While the US & Israel Weaponize Starvation, Trump Attacks Basic Rights, and Throws Himself a $45 Million Military Parade

Millions of Americans gathered in over 2,100 cities as part of the “No Kings” protests, which were held to (1) defend what is left of our so-called democracy, (2) reject blatant authoritarianism, and (3) basically stand up for each other. I hesitated to join because like the “Hands Off” rallies back in April, the “No Kings” movement makes no mention of the US-Israeli Genocide in Palestine (mainly because it is tied in with the democratic party, which is chiefly responsible for the ongoing Genocide). Although the “No Kings” campaign is flawed due its association with the DNC, and its silence on the genocide, it does have merit. In fact, I was surprised by both the sizable turnout in Queens, NY, as well as the one or two passionate people I met, who carried Pro-Palestine posters, and spoke effectively in support of our Palestinian brothers and sisters.

According to the ACLU’s Deirdre Schifeling, “No Kings is really about standing up for democracy, standing up for people’s rights and liberties in this country and against the gross abuse of power that we’ve seen consistently from the Trump administration.”
Click here to learn more about the “No Kings” protests from Common Dreams.
Click here to learn more from the Grayzone on why the “No Kings” rallies featured hardly any antiwar messaging.

Scenes from the Queens’ “No Kings” Protest

Police Brutality is Nothing New

I am so tired of IGNORANT, racist, white people destroying lives. Although being “white” has afforded me a ton of privilege, these types of moral monsters have been a deadly, gnawing impediment for millennia. In addition to the Bidens and Trumps of the world, a good ol’ boy sheriff in Florida has warned, along with the state’s WHITE attorney general, that they “will kill you”, if you protest, and do something that they don’t like. This basically means that they can murder you for any reason, and get away with it (akin to what was done to Trayvon Martin, and countless others). I have probably joined over 100 protests during the last 20+ years, and in every instance, it was peaceful. The few times there was violence was when police officers, who couldn’t think for themselves (like the ass-clowns found in the video below), showed up in riot gear with military grade weapons. As per the comedian, Lee Camp, “don’t expect police officers who show up at a protest dressed like Rambo, to behave like Gandhi.”
Click here for the video of the Florida attorney general, and a local sheriff threatening to kill protesters.
Click here for a video showing masked ICE agents punching a father of 3, who has no criminal history.
Click here to learn how US police receive training in Israel on violence, control, and the lawless suppression of protests.

Image: Jason Armond – ICE raids

Image: Luke Johnson – ICE raids
(Click here for more images)

Florida, like the United States, is insane, and broken. How broken is it? I lived in Florida over 20 years ago, but I had to leave due to its toxic, and racist culture (too many confederate flags, and gun-toting pickup trucks).
Kudos to the NAACP for issuing a travel advisory for Florida in 2023.
Excerpt from the NAACP travel notice: “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

I hope that our brothers and sisters in Florida will rise up and remove their lunatic governor, Ron DeSantis, from office. People are dying because of his truly ignorant, and hateful madness.
Click here to learn more about the travel advisory from the NAACP.

As per Civil Rights Lawyer Alec Karakatsanis (author of Copaganda), “I think the most important thing that is unstated in almost all media coverage of the criminal punishment bureaucracy—and, more broadly, about issues of public safety—is that the U.S. is currently caging human beings at a rate that is unprecedented in its own history and in the recorded history of the modern world. We’re caging people at five times the rate that we did when Nixon was president. We’re caging people at a rate of five or 10 times what other comparably wealthy countries do right now. Those countries, by the way, have significantly lower levels of violence…So what we know from our own history and from studying other societies all over the world is that if our giant bureaucracy—cops, prosecutors, judges, probation and parole officers, prison guards, prisons, surveillance technology, companies profiting at every stage of that process—made us safe, we would have the safest society in the history of the world. But those things don’t make us safe.”

Where the “No Kings” Movement Misses the Mark

The United States, and Israel, are by far, the biggest agents of TERROR in the world, and the greatest threats to the survival of our species. It is estimated that the US has murdered over 20 million innocent people since WW2 (in 37 nations), and that the numbers prior to the second world war, are also in the TENS of MILLIONS. If you believe that every life is a universe, then these figures are impossible to ignore, let alone comprehend. In other words, US settler colonialism & US hegemony, have obliterated too many human lives to count.

A Death Toll Far Higher than What is Reported

Over the last 20 months, we have all borne witness to one of the darkest chapters in human history, as the live streamed US-Israeli Genocide has massacred (via bombing, sniping, starvation, etc.), at least 500,000 of our Palestinian brothers and sisters (70% of whom are Women, and CHILDREN). I heard the British journalist, Myriam Francois, say that her “DNA has been altered” by the horrors of the US-Israeli Genocide in Gaza. I agree. My views on nearly everything, and everyone has changed irrevecobly over the last 20 months due to the Genocide in Gaza. How a movement, like “No Kings”, can claim to be about human rights, and yet ignore one of the worst crimes in human history (Israel’s US backed genocide in Gaza), is beyond me.
Click here to learn more about our struggle for moral consistency.

Artist: Rice Araujo

Tyrant Trump’s Military Parade

“Donald Trump is the worst criminal in human history.” – Noam Chomsky

War criminal, and Genocidist, Donald Trump has been a cowardly, soulless monster for decades. While 1 in 4 children in NYC are food insecure, AND US homelessness is at an all time high (In 2024, the number of unhoused people in the United States was the highest since survey records began), AND the United States continues its Genocide in Gaza, as well as other mass murder campaigns (see Iran, Ukraine, and the US healthcare system), the incredibly depraved Trump spent upwards of $45 Million for a “poorly attended” military parade on his birthday (let’s not forget too that Trump, who is now a champion of the US military, was also a 5 time draft dodger (thanks to his rich, racist daddy), during the Vietnam War).

Donald Trump is a mass murdering lunatic. If he was held to the same standards as the Nazis at Nuremberg, he would be hanged. Again, it is important to remember that Trump, a lifetime criminal, is dangerously dumb too (or as Chris Hedges called him gently, “a limited thinker”). Donald Trump is an ignorant, racist, greedy, sociopath, who filed for bankruptcy SIX times before being vomited up by the broken, and corrupt, US political system in 2016. I have lived in the NYC area for many decades, and unfortunately, the Trumps have been on my radar for a long time (his father, Fred Trump, was an infamous slum lord in NYC, who made MILLIONS of dollars by exploiting people of color through racist/discriminatory housing policies).

Despite his many limitations, and staggering incompetence, Donald Trump (as Mr. Chomsky said), is still in a position to cause more harm to humanity, and Mother Earth, than anyone else in human history. The depths of depravity of Donald Trump should frighten us all. As Trump terrorizes, and massacres our brothers & sisters in Gaza, Iran, and other parts of the world (and brings us all closer to nuclear annihilation), please remember that Donald Trump, like Joe Biden, is a War Criminal, who is committing a GENOCIDE in Palestine. Americans must never forget this as the US propaganda against Iran, and China escalates.

As per Noam Chomsky, Donald Trump is a “sociopathic megalomaniac”.

Palestinian Child Yazan Kafarna died of severe malnutrition caused by the US-Israeli genocidal siege.
Click here to learn more about Yazan Kafarneh’s story from Mondoweiss.

The US and Israel are Weaponizing Starvation

The United States and Israel are Weaponizing humanitarian aid through an organization that they created called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”. According to Mondoweiss, “Palestinians refer to the locations where the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is distributing aid as “massacre sites” and “death traps” due to near-daily killings. But they are forced to visit because there is no other way to get food.”

As per the Electronic Intifada’s Nora Barrows-Friedman (who also continues to do phenomenal work):
“Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees, said on June 10th that, quote, “this humiliating system continues to force thousands of hungry and desperate people to walk for tens of miles excluding the most vulnerable and those living too far. This system does not intend to address hunger. Aid, deliveries, and distribution must be at scale and safe. In Gaza, this can only be done through the United Nations, including UNRWA. We have the expertise, the knowledge, and community trust. The state of Israel must lift the siege and allow the UN safe and unhindered access to bring in aid and distribute it safely. This is the only way to avert mass starvation, including among one million children. Today, there are 12,000 UNRWA staff who continue providing health, sanitation, and psychosocial services under the most brutal and adverse environment. Our warehouses outside Gaza are full with a volume of assistance equivalent to 6,000 trucks. Letting food rot and medicine deliberately expire would simply be obscene.”

Meanwhile, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights has officially notified the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation of its potential legal liability for complicity in Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against Palestinians. In a 40-page letter to the private corporation’s new CEO, Johnny Moore, who is a Christian Zionist evangelical, and dismissed the daily killings at the aid points as, quote, “fictional massacres”.

The civil rights organization warns that if the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, GHF, does not cease its operations in Gaza, they could face civil litigation or criminal prosecution in different countries, as well as legal action before international bodies. The Center for Constitutional Rights senior staff attorney Catherine Gallagher stated, quote, “for the past 20 months, Israel has used the denial of food, water, and other basic necessities to carry out its genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza. As Palestinians now face mass starvation, Israel has teamed up with GHF to make accessing food not only dangerous and potentially deadly, but also a tool of forced displacement.”
Click here to learn more from Mondoweiss.
Click here to learn more from the Electronic Intifada.
Click here to learn more from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Image: Visualizing Palestine

Legally, Israel has NO right to exist in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank

According to the brave & excellent, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories:
“Time to clarify WHERE Zionists believe Israel has the right to exist:
OPTION 1: On the land taken by force from the Palestinians in 1947-1949? Israel already exists on that land! The tantrums and fuss about it – while an entire people is being annihilated – is utterly insufferable.
OPTION 2: Everywhere “from the river to the sea”? That is false: The State of Israel has NO right to exist in Gaza, east Jerusalem, and the West Bank (land where Palestinians have exclusive right to self-determination in the form of independent statehood). It is flagrantly unlawful, violates UN Charter, customary IL, ICJ jurisprudence, and much more.”
Click here to learn more from Francesca Albanese.

The US-Israeli Genocide in Palestine is Worse than the Nazi Holocaust

Katie Halper is a superb journalist, who hosts “The Katie Halper Show” & the “Useful Idiots” podcast (along with Aaron Mate).
Here is an excerpt from a segment called, “Jews Speak Out: Israel’s Genocide is Worse than Nazi’s”, where she interviewed 3 organizers of the first Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress (Dalia Sarig, Haim Bresheeth, and Ronnie Barkan):

Artist: Unknown

How does the genocide in Gaza compare to the Nazi Holocaust?

Katie Halper: Can you talk about what is happening right now, as we speak, in Palestine? I mean we’re seeing people burned alive. We are seeing obviously all the usual suspects being bombed and targeted. So that would be Hospitals, schools, obviously children and women suffering disproportionately. What are your thoughts on what is happening right now?

Haim Bresheeth: “It’s very difficult to speak about this genocide A, because we are out of words. And the reason that we are out of words is it’s been going on for almost 2 years with no action from the western so-called democracies. And the only action they took until now, and continue to take, is supporting genocide, militarily, financially, diplomatically, politically, socially, culturally, they support the destruction of international law. They support the destruction of humanity. Yeah? This is a test that humanity has failed, and this is the one test that humanity cannot fail if it wants to survive. So this is the first thing…The second thing is even if you want to compare it to other genocide, let’s take the worst genocide that we can think of, like the Jewish genocide by the Nazis. Well a lot of those things were not done by the Nazis. They didn’t do song and dance about people that they killed, not just because the technology did not exist, they tried to hide the genocide. And these people are proud. They’re proud. You know, they are sending their wife a birthday message by destroying a hospital, or a university, or a whole block of flats with people in it.

As a historian, I know that throughout the Second World War, the hospital, the Jewish hospital in Berlin, continued to operate for 6 years through the war for the 3,000 Jews that remained in Berlin. Nobody bombed the hospital. Nobody took the doctors and raped them, as as some kind of measure of punishment, for what? For being a doctor? I mean what people are now doing, you know no Nazi, or other genocide, actually went to the public and said, what we’re doing is right, support us. The populations in the other genocide were not part of it, in some cases arguably they say that they didn’t know it like the Germans of course, it’s a difficult argument, but here the whole nation is in a sense voting democratically for genocide. This has not happened before. So all these things are making it really difficult to talk about it in comparative terms because you can’t compare it. Where was there a genocide that was you know, using 2,000 pound bombs on schools and hospitals? The bombs existed before but nobody thought of doing that.

So now, where was there a genocide that intellectuals, writers, doctors, poets, nurses, and of course journalists, were decimated at a rate that you know, in all the other conflicts in the last 80 years, less journalists were killed than in Gaza? This is incredible. I mean you’re a journalist. You know what we’re talking about. You know, if you talk about the genocide, you’re killed. A woman that was part of a film by an Iranian director was killed when it became clear that the film was going to be in the French festival. They killed her a few days before the film came out, with her family, for God’s sake. What is Jewish about it? What is human about it? What is legal about it? What is moral? So, we are actually having a problem finding the words, and finding you know, because it has never happened like it does now. And the whole nation of Israel is supporting it. Between 82 and 91% , depending on which poll you go for, are supporting it. So this is democratic. This is totally democratic.”
Click here for the poll showing that 82% of Israelis support the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Click here for the poll showing that 91% of Israelis support both the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, as well as the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens from Israel.

Ronnie Barkan: “Netanyahu is very representative of Israeli society…there was just a recent poll published, and you have the vast majority (of Israelis) supporting a genocide, the vast majority supporting ethnic cleansing, the vast majority even supporting the starvation policy. And that is what we are fighting against. So yes, everything that was mentioned, Israel is quite literally looking at it as finishing the job that they hadn’t finished in 1948, because there are some some Palestinians still left in Palestine, and that is a problem for the Zionists…”
Click here for the full interview from the Katie Halper Show.

Artist: Carlos Latuff

Lastly, The Grayzone, and the Geopolitical Economy Report, are trusted sources that do superb work. Both outlets have reported that Donald Trump (and his team of crazed sycophants), conspired with Israel, to lie to Iran about having serious interest in nuclear arms talks, so that Iran could be caught off guard during an unprovoked Israeli attack. In other words, the two countries that are the biggest agents of terror in the world, Israel and the US, are committing new “Acts of War”, and “Crimes of Aggression” against the state of Iran (according to legal scholars). The United States and Israel have once again demonstrated that they have ZERO regard for international law, and human life, as their latest set of war crimes brings the entire planet closer to nuclear annihilation (Iran is a powerful country (and partner in peace), and is considered a strategic ally of both Russia, and China).
Click here to learn more from the Geopolitical Economy Report.

According to journalist Jeremy Scahill, “It’s been 10 days since Israel launched an unprovoked campaign of sustained bombing against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hundreds of Iranian civilians have been killed, and Israel has waged a widespread campaign of assassination, targeting military and intelligence leaders, including commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as nuclear scientists and other technical experts. In some cases, these assassinations have been conducted in crowded residential buildings, bringing large civilian death tolls. Israel has attacked medical sites in Iran, ambulances, civilian neighborhoods. Estimates range from 400 to 900 Iranians killed so far, and well over 3,000 others injured in the Israeli attacks. Iran’s Red Crescent and regional civil defense organizations estimate that more than 40,000 people have been displaced since the bombing began.”
Click here to learn more from Jeremy Scahill, and Drop Site News.

Click here to learn more from the Answer Coalition.

“Israel is the Rabid Dog of American Imperialism.” – Dr. Mohammed Tahir

Author, and analyst, Stephen Semler, continues to do outstanding work.
Here are excerpts (and a graph), from his latest piece titled, Trump’s ‘Israel First’ Foreign Policy gets Bipartisan Backing:

“Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultimate goal appears to be regime change in Iran, with the more immediate one being to entice the US further into the war. Trump has admitted that Netanyahu wants to drag the US into yet another Middle East conflict, but he’s now considering attacking Iran directly. American voters overwhelmingly don’t want a war with Iran. Trump is leading Americans into war under false pretenses. Israel’s justification for its attacks is that Iran is on the verge of producing nuclear weapons. US intelligence agencies believe Iran hasn’t even decided to build one, rejecting Israel’s claims that it has. Senior White House Officials aren’t buying Israel’s assertion, either…

If Trump decides to bomb Iran, don’t expect any pushback from the highest-ranking Democrat in office. Earlier this month, Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was producing social media content designed to undermine diplomatic talks with Iranian officials, in keeping with his decade-long opposition to the historic Iran nuclear deal. Schumer has wanted to sink the Iran deal for as long as Netanyahu has. A political party that has built its identity around opposing Trump is not opposing Trump’s march to war with Iran…Israel has about 90 nuclear warheads in its inventory, according to the Federation of American Scientists. These warheads are real, unlike Iran’s imaginary ones. Now, which type of nukes — real or make-believe — do you think is getting more attention right now? A Google search for “Israeli nuclear weapons” over the past week produced 5,900 results. The same search for “Iranian nuclear weapons” yielded 54,400 results. Narrowing the search to news mentions over the past week, the results were 2,900 and 40,600, respectively. The next logical Google search is for “Israeli exceptionalism.” Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. It refuses to allow international inspectors to view its nuclear facilities and is one of just four UN member states that have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It’s this exceptionalism — and the resultant sense of impunity — that leads me to believe that of all the states that own nuclear weapons, Israel is the most likely to actually use them.”

Image: Stephen Semler
Click here to learn more about why US Intelligence says Iran is not a nuclear threat.

Retribution is Just a Matter of Time

Why would anyone believe a word of indicted War Criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Lifetime Criminal, Donald Trump (who is also a war criminal)? To make matters worse, US Secretary of Defense (War), Pete Hegseth, is a wildly incompetent psychopath, who has declared a “Holy War” on both China, and Islam. As the US War Machine violates international law yet again, and ramps up another mass murder campaign in Iran, it is important to remember that while the United States has killed tens of millions of innocent people since WW II, not one US official has ever been investigated, let alone charged. Again, if you are rich and powerful in the United States, you are above the law.

Artist: John Carlton (1949)

The United States, and Israel, MUST be held accountable, and MUST never be forgiven for the Genocide in Palestine. Moreover, if current trends continue, there will no doubt be an additional price to pay for the wickedness of both countries as well, World War III. One day, the chickens WILL come home to roost for the United States, and I won’t blame our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world one bit. In fact, when the life extinguishing strikes start to rain down on my city, I will look up and ask, what took you so long?

Until next time…

*Silence is Complicity. Shame on the vegan movement for its continued SILENCE on both the Genocide in Gaza, and the unprovoked US-Israeli bombing of Iran.

Israel = Nazis = US “leadership” = EVIL = US Corporate Media = GENOCIDE = World War III?