Jonathan Cook Substack War and profit are intimately tied together. The billionaires cannot secure their profits without war, or the threat of it – whether against workers at home or against other nations abroad I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the wave of excitement it unleashed. With the […]
Lee Camp Substack Despite all of their reporting dripping with imperial propaganda, the New York Times can be useful at times. For example, if they start reporting that something needs to be done about [fill in country here], then it generally alerts us all that the US oligarchy/CIA/lizard billionaires have been working towards coup’ing [country] for months […]
President Donald Trump is spiraling over Iran’s latest military strikes, which undermine his claims that their military has been obliterated. Hours after the United States and Iran exchanged their latest series of military strikes Tuesday night, Trump insisted yet again that Iran’s military was all but destroyed. “Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore—They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday morning. “The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!” It’s not evident that Iran’s military has been defeated. U.S. officials said Iran downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter Monday using a drone. It is not clear if the drone attack was deliberate, as Iran has not yet claimed responsibility for the strike. Tehran said it responded to U.S. retaliatory strikes with 21 attacks against American military targets in the Middle East. Trump has been insisting for weeks that Iran’s military capabilities have been obliterated—despite reporting suggesting Iran has been rebuilding its arsenal. Now even Fox News is starting to doubt the president’s word about Iran’s military capability.Trump’s warning that Iran would “pay the price” caused the price of oil to rise 2 percent, after the strikes had already caused stock futures to slide sharply. In a subsequent post, Trump touted the effectiveness of the U.S. military blockade and insisted that energy was flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. “The Fake News Media refuses to report how EFFECTIVE the U.S. Naval BLOCKADE is, the most successful Blockade in the history of Naval Warfare. NOTHING GETS THROUGH unless we want it to. IT IS A STEEL WALL! Iran is doing ZERO business, not paying their military, or any of their bills, and quickly becoming a FAILED NATION! Lots of oil is getting out.” Trump wrote. But it seems that the president’s lies about the war may be finally catching up to him.
The very concept of ring girls is embarrassing enough, but for a spectacle costing $60 million, their outfits look like they were sourced from Spirit Halloween.
Israel disciplines its supporters who still fantasize about a liberal Jewish State; the government invests directly into settler violence; and how the threat of a boycott killed an annexation bill.
Donald Trump’s deportation agenda will now have billions of dollars to play with thanks to Republican handiwork. The House GOP eked out $70 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection Tuesday evening through the budget reconciliation process, bypassing the need for any Democratic support. The Secure America Act’s final vote was 214–212. The president is poised to sign the bill into law Wednesday.The final draft of the bill grants $38 billion to ICE, $26 billion to CBP, and $5 billion for additional contingency costs that are to be doled out at Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s discretion. It is expected to fund Trump’s aims of one million yearly deportations through the end of his term.The package is the result of a four-month stand-off between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of regulating the two violent and apparently unbridled agencies. That issue was sparked nearly half a year ago, when federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens during an ICE crackdown in Minnesota: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.Liberal lawmakers argued that agents should be mandated to meet the minimum standards expected of other law enforcement agencies, such as requiring them to identify themselves, operate without masks, and obtain judicial warrants before forcing their way onto private property.That was apparently too great an ask of the Republican caucus, which vehemently opposed the measure and, ultimately, found a way to force the funding package without its Democratic colleagues.But even this stopgap may not be enough to avert another potential government shutdown: Both parties will need to work together in the coming months to pass government funding measures by a September 30 deadline. Otherwise, they risk stalling federal options mere weeks before a fateful midterm election—a threat that both parties are attempting to use to their advantage.Yet the massive spending bill is effectively supplemental funding: Last summer, Congress provided nearly $140 billion in immigration enforcement funding for the two agencies via Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. That virtually tripled ICE’s budget, jumping its appropriations from roughly $9.6 billion to $30 billion (at cost to programs such as Medicaid, which was gutted in the same stroke).Prior to Trump’s second administration, the annual budgets for both agencies totaled about $17 billion.
We continue to follow the impact of the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on scientific research in the United States with an update from climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who says he has been forced to resign from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) after 15 years at his “dream job.” In an immense loss to the government’s capacity to monitor and assess atmospheric conditions, the JPL has lost about 30% of its staff since President Trump took office for the second time, says Kalmus, who warns that the dismantling of federally funded scientific infrastructure comes as rising global temperatures put the Earth in “extreme danger.” “We’re on this escalator towards warmer and warmer and warmer temperatures, and world leaders are not doing anything about it.”