Under international law, war is legal only in cases of self-defense or an imminent threat of attack, such as an enemy army massed on your border. As Bush did before Iraq, the Trump Administration cobbled together a ludicrous string of theoretical what-ifs to argue that someday, perhaps, under some scenarios, Iran might threaten the U.S.
Last year, the U.S. bombed Iran and claimed to have “obliterated” its nuclear program. The CIA assessed that Iran was a decade away from developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now Trump claims that Iran was just two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and ICBMs. Either Trump lied, or Iran possesses the most remarkable scientific and construction capabilities on Earth.
Current poverty (living below half the median income in a given year) is associated with approximately 183,000 deaths among Americans aged 15+ per year (about 6.5% of total deaths in that age group). Cumulative/long-term poverty (persistent over 10 years) is associated with around 295,000 deaths in the same year (about 10.5% of deaths), making it the fourth-leading contributor to mortality, behind heart disease, cancer, and smoking. This places poverty ahead of factors like obesity, diabetes, drug overdoses, suicides, firearms, accidents, stroke, and homicide.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sports neo-Nazi tattoos yet holds a top job in the cabinet. ICE officers routinely murder, rape, and assault people they kidnap, with impunity. Prisoners who commit the same crimes must be wondering whether they can get jobs working for the government.
The Washington Post reports that Trump’s allies are encouraging him to declare a national state of emergency using alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election. The pretext would be used to nationalize the midterm elections this fall—which are constitutionally supposed to be run by the states—with ICE guarding and potentially blocking polling stations. It’s essentially a putsch attempt, or soft coup.
Protests against ICE prompted Republicans to revive their hoary 1960s-era complaints—utterly unsourced and demonstrably false—that protesters are “outside agitators” paid to march around and get beaten up by the police.
If you were around in 2002–2003, you remember that the George W. Bush Administration bent over backwards to get public support for their wars, even making up lies about weapons of mass destruction. Weirdly, Trump makes no effort whatsoever to convince or explain to the public why we should attack Venezuela or Iran or wherever.
Congress has handed $38 billion to ICE in order to build massive detention centers across the United States as processing facilities for illegal immigrants to be deported. When you crunch the numbers, however, it’s clear they don’t need all those beds for their supposed purpose. What’s the real reason they want them? Hint: it’s not to deport them—it’s to deport you.
As America spins into fascism, with masked goons terrorizing citizens and the Administration clearly plotting to subvert or cancel elections, the real left and moderate left are bickering over who is to blame. Maybe it’s time to fight the Right first, and fight one another later.
For 1,900 of the last 2,000 years, Jews represented a tiny minority, usually in the low single digits of the population of what is today Israel. Zionists argue that they, and only they—not the other ancient peoples who lived and ruled there—are entitled to live in and dominate the region and expel those who lived there throughout their absence.
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