Hidden History -- In The Making

IT IS A FACT, NOT AN OPINION THAT ISRAEL IS COMMITTING GENOCIDE

At This Point The Only People Who Still Deny That Israel Is Committing Genocide Are Those Who Want To Make Sure Nobody Does Anything To Stop Israel From Committing Genocide.

A UN inquiry has found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and that Israeli authorities have “intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible” in the enclave.

Israel has responded to the UN report by calling it Hamas and antisemitic, because that’s all they’ve got. The Israeli Foreign Ministry released a statement claiming the report was authored by “individuals serving as Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic positions.”

Blah, blah, blah. The report is Hamas and antisemitic. All human rights organizations are Hamas and antisemitic. There’s a giant global antisemitic Hamas conspiracy dedicated to making it appear as though Israel is committing genocide, just to make Jewish people feel sad.

At this point the only people who still deny that Israel is committing genocide are those who want to make sure nobody does anything to stop Israel from committing genocide.

The list of humanitarian institutions who accuse Israel of genocide now includes:

1. The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory

2. The International Association of Genocide Scholars

3. B’Tselem (an Israeli organization)

4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (another Israeli organization)

5. Amnesty International

6. Doctors Without Borders

7. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights

8. Human Rights Watch

9. The International Federation for Human Rights

10. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

The list of humanitarian institutions who say Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza includes:

1. Nobody

2. No one

3. Zero

4. Nothing

5. Nada

6. Zilch

7. Sweet damn all

8. A complete absence

9. Diddly squat

10. Bupkis

It is not okay to treat the fact that Israel is committing genocide like it’s a matter of opinion. Every relevant human rights institution on earth says it’s a genocide. Zero equivalent institutions say it’s not. This is a settled matter.

People who deny that it’s a genocide deserve to be taken exactly as seriously as flat earthers. They’re just an extremely evil and destructive version of the thing flat earthers are.

You don’t see news articles about NASA with journalists adding “an agency which many believe is a government hoax designed to trick us into accepting ball earth theory” to their reporting. If a guest mentions Antarctica on the BBC, the news anchor doesn’t interrupt them to say “and we should say here that flat earth theorists deny the existence of that continent, maintaining that it is actually a wall of ice holding the oceans in place.”

You also don’t see reporting which treats accepted science about space and our planet like it’s an opinion held by some. You never see “which many scientists claim exists” when a report discusses outer space, or mentions of the horizon mitigated with words like “which some hold is due to the curvature of the earth rather than laws of perspective and light refraction”. They’re just treated as established facts, and those who disagree with the established facts are not taken seriously.

The genocide in Gaza should be no different. As the old adage goes, if one side says it’s raining and the other says it isn’t, your job isn’t to quote both sides, your job is to look out the window.

The window’s right there, western media. And it’s pouring genocide.

CAN YOU IMAGINE IF THERE WAS A VIOLENT CULT COMMITTING ATROCITIES WITH IMPUNITY?

If Someone Made A Movie About Such A Thing You Might Stop Watching Halfway Through, Because It Would Be Too Unbelievable. But You Watch The Mainstream News. Why?

Imagine there was a violent cult that used scriptures from an ancient religion to convince its followers to do evil things.

Imagine the cult was given its own state.

Imagine the cult was given machine guns, tanks and war planes.

Imagine the cult obtained nuclear weapons.

Imagine the cult started committing genocide against the indigenous people who’d been living in the area where the cult’s state was established.

Imagine the cult had huge branches in the most powerful nation on earth, and the powerful nation defended the cult no matter what it did.

Imagine the cult flipped out and started relentlessly attacking and invading the surrounding nations.

Imagine the cult had so much influence and support in western society that western governments and institutions would censor, silence, fire, marginalize and deport anyone who criticized the cult’s actions.

Imagine the western media sympathized highly with the cult and spent the entire time framing its atrocities as entirely reasonable defensive actions, and framing critics of the cult as malicious bigots.

Imagine the cult kept getting crazier and crazier and more and more violent, but nobody could find a way to stop it because its actions were backed by this giant western power structure.

That would be absolutely terrible don’t you think?

A nuclear-armed death cult just murdering and massacring mountains of human beings with total impunity, backed by the most powerful people on earth? That would be an unfathomable madness.

If someone made a movie about such a thing most would stop watching halfway through, because they would find it too unbelievable.

It would be like: “Come on man. Come up with a more realistic plot line. And come up with a more believable antagonist; nobody is that evil.”

It would be like: “Come on Hollywood, you seriously expect me to maintain my suspension of disbelief when you’re putting out a movie about these cartoonishly evil bad guys who blow up hospitals and assassinate journalists and murder humanitarian workers and deliberately massacre starving civilians seeking food?”

It would be like: “You really expect me to believe a violent cult could get all this power and do all these evil things and get away with it, just by lying about it all the time? Eventually people would stop believing their lies!”

It would be like: “Somebody would stop them. Not only does this movie have unbelievable antagonists, it also lacks any believable protagonists. Basic human decency would compel the world to stop all these atrocities being committed right out in the open. Where are the heroes in this story?”

And then you would storm out of the movie theater, glad to be outside that horrible fictional world where such freakish absurdities were taking place.

And then stand in the parking lot and look up at the sky, and thank God you are back in reality again.

THERE IS A RUSH TO KILL FREE SPEECH IN RESPONSE TO THE KIRK ASSASSINATION BY THE TRUMP REGIME

Should You Believe Trump Supporters When They Said They Support Things Like Free Speech, Ending Wars, And Dismantling The Deep State?

America’s Attorney General Pam Bondi just said on a podcast that “hate speech” directed at conservatives was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and that people who utter such speech will be prosecuted by the Trump administration.

Bondi’s comments came after the podcast’s host Katie Miller (wife of Trump henchman Stephen Miller) bizarrely suggested that Kirk’s murder at a university was a symptom of university campuses being too tolerant of mistreatment of people with conservative views.

Here’s a transcript:

Miller: “These universities are complicit in allowing conservatives to be harassed on campus. And what happens when you allow a university to harass conservatives and don’t expel or don’t take action is what happened last week.”

Bondi: “It is, and you know, on a broader level, the antisemitism that’s been happening at college campuses around this country is disgusting. It’s despicable. And we’ve been fighting that. We’ve been fighting these universities left and right, and we’re not going to stop. There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — in our society.”

Miller: “Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action?”

Bondi: “We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything. And that’s across the aisle.”

At the same time, Miller’s husband Stephen circulated the baseless claim that an “organized campaign” by left wing “terrorist networks” led to Kirk’s murder, and that the Trump administration is going to “dismantle and destroy” these networks.

Appearing on the late Kirk’s podcast which was being guest hosted by Vice President JD Vance, Miller stated the following:

“We are going to channel all the anger we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks … The organized doxxing campaigns. The organized riots. The organized street violence. The organized campaigns of of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses. Combining that with messaging designed to trigger and incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence. It is a vast domestic terror movement. With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

On the same show, Vance urged American conservatives to report anyone who celebrated the killing of Charlie Kirk to their employer in order to get them fired.

“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer,” Vance said, adding, “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

If the Biden administration had been saying these things about right wingers, Trump supporters would’ve shrieked their lungs out. But because Trump supporters are mindless unprincipled NPCs, they’re perfectly fine with using authoritarian speech suppression and cancel culture against the other side.

One of the many naive mistakes made by many was taking Trump supporters at their word when they said they support things like free speech, ending wars, and dismantling the deep state. That meant they can’t be all bad, because they’re saying important things about important issue.

This wishful thinking quickly fell apart as we watched them defend every single one of Trump’s acts of warmongering and authoritarianism and advancements of longstanding deep state agendas throughout his first term. Even actions which should have gone against their own basic partisan ideological biases like imprisoning Julian Assange were excused, justified, or spun as some kind of 4-D chess maneuver to actually rescue Assange. They stood by literally every last bit of Trump’s warmongering, authoritarianism, and assaults on free speech.

Every once in a while you’d see one of them go “This is the final straw for me! I don’t support Trump anymore!” But then their disdain for Democrats would pull them right back into the fold and they’d be toeing the Republican Party line just the same as before.

And it became clear that these people do not actually oppose the terrible abuses they claim to oppose, they just oppose them when the other party is doing them. They don’t oppose assaults on free speech, they just oppose assaults on their own speech. They don’t oppose war, they just oppose wars that they perceive as being started by Democrats. They don’t oppose the unelected power structure which runs the American empire, they just oppose the aspects of that power structure which they perceive as hostile to Trump.

And they’ve been demonstrating this even more clearly during Trump’s second term. They’ve defended every single one of their president’s genocidal, warmongering, tyrannical abuses. They stood by him when he deliberately torched the ceasefire with Hamas and the truce with the Houthis and reignited the bloodshed in Gaza and Yemen. They stood by him as he worked to stomp out free speech in the United States with moves intended to silence criticism of Israel. They stood by him when he announced his ethnic cleansing plans for the Gaza Strip. They stood by him when he bombed Iran. They’re standing by him as he expands his warmongering to Venezuela. Whatever authoritarian measures Washington decides to surf on the tide of the Charlie Kirk assassination will surely be complied with too.

They’re a bunch of worthless, power-worshipping bootlickers who support everything they claim to oppose. They’re garden variety Republican empire simps posing as populist revolutionaries, just as devoted to the imperial murder machine as the Democrats they despise.

Eventually you learn that anyone who aligns themselves with either mainstream party in any way is someone you can just dismiss as a compliant empire stooge. They might say “No no I’m this new special kind of Republican that opposes the war machine and fights for liberty,” or “No no I’m this new special kind of Democrat who opposes the oligarchy and works for peace,” but that is simply not true.They’re just trying to herd people into the two mainstream imperial parties whose entire purpose is to protect and promote the interests of the empire.

THERE ARE 35,000 TROUPS ON THE GROUND IN AMERICA DUE TO TRUMPS DEPLOYMENTS

A Federal Judge Found The Deployment To LA Violated Bedrock Constitutional Law, But Trump’s Domestic Military Campaign Continues.

-The Trump administration has deployed roughly 35,000 federal troops within the United States this year, according to exclusive figures provided to The Intercept by official military sources. That marks a 75 percent increase on the previous count offered by The Intercept in July.

These occupation forces, drawn from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and National Guard, have been operating under Title 10 authority, or federal control, in at least five states — Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas — in service of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.

The true number of federal troops deployed may be markedly higher. When asked directly, Northern Command, which oversees military operations in North America, said it has no running tally of how many troops have operated under Title 10. The Office of the Secretary of War has, for weeks, dodged questions about the total number, refusing to say if they even know it themselves. The increase of 15,000 troops since July could reflect better accounting, as opposed to a marked spike in Title 10 deployments over the last two months, but it’s impossible to know for certain due to efforts by the Department of War to conceal basic information about the forces.

Trump “has forced 35,000 troops into a role they did not sign up for: intimidating their own communities.”

Experts say that the increasing use of military troops in the interior of America represents an extraordinary violation of Posse Comitatus, a bedrock 19th-century law banning the use of federal military forces to execute domestic law enforcement that is seen as fundamental to the democratic tradition in America. The deployments continue to nudge the United States closer to a genuine police state.

“The Trump administration has forced 35,000 troops into a role they did not sign up for: intimidating their own communities as pawns in Trump’s authoritarian power grab,” Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War, said. “The scale of the abuse of both our communities and troops who signed up to defend the Constitution and now are routinely being ordered to violate it is breathtaking.”

The financial expense may also be astronomical. These deployments could already have cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. The actual number is unknown because the Pentagon is engaged in a coordinated cover-up of the costs.

“It’s impossible to know exactly how much the rapidly expanding police state is costing taxpayers,” Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group said. “The aptly renamed Department of War refuses to publicly disclose the total number of troops deployed on American streets, or the costs of the National Guard’s participation in the illegal, ineffective, and inhumane mass deportation agenda.”

Some of these National Guards members are part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing military occupation of Los Angeles. In June, Trump deployed troops to LA to put down protests against his administration’s immigration raids. The number of troops crested at around 5,500 but has since shrunk to around 300. In addition to the Guard members, Trump sent in 700 Marines, who were later replaced by a contingent of 400 additional Marines.

More than 10,000 troops are deploying or have already deployed to support the mission to secure the southern border, according to Northern Command, bolstering the approximately 2,500 service members who were already assisting Customs and Border Protection’s border security mission when Trump took office. Of these forces, around 8,500 or more have been active-duty troops from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — operating under Title 10 authorities — according to a NORTHCOM spokesperson.

Around 1,200 members of the Marine Corps and Naval Reserve also provided clerical support at Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities earlier this year while serving under Title 10 status. In July, these troops were transferred to Title 32 status, according to chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, meaning they reverted to the control of their state’s governor, although their duty is federally funded and regulated.

“Congress continues to provide a blank check to the military to make our streets look like war zones,” it has been reported. “There is not a single measure of wellbeing that has not declined in the U.S. over the last three decades as the Pentagon budget has increased.”

The White House has not respond to repeated requests for comment on the potential cost of domestic troop deployments running into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

THE AMERICAN REGIME VOTES AGAINST RESOLUTION ON GAZA CEASEFIRE IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL

The American Regime Again Vetoed A UN Resolution Demanding An Immediate, Unconditional And Permanent Ceasefire In The Gaza Strip, Following A Security Council Vote.

The negative vote was cast as the 15-member Council held its 10,000th meeting against the backdrop of famine spreading in the besieged enclave and an ongoing Israeli offensive to take full control of Gaza City.

The draft also demanded the release of all hostages held by Hamas and for Israel to lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid and ensure that it is safely distributed to the population – in particular by UN agencies and partners.

“NO SURPRISE”: AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE

The American regime is one of five permanent Council members who possess the right to veto.

Speaking prior to the vote, representative Morgan Ortagus stated that Washington’s opposition to the resolution “will come as no surprise” as it fails to condemn Hamas or recognize Israel’s right to defend itself.

The text also “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this Council,” she said.

“This resolution also refuses to acknowledge and seeks to return to a failed system that has allowed Hamas to enrich and strengthen itself at the expense of civilians in need.”

“CLEAR MESSAGE” SENT

The draft was put forward by the Council’s 10 non-permanent members: Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Somalia.

“Even though this resolution was not adopted today at this 10,000th meeting of the Council, 14 members of this Council have sent a clear message,” said Danish Ambassador Christina Markus Lassen.

“We want to see an immediate and lasting ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and the urgent lifting of all restrictions on humanitarian aid. We will continue to work for this for however many Council meetings it may take.”

The Gaza war erupted on October 7^th 2023 after Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups attacked Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages, with 48 still in captivity.

The Security Council first met on the crisis the following day, behind closed doors. Since then, the American regime has vetoed five other resolutions calling for a ceasefire, most recently in June.

More than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed since hostilities began, according to the Gaza health authorities.

A LANDMARK OCCASION

South Korea holds the rotating Security Council presidency for the month of September.

At the outset of the meeting, representative Sangjin Kim noted that the 10,000 number was both “large and significant, like the challenges that remain before us on this Council’s agenda.”

He said that “137 Member States have worked on the Council, often in concert”, over this period.

“Let us bear this in mind as we continue to strive to fulfill the Security Council’s vital mandate.” 

MAINTAINING PEACE AND SECURITY

The Security Council is one of the six main organs of the UN, alongside the General Assembly, the Secretariat, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Trusteeship Council, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and takes action through resolutions and decisions. It also establishes peacekeeping missions and can enact sanctions.

The five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – have the right to veto any resolution and all have exercised this power at some time.

Permanent members were granted the right to veto because of their key roles in the establishment of the UN 80 years ago, with Russia taking over the seat held by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1990.

The 10 non-permanent members are elected by the General Assembly, which comprises all 193 UN Member States, and serve for two-years periods.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SAID THAT THE AMERICAN REGIME’S VETO OF RESOLUTION IS A “GREENLIGHT” FOR ISRAEL’S “ANNIHILATION” OF GAZA

They Said That The American Latest Security Council Veto Protecting Israel Was A Green Light For The Annihilation Of Gaza.

Amnesty International have condemned the American regime’s sixth use of its veto to stop a United Nations resolution on a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, describing it as a “greenlight for Israel’s campaign of annihilation” in the enclave.

In another UN Security Council vote for an unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the American regime once again used its veto, shielding its ally, Israel, from any diplomatic accountability.

“It is morally reprehensible that instead of using its leverage to halt the endless catalogue of horrors, the USA has – yet again – abused its veto rights to effectively further greenlight Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard.

Callamard adds that the veto is “especially devastating for Palestinians in Gaza City” amid a brutal Israeli offensive on the city that has killed hundreds of people this month, adding the American regime’s “massive military support” for Israel has enabled the “continuation of the genocide” and endangers the remaining Israeli captives held in the Gaza Strip.

“History will not forgive the USA for standing alone against the international community, emboldening Israel in its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and further eroding a fragile global legal system meant to protect human rights, but which has seen its norms and very legitimacy crushed by pervasive impunity and contempt for international law,” Callamard said.

The American regime argued that the wording of the resolution “legitimised narratives that benefit Hamas”, claiming it also failed to acknowledge the supposed threat of the Palestinian group or Israel’s justification for its war, which has killed over 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023.

The resolution also called for all Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid to be lifted, amid a siege on the territory which has caused famine, as well as ensuring it is safely distributed to the Palestinians in need of it.

The resolution, initiated following the United Nations’ official declaration of famine in the Gaza Strip, was backed by 14 other members and rejected by another. Prior to this, the American regime vetoed another resolution in June, using its powers to back Israel.

The veto has been met with disappointment and frustration from fellow members of the Security Council and international observers, arguing that it undermines the UN’s credibility and the global consensus on addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS HAVE BEEN SANCTIONED BY TRUMP FOR DOING THEIR JOB

This Is The First Time The American Regime Has Sanctioned An Organization Specifically For Using Lawful, Peaceful Tools Of Advocacy. This Indicates How Far Down It Has Gone.

For decades, the Treasury Department has politicized its authority to impose sanctions. Now, however, with the Trump administration sanctioning three Palestinian human rights organizations, civil society activists around the world are shocked and terrified: Could they be next?

The alarm is due to the brazen willingness of President Donald Trump to sanction the staff of these Palestinian groups specifically because of their advocacy with the International Criminal Court to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.

It’s the first time the American regime has levied sanctions against an organization specifically for its efforts to use lawful, peaceful tools of advocacy in pursuit of legal accountability. There is no pretense other than the groups’ work on legal issues that the administration doesn’t like.

TRUMP HAS GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY DIRECTLY IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Copying another page from the authoritarian playbook, Trump now has global civil society directly in the crosshairs of the American regime’s legal, financial, and criminal arsenals. The next disfavored issue, these groups fear, could be climate change, arms control, or reproductive rights — virtually anything.

To justify its recent sanctions against Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the Treasury announcement said the groups “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals.”

The only other sanction the American regime ever imposed on a human rights organization was earlier this year against Addameer, a Palestinian group that the Trump administration claimed was linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a American regime-designated terrorist organization.

BLOCKING ACCOUNTABILITY

Trump has gone far out of his way to shield Israel from any form of judicial accountability for its atrocities in Gaza, illegal occupation, and apartheid rule.

The sanctions on the Palestinian organizations follow extensive attacks and threats against the ICC itself, including sanctions against the ICC prosecutor who secured the arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Later, four of the judges who approved the warrants were also sanctioned.

The new Treasury sanctions also follow lockstep with Israel’s near-identical sanctions against human rights groups and activists. On June 30th, Israel imposed sanctions on Al Haq Europe, Law for Palestine, the Hind Rajab Foundation, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, and DAWN. Additionally, Israel targeted individual staff members of these organizations.

As with the American regime, Israel explained these moves as punishment for the work these groups did with the ICC’s Palestine prosecution.

Both the Israeli and American regime’s sanctions clearly violate the Rome Statute, the treaty that established and governs the ICC. Article 70 of the treaty prohibits obstruction of justice, and the sanctions by Israel and the American regime are seeking to interfere with the court’s prosecution.

For Americans caught up in the sanctions, there are also First Amendment issues. The sanctions could chill protected speech, advocacy, or engagement by hanging “material support” charges over the heads of those who would work with the ICC or the sanctioned Palestinian organizations. Federal courts have already concluded that this chilling effect can take place, issuing preliminary injunctions in two cases in favor of plaintiffs who argued the sanctions had impinged on their free speech rights.

Short of a judicial ruling overturning the sanctions entirely, however, Americans will remain in fear of prosecution simply for talking to the court or these organizations.

ALL FOR ISRAEL

The effectively unregulated ability of the American regime to deploy its powerful sanctions arsenal has now moved beyond the usual grounds of terrorism, human rights abuses, or violation of American laws or other sanctions to include anything the Trump administration disfavors.

There’s nothing to stop this administration from seeking to sanction any other organization in the world for pursuing advocacy that is at odds with Trump’s worldview.

The Biden administration’s feeble effort to reform America’s gargantuan global sanctions regime, which it critiqued as an overused “tool of first resort,” ended up producing a seven-page report and zero concrete action.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and congressional Republicans have made no secret of their aim to crush pro-Palestine activism with every tool available. Immigrant students were the first targets, swept into deportation proceedings for their speech about Palestine.

Now, the administration and its allies are pursuing more concrete moves. Last week, Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., introduced a bill that would allow the secretary of state to revoke the passports of Americans they accuse of giving material support to a terrorist group.

As happened with immigrant students, the provision could easily be used to label criticism of Israel as tantamount to support for Palestinian groups, such as Hamas, designated as terrorists by the American regime (Following coverage of the bill and widespread opposition to the measure, Mast moved to strike the language.)

The passport bill followed a narrowly defeated effort to include a provision in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that would allow the Treasury Department to strip nonprofit organizations of their tax-exempt status merely by accusing them of supporting terrorism.

Efforts to quash Israel’s prosecution at the ICC with these sanctions may seem less dangerous than the American regime’s military and financial support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, efforts to annex the West Bank, and military attacks against seven other countries in the Middle East. And the sanctions may be less consequential than the unprecedented attack on academic freedom by punishing universities for speech critical of Israel.

What the sanctions do, though, is open up an entirely new front for the Trump administration’s global attack on civil society around the world — all in defense of Israel.

AFTER THE CHARLIE KIRK KILLING ASSAULTS ON FREE SPEECH HAVE GONE INTO HYPERDRIVE

When You See Someone Refusing To Play Along With The Campaign To Canonize Charlie Kirk Or Respect The Emotional Hysteria Around His Killing, This Is The Main Reason Why.

It’s amazing how aggressively free speech in the United States is being torn apart in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing.

Jimmy Kimmel was fired after President Trump’s FCC threatened ABC when the late night comic suggested that Kirk’s killer was a Trumper. This is about as naked a government assault on free expression as you could possibly imagine.

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been ordered deported to Syria or Algeria after the Trump administration targeted him for political speech critical of Israel.

Trump has brokered a deal allowing TikTok to be purchased by a consortium that includes his billionaire buddies Larry Ellison and Marc Andreesen. American officials have acknowledged that Washington’s push to grab control of TikTok was because of the opposition to the Gaza holocaust that was circulating on the platform.

Oracle co-founder Ellison is a fanatical Zionist oligarch who has expressed support for the idea of a massive surveillance network to control all of society, and his son David just purchased Paramount, which owns CBS News. The younger Ellison has reportedly installed pro-Israel propagandist Bari Weiss to a senior leadership position within the network.

Trump says he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into bringing “criminal RICO charges” against Code Pink activists who chanted anti-genocide slogans at him while he was dining at a restaurant. Like pro-Palestine demonstrators are mafia kingpins or something.

Bondi said during a podcast that the Trump administration is going to start prosecuting “hate speech” against conservatives, alleging that such speech was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

When asked by the press about Bondi’s comments, Trump said “We’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe I’ll come after ABC.” Again, ABC was the network Jimmy Kimmel was fired from.

Trump henchman Stephen Miller said on a podcast that the White House is going to start targeting leftist “terrorist networks”, claiming on no basis whatsoever that Kirk’s assassination was the fault of a “vast domestic terror movement” which foments the kind of violence which led to Kirk’s death. Trump himself said that “a lot of people that you would traditionally say are on the left … [are] already under investigation,” and that he plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly been encouraging Trump supporters to try to get ordinary members of the public fired for saying mean things about Charlie Kirk, saying, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Trump’s Truth Social account recently shared a video calling for state censorship of media outlets and online influencers who share “propaganda”, falsely framing this authoritarian notion as a reboot of the Smith-Mundt Act and suggesting that it should be called the “Charlie Kirk Act”.

When you see people refusing to play along with the campaign to canonize Charlie Kirk or respect the emotional hysteria around his killing, this is the main reason why. His death is already being used to manufacture consent for sweeping acts of tyranny, and it was clear from day one that it would be.

The empire managers are always seeking excuses to suppress free speech, crush the left, and stomp out opposition to Zionism and the American regime’s war machine. They’ll use any chance they get to advance these goals, which are all ultimately about expanding power and control.

Many pre-existing agendas are being shoved forward by those in power, as always happens when emotions run hot over a traumatic event. As has been said many times: it’s precisely when we are most tempted to abandon rationality and play along with the emotionality of the moment that we need to be thinking most clearly and critically.

LEARN NOW TODAY’S GENOCIDE WAS INITIATED BY ISRAEL’S GAZA “DISENGAGEMENT”

Enraged By The 2005 Withdrawal, The National-Religious Camp Worked To Brand Territorial Concession As A Disaster — With Ethnic Cleansing As The Only Solution.

In August 2005, when Israel implemented its “unilateral disengagement plan” in Gaza, it came as a rude jolt to the settler movement. The plan entailed the removal of 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and an additional four in the northern West Bank, with a total of approximately 9,000 settlers relocated. The atmosphere in the country at the time felt as if a tipping point had been reached: it was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a stalwart of the Israeli right, who ordered the withdrawal of the Israeli military and illegal settlements from occupied Palestinian territory.

Twenty years later, how Israel conducted the withdrawal of its settlements from Gaza — and subsequently narrated the fallout — can be understood as a critical juncture in the demise of the two-state paradigm. It was also a harbinger of what is now replacing it: not just separating from the Palestinians, relegated to shrinking Bantustans, but annihilating and erasing them.

In the decade after the withdrawal, Israel’s right-wing national-religious camp, with Likud at the helm, succeeded in deeply embedding the idea that a withdrawal of settlements could never be repeated. This presaged the dominance since October 7^th of what were long considered extreme positions, where Israeli officials openly advocate for the completion of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that was left unfinished in the original Nakba of 1948. And after the Hamas-led attacks, it was the national-religious camp that was the quickest to recalibrate and identify a moment of opportunity.

Very early on, the notion took hold that, tragic as it was, October 7^th was a sign of “messianic times” and an “era of miracles” — a divine intervention that portends the extension of Jewish sovereignty across the biblical Land of Israel and the coming of the messiah. That belief has since been invoked by leaders of the Jewish Power and Religious Zionism factions, most notably by Settlements and National Missions Minister Orit Strook, as well as by rabbinical chaplains in the Israeli army, media commentators, and others.

The Likud Party and the political establishment that had been busy advancing the de facto annexation of the West Bank, with settlers conducting pogroms in West Bank villages and intensifying land theft, now saw an opportunity to reorder priorities. Gaza no longer had to be conceded; it could be resettled. Twenty-first century ethnic cleansing could be taken for a test ride in Gaza before being fully unleashed in the West Bank.

“Gaza First” once referred to the initial implementation of the original Israel-PLO “Declaration of Principles”, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) assumed its first self-governing role in what were defined as the Palestinian areas of Gaza, as well as in the West Bank city of Jericho. The second iteration of “Gaza First” referred to Sharon’s disengagement plan, with the optimistic take that Gaza would be the first of many sites of Israeli withdrawal.

But today, “Gaza First” has taken on a new meaning: Gaza as the opening site of messianic redemption and Palestinian annihilation, or in the current Israeli parlance, “total victory.” It is no surprise that the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem warns in its recent report that what is happening in Gaza is already being planned for the West Bank.

The path from 2005 to 2025 was not preordained, but the contours are now clear — the consequences of political choices that were made then and now need to be unmade or reshaped. Describing this trajectory brings into sharper relief the need for a new political vision for all of historic Palestine, one that will have to come from outside the Zionist consensus.

Palestinians will need to take a central role in defining that vision, and will have to do so outside of the rigid constraints of the PA that sustains itself on the status quo. Whether Israeli politics and society can move beyond this genocidal moment is crucial, and will largely depend on the interplay between internal domestic dynamics and external pressure. But as long as the latter is so limited and absent, the former is unlikely to meaningfully change.

NETANYAHU KEEPS SAYING ISRAEL DIDN’T KILL CHARLIE KIRK

That Is Like Repeatedly Going Out In Public To Yell “I Did Not Have A Sex Dream About My Cousin!” So That Nobody Thinks You Had A Sex Dream About Your Cousin.

One of the weirdest things happening right now is how Israel’s prime minister keeps going out of his way to make public statements saying that Israel was definitely not behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

In a two-minute video uploaded onto his Twitter account on Wednesday, Netanyahu complained that “Somebody has fabricated a monstrous big lie that Israel had something to do with Charlie Kirk’s horrific murder,” saying the allegation “is insane, it is false, it is outrageous,” and that “Charlie loved Israel.”

A few days earlier, Netanyahu appeared on the highly sympathetic Newsmax to spend another couple of minutes ranting about how “insane”, “stupid” and “ridiculous” it is to claim that Israel was behind Kirk’s death, saying he “can’t believe that people are saying that.”

This is like repeatedly going out in public to yell “I did not have a sex dream about my cousin!” so that nobody thinks you had a sex dream about your cousin. People are going to walk away with the strong impression that you probably had a sex dream about your cousin.

At this time we have no position on the emerging theories that Israel was involved in the assassination. But Netanyahu is really not quelling the suspicion there.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is claiming that the Gaza flotilla bringing aid to starving civilians is actually Hamas.

“The so-called ‘Flotilla to Gaza’ is openly backed by jihadi Hamas,” the ministry said in a statement, claiming that “This is a jihadist initiative serving the terror group’s agenda.”

If you’ve been following the Gaza holocaust for a while you start getting real nervous whenever Israel begins saying a new group of civilians are Hamas.

Trump has announced plans to designate Antifa a terrorist organization, which liberals have hastened to point out is a legal absurdity since Antifa is not an actual entity in any meaningful way and has no leadership or organizational structure. But the fact that they’re pushing to apply the “terrorist” label to something so vague and amorphous actually makes this more concerning in some ways, since the shapelessness of the claim will make it easier to slap that label on anyone they’ve got a mind to.

The Trump administration is also reportedly planning to include transgender suspects in the FBI’s newly created domestic threat category of “nihilistic violent extremists” as the American right’s anti-trans feeding frenzy hits fever pitch.

One of the fastest ways to lose our interest and respect is to play along with the anti-trans bullshit, because you’re telling us you’re just another dopey herd-minded NPC thinking whatever thoughts your rulers want you to think.

It’s the most obvious thing in the world that the trans community has been deliberately demonized by the ruling class to keep half the population angry at a convenient target instead of at the people with real power. All the Trumpian pundits and politicians, oligarchs and empire managers have been feeding into this frenzied hate campaign against a marginalized population to keep the populists barking and snarling at ordinary members of the public so the energy of their discontent doesn’t start drifting in revolutionary directions.

They’ve been completely transparent about this. Couldn’t have made it clearer. And people have been clapping along with it like a bunch of drooling toddlers watching a puppet show. It’s pathetic.

Leave trans people alone. Let them be. They are not a threat to you. They’ve got it rough enough as it is. Your rulers want you punching laterally so you don’t start punching up.

Since we began criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive assaults on free speech in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing we have had American rightists falling all over themselves in my social media notifications trying to justify government censorship. Yesterday multiple Trump supporters tried to tell us that it should be illegal to lie, and that anyone who tells lies should be stopped from lying by the government. One of them told me he’s an anarchist.

Some of them argue, “Democrats censored us, so we get to censor the Democrats! Turn about is fair play!”

That only sounds like a cool argument if you believe the two-party puppet show is real. In reality you’re both lining up to give more and more of your power to the empire which remains in power regardless of who won the last election. They surrender some, you surrender some more, repeat.

Obviously American liberals should have known they were opening themselves up to return fire with their support for censorship when they were in power. Obviously they should not have done that, and people told them this the entire time. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re handing the nonpartisan oppression machine more power that you will never get back every time you throw your support behind retaliatory acts of speech suppression.

You think you’re hurting the libs, but you’re just hurting yourself. You’re just making your society more tyrannical and dystopian in ways that will inevitably affect you. You’re clapping along with the two-handed puppet show while your real oppressor picks your pockets.