The above meme sums up why the West hates and fears China, a wildly successful socialist state — because the West’s own workers and young people are in despair over rapidly worsening economic conditions.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We could be learning from a mature, patient culture that assiduously avoids hot wars. Instead we get constant propaganda consisting of lies like: China is suppressing videos of the Nepal flood, China has concentration camps for Muslim Uyghurs, Tibetans aren’t allowed the learn their native language. Not only are these false, they are projections by cultures that do all this stuff. Put another way, Every imperial accusation is a confession.

The United National Antiwar Coalition and two others groups sponsored this webinar yesterday where we heard from panelists who actually experience conditions in China for themselves.

I am so sorry that I missed being part of a recent direct action at a General Dynamics recruiting fair in the greater Boston area. Very inspiring as GD gears up to build nuclear submarines instead of things we actually need.

What GD needs: more workers. Thus, the disruption.

Link to the video on Instagram.

Never think that there’s nothing you can do. As the saying goes: You already know what you need to do, now you’re negotiating your comfort.

Relevant news: a jury declined to convict Palestine Action defendants this week, Elbit systems closed a plant in Bristol following repeated direct actions, and a Japanese company ended their relationship with Elbit following a pressure campaign by locals.

Link to post with video of demonstration on twitter.

If you’re in Maine, here’s one that’s on my radar after a reader shared it with me. As reported in the Bangor Daily News:

TurbineOne, a defense technology company focused on artificial intelligence and drone software, opened its innovation hub T1MachineWorks on Thursday in Old Town’s airport business park.

The building, which is an empty warehouse with tall ceilings, will soon be used as a drone manufacturing facility. Materials will be brought in and made into drones, which will be tested in the building and then shipped to where they can be used.

Is there a big difference between targeting government installations versus private contractors for the government? Not in my mind. Please choose one near you and get busy.

Also in Maine, on Friday October 2 at 11am there will be a Keep Space for Peace Week gathering at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works shipyard on Washington Street in Bath. One worker told a protester recently, “If you can give me a job making $65 an hour, let me know.” That is big money in Maine. Protesters will continue to point out alternatives to the business of building warships like the one that launched Tomahawk missiles into that elementary school in Minab, Iran. (Federal contracts to make anything other than warships would actually generate more good paying union jobs.)

I hope you won’t wait until November to take action, but I did want to highlight a coordinated week being organized worldwide. The lead organizers have been protesting and blocking traffic outside U.S. drone bases for years.

NOVEMBER 1-7

WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE

to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE:

This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a “KIck Off for A New Campaign”: We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries, and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance.

We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.

“Week of Global Resistance” Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.

Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net

The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:

SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)

ShutDownDroneWarfare.org

SDDW Fall Action Week:

NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!

November 1-7, 2026

Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV

Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM

17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!

In the meantime, consider making this your next sign for standouts:

EDITED 8/29 to correct the date of action in Bath to Friday Oct 2 at 11am.

As the death toll from the glacier collapse that flooded Nepal reaches 1,300+ souls, let us pause to examine the causes of this “unprecedented” effect. Unprecedented in part because early warning systems for flash floods in the China border region adjacent to the disaster zone appear to have failed. But also because a flash flood that looked like a three-story high tsunami is the poster child for galloping climate change in 2026.

Remember when liberal Democrats joined 350.org to insist that “the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere considered the safe limit to avoid the worst impacts of climate change”? We are currently at 425.40 ppm. Successive warmongering Democratic administrations and congresses mouthed words to show support for the goal but continued funding the military which contributes most of any organization on Earth. Put another way, the fossil fuel consumption of the Pentagon (never mind its contractors) exceeds that of Nepal and 100+ other NATIONS.

Why did the Dems keep doing this? Profits, of course. Their stock portfolios are bulging as Nepalese families are buried in torrents of mud.

The more overtly fascistic of the U.S. corporate duopoly meanwhile will be highlighted as the climate villains. Can’t both things be true at once?

So vote blue no matter who! And pretend you’re doing something about the human race hurtling toward extinction — while your party continues the U.S. proxy war on Russia via Ukraine. Oops, today that would be Republicans.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

I’m on the home stretch with summer visiting but I saw something so good this morning that I found a minute to share it.

When I get more time to pull my thoughts together I’ll be responding to the catastrophic, even apocalyptic, mud slide/flood experienced by Nepal and China due to a glacier collapsing in the Himalayas. (This disaster offers a definitive answer to the moronic question, Why can’t people just adapt to climate change?)

In the meantime, enjoy this creative commentary on realpolitik at the UN.

With permission I’m reposting my friend Yussra’s substack article today. She is particularly skilled at finding diverse venues for sharing her well-informed views, as I saw back in April when she presented her poetry and essays at a Creative Mornings event in Kittery, Maine. Yussra publishes essays, videos, poetry, and excellent cartoons on her substack “With Struggle Comes Liberation.” Her unique perspectives as a Muslim woman and an Iraqi American therapist are valuable.

Beautiful Peoples Under Despicable Rule

The Dictionary Needs New Words to Describe Israel’s Depravity

Yussra

Aug 24, 2026

It can be overwhelming to think about how many world events unfold in a single day, and there’s so much, too much, that I’ve been wanting to talk about, so let’s take a step back. On August 15, I had the honor of performing another public poetry reading of my “Anthology for the Colonized,” this time at the Haley Art Gallery. You can read more about the event through their online post or on page 18 of a local Maine newspaper. Gallery owner Jacqueline Abramian was an incredibly generous host (huge shoutout to Karina Quintas for connecting us), and the art at her gallery mesmerized me (more on that below). My anthology this time featured old and new works of mine that meant a lot for me to get to share, but I especially cherished the political discussion that followed the reading.

The audience was filled with old friends, amazing activists, and caring locals who had varying degrees of awareness about Palestine. Some were Palestinian, some had been to Palestine, and only after quoting Miko Peled did I realize that we were in the company of a board member of Dar Alhurriya. Most of us stuck around for hours talking about oppression around the world and how to fight injustice effectively (since we can only figure out what we should do to help “by obsessing over the question,” as Shaykh Omar Suleiman once said). I could sense over the course of the conversation, and I pray I’m right, that a few people shifted their perspectives away from the mainstream liberal narrative and toward a deeper understanding of the Palestinian experience. We talked about overlooked topics like the legal right for the people of Palestine to resist the illegal Israeli occupation according to international law, as well as the imperative for American voters to stop falling for the “lesser evil” rhetoric and to start considering support for genocide an absolute dealbreaker.

Although it was one of the most meaningful days of my life, the conversation that felt so profound for so many of us also gutted us to the core. It was heartbreaking hearing at the event from one of our dear activist friends from Palestine that a few weeks ago, her nephew had been killed by Israelis after suffering a year in their torture camps. A witness who had been locked up with him said that the Israeli authorities had used dogs to rape him, and our friend told the audience through tears that an inspection of her nephew’s corpse revealed that not one spot of his precious skin had been left untouched by the Israelis’ sadistic abuse. She showed us a photo of her nephew from before his abduction, a handsome, promising young man in his early twenties. I will never forget the way she wailed as she spoke, and we all cried right with her, the room filling with a heaviness that the heart cannot encompass, while I simultaneously felt awed by her courage to share her sorrow with us when it was still this fresh. To this day, talking about the Iraq War can get me too emotional, but my own homeland’s story doesn’t compare to the unparalleled inferno actively facing Palestine, and my soul struggles to comprehend this level of cruelty, when the grief, already such an overwhelming beast, so greatly surpasses the typical human experience of bereavement, and with violations this unthinkable, I’m just left thinking that the dictionary needs new words to describe Israel’s depravity. May ar Rahman shower the young martyr and his family with His ultimate mercy, along with the countless Palestinians who are in their exact situation.

This is the second nephew of hers that Israel has murdered.

At a certain point during the event, I noticed that sitting in the back was a hijabi who was missing an arm. I didn’t get the chance to meet her before she left the gallery, but it’s humbling to wonder if she’s from Gaza and whether it was Zionism that claimed her limb. When I write about Palestine, never having seen it for myself, I’m typically thinking about an American audience and how to get them to understand what’s really been happening. I don’t imagine Palestinians witnessing my efforts to amplify their voices. Yet every once in a while, I’m followed online by someone in Palestine, or I meet someone whose relatives have lived through or died in the genocide, and I get this feeling of inadequacy.

Palestine, if you can hear me: you never chose me to represent you with these words of mine, and I’m so sorry that we’ve offered you little more than solidarity.

Speaking of solidarity, I’ve grown obsessed with the oil painting that was behind me during the reading, called “Solidarity” by Congolese Ugandan refugee Jozimar Matimano, in which a Black man standing in front of a wall of concrete and barbed wire is holding up an American flag, yet it’s clenched in his fist, so it’s more like he’s raising his fist in power rather than raising the flag, like he’s holding the flag accountable, crushing its fabric in his struggle, and it’s both his oppressor and his chance at liberation, or so I see it (and see if you can spot the flags of Palestine and Israel in the painting).

Solidarity was a big theme during our conversation. We talked about the history of solidarity between Palestine and Cuba, and how all of the different stories of injustice around the world might seem overwhelming, but they actually all stem from the same one evil, and just as our oppressors are united, we too must learn to recognize our struggles, our peoples, and our liberation as connected. What follows is my attempt to highlight a handful of stories I’ve been thinking about lately, but as a disclaimer, I’m a therapist, not a journalist, and my coverage of the populations, resources, and atrocities below by no means encapsulates all or even necessarily the most pressing pieces of information to be found; it’s just my best effort at bearing witness to oppression around the world. From the deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo-Kinshasa to India and Pakistan’s violent repression of Kashmir to the recent US admission that they killed civilians in Yemen to Israel’s continued occupation of Lebanon despite the sham of a withdrawal agreement signed last month, there are so many massive stories I didn’t get a chance to cover in this roundup, and even for the stories I do explore here, the brevity of my discussion measures the limits of my knowledge and time rather than the importance of their plights, so please feel free to share more in the comments. Unshockingly, pretty much all of the suffering I mention in this essay in some way traces back to the Zionist world order, but the Epstein class and all of these enemies of humanity can only continue their corruption of this beautiful Earth through our silent permission.

Let’s get loud.

CUBA

Support Cuba: https://www.give2cuba.com

US sanctions have contributed to a rise in infant mortality in Cuba
(photo by Robert Wallis).

The United States has imposed sanctions on Cuba dating back to before the sixties, but recently, living conditions in Cuba have gotten far worse thanks to the policies of our latest criminal-in-chief. When you hear American media personalities say “free Cuba,” recognize it as a manipulation attempt betraying one of the US government’s most common imperialist strategies: justifying the Western empire’s self-serving and oppressive control of a foreign land by claiming they are “liberating” its people from their own “tyrannical” leaders. We saw the US use the same tactics in Venezuela after kidnapping the president and his wife at the start of 2026 (with the couple still in prison in New York City awaiting “trial” next year!), and the US certainly made use of this hypocritical rhetoric when invading Iraq in 2003, as if to say, “We’re not invading, we’re helping! We’re saving these uncivilized brown people from themselves.”

Somehow it’s the arrogance that boils my blood most of all.

It should come as no surprise that Venezuela’s new US-approved government recently reestablished diplomatic ties with Israel for the first time since 2009. Meanwhile, Columbia just recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory (occupied Syrian land that even the spineless international community acknowledges as stolen), and Argentina’s president was awarded the “Jewish Nobel Prize” in 2025 “for his unequivocal support of Israel during one of the most difficult times since the founding of the Jewish State,” and he has kissed the Western Wall in Jerusalem to join the ranks of the other sycophantic war criminals that rule over our corrupted world. So I have to ask: why exactly do South American politicians feel the need to lend their support to a few million land thieves thousands of miles across the ocean? Isn’t that odd, isn’t that proof that we are living in an age of empires, its vassals merely masquerading as independent nation states?

But turning back to the Caribbean, I recently came across an article arguing that the Trump administration should be investigated for genocide against Cuba. Author Nikos Mottas explores legal definitions and historical precedent, writing that “imperialism helps manufacture the wound and then points to the bleeding as evidence that the victim is diseased.” Reading these words, I felt like I was transported back to my childhood listening to the mainstream media openly lie to my neighbors about Iraq as bombs rained down on my loved ones. I’m also reminded of the complicit Western world’s overemphasis on debating whether the genocide in Gaza really counts as a genocide, back before Israel’s cartoonishly obvious evil plots were explicitly and repeatedly spelled out in front of the entire world.

I remember thinking back then, I don’t care if you call it a genocide or a pizza party. Are you okay with what you are seeing, the continual mass slaughter of children? And sure, I can appreciate that the precise classification of the nature of US imperialism and its impact on the Cuban population can have implications in terms of international jurisprudence, that not all injustices are exactly the same. But regardless of which terms officially apply in Cuba or anywhere else, oppression is oppression, and war crimes by any other name would smell as foul.

SUDAN

Support Sudan: https://sapa-usa.org

Sudanese families fled Al Fashir during massacres committed by the Emirati-funded
Rapid Support Forces starting in October 2025 (photo from Anadolu Agency).

In less than a month, Sudan has experienced over a hundred civilian deaths, and the attacks on the ground and by drone in highly populated areas have continued to result in mass displacement (we’re talking thousands of people) in the month of August 2026. At this point, over a third of all health facilities in Sudan are no longer operational as a result of the ongoing genocide. While some outlets might frame the fighting between the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary and the Sudanese Armed Forces as a civil war (again, we heard the same nonsense about Iraq), it would be naive to ignore the involvement of external powers. It’s no secret that the Zionist-aligned United Arab Emirates funds the RSF and launders gold from Sudan to sell its smuggled wares in the international market. I traveled to the Emirates a few times as a teenager to visit family who took refuge there after the Iraq War, and I’d never seen so much gold in my life. I didn’t know as much at the time, but even back then, the picture looked very wrong. The UAE’s persistent denials of any wrongdoing do nothing to address the ample evidence of their role in Sudan’s genocide.

A few weeks ago, I saw a video that really stopped me in my tracks, and I can’t believe the world has moved on from it. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the current vice president and prime minister of the UAE and the absolute monarch of Dubai, was visiting London and walking alongside his entourage when a brave Sudanese man directly confronted him, yelling clearly, “UAE is killing my people in my country. Stop killing my people! Emiratis! You are killing my people. I’m Sudani, you are killing my people!”

In response, one of the “men” walking with Dubai’s ruler replied, “F*** you, f*** your people. Motherf***er, Black b****.”

The slurs from the monster continued, yet the Sudanese man, his phone recording in his hand, didn’t back down, his voice unshaken as he followed the royal party while replying, “You said Black? They’re killing my people in my country. Stop killing Sudanese!” He raised his voice as he repeated the accusations and named the killers for all of London to hear, calling out UAE president Mohamed bin Zayed.

If I had to guess, I’d assume that since this clip went viral in a Western context, it’s not unlikely that the impulsive and openly genocidal member of the royal crew has been fired, not because Emirati leaders disagree with his sentiment in the slightest, but because he embarrassed them while abroad and would have, in a just world, caused a diplomatic incident. This video is the latest example of Western society acknowledging the offence of racial slurs while supporting actual racial massacres. It’s like the Ben Gvir effect; how many times have European politicians condemned him for sounding racist, for saying the quiet part out loud and bragging about his war crimes, while these very same politicians have the blood of thousands of Palestinians on their hands? Words are only disgusting because of their implications, like implications of supremacist beliefs or that the speaker would justify violating human rights. Surely the actual physical violation of those rights is far more despicable than the language used to describe such atrocities, yet politics is all about image. A psychopath in the public eye is just someone who forgot to shed a fake tear when drawing his weapon and aiming at a child. At any rate, thanks to the courageous stand of that Sudanese man, the illusion of the powerful being civilized faltered for one uncomfortable moment that we shouldn’t let them forget.

THE UNITED STATES

Support Immigrants: https://lighthouseme.org/resources

“THIS IS BLOOD,” reads the pavement of Biddeford, Maine, following the ICE murder
of a young father from Columbia in July 2026 (photo by Robert F. Bukaty).

It was devastating to hear last month that ICE has murdered Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero (sometimes spelled Johan), a young Columbian father, in my family’s very own community. The ICE officer evidently killed him in his car because Joan was trying to get away from the armed terrorist when he was gunned down. Joan was working in the US legally at the time, not that his murder would have been justified if his freaking paperwork weren’t in order. It was later revealed that Joan wasn’t even the target of the ICE raid, and that the killer, a US Army veteran, had a long legal history of “terrifying and violent behavior” against women. Joan’s young widow Karolina delivered a heart-wrenching statement in the wake of her husband’s murder.

The beautiful young Columbian family destroyed by ICE in Maine.

Comments online from repulsive people justify Joan’s murder by “reasoning” that if he didn’t want to be killed via street execution, then he shouldn’t have tried fleeing when the violent lunatic approached him. It’s the same “logic” we hear about how Palestinians deserve their genocide for ever daring to fight back against the Israeli occupation, as though decades of Israeli war crimes could be negated by a single day of resistance. Somehow, the actual murderers face no scrutiny in their eyes, while the frightened victims are apparently to blame for how they handled the threats to their life.

The pathetic ugliness of hateful rage on full display as an ICE supporter
screams in the face of a safety marshal providing security for demonstrators
against ICE after Joan’s murder (photo by Robert F. Bukaty).

Inhumane US policies continue to disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic immigrants, who fill ICE dungeons after getting abducted from their homes, who live in fear while working longer hours for less pay with fewer legal protections under conditions that the poorest citizens would refuse to accept for themselves. Recently, the Trump administration revoked temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the United States. The Haitian community in the US has become a load-bearing pillar of society, and should they be forced to leave, they face the threat of violence in Haiti, and the American citizens who came to rely on them will suffer their absence. Although their struggle doesn’t compare to what the Haitian community is facing, families are now facing the loss of their caregivers for their elderly and disabled loved ones, as tens of thousands of Haitians under TPS have been working as home care aides and nursing assistants for tens of thousands of American families. Cruelty to one group results in the suffering of the collective.

A gentleman named Monsanto Maler, having escaped gang violence in Haiti,
falls to his knees outside of a Department of Homeland Security office in August 2026,
an ankle monitor suddenly locked onto his limb without reason (photo by Carol Guzy).

PALESTINE

Support Palestine: https://www1.hhrd.org/Campaigns/Palestine-Relief

Palestinians run as Israelis bomb the Al-Muttaqin Mosque
in Gaza City in July 2026 (photo by Omar el Qattaa).

May God be with all of the oppressed people I describe in this essay, and all of the ones who aren’t even on my radar, yet are always on His, and may He guide us to do right by each other. It can be tough to know where to look, but I feel compelled to mention that the Israeli settler terrorists and Israeli occupation forces have now entered a third week of their siege on Qusra in the West Bank, preventing families from leaving and preventing food and medicine from entering the village. To zoom out, below is some data on recent Israeli war crimes across Palestine from a wide variety of outlets and organizations, but to really visualize some of the numbers on Israel’s genocide, I recommend checking out the infographics designed by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Without further ado, let me paint a recent picture of PALESTINE IN NUMBERS…

• 94% of Palestinians in Gaza lack basic shelter necessities.

• Israel attacked Palestinian journalists a documented 108 times in July 2026.

• Palestinians from a single clan buried 112 loved ones after the recent recovery of their remains from the rubble in Gaza.

• Israel killed 300 children in 300 days of “ceasefire” in Gaza.

• Israeli settlers and forces committed 467 attacks against Palestinian communities in the West Bank and demolished at least 75 buildings in a single week in August 2026.

• Israel established 592 illegal settlements and outposts in the West Bank.

• Israel detained 630 Palestinians in the West Bank in July 2026.

• Israel limits aid to the West Bank through over 900 physical obstacles.

• Israel has killed more Palestinians since the October 2025 “ceasefire” (over 1,200) than the total Israeli death toll of October Seven (for which Israel is also responsible).

• Israel violated the “ceasefire” 3,795 times from October 2025 to July 2026.

I’ll end this unwieldy essay as I began it, by talking about the Haley Art Gallery. The week after my reading, I went back to the gallery to learn about the Gaza Soup Kitchen from one of its amazing board members, Omama Y. Marzuq, and once again, the conversations following the presentation were truly special. When Israel murdered soup kitchen chef Mahmoud Almadhoun in 2024, his last word was “مستمرين” (mustamirreen, meaning “we will continue”). The soup kitchen feeds thousands of Gazans a day across many locations, and our friend told us it has even become a means for Palestinians to reclaim occupied land in northern Gaza. Some tikkiyya locations are threatened by Israel’s arbitrarily shifting “yellow line” as the Jewish supremacist invaders seek to occupy more and more of what’s left of Palestine, and the soup kitchen workers and their loved ones have been directly targeted and some have even been killed by Israel, but mustamirreen indeed, until Palestine, until everyone, is free insha’Allah.

Chef Mahmoud Almadhoun, who helped run the Gaza Soup Kitchen
until an Israeli drone strike martyred him in November 2024.

As a mature culture, China knows that endless borrowing to fund warmongering is a bad idea in the economic sense. Just crack open a history book on the decline of the Ottoman Empire for examples.

In a new video about the cost of U.S. wars waged to hang on to an unraveling empire, Persian Cats have been replaced by a (Chinese?) dove. Since White Eagle did not listen to his own accountant, his credit card is denied at checkout.

My favorite part: the eagle’s reaction when the dove suggests putting a few warplanes back. Addicted much?

As an immature culture, the U.S. continues to rely on entertainment to cover the fumes of hell awaiting certain genocidaires.

My favorite part of this video: Charles and Camilla.

Some claim that’s the late Charlie Kirk conducting the orchestra. What do you think?And who is 47 supposed to be, Perry Como? So dated.

47 campaigned on the promise he would go to Washington DC and “drain the swamp.” But even a cursory examination of his career to that point would have revealed him as the ultimate swamp creature. Indeed, corruption among his family members is staggering. It surpasses even the grift of the Bidens — who don’t need to worry because Hunter already had his pardon when his dad preemptively pardoned the rest of the family as his last act in the White House.

Of course we had to make sense of those occurrences without the gloss provided by Lego and Minecraft videos. Afroman was doing a lot of the satirical work in those days — while the U.S. barreled toward unsustainable debt, the poor got poorer, and the rich got rocket ship joyrides. Good times.

What’s going on?

Reports of trouble at sea continue with the family members of crew on the USS Boxer reporting a shortage of period supplies like pads and tampons. The Boxer left San Diego in March to head to the Iranian theatre of war, with no port calls since.

Is the very dim head of the U.S. military prioritizing testosterone supplements instead of basic gendered hygiene products? He’s on his third wife so you would think he’d understand that running out of tampons is kind of like running out of toilet paper — you can cope, but it’s going to slow you down.

More likely this is one more result of the ongoing serious disruption to supply lines after Iran bombed the naval base in Bahrain tasked with supplying U.S. warships.

Diego Garcia, the British base now handling those logistics, is 3000 miles away.

Don’t get me wrong. As a student of history I’m aware that military deployments typically result in privation, sometimes even starvation. Remember Napoleon — who was winning until he thought he was emperor and took on Russia in winter — is famous for his observation:

Pre-Hegseth, the Pentagon was gung-ho on putting women into combat positions and promoting them up through the ranks. Then came a spate of firings of top brass of the female gender, along with generals and admirals of color.

This makes it especially ironic that a woman, Col. Angela Black, was tapped to replace two Air National Guard commanders who got the boot this week at Kirtland Air Base in New Mexico.

Col. Christopher George was fired as the commander of the 150th Special Operations Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. The wing’s deputy commander, Col. Jeffry Heggemeier, was “reassigned,” according to a statement from the New Mexico National Guard..

George’s entire three-decade career has been with the 150th. He served as an enlisted crew chief for fighter jets the wing flew until 2013. After commissioning as a security forces officer, he commanded the wing’s law enforcement and security squadron before moving up into higher leadership roles. He has also served in civilian law enforcement for 24 years, according to his biography.

ACAB. But firing the scientist is a lot more interesting:

His deputy commander, Heggemeier, joined the 150th in March. A career-long reservist and directed-energy scientist, Heggemeier spent most of his Air Force career as a researcher in combat-focused laser and directed-energy systems at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate, which is also at Kirtland.

What did he do, advise against the ill-conceived use of 21st century weapons on Iran? Or in space?

Some commanders want the truth, but some just want yes “men.”

Drafting the founding fathers as yes men is now possible with AI. Why was a successful general with a mouth full of slave teeth enlisted to help build support for a lavish — need I say, Versaille-like — ballroom he would have scorned? Maybe ask Natalie Harp who helps 47 create his Truth Social posts.

Meanwhile, in other outposts of the U.S. empire:

I’ll leave you with this old meme, rapidly becoming a classic:

More bad news for the Pentagon as another highly expensive warship goes dark.

“On July 24, 2026, while conducting routine operations in the Indo-Pacific, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65) reported an engineering casualty involving its generators, causing a loss of power,” reads the statement. “There were no injuries to the crew, who demonstrated resilience, grit, professionalism and unwavering steadiness in their response.”

The loss of power meant sailors were without galley services, toilets and air conditioning. Potable water was also affected, Comer said. He did not respond to a question about how sailors handled waste.

I’ve already written about the woes of the USS Abraham Lincoln which is reportedly about to be replaced the the USS George Washington (without the USS Benfold in its entourage), leaving zero aircraft carriers in the waters around China for the first time in many years.

Military types have been less than impressed with the disrespect, gaslighting, and minimizing of the Commander in Chief and his minister of war about the Lincoln’s woes, a 5,000 person ship that must now be supplied from Diego Garcia 3,000 miles from Bahrain where Iran destroyed a crucial U.S. naval base.

‘Typical of a draft dodger’: Rep. Seth Moulton blasts Trump’s response to USS Lincoln crisis

“The U.S. had no plan going into this war”

Retired Maj. General Randy Manner on Friday accused President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth of “spewing lies” about the reportedly deplorable conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and its extended deployment in the Middle East.

A professional military that sees national defense as a sacred calling and that embraces martyrdom if necessary it is up against a whiny Gen Z force that mostly thinks of the U.S. military as a job. My husband: “Probably the only job they could get.” He’s right if we’re talking jobs with benefits like health care and college tuition for high school graduates.

The leadership of this crack military force? They are focused on spending big, bigger, and biggest bucks on elaborate systems like Golden Dome that are highly unlikely to produce interception of hypersonic missiles as promised.

But military-industrial promises are made to be broken.

In the excitement over finally pulling Russia into war, General Dynamics promised to build artillery shells that U.S. proxy Ukraine was running through rapidly. GD took $533 million from taxpayers to equip a factory with state of the art robots purchased from Turkiye.

Those involved described a project that was rushed and ill considered from the start. Congress paved the way, removing government contracting guardrails — meant to ensure taxpayer money isn’t wasted — so that Ukraine-related defense projects could be funded quickly. The Army took advantage, handing General Dynamics lucrative no-bid awards without knowing whether the machines it planned to use could perform the desired work. The Army’s due diligence was inadequate, four former Army and General Dynamics officials told ProPublica.

Descriptions of the malfunctioning robots reads like bad sci-fi and suggests, at least to my mind, sabotage.

The robots, giant metal arms with clamps for hands, would end up drenched in oil, which would then — no surprise — combust as they moved steel blocks heated to 1,800 degrees into and out of a machine that periodically erupted columns of fire. One blaze that summer melted a robot’s cables, putting it out of commission for a week..

according to interviews with 12 former factory workers.. the flaming robot arms also kept smashing into things. They slammed into computer numerical control machines, breaking their windows and bending their doors. They knocked over shells. They bashed into safety fences. Workers talked about the arms going “rogue” and began calling one of them “Johnny 5” after a sentient military robot from a 1980s movie..

Then there were the giant press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer [emphasis mine] to function properly but still botched the shaping of nearly every shell. “We really didn’t have any standardized practice,” said Quantel White, a former employee. “It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night.”

If someone comes up with a better metaphor for the U.S. approach to maintaining its imperial ascendency, please let me know.

Who will be held accountable for the artillery shell boondoggle? Not GD executives.

Wages of Failure: Since the Army halted two production lines at the factory, the General Dynamics unit responsible for the debacle has received contract awards totaling $2.5 billion.

Maybe Turkish robotics firm Repkom will take the blame?

Paranoia set in. Repkon refused to share passwords needed to control important equipment, according to five former General Dynamics employees. Sometimes workers would be startled by the sight of a machine moving by itself and realize it was being controlled by someone in Turkey. Spooked, General Dynamics workers tore out hardware to cut off remote access to the machines, two former workers said.

If this is starting to sound like a bad movie plot with espionage and sabotage threads, keep in mind that you paid way more than $17 to see this film. But not to worry! Private-public partnerships with contractors all over the globe are racing ahead to produce fast, powerful military hardware that will attempt to compete with Iran, China, and Russia. All three of which are currently demonstrating the decisive power of a loyal, patriotic work force called upon to step up production in the face of existential threats.

General Dynamics workers in my state go out on strike regularly for better pay and working conditions, while their CEO slurps up another bonus.

In April 2024, General Dynamics CEO Novakovic told investors: “In the U.S., we are rapidly increasing ammunition production with the opening of our Texas facility.” General Dynamics failed to conduct a scheduled first article test in Mesquite that same month.

I’ll let Xi Jinping have the last word here. From his 2015 plans for The Governance of China:

Iran is trolling 47 again, this time with taunts that U.S. missile defense stocks are alarmingly low.

What could go wrong? According to the video, U.S. bases in North America could be hit next. Here we see scandal-ridden Fort Bragg in North Carolina up in flames:

Then there’s this somewhat relevant chart of interceptor inventories.

I say somewhat because “Floor” and “Goal” are based on interceptors needed to repel attacks on U.S. bases in places like South Korea or the Philippines. But some of those air defense systems were moved to West Asia after the first round of Iranian attacks on U.S. bases near Iran.

Based on the golf outing, 47 clearly believes that Iran could and might hit him with an intercontinental missile in an attempted decapitation strike. Allegedly that’s why he escaped secretly from Air Force One in a catering cart after the NATO summit in Turkiye, leaving most of his staff behind on the decoy jet. Mother-of-two Karoline Leavitt resigned as Press Secretary almost immediately, about which you may draw your own conclusions.

A hilariously bad AI-generated video shared by rabid 47 supporter Laura Loomer has not one but two (possibly three?) Karoline Leavitt look-alikes boarding Air Force One. The originator described it as “EXCLUSIVE Video of President Trump using the fake news media as bait for Iran.” Did he though? You be the judge.

One part of the Iranian video that confused me is this depiction of a Lor man (that’s how Explosive Media described him) wearing the distinctive felt cap of that ethnic group from western Iran. Why is he riding a missile and throwing bricks? Maybe to represent the BRICS threat to the crumbling petro dollar? Or is this Lego person a reference to the music of folk and pop singer Mohsen Lorestani? You might have to be Persian to parse this one.

As confusing as things are at the moment, with shifting alliances and rapidly deflating U.S. imperial power, we would all do well to read Pepe Escobar for his wealth of background knowledge and context. He’s just published “The New Great Game, revisited” on a debut substack called Geopolitics Prime. (You may recall that the old Great Game was Russia and Britain competing for influence in Afghanistan and Persia.) You can subscribe to Geopolitics Prime for free. What have you got to lose?

An excerpt:

in Iran, under a revamped – by Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the solidified consensus is that Tehran will never compromise, especially under the current “no war, no peace” status.

Washington would have to meet a set of very harsh conditions before the Strait of Hormuz reopens, including:

1. The end to US threats and “insults”;

2. Permanent end to US wars against Iran and its allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq;

3. Lifting of the American naval blockade and withdrawal of all US forces;

4. No less than $300 billion in compensation for war damages;

5. Lifting of all sanctions;

6. Unconditional release of all frozen assets;

7. Iran’s right to charge up to 7% on cargo transit;

8. A ban on US and Israeli vessels;

9. A 20% violation toll on ships if conditions are breached.

And if these conditions are not met, Iran is threatening to send more Lego videos.

But seriously, if these conditions are not met (and Escobar doesn’t think they ever will be):

some of the serious consequences of the war unleashed on February 28 are already quite clear. Those include the possible financial destruction of the [Gulf Cooperation Council] GCC, complete with the collapse of their ruling regimes; Yemen’s nearly inevitable geographical expansion; virtually complete international isolation of the death cult [i.e. Israel]; a massive global economic crisis in tandem with a U.S. financial crisis

Guess we’ll have to take the bad with the good, because this is the path that we’re on. And as the old Chinese proverb has it, If we make no effort to change direction, we will end up where we are heading.

What I’m supposed to be doing is finishing Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China so I can discuss it on Friday. But what’s making my head threaten to explode is the backlog of articles on imperialist warmongering in Africa; with 46 tabs currently open in my web browser, my ambition to synthesize what I learn from these readings may be unrealistic. But I have an idea. Hear me out.

The reason my discussion group chose to read Xi is that I saw a tweet by a China watcher (I think it was Arnaud Bertrand) noting that this historically significant collection of Xi’s speeches and interviews from 2012-14 had been published in English but received no reviews by any major media outlets in the West.

So, I was motivated to find out what the powers that be don’t want me to know about Xi’s plans for governance.

It’s 2026 now so we can see many of the plans expressed by Xi have come to fruition.

Notable among the plans:

China does not subscribe to the outdated logic that a country will invariably seek hegemony when it grows strong. Are colonialism and hegemonism viable today? Absolutely not. They inevitably lead to a dead end, and those who stick to this beaten track will only hit a stone wall. (p. 372, emphasis mine)

China’s alternative approach can be seen in “Be Trustworthy Friends and Sincere Partners Forever,” a speech by Xi in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on March 25, 2013.

Chinese and African peoples have supported and cooperated with each other in our respective endeavors to fight against colonialism and imperialism and win independence and liberation, and in the pursuit of development and national renewal. A fraternal bond of shared destiny has been forged between us..

the defining features of China-Africa relations are sincerity, friendship, mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit and common development. We get along well and treat each other as equals. Neither side seeks to impose its will on the other. (p. 416)

Now for my idea. Here’s a selection of reporting on forces that do seek to impose their will on others, often clandestinely via economic pressure or through proxies e.g. militias like U.S. ally UAE-supported RSF committing genocide in Sudan.

In reverse chronological order by publication date, these are the articles I had saved in open tabs. (See if you can spot the ones written from a colonial perspective.)

Mining reforms power Mali’s push for infrastructure development

Leveraging the steady stream of mining revenue into the Energy, Water and Transport Infrastructure Development Fund, the government could borrow $880 million to develop critical infrastructure.

August 10, Break Through News

Giving poor households cash leads to a spike in spending, but also lasting benefits

August 7, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (PNAS)

Child soldiers recount horrors of Sudan’s war and presence of Colombian mercenaries

July 30, Associated Press

Drone Strikes Are Destroying the Infrastructure of Survival in the Heart of Sudan

In El-Obeid, RSF drone strikes are destroying fuel, electricity, and water that keeps the most fragile patients alive.

July 27, Drop Site News

Sudan Resources

Understanding the causes and costs of genocide.

July 27, Notes on the Polycrisis

The Next Crime Scene: The Weapon Sudan’s War Runs On

The fifth installment in our series on Sudan’s War and Its Enablers — and the first of a strand tracing how modern wars weaponize sexual violence against civilians. July 26, Manufacturing Dissent

At least 21 killed in drone strike on water source in Sudan’s North Darfur

July 21, Sudan Tribune

US Seeks to Turn Eritrea Into “a Bulwark Against Iranian Influence”

As the militarization of the Red Sea escalates, the US tries to enlist Eritrea in exchange for sanctions relief.

April 29, Black Agenda Report

The war in Sudan is “between two wings of a comprador parasitic capitalist class”

Sudan's war is a conflict within the comprador elite, cultivated by external powers to plunder the nation's resources after destroying a popular revolution.

December 2025, People’s Dispatch

Increasing agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important problems this century

Agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa needs to improve to reduce hunger, poverty, and the destruction of biodiversity.

April 2022, Our World in Data

I look forward to your comments.

A fast food worker making minimum wage has proved to be a more successful fundraiser than the Gaza Board of “Peace” which has yet to receive a single dollar in its official World Bank-administered Gaza reconstruction fund.

Here’s former Burger King employee Arianna Hamilton explaining what happened and why she was fired:

I would share the Lego video about her but as critics have pointed out her character looks white while Hamilton herself is Black.

On the subject of how Zionists use multiple approaches to silence the voices calling for Palestine to be free, one of their most vicious strategies is deliberately targeting journalists.

How come all six martyrs are Palestinian? Israel does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza and hasn’t for years. Also, doing the media work to get the truth out about Gaza is a kind of sacred calling for Palestinians.

What is Israel so eager to hide? From the substack Palestine Will Be Free:

“Approximately 67 percent of Gaza’s population suffers from food insecurity, [emphasis mine] while more than 200,000 people — about 10 percent of the population — are in the phase immediately preceding a formal famine declaration under the international food security classification,” Justin Brady, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Palestine, said last week.

The so-called Board of Peace is a sham. Per Chris Hedges:

Trump announced a “historic” agreement on July 30 that entailed “the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.” He called the 15-point plan, credited to the Board of Peace, which has no Palestinian representatives and installed Trump as its chair for life, “a monumental step toward lasting peace and security.”

But Hamas swiftly qualified the demand by saying that handing over its heavy weapons was only contingent on Israel ending “all forms of” its “aggression” and withdrawing its occupying forces from Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu blithely dismissed Trump’s proposal. Israel, he said, will not withdraw its forces until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed.

Read this to mean never.

So while mothers in Gaza struggle to scrounge up a single meal a day for their children, we the well-fed in the U.S. can surely boycott Burger King. Save a few calories to send the message: we stand with Palestine.

Yesterday was the most disturbing local news day as eyewitness reports of the cruelty at ICE’s gulag in Scarborough were shared by city councilor in Portland.

I was just contacted by someone who's been observing activity at the Scarborough ICE facility. I don't think people realize what's happening down there every day. Here's what they told me.

They asked that I share their comments and ask for help:

>*They are taking people everyday and transferring them across state lines. Many of whom are asylum seekers. They are moving people to Boston and New Hampshire.*

>*They let people’s cars be abandoned in their lot if they take someone during a routine immigration check in, and they’ve started using shackles during transport on detainees hands and feet.*

>*They are forcing people to stand in the sun with their small children for hours waiting for routine immigration checkins.*

>*Yesterday a woman was forced to uber with her infant child to come pick up her two older daughters (3 and 6) who were made to stand in parking lot alone until she arrived because they took their father in front of them. He is a confirmed asylum seeker.*

>*We were able to give her a ride and take their family car home because she doesn’t drive. They do this every. single. day.*

>*We observe daily and share information of detainments. We provide resources on the ground to families picking up personal items from their loved ones that have been taken.*

>*We offer links to legal services, rental assistance, and water/shade.*

>*We need more people to observe and offer support. We need allied organizations to tell people what’s going on and to offer their assistance.*

>*More people are needed on the ground to help in real time; translators, lawyers, social services professionals.*

>*We get more support than dissent daily, but not enough people stop and stay for a while. But coming by even for 20 min to talk and observe is helpful. I think people should know that. The more the merrier.*

>*We have shade, water, snacks, and we are NOT a group. There is NO leader. We are all individual people who agree on one thing: ICE out of Maine, ICE out of the country, our neighbors deserve peace and safety no matter who they are.*

**The ICE facility's address is 40 Manson Libby Road, Scarborough, if you want to join the observers. They say the most important thing is that people come down. Most active times are 9am -3pm Monday-Friday, but there is still activity all days and all hours, they say.**

Here’s the thing about rushing down there: if you use your car, ICE will put your license plate in their database. That could result in you inadvertently leading them to vulnerable people you may be supporting with food boxes, rides, etc.

So that’s the local dumpster fire today.

The global dumpster fire could end up being a whole lot worse according to legendary hacker Kim Dotcom. No matter what you think of Tucker Carlson, you owe it to yourself to either read or watch this interview with Kim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLZuL52Qp6U

TRANSCRIPT

Highlights: there are no secure digital platforms to use as ALL have granted back door access to the U. S. government. Even Signal? Especially Signal.

Why does the internet activist who supported Julian Assange and Wikileaks now live in New Zealand? Because he believes the U.S. will use nukes on Iran eventually, and that NZ is relatively safer than Europe where he moved from.

How can nuclear WW3 be prevented? Revolution.

Finally, some good news in the struggle against Zionists who have killed one child a day since 47’s bogus “ceasefire” went into effect, and are ravaging the West Bank and Lebanon as I write this.

In the U.S., the AIPAC-supported Rep. Haley Stevens, running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, lost to the Muslim anti-Zionist candidate despite outspending him by 11 to 1.

As reported by Drop Site on twitter:

In a Drop Site and Zeteo sponsored Michigan poll, more than 60% of moderate voters agreed: “If a candidate won’t stand up to AIPAC, they won’t fight for me.”

Another voter gave a different reason:

So AIPAC affiliation is now kryptonite in U.S. elections? Awesome!

Winner of the nomination, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, said on camera:

In the UK, the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled that anti-Zionism is a form of free speech that is legally protected — a victory that David Miller, the professor fired by by Bristol University, described as “decisive.”

Universities are besieged by Zionists insisting that academic freedom must give way due to bogus claims that criticizing Israel is antisemitic and that some Jewish students feel afraid when they see keffiyehs or other visible support for Palestine. I would not wish to be a university administrator in these times.

Internally, Zionists are in disarray over their failed war on Iran.

Apparently the guys in charge of getting Iranians to overthrow their government are taking the fall for the ill-conceived and poorly executed war. The decapitation strike on ayatollah Khamenei and his family and the bombing of an elementary school kicked off the present phase of the war, which the U.S. and Israel are losing badly.

Explosive Media creator of Lego videos explained to Max Blumenthal that the martyring of Khamenei made him feel patriotic and motivated to help in the war effort. And veteran Mike Prysner, Executive Director of the Center for Conscience and War, reports that U.S. troops are scrambling to get out of the military after seeing it slaughter scores of schoolchildren in Minab.

Good for them. Here’s the phone number if they need it:

Nuclear warfare is again in vogue after decades where the people who actually lived through atomic bombings aged out of public discourse. Yes, there are still a few hibakusha alive but they’re extremely old.

Cold War kids like myself spent our childhoods cowering under desks in case the USSR nuked us. The mushroom shaped cloud turned up in satirical songs and featured in our nightmares. I flinched every time a plane flew over my elementary school playground.

Who will tell young people that nuclear weapons are not a cool technology that taxpayers should invest in? Maybe Mayor Mamdani will ask the NYC Emergency Management Department to release a new PSA debunking claims that you can survive a 21st century nuclear attack by doing the same b.s. that we were told to do in the 1960’s.

Survivors know that it isn’t the initial attack vaporizing bodies that is the worst part. It’s the radiation sickness that follows with lots of suffering and eventual slow death. Also damage to the DNA meant to give life to a new generation.

Why are we seeing the minimizing and trivializing of nuclear war?

I think the U.S.-Israel war on Iran demonstrates that, without the “big one” in their arsenal, Zionists are unable to vanquish a well-prepared target.

Israel reportedly has 300+ nukes. The U.S. has ramped up spending on nukes, hiding much of it in the Energy Department budget. Headlines normalizing this abound:

Hey isn’t August 6 the anniversary of the first atomic bombing of civilians which took place in Hiroshima, Japan in 1945?

Follow the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space to keep tabs on the nuclear militarization of outer space, and what to do about it. Follow the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to chart the course of madness and for tools to speak out before “someone will set the spark off, and we will all be blown away.”

Teach your children well.

Note: I’ve written about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, nuclear war, and my own family’s connection to it on many past August 6th’s. Here is a sampling:

Slouching Toward Nuclear War, Let Us Pause To Consider Hiroshima (August 6, 2017)

Biggest Lie Ever Told By The U.S. Government: The “Necessity” of Hiroshima (August 6, 2016)

Is Caitlin Johnstone’s post title today an overstatement?

The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorizing a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth ten million Palestinian lives.

“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” lawyer[emphasis mine] Yehuda Shimon told the BBC.

“It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,” replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview.

“Million,” Shimon corrected her. “One Jewish life, it’s ten million, okay?”

“That just sounds racist,” Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.”

It’s the underlying lie that stalwart protester Clif Brown examines by asking Zionists who approach him, “What about liberty and justice for all?”

It’s the shameful lie that a group of Jewish religious leaders in Maine are pushing in the wake of certainty that Israel’s genocide in Gaza will continue to be a pivotal issue for Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections. According to these Zionists, there is no genocide in Gaza. A quarter of a million people dead, injured, or missing under rubble — including tens of thousands of children — forced starvation, incessant bombing of civilians in tents, deliberate destruction of hospitals and schools, targeted assassinations of journalists and doctors? That’s just Israel “defending itself from Hamas.”

Pogroms in the West Bank killing Palestinians daily who have nothing to do with Hama? Those are ok because Jewish lives are worth so much more than Muslim lives. Right?

The Portland Press Herald proves Caitlin Johnstone’s point by publishing this ridiculous statement: “Israel’s war in Gaza — a response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel.” Actually the Israeli military killed hundreds of people of October 7, deliberately, to prevent their being taken hostage. Most of those killed were Israelis.

This is a well-documented fact, but the Zionist owners of corporate media have deemed that truth unacceptable. And the Zionists of the Israeli government continue to hide the video evidence of what really happened on that fateful day.

Does hiding the evidence of something make it not true?

I was especially interested in one of the eleven rabbis who signed the genocide denial statement in Maine, because I remember my son’s childhood friend Erin Axelman saying that’s where their Jewish education happened and that they did not remember any teachings about the state of Israel. Signatory Rabbi Rachel Isaacs of Beth Israel Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Waterville, must represent the new generation of uber Zionist American Jews. Axelman explored this issue in his documentary ISRAELISM which explores the theory that American Jews replaced their religious faith with new faith in a colonial outpost in Palestine.

And note that religious Jews have been saying this all along: “Zionism took a religion and remade it as a nationalism.”

As for the rise in antisemitism, I need to see that alleged 8.5% rise in NYC differentiate between criticizing Israel and biased behavior toward Jews for being Jews. Calling criticism of a nation “antisemitic” because it is a Jewish supremacist nation is really poor logic. It is the logic of subterfuge, intended to sow confusion.

I could not be more happy that voters are letting Democrats know that Zionism is a deal-breaker. And I hold out no hope that corporate media will do anything other than what they have ever done, which is follow the money.

Thankfully, we have social media and our own distribution networks — at least for now.

One of the benefits of traveling long distances to protest with local activists around Maine is the time spent on the road with fellow travelers. It’s helpful to be able to discuss current events and share resources and analysis with people who don’t view you as the turd in the punchbowl for even bringing it up. (Mutual support for people struggling with families that do not welcome their input is also an offering.)

We had just been discussing the activation of tens of thousands of young men from Morocco who were told that Spain was opening its borders to them, causing them to embark for Ceuta, a Spanish territory on the northern shore of Africa. Reports are that nearly 100 migrants have died in the cruel game played by Zionists to destabilize Spain. It’s Spain’s punishment for refusing use of its air space for the war on Iran, and for its longstanding refusal to cooperate in genociding Gaza.

Woke up this morning to a new Lego video about this. From creator PersiaBoi:

Our hostess in Lubec, Lynn, produced a slew of new signs for yesterday’s protest on busy coastal Route 1. It’s the height of tourist season and one of us counted about a dozen out of state license plates; tourists in particular waved, honked, and thanked us for being there. (I always wonder if they think that excuses them for not being there.)

We estimated more than half acknowledged our presence in a positive way.

We weren’t numerous but as Lubec is pretty remote we weren’t surprised. We’ve seen that interest in preventing the Gaza genocide has fallen off sharply in the U.S. as many younger activists have turned their attention to fascism at home i.e. ICE kidnappings and executions. Older activists in Maine tend to be drawn to orange man bad demos like No Kings — they are Democrats, wishfully thinking that if only 47 wasn’t in the White House things would be so much better.

So it was a stalwart band of “Q-tips” i.e. white-haired protesters that gathered yesterday. Some came from as far as Brunswick or Bass Harbor on Mt. Desert Island. My husband and I traveled for a bit longer than three hours to get there, and we gratefully accepted Lynn’s invitation to spend the night.

The on again off again Zionist war the U.S. is losing badly to Iran was also a topic on our minds. I think Pepe Escobar summed that situation up best when he tweeted:

TACO, as you may recall, is an acronym for the phrase Trump always chickens out.

Or, if you prefer it in visual terms, this bloodied eagle and his little rodent friend were shared by MoNasarRawdhan with Arabic that translated to, Trump: We’ve destroyed Iran.

Two local residents stopped by yesterday to object to another one of Lynn’s new signs:

One of us engaged the young person, a recent high school graduate, and their mom about their feelings in response to the phrase “Jewish supremacy.” Mom was much more Zionist than son and said some predictable things like: Gaza deserves genocide because, They voted for Hamas.

The fact that so many children dying at Israel’s hands did not and could not have voted for anything didn’t seem to matter to her. Our sign was antisemitic, end of discussion. The son expressed agreement with most of our messages but didn’t like that one.

One of the mom’s objections that I’m still trying to understand was: If white supremacists saw your sign they would cheer you on for pointing out Jewish supremacy. It would feed their hatred of Jews.

I didn’t wade into the argument because I don’t like piling on people offering respectful criticism of our messaging. But a question I would have liked to ask: Isn’t Zionism itself a form of white supremacy?

We awoke to news that General Dynamics held a surprise christening[sic] of a warship at Bath Iron Works yesterday, by invitation only. These events used to be well-publicized and open to the public but in recent years they are held in stealth mode. They don’t want to see our messages and they really don’t want us blocking the road they use to bus in their supporters.

Iran has now damaged so many U.S. warships that BIW is expecting big contracts to build more. The problem: it takes years, they are insanely expensive, and aquatic drones are changing the way naval wars are fought in the 21st century anyway.

Here’s top brass explaining that the U.S. can either defend itself or defend Israel, but not both. This comes amid reports that most U.S. air power in West Asia has now been moved to Israel, relocated from Iranian frequent targets like U.S. bases in Jordan and Kuwait.

Meanwhile, plans to formally merge the U.S. and Israeli militaries via the National Defense[sic] Authorization Act are on hold as the Senate went into recess before approving the House version of the bill. It also contains the SAVE act, ironically intended to sharply reduce voting access in advance of the midterm elections in November.

I can no longer believe that elections will save us from the mess we’re in, barreling toward WW3 with outstandingly poor leaders at the helm.

See you on the streets!

Our next monthly statewide coalition protest will be in much more accessible Wiscasset on Saturday, September 12 at 1:30am. Use “Red’s Eats” for GPS to find us on the Route 1 bridge.

Because his voting record over years in the Maine legislature aligns with my values.

And I think he has a shot at beating Susan Collins because he’s also a hell of a storyteller.

From NPR:

In a speech during a run for Congress in 2014, Jackson recalled how his son would hold tightly to his hand on Sunday nights because he didn't want his father to leave. “As if all the strength that he had in that little hand could counter generations of corporate greed that was keeping other young children in the St. John Valley from their parents. It was during those long Sunday nights that would turn into early Monday mornings that I stopped accepting things for the way that they were and started thinking about the way that they should be," he said.

Troy also tweeted on July 9:

Anybody with eyes and a heart knows the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza. It has to end, and we as Americans have the power to end it.

When I'm in the U.S. Senate, I’ll never vote in favor of US taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel.

https://x.com/TroyJackson207/status/2075328351175152014

I don’t care about his thick Maine accent , or how he mispronounces Palantir while calling them “a scumbag outfit.”

I love what he says about holding rogue “law enforcement” ICE agents accountable for violating the constitution. About making sure our state remains a welcoming place for all regardless of the color of their skin.

Anecdotally I’m supporting him because a young staffer I’ve known since they were a kid told me recently, “Troy’s the only candidate besides you, Lisa, who’s the same off camera as he is on camera.”

If elected, can he withstand pressure from AIPAC to fall in line with the Zionists who rule over us? Time will tell but I’m willing to be he can.

Someone told me last weekend that the only place they see the Iranian Lego-style videos is on my substack. So, here’s the latest from Explosive Media.

(EDIT: My bad, it was actually from AI Iran.) All together now: “Epstein, Epstein, Epstein!”

I did not have adult diapers made from Legos on my bingo card. Did you?

In case you thought that Ukraine’s bombing of an Iranian commercial ship in the Caspian Sea was a rogue action, guess who’s meeting today with 47 and Netanyahu at the White House?

It’s been a while since the President of Ukraine canceled elections to stay in office, and since he was invited to the U.S. to meet with the president who has now publicly announced he’ll seek a 3rd term, unconstitutional since FDR did it. People didn’t like it then and I doubt they will like it now. (Zionist cash cow Miriam Adelson excepted.)

It struck me that all three men in suits — or in Zelensky’s case, a sweatshirt — are underwater in approval ratings domestically. That led me to wonder who is the biggest L.O.S.E.R.

Here’s what I found after searching for recent polls:

Of course we know that statistics can lie, but all three of these warmongers have maintained pretty low approval ratings over time.

Here’s an interesting statistic I stumbled on while searching for polls:

So today’s summit appears to be an attempt to marry an unpopular war — against Iran — with a much more popular war, the one against Russia. Not that most people in the U.S. want to send Ukraine more money. But after decades (centuries?) of Russiaphobia, they are operating with very little reality-based information when it comes to the proxy war currently morphing into WW3.

How is pro-Ukraine narrative discipline enforced? Recently I stood for Palestine in Bangor with a Green party member who I’d met at the annual meeting. Michael told me of a recent conversation he had with Democrat Karen Heck, former mayor of Waterville, and Betsy Sweet, former Democratic primary contender in the 2020 electoral challenge to Senator Susan Collins. (As many of you know, I ran in that election as a Green until Maine’s rules forced me to unenroll and run independent if I wanted my name to appear on the ballot.)

Heck and Sweet were grousing about the Dem establishment turning on progressive darling Graham Platner once he was nominated and then credibly accused of date rape. Michael reports he pointed out that there are other parties, like the Green Party. Heck responded by naming me as a well-known Green in our state and added, Lisa Savage is just a mouthpiece for Putin. Michael felt Sweet was in agreement with this assessment.

After laughing I realize that it was oddly satisfying to know that I live rent-free in the heads of these so-called progressive Democrats. It’s been six years, ladies. Or maybe they read my substack? *

Honestly, I’d prefer to be called a Xi Jinping mouthpiece but I’ll settle for Putin.

These are the kind of Democrats that have given us 47 as president twice, because they engage in fantasy and narrative control rather than looking at reality and devising strategies to actually win over the electorate. The fantasy that the deeply unpopular VP Kamala Harris could win ignored her stunning lack of support among voters — even before the Gaza genocide, support for which reportedly sank her. Especially with younger voters.

In an oligarchy, public support doesn’t count for much. It’s a vestige of our belief that the U.S. is a functioning democracy to think that it does matter. When it will really start to matter is not at the ballot box, but when the angry crowds with pitchforks descend on Washington DC because they’ve paid for so many bombs that they can no longer afford groceries.

*REVISED JULY 31: The strikeout portion of this blog post reflects new information about the credibility of Mike Hein. Reached directly, Karen Heck denies having said it.