Hidden History -- In The Making

GERMANY IS URGED BY TURKEY’S ERDOGAN TO HELP END ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE IN GAZA

Despite A Ceasefire Brokered By The American Regime, Israel Has Unleashed A Series Of Bombardments On Gaza This Week. That Tells You The True Nature Of The Israeli Regime.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised Germany over what he called its ignorance of Israel’s “genocide” and attacks on Gaza.

At a joint news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Ankara on Thursday, Erdogan noted Israel’s access to nuclear and other weapons, saying it was using them to threaten Gaza, and adding that Hamas was not as well equipped.

He said Israel had once again attacked Gaza in recent days despite a ceasefire in the enclave.

“We need to end the genocide and the deliberate starvation by involving Germany’s Red Cross and our own Turkish Red Crescent,” Erdogan said. “Does Germany not see these?” he said, adding it was Turkey, Germany and other countries’ humanitarian duty to end the famine and massacres in Gaza.

“Just as we want the Russia-Ukraine war to end, we also support an end to Israel’s war on Gaza,” Erdogan said. “Turkey and Germany are two key countries that can join hands to achieve this.”

Despite a fragile American-brokered ceasefire that took effect on October 10, Israel launched a series of bombardments on Gaza following the killing of an Israeli soldier in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Tuesday. Israel’s retaliatory attacks killed 104 people, mostly women and children, said Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Reporting from Gaza City on Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli attacks this week were similar to previous rounds of bombardments.

“A brief hope for calm turned into despair,” said Mahmoud. “For a lot of people, it’s a stark reminder of the opening weeks of the genocide in terms of the intensity and the scale of destruction that was caused by the massive bombs on Gaza City.”

Israel said on Wednesday that it had begun “renewed enforcement of the ceasefire”. United States President Donald Trump insisted the ceasefire “is not in jeopardy” despite the latest attacks, while mediator Qatar called Israel’s violations “disappointing and frustrating“.

As part of Trump’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza, an international force is meant to form to monitor the agreement, but the accord does not specify which countries would provide the troops. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told reporters on Monday that Israel opposes any troops from Turkey joining that force because of Erdogan’s past comments on Israel.

“Countries that want or are ready to send armed forces should be at least fair to Israel,” Saar said. He did not elaborate.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 68,527 people and wounded 170,395 since it began in October 2023. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7^th, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, and about 200 were taken captive.

STAFF CUTS AT CBS NEWS IS DISPROPORTIONATE AMONG ISRAELI CRITICS

Recent Job Cuts At CBS News Disproportionately Hit Those Whose Coverage Was Critical Of Israel, A Staffer Said In An Article Published Tuesday.

Recent job cuts at CBS News disproportionately hit those whose coverage was critical of Israel, a staffer told Variety in an article published Tuesday.

Variety also reported that CBS’s owner, Paramount, maintains a list of people it doesn’t work with due to their being “overtly antisemitic,” as well as “xenophobic” and “homophobic.”

The report on the job cuts, citing an unnamed staffer, came in a cover story in the entertainment magazine about David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, which owns CBS. The roughly 1,000 cuts were part of sweeping changes introduced at the network after Ellison hired Jewish journalist Bari Weiss as CBS News’s new editor-in-chief. The company also acquired her media startup, The Free Press, for $150 million.

Weiss is vocally pro-Israel, and at least one laid-off reporter, Debora Patta, is considering suing after losing her job, the New York Post reported last week. Patta had covered the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and drew controversy in August when American Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee accused her of selectively editing an interview to mischaracterize his remarks.

According to Variety, a Paramount staffer said the layoffs “were not motivated by [pro-US President Donald Trump] MAGA politics or gender.”

Paramount has been accused of settling a lawsuit with Trump — over a CBS interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris, and the edit of her answer to a question about the war in Gaza — in order to appease the American president.

Critics said Paramount settled that case in order to appease Trump, whose administration had the power to challenge its merger with tech giant Skydance.

The New York Post reported last week that Weiss decided on Patta’s firing hours before the list of layoffs was finalized, reportedly axing the correspondent in place of Chris Livesay, a Rome-based reporter who, the Post reported, had asked Weiss to assign him the Israel beat.

Variety also reported that Weiss’s pro-Israel advocacy has led to her receiving death threats. The article said that she and her wife, Nellie Bowles, who is also a journalist, have a five-person security detail that costs the network $10,000 to $15,000 per day.

David Ellison is the son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, himself an outspoken Israel supporter. Under the younger Ellison’s leadership, Paramount objected to a pledge by thousands of Hollywood figures to boycott Israeli film institutions they claim “are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

ISRAELI CRIMINALS OPERATING IN AMERICA ARE PLACED IN A SECRET THREAT CATEGORY BY THE FBI

The Agency Has Never Disclosed That It Monitors Organized Crime Syndicates Based In Israel. It Would Be Politically Incorrect To Admit There Are Israeli Criminals.

The FBI’s growing list of domestic threats has mutated in recent years to include every conceivable affiliation of Americans across the political spectrum: right-wing violent extremists, left-wing violent extremists, black identity extremists, and animal rights extremists. The current administration has even added nihilistic violent extremists—those who “believe in nothing”—to the laundry list. The Biden administration, for its part, aided in this exercise by vastly overstating the threat posed by Trump-aligned conservatives in the wake of January 6th. But neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have ever grandstanded about another significant threat group that the FBI secretly monitors on American soil: Israeli Based Organized Crime Syndicates, or “IBOCS”.

Leaked FBI records and court filings detail widespread money laundering, taxpayer theft, and drug smuggling enterprises operated in America by Israeli citizens connected or belonging to Israeli crime groups. Despite the trickle of prosecutions over the past 25 years, the FBI has never publicly disclosed the fact that it has designated resources allocated to investigating these criminal organizations.

A 2020 FBI intelligence report from the “Blue Leaks” hack conducted by the hacker group Anonymous and archived by the nonprofit DDoSecrets describes IBOCS operating in Nevada and Florida embezzling money from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). IBOCS “have defrauded US Government relief programs and manipulated tax documents since at least 2015 to reduce tax liability and conceal money laundering activities, as well as have access to companies and agents, which are necessary to process PPP loan applications,” the report found.

The report also lists instances of IBOCS committing both disaster relief and tax fraud, and notes that IBOCS are involved in money laundering, extortion, illegal gambling, fraud, and narcotics trafficking in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, according to FBI investigations.

As far back as 2009, leaked State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks detail one of the reasons why criminals belonging to or associated with Israeli crime families and syndicates have been able to operate inside America with ease: The State Department is not authorized to block their visas. The cables warn of the Israeli mafia taking on a growing role in the American trade of ecstasy, and of the loophole which prevents American embassies from automatically denying Israeli crime figures travel documents.

While the State Department has formalized powers in its foreign affairs manual to restrict visas for Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, the Italian mafia, the Hells Angels biker gangs, Outlaws, Bandidos, Mongols and two dozen Latin American gangs including Tren de Aragua, Israeli organized crime groups remain absent more than a decade after the State Department cable first warned of the Israeli mafia loophole.

“Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC [organized crime] has also gained a foothold in America,” one cable reads. “The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes.”

A former FBI special agent who worked on investigations involving IBOCS said, “There is real Israeli organized crime in this country, and there is a formalized FBI program for investigating these groups,” adding that “they look for the success of other criminals and then try to build a better model on those.”

He also said, “Once you move beyond that and your target becomes more sophisticated, they are presumed to be intelligence operatives and operatives of the Israeli government and then that gets moved highside in the national security division.”

A sentencing letter for an international narcotics smuggling case prosecuted in the Southern District of New York hints at this reality, referencing the IBOCS designation in connection to an international ecstasy smuggling conspiracy:

“The defendant engaged in internationally laundering narcotics proceeds as part of an Israel-based organized crime syndicate. In addition to his demonstrated ability to launder drug money across borders, he also possessed ample global connections in the narcotics trade and access to narcotics themselves.”

A second former FBI agent pointed to the recent west coast indictment of “a suspected high-level member of an Israeli transnational organized crime group” running an illegal poker game in Hollywood. “It’s no secret that politics inevitably shapes enforcement priorities,” the agent said, explaining why the bureau has never highlighted its IBOCS enforcement. “This has not been a popular thing to wave around in the press, which is why you see a steady stream of prosecutions related to Israeli crime figures without the same discussion of organization that you might have with cartels or gangs.”

So politically unpopular is criticism of illegal activities by Israelis that repeated espionage efforts have been swept under the rug, or at the very least, restricted from public view. In 2019, POLITICO reported that intelligence officials suspected that Israel was behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices planted around the White House and in other locations in Washington D.C. According to the report, the Israelis were not sanctioned with a formal reprimand from the State Department.

Another potential reason for the lack of visibility on IBOCS is the changing face of Israeli politics and the increasing proximity of organized crime figures to the ruling Likud party. Ten Likud officials chose to spend the Jewish holiday of Sukkot with convicted mobster Rafi Chaim-Kedoshim this year. In the past, members of Israel’s mafia families elected to parliament on the Likud line have attempted to use their positions to quash investigations in organized crime. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment about the current status of the Bureau’s IBOCS investigations.

IF YOU BELIEVE THE MAINSTREAM NARRATIVE YOU MUST BE TWELVE AT MOST

Do You Think Trump Is Trying To Get Rid Of Maduro Because Maduro Is An Evil Dictator Who Wants To Poison Americans With Fentanyl? If You Do You Must Be Twelve Or Less.

The ultimate expression of “everyone is twelve now” theory is in the mainstream worldview promoted by western pundits and politicians which holds that the world is full of evil villains doing evil things simply because they are evil, and that these Bad Guys are opposed by the virtuous Good Guys of the American-led world order.

If you think Hamas killed Israelis because they’re a bunch of monsters who hate Jews? Of course you do, you’re twelve.

If you think Trump is trying to get rid of Maduro because Maduro is an evil dictator who wants to poison Americans with fentanyl? Sure, you’re twelve.

If you think Putin invaded Ukraine because he hates freedom and democracy and wants to conquer the world? Bless your heart my twelve year-old buddy.

If you think the American regime and Israel have been attacking and eliminating rivals in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Palestine in order to fight terrorism, stop tyranny, and protect the world from nuclear weapons? Yeah, that checks out, you’re twelve.

The mainstream western worldview is like a children’s cartoon, with the Bad Guys doing Bad Things simply because they are Bad, and the Good Guys striving heroically to stop them. It sounds like a stupid summer blockbuster starring The Rock, but it’s the consensus worldview of serious professional pundits and analysts who share this perspective on mainstream platforms with serious expressions on their faces, and anyone who calls any part of it into question is dismissed as an extremist or a deranged crackpot.

Because everyone is twelve now.

In response to the above a guy saying “Western countries like Denmark, Holland and the UK, US and Israel too are objectively nicer and happier places than the third world ones you mentioned. You can see by walking around, looking at people and things. So we’re doing something right that they’re doing wrong.”

It always fascinates me when people think this is some kind of checkmate argument. Yes obviously it’s nicer to be in the countries doing the bombing, sanctioning, extracting and stealing than the countries being bombed, sanctioned, exploited and robbed. It’s nicer to be a mugger than the person being mugged, too. It’s always more pleasant to be the hammer than the nail.

It’s such a self-evidently stupid argument, but you see it all the time. Whenever someone talks about the abusiveness of the western empire they always get empire simps in replies all “hoho, but have you considered that it is nicer to live here than to live there?” Of course it is, stupid. It’s always going to be easier being the abuser than the abused.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly advocated shooting children who get too close to the “Yellow Line” dividing Israel-controlled parts of Gaza from the parts under Hamas control. After a while you start understanding why so many people refer to the Israeli regime as “demonic” and “satanic” even if you’re not religious. At a certain point you just run out of strong enough adjectives.

It’s so weird how the western political/media class regards Ben-Gvir as a fringe kook whose comments should be ignored despite the fact that he (A) is Israel’s national security minister and (B) consistently ends up getting what he wants.

Zohran Mamdani is outside our area of political interest and it’s none of our business who New Yorkers elect as their mayor, but the Islamophobic shrieking that has been seeing online in response to his campaign has been absolutely jaw-dropping. No one with mainstream political or media aspirations could ever get away with talking about the religion of a Jewish politician the way Zionists have been openly talking about Mamdani and his faith.

From what we can tell Mamdani is a just a regular guy and a fairly ordinary progressive Democrat with an extraordinarily high level of campaign talent, but these freaks are claiming he’s going to impose sharia law and start throwing gays off the Chrysler Building. It’s a degree of mass hysteria about Islam unlike anything seen since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which any normal person will agree led to some extremely bad thinking and terrible decisions.

Some of it is arising from organic American racism and the knee-jerk rightist impulse to throw anyone to the left of Bill Clinton out of a flying helicopter, but a lot of it has nothing to do with Mamdani at all. As has been discussed previously, Zionists have been seizing on every opportunity to promote hatred of Muslims because it’s a lot easier than convincing people to like Israel.

To be clear, this is not speculating when this is said. Drop Site News published a report last month based on leaked documents which showed that the Israeli government had commissioned an American polling company to help it with the PR crisis caused by its genocidal atrocities, and the report found that the most effective strategy would be to foment fear of “Radical Islam” and “Jihadism”.

So this agenda is already in the waters of Zionist consciousness. The election of a Muslim to the most high-profile mayoral position in the United States provides Israel supporters with ample opportunity to stir up panic about Muslims in America on the assumption that Israel will benefit from such sentiments, since Israel is always killing Muslims. There is no argument to be made that Israel is a good nation that is inherently deserving of support, so they’re banking on circulating the belief that it’s good to drop bombs on Muslims instead.

Western politics is getting more and more diseased, and American politics is leading the way. It’s making people dumber, crazier, and more hateful, and is preventing them from seeing that the real minority that’s been causing everyone’s problems are the rich and powerful oligarchs and empire managers who rule the western power alliance. Keep ordinary members of the public hating each other and fighting each other, and they won’t start hating and fighting their actual oppressors.

TRUMP’S NUCLEAR TESTING PROVOCATION

Trump’s Announcement That The United States Will Resume Nuclear Weapons Testing After A 33-Year Moratorium Represents The Kind Of Reflexive, Muscle-Flexing Response That He Substitutes For Strategy In Foreign Policy.

Made just hours before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, this decision manages to undermine American interests while providing Beijing and Moscow with precisely the diplomatic ammunition they’ve long sought.

The president’s justification—that we must test “on an equal basis” with other countries—rests on a foundation of dubious claims. Russia’s recent test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile involved the delivery system, not a nuclear detonation. China’s last known nuclear weapons test occurred in 1996. North Korea, the only nation conducting actual nuclear tests in recent years, is hardly the standard by which America should calibrate its strategic posture.

What Trump has done, whether intentionally or not, is hand a propaganda victory to Beijing and Moscow while potentially accelerating the very nuclear competition he claims to be responding to. The United States maintains nuclear superiority not through explosive testing but through sophisticated computer modeling and subcritical experiments—technologies in which we possess an overwhelming advantage. By resuming testing, we invite our rivals to close gaps in their capabilities while squandering the moral high ground that comes from restraint.

The timing betrays the hollowness of this decision. Announcing a resumption of nuclear testing mere hours before sitting down with Xi Jinping suggests this was less about genuine strategic necessity and more about theatrical posturing—the kind of cheap signaling that plays well on social media but complicates actual diplomacy. One wonders how the president expects to negotiate seriously on trade, Taiwan, or regional stability while simultaneously escalating nuclear tensions.

Moreover, this move undermines decades of American efforts to strengthen the global non-proliferation regime. While it’s true that the Senate never ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, successive administrations of both parties recognized that America’s voluntary restraint served our interests by discouraging testing by others. That bipartisan consensus, forged through careful consideration of strategic realities, has now been casually discarded.

The broader pattern here is troubling. Trump’s approach to nuclear policy—whether threatening “fire and fury” against North Korea, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, or now resuming weapons testing—consistently prioritizes dramatic gestures over patient strategy. The problem with foreign policy by pyrotechnics is that other nations respond in kind, creating escalatory dynamics that serve no one’s interests.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that the United States faces genuine challenges in managing strategic competition with China and Russia. Beijing’s rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal deserves serious attention and response. But that response should involve strengthening deterrence through conventional capabilities, shoring up alliances, and maintaining the technological edge that makes our nuclear arsenal credible without explosive testing. Instead, we’re choosing a path that will likely accelerate Chinese nuclear development while providing cover for Russian violations of arms control norms.

The irony is rich: a president who campaigned against endless wars and reckless interventionism has just taken a step that makes nuclear proliferation more likely and strategic stability less certain. This isn’t “peace through strength”—it’s instability through impulsiveness.

If Congress retains any meaningful role in matters of war and peace, it should demand answers about the strategic rationale for this decision, its potential consequences, and whether alternative approaches were seriously considered. The power to resume nuclear testing after three decades of restraint should not rest in a single impulsive Truth Social post.

The question isn’t whether America possesses sufficient nuclear weapons—it does. The question is whether it possess sufficient strategic wisdom to wield that power responsibly. On that measure, this week’s announcement offers a discouraging answer.

WHEN WILL YOU SAY “ENOUGH” AS ISRAELI SETTLERS ATTACK AMERICANS?

This Is Not How America’s “Greatest Ally” Would Behave. It Is How America’s Real Rulers Do Behave. It Is Long Past The Time For Americans To Face This Reality And Do Something About It.

Over the weekend, a group of armed Israeli settlers in the West Bank staged an attack on American journalist and Drop Site News contributor Jasper Nathaniel and a group of Palestinians he was accompanying. Footage recorded by Nathaniel, an American citizen, shows more than a dozen masked men chasing him and his group down a dirt road.

Already horrifying, the story soon became even more egregious. When Nathaniel contacted the American Embassy to report the attack, he was told that his own government could not protect him. As independent journalist Jeremy Loffredo—who was recently detained by the IDF for the “crime” of doing journalism without military permission—observed on X:

“If an American tourist was being chased and attacked by masked & armed government-backed terrorists in any country other than Israel, it would immediately become a major diplomatic crisis with wall-to-wall media coverage.”

He’s absolutely right.

The episode Nathaniel documents is not an anomaly but part of what MAGA luminary Tucker Carlson calls America’s “ongoing humiliation ritual”—the decades-long pattern of Americans being detained, harassed, attacked, and even killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers with complete impunity.

Recall how, in 2022, the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper while wearing a press vest, an execution the Biden administration helped Israel bury. Just a few months ago, 20-year-old Saif Musallet, an American citizen from Florida, was beaten to death by settlers in the West Bank while Israeli soldiers blocked medical aid from reaching him (The IDF says it was deescalating a conflict caused when rocks were thrown at the settlers). His killers remain free. With the unconditional support of a bipartisan majority of lawmakers in Washington, Israeli officials correctly believe that when they target Americans, they have nothing to fear.

The attack on Nathaniel by armed Israeli settlers is therefore not an isolated incident but routine behavior from an increasingly radicalized and fanatical society. For decades, even supposedly progressive foreign policy voices in Congress, like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have insisted these settlers are somehow separate from the “real Israel.” But a growing number of Americans recognize that argument for the fraud it has always been. The settlements are sadly not an aberration, but an expression of mainstream Israeli values that are completely incompatible with our own.

As the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented, settler violence is state violence. Settlers burn homes and olive groves, attack farmers with clubs and guns, and terrorize Palestinian villages under the direct protection of Israeli occupation forces—with total confidence that they will never face punishment.

While settler violence is condoned and even facilitated by the Israeli government, it is antithetical to the basic moral tenets codified in all Abrahamic religions, including Judaism. Evidently, the elementary “thou shalt nots” simply do not apply to Israeli settlers, who steal, burn, and kill with state protection.

The moral bankruptcy at the core of Israel’s expansionist national project is why a global propaganda apparatus is necessary to sustain it: Without that apparatus, Americans would quickly see that their own government is funding and providing cover for the kind of violence they deplore. Americans—especially conservative factions—hold sacred private property rights, self-government, the rule of law, and the belief that all are equal under it. Though it is hailed as the “only democracy in the Middle East,” the state of Israel denies those basic God-given liberties to Palestinians in the occupied territories.

As a result of viral videos like Nathaniel’s, an increasing number of Americans now view Israel and its society as violent and extremist—and Israel, along with its foreign lobby, knows it. That is why, as Drop Site News reported, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has commissioned polling firms to conduct surveys, focus groups, and message-testing aimed at distorting American perception of Israelis and Palestinians. The “best tactic,” to combatting the catastrophic PR problem created by Israel’s genocide and livestreamed assault on Palestinian life, according to the Mark Penn / Stagwell research, is to foment fear of “radical Islam” and “jihadism,” framing Israel as a Western bulwark against barbarism.

Even Tucker Carlson—who has done more than any major broadcaster to expose the power of the Israel lobby and question the foundations of America’s alliance with it—prefaces his critiques by saying he “likes Israel” or “doesn’t care about Israel.”

But to those who say that they don’t care—that Israel’s wars and expanding settlements have nothing to do with us—the American regime has not merely supported Israel’s repression of the Palestinians but, by gifting it weapons and shielding it with diplomatic cover, has become an active participant and co-signer of the Greater Israel project. Nearly every bomb that kills civilians in Gaza was “Made in the USA,” while American tax dollars fund the rifles that kill journalists in the West Bank. Even Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome air defense system—backed by both parties in Congress, from Republican Ted Cruz to Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—grants Israel license to wage wars of aggression, intercepting any retaliation so that it can bomb with impunity, confident that no consequence will ever reach it.

By underwriting this arrangement, the American regime implicitly endorses not only Israel’s aggression abroad but its fanatical social order at home. Across the Middle East, people see Israel—rightly or not—as an extension of American power. Every missile strike, dead Palestinian child, and settler ambush feeds the perception that America is an enemy of Mideast Muslims. As long as that arrangement continues, Israel’s impunity will remain your humiliation—and its moral rot will be your own.

WHY ARE TOP TRUMP OFFICIALS MOVING ONTO MILITARY BASES?

Stephen Miller Joined A Growing List Of Senior Trump-Administration Political Appointees—At Least Six By The Last Count—Living In Washington-Area Military Housing.

The former White House adviser Katie Miller—mother of three young children, and wife of the presidential right-hand man Stephen—walked out of her front door one Thursday morning last month and was confronted by a woman she did not know. When she told this story on Fox News, she described the encounter as a protest that crossed a line. The stranger had told Miller: “I’m watching you,” she said. This was the day after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It also wasn’t anything new.

For weeks before Kirk’s death, activists had been protesting the Millers’ presence in north Arlington, Virginia. Someone had put up wanted posters in their neighborhood with their home address, denouncing Stephen as a Nazi who had committed “crimes against humanity.” A group called Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity warned in an Instagram post: “Your efforts to dismantle our democracy and destroy our social safety net will not be tolerated here.” The local protest became a backdrop to the Trump administration’s response to Kirk’s killing. When Miller, the architect of that response who is known for his inflammatory political rhetoric, announced a legal crackdown on liberal groups, he singled out the tactics that had victimized his family—what he called “organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting peoples’ addresses.”

Stephen Miller soon joined a growing list of senior Trump-administration political appointees—at least six by our count—living in Washington-area military housing, where they are shielded not just from potential violence but also from protest. It is an ominous marker of the nation’s polarization, to which the Trump administration has itself contributed, that some of those top public servants have felt a need to separate themselves from the public. These civilian officials can now depend on the American military to augment their personal security. But so many have made the move that they are now straining the availability of housing for the nation’s top uniformed officers.

Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, moved out of her D.C. apartment building and into the home designated for the Coast Guard commandant on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, across the river from the capital, after the Daily Mail described where she lived. Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live on “Generals’ Row” at Fort McNair, an Army enclave along the Anacostia River, according to officials from the State and Defense Departments. (Rubio spent one recent evening assembling furniture that had been delivered to the house that day.) Although most Cabinet-level officials live in private houses, there is precedent for senior national-security officials, including the defense secretary, to rent homes on bases for security or convenience. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, whose family is in Washington only part-time, now shares a home on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, a picturesque site next to Arlington National Cemetery. His roommate is another senior political appointee to the Army. (When Driscoll moved in, his washing machine wasn’t working, so for the first few weeks of his stay on base, he lugged his laundry over to the home of the Army chief of staff, General Randy George.)

Another senior White House official, whom The Atlantic is not naming because of security concerns related to a specific foreign threat, also vacated a private home for a military installation after Kirk’s murder. In that case, security officials urged the official to relocate to military housing, according to people briefed on the move, who like many others who spoke with us for this story were not authorized to do so publicly. So many senior officials have requested housing that some are now encountering a familiar D.C. problem: inadequate supply. When Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s team inquired earlier in Donald Trump’s second term about her moving onto McNair, it didn’t work out for space reasons, a former official said.

There are scattered examples from previous administrations of Cabinet members residing on bases. Both Robert Gates, defense secretary under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Jim Mattis, Trump’s first Pentagon chief, lived in Navy housing at the Potomac Hill annex, a secure compound near the State Department. Mike Pompeo, CIA director and secretary of state during Trump’s first term, lived at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. The grand homes they occupied, some of which date back more than a century, offer officials an additional layer of security and ample space for official entertaining.

But there is no record of so many political appointees living on military installations. The shift adds to the blurring of traditional boundaries between the civilian and military worlds. Trump has made the military a far more visible element of domestic politics, deploying National Guard forces to Washington, Los Angeles, and other cities run by Democrats. He has decreed that those cities should be used as “training grounds” in the battle against the “enemy within.”

Adria Lawrence, an associate professor of international studies and political science at John Hopkins University, told us that housing political advisers on bases sends a problematic message. “In a robust democracy, what you want is the military to be for the defense of the country as a whole and not just one party,” Lawrence said.

But the threat assessment has also changed in recent years. Trump has survived two attempted assassinations; Iran has stepped up its efforts to kill federal officials; and political violence—such as the June shooting of two Democratic Minnesota lawmakers, the murder of Kirk in September, and the shooting at a Texas immigration facility two weeks later—is a real danger.

The result is straining the stock of homes typically allotted to senior uniformed officers on Washington-area bases. Some of those homes, designed for three- and four-star generals, lack sufficient bedrooms for families with young children. Many have lead-abatement issues and require significant repair. The Army notified Congress in January that it planned to spend more than $137,000 on repairs and upgrades to Hegseth’s McNair home before he moved in. Both Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, and Austin’s State Department counterpart, Antony Blinken, faced protesters at their northern-Virginia homes, which were not on bases. Gaza protesters who set up camp outside Blinken’s house, where he lived with his young children, spattered fake blood on cars as they passed by.

Robert Pape, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago, said that the threat of political violence is real for figures in both major parties. He noted that Trump has revoked the security details for several of his critics and adversaries, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and John Bolton, the former national security adviser from Trump’s first term who has been the target of an Iranian assassination plot. “The correct balance would be: Trump should stop canceling the security detail of former Biden officials,” said Pape, who is also the director of the university’s Chicago Project on Security and Threats. “The issue is both sides are under heightened threat; therefore the threat to both should be taken seriously.”

LEARN HOW ISRAEL REPEATEDLY VIOLATED GAZA TRUCE BEFORE STRIKES KILLED 100 PALESTINIANS

In Less Than Three Weeks, Israel Has Killed 211, Restricted Aid And Kept The Rafah Crossing Closed In Violation Of The Peace Agreement.

Israel unleashed a deadly wave of air strikes on Wednesday in Gaza, killing over 100 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, in the most significant breach of the ceasefire to date.

To justify the strikes, Israel cited alleged Hamas violations of the agreement’s terms.

Hamas has denied the Israeli accusations, reiterating that it has abided by all terms of the agreement.

Meanwhile, Israel has violated multiple aspects of the agreement, including maintaining restrictions on aid, keeping the Rafah crossing closed and carrying out repeated air strikes.

In just under three weeks, Israeli forces have killed 211 people since the ceasefire began.

Medical supplies, fuel and other essential goods remain severely limited in the Palestinian enclave.

The sequence of Israel’s violations leading up to Wednesday’s deadly bombardment:

DAILY KILLINGS

Almost immediately after the ceasefire came into effect on October 11^th, Israel began violating it.

On October 14^th, a day after the exchange of living prisoners was completed, Israeli forces killed at least seven Palestinians in drone strikes and artillery shelling. According to local media, the targeted Palestinians were inspecting their damaged homes.

These attacks constituted a breach of the agreement, which explicitly stated that “all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment and targeting operations, will be suspended”.

The Israeli military claimed it was targeting people who had crossed the agreed-upon army deployment lines, known as the “Yellow Line”, after issuing warning shots.

Such killings continued in the following days, mostly occurring beyond the so-called Yellow Line. Within a week, Israel had killed at least 35 people, citing similar justifications.

On October 19^th, two Israeli soldiers were killed in an attack in Israeli-controlled Rafah. No Palestinian group claimed responsibility.

Israel blamed Hamas, which denied any involvement or knowledge of the attack, saying it has not had active fighters in the area for months.

In response, Israel unleashed a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip, killing around 45 people, before resuming the ceasefire later in the day.

However, violations continued, with more people killed in the following days under the pretext of crossing the Yellow Line.

On October 25^th, Israel killed a man in central Gaza, which was not beyond the Yellow Line, further expanding its violations. Hamas and other Palestinian groups did not retaliate, instead urging mediators to intervene.

On Tuesday, an Israeli soldier was killed in another attack in Rafah, which Hamas denied being involved in.

Israeli military sources told local media that there was no evidence the attack was connected to the Hamas leadership and happened after troops began collapsing a tunnel fighters were in.

By then, Israeli forces had committed 125 breaches of the ceasefire, according to a tally by the Gaza-based Government Media Office.

These included 52 shootings and 55 incidents of shelling. Israeli forces also made nine incursions into areas beyond the agreed deployment lines and seized at least 21 people.

On Wednesday, Israel unleashed the heaviest wave of air strikes since the start of the ceasefire, killing at least 104 people, including 46 children.

The latest assault brought the death toll since the ceasefire took effect to 211.

Overall, Israeli forces have killed at least 68,643 Palestinians since October 7^th 2023, and wounded over 170,000.

Most of those killed are civilians, according to leaked military data.

OTHER ISRAELI VIOLATIONS

Alongside the alleged attacks on troops in Rafah, Israel has also cited the slow return of dead captives as a reason behind the recent escalation.

Israel claims that Hamas violated the terms of the agreement by delaying the return of the deceased captives.

However, the Egypt-brokered agreement sets no specific deadline for returning the bodies, stating only that they would be returned “as soon as possible”.

So far, Hamas has returned all 20 living captives, as well as 15 deceased.

On Tuesday, the group said it had recovered two more bodies, which were initially scheduled for return the same day but were delayed due to Israeli strikes.

The Palestinian movement denies breaching the agreement, asserting that it is doing everything possible to return the deceased captives.

It noted, however, that retrieving the bodies requires heavy equipment that Israel has so far blocked. Additionally, the locations of some bodies remain unknown after contact was lost with their guards, who were killed alongside the captives.

Israel has used the slow return of captives to justify its strikes and impose punitive measures on the population of the Gaza Strip.

Contrary to the terms of the agreement, Israel has not allowed the agreed-upon 600 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza daily. Instead, an average of 200–300 trucks is permitted daily.

The lack of aid has left medical and food supplies critically low in Gaza, where Israel has all but destroyed the healthcare system, and famine was declared following its siege in August.

On October 18^th, Israel announced that it would keep the Rafah crossing with Egypt closed until further notice, another violation of the deal.

The crossing was set to be reopened to allow the movement of Palestinians three days after the ceasefire came into effect.

The crossing has effectively been closed by Israeli forces since May 2024, trapping the Palestinian population inside Gaza. Tens of thousands of critically wounded people are awaiting its reopening to seek treatment abroad.

According to Al-Araby TV, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has reported that 983 patients have died while waiting for permission to travel for medical treatment abroad.

WHAT AMERICANS THINK OF AMERICA IS NOT GREAT – A NEW POLL REVEALS

In A Bitterly Divided Country, Pessimism And Cynicism Reign Supreme: Two-Thirds Of Americans Say It Is At Least Probably True That The Government Often Deliberately Lies To The People.

That distrust cuts across partisan lines: Strong majorities of Donald Trump voters (64 percent) and Kamala Harris voters (70 percent) agree.

Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say that the best times of the country are behind them, according to poll. That’s greater than the 41 percent who said the best times lie ahead, underscoring a pervasive sense of unease about both individuals’ own futures and the national direction.

The exclusive new poll, conducted nearly one year after Trump’s reelection, reveals a deep strain of pessimism across the electorate — but especially for Democrats.

People who voted for Harris last year are twice as likely as Trump voters to say the United States’ best times are in the past.

America, as a country, is like “someone who is feeling lost, confused, or beat up … or uncertain of what to do, and looking around and saying this isn’t right, this isn’t the way,” said Maury Giles, the CEO of Braver Angels, a nonprofit that works to bridge partisan divides.

DEMOCRATS ARE MORE PESSIMISTIC THAN REPUBLICANS

Asked about “the best times” in the United States, only a small number of people cited the present moment. Instead, nearly two-thirds of Harris voters said the best times in America. were in the past, double the share of Trump voters who believe that. A 55 percent majority of Trump voters said the best times still lie ahead.

That’s likely at least partly a reflection of a partisan pattern of expressing optimism when one’s party is in the White House, and pessimism when it is not.
“Americans will divide on how they view the country’s doing depending on who is in office and which party they identify with,” said Jennifer McCoy, a political scientist at Georgia State University who focuses on political partisanship.
Americans’ views may flip in the future, when control of the White House and government next change — but for now, Democrats’ negative views are pervasive.

More than half of Harris voters, 51 percent, say that America is not a functioning democracy, while 52 percent of Trump voters take the opposite view and say America is a model.

The view from Democrats is so gloomy that a solid majority of Harris voters — 70 percent — say the quality of life in America is at least somewhat worse than it was five years ago, a period that was marked by the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread racial justice protests and a contentious presidential election. Meanwhile, a 42 percent plurality of Trump voters say the quality of life in America is at least somewhat better than it was five years ago.

That dynamic even extends to views of the world at large: More than three-quarters — 76 percent — of Harris voters say the state of the world is at least somewhat worse than it was five years ago, compared to 44 percent of Trump voters who agree.

MANY PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE THE AMERICAN DREAM EXISTS

On a personal level, faith in the American Dream has also fallen. The idea — once considered a national ethos about the ability to better one’s life through hard work and discipline — was not specifically defined in the poll, which asked more generally about the statement that “the American Dream no longer exists.”

Overall, almost half — 46 percent — of Americans said that the American Dream no longer exists. That was by far the most common answer, far greater than the 26 percent who disagreed.

A slight majority of Harris voters, 51 percent, agreed that the American Dream no longer exists, while last year’s Trump voters were even split, with 38 percent agreeing and 38 percent disagreeing.

The declining belief in the American Dream, which has been mirrored in other national surveys, reflects a pessimism about today’s economy.

TRINIDAD FISHERMEN FEAR THE SEA BECAUSE OF THE AMERICAN REGIME’S MURDERS AND WARMONGERING

Near Venezuela, In The Eye Of A Political Storm Fueled By An American Naval Deployment, Fishermen From The Archipelago Of Trinidad And Tobago Fear Getting Taken Out.

Between Venezuelan military preparations in response to the muscular American regime’s “provocation” on the one hand, and American strikes on alleged drug boats on the other, people who normally ply their trade in the sea told AFP they are keeping a low profile.

In Cedros, a village in the extreme southwest of the island of Trinidad, a group of them chatted in hammocks on the beach, their boats unusually idle.

The fishers eyed the Venezuelan coast, about a dozen kilometers (seven miles) away, as they discussed their dilemma.

Barefoot and dressed in shorts, Kendrick Moodee said he and his comrades were taking “a little more caution,” with the Venezuelan coast guard “a bit tense” these days.

There has been closer policing, the 58-year-old said, of fishing in Venezuelan territorial waters where boats from Trinidad and Tobago were previously left to operate undisturbed.

Several Cedros fishermen said Venezuelan patrols have been violently repelling Trinidadian vessels, and beatings and extortion have increased.

Their territory curtailed, the fishermen have seen their yields and income dwindle.

American strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific have killed at least 62 people on boats Washington claims were ferrying drugs in recent weeks. Family members and victims’ governments have said some of them were fishermen at sea.

Earlier this month President Trump hailed the success of the operation, saying: “We’re so good at it that there are no boats. In fact, even fishing boats –- nobody wants to go into the water anymore.”

At least two of those killed were Trinidadians, according to mourning loved ones, though the government of the American regime-aligned nation of 1.4 million people has refused to confirm the identities.

“This (fishing) is the only thing we have to… make a dollar,” 42-year-old Rakesh Ramdass said, saying he was afraid of the diplomatic fallout, but without an alternative.

“You have to take a chance,” he said. But at sea, “anything can happen.”

Fishermen said the Trinidadian coast guard was also making life more difficult for them in an area known as a hotspot for the trafficking of drugs, arms and people — including Venezuelans fleeing dire economic problems in their own country.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is a fierce critic of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and a friend of Trump, and has welcomed the American regime’s strikes.

Maduro accused her of turning Trinidad and Tobago into “an aircraft carrier of the American empire” after Washington sent a guided-missile destroyer there for four days for a joint military exercise within striking distance of the Venezuelan mainland.

Caracas fears the American deployment of war vessels is part of a regime change plan under the guise of an anti-drug operation.

The diplomatic standoff has meant that “everyone becomes suspect, even simple fishermen,” a Western diplomat in Trinidad and Tobago said on condition of anonymity.

Those who fish “find themselves caught in the crossfire,” said the diplomat, and “normal economic life is disrupted.”

In Icacos, a village near Cedros, Alexsi Soomai, 63, lamented that fishermen like him were going out to sea less frequently.

“Better safe than sorry,” he said.

Icacos is the arrival point for many undocumented Venezuelans seeking a better life elsewhere.

A few steps from the beach, a hamlet with houses made of salvaged wood shelters several families, including that of Yacelis Garcia, a 35-year-old Indigenous Venezuelan who left that country six years ago.

In Venezuela, she recounted, “sometimes we ate, sometimes we didn’t.”

Her brother-in-law Juan Salazar said he now lives “solely from fishing.”

But he does not dare venture far in the current political climate, fearing he will be caught and sent back.