ISRAEL 2

5/18

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primary 2 24 on Gaza PALESTINE GENOCIDE

SEE IRAN WAR 3

see iran nuclear deal

no merri

SEE AIPAC

bolton freakin envoy to Iran?!

bibi up on chaRges?

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sent in a bit of vax on bad press

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MMA

As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage

Written by Matt Gertz

:{Published 05/13/26

While President Donald Trump accuses news outlets of committing “virtual TREASON” by producing reporting that suggests the United States is losing his war against Iran, the president’s loyal Fox News propagandists keep telling him that he’s doing a great job, saying he’s on the verge of victory, and suggesting he can fail only by backing down.

Ten weeks after U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran — and nine weeks after Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” of its leaders — Iran’s regime remains intact and in control of both its nuclear stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial route for global trade whose closure has spiked domestic fuel prices. In The Atlantic, Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan wrote Sunday that Trump’s decisions have put the country on the brink of a “total defeat” whose consequences “can neither be repaired nor ignored,” and he noted that “any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks.”

With his war at a standstill and the Iranians rejecting his demands for a negotiated settlement, the president has repeatedly lashed out at the press for undermining the effort by producing “treasonous” reporting — an attack he resumed on Tuesday afternoon.

“When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement,” he wrote on Truth Social. “They are aiding and abetting the enemy! All it does is give Iran false hope when none should exist. These are American cowards that are rooting against our Country."

Recent reporting suggests that Trump and his allies have been lying about how successful the war has been.

Minutes after he posted that remark, The New York Times published a report revealing that contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, classified intelligence analyses reveal that “Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities."

Earlier this month, The Washington Post determined that satellite imagery shows that “Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East,” far more destruction than the administration has publicly acknowledged, while Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence indicates the war has not impacted Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, one of Trump’s putative rationales for starting it. NOT COUNTED IN COST?

Meanwhile, NBC News reported that Trump abruptly canceled his “Project Freedom” plan to force the reopening of the Strait after Persian Gulf allies objected.

But on Fox this week, the hawkish sycophants who encouraged Trump to launch the war in the first place are still telling him he’s doing everything right.

Mark Levin: Trump’s war prevented a second holocaust and a nuclear attack on America

Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Fox host and sometime presidential adviser whose program Trump has urged the public to watch, devoted a lengthy and increasingly loud monologue on Sunday’s broadcast to lavishing the president with praise for launching the war and averting a second holocaust.

Levin denounced the Iranian regime and the war’s critics, claiming the latter “hate America and Israel so much they'd rather tens of thousands more Iranians die horrible deaths than see our country defeat this homicidal regime” and “care not at all, not one whit, that they are not only giving aid and comfort to this horrific enemy, but they are encouraging this enemy to slaughter, to execute, to rape, to torture, and to do what homicidal regimes do, because they know the enemy, that these people are in the bag.”

After urging the U.S. to arm and organize a Kurdish resistance to the regime, Levin praised the president, saying that while “humanity allowed the Holocaust to occur,” Trump and his administration had put “this Iranian Nazi regime … on its back."

:{Video

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From the May 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin

“The only president with the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime, this mass-murdering, nuclear-obsessed Islamist enemy, the world’s enemy, is Donald Trump,” he said. “And unlike other such circumstances around the world where genocide is taking place — and as a practical matter, we can’t get involved in all of them — in Iran, we have the opportunity to do something about it,” he continued, calling Iran “the biggest concentration camp in human history right now.”

Levin went on to host Fox contributor Newt Gingrich, who said the Iranian regime was “fully as evil as Adolf Hitler was or Joseph Stalin was” and the war was necessary to prevent Iran from deploying a nuclear weapon “in your neighborhood,” and Fox senior strategic analyst and retired Gen. Jack Keane, who urged the president to revive Project Freedom, “return to combat operations,” “put Kharg Island on the table,” and implement an intelligence operation to overturn the Iranian regime.

Sean Hannity: Iran’s leaders should “get out while they can”

Sean Hannity, the president’s chief mouthpiece at Fox, said on Monday’s show that Iran’s leaders are on the verge of fleeing the country.

:{Video

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From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

After parroting Trump’s statement earlier that day that the U.S.-Iranian ceasefire is “on life support,” Hannity cited unspecified “reports tonight that Iran's very fractured fourth-tier leadership, they may be planning an exit to Russia and Vladimir Putin.”

“Now, if you recall, on this program before Epic Fury, there were reports the supreme leader, other leaders were planning a move, that they had planes with cash and currency on a tarmac ready to go,” he continued. “I said multiple times, my advice to all of them is to get out while they can. The supreme leader, all his top leadership, and then the next tier and pretty much the third tier, they're all dead. They should have listened to me then. My same advice applies here.”

Hannity then brought on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke for a report on the war, telling him, “I think they're just lashing out in utter complete paranoia, but this report that they might be planning an exit is intriguing to me.”

“Yeah, intriguing indeed,” Corke replied. “And I salute you. You are spot-on. You gave him great advice. Of course, they didn't listen and it could cost all of them.”

Hannity was off the air on Tuesday night as he traveled with the president on his state visit to China.

Fox & Friends: “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.”

The co-hosts of Fox & Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show, have spent the week alternating between assuring their viewers that victory is at hand and pushing for risky escalations to the war.

Ainsley Earhart on Monday floated a military effort to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile. “The question is do we go in and get the enriched uranium? … Do the Israelis do it? Do the Americans do it?” she asked.

Lawrence Jones casually responded that such a mission — which experts say would constitute an immensely complex and risky endeavor — could be a “joint operation,” before pivoting back to how successful the war has been.

He criticized retired Adm. William McRaven’s declaration the previous day that the U.S. is “not really that much better off” than it was before starting war with Iran. “There is no doubt in my mind, taking out the ayatollah, a lot of their leadership, has put us in a better position,” said Jones. “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.” (If the metaphorical language seems confusing, consider that Jones is operating within a worldview where it’s unfathomable that we’re farther from the war’s endzone than 5 yards.)

:{Video

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From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

On Tuesday, the trio stressed how important launching the war had been and praised Trump for carrying it out.

In one segment, Jones said that “we’ve been dealing with this threat for 47 years,” criticized news coverage in the face of the “phenomenal” military operation, and concluded, “I'm glad that the president has the will to deal with this."

“Don't forget the purpose of this,” Earhardt chimed in. “It is to get the enriched uranium away from them because they are planning a nuclear -- they want to have a nuclear weapon. What would they do with that? Well, they yell in the streets, publicly, death to America and wipe Israel off the face of the map. That's their ideology. That's how they think."

“They are not thinking clearly like Americans do,” she added. “They hate us with a passion, with a vengeance. And they have the capability, possibly, of building this nuclear weapon. So the president — that was why the president decided to begin this conflict.”

Brian Kilmeade added that Iran causes “chaos in the region” before adding, “For those people who think the president is boxed in and frustrated, I’m telling you, he gets coolest under pressure. He does not feel it at all.”

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https://wareagle.substack.com/p/the-iran-war-exposes-the-farce-of

SUBSTACK

NO LNX

The Iran War Exposes the Farce of American “Representative Democracy”

J Richard Duke

Mar 03, 2026

The Iran War Exposes the Farce of American “Representative Democracy”

Ryan McMaken

“The Trump administration has unilaterally—without any Congressional debate or vote, of course—forced Americans into yet another war. This time, the war is a large-scale military campaign against Iran. Was there any groundswell of public support for this war? Did the Congress vote to spend more American tax dollars on another war? Apparently not. According to a March 1 poll from Reuters, only 27 percent of Americans polled said they support the US’s new war on Iran. Needless to say, few Americans have been calling their representatives in Congress asking for yet another Middle Eastern war.

:{:{So, why is the US now at war with Iran? Not even the administration appears to know for sure. After the war had already begun, the White House repeatedly changed its stated rationale for opening hostilities against Iran. At the beginning the US regime had been claiming it wanted regime change in Iran to “liberate” Iranians. Yet, by Monday, when Trump listed his reasons for starting the war, he didn’t mention regime change at all. Rather, the administration now seems to have settled on claims that the Iran regime was creating a missile program that, somehow, endangers the United States.}:

Yet, virtually no one believes that the Iranian regime has ever had long-range missiles capable of getting anywhere near US territory. Rather, the only “threat” to the United States is a threat to US bases which the US government has insisted on building 10,000 miles from US territory, and which have nothing to do with the safety of Americans in the United States.}:

On Monday, Rubio said that the United States began the war because the State of Israel planned to attack Iran, and that this would lead to Iranian reprisals against US bases. Rubio was essentially stating that Tel Aviv forced the US into the war. Trump today directly contradicted his Secretary of State—as well as the GOP Speaker of the House and GOP Senator Tom Cotton—and claimed “I might’ve forced their hand.”

Completely absent from all these confused and retroactive attempts to justify the war is any mention of the American people, their tax dollars, their freedoms, or even their alleged representatives in Congress. Nor is this surprising. The current war is a timely reminder that the US ruling elites regard the US taxpayers and ordinary Americans as little more than inconvenient afterthoughts in the formation of US foreign policy. At the same time, the US regime also claims to have the moral high ground precisely because the American regime is supposedly “democratic” with the support of “the people.”

Indeed, the Trump administration overall has helped make it abundantly clear that US elections and public opinion are almost completely irrelevant to the foreign policy. Throughout his campaigns, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed to be the peace candidate, announcing in his speeches that he would end wars, rather than start them. In the days before the 2024 election, the GOP posted this image in social media, clearly presenting the Trump administration as “the pro-peace ticket”:

Yet, less than a year into his second term, Donald Trump’s foreign policy looks largely indistinguishable from that of the foreign policy of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. Indeed, if the current war drags on, we’ll be able to say Trump’s foreign policy is reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration.

It was clear during the campaign that the Trump ticket was trying to take advantage of public sentiment which favored less US involvement in foreign wars. With American foreign policy, however, elections don’t matter. This was recently emphasized by the bumbling US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson. Carlson began with a simple question for Huckabee:

Carlson: How much does it matter what Americans think?

Huckabee: Well, it matters every bit what Americans think.

[Huckabee is a delusional liar. - JRD]

Carlson then points out that about 21% of Americans support war with Iran. He asks Huckabee if that’s enough for the US regime to start a war with Iran. Huckabee states “We don’t live in a world where you have a poll taken to find out whether our policy should be in a particular direction...”

Carlson then points out that Huckabee had just said public opinion matters a lot and Huckabee says “we care deeply about it...”

[Huckabee is a liar. - JRD]

Carlson: “If we’re ignoring it, in what sense to we ‘care deeply about it?’”

Huckabee then offers a non sequitur: “I think we care deeply when we see there’s a threat.” Huckabee then continued with more word salad in a desperate attempt to make a connection between public opinion and his preferred policy of repeatedly starting elective wars with Middle Eastern regimes that are no threat to the US population.

[Huckabee, the Ambassador to Israel, is a former pastor who does NOT understand the Bible and is puts Israel first and American somewhere below. - JRD]

The reality, of course, is closer to Rubio’s explanation for the US’s involvement in the war: following the lead of the State of Israel.

This is apparently fine with Ambassador Huckabee, of course, who in his Carlson interview, was asked if Huckabee thinks the State of Israel has a “right” to take over most of the Middle East. Carslon stated: ”Does Israel have the right to that land?” Huckabee responded ”It would be fine if they took it all.”

And what if most Americans don’t share this opinion? Clearly, the US regime doesn’t care, and neither does Huckabee, or Donald Trump.

In spite of all the US regime’s posturing about “the will of the people” and “representation” in Congress, what really matters in Washington is serving powerful interest groups. The taxpaying public simply exists as a resource to be bled dry in favor of wars, protectionism, and federal spending which serves the ruling elite’s complex system of patrons and clients that keeps the elite in power.

When it comes to US foreign policy in the middle east, the dominant interest group is the State of Israel. This is executed through the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and other elements of what foreign-policy scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen walt call “the Israel lobby.” When Mearsheimer and Walt released their book The Israel Lobby in 2007, they were predictably accused of anti-semitism. Yet, the book was ahead of its time in describing how pro-Israel interest groups have been extremely successful in gaining financial, military, and strategic favors for Israel from US policymakers. It has all been done at the expense of American taxpayers. The result has been an American foreign policy elite that overwhelmingly favors incessant foreign intervention to favor a foreign state—the State of Israel—regardless of any concern for the cost borne by Americans or the potential for drawing the US into broader conflicts that do not in any way increase the security of the United States.

In 2007, The Israel Lobby seemed controversial to many. In 2026, it is merely a statement of the obvious—that US foreign policy is tailored to favor certain interest group, rather than the interests of ordinary voters. This, however, is how all interest group politics works. The voting public doesn’t matter, and it hasn’t mattered for a long time.

This is shown in empirical studies that have tried to find a connection between public opinion and actual policies favored in Washington. The connection is tenuous at best.

For example, in a 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benajmin Page, the authors note that when it comes to “impacts on U.S. government policy ... average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” Gilens and Page note that “the preferences of economic elites ... have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.”

This can be seen in Trump’s own fundraising given how one of his biggest donors, billionaire Miriam Adelson, is notable for an extreme pro-Israel position. This is, not surprisingly, reflected in Trump’s foreign policy.

The final conclusions of Gilens and Page are clear:

In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

Perhaps no group of “economic elites” is more influential in foreign policy than those who control campaign funds distributed through pro-Israel interest groups like AIPAC, or through the spending of wealthy individuals like Adelson.

Other studies have come to similar conclusions. For example, in a 2017 paper on voter preferences, John Matsusake concluded that legislator preferences don’t correlate with voter preferences:

[W]hen legislator preferences differed from district opinion on an issue, legislators voted congruent with district opinion only 29 percent of the time. The data do not show a reliable connection between congruence and competitive election, term limits, campaign contributions, or media attention. The evidence is most consistent with the assumption of a citizen-candidate model that legislators vote their own preferences.

There is, of course, no such thing as a “district opinion,” but the general idea is clear enough: if a legislator’s campaign war chest depends on pleasing a specific interest group, then the preferences of the voters don’t really matter.

Similarly, in a 2016 study from Michael Barber, he writes on how votes in the US Senate bear little relation to public opinion: “[S]enators’ preferences diverge dramatically from the preference of the average voter in their state. The degree of divergence is nearly as large as if voters were randomly assigned to a senator.”

So, if policymakers are largely independent of the voters who the policymakers ostensibly “represent,” then what determines federal policy?

The current war is just the latest reminder that pluralism is wrong and elite theory is right. There is no “we the people.” There is no “representative democracy.” And, when it comes to the big stuff like war, federal spending, and the central bank, elections don’t matter. It’s why, no matter who gets elected, US foreign policy proceeds more or less as usual, year after year after year.

This is why it doesn’t matter that only about one in four Americans is interested in being on the hook for yet another Middle Eastern war with no apparent benefits for any average American. This is why the administration continues to engage in shifting claims about the origins of this conflict. The administration knows that claims about Iran being a threat to the American people are not tenable, and are on the same level as claims about Iraqi WMDs. Nor can the regime just come right out at say “our pro-Israel funders told us to fight Iran.” So, we have Rubio telling us the war was a “preemptive strike” against the potential blowback from US-funded Israeli strikes on Iran. This explanation is already falling apart, which is why Trump now denies it.

In the end, the regime doesn’t even really need to come up with a plausible explanation. The political fallout will settle largely on the current administration, and this will have little effect on the real governing elite which remains in control regardless which party is ostensibly “in power.”

Open link

SEE:

Why Parts of MAGA Feel ABANDONED After Trump Goes to War with Iran, with Marjorie Taylor Greene

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rww

no lnc many vids

'The Return Of Jesus Is Back On The Menu': MAGA Evangelicals Celebrate The Attack On Iran

03/02/2026

by Kyle Mantyla

When Israel launched an attack on Iran in June of 2025, religious-right activists celebrated, excited by the prospect that it could precipitate the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.

Predictably, these same religious-right activists are once again overjoyed after the United States and Israel began jointly bombing Iran over the weekend, killing the nation's supreme leader and dozens of top military commanders.

While the attack has generated retaliatory strikes and fears of a wider Middle East war, evangelical Trump supporters are gushing over President Donald Trump's action, with megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs declaring that "for such a time as this, this man is being led by God."

During a special sermon on Sunday, Hibbs absurdly declared that "this is not regime change, this is removing the obstacle so that the people [of Iran] can pick their leadership," before marveling that the attack was carried out on 9/11 of the Islamic calendar.

"Who planned this?" he asked. "I think God planned it."

On Sunday, pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, delivered a special "prophetic sermon" in response to the attacks to explain "what God's plan of fury is for Iran."

"It's refreshing to know that God is in total control and he has plans that will not be removed," Hagee said.

During a service later on Sunday, Hagee led his congregation in thanking God "for the fabulous military victory over the enemies of Israel" and "for our president, Donald Trump, whose wise courage has crushed the enemies of Zion."

Christian nationalist worship leader Sean Feucht likewise praised the attacks, saying that God has positioned his own prayer team in Iraq in order to take advantage of "the End Time open doors of what he is going to do in Iran when this regime is prayerfully removed."

In a separate video, Feucht declared that the attacks represent "the greatest day of harvest" for Christians to spread the gospel in Iran.

"God is using this moment to open wide the doors for evangelism like we haven't seen in 50 years," he celebrated. "Let see the gospel penetrate this ancient land."

On Saturday, Trump cultist Shane Vaughn did an emergency broadcast to explain how Trump is a "prophetic instrument of God" who "has an assignment to protect Israel."

"Yahweh raised up a man to do what happened this morning," Vaughn proclaimed. "Donald Trump did not strike Iran today because of a foreign policy doctrine ... Yahweh, the God of Heaven, raised up Donald Trump for today."

The Christian nationalist program "FlashPoint" likewise did a special broadcast on Saturday, during which MAGA cultist Lance Wallnau insisted that Trump did not want to attack Iran but "God made the Iranians just recalcitrant" during negotiations, just like when "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" in Exodus, thereby forcing Trump to take action.

"They refused to budge," Wallnau said. "And when Trump saw that they were not going to move and that there was no sense in delaying, he went ahead and made the decision, as he always does."

Later in the broadcast, Wallnau noted that the attack fell just before the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the failure of Haman's plot to destroy the Jews as told in the book of Esther.

"Isn't it interesting that the ancient stronghold of the Prince of Persia that sought to exterminate all the Jews is now coming down again under the authority of another modern-day ruler who the prayers of God's people have been empowering?" Wallnau declared. "During their feast of Purim, when they had a reversal of a destructive threat, we're watching that reversal happen again in our day."

"Things are happening right in alignment with actual feasts," Wallnau added. "There's always a feast day manifestation because Israel and the return of Jesus is back on the menu."

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10 25

Mehdi Hasan is live on Substack now: "'Ask the Editor': On Israel and Its Illegal Detention of Greta Thunberg and the Flotilla Activists"

8 25 BERNIE 1ST X GET 1/2 DEMS ~ ARMS

boebert only 2 cty glorify god?

pete sessions?

MMA 8 8 25 SORTING?

.../ Media Matters

• • Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro claimed, “Hamas is stealing the aid.”He also attacked the United Nations, saying, “The UN literally refuses to ship food in if they are escorted by the IDF, because the U.N. wants to fund Hamas.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [7/28/25]

• • National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote an article titled “Hamas Is to Blame for Gaza’s Woes,” which claimed that Hamas “considers the agony of Gazans a useful weapon in the narrative war. From this perverted point of view, a famine would be welcome news.”The piece concluded, “Hamas would rather see the population starve than give up on the war, or its grip on power.” National Review, [7/29/25]

• • After playing a clip of Trump saying the U.S. will get food into Gaza, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner said, “Now if they could just stop the bloodthirsty savages of Hamas from shooting at their own people and taking supplies away from them, that would be a miracle.”Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [7/28/25]

• • Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade claimed that “the problem is it’s Hamas. Hamas started it. They don’t care about their people. … They want to blame Israel for it.”Co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Lawrence Jones agreed, with Earhardt saying, “They steal the aid that Israel sends in, that America sends in.” Fox News,*Fox & Friends*, [7/29/25]

• • Fox News senior strategic analyst Jack Keane claimed it is “Hamas that has stopped the aid from coming in by not making this deal.” Keane: “Are there some humanitarian starvation and serious gravity taking place among the people in Gaza? You betcha there are. But it's Hamas that has stopped the aid from coming in by not making this deal.” Fox Business,*Mornings with Maria*, [7/29/25]

• • Newsweek’s Josh Hammer alleged that “anti-Israel forces have a new op: Israel-induced famine in Gaza. More lying. Hamas and the UN are obstructing aid from entering.”Twitter/X, [7/28/25]

• • Stephen L. Miller claimed, “The famine in Gaza is because of Hamas.”Twitter/X, [7/23/25]

• • OnOutnumbered, Fox host Mark Levin claimed, “Hamas is killing and starving its own people.” He added, “The U.N. is actually helping Hamas. The only people feeding the Palestinians there — the United States and the Israelis.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [7/28/25]

• • Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen agreed with Netanyahu’s claim that there is “no policy of starvation in Gaza” and claimed the reason for famine in the region is “Hamas, not Netanyahu.” Thiessen: “What is important to remember here is the reason why there is starvation in Gaza — Netanyahu is right. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza. The reason is that Hamas has been defeated but they refuse to surrender. They have no chance of prevailing and in any normal situation like this, where they had suffered such military setbacks, the other side would surrender and end the fighting and allow humanitarian assistance to come in. And Hamas is refusing to do that. And that's the source of the problem in Gaza. It's Hamas, not Netanyahu.” Fox News, *Special Report*, [7/28/25]

• • Townhall Editor Katie Pavlich posted: “Gaza is the only place where the UN and Hamas are purposely starving the population as a PR strategy against Israel.”Twitter/X, [7/26/25]

• • Right-wing podcaster Ben Ferguson claimed starvation in Gaza was caused by “adults who decided to put killing Israelis ahead of making sure their own kids are safe.”Ferguson added, “This is not Israel's fault. This is Hamas' fault; this is terrorists’ fault. They are the ones starving these kids. So I’m sick of people saying somehow this is Israel's fault. They attacked Israel. Period.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [7/28/25]

• • Fox News contributor Guy Benson said Trump is “right” for saying the “fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!” Benson added, “He’s right & every good person who cares (or purports to care) about the suffering in Gaza should say this loudly and with one voice, every day. That so many do not is a grotesque tell.” Twitter/X, [7/31/25]

• • Right-wing radio host Larry Elder claimed, “The food is being stolen by Hamas.”He also claimed that the New York Times article that featured the 18-month old toddler “was a complete and total lie, and so many members of the media … ran with it because it advanced the narrative: Gaza is suffering from mass starvation because of the dastardly Israelis.” The Salem Radio Network, *The Larry Elder Show*, [7/31/25]

• • Fox News host Lawrence Jones said there’s “propaganda” regarding “the Gaza story,” that “people just believe everything that is put out there, the images,” and that Hamas is “taking some of the aid away.” Jones: “As it relates to the war propaganda, Israel is losing it, when it comes to the Gaza story right here. People just believe everything that is put out there, the images. They may put an editor's note on there [in the Times story], but the damage has already been done. I even talked with some of my friends — they don't know the full story about what Hamas is doing, taking some of the aid away.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [7/30/25]

• ## A small group of right-wing figures — some with ties to white nationalist or far-right politics — have acknowledged the situation in Gaza

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AN 6 25

Although Donald Trump has, at times, taken an imperialistic turn during his second presidency by calling for the United States to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal and saying that Canada should become "the 51st state," the America First ideology that he usually champions is known for being isolationist. MAGA proponents of America First thinking — including Vice President JD Vance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and "War Room" host Steve Bannon — typically make an anti-interventionist argument that is a big departure from the hawkishness favored by traditional Reagan and Bush conservatives.

In an article published on June 10, Politico reporters Rachael Bade and Felicia Schwartz detail the infighting among Republicans over Iran.

"An influential group of GOP hawks has launched a behind-the-scenes lobbying offensive pressing President Donald Trump to not only back off his administration’s quest for a nuclear deal with Iran, but greenlight an attack on Tehran by Israel," the journalists explain. "The campaign is raising alarms among Trump and his allies, who have launched a counteroffensive to keep the president's diplomacy on track."

READ MORE: Trump's latest move is a danger to all of us

According to Bade and Schwartz, far-right radio host Mark Levin is among the Republicans pushing for a hawkish policy on Iran. Levin, they report, is claiming that Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon, while members of Trump's intelligence team are disputing that claim.

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"Levin urged Trump to allow the Israeli government to strike Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would torpedo the diplomacy," Bade and Schwartz explain. "Levin has been waging a public war against Trump's longtime friend and special envoy leading talks, Steve Witkoff."

Meanwhile, some of Rupert Murdoch's media outlets, according to the Politico reporters, have "savaged Witkoff" and promoted Levin's position.

A senior Trump Administration official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Politico, "They’re trying to push the president to make a decision that’s not what he wants…. There’s clearly a lobby for war with Iran versus those who are more aligned with the president, that know he is the one that has been able to bring them to the negotiating table."

READ MORE:'Not heading anywhere good': NYT reporter sounds alarm on Trump's military move in LA

*Read the full Politico article at this link.

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An alliance between the far right and Silicon Valley oligarchs has given rise to a form of “end times fascism,” says journalist Naomi Klein, who details in a recent essay co-authored with Astra Taylor how many wealthy elites are preparing for the end of the world even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. Klein says that while billionaires dream of escaping to bunkered enclaves or even to space, President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders are turning their countries into militarized fortress states to keep out immigrants from abroad and ramp up authoritarian control domestically.

“There’s always an apocalyptic quality to fascism, but fascism of the 1930s and ’40s had a horizon” for a utopian future, says Klein. Today, by contrast, “we’re up against people who are actively betting against the future — not just actively betting against it, but fueling the fires that are burning this world.”

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We spend the rest of the hour with award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein. She has a major new piece out, co-authored with Astra Taylor, for The Guardian newspaper. It’s headlined “The rise of end times fascism.” It looks at the apocalyptic fervor of the far right.

In it, they write, quote, “[T]he most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating. That is not so far away from the more mass-market vision of fortressed nations that has gripped the [hard] right globally, from Italy to Israel, Australia to the United States: in a time of ceaseless peril, openly supremacist movements in these countries are positioning their relatively wealthy states as armed bunkers,” Naomi Klein writes.

She is also professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia, founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice. Her latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.

Naomi, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. If you can start off by talking about your piece and what exactly you mean by talking about the end times, fascism?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, it’s very good to be with you, Amy.

This isn’t the most cheerful piece I’ve ever written, with Astra Taylor, a very close collaborator, founder of the Debt Collective. And we were trying to kind of map what is similar and what is different about the type of far-right politics that we’re seeing today. And I should say, the piece is not only grim. It also looks at what this can mean for a response to this particular form of fascism, because we can’t fight it if we don’t understand it. So, I think a lot of very good scholarship attempting to understand authoritarianism today, whether it’s Trump or figures like Duterte or Modi, have looked at similarities between these far-right figures and, say, Mussolini or Hitler, and have taken a kind of a checklist approach of looking at what is similar to the past, right? And I think there’s a lot of value in that. But the risk of it is that it doesn’t look at what is new and what is particular to our time.

Fascism always is an attempt by the right to resolve a crisis of its own era. Right? So, in the 1930s, they were attempting to resolve, you know, in Germany, the humiliations of the First World War, the impacts of the Great Depression, and to propose a unity in the face of that for the in-group. But our moment is different, and one of the things that makes it different — I mean, if you think about fascism in the 1930s, this is before the atomic bomb. It’s before they understood climate change. And we are in a moment where our elites, whether they admit it or not, do understand that our economic model — and I’ve written books about this and talked about it with you in the past — is at war with life on Earth, right? And they are barreling down this road of more and more extraction of fossil fuels, of all kinds of — you know, basically, anything they can extract from this Earth and turn into energy and money, particularly now with AI, which is a energy and resource hog — water, LNG, critical minerals, all of it.}:

So, we’re trying to understand how this is informing the kind of fascism that we’re seeing, and also we’re trying to understand what unites this kind of strange Frankenstein coalition that Trump represents, where he’s bringing together these — you know, the richest people in the world who have ever existed with many working-class people, so what binds the vision, right?

:{:{And what we cope with in this piece, or what we propose in this piece, is that they all have given up on this world. Like, they all have bought into a kind of apocalyptic fever — right? — whether it’s Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their investments in outer space and sort of writing off this planet, whether AI, which is willing to sacrifice this animate world in order to build an artificial world, or whether it’s the more populist MAGA vision of the fortress nation-state — right? — which is thinking, “OK, we know more and more people are going to be coming. }:

We know that disaster is on the horizon.” I’ve listened to a lot of Steve Bannon for — you know, when I was writing Doppelganger, and it’s all very survivalist, right? You know, all of the commercials, pretty much, are selling, you know, gold, because the economy is going to collapse, you know, ready-to-eat meals for 90 days, because you never know what’s going to happen. So, it sees the nation and the in-group as being inside the bunker, and then it’s exiling the out-group to all of these lawless territories that you’ve been covering on the show. So, it’s not the same vision, but what it shares is this apocalyptic fever.}:

And then, of course, all of it is following a similar structure, like narrative structure, to the biblical Rapture. And, of course, you have people who believe in that within the Trump coalition, who are, you know, Christian Zionists, like Mike Huckabee and Pete Hegseth, who believe that the actual end times is coming, and they think it’s all going to go down in Israel. And all of the horror that you report on so well and so committedly on the show, these are all good signs if you believe in the Rapture, right? Because it means that the end is coming, and the faithful are going to be lifted up to a golden city in the sky. So, you know, what we’re looking at is like the religious version of that story, the the fundamentalist religious version of that story, where you literally believe you’re going to be saved and taken up to heaven, but also the secular vision, where your wealth protects you, or your citizenship protects you, and you get your own version of that golden, bunkered city.

:{:{AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned Gaza, and you just came from the Jewish Voice for Peace conference in Baltimore, where several thousand people gathered from around the country. Our latest headline, the Israeli military calling up tens of thousands of reservists as Israel’s security cabinet unanimously approved plans this weekend to expand its assault on Gaza, where Israel has already killed over 52,000 Palestinians — and that’s by far an undercount — in the last 18, 19 months. Israel has killed more than 2,400 Palestinians just since it shattered the ceasefire in March. This comes as Israel’s devastating blockade in food aid has entered its third month. Palestinian health officials say 57 Palestinians have already starved to death.}:

According to UNICEF, more than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition so far this year. And aid groups, like Norwegian Refugee Council, blasting a new Israeli proposal to take control in distribution and put U.S. security contractors in charge. If you can talk, as you so often do, about what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank and what the centrality of Israel in President Trump and the current U.S. government — although it was also the past, President Biden’s worldview and approach to foreign policy?}:

NAOMI KLEIN: So, I don’t think there is a single answer to understanding what the driving forces are. And this is what we’re trying to get at, is that there’s a kind of an overlap of these different apocalyptic worldviews. Some of them are religious, and some of them are secular, right? So, I think that people who subscribe to this, like, literalist version of the Rapture believe that all of this is good news, in the sense that, according to the story that they believe in, that the Israelites have to return to Greater Israel. Those are the preconditions for the return of the Messiah. They have to rebuild the Third Temple. So you have this convergence of interests between the religious extremists and the Netanyahu government, who are absolutely committed to rebuilding the Third Temple. They really want to do it. They want to destroy Al-Aqsa. This is why so much attention is focused on it.

But then, you know, does Trump believe that? I don’t think Trump believes that. I mean, what he views for Gaza is he sees resources. He sees money. He sees a private, you know, resort.

AMY GOODMAN: Resort.

NAOMI KLEIN: Exactly. But this is something I’ve been saying from the beginning. I think the interests have been fairly consistent in terms of what the end goal is, which is a depopulation of Gaza, pushing Palestinians out, whether through death or whether through forced exile, whether through ethnic cleansing. And under the Biden administration, there was a denial that that was what was going on. And under the Trump administration, it’s all out in the open. So, you know, this is what is going on.

Now, what the reason for that is, I think, differs. But this is what — part of what we’re getting at in the piece, Astra and I, is that there is a confluence of interests in terms of what Israel represents. Some of the supporters of the Trump administration in the tech industry are talking about wanting freedom cities, for instance, these privatized, corporate cities. And they talk about this as tech Zionism. They have a lot of admiration for the idea that Israel was created, they say, you know, from a book, Theodor Herzl’s books. And they said, “Well, why can’t we start our own country, our own private countries? Why do we have to — you know, why do we have to abide by the rules of the nation-state?”

So, I think part of the support for Israel isn’t just our classic understandings either of Jewish Zionism or Christian Zionism, although that’s absolutely going on. It’s also this idea of a very technologically advanced startup country, right? Israel has marketed itself that way. And a lot of these tech companies want to do that in San Francisco. They want to push everybody out who doesn’t agree with them, who’s poor, who have more needs, and create their kind of corporate, privatized utopia. So, you know, I’m not saying this is a coherent agenda. I’m saying that there’s a lot of overlapping stories that follow a similar structure and share similar goals, if that makes sense.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, yes, I mean, the overall issue, obviously, is hard to make sense of.

NAOMI KLEIN: Mm-hmm, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And most Trump’s supporters are neither wealthy nor are they Christian Zionists. So, why are they backing this whole approach?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, it’s not clear the extent to which they actively back it, but I think that they see a kinship in the ethnostate — right? — because a lot of Trump supporters are becoming increasingly Christian nationalist about the United States. And this has been carefully fostered by figures like Steve Bannon. And so, when they look at Israel, they see a country that is openly an ethnostate that is fortressing itself in a sea of its enemies, you know, and they want to do something similar. And they’re sharing technologies. They’re sharing, you know, legal precedents, tools. So, there’s a — you know, there’s a kinship. And, you know, we’re seeing this now with India with its attacks on Kashmir, following us, you know, using similar techniques that, you know, Israel has used in Gaza. So, there is a kind of a solidarity of the ethnostates. And they are sharing — you know, they’re even trading trinkets of golden pagers and swapping chainsaws. You know, this is something that we — I think, you know, when you’re inside the crucible of it here in the United States under Trump, it’s hard to see the extent to which this is an international project on the right, and they are influencing one another.

AMY GOODMAN: And what does unite them, you know, this whole fortress mentality, is this hatred of immigrants. You have —

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — President Trump just saying he doesn’t even know — he’s not a lawyer, so he doesn’t know if he has to uphold the Constitution, he said.

NAOMI KLEIN: Right. I mean, this is what I’m trying to get at about the awareness that we are in an age of consequences, that when you don’t act in the face of the climate crisis for decades, when scientists have been warning you, that more and more of the world becomes uninhabitable, and, lo and behold, people move to try to find safety in the face of wars, in the face of economic deprivation and in the face of ecological disasters.

And so, that fortressing of the nation-state — and this is what I think, you know, Israel’s come to represent, just as a very small nation that is extremely fortressed — right? — whether it’s with the high-tech walls, the Iron Dome. Trump says now, “I want not an Iron Dome, but a golden dome.” Right? That —

AMY GOODMAN: Here.

NAOMI KLEIN: Here. That all of this is, whether it’s stated explicitly or not —

AMY GOODMAN: And a military parade that’ll cost tens of millions —

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — of dollars, even as he slices and dices the government, on his birthday, in June.

NAOMI KLEIN: Right. So the pattern is protecting the in-group and exiling and cleansing the out-groups. Right? And so, that, I think, is — you know, if there is support among the MAGA base for Israel, it’s less out of a love for Israel than more out of an identification, like they are doing what we want to do here.

AMY GOODMAN: You write many things in your piece, and I just want to go to one of them. You say — in talking about Musk’s apocalyptic vision, you talk about, and also detailing the end times fascism, this whole issue of the rise of the city state, the corporate city state. I think this is a new concept for many. They’re not going to know what you’re talking about.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: In southern Texas, Starbase, just this group of people, who are mainly workers at SpaceX, have just voted to make a city right there?

NAOMI KLEIN: Mm-hmm, yeah. And we’ve had sort of — I mean, the idea of a company town is not entirely new, right? And Disney had Celebration, Florida, and there are lineages to this, right? Colonial lineages to this. You know, I live in Canada, which started as the Hudson’s Bay Company, right? So it was a company before it was a country. So there is some precedent for this.

But I think what this is — I’ve been following this out of the corner of my eye, Amy, because this is where libertarians have been going for a while. There was an — Peter Thiel has been obsessed with this idea. It’s increasingly being called exit, so exiting the nation and just starting your own country, where you can set your own tax level, you can make your own regulations.

AMY GOODMAN: Or not.

NAOMI KLEIN: Or not. And countries — and these little corporate countries will compete with one another to try to attract capital, right? So, in a way, it’s an extension of the free trade zone — right? — where this is, in a way, like a denationalized country within a country. But Trump started to float this in 2023, the idea that he would create 10 freedom cities, on the campaign trail. I don’t think his base much knew what he was talking about. But now you have all these lobbyists who fully intend to take him up on it. And we’re starting to see the beginning of this with this SpaceX city.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you also write about El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, the notorious prison, CECOT, where so many hundreds of people have been sent from the United States, and at the same time, in the last 24 hours, President Trump saying he wants to reopen the notorious Alcatraz —

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — an island in San Francisco. If you can talk about the prison as a model for what Trump wants to put forward, and particularly in relation, as we see motivating so much, to immigrants?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this is an incredibly bleak vision. So, repression is always a huge part of any kind of fascist project, right? You need to contain the out-group. You need to disappear the out-group. So this part of it is not new. But I think what is so worrying to me is that Trump was elected promising all kinds of things to his base, right? He promised to eliminate inflation. He promised to bring these great jobs home. He’s not delivering on any of that. So the sadistic part of his project is really all he has to offer, right?

I think one of the most chilling things I’ve ever seen in the United States was Trump sharing that video at his hundred-day rally of just pure sadism, of just looking at prisoners, as entertainment, being shaved, being shackled, being paraded. And he’s not delivering on the price of eggs. And he’s not delivering on the jobs, by the way, because he’s throwing all in— he’s going all in on AI. So the jobs that are coming back seem to be mainly for robots. It’s not actually for his base. And so, this scales up the need for the sadism and these spectacles, right? And I think that that’s what something like Alcatraz represents. He’s a TV producer, first and foremost, right? He’s producing spectacles. And the less he has to offer economically, tangibly, materially, the more he leans on the sadism.

AMY GOODMAN: You write, “The governing ideology of the far right … has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. … Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them.” What would that movement look like, or what do you see is being formed right now?

NAOMI KLEIN: You know, what we’re doing in this piece by laying out the bleakness of the vision — and when I say “bleakness,” you know, I think it’s beyond something we’ve seen before, because there’s always an apocalyptic quality to fascism, but fascism of the 1930s and '40s had a horizon. Like, after the apocalypse, people were being promised a future, a pastoral, peaceful little piece of land where they could live out their lives, you know? Even though Trump talks about a golden age, there really isn't a future that the base believes in, you know? And this is what I’ve learned by consuming far too much MAGA media, Amy. They envision a future of endless war, right? And this is why they’re bunkering down. This is why they’re buying ready-to-eat meals to last. This is why they’re buying gold and crypto. They think the whole thing is going down. So —

AMY GOODMAN: And why Elon Musk is trying to have so many children, at least 14 at this point. But he’s actually explicitly texted it, saying, “We’ve got to do this much faster,” as he proposed to one of the women he has children with, saying, “We’ve got to start using surrogates.”

NAOMI KLEIN: So, they don’t believe in the future, is the bottom line. And that is — you know, I think I’ve been in a lot of progressive spaces in recent months where we’ve talked about building these very broad coalitions, including with people who we don’t entirely disagree with. I’ve never encountered a potential coalition more broad than the idea of: How about if we believe in this world? How about if we believe in the future? Because we’re up against people who are actively betting against the future, right? Not just actively betting against it —

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty seconds.

NAOMI KLEIN: — but fueling the fires that are burning this world, actively fueling it. So, I think that if we have the courage, really, to look at the bleakness of what they believe in, which is an apocalyptic future, then we have our work cut out for us of being the people who actually believe in this realm, in this world, in the beauty of creation and of each other.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, I want to thank you for being with us, award-winning journalist, author, columnist. We’ll link to your piece with Astra Taylor, “The rise of end times fascism.” I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!

NOW READ:Trump’s clown car cabinet is driving off a cliff

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13 Nov 2024

US President-elect Donald Trump has announced the appointment of pro-settlement former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the US ambassador to Israel.

The controversial political figure and TV personality who claims to have visited Israel more than 100 times will replace Jack Lew, who has held the position for a year.

UN aid chief warns of ‘gravest crimes’ committed in Israel’s war on Gaza

list 2 of 4

Houthis launch attacks against US warships off coast of Yemen

list 3 of 4

Israel’s UNRWA ban is another declaration of genocidal intent

list 4 of 4

Biden dismisses journalist’s question on reaching deal for Gaza captives

end of list

Who is Mike Huckabee, and what was he doing before this appointment?

The devout 69-year-old evangelical Christian was born in the southern US state of Arkansas.

He served as governor of his home state between 1996 and 2007 before launching unsuccessful bids to be the Republican presidential candidate during the 2008 and 2016 primary seasons.

Between these two bids, he had his own talk show, Huckabee, which ran on the Fox News Network between 2008 and 2015.

In 2017, the show was revived and broadcast on TBN, a Christian-based broadcast television network.

Since ending his campaign for presidential candidacy in 2016, Huckabee has consistently supported Trump.

Arkansas Governor

Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee shake hands after participating in a roundtable discussion hosted by Building America’s Future in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 2024 [File: Charly Triballeau/AFP]

What is Huckabee’s position on Israel and Palestine?

Huckabee is a staunch supporter of Israel.

After his appointment, Trump released a statement in which he said Huckabee “loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”

His appointment demonstrates a “very hawkish, very pro-right-wing Israel” approach by the Trump administration, Yossi Mekelberg, an expert on Israel at the Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera.

He said Huckabee’s appointment is similar to that of David Friedman, who served as US Ambassador to Israel between 2017 and 2021 and supports Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Huckabee views Israel as an “overwhelming ally of the United States”, Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.

“He will certainly be a strong voice for a pro-Israel faction in the administration and the country,” he said.

Huckabee has tied his evangelical faith to support for Israeli control of the West Bank and his support for Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.

In an interview in 2017 with the CNN news network, he said: “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria (the territory’s biblical name). There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

Huckabee has gone as far as to question Palestinian identity.

During his Republican presidential campaign, he said: “I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset – there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”

Huckabee is against a two-state solution.

Instead, in various TV interviews, he has propagated the idea that “there’s plenty of land” for Palestinians in countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Syria.

Huckabee

Mike Huckabee visits a large settler enclave, called Maale HaZeitim, in the Ras al-Amoud neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem on August 17, 2009 [File: David Furst/AFP]

He has also criticised US President Joe Biden for requesting that Israel temper some of its actions in the war on Gaza and the administration’s calls for a ceasefire.

“If a person is pro-Israel, how can you be pro-Biden because the Biden administration has made it very clear they will make concessions to Hamas,” Huckabee said in an interview in March on News Nation.

In a recent interview with a podcaster, he labelled himself an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist”.

He also said “radical Muslims want to take us back to the seventh century” adding “I don’t want to go back there”. He said: “I like modernity.”

What has the reaction been like in Israel to his appointment?

The Israeli government, in its current form, will be very pleased with the appointment of an ambassador who supports settlements and annexation, Mekelberg said.

Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right, pro-settler security minister, took to X to celebrate Huckabee’s appointment, simply posting emojis of the US flag, the Israeli flag and a heart alongside the former Arkansas governor’s name.

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, took to X to offer congratulations to Huckabee, who he described as “my dear friend”.

“I look forward to continuing to work with you and to strengthening the eternal bond our two countries share!” Danon wrote.

Mekelberg said even though it will raise concerns about any potential peace agreement, the Israeli public, in general, will be supportive as, given the current climate, “anyone who expresses full support of Israel will be welcome.”

What can be expected from his term?

It is too early to tell how his appointment will affect Israel’s strategy for Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, Musgrave said.

However, he noted it likely indicates that there will be little “pushback” from a Trump administration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war plans.

It is a sentiment shared by Mekelberg, who said any fears in the Israeli administration that an incoming ambassador could have placed restraints on how Israel may conduct itself will have “eased considerably” after Huckabee’s appointment.

Source: Al Jazeera

===

fresh calls to 'reject AIPAC' after analysis of GOP money in Dem primaries](https://www.alternet.org/fresh-calls-to-reject-aipac-after-analysis-of-gop-money-in-dem-primaries/)

Jessica Corbett Common Dreams

4 24 7 WORLD CENTRAL FOOD KITCHEN CHEF ANDRES KIA

4 24 kpfa

israel target low level hamas kill at home ok to kill 15-20, higer value kill 300 with smart munitions 4/5/24 7 am lavendar, where’s daddy

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INVITE BIBI AGAIN NOT PREZ

maga mike

95k$ aipac 2 24 ymail

===

mta 3 24 email

But another “AI” is already a threat to the 2024 elections, which will deepen during the current primary election season. The lobby organization, AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and its affiliated political groups are expected to spend $100 million this election cycle opposing candidates they feel insufficiently support Israel, which has intensified since the start of the war in Gaza. AIPAC’s related groups include AIPAC PAC; the United Democracy Project, its Super PAC; the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI); and others.

AIPAC-related groups comprise the bulk of “Pro-Israel” organizations that have contributed this election cycle to leading Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well presidential candidates. It’s not a surprise that recipients have been roaringly silent about Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

AIPAC entities threaten our elections and the limited degree of democracy that exists in this country in multiple ways.

1. The AIPAC entities have already begun spending money supporting conservative Democratic challengers running against incumbent progressive Congresspersons in the primaries, especially candidates of color, who tend to be the most progressive on economic, social and environmental issues and, relatively speaking, closest to their communities.

Particularly targeted are members of “The Squad” who are supportive of “democracy” issues such as voting rights, anti-gerrymandering, and campaign finance reform. It should be noted that progressive Democrats in the House of Representatives are among the strongest co-sponsors of the We the People Amendment, HJR54.

2. AIPAC-entity donors who are funding Democratic primaries include super rich Republicans, some of whom are billionaires. One is hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who bankrolled a free luxury vacation trip for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and later had cases before the High Court. Many donors are also Trump boosters.

AIPAC’s clear goal is to defeat every progressive Democrat it can this year. AIPAC also supports many Republican Congressional candidates, including many who voted against certifying the 2020 election. How exactly does all this further democracy?

Of course not all AIPAC funders are known. DMFI is a “dark money” group that’s not legally required to disclose their donors. It's spent millions in the last couple of election cycles against progressives and are spending six figures to air ads against Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress and vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.

3. The enormous sum of expected AIPAC spending, especially in the primaries, may be too much to overcome, even for many progressive incumbents who are not flush with campaign cash. J Street, a progressive pro-Israel group that defended candidates against AIPAC in the 2022 primaries, can’t compete with AIPAC and will sit out the primaries. Curiously AIPAC in 2022 didn’t mention Israel in their targeted ads, but rather attacked incumbents on personal issues or on their progressive voting record.

Since constitutionally “money equals speech,” the AIPAC voice in their attack ads will drown out the political voices of all others. Hardly an element of a robust democracy.

It’s not just AIPAC. Money raised and spent in political elections continues to rise every election cycle with the majority of political investments coming from super wealthy individuals, PACs, Super PACs, and dark money groups. That’s every single election cycle with no end in sight.

Simply talking, emailing, Facebooking, Twittering/“X”ing, Instagramming or Tic Toking about it won’t change it. Nor is simply passing laws calling for greater financial disclosure or campaign finance “reform” that ignore the constitutional doctrines permitting corporate entities to spend money in elections and equating political money spent in elections as free speech.

Enacting the We the People Amendment will abolish the constitutional doctrines that “money equals speech” and “a corporation is a person.” The latter is not only applicable in elections, but across the board as corporate entities have hijacked multiple constitutional amendments permitted them to preempt democratic efforts to protect people. communities and the natural world.

Until HJR54 is enacted, our “democratic” political system will continue to be “deepfake,” something that looks, sounds and maybe feels real, but at its core is controlled by the super rich and corporate entities.

There will only be system change when we change it.

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1 24 kpfa going after squad plus 4 jamaal bowman in primary gop megadonors

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===

rw govt trying to grab courts, big protests

https://www.alternet.org/cannot-run-a-racist-government/

netanayu

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===

https://www.alternet.org/israel-rise-of-jewish-fascism/

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~ prog dem?

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/16/democratic-party-progressive-israel-aipac-dmfi/

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https://theintercept.com/2022/05/18/google-amazon-israel-military-nimbus/

palestine surveil?  might be working for pvt corp vs cty? still a contractor?

===

an 7 22

pro-Israel lobby groups have spent “shocking” amounts of money to change the course of multiple Democratic congressional primariesover the past year alone, reports our guest Peter Beinart. The latest is in Maryland, where former Congressmember Donna Edwards is being outspent sevenfold by corporate attorney Glenn Ivey in her bid to win back her old seat in the state’s 4th Congressional District. Beinart, the editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, says the AIPAC-led PACs disguise their attack ads with local issues but in reality are designed to oust candidates who take stances in support of Palestinian rights and working people.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Today is Primary Day in Maryland. In one closely watched race, former Congressmember Donna Edwards is seeking to win back her old seat in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, outside Washington, D.C. She is facing the corporate attorney Glenn Ivey, who has raised seven times as much money. The New York Times reports a new super PAC run by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has spent nearly $6 million on the primary race in an attempt to defeat Edwards, who served in Congress for four terms ending in 2017. In 2008, Donna Edwards made history becoming the first Black woman elected to Congress from Maryland. Another group with ties to AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel, has spent over $425,000 to help defeat Edwards. The two groups also poured money into efforts to defeat other progressive Democrats, including Nina Turner in Ohio and Jessica Cisneros in Texas.

We’re joined now by Peter Beinart, editor-at-large with Jewish Currents. He recently wrote an article headlined “The Israel Lobby’s New Campaign Playbook.” Peter Beinart is a professor at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.

Thanks so much for joining us, Peter. Can you talk about what Donna Edwards is confronting right now in Maryland, the level of money that’s being poured in to defeat her?

PETER BEINART: It’s really extraordinary for a House race to see one organization, one super PAC, spending almost $6 million. What we’re seeing across the country is that AIPAC’s super PAC is often spending as much as the campaigns themselves are spending. Partly this is the result of Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision in 2010 that created super PACs, which are these entities that can accept unlimited amounts of money and spend unlimited money as long as they are theoretically not coordinated with the campaign. And it’s also the result of the fact that AIPAC and allied establishment pro-Israel organizations saw a threat starting in 2019, when people like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were elected to Congress, and have decided to spend virtually unlimited amounts of money to ensure that their brand of politics, which is more pro-Palestinian rights, but which is also more progressive on economic issues, does not become the future of the Democratic Party.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter, could you talk about what you discovered in terms of connections or ties between groups like Mainstream Democrats and other pro-Israel lobbyists, like the Democratic Majority for Israel?

PETER BEINART: Yes. One of the things that I found is that very often when these establishment pro-Israel organizations target a progressive candidate, those candidates are also targeted by groups that are not focused on Israel-Palestine but simply want to defeat that person because that person may be to progressive on questions of healthcare, or they may support the Green New Deal.

So, there’s a group called Mainstream Democrats. If you look at their website, it says nothing about Israel-Palestine whatsoever. It just says it doesn’t want the Democratic Party to be taken over by far-left groups. But Mainstream Democrats is actually run by Democratic Majority for Israel. So what you see is this very, very close alliance. They work out of the same offices with the same staff, so, essentially, this extremely close relationship between groups that want to defeat progressives because they support Palestinian rights, and groups that just want to defeat progressives because they essentially want the Democratic Party to be dominated by people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who will do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, the healthcare industry, the financial services industry.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how successful have these efforts been in the past? Amy mentioned the races of Nina Turner in Ohio and Jessica Cisneros in Texas, both of whom were targeted by AIPAC and both of whom lost their races. What’s been the track record of these efforts?

PETER BEINART: These efforts, sadly, have been very successful. There have been a couple of races — one in Pennsylvania, one in Illinois — where the progressive candidates were able to win. But in most cases, the candidates targeted have lost. And even when the targeted candidates don’t lose, it has a chilling effect. Politicians out there see this and think, “I do not want millions and millions of dollars dumped into a House race against me,” and so what it tends to do is lead candidates who might be more inclined to take progressive positions on Palestinian rights or on other issues to instead keep their heads down and not take those positions in order to try to avoid the kind of attacks that other progressives have faced.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me ask you, back on Donna Edwards’ race, Peter — you have the speaker of the House, right, Nancy Pelosi, who actually comes from Maryland, though she represents San Francisco, coming out in full support of Donna Edwards. Now, while most of the big money spent in the race has come from AIPAC-aligned super PAC, the ads funded by the so-called United Democracy Project don’t mention the Middle East. And I wanted then to talk about Nancy Pelosi, who really came out and attacked the kind of money, the attack ads by the AIPAC-aligned groups, like United Democracy Project, prompting this response in June from House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. This is what she said.

SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: When Donna Edwards first represented Maryland’s 4th Congressional District — and that was for nearly a decade — she was one of the most effective members in Congress. Donna fought hard for Prince George’s County, for jobs and investments in her community, to help constituents in need and to deliver results. As speaker and then as leader, I knew I could always count on Donna Edwards as a valued member of our leadership team.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Nancy Pelosi endorsing Donna Edwards. Now, the ads often, and the candidates who are supported by these massive — I mean, the massive amount of money, millions, in the case of this campaign, going to her opponent — they’re not raising the issue of Israel and Palestine, right? And also, let’s be clear: There are other pro-Israel groups, like J Street, more progressive, that supports Donna Edwards.

PETER BEINART: Yes, but J Street doesn’t have — only has a small fraction of the amount of money that AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel have on the other side. But you’re exactly right. In almost none of these races do the attack ads actually have anything to do with the actual agenda of the organizations that are paying for them. And that’s because AIPAC and DMFI know that not very many voters in these districts actually really care that much about Israel-Palestine. They care about local issues.

So, what AIPAC does is it — and DMFI do, they do poll testing. And they attack people on these kind of — whatever they think may gain traction. So, in Ohio, in the Nina Turner race, because Nina Turner was a Bernie Sanders supporter who had been critical of Joe Biden, they painted her as not a loyal Democrat. In the case of Donna Edwards, they’re claiming that she didn’t provide good constituent service when she was the congresswoman early on — as if AIPAC or DMFI could care less about the level of constituent service that Donna Edwards provided to her constituents when she was a congresswoman. I mean, it’s transparent nonsense, right? It’s just that this is their vehicle for trying to defeat her, because Donna Edwards in the past has shown some minimal — right? She’s hardly radical on this subject — but just some modest concern for Palestinian human rights. For that reason, they want to defeat her.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the role of Bakari Sellers in these campaigns?

PETER BEINART: Yes. So, Bakari Sellers is a former South Carolina politician with close ties to AIPAC who has been — now heads another super PAC that is devoted primarily at this point to defeating Rashida Tlaib in Michigan. And its claim is that it’s an organization that wants to elect Black Democrats. And Rashida Tlaibhas a Black opponent, but, again, this is also transparent nonsense — as if AIPAC and its donors are really concerned about increasing Black representation.

They’re going after Rashida Tlaib for one reason only: because she’s a Palestinian member of Congress who is a passionate and eloquent defender of the humanity of Palestinians, and she brings that issue to the fore in Congress like no one else does. But again, because that agenda itself, if laid out nakedly, would not be very popular, you have these transparent claims that it’s really about something else — in this way, about the claim that somehow because she’s not Black, she can’t represent a district in Michigan, even though, in fact, she has strong Black support and has been a very, very tireless defender of the people in her district of all races.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter, interestingly, there is also a governor’s race in Maryland, and both competitive primaries in both the Democratic and the Republican parties to elect a successor to the Republican Governor Hogan. But has AIPAC been involved in those races at all, or is it only concentrating on these congressional races?

PETER BEINART: AIPAC’s focus has overwhelmingly been not just in congressional races, but in Democratic primaries in congressional races. AIPAC’s assessment has been that because of partisan polarization, there are fewer swing districts, which means that more often than in the past the member of Congress is chosen in the primary. They also have noticed that there are an unusually large number of open House seats this year because of redistrict and retirement. And they like to do open House races, because once an incumbent has been elected in our system, they can be difficult to dislodge. So what this play is really about is trying to create a whole new generation of younger Democrats in Congress who will toe the AIPAC line on Israel-Palestine, also in many, many cases, also take a kind of more pro-corporate position, and therefore blunt the trend that we were seeing towards the Democratic Party moving in a more progressive direction.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but this is new, right, AIPAC having this kind of super PAC?

PETER BEINART: Yes. AIPAC, despite its name, never had a political action committee,but it saw, essentially, that it needed to roll out the big guns in response to the trends that we saw with the election of the Squad members. And it has extraordinary financial resources at its disposal. Several people, for instance, have given a million — written million-dollar checks already, and the money is still being tabulated.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents. We’ll link to your new piece, “Israel Lobby’s New Campaign Playbook: Israel advocacy groups have developed strategies to raise huge sums for their candidates by appealing to corporate interests.”

Coming up, we turn to the pioneering legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who has launched a counteroffensive against right-wing attacks targeting critical race theory. It is Freedom Summer this week around the country. That’s right, a summer school for CRT. Stay with us.

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support sedition caucus

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/aipac-slammed-morally-bankrupt-endorsement/

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intercept 921

Israeli Diplomat Pressured UNC to Remove Teacher Who Criticized Israel

Murtaza Hussain

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gaza-2653011635

salon

Far right pundits cheered the Israeli airstrike that leveled a building in Gaza Saturday housing several international news outlets, including The Associated Press, Al Jazeera and the BBC.

The Israel Defense Forces later said the militant group Hamas had "military intelligence assets" in the building — though as of Sunday afternoon no evidence supporting the claims had been made public.

The bombing, broadcast live television by several journalists who had just escaped the blast, quickly gained widespread media attention Saturday due to the nature of the attack, which drew condemnation from many press freedom advocates around the globe.

Yet, right-wing pundits on Twitter had a different view on it all — they celebrated and jeered at the destruction.

Senior columnist at the right-wing site Townhall, Kurt Schlichter, called those who carried out the bombing "heroes," while seemingly finding pleasure in the attack. "Let's stop pretending that the media is not a participant and that it is somehow entitled to not be treated like every other active enemy," he declared.

Let’s stop pretending that the media is not a participant and that it is somehow entitled to not be treated like every other active enemy.

— Kurt Schlichter (@Kurt Schlichter)1621090669.0

Popular conservative Twitter pundit, Stephen L. Miller, who is currently a contributor at the conservative opinion site The Spectator, reacted by mocking the bombing with a meme of a lady smiling....[twt]

Former Newsmax TV host John Cardillo wrote on Twitter: "Looks like the IDF took out Hamas's PR team," while fellow right-wing Twitter pal David Reaboi called the bombing "based," a term coined by the rapper Lil B to signal that one agrees or approves of a statement.

"Just warms your heart to see," a contributing editor for right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, Harry Khachatrian, responded to the attack.

@davereaboi Probably watched this a dozen times already, what a great start to the weekend

— Harry Khachatrian

Many online also tried to draw spurious connections between the destruction and last summer's Black Lives Matter protests.

GOP operative Arthur Schwartz, who is known for losing his coolafter a waiter spilled steak sauce on him while dining with Trump, tweeted, "Black Lives Matter, Inc. thugs burned and looted American cities, we're now told that property damage is a big deal? What's different here?"

No journalists were reported injured as a result of the airstrike. According to several firsthand reports from inside the building, residents and workers were warned ahead of time that the bombing would occur, sparking a mad scramble to evacuate the premises.[10 min?!]

"I have been covering lots of events from this building. We have lots of good memories with our colleagues," Safwat al-Kahlout, a reporter for Al Jazeera, said. "Now everything, in two seconds, just vanished."

The AP reports at least 188 Palestinians were killed this week in the most recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. That number includes 55 children and 33 women, with more than a thousand wounded. Eight people in Israel have died from rocket attacks launched from Gaza.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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• West Bank erupts in protest amid more Israel-Hamas fighting ›

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cBS host confronts Israel's Netanyahu: Are you killing Palestinians as a plot 'to stay in power'?

David Edwards Raw Story

CBS host John Dickerson on Sunday pressed Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his motivations for using disproportional force to kill Palestinian people, including...

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air strikes, missles, asymmetrical kia

Human rights experts denounce Israeli attacks and confiscation of homes in East Jerusalem

Andrea Germanos Common Dreams

Israeli forces are facing fresh condemnation from international human rights experts for their "excessive force" against Palestinian protesters in occupied East Jerusalem that left...

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/israel-human-rights-watch/

apartheid

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an 221

in game-changer, ICC will take up Israeli war crimes and apartheid in Palestine

Juan Cole Informed Comment

On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of apartheid in the Palestinian...

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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/revealed-erik-prince-had-business-ties-with-netanyahus-disgraced-chief-of-staff-1.5627887

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peace deal UAE?  7/20

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920 an

omg

Full frontal attack on rule of law’: Trump sanctions top ICC officials probing US war crimes in Afghanistan

us mil in afgan, but also israeli palestine

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dn 820

Israeli Military Attacks Gaza for 10th Consecutive Day

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http://www.politicalresearch.org/

End Times Antisemitism

Authored by

Steven Gardiner

Today, we see explicitly Christian Zionist organizations and megachurch pastors working with high administration officials such as Mike Pompeo, to justify expanding support for a right-wing, authoritarian Israeli government as the fulfillment of prophecy.

Read more

Secondary features

Category

ANTI-BLACK RACISM

Antisemitic and Anti-Black: Conservative Jewish Magazine Features Uncensored White Nationalism

Protest organizer with a bullhorn

Authored by

Ben Lorber

June 29, 2020

Amidst nationwide BLM protests, the conservative Jewish publication Tablet publishes an interview with Kevin MacDonald, prominent voice of Antisemitic White nationalism, on Globalist conspiracies behind the protest movement.

Read more

Category

ANTISEMITISM

The Globalist Within: Antisemitism and Anti-China Nationalism In the Era of Coronavirus

Cover image of Der Spiegel: "Made in China"

Authored by

Ben Lorber

June 2, 2020

As the coronavirus crisis deepens, voices across the Right are mobilizing a politics of resentment to distract from the Trump administration’s botched response, and to advance an exclusionary nationalist agenda.

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an 720

...The hedge fund managers, oligarchs and corporate CEOs on college trustee boards don’t care about Marxist critiques of Joseph Conrad. They do care if students are being taught to dissect the lies of the neoliberal ideology used as a cover to orchestrate the largest transference of wealth upwards in American history.

The cancel culture, shorn of class politics, is the parlor game of the overeducated. If we do not examine, as Theodor Adorno wrote, the “societal play of forces that operate beneath the surface of political forms,” we will be continually cursed with a more ruthless and sophisticated form of corporate control, albeit one that is linguistically sensitive and politically correct.

“Stripped of a radical idiom, robbed of a utopian hope, liberals and leftists retreat in the name of progress to celebrate diversity,” historian Russell Jacoby writes. “With few ideas on how a future should be shaped, they embrace all ideas. Pluralism becomes a catchall, the alpha and omega of political thinking. Dressed up as multicultural, it has become the opium of disillusioned intellectuals, the ideology of an era without an ideology.”

The cudgel of racism, as I have experienced, is an effective tool to shut down debate. Students for Justice in Palestine organizations, which almost always include Jewish students, are being banned on college campuses in the name of fighting racism. Activists in these outlawed groups are often barred from holding any student leadership positions on campus. Professors that dare to counter the Zionist narrative, such as the Palestinian American scholar Steven Salaita, have had job offers rescinded, been fired or denied tenure and dismissed. Norman Finkelstein, one of the most important scholars on the Israel-Palestine conflict, has been ruthlessly targeted by the Israel lobby throughout his career, making it impossible for him to get tenure or academic appointments. Never mind, that he is not only Jewish but the son of Holocaust survivors. Jews, in this game, are branded as racists, and actual racists, such as Donald Trump, because they back Israel’s refusal to recognize Palestinian rights, are held up as friends of the Jewish people.

I have long been a target of the Israeli lobby. The lobby, usually working through Hillel Houses on college campuses, which function as little more than outposts of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), does not attempt to address my enumeration of the war crimes committed by Israel, many of which I witnessed, the egregious flouting by Israel of international law, exacerbated by the plans to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, or the historical record ignored and distorted by the lobby to justify Jewish occupation of a country that from the 7^th century until 1948 was Muslim. The lobby prefers not to deal in the world of facts. It misuses the trope of anti-Semitism to ensure that those who speak up for Palestinian rights and denounce Israeli occupation are not invited to events on Israel-Palestine conflict, or are disinvited to speak after invitations have been sent out, as happened to me at the University of Pennsylvania, among other venues.

It does not matter that I spent seven years in the Middle East, or that I was the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, living for weeks at a time in the Israel-occupied territories. It does not matter that I speak Arabic. My voice and the voices of those, especially Palestinians, who document the violations of Palestinian civil rights are canceled out by the mendacious charge that we are racists. I doubt most of the college administrators who agree to block our appearances believe we are racists, but they don’t also want the controversy. Zionism is the cancel culture on steroids.

The Israel lobby, whose interference in our electoral process dwarfs that of any other country, including Russia, is now attempting to criminalize the activities of those, such as myself, who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The lobby, with its huge financial clout, is pushing state legislatures, in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, to use anti-boycott laws and executive orders to punish companies and individuals that promote BDS. Twenty-seven states have so far enacted laws or policies that penalize businesses, organizations and individuals for supporting BDS.

The debate about the excesses of cancel culture was most recently ignited by a letter signed by 153 prominent and largely privileged writers and intellectuals in Harper’s Magazine, a publication for educated, white liberals. Critics of the letter argue, correctly, that “nowhere in it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing.” These critics also point out, correctly, that signatories include those, such as The New York Timescolumnist David Brooks and Malcolm Gladwell, with access to huge media platforms and who face no danger of being silenced. They finally note that a few of the signatories are the most vicious proponents of the Zionist cancel culture, including The New York Times editor Bari Weiss, who led campaigns while at Columbia University to destroy the careers of Arab professors; literary scholar Cary Nelson, who was one of those who denounced the Palestinian American scholar Salaita as a racist; and political scientist Yascha Mounk, who has attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar as an anti-Semite.

I find the cancel culture and its public denunciations as distasteful as those who signed the letter. But these critics are battling a monster of their own creation. The institutional and professional power of those targeted by the Harper’s letter is insignificant, especially when set against that of the signatories or the Israel lobby. Those singled out for attack pose little threat to the systems of entrenched power, which the signatories ironically represent, and indeed are more often its victims. I suspect this is the reason for the widespread ire the letter provoked.

The most ominous threats to free speech and public debate do not come from the cancel culture of the left, which rarely succeeds in removing its targets from power, despite a few high profilefirings such as James Bennet, who oversaw a series of tone-deaf editorial decisions as the Opinion Page Editor at The New York Times. These corporate forces, which assure us that Black Lives Matter, understand that the left’s witch hunts are a harmless diversion.

Corporations have seized control of the news industry and turned it into burlesque. They have corrupted academic scholarship. They make war on science and the rule of law. They have used their wealth to destroy our democracy and replace it with a system of legalized bribery. They have created a world of masters and serfs who struggle at subsistence level and endure crippling debt peonage. The commodification of the natural world by corporations has triggered an ecocide that is pushing the human species closer and closer towards extinction. Anyone who attempts to state these truths and fight back was long ago driven from the mainstream and relegated to the margins of the internet by Silicon Valley algorithms. As cancel culture goes, corporate power makes the Israel lobby look like amateurs.

The current obsession with moral purity, devoid of a political vision and incubated by self-referential academics and educated elites, is easily co-opted by the ruling class who will say anything, as long as the mechanisms of corporate control remain untouched.We have enemies. They run Silicon Valley and sit on corporate boards. They make up the two ruling political parties. They manage the war industry. They chatter endlessly on corporate-owned airwaves about trivia and celebrity gossip. Our enemies are now showering us with politically correct messages. But until they are overthrown, until we wrest power back from our corporate masters, the most insidious forms of racism in America will continue to flourish.

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thehill solomon ukraine

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/461038-how-irans-nuclear-breakout-easily-could-become-a-sneakout

...character in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” describes how he went bankrupt: gradually, and then suddenly. After the latest news out of Tehran, the same can be said for Iran’s continued progress toward a nuclear weapon.

:{

}:

Last weekend Iranian officials announced the third in an unfolding series of ultimatums, whereby Tehran progressively ratchets up its violations of the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) unless Europe offsets the pain of U.S. sanctions.

In May, Iran served notice it would grow its stockpiles of low enriched uranium (LEU) and heavy water beyond the limits of the nuclear deal. In July, it began enriching LEU marginally above the JCPOA’s cap. These moves, although worrisome, do not immediately bring Tehran dangerously closer to a bomb. Its LEU stock is too little for a nuclear weapon, and its heavy water is useless until completion of a corresponding reactor — likely years away.

Instead, Iran’s initial steps began shrinking the “breakout time” it needs to produce enough fissile material for a bomb steadily, rather than immediately. Breakout estimates can be as much an art as a science, but whereas its current timeframe is roughly 10-11 months, a year from now it could shrink to approximately 7-8 months. This would still leave opportunities for inspectors to detect and report a breakout attempt.

These estimates are part of a July study by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), which also looked ahead to next steps Iran could take, including those it just announced.

Specifically, Tehran declared it no longer would adhere to the nuclear deal’s research and development (R&D) restrictions.Unlike its previous moves, which eat into breakout time slowly, this latest step threatens to do so precipitously by paving the way for a major expansion of Iran’s enrichment capacity.

The JCPOA limits this capacity to 5,060 antiquated and inefficient IR-1 centrifuges, while also permitting testing on small numbers of more advanced centrifuges. Crucially, Iran cannot use these tests to accumulate LEU and thereby cut breakout time.

But now Tehran is breaking these exact ceilings. It is installing advanced centrifuges well beyond the numbers allowed in the nuclear deal. More importantly, it will begin adding the enriched uranium from these tests to its stockpile.[not no #/ src]

These moves will not put Iran perilously closer to a bomb tomorrow. But nor should they be confused with Tehran’s much more gradual nuclear escalations from previous months — for two reasons.

First, these advanced centrifuges will accelerate the ongoing expansion of Iran’s LEU stockpile. Though these machines are being installed by the dozens and hundreds, as compared to the thousands of IR-1s currently running, they can produce enriched uranium much more quickly than anything Iran has used to date. Thus, small expansions in overall centrifuge numbers could translate to disproportionate reductions in breakout time.

Second, unlike previous escalations, this gambit could push Iran’s nuclear program into dangerous uncharted territory. Increasing its stockpiles and enrichment level, as it has done since May, still leaves Iran appreciably further from a bomb than it was before the nuclear deal.[huh?]

But fast-tracking its R&D program could give Iran something it has never had, and much sooner than expected. It could learn how to operate an industrial-scale enrichment program capable of producing multiple nuclear bombs’ worth of fissile material before any inspectors could detect it. [are there any now? 24 days?]  Tellingly, the JCPOA sought to delay such breakthroughs for more than a decade by increasing these activities very gradually, past the point when most other meaningful restrictions already would have terminated.

Even though Iran announced last year a new manufacturing facility for advanced centrifuges, it still would need time to build and install vast quantities of these newer machines.

But upon completion, its breakout time would shrink significantly — and at once. From that point, a breakout easily could become an undetectable “sneakout.”

This presents American policymakers with a closing window that could slam shut quickly.They must prepare options beyond sanctions, which only generate Iranian counter-pressure — whether in the nuclear arena or in the Strait of Hormuz — without providing any options to deter or address that counter-pressure. MILITARY?

Indeed, the current U.S. approach is driving events toward one of three unpalatable outcomes: further Iranian progress toward a bomb; a European-Iranian deal on sanctions relief that effectively restores the status quo-ante of the JCPOA and flouts the entire U.S. sanctions regime; or renewed negotiations under the shadow of Iran’s nuclear escalations and serious rifts between the United States and its diplomatic partners.

American policymakers must implement more robust measures to develop some much-needed leverage. Credible military threats most reliably compel Tehran to roll back its progress toward a bomb. The Trump administration must prepare these measures, not more sanctions, to help ensure it can prevent a nuclear Iran as time begins running out.

Jonathan Ruhe is director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy

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video of IDF bulldozer dragging body of Palestinian man in Gaza sparks outrage: ‘This is a war crime’

Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

Human rights advocates are demanding that the Israeli military immediately open a criminal investigation into the incident.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/buried-in-the-trump-netanyahu-deal-is-an-effort-to-torpedo-a-war-crimes-investigation/

no lnx

Buried in the Trump-Netanyahu deal is an effort to ‘torpedo’ a war crimes investigation

[President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)]

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams January 29, 2020

As the International Criminal Court moved forward this week with its investigation into alleged war crimes committed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, the White House’s new so-called “peace” plan includes a largely unreported provision that would end such efforts to hold the Israeli government to account.

The document, released Tuesday, was widely criticized as a “screw the Palestinians over harder non-peace plan” that lets Israel continue its illegal occupation and a “ludicrous” proposal that offers no path towards Palestinian statehood.

The plan’s architect, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner, suggested Palestinians “take a cold shower” and accept it lest they “screw up,” he said, like with “every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.”

A portion of the document states that “the parties should conduct themselves in a manner that comports with this vision, and in a way that prepares their respective peoples for peace.” For the Palestinians, that means victims of war crimes should keep quiet.

The plan states, in part, that Palestinians must take “no action, and shall dismiss all pending actions, against the State of Israel, the United States, and any of their citizens before the International Criminal Court” and other tribunals.

A portion of the White House's "Peace to Prosperity" plan released Jan. 28, 2020.

The provision drew criticism from Amnesty International.

“A just and sustainable peace requires a plan that prioritizes the human rights of Palestinians and Israelis, and must include justice and reparation for victims of war crimes and other grave violations. This plan not only fails this fundamental test; it seeks to torpedo efforts towards justice for both Palestinians and Israelis that are currently under way,” said Philip Luther, the organization’s Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director.

Netanyahu, who was indicted Tuesday on corruption charges and stood alongside Trump as he released the plan, reiterated his condemnation of the ICC this week.

In an interview set to air Thursday with Christian network TBN, he called on global powers to sanction the court over the probe.

“The U.S. government, under President Trump, has spoken forcefully against the ICC for this travesty, and I urge all your viewers to do the same. To ask for concrete actions, sanction against the international court, its officials, prosecutors, everyone,” he said, according to an excerpt of the interview released by the Israeli government.

The internation court, he continued, is “basically in a full-frontal attack on the democracies, both on the democracies’ right to defend themselves, and on Israel’s right, the Jewish people’s right, to live in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.”

Michael Lynk, the U.N. special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, has a different perspective. In December, Lynk praised the possibility of justice the investigation could bring.

“Over the years, the international community has adopted hundreds of resolutions through the United Nations condemning various features of Israel’s entrenched occupation of the Palestinian territory. Yet rarely has it ever combined criticism with consequences for Israel,” he said. “Now, the possibility of accountability is finally on the horizon.”

Trump has bristled at the possibility of the probe into alleged Israeli wrongdoing as well.

In a statement last April celebrating his administration’s successful intimidation campaign to stop an ICC investigation into alleged war crimes the U.S. committed in Afghanistan, Trump said, “Any attempt to target American, Israeli, or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response.”

Despite U.S. and Israeli objections to the ICC probe into war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, the effort—at least at this point—continues to advance.

The ICC announced Tuesday that it set a March 16 deadline for Israel, Palestine, and alleged victims to submit documents to the court.

Situation in #Palestine: #ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I invites Palestine, #Israel, interested States & others to submit observations on the Prosecutor’s request related to the scope of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction. Read more ?https://t.co/cwIfEEfY0W

— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) January 28, 2020

ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in December that “there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine” as she was “satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,” and “there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.”

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/evangelicals-are-anticipating-the-end-of-the-world-and-trump-is-listening/

no lnx

Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them Is Especially Terrifying

End Times.

Stephanie Mencimer January 23, 2020

Mother Jones

The enemies of Israel have unleashed a massive air attack on the Promised Land. Hundreds of fighter jets streak across the sky. But before Israel can be destroyed, fire rains from the heavens and the enemy jets explode in mid-air with no explanation. Hailstones the size of golf balls follow the fire. The ground shakes. Birds pick clean the bodies of the fallen attackers. The enemy is vanquished without a single Israeli casualty, and the country is saved.

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These are some of the opening scenes of the bestselling 1995 book Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, by Jerry B. Jenkins and the late evangelical minister Tim LaHaye. But don’t mistake this scenario for a mere action sequence: It’s based on the war of Gog and Magog, a biblical conflict prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, Gog is the leader of Magog, a “place in the far north” that many evangelicals believe is Russia. According to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog will join with Persia—now Iran—and other Arab nations to attack a peaceful Israel “like a cloud that covers the land.” LaHaye, like many evangelicals, believed this battle would bring on the Rapture, the End Times event when God spirits away the good Christians to heaven before unleashing plagues, sickness, and other horrors on the unbelievers remaining on Earth. Meanwhile, the Antichrist reigns supreme.

The story of Gog and Magog is central to the bloody eschatology long embraced by millions of American evangelicals. In recent years, End Times has gained special political currency as believers have seen any number of Middle East conflagrations as fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecy, notably the US invasion of Iraq and the war in Syria. Gog and Magog took on fresh relevance earlier this month, when the Trump administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

On many levels, President Donald Trump’s self-created crisis in Iran seems to have no relationship to any sort of coherent foreign policy or geopolitical plan for the future. The assassination has yielded few if any tangible rewards for the US. But there is an eager constituency for Trump’s improvised policy toward the Middle East and Iran in particular: the evangelical Christians who see it as a means of ushering in the return of Christ. Lured by the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices, anti-abortion measures, and a commitment to Christian supremacy under the guise of religious freedom, white evangelicals voted for Trump in higher numbers than any other group—more than 80 percent.

He desperately needs them if he’s going to be reelected. And while some have expressed concern about the administration’s inching toward war with Iran, many of those with what were once fringe beliefs have cheered thekilling of Soleimani.“Iran has this big part to play in biblical history,” says religious historian Diana Butler Bass, who grew up in the evangelical church, attended an evangelical college and seminary, and wrote her Ph.D. thesis at Duke University on American fundamentalism. “There are these particular prophecies from Ezekiel, where there is talk of a war that will happen at a very important moment in Israel’s history. And that war is going to kick off the End Times. People in this prophetic community believe Iran is going to be one of these aggressors.”

“When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals.”

Bass thinks this worldview may be central to understanding Trump’s foreign policy. “When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals. They will support anything that seems to edge the world towards this conflagration,” she says. “They don’t necessarily want violence, but they’re eager for Christ to return and they think that this war with Iran and Israel has to happen for their larger hope to pass.”

Not all or even most evangelicals believe in the literal truth of these sorts of prophecies, though nearly 60 percent of white evangelicals, according to one 2010 poll, believe Jesus is definitely or probably going to return by the year 2050. But those who do subscribe to this apocalyptic world view seem to be overrepresented among Trump’s religious supporters and advisers. In October, a host of influential evangelical pastors came to the White House to pray with Trump to protect him from impeachment. Among those who laid hands on the president as he stood, head bowed, in the Oval Office, was repeat visitor Greg Laurie, pastor of a California megachurch. A few days after the killing of Soleimani, Laurie made a YouTube video with Don Stewart, author of 25 Signs We Are Near the End, to discuss Iran and the End Times. “The scenario that the Bible predicted, seemingly so impossible,” Stewart promised, “is now falling into place.”

From the outset, Trump has surrounded himself with people who hail from the fringes of the evangelical community that is steeped in the language of biblical prophecy, and his administration regularly reflects that language back to them in its messaging. In March 2017, for instance, Trump issued an official White House statement recognizing the Persian New Year in which he misattributed a quote to Cyrus the Great, the libertine pagan leader of the ancient Persian empire who was anointed by God to free Jews in Babylon. Ordinary Americans probably wouldn’t have even noticed the announcement, but evangelicals knew that Trump was speaking their language. Many of them believe Trump is like Cyrus, a flawed nonbeliever who nonetheless is chosen by God to work his miracles on Earth.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was reportedly instrumental in pushing for the killing of Soleimani, is also a master of such messaging. In March, during an interview in Jerusalem with the Christian Broadcasting Network (founded by another apocalyptic preacher, Pat Robertson), Pompeo showed his familiarity with another Iran-centric Bible story popular with End Times evangelicals. In the story, a Persian king is urged to slaughter the Jews in his kingdom at the urging of the evil adviser Haman. But his Jewish Queen Esther convinces him not to and saves her people. Asked whether he thought Trump could be a modern-day Esther, saving the Jews from Iran, Pompeo replied, “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible.” The secretary of state’s End Times beliefs made headlines again after the Soleimani killing, as meme-makers circulated a quote from a speech he made in a Kansas church in 2015. A few days after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Pompeo said: “We will continue to fight these battles. It is a never-ending struggle. … until the Rapture.”

The State Department did not respond to questions about how Pompeo’s religious views may affect his foreign policy decisions. But it’s not hard to see how apocalyptic evangelicalism might be influencing the Trump administration as it seeks to mobilize the millions of evangelicals reached by televangelists and megachurch pastors preaching the End Times. The most blatant appeal to this constituency came when Trump made the controversial decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-desired goal of evangelicals who see it as fulfilling a biblical prophecy necessary in securing the Second Coming. What may be less obvious is how Trump’s disdain for international governing bodies like NATO also dovetails almost perfectly with End Times theology, whether he realizes it or not.

Matthew Avery Sutton, a Washington State University history professor and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, says evangelicals who believe the end is near have always been hostile to any sort of international organizations. That’s because they believe biblical prophecies that say that in the last days, a world leader who preaches peace will emerge and move toward a one-world government. In fact, the prophecy goes, that leader will be the Antichrist who will force the world to accept a false religion and persecute people who don’t accept him as a Messiah. (In Left Behind, the Antichrist is a Romanian UN secretary-general.) Evangelicals love Trump’s talk of pulling out of NATO, his attacks on the UN, and his trashing of the Paris climate change accord. “They hate the UN,” Sutton says. “Trump’s unilateralism is also music to their ears.”

Trump is not the first president to surround himself with evangelical Christians with an apocalyptic bent. Ronald Reaganwas advised by Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, andpersonally believed in the End Times and the coming apocalypse, writing about it in his journals. He appointed people like Interior Secretary James Watt, a Pentecostal fundamentalist whose disdain for environmental conservation seemed to be informed by his belief that the end of the world was nigh. In an appearance before Congress, he told stunned lawmakers, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”

Apparently George W. Bush was also part of this apocalypse-now group. When Bush was trying to convince French president Jacques Chirac to support an invasion of Iran in 2003, he reportedly told Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.” Chirac had no idea what Bush was talking about and had to consult a biblical scholar.

George W. Bush: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.”

Trump, who seems unable to distinguish between the New and Old Testaments, doesn’t seem particularly fluent in the prophecies of Ezekiel. But he has brought into the White House a host of people who are.Quite a few also hail from what Bass delicately describes as the “not respectable charlatan wing” of evangelical Christianity. They’re the prosperity preachers and prophets of the sort depicted by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry. “I have no doubt at all that those people are sitting right next to [Trump], giving him these Bible verses, telling him about these prophecies,” Bass says, “which means that they are kind of egging him on, [telling him] that he’s part of God’s prophetic fulfillment for these last days.”

Many of those who have become White House regulars are associated with something known as the New Apostolic Reformation, what Christianity Today describes as “a loosely connected group of Pentecostals and Charismatics.” They’re the ones who speak in tongues, scour the news for clues to biblical prophecies, engage in faith healing, and preach prosperity gospel—the notion that faith in God (or, usually, the preacher) will make people wealthy (or at least enrich the preacher). These apostles tend to embrace “dominionist” theology that implores Christians to take over of all levels of government, media, and education as a way of preparing for the End Times and return of Christ. Influential politicians like former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who has made several visits to the Trump White House, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry fall into this camp.

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the liberal nonprofit People for the American Way who has tracked the religious right for many years, says that the network of preachers who come from NAR and Pentecostal media operations “are telling people over and over again that Trump was ‘chosen,’ that God intervened in the election. Some of them say very explicitly that Trump is playing a role in God’s End Time plans to bring about the return of Christ.”

One of the most prominent representatives of the Left Behind wing of the evangelical movement is San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who has been calling for a war with Iran for more than a 15 years. In 2005, Hagee wrote a best-selling book, Jerusalem Countdown, that claimed the Bible predicted a war with Iran. (In2011, it was turned into a movie of the same title, starring Bionic Man Lee Majors and Randy Travis.) Shortly after the book was published, Hagee created Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organization that now claims to have 8 million members. It lobbies for support for Israeli settlements, military aid to Israel, and for the US to join with Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.

He has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel.

Hagee, now 79, had once been popular with powerful Republicans during the George W. Bush administration, despite some of his more controversial statements. Among other things, he has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel. His star began to fall in 2008 after he endorsed Sen. John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination. McCain rejected his support, calling Hagee’s views “crazy and unacceptable.”

The election of Barack Obama consigned Hagee to his megachurch in San Antonio. But Trump has restored him to the corridors of power in Washington. Hagee endorsed Trump early in 2016. Once Trump was elected, Hagee met with the new president for two hours in 2017 to discuss moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Foreign policy experts feared the embassy relocation would destabilize the region and hamper peace talks, but Trump moved it anyway in May 2018. Israeli troops killed more than 50 people in the protests that followed.

Hagee attended the opening ceremony alongside notables such as Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, and he gave the closing benediction.“Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message: Israel lives,” he announced. “Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran: Israel lives.” He later told the Texas Observer that he was looking forward to Trump confronting Iran, explaining, “The sum of Iran’s evil is greater than the whole of its parts.”

When Christians United for Israel held its annual DC confab and lobbying day last summer, Trump sent no fewer than five top administration officials to address attendees, including Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence (both evangelicals themselves), then–national security adviser John Bolton, a special envoy to the Middle East, and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Pompeo opened the speech by telling the crowd of more than 5,000 people, “This is what it must have looked like to be part of the crowd for the fishes and the loaves. What a miracle that was.” Once more the story of Queen Esther came in handy, this time as Pompeo compared it to modern-day Iran.

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Hagee is one of the most prominent of Trump’s evangelical supporters who see a war with Iran as a necessary step towards the End Times, but he’s far from the only one. The White House has hosted a steady stream of dominionists and NAR apostles since Trump took office, including Lance Wallnau, author of God’s Chaos President.An evangelical leader with a consulting business in Dallas, Wallnau has become famous as one of the few evangelicals who accurately prophesied Trump’s election after receiving divine inspiration to read chapter 45 of the Book of Isaiah. That’s the story of King Cyrus, whom Wallnau and many other evangelicals think Trump resembles.(For $45, Wallnau and ex-con televangelist Jim Bakker now sell a Trump/Cyrus coin that people can use to pray for Trump’s reelection.) Dr. Lance, as he’s known, has made several visits to the White House, including for a private briefing on Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan.

Facilitating many of these visits is Paula White-Cain, the controversial televangelist associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network who became Trump’s spiritual adviser after he saw her preach on TV in the early aughts. White led a 20,000-strong megachurch in Tampa that was investigated by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007 for lavish spending on private jets and big houses and possible violations of its tax-exempt status. His report did not find any wrongdoing—church leaders refused to cooperate with the investigation—but in 2012, White’s church declared bankruptcy. She went on to lead a mostly African American church in Florida where she remained until last spring, when her son took over the ministry.

Now on her third marriage, White has long been at odds with more elite, mainstream evangelicals because of her particular self-help brand of prosperity gospel. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore called White a “charlatan” and “heretic.” Nonetheless, in late October, Trump installed her in an official post at the White House office of public liaison to do outreach to evangelicals, formalizing access for some of the more extreme members of that group. She has referred to Trump as a modern-day Esther and called his enemies “demonic.”

Bass says that evangelical elites of the sort who associated with President George W. Bush have long looked down their noses at populist preachers like White and her crowd, but Trump has elevated them to positions of power. It’s a win-win situation. The evangelicals are at last in the influential positions those who disparaged them once held. And Trump’s narcissism is receiving special nourishment by their insistence that he was chosen by God. “I think that Trump likes it when people think he’s close to God—he called himself the ‘chosen one’—and to think that all of this has some sort of divine backing,” Bass says. “I don’t think there’s ever been a president who was quite influenced by this stream of evangelicalism as Trump has been.”

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Naturally, there are political benefits to all of this. The administration has struggled to provide evidence of any imminent threats from Soleimani, but the timing for the assassination was certainly fortuitous for someone looking to mobilize evangelicals. Not only was Trump embroiled in impeachment hearings, he was still chaffing from a recent editorial in the evangelical publication Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, calling for him to be removed from office on moral grounds. Trump announced the killing of Soleimani just hours before appearing at the launch of his campaign’s Evangelicals for Trump coalition in Miami.

That event took place at a Pentacostal Latino church headed by Guillermo Maldonado, who speaks in tongues and hosts a TV show called “The Supernatural Now.” He’s the founder of the King Jesus International Ministry, a Miami megachurch with upwards of 20,000 members and a large TV and radio presence. Maldonado is also another regular White House visitor who has preached that Trump has a role in God’s plans for the End Times. At the 2019 Global Prophetic Summit, he claimed that God told him, “America, I have prepared this time, I have raised somebody in office to open the doors for my gospels.”

André Gagné, a theology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says the apocalyptic worldview is concerning at such high levels of power, because believers may be rather sanguine about the possibility that assassinating an Iranian general might spur an even bigger war or nuclear confrontation in the Middle East. “If it brings the end of the world, it brings the end of the world,” Gagné says. “They’re ready. They can’t wait for the Rapture to happen. For them it’s the ultimate reunion with God.”

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UN researcher hails ICC’s pursuit of war crimes probe in Palestine as ‘momentous step’

Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

A United Nations human rights researcher on Tuesday hailed the International Criminal Court’s recent decision to pursue a formal investigation of alleged war crimes in Palestinian territories occupied by Israel…

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an 1119

Who’s next?’ Israel expels Human Rights Watch director for opposition to illegal Israeli settlements

Julia Conley / Common Dreams

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aha: djt trying to shore up the core of the base, not just evang but dominionist?!

1119 bibi corruption charges

coup rhet

us djt declares settlements legal; bernie pro-palestine in campaign

major democracy fights to maintain the rule of law – this time, it’s Israel

The ConversationNovember 23, 2019

Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit charged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with three counts of corruption on Nov. 21. At the same moment, former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill was…

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nikki h booktv poor israel gets beatebn up unfairly all the time, beacon of democ in ME

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omg

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/mike-pompeos-state-department-homepage-advocates-being-a-christian-leader/

no lnx

Mike Pompeo’s State Department homepage advocates ‘being a Christian leader’

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement October 14, 2019

The website of the U.S, Department of State currently features a photograph of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the words, “Being a Christian Leader.”

The link on the State Dept. homepage goes to a video and the text of Pompeo’s speech to the American Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville, Tennessee on October 11.

Is separation of church and state dead?

The website of the U.S, Department of State currently features a photograph of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the words, “Being a Christian Leader.”

The link on the State Dept. homepage goes to a video and the text of Pompeo’s speech to the American Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville, Tennessee on October 11.

Secretary Pompeo’s speech focuses on how he leads the Dept. of State as a devout Christian. He says he keeps a Bible open on his desk and refers to it during the day.

That in its self would not be exceptionally disturbing except that Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, has said the Bible “informs everything I do.”

He has said it’s “possible,” when asked if God made Trump president “to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace.”

And he has said the wars in the Middle East are a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”

Here’s how The New York Times explained Pompeo’s biblical views just this past March:

Studies show that white evangelicals are much more likely than other Americans to believe that Israel fulfills a biblical prophecy. Known as Christian Zionists, they believe God promised the land to the Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in Israel is foretold in the prophecy of the rapture — the ascent of Christians into the kingdom of God.

Mr. Pompeo talks about the rapture. “We will continue to fight these battles,” he said at a “God and Country Rally” in 2015, because there is a “never-ending struggle” until “the rapture.”

An L.A. Times opinion piece, referring to those remarks, said Pompeo “has his eye on an End Times cleansing.”

The State Dept. advertised Pompeo’s speech and even broadcast it live on the State Dept.’s website:

On October 11, @SecPompeo addresses the 2019 American Association of Christian Counselors World Conference in Nashville. Watch live on https://t.co/58Uc9lIgDz or https://t.co/O2lYyHUIHa at 12:00 PM EDT/ 11:00 AM CDT. pic.twitter.com/Ns5e0TyBXa

— Department of State (@StateDept) October 11, 2019

A few responses via Twitter:

Why are Republicans such as William Barr “willing to destroy the norms of both justice &… democracy…? To this observer, it seems it is the overwhelming desire to impose…a theocratic cultural agenda coupled w/ a..brand of capitalism rapidly devolving into a new feudalism.” https://t.co/NwJQu8g92R

— Jennifer Cohn (@jennycohn1) October 14, 2019

Holy Hell. This is the home page of https://t.co/sfyrXv8tpo. pic.twitter.com/FsE3IJBPlf

— Derek DelGaudio (@derek_del) October 14, 2019

Once again, anybody want to dispute my suggestion of an “evangelical caliphate?”https://t.co/hcdYOIZoHq

— I.M Hydrogen (@ChuckGore2) October 14, 2019

separation of church and state uh what https://t.co/uJL0tHlEx5 pic.twitter.com/UIRjsGZzco

— James K. Yu (@jyu_pdx) October 14, 2019

The home page of the State Department right now. If you believe in the separation of church and state, make sure you leave them a comment. https://t.co/bgEKT4oI0a pic.twitter.com/jOCet0avnh

— Juliana Aldous (@jaldous) October 14, 2019

What fresh hell is this?? I do not want religion in my government and I do not want the government in my religion. Separation of church and state protects both. https://t.co/FQdXxdfURW

— Carly B (@carly__bird) October 14, 2019

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will Americans let Trump trigger World War III for **Saudi Arabia and Israel?**

Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J. S. Davies / Independent Media Institute

On Saturday, September 14, two oil refineries and other oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia were hit and set ablaze by 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles

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trump tax lawyer replaced by non-enitity

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AN

Netanyahu vows to annex large swathes of West Bank ‘in maximum coordination with Trump’Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

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NYT presents murder of a Palestinian boy as ‘national trauma’—for Jewish Israelis

Jim Naureckas / FAIR

HBO has a series based on a real-life crime in Israel—a 2014 case involving (in the New York Times‘ words) “a Palestinian teenager snatched off a Jerusalem street by Orthodox…

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mint press 719

“Go Forth and Lie” Israel Rolls Out Mandatory Course for Students Travelling Abroad

Israel new course to prepare high school students traveling overseas to be good “ambassadors” includes training on how to combat BDS, claims of apartheid and more.

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• Police Tear-Gas, Arrest Palestinian Protesters as Israeli Settlers Enter Al-Aqsa Mosque

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claimed golan heights vs UN

Trump’s Golan Heights bombshell reverses 40 years of US policy and throws Middle East into turmoil

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https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00247403&cycle=2018

Official PAC Name:

NORPAC 

Location: ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ 07632

Industry: Pro-Israel

Treasurer: SCHRANZ, JOSEF MR 

FEC Committee ID: C00247403

(Look up actual documents filed at the FEC)

Senate

Total to Democrats: $5,666

Total to Republicans: $5,050| Recipient | Total |

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How AIPAC could lose its bipartisan status

Dina Badie, Centre College

The American Israeli Public Action Committee has managed to work with Democrats and Republicans alike. Will that change now that Israel has tacked to the right?

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Progressive Jewish groups thank diverse coalition that mobilized to stop Democrats’ misguided rebuke of Omar

Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

“We’re witnessing a huge change in our society. Our political leaders are becoming less afraid to speak out against Israeli policy and it’s because of our grassroots movements.”

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Elite_Force

Israeli Elite Force (iEF) is a hacktivism group founded two days before OpIsrael on April 5, 2013^[1] that is responsible for multiple high-profile computer attacks and large scale online vandalism. Targets include ISPs, domain registrars, commercial websites, educational institutions, and government agencies. The group's core members are: mitziyahu, Buddhax, amenefus, bl4z3, r3str1ct3d, Mute, Cyb3rS74r, Oshrio, Aph3x, xxtr, Kavim, md5c, Cpt|Sparrow, gal-, gr1sha, nyxman and TheGodOfHell.^[1][2]

Contents

• :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Views}:
• :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{OpIsrael Opposition}:
• :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{OpIslam}:
• :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{OpBirthControl - OpIsraelBirthday opposition}:
• :{5:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Palestinian Population Database Leak}:
• :{6:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References}:

Views

The group is led by Mitziyahu, naming himself co-ordinator, instead of leader. Stating in interviews for The Daily Beast, Israeli Channel 2 News, and more, that the mission of the iEF is to regain the Israeli citizen confidence of their hackers, and to fight Islamic cyber terrorism.^[1]

OpIsrael Opposition

Main article: OpIsrael

OpIsrael was a coordinated cyberattack by anti-Israel^[3] groups and individuals against websites they perceived as Israeli, chiefly through denial-of-service attacks.^[4] Timed for 7 April 2013, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day,^[5] its stated goal was to "erase Israel from the internet".^[6][7][8] Israeli Elite Force had an early start forming two days prior to the attack, taking down Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish government website and leaking information on Twitter. They received coverage in the world media, which stated the counterattack was more productive.^{[1][9][10][11][12]}

OpIslam

The groups has organized a preemptive attack known as OpIslam to start a day earlier of OpIsrael^[13][14][15]. Groups known to join iEF at the planned operations include: sTz Hackers, MiSa3L Hacker Team and some single hackers. Cyber War New website released a summary of attacks which lists the attacks and counterattacks, named Operation Israel Reloaded.^[16] The OpIslam attack has received some criticism for being somewhat offensive with this said preemptive attack, as opposed to the groups usual defensive actions.

OpBirthControl - OpIsraelBirthday opposition

Upon planning of the OpIsraelBirthday by anti-Israeli teams on April 7, 2014, iEF launched OpBirthControl, having several groups and individuals joining them.

On this op the Israeli Elite Force decided to focus its energy on exposing participants of the anti-Israel hacks. The iEF hacked named Buddhax published a PDF document^[17] with a list of hackers and personal information including pictures of them taken from their computers. The PDF document has created a "buzz" being twitted by famous hacker The Jester,^[18] and celebrity Roseanne Barr,^[19][20] and being talked about in the media.^{[21][22][23][24][25]} The group also released 45,000 usernames and passwords of government officials at the Gaza Ministry of Health^[26][27]

Palestinian Population Database Leak

On another counter-op named #OpIsraelRetailiate, the IEF leaked a database file of the Palestinian Authority Population Registry.^[28][29] This action was referred to as unprecedented by Israeli data security experts.^[30][31] At the same counter-op, the group also leaked Palestinian Authority unemployment office information containing 38,000 names and personal data of 700 job holders in the Palestinian Authority...

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/israels-stranglehold-on-american-politics/

chris h

The Israel lobby’s buying off of nearly every senior politician in the United States, facilitated by our system of legalized bribery, is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. The lobby’s campaign of vicious character assassination, smearing and blacklisting against those who defend Palestinian rights—including the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein and university students, many of them Jewish, in organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine—is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. Twenty-four state governments’ passage of requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. The shameless decision in 2014 by all 100 U.S. senators, including Bernie Sanders, to pass a Soviet-style plebiscite proposed by the Israel lobby to affirm Israel’s “right to defend itself” during the 51 days it bombed and shelled homes, water treatment plants, power stations, hospitals and U.N. schools in Gaza, killing 2,251 Palestinians, including 551 children, is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact.

 The U.S. refusal, including in the United Nations and other international bodies, to criticize Israel’s apartheid state and routine violation of international law is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. The well-funded campaigns by theIsrael lobby, which works closely with Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs,to discredit any American politician or academic who even slightly deviates from Israeli policy is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. (One infamous example of a U.S. politician kowtowing was the unconstitutional invitation by then-House Speaker John Boehner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress in 2015 to denounce President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear agreement.) The massive interference in our internal affairs by Israel and the Israel lobby, far exceeding that of any other country, including Russia or China, is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact.

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with bankrupt courtiers in the U.S. press, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, are making a serious mistake, however, in refusing to acknowledge Israel’s outsized, transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system and Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinians. It is too obvious and too egregious to hide. The longer the ruling elites ignore this reality and censor and attack those such as Rep. Ilhan Omar who have the temerity to name this interference and the human rights abuses perpetrated by Israel, the more it gives credence to the racists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and white hate groups, many rooted in the Christian right, who are the real anti-Semites. Israel and its lobby, rather than protecting Israel and Jews, are steadily nullifying their moral and ultimately political force.

Criticism of Israel and the ideology of Zionism is not anti-Semitic. Criticism of Israel’s influence and control over U.S. foreign policy, and of Israeli efforts to silence those who champion Palestinian rights, is not anti-Semitic. Criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians or its dangerous campaign to orchestrate a war with Iran is not anti-Semitic. The more Israel and the Israel lobby abuse the charge of anti-Semitism, a charge the Israel lobby has leveled against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, among many others, the more they lose their effectiveness against the dangerous anti-Semites whose ranks are growing within the far right and across the Muslim world.

Israel and its lobby do not care if its political allies, including those in the Christian right and the Trump White House, possess warped and racist attitudes about Jews. The Christian right and many of those in the White House, while embracing Zionism, are also anti-Semitic. President Donald Trump has called neo-Nazis “very fine people” and once tweeted an illustration of Hillary Clinton against a background of hundred-dollar bills and with the Star of David superimposed near her face. The sole criterion of Israel and the Israel lobby in determining who to support and who to demonize is identifying who backs the far-right agenda of the apartheid state of Israel and who does not. Genuine anti-Semitism is irrelevant. For Israel, the world is divided along the fault line of Palestinian rights. Stand up for the Palestinians and you are an anti-Semite. Cheer their marginalization, oppression and murder and you are a friend of the Jews. Have Jewish leaders forgotten their own history? Anti-Semitism is wrong and dangerous not only because it is bad for the Jews, but because the dark forces of ethnic and religious hatred, used by Israel and the lobby against critics, are bad for everyone, including the Jews and the Palestinians. You open this Pandora’s box of evils at your peril.

The interference by Israel in the American political system is amply documented, including in the Al-Jazeera four-part series “The Lobby,” which Israel and its supporters managed to block from being broadcast. In the film, a pirated copy of which can be watched on the website Electronic Intifada, the leaders of the Israel lobby are repeatedly captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how they, backed by the intelligence services within Israel, attack and silence American critics and use huge cash donations to control the American electoral process and political system. The Israel lobby, lacking any plausible deniability, has remained stunningly silent about the film. The corporate press, in the face of pressure by the lobby, has.

The series exposes the various machinations of the Israel lobby.

“We made sure that there were people [agents of the lobby] in every single congressional district,” M.J. Rosenberg, a former editor of the AIPAC policy journal Near East Report and now a critic of AIPAC, said in the film in an on-the-record interview with Al-Jazeera. “You call [politicians] and say, ‘I’m calling from AIPAC in Washington.’ I did these calls. ‘We hear you’re good friends with Congressman So and So.’ ‘Oh my God, yes, we’ve been friends with so and so.’ ‘Well, what does he think about Israel?’ ‘I never talked to him about Israel.’ ‘Well, can I come down and talk to you? And help you figure out a way to talk to him about Israel?’ ‘No, just tell me. What should I say? I’ll just tell him.’ ”

Craig Holman, who campaigns for lobbying reform with Public Citizen, is another participant in the film who denounced the Israel lobby’s fundraising practices.

“Right now our current [federal] contribution limit from any person to a candidate is $2,700,” Holman says. “That’s a lot of money. It can certainly buy … some gratitude with a lawmaker. But if you really want to add punch to that type of buying of favors, what you do is you get 50 or 100 people together at an event like this, all chipping in $2,700 and then you bundle it all together and hand the total amount to the lawmaker. At that point, we’re talking anywhere around a quarter-million dollars. So suddenly you’ve got a group of people with the same demand they want from the lawmaker, handing over a quarter of a million dollars. That buys a lawmaker.”

One of the fundraising events captured in the film was for Anthony Brown, a Democrat who successfully ran for Congress in Maryland in 2016.

“You strategically pick the ones who are in close races and [whom you] want to build relationships with,” David Ochs, the founder of HaLev and an activist for Israel, says in the documentary. “We want the Jewish community to go face to face in this small environment—50, 30, 40 people, and say, ‘This is what’s important to us.’ ”

“They’re actually buying these officeholders,” Public Citizen’s Holman says in the documentary. Speaking from the lobby’s point of view, he says “we’re chipping in all this money so we can hand over $100,000 or $200,000 to the officeholder so we can buy them.”

“What [the] group is doing to avoid that [federal] disclosure requirement is it isn’t taking money and putting it in its own account and then handing it over to the officeholder,” Holman says of the Israel lobby. “It’s just collecting credit card information and turning that over directly to the candidate. Therefore, it’s not violating the earmarking law and they’re not reporting this. All we can see on the campaign finance reports are the individuals who contributed. But there are no records on those campaign finance reports that they weren’t together in a bundling group who are all at this event. All we’d know is Person A gave $2,700; Person B gave $2,700. And we’d have no idea they’re working in tandem with each other.”

The Israel lobby also flies hundreds of members of Congress, often with their families, to Israel every year for lavish junkets at expensive resorts. These Congress members run up individual bills that frequently exceed $20,000. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 attempted to restrict lobbyists from offering paid trips lasting more than one day to members of Congress. But AIPAC, which has never been forced to register as a foreign agent, used its clout to insert a clause in the act to exclude so-called educational trips organized by charities that do not hire lobbyists. AIPAC is affiliated with such a charity, called the American Israel Education Foundation.

“It doesn’t have an office,” Holman says about the foundation. “It doesn’t have any employees. It’s just a tax form they [Israel lobby agents] file. Gives some dinners, gives some wonderful resorts to stay at, entertainment, all of which is packed up into one of these trips. It’s a very, very effective tool at influence peddling.”

The investment by Israel and is backers is worth it. The United States Congress in 2018 authorized a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade and has spent over $5.6 trillion during the last 18 years fighting futile wars that Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East.

“If you wander off the reservation and become critical of Israel, you not only will not get money, AIPAC will go to great lengths to find someone who will run against you,” John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” says in the documentary. “And they support that person very generously. The end result is you’re likely to lose your seat in Congress.”

The film focuses in part on former Rep. Jim Moran, who was in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 2015 and who was an open critic of the Israel lobby.

“They have questionnaires,” Moran says about AIPAC in the film. “Anyone running for Congress is [presented with a demand from AIPAC] to fill out a questionnaire. And they evaluate the depth of your commitment to Israel on the basis of that questionnaire. And then you have an interview with local people. If you get AIPAC support, then more often than not you’re going to win.”

“You are told that ‘Israel continues to be under siege from hundreds of millions of its neighbors who are Muslims and they hate Israel and Jewish people,’ ” Moran says. “You’re told, ‘They have only survived because of the United States, because of American politicians like you who support us.’ ”

“You realize it’s not just the money,” he goes on. “A number of concerned activists will send out postcards, make phone calls, they’ll organize. That’s the democratic process. They understand the democratic process.”

“They threaten,” M.J. Rosenberg says of the Israel lobby leaders’ response to elected officials who become critical of Israel. “They immediately threaten. Even if [politicians] know AIPAC can’t defeat them, AIPAC can make their lives more difficult. They can make sure that their next town meeting or something, some members of the Jewish congregation jump up and say, ‘But you’re anti-Israel!’ ”

Moran was targeted by the Israel lobby because he raised questions about the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Act, which authorized the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Moran told a Jewish constituent at a town hall meeting in his district that “if the Jewish community was opposed to the war, I think that would make a difference” in whether the United States would invade Iraq. He was immediately accused by the Israel lobby of being an anti-Semite and fostering the belief that there was a Jewish conspiracy to push America into war.

“There was a conservative rabbi in my district who was assigned to me, I assume, by AIPAC,” Moran says. “He warned me that if I voiced my views about the Israeli lobby that my career would be over, and implied that it would be done through the [Washington] Post. Sure enough, The Washington Post editorialized brutally. Everyone ganged up.”

The film shows a screen shot of a 2003 headline in The Washington Post: “Sorry, Mr. Moran, You’re Not Fit For Public Office.” In following years there were a number of other negative commentaries.

In the film, Eric Gallagher, then with The Israel Project, tells the undercover reporter that AIPAC has a close relationship with the Washington Post editorial board.

Moran says, “The principal editorial board of the Post itself has been a very effective instrument because they have been able to maintain their credibility. It’s a great paper in every other way. Because they have such credibility, they’re extremely effective.”

“Both of my daughters married Jewish men,” Moran says. “My grandchildren are Jewish. Anybody who considers me an anti-Semite is ignorant.”

AIPAC, while it presents itself as an impartial supporter of Israel, has long been an arm of the Israeli right. It vehemently opposed the Oslo Accord and the peace process with the Palestinians engineered by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It poured money and resources into the 1992 Israeli election campaign to back Rabin’s political opponents in the Likud party. Rabin did not invite the leaders of the Israel lobby to his inauguration and, according to an aide in his office, referred to the leaders of the Israel lobby as “scumbags.” He repeatedly denounced the lobby as an impediment to Israel’s security and democracy.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz characterized Rabin’s remarks to American Jewish leaders during a visit to the United States as “brutal.” “You have hurt Israel,” the newspaper quoted Rabin as saying. “I will not allow you to conduct my dealings with the [U.S.] administration.”

Washington Jewish Week reported that Rabin told the AIPAC leadership, “You failed at everything. You waged lost battles. … You caused damage to Israel. … You’re too negative. … You create too much antagonism.”

The Israel lobby, after Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by a right-wing Jewish fanatic and the 1996 electoral victory by Likud under the leadership of Netanyahu, returned to the good graces of the Israeli government. The lobby, as Israel has lurched further and further to the right and adopted ever more overtly racist policies toward the Palestinians under Netanyahu, has become more intrusive in American political life. Israel’s apartheid state, racism and murderous assaults on unarmed Palestinians increasingly alienate many of its traditional supporters, including young American Jews. Israel, unable to justify its human rights abuses and atrocities, has opted for harsher forms of control including censoring, spying on and attacking its critics. 

It has pressured the U.S. State Department to redefine anti-Semitism under a three-point test known as the Three Ds: the making of statements that “demonize” Israel; statements that apply “double standards” for Israel; statements that “delegitimize” the state of Israel. This definition is being pushed by the Israel lobby in state legislatures and on college campuses. It spreads the hate talk of Islamophobia, including by sponsoring the showing of the racist film “Unmasked Judeophobia” on college campuses on Holocaust Remembrance Day. The film argues that Muslims embrace a Nazi-like anti-Semitism and are seeking to carry out another holocaust against Jews. Nearly all American Muslims targeted by law enforcement since 9/11 were singled out for their outspokenness about Palestinian rights. Most of those arrested had no connection to al-Qaida, Hatem Bazian, lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies at UC Berkeley, says in the film—“no relationship whatsoever to what is called transnational terrorism.”

There are fractures in the Democratic Party, evidenced when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced a revolt by younger, more progressive members of the House over her proposal to pass an anti-Semitism resolution pushed by the Israel lobby and designed to shame Rep. Omar. A reworded resolution, one that did not please the lobby, was passed, condemning anti-Muslim bias and white supremacy and citing “African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants and others” victimized by bigotry.

Israel’s dominance of the Democratic Party is eroding. It is losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Israel’s tactics, for this reason, will become more vicious and underhanded. Its interference in the democratic process will be characterized less by an attempt to persuade and more by the use of money to ensure fealty to its policies, censorship, the enforcement of legally binding oaths in favor of Israel to blunt the BDS movement, and the kind of racist hate talk it unleashed against Rep. Omar. The lobby, as Rabin understood, was never a true friend of Israel.

==

==

[trip to palestine by dem house scuttled?!]

wow yikes

After The Intercept reported over the weekend that a bipartisan group of senators is pushing, as its first legislative priority, a bill that would hand states more power to punish boycotts of Israel—even as the prolonged and deeply harmful government shutdown continues into its third week—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday condemned the legislation itself and urged Democrats to block any bills that are not related to reopening the government.

“It’s absurd that the first bill during the shutdown is legislation which punishes Americans who exercise their constitutional right to engage in political activity. Democrats must block consideration of any bills that don’t reopen the government,” Sanders wrote on Twitter. “Let’s get our priorities right.”

:{:{:{✔:(style="position:absolute !important;overflow:hidden !important;width:1px !important;height:1px !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px) !important"):}::(style="position:static;-webkit-box-flex:0;flex:0 0 auto;padding-right:4px"):}:}::{@SenSanders}:

It’s absurd that the first bill during the shutdown is legislation which punishes Americans who exercise their constitutional right to engage in political activity. Democrats must block consideration of any bills that don’t reopen the government. Let's get our priorities right. [twit]

Sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the legislation would give states and localities more legal authority to punish companies that participate in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Kathleen Ruane, senior legislative counsel with the ACLU, condemned the measure as an attack on Americans’ First Amendment rights that must be voted down.

“In the midst of a partial government shutdown, Democratic and Republican senators have decided that one of their first orders of business… should be to sneak through a bill that would weaken Americans’ First Amendment protections,” Ruane declared.

“The bill, Combatting BDS Act, encourages states to adopt the very same anti-boycott laws that two federal courts blocked on First Amendment grounds,” she continued. “The legislation, like the unconstitutional state anti-boycott laws it condones, sends a message to Americans that they will be penalized if they dare to disagree with their government. We therefore urge senators to vote no on the Combatting BDS Act.”

According to The Intercept‘s Ryan Grim and Glenn Greenwald, “26 states now have enacted some version of a law to punish or otherwise sanction entities which participate in or support the boycott of Israel, while similar laws are pending in at least 13 additional states. Rubio’s bill is designed to strengthen the legal basis to defend those Israel-protecting laws from constitutional challenge.”

“Punishment aimed at companies which choose to boycott Israel can also sweep up individual American citizens in its punitive net, because individual contractors often work for state or local governments under the auspices of a sole proprietorship or some other business entity,” Grim and Greenwald noted. “That was the case with Texas elementary school speech pathologist Bahia Amawi, who lost her job working with autistic and speech-impaired children in Austin because she refused to promise not to boycott goods produced in Israel and/or illegal Israeli settlements.”

In the last Congress, Rubio’s bill was co-sponsored by six received the backing of at least six Democrats who are still in the Senate: Bob Menendez (N.J.); Joe Manchin (W.Va.); Ben Cardin (Md.); Ron Wyden (Ore.); Gary Peters (Mich.); and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.).

As The Intercept reported, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “plans to support the Rubio bill, rather than whip votes against it.” If all seven Democrats back Rubio’s bill, it will have enough votes to pass the Senate.

Waleed Shahid, communications director for Justice Democrats, expressed outrage at Rubio’s legislation, and Schumer’s support for it, on Twitter.

“It’s horrifying that Sen. Schumer and the Democratic leadership’s first Senate bill (‘S. 1’) allows state and local governments to boycott U.S. companies which boycott Israel,” Shahid wrote. “How is this the first priority?”

==

===

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/21/did_israel_kill_yasser_arafat_stunning

Israeli intelligence officials desperately tried to prevent Ronen Bergman from writing “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” a stunning book exposing the details of Israel’s extrajudicial killing program. Israel even changed and extended secrecy laws to prevent Bergman from gaining access to historical documents. Despite this, Bergman gained unprecedented access while writing the book, scouring thousands of documents and meeting with some 1,000 sources. The result is a stunning investigation that dives deep into the targeted killing programs of Israel, which has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world since World War II. We speak with Ronen Bergman about Israel’s many attempts to kill the former chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and the possibility that they succeeded.

===

Top five Clinton donors are Jewish, campaign tally shows - World ...

https://www.haaretz.com › World News

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1.

:{Oct 24, 2016 - Haim :{Saban:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, George Soros and others stand at the head of a list of ... Clinton to Jewish:{donors:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:: I will be a better friend to :{Israel:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: than Obama ... over $1 billion amassed for the :{Democratic:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:nominee's presidential run. ... Cheryl; George Soros, another hedge :{funder:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and a major backer of .... ':{BDS:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Is Nonviolent.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

===

https://www.alternet.org/former-cia-acting-director-reveals-mueller-might-be-opening-another-front-investigating-ex-aide-dick

former top national security aide to Dick Cheney has fallen under scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Two sources with knowledge of the probe say Mueller is examining possibly suspicious contacts by John Hannah, who served as a Cheney adviser and worked on Trump’s State Department transition team, reported The Daily Beast.

“Mueller might be opening another front here,” said John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA. “His mandate is to examine Russian collusion, but there’s the clause in his mandate that’s very open-ended—to the effect of ‘and any associated matters.’ It could be a separate line of inquiry about efforts to influence the election by foreigners.”

Hannah has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but investigators are interested in his interactions with Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, who arranged meetings between Trump associates and foreign dignitaries, and Joel Zamel, a social media expert with deep ties to Israeli intelligence.

Hannah, Nader and Zamel reportedly met with a top Saudi general shortly before President Donald Trump was inaugurated to discuss plans to overthrow the government of Iran.

Nader worked with Hannah onIraq policyduring the Bush administration, and Hannah is listed as an advisory council for Zamel’s tech firm Wikistrat.

Hannah now serves as a senior counselor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank highly critical of Iran.

Nader and Zamel have each been questioned by Mueller’s team and are reportedly cooperating with the Russia investigation.

==

==

https://www.propublica.org/article/dc-pro-israel-group-ran-facebook-ads-to-target-pro-palestinian-activist

In 2016, as Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi performed at college campuses around the United States, his appearances seemed to spark student protests.

Before his visit to John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, a page called “John Jay Students Against Hate” appeared on Facebook with Kanazi’s face next to a uniformed cop, painting Kanazi as anti-police. When Kanazi crossed the country a few days later to visit San Jose State, a nearly-identical Facebook page popped up, this one called “SJSU Students Against Hate,” with Kanazi’s face superimposed over an image of military graves. Paid Facebook campaigns promoted both pages.

Despite their names, the Facebook campaigns were run by professional Washington D.C. political operatives who work for a group called the Israel on Campus Coalition, according to promotional materials obtained by ProPublica and the Forward.

The social media campaigns provide another example of how well-funded advocacy organizations are using deceptive strategies to promote their cause online. The Israel on Campus Coalition launched these campaigns during the 2016 election season, at the same time that entities linked to the Russian government bought misleading Facebook ads on a range of political issues.In the materials, which the Israel on Campus Coalition distributed to its donors, the group describes each of the Facebook pages as an “anonymous digital campaign.” The group says it paid to promote the campaign, which reached tens of thousands of people.

The Israel on Campus Coalition didn’t respond to requests for comment. The group had a budget of $9 million in its fiscal year ending in June 2017, according to federal tax filings.Its funders include the foundations of billionaire Republican donor Paul Singer and philanthropist Lynn Schusterman.

Asked about the Israel on Campus Coalition pages, a Facebook spokesman said they “violate our policies against misrepresentation and they have been removed.”

In response to criticism of Russia-linked ads, Facebook recently created new rulesrequiring disclosure of who is paying for political ads on the site. How the company defines what is political remains murky.

Anonymous digital campaigns appear to be a central part of the Israel on Campus Coalition’s efforts to combat pro-Palestinian activism on U.S. campuses. This past spring, the ICC appears to have set up at least one anonymous website to oppose a George Washington University student government resolution that called on the school to divest its endowment from certain companies that students said were profiting from Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, the Forward reported.

The Israel on Campus Coalition’s leaders discussed their covert social media tactics in an unaired Al Jazeera documentary featuring hidden camera footage of Washington, D.C. pro-Israel advocacy officials.

“With the anti-Israel people, what’s most effective, what we found at least in the last year, is you do the opposition research, put up some anonymous website, and then put up targeted Facebook ads,” said the Israel on Campus Coalition’s executive director, Jacob Baime, in the Al Jazeera documentary, which was filmed in 2016. The film was viewed by ProPublica and the Forward.

Baime also said in the documentary that his organization’s work is based on a doctrine used to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “It’s modeled on General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy,” Baime said. “We’ve copied a lot from that strategy that has been working really well for us, actually.”

McChrystal, who led the U.S. military’s special forces and the NATO war effort in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, emphasized so-called “offensive information operations” to embarrass and discredit violent insurgents.

...

al-j shelved doco?

==

yikes

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/jared-kushner-thinks-he-has-deal-century-middle-east-peace-it-would-have

Leaked emails from Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and appointed steward of the Israel-Palestine conflict, are shedding light on his planned “deal of the century” for peace in the Middle East. In extracts published by Foreign Policy magazine, Kushner proposes “disrupting” the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and ending the refugee status of 5m Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Although the emails have not been published in full, these snippets are highly revealing. Kushner’s move against UNRWA marks the next stage in the Trump administration’s plan. In January 2018 – the same month that Kushner sent these emails – Trump announced drastic cuts in US aid to UNRWA.

There are signs that defunding UNRWA is just the first stage of a much grander strategy; Kushner is also reportedly pressuring Jordan to strip the 2m Palestinians living there of their refugee status. But even taken on its own, dissolving the agency would have catastrophic consequences.

Out of the picture

UNRWA currently provides emergency aid, education and healthcare to the Middle East’s millions of Palestinian refugees. Many live below the poverty line, and would have little or no support if UNRWA’s services were to end, with their host states lacking the necessary resources to step in.

The impact would be political as well as humanitarian. The status of the refugees, who lost their homes in the 1948 war, has long been one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians. UNRWA’s work by definition implies international recognition of the refugees’ situation and underlines their lawful right of return.

If UNRWA were dissolved while the refugees remained stateless, that would imply that the contentious question of their future and status had been resolved. On these grounds, the Palestinian Authority has condemned the Kushner plan as an attempt to remove refugees from the equation and erase their right of return, effectively denying them any chance of future citizenship in Israel-Palestine.

On the other side, critics of UNRWA – including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – contend that the agency perpetuates the Palestinian refugee crisis by supporting the refugees in their current situation rather than helping pursue a political solution, and by promoting anti-Israeli feeling. According to this view, the agency’s dissolution would improve prospects for peace.

The reality suggests the opposite. UNRWA is a product rather than a cause of the conflict, which will continue even if the agency is abolished. Stripping millions of people of basic welfare is more likely to heighten tensions than calm them. Israel would pay a price too; as an occupying power, it is legally obliged to safeguard the basic needs of the population living in areas it controls, but since UNRWA currently alleviates some of its obligations by providing essential services to 800,000 registered refugees in the West Bank and more than 1m in Gaza, the Israeli government is under far less pressure than it could be to take primary responsibility for their welfare.

Kushner himself seems aware of the potential damage, writing in one email that the US should “risk breaking things” to get results. None of the leaked extracts includes any provision for minimising the fallout. But the US administration’s opposition to UNRWA isn’t just about the refugees it serves. This is part of a broader strategy to redraw the fundamental contours of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” as a whole.

Dismantling Oslo

For more than 20 years, this process has been operating on the framework laid out in the 1993 Oslo Accords. Oslo established terms for a five-year interim period, to be followed by a full final peace agreement. It identified seven so-called permanent status issues – including that of the refugees – to be determined as part of this final agreement.

While every previous US administration since 1993 has endorsed this framework, Trump has been steadily working to take each of the permanent status issues off the table.

First, the administration recognised Jerusalem – deemed the most important final status issue – as the unified capital of Israel. Appearing to acknowledge his strategy, Trump explicitly described the move as “taking Jerusalem off the table”. The recent opening of the new US embassy in the city dashed Palestinian hopes that East Jerusalem would serve as the capital of their future state.

According to the Oslo framework, the Palestinian refugees’ future is the second most important permanent status issue; by mooting the abolition of UNRWA, the Trump administration seems to be planning to take this one off the table too.

The evidence suggests that the administration has similar plans for the third issue: Israeli settlements. In contrast to the Obama administration’s strong condemnation of settlement activity in the West Bank, Trump has been mostly quiet on the issue. Kushner, along with ambassador David Friedman, supported Israel’s recent Nation-State Law, which promotes “Jewish settlement” as a national value.

The four remaining permanent status issues are security arrangements, borders, international relations, and common interests such as allocation of water supplies. The Trump administration’s plans for each of these remains to be seen. Yet even if they are left on the table, the elimination of Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements will leave the Palestinians – already the weaker party – exceptionally vulnerable. By gradually eliminating the permanent status issues, the Trump administration is working to severely restrict the scope of any final deal, with the aim of compelling the Palestinians to capitulate.

Anne Irfan, Teaching Fellow in Middle Eastern History, University of Sussex

This article was originally published on The Conversation

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Right-Wing Media React After Israeli Soldiers Shoot Gazans: 'They Can All Burn In Hell'

Right-wing media have defended the Israeli military’s actions by blaming Palestinians for their own deaths.

By Bobby Lewis / Media Matters May 15, 2018, 9:16 PM GMT

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On May 14, the Israeli military shot hundreds of Palestinian protesters along the boundary line between Israel and the Gaza strip, killing “at least 55” Palestinians, according to The Guardian. Right-wing media have defended the Israeli military’s actions by blaming Palestinians for their own deaths. 

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Ann Coulter: “Can we do that?”

Can we do that? https://t.co/yVOYYEdZYB

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 14, 2018

Far-right personality Laura Loomer: “It’s too bad the United States doesn’t protect its border the same way Israel does.” Loomer positively compared Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinians to the “time of our founding fathers, [when] invaders were usually neutralized for the sake of protecting the sovereignty and borders of our nation.”

It’s too bad the United States doesn’t protect its border the same way Israel does... #Gaza

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 15, 2018

Daily Wire’s Elliott Hamilton: “They can all burn in Hell.”

They can all burn in Hell. https://t.co/4P47pzEIj5

— Elliott Hamilton (@ElliottRHams) May 15, 2018

Fox News analyst Sebastian Gorka: “If you love America and Israel, and hate Jihadists, it’s a GREAT day.”

If you love America and Israel, and hate Jihadists, it’s a GREAT day. https://t.co/w5j2z6XHL1

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) May 14, 2018

Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade: “If someone is determined to create unrest with these great numbers, what are you supposed to do?”

Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby: Protests in Gaza were driven by “toxic, self-destructive hatred, inculcated in Palestinians from childhood” and “jihadist mentality.”

It isn’t “desperation,” it’s toxic, self-destructive hatred, inculcated in Palestinians from childhood. It’s also a jihadist mentality that celebrates “martyrdom” — and a culture that erupted in dancing and joy when thousands of Americans died on 9/11. https://t.co/KUvmGm6b7V

Report Advertisement— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) May 15, 2018

Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer: “No protests in the Arab Street. Only Hamas. Only a terrorist group that urged its militants to attack Israel.”

No violence in the West Bank. No violence in Jordan. No protests in the Arab Street. Only Hamas. Only a terrorist group that urged its militants to attack Israel. Terrorists who refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist. And this is how the NYT covers it. Shame. pic.twitter.com/5UFHiPP8va

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) May 15, 2018

Fox media critic Howard Kurtz: “Hamas clearly precipitated” Israeli gunfire at the boundary line, to “paint Israel as some kind of a military thuggish nation.”

Sean Hannity: Israel “has the right to defend itself” from “Hamas-inspired protesters.”

CRTV’s Jordan Schachtel: The protesters were actually involved in a planned terrorist attack.

BREAKING: Attempting to breach a country's border with the goal of carrying out mass casualty terrorist attacks against its people are not "protests".https://t.co/b28GnRQKBB

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) May 14, 2018

Far-right vlogger Stefan Molyneux: “I can’t help but notice a profound difference between how Israel and the United States defend their respective borders.”

I can’t help but notice a profound difference between how Israel and the United States defend their respective borders.

— Stefan Molyneux (@StefanMolyneux) May 14, 2018

Business Insider’s Daniella Greenbaum: “If 50,000 people approached the US border with a stated intent to maim and kill how would you like our government to respond?”

If 50,000 people approached the US border with a stated intent to maim and kill how would you like our government to respond? Seriously.

— Daniella Greenbaum (@DGreenbaum) May 15, 2018

The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft retweeted a tweet that Palestinians “martyred their own baby because she was a girl.”

The Weekly Standard: “They’re not protests. They’re suicide riots.” In a May 15 editorial, The Weekly Standard denied that Palestinian protests could fairly be called “protests,” because “they’re intended mainly to kill and maim both Israelis and the Palestinian ‘protesters’ themselves.”

In ordinary English usage, a protest is a collective action or gesture meant to bring pressure on a government or corporate entity. The Gaza “protests” are meant to bring pressure on Israel, but they’re intended mainly to kill and maim both Israelis and the Palestinian “protesters” themselves.

These demonstrations would be better described as suicide-riots. For nearly two months, Hamas and other militant factions have been encouraging young Palestinian men to storm the fence separating Gaza from Israel. The rioters cut holes in the fence, charge Israeli guards with crude weapons like axes, and lob fire bombs over the wall in attempts to set Israeli fields on fire. Hamas has pledged to massacre those on the other side of the fence, and these riots are expressions of that intention. Israeli defense forces are obliged to respond with force. An axe-clutching Palestinian insanely charging into Israeli territory isn’t a “protester” but a combatant and a terrorist. The fact that he doesn’t expect to prevail against the might of the Israel Defense Forces—he is in essence on a suicide mission—doesn’t somehow oblige Israeli soldiers not to use force to stop him. The Israelis have no choice but to fire back, and they do, often with deadly results.

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing-media-react-after-israeli-soldiers-shoot-gazans-they-can-all-burn-hell?src=newsletter1092270

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61 kia one day, most under 18

https://www.alternet.org/white-house-edits-transcript-jared-kushner-calling-protestors-gaza-part-problem

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shot 49 protesters, 2 reporters, one with label/sign; 35 kia on annivwersary?

butterfly cluster hi veloc sniper; tear gas drones

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https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-may-14-2018/

11 am

zionism doc fundrive

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rev jeffres ---phobes

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/washington-appears-be-gearing-third-gulf-war

klare

with  Donald Trump’s decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday, it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American experience in the Greater Middle East, is that it won’t be pretty.

The New York Times recently reported that U.S. Army Special Forces were secretly aiding the Saudi Arabian military against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. It was only the latest sign preceding President Trump’s Iran announcement that Washington was gearing up for the possibility of another interstate war in the Persian Gulf region. The first two Gulf wars -- Operation Desert Storm (the 1990 campaign to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait) and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq -- ended in American “victories” that unleashedvirulent strains of terrorism like ISIS, uprooted millions, and unsettled the Greater Middle East in disastrous ways. The Third Gulf War -- not against Iraq but Iran and its allies -- will undoubtedly result in another American “victory” that could loose even more horrific forces of chaos and bloodshed.

Like the first two Gulf wars, the third could involve high-intensity clashes between an array of American forces and those of Iran, another well-armedstate. While the United States has been fighting ISIS and other terrorist entities in the Middle East and elsewhere in recent years, such warfare bears little relation to engaging a modern state determined to defend its sovereign territory with professional armed forces that have the will, if not necessarily the wherewithal, to counter major U.S. weapons systems.

...

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https://www.alternet.org/fox-news-judge-jeanine-claims-trump-fulfilling-biblical-prophecy-moving-israeli-embassy-jerusalem

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noshed on sushi and Thai-inspired taquitos on Sunday evening, klezmer music wailing in the background, the wealthy guests at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual blowout marveled at the right-wing celebrities in their midst. Sean Spicer and Sebastian Gorka couldn’t walk five feet without being asked for selfies. Alan Dershowitz held court over a small crowd of journalists. Senator Tom Cotton gamely mingled with Joe Lieberman, Chris Ruddy, and other members of the hawkish, pro-Israel power elite. But it was Steve Bannon, self-proclaimed “Christian Zionist” and the evening’s most notable speaker, who drew the most whispers (and, befittingly, a crowd of protesters outside Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt), rolling up just 10 minutes before the dinner began. Conspicuously absent from the roped-off V.I.P. table, however, was the Z.O.A.’s biggest donor, and perhaps the most powerful pro-Israel American of them all: Sheldon Adelson, whom Bannon was slated to introduce on stage. (Morton Klein, the president of the Z.O.A., told The Hive that Sheldon and his wife Miriam had been caught up at a Yad Vashem board meeting and were unable to attend, sending a statement to be read aloud at the end of the night.)

Though his absence went largely unremarked upon, a source told me that some in the crowd were surprised the next day when Adelson, the casino billionaire and wealthy Republican kingmaker, issued a public statement leaving no doubt where he stands when it comes to the Breitbart chairman’s quest to overhaul the establishment Republican Party, reshaping Congress in his image in 2018. “The Adelsons will not be supporting Steve Bannon’s efforts,” Andy Abboud, Adelson’s spokesman, told Politico on Monday, saying that instead they would back his establishment rival, Mitch McConnell, “100 percent. For anyone to infer anything otherwise is wrong.”

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see black cube gorka

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/us/politics/iran-deal-benjamin-rhodes-black-cube.html

For years, opponents of the nuclear deal with Iran have accused Benjamin J. Rhodes, a top national security aide to President Barack Obama, of scheming to sell the diplomatic agreement on false pretenses to the American people.

Now, just as President Trump appears likely to announce his decision to withdraw from the deal, evidence has surfaced that the agreement’s opponents engaged in a sophisticated effort to dig up dirt on Mr. Rhodes and his family that continued well after the Obama administration left office.

A detailed report about Mr. Rhodes, compiled by Black Cube, a private investigations firm established by former intelligence analysts from the Israel Defense Forces, contains pictures of his apartment in Washington, telephone numbers and email addresses of members of his family, as well as unsubstantiated allegations of personal and ethical transgressions.

In a separate case in 2017, the same firm was hired to gather dirt on women accusing Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul, of multiple instances of sexual misconduct.

It is unclear who hired Black Cube to prepare the report on Mr. Rhodes and a similar report on Colin Kahl, the national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., which were obtained by The New York Times from a source with knowledge of their provenance.

The Guardian, which first publishedthe existence of the reports on Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Kahl, said aides to Mr. Trump hired the firm, but there is no evidence in the documents that indicate any connection to anyone in Mr. Trump’s administration. A spokesman for the company vehemently denied any connection to the president.

“Black Cube has no relation whatsoever to the Trump administration, to Trump aides, to anyone close to the administration or to the Iran nuclear deal,” said Ido Minkowski, the company’s spokesman. “Anyone who claims otherwise is misleading their readers and viewers.”

One person with knowledge of the reports suggested that the company had been hired by a commercial client with an interest in opposing the nuclear deal.

The reports appear to be aimed at undermining public support for the agreement by finding ways to discredit Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Kahl, who have been staunch advocates of the deal on social media and in television appearances. In an interview on Monday, Mr. Rhodes said he was surprised that ferocious criticism directed at him continued after he left government.

“I never imagined that upon leaving government, that not only would that information campaign continue, but that it would be supplemented by investigations into me and my family by shadowy international operations, involving foreign entities,” Mr. Rhodes said.

The deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program was signed by the United States, Iran and several European countries in 2015. Its critics, including Mr. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, have said it does nothing to curtail the danger posed by Iran and will not curtail Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons. The president said Monday that he will announce on Tuesday whether he will formally withdraw the United States from the deal, as he has repeatedly signaled he would.

While there is no evidence directly linking Trump officials to the preparation of the reports, several current or former members of the Trump White House have repeatedly attacked Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Kahl for their support of the Iran agreement.

Sebastian Gorka, a Trump supporter who served briefly in the White House as an adviser, has repeatedly attacked both men on social media and in conservative news outlets, accusing Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Kahl of working to undermine Mr. Trump and defend the Iran deal from its critics.

Current and former Trump administration officials have also targeted John Kerry, the former secretary of state who negotiated the Iran deal for the United States. Even Mr. Trump himself said in a Twitter post on Monday that recent efforts by Mr. Kerry to save the deal amounted to “possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy.”

Photo

Unlike Mr. Kerry, Mr. Kahl and Mr. Rhodes were not part of the nuclear deal negotiating team for the United States. But even before he left the White House, Mr. Rhodes was the target of criticism for his efforts to help build support for its approval.

“Why did whoever did this conjoin Ben and me? Why the two of us?” Mr. Kahl said. “Being vocal on Twitter would make me a target. But why would it bring down the Iran deal?”

A New York Times Magazine profile of Mr. Rhodes in May 2016 described a White House “war room” in which he tried to manage news coverage of the Iran nuclear negotiations. In the article, Mr. Rhodes was quoted as saying: “We created an echo chamber. They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

Critics of the Iran deal have seized on the article to insist that Mr. Rhodes — and by extension, the entire Obama administration — were secretly manipulating public opinion by misrepresenting the implications of the nuclear deal.

The report on Mr. Rhodes by Black Cube notes that “in the article, he boasts about the creation of an ‘echo chamber’ in which he told journalists what to say and they repeated it back over and over as original thoughts.”

The reports also provide a list of several Washington journalists who have had “extensive contact” with Mr. Rhodes. Among those listed under the heading “contacts to investigate” are Jeffrey Goldberg, now the editor of The Atlantic; Mark Landler, a White House correspondent for The Times who often writes about foreign policy; Andrea Mitchell, now NBC News’s chief foreign affairs correspondent; and Glenn Thrush, a Times reporter who covered the Obama White House for Politico.

On Monday, reporters asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, whether anyone at the White House had knowledge of whether aides to Mr. Trump had hired Black Cube to dig up dirt on former Obama officials.

“I’m not aware of anything on that front,” Ms. Sanders said, adding that “if something comes up, we’ll let you guys know.”

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