This is the Israeli government’s mindset. I don’t think there is anything else to say.
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich is pictured outside Damascus gate in Jerusalem on June 5, 2024. Credit: Eyal Warshavsky / Sopa Images / Lightrocket / Getty
A top Israeli official suggested on Monday that he believes it is “morally justified” for Israel to wipe out Gaza’s population through famine and starvation, in chilling statements that pro-Palestine advocates say openly indicate genocidal intent.
Speaking at a conference hosted by the far right Israel Hayom newspaper, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich complained about having to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying that international norms are stopping Israel from taking what he claims is the “moral” path of starving 2 million Palestinians to death.
“We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,” Smotrich said, Israeli outlets reported. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.”
“Humanitarian in exchange for humanitarian is morally justified, but what can […]
This is the latest evil from The Heritage Foundation. Fascists liked the Cold War, it created the military-industrial industries President Eisenhower warned us about, and for a small group of fascists it was astonishingly profitable. The people who fund The Heritage Foundation would like another run down that profit street. Criminal Trump would be only to happy to help them make it happen.
Credit: AdobeStock
At a time when all three major nuclear powers are upgrading their nuclear arsenals, when Russian leader Vladimir Putin has threatened that there are circumstances in which he would consider using such weapons in Ukraine, and when the one remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreement is hanging by a thread, the last thing the world needs is an accelerated nuclear arms race.
But someone forgot to tell the Heritage Foundation, which just issued a report that, if implemented, would spark a nuclear competition that would rival the worst days of the Cold War.
The Heritage report summarizes its proposed nuclear buildup as follows:
“These expansions will include a larger ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) force, additional warheads on America’s ground-based strategic deterrent, and a modest road-mobile variant of the ground-based strategic deterrent. In the immediate term, the United States will upload non-strategic nuclear warheads from the ready reserve stockpile to existing theater capabilities.”
Beyond its jargon-laced call for more nuclear weapons, the Heritage report makes the jaw dropping […]
Criminal Trump is the only political leader in any country who is congratulating criminal Putin on making the better deal on the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It tells us a great deal about MAGAt worldthat he said this to a mass of MAGAt supporters and no one seems to find it weird. I certainly do.
Criminal Trump Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
U.S. Republican nominee Donald Trump commended Russian President Vladimir Putin over a historic prisoner swap deal struck last week, suggesting the Russian leader got the better end of the agreement.
“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Did you see the deal we made?” Trump told a crowd of supporters at a campaign rally in Atlanta on Saturday as he criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the swap.
The former U.S. president, who is bidding for a second term in the White House amid a string of court cases against him, said the prisoner exchange led to the release of “some of the greatest killers” in the world.
“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” Trump said. “It’s nice to say we got ’em back, but does that set a bad precedent?” he added.
For over a decade the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party has been trying to dismantle public education. In Project 2025 they go so far as to propose to eliminate the Department of Education. And in Red states like Oklahoma, as this article describes, MAGAt legislators and state officials as actively breaching the Founders fundamental firewall between church and state. As a result teachers are revolting, and many are just walking away from their careers. To give some context to this constant attempt by MAGAts to destroy public education, American children are the least literate and numerate children in the developed world, and there is a growing insufficiency of teachers in public schools, particularly in MAGAt-controlled states. This is going to have long-term generational consequences. Already 54% of Americans can’t read past 6th grade level, and 43% can’t read past 5th grade. Nor can they do fraction or percentage calculations. What does that mean? It means the United States is deliberately abandoning its ability to be a scientific world leader.
Oklahoma christofascist State School Superintendent Ryan Walters Credit: The Oklahoman
Educators in Oklahoma are refusing a state order to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans, setting up an inevitable showdown with the start of the school year just weeks away.
Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction, last week released guidelines to schools for how they should be integrating the Bible into classrooms, saying educators who are against the initiative “will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.”
The message from some schools in the state: Bring it on.
“I suspect that the first thing that will happen is he will target a specific school district or multiple school districts who he believes are not complying with his directive, those school districts will then have to make a choice as to whether to bend [to] his whim or to sue,” said Rob Miller, superintendent of Bixby Public Schools.
“And I can tell you that if Bixby was one of those schools that he selected to come after, we would file a lawsuit,” Miller told The Hill.
It is getting harder and harder to vote in the United States, either because of the MAGAt sabotage of the voting system, or because of the incompetent bureaucratic poor design of the ballets, as is happening in Michigan. We are a country that claims to be a democracy but the individual states, as this Michigan article describes, are not doing what they should to make democracy function properly.
A Michigan absentee ballot for the 2024 primary election. Under state law, if a voter selects candidates in different columns of the partisan section of the ballot, those votes will not be counted. Credit: Krishnan Anantharaman / Votebeat
Every other August in Michigan, thousands of votes are rejected because the voters didn’t pay attention to the directions on their primary ballot, or didn’t understand them.
The problem occurs when voters do something called “crossover voting,” where, intentionally or otherwise, they vote for candidates from different parties on the same ballot. In a general election, that would not be a problem. And in a presidential primary, it wouldn’t be possible.
But in the August primary elections — where candidates for federal- and state-level positions are selected — a crossover vote that doesn’t get caught by the voter means officials can’t count the votes on the partisan section of the ballot. And many voters, particularly if they vote absentee, will never know […]
Neil Vigdor, Maggie Haberman and Simon J. Levien, Reporters - Reader SUpported News / The New York Times
Stephan:
I told you criminal Trump would find a way to back out of a debate with Kamala Harris. He is afraid of her because unlike Biden she will call him a liar to his face. So he is trying to rerig a debate using the Fox propaganda network to conduct it, instead of ABC. He expects that Fox staff will only ask him softball questions, and will not challenge his lies. I think Harris is going to show up at the long scheduled ABC conducted debate, and give a talk on Trump’s cowardice and lies. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
Criminal Trump speaking at a MAGAt rally. Credit: Intercept
Former President Donald J. Trump declared late on Friday that he was dropping out of an ABC News debate scheduled for Sept. 10 and presented a counterproposal to Vice President Kamala Harris, his presumptive opponent, to face off on Fox News six days earlier.
The change, which Mr. Trump announced on his social media site, Truth Social, raised objections from the Harris campaign and appeared to throw a potential showdown between the rivals into question.
A campaign official for Ms. Harris on Saturday accused Mr. Trump of scheming up the Fox News debate to distract from reneging on his commitment to the ABC debate. Mr. Trump had agreed to that debate in May, before President Biden dropped out of the race and before Mr. Biden’s calamitous performance in a CNN debate on June 27.
“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him […]
