Peace

It often pays, literally, to be perceived as a perpetual victim, a status that Israel and the Jewish institutional constituency have exploited relentlessly since 1945. It is now eighty years since the Second World War ended and the numbers of those receiving “holocaust” reparations from the German government hardly seems to diminish and may now include children of survivors who presumably were somehow damaged in the womb after the conflict ended and the camps in Europe were “liberated.” More than 20,000 Jews fled to Shanghai in China before and during the war, avoiding the prison camps in Europe, but they too are reported to be eligible for reparations.

There were quite a lot of what Donald Trump might describe as “bad things” taking place in Washington over the past week, to include the worsening of relations with China shortly after what appeared to be an agreement had been reached over tariffs; the arrival at an apparent impasse in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program; and friction with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over possible initi

Midway through this month, Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries sent out a fundraising text saying that he “recently announced a 10-point plan to take on Trump and the Republicans.” But the plan was no more recent than early February, just two weeks after President Trump’s inauguration. It’s hardly reassuring that the House minority leader cited a 100-day-old memo as his strategy for countering the administration’s countless moves since then to dismantle entire government agencies, destroy life-saving programs and assault a wide range of civil liberties.

It has been another exciting week in a world at war where the word “diplomacy” has no meaning and would probably be defined by America’s head of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as a doctrine in which you shoot someone first before he or she can shoot you. In my article last week I discussed the reports that there has been a serious rift between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, exemplified by Trump’s unwillingness to talk to the Israeli leader followed by his failure to visit Israel on his recent Middle East trip. Sources attributed the break to Trump’s perception that he was being “manipulated” by the Israeli, which was completely plausible though something that should have been recognized and warned against by Trump’s foreign policy advisers when he first ascended to the presidency in 2017. Israel always manipulates opinion on the United States through its lobby’s control of the media and corruption of the politicians.

There was a time when Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to have all the cards.

Prelude: As we welcome Pope Leo XIV, we do so with full awareness of the Church’s failures as an institution. Church-sanctioned teachings too often became instruments of empire, rather than channels of Christ’s peace. They upheld systems of enslavement, patriarchy, and racial hierarchy, instead of challenging institutions and bidding them to change. —

When Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost was proclaimed as Pope Leo XIV and then stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, for me it was a moment of disbelief and wonderment: The first American-born Pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Then came his Urbi et Orbi (to the City and the World) blessing, in which he repeatedly, and beautifully, invoked peace.

“Peace be with you all…Peace be with you…. The peace of the Risen Christ - - an unarmed and disarming peace, …uniting everyone, always in peace. …a Church that always seeks peace, …for peace in the world.”

I have in the past speculated that the day might come when President Donald Trump, he of a massive ego, might just become tired of his being manipulated and controlled by America’s Israel Lobby and by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. I thought, and hoped, that he might become so annoyed that he might move to take control of the so-called tail wags the dog relationship that has for so long put Israel in the driver’s seat. While I am loathe to read too much into several recent developments, the first suggestion that all is not well in Washington’s relationship with what has been euphemistically referred to as “America’s best friend and closest ally.”

America is threatening to bomb, with nuclear weapons, the nuclear infrastructure of Iran, a country of 90 million people, even as our own Intelligence agencies admit Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon.

The fervor is growing in DC, as it did in the lead up to Israel’s instigation of America’s war with Iraq. Few in DC are thinking about the moral or physical consequences of America using nuclear weapons:

Deaths of millions, radiation poisoning of hundreds of millions of people in countries around the world, poisoning of water supplies, agricultural lands, food supplies. Sharp increase in cancers and other diseases.

This is a doomsday scenario, one that President Trump campaigned against, when he said we are ending the era of endless wars.

He criticized Biden for bombing Yemen and now he is authorizing it doing it. President Trump advocated to end wars by speaking to others, not bombing them.

Like many presidents before him, he is being influenced by others with a political agenda that does not reflect America’s interests.

Hard-core Zionists led by Benjamin Netanyahu want the U.S. to bomb Iran, just as they urged America to attack Iraq.

After detailing the devastating toll of the U.S.-backed genocide in Palestine, I joined my long time friend, famed journalist, host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss my Kucinich Report articles, specifically honing on