… more and more pundits and fucking alt this and alt that, academics, afraid to fucking say that Hamas IS the only thing now and then and twenty years ago that kept the Jews from West Bank
LISTEN to the reality, from this young Muhammad!
Siege to Genocide: Gaza’s history from 2005–2025 | Muhammad Shahada | UNAPOLOGETIC
He should be ON every fucking show, on the Jew Shows, from Max to Katie to fucking Jon Leibowitz to Miko Piled:
Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:12 Childhood at checkpoints
2:14 Father’s illness, no permits
8:32 Gaza becomes a cage
12:45 Rooftops and football
16:14 Ramadan in blackout nights
21:10 First airstrike remembered
25:33 Bread during shortages
31:56 Sister hides from bombs
39:12 Gaza’s soundscape
41:15 Hamas olive branch
43:05 Civil war and siege
49:42 From Apaches to jets
52:18 Rafah gates open
53:45 Tunnels and celebrations
54:44 Storytelling as survival
59:12 Freedom beyond checkpoints
1:00:22 Great March of Return
1:04:15 “Mowing the lawn” wars
1:09:12 Gaza’s wars recapped
1:20:42 Dream of return
1:24:14 Keys and identity
1:29:50 Journalism as resistance
1:32:11 Complicity
1:33:00 Media bias and narratives
1:45:00 Regional politics and siege
1:59:00 Youth, hope and memory
2:12:00 Closing reflections
+—+
I had to fucking go to Fuck You Book, on the Cirque Journal site, and oh we have this fucking poet . . . . This shit, these fucking poets, are human stain in 2025 — Getting ready for her tenure track job teaching MFA — mother fucking assholes?
School is back in session and Labor Day approaches, as headlines announce what we nervous cases see as the apocalypse. Summer is too long for me, emotionally. The bright promise of early summer fades and darkens by mid-August.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, the desolate people of the Hebrew Bible cried out to the prophet Jeremiah, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved,” and I could have written this yesterday. Those brave people, crying out their hopelessness, looking for direction and consolation. Me? Footage of the National Guard often sends me to my room with Mexican food, the latest issue of People magazine and my emotional support cat.
Three quarters of a million mushy fucking FOLLOWERS? days, but deep in my heart, I do believe that led with infinite dignity by the Ministry of Silly Walks, they will see us through.
“Get a manicure. Sing Monty Python. Be happy. You’ll drive the Trumpists crazy”
Fucking HELL: Lobotomies at the University!
Her fucking druggie hubby: On April 13, 2019, Lamott married Neal Allen, 63, a former vice president for marketing at the McKesson Corporation in San Francisco. The couple met in August 2016. He is a twice-divorced father of four, who left his job at McKesson to devote himself to writing.
)—}
And so the Anne Lamott’s of the world love Biden and Camel Toe! Amazing how spineless they are!
Now the fucking headlines showing the fucking skinless fucking world:
Oh, Klanada:
You think it’s just “farming communities” at risk? Researchers have linked prenatal exposure to the common insecticide chlorpyrifos with lasting disruptions in brain development and motor skills. The results suggest potential risks from continued pesticide use during pregnancy and early childhood.
Prenatal exposure to Chlorpyrifos in the womb disrupts brain development. Risks remain for children in farming communities.
White Psychotic Race: State targets ‘discriminatory’ DEI practices, cancels minority business conference
And so here we are, the death of the globe by the Jew-Run EPA:
Federal officials deny Endangered Species Act listing for rare western Alaska flower
Here we are — not enough clear-cutters. Oregon’s forestry sector needs new workers, industry leaders say, with new skills,
Fucking white freaks:
When NASA was founded back in 1958, its charter explicitly declared “that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.”
For decades, success meant a mix of spaceflight, crewed exploration, robotic exploration, education activities, and science across four major disciplines: Earth science, astrophysics, planetary science, and heliophysics.
In a galling announcement made in August of 2025, NASA’s acting chief, Sean Duffy, declared the intention to abandon all non-spaceflight and exploration-related activities, defying the agency’s charter.
Will anyone act to save the heart of NASA?
Here’s fucking Racist Boston’s big news: Newton to again remove Italian flag lines on Adams Street
Forget about the fucking MAGA maggots assisting: winter storm warning and a heat advisory were in place simultaneously this week in Alaska as the northern part of the state is expecting snow and ice and the Inside Passage battles abnormally warm temperatures.
Why It Matters
The end of summer has contrasting weather across the United States, with the Pacific Northwest battling dangerously hot temperatures, while a cold front brings more fall-like weather to much of the rest of the country.
Meanwhile, parts of northern Alaska are under a winter weather advisory and winter storm warning as some of the first snows of the season begin, whereas the Inside Passage in Southeast Alaska is experiencing temperatures in the 80s. In Southwest Alaska, an atmospheric river is bringing heavy rain and strong winds.
For the winter storm warning, National Weather Service (NWS) Fairbanks meteorologists warned of “wintry precipitation” including an icy glaze of .1 inches along Anaktuvuk Pass and the north side of the Brooks Range along the Dalton Highway Corridor. Earlier in the week, another forecast warned of up to 2 inches of snow, although meteorologists said there is “substantial” uncertainty in storm totals and where the worst of the storm will hit.
Invasion of the grass snatchers: Grass carp have already started reproducing naturally in U.S. rivers feeding into Lake Erie. According to the Invasive Species Centre, if they spread further, 33 fish species and 18 bird species could be at risk.
Similar invasions elsewhere show the cost. In Australia, a Mary River cod was found choking on a tilapia. Snakehead fish overgrowth required dam control in Maryland. Meanwhile, sea lampreys have haunted Great Lakes fisheries for decades.
The Red Rebel Brigade calls itself “a performance troupe dedicated to illuminating the global environmental crisis.” The group evolved out of climate change protests in the U.K. in the early 2000s by global environmental group Extinction Rebellion. James Comiskey, an activist with Extinction Rebellion’s Boston chapter, describes the Red Rebel Brigade as an “arm” of the Extinction Rebellion group, with the groups’ actions “typically done together.” A science-oriented protest by Extinction Rebellion can be “a powerful combination,” he said, when paired with the visual, emotive level of the Brigade’s silent, mime procession.
you’ll never know what you stumble upon when signing up for a free ride on the insane side of Substack
“This time will be different. Agentic AI’s software will be capable of ‘eating’ the core functions of government. The Agentic State… marks a shift in the nature of government.” — advisor to Ukraine’s Digital Gulag!
Now, moving to my email in-box and some wimpy comment BACK at me.
There are fucking white boy trash defending the murderer Kyle, still, five years later:
Check out Mister Fish from Wisconsin commenting. And Paulokirk, tambien!
The Maywand District murders: In 2010, a “Kill Team” of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was responsible for killing several unarmed civilians. An investigation revealed that low-ranking soldiers were sometimes coerced into participating by a senior leader. In one instance, a young private pleaded guilty to murder, admitting he made a “bad decision” when he shot an unarmed teen after a higher-ranking soldier ordered him to.
“The crux of the prosecution’s case was based squarely on Morlock’s testimony that Gibbs generated the idea of killing noncombatants and covering up the killings as lawful combat engagements,” the court filings read. “Although Morlock initially told CID during a videotaped interview that he did not witness Gibbs commit any offenses, Morlock later testified at trial that Gibbs gave him a grenade to toss at the first Afghan, resulting in the first murder.”
And way way back, the US Army did studies on all the shoot first, ask the dead questions later mentality of 18, 19 and 20 year old punks. Putting in 23 year old soldiers in the mix, in these squads, they studied and observed, created a more “empathetic attack force” which would possibly not shoot every living thing in a home or on a farm in that foreign country where the mercenary forces have been deployed.
Rittenhouse? The punks defending a car business? Fucking amped up and juiced up on that phallic gun in his hands.
A US soldier has shot dead 16 Afghan civilians, nine of them children, in a night-time shooting spree in a village outside his base in southern Afghanistan, a rampage the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said was “impossible to forgive”.
The unprecedented attack on families asleep in their homes came as anti-foreign sentiment was already running high after Afghans discovered US troops had burned copies of the Qur’an at a military base.
The US president, Barack Obama, and the British prime minister, David Cameron, are due to discuss UK and American plans for Afghanistan at a meeting in Washington on Tuesday.
Obama said he was deeply saddened.
“I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives, and to the people of Afghanistan, who have endured too much violence and suffering. This incident … does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan.”
The Army has missed its recruiting target twice in the past five years—by roughly 8 percent in 2018 and by 25 percent in 2022. While COVID shocks and a stronger job market may have hurt its efforts in 2022, other services mostly made their recruiting quotas—if in some cases by advancing recruits who had signed contracts but were not scheduled to enter service until fiscal 2023.
Yet the Army has yet to make substantial movement toward changes that could sizably increase its number of recruits. Gen. James McConville, the Army’s chief of staff, even doubled down, insisting that standards will not be lowered in such a way that would sacrifice soldier quality for quantity. While lowering standards is no doubt one way to enlarge the pool of the military-qualified applicants, it is by no means the only way to do so. Recent research indicates that looking at people who are somewhat older than today’s typical recruit could broaden that pool while also maintaining quality—or even increasing it.…
Recruiting older people to enlist in the Army could help with more than just its raw recruiting numbers. In our 2022 RAND study, we found that individuals who enlist over the age of 21 perform better as soldiers on several metrics. For instance, recruits in the 25-to-35 age range were about 15 percent less likely to attrit due to poor performance than recruits ages 16-to-18, and about 6 percent more likely to reenlist. In that same study, recruiters noted a perception that older recruits are “of higher quality, more focused, and more motivated, as well as being ready to ship to basic training more quickly.”
Recruiters told us that older recruits were also more likely to walk into a recruiting station on their own without targeted outreach, indicating ample room for increased efforts to inform older individuals about Army opportunities. In interviews with young soldiers, some even insisted that older recruits’ maturity made them better suited for military life. And to pile on, a previous study found that older recruits have higher qualification test scores, higher levels of education, and are more likely to be promoted compared to younger recruits.
Early childhood is a sensitive period for learning and social skill development. The maturation of cerebral regions underlying social processing lays the foundation for later social-emotional competence. This study explored myelin changes in social brain regions and their association with changes in parent-rated social-emotional development in a cohort of 129 children (64 females, 0–36 months, 77 White). Results reveal a steep increase in myelination throughout the social brain in the first 3 years of life that is significantly associated with social-emotional development scores. These findings add knowledge to the emerging picture of social brain development by describing neural underpinnings of human social behavior. They can contribute to identifying age-/stage-appropriate early life factors in this developmental domain.
Uses experience to temper new recruits: Newer, less-experienced soldiers are typically integrated into squads and platoons alongside seasoned veterans. This structure allows younger service members to benefit from their more experienced peers and leaders who provide mentorship and oversight.
Implements rigorous training: Before deployment, soldiers undergo extensive training to prepare them for the stresses of combat. This includes:
Stress inoculation: Repeatedly exposing soldiers to controlled, simulated combat scenarios to build resilience and improve their performance under pressure.
Tactical exercises: Drills that prepare soldiers to follow orders and execute specific tasks as a coordinated team.
He has been hailed as a hero. He has been feted by politicians, including Donald Trump. He has been compared to John Wayne as a symbol of law-abiding people fighting back against lawlessness. When he took a rifle to a protest over the earlier police shooting that left Jacob Blake paralyzed, Rittenhouse said his intention was to protect property against violence.
Rittenhouse was acquitted because of changes in the legal understanding of self-defense in recent years. Based on the Rittenhouse verdict, the rest of us are now unsafe around anyone with a gun.
Rittenhouse had been guarding an auto dealership at which several cars had been set on fire when he was confronted by Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man Rittenhouse killed. Evidence showed that Rosenbaum was aggressive and lunged for Rittenhouse’s rifle while cursing him. Rittenhouse testified that he feared that Rosenbaum would seize the rifle and shoot him. The jury found this fear to be reasonable and this may be a fair interpretation of the current law of self-defense in Wisconsin.
But that is precisely the problem. No one actually knows what Rosenbaum intended. Rittenhouse admitted that he pointed his rifle at him. Rosenbaum might have intended simply to disarm a dangerous man.
The acquittal means that the person holding the gun gets to decide who lives and who dies.
You can see where this interpretation of self-defense can lead in the trial of the three men who were convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black jogger running through a suburb of Brunswick, Georgia. One of the men charged, Travis McMichael, said that Arbery lunged for his gun.
McMichael was convicted of malice murder, so this defense failed. But George Barnhill, the second prosecutor in the case, who later recused himself, refused to prosecute on just this basis: “at the point Arbery grabbed the shotgun, under Georgia Law, [Travis] McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself.”
John Wayne would not have shot a man he knew was unarmed, as Rittenhouse did. The Duke would have defended himself against non-lethal force by the use of his fists.
After Rittenhouse killed Rosenbaum, he made a phone call to a friend saying that he had just killed someone. He did not seek medical attention for the man on the ground. He did not call the police. Instead, he continued his armed patrolling.
Anthony Huber, the second man killed, considered Rittenhouse to be dangerous. Huber’s girlfriend said in an interview that Huber rushed Rittenhouse to protect her and others nearby. Huber struck Rittenhouse with a skateboard he always carried and reached for Rittenhouse’s rifle. That is when Rittenhouse shot him once, fatally wounding him.
Clearly, Huber was not trying to shoot Rittenhouse, but to disarm him. As the events of that night demonstrated, he was not wrong to fear that Rittenhouse was irresponsibly dangerous. Huber’s courage cost him his life.
John Wayne would not have fired his weapon at Huber, just as John Wayne would have led the police to Rosenbaum’s body.
Ironically, there was someone in Kenosha that night who embodied the grace and restraint of John Wayne—Gaige Grosskreutz, the man Rittenhouse wounded after killing Huber.
Grosskreutz, who was at the protest to provide medical care, and who was carrying a handgun, was told that Rittenhouse had shot someone and was trying to get away. He saw Rittenhouse fire at Huber and moved directly toward him with his own gun visible. He and Rittenhouse confronted each other. Grosskreutz did not fire. Rittenhouse did.
Rittenhouse did not hesitate to shoot, did not assess the situation, did not act like an adult who understood the responsibility of possessing a firearm.
And then, this KR murderer gets to go to the Semen Drip Trump’s Pedophile Mar-a-Lago?
We need Chris Smalls on every ship, in every warehouse, on every fucking stage where Democrats with pencils weild their putrid spinelessness to go up against this Cunt-Tree’s Dumpy Brained Trump and his one million knives:
Bernie/AOC “Are Compromised, They are Class Traitors.” Labor SILENT on Israel? (w/ Chris Smalls)
No mention of Trayvon Martin as Trump talks in the city he died in about blacks getting shot
“I say to the African-American community and to the Hispanic community, what the hell do you have to lose? I will fix it. We will make them good. We will make them safe. We will bring back jobs. We will create good, good schools and education. I will fix it,” Trump said.
Trump has previously faced criticism from African-American leaders and Democratic officials for his description of African-American life as one of utter poverty, which does not match the reality of the lives of most African-Americans, and for equating “inner city” life with the lives of minority citizens. Trump has also issued his pitch to black voters while addressing predominantly white audiences, though he has made three forays into predominantly black churches in Michigan and Ohio.
During one of those stops, at a church in Flint, Michigan, he was heckled and the church’s black pastor also cut him off as he launched into a political speech attacking his opponent Hillary Clinton.
His support among African-American voters remains in the single digits.
+—+
Pepe Fucking Escobar, the Jewish Guy.
Mythic Narcissus, depending on his mood while facing his reflection in the pool, may at any moment authorize Kiev hits on Moscow and St. Petersburg with long-range missiles.
Alastair Crooke’s remarkable analysis of Trump in the context of myth as geopolitics has left us with much to ponder. There’s no escape from Trump’s “extraordinary ability to dominate the discourse”, globally, as well as his capacity for “bending people to his will” – and thus wreak havoc on the geopolitical chessboard.
Alastair stresses how Trump is skillfully “using mythic imagery” – actually crude archetypes – to always impress his (italics mine) narrative. The only narrative.
Here, this gold-selling Neopolitan Cunt, a judge?
Ahh, that semen drip Musk does it again over at Twitter. @marlene4719 = the AI Bot Miss Manners and Ms Grammer and Sir Censor!
Here we go, another Substack, but a good one:
In my interview with Jacob, we discuss the rapidly expanding GovTech infrastructure that the global elite has been developing over the last years to lay the foundation required to transform traditional governments into globally controlled “Agentic States.”
These Agentic States represent a fundamental departure from conventional systems of governance. According to plans proposed by the UN and World Economic Forum, states are expected to evolve into AI-driven systems, standardized across nations, that operate with minimal to no human involvement in decision making and policy formation.
Luukas Ilves writes in the GGTC’s white paper: “The rise of agentic AI will have a particularly profound impact on government and public services… Previous rounds of digital transformation have altered the medium by government functions… but have not altered the fundamental organisational structure or business model of government.
And he continues: “This time will be different. Agentic AI’s software will be capable of ‘eating’ the core functions of government. The Agentic State… marks a shift in the nature of government.”
Ukraine, man, Ukraine:
The Agentic State: How Agentic AI Will Revamp 10 Functional Layers of Government”, the document was initially published by the GGCT in May of 2025. Its lead author, Luukas Ilves, formerly served as Chief Information Officer for the Estonian government and now advises Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation.
Of course, my Substack, maybe a new one before Bari Weiss and Substack cuts me off, will be the Jew Patrol. Remember that other weird TV Show? Rat Patrol!!!
Jews, man, commenting on the murderer Kyle and parallels with Israel. Fuck rats.
How does all this relate to Israel? The answer has to do with the role of news media, politicians, and social commentators. This collection of societal influencers can be called the Chorus.
There is a striking parallel between the roles played by the Chorus in both the Rittenhouse case and that of Israel.
The Chorus has claimed that Rittenhouse had no right to be where he was the night of the events. Although he lived only 20 minutes from the scene of the riots, his home was in another state. The Chorus was unimpressed that his father lived in Kenosha. The anti-Israel Chorus levels a similar charge: Jews have no right to be in “Palestine.” They are unimpressed that Jewish forefathers lived there.
Both Rittenhouse and Israel faced violent and unprovoked attacks.
The Chorus blames both Rittenhouse and Israel for attacking in self-defense.
The Chorus has demonized both Rittenhouse and Israel for its own purposes. In both cases, the media falsely adopted a narrative that the victim was the aggressor. This served the purpose of satisfying their base and lending moral legitimacy to their good guy-bad guy narrative.
Both cases exemplify a dishonest media that misreports events and motives. Some media reported that Rittenhouse came to Kenosha to hunt people down. Some international media report that Jews deliberately forced out an entire people to make way for a Jewish state. The Kenosha Chorus and the international media both impugn the motives of the actors they dislike. In Kenosha, the media suggested that Rittenhouse was a “right-winger” and a racist, out to get the rioters. Israelis are similarly castigated as racists who hate Arabs.
In both cases the Chorus blames the true victim for arming himself—-this, despite the overwhelming danger presented by violent elements. The Chorus does not believe that the true victims here—-Rittenhouse and Israel—-were in danger of attack. According to the Chorus, the fact that they have armed themselves is proof of their culpability.
The bias of the Chorus is evident in the way it characterizes the parties it dislikes. It assigns to them those characteristics that are most despised by their reference group.
For the radical left, the worst thing a person can be is a white nationalist. So for them Rittenhouse became a white nationalist.
The anti-Israel Chorus levels the same charge against Israelis. In the case of Israel this is a particular distortion of the facts: over half of Israelis and their forbearers came to Israel from Arab countries, and thus are not exactly white. And while Israelis generally are proud of their country, many of Israel’s pioneers were victims of European nationalism. Unlike nationalist states, Israel guarantees the rights of all its citizens, irrespective of the origins of their forebears.
In both the Rittenhouse and Israel cases, the rhetoric of the Chorus is often deranged. It is irrational to believe that a 17 year old kid with decent motives, or a country founded on democratic ideals, is uniquely evil. Yet that is what the Chorus says.
In July 2020, just under a month into his tenure as George Mason University’s president, Gregory Washington sought to position the university as a national model of diversity and inclusion in higher education.
He established an Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence task force, and by that November, convened its members and other administrators in a virtual forum where they spoke about the university’s goal to increase faculty diversity.
He’s a hero, man, and Racist Semen Drip Trump is going after them all: In 2022, the board approved “Mason Is All Together Different,” a five-year plan that outlined the university’s goals to increase “faculty and staff demographics that mirror student demographics.” (The Chronicle’s publisher, who does not have a role in journalistic decisions, served on the George Mason board from 2019 to 2023.)
“Our practices and initiatives, including some being questioned by the DOJ, emanated from this framework,” Washington said in a statement responding to the Department of Justice investigation. “They were developed in collaboration with our Board of Visitors, and through shared governance with our students, faculty, and staff. It has never been a ‘one man show’ at Mason.”
King David Hotel after Irgun terrorist attack, July 1946.
Rat Patrol, err, Jew Patrol: From Pogroms to Prime Ministers: The Complicated History of Ukraine and Israel
Ukraine contributed significantly to Zionism: Golda Meir (Kiev), Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Poltava), and Ze’ev Jabotinsky (Odessa), who would go on to shape Israel’s political, military, and ideological architecture.
the dictator has god, guns, goo, golem, grandstanding and groveling on his side
Ahh, so, Meta-astisis or Fuck You Book or any of the UnSocial Social (sic) media companies will be banning this?
Trump issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute individuals who burn the American flag. The order calls for one-year prison sentences and instructs Attorney General Pam Bondi to challenge Supreme Court protections for flag burning as free speech.
The fucking Semen Drip Psychotic White Races, man . . . Florida Deploys Police To Stare At Crosswalks, Stop Them From Being Painted Rainbow Colors
And you thought THIS Substack would not go subterreanean and not mention the most perverse religion, cult, Nazi-mitzvah thing around — JEWS:
Trump signed a radical and openly fascistExecutive Order that would back his regime with military force, including the use of “volunteer” private militia’s and vigilante’s (read the Executive Order).
They buried it, but at least managed to report that: (NY Times story)
The order also directs a task force in Washington led by a White House adviser, Stephen Miller, to create an online portal for “Americans with law enforcement or other relevant backgrounds and experience” to apply to join federal agents in enforcing Mr. Trump’s “crime emergency” order in the District of Columbia.
The Order is nationwide in scope and will be used to invade, suppress, and harass many other cities, as Trump has threatened (not “mused” or “hedged” as NY Times downplays):
Mr. Trump has mused openly about expanding the deployments to other cities, particularly Democratic strongholds like New York, Chicago and Baltimore, saying crime there is out of control. On Monday, Mr. Trump said he could “solve” crime in Chicago in a week, though he hedged about whether he planned to move ahead with sending troops there.
Here’s the text of the Order:
Each law enforcement agency that is a member of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, as well as other relevant components of the Department of Justice as the Attorney General determines, shall further, subject to the availability of appropriations and applicable law, immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit that is dedicated to ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital that can be deployed whenever the circumstances necessitate, and that could be deployed, subject to applicable law, in other cities where public safety and order has been lost.
Repeat: the military units “could be deployed, subject to applicable law, in other cities where public safety and order has been lost.”
Jews and the IDF and President (POTUS) Adolph Bibi are running the show:
There it is, the two goyim on the right with their master on the left:
Any resemblance?
‘Whatever his attire, his clothes are never neat, and his hair is never combed. He is very sloppy in this regard’: An investigation issued by the Haganah’s intelligence service offers a peek into how the Irgun underground commander was perceived before becoming Israel’s Prime Minister…. The description of the commander of Israel’s pre-independence Irgun underground, Menachem Begin, that was issued by the Haganah’s intelligence service wasn’t particularly flattering.
Former Third Reich leaders laugh at a translation error during Nuremberg trials, 1945-1946
And so it goes, the Jew Patrol: Israel files complaint after UK wheelchair basketball players turn backs during ‘Hativkah’
EVERYONE still a Jew in Fascist Israel is a Terrorist, you know that Aaron, Katie, Max!
Changing stance, key Shas rabbi says Haredim who don’t study full-time can serve in IDF
If the IDF enshrines protections for Haredi soldiers in General Staff orders and they can observe Sabbath, ‘why shouldn’t [they] enlist,’ asks Rabbi Moshe Maya in radio interview
[Pedophilia =
“Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is three years of age.”
“To communicate anything to a Goy about our religious relations would be equal the killing of all Jews, for If the Goyim knew what we teach about them, they would kill us openly.”
Former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz has argued in favor of lowering the age of consent to 15, and has discussed a hypothetical “staircasing” system that includes ages 14, 13, and 12.
Bernard-Henri Lévy has sparked controversy for a number of his stances, including his advocacy for France’s burqa ban, his “unconditional love” of Israel, and his criticism of the rape cases against the film director Roman Polanski, who pleaded guilty to statutory rape, in 1978, and fled to France to avoid imprisonment, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Strauss-Kahn, a friend of Lévy’s, has been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct. In 2011, New York prosecutors charged him with the sexual assault of a maid at a Manhattan hotel; the charges were dropped, but not before Lévy published a piece defending Strauss-Kahn, in which he questioned why a maid would have gone into Strauss-Kahn’s hotel room alone, and claimed that his friend had been “thrown to the dogs.”.
It’s in their Talmud: Gad. Shas. 2:2: “A Jew may violate but not marry a non-Jewish girl.”
Simeon Haddarsen, fol. 56-D: “When the Messiah comes every Jew will have 2800 slaves.”
Jew: Trump says he’s removing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, citing his administration’s allegations of mortgage fraud . . . Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, responded by saying that Trump has no authority fire her and she would continue to carry out her duties.
JEW Monster that started it all:
More than 2,000 nuclear weapons have been detonated in the past 80 years. Their effects still linger around the world
Fucking Monsters:
+—+
Oh?
Mark Monmonier, a Syracuse University professor of geography, said the Mercator projection is obsolete and geographers have long advised people to not use it as a world map.
“It was a useful navigation tool in the 16th century, because it has straight lines, giving navigators a line of constant direction to sail along,” Monmonier said. “But outside of that very narrow navigation application, there is no point in using it.”
While maps following the curvature of the earth, like the Equal Earth projection, offer a more accurate scale of the true sizes of the continents, he nonetheless warned that bar graphs remain the best way to compare the sizes of different continents.
And so it goes:
Spending the people’s coffer on offensive weapons:
India on Saturday proposed defence spending of 6.81 trillion rupees ($78.70 billion) for the 2025-26 fiscal year, up 9.5% from the previous year’s initial estimates, with most eaten up by wages and pensions rather than acquiring new weapons.
The 4.7 trillion rupees the budget allocated for manpower costs dwarfed its proposed capital outlay of 1.80 trillion rupees, focused on modernisation and defence procurement.
Inaugurating the 11th edition of DefExpo, the prime minister said the focus on boosting military might is not aimed at any country and asserted that India has always been a reliable partner of peace and stability in the region and beyond.
The five-day DefExpo — India’s biennial exhibition of military platforms and weapons—is being attended by 38 defence ministers and top executives of 172 foreign defence majors and 856 Indian companies.
Talking about the neighbourhood, Modi said India not only focuses on its own security but also considers it a responsibility to help countries in the region deal with key challenges and ensure regional peace and development.
The prime minister said lack of proper policy initiatives in the last several decades has made India the biggest importer of defence platforms. His government, he added, has taken a series of policy initiatives, ridding the acquisition system of silos to cut the country’s dependence on foreign acquisitions and promote domestic production.
Ahh, the Jews: Meet the controversial Jewish billionaire driving Trump’s tariff policy
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, seen as the architect of Trump’s tariff policy, is under fire from allies who say he lacks basic economic knowledge and misunderstands how tariffs work, raising concerns about his growing influence on trade decisions
In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, PragerU and the Department of Education unveiled The Road to Liberty—a new Founders Museum exhibit at the White House. Featuring original portraits, historic scenes, and powerful digital storytelling, the exhibit honors the men and women who shaped our nation’s founding. Watch highlights from this historic launch event with remarks from Second Lady Usha Vance, Secretary Linda McMahon, and PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.
If we weren’t born with anti-social passions – narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious – why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior? — Dennis Prager
And so, the Jewish Trump and Company working on meanness, envy, narcissism, greed, hunger for power, lust . . . Everything the Jew Donald Trump is about destruction.
Los Angeles bus ridership is down slightly from June, when it dropped sharply due to widespread fears over immigration raid, reports Colleen Shalby in the Los Angeles Times. Latinos make up over 60 percent of Metro bus riders.
Texas Rural Communities Could Lose Billions From Renewable Energy Tax Credit Cuts . . . Texas produces more solar and wind energy than anywhere in America — and the tax revenue from it pays for rural schools, hospitals, law enforcement and more. The One Big Beautiful Bill threatens that.
Loss of SEPTA Funding Could Kill Amtrak’s Fifth Busiest Line
The Philadelphia transit agency’s funding challenges could eliminate its contributions to Amtrak’s Keystone Service linking Philly and NYC.
A ‘Grim Diagnosis’: Houston’s Suburbs are Running out of Water . . . Rapidly growing cities are struggling to build out water infrastructure to meet the needs of new residents.
SF’s Market Street Will no Longer be Car-free
The city will allow Waymo robotaxis and ride-hailing app vehicles to drive down the car-free stretch of Market Street as part of Mayor Dan Lurie’s effort to help revitalize local businesses.
Lenin characterised capitalism in France and Britain as “civilised barbarism,” and referred to the so-called Western civilisation as “capitalist barbarism,” driven by the “stupid avarice of a handful of millionaires” who converted people as “slaves of wealth” during the early twentieth century. He further argued that “civilisation, freedom and wealth under capitalism call to mind the rich glutton who is rotting alive but will not let what is young live on”.
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Jews: They must go off the face of the earth: The Israeli military has bombed the Yemeni capital Sanaa, Israeli and Yemeni officials say, as tensions in the region continue to escalate amid Israel’s war on Gaza.
The Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV said the attack on Sunday targeted an oil facility and a power plant in Sanaa. Israel said it also targeted a presidential palace in the Yemeni capital, which it claimed is located on a “military complex”.
Again, always a Jew in the MIX:
Oklahoma just announced a new fifty-question assessment model for teachers designed to “ away woke indoctrinators” from the state’s schools. That test — which includes questions related to “undoing the damage of gender ideology” — was developed by Prager University, a right-wing, pro-capitalist propaganda machine that aspires to become a force in American education.
Now after investing in expensive extracurriculars with Donald Trump and Big Tech, the operation is poised to fill the Sesame Street–sized supplemental-education hole left by the recent defunding of the Public Broadcasting Service.
Founded by conservative radio host Dennis Prager …
[ Dennis Prager was born in Brooklyn to Hilda (née Friedfeld; 1919–2009) and Max Prager (1918–2014), the latter the son of Polish Jewish immigrants. Prager and his brother, Kenneth Prager, were raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish home. He attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York, where he befriended Joseph Telushkin.]
. . . in 2009, Prager University (notably not an actual university) is known for its inflammatory and misleading viral videos that it has long created for teens and adults. But in 2021, the nonprofit launched a kids vertical, designing political and historical content aimed at children. The operation has since gained educational footholds in ten states, where teachers now show students PragerU videos, despite its not being an accredited academic institution.
Jews: Zelenskyy says wants Ukraine to become a ‘big Israel’
Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine would not be “absolutely liberal, European”; that it would have to undertake a different modus operandi.
“Ukraine will definitely not be what we wanted it to be from the beginning. It is impossible,” he told members of the Ukrainian media during a briefing.
“Absolutely liberal, European – it will not be like that. It [Ukraine] will definitely come from the strength of every house, every building, every person.”
This then sets the scene, following the usual venemous drivel from Senator Lyndsey Graham for a Trumpian return to tariff and sanctions threats that have all the potential for intimidation as a bluebottle fly in your bathroom.
Of much greater importance is growing evidence of long-range missile supply from NATO countries to Ukraine, or support for the building of such on Ukrainian territory – some of it already destroyed by Russian missiles – and the apparent growing successes of Ukrainian drones and missiles, some likely fired from Finland and/or the Balkans – on Russian oil and refinery facilities which some reliable sources are saying are having a significant impact on Russian oil supplies and prices within Russia itself and possibly on the international market, even as India is facing steep US-imposed punitive tariffs in retaliation for its continuing dependence on Russian supplies (some of which, I suspect, are now being routed through Chinese shipping). Also impacted are the European “dissident” states of Hungary and Slovakia. None of this has quite reached a level of existential importance but there is a whiff of this in the air. It moves in the direction not of a Russian climbdown, but of a Russian resort to missile strikes (even Oreshnik or nuclear) on Ukraine’s European ennablers.
The hardening on the Ukraine fronts (where Russia is mainly winning – despite some Ukrainian counteroffensive successes in recent weeks – most notably in Zapporizhzhia, Kupyansk, Kosiantynivka, and Pakrovsk, while also making advances on Lyman and Siversk – is coinciding with a build-up towards more confrontation between Israel/US and Iran, with both sides now anticipating recommencement of hostilities in September, preceded, as we have seen over the past day, by a concerted Israeli attack on the Yemeni capital in a bid to put an end to Yemeni control over Red Sea trade and its diminishment of Israeli ports.
So we have an increasing reddening glow in the embers of the ever-smoldering bonfire of World War Three potentiality. There are parallel significations from Taiwan, but here I will just note increasing dependence of Iran on the supply of air defense and fighter jet capabilities from China which is a major client for Iranian oil while potentially subject to US sanctions that will further advise China to shut off all supply of rare earths to the US. — Gathering Escalation, Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Estonia’s President Alar Karis, a self-described “pen-pal” of Herzog, told the president during his visit that “it’s important to support Ukraine.”
Jewish Slav Murderer:
Jew ZioAzovLensky is that perverted, along with his Jews of Palestine: Israeli military uproots thousands of Palestinian olive trees in West Bank
Jews: Palestinian Boys Allege Sexual Assault, Torture by Israeli Jailers
Palestinian teenagers kidnapped and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces during the genocidal war on Gaza accused their jailers of torturing and sexually assaulting them in a report published Saturday by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“They took me from the aid distribution site and transferred me to a hospital in Rafah, where I was interrogated for an hour,” one 16-year-old boy identified by his first name Sami, who was abducted on June 29, toldABC. “They stripped me and conducted a body search. Then, they loaded me into a jeep and transported me to a prison in Israel.”
“During the interrogations, they tortured us—handcuffing us, beating us with sticks, and using electric shocks,” the teen continued. “They did countless things to break us” (continue reading here).
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Jews Killing Africa Stream: Zyklon Blinken!
In the 1930s, at the peak of Jim Crow in the U.S. and Apartheid/settler-colonialism in Africa, the U.S. government claimed that the rise of transatlantic Pan Africanist thinking and political movements was the result of Russian propaganda aimed at provoking a “world Negro rising.”
Reports indicate that Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, was briefly suspended from X in mid-August 2025 after stating that Israel and the U.S. were committing genocide in Gaza. — NBC
“…The suspension lasted only about 15 minutes, but the event caused confusion and controversy.” reported by NBC News.
This is fucking NEWS? My fucking hemorrhoid cream-selling, Viagra-endorsing, Tampon-using National Broadcast Corporation!
[General Electric- NBC, Universal Studios
Disney-ABC, ESPN, Marvel Studios
Viacom- MTV, Paramount Pictures
Time Warner- CNN, TIME, Warner Bros
CBS- Showtime, NFL.com
And who could forget our friend;
News Corp- Fox, Wall Street Journal, New York Post ]
Listen to this Cunt — He won’t say Genocide, and pals up with fucking Germ Bernie: Ro Khanna Exposes AIPAC Pressure & Democratic Divide on Palestine
Remember, those fucking dirty MAGA Maggots, too — No evacuations to the USA of injured-maimed by Jews from Gaza: So says Cunt Trump!
Sadism 101! And this one has a Hispanic last name?
A more than 30-year resident of Columbus, a border town of around 1,300 people, González likes the Republican president, who has come to be known for his hard-line immigration policies. Immigrants deserve criticism for not fixing their legal status, she said. “ Everything that happens to us is our fault,” she added.
The port of entry to Palomas — one of three border crossings in New Mexico — is quiet compared to the much-busier Santa Teresa crossing an hour’s drive east. While there are a few miles of desert from the port of entry to Columbus, Palomas sits directly on the border, its school buildings dwarfed by the 30-foot-tall wall constructed during the coronavirus pandemic.
A few street vendors wheeled carts selling hats and street food on that late June day. Americans wearing tropical attire sipped margaritas in one of the few tourist establishments, the Pink Store, a kitschy restaurant and emporium showcasing artisanal crafts from throughout Mexico.
The main attraction for U.S. tourists, though, are the Mexican optometry and dentistry clinics and pharmacies that line the first few blocks along the border and main street. Beyond that, Puerto Palomas grows into mostly dilapidated residential blocks and unpaved roads.
A few blocks down Palomas’ main street, a human-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty overlooks the Mexican pedestrians from atop a building that holds a bar. González, who owns the building, placed the statue there “because I’m an American,” she said, laughing, adding she prefers the vivaciousness of Palomas streets to the U.S., where “you go home and watch TV.”
Another statue stands in the bare and colorful plaza outside the Pink Store: a bronze depiction of Pancho Villa shaking hands with U.S. Army Gen. John Pershing — a depiction of cross-border friendship that never happened.
[They have the same LaLaLandia Lie statue in El Paso, both my stomping grounds]
The two men never met. Though Pershing tried.
After Villa led a 1916 raid from Palomas across the border to Columbus, leaving roughly 17 Americans and at least 70 Mexicans dead, Pershing led a 10,000-troop military operation in pursuit of Villa, which after almost a year proved unsuccessful.
Francisco “Pancho” Villa, a Mexican revolutionary whose fondness for crossed bandoliers inspired years of south-of-the-border caricatures, died in a hail of gunfire in 1923. Protective of his image — his reported last words were, “Don’t let it end this way; tell them I said something important!” — Villa even played himself in a few D.W. Griffith-produced silent films. To this day his mustachioed likeness can be found on murals across Mexico.
When icons unnaturally perish, they’re sometimes remembered with posthumous souvenirs. Crucifixion relics, stakes from Joan of Arc’s bonfire, pill bottles from celebrity ODs, all are collectible. Villa, who was both famous and infamous, reportedly had his corpse dug up and dismembered. Some of the pieces went to Americans, perhaps as spoils of war (He had, after all, invaded the U.S. in 1916). Villa’s head is supposedly displayed at Skull and Bones, the notorious secret society of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Pancho Villa’s index finger was bent from years of gunfights.
For those of us not as well-connected, a more visible Villa option is available at Dave’s Pawn Shop in El Paso, Texas. Displayed in the storefront window, nestled in a reliquary bed of fluffy cotton among abandoned class rings and silver dollars, is Pancho Villa’s withered, blackened trigger finger.
“It’s been there longer than I’ve been around, and I’m 38,” said Clay Baron, grandson of Dave and current manager of the shop, which has been owned by the family since 1950. Whoever pawned the finger has been long forgotten, but may have come from Mexico, whose border is only a few blocks away.
The shriveled digit, smaller than you might expect, is crooked — as if Pancho was about to fire his six-shooter in his last, desperate moments. “It gets a lot of attention,” said Clay, who judged the grisly memento to be “more celebrated than reviled” to Texans. One of the Pawn Shop’s proudest possessions is a snapshot of First Lady Laura Bush, peering in the window at the finger.
Its price tag — $9,500 — seems more obligatory than serious. Would the Pawn Shop really sell the finger, even if someone walked in with the cash? Clay was coyly noncommittal. “There might be some tears,” he said, but we hope that he would find an excuse not to sell what has become an unofficial icon of El Paso — and the defining property of Dave’s Pawn Shop.
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The Jewish State of Murder, man, think — Valued at a reported $500 million, the tanker deal will be funded through U.S. financial aid. Think 52,631 fingers!
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Look, I won’t be getting mail from my Scottish cousin Molly anytime soon. Trump hates the little guy, for sure.
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Jews destroying the world, and Trump on Mashed Potato IVs: He couldn’t understand this geophysical information even with Bill Nye the Science Guy tutoring him:
As glaciers melt, scientists study potential for more violent volcanic eruptions
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Now take it to this level, and Trump would blow his semen pipe: Deep beneath the waves of the North Sea, the seafloor is behaving in an unexpected way.
There, scientists have discovered hundreds of vast sand mounds, some on the scale of several kilometers across, that, according to a release from the University of Manchester in the UK, “defy fundamental geological principles”.
These mounds pile atop structures known as sinkites, the result of a process called stratigraphic inversion, and never before have they been found in such large numbers.
“This discovery reveals a geological process we haven’t seen before on this scale,” says geophysicist Mads Huuse of the University of Manchester.
“What we’ve found are structures where dense sand has sunk into lighter sediments that floated to the top of the sand, effectively flipping the conventional layers we’d expect to see and creating huge mounds beneath the sea.”
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Trump is calling for forced marriages and forced adulting work camps!
Young adults are pushing back the big milestones Americans have historically associated with growing up — moving out of your parents’ house, getting a job, getting married and having kids.
The big picture: In 1975, about half of America’s 25– to 34–year–olds had done those things. Fifty years later, less than a quarter have, according to a census working paper out this month.
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It’s not California’s to call their any way: The Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel recently reacquired more than 1,000 acres of its ancestral land in San Diego County, the tribe announced Tuesday.
“There’s just a bunch of beautiful nature there, which is just so exciting to see get back into tribal ownership and care,” Geneva E. B. Thompson, deputy secretary for tribal affairs at the California Natural Resources Agency, told SFGATE by phone. The acquisition was funded by the agency’s Tribal Nature-Based Solutions program, which allocated $100 million to placing land back into indigenous stewardship via partnerships with various tribes across the state.
The Iipay Nation plans to open a cultural and educational center on the property called the Ewiinally Traditional Ecological Knowledge Center, the tribe wrote. The public will be able to visit the center along with other portions of the property, Thompson said. Hiking trails and campgrounds may also one day open on the land.
They have to pay for what was stolen from them???
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The Smithfield Foods plant in downtown Sioux Falls, S.D., shown in 2023, is no longer the largest emitter of toxic chemicals in the state.]
Indian Country? South Dakota industries released nearly 7.5 million pounds of chemicals in the air, water and land in 2024, according to recently released data from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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Oh, that hometown, small-town-loving, hick-valorizing Semen Drip Trump:
EPA rescinds protections for Iowa drinking water
The Environmental Protection Agency has overturned a 2024 ruling that sought to protect some of Iowa’s largest waterways that provide drinking water for half a million people.
Nitrate levels in many of Iowa’s rivers, lakes, and streams are already above federally accepted standards.
Based on the EPA’s standards, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources added seven of Iowa’s major urban drinking water supplies to a list of impaired waterways for exceeding safe nitrate concentrations.
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You get the shits when the bivalves eat your shit!
Mark Kapczynski had been looking forward to it for weeks.
He had VIP tickets for him and his wife to attend an upscale seafood festival in Los Angeles last December, where they would feast on the food he grew up eating as a kid in Boston.
Surrounded by shellfish presented raw on ice by some of the city’s best chefs, Kapczynski said he chose to sample a few “Fanny Bay” oysters harvested from the southern British Columbia coastline.
“After three or four hours, I wished I was dead, it hurt so much,” said Kapczynski, who was hit with severe abdominal pain, vomiting every 30 minutes for five hours. “It was the most painful thing I’ve ever felt.”
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And you thought it was all about Gaza in Semen Trump’s pinhead?
The Trump Administration Dismisses the Endangered Species List as ‘Hotel California.’ But There’s Far More to the Story
A small percentage of species protected by the law have ever recovered, but an even smaller fraction have gone extinct. With all the threats they face, including long-shrinking federal support, that’s an achievement, scientists note.
White Psychosis and Double Speak:
“The Endangered Species List has become like the Hotel California: once a species enters, they never leave,” Burgum wrote in an April post on X. He’s referring to the roster of more than 1,600 species of imperiled plants and animals that receive protections from the federal government under the Endangered Species Act to prevent their extinctions. “In fact, 97 percent of species that are added to the endangered list remain there. This is because the status quo is focused on regulation more than innovation.”
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Glad the InBred UnUnited Queendomers are working hard to stop the crime of, err, genocide? Nope. Loud Music.
Ban passengers playing loud music on public transport, say Tories
The Tories say they would change the law to so that nobody has to “endure somebody else’s choice of crap music” while on the move.
Have your say: Should passengers who play music out loud get £1,000 fines?
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The first Gazans? Native Americans:
A company that produces maps for hunters and hikers has partnered with a conservation nonprofit to create a map of Bureau of Land Management-managed parcels in the West that appear to be at risk of sale or “disposal,” including numerous parcels in Southern Idaho. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and onX published the data in early August. It highlights around 6 million acres of public land in 17 states that has been flagged as eligible for sale or disposal — a designation that doesn’t necessarily mean the land will be sold.
The Idaho parcels identified on the map have been flagged for potential sale for varying durations. Many of the parcels in the Boise area are attributed to a resource management plan for the Bureau of Land Management’s Four Rivers Field Office that was approved just last year. Others include management plans for the Owyhees and Challis issued in 1999, a plan for the Jarbidge area near Twin Falls dating to 2015 and the 1985 Medicine Lodge plan for parcels near the Wyoming border.
You’ve got to start thinking about this as an ecosystem. All these plantations might as well be growing corn. But if you want clean water, salmon, wildlife, and high-quality lumber, you’ve got to have a forest. — — Mike Fay, a Wildlife Conservation Society biologist and National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence
Evan was on my show, Finding Fringe, KYAQ FM 91.7 Listen to him and his enthusiasm for restoring wetlands, man. Right Down To The Riparian Dirty and Mud and Roots.
I did this piece for my gig at Oregon Coast Today, Deep Dive with Paul Haeder. Reprinted here on Dissident Voice, and in LA Progressive:
“Wetlands are actually unsung heroes. They nurture young fish, provide refuge to birds, bats, bugs, and sometimes to big mammals like panthers and bears. Mangroves, for instance, are trees and shrubs that inhabit coastal swamps, and they form peat that is home to clams, snails, crabs, and shrimp, and filter pollution out of the water. Their “interlaced roots protect tiny fish from ravenous jaws of larger fish, and even manatees and dolphins take refuge there.”
— Annie Proulx
Seeing a pair of bald eagles, a possum and a black bear just minutes into my trip to an interview is, to say the least, icing on the “Eco Cake.”
Especially now, with so many people in various stages of isolation and paranoia — restricting time outdoors has a double-whammy effect on our mental health, but also on the health of a community who expects in-person participation and face-to-face debate.
Virtual bird watching and online hikes just don’t cut it.
My assignment is to catch a 30-something scientist — coordinator of a non-profit — doing what he loves best: hands-on, in-the-field work, coordinating with landowners on projects to restore river refugia.
I met Evan Hayduk, 35, with Mid-Coast Watershed Council when I first moved to the coast from Portland. That was Jan 2019 at Oregon Coast Community College for a dual presentation as part of the Williams Lecture series.
“Shedding a Scientific and Humanitarian Light on Climate Change” was a one-two punch featuring Hayduk alongside Bill Kucha, well known artist and founder the 350 Oregon Central Coast.
That night unfolded as a contrast in personalities, age and emphases. Kucha is a 70-plus-year-old two-and three-dimensional artist who also composes and performs his music, guitar in hand. Hayduk opened up the talk with a detailed PowerPoint that emphasized the power of natural tidelands/wetlands to not only purify water for species like salmon, but also as natural mitigation for carbon dioxide absorption from fossil fuel burning.
Tidal wetlands are important habitats for salmon and a diversity of other fish and wildlife species. They also trap sediment, buffer coastal communities from flooding and erosion and perform other valued ecosystem services. — Hayduk
This is a story about a man, about his passion, about his vision to see a better world through several lenses, not exclusively through biology.
The first personality to greet me on the private land near Lobster Creek was Hayduk’s loyal two-year-old Australian shepherd, appropriately named, “Tahoma.”
“The original name for Mount Rainer,” Hayduk emphasizes. In fact, “Tahoma” is the Puyallup word for “Supreme Mountain,” and according to others, Tahoma translates to “the breast of the milk-white waters.” Or as Hayduk has heard, Mother Mountain.
Before his gig here with Mid-Coast Watershed Council (MCWC) starting 2016, Hayduk worked on Tahoma (Mount Rainier National Park) running the restoration crew at its native plant nursery.
Today, we are on one of four adjoining 40-acre chunks whose landowners have granted Hayduk and MCWC access to flood plain habitat and Little Lobster creek to “help restore once was a healthy complex riparian ecosystem.”
All water flows downstream
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. — John Muir
While the Alsea River is the mainstem of salmon runs, tributaries like Lobster Creek play a crucial role in salmon health. We are in an area known as Five Rivers, 25 miles east of Waldport. Alder, Cougar, Buck, Crab and Cherry creeks make up those five tributaries.
Within the Alsea Basin, the Lobster/Five Rivers watershed provides an important contribution to the populations of native fish. However, water quality problems, relating to stream temperature, have been documented in several sub-watersheds and along the main stems of both Lobster Creak and Five Rivers. The level of disturbance in the watershed has contributed to the degradation of quality habitat. [So states a 227-page scientific paper, from the Bureau of Land Management, “Lobster/Five Rivers Watershed Analysis.]
Hayduk is “eyes, ears and feet/hands on the ground” coordinator of this project. The day I show up, he has 164 home-propagated lupines and a couple of dozen Camus bulb starts. Zach and Casey from Lincoln Soil and Water Conservation District (LSWCD) soon arrive as part of their regular brush-clearing duties to fight back the canary grass and Himalayan blackberry bushes, both pernicious invasive species in our ecosystem.
They have an auguring machine to dig holes for all these pollinating plants Hayduk and his wife, Jen, grew in their Waldport home garden. Jen is the interim director of LSWCD.
Team players
The husband-wife team met in 2008 when they both worked for a backcountry conservation crew near Port Angeles. She’s from Pennsylvania, and Hayduk grew up in Woodinville (near Seattle) with his two older sisters and parents.
My dad was a general contractor in Seattle. My family had 1.5 acres and turned it into a formal English garden, so I spent a lot of time with plants.
He tells me he always knew he’d be working with plants as he got older. He did an undergraduate degree at Santa Clara University. He graduated from the Evergreen State College in 2012 with a master’s in Environmental Studies. One of his more unique programming experiences as a student was contributing to the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) in school in Olympia.
I gravitate toward the prison work he did more than eight years ago. On SPP’s website, the goal is clear: “SPP brings together incarcerated individuals, scientists, corrections staff, students, and program partners to promote education, conserve biodiversity, practice sustainability, and help build healthy communities. Together, we reduce the environmental, economic, and human costs of prisons.”
Hayduk’s work now is all about conservation, restoration and replicating the natural systems that contribute to streambeds and streambanks gaining structures that make them prime refuge for young salmon and other species to blend into a natural ecological community, or web.
Stream Fish, Flora
Now there are some things in the world we can’t change — gravity, entropy, the speed of light, the first and second Laws of Thermodynamics, and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity for our health and wellbeing. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere, for example.
–– Canadian scientist and TV series producer David Suzuki
It goes without saying rehabilitating an ecosystem like a Coastal Range temperate forest is much more complicated (and complex) than sending a projectile into space.
Evan Hayduk is one of these “forest triage experts” — he sees what 150 years of headstrong resource exploitation, unchecked razing of ecosystems and overharvesting have done and how difficult it is to put it all back together.
I met up with him on the land where he is rehabilitating riparian and river systems. This article was precipitated by my interest in Hayduk’s association with Mid-Coast Watersheds Council, most notably the monthly guest speaker series, “From Ridgetop to Reef.”
He also has just received an impressive laurel: American Fisheries Society’s 2020 Rising Star Award. This is a recognition of Hayduk’s work as someone early in his career through a partnership with NOAA and the National Fish Habitat Partnership:
“Hayduk was recognized for the quantity and quality of his restoration projects and his cooperative work with agencies and landowners.”
He sent me the entire package — the award, the letters of recommendation, projects he has worked on, his college transcripts. As I’ve learned in the Deep Dive column reporting/writing, we have some real gems on the coast. Hayduk could be a superstar in a larger non-profit and in a bigger demographic.
His job with MCWC — promoting freshwater and coastal fish conservation — is one-part grant writer, one-part field expert, one-part people manager, one-part public engagement/relationships impresario. He told me that he goes to landowners with those streams, creeks and rivers run through their properties in order to find ways to encourage stream health and restoration mitigation.
My time with him in early June focused on the process of dropping 60-foot trees into streams, crisscross fashion. This might seem counterintuitive as a best practice for stream health, but in fact, it’s a dynamic natural way to rebuild stream beds and create a functioning healthy floodplain and wetlands cohesion.
He tells me this replication of an ecosystem’s natural hydrodynamic process creates these weirs and in-stream structures that “spread the creek out,” keeping gravel beds intact all the while connecting cold water refugia to the floodplain.
The most challenging aspect of these projects comes down to humans.
“We need to work with land owners,” he tells me. “I sort of see myself as the glue between everybody.”
He shows me this riparian floodplain near the Upper Little Lobster Creek where he and his crew of volunteers have planted conifers, including cedars, and other plants to help revitalize the power of those trees to hold in soil. When the deciduous alders age out (around 60 years), they have a tendency to fall. Conifers live longer and they too will fall and act as natural “damming structures” to replicate what a natural stream should be: a haven for salmon and other aquatic species.
I study all these saplings growing inside “cages” that protect their early growth from deer.
Wood Wide Web
“The wood wide web has been mapped, traced, monitored, and coaxed to reveal the beautiful structures and finely adapted languages of the forest network. We have learned that mother trees recognize and talk with their kin, shaping future generations. In addition, injured trespass their legacies on to their neighbors, affecting gene regulation, defense chemistry, and resilience in the forest community. These discoveries have transformed our understanding of trees from competitive crusaders of the self to members of a connected, relating, communicating system. Ours is not the only lab making these discoveries-there is a burst of careful scientific research occurring worldwide that is uncovering all manner of ways that trees communicate with each other above and below ground.” — Peter Wohlleben, “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World”
The connection between healthy rivers, functioning floodplains, and healthy fish, Evan emphasizes while putting planting riverbank lupine (Lupinus rivularis) in clusters of four, is trees. I learned much of these interlinked processes while teaching and living in Spokane, working on issues around the Spokane River, a highly urbanized and suburbanized river. Those forested watersheds have much higher water quality. Trees also provide a wide variety of ecological services.
Hayduk sources logs from many places, including Georgia Pacific other for-profit outfits, land owners and from projects on BLM, State and National Forest lands.
While the tree canopy lessens the erosive impact of rain and slows the velocity of stormwater flowing towards the river, trees trap sediments that build the floodplain while the roots stabilize the riverbanks.
I jump into some “ponding” water just below one of the crisscross tree structures Evan and his volunteers had dropped into this moving water refugia, Little Lobster Creek. I was presented with nice stretches of fine sand and cul-de-sacs of great pebble beds, perfect habitat for salmon redds. Hayduk showed me fresh water mussels. Crayfish were scrambling in the shallows piercing the shadows underwater.
Hayduk emphasized that there are some healthy stream systems in our area where past disruptive logging practices and snag clearing have not been so impactful and permanent. However, the cost for this sort of project Hayduk is heading up tallies to $28,000 per acre, with invasive species, brush clearing and salvage log/wood placement as the large chunk of the bill.
The tree species that best work for the log weirs and dams are conifers, like Doug firs and cedar, that latter species having the added benefit of not rotting for decades while submerged.
It’s a no-brainer trees also provide shade for maintaining water temperature. To carry the analogy to the end point, we see fallen leaves, limbs and branches support food webs by providing food and habitat for insects that are food for fish, Hayduk states. Clean, cool water with more food equals bigger fish.
Nuances like growing alders on the flood plain or marsh plain encourages other species of trees to grow on the decaying fallen alder.
Looking at the ecosystem from a centuries-versus-a-few-decades perspective is important in understanding what Evan and others of his ilk are attempting. “Big conifers that fall help with grade control. Water tables rise. Conifers in the riparian areas can grow from 100 to 200 years before they fall into the creek.”
This concept of a “messy” stream refugia as being the most healthful for all species is anathema to the way most humans have thought about rivers. Scientists like Hayduk know fish get through any of the hurdles a natural stream environment presents them — even with huge logs and entire trees with root balls integrated into the water flow.
Big enough wood simulating log jams buy time to get refugia back to an interconnected vibrancy. Thus far, in this area, 28 structures have been laid on 2.4 miles of stream, Hayduk stated.
Fragility in a huge forest
He shows me areas where logging trucks came in and now the stream is bare of trees and also where channel incision had “down cut” incisions into the bedrock, not a healthy Coho or chinook refuge.
Again, this is a fragile complex system Hayduk and his cohorts work on. The floodplain is many yards beyond the actual stream channel. So, a 30-foot creek flood flow necessitates a 60-foot log or fallen tree.
The connection between fish, trees and rivers is now poised emerging in our urban areas as sound ecology and ecosystem management. Many cities, large and small, are recognizing the benefits of reestablishing the physical and emotional linkage between river, trees and the human community. For instance, San Antonio has its iconic River Walk, Chicago has just completed its riverfront, Washington DC has its Southwest Waterfront neighborhood, and Pittsburgh has reconnected neighborhoods to its three rivers via a network of urban trails.
We talk about the high turnover rate for positions like his own, as well as his wife’s at the Lincoln Soil & Water Conservation District.
His wife Jen knows the connection of little things put back into an ecosystem having global ramifications. She obtained her master’s degree at OSU in marine resource management.
Back to the glossary: Jen Hayduk could explain the power of blue carbon, which is elegantly illustrated by this marine plant species she was studying — seagrass (Zostera marina). These seagrass habitats provide important “ecosystem services,” including their ability to take up and store substantial amounts of organic carbon, known as “blue carbon.”
Again, the couple not only understands the fragility of homo sapiens as an individual species in a time of COVID-19, but how the cultural and economic activities can so easily be disrupted.
No more volunteers out in the field, Hayduk tells me, and many projects are on hold and grants stalled/delayed because of the lockdown.
The lack of human traffic might be temporarily beneficial to such threatened species as the Northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) and Oregon spotted frog (Rana pretiosa), but Evan Hayduk would rather spend time in the field with people throwing in to help him with his work with river and wetlands restoration.
His background in human rehabilitation through ecological health started with people locked out of society, in tiny prison cells.
“The effects of nature on incarcerated individuals is powerful,” Hayduk tells me. His mentor was Nalini Nadkarni, Ph.D., Founder of the Sustainability in Prisons Project. “Prisoners spend limited time outside. But the program demonstrated they are good with plant stuff. It’s a powerful therapeutic tool, working with the Oregon spotted frog raising them from tadpoles all the way to adult frogs and releasing them into the wild.”
For individuals like Hayduk, “the cure” is being outside, working with/within nature, and with people (Homo sapiens), who are also part of the ecosystems, whether we recognize it or not.
Right now, Jen and Evan are tending a huge Waldport home garden, pickled goodies like carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers. Jen has even gotten into exotic plant growing, selling one of her “children” on etsy.com for a pretty penny.
They are self-sufficient, well-traveled, share visions and know how to grow food. Traits we all might need when the you know what tied to global warming hits the fan.
Q&A: Evan Hayduk Style
Hayduk is a busy fellow, having put in 63-hour work weeks and rushing to harvest tons of garden produce and preserving them, an undertaking he and his wife Jen have been doing for several weeks. Still, though, Hayduk put down some compelling responses to my intrusive queries.
Paul: What are the three things you suggest citizens can do to help folks like you and nonprofits like MCWC do what you have to do to protect salmon habitat/refugia?
Evan: A. Help and protect beaver on the landscape. This is #1. Beavers do a better job to create and maintain salmon habitat than we could ever hope to. Tolerate beavers if you live on a property that has a stream. There are beaver solutions that make it easier to “live with beaver.” Inform your neighbors about the importance of beaver and join efforts to stop trapping and killing of this ecosystem engineer.
B. Get involved! Volunteer your time helping at a MCWC event (when we bring them back after COVID-19). If you live on a river or stream clear invasive species and plant natives. Or give us a call and we can help.
C. Donate! Donations to the MCWC are tax deductible! They go directly to helping us get projects on the ground that protect and improve salmon habitat. For a non-profit like ours, just a little goes a long way.
Paul: Who are two of your biggest influences in this work, in your life?
Evan: I think I’ll separate that out into two categories life/work.
Life: My parents. I grew up observing an absolute model of love, hard work and kindness. My dad worked his way from a carpenter to owning his own construction company. This instilled a work ethic that I couldn’t shake even if I tried. I spent weekends growing up working in our 1.5-acre garden, working with my dad to turn bare land into formal English gardens. If I don’t put in a good amount of time in any given weekend now, I feel like my weekend was wasted.
Work: I’ve been lucky along the way to have some great mentors. I mentioned to you Nalini Nadkarni, who I worked with at Evergreen with the Sustainability in Prisons Project. Nalini is the most amazing person I have ever been around. Her energy is contagious, and when she is in a room there is an electricity that is undeniable.
During my time at MCWC, I also have had amazing support from some Oregon Coast legends. Before retiring in November 2018, Wayne Hoffman was an absolute encyclopedia of information. I could walk into his office, ask about any given creek on the midcoast, and Wayne could ramble on forever about the stream, current conditions, past projects, habitat potential, etc. Fran Recht and Paul Engelmeyer, who started the MCWC back in the late 1990s, are both dedicated stewards of the environment and have devoted their lives to the midcoast. My success at MCWC is due in large part to Wayne, Fran and Paul, and the rest of the active MCWC board and community.
Paul: If you were to present to a high school class, what would your elevator speech introduction be to them.
Evan: Salmon and people aren’t that different. We all need cool, clean water to survive. The actions we take to restore salmon habitat — replacing bad culverts, placing large wood in streams, planting native trees and shrubs — all do more than just restore salmon habitat. These actions restore the natural systems and processes that give us idyllic images of cold-water streams rushing through lush, green mountain terrain. We are focused on salmon, but the work we do touches everything that lives on the landscape — from birds, to bees, to you and to me!
Paul: Ocean forest range here and Olympics are some of the best places on earth to capture carbon. What makes your work out here so vital to that part of the picture?
Evan: Carbon storage is story of our lifetime. We have pumped so much carbon into the atmosphere that we have offset the balance of the system. Protecting and restoring old growth forests, sinks for carbon, is vital. Restoring salt and freshwater marshes and wetlands is also crucial. We can keep carbon locked up in estuary mud or in a 10-foot diameter cedar tree, but if these systems that support these processes are not protected and restored, we are headed down a bad path.
Paul: What are two of your most observable successes thus far in your work here?
Evan: In the last couple years we have tackled some very big projects, though any large wood placed in a stream, any tree planted, or invasive species removed is a success. By far the most observable success was the North Creek culvert project. This project was completed in 2019, restoring full aquatic organism passage to 13 stream miles of pristine habitat on US Forest Service managed lands in the Drift Creek (Siletz) basin. The undersized culvert, installed in 1958, not only blocked adult and juvenile salmon from accessing habitat upstream, but also ceased river processes and degraded habitat above and below the culvert site. The complex project in a remote location was difficult, and 60 years of “Band-Aid” solutions failed because they didn’t address the real problem: the culvert itself.
Paul: A “land ethic” by Aldo Leopold says a lot — riff with it, as in these two quotes:
“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Evan: We as people often see ourselves as other, as separate from nature, but this couldn’t be more incorrect. We not only breathe the same air as all other beings on this earth, we have by every measure had a greater impact than any.
Paul: Again, if you as director got a $5 million check from nonprofit for your work, no strings attached, what would you use that for?
Evan: Well, a boy can dream, can’t he? I think acquisition of important habitat areas would be high on the list (other than just hiring other staff to help!). Though, giving a better wage and benefits package to our staff and work crew would be a no-brainer.
Paul: Give the young reader some spiel on why they might want to pursue a degree or degrees in the general field of environmental sciences tied to ecology during a time of COVID-19, dwindling budgets for these sorts of jobs and more and more tuition expenses.
Evan: I had a professor at Evergreen (Gerardo Chin-Leo) who liked to say one of my favorite expressions: “Science is the painful expression of the obvious”. He also liked to say “Ecology isn’t rocket science; it is way more complicated than that.” Everything in this world in inextricably connected, the clues are in the interactions of flora and fauna on the landscape. Uncovering these connections and understanding how the work we see today has evolved through millennia of interactions is incredibly enthralling (to me!). These times are hard (COVID), budgets are being slashed in this field, salaries in this line of work have never been great. However, the folks that choose this line of work have a greater calling. Understanding this complex world which we are a part of and working to restore ecosystems is more rewarding that any paycheck could ever be.
Paul: Wood wide web — In your own words, explain this concept, if you have any input around how this concept ties to what you are doing in the “preservation” field.
Evan: This gets at the complexity (it isn’t rocket science!) of the natural world. Above ground we see large trees, growing individually across the landscape. What we don’t see, is the complex system of roots, fungi and microbes below the soil that supports this vast forest. Tree talk to each other, conspire when drought is near, and share resources/nutrients through the fungal networks that have co-evolved with them over millennia. This is the original “community”, and our communities could get a lot of good out of better understanding how to work together towards a shared goal.
Paul: You are working in restorative ecology. Explain that.
Evan: We are working with a degraded landscape. We are also dealing with shifting baselines. Bad enough is the direct impact on habitat over the last 200 or so years, this has gone further to disrupt ecosystem processes that maintain what we think of as a functioning system. Restoring these processes is difficult, but if successful, process-based restoration can reset these systems to be self-sustaining. Though the impact can be quick, the restoration can take centuries. When we plant a tree for long-term recruitment of wood to a stream, it’s full impact won’t be felt for 100 or 200 years.
Paul: Then, you were working in a sort of restorative justice program at Evergreen tied to sustainability in prisons. Expand.
Evan: This is where I lean on the words of Nalini: the power of nature. Everyone who works with SPP sees the power of fresh air and getting your hands dirty. Working in a prison can be a dismal setting — windowless cells, limited outside time, fluorescent lights. This is not a restorative situation. There are major problems with the criminal justice system in this country, I don’t claim to be an expert on this. But I have seen the impact that building a greenhouse in a prison yard can bring. What the nurturing of a tiny plant from seed to flower can do for a person. We worked with prisoners to captive rear Taylor’s Checkerspot butterflies and Oregon spotted frogs in Washington. Watching these “hardened” criminals hand feed and raise these tiny creatures in a prison setting was restorative, for me, and for those individuals. The guys that raised the frogs made hats with “Cedar Creek (Prison) Frog Crew” printed on them, they wore them around the prison like badges of honor.
Paul: Where do you see yourself in 15 years? Location-wise, intellectually speaking, emotionally, and politically?
Evan: Oof. I’ve been so busy lately I’ve just been able to take it day by day. In 15 years, I’ll be 50. I have no idea where this world will be at that point, so I really can’t say where I’ll be either. Long term dreams are important, but right now I’m just thinking about how to get my projects on the ground for this summer…
Note: First appeared in Paul’s column, Deep Dive, in Oregon Coast Today.
Hawaii? A Dwindling Kalaupapa Population Honors 1st Exiles With Tributes And Tears
But first, a movie I viewed just last night. The fucking Dutch, man, the Dutch:
I was watching this fucking movie, The East, and of course, poor poor blond and Aryan Dutch soldiers raping and murdering brown people!
Psychosis of Whiteness: calling them all fucking monkeys, man. It’s in the Dutch DNA!
The Dutch West India Company (WIC) was the largest slave-trading company and established plantations in the Americas. They transported approximately half a million Africans across the Atlantic to colonies like Suriname and the Caribbean islands of Curaçao and St. Eustatius, primarily to work on sugar plantations.
Fucking psychotic cunts: William Blake, A Surinam Planter in his Morning Dress.
In the eighteenth century, nearly one-in-ten enslaved people in Suriname had fled their brutal working conditions to establish or join maroon communities, in attempts to live beyond the control of the surrounding slave society. Several maroon leaders, such as Alabi of the Saramaka, rose to prominence and sought independence for their communities by menacing plantation owners and through formal negotiations with colonial authorities.
Shortly after settling in the conquered New World, Spaniards began to use the word cimarrón, of debated etymology, to describe imported European domestic animals that had escaped from control and reverted to natural freedom. For obvious reasons the term was also applied in slave societies to escaped slaves living in freedom outside the world of the masters. It was translated into other masters’ languages as marrons or maroons. That the same word should also be applied by the Caribbean buccaneers to sailors expelled from their community and forced to live the life of nature marooned on some island suggests that freedom was not seen as a bed of roses.
Richard Price, whose Maroon Societies, together with a chapter of Eugene Genovese’s From Rebellion to Revolution provides the most convenient introduction to the subject, is at present the leading authority on marronage in general and on the Suriname maroons (“bush Negroes”), or rather on one of their communities, the Saramakas, to whom he has devoted many years of research. He has already written extensively about them, notably in his path-breaking First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People, an account of the Saramakas’ establishment and war of independence, based on written records and on their own orally transmitted “strongly linear, causal sense of history,” which is central to their identity and, incidentally, makes them fascinating to historians. Alabi’s World takes the story up after independence, as Saramaka society settled down, and it does so in the form of a “life and times” of one Alabi (1740–1820), who was supreme chief of his people for almost forty years. However, it contains enough introductory matter about the origins of the Suriname maroons to put readers into the picture; for, as the Saramakas say, “If we forget the deeds of our ancestors, how can we hope to avoid being returned to white folks’ slavery?”
The Guardian, in that tradition of quasi-literary movie review — ‘The canonisation of Apocalypse Now has resulted in a cinematic template for the psychological war epic where the battlefields on which indigenous people are brutalised are essentially a backdrop for white soldiers’ internal crisis. Covering the Indonesian war of independence through the viewpoint of the occupier, The East is yet another pale addition to the format, rehashing empty metaphors that are barren of emotional complexity, historical poignancy or visual ingenuity.
The basic history is this: as the second world war draws to an end, the Netherlands sends more troops to Indonesia, hoping to regain their colonial footing as the Japanese occupation of the islands loses steam. Among these fresh-faced recruits is the angelic-looking Johan de Vries (Martijn Lakemeier); unlike the other crass soldiers, De Vries is the “nice guy”, whose goodness manifests in maudlin details like giving biscuits to local kids. His sense of righteousness is driven by guilt; back home, his father is imprisoned as a Nazi collaborator. Still, De Vries will soon be corrupted by an authoritarian superior whose sadism only magnifies the horrors of war.
Ostensibly a critique of imperialism, The East inadvertently commits the same sins as the old empire once did, as Indonesian characters are no more than window dressing. During the bloated running time, indigenous people appear on screen only to be violated and massacred, their screams a mere decorative sound effect. As the film clumsily pairs scenes from De Vries’ life both during and after the war, he is given a degree of multidimensionality that is withheld from the Indonesian characters, who are invariably victims or barbaric aggressors. To travel all the way there only to make a tiresome Heart of Darkness pastiche is a waste.’
Amid reports of massacres throughout the country, in late October, Rusk and U.S. national security officials made plans to unconditionally provide weapons and communications equipment to the Indonesian military, while new US aid was organized in December for the civilian anti-communist coalition and the military. By February 1966, Green stated approvingly that “the Communists…have been decimated by wholesale massacre.”
Remember the origins of the Book of Genocide: Jews, man, New Jews of York City.
But perhaps the most enthusiastic of all the Times’ writers was Max Frankel, then Washington correspondent, now executive editor. “US Is Heartened by Red Setback in Indonesia Coup,” one Frankel dispatch was tagged (10/11/65). “The Johnson administration believes that a dramatic new opportunity has developed both for anti-Communist Indonesians and for United States policies” in Indonesia, Frankel wrote. “Officials…believe the army will cripple and perhaps destroy the Communists as a significant political force.”
After the scale of the massacre began to be apparent, Frankel was even more enthusiastic. Under the headline “Elated US Officials Looking to New Aid to Jakarta’s Economy” (3/13/66), Frankel reported that
the Johnson administration found it difficult today to hide its delight with the news from Indonesia…. After a long period of patient diplomacy designed to help the army triumph over the Communists, and months of prudent silence…officials were elated to find their expectations being realized.
Frankel went on to describe the leader of the massacre, Gen. Suharto, as “an efficient and effective military commander.”
Evil Jews live a long fucking life: Max Frankel, former New York Times top editor, dies at 94.
He was born in Gera, Germany, on April 3, 1930, according to the Times. His family fled Nazi forces and landed in the United States in 1940.
In a 1999 interview with Diane Rehm, Frankel discussed what it felt like to immigrate from his European home and to find his “tribe” among Jewish people in the States.
“I come here and even in the midst of all this freedom, I’m expected to fight the battle for my tribe,” Frankel told Rehm in 1999. “And when Israel gets in trouble, I’m expected to stand up for them whether they’re right or wrong.”
Max Frankel: The New York Times’ unflinching Jewish journalist
Jews in Paradise: Max Frankel sits front and center when he was the editor-in-chief of the ‘Columbia Daily Spectator,’ in 1952
Fast forward fucking 71 fucking years:
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and USC Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen was disinvited from a book event at 92NY, a cultural center and nonprofit Jewish organization in New York, after he signed an open letter condemning Israel.
“[92NY’s] language was ‘postponement,’ but no reason was given, no other date was offered, and I was never asked,” Nguyen, a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature, wrote in an Instagram post. “So, in effect, cancellation.”
The event scheduled for October 20 was supposed to feature Nguyen reading from his new memoir, “A Man of Two Faces,” followed by a conversation with Min Jin Lee, the author of “Pachinko.” According to Nguyen’s Instagram post, he and Lee held their event at McNally Jackson Books Seaport instead after receiving news of the postponement five hours before the planned event.
Nguyen signed “An Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine” in the London Review of Books’ blog, which called for an immediate ceasefire and the admission of humanitarian aid into Gaza. It was signed by 750 artists and writers based in the European Union, the United Kingdom and North America.
“Human rights groups have long condemned Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the inhumane treatment of — and system of racial domination over — Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state,” the letter said. “But we are now witnessing a new and even more drastic emergency. The UN expert Francesca Albanese has warned that Israel’s current actions in Gaza constitute a form of ethnic cleansing.”
In a statement quoted by The New York Times, 92NY said that the attack by Hamas on Israel has “absolutely devastated the community.”
“Given the public comments by the invited author on Israel and this moment, we felt the responsible course of action was to postpone the event while we take some time to determine how best to use our platform and support the entire 92NY community,” the statement read.
Following the event’s cancellation, Nguyen stood by his previous statements.
“I have no regrets about anything I have said or done in regards to Palestine, Israel, or the occupation and war,” Nguyen wrote in an Instagram post the day after the 92NY event was canceled. “I only regret that [event organizer Bernard Schwartz] and other staff at the Y have been so deeply and negatively affected by standing up for art and writers.”
Viet Nguyen: Those identities were always fused or confused. I definitely had the sense that I was American because I grew up completely surrounded by American culture and I absorbed the English language and saw myself very much as someone who belonged here in this country. On the other hand, I was also surrounded by Vietnamese people, had attended all these Vietnamese institutions and rituals and was reminded of the fact that I was Vietnamese by American culture, by things such as America’s movies about the Vietnam War, in which when I was watching them I identified with the American soldiers up until the point they killed Vietnamese people, and I realized I was also the gook in the American imagination, as well.
Steve Paulson: So, movies like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, even the Rambo movies?
Viet Nguyen: Oh, absolutely. I saw all of those and many more. For example, watching Platoon in the movie theaters, I was probably 16 at the time, and going along with the action and everything until this climactic battle where Vietnamese soldiers were being killed, and all of a sudden the audience erupts and cheers. I thought, “Where am I supposed to be in this particular scene? Am I supposed to be cheering the killing or am I supposed to be identifying with the person being killed?”
Steve Paulson: I want to come back to one of those movies, actually, because it figures in a major way in your book. Apocalypse Now. What kind of impact did that have on you, when you first saw it?
Viet Nguyen: I first saw it probably when I was 10 or 11 on the VCR, and it completely traumatized me. I was much too young to watch this movie, did not understand what was going on, but it left a deep imprint on my soul, basically. I still remember it vividly, to this day, particularly for a scene in which the American soldiers massacre a sampan full of innocent civilians. Obviously, this moment for the movie, is meant to signal the descent into darkness for all of these American sailors-
Steve Paulson: This is that scene where they go on a boat and suddenly some of the soldiers go a little crazy and they just start shooting this whole family on the boat.
Viet Nguyen: Right, they kill everybody. Not everyone’s dead. There’s a woman who still survives and the American sailors feel regretful and they want to rescue her but Martin Sheen, the character of Martin Sheen, has this mission to go kill Kurtz. He can’t let anything interrupt his mission, so he executes her. So, it is a turning point in the film, morally, for Americans and for Francis Ford Coppola. I understood that, but that left me so shaken that even 10 years later, in college, as I was recounting the scene to a film class, my voice would shake with rage and anger. This is testimony to the power of the movie and the power of art and the power of storytelling, that I respect that movie very much as being a great work of art. But, it’s also deeply problematic for someone like me, and it gave me the sense that I had to respond in kind, that this novel would be my revenge.
For the ʻŌiwi actors, their involvement in the project and helping to tell this particular story amidst a global pandemic was a deeply moving experience.
“As a Hawaiian woman it was a connection to the collective trauma that our people endured. I’m so grateful to be part of this incredibly powerful story. Our story,” Pavao Jones reflected.
“This story is one of the few triumphant stories from the terrible time of leprosy and the overthrow in Hawaiʻi,” said Watson. “Koʻolau and Piʻilani were powerful, strong-willed Hawaiians who rebelled against the intrusive provisional government and prevailed. They refused to bow down to the men that invaded our lands and banished our culture. The first time I read this story I felt very emotional and as I learned more, I felt an immense sense of pride as a Hawaiian.”
1893. The Hawaiian Kingdom has been overthrown by a Western power just as an outbreak of leprosy engulfs the tropical paradise. The new government orders all Native Hawaiians suspected of having the foreign disease banished permanently to a remote colony on the island of Moloka’i that is known as ‘the island of the living grave’. When a local cowboy named Ko’olau and his young son Kalei contract the dreaded disease, they refuse to allow their family to be separated, sparking an armed clash with brutal white island authorities that will make Ko’olau and his wife, Pi’ilani heroes for the ages.
Based on real-life historical events as told through the memoirs of Pi’ilani herself.
Banana Republic? Pineapples:
Fucking psychotic whites: Sanford B. Dole, who became the President of the Republic of Hawaii, after a pro-American coup d’état overthrew the Hawaiian monarch. His government secured Hawaii’s annexation by the United States. His cousin founded the pineapple company that would become the Dole Food Company.
Now? Plantation Tourism!!
Despite the economic significance of tourism in Hawaiʻi, the industry has led to environmental destruction and continues to displace Native Hawaiians as they are forced from neighborhoods as real estate prices climb. At statehood, Hawaiians outnumbered tourists two to one; today, tourists outnumber Native Hawaiians thirty to one. Prominent Native Hawaiian activist and nationalist Haunani-Kay Trask staunchly opposes tourism in the islands.
She writes, “On the ancient burial grounds of our ancestors, glass and steel shopping malls with layered parking lots stretch over what were once the most ingeniously irrigated taro lands, lands that fed millions of our people over thousands of years.”
Plantation tourism is the latest iteration of the anguish that has plagued Hawaiian people for over two centuries since the arrival of European explorers in 1778.
In the 1880s, American sugar and pineapple companies grew tremendously on the islands which at the time were subject to the rule of a native monarchy. The businesspeople had a problem with the royalty of the island, and in 1887, people who were affiliated with pineapple and sugar plantations forced Liliuokalani’s brother, who was king at the time, to sign a new constitution. The Bayonet Constitution, which was signed at literal gunpoint, reduced monarchy rule and mandated that only people of certain ethnicities and who were rich enough could vote.
Hawaiian island of Molokai. It was once the site of America’s largest leprosy colony, known as Kalaupapa. About 8,000 people from across the U.S. were quarantined there. For centuries, leprosy was a misunderstood disease. Many believed wrongly that you could catch it from a handshake. Thousands with the disease were taken from their families and exiled to leprosy colonies in the U.S.
And these Cornhusker Klinks and Alligator Alcatraz Trump Innovations come from what?
Few places in the world better illustrate the human capacity for endurance or for charity than the remote Kalaupapa Peninsula on the island of Molokai. The area achieved notoriety when the Kingdom of Hawai’i instituted a century-long policy of forced segregation of persons afflicted with Hansen’s disease, more commonly known as leprosy.
This mysterious and dreaded disease reached epidemic proportions in the islands in the late 1800s. At the time, there was no effective treatment and no cure. With new cases threatening to eradicate the native population and no knowledge of what caused the disease, officials became desperate. To government officials, isolation seemed the only answer. In 1865, the Legislative Assembly passed, and King Kamehameha V approved, “An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy”, which set apart land to isolate people believed capable of spreading the disease.
This place was chosen to isolate people with, what was at that time, an incurable illness. The peninsula was remote and fairly inaccessible. To the south, the area was cut off from the rest of Molokai by a sheer pali, or cliff, reaching nearly 2000 feet. The ocean surrounded the rest of the area to the east, north and west. Boat landings were only practical in good weather only. Hawaiians had inhabited this peninsula for over 900 years, so the land could support people. Vegetables such as sweet potatoes, taro, and fruits could be grown in the valleys and on the flatlands. The ocean and tidal pools provided seafood. Fresh water was available from Waikolu and Waihanau valleys.
Once the decision was made, and the law passed, the government proceeded to purchase lands and move the Hawaiian residents to other homes, severing their long connection to the land. The village Kalawao on the isolated Kalaupapa Peninsula thus became the home for thousands of leprosy victims subsequently moved here from throughout the Hawaiian Islands. On January 6, 1866, the first group of nine men and three women were dropped off at the mouth of Waikolu Valley, the closest accessible point to Kalawao on the southeast side of the peninsula. By October of the same year, 101 men and 41 women had been left to die at Kalawao.
Gathered in the corrosive salt air at the Kalaupapa pier, a dozen people listened to a moving Hawaiian language reading of the royal government edict that criminalized Hansen’s disease and outcast those afflicted by it to Hawaii’s leprosy colony.
Former Hansen’s disease patient Meli Watanuki, 88, wiped her eyes with a tissue pulled from the pocket of her puffer vest.
“This is a celebration of our people who are buried here,” she said Friday. “It reminds me of my husband who is buried here, too. I remember all my friends.”
The solemn ceremony marked the anniversary of the arrival of the first dozen patients on Jan. 6, 1866 under a measure to protect the rest of society from a then-little understood and incurable infectious disease.
The ceremony featured a dozen lei etched with the names of the first Hansen’s disease patients who were forcibly removed from families and taken to the isolated Kalaupapa peninsula on Jan. 6, 1866. Brittany Lyte/Civil Beat/2023
The event was part of Kalaupapa Month, a designation enacted by former Gov. David Ige last year to honor and remember the thousands of disease-stricken victims who were brutally separated from their families and forced into permanent exile.
Hansen’s disease, commonly referred to as leprosy, is an infectious disease that, if left untreated, can cripple the hands and feet and cause blindness. The disease was long feared to be highly contagious, but it’s now known that it does not spread so easily.
After the discovery of a cure, the Hawaii state government in 1969 lifted the quarantine that for over a century forced roughly 8,000 people to live in isolation at the foot of the world’s tallest sea cliffs. But many former patients chose to remain in Kalaupapa voluntarily as full-time residents.
[Sister Alicia Damien Lau, a Catholic nun who lives in Kalaupapa for the benefit of the last living former Hansen’s disease patients, stands outside the St. Philomena Catholic Church in Kalawao.]
+—+
There is no cure for the living dead:
“Tectonic shift in power”: How MAGA pastors boost Trump’s campaign
And, well, the big missing piece below? JEWS. The Rich Cunts of Talmud!
David Swanson: Roots Action Network, Let’s Try Democracy, Talk World Radio
“The task is… not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.” – Erwin Schrodinger
His TED Talk on how to think “against” war and for “peace” is an elevator speech worth listening to:
But you get 60 minutes with David and Paul on Paul’s Finding Fringe: Voices from the Edge. Oct. 8, but here NOW.
Ahh, the War College: [The National War College mission is to educate joint, interagency, and international leaders and warfighters by conducting a senior-level course of study in national security strategy, preparing graduates to function at the highest levels of strategic leadership in a complex, competitive, and rapidly evolving strategic environment.]
Of course, every college, university and junior college with an ROTC program, any school with a drone tech department, and now ALL tech departments are WAR Colleges.
Note:
There are ROTC programs available at over 1,700 colleges and universities across the United States. The programs are offered through the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force.
The breakdown of ROTC programs by military branch is as follows:
Army ROTC: The Army is the largest branch of the ROTC program, with units at over 900 academic institutions. However, it is also affiliated with more than 1,000 colleges and universities, including “crosstown” relationships where students attend a nearby unit.
Air Force ROTC: AFROTC has 145 host detachments and affiliations with over 1,100 other institutions through crosstown agreements. It trains future officers for both the Air Force and the Space Force.
Navy ROTC: The NROTC program has 63 host units/consortiums at 77 schools and has crosstown agreements with over 160 colleges and universities. The Navy ROTC program also handles training for the Marine Corps.
Marine Corps ROTC: The Marine Corps does not have its own separate ROTC program, but a Marine Corps option is available through the Navy ROTC.
Space Force ROTC: The newest military branch trains its officers through the Air Force ROTC program.
The number of programs is greater than the number of host universities due to “crosstown” agreements that allow students from nearby campuses to participate in a host university’s ROTC unit.
Will humans soon be entirely “out of the loop” for certain U.S. military actions in remote parts of the world? “Battles Beyond the Horizon,” a documentary by two journalism faculty members, poses this question and explores technology, AI and the future of war.
Reynolds School of Journalism Associate Dean and Professor Kari Barber directed the film alongside producer, cinematographer and journalism senior lecturer Nico Colombant.
“Battles Beyond the Horizon” is set mostly in the Nevada desert at Creech Air Force Base, about 45 miles outside of Las Vegas. The base is used for training and operation of daily overseas operations of remotely piloted drone aircraft systems with missions across the globe.
Yeah, quite a long way baby:
Monsters. Blithey discussing the bug splat and triple taps of the hired guns, drone pilots:
Subject matter expertise was provided by Dr Lindsay Clark, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sussex, Major Philippe from the French Air Force currently serving in SHAPE’s Joint Targeting Branch and Mr Ross McKenzie, former Royal Air Force Wing Commander and current Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Officer at NATO’s Defence Investment Division.
Dr. Clark opened the session by sharing her research on the gendered aspects of drone usage and associated discourses. Her research, informed by former US, British, and Australian drone crews, illustrates the implicit gender categorisation in conflict zones. Terms such as “military-aged males” are often used for potential combatants, while “women and children” are assumed to be civilians, influencing targeting decisions and increasing the risk of misidentifying threats. She highlighted that this ingrained assumption underscores a broader thought process affecting how entire campaigns are constructed and how civilian casualties are perceived.
Dr. Clark examined the gendered language around drone warfare, explaining that drone pilots and crews are often viewed differently than fighter pilots. For instance, references to a “PlayStation mentality” or the idea that drone warfare lacks the physical risks of traditional combat subtly diminish the heroism and dedication of drone operators. This language casts drone warfare as “less masculine” and trivialises the emotional toll on operators. Furthermore, she noted that female drone operators are often portrayed as emotionally unstable, a depiction not commonly attributed to their male counterparts. This gendered expectation not only affects perceptions but also impacts the mental health and retention of personnel, as they may feel less inclined to seek psychological support due to a fear of appearing weak.
Next, Maj. Philippe outlined the technical complexities of drone targeting, emphasising that the term “drone” is overly simplistic. These remotely piloted systems can operate at various altitudes and drop munitions similar to fighter aircraft. He outlined processes such as Positive Identification (PID), Rules of Engagement (ROE) and Collateral Damage Estimation (CDE), each designed to minimise harm to civilians. Four guiding principles – distinction, proportionality, military necessity and humanity – help assess whether a strike is justifiable. In this framework, “collateral damage” is considered legally permissible if it is not excessive in relation to military objectives.
Pattern-of-life analysis, a critical tool used by remotely piloted systems, examine a target’s environment and behaviours to prevent misinterpretations that might lead to unnecessary casualties. However, Maj. Philippe noted that the risk of civilian harm remains, especially when women and children are deliberately placed in harm’s way as a tactic of deception. Common factors leading to targeting errors include cultural misunderstandings, poor analysis, psychological biases and behaviour misinterpretation, making it essential to integrate diverse perspectives, including gender, in the decision-making process.
Major Philippe noted that targeting decisions are traditionally made by the Commander and Legal Advisor (LEGAD), but now often include input from a Political Advisor (POLAD) and Gender Advisor (GENAD). GENADs play an increasingly significant role in targeting boards, contributing insights that can help assess the broader effects of military actions on men, women, boys and girls. This expansion of viewpoints helps commanders consider potential secondary effects, such as the impact of disrupted water supplies or other basic resources on vulnerable groups.
Mr McKenzie challenged the media’s use of the term “drone” which he argued implies an autonomous robot, obscuring the fact that a team of humans is operating the system. He noted that the language choice can deflect accountability, as public perception often associates automation with impersonal, robotic decision-making rather than a crew’s calculated judgment. He instead suggested the use of terms like ‘Unmanned Aircraft System’ or ‘Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems’.
This human aspect introduces psychological challenges. Mr McKenzie highlighted that pilots and analysts often work long, intense shifts followed by an abrupt transition to their civilian lives at home, a pattern that can lead to emotional detachment. This lifestyle imposes a unique psychological toll.
Another area of concern Mr. McKenzie raised is the rise of ‘swarming’ technology, where multiple drones operate together autonomously. These true ‘swarms’ could change combat drastically, allowing for complex collaborative tactics. He suggested that while many Nations prioritise keeping humans “on the loop” in decision-making, the potential shift toward entirely autonomous combat poses ethical questions and gender considerations that should inform policy as technology evolves.
Looking ahead, NATO’s policy indicates that within a decade, human pilots may no longer fly fighter planes. As drone technology advances, so too must the ethical frameworks and societal perceptions that govern its use. The perspectives shared by Dr. Clark, Maj. Philippe, and Mr. McKenzie underscore the urgent need to examine the gendered dimensions of drone warfare. Integrating gender perspectives into both operational planning and public discourse can protect personnel and help them make more informed decisions that recognise the full spectrum of impacts on combatants and civilians.
Clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Peter Schaapveld has previously explained how children in the impoverished country are “traumatized and re-traumatized by drones,” and described one young girl whose “dreams are of dead people, planes and people running around scared.”
Kat Craig, Legal Director of UK-based human rights group Reprieve, stated that Yemeni “President Hadi’s agreements with the US are trumping Yemen’s responsibility to protect its children. Instead of allowing the U.S. to bomb his country to pieces and then setting up a recovery center, President Hadi should listen to his Parliament and stop the drone strikes.”
In December, the Yemeni Parliament called for an end to U.S. drone strikes on the country following a strike that targeted a wedding party and killed a dozen people. Evidence gathered by Reprieve has forced the administration to investigate the strike.
2014 has brought a continuation of U.S. drone strikes on Yemen, with a Yemeni farmer the being the first known civilian casualty on Wednesday.
Baraa Shiban, Reprieve’s Yemen project co-ordinator, wrote in an op-ed this week:
Our President may reassure the U.S. of his support for drone strikes, but he does so in complete contradiction to the Yemeni people’s wishes. This year, two of Yemen’s greatest democratic institutions made this clear. Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference — praised by Obama as a “historic” institution — and the Yemeni Parliament have both voted overwhelmingly to ban the use of drones.
For a country so often divided, this unanimity from Yemen’s key democratic bodies shows the strength of public opinion against drones. But the people’s cries have been met only with more missiles raining down from the skies above. How can we in Yemen build our fledgling democracy when our collective will is ignored by Western democracy’s most powerful proponent?
I didn’t get to talk about much of David’s background, growing up back east, even going to school with Ollie North’s daughter. He’s been asked “how did you become a peace activist” a hundred times. You can go read that here:
On November 10, 2024, Swanson was awarded the Real Nobel Peace Prize by the Lay Down Your Arms Foundation in Oslo, Norway. Swanson was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. He was also awarded a Beacon of Peace Award by the Eisenhower Chapter of Veterans For Peace in 2011, and the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award by New Jersey Peace Action in 2022, and a Global Peace Leadership & Excellence Award in 2024.
The short version of this is: For some reason I don’t like to accept lies and nonsense from figures of authority, and that leaves me seeing war as the worst thing around.
I’ve been asked a number of times to write chapters for books on “how I became a peace activist.” In some cases, I’ve just apologized and said I couldn’t. For one book called Why Peace, edited by Marc Guttman, I wrote a very short chapter called “Why Am I a Peace Activist? Why Aren’t You?” My point was basically to express my outrage that one would have to explain working to end the worst thing in the world, while millions of people not working to end it need offer no explanation for their reprehensible behavior.
Books books books:
NATO What You Need to Know (2024). Medea Benjamin and David Swanson. OR Books.
The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace it With (2023). David Swanson. ISBN 979-8-9869811-0-9
Snippers Saves the World (2021). David Swanson. ISBN 978-1734783704
Leaving World War II Behind (2021). David Swanson. ISBN 978-1734783759
20 Dictators Currently Supported by the U.S. (2020). David Swanson. ISBN 978-1734783797
Curing Exceptionalism (2018). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0998085937
War Is Never Just (2016). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0998085906
War Is A Lie (2010, 2016). Just World Books. ISBN 978-1682570005
Killing Is Not A Way of Life (2014). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083061
War No More: The Case For Abolition (2013). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083054
Tube World (2012). Illustrated by Shane Burke. David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083047
The Military Industrial Complex at 50 (2011). Editor and contributor. David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083078
When The World Outlawed War (2011). David Swanson. ISBN 978-0983083092
Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (2009). Sevent Stories Press. ISBN 978-1583228883
The 35 Articles of Impeachment (2008). Introduction. Feral House. ISBN 978-1932595420
We coursed around many topics tied to economic sanctions being worse in terms of “body counts” than kinetic war.
Today, economic sanctions are generally regarded as an alternative to war. But for most people in the interwar period, the economic weapon was the very essence of total war. The initial intention behind creating the economic weapon was not to use it–economic sanctions were intended to be a form of deterrence. In this excerpt from The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, Nicholas Mulder looks at the history of the use of economic sanctions in wartime and elaborates on their effectiveness and consequences.
Can war be banished from the earth? Throughout modern history, world peace has been a powerful ideal. It has also been one of the most elusive. Each major war produced its share of cynics as well as visionaries. Pessimists saw war as an inescapable part of the human condition. Optimists viewed growing wealth, expanding self-government, and advancing technology as drivers of slow but steady moral progress. This veering between hope and desolation took on a new urgency after the unprecedented destruction of World War I. The victors created a new international organization, the League of Nations, which promised to unite the world’s states and resolve disputes through negotiation. The collapse of the global political and economic order in the 1930s and the outbreak of a second world war have made it easy to dismiss the League as a utopian enterprise. Many at the time and since concluded that the peace treaties were fatally flawed and that the new international institution was too weak to preserve stability. Their view, still widespread today, is that the League lacked the means to bring disturbers of peace to heel. But this was not the view of its founders, who believed they had equipped the organization with a new and powerful kind of coercive instrument for the modern world.
That instrument was sanctions, described in 1919 by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson as
“something more tremendous than war”: the threat was “an absolute isolation . . . that brings a nation to its senses just as suffocation removes from the individual all inclinations to fight . . . Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no need for force. It is a terrible remedy. It does not cost a life outside of the nation boycotted, but it brings a pressure upon that nation which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist.”
As a pacifist, David is consistent on why war against Israel would fail humanity, let alone Gazans, on a grand scale:
Here’s David:
But here’s the key question. What the bloody hell would I recommend instead? I would recommend two types of things, both difficult and with no guarantee of success, but with a significant chance of success. One type of thing is stuff that has not been tried yet. The other is vastly more of stuff that has been tried for years now. The war-as-last-resort crowd always rely on the notion that even a token effort, much less a major one, at something other than war makes war the only option. We’re about to hear, for example, that peace negotiations have been tried and failed for Ukraine, even as neither side proposed to ever compromise in the slightest and the neutral arbiter in the White House promised to keep the weapons flowing to one side. People have made heroic efforts for peace in Gaza. People are exhausted from all those efforts. But some of those efforts have worked and could be multiplied a-thousand-fold. Countries and companies have been forced to divest and to stop arming Israel, and more could be. Media outlets have been forced to convey bits of reality, and public opinion has swung dramatically. These facts do not make up a rosy, happy, hopeful picture. They’re sad little semi-wins for a team having a record-bad season. But they are what you can build on. If one dock can block shipments, all docks can. If one pundit can recognize a genocide years too late, all can. If one government can BDS Israel and its suppliers, all can. If a few aid ships can be sent, hundreds can. If some governments can commit to arresting Netanyahu, more can. Nobody’s proposing we give up on the climate struggle and join the people shooting guns at storms; and that struggle has been going a lot longer than this one.
But what hasn’t been tried yet? Of the thousands of tactics of nonviolent activism, most have of course not been tried. But the key tool especially relevant here is UNARMED civilian defense. Here is a leading expert proposing just that. Please read his proposal carefully. One minor point: he quotes Francesca Albanese at greater length than does the pro-militarism paper discussed above, which claims without evidence that she supports “military intervention.”
Has exactly what is needed here been done before with Unarmed Civilian Defense? No. But it has not yet been tried here either. War is NOT the last resort. Unarmed action builds on a stronger success record than armed “interventions” or armed “peacekeeping.” It also has the following interesting advantage over “military intervention.” The more we put into unarmed civilian defense, the more likely it is to succeed (right up to the extreme in which millions of people are involved and success is guaranteed), whereas the more we put into escalating the war with an “intervention,” the more likely the war is to do more damage (right up to the extreme of killing all life on Earth).
Anything countering the genocide and planned starvation and eco/scholastic/cied of the Jewish State of Israel would be an act of war. They board sailboats with a few provisions in international waters.
But here’s the thought experiment:
Naval boats with a container ship or two just heading to Gaza FILLED with construction equipment, portable hospitals, drip irrigation food growing systems, medicines, and more.
An international force, and if a navy ship is used to escort the supplies, then so be it. Show via video that the cargo is peaceful means cargo, and alas, just head to Gaza.
Dunkirk but way more sophisticated and programmatic:
Fuck Israel: Flood the shores of Gaza with AID and AIDES.
While an exact, precise number is unavailable, maritime traffic analyses suggest over 3,000 vessels of various types are typically in the Mediterranean Sea at any given time. The Mediterranean is a very busy waterway, handling a significant portion of global shipping, but the exact total fluctuates daily and includes commercial cargo ships, ferries, fishing vessels, and yachts.
Key factors and data points:
High Traffic:The Mediterranean Sea is a major international shipping corridor, experiencing high levels of vessel traffic daily.
At Any Given Time:Studies show more than 3,000 vessels are often present, indicating substantial continuous activity.
Diverse Fleet:The vessels include large container ships, tankers, ferries, and smaller recreational yachts, contributing to the overall count.
Yachts:A significant number of yachts, particularly large ones over 30 meters, are also present, with a large concentration on the French Riviera during the summer months.
Make this a peaceful priority, then, World Without War:
Some 700 tons of the aid is from Cyprus, purchased with money donated by the United Arab Emirates to the so-called Amalthea Fund, set up last year for donors to help with seaborne aid. The rest comes from Italy, the Maltese government, a Catholic religious order in Malta and the Kuwaiti nongovernmental organization Al Salam Association.
REPARATIONS!
Resistitution:
This post is the conclusion of a three-part series: What Will Gaza Become After Genocide? Using the Counterfactual Method to Evaluate Three Post-Genocidal Futures. You may access Part 1 here, where I argued that the genocide Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinians is central to the zionist ethos which, like other settler-colonial movements, seeks to remove the native from coveted lands. In the second part, available here, I explore a scenario where Europe actually complies with international law. As many have cautioned, even European legal compliance would leave Palestinians at risk, where rights are affirmed without enforcement, and violations recognised but not remedied. I turn now to a Palestinian Freedom Dream.
By August 2025, the world was in agony as Israel engineered the starvation of the people of Gaza, images of backbones and protruding ribs breaking hearts and exposing zionism’s final descent into barbarism. UN agencies confirmed that Gaza faced devastating food scarcity, having breached two of three famine thresholds. Hundreds of thousands of children faced acute malnutrition, their bodies withering, waiting in queues under the scorching sun for hours for a single meal, only to be gunned down by Israeli soldiers posing as humanitarians. At the same time, settlers in the West Bank capitalised on the chaos, burning orchards and poisoning wells, seeking to dismantle Palestinian agriculture destroying, among others, Hebron’s only seed bank. By the end of the year, the grotesque irony was inescapable to everyone, even liberals: the heirs of the people starved in German concentration camps were replicating Nazi tactics with remarkable determination. It was this obscenity—infants dying of thirst and parents boiling weeds to survive—that finally wrecked the myth of zionism as a moral project, with any claims to virtue crushed under the rubble of Gaza’s bombed hospitals, schools, bakeries, and bodies. It was in this breaking moment that two figures plotted an exit.
It began with a balled-up tissue, casually tossed into a prison cell. Marwan Barghouti, entering his third decade in captivity, unfolded the note to find a plea from Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister, then a political outcast: “The occupation has poisoned us both. Let us imagine its end.” Olmert, once unapologetic about settlements, led a clandestine coalition of dissidents—historians like Omer Bartov, legal scholactivists like Neve Gordon, and even former Shin Bet agents who’d grown disgusted of their own shadows. Their message was simple: zionism had reached its natural conclusion—a death cult devouring its own. As did others, Olmert recognised that two-state solution was dead and buried. Even the West’s belated push for Palestinian statehood could not resuscitate it; the only viable path that remained was a single state, built on return, restitution, and cohabitation.
Barghouti was rightly sceptical, wondering if this was another ploy, a factional struggle between fascist zionism and (il)liberal zionism. Perhaps the only thing ringing louder than his alarm bells was the requiem playing in the background, heralding the death of Palestine’s present and its future. He decided to take a chance, responding cautiously but hopefully.
What followed were months of encrypted messages, covert meetings in Cape Town and Beijing, and a series of trade offs, each more painful than the last. In August 2026, news of the secret talks broke, striking Palestinian and Israeli societies—and much of the world—like a sledgehammer. Eager for such a moment, a global solidarity movement erupted like wildfire: BDS escalated to full scale embargoes; ports turned away Israeli ships (some dock workers sunk them); Hollywood stars abandoned Marvel. Karim Khan, cleared of all suspicion earlier that year, immediately requested arrest warrants for most of Netanyahu’s cabinet (the investigations into the support offered by Starmer, Macron, and von der Leyen are ongoing). Zionism had become so addicted to land theft that it could no longer hide behind propaganda, swiftly collapsing under the weight of disgrace and shame brought about by the Great Famine of 2025. The number of Israeli deserters multiplied as they sought refuge from accountability for scores of dead children (alas for them, the world would not overlook the brutalities inflicted and many dual citizens ended up in national prisons). In Gaza, ceasefires held not because of diplomacy, but because the Americans, alone, could no longer sustain the armament supply chains.
On the day the walls fell, it was not governments but grandmothers who led the way. Palestinian elders crossed checkpoints clutching rusted keys and deeds from 1948, while Israeli activists used construction cranes—once tools of settlement—to dismantle the wall. Domestic support for the settlers, already on life support, collapsed once they began shooting fellow Israelis. In Haifa and Jaffa, families returned to homes now occupied by third-generation Israelis; some settlers fled to Canada and Australia, much as South Africans did when that state was liberated from their version ethno-chauvinism. Others stayed, forced to vacate the stolen homes they previously claimed as their own. [Some years later, Daniella Weiss was found hiding in a basement in London, and was swiftly extradited to Palestine to stand trial for her instigation of that final massacre.] The Knesset was dissolved, substituted by a transitional council comprised of Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and several Israeli anti-zionists as well (returning Palestinians would be eligible for office once they completed their naturalisation process). Barghouti and Olmert reached a compromise with Meshal: Hamas would disarm in exchange for the proscription of Otzma Yehudit, Hatzionut Hadatit, and Noam and the handover of Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Moaz to the Hague where they would join Netanyahu and Gallant to stand trial for their reign of terror.
The prisoners came next. Raised to the sound of cell doors and fluorescent hum, thousands emerged from Israeli jails, blinking at the sun, their anxiety broken by embraces and endless unspent love. Flags were fleeting, as were anthems and chants—instead, the air was filled with voices and screams and laughter as they discovered one another, some for the first time. Zionism’s greatest fear had been realised: Palestinians survived while zionism was on its last leg.
In al Quds, Palestinian and Jewish youth scrubbed racist graffiti from the Old City walls; in Gaza, fishermen launched boats unchained by naval blockades. The new parliament, when it convened, did not debate “peace” but land rights. Land commissions documented thefts dating back to 1948; reparations were paid in stolen orchards and the rebuilding of demolished villages. The two-state solution was archived as a footnote, replaced by a single democracy stretching from the river to the sea—not as a slogan, but a legal fact. Israeli settlers, at least those who stayed, were granted amnesty if they surrendered their rifles, testified about the crimes they committed (murder, rape, and famine were excluded), and provided adequate reparations. Those who did, now queued for Palestinian passports, their birthright of supremacy dissolved like the passbooks of apartheid South Africa.
Zionism died as all ethno-chauvinist projects die—when the people marked for elimination hold on, when the ideology blushes before it own propaganda, and when the world runs out of excuses to look away. When Barghouti and Olmert signed the new constitution, the latter quoted a Hebrew prophet: “You have been told what is good: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.” Barghouti, for his part, offered a Shona proverb: “The ax forgets; the tree remembers.” Each phrase hung in the air, epitaphs for dead ideologies and its victims, a dual reminder that hierarchies are always on borrowed time.
Today, the checkpoints have been reconstituted as museums, memorials for those who did not see Palestine’s liberation. Settlements, no longer fearsome, have been renamed in honour of martyrs and are now being desegregated. While records of the famine still shock the soul, it is now taught not only as a human tragedy but as both reckoning and turning point. Zionism, you might say, learned a key lesson before its demise: no people can be caged forever.
+—+
Listen to David and Me as we course through some sticky questions of peace and peace activism, sanctions, and the limits of war but the power of the war lords, WALL Street, City of London, Brussels and Switzerland and the Emerites.
SCALE this up for 2 million in Gaza and Palestine.
In 2011 a documentary called Remote Area Medical followed Remote Area Medical — RAM® to a clinic in Bristol, Tennessee. The documentary focuses on RAM’s patients and what services they need from the RAM Clinic. This award-winning documentary is now streaming for FREE on Tubi.
The documentary follows many patients on their treatment journey as they attend the clinic. Starting in the patient parking lot, the documentary crew talks to patients that have been sleeping in their cars for days for the opportunity to be seen by medical professionals and receive care for free. Many of these patients brought food and provisions to allow them to stay in the parking lot until the clinic opened at 6 A.M. on Friday morning. They chose to stay in the parking lot to guarantee their place in line because RAM Clinics are first-come, first-served until the clinic reaches capacity.
The cost of healthcare is debilitating for many, and they are forced to go without necessary medical, dental, and vision care. In the documentary patients discuss the difficulties affording the care they need because they do not have health insurance or if they do have insurance, they cannot afford the insurance’s co-pay.
“The thing that weighs on me the most is, we have people in desperate need within our borders. Remote areas and medicine? We don’t have to go too remote,” said one RAM Volunteer.
One older patient said to one of RAM’s volunteer providers that he had not been to a doctor since he was a teenager; this patient did not know that he had been experiencing high blood pressure. Others had not gotten a new pair of glasses in as many as seven years, and their inability to see was impacting their ability to work.
The patient stories in the documentary show how prevalent the need for free healthcare is throughout the country. No matter where RAM goes in the U.S., we find patients in need of our services. The clinic in Bristol, Tennessee served more than 2,000 patients, providing more than $606,000 worth of free care in three days.
“These patients are real. Their needs are real. It’s a reminder of the people in America who have no access to the system,” a RAM Volunteer said.
The documentary also shows the emotional connections that are often formed between the patients and the healthcare professionals at RAM Clinics. One dentist shared that seeing patients crying from the pain relief of having an abscessed tooth removed made her cry as well. For her and many others, it’s hard to hold back tears while witnessing patients finally receive the desperately needed dental care they have gone without. Their relief and gratitude inspire volunteers to return time and again.
This documentary covers a RAM Clinic from waiting in the parking lot to taking down tents and loading them back into the trucks, and nearly everything in between. For a more in-depth look into a RAM Clinic and the impact it has on people’s lives, click here to stream Remote Area Medical for free.
Since the documentary aired RAM has been able to help thousands more patients — read Max’s story to see how RAM Volunteers and community members came together to help a high school student in need.
Oh, the shadow-fearing alternative leftists just can’t call a Jew a Jew, so they come up with this fucking thing called Zionist?
Fucking Putin, disaster after disaster, and he is the little boy Jew Judo Jerk for Judaism:
I’ll take Pussy Riot over the rot of these fucking Semen Drips:
‘I never felt like a convict because I always felt free,’ Maria Alyokhina
Nadya Tolokonnikova’s new exhibit at the Honor Fraser Gallery in Venice, called “Punk’s Not Dead,” couldn’t emerge in L.A. at a more fitting time— post-election and amid tensions between the president and local leaders, not to mention Donald Trump’s Putin-like, “dictator on day one” moves.
Pussy Riot, the creative activist collective she started in protest of the Russian government’s authoritarian regime 14 years ago, became a global phenomenon for their audacious art, even if it landed her in a Russian jail for nearly two years.
And so, the Semen Drip Jew Miller, no, not Zionist Miller, has his foot soldiers of the Goyim Variety at the ready!
The colonial regime is a regime instituted by violence. It is always by force that the colonial regime is established. It is against the will of the people that other peoples more advanced in the techniques of destruction or numerically more powerful have prevailed.
I say that such a system established by violence can logically only be faithful to itself, and its duration in time depends on the continuation of violence.
But the violence which is in question here is not an abstract violence, it is not only a violence perceived by the spirit, it is also a violence manifested in the daily behaviour of the colonizer towards the colonized: apartheid in South Africa, forced labour in Angola, racism in Algeria. Contempt, a politics of hate, these are the manifestations of a very concrete and very painful violence.
Colonialism, however, is not satisfied by this violence against the present. The colonized people are presented ideologically as a people arrested in their evolution, impervious to reason, incapable of directing their own affairs, requiring the permanent presence of an external ruling power. The history of the colonized peoples is transformed into meaningless unrest, and as a result, one has the impression that for these people humanity began with the arrival of those brave settlers.
During a visit to Union Station along with Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Miller took a shot at local residents who in recent days have demonstrated against Trump’s takeover of their city’s law enforcement.
“All these demonstrators that you’ve seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of the city and never have been,” Miller claimed. “We’re gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old.”
And what will the ailing fucked up AmeriKKKa do with all these Jews Running Around attacking the Goyim?
In the end, Russia, Putin, will sell Iran and China down the river:
Stop listening to the white ghouls, the white boys, men to boys shits on Substack and on Podcasts, on all the fucking variety shows:
READ:
We divulge what happened, what’s to come and the specifics as well as the likely reasons behind all of it. We pose that not only was the Alaska Summit between the U.S. and Russian delegations theatrical, as much has already been decided and pre-negotiated, but that these deals involve much more than Ukraine. The real agreement involves economic cooperation, particularly on mineral resources in now Russian-occupied and former Ukrainian territories, the Arctic, WestAsia (Middle East), corridors, Israel, and how this could affect China and perhaps endanger Iran, the Resistance, and global order.
We discuss how Latin America, specifically Venezuela, as we predicted, is Washington’s next pivot, along with the expansion of Greater Israel and its war on Iran. A crucial part of the bargain is Russia’s apparent acceptance of a NATO-style security guarantee for Ukraine; tho it is not accepting its entrance into NATO. It is perhaps mirroring Israel’s occupation of the West Bank-as stated by Steven Witcoff.
In exchange, Russia is being granted significant concessions in Syria, Africa, and other areas to secure its economic interests and military bases, facilitated by U.S. and Israeli approval. This requires Russia to collaborate with Israel, effectively acting as its security proxy in Southern Syria to enable Zionist expansion. The deal is part of a larger U.S. strategy to redraw trade and energy corridors across West Asia, isolating Iran and squeezing China out of critical supply chains.
Oh, more Jew Jujitsu!
Notice the Jew Richard Wolff leaves out the JEWS:
And by now, we’re quite familiar with who the coalition partners are. The deals were made long before Mr. Trump arrived on the scene. The Republicans cut no deal now, they just continue. They are the party that throws money, and opportunities, and lots of symbols at, what? We know them, right? Fundamentalist Christians, white supremacists, people in love with their guns, people who hate immigrants. I could collect a few more, but you know, it’s familiar. And on the Democratic side, who? Better educated people, women, non-white people… and that’s what they do. And the elections are assigned outcomes, depend on who’s a bit more effective one year than the other, either in getting the money — look at Elon Musk throwing $200 to $300 million at Mr. Trump to counteract whatever Kamala Harris might have achieved otherwise — et cetera.
And the election is decided by one, two, three percent of the vote. Trump has no mandate. If he had one, maybe he could talk, that he took this conventional arrangement one step further — he made a deal — but he didn’t. He didn’t take it one step further at all. His vote is the same Tweedledum–Tweedledee oscillation that we have always seen.
And how much did the Jews throw at the Converted Jew Trump, and what outsized influence do Jews have on USA and USA geopolitical hell?
Oh, we know Norman Lear and his variety show making fun of Goyim.
And so the condescending and lecturing hectoring Wolff barks barks barks about his supposed socialism, but in the end this is the Century of the Jew.
Again, bark bark bark, Dick:
True, the Russians could save the lives and the expense of another six months, or twelve months, of war. But look, the reality is, again, that going to war has increased the rate of economic growth in Russia, compared to what it was before the war. In other words, this war is doing for the Russian economy what World War II did for the depressed American economy. We shouldn’t be surprised at that as a possible outcome. That’s what all of Keynesian economics teaches us: Massive government intervention, whether it’s for war or growing flowers, has a stimulative effect, and it has done that in Russia. Their problem is a bit of inflation, not a bit of collapse.
Do the Russians have their economic problems? Of course they do. And if you’re a child, you’ll cherry-pick a few statistics of where they’re having trouble, and say, the way a lot of people are these days: Mr. Trump, be aware that the Russian economy is in terrible… That’s not true. The repetition of that doesn’t make it true. The failure to show it makes it false.
“This violence of the colonial regime…irreparably provokes the birth of an internal violence in the colonized people.” Franz Falon
I’ll take Gerald Horne on this analysis over Hudson and Wolff:
U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin spoke with Professor Gerald Horne for a special two-part exploration of the Russia/Africa relationship. Professor Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair ofHistory andAfrican American Studies at the University of Houston. He is the author of more than 30 books, including most recently The Capital of Slavery: Washington D.C. from 1800-1865, a regular guest on the Horne Report, which airs on Black Power 96 Radio Sundays at 3:30 PM EST, and host of Freedom Now on KPFK Los Angeles, Saturdays at 11 AM PST.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: When people discuss Russia in Africa these days, the primary focus is on security relationships. From the West (which is to say the US and most of the rest of NATO,) the narrative is that Russia is an agent of destabilization, whereas for many Africans, Russia is a lifeline providing arms and materiel that the NATO camp has either refused to or offered only with onerous conditions attached. Can you speak to this discrepancy?
Dr.Gerald Horne: Well, it’s obvious that the North Atlantic camp, they do not want the African nations to have allies. They want to be able to feast on Africa without Africa being able to call on Russia for assistance. That particularly is the case with regard to the Sahel nations, speaking of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger who are trying to move in a progressive direction, witness the recent trips to Moscow of the leaders of both Bamako and Ouagadougou, the latter being Ibrahim Traore, who of course was in Moscow on May 9th, 2025, the holiest day on the Russian calendar, marking the victory over fascism. This was the 80th anniversary marked in 2025. And so it reminds me of North Atlantic nations and their relationship to China as well. I mean, [the] United States is in hot to the people’s bank in Beijing, and if you go to Walmart or most major US retail establishments, a good deal of the merchandise is made in China, but at the same time, hypocritically, they turned to African nations and say, don’t deal with China! Well, of course, the African nations might well say, Physician heal thyself! When you break relations with China, we will consider it. But until then, you should shut up, basically, and mind your own business. So we really can’t take seriously these complaints in the North Atlantic camp about Russia’s relations with Africa. African nations are sovereign nations. They’re allowed to make their own decisions. The North Atlantic nations, of course, they don’t necessarily listen to the instructions from Africa, and Africa therefore reciprocates by not listening to the instructions from the North Atlantic nations.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: Much of Russian military activity on the continent over the last several decades has occurred through private entities ranging from the Bout network, to PMC Wagner. Especially in light of the documented relationship between Viktor Bout and the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, coupled with the fact that RSF (Rapid Support Forces) in Sudan is reportedly being supported by both Wagner and the UAE where Bout had much of his operation based, (notwithstanding Russia making overtures to the Sudanese armed forces at the same time,) are private military contractors a fundamentally destabilizing force? Do victories such as the retaking of Kidal in November of 2023 challenge this thesis?
Dr.Gerald Horne: Well, I would say that it was probably a step forward when Moscow decided in the wake of the death of Mr. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, to seek to restrain shall we say euphemistically the Wagner Group and to fold its operations into the government, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, because I think that these private military groups in some ways are an expression of some of the unfortunate post-Soviet trends. You might recall that in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, December 25th, 1991, there was a kind of free-for-all in terms of the looting of natural resources creating billionaires for example, some of whom had to be reigned in subsequently by Mr. Putin to the consternation of Washington and London. And the Wagner group in particular, although as you suggested, was able to accomplish certain victories that could very well be deemed to be progressive, this sort of security for minerals proposition which they embodied was not necessarily a step forward, speaking in euphemisms. In fact, you see another expression of security for minerals with regard to these recent deals cut by US imperialism with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And of course when you talk about these private military groups, we have to bring up Eric Prince, a comrade of Mr. Trump, who has sent forces most recently into Haiti for example in the wake of the apparent failure by Kenyan police forces to reign in what are called gangs in Haiti. And now Eric Prince and his band of thugs was supposed to accomplish that goal. So I think it would be good for Black Alliance for Peace to look skeptically at these minerals for security/security for minerals deals, to look skeptically at these private military groups. But notice that I said look skeptically. I think that presumption and opposition to them can be overcome, but there has to be a considerable weight of evidence to overcome that particular presumption.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: After the 2023 death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, we are seeing the transition from Wagner to the newly inaugurated Africa Corps which is run by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Does national attribution bode to increase accountability and how would you compare and contrast Africa Corps with AFRICOM? Is there a reason why African nations could not forgo both for the much vaunted but seemingly ephemeral APSA (African Peace and Security Architecture?)
Dr.Gerald Horne: Well, with regard to the latter, that is something to consider. The problem with the latter is whether or not the Pan-African bodies have the muscle and the resources to combat these malign forces. I mean, for example, to cut to the chase, you mentioned Sudan and you mentioned the United Arab Emirates. My own supposition, and I would like your crack research team to look into this more deeply, is that a number of the Gulf monarchies are interfering grievously in the internal affairs of African states, not only Sudan, but I would argue that the religious zealots who are seeking to destabilize the Sahel nations also have a lifeline that leads back to the Persian Gulf. That creates contradictions because on the one hand, US imperialism, as referenced by Mr. Trump’s recent trip to that part of the world, he is clearly in bed with the Gulf monarchies, witness the ill-fated, ill-advised Abraham Accords whereby some of these monarchies were warming relations with Israel, and of course that stretches all the way to Morocco. At the same time, these religious zealots, the contradiction is that they can easily destabilize US allies. Speaking of Cote D’Ivoire, for example, speaking of Northern Nigeria for example. But in any case, I think that the Gulf monarchies, they’re trying to satisfy internal domestic issues with regard to religious zealotry in their own homelands by allowing them to run amuck in Africa. They’re sort of exporting the issue to the continent, which they think will allow them to continue in their merry way. But in any case, my point is, I’m not sure if Pan-African bodies have the resources to confront the complexities of what I’ve just outlined which therefore causes them to call upon external allies such as Moscow to help them to resolve these tensions and contradictions reference my speaking to the trips to Moscow, Traore, Goita, et cetera.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: Widening our aperture, how do you assess Russia’s overall relationship with the continent? Considering multilateral entities such as BRICS, or perhaps energy affairs, what are Russia’s interests, what are Africa’s, and do they appear congruent?
Dr.Gerald Horne: I think so. I think that obviously the African nations have historic and contemporary grievances with regard to the North Atlantic countries. Russia, as I’ve tried to indicate, has historic grievances with regard to the North Atlantic countries. And at this point, let me issue a footnote that is rarely addressed, but I think it’s important, which is that with the breakup of the Soviet Union, and here advert to what I said about how even defeats can lead to contradictions that are difficult to resolve, you saw that Russia or the Soviet Union, it was disrupted. You created these independent states. Now on the one hand, this allows for the North Atlantic countries, for example, to try to turn Azerbaijan against Russia, to try to turn the Baltic republics against Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp in Eastern Europe then allows for the attempt to turn or to enhance and exacerbate Polish tensions with Russia. Of course Poland has talked about creating a Fort Trump, for example, which would be useful to that end, even Bulgaria, which traces its sovereignty to 1877/1878 when Russia intervenes to try to rescue it from the clutches of Ottoman Turkey has been moving in that Polish, Baltic, Azerbaijan direction. So that’s on one side of the ledger. It creates enormous complexities and complications, not only for Russia, but I would say for international peace and security. But at the same time, the breakup of the Soviet Union created new contradictions for the North Atlantic camp. I mean, for example, you have geostrategic analysts going back to the beginning of the 20th century who suggested that the fulcrum of planet earth rests in Central Asia, in the ‘Stans’ for example, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, et cetera, once part of the Soviet Union, now close to Russia and close to China. So if you had honest analysts of US imperialism, they would look into that and draw appropriate conclusions. But of course, you cannot expect honesty from thieves. I should also say that, to put this in language that Wall Street can understand, in many ways Russia was subsidizing many of these other republics. And so when the Soviet Union breaks up, that curtails, if not ceases, the subsidies which helps to explain the economic growth of Russia despite sanctions by the North Atlantic countries, and that’s not even to mention the fact that the Ukraine proxy war has driven Russia and China closer together and geostrategic analysts from the beginning of the 20th century through Henry Kissinger have thought that that would be a nightmare for US imperial interests. But in the footnote, now to return to the question, I would say that the interests of Africa and Russia are parallel insofar as both have a common grievance with regard to the North Atlantic countries. However, given the fact that post 1991 Russia is not the same as the Soviet Union, you have billionaires, you have profit making enterprises, inevitably there are going to be contradictions between certain interests of Russia and certain interests of sovereign and independent Africa. But as the BRICS example tends to illustrate, BRICS includes not only South Africa, but Ethiopia and Egypt, I think that those contradictions can be overcome. It’s not as if they’re the same as the contradictions between say the African nations and the North Atlantic camp.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: Finally, if we avoid tired US tropes, do there remain any exploitative conditions deserving of challenge in the name of African sovereignty and self-determination?
Dr.Gerald Horne: It depends on what you mean. I mean, for example, both Africa and Russia, or raw material exporters heavily dependent upon the export of oil; if you look [at] in the case of Russia, Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, for example, the export of energy, energy including natural gas; Russia, Algeria, for example, the export of precious resources; platinum in the case of South Africa and Russia; diamonds in the case of Namibia and Russia; uranium in the case of Namibia and Niger. And so the OPEC example, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which is the exporting countries banding together for mutual benefit, in some ways that sheds light on the parallel interests between Africa and Russia. That is to say, the parallel interests are seeking reasonable prices for their commodities being exported and therefore taking it out of the pockets of the importing countries, speaking of the North Atlantic countries. And therefore you begin to see the contradiction because the North Atlantic countries would like to pay lower prices for the aforementioned commodities. Russia and the African nations would like to see higher prices. The latter then unites Russia and Africa on a common platform. For example, Russia and Africa would like to see the rampant and rampaging interference of North Atlantic countries in the internal affairs of sovereign nations be circumscribed, to put it mildly. And the North Atlantic countries would like to continue that because they think that it’s to their benefit, and certainly US imperialism thinks it’s to their benefit at least up to July, 2025.
Oh, the dumb Ukrainians, you say?
Six Republican-led states have now pledged National Guard troops to the Trump administration’s takeover of Washington, D.C., where it has assumed control of policing under the claim of tackling crime. Along with the D.C. National Guard that Trump already controlled, this brings the total number of troops in the streets of the capital to more than 2,000.
“What we’re seeing is lawlessness, but it’s all coming from the White House,” says community activist Keya Chatterjee, the executive director of the group Free DC.
[Armed officers prepare to place handcuffs on a man from within an apartment complex, Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, in the Petworth neighborhood of northwest Washington. The officers pictured had “Washington Field Office” on their shirts underneath tactical gear that said Police.]
Two House Niggers black on black hate!
Slave masters:
Ebony and Ivory mother fucking hired guns:
Five heads-of-state from West African countries were invited to the White House to meet with United States President Donald Trump.
These leaders were Presidents Joseph Boakai of Liberia; Mohamed Ould Ghazouani of Mauritania; Bassirou Diomaye Faye of Senegal; Brice Clotaire Nguema of Gabon; and Umaro Cissoko Embalo of Guinea-Bissau.
This invitation took place amid the massive round-up, detentions and deportations of people of color, including Africans, by the Trump administration as a cornerstone of their domestic policy. The arrests, detentions, torture and deportations of migrants are not limited to people with Latin American and Caribbean ancestry. People who were born on the African continent and have migrated to the United States directly or circuitously through Mexico, Central and South America, are also being victimized by the domestic and foreign policies of the Trump administration.
In addition, there have been unprecedented cuts in humanitarian aid from the U.S. to African states having a negative impact on economic development, healthcare, scientific research and political stability. Other measures having a negative impact on Africa are the imposition of 10-50 % tariffs by the White House, a process which has been shifting over the last six months.
Moreover, of the dozens of countries subjected to travel bans by the White House into the U.S., a disproportionate number of these states are members of the African Union (AU) based in Ethiopia. No European countries have been listed in these bans illustrating the racist character of Washington’s domestic and foreign policy.
The renewal of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which was enacted during the last year of the administration of former President Bill Clinton in 2000, may not be renewed by the U.S. Congress in September. This bill provided for the targeted production and imports of goods produced on the African continent.
In Lesotho, a country attacked by Trump in his rambling speech before a joint session of Congress, has been hit with 50% tariffs by the U.S. prompting the closure of garment factories resulting in the layoffs of over 55,000 workers. The country located in Southern Africa, has declared an economic “state of emergency” in efforts to address the rising jobless rates, particularly among the youth of the country.
ECOWAS Leaders and Others in the White House Subjected to Racist Insults
These five African states with relatively small populations were invited to meet with Trump, while other countries in the same region have been attacked by the U.S. and its ally France. The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has been threatened with regime change by the outgoing U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) director General Michael Langley, who singled out the political and ideological leader of Burkina Faso, Capt. Ibrahim Traore.
Three of the leaders present at the White House meeting were members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a previously 15-member regional organization which was formed fifty years ago. Due to differences over relations with France and the U.S., three states led by military administrations have broken with ECOWAS and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Although ECOWAS claimed that its differences with the AES members has its origins in the usurpation of power by the military within these states, there are obviously more substantive disagreements related to nationalization of resources and foreign policy orientations related to the Russian Federation.
The Republic of Liberia located in West Africa is the oldest “formally” independent state on the continent being declared a sovereign entity in 1847. This nation was founded in response to the failure of the U.S. to integrate manumitted Africans who had been brought into the North America region through the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Although the nation-state of Liberia was created by the U.S. government alongside Africans freed from enslavement in the U.S. and that English is the official language of the country,
Trump asked President Joseph Boakai: where did he learn to speak such good English. Such a condescending remark whether from ignorance or a paternalistic impulse, is a clear reflection of the lack of sincerity on the part of the administration.
In the past prior to the decimation of the personnel at the State Department through the layoffs carried out by the Trump White House, there were people assigned to compile briefing papers for presidents before meetings with foreign leaders. Although the State Department briefings on African affairs often provided a rationale for continued imperialist and neo-colonial arrangements between Washington and the African continent, it would seem that these so-called “experts” would have avoided embarrassing and ridiculous questions from the head-of-state of the world’s most powerful imperialist government.
FUCKING SLAVE MASTERS! VD Rubio, Trump, Vance!
Slavers”
Slavers:
Tourists in Antwerp are redirected time and again to the Brabo narrative; the city has no memorials dedicated to the Congolese murdered during colonial rule.
The severed hand symbolizes the triumph of the Flemish spirit over a maniacal giant. It is also a sinister reminder of the brutality enacted upon Central Africans during Belgian colonial rule.
Belgians strategically separate past from present in offering up carefully parceled bits of history to evoke pride, rather than shame. Failing to connect the chocolate hands with severed Congolese hands is not the result of collective forgetting, per se, but of studiously compartmentalizing historical events into separate spaces.
Slavers in Isra=HELL.
The belief that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, including children and women, is shared by two-thirds of the Israeli population.
In other words, the government’s policy is not an extremist fringe position; it has become mainstream. This policy is supported by Donald Trump, who has called on Israel to finish the job:
“It got to a point where you’re going to have to finish the job… They’re going to have to clean it up.”
What is most shocking is not just the hunger or the violence itself, but our response to it—or rather, the lack thereof. While thousands of people are being starved, slaughtered, and displaced right before our eyes, the West is looking the other way.
We offer little more than verbal protests, cynical food drops, and a few crocodile tears. Our governments have refrained from economic or diplomatic sanctions and continue to politically support this genocidal regime. Our moral bankruptcy could not be greater.
All fucking a proving grounds for Gazafication of the World: Puny Putin is a Puppet of the Jews!
Get RID of these fucking Jewish-Loving Semen Drips!
Everything Sachs says is correct (click link below), and this interview is one of the most important and fascinating you will ever hear. Don Hank
Again, the One Man Show, Fucking Jewish Sachs, on Savage Minds, who has not done an honest day’s work in his fucking life: A New Foreign Policy for Europe — EU Needs New Foreign Policy Based on Europe’s True Economic & Security Interests/ Jeffrey Sachs
Putin the Jew Loving Christian Conservative:
Kremlin thinks Trump is “genuine” about resolving the issue of Ukraine conflict, showing they still don’t get it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov:
“Trump demonstrates unprecedentedly unusual approach to solving difficult issues, which is receiving much praise in Moscow and personally from President Putin.”
He added that Moscow prefers resolving the conflict in Ukraine through political and diplomatic means,
“We see the mutual political will between the two presidents”.
The problem with this assessment is it takes Trump as being outside the establishment—which ultimately seeks to end Russia’s sovereignty, either through penetration within government or full-on regime change—when he isn’t. Trump is the chosen face of empire and Putin has shown in speech he’s well aware of the lack of change in U.S. foreign policy despite the change in the executive branch. But for some reason, I suspect much of it to do with the “Christian” conservative values many within Trumpian circles say they abide by, as well as Trump’s shift to actually have dialogue unlike Biden, Moscow takes this as being a genuine difference to the former administration. But that’s simply the deep state’s shifting strategy while their objective remains intact.
Every time Russia seems to get ahead of the West, it appears some sort of either naïveté or wishful thinking clouds their judgement. There’s also the influence of the usual U.S.-analysts who are operating from a still dual, team sport hyper-partisan mentality, mostly naive and out of touch of reality, thinking there’s a difference between the blue donkey and red elephant. The reality is there absolutely is no difference, just cosmetic strategic shifts that sure still trick many within the U.S., but which world diplomats should know far better than to fall for.
Washington’s war efforts using their Ukrainian proxy have failed yes, but it’s not over. They’re clearly attacking Russia via multiple fronts, see Poland, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan. Notice how entirely captured the U.S. is (purposely thanks to Christian Zionism & military desires) by Israel. Also notice the recent talks with Russia and Israel and recent revelations of Russia’s role in the fall of Syria, as well as Russia’s movements or lack there of regarding Zangezur corridor. The deals have already been in the works. If Russia stays out of this and after several of its conversations with Israel, it IS undeniably already working with Washington within this limited sphere. But playing with the devil more than often gets you burned.
Europe remains now more than ever a vassal of Washington, more powerless than before. Syria is now in the hands of jihadists Moscow once fought, but now welcome under the umbrella of diplomacy. But the truth is diplomacy is only real when there are genuine desires to maintain fair and cooperative relations. Diplomacy isn’t the absence of conflict but merely the presence of momentary respect. There is no real respect from Washington toward Russia—they’ve shown this time and time again. What there is now is the realisation that the foe can be more useful as a neutral player publicly and even an ally privately. Washington’s realised Europe is useless and Russia is far more powerful. Which is true but after all, Vicky Nuland told us this and this IS exactly why the entire Ukraine thing started.
And for Russia as it pragmatically expands its influence in West Asia and beyond, it means it can continue its economic growth and military gains while maintaining alliances with China and other major players. But again, even if we do get an end to this conflict which is very possible, it’s not because of Trump, or some masterful diplomacy. But rather because we have entered the age of normalization for now & economics has become much more vital than ruining that with nukes. And if there’s anything history can teach us about this moment is that it’s only that—a moment. Washington will turn on those closest, just like with enemies, and has many times before against its major allies.
Nah, Russia Don’t Give a Shit:
Anyone else notice white AMERICAN Jews like Bernie Sanders and Jonathan Greenblatt somehow always say
“KKKKKHHHHHAMAS” or “KKKKHHHHIIIISSSSSSSBALLLAAAHH.”
Being English-speaking Americans, this makes no sense other than identity expression.
Make no mistake, the Kkkkhhh-sound is code —sign language— to fellow zionists/Jews hinting
“I am part of u guys wink wink.”
Yeah, those fucking JEWS:
And those insects, 2nd grade debater, room Temperature Goy Turned Jew, Trump:
Always the golden shower tapes.
+—+
Okay, back to the putrid Capitalist Continuing Criminal Enterprise HEADLINES:
Electricity bills have increased almost 10% since the start of the year and could rise another $170 per year for households by 2035 thanks to the repeal of clean energy tax credits, new tariffs and rapid expansion of electricity-hungry data centers to fuel a boom in artificial intelligence, multiple reports have shown.
CNN Cunt News: New tariffs are generating billions of dollars in revenue, but Bessent says that will go toward paying national debt — this is what, quadruple or more taxation and fines and tolls and fees and add-ons?
This is the Joke of the Rapist and Pedophile In Chief’s flim-flam on the Maga MAGGOTS: Some lawmakers have proposed using tariff revenue to send rebate checks of at least $600 per adult and dependent child. A family of four could end up with around $2,400 from the federal government.
You feeling the LOVE from the Conservative Cunts?
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
We now know that Noam Chomsky, the venerable Dean of the American Left, was controlled opposition all along.
I know, I know, it’s tough to believe. Didn’t Chomsky write Manufacturing Consent, which exposed the American propaganda machine?
Well, yes, he did… but it now seems his true purpose was to establish the exact boundaries of what it was acceptable for a professional Leftist to say in public.
As the quote often attributed to Lenin goes: “The best way to control our opposition is to lead it ourselves”.
When Chomsky was asked about his relationship with Epstein,: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”
But here’s the thing, Noam. It is our business. Although coverage of Epstein has mostly focused on his long career of pimping and pandering, he was also a political operative who was working for Mossad.
If Noam Chomsky is hanging out with Israeli intelligence assets, that kind of casts a wee bit of a shadow over his life’s work.
According to the Journal, Chomsky’s meetings with Epstein took place during the years 2015 and 2016, while Chomsky taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. Chomsky told the Journal that he met with Epstein to discuss topics like neuroscience with other academics, like Harvard’s Martin Nowak (who was heavily funded by Epstein).
On a separate occasion, Chomsky again met with Epstein alongside former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, allegedly to discuss “Israel’s policies with regard to Palestinian issues and the international arena.”
A separate date saw Chomsky and his wife invited by Epstein to have dinner with him, Woody Allen and Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn. When asked about the dinner date with Woody Allen and Epstein, Chomsky referred to the occasion as “an evening spent with a great artist.”
When confronted with this evidence, Chomsky initially told the Journal that his meetings and relationship with Epstein were “none of your business. Or anyone’s.” He then added that “I knew him [Epstein] and we met occasionally.”
Fucking Jewish CUNTS:
Although Chomsky had portrayed himself as a free speech advocate earlier in his career, he did not raise a peep about censorship of dissidents justified in the name of biosecurity.
On the subject of anti-maskers, he had this to say:
“Do you have an individual right to take an assault rifle and go to the supermarket or mall and start shooting randomly? That’s what it means not to wear a mask.”
In 2021, he said this about “people who refuse to accept vaccines”:
“I think the right response for them is not to force them to but rather to insist that they be isolated.”
We’re not “forcing” you! We’re just insisting that you obey… or else.
When asked how unvaccinated people should get food if isolated, he responded:
“That’s their problem.”
Oh, darn, no more Baked ALaska Dessert.
Two German fighter jets were scrambled to the Romanian-Ukrainian border on Tuesday night in response to a Russian drone attack in the frontier region, Romania’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 93 drones and two ballistic missiles into the country overnight, of which 62 drones and one missile were shot down or suppressed. The air force reported drone and missile impacts across 20 locations.
Oleg Kiper, the head of the regional Odesa administration, said drones hit infrastructure and production facilities in the city of Izmail on the Danube river, at the border with Romania — a NATO member.
Fires broke out at the site of the attacks and at least one person was injured, Kiper said.
[Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer, visit the Wharf, a popular waterfront shopping district in D.C., last week. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)]
Shoot or fire bomb or Molotov cocktail or chlorine gas these fucking slime: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s unusually large personal security requirements are straining the Army agency tasked with protecting him as it pulls agents from criminal investigations to safeguard family residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and D.C., according to numerous officials familiar with the operation.
The sprawling, multimillion-dollar initiative has forced the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, the agency that fields security for top Defense Department officials, to staff weeks-long assignments in each location and at times monitor residences belonging to the Hegseths’ former spouses, the officials said.
Make a fucking deal on that fucking used Yugo with the bald tires and leaky clutch:
The Kremlin has played down talk of an imminent summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, as Donald Trump renewed his call for the two leaders to meet to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
The push for a bilateral meeting comes after the US president met Putin in Alaska last week, and welcomed seven European leaders and Zelensky to the White House on Monday.
Trump admitted the conflict was “a tough one” to solve and conceded it was possible the Russian president was not interested in ending hostilities.
“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal.”
Millions dead and dying and forever gone, via PTSD and amputations, but these white cocksuckers can laugh? Shoot them wherever you can.
Here’s your KING Jew. Jew, not some fucking made up fucking name, Z-I-OH-NEST.
Which fucking Maga MAGGOTS on the Gulf of America coast voted for the cunt trump?
Fucking decades in court, all lawyered up with Jews and their Puppy Goyim?
Court Temporarily Halts Land Transfer That Would Allow a Mine to Destroy Western Apache Sacred Land
The Western Apache and a coalition of environmental groups have fought for years against the Resolution Copper mine, which would become one of the country’s largest at the cost of a site revered by the tribe.
COPPER is GOLD to the military offensive weapons boys and girls: Resolution Copper’s proposed mine near the site of Oak Flat in Arizona will eventually create a giant sinkhole on land sacred to the Western Apache people.
High-tech products
Electronics and Computing: Copper is essential for wiring, connectors, and circuitry in computers, smartphones, and telecommunication systems due to its excellent electrical conductivity.
Electrical infrastructure: Copper wiring is fundamental for power generation and distribution within various electrical systems.
Advanced communication systems: High-speed data transfer and connectivity in complex networks rely heavily on copper components.
Electric and Hybrid vehicles: The electrical systems and batteries in these vehicles require significant amounts of copper for their efficiency and performance.
Military products
Vehicles:
Aircraft: Components such as electrical systems, wiring, generators, data transfer parts, and undercarriage components utilize copper and its alloys.
Naval vessels: Copper is employed in various applications such as corrosion-resistant pumps and valves for submarines and aircraft carriers, propulsion systems, and propeller construction.
Tanks: Steering mechanisms, turret gears, and various other components within tanks incorporate copper alloys.
Other Vehicles: Military land operations and vehicles also rely on copper in various electrical systems and components.
Ammunition: Copper alloys, particularly brass, are widely used in ammunition production for items such as cartridge casings and bullet jackets.
Advanced Weaponry: Smart weapons like guided missiles and drones incorporate copper in their complex electronic systems and wiring.
Communication Systems: Secure satellite and battlefield communication systems rely on copper’s conductivity for reliable data transmission.
Defense Systems: Radar systems, cyber defense equipment, and even energy weapons utilize copper components for their efficiency and performance.
Military Infrastructure: The electrical infrastructure of military bases, from power generation to distribution, heavily depends on copper wiring.
Body Armor and Gear: Copper alloys, combined with other metals, can be used to produce military gear and body armor that is resistant to impact and degradation.
Cooling in Military Systems: Copper’s excellent thermal conductivity shows promise in applications like heat exchangers within military systems, according to Military Aerospace.
Medical technologies for troops: Copper, along with silver, is used in modern medicine due to its bactericidal properties, aiding in resisting bacterial growth and accelerating the body’s natural healing process.
Faggotry of the uniformed mercenary forces. Fucking HELL. Troops deployed to US-Mexico border will get a new medal
[Owen Eakle, 16, has accomplished a rare feat unmatched by millions of other young men who have tried to achieve: Thanks to a novice rank in skills like archery, backpacking, and rock climbing, Owen has earned every merit badge offered by the Eagle Scouts.
Since the founding of the Boy Scouts of America in 1912 and participation of approximately 10 million scouts, Owen is one of fewer than 500 to earn all 137 merit badges. He is the third scout from the Southwest Florida Council and the first from the Two Rivers District to gain the honor.]Owen Eakle, 16, has accomplished a rare feat unmatched by millions of other young men who have tried to achieve: Thanks to a novice rank in skills like archery, backpacking, and rock climbing, Owen has earned every merit badge offered by the Eagle Scouts.
Since the founding of the Boy Scouts of America in 1912 and participation of approximately 10 million scouts, Owen is one of fewer than 500 to earn all 137 merit badges. He is the third scout from the Southwest Florida Council and the first from the Two Rivers District to gain the honor.]
And you thought that camping trip with all the organic chips and recycled toilet paper would be Green Green Green!
American demand for tropical wood that is used in motorhomes, conservationists say, is accelerating the disappearance of some of the world’s largest forests., according to a report by The New York Times.
In recent years, tens of thousands of acres of forest have been razed in Indonesian Borneo, including this logging operation in November. Word spread fast that heavy machinery had arrived in the ancient rainforest near the Indonesian village of Sungai Mata-Mata, an expanse on the western edge of the island of Borneo that is home to orangutans, clouded leopards and sun bears.
Flouting the law, the excavators began digging trenches to drain the area’s protected wetlands. Then came the logging crews, which cut down woodlands the size of more than 2,800 football fields, in just a few days.
It was an apocalyptic sight, said Samsidar, a regional forestry official who goes by one name, recalling the devastation he encountered two years ago. “The trees had turned into piles of wood.”
Not just any kind of wood, though. The trees were meranti, a species found mostly in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, and their tropical hardwood is of particular interest to one industry in the United States: manufacturers of motor homes.
Sheets of tropical ‘lauan’ plywood are used in the walls, floors and ceilings of RVs made by brands like Jayco and Winnebago. The report, Unhappy Campers, reveals that the RV industry is now by far the biggest consumer of tropical wood in the US, and much of this comes from wholesale clearance of tropical rainforest in Indonesia – the most unsustainable wood in the world.
Earthsight and Auriga spent months investigating the trade, first visiting a remote corner of Borneo where vast swathes of orangutan habitat are being cleared to make way for a plantation of fast-growing timber. Where lush forests recently stood, they found barren expanses of bare earth, with heavy machinery at work transporting freshly-cut logs.
Members of local Indigenous communities claim that the clearance has disrupted their access to forest resources, which they rely on for their livelihoods, and that communication with, and compensation from PT Indosubur Sukses Makmur, the company concerned, has been minimal.
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Fuck it. I have to get back to more Jews in the News and Making the News and Reporting on the News!!
![Former Third Reich leaders laugh at a translation error during Nuremberg trials, 1945-1946 [900x600] : r/HistoryPorn](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3F0X!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a9aa7a2-c17b-4ab7-9f2a-de97feecd7c7_640x426.jpeg "Former Third Reich leaders laugh at a translation error during Nuremberg trials, 1945-1946 [900x600] : r/HistoryPorn")
Paul Haeder, Author 