ukraine had withstood “tremendous pressure” to accept poorer proposals, showing “that it is not just a junior partner that has to roll over and accept a bad deal”.

    Time and logistics remain significant obstacles to the realisation of the agreement.  As Ukraine’s former minister of economic development and current head of Kyiv school of economics Tymofiy Mylovanov told the BBC, “These resources aren’t in a port or warehouse; they must be developed.”  Svyrydenko had to also ruefully concede that vast resources of mineral deposits existed in territory occupied by Russian forces.  There are also issues with unexploded mines.  Any challenge to the global rare earth elements (REEs) market, currently dominated by China (60% share of production of raw materials; 85% share of global processing output; and 90% manufacturing share of rare earth magnets), will be long in coming.

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  • Finding the Spectacular in the Society of the Spectacle

    The internet and computers have been a boon to essayists like Edward Curtin (and me!). He/you/we can publish at online sites (DissidentVoice.org is a favorite for us) and then publish our screeds in book form if we are prolific and eloquent enough. Curtin was a philosophy/social theory professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. This collection of Curtin’s articles, At the Lost and Found (2025), is a case in point. There are some fine ones; certainly, his introduction and the opening ones are challenging postmodern forays for the uninitiated, yet still readable. His students were very lucky.

    As Trump-Musk take a hatchet to American higher education, I marvel at the thought that there are hundreds if not thousands of Curtins (maybe not as good) across the vast US, most at small liberal arts colleges, all in love with words and wisdom, all teaching their students lovingly, urging them to THINK. That is surely the beauty of America, the promise to take the world’s poor and reviled and give them the chance to be someone, do something worthwhile.

    Curtin, from his earliest memories, saw that conventional life was a provocation because it hid more than it revealed; that it harbored secrets that could not be exposed or else the make-believe nature of normal life would collapse like a cardboard set. Like everyone, I was ushered onto this Shakespearean stage and have acted out many roles assigned to me, but always with the inner consciousness that something was amiss. Everyone seemed to be playing someone, but who was the player? Is the role playing us? Are we marionettes in some pipe dream, and is there an author behind it? God? The devil? Capitalism?

    Curtin’s postmodern credo comes from Thoreau: We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. There are no neutral observers.

    His goal: to oppose these scoundrels and their ilk who kill and wage endless wars against innocents around the world, in a way that will delight and last a little while.

    Writing as music

    Curtin admits he is obsessed with words. That they play him. He, in turn, uses them to produce both astute political analyses and art in luminescent words and sentences that pulsate. I think of them as intertwined lovers. AI is taking capitalism to its Faustian apotheosis, to mechanize us all, to eliminate passion and will. Reduce thought to dead words. Curtin compares his writing to composing, hoping to leave a fresh song in your heart, something to help you see the pageant of our lives in more than just dead words.

    In The End of the Speed Limit on the Highway to Nowhere, he compares us to Sisyphus but without the illusion of ascent, merely going in a circle, returning to the same grey reality of the freedom-to-choose-what-is-always-the-same, seen as a mediated, rootless reality that is no reality at all. Yes, you can fly anywhere in the world (if you are part of SWIFT), but you will find the same McDonald’s and box stores, more or less the same sandy beaches, and souvenirs made in China. Fake diversity. Fake news, to quote our fake king-of-the-world.

    We are flooded with unneeded techno ‘miracles’, but without roots we are swept away by them, our mediated reality providing no signposts for where we are headed, no warnings of pitfalls that threaten our real Reality and us, allowing us to pause, to take a stand. Root in Latin is radix, i.e., radical, which today means extreme, as if we unconsciously mold our thinking to beware of rootedness in our rootless world, where having roots is suspect, even reactionary. We celebrated rootlessness, the dream of travel, and escape as the best experience. How many of us live/die where we were born?

    How language betrays us! Betray as in reveal and subvert. Curtin calls himself a contrarian and relishes contronyms (e.g., betray, fast, sanction, wear, weather, wind up). I’m big on antonyms that our mediated reality turns into identities, e.g., war = peace, progress = regress, bad = good. We see how language reveals much about our muddled thinking, storing clues from the past, and warning us of our illusions.

    Guy Debord begins The Society of the Spectacle with a tongue-in-cheek parody of Marx’s opening of Kapital: In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Like Marx’s commodities, spectacles are ‘use values’, but even more removed from the consumer than bubble gum or a sports car, as they happen only in your mind, illusion pure and simple, reality so artfully mediated that you pay your money, enjoy, and blissfully forget and move on to the next instalment.

    No Virgil to guide us

    Today’s ‘great reset’ just may succeed because we have lost the most important roots, our spirituality, buried beneath a heap of commodity-spectacles. Walking through the forest to the genuinely spectacular Taughannock Falls, Curtin gloomily ponders the massacre of Iroquois two centuries ago and asks: Is there any place on this blood-soaked earth where a semi-conscious person can rest easy?

    He sees our descent into our current Hell/abyss as starting with Reagan, enshrining illusion in the White House, his assigning communism to the trash heap of history, his attack on social welfare, and his ignorance of the environment. All the presidents since have been variations on his MAGA—even Clinton and Obama credit Reagan as their inspiration. Reagan certainly helped collapse the Soviet Union, but he turned the US into a one-party state, taking his lead from the moribund communists.

    And we accept it, as we are trapped in a simulacrum reality, a closed system, a solipsism.

    We have no Virgil to guide us through Hell and set us on the road to enlightenment. Wait! We have AI to do that for us. Our worship of the machine is such that as the machine ‘matures’, we have let it take our place, to think for us, even to simulate emotions, speaking as if emoting. The Turing test. The machine’s goal is Darwinian, too: survival of the fittest. Unless we rediscover the miracle of life, root ourselves in a genuine experience of Reality, take back control from the machine, and even ban or dismantle it where it is harmful.

    Curtin is a postmodernist, drawing inspiration from the French Debord and Baudrillard. And looks to Joyce for a way forward. In The Contronymal Cage, he quotes Joyce on the language of Joyce’s English-born Jesuit dean of studies, who speaks a different English from that of the Irish rebel. We must take control of our language, be conscious of where it came from, its roots, and how it is used to keep us trapped now in a simulacrum hyperreality, as language constitutes reality as much as it describes it.

    Red pill time

    There is no ‘heppi end’ to the stories we weave (or rather that weave us) in the Matrix. Poetry is an escape route, unashamedly subjective, rebellious, and questioning. Another way is the essay, as Curtin knows well, and Edward Said, who argued that his nation, Palestine, is a narrative; that we must tell our stories of distorted reality and oppression to escape the Matrix and root ourselves in unmediated Reality. Throw off Blake’s ‘mind-forged manacles’. Recognize that life is not a dead mechanism but is conscious, that we are part of a conscious universe, not as Sisyphus repeating his tortured, pointless circle of unreality, but as Dante, guided in his spiritual quest by the great minds of the past, teaching us to distinguish the devil from God.

    What about virtual reality? It sounds ominous, blurring the line between reality and fantasy, but not if we are aware. That goes for all techno miracles. And I for one would much prefer to take a virtual reality trip to visit Mecca in the 7th c than to squash Nature with a huge carbon footprint just to say ‘Kilroy was here’ in a dystopian 21st c Mecca. We can use technology wisely, even reject it if it destroys Nature, undermines society, and kills my soul.

    Though raised a Christian, and admiring Jesus, King, Romero, and all those who have died trying to make peace and justice a reality, Curtin is a secular humanist, not looking to traditional religions for answers to ‘why?’ today. He bemoans our loss of spirituality but doesn’t urge Christians to revive their faith, as I suspect he sees it threadbare. That’s where I point my finger. We need faith! That vacuum in my life led me to Islam as the only faith that is still alive, meaningful in a meaningless late capitalism.

    Islam was supposedly backward compared to the progressive West. But looking back now, I would suggest we would be much better off if the age of technology had arrived much more slowly, with a spiritual quest still the goal. The West lost its ailing Catholic spirituality with the Protestant Reformation, as it embraced capitalism and became a false spirituality, a materialism masquerading as spirituality, a treacherous inversion of our most fundamental, radical truth. Islam is slowly breaking its shackles, inflicted by the ‘progressive’ capitalist imperialist countries, which occupied Muslim lands, did the usual rape-and-pillage, and even attempted to erase millions of Muslims in Palestine, stealing their land, their spiritual heritage, which is rooted in the Real. Islam does not need Debord or Baudrillard to tell us that our reality is an illusion, that the ‘modern’ world has lost its soul, that the truth lies in the ‘backward’ world, the precapitalist, spirit-based civilizations. Islam’s immunity to ‘progress’ is its saving grace, as it answers our need for meaning in life, which is timeless, technologyless.

    Beware the counterinitiations

    René Guénon is the 20th-century thinker who first deconstructed the embrace of modernism in The Crisis of the Modern World (1927). He converted to Islam in the 1930s and embraced a traditional lifestyle, rejecting for the most part the illusory technology of the 20th century for ‘spiritual technologies’, even as our capitalist/ socialist societies pushed ahead to carry out greater and greater monstrosities. We have lost our highest faculty, intellectual intuition, i.e., direct apperception or gnosis. We have lost the very possibility of spiritual realization. The Soviet secular spirituality was the first to collapse, and Russia has returned to its Christian Orthodoxy roots, i.e., there is an exit ramp ‘back to the future’.

    Gueon coined the term ‘counterinitiation’, movements that are spiritual doppelgangers that mimic authentic spirituality. Protestantism’s embrace of capitalism is the greatest such ruse, which explains the thousands of evangelical sects all claiming to be true. Now you can fashion your own spirituality with a dash of tarot, yoga, and mindfulness. No! We must rediscover the wisdom of traditional religions, which have been discarded on our highway to nowhere. We need a great cosmic reset. Curtin sees himself as a contrarian, infatuated with contronyms. Language is a powerful repository of wisdom, embedded in great literature, especially poetry. But he doesn’t go the extra mile.

    Without a love, not just of words, but of spirituality, sacred words, essays like Curtin’s just depress me. In Hindu lore, we are in the declining period of civilization, known as the Kali Yuga (the Age of Darkness). It began with the rise of agriculture in 3000 BC, which unmoored us from our spiritual roots, embracing money, private property, and slavery. Three thousand years is a long nightmare, but it is also the necessary precursor to renewal, the cosmic reset.

    The Arts (I like to use caps for the ‘Real thing’) is our avenue for spiritual truths. Our screeds help us see the world in 4d (virtual reality a gimmicky version of this serious path), connect us with our Real environment, not the phony mediated environment of consumer capitalism. As for sacred vs profane, no, no! Everything is sacred, alive, to be connected with meaningfully, loved/hated. There is no neutral observer. I write with passion, or my writing is dead. And as for mindless rituals. No, no! The ritual of prayer is an active form of knowledge, a path to participate in eternal truths, our metaphysical roadmap, showing us the exit ramp from our highway to know-where. (Don’t you love language?)

    JFK and 9/11 litmus tests

    Curtin includes a long article about JFK. The Life and Public Assassination of John F Kennedy, one on JFK and Dulles, and The Assassination and Mrs. Paine. His great courage in the face of an assassination he expected can inspire us to oppose the systemic forces of evil that control the United States and are leading the world into the abyss. And one on Bob Dylan (‘our Emerson’) and his 2020 song about the assassination Murder Most Foul (thank you, Hamlet), whose lyrics about the conspiracy are ignored or mocked by our doppelganger media. Neither Dylan nor Walberg is going ‘gentle into that good night’, to quote Bob’s model and namesake Dylan Thomas.

    I like Curtin sharing personal experiences. There aren’t any independent, neutral observers or observations. He’s not dogmatic. A 9/11 essay at the Berkshire Edge (not included, a shame as the litmus test these days is where you stand on that elephant-in-the-room) dismisses the official story, assumes a conspiracy of the elite directed by the CIA. As for charges of Israel and Mossad, he’s skeptical both here and on JFK, arguing the CIA is too powerful to let that happen ‘outside the box’. I would point to many instances from the King David Hotel in 1948 to many, many assassinations of Palestinian — any — leaders it doesn’t like (Arafat and hundreds of guerrilla leaders). There is an unspoken hit list always in the creation, much like Ukraine’s Myrotvorets. No group, official or unofficial, comes near to Israel. Bin Laden, eat your heart out.

    Personally (remember, no neutral writers!), I think only Israeli terrorists are cynical and smart enough to do such a thing, using Saudi youth as patsies. Funny, Jews have been the world’s leading terrorists since Israel was created, and are exonerated, pointing the finger at the Muslim victims, defending themselves as the real terrorists. Curtin’s mild dissidence/apostasy went unpunished, except for a few comments ridiculing him as another conspiracy nut. I suspect he would have been treated much more severely if he had labeled Israelis, i.e., secular Jewish fanatics, as the perpetrators of JFK’s murder and/or 9/11.

    My sense is that Americans are too spooked, too afraid to point the finger at Israel as the villain-in-chief in the world today, largely responsible for our descent into Hell. US-Israel is tattooed on American minds. A spiritual mark of Cain in our dystopia, making sure we are ready for the mental gas chamber. Are tattoos removable? It’s very hard, painful, and leaves a scar. But, hey!, purging yourself of society’s inhumanity is worth it. Down with tattoos! They are haram in Islam with good reason. Our only identity needed to live a good life is identifying with God, trying to perfect ourselves, and getting as close to Him (not ‘him’) as possible. The world and our special place in it are the only proof we need of who we are and where we’re going.

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  • Trump’s Spy on Your Neighbors Initiatives Creating Climate of Fear

    Neighbors fingering neighbors and workers spying on workers is as American as bacon and eggs and toddlers shooting themselves with guns left around the house by their parents. In the early 2000s, the Bush Administration called it Operation TIPS, a spy-on-your-neighbors scheme aimed at reporting “suspicious” behavior. Now, the Trump administration is encouraging people to report on suspected undocumented immigrants in their neighborhoods. And, workers at various government agencies are being urged to report any activities that they might consider “anti-Christian.”

    What could possibly go wrong with Ameri-snitchers running around their communities?

    Don’t like your neighbor’s dog running through your yard? Call ICE. Don’t want to pay for work an immigrant just performed for you? Call ICE. Co-worker not religious or patriotic enough? Call the government’s anti-Christian bias hotline!

    Calling ICE on Your Neighbors

    In January, Tom Homan, appointed by Trump to oversee deportation efforts, announced plans for a government hotline where individuals can report undocumented immigrants in their communities. Homan stated, “I’m hoping people start calling ICE and reporting because we have millions of people in this country that can be force multipliers for us if they just call us with information.”

    “Experts warn government-inspired informing can devolve into corrupt acts and score-settling,” Forbes’ Stuart Anderson reported. “Businesses are likely to become targets during the Trump administration’s immigration raids. Given the nature of bureaucracies, officials will assign a top priority to generating large numbers of arrests without concern for collateral impacts.”

    Trump’s Anti-Christian Grievance Hotline

    For decades, prominent Religious Right leaders have complained about anti-Christian bias. In early February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.

    Politico’s Robbie Gramer and Nahal Toosi recently reported that “The [State Department] … will work with an administration-wide task force to collect information ‘involving anti-religious bias during the last presidential administration’ and will collect examples of anti-Christian bias through anonymous employee report forms. … Some State Department officials reacted to the cable with shock and alarm, saying that even if well-intentioned, it is based on the flawed premise that the department harbors anti-Christian bias to begin with, and warning it could create a culture of fear.”

    “The instructions are clear,” Daily Kos’ Alex Samuels recently pointed out. “Give names, dates, and locations of the alleged bias, with a task force set to meet on April 22 to review the ‘evidence.’ The goal? To collect examples of religious discrimination under the Biden administration, because nothing says “freedom of religion” quite like your coworkers quietly documenting your every move for a federal task force.”

    According to the Guardian:

    One example of the ‘bias’ the department wants reported includes ‘mistreatment for opposing displays of flags, banners or other paraphernalia’ – a thinly veiled reference to Pride flags displayed at US embassies under the previous administration. The cable also specifically points to ‘policies related to preferred personal pronouns’ as potentially discriminatory against religious employees.

    George W. Bush’s Operation TIPS

    In early March  2002, professional sidekick Ed McMahon (look up Johnny Carson) introduced Attorney General John Ashcroft to an enthusiastic audience of representatives from more than 300 Neighborhood Watch groups meeting in Washington, D.C. Ashcroft unveiled an expanded mission for the Neighborhood Watch Program, announcing a grant of $1.9 million in federal funds to help the National Sheriffs’ Association double the number of participant groups to 15,000 nationwide.

    According to the government’s web page at citizencorps.gov/watch.html, “Community residents will be provided with information which will enable them to recognize signs of potential terrorist activity, and to know how to report that activity, making these residents a critical element in the detection, prevention, and disruption of terrorism.” Under the supervision of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), “Terrorism prevention” was intended to become the “routine mission” of the Neighborhood Watch Program, the web site pointed out.

    The new thrust of Neighborhood Watch is just part of the Bush Administration’s plan to set up a whole network of citizen snitches. In August, for instance, it will unveil a new Justice Department initiative called Operation TIPS, which stands for Terrorist Information and Prevention System.

    Operation TIPS “will be a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity,” says the citizencorps.gov web site. Involving one million workers in ten cities during the pilot stage, Operation TIPS will be “a national reporting system…. Every participant in this new program will be given an Operation TIPS information sticker to be affixed to the cab of their vehicle or placed in some other public location so that the toll-free number is readily available.”

    Encouraging people to skulk around their neighborhoods in search of immigrants, and at government workplaces hunting anti-Christian bias is a totally anti-American undertaking. Trump’s policies could easily lead to abuse and misuse, including racial profiling, false reports and personal vendettas. It could also foster fear and mistrust within communities.

    The post Trump’s Spy on Your Neighbors Initiatives Creating Climate of Fear first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Home Invasions on the Rise: Constitution-Free Policing in Trump’s America

    One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle.
    —James Otis, Revolutionary War activist, on the Writs of Assistance, 1761

    What the Founders rebelled against—armed government agents invading homes without cause—we are now being told to accept in the so-called name of law and order.

    Imagine it: it’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is asleep. Suddenly, your front door is splintered by battering rams. Shadowy figures flood your home, screaming orders, pointing guns, threatening violence. You and your children are dragged out into the night—barefoot, in your underwear, in the rain.

    Your home is torn apart, your valuables seized, and your sense of safety demolished.

    But this isn’t a robbery by lawless criminals.

    This is what terror policing looks like in Trump’s America: raids by night, flashbangs at dawn, mistaken identities, and shattered lives.

    On April 24, 2025, in Oklahoma City, 20 heavily armed federal agents from ICE, the FBI, and DHS kicked in the door of a home where a woman and her three daughters—all American citizens—were sleeping. They were forced out of bed at gunpoint and made to wait in the rain while agents ransacked the house, confiscating their belongings.

    It was the wrong house and the wrong family.

    There were no apologies. No compensation. No accountability.

    This is the new face of American policing, and it’s about to get so much worse thanks to President Trump’s latest executive order, which aims to eliminate federal oversight and empower local law enforcement to act with impunity.

    Titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” the executive order announced on April 28, 2025, removes restraints on police power, offers enhanced federal protections for officers accused of misconduct, expands access to military-grade equipment, and nullifies key oversight provisions from prior reform efforts.

    Trump’s supporters have long praised his efforts to deregulate business and government under the slogan of “no handcuffs.” But when that logic is applied to law enforcement, the result isn’t freedom—it’s unchecked power.

    What it really means is no restraints on police power, while the rest of us are left with fewer rights, less recourse, and a constitution increasingly ignored behind the barrel of a gun.

    This isn’t just a political shift. It’s a constitutional unraveling that hands law enforcement a blank check: more weapons, more power, and fewer consequences.

    The result is not safety; it’s state-sanctioned violence.

    It’s a future in which no home is safe, no knock is required, and no officer is ever held accountable.

    That future is already here.

    We’ve entered an era in which federal agents can destroy your home, traumatize your family, and violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity. And the courts have said: that’s just how it works.

    These rulings reflect a growing doctrine of unaccountability enshrined by the courts and now supercharged by the Trump administration.

    Trump wants to give police even more immunity, ushering in a new era of police brutality, lawlessness, and the reckless deployment of lethal force on unarmed civilians.

    This is how the rights of ordinary Americans get trampled under the boots of unchecked power.

    There was a time in America when a person’s home was a sanctuary, protected by the Fourth Amendment from unlawful searches and seizures.

    That promise is dead.

    We have returned to the era of the King’s Writ—blanket search powers once used by British soldiers to invade colonial homes without cause. As James Otis warned in 1761, such writs “annihilate the privilege” of privacy and due process, allowing agents of the state to enter homes “when they please.”

    Trump’s new executive order revives this tyranny in modern form: armored vehicles, night raids, no-knock warrants, federal immunity. It empowers police to act without restraint, and it rewards those who brutalize with impunity.

    Even more alarming, the order sets the stage for future legislation that could effectively codify qualified immunity into federal law, making it nearly impossible for victims of police violence to sue.

    This is how constitutional protections are dismantled—not in one dramatic blow, but in a thousand raids, a thousand broken doors, a thousand courts that look the other way.

    Let’s not pretend we’re safe. Who will protect us from the police when the police have become the law unto themselves?

    The war on the American people is no longer metaphorical.

    Government agents can now kick in your door without warning, shoot your dog, point a gun at your children, and suffer no legal consequences—so long as they claim it was a “reasonable” mistake. They are judge, jury, and executioner.

    With Trump’s new order, the architecture of a police state is no longer theoretical. It is being built in real time. It is being normalized.

    Nowhere is this threat more visible than in the unholy alliance between ICE and militarized police forces, a convergence of two of the most dangerous arms of the modern security state.

    Together, they’ve created a government apparatus that acts first and justifies itself later, if at all. And it runs counter to everything the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent: punishment without trial, surveillance without suspicion, and power without accountability.

    When ICE agents armed with military-grade equipment conduct predawn raids alongside SWAT teams, with little to no accountability, the result is not public safety. It is state terror. And it’s exactly the kind of unchecked power the Constitution was written to prevent.

    The Constitution is intended to serve as a shield, particularly the Fourth Amendment, which safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures. But in this new reality, the government has nullified that shield.

    All of America is fast becoming a Constitution-free zone.

    The Founders were aware of the dangers of unchecked power. That’s why they gave us the Fourth Amendment. But rights are only as strong as the public’s willingness to defend them.

    If we allow the government to turn our homes into war zones—if we continue to reward police for lawless raids, ignore the courts for rubber-stamping abuse, and cheer political leaders who promise “no more handcuffs”—we will lose the last refuge of freedom: the right to be left alone.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Constitution cannot protect you if the government no longer follows it—and if the courts no longer enforce it.

    The knock may never come again. Just the crash of a door. The sound of boots. And the silence that follows.

    The post Home Invasions on the Rise: Constitution-Free Policing in Trump’s America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Hurricane Helene Survivor Reacts To Trump Administration Aid Response

    On April 25, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein announced that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under the Trump administration had approved a USD 1.4 billion grant for post-Hurricane Helene rebuilding efforts.

    Last year, hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated some of the most impoverished regions of the US, leaving behind billions of dollars in damages and resulting in hundreds of deaths.

    “This is great news for western North Carolina,” said Governor Josh Stein in a statement. “I thank the Trump Administration for moving quickly to approve this plan so we can get busy rebuilding people’s homes.”

    The post Hurricane Helene Survivor Reacts To Trump Administration Aid Response appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran Can Save the Tumbling Trump

    The man who behaves as if he is saving the world cannot save himself. He is tumbling fast, but, if he seizes the moment, he can recreate himself and gain an exalted place in history — Trump triumphant, if Iran permits.

    In his first term, Trump left the White House with the country in a state of physical, mental, social, political, and economic shock — a COVID-19 epidemic, economy in shambles, nation divided, an insurrection impeded, and two congressional attempts at having him removed from office. With this enviable record, maybe not all his fault, he asserted he had made the destroyed America “Great again.” Historians disagree.

    The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey surveyed 525 historians and political science scholars. Abraham Lincoln topped the list, with Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson rounding out the top five.

    The results of a poll released on Presidents Day weekend rank Biden as the 14th greatest president in American history, coming in ahead of the likes of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Ulysses S. Grant. His predecessor and likely Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, found himself in dead last at 45th on the list.

    Donald Trump rates lowest (10.92), behind James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6), William Henry Harrison (26.01), and Warren Harding (27.76). Barack Obama has risen nine places (from #16 to #7), as has Ulysses S. Grant (from #26 to #17), while Andrew Jackson has fallen 12 places (from #9 to #21) and Calvin Coolidge has dropped 7 spots (from #27 to #34).

    After successor and predecessor Joe Biden managed to end the COVID-19 epidemic and revive the economy, while keeping the country divided, the dead last Trump entered his second term by announcing he is going to make the United States greater. Tariffs, which many prominent economists and Wall Street analysts say will cause a RECESSION, will revive the industrial base. Peace and stability will return to the Slavic nations and to the peoples of the Middle East. The dead last man is quoted as having said, “But it (Ukraine/Russian conflict) is a very easy negotiation to take place. I will have it solved within one day, a peace between them.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio now suggests “the U.S. might soon back away from negotiations altogether without more progress.”

    The most grievous faux pas in Trump’s jumbled policies is his repudiation of The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement promoted by the Obama administration, which limited the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions. The agreement was finalized on 14 July 2015, between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council together with the European Union.

    For 13 years, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges.

    For 15 years, Iran agreed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% and not to build heavy-water facilities.

    For 10 years, uranium enrichment would be limited to a single facility using first-generation centrifuges. Other facilities would be converted to avoid proliferation risks. IAEA would have regular access to all Iranian nuclear facilities to monitor compliance. In return for verifiably abiding by those provisions, Iran would receive relief from U.S., European Union, and United Nations S.C. nuclear-related sanctions.

    To President Donald J. Trump “the Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States ever entered.” He inaugurated the PROTECTING AMERICA FROM A BAD DEAL, terminating the United States’ participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and re-imposing sanctions lifted under the deal. Misinformation, exaggerations, and wild predictions steered America from A GREAT DEAL into a BAD FUTURE.

    • President Trump is terminating United States participation in the JCPOA, as it failed to protect America’s national security interests.
    • The JCPOA enriched the Iranian regime and enabled its malign behavior, while at best delaying its ability to pursue nuclear weapons and allowing it to preserve nuclear research and development.
    • The re-imposed sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy, such as its energy, petrochemical, and financial sectors.
    • United States withdrawal from the JCPOA will pressure the Iranian regime to alter its course of malign activities and ensure that Iranian bad acts are no longer rewarded. As a result, both Iran and its regional proxies will be put on notice. As importantly, this step will help ensure global funds stop flowing towards illicit terrorist and nuclear activities.
    • Intelligence recently released by Israel provides compelling details about Iran’s past secret efforts to develop nuclear weapons, which it lied about for years.
    • The intelligence further demonstrates that the Iranian regime did not come clean about its nuclear weapons activity, and that it entered the JCPOA in bad faith.
    • The JCPOA failed to deal with the threat of Iran’s missile program and did not include a strong enough mechanism for inspections and verification.
    • The JCPOA foolishly gave the Iranian regime a windfall of cash and access to the international financial system for trade and investment.
    • *Instead of using the money from the JCPOA to support the Iranian people at home, the regime has instead funded a military buildup and continues to fund its terrorist proxies, such as Hizballah and Hamas.

    Because of Trump’s decision to leave the JCPOA, everything the JCPOA managed to prevent has been encouraged. The Islamic State has ballistic missiles, drones, anti-ballistic missiles, and uranium stock at 60 percent enrichment, close to having material for a nuclear bomb.

    WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Iran could make enough fissile for one nuclear bomb in “about 12 days,” a top U.S. Defense Department official said on Tuesday, down from the estimated one year it would have taken while the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was in effect.

    Trump’s efforts have been counterproductive and his fast fall into oblivion might be hastened in the renewed nuclear discussions, except, wait, he can be resurrected. By playing his cards right, not the way he told Ukraine President Zelensky is playing the cards, he can rise faster than a SpaceX starship and vault himself into a page of glorious history ─ Trump can rid the world of the nuclear menace ─ Iran can help Trump to achieve nuclear disarmament. Unlikely, but doable.

    The only reason for Iran having a nuclear weapons program is to neutralize Israel’s nuclear armaments. The Ayatollahs will definitely halt their program if assured Israel surrenders its weapons, that is, if Israel has deliverable weapons to surrender. This is a fair trade and one that Trump, who covets a Nobel Prize, might entertain. Think of it, and he will ─ Donald J. Trump, 45th and 47th presidents of the United States was responsible for halting nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and for eventually reducing the nuclear threat throughout the world. Much to deliberate, much to cajole, much to administrate, and much to admire. What is the alternative — much to bomb, much to kill, much to destroy, and much for history to scorn.

    Israel will not approve, and will kick, squirm, and threaten. Without the United States support and an entire world from Tierra del Fuego to Siberia allied with the proposition, Israel will receive an offer it cannot refuse. The bitter man will smile again. His hateful disposition hid the real Trump, the man who wants to be loved by all.

    The post Iran Can Save the Tumbling Trump first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Is Trump Closer to Walking Away from Ukraine?

    It appears that what many of us predicted about Ukraine may be coming to pass. Last Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared on the CBS program Face the Nation. In response to a question about Ukraine from Margaret Brennan, Lavrov said,“Trump is probably the only leader on earth to address the root causes that got us into this war and wants to rectify it.” Further, he said, “The President of the United States, and rightly so, believes that we are moving in the right direction.” He added that some matters need to be “fine tuned.”

    On Friday, Trump’s trusted envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow for talks with Putin. Does this mean that the endgame is in sight, that Trump will finally extricate the US from Ukraine? We know that in a single day, Trump can voice indisputable truths, including that if Zelensky continues on his present path “he could lose his entire country.” And when asked what concessions Russia has made, Trump replied that “Russia isn’t taking the entire country.” However, we also know that only hours later Trump might prattle on and prevaricate about negotiations while evading the truth that the US and the collective West have already lost the war. It’s axiomatic that losers in a war do not dictate the peace terms so it’s telling that here we have a case where the delusional losers, with the exception of Trump, are still trying to prolong the war. In the US, opponents of a peace settlement include the MIC, neocons, Democrats, Lindsey Graham Republicans and members of his own team like Kellogg and Rubio.

    In any event, a reality-based analysis suggests that there is no deal to be had for Trump, no final settlement is within reach. Geopolitical analyst Larry Johnson is correct in asserting that, “Trump is playing a game of strip poker but he’s butt ass naked with no more cards to play.” The longer he dithers in exiting, the more likely he’ll be seen as a bluffing buffoon, all hat and no cowboy. Given this reality, sooner rather than later, Trump will walk away and simply say, “We made our best offer so now we’re getting out.” I suspect that Putin will understand this is about Trump saving face.

    What will happen when Trump pulls the plug on the Ukraine Project? The vaunted “Coalition of Willing,” which once numbered 27, is now down to 3: Britain, France and Germany. I once thought that Macron was semi-serious about putting French “peacekeeper” boots on the ground in Ukraine but the absence of a US security guarantee renders that avenue inoperable. Further, this would be a bridge too far for the public to tolerate and the massive protests it would ignite would be political suicide for Macron.

    The outcome for Ukraine is obvious: It will be decided on the battlefield where the Russian army is much stronger than it was in 2021. By all accounts, Russia is breaking through Ukrainian defenses across the board. On Saturday, Russian commander, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov said that Russian forces had taken the last village that Ukrainian troops had held in Kursk. Gerasimov also said that 76,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Kursk region. When the mud season ends in a few weeks, we can expect a major Russian assault and the absorption of more territory.

    For Ukraine, the war is unsustainable. How long the Kiev regime lasts is impossible to predict but six to eight months is a plausible guess. The fanatical ultra-nationalist elements (Neo-Nazis/Azov/Bandera Battalion elements) will fight a rear guard action with support from Europe but eventual collapse is inevitable. Subsequently, I would expect Russia to control events in Ukraine, commencing with denazification. The country will never be allowed to pose a military threat to Russia.

    The hubris of those provoking and continuing to cheer on this proxy war is diabolical and they did and do so in full knowledge that Russia would see it as an existential threat. In addition to all the horrific consequences that have preceded it, they are now responsible for the wholly preventable deaths to follow, the majority of which will be ever younger Ukrainian soldiers.

    European leaders who warned that the Russians would advance to the English Channel will continue shouting “Russia, Russia, Russia!” British political analyst Alexander Mercouris is certainly correct in suggesting that “European unity is now built entirely around hostility toward Putin, toward Russia,” even if that means sacrificing Ukraine. Thus we can expect Europe to press forward with rearmament at the expense of a working class that’s already experiencing increasing immiseration.

    Here in the United States, all the usual suspects, including some on the putative left, will vilify Trump for “cutting and running” on Ukraine. Sadly, I believe that we’re a long way from the point that our heavily propagandized fellow citizens grasp how they’ve been had, lied to about Ukraine by the ruling class and their servile mass media outlets. The next deception on the horizon is the “China threat” and the need to challenge and confront this dangerous duplicity could not be more urgent.

    The post Is Trump Closer to Walking Away from Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • ICE Contracts Avelo Airlines to Fly Deportees

    Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26. (Photo by Roger D. Harris)

    Avelo Airlines has entered into a controversial agreement with US immigration authorities to operate deportation flights, sparking protests from coast to coast. Activists, legal organizations, and local communities are mobilizing against the carrier’s role in deportations. The controversy reflects a broader reckoning with the US’s long and bipartisan history of immigration enforcement.

    Ultra-low budget airline flies gamblers, Hillary Clinton, and now deportees

    Avelo Airlines started off flying gamblers in 1989 as Casino Express. Rebranded in 2005 as Xtra Airlines, it provided air transport for the Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign among other ventures. Current CEO and former United Airlines CFO Andrew Levy acquired the carrier in 2021, renamed it Avelo, and expanded from charter flights to low-cost commercial operations.

    Following its California launch on a Burbank-Santa Rosa route, Avelo developed a hub at Tweed New Haven Airport in Connecticut. Avelo continued to expand destinations, most notably with its recent agreement to make federal deportation flights from Arizona starting in May. The “long-term charter” arrangement for the budget airline headquartered in Houston, TX, is with the US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement Agency (ICE).

    Chilling realities of ICE deportation flights

    Research by the advocacy group Witness at the Border tracks ICE flights. Costly military deportation flights have largely been discontinued, leaving the dirty work to charter carriers such as Avelo.

    An exposé by ProPublica revealed appalling conditions on ICE deportation flights by a similar charter carrier, GlobalX. The report states: “Flight attendants received training in how to evacuate passengers but said they weren’t told how to usher out detainees whose hands and legs were bound by shackles.

    Leaving aside the issue of human decency, the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “90-second” rule for accomplishing a full evacuation from an aircraft is impossible to achieve with passengers in chains.

    Private security guards and an ICE officer accompany these ICE Air flights and are the only ones allowed to interact with the deportees, including even talking to them. But only the professional flight attendants, who are FAA certified, are trained in how to evacuate passengers in an emergency.

    So if a plane crashes on the runway, ProPublica cautions, the rules are for the flight attendants to leave the aircraft for safety and abandon the shackled prisoners. Unfortunately, this grim scenario is not hypothetical.

    Snoopy’s airport

    On April 26, protesters lined the entrance to what locals affectionately call Snoopy’s airport. The Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, named after the late cartoonist who lived in Sonoma County, is an Avelo Airlines hub. The Democratic Party-aligned Indivisible called the “profiting from pain” protest at the California wine country airport against Avelo’s plan to carry out deportation flights.

    One protester flew an upside-down US flag, a signal of “dire distress in instances of extreme danger,” according to the US Flag Code. A sign proclaimed: “planes to El Salvador are just like trains to Auschwitz – a prison without due process is a concentration camp.”

    “Boycott Avelo,” was the message on one young woman’s sign that implored, “travel should bring families together, not tear them apart.”

    An Immigrant Legal Resource Center activist passed out wallet-sized “red cards” at the demonstration. She reported that nearly a thousand northern Californians have taken their training in recent weeks to defend their friends and neighbors who, regardless of immigration status, have certain rights and protections under the US Constitution.

    At the grassroots level, communities are organizing and resisting. The North Bay Rapid Response Network hotline for reporting immigration enforcement activities dispatches trained legal observers and provides legal defense and support to affected individuals and families. Other resources include VIDAS, Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, Legal Aid of Sonoma County, and Sonoma Immigrant Services.

    Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, New Haven Airport, CT, April 17. (Photo by Henry Lowendorf)

    New Haven no-fly zone

    Blowback against the nativist anti-immigrant wind was also evident across the continent in New Haven, CT. This Avelo Airlines hub city along with the state capital, Hartford, are both designated sanctuary cities. The state of Connecticut itself has also enacted measures limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

    These politics reflect the demographics of urban Connecticut, which are now largely Latino and African American. Non-Hispanic whites, using Census Bureau terminology, are an urban minority.

    According to local organizer Henry Lowendorf with the US Peace Council, the vast majority in New Haven are “adamantly opposed to the airline massively violating human rights with no judicial process and dumping people in a concentration camp in El Salvador.”

    Over 200 protested Avelo Airlines on April 17 for the second Tuesday in a row, responding to a call by Unidad Latina en Acción, the Semilla Collective, and others. Led by immigrant rights activists, speakers included local and state officials. Even US Senator Richard Blumenthal spoke out against Trump’s immigration outrages.

    Avelo currently benefits from a Connecticut state exemption from fuel taxes, which subsidizes its hub operations in New Haven. The pressure is on for Avelo to either cancel the deportations or pay the fuel levy.

    The state Attorney General William Tong demanded that Avelo confirm that they will not operate deportation flights from Connecticut. But the airline has refused the AG’s request to make public their secret contract with the Homeland Security.

    The continuity of US deportation policy

    Aside from the heated rhetoric, the New York Times reports “deportations haven’t surged under Trump” although he has taken “new and unusual measures.” These have included deporting people to third countries far from their origins and invoking the eighteenth century wartime Alien Enemies Act.

    The NYT concludes that deportations “fall short” from being the threatened mass exodus and, in fact, “look largely similar” to what was accomplished by Joe Biden. Despite all the drama and an initial surge of arrests, the pace of deportations under Trump has been slower than under Biden.

    Barack Obama still retains the title of “deporter in chief” with 3.2 million individuals expelled. And Joe Biden still holds the recordfor the most expulsions by a US president in a single year if migrant removals under the Title 42 Covid-era public health provision are included (technically “expulsions” but not “deportations”).

    Going forward, however, we can rest assured that Trump will try to beat those records. Lost in the mainstream discourse on the migrant controversy is the reality that US policy, such as sanctions, are a major factor driving migration to the US. This takes place in the context of the largest immigration surge into the US ever, eclipsing the “great immigration boom” of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

    Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26. (Photo by Roger D. Harris)

    Protests expand to other Avelo cities

    A petition is circulating with some 35,000 signatures to-date demanding cessation of the Avelo deportation flights. According to the petition, a leaked memo discloses that Avelo’s decision to enter the deportation business was financially motivated to offset other losses.

    Boycott Avelo protests have expanded to other destinations served by the airline, including Rochester NY, Burbank CA, Daytona Beach FL, Eugene OR, and Wilmington DE. The campaign against Avelo is growing – locally, regionally, and nationally.

    As the sign at the boycott Avelo protest in Santa Rosa reminds us: “immigration makes America great!”


    The author at the Boycott Avelo Airlines protest, Santa Rosa Airport, CA, April 26.

    The post ICE Contracts Avelo Airlines to Fly Deportees first appeared on Dissident Voice.