#Sheldon Adelson

[aunti-christ-ine]

[msclaritea]

These paid buffoons have been dragging the Black community down into the dirt, by acting as voices of truth, and all just to help provide more cover and distraction for the NFL. I know they're not the only ones, but they also gave free promo to Tyler Perry by pretending....PRETENDING to go after him. But, really, what is just a bunch of bought off talking heads going to accomplish against a man who is still getting one deal after another for his toxic films, while sitting in his billion dollar mansion, on a hill. Not much!

And during all of this, repeatedly exposing the public and very likely, children to graphic, violent porn. I say, we are truly living in post racial world when THIS MANY Black and POC, like #Valderrama are willing to do so much to uphold a sick system run by sick men, that ultimately hurts their own communities. The NFL and Silicon Valley are in league, have been and that explains why so many football blogs on Twitter are constantly involved in Hate Spamming and general attacks, including the ones against Disney for years. Because Sports Betting uses AI.

The Entertainment Industry stopped hiring real actors, real comedians and real musicians. Instead, they hire Propagandists, now.

[kramlabs]

:

[channeledhistory]

[wilwheaton]

Speaking at a campaign event on Thursday, Trump made the claim as he addressed Miriam Adelson, the widow of the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Trump awarded Miriam Adelson the Medal of Freedom in 2018. “[The Medal of Freedom is] actually much better because everyone [who] gets the congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers,” Trump said. “They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal.” The Medal of Honor is the country’s highest military award. It is awarded to a military service member who “distinguishes himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty”.

Trump calls civilian presidential medal ‘much better’ than top military honor

Welp. It was bound to happen. I honestly have no words.

[palestinegenocide]

The exquisite choreography of hosting a war criminal at the White House

The grisly farce that is the Biden administration’s support for Israeli war crimes became even more grotesque this week.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington in a few days. Democrats believe overwhelmingly that Netanyahu is carrying out a genocide– nearly 39,000 Palestinians deaths with thousands more under the rubble. So some Dems will boycott Netanyahu’s speech to the Congress, but the Democratic Party leadership is rolling out the welcome mat.

Netanyahu is to meet at the White House with the president who has provided Israel with endless munitions to carry out the war. And though many expect Biden to drop out of the presidential race,the New York Times says Biden won’t do so before he meets with Netanyahu, because Biden does not want to give the far-right-wing prime minister who has repeatedly bossed Democratic presidents the “satisfaction” of seeing Biden when he’s a lame duck.

Though if you think Kamala Harris will stand up for human rights and U.S. interests if she becomes president—think again, she is going to meet Netanyahu too, the White House assured the press.

Why meet with this war criminal at all? To answer that, consider who are the most important voters in the Biden debate right now: the donors who are the last shoe to drop on Biden’s reelection hopes, pulling their money to pressure the president to get out of the race.

Many of these donors now in rebellion are big Israel supporters. Michael Moritz the latest billionaire to put it to Biden has been in solidarity with Israel. Reid Hoffman who organized a concerned donors call with Kamala Harris calls Israeli forces a model.

While another group of 75 donors almost all of whom want Biden out is reported by CNBC to include as leaders Ari Emanuel and his brother Zeke. Ari Emanuel said that Israel’s war is “justified” in May 2024, and has said that he loves the country. Of course, there are Dem donors who don’t care about Israel. But the power map is clear.

It’s not like Trump is any different. The top Republican donor is thought to be Miriam Adelson, the Israeli doctor, and she is reportedly spending millions to stake Trump to a promise to allow Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Just as Adelson’s late husband Sheldon, once the biggest Republican donor, asked Trump to move the embassy to Jerusalem and trash the Iran deal, and Trump followed through, in utter contempt for the Palestinian people and world leaders.

So our Middle East policy is up for bid by billionaire zealots. This is what a liberal democracy looks like.

In any just order, the U.S. would have nothing to do with Israel. The country is committing flagrant war crimes in Gaza, killing journalists and athletes and other civilians with complete impunity.

And the International Court of Justice last week issued (yet another) ruling saying that the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are violations of international law.

Back in December 2016 the Obama administration after 8 years of being walked over by Netanyahu allowed the U.N. Security Council to issue the same determination, in a resolution on which Obama abstained, that condemned the occupation. President-elect Trump called the Russians to try and stop the resolution but it went through. And of course nothing came of it. The Biden administration has never followed through on the landgrab, and the ethnic cleansing.

Al Jazeera graphic showing Israeli land seizures at a 25 year high in West Bank.

The Knesset passed a resolution this week saying there must never be a Palestinian state; that would be an “existential threat” to Israel.

Netanyahu repeated the claim of Jewish supremacy in his response to the International Court of Justice.

The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria, our historical homeland. No absurd opinion in the Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestoral home.

The Biden administration is incapable of condemning these racists. “It’s like pulling teeth to get you to say something on this,” a reporter complained in the State Department this week after the Knesset’s attack on a Palestinian state.

Antony Blinken was unable to say a critical word about Netanyahu during a fawning interview in Aspen (by NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly) in which he used a football metaphor to claim the U.S. was doing something to stop the genocide. “I believe we’re inside the 10-yard line and driving toward the goal line in getting an agreement that would produce a ceasefire, get the hostages home, and put us on a better track to trying to build lasting peace and stability.”

And keep the bombs flowing, as Israel bombs hospitals and refugee camps…

Netanyahu should be persona non grata in Washington. But he will be welcomed with open arms.

As a former Biden official Tariq Habash said on a webinar this week, our policy is “rooted in anti-Palestinian racism”– in the dehumanization and erasure of Palestinians.

Habash quit the Biden administration in January. Let’s hope that his courage and honesty are infectious.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Imagine if Vice President Harris publicly called on a foreign nation that has a history of interfering in our elections to help her defeat Donald Trump. The response would’ve been wall to wall media coverage and members of the GOP would’ve been calling for a DOJ Investigation. But when Donald Trump did that exact thing on Thursday, it barely received any coverage from the corporate media.  Yet there was Trump at an event organized by Trump’s close ally Miriam Adelson—the widow of billionaire Sheldon Adelson and a supporter of far-right policies in Israel—calling on Israel to defeat Harris. I don’t mean Trump inferred he wanted the help of Israel to win, he stated it point blank.

That is when Trump declared: “More than any other people on Earth. More than any other people on Earth, Israel, I believe, has to defeat her. You know that?” He then repeated that Israel—not Jewish Americans—need to help him defeat Harris, stating, “And I’ve never said this before. And I’m thinking, Miriam, more than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her. I really believe that.” There is no wiggle room here. Trump twice asked Israeli leaders to help him defeat Harris in a room filled with people like Adelson who has very close ties to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Where is the outrage that Trump wants a foreign nation to interfere in our election?!! What could Netanyahu do to help Trump? Well one example is the online interference type campaign they were engaged in 2016 that I detail below.  Or far worse and what is what we are seeing over the past few days and that is spark a deadly war with Lebanon.

[...] To that end, in the last few days we’ve seen an unparalleled escalation of attacks by Netanyahu on not just Hezbollah—but the nation of Lebanon. It began with the pager bombings that may have been targeting Hezbollah militants but ended up killing and wounding innocent people including children. In the days that followed, Netanyahu’s military bombed targets in the suburbs of Beirut that killed 45 people, including three children and seven women. Two Hezbollah leaders were killed as well but we as we’ve seen in Gaza, there is no limits to the civilians Netanyahu will kill. And then there is the more traditional type of online election interference. For those unaware, the Israeli government under Netanyahu has a documented history –even noted in Israeli media outlets like Haaretz--of interfering in other nation’s elections, including the United States, to elect people supportive of his right wing views. That was the very point made by The Nation in a detailed deep dive article in 2023 titled, “The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel.” As The Nation explained, “In the spring of 2016, no issue was more important to Benjamin Netanyahu than Donald Trump winning the White House.”  The reason was simple: “The GOP presidential candidate was key to everything he was after, from ending the Iran nuclear agreement, to recognizing Jerusalem—rather than Tel Aviv—as Israel’s capital, to continuing the occupation of” the West Bank.

To that end, Netanyahu personally directed a “covert operation” that “aimed to use secret intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the presidential election on behalf of Trump.” The Times of Israel in 2020 even addressed this plot noting Trump close ally Roger Stone was the point person for key Israeli figures, writing, “the Trump campaign, was in contact with one or more apparently well-connected Israelis at the height of the 2016 US presidential campaign, one of whom warned Stone that Trump was “going to be defeated unless we intervene” and promised “we have critical intell[sic].”

[...] Trump publicly asking Israel to help defeat Harris, of course, conjures up Trump’s infamous comment during the 2016 campaign when he declared about Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” And as the Mueller report detailed, “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.” Adding importantly about Trump: “the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts."

Israel Apartheid State PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s escalation of war with Lebanon serves one purpose: put Donald Trump back in office as “President” in the USA.

[spotlightstory]

The Michigan Medicis of Donald Trump’s America

Left, clockwise from top left Blackwater founder Erik Prince; U.S. Sec of Education Betsy DeVos (Prince); philanthropist Elsa and Prince Corporation founder Edgar Prince. Right, philanthropist Hellen and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos; standing, businessman Dick DeVos.

If you ever wondered where the weird Republican ideas came from or how did we get here, well, here's a piece of the puzzle. Buckle up, it's a long read. Link to full article above. I pulled out quotes on topics below.

"In the solar system of elite Republican contributors, Richard DeVos Sr., who died Thursday at age 92—one of the two founders of Amway, the direct-sale colossus—occupied an exalted place, and his offspring did too. Since the 1970s, members of the DeVos family had given as much as $200 million to the G.O.P. and been tireless promoters of the modern conservative movement—its ideas, its policies, and its crusades combining free-market economics, a push for privatization of many government functions, and Christian social values. While other far-right mega-donors may have become better known over the years (the Coorses and the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers), Michigan’s DeVos dynasty stands apart—for the duration, range, and depth of its influence."

Conservative think tanks, advocacy organizations, and colleges

Grand Valley State University; Calvin College, attended by several generations of DeVoses, including Rich’s daughter-in-law Betsy DeVos, Northwood University, her husband Dick’s alma mater. Hillsdale, the libertarian-plus-Christian liberal-arts college in southern Michigan.

Other recipients of DeVos largesse: the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Justice, and the American Enterprise Institute

"The DeVoses’ preference for “values-oriented” candidates reflect the teachings of the Christian Reformed Church. A small breakaway denomination of its Dutch forerunner, it has some 300,000 adherents in North America, many living in the same western-Michigan towns where their immigrant ancestors settled in the 1840s to pursue a faith.."

SCHOOL REFORM: Who can forget Betsy DeVos’s campaign to undo the state’s public-education system and replace it with for-profit and charter schools that, as she had put it two decades earlier, shared her mission of “defending the Judeo-Christian values"?

“[Among] her big ‘accomplishments,’” says Diane Ravitch, the N.Y.U. professor and respected education historian, “have been reversing civil-rights enforcement for kids with disabilities, putting administrators from for-profit colleges in charge of monitoring for-profit colleges . . . stabbing in the back young people with heavy debt for their college education, and being a constant critic of public schools.” One saving grace, Ravitch contends, is that DeVos has gotten very few of her budget proposals through Congress. 

LABOR UNIONS: Another target was labor unions. Amway and the Prince Corporation had no use for them. Now the family waged a public fight. After Dick DeVos was routed when he ran for governor of Michigan in 2006, he blamed his defeat, in part, on Michigan’s unions and began to push for a right-to-work law (weakening the unions’ economic power and political clout, a pillar of the state’s Democratic Party). In 2012, the bill got through, and Michigan—headquarters to the United Automobile Workers, no less—became yet another of the country’s right-to-work states.

FAMILY: "Betsy and Erik’s father, Edgar Prince, was a Chrysler-Plymouth salesman and then machine engineer who started a die-cast business and also had a tinkerer’s gift for inventions. One, the lighted vanity mirror on the flip-up sun visor (introduced in 1972), helped Prince become one of the wealthiest men in Michigan." (wow) "As he got richer, the elder Prince rewarded his hometown handsomely; Prince money has done much to preserve downtown Holland, which remains a 1950s time capsule of Candy Land façades."

The C.R.C.’s greatest figure, Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian and prime minister who died almost a century ago, had declared, in words the faithful know by heart: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  

The Princes and DeVoses—with neighboring homes in Holland—had effected a merger thanks to the 1979 marriage of their firstborn, Betsy Prince and Dick DeVos, then in their 20s. “Bible-reading jet-setter” was the description in a Detroit Free Press profile of Betsy.

Betsy and Dick own a 22,000-square-foot mansion on Lake Macatawa.

ERIK PRINCE was devoted to his father, who doted on him. He played four sports at Holland Christian and was the proudly straitlaced kid who, without being asked, put away the soccer balls after practice. Prince enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987 but was shocked by the frat-house atmosphere—too much for a junior culture warrior who’d been an intern at the Family Research Council. After three semesters, he transferred to Michigan’s Hillsdale College.

Today Hillsdale, under its president, Larry P. Arnn (former head of the Claremont Institute, a citadel of far-right ideology), is known as a feeder school for the Trump administration, including Betsy DeVos’s chief of staff, Josh Venable. In May, the week Vice President Pence gave the commencement address there, Politico called it “the college that wants to take over Washington”—citing many alums who are now D.C. power players. 

In 1989, Erik had been invited to a “youth” inaugural ball for Bush—and there had met Joan Keating, the woman who would become his first wife. Prince even worked as a Bush White House intern. “I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with,” he later said. “Homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.” He left that job for another, in the office of California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who has often been called Vladimir Putin’s top Capitol Hill asset, so valued, the Times has reported, that he was given a Kremlin code name.

Prince spent four years with the SEALs in the early 90s but moved on after his wife was diagnosed with cancer and his father, aged 63, died of a heart attack. The elder Prince left behind a business with 4,500 employees. The family sold it for $1.3 billion, and Erik, at 25, now had a sizable inheritance.

One of Prince’s instructors in the SEALs, Al Clark, was also looking to set up a security-and-defense training company. Prince had money to invest. Out of this came Blackwater, which began as an instruction facility for law enforcement, the military, and special-ops squads in Moyock, North Carolina. 

The article goes into detail about Blackwater and it is mind-blowing. Their involvement post 9/11, Russian arms dealings, US government contracts,

"The source says he resigned after he discovered that Prince had approved plans to illegally weaponize aircraft and “actively train former Chinese Red Army personnel that are now being deployed into Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Uighur region in China”—actions he perceived as supporting foreign interests above America’s. (Other Prince associates reportedly resigned for similar reasons.) Prince firmly denied the allegations."

[sophiamcdougall]

Can we please, please retire any notion that letting Trump win somehow helps the Palestinians?

[democracyunderground]

The VIPs behind the president were worth more than $1.3 trillion. The message they sent couldn’t have been clearer. But the image that will define the day, and perhaps this entire era of politics, was the rows of seats behind Trump. The front row was simple enough—that was reserved for past presidents and vice presidents and their families, and the Trump and Vance clans. In the back were members of his future cabinet (the wealthiest collection of bureaucrats ever assembled). Sandwiched between them was a pastiche of American oligarchy—a demonstration of both the influence and subservience of wealth in Trump’s second term.

These billionaires were propped between former heads of state and future cabinet officials, like benighted stewards of the American system—a special fourth branch of government.

The inclusion of Elon Musk (estimated net worth $449 billion) and Vivek Ramaswamy (about $1 billion) was no surprise. Their “Department of Government Efficiency” is, after all, a centerpiece of the new administration. But the world’s richest man, and the maybe future governor of Ohio, were joined by a selection of moguls who a few months, or a few years ago, might have avoided such an alliance with Trump. The world’s second-richest man, Jeff Bezos ($245 billion), joined the world’s third-richest man, Mark Zuckerberg ($217 billion), behind Trump’s right shoulder. They sat near Apple CEO Tim Cook ($2.2 billion), Google CEO Sundar Pichai (about $1 billion), and Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin, the world’s seventh-richest man ($163 billion). TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, whose company rang in the Trump presidency a full day early, attended church with the Trumps and his fellow tech titans on Monday morning. Isaac Perlmutter, the billionaire former chairman of Marvel, sat near Musk.

It wasn’t just tech, of course. Over Trump’s left shoulder—just in front of the Clintons—sat Miriam Adelson ($34.6 billion), the pro-Israel widow of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who gave $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign, alongside the hedge funder John Paulson ($3.8 billion) and UFC CEO Dana White—a tycoon in his own right whose company may soon enter into a deal with the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Behind them was the fifth-richest man in the world, French billionaire Bernard Arnault (estimated net worth: $188 billion), along with his son Alexandre.

The concentration of wealth sitting behind Trump was staggering. If you add Trump’s roughly $10 billion cabinet to the people I just named, it adds up to a little more than $1.3 trillion. Trillion with a t. It was not just about the riches they brought to the table—and in some cases, brought to Trump’s campaign—but the symbolism of their presence. These billionaires were propped between former heads of state and future cabinet officials, like benighted stewards of the American system—a special fourth branch of government. At the same time, it was an unmistakable and ominous display of contrition.

The lasting image I’ll have of the event is of Bezos, owner of a newspaper that brought down a president, waving meekly at the president-elect, hoping for a bit of extra credit. After Trump spent his first term, and his four years out of power, seeking retribution against tech billionaires that he believed had stood in his way, he has seemingly offered to cut Silicon Valley’s titans in on his governing agenda in exchange for fealty. Their presence articulated more neatly the message the president, in so many words, laid out in his address: There’s a price to challenging his power. This time, they’re not willing to pay.

You could learn most of what you needed to know about the tone and tenor of Donald Trump’s second inauguration by the people who showed up to watch it. It was a perfectly 2025 mixture of influencers, fighters, billionaires, and bootlickers. Conor McGregor, a UFC star who was recently found guilty of sexual assault by an Irish jury, traveled to the ceremony in a party bus with the comedian Theo Von, influencer brothers Jake and Logan Paul, and “Nelk Boys” YouTuber Kyle Forgeard. Joe Rogan snagged a seat in the rotunda a few seats away from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Gianni Infantino—friend to dictators and president of soccer’s international governing body, FIFA—seemed to be lurking in the background of every shot.

In the floor seats in front of the president-elect, you could find a who’s who of conservative luminaries and favor seekers. There was Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp baron whose company paid a $787 million settlement in a defamation case after Fox News accused voting-machine manufacturer Dominion of stealing the 2020 election, and Tucker Carlson, the onetime Fox News host who once said of Trump, “I hate him passionately.” Crypto billionaire Brock Pierce, a former child actor who now resides in Puerto Rico, was skulking around somewhere. His good friend, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is seeking to get on Trump’s good side—and perhaps win a pardon—snagged a photo with the Pauls. So did Sam Altman, the billionaire CEO of OpenAI.

[azspot]

On the domestic front, the Trump administration was a four-year orgy of union busting, deregulation, and tax cuts for rich people. In foreign affairs, he tore up Barack Obama’s Iran deal, assassinated an Iranian general, ended the warming of US relations with Cuba, doubled the rate of drone strikes in Yemen, and gave Benjamin Netanyahu everything he wanted. His current run for president is backed by billionaire establishment-GOP donors like Sheldon Adelson’s widow, Miriam.

The Rule of Law Being Applied to Trump Is Good

[mariacallous]

According to filings released by the US Federal Election Commission on Tuesday night, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and owner of X, is now one of the biggest donors to Donald Trump’s campaign. Since publicly endorsing Trump on the heels of the July assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, Musk has donated close to $75 million to his own political action committee, America PAC, which is aggressively campaigning on the ground in swing states for the Trump campaign.

Musk has been one of many Silicon Valley elites who have expressed their support for Trump. Peter Thiel, billionaire and cofounder of Palantir, has been a longtime Trump supporter (though he said he would not be donating to candidates in 2024), and venture capitalist David Sacks, who is also a friend of Musk’s, has also thrown his support to the Republicans. Trump has also received support from PACs and individuals in the crypto space.

But Musk has put more money into the Trump campaign than nearly any other individual from the tech industry. In addition to his support for the America PAC, he also donated more than $289,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. While some companies and institutions in Silicon Valley, like venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, have backed Trump, individual donors from those same companies may not. For instance, Marc Andreessen and his business partner Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to the pro-Trump Right for America PAC last quarter. Andreessen has also donated to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Horowitz has backed Democratic campaigns as well, and in early October said he would support Harris rather than Trump going forward.

The graphic below focuses specifically on donations that help Trump directly, rather than GOP giving more broadly. You can see a breakdown of how much each person gave—and where the money went—by scrolling over or tapping each name.

Sacks donated only $6,600 to Trump’s campaign directly, but $114,500 to the Republican National Committee and $250,000 to the Trump 47 PAC. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who run the crypto exchange Gemini, each donated more than $350,000 to the Make America Great Again PAC, which supports the Trump campaign. The twins also donated $250,000 each to the America PAC. Shaun Maguire, a partner at the venture firm Sequoia Capital, has donated $500,000 to the America PAC, $300,000 to the Trump 47 PAC, and $6,600 to the Trump campaign directly. Billionaire and early Tesla backer Antonio Gracias donated $1 million to the America PAC, as did Palantir cofounder and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale. Kenneth Howery, a PayPal Mafia member and former ambassador to Sweden under Trump, put $1 million into America PAC in addition to smaller direct contributions to the Trump campaign.

Musk has contributed more to the Trump campaign than all of them combined, several times over. That puts him in a league with Trump’s most lavish donors, including Miriam Adelson, the widow of Sheldon Adelson, who donated $95 million to the pro-Trump Preserve America PAC over the past three months—including $45 million in September alone. Billionaire Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon railroad fortune, remains the campaign’s largest donor, having put at least $115 million in the Make America Great Again PAC just this year.

Musk’s largesse, combined with his vocal support of Trump on the platform he controls, has been a windfall for Trump in an increasingly close presidential race. He’ll continue trying to get out the vote in person this weekend with a series of appearances in Pennsylvania.

[kramlabs]

:

* Is Thiel the heir to SHeldon Adelson?

[republicanidiots]

What is the most embarrassing thing Trump did as president?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 26, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 27, 2023

A four-year-old dual Israeli-American citizen was among the 17 more hostages released by Hamas today. Israel released 39 Palestinian prisoners, all of whom were under 19 years old. Hamas has expressed interest in extending the truce; Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has echoed that interest so long as each day brings at least ten more hostages out of captivity. Officials from the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar continue to negotiate. 

In the Washington Post today, reporters Steve Hendrix and Hazem Balousha put on the table the idea that both Netanyahu and Hamas “may be on the way out.” Such a circumstance would permit changes to the current political stalemate in the region, perhaps bringing closer the two-state solution for which officials around the world, including U.S. president Joe Biden, continue to push. 

Israelis are furious that Netanyahu failed to prevent the October 7 attack, and seventy-five percent of them want him to resign or be replaced when the crisis ends. At the same time, Hendrix and Balousha write, Palestinians are angry enough at Gaza’s leadership to be willing to criticize Hamas.

Whether Hendrix and Balousha are right or wrong, it is significant that a U.S. newspaper is looking for a change of leadership in Israel as well as in Gaza. That sentiment echoes the statement of Netanyahu’s own mouthpiece, Israel Hayom, about a month ago. Begun by U.S. casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to promote Netanyahu’s ideas, the paper in early November said that Netanyahu should “lead us to victory and then go.” 

Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi forces from Yemen fired two ballistic missiles at a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Mason, this evening, missing it by about ten nautical miles (which are slightly longer than miles on land), or eighteen and a half kilometers. Earlier in the day, the USS Mason and Japanese allies rescued a commercial vessel, the Central Park, when it came under attack by five pirates in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia. The USS Mason captured and arrested the attackers as they fled. The USS Mason is part of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group deployed to the region. Attacks on shipping in the area have increased since the October 7 attack. Last week, Yemeni Houthis seized a cargo ship linked to Israel. 

As Congress prepares to get back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today released a letter addressed to his colleagues outlining the work he intends to get done before the end of the year. He emphasized that he and the Democrats want bipartisan solutions and urged his colleagues to work with Republicans to isolate the Republican extremists whose demands have repeatedly derailed funding measures.

Top of Schumer’s list is funding the government. The continuing resolution that passed just before Thanksgiving extended funding deadlines to two future dates. The first of those is January 19, and Schumer noted that lawmakers had continued to work on those bills over the Thanksgiving holiday to make sure they pass.

Next on Schumer’s list is a bill to fund military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region as well as humanitarian assistance for Palestinian civilians and money for U.S. border security, including funding for machines to detect illegal fentanyl and for more border agents and immigration courts. President Biden requested the supplemental aid package of about $105 billion back in October, but while the aid in it is popular among lawmakers, hard-right Republicans are insisting on tying aid for Ukraine to a replacement of the administration’s border policies with their own. Some are also suggesting that helping Ukraine is too expensive.

Schumer noted that U.S. aid to Ukraine is vital to its ability to continue to push back the Russian invasion, while Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has pointed out that money appropriated for Ukraine goes to the U.S. defense industry to build new equipment as older equipment that was close to the end of its useful life goes to Ukraine. 

Foreign affairs writer Tom Nichols of The Atlantic explains that foreign aid is normally about 1% of the U.S. budget—$60 billion—and 18 months of funding for both the military and humanitarian aid in Ukraine have been about $75 billion. Israel usually gets about $3 billion; the new bill would add about $14 billion to that. (For comparison, Nichols points out that Americans last year spent about $181 billion on snacks and $115 billion on beer.) 

Schumer reminded his colleagues that backing off from aid to Ukraine would serve the interests of Russian president Vladimir Putin; backing off from our engagement with the Indo-Pacific would serve the interests of China’s president Xi Jinping. 

“The decisions we will have to make in the coming weeks on the aid package could determine the trajectory of democracy and the resilience of the transatlantic alliance for a generation,” Schumer wrote. “Giving Putin and Xi what they want would be a terrible, terrible mistake, and one that would come back to haunt us…. We cannot let partisan politics get in the way of defending democracy….”

Schumer said he would bring the measure up as soon as the week of December 4.

Schumer’s letter came the day after the annual day of remembrance of the 1932–1933 Holodomor famine in Ukraine, when the Soviet Union under leader Joseph Stalin starved 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainians, seizing their grain and farms in an attempt to erase their national identity. 

In a statement in remembrance of Holodomor yesterday, President Biden drew a parallel between the Holodomor of the 1930s and Russia’s war against Ukraine today, noting that “Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure is once more being deliberately targeted” as Russia is “deliberately damaging fields and destroying Ukraine’s grain storage facilities and ports.” (Even so, Ukraine has managed to deliver more than 170,000 tons of grain to Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Yemen in the past year.)

“On this anniversary, we remember and honor all those, both past and present, who have endured such hardship and who continue still to fight against tyranny,” Biden said. “We also recommit ourselves to preventing suffering, protecting fundamental freedoms, and responding to human rights abuses whenever and wherever they occur. We stand united with Ukraine.”

On the Ukrainian remembrance day of Holodomor, Russia launched 75 drones at Kyiv, its largest drone strike against Ukraine since the start of its invasion in February 2022.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[liberty1776]

Trump: “Make Israel Great Again”

By Chuck Baldwin September 26, 2024

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At a Republican rally in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, September 19, billed as “opposing antisemitism,” Donald Trump made several remarks that lived up to his title of “America’s First Zionist President.” Leaving the “Make America Great Again” mantra, Trump promised his audience that he would “make Israel great again.”

With Zionist mega-billionaire Miriam Adelson looking on (Adelson gave Trump over one hundred million dollars for his promise that, if elected, he would support Israel’s purge of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as she and her late husband, Sheldon, did in 2016 for Trump’s promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem), Trump said that the upcoming U.S. election is “the most important” in Israel’s history. 

So much for making America great again! It is clear that Donald Trump is an agent of the State of Israel and would use the White House (as he did during his first term in office) as an asset of the Zionist state—even more than did Joe Biden. 

As I have said many, many times: There is only ONE party in Washington, D.C., and that’s the War Party. In this regard, the only difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is that Harris would take America to war with Russia over Ukraine, while Trump would take America to war with Russia (and perhaps China and Iran and Lebanon and Iraq and Syria and Jordan and Egypt and Turkey) over Israel.

In Trump’s sycophantic speech on behalf of Zionist Jews, he boasted:

I gave them Golan Heights. I gave them the Abraham Accords. I recognized the capital of Israel and opened the Embassy in Jerusalem. And most importantly of all, I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which was the worst deal ever made in the history of Israel.

I was there four years, gave them billions and billions of dollars.

Also, during his speech, Trump alluded to one of his social media posts that he wrote in 2022 saying,

Wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of (his Israel record) than the people of the Jewish faith.

Indeed. When it comes to Israel, the vast majority of evangelicals are the most duped, the most deceived, the most beguiled, the most bewitched people on the planet. (Galatians 3:1 - 29) 

If any other nation on earth had committed the unmistakable War Crime of exploding 1,500 electronic handheld devices indiscriminately among a peaceful civilian population, resulting in casualties numbering over 3,000 (most of them innocent civilians, including a large percentage of women and children), as Israel did in Lebanon, U.S. reaction—including America’s evangelicals—would be swift and furious. That nation would rightly be called a terrorist state and accused of War Crimes; and the leader of that country would rightly be called a terrorist and international War Criminal.

Well, that’s exactly what the State of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu are! But Donald Trump and his “wonderful evangelicals” not only say nothing in opposition to Israel’s acts of terror and genocide, but they audaciously support those acts of terror and genocide.

And make no mistake about it: Israel IS a terrorist state and has been since its inception in 1948. On a daily basis for 76 years, Zionist Israel has committed, and continues to commit, ethnic cleansing, genocide and international War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

According to theRome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Article 7:

Crimes Against Humanity

For the purpose of this Statute, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: [Emphasis added]

Murder; [Israel is guilty]

Extermination; [Israel is guilty]

Enslavement; [Israel is guilty]

Deportation or forcible transfer of population; [Israel is guilty]

Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; [Israel is guilty]

Torture; [Israel is guilty]

Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; [Israel is guilty]

Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court; [Israel is guilty]

Enforced disappearance of persons; [Israel is guilty]

The crime of apartheid; [Israel is guilty]

Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health. [Israel is guilty] 

For the purpose of paragraph 1:

"Attack directed against any civilian population" means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack; [Israel is guilty]

"Extermination" includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population; [Israel is guilty]

"Enslavement" means the exercise of any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over a person and includes the exercise of such power in the course of trafficking in persons, in particular women and children; [Israel is guilty]

"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law; [Israel is guilty]

"Torture" means the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions; [Israel is guilty]

"Forced pregnancy" means the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population or carrying out other grave violations of international law; [Israel is guilty]

"Persecution" means the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity; [Israel is guilty]

"The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime; [Israel is guilty]

"Enforced disappearance of persons" means the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time. [Israel is guilty]

Under Article 8, War Crimes, we find listed (abbreviated):

The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.  

For the purpose of this Statute, "war crimes" means:

Torture or inhuman treatment, [Israel is guilty]

Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health; [Israel is guilty]

Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; [Israel is guilty]

Israel has deliberately and with total abandon bombed hospitals, nurseries, schools, colleges, aid shelters, food distribution areas, ambulances, churches, mosques, civilian tent dwellings, houses of journalism, private homes with whole families inside, entire neighborhoods, entire villages, water supplies, food supplies, medical supplies and electrical supplies. Israel has also deliberately and with total abandon destroyed almost all of the agricultural land, which is the primary source of livelihood and life in Gaza.         

Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities; Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives; [Israel is guilty]

Israel is guilty of this War Crime on a daily basis. Israel’s random and reckless pager explosions among the civilian population of Lebanon were a flagrant violation of this section and is, thus, clearly condemned as a War Crime under international law—and God’s Natural and moral laws, by the way.

Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission. [Israel is guilty]

We saw the Israeli War Crime mentioned here on live video when rescue workers were rushing to save a little 5-year-old girl, whose entire family had been killed, as she was hiding in a destroyed vehicle waiting for rescue workers to come save her. The Israeli forces patiently waited for those unarmed rescue workers to arrive and then fired their missiles, which murdered not only the rescue workers but also the little girl.

Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated; [Israel is guilty]

Again, the pager bombings, the destruction of civilians en masse, the destruction of the agricultural land of Gaza, etc., are here identified as War Crimes.

Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives; [Israel is guilty]

Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion; [Israel is guilty]

We have seen the Israeli military commit this War Crime on live video.

Making improper use of a flag of truce, of the flag or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy or of the United Nations, as well as of the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions, resulting in death or serious personal injury; [Israel is guilty] 

We have seen Israeli forces commit this War Crime on live video.

The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory; [Israel is guilty]

Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives; [Israel is guilty]

Destroying or seizing the enemy's property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war; [Israel is guilty]

Declaring abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party; [Israel is guilty]

Pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault; [Israel is guilty]

Employing weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the international law of armed conflict. [Israel is guilty] 

Again, indiscriminate mass bombings of innocent unarmed civilians by Israeli military forces take place every day in Gaza—and now in the West Bank and Lebanon. 

Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; [Israel is guilty] 

We’ve seen plenty of photos of Israeli forces committing this War Crime. 

Intentionally directing attacks against buildings, material, medical units and transport, and personnel using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions in conformity with international law; [Israel is guilty]

Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions. [Israel is guilty] 

This is the Israel that Donald Trump wants to make great? Yes.

This is the Israel that evangelicals claim are God’s chosen people? Yes.

This is the Israel that uses lobby groups such as AIPAC to dominate our U.S. Congress and most state governors? Yes.

This is the Israel that the War Party in Washington, D.C., wants to take America to nuclear war with Russia over? Yes.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Israel and Ukraine! Yes!

And if somehow America miraculously avoids a nuclear confrontation with Russia over Ukraine or Israel, the bloodthirsty (and money-hungry) War Party in D.C. will find another monster for the United States to destroy.

I personally believe that the Jewish bankers (Rothschilds) manipulated the founding of Zionist Israel in 1948 at the conclusion of the Second World War for the specific purpose of destabilizing not just the Middle East but the entire world to make sure that perpetual war continued beyond the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947. I further believe that the history of the State of Israel—up to the present hour—substantiates my belief.

Soon after America’s founding, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that America was “great” because America was “good.”

If goodness is the prerequisite for greatness, Zionist Israel will never be great, because Zionist Israel will never be good.

© Chuck Baldwin

  No matter who Americans vote for, they still get leadership that puts Israel ahead of the USA. With Harris she puts both Israel and Ukraine ahead of the USA. Why cant we get at least one party that puts the USA first?