FIFA, Eurovision expelled Russia but Israel has Impunity

June 8, 2026 Mohammed Samaana Informed Comment, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/08/fifa-eurovision-expelled-russia-but-israel-has-impunity/

Hypocrisy and double standard are the words that come to mind in relation to how the west in general deals with the plight of the Palestinian people.

This is well manifested in culture and sports. Two major events this year have demonstrated just that. The first is the popular annual European singing contest Eurovision which was no different this year to any other year with Israel allowed to participate despite the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people in their own homeland.

Though five European countries – Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and The Netherlands – took the higher moral ground and applied pressure by boycotting the contest in protest against Israel participation, this year’s edition of Eurovision went ahead without the participation of five European countries to ensure that Israel is present. To add insult to injury, the annual event took place at the usual time of every year when the Palestinian people mark the Nakba anniversary of their 1948 expulsion from their ancestral homeland by the Israelis. Because of its invasion and occupation of Ukraine, Russia hasn’t been allowed to participate in the Eurovision contest since 2022.

The second event is the World Cup. This year’s men football World Cup is another arena where the West is showing its hypocrisy. Russia was banned from all FIFA and UEFA soccer / football competitions in 2022 because of its illegal invasion of Ukraine and attempt to annex its territory, and the ban has become indefinite. All Russian national representative teams and club teams are prohibited from participation in global football events. Yet Israel’s deliberate assault on civilians and key infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon is much worse than anything Russia has done, bad as it is.

We all also remember the calls to boycott the last World Cup in Qatar over allegations of human rights abuses, including LGBTQ and migrant workers rights and the environment. Given the current and previous US administration’s record on human rights home and abroad, it is only common sense to ask the logical question, where are those who called to boycott the last World Cup four years ago?

If they were concerned about human rights then why they are not concerned about Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations’ support for the Israel genocide in Gaza where well over 72,000 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, are confirmed dead so far as a direct result of Israeli fire without taking into consideration the missing and the ones who died indirectly as a result of the Israeli assault? This is besides Israel aggression towards other countries in the region including its destruction of Lebanon and the destitution of its civilian population after Israel grabbed land in the south of the country. This is besides Israel expansion into Syria and and its war on Iran which is more likely to have impacted every human on this planet at least financially.

Additionally, during Qatar World Cup in 2022, the German players famously took a photo covering their mouths in protest against the FIFA denying them freedom of expression. No sign of Germany’s team this year protesting against the American security oppressing protests against the genocide in Gaza on college campuses and elsewhere or for that matter their own German security forces brutality against similar protests in Germany or the German government support for the genocide.

Moreover, where is the concern about individual sexual rights in the light of the reports about sexual violence against Palestinian detainees and international peace activists who were at the Sumud (Steadfastness) flotilla after being kidnapped by Israeli soldiers at international waters. It is no wonder why the UN added Israel to the blacklist of states that uses sexual violence in conflict.

In terms of the environment, a study showed that the carbon footprint during the first 15 months of Israel ecocide war on Gaza mainly provided by the US is greater than the planet-warming emissions of a hundred countries.

Furthermore, how could any one be concerned about immigrants’ rights and overlook the brutality of the America Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers? In 2025 alone 32 died in ICE custody. Not to forget the treatment of Palestinian human rights activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil and the ongoing effort to deport him

For the qualifying games to the World Cup, Israel has always played in the European groups with no concern over human rights violations whatsoever except for protests by solidarity groups and other peace activists. At club level, Israeli clubs take part in the European competitions. This applies to all sports and not only soccer / football.

It is important to point out that Israel is located in west Asia, not in Europe. This means that Europe is under no obligation to allow Israel to take part in any European sport or cultural events. But by allowing Israel participation especially when it is committing a genocide, Europe indicates it support for Israel and everything that it does which makes Europe complicit.

Any times these issues were raised, the world was told to keep politics out of sports. The same, however, didn’t apply when Russia was thrown out of every sport and cultural event over its invasion of Ukraine. Even if we were to accept their double standards by keeping politics out of sport when it comes to Israel, it is impossible to argue for keeping ethics or human rights out of sports. Those who insist on applying exceptionalism when it come to Israel know very well that they are enablers of its atrocities by allowing it to sportswash its reputation.

Mohammed Samaana , a freelance journalist published in the Belfast Telegraph, is originally from Palestine and lives in Belfast.

June 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Media’s Ceasefire Fiction Masks Continuing War

SCHEERPOST, June 7, 2026, Joshua Scheer

One of the most revealing aspects of this war has not only been the violence itself, but the language used to explain, justify, or obscure it. As the death toll has climbed and entire communities have been erased, many journalists have struggled to confront a disturbing reality: narratives that would be unthinkable in other conflicts have become routine when discussing Gaza.

Veteran journalist Kathy Gannon reflects on how certain assumptions and talking points have seeped into media coverage, often shifting attention away from those carrying out the destruction and onto those enduring it. Her observation is less about a single comment than a broader pattern—one that raises uncomfortable questions about how suffering is framed, whose voices are amplified, and how language can become a tool for sanitizing mass violence.

“A media colleague described devastated Gazans as “under the boot of Hamas,” not under the horrific bombing of Israel, or the devastating attacks that have wiped out entire families, denied food and medical supplies, subjected to enforced starvation, all by Israel. I wondered at what it could mean. It was as if it was offered, as the reason or to somehow soften Israel’s killing of Gazans by the tens of thousands, 20,000 children killed, journalists targeted, hospitals destroyed, schools devastated. Of course there are still those in the media who say Israel isn’t targeting journalists, but rather it is just not paying enough attention, just not being careful enough. Really? Israel has killed more journalists than any other country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 300 have been killed, scores listed as targeted.”

Kathy Gannon Substack

What Kathy Gannon lays out is what far too many newsrooms still refuse to say plainly: there is no cease-fire when Israel continues killing civilians, journalists, and entire families in Gaza and Lebanon with total impunity. Calling this a “fragile cease-fire” is not reporting — it’s participating in a lie.

Since the so‑called Gaza cease-fire was announced, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them children. It has expanded the “yellow line”, shot civilians near it — including children — and continued bombing neighborhoods where displaced families were told to shelter. These are not “violations.” This is policy.

In Lebanon, Israel has bulldozed villages, bombed civilian areas, and assassinated three senior Lebanese military officers in a targeted strike. That alone shatters any pretense of a cease-fire. And yet Western media still repeats the script.

Meanwhile, the death toll of journalists is staggering: nearly 300 journalists killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists — the highest number ever recorded in a single conflict. Many were targeted, not caught in crossfire. To pretend otherwise is to launder the killing of the very people documenting the war.

Israel’s own officials flaunt this brutality. National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir — a man who has openly advocated genocide — posted video of himself abusing flotilla activists protesting the slaughter in Gaza. This is the level of impunity we’re dealing with.

International law is not ambiguous. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits transferring settlers into occupied territory. UN Security Council Resolution 2334 declares Israeli settlements a “flagrant violation.” Yet media outlets still describe illegal settlers as merely “seen by many as illegal,” as if the law were a matter of opinion.

Hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been bombed in Gaza — and now in Lebanon. Israel claimed Gaza’s hospitals were targeted because of tunnels. What’s the excuse for the hospitals in Lebanon?

This is why Gannon’s warning matters: the more the world normalizes Israel’s actions, the more it signals to Palestinians and Lebanese that their lives do not matter. And the more Western governments expose their own hypocrisy — preaching human rights while enabling mass killing.

If journalism means anything, it must start with refusing to repeat government talking points. Stop calling this a cease-fire. Stop sanitizing the killing of children. Stop pretending journalists aren’t being targeted. Stop turning victims into perpetrators.

We have watched journalists be killed in staggering numbers, and the refusal of empire’s defenders to even acknowledge their deaths is not only unacceptable — it is the predictable rot of a country drifting toward tyranny, where legacy media long ago bartered away its soul.

This is not fragile. This is not complicated. This is not a cease-fire. It is a war on civilians — and the world is watching, even if CBS pretends not to.

Read more here about press freedom and Israel — though it omits the daily, mounting murders of women and children under the ongoing genocide……………………………………………………………….https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/07/medias-ceasefire-fiction-masks-continuing-war/

June 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, media | Leave a comment

The Gazafication of Lebanon: How Israel Exports Destruction and Washington Protects It

7 June 2026 Dr Andrew Klein,, Australian Independent Media

Dedication: To the people of Lebanon – who have been told that their country is a “failed state” by those who worked ceaselessly to break it.

“The destruction will stop only when the silence is broken. Break it.”

On 1 March 2026, Israel launched a full-scale military offensive against Lebanon. The official rationale was self-defence: to push Hezbollah away from the border, to “demilitarize” Lebanon, and to secure the northern settlements. Within weeks, the death toll passed 3,500; 1.6 million people – roughly one‑fifth of Lebanon’s population – were displaced; hundreds of towns and villages were flattened.

The violence did not come from nowhere. It was the product of decades of Israeli military intervention, occupation, political interference, and a US‑backed policy that has systematically dismantled Lebanon’s sovereignty. The objective is not peace. It is the Gazafication of Lebanon: the imposition of a siege-and-destruction model that has already been perfected in Gaza, now exported to a second country.

This article is a comprehensive examination of the historical record, the current violence, and the geopolitical machinery that enables it. It is based on verifiable sources: official government statements, United Nations data, peer‑review

peer‑reviewed research, and on‑the‑ground reporting.

II. The Anatomy of the Current Assault

The offensive began on 2 March 2026, two days after a joint US‑Israeli attack on Iran. Hezbollah responded with rocket fire; Israel responded with a full‑scale ground and air campaign. By early June, the Lebanese health ministry had recorded more than 3,500 killed – including 711 women, children, and medical personnel – and over 10,000 wounded.

The disparity in casualties is stark:

Israel: 24 soldiers and 4 civilians killed.
Lebanon: Over 3,500 killed, plus 1.6 million displaced.

According to the UN, between 8 and 10 May 2026 alone, Israeli forces carried out 1,296 strikes in Lebanon, killing 87 people and wounding hundreds more – all during a supposed “ceasefire.” The United States‑brokered truce, ostensibly in place since April, has been violated by Israel on a near‑daily basis.

Evacuation orders have been issued for roughly 15% of Lebanese territory, including vast areas south of the Litani River. The military has drawn up maps for a permanent “buffer zone” that extends north of key cities such as Bint Jbeil, Aita al‑Shaab, and Khiam, reaching the Litani River and beyond.

The destruction is systematic. Human Rights Watch and the Lebanese government have documented “widespread demolitions” of entire villages, flattening of residential areas, and severe damage to schools, hospitals, mosques, and civilian infrastructure, including bridges and gas stations. One report described the operation as “the Gaza model” applied to Lebanon: mass displacement, wholesale destruction of housing stock, and the deliberate degradation of the country’s capacity to sustain life.

III. The Invention of Hezbollah: Israel’s Self‑Fulfilling Prophecy

The current violence is often presented as a war between Israel and an Iranian “proxy.” This framing ignores history. Hezbollah would not exist without Israel’s own actions.

On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, deploying up to 75,000 troops and advancing all the way to Beirut. The official objective was to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been launching cross‑border attacks. But the invasion quickly became an occupation, lasting 18 years in southern Lebanon.

The brutality of the invasion – the siege of Beirut, the massacres at Sabra and Shatila (carried out by Lebanese Christian militias but enabled by Israeli forces surrounding the camps), the widespread destruction – galvanised a resistance movement. In the aftermath of the invasion, Iran sent a contingent of Revolutionary Guards to the Bekaa Valley to help organise local Shi’ite militias. In 1985, these groups formally coalesced into Hezbollah – the “Party of God.”

Hezbollah was born to fight an Israeli occupation. It was not a “terrorist” group in any meaningful sense of the word; it was a national resistance movement recognised as such by a broad cross‑section of the Lebanese population. That Israel now cites Hezbollah’s existence as a justification for further violence is a grotesque circular argument: Israel invades, Hezbollah forms, Israel calls Hezbollah a “threat,” and invades again.

The pattern has repeated for over four decades. The 2006 war, which killed more than 1,100 Lebanese (mostly civilians) and devastated the country’s infrastructure, was the dress rehearsal. Today’s assault is the full performance.

IV. The “Greater Israel” Project – Not a Conspiracy, But a Policy

Statements by Israeli ministers make the objective abundantly clear: this is not about security; it is about expansion.

In March 2026, a map circulated by Israeli officials depicted a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Litani River in Lebanon to the Suez Canal in Egypt, swallowing the West Bank, Gaza, most of Lebanon, large parts of Syria, and all of Jordan.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that the goal of the current operation is to “demilitarize Lebanon” and to establish Israeli security control over the Litani area – a demand that goes far beyond anything required for border security. In a CNBC interview on 3 June 2026, he declared: “If we want to save Lebanon, we have to disarm Hezbollah and demilitarize Lebanon.”…………………………………………………………………………………………

V. Lebanon: A State Crippled by Design

To understand why Lebanon is so vulnerable, it is necessary to understand how it was deliberately crippled.

The French Mandate (1920–1943)

Modern Lebanon was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire by the French. The French mandatory authorities institutionalised a confessional political system, distributing power among 18 officially recognised religious sects on the basis of a 1932 census that gave Christians a slight majority. This system was further codified in the unwritten National Pact of 1943, which reserved the presidency for a Maronite Christian, the prime ministership for a Sunni Muslim, and the speakership of parliament for a Shi’ite Muslim.

The confessional system was not designed to foster national unity; it was designed to make Lebanon governable by divide and rule. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

VI. US Complicity – The Perpetual Enabler

Every major Israeli military operation – 1982, 2006, 2024, 2026 – has been carried out with direct US diplomatic, military, and financial backing………………………..

The current US‑brokered “ceasefire” is a farce. It has been violated by Israel almost daily. Rather than enforcing its terms, Washington has used it as a cover to continue arms shipments and diplomatic protection.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Hamade described the reality accurately: the conflict is part of a “Zionist‑US scheme” to redraw the map of the region and to incorporate Lebanon into a Greater Israel project.

VII. The Two Narratives – What They Say at Home vs. What They Tell the World

Israel consistently presents two incompatible narratives.

To its own public and to Western allies:

The war is a defensive operation against a “terrorist” organisation (Hezbollah) that holds Lebanon hostage.
The goal is to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River and to “demilitarize” Lebanon – a “peace” operation, not a conquest.
The destruction of civilian infrastructure is regrettable but unavoidable, because Hezbollah “hides among civilians.

To the rest of the world (and through the actions of its ministers):

The goal is territorial expansion, as made explicit by the “Greater Israel” maps and the statements of ministers like Ben‑Gvir and Strock.
The objective is the permanent displacement of populations – both in Gaza and in Lebanon – to create “facts on the ground” that prevent any return.

………………………………………………………………… VIII. A Double Standard That Undermines International Law

No other state in 2026 would be permitted to behave as Israel does.

No other state’s ministers openly call for the establishment of settlements in a third country, to be populated by its own citizens.

No other state systematically occupies territory in defiance of decades of UN Security Council resolutions.

No other state issues mass evacuation orders covering a fifth of a neighbour’s population while claiming “self‑defence.”

No other state’s ministers openly call for the establishment of settlements in a third country, to be populated by its own citizens.

The international community’s response has been a masterclass in moral cowardice. The UN Security Council is paralysed by the US veto. The International Criminal Court’s investigation into Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – proceeds at a glacial pace, while arrest warrants for Russian officials were issued within months………………………………………………………………………………………….

IX. The Gazafication of Lebanon – A Deliberate Export

The term “Gazafication” – the deliberate application of the Gaza model (siege, mass displacement, and wholesale infrastructure destruction) to another territory – is not hyperbole. It is an accurate description of current Israeli strategy……………………………………………………………………..

X. Conclusion: No Sovereign State Should Dictate Terms to Another

The official Israeli narrative – that this is a war against “terrorism” – collapses under the weight of the evidence.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982; Hezbollah was formed to resist the occupation.
Israel has occupied Lebanese territory for over 40 years (the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shuba hills).
Israel has interfered in Lebanese politics, assassinated its leaders, and undermined its sovereignty.
Israeli ministers openly call for the expansion of “Greater Israel” into Lebanese territory.
The United States has protected every single Israeli violation of international law.

No sovereign state should be forced to accept that its northern river marks the boundary of a foreign power‘s “security zone.” No people should be told that their homes must be destroyed to satisfy the expansionist ambitions of a neighbour.

The “Greater Israel” project is not a fringe fantasy; it is official policy. The “buffer zone” maps have been published. The ministers have spoken. The bombs have fallen. The only question is whether the international community will continue to look away.

History will not forgive those who remained silent while a second country was systematically dismantled.

References…………………………………………. https://theaimn.net/the-gazafication-of-lebanon-how-israel-exports-destruction-and-washington-protects-it/

June 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | MIDDLE EAST, politics international | Leave a comment

North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, says Kim Jong-un’s sister

The sister of Kim Jong-un has insisted that North Korea will never give up
its nuclear weapons, setting back hopes of progress towards
denuclearisation during Monday’s visit to Pyongyang by President Xi of
China. Kim Yo-jong, a senior figure in the leadership who sometimes serves
as spokeswoman for her brother, said North Korea’s “status as a nuclear
weapons state is the line of no retreat and it is a stark reality whether
anyone recognises it or not”.

Times 7th June 2026, https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/kim-jong-un-sister-north-korea-nuclear-deal-president-xi-zs7qbkt5c

June 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The timeline for restoring operations at the Chornobyl nuclear waste storage facility following Russian shelling remains unknown – IAEA

A Russian drone strike damaged a nuclear storage building near the
Chornobyl NPP and the IAEA office. It remains unclear when the facility
will be able to resume receiving spent fuel from Ukraine’s operational
nuclear power plants.

A Russian drone strike on the Central Spent Fuel
Storage Facility (CSFSF) near the Chornobyl NPP on Sunday morning caused
significant structural damage to part of the fuel reception building,
including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards office
located there. This was reported in a statement by the agency, UNN informs.

UNN 8th June 2026, https://unn.ua/en/news/the-timeline-for-restoring-operations-at-the-chornobyl-nuclear-waste-storage-facility-following-russian-shelling-remains-unknown-iaea

June 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Natasha Walter: Labour’s workaday repression of protest doesn’t alarm us. But it should

If a far-right government detained activists for months without trial and declared them terrorists, there would be outrage. But Palestine and climate campaigners are being treated like this in a social democracy, writes the author and columnist

But as a result of these complicated, bureaucratic moves we are seeing more and more people locked up for longer and longer periods, and more and more people dissuaded from protesting at all. And if our next government is a far-right one, with the groundwork for greater authoritarianism already dug, with so many precedents already set, many more dissenters will be locked up.

Natasha Walter, Jun 10, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/natasha-walter-column-protest-palestine-action-sentencing-terrorist-connection-elbit?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=tuesday-edition-natasha-walter-on-protest-sangita-myska-on-farage-hotlist&_bhlid=ea754b28990feab0acf9d70ebf48f5b17a368a9a

I hate lazy parallels with the 1930s, but one echo does keep running through my mind just now. In 1933, my grandfather was imprisoned for three years for “high treason”, for being a member of a proscribed organisation. The first nine months of his imprisonment was pre-trial – on remand, as we would call it now. The organisation that had been outlawed in that year was the Communist party, and he was living in Germany.

This is not the start of the Third Reich in Britain, for sure: not even close. But when I look at the young people who are being held for long periods – up to 20 months – on remand right now, and when I see that this Friday four protesters face being sentenced as if there had been a “terrorism connection” to their crimes during a break-in at the Elbit Systems weapons factory in Bristol, I realise a little more clearly how it is that even when the right to dissent is being directly threatened, most people can shrug it off, and so the slide to further repression is eased.

For those who are not turning away, this case has particular weight. The four individuals have been convicted of criminal damage and grievous bodily harm, which can potentially carry long sentences. But the prosecution has submitted that the offences have a “terrorist connection”, which means that the defendants would have no chance of early release and face the possibility of long-term surveillance. The jury in the trial was not asked to deliberate on this terrorist connection, so it is something that – for the first time in British legal history – the judge will decide alone. And the judge in question, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson, has already lost the trust of many observers.

In the trials of those individuals and others, Johnson has ruled that the defendants could not give evidence on their motivations, including their reasons for joining Palestine Action, their beliefs about Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel for use in the war in Gaza, or their views about the actions of Israel in Gaza and its legality. He even referred one of the defendants’ lawyers, Rajiv Menon, for contempt of court because Menon had reminded the jury that they could acquit the defendants based on their own consciences.

As usual, a number of people will turn up outside the court who have become thorns in the police’s side. We’ve seen them before, those often elderly people with their handwritten signs and fold-out chairs, their unbowed determination to turn up in all weathers and despite all threats of arrest.

Right now, I think we should all be saluting their determination. Indeed, the question keeps nagging away at me: why aren’t more people alarmed by this extreme erosion of the right to protest and what it means for our country?

It’s telling that so often this government doesn’t actively own these repressive developments, but portrays itself as simply compelled to carry them out

A few weeks previously I had been talking with an eminent lawyer who has been involved in many cases involving protesters. “What’s going on here right now is shocking,” he said. “It is making the UK an outlier in Europe. Other countries are looking at us and wondering how on earth this is happening when we don’t even have a far-right government.”

“When we don’t even have a far-right government.” I think that this is key to why more people aren’t protesting about these developments, and why so many people who are otherwise politically engaged are shrugging off this assault on people’s liberties. If a far-right government with a Trumpian narrative of a grand assault on dissent was putting in place the kind of measures we have recently seen, there would be an outcry from all sides. But because our government is not shouting about it, and is not even putting it into an ideological frame, the shift has simply become part of the political weather for most people.

Indeed, it’s telling that so often this government doesn’t actively own these repressive developments, but portrays itself as simply compelled to carry them out. When Labour took power, many who voted for them expected them to repeal the anti-protest legislation that had been put in place by the Conservatives, but instead they kept it and built on it. When questioned, David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, said it would take up “so much parliamentary time” to undo it. It was notable that when Yvette Cooper, as home secretary, banned Palestine Action, she referred darkly to things she couldn’t disclose about the group, about shadowy “advice and intelligence” and “assessments”.

And many other developments to silence protesters have taken place in an even more shadowy way, with no scrutiny by members of parliament or the public. Mr Justice Johnson’s refusal to allow Palestine Action defendants to bring evidence on the context and motivation for their actions has been preceded by other judges in climate protest trials who refused to allow defendants to discuss the climate emergency and its effects, or even about fuel poverty and home insulation.

The recent revealing report by the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice at Queen Mary, University of London (I am an honorary professor at the centre, though had nothing to do with this report), showed that this direction of travel by judges means that many protesters are therefore locked up not because of their original protest, but because of behaviour that is deemed in contempt of court, including refusing to keep quiet in the courtroom. Many others have been imprisoned for breaching injunctions granted to private companies stopping protests around oil terminals or other buildings. This kind of repression carried out by courts is often too complicated and bureaucratic to campaign on. It’s hard to explain quickly on an Instagram reel; it’s hard to get excited about.

When my grandfather was imprisoned in Germany for attending Communist party meetings, most people shrugged off that first wave of repression – it was just the Communists and the oddballs who were getting locked up. To repeat, I don’t think this is our 1933, but the road we are walking down now is ever more shadowed. As Trudi Warner – who has been arrested several times already for protesting in the service of the right to dissent, and who will be outside the court on Friday – said to me this week: “I get that a lot of people don’t actually care about the climate or Palestine, so they aren’t getting upset right now. But when you are trying to speak up for something you care more about, and find you can’t, you will wish you had stood with us.”

Natasha Walter is an author and the founder of Women for Refugee Women. Her new book, Feminism for a World on Fire (Virago) was published in May

June 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Protest to be held at Calderbridge nuclear waste meeting

A PROTEST is set to be held in Calderbridge today, as concerned activists
ask why land off the Copeland coast is under consideration for an
underground nuclear waste store. Activists of ‘Lakes Against Nuclear Dump’
(LAND) have told Newsquest Cumbria that they will be protest outside the
Mid-Copeland GDF Partnership meeting at Calderbridge and Ponsonby Village
Hall today. Between 1pm and 3.30pm, the activists will be invited to join
LAND outside the meeting to colour in a giant postcard of an area off the
Copeland coast, which will then be handed to the partnership board.

Community partnerships formed in Mid and South Copeland in 2021 to speak to
residents about the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF), discussing the
potential economic benefits and its role in providing a permanent solution
for the UK’s radioactive waste. Meanwhile, Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) has
been conducting preliminary tests to determine whether the Mid Copeland and
South Copeland search areas contain the correct geology for the underground
nuclear waste store.

After narrowing its search to the area off the coast,
NWS has submitted a report to the Secretary of State for Energy Security
and Net Zero, Ed Milliband. Mr Milliband will hear that the area out to sea
could contain the necessary geology and it will be for him to decide
whether to progress to more detailed investigations. Mid and South Copeland
are now the only areas being considered for a GDF.

Carlisle News & Star 8th June 2026, https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/26169800.protest-held-calderbridge-nuclear-waste-meeting/

June 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Events, UK | Leave a comment

Chas Freeman: The Greater Israel Project Is Collapsing Under the Weight of Endless War

the greatest threat to the Greater Israel project may not be Iran, Hezbollah, or any external adversary. It may be the political consequences of the project itself.

JSCHEERPOST, June 7, 2026 ScheerPost Staff

For decades, the dream of a “Greater Israel” has been treated by its advocates as an inevitable project of regional dominance, sustained by military superiority and unwavering support from Washington. But according to former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman, that project may now be colliding with the limits of power itself. In a wide-ranging conversation with political scientist Glenn Diesen, Freeman argues that Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran have not strengthened its strategic position but instead accelerated its diplomatic isolation, strained its military capacity and eroded the international support on which its ambitions depend.

Freeman’s assessment is stark: what was once presented as a vision of security has produced growing insecurity across the region, while leaving Israel increasingly at odds with allies, neighbors and much of the world. From the collapse of diplomacy to the widening regional fallout of war, he contends that the greatest threat facing the project of expansion may no longer be external resistance alone, but the political and moral consequences of its own actions. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, Freeman offers a sobering warning that the Middle East is entering a new phase—one in which old assumptions about power, alliances and American influence are rapidly unraveling.

Chas Freeman: The Greater Israel Project Is Collapsing

Decades of Expansion Have Reached a Breaking Point

For generations, advocates of a “Greater Israel” envisioned a regional order secured through overwhelming military power, territorial expansion, and unwavering American support. Today, according to former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman, that vision is colliding with reality.

In a wide-ranging discussion with political scientist Glenn Diesen, Freeman argued that Israel’s military campaigns across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran have not delivered lasting security. Instead, they have accelerated Israel’s diplomatic isolation, exhausted military resources, and triggered a regional backlash that is reshaping the Middle East.

His conclusion was striking: the greatest threat to the Greater Israel project may not be Iran, Hezbollah, or any external adversary. It may be the political consequences of the project itself.

A Project Losing International Support

Freeman argues that what was once quietly tolerated by Western governments is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

The devastation in Gaza, the continued expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, military operations in Lebanon and Syria, and the widening regional conflict have dramatically altered global perceptions.

“Israel is at odds with the entire world,” Freeman observed, pointing to growing criticism across Europe, increasing public opposition in the United States, and mounting international scrutiny of Israeli policies.

For decades, Israel relied heavily on diplomatic cover from Washington and its Western allies. Freeman believes that support is eroding faster than many policymakers realize.

The result is a paradox: at the very moment Israel seeks greater regional dominance, it finds itself increasingly isolated.

Security Through Dominance Creates Insecurity for Everyone Else

One of the most important insights from the interview was Freeman’s discussion of what he described as Israel’s pursuit of “absolute security.”

The logic is simple but dangerous.

If one state seeks complete military dominance over all potential rivals, neighboring states inevitably become less secure. Those neighbors then seek new alliances, new military capabilities, and new forms of resistance.

The result is not peace but perpetual conflict.

Freeman echoed a principle often associated with Henry Kissinger: one nation’s quest for total security often creates total insecurity for everyone around it.

This dynamic helps explain why Israeli military operations have increasingly produced regional resistance rather than regional acceptance.

The Iran War Changed the Strategic Landscape…………………………………….

A New Regional Order Is Emerging

Perhaps the most overlooked portion of Freeman’s analysis concerns the changing geopolitical landscape beyond Israel itself.

He described an emerging regional architecture involving countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran……………………………………………………………..

Netanyahu Is Not the Cause—He Is the Symptom

One of Freeman’s most provocative observations concerned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Many critics view Netanyahu as the central architect of Israel’s current trajectory. Freeman disagrees.

Netanyahu, he argued, is not the cause of the crisis but its most visible expression.

The deeper issue is the broad political consensus that has developed around militarized solutions and territorial expansion.

Even if Netanyahu leaves power, many of the underlying assumptions driving Israeli policy would remain.

Removing one leader does not automatically change the direction of a state.

The Failure of Diplomacy

Throughout the discussion, Freeman repeatedly returned to one theme: diplomacy has been abandoned.

Israel, he noted, has relied overwhelmingly on military solutions while offering few meaningful political initiatives capable of resolving regional conflicts.

At the same time, Washington’s credibility as a mediator has steadily deteriorated…………………………………….

A Moment of Reckoning

The interview ultimately posed a larger question than the future of Israel alone.

Can any state maintain security indefinitely through military force while ignoring political reconciliation?

Freeman’s answer is clear.

History suggests otherwise……………………………………………

Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, his warning deserves attention: the future of the Middle East may be determined less by battlefield victories than by the willingness—or inability—of regional powers to replace domination with diplomacy.

If that transformation does not occur, the conflicts now engulfing Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and the wider region may prove not to be the culmination of a long struggle, but merely the beginning of a far larger one.

Chas Freeman’s substack: https://substack.com/@chasfreeman662157 Books by Prof. Glenn Diesen: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/… Follow Prof. Glenn Diesen: Substack: https://glenndiesen.substack.com/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen Patreon: / glenndiesen

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Trump’s Sedition Act for Israel

“you can’t be an American if you don’t love Israel.”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research, May 25, 2026, https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-sedition-act-israel/5927389

At all times and places it has been difficult to speak freely.

Even the founding fathers had their Sedition Act of 1798 that criminalized statements against the US government. Shortly afterward President Thomas Jefferson got most of it repealed.

President Abraham Lincoln during his 1861-1865 invasion of the Confederate States of America had a de facto sedition act. Lincoln used executive orders, military directives, martial law, and the suspension of habeas corpus to shut down free speech. At one time Lincoln had 300 Northern newspaper editors in prison.

In 1918, Congress passed a new Sedition Act that applied when the US government was at war. The law prohibited speech and opinion that put the US government and its war effort in a bad light. The bad light was that US President Woodrow Wilson promised Germany no territorial loss and no reparations in exchange for an armistice, and betrayed the promise. The result was the Treaty of Versailles that as British economist John Maynard Keynes correctly predicted led to World War II.

President Donald Trump has declared his own Sedition Act issued not by Congress, increasingly an irrelevant government institution, but by Trump’s personal defense lawyer currently serving as US Attorney General. Trump’s Sedition Act is unique. It protects from criticism not the US government, but a foreign one — Israel. The May 19 press release of the US Department of Justice (sic) says:

“President Trump has made clear that this administration will not tolerate antisemitism, and the Department of justice is committed to implementing that directive.” (See this)

Understand that the US Department of Justice is now the protector of Israel, as is the US military and US taxpayers, and antisemitism means any criticism of Israel. For example, Israel’s genocide of Palestine and its people, Israel’s interference in tenure decisions of US universities, the hiring and contracting policies of state governments such as Texas and Florida, Israel’s funding of the primary defeat of US Republican Representative Thomas Massie, Israel’s assassinations of foreign leaders, Israel’s suspected assassination of Charlie Kirk, suspicion that Epstein was a Mossad agent collecting blackmail information against Americans in a position to influence US foreign party in the Middle East, and on and on. Every thought, question, statement of fact that can be interpreted as hostile to Israel has become anti-semitism and will not be tolerated by the US Department of Justice (sic).

Clearly, the Trump regime, essentially a Zionist regime, has no intention of permitting any correct information to be aired. If you challenge or taunt the Regime, you are shut down like Colbert, Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and so many others.

The Washington Post published an article on May 21 about President Trump’s efforts to silence late night TV hosts. Apparently, Trump succeeded in intimidating CBS to cancel Stephen Colbert. NBC’s Seth Meyers and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel believe they are on the hit list. See this.

A discredited media unable to hold Trump to account has replaced a former biased media.

During my professional lifetime the print and TV media had a liberal bias, coming down hard on conservatives and Republicans and lightly, if at all, on the leftwing and Democrats. The liberal media was more or less at the beck and call of the CIA, but the New York Times did finally decide to publish the leaked Pentagon Papers, an act that contributed to the end of the Vietnam War.

During the 1980s and I think the 1990s the New York Times asked me twice a year for an op-ed article addressing a specified subject. If memory serves, two was the annual limit for outside contributors, although perhaps not for liberal-left ones. As I had been a presidential appointee in the Reagan administration, a trustee of the Committee on the Present Danger, a Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, and a contributing editor of National Review, the liberal media regarded me as a conservative instead of a person who thought for himself.

The Washington Post was also friendly in a limited way. The Post’s editorial page editor was pleased to occasionally have me on her page and once took me to lunch with some of her colleagues. When at the end of the 20th century I could no longer stomach the corruption and backstabbing of the Washington snake pit and departed to the beach in Florida, the Washington Post sent a star reporter and camera team to my Florida home for a full-fledged interview and expressed regret that an honest voice had forsaken the nation’s capital. The fact that the Washington Post thought that I was honest did not mean that the Post thought I was correct.

In those days large newspapers like the Times and Post comfortably existed on advertising revenues so varied that no advertiser could, very often, influence the newspaper. Media had a liberal bias, but that was their own decision. It wasn’t imposed on them. Unlike today, there was enough belief left in the media in debate in place of silencing critics, resulting in occasional presentation of alternative explanations to the official narratives.

In the 21st century the media for whatever reasons has become censorious, demonizing those in opposition to official narratives. The result has been to discredit the media as a source of information.

Today we don’t have, as existed in my 25 years in Washington, a media even partially open to different explanations.

With the traditional TV and print media discredited, and the lack of transparency of most of the Internet media, to whom do we turn for credible explanations? My own attempts to deliver truth are compromised by invalid accusations against me by Zionist organizations, the political left, and liberals who still believe that more government is the answer. The assaults on me are intended to limit my readership, and the assaults have had a partial success. I suspect that I am now read more abroad than in the United States.

Perhaps I have failed in my approach to insouciant Americans who, despite the high stakes, are unaware of the demands on them of our time. If so, my failure is small compared to that of the media, which by destroying its own credibility, has destroyed the media’s checkmate on the rise of a Caesar.

America now has a president who goes to war at the request of his most important campaign contributors without authorization of the US Congress as long as the request is in Israel’s behalf. The legal advisor to the US Department of State, Reed Rubinstein, has penned a justification for Trump’s military attack on Iran which states the United States initiated its military campaign against Iran (Operation Epic Fury) “at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally”. Note that the State Department defines aggression as self-defense. Clearly Under President Trump, the United States of America now commits its resources and lives of its military personnel to the achievement of the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. Americans are now taxed and die for Israel’s domination of the Middle East. If you dissent, you are punished as an “anti-semite.”

Until the 21std century, I cannot imagine the American media allowing this to happen. The digital revolution by putting the power of money over the media in a few hands has cancelled even a biased free press. In its place there is a propaganda ministry.

President Trump’s anti-semitism policy cancels the First Amendment if it is used by Americans for criticism of Israeli government policies, such as the genocide in Palestine.

When the Israel Lobby can cancel the First Amendment, you know that the United States is no longer a sovereign country.

A country at Israel’s beck and call is America today, thanks to Donald Trump. Yet, a significant percentage of Trump’s supporters conflates MAGA with MIGA. American patriotism now requires patriotism to Israel. As the latest mantra goes, “you can’t be an American if you don’t love Israel.” You have to hand it to the Zionists. They have even stolen our patriotism.

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump and Netanyahu: The odd couple

June 5, 2026 . by Jamal Kanj, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260605-trump-and-netanyahu-the-odd-couple/

“He’ll do whatever I want him to do,” Donald Trump declared recently about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The statement may be one of the most revealing statements Trump has ever made—not for what it says about Netanyahu, but for what it reveals about Trump’s psychology. It was intended as a display of strength. Instead, it exposed the opposite.

Trump has built a political persona around hyperbole, self-aggrandizement, and declarations of superiority to cover up for an oversized inferiority complex, he only knows its extent. When he insists that Netanyahu is acting at his command, he is projecting an authority he does not possess. The louder the boast, the more apparent the insecurity beneath it.

“If there is one lesson since the election of Trump, it is that Netanyahu, not Trump, has consistently dictated the pace of America’s wars in the Middle East. Trump may occupy the White House, issue ultimatums, and proclaim himself the master negotiator, but the facts on the ground tell a different story. Again and again, Netanyahu acts, and Trump adjusts.“

For years, Netanyahu worked relentlessly to pull the U. S. into another made-for-Israel war, this time against Iran. Successive administrations, despite their deference to Israel, stopped short of falling for the scheme. Trump, however, proved far more susceptible to the influence of his Israel-first donors and to Netanyahu’s chicanery. Yet he continues to portray himself as the one calling the shots.

This week, Trump proudly recounted a phone call in which he supposedly instructed Netanyahu to halt a planned Israeli attack on Beirut. It took little time after Trump’s statement for Israel’s defense minister to announce that military operations “will continue under all circumstances.” True to that pledge, Israel launched fresh attacks on hospitals and villages in southern Lebanon, killing and wounding civilians despite the so-called Trump’s war cessation.

“Two days later, on Wednesday June 3rd, Lebanese and Israeli delegations meeting in Washington announced another ceasefire. The third such extension since last April. One day after reaching the agreement, Israel resumed strikes on South Lebanon and said it would neither withdraw nor allow Lebanese civilians back to their homes in the south.“

It is almost certain, when the Lebanese resistance eventually counters the repeated Israeli violations, Trump—as he has done before—will condemn the retaliation rather than the provocation. To save face and avoid appearing weak before Netanyahu, he will once again blame the Lebanese side while ignoring the Israeli occupation and military actions that triggered the response.

The same pattern is evident in the negotiations with Iran. For months, Trump’s stated objective was to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—a framework which aligns with Tehran’s declared position. But nuclear-armed Israel, which never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty that Iran did, has different goals entirely. Netanyahu’s government will not be satisfied with anything short of the destruction of knowledge and the reduction of Iran to a failed state, precisely the fate that befell Iraq and Libya after both countries agreed to surrender their nuclear ambitions.

For Israel, a negotiated agreement between the U.S. and Iran, may be far less desirable than the continuation of regional turmoil. For its objective is the preservation of a strategic environment that sustains military and geopolitical dominance. Zionism has long viewed the emergence of democratic, technologically advanced, and self-reliant neighboring states as a threat. Fragmentation and disorder in surrounding countries serve that objective by limiting the rise of independent regional powers that could one day, potentially challenge Israeli primacy. In this case, Israel may be unique among nations: it derives strategic advantage not from a stable and prosperous region, but from entropy, and has built a regional doctrine whose success depends on propagating chaos.

The cost to ordinary Americans is tangible, and personal. They feel it every time they fuel their cars, pay inflated prices for goods, or watch Congress cut healthcare or financial student aid for Americans in order to finance another military aid package for Israel.

“Americans are not only financing Israel’s wars through tax dollars and weapons transfers. They are also paying what amounts to an Israeli surcharge tax at the pump.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been trying for weeks to assure consumers that gas will hover around $3 a gallon between June and September, as if it is acceptable for Americans to pay elevated prices until Netanyahu deigns to approve a ceasefire, especially when Trump boasts that America is a net oil exporter.

Gaza is another front in Israel’s endless wars. Trump personally signed the ceasefire agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh in October 2025, chirping “we have peace in the Middle East.” He had since watched in silence as Israel systematically dismantled every commitment it had made. During the “ceasefire,” it maintained a starvation diet blockade, murdered more than 800 and wounded thousands.

Under Phase One of the agreement, Israeli forces were required to withdraw to approximately 53 percent of Gaza. Phase two stipulated further withdrawal. Instead, Netanyahu ordered the seizure of an additional 32 percent, increasing total Israeli military occupation to 70 percent of the besieged territory, confining 2.3 million Palestinians to 30 percent, or roughly 50,000 human beings per each square mile of rubble.

On all fronts, Trump did not merely follow Netanyahu’s lead. He enabled it, funded it, armed it, and defended it diplomatically. Then, standing before television cameras, he attempted to compensate for this reality by insisting that he was the one in control.

To that end, and following recent Republican primary elections, lame-duck Republican members of Congress have already begun treating the Trump administration as a lame-duck presidency, long before the midterm elections. The recent congressional vote to limit presidential war powers is a telling sign that Trump’s political capital is eroding far sooner than expected.

Nevertheless, Americans may be witnessing a historic inflection point in the decades-long power of Israel-first Zionist influence over American political life. It is clear the political landscape is shifting, and the assumptions that long governed Washington’s relationship with Israel no longer appear as immutable as they once did. From growing dissent within the Democratic Party—and among Republican influencers—to deepening unease across the Washington Beltway, genuine cracks are appearing in a system that for generations treated Israel as a sacred cow. Eight decades of unquestioned manipulation and political leverage over American leaders is now facing resistance from constituencies that were once among its most reliable friends.

“Hence, no amount of presidential bravado or social-media posturing can obscure what has become undeniable: under Donald Trump, American foreign policy has served Netanyahu’s Israel-first agenda, not America’s. And when the history of this era is written, this odd couple may be remembered for ushering in the sunset of Israel-first Zionist dominance over the U.S. government.“

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Fusing the US Military and the IDF

A bill’s provision to integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries will go to a U.S. House vote after an effort to stop it failed Thursday. Passage will make it nearly impossible to end the U.S.-Israel special relationship, writes Alan MacLeod.

Alan MacLeod for MintPress News, June 6, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/06/fusing-the-us-military-and-the-idf/

Amid widespread and growing public opposition to the Israeli genocide of Gaza and South Lebanon, a controversial new bill seeks to formally integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries like never before, making it difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Section 224 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proposes to join the two forces together at the hip, laying the groundwork for extensive cooperation into “seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation,” according to the Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

This includes the research, development and production of modern, hi-tech arms, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, drones, directed energy, cyber and autonomous weapons systems. It would compel the United States to integrate Israeli arms and technologies into its defense supply chain, and fuse the countries’ data-capturing and storage facilities together, meaning that Israel could have access to essentially all the U.S. military’s data.

The bill also requires the creation of a new position within the Department of Defense: an executive agent whose role is to coordinate cooperation and integration between the two parties.

In essence, then, it would dramatically change the relationship between the two states, from one where Washington supplies Tel Aviv with money, weapons, and diplomatic support, to a situation where the two are fundamentally intertwined.

It would also make the relationship far less transparent, as aid to Israel currently requires an annual public debate and vote. However, by moving it away from the political realm into that of defense acquisition, oversight and accountability mechanisms will be removed, and the public will have little right to know the details going forward.

Judging by its sponsors, Section 224 has strong support on Capitol Hill. It was put forward by Mike Rogers (R-AL), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Adam Smith (D-WA), the panel’s highest-ranking Democrat.

[On Thursday Rep. Ro Khanna’s effort to revoke the provision from the massive military funding bill failed, paving the way for the NDAA to advance to a full House vote.]

The news that a new bill could essentially fuse together the U.S. and Israeli militaries has been met with pushback online, but provoked little comment in Washington, D.C.

One lawmaker who has spoken up is Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who has promised to offer an amendment to strip Section 224 from the bill on the House floor. “We are a sovereign country,” he said on Saturday.

Massie, a strong critic of U.S. support for Israel, recently lost his primary to challenger Ed Gallrein, after AIPAC and other Israel Lobby groups flooded the race with tens of millions of dollars, making it the most expensive contest in American history.

Massie at a speaking event in Las Vegas in 2024. (Gage Skidmore/ Flickr/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Analysts have noted that, if passed, the bill will “extraordinarily” expand Israeli influence in domestic American politics, giving Tel Aviv the opportunity to pull powerful political levers through the tried and tested method of offering jobs.

As the Institute for Responsible Statecraft warns, by expanding or starting new arms production facilities like they already have in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could use the influence of bringing jobs to districts to buy the support of American members of Congress.

The U.S. already provides Israel with enormous amounts of military aid, having sent hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons since 1948.

Since 2008, it is required by law to protect Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” by supplying it with advanced weaponry.

Section 224, however, would transform and deepen this relationship, making it all-but-impossible to democratically break the U.S.-Israel special relationship.

That alliance is under increased scrutiny, as support for Israel is collapsing across the United States. A new poll published by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies found that 60 percent of Americans (including 75 percent of respondents under 30 years old) hold a negative view of the country. When asked, a large plurality says that Israel holds too much sway over American politics and politicians.

A 2025 study found that half of American voters believe Israel is carrying out a genocide against its neighbors in West Asia.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, among others, on charges of crimes against humanity.

The United States, however, has refused to accept the ICC’s actions, attempted to shut down proceedings, and imposed sanctions on the court. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan stated that Senior U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham – one of Netanyahu’s closest allies in Washington – told him that his court is only “for African thugs like [Russian president Vladimir] Putin. It is not for democracies like Israel and the United States of America.”

The response from the governments of Israel and the United States to the increasing opposition to the genocide has been to crack down on dissent and to censor social media.

As Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of pro-Israel pressure group, the Anti-Defamation League stated, “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem.” The Trump administration forced through the sale of TikTok to the family of Larry Ellison, a passionately pro-Israel tech billionaire who is the largest private funder of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Ellison, no doubt, will support Section 224. Yet the effective merger between the U.S. military and the IDF will have profound consequences for the future of America, and should provoke stiff opposition nationwide. Whether it passes will depend largely on the nature and scale of that opposition.

Alan MacLeod is senior staff writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine and Common Dreams.

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Tortured US history with Iran goes back 73 years, not 47.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 8 June 26

US neocons reveling in the current US war to destroy Iran tell the monstrous lie Iran has been at war with America 47 years. In their deranged world view it began with the 1979 Iranian revolution that disposed the hated US puppet ruler Mohammed Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran and took 66 US embassy hostages. Their lie claims that during that 47 years Iran killed thousands of Americans and no president defended America till Trump attacked Iran February 28.

These war lovers omit the current truth that Trump’s war is a total failure for 100 days now. Fourteen US service persons are dead. Hundreds injured. All US Gulf States bases damaged or destroyed. Israel suffered the worst destruction in its 78 years. US offensive, defensive missiles so depleted they will take years to replenish. America’s defeat is irreversible. Worst of all? The US forced closure of the Strait of Hormuz choking off a fifth of the world’s oil and vital economic supplies, likely risking worldwide recession, if not depression. Today’s neocon war was stupidity on steroids.

Their stupidity omits the historical truth that the US is the warmonger here, not Iran, going all the way back to 1953 when the US collaborated with the UK to depose the democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddegh. Patriot Mosaddegh sought to nationalize the British controlled Iranian oil industry being exploited by the UK for decades. To prevent this the Brits cooked up Operation Ajax and brought the US on board to overthrow Mosaddegh on the pretext he was a commie.

The US enlisted Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of premier US warmonger President Teddy. As a top CIA official, Kermit was tasked with exploiting fake anticommunist sentiment to oust Mosaddegh in a violent coup. Kermit used his contacts among Egyptian Anglophiles and pro Shah forces to get Mosaddegh’s removal started. But advance knowledge of the coup allowed Mosaddegh to prevail, so much so, Roosevelt’s CIA bosses demanded he leave Iran immediately. Instead, he conjured up the ghost of TR, inspiring him to instigate a second coup on his own that succeeded.

It became the model for CIA backed coups, both successes and failures, throughout the Cold War. A year later Ike secretly gave Kermit a National Security Medal for keeping Iranian oil safe for the West. Apparently, Ike didn’t want to go public with an illegal, immoral and criminal overthrow of a sovereign government.

Seventy-Three years on the neocons of today ditched coup for all out war to reclaim Iran for a new American sock puppet, one candidate of whom is Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah deposed in 1979. Unlike Kermit’s successful coup in ’53, Trump’s war is a colossal failure that signals the end of US hegemony in the Middle East and possibly the entire world. The Gulf States, looking at their shattered US bases and degraded oil infrastructure, will likely turn toward Russia, China, even Iran for security. Europe has largely given up on America. The Far East, seeing the US claw back its missiles for its Iran misadventure is also rethinking its defensive strategy.

Unlike the clever Kermit Roosevelt Jr., today’s coup plotters and warmongers, including Trump, Hegseth and Rubio, are blithering idiots.

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Iran, USA | Leave a comment

Kim Jong Un vows to build nuclear-armed navy with ‘secret underwater weapons’ as he tours warship with his daughter

Kim Jong Un has vowed to bolster North Korea‘s defences with a nuclear-powered navy and a new generation of ‘secret underwater weapons’.

The North Korean leader made the announcement on Thursday while inspecting a new warship, alongside his teenage daughter, believed to be named Jin Ju Ae, ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

State media reported Kim called for the rapid development of naval forces capable of playing a central role in the country’s nuclear deterrent. He said the navy must be able to deliver ‘a deadly blow at the enemy any moment under the water or on the water’. ………………………….

Daily Mail 6th June 2026, https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15879219/Kim-Jong-nuclear-navy-underwater-weapons-warship-daughter.html

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Industrial dispute on Hinkley C site sees large police presence

A LARGE early morning police presence was needed at Hinkley Point C as
tempers flared while hundreds of workers were locked out of the site during
unofficial industrial action. The dispute arose after claims a dangerous
crane lift on the nuclear power station construction site has put workers
at risk. MEH Alliance workers, who are delivering Hinkley C’s mechanical,
electrical, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning installations,
staged protest sit-downs in canteens. The site’s management then withdrew
access rights for the workers ‘to avoid any further disruption, limit
impacts to other HPC team members, and allow time for discussions’.

West Somerset Free Press 6th June 2026, https://www.wsfp.co.uk/news/industrial-dispute-on-hinkley-c-site-sees-large-police-presence-914669

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Hegseth Compares D-Day Troops to Europe’s Migrants

You could argue that Hegseth was confused in this analogy, and simply misspoke. But he and the administration he is part of have taken over Nazi talking points on racial hierarchies,

Juan Cole, 06/07/2026, https://www.juancole.com/2026/06/hegseth-compares-migrants.html

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Whiskey Pete Hegseth, speaking 82 years after the Allied storming of the beaches of Nazi-occupied France, appears to have sided with . . . the Nazis. He said, “Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?”

He compared the 156,000 US, Canadian and British troops who landed at five beaches on the Normandy coast of Vichy France on June 6, 1944, to the desperate “boat people” coming to today’s Europe in risky voyages on leaky vessels across the Mediterranean. About 150,000 a year make it across alive, to a continent of 743 million Some 30% are summarily deported. I.e., each year’s irregular migrants constitute 0.013% (a little over one hundredth of one percent) of the population.

Now, I’m sure that Operation Overlord, helmed by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and Commander of all Allied ground forces British General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, was viewed by German Field Marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt as a landing of tens of thousands of undocumented aliens from barbarian races. After all those who hit the beaches included Jews, Slavs, Hispanics, indigenous Americans, Chinese Americans and 2,000 African Americans, whom the Nazis viewed with the same horror and disdain that Hegseth views today’s migrants to Europe.

But it is more than a little odd that the successor of Department of War head Henry L. Stimson should take the Nazi view of the matter.

You could argue that Hegseth was confused in this analogy, and simply misspoke. But he and the administration he is part of have taken over Nazi talking points on racial hierarchies, as I observed in some detail in my analysis for Tomdispatch.com of the Trump National Security Strategy regarding Europe. I wrote,

‘Trump claims that he’s no longer sure Europeans will even remain European. He supposedly worries that, two decades from now, the continent will be unrecognizable and EU countries no longer capable of being Washington’s “reliable allies.” That barb is, of course, clearly aimed at Muslim immigrants to Europe, even though they are a distinct minority of those arriving there. In an interview about his NSS, Trump snidely remarked, “If you take a look at London, you have a mayor named Khan.” And he then went on to exclaim in horror that immigrants aren’t just coming from the Middle East, “they’re coming in from the Congo, tremendous numbers of people coming from the Congo.” In other words, the only thing that outstrips Trump’s Islamophobia is his horror of Black people.

Of course, he’s completely misinformed about immigration to Europe, which means his NSS is as well. As a start, the largest influx of people into the EU in recent few years has been 4.3 million Ukrainians. The major sources of immigration to Germany in 2024 were Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, Syria, and India. For Spain, it was Colombia, Morocco, Venezuela, Peru, and Argentina. As for Europe’s future reliability, Trump has already said that he “can’t trust” Denmark, no matter that its population is solidly Lutheran and predominantly blond, because that country won’t give him Greenland. And since the president has expressed a willingness to break up the NATO alliance, if necessary, to add 57,000 Greenlanders to his feudal domains, his doubting of European dependability should be considered richly ironic.

Aryan Reliability

The underpinnings of Trump’s reasoning can (or at least should) be described as Nazi in style. After all, he’s assuming that the immigrants he loathes are inherently incapable of becoming Europeans and will make those countries intrinsically untrustworthy as allies of the United States. Of the EU countries, he recently asserted that “they’ll change their ideology, obviously, because the people coming in have a totally different ideology.” Yet British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, born in Southampton to an immigrant Indian-East African family of Hindu faith, was widely viewed as having restored British-U.S. diplomatic relations after years of strain.

In reality, studies show that socio-economic status, not national origin, best predicts how immigrants will vote. In Germany, the better-off Russian-Germans, who far outnumber largely working-class Turkish-Germans, tend to vote for right-of-center parties. Both groups, however, seem happy to participate in European politics in accordance with local norms. If, for Trump, the term “immigrants” in this context is a dog whistle for Muslims, it might be noted that nine of the 22 countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, that have been formally designated by Trump as “major non-NATO allies” are Muslim-majority

His foreign policy reasoning in that NSS eerily mirrors the crackpot logic of Adolf Hitler, who saw France as an enemy of Germany’s because it had allegedly fallen irretrievably under non-Aryan Jewish influence, and who held out hope in the 1920s and early 1930s that Aryan elements would prevail over Jewish ones in Britain, a country he preferred as a strategic partner because of the Germanic ancestry of part of its population. In Trump’s NSS, immigrant Europeans from Africa and the Middle East play the role that Jews did in Hitler’s thinking — that is, non-Aryan underminers of national integrity. Hitler’s conspiratorial racism was, of course, all too grimly insane, and so, too, is that of Trump’s NSS.

“Mongols and Negroes”

Central to the NSS is the Great Replacement. The idea, though not the phrase, goes back to 1900 when the French nationalist parliamentarian and novelist Maurice Barrès wrote, “Today, new French have slipped in among us… who want to impose on us their ways of feeling.” He warned of Jewish, Italian, and other immigrants. “The name of France might well survive,” he commented, but “the special character of our country would nevertheless be destroyed.” Amid a political crisis over the wrongful conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (of Jewish and Alsatian heritage) for supposed espionage for the German embassy, Barrès denounced the famed French novelist Émile Zola, a supporter of Dreyfus, as “not French” but a rootless cosmopolitan from a Venetian background.

Fifty years later, the French Nazi René Binet (1913-1957) coined the phrase “Great Replacement.” An ex-Communist, he had served as a Nazi collaborator during World War II in the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of the Charlemagne paramilitary Protection Squadron (Schutzstaffel or SS). After the war, in his 1950 book Theory of Racism, he wrote in dismay about how Western Europe had been invaded by “Mongols and Negroes” — that is, by the Soviets and the Americans. He lamented that Jewish-dominated capital also supposedly controlled Europe (it didn’t, of course) and falsely alleged that Jewish CEOs were bringing in immigrants in a deliberate attempt to replace civilized White Europeans.

Sadly enough, Binet’s ideas have been revived in this century by French thinkers and politicians. Renaud Camus published his twenty-first century version of the theory in 2010, entitling his book The Great Replacement. Such falsehoods were echoed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when American Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us” (and President Trump called the assembled protestors, as well as those who opposed them, “very fine people”).

Read the rest here.

June 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

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