“Unfortunately, the targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces is not new. What is new is Israel’s increasing openness in acknowledging these acts.”
Mar 23, 2026
[Mourners surround the body of Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, killed along with his cameraman Rami al-Rifi in an Israeli strike in Shati refugee camp, on July 31, 2024]
BLOOD on the LENS? A new Ellison-Paramount movie to be released?
Shit dawg, man, those Californicationers!
Twelve high school students who first came together while helping rebuild their community after the devastating Palisades Fire have set their sights on a new mission: breaking a world record to combat the estimated 500 million tennis and pickleballs dumped into landfills each year.
The teens, who form the newly launched Junior Board of Habits of Waste, announced their campaign called Another Bounce. The initiative aims to collect the most tennis and pickleballs ever gathered for recycling, culminating in an Earth Month collection event April 19.
“We play the sport, we see the waste, and we aren’t waiting for adults to fix it,” the students said in a collective statement.
“Whale” is constructed from images of 50,000 plastic bags, equal to the estimated number of pieces of floating plastic in every square mile in the world’s oceans. Chris Jordan explains his intention in transforming data into art: “Each of us attempts to build this new kind of worldview. . . of the interconnection of things: the environmental footprints 1,000 miles away of the things that we buy; the social consequences 10,000 miles away of the daily decisions that we make as consumers. As we try to build this view, and try to educate ourselves about the enormity of our culture, the information that we have to work with is these gigantic numbers: numbers in the millions, in the hundreds of millions, in the billions and now in the trillions. . . . these are numbers that our brain just doesn’t have the ability to comprehend. We can’t make meaning out of these enormous statistics. And so that’s what I’m trying to do with my work, is to take these numbers, these statistics from the raw language of data, and to translate them into a more universal visual language, that can be felt. Because my belief is, if we can feel these issues, if we can feel these things more deeply, then they’ll matter to us more than they do now. And if we can find that, then we’ll be able to find, within each one of us, what it is that we need to find to face the big question, which is: how do we change?”
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On October 18, millions of Americans took to the streets across 2,700 locations to protest the creeping authoritarianism of US President Donald Trump. Notably, the involvement of key Democratic Party-linked organizations sought to sideline Palestine, elevate NATO causes, but, due to the protest coalition being so broad, Gaza was still an item on the agenda.
While the No Kings protests notably featured a large range of groups, from mainstream Democratic Party-affiliated non-profit organizations to grassroots Socialist and anti-war activist groups, the millions-strong movement has received a fair amount of criticism from each side of the political spectrum.
On the No Kings official website, there was notably no mention of Donald Trump’s pro-war policies, including his continuation of the Gaza genocide, attack on Iran that was opposed by the overwhelming majority of the American public, and his continued friendship with Israel.
While some commentators defended No Kings for their relative silence on such issues, arguing that it is a protest movement focused primarily on domestic issues, such as ICE raids, creeping authoritarianism, and funding cuts to federal programs, the No Kings website itself does make mention of foreign protest movements.
For example, the website urged demonstrators to wear Yellow. “Throughout history, people who have come together in protest against authoritarian regimes have utilized a color that is easy to see among a sea of thousands,” it states.
It then goes on to cite the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, where demonstrators used yellow umbrellas and yellow ribbons used to represent resistance to Russia in Ukraine, as its two specific examples to align the movement with. Both of these examples are in line with the US foreign policy interests shared between the Democratic and Republican parties. In the case of the Hong Kong protests, in both 2014 and 2019, the US government was accused of directly interfering and helping to direct the demonstrations, especially through its CIA-linked soft-power projects like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Furthermore, the escalation of the most authoritarian crackdowns on academic freedom in US history has occurred under the Trump administration, specifically on the question of free speech about Palestine on college campuses. This issue is not only connected to ICE, which was responsible for kidnapping countless pro-Palestinian students and protesters – the most prominent case being that of Mahmoud Khalil – but also to the Republican President’s threats to defund universities allowing criticism of Israel.
The ruthless attacks on universities and their federal funding, which worked alongside Zionist donors pulling their own financial backing, have spanned from Columbia to Harvard and beyond. Yet, as No Kings is seen as directly aligning with the Democratic Party agenda, this assault on academic freedom is evidently something that began under the Biden administration and would implicate the Party in Donald Trump’s ongoing free speech crackdown.
Prominent in the organizing of No Kings were Democratic Party groups like Indivisible and MoveOn. In the case of Indivisible, they have come under fire from right-wing media, like Fox News, for reportedly receiving 3 million dollars from the Open Society Action Fund of George Soros, a billionaire Democratic Party donor who has become the most well-known boogeyman on the American right.
From the left, Indivisible front-man, Ezra Levin, came under fire for a previous post on X (formerly Twitter) where he stated the following:
“If we could press a button to eliminate every Hamas fighter, I’d support it. But Netanyahu clings to power by making Israel & the world less safe for Jews. Indiscriminate killing of Gazan civilians doesn’t make anybody safer. The only moral and strategic answer is ceasefire now.”
I just checked out the No Kings website for the logistics of the upcoming Saturday March 28 “No Kings” protest in Philadelphia.
I attended and posted photos from the previous April 6, 2025 “Hands Off” (“anti fascist messages were invisible”) and June 14, 2025 (“Tom Paine Would Be Deeply Disappointed”) and October 18, 2025 (Palestinian flags “are not allowed”) No Kings protests.
I understand that other protests are planned nearby in Northeast Philly; Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy; Ardmore; Havertown; Ambler; Springfield; and Camden, New Jersey.
Nothing like scattering the troops for the big battle!
Given that the Israeli genocide on Gaza was taboo, now that US missiles and bombs from US aircraft are shredding children, I wonder if a “No War On Iran” message will be welcomed?
I’m a newbie to Philly (been here just a little over 2 years) so I don’t know the modern history or culture and politics of activism and protest here (I do recall the 1985 Philly police bombing of MOVE:
“[the] ensuing fire killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed more than 60 nearby homes
Seems like folks have “Moved On” from that! (pun intended).
That history is the subject the “Bar None” art work and the WHYY story (no mention of MOVE bombing in news reports): Police barricades are transformed into protest art on the Parkway, highlighting Philadelphia’s history of activism
Called “Bar None,” the piece of public art also features benign images of Parkway activities that also involve barricades: the 2023 Philadelphia Marathon, a Puerto Rican parade in the 1980s, and a 1933 Armistice Day flag procession.
“As a research-based artist, this opportunity got really exciting, the opportunity to dive deeply into the history of the Parkway as a site of collective assembly, protest, demonstration and celebration,” said artist Nicolo Gentile.
Art and politics at its finest! Nothing like a powerful message and tightly focused set of demands!
March 28? Jews Against Jews Rally? For decades, the targeting of journalists by Israel has revealed the fundamental contradictions between the law and the practice of war, where civilians whose purpose is to witness and document are treated as expendable instruments in a strategic agenda, and nowhere is this pattern clearer than after October 7, 2023.
Oh, those synagogues of perversions and hate: Israeli occupation forces tortured a toddler in Gaza to coerce his father’s confession, according to Palestinian and international media reports.
And so it goes. Black Woman Protesting:
When Donald Trump vowed to go after his political enemies if he returned to the White House, he wasn’t joking.
One of the people on his list of targets is none other than LaMonica McIver, the New Jersey Democratic Congresswoman who has been charged by the Department of Justice for allegedly “assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement” during a routine oversight visit to an ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey last May, that devolved into all-out chaos.
Hopeium, Dopeium, FABRICATION. Don’t believe the Subterranean Stackers:
As we move towards a month since the United States and Israel launched their war against the Islamic Republic of Iran a number of things have become clear.
- The United States and Israel are losing/Iran is winning – As assessed by myself and analysts such as Professor John J. Mearsheimer, Professor Glenn Diesen Professor Yanis Varoufakis, the dynamics, contours and limits of power are proving what was predicted before the war started: the United States cannot get what it wants – namely regime change – without getting what it doesn’t want and without causing chaos at a level that may well be an order worse than with Iraq. The Iranian State knows it is in an existential battle for its survival and is simply too powerful, too prepared and too pissed-off to dislodge without launching a full-scale boots-on-the-ground war with thousands upon thousands of troops being deployed, which would be a hop, skip and a jump away from a third global war.
- The United States has already lost – The US has already lost for if there were any remaining shreds of credibility and belief in it as any kind of net force for good in any area, they have been soundly bulldozed into the ground. The United States is an agent of chaos that will do the maddest of things and murder little children if Zionist Israel deems it in its interests. The US cannot be trusted for protection. It cannot be trusted in negotiations. It cannot be trusted to put the well-being of the global economy over the weirdest and darkest of irrational impulses. The greater defeat for the United States in the long term will be the complete and utter demolition job that has been wrought upon its credibility and integrity.
- Being an enemy of the United States is dangerous; it’s even more dangerous to be a friend – The Gulf States have learned the hard way that the presence of American military bases on one’s territory does next to nothing to protect one from attack. The opposite is in fact the case. Not only do they not repel attacks, they make attacks more likely and can do little to nullify them. US military bases in your country will become legitimate targets when the US launches one of its mad wars. The lesson to be learned here for American allies is that they should think twice before allowing the US deploy its armed forces inside their borders.
- Much of the West has gone full Orwellian – Defence is attack. Attack is defence. War is peace. The slaughter of little girls is salvation. Warmakers are peacemakers. Much of the West remains silent about the two worst states in the world doing the worst things on our plant, while as vehement and vocal in twisting every angle to make victims into criminals and criminals into victims.
- Israel is extremely vulnerable to Iranian attacks – As demonstrated during the 12-Day War last year, Israel is very vulnerable to Iranian missiles. Iran knows how to find the chinks in the armour of the Iron Dome defence system, and Israel is running out of interceptor missiles. The video below is of an Iranian ballistic missile hitting the city of Dimona. Dimona is located in southern Israel in the Negev Desert. This is where Israel, reputedly, houses its nuclear arsenal. Accordingly, it should be among the best protected Israeli sites. Notwithstanding, Iran is enjoying success with considerable numbers of missiles finding their target.
- Israel lives deep in the American wheels of power – The sheer fact that Donald Trump gave the go-ahead for this war demonstrates just how deep the mad messianic ideology of Zionist Israel resides the collective American political mind. Israel has been able to insinuate itself into the deepest recesses of American decision-making through a wicked amalgam of lobbying, blackmail, and unceasing and concerted ideological manipulation. We could say that the United States of America has been fully parasitised by Israel, but this metaphor does elide the twin glaring truths that the US is with or without Israel the most destructive state on the planet and, secondly, a seemingly willing participant in its own parasitism.
- Multipolarity rises; megaloliberalism fades – Despite Donald Trumps entreaties to NATO and Europe, and despite the aforementioned Orwellianism of much of the West, nobody is willing to enter into the US-Israeli war on Iran for obvious reasons. Trump called his NATO allies ‘cowards’ for their refusal. Both Europe and China have also refused to help open the Strait of Hormuz by force. Trump is simultaneously a force working for and against both multipolarity and megaloliberalism. In the war on Iran, we see his most emphatic and multi-tiered demonstration of this truth thus far.
- Zelenskiy and his Government are just as rotten as some say they are – Regardless of your feelings on why the Russo-Ukrainian War started, it is becoming harder and harder to deny just how insidious and unscrupulous the Ukrainian Government and its leader are. Zelenskiy has sent armed support to the Gulf States. He has also probably sent drones to be used in the war on Iran and in Israel’s war on south Lebanon. President Zelenskiy has been as eager as you like to get Ukraine involved in all of this, one way or another. Here, he has shown just how much he cares about the sanctity of the principles he so often invokes to vilify Russia. This should tell any person blessed of sound reason a great deal about the man and his Government.
- The US and Israel have no idea what they’re doing and how to get out of this – There has been a a severe and persistent lack of clarity as to why the decision to wage a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran was made from day 1. The reasoning and justifications are likewise all over the place from day to day. Trump jumps from issuing ultimatums to speaking of having ‘productive’ talks with Iran. There is also marked divergence between Israel and the US on rationale and endpoints. When act and thought are blighted by such chaos, it is inevitable that solutions to one’s self-made problems will be in short supply. This is exactly where we are on Day 24 of the war.
- The schism is nigh – necessity is the mother of motivation as it is invention. It is time for the United States of America to break up with Zionist Israel. The war on Iran flies in the face of any ratiocinative logic or sound reasoning. It is deeply unpopular among the American People. There is nothing to be gained for the US and everything to be lost. If this does not provide proof of the problem and the need for a great schism between the US and the world’s ultimate rogue state, then nothing will. It is time for a reckoning. It is time for the USA to take all its money and its might and actually do something good. It is the will of the people. It is the conclusion of the thinking mind. It is for the good of the world.
Paul Haeder, Author 