The Final Countdown – 3/18/24 – Biden Takes the Offensive Against Trump as Election Heats Up

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Angie Wong and Ted Rall discuss top news from around the world, including Biden heating his offensive against Trump. 
Scott Stantis – Cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune
Andrew Langer – President of The Institute for Liberty 
Tyler Nixon – Counselor-at-law 
Garland Nixon – Co-host of The Critical Hour 
Robert Fantina – Author, journalist, and activist 
 
The first hour begins with Cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune Scott Stantis and Andrew Langer, the President of the Institute for Liberty discussing Biden’s campaign strategy and his offensive against his political opponent Donald Trump. 
 
Then, counselor-at-law Tyler Nixon shares his perspective on the latest out of the Fani Willis saga. 
 
The second hour starts with Co-host of The Critical Hour, Garland Nixon, who weighs in on the Russian elections and Putin’s victory. 
 
The show closes with author, journalist, and activist Robert Fantina who discusses the latest out of Gaza. 
 
 

Israel, the Hermit Kingdom

            “The world is kind of deserting Israel right now,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, remarked after meeting with members of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. “So they’re worried about that.”

            Their concern is warranted. Less than six months after Hamas attacked on October 7th, killing 1,200 people with brutality that sparked widespread sympathy as well as material support for the Jewish state, polls show that popular opinion in the U.S. and internationally has turned against Israel at unprecedented levels. The UN secretary-general is angry, the International Court of Justice is giving serious consideration to the charge that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, and even President Joe Biden—a self-described Zionist who has repeatedly visited Israel and rushed to send it weapons after October 7th—has warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that continuing his ground offensive into Rafah, the last relatively intact city left in the Strip, would cross his “red line.”

            Israelis and their supporters are confused. Why is Israel rapidly sliding into pariah status now?

            Netanyahu has forgotten that Israel is a U.S. vassal state. They don’t call the shots. We do. Bibi nonetheless has insolently rejected Biden’s ultimatum.

            Israelis’ cluelessness is understandable. They’ve been oppressing the Palestinians for decades. They’ve ignored UN resolutions requiring that they stop occupying Arab territory, they’ve sent nearly a million religious fanatics to colonize the West Bank, and they’ve run the only apartheid state in the world following the end of that system in South Africa—yet nothing bad has ever happened to them. America kept sending them billions of dollars a year, arming them with high-tech weapons and intelligence, and ran interference for them at the UN whenever the world tried to hold them accountable for human rights abuses. Why should the good times come to an end?

            The answer, of course, is two-fold. The systemic decimation of Gaza, caught in high-definition videos on social media in an act of ethnic cleansing obviously intended to be succeeded by annexation, is even more extreme than Israel’s previous crimes. Israel’s war against the innocent civilians of Gaza is the feather that broke the world’s patience and indifference…a one-ton feather.

            That the world would turn away from Israel was easy to see coming tens of thousands of dead Gazans ago.

For everyone but the Israelis, that is.

            Israelis are not stupid people. How did they fail to anticipate that they would soon be shunned and despised for what most of the world sees as a grotesque and opportunistic overreaction to October 7th? As a nation created by the UN, no other country depends as much upon international goodwill for its survival.

            Israel, you’ll notice if you visit, is along with North Korea and the United States one of the most insular countries on earth. Whereas most of the world and its news coverage is omnivorously internationalist, and floods in Myanmar or a coup in Central America makes the top of the news, Israel, like the U.S., obsesses over its own domestic affairs to the exclusion of all else with the exception of events that impact it directly—and it does so from an unabashedly nationalist viewpoint.

            Like the U.S., Israel is a melting pot of immigrants where assimilation is expected to include learning the national language. Unlike us, who have been blessed with seeing our mother tongue spread as the 20th and 21st centuries’ lingua franca, more than 90% of Israelis read and speak one of the most globally useless languages anywhere, an artificially revived form of long-dead Hebrew.  Curious Americans looking for viewpoints outside the MSM echo chamber can access the BBC and the CBC and Al Jazeera English for foreign coverage in the English language. Israelis looking for alternative news and opinions in Hebrew have no options.

            Founded in large part by Holocaust survivors, veterans of numerous wars and beleaguered by countless terrorist attacks, it is completely understandable why Israelis are obsessed with security. But security is a two-edged sword. When you keep other people out, you yourself remain inside. And you are deprived of the insights and different ways of looking at things people get when they interact with others and opinions that differ from their own.

            It’s also not very effective. Israel, a self-declared safe haven for global Jewry, is by far the most dangerous country for Jewish people.

            Consider, for example, the massive “smart” high-tech security walls Israel built to keep out residents of the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. They were remarkably effective (until October 7th) at segregating populations that Israelis have come to view as dangerous, if not as inherent enemies. At the same time, Israelis now have no day-to-day interaction with their Arab neighbors. They don’t do business together, they don’t make friends, they don’t date, they don’t talk, they can’t get each other. Walling off Gaza is such an extreme act that it cuts off Israel from the Mediterranean Sea; no country interested in its internal security or military strategy voluntarily relinquishes access to the sea. Even the Arab Israelis who comprise 20% of Israel’s population have found themselves discriminated against, isolated and alienated within their own country.

            It’s the height of irony. It’s not just the people of Gaza who live in a giant open-air concentration camp. Survivors of Germany’s camps have built their own prison camp—for themselves—and it’s the biggest, most effective one of them all.

            No wonder Israelis can’t relate to the rest of the planet. They’ve been living on the inside so long they don’t see the real world anymore. Colonialism, a distinctly 19th and early 20th century project, is an anachronism. Apartheid too. Israelis don’t see that opposing the war against Gaza isn’t the same as anti-Zionism, which itself isn’t the same as anti-Semitism. They don’t understand that, these days, even if you don’t care about the people you are killing to steal their land, you have to pretend that you do (e.g., Biden’s parachute drops of food supplies into the same place his bombs are killing the starving locals).

            A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 75% of Jewish Israelis think the country should ignore pressure from the U.S. to wind down the war in Gaza. A poll by Gallup showed that 65% oppose an independent Palestinian state. “It isn’t fashionable to trust Palestinians, any Palestinians,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert observes. That’s how white South Africans felt about Blacks during apartheid. Now, of course, they’re fine. So it would be in a unified post-apartheid Palestine.

            Now the highest-ranking Jewish politician in the U.S., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, has formally issued a Biden-approved verbal demand for regime change in Israel, saying that Israel should call new elections, which polls indicate Netanyahu might lose.

            Yet Netanyahu persists. “No international pressure will stop Israel,” the prime minister says, pledging to attack Rafah despite Biden’s warning.

            “Isolated, cloistered, militaristic and more unhinged than ever, Israel is becoming the North Korea of the Middle East,” Uri Misgav writes in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israelis need to tear down their paranoia-grounded security walls—not just to liberate the Palestinians, though that is way overdue!—but to free themselves.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

The Boss Told Me To Do It

With nearly 30,000 Palestinians killed by Israel and Gaza, America’s support for the Jewish state is being tested more than ever. Now the U.S. has found itself in the position of having to vote against a ceasefire resolution for the third time. Obviously this level of support is unsustainable given the ongoing genocide.

Episode 141 | March 14, 2024: TikTok AtToked, Third Parties on the Rise, Crises in Gaza, Haiti and Ukraine

Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the political Left) and Scott Stantis (from the political Right) discuss the week’s biggest stories without the boring yell fests but with force and passion.

First off, the United States House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation that would force the Chinese company that owns TikTok to divest itself of the social media company within six months. President Biden says he will pass the measure if it hits his desk but its future is uncertain in the US Senate. Scott and Ted discuss the cultural, economic, legal and political implications of targeting a company purely based on conjecture and speculation with no proof that it has any plans to act nefariously.

Secondly, third and independent party presidential runs are in the news. Robert F Kennedy Junior is about to announce his choice for his voice presidential running mate. No Labels is about to appoint a committee to determine its options for president and vice president this year. Dr. Jill Stein will almost certainly be the nominee for the Green Party. And Dr. Cornel West is running his so-called jazz campaign.

Finally, five months into Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is very clear that Israel has overreached and is dangerously close to becoming an international pariah. Meanwhile, United States considers the possibility of military intervention in Haiti, something that has never gone well in the past. Ukraine, of course, will soon have to accept the difficult truth that it has lost its war against Russia.

 

Watch the Video Version: here.

The Final Countdown – 3/14/24 – Trump’s Legal Team Descends on Florida in Bold Move to Quash Classified Documents Charges

On this episode of The Final Countdown, host Ted Rall covers breaking news from around the globe, including Trump’s legal team heading to Florida to quash his charges. 
Tom Norton – National Director of the America First P.A.C.T. 
Jeremy Kuzmarov – Managing Editor of Covert Action Magazine 
Scott Stantis – Cartoonist, The Chicago Tribune 
Manila Chan-RT Host 
 
The first hour begins with the National Director of the America First P.A.C.T., Tom Norton, discussing Trump’s legal team heading to Florida to quash his charges amid the dismissal of the former president’s Georgia RICO charges.
 
Then, Jeremy Kuzmarov, Managing Editor of Covert Action Magazine weighs in on the latest out of Gaza, including Democratic Senators wanting to enforce a humanitarian act and Israel claiming it has plans to evacuate 1 million Palestinians from the Southern city of Rafah. 
 
The second hour starts with Scott Stantis, who shares his perspective on RFK Jr. ‘s plans to announce his running mate and breaks down how the candidate is appealing to Republicans who are against vaccine mandates.  
 
The show closes with RT Host and veteran Sputnik Host Manila Chan, who talks about the TikTok ban bill and the implications it has on the future of social media censorship.  
 
 
 
 

But Trump Is Evil

Biden’s defenders brush off his support for right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s carpet-bombing of Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. There can only be one reason why.

DMZ America Podcast #138: Alabamapalooza, Haley’s Last Stand, Two Years in Ukraine

Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the political Left) and Scott Stantis (from the political Right) discuss the week’s biggest stories without the boring yell fests but with force and passion.

This week, Ted and Scott start with Alabamapalooza! Scott lives in Alabama, which happens to be the improbable center of the week’s news. After a botched execution using a novel Neue asphyxiation method, the state pronounces itself ready to do a lot more. At the same time, the State Supreme Court has declared that frozen embryos developed for in vitro fertilization are full human beings entitled to the full protection of the law, with devastating consequences for women.

In the 2024 election campaign, former ambassador Nikki Haley takes on Donald Trump in her home state of South Carolina with the polls showing her behind by about 65% to 35%. Ted and Scott wonder aloud why exactly she’s still in the race and what is her strategy. On Tuesday, the race moves to Michigan, where Muslim Americans angry about the Biden administration’s support of Israel against the people of Gaza are trying to organize a substantial protest vote against the incoming president.

Finally, it’s the beginning of the third year of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Clearly Russia has won the war. When, if ever, will American policy makers recognize the reality on the ground and reflect that with their funding decisions in Washington? What will a negotiated settlement look like? What should it look like?

Watch the Video Version: here.

The Final Countdown – 2/23/24 – Biden Faces Heavy Competition in Michigan Against ‘Uncommitted

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Angie Wong and Ted Rall discuss top news domestically and abroad, including the Michigan primaries. 
Alan Grayson – Former U.S. Representative 
Paul Wright – Managing Editor, Prison Legal News 
Robert Fantina – Author, journalist, activist 
Tyler Nixon – Counselor-at-law 
 
The first hour begins with Former U.S. Representative Alan Grayson, who shares his perspective as a Democrat, on how Biden is expected to perform in the upcoming Michigan primary. 
 
Then, prison expert Paul Wright shares his analysis on Jan. 6 prisoners being moved to undisclosed locations. 
 
The second hour starts with author, journalist, and activist Robert Fantina discussing the latest out of Gaza, and Israeli PM Netanyahu’s plans for the region. 
 
The show closes with Tyler Nixon, counselor-at-law, sharing his perspective on former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov being rearrested. 
 
 

The Final Countdown – 2/21/24 – Biden’s Record Fundraising Fails to Sway U.S. Voters

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Angie Wong and Ted Rall discuss top news worldwide, including Biden’s presidential campaign. 
Steve Gill – Attorney 
Daniel Lazare – Independent journalist 
Professor Francis Boyle – Human rights lawyer, professor of international law 
Mark Sleboda – International Relations and Security Analyst 
 
The first hour begins with attorney Steve Gill, who shares his perspective on Biden and Trump’s campaign strategies. 
 
Then, Daniel Lazare, an independent journalist, weighs in on the ongoing hearing for Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange who is facing U.S. extradition. 
 
The second hour begins with Professor Francis Boyle, who shares his perspective on the U.S. vetoing a United Nations resolution demanding a ceasefire. 
 
The show closes with international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda, who breaks down Russia’s response to U.S. accusations over the country having capabilities to bring nuclear weapons to space. 
 
 
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