And both bear no responsibility for partaking in Genocide.

"Remember that members of Congress are permitted to own stock in war manufacturing, so when they vote to send more bombs or send our loved ones to war, they profit personally," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

The decision comes after a ProPublica investigation revealed that the EPA had found that one of the fuels had a cancer risk more than 1 million times higher than the agency usually considers acceptable.

TheConversation.com

Axios.com

The true depravity of Joe Biden’s foreign policy, which Blinken was merely executing, was made clear in a feature article by Franklin Foer just published by The Atlantic. Both the author and the place of publication are significant.

Foer is the author of The Last Politician (2023), an extremely sympathetic account of Biden’s presidency, based on deep access to the White House. The same access to top sources is evident in his latest article. The Atlantic is one of America’s most ardently Zionist publications, edited as it is by Jeffrey Goldberg, a former prison guard for the Israel Defense Force.

On the matter of Israel’s man-made famine, Foer provides an interesting corroborating detail. In early April, national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Israeli officials in the Situation Room and was prepared to tell them, “You’re about to be responsible for the third famine of the 21st century.” Sullivan never got to make his speech, because the Israelis sprang a new crisis on the White House by telling Sullivan they had just bombed an Iranian consulate in Syria, killing prominent Iranian military leaders.

This is emblematic of the story Foer tells: a White House trying to do the right thing but being overmastered by events and Israeli recklessness.

Antony Blinken’s unwillingness to be honest about the famine in Gaza is a particularly glaring example of Biden’s delusional and dishonest foreign policy. Blinken’s resignation would be welcome, but would achieve little. Positive change might come if Kamala Harris wins the election and replaces Biden’s foreign policy team wholesale. But she would also need to reject the delusional commitment to a Saudi-Israeli alliance that is the root problem. However desirable, this scenario remains unlikely unless there is a much wider public opposition to the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.

The president called Israel’s attack, which flattened a residential city block, “a measure of justice.”

Maura Finkelstein never hid her support for Palestinian liberation during her nine years working as a professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts school in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

“I have always had an ethical practice of making sure that I include Palestine in my teaching,” Finkelstein told me. “It was never outside the bounds of what I do.” For Finkelstein, who is Jewish, this was not always easy. More than 30 percent of Muhlenberg’s 2,200 students are Jewish, many of them vocal supporters of Israel.

In late May, however, Muhlenberg told Finkelstein that she was fired. The reason? She had shared, on her personal Instagram account, in a temporary story slide, a post written not by herself but by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi calling for the shunning of Zionist ideology and its supporters.

“Do not cower to Zionists,” Kanazi wrote on January 16. “Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Why should these genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist.” At the time, Israel had already killed over 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of whom were women and children.

White House officials said Thursday they had coordinated a ceasefire plan that the US and France presented a day earlier with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and believed Israel was fully on board with it. And they indicated surprise and disappointment that Israel had rejected it and that the Prime Minister’s Office was now saying Netanyahu had never indicated he would back it.

A French official also made clear to The Times of Israel that the ceasefire initiative had been coordinated with Israel.

While still in the air, however, Netanyahu’s office issued a firm denial that he had assented to the idea, calling it an “American-French proposal that the prime minister didn’t even respond to.”

Archive link to article

theHill.com

Williams has condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza as a “war crime” and criticized the US Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in July.

Williams issued a statement on Oct. 11 of last year, four days after Oct. 7, lamenteing the attacks before calling not to retaliate and shifting attention to oppression of Palestinians.

“We can, we have to be able to, at once grieve the hundreds of innocent lives taken in Israel, and oppose the escalating violence of retaliation, the endless war, the systemic violence and oppression of Palestinians too often ignored, excused, or condoned,” Williams wrote.

Counterpunch.org

Reuters.com

alJazeera.com

theconversation.com

FAIR.org

Should Americans be bracing for bloodshed if Donald Trump loses the 2024 presidential election?

Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, was attacked Monday for supposedly claiming that Michigan’s attorney general is going after pro-Palestinian protesters solely because she’s Jewish. The only problem is, Tlaib never said anything of the sort.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, posted on X Monday addressing Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer while alleging that Tlaib had made an antisemitic statement about Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel is pursuing charges against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan, alleging some had assaulted police officers and engaged in ethnic intimidation.

In his post, Greenblatt linked an article published by Jewish Insider Sunday, which discussed an interview of Whitmer earlier that day on CNN. Host Jake Tapper had asked Whitmer to respond to Tlaib’s so-called argument that Nessel was “only doing it because she’s Jewish.” It’s unclear what Tapper’s source was for such a claim.

Whitmer declined to respond, saying, “I’m not going to get in the middle of this argument that they’re having.”

Marcellus Williams was put to death despite questions about the evidence.

Hakim

My work with Democrats started in high school, when I was an alternate-delegate for Hillary Clinton. Later, I interned on Barack Obama's campaign. Most recently, I volunteered at last month's Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Initially, I was thrilled to attend this rite of passage for every political operative. But once there, wandering amidst the glitz and glam, imbibing the gloss and schmaltz of it all, I couldn't escape a sinking feeling. I felt submersed in a hollow chamber whose mottos were "Brat summer" and "Joy"—totally out of touch with regular, every-day Americans and their pressing needs; instead, the most elite people in the world chanted in unison that "We're not going back!"

Many of my family members are proud construction workers and lifelong union members. I grew up believing that the Democrats were our party. Fast forward to today, and many of those same family members are no longer Democrats. They feel the party has changed, left them behind.

At the DNC, I couldn't help but think about my family. Every time the elites chanted "We're not going back," what I heard was, "We're not going back to the party your union family members used to vote for."

At first, I naively thought the system was broken. But now I realize, it isn't broken; it's doing what it was designed to do, which is to keep working class people from true representation. That is the point, a feature, not a bug.

counterpunch.org

Road Runner cartoons, for anyone who grew up under a rock, depict a never-ending battle between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Coyote using his ever more elaborate and diabolical Acme explosives. Yet for all his wiliness — a word that reasonably describes Israel’s operation — the coyote always fails. No matter how ingenious the Acme product, the Road Runner always eludes, zipping by, around, and under, always with a cheerful, Beep, Beep!

Sound familiar?

The Coyote in this metaphor isn’t just Israel. It also applies to the United States since 9/11. On the U.S. side, critics used to use the “Whac-A-Mole” image to refer to the war on terror: one al Qaeda “lieutenant” killed while another popped up. And the synergy goes even deeper. The very paradigm of a “war on terrorism” was borrowed from Israel’s security practices. The country’s approach to counter-terrorism was portrayed by Washington as something to be marveled at, with the Dick Cheneys of the world wanting the U.S. to emulate their ruthlessness.

More than two decades later, Washington has shelled out untold billions of dollars and ruined thousands of American lives, god only knows how many foreigner lives, and look where it’s gotten us. Bin Laden is dead, but al Qaeda has proliferated beyond the Middle East, ISIS has re-emerged, Iranian-backed militias persist, Pakistani-based international terrorism flourishes, and the Coyote’s old foes Hamas and Hezbollah are as resilient as ever. That’s a lot of Acme products later.

All the media hyperbole about the exploding pagers obscures the continuity between this latest caper and the never-ending warring we’ve been engaged in since 9/11. There’s no reason to think this latest Israel salvo against Hezbollah will be any different. The Hezbollah leaders who were killed will be replaced by the next generation. These younger Lebanese have spent their entire lives at war with Israel and are likely to be angrier and more hardline. That portends worse security for Israel, not better, especially in the long-term. Acme rakes in the dough, always, but can Israel say that it is any safer than before? Can the Israeli national security luminaries say that it is on a path to enduring security? I highly doubt it.

Matt Kennard | Real Talk

Reuters.com

The “blatant and hateful” false claims were peddled by a state lawmaker, the attorney general, and some media outlets

The US government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.

The US Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. Their conclusion was explosive because US law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of US-backed humanitarian aid. Israel has been largely dependent on American bombs and other weapons in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

But Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden did not accept either finding. Days later, on May 10, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance.”

Israel launches largest attack on Lebanon since its 2006 invasion, kills hundreds including children