"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we do not know."
"Simply because you do not have evidence that something
exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist."
"Learn to say 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be often."
"A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet for sale, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing, cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. "
"If you live in a major city, you can see them all around you. I am talking about aging vans, RVs and trailers that are parked on the side of the road for months at a time and that obviously have people living in them. There is an entire class of people that live in such conditions, and there is an entire class of “businessmen” that prey on such people. When I was growing up, there were lots of headlines about “slumlords” that were taking advantage of the poor. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a “slumlord” is “a landlord who receives unusually large profits from substandard, poorly maintained properties”. Today, we have a different sort of a problem. “Vanlords” are parking vans, RVs and trailers along the streets of the worst parts of our major cities, and they are renting them out to people that cannot afford regular homes.
Sadly, we live at a time when lots and lots of people cannot afford regular homes because homelessness is absolutely exploding all over the nation. In some areas there have been efforts to crack down on the “vanlords”, but when things get too hot in one area they just move somewhere else. As long as there are vast hordes of homeless Americans that are deeply suffering, there will be “vanlords” that are eager to take advantage of them.
Matt Feely just authored a very interesting piece about this phenomenon. He says that things are particularly bad in the poorest sections of Oakland…"The most familiar and ominous form of homelessness in Oakland, however, has become the vehicle encampment. A few small clusters of vehicles have gathered in my North Oakland neighbourhood, lines of dirty campers and battered cars seeking shade under an elevated freeway, but poor East Oakland has it the worst. There, such encampments have taken over long stretches of busy street, visiting already-distressed neighbourhoods with huge living sculptures of ugliness and disorder - cars filled with clothes and junk; hulking RVs parked for months at a time, drug and sex deals conducted streetside; trash gathering around and between the vehicles, and lots of new crime. Recently, the city had to replace traffic lights at an East Oakland intersection with stop signs, because people, presumably from the vehicle encampment close by, were constantly stealing the cables to sell the copper wire inside."
All over the country, this is how vast numbers of people are living now. Unfortunately, most of the people that are living in RVs don’t even own them. Instead, most of them are owned by the “vanlords”…"But the people in those RVs don’t own them. They rent them, from people who’ve come to be called “vanlords”. These energetic businesspeople buy up old trailers and RVs and either drive or tow them to unfortunate neighbourhoods in cities like Oakland. There they enter into informal rental agreements with homeless people."
This is also happening on a very large scale in southern California. In fact, it is being estimated that the number of people living in RVs in Los Angeles County actually increased by 31 percent from 2020 to 2023…"The number of people living in RVs across L.A. County has jumped 31% from 2020 to 2023, according to the annual homeless counts. About 11,500 people are estimated to live in roughly 6,800 RVs."
With each passing day, more impoverished people are being forced out into the streets. And with each passing day, more formerly middle class Americans are joining the ranks of the poor. Our standard of living has declined so much that we have reached a point where even most middle class Americans are struggling financially…"A majority of middle-class Americans are experiencing financial hardship that they expect will continue for the rest of their lives, according to a new poll. Findings published by the National True Cost of Living Coalition show that 65% of Americans whose incomes are 200% above the national poverty line – which is about $62,300 for a family of four, often considered middle class – said they are struggling financially."
In many cases, a single accident or a single bad break is enough to push someone over the edge. The vast majority of us are just barely scraping by from month to month, and that is because the cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have…"The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago."
If you are still doing well, please don’t look down on those that are hurting. Many of them were once just like you. Sadly, many more Americans will be dumped out into the streets soon as economic conditions continue to deteriorate. This week, we learned that initial claims for unemployment benefits have hit the highest level in 10 months…"The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week unexpectedly jumped to the highest level in 10 months, the latest sign that the labor market is starting to cool in the face of high interest rates.
Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show initial claims for the week ending June 8 increased by 13,000 to 242,000, above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims. It marks the highest level for jobless claims since August 2023. Continuing claims, filed by Americans who are consecutively receiving unemployment benefits, also rose to 1.82 million for the week ended June 1, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week."
Virtually all of the economic numbers that we have been getting lately tell us that the economy is rapidly heading in the wrong direction. So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until you see what is coming. Personally, I fully expect conditions to get steadily worse throughout the rest of 2024. All of the “vanlords” out there will soon have even more potential customers to prey on, and that is not good news for any of us."
"Hezbollah vs IDF: Iran's Proxy Aims 200,000 Missiles
as Israel-Lebanon Border Burns? Who Will Win?"
"Eight months into a brutal and unrelenting war, Hezbollah has intensified its aggression against Israel, boasting a force of 100,000 fighters and an arsenal of 200,000 missiles, including advanced rockets like Burkhan and Fajr. In response, Israel has mobilized its military, with 170,000 active troops, 360,000 reservists, and a range of sophisticated weaponry, including F-35 jets and Arrow-3 missile defense systems. The escalating conflict raises questions about each side's military capabilities and the potential for further widespread death and destruction."
"By several metrics, Europe is about to implode/explode not with a bang but an agonizing whimper anytime within the next few months. It’s crucial to remember that the snap elections in France and Britain will also coincide with the NATO summit on July 11 – where Russophobia-fueled warmongering will reach paroxysm.
Among possible scenarios, some kind of false flag to be squarely blamed on Russia should be expected. It could be a Franz Ferdinand moment; a Gulf of Tonkin moment; or even a USS Maine before the American-Spanish war moment. The fact remains that the only way these “leaders” across NATOstan plus their lowly MI6 agent in a green sweaty T-shirt in Kiev will survive is by manufacturing a casus belli.
If indeed that happens, a date can be advanced: between the second week of July and the end of August; and certainly no later than the second week of September. October will be too late: too close to the U.S. elections. So be prepared for the Summer of Living Dangerously.
Meanwhile, The Bear is not exactly hibernating. President Putin, before and during the St. Petersburg forum, elaborated on how “symmetric” Moscow’s response will be to attacks by Kiev using NATOstan missiles – already ongoing. There are three NATOstan members which are supplying missiles with a range of 350 km and more: U.S., UK and France.
So a “symmetric” response would imply Russia providing Global South nations with advanced weaponry – capable of causing serious damage to nodes of the Empire of Bases. And here are the top candidates to receive these weapons – as extensively debated not only on Russian TV channels but also in the St. Petersburg forum corridors.
West Asia: Iran (which already has them); Syria (badly needs them); Yemen; Iraq (would be very helpful to Hashd al-Shaabi) and Libya.
Central, Northeast, Southeast Asia: Afghanistan, Myanmar (these two were present in St. Petersburg) and North Korea.
Latin America: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua (just look at the current Russian foray in the Caribbean).
Africa: Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Southern Sudan and Zimbabwe (just look at Lavrov’s recent African tour).
Mr. Zircon says hello: And that brings us the jolly matter of a Russian naval force hangin’ out in the Caribbean, headed by the hypersonic missile-armed frigate Admiral Gorshkov and the Kazan nuclear submarine. The indispensable Andrei Martyanov has noted how the Gorshkov “carries 32 Onyx, Zircon, Kalibrs and Otvet. These are the most advanced and deadly cruise missiles in history, with a serious combat pedigree. Kazan, which is Yasen-class SSGN carries also 32 VLS and, in addition, has 10 torpedo tubes which can shoot not just torpedoes.”
Well, this naval force is obviously not there to launch WWIII. Martyanov explains that “while both can strike all of the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada, they are there not for that reason. God forbid if it comes to real WWIII there are plenty of Bulavas, Avangards, Sarmats and Yarses to deal with this horrifying business. No, both Gorshkov and Kazan are there to show that they can reach any combat ship or strategic sea lift vessel carrying any military combat set from North America to Europe in case of some nutjob deciding to try to survive a conventional war with Russia.”
What’s even more intriguing is that after spending time in Havana, the naval force will remain in the Caribbean for a series of exercises – and will be joined by other Russian Navy vessels. They will remain in these waters until the end of The Summer of Living Dangerously. Just in case some nutjob has fancy ideas.
Meanwhile, the possible escalation towards Hot War in Europe proceeds unabated, with NATO via its epileptic slab of Norwegian wood radically changing the established rules of proxy wars with one nonsense outburst after another. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are already capable, via NATO, to destroy both military and civilian Russian assets – oil storage, airports, energy facilities, railway junctions, even concentration of troops.
Everyone and his neighbor will be waiting for the “symmetric” responses. For all practical purposes the crucial decision has been made by the rarified plutocracy which really runs the show: force Europe into war on Russia. That’s the rationale behind all the rhetorical kabuki about a “military Schengen” and a New Iron Curtain from the Arctic through the Baltic chihuahuas all the way to rabid Poland. The plutocracy actually believes that afterwards they can buy the whole thing for a pittance while flies are still laying eggs in radioactive European carcasses."
What does a Russian Shopping Mall look like in 2024? Come along on a tour of Liner Shopping Center in Moscow, Russia. Opened in June 2024, this is a brand new shopping mall. How have sanctions affected the Russian retail market?
"Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.) is sounding the alarm about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it will impact your world in very negative ways. It’s all in a new report called “The AI Revolution: The Final Coup d’Etat.” CAF explains, “This is a very serious look at Artificial Intelligence and how it’s going to be used to implement control. This past week, there was this huge open board meeting at OpenAI. There were board members put there to make sure OpenAI and its products were in alignment with the best interests of the human race. Some of them got booted out. Now, we see the former head of the NSA (National Security Agency) get put on the board. I just realized it today, and I had not realized it before. Edward Snowden just tweeted out and said you should never use any of these products, which include ChatGBT. Snowden also said, ‘You have to understand where this is going. You have been warned.’
“The AI Revolution” also warns that AI “Will alter the prospects for a free society, even free will, and attempt to seed the idea human-only decision-making will become a rarity and, in time, cease to exist.”
Don’t think sophisticated AI is some idea that is far into the future. AI is here now, and CAF points out, “I just see more and more companies using this type of technology to institute financial fraud and make money from financial fraud in their pricing. You also have thousands of companies to track you for their benefit. It is trying to extract data from you to accomplish whatever its goal is. It’s like a swarm of invisible locusts that are all trying to surveil and track, and none of them are trying to optimize your life and give you a free and inspired life. They are just trying to get their piece.”
AI will also be used to ignore and break all laws. After all, it’s robotic and can’t be held accountable. CAF says, “By removing moral obligations and legal and obedient respect for laws, the speed at which you can do evil is extraordinary. One of my concerns, and I have said this for many years, I think this kind of technology allows interdimensional intelligence to act as material reality so that, literally, demonic intelligence can have far more influence and impact in our world. It operates at such high speed, and then you combine that with the payment systems in the financial system, the things that can go wrong are phenomenal. One of the main problems that we have seen in the past year is artificial intelligence takes off on its own, and it starts functioning in a way it makes no sense, and it’s just lying. It’s just making stuff up and lying. It’s literally like it’s under demonic possession.”
CAF says, no matter what, “AI can’t beat God.” And instead of worshiping Jehovah and Jesus (like you should), the creators of AI want you to trust whatever this tech tells you to do. CAF says, “They want an AI Religion Revolution.” Don’t buy into this crap because AI is a disaster for humanity and your freedom.
CAF thinks the Democrats will be forced to replace Joe Biden come November, and she explains why. Now, more than ever, CAF thinks physical gold and silver are good investments. She encourages people to expand the use of cash. CAF thinks two of the best weapons against this sort of artificial intelligence used for control and tyranny is to enforce the US Constitution and, above all, do not lose your faith in God the Father and Christ Jesus. There is much more in the 61-minute riveting in-depth interview."
"I gave this talk in Blackburn, England during a campaign event for my friend Craig Murray who is running for parliament. Like George Galloway, who was recently elected to parliament, Craig’s central campaign issue is the genocide in Gaza. He calls for a permanent ceasefire, the establishment of a full and independent Palestinian state and backs the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against the apartheid state of Israel.
Transcript
Craig Murray: Good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming along. I'm Craig Murray. I'm here in Blackburn, as you may know, as a candidate in the general election and one thing I've made absolutely plain is that I'm standing here because of the genocide in Gaza. That's what has brought me here to raise the issue and fight the election here and we're having a meeting here today which is not like your normal election meeting in that it's very much focused on that subject and which I hope will give you a lot of information and food for thought and I am extremely proud to have two of the best speakers on the subject in the world, two world leading authorities on the subject who've come here to Blackburn.
I had difficulty persuading people today that they are actually here and that it's not a Zoom meeting or something along those lines. And they've both come large distances to be here. And without further ado, because I'm going to be here, as comedians used to say, I'm here all week. I'm here for the next month so you'll have lots and lots of chances to hear me talk but this is a man who you probably very seldom get to hear talk.
He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a man of enormous experience, who's just flown in from Egypt, where he won the Arab World's Top Prize for Journalism — and we look very much forward to hearing Chris Hedges.
Chris Hedges: Thank you.
Israel has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. It has been morally bankrupted by the sanctification of victimhood, which it uses to justify an occupation that is even more savage than that of apartheid South Africa. Its ‘democracy’ - which was always exclusively for Jews - has been hijacked by extremists who are pushing the country towards fascism. Human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists - Israeli and Palestinian - are subject to constant state surveillance, arbitrary arrests and government-run smear campaigns. Its educational system, starting in primary school, is an indoctrination machine for the military. And the greed and corruption of its venal political and economic elite have created vast income disparities, a mirror of the decay within America’s democracy, along with a culture of anti-Arab and anti-Black racism.
By the time Israel achieves its decimation of Gaza - Israel istalking about months of warfare that will continue at least until the end of this year - it will have signed its own death sentence. Its facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation – which it successfully sold to its western audiences – will lie in ash heaps. Israel’s social capital will be spent. It will be revealed as the ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime it always has been, alienating younger generations of American Jews. Its patron, the United States, as new generations come into power, will distance itself from Israel. Its popular support will come from reactionary Zionists and America’s Christianized fascists who see Israel’s domination of ancient Biblical land as a harbinger of the Second Coming and in its subjugation of Arabs a kindred racism and celebration of white supremacy.
Israel will become synonymous with its victims the way Turks are synonymous with the Armenians, Germans are with the Namibians and later the Jews, and Serbs are with the Bosniaks. Israel’s cultural, artistic, journalistic and intellectual life will be exterminated. Israel will be a stagnant nation where the religious fanatics, bigots and Jewish extremists who have seized power will dominate public discourse. It will join the club of the globe’s most despotic regimes.
Despotisms can exist long after their past due date. But they are terminal. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to see that Israel’s lust for rivers of blood is antithetical to the core values of Judaism. The cynical weaponization of the Holocaust, including branding Palestinians as Nazis, has little efficacy when you carry out a live streamed genocide against 2.3 million people trapped in a concentration camp.
Nations need more than force to survive. They need a mystique. This mystique provides purpose, civility and even nobility to inspire citizens to sacrifice for the nation. The mystique offers hope for the future. It provides meaning. It provides national identity.
When mystiques implode, when they are exposed as lies, a central foundation of state power collapses. I reported on the death of the communist mystiques in 1989 during the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The police and the military decided there was nothing left to defend. Israel’s decay will engender the same lassitude and apathy. It will not be able to recruit Indigenous collaborators, such as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority - reviled by most Palestinians - to do the bidding of the colonizers.
All Israel has left is escalating savagery, including torture and lethal violence against unarmed civilians, which accelerates the decline. This wholesale violence works in the short term, as it did in the war waged by the French in Algeria, the Dirty War waged by Argentina’s military dictatorship, the British occupation of India, Egypt, Kenya and Northern Ireland and the American occupations of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the long term, it is suicidal.
The genocide in Gaza has turned Hamas’ resistance fighters into heroes in the Global South. Israel may wipe out the Hamas leadership. But the past - and current - assassinations of scores of Palestinian leaders has done little to blunt resistance. The genocide in Gaza has produced a new generation of deeply traumatized and enraged young men and women whose families have been killed and whose communities have been obliterated. They are prepared to take the place of martyred leaders.
Israel was at war with itself before Oct. 7. Israelis were protesting to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abolition of judicial independence. Its religious bigots and fanatics, currently in power, had mounted a determined attack on Israeli secularism. Israel’s unity is a negative unity. It is held together by hatred. And even this hatred is not enough to keep protestors from decrying the government’s abandonment of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Hatred is a dangerous political commodity. The Palestinian “human animals,” when eradicated or subdued, will be replaced by Jewish apostates and traitors. A politics of hatred creates a permanent instability, exploited by those seeking the destruction of civil society.
Israel was far down this road on Oct. 7 when it promulgated a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that resemble the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law permits exclusively Jewish settlements to bar applicants for residency on the basis of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.”
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, whom Isaiah Berlin called “the conscience of Israel,” warned that if Israel did not separate church and state and end the occupation, it would give rise to a corrupt rabbinate that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult.
“Religious nationalism is to religion what National Socialism was to socialism,” wrote Leibowitz, who died in 1994. He understood that the blind veneration of the military, especially after the 1967 war that captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, was dangerous. “Our situation will deteriorate to that of a second Vietnam, to a war in constant escalation without prospect of ultimate resolution,” he warned.
He foresaw that, “the Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police - mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 million to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would have to suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Force, which has been until now a people’s army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.”
“Israel,” he wrote, “would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.”
Settler colonial states that endure, including the United States, exterminate the native population through genocide and the spread of new infectious diseases such as smallpox. By 1600 less than a tenth of the indigenous population remained in South, Central and North America. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another nine million in the diaspora. They cannot, as many Israelis wish, wipe them all out.
Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza means there will be no two-state solution. Apartheid and genocide will define existence for the Palestinians. This presages a long conflict, but one that the Jewish State cannot ultimately win.
Run, the Israelis demand of the Palestinians, run for your lives. Run from Rafah the way you ran from Gaza City, the way you ran from Jabalia, the way you ran from Deir al-Balah, the way you ran from Beit Hanoun, the way you ran from Bani Suheila, the way you ran from Khan Yunis. Run or we will kill you. We will drop GBU-39 bombs on your tent encampments and set them ablaze. We will spray you with bullets from our machine-gun-equipped drones. We will pound you with artillery and tank shells. We will shoot you down with snipers. We will decimate your tents, your refugee camps, your cities and towns, your homes, your schools, your hospitals and your water purification plants. We will rain death from the sky.
Run for your lives. Again and again and again. Pack up the few belongings you have left. Blankets. A couple of pots. Some clothes. We don’t care how exhausted you are, how hungry you are, how terrified you are, how sick you are, how old, or how young you are. Run. Run. Run. And when you run in terror to one part of Gaza, we will make you turn around and run to another. Trapped in a labyrinth of death. Back and forth. Up and down. Side to side. Six. Seven. Eight times. We toy with you like mice in a trap. Then we deport you so you can never return. Or we kill you.
Let the world denounce our genocide. What do we care? The billions in military aid flows unchecked from our American ally. The fighter jets. The artillery shells. The tanks. The bombs. An endless supply. We kill children by the thousands. We kill women and the elderly by the thousands. The sick and injured, without medicine and hospitals die. We poison the water. We cut off the food. We make you starve. We created this hell. We are the masters. Law. Duty. A code of conduct. They do not exist for us.
But first we toy with you. We humiliate you. We terrorize you. We revel in your fear. We are amused by your pathetic attempts to survive. You are not human. You are creatures. Untermensch. We feed our lust for domination. Look at our posts on social media. They have gone viral. One shows soldiers grinning in a Palestinian home with the owners tied up and blindfolded in the background. We loot. Rugs. Cosmetics. Motorbikes. Jewelry. Watches. Cash. Gold. Antiquities. We mock your misery. We cheer your death. We celebrate our religion, our nation, our identity, our superiority, by negating and erasing yours.
Depravity is moral. Atrocity is heroism. Genocide is redemption.
This is the game of terror played by Israel in Gaza. It was the game played during the Dirty War in Argentina when the military junta “disappeared” 30,000 of its own citizens. The “disappeared” were subjected to torture - who cannot call what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza torture? - and humiliated before they were murdered. It was the game played in the clandestine torture centers and prisons in El Salvador and Iraq. It is what characterized the war in Bosnia in the Serbian concentration camps.
Israeli journalist Yinon Magal on the show “Hapatriotim” on Israel’s Channel 14, joked that Joe Biden’s red line was the killing of 30,000 Palestinians. The singer Kobi Peretz asked if that was the number of dead for a day. The audience erupted in applause and laughter.
We know Israel’s intent. Annihilate the Palestinians the same way the United States annihilated Native Americans, the Australians annihilated the First Nations peoples, the Germans annihilated the Herero in Namibia, the Turks annihilated Armenians and the Nazis annihilated the Jews. The specifics are different. The goal is the same. Erasure.
We cannot plead ignorance.
But it is easier to pretend. Pretend Israel will allow humanitarian aid. Pretend there will be a permanent ceasefire. Pretend Palestinians will return to their destroyed homes in Gaza. Pretend Gaza will be rebuilt - the hospitals, the universities, the mosques, the housing. Pretend the Palestinian Authority will administer Gaza. Pretend there will be a two-state solution. Pretend there is no genocide.
The vaunted democratic values, morality and respect for human rights, claimed by Israel and the United States, has always been a lie. The real credo is this – we have everything and if you try and take it away from us we will kill you. People of color, especially when they are poor and vulnerable, do not count. The hopes, dreams, dignity and aspirations for freedom of those outside the empire are worthless. Global domination will be sustained through racialized violence.
This lie - that the American empire is predicated on democracy and liberty - is one the Palestinians, and those in the Global South, as well as Native Americans and Black and Brown Americans, not to mention those who live in the Middle East, have known for decades. But it is a lie that still has currency in the United States and Israel, a lie used to justify the unjustifiable.
We do not halt Israel’s genocide because we, as Americans, are Israel, infected with the same white supremacy, and intoxicated by our domination of the globe’s wealth and the power to obliterate others with our advanced weaponry.
The world outside of the industrialized fortresses in the Global North is acutely aware that the fate of the Palestinians is their fate. As climate change imperils survival, as natural resources, including access to water, diminish, as mass migration becomes an imperative for millions, as agricultural yields decline, as coastal areas are flooded, as droughts and wildfires proliferate, as states fail, as militias and armed resistance movements rise to battle their oppressors along with their proxies, genocide will not be an anomaly. It will be the norm. The earth’s vulnerable and poor, those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” will be the next Palestinians.
“Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths,” the Roman historian Tacitus wrote of those the emperor Nero singled out for torture and death. “Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”
Sadism by the powerful is the curse of the human condition. It was as prevalent in ancient Rome as it is, 200 miles to the north from us, in Gaza.
We know the modern face of Nero, who illuminated his opulent garden parties by burning to death captives tied to stakes. That is not in dispute. But who were Nero’s guests¹? Who wandered through the emperor’s grounds as human beings, as in Rafah, were burned alive? How could these guests see, and no doubt hear, such horrendous suffering and witness such appalling torture and be indifferent, even content?
There is nothing hidden about this genocide. Over 147 courageous Palestinian journalists have been murdered by the Israelis because they have conveyed the images and stories of this slaughter to the world, martyred for their people, for us.
We are Nero’s guests.
The Palestinians have long been betrayed, not only by us in the global north, but by most of the governments in the Muslim world. We stand passive in the face of the crime of crimes. History will judge Israel for this genocide. But it will also judge us. It will ask why we did not do more, why we did not sever all agreements, all trade deals, all accords, all cooperation with the apartheid state, why we did not halt weapons shipments to Israel, why we did not recall our ambassadors, why when the maritime trade in the Red Sea was disrupted by Yemen an alternative overland route into Israel was set up by Saudi Arabia and Jordan, why we did not do everything in our power to end the slaughter. It will condemn us for not heeding the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is not that Jews are eternal victims, but that when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you are culpable.
“The opposite of good is not evil,” Samuel Johnson wrote. “The opposite of good is indifference.”
The Palestinian resistance is our resistance. The Palestinian struggle for dignity, freedom and independence is our struggle. The Palestinian cause is our cause. For, as history has also shown, those who were once Nero’s guests soon became Nero’s victims."
"The House of Representatives on June 14 passed its annual defense policy bill with GOP-approved culture war amendments that are certain to put the House on a collision course with the Democrat-controlled Senate. The final tally on the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) vote was 217–199, with six Democrats voting in favor and three Republicans voting against.
The $883.7 billion bill, which has more than 1,000 pages, provides continued funding for military aircraft, ships, vehicles, and weapons programs. It also includes a 4.5 percent pay raise for U.S. service members and about 15 percent in additional pay for some junior enlisted service members, bringing their overall pay boost to nearly 20 percent under this year’s budget.
The NDAA includes culture war provisions such as eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) positions within the Department of Defense (DoD) and imposing a hiring freeze on DEI positions in the DoD. There is a measure to block DoD funding for abortion-related expenses, another that bars the DoD from funding or providing gender transition surgeries and hormone treatments, as well as measures to prohibit the DoD’s education arm from purchasing or displaying material that “promotes radical gender ideology or pornographic content.”
The House version also includes an amendment, introduced by Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), that prohibits the Pentagon from contracting with entities that have engaged in boycotts of Israel and would bar the department from selling products made by entities that boycott Israel at any of its commissary stores or military exchanges.
Another amendment, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), would block the DoD from allocating funds for various climate-action-related executive orders issued by President Joe Biden.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the House-passed bill will find no traction in the upper chamber. “The legislation coming out of the House today is loaded with anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice, anti-environment, and other divisive amendments guaranteed not to pass the Senate,” he said in a statement. “As we move forward with this year’s NDAA process, both sides will have to work together to pass bipartisan legislation that honors and respects all who serve in defense of our nation.”
While the defense bill has traditionally passed in a bipartisan fashion, recent years have seen a marked increase in partisan amendments that are viewed as “poison pills” by the opposing party.
The Senate version of $911.8 billion does not include the culture war amendments. Like the House, it does include support for military operations in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, a 4.5 percent increase for service members. Unlike the House, however, the Senate would require women to sign up for the Selective Service System, the U.S. draft program that has not been in use since the Vietnam War.
The House and Senate must now come up with a final bill that passes both chambers before it is sent to President Biden for his signature. The last NDAA, which was negotiated by leaders in the House and Senate, stripped most of the culture war amendments that had passed in the House version.
“As we confront increasingly hostile threats from Communist China, Russia, and Iran, we must provide our military with all the tools they need to defend our nation and deter our enemies,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a statement following the House NDAA’s passage.
“This year’s NDAA will refocus our military on its core mission of defending America and its interests across the globe, fund the deployment of the National Guard to the southwest border, expedite innovation and reduce the acquisition timeline for new weaponry, support our allies, and strengthen our nuclear posture and missile defense programs.”
Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) voted against the version that came out of his committee on June 14. He released a statement that said, “It includes a funding increase that cannot be appropriated without breaking lawful spending caps and causing unintended harm to our military.”
The House NDAA is $12 billion less than the $895 billion cap for defense spending for the 2025 fiscal year under the debt ceiling deal that was agreed to last year while the Senate version is $16.8 billion more than that.
On June 11, the White House issued a statement of administration policy laying out President Biden’s objections to several of the bill’s provisions. The White House expressed disappointment that the current version of the House NDAA provides $700 million less than the president requested for the annual shipbuilding budget and calls for funding one less ship than he had hoped for.
President Biden also signaled his opposition to House provisions that would limit DEI programs. “The prohibitions regarding DEI efforts would impede DoD’s and Federal agencies’ ability to recruit and retain the diverse perspectives, experiences, and skill sets that are foundational to the strength of the Federal workforce,” the White House said. “Creating and supporting programs and policies that embrace DEI fosters workforce cultures that are inclusive of all individuals.”
"A report from 9/1/2021 from the Costs of War project at Brown University in September 2021 revealed that 20 years of post-9/11 wars have cost the U.S. an estimated $8 trillion and have killed more than 900,000 people."
2,459 Americans killed, 70,000 Afghan military and police deaths, 46,319 Afghan civilians killed, and 51,191 Taliban dead. And after $2.313 trillion and 20 years the Taliban kicked our asses out, as we and the whole world saw...Was it worth it? Qui bono, who benefited?
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And now, another $883 billion... look around. This country is going straight to Hell in every measurable way, we could solve so many problems with that money, but no, the psychopathic politicians and war machine interests demand their blood money, and will get it like always. In
2022, counts of individuals (421,392 people) and chronically homeless individuals (127,768) reached record highs in the history of data collection.Today, easily over 600,000 homeless, including 60,000 veterans, 22 of whom commit suicide each and every day. But no money for them, is there?
Shame, total shame and disgrace on us...we so deserve what we get. And I'm a Veteran, US Marine Corps Infantry Rifleman, not some supply clerk, I earned the right to criticize this monstrosity! - CP
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Meanwhile, the finest military on the planet spends this in 2024:
"Russia Approves Record Spending
For Its Military In New 2024 Budget"
"The Russian President has approved a record budget increase of around 30% for military spending in 2024, reaching 36.6 trillion rubles ($403 Billion US dollars)."
Militants' 200,000 Deadly Weapons VS IDF| Explosive Claims"
"The tensions at the Lebanon border remain volatile as IDF and Hezbollah continue with cross-border attacks amid the raging Gaza war. As the tit-for-tat strike escalates, an ex-Israeli security official has made startling revelations in link with a possible war with Hezbollah. A former Israeli security official issued a warning for Tel Aviv amid the growing risk of full-blown war which has been fueled due to intensified cross-border clashes."
"Not a prediction of the future but, humans, is this what you want? If World War 3 goes full scale it will definitely become a Global-Scale Nuclear Holocaust. When that nuclear weapon show comes up, there are going be no winners, it's the end of this round of human civilization. Wish this video never becomes true reality, but remember: war is never too far, peace is precious. Humans, you still have a chance, make your choice wisely. Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain, but still time. Believe there is good out there. We oppose deception. Conduit closing."
This album was inspired by memories of the paths we chose to follow and of the friends that journeyed with us. Some friends now live only in our hearts, immortal. But somewhere, someday we will pick up again, right where we left off. The journey never ends.
"The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems.
As for the view from planet Earth, this sharp image shows off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 4 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe."
"The poet Jane Hirshfield referred in a poem to the number of atoms it takes to make a butterfly. Ten to the 24th power, I think she said. I thought I'd check it out. A typical butterfly might weigh about half a gram. The exact ratio of elements I don't know, but mostly hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Let's assume an atomic weight of ten for a typical atom; that is, an atom with ten nuclear particles (Hydrogen=1, carbon=12, oxygen=16, and so on). A proton or neutron has a weight of about 1.6 X 10-24 grams. About 3 X 1022 atoms in a butterfly.
If I'm remembering Hirshfield's reference correctly (and I may not be), we are off by one or two orders of magnitude. No matter. It's a very big number. You want to make a butterfly? You will need 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. And every one in exactly the right place.
Now consider the miracle of metamorphosis. The caterpillar builds a chrysalis. Wraps itself up in its closet. And there, in the privacy of its self-sufficiency, it rearranges those arrangements of atoms. The caterpillar's six stumpy front feet are turned into the butterfly's slender legs. Four wings develop, as do reproductive organs. Chewing mouthparts become adapted for sucking. A crawling, insatiable, leaf-eater is transformed into a winged, sex-obsessed nectar sipper.
This is why we need poets. It's one thing to count atoms, or draw diagrams of the 22 amino acids, or suss out their sequence on the long chains that are the proteins. Or read out the genome that controls the machinery that turns a creeping leaf-cruncher into a winged angel. But all that biochemistry, as wonderful as it is, leaves the essential mystery intact. The hum. The unceasing hum that is life. The inextinguishable continuity. Sing, poets. Sing your hosannas."
"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for. "
"I reckon that it takes about three minutes to read my text. Well, according to statistics, in that same short period of time 300 people will die and another 620 will be born. It takes me perhaps half an hour to write a text: here I sit, concentrating on my computer, books piled up beside me, ideas in my head, the scenery passing by outside my window. Everything seems perfectly normal all around me; and yet, during these thirty minutes, 3,000 people have died and 6,200 have just seen the light of the world for the first time.
Where are all those thousands of families who have just begun to weep over the loss of some dear one, or else laugh at the arrival of a son, grandson or brother? I stop and reflect for a while: perhaps many of these deaths are reaching the end of a long, painful sickness, and some persons are relieved that the Angel has come for them. Besides these, in all certainty hundreds of children who have just been born will be abandoned in a minute and transferred to the death statistics before I finish this text.
What a thought! A simple statistic that I came upon by chance and all of a sudden I can feel all those losses and encounters, smiles and tears. How many are leaving this life, alone in their rooms, without anyone realizing what is going on? How many will be born in secret, only to be abandoned at the door of shelters or convents? And then I reflect that I was part of the birth statistics and one day I will be included in the toll of the dead. How good that is to be fully aware that I am going to die. Ever since I took the road to Santiago I have understood that although life goes on and we are eternal, one day this existence will come to an end.
People think very little about death. They spend their lives worried about really absurd things, putting things off and leaving important moments aside. They risk nothing because they believe that is dangerous. They grumble a lot, but act like cowards when it is time to take certain steps. They want everything to change, but they themselves refuse to change. If they thought a little more about death, they would never fail to make that telephone call that they have been putting off. They would be a little more crazy. They would not be afraid of the end of this incarnation because you cannot be afraid of something that is going to happen anyway.
The Indians say: "Today is as good a day as any other to leave this world ." And a sorcerer once remarked: "May death be always sitting beside you. That way, when you have to do something important, it will give you the strength and courage you need." I hope, reader, that you have accompanied me this far. It would be silly to let the subject scare you, because sooner or later we are all going to die. And only those who accept this are prepared for life."
"We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide. "
"From lies about the 'ceasefire deal' to the so-called hostage rescue operation - Palestinian-American analyst Omar Baddar always has incredible analysis."
