and Trump is all about Raping and Musk, don’t you know
[Read full article below all my rant!]
Beware of old Jewish Men and their headlines: ‘ZERO EMPATHY, ZERO SHAME’. Sy Hersh is not talking about the zero empathy of Jewish State of Murdering Raping Maiming Starving Poisoning Occupied Palestine. NOPE. Not the Jews’ Zero Shame for What They Have Done!
Nothing about the Jews Zuckerberg and Altman and Ellison and the hundreds of Jewish Billionaires Footing this Fucking Chaos and Terror.
How Trump’s ideologues and profiteers are wrecking the US government: Jews in the first Trump Toilet Bowl;
Elliott Abrams Special representative for Venezuela, then Iran. Jared Kushner Senior Advisor David Friedman Ambassador to Israel Jason GreenblattSpecial Representative for International Negotiations, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict [Resigned September 2019] Steve Mnuchin Secretary of the Treasury Stephen Miller Senior Advisor, Policy Anne Neuberger Deputy National Manager, National Security Agency Gary Cohn Director, White House National Economic Council [Resigned March 2018] Reed Cordish Assistant to the President, Intragovernmental and Technology Initiatives Avrahm Berkowitz Deputy Advisor to the President and his Senior Advisor Jared Kushner Rod Rosenstein Deputy Attorney General Elan Carr Special Envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism
Jeffrey Rosen
Deputy Secretary of the Department of Transportation / Attorney General (December 2020- )Morgan Ortagus Spokesperson, State Department David ShulkinSecretary of Veterans Affairs (appointed February 14, 2017, fired March 28, 2018) Lawrence Kudlow Director National Economic Council Ivanka Trump Advisor to the President John Eisenberg National Security Council Legal Advisor and Deputy Council to the President for National Security Affairs Ezra Cohen-Watnick Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Len Khodorkovsky Deputy Special Envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism
Here Jew Sy Hersh: How Trump’s ideologues and profiteers are wrecking the US government
One: there are many reasonable ways to trim the federal budget, and the most logical way to cut the budget is to start where it is most bloated—the Pentagon. Why not begin with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, which went into use in 2015 after two decades of cost overruns that totaled more than two trillion dollars. Shutting up Washington’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will give solace to the nation’s banking and finance world, but not much else. (Its annual budget is $823 million.)
Two: President Donald Trump believes or wants to believe—not sure there is a difference—that Article 2 of the Constitution, which says that executive power is vested in the presidency, gives him what he has called “the right to do whatever I want.” Hence his constant talk now of running for yet another term in office.
Three: I have been told by those who know the US hacking community that the young members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency computing team now running amok inside the Treasury Department, where America’s checks are drawn up, would not have been granted a clearance had they sought computer jobs with the federal government. But there is little doubt about the skills of Musk’s young Turks and their ability to get proprietary information that would enrich their boss. Musk does billions of dollars in business with the federal government, and analyzing and evaluating the way various bureaucrats evaluate his firms’ contract proposals—and those of their competitors—would be of prime interest.
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Parading Jews, Sy!
Your complete guide to Trump’s Jewish advisers and pro-Israel cabinet
Trump’s new cabinet will include Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, and other loyalists with strong pro-Israel stances
Top row, from left: Laura Loomer, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller. Bottom row: Howard Lutnick, Lee Zeldin, David Friedman, Miriam Adelson. (Collage by Grace Yagel / JTA)
NEVER EVER TRUST A Jew.
/ JTA)
JTA — Stephen Miller. David Friedman. Jared. Ivanka.
These names, and a few others, became familiar to American Jews over the four years of Donald Trump’s first term in the White House. Depending on the day, and their political views, Jews looked at them with pride or scorn, hope or disappointment. In addition to shaping the course of the first Trump administration, they became symbols of and conduits for the president’s relationship with the Jewish community.
Now, four years later, as Trump prepares to reenter the White House, some of that cast of characters is back while others have dropped off the stage. Other Jewish figures are making their entrances for the first time. Some come from Trump’s time in the worlds of media and business, others from his decade in politics, still others from his family.
Here are the Jews to know in Donald Trump’s inner circle.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump
No two Jews drew more attention than Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Coming to the White House from the social circles of wealthy New York City millennial life, the couple was seen as a relatively liberal, moderating influence on a president who had never before held office.
They both served as White House advisers and took central roles in the administration. Kushner, in particular, had a wide-ranging portfolio spanning everything from negotiating a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada to running Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign to brokering the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states known as the Abraham Accords.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, right, arrive for the funeral of former first lady Melania Trump’s mother, Amalija Knavs, at the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida, January 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
They were also in some ways the Jewish face of the administration, making appearances at Jewish sites and hosting members of the cabinet for Shabbat dinner. Particularly at the beginning of Trump’s term, their Jewish observance — they have attended Orthodox synagogues and send their kids to Jewish day school — drew curiosity and scrutiny.
After Trump’s 2020 loss, the family moved to Miami and sat out Trump’s most recent reelection campaign. Ivanka, who campaigned with her father during his previous two electoral campaigns, said after Trump’s campaign announcement in 2022 that she and Kushner would step back to focus on family life. Kushner said he would focus on his business and the couple’s children.
Kushner suggested to The New York Times late last month that the pair would remain outside of politics if Trump won the election, though more recent reports suggest he may be involved in some way with Trump’s Middle East policy. During the campaign, the couple appeared at several events, including the Republican National Convention and Trump’s victory party.
They have not entirely separated from their work during the first Trump administration. Kushner runs a multi-billion dollar investment firm tied to Arab states in the Gulf, raising ethical concerns about overlapping with government affairs. The Democrat-led Senate Finance Committee opened an investigation into Kushner’s firm in June, though its future is uncertain.
Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller — one of Trump’s most hardline advisers on immigration during his first term, and one of that administration’s most polarizing figures — will serve as Trump’s deputy chief of staff in his next term.
During Trump’s first term, Miller was an architect of some of the administration’s most divisive actions on immigration, including the family separation policy and the travel ban on a number of Muslim-majority countries. A broad range of Jewish officials and groups criticized those policies and called for Miller’s resignation.
Stephen Miller speaks before then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, November 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Over the last four years since Trump was voted out, Miller launched a firm called America First Legal that bills itself as a conservative response to the American Civil Liberties Union, and was involved in Project 2025, the controversial compilation of proposals for a second Trump term. He and his wife, who wed in 2020, have also had three children.
This year, Miller campaigned for Trump and used nativist rhetoric at Trump’s controversial rally in Madison Square Garden last month.
“America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said, adding that US citizens were having their jobs “looted and stolen.”
In an interview last week with Fox News, Miller said Trump would begin deporting undocumented immigrants immediately after taking office. In multiple interviews, he has outlined plans to deport millions of migrants, renewing Jewish groups’ concerns.
“The invasion will end the instant that he takes the oath of office,” Miller said.
David Friedman
David Friedman, who worked as Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer before 2016, was ambassador to Israel during his first administration.
Republican presidential candidate former president Donald Trump, right, greets David Friedman, who served as ambassador to Israel in the Trump administration, at the National Religious Broadcasters convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center on February 22, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Friedman did not have foreign policy experience before becoming ambassador in 2017 and had been a supporter of Israeli West Bank settlements before entering office. As ambassador, he was a key part of the team that fulfilled a long wish list of Israeli government priorities — from moving the US embassy to Jerusalem to brokering the Abraham Accords.
Friedman criticized his former boss for his 2022 meeting with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, then two of the most prominent people spouting antisemitic rhetoric. “To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this,” Friedman tweeted after that meeting.
But he says he subsequently spoke with Trump and endorsed the former president’s reelection campaign, citing Trump’s “historic achievements” as president, and his support for Israel.
Friedman has pushed for Israeli annexation of the West Bank. He recently released a book arguing for Israeli control over the entire territory.
Friedman will not be reprising his role in Trump’s second term; Trump announced on Tuesday that former Gov. Mike Huckabee will be the next US ambassador to Israel. Friedman said he was “thrilled” by Huckabee’s appointment.
Steve Witkoff
Steve Witkoff, a real estate businessman and Trump’s golf buddy, will be the Middle East envoy in the president-elect’s coming term.
Steve Witkoff arrives at a campaign rally for Donald Trump at the Butler Farm Show, October 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
In that role, Witkoff, 67, will take the spot occupied by Jason Greenblatt in the first part of Trump’s first term. In that role, Greenblatt conducted negotiations with leaders across the region. As was the case when Greenblatt entered the administration, Witkoff has no Middle East diplomatic experience.
Witkoff has been friends with Trump since the 1980s, when he bought Trump a sandwich after they worked on a real estate transaction. Witkoff has also praised Trump for his friendship after one of Witkoff’s sons, Andrew, died at a rehab facility.
Trump said Witkoff was playing golf with him when Secret Service agents fired at someone who was allegedly preparing to kill Trump. He and his son Zach spoke at the Republican convention in July.
Miriam Adelson
Miriam Adelson, a prolific donor to Republican, pro-Israel and Jewish causes, is carrying on the legacy she built with her late husband, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson has remained a force in Republican politics and has stayed close to Trump since her husband’s death in 2021. She donated $100 million to a campaign committee supporting Trump’s candidacy. (Her estimated net worth is $35 billion.) During the campaign, she introduced Trump before he gave a speech on fighting antisemitism.
Adelson was born in Tel Aviv and reportedly spends much of her time in Israel. She is the publisher of the country’s largest print newspaper, Israel Hayom, which her husband founded.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump embraces Miriam Adelson at an event marking one year since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, October 7, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Boris Epshteyn
Boris Epshteyn is a longtime aide to Trump and a political strategist. He often spoke for Trump on television during the 2016 campaign and advised his 2024 campaign.
Epshteyn served as a special assistant in the Trump administration during Trump’s first term and reportedly wrote a controversial statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2017 that did not mention Jews.
Epshteyn, an investment banker and finance attorney, also collaborated with Rudy Giuliani on trying unsuccessfully to overturn the results of the 2020 election and appeared with Trump in court in New York last year. Epshteyn was charged with felonies for election tampering in Arizona earlier this year and pleaded not guilty.
Epshteyn moved to the United States from his native Moscow in 1993 at the age of 11. He was previously a communications aide for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 campaign for president.
This week, Epshteyn was on Trump’s airplane with the president-elect, Elon Musk and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz when Trump decided to nominate Gaetz, a Florida Republican who once invited a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, as his attorney general.
Epshteyn has reportedly sparred with Musk over decisions during the presidential transition, and The New York Times reported that he has floated himself as Trump’s special envoy for the war in Ukraine.
Boris Epshteyn arrives at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, August 3, 2023, in Arlington, Virginia. (AP/Alex Brandon, File)
Howard Lutnick
Howard Lutnick, the billionaire head of finance firm Cantor Fitzgerald, is the co-chair of Trump’s transition team.
He raised campaign funds for Trump and has taken on a prominent role on the president-elect’s team in recent months, speaking for Trump in the media and earning plaudits from Trump family members and the campaign.
He has been in touch with Kushner about hiring and Musk about budget policy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Washington Post has reported that Lutnick is a candidate for treasury secretary, though more recently, The New York Times reported that Lutnick “has gotten on Mr. Trump’s nerves lately.”
Lutnick is a supporter of pro-Israel causes including the first responder group United Hatzalah and Birthright, which organizes free 10-day trips for Jewish groups to the country.
A New York native, Lutnick accompanied Trump to the grave of the late spiritual leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, last month.
Laura Loomer, a Jewish far-right firebrand who once was the Republican nominee for a Florida congressional seat, has long come close to Trump but never worked for him.
Trump endorsed her 2020 run for Congress and nearly hired her as a campaign aide a year ago but was dissuaded by his aides from doing so. They were concerned about her record of racist and bigoted comments about Muslims and others.
Over the course of the campaign, Loomer began spending more time with Trump and traveled on his plane to Philadelphia to join him for the September presidential debate. Her presence and her racist comments about Kamala Harris drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has herself been accused of hate speech (against Jews).
Sid Rosenberg, a New York shock jock, said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but soon became a Trump convert, after initially dismissing his seriousness as a candidate. On his show, he has backed Trump and his policies, including seeking to eject migrants from the United States.
Rosenberg became a pro-Israel advocate after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages. He vaulted into national prominence last month when he appeared at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, where he mocked comparisons between the rally and one held by American Nazis there in 1939.
This week, he joked with Tulsi Gabbard on his show about becoming White House press secretary under Trump. (Gabbard said his daily briefings would require an R rating.)
And, something from the fucking pathetic Dennis Kucinich?
President Trump Wants to Cut the Pentagon Budget in Half. How?
The President advances a three-pronged strategy for national security: 1. Negotiate a peace deal for Ukraine. 2. Negotiate nuclear arms drawdown with China and Russia. 3. Cut military spending by 50%
Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich
Some of the nation’s wealthiest people are powering Trump’s bid to return to the White House: His 26 biggest billionaire backers, worth a combined $143 billion, have poured $162 million into the effort so far.
“We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man,” declared Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, at the Republican National Convention last month. “A leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for American companies and American industry.”
This is from fucking Dennis and his wife: “Military contractors poured $4,440,605 into Kamala Harris’s campaign—more than double what they contributed to Donald Trump. Yet, even with the support of establishment figures like Dick Cheney, their favored candidate fell short. The defeat of the military contractor’s candidate may have consequences for the industry.
Now, with President Trump in office and a bold initiative to cut Pentagon spending by 50%, the defense industry faces a challenge unlike any before.”
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The stuff Kucinich’s don’t read:
Israel’s ‘genocide general’ welcomed in London – and the media yawns
Why is it only Declassified seeking to hold to account General Basyuk, who oversaw Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, as he meets UK officials?
JONATHAN COOK
28 January 2025
General Basyuk (second from right) with Netanyahu and Gallant – both wanted by the ICC. (Photo: GPO)
There have been two stories deeply revealing – in starkly contrasting ways – of the West’s relationship to Israel’s industrialised, militarised slaughter of the people of Gaza over the past 15 months.
Last week, Declassified UK carried out one of the fundamental duties of journalism. Its reporter Alex Morris sought to hold accountable a war crimes suspect evading justice. And not just any suspect.
Morris doorstepped Major General Oded Basyuk as he led an Israeli military delegation through the streets of London in meetings with the Ministry of Defence and the Royal United Services Institute, a UK “security think-tank” with close ties to the British government.
Basyuk, sometimes spelt Basiuk, heads the Israeli military’s operations directorate, whose responsibilities have included the development of the military strategy that guided Israel’s brutal 15-month assault on Gaza.
The International Court of Justice ruled a year ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza. Israel has effectively been on trial ever since.
Meanwhile, the ICJ’s sister court, the International Criminal Court (ICC), has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity – most notably for their policy of blocking aid and starving the entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians there.
Basyuk was one of the central figures helping to devise and direct these genocidal acts.
He was also pivotal in overseeing the Israeli military’s invasion and occupation of south Lebanon. Israeli forces have been similarly levelling entire communities there and slaughtering civilians.
In other words, Basyuk is one of the biggest cogs in Israel’s genocidal war machine.
If the ICC finds the nerve to take on the new Trump administration – which is almost certain to sanction court officials for charging Netanyahu and Gallant – Basyuk will be at the head of the queue for an arrest warrant.
Diplomatic immunity
Which leads to a number of conundrums.
Not least, why is a major war crimes suspect such as Basyuk freely wandering the streets of London in the midst of two genocide-related legal cases against Israel?
Given that the ICC can issue arrest warrants in secret, and at short notice, how is Basyuk so confident that he can visit the UK without legal repercussions?
Further, Britain’s universal jurisdiction laws mean serious crimes can be prosecuted in the UK wherever they occurred, and separately from the ICC. A private application for his arrest could have been issued while he was here.
The only plausible answer is that the government of Keir Starmer gave him a gold-plated assurance that he would not be arrested under any circumstances during his visit.
That is precisely what happened back in November when Israel’s now-outgoing military chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, visited Britain to meet officials from the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office.
Starmer’s government issued Halevi with diplomatic immunity – a so-called “special mission certificate” – that blocked any possibility of legal redress against him.
As a signatory to the Rome Statute, it should be noted, Britain is legally obliged to enforce an arrest warrant issued by the ICC, though it has equivocated about whether in practice it would carry out an arrest of either Netanyahu or Gallant, if put to the test.
Israeli army chief given special immunity to visit Britain
Criminal complicity
There are other puzzling questions that need answers.
In the midst of legal cases at the world’s two highest courts against the Israeli military for crimes against humanity, why would the Ministry of Defence think that Basyuk – one of Israel’s highest ranking commanders – was a suitable person to be meeting with and talking to?
What knowledge does Basyuk currently have to share with our own military chain of command that makes it so important to meet with him face to face in London, especially when his visit could potentially drag Starmer’s government into a legal showdown with the ICC or expose a shameful evasion of its legal obligations?
Basyuk’s visit serves as a reminder that the MoD is profoundly implicated in the Gaza genocide – as is Starmer himself.
It has approved the continuing sale of more than 90 per cent of British weapons and components to Israel, including those that have kept Israel’s fleet of F-35s in the air so that they can carpet bomb Gaza.
Additionally, the MoD is believed to have helped ship US and German munitions to Israel through air bases in the UK and from an RAF base in Cyprus, Akrotiri, without which the mass slaughter of Gaza’s children would not have been possible.
As Declassified revealed in October, the UK has been allowing regular secret flights of US special forces from Akrotiri to Israel.
And the MoD has been conducting surveillance flights over Gaza, almost certainly with the purpose of supplying intelligence to Israel to help it select targets as it has destroyed most residential properties, schools, universities, libraries, mosques, churches and bakeries.
A strong suspicion must be that the MoD invited Basyuk not only to deepen ties between the two militaries but to prepare for a renewed British role in the genocide should Israel return to the bombardment of Gaza after the first stage of the ceasefire is completed, as Netanyahu has threatened.
Media silence
And then there are questions for the British media.
How is it possible that Basyuk, a major war crimes suspect, is strolling around London at the head of an official Israeli military delegation in the midst of a genocide investigation by the ICJ and no major British media outlet has shown the slightest interest in doorstepping him, or in asking questions of the government about his visit?
Only Declassified UK – an independent outlet with a tiny fraction of the resources of the BBC, the Guardian, the Times or the Telegraph – has chased him down, embarrassed him by asking him to his face whether he is a war criminal, and drawn attention to his presence in the UK.
It is not even as though we can assume this collective failure by the British establishment media was an oversight, and that for some inexplicable reason their military and security correspondents all failed to learn of Basyuk’s visit, as Declassified UK had done.
Because all these media outlets also ignored the video that went viral of Declassified UK’s Alex Morris challenging Basyuk to his face, “Are you a war criminal, General Basyuk?” and “Are you worried about being investigated by the ICC for war crimes?”
In stark contrast to the Israeli media, which widely reported on this supremely awkward confrontation for Basyuk, the British media has remained studiously silent.
They have not wondered why Basyuk, or earlier Halevi, has been allowed into the UK. Or what assurances Basyuk was given. Or what he and Halevi were here to discuss with the British officials.
Similarly, they have not taken this as an opportunity to focus on another story that so far has entirely passed them by and that Declassified has been at the forefront of exposing: Britain’s deep complicity in Israel’s genocide and the covert role in the genocide of RAF base Akrotiri, on Cypus.
These are not oversights. They are a consistent pattern of failure by the media that indicates one thing only: that these failures are entirely intentional. The British media has conspired with the British government every bit as criminally as the British government has colluded in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Through its silence, the British media has given the government cover to assist Israel in its mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians.
‘National scandal’: The BBC’s Gaza cover-up
Europe-wide crackdown
The British establishment media has been similarly silent – if for opposing reasons – on another development related to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
While Basyuk was moving around London to meet British officials without fear of arrest or scrutiny, a Palestinian-American journalist was arrested by the police in Zurich at the weekend shortly before he was about to begin a speaking tour of Switzerland.
Ali Abunimah, editor of the veteran website Electronic Intifada, which is dedicated to Israel-Palestine issues, has been a long-standing and trenchant critic of Israel’s decades of abuses of the Palestinian people.
Alongside Declassified UK and a handful of other independent sites, Electronic Intifada has helped to challenge some of the key narrative deceptions Israel has promoted to rationalise the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza – fake news that British media outlets have too often enthusiastically regurgitated.
Abunimah and his team undermined falsified claims of Hamas beheading and baking babies alive during its attack on Israel on October 7 2023, and of mass rapes by Hamas fighters that day.
The site has shone a light too on a secretive Israeli military protocol, the Hannibal directive, that was invoked during Hamas’ attack.
It allowed the Israeli military to kill a significant number of Israeli civilians, including children, to prevent them being abducted. Some of the resulting, horrifying deaths have been attributed to Hamas.
United Nations legal and human rights experts lost no time in condemning Abunimah’s arrest, calling it “shocking” and evidence of an “increasingly toxic” climate in Europe towards free speech.
But the Swiss authorities are not acting in isolation. This is part of a concerted, Europe-wide crackdown on protest against Israel or support for Palestinian rights – and Britain has been leading the way.
Draconian terror laws
Abunimah’s British colleague Asa Winstanley, an investigative journalist, had his home raided by London counter-terrorism police in October and his electronic devices seized under draconian terrorism laws.
He is one of several independent journalists being hounded over their criticisms of Israel.
Activists with Palestine Action, and its leader Richard Barnard, have been arrested and charged under similar laws for trying to stop firms in the UK making and supplying weapons to Israel for use in the genocide.
Israeli Jewish activists living in the UK, including Professor Haim Bresheeth and Yael Kahn, both of whom lost family members in the Holocaust, have been arrested in recent months for making speeches criticising Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
Another anti-Zionist Jewish activist, Tony Greenstein, was charged in December under the same terrorism laws.
And in a sign that the Starmer government is determined to stamp out wider pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activism, the Metropolitan police used an iron fist this month in cracking down on the latest mass peaceful protest in London against the genocide – one that sought to highlight the heavy slanting of the BBC’s coverage in Israel’s favour.
The police arrested and charged two of the march organisers, including Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, with entirely confected “public order” offences.
The Met also interviewed “under caution” and are investigating the march’s two figureheads: the leftwing MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour party.
Journalism is not a crime – Tell that to the…
World on its head
The contrast could not be more clear-cut – or telling.
Starmer’s government is happy to invite foreign war crimes suspects to the UK to learn from them, safe in the knowledge that the British media will do nothing to highlight their crimes or the UK’s complicity in those crimes.
And the Starmer government is equally happy to bully, arrest and charge journalists and peaceful demonstrators opposed to those war crimes, safe in the knowledge that the British media will do nothing to highlight the UK government’s duplicity or its trampling over the fundamental rights of free speech and protest.
The British police leave Israeli state terrorists in peace, while hounding peaceful protesters as terrorists. The world is turned on its head.
But this glaring contrast in treatment – by the government, the Met and the establishment media – serves precisely the same end: shielding Israel and its enablers in the British government from accountability.
All three institutions of the British state have colluded in oiling the wheels of Israel’s genocide machine. All have conspired to keep war crimes suspect General Basyuk out of public view, and make it harder to get him where he belongs: in the dock at The Hague.
All three have played separate but critically important roles in making the genocide in Gaza possible. And for that, they should be put in the dock too.
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ANother fucking weird Jewish Connected Judge:
After a nearly hour-long virtual hearing, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said she planned to issue a ruling within 24 hours on a request by 14 state attorneys general to issue a temporary restraining order that would block DOGE from firing employees or accessing data from the Departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation, Commerce, and Office of Personnel Management as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to slash the federal government.
The 14 states on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Musk’s “expansive authority” is in violation of the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which calls for anyone deemed a “principal officer” of the U.S. government to be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
MORE: Elon Musk’s DOGE asks for access to IRS taxpayer data, sources say
Describing the states’ request for a temporary restraining order as “prophylactic,” Judge Chutkan expressed skepticism about issuing a wide reaching order while the plaintiffs struggled to prove a concrete harm stemming from DOGE’s conduct.
“The court can’t act based on the media reports. We can’t do that,” Chutkan said. “The things that I’m hearing are concerning indeed and troubling indeed, but I have to have a record, and I have to make a finding on the facts before I issue something.” [Her ex-husband,[42] Peter A. Krauthamer (Black raised by Jews), served as a judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 2012 to 2023. They have two sons.]
More Jew Lawyers ready to defend the poisons and poisoners.
Pesticides are causing overwhelming negative effects on hundreds of species of microbes, fungi, plants, insects, fish, birds and mammals that they are not intended to harm—and globally their use is a major contributor to the biodiversity crisis.
That is the finding of the first study assessing the impacts of pesticides across all types of species in land and water habitats, carried out by an international research team that included the UK Center for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and the University of Sussex.
The international study, led by East China University of Science and Technology, has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Multiple negative impacts
The scientists analyzed over 1,700 existing lab and field studies of the impacts of 471 different pesticide types—either insecticides, fungicides or herbicides—in agricultural, commercial or domestic use.
Wide-ranging negative effects were seen for over 800 species found on land and in water, including impacts on how fast they grow, their reproductive success, and even behavior such as their ability to catch prey, find plants to forage upon, move, or attract mates. Pesticides can also affect organisms’ metabolism and damage cells.
These negative effects can result in the premature death of wild organisms and reduce populations.
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Trump and his gutting of EPA, with another Jew at the Helm. And, Dennis’ buddy, again, evicerating common sense:
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And Dennis’ Rapist in Chief Trump is really enlightening the world about why a Kucinich would back this fucking monster:
Amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion, Julianne Moore is speaking out on the recent censorship of one of her books.
In a lengthy Instagram post Sunday, the Oscar-winning actress and children’s book author reacted to the news that her book “Freckleface Strawberry” was reportedly removed from schools within the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA).
“It is a great shock for me to learn that my first book, Freckleface Strawberry, has been banned by the Trump Administration from schools run by the Department of Defense,” wrote Moore, whose father is a Vietnam War veteran.
More Queer than Udders on Bulls — Trump White Trash mentally dislocated fucks: Singer and rapper Kid Rock stormed off stage at a Nashville performance this weekend, cutting the show short when the audience didn’t clap along.
The slim minds of the Republicans and the fucking Trump Rapist Backers, like Dennis?
In a memo Wednesday, the administration said that “Trump is determined to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars and put an end to fraudulent and wasteful spending” and attached the GAO’s report.
A co-author of that report, GAO Director Rebecca Shea, tells NPR that while government fraud and waste makes up an estimated 3% and 7% of federal spending, the overwhelming majority of federal spending isn’t fraudulent.
Shea also noted that the report defines fraud narrowly — and that definition doesn’t match up with Trump and Musk’s definition. “To call something fraud, you need to prove it in a criminal or civil case,” she said.
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More Kucinich fucking heroes — Jews!
The eclectic crowd that frequents the three Educational Bookshop stores in east Jerusalem, and prides itself on open-mindedness and understanding through discourse, was shocked when the store’s co-owners were arrested earlier this week.
Far from remaining a local security issue, the event has become the subject of international attention.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, headlined a February 10 report: “Israeli Police cite ‘River to the Sea’ coloring book after raiding Palestinian book stores.”
Dennis’ Jews Want Us ALL dead:
‘FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA’
- From the River to the Sea: A Colouring Book
- Illustrated by South African-based artist Nathi Ngubane
- Activity book provides an introduction to the story of Palestine for children
- Illustrations inspired by murals around the world
- Suggested age group 6-10 years
- Author & Illustrator Nathi Ngubane is available for artist workshops for children
- 13,000+ copies sold in South Africa
- $12,000 donated to Penny Appeal South Africa projects in Palestine
Social Bandit Media is proud to announce the publication of a new title on Palestine: “From the River to the Sea: A Colouring Book”.
From the River to the Sea is an educational coloring book that provides a gateway into the story of Palestine. Through a series of stunning illustrations, Soweto-based Nathi Ngubane tackles the injustice of the Nakba, delves into the history and culture of the land, and introduces young readers to the key concepts driving and sustaining the Palestinian resistance.
The book also provides space for young readers to produce their own murals and show their support for Palestine.
“I created this activity book with the aim of educating children in South Africa and worldwide about the history of Palestine, the culture of Palestinian people and their flora and fauna,” Ngubane said.
”The current situation in Gaza is heart-wrenching. Every day, I follow the news to keep myself updated on the ongoing events, such as the Israeli military strikes that are causing severe injuries, destruction to homes and deaths to thousands of children.”
“Many of us feel helpless and wish we could do something to help,” Ngubane added.
“I am hoping that by the end of this book, children will be more informed about the devastating situation that children their age are facing in Gaza.
Furthermore, I hope to encourage children to express their support and solidarity with Palestine by creating their own murals,” Ngubane added.
The activity book is the latest collaboration between Ngubane and Social Bandit Media, an experimental media project based between Johannesburg and New York City.
Social Bandit Media seeks to challenge mainstream narratives and serves as timely interventions in moments of crisis.
Social Bandit Media will be partnering with Penny Appeal South Africa to get copies of the books to learners in South Africa.
As of February 2025, the books are available for sale in South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom and India. Other partners have taken limited batches of the books to Australia, Vietnam, Kenya, Germany, France and Switzerland.
Kucinich’s RFK Junior is now on the hunt for protestors.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently called Palestinians “the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world.”
Kennedy said this in December 2023, more than two months into Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and when we knew that tens of thousands of Palestinians had already been slaughtered or brutally injured – and more than a million had been displaced.
Oh, fucking Dennis:
As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign picked up steam through the summer and into the fall, concerns were mounting internally about its management.
Former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, then Kennedy’s campaign manager, faced doubts about his leadership — doubts that persisted despite convergence with Kennedy on policy. Days after Kennedy left the Democratic race to become an independent, Kucinich left the campaign and said he sent an email to the staff announcing his departure.
Three people with direct knowledge of the campaign said he was fired. The reason, one person said, was persistent internal concern about his capability in that role. A separate memo from a staffer outlined a lack of direction and a pattern of poor communication.
The nature of Kucinich’s departure is now a matter of dispute.
Kucinich said he “was not asked to leave the campaign.” In a phone interview, he called the idea that he was fired “insane” and “totally false.”
Former campaign treasurer John Sullivan said in a phone interview that the situation was more nuanced and ambiguous than a firing or a resignation.
The former congressman also walked away with $120,000 after leaving the campaign, according to the latest campaign financial disclosure to the FEC. The payment was made in two installments on Oct. 18, five days after his departure was announced.
Sullivan, who left shortly after Kucinich, said he could not comment on the specifics of the payment after Kucinich left. Sullivan said it would violate his nondisclosure agreement to discuss it, but the payment would have been per the terms of Kucinich’s contract.
Kennedy’s third-party bid for the White House is a long shot; even getting his name on the ballot will prove tough. While Kucinich said it was “stupid” to doubt his ability to lead the campaign, that feeling wasn’t unanimous.
“He’s just not a great manager of resources, whether financial or people,” said one of the people, who — like the others who were interviewed for this article — was granted anonymity to discuss internal campaign dynamics.
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How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa
Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler
When Elon Musk’s arm shot out in a stiff arm salute at Donald Trump’s inaugural celebrations, startled viewers mostly drew the obvious comparison.
But in the fired-up debate about Musk’s intent that followed, as the world’s richest man insisted he wasn’t trying to be a Nazi, speculation inevitably focused on whether his roots in apartheid-era South Africa offered an insight.
In recent months Musk’s promotion of far-right conspiracy theories has grown, from a deepening hostility to democratic institutions to the recent endorsement of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). He has taken an unhealthy interest in genetics while backing claims of a looming “white genocide” in his South African homeland and endorsing posts promoting the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Increasingly, his language and tone have come to echo the old South Africa.
He is not alone. Musk is part of the “PayPal mafia” of libertarian billionaires with roots in South Africa under white rule now hugely influential in the US tech industry and politics.
They include Peter Thiel, the German-born billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder, who was educated in a southern African city in the 1970s where Hitler was still openly venerated. Thiel, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, has been critical of welfare programs and women being permitted to vote as undermining capitalism. A 2021 biography of Thiel, called The Contrarian, alleged that as a student at Stanford he defended apartheid as “economically sound”.
David Sacks, formerly PayPal’s chief operating officer and now a leading fundraiser for Trump, was born in Cape Town and grew up within the South African diaspora after his family moved to the US when he was young. A fourth member of the mafia, Roelof Botha, the grandson of the apartheid regime’s last foreign minister, Pik Botha, and former PayPal CFO, has kept a lower political profile but remains close to Musk.
Among them, Musk stands out for his ownership of X, which is increasingly a platform for far-right views, and his proximity to Trump, who has nominated Musk to head a “department of government efficiency” to slash and burn its way through the federal bureaucracy.
Some draw a straight line between Musk’s formative years atop a complex system of racial hierarchy as a white male, in a country increasingly at war with itself as the South African government became ever more repressive as resistance to apartheid grew, and the man we see at Trump’s side today.
The week before the inauguration, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, described white South Africans as the “most racist people on earth”, questioned their involvement in US politics and said Musk was a malign influence who should go back to the country of his birth.
Others are sceptical that Musk’s increasingly extreme views can be tracked back to his upbringing in Pretoria. The acclaimed South African writer Jonny Steinberg recently called attempts to explain Musk through his childhood under apartheid “a bad idea” that resulted in “facile” conclusions.
But for those looking to join dots, there is fodder from Musk’s early life with a neo-Nazi grandfather who moved from Canada to South Africa because he liked the idea of apartheid through his high school education in a system infused with the ideology of white supremacy.
Musk’s formative years in the 1980s came amid a cauldron of rebellion in the Black townships which drew a state of emergency and a bloody crackdown by the state. Some whites fled the country. Others marched with the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement against any weakening of apartheid.
The South Africa into which Musk was born in 1971, and to which Thiel moved as a child from Germany, was led by a prime minister, John Vorster, who had been a general in a fascist militia three decades earlier that allied itself with Hitler.
The Ossewabrandwag (OB) was founded shortly before the second world war. It opposed South Africa entering the war as an ally of Britain and plotted with German military intelligence to assassinate the prime minster, Jan Smuts, as a prelude to an armed uprising in support of Hitler.
Vorster made no secret of his sympathy for Nazi, or National Socialist, ideology which he compared to the Afrikaner political philosophy of Christian nationalism.
“We stand for Christian nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism,” he said in 1942. “You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy it is called ‘Fascism’, in Germany ‘German National Socialism’ and in South Africa ‘Christian nationalism’.”
Smuts’s government took a dim view of that and a few weeks later interned Vorster as a Nazi sympathiser.
At the end of the war, the OB was absorbed into the National party, which then won the 1948 election, in which Black South Africans had no vote, on a commitment to impose apartheid. In 1961, Vorster joined the government as minister of justice and five years later became prime minister.
Nazism may have been defeated in Europe but Christian nationalism was alive and kicking in South Africa under Vorster, with its own brand of racial classification and stratification justified by the need to keep the “swart gevaar”, or black danger, at bay.
In schools, Christian nationalist education sought to forge a South African identity around a singular version of the country’s history. Musk and Thiel were taught that the Afrikaner, mostly the descendants of Dutch colonisers, was the real victim of South Africa’s strife whether at the hands of grasping British imperialists or treacherous Zulu chiefs.
The truth is we didn’t see Black people quite as equals. We didn’t think about it
Phillip Van Niekerk
Bea Roberts, who grew up in an apartheid-supporting family but came to oppose the system and later worked for the Institute for a Democratic South Africa, remembers a heavy emphasis on Afrikaners as victims pursuing apartheid in order to protect their culture and even their very existence.
“It was a strange mix of ‘we got fucked up by the British in the [second Boer] war, and our women and children died in thousands in the concentration camps’ so we are going to rebuild our nation and make sure that that we are invincible. And we’ll do that by extreme means,” she said.
Schooling, like much else, was segregated by race for most of the apartheid era and, on paper at least, white pupils across South Africa were subject to the same Christian nationalist education. But white society was itself divided and the historical narrative embraced in Afrikaans-speaking schools could often became the basis for an implicit rejection of apartheid philosophy in English-speaking ones.
Musk attended a Johannesburg high school and then the Pretoria boys high school, an institution whose other alumni include students who went on to become leading anti-apartheid activists such as Edwin Cameron, a South African supreme court justice after the collapse of white rule, and Peter Hain, who moved to Britain, where he became a leading campaigner against apartheid and then a Labour government minister.
Phillip Van Niekerk, former editor of the leading anti-apartheid Mail and Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg, had Afrikaner parents but attended an English-speaking school. He recalled that the official version of history did little to engender support for the apartheid system among a lot of English speakers even if they benefited from it and did little to challenge it.
“We hated the National party government. Even our teachers were kind of hostile. It was seen almost like an imposition. Yet you imbibe things through the culture. The truth is we didn’t see Black people quite as equals. We didn’t think about it,” he said.
Thiel got all that and more at schools in South Africa and its de facto colony, South West Africa, which became independent as Namibia in 1990.
South West Africa had been a German colony until the end of the first world war and Thiel lived for a time in the city of Swakopmund, where he attended a German-language school while his father worked at a nearby uranium mine.
At that time, Swakopmund was notorious for its continued glorification of Nazism, including celebrating Hitler’s birthday. In 1976, the New York Times reported that some people in the town continued to greet each other with “Heil Hitler” and to give the Nazi salute.
Van Niekerk visited Swakopmund during South African rule.
“I was there in the 1980s and you could walk into a curio shop and buy mugs with Nazi swastikas on them. If you’re German and you’re in Swakopmund in the 1970s, which is when Thiel was there, you’re part of that community,” he said.
Thiel, who moved to the US when he was 10, has described his schooling in Swakopmund as instilling a dislike of regimentation that steered him towards libertarianism.
Thiel’s father worked at a uranium mine in Rössing where, as in the gold and coalmines of the Reef around Johannesburg, Black laborers were paid just enough to survive, living conditions were dire and the work dangerous. White managers, on the other hand, lived a lifestyle of neo-colonial luxury with servants at the ready.
Musk’s father, Errol, was also in the mining business among other interests. He once boasted that his stake in Zambian emerald mines made him “so much money we couldn’t even close our safe”. Musk’s mother, Maye, has said the family owned two homes, a plane, a yacht and a handful of luxury cars.
Errol Musk has said that he opposed apartheid and joined the Progressive Federal party but then left because he didn’t like its demand for one person, one vote, and instead favored a more gradual reform with separate parliaments for different races. That was the liberal position inside the Musk family.
Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950 because he liked the newly elected apartheid government.
In the 1930s, Haldeman was the Canadian leader of a fringe political movement originating in the US, Technocracy Incorporated, that advocated abolishing democracy in favor of government by elite technicians but which took on overtones of fascism with its uniforms and salutes.
The Canadian government banned Technocracy Incorporated during the second world war as a threat to the country’s security in part for its opposition to fighting Hitler. Haldeman was charged with publishing documents opposing the war and sent to prison for two months.
After the war, Haldeman led a separate political party that among other things promoted the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. When that went nowhere, he moved to South Africa because he said he liked the core National party philosophy of Christian nationalism that Vorster likened to Nazism.
Errol Musk described Maye’s parents as so extreme he stopped visiting them.
We white South Africans, by the very nature of our privileges and our place in the racial hierarchy, grew up believing we were the master race
Phillip Van Niekerk
“They were very fanatical in favor of apartheid,” he told Podcast and Chill. “Her parents came to South Africa from Canada because they sympathised with the Afrikaner government. They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff.”
Haldeman was killed in a plane crash when Elon was three years old but the boy remained close to his grandmother and mother. He is estranged from his father, whom Maye has described as abusive of her and their children. Errol Musk once claimed to have shot and killed three people who broke into his house.
Musk has described his father as a “terrible human being”.
“Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done,” he told Rolling Stone without elaborating in 2017.
What is indisputable is that Musk and Thiel grew up amid incredible privilege where the racial hierarchy was clear. Those who claimed to reject apartheid sought to explain this privilege not as the result of systemic racial oppression but the natural order of things thanks to their own abilities. That in turn led some to regard all forms government as oppressive and true liberty as an individual battle for survival.
The biography of Thiel said he held a view common among apartheid’s supporters at the time that Black South Africans were better off than Africans in other parts of the continent even if they were systematically denied their rights. Thiel has denied ever having supported apartheid.
Van Niekerk said that opposition to apartheid did not necessarily mean rejection of white supremacy or privilege, a point made in a 1968 British television documentary the year before Thiel was born.
The commentary observed that the English-speaking mining barons and other industrialists in Johannesburg usually claimed to be “hostile to apartheid, call themselves liberal” but did little to oppose the system while profiting from it.
Helen Suzman, at the time a member of the South African parliament who was often a lone voice in opposition to apartheid, was critical of these powerful industrialists and businessmen, saying “people who do nothing are responsible”. She accused them of hiding behind apartheid to exploit Black workers.
“I see no reason why the industrialists should not improve the living conditions of their workers,” she said.
In the documentary, Stanley Cohen, the managing director of the OK Bazaars supermarket chain owned by his family, was asked why he only employed whites behind the counter and no South Africans of other races even though many of the customers were Black. Cohen acknowledged that it was not a legal requirement, but did it to indulge the racist prejudices of white customers.
“There is no reason why they [Black people] can’t work behind the counters. There’s no law against it. But there is this natural prejudice in this country which you can’t legislate for or against,” he said.
A decade later, power was shifting. The uprising that began in Soweto in 1976 had become a full-blown national crisis for the apartheid system by the 1980s. A low-level civil war was under way. In response, the state grew even more violent and repressive. White paranoia was fed by the creep of independent Black African states under Marxist-leaning governments ever closer to South Africa’s borders, with Angola and Mozambique in the 1970s followed by Zimbabwe in 1980.
Talk of white genocide emerged, a conspiracy theory that has taken on new life in recent times with the killings of white farmers in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Support surged for the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), or Afrikaner Resistance Movement, founded in the early 1970s to oppose any relaxation of apartheid.
The AWB, founded by Eugene Terre’Blanche, an imposing and flamboyant figure given to riding around on a horse from which he occasionally fell off, made no secret of its model with a badge strikingly similar to a swastika in design and colors. It’s supporters were also fond of the stiff-armed Hitler salute as they paraded on the streets of Pretoria. At its peak, the AWB appeared to have the support of more than 10% of white South Africans.
Roberts said life for privileged whites in particular was “definitely a bubble, and one filled with self-belief”. But she said that it became increasingly difficult to ignore reality.
“I think Musk in Pretoria in the 1980s must have had a sense of what Black people were experiencing and why they were angry. I grew up fairly conservative but I was able to change my views. I think you have to be fairly rigid in the 80s to still cling on to the belief that the apartheid system was fine and correct and in everybody’s best interest,” she said.
Musk left South Africa in 1988 in the midst of this ferment, two years before FW de Klerk carved out a path to freedom by releasing Nelson Mandela. Had he stayed, Musk faced being conscripted into the military for two years, an obligatory service for white men, that could well have meant fighting in the “border war” in Angola and Namibia or being sent to put down Black protests in the townships.
Instead, Musk took Canadian citizenship through his mother and moved to Ontario. Van Niekerk said that, whether he wants to admit it or not, Musk also took a part of South Africa with him.
“We all [white South Africans], by the very nature of our privileges and our place in the racial hierarchy, grew up believing we were the master race, even if we didn’t actively think about it,” he said.
- Chris McGreal is the Guardian’s former Johannesburg corresponden
Paul Haeder, Author 