Regarding the Recent US “Sale” of Mega-Bombs to Israel

The Washington Post Headline: Trump’s planned sale of controversial bombs to Israel is largest in years. The pending transfer of the 2,000-pound munition, involved in scores of incidents resulting in civilian casualties, sets up a potential litmus test for Democrats."

Then, 4 paras down we see this: "Though described as a sale, the transaction is financed through a mechanism known as Foreign Military Financing, in which the United States provides the money that Israel uses to buy the weapons."

So headline says "sale," presumably for those readers who say "At least we are not giving Israel these massive weapons to finish off their genocide of Gaza." But then it's not really a sale. And it's for the genocide, even though the administration (according to the article) won't comment on "humanitarian concerns." They took that language through the laundry mat before publishing. One also has to wonder whether these bombs are especially useful because they vaporize bodies within 100 feet of the other center. This would leave much less evidence of dead bodies after Israel and the US use these bombs.

Here's another take on this sale of 40,000 bombs, each of them weighing 2,000 pounds by Tucker Carlson. This is another way of communicating the atrocious conduct of the United States and Israel. The U.S. is most definitely an accessory to this genocide, as well as an accessory to all of the crimes ("wars") Israel has coerced and bribed the US Congress and Presidents to fight for them. And none of these wars since and including Afghanistan have fought to defend the US (see below).

According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history.

How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing.

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U.S. States Working Hard to Protect Israel from Criticism

When you decide to become a legislator or governor of a state, you are required to take a pledge to represent the people of your state, not the interests of a foreign country. You'd never know this, however, based upon recent actions (and existing statutes) of various states. Here's Glenn Greenwald reporting reporting on the censorship-based iron dome Arkansas is offering to Israel:

This action by the Arkansas governor is not surprising given that Arkansas has a wide-ranging anti-BDS statute that prohibits state entities from contracting with private companies unless the company certifies that it “is not currently engaged in, and agrees for the duration of the contract not to engage in, a boycott of Israel. In 2022, nine judges of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals sitting en banc upheld that statute. I almost fell out of my chair reading it. The majority concluded no free speech problem here! If you are having a hard time wrapping your head around this decision, read the dissent by Judge Jane Kelly, which IMO should have been the unanimous majority opinion.

What else are states up to? Greenwald also reports on Florida: [More . . . ]

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Pennsylvania is Not Concerned about two Children “who Died due to Measles”

Of a ruptured spleen is different than dying of measles. And Pennsylvania cannot find a second death at all. But. Sayer Ji has dug deeper than most and found that this seems to be a weaponization of a health department intent on pulling down the current administration (and RFK, Jr). This bashed announcement. Was not about concern for dying children. This is entirely political theater.

Sayer Ji: "The New York Times opinion page just confirmed the facts I documented today — and called a "conspiracy theory" last week. A NYT physician — writing from a pro-vaccine frame — calls Pennsylvania's refusal to release the death data "hard to justify," the "completely preventable" claim "too definitive," and describing a newborn as "unvaccinated" (when no infant is even eligible) "disingenuous... to scare and shame."

That's the classification dispute and the withheld evidence I laid out with primary sources hours ago on Substack: "The 'Measles Death' Message Was Loaded" . . . The Times examined the botched announcement. It didn't look at the funding behind the campaign that weaponized it — the pre-tested poll and the two dark-money operations behind it. That's my separate reporting."

See: "EXCLUSIVE: The "Measles Death" Message Was Loaded Before the Evidence Was InPennsylvania blamed RFK Jr. for two "measles deaths" it can't show measles caused. The attack was poll-tested a week earlier — by two operations running on separate, hidden money."

If this sounds like deja vu, it is.

This is not an allegation that anyone knew, in advance, that two people would die. It is the plainer and more unsettling observation that a standing apparatus — a poll fielded a week earlier, a purpose-built anti-Kennedy unit staffed nine months before, a message already selected for maximum partisan effect — does not require foreknowledge of a death to convert that death into a national weapon within hours. It only requires that the machine be built and waiting. It was.

And the death at the center of it was not what the podium said it was.

Continue ReadingPennsylvania is Not Concerned about two Children “who Died due to Measles”

Glenn Greenwald: There is a National Craving for a Third Political Party

Can we find a way to get a legitimate third party on the national ballot in 2028? Glenn Greenwald believe that, as a country, we are motivated to try. The alternative is more of the same. More incompetence. More corruption. More focus on getting re-elected rather than improving the country.

Glenn Greenwald: "I think where people are who never before would have considered it are going to be much more open to identifying with movements or even kind of campaigns or parties that are not connected to or identifying as Republican or Democrat. We've seen ones in the past that have worked like Ross Perot. Of course, he was a billionaire, which is maybe what you need. But he had a very successful third-party candidacy based on the support by both Clinton and Bush 41 for free trade. That, as he very presciently warned, would deindustrialize the country, suck out all jobs, and you know you've seen that before. But I think we've never been more ripe for it because both parties are hated, and the system itself is hated, and I think people are craving a credible alternative. It's just hard to create a credible alternative given all the barriers that have been deliberately erected."

Tucker Carlson: "But something is coming. You feel that?"

Greenwald: "For sure. I mean, no doubt. How can it not? I mean, this is you know, the biggest myth, the biggest lie of our political system is that the two political parties can't agree on anything. They're always at each other's throats. It's always so polarized. The reality is that the two political parties agree at 90% at least of major policy issues. The only time the media covers it is in those very few cases when they disagree, and it casts the appearance that they're always disagreeing. Obama himself, when they used to use this very vitriolic language against him, like John Boehner and the House Republicans, he would always say in private, we all know it's theater. We're all playing within the two 40-yard lines. That's the reality of the two political parties in the United States. This myth that there's these vast fundamental differences between the two parties is crucial to giving you the sense that you have this wild freedom that everything is just so free spirited and and and and nothing is controlled or limited. When reality, there's lockdown on most policy debates because both parties are fully on board because they save serve the same donor classes, they serve the same interests, and that is, I think, more and more people are realizing that."

I would love to see an alternative political party. For the past several elections I have cast vote for increasingly, the worst candidate I have ever voted for. That is not a meaningful action. That is a joke. That is theater. And many of the people with whom I speak, feel the same way.

I am concerned, however, that the cost of forming a third-party and successfully getting that candidate on the ballot is daunting. I say this because of what the DNC did to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. last election cycle. Democrats, including the DNC and its allied groups, pursued multiple legal and regulatory challenges aimed at limiting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 independent presidential campaign, primarily by contesting his ballot access and related activities. And it's worth remembering that these obstructionist actions mirror historical Democratic efforts against third-party or independent candidates seen as potential spoilers (e.g., extensive litigation against Ralph Nader in 2004 across many states).

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About Our Real Enemies

Brett Weinstein: "Something is at war with us, “us” being regular citizens who want things to work and to be left alone. We’re slow to react because we think in terms of nations. Our enemies are mafias that wear our governments like a cloak to defeat our eyes, and fly our flags to disarm our minds."

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